The Patrick Star Show is the second spin-off of
SpongeBob SquarePants, succeeding
Kamp Koral, focusing on
SpongeBob's best friend Patrick Star as he hosts a variety sketch show. It first aired on July 9, 2021 on
Nickelodeon along with
Middlemost Post.
This series contains examples of:
- 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: "Mid-Season Finale" contains an aerial battle using the houses of Patrick and Grandma Tentacles. The houses are done in noticeable CG.
- Accidental Astronaut: In "To Dad and Back", Patrick goes inside the body of his dad, Cecil. Cecil ends up at an astronaut testing site, but after spinning in the centrifuge, needs to vomit. Trying to find the bathroom, he ends up running onto a space shuttle, which launches while he's using the toilet in it. After vomiting, Cecil accidentally flushes himself down, ejecting both his waste and himself. He crash lands next to his house on Earth.
- Adaptation Name Change: Patrick's parents Margie and Herb are called Bunny and Cecil here.
- Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: In the main series, Squidina didn't recognize Patrick and was rather hostile towards him when they met in "The Goofy Newbie". Here, they are siblings and get along well.
- Alliterative Title:
- Alternate Continuity: The show can be viewed as this to its main counterpart (if not a loose prequel), as the showrunners have stated they don't treat the SpongeBob canon too seriously when devising the show, and the show itself is pretty loose in regards to keeping its characters consistent to how they're depicted in SpongeBob SquarePants.
- Animated Sitcom: The series primarily takes place in the Star house, dealing with the situations Patrick and his family get into.
- Animate Inanimate Object: Tinkle, the upstairs bathroom toilet, serves as one of the Star family's pets.
- Appropriated Appellation: In "Get Off My Lawnie", Granny Tentacles insults the Patrick Show's audience ("You people are sick!" and "Don't you people have lives?"). The fanbase think it's her Catchphrase Insult and love it, proudly wearing shirts that say "Sick Person" and "I Have No Life" with Granny Tentacles' face on them.
- Artifact Title: Despite multiple promos stating that Patrick will be hosting a talk show, what he's hosting is anything but a talk show. He's only been seen interviewing people a handful of times over the course of the series, with most of the Patrick Show itself being crazy Variety Show antics.
- Art Shift:
- The show has a more painterly look to it than the main series. You'll see Medium Blending used very often with live-action objects showing up. The Dr. Plankenstein cutaways are also done in stop-motion, similarly to "It's a SpongeBob Christmas!" and "The Legend of Boo-Kini Bottom".
- "Super Sitters" contains a scene where we get a full look at a Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy comic. It takes up the entire screen and is stylized like a classic comic book.
- The opening of "House Hunting" is styled like a classic 1930s cartoon. It's even presented in 4:3.
- Ascended Extra:
- The character of Squidina first made supporting roles in the main series' episodes "Goons on the Moon" and "The Goofy Newbie". Notably, Squidina was so minor on the main series that Jill Talley outright forgot who the character was when she first went in to voice her on the Patrick Star Show.
- Slappy, the Lorre Lookalike fish who only made one appearance on the original show (in "SpongeBob's Big Birthday Blowout"), becomes a regular here. He also appears a little more frequently in several later season episodes of the original series.
- Squidward's grandma, who appeared once in "Chum Fricassee", is a recurring character here.
- Aspect Ratio Switch: The puppet show Patrick puts on at the beginning of "House Hunting" is presented in 4:3 to fit the 1930s rubberhose aesthetic. At the end of it, we zoom out to see that the black bars were the sides of Patrick's puppet theater.
- Babysitting Episode: "Patrick's Alley". To make some extra money, Patrick and Squidina agree to babysit some kids. Patrick puts on shows to entertain them, but they repeatedly escape. By the end, the babies are trying to kill Patrick and Squidina, trapping them in the ground and grabbing weapons. They only stop once their parents arrive to pick them up.
- Back for the Finale: "Mid-Season Finale" features cameos by one-off characters like Crabina and Finkle (from "Squidina's Little Helper") and the Flim Flam Brothers (from "The Haunting of Star House").
- Barbarian Longhair: Being a barbarian version of Patrick, Pat the Hapless has long, blonde hair.
- Barely-Changed Dub Name: The Latin American dub changes Cecil's name to Cecilio.
- Bizarre Taste in Food: The Stars are regularly shown to enjoy eating food made from garbage, or containing inedible ingredients like shoes and socks.
- Black Comedy: It's not uncommon to see dark jokes on the series. A few episodes end with Patrick and Squidina outright dying ("Patrick's Alley", "The Starry Awards"), and "Home ECCH!" revolves around Squidina's teacher constantly having heart attacks from the horrific projects she makes.
- Borrowed Catchphrase: In "Squidina's Little Helper", Squidina wakes up and says "I'm ready! ...to get this show on the road!", referencing SpongeBob's "I'm ready!" catchphrase.
