| “ | Everybody's a critic. | „ |
| ~ Squidward's catchphrase. |
| “ | Oh, why must every 11 minutes of my life be filled with misery?! WHY!? | „ |
| ~ Squidward in Club SpongeBob, also his most famous quote. |
| “ | Morons. | „ |
| ~ Squidward when considering the citizens of Bikini Bottom idiots. |
Squidward J. Quincy Tentacles is the tritagonist of the animated series SpongeBob SquarePants. He is the next-door neighbor of SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Star, as well as the rude, disloyal, and lazy cashier of the Krusty Krab restaurant. He is the most unpopular guy in the Bikini Bottom when considered everyone as idiots.
Despite this, he is also quite sympathetic, as his life is little more than a dismal failure, and he is constantly pushed to the brink of insanity by his mischievous neighbors. SpongeBob and Patrick consider Squidward to be their best friend, this feeling is reciprocated as shown in The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run. He only sometimes mistreats the two due to them being annoying and constantly disturb him.
Squidward is passionate about reading, art, and music, and is especially fond of playing the clarinet, though no one considers his music or artwork to be noteworthy. His arch-rival is a wealthy octopus named Squilliam Fancyson.
He is voiced by Rodger Bumpass who also voiced Professor Membrane, Major Nixel, and Dr. Light in Teen Titans. In the Japanese dub, he is voiced by the late Rokuro Naya, currently Yoji Ueda.
Personality[]
Squidward is best described as ill-tempered, pretentious, and cynical who strongly despises his neighbors for their constant boisterous, noisy behavior. However, the pair are unaware of Squidward's antipathy towards them and see him as a friend. Squidward works as a cashier at the Krusty Krab restaurant, a job that he is apathetic towards.
Squidward also has a passion and interest in reading, arts, and music, and is very fond of playing the clarinet, though no one considers him to be very good at it, the same for his artwork due to his bad taste. This, however, not always the case as on some occasions, his artistic talents somewhat more improved than it used to be.
The post-movie seasons (Season 4 and so on which set between events from both the first 3 seasons and The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie) revealed that his misery, and inability to see the positive side of his neighbor's antics has developed a darker side of his personality where he sometimes became the wrathful, indifferent, and sadistic. The revelation of these negative traits was previously foreshadowed by him nearly killed SpongeBob with his brutal booby trap joke in the retaliation of the latter's annoying but harmless jokes in Fools in April episode.
Not only that, in various cases of his antagonistic acts that he performed, he sometimes has done so in a more malicious manner where he unknowingly became slave-driver for SpongeBob as seen in Can You Spare A Dime?, and Squidward, the Unfriendly Ghost, fooling anyone to gain an advantage for improving his life despite the small percentage of success, or the worst, illegal acts include verbal and physical abuse that threatened him to send to jail. The worst instances of his antagonism are when expresses his lack of remorse and genuine malice was when reading SpongeBob's diary aloud, disagree with his friends' idea to brought SpongeBob back home after remorseful with their abuse on him in retaliate of misfortunes that he unintentionally caused, and lend his lawnmower to both SpongeBob and Patrick hoping that they harmed themselves by accident wherein these case, he potentially crosses MEH. These negative traits were reasons why some Bikini Bottomites antagonize him out of sheer hatred.
However, Squidward is not a heartless character as he had a softer side which hidden under his sadistic, wrathful, and narcissistic personality. To some degree, he friends with SpongeBob and Patrick but incapable to see the positive side of their childish antics, reason why he tends to loathe them more than truly love them. He also has a romantic relationship with his girlfriend Squilvia (a relationship that only explored in an episode where she featured at). Squidward has shown leniency to SpongeBob more than one time. The proof that he cares about SpongeBob was when he rescued him from an incoming truck and stood up to an angry obsessed fish for hurting SpongeBob's feelings and slammed a pizza in his face in "Pizza Delivery". In "Born Again Krabs", he berated Krabs for sold the sponge's soul for the Flying Dutchman. As he did, he expresses genuine disgust on Krabs' ungrateful action that made the crab regretful over his actions. Squidward actually does like SpongeBob, something that he apparently is simply unwillingly to admit most of the time: in the episode "Graveyard Shift", when he thinks he is about to get killed by the "Hash-slinging Slasher", Squidward admits to SpongeBob that, despite what he has said in the past, he "actually sort of likes [him]" (SpongeBob confesses in response that he uses Squidward's clarinet to unclog his toilet). In Sponge On The Run, Squidward stood up for SpongeBob to Poseidon, saying that despite thinking SpongeBob is annoying, he is still his friend who does not deserve to die.
