Creator's Apathy: The Top 8 Video Games of 2012. Eight different Cracked writers chose a game they feel represents 2012. Almost every entry admits they either aren't gamers or they haven't actually played the game they chose.
Creator Breakdown: In 2015, David Wong agreed to participate in a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" Q&A thread. The thread was soon filled with people asking questions like "What was the catalyst that began Cracked's transformation from witty satirical site to a second-rate version of Salon?" Wong threw what could only be described as a temper tantrum, and using Facebook and Twitter he urged his fans to come to the Reddit thread and intercede on his behalf. However, Reddit has strict rules against brigading (inciting a group of people to downvote something you disapprove of), and as a result Wong managed to get his Reddit account banned.
Creator-Driven Successor: After the second Great Purge, former Cracked Podcast host Alex Schmidt launched a new podcast called Secretly Incredibly Fascinating that was clearly made in the late Cracked Podcast's image. He even opened the first episode with the same tagline as the Cracked Podcast, "A podcast about why being alive is more interesting than you think."
Likewise, Cody Johnston and Katy Stoll's YouTube show Some More News is clearly this to Cody's Some News series on Cracked.
Unfortunately, they fell victim to this when they added Robin Williams to "Ten Celebrities You Didn't Know Were Huge Nerds" (spoilers: it's one of their anti-nerd articles) sometime shortly after his tragic death, mocking him being a fan of Neon Genesis Evangelion by saying it's an anime that "people with body pillowssay is for losers".
Jonathan Wojcik claims that Cracked had a strong style guide when writing articles which he had to adhere to, which annoyed him in part because Wojcik is an Animal Lover and Nightmare Fetishist and didn't enjoy adhering to the "MONSTER BUGS THAT WILL KILL YOU AND SHOULD DIE" stance that the site tended to take.
Fake American: Despite being "America's Only Humor & Video Site," quite a few of their writers aren't American but will sometimes try to pretend they are—usually with Eagleland type 2 results.
Falsely Advertised Accuracy: Oftentimes their articles, even if they're cited, end up being either gross misrepresentations of the facts or even flat-out lies. A particularly egregious example is in their article "If Oscar Speeches Told the Truth" where they claim the screenplay to Good Will Hunting wasn't really written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, and the citation they link to directly contradicts their entire point.
According to Facebook posts, Ed Steckley hated Mr. Precious, saying that he only intended for it to be a one-shot but the editors kept pressuring him into making more. It's also noted that the aforementioned Kulpa constantly shoehorned in word balloons, despite Steckley intending for the comic to be pantomime.
Then-future MAD artist Tom Richmond seems mostly ashamed of his short tenure with Cracked at the Turn of the Millennium. His first approved piece was a parody of Godzilla (1998) that he wrote himself with the intent of sending to MAD as a sample. After they turned it down, he sent it in to Cracked, and was surprised when they actually ran it! However, Kulpa did not resize the art properly, causing it to appear vertically distorted. Other issues included low payment (despite Kulpa calling him a "flagship" artist, Richmond still only got the same per-page amount as everyone else), his art getting repurposed for front covers without compensation or credit, and his parody of Gladiator getting downgraded from color to black-and-white at the last minute... in favor of a Battlefield Earth spoof. Thankfully for Richmond, his poor treatment at Cracked drove him to try again at MAD, who accepted him.
Paul Laikin, a former writer in the 1950s and 1960s, came back to become editor in 1985. He was kicked out after only two issues due to his refusal to have John Severin draw anything, submitting sloppy cover art painted by his son, crediting writings to other family members to give them bonuses, and recycling content from Sick and other humor mags to get more money out of existing material. His successor Mort Todd managed to turn things around a bit by attracting underground cartoonists like Dan Clowes, Bob Fingerman, and Peter Bagge, but publishers rejected his attempts to use such artists to make for a Darker and Edgier feel. Editor duties were passed onto Lou Silverstone (a former MAD writer) and Andy Simmons (son of National Lampoon writer Matty), and things seemed okay for a while.
But then came Dick Kulpa (of Weekly World News fame). Under his editorial oversight, many new artists and writers were brought in, and as a cost-cutting measure, payments were done flat-rate instead of page-by-page. As a result, many of the veteran artists such as John Severin and Walter Brogan ended up quitting. Kulpa commissioned cluttered tabloid-style cover art (some of which he drew himself), constantly recycled material (sometimes even on the front cover, and almost always without compensation), forced more grossout and Totally Radical material in, altered others' content with unnecessary captions and/or art, and made a ton of editing mistakes from cutting off captions to improperly resizing art. Kulpa was literally running the mag from his kitchen table, constantly delaying releases, and overall ruining the mag through his lack of experience. Scott Gosar took over as editor in 2004, but by then it was too little, too late.
Follow the Leader: By far, Cracked was the most prominent MAD clone: a parody mag with an Expy of Alfred E. Neuman in Sylvester P. Smythe.
The Other Darrin: Many of their recurring featured were passed along to several artists throughout the years, although some moreso than others:
The first few Nanny Dickering interviews were drawn by John Severin. Art duties were passed to John Langton, B.K. Taylor, and then Sururi Gümen before it became largely the domain of Bill Ward. After he left, Rob Orzechowski became the main artists, but others contributed on occasion as well (including Severin).
"Shut-Ups" jumped artists several times, although Charles Rodrigues and Don Orehek tended to get most of them.
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