The classic Season 1 South Park episode “Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo” has been credited with significantly raising the show’s profile. After its release, series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone started realizing that they’d earned themselves some pretty high-profile supporters. One person who wasn’t singing their praises, however, was John Kricfalusi, best known for creating The Ren & Stimpy Show six years earlier. Kricfalusi’s issue with Parker and Stone wasn’t simply a matter of him not liking South Park or their holiday-themed episode; he straight-up accused them of ripping off their titular talking turd from his lesser-known character, Nutty the Friendly Dump.
After 2 days the 9th episode of the 1st season of South park came out, a now canceled-animator, John K claimed that the concept of Mr. Hankey was a rip-off of his character named “Nutty the Friendly Dump” from one of his Flash cartoons and comics.
[1/2] pic.twitter.com/8q0VqQNspX— SurrealMediaFacts (@SurreMediaFacts) May 21, 2026
Nutty was featured in a short film posted on the Spümcø animation studio’s website prior to Mr. Hankey’s debut and had also appeared in print publications. “The talking, singing dump was invented by me. And now these guys are gonna get rich off of it,” Kricfalusi, who’d initially considered taking legal action against Parker and Stone, said in a statement at the time. Comedy Central dismissed the claim as “ludicrous,” but Kricfalusi insisted that there were several things Parker and Stone lifted from him. As an example, he pointed out how Mr. Mackey refers to Kyle as a “sick little monkey” in the Mr. Hankey episode:
The phrase is believed to have been popularized by The Ren & Stimpy Show:
Why the Creator of ‘Ren & Stimpy’ Accused Trey Parker and Matt Stone of Ripping Him Off
Parker has shared his thoughts on Ren & Stimpy a few times over the years, repeatedly saying that he didn’t “get” the show. In a Playboy interview from 2000, Parker made it clear that he’d only ever seen roughly half of a Ren & Stimpy episode. “I can’t get into that thing where there’s really nothing to care about,” Parker explained. “My favorite parts of South Park are the moments where you’re like, ‘Oh, poor kid.’ You never feel that way watching Ren & Stimpy, because those characters are so over-the-top,” he continued.
Kricfalusi’s accusation received so much attention that Parker eventually wrote him a letter explaining the origins of Mr. Hankey. In it, Parker clarified that his father created the character when Parker was just three years old. In those days, Parker had a tendency to not flush the toilet after going to the bathroom, and his dad told him that if he kept doing it, a Mr. Hankey would crawl out and annoy him forever. Kricfalusi responded by saying Parker should at least admit to being inspired by Ren & Stimpy, but acknowledged that he thought Parker and Stone were “doing a really funny show.”
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