It’s 2025, and a new year is underway. Who knows what the coming months have in store? Well, if you struggle to imagine what 2025 might look like, you are in luck. Many great minds (and some not-so-great minds) from the world of fiction have dreamt up a gamut of outlandish predictions.

Some paint 2025 as a trailblazing year, with flashy new technology like chore-busting robots, sophisticated clones, and bioengineered body parts. Others see the future as a nightmare apocalypse marred by fierce conflict, crooked politicians, and environmental disasters. From bloodthirsty aliens in The Outer Limits to Stephen King’s lethal take on reality TV, here are ten visions for 2025.

Related: 10 Books That Accidently Showed Us Our Future

10 The Bone Clocks, 2014 Novel

If David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks is anything to go by, we’re in for a wild ride in the year ahead. Written by the acclaimed author of Cloud Atlas, The Bone Clocks follows psychic adventurer Holly Sykes from a teenager in the 80s to a war-torn vision of the future. The mammoth novel takes place over six sections, and in section five, “An Horologist’s Labyrinth,” Sykes arrives in 2025. It’s a bleak image of the now-present, overrun with ritual child killings, bloodthirsty hunters, and immortal soldiers.

A brutal battle has broken out between two groups of “atemporals”—fantasy beings who have discovered how to evade death. One tribe holds the secret to reincarnation, while the other slaughters children to lengthen their lives. The book’s title is a slur for humans, who are sneered at by the atemporals for growing old and dying. Mitchell is wild and excessive in his ideas, especially his rendering of 2025. But it’s an interesting view of what might be in store nonetheless.^[1]

9 Future Hunters, 1988 Movie

“A once proud world has been reduced to ruin, famine, and despair in the bitter aftermath of war.” So begins the action flick Future Hunters, which offers a heavily Mad Max-inspired look at what the future might hold. It’s an arid, desolate world, ravaged by a nuclear war that broke out decades earlier. The only hope to save humanity lies in an ancient biblical spear with the power to travel through time.

Reviewers described the film as a protracted fight sequence that lurches across decades and around the globe. One moment, Robert Patrick—Arnie’s foe in Terminator 2—and Linda Carol are running away from lawless American biker gangs. Next, they’re in Hong Kong seeking help from a Bruce Lee lookalike. In truth, this ridiculous mess of a movie has little to say about 2025 other than the usual tired, post-apocalypse cliches. But that’s mainly because the writers are more concerned with watching the main couple fend off Nazis in Manila.^[2]

8 “The Duplicate Man,” 1964 Outer Limits Episode

Based on a 1951 short story by Clifford Simak, “The Duplicate Man” sees classic TV show The Outer Limits explore the dangers of space exploration. The classic U.S. sci-fi series had high hopes for the future. They thought that by 2025, humans would have scouted other planets and found all sorts of alien life, enough to fill a museum with unearthly critters. On top of that, scientists have come up with advanced cloning techniques.

Cloning humans is outlawed, as is importing murderous aliens. However, that does not stop renegade researcher Henderson James from doing both. The wealthy tearaway smuggles an illegal Megasoid to Earth. He then realizes his mistake when the bloodthirsty beast escapes and creates a clone of himself to destroy it because he is too much of a coward to clean up his mess.^[3]

7 Futuresport, 1998 Movie

Futuresport is one of those movies that does what it says on the tin—a sports film set in the future. 2025, to be specific, where the athletes have hoverboards and rollerblades. They play a radical hockey-like ball game known as futuresport. Futuresport is the brainchild of mastermind Obike Fixx, aka Wesley Snipes, putting on a Jamaican accent.

In 2025, the teams are not just playing for prizes and trophies. Futuresport has become a means of colonial expansion. World superpowers send their best players to battle it out for the right to take over new territories. In the movie, we see North America and the Pan-Pacific go head-to-head for control of Hawaii. Readers will be unsurprised to learn that this film was released straight to video.^[4]

6 The Bots Master, 1993 TV Show

A short-lived cartoon that viewers remember fondly, The Bots Master is a tale of corruption-busting robots defending the world from corporate greed. Most works in this list take a negative view of the 21st century. But in The Bots Master, technology has gotten better and better. Robots are a common part of everyday life, as they help with chores and take the stress out of life. It’s all thanks to Ziv “ZZ” Zulander, a talented inventor with a flair for building new robots, and his work for the Robotic Megafact Corporation, aka RM Corp.

It seems like all is well in this animated 2025. But that’s until ZZ learns of a diabolical plan by RM Corp’s president to take over the planet via a robot coup. The evil CEO has found a way to reprogram the bots and force them to obey his orders. That’s right, a power-hungry tech billionaire hellbent on world domination. Could something like that really happen in 2025?

Anyhow, it’s up to ZZ and his crew of robot pals to fight back against the threat of tyranny. The Bots Master even comes with its own electro-hip-hop theme song, complete with breakdancing mechanoids and a sword-wielding robot ninja.^[5]

5 A Friend of the Earth, 2000 Novel

The theme of environmental collapse comes up time and time again in science fiction. Released at the turn of the millennium, T.C. Boyle’s A Friend of the Earth follows Ty Tierwater from a young, radical eco-activist to a jaded groundskeeper struggling to survive as the world falls into ruin.

Boyle depicts 2025 as an environmental wasteland plagued by torrid heat, pounding rain, and bitter storms. The death of natural habitats has wiped out most species. Farming is a constant battle. Social security is a thing of the past. Among all this destruction, the population is skyrocketing, putting even more strain on dwindling resources. But for all its grim predictions, the book does end with the hope that nature will find a way to regrow and return.^[6]

4 Titan, 1979 Novel

Titan is the first volume in John Varley’s acclaimed Gaea trilogy. The book tells of a crew of daring space explorers whose ship crashes into a giant station in orbit around Saturn. But what the astronauts find leaves them reeling for six: a far-out satellite world where centaurs roam free, odd plants grow, and the conditions are always in flux.

Varley’s future vision might be the most surreal in this list. His works often delve into fantasy, with magical creatures and whimsical adventures. One reviewer described the crew’s journey to the hub of this absurd outpost as something out of The Wizard of Oz.^[7]

3 Repo Men, 2010 Movie

A cynical look at the healthcare industry, the sci-fi action flick Repo Men envisions a future where a money-grabbing firm called the Union sells artificial organs at sky-high prices. Patients can buy them on credit. But if they fail to pay, they might find Jude Law and Forest Whitaker crashing through their door to take the organs back by force. The movie sees Law get a taste of his own medicine when he falls into debt on his own artificial heart. He and Whitaker flee the country while rival repo men try to track them down.

Based on Eric Garcia’s book The Repossession Mambo, viewers widely agreed that Repo Men was a bit of a shoddy film. However, it takes an interesting look at the impact of corporate greed on medical care. The movie also shows the amazing potential that bioengineered body parts hold.^[8]

2 334, 1972 Novel

Thomas M. Disch is a key figure among the New Wave of sci-fi writers who transformed the genre in the ’60s and ’70s. A renowned cynic, he paints New York in 2025 as a lawless world overrun with crooked politicians, power-crazed eugenicists, and downtrodden residents struggling to get by. Vast overpopulation and pressure on resources have led to the government bringing in controls on who can or cannot have children.

Disch takes the reader to a filthy, poverty-stricken future where morgue workers sell off smuggled corpses, and rich kids are so bored with their lives that they plot murder. Others are plied with drugs by the government to distract from their mundane lives. Disch passed away in 2008, but it’s a testament to his talent as a writer that his work still feels so topical all this time later.^[9]

1 The Running Man, 1982 Novel

Stephen King is celebrated as one of the most loved writers in the history of genre fiction. Although probably best known as a horror author, his work spans myriad styles such as prison drama (Shawshank Redemption), suspense (Gerald’s Game), and, of course, dystopian sci-fi.

In The Running Man, King once again proves himself to be a master imagineer. He published the book under the pen name Richard Bachman in 1982, offering readers a bleak look at what the future had in store. The world’s economy tanked, and the U.S. is run by power-crazed despots. To keep people in line, the state pumps out twisted propaganda like the TV game show The Running Man. Contestants are on the run from an elite crew of network-hired butchers. Survive, and you win a mass cash prize that will change your life. Get caught, and the stalkers kill you, live-streamed to the masses.

For a book King supposedly wrote in 72 hours, The Running Man is often praised for its insightful picture of 2025. Disinformation is everywhere, the air is thick with pollution, and the gap between rich and poor has never been so clear. The Running Man first hit the big screen in 1987, which saw Arnold Schwarzenegger flee from hitmen around a dystopian Los Angeles. Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver) is set to come out with another Running Man movie later in the year, this time more faithful to the text.^[10]

Clearly, the timing of this article will lead many to dismiss it out of hand as “cope.” However, the recent change in the U.S. executive and legislative branches is not the heart of this matter. The United States of America is still, despite factors such as tariffs and income inequality, a consumer economy, and consumers are in a much more precarious situation than many realize. That’s been the case for months and months. Unless emergency measures comparable to the 2020 pandemic are undertaken, signs indicate that 2025 will be remembered for a major economic downturn to rival 2008.

Related: 10 Business Scandals So Big They Shook the Economy

10 Agricultural Disasters

If there’s one thing an objective appraisal of global agricultural conditions will show, it’s that 2024–2025 is poised to be a calamity for many crops around the world. For example, the world’s leading cocoa grower, the Ivory Coast, experienced such a bad harvest that in 2025, chocolate prices are expected to rise as much as 25%. In the United Kingdom, the 2024 harvest was the worst since 1983 by roughly 15% across crop yields, meaning a lot more motivation to buy crops overseas and thus increase the global price. Much of the rest of Europe has suffered similar environmental disasters.

Domestically, in 2024, American farmers had their worst crop profits since 2007. This means there will be far fewer investments in it for 2025, and with fewer people investing in farms, the supply will go down. Indeed, in 2024, 75% of farmers surveyed said that they believed their industry was already in a recession. With farming being such a bedrock of the American economy, expect massive financial damage to trickle out.

A much more alarming story is being buried right now. On January 16, 2025, the Moss Landing lithium battery factory in Monterey County, California, began a long-burning fire. The blaze released toxic heavy metals that were announced to be a huge threat to local endangered wildlife reserves. More significant was that this is very close to Salinas County farms. Salinas County is known as “America’s Salad Bowl” since it grows more than 30% of all lettuce in America and 50% of its strawberries, cauliflower, and broccoli.

Farmers in the area reported suffering symptoms of poisoning from the fire’s fumes, and they would not consider their own crops safe to eat. That means a giant amount of the nation’s crop yield is either toxic or likely to be thrown out as a security measure, all from a single fire. This goes to show just how vulnerable crop yields in America really are, despite many Americans taking food practically for granted.^[1]

9 Commercial Real Estate Collapsing

The dispute between the desire for employees to work from home and for employers to have their employees come to offices has been a passionate one since the end of the pandemic lockdown in 2021. Commercial real estate values indicate that the employees have gone far toward winning. In 2024, across many cities from Baltimore and Washington D.C. to Minneapolis and Houston, office buildings were reevaluated with extremely severe drops in price. For example, in Houston, the average was 57%. In Minneapolis, the Forum Office Towers sold for a jaw-dropping 91% off their sales price from 2019.

Despite these massive drops in property values, owners and lessees have been having difficulty paying property taxes. Between September 2023 and 2024, commercial real estate foreclosures rose 48%(9c). This is not along a political divide: In New York, the rate was 48%, and in Florida, it was 49%.

To many denizens of smaller communities who hate cities anyway, this may mostly seem a cause to point and laugh. The thing is, though, that when states lose property tax revenue from one sector, they have to either cut public services or raise taxes elsewhere. Thus, residential prices, which are extremely high, if not dangerously inflated, are in a position where high taxes are looming over them.

These can be increases in rates almost as bad as urban commercial real estate values in reverse. For example, in the Utah towns of Charles and Joseph, in 2019, residential property taxes climbed 130%.^[2]

8 Credit Default

As often as the National Debt is called into service as a talking point, consumer debt is such a ubiquitous problem that it usually isn’t mentioned, just like the dust on city streets. And 2024 still saw a growth in the problem that harkens back to much financially darker periods in contemporary American history. By September 2024, $46 billion in credit had been defaulted on.

For companies such as Capital One, this increased the amount of debt deemed “irrecoverable” to roughly 6% of the total, representing the highest percentage since back in 2010. The problem was naturally concentrated in the lower and lower-middle-income classes, but the higher sections of the middle class are in trouble too, as indicated by the percentage who only made minimum payments, which was the highest it had been since 2012.

In a February 2025 article on the subject, Deutsche Bank economist Brett Ryan insisted to CNN that the debt situation is not yet evidence of a dire economy. The same article dispels a default assumption many will make about people in credit card debt, that it’s due to financial irresponsibility, by profiling the family of Monica Chavez.

Due to the loss of her job and her husband’s injury that left him unable to maintain his small business, the family was left having to avoid medical care, having lost even their retirement savings. Such precarity lurks among many more of the middle class and even the upper class than a cursory look will indicate.^[3]

7 Negative Auto Equity

America’s ability to define itself as a consumer culture is paralleled by its ability to define itself as a car culture, with all the sense of independence that comes with someone having the means to travel anywhere in the country under their own power at any time they want embodied by their vehicles. This habit is getting a growing number of Americans in serious financial trouble, especially as other economic factors are putting an ever-tightening squeeze on them.

Negative auto equity is when a vehicle needs to be returned, traded in, or, in general, provided to a dealership at a loss. While it’s expected for a vehicle to lose a large amount of its value just by being driven off the lot, the automobile publication Edmunds reported how, in Q4 2024, 22% of trade-ins were down more than $10,000. The average amount of negative equity was roughly $6,500. The models where this occurs most often are Kia, Jeep, and Tesla. Combine those with credit defaults, and it begins to come to light just how much debt Americans are really in.^[4]

6 Slowing Housing Market

Considering its prominent role in the 2008 recession and in the hopes and dreams of American Millennials, there have been many who have long anticipated the absurdly inflated prices of the residential real estate market providing the catalyst for our next recession. In recent years, homes have been bought in large numbers at inflated rates by conglomerates like Zillow, Blackstone, etc. Inflated is no exaggeration, with homes visibly uninhabitable selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Indications are appearing in the market that this is about to be corrected in a way that will be disastrous for millions of homeowners.

