Actor Misha Collins, known for playing the angel Castiel on the American television series Supernatural, is the founder of GISHWHES.
The competition began informally in 2010 when Holly Ollis, a publicist for Warner Bros., asked Collins to engage his audience to help Supernatural move from second place to first in the People's Choice Awards voting.
Collins posted a message on Twitter, declaring that if the show won, Ollis had promised him a rhinoceros which he would share with everyone who helped by voting for the show.
When Supernatural won the competition, Collins, partially inspired by his time at the University of Chicago as an undergraduate during which he participated in the school's annual scavenger hunt, asked his followers to send him self-addressed stamped envelopes into which he put scavenger hunt prompts written on the backs of jigsaw puzzle pieces from a puzzle depicting a rhino.
Soon, participants began to respond to Collins's "absurd" requests.
One successful prompt, for example, challenged fans to photograph a group of firemen wearing nothing but kale.

Collins enjoyed this exercise so much that he decided to create an official scavenger hunt in 2011.
He established the event's website and gave it its name, the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen, calling its acronym, GISHWHES, "the ugliest acronym the world has ever seen".
According to Collins, the primary reason for developing the competition was that he "loved the idea of thousands of people from all over the world connecting to create incredible things".
He hoped to use GISHWHES to encourage participants "to do good in the world".
The inaugural event, categorized by Guinness World Records as a "media scavenger hunt", broke the record for the largest scavenger hunt of its kind.
In 2012, it broke its own record with 14,580 participants, representing 69 different countries.
The contest broke two additional world records in 2013: the longest safety pin chain, measuring 1,901.8 metres (6,239.5 ft), and the largest online photo album of hugs, totaling 108,121 images.
Actor Misha Collins, known for playing the angel Castiel on the American television series Supernatural, is the founder of GISHWHES. The competition began informally in 2010 when Holly Ollis, a publicist for Warner Bros., asked Collins to engage his audience to help Supernatural move from second place to first in the People's Choice Awards voting. Collins posted a message on Twitter, declaring that if the show won, Ollis had promised him a rhinoceros which he would share with everyone who helped by voting for the show. When Supernatural won the competition, Collins, partially inspired by his time at the University of Chicago as an undergraduate during which he participated in the school's annual scavenger hunt, asked his followers to send him self-addressed stamped envelopes into which he put scavenger hunt prompts written on the backs of jigsaw puzzle pieces from a puzzle depicting a rhino. Soon, participants began to respond to Collins's "absurd" requests. One successful prompt, for example, challenged fans to photograph a group of firemen wearing nothing but kale.
Collins enjoyed this exercise so much that he decided to create an official scavenger hunt in 2011. He established the event's website and gave it its name, the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen, calling its acronym, GISHWHES, "the ugliest acronym the world has ever seen". According to Collins, the primary reason for developing the competition was that he "loved the idea of thousands of people from all over the world connecting to create incredible things". He hoped to use GISHWHES to encourage participants "to do good in the world". The inaugural event, categorized by Guinness World Records as a "media scavenger hunt", broke the record for the largest scavenger hunt of its kind. In 2012, it broke its own record with 14,580 participants, representing 69 different countries. The contest broke two additional world records in 2013: the longest safety pin chain, measuring 1,901.8 metres (6,239.5 ft), and the largest online photo album of hugs, totaling 108,121 images.
GISHWHES