They conned Ebenezer Scrooge out of his fortune

Hello, and welcome to The Popcorn Isn't Real, the podcast where we talk about all things fan theory regarding film, and sometimes games, and sometimes books, novels. Well, starting now. Since when? We've never done that before. What are you talking about? I'm your host, Leif Eric, and I'm here with my co-host, Torvald. On this wonderful Christmas holiday, we're going to be discussing A Christmas Carol, that all-time seasonal classic from way back in 1843 by the legendary Charles Dickens. Everyone knows this story. Proportionally, few people have actually read the short story. So I'll be basing today's theory on the actual novel, but I will also be basing it on the Disney Christmas Carol. What? Whoa. Exactly. What blows my mind is Mickey's Christmas Carol came out in 1983, which is like close to a hundred years after Mickey himself came out. And presumably several years after the character of Scrooge McDuck came out.

And this is the role that Scrooge was meant to play. It's the role he was born to play. I don't understand. Scrooge McDuck, maternal uncle of previously established character Donald Duck, made his first named appearance in the story Christmas on Bear Mountain, which was published in Dell's Four Color Comics, number 178, on October 22, 1947. You got it. And that just blows my mind. How could they have a character named Scrooge sitting around for decades without making a Christmas carol about Scrooge?

Finding that out. So I thought that Mickey's Christmas carol was way older than it actually is. Finding out that it was so recent just destroyed my brain. I didn't know how to process it. I was like, what? I guess that makes sense why we watched it so much then as kids. Yeah, it was like relatively new. Because it would have just come out on VHS. Oh boy. Anyway, in my personal opinion, and that's for what it's worth, Mickey's Christmas Carol is the definitive, bar none, version of this movie. I agree with you, but I know a lot of people like other versions. A lot of people really love the Muppets version. Oh yeah, yeah. Muppets Christmas Carol. I mean, you can't say anything bad about that. It's more just like I grew up with Mickey's Christmas Carol, so that's my preference. Yeah, I just didn't really watch the Muppets one as well. Exactly. It's fantastic though. I know we've got a really

fun theory today. The theory is that a Christmas Carol, which is traditionally viewed as, you know, a story where a man either dreams or is actually visited by supernatural spirits and decides to change his ways based on what they show him. No, none of that happened. We don't believe in supernatural spirits we know that ghosts don't exist yeah so because we know that ghosts don't exist this must have actually happened to him and this must mean that he had you know a bunch of his friends and relatives basically setting him up um they were playing a trick on him they were trying to convince him that he was being visited by spirits and by you know people from his past and seeing his worst experiences replayed for him and then seeing his future death all to convince him to basically give all his money to his friends and uh support them for the rest of their lives because he hadn't been doing that well his yeah i should say co-workers and family

because he didn't really have friends yeah that's true but yeah basically the theory is that a christmas carol is uh it's a con it's a it's the story of one big con to take this man's money they all knew he was dying so they're like hey we gotta set this up otherwise we're gonna get nothing we're not going to get that inheritance i i'm curious to know how they they did this con because i mean they're no brothers grim maybe they were involved they were alive around the same time period i think maybe kind of i don't know no brothers grim came like i think way before uh charles dickens hey so here's a random question you know in uh muppet babies how So Miss Piggy says, I'm as cute as the Dickens. And apparently, you know, that's like an idiom, as the Dickens. Why? What does that mean? Why is that? Do you know? I don't know, but I'm sure Google does. Let's see. As cute as the Dickens. I've always assumed it has something to do with Charles Dickens, but maybe not.

The Dickens is a colloquial expression used as an interjection expressing astonishment. What the Dickens is that thing doing? You know, so I guess it's like saying, I'm as cute as all get out, right? Like, I'm as cute as, I'm as cute as heck. I'm as cute as, right, you know. Yeah, so, okay, so it's like AF. Cute AF. Yes, you got it. Okay, cool. Well, I'm glad they censored Miss Piggy on that one. Yeah, good for them. I mean, if you don't know this story, probably something's wrong with you. It's pretty much in, well, I mean, maybe you're from some Eastern culture. Maybe, yeah, I guess it's more of a Western culture thing, so. Yeah, it permeates storytelling in Western culture, especially Christmas storytelling. It's about a man named Scrooge who is a miser. He hoards all his money and he doesn't want to help the poor. And then he's visited by three spirits who show him his past, his present.

Four spirits. Four spirits. One is his dead partner. Marley. Jacob Marley.

And that's one of the good jokes from The Muppet Christmas Carol is one of them. It's two people. It's Waldorf and Statler. But their names are Jacob and Robert Marley. So one of them is Bob Marley. Oh, good joke. I like this movie already. so anyway um and then he's visited after marley he's visited by three spirits who show him his past his present his future and they essentially scare him into being nice and he he has a change of heart uh and he goes and helps the poor the end oh and he tells the kid in the square to bring to buy the the goose as big as him yes that's true he does do that now i have to say um i think that it's it's incredible watching uh mickey's uh christmas carol because that movie does the impossible which is making scrooge like genuinely likable and fun even though he is a horrible person like it's crazy you i mean scrooge is awesome from beginning to end i just he's scrooge

he's just scroogeing it up because you know he's kind of scrooge's thing he's he's a terrible person but he's also just like a total badass i mean he's like man he's like one of those millionaires billionaires from the old days who got it all by adventuring and exactly and exploiting natives which he does many times in the old show yeah and yeah the comics and you know he kind of never stopped well my favorite part is uh the part where scrooge is such a miser but he's not like evil about it that's just the way he is it's yeah because he's he's just he's genuinely befuddled that his fiance is mad and he's evicting her from her house he doesn't understand he's like oh man what you were an hour late like it was so funny reading the book and realizing that You're supposed to see this guy as just like a rotten, disgusting human being. But then picturing all of his lines said by Scrooge McDuck and thinking, oh, that's Scrooge.

