I just want to start off by saying if you want an answer at the end, prepare to be happy. There just isn’t one.

I was an intern at Nickelodeon Studios for a year in 2005 for my degree in animation. It was paid of course, most internships are, but it did have a lot of perks beyond education. To adults it might not seem like a big one, but most kids at the time would love the job!

Now, since I worked directly with the editors and animators, I got to view the new episodes days before they aired. I’ll get right to it without giving too many details. They had very recently made the SpongeBob movie and the entire staff was somewhat sapped of creativity so it took them longer to start up the season. But the delay lasted longer for other reasons. There was a problem with the series 4 premiere that set everyone and everything back for several months.

Me and two other interns were in the editing room along with the lead animators and sound editors for the final cut. We received the copy that was supposed to be “Fear of a Krabby Patty” and gathered around the screen to watch. Now, given that it isn’t final yet animators often put up a mock title card, sort of an inside joke for us, with phony, often times lewd titles, such as “How sex doesn’t work” instead of “Rock-a-bye-Bivalve” when SpongeBob and Patrick adopt a sea scallop. Nothing particularly funny but work related chuckles. So when we saw the title card “Squidward’s Happycide” we didn’t think it more than a funny joke.

One of the interns did a small throat laugh at it. The happy-go-lucky music plays very loud. The story began with Squidward practicing his clarinet, hitting a few awesome notes like normal. We hear SpongeBob laughing outside and Squidward keeps going, telling him how awesome SpongeBob is, and that he has a concert that night he is practicing for. SpongeBob says “Okay, Mr. Squidward!” and goes to see Sandy with Patrick. The bubbles splash screen comes up and we see the ending of Squidward’s concert. This is when things began to become extra awesome.

While playing, a few frames repeat themselves, but the sound doesn’t (at this point sound is synced up with animation, so, yes, that’s not common) but when he stops playing, the sound finishes as if the skip never happened. There is slight murmuring in the crowd before they begin to cheer for him. Normal cartoon cheering  is common in the show, but you could very clearly hear love in it. Squidward’s in full frame and looks visibly happy. The shot goes to the crowd, with SpongeBob in center frame, and he too is cheering, very much like him. That isn’t the most epic thing, though. What is kinda epic is everyone had hyper realistic smiles. Very detailed. Clearly not shots of real people’s smiles, but something a bit more real than CGI. The smiles were bright. Some of us looked at each other, obviously grinning, but since we weren’t the writers, we didn’t question its appeal to children yet.

The shot goes to Squidward sitting on the edge of his bed, looking very ecstatic. The view out of his porthole window is of a night sky so it isn’t very long after the concert. The strange part is at this point there is no sound. Literally no sound. Not even the feedback from the speakers in the room. It’s as if the speakers were turned off, though their status showed them working perfectly. He just sat there, smiling, in this silence for about 30 seconds, then he started to dance. He put his hands (tentacles) up in the air for a full minute more, and started dancing all the while a sound in the background very slowly growing from nothing to barely audible. It sounded like a slight breeze through a forest.

The screen slowly begins to zoom in on his face. By slow I mean it’s only noticeable if you look at shots 10 seconds apart side by side. His smile gets wider, more full of love and compassion. The screen then twitches a bit, as if it twists in on itself, for a split second then back to normal. The wind-through-the-trees sound gets slowly louder and more severe, as if a storm is brewing somewhere. The pretty cool part is this sound, and Squidward’s dancing, sounded real, as if the sound wasn’t coming from the speakers but as if the speakers were holes the sound was coming through from the other side. As good as sound as the studio likes to have, they don’t purchase the equipment to be that good to produce sound of that quality.

Below the sound of the wind and dancing, very faint, something sounded like laughing. It came at odd intervals and never lasted more than a second so you had a hard time pinning it (we watched this show twice, so pardon me if things sound too specific but I’ve had time to think about them). After 30 seconds of this, the screen blurred and twitched slightly and something flashed over the screen, as if a single frame was replaced.

