The Bikini Bottom Horror / YMMV

Accidental Aesop:
- It doesn't matter how well you can do something artistically. If you don't take risks and create something original out of it, can you really call yourself a true artist?
Squidward: It's not my fault you were too stupid to appreciate real art.
Patrick: Or maybe you're just a boring musician.
Squidward: What?
Patrick: Though technically proficient, you've always lacked the ability to... IMPROVISE!
- If you interpret SpongeBob causing the Tortured One's rampage as unintentional, and assume he simply gave Patrick the undercooked patty to let him know what they were made out of, there's another one: Don't try to warn people about something dangerous until you have the entire picture. Often you'll just end up making it worse for everyone involved.
Alternative Character Interpretation: Did SpongeBob truly orchestrate the Tortured One's rampage to gain control of Bikini Bottom? Or did he just do something well-meaning but foolish right off the heels of learning an Awful Truth, not realizing it would go so very, very wrong? The way that he looked at Sandy as she was leaving is also open for interpretation: is he feeling genuine sadness that he lost one of his best friends because of his actions, or is SpongeBob merely disappointed that Sandy didn't share his vision? Notably, the creator refuses to answer questions regarding SpongeBob's morality or actions at this time as the answers would play into how a possible future installment would pan out.
- On that note, was taking over the city really his plan all along? Or is he just trying to make up for all the death and devastation caused by his reckless deed, hence, his defensiveness when Sandy questioned him?
Aluminum Christmas Trees:
- Amusingly enough, much of the claims that the characters' make about their horrifying abilities are accurate to real marine biology. The horrifying real-life feeding habits and regenerative capacity of starfish and sponges are crucial to the comic's plot, and depicted fairly accurately.
- Patrick being tortured for a regenerating source of Krabby Patty material by Mr. Krabs is too edgy to ever happen in nature, right? Wrong. The Harlequin shrimp has been known to "farm" starfish by eating off all their arms so they can't crawl away and waiting for their limbs to regenerate to feed on them again. Sometimes the shrimp will even force-feed the starfish algae to keep it alive while immobilized as a living meat factory.
Awesome Art: The whole series, but especially the Chapter 10 climax◊, which looks like something straight out of Berserk, and Chapter 21 climax◊, which looks more like a metal album cover than SpongeBob fan art.
Complete Monster: SpongeBob SquarePants himself uses his apparent happy-go-lucky attitude to mask the inner machinations of his enigmatic mind, out to firmly grasp control of Bikini Bottom. SpongeBob discovered the truth that Krabby Patties were made from harvested meat of a tortured clone of Patrick Star an unknown amount of time ago, and deliberately revealed it to Patrick, driving him mad with the memories of pain. Having anticipated the monstrous transformation Patrick would go through, SpongeBob fakes his own death and allows "the Tortured One" to rampage across Bikini Bottom and devour countless people, before SpongeBob finally steps in and saves the day, painting himself as the number one hero of the ocean. With the Krusty Krab's name soiled and both Sheldon Plankton and Mr. Krabs dead, SpongeBob then moves in with his own Pretty Patties restaurant and begins securing control of "his" city, casually threatening Sandy with bloody conflict if she dares try to expose him for the monster he really is.
Crosses the Line Twice: The frequent references to popular SpongeBob memes in an otherwise dark story can come across as this.
Mr. Krabs: This is insane! This is evil!
Patrick: No... This is Patrick.
Evil Is Cool:
- The Tortured One; a massive Eldritch Abomination monstrosity who becomes one of the biggest threats to the sea in its insatiable hunger for revenge.
- SpongeBob himself. Rather than being an incompetent and naïve fry cook, the epilogue reveals that he masterminded the entire conflict of the webcomic all as a means of disposing of Mr. Krabs and Plankton as rivals and then swiftly making a stronghold over the town. His Kaiju form Porifera is also amazing due to his design.
Hilarious in Hindsight: This wouldn't be the last story to involve the heroes fighting a giant, rampaging starfish lashing out in revenge for being held captive and tortured in a secret facility for years.
Moral Event Horizon:
- The secret ingredient of the Krabby Patty is finally revealed: years back, Mr. Krabs took a clone of Patrick and, seeing monetary potential, endlessly harvested it for its meat. Suffice to say, even Plankton was horrified by the truth.
- The Tortured One crosses it when he drives Patrick crazy and makes him create a Clone Army and uses them to consume many of the residents of Bikini Bottom, and then make them sacrifice themselves to him so that he can become a Kaiju that can wipe out entire ecosystems. What is worse is that it is shown that he doesn't care that the populace didn't know that they were oblivious to the fact that Krabby Patties came from him and wants to devour every form of sea life simply to spite them for savoring his cooked flesh. Needless to say, while his origins were tragic, he lost any form of sympathy when it became clear that he only cared about himself.
- The entire conflict of the webcomic was all according to the inner machinations of SpongeBob's enigmatic mind. Having known the truth behind the Krabby Patty for an unspecified amount of time, SpongeBob gave Patrick the undercooked Krabby Patty on purpose, knowing that he would assimilate the memories of the cloned starfish and go on a rampage leading to the deaths of Mr. Krabs and Plankton just so he could Take Over the City in their absence. That said, there's still room for some Alternative Character Interpretation, and it's not clear how much of what happened was actually part of his plan.
Signature Scene:
- Patrick externally digesting SpongeBob in the first chapter, considering how that scene has been animated and redrawn the most.
- The end of Season 2, where Squidward witnesses the death of Larry and the destruction of the Krusty Krab, and the Tortured One makes his first full appearance, complete with lightning in the background.

YMMV / The Bikini Bottom Horror

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