4 Hilarious Scenes Left Out of Comic Book Movies

Conventional nerd wisdom says that the more Hollywood changes a comic book they're adapting, the greater the amount of balls it's going to suck. Look at movies like Catwoman, Constantine, or LXG -- they all made inexplicable changes to the source material, and according to Box Office Mojo's stats, each of them sucked over 75,000 donkey balls (Wikipedia's "List of Films by Most Donkey Balls Sucked" page says LXG sucked a record-breaking 101,837, but the claim is unsourced).
But, despite being a well-documented nerd, even I have to admit that sometimes, even if the original comic is a classic, the changes are for the best. There are things that the comic book medium can pull off which simply wouldn't work on the big screen, mainly because comics can get silly as fuck, you guys. Here are some scenes that I'm glad exist in comic book form, but I'm thankful they didn't get adapted.

#4. The Avengers -- Loki Is Defeated by Ants

What They Got from the Comics:
The basic plot of The Avengers (the 2012 movie) is the same as The Avengers #1 (the 1963 comic), give or take some explosions and Galaga references: Loki, Thor's brother and the god of trickery, manipulates a bunch of superheroes as part of an evil plan, thus causing them to band together and kick his ass.

Marvel Comics
"I am bad at evil plans."

Despite spending a big chunk of the plot punching each other instead of the villain, the superheroes decide to stay together as the Avengers. As in the movie, the team in the comic is composed of Iron Man (back when he was chubbier and completely yellow), Hulk, Thor, and Captain Ame-

Marvel Comics

Wait, who the fuck is this joker?!
What They Left Out:
That joker is Ant-Man, named like that because he has the "power" of shrinking to the size of an ant. Beside him is his assistant/love interest, The Wasp, who also turns tiny but at least gets some wings in return. Ant-Man, on the other hand, has to get around by using exploited ants as skis. I can see why they left him out of the movie: He would have been even less useful than Hawkeye and Black Widow during the big fight scene in New York.

Marvel Studios
"Hey, where's An- whoops."

Despite being universally recognized as the leader and soul of the team, Captain America doesn't show up until issue #4 ... but the thing is, they don't really need him in the fight against Loki, because Ant-Man saves the day. Actually, that's not accurate: Ant-Man's ants save the day. Just regular ants that he talks to, the way Aquaman talks to aquatic animals. How do the ants save the day? Well, at the end of the comic the heroes think they've got Loki cornered, but he turns himself radioactive and starts killing them (which was a thing he could have done at any point, apparently). The mighty Avengers are completely at the mercy of Loki. The team is over before it even started.
That's when the ants open a trapdoor under Loki, drop him into some sort of furnace, and lock him inside.

Marvel Comics
While Ant-Man helpfully commentates on what they're already doing.

At this point, Thor probably invited the ants to join the Avengers, but they were too busy ruining someone's cereal, so the team settled for that Ant-Man assclown. Am I being too hard on the little guy? Probably, but I have to make fun of him while I can before Edgar Wright and Paul Rudd make him cool in his upcoming movie (though I should have learned my lesson after my ill-fated 2007 article, "7 Reasons Why Iron Man Is Stupid and No One Likes Him and Never Will").
It Gets Sillier:
Another big difference between the Avengers movie and comic? I'm pretty sure the movie skipped the part where Hulk tries to go incognito and joins a circus masquerading as a robot clown juggling horses and elephants.

Marvel Comics
"Yes, no one will look at me twice now. I am great at secret identities."

#3. The Dark Knight Rises -- Bane and Batman Become Bros

What They Got from the Comics:
The Dark Knight Rises, that long-ass Christopher Nolan movie with dramatic music in every scene (you know, the one with Michael Caine in it?), is based on several Batman comics storylines, but mainly the one where a big guy called Bane shows up in Gotham City one day and breaks Batman's back.

DC Comics
"Hey there, what's your gimmick? Bring any henchmen toda- ARGH!"

Batman spends several months recuperating abroad until his spine basically fixes itself and he's ready to resume his Batmanning. Eventually he beats Bane in a rematch and then Bane dies, obviously, because there's no more use for the character anymore.
What They Left Out:
Wait, no. That's in the movie. In the comics Bane survives and, having no idea what to do with the character now, the writers said "fuck it" and came up with a plot where he thinks he might be Batman's little brother.

DC Comics
They even got a portrait made in the style of the poster for Step Brothers.

