10 Funny Cases of Nominative Determinism
10 Origin Stories Behind Iconic Old-School Horror Movie Villains
10 Facts about Government Programs Born from Crisis
Ten Amazing Inventions by Catholic Priests
10 Controversial Advertising Campaigns That Backfired
10 Book Characters Who Were Miscast in the Adaptation but Still Great
10 Recently-Added Astrological Placements
10 Exciting Snapshots of a Future Much Closer Than You Think
Ten Long-Dead People Who Are Still Messing Up Today’s World
Ten Horror Games That Were Banned for Being Too Dark
10 Funny Cases of Nominative Determinism
10 Origin Stories Behind Iconic Old-School Horror Movie Villains
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Jamie Frater
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Jamie founded Listverse due to an insatiable desire to share fascinating, obscure, and bizarre facts. He has been a guest speaker on numerous national radio and television stations and is a five time published author.
More About Us10 Facts about Government Programs Born from Crisis
Ten Amazing Inventions by Catholic Priests
10 Controversial Advertising Campaigns That Backfired
10 Book Characters Who Were Miscast in the Adaptation but Still Great
10 Recently-Added Astrological Placements
10 Exciting Snapshots of a Future Much Closer Than You Think
Ten Long-Dead People Who Are Still Messing Up Today’s World
Top 10 Famous People Rumored To Be Reincarnated
Conspiracy theories about the rich and famous are growing thick and fast by the day. If they’re not “dead”, they are members of some obscure cult or the Illuminati clan or they paid someone to “take out” a fellow celebrity. Others are rumored to be reincarnations. Some even remember their past lives. Some of these theories are crazier than others, as the entries on this list will prove.
10 Baby Bruce Lee
Since he was a little boy, Ryusei Imai has been rumored to be the reincarnation of the famous Chinese actor and kung fu master, Bruce Lee. The boy’s father has clearly been a lifelong fan and started showing his son Lee’s movies when he was only a year old. At the age of 3, Ryusei began developing his skill with nunchucks and at age 4, he started imitating Lee’s kung fu. From age of 5 he started looking lean and muscular and could almost perfectly mimic Lee’s complex martial arts moves, energetically emulating the movie star’s personal jeet kune do (translated into “The Way of the Intercepting Fist”) style.
His skill, discipline, and technique so impressed Dan Inosanto, a former a student of Bruce Lee himself, that he made the trip to Japan to personally take on Ryusei as his student. Together they visited Seattle where the little kung fu master displayed his nunchuck skills by Lee’s graveside. Watch little Baby Bruce Lee’s impressive moves in the video below.
9 Time Traveling Travolta
For $50,000, you can own an original 1860s-era photograph of who appears to be “a very young John Travolta.” Or at least, you could have.
In 2017, an antiques dealer made the purported 150-year-old photo of John Travolta available for purchase on the popular auction site eBay. Look closely at the image below and you’ll see for yourself the striking resemblance in both men’s eyes, hairline “and most importantly John’s very unique trademark CHIN.”
Travolta, a well-known Scientologist, would almost certainly have appreciated the “proof” of one of his past lives. Although the church of Scientology does not appear to have an official statement on time travel, it does, according to its official website, support the idea of reincarnation: “Today in Scientology, many people have certainty that they have lived lives prior to their current one … Past lives is not a dogma in Scientology, but generally Scientologists, during their auditing, experience a past life and then know for themselves that they have lived before.”
8 Carrot-topped Cadet
Despite the fact that Conan O’Brien flopped in a big way when taking over the Tonight Show from Jay Leno in June 2009, fans of the carrot-topped comedian are legion and loyal, holding fast to fond memories of the funny man’s late-night television show. In a much-publicized huff, O’Brien declined NBC’s offer to move The Tonight Show to a later slot and instead walked away and handed back the reins to Leno in January 2010.
His short tenure at the show still secured a hefty severance package so it’s little wonder that O’Brien flew under the radar for a while. With $34 million in his pocket, he could certainly afford to! Late in 2010, however, he returned to the small screen with a reincarnation of his famous Late Night With Conan O’Brien which ran from 1993 to 2009. His new show was not the only thing that got reincarnated, though. The man himself is the spitting image of Marshall Harvey Twitchell, who, back in the mid-1860s, served in the Union Army. Take a gander at the picture below and see for yourself how much O’Brien resembles the dapper-looking cadet.
