For years now, we’ve seen athletes with prosthetic running blades break all sorts of boundaries that were previously insurmountable. And now Nike is crossing the final barrier by making a shoe that it can sell to people who have no feet. Snarking aside, the Nike Sole is the missing link for running blade users, providing better grip and a more natural stride length.

The sneakerheads at Nice Kicks have dug up a patent filed by Nike for “An article of footwear with a lighting system … The lighting system includes three lighting devices disposed on the article of footwear. The lighting system is also associated with an automatic fastening system.”

Now, the second coming of L.A. Lights may not be particularly exciting, but that automatic fastening system … well, it’s impossible to mention without mentioning Back to the Future II, so: Yeah, in Back to the Future II, Marty McFly had a pair of self-lacing Nike sneakers that were pretty cool, and so geeks are getting very excited about this Nike patent application.

As Engadget points out, “few patent apps ever lead to a real retail product,” but you can salivate anyway:

There’s an undeniable and indefinable charm to classic pinball tables. Something about the flashing lights, the squeaky, stuck flippers, the irritatingly loud bumpers and the feeling that you never know if you’re doing well just makes for an addictive experience. I’ve lost several hours of my life to various pinball machines, both real and computerized, over the years, and I don’t regret a minute of it, except the specific minutes wherein I lost those games.

Now I’m not one to be traditional or nostalgic, but I think there’s something about the classic arcade pinball experience that can’t be replicated. That said, being able to play any number of different, unique pinball boards on a single machine would be pretty darn cool. And that’s just what Nike has provided with its World Cup promotion pinball table.

It didn’t seem possible, but they found a way to make light-up shoes cool for people over 12 years old. The shoe revampers over at Diversitile have made several upgrades to the traditional Nike model and will soon help turn your feet into crime-fighting machines, complete with functioning arc reactors (and by functioning, I mean glowing). But with something like this, you know they’ll be limited edition, so follow along at Diversitile vigilantly and take swift action. Just how Iron Man would.

They may not SHIELD (see what I did there?) your feet any more than a regular shoe, but when people see these bad boys on you, they’ll know who they’re dealing with. See below for a closer look at the shiny reactor tongue and the alternate color scheme that probably won’t sell a single pair until the colorful batch runs out.

The sneaker phreakers at HappyCash Fashion have lovingly hand-painted some Nike Dunks with the visage and fists of Super Mario, in his Paper Mario iteration. Super jumps are sure to follow.

Here’s a trend we suppose was inevitable: web-equipped shoes. As mobile technology becomes cheaper and more ubiquitous and social media continues to Skynet our lives away, it was only a matter of time before our shoes — which, at one point, were a groundbreaking technology because they made it not hurt when we stepped on sharp rocks — became Internet beacons.

After the jump, five shoes that will ensure that you can never, ever escape the Internet, even when you are jogging or walking to the grocery store: