Line #3 Trivia/Mad


1	!Trivia related to [[Magazine/{{Mad}} the magazine]]:
2	* ApprovalOfGod: Over the years, countless targets of parody have sent letters and photographs to ''MAD'' showing their approval over being the target of a parody. One notable example is Creator/GeorgeLucas, who sent a letter to ''MAD'' praising their parody of ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack''. This letter came right after Lucas' lawyers had sent a cease-and-desist order to the magazine, to which publisher William M. Gaines responded by forwarding them a copy of Lucas' letter and a note reading "That's funny, George liked it!"
3	* BannedInChina: One page containing a strip mocking the British royal family had to be ripped from 25,000 copies manually before that issue could be sold in the UK. Though they have relaxed their attitude on such jokes since then.
4	* BoardGame: In 1979 there was a Board game. The goal was to lose all your money. Play went counter-clockwise, and you rolled the dice with your left hand. Other rules made for an unusual experience.
5	* CowboyBebopAtHisComputer:
6	** Occasionally in the parodies, such as failing to notice that [[spoiler:Mystique replaced the dead Senator Kelly]] in the first ''[[Film/XMen1 X-Men]]'' movie.
7	** In the ''Film/BackToTheFuturePartII'' parody "Bleak for the Future, Part II", "Mutty" complains "Look at me in 2015! I'm a complete failure! Why don't I do something about that?" [[spoiler:Probably because in the actual movie, Marty a) has no idea how he turns out in 2015 and b) ''never does find out'', although his girlfriend Jennifer does (she's in no position to tell him either, because she spends a lot of ''Part II'' and almost all of ''[[Film/BackToTheFuturePartIII Part III]]'' unconscious).]]
8	** In the ''Series/MorkAndMindy'' parody, [[Franchise/StarWars Darth Vader]] (who, beneath his armor, is a human) is shown as one of the aliens complaining about Mork.
9	** In the parody for ''Film/Twins1988'', they got the names of the protagonists mixed up, calling Danny [=DeVito=]'s character "Juiceless" (Julius) and Arnold Schwarzenegger's character "Duncent" (Vincent).
10	** And ''boy'' did they get it when they put out issue #292, the front cover of which featured Mario and Luigi bashing a TV with Alfred's face on it. They actually put a list on their letters page three months later (in small print, taking up a quarter page) of readers who wrote in to tell them that Luigi should have an L on his hat!
11	* CreatorBacklash:
12	** Mort Drucker illustrated the ''Series/TwentyFour'' parody that ran in issue #429. According to a Facebook post by Tom Richmond, the original intent was to have his art colorized digitally, but when he was dissatisfied with the results, it was redone with a grayscale shading instead. Drucker didn't like this either, and there was no time for him to try shading it himself, so he took his name off the art and it was credited to "[[AlanSmithee Bob Julian]]".
13	** ''MAD'' lent its name to an ''Film/AnimalHouse''-style comedy, ''Film/UpTheAcademy''. After it did poorly at the box office, ''MAD'' was quick to disown it, and wrote a two-page satire of their own movie, which ended with the entire staff fictitiously quitting in shame. William M. Gaines also paid Warner Bros. $30,000 to remove every reference to ''MAD'' from the movie. However, following being more integrated in the [=TimeWarner=] corporate culture after Gaines's death (as compared to their relative freedom under Gaines during the Kinney National/Warner Communications/early Time Warner years), the references were restored on all recent TV airings and the DVD.
14	** Some characters in parodies refer to their previous roles as such. In the parody of "Eraser", Arnold's character is asked to "erase" some of his co-stars' previous roles, and he tells them to wait until he's done with his own.
15	* CreatorCouple: George Woodbridge's wife, Deborah Mills Woodbridge, contributed needlepoint to a few articles that called for it. Dick [=DeBartolo=]'s husband, Dennis Wunderlin, has illustrated a few articles over the years.
16	* {{Defictionalization}}: Some people actually play "43-Man Squamish", a {{Calvinball}}-esque game invented by the mag in the 60s.
17	** One of the last mostly-original issues they did had the cover from ''Film/OnceUponATimeInHollywood''. The first half of it was a black-and-white period piece and included a parody of ''[[ShowWithinAShow Bounty Law]]''.
18	** A number of product enhancements suggested in the magazine have since become commonplace, such as peelable postage stamps, lids that stay attached to tube dispensers after opening, and spell checkers ("Hey, stupid! What kind of a word is 'teh'? Don't you mean 'the'?").
19	* DistancedFromCurrentEvents:
20	** Issue #122 (October 1968) features a front cover image of Alfred E. Neuman holding a pin toward several balloons with caricatures of contemporary politicians. One of the politicians depicted was UsefulNotes/RobertFKennedy, who was assassinated shortly before the image was set to hit news stands. His likeness was hastily replaced with one of Alfred.
