So, a couple of days ago, I was at a flea market. It was Sunday and I had nothing to do that day so that I should go over there after seeing it while driving and see if there was anything I would be interested in. I went over to the DVD section and there was a bunch of them for various shows. Looking through it, something caught my eye.
It was a blank DVD case with the words, “SBSP S1EP17 Rough Draft.” I knew that the initials, “SBSP,” meant SpongeBob SquarePants and that episode 17 of season one was Rock Bottom, but what interested me more was the words, “Rough Draft.” Was this some sort of early unreleased version of the episode? This thought alone made me want to buy it immediately.
I went up to the cash register and asked the guy working it how much it was. He lifted his head from his magazine and looked at the item I held in my hands.
“That’ll be 5 dollars,” he said.
I put my money on the counter and walked out of the store and back to my car. After I got home, I went upstairs to my room. I opened the case and put the DVD into my laptop. Windows Media Player opened up and the video began.
It began by showing a white screen with black text reading: “This is the rough draft of the SpongeBob SquarePants episode, Rock Bottom. All footage in this video belongs to Nickelodeon Studios. Do not under any circumstances distribute this video.”
The screen faded to black. It then faded back in, showing the title card. After this, it began normally with SpongeBob and Patrick waiting for the bus after a fun day at Glove World. One difference I noticed from the final version of the episode was that there was no background music or sounds, just SpongeBob’s voice.
They get on the bus and the usual shenanigans happen like normal, with SpongeBob trying to get his wallet and unknowingly hitting the bus with his glove balloon. I chuckled at this scene. After this, the bus takes them to Rock Bottom. It was a lot creepier than the final version, like as in it was a lot grimmer, with the monsters being more deformed and groaning, sounding as if they were in pain.
SpongeBob misses the bus that Patrick gets on and tries to chase it but fails. The disturbing part about this is that Patrick was laughing very cruelly at his failed attempts. After this, SpongeBob sits down on the ground and begins to cry. Suddenly, the monsters surround him, as he immediately stops crying and looks up in horror. They begin to rip him apart and devour him very graphically, as Patrick’s laughing could be heard, only demonic and distorted.
The screen gets blurry as this is happening and abruptly cuts to SpongeBob trying to get a bus with the window attendant. He cruelly tells SpongeBob to get lost and puts the “Closed” sign. After this, it immediately gets really dark, not like in the final, but extremely dark to the point I can’t even see SpongeBob.
SpongeBob hears the raspberry noises and starts to run away. He continues running until he runs into the wall and says, “Sitting. Sitting. Bleeding.” The fish with the red light on his head comes, the red light being really bright. He has big bloodshot eyes and sharp teeth as well. SpongeBob lets out a blood-curdling scream, which loops over and over until the screen blurs again and cuts abruptly to black.
There were no credits at all, it just ended there. I was dumbfounded and shocked by what I saw. I planned to upload it to YouTube to show other people but lost the DVD.
One question that lingers in my mind about this whole thing is...
Why would Nickelodeon make this?