Hello Kitty Is Not a Cat and We're Not OK
He lives in a pineapple under the sea. Absorbent and yellow and porous is he.
But while SpongeBob SquarePants is, in fact, very much a sponge that wears square pants, all is not as it seems in Bikini Bottom.
"When I created SpongeBob, I took a lot of creative license," Stephen Hillenburg admitted in a 2005 video with French oceanographic explorer Jean-Michel Cousteau of dreaming up the beloved Nickelodeon series. "A main character just staying in one place that looks like a blob isn't very exciting to watch."
Still, he continued, "I always think of SpongeBob as being a real sponge, he's just square." (Also his charming underwater town is inspired by a very real atoll in the Pacific Ocean that the United States used to test nuclear weapons during the Cold War era.)
As for SpongeBob's Krusty Krab coworker and grumpy next door neighbor Squidward, well, despite what the name might suggest, he's not a squid.
"I like the octopus for this character because they have a large bulbous head," writer, producer and marine science educator Hillenburg explained in the video. "And Squidward thinks he's an intellectual, so of course he's going to have a large bulbous head."
As for the fact that he only has six limbs, noted Hillenburg, "It was really just simpler for animation to draw him with six legs instead of eight."
Mind blown? We get it.
But if more nautical nonsense be something you wish, we're here to help. After learning that Hello Kitty isn't actually a cat, nor is Goofy really a dog (though he is a canine), we dove deep into the Internet to uncover some more shocking facts about your favorite animated characters.
For the latest breaking news updates, click here to download the E! News App