Tom Kenny
SpongeBob SquarePants/Gary/Mr. SquarePants/Patchy The Pirate/Narrator
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- A square yellow sponge lives in the underwater city of Bikini Bottom.
- 5. Tango Tangle; Necro-Nom-Nom-Nom-I-Con Feb 20, 2024
- Plankton and Karen take dance lessons; SpongeBob cooks up chaos in the Krusty Krab kitchen.
- 4. Momageddon; Pet the Rock Feb 14, 2024
- The Krusty Krew get lazy when their moms take over; Patrick's new pet rock garners interest.
On this channel, you’ll find all the SpongeBob SquarePants classics you know and love, plus BRAND NEW content featuring the whole Bikini Bottom gang - including Sandy Cheeks, Mr. Krabs, and ...
SpongeBob SquarePants is an American animated television series created by marine science educator and animator Stephen Hillenburg that aired on Nickelodeon as a sneak peek after the 1999 Kids' Choice Awards on May 1, 1999, and officially premiered on July 17, 1999.
SpongeBob SquarePants: Created by Tim Hill, Stephen Hillenburg, Nick Jennings, Derek Drymon. With Tom Kenny, Rodger Bumpass, Bill Fagerbakke, Clancy Brown. The misadventures of a talking sea sponge who works at a fast food restaurant, attends a boating school, and lives in an underwater pineapple.
- (112K)
- 1999-05-01
- Animation, Comedy, Family
- 23
- 23 min
- SpongeBob. SpongeBob Squarepants is your favorite patty-flipping, jellyfishing, Bikini Bottom buddy. He and his pet snail, Gary, live in a pineapple under the sea!
- Patrick Star. Patrick Star is SpongeBob’s best friend and neighbor. The inner machinations of his mind are an enigma, and this pink starfish is the ultimate pal who loves to nap, blow bubbles, and eat ice cream!
- Squidward. Spongebob’s next-door neighbor and Krusty Krab co-worker, Squidward Tentacles is a mean, whiny, stick-in-the-mud octopus who thinks he’s better than everyone else.
- Sandy Cheeks. Despite being a squirrel, Sandy Cheeks lives under the sea in her oxygen-filled treedome. She’s a born-and-bred Texan thrill-seeker and adrenaline junkie.
- Overview
- Production details
- Biography
- Description
- Health
- Personality
- Abilities and talents
- Weaknesses
- Family
SpongeBob SquarePants (born July 14, 1986) is the titular main protagonist of the animated series of the same name. He was designed by show creator and former marine biologist, the late Stephen Hillenburg. Stephen Hillenburg based SpongeBob on Bob the Sponge, a character he had created for his educational book The Intertidal Zone in 1984.
SpongeBob is a childish, joyful, hardworking, and sometimes clumsy sea sponge who lives in a pineapple with his pet snail Gary in the underwater city of Bikini Bottom. He works as a fry cook at the Krusty Krab, a job in which he is exceptionally skilled at and enjoys thoroughly. He attends Mrs. Puff's Boating School, and his greatest dream in life is to receive his boating license. Unfortunately, he tenses up whenever he has to drive a boatmobile, and he drives recklessly by speeding, crashing into buildings, etc. which causes him to fail every time. SpongeBob is very good-natured and loves to hang out with his best friend, Patrick. His teacher is Mrs. Puff and his boss is Mr. Krabs.
Like real sea sponges, SpongeBob has the ability to filter-feed (as shown in "I Had an Accident") and reproduce by budding (in "Pressure"). In The SpongeBob Musical, SpongeBob's exact species of sea sponge is identified: Aplysina fistularis, a yellow sea sponge that is commonly found in open waters.
SpongeBob appears in most episodes of the series, beginning with the series' debut episode, "Help Wanted." He is voiced by Tom Kenny, who is married to Karen Plankton's voice actress, Jill Talley.
While Stephen Hillenburg worked as a teacher of marine science at the Ocean Institute in California, he created an educational book called The Intertidal Zone. The book was intended for children and taught about the behaviors of different sea creatures. Bob the Sponge, a natural sea sponge with sunglasses, was the "host" of the book.
Stephen Hillenburg revisited the concept of The Intertidal Zone in 1996 when he started sketching concepts for a cartoon series about undersea life. He wanted the title character to be an under-represented creature, with the rest of the main characters being iconic and easily recognizable sea animals: a crab, a whale, and a starfish. "What's the weirdest animal? The sponge came to mind," he recalled in 2012. As he drew a sea sponge character, he originally wanted to use the shape of a natural sponge, but later decided that a "squeaky-clean square" would better portray a nerdy personality.
