Trivia / El Chavo del ocho

---

• Acting for Two: Chespirito in the Crossover episode with El Chapulín Colorado; Carlos Villagrán in a flashback with Quico's father and baby Quico; María Antonieta De Las Nieves as both La Chilindrina and her "Bizcabuela" great-grandmother; Édgar Vivar as Sr. Barriga and Ñoño; Florinda Meza as Doña Florinda and look-alike niece La Popis.
• Blooper: In one episode, Chavo accidentally stomps on Quico's foot, causing the latter to groan in pain. However, the viewer can clearly see that Roberto's foot does not touch Villagrán's and instead actually touches the floor, in front of him. Thus, it ends up seeming like Chavo stepped on the ground and then Quico started feeling pain out of nowhere.
• The Cast Showoff: Quico was given huge cheeks due to Carlos Villagrán's ability to keep his cheeks inflated for a prolonged amount of time, even while talking.
• Creative Differences: The main reason for Carlos Villagrán and Ramón Valdés leaving the show. The former for disagreements with Bolaños and the latter to show his discontentment with Florinda Meza's interference in the show.
• The Danza:
  • Chespirito liked to do this, because he felt the actors would be more connected to their characters this way. The same went for many of them when they played extras in El Chapulín Colorado, which used the same cast.
  • "...Florinda Meza as Doña Florinda; Ramón Valdés as Don Ramón..."
  • In later episodes, Maria Antonieta de las Nieves (La Chilindrina) as Doña Nieves.
  • "Malicha" (the infamous three-episode long character) is a common nickname in Mexico for "María Luisa", which is the actual name of the actress, María Luisa Alcalá.
  • The first and fourth actresses that played Paty were called Patty Juárez and Paty Strevel, respectively.
• Dawson Casting: Exaggerated-all of the kids are portrayed by adults, some of them well into middle age.
• Fake Nationality: Doña Clotilde states in one episode that she was born in Campeche, located in southern Mexico. Her actress, Angelines Fernández, was born in Spain.
• Franchise Zombie: After the departure of Quico and Don Ramón the show substantially dropped in quality, but it still went on for approximately fourteen more years (though in its final years it was absorved by Gomez Bolaños's sketch show Chespirito). The reason for this was that back in the '80s, the channel where the program aired enjoyed a virtual monopoly on the Mexican TV airwaves, making it possible to air whatever it wanted without risking many ratings. Perhaps the most obvious sign of this is how by the final years of the show, all of the Chavo del ocho sketches ditched the vecindad set in favor of being limited exclusively to the school setting, as the majority of the cast had aged so much that they couldn't perform the slapstick comedy visible in the vecindad.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: Some scripts for the series, which were shown publicly, had "AD LIB" in some of the character's lines, usually when everyone was talking at the same time or an character was chasing another.
• Hostility on the Set: Bolaños and Villagrán started to have differences in the latter seasons of Villagrán's tenure. In Bolaños' point of view, Villagrán tried to "steal the show" exaggerating his performances to get more attention from the public (something that Valdés corroborated in interviews from the time). According to Villagrán, however, Bolaños was becoming "jealous" about the Quico character being one of the most popular and tried to hold him back. As a result of this conflict, Villagrán left after the 1978 season.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: In mid-2020, to the dismay of fans, the show was removed from all TV channels and streaming services worldwide due to a copyright dispute between Chespirito's estate and Televisa, and without any news about the possibility of a return in the future. Some episodes are still on the internet, but many uploads on Youtube have been taken down by Televisa.
• Late Export for You: The show first arrived on Brazil in 1984, eleven years after the independent series premiered. Many episodes were dubbed over the course of four slots until 1992, but many episodes remained either undubbed or with their dub archived, especially remakes or original versions of episodes that were already airing normally. Over the course of the 2010s, several episodes were dubbed or finally premiered after their dub having been archived for decades, and it was only in 2019 that every common episode had been dubbed in Brazilian Portuguese (and that's not counting the lost episodes or the 80s Chespirito sketches, which still haven't been dubbed as of now).
• Missing Episode: Some episodes are missing worldwide, especially those from the 1973 season. And depending on what country you're in, many episodes can be missing from syndication. In Brazil, some episodes from older seasons that weren't lost had just one or two runs in the 80s and in the beginning of the 90s, without any rerun. Many years later, thanks to the Internet, many fans discovered them. As a result, they started to pressure SBT (the channel that owned the show's broadcasting rights in Brazil) to air the "missing episodes".^note This was a term used by Brazilian fans to refer to theses episodes The channel responded by saying most of these episodes are very dated and with some errors but since 2012 they started to air these "missing episodes" from the older seasons.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends:
  • The supposed Love Triangle that many claim to have happened between Bolaños, Florinda Meza and Carlos Villagrán. Not only was the romance between Carlos and Florinda short lived, Bolaños would only engage with Florinda years after her and Carlos had broke up.
  • A lot of people still believe the Acapulco episodes were the final appearance of Quico, despite it being aired a year prior to Villagrán's departure. This confusion is likely caused due to the episode being reran the next year, with some people also interpreting the music played at the end of the trilogy as a goodbye song for him.