21	** Issue #300 (January 1991) originally had an image of UsefulNotes/GeorgeHWBush burning a flag with the magazine's logo on it. Supposedly the editors felt that the image was in poor taste in the wake of the Gulf War, so it was hastily replaced with a stock image of Alfred spoofing ''Magazine/{{People}}'''s "Sexiest Man Alive".
22	** Issue #411 (November 2001) was originally supposed to have a cover featuring Alfred mistaking crime scene tape for the finish line of a foot race. The cover was deemed insensitive after 9/11, so a last-minute replacement was made with a close-up of Alfred's mouth showing an American flag in place of his missing tooth. A few copies of the original cover supposedly got out, and the cover was recycled in international markets.
23	** According to [[http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/newsmakers/cartoonist-al-jaffee-reveals-one-fold-mad-magazine-165324596.html this]] interview with artist Al Jaffee, he created a Fold-In themed to the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Aurora_shooting 2012 theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado]], and the editors decided that it was in poor taste, and 600,000 copies were shredded to cover it up. The Fold-In was finally approved for use in issue #7 of the reboot.
24	* ExecutiveMeddling: Mike Snider revealed in his now-defunct blog that his first approved piece for the magazine, a parody of "A More Humane Mikado", was greatly altered by the editors, who felt that ''Theatre/TheMikado'' would be too unfamiliar to readers. As a result, the parody barely scanned to the song at all.
25	* FollowTheLeader: The magazine's success inspired a succession of copycats, including ''Magazine/{{Cracked}}'' and countless others, many of which even had {{Exp\|y}}ies of Alfred E. Neuman as their mascots (and many of which lasted for only a few issues). William Gaines supposedly kept a voodoo doll that had pins marked with the names of ''Mad'' knockoffs; by his death in 1992, only the ''Cracked'' pin remained.
26	** Gaines even launched his own rip-off, ''Panic''.
27	* LifeImitatesArt: The ''Series/WheelOfFortune'' parody ends with the contestant owing a large amount of taxes due to all the {{undesirable prize}}s he's accumulated. Not long after the parody was published, the show dropped the "shopping" aspect for this very reason.
28	* MissingEpisode: A total of seven known articles from between 1957-1964 have been omitted from ''Totally MAD'' and ''Absolutely MAD'', the majority believed due to declines from the creators or their estates.
29	** Averted, however, with this [[https://www.madcoversite.com/missing.html handy companion archive]] courtesy of MAD Cover Site's Doug Gilford.
30	* TheOtherDarrin: Many recurring features have changed artists and/or writers:
31	** Frank Kelly Freas, who did the majority of the early magazine covers, left in 1962. After his departure, the main cover duties went to Norman Mingo until his 1980 death. Jack Rickard then took over until he died in 1983, and then Richard Williams did most of the covers until the mid-1990s. By the end of the decade, cover duties were rotated among several different artists until about 2003, when Mark Fredrickson became the primary artist (although he had done the occasional cover as early as 1995). Interestingly, the Burbank reboot reverted this and has let several different artists contribute.
32	** After Antonio Prohías retired in 1986, ''Spy vs. Spy'' went to other artists. Bob Clarke did the art from 1987 to 1993, then George Woodbridge for two issues, Dave Manak from 1993-97, and Peter Kuper ever since. Gag writing during the other artists' timespan was typically handled by Duck Edwing, although a few other writers pitched in now and then (notably, at least one installment paired Manak with his ''ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogArchieComics'' collaborator Michael Gallagher, who would go on to become a semi-regular at ''MAD''). Ever since Kuper took over, he has handled almost all of the gag writing as well.
33	** This has also shown up in ''Monroe and...'', which was originally drawn by Bill Wray (the same one who worked on ''WesternAnimation/TheRenAndStimpyShow'' in the 1990s). After a short retirement, the feature was briefly revived with Tom Fowler as the artist before retiring again.
34	** Mike Snider's "Celeberity Cause-of-Death Betting Odds" was originally drawn by Thomas Fluharty for seven of its first eight installments (the seventh, in #364, was done by James Warhola instead). Hermann Mejía then drew it for the rest of the run, except for issues #370 (Warhola again), #375 (Fluharty again), and #398-#401 (Jon Weiman). The feature was retired with #417, made a one-time return with #423, then was revived starting at #455 with digital art from Sam Viviano under his pseudonym of "Jack Syracuse". After Snider quit the magazine, the series has been uncredited.
