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People Describe The Most Insane Documentary They've Ever Seen

People Describe The Most Insane Documentary They've Ever Seen
Photo by Billy Freeman on Unsplash

Truth is stranger than fiction – which is why documentaries are so fascinating to watch.

Even some fictional movies are stories derived from real-life events or people, past or present.


In my humble opinion, Michael Moore makes excellent documentaries about social injustices and he fearlessly reveals the cracks and corruption within our government.

But some topics are meant to be explored beyond the two-hour-plus running time in movies. Which is why Netflix brought Tiger King as a docuseries, and it left audiences completely dumbfounded.

Wanting to find out about compelling documentaries Redditor cryosyske asked:

"What is the most insane documentary you've ever seen?"

People with unstable minds do the unthinkable, and our eyes are glued to the screen.

The Tragedy Of Timothy Treadwell

"Grizzly Man by Werner Herzog. It's a documentary about Timothy Treadwell, an environmentalist who spent 13 summers in Alaska camping out with grizzly bears and eventually gets eaten along with his girlfriend. And it was caught on tape, because he filmed everything. Dude was clearly not all there, just a sad story, but fascinating."

007100

Devils In Our Midst

"Evil Genius. It's about the aftermath of a bank robbery in which the bank robber was a captive who had a bomb collar strapped to their neck. It's definitely one hell of a watch."

PerpetuallyVerdant

Crazy Investigation

"There's an excellent documentary on an incident during the Troubles in Northern Ireland called 'No Stone Unturned'. It's an investigative journalism piece about British forces' collusion and coverup of the 1994 Loughinisland Massacre, when six people in a bar watching Ireland play in the World Cup were murdered by masked paramilitary gunmen with assault rifles."

"The methodical, step-by-step investigation and laying out of the (very incriminating!) evidence makes for a truly fascinating watch. Two of the filmmakers were later arrested by the PSNI and then released."

"Not an easy watch, but highly recommend it."

ladyblithe

The Unthinkable

"The Trials of Gabriel Fernández on Netflix. This precious little boy was tortured to death by his mom and her boyfriend. His mom recently tried to have her conviction overturned."

SaltyDoggoMeo

These are apparently psychologically riveting.

Leaving The Past In The Past

"Tell me who I am was the most heartbreaking documentary I've ever seen. It's about these twin brothers and one of them gets into a bad motorcycle accident when he was 18 and doesn't remember anything from before. His brother has to decide whether to tell him everything or let him live in ignorant bliss."

kurtsleftconverse

Master Manipulator

"Imposter"

"It's the story of this kid who went missing when he was 12 or 13 and then reappeared something like 10 years later. It documents him getting back to and reuniting with his family. But get this: it wasn't the actual missing kid, but instead a French scam artist who did this sh*t serially."

"Now what makes the doc crazy is the story is told with interviews from the family and the f'king scam artist. He obviously a sociopath so he just calmy explains his motives and justifications for getting this poor family's hopes up. There's footage of all this as well as reenactments with the guy. It's super creepy."

The_Trilogy182

Cinematic Scrapbook

"I haven't seen too many but so far Dear Zachary."

"On top of being one of the saddest movies I've ever seen, that reveal was immensely f'ked up. Not to mention f'king terrifying with all that red light and screaming sounds."

Jakov_Salinsky

People Describe The Worst Adult Tantrum They've Ever Witnessed | George Takei’s Oh Myyy

A Father Looking For Answers

"The Pharmacist. A guy who goes searching for his sons murderer and winds up uncovering the beginnings of the opioid addiction in New Orleans."

speedball811

And these films are considered completely wackadoodle.

Kink Takes A Turn

"Tickled. Thought it was going to be just a fun and weird look at a goofy sport but it was so disturbing and wild."

