Alternative Character Interpretation / SpongeBob SquarePants

Alternative Character Interpretation in SpongeBob SquarePants.

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SpongeBob:

• Is he a sweet, clueless and innocent Manchild, a Stepford Smiler hiding a depressed and disturbed personality, or a sociopath using a childish facade to torment others? Or all three at the same time?
• Does he just want to be friends with Squidward/sees him as a brother-figure, or does he have a legitimate crush on him? The same question could be asked regarding his relationship with Sandy.
• Is SpongeBob naïve in his torment to Squidward or is he pretending to be naïve so that he can get away with tormenting Squidward?
• When faced with a life-or-death situation, is he really just annoying, or does he act deliberately annoying so his captors will release him? "Plankton!", "Shanghaied", "SpongeBob Meets the Strangler", "Born Again Krabs", "Welcome to the Chum Bucket", and "The Getaway" imply that this is one of SpongeBob's clever tactics to escape from danger.
• Did SpongeBob betray Plankton at the end of "One Coarse Meal" out of loyalty to Mr. Krabs, or did he play both Krabs and Plankton to teach Mr. Krabs a lesson and get back in his boss' good books at the same time?
• Is his enjoyment of the spotlight a product of a Small Name, Big Ego or is he secretly aware of how much smarter and more competent other people are than him and wants to be seen as someone special in certain fields he excels at? Consider The Original Fry Cook and Employee of the Month, where he's jealous of Jim and Squidward stealing his spots as the best fry cook/employee of the month because those are one of the few things he regularly excels at. You could argue that he receives many awards in Big Pink Loser, but it's never explicitly stated what these awards were for (most likely Krusty-Krab related).
  • Adding to this—what if compliments regularly go to his head because of how rarely he gets them? Considering the Bikini Bottomites are more often than not really shitty to him even when he isn't causing any trouble with his idiocy, as well as Sandy and Mr. Krabs, two of the people he's closest to, regularly mentioning how dumb he is in his vicinity, and how eager Squidward and Mrs. Puff are to get away from him—is he so well-aware of his mistakes that he feels extremely proud of himself on the rare occasion he gets something right or receives praise?
• When he and Patrick acted scared of a toy robot in "Toy Store of Doom", were they genuinely scared, or just playing some sort of game?
• In "Idiot Box", did he and Patrick actually use a tape recorder to make the noises Squidward heard and lie about it, or was their box genuinely magic? (Another possibility is that Squidward was just hearing things).
• Is SpongeBob as much of an unteachable bad driver as he appears? Or is his bad driving stemming from nervousness and pressure from Mrs. Puff? While he doesn't have his license and is stated to be the only student in Mrs. Puff's class who isn't able to pass, in "Boating School", he says verbatim that he knows everything until he gets behind the wheel and when Patrick is the one guiding him in the same episode, he nearly passed his exam with flying colors until he cut him off at the last minute, which gives credence to the latter. There's also The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, where he is shown to drive the Patty Wagon just fine despite his poor driving skills in the show proper, which could stem from him not feeling as nervous and pressured about doing well, since according to SpongeBob, "you don't need a license to drive a sandwich".
• SpongeBob can reproduce by budding. Is it possible his out of character moments are justified by the fact that we're not actually seeing the original SpongeBob?
• Does SpongeBob's behavior towards Sandy in episodes like "Pressure", "Squirrel Jokes", and "Karate Island" even partially stem from jealousy over how much better she is than him in some areas? Did he want to prove himself as coming out on top over her for once?

Patrick:

• It is highly possible that Patrick is suffering from low self-esteem and lack of confidence, if episodes like "Big Pink Loser", "No Hat For Pat", and "Sing a Song of Patrick" are anything to go by. This might help explain at least some of Patrick's behavior.
• Is Patrick a sociopath who knowingly does dumb, stupid and often assholish things just because he knows his low intelligence will keep him from punishment? Can the same be said for SpongeBob? There are throwaway lines in "Home Sweet Pineapple", "I Had An Accident", "Tentacle-Vision", and "The Card" that may support this:
  Patrick: Is it time to ruin Squidward's day?! SpongeBob, don't start without me!

