Bang, Bang, Bang. The woman wakes with a fright, her heart already
hammering. What was that noise? She sits up in bed and wipes the sleep out of her eyes, feeling
the woozy concoction of adrenaline and exhaustion. Bang, Bang, Bang. There it is again, the noise is coming
from downstairs somewhere. She goes and, with trembling hands, grabs the lamp from the
side of her bed. It's pretty heavy at the base, and she reckons worst comes to worst, she
could do a good bit of damage with it. She tiptoes out onto the landing and hears the
thumping noise downstairs again. Sure enough, it's her front door. She hears muffled voices outside
squabbling with one another. She peers around down the staircase just in time to see whoever it is
outside hammering at her door again. The hinges are starting to break, the wood is starting
to bend. Surely, it can't hold out for much… The door splinters and crashes open, and a
crowd of hooded figures run into the house. There are so many of them that she doesn't
have a hope of trying to fight her way out of this. She rushes back to her bedroom and
looks around wildly for a place to hide. She can't go under the bed; there's no space,
and she doesn't have a proper wardrobe, just a clothes rail that she hangs
all her stuff on. More importantly, she doesn't have time to waste now. The
burglars are going to be in here any second. She grabs all of the clothes off the clothes
rail and rushes over to the corner of the room. She curls up as small as she can in a ball and
throws the clothes all over herself. Hopefully, the robbers will think that she's just a
pile of dirty laundry and leave her alone. You can hear voices now amid the crashing sounds
downstairs. It sounds like they're in her lounge, going through her Blu-ray collection.
Why on earth would they be wanting to look at her Blu-rays? Surely they
should just grab the TV and the consoles and run out the door?
That's where the real value is. The voices are getting louder and louder, with real notes of frustration. It doesn't sound
like they're robbing the place; it sounds like they're looking for something. Like they've
come here searching for something specific. But what could they possibly be after? She's
not rich; if anything, she's pretty broke. The door to her bedroom flies open, and a group
of people fills her room. This isn't just a smash-and-grab with a couple of individuals.
There must be well over a dozen people in her house right now. She holds her breath and
does her best to stay as still as possible. Peering out through the small gap in the clothes, she tries to make out who it
is that's ransacked her place. And to her surprise, she realizes they're not
a group of thugs at all. They're teenagers, none of them look much older than 15. They're all dressed in hoodies and
trying their best to cover their faces, but it's obvious from how big
they are. They're just kids. The woman's fear subsides slightly. She
could easily take any of them in a fight, maybe not all of them at once, but she feels
a growing sense of confidence. More than that, she feels a growing sense of curiosity. What
could a bunch of teenagers want from her? The loudest one in the room has her phone out.
Its light spills onto her face, and the woman realizes she isn't even bothering to wear a
mask. She is talking to her camera, and as the woman glances at the screen, she sees messages
popping up from the chat feed at the bottom. Is she... livestreaming this? As if she's heard her thoughts,
the girl proudly announces. “That’s right, it’s your girl Loopy Hunter coming
in right now, we’re going out live on Twitch, YouTube, TikTok, and Insta. I’ve got my boy
Sparkles downstairs raiding the hard drive, but I’m up in the bedroom right
now looking for a laptop.” Hard drive? Laptop? What could any of these teenagers want from her
files? Then the penny drops. “We’re gonna find it today.
The lost episode. Season 3, episode 15, Ick Day. We’re writing
the next chapter in meme history! You better be screen recording because
we’re about to be arrested for this!” * The woman had been to her most recent Comic
Con about eight years ago. It had definitely been time to pack it in. The four days
that she was there, sitting at her booth with stacks of photos ready to sign, she'd
had a grand total of seven people come by. There's nothing more disheartening than watching your popularity steadily dwindle and
not really having an answer for it. Loopy Lilly had been a flash in the pan. Everyone
in the team had known that, except the top execs. It just so happened to catch a zeitgeist, it aired
at just the right time on Saturday morning and featured the voice work of the young actress
who would go on to be a Disney Channel star. The success of the show wasn't necessarily
based on the strength of its writing, but success was success, and the
woman had enjoyed it while it lasted. She got to move to LA for the start of season 2
and wrote every episode up until the 3rd season, where they fired the original
staff to go in a “different direction”. Safe to say there would
be no further seasons for a reason. Still, she couldn't resent it too much; for
a few glorious years, she'd got to live her dream of being a successful writer in Hollywood.
