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

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 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

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.

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.

This reminds me of when in the 1920s-1930s people used to put radium (some radioactive stuff) into medicine. And it actually helped in extremely small doses but if you took too much your body would crumble apart slowly, starting from your skin to your skull

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

How did this video not talk about “Feral Friends” where they turn into real life creatures caused by a green sun coming out of a volcano underwater?

The lifespan of fish is Shorter then ours so they could’ve live through those areas but they just develop faster because the lifespan isn’t as much so they did more and less amount of time

🤔 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.

There is 1 thing that could get the lore to fit into the theory, which is that there are different calendars and different way of counting time and days. So potentially spongebob could have been following a different calendar and different way of measure time from us.

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!

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.

You guys remember Bolt? The superhero dog who finds out hes an actor? Well in it, its reveled everything is done is one take, meaning they have to have GREAT actors and amazing set design. Matpat should make a video about how much the show would cost. Cause i think itd be a lot.

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.

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

MatPat forgot one thing, spongebob episodes are usually non cannon, good way to see it is if you see another character brought into a different episode or change in the environment.

The theory still holds if you just take into account that the beginning of time in bikini bottom is the nuclear testing. It's SpongeBob and they haven't ever been Uber dedicated to their own lore, so there are certain holes in pretty much any theory you can come up with about the show.

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?

Bikini Atoll is indeed very isolated but there were in fact people living there when the government randomly decided to nuke it. They resettled voluntarily after being told the tests were for "the good of mankind and to end all world wars." They were told the relocation would be temporary and that their people could eventually return. Regardless of whether or not the government actually believed this, the native Bikinians and their leader King Juda agreed to resettlement. Their request for food and aid after learning the local fish were inedible due to radiation was considered but denied. An attempt to return was made in the mid 70's but, shockingly, the Atoll is uninhabitable and they were removed once again in 1980.

It could still work in a paradox where bikini bottom residents travel back in time and become there own ancestors and as we know time travel is established in this universe

You could definitely just say their concept of time is just sped up comparably to ours as the hit a fast evolutionary growth spurt and the life spans of most of these creatures were probably decreased as Larry looks young but technically lobsters are immortal so with radiation it would make sense

Here's something that came to my mind: The nuclear experiments on the Bikini Atoll may have created the life species of bikini bottom due to the radioactive waste and thus beginning the bc era of spongebob rather than the modern day era

Matpats face on SpongeBob’s body made me laugh hard😂

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.

6:00 "It's definitely real close." The Pacific is incomprehensively large, that could easily be thousands upon thousands of miles away. He just mentioned how the Bikini Atoll, at 3,000 miles from Australia, is "close" to it. That's a continental scale of distance! It's actually closer to Hawaii than Australia on that globe.

There is another problem MatPat, sponges do not have DNA that can be mutated

I know this is old but I have a theory. Remember when Matpat mentioned that radiation experiment on the 70’s for people to see if they can mutate plants and make them benifical to them quicker then the decades or even longer to mutate naturally. Well, I think that humans tried experimenting on marine life in Bikini Bottom too and it actually came out (mostly at least) well making Spongebob and the rest of Bikini Bottom evolve at a faster if that makes sense.

I would love to see matpat do a theory about the machine flin used to create food made up of water molecules😂

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

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

Super interesting theory!!!! Funny to see the lore being the one getting in the way for once 😂

Throwback time: Just recently watched “Over the Hedge” again today, no clue how many times I’ve seen it now. How fast can hammy move during his caffeine rush?

Another thing I think debunks this theory is that, in that same movie with Hasselhoff, there are other sea creatures that aren’t from bikini bottom who were once alive but captured by that creepy diver guy

Idk if anybody else got a smile from the use of what looked like Toxic Waste candy barrels, but that candy always made me smile (and not with sour-face). 🥰😋

Technically speaking you could say that they perceive time differently, thus meaning that the nukes could have caused the 'bc' adaptations.

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

Steph's voice as the mutant fish is kind of everything.

Since only 5% of the ocean has been explored, bikini bottom could technically exist for real...

Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy have been shown to have all their powers outside of their TV show, as well as all their villains. So anything seen in the TV show about them can be considered canon.

I think this theory could still be plausible if you consider that what we see in the show is just hundreds/thousands of years after the nuclear testing. The prehistoric SpongeBob and Patrick we see could actually just be in the present day

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.

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...)

Have you considered that their time might be different than ours? Like what if the pre historic era of the Bikini Bottom is weeks or months after the nuclear testings? their history doesn't have to match our history in terms of when it happened, the interesting thing is that we somehow developed the same but I don't think the time reason cancels this theory.

It would be awesome if you did a video diving in if Mr. Krabs is a cannibal or not.

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!

I see everyone pointing out how the theory could hold up if bikini bottomites experience time faster than humans, so I want to say that Sandy can really help there because she experiences life like the rest of them, but of course squirrels go through life faster than we do.

Perhaps time moves differently for them. Like the Halloween episode of the Simpsons where Lisa creates a society that worships her. Or the episode of Star Trek TNG where the Enterprise is stuck in orbit around a planet for a few days, but for the inhabitants it's centuries.

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

5:43 "And [Sandy] comes from the east" Editor's note: Matt meant to say "west" Patrick: "I thought you said weast" Missed a golden meme opportunity there, editor

Did anyone else notice Matpat mistakenly said Sandy comes from the East when landing back in Texas when he meant West? 😅

If you want another theory that explains the origins of bikini bottom, I recommend you try alex bale's spongebob theories. He has a really convincing one on the origin of bikini bottom plus a really cool arg he weaves into his videos

It seems like matpat had forgotten that he didn't conclude that SpongeBob was an orphan but rather the opposite. He concludes that while it won't be as likely it is still possible that SpongeBob wasn't adopted, a 1 in 4 chance to be exact

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 like how spongebob fans came up with this theory and made it really popular only to have a classic spongebob episode debunk it

That ending was weird...... IT FEELS UNFINISHED, well done MattPatt

I think this theory could also apply to The Simpsons and Doug. I use Blinky The 3 eyed Fish and skin colors on certain characters in Doug as examples.

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

What if Bikini Bottom's civilization only started after a astroid carrying radioactive material landed in the area.

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

But you might have forgotten: If Spongebob has his own time system, this could mean that spongebob is in the future and primitive sponges time is in the 1970s while bikini bottom is in the far off future

Sandy also kinda debunks the theory, since she is also shown to be more advanced, comes from Texas, and only recently arrived in Bikini Bottom.

Does anyone else remember when we were kids they actually had the krabby patty formula in the show? After the training video for working at the krusty krab and there was that long scat the guy did at the end of the episode they actually read off the ingredients then one day they just cut off that part of the episode?

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

Even if they really didn't have pop culture knowledge, that in no way means they couldn't be radioactive mutations. If nuclear testing happened and things like sea sponges amd starfish mutated, (which is the theory) , that doesn't mean they would see or know about pop culture stuff.

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

I think this theory already gets disproved because sandy is also humanoid and talks like the other but she came from Texas and even wear protective equipment so yeah no mutants, in fact this theory was even acknowledge in one episode, lots of chemical barrels mutated a bunch of barnacles into a giant purple monster, the design was very cool

Who are we to say whether SpongeBob's world is currently up to date or not? The SpongeBob timeline might be very different from our timeline. Perhaps the prehistoric history of Bikini Bottom only started developing after the nuclear tests in our time. Perhaps right now they're only making their way into the Medieval Time. I don't know oh, it's just a thought.

I would just like to clarify for matpat, that if sandy flew back to texas as mentioned by matpat, if she came from bikini atol that would be arriving from the west not east, as the Pacific Ocean is off the west coast of america

Theory idea: In Shutter Island, was Teddy actually a patient or was he being lied to?

