Editing SpongeBob SquarePants (seasons 1-5, 9-present) (section)

==Trivia==
*This series spawned a large number of internet memes such as "Mocking SpongeBob" from Little Yellow Book and SpongeGar from SB-129. In fact, this show has spawned about 178 memes.
*[[Special:LongPages|This is the fourth largest page on the entire wiki]].
*Season 1 is the only season to be animated using cel animation as later seasons would use digital inking and painting animation.
*To this day, SpongeBob SquarePants is one of the most well-known and beloved cartoons of all time.
*There is a spin-off called ''[[Kamp Koral: SpongeBob's Under Years]]'' that was released on Paramount+ on March 4, 2021. The spin-off, however, quickly received backlash from fans and even Paul Tibbitt (the showrunner from Season 4 to the first half of Season 9) for "disrespecting Hillenburg’s legacy", as Hillenburg is often said as not wanting any spinoffs to happen, even though he said he didn't see any spinoffs happening. Rob Renzetti also criticized the spinoff. Said spinoff is promoted in ''[[The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run]]''.  
**There's also a new spin-off called ''[[The Patrick Star Show]]'' with Patrick as the protagonist. Patrick's family is different in the show, as Herb is replaced by Cecil, Margie is replaced by Bunny, Sam may or may not be replaced by Squidina (yes, ''the'' Squidina from ''Goons on the Moon'') as the show is set between Patrick and Sam's separation and reunion, and Billy Bob is replaced by GrandPat Star. There are explanations from Vincent Waller, Ariel "Pinkie" Davis, and Ian V. on why Patrick's parents and sister are different. Vincent responded: "We felt the original iterations of the characters, while they worked for that episode, they were boring as characters. They were NOT entertaining or fun. These two are so much more fun." for why Herb and Margie are replaced. April says that Squidina is Patrick's adopted sister. And Ian V. says: "As someone who's on the show I can say they're officially just a redesign of the old parents (his dad even still has the same voice) into...stars! I just love coming up with these ridiculous explanations for it is fun." It is unexplained why Billy Bob is replaced by GrandPat Star.
*This show has numerous collabs, such as ones with Minecraft, Funko, Brawl Stars, Fortnite, LEGO, Brawlhalla, Netflix, Wendy's, Wonder Works Studio, McDonald's, Netflix, Roblox, Fall Guys, Burger King, Crocs, PinkBox Doughnuts, Stumble Guys, Gamefam, PowerWash Simulator, Toca Boca, Nike, FYE, LittleBigPlanet 3, Just Dance: 2025 Edition, Overtime, POP Mart, Bendyfigs, Amazon, Discord, Fresh Pawz, Vans, Walmart Holiday, and more. Seriously, ''that'' is a '''''lot''''' of collabs as they are milking the franchise '''cow dry'''.
*The show has its own FANDOM site named [https://spongebob.fandom.com/wiki/Encyclopedia_SpongeBobia_(website) Encyclopedia] [https://creativewikis.skywiki.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_SpongeBobia SpongeBobia].
*This show has numerous of official releases outside of the Nickelodeon channel such as the releases of "Snow Yellow and the Seven Jellies" and "Sandy's Country Christmas" on the Another 100 Episodes and The Best 300 Episodes Ever DVDs before release on TV.
*The episode "Gary Takes A Bath" was the only episode to air on Nicktoons before it aired on Nickelodeon.
*Creator Stephen Hillenburg passed away at the age of 57 on November 26, 2018, from ALS.
* In 2002, SpongeBob was ranked #9 in TV Guide's Top 50 Greatest Cartoon Characters list (which also included Angelica Pickles at #7 and Ren and Stimpy at #31). He was notably the most recently created character to be featured on the list at the time of its publication.
