If there's one thing we've learned in our time here, it's that there's absolutely no cherished childhood memory, from nursery rhymes to candy bars , that doesn't have some dark and gritty origin story. But surely our favorite board games sprang fully formed from the land of bunnies and rainbows, right? After all, they're just a bunch of colorful squares on a board meant to let families kill time in the pre-video game era.

5 The Game of Life -- and Suicide

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Released way the hell back in 1860, The Game of Life is one of the best-selling board games of all time and the single oldest game in the Milton Bradley library. It's a charming get-together game in which families around the world experience all the fun of paying their insurance, and ultimately, witnessing the miracle of humanity reduced to a dong-shaped plastic peg.



How Milton Bradley views its consumers.

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The Disturbing Origins:

The original version of Life was somewhat more pessimistic than the one we play today. Some of the board's original squares included "Disgrace," "Poverty," and "Ruin," as well as "Crime," "Prison," and -- no joke -- "Suicide."



Making a square for "Suicide" is one thing, but landing a job at the "Fat Office" is just plain cruel.

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Even though today this would be like having a slot for the Joker's pencil trick in Operation, the original version of Life nevertheless sold like hotcakes.

So who was the psychopath behind this grim game? Milton Bradley himself, who was going through a bit of a rough time when he made it. Bradley was a professional lithographer at the time, and was driven to financial ruin, solely because Abraham Lincoln grew a beard. We're not making this up. Mr. Bradley was making a pretty sweet dime in 1860 selling lithographs of a then-beardless Abraham Lincoln until a little 11-year-old girl named Grace Bedell sent Honest Abe a letter asking him to grow a beard, which he did. This unprecedented presidential fashion statement basically destroyed Bradley's business after all his unsold portraits of clean-shaven Abe were judged "so yesterday."

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At the end of his rope and out of alcohol, Mr. Bradley sat down and sketched The Checkered Game of Life, we imagine with a loaded gun on the table.