The end result of this unfortunate process was revealed in 1912 and has since enjoyed cult status as one of the most skull-crappingly stupid things in existence. Really, the turtle's expression says it best:

Via Wikipedia
"Squirtle, I choose you!"

Congratulations! You have just joined the legions of visitors whose common sense has been ravaged by Posankka, a 16-foot fiberglass pig/duck/butt hybrid that haunts one of the city's main entrance roads like a twisted Statue of Liberty.

With that image etched onto your retinas, it's understandable that you want to immediately pull a U-turn and drive as far away from Turku as humanly possible. Do not do this under any circumstances. Avoid the road. Drive your car into the river to avoid temptation. Escape through the forests, acquire a boat, hijack a jet pack. Anything but the road.

Why? Because the poor bastards who drive the Posankka road away from Turku are waved goodbye by this:

Via Turkulainen.fi
"Fuck you for visiting!"

Too late.

The Fremont Troll is a huge mixed-media statue based on the old Three Billy Goats Gruff folk tale, and today is your chance to play the goat (hope you have a couple of bigger friends following you!). The troll's chosen haunt is under the Aurora Bridge, and in case you're confused about its scale, that's a real VW Beetle it's holding.

Via Travelphotoadventures.com
Huh. Trolls like German food. Makes sense.

The locals, not satisfied with the troll's already abundant murder vibes, regularly add to its hatred of mankind by desiccating it with graffiti, light shows, and, worst of all, stupid hats. This is an ancient ritual to ensure that the giant earthquake that will one day devour them all remains in the #2 spot on the city's "terrifying things that want to consume us" list.

The unveiling went exactly as European celebrations tend to go: Everyone yelled "Huzzah," twirled their mustaches, and waved their hats in unison. And then people started noticing the details. Here's Entropa's spin on Italy:

Via Abc.net.au

Yep, that's an Italy-shaped soccer pitch where the players are trying their level best to bone soccer balls (Italy really likes soccer, you guys). Romania becomes a creepy, vampire-infested fortress:

Via Theguardian.com
Which looks like it was just bought from the toy section at Walmart.

Still, surely that's about as bad as it can get. It's not as if the artists, hah, represent Germany as a set of huge autobahns forming what looks a lot like a broken swastika.

Via Artinvestment.ru
Well, shit.

You get the picture -- Entropa insults every single nation in the Union like that. France is perpetually on strike, Scotland is a bunch of shitty marshlands and a set of bagpipes that fart out random tunes, Sweden is an IKEA box, and the Czech Republic shat a brick as it realized it had just started its reign by brutally mocking every single one of its friends.

It was soon found that the whole "27 artists" thing was a complete fabrication. Entropa was the work of none other than Czech artist David Cerny, a familiar face on Cracked's statue lists and a professional waver of sculpture-shaped middle fingers.

Via Bbc.co.uk
Some of them more literal than others.

The rest of the story is Politics 101. The Czech Republic immediately removed Entropa and apologized to everyone, and the first order of their presidency was to relocate Cerny to Antarctica.

Ha, no! They totally displayed the piece for well over a year after the Czech EU presidency ended, and after that they put it on permanent display in an esteemed science center. Cerny waltzed away with a shit-eating grin and is still gleefully wreaking havoc with works like ...

The statue was originally meant for the main post office, but for some reason the director wasn't too thrilled about it. So Cerny went all out and installed it as close to the original as humanly possible, thus establishing once and for all that in the Czech Republic, "artist" is just another word for "professional troll."

He. Hehehehehe. He he.

Via Digitaljournal.com
Hehehehehehehe.

If you were a tiny island nation that wanted to honor the sea surrounding it -- you know, the very element that can destroy you any moment it goddamn chooses to -- what kind of monument would you make? I'm asking out of genuine curiosity because, according to Malta, the correct answer is DICK DICK DICK A HUGE TATTOOED SMURF DICK WHERE EVERYONE CAN SEE IT! AHAHAHAHA!

The man behind Colonna Mediterranea insists the piece packs no phallic qualities and thinks the members of the community who keep seeing it as a giant dong are just looking for a bone to pick. Even so, this majestic shaft often rubs people the wrong way. Locals have been raging hard on the column ever since it was erected, and its existence remains a throbbing issue that is considered a massive pain in the ass by many a critic.

Penis.

Well, no one except the very statue that is supposed to portray him in his role as the Great Emancipator.

Via Wikipedia
"There, you're all free and whatever. Now emancipate some shine on my shoes."

Washington, D.C.'s Emancipation Memorial is decades older than the actual Lincoln Memorial. It was financed by a group of African-Americans who wanted to raise Lincoln a statue for windmill-punching slavery in the dick. However, in a particularly bullshit example of irony, the project ended up being supervised by a bunch of wealthy white men who took to the task with all the racial sensibility 1870 could muster. In an effort to save money, they ended up telling the sculptor to just combine a random Lincoln statue with a random slave statue, thus accidentally creating the unfortunate domination effect of the finished product.

16th century poet Hans Sachs once wrote an honest piece on the various aspects of marriage called "The Bittersweet Married Life." In 1984, a dude called Jurgen Weber revealed the fountain called Ehekarussell ("The Marriage Carousel"), a work inspired by this poem.

He might have gotten a little carried away.

Via Wikimedia Commons

When you look at the whole piece, you can sort of tell there's something slightly off about the fountain, but it still seems pretty unassuming for a #1 entry on a Cracked list. Let's look a little closer:

Via Wikimedia Commons
Also inspired by Sam Kinison.

What the shit? Are those prank figures some other artist sneaked in after the fountain was finished? Or was something lost in translation, and "marriage" actually meant "zombie smackdown" in 16th century Germany? Let's investigate further:

Via Wikimedia Commons

Fuck! That's actually worse. I'm not married myself, but I imagine the process does not include too many decomposing goat carcasses, unless of course you're doing it the way Nyarlathotep intended, with some good old-fashioned wife slavery:

Via Tourismus.nuerenberg.de

OK, sculptor guy, we get it. It was not a nice divorce.

Special thanks to Jukka K. for his suggestions in this article. Follow Pauli Poisuo on Twitter.

Always on the go but can't get enough of Cracked? We have an Android app and iOS reader for you to pick from so you never miss another article.