Dexter's Rude Removal

If you lurk in the corners of the many fandoms revolving around cartoons, (which I really don't recommend) you are likely to find that each of them has some sort of "lost" episode attached to it. There's the ones that are outright banned, such as the infamous Pokemon seizure episode, and occasionally the episodes that weren't ever meant for airing, so the rumors say, but were instead made to distract the network from other things they wanted to sneak by and/or for the crew's own private enjoyment. These are usually just urban legends, like the supposed Spongebob episode where he dies, because realistically who would want to put the effort into making something nobody is ever going to see, especially back in the days before the internet.

One of the more infamous ones out there is an episode of the Cartoon Network show Dexter's Laboratory. Called "Dexter's Rude Removal," this episode was supposedly a super raunchy 10 minutes created by the crew with absolutely no intention of it ever getting on air. The most often cited source for this supposed episode was this forum post at Big Cartoon Forum by user TyphoidTimmy. According to him, Dexter's Lab creator Genndy Tartakovsy brought a copy of the short to Comic Con years ago, where he showed it after making sure everybody 18 and younger left. It's just THAT crude.


TyphoidTimmy then goes to explain what happens in the cartoon;

Dexter has decided that rudeness is preventing him from becoming the perfect child and has constructed a 'Rude Extractor' to separate his bad mojo. Dee Dee of course shows up at the wrong possible time and wreaks havoc. Dexter manages to tackle her, directly into the Rude Beam. Dee Dee and Dexter separate from each other, spawning a evil twin of themselves and knocking out their good halves. Both look at their good selves and immediately begin to curse each other, their surroundings and trash the place. ***k this ***k that...you are a ***king idiot...who the ***k you calling a ***king idiot, you ***king idiot? Mom calls "Dexter...Dee Dee....LUNCH! "AW ***t...I AM ***kING STARVED!" They tear out of the lab and blunder their way through the house, wrecking stuff and cursing up a blue streak. Just within earshot of mom, they stop cursing as they drop into their seat, and start shoveling food noisily with belches and farts. Mom pauses and turns asking how their food is. Dexter belches and exclaims "Aw ***king hell mom, this ***t is ***kin great!" to which Dee Dee counters "Shut the ***k up you ***thead...you can't ***king curse in front of ***king Mom!" and they both begin to literally curse the ***t out of each other. This exchange manages to make Mom faint and they really go at it (Seriously, Dee Dee called Dexter a Skull***king Douchebag one time). Eventually, Dexter and DeeDee wake up and manage to trap the cursing twins back in the lab and eradicate them (To the scream of ***k OFF, YOU ***kIN NERD from the evil sides). They leave the lab as Dexter declares that 'Lucky we got them in time...ah well no harm done'. Rounding the corner, they find Mom standing there menancingly with a big bar of soap as she screams "DEXTER AND DEE DEE...GET OVER HERE". The black circle closes over Dexter as he looks at the audience and goes "Oh ***k!" 

Pretty intense, right? To the point where it strains credibility. As funny as the idea of nostalgic kid's show characters calling each other skullfucking douchebags is, what reason would they possibly make this for? Cartoons take about 8 months to a year to produce. No crew would want to be saddled with the job of making something that serves no purpose, that's just wasted money. And if you've seen early Cartoon Network shows you'll know that they didn't have huge budgets in the first place. So it's a hoax, right?

Well it turns out not really! There IS a Dexter's Rude Removal that was created and you can watch! Adult Swim, Cartoon Network's sister channel, released the short onto YouTube yesterday:


It's funny! It's a treat to watch for somebody like me who grew up loving Dexter's Lab! But it's certainly not the uncensored raw swearfest people expected. All the swear words have the appropriate bleeps to them, and there certainly isn't anything as bad as "skull fucking douchebag" said here, nor would it be so bad teenagers under 18 couldn't enjoy it. 

So what's the deal? According to Genndy and storyboard artist/Powerpuff Girls creator/Lauren Faust husband Craig McCracken, it was made with the intent to air it. The bleeps were there all along. but the network got cold feet and canned it instead. Most likely TyphoidTimmy, who's username is kinda appropriate, heard this from a friend of a friend who worked on the show and extrapolated it to conclude it was like an episode of South Park.

The short is super funny though! It has the same zip as the classic cartoons did and, as Arrested Development has proved, sometimes bleeps can be funnier than the actual words themselves. I  particularly like the way Rude Dexter claims he makes his own *BLEEP*ing rules. There's a lot of moaning about the short already, that it was overhyped and whatnot, and I guess that's true if you're expecting that level of depravity. I never thought the thing was real, so I think my expectations were a little lower, just happy that it even exists. Watch it, it takes 10 minutes and if you remember trying to sneak past your parents to watch Cartoon Cartoon Friday Nights, it'll bring about some good feelings.

Fuck.