Some stories give the characters and plot time to develop organically, but there’s also something to be said for a story that starts smack dab in the middle, picking up the pieces of another story that has already occurred.

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Drifters is an animated tale that begins somewhere in the middle, a story about “strangers who wake up on a train after a traumatic event”, passengers who have no idea how they got on that train or where they're going.

Drifters is a product of animator Ethan Clarke’s unique mind, and even though it was created in 2012 this strange little cartoon is truly timeless- because strange stories never go out of style.

-Via Laughing Squid

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Mashable has a series called TL;DW (too long; didn’t watch) in which you can save a lot of time by not watching movies or TV. There have been somewhere around seven X-Men films, and if you want to skip most of them in order to watch one out of order, or all of them, here’s what you’re missing. -via Viral Viral Videos

Comic book publishers are always looking for a new angle to help sell their books, whether it’s a dramatic story arc with a hero’s life hanging in the balance or simply a stylistic makeover that appeals to a new generation of fans, but boy have they come up with some crazy ideas over the years.

Adding animals to the mix as sidekicks and main characters may seem a bit strange, but Billy Ray Cyrus going back in time is the ultimate in comic book kookiness!

(Image Via 4thletter)

Critters, clones, musicians and manga style- these strange stylistic trends in comic books are explored on Cracked's list of 5 Weirdly Specific Trends From When Comic Books Were Insane.

(Contains NSFW language)

There’s a man named Matt who created an entire cartoon universe full of strange looking yellow skinned people who happen to resemble real life folks, and then there’s the other man named Matt who built a replica of the first Matt’s city of Springfield entirely out of LEGO.

This story is about that second Matt, and his impressively detailed model of the city, a model that once again proves that The Simpsons and LEGO are two geeky tastes that go great together.

Matt De Lanoy is earning his Master Builder stripes by recreating this iconic toon town out of LEGO, but Springfield looks like it's short a few dozen buildings and landmarks, so hopefully Matt will continue to pay homage to the original Matt via LEGO bricks and keep building up that town!

-Via Gamma Squad

It may seem like the Super Mario Bros. are from Italy, but they actually trace their origins back to Japan, so the Italian accent must be some kind of strange speech impediment.

Mario has a lotta love for his hometown of Tokyo, and the citizens still praise him for keeping their pipework clean of gunk and vicious snapping turtles, but even in his hometown he can’t help but run through the streets like he's conquering a level.

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This delightful fan film by viz fx artist Dean Wright follows Mario as he makes his way across the Tokyo cityscape to get to the Super Smash Bros. tournament. Itsa fantastico!

-Via GeekTyrant

The Guardians of the Galaxy soared into the box office and totally cleaned up, proving that a sci-fi/superhero flick based on a relatively obscure group in the Marvel Universe can still rocket to the top…as long as it stars a raccoon.

Sure, Rocket Raccoon is but one of the colorful characters drawing folks to the theater, but there’s no doubt that Guardians is soaring because of the characters in the group, and if Marvel had replaced any one of them the movie might have bombed.

However, it’s a good thing they cut these Guardians of the Galaxy Rejects by Dennis Culver from the movie, because nothing kills a seriously good flick like a half naked Beldar the Conehead, or American Dad’s Roger in drag.

-Via Moviefone

Anybody who has played Dungeons & Dragons knows it’s simply a storytelling game, a chance for like-minded fantasy fans to sit down and let their imaginations run wild while telling a story together, and unless your Dungeon Master is a hack-and-slash fanatic who constantly has your party running up against entire goblin armies you know storytelling is the backbone of D&D.

So it should come as no surprise that playing D&D, or pretty much any roleplaying game, will make you a better storyteller, especially if you’re the Dungeon/Game Master.

Many authors have shared how important D&D was to their writing career, some going as far as to actually record their campaigns and turn them into novels.

If you've never played the game, and/or you're interested in finding out how D&D can help make you a better storyteller then check out this fascinating article on Lifehacker and read all about it!

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Lee Hardcastle put his claymation skills to work in a live-action short in which he (as Mario) goes up against Ash (played by James Wall) and Pikachu, too! Oh yeah, and since this is live action, you won’t see as much blood and gore as you would in one of Hardcastle’s claymation videos -but there is plenty of action. -Thanks, Lee!

Ever since those totally radical heroes in a halfshell climbed out of the sewers and into the hearts of America’s youth their green mugs have been plaster on everythig from merch to movies to their own brand of cereal, but nothing made the fans cheer more than the video game adaptations.

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The four player arcade games were a great way to share cowabunga moments with friends, and the Turtles in Time adaptation for the SNES brought the fun home and helped me stash some quarters for the next arcade trip.

Believe it or not there have been over forty different Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles video games released over the last two and a half decades, so boiling it down to ten best and five worst must have been hard for the folks at Gamma Squad, except for a few pretty obvious cases.

But if you're a fan of the TMNT games you'll probably agree with their choices, and if you've never played the games and wanna see what you're missing they've included lots of gameplay videos so you can get a feel for each game.

