The 5 Most Sadistic 'Game Over' Scenes in Video Game History

Most "game over" screens are pretty self-explanatory. They generally say the word "game" and then indicate to you that it is, in fact, "over." That is all that is needed to communicate your failure without being a total dick about it. But that's not enough for some games. When a simple handwritten "Fuck you, player" would have sufficed, these jerks built a laser, carved the letters into the moon, then bombed NASA so nobody could ever erase it.

#5. Capcom Ends 90 Percent of Arcade Games With Absolute Murder

Capcom

Arcade games have to strike a fine line with their "game over" screens. They need to get the message of defeat across while still convincing gamers that they should put in another quarter and try again instead of giving up and going to a rival machine. Lots of games accomplished this with an encouraging message, but apparently it used to be official Capcom policy that kids should be confronted with the grim specter of death whenever possible.

For example, in the beat-'em-up game Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (weren't the '90s great?), defeated players literally had a gun shoved in their face as the countdown blared.

Capcom
"Are ... are you mugging me?"

Fail to ante up and you get shot right in the face. You thought this was a fun-filled romp through a land of big reptiles and even bigger cars? This is serious, life or death shit, kid.

Capcom

At least the villains of Final Fight disposed of their defeated enemies in a suitably cartoonish fashion.

Capcom
"Please, God, I swear this will be the last time I check the Casual Encounters section."

This wouldn't necessarily have been traumatizing on its own. It's no worse than a Bugs Bunny cartoon. But there's something about the way Haggar tried to blow out that bomb's fuse. There's so much fear and panic in his face -- you know he wants to live, and it is only your miserly quarter-guarding that is dooming him.

Capcom
"Mayor Haggar is survived by his daughter and his mustache."

Then there's the Punisher arcade game, where the Punisher's sidekick frantically attempts toresuscitate his boss' battered body. It does not appear to be working.

Capcom/Marvel Entertainment
"This is the most cardio work I've done in a decade."

That's because what the Punisher's dying body really needs is a 25-cent infusion, stat! We know it's only a handful of pixels, but if you squint at just the right moment, you can watch a man's heart break as his friend and mentor dies right there on the street.

Capcom/Marvel Entertainment
"YOU CAUSED THIS! JUST LIKE YOUR PARENTS' DIVORCE!"

#4. Lose in Wing Commander IV and Your Character Becomes a 

Washed-Up Alcoholic

Electronic Arts

Mark Hamill has had a long and varied career, but he'll always be remembered for playing a single iconic role: an ordinary farm boy who grows up to be one of the greatest space fighter pilots the galaxy has ever seen. We are of course referring to Christopher Blair from the Wing Commanderseries.

One of the selling points of Wing Commander IV was a storyline that branched based on your decisions, actions, and accomplishments. By this point in the franchise, Blair is already a bona fide hero to humanity, but continued failure to meet your objectives leads to the worst fate a fighter pilot can suffer: a poor performance review from Malcolm McDowell.

Electronic Arts
"So, it's come to this. Your performance, I mean, not our respective careers."

McDowell lectures Hamill with the exacting precision and terrible viciousness that only a man who looks like Sting from the future can muster. At the end of the berating, Hamill is stripped of his commission.

Electronic Arts
His dignity having already been stripped by signing to this franchise.

Ever the gentleman, Hamill offers a farewell handshake, but McDowell has to be all McDowelly about it.

Electronic Arts
You should be used to getting shot down by now, Blair.

That should be it. That's waaay more than enough humiliation for a simple "game over" screen. You've taken your lumps, and you're ready to jump right back into the game to- no? It's still going? Jesus, is this a tactical space fighter or a disappointed mother-in-law simulator?

The humiliation continues on, as the scene jumps to a desert bar on Blair's home planet. The bartender pours him a generous splash of space booze, and the utterly defeated Blair slumps into a drunken depression that surely ends with him placing the business end of a blaster in his mouth.

Electronic Arts
"Blair, want a shot?"
"No ... That's later."

#3. Spider-Man and His Wife Get Melted if You Lose in The Amazing 

Spider-Man vs. The Kingpin

Sega/Marvel Entertainment

The finale of The Amazing Spider-Man vs. The Kingpin has the titular villain dangling Mary Jane over a kiddie pool of acid. Here's what happens if you lose the fight.

