The Simpsons’ Itchy & Scratchy Were Inspired By An Old Cartoon

“The Simpsons” never shied away from violence. Indeed, the show arguably benefitted from the controversy caused by depicting a father who routinely strangles his own son. The Simpsons were not your typical TV family, and that was the point. The show and the Fox network on which it’s still broadcast were ushering in a whole new small screen generation, much to the chagrin of then-President George Bush, who famously lamented that American families should be a lot more like the Waltons and “a lot less like the Simpsons.”

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But even when Bush was uttering that ill-informed sneer, it was already too late. “The Simpsons” might have had a strong emotional core and often delivered heartfelt episodes that affected audiences much more than an animated comedy ever should. But it was also, much like the show’s de facto mascot in the early years, Bart Simpson, vulgar and proud of it.

One of the most unabashedly violent elements of the series was Bart’s favorite cartoon, “The Itchy and Scratchy Show,” which formed part of “The Krusty the Clown Show.” This show within a show within a show featured a psychopathic mouse, Itchy, who with each episode would mutilate and kill a perpetually terrified cat, Scratchy. “Simpsons” writers loved “Itchy and Scratchy” because it allowed them to break every rule of TV, and viewers loved it for being so absurdly over-the-top in its brutality. The joke was immediately obvious to anyone who grew up with “Tom and Jerry” and recognized this sadistic parody of the beloved MGM cartoon. But even seasoned “Simpsons” fans might be surprised to hear that this legendary cat and mouse duo weren’t actually the inspiration behind “Itchy and Scratchy” — at least, not the only inspiration.

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Created in 1940 by legendary animators Will Hanna and Joe Barbera, Tom and Jerry became so successful they arguably became even more famous than their creators, to the point they’re now an indelible part of 20th century pop culture. The series featured Tom the cat who despite his unending desire to capture and kill Jerry the mouse, is always thwarted by the cunning rodent. In “The Itchy and Scratchy Show,” this dynamic is taken to extreme levels, with Itchy the mouse being portrayed as a killer who repeatedly offs Scratchy the cat in increasingly ingenious and sadistic ways. For what is surely the vast majority of “Simpsons” fans, the joke here was straightforward. This was an absurdly bloody parody of “Tom and Jerry.” But it turns out this isn’t actually the full story.

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Mike Reiss, the longest-serving writer and producer on “The Simpsons,” wrote a book entitled “Springfield Confidential: Jokes, Secrets, and Outright Lies from a Lifetime Writing for The Simpsons,” in which he recalls how Itchy and Scratchy had been with “The Simpsons” since the very beginning, when it was launched by sketch comedy series. “The Simpsons” began life as a series of shorts that would act as bumpers between the commercial breaks on “The Tracey Ullman Show,” and “The Itchy and Scratchy Show” actually debuted in one of these shorts from 1988, entitled “The Bart Simpson Show.” The cat and mouse duo then showed up for the first time in “The Simpsons” proper in season 1 episode “There’s No Disgrace Like Home.” But as Reiss went on to note, the cat and mouse characters were not actually a parody of “Tom and Jerry,” and were instead “inspired by ‘Herman and Katnip,’ a cheap, ultraviolet knockoff of T&J.” Ultraviolet might be a bit of a stretch, but “Herman and Katnip” was certainly a “Tom and Jerry” knockoff which featured much more intense slapstick violence than the original.

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Unlike “Tom and Jerry” and its theatrical shorts from MGM, “Herman and Katnip” was produced by Famous Studios, the first animation department at Paramount. The studio churned out a series of theatrical cartoons featuring Herman the Mouse and Katnip the Cat during the 1940s and 50s. These cartoons featured a similar rivalry between the titular characters, but took things further than “Tom and Jerry,” featuring more vicious slapstick escapades than MGM’s original. Poor old Katnip was at one time sent to the bottom of a well, before Herman sent a stick of dynamite after him, trapping the cat underground and turning the well itself into a makeshift gravestone. Oh, and Katnip was actually sent to hell at one point. In these surprisingly violent vignettes lay the seeds for “Itchy and Scratchy,” which at one point became a spinoff which, when tested, was so violent it made audiences sick.

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Interestingly enough, it seems that while Mike Reiss unequivocally claims that “Herman and Katnip” were the inspiration behind “Itchy and Scratchy,” things might be a little more complicated than that. On the one hand, director David Silverman backed up Reiss’ claim in an MSNBC interview saying:

“People say [‘Itchy and Scratchy’ is] like an insane ‘Tom and Jerry,’ but it’s really more of an insane ‘Herman and Katnip.’ ‘Herman and Katnip’ is hilarious because it’s just bad. It’s painfully bad. The key to comedy is quick recovery, and ‘Itchy and Scratchy’ has no quick recovery. There’s not the quick recovery that you normally associate with cartoon violence. That’s the big joke behind the segments.”

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But in an old TV Guide interview (via SimpsonsArchive) show creator Matt Groening said that “Itchy and Scratchy” were “inspired by all the cat-and-mouse cartoons we grew up watching,” suggesting that Tom and Jerry definitely had their influence. This makes sense, as there’s no way a parody cartoon about a rivalry between a cat and mouse couldn’t take some cues from the most culturally significant example of this popular animated trope of the mid-20th century.