This reached its height when SpongeBob and Patrick were featured in a video that taught people about tolerance and diversity. Ironically, the conservative organization Focus on Family wanted to ban it. For his part, Hillenburg has said he considers his characters to be “asexual,” if they were to have a sexual orientation at all.
When Stephen Hillenburg pitched the idea for SpongeBob to Nickelodeon executives, he had no idea how huge it would become. After ten years of it being on the air in 2009, Hillenburg told The Washington Post, “I never imagined working on the show to this date and this long. It never was possible to conceive that… I really figured we might get a season and a cult following, and that might be it.”
Little did he know at the time, SpongeBob SquarePants would gain a cult following and then some.
Since its premiere on May 1, 1999, SpongeBob SquarePants has become the longest-running original Nickelodeon cartoon to date, beating its predecessor Rugrats by a long shot. In its twelfth season as of 2018, there are a total of 242 episodes and counting.
Additionally, the success of SpongeBob has spawned two feature-length movies, The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2004) and its sequel The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water (2015). There have also been two made-for-TV movies including SpongeBob’s Atlantis SquarePants (2007) and SpongeBob’s Truth or Square (2009).
