Airdate: Monday, November 15, 2004
Sender: Unknown.
Strong Bad checks his email, but upon closer inspection realizes it's a long string of random letters, numbers, and punctuation.
Thinking he may have gotten "one of those virus emails", Strong Bad tries (and fails) to delete it from his inbox. Strong Bad breaks out "Edgar the Virus Hunter" to "drop a train on 'em", but to his shock finds the Compy has a whopping 423,827 computer viruses.
The Compy suffers a "Flagrant System Error" ("Computer over? Virus equals very yes? That's not a good prize!"), but then things get weird when the text and blue background melt off the Compy's screen and pour onto the floor ("And the Compy... just peed my carpet.")
As reality itself starts to glitch out, turning the "No Loafing!" sign into pseudo-HTML among other effects, Strong Sad comes in, his head replaced by a series of cycling mood icons from his blog and hovering a few inches to the left of his body.
Strong Bad: Waugh! I dunno... you forgot to wear your neck?
Strong Sad: Have you been using the Internet irresponsibly? (a Main Page begins to creep into the email)
Strong Bad: No more irresponsibly than usual.
Strong Sad: Did you get a virus? (his body becomes mirrored and starts walking away in place)
Strong Bad: Um, no...
Strong Sad: Did you get 400,000 viruses?
Strong Bad: Yes... very yes!
Strong Sad: Well, hurry up and do something about it before it gets worse! (turns into a character card of himself and flies offscreen)
Strong Bad tries to find The Cheat and get some desperately-needed tech support, but runs right off the screen and into the black border beyond the cartoon. He tries to jump back into frame, but the cartoon manages to shift to the left. Homestar (his body replaced by that of his Old-Timey alter ego The Homestar Runner) glides in and offers to help fix Strong Bad's "computer box".
Strong Bad: No, wait, stop! That's not supposed to be possible!
As Strong Bad is driven to madness by a string of Homestar pop-ups chanting "Making out with Marzipan is totally awesome!", the viruses begin infecting the rest of Free Country USA, particularly its residents. Marzipan is turned into ASCII art with a heavily distorted voice, Strong Mad turns into his picture from the old Yearbook-Style character page, the King of Town is transported into the world of Teen Girl Squad and repeatedly slapped by The Ugly One ("I can do it! I can do it nine times!"), and finally the old loading screen turns into "It's Now Safe to Turn Your Computer Off" message. Just then Bubs comes in, wielding Homestar's disembodied leg and with a broken JPEG where his face should be.
As Strong Bad (quoting himself from the old cartoon "The Reddest Radish") and The Cheat (cycling through a series of still images of himself) stand on a field of clouds, it abruptly turns back into the field by The Stick as things go back to normal.
The celebration is short-lived, however, when Strong Bad realizes Bubs had to shoot the Compy with a shotgun to put an end to the virus-induced madness plaguing Free Country, USA.
Bubs: Look, Strong Bad, my mouth was a broken JPEG. I had no choice!
Strong Bad: You don't understand! You all understand! I mean, don't understand! (runs off crying)
The Cheat: (The Cheat noises, follows Strong Bad)
Homestar: (hopping in on his right foot, lifting his still present left leg) Hey Bubs, can I have my leg back now?
Back at the Compy (or what's left of it), a very distraught Strong Bad mourns his loss, slamming his head on the keyboard and sobbing nonsense to himself.
Tropes:
- Angrish: Strong Bad resorts to this when he sees what Bubs did to the Compy.
- Annoying Popup Ad: One of the effects of the virus is to spawn many pop-up ads with a previous design of Homestar Runner saying the secret code from "Homestar Talker", an old game, and the title bar of each reading "Click on the Monkey!!" One of these ads may even spawn outside of the toon and in the viewer's browser. Naturally, Strong Bad frustratedly screams when the pop-ups appear.
- ASCII Art: Marzipan turns into an ASCII art version of herself.Strong Mad: I CAN'T SPELL YOU!
- Aspect Ratio Switch: The cartoon starts off in 11:8, but the effects of the virus spill into the black space on either side of the window (particularly the scene where Strong Bad gets stranded outside the cartoon and then covered by pop-up windows) to sell the effect of reality completely breaking down.
- Beyond the Impossible: Homestar is somehow able to exit the cartoon and tear out the links in the site's navbar.note
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Exaggerated. The virus manages to affect the cartoon itself, screw with the site's navbar, and (unless you have an ad-blocker) open pop-up windows on your computer.
- Computer Virus: 423,827 viruses manage to infect the Compy. They also mess with the reality of the cartoon itself, as well as summon actual pop-up windows in real life.
- Continuity Porn: The email is loaded with site gags that reference earlier cartoons and site versions.
- Downer Ending: The virus is dealt with...by Bubs shooting the Compy. Not only is Strong Bad inconsolably upset, but the last scene of the email is of Strong Bad sobbing distraught nonsense to himself with his head down at his computer desk.
- Exact Words: After the virus's effects kick in:Strong Sad: Did you get a virus?
Strong Bad: No...
Strong Sad: Did you get 400,000 viruses?
