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How Cyanide & Happiness embraced their most regrettable project ever

Inside the minds of Cyanide & Happiness' creators on turning their biggest failure into fun

The Cyanide & Happiness crew have released many entertaining shorts.

‘Ow, My Dick’ is not one of them.

The animated short follows a man who injures his genitals at a nightclub. He spends the rest of the video searching for the person who hurt his genitals. The bit quickly wears out its welcome.

Oh well, they can’t all be winners.

Cyanide & Happiness began life as a webcomic in 2005, and the team behind the strip began producing animated shorts in 2006. This has spawned many memorable bits, but the creators have never been able to escape the legacy of ‘Ow, My Dick.’ Speaking to a crowd at Florida Supercon 2024, Cyanide & Happiness producer Adam Nusrallah revealed how the infamous short came together.

“For those of you who don't know 'Ow, My Dick.' it is about a guy in a club who gets hit in the junk at some point, and he just roams around the entire club asking everyone if they hit his dick. And it goes on for way too long.”

Nusrallah and the team initially thought they had a winner on their hands, and put lots of resources into the short.

“At the time that we were making this, it was one of the highest level produced things that we made. It looked good. We put a lot of work into it. We were all sitting around the computer looking at it going. 'Fuck yeah, this is going to hit.' We made an original trap beat to this thing. We went all out.”

“All of a sudden, we put it out online, and it was the most hated thing that we've ever put out. Ever. We got trashed for the longest time. every comment that followed on every episode, every short that we did was, 'Hey, yeah, but remember Ow, My Dick? Fuck you!’ The whole time.”

The team eventually decided to embrace the short’s reputation. In 2017 they brought the character back for an April Fool’s Joke.

“Do you guys know Ted Bear? Ted Bear is an OG. He is a character that's been around for a long time. One of our most popular bits. He teaches you how to survive. People have been waiting for Ted Bear 3for like, I don't know, nine years. Still gotta wait, but on April Fool's, because the internet's dumb, we put out Ted Bear 3.”

The Ted Bear short features the return of the ‘Ow, My Dick’ guy, who proceeds to ask Ted Bear who injured his genitals. The original video then plays as a flashback.

“It plays the entire short. And then it comes back, Ted Bear is like, 'Oh, I'm sorry, but I can't help you with that.' And he's like, 'Well, maybe if I say it but slower.' And then it plays it at half speed. Yeah...fuck you!”

Expert trolling Cyanide & Happiness gang.



Get ready for what's next with our guide to upcoming comics, how to buy comics at a comic shop, and our guide to Free Comic Book Day 2025.  

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Joshua Lapin-Bertone

Joshua Lapin-Bertone: Joshua is a pop culture writer specializing in comic book media. His work has appeared on the official DC Comics website, the DC Universe subscription service, HBO Max promotional videos, the Batman Universe fansite, and more. In between traveling around the country to cover various comic conventions, Joshua resides in Florida where he binges superhero television and reads obscure comics from yesteryear.

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