SpongeBob: The Brainiac

DIRECTOR ROBERT EGGERS’ 2024 gorefest, Nosferatu, about a haunted young woman and the vampire who stalks her, was a reboot of F. W. Murnau’s silent 1922 vampire epic, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, which itself was inspired by a foundational piece of vampire literature, Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula. Yet when Eggers spoke at the Los Angeles premiere of his film, he credited not Murnau, not Stoker, and not even famed Dracula actor Bela Lugosi for introducing audiences to the original Nosferatu. Instead, the director tipped his hat to a Nickelodeon star. “Thanks, SpongeBob,” Eggers deadpanned.

Eggers had good reason to name-check the squeaky-voiced sponge. In a 2020 episode of the show, “The Graveyard Shift,” SpongeBob and Squidward are working through the night at the Krusty Krab when they are spooked by some flickering lights. At first the friends fear a murderous fry cook is coming for them, but quickly, in the loopy logic of Bikini Bottom, they realize the culprit is Nosferatu playing a prank. A black and white image of the 1922 bloodsucker flashes on the screen, introducing young Gen Z viewers to a masterpiece of German expressionism and perhaps paving the way for future fans of Eggers’ work.

Ever since SpongeBob SquarePants premiered on Nickelodeon in 1999, audiences have tuned in faithfully for the show’s oddball slapstick humor. Bikini Bottom is a place where a porous, cellulose boy gets squeezed and squashed and pops back into shape, survives every kind of calamity, and can’t resist a lowbrow joke. But in between the slapstick gags and ocean puns, SpongeBob writers love to slip in the highbrow reference — one that is as fancy pants as it is square.

In “SB 129,” Squidward is flung into the “Nowhere” dimension, a nod to the World War dadaist movement; “Culture Shock,” Squidward references the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg; and in “The Two Faces of Squidward,” the octopus’s dream alludes to Post-Impressionist painter Toulouse-Lautrec’s cancan classic La Troupe de Mademoiselle Eglantine.

“It’s children’s entertainment that is as entertaining for the adults in the room,” says Jason Donati, a professor of animation at Northeastern University. Not only does SpongeBob operate on multiple levels, he says, but viewers who circle back years later will find something new to laugh at. “It doesn’t rely on you to be able to see the entire picture to enjoy it.”

Brainy, of course, has a hallowed place in children’s programming. Looney Tunes in the 1930s to the late 1960s exposed generations to Beethoven and popularized works like Rossini’s overture for The Barber of Seville. The Stone Age cartoon The Flintstones (1960–66) snuck in bits about Whistler’s Mother, Picasso, and Romeo and Juliet. Nosferatu director Eggers recalls Muppet Babies (1984–1991) leading him to Phantom of the Opera and Cyrano de Bergerac. Perhaps the most famous practitioner of the intellectual two-track is The Simpsons, which among other references has woven in nods to Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, the 1981 cult film My Dinner with Andre, and the complicated formula Fermat’s Last Theorem.

On SpongeBob SquarePants fits neatly into this tradition, melding cultural smarts with marine life, the specialty of creator Stephen Hillenburg. In considering a home for friendly SpongeBob, for example, Hillenburg chose a pineapple, the Hawaiian symbol for “welcome” and “friendship.” Hillenburg was “a very curious person,” Tom Kenny, the voice of SpongeBob, once explained, “and then out of all those curiosities and interests that he had — ocean science, animation, comedy, silliness — made this show.”

Hillenburg and his successors developed SpongeBob SquarePants with animation, incorporating complex artistic styles, including pop art, hyperrealism, and surrealism, says Donati. “The further you get from Bikini Bottom, the more abstract the animation,” he explains. “These are imagination professor. The closer you get, it’s very detailed, almost realistic. That’s an interesting depth and focus you don’t really see elsewhere.”

What also sets SpongeBob apart from its contemporaries, like Fairly OddParents or Phineas and Ferb, is the show’s special sauce for the character of SpongeBob. “My idea is that it’s this kid that’s an adult, and he has a job, and lives in a house. He’s autonomous from his parents,” Hillenburg shared during a podcast interview at Big Pop Fun with Tom Wilson. “The kidult perspective gives SpongeBob an appealing innocence not unlike that of Pee-wee Herman, a comic personality who inspired Hillenburg.”

“These amazing writers, creators, producers, were producing something that they found entertaining at their age as well,” says Donati. “They’re still aimed at children, but if they’re going to live, breathe, and eat this, then why not make it interesting for them?”

SpongeBob voice actor Tom Kenny agrees. “To me that’s the legacy of SpongeBob — that it brings a smile to people when they need it.”