See, that's what happens in comics when a character specifically created for one storyline is allowed to hang around for years and years: His plotlines get increasingly silly until they reach soap opera-esque proportions. In this case, Bane goes on a long quest to find out who his father was, until one day he comes across a photo of his mom with some guy called Dr. Thomas Wayne. As in Thomas "Let's Take a Shortcut Through This Dark Alley, It Looks Really Safe" Wayne, father of Bruce. Alfred confirms that Batman's dad did visit the island where Bane grew up, roughly nine months before his birth, to provide the locals with his special brand of "medical relief."

DC Comics
"Also, one time, he fucked a penguin. Wonder what happened to that ugly kid."

So how does Batman react to one of his biggest enemies making a claim like that? By punching Bane in his shriveled, steroid-filled balls and throwing him out of the city he once threatened to destroy with a clean-energy-device-turned-nuclear-bomb, right? Nope: He lets Bane stay at Wayne Manor, lends him a batmobile, and takes him out on patrols like he's courting a new Robin. To be fair, Bane did chill out considerably during this period, and even started calling himself Wayne. Just Wayne. Wayne who likes to party.

DC Comics
Party on, Bane.

Of course, a few issues later the DNA test Bane and Batman ordered comes back negative, and Bane goes off to continue his dadquest. But the damage is done: He isn't quite so intimidating after you've seen him in a polo shirt.
It Gets Sillier:
More-recent storylines have Bane discovering his tender side and trying his hand at romance -- which is completely awesome, actually, but try to imagine the following dialogue in Tom Hardy's muffled voice:

DC Comics
You'll know you did it correctly if you never feel aroused ever again.

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4 Weird Side Effects of Learning How to Write

A few months ago, several years after beginning this column, I finally learned how to write, the last piece of the puzzle being someone showing me how semicolons work.

They make sentences; look smarter.

It turns out that writing is one of those skills that really changes the way you think. One obvious way is that in the years since I started writing for Cracked, I've noticed all sorts of changes in the way I perceive the world.

Hemera Technologies/AbleStock.com/Getty Images
"Who's the cutest little listicle? You are! You are!"

But it goes beyond turning everything into surprising lists of badass mind blowers. Indeed, if you yourself have learned how to write comedy articles or novels or even just really great text messages, you'll have experienced the same thing -- the surprising ways learning to write changes your life.

#4. Regular Conversations Sound Banal

Conversations in movies and books are filled with snappy banter, people constantly telling razor-sharp jokes or perfectly capturing their character in a few words. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of writing dialogue-heavy pieces in my time here at Cracked, which has the same issue: people talking in a funny but horribly unbelievable manner.

Digital Vision/Getty Images
"Forsooth, this is a pretty unlikely way to begin a sentence."

Conversations in the real world are nothing like this, filled with awkward pauses and words like "um" and "uh" and "derrr." People mishear things all the time, or misunderstand them entirely. Awful jokes are commonplace, and nearly everything uttered is completely banal. Listen to a conversation someone else is having on a bus sometime. The most trite, straightforward observations are repeated as if they're great pieces of wisdom, and everything is dramatically oversimplified. I don't know if I've ever heard anyone say something about politics that wasn't completely wrong, and I'm constantly having to interject and correct them.

Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images
"Sorry to interrupt, but ACTUALLY, a single-payer health care system has a number of advantag-"

The weird thing about this is that the same must apply to conversations you yourself are in, even though you don't notice it. There's something about being invested in a conversation, trying to come up with your own jokes and clever insights, that must distract you from how trite everything you're saying is, and you're generous enough with your friends to overlook the same missteps when they make them. Or you see but choose to ignore them, like laughing at your boss's jokes for the sake of professionalism.

Comstock Images/Stockbyte/Getty Images

#3. You'll Read a Ton More

I've always read, in the sense that I could find out what I wanted to watch on television hours in advance and could navigate train stations without having to resort to hand gestures. I'd even occasionally read books, rather a lot when I was a kid, but then trailing off to two or three a year by the time I became a grown-ass man whose cultural tastes leaned more toward modern artistic forms.

Polka Dot/Getty Images
"Yeah, video games used to be made mainly for 8-year-olds, but they're a lot more mature and dark now. Like for 14-year-olds at least."

Even the books I did read came from a pretty slim selection of genres. I'd typically find one science fiction or fantasy author I really liked and read everything he or she wrote, which I gather isn't an uncommon pattern for elbowy young men to fall in to.

Comstock/Stockbyte/Getty Images
Even if it did lead to my regrettable Star Wars novel phase.

But in the years since I started writing seriously, I've been reading a ton more, something like 15 to 20 books a year, of a much broader variety.

