If there were a late-night comedy show completely run by comedy writers, without any interference from a host, producer, or network, that show would probably be called The Darkest and Most Impossibly Horrible Things You Can Imagine, Presented as Comedy. Every sketch would end with a gunshot or an infant’s stroller engulfed in flames, and the show would be canceled halfway through its opening titles. That’s because most comedy writers are so inured by humor that only the most shockingly toxic ideas can achieve the proper velocity to penetrate their indifference.

Here’s a memorable example among many: When Conan O’Brien was wrapping up his 16-year tenure as host of Late Night, it briefly fell upon the writing staff to come up with a fitting way to put a bow on that particular legacy. Something funny, memorable, and appropriate to the sentimental mood surrounding Conan’s departure from a post where he would surely be missed. What emerged from this assignment was something that looked like the discarded notes of a Hollywood pitch meeting from the director of The Human Centipede. Of the dozens of ideas, an overwhelming majority involved Conan being humiliated or killed in some manner—usually violent, often by his own hand. In various combinations, Conan was shot, hanged, beaten, and thrown into an unmarked grave in the desert; hit by a bus; hit by a taxi; or hit by a bus, then a taxi, while riding a young girl’s pink tricycle. In one scenario I proudly pitched, Late Night was merely a fantasy in Conan’s mind, which was severely addled after being kicked in the head by a quarter horse. According to my pitch, as the final show wrapped up, the real Late Night set would dissolve to a tiny Lego version Conan was playing with on the floor of an employees’ break room at a stud farm, where Conan had spent his last 16 years charged with the task of manually masturbating thoroughbred horses. (I think the final stage direction in my sketch was “In the distance, a horse whinnies in ecstasy.”)

Unsurprisingly, Conan chose none of our ideas and instead made an earnest, off-the-cuff closing statement to camera that was completely appropriate to the moment. I remember being genuinely angry and disappointed he didn’t go with my horse masturbator coda.