Pingu's Punishment (2014)

Most people grew up with a happy little show called Pingu. Pingu was a show that had a clay penguin named Pingu and it showed his adventures. The characters spoke some sort of penguin language.

The original show ran from 1986 to 2006. There were apparently two unreleased episodes that were released in 1998.

Now, this is where it starts becoming surious. When I was 5, or 6, I saw the beginning of a Pingu episode called "Pingu's Punishment". I only saw a bit of it, but what I remember was Pingu was very angry, and his mother began smashing plates. I also remember the episode was about Pingu quarreling with Pinga. My mother came in at the plate smashing part, shut off the TV, and told me that dinner was ready.

Some years later, when i was older, i remembered that event. I went to the episode list on Wikipedia to find that no episode called "Pingu's Punishment" was released.

I thought this as an adventure to myself, and I contacted HiT Entertainment. asked to them for a complete production guide of Pingu, but with insuccess. They replied that they can't give me one. I asked them why, but they don't replied.

I thought they was hiding something to me, and they was.

Afterwards, i tracked the email of The Pygos Group, the actual company that made Pingu. I thought that they was more sincere to me. I asked to them the same question i asked to HiT Entertainment. They, unlike HiT, sent to me a complete production guide to me via mail.

I looked at it, compared it to Wikipedia's list, and I noticed something was wrong with the final series. "Pingu Helps Grandfather", which was the 23rd episode of series 4, was missing. At the bottom of the list was an episode titled "Pingu Ending". I asked for a synopsis, but they refused to give me one, stating it was personal information.

I then googled "Pingu Ending" and "Pingu's Punishment". Then, I found something. It was on rapidshare. The file's name was "Pingu Punishment Last Episode.zip", and I downloaded it. I went to "My Downloads" and I found the folder. It contained two files. One was a notepad file. It was titled "Description.txt", I opened it. It read:

*This is an extremely rare episode from Pingu, dated 1998. The episode was made to end to the series but never officialy aired for the contenent, but strangely aired in some countries.*

I began to feel a bit suspicious and my heart pounded. But my curiousity overtook me. I opened the second file, and avi file.

It begun with the intro i allways loved as child. If you watch again the intro of Pingu, at the end, after the childres choir sings "Pingu" two times, you can hear a strange male voice saying something, obiovusly without a sense. In the episode i was watching it was different, it was backward ad speed up. I recorded it with Sound Recorder, and it played "you can't survive like this beyond death". I was confused, why this on a childrens show? I continued with the video. I got to the part where Pingu's mother was smashing plates. after smashing them she went back to the home. It faded to the kitchen. Pingu's mother was sitting on a stool crying. Her crying began to sound like laughing. Suddenly it cut to Pinga. Pinga was lying down on the floor dead and bleeding. Her blood was it wasn't clay blood like the one from the episode Pingu at the Doctor's, It was some food colouring... I though. Pingu's mother after a while stopped crying and she went away from the room. it cut to the mom in the kitchen moving a trampoline to the center of the room. The camera scrolled up to inquadrate a fan. i was thinking to myself "don't do it, don't do it, don't do it", but she did what i was expecting, she jumped up to the fan, and blood splattered everywhere. The body of Pingu's mother fell down. It faded into annother scene where Pingu's father comes back to home, he opens the door and he gets shocked from what he seen. It fades to Pingu's father outside home worried and nervous, if fades every 3 seconds a different frame oh him in a different position. after 8 photograms he goes in the back of his house and he cames up with a... With a... A... SHOTGUN? i said to myself "when the father had a SHOTGUN?" "Nevermind". Pingu's father went away from home and it cut to him loading with his shotgun with a isane expression on his face, he started to shoot in random parts on the screen very fastly, this for 10 seconds along with pictures of the dead bodies of Robby, Pingo, Pingg, Pingu's grandfather and other undefinied peinguin characters. I understood, he was killing them. He put the shotgun on his mouth and he shoot himself. It fades back to home where Pingu is crying in a mode that he never did, i can't describe how he was crying, i never seen Pingu crying like that. He goes outide home and the sees the dead bodies of his father and the other characters, it fades again. Now the scene is Pingu on a cliff, he is not crying anymore. He looks down the cliff and he closes his eyes, for then jump off the cliff .the screen fades into white and in the white screen fades a flashback of Pingu's mother and Pingu's father rejuvenated holding happily a baby peinguin, obiovusly Pingu. it ended with the end screen, the camera inquadrating Pingu who says his popular "Noot Noot" and the fading of the Pingu's wordmark along with "The Pygos Group"'s byline during the theme song. the video continued with black screen. During these minutes of black screen a disorted voice and very low said something backwards. I recorded it, i turned up the volume and i played it reverse. It said, in a expressionless voice "Your life will be all pitch black. You must be smart enough to play this backwards, because you're stupid enough to believe me".

