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The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy

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The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy
File:Grimy.jpg
Created byMaxwell Atoms
StarringRichard Steven Horvitz
Grey DeLisle
Greg Eagles
Vanessa Marshall
Jane Carr
Rachael MacFarlane
Jennifer Hale
Dee Bradley Baker
Phil LaMarr
Maxwell Atoms
Diedrich Bader
Country of originUnited States
No. of episodes59
Production
Running time30 Minutes
Original release
NetworkCartoon Network
ReleaseAugust 24, 2001

The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, created by Maxwell Atoms, is an animated series that currently airs on Cartoon Network in the U.S. The two main plot characters, Billy and Mandy, have obliged the Grim Reaper to be their best friend forever after having won a bet over a sick hamster.

The show's existence is largely the result of a viewer poll. An Internet and call-in event, called the Big Pick was held August 24-25, 2000. The three final choices were The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Whatever Happened to Robot Jones?, and Longhair and Doubledome. Out of the three, The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy won. The first season appeared on The Cartoon Network (CN) in 2001.

Originally labelled Grim and Evil, the series was a combination of two shows in one. In each show a segment of Evil Con Carne was put between two Grim cartoons. In 2003, CN decided to give each short its own full length show. Evil Con Carne was subsequently cancelled. It re-aired in a late-night slot in the United States on Friday, August 5, 2005 with the newly-created intro and end credits.

The fictional universe of The Grim Adventures

Most of the show is set in Billy and Mandy's hometown of Endsville, a typical "Anytown, USA" in an indeterminate location. The age of the town is also indeterminate, as it has appeared in flashbacks of Billy's dad's youth (The Taking Tree), the early 1900s (Who Killed Who?), and medieval times (Billy and Mandy's Jacked Up Halloween). Grim ostensibly comes from the Underworld, so the show makes frequent forays onto his turf. Grim's scythe is able to produce cosmic rifts through which the characters can visit different planes of existence, including afterlife variations like nirvana, Asgard and Lower Heck. Billy and Mandy have traveled with Grim to places like the Halls of Time (where they accidentally flip over their hourglasses and age backwards), the Circus of Fear (where real human children are considered part of the freak show), and even the Underworld's lunch room (which is open to "staph" only). Grim's scythe can also summon monsters, supernatural creatures and various Underworld inhabitants to Endsville.

The GA universe, in addition to frequently violating the laws of physics, also contains a number of historical variations. Abraham Lincoln is President and a personal friend of Billy. Also, the world police organization is not the United Nations, but the League of Nations (disbanded in 1946 in reality). The presence of a what appears to be a Communist leader in the League of Nations may also suggest that the Soviet Union has not dissolved in the GA universe.

A unique aspect of the show is that episodes often end with the destruction or alteration of the world, or with the disappearance or horrific transformation of the main characters. These changes do not carry over to the next episode, however. Often the episode will end with no resolution at all. For example, in Halls of Time, Billy, Mandy, Grim and Irwin all disappear forever when their hourglasses in the halls of time are turned upside down. In Chocolate Sailor, Billy is turned into a large quantity of chocolate syrup, and in Sickly Sweet, Mandy is turned into a giant monster by an evil mask. Because the producers can compromise the safety of the characters in each episode, the show can avoid the cliché that good always triumphs over evil.

The GA universe is also the Evil Con Carne universe: the characters meet, briefly, in the episodes Chicken Ball Z (a parody of Dragon Ball Z) and Duck! In the third season episode Skarred For Life, General Skarr meets the GA characters in what could be seen as a full crossover.

From time to time, the main characters surprise with aphorisms unusual for quick-draw (even semi-adult) type animation, such as: "Evolution takes no prisoners" (Mandy), "Money is the root of all evil" (Mandy), "Hope is wasted on the hopeless" (Mandy), "Romance is for the weak-minded" (Mandy), "Mind control doesn't work on people who think" (Eris), "Man's loneliness is but his fear of life" (Grim).