Sadly for her, most of the money had dried up, but she just about managed to scrape
together enough for a modest house in the Midwest where she could live on her
own and take nice walks in the country. As far as she was concerned,
Loopy Lilly was long behind her. That was at least until she became a meme. A generation of teenagers who had grown up
watching Loopy Lilly as five-year-olds all of a sudden now had internet access and
phones. Nostalgia bait was a huge thing, as the woman quickly discovered. If you could remember something that
was really niche from your childhood, something that you hadn't thought about in
years, it had a good chance of going viral. And Loopy Lily, being the very popular
but underwritten juggernaut that it was, had the perfect concoction of
forgetability and dated animation. All of a sudden, Loopy Lily
was somehow cool again. The woman had to admit she didn't get it.
She put on a couple of old episodes out of curiosity but found that it was even
worse than she'd remembered. If anything, she was a bit embarrassed to
have had a hand in writing it. But all these teenagers online
were going nuts about it. And at the height of the meme was Season 3, Episode 15. Ick Day. Sitting at her computer, the woman really
doesn't get it. She has to watch a YouTube video explaining something called the Mandela
effect to understand what on earth is happening. “Hey guys and welcome back to the channel,
don’t forget to like and subscribe. Now, let me ask you a question. What
color is the tip of Pikachu’s tail?” The woman thinks for a second. Black. Pikachu’s got a tail that’s yellow at the base
and then black or brown at the tip. “You’re wrong. It’s yellow.” Huh? “Another question, what does Snow
White say to the mirror on her wall?” Well, that’s an easy one. She can picture the
scene from the movie in her head now. "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s
the fairest of them all?" “Well, I’m afraid you’re wrong again.
She actually says ‘Magic Mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?’.” The woman sits back in her chair and
crosses her arms. That's strange. “What you're experiencing there is a phenomenon
known as the Mandela effect. It's a kind of group misremembrance. For some reason, there are certain
events and moments in history that a large number of the population remember in a factually
incorrect way. The phenomenon gets its name from a study that found that a number of people
believe that Nelson Mandela died in prison in the 1980s. Many of them could recount in fair detail
seeing his widow giving a speech on television and watching extensive news coverage about the
event, even though Mandela actually died in 2013. “In fact, the reason you're probably watching this
video right now is that there seems to be a new Mandela effect taking the internet by storm. Ick
Day, episode 15 of Loopy Lilly’s third season.” The woman finishes the video and gets up
to go out for her usual walk. What kind of thing do all these teenagers remember about
the episode? She walks through the woods, scrolling through her phone, looking at Twitter
threads, subreddits, and YouTube comments. Oh maaaaaan! I remember that episode. It was
really horrific, you see Lilly dragging her little lamb outside and beating it. They had
blood and everything. It really scarred me. S.3 E.15 was creepy af. I watched it when
it aired and it was all about her being sick in bed but it was this big metaphor
for mental health. She just steadily goes insane and starts threatening to
unalive her parents and stuff… Ick Day’s just some creepypasta, guys.
It was a 4chan thing or something from a few years ago; no one actually believes that. I definitely saw on the news that they’d banned
it from a worldwide release because it was giving people epileptic fits. My school even had
a letter go out to parents to warn them. The more the woman reads, the more she starts to
laugh. She has no idea where all these stories have come from, but they are all total nonsense.
