Squidward Tentacles

"Too bad SpongeBob's not here to enjoy SpongeBob not being here."

- Squidward in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie "Everyone's a critic."

- Squidward

"Why must every eleven minutes of my life be filled with misery?!"

- Squidward Tentacles's most famous quote.

"In case you've forgotten, here's how things work. I order the food, you cook the food, the customer gets the food. We do that for forty years and then we die. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me, what do you say?"

- Squidward's famous speech to Spongebob from "My Pretty Seahorse".

Squidward Tentacles (born October 9, 1972) is one of the two tritagonists and the one of the anti-heroes (in some episodes antagonist) of the animated series SpongeBob SquarePants. He is an offbeat neighbor of SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Star, as well as the rude, disloyal and lazy cashier of the Krusty Krab restaurant. Despite this, he is also quite sympathetic, of course as his life is little more than a dismal failure, and he is constantly pushed to the brink of insanity by his mischievous neighbours. SpongeBob and Patrick consider Squidward to be their friend, but this feeling is not mutual. Squidward also has a passion and interest in reading, arts, and music, and is very fond of playing the clarinet, though no one considers him to be very good at it, the same for his artwork. Although he hates him with a passion, Squidward usually does show a side of kindness and compassion for SpongeBob at times and even respects him. He is rivals with another octopus named Squilliam Fancyson.

He is voiced by Rodger Bumpass who is best known for voicing as Professor Membrane.

Biography
Squidward Q. Tentacles was born to Mr. and Mrs. Tentacles.

During Squidward's childhood, he always had to sit near the garbage cans at lunch, as he wasn't known as a friend by many people, as revealed in the episode "Boating Buddies."

In 1998 or January 1999, he became part of the Krusty Krab along with Jim and later, after Jim had quit, with a fry cook whose name is yet to be revealed. One day, Squidward was gardening when suddenly, a pineapple from a boat above fell on him and destroyed his garden. A sponge named SpongeBob SquarePants then moved into the pineapple and Squidward has been grumpy ever since.

Squidward's personality is grumpy, short-tempered, selfish, and of course, miserable, frustrated, cranky, and serious. In spite of this, he is still one of the most intelligent characters, and out of the ten major characters, he can be categorized as the most educated one, along with Mr. Krabs, Sandy, Plankton, and Gary. He has a sarcastic attitude and sees others as uncivilized morons while failing to accept his own personal shortcomings. Squidward sees himself as misunderstood and unappreciated, blaming society for his failures.

He is annoyingly pretentious in his pursuit of fame and is either unwilling or unable to spot talent and creativity, even belittling it. He lauds "cultivated taste" and accepted standards. In the episode "Artist Unknown," he insists that his pupil SpongeBob "show his method," even when it is painfully clear that SpongeBob has artistic genius. In the episode "Bubblestand," he belittles SpongeBob's brilliant bubble blowing. Squidward is also jealous of those who are more artistic than he is, for example, Nat Peterson, Patrick Star, Mr. Krabs, Squilliam Fancyson and even the puppet Big Nose.

Squidward is generally portrayed as an overall failure. His musical skills with the clarinet are generally portrayed as sub-par, from mediocre to excruciatingly horrible. However, there have been numerous exceptions (in "Bubblestand" and "Hello Bikini Bottom!") he plays nice after practicing SpongeBob's 'technique,' at the end of "Christmas Who?," he manages to play great with the one SpongeBob carved for him. In "That's No Lady," he manages to play a nice tune to woo Patricia. In addition, in "Best Day Ever," he even has a concert where he plays beautifully and receives thunderous applause from the audience. SpongeBob was even on the VIP list for it. It seems that he is actually capable of playing the clarinet very well by providing the full effort. He plays well enough in "Hello Bikini Bottom!" for a musical manager to offer him and SpongeBob a job.

His overall artistic style is shown to be abstract and overly sophisticated, and his works are commonly panned by his audiences. His critical failure is shown to be more due to his bad taste, rather than a genuine lack of talent. It is worth noting that the majority of his art centers on himself, apparently holding his very being to be an artistic wonder. In the episode "One Krab's Trash," Squidward is shown bringing flowers to a gravestone reading "Here Lies Squidward's Hopes and Dreams." Despite his lack of success, Squidward is tireless in his pursuit of artistic achievement. In "Dunces and Dragons," Squidly, Squidward's medieval ancestor, vowed that if he could not learn to play the clarinet right, his seventh great-grandson would be cursed tenfold. In "Squilliam Returns," Squilliam Fancyson mentions that Squidward was voted "Most Likely to Suck Eggs" in high school.

Given how Squidward is depicted as a loser in most regards, it is likely that his narcissism is actually a defense mechanism to make him feel as if he has some form of self-worth. Outwardly, he shows signs of modest success: he lives in a nice, well-tended house, with no signs of slothfulness, and finds plenty of time to lead an active, involved life.

