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Jezzy's World is an American animated television series created by Scott Skinny and Jeremy Wallis which originally aired on Fox from December 14, 2014 to May 10, 2019. It follows a self-insert of Wallis named Jezzy, who is a relapsing drug addict, as he and his childhood friend Satan, Skinny's self-insert, embark on various shitty misadventures, often violent, sexual, and/or religious in nature.
The series' premise was conceived by Wallis after he snorted cocaine in front of his computer monitor while Scratch was open, and developed its setting and the character of Jezzy; Skinny was mainly responsible for developing the series' other characters. Jezzy's World was originally pitched to ABC for a 2014–15 premiere, but ABC rejected the show after someone at the network took one look at the pilot and projectile vomited. Thereafter, series was picked up by Fox, instead premiering as an impromptu "mid-season replacement" during the following season. The show was executive produced by Wallis for TheRealJezzy Productions, Skinny for Angular Entertainment, James May for Cheese vs. Cheese Productions, David Armand and Alan Fleshburn for Former Assassins for Hire Productions, and Michael Rotenberg for 3 Arts Entertainment, and Phil Roman and Steve Waterman for Film Roman, in association with 20th Century Fox Television. Despite the series' popularity, it suffered behind the scenes due to rapidly decreasing viewership, rising production costs, creative differences, and censorship challenges.
Jezzy's World received generally positive reception from television critics because they have awful taste. The show was praised for its "surreal humor", existentialist themes, headache-inducing animation, electronic score, and brain rot content. The show's popularity led to international syndication, with reruns currently airing in the United States on FXX, and formerly MyNetworkTV. It also led to noteworthy guest appearances from celebrities such as Michael Fassbender, former U.S. President Barack Obama, Cinjun Tate, Rivers Cuomo (celebrity status still disputed), Jon Stewart, Stephen J. Cannell, MF Doom, Harry Enfield, Tom Hanks, and Gillian Anderson. The series won two Annie Awards, two Writers Guild of America Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, a Critics' Choice Television Award, and a Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence thanks to a combination of bad taste and award show rigging. A sequel series, Satan's World, aired on Hulu from January 6, 2022 to December 19, 2024.
Synopsis[]
- See also: List of Jezzy's World characters
Jezzy (Jeremy Wallis) is an 18-year-old (later 19-year-old) boy who lives in the town of Brainrot, Florida. The Wall Street Journal described him as "goofy ahh lil shit". He has a history of alcohol, tobacco, and stimulant addictions and, consequently, an extensive criminal record, which led to him being sent to rehab, which his best friend, novelist and part-time Hell ruler Satan (Benjamin Diskin), busted him out of before the events of the series. Jezzy subsequently moves into Satan's home at the fictional Uncut Palms apartment complex, while Satan tirelessly attempts to keep him out of trouble because they have one of those "friendships".
Jezzy goes on absolutely fucking insane misadventures throughout Brainrot, often in search of drugs, porn, or "a reason to live", and he often brings his imaginary friend Kid (Christopher "Kid" Reid), a rapping, chain-smoking anthropomorphic duck. This is much to the chagrin of the series' supporting cast: Mr. Thornsburger (Brendon Small), Satan's paleoconservative next-door neighbor; Alyssa (Alyssa Q.), Jezzy's love interest; Pinky (Griffin Myers), an annoying little shit; Jilly (Kristen Schaal), a little girl who wanders around the apartment complex at night with a francisca searching for souls to reap; and Sparky (Evan Peters), an anthropomorphic wolf used for non sequitur Bunny Maloney-esque adult humor once everyone else has had their fair share of screen time.
