Trivia / Rugrats

• Acting for Two:
  • Phil, Lil, and their mother, Betty, were all voiced by Kath Soucie.
  • Michael Bell voiced Drew (Angelica's dad), Chas (Chuckie's dad), and Boris (Tommy's maternal grandfather), plus multiple one-off roles.
  • Didi and her mother were both voiced by Melanie Chartoff.
  • Don't forget about Larry and Steve, both of whom were voiced by Scott Menville.
  • In Mexico and Japan, it's Dil and Susie. In Sweden, there's Tommy and Angelica.
• Adored by the Network: From 1998 to 2003, this show was pretty much the forerunner of Nickelodeon back in the day. Even when SpongeBob SquarePants premiered in 1999 they focused mainly on this and other Klasky-Csupo shows, with the treatment dying down after SpongeBob became a Sleeper Hit.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!:
  • Due to a certain image◊ circulating the Internet, many fans believe that there's a scene from "Grandpa's Bad Bug" where Grandpa talks about playing Russian Roulette. The actual dialogue was just Grandpa telling Stu and Didi that he was sick, Didi offers to take him to the doctor but he tells her he just wants to sleep it off. The dialogue in the aforementioned image is lifted from an episode of King of the Hill.
  • A number of viewers think Stu uses the word "hell" in the episode "Spike Runs Away". He actually said "I haven't been able to face halibut since"; for context, he and Didi were talking about a time when Spike chased a cat to a fish market.
• Breaking News Interruption / Release Date Change : Depending on the area, the premiere of Rugrats on Nick on CBS, which was on February 1, 2003, was either delayed until the next week (with the episode "Be My Valentine" on February 8, 2003) or interrupted halfway through the episode "Finsterella" because of news coverage of the Columbia Space Shuttle explosion, which happened the same day. Some affiliates, including WDJT in Milwaukee, ran the show as scheduled.
• Breakthrough Hit: For Klasky-Csupo and Nickelodeon.
• Celebrity Voice Actor:
  • Melinda Finster is voiced in "Mother's Day" by Kim Cattrall of Sex and the City fame.
  • The babysitter Taffy is voiced by Amanda Bynes, who at the time was the star of The Amanda Show and What I Like About You.
  • Jeremy Piven of The Larry Sanders Show did guest voices in season 1 and season 6.
  • Pat Buttram, best known as Mr. Haney in Green Acres appears as corrupt mechanic Eddie in The Graham Canyon.
  • Tom Bosley of Happy Days fame appears as Strike Maxwell in King Ten Pin in season 2 and Dwayne Tickerbacker in Murmur on the Ornery Express in season 9.
  • Adam West appears as Captain Blasto in "Superhero Chuckie".
  • Alex Trebek plays his own caricature Alan Quebec in "Game Show Didi".
  • René Auberjonois was the original voice of Charlotte's assistant Jonathan before being replaced by Dan Castellaneta (who would be replaced by Antony Del Rio in the reboot).
  • Pat Sajak appears as himself in "Chuckie is Rich".
  • Stand-up comedian Andrew "Dice" Clay appears as the repairman in Pirate Light.
  • Ben Stein appears as the Bingo Caller in Lady Luck.
  • Ed Begley Jr. appears as Bob, owner of Bob's Fully Automated Bakery in Baking Dil.
  • Jim Belushi and Paul Reubens play a Mall Santa and Hermie the Elf in "Babies in Toyland".
  • Drake Bell guest starred as Dusty in Lil's Phil of Trash acting as a sort of surrogate big brother to Phil two years before he'd do the same again.
• Channel Hop:
  • Strangely, the show has aired on Nick Jr. a few times, even as far back as 1994. Though this not too surprising considering the show's subject matter.
