GISH

The Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen (GISHWHES, pronounced gish-wes) (now shortened to just "GISH") was an annual week-long competitive media scavenger hunt originally held each October or November, but more recently each August. Teams of five to 15 (previously nine to 15 before 2022) competitors earned points for submitting photos and videos of themselves completing prompts from a list they received at the beginning of the week. Actor Misha Collins officially founded GISHWHES in 2011 after a publicity stunt to help the television series Supernatural (in which Collins appeared) win a People's Choice Award. The competition held a world record for being the largest media scavenger hunt ever to take place, and several additional world records. The hunt also raised funds in support of several charities each year, and was affiliated with the Random Acts 501c3. History Actor Misha Collins, known for playing the angel Castiel on the American television series Supernatural, is the founder of GISHWHES. The competition began informally in 2010 when Holly Ollis, a publicist for Warner Bros., asked Collins to engage his audience to help Supernatural move from second place to first in the People's Choice Awards voting. Collins posted a message on Twitter, declaring that if the show won, Ollis had promised him a rhinoceros which he would share with everyone who helped by voting for the show. When Supernatural won the competition, Collins, partially inspired by his time at the University of Chicago as an undergraduate during which he participated in the school's annual scavenger hunt, asked his followers to send him self-addressed stamped envelopes into which he put scavenger hunt prompts written on the backs of jigsaw puzzle pieces from a puzzle depicting a rhino. Soon, participants began to respond to Collins's "absurd" requests. One successful prompt, for example, challenged fans to photograph a group of firemen wearing nothing but kale. Collins enjoyed this exercise so much that he decided to create an official scavenger hunt in 2011. He established the event's website and gave it its name, the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen, calling its acronym, GISHWHES, "the ugliest acronym the world has ever seen". According to Collins, the primary reason for developing the competition was that he "loved the idea of thousands of people from all over the world connecting to create incredible things".