The Max Headroom Incident

A few decades ago, the weirdest things happened. These things were called The Max Headroom Incident.

You know Max Headroom, right? That popular commercial icon who is known for his commercials like NEW Coke mentioning Catch the Wave as a catchphrase. He was a popular icon in the 80s. He is known for something else as well.

On November 22, 1987, on WGN-TV, there was an interruption. Dan Roan was telling viewers about highlights of the Chicago Bears winning against Detroit Lions. Suddenly, the screen went black for about 15 seconds.

After those 15 seconds, it cut to someone wearing a Max Headroom mask, a suit, and pink glasses. He was bobbing around a bit. His head was in front of a sheet of moving corrugated metal, which imitated the electronic background effect used in the Max Headroom TV and movie appearances. Engineers had ended it after a short amount of time.

When the screen came back, Dan Roan looked at the camera and said, "Well, if you're wondering what's happened, so am I".

Later that day, during a rerun of a Doctor Who episode, the signal was interrupted by the same thing. This time, there was audio. Here's what happened according to a video (Bold is actions, italics is dialogue):

That Does It!

''He's a frickin nerd! [giggles]''

Yeah, I think I'm better than Chuck Swirsky!

Frickin liberal!

Looks to the ground

Oh, Jesus!

Audio distorted

Yeah...

Holds up can of Pepsi

Catch the Wave

Throws the Pepsi can

Your love is fading!

Laughs

Starts to hum theme to Clutch Cargo

I still see the X

Hums theme again

Ohhh...my piles...

Groans

Oh, I just made a giant masterpiece for all the greatest world newspaper nerds

Makes loud noises

My brother is wearing the other one

Puts on glove

''But it's dirty. This one's got blood prints on it.''

Throws glove

Cuts to person with flyswatter and the Max Headroom showing his butt to the other

They're coming to get me!

Bend over...b****

Max Headroom starts to scream and gets hit in the butt with a flyswatter

Oh, Do It!

Screams

That is when it cut back to the episode. Sadly, the channel was unable to cut away. The hacker cut away himself. This all happened on one day. The culprit was never found. There is a video of the event.