The Last Word

Hello, my name is Kathy Folger. I was an intern for the third season of Wordgirl, and it was great until things took a turn for the worse. The PBS station demanded more animation frames for the show to make the animation flawless.

They told us that they wanted to convey a more animated series than there others. So Soup2Nuts (The animation group I was interning for) and the group that animated the show agreed. But they had never done such a feat. So they all worked day and night to get everything flowing right.

As the animators drew, some members of the animation team were growing tired and the animation became more and more grotesque. I should know; I was there giving out coffee and other things for the team. I saw them from the sidelines, gathering together and conversing about an episode they were animating. It was called "The Last Word", and it was going to be to teach children more advanced words like usual.

When the head director brought all the animators to view the episode, he told the one animation group who were animating the last bits to bring the finalized version, but they did not respond. He went to their cubicles, and when he got there they were all dead with blood stains on the alleged tape. The hospital was called and they were sent to the emergency room as soon as possible but it was too late; they died of unknown causes. But we still had the tape so we decided to watch it in their honor and their hard work they put into it. As we all went into the viewing room, everything was suddenly very quiet. The screen flickered on and a scene of Wordgirl started as usual.

First the upbeat theme song played, followed by opening sequence and the title card, but when the featured word was spoken something was wrong. The narrator sounded distorted and demonic in some way and the words sounded backwards, like he was talking in tongues. We thought it was just a sound glitch so we kept going and pulled through the rest of the episode, but it did not get better. Characters started to loose color and the animation became shocking real and plastiscene-like. It showed Wordgirl, the beloved super hero, spitting out obscenities and losing her cartoon style. We kept watching as the horror on the screen unfolded.

As we watched, the dialogue started to become backwards and static started to engulf the scene as unholy creatures which we could barely make out appeared in the background. Wordgirl got worse as scenes of blood-shot faces floated past her as she turned to the screen. Her head went slowly around making a screeching sound as she turned. We all sat there and as her eyes rolled upward her eyes and her mouth opened and she made a sound. Some staff member said that she thought she heard her say "From all good knowledge and power comes greatness", and the staff member said she stopped there. But we did not listen to her. We watched to the end, when it cut to a dark crimson red with a faded pale mask-like face. It just stood there in the screen staring at us until it open its mouth and letters in a jumbled order appeared. HHKTIELLCEILD
 
We all stopped watching it and the tape was gone. We couldn't find it in the VCR anymore and we assumed nothing about it. We went back to our daily lives, except for me. I never went back to the Soup2Nuts team again. I heard rumors that the video still was not found and they did not know why it disappeared in the VCR. I am now trying to forget about it but it still haunts me every night and I still get flashes at night of the face and the things which Wordgirl said. Well, this is the end of my story and I have nothing else to say. I hear Wordgirl is still making new episodes but I will never be apart of that again.

The Grieving

I've always loved Cartoon Network, when I was growing up it was my favourite channel to watch. Even today it has some good shows, like Adventure Time and Regular Show. One of the newest shows on the network, The Amazing World of Gumball, is a cute and mildly entertaining show. Not really my cup of tea, it's a little immature, but my little brother seems to like it a lot.

One day, I was watching Adult Swim when I realized that I'd been up so late that I hadn't even kept track of the time, it was already 4 AM. I don't recall ever watching AS this late, so I stayed awake to see what would happen when it ended. A little bumper showed up at the bottom of the screen during a commercial break, it said that a special episode of The Amazing World of Gumball was about to come on. I was a little confused about an episode of a very popular, new show coming on this early, but I was bored and decided I would watch it; thinking it might come on later in the day so I could spoil it for my brother. Sort of mean, I know.

The flashy and energetic intro theme played, although it was played a little differently than I recall. The music was a little different, and the show's logo wasn't animated, it's colours were done rather sloppily as well, almost like something a little kid would do on a Doodle Board or a Glow Board. I ignored it, assuming that it was done just for this 'special' episode. The title of the episode was "The Grieving", a sort of sad title, but I didn't really pay too much attention.

It began with Gumball, the show's 12 year old protagonist, standing alone facing a corner of his dimly-lit classroom. He looked absolutely miserable, a far cry from the cheerful demeanor he usually had. There was no one else in the room, not even his best friend and adopted brother Darwin the goldfish, and the windows in the room clearly showed the night sky outside. I was really starting to get confused, why would he be at school at night, and why was he standing in the corner all sad and alone?

After about what seemed like a minute of Gumball standing somberly in the corner, the scene suddenly changed. We were in Gumball's house, once again the scene is silent and a little disquieting. Richard, Gumball's enormous rabbit father, walks in from the kitchen, he looked even more miserable than Gumball had in the previous scene. Richard isn't wearing his usual attire, he's dressed in a fancy black suit, a little uncharacteristic of him, as he's usually a slob. He sighs, and slumps down onto the sofa, and starts sobbing intensely, sounding like someone who had just lost something important.

