"Ron Reagan almost had Humphrey Bogart's role in Casablanca, and Plankton almost was playing SpongeBob!"
open/close all folders
The show
- SpongeBob originally wore his Krusty Krab employee hat at all times, even when he was not working, which can be seen in all of the early "SpongeBoy Ahoy!" concept art, in which he is always seen wearing the hat.
- Stephen Hillenburg created Plankton and Karen as potential villains for the series, but he decided in 1997 that they didn't have much potential and that the "Plankton wants to steal a Krabby Patty" plot would become stale after a while. He wanted to have them be one-off characters, and Nickelodeon suggested hiring a one-time guest star, like Bruce Willis, for the voice of Plankton. However, staff writer Mr. Lawrence (who became the voice of Plankton) was convinced that his character had untapped potential; he gave Hillenburg a set of episode outlines about Plankton and Karen, many of which were used throughout the first three seasons. The episodes were popular with the writing team, and Plankton and Karen officially became main characters in the credits of the first movie. Lawrence considers season three as the first season where Plankton is part of the main cast.
- Karen was originally intended to be voiced by her namesake, Karen Hillenburg (Stephen's wife). However, she was so nervous in the recording studio that she couldn't get the lines out, so the role was given to Jill Talley (Tom Kenny's wife).
- In early sketches, Plankton was going to be so small that every shot of him would require an off-camera character to hold a magnifying glass over him, but it made acting too difficult, resulting in some artistic liberties being taken with his size.
- Originally, Mr. Krabs and Pearl would live in the Krusty Krab, the same way Plankton and Karen live in the Chum Bucket.
- The pitch bible states that Squidward was originally going to play the oboe as opposed to his trademark clarinet in the final series.
- SpongeBob's spot in the Nicktoons roster was originally meant for another cartoon, one that never happened due to the creator leaving Nickelodeon over office politics. That cartoon? Sniz and Fondue of KaBlam!
- SpongeBob was originally designed to resemble an actual sea sponge
◊, but Stephen Hillenberg couldn't do an appealing caricature of one. He went with a synthetic sink sponge instead to give the character a "squeaky clean nerd" appearance, as well as to imply that he's "a square peg trying to fit into a round hole." - Hillenburg also wanted to call him SpongeBoy, and the show SpongeBoy Ahoy, until he learned the name SpongeBoy was trademarked by a themed pencil (with a sponge-like look for the text to boot). This appears in a gag where Mr. Krabs addresses SpongeBob with "Sponge boy, me Bob!"
- One early design for SpongeBob gave him a green baseball cap.
- Patrick Star was intended to be a surly bar owner at one point.
- Squidward originally had eight legs, but the animators thought it made him look too burdened, so they cut them down to six.
- The name of the Krabby Patty was originally going to be the Barnacle Burger.
- According to the pitch bible, "Squeaky Boots" originally ended with Mr. Krabs paying through the nose to get the noisy boots back from Spongebob.
- The show was going to have a completely different intro with a more action-styled music piece, still images, and no lyrics. The intro was later changed to fit the show's style.
- Storyboards for the episode "Someone's in the Kitchen with Sandy" actually had Sandy getting naked as opposed to just her bra and panties.
- The TV Movie "Atlantis SquarePantis" was originally intended to be an 11-minute SpongeBob and Patrick episode, until Nickelodeon asked the team to turn it a TV Movie about going to Atlantis.
- The original draft of "Something Smells" had SpongeBob gaining his rancid breath from onion-flavored ice cream, but the writers decided that having it be self-inflicted was funnier.
- Barnacle Boy was originally a character called "Barnacle Bill", a salty old sailor whose body is a piece of log with his head sticking out, similar to Seamus from Family Guy. While he never appears in the show, he's the titular character of the two-part comic "The Ballad of Barnacle Bill".
- According to Vincent Waller, an episode revealing Pearl's mother was written and reached the early development stages; however, Stephen Hillenburg was strongly against solving the mystery and shelved the episode indefinitely.