He's so crazy. You're hoping all these poor people get sent to prison so they can have food. So Scrooge described in this book is like actually like really cool. I'm just going to read you one passage of the description of Scrooge because I think it's like insanely cool. it says external heat and cold had little influence on scrooge no warmth could warm no wintry weather could chill him no wind that blew was bitter than he no follow falling snow was more intent upon its purpose no pelting rain less open to entreaty foul weather didn't know where to have him the heaviest rain and snow and hail and sleet could boast the advantage over him in only one respect they often came down handsomely and scrooge never did is he not like the coolest character ever put to pen like i can totally imagine this dude fighting off skeletrex in his bone brigade are we gonna talk about um i think you should leave i think i'm getting the hang of this

Scrooge, you cheap bastard You're a genius at this Crap dang, this sucks Skeletrox just did a bunch more bad stuff We gotta go to the future Oh man, I just love He tells him to drink the goo But it obviously wasn't something you should No, it turns into a phone mama It turns into a phone mama We are talking, of course, about Netflix's show I Think You Should Leave, and they have a Christmas Carol special where the ghost of way future shows up from when Skeletrex and his bone brigade have taken over the world. My favorite aspect of that sketch is just the idea of the sketch because it's framed as like a made-for-TV Christmas special, right? Yeah, it's like on VHS. Someone making a Christmas special would decide to, like, make a sci-fi future Terminator, I don't know, post-apocalyptic battle kind of thing. And then be like, this seems like a sequel to A Christmas Carol. And then just have Scrooge, Ebenezer Scrooge, be the guy who fights off this post-apocalyptic future.

But it's perfect because, like, in his story, Scrooge, like, he becomes the embodiment of the spirit of Christmas. So if you need someone to save Christmas, it's got to be Scrooge. It doesn't matter what the problem is. You got to bring him. You got to go get him. I also like how they just throw a bunch of random stuff in there. But like the implication that this is some sort of almost video game, because when you kill the skeleton, you drink its goo, you gain its sense of humor. Like you get a power up. Well, yeah, I I've always been confused by the fact that. Apparently, you know, Skeletrex is amassing an army of bonies and stuff. But apparently what's far worse is that he's building, like, bone cars. That's the worst part of what he's doing. I don't know why. Oh, yeah. I almost forgot.

It's a great sketch. It's amazing. Yeah. I think it'd be hard for me to watch any of Christmas Carol now because I'd be expecting the Ghost of Way future to show up. I already saw the ghost of Christmas future. I said way future.

Back to the theory. Now, the weird thing about A Christmas Carol, the book, is that I never knew this, but the book is written from the perspective of someone like the narrator. He is telling a story and he's really, really trying to convince the readers that some supernatural stuff happened. Like, from the very first pages, he obsesses for pages and pages over the fact that Marley was dead. Like, that's like the first line of the book is, Jacob Marley was dead when this story started. Therefore, when you see him later in this story, that means that supernatural things are happening. Which, to me, really felt like a methinks the lady doth protest too much kind of situation where he's like, keep in mind, this is evidence that supernatural things happen when really all it proves is that someone was trying to pull the wool over Scrooge's eyes. Like Marley showing up after he's already dead doesn't necessarily mean there's a ghost.

It just means that someone is playing a prank on him. It means that someone's conning him. Okay. So in your theory, Marley is dead. Yeah, yeah. But the ghost is a living person who is not Marley. Absolutely. And I can prove it. There are gobs of proof in this story that it is not what it seems. Do you know who it is, though? This entire plot was orchestrated, planned, and enacted by Scrooge's nephew, Fred. Okay. I was going to guess Fred, actually. No, he's the only one with the means and the connections and the knowledge of scrooge to pull this off he has an agenda and we don't really ever find out what his agenda is uh he claims that it's just like spreading christmas spirit but uh why specifically to scrooge of all people well he's his nephew and maybe that's why he is a little bitter that he isn't gonna get anything from scrooge because he knows how much his mom loved scrooge and took care of him and now what we're not included in the will what the heck so you know

He's trying to right a great injustice and make sure that Scrooge's wealth gets spread around the family. He is at least lucky then that Scrooge did not have children. Yeah, well. Because he evicted his fiancée like a jerk. The funny thing is that doesn't even happen in the novel. It's only in the Disney version. It's the best part. And she's like, she's sitting there proposing to him. She's like, so when are we going to get married? I have this honeymoon cottage that I've bought just for us. And he's like, yeah, and you owe me money on it, so I'm repossessing it. He's like, Scrooge, you already own it. Just marry her. There's nothing to gain here. It raises a lot of questions. So she got a loan from him to buy a honeymoon cottage to propose to him. She was essentially trying to jumpstart their life. buying a house for them to live in and then he repossesses it he could have just had it

it was bought with his own money you already owned it dude you didn't and he's so confused when she leaves oh scrooge you greedy old bastard you're a genius at this oh man i love scrooge so much i mean specifically scrooge mcduck but you know all scrooges are great in their own right okay so we were talking about nephew fred so he comes to visit scrooge's workplace he gives a long speech about why christmas is so great and then uh bob cratchett basically gives him a standing ovation um and of course scrooge then like starts threatening to fire cratchett just for applauding his nephew's merry christmas speech which is great he also thought he was just clapping to keep his hands warm yeah he may say so in the disney version scrooge is a pretty awful dude he also threatens to like beat the crap out of a little kid who's caroling later with his cane yeah well with whatever he can kill the bone

brigade with that i know i want to take a closer look what did fred actually say to scrooge about christmas what was his purpose in coming here at all he really seemed to want to impress upon scrooge the importance of not profiting from christmas and spending it with fred and spreading joy if that doesn't sound like really really sinister then i don't know what does not profiting from christmas spending it with your family and spreading joy what kind of ultimatum is this what is he up to huh scrooge is basically like why would i celebrate christmas it's never profited me anything and then fred says there are many things from which i might have derived good by which i have not profited i dare say christmas among the rest and therefore uncle though it has never put a scrap of gold in my pocket and this is the important part i believe that christmas has done me good and will do me good and i say god bless it so he's saying christmas hasn't profited

