Film Theory: Is Spongebob a Mutant? Solving Bikini Bottom's Most Popular Theory! 

Matpat should make a theory on how much money Phineas and Ferb spent that one summer

Tom Kenny: *Says there isn't a single pop culture reference in Spongebob* MatPat: _Hold my knowledge_

Of all the "disturbing" cartoon theories I had come across in the past, this one always felt like one of the least absurd/most plausible ones.

This theory has been proven in the show. In Feral Friends from season 10, a "Neptune's moon" releases a weird radation that temporarily demutates the members of Bikini Bottom. The caveman episode that's referred to here takes place in the BC era, with BC referring to "Before Comedy", meaning that spongebob timeline is seperate from human history.

I have a way to help this theory along. The movie said Spongebob had 374 consecutive employee of the month awards. That is over 30 years and no one appears to change. Bikini Bottom is clearly on an accelerated timetable

Matpat: "Movies treat nuclear Like some sort of magic dust" Ad: "There's magic all around"

So this begs the question: How DID the nuclear experiments affect bikini bottom? Clearly bikini bottom existed at Bikini atoll when a bunch of humans started dropping bombs on them- how did the bikini bottomers of the 40s react to that? A very interesting theory! There is nuclear fallout left throughout the show, like in that one episode where SpongeBob accidentally creates a monster from the vats of nuclear acid just chilling around, so clearly there were nuclear weapons around bikini bottom!

Fun fact: the creator of SpongeBob has a degree in Marine Biology so many of the things seen in the show are accurate. Such as the way scallops move in the show.

“It’s time for me to ruin your childhood!” “Yes, matpat…”

ah one small problem, spongebob, the show specifically it shows how quick their civilization grows, it goes from stone age to 1900's as you can see in spongebobs family tree, look at southpark for an example, specifically cartmans seamen

🤔 Matt Patt never considers that the Bikini Bottom historical time line might not be the same as the human one (ex. the medieval period for SpongeBob’s world might not be the exact same as the human world). Regardless, very interesting and otherwise thorough theory.

matpat I am crying right now! I need you to do a pt.2 because you have only scratched the surface of this theory!

What if we've only seen their timeline? Like only after the atomic testing. That would mean the prehistoric SpongeBob and Patrick was really them right after the bombs went off or whenever they first mutated and they were so unique they literally went through our history at a accelerated rate. Leading to what we see today.

I’d like to point out one thing. You talk about how they have a culture that develops over time and that’s why it doesn’t hold up. But animals have shorter life spans than humans. They could have gone through many generations before we get to modern day. Given testing was done in the 1940 and 50s, in animal lifespan, enough time could pass from them to go from primitive to modern…don’t you think?

8:31 VeggieTales Theory

the "prehistoric" sky at 12:15 looks like the aftermath of a nuclear explosion

I think Tom Kenny meant “topical” more than “pop cultural.” And that is pretty true since most the references mentioned are from more than 2 decades before the episodes aired. the pop culture references flew over most kids heads so I think the focus of those jokes was more the vibe they gave and less so a referential joke. You can easily say he was wrong for using a universal, but I think you’d be missing what he was really trying to say.

MatPat’s videos in general: Well yes, but actually no.

At 5:30 when it shows the photo u see the little island on the right that is shown in every beginning of the episode

There’s also a ton of locations on the show implied to be very far away from Bikini Bottom, yet are also inhabited by anthropomorphic fish. Think back to New Kelp City for example, or Ukulele Bottom being mentioned by Patrick in Season 1 (which is also where the Patrick Show supposedly takes place)

Counter-theory: It really is Bikini Atoll, and that the "stone-age" was actually just after the nuclear testing occurred, before the animals were able to develop language and the other things they developed a few decades later. To them, it seems like the stone-age because it was when they first gained sentience, however to us it was just after the nuclear testing concluded.

6:43 "Why is the Hulk green and super strong?" Shows a picture of gray Hulk

No matter how old Ive gotten , SpongeBob takes me back to my childhood. It was the best show imo when it launched, same kind of shenanigans that cat-dog got into. Saturday mornings will never be the same... Smh

Can you make a spongebob theory on Mrs. Puff's Character? The way her character information is written is really interesting!

