Inside the world of “The Simpsons,” “The Itchy and Scratchy Present” is nothing wanting a cultural phenomenon, spawning a film based mostly on the cat and mouse duo and a theme park that was principally a mashup of Disneyland and Jurassic Park. But it surely appears the sadistic mouse and his perennial sufferer have been additionally in style exterior of “The Simpsons.”
The present’s longest-serving author and producer, Mike Reiss, wrote a guide chronicling his time on the collection, titled, “Springfield Confidential: Jokes, Secrets and techniques, and Outright Lies from a Lifetime Writing for The Simpsons.” Reiss writes about how Itchy and Scratchy first appeared when “The Simpsons” existed solely as a collection of shorts designed to transition “The Tracey Ullman Present” to commercials. In keeping with Reiss, the cat and mouse characters weren’t really a parody of “Tom and Jerry,” however have been “impressed by ‘Herman and Katnip,’ an inexpensive, ultraviolet knockoff of T&J.” The producer additionally seemingly confirmed Matt Groening’s declare that audiences had lengthy been requesting an precise “Itchy and Scratchy” spin-off, explaining how folks had been asking about such a present “for years.” The truth is, the writers really set such a mission in movement earlier than in a short time backtracking. As Reiss writes:
“To check out the chance [of an ‘Itchy and Scratchy’ spin-off], our manufacturing crew minimize collectively each single ‘Itchy & Scratchy’ brief. It lasted simply 14 minutes — a few of these cartoons are solely 9 seconds lengthy — and contained such concentrated gore and senseless violence that it made folks bodily in poor health. Somebody in contrast the assembled footage to the brainwashing movies Alex needed to watch in ‘A Clockwork Orange.'”