Teaching is a thankless job. After working years to earn your degree, you must then deal with rambunctious kids who couldn’t be less interested in learning. Worse, the pay rates for this hardship are mediocre at best. These hurdles are enough to drive anyone crazy. Writers sometimes take notice of that.

Fiction has given us numerous nutty teachers over the years. Their insanity usually lies in their behavior or curriculum. They might have some bizarre quirk to their deliveries, or they could impose tyrannical rules on pupils. Then again, they may just have some strange hobbies on the side. All of these traits affect their students, often injuring or traumatizing them beyond repair. These crimes would naturally lead to teachers losing their licenses in real life. In fiction, though, their loony lessons are just fun to watch.

Related: Top Ten TV Series Finales

10 Professor Trelawney

“Colorful” is the word for most teachers at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Even by that standard, though, Professor Trelawney is a fruity figure. The Divination teacher specializes in predictions through tea leaves, palm reading, and star gazing. She’s basically a glorified fortuneteller. Suffice it to say, she probably sees stars on a daily basis.

Trelawney is the very image of a crazy cat lady. Her unkempt hair, thick glasses, and chaotic wardrobe are enough to drive most people off. The rest have to put up with her neurotic noises and random asides. She regularly predicts misfortune on her students, delivering her prophecies in the most ominous ways possible without a care for their feelings. This professor is truly in her own little world.^[1]

9 Mr. Crocker

In all fairness, Mr. Crocker’s craziness emerges outside the classroom in The Fairly OddParents. That’s not to say that he shirks his duties, though. He thoroughly enjoys handing out failing grades to his students, taking great pleasure in their misery. It doesn’t matter if they do well or not; he has a ready supply of “F” grades stashed in his desk. Of course, his true passion lies elsewhere.

More than anything, Crocker believes in fairy godparents. He’s so passionate in his belief that he manically shouts about their existence to anyone who’ll listen. More directly, he concocts countless evil schemes to track and capture the magical creatures. These plans get increasingly ridiculous with every failure. Granted, he’s right about fairies being real, but his deranged demeanor doesn’t convince anyone.^[2]

8 Ms. Frizzle

This teacher isn’t mean or oppressive, but she more than makes up for those traits through child endangerment. Ms. Frizzle is an energetic soul. She believes in a hands-on approach to education, rejecting the sterile dullness of the classroom in favor of daily field trips. That prospect sounds exciting, but these journeys aren’t just walks in the park.

Driving the eponymous Magic School Bus, this wild woman takes her students to fantastic locales they can only dream of. One day, they might dodge dinosaurs in prehistoric times. Another day, they could swim through a person’s bloodstream. These scenarios are obviously dangerous, but the impending death of her students doesn’t seem to bother Ms. Frizzle at all. She just laughs off every peril without a care in the world. That’s not the attitude you want for the person watching your kids.^[3]

7 Ms. Bitters

Invader Zim crafts a demented world to begin with, but arguably, the greatest terror lies in school. Ms. Bitters is a haunting presence. She appears and disappears from the shadows, and she looms over students like a lanky vulture. She seems more wraith than human, making it impossible to relax in the classroom. Believe it or not, she only gets more unsettling as you get to know her.

“Bitters” is as good a name as any. This teacher utterly despises children, and she has no qualms about saying so. Nothing would please her more than for them to die horrible deaths. The kids even theorize that she descends from a species of flesh-eating insects. That certainly tracks with the bugs crawling over her face, and it comes to a head in the characters’ nightmares, where she’s a shape-shifting bug queen who consumes kids. Whether the rumors are founded or not, Ms. Bitters is ominous enough to terrify the titular alien tyrant. That’s saying a lot.^[4]

6 Walter White

Hardship can warp the best men. Instructors are no exception to that rule, as Walter White learns in Breaking Bad. This chemistry aficionado teaches at J.P. Wynne High School, but it’s far from an ideal position. Disrespectful students and financial problems regularly demoralize him. The nail in the coffin comes from a terminal cancer diagnosis. These woes push White over the edge.

Upon discovering his former pupil’s drug business, Walt decides to get in on the action. His chemistry expertise lets him make the best crystal meth around. Unfortunately, the inherent danger means he must take increasingly drastic measures to survive. These events morph him into a ruthless killer. Soon, the humble teacher becomes the region’s leading drug lord. Talk about a career change.^[5]

5 Jin Kuwana

Bullying harms kids the world over, but it can also affect teachers. Such is the case with Yu Kitakata. In Lost Judgment, his classroom is the site of merciless mocking. The instructor brushes it off as normal, but the targeted boy eventually attempts suicide and winds up in a coma. The whole incident demonstrates inexcusable negligence on Kitakata’s part, resulting in a guilty conscience and his unceremonious firing. Sadly, he learns the wrong lesson from the ordeal.

Changing his name to “Jin Kuwana,” the former teacher goes on the warpath. He ruthlessly exacts vigilante justice against Japan’s bullies and anyone who sanctions it. He even helps disgruntled parents torture and kill the tormentors without batting an eye. As an added insult, he blackmails his comatose student’s bullies to aid in his crusade. The tale is a classic case of fighting fire with fire.^[6]

4 Ra’s al Ghul

This immortal warrior wants to make the world a better place. Ra’s al Ghul leads an elite group of fighters with the sole intention of achieving that goal. He teaches them the ways of hand-to-hand combat, ninjutsu, and deception. Certain continuities even position him as Batman’s master. His centuries of knowledge and experience are invaluable sources of learning. Unfortunately, what he uses these gifts for is less than ideal.

The villain’s method of saving the world often lies in genocide. He’s willing to purge large portions of humanity to restore the planet’s purity or restart a failing society. What’s worse is that he imbues this warped worldview into his pupils, creating a doomsday cult with unparalleled skills as killers. The cherry on top is the Lazarus Pit. Bathing in its mystical waters helps Ra’s maintain his youth, but it also robs him of what little reason he has. A megalomaniac is dangerous at the best of times, but an immortal one is a disaster waiting to happen.^[7]

3 Miss Trunchbull

Given that she stems from a Roald Dahl tale, Miss Trunchbull is naturally twisted. The headmistress of Crunchem Hall Elementary School hates kids with every fiber of her being. She despises them so much that she denies ever having a childhood. Even the most well-behaved individuals—the titular Matilda—are pure evil in her eyes. Don’t think she doesn’t act on those impulses.

