Cracked.com



Cracked.com, founded in 2005, is a website spin off from the defunct Cracked Magazine, founded in 1958.

Relying largely on (ostensibly) humourous list articles, Cracked has become rather famous on the internet. Its lists, which can be written by anyone, are rooted in fact (usually) and coated in humour, dispensing interesting historical and scientific trivia surrounded by dick jokes (always). It has about a half dozen full-time columnists on payroll, who dish out weekly and biweekly articles on serious subjects from the cultural effects of the Internet, to Choose Your Own Adventure Gonzo-styled articles about visiting the zoo while on an amount of drugs capable of killing most men, to action reporting while getting kidnapped by pirates.

Small time celebrities including Seanbaby and Michael Ian Black have written articles for Cracked, with Seanbaby now part of the column staff. The website plays host to numerous Internet sketch groups, webcomics (such as Subnormality, White Ninja and Daisy Owl), and has its own caption contest. It has taken on the "Cracked Wikipedia Project" now known as Cracked topics, where Cracked readers submit articles on a variety of subjects, from Steven Seagal to Punk Rock (including one about TV Tropes).

For tropes related to the original mag, see Cracked (Magazine).

For a rundown of who's who on the current column writers:


 * Jack O'Brien (Editor-in-Chief) (2005-)
 * David Wong (Senior Editor, also the author of John Dies At the End) (2007-)
 * Robert Brockway (2007-)
 * Chris Bucholz (2006-)
 * Cody Johnston (2009-)
 * Wayne "Gladstone" Gladstone (2006-)
 * Soren Bowie (2009-)
 * Dan O'Brien (or DOB) (2007-)
 * Sean "Seanbaby" Riley (2009-)
 * Michael Swaim (Though his current priority is videos.) (2006-)
 * Christina Hsu (H.) (2009-)
 * John Cheese (2008-)
 * Luke McKinney (2007-)
 * Adam Brown, a frequent poster promoted to columnist. (2007-)
 * Brendan McGinley, a person recently added to be a columnist.( 2011-)

With frequent non-columnist posters:


 * Kristi Harrison (also editor)(2007-)

Formerly:


 * Ross Wolinsky (2006-2008)
 * Ian Fortey (2007-2010)

They also have video content. The videos range from cultural to just random topics:


 * Cracked TV (now Does Not Compute) hosted by Michael Swaim, whose content comes primarily from lists compiled by the Cracked forums.
 * Cody Johnston produces somewhat esoteric standalone videos.
 * Agents of Cracked, Cracked's main comedy web-miniseries starring Michael Swaim and Daniel O'Brien.
 * After Hours, set in a diner where Soren Bowie, DOB, Swaim and Katie Willert discuss pop culture.
 * Other regular contributors include BriTaNick, Black 20, and Those Aren't Muskets.

On top of the regular columnists, Cracked accepts articles from anybody who wants to write one: all you have to do is create a forum account and then post in this thread to get access to a forum where you can pitch your own potential articles. As such, some of their articles are written by denizens of This Very Wiki.

If you're going to add tropes that have to do with Agents of Cracked please put them here.

Reading and/or general association with Cracked.com will also make you irresistibly sexually attractive.[citation needed]

Tropes present on the website:
""Let's face it, cities can be terrifying. They are, after all, filled with people like us. The modern metropolis is a teeming hive of strung-out dope heads, rapists, home invaders and fine regional cuisine.""
 * Twenty Percent More Awesome: A common source of comedy, especially in the articles that centre on charts and graphs.
 * Accidental Hero: 10 Photos Capturing Moments of Spontaneous Badassery.
 * Action Pet: This article about 5 soldier dogs.
 * Added Alliterative Appeal: The entries in 5 Superpowers We All Had as Babies (According to Science)
 * AI Is a Crapshoot: In 39 Astounding Celebrity (And One Cracked) Reboot, Clippy attempts a Hostile Show Takeover, which ultimately culminates in
 * The Alcoholic: John Cheese is a recovering alcoholic. More than one article has been written about how much of a struggle it's been.
 * Aliens Speaking English: Called The 5 Stupidest Way Movies Deal with Foreign Languages.
 * Alternative Character Interpretation: In-universe (for lack of a better term). One article has an alternate interpretation of Glinda the Good Witch.
 * 9 Famous Movie Villains Who Were Right All Along.
 * 6 Beloved Characters That Had Undiagnosed Mental Illnesses.
 * 6 Insane (But Convincing) Theories on Children's Pop Culture.
 * 6 Classic Kids Shows Secretly Set in Nightmarish Universes.
 * What Seanbaby did to old Popsicle Pete comics, reimagining him as a harbinger of death and despair.
 * NONE OF YOU ARE SAFE.
 * Ambiguous Disorder: Spoofed in Why Batman Is Secretly Terrible for Gotham.
 * And I Must Scream: Do not trifle with the Adventure Master.
 * Apocalyptic Log: A common format.
 * 5 Internet Prescribed 'Cleanses' That Made Me Immortal is a good example.
 * Arson Murder and Jaywalking: Sometimes, the #1 spot of a list is relatively less extreme than the ones before it.
 * Also, the unwritten law seems to be to reserve the last spot for the second (or somewhere close) most triumphant example as an 'appetizer'. So if it's a list of 17 worst haircuts in the Ottoman Empire, it would be like; 2-17-16- ... -4-3-1.
 * From "5 Popular Safety Measures That Don't Make You Any Safer":

""We tend to find Spider-Man easier to identify with than other superheroes. He's not an alien, like Superman, or the son of a major Norse god, like Thor, or a Canadian, like Wolverine.""
 * From "6 Famous Movies with Mind-Blowing Hidden Meanings":

"We are not blaming bad teachers for Adolf Hitler, Timothy McVeigh, and Spencer Pratt"
 * From "6 Famous Movie Wisemen Who Were Totally Full of Shit"

"We love the way the writer crammed in every scary word they could think of: rape, war, cancer, emphysema, respiratory distress, anemia, constipation, irritability, blindness, Canada."
 * From 7 Retarded Food Myths the Internet Thinks Are True:

"We tend to think of ourselves as the smartest animals on Earth. After all, we've built such technological wonders such as the internet, the internal combustion engine, and sneakers that light up when you take a step"
 * From 6 Animals with Better Memories than You

"[The rebels] were trapped, outnumbered, ill-equipped, poorly trained, freezing and starving, and it was raining."
 * From 6 Real Historic Battles Decided by Divine Intervention:

""Where do you go when your name is already Staff Sgt. Max fucking Fightmaster? Oh, wait, there you go. Just make "Fucking" an official part of the name. We think it's almost impossible to say the name without it anyway.""
 * Author Appeal: 6 Artists Whose Weird Fetishes Defined Pop Culture
 * Authority Equals Asskicking: The 5 Most Badass Presidents of All Time. Counts as a We All Live in America too.
 * Automaton Horses: Photoplasty advertises a whistle to summon one in Ads for Products That Must Exist in Video Games.
 * Awesome McCoolname: Staff Sgt Max Fightmaster.

