Film Theory: Was SpongeBob ADOPTED?! (SpongeBob SquarePants)

Are you ready, children? No! I can't hear youuuuuuu~ No!! ..Maybe now? I SAID NO! :| (Several bad puns later) Please? NO! OOOOH-- -Okay then, let's start the episode. *intro music from the movie

theory

chief* Hello internet! Welcome to

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theory

. The show that may not be absorbing or yellow, but is definitely full of holes. Now, as much as I like exposing the dark and sinister side of innocent cartoons, SpongeBob doesn't seem to be hiding that many skeletons in his closet. I mean, SpongeBob is a very hard-working employee, who earns enough to support himself in the career he enjoys.

And unlike all those orphaned Disney characters, he has two loving parents. Wait, those are his parents? Yes, THOSE are his parents... And no, he is not the son of two cookies. Unlike the bright, yellow, rectangular SpongeBob SquarePants, Harold and Margret Squarepants had their appearance designed after real-life sea sponges. Since the show's creator, Stephen Hillenburg, is a marine biologist, it's a cool nod to the real-life science of underwater creatures, BOUUUUUUUT That SpongeBob looks SO different from his parents presents this world with some PROBLEMS. REAL. Specifically, if we can be sure that SpongeBob's parents are actually his parents.

In other words, the question we answer today... Was SpongeBob really

adopted

? Now, I've already called out some of you in the comments section, clicking and saying, "Matpat, of course he can't be

adopted

." In the episode "Truth or Square", we clearly see SpongeBob in Margaret Squarepants' womb eating Krabby Patties, to which I respond, are you listening to yourself?! Oh really! If you watch that episode, it's clear that this flashback scene is something that happens inside SpongeBob's head! The idea that SpongeBob has actual memories going back to before he was born is as ridiculous as the idea that he would be munching on Krabby Patties inside his mother's womb, which is even less ridiculous than the fact that he is inside his mother's womb. his mother. absolutely!

Mainly because sponges don't have a uterus! Sponge larvae grow and develop out of and separate from their mothers after attaching themselves to an underwater surface, such as a rock! So this isn't a flashback at all! This is SpongeBob's imagination hard at work. Cue that SpongeBob...meme...thing... SpongeBob: (elongated) "Imagination!" This is like... what, number 5 and we're still on page 1? HEE HEE! Good thing I loaded these things in advance. Which means the only way to prove SpongeBob's lineage for sure is to look at his family's genetics. Now, it probably goes without saying that sea sponges have no relation to the bright yellow kitchen sponges that form the basis of SpongeBob's design.

Those things are just a bunch of cut and shaped plastic polymers. So in real life there is no way that two sea sponges that look like this would produce something resembling SpongeBob SquarePants. BUT. We can still use the principles of genetics and apply them to the rules established within the Bikini-Bottom-verse, to determine the probability of SpongeBob being adopted. So let's do like Maury Povich and answer the question: "ARE YOU THE FATHER!?" And mother... equal opportunity mother... proving. To get into the basics of sponge reproduction, we must start by asking, "Do sponges even have mothers and fathers?" The answer is yes, more or less...

You see, sponges are like plants, humans and most other animals, they reproduce sexually, but that doesn't mean you're going to be traumatized by the sight of two brown blobs rolling together. . down at the bottom of the sea. Get it? Sea bottom? *awkward laugh* Hello, hello! That's a "very safe for advertisers" joke. The only requirement for sexual reproduction is that offspring be formed by the fusion of two different reproductive cells called gametes. One coming from the female, the egg and another coming from the male, the sperm. In reality, sponges reproduce in the same way that plants do.

Plants will release pollen, the male gametes, into the air in the hopes that they will land on the pistil of the nearby compatible plant and fertilize it. So if you have seasonal allergies, you should know that what makes you sneeze is plant sperm. It's kind of gross when you think about it that way. *delete fake sneezes from clip art* Sea sponges work in a similar way. A sponge releases sperm into the water, which are absorbed by another sponge to fertilize its egg. Except there's a problem. Sponges do not come in male and female varieties. Any sea sponge has the ability to produce both types of gametes.

So while each sponge has 2 parents, a mother sponge and a father sponge, it is absolutely possible for a single sponge to be both the parent of some baby sponges and the mother of other baby sponges. Which means it's going to be an awkward birds-and-bees conversation with our porous friend SpongeBob SquarePants. *In a mother's voice* "Well, SpongeBob, sometimes a sponge mom just wants to be a sponge dad too." But seriously, this "flexible parenting," for lack of a better term, makes SpongeBob's adoption of the mother role in the episode, 'Rock-A-Bye Bivalve' actually make a lot more sense. So yes!

Sponges have a father and a mother. Each of which contributes genetically to their offspring! Therefore, we would expect the offspring's DNA to show the same traits as their parents. Just as humans tend to take after their parents in things like hair color, eye color, and face shape. But then, genetically, is it possible that THESE produced THIS? Well, let's put our 6th grade science skills to the test! Let's see here; The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. Hey, that's the wrong chapter. Mendelian reproduction, peapods Oh yeah, here we go. Our characteristics are determined by genes, DNA sequences that code for specific traits, and each gene comes in variants called alleles.

