Comedy is supposed to be hilarious. However, it has become deadly at times and led to the loss of lives. People have perished while watching comedic acts, or the entertainers themselves have died during their performances. Sometimes, the comedians have been murdered for wisecracking in ways that were offensive to certain individuals or groups.

Comedians have been killed by criminal gangs and terrorist organizations over their quips. At other times, the humorists were interrogated or threatened with jail time over jokes that the government considered a threat.

10 The Great Yarmouth Suspension Bridge Disaster

On May 2, 1845, hundreds of people gathered along the banks of River Bure in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England, to watch a clown sitting in a barrel as it was drawn by four geese across the river. Nelson the Clown worked for William Cooke’s Circus.

Around 300–400 people had climbed onto the Great Yarmouth suspension bridge to get a better view of the clown as he sailed past. This quickly proved disastrous as the structure could not support the massive weight. Its cables snapped, throwing everybody on the bridge into the water.

A massive rescue operation began, and survivors were taken to Vauxhall Gardens. Every medical person in town was summoned to the garden to treat the survivors.

Rescuers soon started to retrieve the bodies of the dead from the river. Some had simply drowned. The rest had become stuck underwater after being smashed by the bodies of other victims or the parts of the bridge that had fallen on them.

In all, 79 people died. The youngest were two years old, and the oldest was 64. Fifty-eight of the dead were 16 years old or younger.^[1]

9 An Audience Laughed As A Comedian Died Mid-Performance

In April 2019, comedian Paul Barbieri (stage name Ian Cognito) died during a live performance at The Atic bar, Bicester, UK. At first, the audience did not realize what was happening and continued laughing, thinking that Ian was only pretending to be dead.

Curiously, Ian had joked about dying in front of the audience that night. He said, “Imagine if I died in front of you lot here.” He also wisecracked about recovering from a stroke and discovering that he only spoke Welsh. Ten minutes later, he sat on a stool on the stage and appeared to faint. The audience laughed, thinking it was part of the performance.

Ian’s body remained on the stool until compere Andrew Bird approached. Bird expected Ian to awake from his pretentious coma with a joke but was surprised to find the comedian unresponsive. First aid was administered, and an ambulance was called. However, the medics declared Ian dead at the scene.^[2]

8 Mexican Comedian Murdered After Insulting Crime Boss

Seventeen-year-old Juan Luis Lagunas Rosales, who was also known as El Pirata de Culiacan (“The Pirate of Culiacan”), was a popular comedian in Mexico until he was murdered by a Mexican cartel boss whom Rosales had insulted.

The cartel boss was 51-year-old Ruben Oseguera Cervantes (aka El Mencho), the leader of the local but dangerous Jalisco Nueva Generacion (“Jalisco New Generation”) crime cartel. El Mencho is a feared and ruthless crime boss famous for murdering people over unconfirmed rumors.

Rosales had posted a comedy video in which he said, “El Mencho, peel my c—ck.” The joke didn’t go over well with El Mencho, and he ordered Rosales’s death. Rosales was drinking at a bar in Jalisco (El Mencho’s turf) when he was murdered.^[3]

Before his death, Rosales had posted on his Facebook and Instagram pages and asked his fans to come over for a drink. Some heavily armed non-fans soon arrived and shot at Rosales 15 times. The bar manager was also hit by a stray bullet.

7 The Nazis Forced A Jewish Comedian To Tell Jokes At Gunpoint

Max Ehrlich was a Jewish actor, author, director, screenwriter, composer, and comedian who lived in Germany before World War II. Unfortunately, his fame could not save him when the Nazis clamped down on Jews during World War II. In fact, it almost got him killed.

Ehrlich was captured and transported to Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. A Nazi officer recognized him and ordered him to tell funny jokes or he would be shot to death by an SS firing squad.

Ehrlich probably made the Nazis laugh and was spared the bullet. However, his jokes could not save him from the gas chamber. He was gassed to death on October 1, 1944.^[4]

6 Iraqi Comedian Murdered Over His TV Show

Iraq turned into a chaotic wasteland after Saddam Hussein was ousted in 2003. Murders, bombings, assassinations, and similar terrorist acts quickly became the norm. Journalists were a major target of these attacks.

In November 2006, actor, producer, and comedian Walid Hassan became a victim of these murders. Before his death, he hosted a comedy show called Caricatures on Iraq’s Al Sharkiya television. On his show, Hassan often mocked the US military, Iraqi politicians, and the Sunni and Shia insurgents.^[5]

One of the groups became angry enough to order his kidnapping. On November 21, 2006 (some sources say November 20), some men cornered and attempted to kidnap Hassan on the streets of Baghdad. Hassan was shot and killed as he tried to escape.

5 Al-Shabab Murders Somali Comedian For Mocking Their Activities

In 2012, Somali comedian Abdi Jeylani Marshale was murdered by Al-Shabab terrorists in Mogadishu, Somalia. Before his death, Marshale often mocked Al-Shabab on radio and television for using child soldiers and suicide bombers and killing defenseless civilians.

Eventually, Al-Shabab issued a death threat to Marshale. He fled to neighboring Somaliland but returned when he thought the dust had settled. He was leaving the radio station where he worked when he was cornered by two Al-Shabab henchmen armed with pistols. They shot Marshale in the head and chest several times.^[6]

4 Comedian Murdered For Mocking Mexican Drug Lord And Not Repaying A Debt

Francisco “Paco” Stanley was a popular Mexican comedy show host until he was murdered in June 1999. He was waiting for a friend outside a restaurant when two men sprayed him with heavy gunfire. Stanley received four shots to the head. A colleague and bystander were also killed while two more bystanders were injured.

Police later discovered cocaine in Stanley’s pocket and in his blood. Eventually, his death revealed a large conspiracy and the involvement of drug cartels in entertainment. Apparently, Stanley’s murder was ordered by crime boss Luis Ignacio Amezcua Contreras over some debts owed by Stanley.

In 1996, Amezcua Contreras had loaned $65,000 to Stanley to launch a television and music production studio. The drug kingpin also frequently sold cocaine to Stanley, who used part of it and sold the rest to other top show hosts. However, Stanley often made jokes on his comedy show that the drug lord considered to be insulting.

The displeased Amezcua Contreras later recruited Mario Rodriguez Bezares (aka Mayito), Stanley’s cohost, to help with the murder. Bezares was mad at Stanley because he often directed insulting jokes at Bezares during the show. Besides, Amezcua Contreras had promised Bezares the production company and was willing to forgo the debts.^[7]

Bezares was the reason that Stanley was waiting outside the restaurant where he was murdered. They had gone for a meal and were about to leave when Bezares delayed them. Bezares engaged in a series of ridiculous schemes, including pretending to have a limp, just to keep Stanley waiting. Bezares was in the lavatory at the time that the killers arrived.

3 Writer Interrogated By The Secret Service Over Joke About Kidnapping The US President’s Daughter

in 2009, Daniel O’Brien, the head writer at a humor website, wrote a piece about kidnapping the daughter of a US president. It was titled “6 Helpful Tips for Kidnapping the President’s Daughters.”

O’Brien soon received a phone call from Special Agent Mike Powell of the Secret Service. The agent had a friendly chat and directed O’Brien to speak with some other agents. O’Brien met with the other agents and was interrogated about his satirical article for two hours. At that time, he was asked if he was involved with terrorist groups.^[8]

O’Brien later had the article deleted from the website. However, it appeared to be too late as he was secretly put under surveillance. As of 2014, he was often asked to step aside for a search at US airports.

2 Johnny Depp In Soup Over Joke About Assassinating President Trump

In 2017, Johnny Depp came under heavy public backlash after he jokingly asked, “When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?” (The last time was in 1865 when John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.)

Public outrage soon followed the inappropriate joke. Later, the Trump White House also issued a statement condemning Depp’s remarks and requesting that other Hollywood stars denounce it, too.

However, Johnny Depp is not the only actor that has come under fire for making jokes suggesting the assassination of a US president. A month earlier, Kathy Griffin had to apologize after posing for a photograph with a bloodied prop head of President Trump.^[9]

1 Venezuelan Comedian Flees Country After Receiving Death Threats

Nacho Redondo is a radical Venezuelan comedian. He is famous for making highly controversial political jokes that are often considered insulting. His offensive jokes have caused public backlash, online outrage, boycotts, and extensive criticism.

The Venezuelan government had enough of Nacho after he made a political joke about a race between a man with one leg, a man with no legs, and a communist. The government sued him over the joke. He also received lots of death threats. Nacho escaped to Mexico right before his trial started.

Nacho is just one of the many comedians from Venezuela who have found themselves under attack from the government of President Nicolas Maduro. Venezuelan comedians generally avoided making political jokes before 2014. However, they changed their minds as the country went into a decline.

The government clamped down on these comedians, forcing other humorists to make political jokes as a form of protest. These days, comedians consider their quips as part of a rebellion against the government. The authorities have also stepped up their campaign against humorists making political jokes, forcing several comedians to flee the country.^[10]

In 2014, a comedy show hosted by Luis Chataing was suspended from television because it mocked the government. Luis accused the government of threatening and blackmailing the television station to suspend his show. However, the government denied issuing any threats.

An intractable divide has split society in two. People on both sides rail at their diametrically opposed counterparts, hurling insults and blaming them for every evil plaguing the world today. We’re referring, of course, to the rift between Baby Boomers, those born between the immediate aftermath of World War II and the mid-1960s, and Millennials, born between the early 1980s and the mid-1990s to early 2000s, depending on who’s setting the definition.

See Also: 10 Reasons Millennials Owe A Thanks To Boomers

Each side has the other’s number. Millennials are irresponsible, disloyal whiners doomed to poverty by their own indolence, and Boomers are meddlesome busybodies, oblivious to the realities of the modern world and how they’ve wrecked it to suit their own needs. If you’re a Boomer or Millennial, perhaps you believe one or more stereotypes about the other generation. Of course, stereotypes rarely hold up across the board, so before the adages and avocados start to fly, let’s take a look at some surveys and studies which contradict commonly held beliefs about Baby Boomers and Millennials.

10 Baby Boomers Aren’t Killing Social Security

Baby Boomers are called what they are for a reason. In the years following World War II, there was a surge (or “boom”) of babies being born, so Boomers are a very populous generation. As of 2019, roughly 10,000 of them are turning 65 every day. The timing isn’t exactly ideal; the US Social Security Administration is currently in a bit of a jam. The Social Security Board of Trustees has projected that the Social Security trust funds will be depleted by 2035 if nothing is done, meaning that people will not receive their full benefits.

Given the sheer number of Baby Boomers beginning to collect Social Security in recent years, many tend to believe that they’re sucking the system dry. A study by Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research (CCR) indicates that this is not the case. Baby Boomers, in fact, will receive less from Social Security than they paid into it during their careers. (The opposite is true for those who lived through the Great Depression.) The CCR study cites amendments made to the Social Security system in 1939, before Baby Boomers were even a thing, as ultimately responsible for the current problems.^[1]

9 Millennials Read Just As Much As Older Generations

A common image of Millennials is that of a generation glued to technology, a group of smartphones with hats. They’re always on YouTube or crawling each other’s Instagrams, and let’s not forget the chronic tweeting. Have these people even seen a book? According to a 2014 report by Pew Research, they have.

