"Shrinking Stars" is a The Patrick Star Show episode from season 1. In this episode, the Star family finds themselves getting smaller and smaller.

Characters

• Patrick Star
• Squidina Star
• Bunny Star
• Cecil Star
• GrandPat Star
• Slappy
• Captain Doug Quasar
• Pat-Tron
• SpongeBob SquarePants ^{(likeness only)}
• Sandy Cheeks
• British gentleman
• "Out her face" woman ^{(single appearance)}
  • Subliminal message girl^[9]
• Giant eyes ^{(single appearance)}
• Mrs. Poecilia
• Ouchie
• Pinkeye
• Rubedor ^(debut)
• Shmandorians
• Mummies ^{(single appearance)}
• The Dartfish Family
• Tinkle
• Mrs. Crossing Guard
• French Narrator
• Incidentals
  • Incidental 60
  • Incidental 70
  • Incidental 80
  • Kid 3
  • Sandals
  • Incidental 163
  • Incidental 167
  • Nerd 1
  • Elwood
• Clown
• Bubble Bass^{[10] (cameo; deleted scene)}

Synopsis

The episode opens in a black void, with various things flying by. The French Narrator signals that things getting strange is an indication of being in the Tidal Zone. He pours into a cup from the Star house and then drops it to its original location. Meanwhile on The Patrick Show!, Patrick and Squidina introduce Captain Quasar and Pat-Tron as guests on the show. Pat-Tron soon glitches from laughing too hard at a joke Patrick makes. While trying to fix Pat-Tron's laugh track, Patrick gets his shrink ray stuck to his head and accidentally activates it, shrinking Squidina.

Pat-Tron chases Patrick around the room, while Bunny and Cecil enter. Patrick stops running to place a pizza order with Cecil, and while doing so, shrinks down Bunny and Cecil. While giving the shrink ray back to Pat-Tron, Patrick accidentally shrinks himself down. Captain Quasar and Pat-Tron then fly away in their ship. The family explores the house while being at their small size. They end up swimming in the toilet water, until they fall out due to Tinkle licking the water. Meanwhile, GrandPat is seen playing a Grand Theft Auto-type VR game of him running over pedestrians. Water from upstairs sprays him and shorts out the VR set.

GrandPat goes to the bathroom and finds the family shrunk, thinking they are bugs, so he tries to spray them with his onion breath. The family is snatched away by the Dartfish family, who shares peppermint with them. Soon after, GrandPat's eye reaches their kitchen door. The Dartfish family run away while Bunny kicks GrandPat's eye. The Star family then try to target GrandPat for scaring the Dartfish family away. Patrick and Squidina drop cake molds on him, and the family then hit him with kitchen supplies and sprays, and also remove the kitchen floor tiles. GrandPat uses his dentures to get the family, who are then further shrunk down by Rubedor.

Rubedor introduces the Star family to the futuristic city, Shmandor. While the Star family appreciates the city, Cecil's singing causes the city to fall apart, due to it being made out of glass. GrandPat soon approaches the family with his scooter, but cannot run them over due to them being too small. The family jumps inside the scooter to mess up the engine, causing the scooter malfunction and go after GrandPat. GrandPat soon catches the scooter, accidentally driving into the time closet, landing in a tomb of mummies in Ancient Egypt, now needing to get home.

Patrick finds a can of Jumbo Grow and pours it over himself and the family, but it only shrinks them down even further, now to subatomic level. It is revealed that the bottle actually grows plants, but shrinks everything else. Cecil finds a light, and pulls them through, with them ending up in front of their house. They notice a giant eye in the sky, revealed to be Sandy, observing them in her treedome. She soon notices a huge live-action eye above her treedome, revealed to be the French Narrator's magnifying glass. While the French Narrator concludes the episode, another pair of huge eyes surround him. The French Narrator runs away, and the eyes wink at the audience.

