Nature can be so serious. Most of the time, an intense survival game plays out. Yet, it is the more indirect side of the natural world—the quirks—that keep scientists on their toes. From the biggest organisms on the planet that nobody ever sees to the Sun setting off explosives, nature seems to have a strange sense of humor.

There are plenty of other cases. But as intriguing as they may be, this weirdness can get destructive. Sometimes, it not only tears apart human constructions but also the scientific community.

10 Haiting Hall

In 2017, an expedition from Hong Kong found a gigantic sinkhole. Located in the forest of Guangxi, it was named the Hong Kong Haiting Hall. A second expedition in 2018 scanned the inner dimensions and revealed a world-class wonder.

Haiting Hall is far from being a hole in the ground. After researchers lowered themselves into the pit, they found an epic cave complex hidden beneath the ground. The sheer size made the site very rare. In volume, it measured 6.7 million cubic meters (236 million ft³).

While 3-D mapping the interior, the team found halls, collapsed structures, craters, stone pillars, and water-polished rocks called cave pearls. The equipment also revealed that the sinkhole itself was 100 meters (328 ft) wide, around 118 meters (387 ft) deep, and almost 200 meters (656 ft) long.^[1]

The 3-D scanning was not just for measuring the standard stuff. It could also help with the reconstruction of the signs suggesting that the sinkhole had suffered a collapse. This could throw light on its formation. Similar sinkholes are usually the result of collapse brought on by the erosion of underground rivers.

9 Antarctica’s Hot Spot

Antarctica has its fair share of mysteries. One of them is rather ironic—the icy continent has a hot spot.

In 2018, a radar survey found the anomaly in East Antarctica. This region is the last place where any kind of heat should appear. East Antarctica is a craton, or a massive piece of Earth’s crust. Magma is shallow in some regions of Antarctica, but not with this craton. The solid interior, as well as its thickness, should prevent warmth within the planet from seeping back to the surface.

Yet the ice sheet closest to the crust is melting, another sign of something hot down there. Analysis showed that global warming cannot be blamed in this case. The bizarre spot is insulated away from the atmosphere and is also quite old.

The truth remains elusive, but hydrothermal energy could be responsible. If there is a fault in the crust filled with water shuttling up and down between the hot lower depths to the ice sheet, it could cause melting.^[2]

8 Woodleigh’s True Size

Woodleigh Crater is an ancient impact site near Shark Bay in Australia. The crater’s size remains a hotly debated issue. Since the crater is buried, an accurate assessment is difficult, although past research placed the diameter at around 60–120 kilometers (37–75 mi).

In 2018, two researchers had no desire to join the controversy. When they examined a core sample from Woodleigh, it was to see how the common mineral zircon behaved during the high pressures of an impact. They were amazed to find reidite instead.

To be fair, reidite is zircon. However, it is an exceptionally rare transformation of zircon. Created during the high-pressure moment when space rocks slam into Earth’s surface, reidite has only been found six times. The discovery could swing the Woodleigh debate.^[3]

To amass the kind of pressure needed to create reidite, only certain size craters can produce this priceless mineral. They must be over 100 kilometers (62 mi) in diameter, which would make Woodleigh the biggest meteorite hit in Australia. Some suggest the crater could dwarf the one in Mexico (thought to be the rock that killed the dinosaurs), which measured 180 kilometers (112 mi) across.

7 The Tree Fight

There is a battle going on in the scientific community. An undeniable amount of evidence suggests that trees are not just wood soaking up sunshine. Studies have identified behaviors that include pain reaction, chemical warning signals to other trees, and the nourishment of saplings and other adults through a subterranean fungal network. They also recognize “family,” or genetically related trees.

This is a far cry from how scientists used to view a forest. The fact that trees are organized, almost like an insect colony, is not really the issue. Both sides agree that these plants show remarkable abilities. However, one question turns things ugly. Are trees doing it on purpose?

Those who support sentient trees believe that these entities operate with intelligence, although it is misunderstood by humans. This is appalling to critics, who feel that chemical reactions to stimuli such as damage, predators, and nutritional needs dictate how trees respond.^[4]

Whether trees have free will or automatically react to their environment, they still behave in ways that scientists are just beginning to understand.

6 Earth Consumes Its Oceans

Earth has several tectonic plates. Often, when one is forced to slide underneath the other, this causes earthquakes. The process also pulls a huge amount of seawater down into the deeper layers of the planet.

Recently, scientists listened to seismic sounds at the Marianas trench where the Pacific plate is dipping under the Philippine plate. They wanted to use the rumblings to calculate just how much water got swallowed this way. Sensors tracked the velocity of earthquake echoes and especially listened for those slowing down as they passed through waterlogged material.

The result was shocking. Every million years, diving plates drag three billion teragrams of water into the Earth’s interior. A teragram equals a billion kilograms. This is three times more than previously thought.

The surprise did not end there. Earth’s deep water cycle should expel an equal amount, but not enough is being spouted by volcanoes or any other means. This inequality plus the fact that the oceans are not losing water volume means that science is missing something about how the planet shuttles water through its deepest plumbing.^[5]

5 Creeping Mud Blob

The Niland Geyser was born in 1953. The mud pool appeared in California’s Imperial County and bubbled placidly for decades. This changed 11 years ago when Niland’s mud began to creep over dry soil.

At first, the pace was so slow that nobody cared. However, in 2018, the flow picked up and became unstoppable. This was a huge problem since the mud’s direction threatened a state highway, train tracks, fiber optic telecommunications lines, and a petroleum pipeline.^[6]

All attempts to stop the mud failed, including an ambitious steel wall that was 22.9 meters (75 ft) deep and 36.6 meters (120 ft) long. The blob merely slipped underneath the barrier and sludged forth. A new railway line was built to circumnavigate the remorseless mud, but the flow could eventually close down state route 111 and force engineers to build a bridge instead.

The geyser, which had been declared an emergency, not only poses a threat to things in its path but also leaves behind a damaged trail. Similar to a bog, a large amount of moisture softens everything up to 12 meters (40 ft) down, ruining the land for future construction.

4 Frankenstein Worms

In 2018, Russian scientists extracted 300 soil samples from the Arctic. The frozen cores were recovered at different locations and represented various geological eras. Back in the laboratory, several 42,000-year-old samples contained worms.

Called nematodes, they had been frozen solid inside the permafrost for all that time. The tiny creatures were moved to a petri dish and left to thaw at 20 degrees Celsius (68 °F). It took the worms a few weeks, but they came back to life.

The dish was filled with a nutrient medium. Appearing unaware that they had stopped living for thousands of years, the nematodes started feeding. This amazing feat set the record for successful cryogenic suspension in animals.^[7]

Naturally, this piqued the interest of researchers trying to freeze humans for posterity. The fact that Pleistocene-era nematodes can survive having their entire bodies frozen, especially without side effects, is remarkable. Something protects them from the ravages of ice and oxidation. This mysterious mechanism can prove invaluable to several medical fields, including astrobiology and cryomedicine.

3 Brazil’s Termite Mounds

A few decades ago, a strange thing emerged from Brazil’s forest. As people cleared land for farming in the northeast, termite hills began to appear. Their sheer size was noteworthy. But in 2018, a study revealed the true magnificence of what the creatures had accomplished.

Thus far, about 200 million have been found and they are enormous. Visible from space, each contains around 50 cubic meters (1,800 ft³) of soil. Most measure 2.5 meters (8 ft) high with a diameter of 9 meters (30 ft).

Together, the hills cover an area as big as Great Britain and have an excavated volume of 10 cubic kilometers (2.4 mi³). This equals about 4,000 Great Pyramids of Giza. Speaking of which, the hills roughly dated back to the time when the Egyptians built the pyramids.

For 4,000 thousand years, termites have constructed the mounds as tunnels—not nests—to reach food on the forest floor. Incredibly, the termites have never gone. They still occupy what researchers are calling the “greatest known example of ecosystem engineering by a single insect species.”^[8]

2 Earth’s Biggest Organisms

The blue whale may be the biggest animal in history, but it is dwarfed by a mushroom. At first glance, the sweetly named honey mushroom resembles a field of small shrooms. However, since it was found 25 years ago in Michigan, scientists suspected that the real “creature” lurked underground. Those caps belong to a single 1,500-year-old fungus spread across 91 acres.^[9]

In 2018, new samples were taken and genetic tests confirmed the whole thing was indeed a single organism. The DNA also revealed a twist. The rate at which the mushroom evolved was slower than previously thought. This made everything bigger.

Calculations determined the fungus was 2,500 years old, covered four times its original territory, and weighed around 440 tons (the same as three blue whales). The Michigan mushroom was the first of its species to reveal how large they could grow, but another honey mushroom in Oregon now holds the record. That 8,000-year-old specimen hugs an area of 7.8 square kilometers (3 mi²).

1 Solar Storm Detonated Bombs

In 1972, a US military plane flew over a minefield off the coast of Hon La in Vietnam. The crew noticed up to 25 bombs detonate in the water, all within 30 seconds. Another 25 to 30 mud splats suggested earlier explosions. The incident was reported, classified, and filed away.

In 2018, the document became public and revealed an extraordinary incident—a solar storm had triggered the mines. As much as people in the 1970s understood that solar activity manipulated Earth’s magnetic field, it could not be proven that the Sun messed with the mines. (The bombs were designed to destruct during magnetic shifts.)

A solid clue was the intense solar activity recorded around the time the detonations took place. This was the main reason the navy suspected a space storm.^[10]

Modern scientists agree. In particular, one coronal mass ejection was identified as the culprit. It behaved like a whip and struck at Earth with unusual speed. Researchers believe earlier flares cleared the planet’s magnetosphere, which added power to the coronal slash.

Ships are a major component of fiction, be it in myth, epic poetry, legends, or simply entertainment. Handed down in oral traditions and songs, later transcribed on stone and parchment, ships of the ancients include the fishing vessels of the Twelve Apostles, the Ark described in Genesis, the twelve ships of Odysseus lost during his journey home, Charon’s boat used to transport lost souls to the Gates of Hades, and others. King Arthur is usually associated with his Round Table, but according to the legends he also had a ship at his disposal, of numerous names, Prydwen and Britain among them.

In more recent times, writers have created fictional ships sometimes based loosely on historical vessels as settings for their stories. They have served as refuges and as sites of conflict. Others have been born out of the superstitions of sailors, nautical versions of tales told around the campfire to entertain listeners. Here are ten fictional ships, most as famous as any real vessel known to have sailed the seas.

