SCP Foundation/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alternate Character Interpretation: SCP-076-2 is constantly bored unless killing something, can produce an infinite quantity of weapons, and respawns on death. He is a videogame character.
  • Base Breaker:
    • SCP-579, "[DATA EXPUNGED"]: Is either [DATA EXPUNGED] or [DATA EXPUNGED]. There isn't much middle ground.
      • To clarify, some believe it's a perfect demonstration of exactly what makes most SCPs scary, while others believe it's incredibly hamfisted and lacking in a "hook" to draw the reader in.
    • SCP-076, "Able": People either hate Able as an overpowered reminder of the Foundation's early days or think it's a well-written article demonstrating the hubris of the Foundation
    • SCP-085, "Cassy": Moeblob who has her every wish tended to by the Foundation or a good-natured entity stuck in a horrifyingly lonely and alienating existence?
    • Are We Cool Yet?: People tend to either despise them as douchey hipster warlocks who plaster their inane catchphrase on everything or love them as a new and fresh Group of Interest with a disorganized, guerilla art mentality that allows for plenty of possibility. The tendency of some authors to needlessly shoehorn in an AWCY reference into random articles has not helped.
    • SCP-789-J, the butt ghost!!: A joke article considered either very hilarious, or embarrassingly immature.
  • Complete Monster:
    • Guest Researcher Dr. W, who "tested two children on SCP-682. Dr. Clef tested him on SCP-682 after.
    • SCP-953 is a bloodthirsty kumiho (Not kitsune) whose acts of villainy include convincing a mother to roast and eat her child, raped the corpse of an agent's wife (Who was forced to watch), and carried out the brutal and systematic slaughter of a lot of furries at a Yiff-Con.
    • SCP-352 is a Baba Yaga who captures people in webs made of her hair and slowly kills them by eating them. It's noted that she especially loves infant flesh.
    • SCP-089. It even has an inscription that says so.
    • SCP-106 is possibly the most sadistic of the horrors that the Foundation contains. It decays and rots whatever is around it, and will induce this in its victims... but not before trapping them in an alternate dimension where it cripples them, and hunts them down before killing them over a period ranging from several hours to a couple of days. It also loves how screaming sounds, to the point where if it escapes, it will only come back if it hears the screams of a male D-Class personnel's femur being broken. Egh.
    • SCP-993 has served as a corrupter towards humanity since the dawn of time, with its latest attempt being through a TV Show where a clown teaches children to indulge in things like stalking, murder, arson, cannibalism, and torture.
    • As a rule, the D-Class Personnel involved with Procedure 110-Montauk have to be this as the Foundation's staff looks for some of the most morally depraved criminals out there to perform the act.
  • Crazy Awesome: Many of the better-known researchers swing back and forth between this and just plain crazy. Some of the more notable moments:
  • Early Installment Weirdness: The earliest SCPs written, like 173 and 004, are very different in tone and format than what the writers later adopted as the site's definitive style.
  • Fan Nickname: Radical Larry for SCP-106. Radical Larry is a figure from a popular picture on the internet who can vibrate through walls and can burrow underground, which is much like the behavior of SCP-106.
  • First Installment Wins: SCP-173 is the first SCP, which may be why 682 is afraid of it.
  • Gannon Banned: It's "SCP". Not "SPC". (If you make the typo, someone's bound to joke that it means "Shark Punching Center".)
  • Hype Backlash: 682 and Able are almost reviled by some members for being so ridiculously popular. It doesn't help that they're the leading causes of Broken Base on the site, either.
  • Internet Backdraft: When livejournal SCP Foundation was created, Dr Bright (the admin) wanted to join in the fun. That did not end well.
    • A short summary, as the page is (possibly permanently) down: the original creator and player of Dr. Bright joined a fan-RP of the SCP Foundation as a player. Later someone joined the RP with a character he didn't like. Despite only being a player himself, Bright decided to tell the other player his character was not acceptable and that even if he were "allowed" to play it, the IC Dr. Bright would kill him out of hand at the first opportunity. The actual mods of the community informed Bright that it was not his place to approve or deny characters, nor was he allowed to kill someone's character without their permission. Bright condescendingly replied that his IC authority (and obviously superb taste and creativity) translated into OOC authority, and they'd better just learn to deal with it. They dealt with it by banning him.
