8. The Stuttering Gimmick After Being Electrocuted
How many wrestlers have ever been electrocuted in a storyline? You can probably count them on one hand. In fact, you may be able to stop with one name: Goldust. Goldust was sitting backstage on the February 3, 2003 edition of Raw looking all sad when Randy Orton and Batista showed up to ask him where Scott Steiner was (Steiner was feuding with Triple H at the time). He didn't answer, so the heels beat him up. The fight went out to the arena where Orton threw Goldust into a wall full of electrical outlets and devices. When they threw Goldust into it the second time, sparks started to fly and there were guys on hand to spray Goldust with fire extinguishers.The story was that Goldust was electrocuted from the incident, so he developed a stuttering gimmick from that point on with the idea that the electrocution messed with his mind and speech. It was a comedy gimmick for the most part, but it also likely upset some fans that knew people with Tourette's because that's what it reminded people of. At least it led to this appearance on Howard Stern's show that was hilarious. He was in character for 30 minutes doing the stuttering gimmick. He was able to have fun with it. These days WWE never mentions the stuttering thing likely because it did piss off some fans and it would have been hard to build him as a serious performer if he was stuttering all the time.