me yet but it's about to oh okay uh he's up to something let me tell you so it's not just that like he's thinking he's putting good out into the world with christmas cheer and it's gonna come back to him in a karmic way he's gonna get money he's gonna profit okay he's gonna get heaps and heaps of shillings and crowns or whatever they used back then he he pretty much impresses on Scrooge the fact that, you know, you might not gain from Christmas and maybe you shouldn't gain from Christmas, but I should. And then he leaves. And then what does Bob Cratchit do the instant he lets Fred out? This is interesting. The next line is this lunatic describing Bob Cratchit, this lunatic in letting Scrooge's nephew out had let two other people in. These guys weren't supposed to come in is bob cratchit specifically lets them in because he's in on it with uh with fred oh oh no so he lets in two quote-unquote charity workers who were apparently

just waiting there at the front step just to be let in uh and guilt trip scrooge into giving them money they're like hey we're you know gathering money for the poor and the needy and he's like why would you why would the poor need money are there no more prisons has something happened why can't you just put them all in the prisons being forced on a crime it's really good you gotta love the evilness of scrooge he's just so great so so okay so as of this point the plot was for fred to come over to very very subtly imply that he's gonna get rich no no i mean that at the same time he's working with bob ratchet to let these charity workers in now you might say this is convoluted and it is except for the fact it doesn't seem like fred needs to be there no this isn't this is the actual plot though like this is the plot of the book is that all of these events culminate along with the you know the visits of the spirits overnight to change his life and make him do things that he

otherwise wouldn't have done he gets incepted by this right like they plant an idea in his head oh it's a it's a heist movie they're setting up a situation in which he is going to feel guilty later right so they need him to feel guilty for chewing out fred they need him to feel guilty for turning him down not coming over for dinner like he was supposed to and they need him to feel guilty for not you know helping the poor when he had every opportunity so they're starting small It's like, oh, well, of course he would be swayed by his nephew. No, that didn't work. But everyone loves charity workers. Let's try that next. And then they escalate very quickly to ghosts. They knew this wouldn't work. The other half of what they're doing here, just to be completely clear, is they're setting up people to benefit from him once he does change. They want him to have people right here at the ready to aim his affections and wealth at.

So the charity workers aren't just some random people they use. The charity workers are in on it? Yes, they're in on the con. I'm sorry, I wasn't clear about this. That's why Bob Cratchit lets them, like, that's why it's so weird that they were just waiting there. They didn't even knock. They didn't even ring the bell. They were just there. And Bob Cratchit specifically lets them in. They wouldn't have come in if it wasn't for them carrying out this plot. These guys are scammers. They just want his money. Yeah, that's true. He gives them everything. He's just, like, throwing money at them. Oh, yeah, not a penny more. Dude, he gives him, he's like, 25 gold sovereigns. And they're like, oh, no. And he's like, well, not enough? 50 gold sovereigns. A hundred gold sovereigns. On the way home, after this horrible day where he forces Bob Cratchit to sit there warming himself with a single piece of coal.

I always wondered, though, doesn't Scrooge get cold? Is he just immune? No, no, his heart is so cold. He is immune. I told you. I read you the story. External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm. No wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he. He literally can't get cold. This is one of his powers that is established in the book. He can't get cold and he can't get warm. I guess I didn't realize it was supernatural. No, no, no. He's not supernatural, but he does have powers.

They're just his natural powers. So Scrooge sees Marley's face in the door knocker momentarily when entering his home. The narrator goes to great lengths to point out that Scrooge hadn't thought of Marley for seven years since he died. He's trying to tell you that Scrooge couldn't have imagined this because he wasn't even thinking about Marley. Like, it's really weird. Every time something happens, the narrator goes, really, really digs into the fact that this couldn't have been imagined. It has to be supernatural, right? It's like he's trying to convince us that this wasn't some big con. So the narrator's in on it, but specifically in on it to convince the meta, the fourth wall.

It's because the narrator is Charles Dickens and he doesn't want his work sullied. He doesn't want people to know that he was actually writing about a con. The narrator insists that he hadn't thought of Marley for seven years. But we know that this is not true because the charity workers specifically called him Marley when they came in. They said, aha, Jacob Marley. And he had to correct them. And then they compared him to Marley after that. They planted this idea in his head. They wanted him to be thinking about Marley. They specifically were like, ah, yes, so you're not Marley. But I hope you're just as caring and loving as he is and willing to give to charity, aren't you? Right? Like they specifically wanted him to be thinking about Marley. and he was this happens in most of the movie versions they transform the door knocker into marley's face yeah right how do they do that oh this is a good question so in the book the door

knocker didn't transform it was just a circular door knocker and in that circle he saw marley's face just sitting there right like you know framed by the circle of the door knocker right And then he looked again, and it was gone. That would have been totally easy enough to do. They could have used like a statue or like a carved potato. I don't know. Like, it's really easy to carve someone's face if you have something to base it on. How do they make it leave? No, I think... A piece of string, dude. They pulled it. As soon as he looked away, they yanked it out. I mean, come on. It's dark. He can't see. A better explanation might be that it was a reflective doorknocker, and the guy they got to pretend to be Jacob Marley had jumped the gun. And then he realized, oh, crap, he could see me, and then ducked out of the way. I got you. But either way, they wanted him to be thinking about Marley,

and he definitely was. And that was a big part of them having those two quote-unquote charity workers drop by along with Fred is they needed him to be thinking about Marley for this whole thing to work. You might think, how could he mistake someone else for his good friend? the book goes on and on and on and on about how foggy and dark it is right now like it keeps like every single paragraph it's like it's like yes and it was a foggy day and then Scrooge left the house and it was foggier still and then the next paragraph it's like and now the fog had grown to such lengths that Scrooge could not even see his hands in front of his face and then it's like and now the fog was a solid wall that scrooge bumped his nose into didn't actually happen but no it just keeps talking about how thick this fog was and how dark it was it's a really dark day on the way up to his house it even says that scrooge who knew every stone in the walkway

