And apparently, children enjoy this kind of pain. ...In-Universe, that is.
Tough Guy: Ya' need to have muscles on your eyeballs! (stretches eyes out)
SpongeBob: Ew.
SpongeBob: Ew.
In the over two decades that it's been on the air, the SpongeBob SquarePants writers and animators have turned eye-related injuries, mutations, and other anomalies into an art form.
- In "Sandy's Rocket", when SpongeBob can't sleep due to being too anxious to ride with Sandy on her trip to the moon, he tries to keep his eyes closed with clothespins. Patrick waking him up causes them to fly off, leaving his eyelids looking stretched out.
- In "I Was a Teenage Gary", the process of SpongeBob turning into a snail shows his eyes elongating in painful-looking detail. When he goes to Squidward's house post-transformation, Squidward touches his left eyestalk, which causes it to recoil.
- In "Suds", after being sent home from work because he was too sick to get anything done, SpongeBob is about to call Sandy to take him to the hospital when his right eye rolls off his face. He puts it back on during their conversation.
- In "Arrgh!", when SpongeBob and Patrick take a peek at Mr. Krabs' treasure map (actually their board game from the beginning of the episode taped to a piece of paper), they stretch their eyes out and rub them across the map. When they take their eyes off the map, they're now shrunken.
- In "Walking Small", SpongeBob's first act of being "assertive" to drive the other beachgoers away is to wave around a sandy blanket. One onlooker runs off after getting the resulting dust cloud in his eyes.
- In "Something Smells", when SpongeBob goes around asking people if he's ugly, he jumps on a boat's windshield and his horrible breath blinds the driver.
- "Wormy":
- When SpongeBob says that he can't watch as Squidward and Mr. Krabs approach Wormy, he pushes his eyes into his head.
- Shortly after that, upon seeing Wormy's face up close, Squidward and Mr. Krabs scream in terror and their eyes fall out.
- When Wormy's "attack" on Bikini Bottom makes the news, one guy watching from home gets so scared that his eyes fall out of his head and into his mouth.
- In "Patty Hype", while watching SpongeBob on TV discuss how he and Patrick made so much money that they didn't know what to do with it and decided to bury, shred, and burn it all, Mr. Krabs' eyes progressively inflate like balloons before flying out of his head while deflating. A similar gag shows up in "That's No Lady" when his eyes inflate and pop on seeing "Patricia", and then again in "Mr. Krabs Takes a Vacation" when his eyes inflate and explode when he sees the process by which the Bikini Bottom Mint makes coins, then SpongeBob gets a box of replacement eyes and screws them into Mr. Krabs' head like lightbulbs.
- In "No Free Rides", when Mrs. Puff steals SpongeBob's new boat with SpongeBob still in it, he attempts to pepper spray her but has the can pointed backwards and sprays himself.
- In "I'm Your Biggest Fanatic", as part of SpongeBob's "initiation" into the Jellyspotters, Kevin has him put jelly on his face to feed the jellyfish. Kevin expects the jellyfish to sting SpongeBob, but SpongeBob sneezes and the jellyfish fly into Kevin's eyes, then zap him, causing his eyes to welt up.
- In "The Smoking Peanut", while paranoid that he'll be arrested for inciting Clamu's rampage, the sound of the police coming to SpongeBob's house scares him so badly that his eyes fall out of his head.
- Played with in the episode "Graveyard Shift" when SpongeBob's eyes scream.
- In "The Fry Cook Games", as a display of manliness before a fight, Patrick rips a lemon in half, then puts both halves on his eyes and screams either out of pain or enthusiasm.
- The beginning of "SpongeGuard on Duty" has Patrick staring directly at the sun, without sunglasses like SpongeBob is wearing, causing his eyes to shrivel up. They quickly return to normal when he takes a sip of his soda.
- Near the beginning of "Snowball Effect", Squidward is at home about to enjoy a cup of tea with a lemon wedge until he squirts it in his eye.Squidward: Why do I even bother?
- In "Can You Spare a Dime?", when Mr. Krabs accuses Squidward of stealing his first dime, he demands that Squidward show him his tentacles. Incensed by his accusation, Squidward squeezes Krabs' eyes as an act of defiance before quitting his job.
- Early in "No Weenies Allowed", a guy in line for the Salty Spitoon says that in order to enter, you need to have not only muscles on your muscles but also muscles on your eyeballs. He demonstrates by flexing his eyes, which SpongeBob comments on with a resounding "Ew."
