Once upon a time, there was a great author, who with a single story transformed a holiday. Along the way, other artists found inspiration in this story, creating their own versions of the work. Some were good. Some were bad. Some were complete trainwrecks. Recently, an idiot spent a year and a half collecting these versions. The goal? Create a new narrative using a small portion of each source to tell it. What is the story, you ask? I would guess you watch it every year...
Twelve Hundred Ghosts isn't just one adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol... it's over 400 of them. Using everything from straightforward adaptations of the work to parodies, whole plot references, and commercials, the result is 53 minutes of utter hilarity that still tells a comprehensible story.
It can be found here
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Currently, Heath Waterman is working on an extended multi-part follow-up, A Christmas Carol Encyclopedia, covering the whole story. Part One, covering Stave One and half of Stave Two was released in December of 2020, with the rest planned for Christmas 2021.
This video contains examples of:
- Adaptation Distillation: Fred's house party in the present and Scrooge discovering Tiny Tim's death in the future are either skipped in the former's case or only briefly referenced in the latter's case, mainly for the video being long enough as it is. In addition, the sections with Ignorance and Want are entirely absent, though that one is most likely because the vast majority of adaptations included also skip it for one reason or another.
- Adaptation Overdosed: Invoked, since this work has over 400 adaptations of A Christmas Carol, doesn't include all of them, and even more were made after it came out.
- Adaptational Villainy: Played for laughs thanks to clips from commercials and A Christmas Carol II. Even after his reformation, Scrooge buys the last big bag of Walkers Crisps from Canadian Tire, teases a young boy about it, and gets the Cratchit family just enough food to keep going instead of the prize turkey (although he does end up giving them a 25 pound turkey, as well as some McDonald's chicken nuggets. He also gives the boy a LOT more money than in the original).
- Alpha Bitch: Besides being a miser, Jacob Marley ignored the unpopular and needy. Some versions of Scrooge are also this.
- Broken Record: "Bah, humbug!" and "three spirits/ghosts" get repeated about a dozen times by different Scrooges and Marleys, and Tiny Tim's "God bless us, everyone" is also repeated several times.
- Cat Scare: Scrooge is further startled at Marley's haunting when one scare turns out to be a cat.
- Catchphrase: Scrooge says "Humbug!" so much he even says it in his sleep.
- Catch Your Death of Cold: Scrooge has a cold early on, which he cures with Nyquil.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: Belle is described as fanciful and thinks she was attacked by vampires.
- Comically Missing the Point: Scrooge thinks the Ghost of Christmas Present means to give him a Christmas present at first.Ghost: No, you hamburger! Not to be confused with the Ghost of Christmas Presents, which is an entirely different thing altogether.
- Composite Character: The Ghost of Christmas Past also doubles for Yom Kippur Past, and the Ghost of Christmas Future is also Halloween Future.
- Cosy Catastrophe: Zombies and vampires are mentioned a few times, but are never brought up again.
- Credits Gag: Pausing the credits reveals long paragraphs explaining the work that went into the video, a tangent about feeling bad for Jacob Marley, and the Gettysburg Address.
- Dead to Begin With: The one constant in all the craziness is that Jacob Marley was dead to begin with.
- Deadpan Snarker: Scrooge gets a good line when Bob Cratchit tries to leave.Scrooge: Right on time when it comes to leaving, eh Cratchit?
- Evil Mentor: Marley taught Scrooge every dirty trick he knew, and then some.
- Faceplanting into Food: Jacob Marley died by choking on his cereal, which leads to him face-planting into the bowl, and drowning.
- Fake-Out Fade-Out: After the main story wraps up, there's a Credits Pushback advertising a showing of He-Man and She-Ra: A Christmas Special. Then we get a word from the critics, and then we get the real credits.
- Fate Worse than Death: Besides being chained and doomed to wander the world for eternity, Jacob Marley is forced to be a traveling sales executive for Armitage Shanks.
