title: Cat

text: Cats have seven cervical vertebrae (as do most mammals); 13 thoracic vertebrae (humans have 12); seven lumbar vertebrae (humans have five); three sacral vertebrae (as do most mammals, but humans have five); and a variable number of caudal vertebrae in the tail (humans have only three to five vestigial caudal vertebrae, fused into an internal coccyx). The extra lumbar and thoracic vertebrae account for the cat's spinal mobility and flexibility. Attached to the spine are 13 ribs, the shoulder, and the pelvis. Unlike human arms, cat forelimbs are attached to the shoulder by free-floating clavicle bones which allow them to pass their body through any space into which they can fit their head.


title: Cat

text: The cat skull is unusual among mammals in having very large eye sockets and a powerful specialized jaw. Within the jaw, cats have teeth adapted for killing prey and tearing meat. When it overpowers its prey, a cat delivers a lethal neck bite with its two long canine teeth, inserting them between two of the prey's vertebrae and severing its spinal cord, causing irreversible paralysis and death. Compared to other felines, domestic cats have narrowly spaced canine teeth relative to the size of their jaw, which is an adaptation to their preferred prey of small rodents, which have small vertebrae.


title: Cat

text: The premolar and first molar together compose the carnassial pair on each side of the mouth, which efficiently shears meat into small pieces, like a pair of scissors. These are vital in feeding, since cats' small molars cannot chew food effectively, and cats are largely incapable of mastication. Although cats tend to have better teeth than most humans, with decay generally less likely because of a thicker protective layer of enamel, a less damaging saliva, less retention of food particles between teeth, and a diet mostly devoid of sugar, they are nonetheless subject to occasional tooth loss and infection.


title: Cat

text: Cats have protractible and retractable claws. In their normal, relaxed position, the claws are sheathed with the skin and fur around the paw's toe pads. This keeps the claws sharp by preventing wear from contact with the ground and allows for the silent stalking of prey. The claws on the forefeet are typically sharper than those on the hindfeet. Cats can voluntarily extend their claws on one or more paws. They may extend their claws in hunting or self-defense, climbing, kneading, or for extra traction on soft surfaces. Cats shed the outside layer of their claw sheaths when scratching rough surfaces.


title: Cat

text: Most cats have five claws on their front paws and four on their rear paws. The dewclaw is proximal to the other claws. More proximally is a protrusion which appears to be a sixth "finger". This special feature of the front paws on the inside of the wrists has no function in normal walking but is thought to be an antiskidding device used while jumping. Some cat breeds are prone to having extra digits ("polydactyly"). Polydactylous cats occur along North America's northeast coast and in Great Britain.


title: Cat

text: The cat is digitigrade. It walks on the toes, with the bones of the feet making up the lower part of the visible leg. Unlike most mammals, it uses a "pacing" gait and moves both legs on one side of the body before the legs on the other side. It registers directly by placing each hind paw close to the track of the corresponding fore paw, minimizing noise and visible tracks. This also provides sure footing for hind paws when navigating rough terrain. As it speeds up from walking to trotting, its gait changes to a "diagonal" gait: The diagonally opposite hind and fore legs move simultaneously.


title: Cat

text: Most breeds of cat are notably fond of sitting in high places, or "perching". A higher place may serve as a concealed site from which to hunt; domestic cats strike prey by pouncing from a perch such as a tree branch. Another possible explanation is that height gives the cat a better observation point, allowing it to survey its territory. A cat falling from heights of up to can right itself and land on its paws.


title: Cat

text: During a fall from a high place, a cat reflexively twists its body and rights itself to land on its feet using its acute sense of balance and flexibility. This reflex is known as the cat righting reflex. A cat always rights itself in the same way during a fall, if it has enough time to do so, which is the case in falls of or more. How cats are able to right themselves when falling has been investigated as the "falling cat problem".


title: Cat

text: The cat family (Felidae) can pass down many colors and patterns to their offsprings. The domestic cat genes "MC1R" and "ASIP" allow for the variety of color in coats. The feline ASIP gene consists of three coding exons. Three novel microsatellite markers linked to ASIP were isolated from a domestic cat BAC clone containing this gene and were used to perform linkage analysis in a pedigree of 89 domestic cats that segregated for melanism.


title: Cat

text: Cats have excellent night vision and can see at only one-sixth the light level required for human vision. This is partly the result of cat eyes having a "tapetum lucidum", which reflects any light that passes through the retina back into the eye, thereby increasing the eye's sensitivity to dim light. Large pupils are an adaptation to dim light. The domestic cat has slit pupils, which allow it to focus bright light without chromatic aberration. At low light, a cat's pupils expand to cover most of the exposed surface of its eyes. The domestic cat has rather poor color vision and only two types of cone cells, optimized for sensitivity to blue and yellowish green; its ability to distinguish between red and green is limited. A response to middle wavelengths from a system other than the rod cells might be due to a third type of cone. This appears to be an adaptation to low light levels rather than representing true trichromatic vision. Cats also have a nictitating membrane, allowing them to blink without hindering their vision.


title: Cat

text: The domestic cat's hearing is most acute in the range of 500 Hz to 32 kHz. It can detect an extremely broad range of frequencies ranging from 55 Hz to 79 kHz. It can hear a range of 10.5 octaves, while humans and dogs can hear ranges of about 9 octaves.


title: Cat

text: Its hearing sensitivity is enhanced by its large movable outer ears, the pinnae, which amplify sounds and help detect the location of a noise. It can detect ultrasound, which enables it to detect ultrasonic calls made by rodent prey. Recent research has shown that cats have socio-spatial cognitive abilities to create mental maps of owners' locations based on hearing owners' voices.


title: Cat

text: Cats have an acute sense of smell, due in part to their well-developed olfactory bulb and a large surface of olfactory mucosa, about in area, which is about twice that of humans. Cats and many other animals have a Jacobson's organ in their mouths that is used in the behavioral process of flehmening. It allows them to sense certain aromas in a way that humans cannot. Cats are sensitive to pheromones such as 3-mercapto-3-methylbutan-1-ol, which they use to communicate through urine spraying and marking with scent glands. Many cats also respond strongly to plants that contain nepetalactone, especially catnip, as they can detect that substance at less than one part per billion. About 70–80% of cats are affected by nepetalactone. This response is also produced by other plants, such as silver vine ("Actinidia polygama") and the herb valerian; it may be caused by the smell of these plants mimicking a pheromone and stimulating cats' social or sexual behaviors.


title: Cat

text: Cats have relatively few taste buds compared to humans (470 or so versus more than 9,000 on the human tongue). Domestic and wild cats share a taste receptor gene mutation that keeps their sweet taste buds from binding to sugary molecules, leaving them with no ability to taste sweetness. Their taste buds instead respond to acids, amino acids like protein, and bitter tastes. Cats also have a distinct temperature preference for their food, preferring food with a temperature around which is similar to that of a fresh kill and routinely rejecting food presented cold or refrigerated (which would signal to the cat that the "prey" item is long dead and therefore possibly toxic or decomposing).


title: Cat

text: To aid with navigation and sensation, cats have dozens of movable whiskers (vibrissae) over their body, especially their faces. These provide information on the width of gaps and on the location of objects in the dark, both by touching objects directly and by sensing air currents; they also trigger protective blink reflexes to protect the eyes from damage.


title: Cat

text: Outdoor cats are active both day and night, although they tend to be slightly more active at night. Domestic cats spend the majority of their time in the vicinity of their homes but can range many hundreds of meters from this central point. They establish territories that vary considerably in size, in one study ranging from . The timing of cats' activity is quite flexible and varied, which means house cats may be more active in the morning and evening, as a response to greater human activity at these times.


title: Cat

text: Cats conserve energy by sleeping more than most animals, especially as they grow older. The daily duration of sleep varies, usually between 12 and 16 hours, with 13 and 14 being the average. Some cats can sleep as much as 20 hours. The term "cat nap" for a short rest refers to the cat's tendency to fall asleep (lightly) for a brief period. While asleep, cats experience short periods of rapid eye movement sleep often accompanied by muscle twitches, which suggests they are dreaming.


title: Cat

text: The social behavior of the domestic cat ranges from widely dispersed individuals to feral cat colonies that gather around a food source, based on groups of co-operating females. Within such groups, one cat is usually dominant over the others. Each cat in a colony holds a distinct territory, with sexually active males having the largest territories, which are about 10 times larger than those of female cats and may overlap with several females' territories. These territories are marked by urine spraying, by rubbing objects at head height with secretions from facial glands, and by defecation. Between these territories are neutral areas where cats watch and greet one another without territorial conflicts. Outside these neutral areas, territory holders usually chase away stranger cats, at first by staring, hissing, and growling and, if that does not work, by short but noisy and violent attacks. Despite this colonial organization, cats do not have a social survival strategy or a pack mentality, and always hunt alone.


title: Cat

text: Life in proximity to humans and other domestic animals has led to a symbiotic social adaptation in cats, and cats may express great affection toward humans or other animals. Ethologically, a cat's human keeper functions as if a mother surrogate. Adult cats live their lives in a kind of extended kittenhood, a form of behavioral neoteny. Their high-pitched sounds may mimic the cries of a hungry human infant, making them particularly difficult for humans to ignore. Some pet cats are poorly socialized. In particular, older cats show aggressiveness toward newly arrived kittens, which include biting and scratching; this type of behavior is known as feline asocial aggression.


title: Cat

text: Redirected aggression is a common form of aggression which can occur in multiple cat households. In redirected aggression there is usually something that agitates the cat: this could be a sight, sound, or another source of stimuli which causes a heightened level of anxiety or arousal. If the cat cannot attack the stimuli, it may direct anger elsewhere by attacking or directing aggression to the nearest cat, dog, human or other being.


title: Cat

text: Domestic cats' scent rubbing behavior toward humans or other cats is thought to be a feline means for social bonding.


