YMMV / Guinness World Records

• Archive Panic: The Guinness organization currently catalogs over 40,000 records. Only about 4,000 of them are printed annually in the book; about 15,000 are on their website, but if you need an official verification of a record you need to write directly to the organization.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: Heather Holliday (see here), holder of the records for "longest neon tube swallowed" and "largest curve in a sword swallowed while seated", because of her extremely revealing performance outfit and the resemblance between sword-swallowing and fellatio.
• Broken Base: Over the inclusion of what some perceive as Overly Narrow Superlative records. Those who want Guinness to recognize fewer records say that they have opened the door to anyone breaking a world record, and made the records a lot more trivial and less impressive. The other side of the debate says that this is a good thing, as it no longer restricts record titles to a select few who have the resources to break them (like in traditional sports).
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: Certain categories have been retired due to fears that people could damage themselves—or others—in a lawsuit-inducing way by trying them.
  • From 1991 to 2007, records related to "gluttony" (most food or drink consumed in the fastest time) were dropped as potentially dangerous. When they were reintroduced, they were moved from the "Human Achievements" section to the "Modern Society" one, which might be seen as less of an endorsement.
  • Sword-swallowing records were included but frozen from 1990 to 2006, due again to fears that the maximum safe limit of human physiology had been reached.
  • You will look in vain for World's Youngest-Ever Mother, for instance: as the record-holder was only five, this category was discreetly dropped partly because of the paedophilia connotation and partly because there was a well-grounded fear that somebody out there would seek to beat this record, with legal implications for any publication seen to be implicitly encouraging the attempt. ^note The "youngest mother" record was also dropped because the unfortunate holder, from a Third World South American nation, had eaten a diet of meat packed with fertility hormones which had brought about a very early puberty. As she was indeed also a victim of paedophilia—a male relative was later imprisoned, but released due to lack of evidence, and the identity of the biological father remains a mystery—Guinness World Records deleted all reference to her, out of respect for all the misfortunes she had suffered.
  • The "Loudest Band" category was dropped due to increasing awareness of the high incidence of permanent hearing damage caused by loud music.
  • All heaviest-animal records were discontinued out of fear of people overfeeding their pets.
  • Despite her claims to the contrary, it looks as if the record set by American porn performer Lisa Sparks (sex with 919 men in 12 hours, or 47 seconds per man) is very definitely not listed. The fact that succeeding in the attempt caused chronic physical damage to Ms Sparks, rather than propriety, is likely to be the reason.
• Iron Woobie:
  • Will Powers, the owner of Arcturus and Cygnus, who held the records for "tallest domestic cat ever" and "longest tail on a domestic cat ever". Both cats died in a house fire at two years old; Will barely escaped from it, as he was so concerned with the cats' safety. He later stated in an interview that he refused to adopt any other cats after that, as it was too difficult to get over the loss. In spite of that, he eventually adopted Fenrir and Altair, who later claimed the records for "tallest living domestic cat" and "longest tail on a domestic cat living".
  • Zion Clark (see here and here), holder of the records for "fastest 20 m walking on hands", "highest box jump with the hands", and "most diamond push ups in three minutes". He was born without legs, as a result of his biological mother doing drugs while pregnant. He was then in foster care for his entire childhood, being adopted mere days before aging out of the system. On top of that, he was bullied at school due to his condition. And yet, he is still living his adult life to the fullest; his prominent "NO EXCUSES" tattoo highlights this fact.
    "If I could talk to all those people who bullied me, beat me up and really disrespected me, do you know what I'd say? I'd say thank you. Because it really made me stronger."