32 TV Trivia Nuggets from Pop Culture History for Sunday, November 23, 2025

These'll swarm on your brain like ants on a fallen hotdog
32 TV Trivia Nuggets from Pop Culture History for Sunday, November 23, 2025
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You might want to lay down for this one. We know that people normally tell someone to sit down before they deliver some shocking, possibly faint-inducing news, but we promise that this isn't anything like that. 

See, these TV facts are a lot like scurrying little ants that pop out from a crack in the sidewalk and crawl all over people's brains. Laying down makes it a lot quicker and easier for them to get in your ears and do their creepy little info deliveries. 

Trust us. Getting the back of your clothes all mucked up will be well worth it.

The Office

The Office made a calculated decision to lean into internet culture. I always credit YouTube for changing the way we look at things, says director Paul Feig. YouTube was real life captured and you have The Office, where the humor is all behavioral. It's about how people are reacting to each other. CRACKED.COM

Parks and Rec

CRACKED ADAM SCOTT MET ROB LOWE MOMENTS BEFORE SHOOTING THEIR FIRST SCENE TOGETHER FOR PARKS AND REC. Both actors said it was pretty terrifying.

Tim Robinson

COMEDY NERD CRACKED.COM THERE'S A WHOLE BUNCH OF SKETCHES FROM TIM ROBINSON WE NEVER SAW ON SNL. They include an intentional walk cage rather than a batting cage - as Robinson explains, it's so you would just go in and it would shoot four balls outside of your range.

Pee Wee Herman

PAUL REUBENS CRACKED.COM After losing a spot on SNL to Gilbert Gottfried, Reubens borrowed five grand from his parents to develop his own stage show. And Pee Wee Herman was born.

Chappelle's Show

IN 2003, CHAPPELLE'S SHOWFEATURED A SKETCH TITLED TRADING SPOUSES, PLAYING OFF THE REALITY SHOW TRADING SPACES. IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A PARODY. It's a standard comedy formula: take one element of the real thing, Trading Spouses and exaggerate it to ludicrous ends. But a year after the sketch aired, FOX created a show with that exact premise, and it was Meet your new mommu indeed called Trading spouses. CRACKED.COM

Lorne Michaels

CRACKED LORNE MICHAELS: FROM SNL TO THE NEW SHOW AND BACK AGAIN. Michaels quit Saturday Night Live after five seasons, but his new show, The New Show, didn't do well. Не had to go back to SNL to make money again.

SNL in The U.K.

SNL around the world From 1985 to 1988, the U.K. had Saturday Night Live on Channel 4. The show had such cast members as Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, among others. ISR CRACKED.COM

Tim and Eric

BEHIND-THE-SCENES FACTS An editor found comedy in ООН, MAMMA TIM AND ERIC AWESOME SHOW, GREAT JOB! CRACKED.COM A sketch about an indifferent student wasn't working, but a video editor found some funny in looping the line Ooh, Mamma. The sound was paired with new images of Tim and Eric trashing a basement rec room and the result was a very surreal piece of comedy.

30 Rock

COMEDY NERD Al Gore appeared on 30 Rock twice, in 2007 and 2009 - both times as himself. His first appearance was in Greenzo, and the second one in Sun Tea. CRACKED.COM

The Golden Girls

CRACKED.COM Blanche from The Golden Girls wasn't going to have that accent. Rue McClanahan decided she needed it, though.

Sonny and Cher

The First Belly Button After half a decade being denied Barbara Eden's navel in I Dream of Jeannie, America got to see Cher's, like, all the time, on The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour. CRACKED.COM

Mork & Mindy

Mork & Mindy CRACKED.COM Mork from Ork originally appeared on Happy Days, attempting to kidnap Richie Cunningham. The episode was technically one long dream sequence, but people loved Robin Williams' performance so much, they edited the ending and spun off a four-season show.

