Line #22 TroubledProduction/WesternAnimation


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2	%% NOTE: Real-life examples only. In-universe examples go on TroubledProduction/FictionalExamples.
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5	!!Series with their own pages
6	[[index]]
7	* ''TroubledProduction/TheRenAndStimpyShow''
8	[[/index]]
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11	* There’s a highly obscure New Zealand cartoon called ''The Adventures of Voopa the Goolash'' that, if the Lost Media Wiki's article is any indication, had this in '''spades'''.
12	** The show was under the control of Jeff Taylor, the same man who contributed to the success of ''Series/{{Teletubbies}}''. However, disputes between him and the original investors meant that the master tapes were held by the studio, who refused to let them go. The show's creator Craig Whyte had this to say about it:
13	--->'''Craig Whyte:''' This was way back in 2007. It created a shitstorm that was hard to grab onto. Before I knew it it was in the hands of Jeff Taylor who put the ''Teletubbies'' on the map for BBC Worldwide. And a few other avaricious bloodsuckers from the children's entertainment business. Sadly it ended up in a cataclysmic bunfight between the original investors and Jeff Taylor and his cronies. The big swinging dicks did their swinging and although there were 13 episodes in the can it never went to market as the studio withheld the masters at the time of broadcast due to a spat over monies due from the NZ film commission. It was an utter tragedy and ended up with me darn near taking my life. For real. It really was my way of putting back something to the world for all the blessings I had enjoyed despite my unbridled rampage through life - and I was crushed that it never got out to the little people!
14	* ''WesternAnimation/{{Amphibia}}'': The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in crunch time to deliver the episodes on schedule, usually finishing only a week before airing.
15	* The 1973 [[Creator/DePatieFrelengEnterprises DePatie-Freleng]] show ''Bailey's Comets'' was a production nightmare due to the massive cast. The show was a ''WesternAnimation/WackyRaces'' [[FollowTheLeader clone]] featuring 15 rollerskating teams, each with six members. Because all ninety of them were rollerskating, this meant that ''dozens'' of characters had to be constantly moving, something hard to achieve with the tight television animation schedule. [[note]](By contrast, ''Wacky Races'' was able to keep the animation costs down by having everybody inside a car, thus only having to animate the wheels and only animating the characters moving when the script called for it.)[[/note]] Even creating the stock animation of each team rollerskating was a headache on its own. In order to ensure they could finish the show in time, [=DePatie=]-Freleng had to hire a night crew (mostly people moonlighting from Hanna-Barbera and Filmation) to paint the cels. In the end, the show not only went overbudget, but received poor ratings, prompting Creator/{{CBS}} to move the show to Sunday mornings after a few months. One animator claimed that the series nearly broke the studio.
16	* ''WesternAnimation/{{Bonkers}}'': While not too much is known about the particulars of the show's production, it is known that Disney was unhappy with the original concept of the show, which resulted in a complete ReTool mid-production, changing the producer, Bonkers' partner, the supporting cast, and the art style. One episode had to be produced to bridge the two radically different versions of the show for the purposes of a complete syndication package.
17	* While many Nicktoons have run into problems with apathy on the part of Nickelodeon, ''WesternAnimation/CatDog'' suffered the opposite problem. The network had high hopes for the show (while conversely having little faith in ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'', which was greenlit for production on the same day), to the point of announcing a whopping 100 episode order to the artists at the studio (on the other hand, they planned to give ''[=SpongeBob=]'' only six for its first season; it was later bumped up to a full twenty). As the series was to be the first Nicktoon to premiere as a weekday strip, this meant episodes had to be rushed through production, and while not many details have surfaced, it's known to have been hellish enough that by the end of its run, studio empolyees could only be convinced to work on the show through threats and bribes. In the end, ''[=CatDog=]'' sputtered out after 68 episodes, two of which never even aired in the United States, while ''[=SpongeBob SquarePants=]'' became Nickelodeon's CashCowFranchise.
18	* While specific details about the production of ''WesternAnimation/CentralPark'' haven't been shared, [[https://archive.ph/LSASD many]] [[https://archive.ph/IKBQy animators]] [[https://archive.ph/qpUv3 allege]] that the working conditions on the show, as well as other Bento Box series, were horrible, to the point where they were relieved that the show was cancelled.
19	* If one of the top comments on B & B Productions' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYMWpkOfQZw video]] on ''WesternAnimation/ChipChilla'' is to believed, the working conditions were really bad for the animators.
20	-->"Not proud to say this, but I actually worked on this show. The animation company I worked for took this project on, but our boss didnt tell us that they were Daily Wire until a few episodes in. Right away, the animators and I said that this show is basically WesternAnimation/{{Bluey}}, but didn't complain too much.\
21	"Now... the characters themselves weren't the issue. This show was hell to work on... We were not given proper assets, or props, and a lot of the [=BGs=] had to be manually fixed by the animators. We also were not given walk cycles, hand poses or anything of the sort, we had to do that all by ourselves. (Which was not told to us until problems started to arise). The animators worked overtime, the clients were extremely picky and constantly told us the wrong things, and will change their minds weeks onto the animation process. Everyone on my team hated working on this show, and we only found joy in the strange glitches and rig breaks that happened."\
22	"Basically... we got the shit end of the stick when working on this show. And I am so glad that it is over. (The show was supposed to come out early spring, but thanks to the clients... tons of things needed to be pushed back)"
23	* The first ever television series based on ''Literature/CuriousGeorge'', a series of 104 four-minute shorts, had a very shaky production, as detailed in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OCuknAddCs this video]] (starting at 14:02):
24	** Co-Author of the ''Curious George'' books, H.A. Rey, had passed away in August 1977, and it wasn't long after this that TV producer Alan Shalleck approached H.A. Rey's wife and co-author Margaret Rey with the idea of producing an adaptation of ''Curious George'' for television. Margaret agreed, but asked for full creative control over the series and its production. With funding being secured from the Canadian firm Lafferty, Harwood, and Partners LTD, production began under the fledging animation company Milktrain Productions in 1977.
25	** It was at this point that things began to fall apart. Once they started working together, it quickly turned out that Margaret and Shalleck did not get along well at all. Still reeling from her husband's passing, Margaret was ''very'' particular about how Shalleck and the crew wrote about her and H.A.'s curious little monkey, which quickly got on Shalleck's nerves and resulted in many heated arguments between the two to the point that Shalleck at one point publicly referred to Margaret as a "spoiled little child". The creative disagreements and constant bickering between Margaret and Shalleck gummed up production, and by 1979, the studio had run out of money with only 34 out of the planned 104 shorts completed. The crew came crawling back to Lafferty, Harwood, and Partners to ask for more funding, which only agreed to foot the bill if they could completely take over production. Milktrain Productions was dissolved and only LHP's name was on the credits of the end product. Luckily, from this point on, production on the shorts went much smoother and the shorts premiered on the then-new Creator/{{Nickelodeon}} as part of ''Series/{{Pinwheel}}'' in 1984, later being given an early-morning half-hour slot after production on ''Pinwheel'' ended. ''Curious George'' would call this spot on Nick home until 1989, when the shorts {{Channel Hop}}ped to Creator/DisneyChannel and aired on its anthology program ''Lunchbox'', later airing as an interstitial either by itself or as one of several short series featured on the channel's interstitial program ''Circle Time'' up until the early 2000s.