She remembers that episode; it takes her a minute, but it's clear enough in her head now. She'd
written it, and the studio had animated most of it, but without warning, the executive
producers decided to cut it from the series. It hadn’t been very good, and they already had
enough episodes to fill the slot. That was it. There were no broken bones, gruesome murder,
killer pathogens, or mental health metaphors. It was just a very normal Saturday morning
cartoon episode about a girl who is too sick to go to school. The whole reason they'd cut it
was because nothing interesting happened at all. She laughs and puts her phone back in
her pocket, enjoying the fresh air. When she gets back home later that evening,
she logs onto Twitter and shares a post about the episode. It's the most attention
the show has gotten in close to a decade, and she's surprised to see she's picked up
almost a thousand new followers out of thin air. Good meme, everyone, making up fake stories
about the episode. It was never released, and trust me, I think you’d all
be very disappointed to learn why… She grins to herself. That's a good post. She'll
get a few replies from people with more traffic, but she's also not giving any false promises.
She gets up to make dinner, and when she sits down at her computer again, her eyes go wider
than the dinner plate she's about to eat off of. 3,100 replies. She laughs and cracks
her knuckles, opening the first one. Exactly, thank you! I always said it was pulled
for being too violent, and now I have proof! Okay, clearly, that person hadn’t read what she’d written at all. She ignores
it and goes on to the next. @baconsforever @cash339 see? I wasn’t
making up that seizure. Defo happened What is going on? The woman looks back at her
original tweet to make sure that she hadn't left in some stupid typo or phrased anything
awkwardly. But no, it was clear as day. What was everyone doing? It's like they'd read something
totally different from what she'd written. She starts to go through and reply to
people, clarifying her original point and trying to make sure that she isn't being
misrepresented at all. But all the while, more and more tweets are flooding in replying
to her, with each person somehow confirming their own previously held beliefs. A few
of them even quote parts of her tweet that weren't originally there. Is she going crazy?
Has she lost command of the English language? She goes across to Reddit and finds a
similar thing happening almost straight away. Someone shared a screenshot of her
tweet, and all the comments underneath are interpreting it in totally different
ways. Sighing, she makes a Reddit account so that she can start replying to all of
these people to clear up any confusion. Hours go by, and before she realizes
it, it's almost two in the morning. And she is absolutely furious. The more she tweets, posts comments, and replies, the more frustrated she feels. Nobody - nobody
- is listening to her. It's like an elaborate game of telephone where everything seems to fall
apart after just the second person in the line. She reads one particularly
disconcerting comment... We’re gonna find your address and come
and get the proof you’ve been promising, the hunt for the missing episode is almost over! Deciding that she's done with the
internet, potentially forever, if she can manage it, the woman logs
off and takes herself off to bed. * Hiding under the pile of clothes in the corner
of her room, the woman couldn't do anything but watch as the teenagers found her laptop and yanked
the screen open unceremoniously. It was password protected, and much to her relief, none of the
teenagers had any clue what the password could be. “Come on, hurry up. We need to
show the world once, and for all, that Loopy Lilly was really a ploy
to take down the Catholic Church.” “Exactly! It predicted COVID years ago to a tee.” “I know, right? Can’t wait for the scene that
the KGB plays to torture their hostages.” It’s like all of these kids are speaking different
languages to one another. Not one of them seems to remotely understand what the others are
saying, so obsessed with their own theories. “Maybe she’s written the password down
somewhere. I’ll check through the notebooks, you check through the pockets of her clothes.” The woman's stomach sinks. What looks
like a 14-year-old boy starts to walk over to her hiding spot. There’s nothing for it. The woman leaps to her feet,
throwing the clothes off her, and what she hopes is an intimidating
display of power. In reality, a pair of her boxes gets stuck on the top of her head
and flap around awkwardly as she shouts. She tells the kids that the police are on their
way (that would have been a good idea) and that they need to get out of her house this instant.
