Excerpt from SpongeBob SquarePants: The Unauthorized
Fun-Ography

Introduction

Stand on any street corner and randomly stop people walking past. Ask them, "Who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?" Perhaps one-third of them will respond, "That's the address of the White House in Washington DC. The President of the United States lives there." The other two-thirds will most likely have no clue. Then ask those same people, "Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?" The overwhelming majority will smile widely and confidently reply, usually in a sing-song, staccato style to parody the theme song, "Sponge-Bob Square-Pants!"

That's the type of indelible impression SpongeBob has made on our society. The incredibly naÏve and pure-hearted fry cook, who slings krabby patties at the Krusty Krab — Bikini Bottom's #1 fast-food restaurant — has actually made being a dork cool. Why have so many people gravitated to this silly, goody-goody character? Invited SpongeBob and his surrounding cast of undersea characters into their living rooms and lives? The answer is quite simple: All that SpongeBob ever wanted from us was to be our friend. And that was enough to open the door to our hearts.

Remarkably, SpongeBob SquarePants (the series) turns 25 years old in July of 2024. As a celebration of that event, this book will trace the character's journey from the edges of a quiet tidal pool observed by creator/artist/marine biologist Stephen Hillenburg to SpongeBob's current status as a media superstar. Is it a biography? Not really. Instead, think of it more as a fun-ography. Why? Because unfettered fun has been the driving force behind every SpongeBob episode and film. So pull up your bright yellow socks. You know, the ones subtly adorned with SpongeBob's face. Get out your plush stuffies of the various characters. Gather them closely around you, and settle in. Then get yourself ready for a rollicking ride through Bikini Bottom. Don't worry, I've got the wheel. SpongeBob is still trying to get his boating license.

Better hurry now. I can hear SpongeBob in the front passenger seat chanting, "I'm ready! I'm ready! I'm ready!"

Chapter One

Like most cartoon characters, SpongeBob went through several incarnations before he was introduced to the world at large. He was the brainchild of artist and marine biologist Stephen Hillenburg, who in 1984 began working at the Ocean Institute in Dana Point, California, which runs educational programs for school kids. That's where Hillenburg developed a comic book called The Intertidal Zone, about a tidal pool inhabited by tiny sea creatures. One of those creatures was Bob the Sponge. How closely did that initial character resemble the SpongeBob we know today? Not much. Hillenburg modeled his original rendering on the type of sponge you would find in the ocean, classified scientifically as an organ-less Porifera. It was round and puffy, although it did wear a pair of sunglasses, which Hillenburg added for coolness. Of course, the character didn't need pants, mainly because it didn't have any legs.

By 1993, Hillenburg, who had gone back to school to study art and animation, was working for Nickelodeon, after his talents caught the eye of the production team for a cartoon series called Rocko's Modern Life (1993-1996). It was during this period that Hillenburg became focused on pitching his tidal pool characters to Nickelodeon as an animated show. SpongeBob (though that wasn't the character's name yet) was now square, reflecting both his personality and the shape of a household sponge you might find in the kitchen or bathroom shower. The addition of pants? Hillenburg believed that giving his protagonist pants would stop potential viewers from thinking the yellow, rectangular character could be a piece of cheese.

Consider the alternative possibilities: CheddarBob, MozzarellaBob or perhaps even StringCheese SquarePants. Luckily, that possibility never occurred.

An animated SpongeBob was introduced to the world on May 1, 1999 as Nickelodeon broadcast a preview of the series SpongeBob SquarePants, directly after its highly-rated Kids Choice Awards show. Then on July 17, the series made its official network debut, introducing viewers to the fun-loving, silly and endearing undersea inhabitants of Bikini Bottom.

Author's Note- The original May broadcast came just 10 days after 12 students and one teacher lost their lives in the school shooting and attempted bombing of Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado. Perhaps SpongeBob gave the country a needed smile during an extremely difficult time.

