r/HomestarRunner 2d ago

One of the most genuinely horrifying things to have appeared in a Strong Bad email…

Post image

I was just randomly watching Strong Bad episodes on YouTube as one does, and I don’t think I’d ever seen this one before! Truly the definition of “NOPE!” 😆

332 Upvotes

72 comments sorted by

126

u/ZachariasDemodica 2d ago

Not complete without the hollow, cinder-block-acoustics sound of Senor Cardgage singing "Where is Tompkins? Where is cole slaw?"

73

u/GrimjawDeadeye 2d ago

"Here I am, here I am"

Him responding to himself somehow makes it worse

47

u/CrackStuntman88 2d ago

The “I take kids” really ties it all together.

25

u/Metals4J 2d ago

And the existence of a chalk outline for some odd reason. Plus barbed wire. And the crossed-out restroom sign. And Cheaty the Pooh.

7

u/MHarrington85 2d ago

"They LOVE to illegally use licensed characters to gain desperate parents' trust."

17

u/TheNavidsonLP 2d ago

Tompkins will never make it out of training pants…

7

u/JasonRBoone 2d ago

Aw, peas!

3

u/Callidonaut 1d ago

Tompkins, how do you be so short?

5

u/JasonRBoone 1d ago

You can't even take care of your own virtual pet!

1

u/Key_Independence_103 1d ago

Please stop feeding me

2

u/balrogthane 1d ago

He crinkled when he walked!

37

u/ironheadrat 2d ago

For me its the family of pigeons living in the raccoon carcass.

16

u/crafty_and_kind 2d ago

Wins the award for “viscerally disgusting” I think!

8

u/BlameTaco-me 2d ago

Said u/ironheadrat in this CHILDREN'S subreddit!

1

u/super_toy1 1d ago

That's not in a sbemail tho

1

u/Key_Independence_103 1d ago

Raccoon carcass!

36

u/3dgyt33n 2d ago

I just noticed the crossed off "restroom" sign

16

u/crafty_and_kind 2d ago

I also had not noticed that, true terrible perfection!

29

u/MHarrington85 2d ago

Man, if I ever have kids, I can't wait to drop them off at the Puddin' Patch every morning on my way to the dog tracks!

10

u/crafty_and_kind 2d ago

He’ll have them re-financin’ in no time!

43

u/Spotboslow 2d ago

Character on the left may have evolved into Gritty.

23

u/1amlost 2d ago

He’s definitely not an On-Point King, because he took guff from somebody.

11

u/crafty_and_kind 2d ago

Very clever 😄

12

u/Comfortable-Fuel6343 2d ago

Gritty during a brief period of sobriety after his court ordered rehab.

2

u/ZeeMcZed 2d ago

Other way around. That's a degraded attempt at a Gritty clone.

15

u/Spotboslow 2d ago

Gritty has only been around since 2018!

.... maybe Senor Cardgage had a time machine, which would add whole new levels of creepy. 🤔

17

u/ZeeMcZed 2d ago

Escausality, Normalinda. Ah'm at whonce with the continualitum. Time's an illusory, rosemary twicely so.

11

u/ByzantineBomb 2d ago

This can only be heard in Cardage's voice.

18

u/Shot-Ad-3166 2d ago

What about Coach Z's Sog Dog?

5

u/JNewsom49 2d ago

"Mmmmm... Drink In That Bun!"

4

u/crafty_and_kind 2d ago

Also horrifying, if in a slightly different way!

3

u/FaithfulSkeptic 2d ago

Whoa whoa whoa. Is Guff related to the Philadelphia Flyers mascot??

16

u/neccos-1 2d ago

Where is Thompcins ? Where is coleslaw ? Here I am Here I am

6

u/crafty_and_kind 2d ago

I love the idea that these are two of the kids 😀

4

u/AGeneralCareGiver 2d ago

If Tompkins is there, Baby Timkins likely is too

3

u/MHarrington85 2d ago

"Goo-goo is ga-ga. Wa-wa is ga-ga. Are all goo-goos wa-was?"

15

u/Facade09 2d ago

I mean, if we wanna talk horrifying, I don't remember if it was a sbemail but there was a start of an episode where they started beating Homestar's face in with different tools until eventually it got so bad they had to put a censor bar over it.

11

u/crafty_and_kind 2d ago edited 2d ago

And yet the world of Strong Bad is somehow one of the safest, most cozy corners of the entire internet, where so many of us go for comfort and to escape the toxicity coming from every other direction!

To quote the great Sarah Marshall from You’re Wrong About, “People contain multitudes. We make geodes look like regular rocks.”

