Squidward's Suicide
I want to start off by saying if you want an answer at the end, prepare to be disappointed. There just isn't one.
I was an intern at Nickelodeon Studios for a year in 2005 for mydegree in animation. It wasn't paid of course, most internships aren't,but it did have some perks beyond education. To adults it might notseem like a big one, but most kids at the time would %%#$ themselvesover it. Since I worked directly with the editors and animators, I gotto view the new episodes days before they aired.
I'll get right to it without giving too many unnecessarydetails. They had very recently made the Spongebob movie and the entirestaff was somewhat sapped of creativity so it took them longer to startup the season. But the delay lasted longer for more upsetting reasons.There was a problem with the series 4 premier that set everyone andeverything back for several months.
Me and two other interns were in the editing room along withthe lead animators and sound editors for the final cut. We received thecopy that was supposed to be "Fear of a Krabby Patty" and gatheredaround the screen to watch. Now, given that it isn't final yetanimators often put up a mock title card, sort of an inside joke forus, with phony, often times lewd titles, such as "How sex doesn't work"instead of "Rock-a-by-Bivalve" when spongebob and patrick adopt a seascallop. Nothing particularly funny but work related chuckles. So whenwe saw the title card "Squidward's Suicide" we didn't think it morethan a morbid joke. One of the interns did a small throat laugh at it.The happy-go-lucky music plays as is normal.
The story began with Squidard practicing his clarinet, hittinga few sour notes like normal. We hear Spongebob laughing outside andSquidard stops, yelling at him to keep it down as he has a concert thatnight and needs to practice. Spongebob says okay and goes to see Sandywith with Patrick. The bubbles splash screen comes up and we see theending of Squidward's concert. This is when things began to seem off.While playing, a few frames repeat themselves, but the sound doesn't(at this point sound is synced up with animation so yes that's notcommon) but when he stops playing, the sound finishes as if the skipnever happened. There is slight mummuring in the crowed before theybegin to boo him. Not normal cartoon booing that is common in the show,but you could very clearly hear malace in it. Squidward's in full frameand looks visibly afraid. The shot goes to the crowd, with Spongebob incenter frame, and he too is booing, very much unlike him. That isn'tthe oddest thing, though. What is odd is everyone had hyper realisticeyes. Very detailed. Clearly not shots of real people's eyes, butsomething a bit more real than CGI. The pupils were red. Some of uslooked at eachother, obviously confused, but since we weren't thewriters we didn't question its appeal to children, yet.
The shot goes to Squidward sitting on the edge of his bed,looking very forlorn. The view out of his porthole window is of a nightsky so it isn't very long after the concert. The unsettling part is atthis point there is no sound. Literally no sound. Not even the feedbackfrom the speakers in the room. It's as if the speakers were turned off,though their status showed them working perfectly. He just sat there,blinking, in this silence for about 30 seconds, then he started to sobsoftly. He put his hands (tentacles) over his eyes and cried quietlyfor a full minute more, all the while a sound in the background veryslowly growing from nothing to barely audible. It sounded like a slightbreeze through a forest.
The screen slowly begins to zoom in on his face. By slow I meanit's only noticeable if you look at shots 10 seconds apart side byside. His sobbing gets louder, more full of hurt and anger. The screenthen twitches a bit, as if it twists in on itself, for a split secondthen back to normal. The wind-through-the-trees sound gets slowlylouder and more severe, as if a storm is brewing somewhere. The eeriepart is this sound, and Squidward's sobbing, sounded real, as if thesound wasn't coming from the speakers but as if the speakers were holesthe sound was coming through from the other side. As good as sound asthe studio likes to have, they don't purchase the equipment to be thatgood to produce sound of that quality.
Below the sound of the wind and sobbing, very faint, somethingsounded like laughing. It came at odd intervals and never lasted morethan a second so you had a hard time pinning it (we watched this showtwice, so pardon me if things sound too specific but I've had time tothink about them). After 30 seconds of this, the screen blurred andtwitched violently and something flashed over the screen, as if asingle frame was replaced. The lead animation editor paused and rewoundframe by frame. What we saw was horrible. It was a still photo of adead child. He couldn't have been more than 6. The face was mangled andbloodied, one eye dangling over his upturned face, popped. He was nakeddown to his underwear, his stomach crudely cut open and his entrailslaying beside him. He was laying on some pavement that was probably aroad. The most upsetting part was that there was a shadow of thephotographer. There was no crime tape, no evidence tags or markers, andthe angle was completely off for a shot designed to be evidence. Itwould seem the photographer was the person responsible for the child'sdeath.
