Some sitcoms make people laugh; others make people wonder how much money they could have made. Everyone knows Everybody Hates Chris, the acclaimed semi-autobiographical sitcom inspired by comedian Chris Rock’s teenage years. But the fresh twist is that Fox could have picked up the series, yet reportedly did not prioritize it, a decision Chris Rock says could have made him ultra rich.

Life has funny ways of working, but Fox executives may have accidentally stolen Chris Rock’s ultra-rich alternate universe right from him.

Fox once had a very expensive laugh sitting right in front of it and somehow looked elsewhere. Chris Rock told Variety, while being quizzed on his famous lines, that Everybody Hates Chris initially competed with Method & Red for a Fox slot, but the network chose the latter. The decision pushed Chris Rock’s sitcom elsewhere, setting up a what-if Hollywood still loves to imagine.

“If it aired on Fox, I wouldn't even be here right now,” Chris Rock said, before delivering the real punchline: he would have made “so much f****** money.” The comedian’s point was not subtle, and neither was the fortune he believed the Fox run could have produced. For Chris Rock, one programming decision apparently came with a multimillion-dollar alternate ending.

While talking to Variety, Chris Rock also connected the missed Fox opportunity to the broader difficulty of getting Black family stories prioritized in television. Method & Red premiered on Fox in June 2004, but lasted only nine of its thirteen ordered episodes. Meanwhile, Everybody Hates Chris eventually found its audience elsewhere, leaving Rock with one spectacularly profitable hypothetical to haunt Fox.

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Chris Rock may have moved past the Oscars slap, but apparently the Fox decision still knows exactly where to find him. Luckily, Everybody Hates Chris was hardly a failure.

Yet for all the millions Chris Rock believes Fox left on the table, Everybody Hates Chris was hardly a sitcom sob story. Created by Chris Rock and Ali LeRoi, the semi-autobiographical comedy became beloved for its sharp satire, warm family dynamics, and honest depiction of working-class Black life in 1980s Brooklyn. It also earned multiple NAACP Image Awards and major award nominations.

Then came the afterlife, and Everybody Hates Chris proved remarkably difficult to kill. Reruns transformed the series into a phenomenon in Brazil, while streaming brought a new generation of viewers and pushed the sitcom onto global charts years after its original run. The animated continuation Everybody Still Hates Chris only underlined how much staying power Chris Rock’s creation still possesses, even if Fox once failed to see the bigger picture.

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Do you think Everybody Hates Chris could have made it bigger with the help of Fox? Let us know in the comments!