Money Crimes with Nicole Lapin - When Beloved Cartoons Became Something Darker

Episode Date: May 24, 2026

Three of the internet's most notorious lost media creepypastas take aim at SpongeBob SquarePants, The Simpsons, and classic Disney — spinning tales of hidden episodes so disturbing they were allegedly buried and erased forever. What makes these stories so unsettling isn't gore alone, but the way they corrupt the cartoons millions grew up trusting. This episode explores why lost media horror hits differently than any other kind of scary story. For more follow Twisted Tales wherever you listen to podcasts: https://pod.link/1839058226 For Ad-free listening to episodes, subscribe to Crime House+ on Apple Podcasts.  🎧 Need More to Binge?  Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Crime House 24/7, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Murder True Crime Stories, and more wherever you get your podcasts! Follow me on Social Instagram: @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios X: @crimehousemedia YouTube: @crimehousestudios To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi listeners, it's Vanessa. Before we get into today's episode, I want to tell you about another show I think you'll love, Hidden History with Dr. Harini Bott. Every Monday, Dr. Bot goes where history gets mysterious, vanished civilizations, doomsday prophecies, paranormal phenomena, and events that science still can't fully explain. Dr. Bot treats these moments like open case files, not myths, not superstition, just incomplete explanations. waiting for a closer look.

Hidden history drops every Monday. Follow now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, so you never miss a mystery. This is Crime House. A SpongeBob episode so disturbing it was never supposed to air. A lost piece of The Simpsons that predicted a character's death. And a Disney cartoon from the 1930s so disturbing that the studio allegedly buried it and erased every trace.

of this existence. These aren't just horror stories. They're stories that make you question the memories you treasure most, and what might be lurking inside of your TV. Today, I'm diving into three of the internet's most notorious creepypastas about lost media, hidden episodes that were never meant to be found, and the nightmares they left behind. Welcome to Twisted Tales, a crimehouse original. I'm Heidi Wong. Every week I'll take you deep into humanity's darkest stories and the creepiest corners of the internet. If you've ever had a haunted moment or a twisted tale of your own, I want to hear about it. Drop it in the comments, the creepier, the better. And for early access and ad-free listening, subscribe to our Crimehouse Plus community on Apple Podcasts. We're also on YouTube with full video

episodes. Just search and subscribe to Twisted Tales with Heidi Wong so you can watch the horror come to life. Today, I'm taking you into one of my favorite corners of creepypasta culture, lost media. These are stories about episodes of Beloved cartoons shows like SpongeBob, The Simpsons, and classic Disney that's supposed to contain content so horrifying, so wrong, that they were hidden away and never aired. None of these episodes really exist, or at least they probably don't. But what makes them so haunting is that they tap into something we all feel, that uneasy little voice in the back of your head that says, what if there's something hiding inside

the things that I trust? We've got three stories today, and each one takes a little voice. a show you know and love and turns it into a nightmare. You're no longer young people. You're just people. And people are either productive or dead weight. It's my first day of work and I need to make a big impression. Were you just checking me out?

No. It's too bad. I see at least 15 ladies I need to talk to you before my beta block wears off. My coworkers don't take me seriously. It's not a human. It's just a piece of meat. Someone bring a gurney. Before I get started, this episode does have some potentially triggering content,

like discussion of suicide, harm to children, and animal abuse. We're kicking things off with maybe the most famous lost media creepypasta of all time. It's called Squidward Suicide, and it first started circulating sometime around 2006 on the 7chan forum. This is probably the creepypasta that launched the entire lost episode genre, and it works really well because SpongeBob is so universally loved. An entire generation grew up on it, so the idea of something dark hiding inside of it hits differently. The way that it's written also makes it feel like a real testimony from someone who actually worked at Nickelodeon.

And fair warning, it gets very dark, very fast. Now, before I get into this one, I want to set the scene a little. Because to understand why Squidward's suicide hits so hard, you need to understand how creepypastas work. The best ones don't just tell you a scary story. They use a format that makes you believe you're reading something real, a confession, a leaked document, a firsthand account of someone who saw something that they weren't supposed to see. Kind of like Russian sleep experiment. How they were positioning it as like totally a real thing that like we weren't supposed to know.

