It’s not very easy to get through life without a job. Unless you’ve lucked into independent wealth because of family money or tripping over a giant gold nugget at some point, you need to work. The lucky amongst us can get jobs we enjoy that allow us to pay the bills and feel good about what we do. Most people just work to survive, though.

Once you get a job, keeping the job is a whole different ball game. According to one study, 40% of people will be fired from a job in their lifetime. There can be almost endless reasons for losing your job, but some are far more unpredictable than others. 

10. BJ Tyler’s NBA Career was Killed By an Ice Pack

For the lucky few people in the world who are talented enough to be professional athletes, the sky seems to be the limit. If you’re a good enough basketball player, you can make millions of dollars on a contract, plus millions more in sponsorships. You can play for a decade in the NBA and be rich beyond your wildest dreams for the rest of your life if you’re responsible with the money. But the “ifs” in those sentences carry a lot of weight.

BJ Tyler had signed a $6 million contract with the Toronto Raptors. From the outside, it looked like he would have become a pretty big star in the game, and his future was laid out on a clear path before him. But then, as with too many athletes, an injury sidelined him and made him retire from the game completely. What’s weird about this is how it happened.

Tyler wasn’t hurt on the court, or even off the court. He had a minor problem with his ankle one day and put an ice pack on it to reduce swelling. And then he fell asleep. With the ice left untended on his ankle, it caused permanent nerve damage which ruined his ability to play basketball. He could no longer move with any speed, and his career was over. 

9. Howard the Duck Ruined the Career of More Than One Person

Long before the MCU was a thing, Marvel was trying its hand at movies for lesser-known properties.  Captain America, Nick Fury, Dr. Strange, The Punisher, and more all had movies before Robert Downey Jr. ever donned the mantle of Iron Man. And the most infamous film of all was 1986’s Howard the Duck.

The movie is most well-known today for being a giant cinematic failure. It was about an anthropomorphic duck from outer space who has a kind of sexy scene with Leah Thompson, the mom from Back to the Future. It was pretty weird all around. Most audiences hated it, but a few people still love it to this day.

It was such a big bomb that the studio never recovered. In fact, it’s one of the few movies that you can point to which has been blamed for ruining the careers of at least three different people. 

Thompson once mentioned she felt the movie was such a big bomb that it mostly tanked her career. Director Willard Huyck never made another movie again after its failure.  Frank Price, the president of Universal Pictures, resigned within a month with speculation being that the poor box office of Howard the Duck was the primary cause. 

8. Director John McTiernan Wiretapped Coworkers

The 1990 movie Die Hard has stood the test of time as one of the great action movies. People still love it to this day, and if you go online around Christmas every single year people will debate whether it qualifies as a Christmas movie. 

Director John McTiernan seemed like he would have been poised to continued the upward trajectory of his career which began taking off with Predator and continued on with other hits like The Hunt for Red October and Die Hard with a Vengeance.

Unfortunately, make Tiernan derailed his own career when he decided he should illegally wiretap some of his co-producers after the 2002 dud Rollerball. McTiernan ended up going to jail thanks to the scandal, which included him lying to the FBI about it. The act ruined his Hollywood career and you can imagine few in the business would trust him again after that.

7. A Model From a Plastic Surgery Meme Says It Ruined Her Life

Meme culture has been big on the internet for years, but did you ever stop to think about the people behind the memes? Sometimes a website will track down the “star” of a member and make a cute story out of it. Sometimes it’s not so cute. That’s what happened with Heidi Yeh, the model featured in a plastic surgery meme.  

Yeh originally signed on to make an ad for a Taiwanese plastic surgery clinic. The ad features her, a man, and three kids. The idea behind the ad was that the mother and father looked a little different from the children because of plastic surgery. The text of the ad was “The only thing you’ll ever have to worry about is how to explain it to the kids.”

The ad was not supposed to extend beyond the local area being served by the clinic. However, once it got online, someone turned it into a meme and it spread around the world. It started traveling with a story that it was real, and Yeh was getting a divorce because her husband saw their ugly kids and decided she had defrauded him by not disclosing that she’d had surgery.

Because everyone believed the story was real, she lost modeling jobs. Companies thought not only had she had plastic surgery, but that she was this horrible person who had lied to her husband.

6. Colonel Sanders Ended His Law Career By Fighting in Court

Despite dying in 1980, most people around the world still know the face of Colonel Sanders thanks to his restaurant Kentucky Fried Chicken. During his lifetime, the colonel was what polite people would describe as a colorful character. For instance, he once shot a man for painting over one of his advertisements. 

