“Unmasking the Undersea Phenomenon: The Surprising Secrets Behind SpongeBob SquarePants’ Creation!”
SpongeBob Is Square Just For Laughs
As with any cartoon, the main characters went through many versions of themselves before coming to life. SpongeBob was inspired by the main character in Stephen Hillenburg’s comic The Intertidal Zone. Spongeboy, as he was called, was shaped like an actual sea sponge.
“In The Intertidal Zone the character was a natural sponge, but I thought an artificial square sponge was funnier. SpongeBob is just made of cellulose, but he has parents who are natural sponges – he got the square gene,” Hillenburg explained.
Hillenburg Was A Fan Of Jacques Cousteau
Stephen Hillenburg grew up being absolutely fascinated with the ocean. As a kid of the ’60s and ’70s, he watched plenty of Jacques Cousteau and he even took up scuba diving.
“I was into Jacques Cousteau as a kid and started scuba-diving around 14, which blew my mind. It was all [color], another world. I studied natural resources planning and thought I could get a job at some marine park. But I was great at art and so-so at marine biology. It’s funny how the two eventually came together,” Hillenburg told The Guardian.
The Reason SpongeBob Loves His Job So Much
Everyone knows that SpongeBob loves his job at the Krusty Krab. This may seem a bit odd to some, especially since SpongeBob works as a fry cook at a greasy spoon. But remember, SpongeBob is a bit naive and his loving his job was by design.
“I wanted SpongeBob to love his job,” Hillenburg told The Guardian. “I always imagined a kid going into McDonald’s and seeing a guy cooking and thinking it was the best job in the world: ‘You can eat hamburgers all the time!'”
Squidward Isn’t Technically A Squid
If you thought SpongeBob’s curmudgeonly neighbor Squidward was a squid, then think again. He’s often thought of as a squid and some might even say he’s an octopus, but both assumptions are wrong. Even though his name is Squidward, he technically only has six tentacles – two for his “arms” and four for his “legs.”
Since squid and octopi have eight tentacles, Squidward doesn’t classify as either. He’s simply just a cephalodpod. Animators believed that giving him any more than six tentacles would have “weigh him down too much visually.”
Hillenburg Purposely Avoided Having Celebrity Guests
The lengthy list of celebrity fans of SpongeBob SquarePants include the likes of Dr. Dre and Ellen DeGeneres. But Stephen Hillenburg never bothered to invite celebrity guests on the show.
“I deliberately avoided that. The Simpsons is a tough act to follow, so I thought it was best not to do what they do. But we’ve had a few exceptions. Ernest Borgnine and Tim Conway have regularly appeared as Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy, respectively,” Hillenburg told Entertainment Weekly. This lasted for the first three seasons. Since Hillenburg resigned as showrunner, there have been plenty of celebrity guests.
Bikini Bottom Is Based On A Real Place
SpongeBob SquarePants takes place in Bikini Bottom, which is actually based on a ring-shaped coral reef known as Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. In the ’40s and ’50s, the U.S. used Bikini Atoll as a site for nuclear testing, which led to the theory that SpongeBob and his friends are results of nuclear mutation.
But the people behind the scenes have denied the theory. “I think Bikini Bottom is like its own world… When the camera drops below the water and you go to Bikini Bottom, it’s almost like another planet,” voice actor Tom Kenny told Huffington Post.
The Flower Clouds Were Influenced By Tahiti
Have you ever noticed those flowers in the “sky” of Bikini Bottom? They don’t necessarily count as clouds since the show takes place underwater. “I had just been to Tahiti and that influenced the flowers in the sky,” Hillenburg once said.
Background designer Kenny Pittenger once clarified, “They function as clouds in a way, but since the show takes place underwater, they aren’t really clouds… So really, the sky flowers are mostly a whimsical design element that Steve came up with to evoke the look of a flower-print Hawaiian shirt – or something like that.”
Hillenburg Drew The Line At Promoting Fast Food
Many cartoons that become huge with children often spawn huge merchandising opportunities. Hillenburg, at first, was very particular about how far that could go and had quite an opinion on SpongeBob promoting fast food.
