I know it’s sort of a weird time to do a seasonal blog event, given that this blog is still in the process of moving sites and I’m essentially posting into the void right now, but I’ve had a good chunk of this content ready to go for months and I figured I might as well post it. We’re going to be doing a creepypasta review for every day in October! This one, like some of the others I’ll be posting this month, was originally posted to a LiveJournal account I started using over the past year specifically to post reviews of creepypasta (I don’t know why I did this on a new account. I’m sure this made sense at the time?). However, I didn’t share said account with anyone except a couple friends I wanted feedback from, so chances are this is new content to you. Assuming anyone is reading this besides myself, of course.
Anyway, I’m sure this story needs no introduction — even if you’re not a creepypasta aficionado like myself, it’s pretty infamous. Notorious, I would say. It was even acknowledged by the creators of SpongeBob recently, or so I heard tell on Twitter.
Content warnings: suicide (obviously), child death, and gore.
“Squidward’s Suicide”
Plot Summary
This story takes place back in 2005, when our unnamed narrator was working as an intern at Nickelodeon. The SpongeBob movie had just come out, and apparently the new season of SpongeBob was delayed because of that (although I'm the right age to have grown up with this show, I didn't watch cartoons much until my teen years, so I'm only vaguely familiar with said cartoon). Our narrator claims that season 4 was delayed for another reason, though.
Narrator, a couple other interns, and other relevant staff are in the editing room, about to watch what they think is the episode "Fear of a Krabby Patty." This isn't a final cut, so when the title card comes up reading "Squidward's Suicide" instead, they assume it's a joke — such jokes weren't uncommon, and would of course be replaced with the proper title card in the finished episode.
The first scene seems, well, pretty normal. Squidward is practicing his clarinet, which is apparently a thing Squidward does — again, I have little familiarity with SpongeBob canon. He fucks it up a bit and gets laughed at, much like you'd expect in a cartoon, and we learn he's practicing for a concert later that night. The scene then cuts to the end of the concert, and here's where things start to get a little weird.
At this point, some animation errors are noticeable, which is odd this late in production. When Squidward finishes playing, he gets booed by the audience, but it seems malicious rather than comical. Squidward even looks like he's scared. For some reason, everyone is animated with what the narrator describes as "hyper-realistic" eyes — if you've read enough creepypasta you're probably already groaning at that detail, but let's cut the author a little slack since this story is old enough to have been a trope codifier in that department. Specifically, the eyes are done in a style that looks somewhere between real eyes and good CGI, so I think it's fair to say we're in uncanny valley territory here. In the editing room, employees are exchanging confused glances, but they figure it's still a bit early in the episode to pass judgement.
The next shot shows Squidward sitting in his bedroom, looking upset. It appears to be right after the concert. The weird part is that, at this point, there's no sound. After about 30 seconds of basically nothing happening, Squidward starts to cry. (This is apparently audible, but quiet.) Background noise begins to fade in, but at this point it's hard to tell what exactly it is. There's an extremely slow zoom-in on Squidward's face, the screen briefly distorts before going back to normal, and all the while the background sound is getting louder. Sounds like a storm outside. Narrator says that Squidward's sobbing sounds better quality than the speakers would be capable of producing, which would maybe be creepy if it was explained in some way but of course it isn't because if you haven't already caught on, this isn't a good story.
In addition to Squidward's crying and the stormy noises fading in, there's another sound, which the narrator thinks is laughter — they're unable to get more specific, because this sound is pretty quiet and comes only in short bursts. About 30 seconds into this, still with nothing else happening, the screen flashes briefly, as if there was a single frame inserted into the episode. One editor pauses to rewind to said frame, and, well, here's where the "child death and gore" part I talked about in the content warnings comes in.
The errant frame is a photograph, showing a dead little boy. One of his eyes is popped out of its socket, but still attached, dangling in front of his face. He's naked save for his underwear and has been disemboweled. It appears that he's lying on a road. The shot doesn't look like a crime scene photo; no sign of police presence, no evidence tape, and the shadow of the photographer is clearly visible. It looks like a photo taken by the killer rather than one intended as evidence. This, naturally, freaks everybody out, but because they're in a creepypasta they just hit play and hope things will somehow be explained. A tip to any potential animation interns out there: this is the point where you may want to consider calling 911.
