Headscratchers / Around the Clock at Bikini Bottom

• SpongeBob, Patrick, and Squidward go to Goofy Goobers to get more mayonnaise, and it's strange that they succeed. Why would an ice cream parlour have mayonnaise in it?
  • Maybe they're like Dairy Queen where they used to only serve ice cream but eventually expanded their menu to include other foods that would use mayonnaise.
  • In The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, Goofy Goobers actually provides other meals including hamburgers. Maybe that's why they go there for mayonnaise.
• Doodle Patrick is startled when he first encounters a Pinkie and asks what is it, yet when he draws a doodle version of it, he correctly identifies it as a Jellien.
  • Jellien=Jellyfish+Alien; it's not implausible that Doodle Patrick would come up with that as a descriptor on his own without knowing that that's what they're actually called.
• Doodle Patrick is smart enough to declare that fire being set underwater should be impossible, yet does not question why he, a creature made of paper, does not disintegrate underwater.
  • Maybe paper used by Bikini Bottomites is specially designed to be waterproof, and Doodle Patrick already infered this. Conversely, you can't exactly make waterproof fire.
• Sandy is a very light sleeper and she will wake up from the slightest bit of noise, such as running around in her tree or stepping on stick outside. Yet despite that, she isn't woken up by the sound of SpongeBob building the flamethrower or the Nutalarm barricading the doors.
  • Adding to this, Pearl's hearing seems to vary quite a bit. Stepping on a squeaky board all the way across the house wakes her up, but somehow slamming a door right next to her doesn't.
  • Selective hearing while sleeping is very much a thing; it's entirely possible to wake up to your alarm quietly buzzing on your nightstand while sleeping through someone mowing the lawn right outside your window. Pearl could very well be used to the sound of doors closing while she's sleeping, and the sound of Spongebob and the Nutalarm doing their thing could also be similar enough to sounds Sandy is used to.
• When you accept to race Barry or play hide and seek with him, all the enemies on the map somehow just vanish.
• The Alaskan Bull Worm and the Parasitic Worm are both residing in Rock Bottom right outside of the museum where the Overlord's base is. Yet somehow they haven't been cloned yet.
  • Well it is pitch black in there, and the only three jelliens with night vision are all incapable of cloning.
    • Wouldn't the Overload have sent out an army of Jelliens to scour Rock Bottom for victims upon turning the Museum into their base? Not to mention that the Jelliens would've had to encounter them upon first arriving in Rock Bottom (unless both creatures actively avoided them).
    • It could be that they actively avoided them. Alternatively look at the situation with Big Lenny and it could be interpreted as the Jelliens being too afraid to go after the creatures in Rock Bottom, or the creatures trying to avoid the Jelliens. I think it might just be that the Alaskan Bull Worm and Parasitic Worm are too dangerous for the Jelliens to control.
• The Nerdy Employee, Dennis, and the doodles all followed the crew into Rock Bottom and to the museum, somehow getting past both of the aforementioned worms. It's understandable that Dennis and the doodles accomplished this since they arguably have the means to defend themselves, but how on Earth did the nerdy employee do this?
  • The Nerdy Employee and Dennis both have connections to the Overlord. The nerd works for him and Dennis is a clone, so they probably hitched a ride with the Overlord and the other jelliens over the worms.
    • This then brings in the question of why the Overlord would do this. Dennis has proven to be a bit of a liability since he's only loyal to himself and not the Overlord and he's perfectly willing to kill other jelliens that get in his way. The nerdy employee has completely failed his job back at Glove World and he's pretty much useless all things considered. Wouldn't the Overlord just kill both of them, or at least leave them to a possible fate of death by the worms? (Also, when would they have even hitched a ride? They weren't seen at all in the final level when the Overlord lifted the restaurant straight up into the sky, and they wouldn't have had any reason to go to Rock Bottom before the crew did)
    • It could just be that since Jellien Dennis doesn't actively go out of his way to attack other Jelliens, that the Overlord doesn't consider sending someone after him, since the only time he placed jelliens in danger was when he was hunting Squidward. It could also be that the Overlord finds Jellien Dennis's skills as a bounty hunter to be incredibly useful.
    • And as for the Nerdy Employee, the guy hasn't ever hurted a fly, just as long as said fly is cloned, so the Overlord would have no reason to bother to dispose of him.
• Assumably things went back to normal once the Overlord was defeated, but we're never shown how Squidward managed to get Big Lenny out of his house.
  • Considering Dave's sense of humour, Big Lenny probably ate a sandwich from the fridge, had an allergic reaction, and died.
  • Both of his neighbors are jellyfish experts; they probably figured something out.
    • Or if the Prowler battle is any indication, Patrick beat the ever living ink out of Big Lenny. Why he didn't do this in the tutorial could be because he still didn't look at the Mermaid Man comic cover, which is presumably what gave him the courage to fight evil.
