Nightmare Fuel / The Bikini Bottom Horror

Do you know how sea stars feed? Let me show you.

The Bikini Bottom Horror is a Dark Fic about Patrick losing his mind and going on a massacre. As such, this webcomic is rife with it. It makes Around the Clock at Bikini Bottom look like a family game by comparison.

As per Nightmare Fuel policy, all spoilers are unmarked!

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• In general, whenever a character dies, background or not, their deaths are beautifully detailed. Made worse by the Art Evolution of the comic, which makes all the deaths incredibly explicit.
• Seeing Patrick slowly turn around and open his skin, revealing the realistic starfish anatomy that he keeps hidden. His body looks like a hole into the void, not helped by the blank white eye holes on the sides of his "head".
  • And of course, him murdering his (former) best friend SpongeBob by impaling the little guy with his sucker-like stomach proboscis, then eating his dissolving flesh. Whilst explaining the process.
• Patrick pulls a hydra-move when Sandy cuts him in half. The version that regenerates from the bottom-up looks like a skull dripping with melted flesh.
• Normal sea stars have eyes at the end of their legs. So does Patrick. But Patrick's leg-eyes look like extremely detailed human eyes, with elongated pupils. Think Bill Cipher.
• One of the Patricks drags Sandy out of the Krusty Krab to fates unknown... but probably to be eaten alive. Mr. Krabs begins to beg, calling Patrick evil — and then another Patrick suddenly appears behind him.
• The reveal that the secret ingredient in the Krabby Patty secret formula is Patrick; to be exact, it's his flesh, harvested from a regenerated clone kept restrained and fed by Mr. Krabs. The main Patrick has been eating his own meat for years, to say nothing of how the rest of Bikini Bottom has been packing away the Patties.
  • Patrick only discovered this when he happened to consume an under-cooked Krabby Patty. The regenerating cells inside passed his clone's memories on to him — years of being cut apart, force fed, regrowing, only to be cut again; all in an endless loop. No wonder Patrick snapped.
  • If Patrick hadn't eaten the undercooked patty, Krabs would've continued that disgusting practice for the rest of his life. And possibly beyond, if he finally passed on the secret in his old age. And it could've gotten even worse if the Krusty Krab ever became a franchise restaurant...
• The Patricks drawing and quartering Mr. Krabs. Not that he didn't deserve it, but still. Not how crab legs are supposed to be served.
• Sandy wakes up under one of the Patricks; its stomach proboscis is beating on her helmet, and has already cracked it. Thank Neptune she's from Texas.
• We get to see the Patricks feasting on the citizens of Bikini Bottom, reducing them to skeletons, as seen in the page image.
• Squidward brutally rips out a Patrick's brain, claiming the starfish never used it.
• Mr. Krabs survived his dismemberment, but it turns out that was just the beginning of his suffering. The Patricks fed him a raw Krabby Patty. It regenerates inside him — and a miniature Patrick explodes out like a chest-burster.
• In order to nullify Squidward's hypnotic music, one of the Patricks rips off his own ears. It then converts to "real" form (the inner part resembling nothing so much as a grinning mouth with More Teeth than the Osmond Family) and runs at Squidward and Sandy on the tips of its legs like some horrible spider-beast, moving too fast for Sandy to be able to shoot it.
• By far the worst thing in this chapter is how Patrick acts. No longer like a monster. Instead, he seems more like a slasher film villain. Smug, intelligent, and cruel. He's enjoying torturing his former friends.
• In order to save Sandy, Squidward taps into his hidden potential, and transforms into a kraken. He's bigger than the Krusty Krab and has a secondary beak-mouth (radula) hidden inside his tentacles. He rips through the Patricks with ease.
  • During this, Squidward points out the escalation that just happened: Bikini Bottom is tiny; the majority of the citizens are less than 4 inches tall. But his transformation is bigger than a lobster trap, which puts him at around 3 or 4 feet in size. In other words, what previously affected only the whimsical inhabitants of the underwater city may soon begin affecting the human world.
• At some point, a small Patrick disguised itself as the face mask of Bikini Bottom's favorite hero, Mermaid Man. When Barnacle Boy comes calling about the army of Patricks, the small one reveals himself... and rips Mermaid Man's face off. Thanks to the evolving art style, every gory detail is shown, even the blood spattering on Barnacle Boy's horrified expression.
  • Additionally, according to the creator's commentary, the small Patrick melted Mermaid Man's brain by secreting his digestive enzymes through his nose!
• Plankton and Sandy follow the Patrick that killed Mr. Krabs to a cavern under the Krusty Krab. Inside, several Patricks chant around a hole that seems to contain... something. They talk about rejoining, and when a particularly well-fed Patrick jumps in, he says that his victims will "feed the tortured one". The implication is that the hole contains the original clone Krabs used as the source of the Krabby Patties, and this "Tortured One" is either eating or absorbing the other Patricks.
• After capturing Sandy, the cultist Patricks show her the hole containing the Tortured One... but all Sandy sees is a swirl of stars and color. From this, SpongeBob emerges, and encourages Sandy to join him. Then we see the real hole, where Patricks are seemingly melting into the bottom, which is nothing but a black void. And Sandy seems about to give in...
• One of the Patricks accuses Squidward of helping Mr. Krabs profit off the Tortured One. Only for Squidward to remind him that Krabs was greedy and paranoid and wouldn't reveal the secret formula to anyone, not even his most trusted employees. Cue the mother of all My God, What Have I Done? moments as that Patrick realizes that he murdered his best friend and so many others, for nothing.
• Sandy thankfully manages to overcome the Tortured One's mind games and make a stand against the Patricks. But then, small grabbing hands erupt out of the ground. They tear the cultist Patricks apart and clearly intend to do the same to Sandy. The only way she survives is by shedding her outer suit and running, but even the tunnel is full of hands...