For a time, Colonel Sanders worked as a lawyer. It’s hard to say if he was any good, but word is he once got into a fight in a courtroom with his own client. There were no serious legal repercussions for the colonel, but it put an end to his law career and allowed him to focus on chicken, so maybe it was all for the best.

5. Larry Bird Ended His Career by Building a Driveway for His Mom

In the 1980s, Larry Bird was one of the biggest names in basketball and is still often considered among the top 10 to ever play the game. He was a 12-time all-star; he won a gold for the US Olympic team, and he was making millions of dollars. It’s been said he had earned as much as $80 million and when he left the game in 1992, he left $24 million on the table.

It’s not that his career had come to a natural end; instead, Bird injured himself and had to retire from the game. His back injury is one of the worst in basketball history because he was in his prime at the time it happened.

Arguably the biggest tragedy is how the injury happened. He had opted to help build his mother a driveway at her house back in 1985. He was shoveling gravel outside and threw his back out. It bothered him for years and was constantly locking up. Even surgery couldn’t fix it. It got so bad he had to bow out of the game when he arguably should have had many years to go. 

4. Jean-Claude Van Damme Turned Down a 3-Movie, $12 million Deal

The 1980s and the 1990s were a golden age for action movies. Stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, and Jean-Claude Van Damme were huge. But nothing lasts forever, and action stars often age out of their roles as time goes on. That’s not to say that Schwarzenegger and Stallone aren’t still making action movies today, they’re just not as intense as they used to be.

Jean-Claude Van Damme, on the other hand, could have probably had a much bigger career than he did. However, Van Damme was a man who bought into his own hype more than other people did. There had been rumors for years that he was very good at sabotaging his own career, and thought he was bigger than he was. The man confirmed as much himself.

After the commercial success of his movie Timecop in 1994, he was offered a three picture, $12 million deal. Instead of taking it, he demanded more money. He wanted $20 million “like Jim Carrey.”  The studio hung up on him and he was blacklisted, tanking his career and relegating him to “direct to video” releases.

3. Allan Carr Produced the 1989 Oscars Then Never Worked in Hollywood Again

Every year the Academy Awards puts on the annual Oscar broadcast and, more often than not, the next day people complain about what they didn’t like about it. But the Oscars are going to be hard pressed to ever outdo the 1989 opening that was so bad it ended the career producer Allan Carr.

The opening segment featured an unknown actress portraying Snow White doing a musical number with Rob Lowe, who is not a singer. The show had no host, just these random performances that made little sense, were bloated with random stars, and were awkward and cringe-inducing to watch.

No one bothered to ask Disney for permission to use Snow White, so they sued for copyright infringement. The broadcast is still considered the worst in the show’s history and ensured subsequent shows never went without a host for another 30 years. 

2. Justine Sacco Was Fired Over a Tweet

Remember Justine Sacco? She was one of the first people to fall victim to what was later labelled “cancel culture.” Which is to say that Sacco said something online that exploded and ruined her life offline as well.

In 2013, Sacco was flying to South Africa and before she boarded the plane she tweets “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white.” She did not know the storm that created during her time in the air. It went viral, was seen by thousands, and soon after she was fired from her job as a communications director. 

For a time she was the villain of the internet, and the tweet effectively ruined her life. If you’re hoping for a silver lining for this sort of thing it’s worth noting that Sacco eventually got another job and, within a few years, was hired back by the same company for an even more high profile job. So getting cancelled is more of a temporary thing for some folks. 

1. Composer Robert Schumann Ruined His Potential as a Pianist with a Homemade Invention

If you want to make a living as a pianist you have to keep your hands safe. Robert Schumann really wanted to be all he could be when he tickled those ivories. He invented a device that would help strengthen his hands and allow him to play piano even better. Except the exact opposite thing happened.

Schumann is widely known these days as a composer rather than a pianist. Also, for the fact he spent his final years in an asylum. But the reason he failed as a pianist was his invention. Using a cigar box and wire, the device was meant to allow him to rest his hands while he played, allowing them to get stronger. He caused permanent damage to two fingers, however, and couldn’t play at all.

There are over 10,000 hostage situations in America every year. Many of them are resolved peacefully but thousands are not. It’s obviously a serious and potentially deadly issue that can play out in so many unpredictable ways it’s hard for anyone to know how to proceed.