35	** Also present in the ''Franchise/StarWars'' parodies of the first six movies. Dick [=DeBartolo=] and Nick Meglin co-wrote the ''Film/ANewHope'' parody, with Harry North, Esq. (who more commonly worked at the British ''MAD'') as the artist; the next four had just [=DeBartolo=] writing and Mort Drucker drawing. ''Film/RevengeOfTheSith'' switched to David Shayne for the writing and Hermann Mejía for the art, and ''Film/TheForceAwakens'' parody was drawn by Tom Richmond (except for some CallBack panels from the ''A New Hope'' parody) and written by "David Richards" (believed to be a pseudonym for Shayne, as he has also written for some of the ''Star Wars'' cartoon spinoffs).
36	* OutlivedItsCreator: Bill Gaines died in 1992, but the magazine is still in business. (He's still credited as the "founder" among "The Usual Gang of Idiots".) Also, ''ComicStrip/SpyVsSpy'' creator Antonio Prohías retired in 1987 and died in 1998, but his strip still appears in the magazine.
37	** "The Lighter Side Of..." was revived 15 years after Dave Berg's death.
38	* PromotedFanboy: In 2015, Music/WeirdAlYankovic became the first (and, as of the 2020 reprints, only) guest editor.
39	* ScrewedByTheNetwork: The Burbank reboot was barely a year into its run when the AT&T-Time Warner merger went through and new management switched to reprints, resulting in the sudden firing of the new Idiots. Even more bizarrely, the recently viral "Gashlygun Tinies" poem had shown signs of renewed interest in the magazine. Especially sore were the authors and fans of the [[CutShort serialized]] ''Potzrebie Comics'', who were [[GrowingTheBeard just getting the hang of long-form writing.]] This came to the point where some of them snarked at a Series/{{Jeopardy}} [[https://mobile.twitter.com/lukeymcgarry/status/1233235750335856641 clue about the ordeal]]. However, Bob Fingerman has stated that he'd like the magazine to return to new ideas in the future, and Luke [=McGarry=] is attempting to revive them in his own comic zine, ''Palaver''. The magazine briefly returned to publishing new material in October of 2022 [[MilestoneCelebration to celebrate its 70th anniversary]], potentially giving a sense of hope to longtime fans and readers.
40	* ShortLivedBigImpact:
41	** Basil Wolverton appeared very sporadically in the publication, just 9 issues from 1954 to 1970. In spite of that, he's regarded as one of the top artists for the magazine, being dubbed "The Michelangelo of MAD Magazine" by The New York Times. ''MAD XL'', a separate magazine reprinting older articles from the main publication, even named him an "Idiot of the Issue" in 2004. His son Monte has also been an infrequent contributor.
42	** Many of the other iconic artists in the early years did not stay for long either. Most notably, Will Elder and Creator/HarveyKurtzman were the main artist/writer duo in the early comic-book days, but both men left in 1958 (although they returned briefly from 1984-88). Other defining contributors who didn't stick around for long included John Severin (who quit after issue #10 and later became the flagship artist of rival ''Magazine/{{Cracked}}''), Wally Wood (left in 1964, except for one stray appearance in 1971), and Frank Kelly Freas (who primarily did cover art in the early days, but did not contribute at all after 1962). To their credit, all of them are known for considerably more than just their ''MAD'' work.
43	* TechnologyMarchesOn: In their article "The 50 Worst Things About the Internet", one of the captions showed a family huddled around their tiny computer monitor watching a movie on Netflix, while their big beautiful flatscreen TV sat in the living room unused. The issue came out in 2009; nowadays there are multiple ways to stream video sites through your television (even back then, the family could have plugged the computer into the TV with an HDMI cable if they ''really'' wanted to). Hell, many TV's now have wifi connectivity, eliminating the need for a middleman altogether.
44	* UncreditedRole: Many of Don Martin's single-page gags were scripted by ghost writers, most commonly Duck Edwing.
45	* WriterRevolt: A running joke in the magazine, and somewhat true behind-the-scenes occasionally.
46	* WriteWhatYouKnow: Dick [=DeBartolo=] was working for Creator/MarkGoodson Productions when he was tapped to write the ''Series/FamilyFeud'' parody. Naturally, he took that opportunity to knock down ''every'' trope that show presented (and submitted the parody under a pen name).
47	* YouLookFamiliar: Certain contributors have returned after a long gap. Most notably, Will Elder and Harvey Kurtzman returned to illustrate some articles (and even a couple covers) between 1984-88, and artist Joe Orlando, a semi-regular between 1957-1969, returned for four articles in 1997.