And like that's why people were so scared. And that's exactly what the story does. The details are so specific, so mundane in places that your brain starts filling in the gaps and going, wait, could this have actually happened? I'll let you decide for yourself. Here's the story. A new intern lands a dream gig at Nickelodeon. He's fresh out of college, thrilled to be working on one of the biggest animated shows in the world,

SpongeBob SquarePants. It's 2005 and the show is deep into its run. Season 4 is in production. One day, the intern and a small group of animators sit down for what's supposed to be a routine screening of a new episode called Fear of a Crappy Patty. They're expecting a standard episode, Squidward being grumpy, SpongeBob being annoying, maybe a jellyfish joke or two. Now, this isn't the final cut yet. The animators will sometimes put a joke title in front of the episode, like how sex doesn't work instead of Rock a Bye Bye Valve.

So when the title card reads Squidward's suicide, nobody thinks it's anything other than an edgy inside joke. But from the first frame, something is wrong. The episode opens on Squidward practicing his clarinetal. which, okay, that's normal. He's getting ready for a concert. SpongeBob and Patrick are playing outside, acting goofy, and Squidward tells them to pipe down. Pretty standard SpongeBob stuff so far.

But then the episode cuts to the concert, and Squidward is terrible, like painfully terrible. The crowd booes him. They throw things at him. The animators watching the screening figure this is just classic Squidward. He always gets humiliated. That's the joke. Except the booing doesn't stop.

It goes on. on and on. Way longer than any gag should last. And then SpongeBob is there too, booing with them. It's definitely out of character, but that's not the worst part. It's that everyone in the crowd has these hyper-realistic looking eyes. Not quite footage of actual eyes, but not a hand-drawn cartoon either. Something in the middle, like out of the uncanny valley.

And the pupils are all bright red. The interns and the others don't really know what to make of it. This doesn't seem right to them, but they're not writers. Maybe this will still pay off in some way. The next scene starts and Squidward is sitting on the end of his bed after the concert. He's just sitting there in silence. Not quiet, but total silence. Like nobody added sound into the scene.

Then after about 30 seconds of this, Squidward starts crying. Not exaggerated, not funny, just sobbing. Then sound starts to slowly creep in. Just a whisper like a gentle breeze in the trees. As this goes on, the camera starts to creep in on Squidward's face. His sobs get more frantic, full of hurt and rage. The sound builds with it like there's a storm coming. It all feels so real like the sound of Squidward crying is really in the room with them,

not just coming through the speakers. Making things even more unsettling underneath it all, they can hear someone laughing. Just for a second or two at the time, but it's definitely there. Then there's a brief flash. Just a single frame. but when they pause to see it, the content makes the room go dead silent. It's a photograph, a real photograph of a dead child. His body is mangled in ways too horrible to describe.

This doesn't seem like a Photoshop job, and it doesn't seem like a crime scene photo. The person who took this one is the person who killed that kid. At this point, the people watching can only hope that it's some kind of sick joke, so they keep watching. The screen goes back to someone. Squidward. He's sobbing even louder than before, and this time his tears are red, like he's crying blood. The sounds of the storm are like a hurricane, and now the laughing is louder, deep.

More images flash. More photographs of dead children, all mangled in some way. They're spliced in between frames of Squidward crying on his bed. Meanwhile, Squidward's tears keep flowing, becoming more realistic like its actual blood flowing down his face. And then he looks straight at the screen. His eyes are like the audience at the concert, bloodshot red and pulsing. Then that deep laughing voice speaks. It says, do it. And all of a sudden, there's something in Squidward's hands.

He puts it in his mouth and pulls the trigger. Like the rest of the episode, this sequence is all rendered hyper-realistically. It's the most disturbing thing that any of them have ever seen. According to the story, the animators immediately reported the footage to the show's creator, Stephen Hillenberg. He launched an investigation to figure out who did this, and it turns out that someone did tamper with the file. But it was changed only 24 seconds before it was screened, and they never figured out who was behind it. And they never identified who took the photos of the children either. Obviously, the episode never aired, but the intern wrote about it online.

about a year later, anonymously, of course. And that's how Squidward's suicide became one of the most notorious creepypastas ever written. The thing that gets me the most is the framing. It's not some random haunted video. It's set inside of a real workplace at a real studio during a real session of a real show. That's what makes it so effective. And the details about the photographs, that's what pushes it from being creepy to genuinely disturbing. It takes something innocent and injects something.

that you can never unsee into it. Also, worth noting, the original creepypasta is written in first person almost like a confessional. You can really feel like you're hearing it from someone who saw something that they can't forget. Which just makes it so much creepier, which is, I guess also the reason that people love found footage.

