i always thought they were stylized plants, and you could say them moving and stuff is just simple cartoon logic (since it's common for cartoons to make inanimate objects seem alive)
My theory is that they are algal blooms. Algae form amorphous, blobby shapes, float through the water near the surface, come in many colors, and are alive. They aren't solid but they only appear solid in a few specific gags and, well, Spongebob is Spongebob.
what the Flowers actually are is just random details Hillenburg put in so the backgrounds weren't just blue gradients, SPF-129 doesn't have them cuz the background is already detailed enough
Exactly my thinking. Or they may just not be visible because of how foggy the setting in the past is in sb-129. It reminded me of murky primordial soup
The flowers are simply another species of sentient sea life living in the Bikini Bottom area. Instead of living on the ocean floor like the other Bikini Bottomites, they live nearer to the surface.
my theory, if you look at 5:11 you can see the polyp (coral like flowers on the bottom), they have the same shape (and sometimes color) like the flowers in the "sky". Personally I think they are like a plankton (not THE Plankton) but in a similar life stage, like how jellyfish reproduce IRL.
I always thought they were added mainly for artistic reasons- breaking up spaces in the backgrounds that would otherwise be large voids of blue also early spongebob backgrounds were often much more abstract than the backgrounds have become in more recent seasons. if you look around in old episodes, you'll often notice highly stylized objects. I'd say that the flowers are one of the last surviving holdovers from that era, mainly because you can't get rid of them without greatly changing the look of outdoor spaces in spongebob
Boat person to clarify, Typically you don't want your Engine on when trying not to disturb fish, that would explain why they seem to gather when the "Flowers" aren't spinning, and each scene transition is a bubble screen, so that could be the boats spinning up and "Scaring all the fish away" so to speak
Spongebobtheory: Heres my fun and interesting theory about flowers Obnoxious Squidwards who hate fun: Its just a stylistic choice, its just a random detail, it has no meaning, stop overthinking the backgrounds!
Really, the best explanation is that the studio never attached any special meaning to them. They're there purely to make the skies more visually interesting, and not just a blue field. Sometimes they'll utilize them for the occasional gag, but beyond that, they only serve an aesthetic purpose. Theorycrafting is great and all, and I can respect the fun in it. But sometimes you really do just need to accept that this show just didn't have the Coraline-level attention to detail that we often assign to it for these theories. Things are going to be inconsistent and strange for their own sake.
Pretty sure its alge taking the form of an orchid/hibiscus flower given the fact that its the pacific ocean that spongebob takes place in for the majority of the series. Hibiscus flowers are also popular when it comes to decorating. The flowers are nothing more than a stylized decoration for the background itself.
Looks at the hundred year old dried-out flower smashed between the pages of my grandma's diary >> suuure lets call 'that' alive I can haz 2 free likes now 👁.
Spongebob is a weird show, but yet it works. So many mysteries, theories, and secrets. Also their was a theory about the fishes houses, like it being part of an engine, IDK 😅. Also, keep up the good work 👏.
@@livilee6337 it would make sense considering most houses in Bikini Bottom come from the surface, but how did they get there? Maybe I should make a vid about it
I used to subscribe to the theory of the flowers being oil spills until I learned about siphonophores. Now I think they’re massive siphonophore colonies that happen to naturally come into the shape of flowers. This could explain why Squidward and Spongebob had them in a garden and around the house, they’re just smaller colonies that they attached to the ground in a manner resembling flower beds. As for the time travel episode, it’s possible that the siphonophores either hadn’t evolved to float high up in the shape of flowers yet or they simply didn’t live in that part of the ocean. Also, I think we need to discredit the shot where one opens up in the sky like a door entirely, as that’s obviously just an absurdist gag and therefore doesn’t count as evidence of anything.
I think they are Siphonophores that float in water , it's an animal , of course, they do not look like flowers, but this is the closest we have in terms of similarity
i like the idea that they're just regular flowers but they're big enough that they can float around in the water! think cherry blossom petals falling in the spring, but year round
There is a new episode that asks this question and it’s just staring at the sky for 11 minutes straight without any cuts or pans. With occasional screams of Spongebkb.
Look up Siphonophores. They're jellyfish like colonial organisms that float through the sea and can come in different colors. Quite possible the flowers are just a type of Siphonophore, the biggest issue being Siphonophores are ancient creature and would've been present in the past.