Blarney_The_Dinosaur

Deadly Amusement Park

"Class Action Park. It's about this old amusement park in New Jersey called Action Park that had an insane number of injuries. Former employees and guests talk about each ride and what made it fun and unsafe. There are animations of people getting hurt so those parts aren't too hard to watch. It also includes interviews about a specific fatality so I do want to make that clear as a trigger warning. But mostly it's a fascinating look at how kids grew up in the 80's and 90's and whether that was the best thing. There's a lot of nostalgia but I don't think anyone wants their kid to be the one who's fatally electrocuted on a kayak ride."

DumDumGimmeYumYums

McScam Scandal

"The McDonald's monopoly scam documentary, McMillion$. I'd never heard of it before, so it was really interesting and pretty insane."

AlterEdward

Good Time Country

"The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia! Produced by Johnny Knoxville, it's about backwoods toe-dancer Jeaco White and his hillbilly family. Wildly entertaining - seen it 4 times."

Tucker1974

Festival Con

"I watched one about fyre festival."

"The sh*t that went down was insane."

"Internet historian does a good take on things."

wetlettuce42

Scaling New Heights

"Free Solo."

MK-Ultra71

"The Dawn Wall is another climbing doc that is absolutely riveting."

billys-bobs

Insane Competition

"The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters."

"About the man whose goal was to set the world record on Donkey Kong, and the record holder he sought to dethrone trying to stop him."

"The people in this flick are bonkers."

livinginthemtns

"Operation Odessa"

"It's a documentary about this group of guys who managed to obtain and sell military equipment from the collapsed USSR to Cuba from Florida among other things. It's fascinating and hilarious, but also shockingly all true. The name actually comes from the name of the DEA operation that brought them down. One of them managed to get away, but they secured an interview with him in an undisclosed location on the documentary."

lydriseabove

Honorable Mentions

"Man on Wire was pretty interesting, especially for a guy like me who is afraid of heights."

"I'd also go with Who the #{replace2}amp;% is Jackson Pollock is brilliant who buys a suspected real Pollock painting at a yard sale, potentially worth millions."

Extrasherman

One docuseries that stayed with me was Don't F**k With Cats.

It was a Netflix doc about how amateur sleuths of the internet managed to lead a manhunt looking for Canadian pornographic actor, Luka Magnotta – whose penchant for torturing cute kittens for fun and posting his cruel acts on social media led him to murder Chinese international student, Jun Lin.

At the end of the series, I didn't know what I just saw and it took a while to process the absolutely bonkers turn of events.

And it's not for the faint of heart to watch.

People Share The Best Little-Known Movie Facts They Know

Reddit user Kuli24 asked: 'What's a movie fact you know that pretty much no one else knows?'

movie set
Chris Murray on Unsplash

Easter eggs, bloopers, trivia, behind the scenes anecdotes... cinephiles live collecting them and sharing their knowledge with others.

Some trivia is well known—like Eric Stoltz was replaced by Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future. Other tidbits are more obscure, like Arnold Schwarzenegger was first considered for the Michael Biehn role of Kyle Reese in The Terminator.

Some stories are conspiracy theories or urban legends—like the body in the forest on The Wizard of Oz set.

But what about just film facts? The obscure ones?

Keep reading...Show less
An illuminated mansion at night
Photo by Daniel Barnes on Unsplash

It's no secret that as a person starts to make more money, they may forget how difficult they had it when there was less money coming into their bank account.

Not only are rich people often incredibly out-of-touch with the realities of most people's lives, but what they choose to prioritize and bring into their home is often pretty bizarre, too.

Already side-eyeing, Redditor Jerswar asked:

"What's the weirdest thing you've witnessed in the home of a rich person?"

Love Can't Be Bought

"Rich grandparents had a brand new house built, had a $100,000 splash pad built for their only grandchild who has never visited them at their new house."

- wyoflyboy68

"This reminds me of when my sister built her house. She had a barrier-free ground-floor apartment built in it, so my grandmother could visit. She never did."

- P44

A Separate Hoarder's House

"I had a rich neighbor growing up who'd always invite us over for parties and always insisted on giving us gifts and leftovers. They did this with every guest."

"They were also hoarders but built a separate house to keep their crap in. It was filled with whatever they bought but never used and even never got out of the packaging it was delivered in."