The reason why he mostly grumpy at times can be traced back when he had a garden as seen in episode Truth or Square. At that time, Squidward appeared to have a happier personality, until a pineapple fell from a sailor's boat to the ocean and crushed his garden, destroying it. Not long afterwards, SpongeBob showed up and decided to modify the pineapple into a house that we know today as Squidward mourned over the loss of his garden. His garden's destruction depressed Squidward so much that he becomes bitter and presumably never told his new neighbor about what has happened in the first place.
Villainous Acts[]
Season 1[]
- In "Squidward, the Unfriendly Ghost", When SpongeBob and Patrick believe they have killed Squidward and that he is now a ghost, he takes advantage of this by making them his slaves. Eventually, SpongeBob and Patrick, after reading a magazine about the Flying Dutchman's death, get the idea that Squidward is being mean and angry because he was never put to rest. SpongeBob and Patrick attempt to bury Squidward, which ultimately brings him to confess that he is actually alive. However, SpongeBob and Patrick still think that Squidward is a ghost in denial and send him to the "great beyond" by trapping him in a bubble, which floats up into the sky where the pelicans are.
- In "Employee of the Month", Squidward and SpongeBob viciously compete with each other for the employee of the month award, both of them trapping each other in hopes of getting to work first.
- In "I Was a Teenage Gary", SpongeBob leaves Squidward in charge of watching his house and Gary, Squidward neglects Gary instead sunbathing in the front of his house, this lead to Gary becoming horribly sick and have to be injected with snail plasma. It accidentally hits SpongeBob who later transforms into a snail which terrorizes Squidward. Squidward gets the snail plasma injected into him turning him into a snail, Patrick later throws a boot at Squidward because he wouldn't stop meowing.
- In "Fools in April", Squidward gets annoyed with SpongeBob pulling playful and harmless pranks on people at the Krusty Krab, and pulls a very cruel and harmful prank on SpongeBob in retaliation. Squidward then laughs at him when he comes out of the trash, which makes SpongeBob run out of the restaurant sobbing hysterically, and the Bikini Bottomites turn on him. Squidward tries to apologize, but he is physically unable to apologize until the very end of the episode, where SpongeBob has the last laugh, all of his friends were standing behind him in his house and witnessed Squidward's apology. As a result, Squidward suffers a mental breakdown and runs off back to his house laughing maniacally after shouting that he had just fooled them as well.
Season 2[]
- In "Grandma's Kisses", Squidward and the customers at the Krusty Krab ruthlessly tease SpongeBob for having a kiss on his forehead given by his grandma. At the end of the episode, it is shown that they have been spying on SpongeBob with his grandma through her house's window.
- In "Pressure", Squidward mocked Sandy for not being a fish, and when she took off her helmet and started drowning, Squidward laughed at her and didn't care that she was dying.
- In "Christmas Who?", Squidward doesn't believe in Santa first to begin with. That's not the worst part, when SpongeBob becomes heartbroken that didn't show up, Squidward wakes and comes out, at last, laughing at SpongeBob's humiliation, and even takes a photo to commemorate the occasion. SpongeBob sadly admits that Squidward was right about Christmas being a stupid holiday due to this, but he hands Squidward a present so he would not feel left out when Santa arrives before trudging away in tears.
- In "Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy IV", He, along with all of Bikini Bottom, mutilated SpongeBob's insides and even tore off some organs just because the former accidentally shrunk them, and even attempted to saw off one.
Season 3[]
- In "Can You Spare a Dime?", Squidward accepts SpongeBob's offer to live in his house until he finds a new job. However, he takes advantage of SpongeBob's hospitality by lying in bed all day and essentially making SpongeBob his domestic slave, staying so long that the French Narrator quits and not even attempting to find a job. This eventually proves too much for SpongeBob who for one of the few times in the series becomes angry with Squidward, who soon begins aggressively giving Squidward obvious hints to get a job, which Squidward either doesn't notice or chooses to ignore. Eventually, SpongeBob confronts Mr. Krabs in an attempt to force him to give Squidward his job back, and in the process accidentally reveals that Mr. Krab's first "dime" (a stone-age wheel) was in his pants the whole time, and that Squidward did not steal it.
