Being a SpongeBob fan, one of the most critical things we focus on is the consistency of the show. I mean it’s the entire reason why the first three (and a half) seasons are so well remembered. So throw all that out the window, I wanna talk about the weird minor inconsistencies throughout the show that have bugged me to no end. Let’s talk backyards. You probably have one, or have been in one. They’re fun right? Grass, birdbaths, lawn mowing and sheds. Every dad’s dream. Except 124 Conch Street seems to constantly flip flop. SpongeBob’s pineapple comes fitted with a garage door on the back, but since that maniac doesn’t even have a boat he just stores stuff in there, like a reef blower. The rest of the pineapple is odd as well. Labyrinthine designs are everywhere. So we have the living room kitchen, bathroom, staircase, bedroom and library and a hatch to the small roof. There’s also a closet attached to the library. Pretty standard right? Well, remember his workout room? How about the attic? The laundry room? The pantry? What about the jellyfish prepping area? The awards closet? Is that the same room where SpongeBob talked to that Krabby Pattyrick? Err, sorry, Patrick in Gone when he was trying to hide from Boaty? HEY WAIT, what about Boaty? This isn’t the first time he’s had a boat of that name, the first time was in No Free Rides. And what about that bathroom? I swear it’s been on the first floor multiple times. And what’s with these decorations? You don’t see me hanging plastic human models on my wall (well, maybe except for one case...) And to top it off, we have the wringer. But maybe it's best we forget that one. I can ramble about SpongeBob’s house all day long, let’s move on. Patrick’s rock. Plain and simple. Just a rock, and a cool stick thing on top. Except the interior. Most times it’s just a green chair with a box TV. Other times it’s a flat layer of sand that Patrick manages to squish under. Then we get a complete flat under here. At the start of I’m With Stupid, Patrick is seen brushing and tending to his home. It’s a bit deeper than expected, but just has sand furniture. Stuff like a cabinet, chair and fishbowl. As the episode progresses, Pat designs an entire living room with decor as well as a kitchen, complete with sand fridge. And then at the end when JANET AND MARTY leave, it's back to being flat. And oh Neptune don’t even get me started on the Donut Of Shame. Patrick wakes up, hungover from a fantastic party, only to wind up feeling guilty for eating and then regurgitating said donut. Most of the furniture is sand, but now electricity works? He can use a phone to call SpongeBob and even has light through a lamp. So does this mean there’s an underground power line in Bikini Bottom? I can’t remember any power poles in any episodes off the top of my head, at least ones near Pat’s house. And now the TV works, complete with color. And then other episodes we're back to the barren pit. For my last example, I wanted to bring up Rise and Shine, since Patrick APPARENTLY HAS MULTIPLE FLOORS NOW? He has an entire pantry and again the working TV. My question, how does he get a signal underneath the rock? AND SINCE WHEN HAS PATRICK HAD A GRILL?! To cap off the housing, we have the winner of House Fancy Prince himself, Squidward Tentpoles. An easter island head fitted with culture and style. We’ve seen his backyard, it’s nothing special. He tried making a garden a few times, but didn’t really work out. Let’s go through the supposed floorplan. First floor, a kitchen, dining and living room. Nothing crazy, some simple furniture, an oven and a closet. And then we get the complete mystery. What is this hallway, where does it lead to? In Squidward the Unfriendly Ghost, Sponge and Pat head back here to clean and find a storage closet. So then to the left of this room we have the elevator. Only featured in this episode. One scene later we see Squidward enter this hallway from the main floor so it seems to connect to the elevator & storage room junction, and presumably also a set of stairs. Second floor, we have the art gallery. You know this room, I know this room. Full of the greatest pieces of pure culture ever put to oil. And I’m betting you forgot about the library. Yeah, Squidward has one and it rarely shows up. (personally I'm more of a Frankenstein guy Squidward, but hey you do you) Alright hey it’s me writing the script about 3 hours later. There was a comic strip titled House of Squidward that apparently featured a switch in his backyard that would