How About That Thing?

A lot of my friends talk about things in cartoons that they found “disturbing.” And usually, it ends up going over my head. For example, The Looney Tunes Show apparently featured a Barry White style music video where in Elmer Fud proclaims his love for grilled cheese sandwiches. A friend of mine insisted this was the most disturbing thing he’d ever seen or heard… But I didn’t see it. I just saw Elmer Fud singing about how awesome grilled cheese was.

You want to know what cartoon moment I found disturbing? Look no further than a very specific episode of Ren and Stimpy.

I’ve already talked about how Ren and Stimpy was one of my favorite shows on Nickelodeon. I ‘ve probably also mentionned how my mom initially wouldn’t let me watch it on the grounds of “Eew! Hairballs are gross!”. And yeah, hairballs are indeed gross. An there was plenty of other things on that show that were absolutely disgusting. A few of which leave me wide-eyed as an adult, saying “Wow! How the fuck did you get away with that one!?”

I always felt like mom was over-reacting. But then, Eggyolkeo made its rounds. After watching that episode from start to finish, I can say with one-hundred percent certainty that I was truly disturbed. As the credits rolled, I found myself thinking: “Okay, maybe Mom was on to something after all. I really didn’t need to see that.” And keep in mind, one of my favorite episodes of Ren and Stimpy involves a joke about beavers, if you know what I mean.

“Oh, come on,” you’re probably thinking. “How disturbing could it possibly be?”

Well, my skeptical little friend, let’s recap.

NOTE: much like the last time I covered Ren and Stimpy, I’m going to have to improvise when it comes to images. In large part because Paramount+ won’t let me take screencaps. More than that… I REALLY don’t want to watch this episode again. At least not any more than I absolutely have to. Hell, reading the plot synopsis on The Ren and Stimpy Wiki gives me flashbacks I could do without.

To start with, we see that Ren and Stimpy are in their Renwaldo and Stimpleton personas. Usually, Renwaldo and Stimpleton are dirt poor and on the verge of starving to death, but this go-around, they’re making a modest living as “egg smithies”. Your guess is as good as mine as to what an egg smithy is, though I think it has something to do with turning raw materials into eggs?

In any case, Ren reveals that he finally has enough eggyolks to begin his greatest project. After some time, Ren molds the glob of eggyolks into a boy, giving him button eyes, a chunk of his scalp, and a spoonful of brain. Stimpleton comes in with some lederhosen, and Ren dresses his creation in them to make…

Unfortunately, even WITH a spoonful of brains, the concoction is still just a lifeless sculpture at best. At least, until a fairy in the form of a chicken visits their house that night, and brings him to life with an enchanted salt shaker. Seriously, how the hell am I supposed to come up with snarky comments when everything is this random?

Renwaldo and Stimpleton wake up that morning to find that the eggyolk boy is alive. True, he can only communicate in unholy gargling wails, but it’s a start. Filled with fatherly pride, Renwaldo raises him up to the heavens above, and names him Eggyolkeo. Only for the ceiling fan to end up beheading the eggyolk boy in the process in a gag the people in charge of making commercials apparently loved to death, because every commercial featuring Eggyolkeo included this very clip.

Once Eggyolkeo’s head is stuck back on, the training montage begins. He learns how to eat, how to speak, how to… Drive a car? Wait, what time period…? Oh forget it.

Eventually, Eggyolkeo gets the attention of these two.

They don’t have any names, as memory serves, but they apparently bring anomalies like Eggyolkeo to The Land of Lost Meals. The two of them abduct Eggyolkeo when Renwaldo isn’t looking, and take him there.

And it’s there that we meet this guy.

Meet Colonel Scrambolio. What in the wide awake hell am I even looking at?He has all the look of a cowboy, but then he starts talking. I think that’s either a Russian, or an Italian accent they gave him? All I know is hearing cowboy mannerisms spoken with that accent is the kind of hilarity I live for.

Scrambolio rewards the bacon and toast characters for their find by eating them both in one big bite that only a character in The Ren and Stimpy Show could possibly pull off. Meanwhile, he’s got big plans for Eggyolkeo.

Meanwhile, Renwaldo is absolutely destroyed emotionally. In his grief, he tries to make another sun out of fruits, but immediately rejects the creation. Eventually, Renwaldo figures out what happened, and tracks his son down to Las Vegas.

Eggyolkeo has been transformed into… Elvis? Okay, maybe not MY first choice, but I’m not the mastermind here. Renwaldo finds Eggyolkeo, only to find himself having to fight an entire crowd of rabid fans as they literally tear Eggyolkeo to shreds! Renwaldo manages to save his head, and takes him back home.

We get a touching scene of Renwaldo tucking Eggyolkeo’s head into his refrigerator bed, and Eggyolkeo gargling out: “I love you, Daddy.” It’s the first time Eggyolkeo has said any actual words, and it’s the kind of thing that just touched my heart.

Then Stimpleton eats him.

I’m not joking, either. Renwaldo goes looking for his son the next morning, only to see that Stimpleton made him into an egg salad sandwich, and ate him. The last thing you hear before he swallows him is one last “I love you, Daddy”. Stimpleton swallows Eggyolkeo, and… I think he tries to burp the alphabet? Ren has a psychotic break… And that’s where the episode ends. We get a THE END screen, and some text underneath the THE END that I’ve never been able to read, between reading at a third grade level, and the fact live TV didn’t have a pause button back then. Frankly, at that point, I didn’t care what the text said. I literally just watched Stimpy eat Ren’s son!

I don’t know if it was the final “I love you, Daddy”, or if it was just the fact it was as dark as it was random. All I know is that the episode overall was pretty average Ren and Stimpy shenanigans up till that point.

True story: that ending gave me nightmares as a kid. I don’t remember a whole lot of details off hand anymore, but I remember that episode scarred me for life, man! What the fuck, dude!?

It honestly hasn’t gotten better with time. If anything, when I see the Eggyolkeo title card, or the title card of the episode it got paired with, I pretty much changed the channel, or found something else to do from that point.

Frankly, now that I’m the father of a one-year-old boy, the ending to that episode just makes me even MORE uncomfortable! Because now, there’s that weird part of my brain that compounds on the shock value I’ve already experienced, and says “Dude! That could be YOUR kid if you aren’t careful!” And believe me, the LAST thing I need as a father is to be reminded of all the horrifying things out there, just waiting for a chance to inflict themselves on my little boy like that.

If you think I’m over-reacting… Well, you’re entitled to your opinion. Just know that even this much of an article took a lot of willpower to get out there, knowing how I feel about this episode. I hope reliving my childhood trauma made you laugh to some degree, or at least gave you something to agree or disagree with, in the grand scheme of things.