Sitcoms are a staple for most mainstream TV channels. Whether reruns of long-ago ended shows or scheduled episodes of new ones, sitcoms almost guarantee viewers. And as the years go by, fan theories pile up about shared universes, character crossovers and imagined scenarios. Some of these theories are decidedly dark and include The Fresh Prince being dead, Phoebe imagining all 10 seasons worth of Friends episodes and the foursome from The Big Bang Theory planning to start an apocalypse.

On this list are 10 more far-out theories that have seen the light since the airing of some of the most popular sitcoms in history.

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10 Welcome to Jurassic Park

26 years ago, viewers worldwide were handed one of the bleakest sitcom series finales of all time. Dinosaurs, a show that was admittedly strange but also funny, ended with some of the characters sparking an Ice Age that led to the inevitable extinction of their species. Why did it happen? Because of greed and ongoing ignorance. Looking back now, this sad ending to a popular show foreshadowed what is happening in our time: bad decisions taking an extreme toll on our environment and ever-decreasing resources. The final line, “Goodnight. Goodbye.” is especially haunting.

Dinosaurs ran from 1991 to 1994 and while it didn’t spark a lot of fan theories at the time, there is one theory still circulating the depths of the internet. It states that the show is set in a post-apocalyptic future in which genetically engineered dinosaurs have taken over the planet after wiping out most of human civilization. The remaining humans are mostly hunters and are dominated by the super-intelligent dinosaurs.

Sound familiar? The theory is based on a “Jurassic Park”-type scenario and became popular after the movie’s release in 1993.

9 The truth about aliens revealed on Frasier

Frasier gave us 11 seasons of hilarity centered around two brothers, Frasier and Niles Crane. Originally, the show wouldn’t have focused on Frasier Crane, to avoid ‘unfair’ comparisons to its predecessor, Cheers. However, Paramount hated the original idea of Crane being a paralyzed media mogul and insisted on the show building on the existing Cheers audience. There are a few homages to Cheers in the script that made their way into the show throughout the seasons, and a lot of guest appearances by Cheers cast members.

A show that runs this long is bound to have a few theories attached to it and Frasier is no exception. Once of the craziest theories involves the late John Glenn’s cameo role during one of the show’s earlier episodes. Glenn was the first American to orbit Earth and he appears on Frasier Crane’s radio show as himself. He takes over the show and talks about his space experience. He then goes off on a humorous tangent about a government cover-up of the existence of aliens.

This let to many fans believing that Glenn wasn’t just playing a part on a show, but that he used the opportunity to reveal the truth about alien life.

8 Cheers is a rip-off

Cheers is where the above-mentioned Frasier Crane was first introduced, alongside a host of other beloved characters. Cheers ran for 11 seasons and premiered way back in 1982. It almost didn’t see its second season, however, as it was very nearly cancelled during its first airing.

There have been a multitude of theories surrounding the show including that the bar was a perfect place for Norm and Cliff to set up prostitutes with prospective clients. Another theory that gained a lot of traction is the one that claims the show is a rip-off of a lesser known sitcom called Park St. Under. This sitcom was produced for a local Boston audience and premiered three years before Cheers. Its focus was on an underground Boston bar owned by an ex-Red Sox player. The rest of the cast included a cheeky dark-haired employee, civil servant, token “old-timer” and a local psychiatrist.

Those who bought into the theory of Cheers being a rip-off of Park St. Under feel that these similarities are too obvious to ignore.

7 The Melmacians may have sparked a war

ALF, also known as Gordon Shumway, crash-landed on TV screens in September 1986. ALF is an alien from the planet Melmac with an appetite for cats to fill his eight stomachs. The show ran for 99 episodes and ended with a cliff-hanger that was only resolved when a TV movie was released in 1996. There were short-lived plans for a reboot in August 2018, but the idea was quickly scrapped.

There was also ALF: The Animated Series that aired between 1987 and 1989. This gave rise to a theory that connects ALF and the Melmacians to the tragedy that befell the ThunderCats from Thundera. The theory goes that the aliens of Melmac would have sent ships to planets other than Earth, including Thundera. Considering the Melmacians’ appetite for cats, they would have seen the ThunderCats as a food source. The ensuing conflict then led to a war giving rise to the evil Mumm-Ra.

