The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy
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{{Infobox Television
| show_name = The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy
| image = Image:Grimy.jpg
| caption = The main characters, from left to right: Billy, Grim, and Mandy.
| format = Animated television series
| runtime = 22 minutes approx.
| creator = Maxwell Atoms
| starring = Richard Steven Horvitz
Grey DeLisle
Greg Eagles
Vanessa Marshall
Jane Carr
Rachael MacFarlane
Jennifer Hale
Dee Bradley Baker
Phil LaMarr
Maxwell Atoms
Diedrich Bader
| country = United States
| network = Cartoon Network
| first_aired = August 24, 2001
| last_aired = Present
| num_episodes = 67
| website = http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/tv_shows/billymandy/index.html
| tv_com_id = 10057
| imdb_id = 0292800
}}
The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, created by Maxwell Atoms, is an American animated television series that currently airs on Cartoon Network. The two main characters, Billy and Mandy, have obliged the Grim Reaper, usually called Grim, 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 from August 24 to August 25 in 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 Cartoon Network in 2001. Robot Jones would later be made into a full series despite losing; Longhair and Doubledome would reappear with another pilot episode in another Big Pick-style show later on, only to fall short once again.
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, the network 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. Characters from Evil Con Carne are still appearing on The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, even realizing that they're not supposed to be there. For example, when the whole town is in jail due to an evil duck, Hector Con Carne from Evil Con Carne is there and yells, "I'm not even supposed to be on this stupid show anymore!".
Contents |
Characters
Billy
Template:Main Billy is an extremely stupid, hyperactive, happy-go-lucky child. He has a red, oversized nose, wears a blue and white striped shirt, has red hair covered by a red hat, and an IQ of negative five. Billy has shown an incredible talent for causing disasters and being in places where he shouldn't. Billy is voiced by Richard Steven Horvitz.
Mandy
Template:Main Mandy is Billy's closest friend and contrast: a blonde, noseless girl with an acerbic attitude, evil personality ("I believe in abusing and exploiting the stupid"), and often surprising intellect and knowledge of the supernatural. She is rude to practically everybody, even her parents. Mandy is voiced by Grey DeLisle.
Grim
Template:Main Grim is the Earth's Grim reaper, the personification of Death. He is an ancient (Grim was apparently a child at the time of the Neanderthals), scythe-wielding skeleton in a black hooded robe. His accent and use of patois suggest he is Jamaican (this may be a direct parody of the Grim Reaper in "Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey", who had a similar accent and a penchant for playing home games to resolve contracts). By losing a limbo contest to Billy and Mandy he is fated to be their "best friend" forever (effectively, their slave). Billy and Mandy often abuse Grim's power which usually leads to disaster. Grim is voiced by Greg Eagles.
For the complete list of characters, see List of characters in The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy.
The fictional universe of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy
Most of the show is set in Billy and Mandy's hometown of Endsville, a typical "Anytown, USA". Endsville is in an indeterminate location, but in Sickly Sweet salesman who was advertising a house said that it's "the most peaceful neighbourhood on the West Side". 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 Hell. Billy and Mandy have traveled with Grim to places like the Halls of Time (where they accidentally flip over their hourglasses and age backwards and eventually disappear), 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. Grim also uses his scythe to reap people of their souls, even though Mandy specifically told him in one episode, "No Grim Reaping!"
The show 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 this universe. In this and many other ways (such as the anti-romance between the characters, and bizarro beliefs in race and sex) it resembles George Herriman's poetic and ground-breaking Krazy Kat.
An unusual 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 universe is also in 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 characters in what could be seen as a full crossover. Skarr is actually now a recurring character in the show, who struggles with fighting his addiction to war. He usually overcomes his desire for power by making cornbread or gardening.
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), and "Man's loneliness is but his fear of life" (Grim).
Cultural references
The series parodied many famous scenes from popular movies, such as Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Kill Bill. Harry Potter is a recuirring theme - several episodes are based on "Nigel Planter"(Harry Potter) and "Toadblatt's School of Sorcery". For example, in Toadblatt's School of Sorcery, the singing hat that chooses which house a new student will enter was parodied as a "Singing squid". In Secret Decoder Ring Billy's "decoder ring" translated text from back of the cereal box as a picture of woman that asks for help (this is an obvious homage to another famous scene from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Princess Leia's plea for help broadcast from R2D2). In Here Thar Be Dwarves, the scene where Billy turns off the shield generator protecting the elves evil cooky factory is a homage to the famous scene from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, where Obi-Wan Kenobi deactivates the tractor beam aboard the Death Star. In the same episode, the meeting was an obvious parody of the Council of Elrond. Middle-Earth was parodied as "Mid-western Earth", and the participants were shown dividing up the fast-food industry. In Beast and Barbarians Mandy meets a creature that looks like Gollum from the Lord Of The Rings trilogies. The creature said it would give Mandy a magic ring if she answered his riddles. Gollum said that to Bilbo Baggins in "The Hobbit". There are many similar occurrances throughout the series.
