40 Strange Facts About SpongeBob That Kids Never Suspected

Kids love the wacky underwater world of SpongeBob SquarePants, but they probably have no idea that the show was created by a real-life marine biologist! Yes, Stephen Hillenburg used to teach the subject before he headed into TV. However, in 2016, he admitted to The Guardian that he was “great at art and [only] so-so at marine biology.” He mused, “It’s funny how the two eventually came together.”

SpongeBob SquarePants is a household name, no doubt. But would he have reached those heights if he’d been called “SpongeBoy”? That was what Hillenburg first came up with for the character, while the show itself was to have been called SpongeBoy Ahoy! Sounds weird. Unfortunately — or fortunately, depending on how you look at it — this moniker was already being used by a mop company.

To date, there have been 270 episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants across 13 seasons. That makes it Nickelodeon’s longest-lasting animated show by quite a distance! Second place belongs to The Fairly OddParents, which aired for a comparatively short ten seasons and 172 episodes. Oh, and SpongeBob has also spawned three movies and two spin-off shows. Nice.

Nickelodeon wasn’t always on board with Hillenburg’s vision of SpongeBob. In 2009 he revealed to Television Business International that the execs basically wanted to make “Hey! Arnold under the sea.” And while Hillenburg was against that, he did throw Nickelodeon a bone by granting another request. The network wanted a teacher, so he came up with Mrs. Puff.

SpongeBob SquarePants wasn’t a show that took time to find an audience. Oh, no — it was a hit right away. Within weeks of its premiere, it had the highest ratings of any Saturday morning cartoon in the U.S. It was even shown during primetime because huge numbers of big kids were watching it. By the end of 2001, 33 percent of the regular viewership were adults.

Mr. Krabs is the only character on the show inspired by a real person. Yes, Hillenburg took some traits from one of his former bosses — ironically, a guy who owned a seafood restaurant. But you’d never find Mr. Krabs putting lobster on his menu, for obvious reasons…

Back in 1997 rock band Ween released their concept album The Mollusk — a record with a distinctly nautical flavor. And while that may not sound appealing to you, it definitely was to Hillenburg, as it sparked off the idea for SpongeBob. He also requested Ween create a song for the show, which resulted in “Loop De Loop” ​​— a tune telling kids how to deal with shoelaces.

Nickelodeon exec Eric Coleman once revealed how much effort Hillenburg put into his pitch. “He came in dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, and he had an aquarium with little versions of the characters inside,” Coleman told Hogan’s Alley in 2012. “He had rigged up a seashell that, when you held it up to your ear, played Hawaiian music instead of ocean sounds. So, he had a good amount of razzle-dazzle to make the atmosphere fun.” Sounds awesome!

The Krusty Krab is iconic, so it kind of makes sense that someone would try to replicate it in real life. And as far as we know, that’s actually happened three times — in Costa Rica, Palestine, and Moscow! The first venue stayed open for just a few months and the second for around a couple of years. The Russian version, which debuted in 2016, may have since shuttered, too. Perhaps they all needed to be under the sea for that authentic Krusty Krab experience…

In “Sailor Mouth,” SpongeBob reads a naughty word but is totally baffled by what it means. The episode then builds to made-up swear words being bleeped out by a dolphin’s cry. And while it’s pretty funny on screen, SpongeBob voice artist Tom Kenny admitted that the recording sessions were even more hilarious. Describing the episode for iTunes, he said, “I was laughing so hard, they recorded me while I lay on the floor of the sound booth.”

Iconic sci-fi scribe Ray Bradbury imparted his wisdom in the seminal guide Zen and the Art of Writing. And, apparently, SpongeBob story editor Merriwether Williams handed out copies to the show’s writers for inspiration. The team obviously got something out of it, too, as they started to play Bradbury’s Noun Game. Basically, it involves drawing a random piece of paper with a noun on it and building a narrative around that. Perhaps that’s how some of SpongeBob’s weirder episodes were created!

After producing season three and The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, Hillenburg felt it was time to wrap up the show altogether. And while Nickelodeon had other ideas, the creator simply quit as showrunner. In 2009 he told The Washington Post, “It reached a point where I felt I’d contributed a lot and said what I wanted to say… As a writer, you have to move on.”

When he left, Hillenburg personally appointed show writer Paul Tibbitt as the new showrunner. Unfortunately, tensions were also running high behind the scenes. There was bad blood between the storyboard artists and animators, while employees were also complaining about low pay. How did Nickelodeon resolve this? It brought on practically a whole new team. And according to some fans, the show has gone downhill ever since.