26	** The story doesn't ''quite'' end there, however, as LHP later neglected to get Margaret and the Rey Family's permission when they began distributing the ''Curious George'' shorts on home media in 1993. Margaret successfully sued the firm for breach of contract and the Reys were properly compensated, while also allowing the shorts to continue to be distributed on home video.
27	* Creator/DiCEntertainment have been known for doing this to many projects of theirs, but two shows were more impacted than others, due to being produced just as DIC was being bought out and rebranded as Cookie Jar Entertainment:
28	** In July 2003, DIC formed a joint-venture with Stan Lee's company POW Entertainment to create an animated series titled ''Stan Lee's Secret Super Six''. After a while, nothing else was heard from this partnership, and the show never materialized until 2010, after DIC co-founder Andy Heyward founded a new company called Creator/ASquaredEntertainment (now Creator/GeniusBrandsInternational), who would start production on the project under the new name of ''WesternAnimation/StanLeesMighty7Beginnings''. Since then, a comic book franchise and an animated TV movie have been made, but no TV show.
29	** In February 2006, DIC announced a Direct-to-Video series featuring Warren Buffet, titled ''The Secret Millionaires Club''. The series was meant to be released in fall 2006, but nothing else materialized until after Heyward founded A-Squared, where the idea was turned into a TV series that aired on Creator/TheHub as simply ''WesternAnimation/SecretMillionairesClub''.
30	* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyDog'' was sunk by its less than ideal production cycle. Besides Creator/BradBird, who created the original ''Series/AmazingStories'' episode it spawned from, [[DisownedAdaptation feeling that the concept wouldn't work as a weekly series]], production suffered from a series of delays over objections from producers Creator/StevenSpielberg and Creator/TimBurton to the animation quality, which led to the original thirteen-episode slate being cut to ten while Creator/{{Nelvana}} was hired to fix the work. Creator/{{CBS}}, who had to eat two years worth of wasted production costs and saw ''WesternAnimation/FishPolice'' bomb in the interim, lost faith in the series and [[ScrewedByTheNetwork left it for dead on Wednesday nights in the summer of 1993]], over two years after it was supposed to come out, where it was slammed by critics for its weak production values (especially given the pedigree involved) and unlikeable characters, and died a quick death against summer reruns of ''Series/UnsolvedMysteries''.
31	* ''WesternAnimation/FillyFuntasia'', among other issues, part way through production it lost both animation studios. This is one reason for the unpolished and often inconsistent CGI quality, as two new studios had to pick up what the others left behind. The second season seems to have this far less, and as a result the animation seems more polished, and it only took a year for it to be released.
32	* ''WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones'' was a tough sell, sometimes requiring 5 pitches per day and requiring 8 months of pitching in total according to Joe Barbera. There was also June Foray getting dropped from the voice cast without warning at the beginning of production, which led her to be very bitter about working with Hanna-Barbera in her later years.
33	* Video game-themed action-comedy ''WesternAnimation/GlitchTechs'' was announced in 2018 for Nickelodeon and set to premiere in mid-to-late 2019. However, on January 9, 2019, the crew walked into work only to discover that [[https://www.cartoonbrew.com/business/nickelodeon-froze-production-laid-off-significant-crew-on-its-upcoming-series-glitch-techs-169049.html production had been "frozen" on the series]] right as they were producing a ten-episode second season, due to executives wanting to cut as many non-money-making productions as possible, and that anyone not required for post-production on the original 20-episode season one order was being immediately laid off. The series eventually premiered on Netflix in February 2020 as part of a deal with Viacom.
34	* {{Downplayed\|Trope}} with ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls''. While the production had no more significant struggles than the average television animation production, the "troubled" aspect comes from creator Alex Hirsch's lack of experience in being a showrunner. By the time season one wrapped up, Hirsch was [[https://ohmy.disney.com/insider/2016/02/15/inside-the-decision-to-end-gravity-falls/ so burnt out from the experience that he wanted to end the series right there]] regardless of popularity and leave it forever on a {{Cliffhanger}}. He credits the existence of the show's second season to both Creator/JonStewart and ''WesternAnimation/OverTheGardenWall'' creator Patrick [=McHale=], who were horrified at the notion and urged him to continue on (Stewart received a guest role in a season two episode as thanks). But even then, Hirsch would try (and fail) to argue for a shorter ten-episode order rather than a full season.
35	** The show's erratic scheduling during its final season was partly the result of Disney wanting to stretch the show out longer in the hopes that Hirsch would eventually change his mind about ending their most popular animated series. It has since been reported that Disney had meddled with the show more than what was previously thought; in particular, it was reported that Sheriff Blubs and Deputy Durland were revealed as gay in the finale as a personal decision by Hirsch ''solely'' out of spite towards Disney not approving such a move earlier.
36	* ''WesternAnimation/HighGuardianSpice'' had a pretty hectic development, according to series' creator Raye Rodriguez in a [[https://twitter.com/dinoraye/status/1483551613503426565 Twitter thread]]. According to Rodriguez, the series was produced by a non-union studio, which resulted in the crew being forced to work with NoBudget and tight scheduling. A lot of the [[OffModel animation errors]] and writing flaws were because the crew had no time or money to go back and fix them. In fact, storyboarding for the first episode began before the script was even finished. Making matters worse was Website/{{Crunchyroll}}'s [[TaintedByThePreview disastrous marketing for the show]]. The cast and crew had interviews and storyboards used as a promo for the show, which the crew had no input on, were not told would be used to advertise it, and were unable to do anything about it once they found out. The talks about the diverse crew working on the show gave the impression that the show would be something it wasn't, which made the show's reputation sink before it was even out. Production on the show took so long that a change in upper management occurred midway through the first season; the new executives balked at the original family-friendly premise, and demanded that the writers [[AvoidTheDreadedGRating include more "mature" content to appeal to Crunchyroll's usual audience of teenagers]]. Because this happened so late, the studio had no real choice but to slot in cursing, sex jokes, and blood "where appropriate." The rest of the show remained colorful and cutesy since there was no time or budget to rewrite the series with older viewers in mind, so this resulted in a heavily UncertainAudience.
37	* ''WesternAnimation/TheIncredibleHulk1996'' had this, [[http://marvel.toonzone.net/hulk/interviews/sebast/ according to the original producer.]] Specifically, UPN replaced most of the creative staff for season two and {{ReTool}}ed the series to make it LighterAndSofter. They also demanded that ComicBook/SheHulk be [[AscendedExtra bumped up to co-lead status]] to better entice girls who might otherwise be uninterested in the ''Hulk'' franchise.
