You picture a tall, silent, brightly colored cartoon cat and hear that sneaky saxophone tune. But how does one two-word phrase connect a 1963 comedy, an Interpol-hunted crime syndicate, a gay rights movement, and a pink desert warfare vehicle? The answer is far stranger than the riddle.

This episode traces the Pink Panther as a kind of linguistic virus, escaping its origins and mutating across sports, activism, organized crime, and the military. We start at the cinematic source and follow the thread into the unlikeliest corners of the real world, showing how creators lose control of a name once it enters public consciousness.

• The original 1963 Pink Panther was a David Niven film, and the title referred to a flawed pink diamond, not a cat. The cartoon was just an opening-credits gag that outgrew the movie.
• Peter Sellers’ bumbling Inspector Clouseau hijacked the film, and Henry Mancini’s jazz theme became one of the most recognizable pieces of music ever written.
• Athletes from golfer Paula Creamer to Irish boxer Jim Rock and India’s Jaipur Pink Panthers kabaddi team adopted the cool, predatory imagery while discarding the comedy.
• Interpol named a jewel-thief network the Pink Panthers after thieves hid a stolen diamond in face cream, exactly as in the 1963 film, so the fiction instructed reality.
• The British SAS painted desert Land Rovers pink, discovering sand turns reddish at dawn and dusk, and soldiers dubbed them Pink Panther Land Rovers.