SCP Foundation / Fridge

open/close all folders

Fridge Brilliance

It's commonly reiterated that the only real canon there is in the Foundation-verse is that there is no real canon. This only makes so much sense after one realizes just how many reality-bending SCPs there are. Also the alternative universes mentioned in many articles and the subject of a good number of SCPs.
- To quote Korg "The only thing that makes sense is that nothing makes sense."
SCP-261, the vending machine, has apparently infinite storage space. How is this possible? Well, one of the items dispensed was a packet of donuts with wormholes in them, so this thing clearly came from somewhere where wormholes can be controlled and used for storage.
Why couldn't the "Generally Nice Monster" kill 682?
- It was only specified to be able to kill 682, but not that it was capable of outlasting it or surviving a fight with it. It still put up a damn good fight. The original 12-page short story became a 500+ page epic novel after SCP-682 was done with the Generally Nice Creature.
- Another possible explanation exists: throughout the numerous termination attempts, there are a couple research notes indicating doubt that 682 fits the definition of a 'living' being. In a strict interpretation of the word 'kill,' well...can you actually kill something that's not alive in the first place? One might also argue that since 682 isn't an Earth life form, it can't be taxonomically classified by an Earthling-based system and therefore isn't actually a "lizard".
- Alternatively, it could be that it could handle one, but not two. After all, if it's a short story about it killing SCP-682, there would be an existing version in the book and the real version being forced into the book — who said that anything that entered would take the place of its fictitious counterpart?
One explanation for SCP-682's uncharacteristic friendliness toward SCP-053?
- It clued in to her secondary power of killing whoever attacks her, and the easiest adaptation for that was to get along with her.
- Another theory: SCP-053's power reverses instinctive responses. What's the initial response for a normal human who sees a small 3-year-old girl? Take care of her and protect her. What's the initial response when SCP-682 gets near any normal human? Rip it to shreds.
You know how sometimes an entry will end with a humorous description/reference of someone using the SCP in a completely irresponsible, reckless, or unprofessional manner? Or how many of the senior staff are just a little bit crazy? There's a reason for that: when you work with or even know about so many things that can end the world or at least kill you in inventive ways, you've got to either laugh or cry.
The Mariana Trench Documents, crossing with Fridge Horror. The world actually ended several times, but the Foundation rebuilt it, people and memories and all. Why the title? That trench used to be a Bottomless Pit on land, near where the man who wrote the journal lives. It wasn't there before.
Early man was not very fast, not very strong, could not fly, and even our first weapons were relatively unreliable; our main advantage was in long distance running, so one of our main hunting strategies was scaring prey into running itself to exhaustion before engaging it directly. Laser-Guided Karma, thy name is SCP-966.
It seems odd for Clef to break his own rule about not talking with Type Greens when interviewing 531-D. Of note, however, is the fact that the purpose of the warning is to prevent the possibility of bonding with the target. A quick look at the interview logs with 531-D show that while Clef did indeed talk to 531-D, his intent was never to have a genuine conversation with 531-D; rather, his dialogue consisted of invectives that served the dual purpose of pissing off 531-D and painting him as a selfish brat, which would make the kill physically and psychologically easier, respectively.
SCP-085/Cassy getting more petting than kicking than most SCPs makes more sense when you remember her origin; she was accidentally created by an experiment between two SCPs, meaning that the Foundation, in a way, created Cassy. As a result, they most likely consider her their responsibility, as well as being aware of what she's capable of because they created her, so she doesn't require too much containment.
The "DRINK" from SCP-261's test log deprives you of your free will. It's a play on "drink the Kool-Aid", a slang term used to refer to someone who blindly follows an idea, belief, or orders.
SCP-1981 is an old Betamax tape that contains a recording of "Ronald Reagan Cut Up While Talking", which, as the title suggests, features varied ways Reagan is mutilated as he gives the speech. Ronald Reagan experienced an assassination attempt in 1981, making the identification number morbidly appropriate (and very likely an intentional choice).
SCP-073, as noted below, is the Biblical Cain. Cain was an agriculturist who traditionally has been said to have slain Abel out of jealousy and anger when God accepted the latter's animal sacrifice over his sacrifice of grains. This would explain the detrimental effect he has on plants and plant-crafted materials as an extension of his well-known punishment.
Reading Word of God in The Leak thread can result in this.
- In 978's test log, where Clef and Bright were photographed while in the middle of an argument, you may think that Clef is simply angry and the girl is just plain weird. Reading Clef's past however, you should realize Clef's desire that's far greater than just giving Bright the finger.
- You think that SCP-902 isn't scary? Hop across the fourth wall by logging in and read it again. You think that's scary? Hop back to this side of fourth wall and get hint of what's actually going on in that article...