- Bumbling Dad: Patrick's dad, Cecil, gives him well-meaning but often nonsensical advice. He's always changing jobs and has weird ways of doing household chores. Ultimately, though, he's supportive of Patrick and Squidina.
- The Bus Came Back: Grandma Tentacles, who made her original appearance in the episode of the original show, "Chum Fricassee", returns after 9 years of absence.
- Butt-Monkey: Squidward, of course, retains his status from the original show, and Patrick. Also, all of the Stars have their fair share of bad luck and physical abuse every now and again.
- Camping Episode: "Survivoring" sees Patrick, Squidina, and Cecil all taking a trip into the forest to "tough it out". Squidina pits Patrick and Cecil in various survival competitions, but when they lose track of her, Patrick and Cecil have to fend for themselves.
- Characterisation Click Moment: While she was initially portrayed as more demeaning and sarcastic, "Squidina's Little Helper" brings Squidina's characterization closer to how it'll be for the rest of the show. Not only is she shown to be an extremely competent showrunner for someone who's only eight years old, but she also has no problems with simply letting Patrick's silliness drive the show.
- Characterization Marches On: Squidina is way more snarky and disapproving of Patrick and his silliness in "Enemies a la Mode" than other episodes. This can be chalked up to it being the second episode produced, and it sticking closer to Squidina's
pitch bible incarnation (which specifically listed her as more serious and gave her a more aged-up design). Later episodes like "Squidina's Little Helper" and "Mid-Season Finale" have her happily participating in the show with him, and "X Marks the Pot" portrays her as just as goofy and eccentric as the rest of the family, which is more in-character. By comparison, some of her dialogue in "Enemies a la Mode" comes off as downright odd:Squidina (as Patrick): Enemies! I got 'em. You got 'em. Sometimes, I'm my own sister's enemy 'cause I go crazy and I ruin all her hard work. Now, here's a pre-recorded segment, from when I wasn't being such a stubborn jerk.
- Child Prodigy: Squidina, despite being eight years old and still in elementary school, has a job producing a television show.
Squidina: Yeah, being a witch might be cool and all, but I realized I'm much happier producing our television show. Like a normal kid.
- Christmas Creep: Parodied in "Terror at 20,000 Leagues". The instant Halloween day is over, Dr. Plankenstein and his minions find that Christmas is already in full force: a commercial for Christmas trees shows up on TV, it's snowing, Christmas Carolers have arrived at their door, and they have to prepare eggnog.
- Christmas Episode: "Just in Time for Christmas". The Star family are celebrating Christmas, when Patrick realizes he's forgotten to get any gifts — Squidina tells him that they have to be better than what he got them last year (garbage and used candles). Patrick uses his time-traveling closet to get gifts: a laser from the future as a shaver for Cecil, a prehistoric meal for GrandPat, a new tattoo for Bunny, and a cute pet monkey for Squidina.
- Comically Missing the Point: In "Patrick's Alley", Patrick's pet urchin is hungry and directs him to cans of pet food. Patrick interprets this as that he's supposed to... dance the can-can.
- Continuity Cavalcade: "Mid-Season Finale" and "The Starry Awards" are loaded with character cameos from previous episodes.
- Cross-Referenced Titles:
- "The Patrick Show Sells Out" and "The Patrick Show Cashes In".
- "Shrinking Stars", "Super Stars", and "Movie Stars".
- Cue Card: In "Bummer Jobs", when Patrick wants to know how to get their paper delivery money from Cecil.
SpongeBob: What do we do?
Patrick: Uhh...
[Squidina clears her throat and shows them a cue card]
Patrick: Oh, we gotta be like those tough guys on TV!
- Cutaway Gag: To fit the whimsical Variety Show theme, the series has cutaways to other TV parodies inserted into the episodes. Whether or not they're actually relevant to the plot varies. For example, at one point in "Bummer Jobs", Squidina wheels in a TV that displays "Noir-Sense": a Film Noir-style interrogation with Fred. "Lost in Couch" interrupts itself with a furniture commercial. Notably, the double-length Halloween Episode contains a cutaway in a cutaway. It turns out that the episode is actually being watched by Frankenstein-style Mad Scientists Patrick and Plankton, and there's a skit with them. Then they watch a story about Squidward's grandma mind controlling people with her "Pantry of Doom". The Frankenstein cutaway persists throughout the episode as a sort of sub-plot, with other cutaways in it, until Patrick and Squidina find their way into it during the main plot.
- A Day in the Limelight: This entire spin-off is dedicated to Patrick and his family. As for individual characters, every member of the Star family gets their own spotlight episodes:
- "Squidina's Little Helper", "Home ECCH!", and "Which Witch is Which?" are mainly about Squidina, and put Patrick on the sidelines.
- "Bunny the Barbarian" is a solo time-traveling adventure for Bunny.