Season 4[]
- In "The Lost Mattress", While retrieving the mattress, Squidward nearly threatened to murder SpongeBob, and then he used him and Patrick as "worm bait." However, Squidward becomes the worm's prey.
- In "Funny Pants", SpongeBob's laughing annoyed him, so he told SpongeBob that he had a "laugh box" that would burn up if he laughed within 24 hours and could never laugh again. SpongeBob eventually thinks he lost his laugh and goes into "spiraling depression." which proves to be too much for Squidward to handle. He eventually faces karma when he himself breaks his own laugh box, prompting SpongeBob to give him a piece of his to Squidward, causing the latter to laugh exactly like him.
- In "Krusty Towers", He made several ridiculous requests with the purpose of driving Mr. Krabs crazy (though Krabs did have this coming).
Season 5[]
- In "Good Ol' Whatshisname", Squidward steals What Zit Tooya's wallet, ran a red light in front of a police officer, is arrested, and was sentenced to ten years in prison.
- In "Slimy Dancing", Squidward controls SpongeBob after pulling off his limbs and putting his in their place to enter a dance contest.
Season 6[]
- In "The Splinter", Squidward tells SpongeBob that Mr. Krabs will have to kick him out for getting a splinter at work.
- In "Professor Squidward", Squidward says he is Squilliam and impersonates him, but the principal finds the real Squilliam and then Squidward was arrested and sent to jail.
Season 7[]
- In "I ♥ Dancing", Squidward gets jealous that SpongeBob has an audition in a musical, and "teaches" him how to dance in order to steal the spot for himself, training SpongeBob to the point of exhaustion. While he wins, he is to star in Squilliam's musical, and is forced to train to perform a dance that SpongeBob had performed earlier, with Squilliam clearly planning to run him ragged just as Squidward had done to SpongeBob.
- In "Sponge-Cano!", He scolds everyone in the Krusty Krab and yells at SpongeBob for humming.
- In "That Sinking Feeling", He tried to separate SpongeBob and Patrick by drawing a line, and later, he threatened them that if Squidward's house was not back to normal on the count of three, he will grind them into chum (kill them).
- In "New Fish in Town", He dragged SpongeBob, Patrick, and Howard's homes down a trench.
Season 8[]
- In "Accidents Will Happen", He lies to SpongeBob and Mr. Krabs about his accident which he was actually sleeping on the shelf.
- In "Are You Happy Now?", He destroys all the paper mache copies of SpongeBob in a rage.
Season 9[]
- In "Little Yellow Book", his most infamous role, Squidward reads SpongeBob's work diary in front of the customers, which made SpongeBob sad. He sees that he has been known as a "diary thief," but does not feel be until his house was repossessed. Later, he even reads SpongeBob's personal diary, and doesn't even show regret of his actions even after he begs for SpongeBob to forgive him.
- In The SpongeBob Movie, Sponge Out of Water, Squidward, along with Mr. Krabs and the other Bikini Bottomites, try to kill SpongeBob as a sacrifice for the "sandwich gods", believing that doing so would bring Krabby Patties back to Bikini Bottom, and they only stop after SpongeBob and Mr. Krabs smell Krabby Patties coming from the surface.
- In "Don't Look Now", Taking advantage of SpongeBob and Patrick's cowardice, Squidward pretends to be the Fisherman in order to play a cruel joke on them. As a result, SpongeBob and Patrick misinterpret the Fisherman eating Squidward, they in reality end up injuring Squidward.
- In "Patrick! The Game", Squidward destroys Patrick's board game in a rage, but he gets arrested by the police for his vandalism.
Season 10[]
- In "Mermaid Pants", He and Mr. Krabs played as supervillains to against SpongeBob and Patrick who play Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy.
- In "Unreal Estate", He tricks SpongeBob into fearing that he is allergic to his pineapple house.
- In "SpongeBob's Place", He requests health department to shut down the restaurant.
- In "Sportz?", He has SpongeBob and Patrick play sports as a result in order to get them hurt on purpose, such as having them throw horse shoes at each others faces. Sandy decides to go against Squidward in playing sports where she ends up humiliating him in the process.
Season 11[]
- In "Spin The Bottle", He fights Patrick, and Mr. Krabs for a bottle that contains a genie actually Plankton in disguise and tries to get it to have a successful music career, the previous genie of the bottle puts him, Mr. Krabs, Patrick and Plankton into the bottle leaving the four of them stuck inside it.