Trunchbull abuses her students in the most ludicrous ways. One moment, she might force a heavyset boy to eat an entire chocolate cake. In another scene, she swings a girl around by her pigtails and tosses her like a hammer throw. These punishments are equal parts horrific and cartoonish. What’s worse is that they’re entirely unfounded. Trunchbull tortures these kids purely out of spite.^[8]

2 Darth Sidious

The Sith aren’t exactly the nicest guys. Even so, Darth Sidious is the pinnacle of evil. Throughout the Star Wars saga, he works to subjugate the galaxy under his own brand of order. It doesn’t matter how many people he has to kill. He gladly slaughters those who resist and enslaves those who don’t. What’s more is that he takes pleasure in his sadistic actions, laughing maniacally at his own misdeeds. Equally demented is how he treats his allies.

Sidious uses and loses people without remorse. He trains several Sith apprentices, imparting the secrets of the Dark Side and commanding them to carry out his Machiavellian schemes. Not only does he delicately play on their fears, but he sometimes indoctrinates them from a young age. Planting those seeds makes these students supremely loyal, but their master doesn’t hesitate to dispose of them once they outlive their usefulness. Keep in mind, it’s the Jedi who discourage attachment, yet this Sith Lord couldn’t be more selfish if he tried.^[9]

1 Everyone at James K. Polk Middle School

It pays to have a few pointers in your teenage years, especially in a school as unhinged as this. Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide is a chaotic show. That chaos comes down to cliques, bullies, assignments, and lunches. All these aspects are a cut above real life. Oddly enough, though, the greatest obstacle lies in the classroom.

James K. Polk Middle School has numerous nutcases on its staff. Examples include a woodshop teacher who cut off his own hand, a science teacher who performs explosive experiments, and a gym coach who loves seeing kids hurt each other. With these guys in charge, any moment can turn a routine class into a horror show. On the one hand, it ensures that kids pay attention. On the other, it risks scarring them for life. Then again, that’ll happen at some point anyway, so why not start early?^[10]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

9 The Duck That Laid The Golden Egg

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

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

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

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

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

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

8 ‘The Ostrich’ Stuck Its Head In The Underground

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

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

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

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

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

7 The Novelty Record That Launched Gangsta Rap

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

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

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

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

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

6 Susanna Salter Won An Election On A Prank

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

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

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

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

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

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

5 A Sexist Joke Discovered The Cosmos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3 A Prank Might Have Killed Vincent Van Gogh

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2 The Butt That Killed Thousands

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

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

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

1 The Party Was Lit At Le Bal Des Ardents

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10. Tang Was Not Made For Astronauts

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

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

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

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

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

9. Hobbits Were Never Described as Having Big Feet

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

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

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

8. Chinese Checkers Has Nothing To Do With China

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

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

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

7. Garfield Was Never Meant to be Funny

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

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

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

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

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

6. The Star Trek Theme Song Actually Has Lyrics 

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

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

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

5. Solo Cup Lines Are Not For Measuring Alcohol

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related: 10 Bizarre Stories Behind The Movies Of Alfred Hitchcock

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

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

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

9 Family Guy: “North By North Quahog”

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

8 Horrible Bosses: Strangers on a Train

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

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

7 The (Not So Great) Hitchcock Remakes

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

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

6 That ’70s Show: Hitchcock Halloween Episode

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

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

5 The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror Hitchcock Spoof

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

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

4 Bates Motel: Norman Bates Origin Story

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

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

3 Psycho Shower Scene: The Spoofs

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

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

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

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

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

1 James Bond: North by Northwest Influence on Bond Franchise

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

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

Of their own accord, sometimes because they have been pressured by government officials or private parties, entertainment media have banned the playing of particular pop songs. Whether at the federal, state, or local level, direct government censorship of such music occurs less often.

However, due to political and other motives, government bans have taken place in China, South Korea, Pakistan, the Congo, South Africa, and the United States. The 10 pop songs on this list were among the victims of such censorship.

Related: 10 Times Musicians Were Banned From Playing In Certain Countries

10 “Fragile”

Although Malaysian rapper Namewee denies bashing China or the Chinese people or supporting Taiwan’s and Hong Kong’s independence, China banished the video featuring his hit song “Fragile” from the country. Officials insist that the artist’s tune is insulting to the nation and its citizens.

Ostensibly, the song’s Mandarin lyrics, sung by Austrian-Chinese vocalist Kimberly Chen, are part of an enchanting romantic ballad about a lover with a heart so fragile it breaks. But, according to an NBC News report, its symbols, idioms, and metaphors are disparaging, blasting “China’s volunteer army of angry digital warriors.”

Known as little pinks, these self-appointed censors form “a core element in China’s cyber nationalism, and…are highly sensitive to any criticism of the country’s leader Xi Jinping.” Those offended by the ballad point to the video’s saturation “with pink objects, decorations and costumes [and to its] dancing panda and stuffed toys in the shape of bats,” which are seen as “tweaking Chinese sensitivities over the origin of the Covid-19 coronavirus.”

Despite the ban and the controversy concerning the hit, “Fragile” has been viewed by millions throughout Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore.^[1]

9 “Beijing Evening News”

China has also banned “Beijing Evening News.” According to Jonathan Kaiman, the song by the underground hip hop group In3 is seen as representing a blistering condemnation of “the capital’s injustice and inequality.” The popular piece contrasts the plight of the poor and disadvantaged with the luxurious lives of the wealthy privileged, the former of whom “sleep in underpasses,” while the latter enjoy fine dining at banquets paid for with “public funds.”

The hit also points out the high price of health insurance, which many of the sick cannot afford. Being banned in China doesn’t seem to have hurt the band too much, though. Members pointed out that “Beijing Evening News” topped the charts.^[2]

8 “Cherry Bomb”

CT 127’s hip hop hit “Cherry Bomb” has been decried by South Korean government officials who banned it as being violent and for encouraging “bad behavior among youth.” But, aside from the “Bomb” in the song’s title, the video version of the tune shows only a group of young men, their clothing changing instantaneously multiple times, as they sing and dance in settings variously resembling a parking garage, a rooftop, a junkyard, a recording studio, an art gallery, and a city street. The only “violent” moment of the performance occurs when a singer seems to punch a pane of glass, causing it to break.