Most episodes feature reaction video-style interstitial segments where Jezzy and Satan watch production logos and offer commentary. BuzzFeed News described the pair as "CLG Wiki Editor's Notes personified". The two prefer 1980s and 1990s film and television production logos, and obsess over older studios such as Carolco Pictures, Columbia Pictures Television, New Line Television, and Paramount Television. Wallis told CNN that the segments were inspired by—and you'd never guess this one—Bluee Gost, and stated that he is "particularly fond" of these segments because "I give insight into the characters' logo tastes while at the same time having an excuse to jack off to the Paramount mountains. Wait... I'm not being recorded, am I?!" Multiple episodes feature additional interstitial segments wherein Jezzy and/or Satan rant on various things, like "baby shows" they don't like, usually opening with "[blank]? Oh my God, more like [blank]!" The Chicago Sun-Times described these sequences as "the Vyond community in a nutshell."
Episodes[]
- Main article: List of Jezzy's World episodes
Production[]
Development[]
In May 2011, the Fox Broadcasting Company canceled the animated series Donny's Damn World, co-created by animator and cartoonist Jeremy Wallis, after one season due to amusingly low ratings. This drove its creator, Wallis, into a deep state of, manic depression, turning to Scratch and cocaine to numb his pain. One night in "June or July", Wallis was playing around with Scratch before developing the urge to snort more coke. Leaving the Scratch window open on his computer, he speedily dumped a large mound of coke on his desk and snorted it all up. Upon looking up from the remaining specks of white dust in front of him, he saw the Scratch website come to life, with all sorts of cartoon characters hopping around on the screen and calling out to him, "Pitch another show, Jezzy!" This would serve as a basis for Jezzy's World.
In August 2011, Michael Rotenberg, co-founder of 3 Arts Entertainment, contacted Wallis about "producing something we can bank off of". Days later, screenwriter and producer Scott Skinny, who was an executive producer of Donny's Damn World, met with Wallis to discuss collaborating on a television series pitch. Wallis immediately responded with, "Let's make a show about highness!" Skinny was confused. Wallis clarified that he wanted to make an animated series that "looks like it was made by guys like us—guys who just, like, spend all day lounging around, sniffing blow". (He forgot that Barney & Friends already exists.) Skinny, who was pretty baked at the time, responded, "OK. Yeah. Sure. Whatever. Sounds good. Got potato chips?" The pair would spend the next few weeks sketching out a basic premise for the show; Wallis had already developed the setting and the series' main character Jezzy, his self-insert, so Skinny developed the other main and supporting cast, including his own "interpretation" of Satan, who was actually just Skinny's self-insert. Skinny originally wanted to outline the show for Fox, but Wallis objected, stating that "Fox betrayed us. We can't go back."
In December 2011, Skinny and Wallis began shopping Jezzy's World to various outlets. It garnered significant interest from ABC, whose president, Paul Lee overestimated the show's potential and commissioned a pilot episode. Skinny and Wallis subsequently sought support from 20th Century Fox Television, which produced Donny's Damn World, and producers David Armand and Alan Fleshburn. The pilot episode, simply titled "Pilot", was subsequently produced and presented to ABC in 2012. After watching the pilot, Lee projectile vomited on Skinny and Wallis and yelled, "WHAT THE FUCKING HELL IS THIS SHIT?! GET THAT THE FUCK OUTTA HERE! NEVER COME THE FUCK BACK TO ABC! I HATE YOU! GO FUCK YOURSELVES, YOU STUPID WANKERS! GO! FUCK! YOUR! SEEEEELLLLLVVVVVES!!!!"
In winter 2012, Fox Broadcasting Company Entertainment president Kevin Reilly screened the pilot, jerked off to it like two or three times, and concluded that he enjoyed the episode. However, Reilly was concerned that the show would "get dumber" each week and the show wouldn't generate mass appeal. Wallis simply responded, "Three words: Married... with Children". By 2013, Fox executives had enough confidence in the series to order a full season on the sole condition that "you fuck this show up, we fuck your career up".
