List of time cards
Time cards are used throughout SpongeBob SquarePants to represent how much time has passed within an episode, performed by the French Narrator. They are identified as time cards by Patrick in "Wet Painters" when he tells SpongeBob to hurry up since he is all out of time cards, breaking the fourth wall. So far, the record for the most time cards in an episode is five, in "Rock-a-Bye Bivalve."
The first time card ever used was "3 Days Later..." in "I Was a Teenage Gary," although the French Narrator did not read it. He would later read the next card, "2000 Years Later" seen in the very next episode, "SB-129" and so on. The "Twenty Years Earlier" time card in "License to Milkshake" is not read either.
List
SpongeBob SquarePants
Kamp Koral: SpongeBob's Under Years
The Patrick Star Show
Picture | Text | Episode | Season |
File:Bummer Jobs 112.png | "Bummer Jobs" | 1 (The Patrick Star Show) | |
File:Squidina's Little Helper 049.png | "Squidina's Little Helper" | 1 (The Patrick Star Show) | |
File:Squidina's Little Helper 057.png | "Squidina's Little Helper" | 1 (The Patrick Star Show) | |
File:Squidina's Little Helper 074.png | "Squidina's Little Helper" | 1 (The Patrick Star Show) | |
File:Just in Time for Christmas 154.png | "Just in Time for Christmas" | 1 (The Patrick Star Show) | |
File:X Marks the Pot 196.png | "X Marks the Pot" | 1 (The Patrick Star Show) | |
File:Host-a-Palooza 037.png | "Host-a-Palooza" | 1 (The Patrick Star Show) | |
File:Host-a-Palooza 191.png | "Host-a-Palooza" | 1 (The Patrick Star Show) | |
File:The Drooling Fool 183.png | "The Drooling Fool" | 1 (The Patrick Star Show) | |
File:The Patterfly Effect 136.png | "The Patterfly Effect" | 1 (The Patrick Star Show) | |
File:Home ECCH! 092.png | "Home ECCH!" | 1 (The Patrick Star Show) | |
File:Stuntin' 145.png | "Stuntin'" | 1 (The Patrick Star Show) | |
File:Super Stars 172.png | "Super Stars" | 2 (The Patrick Star Show) | |
File:10 & 1 Toilets 055.png | "10 & 1 Toilets" | 2 (The Patrick Star Show) | |
File:The Commode Episode 067.png | "The Commode Episode" | 2 (The Patrick Star Show) | |
File:Tying the Klop-Knot 083.png | "Tying the Klop-Knot" | 2 (The Patrick Star Show) | |
File:Cleanin' House 032.png | "Cleanin' House" | 2 (The Patrick Star Show) | |
File:The Fun Bucket 030.png | "The Fun Bucket" | 3 (The Patrick Star Show) | |
File:Who's The Dummy Now 119.png | "Who's the Dummy Now?" | 3 (The Patrick Star Show) | |
File:Who's The Dummy Now 194.png | "Who's the Dummy Now?" | 3 (The Patrick Star Show) | |
File:Patrick Show Land 179.png | "Patrick Show Land" | 3 (The Patrick Star Show) | |
File:A Patty in Time 035.png | "A Patty in Time" | 3 (The Patrick Star Show) | |
File:Patty Poo 150.png | "Patty Poo" | 3 (The Patrick Star Show) | |
File:Patty Poo 190.png | "Patty Poo" | 3 (The Patrick Star Show) | |
File:Patrickle Jokes "15 Minutes Ago..." Time Card.png | "Patrickle Jokes" | 3 (The Patrick Star Show) | |
File:Something Stupid This Way Comes "The Next Morning..." Time Card.png | "Something Stupid This Way Comes" | 3 (The Patrick Star Show) | |
File:The Show Must Go Yawn 043.png | "The Show Must Go Yawn" | 4 (The Patrick Star Show) | |
File:5 Hours Later....png | "The Dated Game" | 4 (The Patrick Star Show) |
Miscellaneous
This list is incomplete, but you can help Encyclopedia SpongeBobia by expanding it.
Trivia
- "Rock-a-Bye Bivalve" is the episode with the most time cards, having five. In fact, it has more time cards than the entirety of season 1.
- A time card reading "The Next Day..." mistakenly appears during the closing credits on disc 4 of The Complete Ninth Season.
- The most common time card is "Two hours later," which has a total of nine appearances in the show, appearing in "Wet Painters," "The Great Snail Race," "Squidtastic Voyage," "Sun Bleached" (shown twice), "Chum Bucket Supreme," "Gary in Love," "Buried in Time" (shown with the number instead of the word), and "Don't Look Now."
