This episode aired in Germany before the United States.
The German name for this episode is "Die Welle Zurück" or "The Wave Back".
This episode has its own spinoff Video Game, "SpongeBob SquarePants vs. The Big One: Beach Party Cook-Off", making it one of the few standalone SpongeBob episodes to have a video game tie-in.
This episode originally premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of SpongeBob SquarePants. There are many differences between the Sundance version and the final product. The Sundance version was mostly in still frames, as the animation wasn't finished at that time, there are scenes with Plankton that are not in the final cut, many songs and sound effects are missing, and there is a lot of dialogue in the Sundance version that wasn't included in the final release of the episode.
In some countries, this episode is referred to under alternate titles, such as "SpongeBob and the Big Wave" and "The Secret of Kahuna Laguna".