urban legends ✓

red mist ☹

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.

As the story goes, a disgruntled Scottish animator named Andrew Skinner developed an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants in 2004 named Red Mist. He tried to pass the episode off as the official season 4 premiere and sent it to Hollywood for approval. In California, animators watched the tape and discovered a dark secret. The video starts with the picture of a salesman at Squidward's house. He knocks on the door and says: "the red mist is coming," in which Squidward is confused. The tape flashes to a picture of Squidward playing the clarinet in front of a large crowd and Spongebob can be seen violently booing the performance.

The body language of Squidward is depressed. He returns to his house and sits in a chair with a blank look on his face. The audio turns scratchy and trees can be heard in the background. Squidward starts to cry and the tape begins to flash. At this point a series of real pictures come to view. The images show the body of a dead boy with his face mangled and entrails exposed. The shadow of the photographer is visible and the tape shows pictures of a deceased girl. The song Amazing Grace is played and the video goes into a sequence of frames in which the boy is mutilated. The words "Do it" can be heard, while Squidward pulls out a shotgun and commits suicide.

The story suggests the tape was made by Andrew Skinner of Fife, Scotland and delivered to the animators at Paramount Studios in Hollywood, California in November of 2004. The event was so horrifying that three of the animators were hospitalized, including Barry O'Neill, Grant Kirkland, Jr. and Alyssa Simpson. One editor named Fernando de la Peña retired and an intern named Jackie McMullen committed suicide. It was reported that the tape was later tracked to Andrew Skinner who was arrested for nine counts of murder, including the two children seen in the video.

After viewing the tape, a copy of the footage was made by an intern at Paramount Studios and released to the Internet. However, it was quickly removed by police and only a screenshot of Squidward's red eyes remains. Research on the story doesn't bring many results. Except for one article from 2002 that briefly mentions a man from Fife, Scotland named Andrew Skinner that was arrested for attempted murder.