The Ren and Stimpy Show/Trivia


 * Author Existence Failure: Not death-related, but many scripts and concepts that John K. pitched to Nick before Spumco was fired were later finished or adapted by the Games crew. Among the episodes fully realized at Games include: "A Yard Too Far" (John K. pitched this as a remake of the Yogi Bear cartoon "Pie Pirates"), "Magical Golden Singing Cheeses" (it was originally meant to be a Stimpy's Storybook Land outing), "Stimpy's Cartoon Show" (Wilbur Cobb was originally visually different than how he turned out, among other changes), and "Ren's Brain".
 * Channel Hop: From Nickelodeon for the original series to Spike TV for Ren and Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon.
 * Creator Backlash: John is actually pretty critical of the original show, and he warns his fans not to study his cartoons--"For everything we did right, there were a ton of mistakes."
 * He also hated "Nurse Stimpy" and "Fire Dogs II". The former for all the cuts Nickelodeon wanted and many artistic failings, the latter for its deplorable timing and sluggish pacing, although he admitted it had good characterization.
 * John K dislikes many of the Ren and Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon episodes, both due to the adult content he was asked to include but didn't really want to and their slow pacing.
 * Billy West does not like talking about working on the show and refuses to work with John Kricfalusi ever again, citing having a bad experience with him on and off it. In particular, Kricfalusi demanded West quit the show alongside him in order to force the network to hire him back even though West needed the job and could have been blacklisted alongside Kricfalusi had he done it and failed.
 * To a lesser extent, Bob Camp: while he enjoyed working on the show, he has similar bad memories working with Kricfalusi and executive demands, and wasn't satisfied with a lot of his directed episodes during the Games Animation seasons.
 * Defictionalization: The LOG toy from Blammo, which initially only existed as a parody commercial, eventually did become a real Ren and Stimpy related toy.
 * John K. noted on the DVD commentary for Sven Höek that there was a Ren and Stimpy fan website dedicated to the Loyal Order of Stupids, Sven and Stimpy's "club", called "Members of the Loyal Order of Stupids".
 * "Ask Dr. Stupid" became the letters column for the Ren and Stimpy comic book by Marvel Comics. Just like in the TV skits, readers would send in silly questions and get equally silly answers.
 * Descended Creator: John K. as Ren for the first two seasons. Bob Camp was credited among The Players in a lot of Games Animation episodes.
 * Edited for Syndication: When R&S was rerun on VH-1 and Spike TV, there were commercial fades in the middle of a cartoon, which disrupted the action. There were also time cuts in some episodes. Sadly, these are the versions which made it onto DVD.
 * Executive Meddling: Nickelodeon messed about with this show extensively due to censorship issues and John K's inability to make deadlines. The later ending up being the final straw as he was ultimate fired for not getting the new episodes out on time
 * John K's firing is a controversial topic subject to much debate. For years, John K. claimed he was done in over content and portrayed himself as a martyr but when Ren and Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon was launched, former colleagues Billy West and Bill Wray came forward to call John K. out on lying and that his laziness was what really got him fired.
 * Flip-Flop of God: John Kricfalusi seems to change his mind whenever people ask about the main duo's sexuality. He goes from saying that "it's none of his business", to saying that Ren is bisexual, to that they are canonically gay. Heck, even when he made them explicitly gay in the adult spin-off, he still beats around the bush regarding this topic.
 * Franchise Killer: The cancellation of Ren and Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon put the kibosh on the franchise until Comedy Central announced in August 2020 that it would try to reboot the franchise again, this time without John K. or any of the other people who worked on either the original series or Adult Party Cartoon.
 * God Does Not Own This World: Probably one of the most Shakespearean and operatic instances of this trope, since Bob Camp, Chris Reccardi, Bill Wray and other Spumco-ites from the first two seasons chose to stay with Nickelodeon and the show after Kricfalusi was fired.
 * Hey, It's That Voice!: Ren (in Seasons 3-5, as well as a couple episodes during Season 2) and Stimpy are both played by a delivery boy who ended up in the year 3000.
 * Haggis McHaggis, quite fittingly, is Scrooge McDuck.
 * Frank Zappa voiced the pope on one episode. He was also the original Powdered Toast Man, later passing that role down to Gary Owens.
 * Gilbert Gottfried as Jerry The Bellybutton Elf.
 * Ren and Stimpy's Mexican actors are Shrek and Buzz Lightyear.
 * As for Spain, Stimpy is Squidward.
 * In Germany, they're SpongeBob SquarePants and Johnny Bravo.
 * They're also Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, Ted Schmidt and Emmett Honeycutt, Hitoshi Shinkai and Heiji Hattori, Makabe and Hatomura, Vegeta (first voice) and Zarbon, Wakko Warner and Jerry Seinfeld, and Danny and Flanigan.