Why is the Foundation so needlessly cruel to SCP-042, who appears to be nothing more than a suffering horse, while forcefully keeping it alive? They're beating a dead horse.
It might seem odd at first that SCP-682 rapidly develops immunity to pretty much everything, yet is consistently injured by getting shot and being put in hydrochloric acid. However, it's possible that things like bullet wounds don't pose any real threat to it, and so it doesn't need to develop immunity to it.
Why will SCP-2217's island be an appropriate, even perfect place for the binding alliance of Foundation, Global Occult Coalition, the Horizon Initiative, and all three major denominations of the Church of the Broken God to occur, even after the latter conquered it? Because the place is literally a god's anvil, and metal must be beaten into shape as it is forged.
SCP-2932. More specifically, Adam El-Asem's log and 2932-A's comment. "There is a cell here for the one with desolation in his steps, and one for the other." Turns out Cain and Abel weren't the only ones who made it to the present day.
SCP-2747 has an astounding amount of Fridge Logic. There is much that can be said about this anomaly, but most of it is not said outright. Instead, most of what can be gathered from the page must be learned by looking for patterns and reading between the lines. In the end, the Foundation breached containment of an anomaly by trying to study the properties of it, and then attempting to fully describe it on a document.
- To start with, it is an anti-narrative. When certain narremes are put together, they will form an instance of SCP-2747. At some point, the anti-narrative will be erased from all existence and record. However, the narremes can safely be used separately, which means that the Foundation can figure out the nature of the anomaly if they can identify the narremes used. The Foundation did this by viewing references to SCP-2747 instances. It's also self-descriptive, so anything that sufficiently describes SCP-2747 is an instance of SCP-2747, and vice versa.
- In addition, this anomaly self-repeats upwards through layers of narrative. In other words, it can be formed via multiple nested in-universe instances of itself. This property can be visually represented by fractals or spirals.
- Certain themes can be found which indicate the presence of SCP-2747. Among these are:
  - One or more lists, groups, series of events, characters, chapters, etc. which are seven in number.
  - Incompleteness, or more specifically, the inability to complete something, and the futility in attempting to. This is often represented in instances as some variant of a "trembling core" which is further described as something that is observable, but not reachable or touchable, and is cold, dark, and silent. There are recurring visual analogies of the light and substance attempting to reach the darkness, but failing miserably. Another similar theme is the inclusion of a hidden antagonist or anathema who is never revealed, but is somehow behind the events described in the plot. Yet another very much related idea is the inability to complete a work, story, or game. And, in general, use of ideas like these is very symbolic of SCP-2747 itself. This is brilliant in and of itself, because the Foundation could hypothetically try to find the properties which would cause a narrative to be erased from existence, except they can't, because the narrative no longer exists. This makes any attempt to completely uncover the secrets of SCP-2747 futile. And that brings us all right back to this theme.
The Alternate Universe Foundation's solution to SCP-1730 was basically "dump it in another universe and let them deal with it". Apparently, a lot of alternate Foundations have the same idea about dealing with threats they can't contain.
Captain Kirby's 001 proposal, O5-13, depicts an O5 council that seems far more casual than previous stories. Nervous, uncertain, joking. Over all, they seem far more like people. Which makes sense, because they are. The previous council, which was killed by O5-1, as we find out, were all anomalies. This council are fully human, and have just been promoted to the positions, so they haven't quite gotten their Omniscient Council of Vagueness act together yet.
In SCP-3008, the IKEA dimension, it appears that regular people who have gotten stuck in the store manage to get along with each other, which is often not a scenario represented in other apocalyptic/survival stories. It helps, though, that all of their basic needs are provided for. The trapped people can easily obtain food, drink, and any other necessity the store provides, and because the store extends endlessly in all directions, there's no reason to have to compete over territory. Their only major problem, other than that they are trapped in this form of limbo, are the strangely inhuman creatures hunting them — giving them the perfect enemy to unite against.
SCP-76-2 or Able being the biblical Abel, seems like a stretch since Able is an Omnicidal Maniac with a full case of Kill All Humans and very weird sense of honor whose only apparent link with his biblical portrayal is knowledge of herding, but when you read the lore beyond of what's just on the Christian bible, you learn that some texts claim that Abel's soul would swear to rise in vengeance against all those who came from Cain's seed (his descendants) which depending on whether you consider Seth ^note as canon or not, could very well mean all of humanity, meaning that if you consider the SCP-76-2 as the biblical Abel, that means the reason he enters a rage state when he leaves SCP-76-1 is because at this point in modern era, all humans are descendants of Cain and thus he has a deep ingrained impulse to kill them all.
Nature has been traditionally viewed as "feminine", while science and rationality being "masculine", as is Christianity. With this in mind, SCP-166 becomes a metaphor for femininity being viewed as a threat against patriarchy, which must be contained and imprisoned until it is subservient.
