Most Insane Things Built With Legos

One of the first things any of us made with Legos as kids was a crude model of a car. Obviously, they didn't go anywhere beyond finding their way under our parents' feet. That didn't deter some imaginative kids, who grew up into imaginative adults and started building car components out of the plastic blocks. The most impressive is Huib van der Hart's working V8 engine.

This isn't just a static scale model of a V8 engine. It actually runs. With a little electricity, the thing springs to life. (Obviously van der Hart didn't want real gasoline running through the engine, combusting, and turning the model into a molten blob of plastic.) Plus, since it runs on electricity, it's technically the engine of a smart car! Other than that, it's not too different from a car engine. It runs up to an impressive RPM and is a six-speed. You can actually watch the model change gears as it is running, including reverse and neutral. Who knew that making moving models of this complexity was possible with Legos, but the best thing about this is, van der Hart conveniently has written out instructions on how to build it. Just don't steal Legos from a kid to do it.

Aircraft carriers are insanely complex in real-life, but it takes a certain type of mad genius to look at one and go: "Hey I can build one of those in Lego." Malle Hawking is that type of person. He embarked on a quest to recreate the USS Harry S. Truman, which seems like a random ship to make, but hey, maybe he liked it. Instead of just creating a little model, though Hawking decided to create it on mini-figure scale using only 25 internet pictures. The end product is a 16-foot long, 4-foot tall, 350-pound model. It displaces enough water to float.

Oddly, that's not even the most impressive thing about this model. Since it's a scale model, the creation has a flight deck, full-sized hangar bay and meticulously modeled bridge. Hawking included every airplane in the complement of the Harry S. Truman's air wing. He didn't just create a scale model of the ship — he also created scale models of every type of airplane that the real-life plane carrier had. He didn't use any off-the-shelf kits. He just modeled them on his own.

But wait, there's more! The aircraft elevators and radar dishes actually move and work. Even the catapult was modeled and motorized. Hawking can even launch his miniature F-18s from his miniature aircraft carrier! If Legominifigures ever gain sentience, this will probably be their base of operations when overthrowing their human overlords.

Out of all the things to build a life-sized model of, the T-800 is probably the coolest, but also the most worrying. Designed by Martin Latta, the T-800 stands at an impressive six feet tall, and is a faithful reproduction of the iconic cyborg assassin. Latta spared no expense for his model. In all, it has 15,000 Lego pieces, and comes complete with light-up eyes. Thankfully, Latta didn't try to create an advanced AI brain to come with his creation, but we wouldn't put it past him to start working on it, thereby accidentally creating the machine uprising.

The actual movie prop for the T-800 is pretty complex, with lots of exposed pistons and components. Latta did an amazing job reproducing everything. Pretty much everything else is in place, with all the pistons and components modeled with loving care. Latta might even plan to skin the robot, which will involve way more time staring at photos of Arnold Schwarzenegger then we'd be comfortable with. With a life-sized X-wing and a life-sized T-800 hanging around, the rise of the machines will probably come from the T-800 gaining sentience and modifying the X-wing to actually fly. The end of the world will be the coolest cross-over event ever.

There is probably a ton of overlap between people who love solving Rubik's Cubes and those who build Lego robots, so it's not too much of a surprise that somebody finally figured out how to build a Lego robot so fast, it beats the Rubik's Cube world record.

Named CubeStormer III, this brilliant little robot solves cubes in just 3.253 seconds. That's insanely fast, especially considering it's just made of commercially available Lego parts. The brains of the robot are a normal Samsung Galaxy phone. Its processors use an app to figure out how to solve the cube. The phone's on-board camera constantly watches the spinning cube to feed info to the phone brain, and little Lego robot arms do the rest.

Watching CubeStormer III work is amazing, especially considering how fast the little robot arms work. Remember, these are made completely out of Lego, which we never knew could move so fast. Also, unlike humans, CubeStormer III can inspect the cube and figure out the solution while still moving its robot components. To the dismay of lots of Rubik's enthusiasts, CubeStormer III is clearly superior to them. If it doesn't gain sentience eventually, we will be way disappointed. Robot Emperor CubeStormer III is definitely worthy of the title.

If zombie movies have taught us one lesson, it's that anything can be used as a weapon, even children's toys. Lego enthusiast Jack Streat wasn't content with making peaceful models in his spare time. He wanted to make an adult toy, and settled on modeling machine guns that actually fire.

The coolest model is his HK UMP 45, but he has also made sniper rifles, World War II machine guns, and pump-action shotguns. The UMP 45 is faithfully reproduced in cool black bricks. Nothing was left out. The firing mechanism is faithfully modeled after real weapons, but instead of shooting bullets, it just shoots little bricks. Of course, these are stored in detachable magazines. Because why wouldn't they?

As if getting the gun shooting wasn't impressive enough, Streat went ahead and reproduced all the accessories of the HK UMP 45. A collapsible stock comes with the model, as does a Reflex sight. In case the sight doesn't work, Streat made sure to give the gun classic iron sights. All in all, the only difference between this and the real machine gun, is that this one is made out Legos and can't kill you. But getting a face-full of flying Lego bricks doesn't exactly sound like a fun time, so watch out for anybody hanging around with a Lego machine gun. The eyes are the groin of the face.

