YMMV / SCP Foundation

Subpages:

• Alternative Character Interpretation
• Base-Breaking Character
• Broken Base
• Complete Monster
• Crosses the Line Twice
• The Woobie

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Other YMMV:

A-E

• Accidental Aesop: Most victims of SCP-1715 received their fate because they gave personal information to the titular anomaly online. Even in Real Life, the danger of internet users soliciting personal information from others is very much real, and you should not be dumb enough to do that.
• Adorkable:
  • SCP-1171-1, as much as a casually racist Starfish Alien can be. Especially notable when he tries to talk to a human.
    "HOW ARE YOU? IS YOUR SKIN NICE AND FLEXIBLE? INSIDES FULL OF FLUIDS?"
  • While not normally a term one associates with mosquitoes, SCP-3774-2432 tripping over her own words is nothing short of adorable.
• Aluminium Christmas Trees:
  • The concept of creating weapons that are so horrifying that they make the idea of war itself too terrible to consider is, surprisingly, a rather old concept. Richard Gatling, the inventor of the Gatling gun, is said to have created his namesake invention with this partially in mind, as he believed that one soldier being able to kill entire squads at a time with a gatling gun could, at the very best, make armies averse to fielding large amounts of soldiers (thus reducing the size of armies in general and by extension the amount of casualties from war), and at worst, make entire nations averse to warfare in order to avoid such an inevitable slaughter.
  • The highest possible Clearance Level, "Cosmic Top Secret" sounds ridiculous and over-the-top, but this is actually the real classification used by NATO for their most sensitive information.
• Americans Hate Tingle:
  • Gamers Against Weed is heavily disliked on the Russian branch of the website, more so than their usual status as a Base-Breaking Character. There isn't any specific singular reason, but it does definitely include the fact that Russian SCP fans consider "an anomalous version of 4chan" to be too ridiculous even by the standards of the website. As a result, any SCP object featuring GAW is going to get downvoted the moment the readers notice its mention, regardless of the execution. It has gotten so bad that the translators outright refuse to translate the GAW-related objects, as they don't want to work on something that would instantly drown in downvotes anyway.
  • SCP-4680 is also heavily disliked by the Russian branch as it is viewed as a shallow caricature and collection of Western pop culture clichés regarding the real Grigori Rasputin, who is much better respected in Russian culture.
  • The Chinese branch's gods are a polarizing topic outside its country of origin, due to their use in power-scaling discussions (which the English on-site community has an intense dislike of) and their portrayal seemingly enabling these debates. Not helping matters is how they are portrayed, with entities like the Void Emperor, Metanormalcy, and the Chinese versions of the Scarlet King, Mekhane, and Yaldabaoth all displaying ridiculous feats of strength and pataphysical apotheosis such as existing above all narratives, being The Man Behind the Man to all pataphysics SCPs (possibly extending to English articles), explaining SCP-2165^note whose original horror is derived from the fact that its sin isn't supposed to be recorded, and having complete and utter control over every narrative in every branch wiki. Needless to say, the international communities are less-than-thrilled to have them around, sometimes pointing out that similar concepts with lower power brackets have already been done by the other branches and have more satisfying stories for doing so.
• Anvilicious:
  • SCP-2112 has its safety classification listed as Keter, one of the highest possible, because it makes those who hear it love covers over all other creative pursuits. This is an obvious enough Take That! at cover bands and unoriginal artists, but then Project Research Manager Edvalds' statement on the matter spells the message out giant, that valuing nostalgia over innovation, taken too far, could lead to the stagnation and decay of the human culture, become a planet of people who follow the "Anyway, here's Wonderwall" meme.
    Edvalds: "Some have questioned why SCP-2112 warrants classification as Keter. It is true that SCP-2112 poses no direct threat to human life or the continued existence of the human race; were every person susceptible to SCP-2112 infection to be infected, it would likely not result in a single fatality. What it does present, however, is a severe existential threat to the entirety of human culture, the arts, and all forms of creative work whatsoever. Man is a wonderfully creative animal and has developed a myriad of ways of expressing his thoughts and emotions — through poetry, dance, film, the written word, theatre, painting, sculpture, video games, even internet memes. We run the risk of every one of these mediums — every single last one of them — disappearing from our common experience, forever, in favor of thousands and millions of mediocre everymen performing the exact same songs over and over again."
  • SCP-4831 is interesting in that it's the title that makes it anvilicious. By itself, it's a rather tragic story about a young man trapped in his bathroom, and the mental and physical toll it takes on him and his family. The title, however, is "There Are Innocent People on Death Row", which turns the entire story into a thuddingly obvious attack on the prison system.
  • SCP-5403, which is about an anomalous site that keeps constant surveillance on the Foundation so that it can spew tasteless shipping art, contains an extended diatribe on why using topics like relationship drama, abuse, and other forms of trauma as something that is cute, funny, or titillating is wrong and insulting to people who have lived through those issues for real. Dr. Laraske eventually explains in detail just how nerve-wracking a seemingly-harmless operation is to her subordinates, citing a researcher who experienced the former SCP-2678 (the Vorehole) and learned 5403 recorded the whole thing, and when the anomaly is seemingly neutralized, it reactivates one last time to write a 4.2K-word fanfic where Laraske is extensively brutalized for 5403's pleasure as a final display of how utterly callous and wretched its obsessions really are despite having the mind of a dumb teenager. Which also ties into the overall message - just because Hanlon's Razor easily applies to modern insensitive depictions of serious topics doesn't mean they're any less tasteless and hurtful.
• Archive Panic: To wit, there are, as of this writing, over five thousand standard SCP articles, and that doesn't even include Tales, J articles, EX articles, SCP-001 proposals, or GoI hubs, among others, which easily number over a thousand articles more. It would likely take literal years of reading in order to see it all... and then you'd have to catch up on everything that was added during that time, seeing how the wiki's still highly active. Those who seek to Archive Binge are wished the best of luck.

• Cargo Ship: SCP-914, a clockwork machine, has feelings for Maintenance Technician Johnson, a human.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • SCP-2578-D is a Kill Sat that delivers an ultimatum to fascist and totalitarian leaders, then assassinates them from orbit if they refuse to repent and assures victims of their tyranny that they are safe and protected. A number of readers derived satisfaction from the idea of an SCP whose purpose is to give some of the most dangerous people on earth what they deserve and protect the oppressed.
  • The "staff" in SCP-3008 violently murder anyone who is caught around the place after closing hours, which sounds like the fantasy of many a retail worker on closing shift who's had to politely shoo out customers taking their sweet time browsing the aisles 5 minutes after the store has closed.
  • SCP-3922 is an anomalous silver cylinder that changes the karmic outcome in any form of fiction. The results? Every vile Karma Houdini FINALLY gets punished, while the unlucky victims and heroes earn their happy ending, or at least compensated in some way. By extension, those who are annoyed by SCP-3922's moral grandstanding to anything they find objectionable in fictional entertainment and making it so they easily win all of their encounters with the bad guys will likely enjoy seeing them fail horribly at killing SCP-682, SCP-993 (Bobble the Clown) shooting down one of their spaceships with a slingshot, The aliens from Mario Gets His Pingas Stuck in The Door trapping their dicks inside doors, and the Godhand completely routing them.
  • Supposedly, the reason the comedic SCP-7933 (a pataphysical anomaly that causes narratives to be overrun by hundreds of mandrills and then turned into a Stylistic Suck nature reel) exists despite being part of the horror-based SCP Anthology series is because of a carnal desire the author had while working in retail to do the same to problem customers. Anyone who's been in the same situation can probably empathize.
• Common Knowledge:
  • The Foundation has three main object classes: "Safe", "Euclid", and "Keter". They classify SCPs by how difficult it is to contain them, but many people mistake them as how dangerous they are. Essentially, "Safe" is reserved for non-sentient SCPs that could be locked in a box and forgotten about without issue, even if they have the potential to be incredibly dangerous or destructive in the wrong hands.^note (The site notes that under this classification, a button that annihilates the entire universe when pushed would be considered "Safe".) Conversely, a living or sentient SCP, even if mostly harmless, will almost always be at least Euclid, as they require consistent attention to contain^note (It's stated that a cat that can swap places with any other cat on Earth would be Keter-class, despite being no more dangerous than an ordinary housecat, as this makes it extremely difficult to contain.). And no matter how murderous a living SCP is, if it's able to be contained without extensive effort, it's "Euclid" and not "Keter". Many entries from the site's early days that would otherwise be classified as "Euclid" are instead "Safe", while many "murder monster" entries that are dangerous but containable are classified as "Keter" rather than "Euclid"; this may contribute to the misconception. In 2019, some members of the wiki introduced an extended (and optional, as many users dislike it) classification system to remedy this, one of which actually says how dangerous a specific SCP is ("notice", "caution", "warning", "danger", and "critical").
  • SCP-999 is typically assumed to have eyes, arms and a mouth due to fan art, but it actually lacks organs and appendages altogether.
  • SCP-4335 is often depicted with yellow eyes and a toothy mouth locked into a shit-eating grin. However, the article's actual portrayal of it is completely featureless, considering it's basically a sentient void. Some fan videos of the creature also show it being able to hold Minecraft weapons, even though 4335 is never demonstrated doing so (and would have no reason to, since it has the Endermen and its tentacles at its disposal for combat.)
