In April 1991 on the newsgroup rec.arts.comics.misc, someone asked what was going on with the comic "Suicide Squad"; however, he misspelled it as "Suicide Squid". This led to a chain reaction of posts detailing exactly what was happening in the non-existent "Suicide Squid" comic; for a while, these posts almost overwhelmed the rest of the traffic in the newsgroup. The Suicide Squid became the official mascot of rec.arts.comics.misc, and their annual award is named the Squiddy in its honor.

The complete Suicide Squid archives can be found at ftp://theory.lcs.mit.edu/pub/people/wald/suicide-squid