who'd memorize them had to feel his way forward just to find his house door so it's really dark it's like what is he feeling with that his hands on the ground like he's like crawling forward oh wait he's not affected by cold that's yeah he doesn't care he's cold come on this is ebenezer screwed man doesn't feel cold i see so as he enters the author then describes how large his hall and stairway is it says that you could easily fit a locomotive hearse broadways through the house and up the stairs so it's saying you could fit a car through his doors and up his staircase like sideways big not even straight yeah it's enormous why would you ever need one that big and unless you're planning on dragging a sideways hearse up to the second floor scrooge saw a locomotive hearse trondling through his house for a second because they put one there why like i don't know but you could easily put one here so they did they wanted to scare him

jeez i didn't even know they had like locomotive hearses back then all the movie versions they have like horse and carriages they they they like rented one just for the occasion um but why it's it's real scary it's like oh there's a hearse in my house it's like really scary right then they quickly dragged it up the stairs yes yes sideways though just because they could right like this is more like they wanted to prove it they were like look how opulent his house is we're gonna break into his house there's something i always wanted to try with his massively wide staircase i mean fred is nothing if not ambitious he will go to great lengths to get what he wants and what he wanted was a car going up that stairway sideways and he got it i see something i have to try with this gratuitously large staircase like isn't this book so much better already like it's a great book let me tell you i love this book uh scrooge pretty freaked out goes up to his

room to rest he you know sits down by the fire he leans back and accidentally brushes his head against one of the I don't know what they're called the communication bells like you know how old houses used to have bells you could ring that would then ring other bells somewhere else Cinderella's bells what's she dressed in dressed in yellow what did she do she went to the mall to kiss the fella well I hope that went well for her no she made a steak oh no what did she do she kissed a snake ah how many doctors did it take one two three i don't remember i love the idea by the way that anything can be remedied and treated with the correct amount of doctors like you just pump more doctors into the room and the the malady just starts to go away by itself She's dying. Get more doctors in here. Man, I can't believe we didn't quote that rhyme during our Cinderella episode. And that we did during the Christmas story episode.

So he brushes against one of his communication bells and then all the bells start to ring. Ooh, that proves that there were ghosts, right? No. No, no. You could so easily make all the bells ring. their strings just attach all the strings together and then they all start ringing right or yeah just have someone standing at every single other bell and start ringing them how many people did fred get in on this a lot well enough to drag the earth up the stairs that would have been no problem with the amount of people he has working this con let me tell you and all the people helping are just like but fred why do we have to drag it up sideways it's so much harder like just want to see if you're gonna love it just do it i've always wanted to see this oh fred he's just so congenial though that smile and laugh of his they go in great great detail about how nobody could refuse him with his wonderful smile and laugh that's why

everyone's in on it well and that's why he's the perfect con man right like they just go on and on later in this book about how unbelievably charming he is when he smiles and laughs all the bells go off scrooge is freaked out he hears a clatter downstairs is it santa claus no it's much worse it is the ghost of his friend marley who's about to pass through the locked door and confront him how could they possibly manage that how could they pass a ghost through the door yeah that's a good question they didn't do that they had someone hide upstairs in his room and just emerge from the gloom you might ask why is scrooge's room so dark and gloomy well specifically they just uh charles dickens describes that scrooge only uses one candle one single candle yeah exactly he's so cheap and they know that i guess yes well i mean they're not expensive but you don't get to be as rich as scrooge if you you know don't pinch every penny apparently um yeah but anyway um so he

uses a single candle to light his entire house so it's a dark house he does have a fireplace he keeps it extremely low like ridiculously low yeah so all they had to do was have a guy hide by the door and stand up and scrooge is like a ghost walked through my door i mean i guess it would depend on the size of the room did they describe how many hearses would fit in his bedroom no but if the hall is any indication i'm assuming like at least like 12 i don't know scrooge does say that this uh this specter approaching him is transparent he makes a joke about it he's like huh i i can't see any bowels in there haha i always knew that jacob marley didn't have any bowels the joke being that in old times your bowels were a symbol of your mercy uh okay so clever he doesn't have any bowels i know he didn't have any i thought he was scared why is he making jokes about his bowels so maybe scrooge isn't as scared as they want him to be

and that is uh is it becomes apparent in just a minute the fact that he has no visible bowels must mean he's not really transparent. Otherwise you could see them. Yeah, there you go. I mean, if he's transparent, I guess his bowels would be too. But anyway, maybe. So how could he be transparent? Maybe Scrooge just is seeing things, right? Maybe it's a dark room. He can't see correctly. Like I said, he's not as scared out of his wits as they want him to be. And he starts to notice things that kind of put this entire situation into question. He notices that Marley has like a strange texture around his face. He says it's some kind of like a kerchief. It says he marked the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head and chin, which rapper he had not observed before. He was still incredulous and fought against his senses. And this is why I really like Scrooge, because he's he's like a very logical man.

He's very cold. The historical reason for this is that they would bind up a dead body's head with a handkerchief to hold his mouth shut just so that it wouldn't like fall open during viewings of the casket. Oh. So there you go. They didn't have glue? Well, I don't know. Or like a needle in throats, I guess. I don't know. Either way, Scrooge thinks that this is noteworthy and it makes him question what he's seeing. And he specifically says, I didn't observe this handkerchief before, and he definitely went to Marley's funeral. So he thinks something's wrong here. What he is seeing is clearly the folds of the mask, which they've tried to apply to the face of this actor to make him look like Jacob Marley. The narrator insists that this is the ghost of Jacob Marley. But what does Scrooge think about this? Does he say, ah, it's Jacob Marley. He probably says Bah Humbug. No, well, yeah, probably that too.