  • Kain Pathos Crow is sometimes depicted with anthropomorphism, even though he really is just a talking dog to the point that a Mini-Mecha is required for him to do certain human things like having opposible fingers. His mugshot on his personal file might be a source of this confusion, as the dog used for the photo is standing upright and wearing a human-looking suit.
  • The acronym "ABSS" ("Absolute Boundless Supernormal State") is often used to refer to the Koitern's latent power and its pataphysical Gate of Truth stored within SCP-173 from the events of SCP-CN-2510. This has never been an official name for it; it simply goes by the Chinese characters for "supernormal" ("超常态") and is localized in English as "Metanormalcy." The phrase itself appears to be a contextual mistranslation of a passage in the article that describes Metanormalcy as "infinite [and] omnipotent."
  • The increasing amount of Door Stopper articles is sometimes exaggerated in proportion by offsite readers, to the point where there's a widget in the site's search functions that probes for the shortest new pages specifically to deter this notion.
• Crack Pairing:
  • Invoked and averted in The Things Dr Bright Is Not Allowed To Do At The Foundation.
  It probably would generate a great deal of revenue if sold in Japan but still, 682 on Granny, Jesus Christ man.
  • There's fan art of Able and Iris. Keep in mind that Able's a killer who's incapable of feeling love.
    • Slightly justified in that both were involved in projects to weaponize SCPs (Project Able and Project Iris, respectively). They are even commonly thought to have been on the same mobile task force (Pandora's Box).
    • It's worth noting that in the canons where Pandora's Box existed, the reason the force was shut down is usually stated to be Able murdering every other team member except for Iris, something that, in the Resurrection canon, at least, Iris is still traumatized by, and actually has a better relationship with Cain as a consequence. The reason Iris survived varies, but if you're a shipper, you can probably guess what it was. If not, the most likely explanation is that she simply wasn't present.
  • Some people like to ship 682 with 999. This one could work in theory, considering the way they interacted, but it also caused 682 to unleash a wave of liquid happiness that killed a huge amount of people, and while 999 wants to see 682 again, 682 responded to the idea of them meeting again with:
  “That feculent little snot wad can [DATA EXPUNGED] and die."
  • It's not as well known as Iris/Able, but there is a couple of pieces of fan art of 106 and 811. SCP-811 is canonically incapable of giving informed consent.
  • Another 106 shipping, from the discussion on SCP-352:
  Gears: Just had the worst idea ever… this and 106 out loose in the same area… lordy… Also… I forgot about the story for her, but I remember now, and will hopefully get a good idea for it soon.
  Tom Serveaux: They catch each other's eyes from across the hall and fall in love. Then 106 invites 352 out on a romantic, candle-lit, infanticide spree. Then they get married and have lots and lots of decrepit, predatory babies. A heart-warming romance, indeed.
  • There's also a little bit of fan art for Pangloss/Saturn Deer.
  • There exist at least two tales pairing SCP-049 and Leslie (the named SCP-3774 specimen). Yes, they paired the Plague Doctor with a cyborg mosquito.
  • Iris and 166 has some following on Tumblr (Where else?). Since 166 is Clef's kid, there's also the potential Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?-comedy. There's this Tale from the Resurrection canon who makes it a real thing.
  • In the recent Resurrection: Old Foes mini-canon, there's SCP-179; the benevolent Thaumiel-class entity named Sauelsuesor, paired with the equally benevolent- if slightly unfocused, SCP-1233; AKA, Moon Champion. You know what they say about opposites...
    Moon Champion: If this is one of your human courtship rituals, I'm sorry, but my heart belongs to a lass with far-away eyes, a stellar pedigree, a steady job, a stable orbit, and several trillion tons of something which just might be hair.
  • Another ship getting popular is SCP-811 and SCP-054. This may be due to them both being water-oriented female entities.
• Crazy Is Cool: Many of the better-known researchers swing back and forth between this and just plain crazy. Some of the more notable moments:
  • Dr. Bright once attempted to disprove 343's existence, to 343. Seriously, just check out the list of things he's no longer allowed to do; if he was even half as insane as most of the entries suggest, it's a miracle that he's still allowed to be a researcher.
  • Agent Strelkinov, as proven by his guide on joining MTF-E5.
  • Dr. Kondraki. Pretty much everyone around him is wary of him due to his disorderly and dangerous behavior, and he is suspected of psychosis. However, his mastery of the Indy Ploy has made him one of the most valuable assets of the Foundation. At one point, he tried to kill SCP-083-D by breaching SCP-682's containment and riding on its back. It didn't work, but the fact that he survived this and later on he managed to kill 083 with a different SCP item (namely, a chamber organ that crystallizes your blood if you hear its music) is really telling of both his craziness and his badassery.
  • Agent Adams from Resurrection was pretty badass already. And then the Foundation decides that she could have an experimental GOC battle suit. Her new levels of badass were proven in her and Iris' shared crowning moment of awesome, when they took down a swarm of replicating zombies pretty much by themselves.
  • For one of the SCPs themselves, it's hard to top 999, a cute, friendly gelatin cube that loves tickle fights with 682.
• Creepy Cute:
  • 239. She even gets a little witch's hat and cape at one point.
  • 040, whose description makes her sound like an anime girl.
  • 134, despite her creepy black eyes, is quite a cute little girl.
  • To some, 1471-A is weirdly adorable for the vaguely-humanoid skull-faced monster it is, given that by all accounts it just wants to be your friend.
  • 2521, especially in the Chinese fanbase, due to how happy it apparently gets when people talk about it.
• Critical Dissonance:
  • The general Author Avatar decommission-era over-the-top styled writing is very popular and well-liked by the off-site fandom, but the main site itself treats them as some sort of Old Shame.
  • The works of wiki user djkaktus encounter this frequently on Tumblr; while they are inarguably the highest-rated author on the site (surpassing even the likes of Clef and Gears in terms of vote count) several Tumblr blogs who have SCP as part of their fandom have at least one post dedicated to how much they dislike either the works of djkaktus, or the man himself.
• Cry for the Devil: SCP-7898 is a bunch of man-eating Giant Spiders. Yet the implied mentions of the absolute hellscape they endure with their prey every single day coupled with them facing extinction due to captivity has gotten sympathetic reactions from some readers, who see them as fellow survivors of an apocalypse desperately trying all they can to get by. It's even stated in-universe that caring for them is a luxury in the Foundation.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: The fact that SCP-321 has poor learning skills (taking months or even years to learn how to use eating utensils) and that she finds it difficult to perform the most basic tasks imply that she's essentially mentally ill.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • SCP-682, of all things, gets this frequently, from those who believe that it only wants to kill everything because everything wants to kill it. Those who believe this rarely mention two incidents in which 682 killed completely innocent children who had been left in its cell. They also rarely consider that the Foundation must have a reason for wanting to kill it, as they don't terminate SCPs very often. Word of God implies that 682 might not be naturally violent or malevolent, which might make the leather pantsing a little more justified.
    Dr. Gears: Whatever Clef had done that causes his head to be unrecordable seems to bugger up more than just cameras. 682 was unsure as to what in the fuck was going on. 682 isn't inherently a violent organism, as we understand the term. When not faced with unreal terror, 682 is actually somewhat cautious and shy, like many big predators. If Clef had stayed inside, 682 would have probably adapted past the “face cycling” thing, and butchered him. As it was, the big gecko was waiting to see what would happen.
  • On another note, there's Able, despite him being a clear Omnicidal Maniac whose brief attempt to work with the Foundation ended due to him slaughtering his coworkers more out of boredom than anything else. The sheer amount of nice fan-art for him probably helps explain why he's so liked. Though there are other reasons others like him, of course, with some admiring his in-universe mythical status as a Gilgamesh-esque demigod.
  • Out of all the SCPs, SCP-049 might get it the most. While his article has gotten a rewrite in May 2018 that makes him more sympathetic, it doesn't change the fact that he still actively kills people and turns them into mindless zombies that attack other living beings, just to cure them of a pestilence that he can't properly explain.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Despite not being as famous as Able, Iris, or the Old Man, SCP-811 ("Swamp Woman") is one of the highest-rated humanoid SCPs on the site. She's also quite popular in fan art. Her popularity is likely because of her creepy abilities, an oddly endearing and unique personality and a backstory that makes her genuinely sympathetic.
  • SCP-____-J. It's a very short article (which is the point), yet it's the third highest rated page on the entire wiki, right after SCP-2521 and SCP-173.
  • SCP-040 ("Evolution's Child"), SCP-049 ("Plague Doctor"), SCP-131 ("Eye Pods"), and SCP-134 ("Star-Eyed Child") are quite popular amongst fanart creators. 049, in particular, got a huge boost in popularity due to TheVolgun's delightfully creepy voice work from SCP – Containment Breach, and his article eventually even got a rewrite to flesh him out as a character, complete with audio logs.
  • Other than SCP-053, some of the other child SCP items, such as SCP-134 and SCP-040, are also quite popular, likely due to being Creepy Cute.
  • SCP-1471 is getting a growing fanbase for some reasons. It helps that the profile picture used for 1471 is an actual fursuit and that 1471 itself is completely harmless, with most of its creepiness coming from its intimidating appearance.