10. Argo

Argo is the mythical ship which carried Jason and his crew of adventurers, known as the Argonauts, on their quest to find the Golden Fleece in ancient Greek mythology. Most versions of the tale, of which there are several variations, claim Argo was built by Argus, the source of its name. Its construction was sanctioned by Hera, Queen of the Olympians. Amongst its mythical powers was the ability of its oaken timbers to speak to the crew in a human voice, foretelling their future in the form of oracles. The communicative prow of the vessel took the appearance of actress Honor Blackman in the 1963 film Jason and the Argonauts, rendering it a handsome vessel indeed.

According to the myths surrounding the vessel, Argo eventually killed the heroic Jason, by dropping a heavy spar on him as he slept beneath the mast. In most versions of the myth, the ship which helped find the Golden Fleece is visible today. It was mutated into the stars by the gods, becoming the constellation Argo Navis, visible below the southern tropics as it sails the Milky Way. Only a few of the more than 160 stars which comprise Argo Navis are visible in the Mediterranean, where Argo gained its fame. Astronomers no longer count it as a separate constellation, despite the enduring fame of the ship for which it was named. Eventually broken up into multiple constellations, it is no longer considered a constellation at all.

9. SS Poseidon

Disaster movies were a popular form of cinematic entertainment during the 1970s and have remained so ever since, at least among producers. Their success at the box office has been unsteady. SS Poseidon was a fictional ship created for an early disaster extravaganza, the 1972 film, The Poseidon Adventure. The ship was struck and capsized by a tsunami on New Year’s Eve in that film, which follows a small group of intrepid survivors as they struggle through the vessel in their attempt to escape. Since the ship is inverted on the surface of the water, the survivors must go upwards as they travel downwards into the hull, deep into the hold, seeking the thinnest part of the hull and rescue at its bottom.

There is no known real-life inspiration for SS Poseidon (RMS Queen Mary provided a stand-in for the film). The writer of the novel (Paul Gallico) upon which the film was based was aboard Queen Mary when the liner was hit with a wave which caused a severe roll. Though the ship was never in danger of capsizing, it may have caught his attention sufficiently to inspire the story. Poseidon appeared in additional films, as a continuation of the story and a target for salvagers (Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, 1979); as a target for terrorists (The Poseidon Adventure, 2005 TV film); and once more as the victim of a large wave (Poseidon, 2006). All the films offer the same basic story, with a small party of survivors, drawn from an ensemble cast, struggling to reach a point where rescuers may offer safety.

8. HMS Surprise

Cecil Scott (CS) Forester created the genre of the British naval officer in a nearly personal battle against Napoleon with his fictional Horatio Hornblower in 1937. Eventually, Hornblower became a character of such renown he featured in novels and short stories, film, radio, and television. He, like Sherlock Holmes, became so well-known that some came to believe he was a real person, and the noted historian C. Northcote Parkinson even published a biography of the character, which included a “family tree” of his descendants to the current (1970) day. Hornblower and his adventures became the prototype of other heroes of the Napoleonic era, including Richard Bolitho, Lord Ramage, Richard Sharpe, and Jack Aubrey.

It was Jack Aubrey who gained fame in HMS Surprise, a fictional frigate and later a hydrography research vessel. Aubrey served in the ship as a young midshipman, a captain, and flew his flag in it as an admiral. The small frigate was entirely fictional, though some of its exploits were loosely based on the adventures of real ships of the period. USS Essex had a memorable voyage to the Pacific during the War of 1812, during which it conducted its own refit on little known islands. Aubrey’s version of Surprise had similar adventures in the Galapagos Archipelago, though the circumstances of its voyage were considerably different.

Patrick O’Brian, who authored the Jack Aubrey series, based his fictional HMS Surprise on a real British frigate of the same era, though its adventures under Aubrey were entirely created in the author’s mind. Some placed the fictional ship in the center of historical events, thus altering the past for the entertainment of his fans, The fate of both the real HMS Surprise and that of Jack Aubrey’s favorite command are unknown, though the replica used to film the Aubrey adventure Master and Commander is a tourist attraction today.

7. The Flying Dutchman

The ship known to posterity as the Flying Dutchman is both fictional and legendary. It represents both an unknown Dutch captain and the ship he sailed, at least in one version of the legend. It has been traced to the heyday of the Dutch East India Company of the late 17th century, when the region now known as Netherlands was a major maritime power. Its legend claims that it sails eternally, sometimes attempting to signal other ships or facilities ashore, often with messages addressed to the dead. It is thus known to mariners as a symbol of impending death. Sailors often repeated tales of the ship appearing during dangerously foul weather, usually in regions known for shipwrecks and stormy seas.

It has been claimed in legends, poems, songs, and short stories the Dutchman is crewed by the doomed souls of miscreants consigned to eternal damnation. It sails in search of those destined to join its crew. The origin of the myth is unknown. No less a personage as George, Prince of Wales, later King George V, reported sighting the vessel at sea in 1881. His sighting was reported in the log of HMS Bacchante written either by himself or his brother, Prince Albert Victor (the log was later transcribed by a functionary, and is in neither prince’s hand).  According to the log entry the seaman who had first spotted the Flying Dutchman and called it to the attention of the future King fell from the mast to his death after reporting his observation. The weather was clear, though in repetitions of the story the Dutchman is usually depicted as emerging from storms and fog.

One of the oldest and most well-known myths of the sea, the Flying Dutchman has been the subject of opera, film, plays, novels, and even appears in Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean, commanded by Davy Jones himself. The ghostly ship and its equally ghostly crew is fictional, except among those who believe the earth and its seas are prowled by evil spirits, eternally doing their master’s bidding while shrouded by storms and darkness.

6. USS Caine

Prolific American author Herman Wouk enjoyed his greatest literary success with the novels The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, both of which were made into major miniseries in the 1980s. The novels tell the global story of the Second World War, largely through the eyes of the fictional Henry family and their friends and relatives. By the time of their appearance, Wouk was an internationally renowned author. His first major success came with his publication of the novel The Caine Mutiny, followed by the play The Caine Mutiny Court Martial. The two works described life aboard a fictional American destroyer-minesweeper in the Pacific War, and a mutiny among its officers. Wouk had served as a junior officer on similar ships during the war, and knew life aboard quite well.

The fictional USS Caine represented one of 42 World War I era destroyers converted by the US Navy to serve as high-speed minesweepers during the Second World War. Most of the ships served primarily as convoy escorts, training vessels, and cargo ships. Not until late in the war did they actually operate as minesweepers, with a few exceptions. Such was the fate of the fictional Caine, which Wouk crewed with an incompetent Captain, Philip Francis Queeg, and a wardroom of officers which lacked experience and a grounding in naval tradition. Eventually they relieved their captain in a lapse of naval discipline which became the titular Caine mutiny.

USS Caine was entirely fictional, as the author notes in a foreword to the novel, as was the personage of Captain Queeg and the rest of the characters in the story. Interestingly, the author served in destroyer-minesweepers during the war, USS Zane and later as executive officer of USS Southard. One of his major characters in the novel occupies his spare time writing a novel about life in the Navy, as he did during his service. The author also noted there had never been a mutiny aboard an American ship of war, ignoring the three men hanged for planning a mutiny aboard USS Somers in 1842. How much reality Wouk exposed in the fictional USS Caine was known only to him, and those who served with him.

5. Whaling Ship Pequod

The whaling ship which carried Ahab, Starbuck, Ishmael, and Queequeg on their fateful pursuit of the Great White Whale was fictional, though so like the average whaler of the day it could have been any of them. The whale itself, Moby Dick, was likewise fictional, though based on the legend of an albino sperm whale known to whalermen as Mocha Dick. So named because he was frequently encountered near Mocha Island, Mocha Dick proved inordinately difficult to kill and developed the reputation of attacking the whaling boats which exhibited the impertinence of striking at him with harpoons. Herman Melville, a veteran of the whaler Acushnet, borrowed some of the attributes exhibited by Mocha Dick to create his fictional white whale Moby Dick.

Pequod was typical of the whaling ships of the day, self-contained factories for the transformation of freely swimming mammals into barrels of fine sperm oil, suitable for lighting the lamps of Bedford and other American towns. So, Melville incorporated two areas with which he was intimately familiar, using often florid language and Shakespearean drama, to create the novel Moby Dick. The destruction of Pequod was a fictionalized version of the loss of the whaler Essex, sunk following the attack of a sperm whale in 1820. Melville did not include the episodes of cannibalism which occurred among the survivors of that sea saga, perhaps the reason he allowed for only one survivor from Pequod.

Moby Dick did not appear until 1851, near the end of the heyday of whaling as the primary source of oil for lighting. Within a decade, kerosene derived from petroleum became the preferred source of illumination, followed by natural gas in the succeeding decades. Pequod remains a famous ship, its decks trod by the stumping Ahab, the pragmatic Starbuck, and the cannibal Queequeg, in the tale told by the equally fictional whaler known only as Ishmael.

4. Nautilus

Nautilus was the name of a submarine long before Jules Verne borrowed it for the fabulous undersea vessel he created for his adventure novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, published in 1870. Robert Fulton had used the name for his submarine, first operationally tested in 1801. Nor did Verne’s Nautilus predict the submarine; the French Navy demonstrated a test submarine named Plongeur (Plunger) nearly ten years earlier. Many of the technologies described in the novel were in fact of their time, rather than predictions of the future. Some were already functionally obsolete, having been replaced by newer technologies, including the deep diving suits used by some of the characters.

But Nautilus did introduce a technology unknown at the time of the novel’s publication. The submersible used electricity to operate. As such it became emblematic of the future. The United States Navy operated a submarine named Nautilus during World War II, named for the shellfish as well as Fulton’s earlier vessel. When the US Navy launched the world’s first atomic powered vessel, USS Nautilus, in the 1950s, its being an entirely new technology, as was Verne’s fictional submarine, was stressed in the press.

Nautilus has thus been both a fictional ship as well as historical vessels, making it somewhat unique among ocean-going ships. Today, Verne’s Nautilus can be visited in the pages of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, in the film recreations of the novel, and in graphic novels and comic books. The US Navy’s most recent version of a ship under the fabled name can be visited at the Submarine Force Museum in Groton, Connecticut.

3. The African Queen

As previously noted, CS Forester created the character Horatio Hornblower and the genre of the Napoleonic naval hero in the 1930s. He also created one of the more famous fictional vessels of all time, though it never went to sea. Instead, it plied the rivers and lakes of equatorial Africa, under the command of Charlie Allnutt, who also comprised its entire crew. A dilapidated vessel with a motor of questionable reliability, it delivered supplies and mail to outposts along a river in German East Africa just before World War I. Allnutt called his vessel the African Queen, a grandiose appellation given its dubious reliability and seaworthiness.

