 Despite this, Mermaid Man has maintained some of his abilities as a skilled crime-fighter, though some of them have been comically shifted to reflect stereotypes commonly associated with his age; however, few of his admirers seem particularly bothered by this.The episode "Mermaid Man Begins" reveals that, through a series of meticulous and intricate events, he and his friend were suddenly equipped with aquatically themed superpowers in their youth, and chose to dedicate their lives to brawling undersea crime as a result (it is implied that the backstory behind the duo's powers as described in Bikini Bottom media was in fact far different from the presumably actual backstory Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy remembered from differing perspectives).Barnacle Boy is depicted as being the undercredited and underappreciated younger sidekick of Mermaid Man.