Joe Russo
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It's time once again for another installment of our most popular feature, in which we find the cream of the internet fakery crop and then explain how it's all totally real. In case you missed the previous installments, here are Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, the gritty reboot that doesn't acknowledge the previous installments, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, and (gasp!) 14. Or you can start right here. It ain't exactly Game Of Thrones, you know?
Picture this: You pull your car into a parking lot. You circle several times without luck, but right as you're about to give up and pay that shifty dude in the lawn chair two streets over to park in his lot, you spot a single space near the corner. As you approach, a strange shape begins to materialize from the wall. "How odd," you think, before all thought ceases because a giant alligator riding atop a floating, chromed-out graffiti tag just gnawed your brain into jelly.
This somehow undoctored photo is a mural from artist Sergio Odeith, who specializes in creepily realistic anamorphic graffiti painted across multiple surfaces to give the illusion of depth. Because life isn't shitty enough without being unexpectedly accosted by an eight-foot praying mantis while cutting through an alley.
OK, this is obviously a crude Photoshop that somebody slapped together so they could copy-and-paste random inspirational quotes onto it and convince your aunt to share it on Facebook. "In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can." "Stop Wishing. Start Doing." "When life gives you lemons, ride a fucking motorcycle across the ocean."
In a stunt that marketers would be physically unable to describe without adding at least four X's to "extreme," professional motorbike guy Robbie Madison bolted water ski attachments onto his dirt bike and rode it on water.
The engine runs on Red Bull.
Of course, anybody could do that. So Madison pushed it one step further and caught a wave that, if it didn't qualify as a tsunami, was at least, like, a junior tsunami. Again, on a dirt bike. If he doesn't change his legal name to Motorcycle Jesus after this, we fail to see the point.
You might not know this, but in Russia, they don't believe in bridges. There's a ramp on one side, and on the other ... well, you'll find out once you're in midair. Put the pedal to the floor, Yuri! This is the reason your entire training consisted of watching Speed!
Okay, that's not Russia, and it isn't the driveway at the Evel Knievel estate. It's actually Storseisundet Bridge, one of several cantilever bridges making it possible for Norway's Atlantic Road to connect the peninsulas and archipelagos of the country's west coast. Viewed from a different angle, it looks less like a stark drop-off and more like a bridge that Magneto is currently in the process of tossing at the X-Men.
Never has a scene more perfectly captured the birth of an eldritch apocalypse than this. If someone dug up H. P. Lovecraft, popped his skull open, and re-hydrated and spread his shriveled brains onto canvas, the resulting artwork would be this, and the signature in the corner would be a horribly offensive racial epithet.
It's actually a wave photographed from the Canadian side of Lake Erie as the weather turned toward winter, because professional sports photographer Dave Sandford apparently decided that working in sports stadiums overflowing with tens of thousands of rabid fans didn't come with quite enough chance of bodily harm. Even though there are no actual monster gods rising from the lake (that we know of), the prospect of swimming in freezing-ass Lake Erie in December is entirely horrifying in and of itself.
This looks like somebody was trying to Photoshop this joyous weightlifter and his barbell into a different background (maybe one with more product placement) and saved the image before he'd had a chance to drag the cropped image to the floor.
Instead, you're looking at a fortuitously timed photograph of Lesman Paredes competing at the Junior World Weightlifting Championships. The pose is the result of a combination of him a) doing his lifting on a somewhat bouncy surface b) dropping an amount of weight capable of launching a human being three goddamned feet into the air and c) being super pumped that he managed to do so without transmogrifying his vertebrae into lumps of wet toilet paper.
So your backyard is a literal cesspit. That doesn't mean you can't have nice things! Look at this lovely oasis amidst an endless sea of shit. Of course, if the harsh cleaning chemicals we use are capable of doing that, it's a wonder every public pool doesn't transform into the pool scene from Poltergeist.
MGM
The image above is an aerial view of the extensive flooding that took place across Central Europe in 2013. The walls of this one lucky swimming pool were just high enough to keep the rising waters out. The resulting dichotomy is so perfect that it looks as if you could still lounge in one of those cabana chairs and enjoy the view, if only said view weren't the aftermath of a vengeful god's wrath. On a similar note ...
This is what happens when building your town requires carving a slice out of the goddamned Atlantic. Overpopulation is a bitch.
Actually, this is another example of how the 2013 flooding affected Austria, this time demonstrating what happens when the Danube River gets all uppity. The fact that those relatively flimsy-looking mobile flood walls were able to hold the waters at bay is a jaw-dropping testament to the wonders of modern engineering. Still, it's difficult to imagine what it must have been like to live in one of those homes right across the street from the wall. It seems like it would take exactly one minute manufacturing flaw in a single panel of that thing to doom everyone. You'd hear a sound like a giant toilet flushing, and then you're under ten feet of water.
Building codes take the place of toilet paper in the restrooms at the Dr. Seuss Museum and Gift Shop.
We're being facetious, of course, but there's a good reason the locals of Willow, Alaska (insomuch as Willow, Alaska can be said to have locals) refer to the teetering building above as the "Dr. Seuss House." The house is the brainchild of attorney Phillip Weidner, whose dual majors in college appear to have been Nonsensical Architecture and Sharp Dressing.