""Perhaps you could pretend the people out in the street begging for food are orcs!""
 * Testosticor Fantastiballs.
 * Badass: Several lists commit themselves to talking about the most badass things found in that subject. Most notably, The 5 Most Badass Presidents of All-Time.
 * Jack O'Brien, the "boss guy" of Cracked. He's possibly an insanely hardened criminal badass who likes to make time for "Jack's Rock Hour". The fact that he's the superior to the columnists say something about him.
 * Badass Grandpa: 6 Old People Who Could Kick Your Ass
 * Badass Mustache: If the subject of one of their articles has awesome facial hair, they will point it out.
 * Badass Princess: ...who are too badass for Disney movies.
 * Bad Boss: These six.
 * Bag of Holding: Photoplasty advertises jeans with such a pocket in Ads for Products That Must Exist in Video Games.
 * Bait and Switch Comment: This is a not uncommon format for article titles, such as "10 Awesome Ads (For Traumatizing Children)".
 * Batman. Seriously. He's the god-damn Patron Saint of this site. If anything can have a Batman reference, it will.
 * Behind the Black: In Swaim's normal series you never see his legs, and he once claimed to not have any.
 * Berserk Button: Seanbaby has a HUGE one in the "romance" guides of one Gregory JP Godek. Every article he even tangentially features in devolves into Seanbaby cursing his birth.
 * Cody and Two and A Half Men. If the show comes up at any point in one of his articles, expect it to devolve into pure bile.
 * Better By a Different Name:
 * Discussed in #4 of 6 Common Movie Arguments That Are Always Wrong.
 * Yet it goes on to explain why Home Alone and Die Hard are the same movie.
 * Better Than Canon: Invoked: 6 insane fan theories that actually make great movies better.
 * 5 Movie Fan Theories That Make More Sense Than the Movie.
 * The Big Guy: Compared to the other columnists, Seanbaby is this physically, Robert Brockway is this in personality.
 * Also, Michael Swaim. He doesn't look that big until he's placed next to his coworkers in video sketches, when it becomes readily apparent that he is a full head taller (or more) than everyone else.
 * Bilingual Dialogue: Called The 5th Stupidest Way Movies Deal with Foreign Languages.
 * Black Comedy: 7 Great Products for Telling the World You're a Rich Dick.