But he does not say at any point that this is Jacob Marley. He says, who are you? He specifically asks, who are you? What are you doing here? Like he has no idea who this ghost is supposed to be. And they're trying to convince him that it's Marley. Scrooge is clever. The first thing he does is try to verify that this is a real ghost. He says, can you sit down? Do it then. Like he's he's putting this ghost to task. He wants it to prove that it's a ghost. I don't see how that would prove it's a ghost. I mean, if ghosts can't exist at all, they can probably sit, right? He thinks it's some kind of special effect that they have set up for him. Maybe this will ruin the effect. Then he specifically he says that he doesn't believe that this is Marley. He says, you're not Marley. And then to prove that he's Marley, Jacob undoes the handkerchief and lets his jaw fall to his chest. I don't see how that proves that it's him.

I guess it proves that he's dead, but, like, that would be pretty easy to do with a mask. Yeah, you just have, like, a jaw on a rubber string of some kind. Now, as they talk, Jacob Marley, in quotes, is trying to convince Scrooge that, well, I'm bound with, you know, the chains of my own making, and I was so greedy, and I need to make sure this doesn't happen to you. You can't let your greed imprison you how mine imprisoned me. So he's doing some very clear social engineering tricks here, which are he is instilling in Scrooge a sense of panic and a sense of urgency. He's saying, right, act now, this crazy, horrible thing's going to happen to you. Act now or you won't be able to act later. I've got these chains that are horrible. Yours are even longer and heavier than mine. Like you're even more doomed than I am. But I can save you. But only if you act now. OK, yeah. Scrooge and Marley walk over to the window and Marley won't let Scrooge get close to him.

Marley won't let him get within two paces of him. He stops him. He says, don't come any closer. It's because they've got a bunch of setups in this window because Marley's about to fly out the window along with a bunch of other floating spirits that are clearly using zip lines. They don't want Scrooge to see them. Just like the Brothers Grimm. Exactly like the Brothers Grimm. Marley has told Scrooge that he's going to be visited for the next three nights at 1 a.m. every night, which is odd because it's the night before Christmas. You might know from viewings of this movie that he's going to wake up on Christmas. Yeah, so that's pretty weird, right? I'm going to get back to that near the end. Scrooge goes to bed at 2 a.m. and wakes up at 12. And he's like really confused by this. He's like, what happened? Did I sleep for like 20 hours? No way could they fake that. I know. He's like, did I sleep for 22 hours or is it 12 noon?

And he like looks out the door and he's like, no, it's still nighttime. But has the night somehow fought off the day and there will never be day ever again? And I love his first thought here. Really good. Again, this is actually great writing from Charles Dickens. He's like, no, no, if there would never be a day, then all of the bills that I've filled out that say page in three days time would never be filled because days don't exist he's like all that money oh man it's his worst nightmare he comes to the conclusion that it's actually nighttime because people aren't out and about so he's like i must have slept for 22 hours something's horribly wrong yeah or someone like set your clocks back dummy he does hear the church tower bell ring 12 times no i just gotta say back in these times bells didn't ring by themselves they had bell ringers they could have paid off the guy to ring the bell 12 times it's not that

man of means well also they took control of all the bells in his house yeah they did i mean they're like masters of bells they just got another bell in their repertoire even if fred doesn't have the means the bell ringer is probably like some 12 year old urchin right like just some dude getting paid like no i'm pretty sure it's usually like a deaf hunchback either way it's not a man who is like very well off fred could have just gone and clobbered the dude knocked him out and rang the bell himself just like his uncle well let's try to beat people up in the streets let's bring this around fred's strengths we know that fred is just like insanely lovable everyone who meets him loves him and he can charm anybody with a smile and a laugh he could have just said scrooge because scrooge is the only one who truly knows him so no he could have just showed up and been like hello there mr bell ringer i'm playing a devious joke on my friend could you ring your

bell 12 times instead of one right i'm sure the guy would do it everyone loves fred he'd be like that sounds like a hilarious jest scrooge the ghost of christmas past who takes scrooge flying out the window clearly using that same zip line i mean that's why they set them up that's why i couldn't go to the window earlier just in case you wonder zip lines were invented by the 1800s i think the first use of one recreationally was in the early 1800s and they were clearly used before then they had ropes and pulleys i mean we know the brothers grim yeah the brothers grim could do it 200 years before now i didn't say this but the first recreational use of a zip line uh the dude died so maybe they weren't that safe back then the ghost of christmas past first leads him to a scene of his younger self like his very young self at school he's there at christmas all alone like a little harry potter because he doesn't have a home to go to yeah christmas harry potter

never went home for christmas um so as he's there um he sees his younger self and then he looks and sees ali baba and hassan and the sultan's groom from a thousand and one arabian nights oh he sees valentine and orson who are the main characters in the french french romance the history of two valentine brethren yeah so these would have all been popular stories at the time yes so it is really starting to sound like fred just hired a troop of actors who maybe didn't know what to do and they're just improv and doing some of their bits yep so using the costumes they have it's really weird for him to see a bunch of actual people from fictional stories just wandering around the set right like what's going on here i feel like maybe they were using an actual set in a theater and they forgot to clear everyone out and like some people are just milling around in costume go go get out of here i mean you said you were gonna have it cleaned up by now that that's

the only explanation i can come up with like we got confused it was supposed to only be 3 a.m and then the clock struck 12 yeah the belt we thought we had hours i mean yeah either either these actors got confused or weren't keeping the schedule or like maybe this is some drug addled trip they drugged him up a bit i don't know either way he's seeing weird stuff then they switch scenes he sees himself a little older he's being invited home by his little sister fan you might say even though she's a little fan she's his biggest fan she invites him home because father is so much kinder than he used to be which i thought was sad apparently their father's just been beating the crap out of them and poor fan was stuck at home well scrooge at least got to leave but she's like you can come home dad doesn't beat me anymore and he's like yay good thing he had fan there to test the waters for him i guess of course they picked this scene to reenact because fan is fred's dead

mom. So he wants to remind Scrooge of his family and of his dearly, dearly beloved dead sister. You wouldn't leave her family high and dry, would you? Right? He's trying to put that idea in his head. So she didn't die as a kid. She died much later. Okay. Probably like a 20 or 30 year old. For some reason I was imagining her father killing her. I don't know why. No, I mean, She just died someday. Fred may have heard stories from his mother fan that Scrooge... Oh, I remember when my dad stopped beating us and I came and got Scrooge from his boarding school. Right, and Scrooge used to cry at the school all alone. But it does seem like the ghost shows him some notable moments from his past later that perhaps Fred wouldn't know about. Aha, aha. Okay, let's keep going then. The ghost then takes him to Fezziwig's party. Yeah, Fozziwig. Fezziwig, of course. Yeah. being his boss. Everyone loves Fezziwig.