• So... how did Mr. Krabs know about the Jelliens? He calls Squidward and merely says he feels like something is going on, which is a Hand Wave and a half, and it's never actually explained how he knew about them.
  • He could have seen the unusually organized flocks(?) of jellyfish flying overhead, well outside of Jellyfish Fields, on their way to Glove World. If they were low enough at that point for their eyes to be visible, either with the naked eye or by telescope (which Mr. Krabs probably owns), he'd connect the dots pretty fast.
• Where was Mr. Krabs during Glove World? Multiple episodes show that when he's not seeing Mrs. Puff (Which he can't of since she's been cloned at her boating school), he goes straight home after work, yet him getting out of his car and entering his house at the beginning of his home level suggest he wasn't already there. So where was he?
  • Possibly he was driving home from collecting the treasure he got from Jellyfish Fields.
    • The tutorial takes place early in the morning, though, meanwhile 3AW takes place at 10 in the night.
    • Or he could've been driving home after seeing what he saw, as he called Squidward to tell him about it.
  • He might have still been at the Krusty Krab; Squidward's comment about Mr. Krabs calling him into work indicates that it's still open at that hour, and 9pm isn't an absurdly late time for a fast food restaurant to still be open. Even if it is closed, 3AM at the Krusty Krab indicates that there's still a handful of after-hours tasks he could be doing.
• How can the Prowler see in the Goofy Goober suit? The costume's eyeholes are presumably in the headpiece, but a Prowler's eyes are on its torso, and the head piece would be filled with its Rubber-Forehead Alien head.
• Why did Dirty Bubble betray Jellien Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy instead of killing Mr. Krabs? Yeah, the whole thing about Man Ray ditching him for the villain-turned heroes was a ploy to fool the crew, but Dirty Bubble could've very easily just sent Krabs flying off of the bridge, and had the cloned heroes kill off Spongebob and Patrick when they came.
• Speaking of not killing when you have the chance, this applies to Doodle Patrick in the final level when he monologues Patrick to sleep. As the YouTuber Jayski Bean pointed out, why did Doodle Patrick bonk his regular counterpart on the head to wake him up instead of just using that opportunity to erase him? Furthermore, why not use the eraser during his boss fight?
  • Because Doodle Patrick is a Card-Carrying Villain who fights fair. You're essentially asking Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?, something that is taboo for any character to do. Need a reason why? Just spend a few minutes reading that page.
• The Prowler's terrifying ability to manipulate the minds of others completely gets abandoned after Patrick's level.
  • Probably because if it failed against a mind as simple as Patrick's, it probably wasn't gonna be that effective against the others.
• It wouldn't make any sense for Squidward to survive the Pink Slip difficulty of the Krusty Krab, considering the numerous supernatural abilities the Flying Dutchman has.
  • The Flying Dutchman has proved to actually be a pretty low threat on his own. He teamed up with the Jelliens to have a possibility of actually killing Squidward, since he definitely couldn't on his own. Once all three Jelliens were dead and Squidward had reinforcements, killing him was out of the question, so the Flying Dutchman left.
• Upon beating the Pink Slip difficulty of the Krusty Krab, the sounds of mayo firing and someone getting beaten up can be heard. Presumably, the Hash-Slinging Slasher and the Pinkie were gunned down by the Mayo minigun, and they had beat up the Flying Dutchman... As in somehow being able to touch and interact with a non-corporeal entity.
• Why does the Suited Prowler reveal himself when he attacks Patrick instead of staying invisible?
  • You can't touch the Suited Prowler when it goes invisible. Rather than invisible, I believe it also becomes untouchable. Which in turn would make it impossible to hurt the duo.
• At the end of Squidward's Monument, SpongeBob backs up the boat mobile through the front window of the Krusty Krab, yet in the hub and in the Krusty Krab level, the windows are fine without a single sign of damage.
  • They're surrounded by sand. Sand becomes glass when overheated. And they're in a restaurant which still has energy supply. I guess you can pretty much imagine what happened there.
• So Patrick defeats the Alpha with a hard Groin Attack, but why do the Jelliens even have genitals? They use parasitic cloning, not sexual reproduction.
  • Rule of Funny.
  • Jelliens carry the cocoons of their victims on their undersides; that could be why that area is still sensitive.
• How does Doodle Patrick, a creature made of paper, have enough strength and weight to flatten Spongebob to death? And how is he able to survive more hits from Patrick than all the other bosses he fought?
  • Storywise, he's probably just falling onto SpongeBob to restrain him until DoodleBob can show up with the pencil. Since getting restrained by Doodle Patrick would lead to a slow inevitable game over, the game merely cuts to a game over there.
  • If that's true, then how is Doodle Patrick strong enough to restrain Spongebob? I mean, I get it, it's Spongebob we're talking about here, but Doodle Pat is still a being made of paper.