I was starting to get a little creeped out, where was the silly, fun cartoon that I usually looked forward to watching with my younger brother? This was something completely different. I was beginning to think that this might have been something the creators did as an experiment or something, a test of the animation or sound perhaps. Though, it couldn't have been, aside from the opening theme, which was still different from the final shows', the episode had been much quieter than it usually was, only subtle sounds and very little music, and the animation was not anything to write home about either. It was done a bit like an amateur flash on Newgrounds, the character designs were somewhat sloppy and rushed looking, and the real life backgrounds used for the show looked different.

As confused and somewhat frightened as I was, for some reason, I kept watching it. Poor Richard was still sobbing on the sofa, as the front door opened suddenly, making me jump a bit at such a loud noise, and Gumball's mother Nicole, a blue cat like him, stepped in. Like Richard, she wasn't wearing her usual outfit, for some reason, she was in a black dress and was wearing a pretty black hat to match. Nicole sat down on the couch to comfort her husband, although she was looking a bit saddened herself. By this point Richard's crying had began to get more pained and miserable sounding, this wasn't the normal cartoon crying on the show, this was realistic and almost depressing crying, I almost felt like sobbing myself.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, the sad scene at their home ended, as it shifted back to the school. We weren't in Gumball's classroom this time, we were in Principal Brown's office. Nicole and Richard were there, in their usual clothes, looking more normal and happy than they had before, but still slightly worried. Principal Brown however, looked extremely sad. He quietly and somberly informed them that their children, Anais and Darwin, were not present after lunch earlier that day. They hadn't been seen at all the rest of the day. Nicole was instantly furious at him, she began spouting various insults and calls at him that I don't think would have made it on a more mature program like Regular Show. I was laughing at this, because it seemed sort of funny for Nicole to flip out in this manner and start swearing like a sailor in a G-rated cartoon, but my outlook soon changed when Principal Brown told her something else after she finally had quieted down.

His eyes began to tear up as he informed them that they eventually were found, but they had not been found alive. He then went into graphic and nearly nauseating detail describing how their bodies were found, their parents sitting in utter shock. I could hardly believe what was happening, how could such a cheery and fun kids show be taking such a dark and twisted turn. I was considering turning the television off, but I was too scared to be left in the dark by now, nearly frozen by fear and disturbed intensely at the terrible things that he was saying. Another flashback, the scene was earlier that day, and the animation in this scene was even worse than earlier. I don't remember it very clearly, but I think he began his recollection by saying that the school had called the police department when they first turned up missing, believing that the kids had simply ran off and decided to skip school. They said it was very uncharacteristic of both Darwin and Anais to go skipping school like delinquents, Darwin was a little naive and a bit ditzy, but he was a good kid and wouldn't have even dreamed of doing something like that, and Anais was even less likely to run away, she was a straight-A student, despite being only four, which also troubled the police, seeing as a defenseless four year old little girl was missing as well as an older boy.

The school had been thoroughly checked, so the police started to search the heavily wooded area outside of the school. It took little time for the police to discover the horrifying fate of Anais. In a small clearing outside of the school, Anais's head was found in a small box, you likely would have expected something like that to be shown in the show's cutesy art style, but it was nothing like that at all. Realistic blood covered the box, inside and out, while Anais's head was done in the normal style, but was drenched in blood and some other fluids, not all of them hers apparently. There was a note in the box, seemingly written in her blood. It was never stated during the episode what exactly was written on the note, but it apparently lead to the rest of her remains and Darwin's heavily mutilated corpse.

What I remember most about this scene was how out of place it seemed. All the blood and gore from Darwin and Anais's slaughtered and dismembered remains was done in a very realistic and disturbing way. It looked like the scene had been taken from a crime scene photograph done by a professional, not something from a cartoon. The way this scene was animated was different from most of the show as well, you may know that the characters from this series are done in vastly differing animation styles, from Flash animation, to CGI, and I think that there's even a character done by someone putting their chin upside-down to make a face. This particular scene wasn't like anything I had ever seen on the show before, every little detail on Darwin's face was clearly illustrated, he looked a little like a zombie, his face was very pale and his eyes had been gouged out by someone. Anais fared no better, or, what was left of her anyway. She was naked and her stomach had been slit open, her intestines were strewn around the trees and bushes in the woods, done once again in a very morbid and realistic style.

I was feeling very ill by the time this incredibly disturbing flashback had come to an end, so I quickly ran to the bathroom to vomit. I was feeling better after upchucking, so I had realized that I had good timing and had ran to the bathroom during a commercial. It was then I noticed that the show had been running twice as long, it usually ran for eleven minutes, but this episode was running for about thirty. By then I was wondering if there was any information on "The Grieving" on IMDB or something, so while the commercials were still playing I looked up some information about this episode on Google. Nothing came up, no information remotely similar to the plot or name of this episode existed anywhere.

