20 facts you might not know about 'Beavis and Butt-Head'

Before it had anything to do with MTV, or before Beavis and Butt-Head were established characters, Mike Judge made an animated short. He titled it “Frog Baseball,” and it delivers on that title in graphic ways. As such, it makes sense that “Frog Baseball” debuted at the 1992 Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation.

As MTV figured out which shows to air around music videos, they debuted a show called Liquid Television. This show would feature an assortment of animated shorts. MTV got a hold of “Frog Baseball” and aired it in 1993. Enough of a chord was struck with the network and its audience that Beavis and Butt-Head was ordered to series.

You don’t necessarily have much of a crew when making animated shorts. As such, Judge didn’t merely write and animate for Beavis and Butt-Head. He was also the voice of both titular characters and characters such as Principal McVicker and Coach Buzzcut.

When creating his characters, Judge decided to name one of them after his college friend, Bobby Beavis. We don’t know if the real-life Beavis was exactly thrilled to be the namesake of a character that Judge himself referred to as a “zero” when it comes to intelligence.

It’s one thing to be named Beavis, but how did Judge also get the name Butt-Head from college? Well, evidently, he went to college with a guy nicknamed Butt-Head. Also, apparently, another guy had the nickname Iron Butt. We wonder how close we were to getting “Beavis and Iron Butt” instead.

The animation studio working on the first season of Beavis and Butt-Head was supposed to have 22 episodes done by March 8, 1993, when the show was to debut on MTV. However, things didn’t go as smoothly as hoped. When the time came, only two episodes had been finished.

It’s not like Beavis and Butt-Head was ever lushly animated in its first run on MTV. However, the first two episodes, “Give Blood/Blood Drive” and “Door to Door,” really don’t sit well with Judge. He has called the animation “horrible” and pointedly admitted, “I don’t know why anybody liked it.”

The first season of Beavis and Butt-Head was only a few episodes. For the second season, MTV’s Senior Vice President Abby Terkuhle suggested the addition of a smart female character who could serve as a foil for our titular duo's stupidity and chauvinism. Thus, Mike Judge created the character of Daria, who debuted in the second season premiere “Scientific Stuff.” In time, Daria would get a spinoff show that took her far away from Beavis and Butt-Head. Also, yes, Daria was named after somebody Judge knew in school.

There was a lot of fervor over Beavis and Butt-Head, as it was admittedly a sophomoric and occasionally crude show. However, some wanted to use the MTV cartoon as a signal of the decline of American civilization. One of them was South Carolina Senator Fritz Hollings, who complained about the duo and referred to them as “Buffcoat and Beaver.”

On a couple of occasions in the 1990s, watchdog groups tried to blame Beavis and Butt-Head for violent crimes. In 1994, for example, the group Morality in Media (now known as the National Center on Sexual Exploitation) said that an 18-year-old who threw a bowling ball off of an overpass (with tragically lethal consequences) was inspired by an episode of Beavis and Butt-Head. While both the prosecution and the defense in the case made it clear the teenager did not have cable and had never seen the show, the stigma was enough that MTV moved airings of Beavis and Butt-Head to after 11 p.m. ET and introduced a “Don’t try this at home” disclaimer.

Critics around the country made a habit of writing, “Actually, Beavis and Butt-Head is pretty smart and funny” pieces. One person who wrote positively about the duo was actually Roger Ebert. Perhaps the most celebrated supporter of Beavis and Butt-Head, though, was David Letterman, who championed the show and even lent his voice to its world (under a pseudonym, naturally).

In 2012, TV Guide listed Beavis and Butt-Head among the top 60 cartoon shows ever. Only the top 10 was ranked, so we don’t know where it would finish on that list. A few years earlier, the same publication included Beavis and Butt-Head’s laughs at 66th on its list of the 100 Greatest TV Quotes and Catchphrases. Yes, these two had such iconic laughs they could make a list of TV catchphrases.

Pretty much right away, MTV wanted to adapt Beavis and Butt-Head into a film, but Judge blanched until he finally agreed in 1994. The film, which Judge directed and co-wrote, would debut in 1996. Beavis and Butt-Head Do America had quite the voice cast, including Demi Moore, Bruce Willis, and Letterman (credited as Earl Hofert). The film was critically fairly well-received, and it debuted at $20.1 million at the domestic box office. Not only did this alone cover the $12 million budget, but it was a record December box office opening at the time.

MTV went all out trying to capitalize on Beavis and Butt-Head. There was a Marvel comic from 1994 through 1996. Multiple video games and books were released as well. Then, there was The Beavis and Butt-Head Experience, an album mostly consisting of songs from bands like Metallica and Primus. On top of that, the duo did a version of “I Got You Babe” with Cher herself, which was released as a single. The song charted across Europe but fell just short of the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States.

The seventh season of Beavis and Butt-Head aired in 1997, and it proved to be the last…for a while. In 2010, it was announced that a new season of the show would air on MTV, with Judge returning to helm it. This time around, instead of mostly watching music videos, the duo would also be riffing on YouTube videos and shows like The Jersey Shore. This revival debuted in 2011 and only lasted for one season of 22 episodes.

There was a time when Judge was bandying about doing a live-action movie take on Beavis and Butt-Head . Judge even said that Johnny Depp, of all people, had told him that he would want to play Beavis, having spent time imitating the character opposite Marlon Brando doing Butt-Head while filming  Don Juan DeMarco (what a weird set that must have been). So far, this has never come to fruition.

In 2020, a decade after the last announcement, Comedy Central proclaimed they would be bringing Beavis and Butt-Head back. Owned by the same parent company as MTV, the move made sense, given the changed landscape of MTV as a channel. However, this revival would not technically happen, and the duo would be shifted to Paramount+ to return to the world.

Paramount+ decided it wanted to bring back Beavis and Butt-Head in a film first. They wanted a live-action movie, but Judge talked them into doing an animated film to reestablish the characters. This led to Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe debuting in February 2022. The movie, fitting for modern times, brings the two characters into the multiverse.

A ninth season of Beavis and Butt-Head consisting of 12 episodes began airing in August 2022. Picking up after Do the Universe, the show features the duo in the multiverse. That means teenaged versions of the characters and old versions of the characters, not to mention smart alternate versions of Beavis and Butt-Head. At the same time, Paramount+ dropped remastered versions of all 227 episodes of the show before that. Significantly, this included music videos, which previously had not been available through any legal methods.

Judge has not been doing takes on Beavis and Butt-Head for almost 30 years. In that time, his take on the duo changed. When the show originally ended in 1997, Judge discussed his feelings about Beavis and Butt-Head. “When I first started out with the first show, which was Frog Baseball, they were just two guys that I would definitely want to keep my distance from,” he told The Baltimore Sun in 1997. “But, by the end of the series, I would think that two guys like that would at least be fun to sit and watch TV with.”