Ren and Stimpy

Ren & Stimpy "You eediot!" - Ren "Oh, Joy!" - Stimpy Gender: Male Type: Eccentric "Jerk and Idiot" Duo (Ren: Psychopathic Control Scapegoat Freak) (Stimpy: Jolly and Kind Dimwit with a Big Heart) Age: Ren: 10 (53 in dog years) Stimpy: 3 (29 in cat years) Species: Chihuahua (Ren Manx Cat (Stimpy) Portrayed by: John Kricfalusi (Ren, seasons 1 and 2) & Billy West (Stimpy (And Ren in seasons 3-5)) Status: Alive Media of origin: The Ren & Stimpy Show

Ren Höek and Stimpson "Stimpy" J. Cat are the title characters in the Nickelodeon animated series The Ren & Stimpy Show, and its 2003 reboot Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon". Kricfalusi created the characters during his stay at Sheridan College and they first appeared on film in the pilot episode "Big House Blues". Ren is a scrawny, emotionally unstable, and sociopathic ”Asthma Hound” Chihuahua, and his best friend Stimpy is a dim-witted, good-natured Manx cat. The show portrays the wacky, bizarre, and often surreal adventures they get into.

Why They're Full of "Happy Happy Joy Joyǃ"

Both

1. They are both the first Nicktoon duo in the history of Nickelodeon itself, and one of the most memorable.
2. They put an end to the regular slice-of-life Nicktoons in favor of wacky and quirky surreal adventures.
3. They, along with Doug Funnie and Tommy Pickles are the first four animated protagonists on Nickelodeon's NickToons.
4. They created the start of other comedic slapstick Nickelodeon characters that came after them like Squidward and SpongeBob for example.
5. They are a great tribute to late actors like Peter Lorre (Ren) and Larry Fine (Stimpy).
6. Although they were both badly flanderized in Adult Party Cartoon, they both massively redeemed themselves thanks to Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl.

Ren Höek

1. Although he's very mean, violent, short-tempered, dyspeptic, antipathic, sadistic, abusive and sometimes villainous to his friend Stimpy, Ren has shown to be nice, sympathetic, and sometimes considerate to him. Sometimes, he even has a good and sometimes comedic reason to be annoyed with him, cause Stimpy can be a total "eediot" sometimes.
2. With that said, Ren can also be smart and intelligent enough to be the voice of reason in order to prevent Stimpy from being persuaded into doing unnecessary stuff like wasting so much money on a Salve in order to set a balance for him with what he likes to buy since he already spent 12,000 payments for the super-vacuum in the episode "To Salve and to Salve Not".
3. Many of his lines are hilarious like "YOU EEDIOT!", "You sick little monkey!", "You fat bloated eediot!", and even his famous laugh.
4. His expressions are quite funny.
5. His over-the-top Hungarian/Mexican (?) accent, which contributes to his iconic "eediot" line, has become a memorable meme in the cartoon community.
6. He is amazingly voiced by John Kricfalusi (originally) and Billy West (in later seasons like in the Games Animations era).
7. Speaking of humor, lots of moments with his comedic sociopathy, snarks, insanity, and violence can range from comical to hilarious.
8. Given that he is a Chihuahua (a fairly intelligent breed) it works off quite well since Ren is not only intelligent but definitely very cunning and sophisticated [in spite of his insanity]. Compared to many cartoon dogs, he was quite unique.
9. His psychopathic personality as an anti-villainous protagonist is better here than that horrid Adult Party Cartoon version of him because he wasn't a Complete Monster in the original era. In fact, in Ren's most villainous moments, he does reach Laughably Evil tendencies at times thanks to his entertaining traits like Ren's insanity and sadism.
10. "HEEEEEE'S DEAD! DEAD YOU EEDIOT! DO YOU KNOW WHAT DEAD MEANS!? JUST LIKE WHAT WE WILL BE IF WE DON'T GET OUT OF HERE!!"

Stimpy

1. On the same level as before Patrick Star from SpongeBob SquarePants, Billy from The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, and Ed from Ed, Edd n Eddy; and Uncle Grandpa He may be very dumb, but he presents his idiocy hilariously. His dimwittedness is often fun to watch as a comic relief character.
   • This was also what made him somewhat unique for the genre of cartoon cats as well, due to how his character as a simpleminded cat makes Stimpy stand out compared to many other cartoon cats paired with dogs in western animation, especially as a reversal to the typical cat-and-dog duo; where his canine friend helps out that inversion as well.
2. His comically insane levels of slapstick-prone buffoonery and clumsiness that is quite on-par with Tom from Tom & Jerry and Sylvester from Looney Tunes are also what made him unique and entertaining to watch.
3. In Stimpy's own cartoon, he was trying to make a cartoon just like his god-father of animation "Wilbert Cobb".
4. Much like Homer Simpson, While Stimpy was always and generally portrayed as a lazy, nonsensically stupid, buffoonish and drooling moron for a cat, he has had moments of showing how talented and smart he actually is. Especially he was intelligent enough to be a chef or a scientist in some episodes despite his outward appearances, for example, all of which shows how productive he is when around Ren and on his own, if foolishly done in a sense.
   • The best example of him showing some level of intelligence on occasion is the episode "Stimpy's Invention", Stimpy singlehandedly created a helmet that makes anyone happy and does nice things towards other people, which is wholesome in a weird way.
5. Much like Courage the Cowardly Dog, Where Ren is sometimes cruel to him, Stimpy is always long-suffering and never feels offended by his insults, harsh words, and beatings, Stimpy also sees Ren as a true friend despite Ren's jerkish nature.
6. His blissfulness usually keeps him from any legitimate harm, as he tends to obliviously walk away from life-threatening danger with an ear to ear smile and tongue hanging out.
7. His childlike and good-natured demeanor is very charming. Stimpy also portrays how much of a great friend he is to Ren (in spite of his eediocy and the beatings he receives from Ren), Stimpy always has a sweet side of his personality and shows how he'll do anything to cheer up his fellow canine friend. Examples of this include the episode "Ren's Pecs", when Stimpy helped out Ren by giving his fat cells {by surgery} to Ren for some strength since a globe-like figure named Charles Globe assured Ren that he can move his fat cells to the pectoral void in order to defeat his overweight bully (because of Ren's scrawny appearance) that antagonized and humiliates Ren in the following episode.
8. He is amazingly voiced by Billy West (The voice of Fry and Doug)