- "To Dad and Back", "Survivoring", and "Backpay Payback" all feature Cecil as a main character.
- "The Yard Sale" focuses on GrandPat and the important memories he's made over his life.
- "Backpay Payback" and "Get Off My Lawnie" give prominent roles to Granny Tentacles. Especially the latter, where Patrick and Squidina only get a few lines each and no other major characters are involved.
- Demoted to Extra: Outside of SpongeBob and Squidward, most main characters on the parent show have relatively few appearances. In the first season, Mrs. Puff only has three speaking roles, Plankton and Sandy get two, and Gary gets one.
- Denser and Wackier: To put things into perspective, on top of the wacky looking intro, the showrunners have stated that there are no set rules to the show.
- Depending on the Artist:
- Squidina's design tends to vary from episode to episode. Most noticeably is her head shape, which is either more rounded or more pointed depending on the scene.
- In episodes like "The Patrick Show Cashes In", Squidina has red pantyhose, when in ones like "The Star Games", she doesn't.
- Tinkle's teeth change depending on the episode. In some, like "Gas Station Vacation" and "Uncredible Journey", he only has teeth when biting or growling. In episodes like "Family Plotz", he always has a visible row of teeth even when his mouth is closed. In "10 & 1 Toilets", he is always drawn with small fangs even when his mouth is closed, but the full row of teeth when his mouth is open.
- Depending on the Writer:
- Squidina's characterization changes a lot throughout the old crew's run. Some episodes portray her as being the more serious, responsible counterpart of Patrick ("Enemies a la Mode", "Squidina's Little Helper"), while other times she's just as dumb as him ("Nitwit Neighborhood News", "Gas Station Vacation"). "Pearl Wants to Be a Star" portrays her an an Innocently Insensitive person who accidentally upsets Pearl with her Brutal Honesty. In episodes like "Patrick's Alley" and "Lost in Couch", it's implied that she cares more about money and the Patrick Show than the well-beings of others, while in "Host-a-Palooza" she lets an injured Patrick heal up and tries to run the show herself in the meantime. Even her involvement with Patrick's show varied between whether she only worked backstage, merely introduces the show, or actively takes part in its sketches.
- Whether or not Cecil and GrandPat get along changes from episode to episode. For instance, in "Host-a-Palooza", the two get into a heated argument, Cecil and Patrick both cheer at GrandPat's disappearance in "House Hunting", and in "The Starry Awards" they fight over a gift Patrick gave to Cecil. However, in "Big Baby Patrick", Cecil serves pizza to GrandPat, they side together in "Stair Wars", and GrandPat gives Cecil advice on how to stop Squidward and his grandmother in "Backpay Payback".
- The Ditz: Yes, Patrick is still the idiot we all know and love, but it also seems to run in his family (apart from Squidina and GrandPat).
- Double-Meaning Title: "Just in Time for Christmas". It's a Christmas Episode revolving around Patrick rushing to get presents for his family at the last moment... doing so by using a time machine to visit various time periods.
- Dr. Fakenstein: Dr. Plankenstein is a Mad Scientist version of Plankton. He's always seen in a Deliberately Monochrome gothic castle, watching TV or scheming with his creation SpongeMonster (who looks like SpongeBob) and bumbling assistant Patgor (who looks like Patrick).
- Dub Name Change: Squidina is renamed to Calamarina (a play on "calimari", the female suffix -ina, and the name Marina) in the Latin American Spanish dub. The French dub renames her to Calamine, and in Portuguese she's named Molusquina.
- Early-Bird Cameo:
- Squidward makes two brief cameos in the pilot, "Late for Breakfast". He then plays a supporting role in "Bummer Jobs", the very next episode.
- Andy's mother from "Fun & Done!" makes a nameless cameo in "Patrick's Alley", a few episodes earlier. She's driving on the freeway, and looks the same besides a different hairstyle. She also makes a brief cameo in "The Drooling Fool".
- Squidina's home economics teacher first appears in "Super Sitters" as the day care manager, before his more prominent role in "Home ECCH!"
- Early Installment Character-Design Difference: Cave Patrick's appearance changed twice over the series. In his first two appearances, he simply looks like present-day Patrick with a loincloth. "A Space Affair to Remember" gave him a different design with a rounder mouth. Starting from "The Prehistoric Patrick Star Show", he is completely redesigned with a slight beard, a sloping forehead, thick eyebrows, and leopard-print clothing. This design would stick for later episodes.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Earlier episodes of the show had a lot of concepts that got dropped later on.
- Most notable is the constant Cutaway Gags to disconnected segments that rarely have anything to do with the plot, intended to give the show a more free-flowing theme to fit Patrick's imagination. Of the first eight episode pairs, a majority of them have one or two of these. After "Mid-Season Finale", these cutaways only show up when we're specifically watching Patrick's show, and they're much less frequent. Rather, many of these characters began appearing in person so they could actually interact with the Star family, or their skits would be thematically connected to the episode.
