A Classic Internet Creepypasta (Just Got A Neat Facelift)

The SCP Foundation, short for Special Containment Protocols, is an open, collaborative horror project responsible for a large part of spooky Internet culture, as well as some equally spooky video games. The project tells common folk about the work of this secret organization attempting to contain mysterious and possibly dangerous lifeforms which were very counterproductively created by the community's very own writers. Think Men In Black but less goofy, or sometimes goofier, albeit in an unintentional manner.

This collaborative effort has influenced the very popular hit Control from 2019, as well as an official game of sorts, SCP - Containment Breach. Though SCP's list of entities, or SCPs, is now immense, it all began when one of the writers turned one of the most effortlessly eerie images on the internet into the very first creature in containment: SCP-173.

173 belongs in the Euclid class of SCPs, which means that means he's predictable but still dangerous. You know he never moves – a clever way of going around the fact that he's just a big chunk of wood, but don't let that fool you, as he'll teleport and kill anyone who dares break eye contact.

Unfortunately for the community, though, 173's likeness wasn't created by the SCP community and isn't even a real monster for those wondering. That's a photo of “Untitled” by Izumi Kato, an artist who wasn't too keen on the appropriation of his work. Though not pleased by seeing his beautiful work of art treated as if it were a monstrosity, he allowed the community to make use of 173's likeness so long as they didn't use it for commercial purposes. Kato was such a cool sport about it that the SCP community decided to disassociate the creepypasta factory's name from the artist's work.

At first, that sounded like a considerable loss for the community but it ended up inspiring fans to come out with their own reimaginings of the character that turned out creepier even than the original version.

From Trevor Henderson, we got an even more out there reinvention of the monster.

And the gold goes to David Romero's awesome animated take that cleverly shows 173's famed teleportation skills

Upon seeing that clip, it's easy to notice that the best parts of it have less to do with the original image and more with what the community drew around it. There's a really cool lesson there in regards to coming up with your own stuff versus just appropriating someone else's, and it's awesome to see that the people behind SCP saw it as well.

Top Image: Keisuke Yamamoto