The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy

The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy (also known as Billy & Mandy) is an American animated television series created by Maxwell Atoms for Cartoon Network, and is the 14th of the network's Cartoon Cartoons (albeit on when it was part of Grim & Evil). It follows two children: Billy, a slow-witted happy-go-lucky boy, and Mandy, his dark and cynical best friend, who, after winning a limbo game to save Billy's pet hamster, gain the mighty Grim Reaper as their best friend in eternal servitude and slavery. In India, the show is known as Billy, Mandy aur life mein Haddi (Billy, Mandy and Haddi in life) and Haddi mera Buddy (Haddi my Buddy).

This article is about the series. For the video game, see The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy (video game).
The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy
Also known asBilly & Mandy
GenreBlack comedy
Comedy horror
Animation
Slapstick[1]
Created byMaxwell Atoms
Written by
Directed by
Voices of
Theme music composerGregory Hinde and Drew Neumann
Composer(s)
  • Gregory Hinde and Drew Neumann
  • Guy Moon (2001-2002 Grim & Evil episodes only)
Country of originUnited States
Original language(s)English
No. of seasons6
No. of episodes77 (including Grim & Evil segments and several specials)
160 segments (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)
  • Maxwell Atoms
  • For Cartoon Network Studios: Brian A. Miller
  • For Cartoon Network: Linda Simensky and Jay Bastian
Producer(s)
Running time7 minutes (Grim & Evil segments)
7–22 minutes (more Grim & Evil segments, and as a full series)
Production company(s)
DistributorWarner Bros. Television Distribution
Release
Original networkCartoon Network
Picture format480i SDTV
First shown inJune 9, 2000 (2000-06-09)
Original releaseGrim & Evil run:
August 24, 2001 (2001-08-24) – October 18, 2002 (2002-10-18)
Original series:
June 13, 2003 (2003-06-13) –
October 12, 2008 (2008-10-12)
Chronology
Preceded by
Followed byUnderfist: Halloween Bash (2008)
Related showsEvil Con Carne

Billy & Mandy began as a series of segments on Grim & Evil, from which it was spun-off, along with Evil Con Carne, on August 24, 2001. Although the 2003 episodes were produced for Grim & Evil, the show ran as a separate series from June 13, 2003, to November 9, 2007. Underfist: Halloween Bash, a made-for-TV movie intended to serve as a pilot for a new spin-off series, aired on October 12, 2008. In addition to the episodes, three movies, two special episodes, and nineteen shorts were made. During its run, the series won two Emmy Awards and one Annie Award, with nominations for one Daytime Emmy Award, three Golden Reel Awards, and two other Annie Awards. Billy & Mandy has also been made into a video game as well as various licensed merchandise.

Premise
Main article: List of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy characters
The show's main characters. From left to right: Billy, Mandy, and Grim.
Graffiti of Grim Reaper in Aretxabaleta (Spain)

The series is centered around the exploits of Grim (voiced by Greg Eagles), a Jamaican-accented Reaper and Billy (voiced by Richard Steven Horvitz), a completely idiotic and happy-go-lucky boy. They are constantly assisted by Mandy (Grey DeLisle), a cynical, intelligent and merciless girl. After Billy and Mandy cheated at a limbo match against Grim (in retaliation for putting the limbo rod too low for them to go under), he is enslaved in a permanently unwanted friendship with the children.[2] Grim is miserable in the first days of his servitude, and even fantasizes about killing them multiple times. However, as the time passes, he gradually adapts to the new life, and even grows to care for Billy and Mandy, if only somewhat. Despite this, he retains a love–hate relationship with the two and desires to eventually break free from his servitude.

Billy and Mandy use Grim's supernatural abilities and powers to venture into supernatural locations or environments, such as the Underworld, or the Netherworld, inhabited by an assortment of grotesque monstrous beasts. The pair also use Grim's enormously strong supernatural abilities or ties with a number of beastly characters to achieve goals or desires for themselves, often with twisted results. Famed fictional monsters including Dracula, the Wolfman, and the bogeyman are also comically depicted in the series.

