SpongeBob SquarePants is a classic cartoon that's been airing for over two decades while putting a fun twist on undersea life. The Nickelodeon cartoon is stylized to evoke the feeling of summer vacation on an island getaway, complete with a house that looks like an Easter Island head. The series also satirizes some common ocean activities, including fishing, where SpongeBob and Patrick risk their lives swinging on fish hooks. However, one theory suggests that the flower clouds in the "sky" are another clever nod to the surface world.
The Reddit theory suggests that the flower clouds are not clouds at all but boat propellers. At first, the idea seems outlandish and a bit of a stretch, but upon closer inspection actually makes a lot of sense. For starters, each flower cloud has leaves that vary in number from three to five. Most boat propellers also have the same amount of fins. Even though the clouds don't look like propellers in the cartoon, science may have an answer for that.
The flower clouds are distorted and reflect different colors, but this could easily be explained by the light refracting the propellers and bending the shapes as a result. Its colors could also be explained as algae or the prism of light being reflected thanks to the sun. The spacing between the flowers and size also justify them being propellers because they are often spread out and incredibly huge compared to the much smaller characters in the show. Further adding evidence to this theory are a handful of episodes that showcase how the propellers are more than just flowers.
A couple of episodes feature the flower clouds as solid objects that could even be dangerous if mishandled. One example is in the episode "Karen's Virus," where Plankton's computer wife develops a virus that changes her personality. During a violent outburst, Karen throws a boat mobile at one of the flowers, causing it to fall out of the sky. The film The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water also shows flower clouds falling from the sky in greater numbers. While accidents with boat propeller malfunctions aren't common, they aren't impossible. Theoretically, it's logical that the characters interacting with the flower cloud propellers could cause them to fall off the boat and onto the ocean floor.
Possibly the best example of the theory is in the episode "SB-129," when Squidward travels through time. When trying to escape the future, he is sent too far back and ends up in the prehistoric era. Walking out, the background is a greenish-brown without a single flower cloud in sight. According to the theory, this is because boats and propellers didn't exist in this timeframe.
For now, the truth behind the flower clouds has not been confirmed. While SpongeBob SquarePants' characters also acknowledge them as flowers, it's hard to deny the subtle evidence suggesting that there's more to them than meets the eye. Considering that boats and humans have interacted with the SpongeBob universe on more than one occasion, it's entirely possible that the lovely flowers in the sky are just distorted boat propellers attached to ships. This would also justify why there were so many fish hooks for SpongeBob and Patrick to swing from. For the most part, the flower clouds are unimportant to the many stories within the series. But on the rare occasions that they play a role in the narrative, it becomes harder to discredit that they may be attached to something much larger.
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