*Stephen Hillenburg created Plankton and Karen as potential villains for the series, but he decided in 1997 that they didn't have much potential and that the "Plankton wants to steal a Krabby Patty" plot would become stale after a while. He wanted to have them be one-off characters, and Nickelodeon suggested hiring a one-time guest star like Bruce Willis for the voice of Plankton. However, staff writer Doug/Mr. Lawrence (who became the voice of Plankton) was convinced that his character had untapped potential; he gave Hillenburg a set of episode outlines about Plankton and Karen, many of which were used throughout the first three seasons. The episodes were popular with the writing team, and Plankton and Karen officially became the main characters in the credits of the first theatrical movie. Lawrence considers season three as the first season where Plankton is part of the main cast.
*It has its channel on Paramount+ called "SpongeBob Universe", which airs SpongeBob content 24/7.
* Though the show wasn't meant to go on after the first three seasons, it still made the show pretty famous and it spawned a lot of cool merchandise.
*The main character "SpongeBob" was named because Stephen Hillenburg was worried that people would confuse him for a block of cheese.
** Stephen also wanted to call him "SpongeBoy", and the show ''SpongeBoy Ahoy'', until he learned the name SpongeBoy was trademarked by a pencil product. This appears in a gag where Mr. Krabs says" Sponge boy, me Bob!"
*Due to its popularity, it spawned merchandise, from DVDs to lunchboxes, to mini shorts, etc.
*The show was going to have a completely different intro with a more action-styled music piece, still images, and no lyrics. The intro was later changed to fit the show's style.
*When the show debuted in May 1999, it surpassed ''[[Pokémon (seasons 1-13, 17-present)|Pokémon]]'' as the highest-rated Saturday-morning children's animated series on television. It is also one of the highest-rated shows on Nickelodeon for years, the other being ''[[The Loud House (seasons 1-3)|The Loud]] [[The Loud House (seasons 4-present)|House.]]''
*Mr. Lawrence auditioned for the role of SpongeBob, using the same voice he'd later use for Plankton (which comes across as serious vocal dissonance for anyone more familiar with the character's more famous high-pitched voice).
*Barnacle Boy was originally a character called "Barnacle Bill", a salty old sailor whose body is a piece of log with his head sticking out, similar to Seamus from ''Family Guy''. While he never appears in the show, he's the titular character of the two-part comic "The Ballad of Barnacle Bill" in the SpongeBob comic.
*In early sketches, Plankton was going to be so small that every shot of him would require an off-camera character to hold a magnifying glass over him, but it made acting too difficult, resulting in some artistic liberties being taken with his size.
*Several US Publications such as USA Today named the Krabby Patty among other fictional foods that many have wanted to exist in real life, and according to the New York Daily News, four restaurants serve a similar burger to the Krabby Patty, which include the Snow Crab Crispy Rice, Phuket Fantasy, Angry Crab Benedict, and Soft Shell Crab Taco. The fictional burger also inspired real-life gummy confectionery treats, primarily in New England. However, the candies were not well received and were the subject of controversy, as a doctor from the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine warned the parents the candy was produced in China and was contaminated as it was made using Chinese milk. In 2019, a reporter with the student newspaper of Capital University gave the gummy candies a rating of 2 out of 10 in their review of Halloween candy.  It was featured in the SpongeBob merchandise, the burger was portrayed by an actor on stage at the SpongeBob Musical at  Palace Theatre, and Katy Perry used it as a second costume on the red carpet at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
*SpongeBob was originally designed to resemble an actual sea sponge, but Stephen Hillenburg couldn't do an appealing caricature of one. He went with a synthetic sink sponge instead to give the character a "squeaky clean nerd" appearance, as well as to imply that he's "a square peg trying to fit into a round hole."
*SpongeBob himself is based on Bob the Sponge from Hillenburg's old educational book, "The Intertidal Zone".
*In 1999, Nickelodeon released a press statement summarizing the first four episodes. At the time, these episodes were planned to be released in production order: "Help Wanted," "Tea at the Treedome," "Squeaky Boots," and "Jellyfishing." Sometime in April 1999, Nickelodeon decided to air the episodes in a different order instead; it was called the "packaging order." This order does not relate to production or airing order, and it most notably moved "Squeaky Boots" (the third produced segment overall) to episode 8b, much later than it was produced.