Sega/Marvel Entertainment
The Kingpin hasn't been this happy since the McRib came back early.

Oh no! Clearly you're about to be dipped in acid. Well, you get the gist, time to hit "continue" and try again ... just as soon as you finish watching both your favorite hero and his sassy lovable wife melt into a fine slurry.

Sega/Marvel Entertainment
"... the hero was dissolved into an unrecognizable meat-goo. In other news,
McDonald's has suddenly announced the return of the McRib."

There was nothing unclear about that first still. Nobody lost that boss fight, saw Spidey and MJ up there about to go skinny dipping in the deepest end, and thought, "I wonder what happens next?" And yet they showed us anyway. The act itself isn't graphic. There's no blood or gore, but you definitely see Mary Jane's bare legs being submerged in acid, leaving little doubt that your favorite superhero and his wife died a horrific and agonizing death because you personally failed him. That's maybe a little heavier than we were prepared to deal with when we popped in our cutesy cartoon Spider-Man game. It made for some pretty philosophical Saturday mornings, all staring gloomily into our Alpha-Bits and only seeing the words "inevitable" and "mortality" spelled out there.

#2. Beat Batman: Dark Tomorrow and You Still Destroy the Planet

Kemco/Warner Bros.

At the end of Dark Tomorrow, Batman corners Ra's al Ghul in his stronghold, where the villain reveals his plan to blow up the North Pole, which will cause massive tsunamis that wipe out Earth's coastal cities. Ra's sensibly uses a multimedia presentation to explain all of the advantages to his plan, but Batman is notoriously unswayed by even the best designed of villainous PowerPoint presentations and attacks. This leads to a climatic sword fight, and if you lose, Batman gets run through and you get to watch him die while the world floods. It's grim, but this is Batman, not My Little Pony. Rainbows aren't going to shoot out of his gaping chest wound.

Kemco/Warner Bros.
"Talia ... I've always loved boob."

Don't wanna watch Batman die? Don't lose, sucka!

So you hit "continue," grit your teeth, step up to the bat (ha!) again, swing for the fences this time, and win! Here's one of the endings you might get: Ra's acknowledges his personal defeat, but the celebratory Batoosi is interrupted when he whips out a gigantic TV remote to activate his doomsday device.

Kemco/Warner Bros.
And delete Bruce's DVR.

That's the North Pole exploding. Generally considered "a bad thing" by fans of the environment and breathing oxygen instead of water. Then you're treated to a montage of city after city being devoured by tidal waves.

Kemco/Warner Bros.

Kemco/Warner Bros.

Kemco/Warner Bros.
Somewhere a young boy named B.P. Exxon vows to fight the oceans that killed his parents.

Batman watches with growing slack-jawed horror as the world dies, eventually falling to his knees and screeching out a "Nooooo!" that would make Darth Vader proud. The game even throws a spotlight on him from out of nowhere, you know, in case you were having trouble appreciating the dramatic significance of the apocalypse.

Kemco/Warner Bros.
Fin.

Aaaaand roll credits. Congratulations! You ... won?

Gamers were understandably confused as to why Batman's adventure "successfully" ended with a global disaster. Unbeknownst to them (because the game didn't bother to mention it), the player has to disarm a signaling device before starting the final boss fight, so that Ra's device can't send its signal. Oh, you didn't think to search out and block potential radio signals before your big boss fight? Psh, the real Batman would have.

#1. X-COM Writes a Damn Novel About How Much You Let Down

 Humanity

2K Games

Winning at X-COM, a strategy game about humanity repelling an alien invasion, requires both tactical prowess and mastery of the raw thrills of budget management. Fail at either and it's game over, because extraterrestrial threats are no excuse for deficit spending. If you lose, you're treated to a slideshow that explains, in specific and seemingly infinite depth, what your failure meant for mankindexactly. First you learn that your failure means humanity will have to accept alien invaders, then you're told that the aliens have no intention of honoring their treaties, then it's further explained that the aliens began to exterminate humanity by poisoning the air and water (at ... at a slightly quicker pace than we're accustomed to, we guess).