"When Buddy found out his bassist Waylon Jennings wasn't going to be on the plane, he said to him: "Well, I hope your ol' bus freezes up." Jennings ominously replied: "Well, I hope your ol' plane crashes." A clap of thunder was heard in the background."
 * Black Comedy Rape
 * Blatant Lies: "America's Only Humor & Video Site, Since 1958". This date refers to Cracked's beginning as a magazine rivaling Mad in 1958.
 * Block Puzzle: The reason "interior design" is #3 on 5 Real Skills Video Games Have Secretly Been Teaching Us. Apparently, all that moving blocks around is great training for knowing just how to arrange furniture to make it easy to get around.
 * You'd think he'd mention the Light and Mirrors Puzzle as well. I know I'd hire a Deflektor veteran to set up the lamps and mirrors in my study so the light was just right.
 * B Movie: B-Movie Posters for Classic Films.
 * Biting the Hand Humor: "It's the stupidest idea for someone to sink money into ever since somebody decided to start a website based only on the name recognition of a magazine that no longer existed."
 * Body Horror: This Photoplasty contest.
 * Bottomless Bladder: Photoplasty advertises undergarments and supplements that make this possible in "Ads for Products That Must Exist in Video Games": #20 and #4.
 * Bread Eggs Milk Squick: This article. "In severe cases, the condition results in difficulty breathing, problems swallowing, muscle ruptures and fucking broken bones."
 * And zig-zagged in this article: "Ramen is a bowl of noodles, broth, spices and destitution that you'll find in college dorms and poverty-stricken homes across the U.S. "
 * And the final entry in this article about bad behavior on public transport is.
 * Breakable Weapons: Photoplasty advertises a product that dulls weapons in Ads for Products That Must Exist in Video Games.
 * Brick Joke: A while back, Daniel O'Brien wrote this article, about what to do when alone in a room with your doppelganger. In Agents of Cracked season 2 episode 3, he finds himself in that exact situation, and the doppelganger brings up the article.
 * While the article itself is not brought up, the meet-your-doppelganger scenario showed up in Agents of Cracked season 1 episode 7 "Curse of the Idol".
 * Which means that DOB has both
 * Buddy Cop Show: Combined with They Fight Crime in Why Crimes Would Never Get Solved At A TV Police Station
 * Burn the Witch: Being burned is Mary Poppins's nightmare according to a Photoplasty: 24 Nightmares of Famous Fictional Characters
 * But He Sounds Handsome: In "This Is Why You Don't Steal From Cracked", DOB doesn't know WHO retaliated against the plagiarist, but is probably someone handsome and witty and with just a hint of Spider-Man-like qualities.
 * But It Really Happened: Happens in almost every article. Especially in the "Images You Won't Believe Aren't Photoshopped" articles.
 * Canada Eh: Chris Bucholz has a "babbling, near-unintelligible Canadian accent" and apparently, because of the sound of it, birds won't land when he's nearby.
 * Caption Contest: The daily Craption Contest, where users submit captions for a silly picture and get votes on which one is the funniest.
 * Catch Phrase: "Oh shit, we went there", for when the article is about to slam a beloved character, such as Batman or Obi-wan.
 * Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: What ever happened to columnist Ross Wolinsky?
 * Clark Kenting: The 9 Stupidest Superhero Secret Identities. The Trope Namer is #1.
 * Classic Cheat Code: Doom "idspispopd" referenced in a Photoplasty: Ads for Products That Must Exist in Video Games
 * Comically Missing the Point: One article bashes Boastful Raps for being unrealistic.
 * You can expect the idiots in the comments section to do this quite a bit- the people who genuinely took the "Four Steps to Staying Relevant as a Bully" article as serious advice are a notable example.
 * Continuity Nod: If a writer thinks something is particularly funny, they'll probably throw it in to whatever situation they feel is remotely appropriate. See this article where Seanbaby takes a potshot at Bullet Ball, the inventor of which you may recall being number one on Seanbaby's list of the greatest failures in the history of talent shows ever.
 * Convection Schmonvection: Discussed in the final entry of 6 Deadly Injuries You Think You'd Survive (Thanks to Movies).
 * Cowboy Bebop At His Computer: Many articles are plagued by this trope. See Dan Browned entry below.
 * Crazy Cat Lady: Parodied by Christina H., whose column is called "Let Me Tell You About My Cats."
 * Creator Breakdown: Several of John Cheese's articles, particularly his recent ones, have been informed by his less-than-happy childhood and personal issues stemming from this.
 * DOB's gotten in on this trope, too, on occasion, though not nearly to the extent Cheese has.
 * Dan Browned: Often times their articles, even if they're cited, end up being either gross misrepresentations of the facts or even flat-out lies. A particularly Egregious example is in their article "If Oscar Speeches Told the Truth" where they claim the screenplay to Good Will Hunting wasn't really written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, and the citation they link to directly contradicts their entire point.
 * Dangerous Workplace: Apparently the Cracked headquarters is a hellish place run by deranged lunatics lead by a rockstar-like figure with No OSHA Compliance whatsoever where writers prefer dangerous reporting missions than to writing in a wooden cage while DOB is out with a working lighter.
 * In Agents of Cracked, it's a somewhat deranged workplace run by a mysterious badass, whose requirements for employment involve killing a man, and terrorists and Michael are allowed to roam.
 * Death World: Having grown tired of jokes about Australia, Cracked has now gone on to imply we live in a Death universe.
 * Deceptively Human Robots: Michael Swaim consistently refers to himself as "your Host Droid".
 * Deconstructor Fleet: Frequently, the themes for the photoshop contests amount to "Show what X would be like in the real world."
 * Department of Redundancy Department : "Now it's time to check in on the robot body I'm building to put Clippy's mind into, in a segment I like to call 'Checking in on the robot body I'm building to put Clippy's mind into.'"
 * Description Cut: Quite common. Sometimes an entry will end with something along the lines of 'The only thing crazier than that would be if x happened.' with the next entry being x.
 * Did Not Do the Research: Because much of the content is done by freelance contributors, the lists tend to vary between this and Shown Their Work. Some of the apparent research failure can be chalked up to Rule of Funny.
 * This writer is under the impression comic books stopped updating their villains since the silver age. Some of those characters have been updated to the point where the fans think that they are some of the better villains like The Riddler and The Penguin.
 * In this article, the writer is under the impression that Superhero Movie was made by Seltzer and Friedberg. It wasn't. It was made by Zucker, Abrams, and Zucker. He also mistakenly claims that a scene from Epic Movie is in it, although there is an editor's note recognizing this.
 * In this article, the writer blames Guy Fawkes of being a "fighter for Spain and the Catholic Church" and "trying to install an evil theocracy in place of the slightly more egalitarian Protestant revolution". In truth, the gunpowder plot was in part motivated by Spain washing its hands off of the situation, which is the opposite of what the article says. This is generally a one-sided account of a decidedly Grey and Gray Morality situation- for one thing, Catholics were persecuted in this "egalitarian" England.
 * Jacopo Della Quercia and Rohan Ramakrishnan are usually the biggest offenders at times.
 * This article seems to be under the impression that the face-huggers in the Aliens series literally impregnates people, which is just Memetic Mutation, and that everything on Pandora is impossible simply on the basis that its wildlife is similar to Earth's.
 * In the making of this article, Fletcher W. seems to have neglected to do any research into Pokémon Black and White beyond the fact that the creator based Unova off of New York. He believes that Route 4 is Ground Zero and was somehow caused by Team Plasma and Kyurem, the latter of which resides in a cave about ten routes away. He also says that it's 9'11" instead of 9'10".
 * The writers regularly call spiders "insects" and commit similar mixups.
 * This article confuses the Paralympics with the Special Olympics.
 * A recent one claimed that a solar probe that could stand up to 2600 degrees Fahrenheit (1430 C) would laugh in the face of the molten metal of Terminator 2, except that melting iron takes at least 2790 F (1530 C). Melting carbon (the other part of steel) is even higher (6500F/3600C)
 * Apparently one of the Cracked writers thinks the Stonewall Riots were caused specifically because of Judy Garland's death upsetting gay people.
 * This one calls Peter the Great a wimp because he didn't have a beard and was skinny. He was also almost seven feet tall and incredibly strong.
 * Robert Evans using Dan Savage as a source to analyze bisexual behaviour. Dan Savage may be a respected advisor on sex, but he is also infamous for being extremely prejudiced on this particular subject.
 * While it still is only a Cracked Topic article this article's first example of an unfunny C&H comic is one where the creators were obviously mocking each other with intentional unfunniness.
 * A recent hilarious example happened with The 6 Greatest Video Games We'll Never Get to Play. Entry #6 discusses a "zombie game done right", where the game focuses on the "apocalypse" aspects of a zombie apocalypse. What makes it hilarious is that the article came out just as the gaming press was spotlighting a new mod for the detailed combat simulator Arma II caled Day Z...
 * Digital Piracy Is Evil: 5 Insane File Sharing Panics From Before The Internet
 * Disability Superpower: Someone with no legs would make a better fighter pilot because G forces wouldn't drain blood to the legs, according to the article 5 People Who Turned Awful Disabilities Into Superpowers.
 * Discredited Trope: Several articles discuss tropes deemed discredited. One is 6 Sci-Fi Movie Conventions (That Need to Die).
 * Disproportionate Retribution: Clippy taunts Brockway about his grammar and writing skills. In return, Brockway murders his wife, mentally destroys his children, mocks Clippy's failed suicide attempt following that, and finally summons Cthulhu to drag Clippy's bleeding body away for infinite torment. Harsh, yet hilarious.
 * And here, 7 Obnoxious Behaviours That Should Be Punishable By Death.
 * Seen again in this article.
 * Does This Remind You of Anything: DOB considers the hair-braid USB in Avatar to be basically rape.
 * Dramatic Thunder: Mentioned in 5 World Changing Decisions (Made for Ridiculous Reasons, regarding the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly

