10 WWE Fates Worse Than Death

WWE has an erm...rich history of killing characters off onscreen randomly. They're not the only company to do that, of course (Lucha Underground once went wild with it), but high profile examples include Torrie Wilson's dad Al snuffing it because he can't keep up with a new bride in the bedroom, Paul Bearer getting drowned/suffocated in cement, and even Vince McMahon's limousine blowing up.

In typical wrestling fashion, some of those names actually returned to TV afterwards like nothing had happened. There are rarely any concrete (sorry, Paul!) rules when it comes to penning this stuff. Creative just make it up as they go along. That'd explain some of the outright insanity analysed in these pages. You'd swear that some of the wrestlers involved would probs rather have been written out with a kayfabe passing.

At least that'd spare some blushes.

Not everything is a writing team's mess though. Some "fates worse than death" came due to production mishaps that proved to be agonising for the guy afflicted. Another (g) string of incidents happened because one salty worker disliked some of his peers or was asked to dish out smelly punishments to those acting up behind the scenes.

These are totally different from onscreen deaths detailed before. Nobody was killed off, and they all lived to fight another day in some form or fashion. That is, of course, once they'd stopped gagging, vomiting, come out of hospital or quit hunting down members of the creative team for a quiet word.

Onscreen mercy killings might've been preferable to any of this, to be honest!

"The British Bulldog's gonna win, whether he wants to or not!". That iconic line uttered by a happy kid before attending SummerSlam 1992 at the old Wembley Stadium in London, England could be adapted for this entry: 'The British Bulldog's gonna get slammed on some mushed up brownies, whether he wants to or not!'. Wait, what? Brownies?! Oh yes, that wasn't actually dog poo on the 11 October 1999 episode of Raw.

People didn't know that at the time though, so everyone tuning into the show believed The Rock had hit his Rock Bottom finisher and poor Davey Boy Smith had ended up covered in poop. The Brit would've been thankful that these were just excess cakes from catering made to look like a pile of brown smelly stuff, but it still wasn't a banner night for him personally.

A mild entry for this list to kick off with, shall we say, but still a mortifying experience nobody would want to live out. Imagine going into your workplace, saying good morning, then immediately being scooped up and sent tumbling into a handy platter of dog crap. Why was it even there to begin with? Is there anybody in the HR department you can talk to? Who's going to get these stains out of this brand new, out of the packet M&S shirt?!

This was certainly an inauspicious way for Bulldog to kick off his latest stint in the then-WWF, put it that way. He was a shadow of his former self, and anyone watching could see that, but now here he was being Rock Bottomed right onto some jobby. YES! It feels great to get that decidedly-Scottish word into an article.

Most wrestlers do a job, but Smith got a jobby.