A Scene From a Michael Bay Movie About Tennis?
This mile-high tennis match looks like some cheesy special effect from a Nike commercial. But no, it's just Dubai, whose entire economy seems to be based on building enormous things that exist only for the purpose of not making any goddamn sense. In that spirit they hosted this tennis match between Andre Agassi and Roger Federer on a helipad located on top of the Burj Al Arab skyscraper.
The "Everything We Could Find" Pizza
This seems to be a Photoshop with some Japanese text thrown on, to mock a culture whose major export seems to be insanity. But the product is real and oh by the way, it's from Pizza Hut.
It's the Double Roll Pizza and comes with a pigs-in-blankets crust. The only thing it's missing is some pork rinds. Maybe sprinkle some tiny cans of beer on there.
"Looks Like Another Neighborhood Got Sucked Into the Vortex Yesterday."
It looks like a city about to get drained out of a giant's bath tub, but it's actually a picture of the world's largest diamond mine outside of Mirny, Russia.
This mine is actually so large that air currents prevent helicopters from flying over it. By the way, the title of World's Second Largest Hole still belongs to your mom.
Freudian Gummy Candy
As you can see from the package, these are supposed to be lighthouses but may in fact be the most unfortunately shaped product of all time.
Body Builder, With Flesh Puppet
Yes, the proportions are correct. The tiny man is Aditya "Romeo" Dev, the world's smallest bodybuilder. He stands a towering 2 feet 9 inches tall and weighing in at a whopping 20 pounds.
We'd love to see him and Vern Troyer go at it in a no holds barred cage match. Or, see two huge men get into a cage match using this guy and Vern Troyer as weapons.
"Damn Kids!"
At first sight, this appears to be a home improvement project that accidentally tapped into Stephen Hawkings' most abstract theories on space and time. But then you notice that the kid who is right next to the portal to another dimension isn't disintegrating into millions of pieces, or even looking up from his goddamn cellphone.
So it must be a photoshop right? Wrong again. The Inversion House is an art project that answers the pressing question: what would your neighbor's place look like if it was sucked through a straw in the Looney Tunes universe? The answer is pretty cool, though apparently not nearly as cool as whatever 13 year-olds are texting each other these days.
If Dogs Played Major League Baseball
This cartoonish muscle-dog is Wendy, a whippet with a genetic disorder causing ridiculous muscular growth.
While Wendy's condition is sure to have many medical applications to various muscle development disorders, we're still hoping Disney casts her as the bad guy in Air Bud 4.
A Splotch From God's Paintbrush
This Mark Rothko-looking blotch of color is the Grand Prismatic Spring, which supposedly gets its colors from bacteria that grow around the water.
Since this explanation seems far too simple for something so brilliant, we'll go ahead and assume it's really an alien spacecraft landing site being covered up by the government.
We're Moving. It's the Crab's House, Now."
Holy crap, look at that thing. We were hoping that was just a tiny trash can but, no, it's a coconut crab, which is the biggest arthropod that lives on land.
We like how they chose the innocuous name "coconut crab" to describe something that can only be killed with a flamethrower. If these things were called "Skull Crabs" or "Under Your Bed Crabs" mankind would have declared war on them long ago.
If You Look Past The Unsettlingly Tiny Speedo, You'll See a Huge Freaking Airliner
This apparent disaster-waiting-to-happen is on the Island of St. Maarten. The airport has a particularly short runway that ends just 40 feet from beach, leaving large planes just barely enough room to land. So they have to come in low, directly over the beach, making it a prime destination for an afternoon of quiet, relaxing sunbathing.
"Do You See Those Letters, Uh, Floating There?"
Yes, if you stand in this spot in the parking garage shown in the photo, the word "DOWN" is just floating there. The sign was designed by an artist who won an award for it, because there are apparently awards for making innovative signage in parking garages.