The lyrics are equally innocuous, if somewhat repetitive, mixing Korean with English, a portion of which repeats: “Quickly damage (Korean characters),” followed by “Cherry Bomb yum” (in English). The refrain, also repetitive, is much like a chant: “I’m the biggest hit, I’m the biggest hit on this stage.” In the song’s verses, the group sings about the motorcycles they ride, but from the sound of things, they’re certainly not members of an outlaw motorcycle club: “All we do is party.” Midway through the song, a pre-chorus instructs listeners, “If you’re happy and you know it/ Clap your hands yo (in this beat).” Okay, moving on…

The only illusion to anything that could be construed (with effort) as violent are references to “Cherry Bomb,” which seems to allude to a beverage since it’s sipped from a “cup,” and “a gunshot,” which is ambiguous, as it might refer to anger and violence or could simply allude to the speed at which the youth would take his leave: “Who cares about a hater, hater talk, talk/ I hear what you sayin’ but so what?/ Won’t say it to my face, so I’m off, like a gunshot.”

If anything, the well-groomed appearance of the young men in their stylish clothes and imitative gangsta-style bravado suggest parody more than criminality. Apparently, even a parody of violence and bad behavior is too much for South Korean officials.^[3]

7 “Letter to Ya Tshitshi”

Socrates likened himself to a gadfly; Bob Elvis, a musician operating out of his studio in downtown Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, compares himself to a mosquito. “I may be small,” he explains, “but I can annoy you all night long by singing, biting, and not leaving you alone.”

His rap song “Letter to Tshitshi” certainly annoyed his country’s president, Félix Tshisekedi, for which reason, it appears, the nation’s Censorship Commission banned it from play days after its release. The song advises the president’s late father, Étienne Tshisekedi, of the nation’s state of affairs under his son’s tenure. The lyrics describe political corruption, electoral fraud, impure water supplies, crime, and civil unrest. As a result, not only has “Letter to Ya Tshitshi” been banned but an additional half-dozen of the rapper’s tunes were also banned. Should a radio station defy the ban, it could incur the government’s wrath in the form of lost licenses.

According to an Economist article, “The legal authority to ban the songs comes from a decree issued by a crooked dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, 54 years ago.” Even though the song’s lyrics target his son, Félix Tshisekedi would not have agreed to the ban, the article notes: “The current president’s father, were he still alive, would be appalled.” ^[4]

6 “It’s Wrong (Apartheid)”

Musicians from around the world took a stand against South Africa’s apartheid, fulfilling an important part of the protest by serving as “whistleblowers and opponents of the oppressive white government,” notes Sabelo Mkhabela. One of the many such performers was Stevie Wonder, whose “It’s Wrong (Apartheid)” makes the point, as its title indicates, that apartheid is clearly, categorically, and unequivocally wrong.

Poetic justice further brought to light the hypocrisy of the government’s ban on Wonder and other musicians whose songs denounced apartheid. After he was punished by a ban on his music for having dedicated his Oscar to Nelson Mandela, the ban on “We Are the World,” the earnings from which would profit victims of the 1983–1985 African famine, had to be rescinded. The ban was lifted on the song, but it otherwise remained in place on Wonder!^[5]

5 “El Chuchumbé”

As Music Around the World: A Global Encyclopedia notes, the first written records of Mexican folk music, which repose in the Ramo Inquisición, include “El Chuchumbé,” which has the distinction of having been “the first Mexican song to be banned.” The ban resulted from the folk song’s depiction of “soldiers and friars fighting to seduce women.” The song itself finds fault not with the lusty soldiers and friars but with the Veracruz officials who banned “El Chuchumbé” for its “lascivious sones (sounds)and obscene coplas (verses).” Whether one performed the song or observed a performance of it, the penalty was the same for defying the ban: ex-communication, which brought a one-way ticket to hell.

The song’s lyrics are rather bawdy. As Elena Deanda-Camacho, Associate Professor of Spanish at Washington College, explains, “El Chuchumbé,” which usually refers to the navel, alludes instead to the penis in the context of this song. With this meaning in mind, the prurient nature of the opening stanza is clear. In English, it reads: “In the corner he stands / a friar from la Merced / with the lifted habit /showing his chuchumbé.”

Additional lyrics further indicate, without a doubt, the meaning of the word as it is used in the song: “Whether you like it or not/ the ‘chuchumbé’ is going to get you / and if it does not fill you, I will fill you up / with what is dangling from my chuchumbé.” Listeners obviously understood the meaning of the song. As it played, dancers interpreted its lyrics “with gestures [and] shakings,” their conduct constituting “a bad example to those who watched [the dancers]…mixing caresses and…touching belly with belly.”

Church and state were both scandalized by the song’s decadence and its immoral effects, and “Chuchumbé” was banned by the Spanish Inquisition, the government enforcing its prohibition by arresting offenders and turning them over to the Church for investigation and punishment.^[6]

4 “I Don’t Want to Get Well (I’m in Love with a Beautiful Nurse)”

The United States War Department banned “I Don’t Want to Get Well (I’m in Love with a Beautiful Nurse),” apparently because the brass feared its lyrics might persuade soldiers to follow the example of their fictional counterpart.

The front of the record sleeve shows a beautiful Red Cross nurse standing by the side of a recovering soldier’s bed, holding his hand as he looks up at her. Outside the window, as an ambulance passes, one soldier shoots an enemy combatant, suggesting another of the hospital’s beds will be needed shortly.

The song’s lyrics are attributed to a friend of the soldier, who shares the contents of a recent letter he has received from the wounded soldier in answer to one of the sender’s own earlier correspondences. His pal, we learn, “was wounded in the trenches somewhere in France.” Having been asked, in his friend’s earlier letter, whether he was on the mend, the soldier responds with words that echo the song’s title, adding that “the cutest girl” feeds him with a spoon and takes his pulse. And when on the verge of recovery, he relapses. and she “begs [him] not to leave her,” meaning, possibly, she hopes he will not die.^[7]

3 “Ohio”

When the Vietnam War protest on Ohio’s Kent State University resulted in the deaths of four protesters who were shot by National Guard soldiers on May 4, 1970, riots raged across the country. Neil Young responded with his classic hit song “Ohio,” which contains the lyrics “four dead in Ohio,” an obvious reference to the protesters who lost their lives on the campus.

Conservative radio stations refused to air the song protesting the deaths of the protesters. James Rhodes, Ohio’s governor, ordered the state’s stations to ban broadcasts of the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young single. Despite the ban, however, independent AM stations joined FM stations in playing the banned song, and the “radical tune” landed in fourteenth place on the charts.