2K Games

2K Games
"Detroit, Cleveland, unaffected."

A normal game would have thrown up the "retry" option after the first screen. But X-COM ain't even finished yet. It's not enough to tell you that humanity has devolved into terrible mutants. You need to see and learn about those mutants and their awful fate, and be further reminded that the whole project was for nothing, and that the entire Earth is screwed because of your failure:

2K Games
"Us remaining mutants speak great legends of you, the one they call Asshole."

When the game was ported to the PlayStation, they actually set aside some dollars and a good chunk of their employees' time to rework the failure slideshow into a full animated cutscene. Because X-COM's entire core gameplay philosophy is and always has been "Fuck you, the player, personally and with great vigor." That extra dev cash could've gone to new game modes, better graphics, or a fuller score -- but no. X-COM got their hands on that sweet port money and shunted it right off into the "Make the Player Feel Like Shit" fund.

First we see a sinister UFO hovering over the United Nations Building.

2K Games

Inside, humans and aliens sit across from each other at the negotiating table. Well, OK, it always sucks to be on the losing side. But they're signing some kind of treaty, indicating that the aliens have at least the barest respect for their defeated opponents. Maybe there is a bit of hope after all.

And that's when a group of armed aliens burst into the room ...

2K Games

... and put a gun to the already defeated delegate's face.

2K Games

And you watch his blood drip straight onto the peace treaty.

2K Games
The aliens then use the blood to finger paint a picture of you getting gang-probed on it.

X-COM took the abstract concept of subtlety out to the shed and bashed its face in with a shovel, then burned the shed down and pissed on the ashes.

4 Uncool Fashions We Should Consider Bringing Back

Sometimes fashions get ripped out of our closets and fade away into the abyss of memory because they're just not cool anymore, even though they are quite practical. They work as intended. They function, but for one reason or another we all collectively decided that they'd had their shot, and it's time to put them away. Sometimes, as they ascended into the fashion afterlife, they somehow picked up an ugly stigmatization, which is like nailing the coffin shut, wrapping it in chains, and blasting it into space. If we can somehow move past the stigmas attached to some of these no-longer-cool-but-crazy-useful items, I think we'll all be much happier people. Trends like ...

#4. Fanny Packs

I've long despised pockets. Wallets make me feel like I have a massive tumor on my ass. Keys are always molding into the most obnoxious, uncomfortable position they can be in at any given time. Modern smartphones are only getting bigger and wider, and if I wanted that in my pocket, I would carry a spatula. A book bag is a little too much for my needs ... but a fanny pack. Ho-ly shiiit -- a fanny pack would rid my pelvic area of all its encumbrances.

lzf/iStock/Getty Images
We could all feel this free if only we would accept fanny packs into our hearts.

I would love to have one right now. If we were friends and you needed ChapStick -- BOOM -- it's in my fanny pack. You're welcome. Hold on; I think I've got a coupon for Golden Corral in here somewhere. Half-priced buffet if we eat before 6. You're welcome. Dude, you want a Tic Tac? Wintergreen or Fruit Adventure? You're welcome, but don't thank me -- thank the fanny pack. I'd be so goddamn cool.

The Rock in a fanny pack AND an Insane Clown Posse shirt. That's ... that's incredible.

I had a fanny pack when I was a kid. I got rid of it when I entered middle school, which is around the age when kids start asking questions like "Is that where you keep your vagina?" The biggest reason for that, I think, is that fanny packs are too practical for their own good. They're so functional, they practically sell themselves, but they're also so tragically uncool that they practically recall themselves back to the factory and their Asian sweatshop manufacturers commit seppuku for shaming the world with the uncoolness of their functionally perfect product.

It also didn't help that fanny packs were worn almost exclusively by off-duty professional wrestlers. Wrestlers aren't exactly fashion trendsetters; they tend to dress like athletic homeless people. They hit the gym, scream at a train, and then fall asleep on a brick.

Steve Mason/Photodisc/Getty Images
Work that fanny, Granny!

