BuT THat’S JuSt A TheoRry

“bikini bottom takes place on the planet neptune” dude Sandy is from TEXAS

"This is such a dark and unsettling episode" *smooth jazz intensifies*

When you have to assume everyone is hallucinating and they are living a false reality, it’s pretty safe to say your theory broke

The more dark and trippy episodes were actually always some of my favorites as a kid, like this one, SB-129, Squidward in Clarinetland, Sleepy Time, Frankendoodle, Rock Bottom, Squidville, etc.

The writers of the episode " wtf Is this guy talking about we made this in 10 minutes"

"The religious lore of Bikini Bottom" That is a statement that will live in my head forever

I know it’s just a theory but holy shit the being on Neptune thing is an astronomic stretch

I vividly remember seeing this episode as a child on german TV. For some reason, after SpongeBob yelled "Hey, you lost your goulash" out of the window, the episode would cut off and another episode would air. The rest of the episode would then air at another time. I don’t know why, but this really stuck with me and kind of adds to the eerie vibe the episode gives me personally.

You're forgetting that David Hasselhoff is canon, so they ARE on Earth

“It’s episode 99B, so this is the last episode.” No further backing

Even without sound, I can perfectly remember the music that the holes and the jellyfish made from when I watched this as a child.

I'm surprised people don't like Spongehenge, I actually really liked it as a child purely for the abstract feeling of the episode. It truly did feel like we got a glimpse at what was to become of SpongeBob at his end

at first i was thinking this episode was sort of an analogy of how addiction can take over people lives. the addiction symbol in this episode being the jellyfish; they literally get into his brain, they follow him to work, rejected from his friends as a negative influence, & drive him out of town.

this episode, rock bottom, and that future episode were quite traumatizing as a kid.

This episode's tone reminds me of the Simpsons scene where the characters abstract into nothingness that ends with Homer telling marge "I'll never forget you". I dont know if this sudden finality episode trope has a name, but they've always done well to stick with me long after viewing.

Second time watching this video and it occurred to me that SpongeBob could've just plugged his holes like he did in an earlier episode when he was sick.

Here’s the issue. The show was literally created by a marine biologist to educate people about earths oceans. Spongebob takes place on earth.

But Sandy is literally from Texas. She even travelled there on bus. It is indeed earth.

bro is not cooking anything, they are on earth lol

No, because in season 3 episode 19, the sponge who could fly, he literally says, "Do not worry earthbound people"

Saying "The characters were hallucinating the entire time!" is kind of a terrible way to try to prove anything. By that logic anything could be said about the show, since it's all in the characters heads.

I think what’s more terrifying is the final scene where the camera zooms into one of the statues mouth and you can hear spongebobs laughter. This means that spongebob’s soul still lingers around spongehenge

i’m not a fan of most spongebob after season 4, but i liked this episode. very thought provoking

This episode always gave me a weird feeling whenever I watched it. Never thought about it or even questioned it. I just sat there, emotionless... Ion know thats just me though 😂

"the religious lore of Bikini Bottom." Ahh. Spongebob theories and words you should never put together in a specific order go hand in hand.

Not a fan of theories that say "Ignore everything that doesnt support my claim because its just imagination"

I like the idea that some of the episodes happen in alternate timelines, this being one of them

His house is literally a sunken pineapple, they’re on earth.

This theory has more holes than spongebob himself "maybe its not our moon" **shows clip of spongebob looking at earth**

Man this episode used to freak me out. It’s sorta like the episode “Gone” where everyone left the city to celebrate No Spongebob Day, but that one had a funny happy ending. This one is darker and more of a genre shift by the end of it. The whistling of Spongehenge is very uncanny, almost felt like a different kind of show. Anyway, I have yet to see anyone make a theory on this, so nice job!

I remember seeing this as a kid at night and the episode didn't creep me out until the end where you heard sponge's laugh and it was suddenly cut off by that outro music. That was what got me.

This episode- and your analysis- remind my of a cosmic horror story that arguably invented the genre called The Willows. In that there is a special piece of coastline where the wind itself is under the influence of extra-dimensional beings. It’s interesting to think that the wind itself was essentially the undoing of SpongeBob and his world. Cool video.

There is something I think you're neglecting: The Clash of Triton. In that episode, the whole tension between Neptune/Poseidon and his son is that Neptune wants to teach his son to *terrorize the mortals below*, while his son wants to be kind and help the mortals cure their diseases and such. The "this episode is Neptune/Poseidon's revenge" theory is still plausible when we take _that_ episode's Neptune/Poseidon into account, since he absolutely seems like the type who'd wipe out Bikini Bottom for an unknown reason.