Later, “Ohio” was released, with “Find the Cost of Freedom” on the flip side, in a sleeve that listed the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights and their guarantee of such freedoms as the right to assemble and the right to engage in free speech.^[8]

2 “Wake Up, Little Susie”

Somehow, even the Everly Brothers found a way to make an innocent date seem risqué. The lyrics have a teenage boy awakening his date, Susie. Although they’ve fallen asleep in a movie theater, the boy appears concerned that the lateness of the hour—it’s four o’clock in the morning—will make Susie’s parents think they have been up to what their friends would call “Ooh-la-la.” They found the movie’s plot so boring that they fell asleep, and now, the boy fears their “reputation is shot.”

The song is “about how innocent acts could be misconstrued as deviant behavior in the stiff 1950s,” a Decades website article observes. A conclusion that seems borne out by the fact that the song was banned at the time by the city of Boston.^[9]

1 The Beatles’ Entire Oeuvre

The Beatles were once banned in the Philippines. Neither their music could be played, nor their records sold. Unlike bans in other countries, this one wasn’t imposed because of politics, concerns about violence or sexual improprieties, institutionalized racial segregation, social injustice, military officers’ worries about the effects that a song might have on soldiers, or even troops’ shootings of protesting citizens. The president of the Philippines took such action because President Ferdinand Marcos believed that the mopheads had “snubbed” his lady love, First Lady Imelda Marcos.

The band’s offense? A prior engagement had precluded their acceptance of her invitation for them to join her for lunch. Government-owned newspapers throughout the islands criticized the allegedly rude musicians’ boorish behavior. Two concerts during the same day, before 100,000 Filipino fans, led to crowds’ shouts and threats as the famous foursome took off from Manila’s airport. Although the ban was lifted not long after it went into effect, the Beatles’ music never stopped being played in Filipino bars.^[10]

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

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

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

10 Mr. Treeger

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

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

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

9 Wizard

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

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

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

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

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

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

8 Quaithe

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

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

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

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

7 Charmaine Bucco

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

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

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

6 Arthur Slugworth/Mr. Wilkinson

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

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

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

5 Éomer

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

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

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

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

4 Santos & Pasquel

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

Big characters sometimes come in small scenelets.

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

So…funny ‘cos they’re foreign, yes?

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

3 Father Larry Duff

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

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

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

2 The Bank Manager

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

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

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

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

1 The Salesman

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

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

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

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

And now for a bonus character!

+ Cravex

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

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

One scene.

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

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

10. Nicolas Flamel From Harry Potter Was a Real Alchemist

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

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

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

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

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

9. Bloody Mary From the Urban Legend was Mary Tudor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7. Captain Morgan Was a Real Privateer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. Jethro Tull Is Named After a Real Historical Figure

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

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

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

4. Uncle Sam Was Allegedly Based on Sam Wilson

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

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

3. The Term Smart Aleck Comes From a Real Man

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

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

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

2. Mary from Mary Had a Little Lamb Was Real

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Someone who is enjoying a book, a song, a movie, or a television show is enriching his or her inner world by imagining new physical, intellectual, and emotional possibilities. Sometimes, however, the world a person creates in his or her art isn’t imaginary at all. All of the places on this list are actual places that a tourist could visit. All of them have been popularized because of their associations with certain books, music, movies, and television shows.

10. Graceland (Home Of Elvis Presley)

When the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Elvis Presley, bought his Memphis estate, Graceland, in 1957 it was one of the most costly properties in the area. Unable to afford the expense of caring for the estate after Elvis’ death, Elvis’ former wife, Priscilla Presley, opened it to the public in 1982. Now, roughly 600,000 people visit Graceland each year to pay homage to their favorite rock and roll royalty.

Graceland is a tourist destination because of its sociocultural significance. Elvis spent 20 years of his life there. However, Graceland also has artistic significance, as it has served as a muse for successful songwriters. In “Walking In Memphis,” singer/songwriter Marc Cohn sings about seeing the ghost of Elvis Presley while touring Graceland. In “Graceland,” a song from an album of the same name, singer/songwriter Paul Simon sings about the creative and personal redemption he finds while visiting his idol’s home.

9. Lyme Park And Sudbury Hall (Pride And Prejudice)

Mr. Darcy, the hero of Jane Austen’s 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice, was mentioned more in 1995 than at any time since 1900. This is partially because when screen and teleplay writer Andrew Davies adapted the novel into a six hour miniseries for the BBC, he put a handsome face to the famous name.

When the novel’s heroine, Elizabeth Bennet (played by Jennifer Ehle in the miniseries) tours the estate of Mr. Darcy (played by Colin Firth), whose marriage proposal she has rejected because she thinks him haughty, she realizes that the man she has turned down is very well endowed… with property. His estate, Pemberley, consists of lush woodlands and a stately manor. When they unexpectedly meet at Pemberley, Elizabeth and Darcy better understand both each other and the nature of their own romantic feelings.

The Pemberley of the 1995 miniseries is actually two places. The exterior shots of Pemberley were filmed at Lyme Park in the Peak District in Cheshire. When the cast and crew were ready to film the interior shots for Pemberley, Lyme Park — which is open to the public — was no longer available. The interior shots for Pemberley, including the elegant, long gallery, were shot in Sudbury Hall, an estate in Derbyshire. Tour guide Maddy Hall says that when she takes tourists who are using P and P Tours to Lyme Hall, she doesn’t go inside herself. She wants to keep her vision of Pemberley (literally) intact. Says Hall, “In our minds we think we have seen Jennifer Ehle [as Elizabeth Bennet] looking out of the windows and seeing the lake [on the grounds of Pemberley] – but in fact it’s all down to skillful editing.”

8. Middle-earth (The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy)

While he was writing the The Lord of the Rings, British fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien meticulously created the vivid details of Middle-earth, the setting for his trilogy. Tolkien produced a colorful, annotated map of Middle-earth, now housed in the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford University. Tolkien also made sketches of his fantasy realm.

