Jimmy Kimmel’s Journey Down the Conspiracy-Filled ‘Rabbit Hole’ Is Better Researched Than You Think

The modern era of the Internet has one well-known player: the bro conspiracy theorist. He’s often clad in a hoodie, clutching a tiny microphone as he narrows his eyes and laments about everything from the Earth being flat to the COVID-19 pandemic being connected to 5G. And now, thanks to “The Rabbit Hole,” Jimmy Kimmel is one of them.

“He really got into character really well,” Molly McNearney, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” co-head writer, executive producer and Kimmel’s wife, told TheWrap. “I think he’s observed conspiracy theorists.”

“The Rabbit Hole” is essentially the opposite of Seth Meyers’ “A Closer Look” or John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight.” Each episode of the web series follows a hunched-over Kimmel as he seriously stares down the camera and explains his latest wild theory, from Elon Musk’s name meaning “small nuts” to boat wakes being the “chemtrails of the sea.” The idea for the satirical web series came from “JKL!” writer Jesse Joyce, who’s long been fascinated by conspiracy theories and theorists. Though Joyce’s obsession has delighted Kimmel over the years, the political nature of Kimmel’s late night show combined with the length of its daily monologue meant there was no room for these more evergreen segments on ABC.

“This finally got pushed on to YouTube, where it is living in the best possible, wild home,” McNearney said. “They’ve been doing really well there because they’re about five to six minutes long.”

“I have the same kind of brain as those people, but I was hugged enough as a kid,” Joyce told TheWrap. “I trust that there is an order to the universe.”

Every detail about these segments perfectly mirror the online influencers they’re mocking. According to Joyce, once the idea for the web series was approved, people involved in set production and wardrobe quickly jumped aboard, giving Kimmel a collection of nondescript sweatshirts to wear and adorning the background of “The Rabbit Hole” studio with newspaper clippings, pyramids, alien paraphernalia and an Elvis bobblehead.

“There’s something about the male brain that most of these doofuses are just dudes in a basement with a neon sign behind them,” Joyce said. “Everybody really nailed the [vibe], and Jimmy’s performance absolutely nails that genre.”

Though “The Rabbit Hole” is intentionally ridiculous, Joyce takes the segment seriously, noting that “it really did become a full-time gig for me” in addition to his regular writing for the show. Each episode of the web series takes roughly two 10-hour work days to develop, a timeframe that includes Joyce’s wide-spanning research process.

“You have to research everything, and you also have to research a lot of dead ends,” Joyce explained. For example, he “desperately” wanted to write an episode that involved the U.S. patent office.

“I thought that would be so funny if one of these random numbers, like a zip code, you could rearrange the numbers, and then it spits out the patent for the [Big Mouth Billy Bass],” Joyce said. “But I just read through 150 patents, probably, and none of them bore any fruit. It was a total waste of time. But you have to go through all that in order to find what you’re looking for.”

His dedication to research paid off, though, when he painstakingly went through roughly 1,000 paintings at the National Portrait Gallery in London, looking for one that resembled Donald Trump. That discovery led to “The Rabbit Hole” suggesting Trump is a time traveler.

So far, the response to “The Rabbit Hole” has been “overwhelmingly positive, which feels weird for YouTube,” Joyce noted in surprise.

“Every time one comes out, there’s now people who are specific fans of this little subgenre. They’ve asked for merchandise,” he added. “What I’m most proud of, though, is that — because the Internet is full of trolls that are hoping to tear s–t down — no one is finding any flaws with the the dumb facts I’m putting out.”

The comedian intentionally goes into the research process for each episode with “no goal.”

“You can sort of reverse engineer a conspiracy,” Joyce explained. “That’s my point. It proves that [conspiracy theories] are all dumb and stupid, and you can say anything. My hope is that somebody will go, ‘OK, I can see that’s believable. That’s almost as believable as why I think the Earth is flat, also on a YouTube video.’ So it might make people question some of their other beliefs.”

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