Billy and Mandy are two seemingly ordinary kids, who spend their day playing in the safe and normal suburbs of Endsville. Today is the birthday of Billy's hamster Mr. Snuggles, who is ten years old and ready to cash in his chips. The Grim Reaper appears to harvest the pet's soul, but is surprised that Billy and Mandy aren't afraid of him.
Mandy tells Grim she won't let him take Mr. Snuggles. She challenges Grim to a game; whoever wins keeps Mr. Snuggles. Grim accepts, certain of his victory, and adds that if they win, he'll be their best friend forever.
That said, he takes the kids to Limbo, to compete for the life of Mr. Snuggles, over a game of limbo. Grim, not willing to let the children win, begins to cheat. As Grim is about to win, Mandy commands Mr. Snuggles to attack Grim, causing Grim to lose, and become their best friend forever and ever, much to his chagrin.
In this episode, the characters all look different from their final designs. They were redesigned for Grim & Evil, again half way through G&E's first season, and one last time for Underfist.
When the episode is summarized in Billy & Mandy Begins, the original designs were poked fun at by Grim, who (out of embarrassment) denied the events of the episode by saying "That didn't even look like us!".
If this line is to be taken seriously and thus as fact, it would make the case that the events of this episode take place in an alternate continuity or timeline than the final series.
The Hanna-Barbera logo
When this episode was shown on the revived Cartoon Planet, the rarely-seen end credits were shown. It was also revealed that this episode was produced under Hanna-Barbera in 1999.
This makes this the only episode produced under Hanna-Barbera, as well as one of the final Hanna-Barbera productions. By the time the series was green-lit and put on air in 2001, Hanna-Barbera had folded into Cartoon Network Studios, due to Bill Hanna's death.
According to Maxwell Atoms, the official Hanna-Barbera color palette only had two tones of Caucasian, and neither of them were as pale as he wanted for Mandy.
Although this pilot was produced in digitial ink and paint, [5] promotional cells (with some featuring poses that differ from the ones used in the episode) [6][7] were produced during production.
While Billy and Mandy first appeared in Atoms' college thesis film "Billy & Mandy in Trepanation of the Skull and You", the characters were used in his rejected Hanna Barbera pilot "Milkman" [8]; while said pilot never made it past its pitch, HBs TV development manager at the time Janet Mazzoti was intrigued by the characters of Billy and Mandy, and asked Atoms' if he had anymore ideas for pitches- leading to the development of Meet the Reaper. [9]
