5 People Who Laugh In The Face Of Their Disabilities

Nick Vujicic is an Aussie motivational speaker with tetra-amelia syndrome, which is a somehow more awful way of saying that he was born without arms or legs. Nick noticed early on in life that others around him also struggled with a terrible disability: They were born raging assholes. Teased constantly and unable to see a happy future, Nick nearly took his own life at the age of 10, but, realizing the harm it would do to his family, he decided not to go through with it. By the age of 17, he began telling his life story to small groups of people, which ballooned over time, and now he speaks in packed arenas all over the world, delivering his message of hope. Meanwhile, some of you out there reading this have all your limbs, all your faculties, and all you can do is sit on a couch and nitpick movies all day. We're looking at you, CinemaSins (full disclosure: We're CinemaSins).

Christliches Medienmagazin pro
He's inspiring and all, but can he tell you why Batman Begins is a complete mess? Not likely.

Vujicic began the Life Without Limbs Organization and tells his story in more than 54 countries around the world. And sure, his motivational speaking is faith-based, which means a bunch of you just said to yourselves, "I'm an atheist, so now it's time to stop reading this and enter a Photoshop contest." To which we say, "You don't have to declare that you're an atheist to yourself all the time. You should understand that inherently without having to state it out loud."

Still ... what can he actually do, other than tell people around the world that they have hope in their lives? Did we mention Nick can swim? That dude can totally swim. Here he is insulting your laziness, and if that's not good enough, here he is surfing all over your prejudices. Basically, he spends a lot of time doing things most of us are too busy compiling all the family histories of Game Of Thrones to try. He's the ultimate "if he can do it, I can do it," example. And that's what his motivational speeches are all about.

Roslan Rahman/AFP/Getty Images
Here he is about to swim with sharks, and then presumably convince them to follow Jesus.

Still ... you're probably saying, "Great. He's a motivational speaker. What kind of a life can he actually have with no arms and no legs? I grade people's overall worth by the sex they can and can't have, so let's be real for a minute." I'm paraphrasing you in a hypothetical situation, which makes this quote about as accurate as a dog's eyewitness testimony in a cat-murder case. But, we know you thought something similar to that, and you've never read a Cracked article before, and you're reading this with all of your delusions intact, which will make this all the sweeter when we tell you that Vujicic got married in 2012 and fathered a child shortly after ... probably just to prove you wrong.

Nick Vujicic
"I like this game. Go on, tell me I'll never win the lottery either."

Well, love probably had something to do with it, but we're going with the retribution angle because we have this affliction where we hold an imagined grudge for a really long time. Honestly, we probably need one of Nick's talks soon.

Here he is giving a TED Talk at the age of 14, telling the audience they should "stop learning and start thinking." He cites Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein as those who decided to look at things from their own unique perspective and came up with the genius theories we didn't learn in high school because our heads were constantly preoccupied with "I'm Too Sexy" by Right Said Fred. If you think that's a dated reference, please tell us, because the doctors keep us in a room where they say the Earth doesn't rotate anymore and it's 1991 forever.

Jacob is amazing because it's common to think that those diagnosed with autism can't learn or even be intelligent. But this kid started sneaking into the back of college lectures at IUPUI at the age of 8, supposedly remaining inconspicuous because everyone is obsessed with Doogie Howser, M.D. and knows kids like that are common. We think Neil Patrick Harris is great but will never do anything else, and he's the straightest guy we've ever known. Again, please let us know if it ever got past 1991.

Jacob Barnett
If not, Jacob can just invent time-travel and send us back to live there forever.

It should be noted that Jacob isn't a typical kid with autism, and that people who are diagnosed have a wide range of intelligence. But this is an article about people who found superpowers against all odds, and he's one of them.

Nick got into high school and college wrestling and won over 300 matches despite this disability. That's freaking insane. At some point, many of the guys he beat were probably wondering how he was typing in the Konami cheat code and applying it to wrestling. This is all after winning only two of his first 24 matches his freshman year. He was so small he had to wrestle a girl in his first match, which he lost. He nearly gave up, but his mom told him not to, and he kept trying. By his senior year, he won a record 53 matches.

Gary Thomas
Despite countless managers interfering with steel chairs.

However, when he entered MMA Nick had a difficult time finding people who would fight him. It's a classic case where opponents felt beating a guy like that would be equivalent to going to your mother's nursing home and beating up Freddy "Notorious Arthritis" Creakyknees. (We think that's how his birth certificate lists it, but we'll have to rely on memory.) Everyone expects victory in that scenario, so there's no glory in winning. On the other hand, losing such a fight would lead to merciless teasing. It's the classic lose-lose scenario, kind of like when you're playing football and your helmet displays a Tennessee Titans logo.

