Deep down in the Pacific Ocean in the subterranean city of Bikini Bottom lives a square yellow sponge named SpongeBob SquarePants. SpongeBob lives in a pineapple with his pet snail, Gary, loves his job as a fry cook at the Krusty Krab, and has a knack for getting into all kinds of trouble without really trying. When he's not getting on the nerves of his cranky next door neighbor Squidward, SpongeBob can usually be found smack in the middle of all sorts of strange situations with his best buddy, the simple yet lovable starfish, Patrick, or his thrill-seeking surfer-girl squirrel pal, Sandy Cheeks.
This tv show contains 117 potentially triggering events.
The Season 7 episode One Coarse Meal uses Mr. Krabs manipulating Plankton's fear of whales as a plot point.This is played unusually seriously and Plankton is driven to madness because of this. Krabs has the tables turned on him near the end, as he is forced to face his own deathly fear -- a mime.
There is an episode about a whole town getting addicted to grease, and another about being addicted to kelp juice, which could be perceived as analogous to alcohol
In "The Great Snail Race," SpongeBob places immense pressure on Gary to train for the race, shouting at him and eventually pushing him to exhaustion. When Gary crashes and explodes like a car during the race, SpongeBob hugs him in remorse, and the battered Gary instantly recovers upon seeing a cute snail.
Dried remains of actual sea creatures are often used to represent the characters "above land" or "dried up". Mrs. Puff's husband was killed and turned into a lampshade in "Krusty Love". An actual taxidermied pufferfish was used.
Gary the snail is sad in multiple episodes. In one he runs away after SpongeBob forgets to feed him. In another, he is sad and meows constantly because Snail Bites treats are sold out. Gary is also sad after SpongeBob overworks him for a race.
In the season 11 episode Ink lemonade A big Spider appears and at the end of the episode a bunch of spiders crawl out of squidward''s mouth also in the Season 4 episode Ghost Host a bunch of spiders crawl out of spongebob's eyes
One scene from "Your Shoe's Untied" has SpongeBob be constricted by his shoelaces, which have morphed into snakes. His surroundings slowly begin to melt as this happens.
In the episode "SpongeGuard on Duty," SpongeBob accidentally offends a family of sharks while he's on lifeguard duty. The sharks, like other fish in Bikini Bottom, are sentient and can talk.
Sandy is bullied into taking her helmet off underwater which causes her to almost drown. She isn't physically being held underwater, but is pressured into it with no easy escape.
In the episode "The Bully" a fish named Flats tells SpongeBob he's going to "kick his butt." He does hit SpongeBob several times but SpongeBob, being soft and spongy, isn't hurt. Flats eventually exhausts himself and collapses, leading people to think SpongeBob actually beat Flats up.
Nothing serious, but in the Halloween episode, Spongebob is shaved, and at the end of the episode, it is revealed Patrick shaved off all his sponginess and has his brain exposing.
While it's not onscreen, in the episode Code Yellow, Spongebob chops up Squidward's body, with only his head remaining. I would argue, that counts as decapitation.
"To Save a Squirrel"'s plot revolves around SpongeBob and Patrick being trapped in a cave and trying to eat the other, and I believe SpongeBob says something like "it's eat or be eaten here..."
The splinter will haunt your nightmares. Also the episode with Mermaid Man's belt features some body horror on Squidward. He is cut in half, set on fire, and skinned.
All the underwater characters asphyxiate and start gasping if they go on land or into Sandy's dome without water helmets. This happens in multiple episodes.
At the end of "Slimy Dancing," a young boy is shown convulsing and drooling on the ground, and his mother panics and dials for help; however, the boy gets up and tells her that he is only practicing a new dance move called "The Cramp".
Two episodes, "The Splinter" and "House Fancy", are reviled by the fandom specifically for this reason, including the level of detail gone into finger and toenail injuries.
It depends on whether you count a random fish falling off of a cliff and exploding as him dying, there’s no confirmation of his death. This was in the seahorse episode.
Many episodes, but usually very cartoony. In "Spongebob Meets the Stranger," Spongebob steps on the Strangler's eyes with cleats causing the Strangler to scream in pain for an extended scene. Mr. Krabs sometimes detaches his eye stalks, in one episode they explode.
There is the underwater equivalent. SpongeBob wakes up because he is very itchy and discovers he is covered in "poison sea urchins." He procedes to run around, scratching himself, to get rid of the urchins.
In-universe, yes. A fully able bodied fish pretends to be severely physically disabled as a scam. He claims he has "glass bones and paper skin" and needs money for his medical bills. Once he cons Patrick and Spongebob, he takes off all his medical gear and laughs about his actions.
in "sandy's rocket" spongebob and patrick capture every citizen of bikini bottom and keep them in the rocket. in "cephalopod lodge" spongebob and patrick kidnap squidward in an attempt to make him join their cult-like group.
In "Prehibernation Week" SpongeBob holds a safety/disposable razor and proclaims "I am a man!" He doesn't do anything with the razor, it is gone in the next scene.