"EEDIOT!" Qualities

Ren Höek

1. His character design is confusing (along with the titular Stimpy and some other side characters). It's hard to tell what he is at all. He's supposed to be a Chihuahua, but he looks more like a skinned rabbit with a distorted face or a very slim, hairless cat (ironically enough), a rat, or a weasel.
2. Even in bad episodes of The Ren & Stimpy Show (like in seasons 3b-5), he can be incredibly unlikable due to being very self-absorbed and unpleasant. He can even be a Butt-Monkey for unfair reasons in season 4 with episodes like:
   • Superstitious Stimpy, when Ren in his pleasant presence kept trying to prove to Stimpy that superstitions weren't real since he doesn't believe in them, as a such he was an utter fall-guy and gets put through so much pain by Ren being beaten up throughout the whole episode (even when Stimpy tries helping him with getting rid of his bad luck in 7 minutes into the episode, but it backfires horribly in the end).
   • He was also a punching bag in season 4. Ren can even be both problems from the original seasons and the worst of the series combined in seasons 4 to 5 like in the infamous Aloha Hoek where he dies at the end of that episode.
   • And in the It's a Dog's Life episode, both Ren and Stimpy were put through a lot of pain, but Ren gets it worse than Stimpy (of which were both in contrast to what his much more infamous flanderized version, especially since his mildly flanderized version was self-absorbed in the original series and actually warranted the Butt-Monkey status or heck, even a Chew-Toy status compared to his much more likable counterparts in the earlier seasons).
3. With this in mind, in his non-flanderization seasons of 1-3, Ren can be incredibly disturbing at times due to how unhinged he is, often having murderous, torturous, or psychotic implications towards what he'll do to Stimpy aside from choking him, like attempting to kill Stimpy on-screen due to Ren's annoyance as seen in "Stimpy's Fan Club", which his anxiety and his envy for Stimpy's popularity leads to Ren's brain getting bigger in a way that hurts Ren due to attempting to kill Stimpy. It doesn’t help that Geraldine Laybourne pressured the crew to insert these moments in.
   • Not to mention that he can also sometimes be a Butt-Monkey for the wrong reasons like in "Dog Show" for example, where he was always treated poorly along with Stimpy and were both forced to be into that dog show by the utterly irresponsible George Liquor, who both Ren and Stimpy did nothing wrong to warrant this mistreatment.
4. He became out of character, and his personality was butchered in the Adult Party Cartoon version.

Stimpʏ

1. He can be quite an "eediot" at times.
   • In bad episodes of Ren & Stimpy, especially in seasons 3 to 5, while he was never flanderized entirely, he can share some of Ren's "Butt-Monkey" status of suffering for no good reason in episodes such as "No Pants Today" and "It's a Dog's Life". Plus in those seasons, he can be annoyingly clueless (reverting back to BQ#1 above) in some episodes like "A Friend in Your Face!" or episodes when he was just weirdly out of character in the episode "Pixie King".
2. He often does some gross, repulsive stuff such as farting, showing boogers, or expelling other body fluids when it pertains to gross-out humor with being disgusting.
3. Just like Ren and some minor characters; His character design is also confusing, Stimpy's appearance is also hard to tell what he even is all even more so than Ren, to point out the fact that he was supposed to be a Manx cat. But he barely looks anything like a feline, he either looks like a very fat dog (also ironic), a stumpy bear, a maroon-colored pig, an oversized hamster, or just some kind of cartoon-creature.
4. He was flanderized in the Adult Party Cartoon as a stereotypically homophobic character (despite showing homosexual and feminine characteristics) who is a masochistic doormat that Ren walks all over him for no reason that acts extremely stupid, who was also pointless, and has no purpose to the show whatsoever, although he wasn't as atrocious as Ren's infamous degradation.

Trivia

• In 2002, Ren and Stimpy were both ranked #31 in TV Guide's Top 50 Greatest Cartoon Characters list (which also included Angelica Pickles at #7 and SpongeBob SquarePants at #9). SpongeBob was notably the most recently-created character to be featured on the list at the time of its publication.

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