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| “ | Plankton: 1% evil, 99% hot gas. | „ |
| ~ Karen's scan of Plankton in "Plankton!" |
Karen Plankton is the secondary antagonist of Nickelodeon's SpongeBob SquarePants franchise.
She is a waterproof computer who lives in the Chum Bucket and is the wife of Plankton. She and Plankton are constantly scheming to steal the Krabby Patty formula from Mr. Krabs. Karen is typically the brains of the operation, coming up with complex plans to run Krabs out of business. However, Plankton has a tendency to take all of the credit for her ideas.
Karen and Plankton first appeared in the Season 1 episode "Plankton!". In the third season premiere "The Algae's Always Greener", it was revealed that Karen is Plankton's wife. Since then, many episodes focusing on Plankton and Karen have involved their marriage.
She is voiced by Jill Talley, who also voiced Gretchen and Ms. Mucus from Camp Lazlo. In the Broadway musical adaptation, she was portrayed by Stephanie Hsu, who also voiced Vontra from The Wild Robot.
Background[]
Karen was Plankton's first invention. As a child, Plankton felt lonely because his hillbilly family shunned him for his genius intellect. He wanted a friend, so he created a robotic best friend out of a calculator. As seen in Plankton: The Movie, he programmed the calculator to have her own emotions, and she named herself Karen.
Karen and Plankton spent many years as best friends. When Plankton grew older, he attended college with Karen. He placed her inside of a roller-skate shoe so that she could move around. Karen uses this roller-skate shoe throughout the Kamp Koral series, which is set before the events of the main SpongeBob series.
Eventually, Plankton upgraded Karen into a computer with wheels. He gave her four computer chips, each making up a part of her personality: smart, evil, snarky, and empathetic. These four chips, especially the smart and evil chips, allow Karen to come up with evil plans for Plankton to steal the Krabby Patty formula.
Karen serves as the main antagonist of Plankton: The Movie, in which Plankton's selfish behavior and lack of empathy causes Karen to snap and upgrade into a high-powered supervillain. Karen goes to take over the world herself without Plankton, and she turns Bikini Bottom into her own personal battle station. Plankton teams up with SpongeBob and the Gal Pals to stop Karen and win back her love.
Characteristics[]
Personality[]
Karen's personality is made up of her four computer chips: smart, evil, snarky, and empathetic. Due to her empathy chip, Karen normally acts like a nice and loving person when she and Plankton are in a good mood. However, due to her evil chip, she is also evil enough to be a villain (possibly more so than Plankton).
In The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, it is shown that Plankton has a filing cabinet of evil plans that Karen reminds him about. Since she writes the majority of his plans, it can be assumed that she wrote these as well. They are in a descending order from harmless to sinister, the worst being "Plan Z" — the only scheme to result in Plankton successfully stealing the formula and using it to his advantage. This plan involves enslaving everyone in Bikini Bottom, forcing a frozen Mr. Krabs to watch the town descend into evil and be killed by King Neptune, and sending a hitman to murder SpongeBob and Patrick. Karen uses her mind-control abilities to enslave the citizens and is one of the only townspeople not to be a slave. This shows that she is just as cruel and sinister as her husband, if not more.
Her darkest side is also shown in Plankton's Good Eye where she encourages Plankton to be evil and hates his good side. Other instances of her dark side include using her lasers on Plankton in multiple episodes and assisting him in his plots in nearly every story focusing on them.
Appearance[]
Karen is usually depicted as a blue computer with a black screen and green facial features. Her face is mostly depicted in the form of a wavy green line.
Plankton builds Karen's system into most of his inventions, so she has various forms of manifestation. Karen is most commonly seen as a mobile computer with wheels, and as a large computer screen in the Chum Bucket laboratory.
When sprayed by Plankton's baby gas (a special gas that reduces people to a baby version of themselves), Karen was reduced into a calculator.
Trivia[]
- Karen was named after Karen Hillenburg (née Umland), the wife of the late series' creator, Stephen Hillenburg.
- In the fairytale-themed episodes "Patnocchio" and "The Big Bad Bubble Bass," Karen plays the role of the Computer Fairy and narrates the stories.
- In the episode "Plankton!", Karen is attached to Plankton's analyzer machine. When Plankton is thrown into the analyzer, Karen states that he is 1% evil and 99% hot gas.
- From season 10 onward, Karen always appears in her mobile form, rather than on the large computer screen in the Chum Bucket laboratory.
- As of season 12, her mobile form is almost always equipped with arms.
External Links[]
- Karen Plankton on the Heroes Wiki
- Karen Plankton on the Nickelodeon Wiki
- Karen Plankton on the Encyclopedia SpongeBobia Wiki
- Karen Plankton on the Wikipedia
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 Villains
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