Loki

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind partly inspired, of all things, Disney's Loki. LOKI That movie (like, say, Scott Pilgrim), had a lot of elaborate practical sets that look like CGI - and Loki did too, to make its world feel like a real environment. CRACKED.COM

The Good Place

Judge Gen in The Good Place was modelled on none other than The Notorious RBG. Her robe was based on that on Ruth Bader Ginsberg - her actress, Maya Rudolph, said it was an homage to an iconic human being. CRACKED.COM

American Horror Story

Lady Gaga based her role in American Horror Story: Hotel on one murderer. It was Robert Durst, and she said she watched him in The Jinx every day to sort of study the practical nature in which he was devious and evil. CRACKED.COM

Guy Fieri

Melissa McCarthy modelled her Bridesmaids character on Guy Fieri. КИНА ... EMICING She even asked the higher-ups if she could wear spiky hair like Fieri's, to really drive the point home, but they told her You can't actually be Guy Fieri. CRACKED.COM

The Good Place

The Good Place is heavily based on a 1944 existentialist play by Sartre. His No Exit is about three people who can't stand each other trapped in the afterlife together, with nothing to do but to talk to each other forever. CRACKED.COM

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Dwayne Johnson directly inspired a character in Avatar: The Last Airbender. It's The Boulder (well, of course), and they even tried to get The Rock to voice the character-but that didn't work out, unfortunately. CRACKED.COM

Family Guy

CRACKED.COM FAMiLY GUY Peter Griffin's accent, look, and mannerisms came from a security guard named Paul Timmins who worked at the Rhode Island School of Design. The show's creator, Seth MacFarlane, had been a student there and would smoke cigarettes and chat with Timmins a couple times a day.

The Simpsons

HA-HAW! YOU DIDN'T know THAT nelson IS JOHN BenDeR! Not only is the Simpsons tough guy based on the Breakfast Club tough guy, but he shares a name with the actor who played him, Judd Nelson. CRACKED.COM

The Gong Show

CRACKED STEVE MARTIN: TOO GOOD FOR THE GONG SHOW. LI MURI Steve Martin made a memorable appearance on The Gong Show in 1977, playing a knockout banjo set. His performance was so impressive that he was not allowed to be a contestant on the show.

Game Shows

April Fools's jokes that became real JED У! ILLI LLAR wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy switch Alex Trebeck and Pat Sajak switched places one year. Not an announcement - they did it for real. CRACKED.COM

Bullseye

Serial killer John Cooper was caught partly because of his appearance on the British game show Bullseye in 1989, two months before his killings. Police used footage from the show to match him to a sketch based on witness testimony. GRAGKED.COM

Millionaire

There's a banned episode of who wants to Be a Millionaire? BE A WHO MILLIONAIRE WH E A In the UK, Charles Ingram won the top prize by cheating, and the episode was never broadcast - but you can go see the fact-checked version of it on youtube, right now! CRACKED.COM

The Six Million Dollar Man

The '70s TV show The Six Million Dollar Man accidentally discovered a corpse. THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN When a camera crew came to an amusement park and tried to move a hanging man prop, the arm came off - the prop was a real body. CRACKED.COM

Seinfeld

COMEDY NERD CRACKED.COM LORI LOUGHLIN Lori Loughlin was on the episode The Serenity Now in Season 9. The Full House star did such a good job it would make you say I bet this woman will never do anything bad for the rest of her life.

The Chris Rock Show

The Chris Rock Show called O.J. Simpson's Ki confessional hypothetical MY tell-all. wite! The 1999 show featured a sketch where Simpson had an instructional VHS called I Didn't Kill My Wife, But If I Did, Here's How I'd Do It while Simpson's actual book, titled If I Did It. CRACKED.COM

The Simpsons

CRACKED COM The Simpsons nearly got cancelled before it aired. After the first viewing of the pilot episode, One Enchanted Evening, both the writers and the network executives were displeased. The writing wasn't great, but it was the animation that really turned them off. Luckily, the next episode, Bart the Genius, was better and saved the series from an early death.

Cheers

CHEERS CRACKED.COM The bar where everybody knows your name aired its finale on May 20, 1993, after 11 seasons. Diane (Shelley Long) returns after 6 years, but Sam realizes the bar will always be his biggest love. The 98-minute finale was seen by about 40% of the U.S. population at the time - 84.4 million viewers.

Friends

Matthew Perry got Julia Roberts to guest-star in Friends by writing a paper on quantum physics. Perry asked her to come on the show, and she said she'd do it only if he wrote her a paper on quantum physics. Apparently, a day later, he wrote one and faxed it to her. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM

Mad Men

Mad Men was partly inspired by a particular old-school French movie. The movie is Les Bonnes Femmes, and it was shot in Paris, in the era in which Mad Men takes place-and it influenced the show's production design. CRACKED.COM

Zombieland as a Series

CRACKED.COM Zombieland was created as a TV series. Writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick's project was too expensive for TV-so the script was taken to Sony, and turned into a movie.

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