I Never Thought I'd Get This Far

About

I Never Thought I'd Get This Far is a quote said by the SpongeBob SquarePants character Plankton after he threatened Mr. Krabs to give him the Krabby Patty secret formula. The line has been used as a reaction image and is paired with captions describing people who don't know their next move after they achieve something.

Origin

On January 19th, 2004, Season 3, episode 58b of SpongeBob SquarePants, titled "Plankton's Army," released in the US.^[1] In the episode, Plankton threatens Mr. Krabs to give him the Krabby Patty secret formula. Mr. Krabs replies "Or what?", to which Plankton replies "I don't know, I never thought I'd get this far." On April 25th, 2017, YouTube^[2] user Evan posted the earliest known upload of the scene. The video received more than 322,000 views in six years (shown below).

…I don't know. I never thought I'd get this far.

Spread

In the late 2010s, the scene began growing popular as a reaction image, paired with captions describing someone achieving something and not knowing what to do next. For example on January 19th, 2019, Facebook^[3] page "History Memes" uploaded an edit describing a German soldier that received more than 3,200 reactions and 974 shares in four years (shown below, left). On January 14th, 2020, Reddit^[4] user Mr_Arcon uploaded a screenshot of a text message thread with the image to the /r/BikiniBottomTwitter subreddit. The post received more than 1,500 upvotes in three years (shown below, left).

On October 7th, 2020, Reddit^[5] user DeterminedHumanGames uploaded an edit about adding Steve from Minecraft to game Super Smash Brothers Ultimate to /r/SmashBrosUltimate. The post received more than 19,000 upvotes in three years (shown below, left). On November 28th, 2020, Facebook^[6] page "Gameranx" uploaded an image about someone buying the PlayStation 5. The post received more than 10,000 reactions and 2,400 shares in two years (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References