38	* ''WesternAnimation/IronManTheAnimatedSeries'' was also a mess behind the scenes, with Marvel viewing it [[MerchandiseDriven as an afterthought whose sole purpose was to sell toys]]. Season two had no producer until three months into production, which resulted in 24-hour work days with no weekends off. The staff also had little say in things about plots and character designs, which were largely dictated by Marvel and Toy Biz.
39	* ''WesternAnimation/JimmyTwoShoes'': Co-creator Edward Kay has admitted that he doesn't look back too fondly on his time working on the show due to this. More specifically, he admitted that ''Jimmy Two-Shoes'' fought a losing battle with ExecutiveMeddling from Creator/DisneyXD executives from the moment they entered the picture (Creator/{{Teletoon}} proved a lot easier to work with, being a lot more lax towards the show's tone), as they constantly rejected and objected to all of the darker ideas he and the writers tried to include in the show (and some of the lighter ones too, refusing to air one episode, "The Big Drip," solely for having ToiletHumor). This became especially prominent in Season 2, where the show's {{retool}} completely severed all traces of its BlackComedy origins for good.
40	* Tom Ruegger of ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}}'' fame [[http://yowpyowp.blogspot.com/2012/05/failure-that-really-was.html described]] Creator/{{NBC}}'s obscure ''WesternAnimation/{{Jokebook}}'' as "an unmitigated disaster". At the time, he was working at Creator/HannaBarbera, the studio that made it, and although he wasn't directly involved, he had a front-row seat to the whole debacle. ''Jokebook'' was an animated SketchComedy conceived by a close friend of HB co-founder Joe Barbera, and described by the network as "a seven-part series featuring animated humor". Problem was that this man, Harry Love, was a humorless old creep who lacked much experience or talent in stories. He rejected his peers' ideas for sketches, feeling that his own jokes were good enough, and flaunted his connections to Barbera. Additionally, the animation was originally so awful (even by the standards of [[UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfAnimation that era]]) that NBC wouldn't touch it, but once much of the animation was fixed, it became clear that Love's DirtyOldMan tendencies crept into the gags, which Ruegger described as "wheezy, lame and ancient one-panel sex jokes rejected by Magazine/{{Playboy}} and other publications at least a decade before". NBC found many of them far too crass and inappropriate, and HB had to fill the gaps left by the rejected sketches with student and independent animated films (among them being a [[{{Bowdlerise}} bowdlerized]] version of Ted Petok's Academy Award winner ''WesternAnimation/TheCrunchBird''). At any rate, NBC had lost all faith in the project by this point, and dumped it in the FridayNightDeathSlot right in the middle of the 1981-82 season against ''Series/TheDukesOfHazzard'' and ''Series/{{Benson}}''. The show performed so poorly that its second episode was [[MedalOfDishonor dead last in ratings among all shows that week]], prompting NBC to pull the plug after just three of the planned seven episodes. Ruegger doubts that it would've lasted much longer even with better ratings, as so much of the original content was removed that it was hard for HB to find enough outside material for the ''three'' broadcast episodes, let alone ''seven''.
41	* Pre-production on ''WesternAnimation/JonnyQuestTheRealAdventures'' was... ''[[http://questfan.com/Page/Lance_Falk_Dialogue.html turbulent]]'', to say the least.
42	** The project started back in the early 1990s. Lance Falk approached the showrunners, Peter Lawrence and Takashi Masunaga, to work on the show, but left when he realized that [[CreativeDifferences the duo was bent on making their own, "reimagined" version as opposed to a closer-to-the-original project]], and went to work on ''WesternAnimation/SWATKats'', another HB show. While there, he heard rumors that the Lawrence/Takashi project was in trouble and recruited a bunch of other classic ''JQ'' fans to assist him in making a pitch to HB exec Buzz Potamkin, promising they could get the show done. But [[ExecutiveMeddling Potamkin promptly stonewalled them for some reason]], with then-studio head Fred Siebert never hearing of Falk's pitch. After he and the others were then laid off, Falk headed to Creator/WarnerBros to work on ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}}''.
43	** Fast forward a while, and the Lawrence/Takashi team had sunk ''$11 million over two and a half years'', and there ''weren't '''any episodes ready''' to air yet''. Compound that with [[MerchandiseDriven the Galoob toys (based around Questworld) being ready to go]] and Cartoon Network setting airdates, it was clear that the show was sinking fast. Davis Doi (another veteran of ''SWAT Kats'') was recruited to help bring the project back in line and hopefully make something airable out of the chaos.
44	** As a result, ''four'' different crews were set to work on the show. Cos Anziolatti and John Eng would handle the task of trying to make sense of the scraps that Lawrence and Takashi had managed to make and turn those into episodes (huge amounts of stuff had to be trashed, rewritten and animated ''just to make some kind of sense'').
45	** Meanwhile, Doi and [[WesternAnimation/XMenTheAnimatedSeries Larry]] [[WesternAnimation/FantasticFourTheAnimatedSeries Houston]] would be in charge of a new batch of 26 episodes far closer to the 1960s show, with the Questworld gimmick largely phased out, all the voice actors replaced, and the characterization and style being closer to the original. But both batches of episodes were mixed and matched at random when aired, creating a disjointed, confusing continuity. (Both batches were retroactively labeled as "season 1" and "season 2" thereafter, although HB technically saw them as one season.)
46	** As a result of the chaos, 13 episodes were cut from the original order and the financial state resulted in the show not being renewed.
47	* According to WordOfGod from ''WesternAnimation/{{Foofur}}'' creator and ''WesternAnimation/StarStreetTheAdventuresOfTheStarKids'' producer Phil Mendez, his most notable work ''WesternAnimation/{{Kissyfur}}'' was plagued with ExecutiveMeddling for its Saturday morning show. [=NBC=] wanted to call the show ''Paddlecab County'', but Mendez refused, wanting to name the show after its titular character whose name his son Christopher accidentally came up with due to how he said his own name when he had a tooth missing.
48	* According to artists and voice actor Creator/BobBergen, the Larry Doyle-produced ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' shorts greenlit as a tie-in to ''Film/LooneyTunesBackInAction'' went through a lot of trouble for what ultimately amounted to nothing. Production on the shorts was marked by in-fighting between the writers and artists, and Doyle's insistence on pitching up voices like the old days led to issues with voice actors (including Bergen, who was planning on quitting out of frustration, only to learn he was being fired anyway; the role of Porky Pig went to a voice-pitched Creator/BillyWest). Warner Bros. executives were appalled at what was being made, especially with the overbearing amount of blatant DemographicallyInappropriateHumor in the shorts. The studio fired Doyle, re-edited the six finished shorts, and shelved everything else, leaving most of them unreleased after the commercial failure of ''Looney Tunes: Back in Action''. When they finally were released to the public ([[ShortRunInPeru with Australia getting most of them long before the rest of the world]]), critics and fans took them to task for, among other things, [[{{Flanderization}} simplifying the characters to a fault]] and relying too much on slapstick violence (including some of the [[FamilyUnfriendlyViolence family-unfriendly]] variety). Needless to say, those who worked on the shorts don't like talking about the experience.