It takes a special type of person to look at a map of Europe and go: "You know what? This would be awesome to make out of Lego." But thank God those people exist, because without them, we wouldn't have one of the weirdest, yet most impressive Lego projects in the world: a 157-square-foot, 53,500-brick, Lego map of Europe.

Now at first, that doesn't sound like much, but this isn't just a normal map. Oh no, the builders of the project wanted to design a relief map, with all the mountain ranges, river beds, and lowlands of Europe modeled to scale. For example, the mountains of the Alps stick up above the map. It's a pretty amazing feat of Lego cartography, but the makers decided that mapping the geography of Europe still wasn't impressive enough. They decided to recreate 44 of the most famous landmarks in Europe out of Legos, and stick them on the map in their respective locations. In the end, looking at the model is like a little tour of the European continent. An actual tour of Europe is probably cooler ... but only marginally so. At least, until these guys build a life-sized Lego European dance club.

Back in 2012, Lego enthusiast Alice Finch put together the largest Lego replica of Hogwarts to date. Making an entire school of witchcraft and wizardry out of tiny toy bricks is no easy feat, but Finch wanted to ratchet things up to the next level. That's when (cue the soundtrack) she met fellow Lego builder David Frank, according to Mashable, and they decided to work together to bring J.R.R. Tolkien's elven city of Rivendell to plasticized life.

Compared to the gentle rolling hills of the Shire, Rivendell presented some complex architectural challenges, presumably requiring coffee, sleepless nights, and a hardcore work ethic. Both of the plastic brick veterans wanted to get the city up and running before BrickCon 2013, which resulted in three months of late-night building sessions that probably resembled the exhausting "study routine" that got you through your college exams. Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films were a huge help in determining the city's layout, and the duo made further adjustments after the release of The Hobbit. In the end, Rivendell was built using 200,000 bricks, and the elves lived happily ever after.

Your average car is made of a wide variety of materials, ranging from glass to aluminum to rubber, all of which can get pretty gnarled up if you're unlucky enough to experience a head-on collision. Now, if you heard that someone had built a cool-looking car out of Lego blocks — let's say, a smooth blue Bugatti Chiron — you'd probably be impressed. Doubly so if you found out that the car was life-sized. But here's the kicker: what if you could actually open the Lego door of a Lego car, hit the ignition, and drive away?

Crazy as it sounds, a drivable Lego car really exists, according to TechCrunch. Obviously, building a car out of over 1 million tiny plastic "Technic" bits is a lot of work, and it required 13,000 man hours, according to Lego.com. While this blocky Bugatti only drives up to 19 MPH, it's certainly fast enough to dodge some cones, and the vehicle contains other fun features like a detachable Lego steering wheel, a spoiler that electronically lifts and lowers, and a fully-functional speedometer built out of... well, you know. To be fair, not every single part of the car is built from toy bricks, as rendering it drivable does require a steel frame, batteries, and actual rubber tires. While you probably don't want to turn this one into a daily commuter, just imagine the look on your partner's face if you parked this in the driveway.

Sure, many kids had a plastic Batcave set when they were a kid. Maybe you were even innovative enough to compile all your black Lego bricks and build one yourself. But no matter how ambitious your plans may have been, you would've had a hard time competing with the work of Carlyle Livingston II and Wayne Hussey, featured on Kotaku, who spent over 800 hours constructing something that even the Dark Knight himself (particularly the version featured in The Lego Batman Movie) would be proud of.

The fact that their Batcave weighs over 100 pounds and is constructed from over 20,000 parts is small potatoes compared to the insane level of detail, which led Maxim to call it "the best Lego Batcave ever." Not only is there a Batmobile, a Batplane, and a Batboat right out of the Tim Burton movies, but Livingston and Hussey's Batcave also features its own lighting system and four motors that power such mechanical contraptions as a turntable for the fancy black super-car, some swanky elevators, and more. Here's to these guys for making childhood dreams come true.

Ask anybody in a band, and they'll tell you musical instruments can get crazy expensive. In 2009, though, the Telegraph reported that a clever New York City artist named Nathan Sawaya had eschewed standard materials like maple and spruce to make his own functional cello, instead opting for — you guessed it! — yellow, brown, and black Lego blocks. Though Sawaya says the Lego cello doesn't quite replicate the beautiful sound of a real cello, it is fully playable when strung with regular cello strings, which definitely marks this achievement as one for the books.

As it happens, Sawaya has become a big name in the wild world of Lego sculptures, with Inhabitat writing in 2011 that he had constructed an entire bedroom set out of Legos, including drawers that opened and closed, a nightstand with a small reproduction of Auguste Rodin's "The Thinker" on it, as well as what is probably the world's most rigidly uncomfortable mattress and pillow set of all time. Placed alongside the little bed, of course, is Sawaya's miraculous Lego-constructed cello ... you know, in case he wakes up in the middle of the night from his hard plastic block bed, can't fall back asleep for some reason, and wants to play his plastic block musical instrument into the wee hours. Now, if he can just follow this up by making a Lego hangpan, or a sitar...