For some people, being average is the worst thing imaginable.
A life of mediocrity and never being remembered is a life not worth living apparently.
These people do anything and everything humanly possible to stand out from the crowd.
Whether it’s embracing the weirdness they were born with or seeking out extreme modifications
to make sure they get noticed, these unique people are turning heads wherever they go.
Ready to meet them?
Let’s get it on!
KAILASH SINGH Don’t believe everything you hear.
Kailash Singh desperately wanted a son, an heir to look after the family when he became
worm food.
After giving birth to a daughter, he sought the advice of a priest who told him that in
order to sire this highly prized son, he must forgo washing.
We feel sorry for his poor wife.
After 37 years and another 6 daughters he’s still yet to have a baby boy and wash.
He’s spent most of his days sweating it out in sweltering heat and smoking marijuana
in the evenings in an attempt to mask his pungent body odour that could strip the paint
off your living room wall.
He’s stiff competition for Iranian Amou Haji, a guy who hasn’t bathed in over 60
years who enjoys eating rotten meat in the form of roadkill, and smokes cigarettes made
from animal manure.
It’s enough to make you sick!
LARRY GOMEZ Sometimes being unique can’t be helped.
Larry Gomez was born with an extremely rare condition called hypertrichosis, causing him
to develop thick black hair on 98% of his body.
There have been fewer than 50 cases documented ever with a likelihood of it occurring in
just 1 in 10 billion people.
Remarkably, 15 of these documented cases include his brother, sister, and cousins.
Larry is officially the hairiest there has ever been – and has a Guinness world record
to prove it.
Instead of succumbing to the teases and taunts that plagued his youth, he’s made a life
for himself starring on television and the silver screen.
He has to shave his face with clippers every few weeks, as the hair on his eyelids grows
so long it partially blocks his vision.
As it turns out, the ladies love a furry man – and Larry has hinted that there are an
endless list of ladies looking to tame the heart of the real life wolfman.
KIRILL TERESHIN Kirill Tereshin is a Russian bodybuilder that
grew up idolising the spinach munching, damsel in distress saving sailor Popeye and decided
to model his entire physique around the lovable cartoon character.
Heavy weights in the gym and smashing down protein rich meals 8 times a day was taking
too long for Kirill to achieve the body look he wanted, so he decided to take a little
shortcut in the form of an oil called synthol.
By injecting a small amount into his arms, he found that his biceps grew an inch overnight.
This soon turned into a way of life, with litres of the substance injected into his
arms to achieve a size so massive they don’t even look real – instead resembling beachballs.
He’s become an Instagram sensation, and is a pretty big deal in Russia with people
stopping him in the street for a photo opportunity.
He even starred in the music video of pop singer Sultan Uragan.
NGUYEN VAN CHIEN Lockdowns courtesy of the global pandemic
have had a peculiar side effect – many people have decided to let themselves go, growing
long hair and beards now that office grooming guidelines have gone out the window.
But Nguyen Van Chien was letting his locks do their own thing 8 decades before it was
cool.
He follows a faith called Dua that is almost hardly practiced in the modern world anymore,
otherwise known as the coconut religion.
Believers are convinced that you must be what you’re born with untouched, and Nguyen has
taken it to the extreme.
He claims that if he cuts his hair, or even washes it, he would die.
Over 80 years of steadfast devotion has given him a massive, thick, 5-metre-long dreadlock
which looks like a vine that Tarzan would happily swing from as he makes his way through
the jungle to find Jane.
TED PARROTMAN RICHARDS Ted Richards has parrot fever.
And no, it’s not bird flu.
Turns out Ted really just likes birds, so much he wants to become one.
He has colourful feathers tattooed on his face, and now goes by the name of Ted Parrotman
after legally changing his name by deed poll.
He jokes that the hardest part of his transformation was changing his name on Facebook.
He’s even gone so far as to have his ears surgically removed for a more authentic look,
but overlooked one important issue – he now had nothing to hold the arms of his glasses.
He then had a subsequent surgery to insert synthetic lumps under his scalp just so he
could read the newspaper.
He ran the risk of potentially going blind in order to have his eyes coloured with ink
to more resemble his fine feathered friends.