Goose Creek Tower (as it's more officially known) started out as a regular two-story cabin before Weidner proceeded to add onto it, level by level, until he had achieved a gravity-enraging height of "somewhere between 14 and 17 floors." In other words, he built a house so ridiculous that it broke counting.
This photograph of what appears to be an outtake from the intro to Monty Python's Flying Circus was taken in Australia, mere seconds after God's great be-sandaled foot crashed through the clouds to crush the koalas clear out of existence, because seriously, fuck those things. The pretty rainbow is his assurance to us that humanity's flesh is now forever safe from their knife-like teeth and ever-flicking, probably forked tongues.
In reality, this is a natural phenomenon called a fallstreak hole, and it can happen any time clouds form high enough for the water within them to become supercooled. As soon as one ice crystal forms, it causes nearby water to crystallize in a chain reaction. The result is a circular, frozen (and therefore heavier) section of cloud. It's the same phenomenon that creates contrails when super-hot jet exhaust collides with super-cooled water at super-high altitudes. That, or they're both evidence that an alien race and/or The Man is out to fry your brain. Your call.
As an arts and crafts project, this isn't that amazing. It's nothing but some strips of blue paper and a glue stick. But as calligraphy, this shit is mind-blowing.
Yeah, this seemingly three-dimensional art class project is in actuality entirely flat (look closely and you'll see the drawn-in shadows intended to fool your eyes). It's the work of Turkish calligrapher Tolga Girgin, and we're guessing the primary application of this skill is making sure no one ever cashes your checks because the signature is simply too damned awesome to part with.
What we appear to have here is a marketing poster created by a budget airline to better appeal to the cheapskate demographic. "We keep our ticket prices low so you don't have to sneak your child onto the flight jammed inside a suitcase, you unimaginable monster." The tagline could use some work.
Sadly, this is a bona fide security x-ray photo of Adou Ouattara, an eight-year-old boy from Africa's war-torn Ivory Coast who was stuffed in a suitcase in an attempt to smuggle him to his parents in the Spanish Canary Islands. Happily, Adou was swiftly unpacked and reunited with his mom.
Piotr Naskrecki / Corbis via WIRED
There is in fact a creature in that picture, and if you stare at it long enough with your eyes squinted precisely right and maybe a little bit crossed, it'll eventually pop out at you like a Magic Eye. Spoiler: It's a lizard, and it's sporting the most batshit camouflage this side of the actual Bat Shit Camouflage (TM) at your local Bass Pro Shop. More specifically, it's a satanic leaf-tailed gecko.
The leaf-tailed bit is clear, but satanic? Seems harsh.
Piotr Naskrecki / Corbis via WIRED
OK, yeah, we sort of see it now. There are 14 varieties of the lizard, all with slightly different color variations, making them nature's version of video game reskins and allowing them to blend right into environments which range from Madagascar's forests to Linda Blair's frontal lobe.
If you were to show this tree to your grandma, she'd probably either a) slap the everloving shit out of you for getting mischievous with the Crayolas again, or b) flash back to her hippie days, strip down, and rub mud all over her bare breasts. It's probably best to avoid showing this tree to your grandma, now that we think about it.
What looks like the tragic aftermath of an explosion down at the black light poster factory is a rainbow eucalyptus, and yes, it really does grow that way. As it matures -- doubling its size each year -- it gradually discards strips of its brightly colored bark, resulting in a veritable living rainbow. We're not saying somebody should sneakily plant one in front of the Westboro Baptist Church, but somebody should sneakily plant one in front of the Westboro Baptist Church.
The top of this picture could easily be a screenshot of the bat-filled nightmare from Batman Begins. As your gaze lowers, though, it becomes clear that what you've mistaken for bats are actually rays -- a mindbogglingly vast number of them. It's like one of those crazy Escher transformation drawings, but instead of ducks becoming fishes it's piss-soaked sheets becoming piss-drenched sheets.
This is a real photo of a school of mobula rays taken off the coast of Baja, Mexico. Why would this many rays be amassing off the coast of Baja, Mexico? Some questions cannot be answered with words -- only convulsions.
This one not only looks fake, it looks like a lazy fake. Are we supposed to think those guys are underwater? The perspective is all wrong. And how the hell would you even get that shot?
The answer is: very carefully.
This was part of an ad campaign for beachwear manufacturer Insight (warning: boobs ahead), in which photographer Dustin Humphrey arranged bizarre underwater scenes, ranging from people driving Dr. Seuss cars to an upside-down Victorian bedroom, and then photographed them as pro surfers whizzed overhead.
Dustin Humphrey/Insight (NSFW)
Dustin Humphrey/Insight (NSFW)
At that point, you need a camera with a special lens and a glass dome on the front, positioned right at the waterline. We're not entirely certain how any of this was supposed to incite people to buy T-shirts, but really, all of modern society depends on us not asking such questions.
For more images that will make you scream "FAKE!", check out 9 Insane Cities You Won't Believe Aren't Photoshopped and 7 Insane Landforms You Won't Believe Aren't Photoshopped.
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