In The Chimps, Sandy refers to them as the "flowers up above", which implies to me that they're just flowers. The ocean is full of strange plants, and they probably exist to give that impression, without overcrowding the scene the way a kelp forest would
I always had my own theory that they were jellyfish patterns, as flower-like patterns similar to the flower clouds do appear on some jellyfish species. Maybe Stephen just based them off that and made them the sea equivalent of clouds, without putting much thought into what they actually were. The cloud falling when it's hit by a car and the flowers being sentient are probably just one off visual gags, but they can definitely lead on to what they actually are if they do have a purpose or any "lore" of sorts.
@@camelCaseHandle I wasn't particularly knowledgeable in marine biology when I was younger, but that's a unique way of seeing this, perhaps the smaller ones on the ground are made from the ones SpongeBob and Patrick catch
I thought the same as I think I once saw one of those! (The memory is a bit fuzzy so i'm not sure if I saw them irl or on tv, although I've found some jellyfish in the shallow water (they were harmless, probably dead)
I think they could be there that there actually flowers be controlled by people so when sponge out of water came out the citizens broke the strings holding them and in the future they get rid of humans so they aren’t there
so you're suggesting that the sky flowers are bait for larger fish, just like the hooks? interesting...that would also explain why they fall when hit, like their line got severed from the fishing rod they're attached to. more likely, though, they could also be special submerged buoys of sorts since there aren't always fishermen on the Bikini Atoll, and them getting struck and falling could be them getting torn and filled with water, causing them to sink.
The reason I believe the flowers weren't in the time travel episode was because it was only shortly after the bomb tests, and as spongebob and others were still unevolved cavemen, I believe the flowers hadn't evolved that vast yet, or the oil spills haven't organised yet, or were covered by other substances.
This is definitely one of those moments of just trying way too hard to look at something silly and stylized as something greater. I mean, its fun, and they were always kinda making me ask a bit about them. But I'm quite fine with just "clouds in fish terms", and disregarding weird nonsense of the episodes of a show that are going on well past its prime and running out of ideas to include something like a face-licking cloud under water.
pretty sure those are algael blooms. There's no genuine reason to disprove of this, and it vibes with hillenberg's background as both a marine biologist and a conservationist to be less goofy, they were put there to spice up the background, but probably do in fact represent surface sea life. Support includes their art style, their nonsentience (one episode with a bollywood esque song sequence dosnt strike me as enough evidence to prove their actual sentience) and their reference as clouds, a
I think the flowers are alive too, but not actual people like the time they sang or messed with a plane. I think they're just inanimate sea plants which explains why Squidward has a garden of small ones.
Artist: I added them because it looked pretty. English teacher: it's a symbol of existential dread and the desire to be reborn. The details are an homage to the death of his first childhood pet. Same vibes.
I always thought they were jellyfish, because jellyfish in the beach i live near have similar patterns on them, and when they're in the water it's hard to see the transparent parts so you can only see the pattern unless you look closely. Edit: They're called moon jellyfish
I think they're phytoplankton tbh. That's the easiest solution if you think about it. And we know size aint a problem when it comes to that theory because Plankton, who should be microscopic, is just short in comparison to everyone else. There's no reason the flowers couldn't be... Yk. Marine plants that get carried by underwater currents.
I always thought that the flowers were just flowers floating in the water. The flowers that stick to the ground are just another type of flower. The ones in the sky are from trees and just happened to fall off, but the ones underwater grew naturally there. :>
To the people saying "it's just an art style/artistic choice" OF COURSE IT IS. Isn't it obvious by the title of the video that the focus is more on how the flowers could be explained in-universe.
The fact that they are also growing on spongebob's house is a pretty strong evidence for them being just plants or algea floating around. The obvious flower shape also supports this.
The flowers are a detail to make the sky look prettier, they function as clouds but they can easily be seen doing random stuff like falling since spongebob isnt a logic-based series, for me, they resemble the common flower pattern seen in beach-y shirts
Theyre... Flowers. Theyre just a kind of sea plant that the show abstracts into being very simple. Them moving and interacting is- Because it's a cartoon that often breaks its internal logic.
