SpongeBob SquarePants’ Nosferatu episode creator explains how it happened

One hundred years ago Nosferatu’s vile villain Count Orlok became an icon when he walked through a doorway, eyes frenzied and claws menacing, to drain his victim’s blood. Just 20 years ago, the exact same person was seen as SpongeBob SquarePants’ little scamp that scared SpongeBob SquarePants. He flicked the Krusty Krab lights on and off.

It’s a great SpongeBobIt’s a joke but also the non sequitur that removes the Vampire from his original movie, and any sense of context. Nosferatu’s Role as pop culture reference SpongeBobThis helped to keep 1922’s film (or not) alive in the public eye. You can find more information at www.as.wikipedia.org SpongeBob writer and storyboard director Jay Lender tells Polygon, that random visual gag in the season 2 episode “Graveyard Shift” was probably the first encounter most of its viewers had with the silent classic.

“Graveyard Shift,” which regularly places in the top 5 in ranked lists of SpongeBob’s best episodes, first aired on September 6, 2002. The 11-minute installment sees SpongeBob and Squidward working the night shift at the Krusty Krab, to the former’s delight and the latter’s dismay. Squidward entertains himself by frightening SpongeBob with a scary story about a “hash-slinging slasher,” but then the mysterious omens he made up about the killer start actually happening, terrifying them both. Fortunately, it turns out that all the signs of his impending arrival have a mundane explanation — except for the flickering lights. In the episode’s final seconds, it’s revealed that the titular vampire from Nosferatu — depicted using a slightly altered and crudely animated still from F.W. Murnau’s 1922 live-action horror classic film, has been turning off the lights as a joke. “Nos-fer-a-tu!” SpongeBob and Squidward say, affectionately, as if they hang out with him all the time. “Nosferatu” smiles. This concludes the episode. We don’t need any more explanation.

Count Orlok wasn’t originally supposed to be the culprit. Lender says that in an earlier draft of the episode, after SpongeBob excitedly lists work tasks he can now do at night (flipping patties, swabbing the bathroom, and burning his hand), there was going to be a fourth joke, where he delivered the mail to Floorboard Harry — a previously unseen, unmentioned creature that apparently just lives underneath the Krusty Krab. Floorboard Harry was then going to flip the light switch at the finale of the episode. Lender provided a couple of Post-It Note sketches with Polygon about Floorboard Harry. But the “at night” joke already fulfilled the comedy rule of threes, so the fourth bit with Floorboard Harry got cut. This meant his appearance at the end wouldn’t be a callback, just a totally random image. It wasn’t quite good enough. Luckily, another, better idea popped into Lender’s head.

Images courtesy of Jay Lender

Lender says that the magazine was his favorite as a kid. Famous Monsters of Filmland. It was well before hundreds of television channels existed, prior to the internet and before large libraries of streaming horror movies. Kids like Lender didn’t really have much opportunity to see old horror movies, but the magazine, which had a fun, tongue-in-cheek tone, could expose them to these films with articles and pictures.

“Stuff would appear in this magazine that I couldn’t track down, but I could be aware of it,” Lender says. “So I could see that [old genre films like] This Island Earth existed, but I couldn’t actually see them unless it showed up on TV.

“They would show a still from Nosferatu. And it was always that still of him standing in the doorway,” Lender recalls. “So my first experience with Orlok and with that image is as this disjointed non sequitur. The image I had in mind when the time came to create a horror replacement non-sequitur was in that same slot of my brain. What’s interesting is that because of SpongeBob, for 20 years, everyone else’s first experience with Orlok came as a weird disjointed non sequitur horror image too.”

That’s the thing about Nosferatu. It’s an innovative, powerful film, but over the past century, it’s become as much a pop-culture artifact as a work of art itself. People who haven’t seen Nosferatu might still know of its existence, or at the very least, be vaguely aware of the gross, rat-looking vampire from that silent film that isn’t Dracula. The 1979 Salem’s LotA miniseries of television programs Nosferatu for its vampire design. Blue Öyster Cult wrote a song about him. Queen and David Bowie used footage from the film in the video for “Under Pressure.” Dungeons & Dragons has a whole type of vampire called a “Nosferatu” in the Monster Manual. Also Shadow of the VampireIt was fictionalized how the movie was made. Nosferatu is a reference as much as it’s a movie itself.

The movie still has an advantage of 80 years. SpongeBob, it’s entirely possible that more people have seen Count Orlok in that episode of SpongeBob You have not seen. Nosferatu. That’s how these things go. Nosferatu is a landmark film full of striking images, but the power of those images (and the decades where it was difficult or even impossible to watch the movie) has ensured that the basic visual idea of “Nosferatu” has become more culturally dominant than the film’s full context is today.

“If it weren’t for the unbelievable reach of SpongeBob as a platform, no one under the age of 30 would ever wanna watch this movie,” Lender says. He explains that it wasn’t until recently that he felt comfortable admitting his part referencing Nosferatu in SpongeBob, but 20 years later, he can’t deny that the gag had an impact.

“I know that this show has a bigger reach than any silent film,” Lender says. He emphasizes how sensational the show is, in case it seems arrogant. SpongeBob squarePantsIt was the first time it was shown. Some 15 million viewers were watching weekly, a number that’s hard to fathom in today’s media landscape, with its splintered audience taking in an overabundance of niche options. “Nothing [today] can have the cultural impact that SpongeBob had when it first came out,” Lender says.

Also, he feels that the sheer size of this audience suggests that he likely peaked with one short reference. “I have to accept that this is it, this is my legacy. It’s almost impossible to imagine anything I could do that would be more noteworthy later on,” Lender says. “I could go out and kill the president right now, and the headline would say ‘Nosferatu Gag Man and Presidential Assassin Jay Lender Died.’”

Now that streaming and YouTube have made it easy to watch so many movies — especially ones in the public domain, like Nosferatu — it’s not a surprise that it’s more seen and appreciated as a film. This year marks its 100th birthday. NosferatuThe original context is perhaps more popular than ever. People are now more interested in movies of old, thanks to technology and perhaps partly because they want to find the original references, which has made Count Orlok a much better memeable character.

Amusingly, Orlok doesn’t have to be non sequitur anymore SpongeBob squarePants. In later episodes and the prequel series, the vampire appeared in a few more times. Kamp Koral: SpongeBob’s Under Years, Kidferatu serves as a camp counselor. “Graveyard Shift’s” random ending is retroactively a continuity joke, which Lender thinks is neat, though he does feel the later returns to the gag “cut the legs out” from the original just a little.

In case you are wondering, SpongeBob’s switch-flicking vampire is called “Nosferatu” and Not Count Orlok because Lender thought the film title was more recognizable, and more importantly, that it sounded better in the sing-songy tone we hear it in at the episode’s end. This is probably the best joke ever. Nosferatu’s ongoing PR, but it has its downsides.

“I have to deal with the trolls who come to me and say, ‘Actually,Name: Orlok.’” Lender says, laughing. “Like, OK. Yes, I do. It was something I had known for 20 years. But thank you for the thought.”

“Graveyard Shift” and much of the SpongeBob SquarepantsPeacock Library and Amazon Prime Video streaming library Nosferatustreaming Tubi is available for free with adsFor subscribers, click here You will be shaken, HooplaAnd Kanopy. It’s widely available for rental on digital platforms like Amazon Vudu.