Collecting every last collectible is critically essential for 100% Completion.
Fetch Quest: The game itself is one big fetch quest due to the number of collectibles you need in order to proceed, which includes the Gold Doubloons, the Jellyfish, and the SPONGEBOB letters.
Being made when the franchise was still relatively young, things probably weren't set in stone when the game started development.
Early Installment Weirdness: All the personality differences from the show might have been less likely to happen had the game been made today.
Dem Bones: You encounter hostile walking skeletons in "The Dutchman's Graveyard".
Double Entendre: The Dutchman's Graveyard has a lot of suggestive comments about "booty" that is to say, treasure.
Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: When Squidward is freed from the Dutchman's clutches, he asks SpongeBob what took him so long.
Cats Are Mean: Feral snails - the undersea equivalent of cats - are one type of enemy.
Krabs into becoming members of his crew - he eventually tries to do the same to SpongeBob himself, but fortunately the treasures the latter collected rendered him immune to the Dutchman's hypnotism.
Brainwashed: Over the course of the game, the Flying Dutchman hypnotizes Gary, Patrick, Squidward, Sandy and Mr.
You must run away from the ship as it's destroying the pier right behind you.
Advancing Wall of Doom: At one point in Goo Lagoon, The Flying Dutchman takes control of a ship ready to dock and pursues SpongeBob with it.
Here, he kidnaps Gary for digging him up while planning to make him part of his pirate crew despite SpongeBob's insistence that he should be the one to go instead, then he goes out of his way to kidnap SpongeBob's friends despite them having literally nothing to do with freeing the Dutchman and seemingly just to torment him, and finally attempts to defeat SpongeBob and make him part of his crew anyway during the Final Boss. While he wasn't exactly a saint in the show, he was at least a man of his word.
Adaptational Villainy: The Flying Dutchman himself.
It's almost as if he took a little dose of Squidward's personality. He refuses to give SpongeBob the letter on his championship belt until after he beats him in a competiton and runs away from him because he fears that other people might see the two of them together. In the series, he's a nice guy and doesn't mind SpongeBob at all, but in the game, he comes off as fairly selfish and a jerk.
Adaptational Jerkass: Larry the Lobster.
Adaptational Dumbass: Downplayed with Sandy, but it's doubtful the version of her from the show would genuinely believe a beehive was an acorn.