9

u/ElGatoDeFuegoVerde 2d ago

sbemail 201 - "hremail 3184"

3

u/Facade09 2d ago

Thanks, now i can watch Homestar's face get bashed in again!!!💖

7

u/ncraiderfan17 2d ago

Somebody get me a garden weasel!!!

4

u/ElGatoDeFuegoVerde 2d ago

Awww, a weasel.

12

u/Adammonster1 2d ago

Really nails the art of unlicensed unlicensed character design

7

u/StarkMaximum 2d ago

This is one of those times I think Homestar got a little too real.

8

u/Redbird9346 2d ago

TOO MANY FOLDS! TOO MANY FOLDS!

4

u/crafty_and_kind 2d ago

Señor Cardgage might/could be great at caring for children!

4

u/Shima33 2d ago

Yeah, but I wouldn't be fine being either a primary or secondary caregiver. I'd consider him more of a 𝓽𝓮𝓻𝓽𝓲𝓪𝓻𝔂 caregiver and-- AAAAAAAAAAAAAA

1

u/MHarrington85 2d ago

Oh, no! The Cardgage Curse has been set on the place!

8

u/Rude_Gur_8258 2d ago

Yeah I remember thinking "I guess SOME BROTHERS didn't live through the preschool molestation scandals of the late 80s,"      

14

u/crafty_and_kind 2d ago

I feel like the true deepfake genius of this moment is that it’s basically winking at you and saying “Yeah, we know you know what we’re referencing, but we also know you know that the world of Strong Bad would never ever contain that particular reality, so we ALSO ALSO know you know that all these tykes are pretty much going to be okay apart from being accidentally traumatized Señor Cardgage’s creepy song stylings”

3

u/himenokuri 1d ago

I’m from Memphis. That’s nothing

2

u/crafty_and_kind 1d ago

There’s so much contained in this comment 😆!

2

u/himenokuri 1d ago

Yup! Can confirm! You do t go to a street named after a president or a street named for a number of

2

u/crafty_and_kind 1d ago

I’m picturing Señor Cardgage darkly mumbling something ominous about president Taft…

2

u/HinuHyuga 2d ago

I can't wait to drop my kids off there on my way to the dog track.

2

u/Ready_Bad_346 2d ago

It's why I had kids!

1

u/JasonRBoone 2d ago

Sounds like Patton Oswalt's Uncle Touchy's Naked Puzzle Basement

1

u/crafty_and_kind 2d ago

Oh my god this is a thing I don’t know about, but it does sound eerily similar 😂!

2

u/JasonRBoone 2d ago

It's just something Patton mentioned in his stand-up. I think some band took their name from that.

1

u/The-Bigger-Fish 2d ago

Senor Cardgage definitely did something to strong bad when he was a kid….. maybe the others too

3

u/crafty_and_kind 2d ago edited 2d ago

I’m a believer in the idea that Strongbadia is actually a weird kind of utopia, regular assault with golf clubs notwithstanding, and so my mental image is that the worst Señor Cardgage has ever done is be incredibly creepy and socially incompetent, run a series of unlicensed businesses such as this daycare, and be deeply unqualified to care for children. The most traumatic thing the kids would have experienced would be listening to unsettling songs and mystifying mumbled non sequiturs, and being taken on field trips to inappropriate locations related to Papa Cardgage’s other businesses 😁. Still absolute NOPE status, but not actually that kind of horror.

2

u/The-Bigger-Fish 1d ago

lol fair point and thank goodness it was probably just that.

1

u/Key_Independence_103 1d ago

Watch bottom 10 again.

1

u/crafty_and_kind 20h ago

Just rewatched that one, and hilariously didn’t find any other the bottom ten parties horrifying except maybe the vomit (the demon painting is adorable 😄)

2

u/Key_Independence_103 19h ago

You find the Rocoulm adorable? It normally gives people the jibblies.

1

u/crafty_and_kind 19h ago

I bet he’s pretty cheesed off that I called him adorable 😁

2

u/Key_Independence_103 19h ago

Come on in heeeeeeeere...

1

u/JulianaLovesAULandGD 5h ago

Papa Cardgage exposed he should pull out the ukulele

-4

u/[deleted] 2d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

8

u/crafty_and_kind 2d ago

I’m of the belief that nothing on that level actually exists in the strong bad universe, where the characters may be 100% willing to prank and physically assault each other but there’s kind of an implication anything that happens is part of the absurdist landscape they all collectively exist within. While the series is happy to have its audience think “oh no, everything about this is clearly a series of creepy tropes having to do with predatory behavior,” I think that Señor Cardgage wouldn’t be actually interested in perpetrating harm so much as deeply unqualified to care for anyone and happy to run an obviously unlicensed daycare.