Because it makes you feel like you're discovering. And here's the thing. It is fiction, but it works because we all know that big studios have vaults full of content that never sees the light of day. So your brain goes, well, what if? Something to note on this one, the story gets confused and combined a lot with red mist, a similar creepypasta that was posted a few years later.

And people made images and videos to go along with it. Not of the disturbing images of kids, but it included a portrait of Squidward with those tears going down his face. And here's something wild. After this creepypasta blew up, Nickelodeon actually acknowledged it. In an episode from 2019 called SpongeBob in Random Land, Squidward and SpongeBob end up in a place that operates outside the rules of logic. A bunch of doors appear and behind one of them, there's a portrait of Red Miss Squidward. It's crazy enough that this made it into an actual episode, but in a case where art mirrors reality,

in some versions, the Red Miss Squidward got replaced by an animation of Squidward as a baby. So in a way, it became real lost media, not just a story on the internet. which honestly makes the whole thing even creepier, and that makes you wonder what else could be out there. Think about some of the cases that defined true crime in America. Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart, the Karen retrial. Some crime cases are so shocking. They don't just make headlines they forever change a country.

I'm Katie Ring, host of America's most infamous crimes. Each week, I take on one of the most notorious criminal cases, whether it's unfolding now or etched in. to American history, revealing not just what happened, but how it forever changed our society. Serial killers who terrorized cities, unsolved mysteries that kept detectives up at night, and investigations that change the way we think about justice. Each case unfolds across multiple episodes, released every Tuesday through Thursday, from the first sign that something was wrong to the moment the truth came out or didn't. These are the stories behind the headlines.

Listen to and follow America's most infamous crimes available to, now wherever you get your podcast. Okay, so our next story goes after another beloved animated show, and it involves one of the most famous creators in television history. Now, if Squidward's suicide works by corrupting a cartoon you associate with silly, harmless fun, dead Bart does something even more ambitious. It goes after a show that's been on air for over 35 years, a show that's so deeply woven into pop culture that people quote it without even realizing.

it. I'm talking, of course, about The Simpsons. And here's the thing about the Simpsons. It already has this huge mythology around it. The show has been running for so long and has made so many offhand predictions that turned out to be true from Trump's presidency to Disney buying Fox that there's a whole genre of internet content dedicated to Simpsons' predictions. People genuinely believe the show can see the future. So when a creepypasta comes along that leans into that mythology, it has a head start on being believable. It's called Dead Bart and it was first posted online around 2010, credited to a user going by K.I. Simpson. And unlike Squidward's suicide, which is told from the perspective of an intern,

this one is told by someone who claims they directly confronted the show's creator, Mac Raining. If Squidward's suicide is the king of lost episode creepypastas, Dead Bart is the Crown Prince. What makes it different is that it doesn't just just tell a scary story. It tries to implicate a real person. Matt Grayning, the guy who created The Simpsons Futurama Disenchantment, one of the most successful people in animation.

And the way the narrator describes Grating's reaction when he asked about the episode, it's genuinely chilling. So here's how it starts. The narrator describes themselves as a huge fan of The Simpsons, not just a casual viewer, they're obsessive. They know every episode, every couch gag, every background joke. They cataloged the entire series, and they know that there's supposedly a lost episode from the very first season called Dead Bart. Matt Graining supposedly wrote it

himself, and it had him extremely on edge, but before the episode aired, it was replaced by another one, moaning Lisa. After that, nobody talked about the episode again. It turned into a rumor passed around the Simpsons superfans. And one day, the story's writer was at an event with David Silverberg, one of the original animators on the show. Someone in the crowd asked him about Dead Bard and Silverman just walked off stage, Q&A over. And that was the first time the writer heard about Dead Bart and it led them down a rabbit hole more disturbing than they could have ever imagined. Eventually the writer got a chance to meet Matt Graning at a fan event. They managed to catch him as he was leaving the building to ask about Dead Bart. I can see it happening. He's like,

I don't want to talk about this. He's getting chased. Like, I... According to the writing, the moment they brought it up, Graining's face went pale. His smile vanished. He got visibly upset, not angry, but shaken. Like someone had just dug up something he spent decades trying to bury. Graining didn't deny it. He didn't laugh it off. He just said, very quietly, that he didn't want to talk about it. And then he gave the narrator a website address. He wrote it down on a napkin with a trembling hand and begged them to never mention it again. The website was bare bones, black background.

no text except a single download link. Guys, don't ever click a single download link. I don't even click email sometimes. This person is so brave. What do you mean? The writer clicked the link. And the file made their computer completely shut down. What did I say?

