Feral Friends
Original air date: 10/7/2017
A weird moon turns everyone in the city into wild animals, and Sandy the squirrel is the only one who can save them.
Feral Friends contains examples of:
- And I Must Scream: When Neptune's Sun transforms Sandy into a primitive squirrel, she immediately begins scrambling around her air helmet, chattering in panic. At least for everyone else, they were in their natural habitat. Sandy is now trapped in a space suit at the bottom of the ocean.
- Animalistic Abomination: The primitive fish are a mix of this and Eldritch Transformation compared to the cartoon fish thanks to them being No Cartoon Fish.
- Animals Not to Scale: Although Neptune's Moon ostensibly turns the cast into realistic sea creatures, it also makes most of them smaller, even though they're all already only around a few inches tall. Patrick and Mr. Krabs in particular go from fairly normal size for their species (and rather small in the case of Larry) to positively tiny. Pearl, at least, becomes a somewhat realistic size for a whale, as seen when she jumps over Patchy. Finally, at the end, Sandy's entire body shrinks down to somewhere around the size of her head when she's affected by Neptune's Sun, even though she was small for a squirrel to begin with.
- Art Shift: When Neptune's Moon rises, the cartoony art-style changes to a much more realistic rendition... to Sandy's horror.
- Artistic License – Marine Biology:
- After getting devolved by Neptune’s Moon, Squidward becomes a giantic octopus which the narrator describes as one of the largest predators in the ocean, and is also depicted as the natural enemy of sperm whales, resulting in a battle between Squidward and the devolved Pearl. That profile is more in line with giant and colossal squids, while the largest known octopus is the giant Pacific octopus, which can have an arm span of 20 feet but is hardly large enough to combat a sperm whale.
- Pearl's devolved form has her blowhole on the top of her head like a baleen whale, rather than on her snout like an actual sperm whale (and her normal form). She is also shown with upper teeth in some shots (modern sperm whales have teeth only on the lower jaw).
- Artistic License – Paleontology: Potty is turned into a pterosaur by Neptune's Sun, which supposedly turns land animals into their realistic versions or prehistoric relatives. In reality, he would have become a theropod dinosaur instead. Possibly justified given he's a puppet, and it also counts as a Call-Back to Ugh (aka SpongeBob B.C.), where Patchy tried to get Potty to wear a Pterosaur costume he made.
- Bad Moon Rising: Any anthropomorphic sea animal exposed to the light radiating from Neptune's Moon is forcefully devolved into its non anthropomorphic counterpart.
- Big "NO!": Sandy does this when the carnivorous fish advances on Squidward.
- Birthday Episode: The episode takes place on Sandy's birthday.
- A Birthday, Not a Break: The Neptune's Moon incident happens during Sandy's birthday.
- Devolution Device: Neptune's Moon turns any anthropomorphic sea animal into a devolved non-anthropomorphic version of themselves. Neptune's Sun does the same to land animals and humans.
- Eye Color Change: When the Bikini Bottommites are mesmerized by Neptune's Moon, their eyes turn pale green.
- Eye Scream: The earthquake that happens when Neptune's Moon comes out causes Mr. Krabs, who was about to feed some cake on a fork to Mrs. Puff, to stab her in the eye with it instead.
- Formerly Sapient Species: Any sapient marine life hit by the light of Neptune's Moon will turn into their unevolved counterparts.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Neptune’s Moon causes Butt-Monkey Squidward to transform into a giant and ravenous predator that tries to eat everything in sight, who nearly makes a meal out of Sandy, twice.
- Downplayed with Pearl. She remains friendly enough to give Sandy a ride and later has a Big Damn Heroes moment. However, the episode still acknowledges that sperm whales are predators, as she scarfs up several devolved fish and nearly devours Squidward as well.
- Happy Birthday to You!: Sung at Sandy's birthday, but "happy" is replaced with "squirrely".
- Here We Go Again!: After everyone returns to normal after Neptune's Moon disappears, it is then followed by Neptune's Sun, which works the opposite of its predecessor, via turning all land creatures into their real or prehistoric state.
- History Repeats: Since this event happens every 100 years, has history often repeated itself?
- Meat-O-Vision: After Patchy and Potty are turned into a caveman and pterodactyl, Potty sees Patchy as a Krabby Patty and flies away with him, ending the episode.
- Medium Blending: The French Narrator appears onscreen, depicted as a man in an old-fashioned diving suit. In addition, Patchy the Pirate makes his first appearance outside of a special.
- My Instincts Are Showing: Every Bikini Bottomite acts as how their realistic animal counterparts would act.