6 Steve Harrington’s son

Parks and Recreation aired between 2009 and 2015 and had a reunion special on 30 April 2020. It is a political satire sitcom and have sparked a host of wild fan theories including Leslie Knope (played by Amy Poehler) being extremely rich and Jerry Gergich being a cult leader. And who could forget the lasting theory that Andy Dwyer (Chris Pratt) is Andy from Toy Story because they share the same first name, love guitars and are both ‘childish’.

One of the crazier rumors however is the one that maintains Jean-Ralphio Saperstein (Ben Schwartz) is the son of none other than Steve Harrington (Joe Keery) from Stranger Things. Both shows are set in Indiana, and the two characters do resemble each other in an uncanny way. Some fans have taken the theory even further by claiming that Pawnee, the town in which Parks and Rec is set, is an inversion of the Upside Down and that Jean-Ralphio is its resident Demogorgon.

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5 Balki was a sleeper agent

Perfect Strangers featuring Larry Appleton and his distant cousin, Balki Bartokomous, ran for 8 seasons. It spawned a successful spin-off, Family Matters, that aired between 1989 and 1998. Perfect Strangers introduced the “Dance of Joy” that co-stars Mark Linn-Baker and Bronson Pinchot performed one last time off-screen for the studio audience after the closing credits of the series finale in 1993.

This light-hearted sitcom attracted a very dark fan theory as some mused that Balki may have been a sleeper agent for a terrorist cell. This theory was built around the storyline that saw Balki arrive from the fictional island of Mypos, find a job at the Chicago Chronicle alongside his cousin, befriend a policeman and marry a flight attendant.

This all means, according to the theory, that Mypos could have been a part of Al Qaeda and that Balki could have garnered valuable information from the prominent newspaper, his police officer friend and his flight attendant wife whilst planning ‘the perfect terrorist attack.’

4 The Tanners are in limbo

One can’t think of Full House without picturing Jesse Katsopolis and his picture-perfect smile or the adorably cute Michelle Tanner played by both Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. The show didn’t come without real-life controversy, though. Amongst other things, John Stamos was convicted of a DUI and entered a rehab facility. Jodie Sweetin admitted in 2006 that she had become addicted to meth shortly after the show ended in 1995. The adult actors sometimes got high on set and John Stamos wanted Mary-Kate and Ashley fired at one point.

The fan theories about the show are as dark as the controversies. Some believe that ‘Uncle Joey’ is the real father of Danny Tanner’s three daughters. Others claim that Michelle Tanner never existed, due to her noted absence in the reboot Fuller House. The theory has it that Michelle was invented as an imaginary daughter by Danny to cope with the grief of losing his wife.

The creepiest theory perhaps is the one that claims Pamela Tanner was the only one to survive the fatal car crash and that the Tanners are stuck in limbo with a demon in the form of Michelle keeping them from moving on. The ‘evidence’ comes in the form of Michelle convincing Jesse to stay at the Tanner’s house because she’s ‘sick’ and Danny’s love interests always disappearing to prevent him from moving on from Pam.

3 Susan faked her own death

Seinfeld is a love-it or hate-it kind of sitcom, but a list like this would be incomplete without mentioning at least one of its persistent fan theories. Once of the stranger rumors surrounding the show is the one that compares the characters to grown-up versions of the Peanuts characters, George as Charlie Brown, Elaine as Lucy, Jerry as Linus, and Kramer as either Pig-Pen or Snoopy.

There are theories that claim Kramer is a widow living off an inheritance from his deceased wife and coming up with outlandish business ideas to keep his mind off his grief. Or, according to fans, he could just be a drug dealer.

A dark theory involving George Costanza alleges that his fiancé, Susan, faked her own death with the help of her parents to escape a life with George. Her death on the show comes after she licked the toxic adhesive on cheap wedding invitation envelopes chosen by George.