Squidward is well educated and knows his history. He is actually intelligent and has a lot of worldly knowledge, especially compared to those of SpongeBob and Patrick. Squidward is also a skilled driver, as he manages to drive virtually everything, from a traditional bike, a boat, car, and even a tractor. Squidward is a good-natured and caring person; he just does not like to get too involved in things.

When he is at the Krusty Krab, he is a lazy, sloppy employee (as shown in the "Krusty Krab Training Video") who has an intense dislike of the Krusty Krab and its management. He is considered "inattentive, impatient," with "a glazed look in the eye." However, given the management's treatment of the employees, his attitude towards the company is more realistic than SpongeBob's. In the episode "Squid on Strike," he organizes a worker's strike at the Krusty Krab. He even causes the destruction of the Krusty Krab, although indirectly and accidentally.

In the episode "Squidville," he moves to a town filled with his own peers, other octopuses who share his tastes and outlook on life. Here, he is forced to face how boring and oppressive his desired lifestyle really is, and he is able to ultimately break free of its bonds with a bit of inspired silliness.

Even though Squidward has tentacles, he is shown or implied to have fingers, toes and even nails in episodes such as "Once Bitten," "House Fancy," and "Giant Squidward."

In "Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy V," it is implied that Squidward at one point had a girlfriend when he remembered the good times he had at Make-out Reef.

In "Love That Squid," it revealed he has not dated for a long time before Squilvia came into his life.

Description
Squidward Tentacles is a light turquoise octopus and has purple suction cups at the end of his tentacles. He has six limbs in total, two being arms, and four being legs, which tend to make the shape of a plus sign when he stands in place. Whenever he walks, his suction cups stick to the floor, meaning that he walks with a distinct squelching noise. Squidward has a large cranium with eight holes on the top of it, presumably show his baldness. However, in the episode "The Original Fry Cook," it showed that he had long blonde hair once. He also has a skinny body, a big droopy nose, a wide mouth, and yellow eyes with rectangle vertical dark red irises and rectangle red pupils. When he laughs, his nose appears to deflate and inflate repeatedly. He wears a brown short-sleeved shirt, which is sometimes shorter. In reality, Squidward is only eight inches and two ounces.

His color is inconsistent throughout the series. While he is shown to be lighter green in earlier episodes, in later episodes he is shown having a lighter and a more like blue color.

In the episode "Just One Bite," it shows a close up of Squidward's face, revealing it disturbing and very morbid. This has scared some kids that watch the show. In the episode Frankendoodle, he was wearing fancy clothing in one scene.

In the episode "Sandy's Rocket," Squidward is shown to be wearing an old version of his nightwear. It is pink with magenta-colored flowers on it. In newer episodes such as "Sentimental Sponge," Squidward is seen wearing his real nightgown. In this episode, he refers to it as a "night shirt." It is a light purple nightgown that comes with a matching nightcap. It is the third version of his nightwear. The second version would appear in episodes like "Funny Pants" and "Employee of the Month."

It is shown in the episode "Bulletin Board" that Squidward has a tattoo of a red rose on his right arm.

Personality
Squidward is best described as as ill-tempered, pretentious, and cynical who strongly despises his neighbors for their constant boisterous, noisy behavior. However, the pair are unaware of Squidward's antipathy towards them and see him as a friend. Squidward works as a cashier at the Krusty Krab restaurant, a job that he is apathetic towards.

Squidward also has a passion and interest in reading, arts and music, and is very fond of playing the clarinet, though no one considers him to be very good at it, the same for his art work due to his bad taste. This however, not always the case as in some occasions, his artistic talents somewhat more improved than it used to be.

The post-movie seasons (Season 4 and so on which actually set between events from both the first 3 seasons and The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie) revealed that his misery, and inability to see the positive side of his neighbor's antics has developed a darker side of his personality where he sometimes became the wrathful, indifferent, and sadistic. The revelation of these negative traits were previously foreshadowed by him nearly killed SpongeBob with his brutal booby trap joke in the retaliation of the latter's annoying but harmless jokes in Fools in April episode. Not only that, in various cases of his antagonistic acts that he performed, he sometimes done so in more malicious manner where he unknowingly became slave-driver for SpongeBob as seen in Can You Spare A Dime?, and Squidward, the Unfriendly Ghost, fooling anyone to gained advantage for improving his life in spite of small percentage of success, or the worst, illegal acts includes verbal and physical abuse that threatened him to sent to jail. The worst instances of his antagonism are when expresses his lack of remorse and genuine malice was when reading SpongeBob's diary aloud, disagree with his friends' idea to brought SpongeBob back home after remorseful with their abuse on him in retaliate of misfortunes that he unintentionally caused, and lend his landmower to both SpongeBob and Patrick hoping that they harmed themselves by accident where in these case, he potentially crosses MEH. These negative traits were reasons why some Bikini Bottomites antagonize him out of sheer hatred.

