Red Mist

**Red Mist** is a controversial real-life bootleg tape featuring an unaired episode of Spongebob Squarepants. Like the long-lost but recently discovered the "Suicide Mouse" tape, Red Mist was purportedly created by a now imprisoned Scottish animator for the series who intended to pass the tape off as the season four premiere episode and featured the death of Squidward. It's Skinner's third tape and a visually edited version of Squidward's Suicide

## Plot

The first scene is of Squidward playing the clarinet when he gets a knock on his door. He answers it and it is a Scottish salesman fish. He asks if he could have a moment of Squidward's time, but Squidward says he is not interested, slams the door and returns to playing his clarinet. Before he can even play though, the knock sounds again. Squidward angrily goes to the door. The salesman looks very upset and tells Squidward that "The Red Mist is coming." and walks off. The next scene is essentially the opening of Squidward's Suicide, but with different animation. The only difference besides the look of the animation is that Patrick is with SpongeBob, and when yelled at, they both apologize to Squidward with tears in their eyes and they both walk off to their houses. The scene reverts back to Squidward, looking unsure of himself and he then returns back to the clarinet. Squidward is now playing his clarinet uninterrupted. The scene then fades to red over the course of 12 seconds, the scene then repeats once more, but now Squidward's eyes are replaced with realistic eyes which look different to the ones seen in Squidward's Suicide. The audio is also absent from this scene save for several clicking noises.

The concert scene then begins. Squidward has the same red eyes from the last scene, The frames of the animation keep skipping every 4 seconds. After performing a song that he dubbed "Red Mist", the crowd started booing, including Spongebob and Patrick, very uncommon for them. The scene pans out to reveal the salesman sitting next to them. The crowd had the same realistic eyes that Squidward had. Squidward walks off the stage.

A new scene begins, which is Squidward walking to his house, with a blank look on his face and he now has his normal cartoon eyes. This goes on for 3 minutes and 30 seconds before abruptly cutting to a red screen for 20 seconds.

The next scene begins with Squidward sitting on his bed with a blank look on his face. After 30 seconds, Squidward begins to sob softly. Shortly after he begins sobbing, the sound of wind blowing can be heard, which gets more severe over time. The camera also slowly trucks in on Squidward as his crying increases in volume. For a split second, the screen twitches during this.

After all this, the sound of a man laughing (who sounds like the Scottish fish) can be heard every now and then.

Shortly after the laughter starts up, the screen again flinches, followed by a single frame photo flashing onscreen. Upon pausing exactly on the frame, a photo of a dead boy, with his entrails scattered everywhere, appears, with the photographer's shadow visible nearby.

Back with Squidward, he is still crying, louder than before, as well as what looked like blood running down his face instead of tears. The laughter is still heard, the wind sound now includes the snapping of branches, and the screams of a young boy are audible.

Shortly thereafter, another single frame photo appears, this one of a girl lying face down in a pool of blood, again with the guts placed all over the ground. The shadow of the photographer can be seen here, too.

After this photo, Squidward suddenly stopped crying, which also caused all the other sounds to stop abruptly. He looks up to reveal that he now has the red eyes before. As he stares directly at the screen, he begins crying again, this time mixed with the screams of a young boy and girl. The wind and laughing sounds also return, as well as an off-key rendition of "Amazing Grace" played on both the clarinet and bagpipes.

During this scene, seven black-and-white frames of a boy getting his guts pulled out by a large hand (presumably the photographer) play.

When this finishes, all sound again comes to a halt. A grisly voice then addresses Squidward: "***Do it. DO IT!!!!***" The camera quickly zooms from Squidward's face to reveal he's holding an handgun in his tentacles. He proceeds to put the handgun near his eyes and pull the trigger, shooting blood out all over his room.

The tape ends on a long shot of Squidward's corpse on the floor as the salesman saying "The red mist is coming." from earlier plays with an echo reverb. The tape then ends.

## Delivery Of The Tape

On November 7, 2004, after the initial animation of the storyboards were completed in Fife, Scotland, the tape was delivered to the lead animators and sound editors at Paramount Studios in Hollywood, 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 "Fear of a Krabby Patty", instead began with a title card using the name "Red Mist". While thrown off at first, the animators continued watching, discovering the tape had been heavily tampered with as some sort of cruel joke fishy wanker.

As a result, three animators (Barry O'Neill, Grant Kirkland, Jr. and Alyssa Simpson) were sent to the hospital, one editor retired (Fernando de la Peña) and one intern (Jackie McMullen) committed suicide. The tape was sent to the police, who determined that it had been made by Andrew Skinner, a disgruntled animator from Fife, Scotland, who 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.

One copy of the tape was made (before police confiscated the original) by Chaz Agnew, writer of this article and the sole surviving intern from that night. Agnew has made various attempts to distribute copies of Skinner's tape and hopes to secure clearance rights to release it on several online auction websites soon.

## Additional Tapes

* Suicide Squidward - Andrew's first tape. The central episode of the Investigation.
* Squidward's Suicide - Andrew's second tape. The most famous one.
* Three Bloody Drops - Andrew's fourth tape. A cartoon detailing the murders of the two kids.
* *Unmarked Video 2000 Tape* - Andrew's fifth tape. Nothing is known except that Spongebob's laugh is heard ten seconds in.
* Blood Lane - A Season 5 Episode Were Squidward Kills SpongeBob

## Videos

Short clips of the tape can be found on YouTube, they were originally uploaded by SpongebobRedMist. and later DiamondMinerStudios was able to release the full tape. However, there is many fake versions and recreations all over the internet.

## Update

A Sony Betamax tape marked "Red Mist" was discovered in a warehouse in Mideastern Canada on August 12, 2016. It was found by Marcus Andrews, and he reported it to Nickelodeon. The tape was brought into Chaz Angew, the intern who wrote the account from Squidward's Suicide. They had to hunt for a Beta VCR in decent condition, but they were able to find one at a nearby thrift shop. When the tape was watched, it was in a poor condition. The tape was then cleaned for a few hours, and the quality vastly improved, although still quite low for a Beta, which was supposed to be better than any other video tape at the time. The tape fit exactly to the reported contents, so this means it is the real third of Andrew's five infamous cartoons.

## Video

Spongebob Squarepants Red Mist clip -1SpongeBob Squarepants Red Mist clip -2Spongebob Squarepants Red Mist clip -3Red Mist ( DiamondMinerStudios )