How Spongebob Explored Existential Nihilism

what’s your favorite spongebob episode..?

"In case you've forgotten, here's how things work. I order the food, you cook the food, then the customer gets the food. We do that for 40 years and then we die."

I don't know why I only just realized this, but the only reason SpongeBob and Patrick like jellyfishing is because Squidward showed it to their ancestors. He is the maker of his own prison.

It’s so disappointing SpongeBob no longer makes amazing episodes like this. They’re now targeted towards brainless children

I also appreciate the fact that in this episode, when Squidward goes to the past, he ends up teaching Spongebob and Patrick how to jellyfish, contributing to his own torture.

Hillenburg in heaven: "Uh, yeah, I totally meant all that"

"This isn't your average, everyday loneliness. This is... advanced loneliness."

4:13 in this scene alone, i think all the coloured squares surrounding squidward are meant to represent the spongebob main cast. yellow, brown/orange = spongebob pink = patrick light blue, purple/dark blue, red = mr. krabs these coloured squares disappear once he mentions being alone it may just be accidental, coincidental, or was done for a reference but it might be meaningful here :P i don't know

I love when people discuss the actual philosophical implications, instead of just calling every weird thing in kids' cartoons "purgatory" or "a dream/hallucination"

The part where squidward ends up in nowhere is still terrifying to me.

SB-129 is basically just ‘The End of Squidvangelion’

I was so lucky to grow up with SpongeBob. Intelligently written, hilarious, deep, and interesting. A show that sticks with you forever.

SB-129 was phenomenal. As a kid, I was jealous when Squidward found his alone space. It always seemed really nice to me.

When I was a kid for some reason I thought the square things in the nowhere place were like abstract things Squidward knew about. The yellow and pink are Spongebob and Patrick, purple is Squidward's house, red is Patrick's house, etc, like if they devolved into their basic elements in his mind.

When you think about it, Squidward is probably the most fleshed out character in Spongebob (In the early seasons at least). He starts off as this snarky person who seems to just hate everyone around him. But over time, it's shown that Squidward only acts this way because he feels like he's trapped in this world where no one else understands him and will always be alone.

I took an entire class on Existentialism this past semester. From Heidegger to Camus and Sartre, each one’s insights force you to approach time, our liminality as we stand between our past, present and future, as well as our mortality, and our question and search for meaning. Definitely my favorite class I’ve taken so far.

There is something even more uncanny in this episode. According to physic's laws if you go back in time you will not return in the actual past. You will create a seperate timeline which is exactly like your past but it is impossible to return to that one you left because time's flow cannot be changed. In other words Squidward has left his actual reality forever and is teleported to a different reality which has another Squidward just like him. And this only gets uncannier because by the time Squidward is teleported to the seperate reality, the other Squidward from that reality is already trapped in the freezer just like he was.

Something else I noticed about the episode when it comes to how lonely Squidward truly is in the world is the fact that he was locked in a freezer but felt confident that someone will come looking for him "in no time", but he waited 2000 years and nobody bothered

The scariest thing to me is that the episode isn't even named. SB stands for spongebob, and 129 is 129 because it's in the first season and is the 29th segment on the show. It scares me and for no reason.

Imagine if the writers of this episode just wrote it randomly with no real reason.