  Sandy: Don't you have to be stupid somewhere else?
  Patrick: Not until 4:00.

  Squidward: Patrick, just how dumb are you?
  Patrick: It varies.

  Patrick: SpongeBob, you can't always expect my usual brand of stupidity. I like to mix it up; keep you on your toes.
  • For that matter, is Patrick actually an idiot, or is he just pretending to be one for whatever reason?
• Does Patrick secretly have a thing for SpongeBob? Not only do SpongeBob and Patrick share quite a few moments of Ho Yay throughout the show, but whenever Patrick feels like he’s in danger of SpongeBob ignoring him too much or abandoning/leaving Patrick for whatever reason (like in “Nature Pants” or “Valentine’s Day”), he tends to go insane and may even start going full Yandere on SpongeBob. And then, there’s lines like these:
  Patrick: What am I supposed to do all day while you’re at school?
  SpongeBob: I dunno. What do you normally do when I’m gone?
  Patrick: ...Wait for you to get back.
• Patrick's wildly inconsistent characterization becomes possibly explainable after it's established that severed body parts of his can grow into doubles of him. Are we always seeing the same Patrick? Or are the more jerkish takes on him actually copies of the original Patrick who didn't have the same experiences and influences? (The "Mad Chopper" copy was more antagonistic than the real Patrick...)

Squidward:

• Is he a Jerkass who deserves his Butt-Monkey status, or the show's biggest woobie? Does he completely hate SpongeBob, or does he care about him deep down? The latter was most certainly the case in earlier seasons while the former seems to be the case in later seasons. Which leads to another alternate interpretation: did Squidward use to deep down care for SpongeBob only for continued grievances to obliterate that care so Squidward plain hates him now?
• Is his arrogant demeanor simply a cover for deep insecurities?
• When he had no happy memories in "Are You Happy Now?", was his lethargic behaviour just a cartoonish exaggeration of a bad mood, or was he clinically depressed? For that matter, was his lack of happy memories due to forgetting earlier times in the series when he has been happy (perhaps due to clinical depression) or was it just a Series Continuity Error?
• When he apparently went into an Acid-Trip Dimension in "Squidward in Clarinetland", was he hallucinating, did he fall asleep and dream the whole thing, or did it really happen? Similarly, in "Idiot Box", were there genuinely loud noises coming from the box (and if so, there's debate on what made them, but that's another matter) or was he just hearing things?
• His drive for fame and fortune and resentment of his workplace take on a possible new dimension when it's revealed that Jim, one of his former coworkers, ended up becoming a world-famous chef. While a flashback establishes that he just saw his job as a way to put food on the table until his career took off even back then, he didn't seem to actively hate working at the Krusty Krab like he does now and he came off as happier overall. Is he so angry at being stuck in a dead-end job and having his art and music go unappreciated because he personally saw somebody go on to great success years ago?

Mr. Krabs:

• Why does he love money so much? Is it simple greed? Does he have a fixation on the money itself, rather than its purchasing power? Or is his relentless desire for cold hard cash borne out of an obsessive desire to avoid falling back into the poverty he grew up in?
• Does he actually care for his employees and his daughter? Or is it just a facade he puts on so they'll be loyal to him?
• What effects did his time in the navy have on him? Does he subconsciously view Plankton as equivalent to the enemies he fought during his time there? Is that why he can be so cruel and ruthless towards him?
• In "Born Again Krabs", Mr. Krabs refuses to let SpongeBob make another Krabby Patty until he sells a rotten one found under the stove, and tries to prove a point about it still being edible by eating it and still wanting to finish it even as he is rushed to the hospital from just one bite making him sick. Was he being overly stubborn about not wanting to throw away the rotten patty in the name of saving money, or was he just very oblivious about how sick it would make someone and still failed to grasp the truth?

Sandy

• Later seasons make her more focused on science. Is this because she's adjusted to the novelty of living under the sea? Or is she taking her job more seriously after almost being fired for a previous lack of results?
• Earlier on, she and SpongeBob were evenly matched in karate, but later episodes would establish a Running Gag of her beating him easily. Has he gotten worse, or has she gotten better?

Mrs. Puff

• Is her sometimes insane behavior really just due to the stress of having SpongeBob as a student? Or was she already mentally scarred by the (heavily implied) death of her husband?

