As a Nightmare Fuel page, all spoilers are unmarked as per wiki policy. You Have Been Warned!
"Would you care for some ice cream?"
You thought that a movie starring the most absorbent, yellow, and porous sponge would be a laugh all the way? HA HA HA—No. Well, despite its comedic moments, this movie is a lot darker than the series, with a lot of horror elements to boot!
- The activation of the bucket helmets. It's the point where the movie takes on a much darker turn.
- If you listen closely to the score, you can hear the fluttering woodwinds making a creepy-crawly sound to accompany all the helmets turning on. It's a very ominous tune.
- Plankton going Not-So-Harmless Villain (to the point of pretty much crossing the Moral Event Horizon) is terrifying as well, considering how he usually is.
- While this point might be seen as mundane, it does become Fridge Horror when you think about it. If SpongeBob's Employee of the Month awards began in 1997 (the year the first episode was produced), then the movie takes place in 2028. How many failures did Plankton have to suffer to finally snap and go off the deep end? What would be that final push from "stealing the Krabby Patty formula" to "Take over the world and enslave"?
- Even at the beginning when we first see Plankton fuming over Krabs being interviewed by Perch Perkins, just watching him barely contain his rage is legitimately disturbing.
- Mr. Lawrence’s performance as Plankton during this scene also deserves a mention; throughout the beginning of the film, he’s prone to yelling more than he ever did in the show, with more frustration in his tone. When he has Squidward captured, he screams "Who can stop me now?! WHO?!" with full-blown malice and mad laughter, a direct contrast to his usual "hehehehehehe" laugh. It's very unnerving, to say the least, to see what could happen if Plankton completely abandoned his morals and went through with his Take Over the World plot.
- The way the sequence switches from colour to a long-shadowed sepia tone a la Triumph of the Will. Let that sink in for a second.
- Then he does it to King Neptune in the film's climax.
- Really, the scariest part of the bucket helmets is probably that constant droning of "ALL HAIL PLANKTON! ALL HAIL PLANKTON! ALL HAIL PLANKTON!"
- The first fish whose helmet is destroyed happily declares "I'm free!" which implies that the bucket helmets keep the victim aware to some extent. To think of the implications, especially with King Neptune, are not well advised.
- We can see babies wearing the helmets. Think about that.
- The climax in general is extremely terrifying if for no other reason than how utterly alone our heroes are. Everyone in Bikini Bottom, including the king of the sea himself, has been brainwashed by Plankton and Mr. Krabs is frozen, leaving SpongeBob, Patrick and Mindy alone and defenseless against the oncoming horde. If SpongeBob hadn't had his heroic epiphany, they'd have been doomed.
- The old lady at the ice cream stand, who turns out to be some kind of giant monstrous frogfish. Not to mention the abundant piles of skulls and bones near her. Serves as an ominous foreshadowing of her true nature.
- Also worth mentioning is the background. There are skeletons everywhere, and the sky is a sick green. It is not an inviting atmosphere and might bring parallels to negative environmental phenomena in the real world, like coral bleaching, mass-die-offs, oil spill impacts, etc.
- Not to mention her, uh, “pet,” Mr. Whiskers.
- While the memetic faces SpongeBob and Patrick make are classic comedy for veteran SpongeBob fans, the original context of this meme is pretty unnerving. After barely surviving an encounter with a frogfish and bailing out of the Patty Wagon to save their skins, a GIGANTIC deep-sea eel swallows the frogfish and the Patty Wagon whole. It's so monstrous and quite spooky-looking, and the way it's animated to move so slowly really sells its intimidating mass. Those surprised faces SpongeBob and Patrick make are completely justified.
- Frozen Mr. Krabs. The worst part is that he is still completely conscious. The whole reason why he is frozen in the first place is for committing a crime he didn't even do and has only six days before he's put to death by fire.
- His face is frozen in a permanent scream, too.
- Not to mention he's left alone in the Krusty Krab, with no one, not even Squidward, making sure he's okay. Hell, the only two people Mr Krabs would trust his lifenote to guard the restaurant have already left on their Road Trip Plot to go save the crown with not even a week to do it and with the odds heavily against them. No one even bothered to lock the damn door when they left! Plankton can just walk right in, steal the secret formula, and walk out. He even could have shattered Mr Krabs if he had felt like it!
- If that were to be considered, then Plankton shattering Krabs could be a Mercy Kill. Plankton wants to see Krabs suffer by making no efforts of easy shattering or thawing.
- Dennis. Enough said. He's a pretty terrifying villain for a kids movie. The quote below represents his character best, and this is before the first shot of him!Plankton: HE'S A VICIOUS, COLD-BLOODED PREDATOR!
- One of his creepier moments is when he casually rips the lips off of the hillbilly brothers after they laughed at him over a stupid joke they made up on the spot, and later on punching a thug to his presumed death. These scenes really establish how Dennis is not one to take nonsense of any kind, unlike the rest of the funny characters.
- He gets even scarier in his last moment when he is having his Villainous Breakdown and yelling at SpongeBob and Patrick about how he is "through messing around" with them. It doesn't help that his eyes are all red, swelled and watering from irritation as he glares down at them. Thank god for that boat.
- When he returns on the "bigger boot", while the way he appears squashed may remind some of Plankton, how he reforms is quite disturbing. And when he manages to get back in shape, he has a Nightmare Face and Slasher Smile combo that could haunt your dreams. His shattered shades, bloodshot eyes, and sharp teeth and the scary music don't help.
