About

Cringing Plankton, also known as [Visible Frustration] Plankton, is a reaction image and video series based on a scene from the 2004 film The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie in which the character Plankton expresses frustration by bending over and revealing bulbous veins.

Origin

On November 19th, 2004, The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie was released in the United States.^[1] In the film, the character Plankton (voiced by Mr. Lawrence) expresses frustration after learning of the opening of a second Krusty Krab restaurant by bending over and writhes in pain.

On February 24th, 2012, Fandango published the clip on their YouTube account. The post received more than 1.1 million views in less than eight years (shown below).

Spread

On December 13th, 2016, YouTuber warnsy posted an ear rape edit of the scene that gained over 150,000 views in less than three years (shown below, left). On June 1st, 2017, YouTuber GuyWithThePie shared a similar variation that was even more distorted. Within three years, it received over 66,000 views (shown below, right).

On September 1st, an anonymous 4chan ^[2] user shared an edited version of a screenshot of Plankton cringing, which had a pink tint on the image (shown below).

On May 10th, 2018, Redditor ^[3] SoonerAjay shared a image edited variation of the screenshot. They captioned the post "When somebody passes you in the fast lane only to slow down." The post received over 960 points (99% upvoted) in a year and a half (shown below, left).

The following year, Redditor^[4] ATurtle96 shared a variation with the addition of the subtitle "[Visible Frustration]." They captioned the image "1st grader: Rain rain go away come again another day." The post received over 72,000 points (96% upvoted) and 245 comments in about two months (shown below, center).

on July 5th, 2019, Redditor^[5] CrPepsi shared a variation of the image in the /r/PewdiePieSubmissions subreddit. They captioned the image, "When your first meme gets to the top of the subreddit but it's gaming week so pewds doesn't review the subreddit." In a little over two months, it received over 16,000 points (97% upvoted) and 85 comments (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References