Books, films, and all manner of popular culture can amuse, inspire, and enlighten. But sometimes pop culture has…darker consequences. Countless acts of lethal violence have been inspired by art, ranging from suicide epidemics and copycat killings to radio station riots and outright global war.

See Also: 10 Pop Culture Icons With Cleverly Hidden Insults

10 Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Uncle Tom’s Cabin is undeniably the most influential American novel ever written. The author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, came from a deeply religious abolitionist family. The book’s title character is a slave in Kentucky owned by the Shelby family. After the family falls into debt, Tom ends up in the possession of the vicious Simon Legree. When he refuses to tell the location of two runaways, his overseers beat him to death. The book was a best-seller in America and overseas, with dozens of translations produced. It even helped inspire the abolition of serfdom in Russia.

But in America it galvanized the anti-slavery and the pro-slavery factions. More northerners were converted to abolitionism. Southerners produced a voluminous “Anti-Tom” literature that romanticized slavery. Though many factors were at work, within 9 years of publication the Civil War had begun. When Stowe met President Lincoln, he supposedly called her “the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.”^[1]

9 The Clansman and Birth of a Nation

Decades later when Southerner Thomas Dixon saw a play based on Uncle Tom’s Cabin he was enraged. In response he wrote The Clansman, which depicted white Southerners as victims and the terrorist Ku Klux Klan as their courageous defenders in the turbulent post-Civil War period. The federal government had successfully suppressed the Klan and it seemed to be gone for good. But Dixon’s book was a success and inspired a film, Birth of a Nation, directed by D.W. Griffith. The movie was controversial from the beginning, even being banned in some cities.

Birth of a Nation’s deadly legacy was that it inspired a new incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan just months after release in 1915. After a cross-burning ceremony on Stone Mountain in Georgia the Klan was reborn. The original Klan had been secretive, calling itself “The Invisible Empire”. This new Klan used clever public relations to conceal their criminality. The organization went through many ups and downs and lingers on into the present day, murdering countless people along the way.^[2]

8 Nazi Propaganda Films

Leni Riefenstahl was a successful German actress and director between the world wars. For this reason she was chosen to film a Nazi party rally in Nuremberg. The resultant “documentary” was Triumph of the Will. In aesthetic terms it was a masterpiece, in moral terms it was horrific. Later she directed a film glamorizing the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Olympia. The Nazis produced lesser known films as well, with other directors. They even commissioned a film about the sinking of the Titanic which blamed the tragedy on the greed of British businessmen.

The effect of this propaganda was to seduce the German public into supporting the regime. From the Nazi perspective it was a resounding success. In fact the most fanatical supporters of the regime, those who fought to the bitter end, were Germany’s young people. They had been raised on a diet of Nazi propaganda in print, radio, and film. And so they marched to their deaths, taking millions with them.

The video clip above is of the film “Olympia”. Of particular note is the Olympic salute performed from around the 16:00 mark. This salute is no longer used because it looks too much like the “Heil Hitler” salute, but it pre-dated Hitler by at least twenty years. It was discontinued from the Olympics from 1948.^[3]

7 The Secret Agent

The Secret Agent is a political thriller of the Victorian era, written by the Polish-British author Joseph Conrad. Conrad, famous today for his colonial novella Heart of Darkness, was deeply interested in the evil side of human nature. The Secret Agent novel focuses on a group of Russian anarchists plotting terrorist attacks in Britain. Decades later this book would wind up in the hands of a young Polish-American, Theodore Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomer. Kaczynski was a brilliant but warped man and he deeply identified with one of the terrorist characters in the book, “The professor”.

He shared this character’s disdain for the mainstream of society, and willingness to use violence to change it. Kaczynski conducted a campaign of bombings targeting those associated with modern technology, which he despised. During this period he used Joseph Conrad’s name as an alias to evade capture. He ultimately killed three people and wounded over a dozen from 1975 to 1998. The fact that Conrad wrote the book to satirize terrorist violence was apparently lost on Kaczynski.^[4]

6 The Sorrows of Young Werther

The Sorrows of Young Werther was the first novel of the great German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Published in 1774, the story is about a young man named Werther yearning for the love of his friend Charlotte. Werther is cultured, artistic man and they have a deep bond. But Charlotte eventually marries another man. He cannot handle the pain any longer and so he ends his own life.

The book was an instant bestseller across Europe. “Werther fever” spread across the continent with young men imitating the title character’s clothing. But more disturbing was that the novel helped triggered a wave of young people taking their own lives. Some used pistols identical to what Werther used in the novel and several bodies were found with copies. The term “Werther effect” today signifies media-inspired suicide.^[5]

5 War of the Worlds

War of the Worlds is one of the classics of early science fiction, by British writer, H.G. Wells. It describes an invasion of earth by hostile Martians. These aliens nearly succeed in conquering the planet but are stopped by earthly bacteria to which they have no immunity. In 1938 the American Orson Welles adapted it into a radio drama, changing the setting from England to New Jersey.

The broadcast was so realistic it convinced many frightened listeners that the planet was actually being invaded. Some years later a Spanish version was broadcast in Quito, Ecuador. While the American audience was surely angered after learning the truth, in Quito the fiasco lead to rioting outside the radio station. A fire broke out and several people died, including the narrator’s girlfriend.^[6]

4 A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange began life as a novel by the British author Anthony Burgess. After spending years teaching in Britain’s Asian colonies, Burgess returned to the mother country in 1961. He found a changed society, the youth counterculture was emerging. A Clockwork Orange showed the dark side of this subculture, focusing on a bizarre gang of young criminals. They take narcotics, enjoy classical music, and commit grisly crimes. But in the end, they too become victims. Alex, the main character, is brainwashed into passivity through brutal psychological experiments.

After weak sales a film adaption by Stanley Kubrick gave the story mainstream exposure. Although Kubrick actually toned down some of the worst crimes in the novel, the movie version was still extremely controversial. A number of horrific crimes in Britain were linked to the film. Some of the connections were tenuous but in at least one case a young murderer explicitly claimed A Clockwork Orange was his inspiration. After getting death threats Kubrick pulled the film from circulation.^[7]

3 Natural Born Killers

Natural Born Killers was a 1994 film directed by Oliver Stone. The movie stars Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis as a man and woman in love and on the run. They engage in a grisly multi-state killing spree as Robert Downey, Jr. plays the role of a low-life reporter who makes them famous. The film was controversial from the start for at least two reasons. One is the uninterrupted depiction of gratuitously gruesome violence.

The other reason was that it apparently played a role in inspiring multiple real life crimes. In one case a teen couple from Oklahoma murdered one businessman and paralyzed another. The previous night they had watched the film on loop while taking acid. A pair of French criminals killed three policeman and a cabbie. A poster from the film was found in their room. In one heartbreaking case a Texas boy said he decapitated his classmate to “be famous, like the natural born killers.”^[8]

2 Taxi Driver

Taxi Driver is a 1976 film by Martin Scorsese. It focuses on a Vietnam veteran played by Robert De Niro. He’s depressed, can’t sleep, and as the title indicates, working as a cab driver in New York. The movie shows him slowly descending into madness as he plans acts of violence against both a pimp and a presidential candidate. One moviegoer named John Hinckley, Jr. became entranced by the film, especially the performance of De Niro’s very young female co-star, Jodie Foster.

Hinckley became obsessed with Foster, sending her letters, and eventually convincing himself that to assassinate the president would win her affection. In 1981, Hinckley fired six shots at President Ronald Reagan outside a hotel in Washington. Reagan narrowly survived and his press secretary, James Brady was left permanently paralyzed. 33 years later Brady’s death was ruled a homicide by the D.C. medical examiner, his death having been caused by the gunshot wounds he sustained.^[9]

1 The Novels of Yukio Mishima

The strange life and stranger death of Yukio Mishima is a unique example of an author being seduced by his own artistic vision. Mishima grew up as a closeted gay man in Japan before and during the Second World War. He developed a deep sense of self-loathing due to his sexuality, his family’s abuse, and being declared unfit for service during the conflict. Mishima viewed post-war Japan as shallow, materialistic, and without culture. The central concern of his novels is Japan’s attempt to recover a lost identity.

He came to believe the solution to Japan’s identity crisis and his own was a return to the past. He devoted himself to the study of bushido, the warrior code of the long gone samurai. He gathered around himself a small group of like-minded followers. The day after finishing his last work, The Sea of Fertility, they entered Japan’s military headquarters in Tokyo. On the balcony he delivered a speech to the soldiers, calling for the end of Japan’s democratic constitution. He was met with ridicule. Mishima then went inside and stoically committed ritual suicide in the manner of the ancient samurai.^[10]

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About The Author: I am a simple man on a continuous journey of self-education, hopefully helping others do the same. “It doesn’t matter how smart you are, unless you stop and think.”

Human history is filled with dark, depressing stretches of misery and suffering. It should be treated with reverence and awe. Yet, most of it is hilarious.

Plenty of historical and cultural milestones only began when one joke spun out of control. The lives of millions of people were shaped just because one person wanted to try his hand at comedy. That might be the funniest joke of it all.

10 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Was Meant To Be A One-Off Parody

In the early 1980s, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird were bored. They had met a year earlier in hopes of becoming comic book cartoonists. Nothing was coming to them. While Laird was watching television, Eastman absentmindedly doodled. He drew a humorous sketch of a turtle with nunchucks and a mask. The image was so ridiculous that he showed it to Laird.

Laird thought it was so hilarious that he tried his hand at drawing one himself. The duo kept one-upping each other until they had four distinct vigilante turtles. Upon finishing the first sketches, Laird said, “This is the dumbest thing ever.” That might have been true, but Eastman and Laird wanted to turn the nonsensical idea of sword-wielding reptiles into a real thing.

The first issue of a Ninja Turtles comic book needed a plot as absurd as its characters. They settled on a parody of other popular comics in the early 1980s. It was the laziest parody they could think of.

Each of the titular adjectives of the newly dubbed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles coincided with a favorite trait from one of other popular superheroes. The “teenage” described Jack Kirby’s canon. The “mutant” was a nod to the X-Men franchise.

“Ninja” was borrowed from Frank Miller’s samurai series Ronin. But this was not the only Frank Miller property from which Eastman and Laird borrowed. Daredevil gained his powers in the same toxic spill that created the Turtles. As the Daredevil main nemesis was “The Hand,” it only made sense that the Turtles fight the Foot clan.

Eastman invested $1,000 of his uncle’s money into self-publishing this bit. They turned a simple night of goofing around into a 42-page comic. From there, the TMNT franchise of TV series, video games, movies, and toys was born.^[1]

9 The Duck That Laid The Golden Egg

In 1983, George Lucas was coming off the heels of one of the most impressive streaks in movie history. He had just made American Graffiti, the Star Wars franchise, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. It looked like he could do no wrong.

But anybody who has been alive for the past three decades knows how much wrong he can do. Given carte blanche to create his vision, Lucas wanted to make a live-action version of one of his favorite comic book characters. For the first time in his career, Lucas stumbled. And what a stumble it was. The resulting movie, Howard the Duck, is now considered one of the worst comedies of all time.

As it was the first feature film adaption of a Marvel story, Lucas was assured that the movie was going to be a huge success. To fulfill his dream, he hired Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, the screenwriting team with whom he had worked on his big break, American Graffiti.

With the talent and intellectual property, everything looked like it was going to be great. It was not. Infamous scenes of interspecific love, endless duck puns, and rampant sexism led to a commercial and critical flop. In the US, Howard the Duck only earned back $16 million of its $37 million budget.

George Lucas had bet that the box office would fish him out of debt. With lackluster sales, he had to start selling his assets. One of those sales included the computer animation division of his production company.

His friend Steve Jobs bought the project. Jobs turned that investment into Pixar Studios. With movies as diverse as Toy Story, Up, and Finding Nemo, Pixar has produced movies that turned out far better than Howard the Duck.^[2]

8 ‘The Ostrich’ Stuck Its Head In The Underground

Lou Reed was the personification of leather-clad coolness. For a generation, he represented the epitome of New York swagger. Reed made his name on freaked-out records about taboos like heroin abuse, sadomasochism, and transsexualism. His best-selling song may have invited listeners to take a “walk on the wild side,” but his origins could not have tamer. One of rock’s great rebels started off as a pure corporate shill.

In the mid ‘60s, Reed was the in-house songwriter for Pickwick Records label. Pickwick was as minor as a record label could be. Without much success on their own, they had to try to fool people into buying their records.

Reed’s job was to write cheap knockoff singles that rode the popularity of fads of the time. When songs about hot rods were big, he invested a lot of mental power on a record called “Hot Rod Song.” “Johnny Can’t Surf No More” was a similarly obvious way to cash in on the surfing crazy.

Reed’s talent for mimicry eventually gave way to gimmicky absurdism. “I’ve Got a Tiger in My Tank” parodied car songs by adding giant cat roars on top. His attempt at a dance craze was the equally ridiculous “The Ostrich.”

This may not be Lou Reed’s best song, but it was certainly one of his most important. To record it, Pickwick hired a young Welsh musician named John Cale. Reed and Cale’s partnership began there. The duo blossomed three years later with The Velvet Underground, one of the most influential groups of all time.^[3]

7 The Novelty Record That Launched Gangsta Rap

In the 1980s, the California Raisin Advisory Board began airing a Claymation commercial for raisins. They could not have imagined how popular this was about to become. The basic plot of the commercial is that a man awakens to see a line of Claymation raisins dancing and singing to a parody of the Motown classic “I Heard It Through The Grapevine.”

