Returning to Paris, Clouseau is finally reunited with Olga. As the remaining henchmen, Fassbender and his daughter, and eventually Clouseau himself escape the dissolving castle, Dreyfus plays "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" on the castle's pipe organ, while himself disintegrating, until he and the castle vanish.
Enraged, Dreyfus prepares to dissolve England, but Clouseau unwittingly foils him by being catapulted onto Dreyfus's doomsday machine the machine promptly malfunctions and begins disintegrating the castle walls. Realising the deception, Dreyfus orders Clouseau killed, who again avoids Dreyfus' henchmen with his usual ineptitude. Dreyfus is elated at Clouseau's apparent demise, but suffers toothache Clouseau, his entry frustrated by the castle's drawbridge, infiltrates Dreyfus's castle disguised as a dentist, intoxicates Dreyfus (and himself) with nitrous oxide and pulls one of Dreyfus's healthy teeth instead. When the real Clouseau arrives, he is perplexed by Olga's affections but learns from her Dreyfus's location at a castle in Bavaria. The Egyptian assassin (an uncredited cameo by Omar Sharif) shoots one of Dreyfus' henchmen, mistaking him for Clouseau, but is seduced by the Russian operative Olga Bariosova (Lesley-Anne Down), who makes the same mistake. As a result of their orders and Clouseau's habitual clumsiness, the assassins all end up killing each other until only the operatives of Egypt and Russia remain. However, many of the nations instruct their assassins to kill the other assassins to gain Dreyfus's favor and possibly the Doomsday Machine. Meanwhile, Dreyfus, using Fassbender's invention, dissolves the United Nations headquarters in New York City and blackmails the leaders of the world, including the President of the United States (a thinly-veiled impersonation of Gerald Ford, advised by a poorly-camouflaged Henry Kissinger), into assassinating Clouseau. Although Jarvis is killed by the kidnappers, to whom he had become a dangerous witness, Clouseau discovers a clue that leads him to theOktoberfest in Germany. Clouseau travels to England to investigate Fassbender's disappearance, where he wrecks their family home and ineptly interrogates Jarvis (Michael Robbins), Fassbender's cross-dressing butler. Determining a more elabourate plan is needed, Dreyfus enlists an army of criminals to his cause and kidnaps nuclear physicist Professor Hugo Fassbender (Richard Vernon) and the Professor's daughter Margo (Briony McRoberts), forcing the professor to build a "doomsday weapon" in return for his daughter's freedom.
The bomb destroys Clouseau's apartment and injures Cato, but Clouseau himself is unharmed, being lifted from the room by an inflatable disguise. Dreyfus promptly escapes from the asylum and once again tries to kill Clouseau by planting a bomb while the Inspector (by periodic arrangement) duels with his manservant Cato (Burt Kwouk). At a psychiatric hospital, former Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus (Herbert Lom) is largely recovered from his obsession to kill the new Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau (Peter Sellers) and is about to be released when Clouseau, arriving to speak on Dreyfus' behalf, drives Dreyfus insane again. Unused footage from the film was later included in Trail of the Pink Panther. Released in 1976, Strikes Again is the third entry to include the words "Pink Panther" in its title, despite the fact the story does not involve the Pink Panther diamond.
The Pink Panther Strikes Again is the fifth film in The Pink Panther series and picks up where The Return of the Pink Panther leaves off.