When movie director Peter Jackson acquired the rights for his movies based on Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, he knew exactly which location would best represent Middle-earth: Jackson’s homeland, New Zealand. Jackson used 150 locations in New Zealand during the making of his movies. Each movie in the trilogy grossed an average of $970 million, and the third film was the highest grossing film for 2003. New Zealand embraces its identity as Middle-earth in its tourism marketing. On its tourism website, it’s called “the perfect Middle-earth.” Many people must see New Zealand’s sloping hills, majestic mountains, and limpid bodies of water as the perfect features for Middle-earth. Roughly 47,000 Tolkien fans per year visit film locations in New Zealand.

7. The Empire State Building (King Kong)

Since it opened in 1931, the Empire State Building has been featured in over 250 movies. One of the building’s earliest scene-stealing cameos was in the 1933 movie King Kong. In the film, the behemoth ape King Kong escapes from an exhibit and kidnaps the character portrayed by Fay Wray, with whom he is smitten. He carries her to the top of the Empire State Building, where she’s rescued when the gorilla is shot repeatedly by airplane gunners.

In 1933, the scene served as an homage to the sociocultural relevance of the (relatively new) Empire State Building. In 2019, the Empire State Building paid an homage to the film. As part of $165 million worth of renovations, designers built a gallery with interactive exhibits on the second floor of the world-famous tower. As visitors walk through a 1930s newsroom, King Kong’s fingers pierce the walls as he dangles from the rooftop, dodging airplanes. In another exhibit, visitors can step into King Kong’s arms.

6. The Iron Throne (Game Of Thrones)

A Song of Ice and Fire, the fantasy series author George R.R. Martin began writing in 1991, hasn’t been completed yet. The HBO series based on Martin’s books, however, premiered in 2011 and ended in 2019. The series earned 12 Emmy awards for its final season, the most wins for any individual show. The finale was watched by over 13 million viewers, the most viewers for any HBO show, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Since the show was filmed in 10 countries, fans of both the books and the miniseries have many tourist destinations from which to choose. Arguably, the most contested site in the series is King’s Landing, home of the Iron Throne that inspires the brutal succession “game” that gives the series its title. In 2019, HBO hid six Iron Thrones throughout the world and awarded prizes to fans who found them using clues posted on the Game of Thrones Twitter account. The scenes in King’s Landing featuring the “real” Iron Throne — the one built by the show’s set designers — were filmed in Dubrovnik, Croatia. In 2015, the mayor of Dubrovnik claimed HBO was gifting the Iron Throne to his city. HBO denied the mayor’s claim. Dubrovnik does not have the Iron Throne yet, but it does have a museum honoring Game of Thrones.

5. Llanddewi Brefi (Little Britain)

One of the recurring characters on Matt Lucas and David Walliams‘ 2003 BBC sketch comedy television series, Little Britain, is Daffyd (a misspelling of the Welsh “Dafydd”) Thomas, a flamboyant, inexperienced youth who doggedly insists he’s the only gay man in his village of Llanddewi Brefi, Wales.

The sketches are actually shot in Buckinghamshire, England. Still, the popularity of Lucas’ character has strengthened the tourism industry in Llanddewi Brefi. Shop owner Neil Driver, who owns Siop Brefi in partnership with his wife, Glesni, says tourists come to have their photos taken while they’re standing in front of the sign at the town’s entrance, and sometimes they steal the signs. In 2005, Driver told Wales News he had sold roughly 40 shirts with a line from one of Daffyd’s sketches on them to visiting tourists.

4. Highclere Castle (Downton Abbey)

Sam Wallaston, a television critic for the British newspaper The Guardian, called Julian Fellowes’ series Downton Abbey “a posh soap opera [but] a pretty bloody splendid posh soap opera.” The series dramatizes the interpersonal relationships of the Crawley family, the owners of the estate Downton Abbey, and the servants who attend the Crawleys. The Crawleys’ story also intersects with important sociocultural and sociopolitical events in England at the turn of the 20th century.

Highclere Castle is where the interior shots (most notably the dining hall, the entrance room, and the staircase) and the exterior shots for the series were filmed. In a way, Highclere Castle is the titular character, since the show is named for the Crawleys’ estate. The popularity of the show has increased the popularity of Highclere Castle, Downton Abbey’s real world counterpart. George “Geordie” Herbert, the eighth earl of Carnarvon and Lady Fiona Carnarvon, who own Highclere Castle, say the tourism created by the show has assisted them in paying for the castle’s necessary repairs. As of 2015, 1,250 tourists per day visited Highclere Castle. In 2019, Airbnb offered two sweepstakes winners an overnight stay in order to promote the newly released Downton Abbey movie.

3. King’s Cross Station (Harry Potter)

In 2018, author J.K. Rowling’s seven book Harry Potter series became the bestselling book series in history. Rowling’s series has sold over five hundred million copies worldwide. Rowling’s work is appealing — especially for her most devoted fans — partially because of how deftly she depicts Hogwarts, the wizard training school where Harry seeks to master his craft.

In the book, Harry travels to Hogwarts by taking the train at platform 9 ¾ in King’s Cross Station. Boarders must reach the platform by running through a brick wall between platforms nine and ten. At the actual King’s Cross Station, platforms nine and ten are separated by tracks. Luckily for Harry Potter fans, there is still a platform 9 ¾… sort of. A luggage trolley is embedded in a wall in the station concourse. Above the trolley is a sign that says Platform 9 ¾. Tourists may have professional photos taken grasping the trolley. A nearby gift shop offers tourists the option to further personalize the photo by wearing a scarf in the Hogwarts house colors of their choice. The photo and the scarf are available for purchase. King’s Cross Station’s platform 9 ¾ welcomes over one million visitors each year. Rowling, for her part, said she immediately knew she would locate platform 9 ¾ at King’s Cross Station, because it has emotional significance for her. Her parents met on a trolley there.

2. The Hollywood Sign

In 1923, Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler invested in an upscale housing development. The housing development was called Hollywoodland. In order to advertise, Chandler bought 45-foot high white letters that spelled out the name of his development, located on the south side of Mount Lee in the Hollywood Hills. He anchored the letters to telephone poles, and attached a total of 4,000 illuminated lights to his lettering.

The word “land” was removed from the sign in 1949, long after Hollywoodland had gone out of business. The sign has received regular maintenance checks since the 1970s, and its sociocultural significance continues to be confirmed. The Hollywood sign, or at least a studio set replica of it, has appeared in over a dozen movies.

