Sheldon plankton (spongebob)

Plankton is the nemesis and the former best friend of Mr. Krabs. He operates the Chum Bucket, located directly across the street from Krabs' restaurant, the Krusty Krab. The Chum Bucket primarily sells chum (bait consisting of fish parts), which is considered mostly inedible by the other characters. As a result, his restaurant is a commercial failure. Plankton's primary goal in the series is to put Krabs out of business and secure a monopoly on the fast food industry. His villainous efforts to do this are widely known within the show; fellow character Squidward Tentacles refers to Plankton as "the most hated thing in Bikini Bottom".
A running gag throughout the series is the fact that Plankton is smaller than the other regular characters; he is easily stepped on and sent flying back to the Chum Bucket with a mere flick of the finger. His small size has led him to develop a Napoleon complex, which is occasionally manifested as a desire for global domination. He is a skillful inventor and regularly builds machines, both to help him in his plots, and for his own personal gain. Although he uses his intellect for evil, Plankton did not start out as a villainous scientist; he built Karen, his first invention, when he was friends with Mr. Krabs in grade school.
Plankton's roles are not exclusively antagonistic. In The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, Plankton discards his enmity for SpongeBob and works with him towards a common goal. The movie has been described by The Guardian as a "buddy film" between Plankton and SpongeBob. Series creator Stephen Hillenburg considers Plankton "more of a caricature of a villain" than a truly evil character.
Development
When SpongeBob SquarePants premiered, Plankton was not part of the series' main cast. Plankton's voice actor, Mr. Lawrence, has stated that after producing Plankton's debut episode in the late 1990s, creator Stephen Hillenburg was unsure if he would continue to use the character. After recording it, Hillenburg was noncommittal, telling Lawrence: "We'll probably do another next year," Lawrence summarized Plankton's origins in 2015, saying that he "was only supposed to be in one or two episodes, but I was a writer on the show and I really liked this character". Following his first voice recording as Plankton, Lawrence drafted some of his own ideas for the character and passed them to Hillenburg. From then on, Plankton began to appear more often. Lawrence considers the third season the first in which Plankton is a main character. Since then, multiple writers have written for Plankton without Lawrence's involvement, including the teams of writers responsible for Plankton's starring roles in both SpongeBob films. Lawrence continues to write Plankton episodes, having said in 2015, "I'm not just his voice. I get to create how the character is written and how he evolves over time." The suit functioned as a way to increase Plankton's presence, as one of Hillenburg's original intentions was for the character to be too small to see without a magnifying glass. As the series progressed, the animators enlarged Plankton's size, feeling that being microscopic was "not conducive to him interacting with other characters".<ref name="Lawrence2015" />

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