Trivia / The Weird Al Show

• Actor Allusion: In one Fatman cartoon, Emo Phillips plays a coleslaw-themed villain named The Slawmeister, a reference to his stand up routines which often make references to coleslaw. He's also designed to look like him.
• Breaking News Interruption: The show was originally slated to premiere on September 6, 1997, but was moved to September 13, 1997 due to coverage of Princess Diana's funeral.
• Censor Decoy: Attempted, but backfired: the censors usually left the decoy in in favor of the material it was meant to distract from!
• The Danza:
  • The show's character claims to be Weird Al, even though the real Weird Al never lived in a cave (that we know of) nor acted like a monstrous jerk to everyone he knew.
  • The episode "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Hamster" has Emo Phillips play a pet psychiatrist named Dr. Phillips.
• Development Hell: Al and his manager Jay Levey had been pitching a kids' show with Al as the star since 1984, before even UHF was conceived.
• Executive Meddling: So much. The commentaries on the DVD box set go into great detail about the various forms of creative interference this show faced (concern over "imitatable behavior", for instance).
• Missing Episode: In one commentary, Al explains that the dearth of extras on the set is because CBS trashed almost everything from the show, and we're actually quite lucky they kept the master tapes, so we're not stuck watching some grainy YouTube rip.
• Out of Order: To the point where the premiere, which introduced the regular characters and sketches, aired tenth. Al and friends make a drinking game out of it in the DVD commentary. Fellow "Think CBS Kids" series Wheel 2000 also suffered from this, but it wasn't as noticeable due to its' structure (being a self-contained game show).
• Production Posse: Several supporting cast members of UHF, Al's only starring role in a film, made appearances.
  • Kevin McCarthy, who played the villainous R.J. Fletcher, plays the mayor of the town in the 60% Chance of Rain parody.
  • David Bowe (no, not that one), who played George's friend Bob, appears as one of the miners in the episode "Mining Accident".
  • Gedde Watanabe (already somewhat famous for playing Long Duck Dong in Sixteen Candles) plays a martial arts instructor that was clearly intended to be a version of UHF's Kuni, complete with his trademark catchphrase.
  • Saturday Night Live alumna Victoria Jackson, who played main squeeze Teri in UHF, has a bit part as a crying woman in one of the fake TV shows on Al's TV in the episode "Time Machine".
  • Longtime friend Emo Phillips, who played shop teacher Joe Earley in UHF, shows up as the voice of the villainous Slaw Meister (modeled to look very much like Philips at the time) in the Fatman cartoon accompanying the episode "Mining Accident". He appears again in the show proper as "Dr. Philips", a loony psychiatrist Al hires to try and calm Harvey down in "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Hamster."
  • Al's late mom Mary Yankovic also guest stars as herself in the talent show episode. His band also comes in and performs "Yoda" for Harvey's birthday.
• Screwed by the Network: All the Executive Meddling meant the show never reached its full potential, and the makers knew it. Not to mention that it was on different times on every station, often very early in the morning, and its only advertising was during the Saturday-morning block itself.
• Unfinished Episode: There's an unproduced Fatman segment titled "Hello, My Name is... Evil", which had Fatman's Uncle Frank band together several of Fatman's enemies to try and kill him. The storyboards of the unfinished episode can be viewed on the show's DVD.
• What Could Have Been: Obviously had it not been for the Executive Meddling, the show would have been more like a 1990s version of Pee-wee's Playhouse.
  • One of the DVD commentaries also talks about dropped characters, such as "The Guy Who Keeps Ringing the Doorbell and Running Away".
  • Other bits that ended up not happening due to outside reasons included a sketch with Al as "Luke Skywalker's annoying little brother" in the original Star Wars (which was vetoed by Mark Hamill) and a possible cameo by William Shatner, Leslie Nielsen, or Christopher Walken performing in "The Obligatory Holiday Episode".
  • The Guy Boarded Up In the Wall was originally going to be The Unintelligible with only Al understanding his muffled lines. Though changing it allowed them to make him a stand-up comedian.
  • Another secondary character dropped was a female Latina postal worker whom Al would always have trouble understanding despite her speaking flawless English. This was immediately dropped without question once the writers said it out loud to themselves and realized that the joke was much more racist than they had intended it to be.
  • Before the writers settled on "Fatman," Seth MacFarlane pitched what would eventually become Family Guy as an animated skit, potentially making this show what The Tracey Ullman Show was to The Simpsons.
  • Stan Freberg, who played the executive producer JP Toppersmith and Papa Booley, was originally considered as a writer, but Al didnt feel comfortable scrutinizing a script written by one of his childhood heroes.
  • Al and the crew wanted to air the educational film Soapy the Germ Fighter in it's entirety, feeling that it was so hilariously bizarre that they wouldn't need to edit it... only for the execs to tell them it would be too disturbing. Al would later use a snippet of it in one of his "fake" educational shorts.
  • Al wanted to get John Kricfalusi, of whom he was a huge fan, to animate the 2D segment in the theme song, but for whatever reason was unable to get him. John K. would later do his music video for "Close But No Cigar."
• Writer Revolt:
  • One episode sees Al forced to babysit an executive's nephew... who proceeds to order him to completely redesign the show to his whims. Given what the actual show went through, it's clear they were venting some frustration.
  • The commentaries note that beginning each episode with a piece of paper with the moral of the day, which then gets ripped in half (as well as having the Narrator, Billy West, randomly shout certain phrases at the top of his lungs while reading them), was their protest over being forced to include the morals.

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