Forget the charming rogues from the movies—real pirates weren’t exactly handing out invitations to a life of adventure. More like a ticket to being brutally thrown overboard! Sure, the hooks, peg legs, and eyepatches seem like fun pirate accessories, but they were basically the result of pirate “team-building exercises” gone terribly wrong. Captains kept their crews in line with the threat of painful, gruesome deaths—and if you were unlucky enough to be caught by them? Let’s just say their idea of “hospitality” involved a lot less rum and a lot more torture. Weird History is here to remind us that swashbuckling on the high seas was less ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ and more ‘Pirates of the Please Don’t Kill Me!’