He created the effect of continuous letters by adjusting the angles for appropriate perspective as they reached walls, just like in those incredible chalk sidewalk drawings that are all over the web.
These sorts of illusions are great when they appear on sidewalks, and probably much less entertaining when you ram straight into the wall of this Wile E. Coyote-inspired parking garage after swerving to avoid the giant DOWN sign that materialized in midair in front of your car.
Giant Table or Tiny Bicyclist?
This humongous table and chair is a sculpture in England. The artist wanted to build a monument to the privacy and loneliness of writing. And by that we assume he means the loneliness of being a writer who is also a giant that eats passing bicyclists.
"AAAAARRGGHH! EDDIE MURPHY HEAD!"
This giant, terrifying Eddie Murphy head that looks like a badly photoshopped and probably racist 4chan meme, was actually part of an enormous bust they were building to promote the movie, Meet Dave.
Incidentally, the only thing that would scare us more than driving next to Axl Foley's humongous noggin on the highway is being forced to see the movie.
Macaroni Push-Pop
Yes, this push-pop made of "Macaroni & Cheese in Chili Sauce With Beef" is very real, part of a "convenience meets nausea" movement to provide your favorite foods on the go in a microwaveable, cardboard tube. Scrambled eggs are also available.
Here's a tip for all you potential consumers: if you want macaroni and cheese so badly that you're willing to eat it in a push pop, you have an illness and need to reach out to a professional.
The Machine Apparently Made to Saw the World in Half
What appears to be some normal-sized machine cropped and pasted onto a skyline is actually a gigantic machinized monstrosity designed for excavation by some Germans. Those things that look like saw teeth big enough to cut down the Empire State Building are actually buckets, each of which could pretty much scoop up your whole house.
If this thing's secretly a transformer, we're screwed.
"Our Top Notch Security Will Find the Cock in Your Luggage"
If you're not sure what's so funny about the above image taken from a public Birmingham International Airport report, look in the lower left hand part of the suitcase.
Actually, a Translation Error Would Have Improved This One
Man, just imagine all of the uses. Wait, do dogs even sweat? We smell bullshit here. This is actually a spinoff of a popular Japanese drink called Pocari Sweat. We don't know who Pocari is either, but we're going to go ahead and assume he's a Sumo wrestler.
Home of the 404 Burger
Something this groan-worthy can only be real. A photo of this restaurant in China made the rounds over the summer during the Olympics.
Apparently restaurants there made a big push to get English on their signs to cater to tourists, but at least one business didn't have a single English-speaking friend they could ask. So they plugged it into Babelfish and ... you can imagine the rest of the story, which must involve at least one sign company who just didn't give a shit.
If a Million Raccoons Rummage Through a Million Trashcans...
From the "holy shit that must have taken forever" category, this sculpture is by some inventive artists making shadow art using garbage, carefully positioned to form the silhouette. We're sure the rats living in the pile see the whole thing as evidence of intelligent design.
A Water Park Designed by MC Escher
What sucks about magic is the tricks are always incredibly lame once you know how they're done. This one is no different: it's supported by a pipe running up through the water.
The Miracle of Creation (During God's Teenage Years)
It's a real iceberg shaped like a pecker. We're going to leave it at that.
The Jeff Foxworthy Estate
This mess of tacky trailer homes isn't a Photoshop, but it's not a living complex either. It's a set for a play in Amsterdam. We were going to question the sense of using a trailer park for Anton Chekov's Ivanov, a 19th century Russian tragedy, until we read a synopsis. The play features down on their luck peasants, gun violence at weddings and a main character who's deep in debt and has some spousal difficulties. The only thing missing is stock car racing.
German Figures Out the Secret to Levitation, Refuses to Share
This seemingly faked photo can easily be explained away as sorcery. Unfortunately, it's actually a street performer named Johan Lorbeer, who stands in a harness hanging from a fake arm that's attached to the building.
The real magic is that the support system up there doesn't crush his nuts.