49	* ''WesternAnimation/{{Marsupilami}}'' was a victim of internal politics at Creator/{{Disney}}.
50	** For starters, when the company got the license from Andre Franquin, its future with original IP was far from certain despite the recent success of ''WesternAnimation/{{The Little Mermaid\|1989}}'', so it seemed like a beneficial deal for both parties. However, Disney committed numerous acts of LoopholeAbuse regarding the contract, such as convincing Franquin to accept a "roll-out strategy" that consisted of making shorts for ''WesternAnimation/RawToonage'' (which also included the aforementioned ''Bonkers''), then debuting a half-hour series the following year, itself made up of both old and new ''Marsupilami'' shorts, with a middle segment alternating between shorts starring ''The Little Mermaid'' character Sebastian and [[WesternAnimation/EekTheCat Bill Kopp]]'s ''[[WesternAnimation/TheShnookumsAndMeatFunnyCartoonShow Shnookums and Meat]]''. The problem was that the contract demanded a series with full half-hour stories, a demand that this series clearly didn't meet. To say nothing of the fact that Disney's version [[InNameOnly barely qualified as an adaptation, using only a heavily-modified version of the title character and nothing else]].
51	** What's worse, by the time production started, the Disney Renaissance was in full swing, and lucrative homegrown properties like ''WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast'' and ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}'' made the idea of promoting an outside property seem redundant to Disney. Marketing responsibility was handed over to lower-rung executives, who screwed it up to the point that [[InvisibleAdvertising the only merchandise released for the property]] came out between the end of ''Raw Toonage'' and the beginning of the standalone ''Marsupilami'' series, a decision that even one of Disney's own experts thought was insane. On top of that, the show had to air on a network (meaning that ''WesternAnimation/TheDisneyAfternoon'', successful as it was at the time, wouldn't suffice) - and Disney never even so much as attempted to sell half-hour ''Marsupilami'' episodes to networks, only airing the shorts series on Creator/{{CBS}} as a replacement for ''Raw Toonage'', which Disney cancelled after 12 episodes.
52	** The series ended after 13 episodes, and Disney had the contract nullified - without the necessary 180-day notice. This was the final straw, and Franquin successfully sued Disney over their mishandling of the property. From there, the series faded into obscurity, with the only thing coming out of it post-cancellation being a spin-off of the ''Shnookums and Meat'' segments into its own similarly short-lived series for ''The Disney Afternoon''.
53	* Not as bad as some, but according to an ASIFA interview with Kurt Anderson (one of two directors on the series), ''WesternAnimation/QuackPack'' was a stressful show to work on. Part of the reason was because there were too many cooks in the kitchen, so things took longer than they should have on a TV production schedule (the show was in production as early as 1993, which explains why a brief clip appears in an early episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}}''). As this was Kurt's first directorial job, it was definitely a learning experience.
54	* ''WesternAnimation/RapsittieStreetKidsBelieveInSanta'', regarded as one of the worst animated Christmas specials of all time, turned out the way it did thanks to a horrific production that made animating it the opposite of easy. [[https://www.polygon.com/2020/12/24/22196527/rapsittie-street-kids-believe-in-santa-cast-crew-making-of Highlights from the Polygon article]] on the special's making include:
55	** 3D Choreographer, the software used in animating the special, was ''never meant for film and television production''. Described by the developers as "an animation program designed for non-artists", it was a way to create simple animation using pre-designed models for use in [=PowerPoint=] presentations and '90s internet webpages. Because of this, the software's functions proved to be ''very'' limited. The animators found out that it doesn't allow modeling new character designs, forcing them to send the concept art to the software developers so they could create custom models specifically for the special. The animators were horrified when the resulting models came back.
56	** Another setback with the software was its pre-programmed animation trajectory, which couldn't be changed or altered. This is why there are strange edits and scene continuity errors throughout; it was the only way they could cut out the unwanted parts of the animation.
57	** One of the animators grew increasingly frustrated with the poor graphics and the limited functions with the software, to the point that he told the investors who financially backed the special that they were being ripped off (up to this point they haven't seen any footage of the special). When Colin Slater found out he promptly fired him, forcing the remaining animators to work overtime as the deadline was just days away.
58	** The animators only had four months to work on the special. It was such a tight deadline that there was no time to storyboard at all. Surprisingly, they were able to deliver the special to Creator/TheWB on time and on budget.
59	** Despite getting screen credit for directing, Slater was very hands-off during production, to the point where the animators didn't get any direction at all. Making it worse was that, aside from the very basic instructions, he was not an expert on how the animation software worked, forcing the animators to figure it out themselves since there was no one they could ask for help. As an inside joke, when "Directed by Colin Slater" came up during the closing credits, they animated a snowman winking in response.
60	* ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'':
61	** If this [[https://decider.com/2021/07/13/rick-and-morty-season-5-episode-4-disgusting-and-tasteless/ article]] from ''Decider'' is anything to go by, the writing process for the highly polarizing Season 5 episode "[[Recap/RickAndMortyS5E4RickdependenceSpray Rickdependence Spray]]" was very hectic and unfocused, with Creator/DanHarmon admitting that he wrote the episode because "I wanted to see like the sort of old-school ''Film/{{Jumanji}}'' sequence where people had to ride sperm", with [[WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants no thought or care being put into the rest of the story]]. This resulted in numerous rewrites; the [=CHUDs=] didn't even exist in the script's first draft.
62	** Following Creator/JustinRoiland's firing after Season 6 over felony assault and false imprisonment charges, it was [[https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/justin-roiland-animation-empire-implosion-rick-and-morty-1235319366/ revealed]] in ''The Hollywood Reporter'' that relations between Roiland and the rest of the writing staff had been fraught since Season 2, necessitating mediation between him and Harmon at one point. Roiland rarely came to the writers room, and when he did he either kept to himself with his toys or invited controversial figures like Music/KanyeWest and a high-profile porn star for impromptu tours. By the time of his firing, Roiland hadn't been on speaking terms with Harmon in years and hadn't corresponded with any of the writers, even over Zoom, since Season 3.
63	* While the first season of ''WesternAnimation/{{Robotboy}}'' went well production-wise, the same can't be said for the second one. Alphanim (now Gaumont Animation) felt the stories needed better pacing, so they hired Bob Camp of ''The Ren and Stimpy Show'' to work on the show [[MoneyDearBoy for money]], evident in how the season feels rather different from the first in style and tone. There were apparently clashes between several of the people at Alphanim, including the higher-ups, who didn't like Bob Camp's way of directing. Series creator Jan Van Rijsselberge had stated that he felt Bob "didn't get" the show during his time on it. He was ultimately fired from the series, likely near the end of production, while Heath Kenny tried to save what he could of the series.
64	* According to Creator/RalphBakshi, ''WesternAnimation/RocketRobinHood'' was no cakewalk.
