Kids' cartoons with dirty secrets

According to Ward Kimball during an interview in the 70's, animators had secretly drawn pictures of graphic intercourse between the film's characters, leading to a 16mm reel of full, pornographic animation. This eventually disappeared after being passed around by the animators.

According to urban legend, Max Fleischer produced a special cartoon in September 1938 to thank all the artists who chose to join the studio in its move from New York to Miami, Florida. This cartoon, titled "Welcome to Miami", resembling in every sense a completed cartoon, featured Popeye having hardcore sex with Betty Boop. One of the sexual acts practiced involved a can of spinach. This reel was never seen again after the Fleischers were forced out of their own studio in 1942.

Looney Tunes have been targeted mainly to adults since the Second World War, but in a privately screened short film named "Breakdowns of 1939", Porky Pig in one blooper said "son of a bitch".

As a response to her de-sexification in Walt's marketing strategy, as the sexualisation was subtle but apparent in Peter Pan, Disney animators drew 15 seconds of pencil test animation with Jiminy Cricket and Tinker Bell in a very sexy situation.

While John Kricfalusi worked as an animator at Hanna-Barbera back in the early 80's, he and inker Bill Wray drew a raunchy, pornographic comic page based on the characters of Fred and Wilma titled "Cave Nudes" in 1984. A "fine funny fellow" printed multiple copies of this to place in the producer's office, just to wind up anyone who entered. Before these were destroyed, Kricfalusi anonymously sent this page to Robert Crumb to publish in issue #9 of his "Weirdo" magazine.

While Bernard and Bianca are first flying on Orville, a subliminal photograph of a nude woman can be seen in one frame. This was added where the film would be cropped out for theatrical release, focusing on Bernard and Bianca.

It has been rumoured that the animators had a secret stash of pornography of the characters somewhere in the studio.

When Betty changes into her pink outfit, the animator drew a nipple which can only be seen on the orginal cel, which was eventually posted online.

As well as sketches of Ariel that this list will later attribute, cartoonist Dan Haskett, after work on The Chipmunk Adventure, would draw the Chipettes as adults every so often. Due to their nature, and some of these sketches being scanty for the sake of scanty, it is easy to assume that these were just personal work, although a feature in an "unproduced" folder on his now-defunct website has led to rumours of a prime-time sitcom pitch centering on these incarnations.

This film may not be for children exactly, but to make it more child friendly, Disney edited out three strong adult themes for video release - Baby Herman poking a woman under her dress, Betty Boop slipping her breasts in one frame (as an in-joke to the innuendos in her cartoons), and Jessica Rabbit's underwear as the lighting made it look like she wasn't wearing any. Although Disney requested these frames to be destroyed, the original cut has been shown on some international broadcasts.




The portrayal of Jessica was initally more sexualised than the finished product, as hinted at by this concept sketch by David Russell where Eddie walks into his bathroom to find Jessica having taken a shower.


On a similar note to the first screenshot, an alternate cel of Jessica once Smartass discovers her "booby trap" recently surfaced where he ends up pushing down her dress a little.

One of the artists behind the show secretly drew porn of Chip and Gadget, apparently in response to a fan who really, really admired the latter, and this fan would post the sketch online many years later. Click here if it's truly your lifelong dream to see some of Disney's most lovable rodents canonically bone!

Several rough sketches of Ariel depict her in the nude. This applies not just to figure sketches by animator Dan Haskett, but early concept art and rough animation as well, although these adhere to the original story.

While the show contains a variety of adult themes, a follow-up show was made for Spike TV called the "Adult Party Cartoon", in which Ren & Stimpy are gay, in response to speculation about their sexuality (this was suggested in 'Son of Stimpy'). The creator didn't appreciate most of them, due to Spike's pressuring of gross-out, adult jokes. However, John was known throughout his career for his indecent behaviour towards the women he employed, all of which was hinted at since but not fully elaborated until March 2018. Among those who stepped forth was Katie Rice, who designed the girl in this screencap.

Animator Steve Ressel made a contribution to a "storyboard jam", something animators take part in when they are fed up of working on the show. It involves a foulmouthed, abusive Stu Pickles. Only the third page has been leaked publicly.

What continued was Stu letting out his penis, censored by a lightning bolt and "BALLS OF THUNDER!"

An episode named "Rude Removal" accidentally aired on Cartoon Network some time in 1998. It involved Dexter and Dee-Dee accidentally splitting themselves into their polite halves and their rude halves, whose profanity is much more elaborate than future cartoon episodes about profanity. Creator Genndy Tartakovsky has screened it at several conventions, but when Adult Swim was informed of people asking Genndy about it at a Reddit AMA in October 2012, the episode was made public a few months later.

This rather racy drawing of Lola Bunny was rejected and reworked in the final animation.

Tom Kenny took inspiration for the voice of SpongeBob from a foulmouthed, angry midget auditioning for the part of an elf in a Christmas commercial. In an interview with Marc Maron on his WTF podcast in 2012, Kenny imitated this elf sounding exactly like a profane SpongeBob.