In recent years, houses have sold in under a week to corporate buyers. However, at the end of Quarter 4 of 2024, approximately 55% of available houses had been unsold for 60 days. As CNBC reported, that was a 50% increase in the volume that was unsold after that long of a listing period in Q4 in 2023. Mortgage rates were an extremely high 7% at the time, and rather than correcting as evidence of market exhaustion was surfacing, prices instead went up 3.6% year-over-year, which is classic bubble behavior.^[5]

5 AI Bubble Bust

The largest tech companies in America are all heavily invested in implementing machine learning. Between Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft, the pot is projected to be $320 billion for 2025 alone. That’s more than all the profits from agriculture in the U.S. annually ($267 billion). Beyond issues such as the ecological concerns of AI, such as the millions of gallons of water that get polluted through being used as a coolant for servers, it’s a huge amount of the U.S. economy to be invested in a single, unproven piece of technology.

This is why it was such a cause for concern when a single Chinese company spent $6 million to develop the product Deep Seek, which was at least a rival to the multi-billion dollar investments the U.S. had put up against it. When it was announced on January 27, 2025, the tech sector lost $969 billion on the stock market, more than three times the entire investment. While, as is often the case with such dramatic losses in the stock market, the recovery was swift as well, it went to show just how risky and costly the investment in artificial intelligence has been. If exposed as a failed investment, it will take whole segments of the economy down with it.^[6]

4 Bankruptcy Creep

With many aspects of the economy slowing, bills and expenses are catching up to growing numbers of investors and asset holders. It’s not just that bankruptcy rates are higher now in 2025 than during the same period in 2024, but that they’re dramatically higher both in overall filing rate and degree of severity. In 2025, the number of weekly filings averaged 9,175, whereas in the same period in 2024, it averaged 7,338.

Chapter 7 is also increasing in pervasiveness compared to Chapters 11 and 13. This is particularly ominous because it means that more business entities are forgoing attempts to restructure their payment plans in favor of liquidating their assets to pay off debts. This has been part of a years-long trend instead of a short-term spike. Over the course of 2023, non-business bankruptcy filings increased 16.8%, and business bankruptcy filings increased over 30%. These rates are lower than they were pre-pandemic.^[7]

3 Raw Material Shortages

Beyond agricultural uncertainty, there are plenty of other vital industries in America that are in a troublesome position. For example, America has experienced a lumber shortage to varying degrees since the pandemic. Throughout 2024, prices for lumber used in construction rose 17.2%, and costs are projected to increase again in 2025. That means a lot of cuts into the profit margins for construction companies, repair projects, etc.

Mining is facing similarly vast but specifically different problems, wherein a growing shortage of mine workers is on the verge of becoming vastly worse. Nearly half of the roughly 500,000 miners currently working will reach retirement age by 2029. Considering how grueling mining is on the body, raising the retirement age for miners will not go well. By the end of 2025, there will already be so many retirements that it will greatly disrupt the industry. Even before the effects of this become too dire to ignore, there are already growing shortages of particularly precious minerals such as antimony, heavily used in sensitive communication equipment tech. Most antimony is currently mined by America’s trade rival, China and its allies.

The last industry to consider for this list entry is fishing. Not surprisingly, 40% of commercial fishing in the United States is done around the state of Alaska. In that area, fish populations have been plummeting for decades. Between 1974 and 2020, migratory fish populations dropped 81%. In 2024, fish yields in the Yukon River had become so bad that Alaska and Canada filed a joint resolution to suspend chinook salmon fishing for six years.

Nationwide, fisheries are finding the demand for fish massively exceeds their ability to supply them. This is not unique to the U.S.: In May 2024, the Washington Post reported that fish in catches were literally shrinking over the years because populations were having various factors disrupt their growth. That’s a lot of trouble for an industry that generates more than $140 billion in revenue annually.^[8]

2 2024 Economic Deceptions

During the U.S. presidential election, much data was carefully manipulated before being presented by the incumbent party to paint a much brighter picture of the economic situation. In 2025, news outlets such as Politico began to report the ugly truth. Throughout 2023-2024, data analysts noted that the unemployment rate hovered around 4%.

However, if you factor in Americans making sub-poverty wages of $25,000, at which point they would be regarded as functionally unemployed, then the unemployment rate in a very real sense climbs to roughly 23.7%. While the median wage at the time was widely reported to be $61,900 for full-time employees exclusively, when part-time employees are factored in, the median wage becomes $52,300.

Meanwhile, purchasing power has dropped at an equally alarming and misleadingly reported rate. In 2023, the cost of living was reported to have increased only roughly 4.1%. However, a review of a wider number of prices found that for many Americans, the cost of living had increased by a destabilizing 9.1%.^[9]

1 Mass Layoffs

This does not refer to the mass federal layoffs in conjunction with the DOGE since the results of those layoffs are not yet known at the time of writing. This refers to private sector jobs being lost in mass numbers and excludes such issues as mass retirements, as referenced in Entry #3. For starters, Meta is laying off 3,600 employees in a year when the tech industry overall laid off 95,000. Manufacturing has also been hit hard. John Deere laid off 2,000 employees in Iowa alone last year.

As bad as those layoffs are, they’re actually dwarfed by the largest mass layoffs of 2024-2025. Nissan laid off 9,000 employees in that period, Amazon 12,000 employees, and Sam’s Club 11,000. Given how beleaguered Boeing has been by recent plane failures, it’s not surprising it laid off 17,000, but no less devastating.

Topping this off is Citi, which laid off 20,000 employees. The U.S. economy has endured mass layoffs in the past, but if we’re looking at the health of its economy as it is, all the indicators are that these are like infections taking place in a severely immunocompromised patient.^[10]

Before motion pictures, plays were the most popular medium of long-form storytelling for live audiences. From ancient Greece to the Renaissance, plays and playwrights have captured the hearts and minds of the masses. Names like Homer and Shakespeare will ring out throughout the ages for their literary prowess.

Like any other great nation, America has produced its fair share of memorable stories through this art form. From the sixteenth century to the modern day, American playwrights have offered a rich tapestry of humor, horror, romance, and mystery on and off Broadway. With that in mind, let’s review the ten best American-written plays, a diverse collection that will pique your interest.

Related: 10 Weird Sci-Fi and Fantasy Musicals You Won’t Believe Existed

10 The Crucible–Arthur Miller

Written in 1953, The Crucible centers around the Salem Witch Trials of the 17th century and is only marginally fictional. Written during “The Red Scare,” Miller’s story is an allegory for McCarthyism. It was first performed at the Martin Beck Theatre on Broadway on January 22, 1953, starring E.G. Marshall, Beatrice Straight, and Madeleine Sherwood. The play initially received mixed reviews from both the audience and critics, yet still won the Best Play Tony that year.

By 1956, The Crucible was already considered a classic and a central work in the canon of American literature. That same year, however, Miller was questioned by the House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities (aka the witch hunt of the day) in 1956 and convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to identify others present at meetings he had attended. It somehow remains relevant in every era.^[1]

9 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof–Tennesse Williams

Tennessee Williams may be the most well-known playwright in American history, and while Cat on a Hot Tin Roof may not be his most famous piece, it’s arguably the most important. Written in 1955, this three-act play examines the relationships of the Pollitt family. This play features motifs such as social mores, greed, superficiality, mendacity, decay, sexual desire, repression, and death. The dialogue throughout is often written using nonstandard spelling intended to represent accents of the Southern United States.

“Like many of Williams’s works, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof concerns itself with the elaboration of a certain fantasy of broken manliness, in this case, a manliness left stifled by the homosexual desire it must keep in abeyance.” Williams draws from his own experiences with homosexuality and alcoholism, making this play ahead of its time and still wholly valid today.^[2]

8 Wicked–Winnie Holzman

Wicked is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Winnie Holzman. It is a loose adaptation of the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, which is in turn based on L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its 1939 film adaptation.

The original Broadway production won three Tony Awards and seven Drama Desk Awards, while its original cast album received a Grammy Award. “After two decades as one of the most beloved and enduring musicals on the stage, Wicked makes its long-awaited journey to the big screen as a spectacular, generation-defining cinematic event this holiday season.”

In a classic literary trope, this story takes an empathetic look at a well-known villain, painting her as a victim and then a hero. Wicked’s success has continued to grow, with potential sequels in the works; it continues to draw large crowds nationwide, thanks to its universal themes that appeal to a broad audience.^[3]

7 Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?–Edward Albee

First staged in October 1962, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? won the 1963 Tony Award for Best Play and the 1962–1963 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play. It is frequently revived on the modern stage. The film adaptation was released in 1966, written by Ernest Lehman, directed by Mike Nichols, and starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, George Segal, and Sandy Dennis.

The plot is that of a bitter, aging couple who, with the help of alcohol, “use their young houseguests to fuel anguish and emotional pain toward each other throughout a distressing night.” This play is still a standard in English and Literature classes in high schools and colleges nationwide. The themes involved seemed to resonate with Americans of all ages.^[4]

6 A Raisin in the Sun–Lorraine Hansberry

A Raisin in the Sun is a play by Lorraine Hansberry that debuted on Broadway in 1959. The title comes from Langston Hughes’s poem “Harlem” (also known as “A Dream Deferred”). The story is about a Black family’s experiences in south Chicago as they attempt to improve their financial circumstances with an insurance payout following the death of their father.

It deals with matters of housing discrimination, racism, and assimilation. The play’s central theme is the question, “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” The New York Drama Critics’ Circle named it the best play of 1959. In recent years, publications such as The Independent and Time Out have listed it among the best plays ever written.^[5]

5 Rent–Jonathan Larson

Rent is a rock musical with music, lyrics, and a book by Jonathan Larson. Loosely based on the 1896 opera La Bohème by Giacomo Puccini, Luigi Illica, and Giuseppe Giacosa, it tells the story of a group of impoverished young artists struggling to survive and create a life in Lower Manhattan’s East Village in the thriving days of the Bohemian culture of Alphabet City, under the shadow of HIV/AIDS.

Winner of the Tony Award for Best Musical and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Rent has become a pop cultural phenomenon, with songs that rock and a story that resonates with audiences of all ages. Rent represents the best of theater, brimming with passion, sorrow, and joy while tackling important issues. It has remained one of the most popular performance pieces nationwide for decades and has spawned film and TV adaptations that are as cherished as the original cast presentation.^[6]

4 Long Day’s Journey into Night–Eugene O’Neill

Long Day’s Journey into Night is a play in four acts written by American playwright Eugene O’Neill in 1939–1941 and first published posthumously in 1956. It is widely regarded as his magnum opus and one of the great American plays of the 20th century. It opened on Broadway in November 1956, winning the Tony Award for Best Play. O’Neill received the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for Drama posthumously for the play. The work is openly autobiographical.

The “long day” in the title refers to the play’s setting, which takes place during one day. “O’Neill recounts a fateful summer evening at the Tyrone family’s seaside home, where members of the clan battle their addictions (to alcohol and morphine) as well as one another.” O’Neill is widely considered one of the greatest American poets, but his plays are often overlooked. This piece is his farewell to the public with whom he had a love/hate relationship throughout his life and career.^[7]

3 Fences–August Wilson

Fences is a 1985 play by the American playwright August Wilson. Set in the 1950s, it is the sixth in Wilson’s ten-part “Pittsburgh Cycle.” Like all the “Pittsburgh” plays, Fences explores the evolving African-American experience and examines race relations, among other themes. The play won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 1987 Tony Award for Best Play.

The play was first developed at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s 1983 National Playwrights Conference and premiered at the Yale Repertory Theatre in 1985. James Earl Jones played the main character, Troy, on stage, and in the motion picture adaptation, the character was played by Denzel Washington, opposite Viola Davis as Rose. Wilson became a nationally recognized playwright in 1987 when his play Fences won four Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.^[8]

2 Glengarry Glen Ross–David Mamet

Glengarry Glen Ross is a play by David Mamet that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984. The play shows parts of two days in the lives of four desperate Chicago real estate agents who are prepared to engage in any number of unethical, illegal acts—from lies and flattery to bribery, threats, intimidation, and burglary—to sell real estate to unwitting prospective buyers.

It is based on Mamet’s experience, having previously worked in a similar office. The world premiere was at the National Theatre in London on September 21, 1983. The play opened on Broadway on March 25, 1984, at the John Golden Theatre and closed on February 17, 1985, after 378 performances. It was nominated for four Tony awards, including Best Play, Best Director, and two Best Featured Actor nominations for Robert Prosky and Joe Mantegna, who won the production’s one Tony.

“This scalding comedy is about small-time, cutthroat real estate salesmen trying to grind out a living by pushing plots of land on reluctant buyers in a never-ending scramble for their share of the American dream.”^[9]

1 Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes–Tony Kushner

Angels in America is a 1991 American two-part play by Tony Kushner. The play’s two parts, Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, may be presented separately or together as a seven-hour epic. The work won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for Best Play, and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play.

Part one of the play premiered in 1991, followed by part two in 1992, with its Broadway opening in 1993. It is a complex, often metaphorical, and at times symbolic examination of AIDS and homosexuality in the United States in the 1980s. Angels in America includes explicit sexual situations, nudity, and adult language and tackles adult themes.

“The play weaves together politics, religion, and human connection themes. It follows characters grappling with illness, identity, and societal change, all while being influenced by their encounters with celestial beings.” It is not nearly as well-known as the other entries on this list. However, it is arguably the best and most influential American written play ever.^[10]

Actors aren’t too different from us in that when they see themselves in photos or on camera, they are hyper-critical of their looks. We’ve all been there. Somebody takes a video of you doing something, and when you look back at the clip, you are overly sensitive about your mannerisms, your facial expressions, or the way you act. To the rest of us, it’s an entirely forgettable thing—if it’s even noticed at all. But when you watch yourself on camera, every little criticism is heightened.

It’s the same way with actors… mostly. Many of them refuse to watch the things they star in, if only because they are so embarrassed and annoyed with their own appearance in them. And others won’t watch those shows because, well, they starred in them! They already know the lines, the plot, and the themes. No need to rewatch something you saw happen the first time when you filmed it, right?

But every now and then, a rare actor comes along who absolutely loves to watch the things they starred in. Call it commitment to the craft, or maybe a touch of narcissism—or a bit of both—but when their movies hit the screens and their shows air on television, they tune in. These are the stories of ten actors who absolutely love to rewatch their own projects after filming is completed so they may bask in the glory of their job well done!