title: Cat

text: Domestic cats use many vocalizations for communication, including purring, trilling, hissing, growling/snarling, grunting, and several different forms of meowing. Their body language, including position of ears and tail, relaxation of the whole body, and kneading of the paws, are all indicators of mood. The tail and ears are particularly important social signal mechanisms in cats. A raised tail indicates a friendly greeting, and flattened ears indicates hostility. Tail-raising also indicates the cat's position in the group's social hierarchy, with dominant individuals raising their tails less often than subordinate ones. Feral cats are generally silent. Nose-to-nose touching is also a common greeting and may be followed by social grooming, which is solicited by one of the cats raising and tilting its head.


title: Cat

text: Purring may have developed as an evolutionary advantage as a signaling mechanism of reassurance between mother cats and nursing kittens, who are thought to use it as a care-soliciting signal.


title: Cat

text: Post-nursing cats also often purr as a sign of contentment: when being petted, becoming relaxed, or eating. Even though purring as popularly interpreted as indicative of pleasure, it has been recorded in a wide variety of circumstances, most of which involve physical contact between the cat and another, presumably trusted individual. Some cats have been observed to purr continuously when


title: Cat

text: The exact mechanism by which cats purr has long been elusive, but it has been proposed that purring is generated via a series of sudden build-ups and releases of pressure as the glottis is opened and closed, which causes the vocal folds to separate forcefully. The laryngeal muscles in control of the glottis


title: Cat

text: are thought to be driven by a neural oscillator which generates a cycle of contraction and release every 30-40


title: Cat

text: Cats are known for spending considerable amounts of time licking their coats to keep them clean. The cat's tongue has backward-facing spines about 500 μm long, which are called papillae. These contain keratin which makes them rigid so the papillae act like a hairbrush. Some cats, particularly longhaired cats, occasionally regurgitate hairballs of fur that have collected in their stomachs from grooming. These clumps of fur are usually sausage-shaped and about long. Hairballs can be prevented with remedies that ease elimination of the hair through the gut, as well as regular grooming of the coat with a comb or stiff brush.


title: Cat

text: Among domestic cats, males are more likely to fight than females. Among feral cats, the most common reason for cat fighting is competition between two males to mate with a female. In such cases, most fights are won by the heavier male. Another common reason for fighting in domestic cats is the difficulty of establishing territories within a small home. Female cats also fight over territory or to defend their kittens. Neutering will decrease or eliminate this behavior in many cases, suggesting that the behavior is linked to sex hormones.


title: Cat

text: When cats become aggressive, they try to make themselves appear larger and more threatening by raising their fur, arching their backs, turning sideways and hissing or spitting. Often, the ears are pointed down and back to avoid damage to the inner ear and potentially listen for any changes behind them while focused forward. Cats may also vocalize loudly and bare their teeth in an effort to further intimidate their opponents. Fights usually consist of grappling and delivering powerful slaps to the face and body with the forepaws as well as bites. Cats also throw themselves to the ground in a defensive posture to rake their opponent's belly with their powerful hind legs.


title: Cat

text: Serious damage is rare, as the fights are usually short in duration, with the loser running away with little more than a few scratches to the face and ears. Fights for mating rights are typically more severe and injuries may include deep puncture wounds and lacerations. Normally, serious injuries from fighting are limited to infections of scratches and bites, though these can occasionally kill cats if untreated. In addition, bites are probably the main route of transmission of feline immunodeficiency virus. Sexually active males are usually involved in many fights during their lives, and often have decidedly battered faces with obvious scars and cuts to their ears and nose. Cats are willing to threaten animals larger than them to defend their territory, such as dogs and foxes.


title: Cat

text: The shape and structure of cats' cheeks is insufficient to allow them to take in liquids using suction. Therefore, when drinking they lap with the tongue to draw liquid upward into their mouths. Lapping at a rate of four times a second, the cat touches the smooth tip of its tongue to the surface of the water, and quickly retracts it like a corkscrew, drawing water upward.


title: Cat

text: Feral cats and free-fed house cats consume several small meals in a day. The frequency and size of meals varies between individuals. They select food based on its temperature, smell and texture; they dislike chilled foods and respond most strongly to moist foods rich in amino acids, which are similar to meat. Cats reject novel flavors (a response termed neophobia) and learn quickly to avoid foods that have tasted unpleasant in the past. It is also a common misconception that cats like milk/cream, as they tend to avoid sweet food and milk. Most adult cats are lactose intolerant; the sugar in milk is not easily digested and may cause soft stools or diarrhea. Some also develop odd eating habits and like to eat or chew on things like wool, plastic, cables, paper, string, aluminum foil, or even coal. This condition, pica, can threaten their health, depending on the amount and toxicity of the items eaten.


title: Cat

text: Cats hunt small prey, primarily birds and rodents, and are often used as a form of pest control. Cats use two hunting strategies, either stalking prey actively, or waiting in ambush until an animal comes close enough to be captured. The strategy used depends on the prey species in the area, with cats waiting in ambush outside burrows, but tending to actively stalk birds. Domestic cats are a major predator of wildlife in the United States, killing an estimated 1.3 to 4.0 billion birds and 6.3 to 22.3 billion mammals annually.


title: Cat

text: Certain species appear more susceptible than others; in one English village, for example, 30% of house sparrow mortality was linked to the domestic cat. In the recovery of ringed robins ("Erithacus rubecula") and dunnocks ("Prunella modularis") in Britain, 31% of deaths were a result of cat predation. In parts of North America, the presence of larger carnivores such as coyotes which prey on cats and other small predators reduces the effect of predation by cats and other small predators such as opossums and raccoons on bird numbers and variety.


title: Cat

text: Perhaps the best-known element of cats' hunting behavior, which is commonly misunderstood and often appalls cat owners because it looks like torture, is that cats often appear to "play" with prey by releasing and recapturing it. This cat and mouse behavior is due to an instinctive imperative to ensure that the prey is weak enough to be killed without endangering the cat.


title: Cat

text: Another poorly understood element of cat hunting behavior is the presentation of prey to human guardians. One explanation is that cats adopt humans into their social group and share excess kill with others in the group according to the dominance hierarchy, in which humans are reacted to as if they are at or near the top. Another explanation is that they attempt to teach their guardians to hunt or to help their human as if feeding "an elderly cat, or an inept kitten". This hypothesis is inconsistent with the fact that male cats also bring home prey, despite males having negligible involvement in raising kittens.


title: Cat

text: Domestic cats, especially young kittens, are known for their love of play. This behavior mimics hunting and is important in helping kittens learn to stalk, capture, and kill prey. Cats also engage in play fighting, with each other and with humans. This behavior may be a way for cats to practice the skills needed for real combat, and might also reduce any fear they associate with launching attacks on other animals.


title: Cat

text: Cats also tend to play with toys more when they are hungry. Owing to the close similarity between play and hunting, cats prefer to play with objects that resemble prey, such as small furry toys that move rapidly, but rapidly lose interest. They become habituated to a toy they have played with before. String is often used as a toy, but if it is eaten, it can become caught at the base of the cat's tongue and then move into the intestines, a medical emergency which can cause serious illness, even death. Owing to the risks posed by cats eating string, it is sometimes replaced with a laser pointer's dot, which cats may chase.


title: Cat

text: Female cats, called queens, are polyestrous with several estrus cycles during a year, lasting usually 21 days. They are usually ready to mate between early February and August.


title: Cat

text: Several males, called tomcats, are attracted to a female in heat. They fight over her, and the victor wins the right to mate. At first, the female rejects the male, but eventually, the female allows the male to mate. The female utters a loud yowl as the male pulls out of her because a male cat's penis has a band of about 120–150 backward-pointing penile spines, which are about long; upon withdrawal of the penis, the spines may provide the female with increased sexual stimulation, which acts to induce ovulation.


title: Cat

text: After mating, the female cleans her vulva thoroughly. If a male attempts to mate with her at this point, the female attacks him. After about 20 to 30 minutes, once the female is finished grooming, the cycle will repeat. Because ovulation is not always triggered by a single mating, females may not be impregnated by the first male with which they mate. Furthermore, cats are superfecund; that is, a female may mate with more than one male when she is in heat, with the result that different kittens in a litter may have different fathers.


title: Cat

text: The morula forms 124 hours after conception. At 148 hours, early blastocysts form. At 10–12 days, implantation occurs. The gestation of queens lasts between 64 and 67 days, with an average of 65 days.


title: Cat

text: Data on the reproductive capacity of more than 2,300 free-ranging queens were collected during a study between May 1998 and October 2000. They had one to six kittens per litter, with an average of three kittens. They produced a mean of 1.4 litters per year, but a maximum of three litters in a year. Of 169 kittens, 127 died before they were six months old due to a trauma caused in most cases by dog attacks and road accidents.


title: Cat

text: The first litter is usually smaller than subsequent litters. Kittens are weaned between six and seven weeks of age. Queens normally reach sexual maturity at 5–10 months, and males at 5–7 months. This varies depending on breed. Kittens reach puberty at the age of 9–10 months.


title: Cat

text: Cats are ready to go to new homes at about 12 weeks of age, when they are ready to leave their mother. They can be surgically sterilized (spayed or castrated) as early as seven weeks to limit unwanted reproduction. This surgery also prevents undesirable sex-related behavior, such as aggression, territory marking (spraying urine) in males and yowling (calling) in females. Traditionally, this surgery was performed at around six to nine months of age, but it is increasingly being performed before puberty, at about three to six months. In the United States, about 80% of household cats are neutered.


title: Cat

text: The average lifespan of pet cats has risen in recent decades. In the early 1980s, it was about seven years, rising to 9.4 years in 1995 and about 15 years in 2021. Some cats have been reported as surviving into their 30s, with the oldest known cat, Creme Puff, dying at a verified age of 38.


title: Cat

text: Neutering increases life expectancy: one study found castrated male cats live twice as long as intact males, while spayed female cats live 62% longer than intact females. Having a cat neutered confers health benefits, because castrated males cannot develop testicular cancer, spayed females cannot develop uterine or ovarian cancer, and both have a reduced risk of mammary cancer.