Relationships[]
Family[]
- Grandma Tentacles - Grandmother
- Jeff Tentacles - Father
- Mrs. Tentacles - Mother
- Unnamed Cousins
Friends[]
- Spongebob SquarePants - Neighbor and Situational Enemy
- Patrick Star - Neighbor and Situational Enemy
- Mr. Krabs - Boss and Situational Enemy
- Sandy Cheeks
- Pearl Krabs - Adoptive niece
Enemies[]
- Sheldon J. Plankton - Business Rival and Situational Ally
- Squilliam Fancyson - Archenemy and Rival
- Flying Dutchman - Attempted Killer
- Doodlebob
- Dirty Bubble
- Man Ray
Powers and Abilities[]
- Intelligence: Squidward is actually smarter than SpongeBob and even Mr. Krabs in many ways, as he had better IQ and more knowledgeable than the latter like Sandy due to the fact that giant pacific octopuses have 9 brains.
- Boneless: Like SpongeBob, Squidward has been shown to be quite fragile due to his laced bones. Although, he sometimes is shown to have bones depending on the writer of the episodes.
- Durability: Squidward is very durable, as, in one episode, he survived a nuclear explosion.
- Artistic Skills: Squidward proved himself as the artist with promising talent in singing, painting, sculpture, playing his trademark clarinet, etc. Unfortunately, he's not always appreciated on his works due to his somewhat bad taste.
- Magma Manipulation: As Captain Magma, he can control and fires magma blasts from the volcanic cone on his mask. Unfortunately, due to lack of proper mastery over his powers, it resulted in him accidentally toasting SpongeBob (where ironically, he didn't intend to harm him as his intended target was Man-Ray, Dirty Bubble, and evil Barnacle Boy).
- Sonic Wave Emission: As Sour Note, he can fire sonic waves (which often depicted as a blast of bubbles) from his signature clarinet, either in form of sonic waves that paralyze everyone who hears it and in the form of a concussive beam.
Trivia[]
- Squidward Tentacles is similar acts like Helga G. Pataki from Hey Arnold! and Lumiere from Beauty and The Beast which both usually despises Arnold and occasionally gets along with him.
- Steve Carell, Alan Cumming, Bill Hader, Neil Patrick Harris, Benedict Cumberbatch, Adam Driver, and Ed Helms were all considered for the role of Squidward for the live-action film adaption to the series.
- Squidward seems to share similarities with Donald Duck due to their pessimistic and grumpy behavior, as well as their misery and pridefulness. He also shares similarities with Benson Dunwoody, because they are both easily angered and annoyed by their foolish co-workers or employees (Squidward by SpongeBob and Patrick, and Benson by Mordecai and Rigby).
- As noted by fans and suggested by writer/voice actor Doug Lawrence in the DVD commentary for the season one episode "Plankton!", main casts of SpongeBob SquarePants were intended to represent Seven Deadly Sins. In Squidward's case, he represented Wrath due to seemingly in perpetual bad mood, extremely short temper, and only seeing the worst in everyone.
- Squidward seems to have a rivalry with Gary, Spongebob's snail. To a lesser extent, he also archenemies to Samantha "Sam" Star, Patrick's older sister due to nearly killing each other when finally fed up with her behavior which turned out more volatile than Patrick.
- As with the rest of the main casts, Squidward's portrayal in post first movie seasons (Season 4-9a) became increasingly negative as a result of his worst traits exaggerated through the show's Flanderization, with his portrayal in The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water and Little Yellow Book where he was at his worst. Fortunately, this has since revised following the end of Season 9.
- His voice sounds like Bert from the Sesame Street series and Mr. Bean from Mr. Bean: The Animated Series.
External Links[]
- Squidward Tentacles at the SpongeBob SquarePants Wiki
- Squidward Tentacles at the Nickelodeon Wiki
- Squidward Tentacles at the Paramount Wiki
- Squidward Tentacles at the Protagonists Wiki
- Squidward Tentacles at the Heroes Wiki
- Squidward Tentacles at the Base Breaking Character Wiki
- Squidward Tentacles at the Heroic Benchmark Wiki
- Squidward Tentacles at the Shonen Rivals Wiki
- Squidward Tentacles at the Likability Scaling Purgatory Wiki
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