The Ugly Barnacle

The most unforgettable scene from The Film of the Book.

"Once, there was an ugly barnacle. He was so ugly that everyone died. The End."

—The opening and ending lines

"The Ugly Barnacle" is a short story Within the Show of SpongeBob SquarePants. During the episode, one Patrick Star improvised "The Ugly Barnacle" in an attempt to cheer up his friend, a Mr. SpongeBob SquarePants, who was suffering from a case of the ugly at the time. Unfortunately and predictably, the story didn't help at all.

This actually is a tropable work of Minimalism, though maybe not tropable to the extent we've seen here. The tale is a great example of a Shoot the Shaggy Dog Story; the entire text is quoted above.

Experience this work of art here -- and now in Spanish!

Tropes used in The Ugly Barnacle include:

• Affectionate Parody: Of "The Ugly Duckling".
• All Just a Dream: Sort of. In the end, it turns out to to be a story Patrick was telling in SpongeBob SquarePants.
• The Aloner: If the barnacle didn't die in the end, he probably became one of these.
• And Man Grew Proud: One interpretation of the barnacle, of how it became ugly enough to kill everyone and of how, and why, we still tell its harrowing tale.
• Apocalypse Wow: See above.
• Artifact of Doom: Another interpretation of the barnacle.
• The Bad Guy Wins: The ending could be this, assuming the barnacle is evil.
• Barnacle of Mass Destruction
• Beautiful Void
• Beauty Equals Goodness: And conversely, ugliness equals evil.
  • Possibly inverted if one considers the Barnacle to be the hero of the story and everyone else to be irredeemable bullies.
  • Alternately, it could be an exaggeration by showing the aforementioned counterpart to the trope.
• Beige Prose: The barnacle's plight is narrated in the most blunt manner possible.
• Bittersweet Ending: Another interpretation of the ending. Everyone died but at least they don't live in a world with an ugly barnacle.
• Black Comedy: To some, the story is a hilarious nihilistic take on children's stories. Your Mileage May Vary.
• Character Title: The titular Ugly Barnacle.
• Chekhov's Gun: Early in the story, Patrick mentions that the barnacle is ugly. The barnacle's ugliness kills everyone later on.
• Cosmic Horror Story: If mere BARNACLES are enough to Kill'Em All, imagine what other things in the ocean are able to do.. Not a lot, since they're all dead.
• Crapsack World and/or Crap Saccharine World: In the Barnacleverse, the existence of a single unattractive crustacean is enough to trigger the Apocalypse. Despite this, Patrick narrates the tale like a bedtime story, and originally told it as an attempt to cheer up Spongebob.
• Cruel Twist Ending: Without giving too much away, the ending is pretty merciless.
  • Technically unspecified.
• Doorstopper: Possibly one of the harshest aversions of this trope in the history of fiction.
• Deconstruction: Of the traditional fairy tale where the hero can overcome his or her challenges through believing in him or herself. Instead, everyone died.
• Downer Beginning: "Once there was an ugly barnacle..."
• Downer Ending: "He was so ugly that everyone died. The end."
• Driven to Suicide: One of the many interpretations of how everyone died.
  • And, depending on you definition of "everyone", this may include the barnacle itself.
• Eldritch Abomination: Some people think that the barnacle is this.
• The End: The words that conclude the story.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: It's a story about a (maybe the) barnacle that is ugly.
• Gonk: Deconstructed.
• Fanfic Fuel: See the Fanfic Recs tab at the top of the page.
• Fractured Fairy Tale
• Genre Shift: The viewer was promised an uplifting tale of someone overcoming their appearance issues. They get it...for one sentence.
• The Grotesque: The barnacle.
• Happily Ever After: Subverted.
• Informed Deformity: We're told that the protagonist is ugly, and we're told of the ramifications of his ugliness, but it is never made clear exactly what features he has that make him so ugly.
  • Fridge Brilliance: It's possible that if we were told, we would die
• Kill'Em All: The ugly barnacle was so ugly that everyone died.
• The Juggernaut: Nobody was capable of stopping the barnacle, thus, everyone died.
• The Law of Conservation of Detail: Patrick doesn't include many non-essential details about the cast.
• Machinima: In Super Scribblenauts, one can type in 'Nuclear Ugly Barnacle', which creates an ugly barnacle, and then everybody dies.
• Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: There's never any evidence that the barnacle intends to kill everyone.
• Mind Screw: After the ending, we're left with a great big pile of unanswered questions. Just how did the Barnacle's ugliness kill everyone? Did the Barnacle himself die? Literally nothing is ever explained.
• Mood Whiplash: At first, it sounds like a charming fairy tale. At first.
• Never Say "Die": Heavily averted. In fact, it's used at least once every fifteen words.
• Minimalism
• No Dialogue Episode: At no point in the story does a character speak.
• No Hugging, No Kissing: The story features no romance at all, and instead focuses on the tragedy of everyone dying.
• Nominal Importance: The story's protagonist, the ugly barnacle, is the only character to get a name.
• No Name Given: The main character is simply known as "the barnacle" or "the ugly barnacle".
• Obliviously Evil: How some people view the barnacle.
• Offstage Villainy: Assuming that the barnacle is evil.
• One-Scene Wonder: In the SpongeBob episode the story was told in.
• Once Upon a Time: Averted. The closest the story comes to using the phrase is "Once there was an ugly barnacle."
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: This particularly eloquent adaption of the tale.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog
• Short Story: Taken to its logical extreme.
• Spiritual Successor: To the saga of Kevin the Hamster.
• Trailers Always Lie: It was set up in a way to make it seem as if it is an uplifting tale about someone overcoming the stigma of being ugly. Instead, we get a Kill Them All Downer Ending.
• Troperiffic: The story is only 13 words long (15 if you count The End), but it has 93 tropes, plus another 25 under YMMV and 25 character tropes, averaging out to 10.84 (or 9.4) tropes per word.
• True Beauty Is on the Inside: Apparently, not so much.
• Twist Ending: Be honest: Were you expecting the barnacle to kill everyone?
• Ultimate Lifeform: Arguably, the barnacle, as it was able to kill everyone.
• Undead Author: If everyone died, then how did Patrick survive to tell the story? And how did SpongeBob survive to hear it?
• Unreliable Narrator: The story was initially told by Patrick Star. Of course he would get some details wrong. And it didn't even help the person he was telling it to!
• Wham! Line: One near the very end that completely changes the direction the story was heading.

He was so ugly that everyone died.

• What Do You Mean It's Not Didactic?: Invoked, Exaggerated and of course Played for Laughs
• What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: Surprisingly averted. Not only is the barnacle portrayed sympathetically, but the story even implies that it's possible for barnacles to be cute.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: The Barnacle, arguably.

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The End.

"That didn't help at all!"