I’m surprised you didn’t mention the episode feral friends, which shows that a green moon that comes up every 100 years and devolves the bikini bottom citizens into normal fish, confirming that the bikini bottom citizens are highly evolved sea creatures, so while they may not be evolved from radiation, they definitely evolved from regular fish

What if, spongebob's prehistoric era started after the nuclear test, maybe they have a calender of their own, it is surely possible that their "history" started after the nuclear tests. Edit: they can have a totally different calender where the year 1 (1 July 1946) is the time the nuclear test was goin on, and then they started to evolve at a very fast rate, but what totally debunks this theory is that Sponge bob started in 1986, and our sponge boi hasn't aged a day, from the past 40+ years, mr.krabs calls him a "kid" and we haven't seen any feature of him growing old, so ya I debunked my own theory and I wasted your time. I beg you, prove me wrong Edit 2: now that I think of that I guess I was right, and SpongeBob when it started was set ahead in time, so the first evolutionary step of spongebob's world would be in 1986, so yes they evolve way faster than any creature, and we also see that the sponge bob family chain is pretty short, the great great great grandpa of sponge bob was a early human (which sounds like a long time and it is, but very short in this context). So save the sweat and try not to debunk this theory I beg you. Edit 3: creatures in bikini bottom see a major evolution every 5 years, which is shocking considering spongebob's age right now, i keep on debunking myself Or maybe one day in bikini bottom is less than one day on ground according to their calander (maybe) so maybe the lifespan of sponge on ground maybe 5 years, and in bikini bottom they have a standard lifespan of 80 (bikini) years

Tom Kenney: you dont see pop culture references that date the show Spongebob: *makes Dungeons & Dragons reference*

I still love every last one of their theme songs

Matpat: "... Basically in the Middle of Nowhere" Me: ...darn now I want a courage the cowardly dog theory

Oh wow matpat acknowledged the prehistoric stuff nice

Well the SpongeBob nuclear mutation theory can still work if you consider the fact that Evolution in SpongeBob‘s universe could be faster then it is in our own

The intro was amazing 🤩 i loved it so much

There's an alternative to this theory that does add up with both science and lore, as proposes by Alex Bale: Bikini Bottom is a place with a high concentration of naturally evolved sea creatures. The main argument for this theory is the Season 10 episode "Feral Friends", where a phenomenon known as Neptune's Moon causes all Bikini Bottom inhabitants except for Sandy to devolve into primitive animals, which is just straight up referred to as "devolving". I personally quite like this one.

I think when Tom Kenny said there aren't pop culture references, he meant the characters themselves don't acknowledge pop culture. A key note is the fact that Spongebob and Patrick didn't know David Hasselhoff. The series is disconnected from the real world in that the characters don't interact with real world events, not that the show doesn't reference it. But that's my guess

I HAVE BENN WAITING FOR THIS EPISODE FOR FOREVER!!!

5:45 Can I just say how Goofy Goober Rock being a parody of the Twisted Sister song I Wanna Rock wouldn't have seemed out of place if Weird Al Yankovic had simply written and sung it for one of his albums? The parody style is as good as a lot of his classic stuff, which is a great compliment.

Um, I believe Stephen Hillenburg is a puppet master and the characters are all following his orders, as who would sell Spongebob to the Flying Dutchman for 62 cents?

Next spongebob theory, how strong is plankton?… using the episode when he broke an atomic bond 😂

0:26 *transforms* “OH THIS IS PAINFUL MAKE IT END!!!” My life in a nutshell

I love how Mat completely neglects to consider the fact that the surface/human world has little to no interaction with Bikini Bottom and the time periods under the water probably don’t line up with the real world counterparts Like the prehistoric spongebob times could just be 1970

What if all that history happened in those 75 years, all of the characters are the same if you ignore the classic cartoon trope of using characters in a past-era episode. What if each nuke reset the bikini bottom population and made them smarter each time. I'm just saying.

I think matpat forgot about how it takes 1. Time for a civilization to develop and 2. Shorter lifespan, which means advancing faster than humans,to prove this, look at sandy and plankton, they both build complex robotic machinery (and also plankton has cooking science while sandy chemistry)but even more proof is that of the “Le spatula” or the robotic spatula he get’s after his spatula needs a replacment.

Well great video speckling about nuclear weapons it reminds me of The Movie "Threads" still in my opinion the scariest thing I have watched