I-M-A-G-I-N-A-T-I-O-N

Just imagine you were an executive at Nickelodeon sitting in a conference room after Stephen Hillenburg had made his pitch to get SpongeBob onto the air. What would have been the chatter among your peers about the show's possibilities? Perhaps the conversation would have went something like this: "Well, from what I gather, he's a talking sponge. A real goody-goody type. He's square, so he needs to wear square pants. After all, we can't put a naked sponge on TV. And his one ambition in life is to become a fry cook and wield a spatula. That's something new in kids' TV programming."

Now be honest, would you have pounded your fist on the over-sized table and proclaimed, "This character can't miss! He'll find his way into the hearts of millions!"

Hi, I'm SpongeBob

Our introduction to SpongeBob comes in the very first episode entitled Help Wanted, with him at home in his pineapple. Yes, I said "pineapple." We'll dive deeper into that later. He's fast asleep in bed and snoring loudly, about to be awakened by an alarm clock. What time is it? That's an interesting question. Hillenburg immediately lets us know that though Bikini Bottom mirrors our own society in many ways, there are going to be some fun and subtle differences. For instance, the alarm clock has just eight numbers on its face instead of twelve. And Gary, SpongeBob's pet snail, meows like a cat. Fascinating.

A huge ship's horn attached to the alarm clock blows the blanket off our main character, who sleeps in his tighty-whities. That's right. Mr. SquarePants has square underwear too. No grumpy-grogginess for SpongeBob. He bounces out of bed with child-like enthusiasm and climbs to the top of a tall, indoor diving board.

"Today is the big day, Gary," SpongeBob informs both Gary and us.

He leaps off the board and right out of his tighty-whities.

"Look at me! I'm naked!" proclaims SpongeBob.

Before we catch sight of SpongeBob in his full-yellowness, he lands directly into his waiting square pants, complete with a square white shirt and a red tie. A tie? Well, this is a big day. In the future, we'll discover that every day in the life of SpongeBob is a big one, and the tie becomes a staple of his dress code.

This diving sequence, though, does leave discerning minds wondering: Was another pair of underwear already in those pants? Or does SpongeBob go commando during the day? During the course of the series, we'll discover that SpongeBob does in fact wear underwear during, sometimes even multiple pairs and colors for comic effect.

SpongeBob exits his home and starts to chant what will become his inspirational mantra: I'm ready! I'm ready!

Not far down the road stands his fixation, an undersea fast-food restaurant. Immediately, SpongeBob lets us know that he has the soul of a poet. Well, sort of. "There it is," he muses. "The finest eating establishment ever established for eating. The Krusty Krab. Home of the krabby patty. With a HELP WANTED sign in the window."

But like most of us, SpongeBob suffers from self-doubt. Could his dream of slinging krabby patties as a fry cook be about to evaporate, even underwater?

"Don't you see, I'm not good enough," bemoans SpongeBob to his friend and neighbor Patrick Star, who lives under a rock, literally.

That's when the simplistic starfish shines as an exemplary friend, reminding our protagonist, "Whose first words were, ‘May I take your order?' Who made a spatula out of toothpicks in wood shop? … And who's ready?"

"I'm ready!" responds a rejuvenated SpongeBob.

Entering the Krusty Krab, we meet Squidward Tentacles, a smug, high-brow octopus who works the register there. Squidward is another neighbor of SpongeBob, and the pessimistic cephalopod (a class of species that includes octopus, squids and cuttlefish) doesn't want anything to do with this naturally enthusiastic job applicant. Enter Mr. Krabs — the eatery's money-loving owner — who slyly sends SpongeBob on a quest for a turbo-driven, hydro-dynamic spatula with port and starboard ("port" is the left side of a ship and "starboard" is the right) attachments.