People didn't like this episode, but for some reason this one is the one I remember the most. It's like the writers wanted to make a serious episode for once, and I kinda liked it.

But wasn't there a human on a boat that dropped a pencil, leading to the creation of Doodlebob?

This episode gave me such a fear that shook the foundation of me and my hand in nature and my position in the concept of time up until the ending where I felt physically sick to my stomache

The show definitely doesn't take place on Neptune... you can't just use "it's all a hallucination" to debunk a boat load of evidence

My theory is that this episode is just spongebob’s nightmare. After all it starts off in the middle of the night when he was sleeping

I actually really liked this episode when I was younger, I'm surprised to see so many people dislike it! I do still get an eerie feeling from it, after watching such a colorful and fun show "end" in such a dark way. I like to imagine this is the true ending to the show despite it still continuing on after season 5, and that the rest of the stories are just being told out of order.

7:10 isn't sandy from texas though. And goes back there regularly

Evidence that they are on Earth: In the episode ‘Mooncation’, Spongebob and Sandy are rapidly propelled into the Earth’s climate

The writers were probably just like “hey Stonehenge is a pretty neat thing” “let’s write a story on how it was created”

I remember vividly being uncomfortable when I first saw this episode as a child. I remember thinking there were funny moments, however I remember being really uncomfortable when Sponge found the Krusty Krab in ruins and hearing him yell. But now that I’m older, I really like the episode now

This episode made me feel like I was on drugs. Very few episodes gave me this feeling but NEVER have I had it worse then when I watched this episode.

The format the show creators took to tell the stories they told is honestly fascinating to me, it’s like they made these stories for us for when we grew older. They entertained us as kids but saved us one more piece of entertainment, only one we can unlock with age.

I feel like the whole "show actually takes place on Neptune" angle of this theory is totally unnecessary and just makes the entire thing way less believable. If you take that aspect out you have a pretty plausible theory about the theology of Bikini Bottom. And why ignore the obvious climate change aspect? They're underwater so what you see as wind are really ocean currents. Bikini Bottom is destroyed by shifting ocean currents, which could also explain the characters' erratic behavior towards Spongebob, as well as the change in behavior in the jellyfish and maybe even a physiological change in Spongebob, causing him to produce vibrations as water flows through his body. Polar melt absolutely has an effect on ocean currents, so this adds up pretty neatly to me. Why bring a different planet into the mix? Just to explain where a single nameless side character came up with the name Neptune?

From the episode "Dying for Pie" around 4:30 Mr.Krabs told Squidward "Why ruin his last day on earth" which implies they are on planet earth the whole time.

A video about SpongeBob being sponsored by Square space gave me a good chuckle.

this feels like an elaborate shitpost instead of a genuine analysis and i can’t tell

Am I the only one who thinks that this story would have been great for a movie, but is hated so much because it's a SpongeBob episode?

I’ll never forget this episode. It made me feel so weird when I was a kid. Chills tbh

Someone found goulash did have some symbolism, and it’s that goulash is loads of leftovers put in one dish, so the idea that this ep was just the writers leftover ideas in one episode makes sense, like they prolly had an idea of how Stonehenge was created, as that’s a real world mystery, and what would happen if spongebob went crazy, or if it was extremely windy, or an idea for aliens 3000 years later, and they probably even wanted to add into an episode about how they know Poseidon is really the god of the sea and not neptune, but couldn’t fit it in anywhere else so just put it in this one. Plus it makes sense they used all the leftovers as it was ep99

I remember seeing this episode when I was a kid and being really sad by the end. The admission and realization that Spongebob was dead by the end of the episode was something that kid-me never had considered, and to this day I can recall the uneasy feeling of, "Well that wasn't a very good episode at all. I didn't like any of that."

This honestly sounds like a drunk Mat-Pat conspiracy

I always loved this episode. I loved when we got the eerie SpongeBob episodes, I loved that feeling as a kid.

For me. This is actually a lesson and a metaphor that every actor and famous people gains unintentional fame and the jellyfish represents the fans not caring about someone's personal life and just being obsessed to them while spongebob represents the famous people, they couldn't even do things right and normal activities due to their fans always disrupting him and not respecting his boundaries. People always forget that famous people and actors are still humans. They're getting the hate and fame they don't deserve because of their talent

Sandy: "hi i'm a squirrel from Texas" this man: "HaLlUcInAtIoNs"

There was so much that freaked me out about that episode, the characteres all felt kinda off and especially that frame where the sun was a head...

