The Hidden Vault

Freddi Fish and the Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds is another game that I remember fondly from my early childhood. For those of you not familiar with the game, Freddi Fish and the Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds is a point-and-click edutainment adventure game for children released for Windows in 1994. It was created by Humongous Entertainment, Inc. and was actually their first game for Windows. Freddi Fish and the Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds was also the first game in the Freddi Fish series and it would prove to be a massive hit with young gamers, myself included. I can still remember the fun of clicking on various objects and characters in an attempt to see a fun interaction. However, unbeknownst to myself and many others, this seemingly innocent game was hiding a dark secret underneath its waves.

The plot of Freddi Fish involves the eponymous hero, Freddi, and her best friend, Luther, trying to find Grandma Grouper’s kelp treasure full of kelp seeds which has been stolen. Failure to find these seeds would result in the starvation and eventual death of all the fish folk. Along their adventure, the two fishes stumble (or swim upon) an electric eel named Eddie. In the normal gameplay version, Freddi cunningly gives her only peanut butter and jellyfish sandwich to Eddie, who enjoys the sandwich so much that he decides to let the two heroes continue their journey unscathed. Below is the video of a walkthrough of the entire game (The scene starts at 15:25 and lasts until 16:20. This is the normal cutscene with Eddie the Eel in the final release of the game).

Below is the infamous “Eddie eats Luther” scene.

As you can see, the scene plays normally at first, but this time the player can click on Luther to trigger a new cutscene. The new event that plays involves Freddi offering up Luther as a snack to Eddie, instead of the peanut butter and jellyfish sandwich. Eddie then proceeds to eagerly consume poor Luther, with animated drops of blood accompanying the violent interaction. Satisfied, Eddie then leaves in the same manner as if he had received the peanut butter and jellyfish sandwich. After Eddie leaves the scene, Freddi then makes a funny face towards the viewer, apparently oblivious and unconcerned with willingly killing her best friend in the adventure. Afterwards, Luther is shown again next to Freddi and asks her what she is thinking about, to which Freddi replies “Oh, nothing, Luther”.

The whole scene with Freddi offering up Luther to Eddie and then watching Eddie devour Luther to bloody bits was just Freddi’s imagination the entire time. This makes the cutscene somewhat more ominous, actually, since Freddi was just casually thinking about sacrificing Luther to Eddie just to continue on with her adventure, and then smiling and making a funny face after the deadly encounter. Even when Luther questions Freddi about her thoughts, she never tells him what she was actually thinking about.

An interesting detail about this cutscene is that it’s actually translated in multiple languages. The reasoning for this is especially weird since it’s not included in the final release of the game and can only be found in the game’s files by using a debugger application like ScummVM. The YouTube video below showcases the same scene in different languages such as in Russian, Dutch, French, Swedish, German, Hebrew, Norwegian and of course English.

It’s commonly claimed by many online that the “Eddie eats Luther” cutscene was a way to blow off steam by Tom Verre. Oh that’s right, I almost forgot to mention that this scene was created and animated by Tom Verre, who was the animator and artist for Humongous Entertainment at the time. I always like to delve deeper when discussing inappropriate or obscure media made by artists and animators, whether that be gag drawings or full animations like this one. What’s interesting to consider is that this cutscene was not just a simple vent or hate drawing by an alleged bored animator, but was fully animated, voice acted, recorded and even translated multiple times in international languages. For something that was supposedly just a way to let off some steam, Tom Verre and his team sured put in a lot of time and resources into this one quick cutscene animation. It calls into question whether they simply wanted to create a humorous scene with more adult humor and got carried away, or were exercising their creative limits with the game. It’s also worth considering as well if there are more inappropriate content made with Humongous Entertainment characters or by the company’s staff over the years.

The ScummVM Application

For those interested in seeing this cutscene and more within the game itself, by yourself, then you’re in luck! The content in the game’s files, including the “Eddie eats Luther” scene, can be viewed by using the ScummVM debugger application. ScummVM is a free and open-sourced program that allows users to run older games, such as classical point-and-click games like Freddi Fish, on modern systems, provided that users already have the original game’s data files on their system. If you want to learn more about how to setup this program, I have included a link to the ScummVM website itself for your convenience below.

https://www.scummvm.org

For those more interested in using ScummVM to view the “Eddie eats Luther” scene in the game itself, I have included a link to a Steam page with such instructions below.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=250254935

Hanging Fish Skeleton Clickpoint

Freddi Fish and the Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds also has an unused clickpoint involving a hanging fish skeleton. Clickpoints (also spelled as two words – “click points”) are any objects, areas or locations that can be clicked on to trigger events in the game. This clickpoint has three quick animations involving the fish skeleton. From what’s shown, it’s unknown how the fish skeleton clickpoint would have fit into the overall story of the game. As for its exclusion in the final release of the game, some online have speculated that the sight of a fish skeleton would have been too morbid for young players, and thus was scrapped by the game’s developers. While this is a very reasonable conclusion, and I partly agree, it could also just be that the clickpoint was a random element that was scrapped for time or simply didn’t fit within the theme of the game, as I mentioned previously.

Sources

https://humongous.fandom.com/wiki/Freddi_Fish_and_the_Case_of_the_Missing_Kelp_Seeds#Trivia

https://tcrf.net/Freddi_Fish_and_the_Case_of_the_Missing_Kelp_Seeds