SpongeBob SquarePants Season 3 Lost Episode: "Darkened Heart"

== Prologue: Who am I? ==
I’m a single father with 2 children. An 8-year-old boy named “Terence,” and a 5-year-old boy named “Leo.” You guys probably ask why I’m a single father. It’s actually because my wife died after getting murdered by her ex out of jealousy.
It's spring break, and I noticed Leo started acting odd. Sometimes, he would barely eat, he would get random bruises, etc. I felt concerned, so I took him to the doctor, and the doctor diagnosed him with cancer. Before he passed away, he wanted to see how SpongeBob SquarePants was made. SpongeBob was his Number 1 favorite tv show. Every morning, he would go to the Nickelodeon channel to see SpongeBob before he goes to school since he wakes up at 6:00 am. Knowing how much Leo wanted to see SpongeBob behind the scenes, I went to the Make-A-Wish foundation to make his biggest wish come true. 
We went to South Korea to visit the Rough Draft Studios to see how SpongeBob was animated and then visited the Nickelodeon Animation Studio to see how they voiced the characters, made the storyboard, etc. There were even shelves of every SpongeBob episode in video tapes with the episode names labeled.
== Chapter 1: Found an odd DVD: ==
I noticed an odd case on the Season 3 episode shelf labeled “Darkened Heart” with some drawings of pieces of trash. I asked them about that, and they said that it was an episode made to spread awareness about the ocean and how we should be more careful about pollution in the sea, but the writers took the wrong turn and went too far to the point where it was deemed too dark to be aired and released. I thought that it probably wouldn’t be as dark as they said. Right? I learned the truth the hard way. 
In case it was true, I decided to watch it alone to avoid traumatizing anybody wanting to join me. Luckily, I found a room with a TV and a built-in DVD player. Now I can watch the episode while Leo and Terence are in the middle of a SpongeBob behind-the-scenes tour. After I put the DVD in, the SpongeBob episode started, and so did my journey of the pollution episode that will soon pollute my innocence.
== Chapter 2: Are you ready, kids? ==
We were greeted with the same old intro from every SpongeBob episode. We got the talking pirate in a painting, SpongeBob playing the recorder on his nose, and the title card of, you guessed it, “Darkened Heart.” Because everything looked normal, I thought it was just a silly joke to scare me, and that in reality, the episode just suffered the same fate as “The Sponge Who Could Fly,” but with no plan to air on TV. Maybe it was exclusive to an aquarium or part of a perk if you donate to some ocean charity. Man, I was wrong. 
It started outside, zooming in to SpongeBob’s pineapple, and fading into his bedroom. Inside, SpongeBob seems to be shaking in fear with his eyes closed, like he was having a nightmare. Some videos like the Boston Tea Party, an oil spill, and a sea turtle choking on one a part of a 6 pack ring appear for a couple of seconds. He woke up before his alarm went off, and after a couple of seconds when he looks at his clock, the “740 Foghorn Wake-em-Up Grand alarm clock,” or what SpongeBob calls, “Alarmy,” goes off while his face looked like he was looking outside a window at a car on a highway. He felt like he was in a strong, windy blizzard climbing up a mountain, using all his grip to avoid getting blown away to turn off his alarm. 
Soon, SpongeBob felt relieved that it was all just a nightmare, and he continued his life like nothing happened. Changing into his clothes and going on a walk to his favorite job, The Krusty Krab. He noticed Mr. Krabs outside, next to lots of floating trash, from water bottles to pitchers of milk. He has buckets of paint and some tubes of glue with him. When SpongeBob asked his boss what he was doing, he told him that he wanted to build a large statue of a Krabby Patty out of the trash and that hiring a sculptor to build a statue out of stone was “too expensive.” 
SpongeBob walks in and notices customers arguing about random objects inside their Krabby Patties. One said that a bottle cap was inside his burger. Another said that they had a whole slipper inside. A customer was mumbling unintelligibly with his mouth closed. When SpongeBob asks the customer what he’s saying, the customer grabs out a piece of paper and a pencil, and wrote to SpongeBob, “I can’t even say anything because there was glue in my Krabby Patty, and while I was eating, that same thing glued my mouth shut.” The customers started chanting the word, “Refund” while holding a sign with the same word. 
The screen goes to Mr. Krabs with his “statue” finished, when his money senses start tingling. The word refund goes from one ear to the other, one letter each. Mr. Krabs dashes inside the restaurant and asks what’s wrong. They started yelling at Mr. Krabs, opening their half-eaten Krabby Patties to reveal random objects inside while yelling out in unison, “Explain THIS!” I chuckled a bit, especially on that one scene when a customer reveals an entire real-life scuba diver inside a Krabby Patty as the diver swims away, looking embarrassed. 
Mr. Krabs starts to demand SpongeBob to cook the Krabby Patties, clean and tasty. SpongeBob goes into the kitchen to try to make a Krabby Patty, but it was full of trash. He tells Mr. Krabs about the trash in the kitchen. The camera pans to Squidward asleep on the cash register with a Kelpy G magazine covering his face. Mr. Krabs wakes him up to send him and SpongeBob on a mission to find out the cause of the random trash on Bikini Bottom, and to end it for good.
== Chapter 3: Operation T.R.A.S.H. (Try Recycling And Stay Healthy) ==
The screen transitions to SpongeBob and Squidward in the middle of a walk. It looks like the sun is going down, and Squidward complains about how they were walking for hours to find nothing, and that he’s going home, throwing the hat on the floor hard. After Squidward leaves, SpongeBob feels upset, wondering how he’s gonna solve this mess. Then, he got the idea to visit Sandy to see if she can find the origin of all the trash. As SpongeBob starts running, the screen transitions to the inside of Sandy’s tree dome with Sandy working on something. 