"David Wong: [W]e turned the ["How I Got My Camera" viral video] over to the 30-man Cracked.com video analysis team, who spent six months processing every pixel of the original upload. After enhancing the image to a level of clarity more than 6,000 times that of the original, they reported that there was a prominent watermark for a site called wittkopp.net in the upper right."
 * Earn Your Happy Ending: After churning out article after depressing biographical article, John Cheese gives us this.
 * Which then eventually leads into this. Awwwwwww.
 * Eldritch Abomination: Popsicle Pete.
 * He's only the herald. And he walks among us already.
 * Spiders.
 * Gustave the Giant Crocodile. Robert Evans describes him as "a living, breathing, scream-eating dinosaur that is so sick of his own immortality that he passes the time by destroying life whenever he sees it."
 * The End of the World As We Know It: Several articles list things that can end the world, things that can end the world when you don't expect it, and things that can end the world that already happened.
 * Enforced Method Acting: 5 Amazing Performances From Actors Who Weren't Acting and 12 Classic Movie Moments Made Possible by Abuse and Murder
 * Enhance Button: Parodied in 7 Viral Videos You Didn't Know Were Staged (and How They Did It):
 * Enhance Button: Parodied in 7 Viral Videos You Didn't Know Were Staged (and How They Did It):

""I typed in porn, and porn came up! I typed in breakfast, and porn came up! It's the perfect system!""
 * Even Evil Has Standards: "Here at Cracked, one of our specialties is "not making jokes about the rape of Nanking"".
 * 7 Ruthless Criminals Who Turned Good When Nobody Was Looking
 * Even the Guys Want Him: Ever since Soren Bowie's headshot was posted in this article, most of the comment threads in his recent columns have consisted of both male and female readers fawning over him.
 * Every Device Is a Swiss Army Knife: Mentioned by name in #4 of 6 Sci-Fi Movie Conventions (That Need to Die).
 * Everything Trying to Kill You: Lots of lists involve various animals/places and how they can kill/maim/burn/harm you without even trying. Australia shows up a lot on these lists, apparently you need to kill five species of poisonous spider just to get to the bathroom.
 * Also Brockway's book, Everything Is Going to Kill Everybody: The Terrifyingly Real Ways the World Wants You Dead.
 * Everythings Better With Monkeys: The 7 Best Kinds of Monkeys.
 * Everythings Worse With Bears: The final entry in 5 True War Stories That Put Every Action Movie to Shame. We'll just let it speak for itself.
 * Experimented in College: One of the myths in 5 Ridiculous Sex Myths Everyone Believes.
 * Fake Nationality: Resulting accent dissonance called The Single Stupidest Way Movies Deal with Foreign Languages.
 * Famous Famous Fictional: This is #5 of 6 Sci-Fi Movie Conventions (That Need to Die), the example being "Newton, Einstein, Sulak".
 * Fantastic Racism: An article 6 Horrifying Implications of Awesome Fantasy Movie Universes mentions how Middle-earth is segregated in the time of The Lord of the Rings: "There are no humans or elves living in the Shire, and if a hobbit is going to live in Rivendell, he'd better be a big goddamned deal."
 * Fetish Retardant: In-universe (lacking a better term). The 8 Most Misguided Attempts at 'Sexy' Videos on YouTube
 * Filler: The major columnists for the site almost never update on Saturday, so the site tends to link to images from older Photoshop contests to pad out the front page.
 * Which some readers still bitch about like it's a new thing.
 * Final Death: Parodied in a Photoplasty. Inability to start a new game after having lost all lives is the #22 terrible idea that would have ruined Super Mario Bros.
 * Flipping the Bird: Some pictures show people doing that a lot in top-number lists.
 * Foreign Queasine: The 6 Most Terrifying Foods in the World.
 * For Science: 6 Most Badass Stunts Pulled In The Name Of Science
 * Freudian Slip: From this video: "I've been your boobs, Michael Boobs. Allow me to boobs you tits".
 * Fridge Logic: Invoked in quite a few articles which consist of thinking about the surprisingly gruesome implications of popular TV shows and movies.
 * Fun With Acronyms: Michael Swaim starts off every episode of Cracked TV with Some Weird Acronym Instead of a Monologue. His official blog on the site is called "Slander Without Any Inherent Meaning".
 * Also Spelling Wuz Aever a Iuge Mriority.
 * And Swaim (s)Wimulates A (human) IMotion.
 * For Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness value, he had Somnambulists Wainscot Antidisestablishmentarianismntidisestablishmentarianistically Irrespective of Malapropisms.
 * Stutter. Wow. Awkward! I am so sorry. Moving on.
 * Gary Busey's Explorations of Science has a bunch:
 * "[This textbook] might contradict what your eyeballs tell you, but that means it's working. EYEBALLS stands for Events You Experience by Alien Laser LieRay Satellites."
 * "If everyone wasn't special, no one would be. Which is why SPECIAL stands for Sunny Pals Extremely Chromosomed and Immune to Apes and Lightning."
 * Gary Busey even manages to plan an acronym around his own death: "LEARNING stands for Leading Excitement! Argh! Reality! No! I-- No! GAAAAHH!!!!"
 * The Generic Guy: Bucholz isn't very generic, but compared to all the other columnists, he's notable for being Cracked's foremost "columnist with no outstanding warrants".
 * Bucholz is one of the only columnists who paints himself as someone with at least a little common sense and morals, however the subject of the articles themselves are some of the craziest of the bunch, including: things learned breaking into P. Diddy's house, guides for using occupy wall street to pick up chicks, people who are accidentally stalking actress Helen Mirren, attacking animals with a bicycle chain, and crashing a royal wedding.
 * Germans Love David Hasselhoff: In-universe again. "7 Things From America That Are Insanely Popular Overseas." And yes, the Trope Namers is at the top of the list.
 * Getting Crap Past the Radar: "The 6 Creepiest Things Ever Slipped Into Children's Cartoons."
 * 8 Filthy Jokes Hidden in Ancient Works of Art.
 * Giant Flyer: Argentavis is #5 of 7 (Thankfully) Extinct Giant Versions of Modern Animals.
 * GIFT: Hey, Let's Fix The Internet
 * Good Cop Bad Cop: Parodied here along with They Fight Crime, Ripped From the Headlines and countless other Cop Show clichés.
 * A Good Name for A Rock Band: Pops up on occasion.
 * Grail in The Garbage: 5 Pieces of Junk That Turned Out To Be Invaluable Artifacts
 * Growing Up Sucks: Daniel O'Brien has written two articles about why growing up sucks; however, both Gladstone and Brockway have written articles explaining why it doesn't suck. John Cheese, meanwhile, has written at least one from each perspective.
 * This is increasingly a focus of the articles; possibly because at least two of the columnists are now parents. There have been at least two articles on the subject of the economy and how tough it is to be not poor anymore.
 * Heal Thyself, Healing Factor, Healing Hands, Healing Potion, Healing Shiv: Among the 7 Video Game Healing Methods Least Likely to Actually Work
 * Heroic Bystander: 5 Unknown Schmucks Who Turned Into Superheroes in the Clutch and 6 Nobodies Who Turned Into Superheroes Without Warning.
 * Heroic Dolphins: Cracked deconstructs this by listing dolphins in both The 6 Biggest Assholes In The Animal Kingdom and The 6 Cutest Animals That Can Still Destroy You.
 * Hiroshima As a Unit of Measure: Someone who is especially out of their mind is often described as "Gary Busey crazy."
 * Historical Badass Upgrade: They like to do this to Theodore Roosevelt.
 * History Marches On: Six terrifying sci-fi predictions (of 1997)
 * Home Porn Movie: It's a worse idea than you think, according to Ian Fortey.
 * Humanoid Abomination: Brockway, over the course of a drug-addled gossip-magazine-sponsored day-long interview, slowly comes to learn that this applies to
 * See Popsicle Pete? That is not the voice of a Down's Syndrome-looking ginger in a marching band outfit.
 * 's nature as a creature not meant to walk this Earth has been further documented.
 * Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: 6 Great Movies Where People Are Hunted for Sport.
 * Hyperactive Metabolism: One of the 7 Video Game Healing Methods Least Likely to Actually Work
 * Hypocritical Humor: A subtle and recurring theme of "Cracked TV" is that the Real Life Michael Swaim is just as guilty of all the things that his character criticizes about everyone else. This was dropped in "Does Not Compute", where the focus is on more "out there" topics.
 * Idiosyncratic Titles: "X Normal Description (Weird Criteria)"
 * Immortal Procreation Clause: 6 Horrifying Implications of Awesome Fantasy Movie Universes mentions Middle-earth in the time of The Lord of the Rings, claiming that "no one in the Elfish kingdom is getting any, anywhere."
 * Incredibly Lame Pun: From 6 Iconic Jobs That Are Going Away Forever, on axes: "Firefighter: Sorry sir, I need to ax you something. Ahah. Laugh or I won't save your family."
 * Infinite Flashlight: Photoplasty advertises it in Ads for Products That Must Exist in Video Games.
 * In Name Only: There's literally nothing carrying over from the magazine save for the title.
 * Insurmountable Waist Height Fence: Photoplasty advertises two variants in "Ads for Products That Must Exist in Video Games": #23 and #16.
 * Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: Photoplasty advertises it in Ads for Products That Must Exist in Video Games.
 * Intercourse With You: Discussed in an article about modern annoyances with evolutionary explanations.
 * The Internet Is for Porn: Constantly referenced. Two notable uses: Swaim watching pornography and describing what he sees to the viewer (because Cracked is ostensibly a family website and they won't host actual porn), and in The Web Of Sites, part of the Agents series, Swaim finally learns that the internet exists and says:

