Population of Bikini Bottom?

[Squidward1066]

I found my Spongebob 2010 Annual the other day, and after flicking through it, I noticed that it said the population of Bikini Bottom was just over 800.

However, in the episode "Patty Hype", Spongebob and Patrick's roadside stand receives 46,853 customers! How is this possible, if BB has a population of 800?! Of course, the customers could be from Rock Bottom (but buses hardly ever run between Bikini Bottom and Rock Bottom and RB citizens can't even speak our language properly, so that's unlikely) or Ukelele Bottom (which is only mentioned once and never really seen, so I also doubt that).

What do you guys think?

[E.V.I.L.]

Well,, people could have traveled from cities such as Bass Vegas and New kelp City in Patty Hype, so that may be why.

[Squidward1066]

Well,, people could have traveled from cities such as Bass Vegas and New kelp City in Patty Hype, so that may be why.

That's true. But wasn't New kelp City introduced in Season 5?

[E.V.I.L.]

That's true. But wasn't New kelp City introduced in Season 5?

It may have been introduced, but that doesn't mean it didn't exist before that episode.

[Squidward1066]

Yeah, I guess that explains it. I'm still shocked at the lack of residents in Bikini Bottom as opposed to other undersea cities.

[Ron]

I think maybe people from other cities traveled in, or Bikini Bottom actually has a larger population, contrary to what the population sign says.

[Cha]

Wasn't the population in "WhoBob WhatPants" like even less than 800? 538, I believe. The population is always been unstable. What we do know from past population numbers is it's always been a small amount compared to most towns. Now with Patty Hype, I gotta agree with the others when they said people probably were from other towns. The patties were on the news, so it's likely that's how they found out about them.

[crushingmayhem]

Last time I checked it was over 46,000. I find it unreal that the population would be less than 800 considering the amount of people we've seen in many episodes.

[OWM]

I estimate about 50,000 people.

[Squidward1066]

I think maybe people from other cities traveled in, or Bikini Bottom actually has a larger population, contrary to what the population sign says.

 

I think you're right about the population sign being incorrect - I mean, in scenes set in the Krusty Krab, there are always some background customers which haven't been seen before, and if there's only a population of 800, I doubt that would be possible.

 

Wasn't the population in "WhoBob WhatPants" like even less than 800? 538, I believe. The population is always been unstable. What we do know from past population numbers is it's always been a small amount compared to most towns. Now with Patty Hype, I gotta agree with the others when they said people probably were from other towns. The patties were on the news, so it's likely that's how they found out about them.

 

538 is absolutely crazy for a city of that size. My hometown has about 27,000 people living in it, and it's smaller than Bikini Bottom (in number of buildings)! Someone has to have a serious talk with Nickelodeon's continuity guy about this...

 

I think that they probably did come based on the news broadcast, but I'd be surprised if they did, because it was shown on 'Bikini Bottom Action News' or something like that. (yeah, this is a tiny detail, but I like tiny details )

 

Last time I checked it was over 46,000. I find it unreal that the population would be less than 800 considering the amount of people we've seen in many episodes.

 

I know, right? As I said earlier, there are so many background characters it would be mad for the population to be anything under about 10,000.

 

In my opinion, the only thing that could justify Bikini Bottom having a population of under 800 is the fact that Squidward lives there. Given that Squidward loves peace and quiet and he can be disturbed by only two troublesome neighbours, I find it unlikely he'd want to live in a vast metropolis with thousands of people who could annoy him.

 

~Squidward1066