*In 1997, a draft of the pilot episode was completed. This is known today as "Help Wanted".
*According to Vincent Waller, an episode revealing Pearl's mother was written and reached the early development stages; however, Stephen Hillenburg was strongly against solving the mystery and shelved the episode indefinitely.
*Nick wanted the cast to be grade-schoolers instead of adults, due to the success of ''[[Hey Arnold!]]''. Hillenburg was so opposed to this that he nearly abandoned the series until he put SpongeBob in boating school as a compromise.
*''Reef Blower'' was originally intended to have dialogue, but became a dialogue-free episode due to the fact that they had to pay 5000$ per voicing session, and it felt redundant for a 3-minute filler episode.
*Storyboard artist Adam Paloian mentioned one episode that had some storyboards but was ultimately never made. It's called ''A Day In The Life Of Plankton'', a 4-5 minute short with minimal dialogue that would've focused on Plankton when he isn't stealing the formula, just doing mundane things.
*According to Vincent Waller, one of Stephen Hillenberg's original ideas for the series was to have Sandy be SpongeBob's girlfriend. Though they've been ship-teased at times, the show ultimately leaves them as really good friends.
*One early design for SpongeBob gave him a green baseball cap, seen at the end of "Home Sweet Pineapple".
*The line from the episode "Something Smells", "Once upon a time, there was an ugly barnacle. He was so ugly that everyone died! The end." became a popular internet meme in 2013.
*Squidward originally had eight legs, but the animators thought it made him look too burdened, and that he was harder to animate, so they cut them down to six.
*The name of the Krabby Patty was originally going to be the Barnacle Burger, and the Krusty Krab was originally the Crusty Crab.
*At one point, Rob Paulsen auditioned for the voice of SpongeBob. Jess Harnell and Mr. Lawrence (as mentioned above) auditioned as well.
*In 2021, the episode "Mid-Life Crustacean" was removed from Paramount+ because of the infamous panty raid scene. The episode "Kwarantined Krab" was also removed from Paramount+ and put on hold from airing in the US due to its plot being unintentionally similar to the ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic. Nick does plan to air "Kwarantined Krab" when the COVID-19 Pandemic is no longer a concern, though many fans believe that the will be released before the COVID-19 Pandemic ends and before 2030. But it was finally released in the US on April 29, 2022.
*Patrick Star has his show called “The Patrick Star Show” and you can watch the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmQ1yWkqpPI first episode here.]
*''[[Minecraft]]'' once made a caption on the main menu saying "Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?" which was made to reference this show.
*It is the first Nickelodeon cartoon to reach its eleventh season.
*The series is very popular in Germany where it's known as ''SpongeBob Schwammkopf'', which may explain David Hasselhoff's appearance in The Movie. It also arguably has the best dub out of all the countries. The series is so popular in Germany that there are multiple SpongeBob SquarePants albums (14 as of 2021) containing original/cover songs that are exclusive in Germany and are sang by the characters. The series even has its music channel called "MusikSpongeBob" on YouTube, and a website dedicated entirely to these albums released annually. Even popular German singers and musicians (such as Markus Becker, MC Fitti, and Roland Kaiser) are heard singing alongside ''SpongeBob''.
*''SpongeBob'' has a large cult following in Japan among not just children, but young women as well, who find him cute, cool, and unique. Yeah, the kids love their SpongeBob over there; that is for sure.
**The show is still popular to this day with its current airings on Kids Station. There was even a SpongeBob restaurant that opened up in Tokyo which sold exclusive food and merchandise.
*SpongeBob is quite popular in China, especially with adults. It had a fairly decent dub that airs on CCTV-14.