65	** The show was already in production when Bakshi joined producer Steve Krantz's company. Krantz was having trouble with the studio in Toronto that was producing the show, run by Al Guest. There were communications problems with the animators because Guest has hired artists from all over the world, but not all could speak English. On top of that, Krantz discovered that Guest was embezzling money earmarked for the production by investing it in other projects that he wanted to produce himself.
66	** As a result of all this, deadlines were not being met and the footage that did come out were deemed unacceptable, so Krantz sent Bakshi to Toronto to straighten things out.
67	** Realizing much of the artists in the Toronto studio couldn't draw, Bakshi hired artists (many of whom worked in comic books) in New York to do layouts, which were sent to the Canadian studio for production. Krantz decided that it would be cheaper to produce everything in New York at this point, so he told Bakshi to pick up model charts from the Toronto studio back to the States so they could do that.
68	** Al Guest (who, at this point, was suing Steve Krantz over the show, with Krantz countersuing) was delirious when he found out and called the Canadian police on Bakshi over the "theft". When Bakshi realized the police were waiting for him at the airport, where he was commuting every weekend, he told his background artist Johnny Vita to go to the airport to distract them while Bakshi would drive to the border (which was a two-hour drive). The police nabbed Vita, but since they had no arrest warrant for him they were forced to let him go after two days. Meanwhile, Bakshi safely made it back into the US.
69	%% * ''WesternAnimation/{{Stripperella}}'': Tellingly, Stan Lee never brought it up until a ''month'' before its premiere on Spike TV.
70	* ''Franchise/ScoobyDoo'':
71	** ''WesternAnimation/ScoobyDooAndScrappyDoo'' ran into many production problems early on. Scrappy co-creator Creator/MarkEvanier [[http://www.newsfromme.com/writings/scrappy-days/ even wrote a very lengthy essay on its troubled history]].
72	*** By 1979, ''WesternAnimation/TheScoobyDooShow'' was on the verge of cancellation by ABC, and Joe Barbera came up with the new character to help save it. None of the on-staff writers at Creator/HannaBarbera could write a satisfactory pilot script, and Evanier, the editor of their comic book division, was chosen. Barbera and Evanier worked together to finalize the character, and Evanier eventually turned in a satisfactory pilot script, and the show was picked up for a full season and made it on the air following endless salary and billing disputes, conflicts with Standards & Practices, and ''much'' ExecutiveMeddling.
73	*** Casting the character's voice was difficult in its own right, and the pilot was recorded at least five different times. Creator/MelBlanc was Barbara's first choice to voice Scrappy, but he turned the role down over salary disagreements. Then Creator/FrankWelker was considered before Creator/DonMessick was cast, and the pilot script recorded with the entire cast. Then ABC decided they didn't like Don's version, so Creator/DawsButler was cast and the script re-recorded. Then they didn't like his version, and Marilyn Schreffler was cast and the script re-recorded once again before Welker was cast, and the script recorded a fourth time. Then Paul Winchell and Dick Beals were cast at different points, though production was halted while Barbera once again attempted to strike a deal with Blanc. Ultimately, Lennie Weinrib was cast in the role simply because he was the first choice the network wouldn't veto. Even he would end up leaving the role at the end of the season over a salary dispute, along with a personality dispute with the voice director, and Messick became Scrappy's permanent voice afterward.
74	** According to [[https://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/6jekz1/creator_of_be_cool_scooby_doo_comments_on_the/ this account by one of the main writers on the show]], production for ''WesternAnimation/BeCoolScoobyDoo'' was an utter nightmare full of ScheduleSlip, frequent staff change-ups, and [[ExecutiveMeddling executives at WB playing favorites with the crew members and generally meddling with the show to hell and back]].
75	*** The original designs chosen by the executives were apparently butt-ugly[[labelnote:*]](and considering that the art-style the final series has [[BrokenBase is still significantly divisive]], that's saying a lot)[[/labelnote]], and the crew had to fight tooth-and-nail to get designs that were more appealing.
76	*** The executives seemingly didn't know what kind of show they wanted to see: a subversive self-parody of the ''Scooby-Doo'' franchise with the characters' personalities exaggerated, or something more traditional for the series. They ended up forcing the first several episodes to be rewritten from scratch over even the slightest of issues they had with the characters, delaying the show's premiere date and wasting several hundred thousand dollars in the process. The execs then blamed their losses on the writers.
77	*** The execs arbitrarily replaced the show creator and the main writer with an inexperienced writer in the middle of Season 2 and gave the former two no credit for what they actually did during said season. The show creator eventually gave up and left the show due to how nasty things were getting behind the scenes and how the execs were treating him.
78	* The pilot episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS1E13SomeEnchantedEvening Some Enchanted Evening]]", went so badly wrong that it nearly killed the show before it even began. The big problem was that the key members of the production team didn't appear to be talking to each other. Creator/MattGroening and Creator/JamesLBrooks imagined a show with unique designs and color schemes, but characters who were animated in a realistic way. Animation director Kent Butterworth (and apparently the people at Klasky-Csupo) on the other hand thought it should be animated in a whacked-out, over-the-top style with little regard paid to keeping the characters on model. And nobody appeared to have told the Korean animators anything at all, meaning they were let loose on the episode with wildly inconsistent results. The end product, while sometimes defended by animation enthusiasts as how the show ''should'' have been animated, wasn't what the producers or Fox wanted at all, and the plug nearly got pulled on the series. Fortunately the second episode, "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS1E2BartTheGenius Bart the Genius]]", did fit what the producers were looking for, and so they reshuffled the episode order and kicked off the series with "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS1E1SimpsonsRoastingOnAnOpenFire Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire]]", while "Some Enchanted Evening" got substantially re-animated and booted to the end of the season.
79	** There is a notorious story surrounding the first time the staff saw "Some Enchanted Evening". In one scene, Bart and Lisa watch a Happy Little Elves cartoon. For some reason still unknown to this day, Butterworth had decided to have a bear ''tear off one of the elves' heads'' and ''drink its blood.'' Needless to say, this did ''not'' go over well with the production crew.
80	** "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS7E9SideshowBobsLastGleaming Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming]]" was credited to Spike Feresten, who penned the famous "Soup Nazi" episode of ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'' (and had a short-lived late night talk show in the mid-to-late 2000s alongside the final season of ''Series/MadTV1995''). However, Spike's script was heavily re-written from its initial draft, and very little of Spike's material remained in the final episode. Co-showrunner Bill Oakley said it was one of the most arduous re-writes in the history of the show. In one instance, the writers were stuck in the office until the middle of the night trying to come up with a funny name for the colonel; they finally came up with Hap Hapablap.
81	* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' has had this happen a few times, as a consequence of its famously fast production process:
82	** Much of Season 2, plus the first few episodes of Season 3, suffered from creators Creator/TreyParkerAndMattStone being busy firstly working on ''Film/{{Baseketball}}'', and then ''WesternAnimation/SouthParkBiggerLongerAndUncut''. This is evident in that Season 2 in particular is reliant on {{Whole Plot Reference}}s and {{Random Events Plot}}s to an even greater extent than Season 1, despite Parker and Stone having disliked how often they had to fall back on said plots in that season.