An early colored sketch portrayed SpongeBob as wearing a red hat with a green base and a white business shirt with a tie. SpongeBob's look gradually progressed to brown pants that were used in the final design. SpongeBob was designed to be a kid-like character who was goofy and optimistic in a style similar to that made famous by Jerry Lewis.
The character was initially going to be named "SpongeBoy," but the name was already in use by other products including a pencil. This was discovered after voice acting for the original seven-minute pilot was recorded in 1997. Upon finding this out, Hillenburg decided that the character's name still had to contain "Sponge" so that viewers would not mistake the character for a "Cheese Man," and decided to use the name "SpongeBob." He chose "SquarePants" as a family name since it referred to the character's square shape and it had a "nice ring to it."
When Stephen Hillenburg pitched SpongeBob to Nickelodeon in 1997, the network gave him an order: they would only produce the show if SpongeBob was a kid who went to school, like "Arnold from Hey Arnold! under the sea." Hillenburg was prepared to "walkout" on Nickelodeon, as writing SpongeBob as a school-aged child went against his creative vision. However, he came up with Mrs. Puff and her Boating School as a compromise, allowing SpongeBob to attend school as an adult. Hillenburg was very fond of the "way things worked out," as Nickelodeon's order brought in a whole new main character, "Mrs. Puff, who I love."
is voiced by veteran voice actor Tom Kenny. Kenny had previously worked with Hillenburg on Rocko's Modern Life, and when Hillenburg created SpongeBob SquarePants, he approached Tom Kenny to voice the character. Hillenburg used Kenny's and other actors' personalities to help create the personality of SpongeBob.
According to his driver's license in the episode "Sleepy Time," SpongeBob SquarePants was born on July 14, 1986. SpongeBob's license is seen again with this birthdate in "No Free Rides," but all further appearances of it remove the birthdate. He celebrates four respective unspecified birthdays in the episodes "I Had an Accident," "SpongeBob Meets the Strangler," "Waiting," and "SpongeBob's Big Birthday Blowout." In the latter, he nearly reveals his age but is narrowly cut off by the episode's ending, making it a mystery. Stephen Hillenburg once joked that SpongeBob is 50 in "sponge years." Taking into account the average lifespan of a yellow tube sponge being just over 100 years, this would make him middle-aged. Jokes aside, Hillenburg explained that SpongeBob actually has no specific age, but that "he is old enough to be on his own and still be going to driving school," firmly confirming him to be an adult.
Like real-life sea sponges, SpongeBob started life as a free-floating larva, as shown in "Gramma's Secret Recipe." During this time, he had a blobby, amorphous shape.
He lives with his pet sea snail Gary in a large pineapple-shaped house on 124 Conch Street, Bikini Bottom. His next-door neighbor, Squidward Tentacles, who lives in an Easter Island head, is constantly annoyed by his antics. SpongeBob is oblivious to this and believes Squidward to be his friend. Beside Squidward's house is the home of SpongeBob's best friend, Patrick Star, who lives under a rock.
SpongeBob works at the Krusty Krab, Bikini Bottom's most popular restaurant, where he is a fry cook and prepares all food served at the restaurant, most notably Krabby Patties.
In "Help Wanted," SpongeBob applied for this job. He says that it has been his lifelong dream to join the Krusty Krew and that only now is he "ready." When he applies for the job, Squidward and Mr. Krabs, wanting no part of him, send him on a fool's errand for a "hydro-dynamic spatula with port and starboard attachments and turbo drive." While he is out searching for one at Barg'N-Mart, several hundred hungry anchovies arrive and overwhelm Squidward and Mr. Krabs. SpongeBob soon returns, having found a hydrodynamic spatula, and saves their lives by feeding the anchovies, showing off his amazing cooking skills in the process.
SpongeBob's house is an orange pineapple with fully furnished windows and doors and has a gas pipe. When he first moved to Bikini Bottom, he viewed many different houses, but none seemed to his liking. Just as he was about to give up, a pineapple from a boat above the water falls into the sea and lands onto the space that was Squidward's garden where Squidward was still gardening. SpongeBob loves the house and buys it, leaving Squidward in misery by losing his garden and having SpongeBob living next to him. However, in The Patrick Star Show episode "Who's a Big Boy?," SpongeBob bumps into his future house as a teenager while it's still under construction and already under the water, along with Squidward's house.
