Seen as a lazy, overweight and dimwitted pink starfish, Patrick lives under a rock in the underwater city of Bikini Bottom next door to Squidward Tentacles' moai. His most significant character trait is his lack of common sense, which sometimes leads him and his best friend, SpongeBob SquarePants, into trouble. Patrick is unemployed and a self-proclaimed expert in the "art of doing nothing"
The character has received positive reactions from critics and fans alike. Patrick has been included in various SpongeBob SquarePants-related merchandise, including trading cards, video games, plush toys, and comic books. He is a leading character in the 2004 full-length feature film The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, the 2015 film The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water and the 2021 film The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run. Patrick is set to host his own talk show called The Patrick Star Show
Patrick is the ignorant but humorous best friend of SpongeBob SquarePants. He is portrayed as being an overweight pink starfish, who serves as the village idiot of the underwater city of Bikini Bottom. Patrick gets dumber throughout the series and has been shown to make many ludicrous mistakes. Despite this, he has occasionally been portrayed as a savant, with articulate observance to certain subjects in specific detail. However, he always reverts quickly back to his usual, unintelligent self after displaying a moment of wisdom. He holds no form of occupation except for several very brief stints working at the Krusty Krab and at the Chum Bucket in a variety of positions, and mostly spends his time either clowning around with SpongeBob, catching jellyfish with him, or lounging beneath the rock under which he resides.
At home, Patrick is usually depicted either sleeping, watching TV, or engaged in the "art of doing nothing", at which he is an expert.All the furnishings in the space under his rock are made of sand, and Patrick can simply opt to quickly build up furniture as needed; even so, his living space is sparse and contains only the barest essentials. Aside from his best friend SpongeBob, who is often impressed by Patrick's capacity to come up with naïve yet genius plans or solutions,Patrick frequently irritates those around him and is confounded by the simplest of questions or subjects.The characters of Mr. Krabs and Squidward have no patience for Patrick's stupidity, and the former does not pay him much regard; Clancy Brown, who provides Mr. Krabs' voice, said, "The only person that he [Mr. Krabs] doesn't hire is Patrick because Patrick is just too stupid to work for nothing."Sandy often gets annoyed by Patrick, but still sees him as a friendIn basketball, dribbling is bouncing the ball on the floor continuously with one hand at a time. It is the only legal way that a player may maintain possession of the ball while walking or running.
The dribble allows for much faster advancement and thus more opportunities for scoring. It also provides an opportunity for a crafty player on the opposing team to "steal" the ball in mid-bounce. Once a player stops dribbling the ball and holds it, the player normally must either pass it to another player or take a shot; if the player dribbles and then holds the ball in any way (either grasping it with their hands or arms, or "palming" it, i.e. holding it too much toward its underside during the act of dribbling) then continues to dribble, the referee stops the play, signals either "double dribble" or "carrying", and turns the ball over to the other team. A "double dribble" may also be called if the player tries to dribble with both hands at the same time.
Stephen Hillenburg first became fascinated with the ocean and began developing his artistic abilities as a child. During college, he majored in marine biology and minored in art. He planned to return to college eventually to pursue a master's degree in art. After graduating in 1984, he joined the Ocean Institute, an organization dedicated to educating the public about marine science and maritime history. While he was there, he initially had the idea that would lead to the creation of SpongeBob SquarePants: a comic book titled The Intertidal Zone.In 1987, Hillenburg left the institute to pursue a career in animation.
A few years after studying experimental animation at the California Institute of the Arts, Hillenburg met Joe Murray, creator of the Nickelodeon series Rocko's Modern Life, at an animation festival, and was offered a job as a director of the show.Martin Olson, one of the writers for Rocko's Modern Life, read The Intertidal Zone and encouraged Hillenburg to create a television series with a similar concept. At that point, Hillenburg had not even considered creating his own series. However, he realized that if he ever did, this would be the best approach. Production on Rocko's Modern Life ended in 1996.Shortly afterwards, Hillenburg began working on SpongeBob SquarePants.
Patrick's voice is provided by actor Bill Fagerbakke, who also does the voices of numerous other characters on SpongeBob SquarePants. While creating the show and writing its pilot episode in 1997, Hillenburg and Derek Drymon, the show's then-creative director, were also conducting auditions to find voices for the show's characters. Fagerbakke auditioned for the role of Patrick after Tom Kenny, SpongeBob's voice actor, had been cast. Fagerbakke said, "Steve is such a lovely guy, and I had absolutely no feeling for the material whatsoever." He described his experience in the audition, saying "I was just going in for another audition, and I had no idea what was in store there in terms of the remarkable visual wit and really the kind of endearing child-like humanity in the show. I couldn't pick that up from the audition material at all. I was just kind of perfunctorially trying to give the guy what he wanted.