1. Abbey Road (The Beatles)

When rock and roll’s most famous quartet, The Beatles, crossed Abbey Road in the cover photo for their 1969 album of the same name, they elevated the significance of their recording studio, Abbey Road Studios. Now linked inextricably with the success of a band ranked Number One in the 2010 Rolling Stone list “100 Greatest Artists,” Abbey Road is a symbolic home for any musical artist who desires creative freedom.

Sam Smith, Lady Gaga, and Adele, for example, have recently recorded at Abbey Road Studios. While Abbey Road Studios isn’t open for tours, Abbey Road Crossing — the crossing on The Beatles’ album cover — is usually crowded with tourists taking photographs.

In an ideal world everyone gets along, no one hates anyone and we certainly never try to ruin anyone’s career or life or anything else, for that matter. But when has the world even been ideal? We can’t even keep sabotage out of the world of pop culture which is mostly just dedicated to keeping people happy and entertained. In fact, sometimes pop culture saboteurs can get pretty dark or creative. Or both.

10. Wrestle The Fabulous Moolah Exploited And Sabotaged Other Female Wrestlers 

Women’s pro wrestling has never been quite as popular as the men’s but the WWE has long included women on their roster and they play an important but still smaller role in the organization even today. But way back when there were only a handful of women who ever got screen time, and often they were valets for the male stars. One woman who enjoyed an extremely long career was known as the Fabulous Moolah. 

Though she was the first woman that the WWE inducted into its Hall of Fame, her past would come back to haunt her and lead to a lot of controversy. It turns out Moolah was something of a monster to other women in the industry and went out of her way to sabotage anyone who didn’t bow to her whims, which included cutting her in for a lot of performance fees. 

Other wrestlers have described Moolah as “evil,” and the list of accusations against her was extensive. As a wrestling trainer, she charged young up and comers both rent to live on her compound and training fees which resulted in most of them not having enough money to live and going into debt to Moolah who then wielded control over them. She was accused of pimping out the girls to business men instead of getting them wrestling gigs. Later, she was accused of sabotaging a tag team match in Japan by telling her girls that the title belt was supposed to change hands when it was actually not. No one believed them when they said Moolah told them to do it. 

One of her girls, Mad Maxine, made a splash in the WWE and was set to become a character in their 80s Saturday morning cartoon which arguably would have made her a superstar. But Moolah, working as her manager, never told her. She took the role instead. 

9. Fans Routinely Sabotage the Baja 1000 Rally Race

Head to the Baja Peninsula at the right time of year and you can witness one of the most popular off-road races in history. The Baja 1000 has been going since 1967 and people from all over the world attend to either participate or just watch. They call it the most dangerous race in North America and, in part, that’s because fans keep sabotaging it. 

People have died at the Baja 1000 over the years, to give you some idea of just what is meant by “dangerous.” Dozens of people. The 1,000 mile course has claimed numerous victims due to accidents in mountains, in ravines and rivers, and in the silty sand that the course winds through. But there are also booby traps laid by locals intent on sabotaging the race as well. Sometimes they dig holes, sometimes they lay debris in the road. Once they redirected a river to flood the track. The reason isn’t to necessarily harm anyone, at least that’s not the main intent. It’s to make the race more exciting and dangerous, because that’s what the people crave. If they lead to accidents and death, well, that’s what everyone is signing up for.

8. John Belushi Would Purposely Tank SNL Sketches Written by Women

Saturday Night Live has had its fair share of huge personalities over the years, as well as the odd controversy for one reason or another. But it’s also had to endure cast members who just didn’t get along well with others. Chevy Chase was notoriously and admittedly awful to cast mates when he was in the cast. Bill Murray has also faced allegations of being pretty bad to work with on the show. And John Belushi was accused of outright sabotage.

Jane Curtin, one of the most famous female cast members in the show’s history, has gone on record saying that Belushi was such a misogynist that he would go out of his way to ruin sketches if a woman had written them. He believed women just weren’t funny and did what he could to ensure others believed it as well by making them look bad. 

7. William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols Sabotaged Star Trek to Include an Interracial Kiss

Star Trek has endured as a franchise since the ’60s for a number of reasons, but one of the things the show was always about was the idea of inclusivity and diversity. The crew of the original Enterprise was diverse as a way to show that, in Gene Roddenberry’s vision, things like racism and hatred between nations no longer existed. In one of the most profound examples of this there was an episode featuring the characters of Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura sharing a kiss.

Kirk, a white man, and Uhura, a black woman, sharing a kiss may not seem like a big deal in the modern age but in 1968 when it happened it was. In fact, there had never been an interracial kiss on TV before. And it might not have happened either had the actors not intentionally sabotaged the scene.

NBC was afraid that some affiliates, particularly in the American South, would have a problem with the interracial kiss. They wanted a few takes of the scene including one with no kiss. But, according to Nichelle Nichols, the actress who played Uhura, William Shatner went out of his way to ruin all the non-kissing scenes so they wouldn’t be usable for broadcast. He sabotaged the scene so that the kiss would have to air because it was the only good take.  

6. Mike Grell Sabotaged his Character Tyroc for DC Comics 

You may not know the name Tyroc, even if you’re a comic book fan, and that’s partially the fault of Mike Grell. Grell created the character for the Legion of Super-Heroes in 1976 after having apparently been vocal about wanting to introduce a black character as there were literally none in the roster up to that point. He had been turned down and apparently he even had a black character he created colored white before publication,  but later was given the opportunity to create Tyroc, the leader of an island of black people, who would be an antagonist of the League. 

Grell felt the character was embarrassing and racist and, to hammer that point home, made him look embarrassing on the page. He made the character look like what he described as a cross between Elvis and a pimp. The character was mostly ignored after his initial appearance and eventually forgotten altogether. 

5. Disney Tried to Sabotage FernGully Over Robin Williams

The animated film FernGully: The Last Rainforest came out in 1992 and probably the biggest splash it’s made since then was how everyone compared it to Avatar in 2009. But at the time it came out it was noteworthy for being a non-Disney animated movie with a voice cast that included the likes of Tim Curry, Christian Slater and, clearly the biggest star in the cast, Robin Williams.

As it happened, 1992 was also the year that Disney released the movie Aladdin, which also featured Robin Williams, this time in his well known role as the Genie. Today that role is remembered fondly and the idea of a big star in a voice role is as commonplace as butter on toast. But that was not always the case and, in fact, Robin Williams has been credited with changing the entire world of voice acting because of his role in Aladdin. Before him, big name actors did not do voice work in cartoons, it was all but unheard of.