• Real-Life Relative: Horacio Gómez Bolaños (Godínez) is Roberto Gómez Bolaños's (El Chavo) brother.
• Reality Subtext:
  • The last batch of Chavo episodes were classroom sketches. This was in 1992, at which point Chespirito was over sixty, and not as able to do his slapstick routines as he once was. The classroom scenes could be done with everyone sitting at desks.
  • The Acapulco Beach Episodes were made as a publicity stunt for the hotel the characters went to. Said hotel was owned by the then-owner of Televisa, which broadcasted the series, and friend of Chespirito.
• Recycled Script: Some scripts were done as much as four times. Sometimes, with the very same characters in the very same roles.
• Screwed by the Lawyers:
  • In 2010, Bolaños got sued by a group of musicians whose soundtrack he used on his series without permission, most notably Jean Jacques-Perrey who composed "The Elephant Never Forgets", which was used as the music for the show's theme song. As a result of this, the music for the live-action series' theme song was replaced by the intro music for El Chavo Animado, which was itself already a more energetic version of "The Elephant Never Forgets", with other soundtracks also being replaced by original music from El Chavo Animado.
  • Due to a rights dispute between Televisa and Chespirito's family, the series stopped being broadcasted worldwide after July 31, 2020. Fans were understandably frustrated.
• Screwed by the Network: Despite airing El Chavo since 1984 in Brazil, the relationship of Brazilian TV network SBT with the fans and with the voice actors isn't nice. During the 2000s, the network started to frequently change the time slot of the show (with Saturday 6am as the worst example), replacing it with Mexican soap operas and other stuff in order to increase the audience (which increased the rumors about SBT putting an end to El Chavo). This still happening during the The New '10s, but less frequently, since the network failed to find a good substitute to the show and still fears a boycott from the fans. Also, SBT had some troubles with former voice actors due to financial disputes. As a result, two voice actors, Nelson Machado and Carlos Seidl, refused to dub the characters again (ironically, the voice actors of Quico and Don Ramón). As of August 2020, the show is no longer airing on SBT (or any channel for that matter).
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: Horacio Gómez (Godínez) wasn't an actor by trade, he was in fact the accountant of his broher Robeto Gómez Bolaños's acting troupe, but at the request of his brother Roberto, Horacio began to fill supporting roles in his productions in lieu of having to bring an outside actor, including the Godínez character.^note In fact, looking at Horacio Gómez's filmography will show that he didn't act in anything outside of his brother's productions. Ironically, Godínez would end up becoming one of the most memorable characters outside of those played by the core cast of the show.
• Throw It In!:
  • Many bloopers made it to the final edit. Sometimes this was because they were funny or the cast used them to their advantage, or because of schedule deadlines rather than for being funny since Chespirito was known to seriously detest improvisation.
  • In one episode, after a typical confrontation with Doña Florinda, Don Ramón angrily throws his hat, and it accidentally goes through Doña Florinda's door just as it closes. Don Ramón continues his snit fit but briefly pauses to knock on the door until one of the other actors lets him in to retrieve it. (See it here.) No one breaks character, which makes the scene funnier than if it had gone as planned.
  • Other times, production problems that should have caused a stopdown didn't. There is one early show where a loud thunderstorm is obviously going on outside the studio, and yet no one mentions the frequent thunderclaps that can be heard over the dialogue.
  • In one of the versions of "Que Bonita Vecindad", Ramon Valdez clearly messes up a dance move, but it was left in the final version.
• You Look Familiar: Godínez was technically a recurring character, but still unimportant enough that actor Horacio Gómez^note That's Horacio Gómez Bolaños, the younger brother of Roberto Gómez Bolaños, AKA Chespirito appeared as other characters once or twice, such as in the Acapulco special where he appeared as a waiter in the hotel the cast was staying, as Godinez hadn't gone on vacation with them. In one case, Horacio Gómez even appeared as both Godinez and a restaurant manager in the same episode, with no mention of them being related.
• What Could Have Been:
  • In 2008, Chespirito revealed that there was to be a series finale where Chavo saves the life of a child about to be hit by a car, but at the cost of his own life. His daughter, who worked as a therapist, talked him out of it because she felt that doing this kind of series finale would cause the audience to be horribly traumatized, and there was the possibility that some children could have tried to imitate this.
  • Also, famous soccer player Pelé once phoned in Chespirito to ask him to make a movie of the show and even offered himself to appear in it, but Chespirito declined as he didn't support the idea of having movies of shows you can watch for free on TV.
  • There is a pilot short of the animated series that features La Chilindrina, who doesn't appear in the series proper, and does not feature either the same animated or dubbing studios. It is speculated that this pilot episode may have been made in 1998, as it predates the legal dispute between María Antonieta de Las Nieves and Chespirito.
• Write Who You Know:
  • As per "Chespirito: Vida y Magia", Bolaños based Quico and many of his traits (such as his "Come one, say yes, don't be a meanie" catchphrase) on a spoiled boy he met once at a party for adults.
  • Jirafales' "Ta, ta, ta, tá!" catchphrase was taken from a childhood teacher of Rubén Aguirre.

---