Production

This episode received storyboard plussing during the fall of 2021.^[11]

This episode was confirmed by Cartoonlounge.de on February 25, 2022.^[12]

April "Pinkie" Davis posted a collage of Bunny Star storyboard poses from her artist reference file to Instagram on May 3, 2022. A few of them happened to be from this episode.^[13]

Promotional art (by Ian Vazquez)

Storyboards

• Rough boarded by Fred Osmond, supervising by Ian Vazquez
• Additional board by Jeff Shea can be found here.^[14]
• Additional board by Chris Tabares can be found here.^[2]

Deleted scene

• In Fred Osmond's rough boards, one of the objects flying through space in the beginning of the episode featured Bubble Bass' bottom being chomped on by fake teeth.^[10]

Art

Character and object design

Prop design

• Designed by Andre Nieves.^[6]

Background design

Production notes

• This was the first of three Patrick segments that Kyle Morrison worked on, as well as their first time drawing the character.^[15]
  • They also made various other contributions to the segment, such as:
    • Revising, plussing, and staging the storyboards.^[15]

• • • Mrs. Poecilia's cheering pose, saying it was based off of one image from "Whale of a Birthday," being the only reference they had.^[16]
    • The "out her face?" gag, which was their favorite addition to the episode.^[9]
  • Morrison said that the trickiest part to work on during production was Patrick fixing Pat-Tron, saying "Patrick "fixing" Pat-Tron was trickiest bit to work on, for as much acting that Pat had to do in a tiny space. I think it came out pretty well though!"^[17]

Music

( ‣ ) Production music

( • ) Original music

( ◦ ) SpongeBob music

 ‣ Tales From The Swamp (D) - Ron Goodwin [Opening.]
 ‣ The Great White - Gregor F. Narholz [Frenchy drops the Star house.]
 ‣ Bossa Cubana [#26.2] - Gerhard Narholz [Patrick's house landed/"Captain Quasar and Pat-Tron!"]
 ‣ Swinging Trombone - Boris Schoska ["Welcome to the show, fellas!"]
 ‣ Hüttenjodler - Werner Brueggemann, Ego Plum ["Out her face?"]
 ‣ Dramatic Encounter - Gregor F. Narholz [Shrink ray stuck to Patrick's head.]
 ‣ Jarabe Tapatio D - Gabriel Montes [Bunny and Cecil arrive.]
 ‣ Plaisir D'Amour [#13] - Florence Caillon, Xavier Demerliac [Patrick gets shrunken by Quasar's shrink ray.]
 ‣ Enchanted [#67.02] - Gregor F. Narholz ["Wow, our house is gigantic now!"]
 • Small Song - Ego Plum [Montage of the Stars doing things while being small.]
 ‣ O Makalapua B - Kapono Beamer [Patrick, Squidina, Cecil, and Bunny floating in the toilet.]
 ‣ Frantic Storm - Ronald Hanmer [Tinkle drinking the toilet water.]
 ‣ Life on the Wild Side - Sam Spence, Ego Plum [GrandPat playing a virtual reality game.]
 ‣ King Kong Coming - Gregor F. Narholz [GrandPat enters the bathroom.]
 ‣ Abject Terror - Paul Lewis [Patrick, Squidina, Cecil, and Bunny get pulled into the wall.]
 ‣ Skippin' It - Robert Franchi [The Dartfish family rescues the Stars.]
 ‣ Tower of Evil - Magnum Opus [GrandPat peeks inside the wall.]
 ‣ Italian Summer - Hendric Haydegg ["To survive in the wild, we find it best to stay out of family squabbles."]
 ‣ Planet Xz-3 A - Gregor F. Narholz ["GrandPat scared our new friends away!"]
 ‣ Roundup - Sam Spence [Patrick and Squidina dropping cake molds on GrandPat.]
 ◦ SpongeBob SquarePants Theme Song - Derek Drymon, Stephen Hillenburg, Mark Harrison, Blaise Smith [SpongeBob-shaped cake mold.]
 ‣ On the March - Jack Jordan [GrandPat attacked using the sink and kitchen utensils.]
 ‣ Smugglers Chase - Jose Armandola [GrandPat retaliates with his dentures.]
 ‣ Coconut Cocktail - Lionel Wendling [The "shimmering, shiny city of Shmandor."]
 ‣ Drama Link (G) - Hubert Clifford [Cecil singing.]
 ‣ Arnold Is Back 2 - Gregor F. Narholz [The Stars nearly get ran over by GrandPat's scooter.]
 ‣ Death Clock F - Dick De Benedictis ["We're too small to be run over."]
 ‣ Enemy Sighted - Sam Fonteyn ["Now, where would I hide if I was a filthy flea?"]
 ‣ Locomotion - Clive Richardson [The Stars control GrandPat's scooter to scare him.]
 ‣ Pyramids Of Egypt - Gregor F. Narholz [GrandPat rides away from the mummies.]
 • Lucky Loofah - Nicolas Carr, Sage Guyton, Jeremy Wakefield ["Hey guys! Look what I found! Jumbo Grow plant food!"]
 • ? - Ego Plum [The Stars shrink to molecular size.]
 ‣ ? ["Now I can see the fine print, Patrick!"]
 • ? - Ego Plum [The Stars grow back to regular size.]
 ‣ Bossa Cubana [#26.2] - Gerhard Narholz ["Look, we're home!"]
 ‣ Night Out - Tommy Reilly, James Moody [Sandy studying.]
 • ? - Nicolas Carr [Sandy sees a eye staring at her.]
 ‣ Horror Cue 5 C - Gregor F. Narholz [Sandy screams.]
 • The Tidal Zone Theme - Nicolas Carr, Sage Guyton, Jeremy Wakefield [Ending.]

