SpongeBob's Wallet

About

Spongebob's Wallet, (not be to confused with Patrick Star's Wallet) is a series of images of "SpongeBob SquarePants holding a wallet in his hands. While initially gaining minor spread in the early 2010s being used as a variant of the Futurama meme Shut Up And Take My Money!, it was later combined with another SpongeBob image to mock people's unwillingness to spend money on certain items or situations.

Origin

The image of SpongeBob holding his wallet comes from the season one episode "Neptune's Spatula," which first aired on April 1st, 2000.^[1] In the episode, Spongebob goes to the fry cook museum and pulls out a golden spatula from ancient grease. King Neptune arrives, as whoever can pull the spatula from the grease is worthy of becoming his royal fry cook. King Neptune, however, upon seeing SpongeBob, doesn't like him, so he tries to create a reason Spongebob cannot be worthy in spite of freeing the spatula. However, Spongebob meets all of the King's made-up criteria. He is told by King Neptune that "the royal fry cook's wallet must contain-" before stopping mid-sentence after Spongebob pulls out his wallet.

Spread

The image of Spongebob holding his wallet initially drew attention in the early 2010s, with people using it as an alternative version of the Futurama Shut Up And Take My Money! The two have also been directly combined, as well as being a source of other variations.

Left: Kyubey from Puella Magi Madoka Magica | Right: Pinkie Pie from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

Comic

At some point, and image replacing SpongeBob's face with an uncanny human face was created. The oldest known copy of this image is used in a 2012 YouTube video remix titled 'Everything wen Spengbab.wmv.'^[2]

In the late 2010's, the image was combined with an image of Spongebob from the episode 'I ♥ Dancing' which first aired on July 19th, 2009.^[3]

This image was the same used in the Spongebob meme Who Put You On The Planet? In the wallet parodies, the format is similar to Drakeposting, in which the sneering SpongeBob is shown as the negative reaction and wallet SpongeBob is the positive reaction. These were particularly popular on /r/bikinibottomtwitter. For example, on August 30th, 2019, Redditor dank_toenail^[4] posted an example that 24,000 points (shown below, left). User prudent_rodent^[5] posted an example on December 6th that gained over 190 points (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References