SpongeBob kicks the door open while panting like he ran a marathon. He tells Sandy about the trash and that he needs her help to find out where all of the trash is coming from. Sandy tells SpongeBob that she was working on an invention to try to get rid of the trash. In the middle of Sandy talking to SpongeBob, the camera pans to the window as the conversation gets quieter. Some trash bumped into the glass of the tree dome, and the debris from one of the trash cracked the glass. 
The camera goes back to SpongeBob and Sandy and they hear a crack. They looked around and noticed the crack in the window. The crack started getting bigger and bigger before it fully broke and all the water got in. SpongeBob quickly takes off his water helmet, pours all the water out, and gives it to Sandy so she can breathe while the flood fills up the tree dome. After the flood, Sandy told SpongeBob that she might have to pause on developing something to get rid of the trash to repair the tree dome. 
It’s now nighttime, and SpongeBob has found an empty city that looks pretty unnerving. He checks the buildings, and they’re all empty. Although, he did check a farm only to find Patrick eating grass, and he told SpongeBob that “some random dude” told him to eat some greens, and he ate grass because the grass was green. He was about to leave town when he noticed something that he hadn't seen before.
== Chapter 4: The Garbanzo Gang ==
There was a man with a hat, his identity covered with his silhouette with a bubble pipe in his mouth. He was sitting in a rocking chair reading an old newspaper. Next to a rocking chair shows a gasoline bottle next to him. His eyes can only be seen, which instead of normal eyes, seem to be right-angled triangles. He peeks out of the newspaper and notices SpongeBob. 
“Hello SpongeBoy,” he said in a deep voice. He sounded like he smoked 5 packs of cigarettes. SpongeBob said “Uhhh, my name’s SpongeBob. What’s your name?” The hat dude says, “SpongeBoy, SpongeBob, whatever. Also, my name’s not important.” SpongeBob starts asking him if he knows where the trash comes from. 
The hat guy responds, “I do know. They’re coming.” SpongeBob’s confused. “Who’s coming?” “Once you see them, you’ll know.” The hat guy starts drinking gasoline until he dies of gasoline intoxication. Then, 3 thug-like objects that look like larger versions of common ocean garbage appear. 
One is an empty water bottle with sharp teeth. Another is a ripped-off food wrapper, with only one eye, a golden tooth, and a spiked bat. The last one is a grocery bag with a scar on an arm, and some broken teeth. The food wrapper’s arm reaches out on the inside of the wrap, grabbing a Krabby Patty, then puts the fist between the buns, the fillings shooting off the burger and hitting SpongeBob’s face. Was that supposed to represent giving SpongeBob a knuckle sandwich? 
The water bottle says, “We are the Garbanzo Gang.” SpongeBob looks at the gang, appalled. “You were the ones putting random trash in Bikini Bottom?” SpongeBob asked. The water bottle chuckled. “You really are smart for a kitchen sponge.”
== Chapter 5: One messy battle ==
The water bottle starts spitting water on SpongeBob as hard as a pressure washer. SpongeBob grabs the ketchup and mustard bottles out of his pockets and shoots them into the floor for the Garbanzo Gang to trip and fall. The water bottle faintly opens his mouth, like he was breathing his last breath, and then, a dark void starts to come out of his mouth, spreading in every direction it goes, with every object it touches disintegrating into nothingness. SpongeBob sprints back into the city he lived in, but it’s empty. No people, no nothing. Just houses. 
The void starts catching up, and corners SpongeBob. He starts to hallucinate about his friends getting harmed by the trash. SpongeBob clenches his teeth, and screams in agony, “WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!” as he disintegrates, with the scream echoing into darkness.
The screen fades into SpongeBob facing away, crying in the corner while sitting down. Some messages appear, saying, “8.3 million tons of plastic are dumped into the ocean,” “Over 1 million marine animals die of plastic debris in the ocean each year,” and “If you don’t want the ocean to end up like SpongeBob here,” “STOP THE POLLUTION!” 
It fades to the credits, but the music was different. Instead of the normal credits music playing, a music box played the same tune as the credits, and the musical scale seems somewhere between oddly disturbing, to sad. The music aside, the credits play like normal, until we get to the United Plankton Pictures Inc. logo. Instead of the little happy plankton-like creatures smiling while holding hands, they’re all lying down, looking like they’re dead. There were some piles of plastic somewhere between them, and in front of all the creatures, there was a small shadow of the Garbanzo Gang, then it faded to the Nickelodeon logo. 
I was disturbed, yet surprised. I’ve seen dark episodes like “Are you Happy Now,” “One Coarse Meal,” whatever, but Darkened Heart was on a whole new level, and the fact that my youngest son got cancer didn’t help. I got Leo into chemotherapy, and I have hope for his survival. Sometimes, I think it’s called “Darkened Heart” for a reason, and that the name was supposed to point to us. We were the ones who had darkened hearts. We were the ones throwing trash into the ocean. We were the ones putting the aquatic species in danger. To this point on, I’m gonna have to live my life with trauma from a SpongeBob episode, my dead wife, and the possible death of Leo.
== Message from the author ==
Hello guys. Creator of this pasta here. This is the first lost episode creepypasta I've made. I hope this isn't too bad, and I hope you enjoyed this. I'm planning to put in fun facts about this lost episode. Feedback is appreciated. The sequel to Darkened Heart has been released. Check it out!
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