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The recent wave of amazingly good Marvel Comics movies have been following in the footsteps of other geeky franchises by including plenty of easter eggs in their movies for fans to discover- usually when they bring home the DVD and are able to pause and rewind the movie for a better look:

MTV has put together a collection of Every Marvel Easter Egg Explained in One Video, which is an erroneous title because the video is missing the easter eggs found in Captain America: Winter Soldier (which is due to be released on DVD in September) and Guardians of the Galaxy (which is currently in theaters).

Oh well, those would have been far too spoilery to share anyway, and in case you're worried about spoilers there may be a few in this video, so go watch the movie first then come back and see all the easter eggs you may have missed!

How is @NASA doing today?

— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) August 2, 2014

@WilliamShatner Good day, Captain. #ISS is in standard orbit and Commander Swanson has the conn. Hope you’re having a great weekend!

— NASA (@NASA) August 2, 2014

@NASA Very good news!

— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) August 3, 2014

Isn’t it a wonderful world we live in, in which a simple greeting between two Twitter accounts can make everyone smile? If you think about it, it would be hard to find anyone at NASA who didn’t grow up knowing exactly what the Captain expected. -via Buzzfeed

Only in fairytales could a fair maiden lay unconscious for years and still look as pretty as the day they first lay her down to rest, in real life bedsores, bugs and a layer of filth would have made poor Sleeping Beauty look a fright!

Even more frightful is the possibility that the spell placed upon her didn’t actually preserve her in any way, so if Aurora actually died when she pricked her finger on the spinning wheel spindle then she’s probably just laying there biding her time until a healthy meal comes along…

Poor Prince Phillip, who knew that sleeping princess would take the fact that you’re a slice of beefcake literally?!

Take it from DeviantARTist Shira-Chan (Sarah White)- Let sleeping zombies lie, no matter how beautiful they might be!

-Via GeekTyrant

YOU HAD ONE JOB. (Then it happened AGAIN.) @RegalMovies #rva #GuardiansOfTheGalaxy pic.twitter.com/DUbyAuLDlu

— Dean Browell (@dbrowell) August 1, 2014

The reviews for Guardians of the Galaxy are quite positive, but that doesn’t help much when you go to a theater and they show the wrong movie. Some people went to see Guardians of the Galaxy on its opening night, but were instead shown Rise of the Guardians, the 2012 animated film. The reactions were immediately posted on Twitter.

"omg," one moviegoer tweeted. "they started playing rise of the guardians instead of guardians of the galaxy."

How in the galaxy did that happen?

"EVERYONE IN THE THEATRE IS CRYING," the tweeter added.

Then it happened again ... and again, possibly in more than one location, according by the tweets.

A Regal Cinema theater in Virginia tried a reset, but after previews, the wrong movie began again. Maybe the third time would be the charm? No.

Dean Browell, who was sitting in the audience with his 10-year-old daughter, says they sat through 15 minutes of previews, followed by five minutes of the animated movie before an employee popped in to say they were trying to fix the situation.

The audience then withstood the same 15 minutes of previews again … only for Rise of the Guardians to start playing once more. At this point, the theater offered to give people tickets to a later 3D Imax showing, and about half the people at the 2D screening took them up on the offer.

But the other screening was too late for the Browells, so they persevered.

"There was a 10 minute wait, then the lights went down again and the third go of previews started, this time with the new Interstellar one, which gave us hope," Browell tells The Hollywood Reporter.

No luck. Rise started playing a third time — to major expletives from the agitated crowd.

Browell and the other audience members got a refund, tickets for another showing, and a movie poster. Maybe today’s showings will be pre-screened to make sure the labels are correct, because no one likes to be rickrolled when they’ve already bought the ticket, the popcorn, and the drinks.   

Cartoon universes are about to collide in Springfield as both Family Guy and Futurama are set to make appearances in the land of the Flaming Moe.

We all know Family Guy "borrowed" a lot from The Simpsons, like the fact that they both star a fat, oafy father, and they're both satirical takes on the average American family, just to name a few similarities, but these two iconic cartoon families have never come together for a full episode...until now.

Here's a sneak peek at the episode entitled "The Simpsons Guy", which will air on September 28th:

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And after the Griffins pay a visit to Springfield the Planet Express crew is set to come back from the grave for a one episode appearance in Springfield, thanks to a rift between Groening dimensions that really should have been opened years ago:

Simpsorama will feature Bender and Bart colliding in a battle of the bad boys sure to make cartoon history! Is this crossover Futurama's official return to the small screen?

Your guess is as good as mine, but if you want to see these Groening dimensions collide the episode will air on November 9th.

-Via GeekTyrant/io9

Jimmy Kimmel is like many comedians in that he doesn't seem to have a filter, and when he decided to record a bit for his show Jimmy Kimmel Live at San Diego Comic-Con 2014 he went lower than most Comic-Con coverage has gone before.

Kimmel asked cosplayers if they've ever had sex in their costumes, which anyone with any knowledge of the cosplay community knows is a rather taboo subject, and the responses he got to this Pedestrian Question were surprisingly genuine:

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The cosplay community is very outspoken these days, and easily riled up, so I'm sure Mr. Kimmel has a bunch of hate mail written on Batman and Hello Kitty stationary coming his way!

-Via Boing Boing