Cheech & Chong, Then and Now: Young Stoner Comics Who Grew Up

Comedy team Cheech (Left) and Chong photographed while touring Australia in 1974. (Photo by Trevor James Robert Dallen/Fairfax Media via Getty Images).

In the 1970s, comedy acts didn't get much bigger than the whacked-out duo of Cheech & Chong. Stoner comedy was a natural consequence of the time -- with such an explosion of marijuana and LSD use in the late 1960s, the freewheeling counterculture was bound to spawn an act that played on its own druggy excesses and ridiculousness. As outsider comics, young Richard "Cheech" Marin and Tommy Chong captured the relatable stoner -- those guys everyone seemed to know in the early '70s who'd fried their brains and permanently lost touch with reality. Cheech and Chong's drug comedy shtick made them massively famous, with top-ten albums, hit singles, movies, and of course sold-out comedy shows.