activate it kinda like a mech, similar to Good Neighbors. I searched everything. I searched everything. Library Genesis, Reddit posts from six years ago, and I just, I can't find this. If any classic comic holders happen to have a November 2007 issue of a Nickelodeon comic, please let me know or just something cause I’ve wasted too much time researching this instead of writing the script, thanks. Alright hey it’s me writing the script again but now about a month later. I FOUND THE COMIC STRIP! It’s pretty much just what you would expect. Besides the art gallery, we have Squid’s bedroom and bathroom. Nothing special, EXCEPT FOR THIS ONE INSTANCE IN THE ORIGINAL PLANKTON EPISODE [from clip]
"HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELP SpongeBob? What are you doing?! I'm talking to you! SpongeBob? SpongeBob! Are you mad?! [ominous turn] 𝙎𝙃𝙐𝙏 𝙔𝙊𝙐𝙍 𝙈𝙊𝙐𝙏𝙃, 𝙔𝙊𝙐 𝙈𝙀𝘿𝙄𝙊𝘾𝙍𝙀 𝘾𝙇𝘼𝙍𝙄𝙉𝙀𝙏 𝙋𝙇𝘼𝙔𝙀𝙍. mediocre?" [btan]
IT'S ON THE FIRST LEVEL?!?! Population-wise, Bikini Bottom is a weird town. They don’t seem to have a general census, just a guesstimate of the population. In Whatever Happened to SpongeBob?, Bikini Bottom is given the population count of 538, soon to be 537. This does not seem possible. Look at the level of infrastructure: buses run, airports fly planes and they have radio stations and an entire monument of the town. It just seems way too developed for a small town. And speaking of, is Bikini Bottom even a town? Is it a city? A city-state? A town ruled by a king? Then how do other cities work? New Kelp City is clearly bigger with much more compact and urban developments ditto for the unnamed city in Pizza Delivery. Rock Bottom I can understand, it’s a bit of a unique destination if you want to call it that, but what about Ukulele Bottom? Mentioned a singular time in I Was A Teenage Gary which apparently holds jellyfish conventions. which leads me to assume this is where I’m Your Biggest Fanatic takes place, except SpongeBob and Kevin go to Jellyfish Fields. So is SpongeBob just a big enough jellyfishing fan that he’d go to multiple? Probably yeah. Oh my Neptune, I just checked the wiki and found out Ukulele Bottom is actually featured in the Patrick Star Show. Apparently Ian Vasquez, one of the crew members for the episode, gave a description comparing it to being a suburban area under Bikini Bottom. He likened it to Burbank and Los Angeles in California. [ew] What about Atlantic City? Everywhere outside just seems to be a destitute wasteland. And I guess I’d consider Tentacle Acres similar to Ukulele Bottom, just being a neighborhood or suburb in the town itself. [banging rock music] IT'S NOT CALLED 'SQUIDVILLE', FOR THE LOVE OF GOD [more banging rock music] There's also Dullsville, which really only shows up in Plankton Retires. This is the last city I promise, but what about Jetsam City? Besides looking absolutely awesome in this art (seriously guys modern SpongeBob backgrounds are insane like look at this detail, look at the resolution! holy fish paste) This place is way more urban than Bikini Bottom I’d say. Guess what? I lied :) We're going back to building layouts
YIPEE!!!! The Krusty Krab is a monster. Leftmost door connects to Mr. Krabs’ office, 2nd from the right is the entrance to the kitchen and far-most right is the bathrooms, right? NO! Sometimes it’s a storage room, like in Imitation Krabs, or other times it’s connected to the kitchen itself, which is also connected to a freezer that shows up a few times, like SB-129 or Truth or Square. There’s also a hidden break room crammed between the two doors. The kitchen is interconnected to Krabs’ office, but also has a backdoor. Which leads to the dumpster area. [jamming tunes playing] So then this means that there's like a garbage truck or something that comes by to pick up the garbage cause you know, you'd have to put like the trash out at the front, that's how most places do it. But then also, in Sailor Mouth, there's like a guy who comes by and he picks the trash up manually and doesn't have a truck, even though we've also seen like dump trucks and like garbage trucks throughout the entire series. Guys I'm so lost, I'm going off-script; I just remembered this. And then you have this sick storage area near the top above Squidward that just never gets used. I'd love to have a peak up there. But we also have a drive through, and have had one forever it seems. It first appeared in Pizza Delivery, but never really got any attention until the name of the episode of the same name [???] Who runs