News Summary

• Rumors spread that "SpongeBob SquarePants" was created to entertain children trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein.
• Snopes looked through the government's files on Epstein and found no references to the show or its creator, Stephen Hillenburg.
• Hillenburg, who died in 2018, was a former marine biology teacher with an interest in art when he initially came up with the idea for SpongeBob.
• He pitched the show to Nickelodeon with only a few years of animation work under his belt.