You may already know your favorite moments from Caddyshack, which turns 35 years old today, by heart. But after reading this list, you'll be a lock for membership at Bushwood Country Club.

1. CADDYSHACK GOT MADE BECAUSE OF ANIMAL HOUSE.

Caddyshack director and co-writer Harold Ramis were also a co-writer of the 1978 National Lampoon comedy classic Animal House, along with eventual Caddyshack co-writer and producer Douglas Kenney. Held to only a $3 million budget, their film of frat-house shenanigans went on to gross $141 million at the box office.

You would think that box office success would afford the filmmakers carte-blanche privileges for any follow-up project, but that wasn't the case. Ramis pitched two ideas to Orion Pictures (the now-defunct production company that would go on to make Caddyshack): One was a dark satirical comedy about the American Nazi Party in Skokie, Illinois, and the other was what Ramis dubbed a "revisionist Marxist western." Both ideas were swiftly rejected, but another idea—a comedy about caddies at a country club, pitched by Kenney and co-writer Brian Doyle-Murray as "Animal House on a golf course"—was given an immediate green light.

2. THE SCREENWRITING PROCESS WAS (ALMOST) ENTIRELY AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL.

To write their screenplay, Ramis, Kenney, and Doyle-Murray locked themselves in a room and tried to recall everything they knew about or experienced at golf courses and country clubs growing up—most of which came from Doyle-Murray, who caddied at Indian Hill Country Club in the suburbs of Chicago as a kid.

Doyle-Murray's sizeable Irish Catholic family even served as the inspiration for scenes and characters in the film. His brother Bill played head greensman Carl Spackler. Memories of living with their eight other siblings (including three sisters) inspired the opening scenes with main character Danny Noonan's overcrowded house of siblings. Danny, who sets out to win the caddy tournament scholarship, was based on Doyle-Murray's older brother Ed, who won a similar prize when he was young. The lumberyard that employs Danny is borrowed from the real life of Doyle-Murray's father, who was an executive at J.J. Barney Lumber Company. The infamous "Baby Ruth in the pool" scene was culled from the Murray kids' real-life high school exploits.