The incredibly unfunny joke is that raisins come from grapes. Despite the simplicity of the punch line, the commercial became a cultural phenomenon. People could not get enough of the idea of dried fruit covering Marvin Gaye. The California Raisins released toys, a Saturday morning cartoon, a line of video games, and, of course, albums.

This inexplicable success was good news for Priority Records, a small independent LA label that hadn’t had a hit in years. All of a sudden, they were making millions off this silly fad.

Flush with this extra revenue, they could hire more interesting acts. The next artist signed by Priority was N.W.A., the opposite of the California Raisins in a lot of ways.

Weeks later, Priority became a rap powerhouse off the success of Straight Outta Compton. The album and Priority exploded gangsta rap into the public, changing music forever.^[4]

6 Susanna Salter Won An Election On A Prank

Decades before US women could vote nationally, Susanna Salter had already held public office. In 1887, the tiny Quaker town of Argonia, Kansas, elected the first woman mayor in US history. The election was a turning point in women’s suffrage.

Though she had a rather uneventful administration, Salter’s victory helped usher in a wave of other woman mayors in the West following the Civil War. However, Salter only got her position because a prank backfired.

She was a good choice for a mayoral candidate. Salter had political experience in her blood. Her father, Oliver Kinsey, had been Argonia’s first mayor. Her husband was city clerk.

With her own legal background, she prepared a local attorney for the bar. Salter wrote the ordinances of the town. She presided at the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) caucus. Under her leadership, the caucus selected men deemed worthy of office.

A group of 20 men did not like the idea that a woman had so much say in local politics. They devised a plan. They made a ticket with a set of candidates identical to the ones supported by the WCTU. The only difference is that they substituted Salter’s name in the mayor position. They assumed that no man would vote for a woman.^[5]

They also expected that Salter would be embarrassed and leave politics with presumably such few votes. When Salter voted that afternoon, she was shocked to find that she was listed as a candidate. She was even more amazed that she had received a two-thirds majority of the vote.

5 A Sexist Joke Discovered The Cosmos

Edward C. Pickering was going over the calculations from his researchers’ latest observations. When the researchers could not understand the calculations, he joked that they were so easy that his “Scotch maid could do better.”

This line may not have been meant as a joke, but it was interpreted as one. Pickering had been aware that his maid, Williamina Paton Stevens Fleming, was a mathematical genius. None of the other male researchers believed that.

The researchers called Pickering’s bluff and brought Fleming in. Very quickly, the researchers became the butt of the joke. Fleming’s calculations were incredibly precise. Impressed by her skill, Pickering started hiring only female researchers. There was also the additional incentive to save money by providing cheaper wages.

No matter the motive, that decision actually changed the universe. These women, known dismissively as “Pickering’s Harem,” conducted groundbreaking research. Fleming finally broke out of Pickering’s shadow when she discovered the Horsehead Nebula.

Other notable members included Annie Jump Cannon, whose system for identifying stars is still applied today, and Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who supplied the data that Edwin Hubble used to measure galactic distances.^[6]

4 Wristwatches Started Out As A ‘Silly-Ass Fad’

Businessmen and rappers like to flaunt their latest Rolexes as the height of class. To anybody from the turn of the 20th century, they would look ridiculous. It would be like bragging about bejeweled fidget spinners. Instead of flashy displays of wealth, wristwatches were originally chintzy novelty tricks.

Before wristwatches, men generally kept their watches in their pockets. It was seen as effeminate to wear your watch on your wrist. When men in Europe picked up on it, The New York Times called it a “silly-ass fad” in 1916.

Wristwatches then became popular among vaudeville stars as “more or less of a joke” or a “funmaker.” As far as jokes go, watching a dial spin around a clock is fairly tame. Wristwatches really took off in the US because of something not funny at all—World War I.

It was the first war to feature sophisticated aerial attacks. Soldiers on the ground needed to move as a unit. Timing was essential. When dodging gunfire and bombs, the delay from retrieving one’s watch from a pocket was an actual matter of life and death. To shave off extra seconds, soldiers wrapped their pocket watches to leather straps on their wrists.^[7]

Following the war, the soldiers brought this practice home with them. Companies like Cartier began modeling their products from these military designs. No longer a joke, they became an iconic status symbol.

3 A Prank Might Have Killed Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh is as famous for his death as his life. His suicide perfectly fits the model of a rejected genius so shunned by the world that he would rather kill himself than go on.

Generations after his untimely death, van Gogh was recognized as a true genius, making his death all the more tragic. This narrative is poetic, but according to Pulitzer Prize–winning researchers Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, it is dead wrong. They are convinced that van Gogh was accidentally shot to death in a joke gone wrong.

Van Gogh had as much success making friends as he did wearing earmuffs. He was often the target of a gang of teenagers who liked to get drunk and mess with him. Van Gogh took particular interest in Gaston Secretan, but it was Gaston’s brother who proved to be the most consequential for van Gogh.

Whereas Gaston was quiet, Rene Secretan was a young prankster. Rene pulled harmless practical jokes on van Gogh—like putting salt in his coffee or hiding a garden snake in his paint box.

Much to van Gogh’s chagrin, Rene also had a habit of waving around a malfunctioning pistol while dressed as the pioneer Buffalo Bill. Naifeh and Smith believe that Rene’s comedy became tragic one fateful night when the gun accidentally went off. The discharged bullet lodged in van Gogh’s abdomen. He died 29 hours later.

The theory has been met with serious backlash from other historians, but there is some evidence to support the claim. Despite his mental anguish, van Gogh did not leave behind a suicide note. In 1956, following the release of the highly acclaimed van Gogh biopic Lust for Life, Rene admitted to torturing the artist.

In 2014, doctors noted that van Gogh would have held the gun in an unnatural and awkward position to shoot the bullet from the angle suggested by the entry wound. This configuration would have caused black powder burns on his hands. At the time, no doctors noted any burns.

Dr. Vincent Di Maio, a leading handgun forensic expert, concluded in 2014: “It is my opinion that, in all medical probability, the wound incurred by van Gogh was not self-inflicted. In other words, he did not shoot himself.”^[8]

2 The Butt That Killed Thousands

Mooning is asinine, particularly the first syllable. For something so stupid, it sure is a simple joke. Everything one needs to make the joke is already attached to them. Throw in a fart for good measure, and one has reached the pinnacle of bathroom humor. Jewish historian Titus Flavius Josephus recorded how one fart was not silent, but it still was deadly.

AD 66 was not the best time to be devoutly Jewish. The Roman government ostracized the religion and caused deep divides. Tensions were at their highest around religious holidays. One unnamed soldier widened this rift when he exposed a crack of his own.

The mooned Jewish pilgrims did not like being the actual butt of the joke, especially during Passover. The insulted pilgrims threw rocks at the soldiers, who deployed reinforcements. The resulting stampede left more than 10,000 people dead. The riot marked one of the more seismic events in the lead-up to the First Jewish–Roman War.^[9]

1 The Party Was Lit At Le Bal Des Ardents

For some historical events, comedy is tragedy plus time. For others, comedy plus time is tragedy. Few events capture that better than Le Bal des Ardents (“The Ball of the Burning Men”).

In the 1300s, third weddings were light affairs where pranks were common. King Charles VI of France thought it would be funny to prank the wedding of his queen’s lady-in-waiting Catherine de Fastaverin. Instead of having a fun time, Charles VI committed the ultimate party faux pas when he ruined the dance floor.

His prank was less a witticism and more a display of stupidity. The joke amounted to having some attendees dress up as wild apes while howling and shouting obscenities. To look like beasts, their costumes were covered in hair consisting of hemp, linen, and tar.^[10]

For a short while, their antics were the life of the party. That quickly changed when Charles VI’s brother showed up late and drunk. He stumbled in with a torch in hand. The embers from the torch set the men on fire.

Four of them died as their costumes burned. The heat so scalded their genitals that their testicles fell to the ground. The king barely survived by jumping into his aunt’s skirt.

Charles VI was already mentally unstable, but this event pushed him over the edge. The tragedy also revealed how fragile he was. Concerns about the stability of the throne led to sectarian violence. Charles was now perceived as a failure. His Valois bloodline was seriously defamed, eventually leading to two decades of civil war over the throne.

If you enjoyed the article, you can write to the author at [email protected]. If you want to see what the author thinks is funny, you can follow him on Twitter @NateYungman. Hopefully, his jokes don’t cause any civil wars.

We may experience delusions (strong beliefs that conflict with rational evidence or reality) when our brains try to understand the distress we associate with mental illness. Many of us think that delusions are as individualized as our fingerprints. But the truth is that our brains shape our delusions from the technologies and cultures of our time.

Delusions go in and out of style, just like clothing and hairstyles. Delusions can be sold and even exported to us from other cultures. Unfortunately, we can’t always count on our doctors for guidance because they’re often as delusional as we are.

10Cultural Influences

Our cultures provide the background material to understand and tell our stories, including the narrative for our delusions. The people who treat us—whether doctors, priests, or shamans—also help to form our delusions by defining the symptoms of mental illness.

“We might think of the culture as possessing a ‘symptom repertoire‘—a range of physical symptoms available to the unconscious mind for the physical expression of psychological conflict,” medical historian Edward Shorter explained to the New York Times. “In some epochs, convulsions, the sudden inability to speak, or terrible leg pain may loom prominently in the repertoire. In other epochs, patients may draw chiefly upon such symptoms as abdominal pain, false estimates of body weight, and enervating weakness as metaphors for conveying psychic stress.”

For example, some Southeast Asian men may suffer from koro, the belief that their genitals are shrinking, even though there’s nothing wrong physically. In the Middle East, individuals with zar are believed to be possessed by spirits, which may cause attacks of shouting, laughing, and singing as part of their feelings of detachment.

Our mass delusions are influenced the same way. For example, repressed nuns suffered many mass delusions from the 15th to the 19th centuries. When combined with popular beliefs in demons, strict religious discipline often triggered hysterical fits in these women, including swearing, exposing and rubbing their genitals, and thrusting their hips as though having intercourse. Priests claimed to exorcise the demons, although some nuns were jailed or burned at the stake.

From the 18th through the early 20th centuries, extreme working conditions caused abnormal movements, convulsions, and neurological symptoms for groups of workers in Western factories.

As the 20th century progressed, mass delusions switched more to anxiety symptoms over environmental and war-related fears. After poison gas killed 90,000 people in World War I, Americans became obsessed with the fear of gas. In the early 1930s, dozens of people in rural Virginia were convinced that someone had sprayed harmful gas in their homes at night. After serious investigation, authorities found that the real sources ranged from passing flatulence to chimney flues that had stopped up.

Fear of anthrax after the 9/11 terror attacks also sparked many false alarms in the US population. For example, one student and teacher claimed to have chemical burns on their forearms after they opened a letter in October 2001. However, nothing unusual was found in the envelope.

9Technological Influences

Although the loneliness, alienation, and other anxieties that cause delusions aren’t new, the way they’re expressed varies over time to mirror cultural changes, including technology. Before the late 19th century, delusions of being controlled or persecuted usually centered on witchcraft and the supernatural. That changed when new technologies such as the telegraph, telephone, radio, TV, electricity, X-rays, lasers, and the Internet became popular.

People don’t usually go back in time with their delusions unless an earlier era is fixed in their minds for some reason. So delusions today are mainly about being controlled or persecuted through computers and the Internet, not through radio waves as in the 1940s.

One 2010 study showed that prolonged Internet use can trigger unexpected psychotic episodes. In three separate cases, women 30–50 years old with no serious psych issues developed delusions and hallucinations from using the Internet many hours every day. Each woman had been unhappy in a previous intimate relationship but was now involved in a strictly online relationship with a man. Over time, these women lost touch with reality. One of them believed she could feel her online love physically touching her, even though she’d never met him in person. All of the women required antipsychotic medications to stop their delusions and return to normal functioning.

In another case, a man was convinced that his computer was used to implant thoughts in his head and to poison him through his keyboard.

Long ago, new materials were the technologies of their time. For example, the glass delusion gained steam in Europe until it became especially popular in the 1600s. It seemed to start with French king Charles VI, who was paranoid about betrayal and assassination. At times, he would have spells where he wouldn’t move. Convinced he was made of glass, he was afraid he would break. He also wrapped his body in blankets to stop his buttocks from shattering. Some psychologists believe this represents a fear of fragility or social humiliation. In a rare case from the 1960s, a young man in the Netherlands told the BBC that people looked through him like glass in a window. “You [don’t see the glass in the window]. But it is there,” said the man. “That’s me. I’m there, and I’m not there. Like the glass in the window.”

8Media And Entertainment Influences

Whether or not the 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast by Orson Welles actually caused the panic and mass delusion that’s been alleged over the years, we have seen delusions shaped by topics in the media or entertainment.

In 2008, the first case of climate change delusion was reported by doctors in Australia. Believing the world faced almost certain eco-destruction, their patient, a young man of 17, wouldn’t drink water because he felt guilty that doing so would kill millions of people. Immediately, there was a public outcry, with some people accusing the media of causing this man’s delusion by sensationalizing climate change. One blog ran the headline “Al Gore Is Literally Driving People Crazy.” But we’ve already seen that people’s delusions are a way to express their anxieties using stories that reflect the times in which they live.

Entertainment also fuels a lot of delusions. Some people believe they’re characters in computer games. Others are convinced they have romantic relationships with or are being persecuted by popular stars.

The Truman Show Delusion (TSD), named after an American movie about a man who finds out that his entire life is a reality TV show, narrates old anxieties of persecution and control in a modern story. With so much of our lives recorded without our knowledge or permission, and so many people who want to be on reality shows, some people now have delusions that they’re starring in their own reality shows.