For starters, 88 percent of Millennials (defined by the report as people aged 16 to 29) reported having read a book in the past year, versus 79 percent of those 30 and older. Forty-three percent of Millennials reported reading books (including e-books) every day, which was about the same as older generations. While 98 percent of them used the Internet, and 77 percent owned smartphones, 62 percent agreed that “there is a lot of useful, important information that is not available on the internet.” Only 53 percent of 30+ adults agreed.

Libraries are certainly places where you can find information that isn’t on the Internet, and Millennials are hardly averse to them, with 50 percent having used a library in the past year, not all that different from the 47 percent of older adults who said the same. However, Millennials may generally view libraries as less important. Fifty-one percent said that the closing of a library would have a major impact on their community, versus 67 percent of those who were older.^[2]

8 Baby Boomers Have Embraced Technology, Too

Speaking of smartphones, they are not the sole province of Millennials. A 2019 survey by Provision Living of St. Louis, Missouri, assessed the smartphone habits of 1,000 Millennials and 1,000 Baby Boomers. The results indicated a number of similarities between the two generations.

As you might have expected, Millennials spend more time per day on their smartphones, but the gulf isn’t particularly wide, with Boomers only using their devices for 42 fewer minutes per day than Millennials (5 vs. 5.7 hours). The daily Facebook and Instagram times for each group differed by fewer than 10 minutes each and by only one for YouTube.

There were certainly differences as well. Millennials still spent considerably more time texting and surfing the Internet than Boomers. Possibly more surprising is the fact that Boomers also spent less time using the phone aspect of their smartphones than Millennials. Boomers were also much more prone to using the Messenger app than their younger counterparts.^[3]

7 Millennials Are More Religious Than You Might Think

Millennials are less likely to claim religious affiliation or go to church, and that’s a fact. A 2010 study by Pew Research found that Millennials (this time defined as people aged 18 to 29) attended religious services less often than older generations, and a solid quarter of those surveyed stated themselves to have no affiliation with any religion. They were also less likely to deem religion to be an important part of their lives. Nevertheless, a closer look at the data shows that Millennials may not be as irreligious as they seem.

Essentially, the differences in Millennials’ responses may be more a function of current age than of generation. Millennials pray less frequently than older adults, but their prayer rates closely resemble those of older generations when they were the Millennials’ age. Furthermore, their beliefs concerning life after death, miracles, and so forth show little difference from their elders. Of those Millennials who did claim a specific religion affiliation, 37 percent described that affiliation as “strong.” Thirty-seven percent of GenXers, that generation seemingly no one cares about if the media is any indication, said the same thing when they were younger. Thirty-one percent of Boomers gave that answer during young adulthood.^[4]

6 Boomers Aren’t Ready For Retirement

Say what you will about Baby Boomers, but at least they’re financially literate. How many uses of the phrase “OK Boomer” have followed unsolicited advice on what Millennials or members of Gen Z should be doing with their money? The question of whether or not it was easier for the Boomers to build nest eggs in their day aside, a recent survey indicates that they may not have done such a good job saving up in the first place.

In 2019, Clever, a home-buying website, surveyed 1,000 Baby Boomers, the average age of the respondents being 62. Their median income was $57,000 a year, and they had $136,779 in retirement savings, on average. The problem is that this falls well short of how much many financial experts would say they should have. An often-recommended benchmark is to have eight times your yearly income in retirement savings by the time you’re 60 years old. For a $57,000 yearly income, that’d be $456,000.

Compounding the issue is the finding that 40 percent of respondents are still paying off credit card debt, and 31 percent stated that they have no emergency fund. The above-mentioned woes of the US Social Security system may very well end up reducing its benefit to retired Boomers as well. On average, those surveyed hoped to retire by 68, though Clever concluded that such a goal may be overly optimistic for many of them.^[5]

5 Millennials Would Rather Keep The Jobs They Have

Why do Millennials change jobs so much? Boredom? Not enough trophies? Here’s another question: Who said they change jobs all the time? Multiple studies say they don’t.

In February 2017, the Resolution Foundation, a British think tank, reported that a mere four percent of Millennials in the UK changed jobs each year. Twice as many members of Generation X did so back in the ‘90s. In April that year, Pew Research released similar findings, namely that Millennials in the US were just as likely to stay with their current employers as GenXers were at the same age. In fact, college-educated Millennials tended to stay longer than degree-holding GenXers did.

In case the dead trophy horse needs any more beating, Millennial loyalty isn’t even being rewarded, at least not in the UK. According to the Resolution Foundation, switching jobs generally leads to a 15-percent rise in income. Raises for those who stick to their jobs, however, have become few and far between. Yet Millennials are sticking all the same. An analyst at the Resolution Foundation cited the fact that many Millennials entered adulthood during the financial crisis of the late 2000s as a possible factor in this. As for why US Millennials aren’t jumping ship at the drop of a hat, a Pew researcher posited that it may be due to a lack of good opportunities for job-hopping.^[6]

4 Boomers Are Accepting Weed

Support for the legalization of recreational marijuana has been steadily growing in the United States in recent years. As of 2019, it is legal in 11 states as well as in Washington DC, and medical cannabis use is permitted in 33 states. You might think that Baby Boomers, rapidly becoming perceived as the grumpy old codgers of American society, would be flat-out against this, but support is growing even among this cohort.

In a study of marijuana use in people over 60, researchers from the University of Colorado examined data from the National Survey of Drug Use and Health. In 2017, 9.4 percent of respondents aged 60 to 64 reported using marijuana sometime in the past year. In 2007, only 1.9 percent of that same demographic had done so. For those aged 65 and older, 3.7 percent used marijuana in the past year, up from a mere 0.3 percent in 2007.

The researchers found that Boomers’ increased interest in cannabis was largely for medical reasons, based on their survey of 136 people aged 60+ at various senior centers, clinics, and marijuana dispensaries. Many respondents had chosen to buy marijuana from recreational dispensaries due to the difficulty of obtaining a medical marijuana card. Some had doctors who wouldn’t approve them for one, and they didn’t want to find a new health care provider or leave their health insurance network. Others were reluctant to broach the subject with their physicians for fear of stigma. Quite a few wished more doctors were educated in the medicinal use of cannabis.^[7]

3 Millennials Aren’t Automatically Tech Wizards

A phrase that sometimes gets bandied around is “digital native.” Essentially, a digital native is someone who grew up in the digital age, having always known a world in which the Internet and mobile devices are ubiquitous. As such, they are more proficient with modern technology than their elders and are also argued to be better at multitasking.

Millennials and Generation Z are commonly seen as digital natives. According to a 2017 paper published in the journal Teaching and Teacher Education, however, that phrase needs to die. Millennials, in fact, are no different from older generations in terms of their technological proficiency or multitasking ability. Other studies have backed this conclusion up as well.

Simply put, digital natives do not exist. Unfortunately, the idea has influenced both educational strategies in schools and how businesses structure their work environments. Dr. Paul Kirschner, co-author of the study, argues that assuming all students to be tech-savvy will only hurt the educational process.^[8]

2 Baby Boomers Tip More Often Than Millennials

The stereotypical Millennial knows the plight of wait staff in the US, scraping by as they do on the gratuity of customers, and generously tips accordingly. The stereotypical Boomer, if he tips at all, leaves a few cents and a note on the receipt about how the waitress needs to toughen up. As usual, the reality is much less clear-cut.

A 2019 survey of 2,569 adults by CreditCards.com found that Baby Boomers, in fact, are more likely to tip a wide variety of service workers. Eighty-nine percent of them tip waiting staff, as opposed to 66 percent of Millennials. People who deliver food get tipped by Boomers 72 percent of the time but only 56 percent of the time by Millennials. The disparity was 63 versus 40 percent for cab and rideshare app drivers, 73 versus 53 percent for hairstylists, and 33 versus 23 percent for hotel housekeeping staff, with Boomers on top in every category.

The only time Millennials won out over Boomers was in the size of the tips they leave. When Millennials do tip, they leave an average of 22 percent. Boomers leave 17 percent.^[9]

1 Millennials Are Projected To Become The Richest Generation In US History

Millennials may have hope for retirement after all. Believe it or not, a study by Coldwell Banker indicates that more than $68 trillion in wealth will be transferred to US Millennials by 2030. Where is this massive windfall coming from? Their Boomer parents. Well, add that to the recent list of things Millennials can thank Boomers for, then.

Baby Boomers, on average, are wealthier than other generations. They came up in a good economy, and the values of both their homes and stocks have grown quite a bit over the years. This isn’t to say that every Millennial with Baby Boomer parents is guaranteed to be rich one day. Individual situations vary, and end-of-life costs or changes in economic conditions could certainly still affect what Millennials are left with. Overall, though, the Boomers’ wealth being passed down to Millennials may very well leave the latter richer than any other generation.^[10]

Kids and playing go hand in hand—sometimes literally. Most of the time, when they do play a game, it usually involves kids running, chasing, and hiding. They all tire themselves out, laugh themselves silly, and maybe the worst thing that happens is someone skins a knee or breaks a window. It’s all innocent fun.

However, there are rare instances when a kid’s game gets way out of hand, and the lawsuits start flying, the cops show up, or something even worse happens.

Here are 8 examples of kid’s games that got way out of hand.

See Also: 10 Bizarre Things People Have Done Over Video Games

8 British Bulldog Game Leads to Girl’s Death

British Bulldog is a rough and tumble game popular among elementary-aged school children. In it, one or two “bulldogs” stand alone in the middle of a large field. A line of runners face them and stand at one end of the field. The runners try to get to the other side without being caught by a “bulldog.” If they get caught, they turn into a “bulldog” and join the other “bulldogs” to try and stop the remaining runners. The game goes on until there is only one runner left—he or she is the winner.

In February of 2013, a group of children played British Bulldog outside Trafalgar Junior School in Twickenham, England. An 8-year-old girl named Freya James played a different game close by when she was accidentally struck by one of the boys playing British Bulldog. She fell, stomach down, onto a recycled wooden railway sleeper. The fall caused a laceration of her liver which lead to internal bleeding. She was taken to the hospital, where she later died.

Freya’s parents, Anekke and Nick James, talked of what a good-hearted girl she was, “Freya was an angel and was loved by everyone who had contact with her.” They added, “She was so strong and determined in everything she did and always tried to help those that struggled.”

Sometime later, Freya’s parents called for a ban of the game that took their daughter’s life, “I hope our daughter’s death will lead to a more widespread ban.”^[1]

7 Snowball Fight Turns Into Race Brawl

Cole Harbour District High School is located in the province of Nova Scotia, on the east coast of Canada. Back in the winter of 1989, what started as a playful snowball fight between groups of grade 10 boys turned ugly as white students ended up fighting black students in a vicious brawl.

Apparently, the brawl was triggered when a, “…particularly large snowball showered one group with snow…”

Christa Webber, a grade 10 student at the time, who witnessed the brawl, said she saw a student’s face “…split open” from a punch and students getting kicked when they fell to the ground.

In the aftermath, 14 were charged, and the brawl led directly to the government of Nova Scotia creating the Black Learners Advocacy Committee. The committee, “…highlighted inequities in education for the African-Nova Scotian learner.” As well, “The BLAC report resulted in the hiring of cross-cultural understanding co-ordinators and African-Nova Scotian support workers in the province’s schools.”

30 years later, the brawl still haunts former Cole Harbour District High School student Corey Beals. Though he didn’t witness the brawl triggering snowball, Beals remains sad about the incident and feels it has had a lasting impact on the community, “Unfortunately, Cole Harbour has been scarred. Ever since. Thirty years later. And whenever there is an incident that takes place at that school, everyone reflects back to 1989.”^[2]

6 Dodgeball Leads to Felony

Dodgeball is a gym class staple. Use a ball to eliminate players on the opposing team by hitting them with it. The first team to hit all of the players on the other side with the game ball wins.

