if you hear suspicious laughter
run as fast as you can
avoid eye contact with the person
once the person notices you, it will begin pursuit
Do Not Interact, You Will Most LIKELY BE....
Announcement Tape from Volume 1
The SMILE Tapes is Web Video Analog Horror series, created by Patorikku
in 2021.
During the 90s, a new mysterious drug has entered circulation throughout the black market in the United States, making headlines. The drug, nicknamed SMILE, is made using the spores of an unidentified fungus. Its many effects include mania, uncontrollable laughter, violent tendencies, as well as smiles. Lots and lots of smiles.
The series is split between volumes, there currently being three volumes that make up the first season. Between the volumes various smaller videos are released, which are snippets from the next volume. There are also bonus images on Patorikku's Instagram, which are also on his youtube account's community tab.
The series can be found here.
This series contains examples of:
- Ambiguous Situation:
- The exact origin of the fungus that SMILE is made from is left vague. In Far History, it's heavily implied it originated from space due to the video glitching when reaching the panspermia segment, but it's left to interpretation. Volume 3 almost outright confirms that it came from space, more specifically the asteroid belt, as it was first found inside a sample of amber dating from the end of the Cretaceous period. This doesn’t exactly answer the question as to what it is though, since how could it be a fungus if it originated not from Earth, but from Space? A more accurate description of it would be an alien lifeform which happens to resemble fungi.
- Given that people only come into contact with the strange man when, well, they are on drugs, is he just a hallucination or an actual entity that can only be encountered through drugs?
- Apocalyptic Log: Shaun Gomez's journal ends up becoming this due to his gradual Sanity Slippage and contact with the strange man, leading him to commit homicide on New Year's Eve and getting killed by the police.
- Artistic License – Pharmacology: While drugs can be pretty harmful, slowly stretching your face to make you smile and ravaging your body is something you can't really do with cocaine. Given the drug is actually derived from a destructive strain of fungus, this is pretty justified.
- Big Bad: Seemingly the strange man from the dreams. Yes, THAT guy. He manipulates everyone who comes into contact with SMILE and makes them believe that they must make people "happy" by murdering them.
- Bittersweet Ending: Volume 3 ends with the epidemic effectively contained and the Variant C smilers destroyed in a rain of ballistic missile-delivered fire, but almost 10,000 people have died over the course of the outbreak, a number which will presumably continue to rise as those currently infected continue to die off.
- Body Horror: Aside from the stretching your face to make you smile, the drug slowly ravages and destroys your body, leading to "motor functions".
- Facial Horror:
- The laboratory segment from Vol 1 shows the eventual progress of the drug in two patients. Their faces slowly wither away, their hair falls off, and one's jaw is barely still attached to his face. It's also mentioned that one patient who managed to linger with it for 6 weeks ended up experiencing what appeared to be late-stage Alzheimers.
- Volume 2 shows a "variant c" effect on patients. The patient's eyes slowly fall from his eye sockets, his head distorts to an unbelievable degree and he has a bigger smile than the others.
- Fantastic Drug: Played for Horror with SMILE, which is made from an unknown fungus, is distributed through the black market and has utterly horrific effects on the human body.
- Festering Fungus: During an autopsy on one of the patients, the morticians discover that he has fungus inside his brain.
- Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: And carved on your face. See Facial Horror above.
- Hate Plague: Would be more accurate to say a Homicidal Happiness Plague, but semantics. The virus transforms people into cackling homicidal lunatics and worse that hunt down and either kill or infect normal humans.
- Hell Is That Noise: During stage 2, the patients' behavior at the laboratory is described as predatory with manic laughter, the latter of which is soon played. It sounds like something between actual laughter and screams of agony.
- In "Hike", at the end you hear the sound of the Hiker very audibly choking and letting out rattling gags from him having his throat slashed open
- Hope Spot: Max, Shaun's dog, was feeling oddly quiet. After Shaun takes him to the vet, he gets better and starts to bark again. Unfortunately, Max suddenly passes away a few weeks later, which only worsens considerably Shaun's Sanity Slippage.
- Kill It with Fire: Revealed in Volume 3 that this was discovered to be the sole weakness of the then steadily increasing in number Variant C, who were otherwise completely impervious to any other form of harm, including bullets. Once discovered, this knowledge was quickly exploited, and proved instrumental in turning the tide and curbing the SMILE outbreak.
- Madness Mantra:
- Shaun Gomez's "I am happy, I am happy, I am happy".
- "There is no cure" in Volume 3.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: The poor eponymous Hiker in the episode "Hike". Was just being a good samaritan, hearing someone screaming in the distance and wanting to see if they're okay, and help them if they aren't. He becomes the implied first murder victim of a Smiler for his troubles, and judging by the sounds he makes and if the distorted picture of him is any indication, his death wasn't a quick and painless one.
- Nothing Is Scarier: When describing Variant C of the spores, a "Text Here" shows up on the screen, implying that nothing is known of this variant. Subverted in that the following distortion barely shows its effect on patients, including enhanced strength, speed, bulletproof exterior and bloodthirstiness. The patient becomes, for all intents and purposes, an Implacable Man.
- Our Zombies Are Different: The SMILE fungus turns infectees into a somewhat zombie-like state, Similar to The Cordyceps Infection. Smilers feel normal for a short while after getting it until they see strange dreams of a man who slowly take over their mind. Their facial muscles are permanently shifted by the fungus to make them look as if they are constantly smiling. Smilers also will constantly laugh until their vocal cords give out and are permanently damaged. They have a strong urge to infect and kill the healthy, under the delusions that they will become "happy". If surviving past the first two stages, most of the skin will eventually melt off of the body except for what is neccessary to maintain the constant smile, and by the time the Smilers die they release a massive spore of fungus Infecting those nearby within over a whopping 30 feet nearby the corpse upon the time of release
- Red Is Violent: Shaun Gomez's photo, after committing a homicide and getting taken down by the police, is largely red with his face censored. Later in volume 2, the strange man is shown with a distorted red smile and a Variant C patient is described as bloodthirsty and his photo get more red and red as it distorts.
- Sanity Slippage: Everyone who's used SMILE or makes contact with the fungus' spores goes through this, though the biggest example is Shaun Gomez. He came into contact with the spores in December after a SMILE user coughed on him, leaving him more confused than angry. Over the month, his face stretched, making a smile. He also started making contact with a strange man in his dreams. In the end, he started repeating that "he's happy" and that he must make everybody else "happy". On New Year's Eve, he committed a homicide.
- Slasher Smile: SMILE obviously does this, though the result ends up utterly horrific.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: Shaun Gomez's journal details how he goes insane due to the drug. The journal is shown while calm music plays in the background.
- Stepford Smiler: Shaun wrote in his journal that while his friends have noticed that he's been smiling and assume he's happy, he notes that he's certainly not happy and that he's in agony and suffering due to the forced smile.
- Synthetic Voice Actor: The voice beginning the tapes saying "This message is broadcast to raise awareness of a new type of drug in circulation", adding to the Analog Horror.
