Secrets of Cartoons [Transferred from Facebook]

King of the hill Lost Episode

· · King of the Hill Lost Episode

(WARNING: Unless you have seen the OFFICIAL first episode of King of the Hill, this may be difficult to understand).
We all know about the 1997 series "King of the Hill". It is still airing on Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" block, but I encountered something dark with this series sometime in late 2007. I was in a goodwill store to buy some N64 games because that store normally had a good stock of Retro Games, but I strolled over to the VHS section in the back, just then remembering I owned a VCR. One of the first things I saw was the Titanic VHS tapes, the one that came in 2 tapes but it was in one dust cover, and I thought that it would be a good movie for me and the wife because she had never seen it before. To ensure that the tapes would be functional, I took one of the tapes out of the dual VHS dust cover and saw something unexpected. It was a VHS tape with a crooked sticker on it and written in sharpie (or magic marker) was "KOTH S1E1NR". I inspected the other tape and it said "KOTH S1E1NRP2", and assumed it was part 2. I didn't know why one 22-23 minute episode took 2 VHS tapes, but I was curious, so I bought the 2 tapes for $2.22.
When I got home, nobody was there but me, so I took up the painstaking process of uncoiling the stiff coax cables and the bulky VCR. I soon tuned the TV to channel 3 and began viewing KOTH S1E1NR. It had the regular opening of the first episode of King of the Hill, but without the music. It was just silent camera pans over the city of Arlen. It began like normal after that, with Bobby at the baseball game, and Hank yelling at him. As we all know, Bobby does not succeed. This is where everything started getting weird. On the ride home Hank, Peggy and Bobby are completely silent, and this goes on for about 3 minutes. No one is angry, no one had any expression actually. Immediately as the family pulls into the drive way, it immediately cuts to a scene inside the house, Hank is yelling at Bobby for not "giving the 110%", Hank then picks up the baseball and got in a throwing position. At this point the video quality was getting very scraggly and the volume level was raised roughly 10%. Hank afterward pegs the ball and it hits Bobby's nose. Peggy is seen in the background crying, and Hank tells her to "shut the hell up". Bobby immediately cups his nose and runs to the background, crying the whole way.

As Bobby is in the bathroom, the social worker comes to the door, Peggy greets him and Hank is sitting on the sofa, relaxing as if nothing happened. From this point the colors start to look more like the real episode, then the scene with Hank telling the social worker off plays as it does in the real episode. The scene from the officially aired episode abruptly cuts to another scene (this one not from the real episode). It is a scene with more scraggly video, but the audio remained the same. The scene depicted Peggy, sitting on the phone late at night, probably contacting Child Services talking about how Hank purposely threw the baseball at Bobby. Hank suddenly walked into the doorway and was in a bathrobe and had no glasses. He grabbed the phone and yelled "WHO THE HELL IS THIS?" The response was, "This is the department of Child Services". Hank suddenly turns red, and put the phone back on the wall. He grabs Peggy by the neck, and said "YOU GONNA GET MORE OF THOSE TWIG BOYS OVER HERE TO PUT ME IN PRISON AND TAKE MY BOY AWAY?!". It then cuts to Hank taking Peggy by the back of the neck down the hallway to the backyard, and Hank takes a propane tank off the grill, and shoves the valve into Peggy's mouth, and it then went silent for a minute, just a still picture of the propane valve in Peggy's mouth. When the scene starts moving again, Peggy's eyes are closed, and a voice is heard that says "Buck Strictland, forgive me for using Propane for this". The only problem is that when Hank says this, Hank doesn't even sound like Mike Judge (the creator of the show and the voice actor of Hank) it sounded like an older and deeper voice.

The screen went black after this, I then fast forwarded through the rest of the tape, to make sure there was no more content on it, there was none. I just thought, "Why so much wasted space?", and at this point I was really shaken up, so I went and grabbed a coffee. When I got back I popped in the second tape and it was just a black screen, I fast forwarded to check for content, and came across some stuff that was really starting to scare me. It was a funeral, but there was very few colors, just various forms of gray and black, and the color of their faces, and it just didn't seem like a real KOTH episode. The funeral was for Peggy, and attending it was all of the Hill's neighbors, including some acquaintances such as Cotton and John Redcorn, and even Hank was there, claiming Peggy had committed suicide. As Peggy's coffin is being lowered into the hole, it fades into an overhead view of it being lowered, and this part really scared the shit out of me, it was a semi-hyper-realistic image of Peggy in the coffin. The reason I say semi is because it looked real, but still appeared to be drawn, and not a real person, and was just a realistic cartoon. It then cuts to Bobby, Hank, and Ladybird sitting on a porch, with Bobby with a queasy face and Hank with one hand on the propane tank that he used to commit the murder. Bobby then asks in his humble voice, "Why...did you do it dad?". Hank then responds, he almost sounds like he is crying, and says "I don't know, son." He then gets up and walks inside, with Bobby and Ladybird still sitting on the porch.

It once again cuts to a very dull scene, with nothing but black, gray, and the skin colors. It is a scene that literally made me sick to my stomach. It was Hank, hanging from the ceiling, with a note pinned on him. It just stays focused on him swinging back and fourth for two minutes or so, then it cuts to the ending credits, with the normal outro and theme music. I was actually kind of laughing on the inside at the fact that the show was playing the regular ending credits, after all that stuff happened, but I was more confused and creeped out more. I went on some forums, but found nothing about this episode, but I came across someone on Yahoo Answers who had a similar occurrence as me, and got a similar tape at a thrift shop in John's Creek County in North Georgia, a place about 20 miles away from where I got mine. I managed to get on AIM with this person, but no answers.

I was really curious at this point, so I drove about 40 miles, and went right down to Cartoon Network/Turner Broadcasting HQ. I knew that Fox Broadcasting made the show, but I assumed Cartoon Network had every episode on record because they air them all. Beforehand I did some research and figured out who was in charge of broadcasting KOTH, so I found a receptionist in the studio and demanding to talk to him, but apparently I needed a guest pass of some sort. I was pissed at this point so I drove back home and put on my old Sheriff's Uniform (I was a sheriff for John's Creek County about three years ago). I went back, and although it is unlawful, I used my badge to talk to him. He was just sitting on a computer, and I walked up to him, threw the tapes on his desk and demanded answers, he dropped the phone that was in his hand, and grabbed the tapes.

I followed him to an office on the other side of the building, and there was a small safe in it, he opened it up, put the tapes in, and locked it. He then told me to leave, and I didn't want to act like a sheriff anymore because I didn't want to get in trouble with the law. I got home and flipped on the TV, Adult Swim was on and I was relieved to see a real episode of King of the Hill. To this day, there are only 2 copies of this episode, on 4 tapes, that I can find anything about on the internet, and one of them I assume is still locked up in Cartoon Network Studios. You may possibly come across more of them in thrift shops throughout the southeast.