For Jacob Sigler and one other student of Ellsworth High School, that simple game turned into something much more ugly and much more complicated. The result was a facial fracture and a criminal complaint against Sigler.

According to the victim, who was 16 at the time, “When Jacob ran out of balls, Jacob closed his fist and punched (him) the face.”

When interviewed by police, Sigler, 18, said that he thought the other boy was going to tackle him. “Then, I punched him,” he told the police.

Months later, Sigler ended up pleading guilty to misdemeanor battery. He was sentenced to 1 year probation and ordered to pay more than $1,300 in fines.^[3]

5 Hide-and-Seek Leads to Dead Body

Who hasn’t played hide-and-seek? A classic kid’s game that may go all the way back to the Greeks of the 2nd-century, hide-and-seek consists of one kid seeking and many kids hiding. After counting up from 1 to anywhere from 10 to 100, the seeker then goes out and tries to find the kids that hid. If found, that kid then becomes another seeker. The last kid left hiding is the winner. Simple and straightforward. Most of the time, yes, but every once-in-a-while, a kid seeking another kid, instead, finds something that turns the game into a crime scene.

Back in October of 2017, two kids were playing hide-and-seek in the wooded area of a park in Indianapolis, Indiana. There, in the midst of their bit of fun, one of them came across the dead body of 30-year-old Christopher Bradley. The kids immediately told an adult, who then alerted the police.

Detectives working the case believe that the death was suspicious.^[4]

4 Salt and Ice Challenge Burns

Most childhood games (including some on this list) have long histories and countless hours of enjoyment—like jumping rope, hide-and-seek, dodge ball, and kickball. While these are mostly harmless activities, kids and teens today have a new source for things to do to pass the time: TikTok. Unfortunately. TikTok, created in 2016, has recently become synonymous with something far more sinister: viral internet challenges.

Some of these idiotic—and sometimes dangerous and deadly—challenges include the cinnamon challenge, the Tide Pod challenge, and the salt and ice challenge. An Iowa woman learned about the last challenge the hard way after a horrific late-night phone call. Her daughter and several friends had tried an internet challenge that involved putting snow and table salt on their arms to see who could stand it the longest. The ice and salt formed a chemical reaction that induced frostbite, giving the girl and her friends second- and third-degree burns. They were taken to the hospital for treatment, where the doctor noted that he had seen several of these types of injuries in recent months.^[5]

3 Choking Game Claims Life of 12-Year-Old Boy

According to the Center For Disease Control and Prevention, from 1995 to 2007, at least 82 kids have died playing the Choking Game. 87% of them were boys aged 11 to 16. The average age was 13.

The point of the game is to go just far enough to get the “high” that follows after briefly squeezing off the supply of oxygen and blood to the brain. The game has a long history and also goes by the names “Pass-Out Challenge,” “Flatliner,” and “Space Monkey.”

One boy who went too far was Erik Robinson of Santa Monica, California. One day in April of 2010, he put a rope around his neck and hung himself from a pull up bar. He was only 12 years old.

His devastated mother, Judy Rogg, found her son collapsed in the kitchen doorway. “I missed him by a few minutes,” she said. Rogg tried to undo the complicated slipknots her son had tied but couldn’t. By the time she got help, it was too late.

In the wake of the tragedy, Rogg founded the non-profit “Erik’s Cause” to help educate other kids about the dangers of the game. She and her co-founder Stephanie Small spent years designing an 8-minute video and PowerPoint presentation now shown to kids in the Iron County School District in Utah. Iron County adopted the training program after 4 kids died in its district playing the Choking Game.

Rogg keeps the memory of her son close—some of his ashes are locked inside of a necklace she wears. She works tirelessly for “Erik’s Cause” and has travelled to speak in Pennsylvania, California, and Maryland. Rogg even flew all the way to New Jersey to help a family get through their own tragic loss from the Choking Game.

“This is the best way for me to preserve his legacy…I have to keep busy.”^[6]

2 Sack Tapping Game Leads to Testicle Removal

One night, a 14-year-old boy named David Gibbons woke his mother up at 1 am complaining of groin pain. Apparently, he had been playing a game called “Sack Tapping” with other boys at school that day. One boy punched him in the testicles so hard that it was still hurting badly.

His mother took him to the hospital, where doctors removed the boy’s right testicle. “This may be called a game, but it’s not a game,” the mom said. “It’s dangerous, and it needs to stop.”

Urologist Dr. Scott Wheeler told a Minneapolis TV station that he thought the problem had gotten “…way out of control.”

Dr. Charles Raison, an associate professor of psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, believes he knows why boys play the game, “Games like this are to see how tough you are…It’s a way of establishing dominance, and because it’s hard to withstand being hit in the groin, it becomes a good measure of toughness.”^[7]

1 Hot Dog Eating Contest Turns Fatal

Jason Easterly/Special to the Daily News
Owen Houston, 7, of Naples starts the kids “Neat Eat” during the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog qualifying circuit for their annual hot dog eating contest held at the Mercato on Saturday, May 12, 2012.

In January of 2010, the Boys & Girls Club of San Pedro in California held a fundraiser for Haiti relief—a devastating earthquake hit Haiti on January 12, 2010. One of the activities was a hot dog eating game. Unfortunately, the fun turned deadly when one of the participants, 13-year-old Noah Thomas Akers started choking.

A male staff member performed the Heimlich maneuver, but it didn’t help. Paramedics arrived soon and tried to remove the obstructing piece of food using an extended pair of forceps. Unfortunately, they were unsuccessful, and Noah later died in hospital.

Apparently, a staff member of the Boys & Girls Club did tell each child participating in the hot dog eating game to take their time and that it was not a game based on speed.

Lt. David McGill, of the Los Angeles Police Department, indicated that the initial investigation suggested that the children were appropriately supervised.^[8]

We may have been fighting each other since the dawn of time, though the average person still has little idea of what war is really like. Our mental image of what happens on the battlefield is heavily influenced by pop culture, particularly the movies. Unfortunately, the people making those movies have usually never been around a real fight, either, and are mostly just making things up as they go.

See Also: Top 10 Awesome Films Hollywood Ruined With Lies

While we agree that fiction requires some suspension of disbelief to be enjoyable, that applies to genres like science fiction and horror. Misrepresenting serious subjects like war on the big screen comes with its fair share of drawbacks. Most of us grow up with a glorified idea of what war is really like, as movie writers are busy writing about dual-wielding guns rather than the stench of poop in the aftermath of a typical battle.

10 Showing off Your Dog Tag Isn’t Cool

Dog tags have always been a popular part of casual fashion. They admittedly look quite cool, which is probably because of their association with the military. Because of Hollywood, a lot of us assume that wearing dog tags as necklaces is something people in the forces do all the time. As any veteran would tell you, though, showing off your dog tag isn’t considered to be sound etiquette within the military.

While it’s true that you’re to wear your tags at all times for identification while on duty, most soldiers keep them tucked inside. Off duty, keeping your dog tag visible in civilian clothes is not in good taste, even—and especially—if you’re topless, unlike what the movies tell us.^[1]

9 “Military Grade” Is an Advertising Gimmick

From knives to antivirus software to alarm systems, companies across the board brand their products as ‘military grade’, usually to signify higher quality and price. If we were to ask you what that exactly means, chances are most of us wouldn’t be able to say. We have this idea of things made by the military to be of higher quality than consumer-grade products.

As it happens, military-grade quality actually doesn’t exist and is yet another one of countless gimmicks advertising agencies use to justify exorbitantly higher prices. While it may be true that civilians don’t yet have access to a lot of military tech, it’s because it’s classified for security reasons and not because they’re somehow making better things in there.^[2]

8 Almost No One Uses Automatic Fire

As we’ve mentioned before, movies exaggerate the effects of various weapons to make them look more impressive on screen. Take grenades as an example; invisible shrapnel paralyzing someone’s lower legs isn’t as impressive as a house blowing up with six people flying in the air. Apart from giving us a faulty idea of what a battle is really like, it also affects decision-making during real-time disaster situations.

One particularly glaring difference between real and fictional wars is “automatic fire” in assault rifles. While military rifles do have a setting to turn the automatic, continuous burst mode on, almost no one uses it in real battles. Apart from bullets costing a lot of money to buy—a fact we’ll come to in a bit—the distances in a real battle are simply too great for automatic fire to be efficient. That’s not to say that automatic fire isn’t used in real wars, though those guns are usually heavier and mounted on a bipod or tripod.^[3]

7 You Can’t Fire A Rifle From The Hip

Rambo may be the best example of this one, though it’s hardly the only movie that’s guilty of it. Many war movies feature an outnumbered hero picking up a mounted gun as a last resort and just mowing down his opponents like a walking machine gun.

There are no walking machine guns because machine guns are extremely heavy, and it’s almost impossible to walk with one, let alone shoot with it. Many movies do it with guns like an AK-47 too. The dangers of shooting out of stance aside, the recoil would make it impossible to continue holding and shooting it for an extended period of time. Moreover, shooting from the hip isn’t a part of any professional training schedule and is something only seen in Hollywood.^[4]

6 Slaughter Isn’t Usually a Part of Battle

Thanks to movies like Lord of the Rings, our mental image of an ancient or medieval war usually features both sides running into each other with their cavalries and actively engaging in hand-to-hand combat throughout the battle. That’s how video games see historical wars, too, influencing our idea of how wars were really fought.

While slaughter is obviously a widespread—and crucial—part of any battle, it usually comes at the end, when the winning side is chasing the routed force. Battles, at least before mass slaughter became a part of all stages of war because of artillery and gunpowder, used to be won through attrition and strategy and not trigger-happy fighters fighting to their last breath. Most battles of history involved calculatedly tiring out the enemy for hours with arrows or mobile units, fighting in isolated units at times, and moving in with full force only when there was a definite advantage.^[5]

5 Infinite Ammo

War movies are quite lenient about the amount of ammo a unit has access to. A part of that could be attributed to making it look amazing, as a battle with everyone saving their bullets would look quite drab on the big screen.

The difference between movies and reality, though, completely changes how battles happen in real life. Limited ammo—for you and the enemy—is an essential part of military tactics, which is especially true today when wars are fought in overseas, cut-off regions. In a real battle, most of the legwork is done by artillery and all of those other big explosives. Even in gunfights, you’re likely to not hear anything for several minutes, instead of the consistent hail of bullets we all imagine. That would also heat up your guns quite fast, which is yet another thing soldiers in real battles have to think about.^[6]

4 Throwing Knives Is Not a Thing

We’re not sure when the dreaded throwing knife showed up in a movie. We can trace its origins to the art of throwing knives, which—much like the art of throwing anything else for no reason—doesn’t have many uses in the real world. It’s unclear, however, when a director saw that and decided to make it a staple weapon in war movies.

A single throw of a knife has killed many people in the fictional world, though how does it stack to its kill count in real life? According to some, it’s even ridiculous to suggest that knives could be thrown to kill.

While throwing around anything pointy is not a good idea, throwing knives hardly produces the impact necessary to kill someone. Moreover, the steel has to be sharp enough to pierce flesh and bone, which is harder than movies make it look.^[7]

3 You Can’t Just Shoot Anyone

We think of the beginning of the battle to be a coordinated and single-minded affair. The commander issues an order to shoot at the other side, and his units just fire off indiscriminately. Much like the other myths on this list, this one only exists in Hollywood too.

