I love Nickelodeon. It’s one of my favorite kids channels that I’m pretty sure all of us grew up on. Nowadays, it’s shows are pretty mediocre, but some, like Harvey Beaks, The Loud House, the TMNT 2012 show, and the newer episodes of SpongeBob are good.
Out of all of these, Harvey Beaks was my favorite. I loved everything about it from its characters to its fun and energetic plots. Sadly though, the show got cancelled—I always wondered why... until that fateful day.
I was watching Nick at 7:00 PM and watched it for a bit until Nick@Nite came. Not being interested in the type of programming they had on it, I was about to flip to Adult Swim when suddenly an announcement came up saying that a new episode of Harvey Beaks was coming on next.
I was very confused. Didn’t this show get cancelled? And why are they airing a new episode of kids show when kids weren’t awake at this time? The intro for the show came on, though the colors were a bit duller and the saturation was darker. The song was also different—it sounded a bit more somber than the normal upbeat melody it was. I began to think that it was like this because it was a special episode and brushed it off.
It began with Harvey waking up and immediately being greeted by Foo and Fee bouncing on top of him.
“Oh, hey guys,” he said while yawning.
“Great news! Foo found this really cool muddy hill and we came up with the idea of sliding down it!” Fee said to the sleepy Harvey.
“Uh... I don’t know... that sounds kind of... ya know, dangerous...” Harvey replied feeling a bit worried.
“Come on, dude! It will be fun!” Fee said back.
“Eh... I guess it won’t be too bad...”
“Alright then, let’s go!” said Foo as the three ran out.
The title card then appeared, like it normally would. It read: “Foo’s Death” in a grim, bold red font with a picture of a gravestone. No writers or animators were credited like usual, it just went straight into the episode after the title, which I thought was odd.
It then showed Harvey, Foo, and Fee on top of a muddy hill. Foo was holding a plank of wood which was shaped like a surfboard.
“Me first! Me first!” Foo yelled excitedly.
“Ok... fine!” grunted Fee.
Foo then began to surf down the mud slide, as Fee and Harvey watched in awe and excitement. This is where things began to take a turn for the worst.
Foo was doing tricks on the wooden board and tripped, falling off. He fell off a cliff and I could hear bones breaking and blood splattering. I was horrified by what that was implying, and so were Harvey and Fee, as they ran over to where the orange imp had fell and looked down in disgust and terror.
It then showed a realistic still of Foo’s dead body and it was the most horrifying and disgusting thing I’ve ever seen. His teeth were shattered, one eye was dangling out of its socket, his stomach was ripped open by a sharp rock, revealing his intestines, organs, and heart, and there was a pool of blood dripping out from the open wound and forming under him.
Fee screamed and wailed, as Harvey ran to go tell his parents. It then cut to black and faded back in, showing a funeral for Foo.
All of the kids and parents, including Harvey, Fee, Dade, Princess Roberts, and all of the other characters were there. It showed Foo, lying in his coffin, eyes closed. Claire walked up to his corpse and kissed him on the cheek.
“Oh, Foo... without you, I am nothing... I’ll never find true love...”
I began to tear up at this. After this, Claire burst out sobbing hysterically and Harvey went to comfort her. The coffin was then lowered into the ground and buried.
Everyone, including Harvey, Fee, Dade, Technobear, and the kids and parents left, only leaving Claire. It then showed Claire putting flowers on Foo’s tombstone.
“Goodbye Foo...” she said sadly with a tear in her eye as she walked away quietly.
It then zoomed out of Big Bark Woods and slowly faded to black. For a split second, an image flashed on screen. I used my remote to rewind it and saw something creepy.
It was Foo’s corpse, except colored grey with no mouth or nose, just two, big black circles for eyes with tiny, glowing red dots staring at the viewer. The text above him read, “I’M NOT DEAD!”, in a bold, bloody and dripping font.
The episode then cut to static for 5 seconds and then showed a message in the Nick@Nite style that read:
“Sorry about that. It seems our broadcast was hijacked and displayed disturbing footage. We will now return to the normally scheduled programming.”
It then abruptly cut to the beginning of a George Lopez episode.
The next day, I tried searching for any news or anything related to what I saw, but found nothing.
That image of the dead Foo still haunts my nightmares.