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This Article Contains Spoilers -
WARNING: This article contains major spoilers. If you do not wish to know vital information on plot / character elements in a story, you may not wish to read beyond this warning: We hold no responsibility for any negative effects these facts may have on your enjoyment of said media should you continue. That is all. |
| “ | Where do you think you're going? | „ |
| ~ Plankton to the Burger Beard before being transform into his superhero form. |
| “ | But it's becoming increasingly obvious. I can deny it NO LONGER!!... I am small. | „ |
| ~ Plankton's most famous quote. |
| “ | Ouch! | „ |
| ~ Plankton's famous catchphrase whenever he gets injured. |
Sheldon J. Plankton, better known simply by his last name Plankton, is the main antagonist of Nickelodeon's SpongeBob SquarePants franchise.
He's the former best friend-turned-archenemy of Mr. Krabs and owner of the Chum Bucket restaurant, who always attempts to steal the Krabby Patty's secret formula, but often fails to achieve so. Nevertheless, there are instances of him joining forces with his said archenemy as well as other main casts for greater good as their (often) situational ally, making him an anti-hero of the series at the same time.
He is voiced by Mr. Lawrence, who also voices Larry the Lobster and Fred in the same franchise, Filburt in Rocko's Modern Life, and Edward Platypus in Camp Lazlo.
Description
Appearance
Plankton is a very tiny planktonic copepod and looks like a small pickle. He has short arms and legs, a big yellow eye, and a red pupil with one large eyebrow. He has two long antennae on his head with spikes alongside both. He also has big white straight teeth.
Personality
Plankton is evil, intelligent, charismatic, ironic, and funny. He sometimes has a heroic side, and he shows up it when he teams up with his former enemies and rivals (though he still continues to steal the formula). However, once young he showed to have been a good friend of Mr. Eugene Krabs. How Plankton changed into such a monster he is mainly shown is so far from kind of indefinite.
History
Past
Before the events of the series, Sheldon was born on the same day as Mr. Krabs where the two would later meet each as babies.
During his childhood with him, both Plankton and Mr. Krabs were considered outcasts by the other kids, most notably a school group led by Billy because Mr. Krabs was poor and Plankton was already very intelligent, which earned him the image of a nerd. When they discovered that money could bring them out of their poverty, they decided to make money selling hamburger patties and set up a mini restaurant in the local dump.
At first, their burgers were not successful; the first of their patties were tried by Old Man Jenkins, who was knocked out by the contaminated burger. Plankton started complaining about how Jenkins had been old and not able to handle the patty. Offended by this, Mr. Krabs tried to take the recipe from Plankton to improve upon. Plankton wanted to do this himself and both he and Mr. Krabs argued, but he only ended up with the corner of the recipe, which read: "And a pinch of chum."
Plankton stormed out of the restaurant and went to create his recipe, using only his memory, the corner of the recipe, and science. At school, Plankton tried to sell his chum burgers in a chum bucket and failed, while Mr. Krabs succeeded with his Krabby Patties, which he had created by accident when Plankton had forcefully slammed the door. Ingredients fell in the patty batter, thus creating the patty. Plankton later named his restaurant the Chum Bucket, after the secret ingredient of the original unsuccessful patty recipe. Mr. Krabs named his restaurant the Krusty Krab, after himself.
To this very day, Plankton has been single-mindedly obsessed with obtaining the Krabby Patty formula and running the Krusty Krab out of business. He often goes to incredible and quite ridiculous lengths to do so. In "SpongeBob's Last Stand," for example, he builds a massive highway that goes straight through Jellyfish Fields and over the Krusty Krab, leading right to his restaurant.
SpongeBob SquarePants
In main series proper, Plankton usually attempts to steal Krabby Patties in order to learn its recipe. In his debut episode, Plankton!, he mind-controls SpongeBob to force him to steal one of the Krabby Patties one night after his initial attempts to win SpongeBob's trust failed. Though Plankton ended up failing in such endeavor, the incident made SpongeBob realized how formidable he is. Plankton also works on other attempts to improve his business, though they ended up short-lived.
The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water
Plankton acts as the anti-heroic deuteragonist of The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water. While in the middle of yet another scheme to steal the Krabby Patty secret formula, the formula unexpectedly vanishes after Burger-Beard writes on the magical book he found. After Mr. Krabs and numerous citizens of Bikini Bottom were accusing and berating at Plankton for being the culprit as he would normally lie about it, SpongeBob convincing to them that he's innocent (though he would normally agree with Mr. Krabs) and that he is telling the truth this time rescues him with a giant traveling bubble as they escape the hostile people who suddenly formed a group of apocalyptic sufferers.
