Looking for some quality comedy entertainment to check out? Who better to turn to for under-the-radar comedy recommendations than comedians? In our recurring series “Underrated,” we chat with writers and performers from the comedy world about an unsung comedy moment of their choosing that they think deserves more praise.
The early 2000s were a hell of a drug. It was an era for lewd, crude dudes — especially animated ones. From the muck of early South Park, bootleg Bart Simpson shirts, and world-domination-obsessed Stewie Griffin emerged Conker, Rare’s swearing alcoholic cartoon squirrel. Originally designed as a normal cute mascot for a 3-D platformer, Conker got an attitude adjustment (and a drinking problem) in the 2001 video game Conker’s Bad Fur Day. The game was full of swearing, cartoon boobs, and contemporary-film parodies. It was a big risk, and one that didn’t pay off with consumers. Except comedian and SNL alum Steven Castillo, who credits Conker with helping to shape his comedic sensibility: “I first noticed it was not a kids’ game when my brother was playing it and the main character leaves a bar drunk and starts pissing everywhere, and I’m like, What the fuck is this?”
Castillo wrote for SNL from 2018–2021, and during that time he carved out a niche of passionate weirdo characters, like the two Weezer fans warring over whether any of their music is good post-Pinkerton. He explained his love for Conker’s Bad Fur Day, which VH1 show taught him more than any school, and what is the natural enemy of poop. (Spoiler: It’s toilet paper.)
What made you want to talk about Conker’s Bad Fur Day?
I was reverting back to my childhood. On Christmas 2002, my uncle bought my brother a video game. He was 5 years old. It was supposed to be like a Super Mario Brothers–type game for the Nintendo 64, and it ended up being the most R-rated, offensive video game ever, and we loved it. I think it ended up being a huge source of inspiration for me.
I’m sorry if I sound like Quentin Tarantino, because I’m obsessed with how this got made and I’ll be speaking 60 miles per hour. So this game was created by a company called Rare that is famous for making Donkey Kong Country and GoldenEye, which is like everyone’s favorite Nintendo 64 game. They really were the Pixar or A24 of video-game companies at the time. They had this idea for a character called Conker that was supposed to be for another kid-friendly platformer game. But at the same time, they were making another game called Banjo-Kazooie. It didn’t make a lot of sense to have two kid games coming out at the same time. A guy by the name of Chris Seavor, who was an animator working for Rare, was like, “Why don’t we go for a full ‘M for Mature’ video game?” They went all the way with it in ways that are just insane.
You know how in Mario you have to get a star to keep progressing in the game? In this game you get money, and the money cusses at you and talks exactly like Joe Pesci. There are multiple worlds in the game that are parodies of movies that came out at the time. There is a Matrix level, the opening of Conker is an homage to A Clockwork Orange, and the most famous is the Saving Private Ryan level, which is a shot-for-shot remake of the invasion of Normandy, but this time it’s squirrels versus teddy bears.
It’s completely nuts. The voice acting is crazy. This is kind of a grabby quote, but the only way I can describe it is: It was so ahead of its time that even if it came out today, it would be ahead of its time. It’s a game that clearly looks like it’s aimed for children and it’s on the Nintendo 64, and everything for the N64 was exclusively kid-friendly, but this game just went all out. Also it came out before Grand Theft Auto III, which really raised the bar on how graphic a video game could be.
It’s such a time capsule of a game, both in tone and with all the contemporary references.
As a kid, I had no concept that you could even parody movies, because I wasn’t allowed to watch Scary Movie or any of these other things. A lot of the funnier jokes that still work are breaking the fourth wall and are making fun of games like Mario or Donkey Kong. I didn’t have the internet at the time, but now if you’re on TikTok or Twitter you can make fun of the new Mario trailer as soon as it comes out. I had no concept of video-game humor, but this game was doing that. In that sense, it was ahead of its time and irreverent as fuck. When you’re a 12-year-old, you’re actively seeking that stuff out. We were so lucky we got ahold of that game when it came out.
It sounds like you haven’t necessarily gotten over that 12-year-old impulse to seek out the irreverent.
Yeah, big time, but primarily that feeling I’ll never get again of experiencing all that crazy stuff for the first time. It’s the element of surprise, which is the thing in comedy I think we tend to overlook a lot. I went into it thinking I was just going to play a regular kids’ game, and it ended up becoming this insane thing. I mean, the most famous thing about it is that there’s a whole world that is all shit, and the villain is a giant turd that sings opera!
The thing that really did my head in about the opera-singing shit is that it has a butt.
The shit also shits, yeah! And its weakness was toilet paper.
Which is really intuitive, when you think about it.
Yeah, absolutely. Everything was so well thought out.
I was also reading up about the making of this game, and it sounded like they had a trailer of the original cutesy version of it and they took it to E3. The reviewers were like, “Oh, it’s just another cute platformer. That’s nothing special.” And Rare sort of went, “Okay, fuck you, then. Let’s do this instead.” Is there something about that creation as “Fuck you” that appeals to you?