- Very early episodes had a Running Gag that the Patrick Show itself is unsuccessful and barely has an audience. Towards the end of the season, it would become something with grand-scale events that everyone in town watches (the mid-season finale, the Starry Awards) and even King Neptune himself is a fan of it.
- Squidina went through a lot of changes in the show's early stages. Originally, she was intended to be more of a Straight Man to Patrick's antics, as well as looking slightly older and more mature. Since the first few episodes were initially boarded with her earlier design, you can see her looking a lot taller than usual in episodes like "Stair Wars". It was also shown that she couldn't act on the Patrick Show due to her stage fright, a trait that was never seen after "Stair Wars".
- It can be weird to see GrandPat so willing to help out Patrick and give him ice cream in "Enemies a la Mode", when later episodes like "The Lil' Patscals" and "Stuntin'" would bring his Grumpy Old Man traits on full display.
- In their first appearance in "Late for Breakfast", the Cave Patrick segments do have their own Art Shift like the others; they have Line Boil and a more washed out color scheme. Later episodes would have them animated normally.
- In "Late for Breakfast", Patrick's bedroom door keeps taking him to other places by accident. This never happens again, with the door later changing destinations only at Patrick's request.
- Eldritch Location: Patrick's house is a family friendly version, with an absurd layout, and a door (the door from Patrick's room, specifically) that can lead to an aggressive, murderous knight charging at you, outer space, or the rest of the house.
- The Eponymous Show: The Patrick Star Show. However, in-universe, it's just called The Patrick Show.
- Establishing Shot: Many episodes begin with an establishing shot of the Star house.
- Everyone Has Standards: While Patrick is an Extreme Omnivore with a Bizarre Taste in Food, in "Olly Olly Organ Free", he actually hesitates before eating the gross food in the fridge. He only does it because his stomach is grumbling loudly and there's nothing else to eat.
- Extra-Long Episode: "The Yard Sale" and "Terror at 20,000 Leagues" are 22 minutes as opposed to 11.
- Fan Community Nicknames:invoked
- Patrick's in-universe viewers, who are usually seen watching his show on the Stars' front lawn, are called "lawnies."
- In "Get Off My Lawnie", when Granny Tentacles becomes popular, her fans call themselves "fantacles".
- Faux Symbolism:invoked Parodied in "Get Off My Lawnie". Granny Tentacles' unwanted fanbase invade her house and comment on everything she does. When she washes her face, one fan shouts, "Washing her face is a metaphor for starting over!"
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Patrick and Squidina. Episodes like "Squidina's Little Helper" and "Patrick's Alley" emphasize this difference: Patrick does all the silly stuff on live TV like magic acts and slapstick, while Squidina calculates the show's budget and organizes stuff behind the scenes.
- Free Prize at the Bottom:
- In "Terror at 20,000 Leagues", Pat-Tron eats a bowl of "Logic Loops" that has a murderous robot invader at the bottom as a prize. The rest of the sketch revolves around them fighting it off.
- In "The Patrick Show Cashes In", Patrick makes a cereal that just contains prizes.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus:
- The credits of Patrick's fake cooking show in "Late for Breakfast" is packed with gags, including parody names of series showrunners Vincent Waller and Marc Ceccarelli.
- Pause when the truck races by as a scene transition in "The Patterfly Effect" and there's a silly drawing of Patrick making a crazy face on it.
- In "Home ECCH!", one of Patrick's backboards is in the style of an insurance advertisement. The text reads "MOTORCYCLE ACCIDENT? That's too bad. I'm wearing a suit." It's visible for less than a second and only readable for half of that.
- Funny Background Event: In "Home ECCH!", there are some jokes in the chalkboard on Squidina's home ec class. It includes stuff like "Ch 23: the 6 types of carpet litter" and "Monday: Cheese due!". They're small and not on screen for very long, so it's easy to miss them.
- Gainax Ending:
- The ending of "Patrick's Alley" involves GrandPat being reincarnated as the Sun, and Squidina and Patrick getting run over by a lawnmower.
- "X Marks the Pot" ends with Patrick detonating a nuclear bomb that sucks the entire universe into a black hole.
- "Patrick's Got a Zoo Loose" revolves around Patrick hunting a shapeshifting alien. At the end of the episode, everyone on the show and even his audience turn into spider-like aliens. Patrick shrugs "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!" and turns into a spider himself.
- "Which Witch is Which?" shows that Squidina doesn't actually have magical powers like we're lead to believe; she was just using video editing software. But she is a werewolf.
- Good Morning, Crono: The first episode, "Late for Breakfast", begins with Patrick being woken up by his pet urchin, and going through his Morning Routine while talking to the viewers.
