The 5 Most Insane Acts of Fan Dedication Ever

As the Internet seems to have been created solely to remind us, people really love the things they love to a degree that can safely be called "teeth-gnashingly defensive." But as the timeless Robert De Niro/Wesley Snipes fable The Fan has taught us, sometimes people love things too much and it crosses the line from unchecked enthusiasm into unsettling, or even terrifying, obsession. So please heed the following cautionary tales ...

#5. Man Gets Decades of Plastic Surgery to Look Like Superman

Ian Walton/Getty Images News/Getty Images

Here's what sucks about being so into Superman that you want to dress up as him: He doesn't wear a mask. Any dude can be, say, Batman, as long as he doesn't have any facial hair or a deformed mouth or something. But when you put on the Superman tights, you're still stuck with your regular ol' head, which by the way looks nothing like Superman's. For a Philippines native named Herbert Chavez, there was only one answer: surgery.

Yes, Chavez decided that he loved Superman so much that he would dedicate years of his life to expensive plastic surgeries designed to make him look more like his favorite alien vigilante, because he apparently only watched the first half of Single White Female and thought it was a buddy comedy. Here's what he looked like back in 1995, before he embarked on his epic face-butchering crusade:

Barcroft India via The Daily Mail
Well, he seems like a decent enough looking dude, surely it won't take that much to-

And here's what he looks like now. Cue the music!

Barcroft India via The Daily Mail

What you are looking at is the result of nearly two decades of cosmetic surgery, including nose resculpting, silicone lip injections, carving a butt crack into his chin with an angle grinder (we assume), and thigh implants. There are almost certainly more ingredients to this batshit cocktail, but those are the only ones Chavez will admit to.

The fruit of his labors looks more like a life-size action figure than Superman, although we admit that that might have been what he was going for.

Barcroft India via The Daily Mail
Thank God his parents didn't get him the Ninja Turtles pajamas he originally asked for.

Source articles indicate that he is a pageant trainer, which we assume is some kind of beauty pageant coach. If that's the case, it's entirely appropriate, considering that Chavez obviously inhabits a world of crippling insecurity. It's good to stick to what you know.

#4. Fans Lined Up Seven Weeks in Advance to See Revenge of the Sith ... at a Theater That Wasn't Playing It

Scott Gries/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

It probably won't surprise you much to learn that eager Star Wars fans began lining up outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre to see Episode III: Revenge of the Sith seven weeks prior to the film's opening night, because Star Wars is a series that demands optimistic dedication bordering on self-endangerment. Heck, Star Wars fans practically invented waiting in line for movies weeks ahead of time. The problem was, Grauman's Chinese Theatre wasn't scheduled to show Revenge of the Sith and had absolutely no intention of doing so, regardless of how many people in XXL Darth Vader costumes lined up in front of their box office.

Frank Micelotta/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
We find your lack of hygiene disturbing.

Employees of Grauman's explained this helpful bit of news to the gathering crowd several times, but the stubborn fans simply refused to believe it. Since every previous Star Wars film had opened at Grauman's, they reasoned that the final film in the series would do the same and that the theater's employees were merely trying to shoo them away with the misinformation (because a throng of people in homemade Jedi costumes leaning against the side of your building for two months just kind of looks like an army of homeless people).

Even though 20th Century Fox executives released a statement officially declaring that the film would be playing a mile across town at the ArcLight and not at Grauman's, the suspicious Star Wars fans refused to back up their banthas and move on, presumably because by this point in the prequel trilogy they expected to feel the sting of betrayal at every turn.

Chris Jackson/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
This is also known as the Walter Fielding strategy.

Finally, on the day of the film's release, a group of volunteers from ArcLight put on Stormtrooper costumes and literally herded the poor Grauman's refugees over to the correct theater so they could actually watch the movie.

#3. Woman Goes into Labor During Playoff Hockey Game and Refuses to Leave

Monkey Business Images/Monkey

Earlier this year, the very-pregnant-and-due-any-day-now Donna Lebano was attending Game 5 of an NHL playoff series between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Minnesota Wild when she began to have contractions during the game's second period, as if the baby was so bored by the sport that he wanted to get the hell out of the arena.

Ilya Andriyanov/iStock/Getty Images
They've used the same gate re-entry stamp since 1976.

However, rather than alert her three sisters to the impending miracle about to tiger uppercut its way out of her lady parts and allow them to take her to the hospital, she decided to ignore the child-bearing rumblings in her abdomen and finish watching the game, because her dedication and responsibility to the Chicago Blackhawks was infinitely more important to her than her dedication and responsibility to her unborn child.

Keep in mind that each period in the NHL lasts 20 minutes, and intermissions between periods are 17 minutes long, meaning that Lebano sat in her seat surrounded by screaming, drunken Chicagoans and pretended she wasn't giving birth for about an hour. Only when the game finally ended and the Blackhawks were victorious did she allow herself to be taken to the hospital and grant life to the infant frantically trying to crawl its way out of her womb before it drowned and/or suffocated.

Donna Lebano via WQAD
At least it wasn't a Red Wings game, where the slimy newborn would have been mistaken for an octopus and thrown onto the ice.

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