From video games, to Disney movies, to livestock, to anime, we’re about to take you on a crash
course of some of the craziest things the Navy SEALs found inside Bin Laden’s compound
after he was shot dead.
First, the surprising, before we work our way up to the truly weird.
Emails and extensive diaries were found on Bin Laden’s computer, showing that - contrary
to popular belief - Bin Laden still had a lot more influence and control over al-Qaeda
than anyone believed.
He communicated with the group extensively through thousands of written correspondences,
issuing everything from strategic commands to religious fatwahs.
Bin Laden didn’t have an internet connection at the compound, so couriers would instead
take his written emails on a flash drive, and send them on from a local internet cafe.
That’s sure to get a laugh out of anyone who knows anything about cyber security.
We can only hope he was at least using a VPN.
Other deeply personal things soon became CIA property after the raid, including Bin Laden’s
personal diary and the wedding videos of his son, Hamza.
Incidentally, the wedding video actually had great strategic importance to US Intelligence.
It was widely believed that Hamza was being groomed to take his old man’s place at the
seat of the Al Qaeda table, but they hadn’t received any photos of him since he was a
child...until now.
This was presumably pretty useful intelligence, as Hamza Bin Laden was killed by US Forces
in Afghanistan between 2017 and 2019.
Okay, that’s all the serious stuff out of the way.
Now let’s get strange.
Did you know Bin Laden was very possibly a gamer?
While we can’t ever know who was playing or watching what on the al-Qaeda leader’s
computer, given he was cooped up for half a decade and had a multitude of video games
on his PC, it’s more than likely he used some of his favorite video games to blow off
some steam.
So what kind of games did this architect of terror like to indulge in?
A big one was Counter-Strike, the iconic multiplayer game where two teams play as either terrorist
or counter-terrorist groups in conflict with one another.
We can only wonder which team he preferred to play as - whether he continued to do what
he did best online, or if he decided to play as the counter-terrorists instead for a little
escapism.
He also had a pirated copy of Half Life on his computer, and there’s a kind of satisfaction
in knowing that he died before he ever got a chance to play Half Life: Alyx.
He also had Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, the puzzle game Zuma Deluxe, and Sniper Elite:
Nazi Zombie Army 2, because we guess even Bin Laden doesn’t approve of Nazis.
But he wasn’t just a PC Gamer.
Bin Laden also apparently loved a good emulated Nintendo DS game, because he had a whole bunch
of them.
These included classics like Super Mario Brothers, and Animal Crossing: Wild World.
Incidentally, he didn’t pay for official releases of any of these games.
The man truly was a monster.
But wait, it gets weirder!
Without going into too much detail, Bin Laden’s computer had a vast number of graphic screencaps
from 8-bit Japanese adult games from the late 1990s.
His computer also contained such classy file names as - and no, we’re not kidding - “_booby_2.JPEG”
and “HORSE_DANCE.flv.”
It must have been a very long five years.
Incidentally, Osama Bin Laden may have been an Otaku - the Japanese expression for someone
who’s incredibly enthusiastic about niche topics, more commonly used in the West to
describe someone heavily invested in Japanese culture and media.
Bin Laden had a vast collection of anime on his computer, including Dragon Ball, Detective
Conan, Bleach, and the little-known anime adaptation of the Devil May Cry Game series.
Incidentally, he also had a Dragon Ball video game, as well as Final Fantasy VII.
Doesn’t quite seem like a hobby befitting of a man who had the top spot on the FBI’s
most wanted list for years on end.
But enough about Japanese media.
For a guy who despised the West as much as Bin Laden, surely we couldn’t expect him
to indulge in anything as corrupt and sinful as Western TV and movies, right?
Not quite, as it turns out.
Bin Laden actually had a vast number of Western movies and TV shows, particularly cartoons.
These include Cars, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Chicken Little, and Antz.
There’s a real irony in a man as antisemitic as Osama Bin Laden owning a Woody Allen movie
about talking cartoon ants.
Because he probably needed a laugh during his five years of de facto house arrest, he
also kept several episodes of the cartoon Tom and Jerry on his computer, as well as
an episode of Mr. Bean.
He also had the movie adaptation of Resident Evil - which has made a number of viewers
wish a team of Navy SEALs would storm in and shoot them.
But he wasn’t all about the fiction.
Like many of you fine, intellectually-curious Infographics fans, he was also a lover of
documentaries.
These included Mysteries Of Egypt, Sex Crimes and the Vatican, BBC Battlefields, and Welcome
to the 11th Dimension - the final part of NOVA’s “Elegant Universe” series, a
surprising pick for a hardline religious fundamentalist.
But without a doubt, Bin Laden’s favorite documentary topic was...himself.
That’s right, Bin Laden had a large number of documentaries about himself and his crimes,
including Biography–Osama bin Laden and Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?
These presumably gave him a bit of a self-esteem boost whenever the isolation was getting too
much for him.
In the interest of balance, he also owned a copy of Loose Change 2, the 9/11 truther
documentary created by Alex Jones, suggesting the attack was an inside job.
We can only assume Bin Laden thought of this one as a dark comedy.
But looking at screens for all those years can really mess with your eyes.
What about when one of the most evil men on earth just wants to kick back and read a book
for a little while?
Bin Laden had a pretty vast and varied library, including books on American diplomatic and
foreign policy, including Noam Chomsky’s Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic
Societies and Bob Woodward’s Obama's Wars.
He was also a big fan of books on conspiracy theories, such as the illuminati and - of
course - 9/11 conspiracy theories.
He was truly the has-been one hit wonder of infamous international criminals.
And finally, some of the things on Bin Laden’s computer that were so odd they defy other
categories: Internet videos, pictures, and of course, memes.
And we’re talking ancient memes, too.
He had a saved copy of Charlie Bit My Finger, the popular viral video from 2007, a respectable
collection of funny and cute cat videos, and even an adorable picture of a stuffed monkey.
He also had a weirdly high number of crochet guide videos, including a guide to crocheting
an iPod sock.
It’s almost surreal to think that Bin Laden had these goofy videos on the same harddrive
as footage of al-Qaeda beheadings.
Bin Laden had a lot of saved YouTube videos on his computer before his death.
Thankfully, because we started making videos only a few months before his death back in
2011, there was nothing from The Infographics Show on that deeply cursed harddrive.
And finally, one of the strangest things of all on Bin Laden’s computer: His press-release
bloopers.
You may remember the sinister videos of Bin Laden sharing his ideologies and threats against
the West on VHS tapes, normally sitting in a cave and flanked by his al-Qaeda henchmen.
But while in the Abbottabad compound, Bin Laden filmed a number of practice videos that
never ended up getting released to the public - serving almost as a kind of al-Qaeda blooper
reel from the master of terror himself.
Personally, we can’t imagine it’ll be finding its way onto America’s Funniest
Home Videos any time soon.
And that’s all you need to know about the strangest things the Navy SEALs found in the
Abbottabad Compound, Good riddance, Bin Laden.
We’re sure they have a copy of Chicken Little in Hell.
Now go check out “FBI's Most Violent Most Wanted Of All Time” and “Worst Days In
The History of the World” for more videos involving this modern monster!