Edit for a clearer picture since my first comment was a bit confusing: Maybe their history was sped up by the radiation.. As mat said, radiation causes rapid cell mutation, aka evolution. That would explain how they were able to evolve from prehistoric (cavefish) to the modern fish in the span of 40 years(nuke testing to the pop culture references). Also that would explain why spongebob looks so different from his parents. Also also, a giant snail (prehistoric gary) may be directly caused by the initial radiation, there are documented cases where radiation grew fish way past their normal size in fukushima, meaning the prehistoric setting was the initial fallout from the nukes. Mat briefly referenced radiation poisoning, the organ failure part, and that could explain the cultural differences from the medieval bikini bottom since time is not the factor for culture but generations. Shorter life spans will lead to more cultural differences within the same amount of time since if people die faster their kids have less culture to inherit making them interpret culture in their own ways leading to differences. Also, since they were now getting more advanced, and more standardized (some fish are spreading their population instead of mutating, though some mutations are still occuring like spongebob himself since radiation stays in the area) the nukes have probably stopped, thus this would be when the U.S. stopped dropping nukes. Also, maybe the nukes also killed the original jelly fish population that formed the lagoon, just to connect to mat's other theory. This would mean that their entire history, prehistoric to modern times, happened within the span of 50ish years due to radiation, and somewhat prove the original theory. Let's ignore the fact that radiation practically makes you sterile. But a possible solution would be maybe a one in a million fish (like the initial prehistory population, since the ocean has millions of creatures compared to the tens we saw in the prehistory) had the lucky mutation that makes their reproductive organs immune to damage to the point of infertility, thus inbreeding within these fish will still cause mutations with the added radiation and their reproductive systems are practically immune, passing that mutation on to their offspring, and continue the cycle of mutating and inbreeding. the original comment I left: What if, their "history" was accelerated due to radiation, like they were prehistoric when we first started dropping nukes, then as we stopped they continued to evolve rapidly because of radiation as you said radiation accelerates evolution. And we today see them as they are, making pop cultural references current to their time, and their prehistory was just 40 years before. Generations would live short due to radiation poisoning and that would explain the rapid cultural growth This would explain most of the inconsistencies.

One thing you didnt take into account is that the characters in the show could have a sped up life span due to the radiation and there evolution didnt span hundreds or thousands of years(evolution) but only a couple decades and all that history spaned only a short period of time. Making the theory plausible.

I never knew that thank you for telling me you’re really awesome

Or the ‘prehistoric’ time period is directly after the nuclear testing. There’s nothing that says their grasp of time is the same as a humans, especially considering shorter life spans. Maybe they went through all those stages of advancement since the testing.

There is nothing in the show specifically saying that their medieval period was at the same point of history as ours, same with the prehistoric period, those could have all happened after the nuclear testing.

I love your content dude

Before I watch this, I already knew that sharks are around the island were missing the top tail fin

Actually, the prehistoric era could be the outcome of the nuclear tests, and Bikini bottom evolves through time all the way to the present. Maybe Bikini Bottom is not all the way connected to our history. Like what Tom Kenny said about the show being it's own world.

If we take into account that most animals live way less years than us humans, we could also guess thay they progress way faster than us, what they lived like the prehistoric era, could have happened just a few years after the nuclear testing, there's not a realiable way of matching the series timeline, to the real world (that I know of...)

FUN FACT: I just found out when researching gamma gardens after this video, the ruby-red grapefruit is now the most common grapefruit even though its from a gamma garden!

I think Alex Bale solved this mystery, just by his own intellect. The guy is a genius, and there's no doubt he deserved to be noticed by Matpat. 😱😀👍

I like how we are scientifically discussing a sponge living under the ocean

I wonder if their version of "ancient times" was actually only 20 or 30 years ago and their society just evolved very quickly. It would explain why even in the caveman era it seems like characters almost identical to Spongebob and Patrick existed.

stephen hillenburg was honestly so cool. the way he made his passions into a beautiful show that anyone can love and appreciate is just so wholesome :)

My man Mat says I AM READY at least once every SpongeBob episode

I believe from hearing somewhere that the show was created to teach children about marine life. It also shows a form of pollution in the show. The houses in Bikini Bottom are car mufflers.

They might not live as long as humans. So faster lifespans, faster advancements, this theory could still work!

F is for fire that burns fire the whole town U is for Uranium .. bombs N is for no survivors…!!! The F.U.N. song makes more sense now lol

Mr Krabs: Hello! I like money. *His entire character described in four words*

Is there the possibility that they are in the “future” in our time? It explains the references and maybe they start their timeline when the bombs went off

What if the “Medieval and Pre-Historic” times were after the explosion, and the current setting is them barely catching up. Also meaning that time could work differently Thank you for 500 likes, I’ve never received so many ever. Thank you

As a loyal theorist myself, I would like to say : what if spongebob's timeline started at when they became sentient. basically, didn't us humans have a different start and evolution in the universe. the spongebob timeline may have started in between ours, but that still will not clash with the fact that it can just evolve near the same as humans. besides, all of bikini bottom doesn't know about the land aside from that one island.

keep up the good work

One issue, they are still (mostly) sea creatures who experience time differently, so the 1950s to today is not long at all if you take their lifetime into account it could feel more like centuries to them. They were attacked and then made life from stone to screen in a matter of a 70 years, because time, or I guess everything is relative.

Tom kenny was quite clearly saying that nobody makes pop culture references in the show, maybe they’re references, but spongebob never goes “this is like thanks giving at tom hanks house” like gex.

Nothing is better that watching Mat Pat talking about sea nuclear locals from Bikini Botom

Can’t wait for the official SpongeBob timeline.