  • SCP-2521, the enigmatic info-stealing monster, is one of the most iconic SCPs outside the initial 1000 due to its article's unique gimmick and execution. On the site itself, it's the second-highest rated article next to SCP-173, beating out even SCP-087 and SCP-____-J.
  • SCP-3008, the Infinite IKEA, is one of the highest-rated SCP's from Series 4^note which starts off with SCP-3000 and onward. This is helped from the fact that it's one of the few SCP's to have a standalone videogame adaptation.
  • SCP-5031 is a fairly well-received SCP overall, but seems to have gotten especially popular over on Tumblr due to its heartwarming story and a viral post that has been going around praising it.
  • SCP-524 is fairly iconic due to being only one of two creatures 682 is afraid of.
  • Out of all of the French series, SCP-006-FR tends to be the most popular.
  • Connor from the SCP animated series Confinement; despite technically not being an official character from the SCP Wiki itself, he's now a fairly popular subject for SCP fan-art and memes.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • Able (SCP-076) is a video game character, as he's constantly bored unless killing something, can produce an infinite quantity of weapons, and respawns on death.
  • In the very first sentence of the description, SCP-231-7 is described as a █████ female. Some authors are of the belief that those censor boxes aren't hiding her race, but her species. Specifically, those authors think that 231-7 is a whale.

F-L

• Fandom-Enraging Misconception:
  • It's "SCP". Not "SPC". If you make the typo, someone's bound to joke that it means "Shark Punching Center".
  • Most who read the SCP wiki in-depth are forgiving if someone assumes the SCP Foundation is primarily horror, given how many iconic SCPs are horror based ^note mostly due to Adaptation Displacement from the SCP-087 game, Containment Breach, and SCP: Secret Laboratory, and will offer a simple correction. However, claiming that the site was always meant to be horror and complaining about certain SCPs not being scary will get a much more negative response.
  • Both the SCP community and Creepypasta/online horror community are generally tired of the latter being labelled "SCP" when they have no relation to the former's universe whatsover. Perhaps the most notable case is Siren Head, where its creator (Trevor Henderson) even goes out of his way to firmly establish that his art is not an SCP.
  • Any attempt to take certain particularly text-and-reference-heavy articles like Project PARAGON, ADMONITION, the X000 SCPs, or SCP-6500 as representative of all modern articles will be met with a swift referral to the "Shortest Pages in the Last 30 Days" widget, which is almost always occupied with new articles fitting that description.
  • Likewise, while pop culture references are increasingly present throughout the site's chronology, claiming that they are in any way arbitrary or pointless is an easy way to get an earful, considering most articles that make use of such references either have diegetic explanations for them or were motivated by the restrictions of a contest like MEMECON.
• Fandom Heresy: Do not use an SCP's power level as its main selling point when discussing it. Nine times out of ten, you'll be accused of not fully understanding their article's content, and nine times out of ten, that will be a correct statement.
• Fan Myopia:
  • Several members of the fanbase (particularly the younger ones) place a handful of SCPs (namely 049, 096, 106, 173, 682, and 999) on a pedestal, while ignoring newer works and things such as tales, as well as the doctrine of "There Is No Canon", leading to questions such as "what if 096 fought 173", the answer to which will inevitably be "Whatever you want to happen".
  • On the SCP Foundation subreddit, whenever the topic of "What SCP do you think is underrated/gets overlooked?" or similar threads come up, fans will routinely name articles that have ratings of 1000 or higher, which are easily in the top 5% of articles on the site.
• Fan Nickname:
  • SCP-106 is sometimes called "Radical Larry", based on this image◊, and the fact that it can go through walls.
  • Thanks to Markiplier, SCP-173 has gained the moniker of "Billy".
  • SCP: Secret Laboratory has lead to several new nicknames for various SCPs and Foundation personnel. 173 is often referred to as "The Killer Peanut" or just "Peanut", 106 has "T-Pose Boy" due to his model's at the time incomplete rigging causing his upper body to T-Pose, and the D-Class personnel are referred to as "D-Bois" even by the creators of the game.
  • The SCP article pages themselves are sometimes referred to as "skips", due to similar pronounciation.
  • SCP-001 proposals sometimes have a three-letter code appended to the number related to the author (e.g. I.H. Pickman's proposal would be SCP-001-IHP, and S. Andrew Swann's proposal would be SCP-001-SWN) when referenced in canons and other SCPs that require multiple proposals to be true. However, this isn't stated as an official form of nomenclature in any official writing guides.
  • Whenever regular users are allowed to weigh in on staff decisions, they're often called the "O4 Council" after the group of the same name called in to replace O5-9 during From 120's Archives.
• Fandom Rivalry: With a splinter site and their Spiritual Successor, the RPC Authority, which was created during June 2018, following the Pride Month Controversy and for political and creative differences. Early on, RPC users actively harrassed members of the Foundation and plagiarized several articles from the site, with its members who committed these offenses facing no consequences on RPC. It's also actively discouraged to make a crossover between the two, as both want to sever ties between each other, to the point where it's been speculated that the 'WikiJump' project to create an alternative platform to Wikidot will actively exclude RPC.
• Fanon:
  • Fanart loves to depict SCP-2317 (the kilometer-tall fat dude chained underground behind a dimensional portal) as having a single cyclopean eye, even though no such trait is present in his description.
  • SCP-2521's pictographs put a little heart symbol where the entity's face should be whenever it takes information of itself. This is most likely just to convey its love/desire for the information, but it's extremely common for fans to portray this as an actual physical feature it has.
• Fanon Discontinuity: The fandom, by and large, views the SCP Wiki as a creepypasta and horror site as opposed to a general creative writing site with a shared universe, much to the chagrin and frustration of those actually writing for the wiki. It's true that horror pieces are still being produced—their effectiveness varies—but when some of the more acclaimed items written in the past three to four years include a llama delivery service, a scarecrow DJ, and a Space Wizard and his Commando Catgirls as SCPs, you know it's not solely a horror site anymore.
• Fandom-Specific Plot: It’s common for stories, especially on Archive of Our Own, to have Dr. Clef go through angst relating to his trauma from the events depicted in SCP-4231 before finding comfort in another character. Said other character is usually Dr. Kondraki, SCP-166, or an Original Character.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Robert Bumaro, head of the Church of the Broken God, a religion that worships a mechanical deity that opposes an evil flesh being, and Grand Karcist Ion, the head of the Sarkic Cults, which worships said evil flesh (Maybe. It's complicated) have been paired together for quite some time now.
• Genius Bonus: Grand Karcist Ion and a large part of the Sarkic cults are based on an obscure alchemical text by Zosimos of Panoplis dating back to the third century. Ion is a character that is dismembered and reassembled, the text features a "copper man" who gave up his flesh, and Ion is said to want to raise the dead.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • While it isn't the only international branch, SCP has a substantial following in Japan, a fan web-manga that adorably explains the notable SCPs (with an English translation), official manga anthologies that also explain notable SCPs, and even an official Light Novel.
  • Eastern Asia appears to have a bigger affinity for Minecraft-based SCPs than the English branch, as the Minecraft Department is a transplant from the Japanese and Chinese branches. This is made apparent by how the English branch itself only has three noteworthy articles involving Minecraft to speak of (one of which was deleted)^listSCP-4335, a sentient void contained within the game; SCP-6468, a dado product taking the form of a potion that affects the user in the real world; and a failed pataphysics SCP set in the anarchy server 2b2t, yet the Department apparently already has the need to construct five sites, hire for four decently-populated divisions, and requisition three MTFs.
  • As a smaller example, there is also SCP-1970-J, a Joke SCP entirely written with a Maurice Chevalier Accent where an anomaly caused the entire american culture to be replaced by the most stereotypically french version of itself. Members of the french speaking branch loved it.
• Growing the Beard: There's naturally countless "individual" examples for each author on the wiki concerning this trope, to the point where it's completely unfeasible to record each and every one. However, there seems to be a pretty decent majority of both fans and authors who see Series III's SCP-2000 ("Deus Ex Machina") as the first SCP on the site to truly set a new standard in terms of quality for site articles and inspire other writers to "step up their game", so to speak, (with the exception of some noteworthy outliers like SCP-093 ("The Red Sea Object") from Series I.)
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • SCP-1004 is both kind of funny, gross, and sad in that it's a pornography program called "Factory Porn" that generates fake porn of whatever the user asks it to (with the eventual side-effect of the user becoming desensitized to it and wanting to enact their fantasies on innocent people). With the rise in popularity of AI Art programs, the concept of a program being able to provide images and even video of unconsenting people (including celebrities and even children) and having the program show them doing sexual and illegal acts is no longer just an SCP fairy-tale, with the tech becoming more accurate and realistic every day. Given what the author was banned for, it's also very revealing about him.
  • SCP-1032 is an alarm clock that accurately predicts the time at which things will end. In what was probably intended as an absurdist joke back in The New '10s, one of its hands predicts that "2020" will end on January 1, 2022. Not as funny anymore considering the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • There is a real life online group called "Are We Cool Yet?" creating and distributing plans for 3-D printed guns using the logo designed for the GoI.