  • Jerkass Woobie:
    • One interpretation of 682, if you think about it from its point of view. Not only is it surrounded by creatures which, to its eyes, are so completely disgusting it can't bear to be near them without attacking them, but they keep it in an acid bath to stop it doing so and only take it out to perform painful, humiliating, and (in the case of its reaction to SCP-173) terrifying experiments on it.
    • Possibly 661, depending on your point of view.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Dr. Clef
  • Marty Stu: parodied by SCP-10101 and SCP-777-J.
    • Averted with SCP-076-2. Despite being (some argue) overpowered and (everyone agrees) a total badass, Able is not written as likable in any way, is not always victorious, is not the center of attention, and is not (thankfully, or there'd be a lot of badfic) capable of forming relationships. The wiki has an unofficial Mary-Sueness threshold called "The Able Line"--if a humanoid SCP is more of a superherobeing than Able, it probably sucks. Also, Able turns out to be a homicidal maniac who now hates everything.
    • Deconstructed with SCP-056, a being that changes its form to always be better than everyone/everything else present -- among dogs, it appears as a bigger/fancier/better-groomed dog; given an IQ test, it scores 30 points higher than the smartest person in the room; in a gym, it can always lift 30 lbs more than the strongest person in the room; with no one present, it'll focus on the surveillance camera and turn into a better one. Anyone talking to it for too long usually ends up violently hating it. Its incredible narcissism doesn't help.
    • It has gotten to the point that the Foundation will not use it against SCP-682 for fear of there now being an even stronger SCP-682 let loose in the world, and it has been in the termination of one of the aforementioned Marty Stu characters.
    • Played straight with SCPs such as 316-D, who are blatant self inserts. They used to be promptly terminated in amusing reports such as this, but nowadays they're just deleted.
    • The decomming of aforementioned self-inserts actually started birthing others - namely, the researchers, who gave themselves god-like competence in order to deal with them. While those over-the-top adventures are still in continuity, the writers are trying really hard to avoid that sort of writing in the future.
    • Despite the creator's numerous protests to the contrary, Dr. Bright is a glaring and continuing example. The fact that the writer/player actually uses "Dr. Bright" as his handle everywhere he goes should be a tipoff. The fact that the creator's rather odious personality causes constant clashes with the other moderators is probably all that's stopped him from turning it into The Dr. Bright Foundation.
  • Memetic Badass and Memetic Mutation: If there's one SCP you're going to remember (and fear), it's SCP-682, the unkillable, human-hating... thing. Its Termination Log is one of the longest pages on the site... and it's still going.
  • Memetic Mutation: From two particularly terrible SCPs:
    • The test subject's teeth became "shark" [1]
    • If unsure, check with an alchemist. [2]
    • "SPC" (a frequent misspelling of SCP by newbie authors) is taken to mean "Shark Punching Center".
    • "It's 'Secure, Contain, Protect', not 'Destroy, Destroy, Destroy!'."
    • "Anyone caught doing [REDACTED] will be demoted to D-class and given Keter duty."
    • Overused SCP concepts are often sorted in the discussion pages into categories of "Thing what": "Thing what make you evil", "Thing what make you crazy", "Thing what make you crazy and dead", "Thing what give you superpowers (and then make you dead)", and so on.
  • Moral Event Horizon:

"SCP-590 is not to be named as anything other then Five Ninety. He is a tool to be used, not someone's friend, sibling, or child."

    • The worst part is that he technically is someone's sibling. And not just anybody's sibling; he's Dr. Bright's. In case you didn't click the link, Dr. Bright is in a high enough position in the Foundation that there are roughly even odds that he personally wrote the above line. Yeah.
    • Their dealings with 352 are more worrying. 352 is Baba Yaga; carnivorous, strong, fast, tough, fond of human flesh, and rated Keter for her aggression. It's been discovered that while she likes human flesh, she prefers the flesh of young infants. They are considering altering her diet to accommodate this fact.
