Ranking Every OG SpongeBob Episode from WORST to BEST (142 Episode Tier List) 

The fact that we reach the great episodes at basically 29:00 with one entire hour left to go really tells you how amazing this show was in it's golden era

The fact that I went "oh I like this episode" starting from the second to worst thing on the list really says something

1:26:53 That shot of Bubble Bass grabbing Squidward and just throwing him across the room has to be one of the funniest visual gags in the whole show

Bubblebass having the pickles from last time under his tongue still was crazy levels of hatred for no reason.

i kid you not, i genuinely thought that Idiot Box had ACTUAL IMAGINATION SCENES up until i rewatched it a few years ago. i was mindblown when i realized it was actually just my imagination. it's crazy how great our imaginations were as kids. i'm not saying it's any worse now that i'm older, my imagination still runs wild to this day, but man i couldn't believe that was just all in my head

Its crazy how many episodes i remember. Turns out SpongeBob was a big part of my childhood

Thr craziest part of all, is how they managed to create many memorable moments in 11 minute episodes. TIME. AFTER. TIME. AGAIN.

I’m here to file my grievance. Shanghai’d is legitimately one of the funniest pieces of media ever created and should be much, much higher on this list.

The funny thing is, I knew every single one of these episodes, but couldn’t tell you a title of any of them. I just never paid attention to that as a kid. I loved every story, and the adventures I went on with all of my underwater friends in Bikini Bottom. This video legitimately made me cry, because I can remember SpongeBob being there for me through so many things I went through as a kid. There are some episodes that, while not being written so well, made me laugh over and over again, no matter how bad I felt inside. Thank you for this. I know it’s just a tier list video, but you really helped me remember just how much this show means to me.

“It’s a giraffe” was the moment I thought of for the bubble blowing episode

No Weenies Allowed at 115 made my jaw drop. Good list though.

1:19:28 Fun Fact: Before creating Phineas and Ferb, Dan Povenmire worked on SpongeBob as a writer and was the one who created “The Campfire Song Song”.

no weenies allowed at #115 is enough to make me lose all trust in this tier list. that episode is PURE gold!

I’m sorry but Krusty Towers is an honorary golden episode. Literally every single line is iconic and it’s just absurd joke after joke after joke, it never slows down. One of my absolute favorites. IMDB also seems to agree as it’s the highest rated of season 4 and higher rated than even many Season 1-3 episodes. “We shall never deny a guest, even the most ridiculous request!”, “This is a hotel??”

Fun fact: the paper is the rarest episode since it only airs after the Valentine’s Day episode

Ghost Host above Krusty Towers is kinda wild

I’m glad you addressed karate island because I remember riding hard for that episode and then rewatching it present day and it has NO substance or anything clever like at least frycook games had funny and relevant events

There were some weird rankings I won’t lie. Squidward the unfriendly ghost for example being way to low imo. But having pickles as number 1 might be one of the most based opinions on the internet. I had such an emotional connection to this episode and I’m glad you see it too.

Man, seeing pickles as #1 initially had me thinking you had a slight bias, since i had Band Geeks as #1. But as you were explainjng how significant it is to see SB redeem his identity really did bring a tear to my eye. You're absolutely right.

“Having pride in your work is nothing to be ashamed of, it’s the only thing that makes it all worthwhile” THIS is only one example from millions for why SpongeBob was so pivotal for me as a kid. Genuine life advice snuck into a humorous kids show. Not to mention I learned how to tie my shoes from that one SpongeBob episode.

graveyard shift not making it to top 20 is sinister work

The fact that you consider part of season 4 a part of the Golden age warms my heart.

You know a show is good when we're describing episodes as "bulletproof" and we're not even in the top 50 yet

I strongly disagree with a ton of these picks, but respect the effort. Dropping a like.

"maybe you can get away with it the first few years of airing it to kids, they'll just laugh about it, but when those kids grow up and make a RU-vid video tier listing your episodes 20 years later, this one will be in F tier." These are the things that keep me up at night.

Dying for Pie is still number 1 in my heart. Every joke lands and it is the best-written episode in the whole series.

Never thought of Pickles like that, but now thinking about it that way and looking back at it, it’s a phenomenal episode, especially considering it was season one

Whatever other people say, holy shit dude, the whole video is an absolute masterpiece. Sure, some ranks in the lower tiers may have been interchangeable, yet the leading episodes of each tier (including SS) depict a real understanding of what makes the whole series (season 1-3 lol) such a memorable masterpiece to this day. With nostalgia in mind, sure, those earlier episodes stick way deeper in out memories than that soulless crap modern Spongebob is, but with so many episodes representing and explaining current topics such as strikes, existentialism and human interaction in manifold it really shows how it is something more than just silly jokes. Thank you a lot for the time and effort that went into creating this list!

