Time machine (SB-129)
The time machine is a machine that appears in the episode "SB-129" and the video game SuperSponge.
Description
The time machine initially appears to be a room with a grayish-chrome door on the right side of a Krusty Krab hallway. When entered, though, the room has blue-striped pinkish wallpaper, a lamp light, green ceiling, and interestingly, a lever with the words "Future" and "Past." When the lever is pulled in a direction, it sends the user to the future or past, respectively. When the user travels through time, green flashing lights appear the moment they disappear.
Role in series
"SB-129"
When Squidward asks SpongeTron and his clones for a way to return to his own time period, the robot leads Squidward to the time machine. When he enters, Squidward decides to flick the switch to the past, ending up in a prehistoric era.
Once there, Squidward meets the primitive ancestors of SpongeBob and Patrick, primitive SpongeBob and primitive Patrick respectively. Their meeting is somewhat calm, but when Squidward finally gets his alone time, he desired and starts to play his clarinet, the prehistoric ancestors become territorial. They chase Squidward down to attack him, so Squidward runs back into the time machine. In a frenzy, Squidward pulls on the lever so hard and accidentally breaks it off the switch on the time machine, causing the word FUTURE to change its setting by spinning like a slot machine, then stops on 2 lemons and a bar, leading it to warp from the prehistoric era.
Thanks to Squidward breaking the lever on the future setting, the time machine doesn't go back to the future, instead it malfunctions, and different colors begin flashing within. The time machine ends up in a black and green spiral area with random things like pigs and eyes flying around, then end up in a computer area with different random things flying across the screen like "Asparagus" and "Huh." Then the machine folds itself like paper while flashing in different colors for the second time and finally disappears altogether. This is where the climax occurs.
Squidward finds himself in an empty white void called "Nowhere;" nothing appears to exist there but colored squares that can be lifted when touched. At first, Squidward finally feels that no one can bother him as nobody can be found here, but when he says "alone," speech bubbles containing the word randomly appears. Weird voices then start to echo "alone" in rather disturbing ways. After hearing the voices, Squidward becomes hysterical and searches for a way out of Nowhere. First, he sprints across the screen around four times, but realizes that by doing that, he just ends up back into the same spot as before. He then jumps around crazily, but luckily, he ends up back in the time machine by breaking the floor.
When he enters the time machine, Squidward begins to admit that he misses Bikini Bottom, and even SpongeBob. Upon saying SpongeBob's name, the time machine warps him back to the present time period.
Squidward feels happy to reunite with SpongeBob and Patrick, summarizing his trip to them.
SuperSponge
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- In SuperSponge, SpongeBob uses an identical time machine belonging to Plankton to travel to prehistoric Bikini Bottom.
SpongeBob Adventures: In a Jam!
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Trivia
- When PatTron, Patrick's robotic descendant, teleports inside of the futuristic Krusty Krab, the animation has a similar effect like the time machine when it warps through time.
- It is located on the opposite side of a can opener room, as Squidward stumbles inside the latter in his attempt to find the former.
- This time machine looks similar to the TARDIS from Doctor Who, except that it does not look like a police telephone box and is not sentient.
- This is the first time machine to appear in the series.
- There was a second time machine that is owned by Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy, which appeared in "Back to the Past."
- A third time machine appeared in The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, built by SpongeBob and Plankton using various objects in an abandoned restaurant, using Karen as a power source.
- A fourth time machine appeared in the short "Time Machine."