Circumstances left Allnutt saddled with a passenger, an English spinster, who criticized his boat and person, disposed of his liquor (to his outrage), and convinced him to use his boat in a nearly suicidal attack on a German vessel operating on a lake downriver. As they cruised downriver, enduring brutal heat and humidity, lousy food, getting lost, both rapids and shallows, leeches, and worst of all, each other’s company, they fell in love. By the end of the story they are married, the African Queen victorious, though sunk through its own actions.

For the film version of the story Humphrey Bogart (Allnut) won the Academy Award for Best Actor while Katherine Hepburn (the spinster, whose name was Rose Sayer), was nominated for Best Actress, though she did not win. The ship which portrayed the fictional African Queen in the film was restored and as of 2012 offered tourists and film buffs cruises in the Florida Keys.

2. Pirate Ship Black Pearl

The Golden Age of Piracy is loosely defined as the eight decades beginning in 1650. During that time pirates roamed the Spanish Main, the Indian Ocean, the coast of West Africa, and the waters off the English North American colonies. The names of some pirates remain legendary, Blackbeard (Edward Teach), Bartholomew Roberts, Captain William Kidd, Stede Bonnet, and many others. Some of their ships are legendary as well, Queen Anne’s Revenge (Teach, better known as Blackbeard), Whydah (Black Sam Bellamy), Adventure Galley (Captain Kidd), and Fancy (Henry Every, famed for having never been caught). But possibly the most famed pirate ship of all in the 21st century is an entirely fictional vessel, the Black Pearl.

Black Pearl was originally part of a Disney attraction, known as the pirate ship Wicked Wench in the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction at Disneyland in Anaheim. When Pirates of the Caribbean went to film, Wicked Wench went too, renamed Black Pearl, with a suitable back story to explain how it came into the hands of Captain Jack Sparrow. Black Pearl changed hands several times, did battle against Blackbeard and Queen Anne’s Revenge, and proved itself capable of outsailing the Flying Dutchman, supposedly the fastest ship on the oceans. At the end of its most recent appearance in film (Dead Men Tell No Tales, 2017) it remained under the command of Captain Jack Sparrow.

The fictional Black Pearl is relatively lightly armed, since it was intended to attack merchant ships rather than battle men of war. It also uses black sails, rendering it difficult to see at night. Both of those attributes were shared with several real pirate ships, whose masters preferred stealth to combat. Its more supernatural capabilities are shared with several legends of the pirates of the Golden Age, as they were handed down by sailors and storytellers. Most, such as burying treasure, wearing bandannas and walking the plank, are untrue. Although there are claims the legendary privateer/pirate/politician Henry Morgan once sailed a ship named Black Pearl, there is little in the way of historical evidence to support them. More likely it is one more fictional creation out of the minds of the entertainers of the Disney empire.

1. MV Disco Volante

Disco Volante, Italian for Flying Saucer, first appeared in the 1951 novel Thunderball by Ian Fleming, the ninth book of his series of novels and short story collections featuring British agent James Bond. The book was unusual in that it was based on a then unfilmed screen treatment, rather than being a complete novel written by Fleming. As such it was the only of the Bond novels published by Fleming in which authorship was shared, though it required extensive legal action before the credits were finalized. Disco Volante appears as a luxury yacht owned by Emilio Largo, second in command of SPECTRE. The yacht serves to recover stolen atomic bombs as well as providing the means of transporting them to their planned place of detonation. It later appeared in the films Thunderball (1965) and Never Say Never Again (1983), both starring Sean Connery as James Bond.

Besides being a luxury vessel of impressive appointments and power, Disco Volante held a secret weapon. At least the film version did. The yacht could, and did, split into two sections, allowing the forward section containing the bad guys to flee at far greater speeds than the after section containing the stolen bombs. In the novel, Disco Volante was attacked and destroyed by a US nuclear submarine, USS Manta. In the film Thunderball it wrecked on rocks after Bond dispatched Largo in the climactic scene. In Never Say Never Again the US Navy again supported Bond by destroying the villain’s yacht using missiles.

Three vessels were used to portray the Thunderball version of the yacht, one of which was later used as a houseboat in Florida. In Never Say Never Again the vessel was portrayed by the superyacht Nabila, owned at the time by Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi. A line in the film’s credits reads “Thanks A. K.”. It was purchased in the late 1980s by Donald Trump ($29 million), who renamed it Trump Princess and later sold it at a loss of $9 million to another Saudi, who renamed it Kingdom 5KR. As of 2022 it is still owned by Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, and is 96th on the list of the largest yachts in the world.

Stories have to be bound by logic. Life does not. Authors usually draw upon interesting personalities for inspiration. For these ten people, the writers did not do them justice. As fantastical as many of the characters in the literary canon are, they cannot compare to the absurdity of the following ten people behind notable creations.

Top 10 Mysterious People Who Should Have Movies Made About Them

10 Alfredo Balli Trevino

Thomas Harris stumbled upon his muse on accident.^[1] Harris’ magazine initially deployed him to interview Monterey Prison inmate Dykes Askew Simmons. Simmons told Harris that he would have died in a botched escape attempt if not for Dr. Alfredo Balli Trevino’s generous help. As Harris questioned Trevino, the surgeon eloquently spoke on psychoanalysis’ merits. Harris, convinced Trevino was an employee, was shocked to learn that Trevino was a fellow prisoner with a gory background.

One does not inspire the most infamous criminal in history without being somewhat evil. In 1959, Trevino severed his lover Jesus Castillo Rangel’s throat with a scalpel. Trevino’s ability to navigate both educated articulacy and gruesome instincts inspired the suave cannibal turned serial killer Hannibal Lecter. For a depraved maniac, the actual Hannibal was relatively swell.

If you ignore the murder, Trevino used his surgical prowess for good. Out of prison, Trevino mostly treated elderly and poor patients. He never charged for his services. His patients commended him, “as a good guy.”^[2] Trevino spent his last years tending to those who needed his help the most.

9 Daniel Ruettiger

Unlike other entries on the list, Daniel Ruettiger never had an alter ego. As the titular underdog in the 1993 biographical football movie Rudy, “Rudy” has become shorthand for anybody who strives towards their dreams no matter the obstacles. The real Rudy put up a few of those obstacles himself.

When one becomes an emblem of athletic perseverance, they can slap their name on any item remotely associated with sports. Rudy exploited this to become a con-artist. The previously pure symbol of endurance branded his image on the “Rudy Nutrition” line of sports drinks.^[3] His attempt as a salesman was less triumphant than his career at Notre Dame. Failing to capture any audience, the company artificially inflated the penny stock’s value by defrauding investors with misleading statements. Allegedly, they illicitly profited $11 million.^[4] The scheme was exposed in 2008. “Rudy Nutrition” went out of business shortly afterward.

8 Dennis Ketcham

Dennis Ketcham never lived the idealistic childhood of his cartoon counterpart.^[5] Inspired by his son’s antics, Hank created Dennis the Menace, the mischievous scamp and eternal tormentor of neighbor Mr. Wilson. Naming his most famous creation after his child drove a wedge in the family. His mother, Alice, turned to alcohol. His father receded into his work at the expense of the same child he was depicting.

In 1959, Hank and Alice divorced. Later that year, Alice accidentally overdosed at 41. Hank coped with the loss by marrying Jo Anne Stevens. The family moved to Geneva. As Dennis struggled in Swiss boarding schools, his father sent him back to the United States. Hank stayed in Europe.

In 1966, Dennis joined the Marine Corps. After fighting in Vietnam, Dennis suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. For the rest of his life, he meandered through menial jobs. The only time Dennis ever spoke to his father again was to ask for some of the money made off his name.

7 Ebenezer Lennox Scroggie

Charles Dickens’ most iconic character exists because he had dyslexia. In a fog, Dickens ambled about a cemetery. On Ebenezer Scroggie’s tombstone, read the inscription, “Meal Man,” referring to his career distributing milled corn. With his poor eyesight, Dickens thought it said “Mean Man.”^[6] Shocked that anybody could be so callously remembered, Dickens envisioned an old curmudgeon who died unloved. Barely altering his protagonist’s name, this led to the grouchy miser Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol.

Curiously, the real Ebenezer Scroggie was nothing like his yuletide namesake. Whereas Scrooge was a stingy prude, Scroggie was a freewheeling bachelor who scandalized his peers. Scroggie got into trouble with the Church of Scotland after impregnating a servant in a graveyard. A General Assembly of the church was forced to stop after Scroggie grabbed a countess’ butt. No wonder the Muppets did not reenact this version of the story. However, Scroggie’s biggest claim to fame was giving William Smellie the concept for a book storing all the world’s information. Smellie turned that idea into the first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.^[7]

6 John Maher

In J. M. Barrie’s 1904 play Peter Pan, the single-minded Captain Hook is plagued by Tick-Tock the Crocodile, an omnipresent reminder of his encroaching mortality. The character is a whimsical reminder that death can come at any moment. Reverend John Maher knew this misfortune too well.

No one in the small village of Brede would have second guessed the parson. The only notable thing about the man was that he had a hook instead of a left hand. A convincing backstory of a carriage accident was good enough to deter any nagging questions. He spent his days honoring the Lord. That is until a former partner drove him insane.

The reverend lived a hidden life.^[8] Before leading Sunday services, Maher was pirate captain in the West Indies with a cohort named Smith. The two had a falling out. Maher abandoned Smith on a Caribbean island. After being rescued, Smith vowed to hunt down the man who left him for dead. Ultimately, Smith confronted Maher by threatening to reveal the reverend’s secrets. Maher was driven mad with guilt. J.M. Barrie lightened this story of blackmail into the bumbling duo of Captain Hook and Smee.

10 Bizarre People Behind Everyday Words

5 Sam Sheppard

The Fugitive stresses that Dr. Richard Kimble was truly innocent. In both the 1960’s television series and the 1993 movie starring Harrison Ford, the physician desperately tried to clear his name after being wrongfully accused of murdering his wife. The real mysterious death of Marilyn Reese Sheppard, wife of neurosurgeon Sam Sheppard, is much more ambiguous. This section will not discuss whether Sheppard got away with slaying his spouse in 1954. Instead, it will focus on his life once acquitted.^[9]

If one wanted to convince the public they were good husband material, it would not be the best idea to immediately marry a relative of the Nazi High Command. One week after being released from prison, Sheppard married German born Adriane Tabbenjohanns. Notably, Tabbenjohanns’ half-sister was Joseph Goebbels’ wife. Even Nazis have standards. When two of Sheppard’s patients died in surgery, Adriane divorced him.