  • The 2021 reboot was animated by Nickelodeon Animation Studio instead of Klasky-Csupo (who had ceased functioning as an animation studio over a decade ago despite several attempts to restart operations; their logo appears on the show as a Vanity Plate for their founders, who are merely producers). In addition, it was slated to air on Nickelodeon, but got moved to Paramount Plus. Though as of August 2021, the reboot has started to air on Nickelodeon linear.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Up until the movie, Arlene Klasky hated Angelica and following the episode "The Trial"^note  Though as of 2016, she has changed her tune and actually admitted that it's her favorite episode and the one that stood out to her the most, because she was impressed that the writers had come up with an intelligent way to satirize Rashomon she complained to the writers that the babies were starting to act too old for their age.
  • Original co-creator Paul Germain, who left after season 3, felt the series went downhill from the revival onwards.
  • The creators did not like how Angelica never received any comeuppance for smacking Tommy's ball over the fence in "Barbecue Story". This was originally designed to teach viewers that life isn't fair sometimes, but the concept was quickly dropped. In any subsequent episode, Angelica would have received Laser-Guided Karma for doing so.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: In the series' tenth anniversary special, "Still Babies After All These Years", the cast got to share their favorite episodes with the viewers. Specifically;
  • Elizabeth Daily has stated that her favorite episode is "Naked Tommy".
  • Gabor Csupo has stated "Chuckie Vs. the Potty" as one of his favorite episodes.
  • Kath Soucie has stated that her favorite episode is "I Remember Melville", due to how touching that episode's subject is^note Chuckie dealing with the death of his pet bug.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Played straight in the English cast, as all the male babies are voiced by women. Zigzagged in some of the foreign dubs for example, the French dub had Tommy done by a male.
• Defictionalization: As of 2017, actual Reptar Cereal and Reptar Bars are being sold exclusively at FYE.
• Died During Production: David Doyle (Grandpa Lou) suffered a fatal heart attack in February 1997, before the episodes he recorded for the new season were even completed and began airing in the summer of that year. Writer and voice actor Andy Houts died from a brain tumor on the exact day of Doyle's death.
• Direct to Video: The two Tales From The Crib movies, Snow White and Three Jacks And A Beanstalk, which were unsuccessful attempts to make the series popular again. The hour-long special Vacation was first released on VHS, too.
• Dueling Shows: The reboot is in a duel with Animaniacs, another reboot of a 90s kids' show that was extremely popular that is also appearing on a streaming service.
• Early-Bird Release: Several episodes of the show were released on VHS months or on a rare occasion even YEARS before they aired on TV:
  • A Rugrats Passover was originally released on the Passover VHS 2 months before it would air.
  • Vacation was released on the aptly-named VHS 6 months before it would air.
  • Hiccups/Autumn Leaves was released on Dr. Tommy Pickles 7 months before it would air. Oddly, commercials advertising the tape said it would air around 4 months after release... that being said the episodes were meant to air much earlier during season 4 but were held over.
  • Grandpa's Bad Bug was released on Dr. Tommy Pickles 8 months before it would air.
  • The Word of the Day was released on Angelica Knows Best 2 months before it aired.
  • Runaway Reptar was released on the aptly-named VHS 3 months before it would air.
  • Both Dil We Meet Again and Big Babies were released on Make Room for Dil a whopping TWO WHOLE YEARS before they aired in the USA. That said they aired much closer to the VHS release on Telemundo.
  • Be My Valentine was released on I Think I Like You a month before airing.
  • Discover America was released on the VHS of the same name 5 months before airing.
  • A Rugrats Kwanzaa was released the VHS of the same name 3 months before airing.
  • Bow-Wow Wedding Vows was released on Easter 1 month before airing.
  • Babies in Toyland was released on the Rugrats Christmas VHS 3 months before airing.
• Enforced Method Acting: Cheryl Chase had such a hard time playing the mean Angelica that to get into character, she had directors tell her that the girl was the show's version of JR Ewing.
• Executive Meddling: As noted under Characterization Marches On, Susie's personality changed a lot from her first few appearances. According to Cree Summer, this was down to network executives wanting her to be a good representation of a young girl of colour - saying she was told to make sure Susie sounded very well-spoken.