Many episodes are based on horror movies - the horror film The Ring was fully parodied in Aren't you Chupacabra to See Me?, Little Shop of Horrors is parodied in Little Rock of Horror, 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 a 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 except for the dolls owner, a young boy.
Another frequent subjects of parody are the Frank Herbert's Dune series and H.P. Lovecraft. Dune is parodied in entire episodes like "Mandy the Merciless" and off-hand references to the Gom Jabbar 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". H.P. Lovecraft is parodied in Big Trouble in Billy's Basement. The "Bad Book" recalls the Necronomicon, with Billy needing Grim's scythe to summon "Yogg Sawhaw" (Yog-Sothoth). Another example of H.P. Lovecraft parody is Prank Call of Cthulu, a parody of The Call Of Cthulhu.
Many episodes of the show have had cameos of different cartoon characters from Hanna-Barbara shows, (In "Irwin gets a Clue", Hoss Delgado is driving a car and talking to Irwin, while accidently knocking over Hanna-Barbara characters) including Yogi Bear, Boo Boo, Scooby Doo, Snagglepuss, Fred Flintstone, Barney Rubble, Betty Rubble, Grape Ape, Secret Squirrel, Smurfs, and Huckleberry Hound. The series has also had cameos or referenced other Cartoon Cartoons, like Powerpuff Girls, Dexter's Laboratory, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends and Codename: Kids Next Door.
Often subjects of parody are video games and game consoles. In Billy and Mandy Save Christmas Mandy said that Christmas is a big set-up for video-game profits, and parodied popular games "Halo 2" (as "Hello 2"), Grand Theft Auto (as "PTA") and World of Warcraft (as "World of Dork Crud"). In Opposite Day, Billy and Mandy were playing a video game on Nintedo 64 and Grim said "I can't even figure out how to hold this thing!", referencing to Nintedo 64 controller.
Pop culture references abound in both the visuals and the dialogue, like game show Press Your Luck and the Keebler Elves from television, to literary references from Edgar Allan Poe and Shakespeare making appearances in the various episodes. Character Eris is probably a reference to Mandonna, who is known for her blonde hair and coquettishness and for adopting a faux British accent. Eris even has a gap in her front teeth, similar to Madonna's. It also mentioned names of the celebrities, such as Molly Ringwald, Kelly Clarkson, and Jennifer Lopez.
Controversy
Probably the most controversial aspect of the show is its somewhat frequent use of crude or gross humor. Examples of this include Billy blowing green mucus out of his nose onto his cat, Mandy magically transforming Billy into a "horse butt", which then passes gas, Billy talking about how a person at his school sneezed mucus onto a wall, and how the rest of the students ate it and got sick, but how he did not, despite "going back for seconds", and Billy digging through his cat's litter-box and claiming that he "found another piece of candy", which is implied to be fecal matter. This also happens in That's My Mummy, only this time, he claims that dog feces can be used as shampoo and steak sauce.
One other controversial premise is the baseless sexism of some 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.
Other sexual related controversy includes the mentioning of necrophilia, which was mentioned in That's My Mummy. Irwin's father revealed that Irwin's mother is actually a mummy. He said that they "Have managed to make it work all these years, leaving a whole lot of questions that don't need to be answered". Before Billy could ask how they could a mummy give birth to a son, Irwin's father interrupts repeating "Leaving a whole lot of questions that don't need to be answered".
Also, in the episode Mommy Fiercest, menopause was mentioned. When the child-version of Billy's mother told Billy that she is actually his mother, he told her "My mom is ancient and grappling with the onset of menopause".
Another controversy is the extreme fantasy violence that this show uses, even to the point of showing gore (In "Irwin gets a clue" there are flashback scenes of Hoss Delgado bursting out of the stomachs of various monsters, plus him doing the same with a fat sunbathing man). There was also a scene in an episode in which a police officer shoots an alien meteorite with his handgun, although he isn't successful in shooting it due to his shaking hands.
Episode list
First season
The first season first aired in August 2001 and ended in October 2002.
Second season
The second season first aired in June 2003 and ended in August 2003.
Halloween special
The Halloween special first aired in October 2003.
| Episode Number | Episode Title |
|---|---|
| 23 | "Billy and Mandy's Jacked Up Halloween" |
Third season
The third season first aired in June 2004 and ended in July 2004.
Fourth season
The fourth season first aired in October 2004 and ended in April 2005.