Sheppard eased his depression with alcohol and a quixotic enterprise as a professional wrestler. Playing into his reputation, Sheppard performed for over 40 matches under the name “The Killer.” There he met his last wife, the 19-year-old daughter of his wrestling coach. It was a brief marriage. At 46, Dr. Sam Sheppard died of liver failure.

4 William Hickman

In the late 1920’s, William Hickman’s crime spree scandalized America. Hickman’s sociopathic tendencies were evident since he tortured animals as a child. Gradually, he upgraded to robbing gas stations and drug stores across the country. Along the way, he likely killed a girl in Wisconsin and his partner’s grandfather in California. His nationwide crime wave culminated in the depraved kidnapping of 12-year-old Marion Parker.^[10]

Hickman ransomed prominent banker Perry Parker $1,500 for his daughter’s safe return. Despite their correspondence’s guarantees, Marion was already strangled with a towel. At the drop site, Hickman positioned the corpse to look like she was still alive. By the time the horrified father discovered Marion’s real condition, Hickman was gone.

This needlessly cruel image stuck with author Ayn Rand. Dubbing Hickman a “superman,” Rand admired that somebody could function with such little compassion.^[11] Ayn Rand most directly referenced William Hickman for Danny Renaham in the 1928 novella The Little Street. To a lesser degree, Hickman’s philosophy informed staunch individualistic figures such as The Fountainhead’s industrial titan Howard Roark or Atlas Shrugged’s strong-willed John Galt. In his own demented way, Hickman certainly did whatever he wanted.

3 Robert Leroy Ripley

Robert Leroy Ripley’s name is synonymous with the surreal. His life reflected his bizarre proclivities. Famed for his “Believe It or Not!” cartoon series, Ripley traversed the world collecting oddities. Financed by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, his travels to more than 200 countries netted him fascinating encounters with strange locals. He stored the relics from his adventures on his own private island. Shrunken heads, a menagerie teeming with exotic animals, and antiquities decorated his house. The centerpiece of his collection was a dried out whale penis and a particularly thorough assortment of erotica. He used those to entertain his self-described “harem” of women. He tended to have three to four live-in girlfriends at a time.^[12]

Ripley found great success with the ladies despite not being conventionally attractive. The most notable trait of the balding artist was his protruding teeth. His jagged dentures made it impossible to properly pronounce some letters. In the 1930’s, the Warner Brothers’ character Egghead shared this inability. Appearing in the cartoon, “Believe It or Else” Egghead donned Ripley’s trademark suit and spats combo and repeated the catchphrase “I don’t believe it.” Egghead, a more inept hunter than his inspiration, eventually morphed into Elmer Fudd.^[13]

2 Jean Ross

Fame alluded Jean Ross in life. She found it in fiction. Outside of a few movie cameos, her success as entertainer was limited to a small gig as a cabaret singer in the Weimar republic. One of the prominent political writers who saw her perform was Christopher Isherwood, who used her as the model for his 1937 novella Sally Bowles.

Transformed by multiple adaptations, Bowles one consistent trait is that she is a sexually adventurous singer of middling talent. Reworked on stage and screen, Sally Bowles is most closely associated with Liza Minnelli’s Oscar worthy portrayal in Bob Fosse’s 1972 film Cabaret. She inspired the similarly glamorous libertine Holly Golightly in Breakfast of Tiffany’s. These versions pigeonholed Ross as simpleminded.

Ross was no ditz. Fleeing Germany following the rise of Nazism, Ross became a leftist journalist for the British publication The Daily Worker.^[14] Novelist George Orwell accused Ross and her husband Claud Cockburn of being secret propagandist. While Cockburn notoriously fabricated stories to promote Stalin’s regime as member of Comintern, Ross tenure as a war correspondent was marked by tales of the human loss. Embedded with Republican defenders, Ross witnessed nine aerial bombardments of the Spanish Civil War firsthand. The literary versions turned Ross into a star, but undermined her even more impressive real history as a brash investigator.

1 John Chapman

As a fixture of American folklore, the specifics surrounding Johnny Appleseed depend on the speaker. One universal feature of the pot adorned arborist’s tall tale is his communion with nature. This seemingly bizarre feature is the story’s most accurate part.

John Chapman was not motivated by an urge to promote botany. He was more infused by a mix of drunken bluster and divine calling. The apples he distributed over the Midwestern United States were planted to claim land and ferment for a stable source of booze.^[15] In an alcoholic daze, he entertained local children by sticking pins in his feet and walking on hot coals. Inebriation helped him brazen into the wilderness unafraid of the natural lurkers like rattlesnakes or black bears. Nature was not always as kind. In his twenties, Chapman removed a chunk of his brain after a horse kicked him in the head

This lobotomized state might explain how he started talking to angels. Along with each bundle of apples, Chapman carried the message of the Church of Swedenborg. Like founder Emanuel Swedenborg, Chapman remained celibate, except for having what he called “spiritual intercourse” with angels.^[16] Disney cut the part when Johnny Appleseed has drunken sex with ghosts.

10 New Facts About Famous People And Places

About The Author: The greatest fictional character Nate Yungman ever wrote was his social media persona. If you want to read more of his thoughts, you can follow him on Twitter, @nateyungman. If you had a question or comment, you can send him an email at [email protected].

Legends of mythical monsters and creatures have sent chills down spines for hundreds of years. So intertwined have these stories become with everyday life that tragic incidents are sometimes blamed on these legendary creatures. For instance, the deaths of nine skiers on Dyatlov Pass were, for a long time, thought to be the handiwork of abominable snowmen living in the northern Urals. Likewise, when two young girls tried to stab their friend to death in a forest in Wisconsin, they blamed the mythical Slender Man, claiming they had been forced to commit the crime to prevent Slender Man from harming their families.

On this list are more devastating incidents that have, to some extent at least, been blamed on creatures of folklore.

Related: 10 Bizarre Legal Actions Regarding Mythical Creatures

10 Bigfoot Kidnapping

Ever since the infamous Gimlin footage made headlines in 1967, there has been a horde of Bigfoot sightings in the U.S. despite experts dismissing the entire concept as being either a hoax or simply ludicrous.

In 1987, things took a turn for the tragic when 16-year-old Theresa Ann Bier apparently decided to skip school and go Bigfoot hunting in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California on June 1. Accompanying her was 43-year-old Russell Welch, who returned from the outing alone. Theresa was reported missing, and when authorities inevitably questioned Russell, he claimed that he last saw the teenager on June 2, after they’d both encountered Bigfoot and she chased after it. According to Russell, Bigfoot had abducted Theresa. He also changed his story several times, adding more and more details to it.

Not believing the story for one second, police arrested Russell Welch on June 11th but had to release him when no sufficient evidence against him could be found. A thorough search that included sniffer dogs in the area where Theresa was last seen yielded no success other than discovering what was believed to be her purse and scraps of her clothing.

To date, no one has been prosecuted for her disappearance, and her fate remains a mystery.^[1]

9 Mermaid Drowning

In December 2013, 12-year-old Siyabonga Masango left his home to play soccer with his friends. A while later, the heat led to the boys deciding to go swimming in a tributary of the Sabie River in Mpumalanga, South Africa.

A man washing his car nearby saw Siyabonga being pulled into the water and rushed over to help. Unfortunately, they couldn’t see or find him inside the water. Police divers searched for two weeks but also couldn’t locate the boy, believing that he had drowned after being attacked by a crocodile.

Siyabonga’s family was not convinced, believing instead that a mermaid had taken their son but that he would be “released”’ in time to go to school. The family also performed rituals to ensure that this would be the case. Siyabonga was never found, however, and his ultimate fate remains unknown.^[2]

8 Ghostly Vengeance

In June 2018, two men in the Thai village of Tambon Dong Yai in Nakhon Ratchasima’s Phimai district died in their sleep. Concerned residents set off to the local medium to hold a rite and call up spirits for an explanation. According to the medium, the ghost of a widow told her that she wanted to kill four men in the village, and as she’d already taken the lives of two, two more would soon follow.

Upon hearing this, several villagers hung a red shirt in front of their homes, hoping that it would keep the ghost away. Some even added a note stating that there were no men in their house, only pets.

Apparently, no other men suffered the same fate as the first two after the red shirts were displayed outside houses.^[3]

7 Alien Abduction

The disappearance of Amelia Earhart spawned a slew of conspiracy theories even after the Navy officially concluded that Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan had most likely run out of fuel, after which they crashed into the Pacific Ocean and drowned.

These theories ranged from Earhart and Noonan landing on Nikumaroro and living as castaways until they died, being taken prisoner by the Japanese, or that they were eaten by coconut crabs after crashing somewhere near Howland Island.

Naturally, there would also be a far stranger theory in the mix, with some believing that Earhart was taken by aliens on the day she was to land on Howland Island and sent to a wormhole where she was left in suspended animation.

A version of this theory was included in the popular anthology horror series, American Horror Story, in which a character claims to be Amelia Earhart and makes contact with aliens.^[4]

6 Demonic Murder

Demons and evil forces are prominently featured in folklore, mythology, fiction, occultism, and religion. Going hand-in-hand with these stories are tales of demon possession and exorcism. In modern times, many crimes have been blamed on demons and evil creatures.

In 2016, Aljar Swartz admitted killing and beheading 15-year-old Lee Adams and burying her head in his backyard in Cape Town, South Africa. It was only after his trial, and after psychiatrists and psychologists found him mentally stable, that Swartz’s lawyer suddenly announced that his client was demon-possessed and requested for an exorcism to take place in Swartz’s prison cell where he was awaiting sentencing.

The lawyer also insisted on getting a retired Methodist minister to perform the exorcism after Swartz allegedly told him that a demon in the form of a black lizard appeared to him in his cell and tormented him. Swartz also said that the lizard would crawl into his chest and “control” him. The lawyer argued that his client was a “vessel” and “instrument in the hand of the devil” and could not be held accountable for Lee’s murder.

The court eventually found that Swartz murdered Lee Adams for the purpose of selling her head to a sangoma—a practitioner of herbal medicine, divination, and counseling in some traditional South African societies. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison.^[5]

5 By Order of the Vampire Queen

In 2002, 22-year-old Allan Menzies murdered his 21-year-old friend, Thomas McKendrick. Menzies then ate part of his head, drank his blood, and buried him in a shallow grave. During his murder trial, Menzies stated that Akasha, the “Vampire Queen” in the film The Queen of the Damned, had repeatedly instructed him to kill his friend. He also said that he’d watched the film more than 100 times and that Akasha told him if he murdered people, she would reward him by turning him into an immortal.

