Mel Brooks and Joe Rogan star in seriously insane Muppet Christmas special

The Muppets and holiday entertainment go hand in hand with the rods attached to them. Obviously, there’s The Muppet Christmas Carol, which some say is the best adaptation of Charles Dickens’ classic tale (and the worst is That Musical with Kelsey Grammer). And then there was “A Muppet Family Christmas,” which teamed up characters from The Muppet Show with the Sesame Street gang, only for the whole thing to be ruined by the mob. Nightline’s teaser was disappointing..

However, the Muppets also appeared in many other holiday specials, including The Musical Show with John Denver and A Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa. Still, while all of these shows largely held together, the 2002 TV movie It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie went to a really strange place.

Well, first of all, the most infamous aspect of this movie is that I’ve talked to you before.which promoted the “Muppets did 9/11” conspiracy theory. That’s because the movie is a riff on It’s a Wonderful Life, in which Kermit the Frog discovers that he exists because of his guardian angel (David Arquette, somehow dressed as a 1920s silent film wimp). This is because it allows us to see a version of the world that didn’t exist before.

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However, when Kermit visits a Kermit-less version of America in 2002, the World Trade Center is still standing, thus implying that America’s favorite frog has something to do with this national tragedy.

But aside from this shocking reveal/mistake in the graphics department, It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie is a fever dream of a movie. Most Muppet projects feature celebrity cameos, but this one features an odd combination of the Scrubs cast, Whoopi Goldberg as God, and Mel Brooks as The Snowman’s narrator, “Joe Snow.” Guest stars appear.

In perhaps the most unsettling sequence, Fozzie tries to deliver a bag of money to save the Muppet Theater from foreclosure, but ends up being chased by a Crocodile Hunter-like reality show host. While trying to defeat Fozzie, Hunter accidentally captures the snowman. Merry Christmas!

Fozzie is then painted green and mistaken for the Grinch by angry Whoville residents who attempt to lynch Fozzie for stealing Christmas.

And since Lizzo is forced to appear on Fear Factor, we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out that Joe Rogan shows up as himself in Kermit’s alternate reality. Yes, this is a Christmas movie where Joe Rogan instructs a screaming woman to eat Rizzo the rat.

There are many other strange story options in the timeline without Kermit. The Muppet Theater is turned into a nightclub, where Beaker becomes a jacked bouncer and Scooter spends the night gyrating in a cage.

At one point, Kermit realizes that if he had never been born, Muppet movie villain Doc Hopper would be expanding his fast food frog legs business. So Kermit basically finds out he’s responsible for the frog genocide.

But again, on the plus side, there is no 9/11.