Plankton's Regular- Mr. Krabs makes a fish eat a krabby patty, and he throws up off screen. You see a red puddle under him for a few seconds. It's not graphic and just looks like water.
Spongicus- Plankton feeds a woman some chum as a snack, and she immediately throws up. It's not shown, but the sound can be triggering. This only lasts a couple seconds.
In one episode Patrick and Spongebob are fighting and wind up in their underwear. They stop fighting when they notice Spongebob has pink underwear and Patrick has yellow. Patrick states the underwear were white when he bought them, implying he peed himself.
In another episode Patrick eats too much snow and needs to pee. Squidward refuses to let him in to use the bathroom so Patrick pees himself.
Sometimes you'll hear bones crunching when someone gets ran over, one ocassion where someone's mouth is stretched out. Realistic vomiting is heard in Spongicus (Season 6).
There are a few episodes involving the Bikini Bottom jail. In one episode, Mrs. Puff imagines several scenarios involving her going to jail. In another episode, the Tattletale Strangler turns himself in at jail to get away from SpongeBob.
In the episode "Atlantis Squarepantis" SpongeBob and Patrick accidentally destroy an ancient relic from Atlantis. They pop "the world's oldest bubble," which was considered museum-worthy in Atlantis.
"I Was a Teenage Gary" has characters get stabbed with a medicinal needle, however it doesn't look like a typical needle, instead resembling a conch shell.
In "Doing Time," Mrs. Puff is thrown into a padded room - solitary confinement - in a strait-jacket. She begins to hallucinate that the walls and floor are made of laughing SpongeBob faces.
The hospital is a common setting in the series. The episode "The Lost Mattress" has Mr. Krabs comatose in the hospital (from losing all the money in his mattress) as a plot point. This is played for laughs.
In some episodes Squidward displays signs of depression. In the episode "I had an Accident" SpongeBob develops agoraphobia after "breaking his butt." In another episode SpongeBob develops a hoarding disorder.
Plankton skins himself alive in Plankton’s Regular, he does it out of rage and upset which makes it particularly akin to self-harm. SpongeBob eats his fingers and hands for comedic effect in Graveyard Shift.
SpongeBob gets amnesia after becoming the mayor of New Kelp City, and thinks he's CheeseHead BrownPants (What Ever Happened to SpongeBob?) He also forgets who he is after doing so many impressions of his friends (Mimic Madness)
In "One Coarse Meal", Plankton lays down on the street with the intent of getting run over. Then in "Are You Happy Now", a very depressed Squidward is pulling up a rope, but it turns out to be attached to a bird cage.
Not in every episode, but there are a few where reality is very fluid or unclear. In the episode Doing Time, it's difficult to tell if events are really happening or if Mrs. Puff is imaging them. As the episode progresses, and the antics get weirder, it's unclear if Mrs. Puff has gone crazy in jail or if the entire scenario is still entirely in her imagination and she never was in jail at all.
There are several meltdowns, usually after SpongeBob is pushed far past his limits. In one episode, after trying to help Mr. Krabs win over Mrs. Puff and being treated poorly by Mr. Krabs for all his effort, SpongeBob melts down and screams at Mr. Krabs. He calls him a bunch of gibberish that is meant to be cartoon curse words. In the episode "Can You Spare a Dime," Squidward takes advantage of SpongeBob for months until SpongeBob explodes. At one point Mr. Krabs is choked because it was his fault Squidward ended up jobless and mooching from SpongeBob. SpongeBob has a meltdown and cries when he loses a "good noodle" gold star. After he discovers Patrick never took off the lens cap, therefore ruining the movie they were making, SpongeBob has a meltdown that includes him crawling on the ground, screaming and eating worms. Patchy has a meltdown and starts crying and throwing away his SpongeBob merch when he is disappointed in a "lost episode."
The beginning of the episode "Squidward in Clarinetland" shows Mr. Krabs scraping a board, which aggravates everyone inside the Krusty Krab except (ironically) Squidward. It is very brief, but the sound may be very uncomfortable for some.
As mentioned above, a bunch of bodybuilders believe they were told they have a "bubble b**t in "Bubble Buddy" and later complain about feeling fat while chewing on celery.
In "Wishing You Well," the characters are trapped at the bottom of a well (Squidward actually mentions his own claustrophobia, to which SpongeBob and Patrick humorously believe is a fear of Santa Claus).
In "Buried in Time," the characters are briefly trapped in a cluttered time capsule.
In "Truth or Square," the characters spend a good amount of time crawling through air ducts and trying to escape.
Squidward and Patrick have both demonstrated binge-eating. In the episode "Just One Bite" Squidward gorges himself on Krabby Patties until he explodes. Patrick likewise binges often on food. Their binge-eating is played for laughs but does sometimes harm them.
