Over the course of its 180 episodes, Seinfeld sometimes went to some pretty weird places for comedy. Some of its darkest episodes, like “The Limo,” in which George (Jason Alexander) unwittingly poses as a famous white supremacist, and “The Opera,” which sees the return of “Crazy” Joe Davola, were written by the same man, Larry Charles. Charles also penned the Season 5 episode, “The Bris,” which covers everything from suicide, the ethics of circumcision, and one of Seinfeld’s most bizarre plot lines, Kramer’s (Michael Richards) discovery of the so-called pig-man. While visiting friends who recently had a baby, Kramer accidentally barges into the wrong hospital room and is horrified to find what he refers to as a “pig man.” As recently revealed by Charles in his memoir Comedy Samurai: Forty Years of Blood, Guts and Laughter, the pig-man was actually inspired by the 1973 British satirical drama O Lucky Man! starring Malcolm McDowell.

Larry Charles Was Responsible for Some of ‘Seinfeld’s Weirdest Episodes

Described as “a show about nothing,” much of Seinfeld’s comedy revolves around mundane situations and petty relationship conflict, but will sometimes venture into dark and absurd territory. Though the series had a talented team of writers, including Larry David himself, Charles was the man behind some of the show’s most memorable episodes. Along with the groundbreaking Season 4 episode, “The Outing,” Charles also brought the show to some of its darkest places, comedically. In the Season 2 episode, “The Baby Shower,” Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld) is shot and killed during a dream sequence. In his Season 5 episode, “The Fire,” George reaches a new low when he pushes children and an old woman out of the way to escape a house fire during a child’s birthday party. “The Opera” from Season 4 feels like a mini-horror movie when “Crazy” Joe Davola (Peter B. Crombie) stalks Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) dressed as Pagliacci the clown.

Seinfeld is also known for incorporating references to movies and other television series – both real and fictional – into its episodes and plot lines. There are references to and parodies of movies like Midnight Cowboy, Apocalypse Now, The English Patient, JFK, and more. Charles did so in a couple of episodes as well, creating a Dragnet-style plot line in the Season 3 episode, “The Library,” featuring Philip Baker Hall in one of the show’s best guest roles. And for one of Seinfeld’s darkest and most bizarre episodes, Season 5’s “The Bris,” Charles made reference to Lindsay Anderson’s O Lucky Man! when Kramer discovers what he believes to be a pig-man at the hospital.

The Pig-Man in “The Bris” Was Inspired by a Scene From ‘O Lucky Man!’

All three plot lines of “The Bris” cover some pretty dark territory. The episode revolves around Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer’s friends Stan (Tom Alan Robbins) and Myra (Jeannie Elias), who have just had their first baby. While visiting them in the hospital after the birth, George gloats about his perfect parking spot right in front of the hospital doors, but things quickly take a dark turn when a patient takes his own life by jumping off the hospital roof and landing on George’s car. On his way up to see the baby, Kramer misremembers the room number and walks into the wrong room, where he finds a pig-man (half pig, half man). He soon launches into a conspiracy about the government performing genetic mutation experiments on humans to create pig-men armies.

Later, Stan and Myra ask Jerry and Elaine to be their son’s godparents, leaving it up to Elaine to arrange the bris and hire a mohel, and tasking Jerry with holding the baby during the circumcision. This episode pushed the envelope in multiple ways. Though it wasn’t the first episode to make light of suicide, Jason Alexander took issue with the way the mohel was portrayed, threatening to boycott the episode if Larry David didn’t tone down the character, which he found to be anti-Semitic, and David ultimately acquiesced.

Charles took some big swings for this episode, and by far one of the weirdest plot lines in the history of the series surrounds Kramer’s pig-man conspiracy. In a recent interview with NPR, Charles discusses how he was the writer who further developed Kramer’s character and gave him his conspiratorial tendencies, so it makes sense that he would be the one to write Kramer as a believer in the existence of human-animal hybrids developed by the government. Kramer “frees” the pig-man in the end, giving him a piggyback ride out of the hospital, though Seinfeld never fully shows us what the pig-man looks like. But if you were imagining something like the doctors from the “Eye of the Beholder” episode of The Twilight Zone, the reality of what this character is based on is a lot more disturbing.

The pig-man is actually based on a scene from the 1973 surreal comedy drama O Lucky Man!, the second film in the Mick Travis Trilogy. O Lucky Man! features a series of outlandish vignettes in the picaresque adventures of Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell), including one in which he signs up to undergo mysterious medical experiments. While exploring the medical research facility, he comes across another man in a hospital bed and asks him how much they’re paying him. When he doesn’t answer, Mick pulls the sheets back to discover, well, a pig-man. Only his head is human, while his body is that of a large pig.

It’s a disturbing image to be sure, but, like the pig-man in Seinfeld, it’s played for laughs. Horrified, Mick screams bloody murder, runs through the halls of the hospital, and smashes through a second-story window to escape. It’s safe to say that wouldn’t fly on NBC.

