About

Pagani and Subaru or I Call SpongeBob Pagani refers to a series of memes that refer to the character SpongeBob SquarePants as "Pagani" and Patrick Star as "Subaru." The memes are inspired by the I Call Patrick Subaru meme, which went viral on TikTok in early March 2025. The "Pagani" memes went viral shortly after the Subaru memes began going viral and tend to show the two characters in situations together. The name is likely derived from the Pagani Zonda, an Italian sports car, similar to how "Subaru" can refer to a car. The meme has notably been accused of being forced by some TikTokers.

Origin

On March 5th, 2025, TikToker^[1] @gehegwoj1ga posted a video showing footage from SpongeBob SquarePants of Patrick repeatedly hitting his hand with a hammer, captioned "Pagani just trying to do his j*b and Subaru just be geeking," garnering over 671,000 views in two days. This is the earliest known video to refer to SpongeBob as "Pagani."

Alternatively, the first instance of the meme may have been posted to the subreddit /r/subaru that same day on a now-deleted, unarchived post by Redditor u/moelzekiboi to /r/subaru,^[2] which inspired a thread of comments mimicking the "Subaru" comment thread, but about calling SpongeBob Pagani.

A screenshot of the comments was reposted to /r/spunchbob^[3] that day garnering over 330 upvotes in two days. It is unclear if this post was made before @gehegwoj1ga's post.

Spread

Memes referring to SpongeBob as "Pagani" continued to spread over the following days alongside memes calling Patrick "Subaru" and other SpongeBob characters nicknames based on cars and auto manufacturers.

For example, on March 5th, 2025, TikToker^[4] @ozor_wolowy posted an image of SpongeBob wearing Mr. Krabs' shell, writing, "nah but why pagani wearing mr.toyotas skin," garnering over 500,000 views in two days.

On March 6th, Redditor u/No-Fan4546 made a post to the subreddit /r/Spunchbob^[5] referencing the meme, titled, "Why did Subaru no pagini day," garnering over 450 upvotes in a day.

Various Examples

Related Memes

I Call Patrick Subaru

I Call Patrick Subaru refers to a series of memes that refer to Patrick Star from SpongeBob SquarePants as Subaru. The memes originate from a comment thread made on the SpongeBob Fandom wiki page for the episode "Gone" in March 2021 in which user Kmh1481 writes, "I hate that even Subaru took part in no Spongebob day what kind of best friend is he." A screenshot of the comments went viral on social media in February 2025, inspiring memes referencing the post and further referring to Patrick as Subaru while claiming he's a bad friend to SpongeBob. Kmh1481 purportedly goes by u/grantpantwhycant, aka Kylie Kozub.

Search Interest

External References