SCP-001 states that The Factory has a claim on the souls of all SCP personnel, and some of them just... disappear. This is an in-built justification for fans who just give it up one day, for whatever reason. In-universe, it explains why they're so cavalier with the lives of D-class ("D" for "Disposable") personell. If they can feed it full of Mooks’ souls, it won't get hungry for researchers.
Of course the ADMONITION Placeholder McDoctorate doesn't feel bad about killing his homeworld (an Alternate Universe of the On Guard 43 canon explored in SCP-5956) just to give himself a better job. From the reader's perspective, his home exists solely to deliver a "you can't change your past" Space Whale Aesop (where the use of 5956 is the space whale.) As the head of pataphysics, this means that Place is very likely to also know this. When your entire existence is predicated on such a simple message that sci-fi has explored again and again and nothing else, which in turn will only ever be relevant in the offsets on one article, you'd probably be inclined to see your surroundings as infinitely more disposable than that of a universe holding some semblance of an actual extended narrative. One that also has a better use for your talents.

Fridge Horror

SCP-073 is the Cain. He is invincible. Sound awesome? Well, he feels all pain inflicted on him, despite being able to recover. Now, imagine being stuck on Earth, incapable of dying. All your friends (the friends he had, anyway) would die, but you wouldn't. Eventually, when the earth is enveloped by the sun or an asteroid crashes into it or something, you'd be still alive, incapable of dying. You'd feel your skin being super-heated, you'd feel your body melting, yet still be alive. Eventually, you'd be lost in space, drifting forever, constantly feeling the pain of asphyxiation, never having your suffering put to an end unless you came across another planet with atmosphere, and even then you'd feel the pain of burning up and the impact, all of your bones shattering. When you think about it, SCP-073 is trapped in his own little time bomb hell. It's only a matter of time. However, this was the entire point.
As most of the articles are about everyday objects being potentially world-ending, or at the very least life-threatening, you're bound to start thinking the next time something strange happens.
- To put this into perspective: most of the Foundation's SCPs were discovered by regular people, going throughout their daily lives. Just like you.
- Several SCPs have been written so that they can be printed and left in a public place.
The recruitment of D-class typically comes from inmates, though under their security designation is this gem: "Condemned persons are preferred; in times of duress, Protocol 12 can be authorized, allowing recruitment of innocents or persons incarcerated for lesser crimes." The reader is then immediately reminded about how all D-class are killed off at the end of the month.
- Protocol 12 is occasionally used in articles where a less than sapient, pliable/suggestible human is needed for an experiment, test or containment. Instead of taking Death Row prisoners they take people who are mentally ill.
- Some tales, specially in the foreign branches, work under the implication that not all D-class aren't killed at the of the month, but instead they are systematically wiped of their last month of service and reassigned. That… doesn't makes the above implications any better.
- As a corollary: what if prison overcrowding is encouraged by the Foundation to ensure a constant supply of D-class?
While most (if not all) articles are built upon Fridge Horror, leaving far too many to list, there are a few good in-universe examples of this:
- The fate of the world SCP-093 came from. It's a post-apocalyptic dystopia centered around Christian belief, where demons are very, very real. For that matter, God isn't implied to be any better.
- It is, by all means, completely impossible to know just what SCP-055 is. Yes, it's hilarious when the researchers forget about things, but the horror sets in when you begin to imagine just what it could actually be.
  - Another dimension of horror arises when they list possible threats SCP-055 could pose, which is then followed by the line, "No action to counter any of these potential threats is suggested, or indeed theoretically possible." SCP-055 could potentially pose any threat right up to an "end-of-the-world scenario" and there'd be no way to know, and no way to stop it.
  - This is also why 055 is a Keter class, because they don't know how dangerous it might be. As far as they know, it's killed hundreds of personnel and they would have no idea that it's happened.
  - What if it was dangerous? What if it breached containment?
  - Not even Knowledge lets you keep it.
Of special horror are the black bars commonly used on the site — you don't know what's behind them, but there's a number of them left there for you to guess. SCP-231's age was originally "between ██ and ██ years of age," but after a user realized that meant she was at least a teenager, it was swiftly changed to "between █ and ██ years of age." Think about it.
The interaction between SCP-682 and SCP-053 is real cute. But let's drop that Sugar Bowl for a moment and think, 682 kills everything because they're disgusting, yet it became docile toward 053. And no, it isn't a case of Wouldn't Hurt a Child, it has killed at least two kids — quickly and messily. Remember that when humans make eye contact with or touch 053, or simply be near her long enough, they will go berserk and attack 053. Taking all those clues, you should have realized the wrongness hiding in 053. Maybe 053 is for us what we are for 682.
