Squidward Tentacles

**Squidward J. Q. Tentacles** is one of the two deuteragonists (alongside Patrick Star) of the animated series *SpongeBob SquarePants* and a supporting character in its film adaptations. He is

the next-door neighbor of SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Star, as well as the rude, disloyal, and lazy cashier of the Krusty Krab restaurant. He is the most unpopular guy in the Bikini Bottom when considered everyone as idiots.

Despite this, he is also quite sympathetic, as his life is little more than a dismal failure, and he is constantly pushed to the brink of insanity by his mischievous neighbors. SpongeBob and Patrick consider Squidward to be their best friend, but this feeling is not reciprocated. Despite this, Squidward does occasional express kindness, respect and compassion towards SpongeBob.

Squidward is passionate about reading, art, and music, and is especially fond of playing the clarinet, though no one considers his music or artwork to be noteworthy. His arch-rival is a wealthy octopus named Squilliam Fancyson.

He is voiced by Rodger Bumpass who also voiced Professor Membrane, Major Nixel, and Dr. Light in Teen Titans. In the Japanese dub, he is voiced by the late Rokuro Naya, currently Yoji Ueda.

## Personality

Squidward is best described as ill-tempered, pretentious, and cynical who strongly despises his neighbors for their constant boisterous, noisy behavior. However, the pair are unaware of Squidward's antipathy towards them and see him as a friend. Squidward works as a cashier at the Krusty Krab restaurant, a job that he is apathetic towards.

Squidward also has a passion and interest in reading, arts, and music, and is very fond of playing the clarinet, though no one considers him to be very good at it, the same for his artwork due to his bad taste. This, however, not always the case as on some occasions, his artistic talents somewhat more improved than it used to be.

The post-movie seasons (Season 4 and so on which set between events from both the first 3 seasons and *The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie*) revealed that his misery, and inability to see the positive side of his neighbor's antics has developed a darker side of his personality where he sometimes became the wrathful, indifferent, and sadistic. The revelation of these negative traits was previously foreshadowed by him nearly killed SpongeBob with his brutal booby trap joke in the retaliation of the latter's annoying but harmless jokes in *Fools in April* episode.

Not only that, in various cases of his antagonistic acts that he performed, he sometimes has done so in a more malicious manner where he unknowingly became slave-driver for SpongeBob as seen in *Can You Spare A Dime?*, and *Squidward, the Unfriendly Ghost*, fooling anyone to gain an advantage for improving his life despite the small percentage of success, or the worst, illegal acts include verbal and physical abuse that threatened him to send to jail. The worst instances of his antagonism are when expresses his lack of remorse and genuine malice was when reading SpongeBob's diary aloud, disagree with his friends' idea to brought SpongeBob back home after remorseful with their abuse on him in retaliate of misfortunes that he unintentionally caused, and lend his lawnmower to both SpongeBob and Patrick hoping that they harmed themselves by accident wherein these case, he potentially crosses MEH. These negative traits were reasons why some Bikini Bottomites antagonize him out of sheer hatred.

However, Squidward is not a heartless character as he had a softer side which hidden under his sadistic, wrathful, and narcissistic personality. To some degree, he friends with SpongeBob and Patrick but incapable to see the positive side of their childish antics, reason why he tends to loathe them more than truly love them. He also has a romantic relationship with his girlfriend Squilvia (a relationship that only explored in an episode where she featured at). Squidward has shown leniency to SpongeBob more than one time. The proof that he cares about SpongeBob was when he rescued him from an incoming truck and stood up to an angry obsessed fish for hurting SpongeBob's feelings and slammed a pizza in his face in "Pizza Delivery". In "Born Again Krabs", he berated Krabs for sold the sponge's soul for the Flying Dutchman. As he did, he expresses genuine disgust on Krabs' ungrateful action that made the crab regretful over his actions. Squidward actually does like Spongebob, something that he apparently is simply unwillingly to admit most of the time: in the episode "Graveyard Shift", when he thinks he is about to get killed by the "Hash-slinging Slasher", Squidward admits to Spongebob that, despite what he has said in the past, he "actually sort of likes [him]" (Spongebob confesses in response that he uses Squidward's clarinet to unclog his toilet). In *Sponge On The Run*, Squidward stood up for SpongeBob to Poseidon, saying that despite he thinks SpongeBob is annoying, he is still his friend who does not deserve to die.