- In "Krab Borg", Mr. Krabs prepares to salt a hard-boiled egg, but SpongeBob calling out to him distracts him and causes him to get the salt in his eyes.
- In "Rock-a-Bye Bivalve", when SpongeBob uses his pants as a crib for Junior, Patrick sticks his head in and pulls it out with several pieces of him missing, including his right eye.
- There was a scene in the episode "Wet Painters" where SpongeBob sees a microscopic drop of paint on Mr. Krabs' first dollar and his eyes crack open, causing his irises to ooze out.
- In "Chocolate with Nuts", Patrick takes SpongeBob's suggestion to focus on getting the customer to buy their chocolate as to focus on the customer himself. The next house they go to, he stretches his eyes in and out to do so until the customer closes his door on them, but Patrick just takes the opportunity to admire the guy's home.
- In "Clams", as Mr. Krabs displays increasing Sanity Slippage over the loss of his millionth dollar and his efforts to get it back, SpongeBob agrees with Squidward's suggestion that they should bail on him when he sees Mr. Krabs laughing insanely and using his eyes as a jump rope.
- In "Krabby Land", SpongeBob realizes that kids enjoy seeing others in pain when he creates a bubble that pops and gets soap in his eyes, his pained screaming being heralded by his eyes becoming bloodshot and then glowing pink. He follows up by pouring the whole bottle of soap into them.
- "SpongeBob Meets the Strangler":
- When the Strangler is being arrested, the police, for seemingly no reason other than Rule of Funny, handcuff his eyes.
- Later, SpongeBob tries to help the Strangler (currently working as his bodyguard in order to get close to him) reach a window by attempting to jump onto his back wearing cleated shoes. He misses the back and the shoes land in both of the Strangler's eyes. His eyes aren't gouged out, being a kid's show and all, but it doesn't decrease the Squick value.SpongeBob: With these spiky cleats, anything is possible!
Strangler: Cleats?! [SpongeBob jumps onto his eye sockets, and he screams in pain] Get your feet out of my eye sockets!
SpongeBob: I'm trying, but my cleats are stuck in your corneas!
- The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie:
- Invoked and then subverted at the beginning when SpongeBob puts some toothpaste on his toothbrush and uses it to brush his eyes instead, expressing no pain doing so.
- At the Krusty Krab 2, King Neptune's bald head causes a man's eyeballs to smoke and burn from the brightness.
- When Mindy is showing SpongeBob and Patrick what's happening in Bikini Bottom without them, she shows them Neptune having a squire trying to give him spray-on hair only to accidentally spray it in Neptune's eyes, covering them in hair.
- When Dennis returns late in the film after being stepped on by the "cyclops", SpongeBob attempts to reason with him and offers to share his bubbles with him. SpongeBob's bubble wand catches the wind and fires a stream of bubbles in Dennis's eyes.
- In "Fear of a Krabby Patty", Plankton (posing as a therapist) tells SpongeBob to close his eyes tighter than he already has them, then he tells him to close them tighter than that, which causes SpongeBob's eyelids to tear like paper.
- In "Skill Crane", when Squidward comes home after being unable to win at the crane even once, he finds that he can't pick up anything with his tentacles anymore, beginning with the TV remote. In a lapse in judgment he attempts to push one of the buttons with his eye, then screams bloody murder and falls under the table. Later, when Squidward hijacks a construction crane and can't stop it, SpongeBob does an Eye Pop and uses his elongated eyes as legs to run away.
- In "Dunces and Dragons", after Dark Knight Sandy's Heel–Face Turn, she takes SpongeBob, Patrick, and Squidly to Planktonimor's castle. There, she convinces the guards that they're her prisoners and she wants to know if they should either be pulled apart by seahorses or have all of their eyelashes individually plucked, taking all of their chances to make an eyelash wish. On the way in, one of the guards removes one of SpongeBob's eyelashes while telling him to make a wish.
- In "Ghost Host", the Flying Dutchman tries several mildly scary things in order to disturb SpongeBob, and, towards the climax of the episode, appears as a huge snake with a huge, grotesque baby's head, which melts, turning into an effigy of SpongeBob, whose eyes elongate into hideous wiggling white worms and squiggle onto the floor. As well as the fact that spiders came out of his eye sockets and mouth.
- At the beginning of "Karate Island", SpongeBob kicks himself in the eye as part of him showing off his karate skills.
- By watching enough episodes, it's clear that SpongeBob is very literal when given eye-related orders. If he's told to keep his eyes peeled, he will rip the skin off his eyeballs ("New Leaf").