• Hey, It's That Sound!: In "Mommy's Little Assets", the buzzer sound heard repeatedly as Angelica plays with a stock broker's computer is the same buzzer heard on Wheel of Fortune whenever a wrong letter is called. Coincidentally, this episode originally aired right after "Chuckie is Rich", which guest stars Pat Sajak, the show's host.
• Hostility on the Set: Tensions between the creators in the original 65 episodes run were quite real. Arlene Klasky and Paul Germain clashed on creative directions; the former wanted the characters to act more like realistic babies, while the latter favored strong characterization. Angelica was the big point of argument - Arlene Klasky not wanting an antagonist and hating how mean she was, Paul Germain instead wanting to show Hidden Depths and explore why a child might become a bully. He ended up leaving the show before the episodes even aired. Arlene Klasky continued to be unpopular with a lot of the animators; she would speak to some of them in baby talk to illustrate how she wanted the Rugrats to act, and they made a Running Gag out of Didi's obsession with the terrible advice of Dr Lipschitz specifically to mock her - as she was a great believer in such parenting books.
• In Memoriam: The episode "Lady Luck", where Grandpa Lou plays a major role, is dedicated to his voice actor David Doyle, who passed away before the episode aired.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The show got tons of VHS releases, but of course those are all now out of print and only a select few episodes were ever released to DVD. The complete series was released in 9 season sets on DVD from 2010-2014, exclusively on Amazon through their CreateSpace service, using their DVD-R manufacture-on-demand service. The series can also be purchased digitally on iTunes and Amazon Instant Video. The CreateSpace DVDs went out-of-print in 2017, and Paramount Home Entertainment has re-released the first four seasons since; Hulu's rights to the series nearly expired in October 2020; they currently only have the original 65 episodes.
  • A complete series DVD release came out in May 2021.
  • The full series can be streamed on Paramount+ as well.
  • None of the show's video games from the 1990s and early 2000s have seen reissues. These include the 1998 PC title Rugrats Adventure Game, which is sadly not only abandonware but due to how it was designed it will only run on Windows O Ses up to Windows ME.
• Kids' Meal Toy:
  • In Fall 1994, Hardee's released a set of eight race cars based on this series, The Ren & Stimpy Show, Doug, and Rocko's Modern Life, with each franchise having two characters. The toys based on this series depicted Tommy on a rocking horse and Angelica on a tricycle.
  • In Summer 1997, Dairy Queen released a set of four Nicktoons beach toys, which were based on this series, Rocko's Modern Life, Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, and Hey Arnold!. The Rugrats toy was an inflatable beach ball decorated with stock art of the show's characters.
  • Burger King released five different sets of toys from 1998 to 2003 that were not just based on the series, but the three movies as well.
• Live on Stage!: Rugrats: A Live Adventure was a show of this type that ran in the 90's. It toured the United States and Mexico, and was about Tommy and an object called the People-ator, which brings objects to life.
• Missing Episode:
  • "Cuffed/The Blizzard" from Season 3 was pulled from US reruns on Nick and Nicktoons by the mid-2000s, probably over concern of small children playing with handcuffs. It still aired in other countries and is available on DVD and iTunes, and TeenNick's programming block The Splat had it in their rotation for years.
  • Because of music licensing issues with the song "Vacation" by The Go-Go's, the Season 4 episode "Vacation" was rarely aired on TV and is not available on iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, or Paramount+. However, it was included on the Decade in Diapers DVD, Season 4 DVD from Amazon, and it is included on Paramount's 2018 release of Season 4.
