Furbies have been around since the late 1990s, an early smart toy and onetime “must-have” item that has proven surprisingly resilient despite the fact that their googly nonsense language and wildly oscillating eyes clearly mark them as things that need to be murdered. The central appeal of the Furby is that it learns gradually to speak and can make a variety of lifelike facial expressions, with more recent ones even developing specific personalities over time. All of these qualities add up to make the Furby seem almost sentient, and thus more satisfying to watch die.
The father-son team of What’s Inside? have created a short film documenting what happens when both a new Furby Connect and a vintage Furby are split in two with a water jet. The results are powerful and extremely dark.
The good stuff begins around 2:49, when the Furby wiggles with joy before its eyes dilate with a black ink, as if viewing in advance the tortures that await it. One eye begins weeping, then the next, before a viscous goo starts burbling from the Furby’s beak. The beloved toy lurches gently to the side, then down, the life leaving its body, before its underside is ruptured in one final act of humiliation. Finally, the water jet finishes its dark deed.
The vintage Furby’s death provides far fewer thrills, which is only proof that advances in machine learning will decidedly lead to advances in machine murdering. After the Furbies are split in two, the depravity continues, as two halves from the different Furbies are then pieced together in a macabre act of rehabilitation before they are then separated and smeared across the asphalt, all to the sound of a child’s laughter.
The answer to the show’s name—“What’s inside?”—turns out to be surprisingly similar pieces in both toys, with a much larger microchip in the new Furby. The answer to “what’s inside” the human mind, however, remains a secret too dark even for YouTube.