title: Cat

text: About 250 heritable genetic disorders have been identified in cats, many similar to human inborn errors of metabolism. The high level of similarity among the metabolism of mammals allows many of these feline diseases to be diagnosed using genetic tests that were originally developed for use in humans, as well as the use of cats as animal models in the study of the human diseases. Diseases affecting domestic cats include acute infections, parasitic infestations, injuries, and chronic diseases such as kidney disease, thyroid disease, and arthritis. Vaccinations are available for many infectious diseases, as are treatments to eliminate parasites such as worms, ticks, and fleas.


title: Cat

text: The domestic cat is a cosmopolitan species and occurs across much of the world. It is adaptable and now present on all continents except Antarctica, and on 118 of the 131 main groups of islands, even on the isolated Kerguelen Islands. Due to its ability to thrive in almost any terrestrial habitat, it is among the world's most invasive species. It lives on small islands with no human inhabitants. Feral cats can live in forests, grasslands, tundra, coastal areas, agricultural land, scrublands, urban areas, and wetlands.


title: Cat

text: The unwantedness that leads to the domestic cat being treated as an invasive species is twofold. On one hand, as it is little altered from the wildcat, it can readily interbreed with the wildcat. This hybridization poses a danger to the genetic distinctiveness of some wildcat populations, particularly in Scotland and Hungary, possibly also the Iberian Peninsula, and where protected natural areas are close to human-dominated landscapes, such as Kruger National Park in South Africa. On the other hand, and perhaps more obviously, its introduction to places where no native felines are present contributes to the decline of native species.


title: Cat

text: Feral cats are domestic cats that were born in or have reverted to a wild state. They are unfamiliar with and wary of humans and roam freely in urban and rural areas. The numbers of feral cats is not known, but estimates of the United States feral population range from 25 to 60 million. Feral cats may live alone, but most are found in large colonies, which occupy a specific territory and are usually associated with a source of food. Famous feral cat colonies are found in Rome around the Colosseum and Forum Romanum, with cats at some of these sites being fed and given medical attention by volunteers.


title: Cat

text: Public attitudes toward feral cats vary widely, from seeing them as free-ranging pets to regarding them as vermin.


title: Cat

text: Some feral cats can be successfully socialized and 're-tamed' for adoption; young cats, especially kittens and cats that have had prior experience and contact with humans are the most receptive to these efforts.


title: Cat

text: On islands, birds can contribute as much as 60% of a cat's diet. In nearly all cases, the cat cannot be identified as the sole cause for reducing the numbers of island birds, and in some instances, eradication of cats has caused a "mesopredator release" effect; where the suppression of top carnivores creates an abundance of smaller predators that cause a severe decline in their shared prey. Domestic cats are a contributing factor to the decline of many species, a factor that has ultimately led, in some cases, to extinction. The South Island piopio, Chatham rail, and the New Zealand merganser are a few from a long list, with the most extreme case being the flightless Lyall's wren, which was driven to extinction only a few years after its discovery.


title: Cat

text: One feral cat in New Zealand killed 102 New Zealand lesser short-tailed bats in seven days. In the US, feral and free-ranging domestic cats kill an estimated 6.3 – 22.3 billion mammals annually.


title: Cat

text: In Australia, the impact of cats on mammal populations is even greater than the impact of habitat loss. More than one million reptiles are killed by feral cats each day, representing 258 species. Cats have contributed to the extinction of the Navassa curly-tailed lizard and "Chioninia coctei."


title: Cat

text: Cats are common pets throughout the world, and their worldwide population as of 2007 exceeded 500 million. Cats have been used for millennia to control rodents, notably around grain stores and aboard ships, and both uses extend to the present day.


title: Cat

text: As well as being kept as pets, cats are also used in the international fur trade and leather industries for making coats, hats, blankets, and stuffed toys; and shoes, gloves, and musical instruments respectively (about 24 cats are needed to make a cat-fur coat). This use has been outlawed in the United States since 2000 and in the European Union (as well as the United Kingdom) since 2007.


title: Cat

text: Cat pelts have been used for superstitious purposes as part of the practice of witchcraft, and are still made into blankets in Switzerland as traditional medicine thought to cure rheumatism.


title: Cat

text: A few attempts to build a cat census have been made over the years, both through associations or national and international organizations (such as that of the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies) and over the Internet, but such a task does not seem simple to achieve. General estimates for the global population of domestic cats range widely from anywhere between 200 million to 600 million. Walter Chandoha made his career photographing cats after his 1949 images of "Loco", an especially charming stray taken in, were published around the world. He is reported to have photographed 90,000 cats during his career and maintained an archive of 225,000 images that he drew from for publications during his lifetime.


title: Cat

text: A cat show is a judged event in which the owners of cats compete to win titles in various cat-registering organizations by entering their cats to be judged after a breed standard. It is often required that a cat must be healthy and vaccinated in order to participate in a cat show. Both pedigreed and non-purebred companion ("moggy") cats are admissible, although the rules differ depending on the organization. Competing cats are compared to the applicable breed standard, and assessed for temperament.


title: Cat

text: Cats can be infected or infested with viruses, bacteria, fungus, protozoans, arthropods or worms that can transmit diseases to humans. In some cases, the cat exhibits no symptoms of the disease. The same disease can then become evident in a human. The likelihood that a person will become diseased depends on the age and immune status of the person. Humans who have cats living in their home or in close association are more likely to become infected. Others might also acquire infections from cat feces and parasites exiting the cat's body. Some of the infections of most concern include salmonella, cat-scratch disease and toxoplasmosis.


title: Cat

text: In ancient Egypt, cats were worshipped, and the goddess Bastet often depicted in cat form, sometimes taking on the war-like aspect of a lioness. The Greek historian Herodotus reported that killing a cat was forbidden, and when a household cat died, the entire family mourned and shaved their eyebrows. Families took their dead cats to the sacred city of Bubastis, where they were embalmed and buried in sacred repositories. Herodotus expressed astonishment at the domestic cats in Egypt, because he had only ever seen wildcats.


title: Cat

text: Ancient Greeks and Romans kept weasels as pets, which were seen as the ideal rodent-killers. The earliest unmistakable evidence of the Greeks having domestic cats comes from two coins from Magna Graecia dating to the mid-fifth century BC showing Iokastos and Phalanthos, the legendary founders of Rhegion and Taras respectively, playing with their pet cats. The usual ancient Greek word for 'cat' was , meaning 'thing with the waving tail'. Cats are rarely mentioned in ancient Greek literature. Aristotle remarked in his "History of Animals" that "female cats are naturally lecherous." The Greeks later syncretized their own goddess Artemis with the Egyptian goddess Bastet, adopting Bastet's associations with cats and ascribing them to Artemis. In Ovid's "Metamorphoses", when the deities flee to Egypt and take animal forms, the goddess Diana turns into a cat.


title: Cat

text: Cats eventually displaced weasels as the pest control of choice because they were more pleasant to have around the house and were more enthusiastic hunters of mice. During the Middle Ages, many of Artemis's associations with cats were grafted onto the Virgin Mary. Cats are often shown in icons of Annunciation and of the Holy Family and, according to Italian folklore, on the same night that Mary gave birth to Jesus, a cat in Bethlehem gave birth to a kitten. Domestic cats were spread throughout much of the rest of the world during the Age of Discovery, as ships' cats were carried on sailing ships to control shipboard rodents and as good-luck charms.


title: Cat

text: Several ancient religions believed cats are exalted souls, companions or guides for humans, that are all-knowing but mute so they cannot influence decisions made by humans. In Japan, the cat is a symbol of good fortune. In Norse mythology, Freyja, the goddess of love, beauty, and fertility, is depicted as riding a chariot drawn by cats. In Jewish legend, the first cat was living in the house of the first man Adam as a pet that got rid of mice. The cat was once partnering with the first dog before the latter broke an oath they had made which resulted in enmity between the descendants of these two animals. It is also written that neither cats nor foxes are represented in the water, while every other animal has an incarnation species in the water. Although no species are sacred in Islam, cats are revered by Muslims. Some Western writers have stated Muhammad had a favorite cat, "Muezza". He is reported to have loved cats so much, "he would do without his cloak rather than disturb one that was sleeping on it". The story has no origin in early Muslim writers, and seems to confuse a story of a later Sufi saint, Ahmed ar-Rifa'i, centuries after Muhammad. One of the companions of Muhammad was known as Abu Hurayrah ("father of the kitten"), in reference to his documented affection to cats.


title: Cat

text: Many cultures have negative superstitions about cats. An example would be the belief that encountering a black cat ("crossing one's path") leads to bad luck, or that cats are witches' familiars used to augment a witch's powers and skills. The killing of cats in Medieval Ypres, Belgium, is commemorated in the innocuous present-day Kattenstoet (cat parade). In mid-16th century France, cats would be burnt alive as a form of entertainment. According to Norman Davies, the assembled people "shrieked with laughter as the animals, howling with pain, were singed, roasted, and finally carbonized".


title: Cat

text: James Frazer wrote that "It was the custom to burn a basket, barrel, or sack full of live cats, which was hung from a tall mast in the midst of the bonfire; sometimes a fox was burned. The people collected the embers and ashes of the fire and took them home, believing that they brought good luck. The French kings often witnessed these spectacles and even lit the bonfire with their own hands. In 1648 Louis XIV, crowned with a wreath of roses and carrying a bunch of roses in his hand, kindled the fire, danced at it and partook of the banquet afterwards in the town hall. But this was the last occasion when a monarch presided at the midsummer bonfire in Paris. At Metz midsummer fires were lighted with great pomp on the esplanade, and a dozen cats, enclosed in wicker cages, were burned alive in them, to the amusement of the people. Similarly, at Gap, in the department of the Hautes-Alpes, cats used to be roasted over the midsummer bonfire."


title: Cat

text: According to a myth in many cultures, cats have multiple lives. In many countries, they are believed to have nine lives, but in Italy, Germany, Greece, Brazil and some Spanish-speaking regions, they are said to have seven lives, while in Arabic traditions, the number of lives is six. The myth is attributed to the natural suppleness and swiftness cats exhibit to escape life-threatening situations. Also lending credence to this myth is the fact that falling cats often land on their feet, using an instinctive righting reflex to twist their bodies around. Nonetheless, cats can still be injured or killed by a high fall.


