Headscratchers / Beavis and Butt-Head

• Where the hell are the boys' parents 95% of the time? Somebody seems to be ensuring that they get to school each day (as they don't seem to be the sort of meatheads to do that on their own) but other than that they seem to run roughshod across the rest of the neighborhood. Is there anybody who cares enough about these two yahoos to ensure that they don't kill themselves out of boredom and stupidity?
  • They probably only go to school because they have to show up to get lunch.
    • Better yet, who pays for their utilities, cable, and electricity?
    • Well, Beavis at least has a job flipping burgers.
  • I always got the impression their mothers are basically doing the bare minimum for them to not get arrested for neglecting their kids. And as the movie shows, their dads are drifters.
• This Troper once worked at a McDonald's and it had like 8 employees and apparently Burger World only has 3 employees which are Beavis, Butt-Head, and the unnamed manager... HOW DOES THIS WORK?!? Apparently the manager doesn't even think about hiring more employees and that can explain why the lines are long due to the incompetence of a certain two employees, plus when Beavis and Butt-Head aren't even working, who is working at Burger World in their place? This doesn't seem to make sense at all! Unless the Unnamed manager is as inept as those two but doesn't admit it.
  • There are probably more, but they just aren't seen, since they wanted to conserve the number of characters seen at a time, or didn't want to create all-new ones.
• Why the heck are Beavis and Butt-Head not fired from their job? They do a lot of crazy and gross stuff at their job, I'm surprised they are still working there.
  • The manager is probably almost as incompetent as they are, and can't find anyone else to do their jobs.
• It's been years so sorry if it's been answered In-Universe, but what sort of teacher is Van Driessen? I don't recall the series ever saying at all, but it seems like he maybe a general education teacher who covers any class that needs a teacher.
  • He probably teaches multiple subjects. Coach Buzzcut, in addition to being a PE coach, has also taught math and US history during the course of the series.
• Sooo what happened to the 2011 revival series? It seemed to be doing quite well, but then it went poof all of a sudden for me. Is there plans to bring it back for a few more seasons on Comedy Central still?
  • Wordof God is that it didn't mesh with MTV's core viewership audience of young teenage girls. Yes, really. And yes, a revival on Comedy Central is still coming, alongside Ren and Stimpy.
    • It's on Paramount+ now, and it's a different revival, picking off where Beavis and Butt-Head Do The Universe left off.
• Why are the title duo's heads disproportionately large, yet everybody else in the series has normal-sized heads?
  • They're not even real. They're cartoons.
• What's the name of the song that Beavis and Butt-Head air-guitar to in several episodes, like in "No Laughing" when McVicker tries to suspend them?
  • Iron Man by Black Sabbath.
• If Daria is so smart why is she in the same class with Beavis and Butthead?
  • One guess is that Highland High was too poor to really offer more advanced honor classes. Another possibility is that even if the school did offer more advanced courses, Daria still preferred being a big fish in a small pond and liked being the smartest student in a class full of morons.
• How did they even get the job at Burger World? It's unlikely they were able to do all the steps required for a job (filling out an application, having references, passing a job interview, etc) without screwing it up.
  • It's probably based on the perception (without making any value judgments as to its accuracy) that burger-flipping is an idiot job and most of these restaurants are so desperate for help that they just accept any warm body.
    • Maybe they're on parole?
• What kind of braces does Butt-head have that they cause his upper lip to be positioned the way it is?
  • I had braces in late high school. To correct an overbite rubber bands had to be attached to brackets, and one episode I recall has Butt-head go to a dentist or something and they mention he's supposed to be wearing head gear at night. Braces seem to only be fixing his teeth in the up and down sense, it's safe to assume the head gear he doesn't wear is supposed to fix his over bite.
• What song do the boys air-guitar to towards the end of "No Laughing" when they think they're going to be suspended?
  • Someone already asked this question just above and it was answered. Iron Man by Black Sabbath.
• Where is Cornholio's bunghole?
• How did Beavis and Butt-Head end up in high school in the first place?
  • Their previous teachers probably passed them just to get rid of them.
    • Rule of Funny.
• Why does Beavis hate being called "buttknocker" so much?
  • Trauma, perhaps?
    • Yeah, sounds about right. Beavis has been implied to have quite a disturbing past.
• What song is playing at the beginning of "Massage"?
• Why haven't our heroes been expelled from Highland High? McVicker's said they're expelled multiple times, and their destructive antics (ranging from driving Tom Anderson's steamroller through the hallways and walls to somehow destroying the teachers' lounge) give ample justification for permanently banning them. And yet, B&B always come back to school.
  • When the pilots of Beavis and Butt-Head first aired in 1992, the school leaving age in Texas (where Highland is located) was 17 years: that increased to 18 in 1997, and now it's 19 years. I imagine that McVicker would have a lot of things to address if he really wanted Beavis and Butt-Head out for good, such as alternative schooling arrangements and getting approval from the school board. It could be possible that the school board overturned the expulsions of Beavis and Butt-Head, especially if Highland High is (to date) the only high school in town.
  • Even if they were expelled, they'd probably ignore or quickly forget it ever happened and keep coming back anyway.
    • McVicker will NEVER forget the duo's antics. They just love to piss him off at any opportunity they get.
• In the 2022 revival, Beavis and Butt-head have time traveled from 1998 to 2022, and are back in Van Driessen's class like nothing ever happened. Van Driessen appears to be the same age as he was in 1998. I realize it's kind of silly to apply serious analysis to Beavis and Butt-head, but the movie went to the trouble of having the time-travel plot to account for the time skip, but didn't account for this. Tom Anderson is also the same age (he would be in his 90s at the youngest if he's still alive).
  • If you look closely, Van Driessen has aged. Note how his hair is darker and his neck is saggier. Still don't know about Anderson, though; maybe he's just a very healthy man.
  • The episodes with Anderson in them are probably from the timeline where Beavis and Butthead eventually aged up. Notice how there aren't any major indicators of which year they're set in.
    • Then how do you explain "Stolen Valor"? That episode shows Anderson alive and well in the same timeline.
• The show is inconsistent about whether B&B can read, or count. Often when they try to count, they'll say something like "1, 2, uh, 7?" Yet, when they sing the "Beat Your Meat" song, they can at least count to 12. Whether or not they can read, likewise, seems to depend on whether it's a dirty word (or something that can be mistaken for a dirty word).
• Are the Crazy Farmer and the school janitor the same guy or are they perhaps identical twins?
• During the tug-of-war over the collection money during the original finale, it's all well and good that Mc Vicker has a big Vietnam flashback to past instances where the boys have caused chaos, but nearly all of the moments shown didn't involve him at all, nor was he there to witness them so how is he seeing them? The school-related moments (the pencil-related injuries in class, Mr. Van Driessen sent flying through a windshield and over the side of a cliff, Butthead getting run down by a school bus) do make a modicum of sense as news of those incidents would make their way to him, but how was he able to witness them rocking out in their own house, Butthead almost drowning Beavis at Burger World, and Beavis starting the infamous fire in the comedy club?