The Powerpuff Girls, which ended its original run 15 years ago, on March 25, 2005, had an extraordinarily strange collection of villains. Perhaps the strangest, and absolutely the scariest, of these villains was HIM. A demonic being whose true name is too terrible to state aloud (many suspect he's supposed to be Satan), HIM looked like a fusion of Santa, a lobster and a gothic drag queen. His voice could turn from a sickly sweet falsetto to an infernal scream at the drop of a dime. HIM was one of the most blatantly queer-coded villains in cartoon history, which could arguably be viewed as homophobic, but queer viewers have generally embraced the character as a genuinely badass villain.
How did Craig McCracken, the creator of the series and showrunner of the first four seasons, come up with the idea for such a uniquely creepy and fabulous villain? He's stated on repeated occasions that the primary inspiration for HIM was another cartoon villain: the leader of the Blue Meanies from The Beatles movie, Yellow Submarine.
Just from still images, you can see some similarities between the two characters, with their broad smiles and outfits including thigh-high boots and puffy flourishes. The clearest inspiration that HIM takes from the Chief Blue Meanie, however, is in the vocal performance. For comparison watch this clip of the Chief Blue Meanie (voiced by Paul Angelis):
....and then watch this clip of HIM (voiced by Tom Kane):
As you can clearly hear, the two performances are in a highly similar vein, mixing effeminacy with explosive rage. The Chief Blue Meanie is also sometimes viewed as a queer-coded villain, though such coding might be less intentional and is certainly less blatant than it is with HIM.
Watching The Powerpuff Girls, it's clear that McCracken is a huge fan of The Beatles. In addition to HIM's obvious antecedent, many references to the Fab Four's music appear throughout the show. Most notably, the Emmy-nominated Season 3 episode "Meet the Beat-Alls," in which HIM, Mojo Jojo, Fuzzy Lumpkins and Princess team up as a group, is comprised entirely of non-stop Beatles references. Ringo Starr himself voice-acted as the mathematician Fibonacci Sequins in a later Powerpuff Girls special, Dance Pantsed, though McCracken had long since left Cartoon Network by the time of that production. For reference, Starr did not voice himself in Yellow Submarine, nor did any of the other Beatles.
Both HIM and the Chief Blue Meanie are essentially the top dogs as far as evil in their respective universes go. Other Powerpuff Girls villains are too stupid to be truly dangerous (Fuzzy Lumpkins, The Amoeba Boys), immature children (Princess), street-level threats (The Gangreen Gang) or at times even capable of saving the day by accident (Mojo Jojo). HIM, in contrast, is both pure evil and pure power.
Yellow Submarine doesn't have any villains other than the Blue Meanies. There are other monsters throughout the seas, but they mainly seem to be creatures acting on instinct rather than malice. The Blue Meanies, however, want to suck all the fun and joy out of Pepperland. Until Sgt. Pepper is able to flee in the Yellow Submarine and recruit The Beatles to save the day, they succeed at turning the people of Pepperland into stone statues and removing all color from the world.
Where HIM is eternally evil, however, the Blue Meanies, even their Chief, are ultimately shown to be redeemable by the end of Yellow Submarine. Defeated over the course of several musical performances, including "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," "All You Need is Love" and "Hey Bulldog," the Meanies concede their loss. Jeremy Hillary Boob, the "Nowhere Man," uses transformation magic to make the Chief Blue Meanie bloom roses. John Lennon offers a hand in friendship to the Chief, who ultimately accepts, leading into the big party ending of "It's All Too Much."
The Powerpuff Girls might stand for similar values of peace and love as The Beatles, but they're not hippies and they're not the type to befriend their enemies. Perhaps the best illustration of their similarities and differences is in the Season 1 episode "Mime for a Change." Like The Beatles in Yellow Submarine, the Girls restore color to a black-and-white world by performing a song about love. Instead of forgiving the color-sucker Rainbow the Clown, however, they beat him up and throw him in prison... And Rainbow the Clown is downright mundane compared to HIM, who flat-out takes over the world in one alternate timeline!
This might be a fun exercise for fanfiction writers: have The Beatles and the Powerpuff Girls trade places. Somehow we doubt the Girls would be so forgiving of the Blue Meanies after defeating them. The real question is would John Lennon be able to see the good in HIM?