Now incredibly scared and wondering if anyone else was watching, I quickly dialed my brother Larry and asked him to turn on Cartoon Network and see if he was seeing the same shit that I was. He was pretty mad that I woke him up at this hour, but he's a nice guy and told me he would see for me. I thanked him and stayed on the line as the show came back from commercial break. The scene had thankfully panned away from the horrific sight of the children mutilated and was back to the principal's office. I asked Larry if he saw some cartoon animals talking or crying, since that was what they were doing on my TV. To my surprise, he said that he saw nothing like that, instead it was a rerun of an old Looney Tunes short. In utter shock, I dropped the phone and ran over to the TV to turn it off and as hard as I pressed the buttons it would not shut off at all, I tried every single button and none of them did a thing. I tried unplugging the whole thing as well, but nothing worked, the TV stayed on no matter what.

Larry had hung up, assuming that I was playing a joke or something, I guess, and I was alone once again. My door was locked from the outside somehow, and the door to my bathroom was now locked as well. It seemed that I had no choice but to call the police, since my other family members were gone that night, it was the reason I could stay up so late to watch Adult Swim in the first place. When I hurriedly dialed the number, I accidentally dropped my cell phone into my cup of Pepsi. I was very scared, and had no choice but to finish the episode, I turned on all the lights in my room and got under the covers, hiding like my little brother does when I make him watch scary movies with me.
I had apparently missed a little bit, but Gumball's parents were still talking to Principal Brown, so not that much. Nicole was asking him if Gumball was alright, apparently since she hadn't remembered him when Principal Brown told her what had happened to Darwin and Anais. He looked slightly confused and shocked for a moment, and explained to her that he thought Gumball was out sick today and he had spent the day at home by himself with the stomach bug. Nicole screamed and wailed, while Richard quietly told him, in a very out of character voice, that they thought Gumball had got on the bus this morning, but it didn't seem that way.

The police were called once again, to search the building and the small forest outside of Elmore Junior High. They had found him in Miss Simian's classroom, hanging by a noose, with a blood covered knife behind him and blood covering his clothing. The episode ended with the shot of Gumball's dead body hanging there in the corner fading to black. The credits rolled silently, not like the usual way Cartoon Network annoyingly airs a promo that squishes half the screen, these credits rolled unusually slow and they weren't that fun to watch either, a little creepy, just plain white text scrolling on a black background.

I only recognized Ben Bocquelet's name, as he was the creator of the show, the rest were people I'd never heard of. The copyright notice at the end said © Cartoon Network Studios, 2001. Which was incredibly odd, seeing as the show was new for 2011. After all that was over, the screen went to static for a split second, during which some incredibly creepy and shocking video clips were shown between static intervals. I can still remember them all very clearly. The first was a picture of a person in a Plague Doctor outfit, those always scared me for some reason, and the way the person in the suit was filmed was just as bad, a red light, something that freaks me out incredibly was shone over the clip. The next was what seemed like a video being played very quickly, over and over of a kitten's face being squished by a woman wearing high heels, which was strange because a so called "friend" of mine sent me a picture yesterday of a cat being stepped on and killed, similar to the kitten in the video. The last one was the one that disturbed me the most and made me want to both cry and vomit my guts out, it was my little brother or at least a small child who looked very similar to him being shot in the face by a person who looked like my father. You could clearly see the child's brains and blood splatter on the wall. I began to sob uncontrollably after that traumatizing clip, so much so that I passed out.

When I woke up, my door was unlocked, and my television was turned off. I went to call the police on the home phone in my kitchen and report that I had seen some very disturbing things on TV and that my doors had been locked. When they arrived, they could find nothing like what I remembered from early this morning. My internet history was even cleared, they were angry at me, and just assumed that I had had a bad nightmare, when I was sure I hadn't. Thankfully, one of the officers felt bad for me and took me out to a small diner so I could recollect my thoughts.

At the diner, I remembered that my family was out visiting my aunt, and they were supposed to be back by noon or so. It was already eleven, so the officer and I drove back only to find a whole squad of police cars and even some government agents at my house. They explained to me that my little brother was missing and that my mother and father were major suspects. I was freaking out, and trying to tell them about the disturbing clip of the boy who looked like my brother being shot in the head, but they wouldn't listen. I stayed with my older brother, Larry, who wouldn't believe me either, still insisting that all he saw was an old Looney Tunes cartoon, and nothing at all creepy or weird. The cops eventually told me that they would contact Turner Broadcasting and tell them about the incident.