That's crazy that they click the link. Oh my God. But they were able to get it onto a CD, and when they opened it, they found the file for Dead Bart. The episode starts normally, but everything is just a bit off. The animation is crude and the characters aren't quite themselves. Homer's angrier than usual. Marge is depressed.

Lisa's more anxious than usual. And Bart is angry. Like he genuinely hates his parents, not in the joking way that he normally is. In terms of the plot, it seems like a typical setup with the Simpsons getting on a plane for a family vacation. But as soon as the wheels go up, things go wrong. Bart keeps messing around near the emergency exit. Homer tells him to knock it off. Marge tells him to sit down, but Bart doesn't listen.

And then the window breaks, and Bart gets sucked out of the airplane. Now, if this was a normal Simpsons episode, you'd expect a cutaway, a joke. Bart's done crazy stuff before, but this time it's different. This episode doesn't play it for laughs. There's no last-minute escape. Bart hits the ground. He doesn't survive. And when they show his body, it's drawn in photo-realistic detail.

The next part has the rest of the Simpsons sitting around a table in tears. For the next few minutes, they just sit there, crying. And like in Squidward's suicide, it's uncomfortably real, like they're genuinely grieving. As this goes on, the animation starts to degrade, until Homer, Marge, and Lisa were barely more than shadows with a few colors mixed in. Meanwhile, there are faces flashing in the way. windows, never long enough for you to know what they look like. It goes like this until the commercial break. And when the show comes back, it's even more horrifying. A year has passed. The Simpsons are still at that table. They're so thin, it seems like they haven't eaten anything the

whole time. Finally, they get up and decide to visit Bart's grave. As they walk through Springfield, the town is abandoned. Every house empty and decayed. When they get to the cemetery, Bart's body is displayed out in front of his tombstone, looking just like when it fell out of the plane. The other tombstones are for every guest star to appear on The Simpsons, but remember, this is just season one. These are the names of everyone who'd appear on the show in later seasons. I know there's a gag of the Simpsons predicting the future, but this just takes it to a disturbing new level, especially because of the dates on the tombstones for some of them, like Michael Jackson and George Harrison, where the actual date,

they'd eventually die. And for all the others, the ones who were still alive when the writers saw the episode, they were all the same date. And that's where Dead Bart ends. What makes Dead Bart so unnerving is the grief, the silence,

the long shots of a family that's just broken. It doesn't rely on jump scares or gore. It's just pure sadness turned up to an unbearable level. And then the twist with the dead celebrities. That's where it crosses from sad, to deeply creepy. The idea that a cartoon somehow predicted real deaths, that's just the kind of thing that sticks in your brain. Also, even if it's just the years that they died, it's still so very creepy. So very final destination, vibes. For sure, death is stalking them type of vibe, but.

Also, dragging a real person, Matt Grayening into this is such a smart move by the author. It makes the whole thing feel like a real cover-up. The Simpsons already had this reputation for predicting the future, right? So this plays directly into that. This is definitely one of those all-time creepypastas. And like the people behind SpongeBob, people working on The Simpsons also heard about Dead Bart and decided to acknowledge it on the show

by calling the first episode of Season 30, Bart's Not Dead. And this wasn't a coincidence. Showrunner Al Jean directly acknowledged this was a reference to the creepypasta. Thankfully, it doesn't contain any of the disturbing images from the fake episode. But it does have Bart fall off from the top of a dam and almost die. So again, we have a case of a fake lost episode making its way to real-life media. But this next story

may never get that treatment, because it involves one of the oldest, most beloved characters ever, one with a squeaky clean image that this creepypasta tarnished forever. Hi, crimehouse community, it's Vanessa. Are you interested in the mysterious parts of history like when in 1518 an entire European city couldn't stop dancing, or in 1908 when something flattened over 800 square miles of Siberian forest in an instant. I'm excited to tell you about a new show, Hidden History with Dr. Harini Bott. Dr. Bott has spent her entire career demanding evidence and asking why. Now every Monday on Hidden History, she goes where history touches the unknown,

Vanished civilizations, doomsday prophecies, paranormal phenomena, and events that science still can't fully explain. Dr. Bot treats these moments like open case files, not myths, not superstition, just incomplete explanations, waiting for a closer look. At the end of every episode, she'll tell you exactly what she thinks happen and ask, what if it happened today? Hidden History drops every Monday. Follow now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. so you never miss a mystery. All right, so our last story today takes us all the way back to the golden age of animation. We're not talking about Nickelodeon or Fox.