- Gotta Pass the Class: In "Home ECCH!", Squidina has As in almost all her classes, but is failing home economics due to her projects backfiring (most turn out dangerous or disgusting). If she fails, she has to go to summer school. With the help of Patrick and Slappy, she manages to make a delicious dish that saves her grade.
- Group Picture Ending:
- "Just in Time for Christmas" ends with all the people Patrick's stolen from across time — including a space captain, a man covered in tattoos, and a pterodactyl — taking a Christmas photo together.
- "X Marks the Pot" ends on a shot of a group picture with the Star family, a displeased Man Ray, and Man Ray's dead sidekick.
- "Dad's Stache Stash" ends with Rube taking a picture of the family. However, he gets run over by a train midway through, so the picture only shows the bottom half of the family.
- Halloween Episode: "Terror at 20,000 Leagues" has Patrick and Squidina going trick-or-treating to various odd houses. A sizable portion of the episode is spent on Halloween-themed Cutaway Gags.
- Hourglass Plot: In "The Patrick Show Sells Out", Mr. Krabs and Plankton sponsor Patrick's show to advertise their restaurants. However, while customers do want to go to the restaurants, their owners are so busy on the show that they can't actually run their businesses. Squidina comes up with a solution: give the entire show to Krabs and Plankton, then advertise her and Patrick's own brand new restaurant on it.
- Hurricane of Puns: In "Home ECCH!", Squidina sets a bunch of forks on a table. This starts off relatively normal, but then escalates to a bunch of puns on things with "fork" in the name, like a fork in the road or a forklift.
- If You Die, I Call Your Stuff: In "House Hunting", when GrandPat leaves the house for good and flies away in a chicken/toaster oven hybrid, Patrick and Cecil shout "Dibs on his room!" almost in unison. Patrick narrowly calls it first, to Cecil's disappointment.
- Incredibly Lame Fun: At the end of "Get Off My Lawnie", Granny Tentacles' fans leave to go watch an old man paint his fence. They're very invested in it.
- Informed Flaw: Squidina has stage fright, as listed in the theme song and seen in "Stair Wars". This rarely comes up afterwards, and in episodes like "Mid-Season Finale", Squidina is fully capable of participating in the Patrick Show, doing skits with Patrick and Pearl and not being anxious or intimidated. In "Klopnodian Heritage Festival", she has the confidence to stand up against the Klopnodian flag tradition, which she thinks is nonsense, in front of a vast crowd of people. And in "Host-a-Palooza", she actually stands up to an unsatisfiable audience and dares them to do better.
- Insult Backfire: In "Get Off My Lawnie", Granny Tentacles insults the Patrick Show's audience. They think she's just a character on the show and love it, down to making T-shirts with her insults on them (an old man proudly exclaims, "I have no life!" after Granny Tentacles says it).
- Instant Wristwatch: Parodied in "X Marks the Pot". When Patrick is bored while waiting for Man Ray to dig a hole, he pulls out a giant antique watch with three hands.
- Lack of Imagination: "Fun & Done!" prominently features a young child named Andy who is incredibly boring: he eats plain oatmeal, prefers to sit on the floor quietly, and has an overbearing mother who stifles his imagination because she is afraid of him being "overstimulated". SpongeBob and Patrick teach him how to have fun... but once he starts imagining things, it ends up being incredibly dangerous as his strange mind creatures come to life. Patrick and SpongeBob seal up his imagination again to turn him into the same boring person he used to be.
- Ladies and Germs: In "Squidina's Little Helper", Patrick addresses his viewers with "babies and gentlemen..." We then see that his audience consists of babies and fancy-looking fish, one of whom marvels, "That's us!"
- Lame Pun Reaction: In "Enemies a la Mode", Patrick runs after the ice cream truck, and the ice cream vendor closes its shutters before he can reach it. Patrick slams into the shutters and leaves an Impact Silhouette. Squidina jokes that he made "quite the impression": cue Ouchie playing a Rimshot, and then a live-action audience looking unenthused as we hear Chirping Crickets.
- Lethal Chef: Runs in the Star family.
- Squidina's attempt at making pickle pie is so bad that it poisons and hospitalizes her home economics teacher.
- "Late for Breakfast" has Patrick and Bunny cook meals entirely out of garbage.
- In "I Smell a Pat", Cecil cooks dinner, which appears to just be a bunch of green slop in a pot. He adds things like shredded underwear to it. In "Family Plotz", the family loves his soupestroni, but it contains inedible objects like socks and lightbulbs.
- Literal Metaphor:
- "Enemies a la Mode" has a joke about Bunny "displaying grace". As in, she has a glass display with a woman named Grace in it.
- In "Nitwit Neighborhood News", GrandPat wins a race "by a nose." We see a snapshot of him holding out a cutout of a nose on a stick to pass the finish line first.
