"A Sucker for the Suck-O-Matic" was originally written as the pilot, but Nickelodeon thought that Heffer would be too weird a character for test audiences, so instead of removing Heffer from the episode, Joe Murray decided to write "Trash-O-Madness" as the pilot episode instead.
Interestingly, "A Sucker for the Suck-O-Matic" along with its sister episode "Canned", would end up serving as the original series premiere on Nickelodeon.
Two months before production began on the first season in November 1992, Murray's first wife committed suicide.
