Hip to be square: SpongeBob SquarePants tidbits

Here are some little-known facts about the origin of a cartoon cult icon:

The birth of SpongeBob: The movie's director and "SpongeBob" creator Stephen Hillenburg was a former marine-science teacher who wanted to do a sea cartoon. "I really wanted to do something about one character, based on an innocent who is surrounded by more cynical beings. ... A sort of awkward, nerdy, goofball, oddball," he said.

Fish seemed too ordinary, so he started thinking about a sponge. "I drew these natural sponges for a while and gave them googly eyes and it didn't come together until I drew a sink sponge one day. I thought, 'This is the guy.' " He's the square peg, literally, in this world of animals."

Helium voice: Tom Kenny, who supplies SpongeBob's high, nasal voice, was a stand-up comic who worked with Hillenburg on the 1993 cartoon series "Rocko's Modern World." When "SpongeBob" started in 1999, Hillenburg remembered an obscure character Kenny did years earlier and envisioned it as the voice of his weird sea hero.

"It was in one episode in a crowd scene," Kenny recalled. " ... just a crowd of people mumbling and grumbling. Steve remembered I had done this squeaky, helium-voiced elf guy. Just a total throwaway voice."

Patrick the starfish: Bill Fagerbakke, best known as Dauber from TV's "Coach," has a naturally deep voice but has to swallow it further to play SpongeBob's dopey starfish friend, Patrick. The result, he said, is an audible version of the fat/skinny look of comedy teams like Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello — Patrick is the immense rumbler and SpongeBob is the high-pitched whiner.

Why adults like SpongeBob: "It's about keeping your kid-nature in life and not totally becoming a curmudgeon," Hillenburg said. "As we get older it gets harder to do that."

"SpongeBob's job is to just be positive and think that every day is going to be the best day ever," Kenny added. "The people around him either find that delightful or ... just irritating."