We're talking about the most powerful entertainment company on the planet. Disney. This story is called Mickey's Best Friend, and it was originally uploaded in 2013 by a user called Kay Rokon. And it makes you look at Mickey and his friends in a horrifying new way.

If Squidward's suicide and Dead Bart corrupt something beloved by certain generations, Mickey's best friend goes back even further. It corrupts the foundations of animation entertainment itself. Disney in the 1930s was genuinely kind of dark. Steamboat Willie, the early silly symphonies, they had an edge that Disney later smoothed over. So the idea of a truly disturbing early Disney cartoon isn't that far-fetched. And this one isn't just about something hidden in a cartoon.

It claims to explain something that Disney fans have debated for years. Why does Goofy walk and talk like a person? But Pluto, who is also a dog, walks on all fours and can't speak. This creepypasta gives you an answer. And it's horrifying. Fair warning, this one might ruin Pluto for you forever. According to the creepypasta, this cartoon was a real 10-minute short that actually played in theaters. Not a hidden file on a hard drive.

not a secret rough cut found in a vault. This thing was shown to audiences, including kids on November 15th, 1929. Right at the beginning of Mickey's career, just a year after Steamboat Willie had made him a star. The short was animated by Ub Iworks, the legendary animator who co-created Mickey Mouse with Walt Disney, and the music was composed by Carl Stalling,

who'd later become famous for scoring Looney Tunes. So we're not talking about some low-budget oddity, This was a real production with top-tier talent behind it. The story goes that Walt Disney wanted to make a Halloween-themed Mickey short. And he had a philosophy at the time that kids were being dumbed down by other cartoons. He thought that they were mature enough to handle darker material. So he pushed the envelope. And for this particular cartoon, he pushed it way, way too far.

It opens with Mickey driving to work. Pretty normal. But his car breaks down and he gets out to check it. When he realizes it can't be fixed, Mickey gets depressed. He's just sitting on the side of the road defeated. That's when a new character shows up, a dog named Eustace. He walks upright, he talks, and he's got a personality. Think goofy, but smaller, scruffier, and with big, dark eyes.

Eustace sees Mickey's broken down car, walks over, and fixes it. Just like that. Mickey is thrilled. He introduces himself and the two of them hit it off. Mickey invites Eustace to hang out and Eustace agrees, even though he asked Mickey if he's supposed to be somewhere. Mickey lies to him and decides to skip work. So far, it sounds like a pretty normal cartoon, right? Two buddies hanging out, classic Disney.

But then the cracks start to show. Mickey and Eustace go to a cafe, and when the owner spots Mickey, he gets hostile. Gives him a dirty look, rudely asked what he wants. Then the sheriff, who's basically peed, the big cat villain from the old Disney show, walks in and demands that Mickey pay his overdue rent. That's some adult stuff. Give it to kids, you gotta pay rent one day. Relatable.

Mickey is on the verge of a breakdown. He's broke, he's in debt, and he's clearly in trouble. Eustace feels bad for him, so he does something incredibly kind. He pays off Mickey's entire debt, just like that. The sheriff laughs, warns Eustace that Mickey is nothing but trouble and leaves. Mickey hugs Eustace completely relieved. Still on track for a normal cartoon, maybe just a little bit edgy. But now here's where it starts to get uncomfortable.

Mickey takes Eustace around town introducing him to the locals. And nobody cares. One by one, the townspeople dismiss him. The last person they speak to actually chuckles and warns Eustace directly. Be careful around that mouse. Eustace tries to ask why, but the person vanishes before he can get an answer. Eustace turns to Mickey and asks why he's still smiling after getting that kind of reception. And Mickey admits something that actually kind of breaks your heart.

