The origins of Hermes & Renato trace back as early as 1990, when Petrópolis-based friends Marco Antônio Alves and Fausto Fanti used to perform comical sketches for fun in their houses under the respective monikers of "Hermes" and "Renato", while recording them with a camcorder; Hermes was taken from a former teacher of one of them, and Renato was a mutual friend whom they liked to joke about. By 1999 they were joined by Adriano Silva, Felipe Torres and Bruno Sutter (all of them long-time friends who occasionally performed together on their amateur sketches), becoming a fully fledged professional comedy troupe, and obtained a contract with MTV Brasil to host their own sketch comedy television program.