I liked theory 4 the most. It takes everything into account including the moments when they’re alive. As someone who’s making a au with a good explanation for everything I am personally adopting this theory into my au’s canon. Now I have to figure out what species these flowers could be.
I think the flowers are algae or something like that. As for Sb-129, the algae are actually really dominating in that era, covering the entire "sky"/ocean surface with a thick layer of green, they only later evolved into flower shaped blobs
In the official SpongeBob mobile game, SpongeBob SquarePants: Adventures in a jam , the flowers in the water sky are refered to as "flower clouds". That game is full of official references from lots of episodes so maybe that would help idk I just wanted to throw that out there
I just like the boat propellor theory tbh, didn't think of it but it works if it's not just an abstract flower design made to stand out then i think it's boat propellors naturally spongebob would just call them clouds because like, that's not a boat propellor to him, a boat propellor is on the back of the kind of boat that he would (try and fail to) drive!
some kind of animal closely related to jellyfish but usually unable to swim on their own and are instead filter feeders that just float as the current pushes them around
I definitely think your theory of them being alive makes the most sense. I wonder if Stephen Hillenburg was making some kind of vague reference to some kinda seaweed or sea anemone or something
To add to theory 2. Its said that the flowers are oil spills. But they're not visible during the past to radiate the creatures. However it could be that the water is just that saturated with oils and chemicals. That can explain why the whole sky is dark and murky. By present time, the chemicals are diluted enough to only be faint traces.
The flowers are tunicates, underwater colonies of microscopic animals called siphonophores. They are quite possibly the most simple example of life in the ocean
I recently collected sand dollars for the first time in my life. The "test" has an uncanny resemblance to the flowers... I think they are a mutated version that no longer reside as bottom dwellers.
I still subscribe to the Bikini Atoll theory for this one. The reason why there's no flowers in the sky in the past is because the effects of the bomb are still prevalent. Once the bombs affects die down it leaves substance behind in the atmosphere as a marker of what happened.
What if there’s a big flower garden out there in bikini bottom. And they just reflect from the ground, onto the water/sky. It’s a joke obv, but it’s fun to think
Theory four could also kinda go along with the radiation theory, they might've just took longer than other things to mutate, since not everything would've mutated at the same time
What I think about the flowers clouds is. The clouds in the sky reflects the underwater bikini bottom. The clouds reflect a flower underwater so that’s why they are called (flower clouds)
i have another reason as to why the 2nd theory wouldn’t make sense, but it’s a bit of a stretch. it’s simply the fact that from what i can remember, patchy the pirate has visited that location in the show before, and while he’s only more of a comic relief side character that appears every now and then and also from what i can remember hasn’t actually touched the water, one would think it would’ve affected him somehow.
maybe the flowers are those weird plant looking animals that just wiggle a bunch as they move around, cant remember for the life of me what theyre called but i know theyre distantly related to starfish
I always thought they are just some Kind of Algae. 3:33 lets me think they might also be some Kind of Animal. Maybe something like a Siphonophore, which can have many different Shapes and Sizes
Gng just because I referred to them as flowers doesn't mean they are I just didn't know what else to call them 😭🙏
I assumed the flowers are a form of algie like plant and if I am right, algie has many forms and is a living plant.
The Discord Shop is having a Spongebob collab rn and they're calling it Flower Clouds.
i always thought they were stylized plants, and you could say them moving and stuff is just simple cartoon logic (since it's common for cartoons to make inanimate objects seem alive)
brov let him vibe ;-;
@@ASH-mf1ul ?
my thoughts exactly, but i really do like the radioactive/oil theory
@@SatiricalSheep floating plants
@@borntoclimb7116 yea kinda, like plants that are just light enought to float on the water but not go to the surface
I have a theory that the flowers in the sky could be algae, phytoplankton or cyanobacteria.
I was going to say this, glad someone else did too.
I’d say they’re probably some kind of cnidarian like a jellyfish or siphonophore
Literal Alega Blooms.
@@cat21860 Algae blooms arent large singular objects
@@Bogsnail And sea-sponges aren't square. It works in cartoon logic.
The flower cloud's design just looks so 70's.
My theory is that they are algal blooms. Algae form amorphous, blobby shapes, float through the water near the surface, come in many colors, and are alive. They aren't solid but they only appear solid in a few specific gags and, well, Spongebob is Spongebob.