Supporting characters include Irwin (Vanessa Marshall), a nerdy awkward boy who has a crush on Mandy; Harold (Richard Steven Horvitz), Billy's father who is even dumber than his son; Gladys (Jennifer Hale), Billy's loving yet mentally unstable mother; Mindy (Rachael MacFarlane), the snobby, stuck-up, and spoiled queen bee of Billy and Mandy's school; Sperg (Greg Eagles), the local bully who has a sensitive side; Fred Fredburger (C. H. Greenblatt), a simple-minded, irritating underworld creature who loves frozen yogurt and nachos; Dracula (Phil LaMarr), a selfish elderly vampire who is revealed to be Irwin's paternal grandfather in the final season of the show.

The show lacks continuity for the most part, as many episodes end with characters killed, exiled, or stuck in a situation. Characters sometimes display an awareness of some events from previous episodes, but there are no clear character arcs or coherent plot lines tying the show together.

Episodes
Main article: List of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy episodes
SeasonEpisodesOriginally aired
First airedLast aired
118August 24, 2001 (2001-08-24)October 22, 2004 (2004-10-22)
210June 11, 2004 (2004-06-11)October 8, 2004 (2004-10-08)
310October 15, 2004 (2004-10-15)June 3, 2005 (2005-06-03)
415June 10, 2005 (2005-06-10)December 2, 2005 (2005-12-02)
513January 6, 2006 (2006-01-06)August 9, 2006 (2006-08-09)
611October 6, 2006 (2006-10-06)November 9, 2007 (2007-11-09)
M&S4March 30, 2007 (2007-03-30)October 12, 2008 (2008-10-12)

Production history

The series had its genesis in 1995, when Maxwell Atoms, while he was a junior at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, made a two-minute short film for his thesis project. Titled Billy and Mandy in: The Trepanation of the Skull and You, it centers around Billy and Mandy (prototype versions) discussing trepanning with each other. In the end, Mandy drills Billy's head, causing him to pass out after too much blood loss even though he says he feels great. The short had never been shown publicly until April 30, 2016, during the first annual TromAnimation Film Festival.[3] After the screening, Atoms uploaded the film, albeit in a deteriorating state after years of storage, on his YouTube channel.

Atoms originally pitched the Billy and Mandy concept to Nickelodeon, but it was only rejected once. The show's existence is the result of a viewer poll event by way of telephone and the Internet called Cartoon Network's Big Pick which was held from June 16 to August 25, 2000.[4] The three final choices were Grim and Evil (later splitting into two separate series: The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy and Evil Con Carne), Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones?, and Longhair and Doubledome.[4] Out of the three, Grim and Evil attained the most votes with 57%; Robot Jones came in second place at 23% while Longhair and Doubledome received 20% of the vote.[4][5]

Originally part of Grim & Evil, Billy & Mandy served as the main show. In each episode, an Evil Con Carne short was put between two Grim shorts.[4] On occasion, it was the other way around, with two Evil shorts and one Grim short. The series premiered on August 24, 2001, during the Cartoon Cartoon Fridays Big Pick Weekend.

Another batch of 13 half-hour episodes were produced for Grim & Evil, but on June 13, 2003, the network separated the two segments and gave each their own full-length program. The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy ran for 6 seasons (with the first season containing 18 half-hour episodes, consisting of 49 Grim & Evil shorts, and one bonus short "Five-O-Clock Shadows"), while the short-lived Evil Con Carne show was cancelled once the already-produced season had aired. Some characters from Evil Con Carne occasionally appeared on The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy. General Skarr became an official character on the show in the episode "Skarred for Life", where he becomes Billy's new next-door neighbor, and in "Company Halt", the ninth episode of the final season which functions as the true series finale for Evil Con Carne, Ghastly, Hector, Boskov, and Stomach restart their evil organization and convince Skarr to join them, but their plans are ultimately foiled by Billy and Mandy, and Skarr goes back to living his life as a normal person.

Reception

Critical response and ratings

Common Sense Media gave the show a 3/5 star rating and stated that it has "goofy punchlines and obscure cultural references" and recommends the viewer age be at least 8 years old.[6] New episodes were broadcast on Cartoon Network's Fridays at 7:30pm to over 1 million viewers an episode.

