SpongeBob SquarePants Celebrates 25th Anniversary With Special Reveals At New York Comic Con
Since its premiere in 1999, Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob SquarePants has cultivated a global audience with endless toys and products, quotable moments, and hilarious characters that everyone has come to love. Tom Kenny, Carolyn Lawrence, Rodger Bumpass, Clancy Brown, and Mr. Lawrence, along with executive producers Marc Ceccarelli and Vincent Waller, celebrated SpongeBob’s 25th anniversary with a jam-packed panel at this year’s New York Comic Con.
The series has captured our hearts with its humor and relatable life lessons with iconic quotable moments ingrained in everyday conversations. The cast reflects on the quotes they never expected to be as popular as they are today. Bumpass shared his excitement over reading the line “The inner mechanisms of my mind are an enigma,” while Mr. Lawrence shared that “I went to college” was an actual conversation he heard during a fender bender.
SpongeBob SquarePants has amassed over 300 episodes over the years and Kenny shared his favorite episode to work on. “I would say ‘Sailor Mouth.’ We had to say some things that our characters wouldn’t normally say and it was replaced with dolphin noises,” he revealed, while referencing the “buried” tape that contains the uncensored version that super fans have speculated about its whereabouts and what was actually said.
It’s popularity led to the creation of the spin-off series The Patrick Star Show. And here’s the good news, the series has announced its renewal for season four and five with 26 episodes in total! We also got a sneak peek at a Thanksgiving special titled “Thanks But No Thanksgiving” where Patrick spends the holiday with Bunny’s side of the family in Klopnod and first look images of the holiday special “Squidina’s Holidaze Special.” It’s filled with all the humor of meeting your extended family during the holidays!
Speaking of spin-offs, Carolyn Lawrence’s character Sandy has become the focal point for her own movie released back in August called Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie. An exclusive look was shown for the 25th anniversary half-hour special “Spongebob & Sandy’s Country Christmas” premiering in December on Paramount+. Designed in stop motion and with texturized characters, the episode will follow Sandy as one of her experiments goes awry and it's up to her and her family to save Christmas. The special features Craig Robinson as Pa Cheeks, Johnny Knoxville as Randy Cheeks, and Grey Delisle as Ma Cheeks.
More special reveals came along in between iconic table reads of the “Band Geeks” and “Scaredy Pants” episodes that had the audience hooked. They revealed an upcoming SpongeBob Squarepants episode called “Snow Yellow” that will finds the characters turning into jellyfish that must try to defeat the evil Queen Karen as she attempts to be the “squarest of them all.”
Closing out the panel, the cast left off with important life lessons they’ve learned while working on the show. “Always seeing glass half full, instead of half empty,” shared Kenny as he resonated with SpongeBob’s positive attitude. While Lawrence mentioned bravery and kindness as her lesson, Brown took a moment to humorously say “People will work for free,” and Waller’s “I’ve learned absolutely nothing” kept the audience laughing.