I also thought of that
Why cant stylistic choices just be stylistic choices? They’re meant to look like designs seen on those Hawaiian shirts
Shhh.... Dont be a kill joy like Squidward and use your 🌈 I M A G I N A T I O N 🌈 to have some F.U.N.
Nope. They are actually atomic blasts seen from every atom of a radnom cat. Nice try, though.
😂 Jk.
Because it's just a fun thing to think about. just because the artist didn't put any meaning on an object doesn't mean we can't make one
Hawaiian shirts have flowers/plants on them... or are you referring to tie dye shirts 🤔
@@GenJuhru no
what the Flowers actually are is just random details Hillenburg put in so the backgrounds weren't just blue gradients, SPF-129 doesn't have them cuz the background is already detailed enough
Exactly my thinking. Or they may just not be visible because of how foggy the setting in the past is in sb-129. It reminded me of murky primordial soup
@@JessScreams mmmm soup
ah yes SPF-129
@@JacobFrancisco-on3qk i burn very easily
Nah, that’s boring. He’s a marine biologists he wouldn’t do that
Ifs just a floral design to make it look tropical.
This is the most likely explanation.
Maybe there’s no flower clouds in sb-129 because of the fog and maybe the sky is muddied up
Real thing
The flowers are simply another species of sentient sea life living in the Bikini Bottom area. Instead of living on the ocean floor like the other Bikini Bottomites, they live nearer to the surface.
Or they are just Clouds underwater, like the water underwater
Nope, water underwater is a thing
Its called extremely salty saltwater. Also known as brinepools
@@Echo_the_half_glitchwhat does that have to do with this comment
@@Echo_the_half_glitch that has nothing to do with the original comment
Siphonophores
I like this one. Siphonophores are awesome
I was thinking crinoids, personally. Or maybe comb jellies
my theory, if you look at 5:11 you can see the polyp (coral like flowers on the bottom), they have the same shape (and sometimes color) like the flowers in the "sky". Personally I think they are like a plankton (not THE Plankton) but in a similar life stage, like how jellyfish reproduce IRL.
I think it's some kind of an amoeba that in real life actually looks similar and it's in the sky to make it look not bland
I thought that was coral for some reason
I thought they were clouds when I was a kid
@@spongebobtheorythey act like clouds so I could see why you think that
Also why does this comment also have 200+ likes?
@@RayyanChawla-b4o "the clouds look like flowers" -spongebob
@@scmbgoogle7790 They Do But It Looks a lot like Coral To Me
I always thought they were added mainly for artistic reasons- breaking up spaces in the backgrounds that would otherwise be large voids of blue
also early spongebob backgrounds were often much more abstract than the backgrounds have become in more recent seasons. if you look around in old episodes, you'll often notice highly stylized objects.
I'd say that the flowers are one of the last surviving holdovers from that era, mainly because you can't get rid of them without greatly changing the look of outdoor spaces in spongebob
Boat person to clarify, Typically you don't want your Engine on when trying not to disturb fish, that would explain why they seem to gather when the "Flowers" aren't spinning, and each scene transition is a bubble screen, so that could be the boats spinning up and "Scaring all the fish away" so to speak
1:32 is just a cartoon gag you're taking it too seriously
In sandys 'i wanna go home' song she calls them flowers
Spongebobtheory: Heres my fun and interesting theory about flowers
Obnoxious Squidwards who hate fun: Its just a stylistic choice, its just a random detail, it has no meaning, stop overthinking the backgrounds!
Dudes over here asking the real questions
Really, the best explanation is that the studio never attached any special meaning to them. They're there purely to make the skies more visually interesting, and not just a blue field. Sometimes they'll utilize them for the occasional gag, but beyond that, they only serve an aesthetic purpose.
Theorycrafting is great and all, and I can respect the fun in it. But sometimes you really do just need to accept that this show just didn't have the Coraline-level attention to detail that we often assign to it for these theories. Things are going to be inconsistent and strange for their own sake.
Pretty sure its alge taking the form of an orchid/hibiscus flower given the fact that its the pacific ocean that spongebob takes place in for the majority of the series. Hibiscus flowers are also popular when it comes to decorating. The flowers are nothing more than a stylized decoration for the background itself.
