5 Insane Ways Famous Movies Are Bleeding Into Reality
We go to the movies to see things that could never, ever happen in real life, like Seth Rogen and James Franco's bromance leading to an international incident with North Ko- whoops.
It turns out The Interview isn't the only movie plot that has come true recently, which probably means that the walls of reality are starting to come down as the end of the universe approaches. That, or God is an unoriginal hack who stole the plot for all of the following events:
Geniuses Are Worried About the Machine Uprising
Sci-fi writers have been warning us about the day the robots will kill us all since way before we even had robots, and it's a genre that's still going strong. The recent trailer for Avengers: Age of Ultron, for example, shows us how dangerous artificial intelligence can be when it starts recognizing metaphors in Disney songs. The upcoming Terminator: Genisys provides yet another post-apocalyptic future and a valid reason for why the machines would want to kill us (our terrible spelling).
But nobody really takes this AI takeover idea seriously, right? Just a few crazy people, like billionaire inventor/Tony Stark inspiration Elon Musk. In November, a website accidentally posted a private comment by Musk in which he sounds rather alarmed about our future (or lack thereof). The post was deleted, but still found its way onto Reddit.
Where it was downvoted by dozens of totally real people, not killbots.
Musk actually wrote his own timeline for the AI apocalypse, saying that it could happen in the next five to 10 years -- in fact, he was so caught up in thinking about the coming of our machine overlords that he completely zoned out and missed someone's question at an MIT panel. Meanwhile, Stephen Hawking himself thinks that AI could "spell the end of the human race," which is a powerful statement from someone who is frighteningly intelligent and has a robot voice.
A Hundred Human Brains "Go Missing" From a Research Lab
Every single Frankenstein movie worth a damn (see: the film starring Boris Karloff and Young Frankenstein) has the famous moment when the hunchback is sent to steal a brain for the monster, which of course turns out to be a criminal brain. This underscores the depravity involved in Dr. Frankenstein's experiment; you would never see a brain go missing in real life. No, in reality, a hundred brains go missing.
At least that's what was reported in late November when photographer Adam Voorhes wanted to take some glamour shots of the 200 brains stored at the University of Texas in Austin ... only to notice that 100 were missing, and no one knew why.
He specializes in '80s high school portraits.
And yes, according to Voorhes, one of them was apparently a criminal brain: Charles Whitman, who shot 16 people in 1966, willingly left his brain to science so they could find out if there was something wrong with him (you think, dude?). At first, the University couldn't account for the missing brains, but a few days later they revealed there was a perfectly rational explanation for this mystery: they were all "destroyed" in 2002! Nope, nothing creepy there.
The college cafeteria served ground beef for the next month.
The officials also said there was "no evidence" that there was a psychopath brain in the lot. We totally believe you, University of Texas, but please forgive us while we continue stockpiling firearms in preparation for either A) an army of 100 Frankenstein's Monsters, or B) one really erudite Frankenstein's Monster wearing a large hat.
Bono Is Trapped in a Final Destination Film
Back in November, Bono from U2 (you know, as opposed to any of the other famous Bonos) was involved in a potentially deadly incident when the rear door of his private jet suddenly flew off of the plane mid-flight, probably upset about U2's new album being forced onto its iPhone. This seems like a recipe for horrible flaming death, but the plane landed safely and Bono remained unscathed. And, apparently, Death got pissed.
"Sorry, I'm just not ready to deal with living with him for the rest of eternity yet." -God
Less than a week after escaping a potential air disaster without a scratch, Bono ended up with serious injuries -- from a bicycle crash. That's like ... actually, there's no comical metaphor that can top "avoiding an air disaster and getting hurt on a bicycle." Bono wasn't laughing, though: the incident resulted in multiple fractures and required hours of surgery. On top of that, B-bone will be forced to go through intensive physical therapy, not to mention put up with the inevitable "Bono died and was replaced by a guy called Billy Shears" conspiracies.
The Real-Life American Psycho ... Is British
British trader Rurik Jutting, who was charged last November for the brutal murder of two women in Hong Kong, was one of those folks who you would never believe is secretly a psychopath ... except that he literally told people that he was a psychopath.
Not too long before the killings, Jutting left his job at Merrill Lynch, leaving the following message as his automatic email response: "I am out of the office. Indefinitely. For urgent enquiries, or indeed any enquiries, please contact someone who is not an insane psychopath." So, let's recap: pompous, money-obsessed asshole with a high-paying job? Check. Killed sex workers in his fancy apartment after doing coke with them? Check. Told colleagues he was a murderer and they didn't believe him? Check. Holy shit, if the murder charges don't stick, American Psycho writer Bret Easton Ellis should consider suing for plagiarism.
"In the morning, if my face is a little puffy I'll put on an ice pack while
eating Nestle Crunches. I can eat 1,000 now."
And then, after the murders, Jutting posted "Money DOES buy happiness" on his Facebook page -- which isn't an American Psycho quote, but face it, if we said it was, you'd buy it. We would take a look at the man's Twitter or LinkedIn accounts to see if he had dumped any more of his insane brain out into the world, but we were hoping to be able to sleep sometime in the next month. (It's probably just tons of Huey Lewis lyrics, anyway.)
A Real Gravity-Style Disaster in Space Is Narrowly Avoided
As the underwear-killing first minutes of Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity taught us in 2013, even tiny pieces of an old Russian satellite can become deadly if they collide with you at a zillion miles per hour -- in the movie, the speeding debris completely fucks up a NASA shuttle, forcing the astronauts to figure out how to get back to Earth without burning to death.
While the experts may have quibbles with the precise physics of this film, the International Space Station had a great chance to verify the veracity of the opening sequence themselves, when they discovered they were on a collision course with an eerily similar disaster.
At which point the Indian member of the crew flipped everyone off and prepared for his new head-hole.
After the ground teams monitoring the International Space Station were unable to catch a piece of debris that was about the size of a human hand, the ISS was left with only six hours (or 2.12 Nolans) to move an enormous space station out of harm's way. And where did the space junk come from? Why, from an old Russian satellite, of course. Thinking quickly, they used the thrusters on a supply-delivery vehicle to move the station out of the way just in time, without compromising its orbit. Disaster was averted, though the astronauts on board all missed the opportunity for several hours in George Clooney's exclusive company.
While we're on the topic, check out 6 Movies That Predicted Disasters With Eerie Accuracy and 7 Completely Unrealistic Movie Plots That Came True.