“[Patients feel] as though their family perhaps were reading from a script, there were cameras everywhere at all time[s], they had no privacy,” psychiatrist Dr. Joel Gold told NPR. “And this was obviously—for most—very, very disturbing. For a small minority, there was an excitement about it, that they were the most famous person on Earth. But eventually, even for those people, it became unbearable.”

Gold notes that TSD is unusual in at least one important way. While most delusions are focused on one unreal area of life, such as alien abduction, TSD encompasses the patient’s whole world. Nothing is real to them.

7The Export Of America’s Delusions

Ethan Watters argues in his book Crazy Like Us that the US has exported its approach toward mental illness to other countries. That happens even when American definitions of illness don’t fit the other culture’s symptoms.

Although one antibiotic may cure the same bacterial infection anywhere in the world, that approach may not work when treating mental illness. Watters questions if we’re helping or harming patients if we don’t recognize the different customs that define our delusions and treat them accordingly.

“This does not mean that these illnesses and the pain associated with them are not real, or that sufferers deliberately shape their symptoms to fit a certain cultural niche,” writes Watters. “It means that a mental illness is an illness of the mind and cannot be understood without understanding the ideas, habits, and predispositions—the idiosyncratic cultural trappings—of the mind that is its host.”

After the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka, American psych experts rushed to help. They assumed the Sri Lankans would exhibit symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But that was at odds with the native culture. “It was not the nightmares or flashbacks that most of the population was concerned with,” trauma expert Gaithri Fernando told the New York Times. “The deepest psychological wounds for Sri Lankans were not on the PTSD checklists; they were the loss of or the disturbance of one’s role in the group.”

Where Americans saw damage to the mind, Sri Lankans saw damage to their social groups. American psychology professor Ken Miller observed similar results in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Guatemala. PTSD symptoms didn’t fit the war-related trauma that occurred in those countries. To export American psychiatry to certain countries, developed or not, may be as much of a cultural mismatch as sending Namibian witch doctors to treat American patients after the 9/11 terror attacks.

If anxiety about changes in the world produces delusions for some people, are American psychiatrists making the problem worse by insisting on changing the way other cultures define and cope with their stressors? As we’ll talk about shortly, American ideas of psychiatry don’t always equate to better treatments and outcomes for patients. They’re not always done in the best interests of the patient, either.

6The Doctors Who Diagnose Us Are Also Delusional

Some doctors may believe that they evaluate and treat mental illness objectively. That’s especially true of some US practitioners, who believe that other countries have cultural delusions but US doctors treat real brain diseases with a scientific approach.

However, US doctors are just as culture-bound and delusional in their approach to mental illness as everyone else. With all their expensive machines to view the brain and medications to alter brain chemistry, they simply don’t recognize it. As Ethan Watters writes, “All mental illnesses, including depression, PTSD and even schizophrenia, can be every bit as influenced by cultural beliefs and expectations today as hysterical-leg paralysis or the vapors or zar or any other mental illness ever experienced in the history of human madness.”

As we saw with Sri Lanka, Western doctors think they understand what life events trigger mental illness, and they’re convinced that they know how to treat it. Some American doctors also believe that it’s good to talk about personal traumas, analyze them, and vent emotionally. There’s a belief that we’re mentally fragile. But many cultures, including some in more developed countries like Australia, simply don’t share those views, which can make American treatments ineffective at best.

That’s not to say that the US hasn’t made any advances in treatment that would help patients in other countries. But it often seems that US doctors have closed their minds to alternative methods of dealing with mental illness.

5Better Outcomes In The Developing World

Beginning in the early 1970s, the World Health Organization (WHO) conducted three international studies of schizophrenia patients that lasted about 30 years in total. The results showed that the relapse rate for schizophrenics in Europe and the US was as much as 67 percent higher when compared to developing countries.

That led to widespread debate as to what happened. One theory is that schizophrenia patients are treated more kindly and are better kept within social groups in some developing countries. Anthropologist Juli McGruder studied schizophrenics and their families in Zanzibar, where people with delusions are believed to be possessed by spirits. “Muslim and Swahili spirits are not exorcised in the Christian sense of casting out demons,” McGruder told the New York Times. “Rather they are coaxed with food and goods, feted with song and dance. They are placated, settled, reduced in malfeasance.” The patient is seen as having a temporary illness, not a new identity. When the illness goes into remission, the patient can function in society again, at least for a while.

Meanwhile, Western cultures value control over self and circumstances to such a degree that mental illness directly opposes that view. Unlike developing countries that accept spirit possession, family members in Western cultures expect their loved ones to get better through force of will. Patients feel more isolated and are less likely to go back to work. Their mental illness is often seen as permanent.

Some researchers believe that the WHO studies were conducted incorrectly. They also feel that the outlook for schizophrenia patients in developing countries has worsened considerably in recent years. They’re calling for new research.

Other studies show that different medication usage accounted for the outcomes in the WHO studies. Those researchers concluded that limiting the use of antipsychotic drugs works better in the long run for schizophrenia patients in all countries.

Even so, none of the studies appeared to show that Western medicine produced clearly better results for their schizophrenia patients.

4The Sale Of Mental Illness

At least one reason the US is so intent on exporting its definitions and treatments of mental illness, including delusions, is drug company profits. One of the best examples happened in Japan at the turn of the 21st century, when drug companies convinced the Japanese public that they suffered from mild depression, which was called kokoro no kaze, or “cold of the soul.” Of course, drug companies provided expensive antidepressants as the cure.

Until then, the Japanese medical community had only dealt with major depressive disorders. With a suicide rate double that of the US, Japan obviously had mental health problems. The average length of a hospitalization for mental illness was around 390 days, far more than the US average of under 10 days. Officially, mild depression didn’t exist in Japan. But after the drug companies rolled out their media campaign, doctor visits for depression soared almost 50 percent in just four years.

”I could take you all over the world, and you would have no difficulty recognizing severely depressed people in completely different settings,” psychiatry professor Arthur Kleinman told the New York Times. “But mild depression is a totally different kettle of fish. It allows us to relabel as depression an enormous number of things.” It’s hard to know where moodiness ends and depression begins. So it’s quite possible that the Japanese began to define conditions that weren’t even diseases as mild depression. They were told repeatedly that drugs were the cure.

One 39-year-old man, Naoya Mitake, was put on different rounds of antidepressants for about two years to treat insomnia and fatigue. He had been convinced by drug company educational campaigns that his feelings had a chemical basis that could only be treated by drugs. But it never completely worked for him. Then he accidentally found his own cure: fasting.

As Japanese psychiatrist Yutaka Ono explained to the New York Times, “[The drug companies] ran a very intense campaign about mild depression where a beautiful young lady comes out all smiles and says, ‘I went to a doctor and now I’m happy.’ You know, depression is not that easy. And if it is that easy, it might not be depression.”

Still, antidepressant sales quintupled in Japan between 1998 and 2003, shortly after the marketing campaigns began.

3Our Relationship With Our Delusions

Stanford anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann examined the way patients with psychotic disorders interacted with the voices (auditory hallucinations) they heard as part of their conditions. In the US, voices were characterized as threatening and harsh. In Ghana and India, the voices were often considered benign, even playful.

Luhrmann thinks that American doctors should pay more attention to both auditory hallucinations and cultural differences in psychiatric diseases. “Our work found that people with serious psychotic disorder in different cultures have different voice-hearing experiences,” she said. “That suggests that the way people pay attention to their voices alters what they hear their voices say. That may have clinical implications.”

In a study of 60 adults with schizophrenia—20 each from Ghana, India, and the US—Luhrmann found that people in all three countries heard good and bad voices, whispering, and an unidentified source of hissing. However, the striking difference came in the interpretations of their experiences. All the US patients had negative experiences that they considered to be brain disease symptoms. They viewed voices as a hateful, violent bombardment. It often felt like war to them.

About half of the Indian patients heard relatives advising them to complete tasks. Sometimes, they interpreted the voices as playful or entertaining. Most of them did not describe their hallucinations as part of a brain disease. The same was true for the Ghanaian patients. In their culture, it’s believed that spirits can talk, so they didn’t characterize voices as a psych problem. Half of them reported their experiences in a positive manner. Plus, 80 percent thought they had heard from God.

Luhrmann believes these different reactions reflect the patients’ cultures. Americans value independence, individuality, and control, but Ghanaians and Indians define themselves through their relationships with other people. This suggests beneficial new approaches to treating schizophrenia, such as naming patients’ voices and forging relationships with them.

“The problem is not hearing voices,” Dr. Marius Romme, founder of advocacy group Intervoice, told The Atlantic, “but the inability to cope with the experience.” Romme’s colleague, Dr. Dirk Corstens, also believes we must limit the medication prescribed for patients with psychosis because it often does more harm than good.

2A Dispute About Chemical Imbalance

Drugs to treat psychosis are some of the best-selling medications in the US. However, evidence continues to show that these drugs are not treating a chemical imbalance that causes mental illness. In fact, the first drugs prescribed for mental illness—Thorazine, Miltown, and Marsilid—were actually developed to combat infections. When they were found to quiet mental symptoms, researchers observed that they also affected brain chemistry. The drugs weren’t created to treat abnormal brain chemistry. The theory of chemical imbalance was created to explain the use of the drugs. Decades of additional research have failed to confirm the chemical imbalance hypothesis with different classes of drugs to treat mental illness.

Even so, the more important question is whether the drugs work. By reviewing the published results of clinical trials to treat depression, Irving Kirsch, a UK psychologist, initially found that placebos worked about 82 percent as well as antidepressant medications. But his most important finding was that drug companies can bury the results of tests they don’t like. So they can keep testing until they get the results they want to publicize. Kirsch concluded that the drugs showed no significant clinical difference than placebos in treatment. Even though there was a small statistical difference, it just wasn’t enough to matter in terms of actual treatment.

He also found that drugs that weren’t antidepressants—such as sedatives, thyroid hormones, stimulants, opiates, and even certain herbal remedies—did just as good a job in relieving depression symptoms as antidepressants. When he looked at high doses of placebos that had side effects, he observed the same results. So he concluded that the presence of side effects may make patients believe that drugs are doing a better job for them than placebos without side effects.

Kirsch’s study is just one review of a complex topic, and no one should decline medication because of it. But it raises questions about the efficacy of medication, and others should conduct further research on the subject.

1The Eventual Fading Away Of Our Delusions

In Western society, we’re often convinced that our scientific approach to mental illness makes us more sophisticated than the mental health practitioners from other cultures and times. This arrogance leads us to look at earlier treatments with a mixture of ridicule and sadness.

We now have the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), known as the “Bible of psychiatry.” It lists symptoms of disorders that are considered to be psychiatric illnesses in the US. So, in a way, it defines what our society views as normal and abnormal behavior—what can let us roam free and what can put us on medication or even get us locked up.

However, the DSM isn’t as objective as we’d like to believe. US psychiatrist Daniel Carlat explains that psychiatrists have received the most money from drug companies for many years because “our diagnoses are subjective and expandable, and we have few rational reasons for choosing one treatment over another.” Carlat also says that he makes 80 percent more per hour by prescribing drugs rather than talk therapy, so he only prescribes drugs.

“Patients often view psychiatrists as wizards of neurotransmitters,” he says, “who can choose just the right medication for whatever chemical imbalance is at play. This exaggerated conception of our capabilities has been encouraged by drug companies, by psychiatrists ourselves, and by our patients’ understandable hopes for cures.”

Psychiatrists ask patients about their symptoms to see if they match any conditions in the DSM. The more matches, the more drugs that may be prescribed. It’s a way of labeling patients that makes us feel cared for and makes money for the medical community. But according to Carlat, that doesn’t necessarily mean he has any idea what he’s doing.

If that’s the way our culture is defining delusions, we can only hope they will fade away sooner rather than later. It also raises the question of how future generations will view our delusions and the doctors who treated them.

The world is, was and seemingly will be full of misinformation. People misunderstand, make mistakes or outright lie about this or that and the next thing you know a rumor or myth gets loose into the wild and everyone hears it. Before long, more people know the fake story than the truth. Once that genie is out of the bottle it can be very hard to put it back in. All we can do is try.

Sometimes this misinformation can be serious stuff and relate to things like disease, war, politics, or finances. And sometimes it’s just silly pop culture things. 

10. Tang Was Not Made For Astronauts

Back in the day, the orange-flavored drink powder known as Tang was inextricably tied to astronauts. This was because of Tang’s heavy marketing which described it as a product used in space but still available to regular folks on the ground. It became associated with space travel and astronauts for years.

Tang was used in space but they did not make it for space. It just coincidentally worked as a beverage for astronauts because it was powdered and easily carried into orbit. 

Tang came on the market in 1959 but it was never popular. Even in space it wasn’t popular, and Buzz Aldrin once went on record to say it sucks. But the problem was that water in space, thanks to how it has to be treated, tastes terrible as well. 

In 1960, someone at NASA determined Tang would work well in space so they began buying it in bulk. They never used the word “Tang,” they just called it orange crystals. But after John Glenn took some into space, General Mills, the company that made Tang, hopped on it as a marketing gimmick and told the world that Tang was an astronaut drink and they were the ones that made it. 

In the minds of many, the marketing implied that NASA made Tang and now it was being sold to everyday people, and General Mills would correct no one on that point.

9. Hobbits Were Never Described as Having Big Feet

In the world of Middle Earth, everything we know about the residents originally came from writer J. R. R. Tolkien. However, his work was subsequently altered by artists drawing images and filmmakers bringing his words to life and somewhere along the lines many people became convinced that Hobbits have giant feet.

