SpongeBob SquarePants is a popular American animated cable television series. It began airing on the children’s cable network Nickelodeon in 1999. The series follows the comic adventures of SpongeBob, an earnest and childlike sea sponge who works in a fast-food restaurant in the undersea city of Bikini Bottom. The series has won a number of awards.
SpongeBob is voiced by Tom Kenny. The show’s other characters include SpongeBob’s best friend, Patrick Star, a starfish (voice by Bill Fagerbakke); SpongeBob’s boss, Mr. Krabs, a crab (voice by Clancy Brown); SpongeBob’s co-worker and neighbor, Squidward Tentacles, a squid (voice by Rodger Bumpass); Sandy Cheeks, a squirrel who lives underwater in an oxygen suit (voice by Carolyn Lawrence); Sheldon J. Plankton, an evil microbe who runs a competing restaurant (voice by Mr. Lawrence); and SpongeBob’s pet snail, Gary (voice by Kenny).
“SpongeBob SquarePants” was created by Stephen Hillenburg, an American marine biologist and animator. Hillenburg developed many of the ideas for the series in The Intertidal Zone, an unpublished educational comic book he created in the mid-1980’s.
In 2004, The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, an animated feature-length motion picture based on the series, was released. A second motion picture, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, was released in 2015.