- In "Mid-Season Finale", Cecil is proud of how far Patrick has gone. Zoom out to show him about to launch Squidina from a catapult: "Now let's see how far our daughter goes!" He and Bunny end up getting launched instead, though.
- Lorre Lookalike: Slappy's greasy hair, Dreary Half-Lidded Eyes, Gag Lips, and creepy demeanor are meant to bring Peter Lorre to mind.
- Malicious Misnaming: In "Which Witch is Which?", Agnes repeatedly misnames Cecil, and when he keeps correcting her, she tells him that he "talks too much" and shuts him up. She does this just because she doesn't like him.
- Mandatory Line: Patrick isn't really involved in the plot of "Backpay Payback". He does show up for two jokes, once midway through and another at the ending, and he has a total of two lines in it.
- Meaningful Background Event:
- In "Home ECCH!", when Patrick and Squidina burst into the hospital, you can very briefly see a tray of forks on the left side of the screen. A few scenes later, Squidina notices these forks and helps use them to perform surgery on her teacher. It serves as very sneaky Five-Second Foreshadowing.
- In "Which Witch is Which?", before Squidina sees Granny Tentacles' house on fire, you can see Agnes's wand smoking and her hiding it behind her back. Squidina doesn't actually have powers at all; Agnes is gaslighting her into thinking she needs to control them better.
- Milestone Celebration: "Mid-Season Finale" is both an in-universe and meta one. It's the final episode of the first half of the season, and the episode celebrates this milestone. As the season was extended from 13 to 26 episodes late in production
, it may also have been intended as a season finale. - Mondegreen Gag:
- In "Nitwit Neighborhood News", Patrick thinks a criminal (whom he mistakes for a celebrity) is wearing a Suspicious Ski Mask so "he won't be noticed by pepperoni!" He means "paparazzi", and Squidina corrects him.
- In "Mid-Season Finale", Patrick reminds the audience to "stay turned" for his show.
- Mouth Taped Shut: In "The Patterfly Effect", Bunny is telling Patrick what her old dream job was (being a race car driver). However, Patrick interrupts her and thinks that she wanted to be an actual race car. When Bunny tries to correct him, he tapes her mouth shut and heads off into his Time Machine to make her "dream" come true.
- Mr. Imagination: The titular show was once referred to as "Patrick's imaginary show," which, along with a segment of the first episode, suggests the titular show is just a hobby Patrick does within his imagination.
- Mutagenic Food: In "I Smell a Pat", Cecil prepares dinner. When it's done, he tastes it, and immediately transforms into a monster. He doesn't mind, though.
- No Ending:
- "Squidina's Little Helper" has an
Esoteric Happy Ending that fails to address how Squidina got the Patrick Show back, or what the Star family will do now that their house has had all the furniture destroyed. - "I Smell a Pat" has Granny Tentacles releasing a living food monster on the neighborhood, then smelling something strange off-screen. The episode then ends with no resolution.
- No Fourth Wall: In "Get Off My Lawnie", Granny Tentacles is in a runaway vehicle and about to cross a canyon. She gets over it by riding across the show's subtitles, which Slappy had accidentally turned on.
- Obituary Montage: Parodied in "The Starry Awards". At his awards show, Patrick gives an In Memoriam montage, mostly consisting of characters on the show who are already ghosts or zombies. The last one is a slide of a random background character, who is in the audience and points out he's still alive. He then gets hit in the head with a falling spotlight and dies.
- Obnoxious In-Laws: As seen in "Which Witch is Which?", Bunny's mother Agnes disapproves of Cecil because he's not magical. She repeatedly gets his name wrong and Cecil is shown to dislike her back.
- Origami Gag: In "Home ECCH!", when Squidina demonstrates how to make a bed, she folds up the blanket like an origami crane.
- Out-of-Character Moment: In "Nitwit Neighborhood News", Mr. Krabs lets himself get robbed a common criminal. He doesn't try to fight back, run away, or even show any bit of protectiveness against his money. It's not a case of Badass Decay on the show, either, since "Pearl Wants to Be a Star" (just two episodes earlier) had him bragging about all the badass feats his did in his navy days, and portrays him as still quick-witted and capable.
- Out of Focus:
- "Super Sitters" and "Fun & Done!" don't have any main characters besides Patrick and SpongeBob.
- Patrick and Squidina only get a few lines in "Get Off My Lawnie". Rather, the episode is focused on Granny Tentacles.
- "Now Museum, Now You Don't" is the only episode where Squidina appears but has no dialogue. She eats pancakes with the rest of the family at the beginning of the episode.
- Despite being a prominent supporting character, Squidward disappears after "Backpay Payback" and is absent for the rest of the season. He only returns in the tenth episode of the second season, "Dr. Smart Science".
- The Star family pet, Ouchie, mostly disappears after the crew shift and only makes small cameos in "The Patrick Show Sells Out" and "10 & 1 Toilets".
