French Narrator

The French Narrator (captions on TV call it as Narrator or French Man is some episodes) is a man with a heavy French accent who speaks at the beginning, and sometimes middle and/or end, of most episodes. His only physical appearance was in "No Free Rides", where he got run over by SpongeBob. The French narrator is based on Jacques-Yves Cousteau, the world-famous sealife expert who died in 1997. On the November 16, 2004 episode of Fresh Air with Terry Gross, Tom Kenny admitted that Cousteau was the inspiration for the French narrator, as SpongeBob SquarePants creator Stephen Hillenburg considers Cousteau an idol. The voice of the French Narrator is done by Tom Kenny, who also does the voices of SpongeBob SquarePants and Gary the Snail, among others. In "Can You Spare A Dime?", a time card with the text "So much later that the old narrator got tired of waiting and they had to hire a new one," being read by an unknown narrator with an English accent, is shown, jokingly claiming that the French Narrator quit. However, this was not permanent.