Comstock/Stockbyte/Getty Images

The main source for this newfound interest in reading is to see how different writers working in different formats do things. One of the most humbling experiences of learning to write (or learning anything, really) is how not easy any of it is, how every detail conceals thousands of smaller details. Now I'll read short stories and translated works and books that have crazy things like footnotes or subtext in them. (Which are totally different things, I was surprised to learn.) I've even reread a lot of those terrible books they made us read in school, and it turns out that a lot of them are actually really good and interesting and not boring at all like they'd taught us.

Jetta Productions/Digital Vision/Getty Images
This is basically the worst possible environment for instilling a love of literature.

A non-trivial side benefit of this is that it's super useful for getting references certain people like to drop in conversation.

Stockbyte/Getty Images
"AHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAA! GODOT! Hehe hehhe heh heh. Heh."
-seconds-long silence-
"I Godon't get it."

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4 Pieces of Celebrity Memorabilia Sold to Insane Rich People

As Indiana Jones taught us, there's no shortage of insane millionaires out there who will spare no expense to procure whatever sinister antiquity they've suddenly decided will fill the roaring emptiness.
The problem is, most of the good shit is taken already -- we're pretty sure Hitler's skull and testicle are stored somewhere in Donald Trump's pool house. That forces the rest of the crazy collectors to spend comical amounts of money on such cultural artifacts as ...

#4. Lee Harvey Oswald's Wedding Ring -- $118,000

On the morning of November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald placed his gold wedding band on his wife's nightstand before leaving the house and, among other things, significantly raising its value by the following day.

rrauction.com
Congratulations, you've found a way to make "Cash for Gold" even more despicable.

After being confiscated by the secret service, the ring spent nearly 50 years on a dusty law firm shelf until it was recently mailed back to Oswald's widow in 2012. For some reason, she just didn't really feel like keeping it around. Instead she put it up for auction, and to the surprise of society, gained a cool $118,000 for it from a Texas buyer.
The identity of the buyer remains undisclosed, but we have the sneaking suspicion that he's hired a crack team of metallurgists to analyze whether this ring is proof positive that Oswald was in cahoots with the kingdom of the mole people.

#3. The Kitchen Table That Watched the Lead Singer of Joy Division Hang Himself -- $13,000

In May of 1980, Ian Curtis of the band Joy Division committed suicide, a seemingly senseless tragedy that we now know wasn't all in vain, for it eventually gave one eBay seller by the name of "toys_and_collectables_2005" a golden opportunity to sell off used furniture marked up by thousands of dollars. All he had to do was become a crowning douche in the process.

ebay.co.uk
"Also, his cat pissed on that rug and got run over by a car. $5,000, or $3,000 'Buy It Now.'"

That's Curtis' kitchen table on sale, and among the product pictures provided by the seller is this one:

The Weinstein Company

And that's a screenshot of the scene from his biopic where Curtis hangs himself in the kitchen -- the selling point being that this is indeed the actual table he sat at the night he decided to commit suicide. And now for about $13,000, some lucky sociopath out there gets to eat breakfast off it (which, considering the sales pitch, would actually be the creepiest thing you could use it for).

#2. An "Original" Painting by George Zimmerman -- $100,099

Under no condition is shooting an unarmed teenager an opportunity to sparkle in the limelight, which is why most people would have assumed George Zimmerman couldn't be more eager to slink into obscurity following his not guilty verdict. Instead, he did a photo op at a fucking gun factory, joined Twitter, and made this:

abcnews.go.com
Great, he can add art to the list of things he's killed.

That is an honest to goodness eBay auction of George Zimmerman art -- bought for $100,000 after a soul-crushing 96 bids. That is, someone willingly paid a small fortune to own a painting made by a guy who is only famous for shooting a kid, which, as far as reasons to press "reset" on this long, sad game of SimCity we call our society go, is a pretty solid one.
But hey, perhaps people just know good, original, and totally-not-a-stock-photo-no-sir art when they see it.

wonkette.com
Weird, the co-author is listed as "S. LaBeouf."

#1. Marilyn Monroe's Medical Records -- Over $25,000

As far as celebrity perversion goes, buying Marilyn Monroe's famous dress or lock of hair is pretty standard at this point -- she was, after all, known for both of those features. What she tends to be less known for, however, is her famous skull:

juliensauctions.com
As mentioned before, people will monetize anybody who blew JFK's brains out.