As of the seasons after the first movie, SpongeBob has been known to stalk on Squidward so much, to the point he knows the exact interior of his house (Squid's Visit)
In the episode "All that Glitters" SpongeBob looks DIRECTLY at the screen and speaks to the audience. It's also very zoomed in so he takes up most of the screen. In "No Free Rides" SpongeBob is driving and hits the "cameraman." The view angle changes to looking up at SpongeBob from the ground. Several times Squidward mentions "11 minutes," which is the run time of each episode, such as "the longest 11 minutes of my life" or "I give him 11 minutes." There are also several instances where characters will comment on background music, like the orchestra in the episode where a clam eats Mr. Krab's dollar.
Several episodes feature babies in passing. They are in strollers/just background characters. The episode "Goo Goo Gas" features the main cast turned into babies by Plankton. One episide features a fetal SpongeBob. He is shown as awake/sentient inside his visibly pregnant mother.
In "Pet or Pests", a stray worm goes into loud, painful labor. The actual birth is never shown, but the next time we see the worm, their babies are squirming in what seems to be afterbirth. There is no blood involved in the scene -- the afterbirth is snail slime.
An early episode has SpongeBob refer to his bubble buddy as having a "bubble b**t" which the nearby bodybuilders take as an insult and relate the incident to other affected individuals later.
At the risk of getting controversial (and speaking as a fan of the show), Professor Holly M. Barker (Uni. of Washington) has argued that the show is insensitive to victims of colonialism. Bikini Bottom is named after and set directly under Bikini Atoll, the natives of the atoll having been violently and hatefully resettled by the US government so they could use the atoll for nuclear testing. This is the setting of a show made by an American with an all-American cast. She has also pointed out that the show appropriates Pacific culture.
"Davy Jones' locker" could be viewed as Hell in universe. The Flying Dutchman says it's where all "naughty" undersea life ends up. Mr. Krabs, upon hearing he's fated to the locker, cries and says "I don't wanna go in there."
There is also an evil, demonic laugh when Squidward states he "has no soul."
They are cartoon, PG nude scenes but full butt cheeks are sometimes shown. SpongeBob spends the entire episode "Nature Pants" living naked in the wilderness with jellyfish. Spongebob and Patrick both get naked to avoid staining their clothes with paint. A table is used to tastefully censor full nudity in the episode "Hooky."
There are a few dirty jokes in earlier seasons that mostly go over childrens heads, such as Spongebob wearing underwear on his head with his nose sticking out, making it look like an erection. There's also an episode where Spongebob is trying to get Gary to take a bath and he says "don't drop them" and winks while he hands Gary soap- a reference to prison rape. In addition to this the town they live in is called "Bikini Bottom" and there is a character named "Sandy Cheeks" but neither of those things are overtly sexual. Unless your child knows something they shouldn't, the show is completely safe for them to watch.
Not quite but there are some scenes that seem close. There is a "7 mile spanking machine" a fish happily enters. He is heard being spanked and saying "ow" but then laughing. There is also a couple of scenes with hugely muscled fish who wear leather and "torture" their victims by tying them up and feeding them beans.
Season 4 Episode 6 (Dunces & Dragons, a medevial themed episode), a character sings a song with this lyric: "I was the king's favorite fool, I made merry mirth and laughter. Then I told one bad joke and the king had a stroke and now I hang from ye ol' rafter".
In the episode "Chocolate with Nuts" a fish states he has a condition that gives him brittle bones and daily heart attacks. He is shown covered in bandages and surrounded by medical equipment. He is actually trying to scam SpongeBob but puts on a good act.
I wouldn't really consider this a fat suit, but if anyone is worried about it: Spongebob dresses up as Patrick in "Big Pink Loser", and he wears suspenders that make him look larger like Patrick.
In "SB-129", after "breaking" a time machine, Squidward ends up alone in a white void. He finds peace in it at first, but then regrets living a life of solitude and tries to go back home.
this show hasn’t ended yet hopefully we don’t get a sad ending, however in the first sponge bob movie patrick and spongebob get dried up against a light (this was implied to be the movie ending) but they are saved by water
There are usually cars honking and screeching tires whenever SpongeBob takes a boating exam. He tends to crash with massive colateral damage to the boating school, his teacher, or the general public.
In the band geeks episode, the flag twirlers are seen crashing into a airplane. However, this is purely a comedic effect and the characters reappear later in the episode. A plane also crashes into a fireworks factory in one episode, and in Club spongebob a plane full of food and supplies crashes into the forest, however this just a gag and no one is seen injured.
A character in "Bubble Buddy" gets left buried in the sand at low tide and we see the water begin to encroach around him. He later appears as an angel. It is heavily implied he drowned.
Almost never but there is an episode where SpongeBob pokes Squidward’s exposed heart and blood shoots out. There’s also an episode where Mr. Krabs ends up in a body of water with geysers of blood. While there isn’t any actual blood the infamous toenail scene is gory. The Paul Tibbett era (mostly Seasons 6-8) have body horror throughout including exposed muscle tissue, internal organs, and bone, without blood.