Trash-O-Madness is a 1992 short film and the pilot episode for the American animated series Rocko's Modern Life. It was directed and written by series creator Joe Murray, with Carlos Alazraqui providing all voices. A new version of the pilot, that was extended for the purposes of including it as a regular episode, was produced and released as part of the first season. It also features an extended end credit sequence to accommodate the names of production crew behind "Trash-O-Madness". On February 7, 2012, the original pilot version found its way onto Shout! Factory's season 2 DVD as a special feature. In Rocko's Modern Life: Spunky's Dangerous Day, the second level is named after this episode.
Plot The sun rises over O-Town as Earl, a vicious dog who escaped from a laboratory, wakes up from a trash can, growling and barking crazily, and glances at a house behind him. In the house, a dog and his owner are asleep. The dog, named Spunky, wakes up with his stomach rumbling, which alerts his owner Rocko; he yawns and tells Spunky that he is "too hungry to dance." He glances nostalgically at a family photo, remarking that they never had a real breakfast since they immigrated from Australia. Rocko dresses up and clips his toenails while promising Spunky a good meal. Suddenly, he hears a noise and finds a Hill-O-Stench garbage truck driving erratically. Rocko realizes that it is garbage day. Rocko then hastily attempts to gather a large hoard of trash in his house, and Spunky quickly eats Rocko's toenail clippings out of hunger.
Downstairs, Rocko gathers multiple piles of garbage while Earl sneaks outside the house, peeking through the windows occasionally. Rocko plugs in his Suck-O-Matic vacuum cleaner, while Spunky stands in front of the sucking tube. Spunky curiously licks the tip of the tube, which causes his tongue to get stuck when the vacuum cleaner powers on, which eventually sucks him in. Rocko saves Spunky by flicking a switch to reverse the vacuum function, but not before Spunky expands like a balloon and gets blasted onto the ceiling. In the kitchen, Rocko frantically throws out all the garbage in his fridge. He opens a container implied to be emergency rations, only to find a green slime ball being what is left in it, disgusting Rocko. He empties the container as the slime ball is disposed of. Spunky, curious about the ball, attempts to play with it, only for the ball to squirt black ink onto Spunky.
As Spunky walks away with the ball, Rocko catches him and forces him to spit the ball back into the can. While running towards the pile of garbage, Rocko looks out his window and sees the garbage men are coming closer. Noticing the slime ball on top of the now-huge garbage pile, Spunky digs into the pile before Rocko carries it out to a Compact-O-Matic trash compactor in his kitchen. Rocko compacts the garbage into the size of a Chinese restaurant take-out box, not realizing Spunky is in the pile of garbage. Noticing the garbage men are getting even closer, Rocko hurriedly attempts to carry the take-out-box-sized garbage out to the front lawn's garbage bin, only to be surprised by Earl, prompting him to quickly shut the door.
Atop the roof of his house, Rocko ties the trash (along with Spunky) to a fishing pole in order to successfully take out the garbage and not get caught by Earl, only to realize that Spunky had been compacted in that pile of garbage. As he is eaten by the garbage truck, Rocko reels back, and Earl follows, eating the compacted trash cube and Spunky. Rocko lets go of the pole in shock, causing Earl and the pole to plummet to the ground. Rocko follows Earl and attempts to reason with him, only to be punched in the face. He returns angrily with a steak, which leads him to get punched in the face again. Having been forced to his breaking point, he launches at Earl's face, attempts the pull Spunky out of Earl's mouth, then punches him in the nose. Rocko nervously pulls Earl's nose back out, realizing that he angered him; Earl then beats up Rocko in response. A battered and angered Rocko enters his house with Spunky and attempts to return him to normal by flattening him with a pin roller and inflating him like a balloon.
At night, Rocko takes a bath with Spunky, stating that they did take out the trash in time and expressing his gratefulness for Spunky's companionship, only to notice that Spunky had the slime ball in his mouth the whole time; Rocko orders him to get rid of it. Spunky mistakenly drops the ball into the bathtub water instead, causing it to explode.
Production
Joe Murray originally wrote "A Sucker for the Suck-O-Matic" as the pilot episode. Still, the executives decided that Heffer Wolfe might be "a little too weird for test audiences." Murray, instead of removing Heffer from "A Sucker for the Suck-O-Matic," decided to write "Trash-O-Madness" as the pilot episode.
Murray co-produced the pilot episode with George Maestri, Marty McNamara, and Nick Jennings at Joe Murray Studio in Saratoga, California, United States. McNamara assembled a cadre of animators. Murray animated half of the pilot, and several San Francisco Bay-area animators such as Robert Scull, Maestri, Jennings, and Timothy Björklund animated the other half. Jennings created all of the production backgrounds.
Murray then hired a camera company. Once the plan fell behind schedule, Murray, Nick Jennings, and George Maestri modified a 35 mm camera to film at night. Tom Schott acted as the cameraman. In the daytime, the team transported the film via automobile to San Francisco for processing. After viewing the completed portions, the team arrived in Saratoga to continue the production. Murray rented a motel room for team members to take shifts sleeping and showering; Murray, Jennings, Maestri, and Schott took shifts there. Policemen visited the animators on numerous occasions due to the noise produced by the studio.
The team completed the film on schedule; the crew later expanded the film to 11 minutes for use in the series. Murray describes the animation of "Trash-O-Madness" as containing "variations in the Rocko models" and "a lot more stretch than usual" in the animation. Differences between the original pilot and the Nickelodeon version The music, sound effects, and some of the voices were completely different. Marshall Crutcher composed the music for the pilot, with Pat Irwin replacing him in the actual show. Tom Kenny had not been involved with the show during the original pilot's production, as Carlos Alazraqui did all the voices. The pilot featured a completely different opening, which began with a photo album, showing Rocko through the years, and then showed clips from the pilot episode, along with sketches of Rocko with Ed and Bev Bighead and Heffer. The Nickelodeon version simply began with a recolored version of the original title card along with the credits. Rocko was originally yellow, but was changed to beige due to a toy company's attempt to market the series and its failure. The original pilot was 8 minutes long. In the Nickelodeon version, roughly a minute and a half worth of footage was added for, as stated above, the purposes of including it as a regular episode. An extended end credit sequence was also created to extend the length of the pilot.
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