So, for example, in the Bikini Bottom universe, sponges could be said to have two different alleles for body shape. One allele for "Square Pantsness" and one allele for "Round Pantsness." The same could apply to sponge color: one allele would be for "fluffy navy brown" and another allele would be for "bright yellow." But to explain how two round, brown parents could have a square, yellow child like SpongeBob SquarePants, we have to look at the relative strength of those alleles. Again, think about sixth grade. Certain alleles are dominant and others are recessive. Unfortunately, many of the human examples you were taught in sixth grade, such as whether you are right- or left-handed or whether you can move your tongue or not, have been disproven.

Now they are lies. They are no longer simple dominant-recessive relationships. So that left me with a Pickle Rick over which example I would use to briefly explain this concept, until I stumbled upon... this new research. You know what human trait has been found to be dominant: having six fingers. Heh, yeah, the old guy from Gravity Falls is in the dominant category of dactylosity. That's how many fingers you have. Yes, six fingers are dominant over five, I like it, I quadruple checked it and it apparently exists, so let's map these alleles the old fashioned way, using a Punnett square.

Capital letters for dominant traits and lowercase letters for recessive traits. So, taking the example of fingers, a gene represented by 'FF' would have inherited the dominant allele from both parents and would show six fingers. A gene represented by 'ff' would have inherited the recessive allele from both parents and would only have five fingers. And a gene represented by 'Ff' would have inherited the dominant trait from one parent and the recessive trait from the other parent, who would still express the dominant six-fingered trait, but would have the potential to have children with five fingers. And if you're ignoring all of this and still wondering how all six fingers are dominant and how more humans don't have all those extra digits, well, I'll leave that to you to debate in the comments... or do your own research.

Anyway, enough about big-handed humans. The only way for SpongeBob's round, brown parents to have a square yellow child would be for roundness and brownness to be the dominant traits of sponges in bikini bottoms. That would allow them to carry the recessive alleles for both yellowish and square, but still express something different. So, let's represent quadrature in a Punnett square, where "R" is roundness and "r" is squareness. By doing this, we see that there are actually 4 possibilities here: RR, Rr, rR and rr. RR and Rr/rR would appear as the dominant trait of roundness, meaning that SpongeBob has to be a rr, which is only one of four possibilities, so there's a one in four chance of that happening.

And that's just because it's square! SpongeBob would have to have two recessive alleles to be yellow as well. That's the only way SpongeBob wouldn't be adopted on stage. It's definitely possible, but is this genetic gymnastics really what's going on here? To prove this, we need to see SpongeBob's parents and grandparents. Unfortunately, we only get to look at his father's side, because half of his mother's family, the Bubble Bottoms, have been surprisingly ignored throughout the show's 11 seasons. However, on Harold's side, we see Grandma Squarepants as another round brown sponge, which makes sense, and Grandpa Squarepants as a yellow square.

Recessive recessive, like his grandson. So putting those two through a Punnett square gives you a 50/50 split between the kids. Half will be round and carry a dominant and recessive allele, while the other half will be square and totally recessive. Furthermore, half will be brown again, carrying the dominant-recessive allele and the other 50% will be yellow, totally recessive. And that's exactly what we see in the family tree. SpongeBob's uncles show the exact same mixture, Sherm is a yellow square and Blue is a round brown blob. So, everything seems to be aligned in our genetic analysis. Science proves that SpongeBob is not adopted.

But here's one last problem: the real odds of all of this happening. For parents who express two dominant traits like Harold and Margaret, having a child who expresses two recessive traits like SpongeBob SquarePants, the odds are incredibly low. Actually, it's 1 in 16, which isn't much. Probability would suggest that Harold and Margaret are SpongeBob's parents, while yes it is plausible, it is actually very unlikely to happen. However, when you look at the SpongeBob Universe, there is one last genetic quirk that works in SpongeBob's favor. The color and shape of the sponge seem to be inherited together. When looking at SpongeBob's family tree, a round yellow sponge is never seen in the show.

NEVER. You'll also never see a square brown sponge, dating back to prehistoric times with Primitive Sponge and Spongegar. What that tells me is that the traits are genetically linked, that the genes that dictate these two individual traits are close enough on the chromosome that getting one will more often get the other. Now, there's a whole field of study dedicated to this called "genetic mapping," but the TLDR of all this is that it would make the chances of Harold and Margaret having a child like SpongeBob SquarePants much closer to the 25% that the study revealed. Punnett square. , meaning it's much more likely in the realm of credible possibilities.

SPONGEBOB IS NOT ADOPTED. At the beginning of the episode, I gave series creator Stephen Hillenberg a lot of credit for bringing the marine biologist's expertise to the world of this fun children's show, but maybe I didn't give him enough credit. Because in the end, SpongeBob may not look anything like his parents, but that doesn't change the fact that when you examine the genetics of SpongeBob's family tree, it all holds up. As unlikely as this chain may seem at first glance, basic genetic science says that our friend SpongeBob shares a genetic link with everyone in it, even if his parents look like two cookies.

BUT HEY, THAT'S JUST A THEORY, A MOVIE THEORY. AAAANNNN CUT. I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready to subscribe to

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theorists! Or if you're not ready to subscribe but still want more SpongeBob action in your life, then click the box to the right to watch the video where I calculate the math behind the biggest SpongeBob meme. It's literally the meme that ends the universe. That's not even an exaggeration. Click on it, discover more.