Related: 10 Actors That Are Polar Opposites from Their Characters

10 John Goodman

John Goodman has had some absolutely incredible on-screen roles. His big body (well, until he lost all that weight) and his booming voice certainly attest to it. We can’t ever see him and not think of his iconic sitcom role in Roseanne. And we really can’t ever see him and not think about what is perhaps his most iconic movie role, as the loud-mouth know-it-all Vietnam War veteran bowler Walter in The Big Lebowski. Thankfully, according to John himself, he enjoys watching that movie whenever it comes on! But not necessarily much of his other stuff.

During a press run chat for his role in the 2017 movie Kong: Skull Island, Goodman admitted to an interviewer that he actually does go back and watch some of his old movies! The key word here is “some.” He said: “Some, yeah, some I watch, and some are irritating and tedious.” Sadly, he didn’t say which ones he felt were tedious, though we’d be very curious to know about that. But he did mention two that he always watches whenever they come on television: “If it’s The Big Lebowski or Barton Fink, I’ll stay and watch a little bit, yeah.” We will, too, John! No matter how many times we’ve seen them, we will, too!^[1]

9 Bryan Cranston

When Breaking Bad was on television, most of Bryan Cranston’s co-stars didn’t watch the show when new episodes were released. They had filmed the episodes, the stars reasoned, and so they didn’t need to see how they turned out. Cranston felt very differently, though. He has seen every episode at least once on TV. Not only that, but he wants to watch them all again one day—with a friend or family member who has never seen the show! What better way to introduce somebody to his life’s work, ya know?

“I actually look forward to watching the whole series again with someone who hasn’t seen it who’s close to me, and it’s like, ‘well, let’s sit down,’” Cranston explained during a podcast interview. He even admitted that it would be fun to replay all the best and most memorable parts over and over again for the new viewer. What a way to be introduced to one of the world’s most famous television shows that would be—eagerly, and by the man who starred in it!^[2]

8 Terry Crews

Terry Crews is not afraid to watch himself on screen. In fact, he goes further than most celebrities on this list and watches himself perform in pretty much any format and venue he can get! That means watching and reliving the memories from filming his reality show, The Family Crews. But it also means re-watching his old scripted television and movie roles before that. And it means watching himself in memes and GIFs that have come to populate the internet. Seriously! But Terry doesn’t even stop there. He makes his family watch him work, too!

Speaking to Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show one evening, Crews admitted that he forces his poor family to re-watch his appearance on Lip Sync Battle when he needs a pick-me-up. “I could not stop watching my own performance,” Crews bluntly admitted to the late-night host. “You know what I mean? I was like, ‘Y’all want to see ‘Lip Sync’ again?’ and my kids were like, ‘Aw man.’ I was like, ‘No, really, it’s good! Look at this part!’ My wife finally grabbed me like, ‘Give me the remote! I’m going to erase it off the DVR if you don’t stop.’” That’s a pretty funny story, but honestly… we think his wife had it right!^[3]

7 Samuel L. Jackson

Samuel L. Jackson isn’t one of those stars who hates to see themselves on the big screen. Rather, he seeks out the films he’s been in and likes to watch them over and over again. And not only that, but he likes to buy tickets to his movies for other people, too! Typically, Jackson buys $1,000 or more worth of tickets on the opening weekends of his films and then gives those tickets away to his church and other friends. He even prefers to watch his movies in theaters with real folks—and not just at premieres with other actors and Hollywood people—so that he can gauge the honest reaction of the public after the film.

“I watch them at home; I go to the theater,” Jackson explained in an interview on the Graham Norton Show once. “I know, when I have a movie that’s opening, it’s going to make at least $1,000 that weekend because I buy $1,000 worth of tickets. I give them to the church, or I give them to somebody, and their kids go.”

He also watches his movies at home when they pop up on television! He added this reveal to Norton, too: “If I’m sitting at home and if I’m channel surfing, there’s nothing else on, I go into the search engine and go, ‘Samuel Jackson.’ Boom. It’s the truth.” That’s a pretty wild revelation. But if we had Samuel L. Jackson’s acting talent, we might do the same thing!^[4]

6 Keanu Reeves

Of all the stars who enjoy watching their past films and productions, Keanu Reeves’s reasons for it are perhaps the most profound and sentimental. Rather than just watching the films to enjoy his own acting talents, Keanu looks back at old movies with one intention: to recall the memories and enjoyable times he had behind the scenes during production. He enjoys thinking back to where he was at that point in his life and what his world was like. And more often than not, the walk down memory lane gets him smiling again.

“Watching old films from the past, it kind of is, for me, like thinking about the memories of making it,” Reeves admitted in an interview once. “It’s kind of like a photo album, so it takes me back to the people that you worked with or the experiences of making it. And once in a while… especially with a certain amount of time between the performing of it and then watching it, you know, you can go, ‘Oh yeah, that movie was pretty good.” In our opinion, he’s been in a lot of movies that we can say that about!^[5]

5 Quentin Tarantino

Quentin Tarantino was once asked by radio shock jock legend Howard Stern to pick his favorite movie of his own that he ever made. And the legendary filmmaker didn’t hesitate to levy a surprising (or maybe not so surprising) choice on the radio DJ: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Tarantino may have picked pretty quickly. But just because that was his favorite of his own movies, it doesn’t mean that he’s one of those stars who doesn’t go back to watch his other films, either. In fact, Tarantino very regularly watches the movies that he’s made. He’s proud of them, and he enjoys them, and he wants to see how they come out on the big screen.

“I love them,” he told Stern. “I love my movies. I’m making them for me, everybody else is invited. Anytime my movies are on the TV, I’m like, ‘Oh hey! Now I’m watching Jackie Brown for a while.’ I’m very happy with my work.” Honestly, that’s probably how we would react, too, if we made movies. After all, what’s the point of doing all that work if you’re not going to enjoy the finished product, right? (And not to mention, but if YOU don’t enjoy your movie when it’s done… other people probably won’t, either!)^[6]

4 Ice Cube

Funny enough, Ice Cube watches all of his old movies—but he doesn’t want anybody to know it! Instead, it took actor Jonah Hill to call him out on it once before that fact bubbled up to the surface. According to Jonah, he was once on a flight with Ice Cube and their 21 Jump Street co-star Channing Tatum when the duo noticed that the rapper was watching one of his old films. They figured it out because they saw Ice Cube watching something and hysterically laughing. But for the longest time, they couldn’t figure out what he was laughing about! Until they finally walked by and saw that the gangster rap aficionado was tuned in to Friday and loving every minute of it!

“We walked by the computer screen, we walked by to go to the bathroom, we looked, and he’s watching Friday,” Hill admitted to Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show. “He was watching his own movie. He couldn’t get enough of it.” Jonah and Channing couldn’t get enough of it, either, and they found themselves laughing very hard at how much Ice Cube was laughing at his own past acting performance.^[7]

3 Jennifer Aniston

Jennifer Aniston starred in the sitcom Friends for a decade. And she came out of the show as perhaps the most well-known of its six main characters. She was so popular throughout the ’90s, in fact, that women started going to their hairstylists and asking for the “Jennifer Aniston” cut to look just like her! So it makes sense that she would want to relive her old glory days from time to time by watching past episodes of Friends. Every now and then, when an old episode comes up, she happily takes the time to watch it and think back to the memories she made while on set acting in it.

“I have to say that when I’m channel surfing, whenever I do watch television, which is not often, but if I land on it, I do stop and watch,” she shared during an interview a few years back. “Absolutely. It’s very nostalgic. It makes me laugh. It always made me laugh. When we were shooting it, we would laugh; we couldn’t get through it half the time. That was something great to be able to do for 10 years—just laugh.”

Then, in 2020, she put her money where her mouth was, as they say! During an interview with Variety, the longtime actress had a mini Friends reunion with former co-star Lisa Kudrow. The duo went onto YouTube to look for old episodes of their sitcom and watch a bunch of compilation clips that had been uploaded by fans. Truly feeling the nostalgia of their time in the spotlight and their run in primetime television—and carrying a lot of pride through it all!^[8]

2 John Boyega

John Boyega may have had the break of a lifetime when he got involved with the Star Wars franchise. And so it would make sense that he loves to rewatch the Star Wars films as often as he can—including the ones he’s been in! But it’s not exactly what you think. See, he’s not watching the movie to reminisce about his own performance. It’s more that he wants to see all the other scenes in the movie that he wasn’t around to film. He’s fascinated by how they came together and what the story looks like. So, when those movies hit theaters, he wants to be a part of the viewing experience!

“I’m not just interested in my performance because there’s a whole bunch of the film I actually don’t get to experience,” Boyega once said in an interview. “So, I like watching all of it. I like to see the visual effects come together and all that stuff. You judge yourself on the first watch, but I feel like the more and more you watch it… you get to experience it in a much more natural way.” Makes sense to us. There is a lot of a movie that actors don’t get to see if they are only asked to show up to film their own scenes!^[9]

1 Kaley Cuoco

Even though she hasn’t been on that show for years now, and even though it’s been more than two decades since it first premiered (time flies!), Kaley Cuoco still rewatches 8 Simple Rules on a regular basis. For her, it’s not only a show that she loves to watch because of the fond memories she has of filming it, though. There’s also the emotional side of things—namely, her time working with the late John Ritter early in the show’s run before his sudden and tragic passing. In that way, rewatching the show allows her to think back to her time with John and how much he lit up the set with his personality.

“Once in a while, if it is on in the background, yes,” Kaley admitted to Us Weekly about deciding to rewatch old episodes. And she does that on a very regular basis! “Once in a while, I peek at it, and it brings me a lot of fond memories. Especially when we do the Three’s Company episode. That is still something that gets me to this day.” We can only imagine what it’s like seeing the much-respected Ritter alive and well on screen in that sweet moment stuck in time. No doubt it makes her emotional every time she sees it!^[10]

Horror games are no stranger to controversy, but these ten games took it a little too far, each crossing boundaries that got them banned or pulled from shelves around the world. From dystopian drug-induced joy to psychologically twisted survival games, these entries aren’t just scary to play—people were scared of what they could do.

Whether it’s Hotel 626’s eerie phone calls in the dead of night or Manhunt’s brutal, unapologetic violence, each game serves as a dark reminder of how far games and the gamers behind them can go.

Related: 10 Bizarre Urban Legends That Are Related to Video Games

10 Hotel 626

Let’s start with Hotel 626, the absolutely legendary web-based game that disappeared from the internet. Hotel 626 was released on October 31st, 2008, by none other than the company we all know and love, Doritos. Yes, I said Doritos. And yes, it is a horror game.

They wanted to revive their two dead flavors: Black Pepper Jack and Jack and Smokin’ Cheddar BBQ. Unfortunately, this was not a game about Cheddar Cheetah hunting you down and trying to kill you for eating his Cheetos. Instead, it was about waking up in a hotel that you found out pretty quickly that you didn’t want to stay at. You could only actually play it between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. (though I’ve heard the stories of people changing the time on their clocks to play it), ensuring you had the perfect eerie backdrop of darkness when you played.

The game had a creepy, unique style that used videos and photos of real people instead of 3D avatars. Your only mission was to escape while being hunted by ghosts, demonic infants, and a psychotic hotel maid. Easy, right? Well, it was apparently really hard due to the puzzles, specifically the one where you’re locked in with a starved-to-the-point-of-insanity man who will eventually escape and eat you alive.

However, the thing that actually killed the game itself was its collection of personal information. The game used things to send shivers down the players’ spines. It asked for your phone number at the beginning of the game in order to call you with a pre-recorded message during the allotted hours in the middle of the night that told you that you were still in the hotel, which is absolutely… great, yeah.

The second is used within the game. There was one particular part where you had to run away from a chainsaw-wielding maniac by finding a photograph that showed your own face from your webcam (or the hotel lobby if your webcam was off). However, as you were looking for your own face, you saw tens of other faces in your desperate escape. These faces were not actors but pictures taken of people in their own bedrooms reacting to the chainsaw maniac following them. Now, the only problem is that Doritos never asked the player for permission to use their webcam and pictures. Yikes.

This led to a panic from the legal department side of Doritos, and critics and privacy advocates pointed out the potential risks of hackers. Doritos eventually pulled the website from the internet to avoid being sued. Thus, they weren’t actually banned, but most likely were going to be, and they pulled the plug on themselves.^[1]

9 We Happy Few

We Happy Few transports players to an alternate 1960s England, a place where the streets are tidy, the colors bright, and everyone is, without exception, blissfully cheerful—or so it seems. The only thing that seems to keep the place running is “Joy,” a happiness pill designed to keep citizens smiling while erasing any uncomfortable memories of the past and everything that makes you you. Those who decide to stop taking Joy are labeled “Downers,” outcasts who are hunted down by the smiling authorities for “rehabilitation.” The game’s take on happiness, controlled by the iron fist of a drugged-up dystopia, poses an uncomfortable question: What’s the price of happiness if it’s manufactured? Turns out, it’s not pretty.

The story begins with Arthur Hastings, one of three characters you can control throughout the game. He discovers an old newspaper clipping that jogs his memory of events before Joy, spurring him to go off the drug and start seeing the crumbling reality around him. The town of Wellington Wells is bright on the surface, but for those not dosed up on Joy, the illusion fades quickly into a grim picture of societal and physical decay. Citizens go about their days in a forced euphoria, with the Joy-enforcing “Bobbies” smiling widely while clubbing anyone who dares to so much as frown. As someone who just watched Smile 2, I have an all-too-good vision of what this would be like in real life, and I don’t like it.

However, We Happy Few was a bit too dark. The game faced a temporary ban in Australia, where authorities claimed that its depiction of Joy might encourage substance abuse, echoing real-life concerns about drug normalization. The controversy highlighted the game’s balance between satire and shock value, as critics argued that its portrayal of forced happiness struck too close to reality. Yet supporters countered that the game isn’t about glorifying drug use—it’s a cautionary tale about the dangers of a society that sacrifices authenticity for the sake of fake positivity.

The ban was eventually lifted, as predicted in 2019. Its portrayal of a world addicted to false happiness simply points to our current social pressures to “just be happy.” By forcing players to choose between following the crowd or holding onto reality, the game poses an unsettling thought: can happiness be real if we don’t have a choice? And maybe more hauntingly, are we already swallowing our own version of Joy?

You might be able to tell I love this game’s concept.^[2]

8 Phantasmagoria

Imagine booting up your computer and stepping into the surreal, eerie world of Phantasmagoria. The game was definitely intended to keep you awake for hours after playing—or falling asleep to nightmares. Set in a massive, creaking mansion on a fog-draped coast, the game drops you into the life of Adrienne Delaney, a writer hoping to escape distractions with her husband in tow. As the days wear on, it turns out this mansion has more inspiration than she bargained for.

