Sheldon J. Plankton

**Sheldon J.** **Plankton**, most commonly known as **Plankton**, is one of the ten main characters of the *SpongeBob SquarePants* franchise. He is a planktonic copepod who runs the Chum Bucket restaurant alongside Karen, a waterproof computer who is his sidekick and wife. The Chum Bucket is highly unpopular in Bikini Bottom because it serves chum, a type of bait made from fish meat.

He is the main antagonist of the franchise. There are also several episodes in which Plankton acts as a sympathetic anti-hero. Plankton despises his rival, Mr. Krabs, for running a successful restaurant because his own business rarely gets any customers. His main goal is to steal Krabs' secret formula for Krabby Patties and running Mr. Krabs out of business. Karen gives him a variety of plans to steal it, but their efforts always end up failing in the process.

Plankton is voiced by Mr. Lawrence, one of the show's staff writers. Stephen Hillenburg originally planned for Plankton and Karen to be one-time characters, but Lawrence wrote them into many episodes and proved that they could work as the main villains. Both Plankton and Karen first appear in the episode "Plankton!"

Role in the series

## Personality

Plankton is egotistical, aggressive and power-hungry. He is very jealous of Mr. Krabs and his success. His only goal throughout the series is stealing the Krabby Patty secret formula and running Krabs out of business, a desire that has led him to destroy The Krusty Krab on more than one occasion. He is manipulative, as he manipulated SpongeBob into becoming "assertive" in "Walking Small" to drive everyone in the beach away so he could build another Chum Bucket even though SpongeBob would later figure it out. He also manipulated SpongeBob in "F.U.N." by pretending to be his friend to get a Krabby Patty. He is also deceitful, as he is always trying to convince SpongeBob and the others that he can be trusted, only to use their goodwill to get closer to the formula. Either way, he's too busy plotting revenge to interact with most of the characters. Being a villain might be lonely, but Plankton seems to like it that way.

He also has an obsession with "world domination" as he is always mentioning that he will rule the world once he steals the Krabby Patty formula and becomes more successful and doesn't really care as he likes to come up with plans to do so. He teamed up with Man Ray in "Super Evil Aquatic Villain Team Up is Go!" and claimed he will rule the world with him, and in *The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie* he enslaved the entirety of Bikini Bottom and created a dictatorship.

He has a minuscule size and overcompensates by being evil and manipulative. He has tried everything from constructing an evil robot to hiring an assassin to kill SpongeBob and Patrick, but all his plans end up failing in the long run.

Plankton's restaurant, the Chum Bucket, has always been extremely unsuccessful, not only because of competition from the Krusty Krab and Plankton's rude and cruel treatment of the people in Bikini Bottom but also due to the extremely poor quality of the food and Plankton's constant failure to clean the place up. As its name implies, the Chum Bucket serves chum-based foods, all of which are shown to taste terrible. In "Plankton's Regular," the Krusty Krab adds chum to its menu in an attempt to steal Plankton's single regular customer.

The customer is disgusted by their chum and says that it is the second foulest thing he has ever tasted. This implies that chum is inherently disgusting, and cannot be made to taste good, although this is shown to be false in the episodes "Greasy Buffoons" and "Chum Fricassee." In the former, Plankton uses excess grease from the Krusty Krab's grease trap that was dumped near the Chum Bucket, to make his sales skyrocket, a goal which he succeeded in. However, his business is lost when the health inspector comes to investigate both the Krusty Krab and the Chum Bucket due to the grease trend.

It should be noted that in real life, chum is made of grounded-up fish parts that are inedible to humans, such as heads and guts, and is used as bait for sharks and similar creatures. This would mean that Plankton is killing fish, or at least collecting dead fish, and serving their remains to other fish, thus promoting cannibalism. This has only ever been touched upon in "The Krabby Kronicle," where SpongeBob prints a story claiming this. However, SpongeBob was being tricked by Mr. Krabs into printing absurd lies to appeal to customers, so this story was supposedly false. As mentioned in the episode "Spongicus," Plankton uses many odd things to spice up his chum.

Plankton has no regular employees, and runs the Chum Bucket entirely by himself, although he spends most of his time in his laboratory, due to having no customers. Plankton runs the restaurant only when he has potential customers, but is shown to be a failure fast-food owner. Also, when he does have customers, he uses artificially intelligent machines to cover the other positions.

Plankton is also highly intelligent and is one of, if not, the smartest citizen in Bikini Bottom, with his intellect being on par with only Sandy. Unfortunately, he often shows himself to be short-sighted and impulsive, and often lacking common sense. This is shown when all his plans of obtaining the Krabby Patty formula often fail, usually due to oversights, and he doesn't think beforehand of what might go wrong. He also seems unaware the biggest barrier to his success is his insistence on serving food nobody wants to eat, rather than serving something appetizing.

Despite being a villain, Plankton is shown to have a soft side, as he seems to care deeply about his wife Karen, his pet Spot and his son Chip. In "Plankton's Pet," Plankton adopts an amoeba which he named "Spot" and takes the time to train it, take care of it, etc. and was genuinely sad when it ran away, only to be reunited with it later thanks to SpongeBob.

Plankton has an expansive history of deception and committing misdemeanors, all while attempting to obtain the Krabby Patty recipe and do away with Mr. Krabs' business as a part of his plan. He has been arrested five times: in *The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie*, "Krabby Road," "Sweet and Sour Squid," "Fiasco!," and "Call the Cops." Plankton's personality traits and actions that came from those include, but are not limited to.