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30. What If...Nickelodeon Owned the SBC Spin-Offs? One year...nobody knows what year it was exactly, but it marked a point in history in which Viacom decided that if they were going to keep Nickelodeon afloat, they were going to have to act fast. Well, except for the whole part of this company being called Viacom, because as of this writing, they are now referred to as ViacomCBS...oh wait, that still isn’t right? For fuck’s sake. Anyways, Paramount... – actually, you know what? This is a hypothetical story anyways, and we don’t want to get sued, so let’s make some last minute changes. ViacomountCBSSkydanceKonamiSiliconValleyIKEA, shortened to Viacomount to make it sound less annoying (or shortened to just Viacom because that’s what we all still call them), saw dwindling viewership for Nickelodeon. They have been so busy building up their own personal Marvel universe with their most successful IP, SpongeBob SquarePants, while throwing everything else to the wolves, and yet their network wasn’t doing so hot. Even after the Nicktoons channel rebranded to NickSpongeBob, it wasn’t good enough. A lot of people say it’s due to the oversatuation of their IP, while others theorized that the Quiet on Set documentary was somehow still powerful enough to get them cooked. Whatever the means, they were growing desperate to find ways to create new content. That was when they discovered the SpongeBob Community and its spin-off library, and just like that, everything about to change… SBCers were alarmed by the news that the people down at Viacomount had purchased the rights to their spin-off library without any notice. To make matters worse, the members were forced to erase their stories so as to not leave evidence that these new spin-off ideas were being taken directly from a certain fan site. As a compromise, Viacomount promised to give the creators of the shows that they greenlit some creative control. These were the end results… One-Time SpongeBob Characters: Where Are They Now? In the current climate of the main series bringing just about every one-time character back as nostalgia pandering to the growing annoyance of its viewers, there were mostly high hopes for this upcoming spin-off. Wumbo, the creator, wanted the first season to focus mainly on the residents of Squidville – the clarinet trio, the Squids playing croquet, the turkey sandwich that someone heard better comebacks from, the canned bread, and of course the fire hydrant that Patrick assumed was Squidward. Instead, the executives at Nick insisted the season focuses mainly on Bubble Bass, therein by making it a glorified Bubble Bass spin-off. The series was canceled after one season, with Wumbo’s only contribution, while credited as ‘Squidward Tennisballs,’ being an episode where Bubble Bass kept screaming about a Mermaid Man credit card. Squnschpunsch Prez was clearly excited when Nickelodeon laid on him the news that they were going to turn his beloved crossover Squnschpunsch into a real series. The excitement fell short as there were some conditions that Prez wasn’t all too satisfied with. Nickelodeon chose not to recast Rick Jones as Maurizio and also suggested having Jacob being voiced by an AI of the late Harry Hill. After some meddling, Chris Pratt was cast as Maurizio while Jacob was voiced by an actual raven that was perched within the Nickelodeon animation studio and sometimes uttered “Nevermore.” Rodger Bumpass remained the voice of Squidward, but the state of the show’s strong promises had diminished. The humor of Squnschpunsch was reduced to bare-bones Squidward torture and gross-out. Even though Nickelodeon lived up to one of the wishes of Prez by having Glass Animals perform “Heat Waves” in one episode, they couldn’t make him happyorr naaaaooooo. It was canceled after one season. Pisces Moon Two spin-offs created by Steel Sponge were greenlit – The Adventures of No Name, which ended up being an unsold pilot, and Pisces Moon, the latter in which Nickelodeon boasted would be their very own Star Wars, to the point where J.J. Abrams would take over in the middle of production, making swift changes to some of the characters, such as giving Sandy an unexplained hatred for sand, and Titan an unorthodox fascination with boxes. Steel’s most notable contribution was including a cameo of Lisa Simpson (or rather, Asil Nospmis, to avoid copyright lawsuits) looked to the camera and said “A company notorious for letting down its consumers reaches out to you to salvage their business, and the very next moment, they sell you down the river. What can YOU do?” before staring at the viewer for five minutes until the episode ends. This, of course, would be the thirteenth and final