Awards and nominations

The series has won one Annie Award, two Emmy Awards and has been nominated nine times for various awards.

Year Award Category Nominee(s) Result Refs
2002 Golden Reel Awards Best Sound Editing in Television Animation Glenn Oyabe, Jesse Aruda, and Rob Desales
for "The Smell of Vengeance: Pt. 1 & 2/Fiend is Like Friend Without the "R""		 Nominated
2003 Golden Reel Awards Best Sound Editing in Television Animation – Music Glenn Oyabe
for "Little Rock of Horror/The Pie Who Loved Me/Dream a Little Dream/Billy and Mandy's Jacked-Up Halloween"		 Nominated
2005 Golden Reel Awards Best Sound Editing in Television Animation Glenn Oyabe, Jesse Aruda, Erik Sequeira, and Cecil Broughton
for "Super Zero/Sickly Sweet"		 Nominated
Annie Awards Directing in an Animated Television Production Brian Sheesley
for "Nursery Crimes"		 Nominated [7]
Shaun Cashman and Phil Cummings
for "Attack of the Clowns"		 Won [7]
2006 Annie Awards Directing in an Animated Television Production Shaun Cashman
for "Hill Billy"		 Nominated [8]
Emmy Awards Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation Michael Diederich Won [9]
2007 Emmy Award Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation Phil Rynda
for Billy & Mandy's Big Boogey Adventure		 Won [10]
Daytime Emmy Awards Broadband-Children's The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy Nominated [11]

TV movies
Main articles: Billy & Mandy's Big Boogey Adventure, Billy & Mandy: Wrath of the Spider Queen, and Underfist: Halloween Bash

Three TV movies were made for the series. The first one was called Billy & Mandy's Big Boogey Adventure and was released on DVD in April, 2007.[12] Common Sense Media gave the movie 2/5 stars and is meant for kids over the age of 8 calling it "undeniably gross and just as undeniably funny".[13] DVDverdict.com gave the movie a good review as well.[14]

A second movie, Wrath of the Spider Queen, was also released in 2007. It was based on a spider queen from Grim's distant past, who tries to take revenge on him because she was meant to be the reaper. Meanwhile, keeping up with the spider theme, Billy learns to love his spider son Jeff.[15]

On October 12, 2008, a third and final spin-off movie, titled Underfist: Halloween Bash, premiered. The movie's primary focus is on Irwin, Jeff the Spider, Hoss Delgado, General Skarr, and Fred Fredburger accidentally coming together to defeat an invasion of chocolate bar monsters, led by an evil marshmallow bunny, on Halloween night.[16]

Media

Music

The score composers for the series are Gregory Hinde, Drew Neumann and Guy Moon.[17][18][19] In addition, two songs were made for the show by Aurelio Voltaire, the episode "Little Rock of Horrors", which parodies the musical Little Shop of Horrors, features a song titled "BRAINS!"[20][21] and, in Billy & Mandy's Big Boogey Adventure, the song "Land of the Dead" is played in the opening credits.[22] Both songs are a part of the album Spooky Songs For Creepy Kids.[20] The season two episode "Battle of the Bands" also featured the song "Darkness" by metal band SPF 1000. There was also an instance at the end of the Christmas special entitled "Billy & Mandy Save Christmas", where the end credits music is the song "Round and Round" by heavy metal band Ratt.

Video game
Main article: The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy (video game)

A video game inspired by the series was developed by Midway Games, and released on October 2, 2006.[23] It is a 3D fighting game. The video game received fair to good reviews: GameSpot gave it a 6.6/10 by Greg Mueller, he goes on to say that while it is fun for the "first few hours" and has "Fast-paced gameplay" the game action "gets old quickly" and has a very short story mode.[24] IGN gave the game a good score of 7.2/10 highlighting its presentation and appeal.[25] Metacritic gave the game a rating of 61/100 based on 10 critic reviews.[26]

gollark: > That is the problem, nobody can fucking decide if it is 1000 or 1024There's a standard: kB/KB (kilobyte) is 1000, KiB (kibibyte) is 1024. But that's not really stuck with consistently and different platforms will randomly label it the wrong way and it's all quite bad.
gollark: 🦀 yay this will somewhat reduce annoyance 🦀
gollark: Oh, neat.
gollark: That makes as much as sense as saying that people who don't believe in free will shouldn't have human rights, i.e. not much, and slowmode is annoying.
gollark: Well, you could measure your height in decimeters, then.

