The Ren and Stimpy Show/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Ren is either an Ax Crazy Jerk with a Heart of Gold or a Complete Monster.
  • Awesome Art: It and Rocko's Modern Life are probably the Nicktoons franchise's two biggest 1990s examples of this.
  • Awesome Music: The Royal Anthem of the Canadian Kilted Yaksmen
    • No wonder, since this is the melody of "God Save The Queen".
  • Complete Monster: Ren becomes this in Adult Party Cartoon.
    • This is prevalent in "Ren Seeks Help" For torturing bugs which are very sentient, begging for mercy, one especially he states that he has a wife and children and forces a tick to stop sucking on ears out of horror. Then moving on to a frog to which he stuffed lit explosives up its rectum, pressed the tires of a tricycle on its stomach to release its organs and finally electrocute it with applied car battery resulting in being burnt alive; when it asks to put it out of its misery, Ren refuses not of pity, but to have it slowly die of its suffering because he was confounded by the fact that a victim actually preferred death over life (to which he admits that he slept soundly afterwards with dreams of sadism) in his adolescence and denying it when confronted with his parents as witnesses; as well as becoming elated when he got to kill it with a chainsaw (from his mother where he gets the sadism from while his father preferred a quick death from a gun...at first) WHICH HE DOESN'T DO ANYWAY CHOOSING TO THROW IT IN A TRASH CAN it shoots itself with the gun at the end. What's worse is what he does to Stimpy from abuse, admittedly loathing him for being immune to the usual pain treatments to which he had to the animal and finally something so horrible that his psychiatrist attempts to kill him out of sheer terror not before he tells that Ren is absolutely insane. Ren responds by first clawing then biting and finally clubbing the horse to death with a gun that the therapist owned. When the cops arrive, he looks more like a blood-crazed beast than his usual self proceeding to bite one of the cops' hands off.
  • Creator's Pet: George Liquor. Many people (both in-universe and in real life) dislike him, but John Kricfalusi, somehow, is really fond of him (possibly due to him being the only Ren and Stimpy character he still owns).
  • Dude, Not Funny: A bit of Adult Party can be described as this.
  • Fridge Horror: Mr. Horse asks Ren and Stimpy for a rubber walrus protector. The walrus that is to be protected asks them to call the police in the single most disturbing scene in cartoon history.
  • Esoteric Happy Ending: Ren and Stimpy's tearful reunion in "The Big Shot" is cut short by Ren slapping Stimpy for giving away his 47 million dollar fortune.
    • In "Rubber Nipple Salesmen", Ren and Stimpy succeed in selling their rubber nipples to a suburbanite couple... who then kick Ren and Stimpy onto the backs of a couple of crazed bulls that they ride into the distance.
      • "Man's Best Friend". By thrashing George Liquor half to death with an oar, Ren earns his approval and praise for being such a good guard dog. Ren and Stimpy are then rewarded with doggie treats, and the three of them dance happily to an upbeat Raymond Scott song.
  • Fanon Discontinuity: Some fans will vehemently deny that APC ever existed.
    • Same thing with the episodes made without John K.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: In "The Big Shot!", Stimpy says, "I'm hunting for a wabbit." Billy West would later become the regular voice actor for Elmer Fudd.
  • Harsher in Hindsight / Funny Aneurysm Moment: "The Littlest Giant", where Stimpy (playing The Littlest Giant) runs away from home after a long time of torture by the mean, larger giants. Made harsher by the fact that nowadays, bullying victims have often done pretty much the same, or worse (case in point, Phoebe Prince).
  • Ho Yay: Even before Ren & Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon, which ran so far with the homoerotic overtones that it circled the globe at least twice.
  • Hype Backlash: For a show that often gets talked about as if it is objectively the best show in Nickelodeon's "Big Five" (it, SpongeBob SquarePants, Invader Zim, Avatar: The Last Airbender and Rocko's Modern Life, with the other four of said shows being blatantly superior to it in many ways), this show can be rather underwhelming to say the least; John Kricfalusi's obnoxiously elitist attitude about the show doesn't exactly help either, and neither does the way in which TV critics utterly worship it while basically ignoring RML.
  • Memetic Mutation: The Log song.
    • HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY!
    • The "Ren Snaps" sequence, where Ren presses "The Button" and atomizes Australia, has become a popular meme on YouTube called "You Dare Not Agree With X", where a picture of X character is photoshopped over Ren.
    • "You're the pitcher, I'm the catcher!"
    • "Ya whizzed on the electric fence, didn't ya?"
    • The Loop of Death from Adult Party Cartoon seems to be gaining this status.
  • Nausea Fuel: Sure, the old cartoon was rather gross at times, but the Spike TV version was actually nauseating in some parts.
    • Hey It's That Guy with a conjoined fetus twin on his belly in "Double Header".
  • Nightmare Fuel: Quite a few Ren moments from the franchise, most notably the "THESE HANDS" monologue from Stimpy's Fan Club, the "I'm so ANGRY" monologue from Sven Hoek, and the entirety of Ren Seeks Help.
  • Seasonal Rot: An amount of episodes produced by Games.
  • Seinfeld Is Unfunny: This is hands down one of the most ripped off cartoons of all time, basically to TV cartoons what Snow White is to animated features and what Mario Kart is to racing games. Nearly everything this show pioneered that was considered unique and groundbreaking when it first appeared has been copied, imitated, homaged, parodied, and ripped off for decades since its debut, and so many elements of it have made its way into modern cartoons that the actual show seems very mild by today's standards--much to John K's chagrin, since he felt that those cartoons only copied the many, many mistakes he made on the show, instead of what he felt he did right.
    • Actually, the show isn't considered tame at all to this day by most people. The DVD box sets have parental advisory labels on them, and users of the website Common Sense Media rate it as unsuitable for viewers below 15.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Dr. Brainchild from "Blazing Entrails" only appeared once.
  • Too Good to Last: John K's original run of the show. Adult Party Cartoon is very debatable though.
  • What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?: Or better yet, What Do You Mean You Don't Agree With Me?
  • The Woobie: Stimpy, at times. Especially true in "Son of Stimpy" and "The Littlest Giant".
    • Ren counts at times too, though usually he's more of a Jerkass Woobie.
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