Menzies further said that he’d made up his mind to kill McKendrick after McKendrick insulted Akasha. He also believed that he was indeed a vampire after the murder and said he didn’t really “feel anything” after McKendrick died.

Menzies was handed a life sentence for the crime in 2003 but was found dead in his prison cell in 2004. It is believed that he committed suicide.^[6]

4 Monster Behind the Mystery

Originating from Norwegian folklore, the Kraken is one of the most feared mythologic beasts. Legend has it that the monster was so big that sailors would often mistake it for an island and try to land on it, only to be dragged to a watery grave. Respected zoologist Carl Von Linné listed the Kraken as a real creature in Systema Naturae. Many believe that such a monster truly existed after Ichthyosaur bones were found in a pattern similar to how octopuses place bones when they’re done with their meal.

Colliding with another mystery, the Kraken has been blamed for the mysterious disappearances of boats and planes in the Bermuda Triangle. Some believe that a super-intelligent Kraken lurks in the depths of the triangle and “feeds” on ships and aircraft.

The Kraken has even been blamed for the Mary Celeste disappearance, even though the legendary ship vanished in a completely different part of the sea.^[7]

3 Quota of Lives

The Higginson Highway in Chatsworth, Durban, South Africa, is notorious for fatal accidents. Here, rocks are often hurled at cars from overhead bridges, after which injured motorists are robbed of their belongings. At other times, drivers lose control of their vehicles and veer off the highway, rolling down the embankment. Sometimes head-on collisions lead to tragic deaths.

Many of these accidents have been attributed to the highway’s resident ghost, aptly named Highway Sheila. Being the restless spirit that she is, it is believed that Sheila has a “quota of lives” to fulfill each year, and she achieves this goal by appearing in the middle of the road, causing drivers to swerve, leading to often-fatal accidents.

Recently, a young Metro police officer and his family were traveling home late at night on the Higginson Highway when he almost hit a woman in white standing in the middle of the lane. They were all terrified by the incident but believed that God had saved them from harm.^[8]

2 Wendigo Psychosis

Filling several pages of Algonquian books on legendary creatures, tales of the Wendigo describe the creature as a humanoid cannibal with antlers who feasts on human flesh to survive harsh and cold climates. Legend has it that the first-ever Wendigo was a hunter who got lost in the wild during winter and was driven to cannibalism to survive. This saw him morph into a Wendigo, doomed to roam the forest in search of more victims.

In the 1800s, a Cree man named Swift Runner slowly became addicted to alcohol, got fired from his job as a guide for the North West Mounted Police, and became increasingly violent as time passed. In 1878, Swift Runner led his wife, six children, mother-in-law, and brother into the woods, killed them, and ate them.

Police found broken hollowed-out bones in the woods as well as a pot of human fat and arrested Swift Runner. He told police that he had been possessed by a Wendigo, which led to him committing the massacre.

No one believed him and Swift Runner was found guilty, sentenced to death, and executed in December 1879.^[9]

1 Lurking Leviathan

Described in Caribbean folklore as a 75-foot half-dragon, half-octopus, the lusca is a sea monster said to inhabit the waters surrounding Andros island in the Bahamas. Some versions of the tale say that the creature sports the head and torso of a shark and the lower body of an octopus.

One theory has it that the lusca, or lurking Leviathan as it’s sometimes called, is the ghost of a woman who drowned and was turned into a beast. Another says that a lusca is a mermaid or siren put on Earth by nymphs to lure sailors to their death.

The TV show, River Monsters, aired an episode dedicated to the lusca monster, which explores the possibility that the creature could be responsible for the disappearance of a number of swimmers exploring the blue holes surrounding Andros. The missing people include 38-year-old Liu Guandong, Wesley Bell, and 72-year-old John William Batchelor. Batchelor’s boat has been found, but he remains missing.^[10]

The inspiration for famous fictional detectives is a topic of great interest among fans of the genre and, to a large extent, the general public as well. So, where do writers come up with their ideas about the often peculiar personality traits and the methods of such engaging characters?

As it turns out, most are based on either actual people or members of their own ranks: fellow fictional detectives. As this list of 10 inspirations for famous fictional detectives shows, there is good reason for the enduring curiosity about the origins of these engaging sleuths.

Related: 10 Legendary Exploits Of The Pinkerton Detective Agency

10 The Right Reverend Monsignor John O’Connor and Father Brown

Father Brown, the humble Roman Catholic priest, solves crimes based on his understanding of human nature as illuminated by his Christian faith as much as he does by his analyses of clues. As such, he remains as popular today as he was when G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) first introduced him to the world in his 1910 short story “The Blue Cross.” The character has not only appeared in several of Chesterton’s own volumes but also in several movies and television series. Currently, he is the protagonist of the BBC One series Father Brown, starring Mark Williams, which is now in its ninth season.

The inspiration for this enduring character was himself a man of the cloth, the Right Reverend Monsignor John O’Connor (1870-1952). And he taught Chesterton a lesson the famous writer would never forget. After a spirited philosophical discussion with two Cambridge University students, during which Chesterton was present, O’Connor retired for the evening. The students then admitted that the clergyman was, indeed, a wise and brilliant man but, due to his vocation, most likely rather “insulated and naive.”

Chesterton was much amused by their opinion, having been earlier shocked at learning just how much O’Connor knew about “certain perverted practices.” This, of course, was the result of his having heard the confessions of those who had performed such acts. Chesterton had found a model for his own priest-detective, who would solve mysteries by practicing the arts of both the rational detective and the spiritual priest.^[1]

9 Dr. Joseph Bell and Sherlock Holmes

In an interview with The Strand magazine in which his short stories concerning his world-famous detective were published from 1887 to 1927, as well as in radio interviews and his 1923 autobiography Memories and Adventures, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) explains the origin of Sherlock Holmes. During his student days, Doyle served as a clerk at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary for the surgeon who became his mentor, Dr. Joseph Bell (1837-1911).

In this capacity, Doyle was able to observe how Bell interacted with his outpatients and learned that the physician was able to discover more about them by his own observations and inquiries than Doyle had obtained by questioning them directly before their appointments occurred. As a result of seeing Bell at work, Doyle wrote, “I used and amplified his methods when in later life I tried to build up a scientific detective who solved cases on his own merits and not through the folly of the criminal.”^[2]

8 Jacques Hornais and Hercule Poirot

Philosophers warn us not to confuse correlation with causation. Coincidences may be intriguing, but they don’t prove anything. Still, there could be a cause-effect connection between such incidents. The problem is that such a link cannot be demonstrated. Nevertheless, the striking coincidences between Agatha Christie’s possible acquaintance with refugee Jacques Hornais (1857-1944), a Belgian gendarme whose actual surname was Hamoir, and the detective Hercule Poirot she would later create are suggestive, indeed. Not only are they both Belgian, but they are also detectives—and there is a striking resemblance between Hornais and Poirot, whom Christie (1890-1976) describes as exhibiting a “stiff” bearing and wearing a mustache.

There is more reason to suppose that Christie may have modeled Poirot on Hornais. In her autobiography, the author herself muses, “We had quite a colony of Belgian refugees living in the parish of Tor. Why not make my detective a Belgian? I thought. There were all types of refugees. How about a refugee police officer? A retired police officer.” Despite the lack of definitive proof, the possibility that the refugee Belgian police officer inspired Christie’s Belgian detective is intriguing enough to warrant further investigation.^[3]

7 Eugène François Vidocq and C. Auguste Dupin

Despite the brevity of his life, Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was not only productive, but he was also inventive, creating both the modern psychological horror story and the amateur detective story that would become the model for the detective fiction that followed. His detective, C. Auguste Dupin, made his debut in Poe’s 1841 short story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and reappeared in two subsequent stories, “The Mystery of Marie Roget” and “The Purloined Letter.” As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle points out, “There is no doubt that in the Dupin tales, Poe created the basic template for the detective stories of the future.” However, Doyle takes issue with Dupin’s flat, lackluster character.

Poe’s own source was Eugène François Vidocq (1775-1857), who lived in France at a time during which neither France nor Britain had either police forces or detectives. It was not until the 1820s that the Sûreté, or “French crime bureau,” was formed and not for over two decades later, in 1842, that London’s Metropolitan Police (aka Scotland Yard) added detectives to its force. Lacking a law enforcement source for a model, Poe based Dupin on Vidocq, the former criminal mastermind who’d reinvented himself as a private detective after serving as the Sûreté’s chief. According to Doyle, Poe used “the folly of the criminal [to] build up a scientific detective who solved cases on his own merits.”

A New York Times article summarizes Vidocq’s contributions to criminology. Long before such matters were customary in police work, he was looking into fingerprinting, ballistics, blood tests and the use of science to fight criminals.^[4]

6 Jim Grant, Lawrence Dallaglio, and Jack Reacher

The protagonist of Lee Child’s thrillers, Jack Reacher, is derived from a mixture of sources, including Child himself. According to Bryan Curtis, Child (the pen name of Jim Grant) is, like Reacher, a former U.S. Army military police officer who drinks an excessive amount of coffee every day, chain smokes, wears jeans and a T-shirt, and tends to be taciturn. Reacher, it so happens, is also the same height as his creator, “six-foot-five.” However, Reacher’s size, like his appearance, is also based on that of former professional soccer player Lawrence Dallaglio, who stands in at six-feet-four. Perhaps with Dallaglio in mind, Child has described Reacher’s face as looking “like it had been chipped out of rock by a sculptor who had ability but not much time.”

In developing Reacher’s character, Child used multiple sources, including stories of the knight-errant, the mysterious stranger, the Japanese ronin myth, and Robin Hood, a type of “character he says, that, “forced out of Europe as Europe became more densely populated and more civilized,” migrated to the American frontier.^[5]

5 Dave Toschi, “Dirty” Harry Callahan, and Frank Bullitt

Clint Eastwood’s Inspector “Dirty” Harry Callahan, who appears in Dirty Harry (1971) and four other gilms, along with Steve McQueen’s Lieutenant Frank Bullitt, of Bullitt (1968), are both based on the same person, the San Francisco Police Department’s Inspector David Toschi (1931-2018).
https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/SF-cop-who-hunted-Zodiac-killer-dies-Dave-Toschi-12488886.php
According to Kevin Fagan, it was Toschi’s “penchant for bow ties, snappy trench coats and the quick-draw holster for his .38-caliber pistol [that] drew the attention of Steve McQueen (1930-1980), who patterned his character after” the dapper detective, and Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry character was also “partially inspired by him.”