- In "Born to be Wild", when Squidward sees the Wild Ones (actually the Mild Ones) headed toward the Krusty Krab through a pair of binoculars, he does an Eye Pop straight through the lenses and his eyes remain stretched out before he falls out of the crow's nest.
- In "Night Light", a beam from one of the night lights that SpongeBob bought and put in his house refracts off Squidward's hand mirror, table mirror, dresser mirror, and ceiling mirror and onto his sleep mask, setting it on fire. He puts it out with a glass of water, and his eyes turn into stalks that crawl out of his burnt sockets.
- In "Money Talks", during Mr. Krabs' dream of him selling his soul to the Flying Dutchman to gain the ability to talk to money, he wakes up when the Dutchman reaches into a bag and throws dust in his eyes, causing him to run around yelling.
- In "Sing a Song of Patrick", a band member's eyes dissolve into dust after he reads Patrick's song, because of how bad it is.
- In "A Flea In Her Dome", Sandy is desperately trying to get rid of a flea that keeps biting her in different parts of her body. In one instance, the flea goes up her nose and crawls into one of her eyes. It then rubs its legs against the inside of her eyelid, causing Sandy to scream in utter pain.
- "Blackened Sponge" featured several different depictions of SpongeBob getting a black eye. Though it shows multiple objects impacting with his cornea, there's nothing too graphic or violent because, again, it's a kids' show.
- In "The Two Faces of Squidward", after Squidward becomes handsome, a fan of his says that he wants his shirt, while a more overzealous fan says that he wants Squidward's eyelids instead.
- After making himself "normal" in "Not Normal", SpongeBob attempts to make himself weird again through clenching, which just makes his eyes shoot out of his head.
- Near the end of "Sun Bleached", the light emanating from SpongeBob's pale body is enough to melt a partygoer's eyes. When it turns out that his state is actually "the ultimate tan", the guy gets up and reinserts his eyes, which have spontaneously reformed.
- In "Giant Squidward", after Squidward is restrained by the townsfolk, one citizen suggests scooping out his eyes and using them as giant, misshapen soccer balls.
- During the pet revolt in "Grooming Gary", a snail who was previously made to wear a too-small pair of glasses by her owner puts the same glasses on his eyes, making him scream in pain. Shortly after, another snail squeezes a guy's eyes when she lassos him with a diamond-studded leash.
- In "Porous Pockets", when trying to decide what to spend his money on at the mall, SpongeBob visits a pet store where baby scallops latch onto his eyes. Patrick then pulls them off, ripping off SpongeBob's eyelids in the process.
- In "Ditchin'", when SpongeBob worries that his decision to skip boating school will result in him becoming a criminal, he pulls on his eyelids.
- In "Komputer Overload", Karen says that without her, Plankton wouldn't even remember to blink. While he's telling her that she's easily replaceable, he promptly does exactly that.
- In "Toy Store of Doom", when SpongeBob and Patrick run out of the Toy Barrel after being stuck inside all night, their eyes are visibly smoking.
- In "I ♥ Dancing", Squidward pokes SpongeBob in the eye and leaves a dent for a few seconds before it pops itself out. SpongeBob doesn't flinch.
- SpongeBob accidentally squirts mustard in Squidward's eyes in "Stuck in the Wringer"; not only do his eyes burn, but they also shrivel up and fall on SpongeBob's patty.
- In "Enchanted Tiki Dreams", SpongeBob and Patrick annoy Squidward at work by squirting mustard in their eyes.
- In "Whelk Attack", Sandy asks SpongeBob and Patrick to lend her their corneas. They remove their corneas like contact lenses and give them to Sandy, then there's a shot of SpongeBob and Patrick with gaping holes where their pupils should be.
- In "Perfect Chemistry", as Sandy and Plankton are configuring Sandy's teleporter using SpongeBob as a guinea pig, their first attempt teleports his eyes into the Krusty Krab's kitchen, much to Squidward's horror.
- A scene in the first half of "Frozen Face-Off" has Patrick's eyelids freezing over and shattering from the sheer cold, then the second half has icicles forming over his eyes.
- "Plankton's Good Eye" has Plankton attempting to give himself a second eye. His first attempt makes him grow eyes all over himself until one extra-large eye grows out of his mouth and overtakes his whole body.
- "Bubble Troubles" opens with SpongeBob and Patrick blowing bubbles when Patrick comes up with the idea to substitute their bubble soap with hot sauce. They repeatedly get the hot sauce bubbles in their eyes, causing them to disintegrate before they quickly grow back.
