Mr Krabs Meme
The Mr Krabs meme is a frame of the SpongeBob SquarePants restaurant owner with his head swollen into a green money bag, two dollar signs where his eyes should be and his mouth open in delight. It captions greed that has given up hiding.
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Where the Mr Krabs meme comes from
Start with what is certain. Mr Krabs was created by Stephen Hillenburg, a marine science teacher who became an animator, and he arrived with the show itself in the pilot that aired on 1 May 1999. Hillenburg based him on a restaurant manager he had worked for, a man whose strong Maine accent reminded him of a pirate. The greed was not part of that model. Hillenburg added it deliberately, to give the character more personality, and it became the single trait everything else about Krabs hangs from. In early development the surname was spelled with a C, which would have made the restaurant the Crusty Crab.
That greed is drawn, not just written. Across the series Krabs sniffs out coins at a distance, chases a penny for miles, breaks into an employee’s house over one cent and, in one episode, has his eyes turn into gold bars at the words counter sue. The money bag head with dollar sign eyes belongs to that visual vocabulary, a gag the show returns to whenever the joke needs to be legible in half a second.
The uncomfortable bit: this exact frame is uncredited
Here is where we differ from every other page about this template. Meme databases document the other Krabs formats carefully and do not document this one. Template sites list it only as a user upload called Mr Krabs money, with no episode, no season and no timestamp. We tried to source it and could not. The frame is on model and looks like broadcast animation rather than a fan edit, but that is an observation, not a citation, and the dollar sign eyes recur often enough that naming an episode from the gag alone would be guessing.
So: the character is documented, the gag is documented, the still is not. What follows is the documented family it sits in, which is genuinely useful for telling these templates apart, because people mix them up constantly.
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1 May 1999 | Help Wanted premieres. Mr Krabs appears for the first time, already defined by money. |
| 24 January 2003 | Mid-Life Crustacean airs, the episode behind the separate are you feeling it now format. |
| 19 November 2004 | The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie is released, containing the interview scene in which Krabs answers a journalist with the single word money. |
| 5 June 2014 | The earliest known GIF of that line is uploaded to Giphy, years before the scene becomes a meme. |
| 31 January 2016 | A tweet spreads the blurred Confused Mr Krabs reaction image, which archives trace to the episode Patty Hype. It gathers thousands of retweets within weeks. |
| 2016 | The I like money scene starts circulating as a meme in its own right, twelve years after the film. |
| 20 April 2021 | A YouTube edit pairs an audio clip of the word money repeated and distorted with footage of real crabs. That audio is not from the show and is not Clancy Brown. |
What it means and when to use it
This format has one job and does it without subtlety. The face is not scheming, it is celebrating, and the difference matters. A scheming expression implies you are being cheated by someone hiding it. This expression implies nobody is hiding anything, which is why the template works best on the moment a price, a fee or a motive is stated out loud with no shame attached.
| Element | Literal reading | How it is actually used |
|---|---|---|
| The money bag head | A cartoon transformation. | Total capture. The character has stopped being a person and become the motive. |
| Dollar sign eyes | An old animation shorthand. | The point at which greed becomes visible from across the room. It signals the joke before any caption is read. |
| The open mouth | A shout. | Joy, not anger. Read as fury, the whole format collapses. |
| The notes on the ground | Scattered cash. | Evidence that the money is already here. This is a celebration, not an ambition. |
| Upper box | A caption. | The polite public version: the service, the offer, the reason given. |
| Lower box | A caption. | The number, the fee or the honest reason. Specific figures work far better than the word money. |
| Aimed at yourself | Self mockery. | The strongest use. Confessing your own money motive is funnier than accusing someone else of theirs. |
| Aimed at a named real company | Commentary. | Risky use. It reads as an allegation about that business rather than as a joke about pricing in general. |
Captions that work
Two text boxes. Give the innocent framing on top and the number underneath. Real figures beat vague ones every time; the joke is precision, not outrage.
