About

The SpongeBob Gross-Up also known as Morbid SpongeBob comes from a 2008 episode of the Nickelodeon television show SpongeBob SquarePants, where SpongeBob gets amnesia after running away from Bikini Bottom. The still features a crustier, grosser-looking SpongeBob with beady eyes, tattered clothes, rotten teeth and a snotty nose. The image macro meme is often used to depict someone or something as gross and disgusting, and first grew popular as an eye-catching YouTube thumbnail before being used as a reaction meme.

Origin

The SpongeBob episode "What Ever Happened to SpongeBob?" aired during season 5 of the animated children's show on October 13th, 2008. The 20 minute special showed SpongeBob as he ran away from Bikini Bottom after being called "idiot boy" by all his friends and coworkers, and developing amnesia. The scene featuring SpongeBob's "gross" closeup is shown in the YouTube^[1] reupload shown below.

The relevant screenshot was also posted to the gallery of the SpongeBob SquarePants Fandom^[2] page. An early repost of this still was on the Facebook^[7] page "alguna vez no he tenido razon?" on August 15th, 2011.

The image of a gross Sponge-Bob close-up first came to be used in YouTube thumbnails in the 2010s, as seen in a January 17, 2015 YouTube^[3] video by TazerCraft titled, "ACIDENTE DO BOB ESPONJA!? – BEAMNG.DRIVE," that gathered over 2.6 million views in ten years. Another early use came in the thumbnail of a Screen Rant video^[4] called, "10 Dark Theories That Completely Change Popular Kids Shows," which gathered over 2.4 million views in nine years.

Spread

The earliest known use of the gross Sponge-Bob close-up was posted to Reddit's /r/dankmemes^[5] on February 1st, 2017 by /u/Spiccy_mustard. The meme reads "When you finally leave your darkened sanctuary after the many days lost looking at dank memes."

On March 9th, 2021, DeviantArt^[6] user @Watermelonthecat posted a SpongeBob "Gross-Up" meme that read, "Friend: You're not ugly, you're cute!" The post gathered over 14,000 views and 65 comments in four years.

On June 3rd, 2022, X^[8] user @pepDX tweeted, "crumbl cookies will have you happy and giddy for ten minutes and then make you feel like this for the rest of the day," gathering over 1,000 likes in three years.

On March 29th, 2025, X^[9] user @auhkui tweeted, "Forgot my airpod's at home and they playing Christian remix's of Fein and Not like us in the gym rn," gathering over 44,000 likes in two days.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References