I'm lowkey ashamed to admit...

I usually have various shows running in the background (either while I clean, write, or sleep) because I apparently need constant background noise or I get overwhelmed by the silence (and background noises of my apartment). Last night, it was Spongebob.

I don't particularly mind the newer seasons, mostly because I generally don't pay attention while they're on. Unfortunately, I was paying attention last night.

Spongebob's Big Birthday Blowout was, aside from the animation, a pretty cute and wholesome episode. That is, until it was time to sing Spongebob Happy Birthday. To give a little context before I get into it, Patchy had spent most of the episode trying to get to Bikini Bottom to give Spongebob a birthday gift (cute asf not even gonna lie). At the end, he crashes into the island and we see both him and Potty with their feet sticking out of the ground, wiggling. The gift makes it to Bikini Bottom, and it's Patchy's head. Silly, but the show itself is pretty silly. Patchy starts singing Spongebob Happy Birthday, per the sponge's request, and everyone joins in.

We see celebrity guests, and characters singing, but what got me was when it darted back to the island where... and this is where I'm gonna place a quick TRIGGER WARNING because what in the actual heck....

[BELOW IS A DESCRIPTION OF THE SCREEN DURING THE WHAT THE HECK MOMENT - READ WITH CAUTION; IT'S NOT SUPER DETAILED BUT STILL]

.

.

.

We see Patchy's body with Potty's head, appearing to be having a seizure. The usually bright colors were... not bright and a little off. There was an awkward bit of silence between the verses, and then we dive back into the song with more guests singing Happy Birthday to the beloved sponge.

For some reason, that freaked me the heck out. I have no problem with most creepy things - I even flip through some gnarly MLP Infection AU slides at night... but for some reason, this scared me. I'm ashamed but at the same time, you gotta admit that that's really weird.

It's not like we haven't seen Patchy get hurt before, but the end product of him getting hurt is usually mild and in comedic fashion. This was just... what the heck?

I've seen theories that say that this was "symbolism" of him passing, but like... there was nothing really symbolic about it? It was pretty straight forward imo LMAO