6 Gloriously Insane Urban Legends You’ll Wish Are True
Conspiracy theories are like moon landings, they're hilariously fake 100% of the time. These theories aren't just fake, they're also so fun that you'll wish they really happened.
"An 18th Century Sumo Wrestler Was Actually a Biblical Giant!"
For an industry built on a solid foundation of backroom deals, astronomical amounts of money, and superstitious bullshit, sports conspiracy theories really suck. It's almost like the people who spend their lives competing in high-velocity professional athletics aren't able to easily switch from unassuming sportsdoers into cunning Machiavellian strategists. We dare not hazard a guess as to why.
However, fear not: if internet free-thinkers are to be believed, the old-timey world of sumo wrestling once played host to a biblical half-monster with a taste for dishing out pain. At 6' 5", Raiden Tameemon was an imposing figure in a field where being an imposing figure was pretty much the entrance fee. He first debuted in the 1790's and by 1811, he retired with a career record of 254 victories to 10 defeats. No, we didn't omit a zero. That's ten defeats, which he presumably only allowed because he wanted to seem like a challenge rather than an unstoppable mass of muscle and fancy skirts.
According to one site, it's not a mystery as to how Raiden was able to carve out such an impressive record. He was a Nephilim -- a type of human-giant hybrid that, according to the Book of Genesis, can only be created by an angel hooking up with a human. It's obvious to see when you watch footage shot towards the end of his career: with a disproportionally-sized head and abnormally-small hands (both of which are indicative of a genetic abnormality), he towers over everyone else like a ... well, a goddamn tower. If he isn't a holy bastard, what else could he be?
How about a total fabrication? This footage -- cited as proof by revelationnow.net -- is actually ripped from a mockumentary, Big Man Japan, which follows an "eccentric man periodically transforms into a 100-foot tall giant in order to defend Japan against similarly sized monsters."
It's the equivalent of borrowing that deleted sex scene from Hancock and pretending that it's footage of an actual intercosmological porno. That's not to say that Raiden is a made-up character: he existed when we said, kicked as much ass as we said, and was as big a dude as we made clear. He just isn't the forbearer of a superhuman race. Feel free to voice your disapproval in the comments section below, crazyfolk.
"MI5 Tried to Rig the Brexit Vote With Erasers!"
The momentous decision by 52% of the UK to leave the EU wasn't just an ominous forewarning of what was about to happen in America. It was proof that, yes, insane conspiracy theories AND being capable of winning an election aren't mutually exclusive concepts.
In the days leading up to the all-important vote, anti-EU campaigners began circulating warnings to voters that the government was planning to undermine the will of the people and ...erase troublesome votes by just flat-out erasing them. In hindsight, it's pretty ironic, then, that the only thing that successfully erased votes on that day was good ol' fashioned idiocy.
In a poll conducted beforehand, half of secessionist voters said that they believed the vote was rigged, while 28% suspected that MI5 (aka the British CIA) was working to prevent a painful, overwrought, Adele-esque breakup with the EU. Those warnings circulated on social media made it clear how this was going to happen: the best and the brightest interns at MI5 were going to erase the pencil-written #FucktheEU votes and replace them with #WeLovetheEU votes.
We'd complain that their ass-backwards system of handwritten votes is to blame for this conspiracy, but that'd be pretty ballsy considering that our high-tech voting machines haven't exactly silenced the crazies.
So how did the conspiracy theorists avert the UK's continued enslavement to the forces of darkness, co-operation, and economic stability? They told everyone to take pens to the ballots. PENS.
If your totalitarian government can be taken down because they absentmindedly forgot to buy a bottle of correction fluid, you should take a good, long look at how they were able to come to power in the first place.
"The Planet Used to Be Covered in Giant Trees!"
While it's fair to say that there's no shortage of truth movements on the internet, we can take heart in one fact: they're terrible aberrations with no sense of irony and/or self-awareness. It doesn't matter whether the topic is terrorist attacks, mass shootings, or vaccines -- if it provides them with an opportunity to harangue people in their darkest moments, conspiracy theorists are there.
That said, there's a new truth movement that, in all honesty, we wouldn't mind getting caught being a member of because a) it doesn't involve making people sad, and b) it alleges that the forests which cover 1/3 of our planet are nothing more than stunted imitations of the botanical behemoths that dominated our planet before they were all wiped out in an epic SPACE DISASTER.
No Forests on Flat Earth is a masterpiece of efficient storytelling. It argues that thousands of years ago, the planet was covered by a layer of forests where the trees sprouted for miles into the atmosphere. You know, as if the planet was subtly trying to signal to the cosmos that it had super-inadequacy issues. Some unknown cataclysm in the biosphere then came along and wiped out these gigantic specimens, leaving us stuck with the piss-poor imitations that you can see outside your window.
Obviously, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof and, luckily, we have that in spades.
That's Devil's Tower in Wyoming. Some shills in Big Geology would have you believe that's a natural rock formation known as a 'butte'. However, the folks over at YouTube University for the Woke AF have news for you: it's actually an ancient petrified tree stump because...well, it looks like a big tree stump.