And on this same topic, i think art, and in general, representation of reality, has a central role in this entire episode: from what we have seen, art, in spongebob world, is submitted to the same rules as modern day art( Squidward creations are en example); it's a form of art very abstrait, so as Hegel already pointed it's "the inevitable evolution of art in all its forms", maximally detached from any concrete shape or rappresentation( for example look at the late creations of Kandisky). In this episode, where spongebob is actually forced to cut his links with society and start living a hermite life in an uneasy nature, he was actually able to return to the root of Art itself, by building the huge statues: a massive( in therme of shape and dimension) and "raw" form of art, just as the egyptian statues one can observe in Luxor or Karnak. This is what, ironically, saves him from this state, he finds a way to peacefully reintegrate human creation in an already hostile nature and appease it( here we could find counteless references to a huge number of traditions in ancient civilizations). At the end, Spongebob is the victim of a Faustian society, who was able, though a socio-cultural regression to free himself( even if only to end up finding a dead world)

Coming to the conclusion they live on Nepture and not coming to any conclusion about the statues is certainly a take...

yall im tellin u, "gone" really scared me. the opening has no music. and spongebob goes insane from everyone leaving and goes insane, making himself into anyone else who's gone. that episode was SCARY.

Fun fact: the statues that make music through their holes is a direct reference to Erewhon by Samuel Butler, where the main character discovers these ancient statues that lead him to a secret civilization.

This was one of my favorite and one of the most memorable episodes from my childhood. I loved the sounds and looks of everything from the goulash to the sounds of the statues whistling, this episode heavily appealed to my sensory needs as a child

this took the weirdest most unexplainable turn 😭 “neptune, neptune AHA they’re on neptune we cracked the case 😏”

I’d just like to point out that the “wreckage” Spongebob finds is literally just the Krusty Krab’s roof and sign, which flew away earlier in the episode. He’s not walking through the post-apocalyptic bikini bottom, he’s walking through the dessert where they landed. The rest of the city, and the people in it, are probably still where they were before - meaning Spongebob might not have even been gone that long.

“In a cosmic sort of way yes” - Sheldon J Plankton

Bro the alien jellyfish episode scarred me

I'd be accepting of this theory if patchy the pirate didn't live in Encino, California, but the lost city of Atlantis episode could explain the source of the wind, as patchy encounters similar aliens that morphed patchy into Encino in tornado like fashion after finding out that they shrank it. This might just be a similar scenario

If a show has clear evidence debunking a theory, "No that doesn't count it was a hallucination" is not a proper response to that.

Theory logic: Its windy in this episode and one of the side characters mentioned neptune, sO tHeY gOtTa Be On PlAnEt Neptune

My interpretation would be, as hinted at the start, during the conversation of the two fishes, that god in their world do in fact exist, weather it be Poseidon or Neptune, and that they are at the mercy of the gods. And the fact that wind blows the food directly to spongebob directly after bringing the topic of the gods up, suggests the gods might have something to do with what happens to spongebob later in the episode. Winds are vigorously blowing, implies indirectly to the start of the end of the world, as seen from many movies (the day after tomorrow, 2012, etc.), and the gods have chosen SpongeBob to survive the end. The gods used the jelly fishes as the way for SpongeBob to survive the storm, taking him to a safe place where he will be safe from the wreckage and the storm. The statues that sponge bob built, is to show to future life, how the people of bikini bottoms looked like, (SpongeBob being chosen by the gods to be the representative of the old myth of a town, the bikini bottoms), a similar narrative to the religious story of Noah. Maybe all that happened because the people of bikini bottoms were straying from the path, or starting to defy the gods.

Man, I remember watching that episode as a kid and I was very sad after watching it... Everytime I heard the song the statues made I nearly cried man...

I know this is probably just made for a gag, but this theory really has more holes in it than the common kitchen sponge

imagine that episode being the canonical ending to the series.

For some reason, this used to be one of my favorite episodes from the entire show as a kid. Maybe I didn't think much of it, but I just liked it

This episode scared me, but it's also the one I remember the most

Guess you didn’t get the joke in the beginning of the episode so I’ll give explanation, Poseidon is the god of the seas in Greek mythological and Neptune is the romantic version of Poseidon. So the joke is that both fish are correct but are using different names for the same god.

Imagine the look on those two fishes faces when they find out that they accidentally killed god and caused their entire civilization to die

Friday night. Beer#3 and I'm watching SpongeBob lore while the wife types away on her work emails. This is the life. Happy 2022.

