Whether you love dark children's stories, are obsessed with stop motion or classic underdog stories, chances are you'll love The Boxtrolls. Whether you've seen it already or are planning to go soon, these fun little bits of trivia can only make you help appreciate the film even more.

Image via Chynbek [Deviant Art]

It's directed by two n00bs. The film is a directorial movie debut for co-director Graham Annable (though he has directed video games) and is only the second picture directed by co-director Anthony Stacchi, who previously directed Open Season. Of course, that's not to say that the directors don't have any experience in the industry. Annable's resume includes credits on Star Wars: Episode III, Paranorman, Sam and Max and Coraline, while Stacchi has worked on such big name films as Back to the Future, Hook, The Rocketeer, Ghost, James and the Giant Peach and Antz.

The voices might sound pretty familiar. The voice acting cast includes some of the most famous British actors around, including Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Sir Ben Kingsley, Isaac Hempstead-Wright (who plays Bran Stark on Game of Thrones), Jared Harris (who was Lane Pryce in Mad Men) and Richard Ayoade  (who plays Moss on The IT crowd). Other names you may recognize Tracy Morgan and Elle Fanning (who played Aurora in Maleficent.

Image via Hasaniwalker [DeviantArt]

The characters always look on the bright side of life. Well, they at least sing like that. Despite the characters looking almost Tim Burton-esque, the songs sound distinctly Monty Python. That's because they were written by Eric Idle himself.

Where do Boxtrolls get names like Fish, Shoe and Eggs? From the labels on the boxes they wear as clothes, of course.

Why does Eggs (the main character) speak English instead of regular Boxtroll language like his adopted family? Because he has a speech impediment, of course.

Boston airport helped produce backup sounds. Aside from the voices and songs, there are a lot of other noises in the film. Since the Boxtrolls are tinkerers who make all kinds of crazy gadgets and gizmos from stuff they steal from the humans above ground, the film needed some distinctly gadget-like noise. They found the source for their sound in some public art on display at the Boston airport that basically consists of metal machines that do nothing functional.

It's loosely based on a book.

LEGO artist Iain Heath, known to many as Ochre Jelly, built an homage to the classic video game Doom. This creation is 6 feet long and 3 feet wide, and contains over 15,000 LEGO bricks! Heath spent three months on this build, and it shows.

Continue reading for more pictures and a video walk-though of LEGO Doom.

Honestly, I had never heard of the Guardians of the Galaxy comic book franchise before Marvel Studios turned it into a movie that has earned more than half a billion dollars.

I'm a DC man, but I'll admit the obvious truth: Marvel knows how to make movies that bring in money--lots of money. The X-Men, Spider-Man, Iron Man, and Avengers movies have been hugely successful.

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Chris Pratt, one of the stars of Guardians of the Galaxy, hosted this weekend's new episode of Saturday Night Live. In one video sequence, SNL arrives at a reasonable conclusion: Marvel cannot fail. Every movie that Marvel can make, no matter how weirdly conceived, will draw in audiences and their money.

-via Uproxx

Being a teenager is hard enough, but when you choose to live musically and fashionably on the dark side of life your teen years can feel like a total nightmare.

This teen angst is multiplied when you decide to wear spikes and chains as accessories, or choose to be part of a subculture where you're encouraged to paint your face.

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This semi-factual sorta documentary style music video was created by Jogger way back in 2009, revealing the hard life of a suburban black metal kid.

The song sounds more Sega Master System than Satyricon, but the visuals are pure METAL!!!

