SPOILERS ARE UNMARKED, READ WITH CAUTION!
- While several Patricks are fighting Squidward, a comment from him explaining that he never knew what Krabby Patties were made of makes one Patrick realize that if Squidward never knew, then neither did SpongeBob. Meaning Patrick killed his best friend for absolutely no reason.
- Flashback to before the comic began: in a rather expected jerk move, Squidward told SpongeBob that he didn't want to go jellyfishing. Then he took it further by emphasizing that they were not friends. Shortly after, Patrick knocks on his door. Or rather, a Patrick, as the horror has begun. Squidward barely manages to escape being eaten and runs outside to find Patricks devouring Bikini Bottomites. And on the ground next to a net are a familiar set of square pants. SpongeBob is dead, and the last thing Squidward told him was that they weren't friends.
- The entries above become Harsher in Hindsight when you realize SpongeBob did know about the contents of a Krabby Patty, and had only used Patrick — his best friend — as a pawn to take over Bikini Bottom, and had made Squidward believe he was fighting for a lost friend.
- It's confirmed that Mermaid Man died after the Patrick-Mask ripped his face off. He and Barnacle Boy have been partners for most of their lives. Barnacle Boy watched his partner, perhaps his only friend, bleed out in their lair.
- Mixed with Nightmare Fuel, but when you look at the Tortured One in the perspective of him being a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, a lot of his motivations make sense. This whole ordeal began when Mr. Krabs discovered the regenerative properties of starfish and decided to steal a piece of one to make Krabby Patties. We then cut to a scene involving the newborn Patrick clone with Mr. Krabs laughing, telling it that it will help him make lots of money before cutting to another scene with the fully regenerated Patrick clone being tortured and mutilated, clearly in pain as his body is turned into the meat for Krabby Patties, but not enough to kill him. Patrick had been eating his own meat without realizing it for years and only learned the truth when he ate an undercooked patty. When you look at the backstory from his perspective, you can understand why he's pissed.
- In the epilogue, Sandy is at a loss: after discovering that her alleged best friend SpongeBob caused the Tortured One's rampage by feeding his own best friend an undercooked Krabby Patty on purpose, Sandy is forced into silence under the threat of SpongeBob killing her and other people and being unable to hurt someone who has already shown that he can regenerate from a single cell. When she meets Squidward as she was about to leave Bikini Bottom, she is conflicted with the burden of telling him the truth or allowing him to continue to be in the dark. Squidward genuinely smiling for once makes her decision even worse. After this, Sandy drops the bombshell that she is going to move back to Texas. Squidward looks absolutely stricken by this revelation, and it's also very sad that Sandy has given up on Bikini Bottom after all she did to save it. Sandy giving Squidward a hand-made clarinet as a gift just adds salt to the wound.
- SpongeBob's dejected expression in his final appearance can earn some sympathy. He might have secured his empire in the end, but it cost him nearly all of his friends.
- In the fourth page, a disheartened Sandy returns to Texas and looks up at the night sky, which she had missed during her time in Bikini Bottom. With great sadness, she notes that the starry sky looks like the Tortured One's stomach to her now. In a comic defined by surreal and often Bathos-laden horror, this is a heartbreakingly realistic moment of You Can't Go Home Again with serious PTSD overtones. The Tortured One may be long gone, but his presence still lingers and will linger for years.