A representative of Turner Broadcasting came to my cousin's house to talk to me in private about what I had seen and experienced that night. He was very kind, but it all seemed a little like some sort of front. After I could tell him all I remembered, he agreed to playback that day's programming from when the incident with the disturbing Gumball episode had occurred. To my shock, all that was airing at that time was an old Looney Tunes short, nothing more, nothing less. I hysterically sobbed and moaned that what I had experienced and seen was completely real, but no one listened. Eventually, I discovered that Ben Bocquelet had a Twitter account, so I sent a message about the episode and this was the reply I got:

"One thing, how in the heck did you find that? I never, ever, EVER, thought I would think about that old shame again. Don't tell anyone this Sarah, (Yes, that's my name), but The Amazing World of Gumball goes back further than you know. I used to have a really boring job as a teen, and I sketched little drawings of The Wattersons and friends. The episode you saw was never supposed to be seen by anyone but me and a few friends of mine. It was a very, very awful thing to do, but we made the episode as a joke. A guy from my old job, who everyone hated, had lost a child to a crazed serial killer, who is apparently still out there somewhere. Anyway, we made it so we could make fun of how he came into work usually, crying like a fool, which is why you saw Mr. and Mrs. Watterson cry so much in the episode. I know, I am deeply sorry for what I did, which is why I tried to bury that stupid thing years ago. Literally, I went out into the countryside with my mates and dug a hole and buried it.

What I don't get though, is how you described the blood and guts and stuff. We didn't have any scene with Darwin and Anais's bodies being found, all that happens in the episode is the parents are informed of the kids being found dead and them crying like crazy. We didn't even draw anything in the episode like that, at all. We're not that sick.
Now, this is my theory, the lunatic who killed the man's child found the tape we buried, watched it, and heavily edited it. Then, he hijacked the local TV station near Vallejo somehow, and got the episode to air on your local Cartoon Network station. Now, why your brother couldn't see it, I have no idea, why it seems you're the only one who saw it, I have no idea either. Sorry, but I just don't know.
Now, for the explanation you have been waiting for, the clips at the end. I DON'T KNOW. I DON'T. I'm deeply sorry, from the bottom of my heart, but I don't know why those clips were aired, I just don't. I am sorry, I really am, but me and my mates are just the ones who made those scenes with Richard and Nicole crying, that's it. I'm so sorry Sarah, I'm so deeply sorry. -Best wishes, Ben Bocquelet and everyone involved with, 'The Grieving'."

The King's Suicide

Because of my video downloaders being glitchy, I had to rip those cutscenes from the ROM.

However, I just got a single cutscene when I was done with the rip: "suicideking_01.avi". It was a clip of 2 minutes and 58 seconds. It was not even in its specific format; it came directly as an HD video, somehow. 


The cutscene began like in the intro for Faces of Evil, yet it was mute. All what I could hear was an faint, eerie static noise in the background. Link was stretching at the screen, saying nothing. The next scene was different. When the King was drinking his wine, he did not move. There was no background at all.  Link zoomed into the screen, immobile.

For a split of second, he had no face. I was getting really scared, because nothing of that was part of the game. It cut back to the King. This time, he was supposed to say his famous "mah boi" line, but he looked different. His hair and beard was white, his pupils were red, and his skin was  pale. He was still mute. I felt like decades passed through both scenes, like if he became older. The scene cut back to the place where Link was supposed to be. He was not there.

Instead, a big stain of blood was on the bricks, and some windows were broken. The scene went back to the King, who stared at the scene for a few seconds, then went back to his wine, slowly. The camera focused on Link again, but he was a lot more abnormal. He was almost completely black, his smiling mouth had sharp, bleeding, shark-like teeth. The background was black and red, and there was eerie music in the background. The scene went black and mute for a second. Link's smile was left behind, with a pair of red pupils staring at me. I was majorly scared at that point.

The scene went black for a few seconds. Then, I saw the King's chalice slowly falling down, with what sounded like the Song of Healing playing backwards in the background. When it hit the middle of the nothingness, it shattered. Shortly after, the King was falling to his back, with eyes closed. I was sure. he was dead. Now the title made sense. He committed suicide. How? The chalice maybe had poison in it? Who knows. Without any noise, he hit the ground, immobile.


For a split of second, his colors were different. There was an iron stack going through his chest, and the triangle of his forehead was an inverted cross. I did not want to continue, but my curiosity grew stronger, and forced me to keep watching. There was more darkness for a few seconds. Then, a sword, pointing down, appeared silently. It blinked in inverted colors for a few frames. Link's hand came down and pulled up. His black silhouette appeared on a red background, after two seconds of black screen. He said some sort of demonic whisper, but not during all the scene. It went mute as he continued talking. When it went black again, he said something distorted.
After I tried to hear it five times, it became clear.
 "Kill anyone friendly."