- moneyVenue asks whether the booking is for a wedding The price quietly doubles
- moneyStreaming service adds adverts and raises the price Cancel button relocated to a submenu
- moneyMy lemonade stand now has a card reader Suggested tip: 25 percent
- travelConvenience fee for choosing your own seat On a coach
- travelAirline charges for the overhead locker And for the aisle
- workMy side project has exactly one user Introducing the enterprise tier
- schoolSold four textbooks back to the campus shop Twelve pounds
- moneyThe concert ticket costs sixty The booking fees cost sixty one
- workWe are a family here, says the manager Family does not get paid overtime
- techPrinter ink sold by the millilitre like perfume Refuses to scan when the yellow runs low
- moneyTap water is free, says the sign The cup is three pounds
- moneyGym membership: cancel any time Cancellation requires a letter, posted
Variants and close relatives
| Format | Source | How it differs |
|---|---|---|
| I like money | The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, released 19 November 2004 | A quote, not a face. Use it when the joke is the refusal to give any other answer. |
| Confused Mr Krabs | A blurred still archives trace to Patty Hype, spread from 31 January 2016 | Same character, opposite emotion. That one is disorientation; this one is certainty. |
| Are you feeling it now | Mid-Life Crustacean, aired 24 January 2003 | A video and audio format rather than a still. Mostly used for innuendo, not for money. |
| Moar Krabs | A high detail frame from Jellyfish Hunter | A video remix fad built on a frame that appears for under a second. Not a captioning template. |
| Money money money edits | An audio clip first paired with crab footage in April 2021 | Audio only, and the voice is not the show or its actor. Frequently mistaken for a real scene. |
Common mistakes
- Writing money in the lower box. The picture already says money. The caption should say how much.
- Confusing it with Confused Mr Krabs. They are opposite faces carrying opposite jokes. Searching for one and using the other is the most common error with this character.
- Claiming an episode. Plenty of pages state a source for this frame with total confidence and none of them cite anything. Do not repeat it.
- Aiming it at a named small business. The template accuses. Aimed at one identifiable shop it stops being a joke about pricing and becomes a claim about people.
- Using it for poverty jokes. The format is about someone taking money, not about someone lacking it. The second reading lands badly.
- Long setups. One clause on top, one number underneath. Anything longer and the picture has already finished the joke.
Limits and etiquette
The honest limits here are comic and legal in roughly equal measure. Comically, this is a blunt instrument. It has one register, and the register is loud, so it does not reward clever writing the way quieter templates do. It is also everywhere; Mr Krabs is one of the most heavily mined characters on the internet, and a caption has to be genuinely specific to stand out among thousands.
Legally, this is not folk art. Mr Krabs is a copyrighted character owned by a large studio, drawn by a named creator who died in 2018, and the frame is a still from a commercial production. Personal captioning of a cartoon still is ordinary internet behaviour and is treated as such. Building advertising around it, or using it to make a specific accusation against a named company, is a different activity with different consequences.
The template frame reproduced here is third-party material, hosted for captioning only; rights holders can use the takedown policy at /dmca/.
Frequently asked questions
Which episode is the Mr Krabs money meme from?
No meme archive credits a specific episode for this frame, and we could not verify one. The dollar sign eyes are a recurring visual gag used across many episodes, so treat the still as uncredited.
Who is Mr Krabs?
Eugene H. Krabs, the crab who owns the Krusty Krab restaurant in SpongeBob SquarePants. He first appeared in the pilot episode Help Wanted, which premiered on Nickelodeon on 1 May 1999.
Who created the character?
Stephen Hillenburg, a marine science teacher turned animator. He based Krabs on a restaurant manager he once worked for and added the greed himself, to give the character more personality.
Who voices Mr Krabs?
Clancy Brown has voiced him throughout the series. He has described the voice as piratey with a little Scottish brogue.
What does the Mr Krabs money meme mean?
It labels greed that has stopped pretending to be anything else. The caption usually confesses a money motive that a normal person would hide.
How many text boxes does the Mr Krabs template have?
Two. The upper box gives the innocent version of events and the lower box supplies the price, the fee or the real reason.
Is this the same as the I like money meme?
No. That one is a scene from The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, released on 19 November 2004, in which Krabs answers an interviewer with the word money. Different clip, different format.
Is it the same as confused Mr Krabs?
No. Confused Mr Krabs is a blurred reaction still that archives trace to the episode Patty Hype, popularised by a tweet on 31 January 2016. Same character, opposite emotion.