title: Stranger Things

text: Stranger Things is an American science fiction horror drama television series created by the Duffer Brothers, who also serve as showrunners and are executive producers along with Shawn Levy and Dan Cohen. Produced by Monkey Massacre Productions and Levy's 21 Laps Entertainment, the first season was released on Netflix on July 15, 2016. Its second, third, and fourth seasons followed in October 2017, July 2019, and May and July 2022, respectively. In February 2022, the series was renewed for a fifth and final season.


title: Stranger Things

text: Set in the 1980s, primarily in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, the series centers on a number of mysteries and supernatural events occurring around the town and their impact on an ensemble of child and adult characters. It stars Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Cara Buono, Matthew Modine, Noah Schnapp, Sadie Sink, Joe Keery, Dacre Montgomery, Sean Astin, Paul Reiser, Maya Hawke, Priah Ferguson, and Brett Gelman.


title: Stranger Things

text: The Duffer Brothers developed "Stranger Things" as a mix of investigative drama and supernatural elements portrayed with horror and childlike sensibilities, while infusing references to the pop culture of the 1980s. Several thematic and directorial elements were inspired by the works of Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter, David Lynch, Stephen King, Wes Craven and H. P. Lovecraft. They also took inspiration from experiments conducted during the Cold War and conspiracy theories involving secret government experiments.


title: Stranger Things

text: One of Netflix's flagship series, "Stranger Things" has attracted record viewership on the streaming platform. The series has been critically acclaimed for its characterization, atmosphere, acting, soundtrack, directing, writing, and homages to 1980s films. It has received numerous awards and nominations, including nominations from the Golden Globe Awards, British Academy Television Awards, Directors Guild of America Awards, Writers Guild of America Awards, and Grammy Awards, as well as wins from the Primetime Emmy Awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards, American Film Institute, Critics' Choice Television Awards, and People's Choice Awards.


title: Stranger Things

text: "Stranger Things" is set in the fictional rural town of Hawkins, Indiana, during the 1980s. The nearby Hawkins National Laboratory ostensibly performs scientific research for the United States Department of Energy, but secretly does experiments into the paranormal and supernatural, including those that involve human test subjects. Inadvertently, they have created a portal to an alternate dimension, "the Upside Down." The influence of the Upside Down starts to affect the unknowing residents of Hawkins in calamitous ways.


title: Stranger Things

text: The first season begins in November 1983. Will Byers is abducted by a creature from the Upside Down. His mother, Joyce; the town's police chief, Jim Hopper; and a group of volunteers search for him. A young psychokinetic girl named Eleven escapes from the laboratory and is found by friends of Will. Eleven befriends and assists them in their efforts to find Will.


title: Stranger Things

text: The second season is set a year later in October 1984. Will has been rescued, but he begins having premonitions of the fall of Hawkins caused by a creature in the Upside Down. When it is discovered that Will is still being possessed by an entity from the Upside Down, his friends and family learn that there is a larger threat to their world.


title: Stranger Things

text: The third season is set several months later, in the days leading up to the Fourth of July celebration in 1985. The new Starcourt Mall has become the center of attention for Hawkins residents, putting the majority of other local stores out of business due to the mall's popularity. Hopper becomes increasingly concerned about Eleven and Mike's relationship and becomes very protective of his daughter. Unbeknownst to the town, a secret Soviet laboratory underneath Starcourt seeks to open the gateway to the Upside Down. Meanwhile, the Mind Flayer uses mind control to make Billy do his bidding.


title: Stranger Things

text: The fourth season is set several months later, in March 1986. Joyce, Will, Eleven, and Jonathan have moved to Lenora, California for a fresh start. In California, Eleven struggles with the loss of her powers and being bullied in school. Meanwhile in Hawkins, a being from the Upside Down—an entity later dubbed Vecna—begins killing the residents of Hawkins, opening new gates between the two worlds in the process. Planning to stop Vecna, Dr. Sam Owens takes Eleven to a facility to help her regain her powers. Simultaneously, Joyce and Murray fly to Russia to rescue Hopper from the Gulag in Kamchatka.


title: Stranger Things

text: "Stranger Things" was created by Matt and Ross Duffer, known professionally as the Duffer Brothers, who also serve as showrunners and head writers, as well as direct many of the episodes. The two had completed writing and producing their 2015 film "Hidden", in which they had tried to emulate the style of M. Night Shyamalan. However, due to changes at Warner Bros., its distributor, the film did not see a wide release and the Duffer Brothers were unsure of their future. To their surprise, television producer Donald De Line approached them, impressed with "Hidden"s script, and offered them the opportunity to work on episodes of "Wayward Pines" alongside Shyamalan. The brothers were mentored by Shyamalan during the episode's production so that when they finished, they felt they were ready to produce their own television series.


title: Stranger Things

text: The Duffer Brothers prepared a script that would essentially be similar to the series' actual pilot episode, along with a 20-page pitch book to help shop the series around for a network. They pitched the story to about fifteen cable networks, all of which rejected the script on the basis that they felt a plot centered around children as leading characters would not work, asking them to make it a children's series or to drop the children and focus on Hopper's investigation in the paranormal.


title: Stranger Things

text: In early 2015, Dan Cohen, the VP of 21 Laps Entertainment, brought the script to his colleague Shawn Levy. They subsequently invited the Duffer Brothers to their office and purchased the rights for the series, giving full authorship of it to the brothers. After reading the pilot, the streaming service Netflix purchased the whole season for an undisclosed amount; the series was subsequently announced for a planned 2016 release by Netflix in early April 2015.


title: Stranger Things

text: The Duffer Brothers stated that at the time they pitched to Netflix the company had already been recognized for its original programming in shows such as "House of Cards" and "Orange Is the New Black", with well-recognized producers behind them, and were ready to start giving upcoming producers like them a chance. The brothers started casting and brought Levy and Cohen in as the other executive producers to discuss storylines, with Levy also directing for the show.


title: Stranger Things

text: The series was originally known as "Montauk". The setting was then Montauk, New York, and nearby Long Island locations. Montauk figured into a number of real world conspiracy theories involving secret government experiments. The brothers had chosen Montauk as it had further Spielberg ties with the film "Jaws", where Montauk was used for the fictional setting of Amity Island. After deciding to change the narrative of the series to take place in the fictional town of Hawkins instead, the brothers felt they could now do things to the town, such as placing it under quarantine, that they really could not envision with a real location.


title: Stranger Things

text: With the change in location, they had to come up with a new title for the series under direction from Netflix's Ted Sarandos so that they could start marketing it to the public. The brothers started by using a copy of Stephen King's "Firestarter" novel to consider the title's font and appearance, and came up with a long list of potential alternatives. "Stranger Things" came about as it sounded similar to another King novel, "Needful Things", though Matt noted they still had a "lot of heated arguments" over this final title.


title: Stranger Things

text: To pitch the series, the Duffer Brothers showcased images, footage and music from classic 1970s and 1980s films such as "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial", "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", "Poltergeist", "Hellraiser", "Stand by Me", "Firestarter", "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Jaws", in order to establish the tone of the series.


title: Stranger Things

text: The idea of "Stranger Things" started with how the brothers felt they could take the concept of the 2013 film "Prisoners", detailing the moral struggles a father goes through when his daughter is kidnapped, and expand it out over eight or so hours in a serialized television approach. As they focused on the missing child aspect of the story, they wanted to introduce the idea of "childlike sensibilities" they could offer, and toyed around with the idea of a monster that could consume humans. The brothers thought the combination of these things "was the best thing ever".


title: Stranger Things

text: To introduce this monster into the narrative, they considered "bizarre experiments we had read about taking place in the Cold War" such as Project MKUltra, which gave a way to ground the monster's existence in science rather than something spiritual. This also helped them to decide on using 1983 as the time period, as it was a year before the film "Red Dawn" came out, which focused on Cold War paranoia. Subsequently, they were able to use all their own personal inspirations from the 1980s, the decade they were born, as elements of the series, crafting it in the realm of science fiction and horror.


title: Stranger Things

text: Other influences cited by the Duffer Brothers include: Stephen King novels; films produced by Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter, David Lynch, Wes Craven, and Guillermo del Toro; films such as "Star Wars", "Alien", and "Stand by Me"; Japanese anime such as "Akira" and "Elfen Lied"; and several video games including "Silent Hill", "Dark Souls" and "The Last of Us". The Duffer Brothers believe that they may have brought influences from other works unintentionally, including "Beyond the Black Rainbow" and "D.A.R.Y.L.", discovered by reviewing fan feedback on the series. Several websites and publications have found other pop culture references in the series, particularly references to 1980s pop culture.


title: Stranger Things

text: With Netflix as the platform, the Duffer Brothers were not limited to a typical 22-episode format, opting for the eight-episode approach. They had been concerned that a 22-episode season on broadcast television would be difficult to "tell a cinematic story" with that many episodes. Eight episodes allowed them to give time to characterization in addition to narrative development; if they had less time available, they would have had to remain committed to telling a horror film as soon as the monster was introduced and abandon the characterization. Within the eight episodes, the brothers aimed to make the first season "feel like a big movie" with all the major plot lines completed so that "the audience feels satisfied", but left enough unresolved to indicate "there's a bigger mythology, and there's a lot of dangling threads at the end", something that could be explored in further seasons if Netflix opted to create more.


title: Stranger Things

text: Regarding writing for the children characters of the series, the Duffer Brothers considered themselves as outcasts from other students while in high school and thus found it easy to write for Mike and his friends, and particularly for Barb. Joyce was fashioned after Richard Dreyfuss' character Roy Neary in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", as she appears "absolutely bonkers" to everyone else as she tries to find Will.