Amazing; thank you for giving me a new appreciation for these episodes on such a deeper level. I never thought I’d hear such an analysis of Pickles of all episodes; well done.

I love how no commentary was needed for #66 “He was number one!”

Krusty towers being so low is a crime

The craziest part about Karate Island being #1 in the original list is that I doubt 50% of the viewers actually understood the punchline at the time.

Sb-129 is my all time favorite episode of all time. About damn time it gets some love. I am a huge sucker for reality bending and breaking episodes. Its fantastic. This and ed edd and eddy. I love episodes that just randomly go into that realm of WHAT?!

the most nostalgia ive ever felt in my life.. and such good takes. thanks brother for the trip down memory road

I really had to temper my feelings for this list, because I was saying “I really liked that episode” to half of the “F tier” episodes. 😂

respect all these takes but i actually really liked the episode where they all turn into snails, its like uncharacteristically fucked up body horror for early spongebob and reminds me of 90s nickelodeon cartoons like ahh real monsters

I wish you went into the Idiot Box episode more, the imagination scenes are SO iconic. Spongebob and Patrick dramaticizing a desperate escape from an avalanche that parodies a war movie because Squidward kicked the box is SO harrowing to watch as an adult and the jokes hit so well with its concept.

i think your breakdown and reasoning for each tier is excellent and revisiting the original list from the 2000s is an awesome idea. as others in the comments have suggested, you can debate placements of your favorite episodes and moments amongst yourselves, but the overall curation and quality of the video is amazing! i love the style of OG spongebob tier list/video essay’s and this is up there with the best. great work man.

Fuckin “firmly grasp it is fire” is a crazy sentence and made me lose my collective shit. Good show sir

"Mrs. Puff You're Fired" is one of my favourite episodes, and by far my favourite from Season 4. So I'm very surprised to see it in F tier. Am I alone?

That pickles episode is also my number 1 😂 not only it's like redemption arc or something but the amount of bubble bass throwing squidward was really making me laugh 🤣

Rock bottom, pickles, neptunes spatula, and the one with plankton and bob in the beach are my favourites

Jesus I didn’t rember season 4 having such a nose dive in quality compared to the first three seasons don’t get me wrong there are some bangers but the quality just flew straight down

The whole bit @ 33:00-33:24 is FIRE social commentary on how schools tend to not be very good at bullying prevention

Man I gotta say as a fan of the show and as someone who’s watched a lot of top ten lists on epsiodes, seeing you pick genuine choices and not just going with obvious fan favourites was so satisfying. Seeing pickles at the top was so cathartic haha. Finally someone who loves that episode as much as I do! Dunno if it’s the number 1 for me but top 3 for sure.

Personally, my absolute FAVORITE episode is Shanghaied. Literally SO MANY quotes from that episode, and you laugh like every 5 seconds Goated episode and the fact that it didn't make the original Top 100 list is absolutely digusting

The Paper is one of my all time favorites and so is Jellyfish Hunter, super happy to see that one in top 20 always thought it was an underrated gem from season 2 that doesn't get brought up much outside of Moar Krabs

great ranking, this video deserves more attention

Every time I watch one of these videos, I feel obligated to rewatch the Golden era again. Good shit

I watched the whole thing and bless you for making something so intricate and so enthusiastic about the show, I can tell SpongeBob is as important to you as it is to me.

One of if not the gratest tier of Sponge Bob episodes I've seen in a while. That was a blast to watch. I laughed so hard at all the gags you cherrypicked from episodes. Don't agree 100% but it still a damn good list. Nice work

watching this is wild! seeing just how many iconic spongebob episodes there are. If D tier episodes of your show are considered still pretty enjoyable you know you had something special :))

I know it's an easy argument to make that any kid from any era feels the same way as any other kid from any other era about their respective favorite childhood shows. And maybe there's a good amount of truth to that, but I don't think that means that shows don't vary in quality. And I'm biased because I was born in 1998, and still quote Spongebob in daily life to friends who also remember it as fondly, but I've also seen a lot of television and I don't think that it's very common whatsoever for a show aimed at an audience for children is so well written, acted, animated, has such great music, memorability and constant bar raising creativity. The show always demanded respect by respecting its viewers. It can be hard to be grateful for things in a mind that constantly resets itself in the present, assessing for threats and anxieties and "is that person looking at me?" But it's nice to be able to step back and appreciate how lucky we were to be at the right time and place and age to see this masterpiece of a show. Also, incredibly well made and satisfying video. I can tell how much time this took you to make and it's inspiring how committed you must have been. I may update this comment as the video goes on to include other blunders such as SKILL CRANE BEING OUTSIDE THE TOP 100!? WHAT!? Skill Crane is Top 50. C'mon! But the passion I feel for disagreeing with you is the same passion you felt that drove you to correct that abhorrent and distasteful list that was somehow voted on.