-Via Dangerous Minds

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Batfans are going to love this! The Piano Guys perform a medley of Batman themes, in chronological order, spanning 50 years. They also have some great visual elements, with different versions of the Batmobile and film sets serving as their backdrop (or is it batdrop?). Don’t be discouraged by the length of the video; the song is only four minutes long. The rest is an ad for their new album. -via Viral Viral Videos

Lindsey Loree had more on her mind than a fun game of Magic: the Gathering when she interrupted her boyfriend Eric's Lego fun to ask him to play the game with her. Her request didn't seem to Eric to be anything out of the ordinary, as he had been teaching her to play for six months. But what happened during their game was nothing ordinary. As Eric told the story (his account is here and her account is here), 

"We’re in the middle of the game and both hovering around ten life. She’s looking awfully giddy and I’m thinking she’s got some power card that’ll spell doom for me. So I play Time Spiral. She was not happy. We reset and on her turn she smiled and threw a card on the table. What I felt next was confusion. What was that card? Five white for a sorcery and the picture was some dude kissing a girl? There’s no card like that. Well, there is now."

What Lindsey handed him was the card below, asking Eric to marry her. 


Quite a game changer! He goes on with his story,

"Of course I said yes. I made a joking fuss about how her cards were sleeved and mine weren’t and how it’d be really hard to shuffle them. Then she gave me a ring pop, to make it official.

Now, there was a little cheating on her part. I Time Spiraled the card back into her library and while I was shuffling she dropped it in her lap to make sure it was in her next hand. But I suppose that can be forgiven given the circumstances."

Way to be flexible with the rules when necessary! Congratulations to the happy couple. -Via Geekologie.

The Game Of Thrones title sequence isn’t the most exciting intro on television, although it does sport a pretty intense soundtrack, so when fans want to make their own version of the intro they can really go either way.

YouTuber Lexavian decided to go the low action way with their reimagined intro, to compensate for the abundance of exciting moments in the show.

Behold the epic excitement of an old man eating a bowl of soup!

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Chances are you'll hear the Game of Thrones theme song every time you heat up a can of Progresso (Red) Wedding Soup from here on out...

-Via Clickhole

Image Via Bungie

Let me start this off by saying I am in-between camps right now when it comes to this game. The following thoughts and feelings on Destiny do not represent Neatorama's feelings about the game whatsoever. That disclaimer made, writer Dan Seitz over at Uproxx put together his thoughts on the game right here, and he has some very hefty accusations to lob at Destiny. But the truth is, going from reviews and people I have talked to, he sums up a good portion of how many gamers feel about the game that was to be Bungie's FIRST non-Halo game. One particular thing that seemed to stand out to him: 

Destiny’s problems come into painfully sharp relief once you hit level 20, which the game has capped as the highest level you can earn through experience points. You can get up to level 30 by collecting gear that has “Light” as an attribute; the more light you have, the higher your level. One problem; the loot system is designed to keep you playing the same missions over and over again on the off-chance you’ll collect a Legendary or Rare engram… which has a strong chance of turning out to be complete and total vendor trash you’ll never use. 

Though I will need a little more time with the game myself before I can determine my own solid thoughts, it just seems fair to represent all sides of the coin. Whether you agree or not, his piece is very well thought out, and makes some very valid points about a game that could have potentially been a game-changer, but might have just missed that mark.

Here's something you don't see everyday - #Klingon #Stormtrooper #ballerinas! #starwars #startrek pic.twitter.com/Oa4iQCcC4o

— Ashley Eckstein (@HerUniverse) September 23, 2014

Today is a good day . . . to dance! Feel the music course through your veins, for the blood of Kahless moves like a happy bumblebee or a graceful swan. Ashley Eckstein snapped this photo at what Amy Ratcliffe suspects to be Dragon Con.

-via Fashionably Geek

We share lots of animated shorts here on Neatorama, but they're rarely as beautiful, and fun to watch, as Loïc Bramoullé’s colorful masterpiece Space Cat Hob.

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Loïc’s delightful short is full of fun character designs, interesting environments and a perfectly alien color palette, and this labor of sci-fi love took Loïc and his friends over two years to complete.

If you enjoyed the film as much as I did you should take a look at Loïc’s amazing concept art for the film, so you can see how well he was able to translate his art style into the environments and character designs in the film.