    • If a drawn bowling ball can bowl over Patrick with the force of an actual bowling ball, then it stands to reason that a Doodle can restrain a real person. After all, in his debut episode, Doodle Bob was able to lift up Squidward with no effort.
• Why weren't Clamu and her children in the Tunnel of Glove maze cloned?
  • Probably cuz the mother was too much for the Jelliens to handle.
• How come the Gloveys don't trigger the hazards in the maze? They don't get shocked to death when they come into contact with the fish motifs' exposed wiring, they don't trigger the Red Menace pressure plates, and they can run around in Clamu's room without disturbing her sleep. Meanwhile, doing any of these things means death for Patrick.
• What Happened To The Doodle Jellien? It got drawn at the end of SpongeBob's Pineapple and then never appears or gets mentioned again. It isn't in any of the Doodle cutscenes, it doesn't appear during the Doodles' ambush in ???, it just vanishes after its debut cutscene is over.
• Eugene in the Barg'N Mart level says that he thought they got rid of all the mayonnaise, even though there were 100 full containers of it all over the aisles.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation. For gameplay, the mayonnaise is just a walk through pickup in the aisles. Storywise, it was probably on the shelves tucked away behind boxes and bottles, and the developers just didn't want to animate Krabs digging through the shelves.
    • I had a feeling something like that may have been the case, but you'd think the Jelliens would've double checked the shelves just to make sure the Mayo was gone.
    • Well at this point it's only been around two hours since the invasion started, and they still have to actually run the store, so they probably haven't had time to double and triple check the shelves and clear all the mayo out.
  • For the record, the demo version DID have the mayo tucked away in specific corners, and it was hard. I believe they simply wanted to make the stage more entertaining.
• Why exactly was a pair of Jellien disguise glasses just laying on a table in the middle of the Salty Spittoon? The bar is packed with Jelliens, why would they leave the glasses lying there? Why did the Jelliens even have the glasses to begin with? Was somebody else in the bar using the glasses and got caught?
  • If the Barg'N Mart cutscene is any indication, an employee could have been pretty much caught.
  • To add onto this, how did Squidward know that there was gonna be a disguise just laying around?
    • He probably just spotted it while searching for a way to fend off the Jelliens in there.
• How come none of the Jellien clones in the Salty Spitoon attack Squidward as he walks by their tables? Are they simply just docile and harmless?
  • They're so engrossed in their conversations that they don't register that the cephalopod walking by has the wrong eyes?
• This may be a case of Gameplay and Story Segregation, but how was Squidward able to successfully use a pinkie to get by in the Sand Castle section of Goo Lagoon? I know in gameplay, pinkies are harmless and not really much of a threat. But story wise, what's stopping the pinky from straight up capturing and cloning Squidward?
  • Cloning pinkies and shocking pinkies seem to be different creatures. No pinkies in the game ever clone the characters. The only cloning pinky we see is when a citizen is cornered by a bunch of clones, so they presumably only use them when they're sure they've got someone trapped.
    • If that's the case, why would the Jelliens have useless shocking pinkies guarding the Sand Castle instead of the more-threatening cloning variants?
    • Why would they bother with cloning variants there? They seem to be in short supply, so it makes no sense to waste them by stationing them at a base already swarming with other Jelliens that nobody is likely to walk into anyways.
    • Fair enough. But since the Jelliens seem to use generators to keep sections of the Sand Castle locked up, it probably wasn't wise having a harmless pinkie there that could easily be tricked into tampering with them (assuming this whole thing of cloning pinkies and shocking pinkies is even true to begin with)
  • Unless if this was all a sand trap Squidward barely survived to.
• Why didn't the Jelliens clone Karen after getting Plankton? In the original show, it's shown that the Jelliens can clone inanimate objects as one did to Spongebob's spatula.
  • Karen was left behind because she's a lifeless computer. SpongeBob's spatula being cloned was just a gag in the episode.
• Why was the screwdriver positioned on that sand pile like an Excalibur in the Stone? It would have been in the repairman's pockets, so shouldn't it have been in a cocoon? If it fell out, shouldn't it be laying somewhere random and not positioned like that? Is some Jellien out there a traitor who intentionally left it there for Squidward to grab?
  • I blame the Pinkie that Squidward uses to turn on the generators in that same area. Why else would it help you progress inside the giant sand castle?
    • That would mean every Pinkie in the Sand Castle wants to help Squidward at the same time.
• This is a minor and really funny one. Why were there wooden cutouts of Squidward and Patrick ready to be used as target practice in the Tentacle Acres level? Did the Jelliens somehow know Squidward was coming and that he was gonna bring Patrick along?
• What exactly is causing the bell noises in Mrs. Puff's Boating School? There's no bell tower or any large bells anywhere on the premises.