Everything that's cool today will fade into uncoolness with time, only to be brought back by some trendy, useless heiress 15 years from now. Fanny packs are about due for their resurgence, and when they return, you better damn well know that if we're hanging out and you've got the sniffles, I've got a travel pack of tissues for you. They're in my fanny pack. You're welcome.

#3. Rollerblades

STEFANOLUNARDI/iStock/Getty Images

I played roller hockey when I was younger. I was pretty good. I also skateboarded. I was awful. Naturally, I gravitated more toward in-line skating as a preferred mode of childhood transportation. Being someone who straddled the line between the two worlds, I noticed there was a soft-spoken tension between in-line culture and skateboard culture that no amount of X-Games could ease.

Ingram Publishing/Ingram Publishing/Getty Images
*Guitar squeal*

Back when "X-treme" sports were gaining national attention, the two sides struggled for supremacy. Roller rinks were cool, and everyone had in-line skates. At the same time, skate parks were popping up everywhere, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was infinitely better than most other nouns. Skateboarding won the culture war, and in-line skating faded into the realm of kitsch fads alongside slap-on bracelets and Pogs. Rollerblading became stigmatized; it was shorthand for lameness, which is sad.

DeviantArt.com
So popular that we made our fingers do it, too.

There was no pressure in having to learn a trick with Rollerblades. If you were riding a skateboard around other skateboarders and wanted to feel the wrath of their dickishness, all you had to do was tell them you didn't know how to ollie or kickflip. They'd fire condescending glares at you through the shaggy, moist hair drapes covering their eyes. I couldn't skateboard just for transportation; I had to constantly be working toward becoming the next Rodney Mullen.

In-line skates were more inclusive. Everyone had them laying around somewhere in a garage or closet, and there was little competitiveness to try to do something incredible with them. They were more like bikes, in that a person could use them to go on a nice, leisurely ride, but they could also go apeshit and try to jump a neighborhood canal that has a "Beware of Alligators" sign beside it, which I actually did once.

One day, rollerblading will be in style again, and we're all going to have a ball while the skateboarders look on, wishing their irrational hatred of shoes with wheels didn't prevent them from taking part in all the fun.

#2. Clip-On Ties

Britishacademystore.com

I will never understand why clip-on ties had a stigma of lameness attached to them while traditional neckties continued on, unabated, perpetuating their bullshit antics.

Bepsimage/iStock/Getty Images
You can't even tell.

There is no practical, functional purpose of a tie, and there hasn't been one since some genius long ago made shirt buttons go all the way up. So when I create a loop that will hold my collar together, I'm creating a redundancy. It's like putting a clip on an unopened bag of chips. So, if the loop hasn't been necessary for way longer than any of us have been alive, why not eliminate it entirely? Yeah, tying the knot is a minor hurdle in life, but if we're keeping ties around purely for stylistic reasons, can't we at least get rid of the need to actually tie them at all to make a useless thing somewhat easier to manage?

The stigma of a clip-on is in the ease of it. Why does the physical action of tying a tie make it a better, more respected option? If no one can tell if it's tied or clipped, why does the way in which it's stuck to your neck matter? Let's admit that whether they be clipped or knotted by our own hands, it doesn't matter -- they're just a thing that fills in a gap between lapels. Ties are basically the fake flowers your mom keeps in a huge vase in the corner of her living room to fill up the emptiness you left behind when you went off to college.

Let's say I have two things: Thing A and Thing B. I tell you that if you use Thing A, there's a chance someone can strangle you with it. Thing B has all the benefits of Thing A, and the risk of strangulation is almost nonexistent.

Niyazz/iStock/Getty Images
Thing A, basically.

Wouldn't you prefer Thing B? If you would, well guess what? Thing B was a clip-on tie the whole time! I'm basing this argument on the "Reasons for Use" subsection of the Wikipedia entry for clip-on ties -- a subsection that's been slapped with a "[citation needed]" tag. Apparently, clip-on ties are used by police officers and security guards so people can't choke them in a struggle. So, now I'm afraid of ties. Thanks, poorly citied Wikipedia entry.

