5

Office Space Invented A Product And Then Made It Indispensable

20th Century Fox

Milton Waddams in Office Space is the great tragic character of our era. Ignored by his co-workers and displaced by his employers, he finds solace in the simple treasure of his red Swingline stapler. As the story of Office Space unfolds, Milton is in the background, slowly losing all that he treasures: his paycheck, the location of his desk, respect, and -- in the movie's most heartbreaking moment -- even his beloved Swingline.

Then he snaps and burns the building down.

2oth Century Fox

Some quick history: when this movie came out, Swingline didn't make a red stapler. They sold most of their equipment in bulk, and companies are unlikely to buy bulk packages of red staplers, because bright colors encourage non-conformity and non-conformity is inefficient. So when Mike Judge approached Swingline with a product-placement offer, they turned him down, because they didn't see any money in it.

But Judge was determined. The Swingline was the beating heart of the film, stained red by the blood of the narrative. He begged to use the stapler anyway, and Swingline basically shrugged and said, "why not?" But they had to custom-make their own, since (again) Swingline didn't make any red staplers.

You know the rest. Today, the red stapler is Swingline's best-selling product and a badge of honor for any hip American cubicle slave. And to think the famed stapler manufacturer almost missed out on all that cool ironic cash, all because they underestimated how many people want to passive-aggressively threaten to burn their office down.

4

Action Movies Have A Huge Impact On Gun Sales

20th Century Fox

3

JFK Is So Insane That Congress Released More Information About The Assassination

Warner Bros.

To be clear, JFK is a really good movie, because Oliver Stone directed it. But the story may as well be the transcribed yammering of a drug-addled schizophrenic. Before the movie even came out, journalists were visiting the set and writing detailed explanations about why every single thing Stone claims to have happened is reddit-thread-flow-chart bonkers.

Even Roger Ebert, who we can all agree was never wrong about anything ever, said in his positive review that the conclusions the film draws are absolutely bonkers: "The achievement of the film is not that it answers the mystery of the Kennedy assassination, because it does not, or even that it vindicates Garrison, who is seen here as a man often whistling in the dark. Its achievement is that it tries to marshal the anger which ever since 1963 has been gnawing away on some dark shelf of the national psyche."

Warner Bros."Gnawing away at the national psyche" is a great way to describe Costner's acting.

However, he must've hit on something pretty key, because the movie ended up inspiring Congress to pass the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, which gathered and re-examined for release all the records surrounding JFK's assassination before the previously set deadline of 2029. In the end, it didn't matter that Stone's theories were bananas. The act of recklessly distrusting in the government on that large of a scale ended up making a difference.

I'm not sure exactly what lesson to take from that.

2

Jurassic Park Caused A Spike In Amber Sales

Universal Pictures

1

Bernie Got Bernie Out Of Prison (And Moved Him In With The Director)

Millennium Entertainment

Bernie is a Richard Linklater/Jack Black movie (based on a true story) about a stunningly nice guy who shoots an abusive old lady in the back. And even though murdering old ladies is generally frowned upon in movies, anyone watching Bernie will find themselves siding with the titular character because he is just an unbelievably nice guy. In fact, a big part of the film explains how they had to hold the trial in a different county because Bernie was so well-liked in his community that every potential juror outright said that they'd never find him guilty of anything (today, even the nephew of his murder victim seems to think he's a nice guy). But of course Texas Justice is as Texas Justice does, and at the end of the film Bernie is charged with murder and sentenced to life in prison.

But of course that's not the end of the story. Bernie is such a fascinating movie that it inspired a local attorney named Jodi Cole to investigate the story, and she dug up new facts and evidence related to Bernie's motive and state of mind. Turns out that the emotional abuse Bernie suffered at the hands of his elderly murder victim was reminiscent of sexual abuse Bernie had suffered as a child, which convinced the prosecutor to revise his opinion. In short, the movie led directly to Bernie getting a reduced sentence and being set free.

But freedom came with one condition: He had to move in with Richard Linklater, the guy who directed the movie that got him released in the first place.

TheStake.orgLinklater's the cute one.

There's a kind of symmetry to that, I suppose: If movies are part of the legal proceedings, it only makes sense that the sentencing should be based on sitcom logic.

This is a pretty dumb story, but I also think it's kind of beautifully dumb. It really doesn't seem like Bernie deserved to be in jail anymore, so justice was served. It just happens to have been served in a way that seems entirely too doofy for this world. And that's wonderful. If more things were this dumb, the world would probably be a better place.

JF Sargent is an editor and columnist for Cracked who will someday change the world in a really dumb way. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook to see how.