I always thought that these were some abstract representation of various sea organisms, like cnidarians, cnethophors, or plankton, etc.
the flowers moving idepentdantly are just gags
No shit the flowers are alive. Most flowers are alive! That's kinda how they're made.
Ye but they're not flowers also for a flower to be alive it needs a stem which reaches the soil
@@spongebobtheory all plants, stemmed or not, are alive
Looks at the hundred year old dried-out flower smashed between the pages of my grandma's diary >> suuure lets call 'that' alive
I can haz 2 free likes now 👁.
@@Biaanca5036 Here is your 2nd like! :)
I think he meant a sentient living creature
I think the reason why the flower clouds were not in the past of the episode "SB-129" was due to how foggy the sky was at that moment lol.
Spongebob is a weird show, but yet it works. So many mysteries, theories, and secrets. Also their was a theory about the fishes houses, like it being part of an engine, IDK 😅. Also, keep up the good work 👏.
@@PandaPan1610 appreciate it
A lot of the tall buildings in bikini bottom are car mufflers!
@@livilee6337 it would make sense considering most houses in Bikini Bottom come from the surface, but how did they get there? Maybe I should make a vid about it
Fun fact: those flower clouds also appeared in 2 episodes of the grim adventures of billy and mandy
I used to subscribe to the theory of the flowers being oil spills until I learned about siphonophores. Now I think they’re massive siphonophore colonies that happen to naturally come into the shape of flowers. This could explain why Squidward and Spongebob had them in a garden and around the house, they’re just smaller colonies that they attached to the ground in a manner resembling flower beds. As for the time travel episode, it’s possible that the siphonophores either hadn’t evolved to float high up in the shape of flowers yet or they simply didn’t live in that part of the ocean. Also, I think we need to discredit the shot where one opens up in the sky like a door entirely, as that’s obviously just an absurdist gag and therefore doesn’t count as evidence of anything.
Yes we are, in the episode where sandy gets homesick, she sings about the "flowers up above".
I think they are Siphonophores that float in water , it's an animal , of course, they do not look like flowers, but this is the closest we have in terms of similarity
Regarding the shape, I can say that although they are not in the shape of a flower in real life, sea sponges are not square either.
i like the idea that they're just regular flowers but they're big enough that they can float around in the water! think cherry blossom petals falling in the spring, but year round
I mean it's a cartoon, anything can happen to the flowers in the sky.
True, this could just be one of them
For all I know someone could be living inside them or something
It could also just be to keep things in theme with the rest of the tropical island theme.
There is a new episode that asks this question and it’s just staring at the sky for 11 minutes straight without any cuts or pans. With occasional screams of Spongebkb.
Fr?
Me when i spread misinformation😈
@@YeomasBros.2008 it’s a joke comment.
That's a documentary 😭😭😭
Look up Siphonophores. They're jellyfish like colonial organisms that float through the sea and can come in different colors. Quite possible the flowers are just a type of Siphonophore, the biggest issue being Siphonophores are ancient creature and would've been present in the past.
Flowers that behave like clouds?
That’s always how I looked at it
It escalated quickly....
From the propeller to a nuclear explosion
They look very similar to an animal known as a swimming crinoid. The flowers in squidwards garden could be a normal non-swimming crinoid
In The Chimps, Sandy refers to them as the "flowers up above", which implies to me that they're just flowers. The ocean is full of strange plants, and they probably exist to give that impression, without overcrowding the scene the way a kelp forest would
I always had my own theory that they were jellyfish patterns, as flower-like patterns similar to the flower clouds do appear on some jellyfish species.
Maybe Stephen just based them off that and made them the sea equivalent of clouds, without putting much thought into what they actually were.
The cloud falling when it's hit by a car and the flowers being sentient are probably just one off visual gags, but they can definitely lead on to what they actually are if they do have a purpose or any "lore" of sorts.