In reality, there are specific, written rules around what you can and cannot do in a war. Every war has its own rules of engagement, and they keep changing depending on objectives. As an example, there are times when generals have to get court orders to move into certain territories, which can take hours.^[8]

2 Everything About Cavalry Charges

We think of the historical horse cavalry as an incredibly powerful unit that could decide the course of any battle for the better part of history. Until it was made defunct by tanks and artillery, it dominated battlefields around the world and remained a staple of some of the most powerful armies.

While it’s true that the heavy cavalry was an immensely powerful unit—the mere sight of an organized unit of horses just running towards you with armored warriors is enough to scare anyone—it was quite easily countered by many infantry units throughout history. Moreover, battles rarely started with a cavalry charge breaking the enemy ranks. For one, you don’t just send your most heavily armored and well-trained unit—which was usually the case for elite cavalry units—as an opening attack. More importantly, though, horses are surprisingly (or rather unsurprisingly) unwilling to run into a wall of visible spears. Cavalry charges were mostly used to chase down disorganized enemies or other specific roles in the middle or end stage of the battle.^[9]

1 Most Soldiers Don’t Shoot to Kill, or at All

War is imagined as an absolute rivalry between two sides, one in which everyone is personally involved. The soldiers must be doing their best to kill the other side and expect the same. It’s how movies feed war to us and how we’ve all come to imagine a typical battlefield.

In reality, most of the soldiers aren’t even shooting unless a senior ranking officer is around. According to one historian, one in three soldiers in Vietnam never fired their weapons. In an average battle in WW2, only around 15 to 20 percent of soldiers on the Allied side opened fire.^[10]

About The Author: You can check out Himanshu’s stuff at Cracked (www.cracked.com/members/RudeRidingRomeo/) and Screen Rant (https://screenrant.com/author/hshar/), or get in touch with him for writing gigs ([email protected]).

Hollywood plays an important role in shaping our perception of our place in society. Movies may also define our expectations about the day-to-day connections we have with other people. Whether it’s about love, enmity, compassion, or greed, human interaction in movies directly influences our ideas of how relationships work in real life.

10 Movies Based On Common Misconceptions

Unfortunately, Hollywood still gets a lot of things wrong about society. In theory, that should be fine because the goal of many movies is to portray the world as we want it to be—not as it really is. These inaccuracies become a problem, though, when they lead to ignorance about certain issues in real life.

10 War Is a Glorious Affair

War is one subject that filmmakers have a social responsibility to portray accurately. Yet, they still refuse to get right. As quite a few critics have pointed out, the depiction of war in popular cinema remains inaccurate at best and intentionally skewed to influence the public’s mood at worst.

It can be argued that public perception affects our cinema and popular fiction and not the other way around. If that’s true, then cinema’s job is to show the world as it should be, not as it is.

War is a misunderstood affair even in movies that make a genuine effort to show conflict like it is in real life. According to some critics, a true anti-war movie is quite difficult to make. Even if you try to show aspects like the brotherhood between soldiers and excessive violence, the film unintentionally promotes the whole act.

Dennis Rothermel, a retired professor of philosophy, argues that a movie can only give us an accurate representation of real-life conflicts if it has “random infliction of violent death, abject terror, [and] heinousness as a norm of behavior.”^[1]

That doesn’t mean that movies never get it right. Some popular works—like Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, and Paths of Glory—definitely stand out when it comes to realistic portrayals of the horrors of war. If film directors and writers were a bit more diligent about the depictions of war on the big screen, popular support for wars around the world probably wouldn’t be as high as it is.

9 People Have Too Much Money

There are good and bad economic cycles. However, even when the world has rising rents and stagnating wages, it seems that Hollywood simply has no idea of how things really are. Characters in TV shows and movies usually have a lot of free time to drive the plot, all the while doing underpaid creative jobs.

Just look at Friends, the story of six young residents of New York who do almost nothing all day and can still afford rent in relatively huge apartments in posh parts of New York.^[2] Of course, it’s technically a TV show and not a movie. However, the big screen is full of unrealistically rich characters, too.

8 No Matter What Happens, the Hero Gets the Girl in the End

A lot has been said about inaccurate portrayals of women in movies, though that’s an obvious consequence of writing rooms being traditionally male-dominated spaces. Although things are rapidly changing—thanks to a deluge of women now going for writing careers in film and television—we’re still a long way from Hollywood correctly portraying women as the normal, three-dimensional people that they are.

One of the most damaging examples is when movies perpetuate the notion that the guy would obviously end up with the girl at the conclusion of the story. Most movies adhere to this cliche regardless of how separated it is from real life.

It doesn’t matter if the woman has a completely different life before she meets the hero or if they have no reason to be attracted to each other. By the time the movie ends, circumstances will make them come together and live happily ever after.^[3]

Apart from promoting the faulty belief that you’re entitled to a romantic partner just because you did your job well, it causes even deeper problems in society. As protagonists of the opposite sex almost always end up getting together, it promotes the idea that most male-female relationships are romantic in nature. As anyone who has stepped out of the house can tell you, that’s not really the case.

A realistic movie would end with the lead actor and actress solving the big problem and returning to a friendship in which they only get to see each other once a month due to work and family.

7 Parents Are Just Bad at Their Jobs

There’s no dearth of intentionally bad parents in Hollywood, though we’re not here to talk about them. In movies, it seems like parents are generally bad at their jobs. You’ll first notice it when you see a kid in a movie sneak out of the house to go party at night. Then you start seeing it in every movie.

If movie parents were anything like real parents, many movies would cease to have a plotline. Kids in movies carry out entire adventures without their parents ever knowing about it.

Unfortunately for all the youngsters out there, parents in real life are quite adept at stopping their kids from doing what movie kids do. The most effective way parents do it is by controlling the money supply. Pocket money is often intentionally calculated to stop kids from sneaking out and partying at night or partaking in any other calls to adventure.^[4]

Real parents usually know what their kids are up to at any given point. There are very few cases where a group of bright school friends solves a major world problem without their parents knowing about it.

6 Parties Are Always Fun

Every time people get together to celebrate something in the movies, it’s all fun and games. Rarely does anything go wrong or anyone get bored. Almost every college party is awesome and eventful.^[5] If it isn’t, that’s an important part of the plot. Bad parties have their own role to play in advancing plotlines.

As you know, that’s not the case in real life. Most college parties are boring affairs and usually don’t end in something scandalous. Of course, good parties exist, though they’re usually the exception. Most of the time, parties are simply a bunch of tired, overworked people sipping on wine and talking until 11:00 PM, after which they promptly go back home and sleep.

5 Villains Are Ugly; Heroes Are Attractive

We know that life is a bit easier for individuals at the top of the attractiveness pyramid. Your service at restaurants is faster, your interviews are easier, and people willingly let you skip queues all the time. Being attractive also increases your chances of survival, even though good looks don’t have any inherent survival benefits.

A big part of that could be attributed to our popular fiction, especially the movies. Villains are usually portrayed as ugly, in clear contrast to conventionally attractive lead actors and actresses.

Although we understand that it’s necessary to create that much-needed binary of good and evil, being ugly isn’t necessarily bad in the real world. In fact, being less attractive than someone else has absolutely zero effect on your skills, day-to-day abilities, or intelligence. That’s not to say that all movie villains are ugly, but attractive ones are usually antiheroes or relatable villains.^[6]

To see how it works in the real world, just look at how attractive criminals—like Ted Bundy— can get away with their crimes for so long. Or how well-dressed, polite politicians who are actively working against the people keep getting reelected.

4 Killing the Villain Ends the Problem

With few exceptions, it’s usually quite easy to tell the good guys from the bad ones in movies. Villains and heroes are clearly defined, appealing to our innate desire to see the world in simple, black-and-white terms.

Of course, that’s not how it is in real life. No one in history—other than Hitler, of course—was completely good or bad. Accurate portrayals are rarely successful, though, as people really do want to see a hero beating a villain at the end. Other than forcibly putting history into neat boxes that we can clearly oppose or support, this also promotes the perception that complex, entrenched problems can be eliminated by killing the villainous leader.

Movies usually end with the bad guys dying and things going back to normal. They ignore the fact that the underlying problems created by those villains still exist.

Take Harry Potter. Sure, by the end of the series, he has killed Voldemort and dispersed his army. While it solves the immediate problem, it doesn’t do anything about the wave of racial supremacy that Voldemort has already unleashed on the magical world.

Lord of the Rings ends with the destruction of Sauron, but he wasn’t the only inhabitant of Mordor. The Orcs could revolt and continue the war in the aftermath of the movies.

We see this in real life, too. Killing Osama bin Laden didn’t end Islamic terrorism. ISIS improved upon al-Qaeda’s methods to create an even more radical form of terrorism, and it could happen again. Of course, Al-Qaeda itself remains a potent force in quite a few countries.^[7]

Killing Hitler may have ended the immediate threat from the Nazis. However, he was just a figurehead for various racial supremacist movements that were popular around the world at that time—movements that are still alive and kicking to this day.

Associating wider problems with one easily dismissible villain also lets us absolve our involvement in the relevant issues. It’s easy for the people of Gotham to root for Batman over the Joker because it distracts them from the fact that they’re equally responsible for the socioeconomic conditions that give rise to criminals like the Joker in the first place.

3 People Have No Work, and Their Bosses Are Great

We’re not sure if Hollywood execs just don’t know how things are on the ground, but people in movies don’t seem to have the same amount of work as we do. Lunch breaks can be unrealistically long and full of exciting, drawn-out events. In fact, it seems like everyone is allowed to leave at 5:00 PM.

If you work in any competitive, modern office, the chances are that you work long hours multiple times a week with little to no time to indulge in dramatic character arcs. It’s hard to execute intricate love plots involving multiple people across the city if you’re a fresher and have to do three jobs six days a week just to make the rent.

In a similar vein, bosses in movies are surprisingly lenient. Have you ever seen a character at work who faces an emergency and asks a coworker to cover for him while he deals with it? Yeah, that doesn’t happen in real life as you can’t take over someone’s job as a personal favor in real life.^[8]

2 No One Ever Finishes Their Meals

For most people, meals in movies are perfectly normal affairs. Eating morsels of food is mostly a background activity and something that’s only added as a prop to the overall setting.

When you think about it, people in movies should be terribly malnourished. If you notice characters eating anything in a movie, they seem to have a fundamental problem finishing it. How many times have you seen a character prepare a whole breakfast only to watch her kid, husband, or other side character take a bite of it and leave?^[9]

We’re guessing a lot because it happens in many movies.

We don’t have to tell you why this is inaccurate as people usually finish their meals in real life. It’s one of the more harmless misconceptions from Hollywood as it hardly affects real-life situations. But it would still be rude to leave a meal midway in most social settings.

1 Creepy Behavior Is Actually Love

Although most of us love a classic rom-com, it only takes rewatching one of them to realize that Hollywood has normalized stalking.

From the famous jukebox scene in Say Anything to the borderline harassment of sending one letter every day to someone in The Notebook, Hollywood regularly portrays as acceptable the types of behavior that would put you behind bars in real life. The Onion even satirized it in one of their classics from 1999 titled “Romantic-Comedy Behavior Gets Real-Life Man Arrested.”

That’s not just satire, either. Stalking is a real crime around the world. Just take the United States, whereas many as 7.5 million people endure some form of stalking every year.