Pearl

• Does she just view SpongeBob as a friend? Or does she have a crush on him that she refuses to admit, due to a combination of their age gap and her being afraid of how her peers might react?
• Is she the biological daughter of a crab and a whale, did Mr. Krabs get together with an already-pregnant whale, or is she adopted?

Gary

• To what extent is he actually SpongeBob's pet? One episode has SpongeBob wonder if Gary forgot to pay the electric bill after an unexpected power failure, and there are other episodes with moments indicating that he's more like SpongeBob's roommate than his pet.
• Is the reason he Hates Baths because he doesn't like to get wet, in a parody of Cats Hate Water? Or, since he's seen trying to go into a mud puddle, does he more hate getting clean?

Plankton:

• Is he a ruthless Card-Carrying Villain trying to cheat his way to success by stealing the Krabby Patty formula, or is he a Jerkass Woobie who has been driven to unscrupulous tactics due to Mr. Krabs' obsessive bullying?
• His obsession with success, constant bragging about his intellectual achievements ("I went to college!") and implied lack of real friends takes on a potential new dimension when "Plankton's Army" reveals he comes from a family of hicks. If there's a connection here, does he resent his relatives and see them as ignorant underachievers, with the course he took in life being an attempt to distance himself from his past and prove he's not like them? Or was he demeaned and treated as an outcast, with his negative personality being the result of anger at society for treating him like a dumb hayseed just because of his background, which he had no control over and couldn't change?

Karen:

• Is she just helping Plankton out of obligation? Or does she genuinely care about him and his goals, even if she's not always the best at showing it? If she's bad at showing she cares, is that just her personality, or is it because she's an AI?

Larry

• "Ripped Pants" has a song with the line "When big Larry came 'round just to put him down", despite Larry acting genuinely nice most of the episode. This takes on a couple of potential new dimensions when one factors in that it was partly performed by SpongeBob himself. If the song is meant to represent SpongeBob's personal feelings, did he include that line because he was jealous of Sandy wanting to hang out with Larry and resentful at Larry dragging him into a weightlifting competition, even though Larry's intentions were entirely innocent? Or is it because he previously treated SpongeBob like dirt before recently (at the time of the episode) changing for the better, with SpongeBob still not fully trusting him and interpreting his actions in a negative light? The latter reading might help explain some of Larry's more dickish moments early on.