For a second, they all stand in stone silence, then smiles break out across all of their
faces, and they rush over to her excitedly. “I knew it! I knew you’d pulled the episode yourself for fear that it would
overshadow the rest of the show!” “It’s so great to hear it straight
from your mouth. Loopy Lilly was actually dead the whole time, and the
show was about a descent into hell.” What are these kids talking about?
She hadn't said a word about Loopy Lilly! She tries to repeat herself, to
tell them that the police are coming, and they need to leave this instant, but her
adoring fans only seem to grow more enamored with the stories that they're hearing from
her mouth. When she says a threat, their eyes light up with excitement as they hear her
revealing the most treasured secrets of the show. She tries to physically usher them out of
the house. She can't hit them, obviously, because they're kids, but she does her best
to push them and herd them toward the door, leading them out into the street. They
just crowd around her on the sidewalk, asking more and more questions, not
listening to a word she has to say. The woman can do nothing but stand there helpless.
Does anyone in the world understand her anymore? But then she catches glimpses of
their phone screens. Heart emojis flood the chats. 600k viewers on
one phone. A million on another. The whole world is watching her. And they’re all loving what she has to
say. Any time she talks, fresh waves of messages fill the chats, and a dozen voices
around her call out in surprise and joy. Before she can stop it, a smile spreads
across her face, and she opens her arms wide, beginning to tell the crowd the story
of Loopy Lilly right from the start. * Keter class SCPs are the ones that are
hardest to contain. Its members can range from problematic teleporters to veritable
world-destroying nightmare creatures. SCP-5019 falls into the same classification
but hopefully poses virtually no threat to the existence of humanity. The reason why
it is in this class is that despite the Foundation's best efforts, it seems
virtually impossible to contain. Foundation web crawlers scour
the internet day in and day out, tracking any website or thread
that mentions the TV show Loopy Lily. Previous attempts have been made
to suppress any mention of the show, but this has proven ineffective. IP addresses
and those talking about the show are tracked, and agents are deployed to administer amnestics
to the users who make the initial reference. This is one of the rare instances where the
Foundation's amnestics have proven totally ineffective. No matter the dosage or
strength, subjects will not forget about Loopy Lily. Specifically, they will
not forget Season 3, Episode 15, Ick Day. Dubbed ‘the lost episode’ by many, this episode
was never officially aired. There is no record of its broadcast in any country, and no copies
of the episode itself have ever been recovered. And yet, a large proportion of this show's
target demographic recalls something about the episode. Recollections vary from
individual to individual, with the common traits being that the episode was censored,
destroyed, made up, or only broadcast once. Many individuals report quite extreme reasons for
the episode's status, citing excessive violence, explicit content, darkness, or other
disturbing elements. Other individuals believe that it doesn't exist at all and is part
of a wider conspiracy made up by trolls online, or is even connected to various
government-level conspiracy theories. The truth is quite simple. Ick Day
was never released. It was written and mostly animated but was canceled prior
to release by the studio. The lead writer, Nichola Myers, referred to
here on out as POI 5019, has explained on numerous occasions the
unremarkable backstory of the episode. Those unaffected by SCP-5019 believe the
same. They have a recollection of Season 3, Episode 15, never making it to
air for unremarkable reasons. And yet, those affected by SCP-5019 seem
unable to comprehend any attempts to explain this. Not only do they fail to understand
what the other person is telling them, they actively believe that the person
is reinforcing their own beliefs. It appears that a large number
of people online who engage in discussions about the Lost Episode
believe that all of their peers are agreeing with their viewpoint, even when
they are explicitly stating the opposite. As confusing as this is, the Foundation believes that this does not pose a significant
threat to the general population. It does make you wonder, though, is there
really any truth to anything you see online? Check out the Dr. Bob Patreon and
become a junior researcher today! Now go and watch another entry from the
files of Dr. Bob, like SCP-1432 Doll DVD.
