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15 Wild Things Witnessed by Middle School Dance Chaperones

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14 Illuminating Jokes From Stand-Up Comedians That Feel Like a Crotch-Punch to the Brain

36 Pieces of Pop Culture That Hit a Little Bit Different Today

36 Pieces of Pop Culture That Hit a Little Bit Different Today

Comedian Claps Back At Heckler Who Didn’t Know He Was Literally in ‘The Joker’

Comedian Claps Back At Heckler Who Didn’t Know He Was Literally in ‘The Joker’

40 Secondary and Background Characters Who Deserve More Time in the Limelight

40 Secondary and Background Characters Who Deserve More Time in the Limelight

20 Surprising Origins Of Famous Pop Culture Ideas

You never know when the Muse will strike you. It could be while you're gazing through the work of great Renaissance artists. Or it could be while you're shitting yourself over rodents eating your fingers. Point is: Inspiration doesn't always need to be a brilliant light bulb. Sometimes it can just be broken glass to a bare foot.

To help illustrate this, we asked our readers to highlight some creators whose great ideas came from odd places. The winner is below, but first the runners-up ...

CRACKED.CON Birds TIELD GUIDE OF WEST INDIES OF THe When British author lan Fleming was strugglin to think of the simplest, dullest, plainest soundin

19
Entry by Michael Voll

We came up with the snow walker. That is my favorit of all the designs thati did... The snow walkers were from a [1969] brochure by Syd Mead for US S

18
Entry by Ted E.

FOR PAN'S SLABYRINTH, GUILLERMO DEL TORO BASED THE PALE MAN OFF HIS FEAR OF MANTA RAYS. There was also this thing that I had as a kid where manta ray

17
Entry by Scott Laffey

Chris Columbus once lived in a mouse infested loft in NYC and was afraid his furry visitors were going to chew off his fingers while he slept. This fe

16
Entry by RogerRamjet

The badass inspirati0n for Captain America's arch hemesis Red Sku1l? A hot fudge sundae that his creator Joe Simon was eating one day. CRACKED COM

15

The coconut-shell horses in MONTY PYTHON Holy were and the Grail hilarious, but the actors were originally going to ride regular horses They only deci

14
Entry by System_Decay

The squidlike Vorlon ships in Babylon 5 were based on... .. Cloves of garlic.

13

JACK SPARROW CRACKED IS A COMBINATION OF KEITH RICHARDS AND PEPE LE PEW + Johnny Deep said he though of pirates as the rock stars of the day and in hi

12
Entry by Scott Laffey

Nora Ephron conceived the 1990 comedy My Blue Heaven while her author husband was researching a book on a real life mobster. The subject of the book h

11
Entry by Scott Laffey

andthe ana the Cnocoate Factory was inspired by a young Roald Dahl's experiences with Cadbury using his boarding school to test new products. ...I be

10

FIGHT CLUB Chuck Palahniuk was on a camping trip where he got into a fight played too loud. When he over musIC being returned to work he was visibly b

9
Entry by Comunacho

Where the Wild Things Are Maurice Sendak was writting a book called Where the Wild Horses Are, but he was unable to draw a horse for his life. So his

8
Entry by System_Decay

Tom Baker has attributed the wide-eyed sincerity of his performance h Doctor Who to his first career... ...as a Catholic monk.

7
Entry by RogerRamjet

Daffy Duck's iconic spit-laden lisp is based the real on speaking voice of hated Warner Brothers Producere Leon Schlesinger. The lisp close real was S

6
Entry by Danzy

Bob Kane came up with the idea for Batman from a book of Leonardo Da Vinci's sketches

5
Entry by Chan Teik Onn

CRACKEDCO Christian Bale once ranted to his director, Mary Harron about how creepy Tom Cruise looked and was struck with an eureka moment to carry Tom

4
Entry by ETangonan

JOEL SCHUMACHER REALIZED GEORGE LLOONEY WOULD MAKE A GOOD BATMAN AFTER DRAWING THE COWL OVER HIS FACE IN THE 'FROM DUSK HVEY VEITEL TARANTI TIL DAWN'

3
Entry by Chan Teik Onn

J. Jonah Jameson. Peter Parker's boss who was irascible. bad tempered. dumb and thought he was better than anyone else. was actually inspired by Sta

2
Entry by Quo

Mark Twain, in his 1872 book Roughing It noted, the coyotes are starving and would chase a roadrunner. Many years later, this line of text inspired

1
Entry by djHanDon

20 Surprising Origins Of Famous Pop Culture Ideas

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