Board Thread:Fun & Games/@comment-24579854-20141022115352

If you have the Official Guide to Protecting your Brains, you would have seen this image.

See that plant in the corner, bottom left-hand side? That plant was taken out of the game before official release because of what it did to a new PopCap employee.

A man by the name of Christian had just been employed at PopCap. He was on the Plants vs. Zombies: Adventures team. His task was to design some new, fresh and original plants. He made a few; you might have played Adventures and unlocked the Beet, Shamrock or Chilly Pepper. These plants were all made by him. He also created potentially the most contraversial plant ever. Its name was the Smiler, and the name couldn't be more self-explanatory. Since there are no mushrooms in the game, the Smiler took the role of Hypno-shroom, except after the hypnotised zombie killed 3 of its brethren, the Smiler would then kill the Zombie, with the smile still on its face. Popcap accepted this plant, and one night he decided to test Smiler in action.

He booted up the game and it froze. Weird. It didn't do this earlier. He tried to debug it, but just as it finished, for a fraction of a second a picture of what appeared to be Smiler flashed on the screen, except its eyes were just black voids, like the deadplants', and it was looking directly at him. The smile was still unchanged. Given that it was almost midnight, Christian was utterly terrified out of his wits. But the game carried on as usual. When he entered his town, everything seemed normal. He decided to plant a Smiler in a planter box, but when he went to plant another one, text appeared onscreen saying: "You only need one." That was really weird. Why did he only need one? That question was answered ten seconds later, when the Smiler was ready to be collected. when he did so, all the townspeople ran into their homes, like if a zombie invasion occurred. However, the text said "SMILER!" instead of "ZOMBIES!" The only resident not in a house was Crazy Dave, and when he started talking, Christian was in for a big surprise. Crazy Dave seemed a lot more... angry than usual. This is what he said:

"You.. you planted the Smiler!"

"That plant is a danger to us all!"

"It cannot be in our village!"

"We do not trust you anymore. You are hereby BANNED FROM THIS VILLAGE!"

This caught Christian off guard. Crazy Dave was very angry with him, and he had lost all of his humor and crazy speech. He seemed extremely strict and firm. What was even more odd was that Crazy Dave's voice clips were not gibberish anymore, just angry huffs and growls. He was never like this before he added Smiler into the game. The villagers must be extremely scared of Smiler and its powers.

He was put on the Road Trip, and he tried to get back to the town, but the button had disappeared. He went onto Cadaver Cavern, Level 8 and selected the following plants: Sunflower, Peashooter, Wall-nut, Cherry Bomb and, of course, Smiler. The level was normal except there was a pink square that couldn't be planted on. He carried on playing the level, but then the Bucketheads appeared. Christian decided he would finally plant the Smiler.

He planted it on the pink square. One of the Bucketheads bit it and, was hypnotised. It started to bite and kill the last three zombies on the board, but after the last one died, the Buckethead started to spasm. The Smiler was following the zombie's every move. Then, all of a sudden, with a large clang, the bucket was forced over the zombie's head, suffocating it. It started to squeal, extremely high-pitched and completely unlike a zombie. Christian was fascinated and appalled by this. The Buckethead fell onto its back, its bucket fell off, its face turned blue, its eyes rolled back into its head and ceased to move.

Christian was utterly speechless. He was about to close the game, when he heard the voice of a little girl, coming from the computer, giggling. It seemed to be the voice of the Smiler. She said:

"And that's why their buckets are red!"

There was another voice of a boy, around 13 years old, probably the voice of one of the Peashooters. He said:

"Smiler! That was horrible! I don't know what to say!"

"Oh little Peeshooter, fraternizing with the zombies are we? That makes YOU a zombie! Do you know what I do with zombies?"

There were appalled cries from the other plants.

"Enough!" shouted Smiler, and with the grin still on her face, she hypnotised the Peashooter. He started to shoot peas at the other plants, and there actually seemed to be blood coming out of them. Blood? In a PvZ game? That can't be right! He saw a Peashooter and a Sunflower go down, their bodies all bloodied and bruised. Christian tried to revive them, but when he hovered the cursor over them, they simply said "Gone."

Christian saw his other three Peashooters die, and he didn't want to see his remaining three plants die. He planted a Cherry Bomb next to Smiler, but just before it was about to explode, Smiler simply said: "No." The Cherry Bomb was then hypnotised and exploded, killing his last two Sunflowers and his Wall-nut. Their leaves, blood and petals were all over the place.

Only the hypnotised Peashooter and Smiler remained. Smiler said:

"Excellent work, my pet. But remember, you're a zombie, so I'll see you in another life!"

"I... I-"

The Peashooter was cut off, and his head exploded. There was a lot of blood now. His stem flopped over and the level finished. Christian saw he had got a secret achievement: Cold-blooded. He pressed the button to go back to the town, but Smiler said: "Where can you go?" The music stopped, and that same gruesome image of Smiler appeared again accompanied by a slowed down, reversed and distorted version of Cerebrawl, the I, Zombie music. Christian turned off his computer and lay on his bed, crying. He had worked it all out.

Smiler was a merciless, cold-blooded killer who seemed to be the most powerful weapon in the series. She killed zombies with no effort at all, and she also did that to the plants. She targeted the most devoted Plants vs. Zombies fans and found a way to make them broken people. She had to be removed from the game.

A wek later, Christian resigned and removed anything related to Smiler from the game's files. He sent an email to the producer of the game with this:

''I have resigned from this job. Last week the Smiler plant gave me one of the most horrifying experiences of my life. I removed it from the game's files. If you don't want to suffer what I did, do not attempt to put her back.''

Christian

PopCap then brainstormed another pink, sugary plant, and the result was the Sweet Pea

So guys, what did you think? 