Spongebob Cops

Submission 40,980

Part of a series on SpongeBob SquarePants. [View Related Entries]

About

Spongebob Cops refers to a reaction image that grew popular on Reddit in 2017. It features the recurring police characters from Spongebob Squarepants bursting into a home, and is used in response to scenarios where a person needs to be chastised.

Origin

On May 12th, 2001, the Spongebob Squarepants episode "The Smoking Peanut" premiered in the United States. In the episode, SpongeBob is confronted by policemen who question him on an incident at the Bikini Bottom Zoo.

On June 6th, 2017, Redditor Baglez^[1] posted the first use of the image to /r/dankmemes, captioned "when someone posts a one-month old meme." The post gained over 2,600 points (shown below).

Spread

The image was then used on dozens more posts on the subreddit. On the same day, the template image was posted to /r/MemeEconomy by fybatkombat,^[2] where it gained over 7,400 points. This led to more posts on that subreddit using different screenshots of the police, while on /r/dankmemes, most of the posts used the template image. One of the most popular variations on /r/MemeEconomy, posted by TrendingMemes,^[3] gained over 130 points (shown below, left). On /r/dankmemes, one of the most popular variations was posted by TachankaTheGod,^[4] gaining over 660 points (shown below, right).