Mystery Science Theater 3000/Trivia

• Adored by the Network: Though it would wind up getting Screwed by the Network later (twice (by two different networks)), the old Comedy Channel considered Mystery Science Theater 3000 its flagship show - when they merged with Ha! to become Comedy Central they threatened to cancel the merger if Ha! insisted on getting rid of Mystery Science Theater 3000, in spite of the Comedy Channel's anonymity and Ha!'s comparative success. Mystery Science Theater 3000 also scored an unprecedented three-year contract, which was a big factor in producing the stellar seasons 3 and 4.
• Hey, It's That Guy!: Jim Mallon, the puppeteer and voice for Gypsy, previously received recognition for being the head of the "Pail and Shovel" Party when he was a student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. To garner votes, he would make outlandish campaign promises such as decorating the front lawn of Bascom Hall with hundreds of pink flamingo lawn ornaments, or bringing the Statue of Liberty to Lake Mendota. And he did. The former was straightforward (though 60 students requested a complete refund of their money, and he followed through...for a total of $6.00), and the latter was achieved through creating a replica head and torch that seemed to jut through the ice of Mendota during the winter.
• Popularity Redo: When the show made the jump from local low-budget KTMA to the cable station Comedy Channel, they revisited movies from the KTMA era and reused some host sketches in their first season. Around season four they exhausted their stock of affordable KTMA-era films, and the repeat host sketches stopped by the second season.
• What Could Have Been: Before Comedy Central canceled the show, they offered the crew a deal--reformat the show so that it would run in a thirty minute time slot and have Mike and the 'bots make fun of TV shows, not films.
  • Gramercy Pictures had a choice between Barb Wire and MST3K: The Movie to back with a full ad campaign and theater spread. They chose the former. ("Even still, in its first weekend it had a higher per-theater average than even the number one movie in the country. So, just imagine the business it could have done if people had actually known it was out.")
  • Once in a while, you can catch a glimpse of someone's mouth moving in the theater (this is most prominent with Crow) but no one says anything. It's likely that they're saying jokes that were cut or perhaps censored. One such example can be found in their riff of Manos: The Hands of Fate:

Bride: The woman is all we want!
Crow: [Mouth moves, but nothing comes out]