We live in an era of permanent reboots. Everything from ‘Superman’ to ‘Archie Comics’ comes roaring back in one form or another, because we entered a handshake agreement with capitalism that we would pay to see it. You may know a few things you like had a weird sequel or two. But did you know almost every franchise has experimented with going completely off the rails, in public, often with added talking animal friends?

On this week’s episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by Kristi Harrison and Cyriaque Lamar for a trip through the world’s favorite pop culture, and the bizarre mutations it went through without most people noticing. Discover the truly weird true ambitions of the artist behind ‘Garfield’, the movie studio behind ‘Casablanca’, and every cartoonist who tried to make ‘James Bond’ and ‘The Flinstones’ work for modern kids.

Footnotes: https://goo.gl/Fp23hJ