In the beginning of the episode, SpongeBob and Patrick are in Jellyfish Fields blowing bubbles. Patrick tries to take pictures of the bubbles, but they keep popping immediately before the picture is taken. SpongeBob sings a song. SpongeBob sings about how he wants to blow a bubble that would last all day. SpongeBob blows a bubble so big that it engulfs them both and carries them into a nearby cave. The bubble suddenly pops as it makes an impact with an ancient piece of gold.
Eager to discover what exactly it is, they decide to take it to the Bikini Bottom Museum, where they run into Squidward, who is painting pictures that relate to Atlantis. At first, Squidward thinks that SpongeBob and Patrick were planning to steal the first half of the amulet, which is housed in the museum, but upon attempting to return it to its spot, he realizes that what Patrick and SpongeBob had was, in fact, the missing half. At this point, Mr. Krabs (who secretly, but unofficially, takes admission as a museum employee to make more money) and Sandy (who is touring the museum while looking for an exhibit for land stuff) join them.
The pieces of gold are then reunited, which summons a luxurious bus (or 'van' as Squidward calls it) piloted by a robot and it's fueled by "song." During the song to fuel the bus, it is revealed that Plankton, who was sneaking into the museum for a heist for an exhibit perfect for destroying the Krusty Krab but was distracted, overhearing the five's conversation about Atlantis, has stowed away in a compartment at the front of the bus, and plans to control the lost weapons of Atlantis and use them to steal the formula, much to the surprise of the viewers.
Once they arrive there, (accidentally crash-landing in a topiary garden) they meet the king of Atlantis, Lord Royal Highness, LRH for short, who shows them the riches, knowledge, and art of Atlantis. Meanwhile, Plankton escapes from the compartment and sneaks into the vault storing the weapons. After looking around at the weapons, he chooses to commandeer a tank (seemingly at random) to start his diabolical scheme.
Meanwhile, Mr. Krabs enjoys the money vault, Sandy enjoys the science lab, and Squidward enjoys the hall of art (the rooms each had been planning to see). In the money vault, money, gold, and prized objects are found and mostly stashed in Mr. Krabs' pants pockets. In the science lab, Sandy enjoys the devices, a biomass-converting device that turns any household object into ice cream (a bug the Atlanteans have not worked out), a germ-fighting, interactive, micro video game, and makes an automatic feeding device. In addition, in the Hall of Arts, Squidward journeys through paintings, is modeled by painters, and even makes his own painting, claiming to have learned more about art in his short time in Atlantis than he did in four years of college.
However, everything goes wrong when SpongeBob and Patrick are left alone with the world's oldest living bubble. The flash from Patrick's camera when he takes a picture of themselves with the bubble causes it to burst, they are terrified, and the pair goes to dinner and insist on leaving. When Patrick reveals their mistake, LRH first doesn't believe it, and considers it dark humor. SpongeBob confirms it isn't a joke, to which LRH tells them that the bubble they popped was a prop for tourists like them, but when he shows them the real bubble, Patrick takes a picture of it like an idiot, once again, with flash, and it also pops. LRH gets furious, drops the glass container, which shatters, and summons the Atlantean Royal Guards to seize the gang, Sandy uses Patrick like a boomerang, SpongeBob as a shield, Mr. Krabs as a claw, and Squidward as a shotgun, they escape almost to which Plankton appears with a giant tank.
Plankton lets out a huge speech about his victory with the collecting of the Atlantean arsenal, then he fires the tank at SpongeBob, the gang, and the Atlantean Royal Guards, but is foiled when it is revealed that the weapon he had chosen only shoots strawberry ice cream. He jumps out of the tank and in frustration, yelling "OVERSIZED ICE CREAM MAKER!" he kicks it, injuring himself. However, LRH seems delighted, saying, "This talking speck will make a fantastic replacement for our recently deflated national treasure!"
He grabs Plankton and puts him in a jar like the one for his bubble. Tourists start taking photos to which Plankton yells "HEY! Can't you read?! No flash photography!" They refuse.
Finally, LRH loads SpongeBob and his friends back onto the bus and removes the amulet, giving it to one of his soldiers to dispose of to ensure no more "visitors like these." SpongeBob is the only one eager to return to Bikini Bottom and sings. His friends (including Squidward, Mr. Krabs, Sandy, and even Patrick) get sad throughout the song. Squidward, Sandy, Mr. Krabs, and Patrick start crying near the end of the song, but SpongeBob ignores the sadness and sings all along.