""In Marvel world, the odds of winding up with super powers are less than half the chance of being hit by lightning (although to be fair, being hit by lightning in the Marvel universe would probably give you superpowers)."
 * Intrepid Reporter: Sometimes the columnists write out 1st person stories, sometimes it's about them doing article research. Special mention goes to Chris Bucholz, who seems to do hands-on reporting 80% of the time.
 * Its a Costume Party I Swear: The #6 Real Old-Timey Photograph That Will Give You Nightmares
 * I Want My Jetpack: 8 Movie Futures Already Proven Wrong
 * Just a Stupid Accent: Called The 4th Stupidest Way Movies Deal with Foreign Languages.
 * Kick the Son of A Bitch: Robert Brockway mentions killing an old woman for her eyeglasses in Fallout New Vegas, having taken the Four-Eyes trait and didn't find glasses anywhere else; however
 * The Krampus: Mentioned here.
 * Lamarck Was Right: Grandchildren of people who had lived through famine were less likely to catch diabetes. Mice exposed to enriched learning environments had offspring with improved memory This apparent Lamarckian inheritance is the third creepiest thing hiding in your DNA.
 * Language Equals Thought: 5 Insane Ways Words Can Control Your Mind
 * Life Imitates Art: One of the 4 Realizations That Will Ruin Science Fiction for You.
 * Lightning Can Do Anything: Lampshaded in the "6 Horrifying Implications of Awesome Fantasy Movie Universes".

""[A]nd Jack O'Brien plus a huge bag of X gave us a Cracked office party that we're still not allowed to blog about.""
 * Locked in A Room: The Most Horrifying Writers Room Ever.
 * Loophole Abuse: The 6 Most Creative Abuses Of Loopholes. Highlights include buying 12,000+ cups of pudding to earn millions of free airline miles.
 * Made of Explodium:
 * Things That Shouldn't Explode But Did Anyway lists things that seemingly were made of explodium at some point, even an office chair!
 * Photoplasty advertises lots of explosive things in Ads for Products That Must Exist in Video Games.
 * Magic a Is Magic A:
 * Even fantasy stories need some consistent ground rules on which to build a conflict. Handwaving lack of internal consistency with extreme applications of Bellisarios Maxim is discussed in #3 of 6 Common Movie Arguments That Are Always Wrong.
 * From 8 Classic Movies That Got Away With Gaping Plot Holes: "at least follow the rules you freaking made up."
 * Magical Defibrillator: When used by a teammate in a video game, one of the 7 Video Game Healing Methods Least Likely to Actually Work
 * Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Spoofed here in a Trope Overdosed video that also includes a Spit Take, Its Not You Its Me, Victorian Novel Disease, Incurable Cough of Death...
 * This sketch mocks this trope thoroughly. Bonus points for actually using the exact name of the trope.
 * Mayfly December Romance: Discussed in a couple articles.
 * 7 Awesome Super Powers (Ruined by Science), #1: Immortality.
 * One of the 6 Horrifying Implications of Classic Christmas Movies is that in Fred Claus, Santa Claus's immortal immediate family suffers from what the article calls the "Highlander Complex": "They will have to watch their friends and relatives wither and die right before their callous, eternal eyes."
 * Meganekko: Katie Willert from After Hours.
 * Mighty Whitey: Cracked loves to accuse film and other entertainment companies of racism and sexism, despite the fact that their writing staff has always been composed almost exclusively by white males. As such, they both satirize and play this trope straight at the same time.
 * When a Chinese-American woman joined the team, each of her articles' comments have been filled with almost nothing but contempt for her for being non-white and female.
 * A Million Is a Statistic: Explained beautifully in David Wong's Monkeysphere article.
 * Mirror Scare: 14 different kinds.
 * Mistaken for Racist: The author of this article explains how a video he made (called "Straya Day") came back to bite him after this happened because of too many people watching it not realizing it was satirical.
 * Mood Dissonance: Discussed in "The 5 Most Badass Musical Instruments Ever Built": "If you could kill Bond with your Nanoguitar pick, you'd use the Laser Harp you'd to wipe out the rest of MI 6 in one hellish afternoon of fire, blood, and inappropriately mellow tunes."
 * Mook Maker: Photoplasty advertises it in Ads for Products That Must Exist in Video Games.
 * Most Writers Are Writers: Sometimes results in a staggering lack of perspective, both discussed and within the articles themselves.
 * 6 Things Movies Love to Get Wrong About the Workplace discusses how Hollywood films get other professions wrong by extrapolating from the experiences of Hollywood writers.
 * This article about intellectual property (which it calls Forced Artificial Scarcity, or FArtS) uses only copyrighted works of authorship (that is, media) as examples, failing to mention potential examples of patented works of engineering (that is, inventions) that arguably power more of the economy.
 * The Movie: These two.
 * Mr. Fanservice & Even the Guys Want Him: Swaim for his lack of a shirt and DOB for his boyish looks. John Cheese too.
 * Seanbaby gets fairly frequent comments from straight men who'd like to have his children.
 * Soren Bowie, who regularly has to cull his booty call lists and frequently gets compliments on his handsomeness from guys (who also explicitly mention their heterosexuality).
 * Mundane Made Awesome: Agents of Cracked Season 2: The Overly Dramatic Trailer
 * These pictures.
 * Musical Episode: If Everything Got Adapted into a Broadway Musical
 * Network Decay: In-universe. Subject of The TLC Experiment: Just How Dumb is The Learning Channel?
 * Another one was done on the History Channel.
 * New Powers As the Plot Demands: One of the 4 Realizations That Will Ruin Science Fiction for You.
 * The Nicknamer: DOB tends to give nicknames to everyone that change every time he refers to them in rapid succession. The nicknames are either puns, insults, terms of endearment, or a disturbing combination of all three.
 * And they're all usually directed at his boss Jack O'Brien. To name a few: Jaxploitation, Jack to the Future, Jackbook Air, Jacts of Life, etc.
 * Nintendo Hard: The 10 Most Irritatingly Impossible Old-School Video Games.
 * Noodle Incident: The opening of this article says:

