How SpongeBob SquarePants Has Retconned Sandy’s Backstory

The universe of SpongeBob SquarePants keeps expanding and is now taking over the world of streaming with Kamp Koral: SpongeBob’s Under Years, a prequel series following 10-year-old SpongeBob at summer camp, and which retconned Sandy’s backstory. Created by Stephen Hillenburg, SpongeBob SquarePants premiered on Nickelodeon in 1999 and has been unstoppable ever since, becoming one of the longest-running American animated series as well as the most successful Nicktoon.

SpongeBob SquarePants follows the daily adventures of the title character alongside his closest friends (and a couple of enemies, like Plankton) in the underwater city of Bikini Bottom, as are his neighbor and coworker Squidward Tentacles, his boss Mr. Krabs, and his best friends Patrick Star and Sandy Cheeks. The latter wasn’t a character SpongeBob knew prior to the events of the show, as she was introduced in the second segment of the first episode, titled “Tea at the Treedome”, and she drew a lot of attention as she’s one of the few characters that isn’t a sea animal – instead, Sandy is a squirrel, whose life underwater is made possible thanks to the diving suit she wears and the air-filled glass treedome she lives in.

One good day, SpongeBob was jellyfishing when he stumbled upon a squirrel fighting a clam. SpongeBob tried to save her before the clam ate her, but it ate SpongeBob. The squirrel then saved SpongeBob, and after they defeated the clam, they greeted each other. The squirrel presented herself as Sandy Cheeks, and she and SpongeBob quickly bonded over their martial arts abilities, so she invited him to the treedome for tea and cookies. That was how SpongeBob met Sandy – or at least it was the official story until Kamp Koral: SpongeBob’s Under Years arrived.

The series takes viewers back to when SpongeBob was 10-years-old and attended the summer sleepaway camp Kamp Koral, alongside Patrick …and Sandy. The series features a young Sandy (wearing glasses and braces to show how young she was), proving that she and SpongeBob met many years before the beginning of the main series. This retcon in Sandy’s backstory was teased in The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run, where a flashback showed Sandy and SpongeBob at Kamp Koral, with Sandy sharing her passion for science with him and mentioning she might “live down here in a glass dome with a tree in it”. Back to the main series, it was explained that Sandy comes from Texas and arrived at Bikini Bottom to study sea creatures and their lifestyles, though in season 4 this was changed to Sandy being sent there to come up with groundbreaking inventions, and her trip down the sea was being funded by the company Treedome Enterprises.

Sandy and SpongeBob’s first meeting as retconned by Kamp Koral doesn’t fit with what the main series showed not just because it happened in the first episode but also because SpongeBob didn’t even know what animal she was until he consulted a book, and if they met when they were kids, he would have been well aware of what a squirrel is. The timeline of SpongeBob SquarePants has been messy for a while now, and Sandy’s retconned backstory as seen in Kamp Koral: SpongeBob’s Under Years will only make it messier and more confusing, but it can be somewhat justified by taking the series as another branch of the SpongeBob multiverse.

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Adrienne Tyler
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Adrienne Tyler is a features writer for Screen Rant. She is an Audiovisual Communication graduate who wanted to be a filmmaker, but life had other plans (and it turned out great). Prior to Screen Rant, she wrote for Pop Wrapped, 4 Your Excitement (4YE), and D20Crit, where she was also a regular guest at Netfreaks podcast. She was also a contributor for FanSided’s BamSmackPow and 1428 Elm. Adrienne is very into films and she enjoys a bit of everything: from superhero films to heartbreaking dramas, to low-budget horror films. Every time she manages to commit to a TV show without getting bored, an angel gets its wings.

When she’s not writing, you can find her trying to learn a new language, watching hockey (go Avs!), or wondering what life would have been like had Pushing Daisies, Firefly, and Limitless not been cancelled. Breakfast food is life and coffee is what makes the world go round.

Guillermo del Toro said “hi” to her once. It was great.

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