  • Due to a manufacturing error on Amazon's Season 3 DVD, the contents of the fourth and fifth discs were exactly the same, meaning the episodes that should have been on Disc 5 are lost entirely, and despite being pulled so Amazon could rectify the issue, the discs were apparently still the same. The episodes in question are available on digital services, and Paramount's third season set was unaffected. Also, the original Season 2 DVD set only covered the first half of the season, and the Season 3 set skipped right over the missing episodes (which included Susie's debut). The Season 2 set was eventually reissued with the missing episodes. In addition, for unknown reasons, the masters for three episodes couldn't be located in time for the Season 9 set, and it was instead issued as a "Best Of" collection without them. It was later reissued with them restored back in.
  • No complete videotape recordings of the Rugrats Magic Adventure show that was at Universal Studios Hollywood from 2000 to 2001 are known to exist, only the show's audio and some excerpts can be found.
• The Other Darrin:
  • After David Doyle's 1997 death, Joe Alaskey took over as Grandpa Lou's voice actor beginning with Season 5. Alaskey himself passed away many years after the show was cancelled, so the 2021 revival replaced him with Michael McKean.
  • When Christine Cavanaugh — the original voice of Chuckie Finster — retired from voice acting and left the show during Season 8, she was replaced by Nancy Cartwright.
  • Chuckie was also played by Candi Milo in two video games instead of Nancy Cartwright.
  • "The Last Babysitter" had E.G. Daily (the voice for Tommy) voice Susie Carmichael rather than Cree Summer, who was unavailable.
  • Susie's siblings change voice actors often.
  • In the Japanese dub, there's a different voice cast between the characters from the TV series and the movies.
  • For the 2021 revival, Stu, Lou, Randy, and Dr. Lipschitz will have to be recast due to the deaths of Jack Riley, Joe Alaskey, Ron Glass, and Tony Jay, respectively. It has also been confirmed that Michael Bell and Phil Proctor will not be returning for the reboot, reportedly because they were deemed too old to voice their respective characters (Drew Pickles, Boris Kropotkin, and Chaz Finster for Bell, Howard DeVille for Proctor). More oddly, Natalie Morales replaced Kath Soucie as Betty DeVille despite Soucie returning to voice the twins. ^note  Soucie eventually revealed that this is because she is no longer able to pitch her voice low enough to play Betty.
• The Other Marty: Tommy was originally voiced by Tami Holbrook in the pilot short. Holbrook voiced him for the first couple episodes, but it was decided that she wasn't working out, so they hired E.G. Daily to replace her and re-dub her lines.
• Out of Holiday Episode: The first Halloween Episode "Candy Bar Creep Show" originally premiered in January 1992, which was close to three months after Halloween. Then as if that weren't enough, it usually wouldn't be rerun on Halloween or around the season (in most cases another mundane episode pairing would air on Halloween day.) Though this changed in October 2000 when Nickelodeon played "Candy Bar Creep Show" a lot during the month, often pairing it with "Ghost Story" from Season 6 (though the Halloween day 2000 airing paired "Candy Bar Creep Show" with its' original sister episode, "Monsters in the Garage.")
  • Subverted with "Mothers' Day," its' original airing at the actual holiday and subsequent reruns around that time of year closed with at title card reading "HAPPY MOTHERS' DAY" in the usual Rugrats font. On the occasions this episode aired outside of the Mothers' Day season, the title card would be edited out.
• Posthumous Credit: David Doyle died in February 1997, several months prior to the Uncancelled seasons beginning airing, though had finished enough voice work as Grandpa Lou to complete Season Four and even the Season Five premier, "Grandpa's Bad Bug"/"Lady Luck", the latter of which was dedicated to his memory. The final aired episode starring him was "Autumn Leaves", a holdover from Season Four released over a year and a half after his passing.
• Reclusive Artist: Tommy's original voice actress Tami Holbrook seemingly vanished off the face of the Earth after the pilot episode.
• Role Reprise: Returning for the 2021 reboot on Paramount+ are Elizabeth Daily as Tommy Pickles, Nancy Cartwright as Chuckie Finster, Cheryl Chase as Angelica Pickles, Cree Summer as Susie Carmichael, and Kath Soucie as Phil and Lil DeVille (but oddly not their mother Betty).