"The text does not mention whether [the sculptures have evolved cavernous maws and a dark, endless hunger, so we are forced to assume they have.]"
 * No OSHA Compliance: OSHA is mentioned by name in #6 of 6 Sci-Fi Movie Conventions (That Need to Die).
 * Not Making This Up Disclaimer: On The 7 Ballsiest Sports Cheats Ever, one of the cheaters looks so much like one they have to use this trope.
 * On a Mazes and Monsters cover; "This is not Photoshop."
 * They use this when talking about Mr. Kellogg's use of circumcision and Corn Flakes to combat masturbation.
 * On Real Life supervillians; Mussolini's evil lair. Seriously. That is not Photoshop.
 * Old Media Are Evil: Though most Cracked writers are perfectly willing to make fun of the internet too, articles like 6 Subtle Ways The News Media Disguises Bullshit As Fact, 7 Clearly Fake News Stories That Fooled The Mainstream Media, and 5 Awesome Cases of The Internet Owning The Mainstream Media show a pretty strong bias. Old entertainment media fares no better than news media, with articles like 5 Reasons The Oscars Matter Even Less Than You Thought and 6 Cheap Acting Tricks That Fool The Critics Every Time.
 * Old Shame: Conversed in Six Musicians With Pasts They Hope You'll Forget
 * Once Per Episode: A bust photo of a large-breasted woman with only a single button closed on her shirt and nothing underneath is shoehorned into the majority of the lists, which usually hang a Lampshade Hanging on it when she appears.
 * They eventually ID'd her in this article. Her name is Kate, and she has a face.
 * It stares into our souls.
 * One Man Army: The 6 Most Epic One Man Armies in the History of War.
 * One of Us: Seeing how this page mentions TV Tropes twice and links to it three times, this is a safe bet of at least one editor.
 * One Size Fits All: Photoplasty advertises one-size-fits-all armor in Ads for Products That Must Exist in Video Games.
 * Only You Can Repopulate My Race: In the 2011 All CGI Cartoon Rio, Blu is the last blue macaw left. The article 6 Disturbing Unanswered Questions from Children's Movies shows what would probably happen in the next generation: Brother Sister Incest in the next generation would result in infertility.
 * Orange Blue Contrast: Called the #4 annoying trend that makes every movie look the same.
 * Oscar Bait: Discussed in the "A Trailer for Every Academy Award Winning Movie Ever", and also in this article.
 * Overly Narrow Superlative: Edouard Manet? Best.19th Century French Impressionist Painter Whose Last Name Is One Letter Away From Another French Impressionist. Ever!
 * Perspective Flip / POV Sequel: 28 Great Movies From the Perspective of Minor Characters
 * And now 26 Great Movies from the Villain's Point of View.
 * Pink Product Ploy: Mocked in "The 5 Most Pointlessly Women-Specific Products".
 * Planet of Hats: This is #3 of 6 Sci-Fi Movie Conventions (That Need to Die).
 * The Presidents Daughter: There used to be an article called "6 Helpful Tips for Kidnapping the President's Daughters," which was taken down after the person who wrote it, DOB, was confronted by the FBI and Secret Service.
 * Promoted Fanboy: 5 Celebrities Who Got Famous by Being Obsessed Fan Boys
 * Queer People Are Funny: Seanbaby is possibly the worst offender.
 * Quote Swear Unquote: Claims adding swearing to the lyrics of "You're the Best Around" would make it even better.
 * Rashomon Style: "Who Killed Ian Fortey?" Was also Ian's last article as a columnist.
 * Rated M for Manly: The 8 Manliest Images on the Internet
 * And let's not forget The 9 Manliest Names in the World
 * Pretty much everything Seanbaby does, but especially his "Man Comics", and its even manlier spinoff "Fuckin'-A Comics".
 * Brockway's column is titled "Robert Brockway: Word Puncher".
 * And then there's Seanbaby's column, "Flying Blind on a Rocket Cycle", the art for which features him dropkicking Hitler in the face.
 * Reality Is Unrealistic: They have so far published no fewer than 6 lists of "Images You Won't Believe Aren't Photoshopped".
 * Required Secondary Powers: Discussed in 7 Awesome Super Powers (Ruined by Science).
 * Reverse Polarity: This is #4 of 6 Sci-Fi Movie Conventions (That Need to Die).
 * Ribcage Stomach: The #8 Real Old-Timey Photograph That Will Give You Nightmares is of an amusement park's souvenir shop whose decoration invokes this.
 * Ridiculously Human Robot: Swaim, evidently.
 * Rubber Band AI: Listed as the number 2 most annoying video game character (Anyone who does it).
 * Rule of Cool/Rule of Funny: Cracked has refined these into a logical heuristic, frequently stating that given a lack of concrete evidence as to what happened, we are forced to assume the most bizarre, awesome, and/or ridiculous scenario.
 * Running Gag: Many themes recur over similar articles, usually referencing particularly popular articles.
 * Praise of Theodore Roosevelt's super-human powers in the art of violence now spans topics, articles and lists.
 * Many of the articles feature an outlandish assumption on the part of the writer, in the formula: "Reports do not say if [X crazy thing] happened, so we're forced to assume it did."