The Ethics Committee. At first, it seems like a bad joke for an organization like the Foundation to have such a thing (hell, even most of the staff think it's ineffectual and pointless), but the truth is they know everything the Foundation has ever done, is doing, and ever will do. Every thing behind those black bars, every [REDACTED] and [DATA EXPUNGED]? They know what's there. Procedure 110-Montauk? Yep, they know that, too. They designed it. The thing is, as bad as the Foundation is now, without them, it would be much, much worse. The fact that they designed Procedure 110-Montauk means that whatever it is, it's the most humane way to achieve the needed result, and it's still too horrible to be described.
Ethics Committee Member: Remember this: the Foundation is not evil. We do not torture people "just because". We are against unnecessary cruelty. Which means somebody has to decide when cruelty is necessary. And that somebody is us... Stop trembling.
A lot of SCPs require sophisticated containment that would take a long time to construct. What did the Foundation do with the artifacts before their containment rooms were constructed? Even when the containment is simple, they still need to locate a free room. Where did they put SCP 173 before they found it a cell? How was it contained and transported to the cell?
Consider this story, which goes into detail about the class-A amnestics that are given out like candy after the more traumatic events. Now remember SCP-231-7 is given a class-A amnesiac every few times 110-Montauk is administered...
- Remember that nothing is canon. SCP-231-7 is not what makes this class A amnestics Nightmare Fuel, instead it's totally incompatible with it. SCP-231-7 is given class A amnestics once a week, while the process described in that page takes weeks to give results, or even months or years. Besides, the amnestics are given during Procedure 110-Montauk, every week.
- That is both Nightmare Fuel & Paranoia Fuel of incredible proportions.
As one commenter pointed out, SCP-106, although highly dangerous, is fairly easy to confuse. It also appears as an elderly man. What if there are younger and less senile members of its species out there?
- One tale, called "The Young Man", implies that 106 is actually a heavily mutated human.
- It's even more implied that 106 wasn't actually a human to begin with, only that what happened to him made it worse.
- Another tale about 106 has him going on a bloody rampage on Halloween, with one unfortunate victim spending four days continuously running in 106's realm before the physical torture begins. Two bits of Fridge Horror emerge from this. One, the entire story takes place on the night of October 31st and the morning of November 1st, meaning that the time a victim spends in that hell is much longer than the time they're missing would indicate, and since 106 controls everything in its dimension, it can manipulate the flow of time however it likes. Two, humans cannot run for that amount of time, and would be near-death from thirst after four days in a waterless environment, meaning that the aforementioned control of everything extends to the biological workings of 106's captives. Combined with another captive somehow surviving horrifying injuries that should have killed him within minutes, this means that you can't die, or even pass out, unless 106 lets you.
SCP-331. Something about the entry is very sad and disturbing. It's a pet collar that turns any recently-dead cat into a zombie cat that answers to the name "Tumbles." The cat is friendly, but undead, and rots away eventually. What happened to the original Tumbles? Poor kitty...
SCP-1696 sounds innocent enough: a box capable of creating an entire universe on a small scale, with various physical constants set by the user. There's also a button that lets you start over with new parameters. But think about that: what happens to the people in that universe when the reset button is pushed?
On the Log of Anomalous Items, they list a fire alarm component that makes all who hear it barricade themselves in a room and refuse to leave. And they found it in a elementary school. The list also includes a pair of baby-blue boxing gloves that cause an infant to grow all of its adult teeth within 24 hours if somebody punches it in the jaw while wearing them. How did someone find this out, exactly?
SCP-1377. While "uncanny valley alien parliamentarians" sounds kind of silly, the thing you have to realize is that they're getting better at imitating humans every time. How long until we can't tell the difference?
SCP-203 is a human who had been unwillingly roboticised. Horrible enough in and of itself, but a particularly unsettling part would be this; a lot of his body parts have been removed and replaced with mechanical implants, except one, which was removed and never replaced. Said body part is censored with a [DATA EXPUNGED] block. Ouch.
SCP-1442 is a sentient corporation that, instead of having a sinister motive, just wants some companionship from another corporation. That takes some of the edge off, but when you really think about it, something that deals in "advanced defense technology and [REDACTED]" can't be all that harmless.
The existence of SCP objects themselves. Reading through the SCP database, which intentionally analyses SCP and their effects through cold, dry, clinical precision of science, you start noticing classification of SCP as somehow contrary to the natural universal laws of physics. Then it hits you: They aren't. Most of the SCP objects, even the ones that are blatantly using some form of magic or extra-dimensional wedgies to perform their functions, do so without fundamentally causing the universe around them to break; therefore, doesn't it make sense that however improbable, however horrifying they are, that the existence of SCP objects and the forces capable of creating them are not only possible, but normal in the grand scheme of things? SCP objects will never stop being discovered or created, they are as natural a facet of the universe as the laws of thermodynamics they defy in the first place.
