10 Disturbing WWE Storylines That Got Way Too Dark
2. Tim White's Lunchtime Suicides
Earl Hebner aside, it’s pretty rare for WWE to involve their referees in storylines, particularly today when the officials have no real defining character traits.
2005 saw them involve Tim White as a means of selling the horrors of Hell In A Cell, however. Having retired from refereeing after a shoulder injury in 2004, White had opened a bar in Cumberland, Rhode Island, and SmackDown reporter Josh Mathews tracked him down on an episode of SmackDown.
White was found drinking himself into oblivion. He claimed that refereeing the 2002 Hell In A Cell bout between Chris Jericho and Triple H had “ruined his life,” then grabbed a shotgun from beneath the bar. Offscreen, White pulled the trigger, apparently killing himself on air barely a month after the death of Eddie Guerrero.
The whole thing was incredible distasteful - but it escalated.
They explained that White had accidentally shot his foot during the incident, but when Mathews interviewed him for a second time, White consumed a box full of rat poison. He survived again, but tried to hang himself two weeks later, and White’s “Lunchtime Suicide” vignettes became a regular feature on WWE.com. The situation ended that April, when WWE finally aired a video in which White didn’t try to off himself, but shot Mathews instead.
Brilliant...