Probably one of Nickelodeon’s most famous bad guys to date, Plankton is often shown to be a
pretty memorable - albeit not too successful - antagonist. He’s mean, crafty and always
thinking of a new scheme to get that formula. But even microscopic organisms can have a heart,
and we wanted to touch on the times where Plankton showed he could be a decently good guy,
as well as all those times where he was shown to be a villain through and through.
I’m Kyle with WickedBinge, and this is Plankton Deeds: Good to Evil.
As always, we’re going to be starting with the times where this teeny villain actually
showed some goodness deep down. These are Plankton’s best deeds.
Starting off with our first Good Deed - very easily our good-est deed for Plankton - we have
the time where he helped Spongebob defeat Burger Beard. Throughout the second Spongebob movie,
“Sponge Out of Water”, we get a pretty satisfying arc of Plankton learning to
be a team player. Although there are a couple bumps in the road, including Plankton briefly
becoming disillusioned with teamwork after his plan with Spongebob fails, he ultimately decides
to accompany the gang to the surface. Just when it looks like the super-powered team is defeated,
it’s Plankton - or rather, Plank-TON - who is able to turn the tides of the battle with his
newly-gained Hulk-like strength. After a bit of taunting and a bubble-powered team move between
him and Spongebob, Plankton captures Burger Beard and gets the formula back. What makes
this instance even sweeter is that he returns the formula to Krabs afterwards, no tricks
needed. He even acknowledges that keeping the formula for himself would be selfish! D’awww.
But you don’t need to be a superhero to be a good guy. Sometimes, you just need to be
kind - just as Plankton is whenever he’s shown being a loving pet owner to Spot. For many,
Spot is considered to be a true bright spot in the latter half of the show, as he’s one of the
few characters Plankton will show affection towards with no strings attached. While other
cartoons have suffered a dip in quality after adding in a dog character that doesn’t really
add much (looking at you Fairly Oddparents), the incredibly cute relationship between Spot
and Plankton has only added to the show. Although he may sometimes get a bit frustrated with Spot,
Plankton has shown time and time again that he loves Spot and is unable to stay mad at him.
He takes care of Spot, and is never ever shown neglecting him,
always keeping him well-fed. You could argue that him using a few of Spot’s amoeba puppies
to try and get the formula is a bit iffy, but given how eager the pups were to help,
we can’t say that this is an instance that counts against him. All in all, seeing Plankton be such a
great owner to his special little guy has really shined a spotlight on this guy’s softer side.
Tying back into Plankton’s relationships, let’s talk about how he helped Spongebob save Karen’s
mind. In "Karen's Virus”, Plankton acts as both mission control and bodyguard as he and
Spongebob go on a mission to try and save Karen from a dangerous virus. Although Spongebob is the
one actually inside her computer mind, Plankton still acts as support and gives him guidance and
advice during the mission. Mind you, this is all while he’s also trying to keep an eye on
a VERY loopy Karen so she doesn’t get hurt, a task that is easier said than done. While
this couple has certainly had its ups and downs - and don’t worry, we’ll get to those downs - it’s
nice to see Plankton being so protective of and worried for his wife. Also, while it may not be
the ‘real’ Plankton, we’d like to give a shout-out to Virtual Plankton, who also helps a ton in the
episode as he’s able to use his buff muscles to assist Spongebob in fighting off the virus.
And this wasn’t the only time he acted as support for Spongebob either. He also teamed
up with the others to rescue him from Atlantic City. In the third movie, “Sponge on the Run”,
we see another one of Plankton’s schemes where he sends Spongebob away after realizing that
SpongeBob is actually responsible for all his previous failures and not Mr. Krabs.
It is his hope that doing this will give himself a perfect opportunity to steal the secret Krabby
Patty formula. But when a distraught Krabs just gives him the formula without a fight, Plankton
actually starts to regret this latest scheme, so much so that he teams up with Mr. Krabs,
Sandy and Squidward to save SpongeBob and Patrick from King Poseidon in Atlantic City. Just as we
see with the others, Plankton testifies and tries to use his words to save Spongebob from execution,
defending him against the vain king. Regardless of how you feel regarding the summer camp stuff
that this movie brought in, it’s still nice to see that even after being stopped and
defeated by him so many times, Plankton is still willing to stand up for and help save Spongebob.
For our last good deed, we have one that while a bit controversial, we feel it still counts - and
that’s the time he saved Bubble Bass’ life. In "Plankton's Good Eye," Plankton comes across a
burning building and spots Bubble Bass trapped inside. He then attempts to save Bubble Bass,
telling him to jump so that he can catch him. Obviously, this doesn’t exactly work out well for
Plankton, leading to him being squished. This is one reason why this good deed may not count
as much as the others, with the second reason being that Plankton was only prompted to help
because of the “good eye” he gave himself using Spongebob’s teardrop. In that sense,
it wasn’t exactly his choice to help. Still, it was Plankton’s encouragement that prompted
Bubble Bass to essentially save himself, and we feel like that counts for something. Still,
we had to put it at the very bottom of our list for not being completely genuine.
With those brighter moments out of the way, let’s talk about all the best examples of
Plankton being a true villain for Spongebob and the other citizens of Bikini Bottom.
