Three Character Names Were Taken from a Previous National Lampoon Project

Animal House is technically titled National Lampoon’s Animal House, as it was the first film produced by National Lampoon, the famed humor magazine. In addition to the magazine, the folks at National Lampoon would do one-off projects.

In 1973, they produced the book National Lampoon 1964 High School Yearbook Parody, a full fake yearbook for the fictional C. Estes Kefauver High School in the fake Dacron, Ohio.

Needless, to say, a ton of detail went into the 176-page fake yearbook. Time Magazine called it “the best comedy writing in the country” at the time. Doug Kenney, one of the writers on Animal House and the first editor-in-chief of National Lampoon, was able to mine some content from the fictional yearbook he helped produce.

Larry Kroger, aka Pinto, and Mandy Pepperidge, are both characters in the 1964 High School Yearbook Parody. The name Vernon Wormer is also used, but in the yearbook he’s a gym and civics teacher.