12 Random Bits of Pop-Culture Trivia Who Popped Up in Your Facebook Newsfeed, But You Can’t for the Life of You Remember How You Know Them
In retrospect, we should have expected YouTube to become a sleazy cesspit, because that’s how it originally started.
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Liam Neeson Swears He’s Friends With a Horse
While filming The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Neeson said a horse he’d worked with on a previous movie remembered him from the treats and apples they’d shared: “I’m saying this horse knew me. He whinnied when he saw me. And pawed the ground.”
YouTube Was Originally Conceived as a Dating Site
YouTube.com was launched 20 years ago by three PayPal dorks who wanted to make a casual dating site. The original slogan was “Tune In, Hook Up.”
This Website Tracks How Many Cigarettes They Smoke in Your Favorite Movies and TV Shows
HowManyCigarettes.com is exactly what it sounds like. The main rule is that the stoge must be “depicted on screen lit and actively being smoked or implied to be smoked (such as resting in an ash tray).”
Someone Stole $1 Million of Guy Fieri’s Tequila
Thieves have hijacked a truck carrying over 24,000 bottles of Santo Tequila, the brand created by Fieri and Sammy Hagar. It was a pretty high-tech jacking, too; authorities think they mimicked the truck’s GPS signal so it looked like it was on its scheduled route.
The Maine of the Stephen King Extended Universe
A Stephen King superfan and an actual Maine historical society teamed up to map out their best guesses as to where in the state Stephen King’s various fictional Maine towns are located.
Ron Howard’s Worst Film
According to Howard himself, they aimed a tad low on The Dark Tower: “I think it should’ve been horror. I think it landed in a place, both in our minds and the studio’s, that it could be PG-13 and sort of a boy’s adventure. I really think we made a mistake.”
Steven Spielberg Accidentally Predicted Giant Raptors
Actual velociraptors were only about six feet long and two feet tall. Michael Crichton confused them with a larger, unrelated dinosaur when researching Jurassic Park, and Spielberg doubled the size of that dinosaur when making the movie. While the movie was in production, the gigantic utahraptor was discovered. This incredible coincidence was a marketing boon for both the film and the paleontologists who discovered utahraptor.
The Utahraptor Was Supposed to Be Called Utahraptor Spielbergi
Paleontologist Jim Kirkland had picked out that name, and even had shirts printed up. But Universal Studios was suing any museum that used the word “Jurassic,” and the animatronic dinosaur company Kirkland worked for thought it best to neither cross nor endorse anyone involved in Jurassic Park.
The BBC Went to a Lot of Trouble to Clean Up a Pretty Unpopular Episode of ‘Doctor Who’
After guest star Huw Edwards pled guilty to “making indecent images of children,” the 2006 episode “Fear Her” was taken off of streaming platforms. No one really missed it. But the BBC recently had Edwards’ parts re-recorded by another actor and chucked it back up online.
How Much Do You Think Kobe Bryant’s Shoes Were Sold For?
If you said half a mil, you’re not thinking big enough. The shoes that Bryant was wearing when he tore his Achilles tendon — and kept playing — sold at auction for $660,000.
Thailand Is Bracing for HBO Tourists
After the first two seasons of The White Lotus came out, Maui and Sicily had a huge influx of tourists. Season Three takes place on the resort island Koh Samui, and Thailand is trying to learn from Hawaii’s and Italy’s experience to manage a hoard of pasty losers doing their best Walton Goggins impressions.
The People’s Oscars
Writer and film critic Celia Mattison is crowd-sourcing some film superlatives that don’t get enough attention. This year’s “Deeper Into Movie Awards” categories include Worst Needledrop, Most “This Came Out in 2024” and Nun of the Year.