See also

References
  1. "The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy - Metacritic.com". Archived from the original on April 19, 2019. Retrieved July 7, 2019.
  2. "The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy Characters". Cartoon Network. Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved May 26, 2012.
  3. Amidi, Amid (May 1, 2016). "Maxwell Atoms Reveals Lost Student Film That Inspired 'Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy'". Cartoon Brew. Archived from the original on May 3, 2016. Retrieved May 2, 2016.
  4. "Billy, Mandy and Grim Head to the Movies". Animation World Network. Archived from the original on January 20, 2012. Retrieved May 28, 2012.
  5. Dempsey, John (August 29, 2000). "'Billy & Mandy' beats out 'Robot,' 'Longhair' to get greenlight". Variety. Archived from the original on October 3, 2013. Retrieved May 31, 2013.
  6. "The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy". Common Sense Media. 22 March 2007. Retrieved May 28, 2012.
  7. "32nd Annual Annie Nominations and Awards Recipients". AnnieAwards.org. ASIFA-Hollywood. Archived from the original on February 14, 2014. Retrieved May 28, 2012.
  8. "34th Annual Annie Nominations and Awards Recipients". AnnieAwards.org. ASIFA-Hollywood. Archived from the original on March 22, 2016. Retrieved May 28, 2012.
  9. "List of Creative Arts Emmy winners". USA Today. August 20, 2006. Archived from the original on June 28, 2011. Retrieved May 28, 2012.
  10. "Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announces Emmy® Award Winners in Costumes for Variety or Music Program and Individual Achievement in Animation" (PDF). Emmy Awards. Archived (PDF) from the original on February 22, 2014. Retrieved May 28, 2012.
  11. "Children's Emmy Award noms make history at the KidScreen Summit". KidScreen.com. Archived from the original on June 18, 2013. Retrieved May 28, 2012.
  12. "Billy & Mandy's Big Boogey Adventure DVD". CD Universe. Archived from the original on March 28, 2014. Retrieved May 26, 2012.
  13. "Billy and Mandy's Big Boogey Adventure". Common Sense Media. 15 September 2009. Archived from the original on September 27, 2013. Retrieved May 26, 2012.
  14. "Billy And Mandy's Big Boogey Adventure (Review)". DVD Verdict. Archived from the original on March 6, 2012. Retrieved May 26, 2012.
  15. "Wrath of the Spider Queen". IMDb. Archived from the original on March 21, 2015. Retrieved May 26, 2012.
  16. "Underfist: Halloween Bash". BCDB. Retrieved May 27, 2012.
  17. "Gregoryhinde resume". www.gregoryhinde.com. Archived from the original on 2012-08-31. Retrieved 2012-05-27.
  18. "Drew Neumann Credits". DrewNeumann.com. Archived from the original on March 8, 2012. Retrieved May 27, 2012.
  19. "Guy-Moon". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 31, 2013. Retrieved May 27, 2012.
  20. Brains! (From The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy), ASIN B004F9RE9M |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  21. "Little Rock of Horror". Cartoon Network. Archived from the original on June 13, 2012. Retrieved May 27, 2012.
  22. "New Voltaire Album!". AdventureQuest Worlds. Archived from the original on March 29, 2012. Retrieved May 27, 2012.
  23. "The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy (Video game)". BBFC. Retrieved May 26, 2012.
  24. "The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy Review". GameSpot. Archived from the original on February 4, 2012. Retrieved May 26, 2012.
  25. "The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy (Video game review)". IGN. Archived from the original on January 14, 2012. Retrieved May 26, 2012.
  26. "The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy Wii". Metacritic. Archived from the original on April 7, 2011. Retrieved May 26, 2012.
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