In 2013 Tom Kenny let us all in on a secret during a chat with Smashing Interviews Magazine. Apparently, Hillenburg had “described SpongeBob and his personality as being half-child, half-adult — kind of like a munchkin. A Jerry Lewis, Pee-wee Herman and Stan Laurel [type] — childlike but not a little kid in the sense that Charlie Brown is a little kid.”

In 2016 SpongeBob made the jump from screen to stage when SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical debuted in Chicago. And given the TV show has always been such a rousing success, it was fitting that the musical was too, as it received 12 nominations at the 2018 Tony Awards. The elaborate production then came back to SpongeBob’s original home when it was broadcast on Nickelodeon in 2019.

The Krabby Patty’s exact contents are a hot-button topic among SpongeBob fans. Many have always assumed it has crab in it, but in 2017 CinemaBlend got a huge scoop from producer Vincent Waller. He revealed, “The one thing I can tell you that Steve Hillenburg has let slip is there is absolutely no meat in the Krabby Patty. There is no animal product in there.” Yes, sounds like it’s vegetarian!

The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie soundtrack features such indie darlings as Wilco, The Shins, and The Flaming Lips. Lips singer Wayne Coyne went on to tell MTV, “I actually suggested that maybe I could try to get Justin Timberlake to do a duet with us as an off-the-cuff idea.” But Hillenburg wasn’t happy. Coyne claimed that he had told him, “I don’t want any of those sort of commercial weirdos on there.” Not a pop fan, then!

The SpongeBob SquarePants pilot episode was tested in front of four Nickelodeon execs. And one of the folks in the room, Cyma Zarghami, told HuffPost in 2009 that they quickly requested a rescreening. Not only did they think it was brilliant, but they also considered it entirely unique.

Kids adore Patrick Star, SpongeBob’s charmingly dim-witted best pal. But would they like him so much if he’d appeared in his original form? Back in the day, Patrick was intended to be a mean, scary guy — not the kind of starfish you’d want to meet in a dark alley. Thankfully, the creative team eventually came to their senses and gave us the sidekick we now know and love.

In 2002 Entertainment Weekly asked Hillenburg why no celebrity superfans — Ellen DeGeneres and Dr. Dre among them — had contributed voices to the show. He replied, “Honestly, I deliberately avoided that” before drawing a parallel to another enormously popular cartoon — one known for indulging in celeb performances. “The Simpsons is a tough act to follow, so I thought it was best not to do what they do,” he added.

Back in 2009, Burger King made a commercial hyping its new SpongeBob SquarePants kids’ meal toys. Sounds like a marketing slam-dunk right? Well, it should have been. The only problem was that the ad featured scantily clad ladies dancing to a parody of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back.” Oh, and they had special “square butts” stuffed down the back of their hot pants. Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood was, shall we say, unamused.

Kids love sweet foods — especially the ones with their favorite cartoon characters on the packaging. In 2005, however, a report emerged that linked U.S. snack food advertising with obesity in children. This was a problem, as SpongeBob has appeared on plenty of sugary treats. Viacom, which owns Nickelodeon, was even threatened with a lawsuit and was called to stop using this advertising tactic. But it hasn’t exactly complied so far…

There’s nothing the internet loves more than over-analyzing things — and that’s exactly what happened with the “SpongeBob characters represent the seven deadly sins” theory. In this scenario, SpongeBob is lust, Patrick is sloth, Mr. Krabs is greed, Squidward is wrath... you get the picture. Incidentally, Tom Kenny digs this idea. In 2015 he told HuffPost, “I think if it engenders discussion about human behavior, it’s a good thing.”

SpongeBob SquarePants may be popular all over the world — but not so much, it seems, in Kazakhstan. In 2014 the country’s chair of the Committee for the Protection of Children’s Rights said, “Kazakh parents should not allow their children to watch the SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon. We witnessed how the cartoon SpongeBob regularly inflicts violence on the others in his community and seems to enjoy what he does.” She added, “This sort of shocking behavior remains in the child’s mind and influences how they behave themselves.” Yikes.

SpongeBob isn’t just a funny marine sponge beloved by kids. He also seems to be a symbol of revolution in Egypt! How did that happen? No one knows, really. But in the wake of the Egyptian Revolution in 2011, young people adopted SpongeBob en masse. His smiling yellow face can now be seen on T-shirts, hijabs, and underwear in Tahrir Square. Weird.

In a short NPR behind-the-scenes video from 2009, Carolyn Lawrence admitted something strange about her fanbase. Turns out that the sweet voice behind Sandy Cheeks gets the lion’s share of her fan mail from people in prison! Yes, the incarcerated love her for some reason. This caused Tom Kenny to joke, “Wow, I hardly get any letters from prison. What am I doing wrong?”

