"The Secret Box" is a SpongeBob SquarePants episode from season 2. In this episode, SpongeBob wants to see what is inside Patrick's secret box.
Characters[]
- SpongeBob SquarePants
- Patrick Star
- Squidward Tentacles (mentioned)
- Squidward Tentacles' house (as a character)
- Gary the Snail
- Clam Burglar (mentioned)
Synopsis[]
SpongeBob runs towards Patrick's house, ready to go jellyfishing. Patrick says he will go with him, but must put away his "secret box" first. SpongeBob tries to peek inside, but Patrick refuses to let him see. SpongeBob entices Patrick by sharing his own secrets, but this only convinces Patrick to keep his box more closely guarded. SpongeBob tries to distract him with many of his own secret possessions, but Patrick only pays attention to his own box.
"If you ever come near my secret box again, we won't be friends anymore!"
As Patrick explains the lengths he must go to keep his box safe, he fails to notice SpongeBob sneaking off with it, giddily preparing to look. Patrick stops him just in time and struggles with SpongeBob over the box. The sight of SpongeBob's arms popping off while still desperately clinging to the box disgusts Patrick, making him question the validity of their membership in the Best Friends Forever Club. He threatens to end their friendship if SpongeBob continues trying to look at his secret. SpongeBob begs Patrick for his forgiveness and promises to respect Patrick's right to secrecy, and they remain friends.
That night, SpongeBob cannot sleep, still thinking about Patrick's box and its contents. He convinces himself that sneaking into Patrick's house while he is asleep would prevent Patrick from getting upset and he will be able to look at the secret without feeling guilty. Despite Gary's admonitions, SpongeBob puts his plan into action, pulling on a silk stocking for a mask and slipping under Patrick's rock.
Inside, the box lays in full view on Patrick's nightstand. Trying to tiptoe across a floor covered in potato chips, SpongeBob fears waking Patrick with every step. Finally making it to the bedside, SpongeBob reaches for the box but Patrick sleepily grabs hold of it. SpongeBob, conveniently cube-shaped, gently slips himself in place of the box just as Patrick attempts to take something from it, yanking SpongeBob's tongue in the process. Patrick then places SpongeBob next to him on the bed, allowing SpongeBob to get back onto the floor. As he prepares to leave, SpongeBob trips on his shoelace and begins crashing and bouncing around the rock in a cacophony of noise, culminating in slamming against the wall and breaking a framed photo of him and Patrick in half. Despite all of this, Patrick remains fast asleep.
The friendship ring.
SpongeBob quietly remarks how heavy a sleeper Patrick is, which causes Patrick to finally wake up and catch the masked SpongeBob with the box. Thinking him to be the "Clam Burglar," Patrick prepares to assault him with a pillow until SpongeBob confirms his identity with his Best Friends Forever ring. In shock and distraught, Patrick declares their friendship to be over. Immediately afterwards, Patrick changes his mind and finally allows SpongeBob look inside the box.
SpongeBob eagerly opens the box, only to find a piece of string. Thanking Patrick for letting him look, SpongeBob heads home, laughing at how he should not have been surprised. Alone once more, Patrick ponders alone the true secret nature of the box: when the string is pulled, a secret compartment opens and reveals an embarrassing picture of SpongeBob at a Christmas party, which Patrick laughs at, joking a Merry Christmas to SpongeBob.
Production[]
This episode was in production in 2000 and early 2001.
Art[]
Storyboard[]
Music[]
| ( ‣ ) Production music |
| ( • ) Original music |
| ( ◦ ) SpongeBob music |
‣ Grass Skirts Blowing (Hilo March) - Jan Rap, The Hawaiian Serenaders [Title card]
‣ Film Fanfare (A) - Dick Stephen Walter [Patrick appears.]
• Idea Sting - Nicolas Carr ["Secret box?"]
• Closing Theme 2 - Steve Belfer ["Hands off, Peeping Bob."]
‣ On the Beach - Kapono Beamer [SpongeBob telling Patrick all his secrets]
• Vibe & Harp Hits - Nicolas Carr [Spilled milk]
• Spongemonger - Sage Guyton, Jeremy Wakefield [SpongeBob's "secret stuff"]
• Gator - Steve Belfer [Patrick looking inside his secret box.]
• Tymp Roll - Nicolas Carr [Timpani roll]
‣ Dramatic Climax - Mike Sunderland ["Nobody must know the mystery of the box!"]
‣ Like Strange - Kenny Graham ["Not even... Squidward's house!"]
