People Explain Which Side Characters Deserved More Of The Spotlight Than The Main Character
Be it a novel, play, television show, or movie, it has a protagonist.
Because, frankly, it needs one. The main character provides the lens through which we watch the action, and their emotional journey through some conflict is what drives the whole plot.
But let's face it, the main plot isn't automatically the audience's favorite part of the story. Humans being humans, we love animated people full of relatable quirks and entertaining outbursts--true characters.
And sometimes, the creator of the story has far more freedom with side characters whose every experience won't chaotically veer the plot off into different directions every second.
Nonetheless, we often walk away most thrilled by those side characters above all else.
Necessary-Spinach 182 asked, "What side character deserved more spotlight than the main character?"
For some Redditors, they wanted more light shed on a side character's back story.
Given only a fascinating tidbit that offered a window into a whole unexplored world, they imagined entire other movies where the side character could be a star with a plot of their own.
A Cat With Plenty to Say
"This is gonna sound weird but Salem from the original Sabrina the Teenage Witch. His character was just a goofy talking cat most of the time and the few times we saw his backstory it was really interesting."
"I just feel like he was underutilized but I haven't seen the new series so they might be paying more attention to him."
-- rubicks56
Best Voice, Best Story, Biggest Snub
"Santana Lopez from Glee - she could do 'Don't Rain on my Parade' but Rachel Berry could never do 'Valerie' or 'Me against the Music'"
Also her story line was by far the most interesting, her arc was the most fully realised, and she had snark for days (RIP Naya Rivera)"
Throne Gaps
"Tormund Giantsbane" -- Aykhancho
"He was my favorite character! And he really reminds me of my brother" -- natsugrayerza
"Agreed but Brianne of Tarth has to be there absolutely. that is a loose end that's going to haunt me for the rest of my days" -- iCantliveOnCrumbsOfD
Plenty of Katniss' Out There
"I wanted to know more background info about the other tributes in the Hunger Games. It was in Katniss' POV so it wasn't that prominent, but it would still be interesting." -- GiseleDamas
"Me too. I would have loved to see stuff from Cato's perspective in the first movie. And how the kids from the higher districts where forced to train for the games ever since they where children." -- JackSparrowscompass
"I thought I was gonna hate the prequel but I actually ended up loving it. Lucy Gray Baird is an incredibly interesting character. Snow is still a psychopath but that isn't exactly shocking" -- smol_lydia
Rewarding Loyalty
"I'm not sure how many people watched Ben 10 before the reboot but I feel like Ben's cousin Gwen deserves some recognition."
"People who watched the show tend to focus more on Ben and his aliens since they are the main characters of the show, but Gwen deserves equal recognition because she's been a very loyal cousin who is willing to do everything she could to defend and fight along with his cousin at all times."
"She went through serious character development going from a kid who was jealous and liking to pick on her cousin and then grew up into this bada** who proved to be much useful whenever she's not around her cousin. Kevin and Grandpa Max deserve credit as well."
"Kevin and Ben pretty much had one of the best enemy-turned ally relationships in a show and Grandpa Max was pretty much a father and mentor to Ben who took what he learned from him in order to become a better hero."
"The thing I love most about this show is how tackles character development well and yes the side characters were very interesting and important in their own way."
The Namesake
"Zelda needs her own game about the missing years in OoT when Link is gone and she becomes Sheik and leads an insurgency with Impa as her Alfred." -- Wazula42
"I mean it is called Legend of Zelda. They should definitely make a game about her. It would be awesome!" -- Monkey6518
Probing the Depths Of Space and Time
"Doc Brown from Back to the Future. He's had much more adventures off camera than Marty did on camera. The thirty years between 1955 and 1985."
"The unknown period he was adventuring in time and space off camera between when he disappeared from the Twin Lone Pine mall and his reappearance at Marty's house at the end of the first film."
"His time in the 1880s before and after Marty's arrival and departure. His subsequent building of a new time travel machine in a locomotive and his adventures after the series finale."
"There's a lot of untold stories of Doc Brown that I'd love to see on the silver screen."
-- II_Confused
Clear Frontrunner
"Spencer from iCarly" -- Agroskater
"He was definitely the best character in the whole show. I'd probably watch a series with him and Freddie in it if they did one. The fencing episode with them was one of my favourites :)" -- ArtemisFowlbooks_07
A Small Business Spinoff
"I binged True Blood recently so it's in front of my brain: Eric Northman and Pam. Sookie got annoying. Bill was an a**hole."