• For Sandy's Treedome:
  • Why does a robot that was built to be a walking alarm clock have tunneling abilities?
    • Perhaps Sandy designed it like that so it couldn't get stuck on snow banks outside if she were to start sleepwalking?
  • Why are the pieces of Sandy's flamethrower prototype separated and out in the snow? Shouldn't they be together in one big pile in her workshop?
  • Why did the lock only freeze after SpongeBob and Patrick arrived? Assuming it runs on Instant Ice: Just Add Cold! for how it got frozen, why did it only freeze once they went in? If it was the middle of Sandy's hibernation winter, shouldn't it have already frozen?
    • Maybe it was already frozen, but Spongebob and Patrick were able to turn the lock from the outside with enough force to break the ice (remember this level is after Spongebob went through a workout). They just couldn't do that from inside because they couldn't get a good grip on the frozen handle. If this still left the bulk of the ice on the handle as it spun, that could account for how quickly it refroze (or maybe they just assumed that it was frozen and didn't bother trying to see if the ice was still loose).
    • Which is also what happened in the episode this section was based off of.
  • In her delirium, why doesn't Sandy also attack the nut bot?
    • Who's to say it wasn't her next target once Spongebob and Patrick were dealt with?
• How did Jellien Larry avoid running into Doodle Pat at the end of the level? There didn't seem to be any backdoor exits, and it's very doubtful the Larry clone would've survived a fight with Doodle Pat.
  • As Goo Lagoon shows, Jellien Larry actually survived that encounter with SpongeBob. Doodle Patrick is diabolical sure, but he's still just a big piece of paper, and so not very strong. Meanwhile, Jellien Larry is a clone of Larry, and so is incredibly muscular. Even if he couldn't kill or tear Doodle Patrick apart, Jellien Larry could probably at least escape and run from the attack.
    • Fair point, but I disagree with the thing about Doodle Patrick. Yeah, he's supposed to be incredibly weak since he's nothing but paper, but somehow he's more durable and tougher than all the other bosses regular Patrick fought (including Ol' Bessy).
    • Patrick isn't nearly as strong as Larry. I think Doodle Patrick purposefully avoided running into Larry and instead went inside to stab every Red Menace in the gym.
• SpongeBob mentions that Gary had turned into a potted monstrosity during the previous invasion, as a reference to Planet of the Jellyfish. However, how does SpongeBob know what Gary was turned into? He wasn't around to see the cloned pet.
  • Gary was there, he probably told Spongebob afterwards.
    • In meows?
• What exactly was the deal with King Jellyfish and Prince Jellien? Was he somehow not cloned and Prince Jellien attempted to capture/kill him, or was he already a Jellien but so incompetent that he ended up being overthrown?
• How on Earth are Jellien Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy strong enough to overpower and take down someone like Mr. Krabs? As the game itself points out, they're still old men.
  • ...and they're super powered old men.
    • Out of their prime and not as strong as they used to be.
    • As the cartoon shows, superpowers don't seem to dissipate with age.
• How exactly does Doodle Patrick know about the events he reprimands Patrick about? Doodle Patrick just got redrawn a few hours ago, and the events all happened long before the game.
• How come Dennis didn't kill Krabs and Patrick before attempting to murder Squidward? Was he unaware that they were wanted as well?
  • Yes he was. Dennis only started chasing Squidward upon seeing the "Wanted!" Poster for him on the wall of the bar. With his game over screen also showing the posters for Krabs and Patrick, it's implied that after he kills Squidward, he does go and kill the two of them.
• Why doesn't Spongebob have a "Wanted" poster (or Sandy, for that matter) in the Salty Spitoon? He was one of the causes of the failure of the previous Jellien invasion.
• How the hell did the Jelliens clone the Iron Dogfish? For that matter, how DID the Iron Dogfish (or at least it's clone) even GET in Tentacle Acres?
  • It's easy to miss, since it's only seen if you go the wrong way during the TA end chase, but the Iron Dogfish can climb walls.
  • We're talking about the same creatures who cloned Dennis.
• If the Nestlers dig underground to get around, why do they still need to move around obstacles and walls instead of going under them?
  • For a watsonian explanation, their Worm Sign indicates they're burrowing close to the surface. Perhaps the walls have foundation or extend slightly underground? For a doylist explanation, Dave probably didn't want to have to program a new, mostly useless AI type for a single, rare enemy.
• At the start of the Glove World level, Squidward was going to give a clarinet performance, and is shown practicing his clarinet. So how come in the level in Squidward's house, the clarinet is one of the objects you have to grab?
  • He specifies in that opening cutscene that the people he was performing with gave him that clarinet. The one he was grabbing was probably the one he had before he was given the new one; given how long he'd been practicing with it, it probably has enough sentimental value for him to want to save it.

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