      • Altering 352's diet isn't so horrifying when you consider that SCP-604 can turn normal food into infant flesh. So, theoretically, they won't need to go kidnap (or breed) children for 352.
  • MST3K Mantra: any contributor who asks the senior staff about some of the more questionable aspects of the setting's Backstory - like where the Foundation keeps getting like Class D personnel (even in the United States, there are only so many people serving life sentences/on death row), or where do they keep getting the billions of dollars that would logically be necessary to keep everything running - will be greeting with this. If the contributor catches them on a good day, he or she may get a Hand Wave explanation, but even then, they will urge the contributor not to overthink it too much.
    • Note that the Foundation has been successfully using clones (and humans made from scratch) of and for D-Class personnel, not to mention that personnel who fuck up are demoted to D-Class.
    • There is mention of using political prisoners from dictatorships.
  • Nausea Fuel: Your imagination filling in the details for the DATA EXPUNGED bits on the really creepy SCPs.
    • The uncensored report for SCP-835 also qualifies. Urghh...
      • SCP-835 has got nothing, nothing on SCP-610.
    • 25% of casualties among soldiers sent to explore 835 were due to "aspiration of vomit" and suits were specially designed with equipment to counter any further deaths by said cause. They had to specially design diving suits so that when people vomited in them out of sheer disgust, they wouldn't drown in their own vomit and die.
  • Nightmare Retardant: Joke SCPs.
    • Humorous "Added notes" regarding why the Doctors are no longer able/allowed to do so-and-so or a humorous event happening (often with commentary along the lines of "Seriously, what the hell, people?") can lighten up otherwise dark articles.
      • On the other hand, humorous addenda are increasingly frowned upon, precisely because they take away from the scary.
    • Reading the entry for a genuinely frightening SCP can have its impact taken away when you move on to an indestructible pizza box.
    • Seeing pictures of the sculpture that originated SCP-173, by Japanese artist Izumi Kato, who seems to really love the thing. Or another of his creations.
    • A few come from the 99Rooms, and so seem less scary when you know what they really are.
  • Paranoia Fuel:
    • Aside from the obvious, Class D personnel can be recruited from the general population if they run out of condemned prisoners. It is, of course, still debated.
    • SCP-966 ("Sleep Killer"). They are invisible, they hunt humans, and they can be found all over the world.
    • SCP-112-ARC is an Artifact of Doom activated in the presence of any non-virgin or non-castrated person. And it has been stolen by Muslim terrorists.
    • Think that it would be bad if some of the SCPs got out and caused The End of the World as We Know It? This short story suggests that it has already happened.
      • Multiple times.
    • SCP-198. You'll be picking up cups very gingerly for the next week or so.
  • Ruined FOREVER: Apparently a chat conversation (reposted here) ruined SCP-033. SCP-033, aka Theta Prime, is the Missing Number, and in the chat log, [REDACTED] said that MISSING NUMBER -> MISSINGNO.
  • Squick:
    • SCP-058
    • SCP-231
    • SCP-562
    • SCP-597
    • SCP-610
    • SCP-835
    • And others, especially if you wonder what's behind all those ████████ and [DATA EXPUNGED]s.
    • One Bad Mother, written by Dr. Mann. Combining Mister Seahorse with Herr Chirurg, two-into-one body grafting and one of the most mentally depraved individuals the Foundation boasts was sure to lead to a lot of vomiting. It's played for laughs, though, and non-canon because no way in hell would the Foundation allow anyone (specifically two men) to start an active relationship with an SCP like Herr Chirurg, let alone bear their child. But still...
  • Seasonal Rot: Over time the site has become less about "using a clinical tone to tell creative and interesting/frightening stories" and more about "how to write a proper SCP article". Things that were original guidelines about how to write a good SCP are now treated more as rigid, unyielding rules. This has resulted in old, well-liked articles suddenly being downvoted into destruction because they no longer meet these standards, and newer articles being far more bland and flat than what they're replacing.