83	** [[AttentionDeficitCreatorDisorder Splitting focus]] also led to 2004 being described by Parker as "the year from hell," given by the time they worked on the latter part season 8 the duo was creatively and physically exhausted from having just wrapped ''Film/TeamAmericaWorldPolice''. It is often highlighted in the DVD commentary for that season, with "[[Recap/SouthParkS8E11QuestForRatings Quest for Ratings]]" described as "a very special time in ''South Park'' history, because, this was the first time that we were officially... out of ideas."
84	** "[[Recap/SouthParkS10E5AMillionLittleFibers A Million Little Fibers]]" stands out in that the episode ended up being massively rewritten midway through production. Initially the plot revolved around the townspeople helping Towelie get over his drug habit, but Parker decided it wasn't working and scrapped everything (the opening scene with Towelie losing his job working at P.F. Chang's is the only footage to survive from the original version), and instead went with a storyline satirizing the then-recent controversy over ''A Million Little Pieces'' turning out to be mostly fictional despite being promoted as autobiographical. Production of the final version was so rushed that much of the finished product noticeably consists of just static artwork while characters talk in voiceover.
85	** "[[Recap/SouthParkS17E4GothKids3DawnOfThePosers Goth Kids 3: Dawn of the Posers]]" became the first episode in the show's history to miss a deadline due to a power outage hitting the studio a day before the episode was set to air. The episode was unable to be edited and shipped out on time, and was rescheduled to air the following week.
86	** Whereas UsefulNotes/BarackObama's two elections were considered safe enough that the show was able to reference the results in the next episode without any trouble [[note]](for Obama's first election in 2008 it was obvious to most people by the week of election that rival candidate John [=McCain=] didn't have a prayer of winning, and while 2012 rival Mitt Romney's chances were considered better enough that they did at least storyboard an alternate ending in case he won, by election week they were confident enough in an Obama victory that they never bothered animating it)[[/note]], Season 20's intended story arc was derailed by UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump unexpectedly defeating UsefulNotes/HillaryClinton. Ironically, the episode scheduled for the following day was the one ''least'' affected, since Parker and Stone had at least taken the possibility of a Trump victory seriously enough that the episode was written in such a way that it could be quickly retooled in just such an event. However, since the remaining episodes of the season were written under the assumption of a Clinton victory, they had to be largely scrapped and rewritten from scratch.
87	* ''WesternAnimation/TotalDrama'': Revenge of the Island was originally to air in 2011 as evidenced by its original teaser. However, the 2011 earthquake and subsequent nuclear disaster in Fukushima caused the production to be delayed to change and remove elements of the season that would've been seen as being in poor taste in light of the recent tragedy. According to Creator/ChristianPotenza, the season was originally set to air in July 2011, then September before ultimately having its English premiere delayed until January 5th, 2012. The season still had its world premiere in December 2011, but in France and in French only.
88	* The Franchise/TransformersAlignedUniverse [[http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Aligned#Clashing_visions is a]] [[http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Binder_of_Revelation clusterfuck]], between ''WesternAnimation/TransformersRescueBots'' being forced into it, the ''WesternAnimation/TransformersPrime'' crew's decision to try to ignore the [[SeriesBible Binder of Revelation]] and [[http://sunnybutte.tumblr.com/post/131367083128/that-explains-a-lot-of-the-mess-that-was its own]] [[http://sunnybutte.tumblr.com/post/131368170623/and-if-you-were-wondering-why-beast-hunters-was behind the scenes drama]], and IDW's inability to shift to help the universe out more.
89	* Season 1 of ''WesternAnimation/TinyToonAdventures'', while still acclaimed overall, had a hectic production schedule that was hampered by animation studios turning in less-than-stellar results:
90	** Several early-run episodes, specifically "[[Recap/TinyToonAdventuresS1E38StrangeTalesOfWeirdScience Strange Tales of Weird Science]]", "[[Recap/TinyToonAdventuresS1E42LooniversityDaze Lonniversity Daze]]", and "[[Recap/TinyToonAdventuresS1E44HeroHamton Hero Hamton]]", were outsourced to a domestic animation studio based in Nevada called Creator/EncoreCartoons. However, Encore turned in results that were ''far'' below the standards the crew was looking for, with sloppy character designs, continuity errors (one of the most infamous ones was in "Looniversity Daze" wherein Plucky was inserted into a classroom scene when he was supposed to be sitting just outside the classroom, resulting in the duplicate Plucky being colored purple with a blue tank top instead of green with a white tank top in the final product to hide this as the production crew was out of time), and extremely LimitedAnimation out the wazoo ("Strange Tales" features points where the characters' mouths ''barely even move'' as they speak). When the crew sent for retakes, they ended up with results that were just as bad if not even worse. The crew eventually ran out of time to get better animation (by which point the episodes, meant to be the third, sixth, and tenth episodes of the season respectively, had ended up being pushed back to the middle of the season) and had no choice but to either use the best Encore takes in the final episodes or have other studios such as Creator/KennedyCartoons or [[Creator/JonMcClenahan Startoons]] replace some of the worst animation. Even with the best takes, these three episodes still ended up with some of the worst animation and OffModel moments of the entire series. The episodes' troubled production was lampshaded numerously in "Strange Tales" (via self-deprecating dialogue that was added in during its production and the obligatory CreditsGag: "Number of Retakes: Don't Ask"), which also notably had AlanSmithee credits for two of the included shorts. Needless to say, the crew never worked with Encore again after the disastrous production of these three episodes.
91	** The aforementioned Kennedy Cartoons itself had very inconsistent animation quality (going from fluid and energetic animation to horrendously sloppy OffModel animation and character designs at the drop of a hat) and the company didn't always concern themselves with emulating the classic ''Looney Tunes'' style that Steven Spielberg (whom company founder Glen Kennedy reportedly argued with over the vision for the series' animation) and the show's crew were aiming for, instead emulating the type of animation they used in shows such as ''WesternAnimation/APupNamedScoobyDoo''. The inconsistent animation and squabbles between Steven and Glen resulted in a few episodes being held up in production[[labelnote:notably...]]"[[Recap/TinyToonAdventuresS1E18HareTodayGoneTomorrow Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow]], which was the first episode in production order (but became the 18th episode) and also threw shade at itself in its CreditsGag ("Moral of the Story: We Need More Animators") and "[[Recap/TinyToonAdventuresS1E65HighToon High Toon]]", which ended up being held up until more than a month after the intended season finale "[[Recap/TinyToonAdventuresS1E64KACMETV K-ACME TV]]"[[/labelnote]] and/or having the worse animation being filled in by Jon [=McClenahan's=] crew, much like with Encore, and, also like Encore, Kennedy Cartoons was shown the door at the season's end.