• Steel Licks 22 - Jeremy Wakefield [Shot of the Best Friends Forever ring]
‣ South Pacific Island II - Victor Cavini ["I feel so filthy."]
‣ Ulkereien - Gerhard Trede ["After all, this is a pretty great secret."]
‣ House Of Horror [#10.1] - W. Merrick Farran [SpongeBob worried about what is in the box]
• Thats It ! - Nicolas Carr ["That's it!"]
‣ Tomfoolery - David Snell ["How do you look into a secret box?"]
‣ Kommissar X - Gerhard Trede [SpongeBob sneaks into Patrick's house at night.]
‣ Footsteps of Horror - W. Merrick Farran [Patrick sleeping/Wall starts to crack/Nail falls off/SpongeBob makes a loud noise upon touching the floor/SpongeBob steps on a potato chip/SpongeBob steps making loud noises again/Patrick falls back to sleep/SpongeBob trips on a shoestring/Box lands on SpongeBob.]
‣ Danger Zone - Mike Sunderland [Patrick wakes up.]
‣ English Country Garden - Curtis Schwartz ["It's the Best Friends Forever, Best Friends Forever ring!"]
‣ Paradise Isle - Jan Rap ["How could you do this?!"]
‣ Revelation - Dick Stephen Walter [SpongeBob looks inside the box.]
• Steel Licks 46 - Jeremy Wakefield [Secret string]
‣ Like Strange - Kenny Graham [Patrick laughing]
• Jingle Bells (ukulele & steel) - Sage Guyton, Jeremy Wakefield [The ending.]
Release[]
Broadcast[]
- This is the first episode to premiere during the Totally Twisted Telly event, alongside its sister episode "Band Geeks."
Distribution[]
- This episode is available on the Halloween, Complete 2nd Season, First 100 Episodes, The Ultimate SpongeBob Box Set, The SpongeBob SquarePants Collection, SpongeBob ScaryPants Collection, The SpongeBob SquarePants 8 Season DVD Collection, Nautical Nonsense and Sponge Buddies (Danish and Norwegian only), The Houses of the Band, Band Geeks, The Complete Second Season, SpongeBob on DVD, Holidays with SpongeBob 3-DVD Gift Set, Laugh Pack, Best of SpongeBob, Nickelodeon Collection, Simply Patrick, Waves of Adventure, From the Beginning, Part 1, SpongeBob SquarePants Vol. 3, The Best 300 Episodes Ever, The First & Second Seasons, The Best 200 Episodes Ever, and SpongeBob and Friends: Patrick SquarePants DVDs and on VideoNow.
Reception[]
- This episode and "Band Geeks" won a Golden Reel award in 2001 for Best Sound Editing in Television - Animation.[4]
- Victoria Justice rated this episode as her favorite SpongeBob SquarePants episode in The Ultimate SpongeBob SpongeBash marathon's Celebrity Favorites.
- "The Secret Box" was ranked #68 during the SpongeBob's Top 100 event in the UK and Ireland from June 4-8, 2012.
Trivia[]
General[]
- This episode is referenced in the song "Under My Rock" from The Best Day Ever album and on The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie soundtrack.
- According to an interview with Stephen Hillenburg found here, the idea for this episode came from this quote:
"The idea came to Drymon because he, too, had a secret box as a child." "He started telling us about it. We wanted to make fun of him and use it."
- This is the first episode for several things:
- The first episode to use a photo for the title card rather than a drawing or pattern.
- The first episode where Gary speaks. In "Sleepy Time," he only spoke in a dream.
- The first instance of Squidward's house moving on its own.
- The first episode to play "Steel Licks 46."
- The first of four episodes to have just Tom Kenny and Bill Fagerbakke as the voice actors. The other three are "Rise and Shine," "The Donut of Shame," and "Don't Wake Patrick."
- In most episodes, Patrick, being a starfish, sticks to the bottom of his rock (which is also considered the ceiling of his house) while sleeping. However, in this episode, he has a bed.
- In the console version of the Lights, Camera, Pants! video game, there is an art gallery with a painting based on this episode.
- A few parts of this episode have become popular internet memes.
- SpongeBob's "secret channel" (replacing the SMPTE color bars in the episode with other content)
- Patrick saying, "The inner machinations of my mind are an enigma," followed by imagining a live action carton of milk spilling.
- Squidward's house trying to peek into the box.
- This episode reveals that SpongeBob and Patrick have been friends since they were babies.