Patchy the Pirate's plot (reruns after the original airing)
Patchy is driving a wheelless, boat-like car on the US 101 in Encino, California but is stuck in a rush hour traffic jam. Patchy is very upset by this and states how it's a real bringdown. He then realizes music could probably calm him down from the stressful traffic, as his Hi-Fi radio still works. He puts his rare "Frampton Comes Alive!" 8-track tape in the player, but the tape pops out and is destroyed. He yells angrily about missing the new SpongeBob cartoon if he doesn't get home in time. Then, Potty calls Patchy on his cell phone to warn him about the new SpongeBob cartoon, which is about to start, and asks where he is. Patchy asks Potty to record the cartoon for him, but Potty cannot because Potty threw out the old Betamax machine, infuriating Patchy. He asks Potty if Potty even knows if the cartoon is important to him. As Potty talks to Patchy, a motorist behind him honks his horn repeatedly. Patchy yells at the motorist for honking at him because he is trying to talk to Potty. The motorist looks at Patchy in shock. Patchy then apologizes to Potty, who hangs up on him. Patchy yells out loud, "Curse this traffic!" Finally, the traffic in front of Patchy moves, so he pulls up his anchor, puts it in his boat car, and drives off. He arrives in a desert-like area, thinking he is home. However, he soon realizes that Encino has somehow disappeared and screams, cries, and suffers. He then introduces the episode by telling the audience that Encino being a lost city reminds him of a story about another lost city, Atlantis.
After Plankton finds an arsenal of weapons, the scene cuts back to Patchy who states that even though Encino is still lost, he at least fixed his 8-track player. Seconds later, it breaks and catches fire. Patchy states, "Well, enjoy the rest of the show."
Patchy has now questionably landed in a desert and is struggling with an empty water canteen. Patchy claims he will die of starvation and thirst and that vultures will pick his bones. Potty drops in out of nowhere, and he tries to eat Potty, who flies away in fear. Patchy realizes what is happening, and says "Uh oh, here come the hallucinations." SpongeBob's laughter can be heard as his pineapple house fades in with a man with SpongeBob's voice and dressed in a tall SpongeBob outfit. He tells Patchy that everything will be alright when he returns to Encino. He states that Encino is gone, to which "SpongeBob" disagrees, if Patchy believes, leading into Patchy believing he is back in Encino. He hugs a blue sign reading "WELCOME TO ENCINO!" he starts to happily cry knowing the "SpongeBob" was right. During a happy, fast-paced musical montage, Patchy runs around, jumps, walks with an umbrella, throws away a crumpled-up piece of paper, has a picnic by himself, throws a beach ball, gets a watermelon pelted at him hard, raises a Jolly Roger flag, and drives an old man reading a magazine, a mother, and her baby crazy by playing a guitar. Patchy eats a strawberry ice cream cone which falls onto the grass. He starts to have goosebumps, to which Potty wakes him up after Patchy mistakenly thinks Encino is back, which was all just a hallucination, as mentioned. Patchy begins to eat a sandwich, which Potty brings to him, but he finds mayonnaise on it, which he doesn't like. He tries to feed it to a vulture and explains to it how much he despises mayo in hot weather.
At the end of the SpongeBob sequence, we come back to Patchy who returns to the original middle of nowhere location he was originally in, which may have implied he was hallucinating the dehydrated desert situation. He asks the kids if the story they watched was good. Patchy then steps on something, and it is revealed he found Encino, but shrunk to a very small size. Then, three aliens appear and apologize to Patchy by explaining that their son, Norblock Five, was playing with a "Shrinkatron" again. Patchy begs to the aliens that he wants his Encino back in full size and keeps saying, "There's no place like home." Sympathetic over Patchy's loss, Norblock Five's mother gets the Shrinkatron given from her son, and she presses a big red button control, making a tornado disaster to fix it up. The scene then cuts to Patchy in his real home, sitting in a chair. Patchy is glad to be back home with everything back to its original size, watching the new SpongeBob cartoon he thought he was going to miss. He states that it looks like everything is back to the right size and asks if Potty agrees. Seconds later, a giant Potty's foot crashes through Patchy's house and crushes him, implying Norblock Five had possibly once again used his Shrinkatron to make Potty huge. Patchy, crushed by the foot, reminds the audience to come back real soon for more new segments featuring him as well as more new SpongeBob episodes. He then attempts to get Potty off of him while SpongeBob laughs in the background, but the episode finishes there.
