It was a normal Friday night for me. It was January of 2012. The stress from all the tests I had during the week had been lifted, and I just finished my homework, which surprisingly enough, I did not wait until Sunday night to actually complete. I was ready to relax for the weekend. However, what I encountered that night has changed the way I viewed things completely.
It was around midnight, and I knew I was not going to be getting any sleep any time soon, so I popped open a bag of chips and decided to watch TV in my room. For a while I was just watching some shows that didn't really come on until late, like “George Lopez”, “Friends”, etc. Eventually these shows came to an end, but unfortunately my insomnia did not. I was still wide awake with nothing to watch. After surfing through channels on the channel guide for a while I found the show, “The Amazing World of Gumball”. If you're unfamiliar with the show, it is a children's cartoon about a 12-year old blue cat named Gumball that lives with his mother (a blue cat), father (a pink rabbit), little sister (a pink rabbit), and his step-brother, Darwin (an orange goldfish with legs).
It was just like any other weird children's cartoon where all the characters are an animal of some sort. I have only seen a few episodes of this particular show with my younger brother, and the idea of watching it now did not appeal to me. Although I did find it odd that a show like this would come on so late. I shrugged and figured there really is not anything else to watch, so I might as well watch it. I turned to the channel, and to my surprise, the episode had just started. It was supposedly a new episode which added even more to the suspicion of it airing so late. As you will soon realize, this episode was not at all the kind of playful children's show you would imagine.
The normal theme song played and then it cut to the title card which read, “Our Ruined World”. The episode began by panning in on Gumball's house with the sound of Gumball and his step-brother, Darwin, arguing about a paper they had to write for school. When the two bickering brothers actually came into view, it could already be seen that something was not quite right. The animation was very poorly drawn, and the lip syncing would often not match up with what they were saying. In addition, the audio sounded like it had been recorded with a cheap cell phone microphone. I was about to change the channel until I heard the words, “That's the dumbest idea ever! With ideas like that, you'll make our paper go down quicker than the twin towers” emerge from Gumball's mouth. I was shocked by what I had just heard.
“Did they just make a joke about 9/11?” I thought to myself. A joke like that would definitely offend a lot of people in general, let alone making a joke like that in a children's cartoon! Appalled, yet intrigued by this I continued watching.
The next scene cut to Gumball's school, with the crude animation still prevalent. Gumball was walking down the hallway on his way to one of his classes. He walked for an unusually long amount of time. If I had to make a guess, I would say that he was walking down the hallway for about a minute and half. There was absolutely no dialogue, no music, and no sound. Not even the sound of his footsteps. Just him walking for roughly a minute and a half. I'm surprised that I didn't just change the channel after thirty seconds of him walking. When he finally arrived to his classroom there was no one there except for his teacher. The teacher immediately questioned Gumball about his report. Gumball nervously told the teacher that he did not have it finished yet. The teacher said in a disappointed tone, “Gumball, I expected more from you. Penny was able to write an excellent paper about Hurricane Katrina, and Tobias wrote an even better paper about the effects of the Haiti Earthquake. If they could put something that nice together, how come you couldn't?”
Gumball simply apologized and took a seat in the empty classroom. The teacher then began teaching a lesson, as if she were teaching it to a full class. I was obviously confused by this, but didn't really take too much note of it since I was once again shocked that they would mention heavy subjects such as natural disasters. All throughout the episode more things like this happened. More devastating events were mentioned, and each one shocked me just as much. I won't bore you with the details just yet, but the final scene of the show surprised me the most.
The final scene began with Gumball sitting on the couch at his house looking upset. An exhilarated Darwin ran into the room and grabbed the remote. Gumball asked him what he was doing, and Darwin replied with, “I just got the perfect idea for our paper!” He turned on the TV, and what was displayed on the television appeared to be real people walking on the streets of Japan. It took me a minute to notice, but the audio lapsed over it was audio from the news broadcast during the Japan earthquake and tsunami. I found myself almost scared the continue watching. A large wave could be heard approaching in the background, but before we could see it, the show just cut to static.
Relieved, yet curious I wondered if this was really the end of the show. I sat there for a while just waiting to see if the show would come back on. After about three or four minutes the static came to an end and the next TV show aired. There were no credits to the previous show I had just been watching or anything. It simply just aired the next cartoon. Somewhat unnerved by this I played a video game until I forgot about the episode, and then went to sleep.
Thinking back to this entire event, it really was a traumatizing experience. Ever since it happened I have asked many people if they have ever seen the episode, and none of them have. Everyone I bring it up to just thinks I am lying. I am completely oblivious to how such an episode could have been aired. It is disturbing enough that such events were brought up in a children's cartoon, but there is something even more unnerving about this.
There was one scene in the episode where Hurricane Sandy was brought up. Keep in mind that I saw this episode in January of 2012. Hurricane Sandy happened in October of 2012, months after I saw this episode. The same can be said for the Sandy Hook incident, and the Boston Bombing. They were both mentioned in this episode, and actually happened later in time.
But the one thing that really bothers me about this is not the events depicted in the episode that have already happened, but the events depicted that have not happened... Yet.
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