I don’t think MatPat took into account that the beginning of time for them would be a few years after the atomic blast, after all Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was bikini bottom.

I think this all has to do with Neptune. Because of “Neptune’s Moon” of turning them back to normal fish might be the 1st hint of how they became a humanoid version of a human.

Matpats idea of beneficial mutation: Mario fire flower

8:54 i actually thought he was gonna say "but thats just a theory, a film theory! Thanks for watching"

Unless they specifically mentioned the year of those pre-historic episodes, we can still say that their pre-historic era was way more recent I.e after the nuclear bombings and they evolved much faster thanks to the mutations. I haven't watched SpongeBob much so I don't know if this is not viable theory by some other info given in it.

“Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?” “According to the man who keeps yelling at me on the street, the man who keeps yelling at me on the street.”

5:55 the pic on the left (the globe) then the map, it shows the hemispheres on opposite sides, thus you pointed to the wrong areas (in name anyway)

You forget that canonically know how the people of Bikini Bottom gained their sentience, the Green Moon or Neptune's Moon caused the normal sea creatures to become what they are, that's why they have centuries of history, this naturally occurring radioactive phenomenon likely rested dormant on the seafloor eventually causing the mutations we see before tectonic shifting buried it letting the mutated life that had resulted flourish. In the episode we see "Neptune's Moon" appear almost like a comet making me theorize that it was only brought back up due to volcanic activity blasting it up, why it was able to suddenly de-evolve the characters doesn't really make any sense but maybe you could argue that Neptune's Moon has an alien origin or was actually created by the Gods that we know exists in SpongeBob's world.

Gary is a 4D Jovian Dolphin

When first gaining intelligence, The creatures of Bikini bottom wouldn’t immediately be able to talk. It could be that the prehistoric bikini bottom takes place right after the nuclear bombs drop and the different eras in SpongeBob go by a lot faster than ours did.

Matpat should make a theory if the angry birds are in green eggs and ham

I just noticed how the people of bikini bottom live in metal cans.. it’s truely impressive how much effort they’ve put into Spongebob to make it sense even if it is a cartoon.

... The "medieval" and "primitive" times could really just be time relative to them. The primeval spongebob could be a decade after nuclear testing when life was starting to return to the islands.

Couldn’t have been to little bit Flexible and you could say that there was some sort of radioactive elements like a deposit of plutonium underneath bikini atoll or in this case bikini bottom

Bro the thumbnail tho is making me 😂😂😂 I guess SpongeBob loves radiation XD

*Hear me out* …. But what if their “prehistoric” and “medieval” periods took place not at the same time as *OUR* prehistoric and medieval periods but they happened *AFTER* the nuclear testing. Like the Nuclear testing is what *STARTED* the creatures to become sentient and to develop their own language and started their development and growth. Like how the *Big Bang* started our development, the nuclear testing started theirs.

What about all of those episodes including patchy the pirate? He literally watches spongebob in the “Lost episode” episode. He also appears in several Christmas specials and even writes a letter to spongebob, which spongebob receives meaning that they both exist in the same world.

What about if the nuclear bombs actually speeds up the growth meaning one second for us is 100 years for them

9:05 what if those are the weird reasons crop circles still exist to this day ? Except, maybe satellites? Or underground.

I see a people saying that time for them is different than us humans, like 20 years is a century to them, but there is the problem that pre-historic animal life is in the stone age of bikini bottom.

The opening was a missed opportunity for the one guy to scream "my leg!"

When he said put on your theorist pants I had no pants on because I was going number 2

Another reference to popculture: "what a beautiful specimen of donuthood" aka "what a beautiful specimen of manhood" in the Rocky horror show 😂😂

imagine being a new fbi agent and you see this Jake(new fbi agent): hey Jim, this guy is looking up stuff about nuclear weapons and toxic waste Jim: what's his name Jake: uh-huh, matpat,, also known as Mathew Jim: oh him, yeah don't worry he does this all the time, he once looked up how long a corpse can go without rotting and if you can wear it as a suit Jake: and..... and we shouldn't be worried Jim: yeah trust me it's fine

When time travel canonically exists in the show, can the chronology of events really be considered absolute evidence?

IDK I think Matpat should make a theory about why patchy the pirate is animated on one episode and whybthe flying duchmin has his old clothes

Ohhh the aspitipy reference :D

Sandy is there just to secretly monitor the sentient sea life of Bikini Bottom and conduct breakthrough technology for her homeland of Texas.

Jesus what type of nuclear waste they tested on to make Sponge's sentient and fire to be lit underwater with no issues

Just saw a comment about timeline and that made me think. Maybe marine life has a relative timeline much different to humans? So the time we see in bikini bottom is moving “faster” than the human world.