While movies and TV shows can make everything look simple, the truth can be anything but. And some hostage situations have gone so far off the rails that no one ever could have guessed how they were going to play out.

10. A Man Took a Radio Station Manager Hostage and Demanded a Kermit the Frog Song

Hostage taking often comes as a result of desperation or cruelty, depending on the situation. Sometimes it’s used as a tactic to try to achieve a goal. Maybe a bank robber will take a hostage to try to ensure their own safety so they can get away. For one man in New Zealand, the purpose of taking the manager of a radio station hostage was about as murky as reasons could get. He wanted to hear the Muppets sing The Rainbow Connection, and he wanted to hear it for 12 hours.

The 21-year-old man was not identified in the media, but he entered a New Zealand radio station claiming to have a bomb. As he barricaded himself inside with his hostage and police cordoned off the neighborhood, the man wanted the world to know how he felt and ordered the song played on repeat.

The whole event was cut short when police were able to take him into custody and we may never know why he felt Kermit’s song from The Muppet Movie expressed his true feelings. The bomb he claimed to have turned out to be a fake. 

9. Notorious Criminal Charles Bronson Let a Hostage Go For Farting

To many people in North America, Charles Bronson was an action star who achieved most of his fame through the Death Wish film series. There is, however, another Charles Bronson out there that people in the UK are more familiar with. This Charles Bronson was an infamous criminal known for being especially violent and brutal. He became almost a folk hero and even had a movie made about him that stars Tom Hardy. 

Bronson was initially incarcerated for armed robbery, however he spent decades in prison because of his violent nature when he was behind bars. There, he would attack other inmates and take hostages on more than one occasion. His motives are usually hard to understand, seeing as once he took hostages and demanded an inflatable doll, helicopter, and a cup of tea to release the person.

Arguably the most bizarre incident involving Bronson and his hostage taking was when he took a librarian hostage and then released the man because he farted in front of him, which Bronson found disgusting.

8. Kenneth Lamar Noid Took 2 Domino’s Employees Hostage Because of Noid Commercials

The story of the Noid, the weird claymation mascot of Domino’s Pizza back in the ’90s, sounds pretty goofy until you get the full, tragic story as it related to one man who had some unfortunate mental health issues.

If you don’t remember the Noid, he was a strange sort of rabbit eared character who really wanted to ruin your pizza experience. So to “avoid the Noid,” as they said, you had to order Domino’s? Unfortunately, a man named Kenneth Lamar Noid became convinced that Domino’s was targeting him specifically with their ads.

Kenneth was so upset by commercials featuring the Noid character that he eventually went to Domino’s location and took two employees hostage at gunpoint, trying to convince the company to stop specifically targeting him in their commercials which is something he felt was happening.

The employees managed to escape because Noid ordered a pizza and then sat down to eat it. He was taken into custody and it seems like the story should have ended there, but unfortunately Noid was plagued by the belief that these commercials were out to get him and eventually took his own life.

7. During a Deadly Hostage Crisis Reporters Asked Hostage Takers to Pose with Their Guns Against Hostage’s Heads

The relationship between the media and the news they report on has always been a strange one. In recent years, the line between the two getting blurred has become more and more of a concern to the point where sometimes you need to wonder if news is being reported or if it is being created. There are few cases where this was more of a serious issue than back in 1988 in West Germany.

Known as the Gladbeck Hostage Crisis, the incident started when two men robbed a bank in Gladbeck. The police response was bungled to say the least, and they ended up providing a getaway vehicle for the two men more than once. After nearly a day of holding employees at gunpoint, the two men took the car, two hostages, and the money they robbed from the bank and drove away. They even managed to stop to pick up the girlfriend of one of the two robbers.

They drove to another town and somehow hijacked a bus full of 30 people. The police detained the girlfriend, and in retaliation one of the bank robbers shot a 15-year-old hostage. They left with a bus full of hostages, transferred to a car and cut down to two hostages, and fled again. 

At their next stop the press swarmed their car. They were taking photos and asking questions while hostages in the car had guns on them. With cameras rolling, in footage you can still find today, one of the reporters notices that there’s a gun not being used and asks if it wouldn’t make for a better shot if the gunman picked it up and put it to the hostage’s head.

In the end, another of the hostages was still shot before police could bring the man into custody.

6. A Hostage Taker Stormed Discovery Channel Because He Hated Their Programming

If you spend any time on social media, then you know people on the internet have some seriously angry opinions about TV. you can get people arguing for hours, even days, over TV shows and movies. Many times these will escalate into violent and angry name calling as well.  People just take their entertainment way too seriously.