As SpongeBob and Plankton watch Bikini Bottom become an apocalyptic wasteland due to the formula being stolen by Burger Beard, SpongeBob tries to get Plankton to become his teammate, which Plankton was reluctant with joining SpongeBob's side pronouncing "teammate" as "tee-am-mate" as he struggles to pronounce the word correctly. SpongeBob tries to get Plankton to understand the meaning of teamwork, which Plankton barely understands. After trying to find the secret formula in SpongeBob's brain that's literally full of kindness and sweetness, Plankton and SpongeBob decide to time travel to get back the secret formula. So, they sneak into the Chum Bucket to rescue Karen who was imprisoned by the savage people and use her as a power source for a time machine made out of parts from an abandoned taco restaurant, then they go to the future where they meet Bubbles who has a job to look after the cosmos.
Then when SpongeBob and Plankton mistakenly made Jupiter and Saturn crash into each other, Bubbles finds out and starts shooting at them because what they've done could make him lose his job. SpongeBob and Plankton escape and try to go to the past where they see Bikini Bottom a few days in the future in a desert like state where a bearded future Patrick told them that everyone given up on finding the Krabby Patty secret formula. Then while they go right to the past day when the secret formula disappeared, Plankton distracts their past selves as SpongeBob takes back the secret formula.
On the way back to the present, Plankton started to get used to teaming up with SpongeBob. However, when they got home and showed the formula to everyone which turned out to be a fake one that Past Plankton was replacing the formula with an "in your face" note for Mr. Krabs. This angers the savage people even more, as Plankton angrily accuses SpongeBob of making that foolish mistake of taking the wrong formula.
An upset SpongeBob argued that they're supposed to be teammates, and that it's selfish to take something like secret formula to yourself. After the town threatened to sacrifice SpongeBob since Sandy believed it could be a gift to the "sandwich gods", SpongeBob then tells everyone that he smelled a familiar scent coming from far away, and when they finally smelled it also, SpongeBob gets Patrick, Squidward, Sandy, and Mr. Krabs right up the where the scent is coming from. Plankton secretly joins in, hiding in SpongeBob's sock.
Bubbles returns and thanks SpongeBob for having him be free from his job and offers SpongeBob and his friends the ability to survive above the surface and launches them up to the beach. As they face Burger-Beard, who's the culprit of stealing the secret formula to open up his new restaurant, he uses the magic book to banish them to Pelican Island to be devoured by the pelicans there. While there, SpongeBob was fortunate enough to find a page from the magic book and uses a pelican feather and Squidward's ink to write them back to fight Burger-Beard as superhero counterparts (SpongeBob as the Invincibubble, Patrick as Mr. Super-Awesomeness, Squidward as Sour-Note, Mr. Krabs as Sir Pinch-a-Lot, and Sandy as the Rodent). Little did they know Plankton sneaks in to write something in as well.
While fighting against Burger-Beard, Plankton, as the giant muscular Plank-Ton, surprisingly comes to rescue SpongeBob and his friends and defeat Burger-Beard, revealing that he also wrote for himself to become a superhero and to rescue SpongeBob from Burger-Beard. Then Plankton knocks Burger-Beard straight to the island above Bikini Bottom. Then as Plankton gets a hold of the secret formula, instead of taking it for himself, he decides to give it back to Mr. Krabs and thanks SpongeBob for teaching him about teamwork, and how selfish it is to keeps things to himself and offers SpongeBob the remaining page to take them back home and set things back to normal.
Then as the Krusty Krab goes back in business with Krabby Patties returning to Bikini Bottom, Plankton then decides to go back to his role as the business rival of the Krusty Krab back to his formula-stealing schemes just to keep things the way they normally were before. As SpongeBob catches him, he uses Gary to scare him away, and then he waves goodbye to him saying, "See you later, 'tee-am-mate'!"
Plankton: The Movie
Plankton is the titular protagonist of Plankton: The Movie.
Heroic Acts
- In The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, he teamed up with SpongeBob to save Bikini Bottom, and rescue Karen from being imprisoned by savage people. He also gave the Krabby Patty formula back to Mr. Krabs after Burger Beard stole it with a magic book, and then he helped defeat Burger Beard. He was also one of the superheroes in the film. This was perhaps his most heroic act.
- In a short called "Can't Swim", Plankton saved Mr. Krabs from drowning.