Eastwood got the role after Frank Sinatra (1915-1998) and Paul Newman (1925-2008), the initial choices for the part, turned them down. Sinatra because an injury to a tendon in his hand made it painful to hold a gun, and Newman because he “objected to its politics.” Ironically, Toschi seemed to regard Eastwood as an unlikely choice for the part. Despite his stardom, Toschi said, Eastwood’s detective impressed him as “an almost shy person [dressed in] faded jeans, a T-shirt, [and] white tennis shoes.”^[6]

4 Porfiry Petrovich, Father Brown, and Columbo

Bing Crosby (1903-1977) would have played the disheveled, one-eyed, cigar-chomping police detective in the wrinkled trench coat had William Link (1933-2020) and Richard Levinson (1934-1987), the creators of Frank Columbo, had their way. However, the part went, instead, to Peter Falk (1927-2011). The actor’s portrayal of the seemingly scatterbrained, humble inspector created as enduring a character as exists in the history of Hollywood. To create their star detective, Link and Levinson based Columbo on both Porfiry Petrovich and Father Brown.

As childhood friends, Link and Levinson had long enjoyed detective stories and mysteries. They were fans of Crime and Punishment (1866) by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881), from which they borrowed aspects of Porfiry Petrovich, and of G. K. Chesterton, whose Father Brown provided both Columbo’s humble demeanor and his ability to seemingly disappear among others who thought the cop apparently irrelevant. As Shaun Curran points out in his online BBC Culture article, Columbo’s “distinctive posture, exaggerated hand gesticulations and a contrived forgetfulness—his habit of leaving a room, only to return having remembered ‘just one more thing’ became his trademark.”^[7]

3 Inspector Clouseau, Lt. Columbo, Sherlock Holmes, Porfiry Petrovich, and Adrian Monk

Adrian Monk, of the television series Monk, was based on more other fictional detectives than most of his peers. The first inspiration for the obsessive-compulsive detective was inept Inspector Clouseau of Pink Panther fame. However, the French detective was not Monk’s creators’ inspiration. Instead, it was that of an ABC executive “looking for an Inspector Clouseau-type show.” It was co-creator David Hoberman who thought up a brainy investigator who not only had a welter of personal problems but also suffered from an obsessive-compulsive disorder, as Hoberman did himself. Although the condition was never officially diagnosed, Hoberman related, Monk’s compulsion to “walk on cracks [and] to touch poles” was inspired by Hoberman’s own perceived need to do so.

Monk is also influenced by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and by Columbo, writes Alessandra Stanley. She contends that Monk is cast, in episodes featuring his brother Ambrose, as Sherlock to his “smarter” sibling Mycroft. Also, as “class [distinctions] drove suspects to underestimate Lieutenant Columbo, Peter Falk’s coarse accent and humble demeanor always lulled rich, sophisticated killers into a false sense of superiority.” Both Monk and Columbo, she said, in turn, are influenced by Dostoevsky’s courteous, plodding investigator, Porfiry Petrovich.^[8]

2 William Oliver Wallace and Jonathan Creek

David Renwick’s Jonathan Creek, who creates magic tricks for the magician who performs them, also acts, at times, as an amateur detective. Not surprisingly, given his area of expertise, Creek was based on professional magician William Oliver Wallace (1929-2009), who went by the stage name Ali Bongo. The flamboyant magician was a superb choice for the television series’ magic consultant.

As an online article in The Guardian points out, Wallace’s interest in magic began at age five. After a stint in the Royal Army Pay Corps, during which he co-wrote Naafi shows in which he appeared, he was convinced that he had the experience and skills to succeed in the entertainment business. So he founded the Medway Magic Society, appearing as Ali Bongo, which, at first, included dialogue but later became a pantomime act. Subsequently, he landed the position of chief consultant for Thames TV’s David Noxon’s Magic Box due to his “encyclopedic” knowledge of magic.^[9]

1 James Bond and Thomas Magnum

Agent 007, aka James Bond, is the quintessential British spy. Whether portrayed by Sean Connery, David Niven, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, or Daniel Craig, the debonair agent of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, created by Ian Fleming (1908-1964), is well-known around the world. It’s little wonder, then, that the creative team who created Thomas Sullivan Magnum IV initially wanted to model their character after Bond.

Instead, the team accepted Tom Selleck’s suggestion to make his character more an ordinary kind of guy, an average Joe, but one who is also charming—and mustachioed. In fact, as writer Dana Sivan points out, Selleck’s mustache, one of both his and Magnum’s most iconic features, was “entered [into] the International Mustache Hall of Fame.”^[10]

There’s a famous saying that truth is stranger than fiction, so it stands to reason that reality is simply more interesting than fiction. That is probably why writers so frequently base characters on people they have met, people who have quirkier and more interesting traits than anything the writer could conjure himself. Here is a list of some classic characters you may not have known were based on real people.

Some people are only familiar with globetrotting comic reporter Tintin through the Steven Spielberg film that came out in recent years, but the character has been around since 1929, the creation of Belgian comic writer Herge. Over 200 million volumes chronicling Tintin’s adventures have been sold, and he became one of the most beloved international comic strip characters in history.

But even those who are familiar with the comics might not know about the real life inspiration for Tintin Danish Boy Scout named Palle Huld, who at the age of 15 won a contest to re-enact Phineas Fogg’s circumnavigation of the globe in the novel Around the World in 80 Days. Of course, unlike Fogg, Huld needed only 44 days to complete the trip. This took place in 1928, less than a year before Tintin debuted. Some people believe Tintin was based on another young adventurer named Robert Sexe, but one look at Huld should give anyone pause and convince just about anyone that he was, indeed, the real-life Tintin.

Ebenezer Scrooge is the infamous miser from the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, who learns the error of his ways when he is visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve. It is one of the most told and retold tales in modern literature, ranging from CGI retellings to re-imaginings like Scrooged. But while you are no doubt familiar with the story, you may not have realized that Scrooge is based on a real-life person named John Elwes.

Elwes was an 18th century politician and notorious penny pincher, and despite having a vast fortune he lived like a homeless hermit, by all accounts. He would eat rotten food and live in abandoned houses rather than finding himself a home or buying food that wasn’t totally gross. The eccentric miser was born into money but refused to spend any of it, choosing instead to live in squalor in order to save his fortune.

Other than the titular character, Severus Snape is likely the most widely recognized character from the Harry Potter universe. A cold and morally ambiguous character, he is almost immediately an enemy of Harry and his friends, and was brought to life on the big screen by Alan Rickman. But certainly, a potentially evil wizard in this young adult novel about all things magic could not have possibly been inspired by anyone in the real world, right?

If you said “of course not” then we hate to break it to you, but Professor Snape was in fact based on a real person named John Nettleship. So what did this man ever do to inspire such a loathsome sounding character? Why, he was JK Rowling’s teacher, of course. Snape taught potions at Hogwarts, so it makes a bit of sense that Rowling would use her former chemistry teacher as the inspiration. Nettleship did not know he was the inspiration for the character until the films came out and his students, along with his wife, pieced things together. Rowling’s mother actually worked as an assistant in the chemistry department under Nettleship, so we can’t help but wonder what the real life professor, who dies in 2011, thought about the revelation that Snape was in love with Harry’s mother.

You might not have ever heard the name Dave Toschi, but you have no doubt watched some incarnation of the man in any of the numerous films in which he was an outright character, or the inspiration for a character. Toschi was an inspector for the San Francisco Police Department, and was the chief investigator on the infamous Zodiac Killer case. He has been portrayed as himself by Mark Ruffalo in the film Zodiac, and Steve McQueen took some inspiration from Toschi for the character of Bullitt, but even more impressive is the fact that Toschi is the man on which the entire Dirty Harry franchise is based.

If you are familiar with the original Dirty Harry film, it should not come as a surprise to learn that he was based on Toschi, though obviously some liberties were taken to turn him into more of a badass than he was in real life. The film echoes the investigation into the Zodiac killings, with “Dirty” Harry Callahan working on tracking down the killer. Of course, unfortunately, unlike Callahan, Toschi never got his man as the Zodiac killings remain unsolved to this day.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only novel that famed wit Oscar Wilde ever wrote, and it tells the story of a man of unsurpassed beauty who has his likeness painted as a portrait. To make a long story short, Dorian sells his soul in order to maintain his youth and beauty while the painting version himself ages instead. It’s a bit of a strange and supernatural tale, but the character of Dorian Gray, believe it or not, was based on a real man named John Gray.

John Gray was an acquaintance of Wilde, and that’s really just a nicer way of saying he was one of Wilde’s many trysts. The real Gray was a poet who traveled in the same social circles as Wilde, and was reputedly an “Adonis” of a man. While Wilde did not bother to change his last name for the fictionalized version, he did change John to Dorian, but it was for a very specific purpose. The Dorians were an ancient Greek tribe that famously practiced and engaged in sex between men. Apparently, when the story came out the real Gray was mortified, as it was abundantly clear that the titular character was based on himself, and the connection caused a rift between he and Wilde.

Norman Bates, the titular Psycho in the classic Alfred Hitchcock film, can be most aptly described as a sick puppy. While he is a transcendent horror movie villain, you may not realize he has something in common with such other horror villains Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs. You know, other than being a twisted murderer. As it turns out, all three characters are based on the same man: Ed Gein.

Gein was a brutal murderer in the 1950’s in Wisconsin, a 51 year old handyman who the police discovered had butchered women and, just like Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs, was attempting to make a “woman suit” out of their skin. Body parts had been chopped off and strewn about Gein’s little farmhouse. The man who went on to pen the novel Psycho lived less than an hour away from where this took place, and quickly turned to fictionalizing this deranged and brutal string of murders.

Indiana Jones, famed adventurer and archaeologist extraordinaire who enjoyed nothing more than ditching his work as a college professor to go gallivanting around the world in search of lost treasures, is one of the most beloved characters in cinematic history. For the most part, the character and his stories take their cues from the serial adventures of the early 20th century, but believe it or not, Indy was also inspired by several real life people. No one knows exactly which adventurers he is truly based on, and in likelihood is an amalgamation of several people, but none is more apparent than Hiram Bingham III.