Slowly, Adrienne uncovers the twisted history of its former owner, a magician who dabbled in dark arts that left a lasting impression—and maybe a few curses behind. So much for inspiration, right? One of the game’s groundbreaking features was its usage of full-motion video (FMV), meaning real actors were filmed to play each character, adding a bit of raw realism that made each horrifying scene even more terrifying. Yay!

As Adrienne’s husband descends under the mansion’s spell, he transforms from her loving husband into a twisted and maniacal stranger. Love does drive you crazy, after all. The use of live actors brought an unsettling authenticity that caused horror fans to flock to the game in droves. With each sequence more gruesome than the last, the line between virtual horror and real-life terror became disturbingly thin. This live footage is also what paved the way for Hotel 626 just a decade later, and it’s what I have to personally thank for making horror games better.

When Phantasmagoria was released in 1995, it was met with a mix of fascination and outrage. Its unfiltered scenes of violence, supernatural possession, and psychological abuse quickly earned it a reputation as one of the most controversial games of its time. Critics were quick to condemn it as “too explicit,” arguing that some scenes were simply beyond the boundaries of good taste.

The now-infamous “head-in-the-blender” moment alone redefined how far horror could go in gaming, with fans eagerly replaying scenes while some critics wondered if they’d accidentally wandered into a horror film set. Australia, once again, was less enthusiastic, banning the game outright for being “too dark.”

Apparently, they didn’t care much for the murder, possession, or the infamous “head-in-the-blender” moment, a scene that truly redefines “blending genres.” But despite the ban, or maybe because of it, Phantasmagoria endures as a darkly beloved cult classic, known for taking horror out of the shadows and into a player’s lap—often a bit more literally than anyone expected.^[3]

7 Rule of Rose

Beneath the facade of its orphanage setting, Rule of Rose is anything but kid-friendly. Jennifer, the game’s protagonist, quickly learns that she’s the latest “lucky” entrant into the twisted social structure run by a gang of children who call themselves the Red Crayon Aristocrats. But this isn’t playtime with jump ropes and hopscotch. Unless you’re okay with the squares being replaced by symbols of ritual sacrifice. The “games” involve strange sacrifices and crazy rituals that make Jennifer the unwilling star player. Eventually, you’ll question if you liked the kids in Lord of the Flies better.

Rule of Rose achieves its horror by leaving most of the terror to the imagination and by hinting at everything behind the scenes. It leads to the feeling of cult-like control and a social hierarchy gone awry. While other games might use zombies or monsters, here, it’s the children themselves who set the stage for horror, forcing Jennifer into disturbing tasks involving cages, mutilated dolls, and animal sacrifices.

Each ritual drags her deeper into their twisted little “games.” As she endures ritual after ritual, she slowly uncovers twisted truths about the children, each task dredging up memories from her own traumatic past. It’s dark psychological horror at its finest—or worst, depending on how you feel about repressed memories resurfacing in the form of creepy lullabies. While this game was definitely more so on the violent side than the sexual side, some journalists claimed that the game had violent erotic undertones with underage girls. This, of course, caused the critics to make an even bigger uproar about the game, even getting the mayor of Rome and the EU involved in its release.

But it was Italy this time, not Australia, that took the largest issue with it. Italians bantered about banning it, saying that “Every frame is dripping with perversion.” Politicians in the UK fueled outrage over content they hadn’t even seen, based on rumors and worst-case guesses. It was eventually released anyway, but only in small amounts, making it a rare and expensive find today. The mix of eerie children, cult-like rituals, and symbolic violence even made sure it stayed off the shelves in several places.^[4]

6 Manhunt

Manhunt is what happens when someone decides a horror game can never be too bleak or too brutal. You play as James Earl Cash, a death row inmate given a second chance—though “second chance” is a bit generous when you’re dropped into a live-action snuff film. Cash’s director and “savior” is a shadowy figure who’s orchestrating every bloody detail for his own twisted film. From the moment Cash steps out of that prison van, his only goal is to survive the night by creatively dispatching a series of gangs—groups like the Hoods and the Smileys, each a little more colorful than the last in their own murderous way.

The game’s “murder with style” approach quickly grabbed attention, with every kill graded on a scale from “quick and clean” to “horrifyingly elaborate.” Manhunt doesn’t just let you eliminate enemies; it challenges you to do it with… pizzazz. Weapons range from plastic bags to nail guns, each lending a different flavor to your executions. The Director encourages the most vicious kills, rewarding Cash with higher scores for each gruesome masterpiece as he sneaks, creeps, and bludgeons his way through each gang. Art school really has changed, eh?

It was immediately banned in New Zealand, labeled as “grossly offensive,” which is just another way of saying they’d prefer it never see daylight. Australia pulled its rating with lightning speed, and the UK took it off shelves briefly after a real-life murder was initially linked to the game—a claim that was later disproven. The game was so infamous that critics quickly raised questions about whether Manhunt was even a game or just an interactive horror film.^[5]

5 Hatred

Hatred is, in a word, unapologetic. The main character (he has no name) wakes up, stares into the mirror, and, instead of making affirmations or grabbing a coffee, decides it’s time to kill everyone in sight. You play as “The Antagonist,” a nihilistic anti-hero clad in a leather trench coat who’s basically the twin of Bleach’s Yhwach. His whole mission? Complete destruction of anyone and everyone.

This game doesn’t mince words—or actions. In Hatred, there are no redemptive story arcs and no world-saving quests. The entire thing is a sandbox game where the goal is simply to be as destructive as possible. And while most games are like, “Hey, maybe save the city,” Hatred is more like, “Here’s your assault rifle, and maybe don’t forget the grenade launcher.” Each level is a parade of carnage as you roam a town that might as well have a banner reading “Welcome, We’re All Targets.” In-game scores even reward you for increasing mayhem, turning every quiet street into the world’s darkest block party.

The backlash? Immediate and intense. It was temporarily pulled from Steam Greenlight after complaints that the game “promotes wanton violence,” a charge that developers shrugged off with a “Yes, exactly.” And while Grand Theft Auto might get flak for “glamorizing crime,” Hatred threw its hands up and said, “Forget glamour, let’s just go all in.”

The developers state that the purpose of the game was to eliminate all the “fake philosophical stuff” thrown into games to justify their violence. The result? An unapologetic, chaotic game full of violence and animalistic nature. The game was banned in several countries, including Germany and New Zealand, and was widely labeled as irredeemably violent.^[6]

4 Mariam

Originally developed in Saudi Arabia, Mariam caused a stir almost as soon as it hit the app store. The game follows a young girl named Mariam who’s “lost” and asks the player for help finding her way home. But what starts off as a seemingly innocent interaction turns creepy fast. While guiding Mariam, players are prompted with increasingly personal and invasive questions, starting by stating she can read your mind by talking about trending news stories and then ending with a casual “Where do you live?”.

The game escalates through these bizarre, unsettling questions that make you wonder if Mariam is more of a stalker than a lost child. As the game progresses, it becomes less about helping Mariam and more about surviving her situation, making players feel like they’re stepping into a horror-themed therapy session they never signed up for.

What really ramped up the unease was the game’s tendency to ask for players’ location access, sparking rumors about potential surveillance and data collection. Reports swirled that Mariam might actually be tracking players, with each spooky message hinting at a ghostly GPS service run by Big Brother. The game wasn’t actually gathering any data, but the game’s eerie atmosphere and unsettling questions led to privacy concerns among players and their parents. It wasn’t long before the app felt less like a game and more like an interactive urban legend, where players were helping a lost girl… and giving her far more information than anyone should share with a haunted app.

In Saudi Arabia, Mariam sparked controversy, with concerned parents accusing the game of influencing children in unhealthy ways. Some even claimed that it promoted self-harm, though no evidence surfaced to support these allegations. Given the outcry, authorities acted swiftly, banning the app and issuing warnings about its “psychological impact” on young players. Apparently, the horror game had done its job a little too well, blurring the line between suspenseful gameplay and digital intrusion.

Mariam remains a curiosity, with its unsettling gameplay and strange mechanics drawing to those with a taste for the mysterious. But it’s more than just a horror game—it’s a digital campfire story that dares you to play and then leaves you wondering if you should have. In the end, Mariam became as much an urban legend as it was an app, proving that sometimes the scariest thing of all is realizing you’ve willingly handed your location to a creepy, fictional child.^[7]

3 Postal 2

Postal 2 is the video game equivalent of a fever dream had by someone who watched too many action movies on fast-forward. The game follows “The POSTAL Dude,” a guy who’s just trying to get through his week with simple errands like picking up milk, cashing a paycheck, and returning a library book. Sounds mundane, right? Wrong. Postal 2 gives you the option to complete each task peacefully or… not-so-peacefully. And by “not-so-peacefully,” we’re talking about flamethrowers, a shovel with a wickedly sharp edge, and a lot of chaos.

Set in a small desert town, Postal 2 doesn’t just allow for violence—it practically rolls out the red carpet for it. Almost every NPC has a quick insult ready if you look at them the wrong way, and the town is filled with groups like rampaging protestors and angry fundamentalists. If you thought going to the bank was stressful, Postal 2 makes it feel like a gladiator match. And just when you think it couldn’t get more absurd, the game hands you a health pack in the form of—you guessed it—catnip, which also doubles as a silencer if you attach a cat to the barrel of your rifle. Yes, Postal 2 is that kind of game.

Obviously, the response was explosive. Postal 2 was banned outright in New Zealand, where authorities labeled it “grossly offensive”—again! They really like that terminology, am I right? Australia followed suit, refusing it on the grounds of excessive violence and animal cruelty. Even in the U.S., it found itself in hot water, particularly within the court system, which pointed to it as proof that video games were steering the youth down a dark path. For once, the game’s creators didn’t argue, proudly marketing it as the game that will give the dark side of your imagination free reign.^[8]

2 Demonophobia

This RPG-visual novel hybrid throws you into a nightmare designed to test your mental stamina (and maybe your sanity). You play as Sakuri Kunikai, a 14-year-old girl. Without a clue as to where she is, Sakuri quickly realizes she’s in a world where everything has just one goal: to make her time here as torturous as possible.

What sets Demonophobia apart is that it doesn’t let you just get through the horror; it demands you watch it unfold in painstaking, pixelated detail. As if the silent, soundtrack-free gameplay weren’t ominous enough, the game makes every mistake lead to a new, disturbing death scene. Each creature has its own gruesome “surprise” for Sakuri. These vary from decapitation to death by slime (which somehow manages to be even worse than it sounds).

The game’s design pushes you to experience each death scene with the kind of loving attention to detail that could only come from a developer with a deep appreciation for Ryona-style brutality and gore. You could say that Demonophobia doesn’t just want you to play it; it wants you to suffer along with it.

By the time you reach Stage 4, things really start to get… weird. Sakuri faces off against grotesque bosses like Asmodeus, and with every level, the game finds new ways to make the whole experience feel progressively twisted. Sakuri, who is still 14, by the way, can lose her clothes, get ambushed by slimy creatures, or face certain “fan-service” moments that are despicable and disgusting to watch. While the game was made in Japan with a lower age of consent, it unsurprisingly caused outrage outside of the country.

Many countries banned it outright, not just because of the VERY questionable erotic scenes with a minor, but also because of the gore and its unapologetic way it served up horrific scenes without any clear purpose beyond shock value. Critics questioned whether it was a game or just a collection of gruesome animations in disguise. Still, Demonophobia still has its loyal fans, mainly in Japan, who are drawn to its sadistic challenges and the dark thrill of surviving each level. For those who make it through, it’s less “I beat the game” and more “I survived it.”^[9]

1 Euphoria

Euphoria, the darkest entry on our list, is an 18+ interactive visual novel game that walks a razor-thin line between psychological horror and boundary-pushing content. It leaves players to navigate an intensely disturbing plot that only gets darker the deeper they go. Set in an isolated, sterile white room, the game begins with protagonist Keisuke Takatou and six other women, five of his classmates, and one teacher, waking up in captivity with no memory of how they got there.

An anonymous speaker leaves them with a disturbing objective: only through a series of twisted and degrading “games” will they survive and escape. Each “game” unlocks a door, forcing players to decide how far Keisuke—and themselves—are willing to go to escape this nightmare. It’s a horror of the mind, with each task chipping away at the characters’ sanity and, frankly, the player’s as well.

Instead of jump scares, Euphoria focuses on psychological torment, making the characters’ physical and mental suffering disturbingly vivid. Keisuke is told to rape and sexually torment all the girls, most of who are also underage, I’d like to point out again, in the room in order to escape. Throughout the game, it becomes clear that each scenario is part of a larger mystery involving Keisuke’s own dark impulses as he constantly battles with his desire to go too far. The storyline gradually reveals more about each character’s background. The game does offer multiple endings, ranging from bleak to (relatively) redemptive, depending on the player’s choices.

While Euphoria is classified as a mature X-rated game, its usage of underaged girls, once again in Japan, makes the entire game even more unsettling and disturbing to play. Euphoria’s extreme content drew criticism for both its disturbing and erotic subject matter and its graphic depictions of violence. Many critics argue that the game crosses the line that no game should go. In reviews, some players admit that Euphoria is like watching a car crash: gruesome, horrifying, but hard to look away from.^[10]

Celebs truly are just like us—in the sense that some of them have incredibly unique names! Just like plenty of people around the world, the parents of many celebrities found some very rare and notable inspirations for naming their unborn babies who would go on to be rich and famous. And these are some of their stories!

In this list, we’ll take a look at the tales of ten celebrities who were named after notable things, people, or places. All ten of these stars were unborn, of course, and at the mercy of their parents’ whims and tastes. But their names were memorable from the get-go based on the inspiration these parents had. And now, after having risen to fame, we all know these stars’ tales of how they got their monikers. Get ready for a strange one!

Related: 10 Of The Most Unflattering Nicknames Given To Royals

10 Rachel Zegler

Rachel Zegler may only be in her early 20s, but she’s already made a major impression on Hollywood. The actress won a Golden Globe for her work in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, and in 2023, she starred in Shazam. Maybe it makes sense that she’s spending her life working successfully in front of the camera, though. Because the reason she was named “Rachel” in the first place all came down to her mother being a big fan of television! That’s right: Rachel Zegler is actually named after Rachel Green, the iconic character played by Jennifer Aniston on the long-running television sitcom Friends.