However, Squidward is not a heartless character as he had softer side which hidden under his sadistic, wrathful, and narcissistic personality. To some degree, he actually friends with SpongeBob and Patrick but incapable to see the positive side of their childish antics, reason why he tend to loathe them more than truly love them. He also have romantic relationship with his girlfriend Squilvia (relationship that only explored in episode where she featured at). The proof where he actually cared with SpongeBob was when he berated Krabs for sold the sponge's soul for the Flying Dutchman. As he did, he expresses genuine disgust on Krabs' ungrateful action that made the crab become regretful over his actions.

Reason why he mostly grumpy at times can be traced back when he had a garden as seen in episode Truth or Square. At that time, Squidward appeared to have more happier personality, until a pineapple fell from a sailor's boat to the ocean and crushed his garden, destroying it. Not long afterwards, SpongeBob showed up and decided to modify the pineapple into a house that we know today as Squidward mourned over the loss of his garden. His garden's destruction depressed Squidward so much that he become bitter and presumably never told his new neighbor about what has happened in the first place.

Powers and Abilities

 * Intelligence: Squidward is actually smarter than SpongeBob in many ways, as he had better IQ and more knowledgeable than the latter like Sandy.
 * Boneless: Like SpongeBob, Squidward has been shown to be quite fragile due to his laced bones. Although, he sometimes is shown to have one depend on the writer of the episodes.
 * Durability: Squidward is very durable, as in one episode, he survived a nuclear explosion.
 * Artistic Skills: Squidward proved himself as the artist with promising talent in singing, painting, sculpture, playing his trademark clarinet, etc. Unfortunately, he's not always appreciated on his works due to his somewhat bad taste.
 * Magma Manipulation: As Captain Magma, he can control and fires magma blasts from the volcanic cone on his mask. Unfortunately, due to lack of proper mastery over his powers, it resulted in him accidentally toasting SpongeBob (where ironically, he didn't intend to harm him as his intended target was Man-Ray, Dirty Bubble, and evil Barnacle Boy).
 * Sonic Wave Emission: As Sour Note, he can fire sonic waves (which often depicted as a blast of bubbles) from his signature clarinet, either in form of sonic waves that paralyzes everyone who hears it and in the form of a concussive beam.

Occupation
Squidward works as the cashier at the Krusty Krab restaurant, along with his co-worker, SpongeBob SquarePants. He not only hates his duties but the Krusty Krab itself, and he performs his job rather poorly and with a lack of enthusiasm. He also frequently behaves rudely to the customers. He has often expressed a desire to be fired or simply quit, but never makes good on it; he only seems to work there because he needs the money. In "Just One Bite," he reveals that he has never eaten a Krabby Patty and thinks them to be disgustingly unhealthy, although after having "just one bite," he falls in love with them. However, this fact is contradicted by an earlier episode in which SpongeBob forgets how to tie his shoelaces and, consequently, throws several Krabby Patties down Squidward's throat. (An explanation for this could be that since he did not taste them with his tongue, he thought they were bad). In "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie," Squidward is the manager of the Krusty Krab 2 for six days, although due to Plankton's invasion of Bikini Bottom, the new restaurant is not in service during this time. It is also shown here that Squidward actually cares about what happens to the Krusty Krab and the Krabby Patty formula when he discovers Plankton selling Krabby Patties and threatens to report him to King Neptune. In Selling Out, Squidward worked as the waiter for Krabby O' Mondays. He was forced to maintain a false state of happiness, or else face "Human Resources," a thug in the back of the building.

Trivia

 * Squidward seems to shares similarities with Donald Duck due to their pessimistic and grumpy behavior, as well as their own misery and prideful.
 * Squidward is very similar to Shadow the Hedgehog from the Sonic series due to their cynical, serious, short-tempered, melancholic and sarcastic personalities.
 * Squidward seems to have a rivalry with Gary, Spongebob's snail. In lesser extent, he also archenemies to Samantha "Sam" Star, Patrick's older sister due to nearly killing each other when finally fed up with her behavior which turned out more volatile than Patrick.
 * As with the rest of main casts, Squidward's portrayal in post first movie seasons (Season 4-Season 9) became increasingly negative as result of his worst traits exaggerated through the show's flanderization, with his portrayal in Little Yellow Book where he was at his worst. Fortunately, this has since revised following the end of Season 9.
 * Sometimes, his Breakdowns are unreasonable, only stemming from his hatred of SpongeBob SquarePants. One example is in Good Neighbors, where he deems that SpongeBob and Patrick are the "worst neighbors ever". SpongeBob tries his best to reason with him, but Squidward unreasonably loses his temper even further, causing a true Villainous Breakdown to occur where he says that they are not good neighbors (which is what they tried to be in the first place), but instead horrible neighbors that must be kept out or even destroyed utterly.
 * It should be noted however, that Squidward's aforementioned breakdowns afe among controversies in post first movie seasons (Season 4-Season 9) as despite his resentments, he still cares with his neighbor and the same applies with Patrick. In fact, Squidward becomes remorseful upon realizing that he crossed the line.
 * His voice sounds like Bert from the Sesame Street series.