Release

Format	Title	Region
DVD	The Complete Thirteenth Season	United States
	Kamp Koral Season 1, Volume 2	United States
	The Patrick Star Show Season 1, Volume 2	United States
Box set	Another 100 Episodes	United States
	The Best 300 Episodes Ever	United States
Digital release	The Tidal Zone	Global
	SpongeBob SquarePants Vol. 22	United States

Trivia

General

• This episode premiered as a part of "The Tidal Zone" special event.
• During the original airing and all subsequent airings of this episode that ran as a part of "The Tidal Zone" special event, the SpongeBob intro is used, making it the only Patrick segment so far to not feature the series' opening.
  • In its non-Tidal Zone airings, the "SpongeBob SquarePants Presents: The Tidal Zone" intro is omitted, and the episode begins with its title.^[18]
• Also during the original airing and all subsequent "The Tidal Zone" re-airings, this episode segment was paired up with the SpongeBob SquarePants episodes "You're Going to Pay...Phone" and "A Skin Wrinkle in Time."^[19]

• The cake mold resembling SpongeBob is based on a stock image, albeit redesigned to resemble his appearance in the spin-off.
  • Ironically, an actual cake mold of this SpongeBob stock image (and in its original appearance) does exist.
• Alongside the SpongeBob SquarePants season 13 episode "Welcome to Binary Bottom", this is the first episode in the Tidal Zone where SpongeBob is absent.
• As GrandPat ends up in Ancient Egypt, he immediately announces that he needs to get home and runs off, kick-starting his story arc.
• The "out-her-face" woman has black hair rather than blonde and a different color pattern behind her in the final version of the episode.

• In the scene where the Stars visit the shopping center, Sandals can be seen walking into the "sandals" section.
• This episode was originally scheduled to premiere on Friday, November 25, 2022 in the United States at 7:30 PM,^[20] but it instead got replaced with the Nickelodeon premiere of the 2021 film The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run.^[21][22]
  • This episode was later scheduled to premiere at this exact time on January 13, 2023^[23] - but it was later moved to 7:45PM.^[24] The segment instead premiered at 7:01PM, mirroring its proposed chronological order in The Tidal Zone.
• Starting with this episode, Kenny Pittenger is credited as the supervising producer, while Marc Ceccarelli and Vincent Waller are now credited as executive producers.

• When this episode is seen in its proper episode 14 pairing, it has a copyright date of 2022. However, when shown as a part of The Tidal Zone compilation special, it has a copyright date of 2023. The episode, ultimately, was produced during the former year.
• This is the first episode where Pat-Tron is seen inside the Star house.

Episode references

• While playing a video game, GrandPat wears a shirt saying, "Foxy Grandpa," which is a reference to the Foxy Grandpa hat from "One Krabs Trash."
• Weenie 1 appears in his scientist outfit from "Atlantis SquarePantis," while Incidental 80 appears as his "Cannonball Jenkins" alter-ego from "The Sponge Who Could Fly."
• The Shmandalorian shopping bags are the same as the ones seen in "No Nose Knows," except they feature Rubedor's face on them.^[6]
• Patrick's paper shopping bag is the same one from "Mall Girl Pearl."^[6]

Cultural references

• The first two cake molds Patrick and Squidina throw on GrandPat resemble Fudgie the Whale and Cookie Puss, two Carvel ice cream characters.^[25]
• The spinning doors are a reference to previous Nickelodeon spin-offs, such as Rugrats Pre-School Daze and Planet Sheen, which Ian Vazquez claims can be accessed through The Tidal Zone.^[1]
• Various Twilight Zone references can be found in this segment.
  • The title card resembles a part of the opening sequence.
  • Chalk referencing the episode "Little Girl Lost" can be found in the Dartfish family's home.^[1]
  • GrandPat antagonizing the shrunken Star family resembles the "Old People vs. Tiny People" premise found in the episode "The Invaders."^[1]
  • The Shmandorians having a monument in their former leader's honor is a nod to The Little People.^[1]
• Shmandor's name and appearance are a reference to Kandor from the Superman comics.
• The original idea for the Shmandorians was to have their clothing be red to reference a supposed Doctor Who gag, but it was later changed to white to match the backgrounds—however, that in of itself was later undone by mistake. Supervising director Ian Vazquez also suggested that maybe "Chancellor Rube [Rubedor] declared it opposite day, [as] he's quirky like that."^[1]

