“Shaggy Dog” Stories in SpongeBob SquarePants.
- In "Pizza Delivery", SpongeBob and Squidward get lost while making said pizza delivery, and have to go on an epic trek through the wilderness while resisting the temptation to eat the pizza themselves. When they finally reach the customer, he refuses to accept it because they "forgot" his drink (which he didn't even order!), and then slams the door in SpongeBob's face. Squidward is so infuriated that he gets the customer to open the door again and then smashes him in the face with the pizza box. And just to add extra "shaggy dog" points, the Krusty Krab then turns out to be right opposite the man's house.
- In "Pickles", SpongeBob falls into an emotional crisis when Bubble Bass claims he forgot the pickles on his Krabby Patty. After regaining confidence and trying again, Bubble Bass accuses him of forgetting them again...but one look at his mouth causes SpongeBob to realize he hid the pickles under his tongue the whole time to mess with him, and he didn't forget them at all in the first place. He also hid the pickles from last time, as well as someone's car keys.
- In "I Was A Teenage Gary", it turns out Gary was only dehydrated and needed water.Squidward: He just needed water?!
- In "Squid's Day Off", Squidward is left in charge of the Krusty Krab and uses the opportunity to give himself the day off, but finds that he can't enjoy himself because he left SpongeBob at the Krusty Krab by himself and becomes increasingly paranoid that SpongeBob might be destroying the place, causing him to repeatedly rush back to check on SpongeBob only to see that everything is fine and there are no customers. When Squidward finally decides to go back to work, SpongeBob discovers that the reason there weren't any customers was because they forgot to switch the "Closed" sign to "Open".SpongeBob: It's almost like we could've taken the whole day off!
- In "Dying For Pie", it turns out SpongeBob never ate the bomb pie; he was saving it in his pocket, and he really ate a different pie offscreen which was completely non-fatal.
- At the end of "Procrastination", having spend the whole episode procrastinating, SpongeBob frantically writes an 800-word report on what not to do at a red light and runs off to boating school to send it in. Mrs. Puff then informs him that the class are taking a field trip to a red light today, and the assignment has therefore been canceled. SpongeBob had been so busy not doing the assignment that he hadn't gotten Mrs. Puff's call telling him he didn't need to do the assignment, and even when he did, it was filled with things like "karate chopping the TV" and "shooting the breeze with the mailman" and would probably have gotten him an F if it had actually mattered. Not that SpongeBob can ever get a passing grade anyway.
- Subverted in "The Secret Box". When Patrick lets SpongeBob look inside, all he sees is a string (a "secret" string, as Patrick puts it). But once SpongeBob leaves, Patrick reveals he didn't pull the string, which opens a compartment on the outside of the box which holds an embarrassing Christmas photo of SpongeBob.
- Two in a row in "Welcome to the Chum Bucket":
- Mr. Krabs bets SpongeBob's contract in a card game with Plankton and loses; Plankton reveals in the end he actually cheated and gives SpongeBob back.
- After SpongeBob ends up becoming a lazy Spoiled Brat and mouths off at Plankton, he is forced to put his brain in the robot chef lookalike; Plankton discovers too late that this did not change the sponge's personality nor attitude, thus the robot becomes lazy as well. Karen tried to warn him before that such schemes "never work".
- In "Chocolate With Nuts", SpongeBob and Patrick start their own business selling chocolate door-to-door, and one customer in particular goes crazy on them, yelling "CHOCOLATE!" over and over, and chases them throughout the episode. By the end, the customer finally has them where they can't escape, and then politely says, "I'd like to buy all your chocolate."
- In "Can You Spare a Dime?", Mr. Krabs misplaces his first dime and blames it on Squidward, who quits and eventually takes up residence at SpongeBob's house. When all of Squidward's needs drive SpongeBob nuts, he accosts Mr. Krabs for not rehiring Squidward "because of a stupid dime" and shakes him violently — which causes the first dime (really a giant stone wheel) to fall out of his back pocket, meaning he had it the whole time. However, Squidward is blamed for putting it there, and SpongeBob begins to face the inevitable.
- "Good Ol' Whatshisname": Mr. Krabs tells SpongeBob and Squidward that he'll give a prize to whoever finds out the name of every customer at the Krusty Krab. Squidward, thinking the prize is a tropical cruise, goes out of his way to win the contest, even winding up in jail in the process — only to find out that the prize was just a brochure for a tropical cruise. Even better is that the titular character shouts his name at Squidward right from the start. However, his name turns out to be Whatsit Tooya, which is exactly what it sounds like. Didn't help matters that he shouted this in Squidward's face, so the latter never realized this until he stole Mr. Tooya's wallet.
- In "I'm With Stupid", SpongeBob pretends to be dumb so Patrick will look good in front of his parents. However, Patrick takes it too far and believes SpongeBob really is dumb. He and his parents then start to openly mock SpongeBob until he goes insane and flees the house. It's then revealed that those two weren't even Patrick's real parents; the real ones are outside Squidward's house, asking him where Patrick is.Marty: Oh, that's right, honey! We don't have a son!
