When you come up with something that you think is cool and funny and you think you're the first person to think of it, but it turns out many people have thought of it long before you.
Person 1: Bro! I have a crazy idea! Imagine Frankenstein but he's a prankster, and his name is PRANKENSTEIN. Why has no one ever though of this before?
Person 2: That joke has been used several times already by many other people.
Person 1: Fuck. I'll call this phenomenon "The Prankenstein Effect"
Main character of the funkateers' album "Clones of Dr Funkenstein", a fusion of Star Wars and funky bass lines from Parliament, half of George Clinton's funk empire.
We'd love to Funk you Funkenstein, your Funk is the BEST-ie. we'd love to jam with you Dr Funkenstein, cos you are the don of the hood.
Dr. Amos Funkenstein (1937-1995). Jewish historical scholar, author of such works as Perceptions of Jewish History from Antiquity to the Present (Tel Aviv, 1991). Probably nowhere near as cool as his name implies.
"I follow the late scholar of Jewish thought, Dr. Funkenstein, in defining historical consciousness as a useful and neglected middle term in this debate"
- Susan A. Crane, 'Writing the Individual Back into Collective Memory', The American Historical Review, 102, 5 (Dec 1997), p.1373.