"One of the plot points of the show was that they ran afoul of the vampire authority and were sentenced to run a video rental store in the 1980s and 90s. I would 100% watch Eric and Pam run a video rental store."
Others highlighted the characters who always managed to steal the hearts and laughs of viewers every time they appeared on screen.
These characters were simply so entertaining that audiences always could have used some more.
Line After Line
'Falstaff from Henry IV."
"Dude was putting out banger lines every scene. So interesting they had to kill him between plays because everyone was like 'IDGAF about anyone not named Falstaff.'"
"Shoutout to all the Shakespeare and literary nerds out there."
Prime Shenanigans
"Andy from Parks and Rec, his shenanigans could have easily been a spin-off series with April." -- misslemom9
"If you're going to do a Parks and Rec spinoff, and you can get Crisp Rat back for it, you have to go for the Agent Macklin: FBI feature film. Anything else is a waste." -- WhatVengeanceMeans
A Significant Late Addition
"Niles Crane. I don't know if the show would work with him as the main character without significant modifications, but he's consistently my favorite part of nearly every episode." -- merupu8352
"It's amazing to think that they had no plans for Frasier to have a brother when they were developing the show."
"It's only because someone in casting saw David Hyde Pierce's headshot and said 'hey, this guy looks like he could be Frasier's brother' and they gave him a screentest on a whim that they realised what a goldmine of a concept that was."
"I honestly doubt Frasier would have lasted more than a season if Niles wasn't a character." -- jetsam_honking
And finally, some characters only appeared for a single moment or two, but really turned heads during the brief snippet.
Sometimes it only takes one amazing joke or a heartfelt moment to leave the whole crowd wondering what could have been.
We've All Quoted It
"frozone from the incredibles" -- thatswhat_shesaid1
"Where he can find his motherfu**ing super suit" -- derthert123
"Absolutely agree with this. He had their back in both movies, a great friend to the family. They just didn't give him enough." -- makeme84
One of Many Pursuers
"James Norrington" -- myhamsterisajerk
"For anyone wondering, this is the admiral that is persuing Captain Jack Sparrow in the original movie, who is the other side of this iconic exchange" -- boopboopadoopity
"Norrington seriously had so much potential. Then he met Bootstrap Bill. We all know how that ended. I kinda wish we saw more of him when he was temporarily a pirate." -- StarWarsCrazy1
"COMMODORE Norrington, as he is now known." -- hazzzaa85
Jockeying For Position
"Sarah Lynn in Bojack Horseman."
"Plus the criminally underrated Officer Meow Meow Fuzzyface."
-- ViperKira
The Promise of a Song
"I would have LOVED if Mulan 1998 focused more on the friendship between Mulan, Ling, Yao, and Chien-po. I really liked how they seemed to bond after Mulan got the arrow and the three started including her in things, like joking around each other during A Girl Worth Fighting For."
"And how they immediately followed Mulan when they said she had an idea. I wish there was more screentime for the four of them. Their dynamics are so fun."
Think back to your favorite movies and shows. Can you recall a character that really stole the show for you? For me, it's without a doubt Cameron from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
His relentless anxious fidgeting is the closest I have to a spirit animal.
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People Divulge Things Their Coworkers Have Done That Should've Gotten Them Fired But Didn't
Reddit user Shelendrea asked: 'Have you ever witnessed something that should've gotten someone fired at work? If so, what happened?'
My second college internship led me to a small content creation company. It was so small that the two editors were the only paid employees. Everyone else was an intern.
I was excited to start so I could add more to my portfolio only to realize that one of the editors replaced my name with hers every time she edited one of my articles. Not much of the content was changed, but I was too shy to question it.
I eventually found out that she did this to all the interns, and most of the interns had learned to private message their draft articles to the other editor, who did not take the bylines.
I asked one of my fellow interns if the founder of the company knew the editor took bylines. Turns out, the founder knew, but for some reason no one else could figure out, the editor never got fired.
It turns out this story isn't unique. There are lots of instances when someone does something at work that should get them fired, but they manage to hold on to their job. Redditors have plenty of stories like that and are eager to share.
