Palin/Bullwinkle 2012?

Ward and his partner, Alex Anderson, owed the creation of Bullwinkle to a strange dream — and a used car dealer.

Anderson had dreamt he attended a poker party with a "stupid moose who was doing card tricks," he told author Scott. "I woke up feeling embarrassed. I thought, 'You've been working too hard.'"

But he and Ward realized this could be a rich comical character. What to call it, though? They simply adapted the name of a car dealer — Clarence Bullwinkel — that they found humorous.

And now, the rest of the story.