While studying at Caltech for a degree in mechanical engineering, Brian Henson is recruited by his fellow students into the latest prank against MIT in 1985, intending to outdo the "Rose Bowl scoreboard" prank the previous year. And before the opening seeking of MIT’s Fall ’85 semester, Brian and the "RF squad" rent a van to drive all the way to Boston where, in their disguises as workers for the “Roger Fox Contracting Company”, they manage to assemble their prank on top of the roof of the MIT Dome: an solar-powered animatronic Mickey Mouse (in cap-and-gown) waving with a oversized sign. MIT like the prank so much that they put the animatronic into their "Hack" museum.
The whole reason that 1991's Muppets: Impossible, a Disney/Paramount collaboration, gets made. Basically, all down to an teenage intern at Nintendo.
Jeri Ellsworth: OK, so I’m at Nintendo and I’m mostly doing basic coding for game ports, and my team was assigned all kinds of crazy stuff, like The Dark Crystal, The Muppets, Godzilla, and Mission: Impossible. So, one week I’m tired and bored because I’ve been working long hours and me and another code monkey needed a break. So as a joke on our supervisor we replaced all the graphics files for the Mission: Impossible characters with the graphics files for the Muppets, so now Kermit and Piggy and Beaker are all doing Mission Impossible’s stuff. We slipped it onto his sandbox [testing computer] and changed his shortcut link and watched the fun happen!
After this, her boss tries to pitch an idea of a crossover video game to both Disney and Paramount, but not only do both Jim Henson and Jeffrey Hayes like the video game idea, they actually get the idea of making a crossover movie!
In early 1995, at the upcoming Disney's Animal Kingdom (DAK), Jim Henson partners with David Attenborough to recruit various conservationists from all over the world, to ensure the design of DAK was safe and comfortable for the animals. Among them, are none other than Steve and Terri Irwin. Jim and Steve become fast friends, and later, have lunch with Fred Rogers and Bob Ross. Imagineer Joe Rhode sums up the lunch as "like seeing the Four Horsemen of Love and Beauty assembled for some groovy anti-apocalypse." And later, when a camera crew comes to film them, a pigeon lands near the four, who, rather than ignore it or shoo it away, start talking about, and to, the pigeon, and even leading to Jim using his Ernie voice, asking the pigeon where he could find Bert. Later, Rhodes remarked:
Ross died of cancer later that year, and Steve, the unknown guy at the time, went on to fame in his own right, so the meeting has become extra poignant in hindsight, like a once in a lifetime convergence of great souls. I have no idea what the pigeon is up to.
The first screening of the Effects Test Reel for Tim Burton's Jurassic Park to the Disney Board Directors. Initially, the team make it seem like that the special effects are all black and white, Harryhausen stop-motion, cheap rubber matinee monster looking (akin to the B-movie look and effects that Tim Burton had initially wanted), much to the discomfort and panic of the entire board, until all a sudden, a T-Rex (fully rendered in CGI) bursts through the screen with a THX-produced, Dolby surround roar, shocking the entire board. Afterwards, the prank reel is so well received, that they actually go so far as to use the footage as Jurassic Park's first trailer.
After Red Tails beats out Swing Youth for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, director Sam Fuller publicly hands his Oscar for Best Direction to his Red Tails co-director Spike Lee, in an act of defiance against Hollywood after Red Tails (one of the nominees for Best Direction) does not win.
Spike Lee: Well, that’s the last damned Oscar you’re ever getting, Sam.
Sam Fuller: Like I could give a shit.
The way the Good Shepherd Group's attempt at taking over Disney goes up in smoke: using "surprise witnesses", Disney manages to counter all the claims made by the Shepherds, as well as expose their hypocrisy. This is followed by Lillian Marie Bounds Disney and Roy E. Disney both making speeches supporting Jim Henson. A furious Jerry Falwell is forced to leave in humiliation, while the Shepherds are severely marginalized.