One hundred percent. Obviously the game is not perfect, and I think the developer has said, “If I were making the game today, there are a lot of jokes and things that I would not put in there,” which I appreciate. But there is this element where people do not know what they’re going to get, and I really respect them for taking that incredible risk. And by the way, it was a risk that did not pay off. It was a huge flop — huge! I don’t know if the company ever fully recovered from it, because they ended up not working with Nintendo ever again and then Microsoft bought them. They make a few games here and there, but it’s not at the pinnacle as it was before.
Can you think of a time when you know you’ve surprised the audience?
When I was in Chicago, I remember having this thought that, because the open mics there would have like 50 people going up a night, nobody was really listening to me: None of my comedy was getting any laughs; they were literally not paying attention to me. I’m looking at the list and it’s all white guys, and I just blend in with all of them. So I felt like I needed to do something to stand out. I bought this Bluetooth speaker, and after I would tell a joke I would press a button on my phone and play a laugh track so I could actually hear laughs for my jokes. And suddenly, that’s when people started paying attention to me. I started utilizing sound effects in my set, just because it made me seem different. I’ve still never been a huge fan of stand-up, but I like performing and I like doing comedy. When I’m onstage I feel like I’m doing more like live-action TikToks than actual jokes.
There was a time when I felt very burned out by comedy, and I had to step away for a little bit to remind myself that that’s why I got into it. I had to remind myself that I got into it because I’m a little stinker. I had to find that again, you know?
I think li’l stinker energy in general is underrated as a force. Do you have a favorite level of Conker’s Bad Fur Day?
Yeah, I think the shit one, just because of the song. It was so unexpected that this piece of shit was going to sing a full opera song. I still remember some of the words to the song. And as a kid I was obsessed with The Matrix, so when there was a Matrix level, I was like, Oh this is the greatest game of all time!
How do you feel about body humor in general? Some people don’t like poop humor because they get viscerally yicked out, then other people are obsessed.
Well, it’s definitely the humor that spoke to me when I was a kid. A lot of the stuff that I found funny when I was younger I still find pretty funny, maybe because I feel nostalgic for how that resonated with me at the time. Conker, for example, is so inappropriate that I’m almost laughing at it because it’s so behind the times. It’s like, Can you believe they let people do this back then? Fucking nuts. One of my favorite comedy movies was Tropic Thunder, and I’m worried to watch it again for obvious reasons.
You did the “Shrek” and “Weezer” sketches at SNL. I feel that there is sort of a line between Conker and the energy that the characters in those sketches bring for their favorite pieces of media.
Yeah, Conker is an example, and Weird Al is another. People made careers just off of referencing pop culture, which is something I’ve always been obsessed with. My education was VH1’s I Love the ’80s. I learned so much about history and culture from watching that, and it kind of shaped who I am. And today I’m still very much obsessed with everything that’s on TV, with every movie, every video game, popular music.
Me and my brother and my sister lived in a trailer park in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and we didn’t have friends in our neighborhood because our neighbors were probably cooking meth, you know? So we became each other’s best friends and lived vicariously through the stuff we saw on TV. It was escapism for us because we couldn’t really do anything else. So that’s why my whole comedy is surrounded by that.
There are so many pieces of media that I first encountered in parody form before I even knew that they were their own thing.
Yeah, same. I heard “Eat It” before I heard “Beat It.”
Did you get the Clockwork Orange reference when you first played the game?
No, absolutely not. I went to Catholic school, and we watched a video saying that if we watched Clockwork Orange or Natural Born Killers, we were gonna go to hell, so I wound up watching that movie much later. Upon watching the gameplay, I was like, Holy fucking shit, this is such an odd reference to put in the beginning of the game.
I have a note here that just reads, “This game is too horny.”
I agree. Clearly it feels like it was a game made by a couple guys in their 20s. The video-game industry is pretty male-dominated now, and I can only assume it was way worse in the early 2000s. Like I said, a lot of the sex jokes do not work today and make me cringe seeing them. But I still appreciate the art that does work.
It’s an idea of sex that is almost completely removed from the physical act of having sex. Like the big-titted sunflower.
Right, and you need her to show off her big boobies so you can jump on them and get the money. It all serves a purpose. I remember with that level, specifically, I had to make sure I could complete it when my mom was at work.
What have you found that makes you excited to be doing comedy again?
When I was in Chicago, I was in my early 20s, and when you’re doing comedy in Chicago there are no stakes. I was always dreaming of what it would be like to be working in comedy full-time. I always had those dreams and aspirations of being on the other side. Now that I’m in my 30s working in comedy, I look back at my time in my 20s and go, God, I wish I was still that kid, because he was doing comedy just because he loved it. There was no pressure, and he felt so comfortable taking risks. I feel like as you get older, you take fewer risks because your paycheck depends on it. That’s why, in taking some time off, I remembered that hungry version of myself, and the reason why I got into it.
Not to get too full circle, but Conker does not like being king.
Right, his girlfriend dies at the end, and it’s not a happy ending. Again, how the fuck did this game get made? It’s insane that Nintendo let them. I heard they only had a few notes, and one of them was, “Take out the scene where Conker beats Pikachu with a baseball bat.” I still have a hard time fathoming how it happened.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
More From This Series
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- It’s Time to Appreciate SNL’s ‘Riley’ Sketch, Bitch
- Take a Bite Out of Horowitz & Spector
