La Bal Nickelodeon Memorial

"Well, mister funny man, is this how you get your sick kicks?!"

– Random customer, SpongeBob SquarePants.

"Mind if I drop in?"

– Bibleman... I mean, the Nickelodeon ball.

Introduction

La Bal Nickelodeon Memorial (AKA The Nick Movies Tragedy Site) is a historical site near Fort Mont-Valérien in Suresnes, France, down the hill from the American Military Cemetery. A Suresnes pottery shop owner named Jacques Descoteaux resided in a small cottage—the only residential building of its kind in the area—along with his wife, two children, and golden retriever, and while they lived modestly, they were regarded as being paranoid of Americans taking advantage of French culture. In the fall of 2000, children's television network Nickelodeon was nearing the release date of Rugrats in Paris, an animated film based on the Rugrats TV series, and a behind-the-scenes idea at Nickelodeon Movies was to replicate the studio's production logo that opens the 2000 Nickelodeon film Snow Day, only this time with a "French flavor". The production logo that opens Snow Day features a man shoveling snow in front of his home while accompanied by his own golden retriever, only for a gigantic Nickelodeon ball covered in snow to fall from the sky and crush his home, in response to which he stumbles back and stares at the scene in awe. However, whereas the Snow Day logo was staged and acted while the man's house was constructed solely for the logo, the logo for Rugrats in Paris, as well as the house seen in it, was not.

In early October of 2000, Descoteaux was raking the leaves on his lawn with his golden retriever at around seven 'o clock in the morning when a private helicopter flew more than a thousand feet overhead. The scene was shot by a lone cameraman on a tree stand, focusing on Descoteaux going about his business until the chopper dropped a five-ton Nickelodeon ball on his house, at the time of which his family was still inside having breakfast. The house was obliterated and his family was consequently killed by the impact, allowing the cameraman to capture the subject's genuine reaction. The footage was edited in post-production with whimsical French-sounding music and the golden retriever from the Snow Day logo appearing alongside the orange and blue Nickelodeon Movies balls, but the entire incident caused Descoteaux to threaten Nickelodeon with a civil lawsuit, resulting in the network paying him fifty million euro ($16,946,700 USD) in damages. The cameraman and helicopter crew involved with the shooting of the logo were fired after this amount was paid in full. Meanwhile, a concrete memorial plaque was set up on the path that the house was built along, the inscription reading, "Souvenir de la famille de Jacques Descoteaux, pour qui Nick a laissé tomber la balle de tant de façons." ("Remembering the family of Jacques Descoteaux, for whom Nick dropped the ball in so many ways.")