Guinness World Records

A series of books consisting of various records on everything. And by everything, we mean everything - this series goes Up to Eleven on everything that's ever gone Up to Eleven in Real Life. If you ever thought of a record that is physically possible, chances are that the book would have a record on that. The lists include things from the mundane stuff to the most outrageous thing and from some famous celebrity doing what they usually do to some obscure person doing outrageous and obviously trying to get that record.

Started out when some British guy who managed a Guinness brewery had an argument about which game bird is the fastest, the record books has become a sort Cash Cow Franchise with editions published every year and is considered as the primary authority when it comes to world records.


 * Cash Cow Franchise: Books every year and spin-offs like Gamers Edition mean they sell millions a year. Also being seen as the maintainers of all world records helps.
 * Death by Gluttony: Averted. For safety reasons, all food and drink records got dropped by them in 1991 because they were concerned that this would happen (and that they'd get the shit in the litigation that would naturally follow), only for them to be reinstated in 2008.
 * Lumper vs. Splitter: Splitter. They launched Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition in 2008; since then, all records related to Video Games have been listed there.