#1. Fedoras

Technically, fedoras are in style right now. Thanks to the Internet, the "fedora-wearing men's rights guy with a button-up shirt with flames on it" has become a stereotype. It's an easy set of words people in comment sections and forums can toss out to pigeonhole someone based on the nearly nothing they know about them. Maybe you've seen it encapsulated in memes like this:

Nicethingsforawfulpeople.tumblr.com/

It's like calling someone a hipster, but harsher and with more disdain. I've been to enough anime and comic book conventions to know that type of person is real, right down to the fedora the stereotype describes. Still, I'm on the border between knowing they're real and wanting to believe it's a straw man used to absorb blame for some of the ills of the world. Real or fake, that special breed of asshole fucked up fedoras for everyone.

Fedoras are a clothing item from a time when wearing a hat meant something. It was more than a practical way of protecting oneself against the elements -- it was the cherry on top of a well-dressed man. No dashing suit was complete without a gorgeous fedora. As fashions became less formal, some people wanted to hold on to at least one item from that golden age of looking fly as shit. Today, only two types of men can wear a fedora, or anything fedora-like, with jeans and a basic shirt and not be considered a loser: 1) grey-haired older guys who don't own a single picture of themselves where they're not in the woods, and 2) guys so impossibly handsome they have to be the result of throwing a mannequin and an issue of GQ into the teleporter from The Fly.

Or if you're the guy who created Minecraft.

The modern use of the fedora is seen as a calculated maneuver, a blatant affectation. It's the hat preferred by those who, instead of cultivating an interesting personality, would rather wear a hat. Not a hat that will give them magic powers like Mighty Max. Just kind of an old-timey hat, a gesture that's only a step away from someone incorporating tuberculosis into their style.

One day, maybe in a far-off age when we don't dress like the only place we're going is from our bed to our toilet and back, fedoras will be ripped from the clutches of whoever the hell fedora wearers actually are. But until then, it will continue to be sunny as shit, and I won't be able to protect my scorched neck with a very practical hat because people will silently wonder why I'm not wearing a button-up shirt with a giant Dragon Ball Z mural on it.

5 Barbaric Practices That Are More Modern Than You Think

When it comes to history, it can be difficult to get a real sense of scale, like when you learn that the last surviving Civil War widow died in 2008. History is like that -- things we assume were left in the distant past have a way of lingering on, decades or centuries longer than you'd have thought. For example ...

#5. The Last American Execution by Firing Squad Was in 2010

Photos.com/Photos.com/Getty Images

If there is one thing humans have been especially good at throughout history, it's coming up with increasingly more efficient ways to execute people. As time progressed, crucifixion gave way to the guillotine, the guillotine gave way to hanging, hanging gave way to the firing squad, and the firing squad gave way to the electric chair. In recent decades, Old Sparky has lost out to chemical injection as the most popular method of removing the most unsociable of us from the mortal realm. It's just so much more civilized to treat it like a medical procedure, rather than, say, straight up shooting a dude.

Dennis Donohue/iStock/Getty Images
Though the idea of a win-and-you're-free deathmatch with a bear has been steadily gaining support.

But Actually ...

Despite the forward march of execution technology, it's only been about four years since the last firing squad execution was carried out in America.

In Utah, those sentenced to the death penalty had their choice of execution method from a list of options (you can't choose "be kicked into a jet engine by Steven Seagal"). This tradition technically ended in 2004, when the firing squad was officially outlawed in favor of lethal injection as the go-to technique for reducing the population of death row, but a caveat in the rule stated that anyone who received a death sentence before then was still permitted to choose to go out in a hail of gunfire.

Pasticcio/iStock/Getty Images
It just has a certain flair to it, on top of giving you a good setup for your last words.

Double murderer Ronnie Lee Gardner, who was sentenced to death for murdering a lawyer while trying to escape trial for a previous murder, was the only guy since that ruling to decide that being shot to death was somehow better than dying peacefully in his sleep. And so, after sitting on death row for 25 years, Gardner was strapped to a chair and had a target painted over his heart, and five officers who volunteered to be a part of history were equipped with old school .30 caliber Winchesters. In line with tradition, one was loaded with blanks so that none of them could feel guilty (or on the other hand, brag) about being the one who fired the kill shot.

