4 Weird Pop Culture Lawsuits That Are Straight Out Of Movies

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Marvel Denied Its Own Canon For A Tax Break

The X-Men are humans. There's no debate about this. They're not aliens, monsters, or talking chupacabras. They're humans with a special genetic trait, like the cherry Coke of people. Only an absolutely clueless geek poser would argue otherwise. Like, um ... Marvel?

In 1993, international trade lawyers Sherry Singer and Indie Singh -- both employed by Marvel -- discovered a bizarre mutation in how federal import tax tariffs are applied. If a company wants to import "dolls" that represent humans, they have to pay a tax of 12%. If that company imports "toys" that represent nonhumans, however, they only have to pay a 6.8% tax. For an entity like Marvel, which licenses scads of action figures, that works out to a massive potential savings. Thus, they petitioned the government to reclassify all of their imported wares as nonhuman toys.

The ensuing legal battle went on for over half a decade, and saw Marvel and the U.S. government go through each character in the company's canon -- from Spider-Man to the Fantastic Four to, yes, the X-Men -- and write real legal briefs about their humanity (or lack thereof).

The figure of 'Kingpin' resembles a man in a suit carrying a staff. Nothing in the storyline indicates that Kingpin possesses superhuman powers. Yet, Kingpin is known to have exceedingly great strength (however 'naturally' achieved) and the figure itself has a large and stout body with a disproportionately small head and disproportionately large hands. Even though 'dolls' can be caricatures of human beings, the court is of the opinion that the freakishness of the figure's appearance coupled with the fabled 'Spider-Man' storyline to which it belongs does not warrant a finding that the figure represents a human being.

Marvel ComicsIn fairness, this isn't a look you see on a lot of people.

It took until 2003 for a judge to declare Marvel as the "winner." It wasn't a decision she made lightly. When describing how she reached her ruling, she explained that she based her verdict not just on the masses of legal papers that both sides had provided, but also a litany of action figures -- as well as close examinations under the clothing of said figures. No, really. That's not a joke.

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Netflix And Sabrina Were Dragged To Hell By The Satanic Temple

When The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina first hit Netflix last year, it was praised for its writing, characterization, and design. Despite being the obvious target market for this show, however, the Satanic Temple wasn't onboard. Instead they filed a $150 million lawsuit against Netflix and Warner Bros. for stealing their copyrighted design of Baphomet.

That might seem like a high price tag for what ultimately amounts to someone on the production staff copying an evil garden gnome, but the Temple justified the amount by pointing out that the show used the statue in association with the bad guys, and therefore implicitly made an association between the evil magical skulduggery of Sabrina and the real organization that uses that statue as its mascot.

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Iron Maiden Doesn't Understand Parody

Living the dream of cranky 60-year-olds everywhere, metal band Iron Maiden recently filed a $2 million suit against a video game developer. The band, currently most famous for Hot Topic T-shirts, alleged that that the title of an upcoming game was an "incredibly blatant" infringement on their intellectual property. The title in question? Ion Maiden, a retro-style game about a bomb disposal expert tasked with stopping the machinations of an evil transhumanist cult leader and his army of cybernetically enhanced soldiers.

Iron Maiden are also arguing that Ion Maiden is similar to Legacy Of The Beast, a game that Maiden released in 2016. We've provided screencaps below, and invite you to judge this claim for yourselves.

Roadhouse Games

3D RealmsIf this is what constitutes "similar," then they may have a solid case against Tetris, too.

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A Court Ruled That The Shape Of Water Has Too Much Bestiality To Have Been Stolen

Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water so successfully made us question notions of love, communication, and every school trip to the aquarium that it won the Academy Award for Best Picture. With this acclaim, however, came two accusations that del Toro had plagiarized the screenplay.