“That is a real fact, and nobody ever believes me,” Zegler told Jimmy Fallon during an appearance on The Tonight Show in November of 2023. “They think there’s no way I’m young enough to be named after Friends, but I am.”^[1]

9 Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift may be the biggest pop star on the planet right now, but she was actually named for an even bigger star who shone brightly long before her birth: James Taylor! Swift’s parents were big fans of James Taylor’s music, and so when they had their daughter in 1989, they decided to name her after the folk-singing sensation.

Years later, in 2015, James Taylor reminisced about how he came to learn that fact. And he was very honored by it! “It’s hugely flattering and was a delightful surprise when she told me that,” James said to the outlet Stereogum that year. “We did a benefit together… before Taylor really took off. But she was playing guitar and singing her songs, and I knew how remarkable she was. She told me that her mom and dad had been really, deeply into my music, and I got a real kick out of the fact that she’d been named after me. Obviously, it wasn’t her choice. It was her mom and dad, but nonetheless, a great connection, I think.”^[2]

8 Selena Gomez

Late in 2020, pop star Selena Gomez popped up on her Instagram account and confirmed to fans that she had been watching the then-popular Netflix series about the late Tejano singer Selena Quintanilla. The first Selena, as she was, took the American Southwest by storm and crossed cultural boundaries with both American and Mexican fans before she was tragically murdered by the director of her own fan club in Corpus Christi, Texas, in 1995. But as it turns out, this second Selena was named in a way to honor the first!

“I wanted to check in and say ‘hi’ and that I have been binge-watching the Selena series on Netflix. It’s so good,” Gomez wrote about the late superstar Quintanilla in her Instagram Story in December of 2020. “She’s such an inspiration. I was named after her, and it’s unbelievable.” It’s pretty amazing to think that a future pop singer would be named after another Latina star, but that’s how it turned out. What are the chances?!^[3]

7 Dax Shepard

Dax Shepard rose to fame on the back of pal Ashton Kutcher when the two did the iconic MTV show Punk’d together in the 2000s. Since then, Dax has taken on a number of film roles in various projects, including a memorable turn in Idiocracy. More recently, his “Armchair Expert” podcast has become one of the more popular audio shows to be streamed, and he interviews all kinds of interesting celebrity guests about all sorts of quirky and fascinating things. But he was destined for fame even before birth—because his parents were already thinking uniquely!

According to Dax’s wife, Kristen Bell, who spoke to People Magazine about her beloved husband a few years back, he was named after the protagonist in author Harold Robbins’ 1966 novel The Adventurers. Kristen went so far as to track down an original copy of that book for one of Dax’s birthdays, too. And then she had family members and friends write messages of love for the star in the book! What a way to honor one’s namesake and recall the inspiration with which his parents picked out his name. Very sweet!^[4]

6 Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey may be a household name by now and one of the most famous women to ever see her star rise on television, but things didn’t start out that way. In fact, her actual name isn’t even Oprah; it’s actually Orpah! (Notice the alternate spelling—it’s easy to miss!) As the story goes, Oprah was named after Orpah, which is a character in the Bible in the 14th verse of the first chapter of Ruth. Basically, the future TV star-to-be’s aunt Ida named her like that. But then, nobody else in the family could pronounce “Orpah” the right way, and the name quickly reverted to what we know today!

“Originally, I was named from the Bible by Aunt Ida who named me from Ruth, the first chapter at the 14th verse: Orpah,” Winfrey explained in 1983 during the audition tape that would end up earning her a turn on her first-ever morning show in Chicago. “But no one knew how to spell in my home, and that’s why it ended up being Oprah.” It’s funny how fate can be changed on a dime like that, isn’t it? We almost had Orpah Winfrey, but instead, Oprah is one of the most recognized names in all of entertainment media!^[5]

5 Leonardo DiCaprio

Leonardo DiCaprio was still in the womb when his artistically inclined mother decided on what to name him. He’s got an Italian last name, of course, so that was a natural move to give him an Italian-inspired first name, too. But that’s not the exact impetus for calling the child Leonardo. What actually happened is that his mom was at a museum in Italy while she was pregnant with then-unborn Leo. She just so happened to be standing in front of a painting produced by the legendary Leonardo da Vinci when BAM! She felt her unborn son kicking in her belly for the very first time.

DiCaprio’s mom took it as a sign that she ought to name the baby after the iconic painter, and so she did. A few months later, Leonardo DiCaprio was born and entered the world with quite a high-end namesake. Of course, we’d say that the Titanic star did pretty well for himself in carrying on the name from there. But it’s definitely funny and unique to learn that he was named after the painter following such a memorable kicking experience in the hallowed halls of a museum that housed da Vinci’s works!^[6]

4 Ciara

In 2016, the R&B singer Ciara became the face of Revlon cosmetics and fragrances. She was officially named a global ambassador for the company that year, and she was extremely happy about it. But it wasn’t just because she’d inked a big deal with a world-famous brand; it was because she was actually named after a Revlon product by her astute parents when she was still in the womb!

“I’ve been a fan of the iconic Revlon brand my entire life,” football star Russell Wilson’s wife touted in a press release celebrating her move to become Revlon’s global brand ambassador. “In fact, my name comes from the Revlon Ciara fragrance. It was a gift given to my mother from my father, and she fell in love with the scent and the name. It’s incredible to think that after all those years, I would be joining the Revlon family as the newest Global Brand Ambassador.” Amazing to think about how that came full circle, isn’t it? From being named after a fragrance by her mother to several decades later becoming the celebrity that the world associates with the brand!^[7]

3 Lil Nas X

Lil Nas X completely took the entire world by storm when his song “Old Town Road” alongside Billy Ray Cyrus debuted and shot to viral fame. And while he hasn’t been quite able to repeat that success with subsequent music, he has made headlines for plenty of other things. For one, he came out as gay after the song got big, breaking down barriers in the worlds of both hip-hop and country music. But there are even more interesting stories beyond that, too—like how he’s named after a Mitsubishi!

Lil Nas X’s given name is Montero Lamar Hill. When he was born in 1999 in Georgia, his mother was apparently really impressed with the Mitsubishi Montero. She didn’t have one at the time, but she badly wanted the SUV for herself. So she willed it into existence by deciding to name her son after the car model! “It’s slightly embarrassing, but [I’m] not embarrassed,” Lil Nas X explained on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon back in 2021. “So my mom wanted the car, the Montero, and she never got one. It’s a Mitsubishi, so ya, I’m named after a car.”^[8]

2 Winona Ryder

Before Winona Ryder was born, her father and her pregnant mother were passing through rural Minnesota. At one point, they stopped in the tiny town of Winona—which today has a population of just 25,000 people and was even smaller back then. As they were there, Ryder’s mom bent down to pick up a pamphlet about the town that was inside a laundromat where they had been washing some clothes. All of a sudden, her water broke, and she went into labor! They rushed to the hospital, and Winona was born a happy and healthy girl. But they were so amazed at the sudden birth in the tiny town that they decided to honor the village in the only way they knew how: by naming their daughter after it!

“[My mom] bent over to pick up this pamphlet with a girl on the cover, which said The Legend of Winona, and she went into labor,” Winona told Vogue Magazine years later. “I was supposed to be named Laura!” Sure, while Laura Ryder may not have a bad ring to it, the name Winona is unique and beautiful. Seems to us like her parents inadvertently picked a winner with that one!^[9]

1 Jane Fonda

Jane Fonda was named after one of the most famous women to ever live: Jane Seymour, one of the wives of the long-dead King Henry VIII. In fact, Fonda is even distantly related to Jane Seymour, so the name makes some sense in that regard. Fonda revealed as much to late-night television host Jimmy Kimmel when she went on his show in 2015. Her full name is actually Jane Seymour Fonda, and the “Seymour” in her middle name is also a nod to the famous ancient wife who was murdered by her rampaging royal husband!

“She was one of the wives of Henry VIII, and we were related to her, which is how come the ‘Seymour’ appears,” Fonda explained to Kimmel during their interview. When she was a kid, it even went so far that everybody in her life called her “Lady Jane” as opposed to only knowing her by her first name. Now, that’s truly the royal treatment! But as it turned out, Jane flipped that script to become something of a modern-day royal herself—at least as far as Hollywood is concerned!^[10]

In the cutthroat world of big business, even the mightiest companies can stumble—and when they do, the results can be spectacularly costly. These aren’t just minor errors; they’re monumental blunders that incinerate billions of dollars, turning what seemed like brilliant strategies into legendary failures.

In this list, we’ll explore ten of the most staggering examples of companies that set cash on fire. These stories aren’t just about financial losses—they’re about the hubris, miscalculations, and unforeseen challenges that can derail even the best-laid plans. As you read, you’ll see how quickly things can go wrong when billions are on the line and how these colossal mistakes are powerful lessons in the unforgiving arena of global business.

Related: 10 Legitimate Business Industries That Seem Like Scams

10 Gateway’s Rapid Expansion

Gateway Inc., once a household name in the personal computer industry, offers a classic example of how rapid growth can spiral into a costly mistake. Founded in 1985, Gateway quickly captured the market’s attention, with sales skyrocketing to over $1.1 billion by 1992 and revenue peaking at $6.29 billion in 1997. But in its race to grow, Gateway stumbled. The company’s aggressive expansion led to sprawling manufacturing facilities and a bloated executive team, all while quality control took a backseat.

As Gateway continued to push for growth, the cracks became impossible to ignore. Shipping delays, poorly assembled products, and frustrated customers began to tarnish its reputation. Adding to its troubles, Gateway’s misguided attempt to break into the consumer electronics market only stretched its resources thinner, leaving the company vulnerable as rivals like Dell and HP capitalized on the booming laptop market.

In a desperate bid to stay afloat, Gateway acquired eMachines in 2004, but by then, the damage was done. The company was sold to Acer in 2007 for a fraction of its former glory. Gateway’s story is a powerful reminder of how unchecked growth and strategic missteps can turn success into a financial disaster.^[1]

9 Xerox’s Squandered Opportunity

Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) was a cradle of innovation, developing groundbreaking technologies like the graphical user interface (GUI) and the computer mouse. These inventions had the potential to revolutionize the tech industry and could have positioned Xerox as a leader in personal computing. However, despite having a goldmine of ideas, Xerox failed to turn these innovations into commercial successes, effectively letting billions slip away.

The disconnect between PARC and Xerox’s headquarters in New York—roughly 2,500 miles (4,023 kilometers) away—played a significant role in this missed opportunity. While the engineers at PARC were pushing the boundaries of technology, Xerox’s leadership was deeply rooted in their core photocopier business. This gap in focus and vision prevented Xerox from seeing how these innovations could be the future of computing.

In the end, companies like Apple capitalized on the technologies Xerox pioneered. Steve Jobs famously recognized the potential of the GUI and incorporated it into the first Macintosh, a move that helped shape the future of personal computing. Xerox’s failure to execute on its own innovations stands as one of the most significant billion-dollar blunders in tech history—a cautionary tale of how even the best ideas can fall flat without the right strategy and vision.^[2]

8 Iridium: From $5 Billion Blunder to Surprising Salvation

Iridium’s tale is one of colossal ambition, monumental failure, and an unexpected second chance. Launched by Motorola in the 1980s, the $5 billion Iridium satellite network was supposed to revolutionize global communications with its 66 low-Earth-orbit satellites. But by the time it debuted in 1998, the technology was already outdated. The phones were bulky, the call rates sky-high, and the timing couldn’t have been worse. Iridium quickly became a textbook example of a billion-dollar blunder, leading to its bankruptcy in 1999.

Just as Iridium was about to be scrapped, aviation executive Dan Colussy saw an opportunity where others saw only failure. With a little help from the Pentagon, which recognized Iridium’s unique value for military use, Colussy bought the entire system for just $25 million. Instead of letting it crash back to Earth, he repositioned Iridium as a niche service for remote and military communications, turning what was nearly a total loss into a strategic win.

Iridium’s revival is a rare case of a billion-dollar mistake being salvaged and repurposed. What started as an enormous financial misstep ended up becoming a valuable tool for specialized markets, proving that even the biggest blunders can sometimes be saved with the right vision and a bit of luck.^[3]

7 Zynga’s $200 Million Misfire

In 2012, Zynga made a splash by acquiring OMGPOP, the creators of the hit game Draw Something, for $200 million. At the time, Draw Something was the talk of the town, and Zynga saw it as a perfect addition to its gaming portfolio. But the timing couldn’t have been worse. By the time the deal closed, the game’s popularity was already declining, turning what seemed like a brilliant move into a costly misfire.

The acquisition quickly ran into trouble. Cultural clashes between Zynga and OMGPOP created internal friction, and what should have been a smooth integration became a struggle. Less than a year after the acquisition, Zynga shut down OMGPOP, laying off most of the staff and closing the New York office. While Zynga retained some assets and intellectual property, the deal ultimately failed to deliver the expected returns.

Zynga’s experience with OMGPOP is a cautionary tale of how even well-intentioned acquisitions can go wrong if the timing and execution are off. The $200 million gamble didn’t pay off, highlighting the risks involved in chasing the next big thing in the fast-moving tech world.^[4]

6 Microsoft’s $1 Billion Kin Catastrophe

In 2010, Microsoft launched the Kin One and Kin Two, two phones that were supposed to redefine social media for teens. Billed as “the next generation of social phones,” the Kin was meant to capture a new market segment. But just six weeks after hitting the shelves, Microsoft pulled the plug, marking one of the biggest and quickest flops in cell phone history. The Kin ended up costing Microsoft nearly $1 billion, making it a textbook case of setting cash on fire.

The Kin’s downfall was a mix of bad timing, internal power struggles, and strategic missteps. Originally part of “Project Pink,” the Kin phones were supposed to run on a unique operating system. However, after internal conflicts, Microsoft forced a version of the Windows Phone OS onto the devices, leading to delays and a final product that didn’t impress. Add to that a confusing pricing model and lackluster features, and it’s no wonder the Kin failed to find its audience.

Microsoft’s Kin debacle wasn’t just a financial disaster—it also led to the departure of key executives and tarnished the company’s reputation in the mobile market. It’s a stark reminder that even a tech giant can burn through a billion dollars in the blink of an eye if the execution isn’t right.^[5]

5 Groupon’s $6 Billion Blown Deal

In 2010, Groupon had the chance to make tech history by accepting a $6 billion offer from Google. But in a move that left many stunned, founder Andrew Mason turned it down, convinced that Groupon had even greater potential on its own. At the time, the daily deals site was riding high, and Mason’s decision seemed like a bold bet on the future. However, what looked like confidence soon turned into one of the biggest billion-dollar blunders in tech.