SpongeBob is a sea sponge with a rectangular shape, despite being designed to look like an actual kitchen sponge. He is light yellow (whose exact shade of yellow is designated by Pantone to be SpongeBob Yellow) with a light olive-green outline. In earlier episodes, he is wider near the top and gets skinnier going further down, akin to that of a trapezoid. However, in the more recent episodes, he is more of a regular square shape.
SpongeBob has light olive-green pores, dimples with three freckles on each cheek, a large mouth with two prominent front buck teeth, a slight lateral lisp, a long, slightly curved nose, and large light blue eyes. His eye color seems to be, uniquely, a shade of pacific blue complimenting the blue ocean background. He has three exceptionally wide, exposed, and effeminate eyelashes on each eye (which disappear whenever his eyes are closed or his brows are lowered), which have sometimes been shown to be numerous eyelashes akin to a human, which is best prominent in "Tutor Sauce" when he is seen breathing heavily during a close-up.
Although rarely seen in the series, he has light yellow hair that goes hand-in-hand with his skin color, as seen on his driver's license, the spin-off series The Patrick Star Show, and in the episode "The Sponge Who Could Fly." However, in the episode "Krusty Krab Training Video," he instead has a simple strand of black hair.
He typically wears a white shirt with a scarlet-red tie, black leather shoes with white shoelaces, white socks with blue and red stripes, and brown rectangular pants with a black belt. While working at the Krusty Krab, he wears a tall, white hat with a small blue anchor illustration as a uniform. SpongeBob usually sleeps in his briefs, and at other times-beginning with season 5-his pajamas. However, he occasionally sleeps with his entire outfit on, which was more common in season 1, most notably the episode "Sleepy Time."
In various spin-off media, he is slightly redesigned. In Kamp Koral: SpongeBob's Under Years, his outfit stays mostly the same as in the original show, but now he wears a red cap and a handkerchief, as well as brown boots. In The Patrick Star Show, SpongeBob has a bit of yellow hair on his head, wears a bow tie, and black-and-white saddle shoes.
Though SpongeBob has always been voiced by Tom Kenny, his voice has changed throughout the series; his voice is lower than normal in season 1. After the first movie, his voice noticeably changes, increasing in pitch, along with other changes. After season 9, his voice slightly decreases in pitch.
While SpongeBob is generally lucky in life and healthy, he has on several occasions faced health problems in the series, which are usually caused by his tendency to fall for antagonists' manipulation or simply by accident. On a side note, he is an invertebrate and thus lacks bones, making him immune to physical harm; however, this varies greatly by episode, as sometimes SpongeBob is depicted as having bones and thus prone to suffering injuries, while in other episodes, most notably "The Bully," he has none and is, therefore, accepting of his said injuries. Like most other characters from the show, he has faced many fatal injuries and near-death experiences. However, due to cartoon physics and negative continuity, he sometimes recovers immediately afterward without medical support. Such instances are played for comedy and do not affect the plot, therefore they will be overlooked when taking into account SpongeBob's health. However, SpongeBob has on more than one occasion faced ongoing medical conditions and injuries that have even been the core of the plot.
The first prominent instance of SpongeBob's health deteriorating is in "Tea at the Treedome," where he for the first time enters an air pollution, Sandy's treedome, after meeting a new friend. Due to the insufficient amount of water in her house, he starts to shrivel up before eventually passing out--along with Patrick--on the ground from hypothermia. Both he and Patrick are subsequently revived by Sandy's new creation, water helmets.
Towards the end of "Jellyfishing," he and Patrick get stung by the Queen Jellyfish and are left covered in bandages.
In "Plankton!," Plankton takes control of SpongeBob by entering into his head at night and using a control on his brain to control SpongeBob's body movements as a means of obtaining the Krabby Patty secret formula for Plankton to hear out loud.
In "Pickles," after Bubble Bass tells SpongeBob he forgot to put pickles on his Krabby Patty, SpongeBob falls into a state of despair as he loses his confidence. He starts doing everything backwards, like talking improperly, walking backwards, and hammering a piece of toast into his kitchen counter. He is cured from the state once he abruptly makes a Krabby Patty while listing all the ingredients as he puts them together in that order, which was an angry attempt to prove Mr. Krabs that he can't make one contrary to Krabs' encouragement.
