Most people grew up with a happy little show called Pingu. It was a show that had a clay penguin named Pingu and it showed his adventures. The characters spoke some sort of penguin language.
The original show ran from 1986 to 2000. There was apparently an unreleased episode that was released a year later.
Now, this is where it starts to become interesting. When I was 5, or 6, I saw the beginning of a Pingu episode called "Pingu's Punishment". I only saw a bit of it, but what I remember was Pingu was very angry, and his mother began smashing plates. I also remember the episode was about Pingu playing around when he was supposed to be doing chores. My mother came in at the plate smashing part, shut off the TV, and told me that dinner was ready.
I was looking up the episode list on Wikipedia to find out that no episode called "Pingu's Punishment" was released.
I thought this as an adventure to myself, and I contacted trickfilmstudio, the company that made Pingu. I asked to them for a complete production guide of Pingu, they sent it to me via email. I looked at it, compared it to Wikipedia's list, and I noticed something was wrong with the final series. Half of Season 3 and the entirety of Season 4, were missing. Instead, at the bottom of the list was an episode titled "Pingu Ending". I asked for a synopsis, but they refused to give me one, stating it was personal information.
I then googled "Pingu Ending" and "Pingu's Punishment". Then, I found something. It was on rapidshare. The file's name was "Pingu's Punishment Unreleased Last Episode.zip", and I downloaded it. I went to "My Downloads" and I found the folder. It contained two files. One was a notepad file. It was titled "fear.txt", I opened it. It read:
"This is an unreleased episode of Pingu dated April 11, 2000. This originally planned to end the series, and this was actually released in some countries. Watch at your own risk.” I began to feel a bit suspicious and my heart pounded. But my curiosity overtook me. I opened the second file, an avi file that was supposedly the episode.
The 1st part was the same episode I saw when I was a kid, however something felt off. The catchy theme song from Season 3 was playing, albeit slightly distorted. The colors were also slightly darker in tone.
The episode began with Pingu and his sister Pinga playing outside. However, their mother calls them to come inside, as they were supposed to do chores. After they do a bit of laundry, they decide to bring out a trampoline into the kitchen. Pingu also brings in the ball from outside so they could continue playing.
Pinga was jumping on the trampoline, and Pingu trips on the ball. Pinga plays as usual and teases Pingu, which angers him. He throws the ball at Pinga. She dodges it but it hits a nearby switch and it turns on a fan from the ceiling. Pinga accidentally jumps into the fan blades, but the camera cuts to Pingu before I could see her get hit. A look of horror appears on his face as the sound of slicing meat can be heard off screen along with a blood curdling scream.
Suddenly, it then cut back to Pinga, now lying down on the floor, her head and an arm were ripped off. I paused it there, I felt sick. But what made me even more sick was that it wasn't clay blood. It was either food coloring or it was real. I didn’t think I remember the blood and the fan, probably because either I looked away, or I slept through it. I continued watching the video.
That was where I left off, where Pingu's mother was smashing plates, apparently in a mental breakdown, before sitting on a stool. She began crying but it started to sound like laughing, far more realistic than the cartoonish blubbering the characters usually make.
The next few minutes of the episode show an entirely different montage of horrible images of penguins and seals in what looked to be a slaughterhouse run by scientists. It showed one penguin being stunned and then being hanged upside down. The butcher slit the penguin's throat and it died from blood loss. It began showing pictures of dead penguins and seals, dead from bullets. Dead from starvation at the hands of global warming. Clips of penguins being eaten by seals and seals being eaten by sharks.
It cut back to Pingu's mother, still crying on the stool. The camera was zoomed out a bit so you could see that the trampoline and fan were still there. The fan was still spinning as well, as if the scene continued where Pinga was killed by the fan. Pingu’s mother jumped up to the fan and blood splattered everywhere. The body of Pingu's mother fell down. An old music box playing "Hush Little Baby" faintly played. I paused to go to the bathroom to vomit. I felt really nauseous and sick after witnessing what I just watched. I continued the video.
