Culture & entertainment
Discover facts about culture & entertainment. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Culture & entertainment
Bleach was almost rejected as a Yu Yu Hakusho copy
One of the highest-selling manga series of all time almost never existed. Creator Tite Kubo's initial pitch for Bleach was outright rejected by Shonen Jump…
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Lincoln's assassin was a celebrity actor
John Wilkes Booth wasn't just a random angry guy with a gun; he was essentially the 19th-century equivalent of a famous Hollywood star. He was a wildly…
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Fifty Shades of Grey began as Twilight fanfiction
The publishing phenomenon that sparked millions of book club arguments actually originated on fan forums. E.L. James originally wrote the story as 'Master of…
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Tolkien typed The Lord of the Rings with two fingers
Creating an intricate fantasy world with functioning languages is hard enough, but doing it via the hunt-and-peck method is sheer masochism. J.R.R. Tolkien…
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Cosmopolitan was once a serious literary magazine
Before it was aggressively teaching women '101 Ways to Please Your Man', Cosmopolitan had a radically different vibe. Founded in 1886, it was originally a…
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Stage ghosts in classic theater arrived via hidden trapdoors
Before the invention of fancy strobe lights and fog machines, you had to get creative to spook a crowd. Classic Elizabethan stages featured a massive trapdoor…
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Captain America once became a werewolf during a comic run
Because fighting Nazis just doesn't offer enough narrative tension, the 1990s decided to spice things up. In a famously unhinged storyline, Steve Rogers was…
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Those famous travel quotes may be misattributed
Every motivational quote painted on a hostel wall is probably a lie. Countless inspirational phrases about wandering and finding oneself are routinely…
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Why Spider-Man's webs vanish after an hour
If you've ever wondered why New York City isn't completely buried under millions of tons of sticky spider goo after 60 years of crime-fighting, it's because…
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When Sherlock Holmes died, fans went into mourning
Imagine being so utterly unhinged by a fictional death that you enter an actual state of mourning. When Arthur Conan Doyle chucked Sherlock Holmes off a…
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Garfield has a canon home in Indiana
Despite living in an abstract void of tables and lasagna pans, the most famous cynical orange cat in history has a canon address. Creator Jim Davis grew up in…
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Sophocles may have died choking on a grape
The man wrote 120 plays, defined the genre of classical tragedy, lived to the ripe old age of 90, and then was supposedly taken out by a rogue piece of fruit.…
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Greek tragedies allowed a maximum of three speaking actors
Ancient Greek theater was essentially the ultimate test of multi-tasking. Strict theatrical rules dictated that a play could feature an unlimited chorus, but…
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The first guidebooks led pilgrims to holy sites
Long before you could buy a pocket guide to find the best local pizza, instructional texts were meant to keep pious walkers alive. These medieval manuals…
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Why Naruto traded goggles for a headband
The deep, symbolic village headbands that define the entire ninja aesthetic of Naruto were born out of pure laziness. Creator Masashi Kishimoto originally…
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Travel brochures made miserable trips look glamorous
Before modern comforts, riding trains across a country was loud, dirty, and miserable. Promoters invented the glossy, heavily exaggerated pamphlet strictly to…
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Fictional travelogues dominated 16th-century books
Hundreds of years ago, people loved reading about foreign lands so much that authors just started inventing places. Fake diaries claiming to describe magical…
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Shakespeare left his wife the second-best bed
Nothing screams 'I value our lifelong partnership' quite like bequeathing your spouse the backup mattress. In his highly detailed will, the greatest…
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Nabokov mapped Lolita on butterfly road trips
Because a road trip novel about a grotesque obsession pairs perfectly with collecting bugs. Nabokov was a brilliant, self-taught lepidopterist (butterfly…
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The 1930s film that invented the road movie
The cinematic trope of a mismatched duo learning life lessons while driving a car was born during the Great Depression. 'It Happened One Night' set the…
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Archie Comics explored the multiverse before Marvel
Long before comic geeks were arguing over parallel Earths, the squeaky-clean teens of Riverdale were bending reality. In the 1990s, Archie Comics published a…
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George Orwell borrowed his pen name from a local river
Eric Arthur Blair didn't want to embarrass his family when he published his first book about living in extreme poverty, so he needed an alias. He chose the…
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Venom began as a fan's $220 idea
One of Marvel's most iconic anti-heroes was essentially outsourced. In 1982, a fan named Randy Schueller submitted an idea for a black stealth suit for…
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Stage directions originated from the performer's perspective
If you've ever wondered why moving to the right side of the stage is called 'Stage Left', it's because theater revolves entirely around the ego of the actor.…
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