"They told my mom to take a box of what she wanted, and for s**ts and giggles, she did. It was a knife collection and sharpener set."

- MUSTARDUNAVAILABLE

Unusual Art

"I was at John Waters’ house for his birthday and he has a room set up as a lifelike recreation of a meth lab (it wasn’t a real meth lab, it’s an art piece)."

"He told me that when Bill Clinton visited him the secret service agents were extremely concerned about the room."

- writeleahwrite

Weird Pet Relationships

"One client had a whole separate house on their property just for their dogs. They'd referred to it as the 'dog house,' and I was expecting like maybe a little building in the yard where they kept their toys or something, but this was a fully furnished home with king-sized beds and a huge playroom on the main floor."

"They had a full training and feeding staff to care for the dogs and everything. They lived in their own house and would come over to visit. Seemed like a weird dynamic to have with your pet..."

"One client didn't have a litterbox for the cats, their cats I guess didn't like using the boxes in the basement and they didn't want to put boxes upstairs so they put down pond liner and kitty litter across an entire room in the basement and had their housekeeper run a rake through it daily."

- daabilge

Special Needs Kitty Mystery Mansion

"As a kid back in the Mesozoic Era (I'm old), my best friend and I used to play in a converted racquetball court and lounge under the old West Coast mansion her family had lived in since its construction."

"The stairs to it were hidden behind a closet off of the abandoned servants' quarters. Halfway down the stairs was a wine cellar. A decoy as the actual wine cellar for the home was under the kitchen….. Another staircase behind a rack of dusty bottles led two stories down to our giant play area beneath this."

"At the beginning of WWII, before Pearl Harbor, my friend’s paranoid WWI vet grandfather had dug out the space over fear of Japanese (or German) invasion. Her dad made the giant room regulation designed for racquetball years later. Maybe originally squash. Not sure, but the lounge area was also glassed off above it so one could look down into the court like a gallery."

"It was really neat. Also upstairs in the living room was a wall straight out of an old mystery novel. If you pushed a spot just right, the wall opened to a hidden room. Super tiny and had a button to ring certain other rooms in the house as the home had these already to call for staff. My friend's mom said it was so if someone quickly had to hide, they could alert the household of danger."

"We used to pretend to be on Nancy Drew cases all the time... so fun."

"The family was wealthy, but despite the amazing home, they lived a completely pretentious free life. Normal cars, camping vacations, frugal living as sport."

"But they were philanthropists too, especially supporting organizations like the humane society. One thing about this family’s home was all the cats. I loved kitties but had a mother who preferred her animals well-seasoned. The family had the space so they always had, and were looking to adopt out but often didn’t, at least 20 rescue cats, many with special needs."

"I’m old, I didn’t know how to write that. Special needs kitty mystery mansion really is actually an appropriate description..."

- waltersmama

"Special needs kitty mystery mansion with hidden panic rooms and decoy wine cellars is like, the best possible fever dream."

- ConneisseurOfDanger

A Unique Viewing Experience

"In Naples, FL., I was at a house with a sensory deprivation room. Flat black walls with acoustic dampening baffles, in the middle was a coffin-like bathtub. It had speakers and a flat-screen display in the lid."

"I heard that the room cost over $100K to build."

- frank_sarno

A Christmas Village

"They had part of the house permanently decorated for Christmas and it included a fully decorated Christmas tree that was suspended upside down from the ceiling. Which was pretty awesome."

- lithecello

New Meaning to "Don't Take Your Work Home"

"My wife and I used to babysit for this wealthy couple when they went on ski trips etc."

"Except for the children's schoolbooks, there wasn't a book, magazine, or newspaper in the house."

"The man was a publisher."

- Texbadger349

The End of Laundry

"I knew someone who didn't like to do laundry so she just bought new clothes for each of her 4 kids every week. They were always high-quality or designer clothes. At the time, all her kids were 10 to 16 years old."

"What would happen if they liked an item a lot and couldn't find it again? Why not just teach the kids to do their own laundry? Why not hire a housekeeper who can do it?"