  • The "it's happening again" meme becomes significantly less funny in SCP-7591, which has Alex Thorley repeat their lines almost verbatim during the SCP's Surreal Horror twist revealing that their association with the Department of Unreality is causing them to lose their humanity.
  • In the extended test logs for SCP-978^note A Magical Camera that produces photos that show your current desire, SCP-049's photo shows him embracing a six-year-old child (presumably his son/daughter). In 2020, it was discovered that SCP-049's author, Gabriel Jade, had sexually and emotionally abused a then-underage user in 2018.
  • Similarly, the Things Dr. Bright Is Not Allowed To Do At The Foundation page was locked after people began adding references to things like rape and pedophilia. In 2022, AdminBright — who created the Dr. Bright character — was permanently banned from the site after it had been discovered that they had sexually harassed multiple underage users. The page was unilaterally deleted the following year by a rogue moderator; while there was some debate over whether this was the right thing to do, very few users were sad to see the list go, and the deletion was ultimately upheld.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • One of the snacks SCP-261 produced was a Pepsi drink flavored with dragonfruit that the Foundation said PepsiCo did not produce. In 2012, the real PepsiCo did produce a dragonfruit-flavored Pepsi called Pepsi X to promote The X Factor.
  • SCP-2747 has, one of an entry, a videogame called "No Sister of Mine". Judging from the description of the game, it feels like Fear & Hunger, without the bad parts.
  • The SCP-3000 contest entry Chessland was massively lampooned for ruining the entire article with massive amounts of garbage text generated through a neural network in an effort to look creepy. Lo and behold, cue SCP-BOTNIK-J, AKA SCP-\̅\̅\̅\̅-J, which is nothing but procedurally generated text and was widely praised for its creativity. Even better, the SCP-001 proposal ("A Good Boy") by TheGreatHippo and PeppersGhost would also go on to utilize procedural generated text (here, it was used to simulate the messages of a primitive A.I. creating containment procedures based on anomalous data), and it was widely praised for its creativity and resultant Word-Salad Horror.
  • The 34th rule from "The Things Dr. Bright Is Not Allowed To Do At The Foundation" (Dr. Bright is not allowed to apply SCP-963 to any major political figures. Again.) becomes a lot more hilarious come SCP 4444, where it is revealed that he was used on a then brain-dead George W. Bush to run against Gore (who was sharing a body with a hostile alien). Even more so because Bright was not a willing participant in this event.
  • SCP-6930 is a Pattern Screamer named "Paty" who made a Virtual YouTuber career for herself in a bid to get enough human attention to exist again. When booting her off the internet using "thaumaturgical firewalls" didn't work, the SCP Foundation had some of its agents attempt to bully her into quitting her career. When other people on the 6930's case decided that these agents were going a bit too far in their bullying, they offered Paty a position in real life VTuber group hololive. A few months after the writing of this SCP, hololive introduced a new group of VTubers whose collective character setting is that of a secret society, much like the SCP Foundation.
  • SCP-5254 is an anomaly that turns people wearing Pokémon accessories for prolonged periods of time. The Foundation's methods to attempt to stop the spread of the anomaly is to force The Pokemon Company to begin to reduce the quality of its games, starting with Pokémon Sword and Shield and it's Dexit fiasco. Come 2022, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet release and are lambasted as bug-riddled games by many, which could be interpreted as the Foundation's handiwork. The cherry on top? The games sold over 10 million copies in their first three days, making them Nintendo's biggest launch of all time, and 22 million copies by March 2023. This means the Foundation could be seen as both succeeding and failing at their containment!
  • The S & C Plastics Canon cites Gravity Falls as one of its inspirations; Gravity Falls was inspired by the Real Life town of Boring, Oregon. A few years later, Boring became a part of the site canon with the establishment of Wilson's Wildlife Solutions.
• Hype Backlash: 682 and Able are almost reviled by some members for being so ridiculously popular. It doesn't help that they're the leading causes of Broken Base on the site, either.
• I Am Not Shazam: Lots of SCPs with multiple components are often lumped together with their suffixes forgotten.
  • Even in other articles on the site, "Able" has been mistakenly referred to as SCP-076 despite being the latter of its two components, SCP-076-2.
  • Many forget that the girl with a Fetus Terrible contained by Procedure 110-Montauk is 231-7, and 231 is the entire group of girls.
  • The green slime that must never come in contact with dead bodies is SCP-447-2. SCP-447-1 is the spongy ball thing that produces SCP-447-2.
• Iconic Character, Forgotten Title: "SCP Foundation" is the correct name for both the in-universe organisation and the real world website, and "The Foundation" is an acceptable In-Universe shorthand name. Not "The SCP". Even if it is contextually obvious it is incorrect. SCP or "The SCP" should only be used to refer to the contained anomalies, not the name of the organization that contains them. The name of the organization is right there in the title, the SCP Foundation, i.e. the Foundation of SCPs.
• Jerkass Woobie: Syncope Symphony (the group responsible for experimenting on the Class of '76) turns out to be led by a shadowy group of former high school students who were forcibly transformed into monsters by a flawed activation of SCP-2000. As a result, they became intensely athazagoraphobic and took increasingly-desperate measures with their new powers to become remembered again and return to their normal lives, a situation only made worse when a Foundation containment procedure Gone Horribly Wrong led to the creation of SCP-2316 and the burdens both the SCP itself and Syncope have had to live with since. At the same time though, even though the Foundation may have messed up, they're right to point out that Syncope's more catastrophic anomalies brand them as a terrorist group who would rather destroy this world and themselves for the sake of pointless nostalgia instead of learning to move on.
• LGBT Fanbase: A small, but notable contingent, which has become increasingly visible over time as the site evolves and changes. Key website staff and well known power users are generally in favour of improving diversity and accessibility for LGBT users, and many actively push back against people who want to get rid of such users. Of course, there are several users who are LGBT themselves.

M-P

• Magnificent Bastard:
  • SCP 2137: The ghost of Tupac Shakur, fights corruption from beyond the grave, using music to communicate with the living. He got the Foundations attention when he urged one of his listeners to commit the vigilante slaying against a corrupt official and Serial Killer, who would have gotten away with it, providing evidence to exonerate his listener. He has the Foundation use their resources in his pursuit of justice, resulting in thousands of cold cases being solved, escaped killers being arrested or killed, and even the recovery of dangerous SCP's. When the Foundation decided he had too much power over his containment, they try to suppress him; Tupac's response was to release an album to the public, exposing the Foundation, their dirty secrets, and the location of a dangerous SCP, causing the Foundation to scramble to control the damage, following Tupac's demands. A researcher would uncover a obscured interview where Tupac implies he's actually an otherworldly being "on vacation", and that he even is pursuing the Scarlet King himself, outright calling him a "bitch who knows his days are numbered".
  • Murphy Law is a crafty Reality Warper who invades written narratives and turns them into Film Noir scripts, something he uses to his advantage. In his first appearance, Murphy invades the article for SCP-3043, stopping the malevolent Typewriter from rewriting reality by swiftly derailing its story and killing it afterwards. When the Foundation tries to contain him later on by deconstructing his character, rendering him powerless, Murphy manages to will his powers back and escape by deconstructing the Foundation itself, revealing to his researcher that they too are fictional, leaving the Foundation hesitant to act against it for the time being.
  • The scholar with a head resembling that of a rabbit is one of the faeries residing within "Taboo"/SCP-4000. Desiring to return to the outside world, the scholar befriends Dr. Eugene Japers with his knowledge and gentlemanly demeanor, only to trick him into letting him steal his identity, allowing the scholar to happily leave the forest without fear of Foundation interference.
  • SCP-3992's Extended Test Log: Hans Gruber remains the suave planner he was in the original film. Taking over Nakatomi Plaza, Gruber quickly responds to the SCP-3922-A's attempting to kill him by tricking the police into attacking them, getting both off his back and reducing SCP-3922-A to 5 members. Only loosing due to McClane's last minute intervention in 3922's favor, Gruber stands out as one of 3922's most resilient targets.
  • The Meaning Of Fear: The seemingly harmless SCP-2006 is revealed to be far more intelligent than initially anticipated. A shape-shifting being that thrives off of fear, it plays along with the Foundation's assumption that it thinks people are scared by B-Movies, enjoying the Foundation's fears that it'll one day discover what true fear is. While conversing with a researcher, he subtly reveals his deceptions to her, correctly anticipating that she'll catch on and be horrified by the realization before politely allowing her to leave, getting in one genuine scare on the way.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Dr. Clef is immune to seduction because his crotch is a hand, and that hand holds a gun.
  • SCP-999. Given that it can subdue SCP-682, fans off-site jokingly claim that 999 can tickle just about anything into submission.
  • Sheldon Katz, Esq., the Foundation's Senior Counsel. His introduction holding his own in a contract negotiation with a literal devil was only the start for the legal department's answer to Dr. Clef.
• Memetic Molester:
  • SCP-106, mostly due to him looking like a typical Dirty Old Man.
  • SCP-953, considering she raped the corpse of a Foundation agent's fiancée while said agent was watching.
  • SCP-2521, based largely on the image of it wrapping a D-class in its tentacles and abducting them with a heart on its "face."