While we won’t assume that all cases have the same motivations, enough stories exist about crazy exes and jaded lovers to prove that it’s a real problem. Although we understand that many factors may contribute to stalking, the movies are definitely not helping.^[10]

About The Author: You can check out Himanshu’s stuff at Cracked and Screen Rant or get in touch with him for writing gigs.

Everyone has heard of Vlad the Impaler, the notorious medieval ruler said to be the inspiration for Dracula. Countless tales are told of his penchant for impaling and torture, drinking blood, and ruling with an iron fist. How many of these stories are actual historical fact is highly debated, so this week we’re traveling to Transylvania to look at the real life of Vlad Tepes, the supposed inspiration for fiction’s most famous vampire.

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Discover more wild history on :

10 Strange Stories That Will Change The Way You See Charles Dickens
10 Dark Secrets Of The Ottoman Empire
10 Crazy Cures for the Black Death
10 Tiny Things That Nearly Changed History

We’ve all heard about celebrities with drug addictions who check into rehabilitation clinics, and many people have known at least one person in their lives with a substance abuse disorder. But it’s still one of the most misunderstood concepts out there. While some people might think that addiction is a problem for the poor, it is something that permeates all corners of society from the least wealthy to the most. In many cases, people have tried to deal with drugs, gambling, and other addictive pastimes with results that only seemed to make the problem worse. If we are ever going to truly conquer the issue, we must learn what causes it in the first place and get past our misconceptions.

10D.A.R.E.’s Influence

If you went to school in the United States during the 1980s (or the 1990s in Great Britain), there is a good chance you came across the program D.A.R.E. The acronym stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education and the program was formed by a former police officer with the help of Los Angeles schools to get teens to do fewer drugs and be better people. It fit with the message of the era as put forth by Nancy Reagan, which is that the best way to avoid doing drugs was to “just say no.” Clearly, Nancy had never encountered peer pressure. While it was certainly a heartfelt attempt to decrease drug use in schools, most people believe that D.A.R.E did more harm than good.

Studies have shown that D.A.R.E. wasn’t very successful at all, which has prompted them in more recent days to reevaluate how they do things. The original program was meant to teach kids about the dangers of drugs, but it also claimed that drugs were basically around every corner and were absolutely awful in every way. They also aimed to increase children’s self-esteem—this was a cornerstone of the program. The studies followed children who went through the program and found that they were just as likely to do drugs as their peers, and more likely to have lower self-esteem. If that wasn’t bad enough, another look at the program suggested that some kids who went through it were more likely to do drugs, which is the exact opposite of what they intended.

Experts believe that the problem lies entirely in the way the message was presented. Even children don’t really take well to exaggerations and misinformation, however well-intentioned it is. Some people also believe that telling kids that everyone was doing drugs actually made kids more likely to do drugs because they thought it would help them fit in. Perhaps D.A.R.E. has learned that the best way to keep kids from drugs is to tell them the real dangers instead of exaggerating them, and make it clear that no, not everyone does drugs.

9The Hidden Problem Of Addiction Switching

One of the biggest causes of addiction is not so much the chemical hooks themselves, but the environment in which the addict lives and the state of their emotions and life. What this means is that if someone is weaned off a drug, but the underlying causes of what made them likely to become an addict in the first place are not addressed, they often end up just switching their addiction to something else. This is why some people have gone to rehab clinics and managed to drop their addiction to deadly drugs, only to come out with a brand new addiction to sugary or fatty foods that made them gain a ton of weight. Of course, most people would still say that this is a better alternative, and the specific problem could be solved by offering better meal plans and advice at rehabilitation clinics.

The much bigger problem is that addiction switching often means simply switching from one hard drug to another—fatty foods and sugar are really the least of your worries. Researchers have explained that it’s not uncommon for opiate users to switch to alcohol because they don’t think it’s as bad as what they’ve been using. It’s also not uncommon for it to happen the other way around, where an alcohol addiction is replaced by an opiate addiction.

Psychiatrist Dr. Gregory Collins, a drug addiction recovery specialist in Cleveland, Ohio, believes that there may be as many as one in four drug addicts who just end up switching to a different substance. To make matters worse, he says that he wasn’t even counting people who take up smoking cigarettes to cope with the withdrawals when he came up with his estimate. Experts like Dr. Collins are increasingly suggesting an approach that involves understanding the patient’s core reason for using drugs or taking part in other addictive behaviors in order to truly bring an end to the problem that plagues them.

8Binge Drinking And Alcoholism

A lot of people assume that alcoholism is characterized by binge drinking or heavy drinking throughout the week. On the other hand, there was a recent report that went around the Internet claiming that most binge drinkers are not actually alcoholics. There’s actually some truth to both claims. The recent report was based on a study which found that, of people who consume alcohol excessively, only about 10 percent actually ended up alcoholics. That’s good news, considering that roughly one-third of the population drinks excessively. For the purposes of this particular report, excessive drinking was defined as either imbibing five drinks for men or four drinks for women in one session, or drinking more than 15 drinks in a week for men or more than eight for women.

However, while the study might sound like it’s defending the practice of binge drinking, the researchers were quick to point out that they don’t think binge drinking is a good idea—they just hesitate to use the terms “alcohol dependence” or “addiction” unless it fits more serious criteria. They also caution that just because an excessive drinker is not an alcoholic does not mean their lives aren’t negatively affected by their decisions. In fact, the researchers caution that many excessive drinkers who are on the border do not realize that alcohol has anything to do with their problems at all.

To make matters worse, they suggest that detrimental effects are caused to the lives of roughly one-third of excessive drinkers—you don’t need to be truly addicted for a substance to mess up your life.

7You Can Be Addicted To Practically Anything

When you mention being addicted to nebulous, non-drug things such as watching television, playing computer games, reading books, or working out, people tend to scoff. Most people who say stuff like that aren’t being serious, but the truth is that nearly any behavior has addiction potential. It’s still such a strange concept in our culture that most people really just don’t take it that seriously. And while you could say that an addict is never likely to admit to their addiction, the truth is that if these behaviors were taken as seriously as drug addictions are, the friends to whom they say this stuff would also take it much more seriously and there would be more social pressure for the addict to change their behavior.

Now, we mentioned things like television and video games, but one of the most addicting behaviors in the world is gambling. Most people assume that quitting something like gambling couldn’t possibly be as hard as, say, kicking nicotine or heroin, but the research on the matter has shown that gambling addicts can suffer physical withdrawal symptoms just as bad or worse than drug withdrawals. Some symptoms include heart palpitations, difficulty breathing properly, and pain in various parts of the body. It all comes down to the fact that addiction is more about a set of behaviors than it is a particular substance, and taking away something which our body is used to constantly having will almost always lead to a bad reaction.

6Marijuana Withdrawals

Most people wouldn’t consider marijuana to be a particularly dangerous drug. Unfortunately, due to the fact that marijuana’s illegality has made it difficult to perform studies, we still don’t know much about the mechanisms behind the drug’s relation to dependence and addiction. But now that it’s been legalized in some places, researchers have begun to get a clearer idea of how it affects people in the long term, especially when it comes to quitting. The common belief for the longest time was that you couldn’t really experience physical withdrawal from quitting reefer, but that’s not entirely true.

According to researchers, the symptoms of marijuana withdrawal can include trouble sleeping, increased anxiety levels, lots of fidgeting, irritability in general, and decreased appetite. The symptoms can reportedly be bad enough for some people that they significantly impair their functioning and make them more likely to relapse and use more in the future. This doesn’t mean it is necessarily anywhere on the same level as hard drugs, but it is important for people to remember that you can become addicted to—and suffer withdrawals from—pretty much any substance.

5The Real Cause Of Addiction

Most people think that addiction is the result of chemical changes that are made in your brain. The drug sets off the pleasure centers of your brain, making you want more and more until your brain starts to change shape and adapt. Soon enough, you’re nothing but a mindless zombie junkie, rewired to need your fix of choice. However, according to Johann Hari, author of Chasing The Scream: The First And Last Days In The War On Drugs, addiction actually has very little to do with the drugs themselves at all.

In an article for The Huffington Post, Hari wrote of a study done back in the 1980s involving rats. In the study, the rats were put in isolated cages with two water bottles: one that was laced with cocaine or heroin and another with regular water. The experiment found that the rat would become addicted to the substance and keep abusing until it caused its own death.

He then cites another study that was meant to disprove the previous one. In the new study, rats that were given drug additions were later put in an amazing rat enclosure with plenty of toys and other rats to play with. Before long, the rats were no longer drug addicts, even if they still had access to the drugs. They just didn’t need it as much anymore because they had the right emotional connections and bonds.

He also cites the fact that roughly 20 percent of soldiers in Vietnam becoming addicted to heroin while fighting the war, but 95 percent of them stopped using without any serious trouble upon returning home. He argues that the real cause of addiction isn’t the drug itself—although the biological changes caused by the drug can be a contributing factor—but the lack of proper bonds with other humans. In other words, he feels that people are actually forming connections with whatever they are addicted to in lieu of proper human connections.

4The Allure Of Online Gambling

We all know the lure of the casinos, and many people know at least some of the tricks that are used to keep people gambling. For example, casinos usually don’t have clocks and will happily ply their gambling clients with free drinks to impair their judgment. We’ve also already mentioned that gambling can be an extremely serious form of addiction along the lines of hard drug abuse, but many people don’t realize that online gambling is not only just as addicting as the casino variety, it can also be much, much more addicting on its own.

In the United States, most online gambling is no longer around or has gone underground due to stricter laws governing it. But the UK both allows it and lets online casinos advertise—which has caused a huge jump in online gambling. However, the truly depressing numbers are the statistics on gambling in person and gambling online, and their relation to addiction. According to the report, you have a 5 percent chance of developing a life-ruining relationship with gambling if you are doing it online, and only a 0.5 percent chance if you doing it in the physical form. This is disturbing because it means that the more readily accessible form of the habit is actually harder to break.

3Dependence Is Not Necessarily Addiction

There’s actually a pretty fine line between addiction and physical dependence. Many people falsely conflate the two, thinking that if someone is dependent on a drug, they must be addicted to it. Unfortunately, this thinking completely sidesteps the nature of addiction. The reason addiction is so hard to understand is because there isn’t one set of exact behaviors that makes someone an addict. An addict could easily be a total mess, but someone could also be in such a state for other reasons.

In order to actually pass as an addict, generally you have to have tried to quit multiple times and failed, know that the drug is messing up your life or your health (or both), and continue to do it anyway despite the wreck it is turning your life into. Whether it’s drugs or a specific behavior, these are the real criteria for addiction. Physical dependence means you’ve built up a tolerance to the drug and may have some withdrawal symptoms when you stop using, but you have no psychological need for it to fill a void in your life. This is the reason many people can take opiates for pain and just stop using when they are done—because they don’t require the drug psychologically. Dependence can help lead to addiction, but it is not the same thing at all.

2Alcoholics Anonymous

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is the original 12-step treatment plan originally designed for alcohol addiction, with the idea behind it being adapted to help people deal with narcotic addictions as well. It is incredibly well known, and the first place many people look when thinking about getting help quitting alcohol is AA. But it’s also a very misunderstood program, and there are many misconceptions about how it works. Many people may be surprised that AA has an incredibly strong faith-based component. Part of the program actually literally wants you to put your faith in a higher power to help you beat your craving for alcohol, because they believe the addict can’t handle the power of the craving on their own.