Writing[]
While writing the pilot, Skinny and Wallis outlined the basics for developing the "plot" of each episode. First, Skinny and Wallis both wrote an extremely basic synopsis of the episode on a whiteboard. While writing this synopsis, Wallis created several "loose" lines of dialogue while thinking of the specifics for each scene. After the synopsis was written, Wallis took it from there, writing a more descriptive plot "pre-summary" incorporating those "loose" lines of dialogue. Finally, he downed a whole bottle of Jack Daniel's and a whole lotta of Vicodin, and wrote the actual script while wasted and vomiting on himself.
After the series was greenlit, Wallis formed a small writing team with the only three people he could recruit: Mike Reiss, Tow Ubukata, and Gabriela Cowperthwaite. According to Wallis, at the time that this team was assembled, they worked in a muggy, stinky trailer with no AC "chronically" parked outside one of 20th Century Fox's studios. After a complaint was supposedly filed by the writers with an HR department the real HR department denied the existence of, the studio was like "OK BITCHES" and briefly crammed them into an even smaller trailer with a broken AC. After both trailers burst into flames, the studio finally moved them into an actual fucking office on the Fox Studio Lot, next-door to the Family Guy writers, who were constantly screaming racial slurs, making writing difficult. As a result, most first-season episodes are heavily critical of 20th Century Fox, Family Guy, and "MacFarlane's mom".
Animation[]
Jezzy's World was produced by Cheese vs. Cheese Productions, Former Assassins for Hire Productions, TheRealJezzy Productions, Angular Entertainment, Film Roman, 3 Arts Entertainment, and 20th Century Fox Television. Film Roman handled U.S. animation production for the series. The Jezzy's World pilot was animated overseas by Rough Draft Korea before AKOM assumed overseas animation production duties for the remainder of season 1, followed by Sunmin Image Pictures from seasons 2 to 4 and Pierrot in season 5. The production staff at Film Roman handled storyboarding, character design, background design, prop design, and layouts. They would create animatics for each episode using Microsoft Paint and Windows Movie Maker to be screened by the writers, who would usually just say something like "yeah, sure, whatever". The work would then be shipped to the overseas animation studio for inbetweening and digital ink and paint and all the other good stuff.
Each overseas studio had a distinct animation style. Rough Draft and later AKOM animated the show really cheaply because Rough Draft and AKOM, using Microsoft Paint, a cracked version Microsoft PowerPoint, and Google Slides to draw the frames and Movie Maker to compile the frames into a video and add visual effects. To save time on animation and money, they animated the show at six frames per second. After the producers got tired of looking at the show's animation, AKOM was dismissed from production and replaced by Sunmin, which animated the show more expensively (not that you'd notice) by actually paying for PowerPoint and using VideoPad Video Editor to compile the frames, and rendered animation at 12 frames per second. Under Sunmin, new elements were introduced to the series' animation, such as bad chroma key visual effects, computer-generated imagery made in Autodesk Maya by F.U.FX, and in season 4, visuals drawn in Paint 3D. Sunmin quit animating the show after season 4 after Rebecca Sugar scolded them for "focusing this fucking hard on a show that [wasn't] Steven Universe", and Pierrot assumed its duties. Under Pierrot, the show was animated in what Wallis called a "boring, more industry-typical manner" using Adobe Animate.
After any given overseas studio finished its work on the episode, the animation would be Gmailed back to Film Roman, which would edit the show in VideoPad. This would include inserting the opening sequence; inserting and timing dialogue, music, and sound effects; "correcting" animation mistakes and visuals that didn't align with the director's intent; inserting additional chroma key effects; and inserting stock footage. Then, the credits would be typed in PowerPoint, and each slide would be saved as an image and inserted into the VideoPad project, and the closing logos would be inserted. Each episode ends with a five-second black screen to ensure none of the footage gets cut off. Finally, Skinny and Wallis themselves would play the video back one last time to check for any errors. Once any errors are cleaned up, it's time to export the video! The pilot episode was exported at 29.97 frames per second, the standard NTSC/ATSC frame rate. However, every subsequent episode was exported at 23.976 frames per second to look like, as Skinny worded it, "a real TV show".