-Via Short Of The Week

Image Credit: Bill Kolb

I have this weird fascination with deadly kid's toys. Meaning toys for children that generally were not well thought out or were not looked into ahead of time for safety precautions. In the 50's, you could pretty much hand cancer-causing mercury to kids and tell them to play with it. But thankfully, over time, things have changed.

The cool thing, we don't forget.

A great many of these deadly and dangerous toys may not exist anymore, but our minds wont let us erase them. There is a list of 24 Dangerous Toys from Past and Present over at URLesque, and I wont lie, a few of the items on the list shocked me. We are not just talking about small objects kids could choke on. We are talking about toys that could seriously kill your child. Like the above pictured "Atomic Energy Lab" which was just chock full of things no child should ever handle without a hazmat suit.

Now you just need to sit a kid down in front of the TV with a video game controller in their hand and they are fine for hours. But in the olden days, fun often went hand-in-hand with the risk of injury or death. I mean, all I need to end this on is two words to make my point:

Lawn darts.

So do you guys know about Line-X? Normally, I try to avoid shilling products here, but this is science at some of its most mind-blowing, and you sort of need to see it to believe it. The long and the short is, Line-X is a spray coating full of polymers that makes pretty much anything in the world indestructible (shoulda tried it on my last relationship, wokka wokka).

What really makes the product so awesome is that they willingly test it on their YouTube channel. The stuff really blows the mind, but is taken to a whole new level when they try a watermelon smash. I think it is pretty clear how this will turn out, but you need to witness it yourself so that you can walk around all day buzzed off the madness of modern science. I am refraining from quoting Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad right now, but I think you know what I am thinking.

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This video could also be called: How To Turn A Watermelon Into the Most Dangerous Kickball of all Time.

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Cover art is a big part of a vinyl record's appeal, and some of the greatest artists of all time have created cool artwork to accompany killer cuts- Robert Crumb, Roger Dean, H.R. Giger, Edward Gorey and Andy Warhol, just to name a few.

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Over the years many of these cover artists have chosen to take the visual appeal even further by adding hidden images to their album artwork, like easter eggs for music lovers to discover while they listen to their new favorite album.

Some are more obvious, like the skull on Def Lepard's album Retro Active, others require a bit of a search, like the faces of The Beatles hidden in the cover art for The Rolling Stones album Their Satanic Majesties Request.

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And what about the images found on the cover of Supertramp's Breakfast In America? They're best seen with hungry eyes.

Mental Floss put together an interesting collection of 10 Hidden Images on Album Covers, complete with the stories behind these captivating images record lovers stared at while grooving to their favorite tunes.

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Video game juggernaut Nintendo Co., Ltd. just celebrated their 125^th anniversary on September 23rd, which is hard to believe since many people first came into contact with the company when they released the NES console.

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Nintendo started out as makers of playing and trading cards, opening their doors on September 23, 1889, and even though they've moved on to bigger and better things they still make Hanafuda playing cards to this day.

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Nintendo tried their hand at building pachinko machines, running a taxi service, and they even created their own brand of instant rice before becoming the innovative electronic gaming company we know and love.

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Gamma Squad celebrated the quasquicentennial with a fun Nintendo themed cosplay/costume gallery, which pretty much kills two birds with one stone considering Halloween is right around the corner!

Check out the rest of these fun Nintendo themed costumes here

Danny Elfman should be known first and foremost as the lead singer/co-creator of Oingo Boingo, but since Boingo has been sent to the Oldies section by millennials he's probably best known as the guy who created The Simpsons theme song.

He also composed the theme song for the 1989 Batman movie, and continued to work with friend Tim Burton by composing all the music for A Nightmare Before Christmas, in which Elfman also sings many songs as Jack Skellington.

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Danny made a special appearance outside of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion Holiday to honor this delightfully dark tale of holiday horror by reading an excerpt from Burton's original poem that started it all.

The video is a bit short, but it's pretty much just an ad for Danny Elfman's Music From The Films Of Tim Burton concert and Disneyland so of course they keep you wanting more!

-Via GeekTyrant