The Truth Behind the Most Iconic SCP Photos

SCP Explained - Story & Animation

Have you ever wondered where the terrifying image of SCP-173 actually came from? Or the real story behind SCP-682's rotting carcass? The SCP Foundation is filled with lore and mysteries, but some of the most enduring secrets are the real-world origins of its most famous pictures. From the original 4chan post of SCP-106 (The Old Man) to the actual real-life location of SCP-096's infamous mountain photo, we're tracking down the artists, photographers, and weird internet history behind the SCP wiki's most iconic images.  LIKE & SUBSCRIBE to SCP Explained - Story & Animation  Follow us on Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@scpexplainedofficial  Join our Discord, share your SCP art, submit video feedback, chat with other fans...: https://discord.gg/scpexplained  Please let us know in the comments which SCP's we should cover next   Narrated by https://www.youtube.com/c/hitherehunter  Content relating to the SCP Foundation, including the SCP Foundation logo, is licensed under Creative Commons Sharealike 3.0 and all concepts originate from http://www.scp-wiki.net and its authors.   #scpexplained #scp #animation

Transcript

00:00The SCP Foundation is full of mysteries, but some of the most enduring mysteries of all

00:05are the sources of their most famous images, from the melting lizard to a certain infamous

00:11sculpture. Even though many SCP page images have been removed or replaced in the last few years

00:17due to copyright, the originals were around long enough to become iconic pieces of internet horror

00:22history. It's likely that many of the fan-favorite SCPs wouldn't be nearly as well known if they

00:29hadn't had those images. So today, we're giving some much-needed credit to the iconic pictures

00:35behind some of the most well-known SCPs. First, let's look at SCP-682, the hard-to-destroy

00:42reptile. This classic image of a skeletal crocodile-like head covered in strips of rotting flesh

00:48comes from a series of pictures taken on Sakhalin, an island located in the Strait of Tartary,

00:54off the coast of Russia. These pictures show multiple angles of a carcass on a beach,

00:59with one picture showing an off-screen person holding its jaws open with a large stick.

01:04They were first posted online on August 16, 2006, on the Argentinian science fiction website

01:11Axon, alongside a story about fishermen discovering the strange remains on the beach. Apparently,

01:17this story was corroborated by then-director of the Sakhalin Cultural Department, Vladimir Bedzioff.

01:22Soon after it went viral in Argentina, it was translated and reposted on cryptozoology blog

01:28Cryptomundo. The corpse was dubbed the Sakhalin Sea Wolf, and was theorized to be everything from

01:34an undiscovered species of seal to a prehistoric marine reptile. Much like the Montauk monster,

01:40the Zuyo Maru carcass, and other mysterious sea monster carcasses, the sea wolf's story fell

01:46into obscurity. Scientists examined the photos and judged that it was most likely the long-dead

01:52remains of a beluga whale. From one scary animal skull to another, now let's take a look at the

01:58source of SCP-1471, the entity summoned by the Mal-O app. This picture shows a shaggy creature

02:05with a dog skull for a face and eerie black eyes peering in through the window in what looks like

02:11the door of a classroom or office. This picture was posted, fittingly, on October 31, 2011,

02:17by a DeviantArt user called Terangriff. The creature in the picture is Terangriff's original

02:23character, Brenz the zombie werewolf, who appears in a bunch of the pictures on their account.

02:29The specific image on the SCP-1471 entry is called Don't Open the Door. As the image description

02:35explains, it was taken at the hotel while Terangriff was attending MCM London Expo. The costume was made

02:42by a company called Clockwork Creatures, who, as a fun aside, had their fursuits featured in an indie

02:48fantasy film called Bitter Lake, also in 2011. Brenz the zombie werewolf is also the page header for

02:56Clockwork Creatures' website, so it's clear that the SCP-1471 page has brought them a lot of new site

03:02traffic. Good for them. But you know what would be good for you? Subscribing to SCP Explained, where

03:09you'll find tons of fascinating videos about the world of the SCP Foundation, just like this one.

03:14Anyway, it's time to get to some of the really creepy pics. Now let's take a look at SCP-106,

03:22The Old Man. One oft-repeated rumor about the image's origin is that it was a heavily edited

03:27version of a famous picture taken in the trenches of World War I of a shell-shocked soldier looking at

03:33the camera with a very creepy grin. This has been debunked. The real source of the Old Man image

03:39was found very recently thanks to some tireless detective work from the SCP community on Reddit.

03:45Dr. Gears, who posted the SCP-106 entry in 2010, said when asked that he found the picture on 4chan,

03:52where he used to just scroll through and save images for future use. Through a combination of

03:58reverse image searching and examining the picture's metadata, the original 4chan post was tracked down.