Fifth season
The fifth season first aired in June 2005 and ended in October 2005.
| Episode Number | Episode Title |
|---|---|
| 45 | "Wishbones" |
| 46 | "Dream Mutt / Scythe for Sale" |
| 47 | "Jeffy's Web / Irwin Get's A Clue" |
| 48 | "Duck! / Aren't You Chupacabra To See Me?" |
| 49 | "Zip Your Fly / Puddle Jumping" |
| 50 | "Runaway Pants / Scythe 2.0." |
| 51 | "The Firebird Sweet / The Bubble With Billy" |
| 52 | "Billy Idiot / Home Of The Ancients" |
| 53 | "My Fair Mandy" |
| 54 | "One Crazy Summoner / Guess What's Coming to Dinner" |
| 55 | "Mommy Fiercest / The Taking Tree" |
| 56 | "Reap Walking / The Loser from the Earth's Core" |
| 57 | "Ecto Cooler / Schlubs" |
| 58 | "Prank Call of Cthulhu" |
Christmas special
The Christmas special first aired in December 2005.
| Episode Number | Episode Title |
|---|---|
| 59 | "Billy and Mandy Save Christmas" |
Sixth season
The sixth season first aired in January 2006, and it is currently in progress.
| Episode Number | Episode Title |
|---|---|
| 60 | "Billy Ocean / Hill Billy" |
| 61 | "Keeper of the Reaper" |
| 62 | "The Love That Dare not Speak Its Name / Major Cheese" |
| 63 | "Modern Primitives / Giant Billy and Mandy All-Out Attack" |
| 64 | "The Wrongest Yard / Druid, Where's My Car?" |
| 65 | "Herbicidal Maniac / Chaos Theory" |
| 66 | "A Grim Day / Pandora's Lunch Box" |
| 67 | "Billy and Mandy vs. the Martians" |
| 68 | "Dumb-Dumbs and Dragons / Fear and Loathe" (air date: May 12, 2006) [1] |
There will be a 90-minute tv movie called Billy and Mandy's Big Boogie Adventure. For more information click on this link Info about Cartoon Network's Upcoming TV Movies, including Billy and Mandy's Big Boogie Adventure
Trivia
- The show often breaks the fourth wall. In Chaos Theory, when asked when he fell in love with Eris, Hoss Delgado says, "in Episode 47".
- There have been two episodes in which Mandy rides a red futuristic motorcycle; the design is a reference to Shotaro Kaneda's bike from Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira.
- Multiple episodes as well as the Christmas special were written by Nina Bargiel. She was a girlfriend of Maxwell Atoms and she has a website of her own called the slack.
- The Bad News Ghouls (43a of Season Four) and Keeper of the Reaper (61 of Season Six) were 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.
- This show often uses dark humor and extreme violence. For example, one episode has a rabbit getting caught in the middle of an explosion. When he emerges, his organs are shown. In that same episode, Pud'n is thrown out of a seven-story window and lands in a cactus farm, getting a large cactus stuck in his eye. Often times, Billy will have his entire face removed. In one instance, Billy falls off his bike and lands face-first on the sidewalk and slides ten yards. When he looks up, most of the skin on his face has been removed, showing his skull. In a similar instance, Nergal throws a Lawn Mower Billy's face and removes it. Similar occurrences have happened throughout the series.
- In Crawling Niceness, when Billy is hunting through Grim's trunk, he tosses out (among other things) the Eye of Vecna, a supremely powerful Dungeons and Dragons artifact. He also throws out a scroll containing the spell "Magic Missile."
- 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! and has been released on the album Boo Hoo.
- In the end credits of the show a voice can be heard speaking backwards at the end of the credits. Played backwards, the voice states "No, no, this is the END of the show. You're watching it backwards!" This is a possible reference to manga, which, like most Japanese books, are read from right-to-left. When these titles are released in English-speaking countries, a note is often on the last page (which would be the first page of most English-language books) explaining this.
- In My Fair Mandy, Mandy, Grim and Billy ended up as The Powerpuff Girls, with Professor Utonium coming in to tell them to save the day. Irwin ended up becoming Mojo Jojo.
- Throughout the series Billy, Mandy or Grim, will say lines which are slight parodies of famous lines from Star Trek or Star Wars. One example is found in the episode My Fair Mandy, in which Mandy wants to beat Mindy in a beauty contest. In response to being asked if he can help make Mandy beautiful, Grim replies "Darn it boy, I'm a skeleton, not a miracle worker!". This is an obvious allusion to the original Star Trek and a line by Doctor McCoy of "Damn it, I'm a doctor not a miracle worker". Similar moments have occured for famous quotes from Star Wars.
- In the episode Reap Walking, Grim is watching a show called Fister's House for Crazy Weirdo Made-Up People. The home blew up a few seconds after the "episode" began. The title and show is a direct parody of another Cartoon Network show, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends
- Billy's Mom wants Billy to be a chiropractor like his father, but Billy would rather juggle chickens. Billy's dad actually works at a fast food joint
- In the episode, Runaway Pants, a narrator guides viewers through "The Billy Zone" a parody of the popular TV show and Disney attraction, The Twilight Zone.