7 Macaulay Putin
Yup, you read that right. Macaulay Culkin, the forever-young Home Alone star of the 90’s, looks just like a young Vladimir Putin. The same angelic face, the same floppy hair, and the same cupid bow. The similarities between the two do not end there, though.
In his 2018 documentary, The Most Powerful Man in the World, Fareed Zakaria describes Russian President Vladimir Putin as, yes, you guessed it, the most powerful man in the world. Similarly, because of his son’s enormous box office successes, Premiere magazine rated Kit Culkin one of the most powerful people in Hollywood back in 1993. Culkin is the first child actor to be paid $1m for his role in My Girl, as well as the second-youngest celebrity to host Saturday Night Live at the tender age of 11.
When he was around the same age, Putin’s teacher noted the following: “In the fifth grade, he still hadn’t found himself yet, but I could feel the potential, the energy and the character in him.“
When he was in the sixth grade, Putin decided it was time to “achieve something life.” His attitude towards his studies changed dramatically and he started to excel in school. His career rise was rapid, his journey to President of Russia happening almost overnight. Much like Culkin who told Maron he felt his father was “jealous” of him, because “everything he tried to do in his life, I excelled at before I was 10 years old”.
In December 2018, Culkin announced that he would legally change his name to “Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin” but after seeing the picture below, Macaulay Putin is perhaps more accurate.
6 Greta Thunberg
In November 2019, at the height of Greta Thunberg’s political career, the Twittersphere nearly imploded when a picture, taken in 1898, came to light. Released from the archives at the University of Washington, the creepy image clearly shows “Thunberg”, together with who appear to be her siblings, fetching water from a well in Dominion Creek, Yukon Territory. Even the braid is an exact match …
When the photo was posted online by Jack Strange, the uncanny resemblance between the girl in the picture and the modern-day Thunberg sparked thousands of Twitter users to joke that she might be a time traveler. The hosts of the talk show Your Morning also had a blast theorizing about the environmental activist’s time traveling capabilities and the possibility that she is from the future, here to deliver a dire warning. They further proposed that the image explains why Thunberg refuses to take a plane across the Atlantic and prefers to travel by boat; obviously, time travelers suffer from some kind of aversion to technology.
Top 10 Disturbing Tales Of Doppelgangers
5 Lawrence Lookalikes
In 2017 a 17-year-old model named Alexia Maier rose to fame in a rather unconventional way. Apparently, she looked scarily similar to actress Jennifer Lawrence. So similar, in fact, that she has even found herself surrounded by paparazzi.
Maier isn’t Jlaw’s only lookalike. The Hunger Games star is also the spitting image of the Egyptian actress Zubaida Tharwat, famous during the silver age of the silver screen. And when we say spitting image, we mean Spit. Ting. Image. Seriously. Right down to the eyeliner.
In reality though, the only thing these accomplished actresses have in common is their chosen profession. And even though we can’t call it a reincarnation, since Zubaida only died in 2016, the strong resemblance in the picture below is enough to make you do a double take. Or two.
4 Royal reincarnation
In 2013, one TV psychic’s claims made many people stand up and take notice. Not because, as is usually the case, it sounded bizarre but because it involved our all-time favorite royal, Lady Diana. Sharon Prasad, self-proclaimed psychic, shared in a documentary about the royal family that Prince George and Princess Diana share more than just a star sign.
“If we have look at the Cancer influence with Lady Diana this is really interesting because it shows a life-death connection.”
Yup. According to Prasad, Prince George is the reincarnation of his beloved grandmother. Not only because of the striking resemblance between the late Princess and Kate and William’s eldest son, but because of their shared interests and talents, like their mutual affection for dancing. Prince William apparently once told the press that his eldest son loves dancing just like his late mother did.
While you might wonder if these people have ever heard of genetics, the video below is still worth a watch.
3 Mata Hari the Material Girl
Madonna has been purported to be the reincarnation of various individuals. Most notably the woman known to the world as Mata Hari. Born in 1917 in the Netherlands, her real name was Margaretha Zelle. As a young woman she married a Dutch army officer and moved to Indonesia where she became a member of an Indonesian dance company. But Zelle only started drawing attention when she later relocated to Paris and worked as an artist’s model and exotic dancer.