"...which means if you put a jellyfish in the space shuttle, and it fired its stingers at the moment of takeoff, it would travel back in time [citation needed.]"
 * [Citation needed]..

"BOD: You know, I remember reading somewhere that there are only two truly meaningful things you can do with your doppleganger when you're locked in a room. You can fight them... Or f*** them.
 * The word "Baffling" is often used in titles of articles.
 * Similar to their love of Roosevelt is their love of Nikola Tesla, and their complete and utter ball-crushing hatred of Thomas Edison. Like Roosevelt, this is because the things you could make up about either man in favor of their position on said man are only slightly less exaggerated than real life.
 * Have we mentioned Australia yet? Well, Cracked does a lot...
 * Can be taken to exasperating extremes when the writers start taking potshots at other cultures' idiosyncrasies for the sake of a laugh. One or two jokes is one thing, but... well, see for yourself. Worse, the cultural jokes aren't just annoying, they're frequently wrong.
 * At least it's justified whenever they're bashing North Korea.
 * Ke$ha's debauchery is becoming a fairly common theme...
 * "Gary Busey crazy" was often used when mentioning something they considered insane. Often including an image of the man himself.
 * Whenever they are in doubt of what picture they should use for an article, they will frequently use reuse the same photo of a woman's large cleavage.
 * Several articles have been devoted to the over-the-top mean, weird, or just plain laughable antics of world dictators, especially North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il.
 * They also love spiders.
 * Also, they have a running gag where they'll explain that X does (action) because fuck Y, that's why.
 * Additionally, Al Gore invented the internet.
 * And among the columnists, Brockway's drug use, Soren's social superiority, Swaim's freaky kinks, Dan's nicknaming, and Bulchoz's Canadian roots.
 * They also tend to bring up the infamous "I'm Han Solo" from Kinect Star Wars.
 * Science Is Bad: "7 Ways Science will kill you by X" is practically a template. Only matched by the number of articles about horrifying animals.
 * Scope Snipe: In the Vietnam War, Carlos Hathcock landed the #3 Most Impossible Sniper Shot Ever Made.
 * Screw Yourself: Mentioned in a few articles, including one by Dan O'Brien that's almost entirely about the subject. Said article is referenced when Dan meets his counterpart from Broked.com's Similar Squad in Agents of Cracked.


 * Dan takes a fighting stance*

BOD: Wrong answer."

