14 Cartoon Characters Who Disappeared Without A Literal Trace
The Porygon episode of Pokemon catches a lot of flak for triggering a ton of kids’ epilepsy, but it was actually Pikachu who launched that bizarre red and blue lightning. This is just like Justin Timberlake letting Janet Jackson take the fall for Nipplegate. Justice for Porygon!
‘South Park’: Dr. Mephesto
He was a staple of early episodes that needed some kind of mad science, like Stan’s evil clone or mutant turkeys, but his services were no longer required as the writers figured out other ways to cause mayhem. In South Park: Post COVID, he was just a disembodied ass floating in a jar of green goo.
‘The Fairly OddParents’: Tootie
Timmy’s be-braced, no-so-secret admirer began slipping away as the animated show wore on, but came roaring back in the live-action films as Timmy’s love interest.
‘Looney Tunes’: Pepe Le Pew
A date-raping Frenchman was a perfectly acceptable cartoon character when he debuted in 1945. And also 1996 when he appeared in Space Jam. But in 2021, the New York Times chronicled his numerous assaults, and Warner Bros. scrubbed him from Space Jam 2, which came out later that year.
‘Looney Tunes’: Speedy Gonzalez
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Cartoon Network took Speedy out of their rotation in 1999, conceding some racial insensitivity. But some saw him as a heroic, clever character, and lobbying from the League of United Latin American Citizens, among other groups, saw him actually reintroduced in Space Jam 2.
‘Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers’: Monterey Jack
The fat-faced, cheese loving, mustachioed mouse whose best friend is a fly is barely in the 2022 Disney+ film, and is the only Ranger who wasn’t voiced by his original voice actor. Canonically, he joined the criminal underworld because he racked up too much cheese debt.
‘Pokemon’: Porygon
This polygonal Pokemon was at the center of a bizarre controversy in 1996, when an episode of the show reportedly caused 600 kids to be hospitalized. The culprit ended up being a lightning bolt shot at Porygon by Pikachu, but the episode was shelved along with the character’s chances at mainstream stardom.
‘South Park’: Chef
Isaac Hayes left South Park almost 20 years ago, and details of the controversy continue to leak out. At the time, Hayes said he left the show after a 2005 episode that skewered Scientology, the cult-religion that Hayes was a part of. In recent years, his family has said that he was most likely forced out by his Scientology handlers. Either way, Chef was brutally killed off in a 2006 episode that used lines of dialogue from previous episodes.
‘Wreck-It Ralph’: Fix-It Felix
Voiced by Jack McBrayer, and married to Jane Lynch’s Sergeant Calhoun, Felix seemed prime for a spin-off. But Felix and Calhoun were reduced to an ill-fitting subplot in the sequel, Ralph Breaks the Internet.
‘The Simpsons’: Maude Flanders
Voice actor Maggie Roswell grew sick of living in Los Angeles just to occasionally record her parts (Maude Flanders, Helen Lovejoy, Miss Hoover and Luann Van Houten), so she moved to Denver in 1994. She requested a pay raise to account for her flights back and forth, but the producers refused and opted instead to widow Ned Flanders via a tragic T-shirt gun accident.
‘The Simpsons’: Apu
Notable white person Hank Azaria has been extremely reasonable about the cancellation of one of his most recognizable characters. Apu hasn’t had a speaking role on the show since 2016, and Azaria has taken accountability for playing the character for so long: “Through my role in Apu and what I created in Hollywood messaging… I helped to create a pretty marginalizing, dehumanizing stereotype.”
‘DuckTales’: Duckworth
When Disney rebooted the series in 2017, they turned Scrooge McDuck’s loyal butler into a ghost. That’s like having Alfred show up in a Batman movie and say, “I’m dead now, but don’t be mad at DC, I like being a ghost.”
‘Static Shock’: Richie
Despite being explicitly gay in the DC comics, the show was forced to appease censors by making him straight. Creator and writer Dwayne McDuffie said of TV Richie, “The way I dealt with Richie’s homosexuality was to write him aggressively and unconvincingly announcing his heterosexuality whenever possible.” It appears censors may have caught on, and the character was quietly shelved throughout most of the final season.
‘The Powerpuff Girls’: Ms. Bellum
The mayor’s faceless assistant, who was quite literally all legs and cleavage, was left out of the 2016 remake. According to executive producer Nick Jennings, “We felt like Ms. Bellum wasn’t quite indicative of the kind of messaging we wanted to be giving out at this time, so we sort of had her move on.”
‘Scooby-Doo’: Scrappy-Doo
When he first hit the scene, 10 years into the franchise’s existence, Scrappy was a breath of fresh air. Audiences liked the novelty of a new character, and writers found he helped the cautious Scooby get into trouble more quickly. His welcome wore thin some time in the ‘80s, he didn’t make a single canonical appearance in the ‘90s and he’s been an afterthought or even a villain in most of his modern appearances.