History Trivia / TheRenAndStimpyShow

** A number of episodes are absent from Creator/ParamountPlus, although Bob Camp has confirmed that in this case it's due to [[ScrewedByTheLawyers music licensing issues]].

* ScrewedByTheLawyers: Nickelodeon intended to reanimate and recut "Man's Best Friend" to remove some of the more offensive material and make it suitable for their broadcast standards. The new animation was nearly finished by the time they found out that John K. still owned the rights to the George Liquor character, meaning that even if they wanted to, Nick couldn't air the episode without his permission.
** Around 1/3 of the show was removed from circulation in the early 2010s due to the license to show Raymond Scott music expiring. As of 2021, this seems to be reverting, as some of these episodes aired for the first time in years on Creator/NickRewind.

* [[ReferencedBy/TheRenAndStimpyShow Referenced by...]]

* TroubledProduction: Right from the start, the series was fraught with production troubles that ultimately destroyed the show. Years later, Bob Camp summed up the show as "the best of times, the worst of times" and that "the whole thing was fucked from the beginning."
** Nickelodeon green-lighting their first original show from a studio that had never produced animation (up until this time, Spumco had been an illustration company) turned out to be the blind leading the blind. According to Bob Camp, there was poor communication regarding creative control from then-network head Linda Simensky, who outright told the crew that they had carte blanche on content under the incorrect assumption that they shared a consensus of just how far "too far" was. The result was constant disagreement and confusion between both parties on an issue-to-issue basis. The executives also didn't understand the show's particular brand of absurdist filmmaking like jump cuts or {{gross up close up}}s when shown the storyboards, forcing the crew to over-explain most of the more bizarre gags (this [[DontExplainTheJoke obviously didn't help the network's faith]]). Because of John K.'s insistence that the show not use scripts, only storyboards, he had to fly to New York every time the network needed to approve stories. Each storyboard took two months to complete and be approved. Bob Camp admitted that the crew had too much of a "shitty 'fuck you' attitude" that the network wasn't prepared to deal with.
** Many of the season 1 episodes were massacred by bad outsourcing, due in part to work from Creator/FilCartoons, a literal sweatshop studio in the Philippines with poor working conditions and such dismal pay that employees were forced to sleep there. The studio handled ink-and-paint work for the entire first season, and more often than not heavily ruined many scenes due to their all-around cheap Xeroxing, ugly colors and even "reworking" drawings or whole scenes of animation without the consent of Spumco; there were even some unintentional (rather than purposeful) OffModel moments, such as Stimpy's eyes inexplicably turning black in the "Stimpy's Breakfast Tips" [[note]] It was supposed to be a placeholder for a separate level of animation photographed in front of it, specifically of Stimpy's actual eyes, but that bit of animation was thrown out [[/note]] and Ren accidentally having two elephant trunks on him instead of one in "Black Hole". [[note]] specifically, Ren's trunk is supposed to shift off to the side when he looks at his watch, but a mistake left the animated part of his trunk moving, but with a top drawing of his trunk kept static above it, making it seem like he now has two trunks [[/note]]. Carbunkle director Bob Jacques had to fight tooth and claw to get the studio to turn in acceptable work for episodes like "Stimpy's Invention" (and even then the sporadic error slipped in, such as Stimpy's eyes floating off his face when he's showing Ren his new socks), and described the experience of working with them as "all damage control" and called them "the cheapest shithole studio I've ever had the displeasure to work at." The second season switched to digital ink and paint, presumably to avoid further problems like this, which came with its own set of problems, being such a new and still very rudimentary form of technology.
** One of the biggest sources of friction was over censorship. Nickelodeon was always uneasy with the gross-out nature of the show's humor, and sent constant revisions to every single episode; "Nurse Stimpy" had a good chunk of footage axed before it got to air (specifically a gag involving a leech being used on Ren) and they even kept one finished episode, "Man's Best Friend", off the air due to its violent and scatological content. As a general rule, anything that had to do with religion, politics, alcohol, and tobacco was put under a microscope by Standards & Practices; the character George Liquor had his last name removed from one episode and made only sporadic appearances due to opposition from the network, right down to axing an entire scene with him from "Rubber Nipple Salesman", forcing Spumco to change a Liquor cameo in "Haunted House" into a parody of Doug Funnie (a scene that got edited out in reruns anyway) and rejecting an episode idea starring him (which prompted the crew to improvise the story for "Fire Dogs" in an afternoon), while "Powdered Toast Man", featuring The Pope, removed a cross from his hat and credited the character simply as "The Man with the Pointy Hat", and the ending scene of Toast Man carelessly using the Constitution and Bill of Rights as kindling for a fire got edited out after its initial airing, which ironically ruined the episode's satirical message of how easily authority and power are abused.
** In addition to his general unprofessionalism (see above), John K.'s perfectionism was out of control. Spumco was largely understaffed, due to his refusal to hire anyone who didn't meet the standards of the studio's founders (himself, Jim Smith, Camp and Naylor). Not only did this mean that the show had to be created by an incredibly small crew, but what few staff members ''were'' hired regularly had their drawings torn up if they didn't meet Kricfalusi's exact expectations, despite his directions often being vague. One scene of Stimpy shaking his butt in ''Stimpy's Invention'' was re-animated '''sixteen''' times until it met John's approval. Historian Jerry Beck distinctly remembers visiting the studio and finding out John was so obsessed with finding the right color for the present Stimpy hands Ren that the walls were lined with over ''50'' different cels of the same present in different colors, likening it to a scene out of ''Film/TheShining'' (ironically, John ended up working with one of the initial color choices).
** Through a combination of the crew's perfectionism and the constant battles over what was acceptable to air, the show suffered from severe ScheduleSlip almost from the start. Nickelodeon only ordered six episodes when the show was green-lit and they still had to rerun the pilot episode in order to have something to show in what would've been the second episode's time slot; this helped the show build an audience but killed any hope for syndication. The second season was planned to have twenty episodes before getting cut down to thirteen. Only eleven were completed, with two held over for season three.
** Feuding between John K. and Nickelodeon over how long and expensive the production of each episode was reached its apex September '92, in the middle of the second season, when John K. told them point blank that episodes would "cost what they cost and take as long as they needed." Having had enough, Niceklodeon fired him and his studio from the series and continued it through their new in-house production facility Games Animation (John K. continues to insist that content was the deciding factor, specifically that in "Man's Best Friend," but nearly all sources say otherwise).
** The remainder of the series was finished by half of its original staff (those who weren't loyal to John K.) plus some newcomers. Despite their efforts to conform to the more traditional structure of TV animation production, deadlines were still missed. Both fans and much of the staff agree that there were more bad episodes of this era than good ones. Nevertheless, the show ended up running for three more seasons until 1995, at which point Nickelodeon put it on "indefinite hiatus."

