Banned Episode: One episode, "Stokey the Bear", was pulled from syndication after its initial broadcast until after 2000. Why? Someone at the U.S. Forest Service was upset at the satire of Smokey Bear and personally went to the animators to complain about it...in full uniform. (Reputedly, his secretary thought it was Actually Pretty Funny.)
What Could Have Been: An early incarnation of Dudley Do-Right was featured alongside Crusader Rabbit in a proposed series, The Comic Strips of Television, that Jay Ward and Alex Anderson pitched to NBC in 1948. Had NBC picked up the series, Dudley would've been one of the first animated stars of television, but the network rejected the idea and Crusader Rabbit was instead produced on its own for syndication.
The Film
Actor-Shared Background: Like Dudley Do-Right, Brendan Fraser is a Canadian although he was born in America.
Box Office Bomb: One of the biggest box office derailments of 1999. Budget, $70 million. Box office, $9,974,410.
Creator Killer: Dudley Do-Right and another Brendan Fraser film, Blast from the Past, both ran down the career of director Hugh Wilson; He managed only a pilot and one more film, the John Grisham-penned Mickey, before his death in 2018. The career of Fraser, however, was saved by The Mummy (1999).
Fake Nationality: In the live-action movie, the "Canarsie Kumquats" are obviously New York Italian-Americans unconvincingly masquerading as a Canadian First Nations tribe. This appears to be a sly reference to Iron Eyes Cody, the Sicilian-American Crying Indian.
Franchise Killer: This movie's massive failure along with the massive failure of its successor The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle froze the Jay Ward Rocky and Bullwinkle franchise dead in its tracks for 14 years until the Mr. Peabody and Sherman spinoff that was meant to be made got followed up on by DreamWorks Animation in 2014. While THAT film also flopped and was part of a string that led to DWA getting bought up by these movies' distributor Universal minus their founder Jeffrey Katzenberg note who had already attempted to get Rocky and Bullwinkle into Disney in the late 1980s/early 1990s, but Disney only distributed the show through Walt Disney Home Video subsidiary Buena Vista Home Video, it still led to the creation of The Mr. Peabody & Sherman Show on Netflix, later followed by The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle on Amazon Prime Video. Dudley Do-Right, however, has essentially been relegated to being a small part of DreamWorks Classics.