A Rare Shot of the Endangered African What the Fuck is That
That dayglo smiley hovering in the air in the middle of the jungle is actually a Bird of Paradise engaging in a completely ridiculous mating ritual. The markings are actually on the bird's chest feathers, which it can puff up to display the pattern.
It'd be like being born with a shitty fad t-shirt permanently stuck to your body.
Recommended by Four out of Five Dentists to Ward off Attacks by Giant Asian Men
This billboard from Indonesia is a creative effort by the Formula Toothcare company to illustrate the fact that their toothpaste builds strong teeth, though there's a special bonus message for very young children: people in pictures can only come alive if they're very big and hungry enough to eat you.
The Penis Extension Most Likely to Accidentally Castrate You
While this looks like a pretty ingenious photoshop mocking the Swiss Army Knife manufacturers, the reality is far, far stupider: it's an actual Swiss Army Knife so huge as to be utterly useless for any task. It features a whopping 85 tools, including something that looks like it's for circumcising a baby.
On whole, the knife is nine inches wide and weighs two pounds. Here's an important outdoorsmen tip: When your knife has a handle three times wider than the blade is long, you're not carrying a knife, you're carrying a paperweight. One that's far more likely to stab you than anyone else.
The Streets As Seen by Salvador Dali
This melting building is actually just a regular building covered in a huge tarp with the Dali-esque design painted on it. It's covering an apartment building undergoing renovation in Paris.
Hats off to the French. In a single stroke they hide unsightly construction and fool all passersby into thinking someone spiked their espresso. Now if they could only figure out why people keep plowing their cars into buildings undergoing renovation in Paris.
Miners from Lilliput Explore the Interior of a Geode
Okay, that doesn't even look like a good Photoshop. Yet, it's a real photo, taken in the Cave of Crystals in Mexico.
It's believed that the combination of mineral rich water and high temperatures resulted in super charged growth of the crystals. So Lex Luthor's plan in Superman Returns wasn't retarded after all.
Hannah Montana Gummi Cocks
Speaking of disturbing food, what is clearly a gummi dong to our eyes is supposedly a guitar. But yes, the candy is real and yes, the flesh-colored phalluses are in every bag.
Night of the Lepus
We couldn't tell if this was the most horrifying or most adorable thing we'd ever seen, until we learned the backstory. First terrifying detail: it is real. This species of giant gray bunnies are bred by a guy in Germany ... for food.
Look people, we're going to say it extra slow this time, and we're going to link every word to evidence: Germany. Is. Freaking. Weird. If you choose to travel there, please don't return with photographs.
Lovely Phallic Innuendo Bridge
So ... how long after construction did it take for the public to notice the shafts of sunlight through the railing of this bridge forms dongs on the street? You can't tell us nobody noticed this, either. This is Westminster Bridge in London...
...and we're going to assume that the architect figured this out at the planning stages. They were making dick jokes in 1750, right?
If you think about it, those shadows are just going to get longer and longer as the sun goes down. So if you're an insecure dude, stay away from Westminster Bridge at sunset.
Unless you're not one of those people who just see dongs everywhere.
Unfortunately, we are.
Mountain Does Marilyn Monroe Impression
No need to avert your eyes, you are not in fact witnessing the world’s largest up-skirt. These bizarre, lens shaped lenticular clouds form in upward gusts of wind that naturally occur around mountains. These winds, known as "wave lifts," are so powerful that sail plane pilots have used them to glide 1,864 miles without a motor.
Venticular clouds are often mistaken for UFOs, which sounds retarded until you see one of these hovering over your town ...
Scientists Combine Human and Slinky DNA
What appears to be a simple application of the "blinds" effect in Photoshop is actually the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum, decorated for the Dali exhibit and to terrify passers-by. Wait, Philadelphia Art Museum? Where's the Rocky statue?
If There's One Sport You Just Have to Try Before You Die ...