@@camelCaseHandle I wasn't particularly knowledgeable in marine biology when I was younger, but that's a unique way of seeing this, perhaps the smaller ones on the ground are made from the ones SpongeBob and Patrick catch
I thought the same as I think I once saw one of those! (The memory is a bit fuzzy so i'm not sure if I saw them irl or on tv, although I've found some jellyfish in the shallow water (they were harmless, probably dead)
I think they could be there that there actually flowers be controlled by people so when sponge out of water came out the citizens broke the strings holding them and in the future they get rid of humans so they aren’t there
That's an interesting theory
Godzilla had a stroke trying to read this and died
so you're suggesting that the sky flowers are bait for larger fish, just like the hooks? interesting...that would also explain why they fall when hit, like their line got severed from the fishing rod they're attached to.
more likely, though, they could also be special submerged buoys of sorts since there aren't always fishermen on the Bikini Atoll, and them getting struck and falling could be them getting torn and filled with water, causing them to sink.
I always thought that the flowers in the sky in SpongeBob were just the flowers that fell into the ocean
The reason I believe the flowers weren't in the time travel episode was because it was only shortly after the bomb tests, and as spongebob and others were still unevolved cavemen, I believe the flowers hadn't evolved that vast yet, or the oil spills haven't organised yet, or were covered by other substances.
This is definitely one of those moments of just trying way too hard to look at something silly and stylized as something greater. I mean, its fun, and they were always kinda making me ask a bit about them. But I'm quite fine with just "clouds in fish terms", and disregarding weird nonsense of the episodes of a show that are going on well past its prime and running out of ideas to include something like a face-licking cloud under water.
Bruh they are just shiny objects that float near the surface
I just think they are weird sentient algae
I always thought they were floating patches of seaweed. Makes the most sense to me.
I though it was just algae, which would explain why they are alive
pretty sure those are algael blooms. There's no genuine reason to disprove of this, and it vibes with hillenberg's background as both a marine biologist and a conservationist
to be less goofy, they were put there to spice up the background, but probably do in fact represent surface sea life. Support includes their art style, their nonsentience (one episode with a bollywood esque song sequence dosnt strike me as enough evidence to prove their actual sentience) and their reference as clouds, a
i thought, it was the color of oil from the oilspill. u know? the rainbow color in the oil 🥲
I think the flowers are alive too, but not actual people like the time they sang or messed with a plane. I think they're just inanimate sea plants which explains why Squidward has a garden of small ones.
Artist: I added them because it looked pretty.
English teacher: it's a symbol of existential dread and the desire to be reborn. The details are an homage to the death of his first childhood pet.
Same vibes.
I always thought they were jellyfish, because jellyfish in the beach i live near have similar patterns on them, and when they're in the water it's hard to see the transparent parts so you can only see the pattern unless you look closely.
Edit: They're called moon jellyfish
I just think they are flowers that float on the water surface
Finaly...THE QUESTION I HAD OVER 9 YEARS.
Siphonophores... I thought they were siphonophores, I really liked Animal Planet as a kid.
0:40 The sky is just foggy...
Fr
My theory is, they didnt want the sky to be empty and didnt know what to put on there so they drawn flowers
I think they're phytoplankton tbh. That's the easiest solution if you think about it. And we know size aint a problem when it comes to that theory because Plankton, who should be microscopic, is just short in comparison to everyone else. There's no reason the flowers couldn't be... Yk. Marine plants that get carried by underwater currents.
I always thought that the flowers were just flowers floating in the water. The flowers that stick to the ground are just another type of flower. The ones in the sky are from trees and just happened to fall off, but the ones underwater grew naturally there. :>
In my opinion they are just clouds underwater but the flowers looks more plausible. I like the boat propeller theory.
To the people saying "it's just an art style/artistic choice"
OF COURSE IT IS. Isn't it obvious by the title of the video that the focus is more on how the flowers could be explained in-universe.
The fact that they are also growing on spongebob's house is a pretty strong evidence for them being just plants or algea floating around. The obvious flower shape also supports this.
Additionally in Theory 2 it makes sense why most of fishes explodes like Squidward exploded twice and other fish exploded after Mystery kicked him.
When I was little I always thought there were just flowers floating on the surface of the water that the sea creatures could see.
hear me out, the flowers are... flowers, literally just flowers
The flowers are a detail to make the sky look prettier, they function as clouds but they can easily be seen doing random stuff like falling since spongebob isnt a logic-based series, for me, they resemble the common flower pattern seen in beach-y shirts
Theyre... Flowers. Theyre just a kind of sea plant that the show abstracts into being very simple. Them moving and interacting is- Because it's a cartoon that often breaks its internal logic.
