| “ | Plankton: one percent evil, ninety-nine percent hot gas. | „ |
| ~ Karen's scan of 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 the Planktons have involved their marriage.
She is voiced by Jill Talley. In the Broadway musical adaptation, she was portrayed by Stephanie Hsu.
Background[]
Karen is a Mark II Surplus UNIVAC with 256 gigabytes of RAM. She was built by Plankton himself out of a calculator, a mass of wires, and a security system. They first met and dated before Plankton became evil.
The further depth of Karen's early life is debatable, since she has two parents. This was first hinted when Plankton told her "Your parents must have been like, part computer or something.". In Single Cell Anniversary, Karen's AI mother is revealed to be a software program named E.M.I.L.P. (Emergency Mother-In-Law Program). Her father is an outmoded computer named Fredrick, who has so far only been seen in an issue of Nickelodeon Magazine.
Characteristics[]
Personality[]
Karen normally acts like a nice and loving person when she and Plankton are in a good mood, but 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[]
Being an AI, Karen usually manifests on the large-screen computer in Plankton's lab where she has green facial features. Her face is mostly depicted in the form of a wavy green line. However, she has many other forms since Plankton builds her system into most of his inventions. Her other most common form is a robotic body designed to look like a portable wheeled computer with detachable robot arms that made its debut in the 2004 movie.
Oddly, when sprayed by Plankton's baby gas (a special gas that reduces people to a baby version of themselves) she was reduced into a calculator.
Gallery[]
Videos[]
Trivia[]
- The form we currently know her in appeared in the episode "Fun", in which she told her husband that he should spend some time with Spongebob, hoping that he would tell him the secret recipe. However, it is worth keeping in mind the fact that the Karen prototype already appeared in the episode "Plankton!" which was long before the episode "Fun", in which she appeared as an unknown computer whose task was to give the name of a thing and which thing was made.
- Karen's origins are unknown, as it is claimed that Plankton bought Karen, another that he built her, and another that she is actually an app that Plankton installed on his computer.
- As of season 12, her mobile form is permanently equipped with arms.
- As of season 10, she appeared only in mobile form.
External Links[]
- Karen Plankton on the Heroes Wiki
- Karen Plankton on the Encyclopedia SpongeBobia
- Karen Plankton on the Wikipedia
