‘Ren and Stimpy’ Creator John Kricfalusi Is Every Bit as Creepy as You’d Think He’d Be

‘Ren and Stimpy’ Creator John Kricfalusi Is Every Bit as Creepy as You’d Think He’d Be

Okay, what in the name of fuck is going on at Nickelodeon. First we had the departure of Dan “Give me a blow, I’ll give you a show” Schneider, which brought up rumors that he’s been using Nick’s back lot to find preteen girls to shag for 25 years. Now we’ve got this story about John Kricfalusi, the creator of Ren and Stimpy, shacking up with a 16-year-old when he was like 40.

Kricfalusi flew out to visit Byrd, then a high school junior, at home in Arizona. They had sex for the first time at a nearby hotel, she said, and put into motion a series of decisions that would reshape the rest of her teenage years. She’d move in with Kricfalusi for the summer and intern at Spumco, then complete her senior year at a private school in Arizona, and he would cover the tuition. He told her he could give her an animation career in Los Angeles when she graduated. She and her mother believed him.

So when the young artist and writer moved in with Kricfalusi in the summer of 1997, part of her was happy. As an intern, she was making copies, keeping art organized, and learning how to be an animator. “I made my dream come true,” Byrd said. “That’s why I sent the tape when I was 13.” Everything in California was new and exciting, including, to some degree, her boyfriend. “I believed, as a 16-year-old dating him, ‘Oh, the world’s against us. It shouldn’t be wrong for him to date me. We’re cool and rebellious because we’re breaking the rules of society,’” Byrd told BuzzFeed News. She said he told her their 25-year age difference was “romantic.”

Yeah, okay, you get the picture. Now, the age of consent in California is 18, not 16, and John is clearly pulling some Harvey Weinstein “here, put this in your mouth if you want to be famous” thing, except in the end you’re just an animator. Quick, name an animator other than John K. Can’t do it, can you? I know what you’re thinking, Walt Disney or Hayao Miyazaki, right? Well, they’re animation directors, not animators. At least Harv put the girls he was banging in movies, John K here just has them drawing Stimpy’s butthole.

Sometime between 1998 and 2000, Mora went to a party at Kricfalusi’s house that has bothered him for years. He remembered Byrd, who was no older than 20, was drunk and seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness when Kricfalusi called Mora over to him. “And then he pulled out these Polaroids of Robyn basically — how can you say it? — going down on him. … He’s like, ‘What do you think of that?’”

Okay, so, just assuming she’s over 18 at this point, John K still sounds like a creep here.

On Oct. 19, 2004, when Rice was working at Disney, 49-year-old Kricfalusi contacted Rice via her work email. He wrote that he’d been resentful, as a 41-year-old man, of the classmate Rice liked when she was 15. “You used to make me very jealous … and you would never admit you liked me in a romantic way.” At the end of that email, he begged her to be in a relationship with him, writing, “I would worship you and bve [sic] your best partner and friend and everything that would be good to be.”

He also sounds like… what’s the word… an incel. There’s really nothing wrong with a guy in his 40s hitting on someone in her 20s per se, but John is an animation legend, you’d think he’d be able to come up with something here that sounds a little less pathetic. I stopped talking to girls like that when I was in college and learned how to actually talk to women. I suppose maybe if John had tried that instead of hitting on teenage girls, he might have gotten past that, too.

ShareOriginal Article