55:32 Not to mention it has three endings.. but the only cons to those endings is the fact that two of them end the same way with the Flying Dutchman eating them. SpongeBob's won with them turned into fruit in a blender and chased by the Flying Dutchman as a vegetarian, as SpongeBob wished for in his ending.

Chimps ahoy had one of my favorite jokes in the whole series as a kid. Sandy has a helmet that lets you communicate with peanuts. So SpongeBob puts it on and talks to a peanut. "It says, 'It's dark in here'" and then later the peanut gets put in a grinder with a screaming sound and you just see SpongeBobs face fall in grief and Taps starts playing. Still kills me and I can't quite put my finger on why.

as someone who was 7 when Help Wanted was first released, and who has seen every episode of the first 5 seasons, your top ten is absolute perfection!

I went right to the SS tier and saw you had chocolate with nuts in there, which cemented your trial period as a valid evaluator, so I decided to watch from the beginning

This videos amazing bro dope work 💯

Krusty Towers and Nautical Neighbors should be so much higher lmao. Thought both were top 20 locks! Great video though

its absolutely criminal that this only has 266 views

Bro, the way you narrated the episode Pickles made me realize that it is like the Spongebob Movie in a nutshell ❤️‍🔥

I don't always agree with your rankings, but I cannot say that you didn't make great arguments. Great video, subscribed

Thank you rock the johnson. You have illustrated your love for spongebob by making a tier list.

This just made me realize how many bangers they had. The sheer number is insane. The top 50 was just HITTER AFTER HITTER AFTER HITTER, good lord.

Crazy how Squidward dominates the top 10, proving he is the best character to interact emotionally, plot-wise, psychologically, socially, comically with SpongeBob in the entire show

Two things I still say to this day! "We have technology" and "He's just standing there, MENACINGLY!!!"

while it's easy to point out disagreements with the list (my favorite episode is ranked 94th, and the one immediately below it is another one of my absolute favorites), this show was just so consistent in its quality that i really can't take issue with any of the list, because the majority of the season 1-3 episodes are so close together in quality so what you're left with is even more subjective than the usual tier list video. i'm so glad this show was such a big part of growing up for so much of our generation, the shared experience of watching these episodes and remembering the best parts all these years later is just so strong and really makes me feel closer in some strange way to people i've never met. glad people in the comments are sticking up for krusty towers though, love that episode

Very solid list. My only gripe is the low rank of Jelly fishing, especially because you followed it with April Fools and Krabs V Plankton. Both of which I think it outclasses.

I really love your channel

this is an incredible list and vid, god bles 🙏🙏

I feel like there is no way to argue with the top 10 you choose. These feel like such universal picks, absolutely classics.

Bro in scaredy pants when squidward say “ I’ve came for your pickle” I Don’t blame SpongeBob for jumping like that I would be scared too

Krusty towers is way too low. For me it’s the best season 4 episode.

Wow just stumbled upon this video and watched the whole thing and loved it! Obviously, i would make a few changes in my own personal ranking, but I really loved your picks! One thing this video made me realize is how few seasons are the golden era. I just looked it up and realized as i kid i gave up on spongebob after season 6, but when i was a kid, there were so many classics i had always assumed there were over like 10 seasons at the point because the show was so good. But after watching your video, it made me realize that like 95% of the episodes that i consider good is just the entirety of the first 3 seasons and then there was a huge drop in quality and as a kid i just didnt realize that all these classics were just 3 seasons. Still to this day, my favorite show from when i was a kid.

I normally hate tier list videos but this one one of the best. You can tell the dude's really into this.

Salty Spatoon being so far down hurt me

I don't agree with all of your opinions but I honestly agree with you on a lot. Really happy to see Pickles getting some attention; not sure if it's my number one favorite but it's definitely in my top five!

Awesome video!

I really loved your list for the top 100 of these episodes! Seeing a #1 that WASN'T Band Geeks (though that episode is still spectacular) and was instead an episode I also really love and enjoy was a nice change of pace, and I liked how short and sweet some of the reviews were, while the more in-depth and deeper episodes were really analyzed in detail. The only episode I really rank a lot higher from Season 4 is "Have You Seen This Snail?," but that's mainly because it made me cry when I was a kid. The song in that episode hits hard.