Strong Bad: Yes... very yes! - The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: The viruses manage to allow Homestar to screw with the site's nav bar and inadvertently summon popup windows in Real Life.
- Head Desk: As part of his anguished sobbing at his computer desk, Strong Bad briefly repeatedly bangs his head into the Compy's keyboard.
- Heroic BSoD: Strong Bad can only babble incoherently in despair after Bubs shoots the Compy.Strong Bad: Dear Strong Bad, I doh du duoh crapfully yours. I... Id doh du duoh crapfully yours!
- Inelegant Blubbering: Strong Bad does not take the news of the Compy being shot by Bubs well at all, and the email ends with him sitting at his desk and loudly sobbing in despair while babbling nonsense.
- Interface Screw: Homestar removes several options from the site's nav bar, preventing their use when watching the original Flash version.
- Interface Spoiler:
- Thanks to there being no "rando" button on the navbar when the email was released, its inclusion on the rest of the site provided one in August 2005.
- The YouTube and DVD versions of this sbemail are letterboxed and include the navbar. The navbar does not show up in other non-Flash versions of toons, spoiling the joke about it getting links removed.
- The New Years 2020/2021 update shows this sbemail as much more zoomed out than every other sbemail due to the new site format giving all normal-sized toons more space, but toons with an unusual aspect ratio are relatively shrunken to have the same width. In addition, the site reformatting also means a new navbar, much different than the one in the toon.
- Medal of Dishonor: 423,827 viruses are found on Strong Bad's computer, a new record according to Edgar the Virus Hunter.
- Mercy Kill: Subverted: although he claims that the Compy was in a better place,note it's implied the real reason why Bubs shot the Compy was because his mouth was a broken JPEG.
- Metaphorgotten: Bubs breaks the news of the Compy's demise by saying "It's in a better place Strong Bad. Or rather, it's in the same place but with a big hole in it."
- Mouthful of Pi: As the viruses take over the website, the King of Town finds himself inside an issue of Teen Girl Squad, the issue number being "3.14159265 and the rest".
- Mythology Gag: The Homestar pop-ups chant "Making out with Marzipan is totally awesome!", which was the original phrase in the "Homestar Talker" game that unlocked "Strong Bad Talker" mode.
- "Stave it off, 1, 2, 3" can be seen in the glitched background.
- Strong Sad's emoticons are from his short-lived blog.
- No Ontological Inertia: Bubs shooting the Compy undoes all of the Reality Warping and sets everything back to normal.
- Painting the Medium: This Strong Bad Email involves computer viruses not only infecting Strong Bad's computer, but apparently the Flash file for the cartoon itself, as reality starts falling apart in strange, interesting, and funny ways.Bubs: My mouth was a broken JPEG!
- Reality Is Out to Lunch: The viruses pretty much shoo reality away until the Compy is destroyed. Pixels turn to liquid that spills out of the CRT, characters are flung about to other dimensions, and the viruses even reach outside the normal bounds of the Flash file!
- Shoot the Dog: Bubs shotguns Strong Bad's Compy (specifically, the monitor) in order to destroy the computer viruses warping reality throughout Free Country, USA. Strong Bad takes it poorly.
- Shout-Out:
- Strong Bad's intro song ("I got the e-mail, you got the e-mail") is a nod to "Rhythm (Devoted to the Art of Moving Butts)" by A Tribe Called Quest.
- The way Strong Bad mourns the loss of the Compy and banging his head against the desk at the end parodies the climax of Raging Bull, in which a jailed Jake La Motta bangs his head on the cell wall and raves incoherently.
- When the Compy is unable to delete the virus email, Strong Bad gripes, "A wise guy, eh?", a catchphrase of Moe Howard's.
- Snarky Inanimate Object: The Compy as it succumbs to the virus. Strong Bad's attempts to delete it result in the screen flashing "NICE TRY!" and "NOTTA CHANCE!!", accompanied by red lines of text reading "That didn't work." and "That neither.", respectively. Strong Bad's virus scanning software finds 423,827 viruses, which according to Edgar is "A New Record!!"
- Suddenly Fluent in Gibberish: When the email full of garbage text first opens, Strong Bad begins reading it as though nothing is wrong, including pronouncing random strings of characters and the plus sign.
- Toilet Humour: As the blue from the Compy's Blue Screen of Death pours off the monitor and onto the carpet, Strong Bad dryly remarks "And the Compy... just peed my carpet."
- Understatement: Strong Bad's reaction to getting 423,827 computer viruses at once.Strong Bad: That is not a small number!! That is a big number!!!"
- Vocal Evolution: This email marks Bubs' transition from sounding like Redd Foxx to more of a Scatman Crothers impersonation. It's most prominent when he says, "My mouth was a broken JPEG. I had no choice."
- Wham Sound Effect: If you couldn't make out what Homestar's leg was supposed to be when Bubs was shown carrying, then you most likely got your answer when reality was snapped back to normal... as a shotgun blast and a computer exploding could be heard in the distance.
- You Killed My Father: Strong Bad cries "You killed my brother! I mean, computer!" in response to Bubs' explanation of the Compy's fate.
