The Hidden Vault

Behind Closed Doors (full title: Behind Closed Doors: Horrible, Filthy, Vile, Disgusting, Inappropriate, Off-Model Drawings by the Crew of a Popular Cartoon Show) is a book of pornographic and adult drawings of SpongeBob SquarePants characters created by the storyboard artists in the early 2000’s, mostly around 2001. The book was compiled by Sam Henderson, a former writer and storyboard director for the cartoon series. It reportedly contains 28 pages and hundreds of drawings of SpongeBob characters in adult situations, especially pornographic scenarios. While the book and its content were reserved for only the storyboard artists, some pages of the book were shown online for the first time on YouTube by YouTuber LSuperSonicQ on July 18, 2023. The full contents of the book have yet to be released to the public.

History

Around the early 2000’s, several storyboard artists would create crude and adult drawings of the SpongeBob characters on Post-It notes around the office. These drawings were apparently made just for fun by the crew members and were never meant to be seen by the public. The drawings were considered off-model since they deviated from the established style of the show and did not follow the rules set in the show’s Main Model Pack. Sam Henderson gathered all of the Post-It notes by the crew and created an entire book that was titled Behind Closed Doors. Sam then created and gave copies of the original book to the other crew members. In order to have everyone involved remain anonymous, Sam made anagrams of everyone’s name and put them on the back of the book.

Behind Closed Doors were first mentioned by Kent Osborne, a former crew member for the show, in a September 21, 2012 interview titled “The Oral History of SpongeBob SquarePants” for the online magazine Hogan’s Alley. The article is interesting in its own right with regards to the creation and production of the show, but it’s also the first mention of Behind Closed Doors. Readers and fans of the franchise who noticed this short paragraph wondered what the images could be since adult content of SpongeBob characters created by actual members of the show were virtually nonexistent at that point-excluding the three infamous drawings in the SuperSponge video game. It wouldn’t be until July 18, 2023 where several pages of the book where finally shown to the public by YouTuber LSuperSonicQ in his video titled “The Darkest SpongeBob Lost Media, Found [Behind Closed Doors].” The images were then uploaded by LSuperSonicQ to the Internet Archive and have since spread across the internet. Reaction to the images were mostly negative, especially by SpongeBob fans, due to the lewd nature of the drawings.

Censored Version of Some of the Drawings

Link to the uncensored version on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/behind-closed-doors-sponge-bob

Personal Thoughts

One of the biggest mysteries with Behind Closed Doors is not just that it exists, but that the full contents of the book have yet to surface online. It has almost been two years since several pages of the book were shown on LSuperSonicQ’s channel, but he has yet to show all of the pages of the book. Even though Behind Closed Doors was never meant to be shown publicly, myself and others are still interested in seeing the full book released online. I feel that there is something fishy (pun intended) going on behind the scenes (again pun intended) on LSuperSonicQ’s channel because he and the anonymous individual already have access to the full book, but still have not shown others the rest of the pages. Why is that? I’ve heard rumors that fans of the SpongeBob franchise love to keep valuable media related to the series for themselves and rarely share with others. Regardless of whether that is true or not, it does seem almost accurate in this case since LSuperSonicQ is an obvious fan of the series, as anyone who regularly watches his videos can tell. I’m a fan of his channel myself since I also love lost and obscure media, so it’s a little weird that he hasn’t updated the community about Behind Closed Doors.

I would love to potentially follow up with him and/or former crew members of the show to see if they have more information about Behind Closed Doors. In LSuperSonicQ’s video, he does mention that other crew members have copies of Behind Closed Doors, so maybe a full book could show up in the near future. What’s even more interesting is the existence of a master copy of Behind Closed Doors according to LSuperSonicQ’s video, as well as a couple of pages that were left out by the anonymous individual just because he considered them too disturbing to show the public for some reason. LSuperSonicQ’s secret contact also mentioned an image that featured World War II imagery, but we couldn’t see that as well. I guess it could be too disturbing, but I highly doubt it.

The thing I don’t get about all of this is that the anonymous person who reached out to LSuperSonicQ was more than comfortable with showing a portion of Behind Closed Doors to the YouTuber, but why didn’t either of them just release the full contents of the book? What harm could those images possibly have now, especially considering that the people involved have anagrams of their names and we still don’t know for certain who drew what. However, some users online have their own ideas about specific crew members tied to the book. I read online on Reddit or some other platform that former crew member C.H. Greenblatt (the creator of the Cartoon Network series Chowder) may have drawn the cover image of SpongeBob and Patrick having anal sex with Mr. Krabs. It’s just a rumor though at this time. Reaching out to former crew members, as well as to LSuperSonicQ himself, could help finally solve the mystery as to the full contents of Behind Closed Doors.

Sources

https://spongebob.fandom.com/wiki/Behind_Closed_Doors

https://lostmediawiki.com/SpongeBob_SquarePants_%22Behind_Closed_Doors%22_(partially_found_storyboard_jam_comic_of_Nickelodeon_animated_series;_2000s)

https://www.hoganmag.com/blog/the-oral-history-of-spongebob-squarepants