It all started when Redditor Shelendrea asked:
"Have you ever witnessed something that should've gotten someone fired at work? If so, what happened?"
Needs More Than A Demotion
"Coworker jokingly threw a box at my chest and knocked the wind out of me and I collapsed. He begged me not to tell anyone and I didn't. The guy was a weirdo. He'd talk about how he'd burn insects and starts fires. Weird sh*t. He ended up getting in more trouble later on for some reason or another...crass jokes, sexual comments....either way, he eventually transferred stores and I never saw him again. This all happened back in 2013-14."
"Fast forward to earlier this year 2023, my store was getting a major remodel, and he was one of the managers that came from afar with a team of workers to do the remodel. I was surprised he was still with the company, let alone in a leadership position. I said hi to him a time or two, but he was busy with the remodel project on the other side of the store so I eventually stopped seeing him."
"This whole time things were tense between the remodel crew and our store crew. Pallet Jack's getting stolen, supplies going missing, etc. Both sides hated each other."
"I hadn't seen (we'll call him John) in a few weeks and noticed there was a new manager on the remodel crew. Either way, things were finally cooling down between us."
"Out of curiosity I asked one of the remodel crew what had happened to John, and they told me, "Oh you didn't hear? He got demoted for trying to start problems between our teams. He'd tell us to steal your pallet Jack's and tried getting a few people to fight.""
"Unreal."
– AdamR91
Got Milk?
"I worked in a milk factory. I was working with a man that was a bit off. We had to take the milk cartons on a conveyor belt and place them on a pallet. While we were working he said "time for a break" and slammed a blade used to open boxes into the conveyor belt. The conveyor belt got absolutely destroyed and the machine was in maintenance of two days after that."
– LyricalJerrycal
"Hey, when it's time for a break, it's time for a break."
– MyOpinyunIsRight
"How dairy?!"
– StrongestAvenger2211
Money, Money, Money
"The supervisor left the safe open."
"At this job, he should have absolutely gotten fired but his blunder got overshadowed because one of the douchier employees stole 50k and went on the run for over half a day."
– BW_Bird
"...doesn't that just highlight why the supervisor should keep the safe shut?"
– akaioi
"You'd think."
"Honestly, I wasn't too upset. Sups was a nice guy."
– BW_Bird
A DQ Thing
"When I was in high school, I worked at Dairy Queen. I was on the opening crew one Saturday and the assistant manager unlocks the doors, lets us in, and tells us "Guys, I'm really hungover right now so I'm gonna sleep in the back. Wake me up if you need me." She goes back and curls up on top of the laundry machines (we washed all the uniforms on site because they get covered in ice cream). It was a slow day so and she was the cool manager, so we all let her sleep and never told the owner."
"Another night, one of our cook's buddies parked their car in our lot and he just hung out there with them smoking weed for a couple hours. If someone ordered food, we'd go out and get him. He'd come back inside, cook it, and go right back out. The rest of us had the decency to smoke after work, but nobody ratted him out either."
– SeveralAngryBears
"Must be a Dairy Queen thing. When I was seventeen I was the grill cook at Dairy Queen and the employees had a pact with each other that if one of us came in after 4 pm when we weren’t working and made food and walked out with it, nobody would see the person doing it. We only had a shift leader, no managers after 4pm. So, my friends and I would smoke weed, drive to Dairy Queen, and I would walk back to the kitchen and cook a bunch of fried food and burgers, then take it out to my stoner friends waiting in the car. As you can imagine, I was pretty popular with my weed smoking friends."
– Horror-School-6713
Going, Going, Gone
"At my last job we had this guy who seemed normal, I knew he did some club drugs outside of work but I don’t have a problem with that. Anyways, he shows up to work one day COMPLETELY f*cking blasted. Like couldn’t walk right, couldn’t talk. This motherf*cker gets mad at me when I send him home, the next day I get to work and our boss is like "hey man what did you say to Tyler last night? He said you’re a huge a**hole and he’s never working with you again”. I told him and my boss goes “oh. Okay. Well I think he quit, he said if I don’t fire you he’s done here""
"Bold f*cking move to make after showing up in a k hole during your third week of work at our company lmfao"
– _clydebruckman
A New Kind Of Sneeze Burgers
"Was working at McDonald’s. Watched a female crew member sneeze into her hands, and proceed to make a wrap and sent it out. I threw it in the bin before front staff got it."