Yep, the blonde bombshell's medical records were recently auctioned off for $25,600, which is actually $4,400 less than the seller hoped to get. This is especially baffling when you consider that, even if you really need to know all the details of Monroe's plastic surgeries and ectopic pregnancies, all that stuff was already publicly detailed on the auction's listing, for free. That means that whoever bought this needed to go beyond simple information and actually had to have a kinetic relationship with the outline of the deceased actress's skull and dental X-rays -- which incidentally make a great reference for any life-size Monroe doll made of sawdust and hooker parts.
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5 Anti-Piracy Strategies That Screwed Over Regular Gamers

Since the dawn of the home gaming era, unscrupulous people have been pirating games, and unscrupulous companies have been trying to stop them. But just as video game graphics take a significant leap forward with every generation, so too does the increasingly inept technology behind copy protection. Only, you know, in the opposite direction.
We've talked before about some of the best ways developers have messed with pirates -- now let's look at the other end of the spectrum, in which developers aim for the pirates but instead screw over their paying customers in increasingly ridiculous ways.

#5. Lenslok Games Required a Little Plastic Decoder Gadget (That Didn't Work)

Nijmegen 2010, via MSX

A pioneer in the "only making things worse" approach to video game copy protection was the Lenslok: a little plastic contraption powered by tiny prisms that apparently sought to negate Atari-era piracy by making the simple act of playing a game so fucking tedious that you'd end up throwing your primitive console out the window.

Via Wikipedia
Nearly 900 people were killed by a rain of Commodore 64s the first year it was out.

The way it "worked" was that at certain points in the game, the breathtaking 8-bit graphics you were previously enjoying would become scrambled into an unholy mess of pixels at the center of your television and could only be descrambled by holding the Lenslok up to that part of the screen. Simple, right? Oh, and first you had to calibrate it, adjust it to account for your screen's anti-glare or flatness, and hold the thing precisely at arm's length or else it would only show gibberish. You'd know it was working once you saw the letters "OK."

Lenslok, via Torrent Freak
Or, like, a gaping vagina and a K.

And you're done, right? Nope! At this point you had to reach for your keyboard (while still holding the Lenslok perfectly still with your other hand) and press a key to reveal a two-letter code on the screen. Enter the code and voila, you are now allowed to continue playing the game you bought, assuming you didn't break your arm performing that last move.
But wait, what if your TV was too big or too small for the code to be seen? Then the manufacturer's official solution was "Get fucked," because the Lenslok was only compatible with the most medium-sized of televisions. Not that it said so anywhere: You had to assume as much after spending hours trying to get the thing to work to no avail. This is all, of course, assuming the packager bothered to put the "extremely easy to use" instructions in your box and that you didn't get the Lenslok intended for a different game (hundreds of people did).

Lenslok, via Torrent Freak
The game apologizes and wishes you luck, knowing that this may be the last time it sees you.

Right, so, anti-piracy efforts in games didn't get off to a good start. And somehow, they were about to get worse ...

#4. StarTropics Made You Destroy Your Copy Protection

Nintendo

Another early method of screwing with pirates consisted of including a code in the game's packaging so that at some point the pirates could get locked out of the game for not having it ... as would a shitload of honest buyers, inevitably. An especially bad case was StarTropics for NES, which seemingly went out of its way to make the code as easy to miss (and throw away) as humanly possible.

Nintendo
We're not sure why copy protection was necessary with this cover.

Say you're halfway through the game when you get stuck on a puzzle with only this clue: "Tell Mike to dip my letter in water" (you're Mike, incidentally). Fine, OK: You've been asked to do weirder things in Nintendo games. So, you go through every pixel of the game trying to pick up anything vaguely resembling a letter, but you can't find it -- because it's not in the game. It's a physical sheet of paper that came in the game's box, between all the safety warnings, subscription slips, and other shit that your mom probably threw out the day after you opened the game.
But let's say you find the damn letter, and let's say you figure out you have to expose it to water to reveal a secret password. In that case, you'd better make sure you apply the exact amount of water needed -- add too little and the code won't be readable; add too much and the letter will fall apart, as wet paper tends to do.

Nintendo, via Destructoid
Especially in the hands of pissed off preteens shouting "FUCK YOU, UNCLE STEVE!"

Even if it works, we hope you remember to write down the code in case you ever want to play this game again, because as time passes the writing will fade out. And if you rented or bought the game secondhand and it came without the letter? Then your options are: A) call Nintendo's hotline, where Nintendo officials will slowly, and seductively, tell you how to progress through their titles for a small fee; B) waste money on a strategy guide to get a single password; or C) wait for that World Wide Web thing to catch on in a decade or so and ask the Internet what to do.
Today, you can buy StarTropics on Nintendo's Virtual Console, where you just submerge a digital letter on a drawing of a bucket.