** Creator/BillyWest was reluctant to talk about the show for many years after getting caught up in Kricfalusi's smear campaign. Working under K's direction apparently took its toll on West's health, with the latter often damaging his throat with how many times K made him redo lines (remember, this is a show where just about all the dialogue [[WorldOfHam is screamed rather than spoken]]) and being bullied whenever K was impatient with him. After K's 1992 firing, he demanded that West quit if Nickelodeon didn't hire him back, but West refused out of fear of being blacklisted, nor did he feel he owed it to K anyway, leading to the latter openly calling him a "job thief" and occasionally sending him ''death threats'' (Creator/HowardStern, West's old boss, then made things worse by inviting the two of them onto his show without either of them knowing that the other would be there, then forcing them to sit across from other another and talk. West's brother, Joseph "Jack" Werstine, had just died, so he was obviously in no mood to deal with it). And this was in addition to the more mundane backlash he was facing from disgruntled fans and industry people who bought into Kricfalusi's martyrdom complex. It got to the point where on West's now-defunct forum, even mentioning the show was a ''bannable offense''. To this day, even after he made peace to the more well-behaved parts of the fandom, West has made no secret that K is difficult to work with, and has vowed never to work with him again. He does, however, appear to have made peace with the series itself, as he has reprised the roles of Ren and Stimpy in ''VideoGame/NickelodeonAllStarBrawl'', ''VideoGame/NickelodeonKartRacers 3: Slime Speedway'', and the upcoming Comedy Central revival.