He's never had a friend before. Eustace is his first, ever. And you can see Eustace react to that. His expression gets complicated, guilty almost, like he knows something that he's not saying. They spend the rest of the day together. They go to a theater, climb a mountain, go look at some scenery. It's genuinely sweet. And then Mickey takes Eustace back to his house and asks him to move in,

to stay and be his friend for real forever. And that's when Eustace says he has to leave. This is reminding me, weirdly, of Jeffrey Dahmer. Is it not giving Jeffrey Dahmer? Like, oh my God, I want to be your friend, be my friend forever. Come back to my house and stay forever. I'm going to cut your head off. Like, that was like his whole thing literally in the show is everything was basically chill

until that person was like, I need to leave. Or like, I can't sleep with you. Or like, I'm not gay. Like, I have to leave somehow. Like, you got the, like, literally, like, trying to leave him was, like, the moment he went crazy and was like, I'm gonna skin you now. You heard it here first. Mickey Mouse is based off of Jeffrey Dahmer.

He tells Mickey that he's not happy in this town. The people are cruel. The place has nothing for him. He's going to move on and find somewhere better. He apologizes and he says some encouraging words and then he heads for the door. Mickey doesn't take it well. He rushes forward and grabs Eustace by the leg.

He begs him to stay. Eustace shakes his head. And Mickey, the world's most beloved cartoon character, the face of an entire empire built on joy in childhood wonder, picks up a rock from the ground. And he knocks Eustace unconscious. The next scene is the one that got this cartoon banned and where things get genuinely dark.

Mickey is walking down the stairs to his basement. He flicks on the lights and there's Eustace. Tied to an operating table still knocked out cold. Mickey starts crying. He's sobbing, apologizing to Eustace's unconscious body, telling him that it has to be this way, that he can't be alone anymore, that he won't be alone anymore. He keeps repeating it over and over louder and louder

and then he reaches under the table, pulls out a knife, and the camera cuts away. We don't see what happens next. The actual operation takes place off-screen, but we hear it, and according to the creepypasta, what we hear is not pleasant. When the scene comes back, Eustace wakes up, and everything has changed. Eustace has been transformed into a regular four-legged dog. He can't speak, he can only bark. The cartoon shifts to Yustace.

Eustace's point of view, and we watch through his eyes as he looks down at himself and starts to panic. He's frantic. He's barking, whimpering, thrashing. He doesn't understand what's happening to him. And then Mickey walks in. The moment Eustace sees him, he stops panicking. He stops barking. He stops struggling. He looks at Mickey and something in his eyes goes blank. Whatever Eustace was, whoever he was is gone. In its place is something else. something obedient, something loyal, something that won't leave. Eustace pounces on Mickey and licks his face like a good dog. Mickey smiles, that big, classic Mickey Mouse smile,

and he tells Eustace calmly, sweetly, like he's talking to a pet that nobody will ever know about this, that it'll be their eternal secret. And he says one more thing. From now on, your name is Pluto. The final shot zooms out from Mickey's house. In the distance, you can hear the share of laughing and the voice of the townsperson who tried to warn Eustace earlier. The iris closes, the cartoon ends.

And here's where the creepypasta gets really unsettling, because it doesn't stop at the plot. It gives you the backstory. According to the story, production of the cartoon was a nightmare. The animators, including Ubb Iworks himself, were deeply uncomfortable with the script. IWorks was reportedly disgusted by the basement scene and demanded that the operation be censored,

which is why it happens off-screen. The whole production dragged on for months because the staff simply didn't want to finish it. There was even an undisclosed budget, which people speculate was because the animators demanded higher pay for working on something this disturbing. But Walt pushed it through, he was convinced that kids could handle it.

They couldn't. Because not all of them are crazy like me, I guess. At like 10 years a lot of, I'm like, yeah, give me more of this. When the cartoon finally hit theaters, the backlash was immediate and brutal. Parents reported that their children were having nightmares about being operated on by Mickey Mouse. Young kids became terrified of being left alone, especially at night. Some children required constant supervision afterward because the cartoon has shaken them so badly. Parents threatened to press charges.

My parents just laughed. They were like, you can't sleep because you watch the grudge and some Japanese lady who's crawling on your ceiling now? That's hilarious. Go back to bed. Tell her hi. Don't come in here again. Walt panicked.