For starters, let’s talk about all of the times that he’s manipulated Spongebob. Now, if we had
a nickel for every time Plankton has tried to manipulate or deceive Spongebob, we’d have… well,
certainly a lot more than two nickels. In fact, it’s easily one of the show’s go-to plot points,
as well as one of Plankton’s defining personality traits. Heck, it’s something we see in the first
season, both with the birthday lie in his debut episode and with him pretending to be Spongebob’s
friend and giving him a sob story in “F.U.N.” We also can’t forget how he manipulated SpongeBob
into becoming "assertive" in the episode "Walking Small", using him to drive everyone else at the
beach away so that he could build another Chum Bucket. And again, this is only season one - and
in that sense, only the tip of the iceberg. We should also mention that this manipulation
factor isn’t just limited to Spongebob, as we’ve seen him also try to manipulate Krabs and even
characters he rarely interacts with like Plankton, Squidward and Sandy. We’ll mention this again in a
couple of our later entries, but Plankton is the type to usually just see others for what
they can do for him and how useful they can be to him versus actually seeing them as people.
But for as bad as a friend Plankton can be at times, he can also be a pretty lousy husband - as
best seen during the time where he replaced Karen. In the infamous episode, “Karen 2.0”,
Plankton decides to ‘upgrade’ and replace Karen with a Karen 2 model. We should mention right off
the bat that this is done for some pretty petty reasons, such as Plankton being mildly annoyed at
Karen’s memory being full or her making a simple mistake with dinner. Throughout the episode,
Plankton seems to treat her more as an object than as a wife, and even if she is technically
an object, it still comes off as incredibly harsh and callous. We also see Plankton having
a romantic dinner with the new Karen, which just adds salt to the original Karen’s wounds. It all
just comes off as a guy who is uninterested and wants to date a ‘younger model’, as it
were. What’s worse is that Plankton isn’t really apologetic for any of this for the most part,
only seeing the error of his ways and going back to the original Karen after Karen 2 is shown not
really caring about him. He does promise not to take her kindness for granted anymore,
but after all that… well, it really does come off as more hollow than sweet.
With how unlikable Plankton can be, it maybe isn’t too surprising just how often he’s
been caught stealing the identities of various characters. Throughout the course of the show,
Plankton has stolen the identities of Mr. Krabs, Sandy, Gary and even his own grandmother,
all in the hopes of finally stealing the Krabby Patty secret formula. Obviously identity theft
is a pretty serious crime, and what makes it worse is that Plankton doesn’t care
about how his impersonations of others impact their reputations or well-being. Of course,
this is best shown in the instances with Krabs and Sandy, where the former is covered in tartar
sauce and nearly gets eaten by Hans while the latter is arrested for public nudity. Overall,
while each of these instances is shown in a pretty silly manner, with the episodes themselves often
feeling like a farce, we still feel like it’s serious enough to get a mention here.
But stealing identities is one thing. What about trying to steal an entire holiday? Yes,
it’s time to talk about the time Plankton tried to ruin Christmas. In the stop-motion special, “It’s
a Spongebob Christmas”, Plankton’s latest plan to steal the formula involves him trying to make
the entirety of Bikini Bottom be even naughtier than him, allowing him to then look ‘nice’ by
comparison and earn his Christmas wish. To do this, Plankton bakes up some jerktonium-laced
fruitcakes and, after thinking the jerktonium didn’t work, accidentally leads Spongebob to
unknowingly transform everyone in Bikini Bottom into jerks. If not for Spongebob realizing what
happened, the entire holiday could have been ruined for everyone! We also see Plankton send
out an evil wind-up robot-version of SpongeBob to commit naughty deeds and cause trouble,
all in an attempt to frame the real SpongeBob. This is yet another example of him temporarily
ruining someone’s reputation for his own gain, and while all this may just be par for the
course for someone as villainous as Plankton, the fact that he did it all on Christmas and
didn’t care about all those who would lose out on presents just makes it even worse.
But at the very least, people can survive not getting presents. We know very well, however, that
Plankton is still willing to put people in danger, which he did so blatantly when he framed Krabs.
Okay seriously, between the disguises, robot impersonators and now fake notes combined with
even faker phone calls, Plankton either has a real talent for ruining people’s reputations
or he just has a really bad habit that he needs to break. Anyway, with this particular instance,
Plankton’s framing of Mr. Krabs wasn’t just an attempt to steal the formula but was also
very much him trying to get Krabs out of the picture for good, using King Neptune’s fiery
rage as the perfect means to eliminate his foe. Even after Krabs is given some more time,
Plankton refuses to come clean and actively revels in the idea of Krabs being destroyed,
not once regretting it or having any second-thoughts. Compared to the other
two movies where Plankton shows at least a little bit of humanity even for the characters he claims
to hate, this is certainly Plankton at his most heartless and unsympathetic.
Of course, we now know that framing Mr. Krabs was just one part of Plankton’s big two-part
scheme. Obviously this latter part - enslaving the citizens of Bikini Bottom - was easily the
worst thing that Plankton has ever done. No, it simply wasn’t enough for him to have wealth
and fame through the Chum Bucket becoming the new home of the Krabby Patty. Instead,
Plankton’s real goal all along was to eventually brainwash and enslave everyone in town,
using them as his servants and forcing them to build Plank-topolis. Through these actions,
we see just how little Plankton cares about Bikini Bottom’s citizens, truly only seeing them as tools
for his own goals and desires and giving no thought whatsoever to their well-being - as
seen when he’s shown whipping them and shouting “no resting!” With how powerful Plankton’s helmets
were and how effective the Bikini Bottomites were as an army, it’s not too far-fetched to think
that he wouldn’t eventually try to take over other cities - maybe even the entire ocean! Simply put,
there’s a reason why this is Plankton’s most memorable evil deed. And maybe it’s
good that the other movies have him in a more redeemable role, as we’re unsure how
he could ever top this specific scheme - and we aren’t quite sure if we want to see him try…