In 2010, this grew well out of control when one man broke into the Discovery Channel headquarters and took hostages because of how much he hated the shows the channel was airing. And sure, lots of people complain about reality tv, but most of those complaints don’t end in fatalities.

James J. Lee had a history of publicly causing trouble for Discovery. Two years prior he staged a protest against the shows Kate Plus 8 and 19 Kids and Counting. But in 2010 he crossed a line and took two employees and a security guard hostage for hours, demanding Kate Plus 8 be taken off TV. Part of his issue was the belief humans were destroying the planet and, since those shows promoted large families, they were doing more harm.

Lee was armed with a gun as well as several explosives that were designed to go off if he was shot by police. A robot had to be used to disarm some of the devices. 

5. John II of France was Taken Hostage, Released, Then Voluntarily Returned as a Hostage

Most people have some kind of individual sense of honor, to a greater or lesser degree, that determines how they’re going to act in any situation. Historically, codes like this were a little more important to a person and could have a greater influence on the actions they took in day-to-day life. Such was the case with King John II of France.

In 1355, England and France were at war. In 1356, England had overcome the French forces and King John was taken prisoner. By 1357, he was being held in London. It wouldn’t be until 1360 that he was finally ransomed and returned home. However, France did not have the money to pay the ransom so instead additional prisoners were taken. King John was exchanged for his own son, amongst others.

Maybe the story would have ended there, except John’s son managed to escape after he was taken into custody. For whatever reason, John felt this was a dishonorable move, since his son was meant as payment for himself, so he turned himself back over to the English once again. 

4. Muhammad Ali Negotiated the Release of 15 Hostages in Iraq

Every once in a while a professional athlete will offer up their opinion on something to do with politics or world events. Many times people will tell them to stick to what they’re good at, meant as an insult. But Muhammad Ali proved that professional athletes can make a big difference when he saved 15 hostages back in 1990.

The regime of Saddam Hussein took 15 Americans hostage after the Gulf War. Ali traveled to Iraq, amidst heavy criticism, to speak with Hussein in person. He was successful as well, and secured the release of the men. His efforts would later result in George Bush giving him the Medal of Freedom.  This was also not Ali’s first time dealing with hostage negotiations, as in the mid 80s he had gone to Beirut to negotiate for the release of four American hostages. 

3. A Woman Held Hostage by Her Boyfriend Used the Pizza Hut App To Get Help

Cheryl Treadway was taken hostage by her boyfriend in 2015, along with her children. In need of help and fearful for her safety and that of her kids. He confiscated her phone and held them all hostage with a large knife. At some point Treadway managed to convince her boyfriend that they needed to eat, and she could order pizza using the Pizza Hut app without having to talk to anyone. So he let her do it.

In the space where you’re allowed to leave a note in the ordering app she wrote “911 hostage help”. The order taker at Pizza Hut could see that something was wrong, and the police were called, saving Treadway and her children. 

2. Residents of Love Canal Took the EPA Hostage

You may have heard of the town of Love Canal, the infamous site of a toxic waste dump. Many of the local residents complained of severe, long-lasting health conditions as a result of this toxic waste that they didn’t know existed. The story of what happened has been considered the kicking off point for the modern environmental era. 

The issues suffered by these people were catastrophic. It wasn’t just getting sick; they were suffering chromosome damage. This was serious stuff. After it was discovered, several hundred families were compensated, their homes were purchased by the government, and they were able to relocate. But hundreds more were considered to be outside the danger zone, even though they were also suffering ill effects.

Because the government wasn’t listening to their concerns, they resorted to the extreme measure of kidnapping two EPA officials. Police arrived to discover hundreds of residents armed with 2x4s protecting their hostages. They explained that the men wouldn’t be treated poorly, but they were not going to be let go until the government listened. 

The hostage situation lasted 5 hours, but over 700 residents had their homes purchased by the government soon after, which is what they wanted.

1. A Hostage Taker’s Mom Showed Up and Beat Him

In a movie it’s always exciting when the hero shows up and gives the villain their comeuppance. Do we have heroes in real life to do this? Sometimes. In the case of Amos Atkinson, the hero was his mom.

After firing a shotgun at police, Atkinson took 30 hostages at a restaurant in an effort to force authorities to release his friend from custody. Police contacted his mother to act as a go-between to communicate with him. She showed up and started beating her son with a handbag. Humiliated and unable to proceed, Atkinson let the rest of the hostages go and was arrested.