it? Squidward? What is the deal with Gary’s shell? I think it’s a similar Patrick situation again, where it can really just be anything, kinda like a pocket dimension if you want. In Karate Island, we see SpongeBob explore around and find a bunch of old stuff like shirts or in Pineapple Invasion he has stuff like a magic 8 ball and a clarinet. that's all I had for this topic, I kinda ran out of ideas at this point. Is the Krusty Krab to the left or right of Conch Street? It conchstantly changes and flips. wait- Krabs a La Mode shows to the right, SpongeBob’s left and other episodes like Can You Spare A Dime concur with this. But Help Wanted shows it's to the left, SpongeBob’s right, from the very start. Bummer Vacation muddies the waters even further with the Krusty Krab apparently now being a straight shot. But what about the Chum Bucket? Does this episode canonically take place before it was built? Am I reading too far into a kids cartoon? Then in the same episode like four minutes later, the straight shot has switched to a junction (again with no Chum Bucket). Then even later Krabs takes SpongeBob AWAY from the Krusty Krab, driving to stage left. What kind of cosmic plaything eldritch abomination horror location is Bikini Bottom? I'm losing sleep over this. And then probably one of the most questioned elements, who the absolute barnacle rules Bikini Bottom? First answer is obviously King Neptune, you know, the guy who rules the ocean, has a Poseidome named after him. wait Poseidome Poseidon Oh Neptune. His kid who featured in a very okay-at-best special is named Triton, who gets his name from the sea god of the same name, yadda yadda yadda you’ve probably heard this before. But Mindy gets no explanation from me. And yeah there was the first movie blacklisting the characters from showing up in the main series for a while, but how is she related? Is she actually just his daughter? Did Triton die or something and having a second kid break apart Neptune and this lady’s marriage? And because of the immense stress, he went BALD. OH MY NEPTUNE AND SLASH OR POSEIDON GUYS I'VE BECOME A SPONGEBOB THEORY YOUTUBER BY ACCIDENT. This one is less of an inconsistency and more just a general question, is SB-129 a stable time loop? Squidward wants to avoid jellyfishing with Sponge and Pat, so he hides in the Krusty Krab freezer, only to wind up in the chrome-laced future. He uses a time machine, meets with these two intellectuals and teaches them how to jellyfish. When Squidward returns to his home time period, he learns he is the father of jellyfishing. Surely this would have other side effects right? And speaking of time travel and side effects, what about the entire episode dedicated to it? Back to the Past has the main crew heading back in time and changing elements from the past. -HEY WAIT THERE'S ANOTHER BIKINI BOTTOM POPULATION SIGN This one can’t be far back, maybe only like 40 to 60ish years at most? No, no! I-, I can't afford another tangent. The crew accidently screws up and messes up a tartar saucy plan, and returns home to find the town of literally 1984. Then they go back and the episode kinda just starts to compound on itself more and more. What even happened in Dunces and Dragons? That episode also had time travel, but Sponge and Pat didn’t even use a time machine. Is that what happened with Season 3’s Ugh or 13’s Dopey Dick? Can I ragdoll myself into the past? And speaking of the Krusty Krab, how about that menu? I feel like it changes so often. elly patties, hotdogs, coral bits, number ones, a Double Triple Bossy Deluxe on a raft, four by four, animal-style, extra shingles with a shimmy and a squeeze, light axle grease, make it cry, burn it, and let it swim, diet Dr. Kelp and one time even a salad bar. (oh my God I did that on the first take) ((oh my God)) Or I guess two times if we count Bossy Boots and you know, the whole Kuddly Krab stuff. Again, we still just have Krusty Krab Pizzas, adult and pipsqueak sized patties, milkshakes, a Triple Krabby Supreme with kelp bun or a double batter fried patty on a stick with mayo. But like your makeshift product is just the Krabby Patty. How many like different variations of other things do you need to get? Like milkshakes who-, who gets milkshakes???? There’s a lot of inconsistencies in this show. I just wanted to point out some of the ones that haven’t left my brain since like 2008, so. I guess you could say in regards to pacing, this uh video's been pretty inconsis- I've been btan. Thanks for watching.
[AND READING!]