- Naked People Are Funny: SpongeBob, Patrick, Squidward, Pearl, Mr. Krabs, Mrs. Puff, and Larry end up naked once the two hours of Neptune's moon are over and everyone returns to normal.
- Naked People Trapped Outside: Happens to the Bikini Bottomites after Neptune's Moon ended its cycle and they returned to normal, since their clothes were destroyed in the process of their transformations. While it's subverted with SpongeBob and Patrick because they're unfazed by their sudden nudity, it is played straight with everyone else seen naked (Larry the Lobster panics before using a flower to cover himself, while Mr. Krabs, Mrs. Puff, Squidward, and Pearl run away in embarrassment while covering themselves the instant it dawns on them that they are nude in public).
- No-Sell: When Neptune's Moon appears, it has no effect on Sandy because she's a land animal.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Squidward breaking himself free of the hypnosis of Neptune's Moon the first time, because he needed the bathroom.
- Our Werebeasts Are Different: See Weird Moon below.
- Protagonist-Centered Morality: Throughout the episode, some of the Bikini Bottomites eat each other, or get eaten by Pearl and Squidward. The important thing is that Sandy's friends aren't digested.
- The Reveal: The French Narrator appears on screen for the first time. Wearing a 1950s diver's suit very similar to the cyclops.
- Remember the New Guy?: Frenchie is revealed to be friends with Sandy and Patchy.
- Running Gag:
- Sandy yelling, "You don't see that everyday!"
- The feral Mr. Krabs pinching Sandy with his claws.
- Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing: Everyone who was transformed by Neptune's Moon had their clothes destroyed by the transformation, and once everyone is back to normal, they're all naked.
- Shown Their Work: Quite a bit with the devolved characters, like Larry consuming his shed skin or Patrick eating by extruding his own stomach. Squidward also has a proper beak instead of sporting sharp fangs.
- Sickly Green Glow: Neptune's Moon has a vivid green glow on it.
- Unanthropomorphic Transformation: The effects of Neptune's Moon transform all the residents of Bikini Bottom into non-sapient, non-anthropomorphic sea creatures. By the end of the episode, Neptune's Sun transforms Sandy into a non-anthropomorphic squirrel.
- Weird Moon: Neptune's Moon, a glowing green moon that appears every 100 years and turns the Bikini Bottommites into realistic sea creatures for two hours.
Don't Wake Patrick
Original air date: 10/7/2017
Patrick sleepwalks and SpongeBob can't wake him up.
Don't Wake Patrick contains examples of:
- Bait-and-Switch: There are two instances in a row where it seems that SpongeBob has spotted Patrick sleepwalking, but turns out to be something else entirely before he actually does spot the sleepwalker.
- Bottle Episode: Downplayed; while this 5-minute episode takes place across several locations, SpongeBob and Patrick are the only main characters to show up with speaking parts, and the sleeping fish couple is performed by their respective voice actors.
- Butt-Monkey: SpongeBob suffers a lot of physical abuse just to protect Patrick, such as getting hit by passing vehicles as Patrick crosses the street and (literally) kicked out of a stranger's house.
- Don't Wake the Sleeper: SpongeBob chases Patrick through the city, and when one resident is sleeping soundly, not hearing a single bit of noise caused by Patrick, SpongeBob accidentally wakes him up and is booted out of his house.
- Go-to-Sleep Ending: The episode ends with Patrick writing off SpongeBob's sleepwalking as he goes back to sleep.
- Heavy Sleeper: Patrick always was this, as demonstrated in "The Secret Box", as none of SpongeBob's attempts to wake him up work.
- Here We Go Again!: By the end, SpongeBob falls asleep and starts to sleepwalk into traffic, though Patrick doesn't chase after him, insisting he'll be fine.
- Never Wake Up a Sleepwalker: Subverted. SpongeBob actually does try to wake Patrick up when he starts sleepwalking, but every attempt fails due to Patrick being a Heavy Sleeper.
- Pass the Popcorn: When Patrick sleepwalks into a dance studio, SpongeBob just takes a seat in the audience and eats popcorn as he watches Patrick sleep dance.
- Shout-Out: The episode title is a parody of the board game Don't Wake Daddy.
- Sleep Walking: The episode starts with Patrick doing it, then ends with SpongeBob doing it.
- We Are Not Going Through That Again: See Here We Go Again!.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: An exhausted SpongeBob has this reaction once he finally returns Patrick home, and Patrick only wakes up after stubbing his foot on a tiny pebble.