• Memetic Mutation:
  • [DATA EXPUNGED], [REDACTED], and █████ ^ExplanationData omissions have long been a staple of the Foundation's writing.
  • The phrase "Oh God Oh Fuck!" is jokingly used on dealing with dangerous SCPs, like 682, 096, 106, 2316, 2521 and so on.
  • Bees and things that beecome bees
    What if bees collected tropes and made a wiki all about the sweetest ones?
    What if there were a gun that shot bees?
    What if a game level was bees?
    What if there were MORE bees?
    What if bees were people too?
    What if bees could generate force fields?
    What if bees was a trope?
    TROPES WERE DEFINITELY BEES.
  • Crunch. ^ExplanationThe preferred onomatopoeia for SCP-173's Neck Snap.
  • "The store is now closed. Please exit the building." ^ExplanationSCP-3008 (AKA the infinite IKEA) has a seemingly limitless number of faceless staff, who spend the "night" calmly telling you to leave the premises while attempting to tear you to shreds.
  • "Hello, SCP Foundation? Yeah, it's me... yeah, it's happening again." ^ExplanationThis image◊ is a common online reaction to weird, supernatural-looking events and items/creatures.
  • "You do not recognize the bodies in the water."^Explanation The phrase used throughout the article of SCP-2316 to prevent the reader from being affected by the cognitohazard. Cue endless jokes and memes about what happens if you do recognize the bodies in the water. This one particularly gained traction in 2021 after a TikTok video based on SCP-2316 went viral.
  • Eberstrom's SCP-001 proposal^ExplanationOne of the -ARC SCPs is this proposal for SCP-001 that suggests only Site-19 specifically is an anomaly, calling out its vague location. Due to it being incorporated into a Resurrection-style Story Arc (that has since been Quietly Cancelled), it was preserved after its vote count fell to pathetically-low levels. It later gained a memetic reputation as many attempts would be made to create a suitable Spiritual Successor, all of which have either ended in failure or deviated too heavily from the concept to properly replace Eberstrom's Proposal. The current top contendor is SCP-7001, due to its similar, er, foundation of Site-19 being an anomaly.
  • Mariah Carey is an SCP^Explanation In combination with the joke about Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” being a Sealed Evil in a Can that awakens during the holidays, it is joked that Mariah Carey is kept in SCP containment and always breaks out around November or December. The official SCP Twitter account even plays along.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • A large part of the wiki's fanbase (mostly off-site) prefers to ignore most new SCPs and focus on the earliest creations (though there are some exceptions like SCP-2521 and SCP-3008). Such as SCP-682 (AKA the Omnicidal Maniac Lizard), SCP-173 (AKA a statue that breaks your neck if you look away), SCP-953 (AKA another Omnicidal Maniac, this time aimed exclusively at the Furry Fandom), and SCP-106 (AKA the epitome of the horror behind the Dirty Old Man trope). This has been met with a mix of bemusement, frustration, and Hype Backlash from various site authors.
  • According to Dr. Clef, the "Apollyon" class he used in SCP-2317 was intended to be a special classification for items which were only known about by certain very high-level personnel, such as the O5s. However, subsequent writers have taken to assuming that it referred to an object which was fundamentally uncontainable, or that it represents a Despair Event Horizon on the part of the Foundation; this has led to it being used for this purposes in such articles as SCP-4005 and S. D. Locke's proposal. This alteration of the term seems to have been a contributing factor in Clef removing the term "Apollyon" from the 2317 article.
  • As revealed here alot of accepted fanon details in SCP-4100 are incorrect compared to the intended interpretation by the author:
    • The Destroyers (as seen here◊) weren't intended to be the Scarlet King nor the Reapers, which isn't helped by it's red coloration (which is commonly associated with the Scarlet King) and tentacles (which the Reapers have)
    • The final pictogram is intended to be a warning to the Stellar Congressional Protectorate from the Foundation that there are still other Destroyers out there, not a declaration to Bring It to the other Destroyers still out there.
  • A portion of the off-site fandom reveres SCP-3812 for being one of the most powerful SCPs due to his ability to transcend all narrative layers in conjunction with his omniscience and omnipotence, even though this is explicitly not the point of the article nor its main focus. Author djkaktus has mentioned being repeatedly pestered about Hypothetical Fight Debates involving 3812, much to his critical annoyance.
  • Even though its Central Theme is very blatantly a Meta Fiction take on the "normalcy vs. anomalous" philosophical debate brought up in modern articles, SCP-CN-2510 is also a common target for powerscalers who, like with SCP-3812's article, tend to ignore the above and instead focus on the implications of SCP-173 being a pataphysical Gate of Truth, as well as SCP-2165's Near-Villain Victory that would have potentially destroyed it.
  • Chinese pataphysics SCPs in general tend to get this treatment, also by powerscalers, despite the intent of their portrayal being an Homage to various periods and facets of Chinese mythology.
  • SCP-3922 is seen as suffering from this by other authors, as the Seasonal Rot in its extended logs is due to contributors forgoing the original Deconstructive Parody elements of the SCP's literal policing of fiction in favor of writing entries that read more like straight fanfiction with SCP-3922-A (which has led to licensing concerns on at least one occasion.)
• Misblamed: The announcement of the removal of SCP-173's picture prompted some people to say that it was not very kind of Izumi Kato to ask for the image to be taken down... except that Kato never asked for it, it was something that Staff decided on their own.^note According to some members, it's true that Kato wasn't totally pleased with the fact that his creation was more famous as SCP-173, but still, he never asked for a takedown.
• Moe:
  • Cassy. For bonus points, her appearance changed to match the art style of the picture she's in.
  • Despite how creepy she is, you can't deny that 053 looks adorable.
  • SCP-999, an adorable blob that loves everybody and survives off of candy.
  • Even for a patched-up Teddy Bear, SCP-2295 is that one who you want as a friend.
  • SCP-4966, a talking stuffed animal that asks for "munchies" (biscuits) and behaves like a kitten.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Invoked with 1459, a machine whose sole purpose is for its user to come up with cruel and twisted ways to kill a puppy, with the only reward being a cookie of a variety the user usually hates. The machine even lampshades this at the end of each "game":
    "Yeah, you're totally going to hell for this. Play again?"
  • SCP-531-D crossed this by using his Reality Warper powers to rape several of the female staff. He rationalizes that it wasn't rape because they all said yes, but Clef reminds him that his powers made it so they had no choice but to say yes. Needless to say, this is ultimately what led to him getting terminated.
  • The unnamed Jerkass who ruined poor SCP-1481 crossed it by wishing him into becoming an "alcoholic j-j-j-junkie tweaker crackhead" For the Evulz and making sure that the wish could never be reversed.
  • The Scarlet King crosses it by raping a goddess named Sanna to death, which would end up creating SCP-231. If that didn’t do it, devouring his own siblings certainly would have.
  • SCP-953 crosses it by convincing a mother to cook and eat her own child.
  • Dr. Langford crossed by murdering Mr. and Ms. Talish in an attempt to prevent the ghost of their daughter Mary (aka SCP-1337) from appearing all so the foundation would stop spending gas money driving Mary around when she appeared.
  • Dr. Elliot Emerson, Site Director of the alternate reality Site 13 (aka SCP-1730), crossed it by torturing and terminating all of the anomalous under his care regardless of threat status or age.
• My Real Daddy: The original article of SCP-093 was fairly short and typical of Series I SC Ps. As the original author could not be found, user NekoChris took over and greatly expanded on it, adding the now iconic test logs.
• Narm:
  • The bit about skeletons coming to life and hanging themselves from the otherwise excellently creepy 097.
  • SCP-166, which can't help but sound like the premise of some awful hentai. It's a teenage succubus whose skin is irritated by clothing, meaning she must be nude at all time. Any man who sees her is immediately compelled to have sex with her, despite her wishes to remain celibate as she was raised in a monastery. And to top it off, she requires no food except for a bit of semen every week. In 2020, the article was rewritten drastically— the author said he had wanted to for a while but couldn't himself and couldn't find anyone else to do the job right, either, until then.
  • SCP-1322 should be effective, what with the Foundation accidentally sterilizing another planet, but the message from "the Last Generation" is so overdramatic that it comes across as the literary equivalent of Milking the Giant Cow. Special mention to the line about them "PLED[GING] AND VOW[ING]" to get revenge. Apparently just one of them wasn't enough.
  • The chilling tone of SCP-1981 becomes a lot less scary when you read some of the excerpts, which are often so nonsensical that it's hard not to laugh. The fact that SCP-1981-1 looks like a hand flipping the bird doesn't help matters.
    "A renewal of the traditional values that have been the tendons of this country's strength. One recent survey by a Washington-based researcher concluded that Americans were far more willing to participate in cannibalism than they have in the past hundred years."
    "I've seen the derelict offices of Google burn with the window boarded up and the squatters inside them. I've seen the houses where they cut up the little babies."
  • It's hard to take The Shy Guy seriously, even without being aware of the Super Mario Bros. species of the same name.
  • Pick a Decommissioned SCP, any of them.
  • For some, the "stop trembling" line in the Ethics Committee Orientation.
  • The name "Chaos Insurgency" is almost universally regarded on the wiki as being cartoonishly dumb. Justifications of the name have since become a big part of the site's development with the GoI.