Why are all those banger episodes in D tier, KRUSTY TOWERS IN D TIER IS CRAZY

I kinda find it funny that, if Stephen Hillenburg's plan to end spongebob after the movie went through, the strangler episode would've been the last episode of the original show before the movie. I dunno, I just kinda find it funny that would've been the note they would've ended it on.

One of my personal favorites is Born again Krabs and I love how you gave it the respect it deserves. Pretty great list.

CLAMS at C tier is insane!

I’ll respect all opinions but I did feel like you were way too harsh on season 4, especially when there were plenty of good ones on caliber with the first 3 seasons. (Skill crane, lost mattress, krabs v plankton)

the Adrian Dennis cameo had me SHAKEN bro shoutout Adrian that laddie is awesome

Something you did with this list that I never would’ve thought of personally but I’m really glad you did it putting them into categories. Like episodes were Squidward starts out as a grumpy fuddy-duddy denying SpongeBob, who is trying to get Squidward to do something playful, but by the end of the episode, Squidward has an imagination and becomes playful. Or episodes were plankton, tries to steal the crabby patty or mermaid, man and Barnacle, boy episodes, etc. but one thing as I wish you would’ve added more non-character related categories like best ending. The funniest moments of SpongeBob to me, as an adult, and as a kid, or the very, very end of some episodes. For example, it’s probably the hardest I’ve ever laughed at a SpongeBob was at the end of Fry when Patrick says that his underwear were white when he bought them insinuating that he pissed his pants. I was in tears as a kid when I first heard that. Edit: also the ending to the snowball fight episode. When Squidward is having a mental breakdown and starts going crazy and decides to build a snowball/wall around his house and it’s like 1000 feet tall. I remember as a kid when I first saw this, I was dying, just a visual how tall and how we just started going insane with snowballs against Patrick and SpongeBob, and even Patrick and SpongeBob realize that Squidward was going a little bit crazy. Orwin Flats was going to kick SpongeBob’s butt. The ending when Mrs. puff says that she’s going to kick SpongeBob’s butt. There’s so many episodes with just iconic as fuck endings.

16:30 if you're not crying when you're hearing the song or after the song you have no soul

I SWEAR TO GOD, IF ITS ANOTHER DISS TO THE S3 SPECIALS. CALLED IT. Ok at least sponge bc is up there

I thought I liked spongebob, but you sir deserve employee of the month. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I’m going to go watch spongebob now

While Plankton is the most prevalent villain, I totally agree that Bubble Bass is arguably the best and most underrated of Spongebob villains, even more evil than Plankton. Why? Because he was he one of the few antagonists to almost singlehandedly cause the Krusty Krab to go bankrupt. He psychologically wrecked Sponge so bad that it forced Squidward to be the new fry cook. But his food was terrible and caused the customers to leave. Had this continued, Mr. Krabs would have went out of business for good, all because of ONE lie. Sure Krabs could've hired someone else, but who else could match Spongebob's fry cook skills AND work for cheap? Even besides that, Bubble Bass is a rare character that really tests Spongebob's fortitude. Him being a lazy, bossy, spiteful, overly-pedantic, and dishonest person in sharp contrast to Spongebob's hard working, easygoing, friendly, accepting, and honest personality. Nowadays, Bubble Bass is just a harmless neckbeard that lives in his mom's basement and is completely useless. But I'll always prefer Season 1 Bubble Bass as a really effective antagonist.

Thanks!

rock moment

Nice mention of the Recency Bias effect. Glad we’re using psychology concepts in our analysis!

I need that outro music Ok. But seriously, great tier list video. My fav is the krusty krab training video because its humorous and give us an insight on what happens at the krustry krab on a daily basis

Fools in April being in D tier is genuine blasphemy Still love the video tho

I should watch the first 3 seasons again. I gotta learn how to be more like spongebob It's a estimate to how great it was that there were a lot outside your top 100 and I was like 'what that should be top 20!'

You should do the next 100 as well. Or the entire series of you get ambitious enough, excellent video. I subscribed.

The time traveling machine and the training episodes are so iconic for me. The training episode was the first in a DVD I had, so I rewatched it over and over again... And the sb-128 episode, man, I've always been a sucker for episodes that explore different settings but the future and the abstract nothingness stuck to me to this day.

Yess rock!!! 🤘🏼

hey mr lvl 1 rock i think a banger video would be halloween sponge bob eps like focus on one of the real spooky vids. Everyone is on that halloween vibe