

One of the first three Nicktoons, which premiered alongside Doug and Rugrats on August 11, 1991, and third to premiere, Ren & Stimpy broke the mould in many ways: Kricfalusi and his crew were uncompromising in their ambition to diverge from the boring, cheaply-animated and moral-heavy programming they despised working on for years by setting out to make cartoons funny again. And just when you thought you've seen everything, it gives us an almighty Tear Jerker tale about a sentient fart cloud!

And that's not even counting its macabre tone - in The Ren & Stimpy Show, even a standard sitcom plot such as "Ren is jealous that Stimpy has a fan club" could become a tale of operatic angst and rage.

Even its dialog was pulled up to eleven - Ren didn't so much talk as scream threats and insults in other people's faces. The show was over-the-top in every way imaginable: in its visuals, even traditional Animation Tropes were taken up a notch characters frequently Temporarily Atomise things the size of a nuclear submarine and Non-Fatal Explosions generally take out at least one state.
