YMMV / Squidward's Suicide

• Common Knowledge: Squidward's Suicide is often given the epithet "also known as Red Mist". Red Mist is a different creepypasta; a Fan Sequel to Squidward's Suicide with one added scene.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Years after this pasta was made, the episode "Are You Happy Now" aired, which had two scenes where it looked like Squidward was attempting suicide: him sticking his head in an oven (it turned out he was taking brownies out) and him throwing a rope over a chair (it turned out he was hoisting up a birdcage).
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The creepypasta is about an episode that was banned from airing due to its content being too scary for SpongeBob. When it was officially acknowledged in the episode "SpongeBob in RandomLand", the segment referencing it was cut from later airings for... being too scary for SpongeBob.
• Hype Backlash: Due to being considered one of the best and most original creepypastas ever written, it's not surprising if it gets panned as "overrated" by an average creepypasta reader.
• Memetic Mutation: "DON'T ASK WHO JOE IS"^Explanation An ironic meme from 2019, pairing the photo of Squidward with a caption alluding to a What's a Henway?-style joke about "Joe Mama" (creating a sense of unnecessary gravitas in the process).
• Narm:
  • The use of hyper-realistic eyes and the fact that interns aren't usually allowed to view early versions of upcoming episodes for TV shows tend to cheapen the story for some, not to mention the constant grammar mistakes.
    "[Squidward after shooting himself] flies back with the Force!"
  • The narrator stresses that the booing Squidward is subjected to at his recital isn’t “normal cartoon booing” but rather one where you can “clearly hear malice”, as if to imply booing in cartoons is somehow less negative and more sanitized than real-life booing? Squidward isn’t even subjected to Produce Pelting here (unlike many times in the show), so the audience was hardly being that malicious.
  • Some versions of the pasta bowdlerize the swearing from the original, but instead of simply removing the curse words completely, they replace them with Gosh Dang It to Heck! terms. This can be silly to read with lines such as: "Mr. Hillenburg is obviously angry at this. He demanded to know what the heck was going on," which was on the Creepypasta Wiki for a while before "heck" was changed back to "hell" because of this reaction.
  • The story's complete inability to keep its tenses straight (notice that the sentence in the entry right above this one switches from present to past tense between sentences) is guaranteed to take you out of the mood every time it comes up.
• Nausea Fuel: The Gorn is rather obvious, from the pictures of the murder victims to the titular suicide.
• Nightmare Retardant: The creepypasta could have been genuinely terrifying if not for a good number of logical fallacies.
  • For starters, the fact that the interns and executives continue watching the "lost episode" after having been horrified or nauseated by the imagery, such as the murdered children's photos. The narrator (who is one of the interns) explicitly states that they even bothered to watch the episode a second time. One also ponders why they don't decide to report the latter footage to the police until much later.
  • When the investigation does concur, the police are apparently unable to put anything together regarding the case, such as the children's identities or attributes about the perpetrator. This might have been intentional on the writer's part to keep things "mysterious", but a series of photos alone is enough for the police to get good progress into the investigation with the variety of methods they can have in hand, such as being able to contact the parents or guardians of the children, who must have reported that they've gone missing. Thus, they could easily find the culprit, regardless of the time they'd have to take.
• Once Original, Now Common: As noted on the main page, this was one of the very first lost episode pastas to use hyper-realistic eyes, extra blood and gore, normally lighthearted cartoons doing unbelievably dark things, etc, all of which have now become clichés. All of those aspects were probably very shocking and disturbing at the time, but due to this being before the massive influx of poorly written stories that used the same format or something similar, not so much anymore. It also doesn't help that the SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon itself has done just as many shocking things, so, to the average fan, and to the people who have read better written creepypastas, this one doesn't hold up nearly as well as it once did.
• Signature Scene: Squidward staring at the screen with creepy, misty eyes and Tears of Blood.
• The Woobie: Squidward after he is humiliated at his clarinet recital.

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