48
49	!Trivia related to [[WesternAnimation/{{Mad}} the cartoon]]:
50	* AccidentallyCorrectWriting:
51	** In "[[WesternAnimation/ThomasAndFriends Thomas the]] Film/{{Unstoppable}} [[WesternAnimation/ThomasAndFriends Tank Engine]]", Thomas is depicted as having both ends of his running plate dipped, not just the front. While it was done in order to not infringe on the character's image, [[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a5/LB%26SCR_E2_class.jpg this is actually how a real life Billington E2 tank engine's running plate is built.]][[note]]although to be exact, they modelled Thomas after his Hornby model[[/note]]
52	** A skit had a scientist claiming dinosaurs didn't roar because "they are part of the bird family". While the classification is utterly mixed up (birds are part of the dinosaur family, not the other way around), it has lately been discovered that dinosaurs really didn't roar like they how they are always portrayed since their vocalizations were more like those of crocodiles.
53	* ActingForTwo: Kevin Shinick and Rachel Ramras voice a large percentage of the show's characters - and it's pretty obvious.
54	* DeletedScene: [[https://vimeo.com/31232068 The original version of WALL-E-NATOR]] contained a scene where Wall-E steals a bike being towed by Tow Mater. The scene was cut from the final version, presumably for running time reasons.
55	* KeepCirculatingTheTapes: The show only had its first season released on DVD (in two parts) and even those are out of print. Given how firmly the show is dated to the early 2010s, as well as copyright laws being too harsh on kids' shows (unlike how lax they are on adult-oriented shows like ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken'' and ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy''), it's unlikely to see a re-release anywhere soon, even on Creator/HBOMax. Luckily, the entire series is still available on Google Play.
56	* MilestoneCelebration: The ''Once Upon a Toon'' sketch was made to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Creator/CartoonNetwork.
57	* NoExportForYou: This show never got a lot of distribution outside of English-speaking countries, with almost all international Cartoon Network channels (with the exception of the Canadian and Latin American feeds) never airing the series, possibly due to the show's more mature sense of humor and nature compared to other shows on the network (which lead it usually being aired on various adult networks instead abroad), not to mention most of the references possibly going over most foreign audience's heads, due to this, only 4 known dubs (plus a Russian [[VoiceoverTranslation voice-over]]) are known to exist.
58	* QuietlyCancelled: ''MAD'' was not renewed for a fifth season despite Cartoon Network not officially declaring the show's cancellation. Since the show is off Cartoon Network's schedule as of 2015, Cartoon Network is focusing on other shows (some of which are LighterAndSofter), and the show's staff has moved on to other projects, it's safe to say it's done for good (''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'', which premiered a month before ''MAD'''s final episode, was observed to have essentially replaced it on CN's schedule).
59	* RoleReprise:
60	** Creator/TaraStrong would occasionally reprise any of her past or current roles whenever they get spoofed, such as [[WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls1998 Bubbles]], [[WesternAnimation/TeenTitans2003 Raven]], or [[WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic Twilight Sparkle]].
61	** [[Franchise/{{Cars}} Lightning McQueen]] is voiced by Creator/OwenWilson in the original movies, but any spin-off media such as the ''[[WesternAnimation/PixarShorts Cars Toons]]'' will have him be voiced by Creator/KeithFerguson instead, who would also occasionally reprise his role in this series.
62	** One sketch parodying ''Franchise/ScoobyDoo'' had Creator/FrankWelker reprising the roles of Fred Jones and Scooby-Doo, and when the unmasked villain (who had been dressed as a mummy) points out that dogs can't talk, they remove Scooby's LatexPerfection mask to reveal he's actually [[ActorAllusion Frank Welker himself]], referred to as "Old Man Welker!"
63	*** A few sketches even had Welker reprising ComicStrip/{{Garfield}}.
64	*** Creator/MatthewLillard reprises the role of Shaggy Rogers in the sketches "The Scooby-Doo Gang, Ruining Halloween Since 1969" and "Downton Shaggy".
65	** Creator/JeffBergman even reprises his ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' roles such as WesternAnimation/DaffyDuck and WesternAnimation/ElmerFudd in the "[=McDuck=] Dynasty" sketch.
66	** Creator/BillyDeeWilliams appears as [[Franchise/StarWars Lando Calrissian]] in the "[[Music/{{Maroon 5}} Moves Like Jabba]]" sketch, one of the few live-action actors to reprise their role here.
67	** Creator/MichaelSinterniklaas reprises his role as Leonardo from the 2003 ''[[WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]'' series in the "I Hate My Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" sketch.
68	** Creator/WillFriedle reprises his role as [[WesternAnimation/ThunderCats2011 2011 Lion-O]] in the "[=ThunderLOLcats=]" sketch.
69	* ScrewedByTheNetwork: The series was abruptly cancelled in 2013 for unknown reasons.
70	* SimilarlyNamedWorks: "Outtagascar" is also the name of a YouTubePoop [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl4pQNlTlYI collab]] of the first ''WesternAnimation/Madagascar1'' film.

Context Trivia / Mad