Back to the Freezer

Back to the Freezer is the fourth quest in the Penguin quest series.

Official description
"The penguins are back for another slippery tale of subterfuge and ramshackle science that'll leave you questioning the very fabric of reality…as well as the good taste of its puns. Rewards include hearty chunks of XP to ward off the polar chill, as well as improvements to the XP rewards from Penguin Hide & Seek and the Circus.

And with that, you're on your own. Can you circumvent the latest flashpoint in Gielinor's coldest war? There's only one way to find out.."

Start
To start the quest, speak to Chuck in his enclosure at the south side of the Ardougne Zoo.

Chuck asks you to meet with two PBJ agents Skot and Mundsen, who are located in the Rellekka marketplace, and provides you with the passphrase. This passphrase consists of 3 parts highlighted in blue. (For example: "The weather on the holiday location is weather option and the fish option are to die for.") The phrase is different for every player. The answer can also be found in your quest journal.

The Desert
After you provide the unique passphrase, Skot and Mundsen (located in Rellekka) tell you that the penguins are plotting to lower the temperature of Gielinor.

A short cutscene takes place on the iceberg, where the penguins have created a flying box which they use to travel to the desert. When they land in the desert, the landscape becomes covered in snow before the cutscene ends.

Skot and Mundsen asks you to travel to the desert south-west of Pollnivneach to investigate, stating that they are too "busy" to do so themselves.

Speak with Dundee just north east of the T.A.R.D.I.S. and ask him about the penguins. He didn't see anything, but he provides you with a Crocspeak amulet which allows you to speak with the crocodile near Dundee's camp.

Equip the amulet and speak with Croc, who asks you to help with the temperature in the area, stating that he doesn't like the cold. After talking with Croc, you discover Croc used to be an inhabitant of the Zoo, and is familiar with Chuck, though he didn't believe his penguin stories until now.

Investigate the T.A.R.D.I.S. to the south-west of Dundee's camp. You find a sign that reads "Terraforming Arctic Refrigeration Dispersing Ice Spreader" before deciding they should tell Chuck what they have found.

The secret-secret agent
Bring Chuck up to speed with your findings in the Ardougne Zoo. Chuck suggests you find a secret PBJ Agent, and provides a clue to help find the agent (The only thing I do know about him, is that his Favorite food is... Maybe that'll be some help.). There is one problem, however, as the PBJ Agent's identity is so secret that even Chuck doesn't know their name. For the next part you'll need a Penguin Suit, but luckily Chuck provides you with one if you don't have one with you.

Get your disguise, travel back to the T.A.R.D.I.S. and upon entering the snow covered area, your penguin suit is automatically put on (cape, main hand and off-hand must all be empty). Back at the T.A.R.D.I.S. speak with Emperor Wing, Gordon, Hugh and Elon to gather clues towards figuring out who the agent is. After talking to all four penguins, a new option appears to ask if the penguin is a spy. By asking what happened to the penguin at the party, they reveal what fish he or others like. The clues are also recorded in the quest journal, should you forget them.

Speak to the secret agent (Gordon) and ask him if he is a spy.

The secret bunker
Travel to the iceberg via the small boat north of the Fremennik lodestone and use the G.P.S. to locate the secret bunker. After a few interference you discover a mysterious hatch leading to the secret bunker. Change your disguise by talking with Jim to east, type the CHIP and FIN code - 1234, and enter.

Follow the hallway south then west to the center, and enter the doors to the main research facility. Search the agent's locker in the locker room, both directly west, to find the de-lore-ing device parts list and the incomplete device. Search the following areas to find the items needed to complete the device:
 * Hide and Seek staging area (North-east) - Hat
 * 'Some like it' - Cold Storage (South-west) - Hammer, Flax
 * Chill-out room (North-west) - The Penguin Book of Gielinor, Ice cubes

Use the items on each other to create a Flax cap-ice-i-tor, and then use this "capacitor" on the incomplete de-lore-ing device to complete it.

Time travelling
Operate the De-lore-ing device and you will travel to an isolated monkey island. Operating the device again informs you that the device requires calibration. Grab the monkey wrench on the ground and use it on the device to tighten the nuts and operate the device again.

Malfunctioning again, the device teleports you to a fenced-in area in "Fin-inor" where Ping and Pong are caged. Grab the Penguin bongos and Cowbells and use them on the device to "fin-tune" it.

Operating the device again teleports you to a cabbage field with the Gower brothers. The device is now stopped working entirely, but picking a cabbage and using it on the device will prime it and will once again be operable.

You now arrive at the Mining Guild with men mining coal and mithril rocks. The device is now crashed and requires something to get it restarted. Talking to the men with rune pickaxes reveals them to be robots, so talk to the man with a dragon pickaxe instead. The man suggests "give it a kick" and gives you a pair of worthless old boots. Use the boots on the device to "re-boot" it, and it is now functional and finally transports you to the secret bunker in the past upon being operated one last time.

