The face flicking the lights at the end of SpongeBob's "Graveyard Shift" is Count Orlok from Nosferatu (1922) — a silent film made without permission from Dracula's estate, which a German court ordered destroyed in 1925. A few prints escaped, so the face survived long enough for a cartoon sponge to bring it back in 2002.
In the episode, Squidward invents the Hash-Slinging Slasher to scare SpongeBob on the night shift — then the three signs he made up start happening: the lights flicker, the phone rings with nobody there, and the ghost bus arrives. Every sign gets a normal explanation, except the lights. The camera swings to the switch, and a vampire is standing there flipping it, smiling, while the characters greet him like an old friend: "Nosferatu!"
Writer and storyboard director Jay Lender has explained how that ending happened. The flickerer was originally Floorboard Harry, a creature who supposedly lived under the Krusty Krab floorboards — but that setup joke was cut, so ending on a random creature was not funny enough. Lender reached instead for a still photograph from a silent horror film, slightly altered and barely animated. Creator Stephen Hillenburg said yes.
Prana Film was founded by occultist Albin Grau, and Nosferatu was the only film the company ever made. The filmmakers wanted Dracula but never got permission — Bram Stoker's widow Florence guarded the novel — so they changed the names and hoped: Dracula became Count Orlok, and London became the German town of Wisborg. Max Schreck played Orlok bald, sunken-eyed, with fingers like talons, and stayed in character so completely that a rumor spread that Schreck did not exist and Murnau had hired a real vampire. It was never true — Schreck was a working stage actor — but the rumor was sticky enough that Hollywood later made a whole movie about it, Shadow of the Vampire (2000).
Florence Stoker sued and won. In 1925 the court ordered all prints surrendered and destroyed, and Prana Film went bankrupt. That should have been the end — except prints had already escaped to other countries, where they were copied and passed hand to hand for decades while Orlok's face became the template for nearly every screen vampire after him. Nickelodeon later brought him back again and again, including as the Krusty Krab's night-shift manager in "The Night Patty" and in his biggest role yet, "Squidferatu," twenty years after that first cameo. The court tried to erase him. Instead, he is the one silent-film monster most kids can pick out of a lineup.
See the full story in the LOE PRESSURE long-form pilot — "The Monster Hiding in SpongeBob's Scariest Episode — The True Story of Nosferatu" — on YouTube.
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Sources: Polygon, "SpongeBob SquarePants' Nosferatu episode creator explains how it happened" (Jay Lender interview); Wikipedia, Nosferatu (film facts, lawsuit, public domain 2019); Encyclopedia SpongeBobia, Nosferatu / Graveyard Shift / The Night Patty entries.