Now, this higher power doesn’t necessarily have to be a deity, but God is commonly mentioned throughout the program, which might make some people uncomfortable. The AA process also believes that the person in question will always be a recovering alcoholic. In other words, the battle with the desire to drink will last the rest of their lives. Some people disagree with certain components of the process—such as interventions—because they could damage personal relationships or push people away.

However, despite its flaws, there is increasing evidence that the skeptics are wrong and those who use AA for addiction recovery have a high chance of keeping away from their vice of choice. It’s hard to say for certain what makes AA so effective, but there’s a good chance that the community-based aspect is a big help. It makes sense that having constant contact with people who are going through the same problem would be beneficial, and the well-organized steps are a good way to keep people on track. AA is a useful organization for those who commit to it, but it may not be the right fit for everyone.

1The Addictive Properties Of Caffeine

Caffeine is one of those things that many people will casually admit to being “addicted” to, but most of those same people think of it as a joke. Like the idea of being addicted to reading or working out, even if they know it’s a possibility, most people don’t really take it seriously because it doesn’t seem like something that would actually happen to them. Caffeine is just not that strong a drug compared to stimulants like amphetamines—but that makes it all the easier to disregard.

It may not seem like much of a problem, but excessive consumption of caffeine is not very good for your health, and many people have trouble quitting caffeine even after being advised by to do so their doctors for health reasons. And that’s an important criteria for diagnosing addiction. To make matters worse, we all know the dreaded caffeine headache if we don’t have it on a regular basis, but for some people, these headaches and other psychological withdrawal symptoms can be so debilitating that they can’t get to work or live their daily lives. Many researchers who have been studying the detrimental effects of excessive caffeine consumption think that people should take the drug more seriously.

Hollywood loves mental disorders, which provide plenty of material for intriguing or outlandish character traits. Unfortunately, Hollywood doesn’t love depicting mental disorders accurately, since that seldom makes for an interesting or uplifting movie. Instead, Hollywood disorders usually draw from a loose collection of stereotypes, creating an inaccurate popular perception of many harrowing mental problems.

10The Difference Between OCD And OCPD

Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) has firmly cemented its place in popular culture thanks to the hit TV show Monk. The lead character, Adrian Monk, is a brilliant detective whose OCD spirals out of control following the tragic loss of his wife. As a result, Monk goes to extreme lengths to make everything in his life perfect. Not a single button out of place or hair where it shouldn’t be escapes his attention, usually resulting in some sort of humorous escapade. It’s exactly the sort of behavior that people associate with the disorder, leading to the usual casual jokes about how “OCD” people are because they keep their house tidy or don’t like the peas and carrots to touch on their plate.

But in reality, people are usually confusing two very distinct disorders. Obsessive compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) is characterized by an extreme need for neatness, along with an anal attitude about almost everything. People with OCPD are often extremely neurotic, which fits Monk to a tee. However, just because you don’t like your vegetables touching doesn’t mean you have OCPD. You are only diagnosed with the disorder if it severely affects the functioning of your daily life.

Obsessive compulsive disorder, on the other hand, is usually characterized by obsessive thought patterns, usually in the form of unpleasant thoughts that repeatedly enter the mind for no apparent reason. Another symptom is repeated strange behaviors or ticks, sometimes performed to block out the unwanted thoughts. Interestingly, people with OCD are usually aware that their thoughts are bizarre and unreasonable, while people with OCPD often refuse to acknowledge that they have a disorder at all.

9How To Treat A Seizure

When someone has a seizure in popular culture, the response usually involves holding the person down and putting something in their mouth so that they don’t bite or swallow their tongue. This common trope is more than just a silly myth—it’s bad advice that could actually get someone injured or killed. First of all, it is completely impossible to “swallow your tongue.” Biting your tongue is a real worry, but it’s very unlikely to do irreparable damage. Meanwhile, trying to force something into the mouth of a seizure sufferer can result in choking or damaged teeth. In fact, it’s not impossible that forcing a hard object into a seizing person’s mouth will result in them chipping or dislodging a tooth and then choking on that tooth when it falls into their throat. Finally, messing around with a seizing person’s mouth is a great way to get your fingers bitten.

Additionally, trying to hold a seizing person down to “keep them from hurting themselves” is more likely to end up hurting them or you. The correct response is actually to remove any sharp or hard objects and see if there’s anything you can use as cushioning to prevent them from injuring their head. If possible, you should also try and get them on their side. What you shouldn’t do is shove an object into their mouth and then hold them down as hard as you can—that’s just Hollywood artistic license to increase the intensity of emotional scenes.

8Bipolar People Are Powder Kegs About To Go Off

This myth has become so widespread that it permeates almost all popular culture and frequently bleeds into real life, ensuring that many people simply have no understanding of what bipolar disorder actually is. The term is often used to describe someone who seems to fly into a rage at the drop of a hat, but this is completely inaccurate. That person may not be getting enough sleep, they may be stressed, have drunk too much or too little coffee, or maybe they genuinely have some sort of behavioral disorder, but having a short fuse has nothing to do with being bipolar.

Bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression, is characterized by extreme highs and lows. But even with the rarer version of the disorder that causes you to move quickly between the two extremes, it’s unheard of for them to change back and forth in the same day. In fact, the current definition of rapid-cycling bipolar disorder suggests the patient might experience four or more episodes of depression or mania over an entire year. Furthermore, neither of those states are likely to put someone into a towering rage. Instead, the depressive state is basically depression (and is often confused as such, making diagnosis difficult), while the manic state consists of periods of elevated mood, increased risk-taking behavior, and increased energy. Someone suffering from bipolar disorder can actually sometimes be going through both at the same time, which is known as a “mixed episode.” So if your boss tends to shout at you for no reason, they might be a jerk, but they probably aren’t bipolar.

7Violating Doctor-Patient Confidentiality

Hollywood loves to play fast and loose with the rules around doctor-patient confidentiality. In order to provide a hint of drama, a movie therapist will often refuse to share client information, at least initially, even if it’s the crucial clue required for the cops/band of plucky kids/wisecracking cat detective to save the day from their out-of-control patient.

In reality, the rules around doctor-patient confidentiality are clear and not particularly complex. Like any medical records, mental health information is extremely sensitive and therapists are not at liberty to share it, even with well-meaning friends or relations. The exception is if the mental health practitioner believes their patient might cause serious harm to themselves or others. In that case, they have a legal right and obligation to relay the information to someone who has the ability to do something about it. In some cases, this might involve a therapist telling a parent their child’s suicidal tendencies. In others, it might mean providing information to the law about a patient likely to harm others.

Where TV and movies gets it wrong is in depicting therapists as reluctant to disclose such crucial information, forcing the cops to lean on them to get access to their files. In fact, breaching confidentiality in a situation where there’s the slightest chance someone may be harmed is the farthest thing from a risky career move. Instead, current laws provide thorough protection for mental health professionals who wish to invoke that exception. As such, it is unlikely that the trope of the brave psychiatrist risking their career to share information is anything like reality. In truth, doctors know that the law will always back them up if they do have a moral need to violate confidentiality.

6The Character Who Ends Up Cured

In fiction, this myth stems from an understandable desire on the part of the writer and the director to provide some positive resolution and leave audiences satisfied. This leads to movies constantly going for the easy way out, where the character has some final revelation that makes them realize how they can live a normal life. Then they have some romantic reconciliation and everyone lives happily ever after.

Sadly, this is pretty much the opposite of how things work in real life. Most serious mental disorders can’t be fully cured, and even those that can require a lot of time and patience to deal with. Someone may indeed have a helpful revelation, but the movies don’t show the years of hard work after that in order to cope with the disorder: the trips to multiple different doctors, the trial and error of different medications, and the painful struggle to repair relationships and rebuild a normal life. Of course, a movie doesn’t have to end on a depressing note to be realistic. Showing that someone is on the way to recovery and has a strong support structure would be a grounded and positive way to bring a story to a conclusion.

5Autistic People Are Either Savants Or Totally Helpless

Movies like Rain Man and Mercury Rising have popularized the idea of an autistic person with advanced math skills or other abilities beyond normal human functioning. Hollywood also frequently features autistic people who are completely incapable of caring for themselves, but very little in between. Apart from Asperger’s syndrome, which is becoming better known, autism has many widely different forms stretching across a scale known as the autism spectrum. As a result, researchers who have studied common stereotypes of autism have found they usually don’t fit well with the reality of the issue.

In fact, savant-like skills are extremely rare among autistic people and their portrayal in Hollywood movies can create unrealistic expectations. One father of an autistic child observed that he often found himself having to tell people that his son was “just” autistic, causing people to respond as if his kid “is doubly challenged.” Yet, as far as Hollywood is concerned, people with autism can either have “diminished capacity or superhuman capacity, but nothing in between.”

4The Cool And Collected Therapist

Many of Hollywood’s stereotypically mentally ill characters have a counterpart in a calm, efficient therapist who listens to them and puts their weird actions in perspective. The therapist may ask the character about their dreams, encourage them to follow their goals, or dispense advice leading to a life-changing epiphany. These characters are almost never shown as anything but the perfect, patient professional. However, it would likely be more accurate if they showed the therapist as a neurotic, anxious, depressed individual who struggles with mental health issues of their own.

While it may disturb some people who get therapy (which is still extremely useful and important), a large number of therapists entered the field because their own mental health problems made them interested in it. Additionally, there is generally no screening for serious psychological issues in the people who are dispensing counseling. The issue is made worse because many therapists end up physically attacked by their patients or discover that a patient has committed suicide. This means that even those therapists who entered the field with relatively good mental health still find themselves dealing with a level of emotional stress much higher than the average medical professional. Therapists also often struggle to get proper help from other therapists, even though they should know better than anyone what help they really need. Even Sigmund Freud, who could arguably have used some counseling himself, believed that therapists should have themselves evaluated every few years for the sake of their patients and themselves.

3People Know What Mental Illnesses They Have

In the movie Fight Club [Warning: 15-year-old spoilers ahead], the main character eventually figures out that he is Tyler Durden and that he has been forgetting his double-life as the Tyler persona. In other words, he has a second personality that’s a total psycho, making him two different parts of one extremely insane person. The problem is that the big reveal also happens to be extremely unrealistic: our anti-hero just kind of suddenly figures out what’s going on. In real life, people with mental disorders don’t simply trip a switch and work out what their disorder is and how to deal with it. Instead, it’s a long, painful process requiring lots of trial, error, and often multiple different attempts at medication.

In fact, many people go without treatment for years because they don’t realize their problems are actually a mental illness. Even if someone does believe they have a problem and is actively searching for the solution, it can still take years to find the right diagnosis or medication. Many people initially go to their primary care doctor, who often doesn’t have the time or knowledge to address the symptoms correctly. And once someone starts treatment, they may not take their medication as often they should. Even if they do, there’s no guarantee the medication will work for their particular issue. This, along with misdiagnosis, makes treating mental health problems a lengthy process.

2Treating An Overdose With A Needle To The Heart

In Pulp Fiction, John Travolta has to help Uma Thurman’s character after she accidentally overdoses on heroin. He drives like a lunatic to his dealer’s house, who immediately produces a massive adrenaline needle, which Travolta stabs into Uma Thurman’s heart, instantly reviving her. Surprisingly, there is a grain of truth to this, since an actual procedure called intracardiac injection has been used to treat cardiac arrest in the past. Unsurprisingly, the procedure depicted in the movie bears no relation to the real one and Travolta’s actions would simply have ensured that Thurman’s character definitely died.