"There are so many options, other than spending thousands every month just to avoid laundry. Plus, they rarely donated it. Just bagged it up and threw it out. I never could wrap my head around it."

- coffee-jnky

Can We Be the Trivia Guy?

"I know someone who's worked for a very rich person, probably worth billions. He had more than 100 staff on site, including chefs for the staff...all while divorced and living alone. He had a 'trivia' staff member... someone hired to tell him interesting facts and stories daily. That was his only job."

"Someone else was hired to maintain his shoes. Polish, shine, the works."

"If I didn't hear it firsthand, I wouldn't have believed it."

- mambo-nr4

A Mud Room, Indeed!

​"I used to work as an exterminator, mostly pest control. This had me walking through houses from the poor to the rich."

"One day, I pulled up to a four-story mansion with more rooms than I could count."

"I spoke with the lady at the door and got started. As I sprayed, I noticed there wasn’t much furniture in the house. As I went, I made a game of counting the furniture I could find. Over 50 rooms and the whole building had 13 pieces of furniture."

"Pretty odd, but then I went into the very last room, a mud room right by the door I came into."

"I stopped as I walked in, completely shocked. A huge, full-sized (alive) adult pig stretched from one end of the room to the other, resting on the tile floor. I’m talking five or six feet stretched out across the room. Flies buzzed around its head as it stared at me."

"Suddenly, the lady (who I hadn’t seen since she let me in) said, 'Oh, don’t go in there. She doesn’t like men,' and then she walked me out, paid me, and went back inside."

- Moist-Exchange2890

His Very Own Hot Wheels Garage

"Buddy of mine has a car elevator."

"Instead of just building a bigger garage, he stores his cars stacked onto each other, like some kind of Hot Wheels accessory. It's very surreal."

- SmackEh

Make Yourself at Home

​"My friend's dad growing up was one of the top lawyers in our state. Their house was so d**n big, I got confused (lost as h**l) on all the staircases they had everywhere. They would split in a few places and lead to banisters that had different connections to different parts of the house."

"They had a room just for dishes. Her mom had a huge room for sewing and another for different crafts. They both had an office. Many guest rooms. A small kitchen in one part with a sink, coffee pot, and fridge. Their main bathroom for guests had heated floors and rainfall showers and everything. I LOVED HER SHOWER."

"Her room had a balcony and a table outside."

"They had a pool and hot tub. Horses and a barn and lots of cute barn cats."

"I was very poor and had a messed up situation in my childhood. I stayed there a lot and they would even take me for weeks in the summer because my mother was not there. They are really great people."

" They didn't give handouts or anything, I would literally scoop up horse shit and clean stalls and help with everything for those horses when I stayed. I wanted to help."

"They had a maid, but we still cleaned up after ourselves. Their kitchen was gigantic, and I always loved the fancy pasta water arm over the stove. I had so much fun cooking with her mom and us having the big dinners (Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas) with them."

"They were so magnificent and beyond anything I would have ever experienced without them. I got my first pair of cowboy boots from them for Christmas. Her dad bought me a plane ticket one time out of the blue because I wanted to visit my grandmother. Never forget them."

- xNinjaNoPants

So Much Wasted Food

"A very rich person I know does not eat leftover food. They will cook a feast and after, everything goes straight in the garbage no matter how much is left over."

- duckduckroosebolton

"My husband won’t eat leftovers because he thinks it will give him diarrhea. His family is preoccupied with food poisoning but doesn’t know any of the actual food safety rules."

"Oh well, more for me."

- jendet010

"My brother-in-law’s family does this but they are middle class. It’s such a waste!"

- outlawjoseymeow

An Art Enthusiast

"Not weird but a Van Gogh, just chillin' in the hallway. I took a selfie with the flash on, whoops."

- Raccoon_Expert_69

"When I did executive level IT support years back, I found a Monet dangling haphazardly on an office chair in the CEO's extra office (which was unused for storage, and had an extra desktop computer I would sometimes use for quick tasks when on that floor)."

