Formerly Canadian funnyman Jim Carrey surprised the easily-removed pants off of Hollywood this week with the revelation that burnout poster boy and O.J. trial superstar Kato Kaelin never actually existed, and was merely one of Carrey’s comedic creations. The news of this unprecedented ten-year hoax has left the world shocked, stunned, and shockastunnated.

The ditzy, bleached-blonde Kaelin shot from freeloading, couch-sleeping obscurity in 1994 after his wealthy patron, former football great Orenthal James “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” Simpson, murdered the hell out of his ex-wife Nichole and a helpful neighborhood waiter. Called upon to testify in the hit trial that followed, Kato captured the hearts of Americans everywhere with his surfer boy antics and vacuous charm. Few then anticipated that the inevitable breakup would come this hard, or this ten years laterly.

Testifying in an unrelated trial this week, Carrey claimed that he couldn’t have stolen Al Jolsen’s “ass-talking moron” bit since he was sleeping on O.J. Simpson’s couch the week Jolsen’s grave was robbed in 1994, which led to the unraveling of a raveled-up tale of confusing hoodwinkery the likes of which the world had not seen since that funny movie where the kids try to get their divorced parents back together through devious guile.

According to Carrey’s testimony, leaked to the press through a conveniently left-open window, he first developed the Kato character for the sketch comedy show In Living Color in 1992, but was rejected on the grounds that he was too creepy and that Keanu Reeves had already been doing him for thirty years. Undeterred, Carrey continued to develop the character independently, naming him Kato after a mistaken memory of the 70’s television program Kung Fu (whose main character was named Caine) and following the lead of his hero Andy Kaufman by traveling around Hollywood in-character as Kato during 1993.

Hoping to eventually spin the character into a series of Kaelin-centered gross out comedies, starting with the Yuletide fun of Kato Saves Kristmas, Carrey eventually found lodging with ex-footballer Simpson by a stroke of luck, since the Simpsons needed an unreliable layabout to watch their kids while they were off being rich. Not long after, Carrey was caught in a dilly of a pickle when Simpson decapitated his ex-wife and “Kato Kaelin” was called upon to testify.

Rather than paint his own career with the sickly stink of O.J. trial faddery, Carrey opted to ride that lightning for all it was worth, and the rest of the story went down in Access Hollywood history.

“This whole thing just got terribly out of hand,” mock-sobbed a repentant Carrey on the witness stand, barely stifling a serious case of the giggles.

While the possibility for a punishment for Carrey has been discussed, including a sentence requiring the comedic actor to write “I WILL NOT MAKE A MOCKERY OF THE AMERICAN JUDICIAL SYSTEM” 10,000 times on the courthouse chalk board, the consensus seems to be that many in the legal profession remain enamored of Carrey and his zany antics, and their fondness for his work in 1997’s Liar Liar may likely override any calls for indictments on perjury or impersonating a bonehead.

Ordinary Americans have yet to prove so forgiving. In the wake of the news’ breakery, angry consumers returned thousands of dollars of Kato Kaelin merchandise to stores, demanding refunds or at least a nickel off on that poster of the Madonna-Britney Spears lesbo kiss.

Strangest of all has been the reaction of Brian “Kato” Kaelin’s parents, who just this week finally calmed down from the O.J. hysteria enough to realize they’d never had a son.

But most visibly-upset has been Simpson himself, who in a televised interview from his Florida tax shelter Saturday expressed his deep feeling of hurt at his freeloader’s betrayal, and called for the courts to award $33 million in compensatory damages for his hurtedness, made payable to Fred Goldman.