| “ | Plankton: one percent evil, ninety-nine percent hot gas. | „ |
| ~ Karen's scan of Plankton. |
Karen Plankton is the secondary antagonist of the SpongeBob SquarePants franchise as well as its supporting anti-heroine.
She is a waterproof computer who lives at the Chum Bucket. She's also the wife of Plankton. Throughout the series, Karen and Plankton are constantly scheming to steal the Krabby Patty formula from the latter's business rival/arch-nemesis, Mr. Krabs. Karen is typically the brains of the operation, coming up with complex plans to run Krabs out of business. However, Plankton has a tendency to take all of the credit for her ideas.
Karen and Plankton first appeared in the Season 1 episode "Plankton!". In the third season premiere "The Algae's Always Greener", it was revealed that Karen is Plankton's wife. Since then, many episodes focusing on the Planktons have involved their marriage.
She is voiced by Jill Talley. In the Broadway musical adaptation, she was portrayed by Stephanie Hsu.
Background[]
As indicated by her baby form in "Goo Goo Gas", and it finally expanded in Plankton: The Movie. Karen was Plankton's first invention. She was an A.I. made of a simple blue calculator. Back then, he created her as a best friend and eventual wife because he was lonely in his youth and had no friends. True to this, Plankton programmed the calculator to have her own emotions, and she named herself Karen.
From there on, Plankton further upgraded Karen, leading to her finally attained her recognizable immobile and mobile forms. Karen's iteration in Kamp Koral series also received similar treatment albeit mostly seen in her earlier version of latter form; a blue calculator-like device with buttons, a roll of white paper on top of it, and a roller-skate shoe.
While being Plankton's creation, it's worth to mention about the existence of two A.I.s that served as her parents; her mother a software program named EMILP who appeared in "Single Cell Anniversary", and her father the old-fashioned desktop computer named Fredrick whom so far featured in an issue of Nickelodeon Magazine.
Karen and Plankton's relationship was positive for several years, with the two starting to date while she worked as a security system for the Dump as shown in the Season 5 premiere, "Friend or Foe". In the same episode, she witnessed the fallout between Plankton and Mr. Krabs. She even recorded the whole thing, so that she could provide more accurate account.
When he and Karen got married, Plankton had a head full of hair and a bushy mustache. A photograph of them at their wedding can be seen in "Komputer Overload", while their proposal was shown in Plankton: The Movie.
Karen serves as the main antagonist of Plankton: The Movie, in which Plankton's selfish behavior and lack of empathy causes Karen to snap and and remove her empathy chip before upgrading into a high-powered supervillain. Karen goes to take over the world herself without Plankton, and she turns Bikini Bottom into her own personal battle station. Plankton teams up with SpongeBob and the Gal Pals to stop Karen and win back her love. The two make up and Plankton goes with Karen's plan instead of stopping her, but he forgot that he assigned SpongeBob and Patrick to get rid of the battle station's power supply, causing it to collapse.
Description[]
Karen doesn't have a heart, as stated in a conversation between her and SpongeBob in "Friend Or Foe." However, this doesn't prevent Karen from expressing emotions or feeling true love for Plankton. She does not often show it, but Karen cares for Plankton more than anything else; almost everything she does revolves around helping him in some way to do. According to Plankton, Karen likes to take long walks on the beach, and talk about their dreams of conquering all of Bikini Bottom.
Personality[]
Karen normally acts like a nice and loving person when she and Plankton are in a good mood, but she is also evil enough to be a villain (possibly more so than Plankton). In The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, it is shown that Plankton has a filing cabinet of evil plans that Karen reminds him about. Since she writes the majority of his plans, it can be assumed that she wrote these as well. They are in a descending order from harmless to sinister, the worst being "Plan Z" — the only scheme to result in Plankton successfully stealing the formula and using it to his advantage. This plan involves enslaving everyone in Bikini Bottom, forcing a frozen Mr. Krabs to watch the town descend into evil and be killed by King Neptune, and sending a hitman to murder SpongeBob and Patrick. Karen uses her mind-control abilities to enslave the citizens and is one of the only townspeople not to be a slave. This shows that she is just as cruel and sinister as her husband, if not more.
Her darkest side is also shown in Plankton's Good Eye where she encourages Plankton to be evil and hates his good side. Other instances of her dark side include using her lasers on Plankton in multiple episodes and assisting him in his plots in nearly every story focusing on them.
Plankton: The Movie revealed that Karen's personality was shaped by four brain chips:
- The smart chip: A round, blue circular chip that keeps Karen informed.
- The evil chip: A red hexagon chip serves as the source of her capacity to do evil.
- The snarky chip: A triangular, yellow chip which provided her sassy side.
- The empathy chip: A red heart-shaped chip which allowed her to understand Plankton's pain.
Removing or damaging any of such brain chips will negatively affect her behavior. However, the fact that Karen herself is aware of consequences of doing so and can still be reasoned with despite already removed her empathy chip showed that she had since fully developed her personality and sentience some time prior to the events of the film.
Appearance[]
Over the years, Plankton made significant upgrades on Karen's physical form where it started as a simple blue calculator. Her later forms, which had a screen, allowed her to better express her emotions and informing others through neon green facial features (ex. simple wavy lines) as well as various pictures and characters on it. The same screen could also functioned as both television and security camera.