In this diary entry, we see that SCP-1048 only converted the girl's parents (the mother's unborn child and the father, technically, but the mother still died from it) after they saw it and presumably tried to get rid of it. Yet it acted like a whimsical living toy with the daughter, to the point where at the end, she was happy to live on her own with it while it brought her food. Then you have to wonder, did it need the daughter for some reason? And why turn the parents into more teddy bears? Maybe to help keep the daughter around? Now, remember that SCP-1048 is doing the same thing in the Foundation, except here we have no clue what triggered its decision to start making more of itself. And because the Foundation is so massive, it could theoretically have as many people around as it wants, for whatever it needs them for. Good thing there's only one of it — Oh, Crap!, actually the Foundation has no clue where it is, and it can make as many copies of itself as it needs, at this point.
Read SCP-2317 and then SCP-231, then back to 2317.
- 7 seals. 6 broken. SCP-231-7 is (or isn't) the last seal stopping SCP-2317 from coming into our universe. Procedure 110-Montauk is fully justified.
- Speaking of 2317, it's revealed in the final iteration that the containment is all useless and is just there to hide the fact that the O5s have no idea what to do. Who knows what other containment procedures are also a sham?
- Do you want to put weight on it? The Church of the Second Hytoth believes (among other things) that we live in the second multiverse/hytoth, and that seven beings from the previous universe were promoted to divinity to protect it. Six have died or are missing. There's one left.
Y'all know Gustave? That infamous crocodile from Africa? The one that killed around 300 people, some of which wasn't for food but just for the sake of killing? Also, that he has survived gunshots and even a grenade? Consider the following, then. What else do we know that is large, reptilian, hard to kill, and kills for no reason other than sheer malice? SCP-682. Coincidence? Or could it be possible they are one and the same?
- 682 is known to be capable of talking, so not likely. Also, the photo on the site doesn't look crocodilian at all.
- Fun fact: that picture is actually of a dead and heavily decayed whale. Which was from 2006, and nobody knows the whereabouts of after the Russian government contained it. Think about it for a little.
In SCP-1678: One of the random messages playing in the city says ‘Can’t make ends meet? Do not be ashamed. Bryson’s Home for the Poor is here to help.’ When you read the description of the "Bobbies", they are thought to originate from said home because they are all wearing inmate style jumpsuits from said building. Here's a description of the Bobbies: "these entities are constructed out of human corpses crudely dismembered at the head, wrists, knees and elbows and re-assembled using simple industrial hinges and screws. The head is always wrapped in bandages."
SCP-2170. There's one "gif" that it's not displayed. bobble.gif.
SCP-447. What does it do that's so secret we don't get to know the faintest detail, but warrants warning about letting it come into contact with dead bodies in every single paragraph of its description? You might assume it just makes zombies of some kind, but then it sinks in: They don't dare to conceive of any experiments to figure out even the vaguest boundaries of what constitutes a "dead body". A steak? The tiniest amount of meat? The risk is too great to allow any contact, under any circumstances. What could it possibly do that's so bad?
SCP-1192 is a bird who identifies himself as a boy called Timmy. Nothing special, right? Except there's the very plausible theory that something turned Timmy into the bird and is now impersonating the boy himself.
Imagine if you woke up one morning and realized something was off. Your house had an extra floor, the hallways seem longer, but you remember them always being that way. Then you look in the mirror and see your hair color and parts of your face are different as well...except that you've always looked like this. You drive into town and distinctly remember that the road is very curvy. Except for your memories of it being just a straight shot. You see one of your friends is there and walking on two legs. Which they lost back in Iraq several years ago...right? Did that war even happen? You start to feel like you're going crazy. You go to bed that night and have a nightmare of a totalitarian government taking control of your entire country. They subject you to cruel and horrific experiments, but you manage to escape and discover they'd given you superhuman strength. The next morning, you wake up and see you've developed a thick muscular structure. You look out the window and see the posters of your glorious leader everywhere. You decide to call your friend and ask him for help. Except you remember he was killed during the war. What's happening? This is the life of those with SCP-1237, a gene that causes people to enter a deep sleep state where they can alter reality through their dreams. It's completely unconscious and they retain both old and new memories, as well as false ones created from the changes they've made.
SCP-1827 is a portal that leads to a parallel universe inhabited by two species of sapient bird, the turkeys and the herons, who fought a long and bloody war. What initially seems like a particularly weird Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode or a FilmCow short, becomes bloody terrifying when you realise the herons, who are Scary Dogmatic Aliens, won the war and, considering what happened to the test turkey the Foundation sent through the portal, are pretty damn ruthless towards their enemies. Their technological capability is also unclear, but is evidently far superior to ours, considering they made the cross-dimensional portal. What's going to happen when they learn about humanity and decide they want Earth for themselves? If we go up against this ruthless, enigmatic, and vastly technologically superior alien threat, we are doomed. An SK-class dominance shift scenario is almost guaranteed.
not_a_seagull's 001 Proposal, Sky Above the Port, describes a humanoid entity, visible only through a pulsating sphere, which causes the world to "tune out" of existence unless it is constantly kept entertained. The Foundation tries to keep it satisfied with literature, and then turns to showing it SCP articles, which seems to work. The Foundation then learns that the creature is biased towards hearing about itself, and devises a document to keep it entertained forever, going in an infinite loop. You can view the document, which turns out to be a repeat of the article, with another "document" nested inside it, ad infinitum. In other words, YOU are reading this document. YOU are the creature, and if you get bored, and tune out, their universe will end.