title: Stranger Things

text: In June 2015, it was announced that Winona Ryder and David Harbour had joined the series as Joyce and as the unnamed chief of police, respectively. The brothers' casting director Carmen Cuba had suggested Ryder for the role of Joyce, which the two were immediately drawn to because of her predominance in the films of the 1980s. Levy believed Ryder could "wretch up the emotional urgency and yet find layers and nuance and different sides of [Joyce]". Ryder praised that the show's multiple storylines required her to act for Joyce as if "she's out of her mind, but she's actually kind of onto something", and that the producers had faith she could pull off the difficult role. The Duffer Brothers had been interested in Harbour before, who until "Stranger Things" primarily had smaller roles as villainous characters, and they felt that he had been "waiting too long for this opportunity" to play a lead, while Harbour himself was thrilled by the script and the chance to play "a broken, flawed, anti-hero character".


title: Stranger Things

text: Additional casting followed two months later with Finn Wolfhard as Mike, Millie Bobby Brown in an undisclosed role, Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin, Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas, Natalia Dyer as Nancy, and Charlie Heaton as Jonathan. In September 2015, Cara Buono joined the cast as Karen, followed by Matthew Modine as Martin Brenner a month later. Additional cast who recur include Noah Schnapp as Will, Shannon Purser as Barbara "Barb" Holland, Joe Keery as Steve Harrington, and Ross Partridge as Lonnie, among others.


title: Stranger Things

text: Actors auditioning for the children roles read lines from "Stand by Me". The Duffer Brothers estimated they went through about a thousand different child actors for the roles. They noted that Wolfhard was already "a movie buff" of the films from the 1980s period and easily filled the role, while they found Matarazzo's audition to be much more authentic than most of the other audition tapes, and selected him after a single viewing of his audition tape.


title: Stranger Things

text: As casting was started immediately after Netflix greenlit the show, and prior to the scripts being fully completed, this allowed some of the actors' takes on the roles to reflect into the script. The casting of the young actors for Will and his friends had been done just after the first script was completed, and subsequent scripts incorporated aspects from these actors. The brothers said Modine provided significant input on the character of Dr. Brenner, whom they had not really fleshed out before as they considered him the hardest character to write for given his limited appearances within the narrative.


title: Stranger Things

text: The brothers had desired to film the series around the Long Island area to match the initial Montauk concept. However, with filming scheduled to take place in November 2015, it was difficult to shoot in Long Island in the cold weather, and the production started scouting locations in and around the Atlanta, Georgia, area. The brothers, who grew up in North Carolina, found many places that reminded them of their own childhoods in that area, and felt the area would work well with the narrative shift to the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana.


title: Stranger Things

text: The filming of the first season began in November 2015 and was extensively done in Atlanta, Georgia, with the Duffer Brothers and Levy handling the direction of individual episodes. Jackson served as the basis of the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana. Other shooting locations included the Georgia Mental Health Institute as the Hawkins National Laboratory site, Bellwood Quarry, and Patrick Henry High School in Stockbridge, Georgia, for the middle and high school scenes.


title: Stranger Things

text: Emory University's Continuing Education Department, the former city hall in Douglasville, Georgia, the Georgia International Horse Park in Conyers, Georgia, the probate court in Butts County, Georgia, Old East Point Library and East Point First Baptist Church in East Point, Georgia, Fayetteville, Georgia, Stone Mountain Park, Palmetto, Georgia, and Winston, Georgia. Set work was done at Screen Gem Studios in Atlanta and the series was filmed with a RED Dragon camera. Filming for the first season concluded in early 2016.


title: Stranger Things

text: After the third season finished filming, producers considered the idea of keeping the Starcourt Mall set as a permanent attraction for fans to visit, but ultimately decided against it.


title: Stranger Things

text: The fourth season of "Stranger Things" was expected to consist of eight episodes, with the first episode titled "Chapter One: The Hellfire Club". Filming for the season was slated to begin in January 2020 and to last through August. With the release of a February 2020 teaser for the fourth season, the Duffers confirmed that production had started. Some filming for the fourth season took place at Lukiškės Prison and nearby in Vilnius, Lithuania. In March 2020, production was stopped due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Production resumed in September 2020.


title: Stranger Things

text: To create the aged effect for the series, a film grain was added over the footage, which was captured by scanning in film stock from the 1980s. The Duffer Brothers wanted to scare the audience, but not to necessarily make the series violent or gory, following in line with how the 1980s Amblin Entertainment films drove the creation of the PG-13 movie rating. They said such films were "much more about mood and atmosphere and suspense and dread than they are about gore", though they were not afraid to push into more scary elements, particularly towards the end of the first season.


title: Stranger Things

text: The brothers had wanted to avoid any computer-generated effects for the monster and other parts of the series and stay with practical effects, so they created an animatronic to play the part of the Demogorgon. However, the six-month filming time left them little time to plan out and test practical effects rigs for some of the shots. They went with a middle ground of using constructed props including one for the monster whenever they could, but for other shots, such as when the monster bursts through a wall, they opted to use digital effects. Post-production on the first season was completed the week before it was released to Netflix.


title: Stranger Things

text: The title sequence uses closeups of the letters in the "Stranger Things" title with a red tint against a black background as they slide into place within the title. The sequence was created by the studio Imaginary Forces, formerly part of R/GA, led by creative director Michelle Doughtey. Levy introduced the studio to the Duffer Brothers, who explained their vision of the 1980s-inspired series, which helped the studio to fix the concept the producers wanted. Later, but prior to filming, the producers sent Imaginary Forces the pilot script, the synth-heavy background music for the titles, as well as the various book covers from King and other authors that they had used to establish the title and imagery, and were looking for a similar approach for the series' titles, primarily using a typographical sequence.


title: Stranger Things

text: They took inspiration from several title sequences of works from the 1980s that were previously designed by Richard Greenberg under R/GA, such as "Altered States" and "The Dead Zone". They also got input from Dan Perri, who worked on the title credits of several 1980s films. Various iterations included having letters vanish, to reflect the "missing" theme of the series, and having letters cast shadows on others, alluding to the mysteries, before settling into the sliding letters. The studio began working on the title sequence before filming, and took about a month off during the filming process to let the producers get immersed in the series and come back with more input.


title: Stranger Things

text: Initially they had been working with various fonts for the title and used close-ups of the best features of these fonts, but near the end the producers wanted to work with ITC Benguiat, requiring them to rework those shots. The final sequence is fully computer generated, but they took inspiration from testing some practical effects, such as using Kodalith masks as would have been done in the 1980s, to develop the appropriate filters for the rendering software. The individual episode title cards used a "fly through" approach, similar to the film "Bullitt", which the producers had suggested to the studio.


title: Stranger Things

text: Michael Stein and Kyle Dixon of the electronic band Survive have composed the original soundtrack for the show, including the show's theme song. It makes extensive use of synthesizers in homage to 1980s artists and film composers including Jean-Michel Jarre, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis, Goblin, John Carpenter, Giorgio Moroder, and Fabio Frizzi. According to Stein and Dixon, the Duffer Brothers had been fans of Survive's music since the 2014 film "The Guest". Once the series was green-lit, the Duffer Brothers contacted Survive around July 2015 to ask if they were still doing music; the two provided the production team with dozens of songs from their band's past to gain their interest, helping to land them the role.


title: Stranger Things

text: In addition to original music, "Stranger Things" features period music from artists including Joy Division, Toto, New Order, the Bangles, Foreigner, Echo and the Bunnymen, Peter Gabriel, and Corey Hart, as well as excerpts from Tangerine Dream, John Carpenter, and Vangelis. Some songs have been used as narrative elements, such as The Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go" within the first season, and Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" in the fourth. Some of these licensed songs saw subsequent resurgence on sales charts after the respective seasons of "Stranger Things" aired, notably "Running Up That Hill" and Metallica's "Master of Puppets" from the fourth season, and Limahl's "The NeverEnding Story" from the third season.


title: Stranger Things

text: Soundtracks containing separately the original compositions and the licensed music for each season have been released by Lakeshore Records.


title: Stranger Things

text: The first season consisted of eight one-hour-long episodes which were released worldwide on Netflix on July 15, 2016, in Ultra HD 4K. The second season, consisting of nine episodes, was released on October 27, 2017, in HDR. The third season once again consists of eight episodes, and was released on July 4, 2019. The fourth season, consisting of nine episodes, was released in two volumes on May 27 and July 1, 2022, respectively. In February 2022, Netflix renewed the series for a fifth and final season.


title: Stranger Things

text: Shortly after the fourth season's release, viewers reported that Will's friends did not acknowledge his birthday in an episode of the season that took place on that day. The Duffers said in an interview that they could rectify the matter by changing its month, which they called "George Lucas-ing the situation", in reference to the canon changes that George Lucas had made to the original "Star Wars" trilogy to match what the prequel trilogy had added.. Some viewers took this to imply that scenes from earlier seasons were also being edited, including one scene where Jonathan takes discreet pictures of a pool party that Steve, Nancy, and Barbara are holding. The writers stated that "no scenes from previous seasons have ever been cut or re-edited", including this scene.


title: Stranger Things

text: The first season of "Stranger Things" was released on a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack exclusively to Target retailers on October 17, 2017, and the same for the 4K/Blu-ray combo pack on November 15, 2017, both of which includes vintage CBS-FOX VHS-inspired packaging. The second season received a similar release on November 6, 2018.


title: Stranger Things

text: Netflix did not initially reveal subscriber viewership numbers for their original series, and Symphony Technology Group compiled data for the season based on people using software on their phones that measures television viewing by detecting a program's sound. According to Symphony, within the first 35 days of release, "Stranger Things" averaged ratings of around 14.07million adults between the ages of 18–49 in the United States. This made it the third most-watched season of Netflix original content in the U.S. at the time behind the first season of "Fuller House" and fourth season of "Orange Is the New Black". In a September 2016 analysis, Netflix found that "Stranger Things" "hooked" viewers by the second episode of the first season, indicating that the second episode was "the first installment that led at least 70 percent of viewers who watched that episode to complete the entire first season of a show."


