Squidward's Suicide

**Squidward's Suicide** is a lost season 4 episode of the popular animated television series "Spongebob Squarepants." It is contained on an old VHS tape, and was watched by the Nickelodeon staff back in 2005. The episode was so horrifying, that two animators were rushed to the hospital, one editor retired, and one female intern even commited suicide. The tape is probably in the Nickelodeon Archives nowadays. The tape was sended to Nickelodeon Studios as the rough cut of the Season 4 premiere "Fear Of A Krabby Patty"

## Story

The episode begins with a title card saying "Squidward's Suicide," and then the opening credits read five names - Madison Richards, Andrew Skinner, Paul MacLoued, Trent Hindley, and Dylan Grant.

The happy bubble transition plays as normal, and we are given a view of Conch Street from a distance. The screen zooms in on the houses as the usual music plays, making it seem like it is just another episode. After a few seconds of this, the view changes to a closeup view Squidward's house.

Soon we are with Squidward, playing his clarinet near his window. Spongebob can be heard laughing merrily outside. Squidward stops playing, and looks out his window. He yells to Spongebob to knock it off as he has a concert to practice for that night. Spongebob says sure thing, and Spongebob goes to see Sandy with Patrick. The bubbles pop up, and the ending of the concert can be seen. Squidward is in center frame, and he looks scared.

This is where things start to seem off. As the shot goes to the crowd, everyone starts booing Squidward, but they all have realistic eyes as they boo him. Not real shots of eyes, but more real than even CGI. Even Spongebob was booing, very unlike him. Squidward looks very afraid, and the scene switches to Squidward sitting on the side of his bed looking depressed. There is absolutely no audio.

After thirty seconds, Squidward covers his face and starts sobbing softly. There is a faint noise in the background, it is the sound of a gale blowing through a forest. Another strange sound is a deep, odd laughter. Soon the screen twists in on itself and goes back to normal. After an undetermined space of time, the screen twitches and blurs and twists and a single frame flashes over the screen. If one were to rewind it, the result is absolutely horrible. It is a real photo of a dead six year old boy, mangled and cut open and all. Squidward is now crying realistic blood. After 20 seconds, the screen twists again, and another frame pops up. This time a six year old girl is shown horribly disfigured and mutilated, and is, like the other kid, on pavement.

Squidward goes silent as does all sound. Squidward uncovers his eyes. They are realistic and bulging. Blood is running down his face. He stares at the viewer for about ten seconds, then starts to cry again. It is earsplittingly loud. The laughter and wind return. Squidward's crying is now mixed with screams. This happens for about a minute and a half or so, and out of nowhere a sequence of five frames flashes over the screen. They depict a short "video" of a hand reaching into another boy's chest around the age of the boy in the first photo, and then holding his eye. The eye even blinks for two the final two frames. At the end of the long, horrifying stare of Squidward, the scene zooms out and Squidward has a shotgun in his hands. He puts the gun to his mouth, and fires. The final five seconds consists of Squidward's lifeless body lying on the bed, His brain exposed, one eye out of his head, blood dripping from all of this, and blood on the wall. The tape then ends abruptly.

## Delivery Of The Tape

On February 26, 2005, after the initial animation of the storyboards were completed in Fife, Scotland, the tape was delivered to the lead animators and sound editors at Nickelodeon Studios in Burbank, California during the middle of the night. The tape was taken into the editing room where it was watched by said animators and editors, as well as two sixteen year-old interns. The tape, which was supposed to feature the rough cut of the season 4 premiere "Fear of a Krabby Patty", instead began with a title card using the name "Squidward's Suicide". While thrown off at first, the animators continued watching, discovering the tape had been heavily tampered with as some sort of dark joke.

As a result, four animators (Barry O'Neill, Grant Kirkland, Jr., Alyssa Simpson and Jack Gallistan) were sent to the hospital while one editor retired (Fernando de la Peña) and one intern (Jackie McMullen) committed suicide. The tape was then sent to the police, who determined that it had been made by Andrew Skinner, a disgruntled animator from Fife, Scotland who as a result has since been charged with nine counts of murder, including the murder of the two children seen in the tape. Oddly enough, after going through the data on the VHS, police discovered that the last edit to the tape had been made exactly twenty four seconds before it was watched by the SpongeBob staff.

## Aftermath

On August 28, 2019, the tape was found buried and hidden in a dirty plastic bag at a scrap yard in California. It was found by a man named Sam Brown who had been interested in the case.

Attempting to play the tape would result in just a white screen with a loud buzzing at first.

1. The playback after the first attempt at cleaning the tape just seemed like static until, looking more closely, a dead child can be seen for a split second, the sound was just white noise with snippets of muffled talking, singing, piano music and morse code of sorts.
2. After the second attempt, the playback started to look better, however, the colors were washed out and there was low brightness.
3. After the third attempt, the playback was better, the picture however was hard to make out but not as much as the previous playback, you can kind of tell what's going on from the shape and brightness of the on screen stuff, and the colours were washed out.
4. The fourth attempt had really high color saturation and every now and again the screen cut to black.
5. The fifth attempt was great but the colour saturation was off, the static was still there but not as bad, and the sound was some strange alien-like talking in a different language with a high pitched beep, the tape stops before the concert scene begins.
6. The sixth attempt was identical but the sound is now some strange classical song and it now goes through the concert scene, the tape ends after said scene.
7. The seventh attempt was the strangest, the tape began at the scene where Squidward is done crying with his realistic bleeding eyes, the picture is like the last 2 attempts but with worse picture and colour, it is also very shaky. the sound is some weird eating/chewing sound that gets louder as it goes on, this goes on for 4 seconds until the tape abruptly ends.
8. The eighth attempt was almost great, the only thing theat was off was that the screen was distorted and blurry.
9. The ninth attempt was the greatest by far, ot wasn't blurry anymore but still distorted

## Video

The original video has been released. It can be found on this page. The footage was a bit blurry as it was restored.

## Gallery

The beginning scene.Squidward playing the clarinet.Squidward yelling at Spongebob.Squidward staring at the viewer.The Title Card.Squidward's Suicide-2Squidward's Suicide Tape Less StaticThe Tape