At our best guess, 90% of this movie's runtime (nearly two motherfucking hours!) is spent idly alternating between pictures of tree stumps, pictures of suspicious-looking rock formations, and pictures of our beautiful planet before we came along to pollute it with No Trees on Flat Earth. The video also challenges viewers to name two differences between tree stumps and rock formations that don't have anything to do with size and material type, as if those are just inconsequential details in their theory. Adorable!
"Aliens Have Quarantined the Earth!"
One of the biggest mysteries in space stuff is why, given our long history of shooting DMs into the stars, we still haven't been contacted or visited by extraterrestrial lifeforms. Some would argue that this is because space is a black void and our messages probably got lost or something. Others suggest that we haven't been visited for the reason that you don't agree to attend barbeques held by your methhead neighbor. It can only end in disgust, despair, and a promise never to do that shit again. We believe the first option, obviously. We're nice and optimistic like that.
The internet has another explanation for this, however: the whole planet is under a state of intergalactic quarantine, a plot device that you might remember from that Doctor Who episode about the man-eating books.
In 2014, scientists announced the discovery of a gigantic, invisible, planet-encompassing force field preventing us from being fried by the constant stream of high-energy electrons being thrown at us. This discovery was instantly seized upon as being "just like Star Trek" by both self-loathing journalists and internet crazies alike, with only one of those groups managing to do anything remotely interesting with the story.
According to the crazies, this intergalactic shuttering was imposed several thousand years ago by an all-powerful race of aliens known as the...well, take your own pick. You've got the 'Serpent Brotherhood', who quarantined the planet against the possibility of their enemies escaping and wreaking havoc in the cosmos, effectively making us Space Australia. There's also the Nibiruan Council, the Pleidians, and something called the Council of Saturn. We don't know this forcefield stuff, but now we've finally solved the mystery of who George Lucas was appealing to with that sideplot about trade negotiations in Episode 1: The Phantom Menace.
This totally also proves that we never went to the moon. Or, you know, space in general. We'd ask about how precisely we were able to find the forcefield (still an actual scientific discovery, by the way) without actually having gone into space, but we're sure they're still working on unfucking that mental ouroboros.
The US Government Cancelled Firefly Because of Its Anti-Authoritarian Message
We've covered how the government helps and hinders pop culture whenever they feel like it, but it's hard to imagine them ever ordering a show to be cancelled because it went against national interests. Well, think again. That was the ultimate fate of Firefly, an amazing space western that was (allegedly) cancelled due to low ratings in 2002 by Fox and subsequently canonized by nerds everywhere five milliseconds later. In actuality, it was only an okay-ish space western...that the government ordered consigned to Room 101 after realizing the hideous ramifications of allowing such libertarian propaganda to be broadcast to the citizenry.
In the interests of listwriting ethics, we should probably mention that everything you just read was originally the subject of a humor article, "Firefly: A Conspiracy Theory".
Cue the conspiracy theorists who seized upon this innocuous tomfoolery as evidence of Big Government sticking a Preposterous Oar into anything that threatens to upend their Literally Tyrannical Regime with Uncomfortable Truths and Summer Glau.
It's not just hardcore disaffected nerd boards pushing the "Bush Did Firefly" conspiracy, either. There's also /r/conspiracy, reddit's home for the type of incisive political commentary that only gets written between skimming Breitbart articles and watching Alex Jones foretell doomsday with the energy of a cocaine addict and the general demeanor of a deflated parade balloon.
"Jesus Retired to Japan!"
The Bible is pretty clear on what happened to Jesus after an ill-fated Thursday night out with the boys: he was arrested, tortured, wound up dying for our sins, and was eventually resurrected, thus writing the basic storyline of every hero epic for the next several thousand years.
Oh, spoilers in that last paragraph.
However, some people believe that this story isn't as cut-and-dry as the New Testament makes out. In Japan, a group of millennia-old documents -- known as the "Takenouchi Documents" -- make the bold claim that Jesus Christ actually broke free of his bonds and escaped his crucifixion before retiring to the tranquil village of Shingo and ... dying like, well, a normal person and shit.
In this version of the Gospel, Jesus traveled to Japan as a young adult, only to return to Judea just in time to get got by the Romans. It was at this point that Jesus pulled a switcharoo with his brother, Isukiri, who was actually the one crucified by the Romans. Jesus fled with nothing but a lock of hair from his mother and HIS BROTHER'S EAR and settled down in Shingo, Japan. You'll be happy to know that this version of Jesus went by the name of Daitenku Taro Jurai, lived to 106 and had three kids. Around town, he was known as the "hook-nosed goblin," because Americans aren't the only ones who are good at racism.
Don't believe us? You can definitely visit Jesus Christ's grave before buying a commemorative mug of your trip at the local gift store. Why they included a cross when this version of Jesus was never crucified is a mystery.
We'd lament that it looks kinda shitty, but a) we don't want to be on the wrong side of the rapture, and b) that's pretty much what the guy from The Last Crusade thought and look how it turned out for him.
"At least I died before Crystal Skull."
If you like that sort of thing, you can follow Adam on Twitter. He'd also like to thank Marina Reimann for her buddyship, puns, and all-round awesomeness.
Also check out 5 Conspiracy Theories We're Ashamed To Admit Make Sense and The 5 Best Conspiracy Theories About Celebrity Impostors.
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