But find opponents he has, and Newell's won 12 of 13 MMA matches in the lightweight division. Here he is fighting Keon Caldwell, winning with a first-round submission. After watching this, you'll wonder how he does it, kind of like how former one-handed Major League pitcher Jim Abbott used to pitch and manage to put on a glove, all in one motion. As a Yankee, he pitched no-hitter against the Cleveland Indians in 1993. Unsurprisingly, Newell cites Abbott as an inspiration.

Nick Newell
Though Abbott never got to sucker-punch the most badass action hero of his time.

Nick is currently a part of the World Series Of Fighting, and he recently fought for a championship belt against Justin Gaethje. Newell lost by TKO, suffering his first defeat in professional MMA, but considering the fact that, oh, he has to fight with one arm ... just getting there is more impressive than anything we've ever done.

Viktoria Modesta is a Latvian-born singer-songwriter and model who, due to a doctor's mistake during her birth, had problems with her left leg all her life. So, about eight years ago, she had it amputated. Now, you might think that beautiful people should have no problems getting modeling jobs, and replacing a leg with a prosthetic is no big deal as long as they look pretty. But, chances are, some of you out there broke up with your drop-dead gorgeous girlfriend because you could swear one boob was bigger than the other. And once you see it ... you couldn't unsee it.

David M. Benett/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
"We should see other legs ... er, I mean, leg other people ... er, I mean ... fuck."

So, in an industry where you pretty much have to look perfect, it's kind of hard to overcome an entire limb missing. There are too many people out there who consider that an irrevocable flaw. Still, she's managed to make this disability something uniquely beautiful about her, by teaming with designers at the Alternative Limb Project and prosthetists at Ability Matters. They've turned the plain ol' prosthetic leg into a work of art.

Ewelina Stechnij
And they let Arnold be the Terminator again?

You probably didn't think anyone could make a missing limb cool, but taking a look at these pictures, we kind of ... want one. It would transform our species' inevitable, scary, natural evolution into kill-happy cyborgs to a fashionable evolution into kill-happy cyborgs. And don't we want to look awesome when we're destroying the oppressive human race? The fact that Viktoria calls herself a "bionic woman" on her own website tells you where she sides in that discussion.

Nadav Kander / Omkaar Kotedia
The natural next step.

But, modeling is not all Viktoria does, as we mentioned. She also sings. Even if you don't like this kind of music, it's pretty admirable she doesn't pigeonhole herself as a model and diversifies her interests. We're pretty sure if we had a prosthetic leg we'd only be interested ... in revenge. On somebody. Possibly innocent. As long as someone pays, dammit.

"Broly," aka "Brolylegs," born Mike Begum, is a competitive video game player from Texas born with arthrogryposis, a congenital condition in which the joints are contracted, which leads to abnormal development of the muscles. In Mike's case, it means he has little use of his hands. It also means he kicks everyone's ass at Street Fighter IV, using Chun Li, with his face. In this video, you can watch him use his cheek for the control stick and his tongue for the buttons.

MyFox Houston
It's also a great way to ensure nobody hogs the controller, ever.

According to the video, he picked Chun Li because most of her attacks could be done with the four main buttons. We always picked Chun Li in Street Fighter II (remember, it's still 1991 in our world, send help) because we have weird, hot-video-game-character fetishes. We always lost, too, because some dick somehow mastered Zangief's screwdriver move, and it was bullshit. All this to remind you that Broly wipes out the competition with Chun Li using his face to make the video game controller do the things our thumbs are too stupid to do. Or the controller itself. Stupid controllers. Stupid, multiple smashed controllers.

Mike Begum
He probably defeated Sheng Long back when he was still a hoax.

He's also proficient at Super Smash Bros. and SSB: Melee, but that's not all. The guy learned how to type by using a chopstick in his mouth, and he wrote an autobiographical book last year, called My Life Beyond The Floor. Honestly, we can't imagine writing a book using a chopstick, but that's only because Mavis Beacon refuses to expand her empire beyond fingers.

To read about some fictional superheroes with disabilities, check out Jeremy Scott's book The Ables. Jeremy, along with Chris Atkinson, co-founded the YouTube channel CinemaSins in 2012, nitpicking movies to death. In that time, they've delighted and pissed off millions. Join in on the fun and the anger!

For more from CinemaSins, check out 84 Plot Holes You Didn't Notice In 'X-Men: First Class' and Why James Bond: GoldenEye Is Not Without Sin.

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