The past secret bunker
Talk to Gordon in the laboratory (south-west), he refers you to Elon in the central room (with the T.A.R.D.I.S.). Speak to Elon and he gives you a new list of items to collect from around the base. Search the following areas for the new batch of items:
 * Prison (East) - Talk to Buzz the killerwatt to obtain 21x Killerwatt energy, the remaining 100 are obtained by killing 10 Killerwatts in the Killerwatt plane.
 * War room (South) - fishing rod
 * 'Some like it' - Cold Storage (South-west) - Cog, coolant holder
 * Use the cog on the fishing rod to create a 'fishvention' rod.
 * 'Area 51' (West) - Gather 2,000 pure S-now
 * Clean the Mysterious Ice Block with the lemon found in crate next to it.
 * Investigate the Mysterious Ice Block to create 2,000 lemon sole runes
 * Chill-out room (North-west) - cool-ant, ice box (With coolant holder and ice cooler in inventory, use both on the Ice Maker just south of the door to get ice)

The Ice cooler can be purchased from any Slayer Masters for 1 coin. Talk to Elon once you have all the required items.

The puzzle
After you bring Elon the required items, he asks you to find a way to charge the T.A.R.D.I.S. Use 50 of each Bright, Flickering, Gleaming and Sparkling energy on the energy container to the northwest corner of the room, then charge the batteries by solving the puzzle at the Battery Control Station.

The puzzle works the same way as the board game, in which you must figure out the order of the pegs (in this case the pegs are the energy types). Select which energy types you would like to place in each of the 4 slots, and try to solve. To the right of your selection you be given either nothing, a number of grey squares, a number of white squares, or any combination of these. By trying different combinations and observing the outcome of the grey/white squares, you must figure out which colour pegs belong in which spots, thus solving the puzzle. Each row is a separate guess at the four-energy sequence. Resetting the puzzle will change the correct sequence.
 * A white square means you have a peg of the right colour in the wrong spot.
 * A grey square means you have a peg of the right colour in the right spot.
 * If neither of these is present it means you have no pegs of the right colour.
 * The squares location is always to the far left, this does not indicate which peg it is referring to.

By setting each of the slots to the same colour, the number of grey squares shows how many of that colour are in the solution. Doing this for three colours gives the number of each colour needed. The number of the fourth colour pegs is the remaining number of pegs not identified by the first three. This can use up to three turns, but then only determining the order remains.

Return to the present
After solving the puzzle, the T.A.R.D.I.S. is completed. Talk to Elon (current room), Gordon (laboratory to the south-west) and Hugh (chill-out room to the north-west) and inform Emperor Wing in the main research facility afterwards. Shortly afterwards, the cool-ant starts to leak around the facility. You may now pilot the T.A.R.D.I.S. and escape.

Following a cutscene, the T.A.R.D.I.S. lands in the desert. Return to Chuck in the Ardougne Zoo to report the case. You express concern that despite Gordon sabotaging the machine in the past, the T.A.R.D.I.S. has landed and could cause the desert to freeze. Chuck informs you, however, that the T.A.R.D.I.S. machine had already been sabotaged, and was harmless when it landed, and so its cooling power is under control. Unwillingly, you accept the outcome and Chuck rewards you.

Trivia



 * The quest summary that appears in the player's Event Log in Runemetrics says "I travelled back in time in an attempt to thwart another of the Penguins nefarious schemes and stopped Gielinor being terraformed and sent back to the ice age."
 * The quest makes references to franchises containing time travel, such as ', ', ' and '.
 * The quest title is a play on "Back to the Future".
 * The T.A.R.D.I.S. is based on the spaceship of the same name from Doctor Who.
 * Ping & Pong, when imprisoned in the Pillory in the future, quote Bill & Ted.
 * The penguins describe the going-away party, saying "There was black ice, vanilla ice, cyan ice, and yellow snow." These are all references to non-edible forms of ice.
 * When speaking to Croc and asking him about his escape, he says "I have climbed highest mountains, I have run through the fields, but I still haven't found what I'm looking for..." This is a set of lyrics to the song "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" by.
 * Croc's dialogue "Those were the days of our lives. The bad things in life were so few" is a set of lyrics from "These Are The Days Of Our Lives" by.
 * Filip and his dialogue about selling pens is likely a direct reference to , in which the protagonist learns how to sell stock bonds to people using the example of creating need to generate sales.
 * Ping's dialogue "And that's when we bit the head off a fish on stage!" is a reference to an incident involving biting the head off a bat live on stage.
 * The examine text for the door in the version of the mining guild visited during the quest is "Hold the door." This is a reference to a scene from .
 * The mining guild in the quest references bots being used for mining, as the player with the dragon pickaxe (who unlike the others, is not a bot) notes that they all look alike (in order to save time making accounts, bot users do not spend much time customising a character), as well as gnome balls being used to prevent the bots from skilling.
 * The PBJ's secret agent mentions him inventing a device during his 'Twiblick All-day Passion Projects' time, which allows the penguins time to work on their own passionate projects. A reference to the 'Thursday All-day Personal Projects' time in which Jagex employees are able to spend every other Thursday working on a project they feel passionately about, from which this quest came initially.
 * When reporting to Emperor Wing before boarding the T.A.R.D.I.S., he asks "Can you fly this T.A.R.D.I.S., and land it?" to which the player responds "Surely you can't be serious!" and Emperor Wing says "I am serious, and don't call me Shirley." This might be a reference to the film .
 * When talking to Croc, he says, "If I could turn back time." This might be a reference to the Cher song.