“Promiscuous, flirtatious, and openly flaunting her body with a mystique that captivated both her audiences and the public, Mata Hari was an overnight success. The most celebrated segment of her act was her progressive shedding of clothing until she wore just a jeweled bra and some ornaments upon her arms and head.”?
Rather like Madonna during her Blonde Ambition tour, don’t you think?
But, apparently, Mata Hari was just one of many past lives lived by the Material Girl. Her affinity for Kaballah has led to an exploration of her previous incarnations. She was, it is said, a strong Jewish woman in these past lives but, as she wasn’t famous then, it would be difficult to historically validate them …
2 Isn’t it ironic?
Is Alanis Morissette the reincarnation of Sergei Prokofiev? Are the prolific musicians in fact the reincarnation of the same soul?
Sergei Prokofiev was the Russian composer, pianist and conductor behind the musical fairy tale Peter and the Wolf, which remains enormously popular today. He was regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century, playing the piano at age five and composing his first opera at age nine.
Alanis Morissette, of course, is the Canadian-born singer-songwriter behind Jagged Little Pill, the best-selling album of the 90s. Often described as an old soul, Morissette was playing the piano at age seven and, just like Prokofiev, writing songs by age nine.
Could they be one and the same soul?
Ironically, the singer has a twin brother, Wade Imre Morissette. He looks nothing like his sister nor Prokofiev, but does, however, bear a striking resemblance to Prokofiev’s second wife, Mira.
1 Queen of the people
“I was taught from a young age that many people would treat me as a second-class citizen because I was African-American and because I was female.” – Queen Latifah
Zora Neale Hurston (1891 – 1960) was an African American author and filmmaker born in Alabama. Her work mostly portrayed the struggles around slavery and segregation in the United States.
Dana Owens, now known as Queen Latifah, was born in 1970 in New Jersey. Her award-winning work as a singer, actress and music producer also revolves mostly around the African American experience in the United States.
Knowing this makes the image below all the more mind blowing. Not only does Zora Neale Hurston (on the left) look just like the famous Hollywood heavyweight in character for a movie, their respective lives have demonstrated great intelligence and creativity in portraying the lives and struggles faced by African-Americans throughout history. One cannot help but think they would have been great friends and mutual fans.
+ The Last President
In 1893 Ingerssol Lockwood wrote a book. That book was called The Travels and Adventures of Little Baron Trump and His Wonderful Dog Bulgar.
“Trump, an aristocratically wealthy young man living in Castle Trump, is the protagonist of Lockwood’s first two fictional novels, The Travels and Adventures of Little Baron Trump and His Wonderful Dog Bulgar and Baron Trump’s Marvelous Underground Journey. The little boy, who has an unending imagination and ‘a very active brain,’ is bored of the luxurious lifestyle he has grown so accustomed to. In a twist of fate, Trump visits Russia to embark on an extraordinary adventure that will shape the rest of his life.”
But it gets crazier, the sequel to the book was called The Last President, and here’s a snatch:
The story begins with a scene from a panicked New York City in early November, describing a “state of uproar” after the election of an enormously opposed outsider candidate.
“The entire East Side is in a state of uproar,” police officers shouted through the streets, warning city folk to stay indoors for the night. “Mobs of vast size are organizing under the lead of anarchists and socialists, and threaten to plunder and despoil the houses of the rich who have wronged and oppressed them for so many years.”
“The Fifth Avenue Hotel will be the first to feel the fury of the mob,” the novel continues, citing an address in New York City where Trump Tower now stands. “Would the troops be in time to save it?”[1]
It’s so strikingly similar to our reality that it can’t be true . . . right? But it is! Oh . . . and the illustrations from the book look like President Trump’s son too! This has led the self-described “autists” of /pol/ on the mostly-unmoderated Social Media site 4Chan along with their compadres on thedonald.win, the largest President Trump fan community, to declare that Barron, the youngest son of the 45th president, is a multi-dimensional time traveller. That could certainly explain a lot.
Top 10 People Who Claimed To Be Time Travelers