04:04When uncropped, it became evident that this photo was actually of a painting. Then the search became

04:09trying to track down the name of the artist behind it. Eventually, Reddit user MonstersOnScreen

04:15was able to track down the first-ever instance of the picture being posted online, which led them

04:20to the name of the artist. On August 16th, 2007, an artist by the name of Christopher Goodman

04:26posted the image on his Facebook page. Even though the painting was posted in 2007,

04:31it was painted sometime around 2001 or 2002. Another painting that will be immediately

04:37recognizable to SCP Foundation fans is SCP-1155. This SCP is an entity that resembles a human body

04:45with an owl's head, which hunts by stalking the streets disguised as a piece of street art.

04:51It can appear anywhere where there's a blank wall, and brutally kills its prey with its claws and talons.

04:56The current page image is a photoshopped artwork made by SCP Wiki user Eddie Bird, but the original

05:03was painted by New York-based muralist Gaia Street Art. The piece is appropriately called

05:08Predator, and was painted onto the stoop of a building near a bus stop. In Gaia's own words,

05:14here was the intention behind the artwork. A lot of image-based street art interventions simply

05:19recede into the environment and go relatively unnoticed. The powerful and potentially inflammatory

05:24gesture of the artists imposing themselves illegally is seen almost as a parody for most people hardly

05:29recognizing the existence of the poster. Yet the poster is setting a trap, luring viewers in,

05:35beckoning them to sit and notice. While we can't say for how long Predator was up before the building's

05:41owners noticed it, the image of it that used to be on the SCP-1155 article is thankfully still up

05:47on

05:47Gaia's Flickr account. Next is SCP-1981, Ronald Reagan Cut Up While Talking. This SCP is a Betamax

05:55recording of the Empire of Evil speech that Reagan gave to the National Association of Evangelicals in

06:00Orlando, Florida in 1983. Over the course of the tape, Reagan sustains various wounds from no clear

06:07source, and the speech becomes increasingly incoherent and disturbing. The nature of his

06:12injuries and the speech change every time the tape is watched, and watching it can trigger bad dreams

06:17and paranoia. The page image for SCP-1981 is a series of screenshots showing Ronald Reagan at various

06:24stages of decay. These pictures were made specifically for the SCP page by SCP-Wiki user and

06:30author of the SCP-1981 article, DigiWizard, who edited screenshots from a recording of the actual

06:37Empire of Evil speech. The title of the SCP, Ronald Reagan Cut Up While Talking, is a reference to a

06:43song called George Bush Cut Up While Talking by Montreal-based post-rock collective Godspeed You,

06:49Black Emperor. The track is from their 2002 album Young Qui UXO, and samples of the

06:54collage of random words and syllables from a speech originally given by George W. Bush.

07:00SCP-087 is an infinite staircase located on an unspecified university campus. According to the

07:07wiki entry, the staircase is completely pitch black the whole way down. The further you descend,

07:12the more you start to hear strange voices crying and whispering somewhere in the distance. If that's

07:18not scary enough, in most explorations of the staircase, D-class personnel have run into an entity

07:23known as SCP-087-1, a ghostly face in the darkness with no nostrils, no mouth, and blank white eyes.

07:31The picture of the infinite staircase itself is a composite of two separate pictures. The right

07:36half of the image comes from a photo of a stairwell in Turner Hall, a building on the Offit Air

07:42Force

07:42Base in Nebraska, USA, and was taken by photographer Josh Plugger in 2007. The left side of the stairwell

07:49is taken from an apartment building in Liev, Ukraine. As for the image for SCP-087-1, the source

07:56is a little more mysterious. It's often claimed to be from an Amiga demo called De Profundis. In actuality,

08:03De Profundis wasn't released until 2019, long after the SCP-087 article was written. The confusion comes from

08:10the fact that the original 087 image and the face from De Profundis are both based on the same

08:15thing, a creepy and very realistic sculpture called Nil by Australian artist Sam Jinks. And then there's

08:23a personal favorite of ours, SCP-082, an abnormally tall, strong, and apparently immortal cannibal who

08:30has a penchant for fine dining and spinning tales about his life that are very obvious lies. Even though

08:36the original page image had a black box over his eyes, the original page image for Fernand the

08:41cannibal was pretty obviously a picture of French professional wrestler Andre the Giant. You might

08:46assume that image was taken from one of his wrestling promos, or maybe The Princess Bride, his most famous

08:52acting role, but it's actually from a slightly more obscure source, a commercial for Honeycomb Cereal that

08:58aired on American TV back in the 1980s and 90s. In the commercial, Andre plays a fairytale-style

09:04giant who reaches into a kid's treehouse to steal their cereal, giving us that immediately recognizable

09:11shot of him with his mouth wide open and his hands reaching towards the camera. After this picture was

09:16removed for copyright concerns, the image that replaced it was a heavily edited photo of a statue

09:22of the Cave Troll from the Lord of the Rings, which stands outside the Weta Workshop Studio and offices

09:27in Wellington, New Zealand. One of the creepiest images in any SCP Foundation article is the image

09:34hidden within the addendums on SCP-1875, the antique chess computer. This SCP is based on the Mechanical

09:42Turk, a clockwork automaton built in the 1770s that was designed to be able to beat a human at chess.