2 Unofficial prequel

Married… with Children was once called the crudest comedy on primetime television by a parents’ advocacy group, because of the show’s outrageous and sometime shocking moments. This includes a drunken Santa parachuting into the Bundy family’s back yard and causing quite a stir by dying. There is also an episode dedicated to PMS and during another episode Al and Peggy are videotaped while getting busy in a motel. All of this added to the show’s ‘trashy’ reputation, but audiences loved it regardless.

Ed O’Neill, who played Al Bundy, went on to star in another sitcom: the hugely popular Modern Family. This soon led to a fan theory suggesting that Married… with Children is an unofficial prequel to Modern Family. Al Bundy, now Jay Pritchett, is divorced from Peggy and in a second marriage with Gloria Delgado-Pritchett. He had a son and daughter in Married… with Children and also has a son and daughter in Modern Family who some fans believe share similar traits across the two shows.

1 Organized crime syndicate… of old ladies

The Golden Girls premiered in September 1985 and received critical acclaim for the largest part of its 7-season run. The sitcom won several awards including an Emmy Award for each of its four main characters. The show ended after Bea Arthur made the decision to leave, and the finale was watched by more than 27 million viewers in May 1992. The heart of the show is the group of four older ladies, Blanche, Dorothy, Rose, and Sophia, who share a home in Miami. Many hijinks and adventures ensue.

Michael Harriot from The Root has shared his own hilarious fan theory on Twitter, digging further into the show’s characters and its ‘hidden agenda’. Which, according to Harriot, is that the ladies were part of an organized crime syndicate.

His ‘evidence’ includes The Golden Girls debuting in 1985 which was the beginning of the crack cocaine epidemic. He also theorizes that Rose was the head of the organization and that she murdered her own husband for insurance money. Blanche’s father could have easily been a pimp, considering his outfits, mannerisms, and way of speaking. To top it all off, Blanche’s job as an art dealer could have provided the perfect cover for drug dealing.

Dorothy would have been the handler of day-to-day business and Sophia kept the police off their trail by burning down the nursing home she lived in.

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We know that many classic American TV series were either adapted from recycled shows that originated in other countries, were spin-offs of existing series, or were based on films. However, the details surrounding the origins of some shows, especially situation comedies, are often surprising and can be insightful for fans. Here are the eye-opening stories of 10 classic sitcoms.

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10 Barney Miller (1975–1982)

In the 1970s, prime-time TV lineups were packed with police dramas. The creators of Barney Miller wanted to do a humorous cop show. Although it was a comedy, the show’s atmosphere and daily activity were much more authentic to a police station house than its dramatic counterparts, as noted by many real law enforcement officers. The pilot, called “The Life and Times of Captain Barney Miller,” was as much about Barney’s home life as his work life and bore little resemblance to the series, in part because the original cast was almost completely replaced.

Two exceptions were Hal Linden, who reluctantly gave up a part in a Broadway play to star as the title character in this risky new series, and Abe Vigoda, who played the popular Detective Fish. Veteran director/producer John Rich, who was brought in to fix the initially flawed project, thought Barney Miller should be centered at the station house, and the show quickly became a workplace comedy with very little about the personal lives of Miller or the other characters. The revamped program went from being a rejected pilot aired on ABC’s Just for Laughs summer anthology series to the iconic, long-running show we remember.^[1]

9 I Love Lucy (1951–1957)

Considering how important visuals were to I Love Lucy, from slapstick comedy to the exceptionally expressive faces of the leading actors, it’s difficult to imagine the show limited to radio. However, the original version of the series, titled My Favorite Husband, was a radio comedy based on the novel Mr. and Mrs. Cugat. The show, starring Lucille Ball, was so successful that producers were anxious to adapt it to the exciting new medium of television. Originally, it was planned to cast Richard Denning, the same actor who played Ball’s bank vice president husband on the radio, in the TV version.

While Denning did go on to play the part in another adaptation of the series, Ball, who wanted to find a way to spend more time with her frequently on-the-road bandleader husband, insisted Desi Arnaz play opposite her in this proposed incarnation. Executives were against the idea of hiring the Cuban-American Arnaz because of the perception that viewers wouldn’t accept an ethnically mixed couple on screen.