By the present day, she possessed two main forms:
Wall Computer Form[]
This form is a Mark III Surplus W.I.F.E.omatic 1000 (Wired Intergrated Female Electroencephalograph-omatic 1000) model; a large, dark blue monitor with a black screen. On the left of the screen was a silver keyboard with an oval-shaped green button on the top and nine pink keys on the bottom. Three silver tubes could be seen on the right side. A silver control panel connected to the bottom of her screen, usually had a red lever, a circular analog clock, a green keypad, and several multicolored buttons on it.
Mobile Form[]
For her mobile form, it was a Mark II Surplus U.N.I.V.A.C. (Universal N.I. Variable Automatic Computer) mode. The light blue head was a desktop computer complete with a screen, a silver stand as torso which occasionally had a pair of robotic arms installed on them, and a silver base with wheels to move about. The base through out Season 4 to 9 had two red keys, though they had since replaced with aqua-colored ones from Season 9's second half and onward.
The mobile form of Karen's Kamp Koral incarnation mostly resembled her original calculator form albeit with a roll of white paper above her head and affixed with a stand connected to a pink roller skate shoe with blue wheels.
Miscellaneous[]
Karen also had copies of her A.I. installed into Plankton's vehicles such as his Robot Krabs and his two submarines (Chum Bucket fist and mechanical clam digger).
Villainous Acts[]
- "F.U.N.": She tells Plankton how to get the formula by using SpongeBob's trust against him. She also convinces him to get back on track after he starts caring about Spongebob for real.
- "Plankton's Army": She helps give Plankton the idea to recruit his family members to take down Mr. Krabs.
- "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie": In one of her most evil roles, she writes and gives Plankton his most diabolical plan yet: Plan Z, which involves enslaving everyone in Bikini Bottom and sending a hitman to kill SpongeBob and Patrick. She also is the one who mind controlled the citzens.
- "Enemy In-Law": She zaps Plankton with a laser after his affair with Krabs' mother.
- "Friend of Foe": She helps Plankton to try to get the formula by pickpocketing it from Krabs' pocket when Krabs and SpongeBob were distracted.
- "Krabs à La Mode": She encourages Plankton to steal the formula by using Krusty Krab's frozen state as an advantage because simply freezing the restaurant is not enough to run it out of business.
- "Plankton's Regular": She paid a random fish named Nat to eat Plankton's chum to keep Plankton from being sad, in spite of the risk on Nat's digestive system.
- "Single Cell Anniversary": Stealing the Krabby Patty formula as the gift for Plankton in their wedding anniversary. Unfortunately, her undoing in this illegal act was demanding Plankton to give her her own gift, where upon gained what she wanted, Karen was crying so much that she causes her system to overload.
- "Chum Caverns": Upon discovery of underground cave below Chum Bucket, Karen suggested to used the place's scenery to run the Krusty Krab out of business.
- "Plankton's Good Eye": She encourages Plankton to steal the formula and aiding him to have a new secondary eye to increase his perception by using SpongeBob's tears. However, Karen's scheme in this backfires as the mutation for creating the second eye resulting unwanted side effect where SpongeBob's persona from that eye began to take over Plankton's mind so she encourages him to despise his good side to restore order on his mind.
- "Walking the Plankton": Upon discovering that Plankton was too absorbed in his obsession in stealing Krabby Patty due to Krabs intentionally sell patties on the cruise ship that they coincidentally went on board in their honeymoon, Karen was upset so much that she cleaves the ship in two with laser, revealing her surprising capacity to suffer Breakdown Villainous Breakdown in process.
- "Plankton's Good Eye": She reveals that she loves Plankton's evilness and doesn't want him to become a good guy.
- "It's a SpongeBob Christmas!": Karen analyzes SpongeBob and finds out that he is immune to jerktonium, leading Plankton to create a wind-up robot sponge to ruin SpongeBob's chances of getting presents from Santa.
- "Evil Spatula": She unknowingly tries to make faux Krabby Patties out of the recipe SpongeBob gives his talking spatula, which ends up being a trick from Mr. Krabs.
- "The Legend of Boo-Kini Bottom": She hosts the Chum Bucket's "Horrors of the Krusty Krab" show, which spreads lies about the business practices at the Krusty Krab.
Trivia[]
- Karen was named after Karen Hillenburg (née Umland), the wife of the series' late creator, Stephen Hillenburg.
- In the fairytale-themed episodes, "Patnocchio" and "The Big Bad Bubble Bass", Karen plays the role of the Computer Fairy, and she narrates the stories.
- In the episode, "Plankton!", Karen is attached to Plankton's analyzer machine. When Plankton is thrown into the analyzer, Karen states that he is 1% evil and 99% hot gas.
- From Season 10 onward, Karen always appears in her mobile form, rather than on the large computer screen in the Chum Bucket laboratory.
- As of Season 12, her mobile form is almost always equipped with arms.
- Karen's voice actress, Jill Talley, is also known for voicing Rita Loud in another Nickelodeon TV show, The Loud House. In the same show, Talley briefly voiced Sam Sharp in the Season 2 episode, "L is for Love".
- Karen, Plankton, and the Flying Dutchman are the only TV show characters who were the main antagonists of the SpongeBob SquarePants film series. The former two are also the only villains who retain their voice actors in the film series. As a bonus, Karen is the only female TV show character who was the main antagonist of a SpongeBob SquarePants film.
Gallery[]
Images[]
Videos[]
External Links[]
- Karen Plankton at the Heroes Wiki
- Karen Plankton at the Villains Wiki
- Karen Plankton at the Nickelodeon Wiki
- Karen Plankton at the Encyclopedia SpongeBobia Wiki
- Karen Plankton on Wikipedia
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