Zayn Malik has a comic book-inspired "ZAP!" tattoo on his right forearm, which displays at least a small level of his nerdishness. And while he might not have devoted any ink to his love of video game characters and pirates (that we know of), he devoted his backyard to them instead.

As The Fader's Duncan Cooper revealed, Zayn has sprinkled his north-of-London home with plenty of pop culture decor, including a science-class skeleton pretending to smoke and a Japanese Akita dog named Marley, after Bob Marley, of course.

Perhaps the most striking and nerdy offerings from Zayn's garden were the "life-size wooden carvings" of characters from the "Tekken" series -- you know, the fighters from the arcade (and later PlayStation) game franchise that rocked battle jumpsuits like this:

"It was from an HMV store that had gone out of business when he was in One Direction," Cooper explains, "and all the guys knew that he loved 'Tekken' for some reason, and so they bought him these life-size punching figures."

The oddly worn video game statues, the knife collection on the wall, the pirate-themed bar inside a shed (where Cooper says the interview took place) -- these are all things that would make for a hella entertaining episode of "MTV Cribs." Can we hook this guy up?

Watch the whole peek into Zayn's weird world below.