The following morning Frankie asks Jeff to introduce an award to deputy custodian Lapari (Kumail Nanjiani) at the gala for a Cleaner Greendale in order to be seen as denouncing the underground game.
Abed manages to recover Koogler's encryption key which reveals that Silver Ballz plans to ambush Lapari at the gala.
The group split up at the gala; Britta and Elroy take out the kitchen staff who are all secretly playing but realize none of them are Silver Ballz.
He is saved from punishment by the arrival of the Dean who was assigned a non-active role scouting the perimeter and realized that the custodial staff, finally fed up with the mess the Greendale students make during paintball, are the ones behind the new game.
Lapari lures Jeff and the Dean into the museum of custodial arts where he reveals that he organized the game in order to fight against Frankie and her attempts to clean up Greendale and change the spirit of the school.
The group's codenames are references to actors who have portrayed Batman in film, television, and animation, with Jeff as Michael Keaton, Britta as George Clooney, Abed as Christian Bale, Annie as Adam West, Elroy as Val Kilmer, and the Dean as "Voice of Diedrich Bader"; additionally, their collective chat is called the Belfry, referring to one of the Batman Family's headquarters.
Club gave the episode an "A" rating, calling it "fun and sharp", adding that "despite the revamped cast, [it] feels remarkably like old-school Community.
[3] Eric Goldman of IGN rated the episode a 9.5 of 10, stating "this quickly stands out as the best installment yet this year and a reminder of just how wonderful this show is.
It found an actual emotional story – the campus' reaction to all the changes Frankie has implemented, and all the responsibility she's taken away from the Dean – to wrap the paintball game around, and the various spy thriller tropes gave it a specificity in the same way that season 2's Spaghetti Western version had.