- Parental Bonus: Earlier episodes had a tendency to reference things that kids wouldn't exactly be familiar with, such as telemarketing scams, infomercials, and shows like Night Gallery, The Benny Hill Show, and Masterpiece Theater. "Mid-Season Finale" in particular consists almost entirely of references to shows that only older adults will recognize, if at all. The episode also features a hyped-up surprise guest appearance by Bootsy Collins, an artist who, though prolific and still active, saw his heyday in the 1970s and 1980s and is mainly known today among devoted music fans, a group which skews towards adulthood and old age. Eventually, these more dated jokes would be cut out with the crew shift.
- Percussive Maintenance: In "Enemies a la Mode", Bunny deals with her malfunctioning toaster by throwing it on the ground and smashing it repeatedly with a rolling pin. Then she realizes why it wasn't working: she forgot to plug it in.
- Perspective Magic: Parodied in "To Dad and Back". Patrick gets a request to show how the body works, so he decides to go inside his dad. However, he's too big for it. Squidina tells him to run down the hallway, and as he does, he gets smaller... then Squidina picks him up, and he stays small.
- Pun-Based Title: The segments on Patrick's show are usually given pun titles. Examples include "Peek-a-BOO" for a ghost-viewing segment, "Pardon My Garden" for a gardening segment, and "Well! Well! Well!" for a first aid segment.
- Prequel: To the original show.
- Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: Squidina gets one in "Which Witch is Which?", when she finally uses her magical powers and calls out her grandmother, who has been less than nice to the rest of the family.
Squidina: Grandma, it was nice to meet you, but it's time for you to go!
(uses her Psychic Powers to throw her out a window) - Quarter Hour Short: Episodes of the Patrick Star Show consist of two eleven-minute segments.
- Random Events Plot: Some episodes of the show lean more heavily in this territory than to having a more consistent plot like in SpongeBob.
- The premiere episode is about Patrick ending up in different wacky escapades while simply trying to find something to eat.
- Exaggerated with "Mid-Season Finale", which barely has a plot. Rather, it takes the form of a rapid-fire Sketch Comedy along the lines of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. This includes Squidina morphing into a killer ventriloquist dummy, a prehistoric Game Show, a search for the episode's ending, Cecil and Bunny acting out a Victorian romance story (which gets derailed by Squidward and a mime), and GrandPat and Grandma Tentacles having a sky battle using their houses.
- Really 700 Years Old: GrandPat looks a hundred years old at most, but his actual age goes back to the creation of life itself. He was a personified cell in the primordial soup before then.
- Recursive Canon: When Squidina reads the newspaper at the end of "Backpay Payback", the comic is a recreation of the events of the episode. It's even credited in-universe to the episode's actual writer.
- Red Boxing Gloves: Patrick wears red gloves when boxing in "A Root Galoot" and "Stuntin'".
- Retcon:
- Patrick's parents look completely different than in the main series, and even their names are different.
- This show, as well as Kamp Koral, retcons the meetings of other characters, with SpongeBob being friends with Squidward as a teenager, despite meeting him as an adult. SpongeBob is also shown to know Patrick as a teenager, somewhat continuing the fact they've known since they were babies in "The Secret Box".
- Patrick's sister was a large starfish that was Dumb Muscle in the main series, instead of being a small squid that looks to be Wise Beyond Their Years here. He also said he didn't have a sister in the main series episode "Something Smells"; but then again said series did later introduce Patrick's other supposed sister, Sam Star in the episode "Big Sister Sam".
- Retraux Flashback: In "Enemies a la Mode", GrandPat tells a story about prohibition (represented by ice cream). His flashback is shown in grayscale with rubberhose character designs.
- Rhyming Title:
- Robot Names: The residents of Tron-tron in "Blorpsgiving" are all variants of Patrick's family. Their names are Pat-Tron, Bun-Bot, Cecil-5000, Robodina, and Grand-Tron.
- Running Gag: Characters using a red flyswatter to swat flies (or other things) and shouting "Foinsapp!" This originates from a Klopnodian tradition that Bunny did as a child, but it seems to have caught on to the rest of the family, too.
- Saw a Woman in Half: In "Patrick's Alley", while teaching a lesson on manners, Patrick learns that "please" is a "magic word". To test it out, he does a magic trick where he saws GrandPat in half, then tries saying "please" to put him back together. It doesn't work, and GrandPat's lower body runs off into the time closet.
- Scream Discretion Shot: At the end of "Patrick's Alley", Patrick and Squidina are Buried Alive up to their heads, when a lawn mower-operating robot runs towards them. They are heard screaming as the next scene cuts away to GrandPat.
- Sea Hurtchin: One of the new characters is Ouchie, Patrick's pet urchin. As the name implies, every time Patrick touches Ouchie is quite painful, not that Patrick minds.