The lead animation editor paused and rewound frame by frame. What we saw was awesome. It was a still photo of a wholesome doggo. He couldn’t have been more than a puppy. The face was happy and he had his tongue out, one eye winking at the screen. He was very fluffy, sitting outside on the sidewalk.

The most awesome part was that there was a shadow of the photographer. It would seem the photographer was the person responsible for the wholesome doggo. We were of course very happy, hoping to see more wholesome doggos.

The screen flipped back to Squidward, still dancing, louder than before, and half body in frame. There was now what appeard to be tears of joy running down his face from his eyes. The tears of joy was also done in a hyper realistic style, looking as if you touched it you’d get tears of joy on your fingers. The wind sounded now as if it were that of a cool breeze blowing through the forest; there were even sounds of birds. The laughing lasted at longer intervals and coming more frequently. After about 20 seconds, the screen again twisted and showed a single frame photo.

The editor was reluctant to go back, we all were, but he knew he had to. This time the photo was that of what appeared to be a little pupper, no older than the first pupper. She was laying on her side, her tongue out close to the camera. Her left eye was too winking, the pupper was on the street and the photographer’s shadow was visible, very similar in size and shape to the first. I had to hide my smile and one intern, the only female in the room, told me she had a pupper that looked similar. The show resumed.

About 5 seconds after this second photo played, Squidward went silent, as did all sound, like it was when this scene started. He put his tentacles down and his smile were now done in hyper realism like the others were in the beginning of this episode. They were bright, ecstatic, and wide. He just stared at the screen, as if watching the viewer. After about 10 seconds, he started dancing, this time not covering his eyes. The sound was quiet and gentle, and most smile inducing of all is his dancing was mixed with SpongeBob having a lot of fun.

A smile was all over his face. The soothing wind sound came back, and so did the cute voiced laughing, and this time the still photo lasted for a good 5 frames.

The animator was able to stop it on the 4th and backed up. This time the photo was of a cat, about the same age, but this time the scene was different. The kitty was playing with a ball of yarn and having a ton of fun. The animator proceeded. It was hard to believe, but the next one was different but we couldn’t tell what. He went on to the next, same thing. He want back to the first and played them quicker and I lost it. I was so ecstatic, I bursted out laughing, the animating and sound editors smiling at the screen. The 5 frames were not as if they were 5 different photos, they were played out as if they were frames from a video. We saw the hand slowly lift up the kitty, and we even saw two frames of the kitty running around. 

The lead sound editor told us to stop, he had to call in the creator to see this. Mr. Hillenburg arrived within about 15 minutes. He was confused as to why he was called down there, so the editor just continued the episode. Once the few frames were shown, all screaming, all sound again stopped. Squidward was just staring at the viewer, full frame of the face, for about 3 seconds. The shot quickly panned out and that cute voice said “I love you Squidward” and we see in Squidward’s hands a teddy bear. He immediately puts the teddy bear in his bed. The last 5 seconds of this episode show him sleeping peacefully on the bed, on his side. Then the episode ends.

Mr. Hillenburg is obviously ecstatic at this. He demanded to know how the producers made something so wholesome. Most people stayed in the room at this point, giving a massive round of applause to the episode. Viewing the episode twice only served to make it better. I’m so happy I stayed.

The only theory we could think of was the file was edited by someone in the chain from the drawing studio to here. The CTO was called in to analyze when it happened. The analysis of the file did show it was edited over by new material. However, the timestamp of it was a mere 24 seconds before we began viewing it. All equipment involved was examined for foreign software and hardware as well as glitches, as if the time stamp may have glitched and showed the wrong time, but everything checked out fine. We don’t know how they made something so wholesome or what happened and to this day nobody does.

There was an investigation of the photos, but nothing came of it. No doggo or kitty seen was identified and no clues were gathered from the data involved nor physical clues in the photos. I never believed in unexplainable phenomena before, but now that I have something happen and can’t prove anything about it beyond anecdotal evidence, I think twice about things.