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33 Random Bits of Trivia We’ve Been Saving for a Special Occasion

Time to break out the fine facts

33 Random Bits of Trivia We’ve Been Saving for a Special Occasion

September 09, 2024

Finally! This wildly expensive collection of facts is getting dusted off and shared. You really lucked out today. Not that our regular day-to-day facts aren’t special too. But the creme de la creme is just a few lines below, and we can’t wait to blind you with their shimmer.

So please, if you’re going to share this list (which we highly recommend that you do), only share them with your classiest of friends.

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33

CRACKED.COM Elephants can learn to imitate human speech. A male Asian elephant named Koshik, at South Korea's Everland Zoo, uses his trunk to change the shape of his vocal tract and produce eerily human-like sounds. Koshik's vocabulary of five words doesn't sound like a lot, but it's still better than humans can imitate elephants. — Source

32

Filing your taxes is complicated because of industry lobbying. Companies like Intuit (of TurboTax) and H&R Block are just too invested in you needing their services. That's why they keep pouring millions into preventing your taxes from getting easier to file. Then they pump out ads telling you how the only want to help you. + U.S. - Corporation INM IT'S IN CRACKED COM - 1040 U.S. Individuo - Status - Since - - — Source

31

The Chinese government banned puns. Wordplay is common in Mandarin language - or it was until 2014, when the government disallowed puns in TV and advertisements. The rationale was ostensibly to uphold traditional values and avoid cultural and linguistic chaos. Punbelievable. CRACKED.COM — Source

30

Gamers are living regular lives on Grand Theft Auto. The most transgressive thing you can do in GTA V isn't shooting cops or pedestrians, but living a normal, unremarkable life as a law-abiding citizen - and Grand Theft Auto Roleplay is exactly about that. While the community has been around since 2019, it has become wildly popular during lockdown. CRACKED.COM — Source

29

Godzilla began as a rip-off of an American movie. When plans for a post- war drama fell through, producer Tomoyuki Tanaka decided to use the budget for a copy of the recent The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. Ray Harrysausen, who made the creature effects for The Beast, was still peeved about that decades later. CRACKED.COM — Source

28

Mötley Crüe demand a boa during their tours. A usual request in Mötley Crüe's tour contracts is a list of local AA venues, which makes sense considering their hard-partying history. Harder to explain are the submachine gun and the 12-foot-long boa constrictor. CRACKED.COM — Source

27

Rats

Rats can live everywhere - except in Alberta, Canada. Alberta takes rats as seriously as any other place else would take kaiju. There's an overzealous, government- sponsored rat-control program, and every resident is responsible to fight the whiskered menace. As a result, Alberta has been rat-free for the last 70 years. CRACKED.COM — Source

26

CRACKED.COM The first Smurfs story was about a zombie apocalypse. The comic The Black Smurfs (which became The Purple Smurfs in the U.S.) had many tropes of modern zombie stories: Mindless ghoul Smurfs, an infection which spreads by biting, the near extinction of Smurfkind... And it came out more than 10 years before Night of the Living Dead. — Source

25

Gnomeo & Juliet This was Elton John's passion project. Не spent 11 years of his life trying to get the movie made, adored it, and made a sequel. CRACKED.COM — Source

24

suspiria Tilda Swinton had a hidden cameo as an old man in the movie. She denied it the whole time. CRACKED.COM — Source

23

CRACKED.COM Jack ketchum's The woman The horror film made a woman faint on release. — Source

22

Unkar Plutt Rey's adopted father/Oliver Twist villain Unkar Plutt was actually Simon Pegg. Не joins a handful of actors that have appeared in Star Trek and Star Wars, and the only one who also appeared in Spaced. CRACKED.COM — Source

21

The Legend of VOX Machina The show, based on an actual D&D play podcast, began as one animated episode - but after the Kickstarter got over ten times the original amount, it began to transform into this Prime Video series. CRACKED.COM — Source

20

CRACKED.COM Tropic Thunder Tom Cruise hid his name in the credits and took a reduced fee to portray what in retrospect seems to just be Harvey Weinstein. — Source

19

WAYNE'S WORLD wayne's world This is the second highest-rated of all movies based on SNL skits, just after Bob Roberts. CRACKED.COM — Source

18

CRACKED.COM Bill Murray in zombieland They hid Murray's appearance in all promotional material before the film came out. — Source

17

sith of the opera Darth Vader might've been based on the Phantom from Phantom of the Opera. Byronic hero? Awful face mask? Weird pseudo-mentor relationship with the main lead? Check! Once Disney buys Andrew Lloyd Webber, they can have a crossover. CRACKED.COM — Source

