Look— we're staunch believers in the "parallel thinking" theory. Despite the limitlessness of creativity, really, there are only a finite number of relatable ideas that can be conveyed to an audience. That's why, over time, sitcoms can feel a little... stale. There's an infinite pool to pull from, artistically, but if the aim is to remind viewers of their own homes, then the storylines are numbered.

It might not be that scandalous, then, to notice a few tried-and-true tropes show up time and again. Specifically, if the goal is "nostalgia," you're restricted to the trappings of an era and that which is familiar to those who remember it. That's most likely the story with some very familiar car vandalizing in one of history's most beloved movies.

American Graffiti, perhaps better than any other movie, captured youthful energy in the early '60s. It prefaced a decade's worth of rose-tinted glasses, heralding Happy Days and, later, The Wonder Years.

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While American Graffiti definitely influenced television shows that came after it, the film may have lifted a pivotal scene from an earlier sitcom, at least according to that sitcom's title star. In his 1998 memoir, Leave It to Beaver star Jerry Mathers detailed how the show served as a jumping-off point for a famous cinematic scene.

"My generation of young Americans was beautifully captured on screen in the 1973 film American Graffiti. Few films have shown as warmly and humanly the eagerness, the joys, the sadness, and the sorrows of a generation of kids soon to lose their innocence. In the film there's a scene where one of the guys wraps a logging chain around the back of a police car. when the police pull out fast, the chain rips out the back axle of the police car."

Ok, sitcom fans, does that sound... familiar?

"That scene was taken from a scene in Leave It to Beaver, when, to get back at Lumpy Rutherfrod, Wally and Eddie put a logging chain around a tree and wrap it to the back of Lumpy's 1940 Ford convertible.