During a recent White House press event on manufacturing innovations, President Obama announced that the U.S. government is working on an "Iron Man" project, then retracted his statement and tried to play it off as a joke by saying "it's classified." But who hasn't heard that before?

These humorous, and sometimes disturbing, anecdotes shared in various boards on 4chan have spawned a slew of variations involving spaghetti, spontaneous exploding candy, the retailer Gamestop and male patronage.

Shortly after Jeff Gordon's test-drive prank video went viral last March, Jalopnik blogger Travis Okulski expressed skepticism about its authenticity during a TV appearance. Almost a year later, the NASCAR champion decided to turn the table on him by picking him up for a surprise ride while posed as an ex-con fugitive taxi driver.

First coined by Indian Jones fans to poke fun at a silly plot device involving a nuke-proof refrigerator in the 2008 film Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, this phrase has since been used to indicate that a blockbuster franchise has started going downhill under the weight of special effects overload.