SpongeBob has permeated the culture so much that, in 2011, he was given the ultimate honor. When a sea sponge-like fungus was discovered in Borneo, researchers decided to call it Spongiforma squarepantsii. So, there you go — scientists love SpongeBob too. Makes sense; he is a fun guy, after all…

Fox News’ Gretchen Carlson and Steve Doocy have accused Nickelodeon of pushing a climate change agenda to children. Yes, you read that correctly… Prompted by a clip featuring Mr. Krabs remarking that Bikini Bottom would have an “endless summer,” Carlson said on air, “SpongeBob is talking about global warming, but he’s only looking at it from one point of view.” She was talking about a short film that had aired six years previously, so it obviously took some time to filter through.

Season three’s “Mid-Life Crustacean” is a madcap adventure that sees SpongeBob, Patrick, and Mr. Krabs breaking and entering a home. The trio also take some of the owner’s garments. Yes, really. No surprise, then, that the episode hasn’t been shown on Nickelodeon since 2018. A network exec told NBC News that it just isn’t kid-friendly enough.

Season one’s “Scaredy Pants” features a scene that was deemed too horrific for children in the U.K. to witness. The censors felt kids wouldn’t be able to handle seeing the inside of SpongeBob’s head — even if there was no gore. Yet British kids didn’t have to search far to witness that horror. Weirdly, the offending scene was all present and correct on the U.K. DVD release.

In 2021 Nickelodeon decided to snip an old SpongeBob SquarePants episode out of the schedules. Why? Well, season 12’s “Kwarantined Crab” had unfortunate parallels to real-life events. Unsurprisingly, a Nickelodeon spokesperson said that it had been removed “due to sensitivities surrounding the global, real-world pandemic.”

In what has to be one of the weirdest cartoon crossovers of all time, a 2004 episode of The Simpsons turned SpongeBob into a kind of deity. In “She Used to Be My Girl,” Lisa prays to Buddha, Jesus… and Bikini Bottom’s favorite sea sponge! The scene then cuts to heaven and shows SpongeBob, drawn in The Simpsons’ iconic style, denying Lisa’s request and cackling maniacally. Not the most flattering tribute…

In the U.S., “SpongeBob, You’re Fired” aired to more than five million viewers — the highest rating the show had seen in two years. Why? Perhaps because the episode had been co-opted by media outlets using it to justify criticizing welfare. Naturally, there was a huge backlash to this, and a Nickelodeon representative was forced to clarify that the show didn’t actually land on either side of the fence when it came to the topic.

One fan theory that has gained traction over the years is that SpongeBob and all the other residents of Bikini Bottom are mutated by-products of nuclear testing. And this actually holds some water — if you’ll pardon the pun — because the city is located under the very real Bikini Atoll. You may remember that this collection of islands was used to test nukes in the ’40s and ’50s. It’s all starting to add up!

In 2010 a 12-year-old named Miriam Starobin saved her choking friend’s life using the Heimlich maneuver. And, apparently, she learned the technique from an episode of SpongeBob, of all places. The kicker? SpongeBob doesn’t actually use that particular maneuver in the episode; he sticks his arm down Patrick’s throat instead. That wouldn’t have worked out so well in real life!

As fans know, The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie features a hilarious live-action cameo from David Hasselhoff. For the scene, production blew $100,000 on an enormous replica of The Hoff, and this was gifted to the actor after the shoot. But he didn’t keep it forever. In 2021 the star put the huge version of himself up for auction, with the piece expected to raise as much as $1.5 million. Wow.

An intriguing study looked at toddlers’ problem-solving abilities after they watched a clip from SpongeBob. And the show was found to negatively impact these faculties slightly, which led the Los Angeles Times to claim that SpongeBob was harming kids’ brains. Not quite! Angeline Lillard, who helped conduct the study, told New Scientist, “Saying that SpongeBob is making you dumber is very different than saying a child’s attention is temporarily impaired.”

An enduring fan theory suggests that SpongeBob and Patrick are actually more than friends. But in 2015 Tom Kenny told HuffPost that he didn’t expect the loveable sea sponge to ever get romantic. “I think our take on SpongeBob and Patrick is that they’re pre-sexual characters,” he said. Overall, he felt that SpongeBob isn’t looking for a romantic partner. Instead, he is “married to his job” at the Krusty Krab.