Williams made Aladdin a hit and Disney knew that. So hearing that he was also voicing a character in a competitor’s film set them on edge. Which is to say they tried to ruin the production. Disney brass tried to get Williams to leave the role but he wouldn’t quit stating that “It’s my voice. You can’t stop me.”

Director Bill Kroyer spoke about renting facilities during production only to have Disney offer the owners more money and take them away. They tried to buy a third facility and at one point Disney chair Jeffrey Katzenberg showed up with eight people in tow and just wandered through the place. This was all because Katzenberg just didn’t want Williams being in someone else’s cartoon.

4. Disney Also Sabotaged Their Lion King Game

Ever hear someone tell you video games were harder when they were a kid? Or maybe you think that way yourself. Well, you’re probably not wrong. Sometimes companies sabotaged their own games to make them frustratingly unbeatable on purpose, like Disney did with their Lion King game. 

Released on SNES in 1994, it was an intensely finicky and frustrating game. The devs made the game hard at Disney’s request so that no one could rent the game and beat it in a weekend. Their research showed if a player rented a game and did too well, they wouldn’t buy it. So they made it all but unbeatable in the hopes you’d shell out for your own copy. 

3. Wham’s Manager Sabotaged Queen 

Wham!, the band that made George Michael famous in the ’80s, was the first Western pop act to play in China but it wasn’t planned that way. Queen was the first act chosen but a little creative sabotage took them out of the running.

The band’s manager had spent a year and a half trying to get Wham! to play China. He says he flew to China and ended up taking 143 government figures to lunch again and again to convince them to let the band play. But since they were also considering Queen, he made up pamphlets. One showed Wham! fans as nice, mild-mannered teens. The other depicted Freddie Mercury in a “provocative” pose, meant to scare the Chinese off. It worked, and Wham! got the gig. 

2. Ed Sullivan Sabotaged Buddy Holly Live on TV

Back in the day anyone who was anyone had to appear on Ed Sullivan if they wanted to get known and that’s just what Buddy Holly did. In 1958, Holly and his band made their second and final appearance on the show after angering Sullivan so much he actively sabotaged their live performance.

Sullivan, who was known to have a temper, asked the band to play a different song because he thought their song “Oh Boy!” was too raucous. Holly informed Sullivan that he planned to sing “Oh Boy!” and that’s what the band was playing.

Adding fuel to the fire, Sullivan wanted to speak to the band during rehearsal and only Holly showed up, making a joke about it. During the show he responded by reducing the band to one song instead of two. Then he introduced Holly by mispronouncing his name and also cut off the mic to Holly’s guitar which is why Holly does a guitar solo at one point to make it obvious he’s playing but the mic just isn’t working. 

1. Sharon Osbourne Sabotaged Iron Maiden’s Ozzfest Performance

Ozzfest is an almost annual music festival that dates back to 1996, started by Ozzy Osbourne and his family to showcase rock, metal and other hardcore acts. Ozzy himself headlined along with other huge acts that ranged from Slipknot and Marilyn Manson to Metallica and Motley Crue. One of the more classic metal acts on the lineup in 2005 was Iron Maiden and things did not go well.

Lead singer of Iron Maiden, Bruce Dickinson, made the mistake of publicly making fun of Ozzy Osbourne and his reality show. He also accused Ozzy of using a teleprompter on stage. Ozzy’s wife and manager Sharon Osbourne responded by letting loose the dogs of war.  

Osbourne cut off the band’s sound system several times and arranged to have fans (and possibly other bands) pelt them with eggs when they took the stage. Others stormed the stage during the show with a flag warning them not to eff with Ozzy. When they left the stage, Sharon told the crowd of 40,000 that Dickinson was a prick.

The two exchanged less-than-pleasant words in the press afterwards, and it’s safe to say Iron Maiden is still probably not welcome on tour with Ozzy, nor would they want to join up again.

If there’s one thing pop culture fandom loves, it’s hate. People can’t get enough hate watching, hate listening, hate whatever else you can think of. Just look how people react to any new installment of Star Wars, Star Trek, the MCU, or the DCEU. Sure, there’s lots of love but there’s plenty of negativity to go around. It’s been that way for years, too. And it’s not always limited to people posting angry messages on social media. Let’s take a look at some of the most shocking examples of pop culture hate pushing the envelope. 

10. Richard Donner Got Death Threats for Superman

People losing their minds over comic book movies is by no means a modern phenomenon. Way back when Richard Donner was putting Superman on film for his first blockbuster in 1978, your grandparents were just as angry as some fans are today. 

Donner spoke in 2020 about his experience making Superman back in the 1970s. Part of that involved dealing with “fans” who didn’t want to experience the Christ allegory which is fairly obvious though not overly involved that takes place in the film. Basically, Donner acknowledged that a powerful being from afar sending his only son to live among humans and maybe save them from themselves could be regarded as a Christ allegory and people were not having it. A woman even told him his blood would “run in the streets.”

Keep in mind, this is 1978, so this was not an off the cuff, anonymous missive Tweeted to a filmmaker in a moment of passion. This lady had to get a pen and paper, write it out, find Richard Donner’s address, get a stamp and then send it to him. That’s commitment to a death threat. 

Also of note is that, in telling the story, Donner mentions threats and multiple people, so this lady was not alone. 

9. Gene Siskel Doxxed Friday the 13th Filmmakers

Before the internet made one million people into film critics, there was only Leonard Maltin and Siskel and Ebert. Gene Siskel and Robert Ebert were both intelligent men, but they managed to distill film criticism down to a thumbs up or thumbs down, the prototype for our modern Fresh or Rotten rating over on Rotten Tomatoes. 

The two men did give more in-depth film reviews and sometimes they became shockingly off the tracks. Though Ebert was more often known for going on wild tangents and ripping apart films and filmmakers he disliked. Gene Siskel may have taken the cake with one of the earliest examples of doxxing in film critic history. 

Back when Friday the 13th came out, it was not a critical darling. Gene Siskel didn’t just dislike the movie, he hated it with enough passion that you’d think Jason Voorhees and his mother may have killed Siskel’s own family. In his review of the film, he devotes space to telling readers the address of the parent company of the film studio and advising people to send hate mail. 

In addition, Siskel ruins the movie’s twist ending in the second paragraph of the review and then gives the hometown of the actress recommending people send her hate mail as well. It’s hard to imagine something like that working out for a film critic today but if it happens, you know there’s precedent.