- In "Plankton's Good Eye", he attempted to save Bubble Bass from a burning building, although Bubble Bass was able to help himself escape. He also returned the Krabby Patty formula to Mr. Krabs like a nice person.
- In "Karen's Virus", he helps SpongeBob save Karen by removing a virus from her and tells SpongeBob that he really needs to save Karen.
- In "Plankton's Pet", when Plankton lost his pet named Spot, he teamed up with SpongeBob to find him and prevent him from being lost again.
- In "Karen 2.0", Plankton saves Karen by replacing her old battery with the one from Karen 2.
- In "The Krusty Bucket", Plankton and Mr. Krabs joined forces to try and stop Plankrab after he merged the Krusty Krab and the Chum Bucket into one restaurant.
- In The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run, he helped Sandy, Squidward and Mr. Krabs rescue SpongeBob, Patrick and Gary the Snail from King Poseidon despite having him kidnapped by Poseidon initially.
Gallery
Images
Trivia
- Plankton found Mr. Krabs' life to be worse than his own when he experienced it in "The Algae's Always Greener" and "Spy Buddies". In "The Algae's Always Greener", he found lots of reasons that make Mr. Krabs' life difficult:
- SpongeBob is always asking him for a Weekly Performance Review on Tuesday and throws a temper tantrum if Plankton refuses. He also keeps yelling "SOILED IT! SOILED IT! SOILED IT!" when he accidentally gave a customer a large soda when the customer wanted a medium soda.
- Squidward, the lazy, grumpy, pessimistic worker at the restaurant, complains to Plankton that he doesn't want to work with SpongeBob. Later, when Plankton put him in charge of fry cooking, a customer got angry because the Krabby Patty that Squidward cooked was very ugly, disgusting-looking, and hideous.
- Pearl, his virtual reality daughter, throws a big temper tantrum because she doesn't get more than $1 advance to her allowance.
- Krabs tries to steal the Krabby Patty formula (which Plankton actually does in the show's reality), and Krabs NEVER gives up like he does. This version of Krabs, while not as smart as Plankton, is even more unhinged in his attempts.
- Early in the series, Plankton is considered a true villain. Later, as Krabs becomes more dramatically greedy (said greed ultimately drove him insane) and Plankton becomes less dramatically evil and less of a genius, the role of the main villain of the series becomes more debatable as lots of people think that Mr. Krabs is evil. Plankton also acknowledges this himself when he begins to question whether he or Krabs is truly evil. On the other hand, once seasons 9-12 started reducing Mr. Krabs' less pleasant traits, Plankton ended up becoming the true villain again. Even then, it depends on who is writing the episode.
- Though speculative, Plankton's post-first movie seasons portrayal could be attributed to newer showrunners involved misunderstanding his character as much as the rest of the main cast. In this case, they erroneously found Plankton a better anti-hero than Mr. Krabs hence the series' flanderization throughout those seasons in which Plankton became increasingly sympathetic just as Krabs became increasingly detestable.
- He and Mr. Krabs were born exactly on the same date.
- He may not have become the main antagonist at first, because Stephen Hillenburg didn't know what to do with him, but Mr. Lawrence liked him and so created many ideas for how to use him.
- Plankton oddly does not attempt to steal a to-go meal from people leaving the Krusty Krab.
- Despite his genius, Plankton doesn't try inventing a device to scan and replicate the taste memory of a person who ate a Krabby Patty.
- Given the main cast of SpongeBob has been compared to the Seven Deadly Sins, Plankton obviously embodies Envy. Ironically Envy is called the "little green monster", which kids unfamiliar with aquatic life would call Plankton. Plankton's jealousy towards Krabs' success drives him to try stealing the Krabby Patty formula.
- In real life, chum is the grounded up body parts of fish, meaning Plankton's food is made from organs and other body parts, and this is why anyone who ever eats chum always gets sick.
- Even if Plankton ended up selling Krabby Patties at the Chum Bucket, he could get sued by Mr. Krabs since Plankton doesn't own the right to sell Krabby Patties. This didn't happen in the first movie since Mr. Krabs was frozen and Plankton was able to forge a lie to make the public think that Mr. Krabs gave him his blessing to sell Krabby Patties at the Chum Bucket before King Neptune froze him.
External Links
- Plankton on the Villains Wiki
- Plankton on the Antagonists Wiki
- Plankton on the Wikipedia
- Plankton on the Encyclopedia SpongeBobia Wiki
- Plankton on the Inconsistently Heinous Wiki
- Plankton on the Heroic Benchmark Wiki
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