5

Bill Murray's Wrath Comes In The Form Of A ... Personal Assistant?

As the entire internet has told us time and time again, Bill Murray is a national treasure and professional randomness elemental who is at least as famous for his off-time hijinks as he is for his extensive movie career. At this point, you can hardly Google the guy's name without him rappelling through your kitchen window, stealing a single chicken nugget from your fridge, and running away, screaming, "No one will ever believe you!"

The thing many people forget is that while Murray's chosen existence as a trickster god inhabiting the body of a talented actor is good for roughly every internet point in existence, actually working with the guy could get pretty challenging. Fellow Ghostbuster and esteemed comedy director Harold Ramis found this out the hard way in 1993, while shooting Groundhog Day. We all know how the end result turned out (a goddamned masterpiece, and I'll drunkenly attempt to drop-kick you if you disagree), but it soon became apparent to the production staff that getting there was going to be like pulling teeth while attempting to herd a clowder of angry cats, if Murray had any say in the matter (which he had).

United Artists

Murray had his reservations about the production and dealt with the situation by being as unreachable as he could be without actually faking his death. Calls went unanswered and unreturned. Production assistants couldn't find Murray anywhere. And when they actually did reach him, things weren't necessarily any better: Murray's first marriage was rapidly disintegrating, which brought a generous layer of crankiness to his already aloof nature. Even Ramis, who had already collaborated with Murray five times, described dealing with his compatriot's mood thusly: "I learned to step back. You don't step in front of a train. You just let it go by."

But the movie had to be made, and its star had to be reached. So one day, some brave soul in the production told Murray, "Bill, you know, things would be easier if you had a personal assistant. Then we wouldn't have to bother you with all this stuff." To which Murray, presumably infuriated by his impending divorce, a movie he wanted little to do with, and a bunch of people who were bothering him with petty shit like "schedules" and "Oh god please tell us you haven't been eaten by a bear, it's been a week and we're worried," reacted in a manner most ferocious: "OK," he said, and wandered off to hire a personal assistant.

Evan Agostini/Getty Images

4

Noel Gallagher Spent Years Convincing His Brother That Ghosts Exist

"Brothers," "bandmates," and "drunk, grumpy Brits" are all concepts that rank highly on the list of Things That Will Probably End Up In A Fight. So it's not exactly shocking that Noel Gallagher from Oasis has been feuding with his bandmate/brother Liam pretty much throughout their career, presumably over which of them should get to reign supreme over the two eyebrows they share between them. However, the list of their many insults, barbs, and right hooks tends to exclude some of their more cerebral acts of petty vengeance, particularly my favorite one: Noel systematically pulled a years-long con to convince Liam that ghosts are real.

Nick Pickles/Getty Images

Things started small: If the band was anywhere even remotely spooky (which, touring in Britain and staying in local hotels, was presumably about 95 percent of their time), Noel made remarks that the place was clearly haunted, particularly the room Liam ended up staying in. Eventually, matters escalated, and Noel recruited help. By 1996, when they were recording Be Here Now at remote Ridge Farm in Surrey, people would sneak into Liam's room when he was away and alter it in small yet noticeable ways, turning the pictures on the walls back to front or moving furniture ever so slightly around, to Noel's endless amusement and Liam's growing phasmophobia.

John Gichigi/Getty Images

3

Joseph Gordon-Levitt Turns The Camera On The Paparazzi

In 2006, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's days as the kid from 3rd Rock From The Sun were well behind him, but he had not quite graduated from the school of What Shia LaBeouf Could've Been If He Wasn't So Damn Annoying with a Summa Cum Laude in Looper, Inception, and The Dark Knight Rises. As such, he was in a weird place with the paparazzi: He knew more than enough to be wary of the fuckers but hadn't yet been worn down to the inevitable "barely avoids the temptation to beat them to a pulp with their own cameras" stage.

Randy Shropshire/Getty Images

One day, when Gordon-Levitt was walking about with a friend, some particularly annoying paparazzi started pestering him. Instead of yelling at them and/or summoning a horde of bodyguards to beat them up, he decided to get creative. He whipped out his camera and turned it on them, calmly interviewing them as he reveled in their growing frustration and annoyance, slowly coaxing them to explain their motivation of chasing celebrities and how they hoped to get pictures that would specifically make him seem gay.

2

Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras Go Nuts In A Charity Match

To say tennis stars Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras didn't get along professionally is to say that North Korea and South Korea wouldn't necessarily go to prom together. In their very first match in 1989, Agassi flat out stated that Sampras would never make it as a pro. Sampras responded by upping his game, beating Agassi the very next year, and spending the next two decades fighting him for the world's No. 1 tennis player spot. By Sampras' retirement in 2002, he had beaten Agassi's ass in 20 of their 34 overall matches. Agassi retired a few years later, the men publicly claimed mutual respect, and one of the most legendary feuds in tennis was seemingly over for good ...

Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

1

Mark Twain Makes A Minor Enemy National News

Hey, look! Turns out celebrities from the past were at it, too!

Technically speaking, Mark Twain wasn't yet quite the superstar he would later become when he utterly annihilated Judge Sewall with a single newspaper article. The year was 1862, and Twain was still at the Batman Begins stage of his career, learning his trade as plain ol' Samuel Clemens, newest employee of the Territorial Enterprise, a newspaper in Virginia City, Nevada. During his stay in the city, Twain had had problems with Sewall, a local politician he considered a bit of an idiot. So he decided to combine business and personal matters by writing a satirical news story about the amazing (and 100 percent fake) scientific discovery of a strange, petrified man that had been found in the area, casting Sewall as the person who had investigated the body and declared that it should stay where it was, instead of giving it a proper burial. And really, that's the bare minimum you can expect when you feud with Mark fucking Twain, even in his pupal stage.

However, here's the thing: Twain had intended his story as an amusing piece of satire, and nothing else. What he didn't realize was that at the time, absolutely no one but Mark Twain understood the concept, let alone knew to expect it in a newspaper article.

Museum of Hoaxes

Petrification stories were all the rage at the time -- this was another target of the article's satire -- so newspapers all over the area picked Twain's story up. For months to come, variations of the tale were running in the papers of large cities all over the country, and according to Twain, it even popped up in the medical journal London Lancet. And all the while, Judge Sewall's completely fabricated and extremely unwanted reputation as a prospector of petrified people grew.

Still, the soon-to-be-famous writer might have gone full Mark Twain on Sewall, but at least it was an accident, right? Well, sure -- but the fact that the story goes on to describe how Twain gleefully collected copies of every single newspaper that ran the story and personally sent them to Sewall is something else altogether. He did it for 11 goddamned months. Mark, dude, what the fuck? That's not America's favorite writer being cheeky, that's borderline serial killer territory. What ... what did this guy do to you? You "had a temporary falling out"? Seriously? That's ... that's all it takes?

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

OK, guys, new rule: Never, ever piss Mark Twain off. I don't care that the guy's been dead for a century; there's no way a man who'll fuck up a barely registering enemy that badly without even really trying isn't a vengeful ghost floating around, looking for people to torment. Though maybe if you find yourself face to face with him, you can just convince him to go give the Gallagher brothers a visit.

Pauli Poisuo is a Cracked weekly columnist and freelance editor. Here he is on Facebook and Twitter.

For more check out 7 Celebrity Pranks That Backfired Horrifically and 5 Famous People Whose Best Work Was Motivated By Revenge.

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