This seems interesting because they get there and Fezziwig and Scrooge and another guy named Dick are all working. And, you know, funny name, right? Yeah, that's good. No, I was thinking that that must be Dickens, you know, that he put himself into the story. Oh, you're right. So they're all working. And then within two minutes, like you're just just like instantaneously Fezziwig's like all right boys we're done for the day set up for the party and then immediately like 30 guests pour into their office and the party is like that was the cue yes all the actors came in play the music exactly so they have a great party everyone's having fun Scrooge is like oh this rich man who made people so happy how come I'm so rich and people don't love me like we all love Fezziwig and the ghost talks to him a lot about that he's like you see how easy trying to convince scrooge that you could use your money to make people happy

essentially right yeah after the party feziwig sends scrooge and dick to bed under the counter in the shop like they just sleep under the counter and then wake up and work more and i'm like feziwig's a horrible person why'd you like this guy the slave driver apparently it was a common practice for apprentices of that time to sleep in small beds made under the counters and then just work again when they wake up. That's all they would do. I'm like, geez, this is like a Christmas party. Fezziwig wasn't even like giving them the day off and he didn't even let them go home. He's just like, come to the party. Now go back to your counter. Yeah. I'm like, why did they portray him as like a nice guy? He's awful. Scrooge didn't make Cratchit sleep under the counter no you let him go home so you asked who might have been present who's still alive who would have you know been here to see this party and could read gail them of what happened dick

exactly he takes no actions in the book so why is dick here it's literally just to establish that there was another person here who is not dead who is close to scrooge who would have known everything about this party so you know with a little investigative work fred tracked down dick and was like hey do you remember any you know experiences we could use for this and Dick's like oh yeah I remember this party with Fezziwig and he's like tell me everything oh yeah okay okay I don't think he included Dick in the con I think he just went and talked to Dick right and he got a very descriptive you know recounting of this party and he's like all right we can do that at least like 50 percent of the money he's getting from Scrooge is gonna have to go to these actors so you don't underestimate how little they paid people back then apparently that's true mickey got a raise in a christmas carol and his raise he makes like a shilling a

week and he's like no no i got a raise and he's like all right when you started to do my laundry he's like that's right now i make a shilling and a hay penny he got a lot of raise you're just doing no exactly he got more work and all he's paid for it is a hay penny he gets a half penny for doing Scrooge. And that's all they have to eat for Christmas. Yeah, when they go there, they have no food and the entire kitchen where they would cook the food is taken up with a big pot doing Scrooge's laundry. How much laundry does he have? He's just one old man. I know.

Cheap bastard. Yeah. This seems like it might be a good time to bring up a couple things that are on my mind. Uh-oh. If you know the song, It's the most wonderful time of the year. I do now. You sang it so well. There's always that one confusing line where he says, there'll be scary ghost stories and tales of people. You know, so I looked into that and it turns out that it used to be a common practice to tell scary ghost stories around Christmas time, which to us seems weird because that's more of a Halloween thing, not a Christmas thing. Well, they didn't. Do Halloween back then. Yeah, but Charles Dickens was sort of writing within this tradition that already existed when he created a Christmas carol. And nowadays, it's the only Christmas scary ghost story that the mainstream would really know about. That's a cool tradition. I wish that still existed. Yes, kind of makes Christmas, I think, more interesting

than just like cheesy, happy, fun, fun Santa.

Just because we're talking about the ghost of Christmas past portion in the Muppet Christmas Carol, my favorite part of it and most people's least favorite part, and some people would say scariest part is not the ghost of Christmas future, but the ghost of Christmas past, because she is a ridiculously creepy puppet doll ghost. She's got like this pale white face and like these little strands of blonde hair. and she's constantly surrounded by just moving, flowing white fabric all around her. And she's floating, and they filmed her separately from Scrooge on a green screen. So anytime it shows her next to Scrooge, she looks even scarier, because she just looks like she shouldn't be next to him, because she wasn't. And their green screen wasn't that great. That's my favorite version of the Ghost of Christmas Past. And I would also say the ghost of Christmas present is scarier than the ghost of future

because that weird scene that creeps me out where he opens up his like pants and has two little like starving orphans. So did they do that one in the Muppet Christmas Carol? A lot of the movies just leave that out. Yeah, they do. But I know that I've seen it in some of the older versions and it's kind of creepy and weird. A couple of other interesting notes as long as we're going into some trivia. A lot of people probably won't know. I didn't know until I saw the Jim Carrey version. But the Ghost of Christmas Past is actually portrayed in the original book as a candle. Oh. And in the book, they never say he's a candle, but they describe him as a candle, right? Like they say that he's very tall and thin and that his head, like the top of his head is really bright and he has a hat that can cover it. And he's like, Scrooge is like, and I had the feeling if I put that hat down, it would turn out the light forever.

