5 Throwaway Jokes That Turned Into Actual Great Ideas

How did it ever get made? The only answer we can come up with is that someone at Disney was a big fan of The Critic. For those who don't (or are too young to) remember, that was an animated sitcom from the producers of The Simpsons which ran on ABC in the early '90s. It followed the everyday life of film critic Jay Sherman as he reviewed "joke" productions with ridiculous premises that could never exist in real life. Like an Arnold Schwarzenegger action flick in which he plays a cop going undercover as a Hasidic Jew, a Smokey And The Bandit / Spartacus mashup, and, as seen in Season 1, Episode 7, a stage musical adaptation of The Hunchback Of Notre Dame.

Which also saves you a trip to France to gawk at a big church.

Yes, when The Critic tried to think of an idea that would never work in a sane world, one of their first ideas was the exact premise of Disney's next big hit. Even better, an actual stage version of that musical came along a few years after.

Tony Soprano's second in command, Silvio usually operates behind the scenes -- unlike the actor playing him, who operated as upfront as you can get. Silvio was played by Steven Van Zandt, whom you might recognize as the guitar player from Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. Musicians act on TV shows all the time (did you know Hodor is a club DJ?), but what's surprising is that Van Zandt never auditioned for the role. Or at least, he never knew he was auditioning. David Chase, the show's creator, happened to be watching the 1997 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony when Van Zandt introduced the Rascals. The Rascals were an Italian-American rock group from New Jersey, so Van Zandt decided to really ham up the presentation when introducing them. Heavy accent. Funny words. Dude talked with his hands like he was rapping in ASL.

When Chase saw it, he reached out to Van Zandt about playing Silvio. "That's perfect for the complex drama I'm creating," he presumably proclaimed. "And this must be a good idea, because I'm only extremely drunk!"

It all started after Rihanna and Nyong'o were photographed together at a fashion show back in 2014:

MFKAILLOU/Twitter

This tweet and an earlier, nearly identical Tumblr post went viral, and it wasn't just the internet that loved the idea. At the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, which is basically the Oscars if they did absinthe instead of coke, Netflix acquired the rights to the idea, and got both Rihanna and Nyong'o on board. The movie is now being written by Issa Rae, the creator of Insecure, and will be directed by Ava DuVernay. Stay tuned for Netflix's next big acquisition: that SpongeBob meme with the alternating capital letters.

But Mork was initially a throwaway joke character on Happy Days, the show where Henry Winkler played the dangerous bikesexual criminal Fonzie. Around Season 5, with the U.S. in the midst of an alien mania, Happy Days put together an episode in which the Fonz meets Mork, who wants to learn about human dating. Despite sounding just ... the worst on paper, the episode was a huge hit, which eventually led to Mork getting his own spinoff.

Mork was created by Happy Days director Jerry Paris, who had worked as a director on The Dick Van Dyke Show, the dirtiest-sounding wholesome sitcom in history. For that show, he directed the insanely popular tongue-in-cheek episode "It May Look Like a Walnut," about an alien visiting Earth and trying to steal a comedy writer's thumbs (and sense of humor).

Paul Brownstein Productions

To summarize, if Dick Van Dyke never had a joke episode about an alien, Jerry Paris would never retell it on Happy Days, which would mean no Mork & Mindy, no Robin Williams' career, hell on Earth, cats marrying dogs, blood raining down from the sky, and all ice cream flavors being licorice. Scary thought.