Dennis: (eerily calm) Did you miss me? - Alec Baldwin's performance is too to be applauded for conveying pure malice in his voice. His very voice can send a chill down anyone's spine.
- The Thug Tug Bad Guy Bar, not to mention the psychopath running the place.
- The main thug trying to weed out the "Bubble-blowin' baby." It starts off rather silly, but as Patrick and SpongeBob actively try not to sing along to the "Goofy Goober" song, they start to melt, foam at the mouth and to top it off, they have pain-contorted faces. It is animated fluently, but it's too fluid to be goofy.
- Hell, the main thug, Victor the bartender himself. He's arguably a little too aggressive for a SpongeBob movie. The way Thomas F. Wilson just has this guy REVEL in basically torturing SpongeBob and Patrick can be sickening. You probably won't feel too sorry for him when he runs into the even more aggressive Dennis and gets his clock cleaned (Although considering what happens to the Thug Tug when Victor crashes into it, no one could survive THAT. We might have seen a murder in a SpongeBob production).
- The main thug trying to weed out the "Bubble-blowin' baby." It starts off rather silly, but as Patrick and SpongeBob actively try not to sing along to the "Goofy Goober" song, they start to melt, foam at the mouth and to top it off, they have pain-contorted faces. It is animated fluently, but it's too fluid to be goofy.
- Shell City, once you see it from SpongeBob and Patrick's perspective. Imagine being trapped inside a room with no way out with hundreds of dead people surrounding you.
- Not just dead people, dead people dressed up to be sold like gifts.
- Were those fish unconscious or not? Considering that the movie wasn't explicit about it, best not to think about it too hard.
- King Neptune may be a short-tempered, tyrannical, and punishment-obsessed king who tends to lose his temper over the slightest wrongdoings, but his expressions can be freaky whenever he's angry (despite Jeffery Tambor's hilarious delivery from time to time).
- How hell-bent he is on killing Mr. Krabs under the assumption he stole his crown can be pretty disturbing. It’s not given any focus, but on the day he intended to kill Mr. Krabs, Neptune drove straight through the enslaved Bikini Bottom without any form of acknowledgement as to how utterly different it looks from the last time he was there, just that dedicated to execute someone, who he froze to the spot for nearly a week no less, over a stolen item.
- Even worse than his constant freakouts is seeing Neptune enslaved by Plankton. After SpongeBob and Patrick save the day and Neptune is happily reunited with his crown, Plankton puts a bucket helmet on him. He even tries to get it off (whether he wants to take such a contraption off or if he knew about what they can do is unknown), but Plankton turns the helmet on and he starts droning, "All hail Plankton." Following that, an emotionless and brainwashed Neptune points his fiery trident at SpongeBob and co. (even his own daughter) who are closed in by the other brainwashed Bikini Bottomites, ready to burn our heroes to death for being the only ones to thwart his plan. Or how about the fact that Plankton almost made Neptune kill his own daughter? And as a previous point suggests, Neptune may have been aware of it, powerless to stop himself.
- The close-up on Plankton's face as he gives his third and final "YES!!!" when Neptune is about to immolate Krabs. His eye is crazed and widened, and he's got a vast Slasher Smile on his face (that can be eerily reminiscent of Luca Blight from Suikoden II), complete with fangs. Seeing that picture of Plankton, and hearing Mr. Lawrence's aggressive (yet well-acted) delivery, is enough to drive the point home of how much he wants to see Krabs gone, and how far past the Moral Event Horizon he has become.
- The Cyclops. Mindy specifically warns the heroes about a giant cyclops guarding Shell City, and that if he catches them, they will never be seen again. Then they finally encounter the dreaded Cyclops, which turns out to be a realistic deep sea diver with a glowing green viewpoint. From SpongeBob and Patrick's perspective, the Cyclops looks downright unnatural compared to what they have seen so far, and it is utterly massive, accidentally crushing the nightmarish hitman Dennis with his boot. As the Cyclops quickly captures SpongeBob and Patrick, he brings them up close to his glowing, expressionless "eye," silently watching them scream in terror, before taking them away to Shell City. Unlike most monsters in the sea, the Cyclops seems to enjoy watching sea creatures get scared, cackling maniacally before slowly killing them and turning them into gifts. And then he leaves SpongeBob and Patrick to dry up under a hot lamp...
- The fact that Mindy knows about the Cyclops guarding Shell City is probably the reason why no one has returned, it makes King Neptune's utter despair that the crown is stuck in Shell City seem much worse; it's possible that King Neptune is afraid of the Cyclops, or at least unwilling to challenge him, even to get back his crown.
- What makes him really disturbing is that whenever actual humans are used as villains in Funny Animal cartoons, they're usually Obliviously Evil, or at most, an Egomaniac Hunter. It's heavily implied that the Cyclops, whoever he really is, is perfectly aware that the sea creatures he's been tormenting and selling are sentient, and that he enjoys their pain and fear. He's easily a hundred times the size of the fish and marine life he tortures and there's nothing they can do to stop him. He even wears his diving suit inside his shop, even though there's no reason to other than enforcing his dominance over his victims. Even the most callous normal human being would be disgusted at his pointless cruelty. It's pretty cathartic, therefore, that when the sea creatures all get restored once the sprinkler system is activated, they see that the tables have turned and attack the Cyclops themselves.
