If all this talk of microbes and cancer is making your tattooed skin crawl, here's the kicker: Because ink manufacturers won't tell us what's in their product, it makes removing those tattoos an extra-big pain in the ass, or wherever else you got them. If doctors knew the composition and chemical makeup of each ink, they could identify and calibrate a treatment that stands a good chance of working without putting a patient into a pain-induced coma. Without that information, however, they're just winging it with lasers, which is much less fun than it sounds.

So what does it take to get The Man involved? Oh, they're waiting for enough people to contract dangerous infections. As the FDA doesn't mandate testing on tattoo ink, only a bona fide outbreak has can force them to take action. When an outbreak of nontuberculous mycobacterium (a cousin of actual tuberculosis) started afflicting tattoo owners in 2012, the infection was eventually traced back to a non-sterile ink manufacturer and the FDA finally stepped in. All it took was dozens of people oozing blood out of their skin for a few months.

We'll explain this using one of the most famous tattoos in pop culture: Mike Tyson's temple of flame in The Hangover. When The Hangover Part II homaged his appearance by having one of the main characters drunkenly get a similar face tattoo, it got Warner Bros. sued by Victor Whitmill, the artist responsible for the original. He alleged that by reproducing the tat and including it on posters and other marketing materials without his permission, Warner Bros. committed copyright infringement. The studio tried to claim the second tattoo was a parody, showing off how stupid the original was (making it symbolic of the whole Hangover franchise), but the judge disagreed and Warner was forced to settle out of court.

Warner Bros. Pictures

It's an issue that's coming up more and more in video games as well. When the popular basketball game NBA 2K created its virtual avatars, it also added their many tattoos, leading to a group (or inkling) of tattoo artists suing the makers of the game for duplicating their artwork. Their lawsuit only failed because they filed for copyright after the game's release, not because it was dumb, but they still managed to claim damages for loss of income. In another case, when a tattoo on MMA fighter Carlos Condit appeared in UFC Undisputed, the artist responsible filed suit on the same grounds of copyright infringement.

So remember, if you ever muster the courage to get that The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo tattoo on your back, make sure to leave some room for the copyright symbol right above the butt crack.

If you don't want to speed up this process, you have to do one other thing: Stay out of the sun. Forever. A sunburn causes your skin to shed like crazy, causing the ink to fade, feather, or blot much faster than it normally would. To make it even worse, seeing as you've just painted your skin unnaturally dark, tattooed skin is extra sensitive to sunburn, absorbing sunlight more easily and causing swelling, itching, or even blisters. But don't worry, this only happens with obscure colors like yellow, red, blue, and black.

Is your tattoo full of bright colors? Congratulations on completing art school / rehab. Unfortunately, choosing literally any other color than black or red means more of that painful laser surgery we mentioned. When it comes to inks like yellow, blue, and green, the chance of their removal inside of ten sessions was reduced to a measly 20 percent because, instead of disintegrating when lasered, these bad boys change hue and refuse to take the hint that you want them off your body.

You don't smoke and your tattoo is just black? You must be either straight edge or a sailor from the '60s. Better hope it's the former, though, because the older a tattoo, the harder it is to get rid of. Over time, the ink sinks deeper into the body. Just three years in, and laser therapy only has a 47 percent success rate, whilst tattoos over six years old are so hard to get rid of that you'd think they have squatters' rights.

And here's where it gets ironic: If you listened to society and got a discreet tattoo on your ankle or foot that no one (including prospective employers) could pitch a fit about, your chances of removing it inside of ten sessions are even worse. As it turns out, those discreet locations are far away from the main bad-stuff-removal routes of your body, which means they take longer to break down.

So to summarize: If you're thinking of getting a tattoo and want the option of removing it quickly, all you need to do is not smoke, get it on your face or neck, make it black and red, and pay extra attention to your skin. That way, you'll never have any regret getting a tatt-

Carsten Koall/Getty Images

-oh, fuck.

Adam Wears is on Twitter and Facebook. He also has a newsletter about depressing history, but that's only for the coolest kids.

Instead of getting a tattoo, try putting together this 1,329-piece Millennium Falcon Lego set. Seriously, it even comes with the little dudes.

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