In 2018, Screen Rant wrote that the show had "what is quite certainly the dumbest and most egregious animation process we've ever heard of" and called for Skinny and Wallis to be publicly hanged.
Casting and voice recording[]
Kirby Herbie, known for his work on Bluee Gost and GoAnimate the Series, served as the show's casting director. Herbie began casting through a Craigslist ad he posted in early 2013. Because nobody responded within next the week, Wallis cast himself as Jezzy. "It was for the better, anyway," Wallis told Fox Business in 2018. "I am Jezzy. Jezzy is me. I love Jezzy."
Two weeks in, a down-on-his-luck Evan Peters auditioned for the role of Satan. However, the executive producers thought he was "too adorable" for that role and found him better fitted for Sparky, an anthropomorphic wolf. Before he even finished auditioning, Skinny shouted, "You exist, Evan! You've already landed the role! Congrats!" Benjamin Diskin responded to the thinking he would could audition for the role of an anthropomorphic canid, which he really wanted for some reason, and he was so enraged to find out that the role of Sparky was taken that he threatened to punch the creators' fathers. Wallis simply responded, "Calm down, my G. You'll get that opportunity again in the future." And for once, he was right. Maybe even too right. Meanwhile, Herbie was hoppin' up and down like a dumbass, going "THAT'S IT! THE SATAN RAGE I'VE BEEN LOOKIN' FOR! YYYYYEEEEEAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!" Diskin was subsequently cast as Satan.
Bertalan Borsay, Calista Flockhart, Louis Horn, Frankie Muniz, Kristen Schaal, and Brendon Small were the only other actors to respond to the Craigslist ad. Flockhart auditioned for the role of Jilly but was turned down because she was on Ally McBeal; Skinny thought that show was "boring, of-its-time '90s/2000s TV poop", while Wallis had a genuine, mutual hatred for its creator, David E. Kelley. Muniz auditioned to play Mr. Thornsburger, but he was turned down because Skinny thought Malcolm in the Middle was "boring, of-its-time 2000s TV poop", and he thought Borsay was more appropriate for the role. However, the moment Borsay opened his mouth, Herbie was tired of him and he screamed "MOTHERFUCKER, NEXT!" No one else wanted to play the role, so Skinny drove slowly and intimidatingly around Los Angeles in search of Muniz, but kept running into Small instead. Small was then violently dragged by Herbie and Wallis in front of Skinny to "audition" and was cast as Mr. Thornsburger before he even spoke. Horn and Schaal would later be cast Pinky and Jilly as they were the only people remaining, but Horn was fired from the show after the pilot was recorded due to sexual harassment allegations, and Pinky's dialogue was dubbed over by Griffin Myers, who was also violently dragged into the studio, and Myers ended up being Pinky's mainstay voice actor. The characters of Alyssa and Kid were respectively based on Alyssa Q. and Christopher "Kid" Reid, and written with their acting abilities in mind.
Music[]
The theme song for Jezzy's World, aptly titled "Jezzy's World", was performed by the rap rock band Marvelous5 and composed by Wallis and rapper Matter D, one of the band's lead vocalists. Wallis had previously approached Matter D about composing a theme for Donny's Damn World, but Matter D told Wallis to go fuck himself. However, the two reconciled at a Golden Globe Awards after-party sometime in the very early 2010s, after which Matter D said, "Yeah. I'll make a theme for one of your shows. Whatever." The band purportedly recorded up to thirty demos of "Jezzy's World" because studio musicians with time on their hands before recording the final version.