He ordered every copy of the cartoon destroyed. He wanted it erased, wiped from Disney's history like it never existed. And for decades, it worked. There used to be a website that hosted screenshots from the cartoon, but even that is gone now. Most of the people who worked on the short are long dead, and the ones who survived to old age refused to talk about it. The creepypasta suggests that this was out of guilt. When you read it, you'll know that it's not real, but the story's implications are what stick with you. Because if you're a Disney fan, and let's be honest, who isn't, you know that Pluto

eventually became one of Mickey's most iconic sidekicks. He shows up in hundreds of cartoons. He's loyal, he's lovable, and Mickey is absolutely devoted to him. In later shorts, Mickey gets extremely worried whenever Pluto runs off or gets lost. He would risk his life to save his best friend. And now according to this creepy pasta, you know why. Pluto isn't just Mickey's pet. Pluto is Mickey's prisoner, a person who was stripped of everything that made him a person, his voice, his identity, his ability to walk. upright and think for himself because Mickey couldn't handle being alone. And the worst part, nobody in the cartoons world seemed to care. The sheriff laughed. The townspeople

walked away. Eustace came to a town where everyone knew what Mickey was capable of and not a single person did anything to stop it. They just warned Eustace and let it happen. Okay, that twist absolutely destroyed me. The idea that Pluto, sweet, lovable, Pluto was actually a person that Mickey mutilated and brainwashed into being his pet. I will never look at a Mickey cartoon the same way again, and now every time I do, it will remind me of Tusk. What makes this one so effective is how it re-contextualizes something that you already know. Every time Mickey hugs Pluto in a cartoon, every time he panics when Pluto runs away,

it takes on this completely different, horrifying meaning. It's not love, it's control. And I love that the creepypasta gives you the production backstory. The animators being uncomfortable, I worst demanding the censorship, the parents outrage. It just makes the whole thing feel documented, like a real controversy that got buried somehow. There's also something really clever about how the townspeople reacted. They know what Mickey is. They warn Eustace, but no one actually intervenes.

It's this dark little commentary on biosephi. standard behavior. Everyone sees a monster and no one does a thing. And here's the detail that gets me. Disney fans have always pointed out that it's weird how Goofy is an anthropomorphic dog who walks and talks while Pluto is a regular dog who walks on all fours and can't speak. Why are there two different kinds of dogs in the Disney universe? This creepypasta gives you the most terrifying possible answer because Pluto used to be like Goofy, until Mickey got to him. The creepypasta even notes that the character who warned Eustace would later become Goofy,

and that Eustace's design looked a lot like Goofies. Think about that for a second. Goofy looks at Pluto every day and sees what he could have become. Oh, that's even scarier. What connects all three stories is the idea of being violated. SpongeBob, The Simpsons, Mickey Mouse. These are things that we associate with safety, with childhood, with comfort.

And these creepypastas take that comfort and twist it into something horrifying. There's something uniquely disturbing about the idea that the thing scaring you is hiding inside of something that you love. It's not a monster under the bed. It's the bed itself. Lost Media creepypastas also tap into a real phenomenon. Studios do have vaults. Episodes do get pulled.

Content is buried. We do know for a fact that there are entire films, and shows that were produced and never released. Disney alone has shelved projects, locked away controversial content, and scrub things from their history. So these stories live in that gap between what we know exists

and what will never be allowed to see. And I think that's why lost media creepypastas have their own breed of horror. Because they're not asking you to believe in ghosts or demons or monsters. They're asking you to believe that something that was produced by real people was eventually covered up.

And in the age where a lot of things get leaked, that's not really that hard to believe. What I also find fascinating is the way that these stories spread. They start on a forum. Someone reads it and then retells it on Reddit. Someone else makes a YouTube video about them. Before long, there are fan animations, analysis videos, reaction videos, even official nods from the studios themselves. The stories become bigger than the original post.

It takes on a life of its own. And that's kind of the ultimate creepypasta move, right? The story escapes the screen. And honestly, that's what makes the internet so powerful and so scary at the same time. It's a place where buried things get dug up. It's where secrets don't say secret. Where someone, somewhere, always knows the truth. The question is, do you really want to find it?

Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of Twisted Tales, A Crime House Original. I'd love to hear from you. What did you think about today's stories? Have you come across any lost creepypastas that freaked you out? Leave a comment or review wherever you're tuning in. And be sure to follow Twisted Tales so we can keep building this community together. I'll be back next week with another story guaranteed to keep you up at night. Until then, stay curious.

And remember, there's no reason to fear the dark unless you try to hide from it. I'm Katie Ring, host of America's most infamous crimes. Each week, I take on one of the most notorious criminal cases in American history. Listen to and follow America's most infamous crimes available now wherever you get your podcasts.