Janet: Oh yeah! - "Wet Painters" has Mr. Krabs ask SpongeBob and Patrick to paint his living room, and he warns them to not get paint on anything but the wall since the paint is permanent. They manage to use a giant paint bubble to paint the wall, but end up getting paint on Mr. Krabs's prized first dollar. They try everything they can think of to clean the paint off, but nothing works. When Mr. Krabs returns, they fear he will cut their butts off as punishment, but Mr. Krabs just licks the dollar clean, revealing the paint actually comes off with saliva. SpongeBob assumes he lied about the paint being permanent so he and Patrick would be more cautious about getting paint on anything, but Mr. Krabs admits it was just to mess with him, causing SpongeBob and Patrick to leave in disgust. To top it all off, Mr. Krabs' subsequent hysterical laughter and spit causes all the paint to come off.Mr. Krabs: Aww, crud. I really gotta learn to say it, not spray it.
- In "One Krabs Trash", Mr Krabs spends the episode trying to take a valuable novelty hat from SpongeBob, to the point of fighting an army of undead. When he finally gets it, the potential buyers reveal that they found a warehouse full of similar hats, making it worthless. It doesn't help that SpongeBob then walks past wearing another valuable hat.
- SpongeBob spends the whole of "Krusty Krab Training Video" asking whether he's ready to make a Krabby Patty yet, while the narrator keeps blowing him off and discussing other important topics instead. Finally, after a very long and grandiose introduction, the narrator is about to explain how to prepare a Krabby Patty... and it Smash Cuts to the closing credits.
- "Best Frenemies" revolves around Mr. Krabs and Plankton teaming up to discover the recipe for creating "Kelpshakes," a hot new drink that's so popular it threatens to put them both out of business. After they finally succeed in getting their hands on a Kelpshake, it turns out that the main ingredient is plain kelp juice, and once they've had a few sips, both Krabs and Plankton get just as addicted to Kelpshakes as everyone else; it is that point Karen warns the two there's another secret ingredient, but they fail to comply. All the Kelpshake restaurants get shut down anyway once it turns out that the formula causes consumers (including Krabs and Plankton) to grow greenish fur all over their bodies.
- In "The Donut of Shame", Patrick takes a donut from SpongeBob after a party they had the night before and tries to eat it. However, he soon feels guilty when he realizes that the donut belongs to SpongeBob and tries unsuccessfully to hide it when SpongeBob comes to his house so they can watch the video of the party together. When Patrick confesses to SpongeBob that he took the donut, SpongeBob isn't upset, and reveals to Patrick that the donut was for him all along, because the party they had last night was for Patrick's birthday.
- "Penny Foolish" reveals the supposed penny SpongeBob picked up was really a wad of chewing gum for his collection... which was actually a crumbled up $500 bill. But Mr. Krabs is still looking for the penny and is not over it.
- In "Gone", SpongeBob wakes up to find Bikini Bottom devoid with only him standing, and struggles to make the best of it. It is revealed in the final scene the reason everyone was gone for so long was because they were celebrating an out-of-town event called National No SpongeBob Day, which is a day to secretly get away from his wacky antics, even though it took weeks. SpongeBob is upset to hear (not because everyone was avoiding him, but that they've been gone for so long), but nevertheless happy everyone is home and that the holiday was dedicated to him.
- In "Squirrel Record", Sandy attempts to break every record in a record book she finds in the trash, with SpongeBob helping out, but it turns out in the end she didn’t break any records at all — the book is 30 years old and they’ve already been broken long ago. Fortunately, SpongeBob managed to set his own record for 'most injuries sustained while helping a friend'.
- In "Little Yellow Book" after SpongeBob forgives Squidward for reading his diary, he reveals the diary he read was really his work diary, which he got published and became an instant best-seller, and not his secret personal diary. But then Squidward starts reading that diary unguarded while SpongeBob is addressing the townsfolk, humiliating him again.
- In "Lost in Bikini Bottom", SpongeBob finally gets to the Krusty Krab after an attempt to get there through a shortcut, only to be sent home to take a bath because he came covered in trash. In the same episode, he finds Patrick already beat him there because his method of a shortcut is he pays a pedicab driver to take him there.
- In "Move it or Lose it", a new law is passed that fast food restaurants cannot be within 100 feet of each other. Mr. Krabs and Plankton find out that the Krusty Krab and the Chum Bucket are within 99 feet of each other, and the Slate Officer tells them that one of the restaurants will have to be bulldozed. Plankton actually succeeds in preventing the Chum Bucket from getting bulldozed, and SpongeBob and Mr. Krabs are unable to stop the Slate Officer from bulldozing the Krusty Krab despite their best efforts. In the end, it's revealed that the Slate Officer never had any intention of destroying the Krusty Krab, and only pushed it one more foot so it would comply with the new 100-foot law.
- "The Ghost of Plankton" revolves around Plankton learning about how to be a ghost so he can phase into the secret formula's vault and steal it. At the end, he finally tries and fails because, as he only realizes now, becoming a ghost doesn't mean the object he tried to steal will become intangible too, rendering the whole thing pointless.
- In "Spatula of the Heavens", SpongeBob turns to ancient spatula forger Guru Greasetrap to make a new spatula for him after breaking his old one; when Guru gets injured and cannot do any forging until his hands heal, he gives SpongeBob one word of advice: "Your true spatula is inside you." SpongeBob is unable to forge a spatula himself and remembers what Guru said, shaping his hands to look like spatulas. When he tells Guru what he learned, Guru reveals SpongeBob misinterpreted his advice and he literally had an extra spatula inside him, so all that advice SpongeBob learned was a complete waste of time.