Squidward and Mr. Krabs enjoy a hearty laugh at SpongeBob's expense as our protagonist leaves in search of that mythical cooking implement. Where would SpongeBob find such a cooking tool? Why at the Barg‘N-Mart, naturally. It's Bikini Bottom's local supermarket and catch-all (a fishing pun) shopping experience. The store is perfectly shaped like a pirate's treasure chest and even sports the skull and crossbones of the Jolly Roger, exactly something you might imagine that has sunken to the ocean floor.

During SpongeBob's absence, the Krusty Krab is besieged by a scourge of the sea, several busloads of hungry and smelly anchovies that overrun the restaurant like patty-starved zombies. Squidward and Mr. Krabs are forced to climb the Krusty Krab's crow's nest (a lookout platform high above a ship) as the waves of anchovies rock restaurant rocks like an angry tide.

Eventually, SpongeBob returns to save the day. He sails above the throngs of anchovies, propelled by the mythical spatula which he had been quested to find, most likely in the spatula aisle at Barg'N-Mart, where else. Entering the kitchen, our mild-mannered hero produces krabby patties at a super-sonic rate, feeding the famished hordes. With their appetites now satisfied, the smelly anchovies board their busses and leave.

"That was the finest fast-foodsmanship I've ever seen, Mr. SquarePants. Welcome aboard!" proclaims Mr. Krabs, rewarding SpongeBob with his own Krusty Krab name-tag, much to Squidward's dismay.

It is an episode that earns SpongeBob his life's ambition, the coveted title of "Fry Cook," and sets the stage for the boundless fun to come in future episodes.

A Pineapple?

The pineapple (Ananas comosus) is a flowering tropical plant with and edible fruit that grows on a small shrub-like bush. Though it's indigenous to South America, Christopher Columbus brought it back to Europe where it became a symbol of wealth because of the cost it took to export there or grow in greenhouses.

But how did SpongeBob wind up living in one?

Today, both the Philippines and Indonesia, a pair of island nations bordered by the Pacific Ocean, are among the world leaders in the production of pineapples. Could Stephen Hillenburg have imagined that one fell off a ship during transport? But wait a minute, don't pineapples float? They certainly do. And some pineapple connoisseurs contend that the riper ones will float higher in the water.

So why is SpongeBob's healthy looking pineapple sitting at the bottom of the ocean?

Sometimes it's just best to accept things the way they're present. You don't dissect gossamer (a delicate fabric or silky webbing). And that may best describe the inner-working of Hillenburg's fertile imagination.

Perspective: Tom Kenny

Tom Kenny was gracious enough to be interviewed for this book. We'll get to experience his perspective on many aspects of the series throughout the text.

Q- Can you tell us about Stephen Hillenburg, who sadly passed away in late 2018? By all accounts, he was a terrific human being and an absolute creative force.

"Stephen Hillenburg was a total inspiration to me. That's because he was this purely creative person. He just wanted to create. SpongeBob would turn out to have really long legs, no one would have initially dreamed it could go on this long and make this big an impact. But I'm convinced that if Stephen hadn't sold the SpongeBob pilot, he would have gone back to his painting and animation, and been just as happy.

Stephen was also very opinionated about the show, and almost always absolutely correct about what was best for it. He was creating art for art's sake. He never devised a flowchart about what made other shows successful. He never tried to distill those characteristics down and put his own spin on it. He just made things up, and he made SpongeBob out of his passions and interests in life: art, drawing, music, characters and a bunch of silly stuff that made him smile."

Who Is That?

Who is the first character to speak in the SpongeBob SquarePants series? Surprisingly, it isn't SpongeBob, though that first voice is indeed supplied by actor/comedian Tom Kenny, who voices our beloved sponge. Instead, Kenny speaks to us as the narrator, performing a spot-on parody of famed oceanographer and environmentalist Jacques Cousteau (1910-1997).

"Ah, the sea, so fascinating… Teaming with life. Home to one of my favorite creatures, SpongeBob SquarePants," says Kenny in a Cousteau-like French accent. "Yes. Of course, he lives in a pineapple, you silly."