The episode resumes. Squidward is still crying, and appears to be bleeding from his eyes, because I guess whoever made this episode is also the author of "My Immortal." Time period's right, anyway. Maybe bleeding eyes were really creepy in the mid-00s and I missed out on this important piece of pop culture by being in fifth grade at the time. Once again, the blood is described as being "hyper-realistic," and this time I'm not even gonna tell you to lay off the author for probably being one of the trope codifiers of this particular shit trope, because it's occurred to me that no one should have ever used this trope in the first place. The odd sound in the background is back, and this time it's definitely laughter. After the screen flashes once more, the editors pause playback again and wind back to see what horrors await, probably figuring that at least it will be actual realism rather than whatever hyper-realism is supposed to mean.
Surprise surprise — it's another photo of a dead kid. This one's a little girl, dispatched in much the same way as the previous child, with one eye out of its socket and her entrails removed from her body. It's mentioned that the only woman in the room leaves at this point, which I guess proves women have more sense than men even in subpar stories.
When they hit play once more, Squidward stops crying and looks at the camera, with eyes that are — you guessed it! — hyper-realistic. The sound cuts out, but after about 10 seconds of silence it resumes again. Squidward keeps crying, this time much louder to the point where he's basically screaming. The laughter and storm noises in the background continue, and then there's another cut to a photo, although this time it lasts for about 5 frames. They hit pause, rewind, and realize that this isn't a still shot — it's a short video clip, and the kid in this video is still alive, although he's again got one eye popped out and is having his intestines pulled out of his stomach.
Finally, one of the sound editors tells them to stop playback while he calls — well, if you were expecting the police, no, he wants to call the creator of the show in instead. Once the man in question arrives, they opt to just hit play rather than trying to explain what they saw. Playback resumes from where they left off, and the sound again cuts out as Squidward stops crying to again make eye contact with the viewers. A deep voice says "DO IT," the camera quickly pans back to show Squidward is now holding a shotgun, and, sure enough, he fulfills the premise of the story. The last shot is him lying lifeless on the bed, one eye popped out of its socket from the force of the shotgun blast.
An investigation happens — or, rather, two. The animators figure someone edited the hell out of the original episode as some kind of incredibly morbid joke, and the video file does show that it was edited shortly before playback, but the problem is that the edit supposedly took place a mere 24 seconds before the editors hit play. The photos of the kids go to the cops, but they're unable to identify any of the children in the pictures or to identify any connection to a real-life crime. Our narrator closes by saying that this event has given him a new perspective on supposedly unexplainable phenomena.
Closing Thoughts
This is one of the best-known pastas in its genre, and it's got decent sticking power, as evidenced by the fact that people on the internet such as yours truly are still talking about the damn thing. I cut it some slack for seeming clichéd, because the truth of the matter is that this story helped invent said clichés. It's had a huge impact on other writers of "lost episode" pastas, and on creepypasta writers in general.
Unfortunately, that's about the highest praise I can give it. This story relies on gory imagery, and specifically imagery of dead and mutilated children, in order to shock and disgust its readers. It's a tried-and-true horror formula, but all the blood and guts in this one amount to nothing. In fact, it's much easier to see how this story falls apart when you separate out the gory photos from the episode itself. Nothing happens in the "lost episode" besides Squidward getting booed so hard at a concert that he cries tears of blood and then shoots himself, which would definitely be a weird sight if you were expecting normal SpongeBob, but... that's it.
The implication in combining the episode with the IRL gore photos is that whoever created this episode either drew inspiration from some gory pics they came across somehow, or that they're actually the perpetrator of those crimes. However, since the mysteries of who killed the kids in the photos and who edited the episode are never solved or even elaborated on a little bit, this also goes nowhere. We're left with a tale of an intern having a really freaky day at work, and it's so thoroughly implausible that you'd have to be seriously dumb to think this could have actually happened. That just leaves readers with the ultimate horror of "people make shit up online," which is something we've all known for as long as the internet has existed.
I think this pasta is best remembered as a good example of what not to do. Especially the "hyper-realistic" bits. Please let that fucking trope die already.