  • Tear Jerker: Let's start with some of the images from SCP-978, which allows you to see what the subject of its photos wants most. The "horse" whose touch causes deadly rashes just wants to be pet, loved, and ridden upon by humans who are unharmed by it. 590 is screaming inside. Cassy wants to be 3-dimensional. 451 wants to be re-united with the rest of the SCP agents. 492 wants to be human. 811 wants to be human again. The living tank wants to be so unnecessary that plants grow on him.
    • The last one is more of a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming, in this troper's opinion.
    • During the re-containment of SCP-096, the soldier that secured 096 found it in the remains of a minivan. After debriefing on the incident, he committed suicide. They found a crushed pacifier in his hand.
    • Not everyone in the foundation is a robot.
    • Unimaginable though it may be, Procedure 110-Montauk is, without a doubt, horrible. And it is being done, day after day, to SCP-231, a young pregnant girl and the victim of a Satanic sex cult who did nothing to deserve it. The fact that it must be done to prevent the Eldritch Abomination she carries from destroying the planet makes it even worse. No wonder some of the people who work with her either take amnesia-inducing drugs or commit suicide.
    • The document recovered from the Marianas Trench.
  • The Woobie:
    • SCP-042. A formerly winged horse, now in suicidal depression.
    • SCP-187 is a seer. Specifically, she sees whatever significant changes the things she's looking at will undergo. She had to be fed intravenously for months because whenever she looked at food, she saw it digested.
    • SCP-191. A technopathic cyborg, sounds awesome, right? Except the implementation of her enhancements was... experimental, at best...
    • SCP-231-7. Please note: she's a child. Or at least she looks like one - there's no way of proving she's the genuine article.
    • SCP-085 ("Cassy"), thanks to accidental exposure to the report on her nature, is now fully aware of her 2D status and her subsequent limitations. She immediately became clinically depressed at the realization as to how lonely she really was.
    • SCP-1324. An extraordinarily sensitive anteater that is harmed by even the faintest of stimuli, but just wants to be friendly to the personnel
    • SCP-590. A young man who has the power to heal injuries, both mental and physical, with a touch, taking them into himself. The first thing the Foundation does is infect him with mental retardation to keep him pliable, then strap him to a hospital bed and start using him as a disease repository to clean out personnel who get sick. This was done by Dr. Bright, who is SCP-590's brother.
    • SCP-959. A perfectly nice, normal guy who everyone sees as whatever upsets them the most. He's just as distressed by people's reactions to this as you'd expect. Despite the fact that he's willingly cooperating with the Foundation, they've still had to put him on antidepressants because the social isolation is getting to him so badly.
    • SCP-135 is a young girl who promotes rapid, uncontrolled cell growth around her. She is always in fetal position, has never been observed to move, and is continuously being buried under a mass of plant/fungal matter and micro-organisms. Her organs are ruptured, and she has no skin. And EEGs have "confirmed full brain activity." When she was found, she was in a ball of growth with her biological mother. Her mother was covered in cancerous cells, presumably caused by SCP-135. Considering the permanent torture she is going through, the fact that she is conscious for all of it, and that she must be going through some serious guilt for presumably unintentionally killing her own mother, it's hard to not weep for her a little.
      • Read the article closer and we learn that she's was like that since before she was born She might not even understand what happened, since she never left her mother's womb.
    • SCP-507 is an Everyman who periodically shifts into alternate earths every two weeks or so. These are rarely pleasant places. When he shifts back, he is usually curled into a ball crying.
    • SCP-1951. A non-malicious entity of living radiation. Unable to interact with regular people (as a few unlucky guards found out), he apparently made himself a family. A wife, and a few kids... which were wiped out by Gv20 EMP grenades, due to the increased levels of radiation they were producing. The poor guy left a last message, and hasn't appeared again since.

You’ve left Aleksey all alone.

Back to SCP Foundation
  1. ↑ See this page, specifically the section "The Ring, Part II"
  2. ↑ From this SCP which had the dubious honor of being the subject of the first decommission in quite a while.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/SCP_Foundation/YMMV?oldid=1916537"