  • The otherwise terrifying SCP-2718 has the line "We must declare human death a Keter SCP, and contain it at any cost." It may be intentional considering the circumstances and the Alternative Character Interpretation on the SCP in question, but it still sounds somewhat off even with context, let alone without. Then there's Miriam saying "Superlative idiot", presumably as an expression analagous to "oh my god" or "Jesus Christ!", but it can come off as a ham-handed way of making the O5s sound like they're on a different social plane than the rest of the rank-and-file staff.
  • SCP-3108's creator having an emotional breakdown when he finds out the Foundation tested the gun on people can't help but come across as just a bit ludicrous when you realize there's practically no way he couldn't have thought about what it would do to living creatures, not to mention his own extreme carelessness in handing it to an unwitting ten-year-old. Some of the article's critics have even mockingly noted that the article's premise is reminiscent of "the death ray for peaceful purposes" joke from Danger!! Death Ray. It doesn't help that there's a random, needless Take That! at Mass Effect 3 right in the middle of that breakdown.
  • SCP-5999's attempt at killing you to keep you from proceeding further at the end basically amounts to a Screamer Prank.
• Narm Charm:
  • SCP-058. It's a cow heart with spiky tentacles, a stinger tail, insectoid legs and a British accent that goes on destructive rampages as it incessantly rambles. OTT? Probably. Terrifying? Definitely. It also helps sell how the creature's "a heart of darkness".
  • The excerpts transcribed in SCP-1981, considered to be OTT and ridiculous by some, were also considered by others to be perfect examples of Word-Salad Horror.
  • "Bees" is, at first glance, rather hilarious, thanks to the premise being literally "What if everything was bees?", but can arguably be quite terrifying because it's also "What if EVERYTHING was bees?"
  • SCP-3288 pretty much indulges every single possible example of Body Horror and Squick-inducing sight possible, playing off like an incredibly depraved Aristocrats joke... but it's all still really creepy, as the various SCP-3288 instances delve as deeply into the Uncanny Valley as possible in their perverse attempts to preserve the Blue Blood stylings of 18th and 19th-century Central Europe.
  • SCP-3774 is, ultimately, an Interspecies Romance between a human man and an anomalous female mosquito. However, Merle and Leslie's relationship is so humanized and weirdly natural that in spite of the sheer absurdity of the whole situation, it's both incredibly sweet and tragic to watch it all play out.
  • SCP-\̅\̅\̅\̅-J is mostly a shining example of Word-Salad Humor, but some of the phrases^note i.e., "All the memories I've written on the back of his skin have become a single footnote in his head." are shockingly good despite having been generated by a predictive text app.
  • S.D. Locke's Proposal for SCP-001 is, in many respects, a derivative of End of Evangelion — (spoilers for the latter in particular) the whole "everyone melts into a shared-conscious biomass" sounds an awful lot like EoE's "everyone turns into Tang" ending, and some of the descriptions given can't help but sound a bit unintentionally silly (i.e., the SCP-001-A instances moving like giant amoebas). However, the writing is still excellent enough — particularly in how the romance between Dr. Igotta and Ari adds humanity to an otherwise exceptionally bleak Cosmic Horror Story — that it hasn't stopped wiki readers from now being terrified of the friggin' Sun.
• Nausea Fuel: Any SCP with Body Horror is bound to this. Double if it decides not to hide any content.
  • 25% of casualties in early among soldiers from the task force sent to explore 835 (a coral-like organism with tentacles that just so happens to be made out of human components) were due to "aspiration of vomit caused by backflow against the suit faceplate" and suits were specially designed with equipment to counter any further deaths by said cause. Basically, they had to specially design diving suits so that when people vomited in them out of sheer disgust, they wouldn't drown in their own vomit and die. In the after-action report, one of the team members pukes in his suit. Now think about if that had happened with a first-generation suit...
• Nightmare Retardant:
  • Joke SCPs.
  • Humorous "Added notes" regarding why the Doctors are no longer able/allowed to do so-and-so or a humorous event happening (often with commentary along the lines of "Seriously, what the hell, people?") can lighten up otherwise dark articles. Note that humorous addenda are increasingly frowned upon, precisely because of this trope.
  • Reading the entry for a genuinely frightening SCP can have its impact taken away when you move on to an indestructible pizza box.
  • Seeing pictures◊ of the sculpture that originated SCP-173, by Japanese artist Izumi Kato, as well as this image of fellow artist Nobuyoshi Araki, who seems to really love the thing◊. Or another of his creations◊.
  • While we're on the topic of SCP-173, the little copyright notice on the bottom of the page can really kill the willing suspension of disbelief.
  • A few come from the The 99 Rooms, and so seem less scary when you know what they really are.
  • The first question on the FAQ? "Is this all real?" The answer? "No. It is just a collection of stories." The creepiness is kind of lost to a certain degree when you read this. Then again, it was a necessary measure when the SCP Foundation wiki admins actually started getting people contacting them asking how to join the Foundation. If one really thinks about it, the Foundation being fictional is given away by its format; after all, there's no way an allegedly top-secret organization whose most basic security measure is making absolutely sure that civilians never discover its existence unless it's either absolutely necessary or too late^note and even in the latter case, civilians aren't usually considered civilians by the Foundation — D-class personnel and targets of SCP-096 come to mind leave its entire inventory of world destroying abominations just sitting there on the internet for all to see.
  • The community has a trend to use the discussion pages and the chat to crack jokes about some of the most horrific SCPs. The authors included. It sure helps lower the scariness - Clef giving such an assessment on SCP-231 was even closed with "Keep thinking that, you'll sleep better."
  • The tale Fear Alone posits that Procedure 110-Montauk is tucking the little girl in and reading her a bedtime story. The Foundation doesn't need to do something horrific to her to keep her from giving birth; the fear generated by the idea that 110-Montauk is something unspeakably awful satisfies the Eldritch Abomination that wants her child born.
  • Simply knowing the background to some of the SCP images reduces their scariness. For example, the now-removed image on SCP-957's page was a foam Halloween prop known as Spazm, SCP-1471's page image is a fursuit, SCP-870’s is a Victorian-era illustration of a pterosaur and SCP-682's famous but now-deleted image is a beluga whale carcass (the current one is a humpback whale).
  • The horror of the would-be dystopia of UnLondon is somewhat lessened once the reader realizes its suspicious similarity to a pitch for a Bioshock sequel.
  • The former SCP-2678, alias "the Vorehole", is horrifying and disgusting, despite starting as a joke. Then the reader learns that those tasked with locating it are, in-universe, known as "Kinkshamers."
• Older Than They Think:
  • Many fans often claim that SCP-173 predates the Weeping Angels from Doctor Who. However as noted here, the original SCP-173 entry was created on June 22, 2007 while "Blink", the episode of the Angels' debut, aired thirteen days earlier on June 9, 2007. Furthermore, the idea of a statue moving when unobserved isn't exactly original as the Weeping Angels themselves were based off the game Statues.
  • The appearance of the Foundation's logo in the Sesame Street short "NasCount" had some convinced that it was a deliberate subtle reference to the wiki... except this was aired several years before the SCP Foundation existed. The symbol appears to be part of an existing font or character set that the wiki creators borrowed from.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • Aside from the obvious, Class D personnel can be recruited from the general population if they run out of condemned prisoners. Of course, it's still debated.
  • SCP-966 ("Sleep Killer"). They're invisible, hunt humans, and can be found all over the world. They also deprive their victims of sleep. Permanently.
  • Think that it would be bad if some of the SCPs got out and caused The End of the World as We Know It? This short story suggests that it's already happened. Multiple times.
  • SCP-198. You'll be picking up cups very gingerly for the next week or so.
  • An O5 note for SCP-231 states that those assigned to SCP-231 duty are given the option to take an amnestic when leaving the project. As this particular O5 states, if you work for the Foundation you could've been assigned these horrific responsibilities in the past and you simply don't remember it.
  • SCP-096. Any photograph you view could contain even a single pixel of it, and you don't even have to be consciously aware that you saw it—at that point, it'll hunt you down and end you. Then it'll go after all the unlucky schmucks who might've caught a glimpse of it while it was racing towards you, too!
  • SCP-650, though not apparently dangerous, literally does nothing but teleport right behind you as soon as you turn around to scare you. You'll always be waiting to see it whenever you turn to leave a room...
  • SCP-870, predatory monsters that are only visible to people with schizophrenia. And all sufferers describe them differently, so you can never tell if it's a hallucination or if one of the beasts really is there, waiting for its prey to be alone. Oh, and you may think they only target the people who can see them, right? They don't. Meaning that even if you're not schizophrenic, these things could be watching you. Right now. Waiting for the right moment to strike.
  • SCP-1889, especially for Calculus students. To think that you could be solving an innocuous word problem, and then suddenly being teleported to God-knows-where only to have your brain stolen by who-knows-what and the rest of your body chopped up and sent back as nicely-wrapped cubes of flesh.
  • Any time an amplified SCP from Kalinin's Proposal for SCP-001 is listed as uncontained.
  • SCP-2086. Big Creepy-Crawlies disguised as buses, who set up fake bus stops in order to capture commuters, then feed their organs and blood to their babies, who in turn use their mummified corpses as decoys.
