Snapback

In January 2011, the twelfth episode of the new My Little Pony cartoon was released. Among other things, it featured a light, peppy song about baking cupcakes.

This would lead to the creation of a highly gruesome piece of fanfiction that would become one of the most notorious in the burgeoning fandom, shaping it for months to come.

Exactly when Cupcakes was first published is unclear, though it is known it had to happen after the release of Call of the Cutie on January 7, and at some point before the final edit date on the original Gdoc, in late February. It is a badfic in the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic canon.

Plot
Rainbow Dash goes to help Pinkie Pie make cupcakes. Pinkie then drugs her and tortures her to death.

...That's pretty much it.

Notoriety
Though Cupcakes' content is fairly gruesome, it's not very noteworthy besides, lacking a coherent storyline or any particularly hilarious grammar errors (which is not to say grammar errors don't exist in the original, they're just not very funny ones). What makes it infamous, paradoxically, is its infamy.

It was released while the fandom was still centered on 4chan, and disseminated from there. For a fandom which had not experienced much or any serious horror or dark fiction yet, it was horrifying--and so despite its generally poor writing quality, Cupcakes became a legend.

Within a month of its first appearance in early February, its fans had cleaned up the writing and released no fewer than fifteen spinoff endings, and the line of Cupcakes-inspired fics stretches in a bloody and disturbing swathe down the fandom to the present day.

Mission and Content
The original and edited Cupcakes stories as well as a slew of spinoff material can be accessed from here. The original story is EXTREMELY Not Work Safe as well as Not Mind Safe, and most of the spinoffs are as well. Proceed with caution.

Cupcakes was handled by Agents Fritz Sorgebrunnen and Silas shortly after their return in late August, as their sixth mission. That mission log is recorded here.