- Nick actually wanted the cast to be grade-schoolers who went to school (in Hillenburg's words, "like Hey Arnold! under the sea"). Hillenburg was so opposed to this that he nearly abandoned the series, until he put SpongeBob in boating school as a compromise.note
- According to Jay Lender, the episode "Rock-a-Bye Bivalve" was originally going to focus more on SpongeBob and Patrick trying to care for the baby, including showing him how to eat. They then decided to change it, so that it focused on poking fun at marriage.
- Storyboard artist Adam Paloian mentioned one episode that had some storyboards, but was ultimately never made. It's called "A Day In The Life Of Plankton", a 4-5 minute short with minimal dialogue that would've focused on Plankton just doing mundane things.
- According to Vincent Waller, one of the original ideas for the series was to have Sandy be a love interest for SpongeBob. This was pitched by Tim Hill, one of the writers of the pitch bible, which even refers to her as the "apple of SpongeBob's eye" and that he is willing to be physically harmed just to be next to her. Though they've been ship teased at times, the show ultimately leaves them as really good friends.
- During the scene in "Patrick's Tantrum", where Patrick gets slapped by the referee for touching him, he says "And in Pain-o-vision!" It ended up cut from the episode.
- During the auditioning process, Mr. Lawrence auditioned to voice SpongeBob, giving him a voice he described as a combination of Gregory Peck and Thurl Ravenscroft. The voice was rejected but would later be repurposed for Plankton.Clancy Brown: Ron Reagan almost had Humphrey Bogart's role in Casablanca, and Plankton almost was playing SpongeBob!
- The stop-motion models of Mrs. Puff and Pearl from It's a SpongeBob Christmas! were originally going to appear in The Legend of Boo-Kini Bottom, but their scenes had to be cut from the final episode for time.
.jpg){kind=small}
The movies
- In one draft of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, while on their journey to retrieve the crown, SpongeBob and Patrick were to encounter the Rocko's Modern Life cast scuba diving. There is also an animatic on the DVD with Sandy appearing on the surface, having her own adventure.
- Storyboards had a little Ho Yay scene of SpongeBob grabbing Squidward's tentacle as he waits for the announcement of the new manager.
- There was also cut footage of SpongeBob seeing cakes and airplane banners congratulating Squidward on his manager job.
- Storyboards also show that the pirate captain was originally intended to be Patchy, with Potty instead of a live parrot.
- There was a deleted scene where SpongeBob and Patrick would meet Sandy on land implying she moved away from Bikini Bottom some time ago but she was also being chased by government agents for some strange reason. This was changed due to censors being displeased at how much Patrick vomited due to how gross he and SpongeBob thought she looked on land as they reunited. Others say it was removed because it didn't really add anything to the film and just slowed down the pacing unnecessarily. In the same deleted scene, Shell City was actually a city and there were buses that traveled between there and Bikini Bottom.
- The scene would also show three human bystanders that were basically SpongeBob, Patrick, and Squidward in Human form.
- Some of the drafts to The Sponge Bob Movie Sponge Out Of Water originally had either SpongeBob teaming up with Patrick on his apocalyptic adventure, or SpongeBob could've done it alone.
- It also featured different superhero designs for the main characters, being more realistic than what we got now.
- One scene featured a car chase involving SpongeBob and Plankton, after which Mrs. Puff (who was driving after them) gives SpongeBob a F-, despite him not even driving.
- The Teamwork song was originally more detailed.
- The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run had two storylines that did not make the cut.
- The first draft involved Gary being kidnapped and taken to Atlantic City instead of Atlantis, where King Neptune and his guards were played by actors instead of being animated.
- The second draft involved Gary being kidnapped by alien cats and being taken to Cat World, ruled by a cat named Twinkles, while also showing Gary's backstory on his home planet, which completely contradicted the episode "Rule of Dumb", which revealed that Gary and Patrick are cousins.
The video games
- Spongebob Squarepants Super Sponge has its own page.
- Spongebob Squarepants Battle For Bikini Bottom has a theater in-game for viewing Concept Art, some of which shows off concepts that were never in the game proper. One such idea is a Robo-Squidward boss, to go along with Robo-Sandy, Robo-Patrick, and SpongeBot SteelPants. Robo-Squidward would eventually appear in Spongebobs Truth Or Square and in a side mode of the Rehydrated remake of BFBB.