Feet were definitely in Tolkien’s mind and he describes them as having hairy feet with leathery soles because they never wear shoes.  But Tolkien never said they had enormous feet, especially not unusually large ones. He also did many illustrations for his work and none of the Hobbits have unusual feet in what he produced. 

Large feet came into play when artists started drawing Hobbits. The Hildebrand Brothers, noted fantasy artists though they were, took liberties in their interpretation and had a habit of giving Hobbits large feet in their drawings from the 1970s. Because this was the first exposure many people had to what a Hobbit might look like, it became ingrained in people that a Hobbit has large feet, something perpetuated through film.

8. Chinese Checkers Has Nothing To Do With China

Games are big business these days, mostly as video games. The board game industry is nothing to sneeze at either, and was worth $15.5 billion in 2019 with projections that it would hit $34 billion by 2030. It’s safe to say many people are playing board games.

There’s no statistics on how many people are playing Chinese Checkers but the game rose to popularity in the US in the 1930s. Despite what the name clearly implies, it’s not a Chinese game at all. It came from Germany and the original version dated back to the late 1800s in America again where it was called Halma. So, if you’re keeping track, it’s called Chinese, but it’s an American game based on a German game based on an American game.

The game became “Chinese” in America, when Pressman Company adopted an “Oriental mystique” by branding it with pseudo-Asian imagery to sell it. 

7. Garfield Was Never Meant to be Funny

This is going to be a hard one for some people to deal with. Have you ever read a Garfield comic and thought “this isn’t very funny?” Don’t feel bad because you’re not alone. At least one other person in the world agrees with you – Garfield creator Jim Davis.

Davis never actually intended for Garfield to be funny at all. So if a joke misses the mark that’s par for the course. And if the joke seems to just be a repeat of how fat Garfield is, how dumb Odie is, or how Garfield hates Mondays, that’s on purpose, too.

In a 1982 interview, Davis said he had seen that characters like Snoopy were hugely popular, especially in terms of licensing, but Charlie Brown was not. He also saw that the comics were loaded with dog characters but not cats. He concluded that there was a market for a cute, memorable cat character that could be licensed to the moon and back.

Davis intentionally created a stable of repetitive jokes and set about making his little cartoon. The entire purpose was to make money, not to be funny. He said he would spend 14 hours per week making the comic but up to 60 hours on promotion and licensing. 

The reason Garfield’s face has been found on T-shirts, coffee mugs, a pizza cafe in Kuala Lumpur and a million other things is, and always was, because Jim Davis wanted money. Seems like it worked out for him.

6. The Star Trek Theme Song Actually Has Lyrics 

The theme song to the original Star Trek series is pretty memorable even if it’s just an instrumental track that starts after William Shatner’s narration. Over the years people have made up lyrics for it and you can probably find more than a few videos on YouTube of people singing along. What fewer people realize is that the song already has lyrics and series creator Gene Roddenberry wrote them.

A man named Alexander Courage composed the instrumental music. As part of the deal for making the music, he would receive royalties every time that song played on TV. So every rerun of Trek would have cut him a check. Not too shabby as deals go. Except it only lasted a year.

Roddenberry and Courage made a deal that gave Roddenberry the right to add lyrics to the song. He waited a year and then did just that. Even though the lyrics were never used, and they’re arguably terrible, he was now the song’s co-writer. That meant it entitled him to half of the royalties for the song and apparently told Courage “Hey, I have to get some money somewhere. I’m sure not going to get it out of the profits of Star Trek.”

5. Solo Cup Lines Are Not For Measuring Alcohol

If you ever attended a college party, then there’s a good chance you’ve enjoyed an alcoholic beverage out of a red Solo cup. If you’ve gotten deep into the lore of drinking out of these Solo cups, you may have even heard that there are lines of demarcation inside the cup which show you different measurements for booze. The top line shows 12 ounces for beer, the next down is 5 ounces for wine and the lowest is one ounce for a shot of hard liquor.

The good people at Solo have explained more than once that the lines inside a cup are not measurements. They are part of the manufacturing process and just have a functional purpose rather than a convenient one for booze consumption. 

Also, as has been pointed out, why would anyone drinking out of a plastic cup specifically measure out their wine or beer, anyway? And if you’re so concerned about measuring a shot, why not use an actual shot glass? 

4. Back to the Future Was Never Supposed to Have a Sequel

Back to the Future was one of the most popular movies of the ’80s and spawned two sequels. The first film ends with Doc Brown’s character showing up with a flying Delorean insisting Marty needs to go to the future. It was a clear set up for a sequel except for one important detail – it wasn’t.

The producers never intended to make a sequel. That ending was meant as a joke. When the idea of a sequel became a reality, after part one was so popular, a “to be continued” was added to copies of the original and the sequel had to follow the original setup.

3. Schrodinger’s Cat Metaphor Was Not Meant to Be Serious

Many people are familiar, at least in passing, with Schrodinger’s Cat. It’s a metaphorical thought experiment to help explain quantum mechanics. The gist of it is that you can never know if the cat in this box is alive or dead at any given moment based on the elaborate setup that deals with poison and radioactive decay and the cat has to be both alive and dead for various reasons understood by physics. Only by observing the experiment could it become one or the other.

For many people this idea is absurd because cats cannot be both alive and dead. But what many people miss, especially in the less scientific understanding of this experiment as it gets simplified in modern pop culture, is that Schrodinger fully knew how absurd it was. That was part of the point. He was commenting on the silliness of the experimenter himself being the deciding factor in whether this cat was alive or dead, which was part of a prevailing theory of quantum physics at the time.

2. Seinfeld’s Festivus Was a Real Event in One Writer’s Home

If you’re a fan of Seinfeld, and even if you aren’t, you may know Festivus. It’s the secular stand-in for Christmas created by Frank Costanza on the show that involved decorating an aluminum pole and airing grievances with loved ones. The joke holiday was one of the most memorable parts of the series’ entire run and became so popular that people have Festivus celebrations in real life. 

As fun as it must be for some to celebrate this fake holiday for real, the truth is that it was not actually a fake holiday. It was just never an official holiday. Writer Dan O’Keefe came up with the concept for the show based on the real-life Festivus that was forced upon his family as a child by his own father.

In his telling, Festivus was even more chaotic than what made it on TV, and his father was never clear about why it happened or even when. There was no set date, no set reason, and no set rituals. 

1. Bram Stoker Didn’t Intend for Dracula to Be a Work of Fiction

Remember when The Blair Witch Project came out, and they sold it to audiences as a true story? Or, really, many modern horror movies from The Conjuring to The Strangers which always claim to be based on true events? None of them actually are, but saying that seems to add a layer of mystique to the proceedings. Maybe that’s what Bram Stoker had in mind with Dracula. Or maybe it really was a true story.

Despite what it seems like now, Stoker tried to sell Dracula as a true story after he wrote it. He told his editor that Mina and Jonathan Harker were dear friends of his and had relayed the story to him. 

Stoker’s editor was not having it. Historically, the book was written shortly after Jack the Ripper had terrorized London and was still obviously at large. The editor wanted no part of a so-called true story about a supernatural monster stalking London’s streets.

In order to get the book published, Stoker had to remove several elements including the first 101 pages. The version that we have today starts on what would have been page 102 in the original. 

Some of what Stoker included in his tale is, in fact, real. While he wrote of a boat called the Demeter taking Dracula to England, he researched a real vessel called the Dmitri that had run aground while carrying crates of Earth. Those who went to rescue the boat reported seeing a large black dog that ran to a graveyard. 

Whether or not Stoker was sincere, confused or just trolling is lost to history.

An actress who expresses a conservative viewpoint in liberal Hollywood. A teacher suspended for daring to assume a boy in her class goes by the pronoun “he.” A chef accused of cultural appropriation for cooking an ethnic dish. There’s no doubt that cancel culture – the attempt to ruin someone’s personal or professional life due to a perceived insult or insensitivity – is only getting worse.

In a woke world obsessed with meaningless microaggressions, it’s amazing how many macroaggressions continue to go largely unpunished. In fact, the list is so lengthy that a sub-list could be created for animal-related offences alone. So we made one.

Here are ten items that, hopefully, will wake up the woke to focus on something more important than playing purity police online.

Top 10 Great Scientists Who Would Be #Cancelled Today

10 Polar Bear Killings

Don’t polar bears have enough to worry about without jackass trophy hunters shooting them? With the Arctic sea ice they rely upon for hunting, resting, mating and dens rapidly diminishing due to climate change, it is estimated that less than 25,000 are left in the wild. Polar bears’ plight led to the US including them on its Endangered Species List in 2008 – and things have only grown worse since then.

Considering this, the idea that people are still killing polar bears for sport and money is disturbing to say the least. Even more insane is WHERE this practice is still legal; while one might expect it of Russia – a country whose macho dictator never found a barechested photo-op he didn’t like – the country to visit to senselessly slaughter a polar bear is Canada. Ah, Canada: clean air, universal healthcare and polar bear murder.

Why hunt them? Because killing a polar bear can make one not only a sick asshole but a RICH sick asshole. Polar bear skins can fetch tens of thousands of dollars; like hunting, such sales also are somehow still legal.

Per Freedom of Information divulgences, nearly 9,000 polar bears were killed by hunters in the Arctic between 2007 and 2016. More than 50,000 polar bears have been killed since 1960 – twice as many as today’s remaining population.

9 Seal Beatings

All reputations for being polite and generous aside, those Canadians are a bloodthirsty lot.

Canada’s annual commercial seal hunt is the largest slaughter of marine mammals on the planet. The hunt’s primary target is the harp seal, which might be the most adorable animal on Earth. Even more disgustingly, some 97% of the harp seals slaughtered are pups less than three months old. Weapons of choice include wooden clubs, hakapiks (large ice-pick-like clubs) and guns.

The hunts occur predominantly on ice floes in two regions, both off Canada’s East Coast: the Gulf of St. Lawrence, west of Newfoundland and east of the Magdalen Islands; and an area called the “Front,” northeast of Newfoundland. The mass killings come in addition to the harp seal population’s increasing vulnerability to diminishing sea ice.

The perverse practice is typically undertaken by local fishermen, who sell the seals’ fur and oils to supplement their income. Approximately 6,000 fishermen participate each year. The Humane Society estimates that more than ONE MILLION seals have been clubbed, stabbed and shot to death in the last FIVE YEARS.

The understandable international backlash has prompted a widespread and well-funded disinformation campaign by the Canadian government. What’s next, Canada? Drowning baby unicorns perhaps?

8 Sea Turtle Eyeglass Frames

“Comfort and refinement go hand in hand,” the website of France-based manufacturer Maison Bonnet reads. Matching its suspect morals with even more suspect English, it continues: “They provide the harmony between the model and the individual face, the true luxury of handmade glasses. Traditional handcrafting is essential. Only a firm hand can do justice to a one-off item.”

Harmony? Justice? I’m not sure the sea turtle butchered to make the spectacles frames would think so. An alarming example of how accepted this practice still is, Maison Bonnet goes on to namedrop famous customers, including two French Presidents: Francois Mitterrand and, more recently, Jacques Chirac.

The lingering legality of making products from sea turtle shells in certain areas has, unsurprisingly, spurned illicit poaching in other places. For example, last year, it was reported that traffickers were capturing and shipping thousands of sea turtles from Florida to Asia and other markets, where some can fetch up to $10,000. Over the years, the trade has caused the deaths of millions of turtles to make such frivolities as combs, eyeglass frames, guitar picks, ornaments and cheap jewelry.

Utilizing certain animals for food or clothing is one thing, but do we really need to be making extraneous items from slaughtered animals? Regardless, Maison Bonnet claims that its production process “totally respects the natural cycle of the sea turtles.” A sea turtle could not be reached for comment.

7 Ivory products

Given the worldwide fervor over the ivory trade – a matter made urgent due to the severely endangered animals whose deaths fuel it, especially elephants – it’s easy to assume that underdeveloped countries with ineffective law enforcement would have the most difficult time policing the globally-banned practice.

But surprisingly, among the biggest drivers of the illegal ivory trade is… Japan, one of the most advanced, law-abiding nations on Earth. The reason is something incredibly mundane: a signature-substituting seal. Called hankos: the small stamps are used in lieu of signatures for anything from opening a bank account to signing an employment contract.

According to Hideki Arami, a third-generation hanko carver with a shop in Tokyo’s busy Shibuya district, the best hanko ivory comes from the center of the tusk, where the bone is firm and flawless. What a wonderful reason for bringing multiple species to the verge of extinction.

Selling ivory legally entails proving that it isn’t new, meaning it was “harvested” before poaching was banned in 1989. Per the African Wildlife Foundation, while Japanese law states ivory tusks must be registered before a sale, the process has remained notoriously lenient. Owners often do not need to provide verifiable proof of how, where, or when tusks were acquired – opening the door for illegal ivory to enter Japan’s legal marketplace.

6 Animal Products in Perfume

Wearing perfume? Then you’re probably spraying liquified fauna on yourself. Animal parts are still widely used as ingredients in various fragrances.

One example is civet, a catlike animal with a long tail and pointed snout native to Africa and much of Asia. Its perineal glands produce a crude, buttery-yellow paste that turns darker with age. At full strength, the tincture smells fecal and nauseating, but when diluted it has a floral scent. Civets are “farmed and harvested” (read: born imprisoned and slaughtered en masse) at facilities in Ethiopia, with their paste exported to perfumeries in Europe and North America.