Although Gardner was one of only three people executed by firing squad since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, there's a chance it might soon make a comeback due to a recent shortage of drugs that is pushing states to find new ways of disposing of criminals. Of course, we could go back to the electric chair, but shit, prisons have to pay power bills, too, and besides that, they've probably been traumatized after watching The Green Mile.

tiripero/iStock/Getty Images
Leading to exploding mouse populations in prisons.

#4. Chernobyl Kept Running Until December 2000

Wyco/iStock/Getty Images

In 1986, the worst (accidental) nuclear incident in history at the time occurred when the Chernobyl nuclear plant decided to spit radiation over a good portion of the Ukrainian countryside and create an iconic Call of Duty level in the process. Since then, the region has been an abandoned, irradiated wasteland, overgrown with weeds and probably mutated rats or some shit. The plant itself is probably nothing more than a sprawling, silent complex with a big-ass crater in the center.

But Actually ...

Not only did the Chernobyl plant survive the meltdown, but it was business as usual for over a decade afterward. The world's most notoriously explosive power plant continued providing energyuntil December of 2000.

Dobresum/iStock/Getty Images
But unlike those Ruskie quitters, Three Mile Island is still going strong! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Though the popular impression is that the Chernobyl disaster was a Hiroshima-scale event, it was really just one reactor that was affected, and then it was less an atomic explosion than it was an atomic crop dusting. The other three reactors were just fine after the incident, and given that Eastern Europe still needed power to watch Wheel of Fortune and whatever crazy bear-wrestling game shows they have over there, the technicians continued to run the place for almost 14 more years. To keep the lethal radiation enclosed (and to ensure no one else gained mutant superpowers), a gigantic steel and concrete sarcophagus was placed around the ruined reactor, and from there it was just the same 9-to-5 as it had always been.

It was only after much international scrutiny spearheaded by Bill Clinton that the United States pledged $78 million to help Ukraine close down that nightmare factory and repair the structure that protects the rest of the world from its horrors. In December 2000, former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma appeared on television and announced the closing of the plant, at which point chief Chernobyl technician and consonant hoarder Oleksandr Yelchishchev turned the switch that would see the permanent termination of the plant's unholy existence.

Rachel Gardner/iStock/Getty Images
The switch itself was rather anticlimactic.

Kuchma's address appeared to lament the premature closure of the plant, which seems odd, because it did run for over a decade after, y'know, killing all those people and irradiating over 1,000 square miles of land for the foreseeable future.

#3. The Last Battle Between Sailing Vessels Was in World War II

Josh Doughty/iStock/Getty Images

Before people discovered how to build ships that ran under their own power, naval battles from the dawn of civilization had always been decided on the whim of whichever direction God decided to blow wind on their sails. Considering that we've had boats powered by actual engines since the Industrial Revolution, you'd assume that by the time World War II rolled around that nobody was out there fighting Master and Commander style. This was, after all, a conflict featuring tanks, stealth bombers, and goddamn nuclear weapons.

Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
And missiles from outer space.

But Actually ...

Not only did history's last battle between sailing vessels happen in World War II, but it was actually the final naval battle of the war, occurring shortly after the Japanese had surrendered but before all of the Japanese had received the memo. It was late in August 1945, and having been given notice that the war had ended, U.S. Navy Lieutenants Livingston Swentzel and Stuart Pittman were on their way home via China. They weren't making the journey by battleship, but instead commanded two Chinese junks.

If you haven't seen Pirates of the Caribbean, a junk looks like this:

Medioimages/Photodisc/Photodisc/Getty Images
"Junk" is being kind.

On August 20, the two were probably wondering what they did to get stuck with this shitty assignment on their measly sailing ships when suddenly they came across yet another sailing ship that was acting suspiciously. It turned out to be a Japanese vessel, and when it saw the Americans very slowly approaching, they gradually turned around and, after several minutes of slow motion suspense, opened fire, kicking off the last sailing battle the world will probably ever see until Kevin Costner's Waterworld becomes real.

Pittman, realizing that his day just got much more exciting than expected, responded by opening fire with all weapons he had on board, to which the Japanese responded in kind. Discovering he had a bazooka, Pittman ordered his ship within 100 meters to fire it onto the enemy ship. Three bazooka hits later, the Japanese still continued to fight on, and Pittman ended the battle as any movie-quality sailing battle should end: with a hostile boarding. He maneuvered his ship next to the Japanese one and gave the one order all Navy officers secretly hope to yell: "Prepare to board!"