I was scared, distraught and confused in that moment.

Recapting everything, the plot was like this, "Pingu quarrels with Pinga, wich it end with the death of Pinga but he doesn't know he killed her. Pingu gets punished by his mother who goes insane. She smashes plates, cries and commits suicide. The fathers comes back to home and sees the scene, wich makes him go insane too and kills some of the people of his town for then commit suicide too, Pingu goes away from his room he is for punishment and sees the scene too. He is shocked for his mother and sister loss, since he didn't knewn he killed his little sisters and he is hurted by this, he went outside and sees the other horrible scene of his father's carnage and suicide. Pingu can't hold the two scenes he seen, wich makes him decide to bring an end to his life".

I wanted to find the source of the film.

I got in contact with Carlo Bonomi, the voice of all the characters. I pretended it was an interview, and I talked about Pingu. I finally mentioned "Pingu's Punishment". He stopped, and he asked where I had heard that before. I explained the entire thing to him. He then told me the story.

During the 1998 season of Pingu, there was an writer/animator named Ted Goldman. Ted was a quiet man, who usually wasn't that sociable. Sometime during the middle of the season, Ted's mother had been trying to reach something from the upper shelf. The ceiling fan was still on. She got decapitated. Ted was immidiately hurt by this. He began submitting morbid ideas, such as Pingu's mother going isane. Goldman found out that Pingu was closing production at the end of the season. Ted passed off the episode as the season finale. Right after they had watched the episode. The episode's contenent was shocking and not suitable for a underaged kid, Ted was fired from Trickfilmstudio (ex "The Pygos Group") for making that episode, wich was a very pleasant problem for him, because he could not find annother job. Ted left an apparent suicide note claiming he was going to live in Antarcitca. However, no records claim he was ever there. His corpse was found years later decomposing in the North Pole under the ice.

Some days later i thoug i should post it on YouTube to see what other people thought, as the file was till on my computer. It got about 200 or something views and there were 2 comments. One of them said "OMG so fuckin creepy im never watching pingu ever again". The other one said "I hope this is fake, but shit that creeped me out". I was looking forward to my success. Suddenly, as I came back to the video a few hours later, the video wasn't there. There was a message stating "This video has been removed due to a copyright claim of HiT Entertainment". A few minutes later, a virus got onto my computer even though Anti Virus was on, which I found odd. My computer crashed and I had to call a technic. The technic was able to back up all the files. After I got back on, I was looking around. Then I noticed something. The Pingu file was gone. I searched for it, but I wasn't able to find it. I asked the technic if he deleted anything, and he told me that he restored it and nothing was deleted. As I was looking through "My Downloads",I found an odd .txt file I had never seen before called "Image.txt". I opened it. It contained long lines of gibberish text. I didn't realy cared on the file, until i thought on the name of the file, it camed me to mind what it i could have been converted to an image file to .txt .

I converted it in various image files until it turned up that it was a .png file. The result was shocking.

A dead corpse like Carlo Bonomi described, "decomposing" and "under the ice"