5
A Stress Ball Factory Worker Stresses Out And Goes Postal
In 2013, recently fired factory worker Darren Baldwin went nuts, punched his manager in the face, and threatened several other colleagues with not one, but two knives he'd been carrying around. Dude's got backup knives! That's not just crazy; that's prepared crazy. The kicker? He worked in a stress ball factory. News outlets promptly began reporting on the case, reaping that sweet ironic gold.
NBC News
Brian Williams would later need a lot of stress balls for other dishonest reporting reasons.
But actually ...
As far as we can tell, there's no such thing as a "stress ball factory." Sure, those things are made somewhere, but if every individual object within your personal line of sight right now were made in its own specific factory, then there wouldn't be an inch of the planet left for us to live on. In this case, the building that Baldwin worked in was SPS, an 82,000-square-foot factory that manufactures a hundred different items -- from stress balls to mouse pads, keyrings, coasters, notebooks, stationery, drinkware, and Rubik's cubes. And yet tragically, the headline wasn't "Mad genius in Rubik's Cube factory plans ahead, brings TWO knives!"
4
A Noah Screening Was Canceled Due To The Theater Flooding
2014's Noah wasn't your standard Bible movie. For one thing, its director, Darren Aronofsky, is a staunch atheist, and the movie doesn't mention God by name (or ... title?) even once. For another thing, the story takes a few liberties with the tale, turning Noah into kind of an asshole, and oh yeah, suggesting that his ark project was assisted by giant rock monsters. It ... didn't go over well.
Paramount Pictures
"This isn't believable!" -- people who picture Satan as a cartoon character holding a trident
In one hilarious case, it appeared that God himself had directly criticized the film by flooding a cinema in Exeter, England, forcing them to cancel the screening. The irony was so delicious that it was reported by TIME.
But actually ...
The "flooding" was more of a "slight carpet dampening," due to a malfunctioning ice machine. According to the cinema's spokesman, they arrived at work at 7 a.m. to find the carpet near the concession stand to be slightly squelchier than was normal. Also the movie wasn't so much "canceled" as it was "delayed by a couple of hours."
Paramount Pictures
How TIME believes cinema employees reacted.
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