- Framing Device: Twofold. The video begins with a narrator talking about Charles Dickens and the story he wrote that was frequently adapted, then transitions into the Looney Tunes watching Twelve Hundred Ghosts in a theater.
- Gender Flip: Everyone switches genders a few times.
- Genre Shift: It shifts from straightforward adaptations to steamy romances, comedies, parodies, and back again.
- I Was Quite a Looker: Young Scrooge, along with being handsome, had a cast-iron stomach and tight abs.
- The Lost Lenore: Besides his ex-girlfriend Belle, Scrooge regards the deceased Marley as dashing and handsome, having seen him on countless pulp adventure magazines.
- Medium Blending: Live-action works, radio plays, comics, cartoons, paintings, books, and stop-motion animation are all seen.
- Me's a Crowd: After Fred finishes his speech about Christmas, multiple Bob Cratchits all applaud him at once. Multiple Jacob Marleys are also seen when Scrooge mentions his death, as are multiple versions of the charity collectors.
- Mood Whiplash: Immediately after Scrooge says he'd never love anyone or anything as much as Belle, it goes to him yelling at her for snuggling too close, which is followed by her breaking up with him.
- Nice Guy: Despite his meager job and how Scrooge mistreats him, Bob Cratchit still gives him Nyquil to help with his cold.
- Nocturnal Emission: Scrooge wakes up from the Ghost of Christmas Past's visit with a wet dream.
- The Nth Doctor: Everyone is played by different 'actors' depending on the scene and sometimes the line.
- "Number of Objects" Title: Due to being over four hundred versions of a story that features 3 ghosts. 3 * 400 = 1200.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Characters go from English accents to American to Spanish to Southern accents on a whim.
- Pet the Dog: Scrooge is careful when slurping soup to not get any on Mr. Snazzy, who would yell at him if he woke up.
- Product Placement: Honey Nut Cheerios, Nyquil, Walkers Crisps, Sears, McDonalds, and Canadian Tire all get nods.
- Race Lift: Everyone swaps nationalities, races, and even species at various points.
- Recursive Fiction: Several characters pull out the original book for reference, whether to do their job properly, remember their lines, or just plain compare it to the strange happenings around them without making a connection.
- Refusal of the Call: Scrooge tries to go back to sleep when the Ghost of Christmas Past arrives, but she yanks the covers off of him and forces him to go.
- Sand In My Eyes: Scrooge as played by Cruella de Vil denies she's been crying, claiming it's the smoke.
- Self-Deprecation: The opening speech calls the maker of the video an idiot. The post-show credits also show Siskel & Ebert calling it the worst Christmas Carol adaptation ever made.
- Show Within a Show: The Looney Tunes and Homer Simpson are seen watching their own versions of A Christmas Carol.
- Silver Fox: Scrooge yelling at Bob Cratchit over stealing coal transitions into Bob thinking it was the hottest thing he'd ever seen.
- Undignified Death: Jacob Marley died by choking on his cereal, then face-planted into the bowl and drowned.
- Unfortunate Names: Scrooge's schoolmates had really unfortunate names, such as Old Melonhead.
- Unresolved Sexual Tension: Early on, Bob Cratchit thinks Scrooge is the hottest, sexiest man he's ever laid eyes on. This realization goes nowhere.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Scrooge has some sort of plan going on in the background, but since it isn't elaborated on we never learn if it fails.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Scrooge used to be nice when he was younger, particularly as a baby when he was delighted to get a rattle as a Christmas present.
- The Voiceless: Played with. While some versions of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come speak, others don't.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Early on, London is mentioned as building a wall to keep zombies out, which made Scrooge even richer. It's never brought up again.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Scrooge apparently lives in England, America, Japan, and Canada all at the same time, and in different time periods.
- Yet Another Christmas Carol: Many snippets shown are of whole-plot references to the story in other mediums. And if we take the opening into account, this is yet another one to add to the pile.