SCP-498 is an anomalous alarm clock that goes off every eleven minutes. If the snooze button isn't pressed, the 30 decibel alarm will become 4 decibels louder every ten seconds. There's no evidence that this process will stop, meaning that the sound waves could not only destroy the earth, but conceivably even create a black hole.
Some SCPs (-966, for example), however bizarre they may be, they act quite similarly to familiar predatory animals, with wide habitats and predictable behaviors. There's no evidence for them outside Foundation custody, which begs a serious question. Has the Foundation not only meddled with human history, but also erased several branches of evolution from the history of life on Earth? How many SCPs are products of inexplicable phenomena and how many are just products of natural selection?
SCP-187 is a young woman who can see the current and future state of anything she's looking at. When she saw SCP-173, all she could do was scream for a minute and thirty-one seconds, then slip into a coma for 48 hours, waking with no recollection of what she saw. What exactly is going to happen to SCP-173 in the future and why would it garner such a reaction?
SCP-140 is a book that extends the history of the Daevas when it is given more liquid to write with. The Sarkic Cults of Adytum arose when Ion, a half-Daevite slave, stumbled on the power of Yaldabaoth. What if the Sarkic Cults didn't exist originally, and were retconned into reality by the book?
- SCP-6140 took that last concept and ran with it. In this SCP, the Always Chaotic Evil, slaveholding, depraved, and stagnant Daevite Empire portrayed in most of SCP lore is actually the creation of a single, racist British man who whipped up a slanderous and inaccurate ethnography of an entire culture to fit his beliefs and project his own society's issues on another. He then enacted a ritual that wiped the actual Daevite states from reality just so his lies will be the truth. If SCP-140 had been allowed to reach the modern day, then the destruction of the peaceful, civilized Daevastanis would have been complete.
It's stated in a note that SCP-2000 will not be used to alleviate humanity's violent and sociopathic tendencies. Why not? Because it's already been done before. Successfully. They're not doing it anymore because further behavioral modifications would severely undermine humanity's tenacity for survival and inhibit social and technological progress. And this is after it's established that resetting with SCP-2000 accidentally caused both World Wars. Yes, the two largest wars in history, along with all other conflicts, crimes, and violent occurrences since then? This is the minimum level of violence humanity needs to survive. What were we like before then?
The entry for SCP-1357 details how Agent Fredricks had his daughter kidnapped by staff at the amusement park he was investigating. His daughter was then repeatedly manipulated by the staff into thinking her parents did not love her anymore in an attempt to make her stay before finally brainwashing her into becoming an employee at the park. For all we know, this has happened before and for who knows how long before the Foundation set up measures to prevent people entering the park. How many staff are also children who have been brainwashed?
SCP-1539 steals an object's identity and reattaches it to another nearby object. Jim Thayer, the agent who responded to the anomaly, had his identity ripped from him and placed into his wallet. We know his physical body, now identified as a washer, is dead because the loss of mass and foul odor is consistent with decomposition. However, it's also possible that his consciousness is still alive inside the wallet.
SCP-2030 is an extremely disturbing hidden camera prank show called Laugh is Fun, among other titles. Each episode has a theme, and all of them end up worse than they sound. Like how the episode about cephalopods involves a woman giving birth to octopi with celebrity faces who sing "Row, Row, Row your Boat." That's disturbing, but the fridge comes later. Whenever the host of the show appears, everyone is completely fine with whatever the fuck just happened. They even recognize him! This implies either they've seen the show, or the show itself forces them to play along. Does watching Laugh is Fun make you a target for these terrifying pranks? Two final things: The show usually disguises itself as other shows, to trick people into watching, and all the guests were legally dead or missing before the episode's airing, but their corpse is no longer in the grave. Nothing funny about that...
One of the victims of SCP-944 was a little boy who was tortured for seven hours by a Monster Clown in the dimension he was trapped in. The clown in question was said to be "Zippo the Pyromaniac Clown", so it's obvious that burning was a part of the torture...but apparently, there was another part of the torture that warranted a "[DATA EXPUNGED]" mark. This implies that Zippo did something worse to the kid, and given that this is a Monster Clown we're talking about, there's a very strong possibility that what he did was something more...unthinkable...
