Encyclopedia SpongeBobia
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Encyclopedia SpongeBobia

This article is a transcript of the SpongeBob SquarePants DVD bonus feature "SpongeBob's Start." It can be found in the Nautical Nonsense and Sponge Buddies DVD, which was released on March 12, 2002.

  • [A title card with the text "Show Idea" is shown.]
  • Stephen Hillenburg: I studied marine science and taught marine biology for a while before I got into animation, and uh, so having thought, "Well, I'd like to do a show that centers around the really bizarre from undersea, uh, specifically, I think tidepools." So I've looked at some of the drawings that I'd done, and I'd done, uh, sea star and some crabs, and octopus, and, and then I had done some drawings of sponges, and thought they're really weird, and if I could just find the right character for, for that nerdy optimist, um, I would go with the sponge. And so I drew one, a few that were amorphous, you know the kind of natural-looking sponges, [scenes of him drawing SpongeBob are shown in the background] and then I, uh, drew a square one, and uh, it just seems so funny; he had the pants and the tie, and everything, it just seems so odd, and in fact, he was kind of a square character, and a square peg, and he fit, fit the role perfectly, and so that's basically, how I came up with SpongeBob.
  • [A title card with the text "SpongeBob's World" is shown.]
  • Stephen Hillenburg: I wanted to do an undersea show that didn't sort of, uh, follow the same logic as other undersea shows, like uh, mermaid stories where you see fish and they live in old boots, and in tin cans, and basically refuse from, uh, from us. [scenes of him walking through a studio are shown in the background] And, I thought well, what if they have their own little society that's based on familiar imagery, like anchors, and as far as for a house, someone lives in an anchor, or someone like, someone like SpongeBob lives in a pineapple, which is from, uh, Polynesian imagery. And uh, that there's a certain suspension of, of your beliefs, um, like uh, that there is no fire, um, and that fish walk and, and these sort of things that help us to write, write stories that parallel- parallel, our lives.
  • [A title card with the text "SpongeBob's Original Name" is shown.]
  • Jay Lender: In the very beginning, SpongeBob was called "SpongeBoy," but I think they found out that someone else was using the name. There was another character named SpongeBoy, so they had to change it to SpongeBob, and for about a minute and a half, everyone was very upset about that, and then they realized, SpongeBob is better.
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