I was really scared at that point. Then, Gwonam flew in like in the first real scene, but he had that older style. There was no sound or background. When his speech ended, Link's sword appeared, a demonic whisper was slowly becoming louder. It cut to Gwonam again. Then, Link holding the sword and pulling it up. And then, Gwonam again. When it turned black, there were slaughter noises. Link's sword reappeared, but it was covered with blood. It cut to Link's black silhouette, with a different background this time.
There was more black screen. And then... Link's sword. He came in again, and picked it up. But this time, he began to kill a lot of people with the sword. I was unable to see their faces; I could just see the sword swinging and the blood spilling. There were lots of screams and massacre noises. Those screams were making me feel completely scared. Link stabbed one person, who slowly raised his hand, then he chopped it off. There was a chained man in the background, struggling to escape while he watched Link kill two more people. He begged Link to not kill him, but Link ignored his pleas and cut him in half. For a split of second, a pair of horrendous eyes appeared on the screen. Then there was more black screen. This time, it was longer.

Link slowly came toward the screen, faceless, with different colors. As he approached, random images appearing for single frames, eerie music was heard, with continuously increased volume. When he was "looking" at me, he began to glitch. That was, until there was a deep close-up at his empty face.

Before the video ended, the King appeared in a single frame, zombie-like.
After that, I got a blue screen.

Meg's Suicide

Meg Griffin was happy, she had the most wonderful dream that the world was peaceful and her family loved her. The dream was untrue, however. Everybody hated her in reality. Her mother, Lois, forgot to make her breakfast and when Meg complained, Lois told her to walk to school. Her father, Peter, comes in and asks what is going on. Lois tells him that Meg criticized her work.

Peter gets angry and hits a wall telling Meg to get out. Meg screams and runs out. At school, Meg has no supplies she needs for class work, as Peter forced her out before she could get any. She got in trouble in her first 2 periods before going to lunch.

She sat at a table alone, as usual, and some popular kids teased her for being forgetful, and hoped they "Won't forget Meg is a loser and start hanging out with her." Meg begins crying and, while doing so, somebody pushes her head into her mashed potatoes, breaking her glasses, and having everybody laugh at her. Her clothes were dirty so she received four lunch detentions in her next classes.

As the bell rings for the end of the school, Meg is trying to erase her horrible day. However, on the way home, many people tease her and nickname her "Potato-faced loser." Meg is now crying bitterly. She runs home, and when she opens the door, nobody bothers to say "Hello" or anything, for that matter.

Meg runs to her room. Meg usually cuts herself, so this was no big deal. Everybody knew she did, even Stewie. But this time Meg was going to extreme measures and was crying while doing so. She accidentally slit her wrist too deep and screamed so loud that Glen Quagmire, the neighbor, heard. However, even though all the family was there, they didn't care.

"I hope she died." Brian remarks.

"Wait... that feels good." Meg says.

"YES! I LOVE THIS!" So Meg continues to brutally cut her pale skin.

She finally cuts off an entire finger, but instead of screaming she laughs very, very maniacally. She cuts off all her fingers and covers the blood with her pillows and sheets.

Her bedroom looked like a murder scene, it was so goddamn bloody. Meg spots her flute, which she doesn't play very often because everybody complains that it makes their ears bleed. She grabs her flute. There is a blackout for about 10 seconds. Meg has a realistic-looking knife in her hand. There is another blackout for about 20 seconds.

Meg has her flute in her mouth, now, which also looks strangely realistic. Now there is a 30-second black out. Meg is stabbing herself in the stomach, which is squirting out realistic blood; Meg's intestines are coming out, too. Meg is in so much pain that she blows the highest and most off key note on her flute. Now there is a minute of blackout, before we see Meg lying in a dim forest, bleeding, with children screaming in the background, and a hound barking.


Investigators found Meg's body in the forest and brought it to the Griffins' house to ask what they request to do with the body. Peter insists they bury it in the backyard, as they don't have enough money to get it buried. There is a minute or two of blackout, before we see The Griffins at the dinner table, eating realistic hands and legs, and Chris putting salt on Meg's arm. They burp and leave the dinner table a bloody mess

Not Long Enough

Until recently, it was thought that Matt Groening had completely recovered from whatever was making him act so strangely during the Dead Bart incident and that it had affected his normal life afterward. Recent claims from the employee who found the Dead Bart video, however, indicate that Matt Groening went through another, similar, incident ten years ago. It was the summer of 1999 and Futurama had recently premiered. Matt was working on two shows now and had started showing signs of stress, when he announced that he was working on another episode that would be 100% of his own writing. This terrified some of the staff who worked on both shows, but they were hesitant to bring up Dead Bart and the Futurama crew saw no reason to reject Matt's idea. An early version of it was made and the employee who found Dead Bart managed to make a digital copy of this as well. The episode was called "Not Long Enough."

