Mike Judge: 15 Know-You-Know Facts

15 Office Space caused TGI Fridays to lose their flair.

Four years after the film's debut, one of Judge's assistant directors was at a TGI Fridays and discovered that they ditched the flair because they were tired of customers (Office Space fans) making fun of the flair-adorned staff.

Judge told Deadline, “One of my A.Ds asked once at the restaurant why their flair was missing, and they said they removed it because of that movie Office Space.  So, maybe I made the world a better place.”

14 He has a bachelor's degree in physics.

In 1986, Judge graduated with a Bachelor of Physics from the University of California, San Diego.

He credits his degree with helping him animate objects to scale, along with providing the mathematical and engineering know-how to competently write Silicon Valley.

13 He enlisted Stanford mathematicians for that Silicon Valley d*ck joke.

Obviously wanting the math to be authentic in Silicon Valley, he asked Stanford mathematicians to make sure the math behind an elaborate d*ck joke was correct.

The AV Club posted the 12-page paper explaining the "Optimal Tip-To-Tip Efficiency: A Model For Male Audience Stimulation" formula.

12 He was the voice of Kenny in South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut.

South Park co-creator Matt Stone provides Kenny's muffled voice in the show, they got Mike Judge to provide the voice for un-hooded Kenny in 1999’s South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut.

11 He considered becoming a toymaker.

He told Wired that he and a friend thought of starting a toy company after winning a physics competition where they designed a micro processor driven remote-controlled car capable of balancing objects on top of itself. 

10 He programmed F-18 Hornet fighter jets.

One of Judge's first jobs out of college was programming test systems used to evaluate F-18 Hornet Fighter Jets.

He was working as an engineer at the time while going to grad school part-time, until he was convinced to switch careers after a brief stay in Silicon Valley. 

9 Judge got to pitch a “show he actually wanted to watch” to Fox.

Fox wanted him to create a “companion” animated show for The Simpsons, and because he somehow had an amazing production deal with the Fox network, he would get paid whether Fox liked his show idea or not.

Because of this, he came up with a pilot script for King of The Hill, a show he said that he would actually want to watch himself.

8 He got Hank Hill to pitch the show to the president of Fox.

Because animating the pilot script would take him roughly 9 months, he and co-creator Greg Daniels animated a “pencil test” with Judge voicing Hank Hill’s pitch of his family and friends to the network.

Fox loved it and they immediately got to work.

7 The studio wanted a sequel to Office Space but Mike Judge did not.

Despite the initial financial failure of Office Space, the studio was eager to make a sequel because, after becoming a cult classic, it ended up making back its money in cable broadcasts and home media sales.

Since Judge has stated that he had a nightmarish experience on the first film, and didn’t want to go through it again, so he turned down the opportunity to direct a sequel.

6 Silicon Valley was originally conceived as a feature film.

More than 10 years before Silicon Valley made its debut in 2014, Judge toyed with the idea of creating a feature film bout America’s tech giants.

He told Deadline, “I’ve been hovering around with something like this for a while. Way back, before the dot-com burst in 2000, I thought about doing something like this, about a tech billionaire like Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, but that was as a movie.”

5 Mike Judge was thinking of Thomas Middleditch as he wrote Silicon Valley.

At the time, Thomas Middleditch was better known for stand-up and smaller film and TV roles, but Judge had him in mind when he was writing the role of Pied Piper founder, Richard Hendricks.

Judge said, “This project felt charmed from the beginning. I was a little worried before we started the casting process. I thought of Thomas Middleditch when I wrote it. He auditioned like everybody else and was great. It was important to me that the cast was believable, that they are highly intelligent and not just goofy caricatures. They had to be both funny and good actors.”

4 He was born in Ecuador.

Born to American parents, Mike Judge was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador on October 17, 1962.

His father was an archeologist, working on a project for a non-government organization. When he was seven, his family relocated to Albequerque, NM, where Judge grew up. 

3 He named Beavis and Butt-head after kids in his neighborhood.

In an interview with John Kricfalusi, the creator of Red & Stimpy, he said, “When I was in college, a twelve-year-old kid next door called himself Iron Butt. They all called him Iron Butt because supposedly you could kick him in the butt as hard as you wanted, and it wouldn't hurt him. He'd stick his butt out and kids would line up and just whack! kick him in the butt and he'd say, "See, it doesn't hurt."

“His friend, actually, we called Butt-Head, even though that wasn't his name. Then there was a kid in the neighborhood about three blocks away, his name was Bobby Beavis. He wasn't anything like Beavis. I just liked the name. And he was sort of an athletic guy.”

2 He had a ham radio license at 12 years old.

Cool!

This might not seem all that remarkable at first glance, but you actually have to pass a technical test in order to get a ham radio license, and he got one at 12.

"I actually had a ham radio license, and would be in my garage with a dipole antenna on the roof and an Heath-kit transceiver doing Morse code, and talking to people all around the country. People throw the term 'nerd' around loosely nowadays. I was a major nerd for my time.”

1 He was a musical prodigy.

I guess the bass is cooler than the trombone. Depends who you ask though.

Judge started playing trombone in the 5th grade, and was proficient enough to make the all-state symphony.

In high school, he put the trombone down, and picked up the bass, and ended up being a blues bass player who played with Anson Funderburgh and The Rockets on their Rack 'Em Up album. He also played with Doyle Bramhall on numerous recordings in the 90s.

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Top Image: 3 Arts Entertainment & HBO