Production
Development
The special entered production in May 2006, and was delivered to Nickelodeon roughly a year later, allowing time for the network's marketers to promote it.[1]
The Washington Post's television critic Tom Shales lambasted it in a November 12, 2007 review. In the review, titled, "Squeezing the Life out of SpongeBob," Shales wrote, "the funniest thing about the film is its title" and "a typical episode has about as many laughs as this inflated version does." Shales criticized the amount of musical numbers in Atlantis SquarePantis, calling them "numbing." He concluded the review with the statement that the episode was "flat" and "unimpressive."[2]
In her review for About.com, Nancy Basile's review was mixed and gave it a score of 2.5 out of 5. She wrote "Kids will enjoy this, but adults, who love the crazy antics, tongue-in-cheek humor and naïve blunderings of early SpongeBob will be disappointed."[3]
Jerry Vonkramer of ToonZone gave the episode a score of 7/10 and wrote "Atlantis SquarePants is not a masterpiece, but neither does it deserve the awful reputation it seems to have."[4]
"Atlantis SquarePantis" recorded 8.76 million viewers, beating every 8 p.m. show on broadcast television that night except Dancing with the Stars.
Casey Alexander has stated on Twitter this was his least favorite episode that he worked on.[5]
Casey Alexander stated the reason why LRH never sang in the episode is because David Bowie was cast too late in the process and no songs were written for that character.[8]
During the time this episode was released, Nick had a contest where the grand prize winners could win a trip to the luxurious resort, Atlantis.
Another contest was about a Nick.com user making a bubble. It had a chance for it to be shown throughout the day (starting before the SpongeBob Z-A Countdown marathon on the rerun of an episode from The Fairly OddParents, throughout the entire marathon, and the split screen credits of the original airing).
The users with the usernames: baybegirls, james, and tiny, had their bubbles shown.
On the SpongeBob Z-A Countdown marathon, Patchy was seen at Atlantis in Paradise Island, Bahamas.
Without the Patchy plot, theme song and end credits, this episode is only 32 minutes long. The SpongeBob plot without the songs is only about 23 minutes.
In the original airing, only the SpongeBob plot was aired. Reruns show the Patchy plot, alongside it.[9][10]
The premiere of the special drew 8.757 million viewers, the highest audience in the history of the show as well as the highest timeshifted audience in the history of the show with a Live+7 total of 9.222 million viewers.
It is also the fifth most viewed premiere on Nickelodeon.[11]
This episode was aired again with the Patchy segments on November 23, 2007[12][13] which received a total of 4.277 million viewers.[14]
Patchy mentions he is stuck in traffic on U.S. 101. U.S. 101 passes through Encino and is one of the many major commuter route for drivers going to or from Los Angeles.
The first scene during the Patchy segment was a shot taken at the 405 Freeway in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California.
Some old technology that Patchy used are Betamax, 8-track cassette tapes, and phones that drop calls.
Prime Video also accidentally used the X-Rays and the thumbnail from "Banned in Bikini Bottom"/"Stanley S. SquarePants," which also lists the credits music throughout about half of the episode.
In addition, at the end of the episode, stock stills of a sunset background (in turn, it's actually a textless version of the episode's title card), the title credits, and the credits are all seen, as well as an English dubbed version of the international version of the theme song without any text whatsoever. This was possibly left in due to an editing mistake. This mistake occurs on Amazon Prime.[15]
This episode on Amazon Prime is misspelled as "Atlantis SquarePants for the digital release.
When Plankton sings Eeny-Meeny-Miny-Moe during his song, he ends up picking the warplane, but hops into the tank instead.
In Taiwan it is advertised as "SpongeBob's Tressure Hunt."
During Squidward's song, SpongeGar, Patar, and Squog all make cameo appearances in a cave.
The storyboard shows Patrick eating the Oldest Living Bubble, but it was changed by taking a picture of it and it pops.
This episode marks the second time Sandy is referred to by her real name, "Sandra." The first was in "Patrick SmartPants."
Sandy creating an invention that allows her to eat underwater without removing her air helmet references how she tries to eat a Deluxe Krabby Patty in "Pressure."
Every character was used as a weapon during battle by Sandy. SpongeBob (shield), Patrick (shuriken), Squidward (gun), and Mr. Krabs (chainsaw).
The fact that the Atlanteans are aliens is a reference to "Sandy's Rocket," where SpongeBob mentions that Atlantis was built by aliens.
Take up one episode production number rather than two.
This is the second season 5 episode where a main character is shown driving a tank. The first is "The Krusty Plate" with SpongeBob driving a tank.
