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There’s a dirty episode of SpongeBob SquarePants that Nickelodeon has hidden in a vault

Nickelodeon has an unedited episode where SpongeBob and the gang curse, but they won’t let us watch it

Image credit: Nickelodeon

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For 25 years SpongeBob SquarePants has been a name associated with wholesome children’s entertainment. While the long-running Nickelodeon cartoon can get a bit silly, SpongeBob and his friends keep things PG. Except for the season 2 episode ‘Sailor Mouth.’

The episode centers around SpongeBob and Patrick learning a curse word, and it isn’t long before chaos ensues. Of course, the episode bleeps out the cursing with dolphin noises. At least it does on the official version. According to SpongeBob voice actor Tom Kenny, he and his castmates were actually cursing, and there’s an unedited version of the episode somewhere in Nickelodeon’s archives.

During a SpongeBob spotlight panel at New York City Comic Con, Kenny and the cast gave us the scoop on the version of Sailor Mouth that Nickelodeon doesn’t want you to see. “Sailor Mouth was particularly fun because we got to say things that our characters wouldn’t normally say, and then that was replaced with a dolphin noise. I’ve never heard the tapes,” Tom Kenny recalled.

“It was naughty,” Bill Fagerbakke added in his Patrick Star voice.

“Those recordings are buried deep in the Earth,” Kenny continued. “There’s some Raiders of the Lost Ark warehouse where a guy’s moving it around with a forklift. I’ve understood that some internet wag did an AI version of what he thought it might be. NSFW! So many people have asked me, ‘Is that real?’ Like, people who should know better. No, it’s not real you goofball!”

“There’s a lot that goes on in the booth that you guys don’t know,” Carolyn Lawrence added.

While it’s unlikely Nickelodeon will ever release this on any of their DVD boxsets, it’s still amusing to imagine what the unedited episode sounds like.

SpongeBob SquarePants is currently airing on Nickelodeon.


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Joshua Lapin-Bertone

Joshua Lapin-Bertone: Joshua is a pop culture writer specializing in comic book media. His work has appeared on the official DC Comics website, the DC Universe subscription service, HBO Max promotional videos, the Batman Universe fansite, and more. In between traveling around the country to cover various comic conventions, Joshua resides in Florida where he binges superhero television and reads obscure comics from yesteryear.

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