** Kricfalusi stated [[http://renandstimpyonline.tripod.com/index2/webchat.html in a web chat]] that he felt the early Games episodes had good art, background and story ideas, but were ultimately mangled by lousy direction. In the DVDCommentary for "[[Recap/RenAndStimpy3x04StimpysCartoonShow Stimpy's Cartoon Show]]", he criticized some aspects of how the final cartoon was handled, namely for muddling its "Artist Vs. Non-Artist" message by changing Ren from executive to producer--while he did submit it in the cartoon as that in an attempt to avoid executive scrutiny, he felt Games used it as a chance to turn the cartoon into a attack on him instead of meddling executives (although he was ok with that), and that there were weird expressions that didn't really work in context.

* AdoredByTheNetwork: While Nickelodeon adored the show and ran it multiple times a week, the limited number of episodes (particularly early in the show's run) meant that Nickelodeon could not marathon the show like the could with their later animated successes ''WesternAnimation/{{Rugrats}}'' and ''WesternAnimation/SpongebobSquarepants''.

* TheWikiRule: The [[http://renandstimpy.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page Ren & Stimpy Wiki]].

** Creator/BillyWest was reluctant to talk about the show for many years after getting caught up in Kricfalusi's smear campaign. Working under K's direction apparently took its toll on West's health, with the latter often damaging his throat with how many times K made him redo lines (remember, this is a show where just about all the dialogue [[WorldOfHam is screamed rather than spoken]]) and being bullied whenever K was impatient with him. After K's 1992 firing, he demanded that West quit if Nickelodeon didn't hire him back, but West refused out of fear of being blacklisted, nor did he feel he owed it to K anyway, leading to the latter openly calling him a "job thief" and occasionally sending him ''death threats'' (Creator/HowardStern, West's old boss, then made things worse by inviting the two of them onto his show without either of them knowing that the other would be there, then forcing them to sit across from other another and talk. West's brother, Joseph "Jack" Werstine, had just died, so he was obviously in no mood to deal with it). And this was in addition to the more mundane backlash he was facing from disgruntled fans and industry people who bought into Kricfalusi's martyrdom complex. It got to the point where on West's now-defunct forum, even mentioning the show was a ''bannable offense''. To this day, even after he made peace to the more well-behaved parts of the fandom, West has made no secret that K is difficult to work with, and has vowed never to work with him again.

** Ren in "Stimpy's Cartoon Show" and the character of Rev. Jack Cheese were both unflattering caricatures of John K.'s dictatorial habits by the Games staff. Notice that both of the characters wear horn-rimmed glasses (as Kricfalusi does). Interestingly, despite the common believe that "Stimpy's Cartoon Show" was done without Kricfalusi's knowledge, he was actually involved in the initial writing and while he was aware of the comparison, and was even okay with it, he did feel like Games bungled the "Artists vs Executive" message of the episode by changing Stimpy from an executive to a producer (to further emphasize the comparison to Kricfalusi), though he admits at the same time it was probably for the best to keep the ''actual'' executives off their backs.

** William Wray, who often describes John K. as "deeply unhappy" when sharing anecdotes about him, refused to talk about the show for many years because doing so brought a lot of bad memories of his and Kricfalusi's relationship, especially since Wray allegedly took it upon himself to befriend John and help with his depression to no avail. One less-than-pleasent anecdote involved John essentially trying to teach Wray how to do his job with a painting "lesson" to get Wray to paint backgrounds exactly how he wanted him to (this despite Kricfalusi [[KnowNothingKnowItAll never having painted in his life]]). Wray initially refused to be interviewed for Thad Komorowski's book ''Literature/SickLittleMonkeys'', and even after coming around was described in the book as "tearful" when recalling the nightmare that was John K.'s firing. When K's 2019 short ''WesternAnimation/CansWithoutLabels'' (which actually ''plagiarized'' painting of Wray's) was leaked onto Website/YouTube, Wray's critique on his Facebook page turned into a massive thread of former colleagues and other non-fans more or less confirming every single negative rumor about Kricfalusi.

* OldShame: Jamie Oliff, the director at Lacewood Productions, was not happy with how his studio's episodes turned out, and actually asked John to not send them any more work. He said that the crew members had really bad attitudes and weren't as grateful as they should've been to be working on such a unique cartoon.