8. Pro-Hitler Fans Threatened to Makes of Captain America #1 

Captain America is one of the longest running and most well-known comics in history. The first issue of the comic came out back in 1941, smack dab in the middle of the Second World War, and the cover of the book featured Cap socking Adolph Hitler square in his Nazi mug. You’d think people back then would have been as happy to see that as they are today and you’d be right. But just like today, there were also a few people back then who were really into the whole Nazi way of life and they were less than amused.

Writer Joe Simon once shared in an interview that he and artist Jack Kirby had to field death threats from Nazi supporters state side in the form of both letters and phone calls. And while those may have been easy enough to ignore at first, things went from bad to worse. Men started showing up at the office and it became bad enough that they had to call the police to report it. An officer took up a regular patrol of the halls to guard the Marvel office against the angry Nazi element who had become enraged by a comic book. 

Of course, this would not be Captain America’s only brush with an angry public. More recently, in 2016, Cap switched allegiances and became a Hydra agent for a storyline that sent fans into a fury, some of whom sent writer Nick Spencer a number of death threats as well. 

7. Sherlock Holmes Fans Greatly Overreacted to The Character’s Death

Further proof that overreactions aren’t new to pop culture comes from the world of Sherlock Holmes. When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed his famous detective, the fans revolted. The tales, which were printed in Strand Magazine, came to an end and so did the subscriptions of 20,000 readers who dropped the magazine in anger. Others wore black armbands and sent hate mail to mourn their hero, and all of this back in 1893.

Rumor has it that Doyle received hundreds of pieces of hate mail, Strand received bags of it, and people were even seen crying in the streets as they read the final story. 

6. White Supremacists Sent Death Threats to Johnny Cash

In the history of music, few singers have the reputation of being a tough guy that Johnny Cash has. The man was an outlaw. He was reckless and had run-ins with the cops and sang the “Folsom Prison Blues”! Though he never actually did hard time himself, he was arrested a few times and spent the night in lockup. But he did have the air of a dude you don’t want to mess with. Despite that, white supremacists were not fans of the man in black and he was threatened, boycotted and was forced to cancel shows in the 1960s, all thanks to hate.

After one arrest for drug smuggling, Cash was photographed leaving the courthouse with his wife Vivian Liberto. Vivian, an Italian with a dark complexion who had one African-American ancestor several generations back, was deemed to be Black by racists and that, in turn, made Cash a target.  Shows were canceled, and the couple endured a number of threats as a result. 

5. The Clown Lives Matter Organizers Got Death Threats

Not so long ago in much simpler times, one of the biggest things people worried about from day to day was clowns. There was a general clown panic based on nothing, but it did generate some headlines. And for real life clowns it seemed to be a bit of a nightmare thanks to all the hate that came their way.

With unfounded rumors of clowns trying to abduct children coming from many states, people were angry and scared. It didn’t matter that the stories weren’t true; the flames were being stoked by people who would just walk around in public dressed like creepy clowns and the internet did the rest.

So bad was the backlash that a planned Clown Lives Matter walk, in which real clowns wanted to have a walk to show they’re just normal people who want to entertain you, was shut down amidst threats. 

People took issue with the name of the walk, a parody of the much more serious Black Lives Matter, but when the organizer started getting death threats, the whole thing was shut down making you wonder who was the real danger. 

4. Bridget Loves Bernie was Canceled After Protests and Threats

In 1973, CBS aired a sitcom called Bridget Loves Bernie. It depicted a Catholic woman married to a Jewish man and Jewish groups in America hated it. There was some reference to negative Jewish stereotypes but the main reason was they disapproved of the interfaith marriage. Both Conservative and Orthodox rabbis spoke out against the show claiming it “mocked the teachings of Judaism.” 

Boycotts of the network and sponsors were organized, but things got worse. Meredith Baxter, mom from Family Ties and star of the show, said the show got a bomb threat one day and members of the Jewish Defense League showed up at her house. The producers received threatening phone calls which led to at least one arrest as well. The show, despite being highly rater by critics, was canceled after a single season 

3. The Creator of Attack on Titan Received Numerous Death Threats

If you’re a fan of anime, you’re probably aware of Attack on Titan, a series based on the manga of the same name that dates back to 2009. In 2013, creator Hajime Isayama was getting buried in death threats on his personal blog, reportedly as many as 1000. And these weren’t just “I wish you’d die” threats, they were explicit “I’m going to kill him on this specific date and get away with it” threats. 

It was guessed that the threats stemmed from a character in the series being based on a real figure from the Imperial Japanese Army. Years later a voice actress from the show also got death threats, though the perpetrator in that case was at least arrested. 

2. Rebecca Black Was 13 and Getting Death Threats Over a Song

In 2011, the biggest thing on the internet was a goofy music video made by a teenage girl. Rebecca Black’s “Friday” was not a good song, and that’s okay. And people online made fun of it and, to some degree, that’s okay too. The song was very simple and childish because of course it was; it was made by a child. Black was an aspiring singer and her parents had funded the video to help make a dream come true. Sadly, it turned into something of a nightmare. 

The internet, as it is wont to do, took things way too far. The song was huge, and it was viewed millions of times and people deluged Black with hate. Her parents shielded her from some of the threats but police had to get involved. People told her to cut herself or they hoped she’d get an eating disorder. She was bullied so badly her parents began to homeschool her. 

The tale does have a happy ending, at least, as Black persevered and spoke out against bullying while continuing to pursue her musical dreams even today. 

1. Malcolm McDowell Got Death Threats for Killing Captain Kirk

Star Trek: Generations was supposed to be the greatest of all the Trek movies, merging the cast of the original series with the cast of the Next Generation. Fans got to see Captain Kirk and Captain Picard on screen as the baton was passed and the original cast finally retired from the big screen. Part of that involved the on screen death of Captain Kirk.

The film fell a little flat. It has a 47% of Rotten Tomatoes and is generally considered a pretty middle of the road and forgettable entry in the pantheon of Trek movies. But at least one actor walked away with more death threats than the average Trek movie engenders, and that was Malcolm McDowell.

McDowell played the movie’s villain and the man responsible for the death of Kirk. According to McDowell his nephew, who played Dr. Bashir on Deep Space Nine, called him to tell him the news – people on the internet wanted him dead. He didn’t take the threats seriously, but the studio still gave him security.