• Same Voice Their Entire Life: Played for Laughs in the episode where the babies imagine themselves as adults. They all keep their same childish voices.
• Sequel Gap: The reboot came 19 years after the last produced episode of the original series ("Kimi Takes the Cake").
• Sleeper Hit: Arlene Klasky describes the sudden success as "when the show started, we had two employees. When it ended, we had 550."
• Screwed by the Network: On CBS, the show suffered this under their thumb. It premiered on their Saturday morning block in February 2003, but only stayed on for the next five months. It aired by default at 7AM, when its target audience was still asleep, although some stations aired the show in different timeslots; including KPIX in San Francisco, which aired it in the afternoon at 3:30PM; KIRO in Seattle, which aired it at 5AM on Sunday mornings, when absolutely no one would be awake; and WIVB in Buffalo, New York, which aired it at 8AM, directly against Nickelodeon's Rugrats broadcast.
• Similarly Named Works: Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers and Noonbory and the Super 7 both also have an episode titled "Opposites Attract".
• So My Kids Can Watch: Alex Trebek guest starred in "Gameshow Didi" as "Alan Quebec" so his then-3 year-old son Matthew could hear his dad's voice in a children's show.
• Tie-In Cereal: The Show Within a Show Reptar had the Real Life cereal Reptar Crunch, filled with purple rice crisps and green dinosaurs.
• Uncanceled: The show originally ended in 1994 due to contractual reasons as a rule that no Nicktoon at the time could be renewed over 65 episodes, but due to everlasting popularity in reruns, the show was renewed for a further six seasons until being cancelled again in 2004 as a part of a dispute between Klasky/Csupo and Nickelodeon (The dispute being that they couldn't agree on a price to produce the shows).
  • Due to growing popularity once again, Nickelodeon hinted that Rugrats could be on the list of shows being resurrected, due to popular demand. To test the waters, apparently, a new comic book series was revealed in 2017. One year later, an official revival (plus a live-action/CGI film) was announced. The former began airing in 2021 on Paramount+, the latter ended up being scrapped.
• Unfinished Episode: According to RugratOnline, some episodes were written in the outline stage for the second and third seasons, but never got produced. Such examples include...
  • "Tommy the Sage," where Tommy would be giving words of wisdom to his friends, apparently in a flashback sequence. Nick didn't think it fit the series.
  • "Didi's Cold," which would've been a Sick Episode featuring how the babies react to Tommy's mom coming down with a cold.
  • "Chuckie Gets Trapped," where Chuckie would get his head stuck in a banister. Arlene Klasky rejected this episode because she felt it presented a danger issue.
  • "Dog Show," which Klasky-Csupo scrapped because they did not want to center on Spike too much. The idea was revisited in Season 9 as "Bestest of Show", with the focus being on Spiffy and Puppy.
  • "Tommy the Gambler," where the adults would take the kids to a horse race where they place bets. It was rejected not due to the gambling issue, but because back then Klasky-Csupo had difficulties with big crowd scenes. Another episode, "The Parade," was scrapped for the same reason.
  • "The Seance," where the adults and possibly the babies partake in a Spooky Séance.
  • "Angelica Takes a Candy Bar," a.k.a. "Shoplifting", which involves Angelica stealing a candy bar from a store. Nickelodeon rejected it.
  • "The Case of the Missing Eggs," a possible Easter Special, was rejected by Klasky-Csupo because they already had a mystery-themed episode for the second season, "The Case of the Missing Rugrat."
  • "Glasberg's Polynesian Restaurant," which Nick rejected because it was too similar to "Waiter, There's a Baby in My Soup" and presumably another story allegedly titled "Client Dinner" (which was either another unproduced episode, or a Working Title for "Baby in My Soup.")