Bingham was a professor in the history of Latin America at Yale University, where he worked from 1907-1915. Most famously, however, he was the man who re-discovered Machu Picchu. One of the connections between Bingham and Indiana Jones is actually a separate movie called Secret of the Incas, a 1954 film starring Charlton Heston as a character named Harry Steele, who explores the lost city of Machu Picchu. Steele, of course, was inspired largely by Bingham, and the makers of Raiders of the Lost Ark have openly admitted to basing Indiana Jones largely on Harry Steele.

Just like with Indiana Jones, it’s hard to believe that James Bond could have actually been based on a real person. And, as with Indiana Jones, it turns out that no one is quite sure exactly who 007 is inspired by, but there are several prime suspects from author Ian Fleming’s own days as member of British Intelligence. However, many believe the most direct inspiration for Britain’s top secret agent was a man named Forest Yeo-Thomas, renowned as one of the UK’s top spies during World War II.

Yeo-Thomas parachuted into occupied territory three times on secret missions and reported directly to Winston Churchill. He was actually captured and tortured by the Gestapo before being placed in a concentration camp, but escaped and made his way back to allied territory. As it turns out, it was not long after this that Fleming held a briefing about Yeo-Thomas and his exploits in escaping from the Nazis. Considering they did not actually work together during the war, yet Fleming was clearly fascinated by Yeo-Thomas, it lends credence to the theory that the agent known as “White Rabbit” was certainly one of the strongest inspirations for James Bond.

Over the years, Zorro has become something of a superhero in popular culture. The masked, swashbuckling, sword fighting vigilante was created in 1919, and has been the star of many books, television shows, and movies. It’s hard to believe that a character like that could have actually been based on a real person, but as it turns out, Zorro was indeed inspired by a man named Joaquin Murrieta, also known as the Mexican Robin Hood.

Born in 1829, Murrieta found success mining for gold in California before his family was attacked and murdered by American miners. He was unable to find justice through the legal system, so that’s when he became the vigilante that would inspire Zorro. He formed a gang to exact his revenge on the men who had attacked his family and raped his wife, and he and his gang continued to rob banks and commit murder until the Texas Rangers became involved and tracked down and killed Murrieta in 1853. Soon after his death, the legend of Joaquin Murrieta began to spread and he became a folk hero of sorts.

At first glance, Sherlock Holmes and a medical lecturer might not seem to have much in common. After all, Holmes is perhaps the greatest fictional detective of all-time, and certainly the most famous. However, when you really stop to think about it, it makes sense that Holmes would be based on a medical doctor renowned for his keen observational skills and superior intelligence. That man was Dr. Joseph Bell, and he was a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland in the 19th century.

Bell was an acquaintance of Holmes’ creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and in fact served as the doctor’s clerk at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Bell was famous for being able to observe a man and instantly deduce things he could not possibly have known, which should like a familiar trait to anyone even loosely aware of Sherlock Holmes. Reportedly, Bell even advised the police in several investigations in Scotland, including the Ardlamont Mystery, and testified as an expert witness in the ensuing murder trial.

When we think of cults, we typically think of hippies, drugs, a little bit of weird love, and, eventually (usually), horrific deaths. At  we’ve spent some time with various cults before. So we thought it was about time we looked at the top ten fictional cults created by the brilliant minds of writers like Ryan Murphy, George Lucas, and, yes, Stan Lee.

While many of these may pale in comparison to the likes of Jim Jones and the People’s Temple (LINK 2), many are infinitely worse, and we should probably feel relieved that they remain on paper and screen. Luckily, they have not made their way to the scheming minds of the narcissistic men and women who could bring them to fruition.

*Spoiler Alert*

Related: Top 10 Evil Cults You May Not Have Heard Of

10 Cult (American Horror Story)

Cult, as featured in American Horror Story, was influenced by the propaganda that had been part of the fear and anxiety-inducing reporting of many major news outlets when Donald Trump took office. The show’s writer created intense anxieties and phobias for Sarah Paulson’s character, possibly intended to reflect some of the same concerns that could be felt by those who supported Trump’s views and those of other marginalized groups.

Although the show directly mentions Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, it ultimately took a deeper look into how people in power retain their position by manipulating others’ fears by leveraging social media through fake news and propaganda. The terrifying season also touched upon important historical figures to deliver flashbacks and insights into some of history’s best-known cult leaders, including Charles Manson.^[1]

9 The Cause (The Master)

The Master was much more than just a Scientology movie, even though they tried their best to stop its production. Set in Post-War America, Joaquin Phoenix plays the role of a delinquent that refuses to be tamed within the new up-and-coming factions, not even by “The Master,” played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman. The factions make up The Cause, a group devoted to separating man from his animal instincts. Where this film actually takes a turn from the other popular fictional cult storylines is that it comes up with the notion that the real dependent in any brainwashing organization is the leader, not the follower.

As the narrative continues, we come to realize that “The Master” may be a liar, a philanderer, and a miserable alcoholic. Still, his fixation on wanting to understand the world through his own vocation of “making it up as I go along” shows that he is a depressed and lonely little mouse rotating within his little exercise wheel forever. He ultimately becomes the most human of all the cult leaders on this list.^[2]

8 The Sith (Star Wars)

Though many may not realize it, The Sith, also referred to as the Sith Order in the Star Wars franchise, is a fictional cult. The ancient religious order of Force-wielders was dedicated to the dark side of the Force. Propelled by their feelings, including hatred, rage, and self-interest, the Sith were manipulative and fixated on gaining control and power. The order attained the pinnacle of its control under Darth Sidious, the Dark Lord of the Sith, who accomplished interstellar domination after a thousand years of plotting.

Within one generation, however, the deaths of both Sidious and Darth Vader would signal the end of the order of the Sith Lords. While Darth Vader’s death marked the Sith’s demise, it brought balance to the Force. However, even though the Prophecy of the Chosen One prophesied the demise of the Sith, it never prophesied the annihilation of the dark side.^[3]

7 The One (Caprica)

The ephemeral spin-off of Battlestar Galactica did an excellent job of getting on the inside of the cult known as “The One,” a religious cult that chose to believe in a single deity above all others. Hence all those BSG references to “thank the gods.” Zoe Graystone is at the center of the plot, a teen murdered and revived through a software program created by her father. Her new self will finally be put inside a machine: aka Cylon, the first sentient toaster.

Another cool twist to the series was the virtual world populated by Zoe and her peers. They jacked into a chaotic nightclub that promoted murder and sex with no consequences whatsoever if they needed to let off steam. Although many found the series unoriginal, the principal of the school did have the habit of convincing her students to commit suicide for “the cause.”^[4]

6 Hydra (Marvel)

HYDRA is a totalitarian organization committed to ruling the world. It was established in remote times, previously as a cult oriented around the extremist veneration of Hive, a strong Inhuman who found himself exiled to the planet Maveth by other bygone Inhumans. As of his expulsion, the cult has been intent on bringing him back to Earth to begin a terrestrial power grab. Over hundreds of years, the cult has continued to evolve, having taken many forms, with its most recent incarnation brought to life shortly after the rise of Nazism in Germany under the command structure of Johann Schmidt of the Nazi Schutzstaffel.

HYDRA was secretly rebuilt within S.H.I.E.L.D. by Schmidt’s top scientist Arnim Zola. She was recruited to the organization during Operation Paperclip, following his failure at the hands of Captain America in 1945 and the eventual death of Johann Schmidt. The ultimate objective of HYDRA was to dissolve governments of the world to create an authoritarian, totalitarian, global state, thereby removing any challenges to their new world order. ^[5]

5 Homeland (Split Image)

American college student Danny Stetson is a clean-cut gymnast with Olympic gold aspirations when he’s lured to Homeland, a religious youth-oriented community, by Rebecca, a beautiful girl. There, the charismatic cult leader, Neil Kirklander, immediately starts conditioning him to assume that his new life now has the true significance it had been missing.

Every minute with the cult causes young Danny to come even more and more under the influence of the cult’s enigmatic leader, and he eventually refuses to go home. In their anguish, his parents decide to recruit someone to kidnap him. The modern-day bounty hunter has some experience in “de-programming” and attempts to undo the emotional harm that had been done to him. In short, this storyline focuses on the traumatic psychological adjustments that accompany any cult member’s road to recovery.^[6]

4 Daughters of the Amazon (Y the Last Man)

The extremist Daughters of the Amazon maintain that Mother Earth cleansed herself of the “aberration” of the Y chromosome. They specialize in the vandalism and destruction of sperm banks, destruction of all “patriarchal landmarks” such as churches and temples, the theft of food and equipment (believing that women should not be gatherers but hunters), and the assassination of transgenders and male impersonators.

As we come to learn in these unique comic books, the Daughters could be identified by their single breast, as the other would always be removed during their rite of initiation. Buying into the anger and rage of the manipulative Victoria, we learn that these women eventually begin to fade out even though the movement remains very strong in New York.^[7]

3 The Cult of Killers (The Following)

The Following is half Charles Manson and half Hannibal with a side of the seven deadly sins in Se7en and a lingering touch of Edgar Allen Poe. Kevin Bacon plays former FBI agent Ryan Hardy, who has to deal with his greatest capture: the infamous serial killer Joe Carroll, who’s been found guilty of murdering 14 women.

When the season kicks off, Carroll is imprisoned, but his followers are on the loose and are wreaking havoc to sustain his murderous activities. As expected, Carroll escapes halfway through the first season and reveals he is the ultimate cult leader. In flashbacks, we are shown how he achieved some of his best recruitment while being held in a maximum-security prison. The highlight of the first season happens when the two are face-to-face. “Why are you surrounded by death? Death is fuelling me.” taunts Joe. “Me too,” Ryan says. Unfortunately for fans, The Following was canceled after the third season.^[8]

2 The Creedish Church (Survivor)

In this eerie novel, we learn about The Creedish, a religious cult that established its own 20,000-acre colony in Nebraska. They managed to live here without creature comforts, including televisions or phones. Every firstborn son would invariably be named Adam, and this firstborn son would be the only son who could get married and stay within the colony. The younger boys were all named Tender (as they had to tend to your every need). Every girl would be named Biddy (as they had to do your bidding).