As competitors crowded into the daily deals space and the initial excitement around Groupon faded, the company struggled to maintain its momentum. The market was saturated with similar services, and Groupon’s growth began to stall. Meanwhile, the $6 billion offer from Google became a what-if scenario that haunted the company as its stock value plummeted and its early promise dwindled.

Rejecting Google’s offer, which could have been a financial windfall, ended up costing Groupon dearly. Instead of capitalizing on the moment, the company’s refusal to sell marked the beginning of its decline. It’s a stark reminder that sometimes the biggest mistake isn’t the deal you make—it’s the one you walk away from.^[6]

4 Webvan’s $800 Million Slip Up

In the late 1990s, Webvan set out to revolutionize grocery shopping with its bold vision of home delivery. Backed by a staggering $800 million in capital, the company was determined to bring groceries straight to your door. But instead of becoming the next big thing, Webvan went down in flames, becoming one of the most infamous disasters of the dot-com bubble. This billion-dollar blunder resulted from a perfect storm of poor decisions and misguided ambition.

Webvan’s first mistake was trying to be everything to everyone. They targeted a mass-market audience with premium services, hoping to outprice competitors like Safeway while offering Whole Foods-level quality. But that strategy attracted price-sensitive customers who weren’t willing to pay for the luxury. Next, Webvan sunk millions into building a complex, high-tech infrastructure from scratch—distribution centers, conveyor belts, delivery algorithms—you name it. It all sounded impressive, but it was a money pit that never paid off.

The final nail in the coffin was Webvan’s rapid, reckless expansion. Before they had even figured out how to make it work in their own backyard, they were rolling out in cities across the country, burning through cash faster than they could make it. By 2001, the dream was dead, and Webvan was bankrupt, its assets being sold for pennies on the dollar. Webvan’s story is a classic example of how to set $800 million on fire—one bad decision at a time.^[7]

3 LeEco’s Billion-Dollar Gamble

LeEco, the Chinese tech giant, once set its sights on outshining Netflix, Tesla, and Apple. Under the ambitious leadership of founder Jia Yueting, the company aggressively expanded into streaming services, smartphones, electric cars, and smart TVs. With billions of dollars at its disposal, LeEco appeared poised to dominate the global market. But instead of building a tech empire, it found itself engulfed in financial chaos, burning through billions in what became a textbook case of overreach.

LeEco’s downfall wasn’t just about overambition—it was a perfect storm of poor planning, increased competition, and regulatory hurdles. The company spread itself too thin, investing heavily in various sectors without securing a solid financial foundation. Despite the bold vision, LeEco’s financial house of cards quickly collapsed. By 2017, the company faced massive layoffs, plummeting stock prices, and creditors demanding payment, leaving its grand dreams in ashes.

LeEco’s billion-dollar blunder serves as a stark reminder that even with deep pockets, unchecked ambition without a clear strategy can lead to spectacular failure.^[8]

2 Daimler-Benz’s $36 Billion Misstep with Chrysler

In 1998, Daimler-Benz made headlines by acquiring Chrysler for a staggering $36 billion, aiming to create an automotive giant that could rival the world’s best. But what was supposed to be a match made in corporate heaven quickly unraveled into one of the most notorious billion-dollar blunders. The two companies were as different as oil and water—Daimler-Benz, a symbol of German luxury, and Chrysler, a scrappy American carmaker known for its affordable vehicles. The cultural and operational chasm between the two was too vast to bridge, leading to a merger that never found its footing.

Instead of realizing the anticipated synergies, the merger became a textbook case of corporate incompatibility. Daimler-Benz was reluctant to integrate its premium components with Chrysler’s more budget-conscious offerings, fearing it would tarnish the Mercedes-Benz brand. Meanwhile, Chrysler struggled with its own issues, including rising costs and declining demand, which only deepened the financial woes of the union.

By 2007, the once-celebrated merger had deteriorated so badly that Daimler was forced to offload Chrysler for less than $5 billion, a fraction of the original purchase price. What was intended to be a bold step towards global domination ended up as a costly lesson in the perils of mismatched corporate marriages.^[9]

1 Microsoft’s High-Stakes AI Investment

In a bold move, Microsoft poured $19 billion into artificial intelligence within just three months, with much of that going toward building and leasing data centers. This massive investment highlights the company’s commitment to leading the AI revolution. However, the financial return on this gamble remains uncertain, and the lack of immediate, significant revenue has some investors questioning the strategy.

Microsoft’s leadership has been upfront about the challenges, emphasizing that AI is a long-term play rather than a quick win. While they remain confident in the transformative potential of AI, the sheer scale of the investment has raised concerns about whether the company can maintain investor confidence in the interim. Despite these concerns, Microsoft’s broader AI strategy, which includes various investments and acquisitions, continues to be a central focus for the tech giant.

Only time will tell if Microsoft’s ambitious AI bet will reshape the industry or serve as a reminder of the risks inherent in such large-scale investments.^[10]

Sometimes, the best ideas are those we didn’t even know we had. A stroke of luck can lead to the purest and most profound genius. An accidental uncovering of a new food, invention, idea, or product can become a world-changing moment. Even if it’s one we didn’t realize at the time!

So many great things have been invented after painstaking research, development, trial, and error. But so many more great things have been created entirely by mistake! In this list, we’ll take a look at ten tales of the latter. These ten things were produced in error if you can believe it. It was only after the mistake was realized and observed by their creators that they knew they’d stumbled upon something pretty good. May we all have this kind of good serendipitous fortune!

Related: Ten Offbeat “Hit-or-Miss” Inventions

10 Cheeseburgers

We all love cheeseburgers, don’t we? That juicy beef patty, those tasty buns, the deliciously fresh toppings, and, of course, the cheese that melts onto the meat as it sits there, making your mouth water. Well, you can thank the mistake of a lifetime for that cheese! As the story goes, a young man named Lionel Clark Sternberger invented the cheeseburger in Pasadena, California.

Sweet, young Lionel was working at his dad’s restaurant in the California city as a short-order cook one day in 1924. He was flipping burgers for a customer’s order one afternoon when he accidentally left one on the grill too long. The patty became burnt. But Lionel, not wanting to waste an otherwise perfectly good slab of beef, opted to throw a slice of cheese on top to conceal the burn. And it worked!

The customer loved the new concoction so much that he begged Lionel to keep making it. Eventually, the restaurant put it on the menu. They even had a funny name for it, terming the concoction the “Aristocratic Burger: the Original Hamburger with Cheese.” Lionel was just 16 years old at the time, but he was quickly recognized as the inventor of the cheeseburger. Of course, it would become an American staple food in the decades after that. And it all started after a grill error!^[1]

9 Jason’s Hockey Mask

Jason Voorhees’s hockey mask in Friday the 13th is so iconic that it has transcended the movie series. By now, it has become a much larger part of horror movie culture, Halloween culture, and just general Americana. But the whole thing almost never happened! In fact, putting the actor Richard Brooker in a hockey mask in the first place was entirely an off-the-cuff idea that was done simply to save money!

While the production team was filming Friday the 13th Part 3, director Steve Miner needed to do a lighting check on Brooker in a certain spot before filming a scene. The only problem was that nobody on set wanted to do all the work of putting together Brooker’s face prosthesis and grotesque makeup just for a quick two-second lighting check. So, instead, the crew opted to take the easy way out and make Brooker wear a hockey mask for the lighting check.

The film’s 3-D supervisor just so happened to have one and offered it to the production for use. They put it on Brooker, he stood for the lighting check, and Miner absolutely loved how it came across on camera. And thus, totally by accident, the hockey mask horror icon was created! The world would have never seen it had it not been for some lazy film crew members dragging their feet during the production. So it seems that sometimes, laziness really can pay off! You hear that, Mom?^[2]

8 Nachos

It may stun you to learn that nachos were entirely discovered by mistake. After an improvisation came up with this new Mexican food, the whole thing quickly blew up. And now, we have nachos everywhere! And for good reason—they are tasty as hell!

So in the early 20th century, there was a man named Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya. He was the maitre d’ at a restaurant called the Victory Club in the border town of Piedras Negras, Mexico. There, military members at nearby Fort Duncan Army Base often crossed the border with their wives and families to enjoy meals in Mexico. One day, a group of nearly a dozen military wives crossed the border without their husbands. They knew Nacho was a talented and capable manager at the Victory Club, and they wanted to push him a little bit. So they asked him to come up with a new dish that they hadn’t yet tried.

Nacho was stumped for a minute—until he decided to make up a plate of tostadas and cover them with grated cheese. Then, he passed it through a broiling unit to heat the whole thing to a crisp. When that was done, he topped it with jalapenos to give the women a little bit of a spicy kick. And just like that, nachos were born! And yes, they took their name after Anaya’s nickname. That part is only fitting. Gotta give the man some credit for creating one of the tastiest foods out there!^[3]

7 Luca Brasi

While The Godfather was being filmed, director Francis Ford Coppola ran into a bit of a problem. One scene called for a character named Luca Brasi to show up. Brasi was to be a mob enforcer working for the legendary Don Corleone. And Coppola needed a really, really intimidating guy to play Brasi. But what ended up happening wasn’t on anybody’s radar—because the real mob enforcer they got to play Brasi ended up bumbling his lines for a totally unforeseen reason!

To play Luca Brasi on screen, Coppola hired a man named Lenny Montana. Now, Lenny was a real-life mob enforcer. He was as tough as they come and had seen and done some, uh, less than above-board things during his life in the mafia. But when it came time to appear on screen alongside Marlon Brando, Lenny fumbled all his lines. Now, you might assume that he stumbled over his lines because the script called for his character to be intimidated by Brando’s Don Corleone. But that’s not the case!

In reality, Lenny was absolutely starstruck that he was in the same room as a legend like Brando. The real-life, tough-guy mob enforcer was so overcome with the power of Brando’s celebrity that he nearly couldn’t remember any of his lines. He stumbled and faltered as the scene was being filmed simply because he was such a fan of Brando. But when Coppola went back to look at the tape, the stumble worked! The line flubs and mistakes turned out to be the perfect thing at the perfect time for the movie. Now THAT is true serendipity!^[4]

6 Ms. Pac-Man

In 1982, two MIT students decided to create a fun and interactive game called Crazy Otto. But instead of building out the whole thing from scratch, they went the easy route: they hacked into a Pac-Man machine and modified it. Once inside the machine and tinkering around with its inner workings, they began to perfect their Crazy Otto creation. And it was a hit! Well, at least among their close friends, who all enjoyed playing the game on a small level. But the duo didn’t think to commercialize the thing, knowing they’d pilfered Pac-Man’s intellectual property to make Crazy Otto in the first place.

Then, a stroke of luck followed their stroke of genius. It wasn’t long before Midway Games learned that the two students had hacked into Pac-Man and changed the game. And instead of going forth with a lawsuit or asking the pair to knock it off, they bought them out! Midway liked the hacked creation so much that they bought it from the college kids. In turn, they replaced Otto with a female Pac-Man and gave her a bow to wear. And thus, thanks to the unforeseen decision by two young men to hack a Pac-Man machine, Ms. Pac-Man was created. How lucky!^[5]

5 Star Trek’s Transporters

The transporters that popped up in Star Trek are such a cool idea. And one that we hope would one day be possible (far, far) into the future! But they didn’t come around on the television show for any real reason other than, well, they were cheap to film! Initially, producers wanted their characters to take shuttles to various places where they were going. Or alternatively, they could land their ship at whatever location it called for in the script. But that would have meant lots of expensive filming of various scenes in various places. And a ton of hassle in assembling actors and props for very short shots.

So, instead, the transporters came into being! It was an accidental thought the production team was having one day when they decided that a simple transporter making a human disappear in one spot and reappear in another would solve all their problems! Obviously, there would be no budget issues from that move. And they could produce the whole thing on camera with very little need for special effects. Then, when they started doing it, the transporter move became a huge success with fans! That was sort of an unintended consequence, too, but producers were certainly happy about it.^[6]

4 I’m Walking Here!

In the legendary movie Midnight Cowboy, actor Jon Voight plays Joe Buck—a small-town Texas native who goes to New York City. While in the Big Apple, he then gets scammed by Ratso, who was a disabled con man played so memorably by Dustin Hoffman. Much of the movie is about the chaos and uncertainty of life in New York City. But since the filmmakers didn’t have permits to shoot out on the streets of the massive metropolis, they had to improvise. And that’s how they got one of the best lines in movie history—totally by accident!

The line, of course, is “I’m walking here!” Hoffman was the one who yelled it out after a taxi cab nearly ran them over. And since the filmmakers didn’t have permits, and the scene had to be shot on a hidden camera, that was a real taxi cab—not an actor driving a car on a set!

What really happened was that Hoffman was walking across the street just to get a general shot of him moving for a scene. But unexpectedly, a cab crossed his path as he had the walk signal. The car almost ran him over. So, completely off the cuff and without going to the script, Hoffman ad-libbed the line. The producers loved it so much that they kept it in the final cut of the movie. And now it’s legendary!^[7]

3 The Incredible Hulk

The Incredible Hulk was originally supposed to be gray. When he first popped up in a May 1962 comic, the character was intended to be a pretty basic shade of gray. That was on purpose so that his color wouldn’t offend any one particular ethnic group. But the Marvel printers were acting up when it came time to print out that first comic book because the Incredible Hulk turned into a strange and different shade of gray on every single page! Printers hated how he changed color on each page, and the Marvel folks weren’t that thrilled, either. But there was nothing to do!

Until the next issue was released, that is. In the second issue detailing the Hulk’s activities, Marvel designers changed his color from the original gray to a deep, pleasing green. Thankfully, the printer was able to handle the green. And nobody really noticed that the Hulk had been gray in the first issue. They just took the story in stride with his green skin and let it be. Until now, that is as people have looked back to see how the Hulk didn’t originally begin as the green hero we know him as today. But to think the iconic green only ever came around due to a printing error! Could you imagine him now had he stayed gray this whole time?^[8]

2 Corn Flakes

The popular breakfast cereal Corn Flakes was created from a wheat-based dough that had been accidentally left out for an extended period of time. Will Kellogg, who was working on a health resort and lifestyle project (more on that in a minute) at the time, figured out that the fermenting done by the dough had caused it to become somewhat moldy. In a stroke of genius, while trying to salvage whatever food he could from that mishap, he rolled the moldy dough into thin sheets. Then, he baked the sheets. The fermentation and the high baking temperatures combined to create the first-ever batch of thin, crispy Corn Flakes that so many millions of people love to eat today. Crazy, right? What a fortunate mistake!