The series is noted for its parodies, notably Harry Potter, and for quote references, like "Scooby-Doo" and "The Wizard of Oz". Another frequent subject of parody is the Dune series by Frank Herbert, from entire episodes like Mandy the Merciless to off-hand references to the Gom Jobbar during the beauty pageant in My Fair Mandy, and Lord Byron saying "You must not fear. Fear is the death that brings total obliteration" in Ecto Cooler. In Big Trouble in Billy's Basement, the "Bad Book" recalls the Necronomicon of H.P. Lovecraft, with Billy needing Grim's scythe to summon "Yogg Sawhaw" (Yog-Sothoth). The horror film The Ring was fully parodied in Are you Chupacabra to See Me and the Disney film Fantasia was parodied in Dream A Little Dream. Parodies of Stephen King have also appeared in the show; in the episode Tricycle of Terror, Billy is given a possessed tricycle, a plotline similar to King's novel Christine, in which a teenage boy buys a possessed antique car. Another example of horror movie take-off would be the episode Tickle Me Mandy, which was a mimic of the Child's Play movie series, about an evil killer doll that no one believes is truly evil but the dolls owner, a young boy. Pop culture references abound in both the visuals and the dialogue, with everything from the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings films, to the game show Press Your Luck and the Keebler Elves from television, to literary references from Edgar Allen Poe and Shakespeare making appearances in the GA universe.

One controversial premise is the baseless sexism of the boys (a premise found in many other shows): Billy and Irwin tell Mandy that she cannot do something with them because she is a girl; they then demonstrate their own ineptitude or she shows her superiority.

Characters

See List of Characters in Billy and Mandy.

Episode List

Season One

(August 2001 - October 2002)

Season Two

(June 2003 - March 2004)

Special

(October 2003)

Season Three

(June 2004 - July 2004)

Season Four

(October 2004 - April 2005)

Season Five

(June 2005 - December 2005)

Special

(December 2005)

Season Six

(January 2006 - ???)

