The Callisto Protocol has turned to many things for inspiration, including some of horror’s most terrifying movies like Alien and Event Horizon, but here’s one that may come as a bit of a surprise: SpongeBob SquarePants.

No, I’m not talking about the (also horrifying) Rock Bottom episode where SpongeBob gets stuck in Glove World; it turns out that the way animated characters move have inspired the character director of The Callisto Protocol, too.

“Some creatures came from the art perspective, though, like, ‘Hey, let’s just do something that is very crazy looking’. And then we put that in the game and find a way of making it work,” character director Glauco Longhi told GLHF, via The Sun.

“Even some cartoons, like SpongeBob. We look at cartoons on the stylisation and movement because, although it’s super real and immersive, we stylised a lot of things to make them more appealing.

“So some of the movements, and in the case of the gore, the blood, and how we remove the limbs, there’s a push of style to emphasise some of these actions,” they added.

Longhi says that cartoons are particularly good at conveying much of what a character is by “strong silhouettes”.

“Cartoons do that very well,” Longhi said. “Disney, Pixar, or whatever – they give you the message right away. If there’s a fast character, you get it right away [from the] strong silhouettes.”

The Callisto Protocol will launch on 2nd December across PlayStation, Xbox, and PC. If you can’t wait, a spoilery 13-minutes of the game’s opening footage recently leaked online.

And if we’ve learned nothing else from The Callisto Protocol’s teasers and interviews thus far, expect to die: a lot. In the words of Striking Distance, “fear takes no prisoners” and even more death animations will be added further down the line as part of the game’s season pass.

In fact, the game’s collection of deaths and bloodshed are why the Japanese version has been cancelled all together.

Not sure if your PC will run here? Here’s the science bit.