- Seasonal Rot:invoked Parodied. In "Mid-Season Finale", following a fart joke by Patrick, Grandma Tentacles comments that "The Patrick Show has really gone downhill since the first three episodes."
- Second Episode Introduction: SpongeBob first appears in the second segment in the first episode of the spin-off.
- So Proud of You: In "Mid-Season Finale", Bunny and Cecil are featured on the special, commenting on how proud they are of Patrick for his show getting so far.
- Stop Motion: The show regularly features Screen Novelties-produced "stop motion puppet" skits starring Mad Scientist Dr. Plankenstein, SpongeMonster, and Patgor. Most of their scenes are Deliberately Monochrome and revolve around the three watching the Patrick Show itself, inspiring Plankenstein's schemes or leading into other segments.
- Stylistic Suck: The show's Medium Blending gets attention called to it in "The Starry Awards", where Dr. Plankenstein tries to turn his minions 2D so that they can go on Patrick's show and get an award. Rather than just being animated normally, they are Squashed Flat by a hammer and come out as messy 3D puppets that are straight out of South Park.
- Sudden Name Change: Patrick's prehistoric ancestor has been known as Caveman Patrick, Cave Patrick, Cave Pat, and Patrick CaveStar. He also has three separate designs over the course of the series.
- Surreal Humor: The series' jokes are driven by insane, illogical happenings. For example, "Patrick's Alley" includes Patrick having a CG duplicate, dancing the can-can, exploding a giant mechanical ape, and getting his head cut off by a robot gardener.
- Surrounded by Idiots: GrandPat is the only member of the family (aside from Squidina) who is very smart, or at least of average intellect.
- Suspicious Ski Mask: Exploited in "Nitwit Neighborhood News". Patrick and Squidina end up in the hideout of wanted criminal Tony Tuna, who is always seen with a purple ski mask over his head. When the police surround Tony, he puts ski masks over Patrick and Squidina (as well as visiting reporters Perch and Harvey, with the former getting Tony's purple mask) and pushes them all outside, leading the police to think they're the criminals and arrest them.
- Terrible Interviewees Montage: "Squidina's Little Helper" has Squidina talking to applicants who want to help her assist Patrick on the show. The first is her mother, the second is an ice cream cone whom Patrick attacks and eats, and the third is Slappy, whom she finds incredibly creepy and off-putting.
- The Talk: Parodied in "Bummer Jobs". Patrick isn't sure why his parents have to leave the house, and Bunny tells him it's time for "the talk". Cecil gives him a speech on how jobs work.
Cecil: You see, Patrick, when an employee and an employer love each other very much, a brand-new job is born!
- They Killed Kenny Again: The city of Shmandor ends up being destroyed by the Star family every time they come across it.
- Time Machine: Patrick's family has a time closet that can take them back to any time. When it's activated, just the door is transported to the new location; it can be used again and leads back to the house, allowing the user to keep whatever they may have brought with them.
- Time Travel: Patrick and his family can travel through time with the use of their time closet. There usually aren't any negative consequences, although characters from other time periods can happen to show up in the Star house. Episodes such as "Bunny the Barbarian" and "Just in Time for Christmas" revolve around time travel.
- Trademark Favorite Food: As on the main show, Patrick's favorite food is ice cream.
- Vacation Episode: In "Gas Station Vacation", the Star family take a vacation to a gas station, which they see as a tropical resort.
- Vanilla Edition: The Season 1, Volume 1 DVD has no bonus features. It has audio options, but they don't even apply to every episode. Of the 13 episode pairs, French is only available for 7, and Spanish is only available for 10.
- Variety Show:
- Patrick's show, in-universe. In "Enemies a la Mode", he has a "Wheel of Segments" that he spins to decide on what activities to do on the show. In "Pearl Wants to Be a Star", Patrick's show includes a comedy sketch, a song performance, a combo cooking/Pimp My Ride show, and him playing basketball.
- A regular feature of the show's earlier episodes is switching to random comedy sketches. Recurring segments include a space adventure with Captain Doug Quasar and his incompetent robot Pat-tron and a stop-motion Frankenstein parody featuring Plankton as the Mad Scientist, Patrick as his assistant, and SpongeBob as the monster. There's also a few one-off skits, such as Noir-Sense with Fred and a bunch of fake commercials.
- Visual Pun: In "A Root Galoot", Squidina wants to record her show outside instead of inside because the lighting is bad. We then see a particularly thuggish living lightbulb, who takes offense to this.
- Voodoo Doll:
- In "Terror at 20,000 Leagues", a witch version of Granny Tentacles uses voodoo doll-shaped cookies to hypnotize the townfolk into doing her chores.
- In "Which Witch is Which?", Patrick's maternal grandmother sends him a present: a voodoo doll shaped like him, with six nails sticking out of it.
- World of Ham: Being a SpongeBob offspring, it's bound to be this, but due to the Denser and Wackier tone, it manages to be this up to eleven!