like it's it's like one of those little so it's like that you can extinguish scrooge was just like staring at his only candle and and that was the dream he had yeah he's all drugged up by fred it's a little interesting a little weird so maybe for that ghost fred just used like a candle and they like kind of hypnotized him with him i kind of think so the light from this thing's head it has like a hypnotic effect on scrooge oh like he keeps getting distracted by it and and then eventually he pulls himself out of the delusion he's seeing by pulling down the hat and extinguishing the flame and then he immediately wakes up in bed there's good evidence that every single one of these ghosts is something that he saw in his house before he went to sleep so marley was the door knocker he saw that and he remembered marley yeah right before he went to bed he looked at the candle and the candle showed up as a ghost the other thing he looked at before he

went to bed is he has a pot of gruel cooking uh on the hob by the fire when he wakes up again it's not just a little pot of gruel it's a gigantic feast and a giant right like that that became the gigantic feast of christmas present and then the last one is the ghost of christmas future the very last thing when he's screaming and crying and oh i'll change i'll change then he snaps out of it and wakes up and before his eyes the ghost of christmas future becomes his bedpost so it was just his bedpost that he was staring at as he fell asleep and he's like ah it's evil it's the grim reaper well then there's there's definitely good evidence to support that it was all a dream well but i don't need to prove that that's just kind of the story anyway the next uh thing that the ghost of christmas past shows him is his fiancee bell he sees his middle-aged self and bell and she is breaking up with him and i think that bell in this

scene is played by the actual bell's daughter because bell does have a daughter who would be just the right age to play her the next scene is one that has nothing to do with scrooge they jump like way into the future it's like current and they show bell like current bell and her current husband and their kids just being the world's most cheesy happy family ever like just oh life is so good oh i love my children so much oh that old disgusting stupid scrooge what what fun he's missing out on and they they make fun of scrooge for no reason they just start talking about him the husband's like you'll never guess who i saw today and she's like oh it must have been that stupid scrooge and he's like yes oh i pity the fool and she's like oh what he could have had if he married me it's really weird laughing about you instead well yeah i think i think bell is playing herself here and i think this is just her little revenge on scrooge and they're trying to

show him like hey what have you done with your life you could have used your money for the people you love well it could be that that fred found a past scene by interviewing bell and her daughter and then after that he was just out of stuff he's like well we gotta go to the present i know it's kind of mixing my ghosts but then uh he gets like extremely tired and drugged and like wakes up again at one okay so they were definitely drugging and or hypnotizing him then he leaves his bed and finds the ghost of christmas present now i'm like 99 certain they just hired the biggest gigantic dude they could find and paid him in food they're like hey come come work for us and you get like a whole room full of food he's like yes i love food can i also have a few orphans yeah so i don't know what's going on with the orphans the ghost of christmas present hides two orphans under his cloak they are the boy is ignorance and the girl is want

and he says that the boy ignorance is the most dangerous one you have to look out for him because he's got the word doom on his forehead and is becoming more and more clear every year which again kind of helps to show that they're trying to get scrooge to change his ways like but i mean that's the normal interpretation of this story right yeah yeah all of this and that's why this works so well is because someone's clearly conning him like like i said you might think this is all really convoluted and crazy but it works right like this does get scrooge to completely change his ways so clearly whether it's orchestrated by ghosts or a human it's the right way to go about it right yeah and the honestly the dream interpretation is the least likely because we know that subconsciously scrooge didn't care like there was no indication that any of the things that happened had gotten to him yeah it was like a clown college situation those charity workers didn't affect me at all

but he said seeing marley's face and doorknobs and hearses in his house the first thing he has scrooge do is he's like okay scrooge you're ready to go with me just touch my robe and scrooge touches his robe and then everything vanishes it's a drug robe oh no no no no no i think that he just needed scrooge to get close to him and then like put a bag over scrooge's head and scrooge is like ah where did everything go he takes scrooge to bob cratchit's house scrooge gets to see tiny tim he gets to see how horrible bob cratchit's life is they're all putting on a very exaggerated performance of like yeah teeny tiny itty bitty christmas that they all love so much so big it's all very exaggerated Like no one would ever spend Christmas in this cheesy of a manner unless it's, you know, for somebody to see. Make Tiny Tim the cutest and tell him that he's going to die. You're killing Tiny Tim. The Ghost of Christmas Present quotes the exact words that Scrooge said to the charity workers earlier.

He says about Tiny Tim, he says, if he be like to die, then he better do it and decrease the population, which is what Scrooge said about the beggars. Oh, man. So how could he have known that? well either he's an omniscient ghost or he's one of the charity workers yeah exactly no that's why he's so big he's both of the charity workers stacked up the orphan was the other guy he was standing on when he opens up the cloak it was an accident they weren't that's why he's like oh it's ignorance and it's ignorance and also i've got i've got another one in there too that's not weird at all i keep lots of people under my my cloak wow so out of nowhere like they're just enjoying their christmas meal and then bob cratchett is like hey hey i want to make a toast to scrooge the founder of the feast just so that they can again tug at scrooge's heartstrings they're doing two things here and fred does the same thing bob's loyalty is unquestionable and so is fred's they will never

give up on scrooge but everyone else thinks he's horrible so if he just changes then you know he could give bob and fred some uh some money the ghost then takes him to like you know like across the country like to a lighthouse and then on a boat uh across the ocean it's like a bit of a drugged up haze and then suddenly he's just at fred's house wow all they talk about at fred's house for this whole party is how scrooge is saying that christmas is a humbug and they're like oh that's fred's like no no and again yeah specifically they don't hate on scrooge or how rich he is they pity him right like and they say oh it's like fred's message to everybody else is that it's really sad how scrooge has all this money and he'll never do anything with it or get anything out of it yeah seems like a weird message unless scrooge is there listening right and he's like yeah if only scrooge would use his money for give it to his poor nephew it was always nice to

him he specifically tells everyone here he says that he will keep visiting scrooge every christmas in the hope that it gets him to do something good with his money someday. This is a quote from the book. Even if it only puts him in the vein to leave his poor cleric 50 pounds, then that's something. Him and Bob really tugging at Scrooge's purse strings. But Fred is also implying that's all that Bob is getting for his part in this. They got to start slow, you know, they got to ramp up. He's putting the idea in Scrooge's head that life would be better if you just give bob and old fred some money that's the whole message of bob's party and bob's party is even about scrooge it's so weird dude he's like man life would be better for scrooge if he'd just give us some money i think their production has taken longer than they planned the night is dragging on and they know that the day is coming soon and they've had to pay off the

bell ringer lots of times yeah they paid off a lot of people they they have to speed things up And the instant the Ghost of Christmas Present leaves, the Ghost of Christmas Future arrives. Like, he's just there. He just shows up. Yeah, nothing special. Ghost of Christmas Future takes him on a quick, clearly set up walk through the town where everybody in town is discussing the death of Scrooge and what will be done with his money. Uh-oh. In most of the movie versions, it's always, like, nighttime and scary when the Ghost of Christmas Future takes him. Is it nighttime while these people are out on the streets chatting? Yeah, presumably. I mean, it seems to be in the book. Why would they all be out on the street chatting at nighttime? For the con. They're actors. It also doesn't make sense because we're supposed to believe that Scrooge was so unloved and nobody cared about him and nobody came to his funeral.

