5 Great Ideas That Started As Throwaway Jokes

4 An Over-The-Top Italian Impression Gave Us One Of The Best Characters On The Sopranos

The Sopranos kicked off the modern "Golden Age" of television by exploring the world of the Italian-American mob. The show's nuanced takes on mental illness, familial relations, and drug addiction helped audiences realize that TV could be artistic and entertaining at the same time. Which brings us to the series' colorful movie buff, Silvio Dante.

If New Jersey was a person.

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.

3 A Silly Twitter Joke Is Set To Become A Netflix Original Movie

Have you heard about the recently announced Netflix heist flick, wherein Rihanna plays a professional conwoman and Oscar winner Lupita Nyong'o plays her genius computer hacker partner? It sounds killer, especially considering that description comes straight from the Twitter post that inspired Netflix to make this movie in the first place.

Yes, it is a movie inspired not by a book, or a graphic novel, but a goddamn tweet.

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

2 Mork & Mindy Started As A Joke About How Silly The Alien Craze Was

We never deserved Robin Williams, and we'd never have had him if not for the 1978-1982 ABC sitcom Mork & Mindy. The series which first introduced Williams' high-energy antics to the public told the story of Mork, an alien from the planet Ork, who lived with a human girl, Mindy, to study Earth culture and all of its terribleness.

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).

1 Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter Traces Back To A Throwaway Gag On Party Down

Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, by Seth Grahame-Smith, is a book about the adventures of America's 16th president as he slaughters hordes of the undead. Surprisingly, it was met with mostly positive reviews, and was turned into a 2012 movie that actually made some money at the box office. All in all, not bad for a premise pulled from Mad Libs.

But believe it or not, the short-lived Starz series Party Down came up with this extraordinarily specific idea first. That show was about a group of wannabe writers and actors making a living in LA working as caterers. In the episode "Taylor Stiltskin Sweet Sixteen," some of them discuss a made-up movie titled Edgar Allan Poe: Vampire Hunter. It was meant to be a ridiculous joke, something that sounds way too stupid to ever exist ... exactly like the book that came out in 2010. Coincidence? Maybe. But in Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, Lincoln and Poe meet up and work together, so maybe not.

Also, the episode aired in 2009, a full year before the book came out. Naturally, there are plenty of rumors that the author got his inspiration from that one Party Down joke, but for whatever reason, no one from the show came rushing forward to take credit for the idea. Weird.

Want to create your own movie? Steal more jokes from Party Down!

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