Once more we are presented with a photo that not only appear to be a Photoshop, but a bad one.
But, no, Ostrich racing is an all too real sport in several countries, though we admit these photos seem to portray frat guys enjoying the sport ironically.
Ostriches have a reputation for being ornery sons of bitches, so we're guessing that half of the excitement is watching to see which jockey gets his eyes pecked out mid-race.
Some Creatures Get Scarier as They Get Smaller
If The Daily Mail can be believed, the Dwarf Gecko up there only grows to be a half inch or so long. And that's really gross for some reason.
We realize there are lots of insects that size, but for some reason it's weirder when it's an actual animal with a tiny little skeleton and everything. Like if you looked down at your kitchen counter and found a horse the size of a pea standing there. It'd be time to move out of that shit.
"Sir, Did You Not See That Signal Back There?"This has gotten passed around the internet with titles like WORST INTERSECTION IN THE WORLD OMG. While it's not Photoshop, it's not a real traffic signal either. It's a sculpture found in a roundabout in England. The sculpture obviously means, "We hate out-of-towners, and wish to distress them."
On the Set of For Your Ass Only
At first glance it would appear to be your 13-year-old brother's first attempt at photo manipulation. But it is in fact an actual event from last year when Gary Kasparov (yes the chess dude) was attacked by a peniscopter during a press conference.
Christmas Tree Decorations in Morocco
This might look like a lazy father's hastily photoshopped answer to the question "Where do baby goat's come from?" But in fact, it's a real photograph taken of real goats in in Morroco.
When food became sparse on the ground, the hoofed creatures simply learned to climb trees. Pretty cool, though we'd imagine it loses some of its luster the first time you park under a tree and your car gets crapped on by a goat.
What Icebergs Do to Hide Their Holiday Weight
Yes, that's a real iceberg and no, it hasn't been painted. These icebergs were observed off the coast of South Africa. It turns out those stripes are caused by sediment or even dead krill getting trapped in the ice in layers over time.
We'd like to think of the process as deliberate, with the krill submitting themselves for cryogenic freezing until somebody invents a cure for being a tiny little shrimp. Hopefully technology won't let them down.
The Reason Your Car Insurance Rates Keep Going Up
Behold The Uno: a one-wheeler motorcycle invented by an 18-year-old. That's right, while you spent your senior year of high school trying to get a peek up the cheerleaders' skirts at basketball games, this dude went out there and completed some engineering slick enough to make every Segway owner jealous.
It operates just by tilting your weight forward or back to accelerate. Now we'd just like to see him pop a wheelie.
I Didn't Want "Instant," That's Gross
Despite our desire to keep our lunches down, we looked into this one a little further and discovered that it's a real product, made in China and elsewhere.
It turns out that Jew's Ear is a colloquial (and somewhat politically incorrect) name for a fungus also known as "jelly ear," which doesn't sound any more appetizing. We've squinted at the window in the packaging to figure out what the hell that stuff actually looks like. All we know is it doesn't make us want to eat it more.
Yes, That's a Dog
Yes, an actual living dog. The above monstrosity is from the Super Groom competition, where the boundaries of animal abuse get relaxed, if only for a day. It's basically the Ace of Cakes of dog grooming, complete with what appears to be an airbrush paint job.
"Screw Your Boat Race, I'm Outta Here"
We'd like to think that if you were in a speed boat race and Jesus called you to walk out on the water, he'd be cool with you slowing down first. At least for the safety of the other drivers.
Of course, in reality, the photo just captured this guy a split second before tumbling horribly into the water at inhuman speeds. According to a source that talked to the dude in the hospital afterward, all he was concerned about during his recovery was how to make one of his friend's speed boats go faster. Way to learn from your mistakes there, buddy.
We Can't Stop Staring at the Huge Shoes
Sadly, this is a woman in England with a growth abnormality causing her legs to reach enormous size. It's a debilitating condition and we're not going to make fun of her. But still, look at those shoes.