What if some people just traveled to the past like SpongeBob did? That would explain everything

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.

to me it was his inspiration, he knew and used bikini atol as a base and to start an idea, but he did not take this seriously, and no one in the writer team did, despite knowing that it was an inspiration. We have pre-historic bikini bottom, with no normal fish, and is referenced many times sea creatures from all the ocean being just like bikini bottom's population.

matpat could literally tell me anything at this point and id believe him I mean whats next he'll get me excited about the lore in a food delivery services ads??? oh wait...

There’s a whole original story that goes along with this theory which doesn’t involve nuclear testing but instead full on nuclear war. And apparently there’s more than just sentient sea creatures in the sea afterwards

Also, if beneficial mutation happened so little, what are the chances that all of Bikini Bottoms residents would have one.

Can’t wait for the official SpongeBob timeline.

... 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.

I know I've requested this at least once before, but I think you guys should do a theory on Team Starkid's Hatchetfield universe. There's so much to theorize on, its like the theater equivalent of gravity falls. There's aliens, interdimensional godlike elderitch beings, supernatural powers, great stories and characters. There's so much that still needs to be explained and I can't wait to see where the Lang brothers take it next. Unfortunately a certain event of the past year made it so that they couldn't put on the next show, Nerdy Prudes Must Die, yet; and they ended up putting some of the content from it into the Nightmare Time stories that they performed over zoom. But I believe they're still planning on doing it eventually, even if that changes I know they still have other projects for the series in the works, so there should still be plenty more to theorize on , on top of everything that's already there. Honestly even if you don't wanna do any videos on the series I'd still recommend it. Everything that's been released so far is free on THvid in its entirety. Each story is a great mix of horror and comedy, each story generally leans more towards one of those two but all of the still have plenty of both, the songs are great, the choreography is absolutely stellar, every single cast member is insanely talented. They're honestly just really great shows and I hope that if you do check them out you like them as much as I do.

Bear in mind, Bikini Atoll was a real nuclear test site

Not enough of a discussion of how Hillenburg was partially inspired by Ween's album The Mollusk in creating Spongebob. (He was a noted fan, used the song Ocean Man as the credits song in the Spongebob movie, and asked the band to write and record the song Loop De Loop in S1, which they did). Songs relevant to the theory: Mutilated Lips, The Golden Eel, and Polka Dot Tail.

I think we should consider that they may have a different way of telling the date like they may not have started counting the years until we dropped a bunch of nukes on them and made them sentient

i remember reading this theory and other spongebob theories on pinterest a couple of years ago and being so spooked by them

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.

could I just add that with the timeline debunk part, their history could've started in the 1940's or whenever you said that they did the bombings on that area, so they could've just either a. been in the future to us (granted the movie but normally movies aren't canon in most things.), or b. they develop at a faster rate than we do somehow?

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

Sandy also kinda debunks this since she was smarter than the people from Bikini Bottom and she only arrived way after they were already able to talk, ... Unless she comes from some place in Texas that was also used for nuke testing.

The only answer I could possibly think on why there were a different time periods is because it probably took a while for civilization to start advancing ever since nuclear testing made them sentient

Well here is a work around for lore. Time might move differently in the perseptive of the sealife, due to their shorter lifespan, so 800 years in spongebob could be like 40 years IRL.

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.

I would love to see a theory about Kubo and the Two Strings. Specifically the ending.

The citizens of Bikini Bottom could have advanced in a similar way to us, just that they advanced at a faster pace.

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.

Matpat should react to Alex bale his theories are so convincing that hid fan base named him "the spongebob guy" even though the majority of his videos are short films if you search up "spongebob theory" he's bound to come up the theories I think he should react to are "Mrs puffs dark secret" and his take on the bikini atoll theory, the secret formula, and who's pearls mother that he has in one theory I would really like to see this

The radioactive mutation enabled them to do timetravel. There you have it.

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

If you want more really good sponge bob theories, i suggest checking out alex bale. He’s done a 4 part series about multiple theories. :)

Congrats on 10M Film Theory followers!!!

here is my theory: what if actually they were mutants but they percieve time differently because fish basically dont live as long as humans that means their year could be a few days and that means that they just mutated a while after the nuclear testing and then just evolved really fast