I got into professional wrestling during the Attitude Era, that golden stretch from 1997 to 2001 when wrestling was somehow both mainstream entertainment and complete madness. Watching a YouTube video about it recently made me realize just how insane those storylines were.

And I’m not even talking about the stuff that sort of makes sense, like a guy beating up his boss every week (relatable, honestly). I’m talking about Kane: the seven-foot, mask-wearing fire survivor who debuted to avenge an act of childhood arson committed by his brother, The Undertaker. A fire that killed their parents. Naturally, they decided to handle that trauma in the most rational way possible: a wrestling match at WrestleMania.

Kane is basically the Forrest Gump of unhinged WWE plotlines. The man has been through everything. His girlfriend Tori left him for X-Pac. He got recruited as a corporate hitman. He once buried The Undertaker alive and then solemnly declared that his brother was “dead.” Oh, and Triple H once accused him of committing necrophilia. Why? Because apparently that’s how you hype a pay-per-view match. Forget titles. Let’s talk about corpses!

You’d think after all that, the character would have an expiration date. But Kane just kept going. The fact that he remained a relevant character until 2018 is unreal. Impressive, but unreal.

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