""TV Tropes is a veritable black hole of hyperlinks, each leading further into the center of oblivion. The entire site is made up of a community that spends its life collecting patterns and commonalities between fictional worlds. It applies names to every plot device, every story arc and every cinematic tool ever captured by a camera and then links them to one another. The result is like being in the mind of a paranoid schizophrenic deciphering hidden codes in newspapers. Clicking on one link will ensure that you click on another, and another until you have lost your way back home and forgotten who you are.""
 * Scunthorpe Problem: Seen in the comments section, due to a word filter that targets a given word sequence even as part of a larger word. For instance, the racial slur "Jap" is rendered as "J*p" so that it'll also catch "Japs" and turn it into "J*ps", and consequently the comments on an article about Japanese subcultures talked about "j*pan" (in lowercase). This makes writing "j*panese" a bit of a problem. "Cum" is also banned, so you can't say "doc*mentary". "Cock" is banned as well, which is a problem since most of the site is made of dick jokes. "Spic" makes it a problem writing the word "susp*cious". We could list a whole bunch of examples. Basically, their filter s*cks d*ck.
 * The main problem is that the article will usually curse up a storm, while the comments section is censored. The problem is why they would need to censor it at all when the site's main demographic is 18-34 year old males who wouldn't be offended by cursing. Now you can say that it's the server's policy not to host foul language, but again: why is it that the article can say "fuck shit piss" all they want while the community is treated like children? Do they really think that a site like that is going to be visited by 8 year olds?
 * The issue isn't about profanity, but appearance. They most likely don't want to look like a den of hate, which is why most of the censoring is centered around slurs.
 * Seinfeldian Conversation: The series After Hours is built on this trope.
 * Self Deprecation: Everyone who contributes to Cracked are always most likely to take a cheap shot at people that are like them, or Cracked itself. The main contributors are also likely to talk about how much of an asshole they are, the sad fact that they write internet articles, and that they work at a headquarters that serves gruel-like slop and doesn't have indoor plumbing.
 * Christina H frequently laments how fat and ugly she is, even while explaining why women tend to have artificially low opinions of themselves.
 * Self Insert Fic: A good amount of Dan O'Brien's stuff is this, depicting himself as a Jerkass fond of annoying the protagonists and lampshade hanging.
 * Serial Killer: There are two lists of serial-killer animals.
 * Severely Specialized Store: Photoplasty advertises a store that sells only three things, like those in The Legend of Zelda series, in Ads for Products That Must Exist in Video Games.
 * Sexy Whatever Outfit: Parodied.
 * Shameless Self Promoter: Pick up "Everything Is Going to Kill Everybody" on book stands now.
 * Shared when other Cracked columnists also help with promoting Brockway's book.
 * And of course, David Wong will never let us forget that he wrote a book once.
 * And now with the release of the first Cracked.com book they've been even more blunt with no less than two full articles advertising it.
 * Single Biome Planet: Part of #3 of 6 Sci-Fi Movie Conventions (That Need to Die).
 * Sitcom Arch Nemesis: Apparently Adam is Gladstone's.
 * Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: The articles are, for the most part, quite cynical.
 * Skewed Priorities: "[Circumcision] can result in death, or even worse, loss of the penis."
 * Tastes Like Purple / Mushroom Samba: "...and when you're walking down a road made out of wind and purple, you'll know you're tripping just the right amount of balls."
 * The Smart Guy: Gladstone, compared to DOB or Swaim.
 * Sophisticated As Hell: Pretty much all the articles have a hint of this, especially those by the main contributors.
 * This is may be the greatest example of this trope ever.
 * Space Is an Ocean: Mentioned by name in #2 of 6 Sci-Fi Movie Conventions (That Need to Die).
 * Species Surname: In Funny Animal world, Justin Bieber is a beaver. This is illustrated in a Photoplasty ("19 Things Old People Suspect About Modern Culture") and a mobile phone game Joustin' Beaver.
 * Spiky Hair: Photoplasty advertises hair gel that makes it possible in Ads for Products That Must Exist in Video Games.
 * Sprint Shoes: Photoplasty advertises 30 Second Energy in Ads for Products That Must Exist in Video Games.
 * Stealth Parody: The article "6 classic songs that were supposed to be jokes" discusses several examples from music.
 * Stock Footage: Swaim's co-host in Cracked TV, "Clippy", which consists of out-of-context clips from films or viral media, such as "Orientation guy from The Hudsucker Proxy", "Still-lives of fruit alongside Holocaust survivors", and "Clips of chips."
 * Chips clips? TOTALLY RAAAAAAAAAAANDOOOOOOM!
 * Not to mention "Clips of CHiPs".
 * Gladstone changes his shirt in one episode to match stock footage.
 * As of Swaim's new series, his "co-host" is stock footage of various bad Youtube bloggers. Clippy, meanwhile, is having a new body built for him - which, at this time, consists of a can of Monster, a cell phone, a light bulb, and Doritos.
 * And then Clippy came back.
 * Stupid Sexy Soren!
 * Super Drowning Skills: The Strid is a segment of the River Wharfe in Yorkshire that will murder you. This article compares it to "exactly how water works in a video game".
 * Suspiciously Specific Denial: Robert Brockway loudly and repeatedly interrupts Ian Fortey's last article to insist that he did not kill Ian Fortey, had no reason too, didn't make sure he had the opportunity to and certainly had made no detailed plans to kill him.
 * Take That: The tendency to mock Mad Magazine has continued, especially since the magazine's sales figures have been in decline whilst "Cracked" has enjoyed a reasonable amount of success as a website. This article is a good example, which, upon closer reading, can be seen as a The Reason You Suck Speech towards Mad.
 * This, aimed squarely at Lady Gaga.
 * Kristi Harrison seemed to start the whole attitude the other writers have towards Zooey Deschanel.
 * Testosterone Poisoning: Mentions of anything remotely Badass will generally include comments relating to testicular fortitude completely unironically. Probably intentional.
 * "Punched your eyeballs right in the dick" is one of the more extreme examples.
 * Many of these Harry Potter book disguises is retardedly manly.
 * These
 * And these.
 * The Smurfette Principle: Most of the videos on the site have a single female.
 * The Tetris Effect: AKA "When Video Games Get Stuck In Your Head"
 * Time Is Dangerous: 6 Time Travel Realities Doc Brown Didn't Warn Us About.
 * Time Stop: Declared to be the ultimate super power in After Hours' "The Best Super Power (Is Not What You Think)". Specifically, the Zack Morris "Time Out" from Saved By the Bell.
 * Tim Taylor Technology: Mentioned by name in #4 of 6 Sci-Fi Movie Conventions (That Need to Die).
 * Top Ten List: "The leading source of list-based humor."
 * Training Montage: Mocked.
 * Translator Microbes: Called The 3rd Stupidest Way Movies Deal with Foreign Languages.
 * Trapped in Another World: One of the 4 Realizations That Will Ruin Science Fiction for You.
 * Trauma Inn: One of the 7 Video Game Healing Methods Least Likely to Actually Work
 * Tree Buchet: #4 on 5 Greatest Animal Escapes
 * Trope Name: This video takes generic and turns it Up to Eleven for roughly three-and-a-half minutes.
 * Trope Overdosed: This is largely because of their numerous media related articles. Many lists feature tropes.
 * They even occasionally link to this website. So after you're done reading Cracked...
 * And then came TV Tropes: The Movie...
 * The TV Tropes topic.
 * Turns Red: 5 Soldiers Whose Horrific Injuries Only Made Them Angry
 * TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life: In An Epic Online Odyssey, TV Tropes plays the part of Charybdis, with YouTube serving as Scylla.


 * Chris Bucholz recently did an article where he claimed he "Once logged in to TV Tropes and didn't come out for eight days."
 * The Unintelligible: Depending on the article, people either understand what Chris Bucholz is saying or see him as entirely unintelligible as no one can decipher the gibberish language he calls ‘Canadian English.’
 * Unproblematic Prostitution: The Oldest Profession may be older even than humanity, as it appears to emerge in the presence of money. 6 Things You Won't Believe Animals Do Just Like Us describes several experiments in which researchers introduced money to communities of monkeys. In one, a female monkey ended up trading sex for money so she could buy some grapes.
 * Vendor Trash: Photoplasty advertises a vendor that buys everything, specifically naming items that substitute for Money Spider, in Ads for Products That Must Exist in Video Games.
 * Video Game Cruelty Potential: Mocked here, then paid back.
 * Seanbaby took this Up to Eleven with this.
 * Robert Brockway has gotten in on the action with Fallout: New Vegas
 * Vindicated By History: In-universe. 6 Great Novels that Were Hated in Their Time
 * And Neville Chamberlain.
 * Water Is Air: An underwater lake is the #5 most mindblowing thing found underwater.
 * Waxing Lyrical: Brockway is fond of this. Especially if the song in question is Life is a Highway.
 * We Buy Anything: Photoplasty advertises such a shop in Ads for Products That Must Exist in Video Games.
 * What If: Many of the Photoplasty contests.
 * What You Are in The Dark: Robert Brockway is a horrible person according to Fallout: New Vegas
 * Who Wants to Live Forever: Explored in this article.
 * Why Did It Have to Be Spiders?: Many authors of articles express their hatred and fear of spiders.
 * Wiki Walk: OK, they're not actually a wiki, but it is really easy to get trapped for a long time just by clicking the links at the end of each article. If they were to drop the last two letters, their name would be almost chillingly appropriate. It's a good thing Cracked is free.
 * The addition of the Random Article button does even more to add to it.
 * You Can Panic Now: A staple article topic is a list of mundane items and activities that can kill/maim you.
 * And conversely, things which are hyped as dangerous by films/television/news media etc., and in fact are not nearly as dangerous as made out to be.
 * You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Photoplasty advertises hair dye in impossible colors in Ads for Products That Must Exist in Video Games.
 * Youngest Child Wins: #6 on this list shows that the older children will have more health problems than the younger ones based on order of birth.
 * Zero G Spot: Shot down in 6 Reasons Space Travel Will Always Suck.
 * Zombie Apocalypse: One of Cracked's favorite subjects for lists and parodies.