Son of Stimpy

Plot

Stinky Wizzleteats narrates the tale. Stimpy, while watching cartoons, emits a large fart and believes he has given birth to a flatulence being named Stinky. He tries to brag to Ren, who rebukes him and calls him an idiot; Stimpy attempts to reenact the event but his buttocks deflate. Ren blames his overactive imagination.

Stimpy searches the house for Stinky, even asking the Magic Nose Goblins under the piano seat, who ridicule him. Depressed, Stimpy sits motionless before the television. Ren tries to cheer him with Commander Höek and Cadet Stimpy and The Muddy Mudskipper Show, but Stimpy remains despondent. Ren shows genuine concern with a mouse toy and litter box, but Stimpy breaks down at the word "stinky".

Ren becomes too angry to continue. Stimpy cannot sleep from grief, but Stinky is revealed to be a gaseous sentient being returning to reminisce about his time inside Stimpy's buttocks. On Christmas Eve, Stimpy has been outside for months yearning for Stinky's return. Ren tries to lure him inside with mistletoe while looking at him romantically, but Stimpy sees through the trick and leaves, saddening Ren.

Stimpy wanders the city asking for Stinky to no avail; he seeks warmth at a manure shop owned by Mr. Horse but is run over by a truck. Stinky, having suffered cruelty from the city's populace, hides between two homeless men who try to light him on fire, then retreats to the sewers. On Christmas, Ren celebrates in sorrow until Stimpy returns frozen in an ice block. Ren thaws him by the fire, and Stinky visits.

Stimpy returns to joy but refuses to let Stinky have his own life until Stinky appears with a girlfriend, an apparently sentient fish corpse. Stimpy oversees their marriage, accepting Stinky's manhood. The couple moves to a corner of the residence; Ren returns to his usual disgruntled self while Stimpy celebrates the happy ending.

Production

The story for this episode was developed by John Kricfalusi, Vincent Waller, and Richard Pursel, with Peter Avanzino handling the storyboards and Kricfalusi directing. Kricfalusi originally planned it as a send-up of beloved Hollywood melodramas like The Wizard of Oz, Bambi, The Godfather, and E.T., specifically targeting what he called "fake pathos." He saw this as a manipulative trick where directors use music and camera work to force sad feelings from the audience, a practice that made him furious.

He labeled it cheap, contrived, and dirty, arguing that real emotional weight should come from strong characters and honest acting, not editing gimmicks. He also complained that such dramatic films get more praise than simple comedies, which are often looked down on. To prove his point, he built the episode around the silliest idea he could imagine—Stimpy struggling to pass gas a second time—and packed it with every cinematic trick he knew, showing how easy it is to make people cry over nothing meaningful.

Kricfalusi agreed to make this episode as a trade: Nickelodeon would allow him to produce more gross-out episodes if he delivered some heartwarming ones. The mistletoe scene, where Ren uses the plant to lure Stimpy inside, sparked a major fight with the network, which worried about "homosexual undertones." According to Kricfalusi's DVD commentary, the scene stayed because its removal deeply upset an unnamed gay artist at Spümcø. A brief moment where Ren shoves Stimpy's Christmas gift toward a photo of himself was removed from the "First and Second Seasons" DVD, but it appears on the Sony Wonder VHS and was later digitally restored for broadcasts on Nick, MTV, Comedy Central, and Paramount+.

Nickelodeon also initially cut the sequence where Stimpy goes to the police looking for his missing "son" and gets thrown out, but that footage was reinstated for the Spike TV airing and the DVD release.

Reception

The episode earned a four-star review from Thad Komorowski, who described it as a memorable Christmas special. It also appears as a case study in An Introduction to Film Studies, which highlights its use of a 'Son of God' motif through the title, Christmas setting, and soundtrack, blending the sacred and profane in a way some may find provocative. John Kricfalusi deliberately avoids a coherent analogy, instead exploiting animation's openness for subversive ends. A. J. Carson of tvdvdreviews.com called it a pitch-perfect send-up of overly sentimental Christmas specials. In 1993, it was nominated for a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program but lost to Batman: The Animated Series's "Robin's Reckoning." It later ranked 96th in a 2007 countdown of the greatest Nicktoon episodes.