Still, animator John Kricfalusi claims he did just that four years ago to Comedy Central and was turned down.
Now, the creator of Nickelodeon's Ren & Stimpy--an off-beat pioneer of scatological humor--is upset because last week's episode of the cable channel's animated hit South Park contained a character very similar to the one he pitched.
Yep, the guy who made coughed-up fur balls, lederhosen and kitty litter funny in the early '90s says that talking crap is his idea.
Last week's holiday episode of South Park featured a singing, dancing piece of human feces called Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo. This "Yule-log" airing scored an extremely impressive 5.4 rating for Comedy Central--unusually high for cable.
But Kricfalusi--now marketing his 'toons on the Internet--says his bowel-spawned character, Nutty the Friendly Dump, must have inspired the Mr. Hankey concept.
"I got nine messages on my answering machine from people who said [South Park] took like 10 of your ideas and put them into one episode," Kricfalusi tells E! Online.
"It's basically taking bathroom humor and making pathos of it," he adds. "I suppose it could be a coincidence; everyone likes dump humor. But so many things in that episode parallel Ren & Stimpy."
Kricfalusi has high praise for the work series-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone do, calling South Park both "hilarious" and "creative," but he says it bothers him that the two young animators are able to get things on television he was told were impossible to air several years back.
"I moved to the Web because I couldn't get South Park-type humor on TV anymore," he explains.
Comedy Central spokeswoman Sharon Levy says Kricfalusi's claims are "ludicrous." She says Parker derived the concept of Mr. Hankey from a character his father created while teaching him how to go to the bathroom as a little boy.
In any event, Kricfalusi plans no legal action against Comedy Central. After all, he asks, "How can you copyright a dump?"