Via YouTube
It isn't the same without the anger and frustration.

#3. James Bond Hates the Colorblind

Delphine Software

At least the previous two examples graciously let you play your game for a while before unleashing the overzealous copy protection terror. The 1990 PC game James Bond 007: The Stealth Affair cockblocked you right from the start, which is kind of ironic, considering that this game started life as a shameless Bond ripoff and only became an official product when it was rereleased in America.

Delphine Software, via Wikipedia
Turns out Daniel Craig wasn't the first Bond with blond hair, or with a magical chest.

You start up the game, hoping to be greeted by the classic image of Bond shooting you in the face through your monitor. Instead, you are prompted with a terrible example of MS Paint cubism in black and white. You also find a color version of the same picture in the manual:

Delphine Software
OK, we're pretty sure we got a D+ for this thing back in seventh grade.

At this point you're asked to identify the color of a certain piece in the picture by looking at the manual. Easy enough, right? It would be, if the red boxes that tell you which shape to identify didn't stupidly encompass several pieces at once. Oh, and you only have two chances to get it right, because absolutely no one thought this thing through.

Delphine Software
It's either the circle or the smaller circle or the even smaller circle or the triangle or ...

On top of that, the colors printed in the manual were apparently a little bit off to begin with, so even if you picked the right color, the game might still tell you it's wrong ... and then it's back to trying to guess if you're clicking on the right shape at all.

Delphine Software
Just ... something in this general area. The game has already decided that your choice will be wrong.

Of course, you've probably figured out the biggest flaw in this system: If you're one of the 10.5 million men in America with red-green color blindness and you happen to like James Bond, then tough shit, because this game is unplayable for you.
Also, what the fuck does any of this have to do with James Bond? At least the makers of StarTropics made an effort to use something related to the plot of the game, but Bond solves problems by shooting and screwing things, not looking at pictures until his eyes bleed. It could have at least been a picture of some ample-bosomed, ridiculously named vixen, is our point.

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4 Disasters That Couldn't Have Happened Anywhere Else

Looking back on your life, you can see how the places you've lived have shaped you into the person you are today. If, for example, you're from New York City, you might give a condescending huff anytime someone from another part of the country complains about "traffic" or mentions "fashion" or praises a "bagel." News flash, New Yorkers: Idahoans can eat bagels too!

David Calicchio/iStock/Getty Images
"Search AskJeeves dot com for how to bagel."

In the same way that people are molded by their hometowns, important events can't be divorced from the places where they happened. Sometimes geography itself becomes the Overlook Hotel of history.

#4. The Manson Murders Could Have Happened Only in California

Stockbyte/Stockbyte/Getty Images

A few world-changing events happened in the summer of '69: Hippies had their shindig at Woodstock, a man walked on the moon, 9-year-old Bryan Adams was probably a solid year or two away from getting his first boner, and in Southern California Charles Manson and his band of drug-fueled acolytes horrifically murdered eight complete strangers in the hopes of starting a pseudo-apocalyptic race war. (It didn't work.) Without getting knee-deep into the horrific, grisly details that surrounded the actual killings, the key to remember about what became known as the Tate-Labianca murders is that Manson himself didn't commit them. His followers did, under his guidance and insane instructions. The other thing to remember is that Mr. Manson couldn't pull this shit off anywhere else in the world. Not a chance.
Why Location Mattered

wbur.org

Take a guy like Manson and plop him down in regular ol' middle America, and he's just a crazy guy with a wonky eye and a motormouth. In fact, Manson was a run-of-the-mill screw-up his whole life -- in West Virginia; Ohio; Indiana; Washington, D.C.; and Florida. But then something happened -- he was arrested in California. And it was California that put Manson in prison for seven years in the 1960s, and California where he was paroled in 1967.

Ingram Publishing/Ingram Publishing/Getty Images
He was free only for about 33 months.

This is where things take a turn for the Satanic. California, for all its liberal leanings and laid-back vibes, has been a hub for fringe religious cults for decades. Jim Jones and his ill-fated Peoples Temple followers were headquartered in San Francisco. Children of God, the weird sex cult that River Phoenix's family belonged to when he was a kid, was started in Huntington Beach, California. Branch Davidians: California. Remember those guys who killed themselves to reach an alien ship traveling on the Hale-Bopp comet? San Diego. Scientology? Southern California. Finding a cult that didn't get its start in California is like finding a silicon breast implant that didn't end up there.