title: Stranger Things

text: For the third season, Netflix revealed that the show had broken viewing records for Netflix, with 40.7million households having watched the show in its first four days, and 18.2million already watched the entire series within that timeframe. Within its first month, the third season was watched by 64million households, setting a new record for the most-watched original Netflix series.


title: Stranger Things

text: The series is the most followed TV show on social media app "TV Time"s history, with over 5 million followers.


title: Stranger Things

text: Rotten Tomatoes gave the show an overall score of 92%, while Metacritic gave the show an overall score of 74.


title: Stranger Things

text: Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gave the first season an approval rating of 97% based on 91 reviews and a weighted average rating of 8.12/10. The site's critical consensus states, "Exciting, heartbreaking, and sometimes scary, "Stranger Things" acts as an addictive homage to Spielberg films and vintage 1980s television." "The New York Times" has compared the show to Rob Reiner's "Stand by Me", relating their nostalgic feel by "...finding that timeless moment where everything seemed tantalizingly, scarily new." Review aggregator Metacritic gave the first season a normalized score of 76 out of 100 based on 34 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Stranger Things

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the second season has an approval rating of 94% based on 150 reviews and an average rating of 7.86/10. The site's critical consensus states, ""Stranger Things" slow-building sophomore season balances moments of humor and a nostalgic sweetness against a growing horror that's all the more effective thanks to the show's full-bodied characters and evocative tone." On Metacritic, the second season has a normalized score of 78 out of 100, based on 33 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Stranger Things

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the third season has an approval rating of 89% based on 140 reviews and an average rating of 7.86/10. The site's critical consensus states, "Vibrant and charming, "Stranger Things" transforms itself into a rivetingif familiarsummer ride that basks in its neon-laden nostalgia without losing sight of the rich relationships that make the series so endearing." On Metacritic, the third season has a normalized score of 72 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Stranger Things

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the fourth season holds an approval rating of 88% based on 185 reviews, with an average rating of 7.90/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Darker and denser than its predecessors, "Stranger Things" fourth chapter sets the stage for the show's final season in typically binge-worthy fashion. On Metacritic, the fourth season's two volumes have scores of 69 out of 100 based on 29 critics and 74 out of 100 based on 18 critics, both indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Stranger Things

text: "Stranger Things" was ranked third-best TV show of the year (2016) by "The Guardian" and "Empire". It was also included on "The Atlantic"s best TV show of 2017 list.


title: Stranger Things

text: "Stranger Things" gained a dedicated fan base soon after its release. One area of focus was the character of Barb, Nancy's nerdy friend and classmate who is taken and killed by the monster early in the season. According to actress Shannon Purser, Barb "wasn't supposed to be a big deal", and the Duffer Brothers had not gone into great detail about the character since the focus was on finding Will. However, many fans sympathized with the character; Laura Bradley of "Vanity Fair" suggested that Barb would be a similar misfit in society, and "looks more like someone you might actually meet in real life" compared to the other characters, particularly Nancy. Hashtags grew in popularity after the series' release, such as "#ImWithBarb" and "#JusticeforBarb", and several fan sites and forums were created to support her.


title: Stranger Things

text: Purser did not return for the second season, but the Duffer Brothers used the real-life "Justice for Barb" movement as inspiration for narrative at the start of the second season: Nancy addresses the fact "that no one ever cares about" Barb. Purser and several media outlets took her nomination as Barb for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series in the Primetime Emmy Awards as achieving "Justice for Barb", highlighting how well her character was received.


title: Stranger Things

text: Another impact of the series has been an increased demand for Eggo waffles, as they are shown to be Eleven's favorite food in several episodes and are seen as a representation of the series. The Kellogg Company manufactures Eggo and had not been part of the production prior to the first season's release, but they recognized the market impact of the series. They provided a vintage 1980s Eggo television advertisement for Netflix to use in its Super Bowl LI commercial, and they intend to become more involved with cross-promotion. Coca-Cola released a limited run of New Coke (introduced in 1985) to coincide with the third season of the show, which takes place in 1985.


title: Stranger Things

text: In April 2018, filmmaker Charlie Kessler filed a lawsuit against the Duffer brothers, claiming that they stole his idea behind his short film "Montauk", which featured a similar premise of a missing boy, a nearby military base doing otherworldy experiments, and a monster from another dimension. Kessler directed the film and debuted it at the 2012 Hamptons International Film Festival. During the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival, he pitched his film to the Duffer brothers and later gave them "the script, ideas, story and film" for a larger film idea which he called "The Montauk Project". Kessler contended that the Duffer brothers used his ideas to devise the premise for "Stranger Things" and sought a third of the income that they had made from the series.


title: Stranger Things

text: The Duffer brothers' lawyer stated that they never saw Kessler's film nor spoke to him regarding it, and that Kessler had no input into their concepts for "Stranger Things". The judge denied summary judgment for the Duffer brothers in April 2019, allowing Kessler's suit to proceed to trial. Just before the trial was due to start in May 2019, Kessler withdrew his lawsuit after hearing the depositions and seeing documents from as early as 2010 which showed him that the Duffers had independently come up with the concept of "Stranger Things".


title: Stranger Things

text: Journalists have noted that the idea of supernatural events around Montauk had originated due to urban legend of the Montauk Project, which came to light from the 1992 book "".


title: Stranger Things

text: In September 2017, multiple media outlets published articles about a cease-and-desist letter sent by a Netflix in-house attorney to the operator of a "Stranger-Things"-themed bar in Chicago. The letter included humorous references to the series: "unless I'm living in the Upside Down"; "we're not going to go full Dr. Brenner on you"; "the demogorgon is not always as forgiving". The letter also won praise from lawyers for its even-handedness in not demanding immediate closure of the bar, only demanding that the bar not remain open without Netflix's permission past its initial scheduled run.


title: Stranger Things

text: In July 2022, six Jewish and Roma groups condemned Netflix's use of Lukiškės Prison as a filming location for season four of "Stranger Things". Protestors pointed out the prison's involvement in the Holocaust and its role in the Ponary massacre; denounced Netflix's partnering with local tourism board Go Vilnius to rent out a refurbished "Stranger-Things-"themed prison cell on Airbnb; and criticized Netflix's decision to repost images of fans' Eleven-inspired numerical tattoos on their Instagram, saying it "desecrates the living memories of Holocaust survivors". A petition calling on Netflix to close the rental and apologize garnered more than 60,000 signatures, leading Go Vilnius to shut down the Airbnb listing indefinitely. Multiple news outlets reached out to Netflix, which did not comment.


title: Stranger Things

text: "Stranger Things" has received numerous awards and nominations across the entertainment industry, including ten Primetime Emmy Award nominations and four Golden Globe Award nominations through the second season. The series' cast has received several of these: the series' first-season cast won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series, while series leads Ryder, Brown, and Harbour have earned individual awards and nominations.


title: Stranger Things

text: With the release of the second season of the series, Netflix also released "Beyond Stranger Things", an aftershow hosted by Jim Rash. The guests are cast and crew from the series, including the Duffer Brothers and the series' stars, who discuss the development and production of the series and its larger mythology. Unlike previous aftershows created by Embassy Row, such as "Talking Dead" and "Talking Bad", "Beyond Stranger Things" is intended to be watched after a screening of the entire second season.


title: Stranger Things

text: Penguin Random House partnered with Netflix to release a series of books related to "Stranger Things", starting in late 2018. These include "How to Survive in a Stranger Things World", a children's book released on November 13, 2018, that offers "advice, wisdom, and warnings" from "Stranger Things". They have also published the behind the scenes book "Stranger Things: World Turneds Upside Down: The Official Behind-The-Scenes Companion" (released on October 30, 2018), and a two-in-one "Hawkins Middle School Yearbook/Hawkins High School Yearbook" (released on March 26, 2019).


title: Stranger Things

text: "Visions from the Upside Down: Stranger Things Artbook" was released on October 15, 2019. "Will Byers' Secret Files" was released on September 24, 2019. "Stranger Things: The Official Sticker Album" was released on June 15, 2021. "Stranger Things: The Official Coloring Book" was released on June 28, 2022. A Stranger Things-themed Little Golden Book, "Stranger Things: We Can Count on Eleven" was released on July 5, 2022.


title: Stranger Things

text: Insight Editions released "Stranger Things Tarot Deck and Guidebook" on August 16, 2022, followed by "Stranger Things: The Ultimate Pop-up Book" on August 30, 2022.


title: Stranger Things

text: In the second quarter of 2019, as part of its Silver Archive series, UK publisher Obverse Books released a book on the first season of "Stranger Things" by writer Paul Driscoll.


title: Stranger Things

text: The novel "Suspicious Minds" by Gwenda Bond takes place before the first season and focuses on Eleven's mother Terry Ives and her experiences with Dr. Brenner in the Hawkins laboratory in 1969. The novel was released on February 5, 2019, and was soon followed by "Darkness on the Edge of Town" by New Zealand author Adam Christopher on May 28, 2019. In "Edge", following the events of the second season, Hopper relates details of his past life in New York City during the 1970s to Eleven. "Runaway Max", a young adult novel by Brenna Yovanoff, was released on June 4, 2019, and explored Max Mayfield's early life in San Diego prior to moving to Hawkins in 1984, as well as offering a retelling of events from the second season from her perspective.


title: Stranger Things

text: "Rebel Robin" a young adult novel by A.R. Capetta was released on June 29, 2021, detailing Robin Buckley's struggle to accept her identity prior to the events of Season 3. "Hawkins Horrors" by Matthew J. Gilbert, a collection of short scary stories told from the perspective of the Party, was released on May 3, 2022; and "Lucas on the Line" by Suyi Davies Okungbowa, a novel set after the events of the third season from Lucas's perspective, was released on July 26, 2022.


title: Stranger Things

text: Dark Horse Comics announced a partnership with Netflix for "a multi-year publishing line" of stories set in the "Stranger Things" world. The initial title was a four-issue miniseries written by Jody Houser and interior art by Stefano Martino. The story took place during the events of the first season and took Will's perspective while he was still trapped in the Upside Down. The first issue of the miniseries was released on September 26, 2018.