In "I Was a Teenage Gary," Squidward accidentally injects SpongeBob with the snail plasma when he meant to inject it into Gary. This causes SpongeBob to transform into a snail and say nothing but "Meow" as he chases Squidward around. Instead of being cured, Squidward himself gets injected with the needle too and sings with Snail-SpongeBob and Gary on the fence towards the end.
SpongeBob is a fun-loving, hyperactive, clueless, and childish sea sponge with a happy-go-lucky personality. Despite being portrayed this way, he is relatively smart and knows right from wrong, an example being telling Patrick not to draw his picture of calling Mrs. Puff a "big, fat, meanie" because she's a teacher. He is extremely determined and will often stop at nothing to accomplish a task. He is also somewhat dramatic to the people who are kind to him: for example, to the mailfish. He is also over-confident. Sometimes, though, he shows his devious side when trying to get Mr. Krabs and Plankton to work together. He sometimes makes mountains out of molehills, such as losing his name tag. It is also suggested that he deceived the Tattletale Strangler in an elaborate plot to get him back to jail. When he first met Plankton, he was almost quick to befriend him, but quickly realized Plankton's true intention was to take advantage of him to steal the Krabby Patty secret formula. Plankton himself is surprised that SpongeBob was smart enough to see through his manipulation, telling him,
SpongeBob is very kind-hearted and innocent, and very rarely acts openly naughty to anyone, even those who find him an annoyance and act cruelly to him such as Squidward. He is a very selfless and loyal person, especially towards those close to him. His selfless nature is most notably shown in "Best Day Ever," where he sacrifices his "perfect day" to help his friends. Despite his well-meaning intentions, SpongeBob's actions often annoy and cause trouble for those around him, most notably his next-door neighbor, Squidward.
SpongeBob can become scared easily and usually panics when frightened. He is afraid of the dark and clowns. He also hates hot sauce. Occasionally, SpongeBob is too ignorant to notice impending danger and his unworldly thinking may put himself or others in peril. He also cannot detect lies or malice as easily as the other characters, mainly due to his naivety. This is particularly evident in episodes featuring Squidward, such as "Giant Squidward," "Good Neighbors," "Squid's Visit," and "Tentacle-Vision." In these episodes, as well as many others, SpongeBob believes he is making Squidward happy, even though he's actually making him miserable as he is unintentionally annoying him often with Patrick. One non-Squidward example is in "A Pal for Gary," when Gary is being violently attacked and nearly eaten by Puffy Fluffy, SpongeBob takes no action and instead accuses Gary of harassing Puffy as he didn't see Puffy Fluffy do that. Another example is "Home Sweet Rubble," when it takes SpongeBob a few moments to realize that his house is in serious need or repair.
Furthermore, SpongeBob also goes to great lengths to impress others and achieve his goals, even if they involve malice, as seen in "Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy II," where SpongeBob wrongly attacks an innocent Atomic Flounder to impress Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy. SpongeBob attempts to steal Patrick's secret box in "The Secret Box." He also tries to steal Betsy Krabs' underwear along with Patrick and Mr. Krabs in "Mid-Life Crustacean" as part of the "panty raid." In "Doing Time," SpongeBob and Patrick force the receptionist of the local bank to give them all his money; this was done in an attempt to get arrested and free Mrs. Puff from jail. In "Hall Monitor," SpongeBob enters the window of a couple's house and disturbs them while on hall monitor duties; this was done to show them the consequences of leaving a window open. In "The Great Snail Race," SpongeBob overexerts Gary to prepare him for the following snail race. This causes extreme discomfort to Gary and eventually results in him collapsing on his way to the finish line; however, SpongeBob eventually noticed the error in his ways.
In "Employee of the Month," SpongeBob sets up many traps on Squidward in an attempt to sabotage his Employee of the Month Award just to get Employee of The Month. In "Just One Bite," SpongeBob handcuffs himself to Squidward, forcing him to eat a Krabby Patty and Squidward pretends not to like it and immediately becomes addicted to it. In "Shuffleboarding," he and Patrick, while dressed as Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy respectively, go around arresting citizens for actions that do not count as crimes, such as chewing gum too loudly and being too old. In "SpongeBob's Last Stand," SpongeBob and Patrick resist the government-sanctioned construction of the Shelly Superhighway and encourage the rest of the town to join their protest through a song. The police eventually notice the boys rebelling against the government's authority and imprison them in the middle of nowhere. However, on SpongeBob's part, his arrest was for playing the sitar without a license and states it didn't come with one.