"Edit* I should mention - I was genuinely shocked to see it happen. McDonald’s are extremely strict on hygiene. I reported her to a manager, but she denied it and said she sneezed into her arm. We were too busy for anyone to check cameras."
– RewardNew5810
Nepotism At Its Finest
"Work in a residential setting for teens with behavioral issues. There’s 1 staff in particular who should not be working with kids and it was clear on my 2nd day. He’s almost 50 and behaves like a 15-year-old. He’s always going back and forth and gets mad about everything with them."
"One day, things got heated between him and a kid for the 100th time and he ends up choking the kid. The kid was actually being more mature about it and he wanted to continue to fight the kid. We separated them and I was holding the staff back when he started to get mad at me for not letting him beat up a 14 year old."
"I’ve only been at this job for 3 months and was told by other staff that this has happened multiple times now with different kids."
"He still has a job because he’s best friends with the 2 bosses."
– i-piss-excellence32
Wrong Accountability
"I worked at a special needs day program many years ago. Wednesdays were classic film day at the local theater and we’d take the clients. I was a 1:1 meaning I had only one client. My direct superior had 3, and a substitute had 4. The substitute lost one of her guys and didn’t realize it until after the film when we were counting clients."
"Long story short, I got fired & the superior got fired. But the one whose responsibility it was to watch him kept her job. The client was fine, though, he was found a mile down the road asking for a police officer to help him find his way home."
– iateacakeonce
It Is The Night Shift
"I work overnights at a hotel. They hired a guy to be the security/valet and in the first two weeks he was found sleeping on the job. The first time he was found by a third coworker. We told the manager and nothing happened. The second time the manager found him sleeping in the bell closet in a wheelchair. He got sent home but didn’t get fired."
– aolewahine808
"I'm overnight too, sometimes it feels like they just want a living body and don't care about much else."
"One of the guys I've had over the years would fall asleep constantly and sounded like he was drowning he snored so horribly, no consequence."
– wickedblight
Santa is Real!
"I worked at a small map company. Our first task when we started was to add rivers and lakes over satellite imagery/topographic maps. It was a summer job when I was in college. Both me and the guy who worked next to me were 19-20ish. It was very dry, repetitive, tedious work. We weren’t really allowed to talk while working so for the most part just plugged away at our own computer stations. Occasionally we would write notes to each other. Towards the end of the summer when he was about to go back to school my coworker went off the deep end. He just started drawing line art with the GIS software and naming them things. He drew Santa and his reindeer. Made up like half a dozen lakes with a bunch of whacky names like “Lake Milk Was a Poor Choice.” I didn’t tell anyone what he did and I wonder what the quality control people thought of it. He definitely would have been fired had they known."
– JMaple
Just One More Zero
"Yep."
"Few weeks ago one of my sales rep comes in to drop off paperwork for a sale he had just completed."
"The whole time he's bragging about how the customer couldn't believe his great deal even though he was paying MSRP."
"I take the paperwork, and start looking through it to verify the same amount to put the commission in for payroll."
"I come up on the price, and in the box it says: $2,100. I look at him in complete disbelief. I show him where he put the price, and his face went white as a ghost."
"$2,100 when it should've been $21,000. By misplacing the comma, and not adding an extra 0, the dumb S.O.B let a BRAND NEW UTV GO FOR $18.9K BELOW MSRP!!!!!!!"
"I had to tell the owner who told sales rep that 1% of the price would come out of all future paychecks until the price was paid back."
– amethyst_haired_emo
Yikes!
"I worked in a pizza restaurant from age 15 to 23. My answer is almost everything. Just a tip, when people say be kind to your servers, this is for your own benefit, not theirs."
– Silver-B-NotGold
I used to be a server. This is very true!
Not to startle any of you, but death stalks us.
We all have nightmares about diseases and murderers.
But what if, in the end, we just choke on a pickle we inhaled too fast?
Maybe instead of a pickle, a little coleslaw would have been the wiser choice.
We'll never know.
The most minute things can send us packing.
Redditor SuffocatedByThighs wanted to discuss the things that can extinguish our lives in the most basic ways, so they asked:
"What simple mistake has ended lives?"
Tripping over untied shoelaces.
It can break your neck.
TIE YOUR SHOES!!!