The episode started with Fry, Leela, and Bender making a delivery for Planet Express. They never revealed exactly what they were delivering or where they were going, and everyone seemed to be upset about an unexplained event that had happened recently. Leela and Bender were angry at Fry, who kept apologizing but was coldly rejected by his friends. They eventually reached a planet that seemed to have only one house surrounded by empty, desolate fields on all sides. They knocked the door and a grotesque alien that seemed to be very old answered. He took the box without a word. He opened it, took a knife out of it, and stabbed himself.

The Planet Express crew didn't seem to find this odd or surprising; they simply left the body on the ground and walked back to their ship in silence. The next scene was of the Planet Express ship flying through space. A dissonant piece of music made of extremely loud instruments playing a very slow tune played in the background while the ship flew through an empty, black space. They finally reached Earth and landed in a deserted New New York. Fry started apologizing again as they walked through the empty streets (there was no sign of the Planet Express building), but Leela and Bender glared at him in silence. Fry gave up and separated from his friends. He walked for quite a while, never encountering a single person.

He reached the cryogenics building where he had been frozen, looked inside, and began to cry. The crying went on for a few minutes before he entered the building. Fry went to one of the tubes, set the timer on it to a huge number with more zeroes than I could count, and locked himself in. The screen faded out and when it came back in the view was entirely on Fry. The machine must have partially stopped working, as parts of Fry were decaying; bone was poking through his skin in several places. Fry mumbled, "It's what I deserve," and climbed out of the freezing device.

He was in a surreal, indescribable place. There were a huge variety of shapes and colors, but it wasn't bright or fanciful. It was closer to the faint colors you see if you close your eyes too hard. Fry started walking, the surreal void he was in seeming to go on and on. He kept walking for a few minutes. The colors kept making shapes you could kind of make out, but none of them were pleasant. After his long walk, Fry found a picture on the ground. It was completely out of place in his new environment; it looked like something drawn in the normal Futurama style. It was a photo of himself, Leela, and Bender. Fry looked at it for a few seconds before beginning to cry again. The picture soon turn to dust and Fry continued walking.

The view zoomed out until Fry couldn't be seen until the colors all blended together and turned to solid black. The view continued to zoom out and we see that the black was a tiny fragment of the pupil in Fry's eye. His frozen body had fallen out of the freezing unit and was lying in an abandoned room. He was drawn in the same hyper-realistic style as Bart's corpse (from the Simpsons episode, "Dead Bart").
Bender and Leela walked into the room. They saw what Fry had done to himself and Leela said, "He got what he deserved." She checked her watch and said, "Looks like we need to leave for our next delivery." She took a knife out of her pocket, put it in a plain cardboard box, and headed to the ship.

Dead Bart

You know how Fox has a weird way of counting Simpsons episodes?
They refuse to count a couple of them, making the amount of episodes inconsistent.
The reason for this is a lost episode from season 1.

Finding details about this missing episode is difficult, no one who was working on the show at the time likes to talk about it. From what has been pieced together, the lost episode was written entirely by Matt Groening. During production of the first season, Matt started to act strangely. He was very quiet, seemed nervous and morbid. Mentioning this to anyone who was present results in them getting very angry, and forbidding you to ever mention it to Matt.


I first heard of it at an event where David Silverman was speaking. Someone in the crowd asked about the episode, and Silverman simply left the stage, ending the presentation hours early. The episode's production number was 7G06, the title was Dead Bart. The episode labeled 7G06, Moaning Lisa, was made later and given Dead Bart's production code to hide the latter's existence.

In addition to getting angry, asking anyone who was on the show about this will cause them to do everything they can to stop you from directly communicating with Matt Groening. At a fan event, I managed to follow him after he spoke to the crowd, and eventually had a chance to talk to him alone as he was leaving the building. He didn't seem upset that I had followed him, probably expected a typical encounter with an obsessive fan. When I mentioned the lost episode though, all color drained from his face and he started trembling. When I asked him if he could tell me any details, he sounded like he was on the verge of tears. He grabbed a piece of paper, wrote something on it, and handed it to me. He begged me never to mention the episode again.

The piece of paper had a website address on it, I would rather not say what it was, for reasons you'll see in a second. I entered the address into my browser, and I came to a site that was completely black, except for a line of yellow text, a download link. I clicked on it, and a file started downloading. Once the file was downloaded, my computer went crazy, it was the worst virus I had ever seen. System restore didn't work, the entire computer had to be rebooted. Before doing this though, I copied the file onto a CD. I tried to open it on my now empty computer, and as I suspected, there was an episode of The Simpsons on it.

The episode started off like any other episode, but had very poor quality animation. If you've seen the original animation for Some Enchanted Evening, it was similar, but less stable. The first act was fairly normal, but the way the characters acted was a little off. Homer seemed angrier, Marge seemed depressed, Lisa seemed anxious, Bart seemed to have genuine anger and hatred for his parents.