 * Keep Circulating the Tapes: The short "Chicken in a Drawer", which was absent from the second DVD set, likely due to using time-compressed Spike TV masters. Speaking of Spike TV masters, a large number of episodes on all the DVD sets of the original series featured cuts, ranging from only a few seconds to a minute in some instances. This was due to Nickelodeon tampering with footage from the negatives after Kricfalusi's firing for the reruns of them. Although he got the episodes as close to the originals as he could for the sets, he couldn't get all of the original footage back.
 * Missing Episode: While all episodes are now on DVD, a few episodes from the Games era were banned after one or two broadcasts. And in the case of Ren and Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon, "Naked Beach Frenzy", "Altruists", and "Stimpy's Pregnant" never aired on American TV at all.
 * "Man's Best Friend" also went unaired for years, until finally airing once on Spike TV in 2003. It can now be seen on the Seasons 1 and 2 DVD set as well on Netflix under the Adult Party Cartoon series. Allegedly, the censors objected to Ren repeatedly hitting George Liquor with a boating oar.
 * The Other Darrin: Billy West replaced John Kricfalusi as Ren when Spumco was fired. West also took over as the voice of Mr. Horse and Mrs. Buttloaves.
 * Gary Owens replaced Darrin J. Sargent as the voice of Powdered Toast Man after the first PTM bumper.
 * Eric Bauza replaced Billy West as Stimpy in Ren and Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon.
 * Harris Peet originally voiced George Liquor in "The Boy Who Cried Rat" before being replaced by Michael Pataki.
 * Sacred Cow: One of the five main ones of the Nicktoons franchise, along with SpongeBob SquarePants, Rocko's Modern Life, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Invader Zim.
 * Schedule Slip: Word of God the reason behind Kricfalusi's firing. The Simpsons even made jokes about it with a bit where an episode of the show was up for an animation award but was not even finished yet...
 * Shrug of God/Flip-Flop of God: On Ren and Stimpy's sexuality.
 * Talking to Himself: Both main characters were voiced by Billy West after John Kricfalusi, Ren's original voice actor, was fired.
 * They Copied It, So It Sucks: Was unfortunately the response of (far too) many "professional" critics when Rocko's Modern Life dared to feature R&S's gross-out humor and surrealism.
 * Uncanceled: Ren and Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon (though most disappointed fans wouldn't count this).
 * What Could Have Been: Obviously, if John K. and his team hadn't been fired. Word is that Season 3, had Spumco been kept on, would've mixed in more dramatic outings (similar to "Stimpy's Fan Club" and "Son of Stimpy") with the comedic shorts. Given how good they got at visual acting towards the end of their work on R&S, that would've been interesting to see.
 * Episodes like "A Visit to Anthony", "Fake Dad", and the aforementioned "Stimpy's Fan Club" were only partially finished when Spumco was fired and were mostly completed by Games. How much better these episodes would have turned out if John K. had been able to finish them is unknown.
 * In 1993, Nickelodeon was planning on making a Ren and Stimpy movie, along with a movie of Rugrats and Doug. Only the Rugrats and Doug ones were made (albeit the Doug movie being made after it was bought by Disney), with the Rugrats one being successful enough for a string of sequels.
 * Billy West was supposed to be the voice of both Ren and Stimpy when the show first started. He got his wish when John K. was fired and Games Animation came in to make episodes.
 * The show was going to be a song written and played by Kurt Cobain. Sadly, John K. rejected the music sheet (by tossing it in the trash just after Cobain submitted it to Spumco Studios) and decided an instrumental was better.
 * Had Spumco remained on the show Wilbur Cobb's role in "Stimpy's Cartoon Show" would have been taken by Raymond Spum, a sort of Walt Disney-type figure. Also, Stimpy's cartoon was originally going to be animated and designed like a short from The Golden Age of Animation.
 * George Liquor had been an intended part of the show from almost the very start. However due to an alleged dislike of the character by Nickelodeon, he was limited to cameos in Season One and only fully utilized in two episodes of Season Two (one of which was banned). After John K was fired, Nickelodeon were more than willing to let him take the rights to use Liquor with him, retiring him from the series. He was intended for a return in Adult Swim, though due to it's cancellation he never made an appearance.
 * Word of Gay: John K's confirmation on whether Ren and Stimpy are a gay couple is a bit flip-flopped. Answers from John K. range from "It's none of my business" to "Only when/if it's funny" to "Both of them are desperate and/or bisexual." There's no simple "Yes" or "No" answer and, knowing Kricfalusi, there probably will never be one.
 * The German translation of the show seemed to have caught wind of this as both the voices of the title characters in that version are quite clearly gay.
 * Write Who You Know: George Liquor is based on John Kricfalusi's father, while the fireman from "Fire Dogs" and the tenuous sequel "Fire Dogs 2" is based on Ralph Bakshi (Kricfalusi's animation mentor).
 * Written by Cast Member: Many of the early episodes were written by John K., who initially played Ren. Later, "Ol' Blue Nose" was partially written by Billy West, who initially voiced Stimpy, but later voiced both Ren and Stimpy.