Trivia / Ren And Stimpy2x 11 A Visit To Anthony

• Creator Backlash: While John Kricfalusi liked how the episode turned out, he was dissatisfied at how undirected the acting of Anthony's dad turned out, and he felt the sound effects and music (added by Games) were "clumsy and inappropriate".

  I directed the recordings of all the characters EXCEPT my Dad, ironically and was very disappointed when I heard it. It sounded like the actor didn't know the story and was reading it for the first time, so he didn't give it the meaning that the drawings conveyed. It was a professional live action actor and I think whoever directed him was afraid to actually give him any direction. And also didn't know my Dad." "I think the animation was done at Rough Draft and it was amazing. The fireplace scene was especially impressive with all the cool effects. The sound effects and music was clumsy and inappropriate as per usual in the Games episodes. That's something they just never got, even though I sent them a long treatise on how to make the sound match the moods of the story.

• Missing Episode: Hasn't aired on Nickelodeon or its sister channels in years. While many people speculate that the reason is because of its strong themes of bullying, others speculate that it's due to royalty issues involving Anthony who voiced himself in the episode.
• Reality Subtext: The episode was based on a real fan letter by a boy named Anthony who asked Ren and Stimpy to come visit him in the United States. John K. even proposed having the boy voice his namesake character to create a certain level of "interactivity" with the audience.
• Two Voices, One Character: Halfway through production of this episode, John Kricfalusi was fired, causing Billy West to replace him. While John K. did record most of Ren's lines for the episode, a couple of them had to be recorded by Billy West, resulting in Ren having two voice actors for this episode.
• What Could Have Been: It was originally intended for this episode to be animated by Carbunkle Cartoons. According to Bob Jaques, after John K. was fired, Nickelodeon cancelled these plans, presumably because production was going overbudget, and instead had them animate "The Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen".
• Write Who You Know: Anthony's dad, like all of his father characters, was based on John K.'s own father. Anthony's house is based on a cottage that the Kricfalusi family stayed at every summer, where John frequently saw (and was highly disturbed by) his father going around shirtless.

---