Jezzy's World features an "experimental electronic score" that constantly samples the music from the BBC One "Balloon" idents. HotSauceNinja composed the core for the first season of Jezzy's World, but left the show thereafter due to pay disputes and a fistfight with an unnamed crew member, who many sources speculated to be Wallis. ReedFromNJ provided additional compositions in season 1, and took over as primary composer in seasons 2 to 4, with s3xd3m0n joining the show as a composer for the fourth season. After s3xd3m0n left the show, ThomasTheGr8 joined as composer. During the first season, the series' score primarily consisted of drum and bass music HotSauceNinja composed on the toilet. However, subsequent seasons feature industrial music and trap beats.
Jezzy's World frequently incorporates production logo music because logo kid show. Examples include the series' theme sampling the music of the Coca-Cola Telecommunications production logo (which the crew spent "a million years" fishing for a high-quality capture of before Wallis found it on YouTube accidentally), the 1983 Columbia Pictures Television music playing over many later episodes' title cards, the music from the 1998 Klasky Csupo "Super Scary Face" logo playing over what Skinny called "scenes that'll become memes, I swear", and the Paramount Pictures fanfare playing over what Wallis describes as "triumphant or uplifting moments". However, all this shit begins to be phased out halfway through the series' fourth season in favor of actual licensed music. Songs used in the show include Omnipotent Youth Society's "Kill That Man from Shijiazhuang", The Cult's "Sweet Soul Sister", R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)", Meme Mafia's "Dead Memes", Berlanti Sigma's "This Used to Be Hip-Hop", Weewee's "I Hate You (Warner)", and Starship's "We Built This City".
Broadcast history[]
Fox broadcast the pilot episode of Jezzy's World as a "preview" on December 14, 2014. The series resumed airing with "The 2nd Episode" on January 11, 2015, placing it in a Sunday night time slot. The first season received unexpectedly high ratings, with viewer counts regularly exceeding 10 million. In May 2015, the series was officially renewed for a 20-episode second season, which premiered on September 27, 2015 in the same time slot. Ratings remained high during season 2.
In May 2016, the series was renewed for a third season, which premiered on September 24, 2016. This season saw the show move to Saturday nights. Although earlier third-season episodes received some of the series' highest ratings—its premiere, "Jezzy vs. China", receiving a record 20.2 million views—viewership waned as the season progressed. Nonetheless, it somehow received a large enough audience to be renewed for a fourth season in May 2017. Season 4's premiere was broadcast on September 30, 2017 to 8.6 million viewers, the lowest Nielsen rating for a Jezzy's World season premiere at that point. From there, viewership dropped to numbers as low as 4.2 million viewers per episode. Despite the drop in viewership, Fox had faith in the show for some reason and decided to give a show another chance. In May 2018, the show was renewed for a fifth season on an unorthodox trial basis, the deal being that if ratings shot up during season 5, the show could continue into a sixth season.
Season 5 premiered on October 5, 2018. That same month, the series entered barter syndication. It saw Jezzy's World move to Friday nights at 10:00 p.m., within the Friday night death slot, and receive very little on-air promotion. On top of that, public interest in the series had died down significantly, which negatively impacted the series' ratings. In fact, it died so much that the former half season 5 only received 1–3 million viewers a week, with the numbers showing that much of the show's original viewer base had been lost to long-running Saturday night hit Bluee Gost. The final episode of the series, "Jezzy's Showdown", aired on May 10, 2019. Reruns of the series began airing on MyNetworkTV in September 2019 before the show was pulled in 2022. FXX has aired reruns since January 2, 2025.
In Canada, the series was simulcast on Global. In the United Kingdom, the series aired on BBC Two on September 5, 2016 to May 7, 2018 before the channel randomly lost the series to satellite competitor Sky One because British television, and it premiered on the channel on February 21, 2019, later airing on Sky Replay. It left the Sky channels after June 12, 2021 because rebranding or restructuring or whatever the fuck was going on at Sky UK. In Australia, Jezzy's World premiered on Disney Channel on July 3, 2017 before being pulled from the network in August 2018 due to controversy surrounding its sexual and drug-related content it later returned to Disney Channel from January 2020 to the channel's closure on April 30, 2020.