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SYFY WIRE It

Pennywise floats into Cheers opening theme in viral mashup video

By Josh Weiss
Pennywise the Clown Cheers opening credits

Sometimes, you just wanna go where everybody knows your name, but if that place also happens to play host to a killer clown from another dimension that feeds on the fear of susceptible human beings, you might wanna find another bar to frequent.

Over the weekend, both Cheers and Stephen King's It skyrocketed into the viral consciousness of Twitter with a popular mashup video that hides Pennywise the Dancing Clown in every frame of the classic sitcom's warm-hearted opening credits. The strange, yet appealing, convergence of both properties includes both live-action iterations of the horror character played by Tim Curry in the 1990 miniseries and Bill Skarsgård in the two Warner Bros. film adaptations of King's seminal 1986 novel.

"I was rewatching Cheers on Netflix and the idea popped into my head," the video's creator, Jesse McLaren, tells SYFY WIRE. "All those creepy images of old New England, it just made sense Pennywise would have been there. Also this explains the disappearances of Coach and Diane, and why Frasier left town to become famous."

Check out the mashup below:

Created by Glen Charles, Les Charles, and James Burrows, Cheers ran on NBC for a total of 11 seasons and nearly 300 episodes between 1982 and 1993. The multi-camera sitcom — which starred Ted Danson, Rhea Perlman, John Ratzenberger, Woody Harrelson, Kirstie Alley, and Kelsey Grammer — centered on a Boston bar opened by a former Red Sox pitcher (Danson) and the colorful characters who would frequent it.

Aside from its long-running tenure and popularity on the airwaves, Cheers is also well-known for its opening credits that include old-timey painted portraits of people drinking in bars set to Gary Portnoy's "Where Everybody Knows Your Name."

It's the vintage visuals of the introduction that provide a ripe space for Pennywise to be inserted as the clown has popped up again and again throughout Derry, Maine's history ever since the malevolent cosmic entity arrived on Earth during the age of the dinosaurs. Moreover, the character has a dark past with bars and nightclubs, being responsible for massacres at both the Black Spot and The Sleepy Silver Dollar.

"The whole thing only took me a few hours," adds McLaren.

Pennywise will return to terrorize the Losers' Club (now all grown-up) in It: Chapter Two, which awakens from its long slumber and into theaters everywhere Sep. 6.