At the end of every episode, Burnett would tug on her ear as a secret signal for her grandmother, and continued with the tradition even after Nanny died.

Her affection towards her grandmother even led to Burnett's iconic trademark. Burnett and her younger half-sister were mostly raised by their grandmother, who they called 'Nanny,' in a tiny apartment. The Texas-born comedian grew up with parents who both suffered from alcoholism, and they divorced while Burnett was still young (per NPR). In 2003, Burnett received the Kennedy Center Honors and the Golden Globes honored her in 2019 by creating the Carol Burnett Lifetime Achievement Award for excellence in television and presenting her with the inaugural prize. The show even created a spin-off, the sitcom Mama's House, which ran from 1983 to 1990 and starred several cast members from The Carol Burnett Show. She proved them wrong by creating a smash hit that won 23 Emmys over the course of 11 years, cementing her place in entertainment history. 'You know, Carol, it's a man's game,' one CBS higher-up reportedly told her at the time, trying to push her towards doing a sitcom called Here's Agnes instead. Burnett later revealed that the show had been green-lit through a fluke in her contract, however, and that network executives were initially reluctant to give her the show. The Carol Burnett Show ran from 1967 to 1978 on CBS, making her the first woman to ever host her own variety show on television (per CBS News).

Carol burnett show bloopers