1:32 😂 A for effort

"The universe is more powerful than any form of human connection" Great message, Karsten

If you’ve ever read the Odyssey you see Poseidon’s wrath first-hand, and comparing Spongehenge to Poseidon’s wrath brings up a lot of similarities, especially since Poseidon manipulates the wind a lot in the Odyssey. My theory is that Spongehenge takes place in essentially the rapture in Poseidon’s terms and Spongebob was the last survivor doomed to eternal suffering

Im pretty sure this was a metaphor for drug addiction. The jellfyish flying into his brain and not wanting to leave, him becoming gaunt and losing his job, spongebob being a bad influence and abandoned by his friend, ultimately being cut off from society. The wind could be a metaphor for the tiniest coincidence (gulash flying into his face from harsh winds) being able to lead into something as catastrophic as drug addiction. the statues are a representation of his "lifes work being made into stone" like someone who has nothing left but his memories, which is why theyre literally statues of himself. He is trying to recreate his old self as stone while he himself is deteriorating.

I do so love to see Lovecraftian horror in my silly fish show

If you ignore all evidence against a theory by saying the characters are hallucinating, you can make any claim you want

Not gonna lie. As fun as this was, you reeeeeeally reached with these interpretations lol.

I actually got somewhat traumatized by that one episode where SpongeBob sleepwalked (and I think he got sleep deprived too?). Forgot which one it was.

I actually really liked this episode 😭 I always thought the ending was somehow really strange and beautiful in some weird artistic way. Idk

The idea that this takes place on Neptune has little to no supporting evidence, you seem to be taking this episode more literally than you should be. The wind could definitely be a metaphor, it flew through him making music that came with jellyfish which ended up tormenting him. This episode can be seen as a metaphor for fame, with the wind being the content he creates and the jellyfish being the fans that love it. Just like in real life, the fame came unasked for, it was fun at first but soon he couldn't leave his house without being recognized. His job that he loved was no longer possible with the fans that he now has, his friends now have left him for "being a bad influence" or in other words "fame has changed him". The cave that he runs off to is the new home he hids in, growing so lonely that he starts to "create" music again, in the form of building a statue. When he tries to return home, his home is gone, the simple life that he once loved he can never return to. The statues he creates are his albums, celebrated thousands of years into the future as masterpieces that the jellyfish called them to be. I believe that this episode does have a meaning, a meaning about fame and what it can do to someone, the legacy someone leaves behind, and how its original meaning can be lost in time. It may be about religion, or the worship we give to the people who create. But it's definitely not about how bikini bottom is actually on Neptune.

This episode is closer to The Twilight Zone than Spongebob. The whole thing is just messed up.

2:03 I never noticed until now but is no one gonna talk about how there’s wind indoors

You’re forgetting that Poseidon was referenced as Neptune’s son, who, after taking no interest in the life he would inevitably inherit as a god, was shunned by king Neptune and put in a cage until SpongeBob and Patrick came to rescue him and eventually destroys bikini bottom out of spite for his father. Though this did end with Poseidon inadvertently restoring his father’s faith in his son, it does show that Poseidon does exist in the series thigh not in the typical sense, which does prove that he can have drastic influence on the environment if bikini bottom

"Not only is Neptune made mostly of water," This infuriated me way more than it should've

Or you know, Spongehenge is just another episode that just happens to have a darker tone. It's probably just a joke about how humans always wonder about the origins of Stonehenge, and it could just be a silly scenario like Spongehenge

An unsettling detail of this episode is that sea sponges can live up to thousands of years. It’s implied when SpongeBob goes back to a bikini bottom ghost town that it’d been a long time, but it could have been well over a thousand years

This reminds me of a short story called "Dark They Were, and Golden Eyed". It's about a group of people move to Mars to escape nuclear fallout back on Earth. The main character, Hank, is nervous about what Mars could do to him. When the people make a settlement, wind starts to appear and there is a dense fog. After a few days, an atom bomb strikes New York, making the people unable to go back to earth. After a few months, the people start to change and look more like Martians. They move out of the settlement to an old Martian villa and that is when they fully transform into Martians. Years later, when the war is over, another settlement flies to Mars to stay there and the cycle continues. It's a really dark story that I read in school a few years ago. (Sorry for bad English it is not my first language)

Alternate take: “Spongehenge” is just a really bad nightmare Spongebob had one night.

Audience: "They're not on Neptune, Sandy's from Texas!" Karsten: "I CAAANT HEAR YOOOOOUUU!!!!"

I love that SpongeBob is put on such a pedestal and people love him to do videos like this. I was a bit older when SpongeBob came out but it didn’t stop me from watching him. I love him and I’m not toooo far from 40 now. He’s a great show, scratch that, he’s a genius show. The creators are on God status like Rick & Morty and other cartoons that I had near and dear to me from my childhood. So, in closing, thank you sir for giving SpongeBob the respect and spotlight he deserves.