I was an intern at Nickelodeon Studios for a năm 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 thêm 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, được trao that it isn't final yet animators often put up a mock tiêu đề 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 tiêu đề card "Squidward's Suicide" we didn't think it thêm than a morbid joke.
One of the interns did a small throat laugh at it. The happy-go-lucky âm nhạc plays as is normal. The story began with Squidward practicing his clarinet, hitting a few chua notes like normal. We hear SpongeBob laughing outside and Squidward stops, yelling at him to keep it down as he has a buổi hòa nhạc 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 bạn 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 thêm 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 câu hỏi 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 một phút 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. bởi slow I mean it's only noticeable if bạn look at shots 10 giây apart side bởi side. His sobbing gets louder, thêm full of hurt and anger. The screen then twitches a bit, as if it twists in on itself, for a chẻ, phân chia, split một giây then back to normal. The wind-through-the-trees sound gets slowly louder and thêm 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 thêm than a một giây so bạn had a hard time pinning it (we watched this hiển thị twice, so pardon me if things sound too specific but I've had time to think about them). After 30 giây of this, the screen blurred and twitched violently and something flashed over the screen, as if a single frame was replaced.
The lead phim hoạt hình editor paused and rewound frame bởi frame. What we saw was horrible. It was a still bức ảnh of a dead child. He couldn't have been thêm 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 tag hoặc 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 bạn 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 thêm 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 bức ảnh 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 tiếp theo to her. Her left eye was too popped out and popped, naked except for underpants. Her entrails were piled on hàng đầu, đầu trang of her above another crude cut along her back. Again the body was on the đường phố, 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 hiển thị resumed.
About 5 giây after this một giây bức ảnh 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 bức ảnh lasted for a good 5 frames.
The animator was able to stop it on the 4th and backed up. This time the bức ảnh 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 bởi a large hand, the right eye popped and dangling, blood trickling down it. The animator proceeded. It was hard to believe, but the tiếp theo 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 Mất tích 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 đã đưa ý kiến "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 tường behind him, and his bed, and he flies back with the force. The last 5 giây of this episode hiển thị 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 bởi 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 hiển thị it was edited over bởi new material. However, the timestamp of it was a mere 24 giây 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 ngày 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.