We were of course mortified, but pressed on, hoping that it wasjust a sick joke. The screen flipped back to Squidward, still sobbing,louder than before, and half body in frame. There was now what appeardto be blood running down his face from his eyes. The blood was alsodone in a hyper realistic style, looking as if you touched it you'd getblood on your fingers. The wind sounded now as if it were that of agale blowing through the forest; there were even snapping sounds ofbranches. The laughing, a deep baritone, lasting at longer intervalsand coming more frequently. After about 20 seconds, the screen againtwisted and showed a single frame photo. The editor was reluctant to goback, we all were, but he knew he had to. This time the photo was thatof what appeared to be a little girl, no older than the first child.She was laying on her stomach, her barrettes in a pool of blood next toher. Her left eye was too popped out and popped, naked except forunderpants. Her entrails were piled on top of her above another crudecut along her back. Again the body was on the street and thephotographer's shadow was visible, very similar in size and shape tothe first. I had to choke back vomit and one intern, the only female inthe room, ran out.
The show resumed. About 5 seconds after this second photoplayed, Squidward went silent, as did all sound, like it was when thisscene started. He put his tentacles down and his eyes were now done inhyper realism like the others were in the beginning of this episode.They were bleeding, bloodshot, and pulsating. He just stared at thescreen, as if watching the viewer. After about 10 seconds, he startedsobbing, this time not covering his eyes. The sound was piercing andloud, and most fear inducing of all is his sobbing was mixed withscreams. Tears and blood were dripping down his face at a heavy rate.The wind sound came back, and so did the deep voiced laughing, and thistime the still photo lasted for a good 5 frames. The animator was ableto stop it on the 4th and backed up. This time the photo was of a boy,about the same age, but this time the scene was different. The entrailswere just being pulled out from a stomach wound by a large hand, theright eye popped and dangling, blood trickling down it. The animatorproceeded. It was hard to believe, but the next one was different butwe couldn't tell what. He went on to the next, same thing. He want backto the first and played them quicker and I lost it. I vomited on thefloor, the animating and sound editors gasping at the screen. The 5frames were not as if they were 5 different photos, they were playedout as if they were frames from a video. We saw the hand slowly liftout the guts, we saw the kid's eyes focus on it, we even saw two framesof the kid beginning to blink. The lead sound editor told us to stop,he had to call in the creator to see this. Mr. Hillenburg arrivedwithin about 15 minutes. He was confused as to why he was called downthere, so the editor just continued the episode.
Once the few frames were shown, all screaming, all sound againstopped. Squidward was just staring at the viewer, full frame of theface, for about 3 seconds. The shot quickly panned out and that deepvoice said "DO IT" and we see in Squidward's hands a shotgun. Heimmediately puts the gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger. Realisticblood and brain matter splatters the wall behind him, and his bed, andhe flies back with the force. The last 5 seconds of this episode showhis body on the bod, on his side, one eye dangling on what's left ofhis head above the floor, staring blankly at it. Then the episode ends.
Mr Hillenburg is obviously angry at this. He demanded to knowwht the hell was going on. Most people left the room at this point, soit was just a handful of us to watch it again. Viewing the episodetwice only served to imprint the entirety of it in my mind and cause mehorrible nightmares. I'm sorry I stayed.
The only theory we could think of was the file was edited bysomeone in the chain from the drawing studio to here. The CTO wascalled in to analyze when it happened. The analysis of the file didshow it was edited over by new material. However, the timestamp of itwas a mere 24 seconds before we began viewing it. All equipmentinvolved was examined for foreign software and hardware as well asglitches, as if the time stamp may have glitched and showed the wrongtime, but everything checked out fine. We don't know what happened andto this day nobody does. There was an investigation due to the natureof the photos, but nothing came of it. No child seen was identified andno clues were gathered from the data involved nor physical clues in thephotos. I never believed in unexplainable phenomena before, but nowthat I have something happen and can't prove anything about it beyondanecdotal evidence, I think twice about things.