Like leathery scents? Then you’re likely wearing beaver taint. Vintage leathery notes are typically achieved via castoreum, which comes from the castor sacs of beavers, who use it to mark territory. After killing the beaver, harvesters smoke or sun-dry the paste-filled castor sacs, which come to resemble dried figs (yum!). The paste’s aroma eventually mellows into the smell of sweet, clean leather.

The hyrax, an African species resembling a large guinea pig, is another furry critter with perfume-centric secretions. Often called “African stone,” hyraceum forms when the animals’ urine and feces (they live together in colonies, and typically relieve themselves in a common area) petrifies. Luckily for the hyrax, this process takes hundreds of thousands of years, meaning their contribution to the perfume industry doesn’t carry a death sentence.

These animal materials were once used in huge doses in fragrances such as Miss Dior and No 5 and they continue to be used to this day in many perfumes across the industry.

5 Bone China

Bone china is a type of porcelain made from a significant amount – at least 30%, but usually closer to 50% – of animal bone ash. Why bone? Because it makes for an especially strong ceramic that offers premium chip resistance and high levels of whiteness and translucence. Among other benefits, the sturdiness provided by bone ash allows bone china to be produced in thinner cross-sections than other porcelains.

From its initial development in the early 1800s, bone china has historically been a British product; in fact, the term “English porcelain” often refers to bone china. In most cases, the bone comes from cows, though pig bone also may be used – prompting Middle East manufacturers to make halal versions that are verified cow-only.

So, is bone china ethical? Proponents argue that it basically just uses the bones of animals already set to be slaughtered for meat. Critics counter that, while less problematic than, for example, killing polar bears for sport or sea turtles for eyeglasses, bone china is simply an unnecessary animal-derived item. In addition to doing no favors to the animals, opponents contend, bone china imposes on vegetarians and people who avoid animal products.

In addition, human bone ash has been identified on rare occasions, and no one wants to eat off of great-grandma.

4 Industrial Cattle Production

Despite their growing ranks, animal rights activists calling for completely ending meat-eating remain overwhelmingly in the minority. Among other issues, such posturing and proselytising ignores the fact that humans are naturally omnivores – eaters of both fauna and flora.

However, a more understandable candidate for cancellation is the way some meat is produced. For example, the American livestock stream is awash in antibiotics, used to keep cows and pigs in unhygienic, tightly-packed factory farms “healthy.” Not only is this indicative of the filthy, crowded conditions these animals experience, but also adds to the growing problem of bacterial resistance due to antibiotics overuse. A worrisome 13.6 million kilograms of antibiotics are used for US livestock each year, nearly four times the amount distributed for direct human consumption.

A legitimate case also can be made that humanity is eating too MUCH meat. More than six million animals are killed for human consumption every hour; in one lifetime, the average American will consume the equivalent of 11 cows, 27 pigs, and 2,400 chickens.

Another reasonable concern is the meat industry’s contributions to global warming: animal agriculture is responsible for an estimated 18% of global climate change. Each day, cows alone produce 150 billion gallons of methane, which is 25-100 times more heat-trapping than carbon dioxide. That’s right: cow farts are a flatulent factor in climate change.

3 Industrial Poultry Production

As concerning as some meat sector practices are, the fashion in which the United States produces poultry deserves an entry all its own.

Again, the issue here isn’t a total chicken-eating ban. The idea that we’re close to replacing real chicken with the sort of highly-processed, often high-calorie plant-based concoctions popularized as beef and pork substitutes is nonsense. Besides, faux chicken is notoriously harder to create, with most products discontinued.

Regardless, poultry often is raised in highly problematic conditions and, given its food industry track record, the US is unsurprisingly among the most blameworthy. Each year, America produces more than 44 billion pounds of chicken. That’s a lotta wings.

However, the trade off for making that much meat is truly horrific conditions for the chickens. US chickens are typically raised in crowded coops covered in droppings and devoid of sunlight. There, the birds are aggressively force fed to meet Americans’ ever-growing demand for cheap meat. Over their two-month lifespan, chickens grow so rapidly that their joints, legs, hearts and lungs are significantly compromised.

After slaughter, US factory chickens are rinsed in chlorine. And if you’re wondering whether blasting a food product with a dangerous chemical is problematic… well, join the rest of the world. Many countries ban the import of US poultry for this reason and, recently, Brits cried foul (or rather, fowl) over a backroom deal that allowed US chickens into the UK food stream in exchange for a broader post-Brexit US-UK trade deal.

2 Fur Farms

Humans have been turning furry animals into clothing for millennia. So as with the loud-but-miniscule minority who want to disallow all meat-eating, animal activists who want to cancel all dead animal-derived clothing – such as fur coats and leather – are unlikely to prevail anytime soon – though they certainly help the polluting paint manufacturers with all that red paint they buy!

However, one aspect of fur clothing is particularly problematic: fur farms, which raise foxes and minks in cramped, cruel conditions for the singular reason of fattening them up for maximum fur production. The first two sentences of an investigative report by the Humane Society are so powerful that they’re difficult to read:

“By the end of his life, the arctic fox, just 1 year old, has grown so large he barely fits in the bare wire cage on a farm in Asia. Overbred to produce a big pelt, he suffers from an eye condition made worse by obesity: His lashes grow inward and scratch constantly against his cornea.”

Estimates vary, but all available figures would place the number of foxes and minks slaughtered on fur farms in the tens of millions annually. In a developed world that has largely banned the commercial killing of dogs and cats (except for South Korea, which should be ashamed of itself because dogs aren’t food, ever, full stop), the idea that similar animals are being factory farmed for something as frivolous as fur is difficult to justify – and that’s putting it kindly.

1 Puppy Mills

The Sato Project is a nonprofit dog rescue organization headquartered in southeastern Puerto Rico. Its mission is to save as many of the 300,000 stray dogs that roam the Connecticut-sized Caribbean island. The Sato Project team manages to feed, shelter, vet and ultimately fly more than a thousand dogs per year to forever homes on the US mainland (including one lucky sato, Vector, who joined this author’s family in 2013).

Multiply Puerto Rico’s plight by thousands, and you begin to scratch the surface of the number of desperate dogs in need of good homes. Against such a backdrop, the fact that pully mills still exist is, simply, disgusting and unacceptable.

A puppy mill is a commercial dog breeding facility in which the health of dogs is disregarded to maintain a low overhead and maximize profits. There are an estimated 10,000 puppy mills in the US alone, catering to customers who, for whatever reason, simply must have a pure breed or designer dog (oh cool! It’s another f*cking Labradoodle!).

While there are laws regulating facilities that sell to pet stores and through certain online forums, nothing can be done about black market operations that sell directly to consumers. The only way to eliminate puppy mills is for people to stop being so choosy about breeds and simply give a needy dog the home it deserves.

10 Insane Decisions That Nearly Ruined Pop Culture Classics

You might think cancel culture is a relatively new invention. Social media, particularly Twitter, seems to be obsessed with trying to get conservative people banished from their fields of work. These social media pile-ons often have no effect. Some celebrities have successfully manipulated cancel culture for personal gain and used their online notoriety as a way to play the victim.

But cancel culture existed long before the internet was born and “progressives” took the helm. For years, people have used spurn and blacklists to attack those who dare to rock the boat of public opinion. Throughout history, people have been “canceled” because of their gender, the color of their skin, or because they disagreed with the powers that be. Often they faced much worse than an online hate mob or being dropped from Netflix. They were thrown out of their homes, firebombed, even burned at the stake. From historical rewritings to Hollywood blacklists, the trend of cancel culture has a rich and varied past. Here are ten notable examples.

Top 10 Things Cancel Culture Has (surprisingly) Not Canceled Yet

10 Ostracism in Ancient Athens

Some of the earliest known examples of people being canceled date back over two thousand years. In the 5th century B.C., the Ancient Greeks used to practice ostracism, where wrongdoers were sent into exile by popular vote. Cleisthenes – the “father of Athenian democracy” – is widely regarded to have created the punishment.

Every year, the people of Athens would be asked if they wanted to ostracize anyone. If they voted in favor, they would meet in the public agora to hold an election. Under the watchful eye of the council, citizens would etch the name of the person they wanted to be thrown out of the city into a shard of broken pottery. Each fragment was known as ‘ostrakon’ – from which the word ostracism was born.

The shards were collected in an urn and counted. It took at least 6000 total votes for the process to be valid. Athenian officials would then sort the shards into piles, and whoever received the most votes was banished from the city. They were given ten days to prepare themselves and warned that they would be killed if they tried to return. The punishment would last for ten years, after which they would be allowed back into Athens.

Records suggest that around thirteen men were ostracized from Athens between 487 and 416 B.C. Some of those were pardoned and returned to the city before they had served their full decade, like Xanthippus and Aristides who were let back in to help fight the Persians in 479 B.C.

One of the most notable people to be kicked out of Athens was renowned politician Themistocles. It is said that Themistocles’ power went to his head and that he was ostracized to curb his arrogance. As the historian Plutarch explained, ostracism “was not a penalty, but a way of pacifying and alleviating that jealousy which delights to humble the eminent, breathing out its malice into this disfranchisement.”^[1]

9 Michael Servetus, the Theologian burned by protestants for Heresy

Born in Spain, Michael Servetus was one of the most controversial religious teachers of the 16th century. He was an outspoken critic of the Church who developed his own theories about the Holy Trinity and astrology. But his ideas outraged both Catholics and Protestants and he was forced to publish them in secret.

Like people today who dare to disagree with public opinion, Servetus received a barrage of hate. But the theologian’s fate was far more severe than a digital slap on the wrist or a bike-lock to the head. When a French inquisitor discovered his letters, Servetus was accused of heresy, forcing him to flee. He escaped Catholic France and ended up in Calvinist Geneva where, in 1553, he was captured and burned at the stake for his non-protestant ideas.^[2]

8 The Hollywood Blacklist

The Hollywood Blacklist was the cancel culture of the 1940s and 50s. During the Second World War, the US had teamed up with the communist Soviet Union to fight the national socialists. But after the war ended, anti-communist views began to spread across the states. People feared that pro-Soviets were infiltrating the US media to push global socialism.

It reached such a furor that Hollywood began banning workers who were rumored to have far-left political views. In 1947, the HUAC started to look into the influence of communism on the film industry. Ten workers who refused to give evidence to the committee were thrown out of their jobs and each served a short jail sentence. The HUAC continued its paranoid investigation through the 50s, blacklisting workers who they suspected of subversion.

But perhaps the HUAC had ulterior motives. In the 1940s, lawyer Wendell Willkie showed that certain US politicians were using communist paranoia as a ploy to target Jews. Although they claimed to be motivated by patriotism, Willkie proved that some investigators seemed to be far more interested in starting an anti-Semitic witch hunt in Hollywood. My how the worm has turned!^[3]

7 Percy Julian, the Black Chemist Scrubbed from History

For years, people tried to erase the legacy of Percy Julian. The Alabama-born chemist faced multiple setbacks throughout his life due to his skin color. Even though his pioneering work saved numerous people’s lives, Julian is still a relatively unknown figure in US history.

Educated at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, in 1923 he became the first African American to earn a master’s degree in chemistry from Harvard University. However, Harvard refused to let him study for a PhD on racial grounds, so he completed his doctorate in Vienna.

Julian then returned to the US and tried to pursue a career in academia, but again racial prejudice stopped him from progressing. So he moved to the business world where he pioneered new uses for soybean chemicals. One chemical helped produce fire-retardant foam in fire extinguishers and saved the lives of thousands of soldiers during the Second World War. He also found a way to create artificial hormones. Due to his research, ludicrously expensive drugs suddenly became affordable for millions of people.

Julian’s work meant he could move his family to a better-off suburb in Illinois, but they were despised by many of their white neighbors. They faced several attacks – including arson and someone firebombing their house – but Julian and his wife refused to move. By the time he died from liver cancer, aged 76, he was a millionaire.^[4]

6 Lise Meitner, the Female Nuclear Physicist Pushed Out and Persecuted

Lise Meitner was a pioneer of nuclear physics. She should have made history as one of the first two people to explain the process of nuclear fission. But the Austrian trailblazer was never given the credit that people say she deserved. In 1945, when her collaborator Otto Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize, Meitner’s contribution was sadly overlooked by the judges.

Besides her gender, it was the threat of the Nazi Party that ultimately led to Meitner being canceled. When Hitler’s regime annexed Austria in 1938, Jewish-born Meitner left Vienna and moved to Stockholm. There, one historian wrote, she was given “laboratory space but no collaborators, equipment, or technical support, not even her own set of keys.” She had to meet with Hahn in secret to continue their work exploring the behavior of uranium.^[5]

5 Ignaz Semmelweis, Hand-Washing Pioneer Committed to an Asylum

Ignaz Semmelweis should have been a medical hero, but his colleagues’ pride got in the way. The Hungarian doctor was the first person to advocate that people wash their hands.

During the 1840s, Semmelweis decided to explore the unusually high number of women dying from childbed fever. He studied two maternity wards at the General Hospital in Vienna. One ward was run by doctors and medical students; the other was staffed by midwives. Semmelweis quickly discovered that the death rate on the first ward was five times higher than that on the second ward. But, for a long time, he was unable to explain the disparity.

It turned out the key difference was that the doctors were carrying out autopsies. Semmelweis theorized that students were getting tiny pieces of corpses stuck to their hands, which then infected the pregnant women on the ward. Of course, we now understand that disease is spread by germs and not by pieces of dead bodies, but pathogens were barely understood at the time.