Off the Rocks
On No Falling GIF by Outside TVGiphy"There have been too many instances of rock climbers rappelling off of the ends of their ropes, which could have been easily avoided by tying stopper knots at the ends of their ropes."
LZRDLZRD
Seconds
"I worked at a tire place for a summer and the first thing they told me was 'See that torque wrench? One mistake with this and you can kill a whole family in a matter of seconds.' I thought well, better take this thing seriously."
FrenchMicrowave
"Man for a second I was thinking 'F**k you'd have to swing that thing around fast to take out an entire family' and just bluescreened on the idea of changing a tire."
lurking_my_a**_off
How Vexing...
"THERAC-25. The world’s deadliest software error. Cost several radiation patients their lives by administering lethal amounts of radiation, and for a while, the doctors didn’t even know."
Longjumping_Event_59
"THERAC-25 suffered a particularly vexing sort of error known as a race condition. Essentially, the circuit required multiple inputs in a particular sequence, but sometimes the timing of that sequence could get thrown out of whack and it would lead to all sorts of nonsensical output."
"This is less than ideal when all you're doing is manipulating pixels, but when your software is handling radiation beams you really don't want this to happen."
"Even more vexing is that race conditions are frequently heisenbugs, which can vanish altogether when one attempts to study them. If you don't have a good idea of what's causing the error, you may never cotton on to what sort of bad input is required to test it. Under those circumstances, it's easy to write them off as imaginary, only to then find."
dancingmadkoschei
Heavy Drifting
"Leaving the stranded vehicle on the road in winter and trying to walk to get help. It happens in rural parts of our province once or twice a year and they find the body a few days later. They get disoriented and freeze."
Regina_Runner
"I got blown off a road in high winds. Heavy drifting. Less than a mile from a friend's house after I had turned around. Drifts made it impossible to complete the trip. Trying to run a mile in full blizzard conditions was a fight for my life as an in-shape 24-year-old male athlete.
"rotyag
Simple Slips
Uh Oh Omg GIF by BounceGiphy"Almost any simple mistake can end a life if you're an anesthesiologist, that's how my grandpa died in his early 60s."
dwserps
Any second. Any moment.
Stay vigilant people.
Celibacy could be better...
Oh My Wow GIFGiphy"Not being honest with doctors about Viagra. It has many dangerous drug interactions and can cause a lot of problems from what I’ve heard. Trust me the doctor ain’t gonna judge you guys, they have seen many more embarrassing things. And it would suck to die because you wanted to hide something just for it to be later stated in your death certificate."
The_upsetti_spagetti
Check the Numbers
"As a healthcare worker, giving the wrong amount of insulin."
UzumakiHorror
"During the first shift of my first clinical rotation in nursing school, I watched a nurse draw up insulin out of an auto-injector pen that was CLEARLY marked to specifically not do that AND she was drastically wrong about the dosage and almost killed a guy by giving him essentially like a hundred times the intended dose."
someguynamedg
Stay In
"Pulling the knife out of someone."
rcadephantom
"Yeah, I did that but it was a broken tree branch that had impaled my leg. Without even thinking I pulled it out. Blood started gushing so I pulled off my shirt and tied it into a pressure bandage. I was lucky I didn’t bleed to death."
Olddog_Newtricks2001
"Shock is an IQ reducer. I once sliced a bit off the side of my hand with a broken glass, and sort of dazedly picked off the piece of me and tried to stick it back on. It did not work."
UncannyTarotSpread
Stay Dirty
"Mixing cleaning ingredients."
Jonnysource
"My dad was trying to unclog his kitchen drain and mixed drain cleaners by adding one then adding another a few minutes later. It started bubbling and he began coughing intensely. I heard him coughing from the other room, saw what happened, and opened the nearby window to get rid of the chlorine gas he just produced."
"I forgot there was a large hive of wasps that had moved into that window and they did not appreciate this unexpected interruption. I took him to the emergency room for the gas exposure and it was tough explaining that the wasp stings were not why we were there."
CharmingTuber
Dear God
Jeff Goldblum What GIF by The Late Late Show with James CordenGiphy"A friend’s husband locked himself out of their home. He tried to get in through a window that had security bars. While squeezing through his foot slipped and he essentially hung himself on the window sill."
Cokej01
Life is fleeting. Here is proof.
LIVE!! But live smart.
