Every so often, a new wrestler comes along that everyone takes one look at and sees money just waiting to be printed.  There’s going to be no holding them back, and it’s just a matter of time until they take that big Superman leap over all the 1-As and become the megastar who will carry the business for years to come…except that they don’t.

Whether due to politics, personal demons, or just an inability to come through when the pressure is on, every one of the men we’re about to look at never quite managed to pull Excalibur from the stone.  In extreme cases, these “stars” continued to be shoved down the fans’ throats well beyond the point it was obvious to everyone but the promoter that it just wasn’t going to work.

One of the original Nicktoons to premiere in the early 90s, Rugrats was an adorable story about the world from the perspective of four babies: Tommy Pickles, the redheaded, thick glasses-wearing Chuckie, and the combative twins Phil and Lil.  The four babies could only talk to each other and Tommy’s evil older cousin Angelica, who spent most of her time berating and bossing around the younger children. Despite apparently having everything a little girl could want, Angelica is filled with anger and resentment towards the others, whom she repeatedly bullied in secret while otherwise playing the part of the perfect angel.  Modern psychologists would probably see something really wrong with Angelica, indicating deeper psychological issues than typical selfish childhood behavior.

One theory suggests that Angelica does indeed have severe mental problems, but they go beyond an irrational animus towards other children…far beyond.

Star Wars has always been a movie franchise that has a somewhat unique relationship with its fans. On the one hand, they get angry to the point of violence when George Lucas commits his various “blasphemies” against the movies they feel they’ve somehow taken ownership of. Nevertheless, they’re still more than willing to throw down their money whenever a new Star Wars movie, book, game, or other media comes out.

How can we explain this contradiction? How can Star Wars fans have so much love for something they often don’t have a positive thing to say about? I think the answer boils down to the fact that Star Wars fans appreciate the art, but don’t understand the underlying business direction that has supported the series over the last 40 years, and cemented George Lucas as one of the greatest visionaries in mass media history.

WCW had an unfortunate reputation for letting things on their shows spiral completely out of control. Whether or not these things were actually planned by WCW didn’t really matter, they became characteristic of the company because these were simply not things that you could ever see happening under Vince McMahon’s watch. Here are five such incidents that, if nothing else, made you want give WCW a hug for trying.

For a company that keeps such tight control over everything they do, WWE has been the forum for some pretty unconventional situations surrounding their World Title.  Some have been planned, some definitely weren’t, but all of them got people talking, and here are five of the most infamous of these situations.

The first rule of life after a zombie apocalypse: DON’T TRUST ANYBODY.  Remember, civilization as you knew it no longer exists, and by assuming the wrong people have your back, you’re setting yourself up for a potentially fatal betrayal. Several people on the Walking Dead have found this out the hard way, and either wound up dead because of it, or escaped death by the skin of their teeth.  If you still think your mom wouldn’t leave you hanging in the world of the Walking Dead, here’s 8 stories that might make you want to rethink that assumption.

            I have to give Nintendo credit, they were never content to rest on their laurels, and were always looking for new ways to push the envelope and reinvent the gaming experience.  A lot of the ideas they came up with were way ahead of their time, but unfortunately, they were also usually years ahead of the technology needed to make them actually work as well as people expected them to.

            It didn’t really matter since most kids would just go buy whatever Nintendo told them to regardless, but here are six examples of really crappy peripherals and other products that Nintendo, masters of the shill that they are, got you to give them money for.

The Star Wars saga enjoys such a depth of additional canon media such as books, TV shows, video games, and comics that it includes many extremely important characters who never appeared in a Star Wars movie.  Let’s look at 10 people who never made it to the big screen, but nonetheless played pivotal roles in the ongoing war between the Light and Dark Sides of the Force.

It’s been more than 35 years since Return of the Jedi hit theaters, and while the many movies and TV shows that have been released since then have had their own stories to tell, they occasionally surprise us with something that sheds new light on the events of the original trilogy.  Hell, Rogue One basically only existed to explain why the exhaust shaft Luke used to blow up the Death Star was there.

Star Wars: Rebels was no different, because while the adventures of Kanan, Ezra, and the rest of the gang revolved around the struggle to free Lothal from the grip of the Empire, it also revealed some pretty staggering things about the people, places, and events we’re familiar with from the Imperial era.

Certifications have always been a very polarizing topic in the IT business. Some people (and the vendors behind the certifications) push them as verifiable proof that you have a certain set of skills or knowledge that qualify you for specific jobs within the industry. Others believe that, without the real world experience to back them up, certifications aren’t worth more than the paper they’re printed on. Though people on both sides tend to get really heated about the topic, my opinion is that they both have good points and neither side is really “right” per se.

The people who work endless hours and spend hundreds of dollars on books and lab equipment to earn certifications want something to show for it, and rightfully so. After all, if certifications didn’t qualify you for a better job than the one you have now (or have become a requirement of keeping the job you already have), why would anyone bother? On the other hand, people who question the value of certifications typically already have experience in the field the certifications are supposed to qualify people for, and to them, being able to sit there answering multiple choice questions and doing simple lab work doesn’t mean that you can actually do the day-to-day work in real life.

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