After demonstrating what a great team they were by doing a Vaudeville tour together, Ball eventually got her way, and instead of hurting the sitcom, the cultural contrasts between Ball and Arnaz only made the show more entertaining. Produced by the couple’s Desilu Productions with My Favorite Husband radio show writers Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll Jr. on board and newly cast supporting actors William Frawley and Vivian Vance, I Love Lucy became a true television classic.^[2]

8 The Nanny (1993–1999)

It may have been good luck that Fran Drescher found herself on a transatlantic flight with the then-president of CBS Entertainment, Jeff Sagansky, in 1991, but it was what she did with the opportunity that made all the difference. She had already worked for Sagansky on two unsuccessful projects, including the failed series Princesses. Drescher told the exec that “everyone kept trying to use her as a side dish but that she was the main course,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Not only insisting that she should star in the show but offering to write and produce the show with her husband at the time, Peter Marc Jacobson, it’s no wonder that Sagansky thought she was being “unbelievably brazen.” But she convinced Sagansky to set up a meeting to listen to their pitches. The problem was that the couple didn’t have any yet. However, fate once again lent a hand when she got the idea to do a humorous take-off of The Sound of Music with herself in the lead after going on a shopping trip with the teenage daughter of her model/actress friend Twiggy while in London. The end result was the hit sitcom The Nanny, starring Drescher as Fran Fine, a saucy, wise-cracking but lovable caregiver to the children of Broadway producer and would-be love interest Maxwell Sheffield (Charles Shaughnessy).^[3]

7 The Flintstones (1960–1966)

Animators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, who had scored success with collaborations on the Tom and Jerry theatrical cartoons and animated TV programs like The Huckleberry Hound Show, made history with the first prime-time animated series—prehistoric sitcom The Flintstones.

A lot of ideas were tossed around by Hanna and Barbera when they were trying to find a theme for their next series, including shows about pilgrims, Native Americans, and hillbillies. The Stone Age was so appealing because, as Joseph Barbera said, “You were able to take anything that was current and convert it to the Stone Age.”

Many people take for granted that The Flintstones was a parody of The Honeymooners. While there are clear similarities, Barbera would never confirm that the hit Jackie Gleason sitcom inspired The Flintstones. However, William Hanna said, “The characters, I thought, were terrific. Now, that influenced greatly what we did with The Flintstones… The Honeymooners was there, and we used that as a kind of basis for the concept.”^[4]

6 Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979)

There’s a long-established tradition of building sitcoms around the stand-up acts of popular comedians, but this was not nearly as common in the early 1970s when the Gabriel Kaplan-starring show Welcome Back, Kotter was being developed. The series revolved around Gabe Kotter, a Brooklyn teacher who had his hands full with a zany, undisciplined group of remedial high school students dubbed “The Sweathogs.”

As hard as it may be to believe, the leading Sweathogs were based on real guys Kaplan went to school with when he was a student at Brooklyn’s New Utrecht High School. Before they were immortalized on TV, his pals were featured in Kaplan’s stand-up routine, “Holes and Mello-Rolls.”^[5]

5 The Golden Girls (1985–1991)

Aww, who doesn’t love The Golden Girls—Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, and Sofia. However, it was actually a spoof performed for potential advertisers to promote the upcoming TV drama Miami Vice that inspired executives to develop NBC’s irreverent hit sitcom. The Golden Girls was revolutionary for its fun, provocative depiction of mature women. Sassy character actresses Doris Roberts and Selma Diamond “ad-libbed a bit about the upcoming cop show Miami Vice, changing the concept to the idea of retirees playing cards together in a Florida retirement community in a show called, Miami Nice,” according to Biography.

