Shortly after he had graduated from film school, Rolf de Heer and Ritchie Singer collaborated on the idea of what would eventually become "Bad Boy Bubby". For most of the 1980s, de Heer collected ideas and wrote them on index cards. In 1987, he took a hiatus from making "Bubby" index cards, but in 1989 he resumed work. Sometime between 1989 and 1990, he saw the short film "Confessor Caressor" starring Nicholas Hope (which would eventually be included on the bonus DVD when "Bad Boy Bubby" was first released on DVD in 2004) and tracked him down. In 1991, he began work on the actual script.