It used to be that to become pope, you had to sit pantsless in a horseshoe-shaped chair and let a couple of cardinals see if you had the goods. If you passed, they'd yell "Testiculos habet et bene pendentes!" (He has testicles, and they hang well!) It's true, in those days it took balls to become pope. Back then, the Papacy was reserved for the hardasses, guys you wouldn't mess with--the gangsters, the demon-summoners, the corpse-digger-uppers. Here are the ones we consider the biggest badasses. And, no, we didn't make any of this up. Advertisement

5 Alexander VI (1492-1503) Alexander VI blazed the trail for Biggie Smalls, Kingpin and Jabba the Hutt as obese badasses who didn't let their man-boobs and tendency to sweat while they ate stop them from amassing a huge fortune, slaughtering their enemies, and getting sweatily busy with the ladies. Continue Reading Below Advertisement Any story you've ever heard about crooked popes started with this guy. He bought the papacy with four mule loads of silver. He nailed Rome's most eligible bachelorettes. He made his 17-year-old bastard son an archbishop. He started wars, poisoned cardinals and took their money, and probably ate live frogs while feeding people to the Rancor. His greatest accomplishment--as a host if not as a pope--was the Banquet of Chestnuts held in 1501. This sounds nice enough until you learn that the chestnuts were merely a pretext to have a pack of naked hookers crawling around the ground collecting them. But that wasn't the evening's only nut-related activity. Trained observers were present to keep track of the total number and quality of the party-goers' ejaculations. That's exactly the kind of information you need when a bishopric comes open. Continue Reading Below Advertisement Alexander's death was followed by further hijinks. His ham-stuffed corpse couldn't fit in the coffin and began belching sulfur. His successor forbade anyone from saying prayers for his lardy soul. Finally, almost 400 years later, he was reborn as Aleister Crowley (at least that's what he said), who shocked the world by ... taking a lot of drugs and drawing naked pictures of himself.