One of the best things about SpongeBob is that it has both kid-friendly humor and a lot of jokes that only adults will fully understand. Unfortunately, that means the show sometimes crosses the line a little. The most infamous example of this can be seen in “Are You Happy Now?” which hints at Squidward taking his own life. Not cool, writers!

Not only have the show’s writers slipped in some highly questionable jokes over the years, but they’ve also managed to get away with several risqué gags. How about when SpongeBob told Gary that he shouldn’t drop the soap? Or when Squidward saw a red blimp and lamented that it had to be “that time of the month.” Cue blank faces from the kids and surprised snorts from their parents. But you have to admit: the best kind of cartoons are the ones adults can also enjoy. Producers on The Rugrats may have taken the adult humor a little too far, though...

The naughty stuff is everywhere in this cartoon – from Grandpa talking about "lonely space vixens" in front of the babies to Angelica drawing a suggestive nose and glasses set on a doodle of her elementary school teacher while in class. It's amazing what producers got away with – and they're far from the only ones. And these weren’t the only animations tinted with scandal.

Sometimes, actors simply don’t agree with a character’s morals. And it’s this that caused quite a wobbly start for voice actor Casey Kasem when becoming Shaggy. At first, he refused to voice the lovable foodie and mystery-solver. But after taking time to think, Kasem said he’d accept the role on one condition: Shaggy had to be vegan.

Parents were delighted when they came across a cartoon that was educational and entertaining, which is probably why The Wild Thornberrys was so popular. Unfortunately, the wildlife-obsessed Thornberrys weren't nearly as knowledgeable as we first thought.

Despite how it seemed, many of the animal facts on the show were not exactly scientifically accurate. For instance, remember that time Eliza said the Komodo dragon is the world's largest reptile? That's incorrect. It's actually the crocodile. But despite these mistakes, fans fell in love with the series.

Who doesn't love Winnie The Pooh? The real Christopher Robin, that's who. The beloved fictional character was actually inspired by author A. A. Milne's son, Christopher. While this sounds endearing, the son himself didn't take it that way for most of his life.

The real Chris even said his father “had got where he was by climbing on my infant shoulders, that he had filched me my good name and left me nothing but empty fame.” Ouch! Sounds like A. A. Milne might have been a better writer than a father, but harsh truths aren't what kids expect from Winnie The Pooh. For heavier material, children tuned into programs such as the next show...

If you were a kid growing up in the '90s, this farm home may look familiar to you. The house and its inhabitants were the inspiration for Courage the Cowardly Dog. The story goes that a couple lived in the now-abandoned property together with their dog in the middle of Nowhere, a real place in New Mexico. Scared yet? It gets worse.

Even more terrifying, the real couple reported countless supernatural occurrences, one after the other, until they suddenly disappeared, leaving the dog behind. If the TV show didn't scare the pants off of you as a child, then the true story probably will. Still, even upbeat shows like Spongebob Squarepants have darker edges than most children realize.

From 1946 to 1958, Bikini Atoll served as a nuclear testing site in the midst of the Cold War. For all we know, with all that radiation, there may really be a small town of fish that walk on legs, wear clothes, and have a porous friend who lives in a pineapple under the sea.

It's actually a well-thought-out plot made by the evil sorcerer Gargamel. He created Smurfette to spy on the Smurfs and even drive them mad with jealousy over the blue little lady. Fortunately, she turned out to be good!

It's no secret that art is hard, and hand are probably one of the hardest body parts to draw. That's why cartoon characters typically have only four fingers. But that wasn't good enough for one character from The Simpsons.

In the episode "Homer the Heretic," Matt Groening and his band of creative animators agreed they'd add one more finger when drawing God. Homer didn't seem to notice the extra finger on the almighty Father, but the rest of us sure did. Holy moly!

Animated kid shows and films have always been a great way to sell toys, but The Flinstones may have marketed to adults at the same time. An ad was released back in the '60s with Fred and Barney leisurely smoking cigarettes while ignoring their wives who were busy with household chores.

You never see any smoking in the actual show, but maybe that's because Wilma and Betty had a fit when their husbands wouldn't help them around the house. They deserve some rest and relaxation, too! Of course, these ads were far from the most controversial aspect of The Flintstones...

The Stone Age couple's habit of sleeping in the same bed rocked the '60s quite a bit. It's not a big deal today, but before then, married couples on TV were always shown sleeping in separate beds. And many real-life couples opted for twin beds back in the day, too.

But that TV convention soon went extinct. The creators of The Flintstones decided to show that Fred and Wilma loved each other too much to be apart – even while they were sleeping. What a romance for the ages!