We all have foods that we like or don't like, and depending on how passionately we feel, it may be pretty hard to understand why someone likes a food that otherwise grosses us out.
But if that food is also expensive, we'll also be left wondering why they'd spend so much money on that dish.
Redditor 123456789_00 asked:
"What expensive foods do you genuinely not understand how someone could actually enjoy eating?"
Escargot
"Escargot. It’s gross."
- Heysandygirl
"Escargross."
- dukeofbun
Amusement Park Food
"Amusement park food."
- flacidsword
"A small bottle of Coke for $18 because it comes in a novelty bottle from a novelty booth in a theme park."
- GeebusNZ
Live Geoduck
"Live Geoduck. Just no."
"Watching someone eat clams has never felt so inappropriate."
- Unicornucopia23
Gold Leaf
"Anything with gold leaf."
- toxic_fumes23
"Gold is the dumbest f**king trend I have ever seen in food. Any restaurant that uses gold in their food is not worth visiting unless you want to post on social media telling everyone you have money to waste on sub par food."
- TacoShopRS
A5 Wagyu
"A5 Japanese Wagyu, it’s too godd**n rich, a few bites is more than enough. Maybe Australian or American is a little tamer"
"If you didn’t know dry age has a “funk” to it that might catch you off guard, still good, just not might be what you think."
- ScorchFalcon
Salt Bae's Menu
"I don't understand how any of the people eating at Salt Bae's restaurant can enjoy what he is giving them at those prices. Paying thousands of extra dollars just because this guy was in a viral video? Give me a f**king break."
- rity5yender
Truffles
"Truffles. To each to their own, but truffles and truffle oil completely overwhelm the flavor of whatever they’re in, and it’s not a taste I care for."
- calvinball81
Questionable
"Anything that's come out the a** of an animal. Like those expensive coffees (I know it's a drink, but still)."
- JackHyper
Sea Cucumber
"Sea Cucumber. It's a caterpillar/worm from the ocean that looks like snot on the plate. It tastes like processed American cheese that was left in the sun for the day and then wrapped around soggy tofu. It was served at my wedding and was maybe the worst dish of my life. Super popular in Asia, though."
- dangerwillrogers
Caviar
"Caviar. that expensive egg of fish hays."
- Client_Direct9613
Rocky Mountain Oysters
"They're not really expensive, but rocky mountain oysters. They're fried bull testicles and they basically taste like a beef chicken nugget. Not worth the hype, and a strange part to eat."
- vonshook
Foie Gras
"Foie gras. I was nauseated after seeing how the geese are force-fed. Should be outlawed everywhere. And I’m no vegan; I’m a pescatarian."
- Asparagussie
"There is ethically produced foie gras from just regular wild or free-range ducks/geese, but yeah, I agree that force-feeding foie gras production should absolutely be outlawed."
- SPEEDANDMOMENTUM
Shark Fin Soup
"Shark fin soup."
"I don't care how tasty it is, it's absolutely cruel to cut off a shark's fin and drop it back in the ocean."
- Impossible_Try76
Ortolan
"Ortolan. It is a small songbird that's drowned in cognac then cooked whole and eaten whole. The eating is done by placing a napkin over the face, they say to hide the diner from the eyes of God because it's such a sinful food, but in reality, it's because watching someone shove a whole bird into their mouth and chew it, including beak and bones, is not a pretty sight."
- SwordTaster
Expensive Burgers
"Any burger on any menu over the price of $14, especially if it doesn’t even come with fries."
"When did $18 single patty burgers become normal?"
- Expensive Burgers
Everyone is going to have different tastes when it comes to food, and some are going to be more tolerant to high prices than others.
But for those who don't even enjoy high-priced foods, it may be confusing why someone would be willing to spend so much money in the first place.
Let's face it. We love horror movies–at least a good majority of cinephiles do–because the experience of seeing one in theaters is as thrilling and pulse-pounding as riding a roller coaster.
Scary movies are not real-life.
But there are some scary films that are actually based on real cases or incidences, but even those are highly dramatized.
What genuinely gives people the heebee jeebees, however, are not movies like "Halloween" or "Nightmare on Elm Street."
It's the historical and scientific facts that a lot of people aren't cognizant of us that have the potential of keeping them up at night.
But thanks to an unnamedRedditor, some of those were revealed when they asked strangers online:
"What are some really creepy facts you know ?"