It then showed Pingu and his father seeing a therapist, apparently shaken up by the deaths of both Pingu’s mother and Pinga. Tears were swelling up in Pingu’s eyes, but eventually started to calm down. It then cut to Pingu and his father sitting at the dinner table. Supper had just been cooked, and Pingu had steak. He looked confused, and asked his father where he got the steak from. It then cut to a picture of Robbie the Seal, laying belly up with a massive hole in his body. It then went back to Pingu’s father, who then spoke, in the usual gibberish and body movements, that he got it from the store.
It then went to Pingu in his bed, with the colors even darker than before, indicating it was night time. Pingu stayed awake with his eyes open, as tears began to fill in his eyes. Images of Pinga flash on screen, causing Pingu to start banging his head on the headboard of the bed. Suddenly, there was a bone-cracking sound, and blood covered Pingu’s pillow. Pingu stopped banging and started to shake violently, as tears streamed down his face. The shaking slowed to a crawl as the episode ended.
The ending card of Seasons 1 and 2 came up, despite the fact that the Season 3 intro was used. A weird voice sang along with the theme song, saying “Thanks for tuning in to the finale. I hope you have a nice day.”
I was shocked when I saw the last few seconds of the episode. The episode in general was pretty gruesome but this last scene took it up a notch. Did Pingu just kill himself? I get it now. The title of the episode, the ending, the deaths. It was all a PUNISHMENT for Pingu. An ETERNAL punishment. Everything bad he had done up to this point finally paid off. And he will be punished for it forever.
That was when the screen went black, like a program that just came up in full screen. I could tell because I couldn’t see my Taskbar at the bottom of the screen. It then came back and showed a picture of a mask with red eyes. The mask suddenly said in a distorted tone "Your life will be all pitch black in a few seconds. You must be strong enough to watch this thing the whole way through, but maybe you're just stupid enough to watch it to begin with." Just like that, in a few seconds, my desktop froze, the lights flickered and the power went out. It came back on within a few seconds later. I was now shaking and I wanted to find the source of the film.
I got in contact with Carlo Bonomi, the voice of all the characters. I pretended it was an interview, and I talked about Pingu. I finally mentioned "Pingu's Punishment". He stopped, and he asked where I had heard that before. I explained the entire thing to him. He then told me the story.
During the production of Seasons 3 and 4 of Pingu, there was a writer and animator named Ted Goldman. Ted was a quiet man, who usually wasn't that sociable. Sometime during the middle of the season, Ted's mother had been trying to reach something from the upper shelf. The ceiling fan was on at the time, and she got decapitated as a result. Devastated by this, Ted developed “Pingu’s Punishment” over the course of five years as a reflection of that incident. He also began submitting morbid ideas, such as darker themes and blood in the series. He even asked Bonomi to do a voice of Pingu dying. Eventually, Ted found out that Pingu was wrapping overall production at the end of Season 4. He passed off the episode as the series finale. Right after they had watched the episode, Ted was being charged with animal cruelty, beastiality, and murder, and was sub sequentially fired. He left an apparent suicide note claiming he was going to live in Antarctica. However no records claimed he was ever there, and he was last spotted in Santa Barbara, California purchasing a gun. They never saw him again.
I was left shocked. I still have the episode on my computer. I decided to post it on YouTube to see what others thought about the episode. However, it was taken down almost immediately due to copyright infringement from Mattel. I had to edit it down to the last scene with Pingu in his bed, and they left it at that. I also had to leave out the parts with the mask, because I think it wasn’t a part of the episode. The ending of the episode is now on YouTube for everyone to see.
However, I still have one concern… A couple of years ago I had received an email from Bonomi, stating he had found something in his garage and had given it to me for reviewing. Attached to the email was an image, and when I opened it up, I saw one of the most gruesome things I had ever seen in my life.
There was a closeup of a dead, pale-skinned man under a lake of ice, focused on a majority of his chest so you couldn’t see his face. But there was one striking detail that still gives me chills to this day.
There, from what I can see from the blurriness, was a small hole under his chin.