The reason why he mostly grumpy at times can be traced back when he had a garden as seen in episode *Truth or Square.* At that time, Squidward appeared to have a happier personality, until a pineapple fell from a sailor's boat to the ocean and crushed his garden, destroying it. Not long afterwards, SpongeBob showed up and decided to modify the pineapple into a house that we know today as Squidward mourned over the loss of his garden. His garden's destruction depressed Squidward so much that he becomes bitter and presumably never told his new neighbor about what has happened in the first place.

## Relationships

### Family

* Grandma Tentacles - Grandmother
* Jeff Tentacles - Father
* Mrs. Tentacles - Mother
* Unnamed Cousins

### Friends

* Spongebob SquarePants - Neighbor and Situational Enemy
* Patrick Star - Neighbor and Situational Enemy
* Mr. Krabs - Boss and Situational Enemy
* Sandy Cheeks
* Pearl Krabs - Adoptive niece

### Enemies

* Sheldon J. Plankton - Business Rival and Situational Ally
* Squilliam Fancyson - Archenemy and Rival
* Flying Dutchman - Attempted Killer
* Doodlebob
* Dirty Bubble
* Man Ray

## Powers and Abilities

* **Intelligence**: Squidward is actually smarter than SpongeBob and even Mr. Krabs in many ways, as he had better IQ and more knowledgeable than the latter like Sandy due to the fact that giant pacific octopuses have 9 brains.
* **Boneless**: Like SpongeBob, Squidward has been shown to be quite fragile due to his laced bones. Although, he sometimes is shown to have bones depending on the writer of the episodes.
* **Durability**: Squidward is very durable, as, in one episode, he survived a nuclear explosion.
* **Artistic Skills**: Squidward proved himself as the artist with promising talent in singing, painting, sculpture, playing his trademark clarinet, etc. Unfortunately, he's not always appreciated on his works due to his somewhat bad taste.
* **Magma Manipulation:** As Captain Magma, he can control and fires magma blasts from the volcanic cone on his mask. Unfortunately, due to lack of proper mastery over his powers, it resulted in him accidentally toasting SpongeBob (where ironically, he didn't intend to harm him as his intended target was Man-Ray, Dirty Bubble, and evil Barnacle Boy).
* **Sonic Wave Emission**: As Sour Note, he can fire sonic waves (which often depicted as a blast of bubbles) from his signature clarinet, either in form of sonic waves that paralyze everyone who hears it and in the form of a concussive beam.

## Trivia

* Steve Carell, Alan Cumming, Bill Hader, Neil Patrick Harris, Benedict Cumberbatch, Adam Driver, and Ed Helms were all considered for the role of Squidward for the live-action film adaption to the series.
* Squidward seems to share similarities with Donald Duck due to their pessimistic and grumpy behavior, as well as their misery, chronic bad luck and pridefulness. He also shares similarities with Benson Dunwoody, because they are both easily angered and annoyed by their foolish co-workers or employees (Squidward by SpongeBob and Patrick, and Benson by Mordecai and Rigby).
* As noted by fans and suggested by writer/voice actor Doug Lawrence in the DVD commentary for the season one episode "Plankton!", main casts of *SpongeBob SquarePants* were intended to represent Seven Deadly Sins. In Squidward's case, he represented **Wrath** due to seemingly in perpetual bad mood, extremely short temper, and only seeing the worst in everyone.
* Squidward seems to have a rivalry with Gary, Spongebob's snail. To a lesser extent, he also archenemies to Samantha "Sam" Star, Patrick's older sister due to nearly killing each other when finally fed up with her behavior which turned out more volatile than Patrick.
* As with the rest of the main casts, Squidward's portrayal in post first movie seasons (Season 4-Season 9) became increasingly negative as a result of his worst traits exaggerated through the show's Flanderization, with his portrayal in *The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water* and *Little Yellow Book* where he was at his worst. Fortunately, this has since revised following the end of Season 9.
* His voice sounds like Bert from the *Sesame Street* series and Mr. Bean from *Mr. Bean: The Animated Series*.
* Ironically, Squidward has shown himself to be a better friend to SpongeBob than Patrick on several occasions. Squidward stood up for SpongeBob when he was being mistreated such as in “Pizza Delivery” and “Born Again Krabs”. Patrick however, would constantly backstab and eagerly throw SpongeBob under the bus, and he was uncaring of SpongeBob’s predicament in “Stuck In The Wringer”.

## External Links

* Squidward Tentacles on the Nickelodeon Wiki
* Squidward Tentacles on the Antagonists Wiki
* Squidward Tentacles on the Encyclopedia SpongeBobia Wiki
* Squidward Tentacles on the Heroic Benchmark Wiki