The universe of SpongeBob SquarePants is full of colorful characters, and some of them have gone from background characters to recurrent ones and have even become memes, as is the case of the “My Leg” guy – and here’s who he is and when he appears. Nickelodeon has been home to a variety of cartoons, and while many of them have become fan favorites, none of them has been as successful as SpongeBob SquarePants. Created by marine science educator and animator Stephen Hillenburg, SpongeBob SquarePants premiered on Nickelodeon in 1999 and has since become the most successful Nicktoon.
SpongeBob SquarePants has branched out to other media, most notably film and video games, but viewers continue to be more drawn to the original series. SpongeBob SquarePants takes viewers to the bottom of the ocean to the underwater city of Bikini Bottom, where the title character and his friends live and get involved in all types of trouble. SpongeBob is often accompanied in his many adventures by his best friends Patrick Star and Sandy Cheeks, his neighbor Squidward Tentacles, and his greedy boss Mr. Krabs, as well as his pet snail Gary, who joins the fun from time to time. However, there are other, minor characters who, even though aren’t close to SpongeBob, have been given some relevance, as happened with the “My Leg” guy.
As mentioned above, Bikini Bottom is full of colorful characters, and the “My Leg” guy caught the attention of viewers as his bad luck became a running gag in SpongeBob SquarePants, and it’s a very simple one: this guy has a tendency to hurt his leg, and every time he does, he exclaims “my leg!”. The “My Leg” guy made his debut in SpongeBob SquarePants in season 1, in the episode “Boating School”, when SpongeBob crashes a boat into Mrs. Puff’s lighthouse, causing it to fall over twice. Since then, “My Leg” guy has been a recurrent minor character, appearing in almost every season (except seasons 4 and 7), and as it turns out, he actually has a name: Fred.
Fred is one of many incidental characters in SpongeBob SquarePants, so not much about his personality and backstory is known, but as he always hurts his leg, it’s implied that he’s accident-prone. However, Fred has shown a bit of attitude through the years, proving that he’s a leader as he has caused angry mobs a couple of times throughout the show. Fred’s popularity has been such that he even got his own episode in SpongeBob SquarePants season 11, appropriately titled “My Leg!”. The episode begins with a montage of Fred’s many accidents through the years, before following Fred to the doctor, where he gets the cast on his leg removed – and is warned by the doctor that if he doesn’t look after his leg, he will have to need a robotic one. SpongeBob then takes on the mission of keeping Fred and his leg safe, but Fred reveals he misses the hospital because he’s in love with a nurse, and so SpongeBob tries to break his leg again but fails.
In the end, Fred is run over by the ambulance, which hits him everywhere but the leg, but it’s enough to send him to the hospital, where he confesses his love to Nurse Bazooka. Fred and the “My Leg” meme have become the most popular running gag in SpongeBob SquarePants, and it’s unlikely he will stop appearing in the main series and other media, as he has also shown up in the movies and the spinoff series Kamp Koral: SpongeBob’s Under Years.