And yet, that’s only half the story, if you can believe it. As we mentioned, Kellogg was working on an entire lifestyle program as part of a retreat he was running at the time. One of his specific goals with the retreat was that he wanted people to masturbate less. Yes, you read that sentence correctly. Kellogg was a dietitian by trade, but he was very notably an anti-masturbation activist in his life. So he wanted to develop bland foods that would not “excite the passions,” as he was fond of saying. Thus, when the mistake that created Corn Flakes popped up, he made the most of it. And now, whenever you eat Corn Flakes from here on out, you can think of Will Kellogg’s dislike of self-pleasure.^[9]

1 Chocolate Chip Cookies

The chocolate chip cookie was invented by accident nearly 100 years ago. Ruth Wakefield was a New England woman who owned a place called the Tollhouse Inn. She loved baking cookies for weary travelers staying at her cozy little hotel. The only problem was that one day, she found out she was out of baker’s chocolate when it came time to throw a batch into the oven. Undaunted, she decided to substitute sweetened chocolate in its place to see what would happen. She broke the chocolate into small chunks, added it to the cookie dough, and put it all into the oven to bake.

Naturally, she expected the chocolate to melt and create the mainstay chocolate cookies for which she was already so regionally famous. But that’s not what happened! The sweetened chocolate kept its form within the cookies. The surprising result was a huge hit with travelers who came through the inn that day—and for many days after. Eventually, sweet old Mrs. Wakefield sold the accidental recipe (and the Tollhouse brand name, which became Toll House) to Nestle for just $1. Oh, and they also gave her a lifetime supply of chocolate. That’s nice!^[10]

The lore surrounding leprechauns may have originated in Ireland. Still, whenever March rolls around in the United States, there seem to be little redheaded men wearing green all over the place. St. Patrick’s Day is obviously a huge holiday—and a big excuse to party—for many Americans. And it’s the one day every year when you absolutely must wear something green, lest you get pinched by everyone around you!

Between that and other leprechaun lore, including symbols of good luck and pots of gold at the end of the rainbow, leprechauns seem to be all over the place. They’ve been portrayed in television and movies, they wind up on the front of cereal boxes, and they are both lampooned and honored in a variety of ways by Irish-American descendants—and, more recently, their counterparts from pretty much every background.

But the story of leprechauns actually goes back way further than a springtime holiday, and it has far more interesting aspects to it than you ever realized. In this list, we’ll take a long look at ten fascinating facts about leprechauns. These were things you likely never knew about the myths surrounding these little guys, their origins, their history, and their legacy. Are you feelin’ lucky enough to read on?

Related: Top 10 Strange and Eerie Mysteries in Ireland

10 Leprechauns Settled Ireland?

According to legend, leprechauns were actually in Ireland long before the arrival of humans from the rest of the British Isles and elsewhere. See, leprechauns are not people like we are; instead, they are said to be fairies. These fairies are unique in their biological makeup and temperament, and they didn’t migrate to Ireland ages ago like humans did.

As the legend does, they supposedly originated from a family of what is called “Tuatha Dé Danann.” This family was composed of magical beings that existed to serve the goddess Danu. That goddess was a well-known Gaelic spirit who lorded over the land.

The leprechauns were created and then thrived in order to do her bidding, protect her land, and see after her assets and legacy on Earth. As such, they originated in Ireland far before people got to the island. When humans finally did discover the land and make a move to settle it, they were supposedly confronted by a group of leprechauns who had been there already, working hard at doing Danu’s bidding.

From the very start, then, leprechauns had more than just a whimsical aspect about them. They had the goddesses’ backing, and they had first rights to the region that would become known as Ireland!^[1]

9 Carlingford’s Leprechaun Evidence

In 1989, an Irish businessman claimed that he found rock-solid evidence of the presence of leprechauns. The evidence came after he’d heard a scream from deep down inside a wishing well, he asserted. When he went to investigate the source of the scream, he supposedly found gold coins, a tiny suit, and some bones—remnants of some very tiny creature that had perished down in the well.

Shocked, he quickly realized that the combination of that evidence could only point to one thing: the sure-fire presence of leprechauns! And like any good fairy hunter, he preserved the evidence he did find in a glass case to be put on display. You know, so any naysayers would be overcome with the cold, hard truth!

Then, he created an annual tradition in which others now go out and “hunt” for leprechauns in Carlingford. There is said to be a fairy cavern upon the side of a hilly incline where these leprechauns supposedly live. At the annual “leprechaun hunt,” visitors can go across the hills and find more than 100 scattered and hidden ceramic leprechauns.

The “hunter’s license” that this event requires costs a few pounds, so the businessman proved himself to be savvy enough to charge for the pleasure. But the event has become an annual celebration in Carlingford, with hunters from all over searching for leprechauns, gold bars, and more “proof” of the fairies’ existence in Ireland.^[2]

8 No Girls Allowed!

There are no female leprechauns. According to old books that have covered the stories of leprechauns going back centuries, there have only ever been male versions of the little species. Even going back to Fairy Legends and Traditions from the South of Ireland, published by author Thomas Crofton Croker way back in 1825, there are no mentions of female leprechauns existing in the mortal realm.

Some say that’s because leprechauns are actually male fairies who were previously banished from their fairy colonies and families for a variety of reasons. After banishment, they were ordered to carry out the rest of their whimsical lives as leprechauns in their male-only colony in present-day Ireland.

Other sources claim leprechauns weren’t banished from their fairy colonies because they did something wrong. Instead, lore holds these creatures were simply the unwanted male children of fairy communities. For a variety of reasons, they were discarded and sent off to live in their new land away from the community that was supposed to have raised them. Pretty depressing, right?

Either way, there are two ways for leprechauns to maintain and grow their population once they are sent off to their new living arrangements. They can either (a) mate with the females of other species to supposedly produce more leprechauns or (b) wait around patiently and rely on other banished fairies to maintain the population into the future. Regardless, this detail sure makes you look at leprechauns in a different (and even more sympathetic) light, doesn’t it?^[3]

7 Going Santa Style

We know leprechauns as wearing all green, but they weren’t always depicted that way. For centuries, leprechauns were said to have worn red. In all kinds of Irish written lore, they were described as being shoemakers with pots of gold hidden at the end of rainbows—which, yeah, we’re still on board with today—but their outfits were made up of bright red that allowed them to easily spot each other as opposed to the green we know today.

Take the author Samuel Lover’s 1831 work Legends and Stories of Ireland. In it, Lover writes that all leprechauns have a red square-cut coat that is laced with gold trimmings, as well as a bright red hat that goes along with large black buckles on their belts and shoes. That sounds a little more like Santa Claus than it does the modern leprechaun, doesn’t it?

And Lover was not alone in his description. Many other authors centuries ago described these mischievous and energetic little fairies in the exact same way: with three-cornered hats and bright red clothes. It wasn’t until Irish poet William Allingham—who died at the very end of the 19th century—wrote a memorable poem about leprechauns wearing green that the new look stuck.

A large part of that change could be to more closely associate leprechauns with Irish customs, colors, and traditions. After all, green began to be associated with everything to do with Ireland by the late 19th century, so it only makes sense that leprechauns would join that line. Or, if you’re more whimsical about it, perhaps you can believe they switched to green to better blend in with the grass along the Irish countryside!^[4]

6 The Dutch Have Leprechauns, Too!

Amazingly, leprechauns aren’t an Irish-only thing. Other societies around the world have similar tales and fables from their ancient past. The Hawaiians have the Menehune, for example. They believe these Menehune are tiny, secretive dwarf people who dwell high up in rainforest jungles and live quietly as best they can away from human encroachment.

But the Irish isn’t the only culture that believes tiny fairies or fairy-like people are dwelling about. In fact, one culture that believes this to be true is MUCH closer to Ireland than the Hawaiians!

In the Netherlands, there is said to be a race of gnomes known as “kabouters” who are very similar to the leprechauns that live in Ireland. These Holland-based gnomes are supposedly very tiny and very hairy. They tend to live underground, most often in holes that they’ve dug out in sloping hills. They tend to be solitary creatures, and they’re even a little bit vindictive!

Legend has it these kabouters like to spy on people, and if people spy on them, they come after the poor humans who dared to explore. Oh, and just like leprechauns (er, you know, leprechauns before their outfit switch), kabouters are always depicted as wearing little red suits with pointy red hats. Clearly, there are quite a few parallels!^[5]

5 Holding the Purse Strings

According to legend, the leprechauns are the bankers of the fairy world. Of course, their main work is making shoes. They are well-known among myth followers and even casual observers for their role in producing shoes. Those shoes, in turn, are sent off to all the other fairies of the world, and the leprechauns make their money and thrive in this little economy.

Sounds simple (and pretty popularly known at this point), right? And since fairies love to dance and romp so much, they always need new shoes from their shoemakers. Cha-ching! But what’s interesting is that leprechauns have other ways to make bank (literally) that go beyond just cobbling together footwear!

Leprechaun legends claim that these little red-haired men are the ones who quite tightly hold the purse strings in the fairy world. See, it’s no accident that leprechauns are often depicted as lucky and have those infamous pots of gold around them. That gold is said to be their bank stash, from which they can dole out money to other fairies in need.

The leprechauns guard their assets carefully and shrewdly, giving out a few coins here and there—always to be paid back in time. It all came to a head centuries ago, myths claim, when marauders from Denmark landed on Ireland hunting treasure. The leprechauns hid their pots of gold, avoided the aggressive Danes, and then circled the wagons to protect their pricey assets forever after!^[6]

4 The Smallest Leprechaun Colony Ever

In 1946, a man named Dick Fagan returned to Oregon after serving in World War II. He got a job as a reporter at the Oregon Journal and set out to cover local news, politics, and other events around the city of Portland.

That should have been the whole story, perhaps, but Fagan wasn’t interested in just being a news reporter. He also had a bit of a creative side to him. That came out one day a few years later when he noticed a tiny block of concrete in the city that used to be the foundation point for a light pole. With the light pole gone, some grass had sprung up, and Fagan got an idea.

He began writing newspaper columns about a supposed leprechaun named Patrick O’Toole, who lived in that cement-encircled grassy area in Portland. It was a very tiny spot, and O’Toole, Fagan explained in his columns, was a very tiny man. Obviously, the details were all made up, but Fagan ran with a whole story about O’Toole’s colony of fellow leprechauns. In time, the journalist even added flowers and other decorations near the cement outcropping—and he even made a sign for the site.

The whole story is goofy, but it proved to be a hit with the public. Over the next several decades, Portland residents responded positively to the supposed leprechaun tale. By 1976, it became an official city park despite its incredibly tiny size.

In the years since, other contributors have carried out Fagan’s goofy legacy with more leprechaun-related improvements. The city has moved the “park” a couple times to put together various construction projects, but the location—now officially known as Mill Ends Park—lives on well into the 21st century.^[7]

3 Don’t Fence ‘Em In!

In 1958, workers in Ireland were tasked with building a high fence to enclose a certain area of the hilly countryside. The task seemed simple enough, and the workers in question had done jobs like that plenty of times before. But there was one major problem: They believed the area they were enclosing was a spot where leprechauns tended to live.

Thus, they wanted to not build the tall fence, as it would trap those supposed leprechauns within an enclosed space and leave them unable to move to get food and water and generally live their fairytale lives. In total, more than 20 workers boycotted building the fence. They wanted the land around there not to be disturbed, dug up, or desecrated in any way because of the supposed leprechauns that called it home.

Then-president of Ireland Éamon de Valera was quickly put into a difficult spot when it came to whether or not the workers should be punished. Believers who argued the leprechauns really did live there noted that “the land is a fairy palace and must not be desecrated.” Of course, it’s possible that the workers simply chose not to build a fence on that day because they didn’t feel like working.

Thus, the leprechauns became a simple excuse for all that. But we prefer to believe that they really did know some leprechauns lived in the area—and their disobedience was thus all the more righteous in its brazen push.^[8]

2 The Law Loves Leprechauns!

Whenever surveys are taken about leprechauns across Ireland, the results consistently come back with about one-third of the population believing in them as being real. That number fluctuates a bit and has changed some over the years. And, of course, it’s certainly possible that survey respondents are simply trolling the survey takers when answering that they think leprechauns really do exist out there dug deep into the hillsides.

But still, there are so many Irish people who back leprechauns as being legitimate that it has left lawmakers in a bit of a bind when it comes to human (er, uh, fairy) rights! In 2009, 236 “surviving leprechauns” were granted protection in various human rights and legal manners under the European Habitats Directive. Yes, you read that right: European law actually does protect leprechauns just as it would for any other endangered species or rare habitat within its jurisdiction.

Specifically, the Slieve Foye mountain caverns were protected by the European Union when they were given heritage status that year. Those caverns are believed to contain at least 236 leprechauns who hide out in there and stay as far away from people as they possibly can. Of course, the law also very specifically protects real flora and fauna in those mountain caverns. But it’s definitely more fun to think about how the EU is looking out for its leprechaun citizens!^[9]

1 Leprechaunism Is a Disorder

Believe it or not, there is a very rare disorder that afflicts babies, and it is named after leprechauns. Also known as Donohue syndrome, this disorder has to do with insulin resistance. Basically, an extremely small percentage of infants suffer from insulin resistance after they are born. In turn, they find it extremely difficult to gain weight, and they suffer through exceedingly slow and perilous growth rates. The disorder forces them to suffer through extremely low muscle mass and growth through infancy, as well as dangerously low body fat levels.

The disorder is so rare that it has only been seen in the world a few dozen confirmed times. In fact, there are only about 50 known and legitimized cases of the disorder that have been listed in medical literature. So saying there’s a one-in-a-million shot for a baby to suffer through this is even understating it a bit.

Still, leprechaunism can seriously affect the endocrine system and make for life-threatening growth delays, so doctors take it very seriously when they see it. They have also tried to rename the syndrome to its Donohue moniker, too, as a way to walk back any potentially negative or offensive associations between these babies and leprechauns.^[10]

We all love to quote things to each other: axioms, proverbs, famous politician and celebrity quotes, iconic statements, and remarks from history. Heck, even funny lines we see on television shows and viral memes we watch on social media. Quoting other people’s clever and creative remarks has been going on throughout human history for as long as people have been making clever and creative remarks. But with all that quoting, there are bound to be some messed-up and mistaken quotes floating around out there!