title: Stranger Things

text: On May 4, 2019, Dark Horse Comics published a special "Stranger Things" comic as part of the event Free Comic Book Day (FCBD). The Dark Horse FCBD 2019 General comic contained a "Stranger Things" story entitled "The Game Master" set a few days after the events of the first season. It was written by Jody Houser and illustrated by Ibrahim Moustafa.


title: Stranger Things

text: The second "Stranger Things" title is another four-part miniseries, written again by Jody Houser with interior art by Edgar Salazar, titled "Stranger Things: Six". The comic focuses on one of the experiments preceding Eleven: a girl named Francine, who possesses powers of precognition. The first issue went on sale on May 29, 2019.


title: Stranger Things

text: An original graphic novel based on the series called "Stranger Things: Zombie Boys" was released on February 19, 2020. It was written by Greg Pak, drawn by Valeria Favoccia, lettered by Nate Piekos of Blambot, colored by Dan Jackson, with cover art by Ron Chan. It is 72 pages and set after the first season.


title: Stranger Things

text: A third comic miniseries, "Stranger Things: Into the Fire", started in January 2020. Also lasting for four issues, it is a sequel to the "Six" miniseries set prior to the show's third season. It is written by Jody Houser, penciled by Ryan Kelly, and inked by Le Beau Underwood.


title: Stranger Things

text: Another "Stranger Things" one-shot was released as part of Free Comic Book Day 2020. It was written by Greg Pak and set shortly after the Battle of Starcourt Mall depicted in the series' third season.


title: Stranger Things

text: A second "Stranger Things" original graphic novel, titled "Stranger Things: The Bully", was released on October 13, 2020. It was written by Greg Pak and illustrated by Valeria Favoccia, and focuses on the characters Troy and James concurrent with the events of the second season, as the former struggles with PTSD following his encounter with Eleven.


title: Stranger Things

text: On June 18, 2020, it was announced that IDW Publishing and Dark Horse are co-publishing a "Stranger Things and Dungeons & Dragons" miniseries.


title: Stranger Things

text: A fourth miniseries from Dark Horse, entitled "Stranger Things: Science Camp" started in September 2020. It also ran for four issues.


title: Stranger Things

text: On July 23, 2020, Dark Horse announced a prequel one-shot entitled "Stranger Things: Halloween in Hawkins".


title: Stranger Things

text: Hasbro published a licensed version of a "Stranger Things"-themed "Dungeons & Dragons" starter kit in May 2019. The kit, besides including instruction books, character sheets and dice, includes a campaign called "The Hunt for the Thessalhydra", which the children played in the first season (written with the intent of having come from the pen of the character of Will himself) as well as Demogorgon minifigs.


title: Stranger Things

text: "" will include a series of "Stranger Things" crossover cards as part of its special "Secret Lair" series in 2021.


title: Stranger Things

text: Netflix and BonusXP developed a free mobile game tie-in for "Stranger Things", released to iOS and Android devices on October 4, 2017. The game uses a retro-pixel style of art, similar to games for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The game is loosely based on the "Stranger Things" story after season one, with the player starting as Chief of Police Jim Hopper looking for the missing boys. Once these characters are found, they become playable and have special abilities that allow the player to access more areas in the game.


title: Stranger Things

text: BonusXP had less than a year to complete the game. The team decided to make the game in a similar style to "The Legend of Zelda" because it "was a perfect match because both ["Stranger Things" and "Zelda"] are about exploration, and it's kind of a mysterious fit that fit the mood of the show," according to BonusXP president Dave Pottinger. The map of Hawkins in the game was based on a Google street view map of Jackson, Georgia, where the series is filmed. In order to help keep the game a secret, BonusXP did not hire game testers for their quality assurance, instead having family members from the design team provide feedback; this process helped create the two difficulty levels in the game.


title: Stranger Things

text: Completing the game gives players a clip from the first episode of the second season of the series. The game was downloaded 3million times in the first week, becoming a top download and receiving critical praise. With the release of season two, an update to the game added Max as a playable character, and a release for the Amazon Fire TV, which included controller support. The game was nominated for "Mobile Game" at the 14th British Academy Games Awards.


title: Stranger Things

text: A second mobile game by BonusXP, "Stranger Things 3: The Game", was announced during The Game Awards 2018. It was released as a tie-in for "Stranger Things" third season, launching on July 4, 2019. This game is an isometric action game, where players leads selected show characters, including Joyce, Jim, Max, and Eleven, through various levels, with gameplay inspired by several video games of the 1980s. The game follows the narrative of the third season, as BonusXP has some input with the Duffer brothers, and provided additional story elements that the show does not have time to explore. The game was not only released for mobile platforms, but also personal computers, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.


title: Stranger Things

text: Both of these "Stranger Things" mobile games were used to launch Netflix's video games service for its mobile app in November 2021.


title: Stranger Things

text: A third mobile game, called "Stranger Things: Puzzle Tales", was developed by Next Games. It was initially announced as a location-based game with role-playing game mechanics. Instead, when it was released in 2021, it was instead a story-driven puzzle role-playing game.


title: Stranger Things

text: Sony Interactive Entertainment has announced that it is working on a PlayStation 4-exclusive game, based on "Stranger Things", for their PlayStation VR peripheral. The company has since released a teaser showing the Christmas-lights-on-a-wall scenes.


title: Stranger Things

text: In June 2018, Netflix announced plans for Telltale Games to produce an episodic adventure game based on the series, as part of a larger partnership that would see ports of other Telltale series as interactive movies on Netflix. However, the project was cancelled after Telltale laid off the majority of its staff in September 2018. As planned, the game would have taken place in the springtime of 1985, bridging the events of the second and third season. Telltale had also commissioned a companion game from Night School Studio titled "Kids Next Door" that would be a precursor to their title, but this also was cancelled on Telltale's closure.


title: Stranger Things

text: In July 2019, a three episode "Behind The Scenes: Stranger Things 3" podcast was released, taking a look at the making of the show's third season. It was hosted by Dan Taberski.


title: Stranger Things

text: A six-episode scripted podcast companion to the "Rebel Robin" novel, entitled "Rebel Robin: Surviving Hawkins", was released in mid-2021. Maya Hawke reprises her role as Robin, Sean Maher plays her favorite teacher Mr. Hauser, and Lauren Shippen writes and directs.


title: Stranger Things

text: From 16 to 19 June 2022, Netflix South Africa partnered with Fourways Mall to operate the Stranger Things Experience. The Experience previously operated at the Canal Walk Mall in Cape Town.


title: Stranger Things

text: Lego introduced a "Stranger Things" set called "The Upside Down", based on a version of the Byers' home and its replica in the Upside Down, in May 2019. In 2020, The Upside Down set was awarded "Toy of the Year" and also "Specialty Toy of the Year" by the Toy Association. Netflix partnered with Epic Games to include some elements of "Stranger Things" as cosmetics in "Fortnite Battle Royale" in the weeks preceding the show's third season launch. "Stranger Things" DLC for the VR game "Face Your Fears" was also released. Within a September 17, 2019, update for the asymmetric multiplayer horror game "Dead by Daylight", the Demogorgon was released as one of the killers, along with Nancy Wheeler and Steve Harrington as survivors. The chapter was later removed on November 17, 2021. "Stranger Things"-themed vehicles and cosmetics were added to "Rocket League" for its 2019 Halloween event. In the MOBA "SMITE", a number of Stranger Things-themed character skins were created and released as part of a crossover Battle Pass, such as Starcourt Eleven Scylla, Hopper Apollo, The Demogorgon Bakasura and The Mind Flayer Sylvanus.


title: Stranger Things

text: United States Representative David Cicilline compared the state of the nation during the presidency of Donald Trump to that of "Stranger Things" during a speech given in Congress on February 16, 2017, using a sign "Trump Things" in the same format as the title card of the series and saying "Like the main characters in "Stranger Things", we are now stuck in the Upside Down".


title: Stranger Things

text: As part of its release on Netflix on April 14, 2017, the cast of the rebooted version of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" riffed on the first part of "Chapter 1" of "Stranger Things". Google used augmented reality (AR) "stickers" of "Stranger Things" characters to introduce its ARCore technology announced alongside its Pixel 2 phone in October 2017. "Sesame Street" created a young audience-appropriate spoof of "Stranger Things", called "Sharing Things", released in November 2017; it featured Cookie Monster as the "Cookiegorgon", Grover as Lucas, Ernie as Dustin, and included several nods to the narrative of the second season.


title: Stranger Things

text: "The Simpsons" episode "Treehouse of Horror XXX", which aired on October 20, 2019, included the segment "Danger Things", a parody of "Stranger Things". The classic 1980s bicycles used in the series have been produced in limited runs that sell out quickly. The mobile game "" had a "Strangers Things" crossover event and the story followed the characters being transported to the universe of the anime. The "Stranger Things" characters could be unlocked for a limited time.


title: Stranger Things

text: In July 2022, it was revealed that a spin-off stage play written by Sonia Friedman and Stephen Daldry and a spin-off series are in development. According to series co-creator Ross Duffer, the spin-off series will not focus on any of the core characters of main series. The direction the stage play will take in regards to characters and story is unknown as of yet.


title: Dwayne Johnson

text: Dwayne Douglas Johnson (born May 2, 1972), also known by his ring name The Rock, is an American actor and former professional wrestler. Widely regarded as one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time, he was integral to the development and success of the WWE during the Attitude Era, an industry boom period in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Johnson wrestled for WWF/E for eight years prior to pursuing an acting career. His films have grossed over in North America and over worldwide, making him one of the world's highest-grossing and highest-paid actors.


title: Dwayne Johnson

text: Prior to his emergence as a top-grossing actor beginning in the 2010s, Johnson was an athlete. At Freedom High School in Bethlehem Township, Pennsylvania in the Lehigh Valley, he ultimately emerged as a standout on the school's football and wrestling teams, which competed in the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference, a conference known for producing top professional and Olympic athletes. He credits his high school football coach with helping inspire transformational changes in his life, which before entering sports in 11th grade had been characterized by fights and petty crimes as a high-school teenager. His football capabilities at Freedom High School led him to be ranked as one of the top ten defensive tackle high-school prospects in the nation, drawing the attention of several NCAA Division I college football programs.