• When the Star family finishes adjusting to Shmandorian life, their attire appears to parody of The Jetsons, with Cecil's suit, Patrick's antenna-topped hat, and the two antennas sticking out of Bunny's hair sharing similar attributes with George Jetson, Elroy Jetson, and Rosie the Robot.

Errors

• In the original clip for the episode, Captain Quasar's eyes aren't colored in. In the final episode, they're properly colored.
• It is shown that GrandPat wears dentures, yet he looks like he has many missing teeth, and was even shown having gums with spots where his missing teeth are supposed to be.

Videos

Names in other languages

Language	Name	Meaning
Russian	Сжимая звёзды Szhimaya zvyozdy	By Compressing Stars
Spanish (Latin America)	La familia diminuta	The Tiny Family
Spanish (Spain)	Estrellas menguantes	Shrinking Stars

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Ian Vazquez on Twitter
2. ^ ^{a b} Chris Tabares on Twitter
3. ^ Kyle Morrison on Twitter "Week-late Shrinking Stars thread"
4. ^ Sterling Richter on Twitter - "Layout designs for the episode Shrinking Stars..."
5. ^ Spongebob Universe - "The Tidal Zone" Patrick Star Sequence - SpeakerDeck
6. ^ ^{a b c d} Andre Nieves - Prop Designer / Storyboard Artist | Patrick Show and SpongeBob Prop Design
7. ^ SpongeBob SquarePants: Tidal Zone :553. - Copyright | Public Records System
8. ^ Nickelodeon UK - March 10, 2023
9. ^ ^{a b} Kyle Morrison on Twitter - "Pat's dumb "Out her face!?..."
10. ^ ^{a b} Fred Osmond on Instagram - "Some rough board panels..."
11. ^ Resume - David Shair
12. ^ DIE PATRICK STAR SHOW - EPISODE GUIDE
13. ^ April "Pinkie" Davis on Instagram - "Some of my board drawings of..."
14. ^ Jeff Shea on Twitter
15. ^ ^{a b} Kyle M. on Twitter - "I did revising, plussing, and staging..."
16. ^ Kyle M. on Twitter - "The blue dress fish's weird..."
17. ^ Kyle M. on Twitter - "Patrick "fixing" Pat-Tron..."
18. ^ SBSP Tidal Zone special vs. TPSS S01E14, "Shrinking Stars" opening - YouTube
19. ^ Nickstory - January 13, 2023
20. ^ November 2022 on Nickelodeon USA | Premiere Highlights - NickALive!
21. ^ Weeknights on Nickelodeon Promo - November 2022
22. ^ November 25, 2022 - Nickstory
23. ^ Upcoming Episode Talk (post #43) - SpongeBuddy Mania Forums
24. ^ The Tidal Zone will premiere on January 13 (post #294) - SpongeBuddy Mania Forums
25. ^ SNEAK PEEK at SpongeBob SquarePants Presents The Tidal Zone

Notes

The Tidal Zone (V • E)
Episodes:	Shrinking Stars • The Switch Glitch • Welcome to Binary Bottom • You're Going to Pay...Phone • A Skin Wrinkle in Time
Characters:	SpongeBot • RoboGary • Pat-Tron • SquidBot • SquidBot twin • Sandroid • RoboKrabs • PlankBot • Karen • "RobotInc" incidentals • RoboLarry • Bubble Bass robot • Mama Bass robot • Mrs. Puff robot • Lady Upturn robot • RoboRube • Bathroom mirror robot • SpongeBot's alarm clock robot • Rubedor • Demon • Cowboy 1 • Cowboy 2
Locations:	Binary Bottom • Shmandor • SpongeBot's house • SquidBot's house • Pat-Tron's house • The Krabby Battery • Grease Bucket • Sandroid's treedome • Lube Lagoon
Objects:	Lightning berries • Pat-Tron's shrink ray • Jumbo Grow • Krabby Battery employee hat
Songs:	GrandPat Sea Star
Others:	The Tidal Zone (in-universe event)