15 Random Facts to Freshen Up Your Neurons
![15 Random Facts to Freshen Up Your Neurons](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/9/2/8/788928_320x180.jpg)
So, you have come to Cracked to learn stuff? Tough luck, we only have random trivia for you. But it’s cool trivia! It won’t help you land a job at NASA, but it will… Uh… Well, we can’t think of a really good trade-off here. We’re talking NASA, after all. Not a whole lot of things would beat working at NASA, making space ships and looking at the stars. Will Batman do? Yeah, we think he just might. Everyone wants to be Batman to some degree. The cool punching and having unlimited money parts of Batman, anyway. Less so the dead parents and body aches and psycho clowns. Could you imagine having a psycho clown as your nemesis? Like everyday you’re just trying to do your thing but this freaky guy in a purple suit pops up all the time to turn your day to doo doo. There’s probably a weird, psychological-horror thriller in there somewhere. We’re going to go ahead and trademark that now.
![Danny Elfman composed the Batman theme in a plane's bathroom. After visiting the movie's sets in London, inspiration hit Elfman right on the plane back to Los Angeles. Fearing he'd forget it, he spent the rest of the flight coming and going to the bathroom, humming a little music into his tape recorder every time.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/9/2/2/788922.jpg)
More: 'Batman's Theme Was Composed On A Plane (While Passengers Freaked)
![Tupac had his first movie role in a horrible comedy. Nothing But Trouble was an awful vanity project of Dan Aykroyd, who dragged Demi Moore, Chevy Chase, and John Candy along the way. As the movie also features the hip-hop LIFE group Digital Underground, it has the distinction of being the acting debut of Tupac Shakur.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/9/1/0/788910.jpg)
![Jediism has become a real religion. Sorry, you don't get cool powers or a lightsaber when you join the International Church of Jediism. You do get, however, to believe in the Force and follow the Jedi Code. It isn't just pretend it's a real church, with ministers and a tax exemption.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/9/1/1/788911.jpg)
![Scooby-Doo was the result of Robert Kennedy's assassination. In the '60s, action- packed cartoons were all the rage but after RFK was shot, a moral panic ensued against violence in the media. Pressured to come up with more wholesome content, Hanna-Barbera created Scooby-Doo and his gang.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/9/1/3/788913.jpg)
More: RFK's Assassination Gave Us ... 'Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!'?
![The Matrix reused Dark City's sets. Both movies aren't just similar - they also used some of the exact same sets. Why hire someone to make a new set when you've got a perfectly good one lying around in storage?](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/9/1/4/788914.jpg)
![Do you want to play as Gordon Freeman with a Portal Gun? You can! While not official (it’s too cool for that), dedicated modders have found a way to, ahem… combine the two Valve games, by bringing the Aperture Science device from Portal into Half-Life 2.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/9/2/4/788924.gif)
![Two X-Men mutants have ice cream-based powers. Eye-Scream can turn into any flavor of ice cream - a power he somehow hates. More recently, penciler Robert Quinn hid his own creation in a comic - a girl named Soft Serve, who has the even more baffling power of pooping ice cream.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/9/1/6/788916.jpg)
More: 'X-Men' Has Two Ice-Cream-Powered Characters And They’re Absolutely Insane
![Bugs living on your face die by poop explosions. Demodex mites are tiny, gross bugs that burrow into your hair follicles, when they eat and lay eggs - but don't poop. They can't, as they don't have a butt. They just keep getting more and more full of crap, until they die and release a lifetime of feces all over your face.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/9/2/1/788921.jpg)
![Leonardo da Vinci studied butt clenching. The Renaissance was a time more obsessed with butts than you were taught in school and Leonardo, the definitive Renaissance man, dedicated several pages to sketch the anus' ability to take different forms when clenching.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/9/1/9/788919.jpg)
More: Butts And Poop Were An Obsession For Renaissance Geniuses
![It took a Supreme Court ruling to end Abercrombie & Fitch's tyrannical dress code. A&C notoriously refused to stock clothes bigger than Large and yet, employees of all sizes were forced to wear them (among other draconian rules). All this ended when a Muslim woman sued them for firing her over her headscarf, and the case made it to the Supreme Court.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/9/2/3/788923.jpg)
More: Abercrombie Had A Psycho Dress Code (For Its Accountants)
![Who Let The Dogs Out is not about ugly women. While not about literal dogs, Baha Men's song isn't about unattractive women either, as it's often interpreted to be. In the lyrics, it's the women calling the creepy, annoying men dogs. It's a man-bashing song, explained songwriter Anslem Douglas.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/9/2/0/788920.jpg)
More: Reminder: Baha Men Banger 'Who Let The Dogs Out' Is A Secret Feminist Banger
![George Orwell's real life imitated his novel. 1984 was based on the way communists led by Stalin spied on their own. What Orwell never knew is that he was himself being spied on - and that the guy supervising that was codenamed O'Brien, just like the antagonist in his novel.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/9/1/8/788918.jpg)
![Copyright almost destroyed Nosferatu. The original vampire film was almost lost forever. After losing a copyright lawsuit brought by Bram Stoker's widow, all copies were ordered to be destroyed. Luckily, one print managed to find its way to the United States, where Dracula was in the public domain.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/9/1/7/788917.jpg)
More: How Movies' Most Important Vampire Film Was Almost Lost
![Yes, you can actually tell when someone is watching you. It's not some sixth sense, just one of the boring big five - you simply see the person. As it turns out, your field of vision is wider than you think, and if someone within it is looking at you, your brain gets the information.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/9/1/5/788915.jpg)
![It's harder for people with darker skin to get good tattoos. Many tattoo artists believe (wrongly) that dark skin is thicker, which often results in damage as they get overly rough to compensate for this. Also, they often don't know how to properly apply colors to non-white skins.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/9/1/2/788912.jpg)
More: 4 Beloved Things ... That Have Surprisingly Bigoted Problems