On Semmelweis’ orders, medical staff began washing their hands with chlorine and the death rate soon fell. The Hungarian scientist should have become the founding father of modern hygiene. But he did not.

You see, people at the hospital were not impressed by Semmelweis’ discovery. They thought it made them seem guilty of infecting women on the ward. Certain accounts also suggest that Semmelweis was a difficult man to work with. In the end, his colleagues hit back and he was kicked out of the hospital. By 1865, he had been sent to a mental asylum where he was beaten and, in a sad twist of irony, probably died of infection.^[6]

4 The Victorians and their Wild Cancel Culture

Cancel culture in the 1800s was brutal, far worse than the online pile-ons of today. Respected Victorians spent much of their lives locked in feuds. Some of them put an enormous amount of energy into trying to destroy each other’s reputation. Oscar Wilde often clashed with the Marquess of Queensberry, once publicly smearing him as a “foul thing” who “assailed” the world of academia.

Thomas Edison’s supporters wanted to cancel his rival George Westinghouse. They tried to make sure that his reputation would always be associated with the murder of animals. They used Westinghouse’s invention of alternating current to kill dogs, horses, even an elephant, hoping they could smear the entrepreneur.

But perhaps the worst was paleontologist Richard Owen. Owen had a long-standing rivalry with fellow dinosaur expert Gideon Mantell. When Mantell took his own life in 1852, Owen somehow got hold of his spine. He had it pickled and displayed it at the Royal College of Surgeons in London.^[7]

3 Galileo Galilei, Dared to Disagree with the Church

Galileo Galilei is an eminent figure in scientific history. Although he started out studying medicine, he soon changed fields and became an expert in maths and physics. Throughout his life, he looked into the speed of falling objects, mechanics, and pendulums.

But, apart from his iconic mention in Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, Galilei is probably best remembered for his contribution to astronomy. In 1609, he created a telescope and began to study the Solar System. The Italian professor was one of the first people to suggest that the Earth orbited around the Sun.

Unfortunately, not being content to simply publish his additions to the already well-establish and Church-accepted Copernican theory, Galileo declared it proved the Church and Bible wrong. Galilei was convicted of heresy and died under house arrest in his villa near Florence.^[8]

2 Cultural Imperialism, the Canceling of Entire Cultures

Most of the time, when people talk about cancel culture, they are referring to something that might have an impact on one person or a handful of people. But, as several historians have pointed out, there are numerous examples of entire cultures being canceled.^[9]

European colonizers were notorious for destroying the cultures of the countries they took over. When Britain colonized India, they erased much of the existing heritage and imprinted their cultural dominance. The British colonizers often claimed that they were “civilizing” the natives. The same rhetoric was used by German officials who set about to “Prussify” the Slavic people of Eastern Europe. It was also mirrored by the European empires in their treatment of Native Americans.^[10]

1 Alan Turing, the Computer Scientists Persecuted for being a homosexual

Born in London, Alan Turing is remembered as one of the fathers of modern computing. His work at Bletchley Park played a pivotal role in Britain’s victory during the Second World War. As part of the Government Code and Cypher School, he used statistics and logic to decode secret Nazi messages sent using the Enigma machines. Historians say that his ground-breaking work saved more military lives than anyone else in the history of warfare.

But Turing had a deep secret. He was gay at a time when homosexuality was outlawed. Under Britain’s oppressive sexuality laws, the great mathematician was sentenced to a year of estrogen injections. British intelligence started to grow suspicious of his work, solely because he was gay. He died of potassium cyanide poisoning in 1954. An inquest found that he had administered the poison himself.^[11]

+ German Book Burnings

Myth: The National Socialists (Nazis) burned books. Truth: it was university students and it occurred on exactly two occasions in 1933. Effectively the German Students Union which supported the principles of national Socialism organised protests against the Institute of Sex Research which was studying transgenderism and even performing transexual operations (the famous Lily Elbe was a victim of one of their early surgeries in fact). The students destroyed all of the literature of the group and other “un-German” materials in a public book burning.

Today’s book burnings are mostly (though not always, as the feminists burning anti-feminist books in the above picture illustrates) digital cancellations of “un-progressives” but the perpetrators and principles remain the same. Young angry extremist students of our time may be more discreet, but the outcome is not.

It is somewhat ironic that the institute and its leader, Magnus Hirschfeld, were supporters of cultural Marxism, the theories and principles of which are now firmly entrenched in and form the backbone of much of the education in our universities—the source of cancel culture.^[12]

Interestingly book burnings had also happened 120 years earlier in the 1817 German celebrations in Wartburg for the 300th anniversary of protestant Martin Luther’s posting of his anti-Catholic “95 theses” in the 16th century.

Top 10 Plans Hitler Would Have Put In Motion If The Nazis Had Won

With 2020’s Netflix remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Rebecca, it’s clear that Hitchcock’s movies still have a significant influence on pop culture, film, and TV even 40 years after his death. He is one of those rare directors who comes along once in a while and changes cinema forever. Even long after his death, we still see the impact he has had on entertainment through countless references and homages. Here are 10 memorable pop culture references that keep his work alive.

Related: 10 Bizarre Stories Behind The Movies Of Alfred Hitchcock

10 Scream: “We All Go a Little Mad Sometimes”

We love to see the iconic ’90s slasher movie paying tribute to an even more iconic Hitchcock film. Wes Craven’s blockbuster hit is full of scary movie references throughout its runtime like The Exorcist, Friday the 13th, Halloween, and so many more. So it only makes sense that Hitchcock’s Psycho would make a cameo at some point.

When Billy Loomis (who is a huge horror film fanatic) reveals he is one of the killers, he says, “We all go a little mad sometimes.” This famous line was said by Norman Bates, the famous villain with mommy issues we all know and love, at the very end of Psycho. Not only that, but Billy shares his last name (Loomis) with the husband of Norman Bates’s first victim, Marion Crane. Now, that’s definitely no coincidence. It’s safe to assume that Bates may have been an inspiration or role model to Loomis’s character, who loved horror films and was clearly a psycho.^[1]

9 Family Guy: “North By North Quahog”

The title of Family Guy’s season 3 opener is a dead giveaway that we may see a Hitchcock reference or two. The episode finds Peter stealing a script from Mel Gibson’s hotel room and being chased North By Northwest style. We even get a shot-for-shot rendition of the famous crop duster scene. Later in the episode, Peter saves Lois from Mel Gibson’s house, in another exact replica of the North By Northwest Mount Rushmore scene. It’s also worth mentioning the show’s producer, Seth MacFarlane, even did a Psycho-themed Oscars promo in 2013, so it’s no surprise that his show has a few Hitchcock homages throughout the series.^[2]

8 Horrible Bosses: Strangers on a Train

When you think of the plot of Horrible Bosses, it’s easy to make the connection to Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train. In fact, the movie does it for you. When Jason Bateman’s, Charlie Day’s, and Jason Sudeikis’s characters decide to murder their bosses, they meet with Jamie Foxx’s character, Motherf––r Jones. Mr. Jones calls himself a “murder consultant” and advises the three to kill each other’s bosses so the police don’t have a motive and they have a secure alibi.

When hearing this, Jason Sudekis’s character points out that this is just like in Hitchcock’s film Strangers on a Train. Charlie Day’s character, Dale, goes on to say that the movie stars Danny DeVito. The funny thing to note is that the movie Dale mentions is Throw Momma from the Train, a parody of Hitchcock’s film. So he was kind of half right. The movie’s plot is clearly inspired by Hitchcock, and it finds a hilarious way to explain that within the movie itself.^[3]

7 The (Not So Great) Hitchcock Remakes

Many directors have tried to pay tribute to Hitchcock’s films with their own version, yet very few (emphasis on very) have succeeded. The most recent Netflix remake of the 1940 film Rebecca received a sad 41% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Many critics agreed it had nothing new to offer, standing in the shadow of the original movie. We won’t even mention the almost shot-for-shot 1998 Psycho remake starring Vince Vaughn because we pretend it didn’t happen. The 2007 modern remake of Rear Window, Disturbia, was fairly well-received by audiences and critics, but it still didn’t live up to Hitchcock’s greatness.

On the flip side, one of the highest-rated Hitchcock remakes is not even an actual remake but a parody. Mel Brooks’s High Anxiety is a funny spoof of many Hitchcock films, including Vertigo, Spellbound, and Psycho. In conclusion, can we all just collectively agree to stop making Hitchcock remakes unless they bring something new and fresh to the table? Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.^[4]

6 That ’70s Show: Hitchcock Halloween Episode

If you’re a Hitchcock fan, you’ll definitely enjoy this Halloween-themed episode of That ’70s Show. The entire 4th episode of season 3, titled “Too Old to Trick or Treat, Too Young to Die,” is a funny, light-hearted homage to Hitchcock films. At the beginning of the episode, Fez breaks his leg and ends up in a wheelchair. Then, much like James Stewart in Rear Window, he begins suspecting a neighbor may have murdered his wife while creeping around with a pair of binoculars.

The episode also spoofs Hitchcock’s The Birds when Kitty has a hard time feeding a neighbor’s creepy birds who don’t seem too friendly. There is also a Vertigo nod when Eric develops a fear of heights after almost falling from a roof, and we get a hilarious scene with Michael and Laurie reenacting the famous shower scene from Psycho. Last but not least, we see a funny parody of the crop duster scene from North by Northwest.^[5]

5 The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror Hitchcock Spoof

If you’re a fan of The Simpsons, you know they love a good movie reference. The Simpsons pays tribute to great movies with a fresh and funny twist. The show has made tons of Hitchcock references over the years with spoofs of Vertigo, Psycho, Strangers on a Train, North by Northwest, The Birds, and Rear Window.

One of their most popular Hitchcock-themed episodes is, of course, Treehouse of Horror XX. You can spot at least five Hitchcock movie references in this Halloween special, including a silhouette of Homer, a call back to Hitchcock’s TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The Simpsons even included Hitchcock’s famous cameo appearance in this episode, which he was famous for, appearing in over 38 of his films.^[6]

4 Bates Motel: Norman Bates Origin Story

The main takeaway from this Psycho spinoff show is that you should never trust a man who likes to stuff dead birds for fun or stay in a shady motel by yourself. The character of Norman Bates became so popular that 53 years after Psycho’s premiere, the A&E network decided to do an entire show around his origin story titled Bates Motel. The show was very successful, and even Rihanna made a guest appearance, playing the iconic role of Marion Crane.

Bates Motel also re-created the famous shower scene—with a twist—and explored the weird and slightly (ok, very) creepy relationship between Norman and his mother, Norma. At the beginning of the series, we meet a relatively normal teenage Norman, and by the end of it, he becomes the psycho that stole America’s hearts.^[7]

3 Psycho Shower Scene: The Spoofs

Even people who have never seen the original 1960 film Psycho know about THE shower scene: the shadow behind the shower curtain, the knife slowly inching up on the other side of it, or the unmistakable musical score. This is without a doubt one of the most famous scenes in movie history, and the violence in it was highly controversial at the time.

So it’s no surprise that this is Hitchcock’s most spoofed scene. Even Jamie Lee Curtis, the daughter of the actress who played the victim, Marion Crane, re-enacted the scene. From cartoons like Looney Tunes to comedies like High Anxiety and modern remakes like the Bates Motel, here is a compilation of the many “Shower Scene” parodies.^[8]

2 The Beatles: “Eleanor Rigby” Inspired by Psycho Score

Yes, you read that right. Most people don’t know that the dark and “edgy” strings behind the popular Beatles song “Eleanor Rigby” were inspired by the Psycho musical score, known for its almost screeching sound. Now it’s important to note that the song itself was not inspired by Psycho’s score, but the melody and instrumentals were. In an interview, the Beatles’ producer George Martin reveals that when Paul McCartney suggested using strings for “Eleanor Rigby,” Martin drew inspiration from Hitchcock’s famous score.

If you listen to the song, you can easily make the connection between the two. “Eleanor Rigby” is a darker song than other famous Beatles tunes, so it’s no surprise that the instrumentals behind the lyrics were inspired by one of the greatest horror soundtracks of all time.^[9]

1 James Bond: North by Northwest Influence on Bond Franchise

Probably the least known but significant pop culture influence Hitchcock movies have had was on one of the biggest franchises of all time: James Bond. Some call North by Northwest the “first James Bond film” that isn’t actually a James Bond film. Even the author of the James Bond series, Ian Fleming, wanted the star of North by Northwest, Cary Grant, to star in the first Bond film. Grant was actually offered the 007 role after his performance in Hitchcock’s film but turned it down.

If you watch North by Northwest (which came out before any Bond film, of course), it’s easy to see the major influence on the iconic Bond movies. Grant played the slick, well-dressed, and charming ladies’ man running from danger in beautiful and exotic locations. This spy thriller had everything you see in any Bond film: suspense, espionage, a villain, and a mysterious, beautiful woman on our hero’s arm. So it’s no surprise that every Bond movie that followed uses the same recipe as its inspiration.^[10]

Have you ever had a conversation with your friends about an awesome film, TV show, or childhood cartoon? How often is the talk about the hero? About the torrid love affair or the “will they, won’t they?” between the two main characters? What about the most hateable villains or the funniest series regular? Pretty often, probably.

But we mustn’t forget that there are tons of small roles that can help elevate a scene, a film, or even a series to classic status. Even in some sucky IPs, there can be some small, memorable performance that sticks with the viewer. Here’s a list that shows appreciation for some of the more incidental characters that were elevated by the able actors who brought them to the screen.