Similarly... (at 3:14)

Pitched to Disney and submitted to Cartoon Network without any luck, creators Kevin Kaliher and Meaghan Dunn resorted to sketching the characters for their own personal use. Having based the characters on Kaliher and herself, Dunn included Kitty Bobo and Maggie in comic stories occasionally dealing with risqué, adult topics. One comic features Maggie having her period, while another features Bobo offering her a drug.

Around a decade after the Cartoon Network series came to an end, creator Genndy Tartakovsky expressed interest in a feature film adaptation with the involvement of J. J. Abrams. When this failed to make the rounds, he instead opted to develop a fifth season, intended to end Jack's story once and for all, to be broadcast on Adult Swim. This meant that it would still retain much of the tone of the original series, but this shift in development meant that the violence would be far bloodier than it used to be, the body count originally being exclusive to robots. Furthermore, the show would also be more sexually suggestive, and in the sixth episode more profane.

Sinbad character animator Kevin O'Hara pulled a cheeky prank on the studio by taking a shot where the titular character carries Marina...

...and giving it a cheeky little spin.

If you look closely, you can tell that Sinbad's supervising animator, James Baxter, was not impressed.

Four risqué storyboard frames were posted onto the production blog, two of the girls making out and two parodying Alien, complete with gore.

A conceptual design by Sherm Cohen for SpongeBob's outfit during his "Goofy Goober Rock" gives the kid a bulge.

To commemorate the release of Ice Age: The Meltdown, Blue Sky teamed with Fuzzy Door to insert Scrat into a cutaway gag, the time Peter froze his "nuts", in the episode 'Sibling Rivalry', an episode in which Stewie battles his half-brother, born from a lesbian couple who collected Peter's sperm, and Lois and Peter's sex life is redetermined when Lois gains weight.


But the real kicker is how Fox was so committed to marketing what is essentially a children's film (despite such language as "pervert" and "crap" being present) to the audience watching Family Guy that they released sponsorship idents to tie in with the film in which Sid the Sloth would present their programming, and that included him quoting the theme song to Family Guy, and that in turn resulted in him directly alluding to "sex on TV".

Storyboard revisionist Natasha Allegri drew some special, spicy art involving Bubblegum and Marceline flirting with each other. This was featured in an official behind-the-scenes recap, "Mathematical", that implied that the creators took inspiration from fan input related to Bubblegum and Marceline's relationship in 'What Was Missing'. Producer Fred Seibert responded, "in trying to get the show’s audience involved we got wrapped up by both fan conjecture and spicy fanart and went a little too far." The series finale, 'Come Along With Me', canonized this relationship with a brief kiss.

Mordecai, Pops and Benson were based on two clerks' acid trips in JG Quintel's short film, 2 in the AM PM. The two clerks turn into such creatures as a jay and a talking gumball machine after taking drugs, and utter much more harsh profanity than that in the first season of Regular Show.

A gnome sporting a mankini was as risqué as this movie and its sequel could get; however, character designer and animator Gary Dunn was able to have as much fun drawing gnomes as he wanted behind the scenes.

Storyboard artist for The Looney Tunes Show and penciller for past Looney Tunes comics Dave Alvarez drew this on a fax to the comic editors for fun:

Animator Jin Kim produced a rough test based on attitude and facial expressions for the animation of the film. He used a snippet of John C. Reilly's dialogue from "Step Brothers", so in the test Ralph practically curses.
vimeo.com/68919357

Behind the scenes, director Chris Sanders drew several artistic nude sketches presumably of Eep, the main protagonist.

After departing from Cartoon Network Studios, a model designer and colorist for Mighty Magiswords saw fit to draw characters like Vambre in any situation he wanted, the first of which he posted to his (highly) NSFW art blog. Posted here with permission.

The character of Phillip spawned from Mike Owens' short film from 2010, Phillip the Safety Egg, a far more surreal, gritty and cynical cartoon than the resulting series. Having not been particularly successful among film festival crowds, the short can no longer be found online, presumably due to its contrasting appeal and in fear that a younger audience would discover it.

An outtake from the filming of Sesame Street's All-Star 25th Birthday surfaced online in which Julia Louis-Dreyfus curses in front of Zoe and Elmo. Both puppeteers were in-character at this moment.

In 1979, the cast and crew of Rainbow submitted a sketch to the private Thames TV "Christmas tape", with the characters of Rainbow making sexual innuendos throughout.

The Muppets are not immune to cursing, as long as it's as mild as "ass". However, the strongest profanity uttered by a Muppet was by Rowlf in an interview with Jim Henson by Arsenio Hall. (8:37)

It took over 200 takes to get the Riverbottom Nightmare Band's drum roll past Emmet and Ma into perfect position. As Muppeteers like Frank Oz tend to treat their puppets like actors, Oz reacted to several misfires in Ma's temporary voice, and some of his lines include:
"What the hell was that?"
"My God, it went right in the f- studio floor."
"Sweet Jesus! Good Lord..."

The show is geared more towards adults, but in the days when children were watching, this happened behind the scenes:

The puppet of Spamela Hamderson was built with private parts included.