And yet the entire town is like just chatting about him. It doesn't make any sense. It's stupid. They meet some robbers that are tallying up the stuff they took after his death. None of these robbers took anything worth anything. They took, like, his curtains and, like, his blanket. I don't know what they think they're going to talk about. The things that he had near him. Right, just the things in his room right then. He probably just, in the dream version, he probably just, like, lost his blanket. He's like, robbers took my blanket. No, no, robbers took it. so the ghost of christmas future takes him to his own room and they see a body on his bed but they never see its face they never remove the sheet from its face and this is important because it's not him it's some actor they got to lay on that bed and scrooge keeps asking who it is he's like who's that body on my bed and then they go to the cratchets house where they're not

feeling emotional about him they're feeling emotional about tiny tim they're all grieving tiny tim and bob is like oh and i by the way i ran into fred and you know how great fred is he's just great i love fred everyone should give fred more money he just goes on and on about how awesome fred is and he's like and fred's gonna get my son work if only someone would give me and my family more money and work what did tiny tim supposedly die of a broken leg he uh he just died of a plot device wow in this he has a crutch and he has like metal braces so i'm guessing he has like polio and yeah that that'd kill you well he's gonna die no matter what then right i was gonna say scrooge could not keep him alive through polio and this is actually good evidence that they were conning scrooge because scrooge changing his ways does according to the story keep tiny tim alive and if he had polio the spirit of christmas can't fight off polio and before this night

scrooge did not know of the existence of tiny tim right no he didn't know about any of this so he only learned of him the ghost of christmas present and that's when they put the leg braces on tiny tim is a setup right like they bought him the crutch and the braces like you know a week ago and they're like quick put these on act as decrepit as you can and then miraculously after Scrooge starts helping him they're like hey he got better he doesn't need the crutch anymore they take him to his workplace which he can see is refurnished which wouldn't be that hard to do and then they go to his grave and then he's like ah it's me I'm the one who's dead no I'll change I'll change I'll never be so greedy again I'll be a good person he seems to think that being less greedy will make him live longer which i'm like dude you're gonna die either way it's not gonna make you live longer i don't know unless he was murdered by like bob cratchit or someone yeah

you never know his money yeah fred he'll this is a threat right like fred's like if you don't change i'm gonna kill you i'll kill you and just forge the will the will yeah he wakes up and it's christmas day jacob marley told him it would take the next three nights everything was done in one night and the boy outside is like why sir it's christmas day and he's like whoa time travel yeah or like they just were messing with you dude there's no reason why it would have taken three nights they just want to be like oh spooky you thought three nights had passed but it was just one he orders the prize goose and sends it to the cratchits the one as big as me yeah wow he's like it's like two times as big as tiny tim he leaves his house and immediately runs into the two charity workers who apparently hang out right outside his doorstep all day every day well they probably had to sleep there they've been just doing stuff the whole night they had to refurnish

his office yeah yeah they just got back so yeah they uh they're just hanging out right there and they're like oh what a coincidence mr scrooge and then he promises them some absolutely obscene amount of money which we don't get to hear he just whispers it to them and it's not included in the book but they're like oh could they say oh no he's like not enough they set themselves up as as the recipients of his charity and they got his charity he then goes to visit fred and have a christmas dinner with him and all the people from his vision they were all ready for fred's christmas dinner anyway they were all there they essentially have to reenact it twice yeah they're like oh i'm tired of having to do all those same games again We had to do one at like 4 a.m. I know. The next day at work, Scrooge gets there early and he gets there early just so that he can find Bob coming in late. And then Bob comes in 18 and a half minutes late.

So Scrooge chews him out and then gives him a raise. No, I was like, yeah, dude, Bob is late. Well, he knows he's going to get that raise. He probably never comes in on time again after this. Exactly. He's setting precedent. And yeah, that's, uh, that's pretty much the story. Um, I think it's, it's, it's clear that, uh, he, this is all Fred and Bob's doing like they're the only ones who benefited from this, them and the charity workers. And, uh, someone's had to have set it up. What do you think? Well, you know, uh, I give it two balls and one humbug, um, which is to say, I like it. Dude, that's how Scrooge says he likes things. No, I mean, I wasn't on board to begin with, but I think you convinced me. Either it was a dream, and you know, how likely is that? Or it was a con, but it's definitely not a ghost story. Either way, Fred was up to no good. I mean, Fred was really, he's skulking around, giving his Merry Christmas messages.

Look who he's related to, you know, the apple doesn't drop far from the tree. Exactly, fan taught him well. What do you think the odds are of us maybe possibly getting the author on the podcast? Oh, Dick, Charles Dickens. Well, maybe we could get a Charles Dickens impersonator. How do you impersonate someone who there's no footage of? I don't know. I think you mean like a ghostwriter? I don't know. No, we'll just get a psychic medium. Dude, that would be amazing. Oh, my gosh. We should do that. And on that chilling revelation, I'd like to end this with the famous words of Tiny Tim. Merry Christmas and God bless us, everyone. Have a great Christmas. If you like the podcast, you can always give us a review. Make sure you subscribe to us on Patreon. We really, really appreciate any sort of Christmas cheer you have to send us. Yeah, don't be a Scrooge. Yeah, don't be a miser. If you don't subscribe.

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