For starters, intracardiac injections are almost never used anymore, since there are obvious complications from stabbing someone in the heart in an attempt to save them. Assuming Travolta didn’t hit a lung or the pulmonary artery, which he almost certainly would have, the procedure still wouldn’t have gotten the drugs to Thurman’s heart any faster than injecting them normally. Even if an injection to the heart was somehow necessary, there’s never any reason to ram a needle through someone’s chest, since the heart can be easily reached from the side through the ribcage. And finally, heroin overdoses actually cause respiratory problems, not the cardiac arrest an intracardiac injection of adrenaline could theoretically be used to treat.

1Depressed People Look Depressed

While depression may be one of the most widespread mental disorders, it’s also among the least likely to be realistically depicted. In movies, a depressed person will probably wear dark clothes, constantly appear sad or somber, and act withdrawn from their friends and family. Hollywood depression apparently involves indifference or contempt for everything outside a small bubble of overly indulgent self-pity. However, these depictions are often the farthest thing from the truth.

In reality, many depressed people put on a public face that fools even their closest friends and family. In fact, depressed people are the most likely to act out in public and draw attention to themselves, putting on a show to hide their problems from others and even themselves. The outgoing popular kid in the movies is always either a one-dimensional caricature or an extremely put-together and well-adjusted person. In real life, the class clown who makes the most noise and keeps everybody laughing could very well be severely depressed on the inside. As a result, many people with depression suffer in silence, putting on a happy face to ensure no one knows what they are really dealing with.

The moment before death is often one of truth. Some dying people use that time to correct their errors (at least the ones they can correct), appreciate their loved ones, and cherish their best moments. They may also reveal their deepest secrets and greatest regrets and align their beliefs.

We have seen dying people do all these things. However, some admissions have turned controversial—especially when it involves the revelation of a secret—after the person survived. Imagine confessing to a murder in front of the cops when you think you are dying but you end up surviving.

Other confessions have become contentious after the dying individuals supposedly took on new faiths. They did die, but the supposed deathbed conversions often caused controversies that lingered on long after they were gone.

10 James Washington

In July 1995, firefighters discovered the charred remains of a woman in an empty home in Nashville, Tennessee. Police later identified the woman as 35-year-old Joyce Goodener, who had been stabbed and beaten to death. Afterward, the murderer had placed her body in a rug before setting it on fire.

Police arrested James Washington for the murder. He knew Joyce and even admitted that he saw her on the day she died. However, police could not pin the murder on him as there was no DNA evidence at the crime scene.

Things changed in 2009 when James Washington suffered a heart attack while serving a 15-year sentence for attempted murder. Fearing that he was going to die, Washington called a nearby guard, James Tomlinson, and confessed to the 1995 murder.

Things went south for Washington when the heart attack didn’t prove fatal. Tomlinson informed authorities about the confession, and Washington was charged with murder. Washington recanted the confession and claimed that he was hallucinating at the time. Unfortunately, it was too late. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.^[1]

9 Tony Wakeford

In 2006, Tony Wakeford suffered a life-threatening illness caused by Parkinson’s disease. Thinking he was going to die, he called his wife, Patricia, and confessed to having an affair with her best friend. Patricia did not complain and patiently listened to all he had to say. Death was near anyway, she probably thought.

They were wrong! Tony survived.

However, Patricia could not contain the pain of betrayal by her husband. This came to a head on September 4, 2010, when she murdered him in their Effingham, Surrey, home. Afterward, she called 999 and claimed that her husband had attacked her during a fight. Police arrived to find Tony’s remains. He had multiple stab wounds on his arms, hands, and legs.

However, the one that proved fatal was delivered straight into his heart. Patricia insisted that Tony had attacked her first even though investigators believed that she had murdered Tony in a fit of jealousy. A neighbor also told investigators that he had heard Patricia repeat the words “I hate you” for about 10 minutes on the day before the murder.^[2]

Patricia was arrested for murder. However, she got lucky after the court reduced the charge to manslaughter. She received a 582-day sentence but was freed because she had already spent 291 days in prison.

8 James Brewer

In 2009, “Michael Anderson” suffered a stroke that he believed was going to kill him. At the hospital, he revealed that he was actually 58-year-old James Brewer. He had changed his name around 30 years earlier after he was declared “wanted” in Tennessee for the murder of his neighbor Jimmy Carroll.

James shot Carroll to death outside a gas station over suspicions that Carroll was trying to have an affair with James’s wife, who later changed her name to Dorothy Anderson. James Brewer was arrested for the murder but fled with his wife right after he was released on bail. They went to Oklahoma, where they changed their names and started to live a new life.

James told the police that he had decided to confess because he wanted to “cleanse his soul” before dying. James was so sure that his time was up that he even told his wife to stop interfering when she tried to halt his confession. Fortunately for justice, James survived the stroke and was charged with murder.^[3]

7 Unidentified 91-Year-Old Man

In 2015, a 91-year-old British man living in Canada confessed to murdering a woman outside a nightclub on Carnaby Street, Soho, UK, in 1946. This is considered the longest period between a crime and confession in British criminal history.

The unidentified man offered the confession at a Canadian police station right after he was diagnosed with cancer. Canadian officers informed the British police, who promptly sent investigators to interrogate the man. The victim was a prostitute whose name the British man could not recall. However, he remembered that he had shot her to death with a pistol.

When British officers showed him pictures of several women, the man identified his victim. She had been a 26-year-old prostitute called Margaret Cook. Police had never arrested a suspect in Cook’s murder even though the man had remained in Britain for five years before relocating to Canada.

Canadian police offered to extradite the man to the UK. However, Canadian judges refused to honor the extradition because the man was too old. They also thought that a trial was unnecessary because the murder would have remained unsolved if the man had not confessed.^[4]

6 Jeffrey Gafoor

In 1988, British police found the remains of a gruesomely murdered woman in a flat in Cardiff, UK. The woman had over 50 stab wounds on her body. She was later identified as a 20-year-old prostitute called Lynette White.

In 1990, Tony Paris, Yusef Abdullahi, and Stephen Miller received life sentences for the murder. However, they were released two years later after advancements in DNA technology proved they were innocent. A few years later, police turned their radar on a man called Jeffrey Gafoor. DNA tests soon proved that Gafoor was the real murderer.

In 2003, the 38-year-old Gafoor somehow realized that he was under police surveillance. He visited several stores where he purchased large amounts of paracetamol tablets. He swallowed the tablets when he returned home that night. Police broke into his home at that moment and arrested him.

Gafoor confessed to the murder as an ambulance transported him to a hospital. He added that he had been awaiting capture for 15 years and really wanted to die. Gafoor was already convulsing when he arrived at the hospital, and for once, it seemed like he was really going to die. That never happened, and he went on to make a full recovery.

Gafoor did not recant his confession. However, he said he was no longer interested in dying and was prepared to face the consequences for his action. He added that he had previously considered death to discover if God and the devil really existed.

Gafoor confessed that he had murdered White during an argument over £30. He received a life sentence and had to spend 13 years in prison before he could be considered for parole. However, he is still in prison as his parole requests were rejected in 2016 and 2018. He is eligible to file a third parole request in 2020.^[5]

5 Shaun

In 2018, a cancer patient at Auckland City Hospital in New Zealand informed a doctor that he had some confessions to make. He added that he would only disclose the information on the condition that the doctor promise never to tell anyone else. The doctor agreed.

The man—identified only with the pseudonym “Shaun”—claimed that he had been a gun for hire who was responsible for several murders across New Zealand in the 1960s. The unidentified doctor later encouraged Shaun to write a confession for the police in case he died. It is unclear if Shaun wrote that letter.

The doctor kept the secret anyway. However, police learned about Shaun after several medical and law researchers published a paper discussing the moral and legal consequences of keeping such secrets. The paper generated a controversy that split medical practitioners into two groups. One supported the doctor who kept the secret, while the other wanted the doctor to reveal it.

The supportive group noted that secrets should never be revealed because they are considered a sort of bond between doctors and their patients. The group also mentioned that Shaun’s condition improved after the confession. He was able to walk and eat—two things he could not do before the confession. His health also improved significantly, and doctors even had to reduce the amounts of painkillers he received.

In fact, Shaun was discharged and sent to a nursing home for palliative care, which is reserved for dying people. Doctors consider patients in palliative care to be terminally ill. Their care is focused on making their deaths less painful. Shaun later died.^[6]

4 Bjorn Ironside

Bjorn Ironside is a legendary figure, although his existence remains in doubt. He was supposedly a Viking king who ruled what is now Sweden sometime in the ninth century. He also doubled as a raider and frequently organized surprise attacks into cities that would now be located in Europe and North Africa.

One of his most infamous raids occurred when he partnered with another Viking called Hastein to attack the Italian city of Luni, which they mistook for Rome. The raid started with a siege. However, the duo quickly realized that the city was well defended against assault. So they decided to trick their way in.

Sources say that either Bjorn or Hastein sent a message to the local bishop in Luni, claiming that Bjorn was on his deathbed and wanted to convert to Christianity. Other sources say that Bjorn actually feigned death and had requested a Christian burial earlier.

Whichever is true, the bishop of Luni agreed and allowed some Viking pallbearers to carry Bjorn’s body into Luni. Once there, Bjorn leapt out of his coffin and fought his way to the city gates alongside the Viking soldiers disguised as pallbearers. However, they soon realized that they had attacked the wrong city.^[7]

3 Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin died in April 1882. Soon after, there were rumors that he had converted to Christianity just before his death. The first such claims were made during a sermon delivered by one Mr. Huntingdon.

Darwin’s deathbed conversion is a big deal because he proposed the theory of evolution. The theory pitched him against religionists who believed that God had created the world and everything within. This is the creationist theory. The creationist and evolutionist theories cannot both be true—at least not totally. One has to be false or only partially true for the other to be true.

Elizabeth Reid Cotton (aka Lady Hope) reignited the rumor in 1915 when she declared that Darwin had really converted. Cotton claimed that Darwin was reading a Bible when she visited him at his home. Darwin was gravely ill at the time and bedridden. Cotton added that he had told her to return to share a sermon with the servants in his home.

Darwin’s family continued to deny every story that Darwin converted on his deathbed. His daughter Henrietta was with him at the time of his death and never saw him convert. His wife, Emma, added that he would have never converted. While they agreed that Cotton did visit Darwin, they said that it was seven months before his death. Darwin was not bedridden at the time.^[8]

2 King Louis XV

King Louis XV was one French king with great taste in women. He became king at age five and married his wife, Queen Marie Leszczynska, when he was just 15. He soon got tired of the queen and found several mistresses to satisfy his sexual urges.

King Louis XV had his mistresses live in the same palace that he shared with his wife. The mistresses resided in different apartments that were linked to the king’s bedroom by a secret staircase. The mistresses used that staircase whenever the king requested their services.

The king’s philandering ways almost came to an end after he was stabbed by Robert-Francois Damiens on January 5, 1757. Thinking he was dying, King Louis XV was rushed to his palace where he confessed his infidelity to Queen Marie and promised to reveal more details if he ever recovered. He did get better, but there is no mention that he made more confessions or dumped his mistresses.^[9]

1 Sir Allan Napier MacNab

Sir Allan Napier MacNab was a controversial politician in early Canadian history. He was a jack-of-all-trades as he dabbled in business, acting, carpentry, land speculation, and law during his eventful life. He also briefly worked as a soldier and even fought in the War of 1812.