09:49Audiences at the time thought that they were witnessing the first-ever intelligent machine,

09:54but of course, this machine was a total scam. The robot was actually controlled by a human

09:59chess master hidden underneath the table. But for our purposes here, given that this is the SCP

10:04Foundation, the truth behind SCP-1875 is much more gruesome. It's explained that this chess-playing

10:11automaton is powered by the preserved brains of the twin daughters of a Russian chess prodigy,

10:16and the pieces of the chess set are carved out of their bones. During testing of the

10:21antique chess computer, all personnel present received a highly corrupted email at the same

10:25time. It contained a stretched and distorted black-and-white photo of the two teenage girls.

10:31Unlike the other images on this list so far, the source of the original image is unknown.

10:36It was likely a creepy Photoshop edit that had been circling around the internet before the SCP-1875

10:43article was written. The new image is a heavily edited picture of two girls on a roller coaster

10:48taken from the website for a theme park in Queensland, Australia called Aussie World.

10:54SCP-096 is one of the most iconic characters the SCP Wiki has ever produced. It has appeared absolutely

11:00everywhere and became almost a mascot for the SCP Foundation over the years. So of course, we have to

11:07include the sources for some of the most famous pictures associated with this iconic anomaly.

11:12SCP-096 is a tall, thin, humanoid creature who constantly tries to keep its face covered and flies

11:19into an unstoppable rage if anyone anywhere on Earth sees its face. This even goes for photographs,

11:26no matter how distant or pixelated they are. The page image for SCP-096 is a picture of a hiker

11:32standing in a snowy mountain range with a circle drawn around a few pixels in the background.

11:38According to the article, those pixels are the distant face of SCP-096, and the hiker in the photo

11:44looking at it after it was developed was enough to trigger the creature's rage state. The original image

11:49of the hiker in the mountains was posted by SCP Wiki user Dr. Dan in 2010, but as you can

11:55probably guess

11:56by this point, the original source is unknown. However, while we might not know who took the

12:01photo, we do know where it was taken. The location in the picture has been identified as Zero Point

12:07in Sikkim, India. Zero Point is the last stop accessible to civilians before the border with China,

12:13and it's a popular spot for tourists to take photos. If you've ever spent time looking at paranormal

12:19videos on TikTok, you'll probably have heard of the knot deer. In real life, those creepy deer can

12:25usually be explained by a chronic wasting disease, but in the SCP universe, these are instances of

12:31SCP-6448. These are anomalously intelligent bipedal deer that mimic voices and stalk humans through the

12:38Appalachian wilderness. The page image for this SCP is described as 6448 instance imitating a non-anomalous

12:46deer. It's an admittedly pretty unsettling trail cam image of a stag cautiously observing the camera as

12:52it walks by. The image came from a flicker gallery of a woman named Lisa Zins from Mount Juliet,

12:58Tennessee. It was uploaded in 2015. In addition to this and other eerie night vision shots of the deer

13:04in her area, there are also plenty of daytime shots which are much cuter. Now we've saved the best for

13:11last. The SCP image that started it all. SCP-173 was the first SCP article ever written, and was posted

13:20to 4chan

13:21before the SCP wiki even existed. SCP-173 is a statue that must be observed at all times by direct

13:28eye contact,

13:29or else it will kill whoever is nearby by snapping their neck. The original image, which has been removed but

13:35remains in

13:36circulation in fan works and reproductions, shows a humanoid statue with green and red markings on its

13:41face and strange childlike proportions positioned up against the wall in a blank, dirty room. This statue,

13:48called Untitled 2004, was made by Japanese artist Izumi Kato and was created using wood, charcoal, and acrylic

13:55paint. Untitled 2004 is pretty typical of Kato's art style. His body of work is made up of sculptures

14:02and paintings that depict similar distorted childlike figures with painted faces. As for why he made

14:08Untitled 2004, Kato provides little explanation for what any of his art means, preferring to challenge

14:14his audience with deliberate ambiguity. These are just a few of the hundreds of images that have been

14:19attached to SCP Foundation articles over the years. Even though the sources for many of them have sadly

14:25been lost to time, fans are discovering new image sources every day. Let us know down in the comments

14:30which SCP image you're most curious about the origin of. Now check out SCP-715, Selfies Are Terrifying,

14:38My Face That I May Be, or SCP-096-Tail, Picture Perfect, for more.

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