  • In SCP-2718, it's mentioned that O5-11, prior to his death and subsequent revival, would take his vacations unexpectedly and in total solitude. When he died of a stroke and subsequently went through the unimaginably miserable afterlife, it happened in the relatively remote Galapagos Islands, where he was not discovered for over a decade. Suddenly, taking a vacation by yourself doesn't sound like such a good idea anymore, does it?
  • SCP-4975, which drives its human victims crazy with an incessant ticking sound not unlike that of a clock before attacking and eating them. It's contained, though, so everything should be fine, right? Nope, it can be in two places at once.
• Play-Along Meme: Any time the fandom talks about me, SCP-426 ("I Am a Toaster"), you can bet they will invoke my anomalous properties by speaking of me solely in the first person.
• Popular with Furries: Surprisingly, yes. There's a sizeable population of furries among the SCP Foundation userbase, including one of the co-authors of SCP-3000, several site administrators and moderators, and, formerly, the second-most prolific author on the site. This actually goes back to the origins of the Foundation— Moto42, author of SCP-173, has a Furaffinity page.
  • Unsurprisingly, this has led to works such as SCP-3312, which can be summed up in its title: "OwO What's this?"
  • SCP-1471-A quickly grew popular with furries because it's more or less just an anthropomorphic dog (its "picture" is a real fursuit) who is absolutely and completely harmless (its "kill count" mostly involves someone committing suicide because she couldn't handle its stalking - less its fault directly because it's just what it does meaning no harm) and only wants to give and receive companionship. Most of the horror of its skull-faced head and glowing eyes has even endeared it to quite a few because Freaky Is Cool.

R-W

• Realism-Induced Horror:
  • SCP-847, a sentient female mannequin created by Human Traffickers which acts submissive in the presence of men, breaks off parts of its body if it hears men making negative comments about them and leaves messages in its cell desperately begging for validation, is horrific largely because of its disturbing realistic portrayal of abuse and trafficking.
  • SCP-3512 ("The More You Know") satirizes pick-up artists and their misogynistic attitudes through monstrous beings brainwashing women into becoming sex dolls. Excerpts from a self-help book on becoming such monsters outright advise readers to stop thinking of hot women as people, and think of them as instruments. And in one of the logs, a SCP agent who is brainwashed by one of the monsters is just as quickly discarded once it's done with her. As noted in the discussion, the fact that some guys do think of women like sex toys to be used and disposed is what provides the entry with its horror as much as the Body Horror and descriptions of disgusting viscera.
  • The true horror of SCP-2190 ("Phone Calls from Mom") is not the supernatural elements of it, but rather the extent of cruelty that a spiteful and narcissistic old woman was willing to go to ruin her own daughter's life. While alive, POI-2190-1 would spread rumors about her daughter's family, accusing said daughter's husband of abusing her and their son, and even hiring thugs to assault her in order to make the rumors look plausible. Dying and becoming a ghost did not make her any better nor worse, merely allowing her to continue her cruel treatment of them from beyond the grave.
  • SCP-6140 ("The True Empire"), turns the Daevite Empire into a cautionary tale about the dangers of Orientalism; turns out, an entire innocent nation was erased from history because a Victorian man named Thomas Bruce was so prejudiced that he'd rather they be horrific monsters than a functioning civilization that just so happened to be Asian and matriarchal. The only real difference between Bruce and "anthropologists" who demonized non-European cultures was that he was able to anomalously affect said culture's actual history with his book.
  • With SCP-4319 ("By Girls, For Girls"), the horror comes less from the anomalous properties of the blog and more from the blog's mastermind, Kee Lee, being depicted as a woman whose "feminism" begins and ends with her own self-interests and bigotry (especially transphobia, antisemitism and homophobia) and how she'll gladly abuse and brainwash anyone who disagrees with her, even (or especially) other women. Though her powers are obviously outside their ability in real life, the bigotry, abuse tactics and manipulations Kee Lee displays are very real, and quite widespread on the internet as well.
  • The Nuclear Option, a tale by Captain Kirby, is focused on examining exactly what the consequences of the ubiquitous on-site nuclear warheads detonating in one of the many early articles that listed it as a final failsafe against a containment breach. Rather than focusing on whatever horrifying thing caused the breach, the story examines just how horrifying a nuclear blast is in the real world, heavily inspired by the author visiting Hiroshima and seeing it firsthand.
    Narrator: But that was fifty years ago. And nobody properly understood the scope of urban sprawl. The winding tendrils of suburbia that stretched across developed nations. Now, a major highway runs by Site-17. Real estate developers build up the swamp surrounding Site-23.
    This site is only 3 miles away from a middle school.
  • SCUTTLE adds onto the same concept that The Nuclear Option touches upon. The story has the Foundation in a massive panic as the dead-hand system responsible for handling the various on-site nuclear warheads suddenly breaks down, leaving them scrambling for some sort of fix... but in the end, they fail. The above horror of entire cities and suburbs being vaporized is now applied to all Foundation sites. And all of this happened because the Foundation insisted on continuing to use a computer system and associated program that's decades old, leaving them with almost no experts on-hand who could maintain the system until a catastrophic failure occurred.
  • SCP-2271 ("Factory Loans") is rooted in the fear of having an enormous financial debt that you're just not in any shape to pay off on the lender's terms. Granted, malevolent debt notices warning you of impossibly-large debts and which will inevitably kill you for non-payment don't exist in real life, but in real life, there are many malicious and sadistic ways for lenders and the people they employ to shake down their debtors. This trope is lampshaded by djkaktus in the discussion for this SCP:
    "If you're too young to appreciate it yet, consider yourself fortunate. Debt sucks."
• The Scrappy: Decommissioned SCPs. All of them were originally SCPs that were received extremely poorly on the site, so badly in fact that they were turned into -D articles that mocked them.
• Seasonal Rot: Extended collaboration logs and their associated narratives can theoretically go on infinitely, but it's generally agreed that even with external intervention, ones that stick around for too long experience noticeable declines in quality. Though they are meant to be pruned regularly by MAST, the sheer number and length of new submissions (coupled with MAST's other priorities) has rendered this unsustainable, leaving them out in the open.
  • The SCP-914 logs and the subcommunity surrounding them have significant amounts of drift from the rest of the on-site community, who often view the former as an estranged group engaging in thinly-veiled roleplaying through researchers with the minds of bored college students. To their credit, though, this is lampshaded often, and the logs' current state is also sometimes described as the best-case scenario for their continued persistence (they used to be unmoderated before Leveritas stepped in.)
  • SCP-3922 is a device that summons the Three Moons Initiative to invade media recordings and attempt to punish any wrongdoing in them. Although the intent of the extended logs was to serve as a Deconstructive Parody of literal fiction police, there are concerns from authors that it has since decayed into on-site crossover fanfics that ignore this narrative to the point of repetition. While this normally isn't a problem on its own, the crossover aspect specifically is a point of strife due to the site clamping down on its conflict with CC-BY-SA in The New '20s, and the actual content of each test began to be more strictly regulated by Voct in spring 2024 to return it to its roots.
  Voct: (regarding their role as curator of the second volume) Too many of these are powerscaling bullshit. As Djoric said, "the same joke repeated". That's boring. [...] We know [the Three Moons Initiative] can be a bulldozer. Can they be a Swiss Army Knife?
• Self-Fanservice:
  • Looking at the fanart for SCP-173, it's either a horrifying Humanoid Abomination, an Ugly Cute Living Statue who only wants a hug, or a cute girl with a Sugar-and-Ice Personality.
  • Speaking of Moe Anthropomorphism, some of the other SCPs also got the same treatment. Some are mild, like Iris and 053 who are simply drawn in a cuter style, or 191 who usually gets her the missing mouth back and less severe wounds. The most bizarre case would be 682 as a Cute Monster Girl.
  • SCP-073 and SCP-076-2 are often depicted as Bishonens or Hunks in fanart. Not to mention, 076-2 is usually depicted as wearing nothing but a(n admittedly very long) loincloth. Or less.
  • SCP-040 is, for whatever reason, most commonly depicted as an Elegant Gothic Lolita.
  • SCP-999 is a friendly blob of orange slime with the power to induce happiness and cure depression. Its article doesn't say anything about it having a face, but fanartists always draw it with one to make it even cuter.
  • SCP-811 is almost often times depicted as a cheerful/excitable Cute Monster Girl who acts like a puppy.
  • SCP-239 is often depicted as a Cute Witch.
  • SCP-1471-A is, rather infamously, subject to a lot of sexy fanart, particularly by SCP fans who also happen to be furrys. This is perhaps unsurprisingly, as the photo for the article is actually a fursuit. Also, despite how creepy they appear to be, 1471-A is by all accounts a harmless SCP only seeking to befriend those subjected to its anomalous effects, making it easier for fans to see it as "waifu material".
  • Dr. Clef is usually portrayed as quite handsome, despite all the evidence that he's probably... not.
  • Similar to the above, Dr. Bright is often depicted as very handsome and attractive... even though he's completely bonkers, not to mention ignoring that some of his host bodies have been orangutans.
