Mrs. Puff's development originated with a request by Nickelodeon that SpongeBob attend a school. Nickelodeon initially wanted to make SpongeBob a child since their most successful cartoons at the time focused on young, school-age characters. Hillenburg stated that the network wanted SpongeBob to be like "Arnold "Hey Arnold!" under the sea," but he told them, "No, that's not the show." As a compromise, Hillenburg decided to "put him in school - but it would be a driving school"; this allowed him to keep writing SpongeBob as an adult while also using the school as a main plot element. Showrunner Vincent Waller suggested that if the network had creative control over the show, almost every episode would take place at Mrs. Puff's school, not at a variety of locations. The choice to make Mrs. Puff a pufferfish, who inflates into a ball when SpongeBob crashes, was made to evoke the appearance of car airbags. Because she was created late in production, her design incorporates elements of the earlier characters' appearances, such as the same type of skirt as Pearl and the same rounded teeth as Squidward.