- If not counting a specific time to be said later, then "Later" is one of the two most common time cards, which also has nine appearances in the show.
- The "70 Years Later" time card is spoken by Stephen Hughes instead of the French Narrator.
- This does not count the other "Later" time cards such as:
- "Later, in the void..."
- "Later That Night," etc.
- The time card "So much later that the old narrator got tired of waiting and they had to hire a new one" is the longest of all of the time cards in the series, with 19 words and 69 letters.
- The time card "The Next Day" in "Born Again Krabs" is the only time card so far to feature characters. It has SpongeBob, Patrick, Mr. Krabs, and Squidward in the corners.
- If counting not only characters that are in the time card itself, then "Mimic Madness" is the second time where a time card features a character.
- The "One Eternity Later" time card displays the longest passage of time in the series: an eternity.
- The "Three Hours Later" time card in "Wet Painters" is the first one in the series to be held by a character, being Patrick. It would be followed by "One Little Boost to the Surface Later" in "SpongeBob's Big Birthday Blowout," which was held by the French Narrator.
- The time cards "Just Then..." and "...By Sheer Coincidence..." in "Yeti Krabs" is by so far the only instance in which more than one time card was represented in one phrase.
- The "Uhhh..." time card is the shortest time card with 4 letters, "Later..." being the second with 5 letters.
- The "The Next Morning..." time card in "Sanctuary!" is the same pattern as SpongeBob's pineapple, with a magenta aura.
- The "Two Hours Later" time card from "Don't Look Now" is the last time card to not use an ellipsis at the end. All time cards starting with the "Just Then..." and "...By Sheer Coincidence..." time cards from "Yeti Krabs" have an ellipsis at the end. This would be the case until the "Five Billion Years Later" time card in "The Goofy Newbie."
- The "70 Years Later" (Patrick the Snowman), "Meanwhile" (The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie), "2 Days Later" (Sandy's Vacation in Ruins), "A Little Later..." (Bike Safety Tips), and "Meanwhile..." (The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run) time cards are (currently) the only time cards without a season.
- The very first time card from "I Was a Teenage Gary" (3 Days Later...) and the time card, "Twenty Years Earlier..." from "License to Milkshake" are the only time cards not read.
- The "Brief Construction Montage" time card in "A Friendly Game" is read differently than what it reads in the two instances in the episode it is used.
- In the first use of the card, the French Narrator reads, "What follows is a brief construction montage." In the second, he reads, "We hope you enjoyed this brief construction montage."
- The episodes "Sun Bleached," "A Friendly Game," and "Snooze You Lose" are currently the only episodes to display the exact same time card more than once.
- "Abandon Twits" is the only time a time card from a previous episode has been reused, being reused from "You're Going to Pay... Phone."
- In some dubs, the time card "3 Days Later..." time card from "I Was a Teenage Gary" is read out.
- Season 1 is the season with the least time cards, having two.
- Season 13 is the season with the most time cards, having 33.
- The "80,000 Impressions Later..." time card in "Mimic Madness" has SpongeBob reading this, imitating the French Narrator, who says, "Would you please stop imitating me? It is starting to get very annoying."
- The "The Next Evening..." time card in "Larry's Gym" is read as "The Very Next Evening..."
- The "Later" time card in "SpongeHenge," although by coincidence, is reminiscent of Toonami's sign off bumper, which also reads, "Later." However, the bumper is not read out loud.
- The "One Weiner Later..." title card is misspelled, and should read, "One Wiener Later..." However, "weiner" is sometimes considered an alternate spelling.
- The time cards "One Hour Later..." from "Mermaid Pants," "6 Months Later..." from "Dirty Bubble Returns," "Many Buckets Later..." from "The Dirty Bubble Bass," and "One Minute and Seven Seconds Earlier!" from "Delivery of Doom" are read by the Realistic Fish Head rather than the French Narrator.
- The "70 Years Later" time card from "Patrick the Snowman" is the only time card to be narrated by Nigel Thornberry from The Wild Thornberrys.
- The time cards in the SpongeBob style have been very popular internet memes among YouTubers. They were even parodied in the Disney Channel shows Milo Murphy's Law season 1 episode "Fungus Among Us" which the episode title shares the same title to a season 5 episode as their time card also had a voice similar to the French Narrator and the Amphibia season 2 episode "The First Temple." In the Teen Titans Go! episode "DC," the way Cyborg says "A half hour later..." is reminiscent of the French Narrator narrating the time cards.
- In "The Goofy Newbie," the "A few minutes later" and "One hour later" time cards" are read by a training announcer while "Five billion years later" time card is read by a robotic voice.
- The "Several Hard-Hitting Hours Later..." time card from "Smartificial Intelligence" is animated.