16

I am Iron Man. Robert Downey Jr. improvised the film's ending line. Years later, an editor would come up with the idea to have it come back in Endgame. CRACKED.COM — Source

15

CRACKED.COM Die Hard became a classic because of a cardboard box. A fridge box fell off a truck in front of screenwriter Jeb Stuart's car - and before he found out it was empty, he thought he was going to die and that he should have patched things up with his wife while he had the chance. Then he decided the movie should be about a guy trying to do exactly that. — Source

14

Some scientists want to do away with the concept of fish. Yes, all fish kinda look alike, but that doesn't mean they're all related - some are genetically closer to you than to other fish. That's why many experts have been advocating for replacing the category with others that make more biological sense. CRACKED.COM — Source

13

Car Window Garfield

CRACKED.COM That car window Garfield was a mistake. Not just in the obvious sense - the product wasn't supposed to be like that. Jim Davis' idea was to put velcro on the toy's paws to hang it on curtains, but the manufacturer used suction cups instead. Still, no one thought people would stick it to car windows. — Source

12

Superheroes lost readers in the early '70s - but not the Hulk. After Marvel's massive success in the '60s, most of their heroes slumped in the new decade, except for Hulk, who actually gained readers. Hulk was seen more as a monster than a hero, and monsters were all the rage back then. CRACKED.COM — Source

11

Americans are more susceptible to placebos. Extensive research has found out that the placebo response to sham treatments has risen dramatically in the last two decades - but only in the U.S. This is speculated to be caused by increasingly big and elaborate clinical studies, which may boost participants' expectations. GRACKED.COM — Source

10

A Good Samaritan was seen as a contradiction. Israelites of the time were prejudiced against Samaritans. That's why the biblical parable underlines that this Samaritan was good-listeners wouldn't expect him to be. CRACKED.COM — Source

9

CRACKED.COM The Soviets sent the first woman into space because of a misunderstanding. Skydiver Valentina Tereshkova was rushed into orbit in 1963, to beat the U.S. at the women in space game. Except that America wasn't training female astronauts - the Soviets were just misinterpreting a news report. — Source

8

CRACKED.COM M John Steinbeck wrote an unpublished werewolf novel. Steinbeck is well known for The Grapes of Wrath, and tragically much less well known for Murder at Full Moon, a potboiler about werewolves he wrote with a pseudonym. Steinbeck's estate selfishly refuses to let us read it. — Source

7

Elves get married by having sex. Tolkien's notes and rought drafts published after his death reveal that elves can't get naughty out of wedlock, as getting naughty results in wedlock. They do have wedding ceremonies, but those are a formality - it's the act of bodily union that seals the deal. CRACKED.COM — Source

6

CRACKED.COM The TV version of The Thing is almost a different movie. The edit of John Carpenter's movie CBS debuted in 1986 was weird, even by TV edit standards. Not only was a lot of the gore cut out, but a voiceover narration was added in for some reason. Also, the ending is made much less ambiguous by heavily implying the Thing escaped. — Source

5

* Bill Burr (not the comedian) came up with all those password rules you hate. Letters, numbers, symbols, punctuation marks, unholy glyphs from forgotten languages... Burr, a government IT specialist, created all those rules for passwords in 2003 - but he intended them for administrators, not regular users. Today he's sorry for all the pain he's caused. CRACKED COM — Source

4

Big Bird taught Giancarlo Esposito to work with Baby Yoda. Esposito has said that a Sesame Street gig early in his career prepared him for The Mandalorian. Big Bird taught me how to play with someone who was inside the suit, who was a real human being, which all led me to being able to work with Baby Yoda. CRACKED.COM — Source

3

Redshirts are actually less likely to die than other crew members. Yes, most of the dead on Star Trek wear red, but also red shirts greatly outnumber other shirt colors. Fan and mathematician James Grime calculated that about 10% of the Enterprise's redshirts died during the show, compared to 18% of goldshirts. CRACKED.COM — Source

2

Pepsi briefly had the sixth most powerful navy in the world. As payment for a huge shipment of cola to the USSR in the '80s, Pepsi got $3 billion worth of warships and submarines. Fortunately, they didn't need to invade anywhere, having nowhere left to conquer. PS PEPSI CRACKED.COM — Source

1

CRACKED.COM Disney workers were forced to share underpants. As regular underwear doesn't play well with the costumes, Disney's costumed characters are issued specially designed shorts and jockstraps - which until 2001, they had to share from a common pool. It took the unions intense negotiations to change that. — Source

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