- In One Crazy Summoner, Herfeffenie Pfefferfeffer is seen reading a magazine called Popular Seance, a parody of the magazine Popular Science.
- In Modern Primitives, when Grim is smashed under the block of ice, you see a pair of red shoes sticking out, just like those of the Wicked Witch of the East in The Wizard of Oz.
- In the episode Mandy the Merciless, it is revealed that, in the future, Mandy becomes immortal when she fuses with a worm. After gaining immortality, she eventually conquers the world. She also creates an unknown number of clones of Billy to keep her company. Whether the events telling exactly how this happens will be revealed in an episode of the TV series, or be left unknown, is still to be determinded. Also, this is an allusion to Frank Herbert's God Emperor of Dune novel.
- In the episode Billy Ocean, there's a singing Jamaican crab named Ziggy the Crab. He is a parody of both the reggae singer Ziggy Marley and the Little Mermaid character Sebastian. Also, the song he sings to Billy about how great the ocean is is a parody of the Academy Award-winning song "Under the Sea" from the same movie.
- Sometimes, in a short 10 second clip before a commecial break, the show's title characters are seen watching Dexter's Laboratory.
- The episode "Chicken Ball Z" is a parody on the anime series Dragon Ball Z. In the episode, we see Billy and Mandy flying around and fighting very fast with their hair golden blonde and spiked up like Super Saiyans.
- In the episode Dumb Luck Mandy is shown reading The Catcher in the Rye.
- The episode where Billy, Grim and Irwin go to a land wher giant monsters battle Mandy comes up with a costume that looks like the one in Kill Bill
- In Complete and Utter Chaos, when zapped by Billy and Mandy's Apple of Discord slices, Grim turns into the same creature Daffy Duck was drawn like in Duck Amuck. He even says Daffy's catch phrase "You're disssssspicable!" At the beginning of the episode, Eris said "Keep it secret, keep it safe." when giving the apple, a reference to Gandalf saying the same thing about the One Ring to Frodo.
- In Scythe 2.0, Grim goes to a technological genius named F, obviously a parody of Q from the James Bond movies.
- Mandy hosts her own fake TV Show called The Darkside with Mandy,which is a crossover of Cartoon Network. It is shown on commericals on Cartoon Network.
- In "Keeper of the Reaper",when they go into musical, Grim sings alot like Jack Skellington. Jack is from the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas. Maxwell Atoms (knowing that the goth he is) probably liked this movie and added this in.
DVDs
Though Cartoon Network and Warner Home Video have no plans for season or volume sets of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, certain episodes have been featured on various other Cartoon Network DVDs.
- Cartoon Network Halloween - 9 Creepy Capers (August 10, 2004) — Billy and Mandy's Jacked Up Halloween
- Cartoon Network Christmas - Yuletide Follies (October 5, 2004) — Son of Nergal
- Ed, Edd, 'n' Eddy, Volume 1 - Edifying Edventures (May 10, 2005) — Nursery Crimes
- Cartoon Network Halloween 2 - Grossest Halloween Ever (August 9, 2005) — Night of the Living Grim
- Cartoon Network - Christmas Rocks (October 5, 2005) — Battle of the Bands
Titles in Other Languages
- Bulgarian: Страшните приключения на Били и Манди
- Dutch: Billy & Mandy (also De grimmige avonturen van Billy en Mandy)
- French:
- Grim and Evil: Malices et Menaces. (Misbehavior and threats)
- The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy: Billy et Mandy, Aventuriers de l'Au-Delà (Billy and Mandy, Adventurers of/from The Beyond/The Hereafter)
- 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)
- Italian: Le tenebrose avventure di Billy e Mandy
- Macedonian: Страшните авантури на Били и Менди
- Norwegian: Skumle eventyr med Billy og Randi (Scary Adventures with Billy and Randi)
- Polish:
- Grim and Evil: Mroczni i Źli (Dark and Evil)
- The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy: Mroczne przygody Billy'ego i Mandy (Dark adventures of Billy and Mandy)
- Portuguese: As Terríveis Aventuras de Billy e Mandy (The Terrible Adventures of Billy and Mandy)
- Spanish:
- Spain: Las macabras aventuras de Billy y Mandy (The Macabre Adventures of Billy and Mandy)
- Latin America: Las sombrías aventuras de Billy y Mandy (The Gloomy Adventures of Billy and Mandy)
External links
- Official Site
- The "Shnissugah" site from episode 5.11 The Secret Snake Club.
- Grim Adventures on Templelooters
Template:Cartoon Cartoonses:Las sombrías aventuras de Billy y Mandy nl:Billy & Mandy pl:Mroczne przygody Billy'ego i Mandy