• We now see the Tortured One — the source of all those hands, and the tunnel itself. The sea floor around the Krusty Krab breaks apart, and from beneath rises the Patrick. The final boss. A starfish so big, each of its arms dwarf Squidward's kraken form. At its smallest, the Tortured One is at least 8 feet in diameter. In other words, it's a starfish large enough to swallow an adult human whole.
  • For perspective, the largest real world starfish are barely bigger than a human child. Most can easily be held in the palm of your hand. The largest starfish on record is a little over 3 feet in diameter; the largest sea star manages to grow to 4 feet. Compared to the Tortured One, those are rookie numbers.
• A small group of survivors have found refuge under Bubble Bass's leadership. He assures them that, despite the ground shaking, they are safe inside the building. And then the Tortured One breaks through the roof. It consumes almost everyone inside, and then reaches for a mother and her child. The little girl clings to her mom, shouting that she's scared. The only thing her mother can do is tell her to not look.
• Mrs. Puff is leading another group of survivors, and they seem to have adapted to the apocalypse a little... too well. They've already put together a caravan of armored boats (based on Mad Max: Fury Road, complete with a Doof Warrior and cries of, "Witness me!") and somehow acquired a large number of guns. It's worth noting that at this point, Sandy barely bothers questioning this new element of insanity in her life.
  • Mrs. Puff has a mechanical arm now. Either one of the Patricks tore her fin off and she just barely avoided being eaten; or Mrs. Puff removed her own arm for some reason. Neither possibility is pleasant. It's quite possible a Patrick latched onto it and her only chance for survival was cutting it off.
• The Tortured One tries its hypnosis trick again, this time on Squidward. He sees all of the Patricks' victims asking him to play them a song on his clarinet. We're treated to a lovely image of SpongeBob and Larry holding out the instrument... While their skin is cracking and melting off their bodies. It's quite possibly the most outright disgusting panel in the comic so far.
• Plankton seems to be doing well, using his robot to go all Pacific Rim on the Tortured One. But then the small Patrick returns, and kills Plankton — by popping him. In order to keep it from causing any more harm, Karen has no choice but to self-destruct.
• The Tortured One's severed arm started to regenerate into another giant Patrick. That alone would be terrifying enough, but its manner of doing so takes the appearance of half-melted Patricks continuously growing from the stump with their mouths open in silent screams.
• After Karen's self-destruct, Squidward lands on the Krusty Krab sign and is impaled through a heart.
  • Sandy is worse off; her cracked helmet is now leaking, slowly filling up with water. She needs to get to the surface so she doesn't drown... and she has to watch the fallen Squidward be swarmed by Patricks as she goes.
• The Tortured One speaks for the first time, in order to justify the slaughter of innocents. When Guilty Patrick asks why they should die if they never knew the truth about Krabby Patties, how does the Tortured One respond?
  BECAUSE THEY NEVER ASKED.
• SpongeBob's return is very cool — until you realize that he was somehow able to lift the Tortured One's arm off the ground. That is strength he never had before since in the original show, he could barely do one rep with a dumbbell that uses plushies as weights. Compare that to the last two panels of this comic where he's lifting the Tortured One's arm, which probably weighs millions, if not, tens or hundreds of millions of times his body weight, and it's clear that this sudden boost of strength is the first indication that he Came Back Wrong.
  • He's also clearly not the same goofball we all love. He's serious, vengeful... And he's not done regenerating. Pieces of sponge are scattered across Bikini Bottom, across all the Patricks. Now they come together, growing bigger and bigger. Until they form a massive gorilla-like beast that can match the Tortured One: PORIFERA.
    • As he forms, the sponge sings a familiar song. Though it's as twisted as he is, now...
    F is for Friendship; it can't last Forever...
    U is for yoU killed me...
    N is for aNywhere you think you're safe, you're Not
    DOWN IN THE DEEP DARK SEA!
• Porifera decides to repay the lesson Patrick gave SpongeBob on marine biology...by sucking up nearly all the Patricks and eating them in the way sea sponges eat anything. We see Patricks being dragged into too-small holes on Porifera's body, then turned inside out by the suction. The "waste" billows from Porifera's back in a cloud of red.
  • For that thought, Porifera's design is certain to trigger nightmares in anyone who suffers trypophopia.
  • Porifera is aware of Guilty Patrick, but made no effort to spare him when sucking up the other stars. Confident that Squidward would save him? Or did Porifera just not care?
    • And for that thought, the fact that Porifera/SpongeBob seems to have been conscious within all the different sponge parts throughout the whole comic. Most certainly a Fate Worse than Death.
• Porifera rips one of the Tortured One's arms in half down the length — so the Tortured One rips his face off. Lot of that going around lately.
• The epilogue implies that SpongeBob gave his own best friend the undercooked Krabby Patty on purpose and orchestrated everything; the Tortured One's rampage and the deaths of Krabs and Plankton; all so he could take out his rivals and his stint as the hero of the town would ensure that the citizens of Bikini Bottom would be none the wiser when he had the town within the palm of his hand.
  • While his behavior in the epilogue is subject to a lot of Alternate Character Interpretation, two possibilities are equally chilling. Either he Came Back Wrong due to the sheer agony of his split up state (making him much like the Tortured One)... or he was always The Sociopath, tricking his friends for years. The third possibility, that he didn’t plan for the Tortured One’s rampage but has been driven mad with guilt over the consequences of his actions and can’t bear to let anyone know the truth, isn’t much more pleasant.

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