Related: Top 10 ‘Star Wars’ Background Characters You Never Even Noticed

10 Mr. Treeger

TV Series: Friends (1994-2004)
Played by: Michael G Haggerty

Where would we be without your average working schlub? One thing is for certain, a whole building’s worth of rent-dodging, coffee-swilling, intra-dating, unfeasibly attractive twenty-somethings in the late ’90s/early ’00s would soon succumb to carbon monoxide poisoning or die under the rubble of their collapsed rent-controlled brownstone. Not so schlubby now, are they? One character given fairer treatment than most “working-class” archetypes in comedy is the superintendent of the building that the friends live in, Mr. Treeger.

He isn’t generically “street smart” or a simple “diamond in the rough” or any other patronizing stereotype. Treeger is just a working guy who knows his stuff and does his job. He can be tough and goofy, mean and kind, surly and have a tender side—the revelation that he enjoys ballroom dancing with Matt LeBlanc’s Joey Tribbiani, his impromptu practice partner, is a surprisingly touching, decently written episode—”The One with the Ballroom Dancing.”^[1]

9 Wizard

Film: Taxi Driver (1976)
Played by: Peter Boyle

Now to a slightly less funny depiction of a working-class New Yorker.

Peter Boyle, known for his comic turns as “The Monster” in Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein and as Ray Romano’s crotchety father in the beloved sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, puts in a great performance in this classic. He’s a regular guy, just a typical New York taxi driver, starkly contrasting against DeNiro’s warped, homicidal, deranged Vietnam vet cab driver.

When pressed to help with Travis Bickle’s growing unease at society and provide some real wisdom, he retreats into trite aphorisms, culminating in just telling the future rampage killer to “go out, get laid, get drunk, do anything” and that:

“We’re all f**ked. More or less, y’know.”

His character’s non-advice would have rendered him a 2D scene filler were it not for one line, perfectly delivered, that really underscores the visceral futility in the movie: “It’s not Bertrand Russell, but what do you want? I’m a cabbie, y’know? What do I know?” Boyle’s assured performance helps turn DeNiro’s iconic anti-hero from a cartoonish monster into the very embodiment of broken mental states and outsider rage at society.^[2]

8 Quaithe

TV Series: Game of Thrones (2011-2019)
Played by: Laura Pradelska

This is an interesting case of a character that was underrated by those writing the show she was in. in George RR Martin’s expansive fantasy universe, the character of Quaithe adds intrigue and a mystical air. She hails from the far-away city of Ashai, a place steeped in dark legends (a ghostly glowing river, mask-wearing denizens competent in forms of eldritch magic, the whole place built in the mysterious oily black stone—a motif inspired by the cosmic horror works of HP Lovecraft).

Quaithe shares visions and portents with the prospective queen of Westeros, Daenerys Targaryen, popping in and out of her life like a ghost. And that ghost-like quality may be fitting—not only does it denote a sense of otherworldliness, but it allows for speculation that she may be a long-lived relative from centuries past, a fallen Targaryen who knows what’s coming around the pike for her family.

Yeah, that’s not what we get in the show. She turns up, says some kooky stuff. And that was that.^[3]

7 Charmaine Bucco

TV Series: The Sopranos (1999-2007)
Played by: Kathrine Narducci

Characters like this are vital to create the audience introspection that classic TV series demand. And there is no greater classic than The Sopranos. Charmaine is wife to Artie Bucco, the chef and owner of Vesuvio. The restaurant is a regular haunt for the members of North Jersey’s Soprano crime family. Tony Soprano is Artie’s childhood best friend. He feels a constant draw into that world (but has nowhere near the street smarts or the hard edge required), constantly thinking of himself as an extension of that world. He lives vicariously enough through the ballbusting and the stories to even consider working with the mafiosos at certain junctures in the series.

But then there’s his wife. Katherine Narducci’s Charmaine is very Jersey. She’s very loud. Very expressive. And very much opposed to the criminal lifestyle of her main customers. Her wry, hostile attitude reminds her husband (and us) of exactly who these people are—charming, lovable, funny murderous thugs and pimps who kill as easily as they finish plates of gabagool.^[4]

6 Arthur Slugworth/Mr. Wilkinson

Film: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)
Played by: Günter Meisner

Beloved by millions as the film that defines their childhood, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory not only delighted children all over the world but also freaked them out to the point of persistent nightmares. The “Boat Trip” scene is enough on its own to cause nightly bed-wettings.

Worse still for the nervous systems of the pre-pubescent is the creepy owner of a competing chocolate company, Wonka’s arch-rival, Arthur Slugworth. He makes Charlie an offer, asking the boy to commit an act of industrial espionage (a mission Charlie refuses, thus allowing him to inherit the factory. Wonka orchestrates this whole ruse for, uh, reasons. Psychopathic reasons.) For all the kookiness and creepiness, all the whimsy and wonder, Slugworth helps ground a filmic vision that could have meandered off into “too-fuzzy-to-be-good” territory. German actor Günter Meisner brings some Teutonic steeliness to this faux antagonist, leaving weak-willed and naughty children in his wake like some corporate pied piper.^[5]

5 Éomer

Film: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003)
Played by: Karl Urban

Right, Tolkeinologists, in light of the upcoming nightmare that will drip from Bezos’s spite glands, let’s talk about an imperfect but much more faithful screen adaptation of J.R.R’s opus. Where would Middle Earth be if not for a comparatively unsung hero? In some pretty deep Mordorish crap, that’s where!

Éomer, Marshal of the Mark in the kingdom of Rohan, is the real martial brains behind the survival of the world of Men.

But the real sign of (movie) Éomer’s badassery comes in the scene where he warns the remaining members of the fellowship to leave Rohan, lest they succumb to the same fate as his King. Actor Karl Urban, on mounting his horse but before exuding pure loss with the line “Look for your friends, but do not trust to hope,” lets his sword slip from its scabbard. This unintended blooper only serves to add to his character’s hard edge. This dude doesn’t even need a sword (Seriously, watch the clip!).^[6]

4 Santos & Pasquel

TV Series: Family Guy (1999– )
Voiced by: Denis Martell & Mark Pasedes

Big characters sometimes come in small scenelets.

Take Santos and Pasquel, two throwaway characters that Peter Griffin hires to work on his fishing boat (remember that? Peter was a fisherman for a bit in the 3rd season). They were Portuguese. That’s how many humorless people perceived the gag. Non-English-speaking characters interact with monolingual American; we see the translation. Ha.

So…funny ‘cos they’re foreign, yes?

Not exactly. Their lives, expounded upon through their conversations, reveal a very different pair of men from how Peter perceives them. They are normal, intelligent guys. One was even a cardiologist back on the Iberian Peninsula. Now, due to the language barrier, they are forced into menial labor on an imbecile’s boat. That’s a lot of character complexity and arc spread across a few scenes and a clutch of lines.^[7]

3 Father Larry Duff

TV Series: Father Ted (1995-1998)
Played by: Tony Guilfoyle

If you are from the geographically larger, brasher, slightly more oil-rich side of the pond, you may very well never have heard of this Irish sitcom. Everyone in Ireland has. Hell, everyone in Britain has! Amid a whole slew of memorable guest spots, all actors portraying increasingly absurd, eccentric characters (mainly priests, all leveling wonderfully satirical jibes at late ’90s Irish culture), Father Larry Duff should get more love.

Used as a throwaway slapstick gag once every few episodes, this unlucky priest’s travails are hilarious. Every time he is in a high-risk situation, he gets a phone call from Ted, the eponymous protagonist of this sitcom. Every time Duff, played by Tony Guilfoyle, is called by Craggy Island’s resident priest, the call itself causes some violent mishap. Ted then realizes he’s been told not to call him for whatever reason, unknowingly having injured his friend. Simple but memorable.^[8]

2 The Bank Manager

Film: The Dark Knight (2008)
Played by: William Fichtner

How do you turn a run-of-the-mill, in-almost-every-crime-based-action-movie heist scene into a work of cinematic beauty? Add Heath Ledger’s Joker. How do you set the tone for what may still be the best (true) Superhero movie of the new millennium? Make sure your ancillary characters seem as 3D as possible.

What type of guy would be the manager of a bank that mainly does business with the mob? The baddest badass, that’s who. When he bursts out of his cubicle office in the palatial downtown Gotham bank building, riding the powder of his shotgun’s blast, the viewer gets the sense that the robbers have bitten off more than they can chew here. Only a new type of criminal could take on this mobbed-up, “old money” sort of guy.

Unfortunately for Gotham’s underworld, that’s exactly who the Joker is. Left with a mouthful of smoke-spewing explosives of some sort and let off with the severing of the Joker’s jacket thread, this scene not only sets the mood for the film but also for superhero blockbusters for the next few years. Smart and entertaining, the whole film would have suffered if not for the performance of this humble/sociopathic bank manager.^[9]

1 The Salesman

Film: Sin City (2005)
Played by: Josh Hartnett

As with the opening scene of The Dark Knight, 2005’s neo-noir adaptation of Frank Miller’s classic comic series Sin City has the quintessential mood-setting opening chapter. A dark cityscape lies beyond the rooftop of an American city. A beautiful woman in a ballgown strikes up a conversation with a tall, dark stranger as the score of doleful sax music sets the mood beyond the scene. He lights a cigarette for her. He tells her things about her that seem to reach deep into her soul. He makes her promises and reassures her that he can make her life better. He tells her he loves her.

He shoots her in the stomach. Then tells us that he’ll “cash her check in the morning.” Did she pay him, a last dramatic flight of fancy and some kind words before her life ends? Then the movie starts. Wow.

The only issue with this character, brought to life by a beautifully smooth turn by Hartnett, is that we don’t get to see this enigmatic character again until the very end of the movie.^[9]

And now for a bonus character!

+ Cravex

TV Series: Visionaries: Knights of the Magical Light (1987)
Voiced by: Chris Latta

A minor henchman antagonist from a cartoon? Why on earth would this screech-voiced, generic character make a list like this? I mean, how could the writing for a short-lived 1980s science fantasy, Hasbro-owned toy tie-in cartoon produce a good character?

One scene.

The scene that every person who has ever felt frustrated in a work meeting/classroom/waiting in line at customer service dreams about. After the show’s main antagonist, Darkstorm, refuses to share some of the plundered treasure with his fellow baddies, Cravex (member of the show’s evil faction, The Darkling Lords) just flips out. He smacks every other member of this gang of evildoers, castigating them based on their character flaws…except for Cindarr, who gets smacked just “out of principle!” This otherwise forgettable character shows us that even those with minimal personality can sometimes hit a nerve. All while viewers shout, “YES! Take that, Jeremy, you don’t even run the IT department, ya jerk!” at their screen.^[11]

Japan can be an odd place.  No other country in the world has experienced such a confluence of tradition, technology, and circumstance.  Feudal samurai ideals clash with cutting edge computers; aged survivors of the only country which endured the full wrath of the atomic bomb mix with teenagers in Pokemon outfits.  Although it hosts one of the most massive economies on the planet, Japan is extremely insular, and its culture is often misunderstood by outsiders.  Below are ten of the strangest aspects of Japanese culture—from sex, to snacks, to death.

Although Earth’s population is rising at an exponential rate, the Japanese are slowly dying off behind an aging infrastructure.  Compounding the problem is a growing problem: the shut-in “hikikomori.”  To be sure, every society is home to a small number of people who could be described as “reclusive”—though most of these recluses tend to be older individuals, marked with mental illnesses such as depression and agoraphobia.

Japan’s hikikomore hermits, on the other hand, are decidedly young. They’re mostly disaffected teenagers and twenty-somethings, withdrawn almost completely from society.  There is no precise explanation to account for the rise in hikikomori, though there are several known contributing factors, including the rise of the internet, intense academic pressures, and parents willing to shelter their children well into adulthood.  Psychiatrists (many of whom are forced to make house calls to visit their patients), have only recently set upon the task of helping the group dubbed by some as “the missing million.”

Although legends of the Yakuza are prevalent, crime rates are particularly low in Japan.  It is illegal to own a handgun, and even ceremonial swords must be registered with the police.  The country enjoys the second lowest homicide rate in the world, behind only Monaco (a country about half the size of New York’s Central Park).  If you ever have the misfortune of standing trial in Japan, however, you can be almost certain that you’re going to jail; indeed, the conviction rate is said to exceed ninety-nine percent (the career of a judge can suffer greatly for handing out acquittals).

Capital punishment is exercised in Japan, and around two or three inmates are executed every year.  Unlike most other countries, death row inmates are only informed hours beforehand when their time is up.  The family is not informed until the condemned father, sibling, or child is already dead.  Although Japan has a history of rather gruesome and unconventional methods of execution, prisoners are generally executed by hanging today.

As I described in a previous list, the Japanese have a predilection for novelty foods and beverages; indeed, the range of flavors they utilize often seem repellent to Western palates.

Due to a coincidence of language, the Kit Kat chocolate bar is enormously popular in Japan.  “Kit Kat” is remarkably similar to the phrase “kitto katsu” (literally: you shall surely win), which is used as a sentiment of good luck.  Students are often given the candy before an exam as a good luck charm.  Unlike the rest of the world, which features only a milk chocolate version, Japan maintains dozens of exotic flavors, such as grilled corn, miso, camembert cheese, baked potato, and soy sauce.

Although the Japanese are known for their industrious work ethic, the stereotype of the boozy businessman warbling “Margaritaville” in a karaoke bar is not that far from the truth.  Marathon drinking sessions are often seen as a cornerstone of the Japanese business model; corporate relationships are forged over gallons of sake, younger salarymen struggling in vain to keep up with their seasoned bosses.