Of course, there was never actually a pig-man in Seinfeld, with Kramer ultimately admitting he was just a “fat little mental patient.” Nevertheless, this unhinged scene from O Lucky Man! helped turn “The Bris” into an iconic episode, for better or for worse, inspiring one of those bizarre plot lines that makes Seinfeld stand out as such a unique show.

All episodes of Seinfeld can be streamed on Netflix in the U.S.

Seinfeld is easily my all-time favorite show. I’m old enough that I watched it every week during its nine-season run on NBC, and I still watch it often today on Netflix. George Costanza (Jason Alexander) is who I relate to the most, and although Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld) is the weakest of the characters, I’m a big fan of the man who played him. I’ve seen all of his comedy specials, read his books, and have been lucky enough to see him perform in person. Still, as much as I admire the guy, there’s still one thing that has always been hard to comprehend. During the height of Seinfeld‘s run, Jerry was, in real life, dating a 17-year-old still in high school and living with her parents.

Jerry Seinfeld Dated the Teenaged Shoshanna Lonstein

In 1993, the 39-year-old Jerry Seinfeld was the king of the TV world. His show, which had his name right there in the title, was in its fifth season and was the biggest thing on TV. Jerry was a household name everyone knew, which also meant he was under the constant gaze of the paparazzi. Despite living in Los Angeles, he could have hidden from the spotlight, but with his expensive car collection, he was often seen out on the town. And in 1993, he added a gorgeous girlfriend on his arm. Good for him, right? Well, the major problem was that Jerry was 39, and his new girlfriend, Shoshanna Lonstein, was only 17.

Jerry Seinfeld Met Shoshanna Lonstein in Central Park

While Jerry Seinfeld would be immediately cancelled (along with his series) if such a thing happened today, that wasn’t the case in the 1990s. Maybe you rolled your eyes at the news or thought it was a little weird, but it was just another male celebrity with a young girlfriend. It certainly didn’t hurt Jerry or the show, which only got bigger and bigger. As proof, one only has to look at the article People magazine did about it.

The headline, from March 1994, after Jerry and Shoshanna had been together for months, was “LOOK WHO’S IN LOVE” over an image of the smiling couple out together. Underneath was, “Jerry Seinfeld, 39, and Shoshanna Lonstein, 18, make an unlikely romance work.” Their relationship, in the most popular celebrity magazine, was called “unlikely” and that’s it. The People article revealed that the couple met in Central Park when Shoshanna was 17 and a senior at Manhattan’s Nightingale-Bamford School. Jerry asked for her number, she gave it, and they were soon dating. Not creepy at all…

After she turned 18, Seinfeld was on the Howard Stern Show. Howard had previously made fun of the relationship, Jerry now said, “I didn’t realize she was so young. This is the only girl I ever went out with who was that young. I wasn’t dating her. We just went to a restaurant, and that was it.” It’s up to you if you believe him or if you think that going on a date with a teenager and then later dating her isn’t a little fishy.

Jerry Seinfeld and Shoshanna Lonstein Dated Until 1997

People quoted Jerry saying of his girlfriend: “Shoshanna is a person, not an age. She is extremely bright. She’s funny, sharp, very alert. We just get along. You can hear the click… My interest in her is very proper.” With Lonstein turning 18, the two were seen out and about often. Seinfeld even took her as his date to the Emmys.

In 1997, Jerry and Shoshanna broke up. Lonstein landed on her feet, despite losing her celebrity status, opening her own NYC clothing line named Shoshanna, the next year. A 2016 Forbes article about Lonstein said that the line “remains at the forefront of the industry” two decades after it began. While she has talked about her personal life and her later marriage and family, she has not talked publicly about dating Jerry Seinfeld.

Jerry’s controversial relationships didn’t stop with Lonstein. A year after the breakup, Jerry met a woman named Jessica Sklar-Nederlander and fell madly in love. She was a bit older, at 27, but the controversial aspect of their relationship came from Jessica’s status: she was married. She’d actually only been married for three weeks when she met Jerry. E News reported, “Seinfeld began courting Sklar after meeting her in the gym shortly after she returned from her honeymoon. Nederlander was reportedly stunned by his wife’s betrayal and swiftly filed for divorce.” It was an inappropriate way to begin a relationship, but the biggest surprise of all might be that this relationship lasted.

On Seinfeld, Jerry finds any reason to break up with a woman. He has a new girlfriend in nearly every episode. But in real life, Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld have been married for 26 years and have three children together. Your mileage may vary on a relationship that starts with infidelity, but the marriage has stood the test of time. But I’ll still always remember the time that he dated a teenage girl still in high school. As horrible as the character of Jerry could be on the show, not even Larry David would attempt to write that storyline.

All episodes of Seinfeld can be streamed on Netflix in the U.S.