episode before the series was dropped due to the network not having the budget to let it continue. The Silly Adventures of Patrick Star Despite Nickelodeon already having a Patrick-focused spin-off on their line-up, they thought that one wasn’t enough and decided to greenlight JCM’s own Patrick show. Although things were looking up this time, an abrupt change in management stifled the show’s quality when a production company going by the name of United Seasponge Studios took over. The spin-off ended its run prematurely on the Nickelodeon channel, but it would continue airing on the Skibidi Toilet Kids channel. Skodwarde Skodwarde, created by OMJ, and one of the most popular long-running series in the SBC spin-off archive, was picked up, but a lot of changes had to be made. In order to make Skodwarde more TV-friendly for the network, 4Kids was revived to take up the strenuous task of Bowdlerizing the series until it no longer resembled Skodwarde. All the past edgy and raunchy humor was traded in for puns, the titular character now reads “Eat, Pray, Love” and sings the national anthem in his past-time, the Krusty Krab served jelly donuts instead of Krabby Patties, SpongeBob was given an unexplained Brooklyn accent, and instead of Scotty (the new name given to the title character) using his god powers for evil, he uses them to teach basic and religious morals. Despite all of these drastic changes, OMJ would still manage to include some potshots towards Nick by way of sneaking in caricatured cameos of disgraced former Nickelodeon creators Dan Schneider, Butch Hartman, and John K. to keep the spirit of the original Skodwarde alive. The rights to Skodwarde were then given to Funimation, who were told by Nickelodeon to ‘do whatever the hell you want with it.’ Jjs’ Riffing Theater 3000 Despite Jjs’ wishes for an animated version of Scooter’s Paradise, and despite not being a SpongeBob-inspired creation, the executives of Nickelodeon picked up the Riffing Theater for a full series, as they saw greater opportunities with the format. One of those opportunities being allowing SBC members to react to characters from their other shows reacting to their show being canceled (“Bye Bye Beavers” is finally televized to the public as a result). The riffers focused solely on riffing the network itself that forced this on them than on the material being presented to them, and needless to say, they showed no kind words for their bosses. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when one of the subjects of the riffing was footage of Tiny Chef having a half-hour mental breakdown. Even though Nickelodeon wanted this to continue, they still ended up pulling the plug due to all of the riffers quitting. There was a proposal to implement actual SB characters in the series as riffers, but no one wanted to take up the job of mocking Rock from Rock Paper Scissors coping with the cancellation of his show by stress eating pints of ice cream, among other sadistic creations from the Sponge. SpongeBob’s Host Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, wait, you thought I was being serious with this one? Several other failed spin-offs later, and it would be announced that Nickelodeon will go off the air for good, as ViacomountCBSSkydanceKonamiSiliconValleyIKEA would then later file for bankruptcy. The spin-off rights would eventually go back to the respective SBC members and were re-archived on said site. Even though the answers were abundantly clear, when a few former Nickelodeon executives were asked about what went wrong, they would all say they never understood why their versions of the SBC spin-offs failed. When the SBC members were approached about their experiences working with Nick, they didn’t seem to have so much to say… Jjs: Well, you know what they say in Brooklyn – early to bed, early to catch the worm. ...Or, is it the bagel? JCM: Maybe the real spin-offs were the friends we’ve made along the way. Except Skibidi Toilet Kids, they’re not my friends. Steel: I may have gone too far in a few places… OMJ: I was hoping they’d let me make a show about SpringBoob SquirePin. Wumbo: I’m my own man. Prez: It was okay I guess, but that pesky raven still owes me $100. (Quoth the raven: Nevermore.) After all was said and done, the SBC members have all went back to their own normal lives. Whatever remained of Viacom now can’t help but wonder how a ragtag bunch of netizens from an internet community dedicated to a cartoon about a sea sponge could have such a stranglehold on real life events. But hey...that’s just a theory...A SPIN-OFF THEORY! HELLO, INTERNET!- [MatPat was found and subsequently evacuated from the SBC What If’s… studio.]

And now, the stars of 4Kids will sing the national anthem...