Trivia

  • Prank Call of Cthulhu (58 of season five) The title is based on a short story written by H.P. Lovecraft entitled The Call of Cthulhu
  • The Bad News Ghouls (43a of Season Four) was written by Richard Steven Horvitz, the voice actor for Billy and his father, Harold.
  • Educating Grim (14b of Season Two) was written by Rachael MacFarlane, voice of Mindy/Eris and sister of Seth MacFarlane.
  • The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy is the title of a song by Voltaire concerning a brain-eating meteor from the sky that lands on Earth and meets Billy (as seen in the episode Little Rock of Horrors). The song is alternatively titled Brains.
  • The character Dean Toadblatt in the episodes Toadblatt's School of Sorcery, Nigel Planter and the Chamber Pot of Secrets and One Crazy Summoner is a spoof of Dean Wormer from the movie Animal House and its spin-off tv show Delta House [1]. It is voiced by the same actor, John Vernon (1932-2005). [2]
  • In the episode Toadblatt's School of Sorcery, Dean Toadblatt quotes a verse of a song from The Wizard of Oz. The song is "We're off to See the Wizard".
  • The squid that appears in the Nigel Planter episodes (as the "sorting hat" that places students into their respective houses in Toadblatt's School of Sorcery, as the voodoo class teacher in Nigel Planter and the Chamber Pot of Secrets, and as the singer on the beach in One Crazy Summoner) is voiced by musician "Weird Al" Yankovic, who also sings the "Put on Your Squid Hat" song that appears in two of the episodes.
  • During the two-part episode Brown Evil, zombies can be seen exiting a plane labeled "Voorhees Air". Jason Voorhees was a serial killer in the popular horror series Friday the 13th. In the episode Grim For a Day, an elderly man on Grim's "To Do" list is named Mr. Voorhees, another nod to the Friday the 13th series. Voorhees is also the name of a Billy and Mandy crew member: Background Designer Cliff Voorhees.
  • In the episode Son of Nergal, an oppressive camp leader is named "John Jack Daniel Torrance". There was a character named Jack Torrance in the horror movie The Shining by Stanley Kubrick.
  • The episode Wishbones bears resemblances to the movie Donnie Darko, a major one being the presence of a dark talking bunny (Frank in Donnie Darko; the bunny that plagues Pud'n in Wishbones) and similarity in their voices. They also share a similar line: Frank asks Donnie "Have you ever heard of time travel?", Pud'n's bunny asks Pud'n: "Have you ever heard of tough love?"
  • Also in the Pud'n chapter of Wishbones a red semi truck that looks like Optimus Prime and bearing the Autobot insignia is used by the bunny to run down Pud'n.
  • In the episode My Fair Mandy, the other little girls competing against Mandy and Mindy in the Little Miss Scurvy pageant are named after Billy and Mandy crew members: Juli (Supervising Director Juli Hashiguchi), Laura (Production Manager Laura A. Dalesandro), Eva (Model Clean-up Eva Wu), Zena (Production Assistant Zena Wyss), Anna (Prop Designer Anna Chambers), Rae (Art Director Rae McCarson), and Sue (Director Sue Perrotto).
  • In addition to typical pageant rounds the Little Miss Scurvy pageant features "Samurai Armor" and "Gom Jabbar"
  • In one episode, there is a video game named President Evil, a spoof of Resident Evil
  • In the same episode, the character Hoss Delgado has a chainsaw for a hand and dresses like Ash from the film Army of Darkness, a nod to the Evil Dead horror film series. Aside from that, he's drawn on Kurt Russell's character look in Big Trouble in Little China
  • Episode name and storyline of Billy Idiot are puns on Billy Elliot
  • There are instances in which the fourth wall is broken:
    • In Educating Grim, Billy says: "But in this episode, you do!"
    • In the end of Wishbones part one, Thromnabular says: "Let's watch some commercials and get back to the show!"
    • At the end of Look What's Coming For Dinner, Grim mentions that "This is a kids show" when Hoss Delgado kisses Eris.
    • In He's Not Dead, He's my Mascot, Mandy walks out of the episode, causing Billy to forget his line.
    • In Duck!, Grim comments, "I predict this cell will be filled in about four hours!" When it's filled in two hours, Grim exclaims "Man he's working fast!" and we see Hector and Boskov from Evil Con Carne, and Hector remarks, "I'm not even on this stupid show anymore!", a clear reference to the fact that the two shows were formally tied into each other.
    • In the end of The Firebird Sweet, you can see that Billy, Grim and Mandy were watching the episode and were commenting on it.
    • In Billy Idiot, after reading a letter to Billy about his talent, Mandy says that Billy has never been good at anything and then says, "Don't people watch the show?"
    • In Prank Call of Cthulu Mandy breaks the fourth wall by saying, "Because 'The Grim Adventures of Mandy' doesn't sound as good as 'The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy', also giving an explanation as to why Mandy always rescues Billy.
    • In The Bubble With Billy Irwin breaks the fourth wall by saying, "Now that Billy's gone, why don't we name our show 'The Grim Adventures of Irwin and Mandy'".
    • In Bully Boogie Grim pulls out milk and hot sauce and says to Mandy "I saw this in a Halloween special once". Grim is talking about "Billy and Mandy's Jacked up Halloween", where Mandy does the same about pouring hot sauce in milk.
    • In the half-hour episode, "The Secret Snake Club", when the CIA are dragging Irwin to the van, Irwin says "This isn't right! This episode is supposed to be about snake nerds! SNAKE NERDS!".
    • In Keeper of the Reaper the Judge's head appears out of a toilet and sentences the viewers to "take a pee break." He reminds them to "come back -- or else."
  • In the Christmas Special, "Billy And Mandy Save Christmas." Santa says "I'll swallow your soul." Very "Evil Dead" of him.
  • Also in the Christmas Special, it's established that Billy is Jewish, yet firmly believes in Santa Claus.
  • The 2006 episode Keeper of the Reaper is partly a parody of the Pauly Shore film Jury Duty.

Titles in Other Languages

  • Dutch: Billy & Mandy (also De grimmige avonturen van Billy en Mandy)
  • Hebrew: הרפתקאותיהם של בילי ומנדי (The Adventures of Billy and Mandy)
  • Hungarian: Billy és Mandy Kalandjai a Kaszással
  • Irish:
    • Grim and Evil: Bás agus Olcas. (Death and Evil)
    • The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy: (Unknown)
  • Macedonian: Страшните авантури на Били и Менди
  • Norwegian: Skumle Eventyr med Billy og Mandy (Scary Adventures with Billy and Mandy)
  • Polish: Mroczne przygody Billy'ego i Mandy
  • Portuguese: As Terríveis Aventuras de Billy e Mandy (The Terrible Adventures of Billy and Mandy)
  • Spanish: Las macabras aventuras de Billy y Mandy (The Dark Adventures of Billy and Mandy)
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