SpongeBob SquarePants is a television show that is extremely popular around the world and has earned more than $8 billion in merchandising revenue for Nickelodeon. The cartoon features a wide variety of characters that live in the underwater city of Bikini Bottom. One of these characters is named Squidward Tentacles. The show is made for kids, but in 2004 an urban legend emerged surrounding a lost episode of the show that is said to display Squidward’s Suicide.
Red Mist is really a controversial real-life bootleg tape featuring an unaired episode of Spongebob Squarepants. Much like the long-lost but recently found "Suicide Mouse" tape, Red Mist was purportedly made by the now imprisoned Scottish animator with the series who that will pass the tape off since the season 4 premiere episode and featured the death of Squidward.
Description in the tape
Red Mist starts with Squidward preparing to practice his clarinet as part of his room as Spongebob and Patrick play merrily outside. Squidward wraps his mouth around the clarinet which is only able to play one note just before being interrupted by a person knocking about the door. He walks down and opens the door and discovers than a traveling salesman are at his door. The salesperson, a huge Scottish fish, asks if he might have a moment of Squidward's time. Squidward tells him he is not interested and slams the door within the man's face, walking into his room. The salesman begins knocking once more, and Squidward paves the way angrily. The salesperson, searching very upset, tells Squidward that "the red mist is coming" and precedes to walk off, confusing Squidward. Squidward walks into his room and lastly begins playing the clarinet. Right after performing various off-key notes, Spongebob and Patrick start laughing outside, interrupting Squidward however once again. Squidward walks over towards the window and shouts at the two, telling them he desires to practice for the concert he is going to be performing at. Spongebob and Patrick apologize with tears to them and walk into their houses. Squidward, undecided about himself, walks back over and begins playing his clarinet again, now uninterrupted. The scene then fades to red throughout twelve seconds.
Maybe by glitch, exactly the same scene is repeated once extra that is somewhat widespread in rough cuts of animation. Nevertheless, this occassion, up your eyes have already been replaced with new, a lot more realistic eyes with red pupils, clearly not true but a lot more realistic than CGI or animated. The audio is likewise fully absent using this scene, save for occasional clicks.
After the repeat in the prior scene, a new scene begins with the same red eyes, but in the theater where Squidward is playing his clarinet. The frames within the animation skip just about every four seconds, even so the sound remains synced. Right after an unruly efficiency of an song he dubbed "Red Mist", Spongebob and Patrick are noticed inside the crowd booing Squidward, quite uncommon for the kids. The scene pans to reveal the same Scottish salesman sitting subsequent in their mind, also booing, as Squidward walks returning to his household along with head as part of his tentacles. What's odd is that the scene in fact shows him approaching his residence, with nothing happening inside the background, for three minutes and fifty seconds before abruptly cutting to red for another twenty seconds, equally he comes to his house.
A new scene appears, back to the original cartoon eyes, with Squidward using a chair in the room that night, having a blank look on his face for roughly a few seconds prior to beginning to sob softly. Once again, the audio is fully missing for many of the scene, until the sobbing begins. This is in the event the sound of a slight breeze via a forest might be heard within the background. Additionally, it begins pretty mildly zooming in on Squidward's face, only noticeable in case you compare ten seconds of frames alongside each other. The noise of him sobbing can suddenly be heard, very loudly and severe when the screen twitches in on itself briefly. The salesman's laughing can also be heard echoing in the background.
Soon after an additional thirty seconds, the screen blurs and twitches violently plus a single frame flashes above the screen. Upon pausing it specifically on the frame, the viewer are able to see a real-life photo of any deceased six year-old boy laying inside the forest within his underwear, whose face has become mangled, eye have been popped, and stomach cut open with entrails laying beside him. Next to him, the shadow in the photographer is clearly visible with component within the photographer's hand appearing to the proper of your screen.
Following this photograph is observed, it cuts back in Squidward sobbing, a lot louder than prior to with the information definitely seems to be blood operating from his eyes as an alternative to tears as well as the sound with the salesman nonetheless heard. The noise of the wind inside the forest can also be played in a much louder volume, but now using the sound of branches snapping along with the screams on the young boy heard. After twenty extra seconds, one more single frame appears, this occassion of eight year-old girl inside the forest laying on the stomach in a pool of blood, together with her back cut open and entrails piled on top. The cisco kid on the photographer can be visible.
The scene reverts returning to Squidward, now with the similar realistic red eyes from before, entirely silent as well as zero longer sobbing. The sound of the forest still cannot be heard. An additional three seconds later also it cuts back towards the sobbing, this time around piercing loud and with the sound with the forest heard. The screams of both a boy and litttle lady might be heard mixed together because song "Amazing Grace" plays on both the clarinet and also the bagpipes. In the course of this, seven frames are noticed in black or white of your boy from the very first photograph laying in the woods. Throughout the seven frames, the hand in the photographer reaches in and grabs the boy's entrails, as his remaining eye is targeted on the man's hand and also blinks once.
This cuts returning to Squidward again, this time around staring in the viewer as the sound from the salesman echoes "DO IT" and "the red mist is coming" repeatedly. After forty seconds in this, you swiftly pans seem to reveal Squidward holding a practical gun, searching as although it were Photoshopped into your scene. Squidward lifts the barrel into his mouth and fires, with blood shooting rid of his head.
Squidward is alive, however right now suddenly within the forest, with one eye dangling through the side of his face, popped. A hole also appears inside the side of his jaw. Standing over him is the Scottish salesman in the first place in the episode. Captions also appear in the bottom of the screen, repeating everything that is stated. Squidward asks the guy "What do you need from me?" and also the salesman tells him "I want 'bout tree fiddy". Squidward asks "What does tree fiddy mean?" plus the salesman answers "Ya'know, tree dollars and fiddy cents." Squidward shouts "I ain't giving you no tree fiddy!", just as the monster reveals a small zipper along the side of his head. After unzipping it, the salesman transforms in to the Loch Ness Monster, an eight story-tall crustacean from the protozoic era and asks responding "How about two fiddy?". Squidward retorts, "Oh, now it's only two fiddy! What? What is the sale on Loch Ness munchies or one thing?" The Loch Ness Monster swims off angrily, promising to one day return and extract revenge on Squidward. The colours invert themselves as well as the scene cuts to blue.
Delivery of the tape
On November 7, 2004, soon after the original animation of the storyboards had been carried out 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 in to the editing room where it absolutely was watched by stated animators and editors, at the same time as two sixteen year-old interns. The tape, which has been likely to function the rough cut of "Fear with a Krabby Patty", instead began with a title card working with the name "Red Mist". When thrown off at very first, the animators continued watching, discovering the tape ended up heavily tampered with as getting some cruel joke.
As a result, 3 animators (Barry O'Neill, Grant Kirkland, Jr. and Alyssa Simpson) had been sent to the hospital, 1 editor retired (Fernando de la Peña) and 1 intern (Jackie McMullen) committed suicide. The tape was sent to the police, who determined so it ended up being created by Andrew Skinner, a disgruntled animator from Fife, Scotland, who may have considering that been arrested for nine counts of murder, such as the murder of these two young children noticed inside the tape. Oddly enough, after going by way of the information for the VHS, police discovered that the last edit to the tape was made exactly twenty 4 seconds just before it was watched because of the Spongebob staff.
1 copy within the tape was created (just before police confiscated the initial) by Chaz Agnew, writer of the article as well as the sole surviving intern from that night. Agnew has created various attempts to distribute copies of Skinner's tape and hopes to secure clearance rights to push out a it on several on line auction internet websites soon.