SpongeBob also feels the need to impress Mr. Krabs and to protect the Krusty Krab and the Krabby Patty secret formula at all costs. In "Call the Cops," SpongeBob and Mr. Krabs impersonate police officers in hopes of retrieving the secret formula. He also likes to impress his boating teacher, Mrs. Puff, despite his reckless driving due to his nervousness. Beginning with "Boating School," an ongoing plot point is SpongeBob failing his driver's test due to his inability to drive safely. His poor driving skills have caused him to floor it thinking he has to do that (speed), run over pedestrians, rapidly switch lanes, drive on the sidewalk, crash into buildings and property, harm his passengers, and lastly damage his vehicle. Despite all the damage he causes, SpongeBob is never arrested or charged for his dangerous driving; instead, Mrs. Puff is, who the authorities believe is failing to educate him.
SpongeBob has been shown to have numerous extraordinary abilities and attributes throughout the series.
•Absorbency: Being a sponge, he is also absorbent, and can expand his body by absorbing liquids. Sometimes when SpongeBob cries, he re-absorbs his tears. An example is in "The Bully" when Flats the Flounder kept on hitting him, but SpongeBob just absorbed all of his blows; however, he does not absorb blows on occasion, specifically Patrick's punch in the face in "No Weenies Allowed." Also, in "I Had an Accident," he filter feeds through his holes, as he is a sponge.
•Boneless: SpongeBob is usually shown to be boneless since sea sponges are invertebrates. However, in some episodes, such as "I Had an Accident," bones are shown on his X-rays. He also has bones when his skin is ripped off in "Atlantis SquarePantis" and "The Splinter" and is peeled off in "Delivery to Monster Island." He can also squeeze through and fit in things.
•Bubble blowing: SpongeBob can perform extraordinary moves with bubbles, most notably exhibited in "Bubblestand." It is considered along with jellyfishing as his and Patrick's favorite hobby.
•Cleaning: SpongeBob is able to use his body like a kitchen sponge to clean surfaces, usually floors. This is seen in episodes such as "Hooky" and "Procrastination".
•Destruction: SpongeBob has a degree of talent in destruction, but most of the cases show that he mostly performed this involuntary due to his gullible and reckless personality, Although he does not know it and thanks to his poor driving skills, SpongeBob is skilled at demolition derbies. This is shown in "Demolition Doofus," as SpongeBob manages to defeat five other competitors, although inadvertently, also surviving Mrs. Puff's murderous attack.
•Lack of physical strength: Due to his physiology, SpongeBob's natural physical strength appears to be below average. Even one instance exaggerated this whereupon close inspection, his hand was depicted in the emaciated state as if it was only skin and bone. Although, SpongeBob can sometimes build up strengths he normally isn't capable of possessing by sheer force of will, with his prowess dependent on the writers of the episode.
•Fighting: Besides in "Karate Choppers" and "Dunces and Dragons," SpongeBob is very bad at fighting. This is best exemplified in "Extreme Spots."
•Gullibility: SpongeBob's gullible personality makes him prone to manipulation of others who use him for their gain or make him unknowingly hurt others, physically and emotionally.
•Cowardice: SpongeBob often lacks the willpower to stand up for himself. Even his arch-nemesis Plankton points this out in "Walking Small" when beachgoers were walking all over SpongeBob (ironically enough, Plankton himself was forcing SpongeBob to do his bidding in the same episode). Patrick even takes advantage of SpongeBob in "Suds," "Hooky," and "Rock-a-Bye Bivalve." He's also shown to have numerous irrational fears such as the fear of clowns or the dark.
SpongeBob has many relatives, most notably his parents, who appear in several episodes. Unlike SpongeBob, who is rectangular, most of SpongeBob's relatives better resemble actual sea sponges, being round in shape and brownish.
In "SB-129," a robotic descendant of SpongeBob named SpongeTron is seen, as well as a primitive ancestor. "Ugh" features a caveman version of SpongeBob known as SpongeGar. SpongeGar is distinctly different from the primitive sponge seen in "SB-129," being more evolved and closer to his modern counterpart. "Pest of the West" features SpongeBuck SquarePants, an ancestor who saved Dead Eye Gulch in what is now Bikini Bottom from Dead Eye Plankton in 1882.
May 1, 2024 · SpongeBob SquarePants, often shortened to SpongeBob, is an American animated television series created by former marine biologist and animator Stephen Hillenburg for Nickelodeon. It is chronologically the tenth Nicktoon to debut.
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