Even the most classic cartoons have their dark pasts, and Looney Tunes is no exception. Having been a pop culture staple since the 1930s, the cartoon included dark racist themes. This was pushed by war propaganda and, of course, racist creators.

In 1968, United Artists bought all the cartoons from the 20s, 30s, and 40s, and picked out the worst, most inappropriate segments to hide away forever. This small collection is called "the censored eleven." You can look up snippets online, but you’re better off just taking our word for it. They're pretty bad.

’90s kids loved the action-packed hit The Powerpuff Girls, but if their parents knew what these girls were originally called, the show would never have seen the light of day. The trio started their crime-fighting adventures in a McCracken student film at CalArts where they were first known as The Whoop-Ass Girls. But why?

The original backstory was a little less family-friendly. Rather than being made up of sugar, spice, and everything nice — plus Chemical X — The Whoop-Ass Girls were made from one thing only: a can of whoop-ass! That'll pack a punch!

You can't have a kids' show without kids, right? Well, as it turns out, voice actors for children's cartoons are typically fully grown adults — the nerve! Then again, it's hard to hire underaged children with all the legal guidelines and pressure that come with the job. Still, one show dared to do the impossible! That was Hey, Arnold!

The reason why the characters seemed so authentic is because they were. Real kids used their incredible voice-acting talents to bring Arnold, Gerald, Helga, and all their school friends at P.S. 118 to life. And even though puberty meant producers had to recast several times, we'd say the effort was worth it in the end.

One of the most troubled characters from Hey, Arnold! is Helga's mom, Miriam. Although she isn’t in too many scenes, what we do see is a lethargic, unorganized, and probably depressed parent struggling to raise her child.

The only times when she seems really happy are when she's talking to her daughter and when she's making "smoothies." That's a pretty clear red flag that Miriam is a secret alcoholic. We think someone needs an animated therapist – or just AA, for that matter.

King of the Hill was a show that broke the mold for animated series. It became so popular that King earned two finales to wrap up the show. The first happened after Fox made the decision to cancel it, but the network soon took notice of how popular the axed sitcom had become.

Looking at that trend, executives decided to greenlight King for another three seasons. Though it can be a little taboo to continue a show when it already reached its "end," the gamble proved to be a success.

South Park has never held back on shocking its audience in the greatest ways possible, but some of the biggest twists come from the character Eric Cartman. During the 24 seasons that the show has been on the air, this little troublemaker has committed pretty much every crime known to man.

Murder, theft, arson, prostitution, cannibalism, war crimes, hate crimes — you name it, and Cartman has done it. They must have some shoddy justice system in the fictional Colorado town because the heinous junior never seems to get locked up.

It didn't take long for audiences to fall in love with Bob's Burgers, but that probably wouldn't have happened if the creator, Loren Bouchard, had had his initial say. Bouchard first imagined the family as cannibals — yes, you heard right — and the burger joint was going to be a cover for their peculiar lifestyle.

Fox managed to shut the idea down, for the most part. If you recall in the pilot episode, Louise spreads a rumor that the family's burgers are made of human flesh. That was the creator's way of sneaking the idea in. It was just a rumor in the end, though, and we're all grateful for that.

Audiences may be too distracted by the heavy plot to notice a lost detail in Bojack Horseman. None of the animals have tails! The anthropomorphic characters are pretty detailed otherwise. At first, there was a big disagreement about it among producers.

Animators tried drawing Bojack and other animal characters with tails, but no matter what they did, it just didn't look right to them. So they nixed the tails – though not without a couple of fun references to the fact.

A theory behind a Jetsons-Flintstones crossover episode is shattering history. People seem to think that the reason these families meet is because they're living in the same timeline — just in different societies. And the more you think about it, the more this theory becomes even less crazy. The technology they have in The Flintstones is pretty advanced, and before you say "it's a cartoon, they're being creative," consider this.

In The Jetsons, they never fly below the clouds. What's hiding down there? The cartoon conspiracy theorists believe it's a post-apocalyptic zone that left people in a new Stone Age. Maybe that’s where Fred and Wilma are living, or maybe it's a little more like Mad Max: Fury Road.

The Disney classic Aladdin takes us on more than just a magic carpet ride; it taught us to be truthful to who we really are. Now you can throw all that BS out the window because it's possible that Genie manipulated Aladdin throughout the entire movie. Everyone seems to forget all about the merchant at the beginning of the film who was selling the lamp.

When he sees that we aren't interested, he offers up the "true story" behind it, but it was confirmed by the director himself that this guy is the same character as the lovable Genie. A coincidence? We think not! The genie is either tricking Aladdin into buying the lamp or just spinning a tall tale to make us want it.