The phrase comes from the time cards used throughout SpongeBob SquarePants, the Nickelodeon cartoon that began in 1999, where a narrator announces how much time has passed between scenes. Cards like this one became a familiar visual and audio gag for viewers, and short clips of them later spread across meme pages, YouTube edits and TikTok, where creators reused them to mark a fast-forward. It remains popular because the format is instantly understood, even by people who have not watched the episode it came from.