ERIK LIZARDMAN SPRAGUE For Erik Sprague, the decision to make the
shift from homo sapiens to The Lizardman was a sudden and abrupt one.
Unlike many extreme body modifiers, he started off a cleanskin and quickly set himself to
the task of looking as reptilian as possible.
A few years and 700 hours in a tattoo chair later, his entire body was covered with green
scales – looking like a dragon straight out of a fairy tale.
Next up was a split bifurcated tongue, giving him a definitively snake-like appearance.
From there dental work to file down his teeth into sharp points, and bulbous subdermal implants
underneath his eyebrows, completed his ghastly transformation.
He doesn’t regret his decision, and enjoys his line of work working as an artist.
You can find him hanging objects from his many piercings and swallowing sharpened swords.
His signature trick is pushing a corkscrew into his nose, out of his mouth, and then
into a hole in his ear lobe.
Don’t try this at home kids.
NILANSHI PATEL Rapunzel had flowing golden hair so long that
it was arguably the hero of her story – allowing Prince Charming to scale up the wall into
the tower and save her.
Nilandshi Patel is proof that they do it better in the subcontinent, boasting hair six and
one quarter feet long.
It all started after a bad experience in a hair salon when she was only 6 years old.
Now 11 years later, her hair has grown unfettered – with her parents supportive of her lifestyle
choice, as well as being happy to pay a small fortune in hair care products, shampoo and
conditioner.
The trouble is that now her hair is so long, it trails behind her on the ground like the
train on a black wedding dress.
She has to wear high heeled shoes just to keep her luscious locks off the ground.
She’s now an international celebrity holding the Guinness record for longest hair on a
teenager, eyeing off China’s Xie Qiuping and her 18 and a half foot head of hair.
SHRIDHAR CHILLAL Long nails can be cool, after all, everyone’s
favourite of the X-Men is Wolverine.
Shridhar Chillal may not have adamantium claws, but he’s the owner of the world’s longest
nails.
He’s been on television showcasing his bizarre appendages for the better part of 40 years.
His nails have a combined length of 29 feet 10 inches.
The weight of the nails has permanently disfigured his hand, losing all motor function and dexterity.
When out in public he wears a protective covering to keep them safe.
He started growing his nails at 14 years old but recently the crippling pain in his hand,
arm, and neck from the weight of the nails was too much to take.
The beautician did away with nail clippers, instead pulling out an angle grinder to chop
off the nails.
They were then donated to Ripley's Believe It or Not, forever on display in their museum
in Times Square.
LUIS PADRON All Will Ferrell had to do to star in the
hit movie Elf was wear a pair of yellow leggings, a green tunic, and a little pointed hat.
Luis Padron had other plans, not content with wearing costumes and prosthetics to merely
play an elf – he wanted to become one.
He’s had over 40 cosmetic surgeries to date in order to undergo the extreme modifications
needed to reach the pinnacle of metamorphosis – a magical elf from outer space.
He explains that even as a young child, he knew he wanted to be an elf.
In particular, a space elf – a warrior of love and light, protecting the world from
evil aliens.
He used tales of fantasy to escape schoolyard bullying, and his fascination followed him
into adult life.
He’s spent countless thousands on shaping his face for a smoother, more aquiline look,
as well as reshaping his eyes to appear larger, more almond, and a permanent purple.
SADHU AMAR BHARATI We’ve all been there, waiving your arm up
in the air trying to get your teacher’s attention in class so long that a dull ache
and pins and needles start to set in.
Multiply this unpleasant feeling by 43 years and you might be able to imagine how Sadhu
Amar Bharati feels.
He’s had his arm up in the air for over 4 decades paying respect to Hindu deity Shiva,
never lowering it even once.
He left his job, wife, and children in order to further his devotion by living a life devoid
of luxury.
His arm looks like a gnarled tree branch covered in dry skin.
The muscle has wasted away, the joints permanently disfigured and fused together, and at the
end of this inhuman appendage lies his hand.
It looks like he’s holding some weird object, but those are just the twisted, mangled fingers
and black, uncut, claw-like nails that occupy the space where his hand used to be.