I liked theory 4 the most. It takes everything into account including the moments when they’re alive. As someone who’s making a au with a good explanation for everything I am personally adopting this theory into my au’s canon. Now I have to figure out what species these flowers could be.
I think the flowers are algae or something like that. As for Sb-129, the algae are actually really dominating in that era, covering the entire "sky"/ocean surface with a thick layer of green, they only later evolved into flower shaped blobs
The video starts here: 0:16
You have to have absolutely no attention span to be skipping 16 seconds 😭
Bros attention span is COOKED
no it starts here 0:00
Amazing theory! You just got yourself a new subscriber
In the official SpongeBob mobile game, SpongeBob SquarePants: Adventures in a jam , the flowers in the water sky are refered to as "flower clouds". That game is full of official references from lots of episodes so maybe that would help idk I just wanted to throw that out there
I just like the boat propellor theory tbh, didn't think of it but it works
if it's not just an abstract flower design made to stand out then i think it's boat propellors
naturally spongebob would just call them clouds because like, that's not a boat propellor to him, a boat propellor is on the back of the kind of boat that he would (try and fail to) drive!
some kind of animal closely related to jellyfish but usually unable to swim on their own and are instead filter feeders that just float as the current pushes them around
I definitely think your theory of them being alive makes the most sense. I wonder if Stephen Hillenburg was making some kind of vague reference to some kinda seaweed or sea anemone or something
Since they are underwater, those flowers are- flowers that grew big and floated up the bigger they grew
Where in SpongeBob's House is the library??: Well you see Bikini Bottom of actually Bikini Atoll and the fish are mutated.
Makes sense to me
The flowers are just a decoration added by the animators. There’s absolutely no meaning behind them.
"They all look like flowers SpongeBob. All the time."
To add to theory 2. Its said that the flowers are oil spills. But they're not visible during the past to radiate the creatures. However it could be that the water is just that saturated with oils and chemicals. That can explain why the whole sky is dark and murky. By present time, the chemicals are diluted enough to only be faint traces.
Look up moon jellyfish. Pretty sure they're those.
The flowers are tunicates, underwater colonies of microscopic animals called siphonophores. They are quite possibly the most simple example of life in the ocean
I recently collected sand dollars for the first time in my life. The "test" has an uncanny resemblance to the flowers... I think they are a mutated version that no longer reside as bottom dwellers.
I still subscribe to the Bikini Atoll theory for this one. The reason why there's no flowers in the sky in the past is because the effects of the bomb are still prevalent. Once the bombs affects die down it leaves substance behind in the atmosphere as a marker of what happened.
What if there’s a big flower garden out there in bikini bottom. And they just reflect from the ground, onto the water/sky. It’s a joke obv, but it’s fun to think
They’re starfish, wait, no , they could be a super duper ultra stylized anomonie
Flowers are solid objects too...and, flowers are alive. So they could still be flowers in the show. Or some other water plant.
I always thought of them as corals
I think it’s just cartoon logic, same as SpongeBob drinking a glass of water while also being under the water or bubbles being sentient
Theory four could also kinda go along with the radiation theory, they might've just took longer than other things to mutate, since not everything would've mutated at the same time
"The flowers are alive!"
Plants: Am I a joke to you??
Well the houses are car mufflers so maybe the flowers in sky are the emitted gases?
I've always thought they were just jellyfish. Jellyfish have soo many different breeds
What I think about the flowers clouds is. The clouds in the sky reflects the underwater bikini bottom. The clouds reflect a flower underwater so that’s why they are called (flower clouds)
i have another reason as to why the 2nd theory wouldn’t make sense, but it’s a bit of a stretch.
it’s simply the fact that from what i can remember, patchy the pirate has visited that location in the show before, and while he’s only more of a comic relief side character that appears every now and then and also from what i can remember hasn’t actually touched the water, one would think it would’ve affected him somehow.
They are massive unicellular organisms meant to evoke the Nickolodeon Slime imagery
maybe the flowers are those weird plant looking animals that just wiggle a bunch as they move around, cant remember for the life of me what theyre called but i know theyre distantly related to starfish
I always thought they are just some Kind of Algae.
3:33 lets me think they might also be some Kind of Animal. Maybe something like a Siphonophore, which can have many different Shapes and Sizes