Casper Kelly: My direction to him was very specific for each shot, but in my head he is a man who tried to be a sitcom dad — with his attempt at a Cosby sweater and such — but just will never allowed to be a part of this world he has to dwell in. So he’s gotten a little bitter and vengeful about being left out.
Another growing theory is that he's just one of many of the Always Chaotic Evil forces of B.R.o.t.H.
"Intronitis" being a disease that professional doctors are horrified by calls into question if it's a good thing that Smarf reset the show.
It also creates a possibly that Bill is ultimately doing a good thing by attempting to destroy the show.
Also, the fact his credits glitch out and the "Too Many Cooks" theme continues whenever he's around suggests Bill is at worst a carrier of the infection, but possibly even could be immune to Intronitis.
Even he's not fully immune; when he chows down on some of the cast members, whenever his title is glitched out, he's clearly holding back a smile as best as he can. It can't get him fully, but it can't leave him.
The show is actually about a group of people who are all rampant sufferers of Intronitis who were put onto the show purely to give them something to do with their lives. If you look at some of the younger cast members, they are slumped, seemingly bored out of their minds. Imagine if you were stuck in a sitcom purely since a name floats into view a short distance in front of you. No wonder the doctor wants to commit suicide!
Applicability: Dozens of theories have been made about the short's applicability to real television, such as it being a critique of cookie-cutter entertainment, forced retools, multiple writers/showrunners working on and overcomplicating long-running sitcoms, the dark undertones behind cheery family-friendly shows, or even an attempt to overthrow television as a whole. Word of God is that there's probably a message in the short somewhere, but the main reason why they made it was just to screw with people's minds at four in the morning.
Award Snub: The short was wildly popular on the Internet and received high praise for its twisting of TV cliches, but didn't even get nominated for the 2015 Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Short-Format Live-Action Entertainment Program.
Awesome Music: Some of the variations on the main theme get absolutely amazing, like the crime drama variation and the G.I. Joe parody one.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Grandma turning into an owl. A bunch of the other surreal gags have setup or payoff but this bit comes right out of nowhere — for everybody except people who saw Manimal when it was on the air. Shortly after there’s a giant flying severed head, though this might be an extent of the killer decapitating someone. To a lesser extent, the cartoon sequence, which is never brought up again outside of the closing credits, but at least has Bob appear.
Ending Fatigue: A common complaint about the short is that it just keeps going and seems to end multiple times before starting back up again. It's All Part of the Joke, but whether that joke overstays its welcome will vary from person to person.
Gwydion Lashlee-Walton, for his awesomely complicated name. And it's the actor's real one, to boot!
Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: And how. The amount of slightly ponderous chin-scratching clickbaity articles about what this short is really about (and the various abstract theories they're coming up with) is getting more insane than the short itself.
Harsher in Hindsight: The character who homages The Cosby Show, Bill, is a serial killer who's featured hunting young women through the set of a sitcom.Bill Cosby himself would later be outed as a serial rapist, with numerous cases of tormenting women and getting away with it because few suspected a sitcom star.
This 2004 Mad TV sketch has a similar premise and punchline. This 2012 Upright Citizens' Brigade video also has some of the same ideas.
There actually was a sitcom called Too Many Cooks about a large family (10 kids) named Cook — a 1950 radio series that aired on CBS but was canceled after eight episodes.
Signature Scene: The "Katie Adkins" section, where the actress is frozen as her name is displayed on the screen and she can only move her eyes while Bill is coming closer.
What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: Bill isn’t affected (at least no to the same extent than the others) to Intronitis and kills every actor who’s affected. This can be interpreted as a criticism of healthy carriers who claim their superiority on infected people and that nobody should find a cure for their disease by arguing that the latter’s decay and death is only due to natural selection.
1938 mystery novel
Fair for Its Day: The novel in general is a critique of race relations in 1930s America nevertheless written in 1930s America, and it's safe to say that by modern standards it shows. Nevertheless, it is still arguing for greater tolerance, openness, equality and racial justice. In particular, while Archie Goodwin's conduct is quite racist (if still not as bad as some of the other characters) and the novel doesn't spare him from criticism, a case can be made that by contemporary standards he's nevertheless still fairly tolerant. He freely uses several racist slurs and displays some rather prejudicial ideas about individuals of other races, but seems to hold no particular animosity or hostility towards those individuals. At a couple of points he also helps several African American servant characters with various menial tasks without resentment or complaint, something that would have been otherwise almost unthinkable in 1930s West Virginia.
that he's actually doing this for revenge.Casper Kelly: My direction to him was very specific for each shot, but in my head he is a man who tried to be a sitcom dad — with his attempt at a Cosby sweater and such — but just will never allowed to be a part of this world he has to dwell in. So he’s gotten a little bitter and vengeful about being left out.