If you ever went to college — heck, probably even if you didn't — there's a very good chance you spent at least part of your life trying desperately to relive scenes from Animal House. The 1978 frat comedy popularized toga parties, canteen food fights, and the classic college prank of putting a dead horse in the Dean's office. Heck, it even inspired one of the single greatest lines in Futurama, when Mars University's Dean Vernon puts Bender and his Robot House buddies on "dodecatuple secret probation." Oh, and it spent, like, decades as the top-grossing comedy of all time, but you don't wanna hear about stuffy Omega house crud like that. TOGA! TOGA!
Yet as much as Animal House remains a fixture on campuses four decades after its release, the story behind the movie that launched John Belushi's all-too brief career remains strangely unknown. Sure, every film junkie can tell you that Universal thought it would tank on release, or that Dan Aykroyd was originally meant to co-star as deranged biker D-Day, but the twisted, bizarre hijinks that went on behind the scenes? They've somehow escaped pop culture's spotlight glare. Which is a pity, because the stuff that went on when the cameras stopped rolling would've made Bluto Blutarsky run for cover.
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