Originally, Betty White, who had won two Emmys co-starring on The Mary Tyler Moore Show as the lusty Sue Ann, was tapped to play Blanche. And Rue McClanahan was going to be Rose, a character similar to her air-headed Vivian character in the Bea Arthur sitcom Maude. However, director Jay Sandrich was not buying McClanahan as the innocent Rose, so he got the bright idea for them to switch parts, which turned out to be ideal.^[6]

4 Mork & Mindy (1978–1982)

It might be surprising to hear that an eight-year-old kid came up with the idea for one of the biggest hit sitcoms of the 1970s until you find out the show is Mork & Mindy. Then it totally makes sense. Producer/writer/director Garry Marshall knew a good concept when he heard it, even coming from the mouths of babes like his small son Scotty who wanted him to put an alien on Happy Days. However, according to Looper, “The writers were not enthused by this idea, and they drew straws to see who’d have to write it.”

Of course, the biggest attraction of this series about an extraterrestrial who moves in with an ordinary young woman is the outrageous, frequently ad-libbed humor of the show’s star Robin Williams. He was discovered by another member of Garry Marshall’s family, his sister, who encouraged Marshall to cast Williams after seeing him play an alien in his stand-up routine.

Mork and Mindy ended up being a spin-off. There was no real pilot. When Marshall pitched the show to ABC, he re-edited the Happy Days episode, adding dialogue for Mork in which he talked about traveling to the future. He then spliced footage of Robin Williams with footage of Pam Dawber, who would play Mindy.^[7]

3 I Dream of Jeannie (1965–1970)

In the wake of Bewitched’s colossal success, the prolific writer/producer Sidney Sheldon created a similarly themed show about the pairing of a mortal man and a supernatural woman. Sheldon’s series I Dream of Jeannie revolved around the misadventures of astronaut Major Anthony Nelson (Larry Hagman) and Jeannie, a beautiful 2,000-year-old genie (Barbara Eden). However, the premise was actually rooted in a novel by F. Anstey published in 1900 titled The Brass Bottle.

The story is about an architect who discovers a genie in an antique bottle. The book spawned two silent film adaptations and a 1964 version starring Tony Randall and, coincidentally, Barbara Eden as his mortal fiancée. It was the third movie that gave Sheldon the idea for this new show. However, unlike in the book and films, Sheldon’s genie was female, and the romantic chemistry between Hagman and Eden was a vital part of the series.

To avoid comparisons to Bewitched, Sheldon was firmly set against casting a blonde actress for the TV series. But after an extensive talent search, he reconsidered and hired Barbara Eden, who was so popular in the role that it has become her legacy.^[8]

2 The Love Boat (1977–1987)

Hour-long cruise ship romance dramedy The Love Boat had a certain advantage over typical sitcoms. Although the basic setting and cast remained the same from week to week, it was more like a series of vignettes featuring a new batch of celebrity guest stars on each episode. This helped to keep the show fresh, and since many of the guest stars were or had been Hollywood royalty, they could draw an audience regardless of the merits of the series itself. Instead of a traditional pilot, there were actually two Love Boat TV movies in the early 1970s, with a completely different cast than the subsequent TV series.

One of the most surprising things about the frothy show is that it was based on a book. Prolific 1970s TV producer Wilford Lloyd Baumes developed The Love Boat franchise from The Love Boats, a 1974 memoir by Jeraldine Saunders, who wrote of her years working as a cruise director on some very large ships.^[9]

1 Everybody Loves Raymond (1996–2005)

The popular sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, which centered on a loving but humorously dysfunctional family, was to some extent another case of a comic basing a show on his stand-up act. But the family on this series was actually a composite between Ray Romano’s relatives and those of writer/producer Phil Rosenthal.

Ray Romano recalls that a week after doing a monologue on The Late Show with David Letterman, he got a call from Letterman’s producer Rob Burnett expressing “interest in trying to develop a show just based on what they saw, my stand-up, which was talking about my family. And we said fine.”

In the beginning, it wasn’t clear exactly what the premise of the show should be. Given Romano’s lack of acting experience, Rosenthal thought it best for him to play a role similar to himself. The two created a family-based sitcom that utilized material from Romano and Rosenthal’s real lives and sometimes events in the lives of other writers on the show. The sense of authenticity to family life resonated with audiences and largely contributed to the show’s success.^[10]