Everyone else

• The townspeople of Bikini Bottom: Friendly and good-natured citizens, with occasional jerk moments, but nice people overall or group of callous and unpleasant individuals who bully each other and have sadistic tendencies and possibly hate Sandy because she is a land animal? It could also be that, like most towns, Bikini Bottom has some nice people, some jerks, and some in-between people.
• The police officers of Bikini Bottom: Honest and well-intentioned cops, but sometimes a bit gullible and with few shades of Good Is Not Nice or useless and corrupt assholes who do not help others or respond to any crimes and instead pick on innocent people and punish them for minor things?
• Is Mermaid Man being a Scatterbrained Senior simply the result of aging? Or was he exposed to the Orb of Confusion for a prolonged period of time?
• Bubble Buddy (a sentient, man-shaped bubble who appeared in an episode of the same name):
  • Did he do nothing while Scooter was drowning because he didn't want to blow his cover as an Animate Inanimate Object and only intervened when Squidward was about to kill him, or because he simply didn't care, or even enjoyed watching Scooter die?
  • There's a third possibility. While the episode seems to indicate he was alive all along, with only SpongeBob knowing, it's also possible that he was an inanimate object and only came to life just before Squidward could pop him, with SpongeBob just acting like he was a real person.
• Does Granny from "Have You Seen This Snail?" actually eat snails, or does she just overfeed them to death? If the latter, does she overfeed them intentionally to kill, or does she do so with affection, unaware of the consequences?
• Lord Royal Highness in "Atlantis SquarePantis" is enraged when Patrick destroys the bubble for real, and leads an angry, armed mob of soldiers against the gang until Plankton tries (and fails) to kill them with a tank that shoots ice cream, and declares the "talking speck" as the new treasure. Considering how he puts up a new sign forbidding flash photography and gets rid of the amulet so SpongeBob and friends can't return, it could be that he only picked Plankton as a treasure not because he's a Cloud Cuckoolander, but because he didn't want any violence, and got rid of Plankton by killing two birds with one stone.
• The veterinarian from "I Was a Teenage Gary" prescribes Gary Snail Plasma but refuses to administer it to him, claiming to be squeamish. Was he sincere or afraid of accidentally injecting himself with the plasma, transforming him into a snail? The way he hastily leaves SpongeBob's house points to the latter. Also, was he stupid for not realising that Gary didn't need the plasma and was just dehydrated, or did he just make an honest mistake?
• Flatts wanting to kick SpongeBob's butt. Was it just because, or did he want revenge for being kidnapped in "Sandy's Rocket" (provided that really was Flatts and not another fish with the same design)? SpongeBob makes no mention of what happened during that episode and apparently doesn't recognize Flatts, which could be explained as either one of the show's many examples of episodes being entirely self-contained and having no bearing on other episodes or just not remembering what he did to him. When asked to tell something about himself, he says that he likes to kick people's butts in general, not just SpongeBob's, which could mean that he's just a bully in general, but then again he could have been lying to intimidate SpongeBob.
• The official web series Bikini Bottom Mysteries invokes this trope on the show's characters:
  • The doctor fish. He occasionally diagnoses patients wrong or gives them cruel treatments, but he is shown treating pets competently and once claims to be a vet. Does that mean he doesn't actually have a medical license? The fact that other characters look similar to him also leads to the tongue-in-cheek interpretation that those characters are him in disguise.
  • The background character Harold has a ravenous appetite, a Hair-Trigger Temper, and a Companion Cube of some keys named "Boo Boo Keys". Is he a predatory fish (which also explains his sharp teeth), a lunatic, or just a tough guy with a soft side?
  • Nat Peterson is speculated to have supernatural abilities, since he's very strong and once appeared alive despite being dead in a previous episode.
  • Scooter once apparently died, but then came back, which has led to the theory that he's a ghost in later appearances.
  • The various Old Man Jenkinses are theorised to be trying to nab the secret formula, since they often show up around Krabs and Plankton and have occasionally committed crimes.
  • Was the Flying Dutchman really used as a fashion display upon death, or was the legend made up (since the Dutchman likes fashion so it's odd he'd be bothered by being used as a fashion display, and he claims to have been buried despite the legend saying he wasn't)? Likewise, is he haunting people out of loneliness, because he's evil, or because that's just what ghosts do?
  • Miss Shell sometimes seems snarky and active, and sometimes seems frail and meek, which has caused the (somewhat satirical) theory that one of them is an impostor.
  • Several background fish resemble the conman, leading to a theory that those fish are him in disguise.
  • Norton the mailfish is hypothesised to be a criminal, since he avoids contact and has suspicious knowledge of things.
• YouTuber Alex Bale has a number of theories about the show, some of which involve this trope.
  • This video has two regarding Squilliam. One is that he's not nearly as successful, talented and popular as he likes to portray himself as, using his money and influence to hire people to mess with Squidward. The second is that the reason he spends so much time and effort to mess with Squidward is because he's Squidward's vindictive ex-boyfriend.
  • This video postulates that, rather than being an innocent restaurant chain, Goofy Goober's is actually a front for a UFO death cult in the vein of Heaven's Gate.
• A lot of the customer's actions in "Pizza Delivery" are up for debate.
  • Did he order his drink after Mr. Krabs hung up the phone? Did he assume that the drink was included with the pizza? Or did he deliberately leave the drink out of the order just to have an excuse to complain about something?
  • As for why the customer ordered a pizza from a restaurant that doesn't deliver or make them in the first place, did he call the wrong restaurant by accident? Or did he actually believe they served pizza? If the latter is true, was he just misinformed, or possibly insane?
  • Why was he so angry about not having a drink, to the point of refusing to accept or pay for his order? Was he really that easy to piss off? Or was he just a very mean spirited prank caller who rage quit when they actually managed to give him his ridiculous order and used the lack of a drink as an excuse? It could also be that he was extremely hangry, because the pizza seemed to arrive about an hour or so late.