Joe Snow, the would-be narrator of the 2002 TV-movie It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie, is a parody of Burl Ives' character in the Rankin/Bass Christmas special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Joe's attempts to narrate the movie are thwarted, at first by the camera crew, and later by the Crocodile Hunter impersonator who shoots him with a tranquilizer dart meant for Fozzie. In a deleted scene from the movie, Joe makes an appearance in the alternate universe in which Kermit had never been born, as a puddle of melting snow.