The Scene of the Most Hardcore LARP in the World
This looks more like a painting than Photoshop, but it's actually an enormous, elaborate set from the opera Ein Maskenball with a scene depicting Death reading from the book of life.
Have you seen Quantum of Solace? Remember the opera scene where they're on that huge set shaped like an eyeball? That's from the same opera. So is this inexplicable image of naked, fat and very old actors in Mickey Mouse masks.
Man, why couldn't they have shown Bond chasing bad guys through that?
The Predator Checks a Map
This undoctored photo is part of an art project--and possibly also an awesome assassination scheme--where they meticulously paint clothing to match the surroundings.
We can't imagine how much time they must have put into creating photos that, after all that effort, will be dismissed as Photoshop by nearly every single viewer.
God Declares the SUV to be Gay
It's the end of the rainbow! Wow!
The above photo got spread around the Internet earlier this year with that exact title, claiming the photographer had found the exact spot the rainbow "landed" on the highway, as if it's a goddamned stationary structure rather than a play of light and water particles that changes depending on where you're standing.
"Hey Steve, You Remember That Scene in Independence Day..."
Come on! Look at the way the ground is perfectly cropped out at the horizon, so that stupid cotton candy-looking stuff could be pasted in! This isn't Photoshop, it's MS Paint!
Actually it's one of a series of real photos from Iraq, taken during a sandstorm in 2005 (the photographer says it took about three minutes from spotting it on the horizon to engulf him completely).
So parts of Iraq apparently look a lot like some crappy pre-CGI shot from the latest Mummy sequel.
"What's that White Stuff on the Trees? It Almost Looks Like Some Kind of Web... OH SHIT-"
If you're arachnophobic and are getting short of breath looking at what looks like the work of a giant spider, don't worry. It's actually a freak massive spider web created by millions of spiders working together in ways science previously did not think was possible.
Sleep tight.
COCKS
This image is a message board staple and easy to confuse with something that's been manipulated lolcat-style. But it is in fact just a cheerleader at the University of South Carolina, home of the the Gamecocks. The girl is leading the crowd in the official school cheer of "GAME!-COCKS!" with each word printed on one side of the card.
We would say here that they named the team during a more innocent time, but we're having trouble believing such a time ever existed. And you'd think after discovering their faux pas, they'd find a cheer that didn't require a young girl in a skirt to carry around a foot-tall dick euphemism on a sign.
The Ent Nursery
These laughably fake-looking tree men are in fact made using a technique called arborsculpture. The trees are bound and grafted as they grow, forming them into all kinds of ridiculous shapes. If you're curious what a typical day looks like for the guy behind these painstaking sculptures, the answer is: exactly what you think.
That Thing That Nobody Understood in the Ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey
In a classic example of "You won't believe it's not Photoshopped," this 1965 cover to LIFE magazine was initially doubted as fake by the Editors.
It's one of the first pictures ever taken with an endoscope and is of a living fetus inside the uterus. It's really amazing to realize that the beginning of every human life starts with a swim for your life to escape from an interstellar jellyfish.
Documentation of Man's First Attempts to Win a Penis-Measuring Contest
Hey, remember that news story from a while ago where that kid drew a giant penis on his parents' roof so it'd be captured on Google Earth? Well, it turns out that tradition goes back a long way.
The Cerne Abbas giant for instance has been around for centuries (nobody is sure who made it). It's formed out of a trench that uncovers the chalk under the soil, creating a permanent drawing of a dude with a huge dong. Wikipedia thoughtfully includes a close-up of his nuts.
It's common to catch sight of couples fucking, as doing so is rumored to prevent infertility. We'd prefer to think the drawing is less about fertility and more about the medieval custom of going into battle with a huge boner.
It's Raining Asses
These are Mammatus clouds, aptly named for their resemblance to udders.
It's still not well understood how they actually form, so in a sense, these sky-butts (as we like to call them) represent the cutting edge in our meteorological knowledge.
