Few developers have transcended gaming like John Carmack. He is the technical mastermind behind the likes of Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake, and managed to achieve the impossible time and time again. His feats are the stuff of legends — so much so, that it’s very easy to assume they are probably made up.

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I mean, surely one man couldn’t have done all the wacky things people have claimed John Carmack has done and achieved. Here’s the kicker though — reality is stranger than fiction and had John Carmack gone down a different path, he could have easily taken over the world.

6 Created Engines That Shouldn’t Exist

Quake super shotgun

It’s hard to think that, at one point, PC gaming was barely worth considering. You’ve got to remember, PCs in the 90s couldn’t run games like Super Mario Brothers - a game from the early 80s. It was a dire time for anyone rocking a home computer at the time. These limitations didn’t stop John of course.

He managed to get a flawless port of Super Mario Brothers 3 working on PCs in a single night's work. Then, he went on to create Doom — one of the first 3D games ever. How about the Quake engine? An engine so damn efficient, that you can still find traces of it in modern games to this day. Most impressively, however, he created what was once considered a mathematically impossible piece of code for Quake 3.

5 Turned Down The US Military

John Carmack smiling

Doing the impossible is something most people would find impressive, so it’s no surprise that the US Military approached Carmack and asked if he would hop aboard. Thankfully, Carmack declined the offer. Had he accepted, the world as we know it may not have been the same.

Not only would the gaming space be different without his influence, but that influence applied to real-world war could have slowly turned into complete and total world domination. This might sound a tad hyperbolic, but we’ve only just gotten started with Carmack and his exploits.

4 Doors Cannot Stop Carmack

John Carmack holding his hands out at a conference holding an ipad

Whilst John was still working at ID Software, a door got stuck. An annoyance, to be sure, but most people would simply hire someone to come out and fix it. A simple solution to a relatively mundane problem. It’s just a door, after all, it’s not the end of the world, right?

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Wrong. This door was an affront to Carmack. How dare mere wood bar his entrance to a room he may need to enter? So instead of calling for a repair, he grabbed a battle axe and destroyed the door. It solved the problem, sure, but at what cost?

3 Unstoppable Combatant

John Carmack choking Jace Hall

Devilish doors are one thing, but what happens when Carmack encounters another human being? Surely Carmack’s incredible intellect would make for a poor physical brawler. Taking over the world requires more than just brains, you need a bit of brawn to keep the population in check.

Turns out John Carmack is quite the imposing fighter. This is impressive considering Carmack is not a particularly large man, coming in at only 5’9”. This one time, he put the physically imposing, 6’7” Jace Hall in a chokehold like it was nothing. This pocket prince brought down a tall king — nobody is safe.

2 Criminal Mastermind And Lover Of Thermite

John Carmack, John Romero, Id Software group photo

When Carmack was a young lad, he decided that a life of crime was for him. His first heist? To steal some Apple II computers from a school. Breaking windows and sneaking through halls is not John’s MO, however. Thermite is clearly the only answer to this problem.

Thermite mixed with Vaseline to be precise. He melted a hole in the school, snuck in, swiped the Apple IIs, and then got caught. This wasn’t due to any mistake on his part, of course. No, it was an inept minion messing up and ruining the whole operation. This failed venture was enough to deter Carmack from becoming a crime lord, but our timeline was so close to being catapulted into ruin.

1 The Final Frontier

John Carmack speech

The final feather in Carmack’s cap is his desire to take to the stars. He founded Armadillo Aerospace in an attempt to achieve that goal, but unfortunately, the project is currently in hibernation. Honestly, this is probably for the best. John has made a killing out of murdering things in space (Doom was set on Mars after all).

If John had actually made it to space and had the opportunity to fly about on whatever space-brained mission he deemed necessary, the human race would be doomed. Battle axes and thermite are only the beginning. The galaxy is only at peace because Carmack is not floating around choking out every alien he stumbles across.

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