- In "Free Samples", Plankton lures customers into buying his chum by selling it in fake Krabby Patties. Several unfortunate customers have their eyes bulge after taking a bite, while one guy's eyes fall out of his head, followed by his arms and dorsal fin.
- In "Home Sweet Rubble", when SpongeBob's pineapple house begins rotting, his friends give him an unwanted remodeling that's a hodgepodge of a space-age house, at Sandy's suggestion, with half of a boat sticking out of it from Mr. Krabs and a rock from Patrick. Mr. Krabs also gives him some vintage condiment jars, and when SpongeBob presses the pump on one of them, he gets flakes of fossilized brown mustard in his eyes that cause them to smoke.
- In "License to Milkshake", when Captain Frostymug prepares to drink one of SpongeBob's first attempts at a milkshake, it turns out to be frozen solid and slides out of the glass, hitting Frostymug in the eye. He's unfazed.
- In "Eek, an Urchin!", SpongeBob tries to spray a blob of ketchup on the floor but ends up spraying his eyes instead.
- In "Company Picnic", SpongeBob accidentally flicks a pickle chip into Squidward's eye, and while reaching for a bottle of water Squidward accidentally squirts hot sauce into it, setting it on fire. When he semi-nonchalantly tells Mr. Krabs about his flaming eye, the latter puts it out with a fire extinguisher.
- In The Sponge Bob Movie Sponge Out Of Water, when Plankton (as muscular superhero Plank-Ton) shakes down Burger-Beard and his ship, the latter squirts hot sauce in the former's eye.
- In "The Incredible Shrinking Sponge", when Squidward has to work the grill after SpongeBob shrinks, he accidentally flips a Krabby Patty into his eye, causing it to get horribly burned, then he relieves it with a baster full of water.
- In "Out of the Picture", Squidward shows Larry one of his paintings and Larry's eyes burst into flames. He rips his eyes out of his head, but his eye holes catch fire, too.
- In "Feral Friends", a tremor causes Mr. Krabs to accidentally jab Mrs. Puff in the eye with a forkful of cake.
- "Teacher's Pests":
- At the beginning, Plankton is driving a tank while drinking a cup of coffee and runs Mr. Krabs off the road and up a mountain. When Mr. Krabs' boat falls on Plankton's tank and flips it over, Plankton finds that the coffee has disappeared from his mug, before looking up and the coffee cascading into his eye.
- At the end, when Plankton, Mr. Krabs, and SpongeBob are all sewn together after being mangled in an explosion, Plankton sees that his body is now replacing one of Mr. Krabs' eyes, and Krabs' head is sewn to the part of SpongeBob's head where his eyes used to be.
- In "Plankton Paranoia", Mr. Krabs prepares a platter of booby-trapped Krabby Patties intended for Plankton. While preventing the partygoers at his surprise birthday party from eating them, two jellyfish come out of one and sting his eyes, then another comes open and his eyes get clamped by a beartrap.
- In "Call the Cops", when Plankton is absconding with the Krabby Patty formula, he runs face-first into a police officer's boot, then pries himself loose while his eye and teeth remain stuck to it.
- In "Squirrel Jelly", one of the mutant jellyfish that Sandy created slices Patrick's head open, then two of them enter his head, push his eyes out, and zap him from his sockets. Later, a giant jellyfish squeezes SpongeBob and Patrick, causing their eyes to pop out.
- "The String" opens with SpongeBob setting his eyes on fire when he uses them to flip patties. He puts the fire out with hot mustard, which causes his eyes to melt.
- In "Karen's Baby", after Chip is delivered, SpongeBob gives him a can of keyboard spray as a gift. The nozzle flies off and barely misses Plankton, but rebounds off a wall and hits him from behind, knocking his eye out of its socket.
- In "SpongeBob's Big Birthday Blowout", after Plankton gets SpongeBob's house keys and the keys to the Krusty Krab, Mr. Krabs steps on him, causing Plankton's eye to pop out. It happens again later when Plankton suggests that they do a torture theme for SpongeBob's party and squeezes himself in a vise.
- In "Knock Knock, Who's There?", a Home Alone-styled trap that SpongeBob and Patrick set up for Mr. Krabs, whom they thought was a burglar impersonating himself and trying to break into his home, sprays him in the eyes with cologne.
- In "There Will Be Grease", Mr. Krabs and Plankton's grease that they sell as a do-anything tonic gives Mrs. Puff pinkeye.
- In "Captain Pipsqueak", after Plankton's latest defeat, Karen puts a cucumber slice on his eye. When he pulls it off, his eye remains stuck to it and he reinserts it by swallowing it.