The episode was about the Simpsons going on a plane trip, near the end of the first act, the plane was taking off. Bart was fooling around, as you'd expect. However, as the plane was about 50 feet off the ground, Bart broke a window on the plane and was sucked out.
At the beginning of the series, Matt had an idea that the animated style of the Simpsons' world represented life, and that death turned things more realistic. This was used in this episode. The picture of Bart's corpse was barely recognizable, they took full advantage of it not having to move, and made an almost photo-realistic drawing of his dead body.

Act one ended with the shot of Bart's corpse. When act two started, Homer, Marge, and Lisa were sitting at their table, crying. The crying went on and on, it got more pained, and sounded more realistic, better acting than you would think possible. The animation started to decay even more as they cried, and you could hear murmuring in the background. The characters could barely be made out, they were stretching and blurring, they looked like deformed shadows with random bright colors thrown on them.

There were faces looking in through the window, flashing in and out so you were never sure what they looked like.

This crying went on for all of act two.

Act three opened with a title card saying one year had passed. Homer, Marge, and Lisa were skeletally thin, and still sitting at the table. There was no sign of Maggie or the pets.

They decided to visit Bart's grave. Springfield was completely deserted, and as they walked to the cemetery the houses became more and more decrepit. They all looked abandoned. When they got to the grave, Bart's body was just lying in front of his tombstone, looking just like it did at the end of act one.

The family started crying again. Eventually they stopped, and just stared at Bart's body. The camera zoomed in on Homer's face. According to summaries, Homer tells a joke at this part, but it isn't audible in the version I saw, you can't tell what Homer is saying.
The view zoomed out as the episode came to a close. The tombstones in the background had the names of every Simpsons guest star on them. Some that no one had heard of in 1989, some that haven't been on the show yet. All of them had death dates on them.
For guests who died since, like Michael Jackson and George Harrison, the dates were when they would die. The credits were completely silent, and seemed handwritten. The final image was the Simpson family on their couch, like in the intros, but all drawn in hyper realistic, lifeless style of Bart's corpse.

A thought occurred to me after seeing the episode for the first time, you could try to use the tombstones to predict the death of living Simpsons guest stars, but there's something odd about most of the ones who haven't died yet.

All of their deaths are listed as the same date.

Squidward's Suicide

I just 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 my degree in animation. It wasn't paid of course, most internships aren't, but it did have some perks beyond education. To adults it might not seem like a big one, but most kids at the time would go crazy over it.

Now, since I worked directly with the editors and animators, I got to view the new episodes days before they aired. I'll get right to it without giving too many unnecessary details. They had very recently made the SpongeBob movie and the entire staff was somewhat sapped of creativity so it took them longer to start up the season. But the delay lasted longer for more upsetting reasons. There was a problem with the series 4 premiere that set everyone and everything back for several months.

Me and two other interns were in the editing room along with the lead animators and sound editors for the final cut. We received the copy that was supposed to be "Fear of a Krabby Patty" and gathered around the screen to watch. Now, given that it isn't final yet animators often put up a mock title card, sort of an inside joke for us, with phony, often times lewd titles, such as "How sex doesn't work" instead of "Rock-a-bye-Bivalve" when SpongeBob and Patrick adopt a sea scallop. Nothing particularly funny but work related chuckles. So when we saw the title card "Squidward's Suicide" we didn't think it more than 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 Squidward practicing his clarinet, hitting a few sour notes like normal. We hear SpongeBob laughing outside and Squidward stops, yelling at him to keep it down as he has a concert that night and needs to practice. SpongeBob says okay and goes to see Sandy with Patrick. The bubbles splash screen comes up and we see the ending 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 not common) but when he stops playing, the sound finishes as if the skip never happened. There is slight murmuring in the crowd before they begin to boo him. Not normal cartoon booing that is common in the show, but you could very clearly hear malice in it. Squidward's in full frame and looks visibly afraid. The shot goes to the crowd, with SpongeBob in center frame, and he too is booing, very much unlike him. That isn't the oddest thing, though. What is odd is everyone had hyper realistic eyes. Very detailed. Clearly not shots of real people's eyes, but something a bit more real than CGI. The pupils were red. Some of us looked at each other, obviously confused, but since we weren't the writers, 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 night sky so it isn't very long after the concert. The unsettling part is at this point there is no sound. Literally no sound. Not even the feedback from 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 sob softly. He put his hands (tentacles) over his eyes and cried quietly for a full minute more, all the while a sound in the background very slowly growing from nothing to barely audible. It sounded like a slight breeze through a forest.