• What Could Have Been:
  • Apparently, up until the "Mother's Day" episode, the creators didn't know what to do with Chuckie's mother. In fact, the only time the classic-era episodes explicitly point to Chas being a single dad was in "My Friend Barney" where Chuckie finds a stuffed fish plaque, and Chas tells him, "Your mother never liked this fish much, but hey, I guess now we can hang it back up in the dining room!". In "BBQ Story," a woman often interpreted to be a prototype of Chuckie's mother can be seen alongside Chuckie's father^note Though she may well be just a friend of Chas', since two other unrelated guests are also shown., in "Real or Robots" Stu says Chuckie's "mom and dad" will pick him up in the morning and in "Special Delivery", Chuckie says "My mom says I came from the hospital." According to Paul Germain, it was at one point considered for Chuckie's mom to still be alive, but divorced from Chas, but Nickelodeon felt both divorce and death were too sensitive subjects for a children's show - but they came around for the early death of a mother during the revival.
  • Originally 20th Century Fox had a deal with Nickelodeon to release movies of the Nicktoons in 1993 but this fell through. The Rugrats Movie did come out in 1998 through Paramount after Viacom's acquisition of the studio, but whether the plot details were the same remains unknown.
  • In the original pilot Lou's name was Stu Pickles Sr.
  • Before Angelica was made, early on it was considered having Chuckie be the bully to the other babies.
  • As noted under Early-Installment Weirdness, Angelica was first conceived as a Karma Houdini who would never be punished - to teach kids the Hard Truth Aesop that sometimes life isn't fair. But the show runners quickly came to hate how nasty Angelica was, and had her punished frequently. Season 2 onwards started showing her Hidden Depths.
  • There was a rumor that if Rugrats Go Wild! was successful, then a fourth movie would've been made with the characters in their grown forms.
  • After Christine Cavanaugh retired from voice acting, Candi Milo was considered for Chuckie's new voice actress, even playing him in two video games. However, Klasky-Csupo brought Nancy Cartwright in instead, thinking that having a more "famous" voice actress off of The Simpsons would bring in more prestige and viewers as the popularity of Rugrats was slowly starting to wane. Milo still replaced Cavanaugh as Dexter in Dexter's Laboratory.
  • Additionally, Klasky-Csupo was planning to make an eleven-minute version of the pilot, "Tommy Pickles and the Great White Thing," to air with the rest of the series. It would've either been a complete remake of the pilot, or would've extended the existing pilot with newly-animated sequences (the way Klasky-Csupo also did with the Aaahh!!! Real Monsters pilot, along with the pilots for two other Nickoons Doug and Rocko's Modern Life.) It never got made, and the pilot continued to only be shown at animation festivals until it was finally released on the "Decade in Diapers" DVD in 2001.
  • Gabor Csupó originally considered selections from Mark Mothersbaugh's 1988 2-volume album, Muzik for Insomniaks, to be the soundtrack to the series. Mothersbaugh, though, insisted that he should create new tracks for the show, and after a single meeting, Csupó agreed.
  • A live-action/CGI revival film was planned and scheduled for a 2020 release, but it was pulled in favor of Paramount's new film, Rumble. A CGI television reboot was made instead.
  • In 2013 Arlene Klasky Kate Boutilier and Alex Mesrobian pitched a fourth potential movie to Nickelodeon titled "Rugrats in Space". It was shot down in exchange for reviving the series (which began negotiation in 2018).
• Working Title: Arlene Klasky's idea for a title was 'Onesomething', after the TV show thirtysomething.
• Write Who You Know:
  • Tommy was based on Arlene Klasky and Gábor Csupó's son, and was named after co-creator Paul Germain's son, Thomas.
  • Angelica was based off a girl who used to beat up Paul Germain as a kid. In fact, until he brought it up, Angelica was going to be a boy.
• Writer Revolt: Didi's obsession with Dr Lipschitz was a Take That! from the writers to Arlene Klasky, who was a great believer in such doctors and parenting books.

---