The Mensa Headquarters has an Entrance Exam
This building in Ukraine does in fact have a gigantic, 100-foot-tall, crossword puzzle on the side. Yes, you can actually work it, though we assume if you try to do it with some rope and a can of spray paint, some guys will shoot you.
The clues are hidden around the city, and each night the answers are projected onto the side with lights.
The town did this to give people another reason to visit the Ukraine, bringing the total number of reasons up to... no, it's still at zero.
"You Need to Disguise Your Truck. Use This Giant Afro."
This ridiculous photo has been bouncing around the internet for years, and simply looks like a semi-competent attempt to make a normal truckload of corn husks look ridiculous via Photoshop's Clone Tool.
But unless Reuters got really, really bored one day, it's a genuine pic from Somalia. They basically don't have a government there so no traffic laws are enforced (you can seriously drive on whichever side of the road you want).
With the oppressive "limit how much corn you cram into your truck" regulations off the table, the locals cheered and said, "Yeah! Just cram all the corn on there! Keep going!"
More Nightmare Fuel for Kids Who Are Scared of the Bathtub
OK, this one just looks like some joker practicing their reflection effects by cutting and pasting this ridiculous rubber ducky into a harbor full of boats. But, no, artist Florentijn Hofman did it the hard way, creating an actual 100-foot long rubber ducky and sticking it in the water like God's bathtub.
Why? According to the artist, "The friendly, floating Rubber Duck has healing properties: it can relief mondial tensions as well as define them. The rubber duck is soft, friendly and suitable for all ages!"
In other words, "To terrify children."
And Its Second Victim...
If you're not clear what's so remarkable about this triangle sculpture thing, look closer and follow the surfaces from one angle to the next. That's right, it's utterly impossible, with its MC Escher design that seems to break all laws of the known universe.
When this sculpture--located in Perth, Australia--is viewed from another angle you can see the complicated way it manipulates perspective to get the effect...
...but what we love about it is there's no plaque explaining what the sculpture is all about either, so nobody knows what the fuck it's supposed to be unless they're standing in exactly the right spot.
The Large Hadron Collider's First Victim
The lady whose midsection appears to be in the process of getting sucked into a black hole is Cathie Jung, who, as you can see, has an entire website based around the fact that her body is terrifying to look at.
Thanks to a lifetime of wearing increasingly smaller and more ridiculous corsets, she has a 15-inch waist and presumably a liver that's been flattened to the thickness of a Fruit Roll-up.
"But This Store Goes to 11..."
There are marketing geniuses, and then there are the kind of visionaries who look at the ugly security fence on their storefront and decide it sort of looks like a guitar amp. Thus the Guitar Store in Southampton just went all the way with that idea, complete with big-ass knobs and everything. We want to hire that guy to decorate our adult book store.
God's Sand Art
Take the people out of this photo, and it looks like a bad painting. It's the wave rock formation in Arizona, formed out of ancient sand dunes and creating that crazy depth perception-destroying optical illusion.
We're not kidding, every damned picture of this thing looks fake. Including some that look like freaking finger paint.
And in Season 6 of Lost, They Reveal That the Island is Actually an Ocean
What appears to be the background for a cheesy 80s album cover is actually an untouched photo from Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, the largest salt flat in the world.
It frequently floods with a shallow layer of water, allowing that dude pull off the Jesus move in the picture. Apparently it's a popular tourist site for the natural beauty, leading to construction of a salt hotel, which we suppose makes it the worst vacation destination in the world if you're a slug.
A Glitch in the MatrixThat car rendered from what looks like vector graphics from an old-school arcade game is a wire-frame sculpture by artist Benedict Radcliffe. And we mean an actual frame made of wires.
Reportedly, it received a ticket for being illegally parked, though if we had been there we'd have quickly gotten another ticket for climbing inside, picking it up and running down the street making engine sounds.