- This is however contradicted in The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run since they both meet as older children in Kamp Koral.
- SpongeBob's "secrets" are as follows:
- He loves his job at the Krusty Krab.
- He sleeps with his shoes on.
- He likes jelly on both sides of his toast.
- He has an overdue library book.
- He thinks jellyfishing and bubble-blowing are the sea bee's knees (the dialogue was not said in full due to being interrupted by the transition).
- He has a slight overbite.
- He has never been late to work. (However, he is shown late for work in some episodes, most notably in the episode "New Digs," and an episode before, from season 1, "Hooky.")
- He had said "fancy" in conversation before.
- He likes to dance to loading zone announcements.
- He still does not have his driver's license.
- He is a little bit on the short side.
- He was wearing three pairs of underwear at the moment.
- In the 2005 movie War of the Worlds, Rachel, Tom Cruise's daughter, is shown watching this episode on TV. However, the audio and video are out of sync.
- This is the third episode where SpongeBob is revealed to have shoes with shoelaces. The first was "Rock Bottom" and the second was "Your Shoe's Untied."
- When the picture of SpongeBob and Patrick falls and splits in half, it symbolizes the consequences of stealing the secret box following the moment Patrick wakes up, and the iminent end to the duo's friendship.
- When Patrick mistakes SpongeBob for the secret box in his sleep, he pulls on SpongeBob's tongue like he would do with the string inside.
- Whenever Patrick opens his secret box, he does not pull the string to open the secret compartment; instead he just looks in the box and laughs.
- He might have done this deliberately to divert SpongeBob, and the audience, away from learning the real secret.
- During the November 6, 2009 airing, this episode was paired with "SpongeBob Meets the Strangler."[5]
Cultural references[]
- Patrick says, "Hands off, peeping Bob!" which is a reference to the phrase "peeping Tom."
- Patrick mistakes SpongeBob for the Clam-burglar, a parody of the McDonald's character Hamburglar.
- Spongebob speculating that Patrick is a maniac who keeps his victim's heads in the box is a reference to the character John Doe in the film Se7en.
Errors[]
Listed "2000" in the end credits.
Squidward's house is missing.
- This episode along with its sister episode are incorrectly listed with a 2000 copyright date in the end credits.
- This mistake may be attributed to the fact that this episode was mostly in production in 2000, but wasn't actually finished until the early part of 2001.
- This also happens in the next episode "Graveyard Shift"/"Krusty Love."
- When SpongeBob sneaks over to Patrick's house, Squidward's house is missing.
- The potato chips on the floor, including the one that SpongeBob steps on, are present in one scene, but in subsequent scenes, they are missing.
- When Patrick says, "And to think we joined the 'Best Friends Forever' club?!" his lips are off-sync.
- After SpongeBob's arms come off, Patrick grabs what appears to be SpongeBob's right arm to point to him with. But when he is pointing at SpongeBob with the arm, it becomes the left arm.
SpongeBob with double the amount of freckles on his cheek instead of the usual three.
- Before Patrick mentions Squidward's house, SpongeBob has double the freckles on his cheek than he normally does.
- When SpongeBob gathers the "secret" stuff, he goes towards Patrick's house, not his own.
- When the screen "rumbles" after SpongeBob acquires the box, there is a light blue border, as the effect was shot in 60Hz rather than 24/29.97Hz, which clearly arose during post-production, since most of the episode's original audience viewed on CRT TVs that are common at that time, in which most of it was hidden through overscan. A similar incident would occur in the sister episode, "Band Geeks."
- When Patrick ends his friendship with SpongeBob, he has no eyebrows.
Two errors in the opening credits: the "K" in Carson Kugler's surname is lowercase and Erik Wiese's surname is misspelled as "Weise."
- In the opening credits, Carson Kugler's surname is miscapitalized as "kugler."
- Erik Wiese's surname is also misspelled as "Weise."
- Both typos can also be found in the opening credits of "Procrastination" and "Welcome to the Chum Bucket."
Video[]
Patrick “big brain” Star 🤓🧠 - SpongeBob -Shorts
Names in other languages[]
| Language | Name | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| French | La boîte aux secrets | The Box of Secrets |
| German | Die Geheimschachtel | The Secret Box |
| Italian | La scatola segreta | The Secret Box |
| Russian | Коробка с секретом Korobka s sekretom |
The Box with the Secret |
| Spanish | La caja secreta | The Secret Box |
References[]
Notes[]
- ^ Mistakenly listed with a 2000 copyright year in the end credits.