"Another time, I was admiring a Joan Miro coffee table book in his main office, and when his assistant noticed, he showed me into a side room I didn’t realize was there, which had a mini gallery of original Miro drawings."

- spymusicspy

It's amazing what people will spend money on when they have the money to spare. It would be so interesting to see how much more a person would explore a hobby if they had the money to spend.

There's nothing like leaving a movie theater having just seen an excellent movie.

Particularly one that took you by surprise.

Perhaps it was deeper and more meaningful than it purported itself to be, or on the flip side, had much more warmth and humor that you would have expected.

Or, the film took an unexpected twist that you never saw coming.

Resulting in your needing to bite your tongue until the rest of your friends and family see the film, and not spoil the surprise for them.

Redditor HornyCorny was curious to hear which plot twists left viewers utterly speechless, leading them to ask:

"What’s a movie twist that caught you completely off guard?"

He Didn't See It Coming Either!

"Brad Pitt in 'Burn After Reading'."

"So surprising and downright freaking hilarious."- thefirehairman

If The Shoe Fits...

"'The Shawshank Redemption'."

"Come on."

"It's not always a man notices another man's shoes."- FUBARspecimenT-89

Lucky For Some, Not For All...

"'Lucky Number Slevin'."

"Huge twist and very satisfying."- kvlr954

angry josh hartnett GIFGiphy

Rosie O'Donnell Would Agree...

"Fight Club."- BuchseeI

"once watched it with a friend who had never even heard of it, and she called the twist like, a half hour in."

"She said it as a joke and didn't realize she was right until the actual reveal, but still I was shook."- yugosaki

I See You Keyser Söze

"The ending of 'The Usual Suspects'."- Schwarzes__Loch

Definitive Shyamalan

''The Sixth Sense'."

'I love movies with plot twists, but I never imagined this one. It caught me completely off guard."- lucasduka

Haley Joel Osment Movie GIFGiphy

The Title Is Also Misleading...

"The second half of 'Parasite'."- iwontrememberthat4

Appropriately, They Really Toyed With Your Cognition

"'The Game'."- DudeHeadAwesome

"Good one!'

"I spent the entire movie going 'is it a game? Is it real?'"- fastpixels

There Were Definitely Ghosts...

"'The Others'."

"Unsuspected end."- NeckComprehensive743

scared horror film GIF by FilmStruckGiphy

One Unforgettable Opening Scene

"'Scream'."

"The Drew Barrymore role."- LivingTheLife53

The Real Reason Everyone Is Terrified Of Bees...

"When I was a kid, I wanted to feel good and happy."

"So at the video store, I decided to rent a movie with two happy laughing kids on the DVD cover, thinking it would be a feel-good playful story."

"That movie was 'My Girl'."

"Eff that movie."

"Seriously."

'The DVD cover lies."

"IT LIES."- buckyhermit

You THOUGHT you knew who the villains were...

"'From Dusk to Dawn' — midway point."

"Didn’t know at all what I was walking into when saw it in the theatre decades ago — just, you know, Salma Hayek. Good enough."

"Quentin Tarantino slurping tequila from her foot after it ran down the entire length of her leg — that was already a 'Holy WTF' moment."

"But then, well.. . you know."

"And if you don’t know — quick, go watch it. "

"No trailer, no synopsis, no summary."

"Find it and load it 'blind' and fasten your seatbelt."

"You’re in for a wild ride."- canada11235813

George Clooney Tarantino GIF by MIRAMAXGiphy

It's Title Is More Than Accurate!

"'Crazy Stupid Love'."

"The scene when the whole movie goes apesh*t in the yard is one of my all time favorite movie scenes."- Fimbulvintern

Trifecta Of Twists

"'The Others'."

"The end of 'The Mist'."

"'The Prestige' (though, I ALMOST had it figured out, but not quite)."- Krinks1

There's nothing better than when a movie surprises you.

Even if it does make talking about said movie with people who haven't seen it a bit more challenging.

Case in point, people who saw The Sixth Sense and The Usual Suspects after their endings were spoiled for them, don't seem to like those movies as much as those who went in blind.