Gary Blakeley/iStock/Getty Images
A controversy later arose as to whether the lack of rope swinging constituted a proper boarding.

Pittman personally led the charge onto the enemy ship for vicious hand-to-hand combat with guns, bayonets, and a freaking meat cleaver. The battle continued until the Japanese surrendered, with 43 dead and 39 captured. And as of yet, Hollywood has somehow still neglected to make a movie out of this whole thing.

#2. Negro Leagues Baseball Was Played Until the 1980s

Wiki Commons

Baseball's Negro Leagues are an artifact from that awkward period in America after white people decided that African-Americans were allowed to participate in society but before they were comfortable being near them. The segregated leagues lasted from the late 1800s until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier right after World War II, at which point white America graciously decided to allow some of the greatest baseball players on the planet to join them on the field.

But Actually ...

Dark-skinned Americans stopped being forced to play in the Negro Leagues after 1947, but that didn't mean the Negro Leagues teams packed up their bats and stopped playing. In fact, they continued playing ball right past the Civil Rights Act, up until the 1960s. It was something of a sore topic among Negro Leagues managers that the Major Leagues were suddenly stealing all of their best athletes, and they actually campaigned to stop the white folk from taking away their best players.

Bowman Gum
"Sorry, but the chance to make racists rage-shit their pants is too good to pass up."

Even after the 1970s ended, a team known as the Indianapolis Clowns refused to buckle to the pressures of integration and continued to play under the Negro Leagues banner. They became the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball, but instead of always winning rigged matches, they almost always lost to junior college teams practicing for the upcoming season. It wasn't until 1989, the year of Tiananmen Square, the Berlin Wall, and the B-52s' "Love Shack" release, that they finally ran out of backing. Still, a league started by segregation lived on right until the Seinfeld premiere episode.

#1. Part of the Roman Empire Still Exists Today

BargotiPhotography/iStock/Getty Images

Since we humans have such relatively short lifespans, it's difficult to come to terms with the fact that nation-states have been a pretty recent fad of history. It's only a few short generations ago that the world was made up of gigantic empires that spanned continents. In fact, by the time America achieved independence at the turn of the 18th century, it was still a mishmash of English, French, and Spanish colonies battling in a worldwide Thunderdome to collect the most land. Even still, you imagine that the era of globe-spanning empires only exists today as your most accomplished Sid Meier game.

Stockbyte/Stockbyte/Getty Images
You know Julius Caesar would never settle for a pansy-ass space-race victory.

But Actually ...

Pretty much the first group of people to look at a map of the entire Earth and say "I'll take one of those, please" was the Roman Empire, except they didn't really say "please." Over the course of a significant chunk of human history, the Romans went forth and conquered most of the known world until eventually it became so huge and unwieldy that it broke apart into smaller and smaller pieces.

You probably learned that the fall of the Roman Empire is the milestone that separates the ancient from the medieval world, but what you might not know is that it never entirely fell. It just got smaller, its constituent parts being divvied up among rival empires until there was nothing left ... except Liechtenstein, an incredibly tiny nation near modern-day Italy.

Wikipedia
It was briefly overthrown when a drunken tourist accidentally wandered into parliament and sat in the prime minister's chair.

After literally millennia, tiny Liechtenstein, just a dot on the world map, is the last remaining outpost of the Roman Empire that has never been conquered. To this day, even its royal family is descended from their no-doubt inbred Roman ancestors.

As for the rest of the Roman Empire, it is officially recorded in history as having fallen in the 1400s, when it was finally conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1452, just in time to be reported by the printing press. So how long did the Ottomans stick around? They existed until 1922, until they were defeated in goddamned World War I, meaning a country that fought the Roman Empire was competing in the modern Olympics and being talked about by Warren G. Harding. This basically means that, if you play the Kevin Bacon game with world leaders, the 29th president is surprisingly damned close to Julius Caesar.

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Who has a salad, that was eaten by ... Kevin Bacon.