SCP-2935 is a cave that leads to an alternate universe where every living thing on Earth has died suddenly. What caused this? An agent from that universe discovered a cave that led to an alternate universe where every living thing had died suddenly, and when he returned, everything on his Earth died simultaneously. Given this information, it's entirely possible there's an infinite chain of SCP-2935s.
- Which ties nicely into the title of the SCP: "O, Death." The letter "O" can also be viewed as a circle, making the title literally "Circle of Death" (or Cycle, if you'd prefer.) It just keeps going round and round...
The concept of SCP-2557 was purchased from a Foundation agent by an extradimensional investment banking firm. The entire article is meant to be humorous, but some commentators have pointed out the horror in one line: "This obviates and annuls all pre-existing containment procedures". The implication being that the 2557 destination was once a set of containment procedures for an actual Keter-class subject, but any way of containing it has been removed by the bank simply so they can place an ad within the Foundation. Envelope Logistics is intended to be a Harmless Villain shamelessly exploiting the Foundation to hawk a no-strings-attached get-rich-quick scheme Played for Laughs; customers can talk to Envelope's employees to find ridiculous ideas to invest money in, and then receive rapid returns when/if they proliferate. Surely, it's no different than betting on something the old-fashioned way, right? Just one small moral quandary: both they and their customers openly admit to investing in ideas such as cancer rates in a certain city and gender dysphoria as a whole concept. Which means that if a customer so desired, they could profit off of the suffering of thousands of people at minimum and actively attempt to resist efforts to fight it just to line their pockets; alternatively, using the firm to bet on politics (as one customer mentions in their testimonial) leads to the very questionable motive of using political positions for personal gain — and lots of it, too. Both possibilities are common criticisms of capitalism as an economic ideology, overlapping this with Fridge Brilliance.
SCP-1160 is humorous at first glance, but then, one commenter brings up a horrifyingly good point: What other cereal mascots are mere fronts to keep an Eldritch Abomination from achieving its true, unspeakable form?
D-Class are often dismissed as a bunch of criminals that you don’t feel too bad for, given that since many of them are on death row, it’s implied that they’ve done some heinous crime to get there. But in Real Life, many death row inmates are wrongfully accused or given a sentence disproportionate to the crime. That means that it’s highly likely that many D-Class are perfectly innocent or have committed very mild crimes, but suffer the same horrific fates of the worst criminals.
- The police institution of America disproportionately targets African Americans, particularly during the era right after slavery was abolished, mostly because it was not illegal to make prisoners perform slave labor. That means a lot of people were put in jail wrongfully, and likely ended up in D-Class despite having done nothing or little wrong. This gets worse if SCP-1851-EX is treated as canon—in that article, the Foundation's precursors supported slavery and pseudoscientific justifications for enslaving Black people and using them as D-Class. The article even states that after the Foundation switched to supporting the North, the Foundation began "recruiting" D-Class from the poor, mentally ill and imprisoned populations, with the note that this would "change little of the racial makeup of [the D-Class]".
- SCP goes through a LOT of D-Class personnel, to the point where it’s a running gag. However, in the real world, there simply isn’t enough death row inmates to sufficiently fill out the Foundation’s high demand for them. Which means they must be ACTIVELY trying to get people wrongfully or disproportionately convicted in order to fill out the numbers. Now, think of the thousands of D-Class lost in almost every story.
Considering every horrible and nightmarish thing known about the SCP Foundation 'verse, what did SCP-2165 do to be considered irredeemable and made an Un-person by universal consensus? Were any of the very worst SCPs and Lovecraftian horrors its fault?
SCP-5007-A is an intertidal reef from which SCP-5007 originate from. At the center of -A is -B, a large, deep pit, containing some sort of many-eyed, tentacled horror designated SCP-5007-C. One comment in the discussion page pointed out on how the shape and location of SCP-5000-B inside -A makes it appear to resemble an eye. Since -C is inside -B, does this mean that the entirety of SCP-5000-A, -B, and -C are merely parts of a bigger entity?
TL333s: Am I right in thinking that 5000-A, with its giant black pit in the center, is shaped like an eye?
The already-fucked-up SCP-3288 (a cabal of depraved, incestuous families who live beneath Austria that abduct human women to forcibly impregnate) gets even more disturbing: many aspects of the article resembles the Real Life Fritzl case, when an Austrian man imprisoned, abused, and raped his own daughter for 18 years, keeping her and their children in a cell beneath his house.
