Trivia / Ernest P. Worrell

• Acting for Two:
  • Jim Varney not only played all of Ernest's relatives, but on some occasions, would also play additional characters who had no relation to Ernest whatsoever, such as the creepy alien cyborg Dr. Otto, drill sergeant-turned-school teacher Sergeant Glory, and criminal mastermind Mr. Nash.
  • In Hey Vern, It's Ernest, multiple supporting actors play multiple characters.
• Breakaway Advertisement: From advertising stuff to a film star.
• The Character Died with Him: Save for a handful of local commercials that aired around the mid-late '00s, which had a cartoon Ernest voiced by John Hudgens, Jim Varney's death in 2000 meant the end of Ernest as a media figure (it didn't help that the franchise was already seeing a significant dip in popularity and budget).
• Development Hell: Son of Ernest, intended to star a younger actor as Ernest's exact duplicate offspring, was first announced — however quietly — sometime in the early 2010s. Nothing more about this project has been heard of.
• Follow the Leader: "Hey Vern, it's Ernest" was meant to capitalize on the success of Pee-wee's Playhouse.
• The Other Darrin: John Hudgens voiced Ernest in CGI commercials after Varney's death, and actually played him in live action commercials circa 2005. Safe to say, the fandom did not rejoice.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: For many years, sites such as IMDB claimed that Jim Varney was set to film a movie called Ernest the Pirate before he died. Coke Sams, who worked on most of the Ernest films, later debunked this rumor, stating that no Ernest films were being planned at the time. Many think that this sparked from the fact that Varney almost appeared in the movie Pirates of the Plain, which released shortly before his death.
• Recycled Set: The "Me and My Brother Bobby" commercials are obviously shot in the same houses and neighborhood as the Ernest commercials were; in fact, in one such episode, Chuck and Bobby drop in on a lady as her suitors, and she clearly is living in Vern's house.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Many, many Ernest movies had been conceptualized/pitched throughout the years that never got made for one reason or another. Some of these movies planned included:
    • Ernest Spaced Out - Originally set to be the third film, this involved Ernest being sent to space to investigate a strange space capsule. The film reportedly got as far as draft scripts before the idea was dropped. Rumor has it that Disney later recycled one of these scripts into RocketMan (1997).
    • Ernest and the Voodoo Curse - In this one, Ernest would go to a tropical island, where he'd take on a voodoo priest and zombies. Some have speculated that ideas from this would be recycled into Ernest Goes to Africa.
    • Ernest and the Water Baby - A movie that was set to parody E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. According to Coke Sams, this got far into the treatment process, but was eventually scrapped for being too expensive to produce.
    • A musical film had been planned at one point, but was tossed out due to being too expensive.
    • Ernest and the Bold Crusader, meant to be a Batman (1989) parody. This got scrapped in favor of Ernest Goes to Jail.
    • Ernest and the Cave of the Voodoo King
    • Ernest the Bellhop - Pitched as the possible second film.
    • Ernest in Paradise - In which Ernest wins a cruise ship vacation.

---