  • SCP-2747, the Anafabula^note the metafictional phenomenon of stories with certain themes being erased from existence, has a number of fanarts portraying the story-eating abomination as a pale woman in a black dress, given how it's/she's referred to with titles such as "The Lady of Black Thorns" or "The Queen of the Void" on multiple occasions.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: There are a not insubstantial amount of fans who ship SCP-105, Iris Thompson, and SCP-166, "Teenage Gaia" aka. Meri, both before and after scp-166 was rewritten. They haven't interacted in any canon, but are both very popular and recognizeable SCPs and both girls of similar ages.
• So Bad, It's Good: Some of the Decommissioned SCPs (also see here) are hilarious in just how absurd they are; such as SCP-106-D, a perpetually smiling woman who explodes with the force of a 20kt nuke when she jabs her finger into someone's navel; or SCP-269-D, who is a giant moose man.
• Spiritual Adaptation:
  • The Foundation has several excellent big-name adaptations:
    • The Cabin in the Woods basically becomes a straight adaptation once it's revealed what the Controllers' mission actually is, even depicting a containment breach and an XK-class end-of-the-world-event at the end.
    • Warehouse 13 is a Lighter and Softer version, perfect for those who feel that the actual Foundation stories can get too depressing.
    • To a lesser extent, Stranger Things counts as this, as the series pretty much sounds like it came out of the Foundation's archives, with the Demogorgon basically being a slightly less malicious version of SCP-106 (in that it doesn't cause as much Body Horror) and the series' own working title was "Montauk."
    • Control's Federal Bureau of Control is tasked with locating, securing and containing various supernatural phenomena, maintaining warehouses stuffed with various Objects of Power/SCPs, seeking to maintain the Masquerade but undermined by slightly suspicious upper management, leaving documentation lying around that has tons of redactions and always starts with whether the Object has any special containment procedures, and constantly vulnerable to containment breaches. The developers cited the SCP Foundation as an inspiration for the game, and it shows.
    • Tenet is pretty close to an unofficial SCP Foundation movie. Anomalous materials with strange properties that pose a threat to existence, as well as a massive global conspiracy and a secret organisation that uses military grade gear and has connections around the globe. Helps that time manipulation is actually a part of the SCP Universe.
    • Inside Job (2021) has been semi-jokingly, semi-seriously described as a Denser and Wackier take on the SCP Foundation, thanks to both works being set in a Conspiracy Kitchen Sink and are primarily focused on a morally-bankrupt America-based N.G.O. Superpower (Cognito Inc. and the SCP Foundation respectively) dedicated to upholding The Masquerade for mysterious reasons, has a staff full of various eclectic and dangerous paranormal and human entities, and is overseen by a shadowy Omniscient Council of Vagueness whose members are Ambiguously Human (the Shadow Board/Council and O5 Council). Many fans have even argued that the gradual Cerebus Syndrome seen in Inside Job despite its ostensibly absurd premise and characters is a reflection of how the SCP Foundation itself was a pretty goofy collaborative writing project before the Mass Edit caused it to gain a more or less consistently serious approach and higher standard of writing quality.
  • SCP-231-J is basically a Lighter and Softer version of SCP-2271, featuring a debt so high that it's censored out and the Foundation getting caught up in the mess.
• Squick:
  • One Bad Mother, written by Dr. Mann. Combining Mister Seahorse with Herr Chirurg, two-into-one body grafting and one of the most mentally depraved individuals the Foundation boasts was sure to lead to a lot of vomiting. It's played for laughs, though, and non-canon because no way in hell would the Foundation allow anyone (specifically two men) to start an active relationship with an SCP like Herr Chirurg, let alone bear their child. But still...
  • The former SCP-2678, which drew comparisons to SCP-835, was created in response to a joke question one of the authors got on their tumblr: "Is their(sic) a vore SCP yet?" SCP-2678's horror comes in two parts: in part one the D-class is "dosed" and happily submits to the "pit", its Naughty Tentacles, and its liquefying, uh, liquids (it's missing the "squeezing" that usually happens) while part two subverts all the fetish-y-ness of vore: the thing's aphrodisiac is gone, the D-class is terrified and disgusted, the "pit" isn't interested in having fun, and it's implied the people who were "eaten" have become living excrement, not the unified being the cult that summoned the pit (or that the pit sought out) was hoping for.
    Cyantreuse: Kaktus (another author) said he had an idea. I said "Oh god no." Then right after that I said "Collab."
  • SCP-2610 comes with a graphic content warning:
    SCP-2610-A's "Angel": He has provided for you the Whore of His Deliverance,
    in your own blood she is born.
    Her womb will open for your seed and the seed of your offspring,
    and their seed upon their seed,
    until the Earth is made anew in His Image.
  • There are a load of works that invoke dental horror. Standouts include SCP-478 and SCP-1994, both involving teeth growing at places where they shouldn't be growing.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: SCP-5167 was understandably controversial and many felt that its Hard Truth Aesop was needlessly obfuscated along with the whole article being far too short for it to have much of an impact. In contrast, its Sequel Episode SCP-5761 has been significantly better liked, with it being praised for fully embracing its absurd premise in the name of some genuinely hilarious comedy, its greater length providing more of an interesting dive into its cast of characters (all of which are granted a stronger narrative depth and interest), and the Classical Mythology references along with the Hard Truth Aesop of how Living Is More than Surviving and people have to be willing to embrace an unknown future to do so being better conveyed to the reader(s) and mitigating its (now fully intentional) Unintentional Period Piece status.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • In early 2019, SCP-106 got new pictures, due to wiki moderators more stringently enforcing image policy that disallows the use of copyrighted/unsourceable images. To say their reception was mixed was an understatement, and the images had to be updated several times due to feedback. Then it was discovered that one of the images was partially plagiarized and had to be replaced yet again.
  • And then there was the reaction to SCP-682's photo needing to be replaced as well, resulting in the iconic skull for a head look being replaced with just a giant whale carcass lying prone on a beach somewhere. To say fans were displeased would be putting it mildly.
  • To put it bluntly, the decision to remove the original picture of SCP-173 thanks to the wiki's complicated relationship with the Creative Commons license and wanting to avoid copyright issues has gone over like a lead balloon, with many complaining that other avenues could've been taken to preserve the now-iconic original image while still respecting international copyright law.
  • Some people weren't happy with the rewrite of SCP-031, which turned it into what they feel is a basically In Name Only generic hostile monster.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • For many, the D-Class personnel. Even though they're supposed to be heinous criminals, one will likely still feel sorry for the way they get used as human guinea pigs to be horrifically maimed and killed, just to satisfy the curiosities of amoral mad scientists. It doesn't help that the Foundation outright admits that in case of shortages, they will recruit lesser criminals and innocent people to use as D-class.
  • SCP-4338, the murderous volcano god, ends the story defeated, demotivated, and outrageously fat, which was meant to be his punishment for being a tyrannical, childish asshole. However, the creator of the article was rather pleasantly surprised to learn that people felt bad for him, hypothesizing that the nature of 4338's sorry state may have struck a chord with readers, particularly those who know the struggle of weight loss. Adding further fuel to the fire, 4338's closing speech, while clearly narcissistic and capped off with a proclamation of "should have killed you", is unintentionally written in a way that it comes off as poignant.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The Children of the Scarlet King as they appear in Tufto's Proposal, where people were bothered that the narrative seemed to support the Children's anarcho-primitivist ideals by portraying the Children's arguments eloquently while highlighting the coldness of modernity. Late on, the article's author Tufto had to clarify that the Children were intended to be portrayed as in the wrong overall and he has since expressed regret for making them too sympathetic.
• Unintentional Period Piece: SCP-2747 makes reference to a fictitious work with an equally ficitious reference to TV Tropes Wiki itself, with the work in question having What Do You Mean, It Wasn't Made on Drugs? as one of the tropes listed. Written in 2016, it became dated when that trope was renamed to Quirky Work (and consolidated with Widget Series) in 2023.
• Vindicated by History: SCP-4503 was formerly SCP-503-ARC, relegated to archival status due to being necessary in explaining a relatively popular tale, despite reaching the deletion threshold. It hit +100 in August 2018, and in January 2019, it became the first (and so far only) Archived SCP to be put back onto the mainlist.
• Woolseyism: The popular Comedy Horror tale Bees revolves around the diary-turned-Apocalyptic Log of an Unlucky Everydude having problems with things around him beecoming bees. The combination of Black Humor and Surreal Horror that make it one of the highest rated tales on the site rely quite a bit on wordplay as "bee" words invade the text, meaning that translations of this article sometimes require a little creativity:
  • The French translation turned the story's signature Madness Mantra of "What if bees..." into "Et si les abeilles...": a tongue-twister that easily turns into "Abeilles abeilles"("Bees bees")
  • The Russian translation, meanwhile, evaded the issue of пчелы not having the same potential for wordplay by changing bees to wasps- оса- and tweaking some of the jokes: throwing bees replacing throwing beads at Mardi Gras, for instance, turned to throwing wasps replacing "осаться снежками" (pelting each other with snowballs)
  • On the other side, the Chinese site's SCP-CN-296 renders all its text in Chinese characters to show the anomaly's effects (people affected by it cannot write in Latin letters). To show this off in English, the version from The SCP International Translation Archive wrote it in a font resembling Chinese characters

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