If you're a teen or pre-teen and are not familiar with Cousteau's incredible exploits, that's quite understandable. Cousteau was the host of a popular documentary TV series called The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau (1966 to 1976) and The Cousteau Odyssey (1977 to 1982). He dove to the ocean's depths himself to record the beauty of all types of undersea life, and was greatly admired by SpongeBob creator Stephen Hillenburg. Cousteau was even the co-inventor of the Aqua-Lung, the early forerunner of the SCUBA equipment used by divers today. And if the ocean truly had a voice, many people believe it would be that of Cousteau.

Budding Relationships

The opening episode concludes with a pair of segments that begin to explore SpongeBob's relationships with others. In Reef Blowers, which focuses on the neighborly strife between SpongeBob and Squidward (with all the strife resting upon Squidward's huge forehead), the pair compete for the cleanest yard, attempting to push a lone clam shell onto the other's property.

Neither character speaks throughout this segment, with the soundtrack coming from background music and SpongeBob's noisy reef blower, an undersea version of our leaf blowers. The ensuing action is cartoon slapstick, a type of physical comedy at its best, with Squidward left buried beneath a huge pile of sand. It's a signal to the audience that Squidward's sour nature is probably never going to triumph over SpongeBob's persistent cheerfulness.

In Tea at the Tree Dome, SpongeBob, who is out jelly-fishing (though the activity isn't yet named), encounters Sandy Cheeks for the first time. "Where have I seen this before?" ponders SpongeBob, producing a Field Guide of animal species. "Here it is. Land Squirrel." Does that mean SpongeBob has previously been to the surface world?

SpongeBob and Sandy instantly bond over their love of karate, or as they call it, ka-rah-tay. Sandy, who wears an air helmet for oxygen, invites our protagonist over to her home for tea. After accepting, SpongeBob sprints to Patrick Star's rock to ask, "Patrick, what's air? I just met this girl. She wears a hat full of air."

"Do you mean she puts on airs?" responds the starfish in a moment of dumb-and-dumber take a vocabulary quiz. "That's just fancy talk. If you want to be fancy, hold your pinkie up like this. The higher you hold it, the fancier you are."

Of course, Patrick has no fingers and SpongeBob has just four digits. But for a moment, they each manage to magically hold up a pinkie.

Sandy lives in a treedome, which is void of water and filled with air. After several minutes visiting there, SpongeBob and Patrick, who rushes inside to save his friend, dry out. When Sandy, who has excused herself to fetch the tea, returns, she is horrified by the sight of a real-life dehydrated kitchen sponge and a rigid star fish, like the ones you might find in a curio shop, lying prone on the ground. The instant remedy: a helmet like hers, only filled with water (and steeping tea), instead of air, for her guests.

The inclusion of Sandy, an air-breather, subtly adds to the diversity of Bikini Bottom. That's something will see Stephen Hillenburg and the writing staff achieve in many different fashions of the course of the series.

Quiz Question #1

What is SpongeBob's middle name? Hint: He clearly informs Sandy of this upon their initial meeting, though since he's trying to impress her, it may not be exactly what is on his birth certificate. Wait, did I just say that a sponge has a birth certificate?

The answer can be found after the book's conclusion.

Bart Simpson and SpongeBob?

Within the first minute of our introduction to SpongeBob SquarePants, he proclaims, "I'm Naked!" It seems our oh-so-good protagonist has that same trait in common with the devilish Bart Simpson. We were introduced to Bart's bare butt before The Simpsons (1989-present) had their own show. In four of the short vignettes that appeared on The Tracey Ullman Show (1987-1990), Bart found the need to get naked for us.

When the dysfunctional family was given its own primetime platform, it didn't take long for Bart to shed his trademark red t-shirt and blue shorts. In the premier season's second episode entitled Bart the Geniusem>, we catch a glimpse of a naked Bart, whose skin has been turned green by a failed school science experiment.