SB-129 (Episode)

SB-129
© Viacom
Episode No.:	14a
Season:	1
Airdate:	December 31, 1999
Previous Episode:	I Was a Teenage Gary
Next Episode:	Karate Choppers
Characters	Voice actors
SpongeBob SquarePants	Tom Kenny
Patrick Star	Bill Fagerbakke
Squidward Tentacles	Rodger Bumpass
Primate Sponge © Viacom

SB-129 is an episode from Season 1.

Plot

The day starts off well for Squidward. He is about to practice his Clarinet when SpongeBob's alarm clock (facing out the window) knocks the clarinet inside Squidward's mouth, and SpongeBob asks Squidward if he wants to go jellyfishing. Squidward tries to reply, but because his clarinet is in his mouth, anything he says is incomprehensible, and SpongeBob thinks he said "yes". After Squidward takes his clarinet out of his mouth, Squidward is constantly bothered in his house by SpongeBob and Patrick who want to go jellyfishing with him. Squidward, in an attempt to stop SpongeBob and Patrick from bothering him, tells SpongeBob that he should be at work, but SpongeBob tells him that it is a Sunday, and the Krusty Krab is closed on Sundays.

Squidward tells SpongeBob and Patrick to stay where they are, and goes out the back door of his house and goes into the Krusty Krab. He sees SpongeBob and Patrick looking for him, and goes into the kitchen. SpongeBob and Patrick are still looking for him, so he goes into the freezer. After SpongeBob and Patrick go away, Squidward is frightened to find that the handle is jammed and that he is stuck inside the freezer. He assures himself that someone will find him.

Unfortunately, this is not true, so two thousand years later, the door falls down and a frozen Squidward is defrosted by 'SpongeTron', a descendant of SpongeBob. Squidward finds out that everything in the future (except for people) is made entirely of chrome, and all organic life forms that aren't people (such as seaweed or kelp) are simply spray-painted chrome. SpongeTron introduces Squidward to his clones; X, Y, and Z. SpongeTron inform Squidward that there are 486 SpongeTrons in response to the question asked by Squidward "Are the other letters of the alphabet involved, here?", meaning that the English alphabet has been expanded, merged with another character set, or (most likely) it was hyperbole by the animators to make the future more complex. Squidward decides that he hates the future, so SpongeTron directs him to a time machine, which is actually a small room with a control panel. Squidward uses the time machine (shortly after meeting Patron, a two-headed descendant of Patrick) to travel to the prehistoric past, ripping the entire room out of the building in the process.

He meets Primitive Sponge and Prehistoric Starfish, whom are the ancestors of SpongeBob and Patrick. Squidward tells them about jellyfishing because they keep on torturing themselves with jellyfish. They seem to be interested, but are driven crazy by Squidward's clarinet, and chase after him. He goes into the time machine, but it malfunctions, and he goes to a very strange place with abstract shapes and no characters or setting (it is possibly an alternate universe, another dimension, or a time warp, but Squidward calls it 'nowhere'). At first Squidward is happy to be here because there is no SpongeBob or Patrick around, but he then becomes freaked out by the eternal nothingness and desperate to escape. After he finds the time machine, he begs it to return to the present, which it does, but Squidward finds out that in his travels, he invented jellyfishing. The episode ends when Squidward says "I'm going back."

Trivia/Goofs

The episode, which arises from Squidward time traveling and inventing the game of jellyfishing while seeking to avoid SpongeBob and Patrick as they want him to jellyfish with them, is an example of a time paradox known as a causal loop, in which a person is inspired or driven by an event to time travel and, whether or not intentionally, causes the event which will facilitate their initial time traveling trip.
This is the first and only episode where episode's name in the title card was shown. This is also one of the ten episodes in which the title card has an animation. The others are Pre-Hibernation Week, One Krab's Trash, Idiot Box, SpongeBob Meets the Strangler, Skill Crane, Karate Island, All that Glitters, The Donut of Shame, and The Krabby Kronicle.
The episode parodies the black comedy Futurama, where Fry, the main character, was frozen in December 31, 1999 and was released in the future. Squidward is also frozen into the future.
The calendar in the future says AD March 6, 4017.
The words "past" and "future" switch places from when Squidward first enters the time machine and when he enters the past. Additionally, nothing is written on the lever when Squidward "falls" into the time machine near the end of the episode.
When Squidward first arrives in the "Nowhere" zone, he has his clarinet. But when he begins running frantically, he does not hold his clarinet. When he falls through the roof of the time machine, the clarinet is back in his hand.
When Squidward said "alone" in the Nowhere Zone, other voices said it too. These voices were voiced by the entire crew of the show.
"SB-129" was originally going to be called "SpongeBob 3000".
The episode first aired on December 31, 1999. This could be a note on the upcoming millennium and new century.
SB-129 was this episode's production code, and the code was kept.
In SpongeBob SquarePants: SuperSponge, Chapter 3 takes place in the prehistoric Bikini Bottom. SpongeBob also uses a similar time machine to get there.
When Squidward goes into the can opener room, he looks like a spring. When he enters the time machine, he returns to normal.
It is revealed in this episode that the Krusty Krab is closed on Sundays.
In real life Squidward would have suffered from hypothermia from being in the freezer for too long.
Even though SpongeBob states that the Krusty Krab is closed the doors are unlocked.