Sweet Victory: SpongeBob SquarePants makes cameo at Super Bowl halftime show

WASHINGTON — The Super Bowl 53 halftime show, headlined by Maroon 5 (and including Travis Scott and Big Boi) offered a medley of hit songs from Adam Levine’s band.

What got the social media universe going, however, was a cameo from SpongeBob SquarePants’ “Sweet Victory” halftime show.

According to the website Polygon, the movement to include a cameo of the sponge who lives in a pineapple under the sea started in late 2018 and included a petition on Change.org, to honor Stephen Hillenburg, the show’s creator, during this year’s Super Bowl halftime show.

Hillenburg died in November, 2018.

Maroon 5 previewed the possibility of a SpongeBob call-out earlier this week.

A brief clip of the character Squidward, acting as the band leader, from the “Sweet Victory” performance, played on the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta part-way through Maroon 5’s performance.

One of the halftime show bets leading into Sunday’s game was whether Maroon 5 would actually play “Sweet Victory.” It’s not known whether the brief appearance of a clip from the show was enough to satisfy the bookmakers.

However, a number of WTOP Twitter followers did not seem to think the clip was long enough to count.

Dan Friedell

Dan Friedell is a digital writer for WTOP. He came to the D.C. area in 2007 to work as digital editor for USATODAY.com, and since then has worked for a number of local and national news organizations.

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