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 classic Short Story in the Pacific literary canon, the authorship of which is generally attributed to one Patrick Star. According to legend, 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, the story didn't help at all.

Despite the fact that "Barnacle" failed to accomplish its initial goal, it eventually found its way to Bikini Bottom's intellectual community, which hailed the story for its harsh realism, innovative use of Minimalism, and detailed characterization. Slowly but surely, the story spread from Bikini Bottom to the rest of the world.

An animated film adaptation of the tale, also titled "The Ugly Barnacle", was produced in 2000. Unusually, the movie is both a Film Of The Book and a Biopic, as it focuses on both the legendary story and the events surrounding its creation. The film managed to avoid many problems commonly faced by page-to-screen adaptations, a fact which many critics attributed to Star's heavy involvement in the film-making process. Experience this work of art here.and now in Spanish Another film adaptation is planned for a 2014 release and will be directed by the legendary Patrick Star.

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Tropes provided by "The Ugly Barnacle":

• 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.
• Anti-Hero: Possibly.
• Anyone Can Die: And everyone does.
• Apocalypse How: Between Class 0 or 6, the latter depending on whether you interpret everyone dying as including things like plant life and bacteria.
• 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.
• Bad Powers, Bad People: Possibly.
• 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.
• Book Ends: The first three and last three lines are identical.
• Brown Note
• 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.
• Curb Stomp Battle: Nobody had any chance of stopping the Barnacle from killing everyone.
  • 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.
• Enemy to All Living Things: The barnacle. So very, very much.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The barnacle.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: It's a story about a (maybe the) barnacle that is ugly.
• Gambit Roulette: Assuming that the barnacle's actions were deliberate, there was really no way to guarantee that it would be potent enough to kill everyone.
• Gonk: Deconstructed.
• Fanfic Fuel: See the Fanfic Recs tab at the top of the page.
• Fractured Fairy Tale
• Framing Device: The rest of the episode of SpongeBob SquarePants.
• Furry Confusion: The barnacle in the story is presumably anthropomorphic, yet ordinary barnacles exist in the universe this story is set in.
  • This was never explicitly stated in the story, however, so it is currently unknown whether the barnacle is anthropomorphic or, indeed, if he is in fact the only remaining barnacle in the story's universe.
• 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.
• Helium Speech: Averted, this never comes into play.
• Infant Immortality: Averted. Everyone dies.
• 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
• Invincible Hero: It's difficult to do anything with a "hero" who can and did go up against anyone and kill them.
• Invincible Villain: If the barnacle was in fact a Villain Protagonist, then any hero would not be able to stand against it, for he would just kill them along with everybody else.
• 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.
• A Million Is a Statistic: Everyone dies.
• 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.
• Nigh Invulnerability: Considering that you can't even go near the barnacle without dying...
• Minimalism
• Nobody Poops: Either played straight or averted, depending on whether you count the emptying of bowels after death.
• 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".
• Not so Different: The barnacle is never state to be exceptionally ugly, merely that it is 'so ugly that everyone died'. It's entirely possible that it was of normal appearance, and just happened to be in exactly the correct spot on the spectrum of attractiveness that everyone died.
• Obliviously Evil: How some people view the barnacle.
• Offstage Villainy: Assuming that the barnacle is evil.
• Oh Crap: Presumably the thoughts of everyone before they died.
• Omnicidal Maniac: One interpretation of the barnacle itself.
• 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.
• Shrouded in Myth: The only source we know of concerning the barnacle is one Patrick Star.
• Spiritual Successor: To the saga of Kevin the Hamster.
• Sword of Damocles: The threat of the barnacle is enough to stop anyone from doing anything. Ever.
• The Hero Dies: Assuming he was a hero. Patrick did say that everyone died, so shouldn't that include the barnacle itself?
  • It's not specified who the hero is, but assuming one existed, we can safely assume he/she died.
• 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'Em 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!
• Villain Protagonist: Possibly.
• Walking Wasteland: Technically averted. Barnacles can't walk.
• 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.
• You Cannot Grasp the True Form: Well, you can't do it and survive...

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The End.

"That didn't help at all!"