Although the Stooges were nominated for an Oscar, unfortunately they did not win the honor of receiving this honored title. However, in 1993, The Three Stooges did go on to earn a different award: the MTV lifetime achievement award. An award created in order to honor those who have greatly impacted pop culture over the years, this award was announced by Mel Gibson, who, upon presenting the Stooges with the award, as a nod to the Stooges’ notoriously physical, slapstick style of comedy, preceded to hit himself on the head with an over-sized wrench.
Though this award was discontinued after 1998, the legacy of The Three Stooges, their prestige, and their overwhelming influence over society, still remains to this day.
The Three Stooges Video Games
Later on in their career, after conquering the areas of performance, film, television and music, the Stooge brand would next enter a fairly new realm of technology: the world of video games. In 1984, Mylstar Electronics released the Three Stooges very first video game, an arcade game titled, The Three Stooges in Brides is Brides, also known by its shortened name, The Three Stooges.
Based on the Stooges’ comedy act of the same name, this game allowed the Stooges to expand their fan base further than ever before. In 1987, they received their second Three Stooges Game, this one available on a number of home gaming systems, including the Nintendo Entertainment System. The goal of the game? To prevent the closure of an orphanage.
Stooges Lost in Foreign Translation
Interestingly enough, The Three Stooges, when directly translated into different languages around the world, holds some very different, often strange meanings. For instance, in China, the Stooge trio is idiomatically known as either Sānge Chòu Píjiàng or Huóbǎo Sānrénzǔ. The direct translation of The Three Stooges? The ‘Three Smelly Shoemakers.’
Equally as strange, when translated into Japanese, the Three Stooges are known as San Baka Taishō, otherwise known as ‘Three Idiot Generals.’ Even stranger is the Spanish translation: ‘Los tres chiflados’, which roughly translates to, ‘The Three Crackpots.’
In The Name Of Science Or Comedy?
Over the years, there has been much debate regarding whether or not Jerome Horwitz Elementary School—the school attended by the main characters of the widely loved children book, “Captain Underpants”—was named after Jerome Horwitz, the famed scientist, or Jerome ‘Curly Howard’ Horwitz, the birth name of the popular Stooge.
However, the truth is revealed within the very pages of the book itself. Upon reading the ‘Fun Facts’ section of “The Adventures of Captain Underpants (Captain Underpants #1),” one will readily discover ‘Fun Fact #4,’ which gives the answer to the mystery behind the school’s name: “Jerome Horwitz Elementary School was named after “Curly,” one of the Three Stooges (another show Dav Pilkey watched every day as a child). Curly’s real name was Jerome Horwitz.”
Here Come The Men in Black
Though they are long gone, in addition to the original Stooge arcade game, The Three Stooges continue to live on in the form of several other, newer video games. Names of more recent Stooge games include “Dead Space” and “Batman: Arkham Asylum.”
In these games, players can hear the line “Paging Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard.” This is a subtle nod to “Men in Black,” the Academy-Award nominated, widely recognized Three Stooges short.