title: Dwayne Johnson

text: Johnson accepted an athletic scholarship to play at the University of Miami, one of the country's top college football programs. As a college freshman, he was a member of the University of Miami's 1991 national championship team but largely spent his four college football years at the University of Miami in backup roles behind elite players, including future NFL star and Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee Warren Sapp. Johnson aspired to play professional football but went undrafted in the 1995 NFL Draft. Following his graduation from the University of Miami that year, he signed with the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League but was cut from the team in his first season.


title: Dwayne Johnson

text: In 1996, Johnson's father Rocky, a longtime professional wrestler, assisted in helping him secure a contract with the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE). Johnson quickly rose to global prominence, aided by a gimmick he employed as a charismatic trash-talker. Johnson left WWE in 2004 and returned in 2011 as a part-time performer until 2013, making sporadic appearances until retiring in 2019. A 10-time world champion, including the promotion's first of African-American descent, he is also a two-time Intercontinental Champion, a five-time Tag Team Champion, the 2000 Royal Rumble winner, and WWE's sixth Triple Crown champion. Johnson headlined the most-bought professional wrestling pay-per-view (WrestleMania XXVIII) and was featured among the most watched episodes of WWE's flagship television series ("Raw" and "SmackDown").


title: Dwayne Johnson

text: Johnson's first film appearance was in "The Mummy Returns" (2001). The following year he played his first leading role as the titular character in the sword and sorcery film "The Scorpion King" (2002). He has since starred in family films "The Game Plan" (2007), "Race to Witch Mountain" (2009), "Tooth Fairy" (2010), and "Jungle Cruise" (2021), as well as the action adventure films "" (2012), "" (2013), "Hercules" (2014), "Skyscraper" (2018), "San Andreas" (2015) and "Rampage" (2018). He also starred in the action comedy films "Get Smart" (2008), "Central Intelligence" (2016), "Baywatch" (2017), and "Red Notice" (2021). In 2016 he voiced Maui in the Disney animated film "Moana" (2016). His role as Luke Hobbs in the "Fast & Furious" films, beginning with "Fast Five" (2011), helped the franchise become one of the highest-grossing in film. He subsequently starred in the spin-off "Hobbs & Shaw" (2019). Johnson also stars in the "Jumanji" films, appearing in "" (2017) and "" (2019), and voices Bark Kent / Krypto / Superdog, Anubis, and Teth-Adam / Black Adam in the animated film "DC League of Super-Pets" (2022), before starring as the latter in the live-action superhero film "Black Adam" (2022).


title: Dwayne Johnson

text: Johnson produced and starred in the HBO comedy-drama series "Ballers" (2015–2019) and stars and produces the autobiographical sitcom "Young Rock" (2021). In 2000, Johnson released his autobiography "The Rock Says", which was a "New York Times" bestseller. In 2012, he co-founded the entertainment production company Seven Bucks Productions and is co-owner of the XFL, a professional American football league. In 2016 and 2019, Johnson was named by "Time" one of the world's most influential people.


title: Dwayne Johnson

text: Johnson was born in Hayward, California on May 2, 1972, the son of Ata Johnson (née Maivia; born 1948) and former professional wrestler Rocky Johnson (born Wayde Douglas Bowles; 1944–2020). Growing up, Johnson lived briefly in Grey Lynn in Auckland, New Zealand with his mother's family, where he played rugby and attended Richmond Road Primary School before returning to the U.S.


title: Dwayne Johnson

text: Johnson's father was a Black Nova Scotian with a small amount of Irish ancestry. His mother is Samoan. His father and tag team partner Tony Atlas were the first black tag team champions in WWE history, in 1983. His mother is the adopted daughter of Peter Maivia, who was also a professional wrestler. Johnson's maternal grandmother Lia was the first female pro wrestling promoter, taking over Polynesian Pacific Pro Wrestling after her husband's death in 1982 and managing it until 1988. Through his maternal grandfather Maivia, Johnson is a non-blood relative to the Anoa'i wrestling family. In 2008, Johnson inducted his father and grandfather into the WWE Hall of Fame.


title: Dwayne Johnson

text: Johnson attended Montclaire Elementary School in Charlotte, North Carolina before moving to Hamden, Connecticut, where he attended Shepherd Glen Elementary School and then Hamden Middle School. Johnson attended President William McKinley High School in Honolulu and then Glencliff High School and McGavock High School, both in Nashville, and then Freedom High School in Bethlehem Township in the Lehigh Valley, where he graduated in 1990.


title: Dwayne Johnson

text: At Freedom High School in the Lehigh Valley, Johnson initially struggled and was drawn into a culture of conflict and petty crime. Before the age of 17, he was arrested multiple times for fighting, theft, and check fraud and was suspended two weeks for fighting. The local newspaper later described him as "a troubled teenager with a history of run-ins with police." Freedom High School football coach Jody Cwik, however, saw athletic potential in Johnson, and recruited him to join Freedom's football team, where he played defensive tackle. The experience proved the beginning of a personal transformation for Johnson. "My thought process started to change. That's when I started thinking about goals and what I wanted to accomplish," he has since said about his high school football experience.


title: Dwayne Johnson

text: In addition to playing football at Freedom High School, Johnson also was a member of the school's track and field and wrestling teams. Like the school's football team, its track and field and wrestling teams competed in the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference (EPC), a high school athletic conference known for being among the nation's best. The EPC's wrestling programs have been ranked best in the nation by "WIN" magazine and have been described as "among the nation's best in the sport for nearly three decades", and Johnson quickly found himself facing some of the nation's most accomplished high school wrestlers.


title: Dwayne Johnson

text: By his senior year at Freedom High School, Johnson had only played two years of high school football but the fact that he had excelled on a team in an elite high school athletic division known nationally for producing a long list of professional and Olympic-level athletes, including future NFL stars Andre Reed, Saquon Barkley, Kyzir White, and others, drew the attention of NCAA Division I collegiate programs. College football recruiters ranked Johnson as one of the top ten high school defensive tackles in the nation. He opted to accept a full athletic scholarship offer from the University of Miami, whose football program was then one of the best in the nation.


title: Dwayne Johnson

text: As he did in high school in Pennsylvania, Johnson continued to play defensive tackle at the University of Miami. In his freshman year there, he was a member of Miami's 1991 national championship team. In his four years playing for the University of Miami team, however, Johnson found himself behind elite players on the depth chart, including future NFL star and Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee Warren Sapp, and appeared mostly in backup roles.


title: Dwayne Johnson

text: In 1995, Johnson graduated from the University of Miami with a Bachelor of General Studies and a dual major in criminology and physiology. In addition to being a member of the University of Miami's top tier collegiate football team, Johnson also was one of the University of Miami's most prolific student speakers in the Miami-area community, frequently delivering positive messages about his own struggles and encouraging them to remain in school and avoid the dangers of drug use.


title: Dwayne Johnson

text: Following his May 1995 graduation from the University of Miami, Johnson was signed by the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League. Calgary moved Johnson from defensive tackle, the position he had played on the high school and collegiate levels, to linebacker. He was assigned to Calgary's practice roster, but was cut two months into Calgary's 1995 season.


title: Dwayne Johnson

text: After being cut by Calgary, Johnson began his professional wrestling career the following year, in 1996. Veteran wrestler Pat Patterson secured several tryout matches for Johnson with the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in 1996. Wrestling at first under his real name, Johnson defeated The Brooklyn Brawler at a house show on March 10 and lost matches to Chris Candido and Owen Hart. After wrestling at Jerry Lawler's United States Wrestling Association under the name Flex Kavana and winning the USWA tag team championship twice with his partner Bart Sawyer in the summer of 1996, Johnson was signed to a WWF contract. He received additional training from Tom Prichard, alongside Achim Albrecht and Mark Henry.


title: Dwayne Johnson

text: Johnson made his WWF debut as Rocky Maivia, a combination of his father and grandfather's ring names, although his real name was acknowledged by the announcers. He was initially reluctant to take this ring name but was persuaded by Vince McMahon and Jim Ross. He was given the nickname "The Blue Chipper" and to play up his lineage, he was hyped as the WWF's first third-generation wrestler. Maivia, a clean-cut face character, was pushed heavily from the start despite his wrestling inexperience. He debuted on "Monday Night Raw" as a member of Marc Mero's entourage on November 4, 1996. His first match came at Survivor Series, on November 17, 1996 in an eight-man elimination tag match; he was the sole survivor and eliminated the final two members of the opposing team, Crush and Goldust. On February 13, 1997, he won the Intercontinental Championship from Hunter Hearst Helmsley on "Monday Night Raw". Maivia then successfully defended the title against Helmsley at .


title: Dwayne Johnson

text: Johnson's first WrestleMania match came at WrestleMania 13 on March 23, 1997, where he was victorious in his Intercontinental Championship defense against The Sultan. WWF fans started to reject his character and push from the company. He defeated Bret Hart by disqualification in a title defense on the March 31 episode of "Raw is War". Behind the scenes, Hart mentored Johnson for his first year in WWF and refused to be booked to take the title from him. On April 20, at , he lost to Savio Vega by countout but retained the title. Audiences became increasingly hostile toward Maivia, with chants of "die, Rocky, die" and "Rocky sucks" being heard during his matches.


title: Dwayne Johnson

text: After losing the Intercontinental Championship to Owen Hart on the April 28, 1997 episode of "Raw Is War" and suffering a legitimate knee injury in a match against Mankind, Maivia returned in August 1997 and turned heel for the first time in his career by lashing out at fans who had been booing him and joining Faarooq, D'Lo Brown and Kama in the stable called the Nation of Domination. He then refused to acknowledge the Rocky Maivia name, instead referring to himself in the third person as The Rock, though he would still be billed as "The Rock" Rocky Maivia until 1998. The Rock would then regularly insult the audience, WWF performers, and interviewers in his promos.