- The “Many Miles Later” time card from “A Fish Called Sandy” fades in to the background.
- The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water is the only movie so far not to have a time card. However, it did have a scrapped one reading "242 Explosions Later..."
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A SpongeBob-style time card in the Amphibia season 2 episode "The First Temple."
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A SpongeBob-style time card in the Milo Murphy's Law season 1 episode "Fungus Among Us."
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The way Cyborg says "A half hour later..." in the Teen Titans Go! episode "DC" is reminiscent of the French Narrator narrating the time cards.
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Marvin Flute imitates the French narrator by saying, "Ten Minutes Later" in the Grimsburg season 2 episode "Granddaddy Issues".
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A SpongeBob-style time card in The Wonderfully Weird World of Gumball episode "The Entrance."
Time card design trivia
- The pattern of the time card, "Epilogue" from "No Hat for Pat" would be reused for the ninth-season episode, "Mall Girl Pearl," except the title card was pink with magenta instead of green.
- The "Meanwhile" time card in "Ugh" is actually written on a prehistoric wall, with drawings of two jellyfish and prehistoric hand prints.
- The "75 Years Later" time card in "The Great Patty Caper" has the same background as the title card for the first-season episode, "Pizza Delivery."
- The background of the "One Extremely Annoying Shift Later..." time card in "Enchanted Tiki Dreams" would be reused for the title card for the ninth-season episode, "The Executive Treatment."
- The "One Long Angry Line Later..." time card in "Hello Bikini Bottom!" has the same background as the title card for the sixth-season episode, "House Fancy." It is also the last time card to be standard definition.
- The time card, "Twelve Seconds Later" in "My Pretty Seahorse" has an edited version of the first-season episode, "Help Wanted" title card.
- Likewise, the "Three Days Later" time card has the same background as the title card in "Squidville."
- The "Several Song Filled Hours Later..." time card in "Toy Store of Doom" uses the same background as the title card of "Squid Wood," and "Patrick's Staycation, afterwards."
- The "2000 Years Later" time card from "SB-129" uses a recolored version of the background from the title card of "Pickles."
- The "A Few Inches Later" time card in "Shanghaied" would be later reused in the background and font for the title card of "Patrick SmartPants."
- The "Twenty Minutes Later" time card from "SpongeBob Meets the Strangler" uses the same title card background from "Graveyard Shift."
- The "Three Weeks Later" time card from "Can You Spare a Dime?" uses the same title card background for "Jellyfish Hunter."
- The "Day Three" time card in "Band Geeks" uses the same background and font color from the title card of "I Was a Teenage Gary," which is the episode with the very first time card.
- The "One Eternity Later" time card from "Squid on Strike" has the same background as the title card of "The Paper."
- The "Many Months Later" time card from "Can You Spare a Dime?" uses a recolored version of the title card background from "Walking Small."
- The "Two Days Later" time card from the short "Sandy's Vacation in Ruins" has exactly the same title card background as "No Hat for Pat."
- The time card "The Following Thursday..." in "Porous Pockets" has the same background from the title cards of "Naughty Nautical Neighbors" and "Summer Job."
- The "Meanwhile..." time card from "Drive Thru" uses a recolored version of the "Hall Monitor" title card background.
- The "Several Bad Puns Later" time card from "Pranks a Lot" uses a recolored version of the "Opposite Day" title card background.
- The background of the "4-6 Weeks Later" time card from "Hocus Pocus" would be reused for the title card of "Pat No Pay."
- The "346 Minutes Later" time card in "BlackJack" is the same background for the title card of "Mrs. Puff, You're Fired" except its saturation is a little bit pale and has vignette on it.
- The "5 Billion Years Later" time card from "The Goofy Newbie" uses same the font color as "SB-129"s title card except slightly recolored.
- The "The Next Day..." time card from "Appointment TV" uses the same background as the "The Following Day..." time card from "Krusty Dogs," except it's higher in contrast and slightly more hue.
- The "One Hour Later" time cards from "Wet Painters" and "Patrick's Staycation" are exactly the same, except the latter's is slightly zoomed in and recolored.
- The "One Hour Later" time card from "Pat the Dog" is also the same, but in widescreen.
- "Mall Girl Pearl" and "Mermaid Pants" however, used the same fontwork, except that both are arranged differently and have full stops at the end.
- The "6 Months Later" time cards from "Ghost Host" and "Dirty Bubble Returns" are exactly the same, except the latter's is zoomed out slightly and recolored.
- The "7:59 A.M." time card from "Nautical Novice" and The "One Shift Later... time card " from "Restraining SpongeBob" are uses the same title card background from "Wormy" but without bubbles.