That said, it’s also relatively easy to nurse a hangover. The Japanese business culture values an employee who naps on the job.  “Inemuri,” as it is known, is a quick cat-nap meant to recharge the batteries.  It is seen as a sign of hard work and commitment.

Nothing appears to be more tragic than dying alone—but it happens in Japan all the time.  One of the unfortunate side effects of maintaining such an elderly population (one in five Japanese are over the age of sixty five, many of them well into their eighties and nineties) is that people tend to die at home.  These people often go undiscovered, sometimes for months or even years—a phenomenon known as “kodokushi”, the lonely deaths.  Thousands of cases occur in Japan each year, especially among men who have few social ties.  Sometimes the bodies are left for so long that they self-mummify.

There are even companies which specialize in cleaning out the apartments of people who have succumbed to such a fate—even dealing with the grisly “kodokushi stains” left behind by a rotting body.  It is estimated that in another twenty years, one in three Japanese will be senior citizens—an estimation which does not bode well for a halt in lonely deaths.

Japan has always been something of a restrictive society, and that prudishness extends all the way to its pornography.  Although hardcore sex acts are allowed to be filmed, the genitalia of the performers is required to be blurred out, in order to uphold moral laws.  This has steered Japanese porn-makers towards a trend called “bukkake”—the prominent display “resultant fluids”—as proof that the actors are really engaging in sex.

Curiously enough, a huge number of Japanese youths have reported that they have very little interest in sex. This is especially true for many males, who are often referred to as soshoku danshi, or “herbivore men.”

Pachinko is a kind of cross between pinball and slot machines; it involves an upright machine, in which players shoot balls which descend through a series of pins.  If the balls land in the right spot, more balls will be produced.  Although gambling is technically illegal in Japan, winners are provided with a token based on their score which can be redeemed elsewhere for cash (a little bit like turning in your tickets at Chuck E. Cheese for a prize).

There is currently a push to legalize pachinko in Japan, with industry insiders estimating a potential gambling revenue that would approach $10 billion a year—nearly double that of Las Vegas.

Anyone who has suffered through the stigma of wearing braces (or any parent who has shelled out thousands for orthodonture) understands the importance of straight, even teeth.  In Japan, however, there is a growing trend among young women for yaeba (literally “double tooth”) caps on the canines, which lends their smile a kind of crowded appearance.  As bizarre beauty trends go, this one is somewhat costly to implement—but at least it’s reversible.

Although homicides in Japan are almost nonexistent, the country has one of the highest suicide rates in the world—in some cases more than twice that of other developed countries.  Although attitudes are changing, suicide was for a long time accepted by the culture as a noble act—a way of protecting honor, and defending the reputation of the family.

One of the most startling suicide trends involves leaping in front of commuter trains.  This has become such an issue that rail companies usually fine surviving family members for the inconvenience.  Japan is also home to the chilling Aokigahara Forest.  Located near Mount Fuji, Aokigahara is often mentioned by  writers, and is well known as a hotspot for suicides.

The typical Japanese diet is quite healthy; daily staples like rice, tofu, and fresh vegetables make them some of the longest-lived people on earth.  But many Japanese people also have a weakness for familiar American comfort food—most notably, fried chicken.  In major cities, there is often a KFC to be found every few blocks, with each restaurant hosting a life-sized statue of Colonel Sanders standing out front.

Although only a small handful of Japanese are Christian, they have adopted KFC as a Christmas Eve tradition.  On December 24, every KFC in Japan features lines out the door.  Many make reservations months in advance.

The KFC legend is not confined only to the holiday season.  In 1985, when the Hanshin Tigers baseball team won the Japan Series, revelers spilled into the streets.  Amid the chaos, a statue of Colonel Sanders was thrown into a canal in Osaka.  In the subsequent years, the Tigers have continually failed to win another championship—felled, supposedly, by the “Curse of the Colonel”.  In 2009, most of the statue was recovered from the river. The glasses and the left hand are still missing, however, and some locals believe that the curse will not lift until the Colonel is whole.

Mike Devlin is an aspiring novelist.  He loves sushi and ninjas.

Pop culture has really exploded into a monster since the emergence of streaming technology and a million cable channels. There are video games, books, shows and films coming out constantly telling old stories, reimagined stories, rebooted stories and brand new stories. It’s all content, as some people say, and there is a lot of it. So much, in fact, it can be hard to keep track of where it all came from or the fact that some of the characters we’ve come to know aren’t just characters but were, at some point, real people. 

10. Nicolas Flamel From Harry Potter Was a Real Alchemist

In the Harry Potter books and films, Harry and crew run across the name of a French wizard and alchemist called Nicolas Flamel. A onetime friend of Albus Dumbledore, he’s the man behind the Philosopher’s Stone (or the Sorcerer’s Stone if all you saw was the American version of the film). He also has an appearance in the Fantastic Beasts movies, which take place in the same wizarding world.

But Flamel is not one of the creations of Potter author J. K. Rowling. He was a real person, and he did want to make the Philosopher’s Stone, as did many alchemists throughout history.

The “real” Philosopher’s Stone, or the thing people were hoping to find or create, was supposed to be able to not just transform things into gold, it was also believed to grant immortality. Flamel said he bought a book from a traveler in an unknown language and, after years of trying, he managed to translate it and succeeded in turning a half pound of mercury into silver and then gold. 

As the story goes, he donated the money and continued pursuing learning for his remaining years, eventually giving up on transmutation because he felt such an ability was too dangerous for people. It’s said he hid the book so no one could find it and learn the secrets. Many people suspect his money was just from his savvy real estate investments, however. 

Known science suggests Flamel did not succeed in transmuting common metals to gold and the fact he did die certainly makes the idea of immortality seem like it was a bust as well. Unless he faked it. 

9. Bloody Mary From the Urban Legend was Mary Tudor

Long before saying Candyman’s name would attract the fury of a bee-addled Tony Todd, kids at sleepovers were saying Bloody Mary in front of a mirror in a dark bathroom hoping to catch a glimpse of a terrifying spirit. Why? Kids are weird. But the story of Bloody Mary has more to it than a party game that ultimately goes nowhere. The Bloody Mary we’re referring to was a real person: Mary Tudor.

There’s been a lot lost in translation between the real Mary and her reign as Mary I of England back in the mid-1500s and the idea that a bloody spirit will lunge from a mirror at a birthday party, but the connection makes more sense when you look at how history long chose to remember Mary.

Mary Tudor was notable for being the first Queen of England to rule without a King at her side and that makes her something of a feminist icon in a historical sense. But at the same time her legacy was of extreme religious persecution against Protestants which included a lot of executions. Hundreds of them, in fact. 

Bloody Mary had Protestants burned at the stake. The execution of some 300 Protestants is how she got the nickname Bloody Mary, something that was arguably made worse buy the fact a Protestant took over after Mary’s death, allowing history to make her look even worse than she truly was. Not that it takes much effort to make mass burnings look bad.  

8. Little Debbie Still Works for the Snack Cake Company Named After Her

Love them or hate them, Little Debbie snack cakes are a ubiquitous feature in grocery stores around America and beyond, and have been staples of kid’s lunches for decades. Most of us recognize the iconic image of what we had to assume was Little Debbie herself, a young girl in a checkered shirt, smiling from the corner of the box. 

Turns out Little Debbie isn’t just a corporate homunculus, she was and is a real person. Debbie McKee is the granddaughter of O.D. McKee who founded the company back in the 1930s after selling snack cakes out of their car during the Depression.

In the 1960s, the company rebranded as they got larger and started selling their baked goods in quantity. They chose their 4-year-old granddaughter to be the face and name of the company. Today, Debbie McKee-Fowler still works for the company as the Chairman of the Board.

7. Captain Morgan Was a Real Privateer

Captain Morgan is one of the bestselling brands of rum in the world and their buccaneer spokesman is widely recognized from the product labels and commercials featuring his likeness. But unlike some “real” human spokespeople that turn out to just be made up for marketing purposes, Henry Morgan was a real life pirate, or more specifically a privateer meaning that any raiding and pillaging he did was backed by the authority of the British Crown and therefore arguably legal. 

Morgan spent much of his life plundering Spanish cities and amassing huge wealth and land in Jamaica. He owned sugar plantations, kept slaves, and built a reputation as basically a pirate king. King Charles even knighted him and made him Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica at one point.

His reputation as a villain was very much exaggerated in books and stories from former crew members to the point that he even had to file lawsuits over it in his life. But his purported love of rum and the massive plantations he owned were perfect fodder for using him in the modern age as a spokesman for the brand.

6. Monterey Jack Cheese Was Marketed by David Jack of Monterey

Monterey Jack is one of the few cheeses that has a human name and it turns out there’s a reason for it – Monterey Jack was a person. His real name was David Jack and, despite the cheese being a fan favorite among cheese lovers, David Jack himself was apparently nothing short of a villain. 

Jack came to California in 1848 shortly after it became part of the United States. He quickly set about taking control of as much land as he could through some underhanded means when the legitimate landowners couldn’t pay legal bills. He and a lawyer got 30,000 acres of land in Monterey for about $1,000.

Jack immediately raised taxes on lands and foreclosed on those who didn’t pay. He took control of ranches, vineyards and also cheese production. What was once the cheese made by Mexican residents and known as queso blanco país was rebranded as Jack’s Cheese.As it spread, it became Monterey Jack’s cheese and finally what we know it as today. 

Jack didn’t invent the cheese by any means, but he certainly took credit for it. 

5. Jethro Tull Is Named After a Real Historical Figure

Jethro Tull was one of the biggest bands of the ’70s and has a legacy of being a creative, bizarre mix of hard rock and folk music that few other bands have ever even tried to pull off. The lead singer played the concert flute on a lot of tracks, that’s just not something you see in rock bands that often.

What many fans never knew at the time, and may still be unaware of, is that Jethro Tull is a real person’s name though he had nothing to do with the band at all. The real Jethro Tull was an agriculturalist born in England in the late 1600s. He was also an inventor and created things like a horse-drawn seed drill to make neat and even sowing of seeds easier and more efficient.

Though his ideas were slow to take off, he stuck by his methods and is generally considered to have been at the forefront of the agricultural revolution. As for the band, word is they got the name because, after going through many names, a booking agent’s assistant with a penchant for history picked it at random.

4. Uncle Sam Was Allegedly Based on Sam Wilson

Most Americans would recognize the face of Uncle Sam, a sort of unofficial spokesman for the country and even a nickname for the USA. Sam is rumored to be based on businessman Sam Wilson who supplied beef to the US Army during the War of 1812. 

As the story goes, soldier’s referred to it as Uncle Sam’s beef. And, since it came from the government, the name became inextricably linked with the government itself. The famous image, of course, came later as a means to encourage recruitment into the army 

3. The Term Smart Aleck Comes From a Real Man

These days if someone calls you a smart aleck it’s a bit of a g-rated insult suggesting that you’re being a bit of a know-it-all or you have a smart mouth. It’s more of an old-school dig and it’s likely only coming from a parent or grandparent. But the insult didn’t come from nowhere. There was a real Alec who inspired the term.

Alec Hoag was a pimp and a con man from the 1840s in New York. He and his wife used to run scams to rip off men on the streets. He also paid off cops to make sure he never got punished. Later, he and his wife performed more elaborate scams where she would lure men to a room, he would secretly rob their discarded clothing, then pretend to be shocked to catch her with a man so that the victim would flee without noticing their stuff had been looted.

Because Alec assumed the men wouldn’t report being robbed by a prostitute to the police, he stopped paying bribes. The cops didn’t take kindly to losing income, so they absolutely arrested him. A cop referred to him as Smart Alec as in too smart for his own good and it stuck as a prison nickname. The nickname also spread among cops, referring to any criminal who thought they were too smart as Smart Alecks. It spread from there until it became part of the vernacular.

2. Mary from Mary Had a Little Lamb Was Real

Nearly everyone knows the Mary Has a Little Lamb nursery rhyme, which was first published way back in 1830. It’s not a super detailed story and is mostly about a little lamb with fleece as white as snow following a girl named Mary everywhere she goes. But, according to the author, it was inspired by a real girl named Mary and her real lamb.

Mary was Mary Elizabeth Sawyer. Born in 1806, she convinced her father to let her take care of a sick lamb in 1815 when she was just nine. Against all odds, Mary nursed the little lamb back to health and it made a full recovery. Thus, a friendship was born.

From the sounds of what Mary wrote many years later in the 1880s, the lamb likely imprinted on her as she took to feeding it and caring for it in every way. As a result, it followed her everywhere she went and, indeed; it followed her to school one day. The teacher who kicked the lamb out wrote the popular version of the nursery rhyme years later.

1. Granny Smith Apples Came From Maria Ann “Granny” Smith

Granny Smith apples are the third most popular apples in America and they are consistent among the most popular in the world. Bright green and tart, they’re popular for eating by themselves, for use in candy apples, and for pies. The name isn’t just a cute moniker meant to bring to mind nostalgic memories of grandma baking a pie, either. There really was a Granny Smith, and she’s responsible for the apple’s popularity.

The apple dates back to 1868 in Australia where Maria Ann Smith, known locally as Granny Smith, had an orchard with her husband.  She had been testing out various kinds of crab-apples to find the best ones for cooking and tossing cores out of her window. These sprouted new seedlings, and she began propagating the best of the ones she discovered until she settled on an apple she felt was suitable for cooking and eating.

After Smith passed away, other farmers kept her strain going, calling it Smith’s Seedling, then Granny Smith’s Seedling and finally just Granny Smith apples.