Scientific facts like these can be downright terrifying.
The Sound Of Prey
"Dogs like squeezing toys because it sound like a dying animal."
– Nain6969
"My dog loves squeeze toys except the chirping bird toy we got for our cats. If he hears it he picks it up very gently and brings it to us and then whines and is distressed by it."
– CopperTucker
Ominous Mass
"There is a black hole called Phoenix a, and it is estimated to be 100 billion times the mass of our Sun, comparable to the mass of an entire galaxy. Its event horizon is 590 billion kilometers wide, or more than 100 times the distance from the Sun to Pluto, or about 1/16 of a lightyear wide."
"To get a visualization of how big that is on a human scale, lets shrink our solar system by 1 trillion times."
"The Sun would be 1 millimeter wide, and Pluto would be a little more than 5 meters away, and that black hole would be 590 meters wide. For reference, Alpha Centauri would be about 40 kilometers away at that scale."
– Youpunyhumans
Easy Passage
"Take away the stomach acid and an octopus could go into your mouth and crawl out your a**hole."
– Resident-Clue1290
Creepy Crawlies
"Spiders, one of the most evolutionary advanced species on the planet. We keept killing them, they began to get better at hiding. They can also convince us we have killed them when we haven't. Rain doesn't destroy their webs, not even a pressured hose does anymore."
"Also forgot to mention, they can do nothing, sleep all day and wake up to find food in their webs. They do not need to hunt or attack like almost every animal."
– Unlucky_Ducky23
Some of the sinister forces around us are the work of humans.
Murderers In Our Midst
"As many as 50 serial killers are active in the US and on the loose."
– Individual_Bit_8528
"Wayyy more than 50 if you include organized crime affiliated killers. Probably a lot more than 50 lone weirdos killing strangers too, but definitely hundreds or more if you include the former demographic."
– fluffedpillows
Corruption
"A guy disappeared in my country. Everyone knew he died. Everyone knew who did it. But the guys were policemen. So the investigation was so ruined it became ridiculous."
"There are people on this planet who can interven in the investigations made against them, decide to block them and if you do something about it, no one will investigate when you will mysteriously vanish."
"Can't fathom to be so powerful but yet use this power to be so heartless."
– Least-Designer7976
A Patient's Risk
"In 45 states, doctors and medical students are legally allowed to practice pelvic exams on patients who are under anesthesia without being granted explicit consent to do so."
– TrailerParkPrepper
Feasting On Flesh
"The first known human cannibal was a Neanderthal whose victims' 100,000-year-old bones were discovered in Moula-Guercy, a cave in France."
"There have been sites where the act has occurred involving the cannibalism of children leading some to speculate the act was not just done for food, but that it was done as a warning to rivals."
"Some anthropologists suggest that cannibalism was common in human societies as early as the Paleolithic."
"To this day only a few countries have laws which explicitly criminalize the practice of cannibalism, and the act can still be found in isolated regions of five different Countries."
– JustSomeApparition
Death itself is a mystery.
Ill-Fated Flight
"The crew aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia was still alive for several minutes during the fatal and futile reentry attempt."
"The first signs of trouble were observed at 8:53:46. More and more started to go wrong but Mission Control was able to maintain communication through 8:59:32. Sometime after that, the shuttle entered a flat spin while traveling approximately Mach 15, which is enough to cause disorientation and very painful injury, but most likely not unconsciousness or death. Review of recovered data recording shows that Commander Husband and Pilot McCool were still attempting to restore systems and recover control past 9:00:05. The first lethal event was depressurization, which occurred between 9:00:35 and 9:00:59."
"All that means that the crew was very much alive and very much fighting to maintain/regain control for more than 7 minutes despite knowing that realistically their chances of success were pretty much zero."
– HoopOnPoop
After The Chopping
"Supposedly you're still aware for a few seconds after being decapitated."
– Broski225
"There was that one scientist or whatever who got beheaded in France. He said he would attempt to blink as many times as possible after his head was lopped off, for science, and his head did. I'm paraphrasing since I don't remember anything about the story but whatever. lol"
– Adkit
Now you know.
Some of the scariest things in life are our real living nightmares, and once you know about them, you can't unlearn them.
Reading through some of these examples, it's very clear that our world is a mysterious and creepy place to live in.
Sleep tight, and don't let the bedbugs bite.