That’s what this list is about. Today, we’ll take a fascinating journey through ten very famous quotes that are very often mistakenly quoted. Whether taken out of context, only half-shared in a way that totally changes their original meaning, or just outright misattributed or misremembered altogether, these ten quotes are extremely well-known… and extremely wrong. Oops! So let’s set the record straight once and for all!

Related: 10 Quotes From Experts Who Were Proved Wrong

10 Money, Money, Money

You’ve undoubtedly heard the quote, “Money is the root of all evil.” But that’s not actually the entire quote as it originally stood—in the Bible, no less. See, people like to drop that quote on you when it comes to the importance of money. But the full quote misses three key words that add a good bit of context right up front. It actually goes: “The love of money is the root of all evil.” See how that changes the tone just a little bit?

Quoting from the Bible in the first book of Timothy (chapter six, verse ten), the wording goes: “For the desire of money is the root of all evils; which some coveting have erred from the faith, and have entangled themselves in many sorrows.” And other translations of the Bible have the same quote, of course, but worded slightly differently.

But again, the key context here is “the love of money” and not simply money itself. Money is, of course, a means to an end. You need money to live a comfortable life, buy a safe home, a reliable car, and everything in the modern age. So, to that end, money is a tool you should use to achieve positive ends and help you live the life you want. It’s not categorically “evil” in all senses just because it exists.

But there’s a line to cross there, too. When you go from earning money to live a better life to becoming obsessive over hoarding as much money as possible, well, you’ve crossed into “evil” territory. And now you know the difference—and the full quote that infamously warns about it!^[1]

9 Elementary, My Dear!

To hear casual fans of Sherlock Holmes tell it, you’d think Sherlock said, “Elementary, my dear Watson,” right from the very start. After all, it’s one of the most quoted lines from Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories. But it’s completely wrong! Sherlock Holmes never said that in any original Conan Doyle tale!

Despite that, the quote has been used frequently in movies throughout the years. And it has been so misattributed that it was even placed (mistakenly!) in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations in both 1937 and 1948. That’s a big bungle!

In the original Conan Doyle, Holmes’s iconic quote is actually broken up into two separate pieces and set out differently. It starts with Holmes saying this to Watson: “I have the advantage of knowing your habits, my dear Watson. When your round is a short one, you walk, and when it is a long one, you use a hansom. As I perceive that your boots, although used, are by no means dirty, I cannot doubt that you are at present busy enough to justify the hansom.”

And then, after Watson cries out “Excellent,” the second part of the Holmes quote rears its head: “Elementary. It is one of those instances where the reasoner can produce an effect which seems remarkable to his neighbour, because the latter has missed the one little point which is the basis of the deduction. The same may be said, my dear fellow, for the effect of some of these little sketches of yours, which is entirely meretricious, depending as it does upon your retaining in your own hands some factors in the problem which are never imparted to the reader.”

It’s a bit of text to parse through, but clearly, that mix-up is where the mistake occurred: Holmes does indeed say “my dear Watson” and criest out “elementary.” And they come in quick succession across a single conversation! But they don’t come packed together in one quotable quote. But for whatever reason, the quote was transcribed this way into all of our brains, and it has stuck incorrectly in the public consciousness like this.^[2]

8 Okay, Houston…

The iconic 1995 film Apollo 13 may have popularized the quote, “Houston, we have a problem,” but that memorable movie line is actually incorrect. Yes, we know, it pains us to say that anything Tom Hanks is involved in wouldn’t be 100% above board, but Hanks and his co-stars in that blockbuster film actually got the scene wrong—but only very slightly.

Instead of “Houston, we have a problem,” the actual line comes in the past tense: “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” On April 14, 1970, an explosion occurred on board the Apollo 13 spacecraft as it approached the Moon. The command module pilot, Jack Swigert, noted the explosion immediately and radioed into NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas.

He used these exact words: “Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” The radio operators in Houston didn’t hear him correctly when he first said it, though, and they asked him to repeat it. Speaking from down in Texas, Mission Control capsule communicator Jack R. Lousma asked for Swigert to speak again. At that point, mission commander Jim Lovell jumped in from his place on the spacecraft, confirming the exact same words with the exact same tense: “Ah, Houston, we’ve had a problem.”

It’s a very minor misquotation, of course, to go from “we’ve had a problem” to “we have a problem.” But it’s a big deal in how the movie is structured. When you see “Houston, we have a problem” on the big screen, you get to watch Hanks, Kevin Bacon, and Bill Pullman desperately trying to figure out what happened in real time. It makes your heart pound!

In the actual space launch, Swigert and Lovell were no less alarmed or worried, but they had to work backward through a technical checklist to figure out what went wrong after the actual problem occurred. And so the past tense of reality with “we’ve had a problem” becomes the present tense terror of the silver screen with “we have a problem.”^[3]

7 No Cake for You!

One of the most famous quotes in all of human history is the line ascribed to Marie-Antoinette: “Let them eat cake.” As the story goes, when hearing that French peasants had no bread to eat and were going hungry, Marie-Antoinette supposedly said, “Let them eat cake,” proving how out of touch the royal class was to the sufferings of their subjects in the 18th century.

However, there’s just one little problem with it. Marie-Antoinette almost certainly didn’t say that. In fact, when the quote was first written down and recorded for history, she was a very young child who hadn’t even been to France yet and certainly wouldn’t have been able to think about the implications of such a statement on hunger and poverty!

Historians who did the smallest amount of digging found the quote listed and discussed in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions, written in 1765. That was published nearly three decades before the French Revolution. And when it was published, Marie-Antoinette was only nine years old—and had never even been to France yet! So it’s pretty unlikely that she said it, right?

But it gets even deeper from there! In 1843, a French writer named Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr reported that he found the quote in a separate book that was published five years before Rousseau’s work in 1760. If that’s true, Marie-Antoinette would have been just five years old at the time of that publication, and she certainly wouldn’t have said the infamous cake quip.

Unfortunately for Rousseau, Karr, and every other writer and historian who has been trying to debunk this thing for decades, the cake comment has been stuck to Marie-Antoinette even though it almost certainly wasn’t her who said it. Ah, well. History can be quite a fickle mistress, can’t it?^[4]

6 Ends and Means

Niccolò Machiavelli never said, “The ends justify the means,” even though that famous quote is very often attributed to him. Of course, he was a prolific thinker—and a prolific writer—so there is no shortage of quotes you can rightly and correctly attribute to the Italian philosopher and social theorist. But “the ends justify the means” is not one of them.

That quote, as it stands, is not found in any of his works, nor is a translation into English enough of a parallel to likely give that quote to him. Historians and philosophers today instead believe the Roman poet Ovid ought to be the one credited with “the ends justify the means.” But for whatever reason, Machiavelli unfairly gets all the mistaken credit.

Now, Machiavelli wrote some things that were somewhat similar to the quote. In Discourses, one passage goes: “For although the act condemns the doer, the end may justify him….” And in his famous work The Prince, he goes on to write, “Let a prince have the credit [as] the means will always be considered honest… because the vulgar are always taken by what a thing seems to be and by what comes of it.”

From those quotes, it is perhaps easy to see how his writing has been very liberally (and very incorrectly) reframed over the centuries to get down to the pithy “the ends justify the means” commentary we have today. However, for Machiavelli, the reality of ends and means wasn’t as simple as that justification though. As he notes in his writing, sometimes the ends may indeed justify the means—but not always.

For him, thinking of ends when it came to the means to get there was more of a warning not to be pious in political dealings rather than an outright suggestion that there would be no consequences should one cast aside virtue and honor. That’s a big difference and one that philosophers have hotly debated ever since. But once and for all, let’s take that mistaken Machiavelli quote off the board, shall we?^[5]

5 Taste That Pudding

We’ve all heard the very common axiom, “The proof is in the pudding.” But did you know that isn’t actually the correct quote? Okay, if you’re reading this list and you’ve made it this far down the list, you probably already know that the quote is going to be corrected shortly. So, let’s not insult your intelligence with that question and just get on with it!

Jokes aside, “the proof is in the pudding” is the evolution of an old proverb that started out with a very important and different distinction. The full old proverb goes something like this: “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.” In the end, it means the same thing as it does in our modern misremembrance of how it goes. That is, the value of the thing in question (the “pudding” in this case) must only be judged on direct, actual experience with it rather than in theory or appearance.

It might be a good idea in your head, but if the “pudding” in your brain comes out flat as a project or product or whatever else, well, that proves the “pudding” wasn’t any good to begin with. Coincidentally, that proverb actually got its start with literal pudding. Centuries ago, people used it to quite literally explain how they had to try out the food they made to know if it was worth eating. Recently, society has reorganized that to a more metaphorical usage, but the ultimate meaning is all the same. Still, it’s important to share the actual quote so that you can use it correctly!^[6]

4 Blood, Sweat, and Tears

The quote “blood, sweat, and tears” is one of the most common phrases used by people for nearly a full century now—and in that exact order, too. But if you ask many people about the quote, they either don’t know where it’s from, or they almost always say it came from a famous speech by Winston Churchill during the beginning of World War II. That’s actually not correct, though.

Even though “blood, sweat, and tears” have been misattributed to Churchill to the point where they likely always will be, his actual words were slightly different. The date was May 10, 1940, and the occasion was Churchill’s rise to officially become the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister. Upon his ascension during the political turnover, he gave a speech to the House of Commons while asking them for a vote of confidence in his new government.

Labour backed him, but the Conservatives were a bit more lukewarm; they had remained steadfast in their support of Neville Chamberlain. Of course, Churchill eventually took power and carried Britain through the awful war years. But on that day, he was moved to give his speech to the House of Commons, where the wrongly credited “blood, sweat, and tears” came up.

In reality, during the speech warning of the long years of war ahead, Churchill said: “I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering.” And that’s how history actually happened—not “blood, sweat, and tears,” but “blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” A minor difference, perhaps, but a major change from the quote we all know so well.

Chillingly, as Churchill ascended to the role of Prime Minister and was accepted by the UK’s shell-shocked, war-torn government, he also famously made a very foreboding comment warning of the long war years to come: “Poor people, poor people. They trust me, and I can give them nothing but disaster for quite a long time.”

Sadly, that ended up being all too true for the UK and its Allies in their years-long fight to defeat Nazi Germany.^[7]

3 Survival of the Fittest

The term “survival of the fittest” is very often attributed to Charles Darwin and his groundbreaking theory of evolution. But he did not coin it, and for a long time, he did not even use it in any of his writing! Granted, it has everything to do with Darwinian evolutionary theory.

As you no doubt know, “survival of the fittest” occurs when the fittest iterations of a thing—be they humans, animals, plants, or otherwise—have the greatest chance and likelihood of successfully breeding to produce future generations. The “fittest” genes generally survive in the long run because they were the hardiest ones that stuck it out when the proverbial going got tough. Makes sense, right?

Well, it wasn’t Darwin. Interestingly enough, another biologist, Herbert Spencer, came up with that phrase. He got to it right after reading Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. In 1864, Spencer published Principles of Biology. In it, he used Darwin’s evolutionary claims to draw parallels between his own economic theories and natural selection.

Now, here’s the thing: Herbert Spencer had some of what we might call, um, interesting theories about race in his day. And you’ll see what we mean when you read the full quote of his that coins the term and harkens back to Darwin’s work: “This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called ‘natural selection,’ or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.” Yeah…

Interestingly, economic racism aside, Darwin really liked the phrase “survival of the fittest” as it applied to natural life. Another scientist named Alfred Russel Wallace wrote to Darwin and suggested he use Spencer’s phrase in his own work to perfectly encapsulate what he meant by “natural selection.”

Darwin agreed and first used “survival of the fittest” in his 1868 publication The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication. Then, in 1869, he introduced the phrase again in the fifth edition of On the Origin of Species.^[8]

2 Great Minds…

Surely, you’ve heard the phrase, “Great minds think alike.” Whenever two people come to the same conclusion about the same thing at the same time, they often chuckle about it, and somebody will utter the saying. “Great minds think alike,” you’ll say as you shrug, laugh, and go on about your day.

But would you still utter that phrase if you knew the second half of the quotation? That’s right! As it turns out, “great minds think alike” is only half the story when it comes to this very popular quote. The full read-out goes a little something like this: “Great minds think alike, but fools seldom differ.”

That doesn’t seem so fun and sweet now, does it? Suddenly, we feel like fools! But then again, maybe that was the point. For what it’s worth, the (full) quote began appearing in written documentation at the beginning of the 17th century. Some historians believe it dates specifically to a 1618 book, in which its Old English equivalent of “good wits doe jumpe” was first used.

Undoubtedly, though, the quote, exactly as we know it today, was first published in a work in 1816. That year, Carl Theodor von Unlanski published his biography The Woful History of the Unfortunate Eudoxia, which included the “great minds” quote.^[9]

1 Help Yourself!

The phrase “God helps those who help themselves” is so popular, and it has been so common for such a long time that religious pollsters consistently find that people believe it is written in the Bible. But it isn’t anywhere in the Good Book at all! In fact, so many people mistakenly think it’s a biblical quote that it is often cited as the single most incorrectly attributed phony Bible verse ever. That really says something!

But that’s not even the only misattribution that the quote suffers from! Throughout history, people have also incorrectly cited it as being a quote first penned by Ben Franklin in his 1757 publication of Poor Richard’s Almanac. But that’s not correct, either. The real quote goes back almost a century before that!

The first verifiable use of “God helps those who help themselves” came in Algernon Sydney’s 1698 article “Discourses Concerning Government.” Doesn’t that sound like an absolutely fascinating read? It must have been a page-turner, for sure. But jokes aside, Sydney came up with the saying. Or, if he stole it from somebody else before him, historians have yet to figure out who that original source might be.

Funny enough, one might argue that the saying is decidedly not biblical at all, even if it mentions God. After all, the Bible has several very well-known passages in which God helps the helpless—and not those who help themselves at all!

Take Isaiah 25:4, for example, which declares: “Because thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress: a refuge from the whirlwind, a shadow from the heat. For the blast of the mighty is like a whirlwind beating against a wall.”Or what about Romans 5:6, which notes: ” For why did Christ, when as yet we were weak, according to the time, die for the ungodly?” And on and on it goes!^[10]