SCP-5002 was a mystery writer who, whenever she reread something she wrote, caused it to occur in reality, albeit with some of the details - mostly names and places - changed. One D-Class said he was terrified of her because he could never be sure if he was responsible for his actions, or if 5002 had written them. Agent O'Connor says in the last part of her report that Lowry may not have been fully responsible for killing 5002 because she might have forced him to do so by writing a story. But how many of the events leading up to 5002's death were orchestrated by 5002? Did she force Dr Yau to fall in love with her, or Director May to want revenge so badly she let a serial rapist roam free? Did 5002 simply want to die, so she wrote her own murder and the rest was a coincidence, or did she specifically set things up to make her death one that suited a mystery novel?
In the updated 2024 entry for SCP-5140, instances of them are estimated to make up roughly 45% of the mass of Mt. Everest, which would have to be around 714 billion corpses at least. That's seven times the total of number of all human beings estimated to have ever lived...if you don't factor in the many, many times the world has already ended in the Foundation universe.
- Which implies that the world has not only ended many, many, many times, but that it's ended enough times that even the sub-set of XK-caliber catastrophes which leave all the bodies intact have recurred a hundred times over. And that's assuming Everest is the only mountain to be so-constructed.
- Arguably worse: what if most of those corpses aren't natural corpses, but created by Mt. Everest? There are plenty of self-replicating SCPs, some of which could cause a Grey Goo apocalypse in the right/wrong conditions. SCP-5140 could be one of these and the Foundation has no idea.
SCP-1440's immortality gets a lot more grim when you consider that given he was still an old man when first found by the Foundation fifty years ago, he was probably old enough to have experienced a past XK-scenario that required SCP-2000 to restart humanity and thus he has "witnessing the apocalypse" as another reason to regret beating Death. But it gets worse when you consider his effect on civilization; was one of the catastrophizes that required SCP-2000 to be used accidentally triggered by him?
SCP-____-J is a joke SCP that makes people procrastinate, leading to a bare-bones article as it affects the researcher writing it. Seems funny, but then you remember that it could make them procrastinate on doing basic, life-sustaining activities such as going to the bathroom and eating, thus leading to a slow decay of living skills and eventual death. If the article was written differently, this could easily be a proper SCP.
Part of SCP-6373 is a puppet known as Âme that is completely empty, while the other three puppets contain human organs. But in French, "Âme" translates to "soul", so the puppet might've not been empty after all...
Some of the more beneficial SCPs were discovered in the possession of people who were relying on them to survive. SCP-348 (the soup bowl that produces soup if you're sick) was being used by a child with neglectful workaholic parents, SCP-1689 (the infinite potato bag) was the sole food source of a small Siberian village with 200 residents (and had been for more than a century), and SCP-2295 (the teddy bear that makes organs for injured patients) was discovered in a crashed mail truck on its way to an injured child, courtesy of his grandmother. There is no indication that any of these people received the help they needed after their respective SCPs were confiscated.
A tale-specific example: SCP-053's crosstest with SCP-978 is actually really wholesome, what with 053 happily riding through the countryside on 682's back while a bunch of smiling people follow, right? But what if one takes this as canon to the Competitive Eschatology, wherein we see 053 and 682 doing exactly that as Horsemen of the Apocalypse? Is 053's greatest desire to herald in the end of the world?
The Paranoia Fuel that is the end of SCP-5002 where Agent O'Connor outlines how the late SCP-5002 may have used her abilities to control everybody's lives, including brainwashing Dr. Yau to love her and Director May to hate her, and may even still be controlling them from beyond the grave, becomes even more paranoia-inducing when you realize the full implications of it. If SCP-5002 did brainwash Director May to hate her, then she must have known that her daughter was one of the people who died because of her books. But May wouldn't have told her that. So did she already know even before she was contained that her books were causing people to be murdered and kept writing them as part of some grand plan to have a murder mystery about her? If so, then she must have already known that the Foundation would come and contain her. Did she know about them somehow? Or did she invent them as part of her plan?
- On a less paranoia-inducing note, if SCP-5002 did make May hate her, then presumably she also made her release the unnamed SCP that walks through walls. So she released a Serial Rapist, presumably knowing that there was at least a risk that he would attack D-2825 or another woman on the site, purely to make her story more like a detective novel.
SCP-7179 is already existentially horrifying, but remember that Hiddleston is an adult. A dead child, of which there's unfortunately no shortage of, is going to have their Hell start early, because the initially heavenly features are catered to adults (sex partners and drug-simulating fruit), so they're going to run out of things to do faster. It's even worse for a dead baby.
The Antimemetics Division tales follow the titular Antimemetics Division. This division deals with "Antimemes", which are essentially ideas that eat ideas. Victims of Antimemes are effectively erased from the world, as all memory of them, or even all records of them, are destroyed. The first Antimemetics tale, "We Need To Talk About Fifty Five", introduces Mraion Wheeler, the division chief. In it, she is described as having a "loving husband and two kids". Later tales tell us a lot more about her husband, but the this first tale is the only one to make any reference to her having kids. Word of god confirms this was intentional.

Fridge / SCP Foundation

Edit Locked