*''SpongeBob'' is one of the most popular cartoons in Mexico (despite the dub being made primarily in Venezuela). There, ''The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water'' topped the box office for two weeks in a row. Also, while ''SpongeBob'' merchandise isn't as common as it used to be in the United States, the merchandise is everywhere in Mexico. And when show creator Stephen Hillenburg died, the Spanish tag for ''SpongeBob'' was the third most popular tag of the day on Twitter, which also happened when the show turned 20. The 20th-anniversary campaign that happened in North America also happened in Mexico, with promotions not happening in the US being tied to it, like these donuts. The third film ''The Spongebob Movie Sponge On The Run'' even gained an original song called "Agua" by Tainy and J Balvin which was performed entirely in Spanish with two English lyrics as a response to ''SpongeBob'' 's popularity in Mexico.
*On January 13, 2023, <nowiki>''</nowiki>SpongeBob SquarePants<nowiki>''</nowiki> got its very first crossover as it crossovers with its two spin-off shows <nowiki>''</nowiki>Kamp Koral: SpogneBob's Under Years,<nowiki>''</nowiki> and <nowiki>''</nowiki>The Patrick Star Show.<nowiki>''</nowiki>
*Between 2007 and 2013, ''SpongeBob SquarePants'' dominated Nickelodeon as episodes aired very frequently and took up a majority of the schedule, just because it was pulling in better ratings than other shows, albeit to a much lesser extent as with Cartoon Network's over-airing of ''[[Teen Titans Go!]]'' between 2014-2017. In 2012, however, the series' ratings began dipping significantly, mainly due to a variety of reasons such as the series' declining quality, the rise of internet streaming, or the network's over-saturation of ''SpongeBob SquarePants''. As of 2015, the network now reduces the excessive number of airtime for ''SpongeBob SquarePants'', to return diversity to the schedule. However SpongeBob marathons still air on Nickelodeon once in a while, but it's not as frequent as before.
**During this period, it is alleged that Nickelodeon created an unwritten policy stating that any new Nicktoons had to ''IMMEDIATELY'' match or beat the average ratings for ''SpongeBob'', or it would be deemed a failure and burned off on the Nicktoons channel. Shows such as ''Robot & Monster, TUFF Puppy, Harvey Beaks'', and ''It's Pony!'' were all well-received critically, but didn't get the ratings Nickelodeon desired. In one infamous example, ''Making Fiends'' was never even given a chance by Nickelodeon and was unceremoniously punted to Nicktoons, which treated the series as best it could with the material it had (21 segments spread across six half-hour episodes) and even became the network's highest-rated series before Nickelodeon pulled the plug because, as TheMysteriousMrEnter said, it "wasn't ''SpongeBob'', at a time when Nickelodeon only wanted ''SpongeBob'' and tolerated ''[[The Fairly OddParents (seasons 9 & 10)|The Fairly OddParents]]'').
*Casey Alexander and Zeus Cervas, who previously worked as storyboard artists in the show's earlier seasons, serve as the main screenwriters of these seasons, as they wrote the majority of episodes of these seasons.
*One of the writers of these seasons, Richard Pursel, wrote some of the most infamous episodes of these seasons such as "[[A Pal for Gary (SpongeBob SquarePants)|A Pal for Gary]]" and many Squidward torture episodes such as "[[Cephalopod Lodge (SpongeBob SquarePants)|Cephalopod Lodge]]" and "[[Choir Boys (SpongeBob SquarePants)|Choir Boys]]" for example, previously worked on the infamous ''[[Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon"]]'' before working on this show.
**'He returned to work on this show as a writer in 2021.
*The 5th season ended on the day that the 7th season started, which is the only season to end during a season premiere.
*C.H. Greenblatt the writer of this show is also the writer of [[The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy]], and also starred as Fred Fredburger in the last two seasons.
*This show had the most episodes page out of all shows on the entire wiki, with more than 100+ of them, it is one of the only show to get this much episodes pages along with ''Teen Titans Go!''