My Mind Is Absolutely Blown By These 10 Facts That Sound Very, Very Fake But Are Actually 100% Real

Aside from the ratings and reviews, NBC executives were also unsure if the mockumentary-style sitcom would ever connect with American audiences. However, everything changed a few months after the show premiered, when Steve Carell starred in the 2005 box office hit The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which made him a big star. NBC also did something unusual for the time: it began selling the first season of The Office on iTunes, where it would go on to be a huge success (selling 100,000 copies). Carell's rising fame and the success of the show's digital sales led NBC to decide to renew it for a second season.

Originally, they weren't even called Cheddar Bay Biscuits; they were simply referred to as "freshly baked, hot cheese garlic bread." The recipe was created by Kurtis Hankins, then-head of Red Lobster's culinary development team, who wanted to develop something to replace the restaurant's standard offering of hush puppies (which were not very popular). Inspired by Texas toast and French bread, he decided to create a biscuit that substituted sugar with garlic and cheese to make them savory. The biscuits quickly became a hit, winning over customers so completely that they were moved from the waiting area to the dining room. 

However, it wasn't until 1996 that the company gave them their now-iconic name, "Cheddar Bay Biscuits." The made-up "Cheddar Bay" was invented to sound like a cozy seaside location and to better fit Red Lobster's nautical theme and seafood offerings.

According to company lore, he's an orphaned mouse who grew up in an orphanage and never knew his birthday. Because of that, he loved celebrating other kids' birthdays and the song "Happy Birthday." Chuck was never adopted, so he aged out of the orphanage and then moved to New York City, where he lived in a pizzeria owned by Pasqually. While living there, he developed a love for music and pizza. One day, he finally performed on stage, his singing won over the crowd, and Pasqually decided to rename the restaurant to Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre. 

At the time, Pearl Jam had accused Ticketmaster of charging unfair fees and engaging in monopolistic practices. They were unable to play concerts in LA venues (which Ticketmaster controlled). In search of an alternative location that was still nearby, the band chose the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, a large, open field typically used for, well, polo matches. The show was a success, drawing a huge crowd and proving that a large-scale concert could work in the middle of the desert.  

Paul Tollett, who helped put together Pearl Jam's show at Empire Polo Club and actually found the location, realized the site's potential for a new kind of music festival. A few years later, he and Rick Van Santen used the same location to launch the first Coachella in 1999. The inaugural lineup featured artists such as Beck, Rage Against the Machine, Tool, Morrissey, and the Chemical Brothers. 

Guinness thought the dialogue was clunky and the story was "fairy tale rubbish," but he found himself unable to put down the script. He agreed to do the film only after 20th Century Fox doubled their initial offer (paying him $ 300K) and to give him 2% of the film's box office royalties. George Lucas gave him an additional 0.5% after the film wrapped as a goodwill gesture. For his part, Guinness thought the film wasn't going to be a hit. When Star Wars became a massive global hit during its initial run, his share of the profits made him $7 million. By the time of his death in 2000, it is estimated that he had earned $95 million in residuals and royalties. His family continues to collect royalties from that role to this day. 

The classic burger was created in 1967 by Jim Delligatti, a McDonald's franchise owner in Pittsburgh, who noticed that his location, surrounded by steel mills, attracted hungry workers who wanted a more filling meal. Delligatti also noticed that local restaurants around him that catered to the workers offered large sandwiches and double-patty burgers. 

Trying to find a way to prevent his customers from leaving hungry, Delligatti appealed to McDonald's corporate to allow him to create a larger double-patty burger. They eventually allowed him to do it, but on the condition that he only use ingredients that were already available in McDonald's restaurants. While he was developing it, he deviated and created the special sauce and decided to use seeded sesame buns from a local bakery.  

Initially, it was sold only in his Pittsburgh restaurants, but it quickly became popular with locals. Its success caught the attention of McDonald's corporate, which officially added it to the national menu in 1968. 

However, it almost wasn't called the Big Mac! The company couldn't decide on a name and alternated between "Blue Ribbon Burger" and "The Aristocrat." A 21-year-old McDonald's advertising secretary named Esther Rose said she didn't like either name when asked by a product development manager, and instead pitched "Big Mac" after the burger was described to her. She only found out they went with the name after going to eat at a McDonald's and seeing it on the menu. 

In the original script for Back to the Future, Marty McFly was supposed to return to 1985 by driving the DeLorean into a nuclear test site in the Nevada desert, where a nuclear explosion would generate the 1.21 gigawatts of power needed. However, they were ordered by the studio to cut a million dollars from the budget. As a result, the film's writers, Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis, rewrote the climax to take place at the Hill Valley clock tower, using a lightning strike to power the time machine instead. This change not only saved the budget, but it became one of the most iconic scenes in movie history.

Before 1960, it was common for people to buy a ticket and drop into a theater at any point during a movie. Movies played on loops repeatedly, so if you only caught the last half-hour of a movie, you would just stay in your seat and wait for it to play again (or wait until after they played the second movie if it was a double-feature) so you could watch what you missed. Directors and studios hated that, but it's how people were used to going to the movies. However, that posed a problem for Psycho.

              ******Spoilers ahead for a 60-plus-year-old movie*******

One of the big twists in Psycho is that Janet Leigh's character, Marion Crane, is murdered in the shower halfway through the film. Janet was the movie's most famous star, so having her killed would shock and confuse the audience and make them not know what to expect next. 

Hitchcock had gone to great lengths to keep the plot a complete secret, so he wanted people not to have the film spoiled by coming in after that shower scene. Jerry Pickman, who was the vice president for advertising and publicity at Paramount, came up with an ingenious way to both market the film and ensure people watched the movie from the beginning. He created an ad campaign (like the poster seen above) that featured Hitchcock telling people that they not only had to watch Psycho from the beginning, but also that theaters would refuse to let anyone in after the movie had started. 

The campaign worked. People arrived at the theaters on time and watched the movie from start to finish. After that, theaters started setting start times for movies, and audiences were now conditioned after Psycho to get there before the movie started.