The screen slowly begins to zoom in on his face. By slow I mean it's only noticeable if you look at shots 10 seconds apart side by side. His sobbing gets louder, more full of hurt and anger. The screen then twitches a bit, as if it twists in on itself, for a split second then back to normal. The wind-through-the-trees sound gets slowly louder and more severe, as if a storm is brewing somewhere. The eerie part is this sound, and Squidward's sobbing, sounded real, as if the sound wasn't coming from the speakers but as if the speakers were holes the sound was coming through from the other side. As good as sound as the studio likes to have, they don't purchase the equipment to be that good to produce sound of that quality.

Below the sound of the wind and sobbing, very faint, something sounded like laughing. It came at odd intervals and never lasted more than a second so you had a hard time pinning it (we watched this show twice, so pardon me if things sound too specific but I've had time to think about them). After 30 seconds of this, the screen blurred and twitched violently and something flashed over the screen, as if a single frame was replaced.

The lead animation editor paused and rewound frame by frame. What we saw was horrible. It was a still photo of a dead child. He couldn't have been more than 6. The face was mangled and bloodied, one eye dangling over his upturned face, popped. He was naked down to his underwear, his stomach crudely cut open and his entrails laying beside him. He was laying on some pavement that was probably a road.
The most upsetting part was that there was a shadow of the photographer. There was no crime tape, no evidence tags or markers, and the angle was completely off for a shot designed to be evidence. It would seem the photographer was the person responsible for the child's death. We were of course mortified, but pressed on, hoping that it was just a sick joke.

The screen flipped back to Squidward, still sobbing, louder than before, and half body in frame. There was now what appeard to be blood running down his face from his eyes. The blood was also done in a hyper realistic style, looking as if you touched it you'd get blood on your fingers. The wind sounded now as if it were that of a gale blowing through the forest; there were even snapping sounds of branches. The laughing, a deep baritone, lasting at longer intervals and coming more frequently. After about 20 seconds, the screen again twisted and showed a single frame photo.
The editor was reluctant to go back, we all were, but he knew he had to. This time the photo was that of 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 to her. Her left eye was too popped out and popped, naked except for underpants. Her entrails were piled on top of her above another crude cut along her back. Again the body was on the street and the photographer's shadow was visible, very similar in size and shape to the first. I had to choke back vomit and one intern, the only female in the room, ran out. The show resumed.

About 5 seconds after this second photo played, Squidward went silent, as did all sound, like it was when this scene started. He put his tentacles down and his eyes were now done in hyper realism like the others were in the beginning of this episode. They were bleeding, bloodshot, and pulsating. He just stared at the screen, as if watching the viewer. After about 10 seconds, he started sobbing, this time not covering his eyes. The sound was piercing and loud, and most fear inducing of all is his sobbing was mixed with screams.

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 this time the still photo lasted for a good 5 frames.

The animator was able to 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 entrails were just being pulled out from a stomach wound by a large hand, the right eye popped and dangling, blood trickling down it. The animator proceeded. It was hard to believe, but the next one was different but we couldn't tell what. He went on to the next, same thing. He want back to the first and played them quicker and I lost it. I vomited on the floor, the animating and sound editors gasping at the screen. The 5 frames were not as if they were 5 different photos, they were played out as if they were frames from a video. We saw the hand slowly lift out the guts, we saw the kid's eyes focus on it, we even saw two frames of 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 arrived within about 15 minutes. He was confused as to why he was called down there, so the editor just continued the episode. Once the few frames were shown, all screaming, all sound again stopped. Squidward was just staring at the viewer, full frame of the face, for about 3 seconds. The shot quickly panned out and that deep voice said "DO IT" and we see in Squidward's hands a shotgun. He immediately puts the gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger. Realistic blood and brain matter splatters the wall behind him, and his bed, and he flies back with the force. The last 5 seconds of this episode show his body on the bed, on his side, one eye dangling on what's left of his head above the floor, staring blankly at it. Then the episode ends.

Mr. Hillenburg is obviously angry at this. He demanded to know what the heck was going on. Most people left the room at this point, so it was just a handful of us to watch it again. Viewing the episode twice only served to imprint the entirety of it in my mind and cause me horrible nightmares. I'm sorry I stayed.

The only theory we could think of was the file was edited by someone in the chain from the drawing studio to here. The CTO was called in to analyze when it happened. The analysis of the file did show it was edited over by new material. However, the timestamp of it was a mere 24 seconds before we began viewing it. All equipment involved was examined for foreign software and hardware as well as glitches, as if the time stamp may have glitched and showed the wrong time, but everything checked out fine. We don't know what happened and to this day nobody does.

There was an investigation due to the nature of the photos, but nothing came of it. No child seen was identified and no clues were gathered from the data involved nor physical clues in the photos. I never believed in unexplainable phenomena before, but now that I have something happen and can't prove anything about it beyond anecdotal evidence, I think twice about things.