Stockbyte/Stockbyte/Getty Images
Enjoy the fresh air while you can, little pre-boob.

Not only was/is California "Cult State, USA," but in 1967 California was also home to tens of thousands of disenchanted young hippies looking for their slice of the counterculture pie. So what do you get when you mix a two-bit pimp with America's runaways in a bowl primed for fringe religious movements? Sadly, eight murders that made no sense.
After all, Manson wasn't the brightest guy on the block, as IQ tests later confirmed. And he didn't have many original ideas -- his whole message was a garbled amalgamation of other people's writings -- everything from the Book of Revelation, his weirdo interpretations of Beatles lyrics, and the self-help book How to Win Friends and Influence People got thrown in the Manson sermons. It just so happened that his audience was composed of young girls too naive and too drugged to notice he was spewing complete nonsense.

last.fm
You'd think the flying gestures would have tipped them off.

#3. The OxyContin Epidemic Started in Appalachia for a Reason

Juanmonino/Vetta/Getty Images

Quick question: What's the scariest drug in the whole world? First answer: the love of a good woman. Second answer: heroin. If you know anything about drugs, it's that anyone doing heroin is at the end of their line, and not just because Trainspotting, Breaking Bad, True Life, The Wire, Gia, Little Miss Sunshine, Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, Ray, jazz music in general, and the future Janis Joplin biopic tell us so. There's "Oh, I'm sorry about your drug problem" drug addiction, and there's "I'll start writing the eulogy that will be given after your inevitable overdose" addiction, and heroin falls in the second category.

Photos.com
Not even fairytale heroines are immune to heroin.

Heroin was the king of Addiction Mountain until the prescribed opioid painkiller OxyContin came along in the late '90s. Suddenly, a bad back, tooth extraction, or particularly heavy menstrual cramp could get the sufferer a doctor-approved prescription for drugs so powerful that they could be compared only to heroin, especially when abusers figured out how to snort and inject them. By the early 2000s, OxyContin had a nickname: hillbilly heroin. And Oxy didn't get the "hillbilly" part of its nickname because the pills grew up in a double-wide or wore tiny overalls. That would have been awesome, though.
The nickname "hillbilly heroin" came about because the rural counties of Appalachia were the first to get eaten alive by pill addiction. By 2001, Kentucky, Southern Ohio, and West Virginia were all facing an epidemic that made the crack panic look like a whack panic. (Sorry.)
Why Location Mattered

CDC

Have you ever spent a 12-hour workday on your hands and knees? Don't answer that, down-and-out prostitutes. For the generations of men who have no other way to earn a living but to rip minerals and fuel out of the depths of Earth itself, chronic pain and traumatic injuries are inextricably linked to putting dinner on the table. So, for years coal miners relied on medication just to keep their bodies on the job. Even after the mines dried up, the pro-pill culture was already decades old. Pills were good. Pills helped. Pills kept dad working and grandpa alive until black lung took him down in the end. What choice was there? Like Tommy Lee Jones said in Coal Miner's Daughter, when you lived in Kentucky the choices were "coal mine, moonshine, or move on down the line."

Universal Studios
Tommy Lee went with all three.

Fast-forward to 1995, when Purdue Pharmaceuticals claimed they had a new pain pill that was less addictive than anything else on the market. To get their new product into the right hands, Purdue aggressively marketed OxyContin to doctors in regions where the economy ran on manual laborers -- loggers, miners, construction workers, a few fruit-pickers named Manuel.
There were two problems; once users figured out how to obliterate the drug's time-released formula by snorting it or injecting it, all promises that OxyContin was less addictive went out the window with the unattended Oxy babies. The other problem was Florida. By the time coal country had a clue that maybe Grandma shouldn't be self-treating her arthritis by injecting her hand with crushed pills, it was too late. Florida had the loosest prescription laws on the books, no oversight, and were more than happy to set up pill mills to keep everyone else medicated. Suddenly, you could pick up pills without prescriptions from the same strip mall where you get your payday loans and eat questionable Chinese food.

olesiabilkei/iStock/Getty Images
"I'm so high right now!"

The good news is that after the CDC declared that painkiller overdoses had hit epidemic levels, the government and the pill companies started getting their act together. Florida got a crackdown on pill mills, and Purdue changed its formula so OxyContin can't be crushed for the one-time high. The bad news? Heroin is on the rise again.

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