MacNab’s life was filled with controversies, which continued after his death. He owed lots of debt, leaving his creditors to fight over the few properties he had left. However, the greatest dispute involved his faith. MacNab was a renowned Anglican even though his wife and daughters were sworn Catholics. The controversy began after Sophia Stuart, his sister-in-law, declared that he had converted to Catholicism on his deathbed.

The Anglicans refuted the claims and insisted that MacNab had died and must be buried an Anglican. They added that the supposed conversion was impossible because MacNab was unconscious at the time of his death. The Catholics won, and MacNab received a Catholic burial. However, the disagreement left the family divided.^[10]

Filmmaking is hard. Hundreds of complex elements must come together smoothly to create an experience for the audience that lasts only a couple of hours. So it’s not surprising that things occasionally go wrong.

The more ambitious the project, the more likely that errors will occur. Sometimes, great movies are made despite the risks. Other times, these films bomb. Here, we look at 10 movies that didn’t go quite as planned.

10 Horrific Things That Happened During Movie Filming

10 When The River No Longer Runs Through It

William Friedkin had an enviable reputation when he signed on to direct the 1977 movie Sorcerer. Perhaps his massive successes with The French Connection and The Exorcist explain why the film studio acquiesced when he decided that Sorcerer needed a huge bridge built over a raging river in the Dominican Republic.

Unfortunately, by the time they were ready to shoot the bridge scene, the river had dried up. Not content to paint in the water, Friedkin moved the entire shoot to Mexico, where he rebuilt the bridge over another raging river.

1976 must have been a good summer because this river also ran dry before shooting began. Whether he would have continued building and dismantling bridges is unclear, but the studio put its foot down and Friedkin was obliged to accept some help from the effects department.

Nevertheless, the scene was stunning. The bridge looked rickety, with steel cables hidden inside frayed ropes. Hidden hydraulic systems made the bridge sway when vehicles crossed it. The little bit of water left in the river was sucked out by pumps into a set of sprinklers which provided the lashing rain.^[1]

Later, Friedkin admitted that the filmmakers had lost five trucks over the side of bridge—sometimes with the driver still inside.

9 Storms, A Heart Attack, And Marlon Brando

When your movie has the word “apocalypse” in the title, you probably should expect trouble.

However, Francis Ford Coppola could not have known just how bad Apocalypse Now was going to get. This was probably just as well because he had invested $30 million of his own money in the film.

The movie was filmed in the Philippines. Although the shoot was supposed to last five months, it took over a year—and an eventful year it was. Storms wrecked the set, Martin Sheen had a heart attack, and according to Coppola, everyone went a little bit insane. Sheen drank too much, Dennis Hopper took too much cocaine, and Coppola had an epileptic fit.

Then Marlon Brando showed up.

He was massively overweight and underprepared. Production shut down for a week so that Coppola could go over Brando’s lines with him. Then Brando shaved his head and decided that he only wanted to be filmed in shadow.

Knowing that he faced financial ruin if the film bombed, Coppola had a nervous breakdown and contemplated suicide.^[2]

Despite some major setbacks, the film was finished and is regarded as a masterpiece today.

8 When You Have The Wrong Sort Of Cloud

Some films are labors of love that the directors want to get just right. Which is admirable. However, moviemaking budgets usually can’t withstand such attention to detail. Film crews can be large, and location shoots are very expensive.

Most movies are a compromise between the artistic vision of the director and the financial constraints placed upon him. But some directors are not comfortable with limitations.

Take Michael Cimino, for instance. While he was directing Heaven’s Gate, the shoot constantly fell behind schedule due to his desire to get everything just right. For example, he wanted his sets to be historically accurate. If they weren’t, he tore them down and had them rebuilt.

That’s expensive.

He did so many takes that he used about 0.4 million meters (1.3 million ft) of film, which is also costly. However, there was little the studio could do because Cimino’s contract gave him absolute artistic freedom. He used it to get seemingly unimportant details just right.

For example, Kris Kristofferson had to crack a whip at least 50 times before Cimino was happy with the noise it made. An irrigation system was also installed to make the grass on his battlefield the right shade of green.

But things really got weird when shooting was halted for hours—and the cast, crew, and extras did nothing—while Cimino waited for just the right sort of cloud to float into the shot.^[3]

When the shoot was finally over, Cimino changed the locks on his editing room door and began to work through the miles of footage. He was so pleased with his movie that the work print was 5.5 hours long. The studio demanded something shorter. The final film, a modest 3.5-hour epic, was released in 1980.

It bombed.

7 When The Shoot Is As Ugly As The Film

John Boorman’s 1972 movie Deliverance is not a pretty film. The story of four businessmen who take a trip into the wilderness, only to find it much more savage than they had expected, makes for uncomfortable viewing. As they battle to survive, their baser instincts take over.

And it is ugly.

The process of making the film was also nasty. Boorman wanted his actors to perform all their own stunts on their canoe trip down swollen rivers with fast-flowing currents. Burt Reynolds later claimed that Boorman had insisted the film be shot in sequence so that he could rewrite the script if one of the actors died.^[4]

Which was a distinct possibility.

Jon Voight did a rock-climbing scene without a harness or any wires because the director wanted the scene shot in close-up. Reynolds broke his tailbone going over a waterfall in a canoe.

This is probably why all the characters in the film look so darned miserable. However, nobody died, and the movie was a critical success. Boorman got an Academy Award nomination for Best Director, and Deliverance was nominated for Best Picture.

6 When You Endanger The Stars

As a rule, Hollywood is protective of its stars. They are given their own trailers, dressers, and personal assistants. Someone does their hair and makeup, and another person fetches their coffee just the way they like it. But when the cameras roll, certain actors find themselves doing things that are decidedly less glamorous and sometimes downright dangerous.

Take Brendan Fraser, for example. He was almost hanged when the safety device on his noose failed to work in The Mummy. Isla Fisher almost drowned in a tank of water in Now You See Me. Margaret Hamilton was set on fire in her first scene in The Wizard of Oz. Her Wicked Witch of the West disappeared in a puff of red smoke, but the trapdoor beneath her feet failed to open.^[5]

However, these actors survived.

The deaths of Vic Morrow and two child actors in a helicopter crash while filming Twilight Zone: The Movie led to one of the most prolonged lawsuits in movie history. In a stunningly tactless moment, director John Landis said of the accident, “There was absolutely no good aspect about this whole story. The tragedy, which I think about every day, had an enormous impact on my career, from which it may possibly never recover.”

The careers of Vic Morrow and those child actors ain’t doing so well, either.

Top 10 Tragic Movie Set Deaths

5 When You Annoy The Neighbors

When movies are shot on location, it can be annoying for residents who live and work in that area. Although production companies may make a lot of promises to residents before shooting begins, filmmakers don’t always keep them.

However, location scouts would do well to keep in mind what happened during the shoot of the original Doctor Dolittle movie in 1967. The film company had taken over an entire village in Wiltshire, England, and even built an enormous artificial dam.

The villagers were not pleased. One of them was an SAS officer named Ranulph Fiennes. He tried (but failed) to blow up the dam with some explosives that he had borrowed from his employers. Fiennes was dismissed from the army and had to find alternative employment as the world’s greatest living adventurer.^[6]

Even so, Doctor Dolittle went massively over budget due to weather delays, animal problems, and casting issues. Worst of all, the film didn’t come close to covering its costs at the box office.

4 When You Are A Little Too True To Life

Realism in the movies is always good, and it’s nice when filmmakers go the extra mile to give audiences an authentic experience. Sometimes, though, they can take it a little too far.

Noel Marshall’s movie Roar is a case in point. The 1981 film depicts a man living with lions, tigers, and other dangerous animals in his own African wildlife sanctuary and what happens when his family comes for a visit.

Marshall hired his wife, Tippi Hedren, and his stepdaughter, Melanie Griffith, to star in the movie with him. It took 11 years to complete the film, probably due to the time that injured cast and crew members spent in the hospital from animal attacks.

Hedren had her head bitten by a lion, and Griffith was so badly injured that she needed 50 stitches on her face. Even worse, the cinematographer had his scalp torn off by a lion and needed over 200 stitches.^[7]

After all that effort, Roar was finally released in 1981. It bombed.

3 When Your Location Is A Little Too Remote

What do you do if your movie is set in a unique yet somewhat remote historic location?

You could use the expertise of Hollywood set designers to recreate the environment within the safe confines of a soundstage. Or you could pack your bags and do the thing properly.

In the early 1990s, Kevin Reynolds decided that he had to travel to Easter Island to make Rapa Nui. Situated in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean, Easter Island was hard to access. It was even more difficult to bring in supplies to feed the crew.

The film supposedly explored the history of Easter Island and put forward theories about what had happened to the population. It seems, however, that Rapa Nui concentrated most of its authenticity on the location.^[8]

Historians took issue with the movie over the accuracy of historical details. Meanwhile, film critics complained about the quality of the script. One reviewer said it was more Fantasy Island than Easter Island.

When Rapa Nui was released in 1994, it bombed.

2 When It Rains In The Desert

There are some things that you should be able to take for granted. Deserts are surely one of them.

However, George Miller discovered that this is not always so. While filming Mad Max: Fury Road, Miller eschewed CGI sequences, instead opting to race real vehicles in the actual desert of Namibia and crash those vehicles repeatedly.

This low-tech decision did not please everyone, particularly the producers who were footing the bill. However, the stunts certainly made for an entertaining film.

Namibia was not Miller’s first choice of location. As originally planned, the shoot was to take place in Australia. But an unexpectedly large amount of rainfall turned his dystopian desert into a lush oasis of flowers.^[9]

Mad Max: Flora Road didn’t sound quite as cool, so the shoot had to cross continents before it could be completed. However, Miller’s determination was rewarded with 10 Academy Award nominations, including Best Director and Best Picture of 2015.

1 When Ships Just Won’t Sail—On Land

Werner Herzog is a man who thinks big. Not only is he a notable film director but he also writes, acts, and directs opera. His films are known for characters who are not afraid to follow their dreams, even when those aspirations are a little bit mad.

When Herzog made the film Fitzcarraldo in 1982, he took a leaf out of his protagonist’s book and pushed a massive steamboat over a mountain. The film features a man who wants to build an opera house in the Amazon jungle. He also decides that he can take a shortcut through the jungle if he drags his boat from the river, up a mountain, and down the other side to a different river.

Herzog didn’t want to rely on camera trickery, models, or any other cinematic techniques that would have made the job easier. He chose to use only the ropes and pulleys that you see in the movie, a bulldozer to clear the path, and a lot of indigenous extras. They actually pulled that 320-ton boat up the hill.^[10]

The ropes hid steel cables, which became very hot and had to be cooled with buckets of water before the surrounding rope caught fire or the cable snapped. Every time the boat moved 9 meters (30 ft), the shoot halted while the cameras were reset. Huge logs were placed beneath the boat to prevent it from plowing into the soil. This was also shown in the film, so it had to be done by hand rather than by a crane.

Herzog was determined to have audiences see the whole ship moving and refused to cheapen the film with close-ups to cover up the hard bits. It took two weeks to get the ship to the top of the mountain.

Then they had to take a break for six months because the water in the river on the other side had all but dried up. They left the boat balanced at the top until the river swelled again. After six months out of water and the toll of the arduous journey, the boat almost capsized as it entered the water.

Although shooting that scene was completely nuts, it has become one of the most iconic in cinema history.

10 Notorious Film Sets That Injured, Maimed And Killed

About The Author: Ward Hazell is a freelance writer and travel writer who is currently studying for a PhD in English literature.