Evil Con Carne

Once upon a time, there was a jillionaire playboy who was blown up in a tremendous explosion. His brain survived... (Stomach, too!) ...and was attached to the body of a stupid circus bear. I am that brain. My name is Hector Con Carne, and I will one day rule the world! (He laughs maniacally.)

— Hector Con Carne's brain (and stomach), in the opening title sequence

Hector Con Carne (Phil LaMarr), a wealthy crime lord and evil genius bent on taking over the world and the League of Nations, was caught in an explosion initiated by his nemesis, Cod Commando (Maxwell Atoms), a soldier for the Secret Paramilitary Organized Response Kommand (S.P.O.R.K.). The explosion scattered most of his body across the world. He was rescued by the scientist Major Dr. Ghastly (Grey DeLisle), who placed his living remains into two containment units: one for his brain, and the other for his stomach. These two units were later installed into Boskov (Frank Welker), a purple Russian circus bear, giving Con Carne's brain control over (almost) all the bear's actions and movements.

Hector, Dr. Ghastly and his military leader, General Skarr (Armin Shimerman), then created a secret laboratory on an island with a bunny-shaped mountain known as "Bunny Island" (a parody of Ernst Stavro Blofeld's lair in the James Bond movies). Gathering an army, Con Carne resumed his quest for world domination and made a new goal: to find his missing body parts. The group's schemes typically end in failure, often due to the behavior and conflicts within the trio: Skarr is tired of being directed by Hector and wishes to overthrow him; Ghastly cares more about her unrequited love for her boss than world domination; while Hector is narcissistic, megalomaniacal, and generally abusive towards his henchmen.

A viewer's poll to decide a new Cartoon Network animated series, titled Big Pick, was held on the Internet from June 16 to August 25, 2000.[3] The three choices for short films to become animated series were The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones?, and Longhair and Doubledome. After the event, the Meet the Reaper short film won with 57% of the vote.[4] While Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones? became an animated series in 2002, Longhair and Doubledome appeared at another Big Pick event, but lost once again. Another original short/pilot titled Evil Con Carne had been produced in 2000, shortly after the Billy & Mandy short. The two ideas were ultimately combined into a single show, as Cartoon Network desired a show that had a "middle cartoon" as an in-between segment (a format found in the Dial M for Monkey and The Justice Friends shorts in Dexter's Laboratory, and the I Am Weasel segment on Cow and Chicken).[5]

The resulting show, Grim & Evil, premiered on August 24, 2001, and was put on hiatus on October 18, 2002.[6] In 2003, 13 more half-hour episodes of Grim & Evil were made, but aired when Cartoon Network separated the two series, and The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy and Evil Con Carne earned their own full-length series later that year. After production wrapped on both series' new seasons, the network gave Maxwell Atoms a decision to choose one show to continue, while the other would be dropped from production. Atoms ultimately went with Billy & Mandy, and the final season of Evil Con Carne subsequently aired in 2004. He embraced the network's decision to drop one of the two series, as he considered being in charge of producing both shows difficult.[5]

After Evil Con Carne was cancelled, its characters appeared in The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy. The first cameo was in the episode "Chicken Ball Z" which ended with Mandy purchasing Hector's Bunny Island. General Skarr moved to Billy's neighborhood in the episode "Skarred for Life" after Bunny Island was bought out by an "entertainment corporation that didn't want competition in world domination". Since then, General Skarr went on to become a recurring character in Billy & Mandy. In the episode "Company Halt", Con Carne and Ghastly appear in Endsville, in order to recruit Skarr and revive Evil Con Carne (the organization, not the show) in another attempt to take over the world; naturally, like most of their other schemes and misadventures, it ends in failure when Skarr turns against Hector once he tries to destroy his garden in an attempt to kill Billy, and crushes him with a giant catapult (which they were to use to destroy the neighborhood), causing Ghastly and the rest of the army run away. According to Tom Warburton, characters from Evil Con Carne were originally set to appear in the television special "The Grim Adventures of the KND".[7] Hector, General Skarr, and Dr. Ghastly (strangely, they're "costumed" by Lazlo, Raj, and Clam) did briefly appear in the crossover's end credits in a crossover with Camp Lazlo titled "Evil Camp Carne".

On July 29, 2016, the series aired re-runs for a single day on Cartoon Network's sister channel, Boomerang, in the United States, despite the schedule for Boomerang saying that The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy was airing in its timeslot.[8]

It is currently unknown whether or not the series will air as a segment during The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy on Checkered Past.

Note: Most of the episodes did not air in production code order.

Five episodes are included as bonus features in the Season 1 DVD set for The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy. On August 16, 2018, the entire series was added to the iTunes Store under a single volume.

• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy
• Grim & Evil

Wikiquote has quotations related to Evil Con Carne.

• Official website (archive)
• Evil Con Carne at The Big Cartoon DataBase
• Evil Con Carne at IMDb