Area 51 lore has been satirized, remixed, and riffed on so much in popular culture, sometimes it's hard to remember how creepy this whole deal was/is in the first place. But secret government cover ups, dead aliens, and playing God in the middle of the desolate Nevada desert is creepier than probing Randy Quaid. It's been said that everything from time travel, genetic experiments, and alien autopsies are commonplace at Area 51. Frankly, no one outside of high government knows what goes on in there. First off, Area 51 is a real, highly classified military base in the southern portion of Nevada; its purpose is publicly unknown. But in the early 1950s, in the infant stages of the Cold War, President Eisenhower approved plans to build the U-2 stealth plane and created Area 51 to house the development labs and test field. When reports of the -- admittedly, spacecraft-looking -- plane floated through the public and media, theories spread, and the conjecture around Roswell's "alien crash" site only fanned the flames of speculation. From there, it's been the epicenter for all US government suspicion.