In SpongeBob's Game Frenzy, there is a minigame where Squidward Tentacles is trying to complete the Medallion. To win this game, you slide the Medallion's stars to their proper place. If you win, the gang admires the Medallion. A failure (which is non-canon) shows a scene where Squidward disintegrates.
Behind the scenes footage of this episode shows that the design of Atlantis was originally going to be an Ancient Greece-like place, but the design was changed into a more futuristic looking place.
This is the second time the famous painting American Gothic is referenced in an episode. The first is "Artist Unknown," however, it only makes a very minor cameo in that episode.
In reality, taking a picture of bubbles does not make them pop.
Despite this episode being a musical and David Bowie being a singer, The Lord Royal Highness doesn't have a musical number.
One of the paintings in the Bikini Bottom Museum in the background is "The Scream," but instead of a man, it is a fish.
Squidward's quote of "In Atlantis, the streets are paved with gold" is a reference to the old idea that America's streets are paved with gold, which was used to encourage immigrants to start new lives there. Mr. Krabs calling Squidward a liar references an Italian immigrant saying that the streets in America are not actually paved with gold.
Lord Royal Highness and the other Atlantean citizens greatly resemble the Blue Meanies from The Beatles' 1968 animated musical movie Yellow Submarine.
Additionally, Lord Royal Highness's initials, "L.R.H." are commonly used to refer to L. Ron Hubbard, a science fiction writer and the founder of Scientology.
Just like Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, whenever a character spots an area of Atlantis that has things that they love, they go to the area and start playing in it. Also, during that time, the character sings a song about it, just like the Oompa-Loompas do in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Each time the character goes there and does all those things, and their song is over, the other characters move on, leaving one character behind each time, while the group grows smaller and smaller until there's only one character left. This is another parody of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. However, unlike in Willy Wonka, the group members stay behind willingly in this episode.
The way Sandy warps into the video game is similar to the way some of the characters in the Mega Man franchise of video games enter or exit levels.
When Squidward says "The magical path to Atlantis is a van?" Patrick's arm is through SpongeBob's body.
In some shots of Patchy in the traffic jam, the traffic in the background is mirrored. The traffic is frozen in one shot of Patchy talking to Potty on the phone.
When SpongeBob realizes he trapped himself and Patrick in the bubble, he drops his wand. Then it goes missing.
At the Bikini Bottom Museum, there are multiple clones of some of the paintings.
When Mr. Krabs is trying to put gas in the bus, there is no exhaust pipe, and they are told the bus uses singing as their fuel. However, Plankton is later seen climbing out of the exhaust pipe.
When Sandy says "How's it work?," the square around the acorn on her suit is white instead of yellow.
When SpongeBob is in the game in the science room and the camera goes to where Sandy, Patrick, and Squidward, the yellow suction cup hat that was above SpongeBob's seat is missing. The hat is still missing during the scene where Patrick and Squidward get teleported to the game.
When everyone is at the window after Squidward says, "Look it's Atlantis," SpongeBob's left leg is missing, Mr. Krabs' legs are missing, and he is unusually tall. Also, in the shot after the window appears, Sandy is next to Mr. Krabs and behind Patrick and SpongeBob is in front of both Mr. Krabs and Squidward. In the shot before, Sandy was behind Mr. Krabs, and SpongeBob was next to/in front of Mr. Krabs.
During the October 13, 2012 airing of this episode, there was a slight skip of the Lord Royal Highness's sentence during the ice cream scene where he said this:
Original line: "Actually, it can only turn things into ice cream."
Skip line: "Actually, it can only turn cream." Evidence of this audio glitch: [1]
At the end of the episode, stock stills of a sunset background, the title credits, and the credits are all seen, as well as an English dubbed version of the international version of the theme song without any text whatsoever. This was possibly left in due to an editing mistake.
When Plankton finally picks his weapon, it's red but when he stops everyone in their tracks, it's green.
Additionally, when Plankton sings Eeny-Meeny-Miny-Moe during his song, he ends up picking the warplane, but hops into the tank instead.
When Patrick is biting his hands, pieces of nails are seen flying off, despite him not being shown having nails in this specific episode.
When SpongeBob and Patrick are licking spoonfuls of ice cream toward the end of the episode, the ice cream appears and reappears on the spoon.
In the closing credits, "Atlantis SquarePantis" is spelled as "Atlantis SquarePants."
In the closing credits to this episode, David Steinberg, who played the live-action SpongeBob hallucination, is uncredited.[16]
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