92	* ''WesternAnimation/{{TUGS}}'' was much higher budget than its [[WesternAnimation/ThomasAndFriends sister show]], and also a lot more ''troubled''.
93	** Episodes were originally written to be 30 minutes long, but the decision was made to cut them down to 20 to keep the attention span of the audience. Before airing, the episodes were cut down ''again'' to 15 minutes, leaving several subplots and entire characters cut out. The reason fans have access to the 20 minute cuts of "Sunshine", "Pirate", "Regatta", and "Munitions" is because they were released to VHS before the series had started airing in an attempt to recoup the high production costs.
94	** The models were initially designed to move on their own with the wheeled chassis used to keep the models from drifting out of shots having motors, but the mechanisms to give the characters functional propellers, the ability to emit smoke, and move their heads and eyes proved to be too heavy and required the crew to pull the models with transparent string by hand.
95	** The initial plan was to give the characters flat gray faces with round eyes ala ''Thomas''. However, Britt Allcroft, the only major member of ''Thomas''' production crew who didn't sign onto ''TUGS'', sued over the style of the faces being identical to her show, necessitating the crew to change the faces to rounded and flesh-colored with square eyes. All of Lillie Lightship's faces had been completed by this point and needed to be remade in the new style. The faces now being rounded and having square eyes meant the eye mechanism design from ''Thomas'' could not be reused and the crew had to figure out a new design. Several signs suggest the new design was more problematic than the ''Thomas'' design, such as Zorran's hat being lifted whenever he looks up, and it not being uncommon for the characters to look so far in one direction that a gap is created between the whites of their eyes and their eye sockets.
96	** Various aspects of the models were changed late before filming. The Fire Tug had a simpler face design that was replaced by a new design based on Big Mac's faces, though the prototype face ended up in "Jinxed" and resulted in fans assuming it was meant to represent a second Fire Tug. Zorran initially had a shorter superstructure to make him look as if he were "sneaking about with his head down" that the crew decided looked ridiculous when finished and was thus raised higher with a visible seam. David Mitton reportedly didn't like the goods engine Little Owl so the crew created Puffa to take his place for his later planned appearances.
97	** The Bigg City Port set proved to be troublesome; it featured far more alleyways and overhead bridges than the standard ''Thomas'' set and David Mitton quickly lost his patience trying to navigate the camera through the narrow passageways they were given. ADayInTheLimelight for Hercules was scrapped due to it being deemed too difficult to film, and "Bigg Freeze" was rewritten to take place Up River rather than try to recreate frozen water in the awkward Bigg City Port set. Season 2 was planned to take place mostly Up River to avoid the Bigg City Port set, and "Trapped" is often believed to have been carried over from the planned second season in favor of another episode due to Billy Shoepack's model seeming unfinished during filming (note his inability to turn his head or change his expression compared to his appearance in "Up River").
98	** Filming for most episodes concluded in 15 days, but "Munitions" was delayed by four weeks to test the episode's prevalent pyrotechnics. When filming started, the relevant scenes required the studio doors to be left open.
99	* ''WesternAnimation/TheTwistedTalesOfFelixTheCat'', an attempt to revive the WesternAnimation/FelixTheCat cartoons for the mid-90s, went through this, [[http://web.archive.org/web/20111219032547/http://classiccartoonreviews.blogspot.com/2011/03/twisted-tale-of-twisted-tales-of-felix.html according to animator Milton Knight]], who worked on Season 1. He recalled the experience was fun, but not exactly ideal; other staffers have pitched in on the internet over time that the show's production was rather turbulent.
100	** One of the biggest problems during production was a classic case of [[TooManyCooksSpoilTheSoup too many cooks in the kitchen]]; the staff simply couldn't make up their minds on what kind of cartoon this series was supposed to be. Studio head Phil Roman was most comfortable with the plot-and-dialogue-driven approach used in his commercial successes ''WesternAnimation/GarfieldAndFriends'' and ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', and had given this series what seemed like a guarded blessing, but then there was one group who wanted a Felix like the Creator/OttoMessmer shorts, one group who wanted [[Creator/MaxAndDaveFleischer Max Fleischer]] surrealism, Don Oriolo, the former owner of Felix, wanting it to be like his dad's made-for-TV Felix cartoons (which most of the staff working on the show was against; they ultimately, but begrudgingly, added certain elements from it into ''Twisted Tales'', like the Magic Bag), one group who wanted the show to be WesternAnimation/RenAndStimpy-esque (understandable, since some of the artists on the show were former ''WesternAnimation/RenAndStimpy'' artists), and one director who wanted a Creator/RobertCrumb influence! The end result of this gave the show a very helter-skelter direction in tone and content, with Felix himself often getting swamped in importance by a large cast of supporting characters and his chaotic world.
101	** On top of that, per word of Creator/MarkEvanier, the studio had a terrible time finding a voice for Felix, saying they may have set a new industry record for most actors auditioned for one role (to where even staff of the studio were trying to audition for the role), and they wound up recording the show with a "scratch" (temporary) voice and animating to that. Out of desperation, they settled on casting Creator/ThomAdcoxHernandez as a temporary actor for Felix only a few weeks before an episode aired and he dubbed his voice over the animation but intended to recast him after the first season wrapped up. The second season would end up recasting him with Creator/CharlieAdler.
102	** Another problem was that in addition to having a month to storyboard, design and do layout work on each short, they could not learn from their mistakes because by the time film began to come in, the season had been just about wrapped up. Some directors could handle writing and boarding a good cartoon while some couldn't. The artists had no say on retakes in animation either, which was left to Phil Roman to decide and unfortunately, the overseas animation on the show tended to be rather sluggish. This only got worse with the second season with Korean company Creator/PlusOneAnimation having to rush episodes through, resulting in sloppy artwork and very bad animation timing (with "Nightmare on Oak Street" being one of the worst examples in the second season). On top of that, they were behind schedule so they couldn't order retakes to correct any mistakes.
103	** Eventually, Phil Roman and Don Oriolo found the "Cartoonist Driven" approach of the first season to be too taxing on them, and not even worth the trouble since, despite being one of the most expensive shows that Phil Roman's studio had made, the first season turned out to be a flop in ratings, due in part to a terrible time slot: it was usually sandwiched right between sports shows and then-ratings giant ''WesternAnimation/XMenTheAnimatedSeries'', making it very hard to establish an audience for the show. On top of that, Don was just unhappy with the weird direction of season 1 having almost nothing in common with Joe Oriolo's Felix, so the second season went through an extensive {{retool}}. While the first season was storyboarded while working from a basic outline and was absurdly surreal in its premises and animation, the second season decided to take the series into a direction more in vogue with the Joe Oriolo Felix cartoons and shift production to make the show a more standard TV cartoon, with scripts replacing the all-storyboard approach (usually provided by the writer of ''WesternAnimation/GarfieldAndFriends'', Creator/MarkEvanier, [[CreatorBacklash who has remained silent on the series ever since]]). This resulted in much more linear plotting and less surreal humor with more emphasis on wordplay and one-liners, as well as bringing back some of the Oriolo-era characters like Poindexter, Master Cylinder, and The Professor while forcing most of the new side characters to be scrapped in turn.