Upon reaching 18, Tenders and Biddies would be christened and promptly sent out to the outside world to take up some form of domestic work. The Adams would stay in the colony and go on to get married (in an arranged marriage, of course, to a bidder chosen by the church). After that, they would proceed to make the Creedish babies as if there were no tomorrow, to raise them from Adam to the Elder. The Creedish often had a wide variety of mental problems. A lot of them were chronic masturbaters, while many others had problems with kleptomania. A major part of their theology was known as “The Deliverance.” Once this was called, all the Creedish had to kill themselves the moment they heard the word. ^[9]

1 The Island Cult (Gather the Daughters)

Gather the Daughters is a macabre and bleak story about a fictional island cult where being female is such a terrible fate that when girls are born, all the women cry together. Incest between fathers and their daughters is permitted until the girls reach adolescence. At that point, all women are expected to become Stepford wives and breeding objects for such an inbred culture where high rates of genetic abnormalities and infant mortality eventually become alarmingly high. Any so-called “defectives,” the disabled and elderly, and anyone else who is a burden on this isolated community are murdered.

The story doesn’t say how or when the cult first isolated itself from the rest of the world, but it appears to take place in our current timeline or in the near future. Due to an increase in the number of birth defects, the cult sends out trustworthy males known as “wanderers” to recruit new members and collect necessary goods while rejecting modern medicine and other creature comforts available to everyone on the mainland. Definitely not a story for the faint-hearted!^[10]

Every story includes a protagonist and an antagonist, whether apparent or not. We all have favorite heroes and villains, from paperback novels to Oscar-winning films. Some of the most memorable stories include such dynamic opposing characters that a rivalry is born. Great rivalries can inspire us to do great things.

And some of the most famous fictional characters ever would not be as popular without their adversary. These characters cannot help themselves; they share a natural hatred for each other and will attack at first glance. These rivalries have become the stuff of legend; they are the greatest fictional rivalries of all time.

10 Optimus Prime vs. Megatron

The mechanical alien race of giant, transforming robots first came to Earth in 1984 as a toy line. Two warring factions of Transformers traveled here from their home world of Cybertron; a benevolent group called the Autobots, and a sinister one, the Decepticons. The two group leaders have a bitter rivalry that has spanned decades and crossed lightyears.

Optimus Prime of the Autobots protects the people of Earth against Megatron and the evil Decepticons. These two warriors have battled countless times through animated series and movies, live-action films, comic books, and video games. Although they seemed to vanquish each other in the 1986 film, they have reincarnated and come back from death time and again. In every scenario across the cosmos, these two will always be opposite sides of the same coin.^[1]

9 Sherlock Holmes vs. Professor Moriarty

The greatest detective that ever lived could not have become so if not for his archnemesis. Created by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887, Sherlock Homes has appeared in countless novels, comic books, TV shows, and movies for over a hundred years. He inevitably must confront Professor Jim Moriarty, his only intellectual equal. A constant and increasingly dangerous game of cat and mouse ensues between the detective and the criminal mastermind.

Doyle’s original series concludes with “The Adventure of the Final Problem,” in which Moriarty kills Holmes only at the cost of his own life. Years later, Holmes was brought back after an overwhelming outcry from fans in “The Adventure of the Empty House.” Moriarty’s primary purpose as a literary device is to defeat Holmes. Their rivalry is absolute and eternal; the only one that can stop Moriarty is Holmes and vice versa.^[2]

8 Bugs Bunny vs. Elmer Fudd

Since 1937 Warner Bros. character Elmer Fudd has been hunting lead Looney Tune Bugs Bunny. Bugs is a mischievous carrot-munching rabbit who is seemingly invincible. Fudd has a funny way of speaking, replacing his R’s with W’s, and is known for saying, “Be vewy vewy quiet, I’m hunting wabbits.” These two have a shoot-first-ask-questions-later type of relationship. No matter what Fudd does, though, he can’t seem to get the better of Bugs—and he’s been trying for almost 90 years. With one exception, the 1957 Merrie Melodies short, “What’s Opera, Doc?”

In this story, Elmer chases Bugs through a parody of 19th-century classical composer Richard Wagner’s operas. It borrows heavily from the second opera in the Ring Cycle, woven around the typical Bugs-Elmer feud. The short marks the final appearance of Elmer Fudd in a Chuck Jones cartoon and the only time the hunter gets the better of the rabbit. His victory is bittersweet, however, as he immediately feels remorse and sings the now-famous verse, “I killed the wabbit!”

By the mid-1960s, Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd were household names, but crowds especially cheered when Elmer would shove his shotgun in the rabbit’s face only to get a nonplussed, “Eh, what’s up, doc?” reply. While this rivalry is more comedic than most, it is one of the most well-known in history.^[3]

7 Robin Hood vs. Sheriff Nottingham

Few fictional characters have enjoyed the fame that Robin Hood has. He was originally depicted in 13th-14th century English folklore and has continued to appear in literature and film ever since. Known to “rob from the rich and give to the poor,” he could not achieve this hero status if not for his nemesis, the Sheriff of Nottingham. The two characters have fought to the death in every medium, from Disney’s Fox and Wolf incarnations to the 2018 motion picture and everything in between. The Sheriff is the most recurring enemy of the well-known outlaw.

Sheriffs were powerful men in medieval society. They were the king’s representatives in each county and were charged with keeping the peace and upholding the law. Outlaws were hunted down without mercy. Historians and literary buffs have studied the mythos of Robin Hood for centuries, and it is generally believed that the character was based on real people, as was his nemesis. If true, Robin Hood (Robert Hode) and Sheriff Nottingham (Eustace of Lowdham, Sheriff of Yorkshire) have accomplished something few rivalries have. Their hatred for each other has transcended from non-fiction to fiction and survived for centuries.^[4]

6 Batman vs. The Joker

Perhaps the best-known rivalry in comic books is the one between the Dark Knight and the Clown Prince of Crime. Batman, aka Bruce Wayne, as a boy, watched his parents murdered by a street thug. As an adult, he becomes the vigilante Batman and protects the streets of Gotham City. He has trained himself to be the peak human specimen in body and mind. Time and again, he is plagued by the Joker, who is his equal, but opposite. The only DC character without a known origin, he is the unstoppable force to Batman’s immovable object.

A deeper look at their relationship shows that Bats and Mr. J share one of the most complex relationships in comics. Sure, they’re enemies, but there is an unmistakable codependency to their conflict. While there are many examples of archnemeses in fictional lore, few hold the potency this one does. The two met for the first time in Batman #1, published in 1940. Since then, the two have appeared in every possible medium fighting each other to the death.^[5]

5 Obi-Wan Kenobi vs. Darth Vader (Anakin Skywalker)

As one of the most iconic characters in film history, Darth Vader would never have become the dark menacing villain without his mentor Obi-Wan. Kenobi and the other members of the Jedi Council always sensed some darkness in young Anakin. Kenobi trained the boy anyway, as it was his mentor’s dying wish. Although Anakin does become a great Jedi and had many victories over the evil Sith during the Clone Wars, his fear eventually gets the better of him. Obi-Wan desperately tries to save Anakin’s soul and bring him back to the light, but his fall to darkness is inevitable.

The two engage in an epic battle on a volcanic planet, ending with Anakin losing three of four limbs and being burned to a crisp. After which, his transformation to Darth Vader is complete. Unbeknownst to Vader, Kenobi hides the birth of Skywalker’s children—the two don’t meet again until the children are about 19 years old. Once again, the two adversaries fight; this time, Kenobi allows himself to be cut down by Vader’s lightsaber to protect the unknowing children. Vader survives for years purely on his hatred for Kenobi, yet he could not exist without him.^[6]

4 Wile E. Coyote vs. the Roadrunner

While these Merrie Melodies may be slap-stick comedy at its core, this is one of the most violent of all rivalries. Coyote’s obsession with Roadrunner is absolute. Dr. Natalie Frank was hired by Warner Brothers to do a psychological work-up on the character. Her findings suggest that the Coyote’s seemingly obsessive focus is on eating not just roadrunners in general but a very particular Roadrunner.

Coyotes can chase and catch roadrunners in real life, which adds legitimacy to the rivalry. Coyote employs an endless string of Acme products to aid him on his quest to kill the Roadrunner. From rockets to anvils, nothing is too extreme or violent for Coyote—who usually ends up on the business end of these products. His constant failure seems only to motivate Coyote to try again. Meanwhile, Roadrunner is all but oblivious to Coyote’s attempts on his life. The duo first appeared in “Fast and Fury-ous” in 1949, and Coyote has been trying to catch—and eat—Roadrunner ever since.^[7]

3 Rocky Balboa vs. Apollo Creed

Sylvester Stallone won an Oscar for writing his classic 1976 film Rocky. The film series depicts the rise of underdog streetfighter Rock Balboa to heavyweight champion. Before he gets the belt, he has to face the reigning champ, Apollo Creed. The first film ends with Creed winning by decision after the two fought for a full 15 rounds. Balboa is the first to “go the distance” with Creed. Balboa defeats Creed in the second film, but Rocky and Apollo eventually become the closest of friends.

Unfortunately, Apollo is killed in the ring during an exhibition match against Russian Ivan Drago. His son, Adonis, grows up without a father. The second generation of films was spawned as Rocky becomes Adonis’s mentor. Unlike most rivalries, these two become better friends than enemies, but their fights are the most memorable in fictional sports. Apollo’s iconic “ding ding” at the end of Rocky III is one of the most quoted lines in movie history.^[8]

2 Tom vs. Jerry

The best-known cat-and-mouse duo of all time is undeniably Tom & Jerry. Created by Hannah/Barbera in 1940 and debuting with “Puss Gets the Boot,” this iconic series features a cat (Tom) and a mouse (Jerry). The two constantly, violently, and maliciously try to kill each other. Thanks to cartoon physics, neither is ever successful.

Tom and Jerry have consistently appeared in animated films for over 80 years. Their names are synonymous with arch-rivals and violence, despite their comedic value. They are known to attack with no provocation, and the characters rarely, if ever, speak—it’s just nonstop violence. They are enemies by nature, but they have teamed up in the past to take on a greater opponent. The original series produced by MGM aired over 100 cartoons, and several won Academy Awards for best animated short. It seems that Tom and Jerry are destined to battle each other for eternity.^[9]

1 Betty vs. Veronica

Although their rivalry is rarely violent, it is the most well-known of all. Adhering to patriarchal stereotypes, the two compete over the affection of Archie Andrews. Betty first appeared in Pep Comics #22, while Veronica made her debut a few months later in Pep Comics #26 in the early 1940s. Betty Cooper (blonde) is a sweet, reliable girl next door, while Veronica Lodge (brunette) is exotic, edgy, and dangerous.

The two had their own series as well: Archie’s Girls Betty and Veronica. And they have gone from friends to adversaries and back again countless times over the years. The two women and Archie create the most famous and long-lasting love triangle in history. While the two may not be considered enemies, their rivalry is the most historic in fiction.^[10]