104	** This move was met with an outright hostile reception from the show's staff, particularly Timothy Björklund, the producer of the first season, who knew Don's meddling would only make things worse and [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere bailed on the show]] just ''two weeks'' into the second season's production. Evanier attempted to voice direct the actors instead of the directors but after a couple of weeks of trying that, the results were so disastrous that the studio was forced to drop that position and hand over voice direction back to the cartoon directors. And the biggest slap in the face was that the show's budget was reduced to a third of what it originally was, which guaranteed the animation would take a nosedive in quality. The music was another major casualty: the first season had been scored by the Club Foot Orchestra, whose hot jazz soundtracks accurately evoked the classic cartoons the show was paying homage to. Budget cuts forced the show's second season to use cheaper and less fitting synthesizer music.
105	** The artists, who were very unhappy about the situation, retaliated by [[WriterRevolt writing whole episodes that took jabs at the second season's toned-down retool]], such as "Attack of the Robot Rat" (which infuriated Don Oriolo for being a [[TakeThat ruthless parody]] of his dad's made for TV Felix the Cat cartoons), "Background Details" (which jabs at the show's production), "Phoney Phelix" (a jab at the animation industry at the time... [[TechnologyMarchesOn or at least somewhat today]]. It even jabs at Creator/FilmRoman, [[BitingTheHandHumor the company that made the show]]), and "The Fuzzy Bunny Show" (jabbing at the show's ratings and character's popularity). The first few scripts they received were followed closely but Craig Kellman, the show's new producer, finally fought for the artists to have more storytelling and creative control on the show, and they were able to completely scrap the scripts and write their own shows, ironically giving the crew ''more'' freedom than they had in the first season. Some episodes were tightly scripted and some were not.
106	** Unfortunately for them, CBS' VP of Children's Programming Judy Price, who wanted the show picked up in the first place, got fired and Felix the Cat Inc. was so unhappy with the show in general that they refused to renew the license for Phil Roman to continue using Felix, guaranteeing a third season wouldn't happen. To make matters worse, the second season turned out to be an [[GoneHorriblyWrong even]] ''[[GoneHorriblyWrong bigger]]'' [[GoneHorriblyWrong flop in the ratings]] and it ultimately got the show canned with season 2 [[CutShort ending after just 8 episodes.]] The show's failure ultimately put the Felix the Cat cartoons on ice yet ''again'' (having already gone through it with [[WesternAnimation/FelixTheCatTheMovie the 1991 movie]]), with only low-key revivals coming of the series after the fact and the character's 100th birthday in 2019 passing by with little to no fanfare. The show itself didn't even see a full DVD release, forcing fans to KeepCirculatingTheTapes until it was added to streaming service Peacock upon its launch in July 2020.
107	* This happened to the ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitansGo'' episode "Serious Business". [[https://www.cbr.com/teen-titans-go-producers-horvath-jelenic-on-the-importance-of-bathroom-humor/ According to this article]], the creative executive for the show said that the original opening of the episode would not get past the censors, so a new song was written for it. It's quite possible that there were a few more things they objected to before it hit the airwaves, as said song's instrumental appears in "Waffles", which aired eight months before "Serious Business".
108	* As told by creator Pete Williams in various interviews and catalogued by [[WebVideo/RebelTaxi Pan Pizza]] in his [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4u4xciqlek review of the series]], ''WesternAnimation/{{Undergrads}}'' went through hell and back during its pre-production process.
109	** The show was created via an animated pitch by Williams for a contest held by Creator/{{MTV}}... of which he won only because he was one of 15 competitors who entered, [[DisqualificationInducedVictory and the only one who followed the instructions]]. The show, at that time titled ''The Click'', was stuck in years of focus testing, with Williams working for MTV during the meantime. Williams created a low-budget pilot for ''The Click'' three years after the contest, but it did so poorly with the focus group that it killed any chance of the show getting greenlit. Williams hated the pilot so much, he refused to show it in its entirety.
110	** So Williams tried again during his time in college. After pitching some other shows to MTV that didn't make it, he ended up befriending a producer working for the [[Creator/SyFy Sci Fi Channel]], who accepted his newly-animated pitch for ''The Click''. The show looked to be heading forward... only for Williams to realize that MTV still owned the rights to the show's characters, meaning that if he were to get the show made, it would ''have'' to be through MTV. This resulted in him having to create ''yet another'' low-budget pilot. Thankfully, the pilot was accepted, and the show was finally going to get made. But since there was already a game show called ''Click'', it had to be renamed to ''Undergrads'', which finally started airing in April 2001.
111	** But not before getting ScrewedByTheNetwork. MTV ended up leaving the show to die after one season, barely giving it enough advertisement or a consistent schedule before ordering its cancellation. Williams spent years getting the rights to the show and its characters back, finally acquiring them in 2018.
112	* ''WesternAnimation/{{VeggieTales}}'':
113	** The first video, ''Where's God When I'm S-s-scared?!'', was reportedly a nightmare to make. It began with Phil Vischer animating the entire thing himself, only to hire two more animators on the fly when it was clear he couldn't achieve the level of animation quality he was aiming for alone. The three animators then moved into a rented storefront for extra space, which stretched the already minuscule budget. The project was funded by a Christian mail-order service, with customers ordering the video while it was still in production, meaning that the creators were legally required to finish the project on a stone-set date, lest they be charged with mail fraud.
114	** ''Rack, Shack, and Benny'', while not nightmarish to the same degree, still reportedly had everyone suffering from exhaustion by the end of it due to the ambitious nature of the episode, and only 10 employees armed with four computers. Many of the original workers still say it was the hardest project they ever took on; it was only natural that the next episode, ''Dave and the Giant Pickle'', was much smaller scale.
115	** ''The Toy That Saved Christmas'' also had a troubled production, due to being another ambitious episode and having a very set-in-stone deadline (since you can't ship a Christmas special late). Not only did the episode end up ChristmasRushed, the air conditioning broke at the headquarters just in the wake of a heat wave hitting Chicago. Phil Vischer was bed-ridden afterwards for almost two months as well due to bacteria in his heart. It was so close to the deadline once production of the show had wrapped that one of the employees had to be flown down to Dallas, TX with a copy of the show in-hand to give to the tape duplicator because (in Robert Ellis' own words) "[=FedEx=] wasn't fast enough!". This was one of the few cases where the team was unsatisfied with the episode's original end result, and the following year they went back and re-animated a lot of the scenes, creating a second version of the show that was overall much cleaner than the original.
116	** Towards the end of the production of "Esther...the Girl Who Became Queen", there was a server crash at Big Idea leading to two weeks worth of work on the show being lost. Most of the animators were forced to work overtime, up to and including sleeping at the studio, to make up for it.
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Context TroubledProduction / WesternAnimation