24 Famous People Who Weren't That Famous Before They Died

Famous people, for all their creativity and ingenuity, are often rewarded with fortune, the limelight, and probably toilet paper made out of $100 bills. Unless you're anyone on this list, that is.

Because it turns out that when fortune smiles upon you, there's no designated time in which she does. To that end, we asked our readers to show us some of the most famous people on the planet ... who only became so after they kicked the bucket. The winner is below, but first the runners-up ...

24 Entry by NinjaBill

BRV<E LEE 1240-127 IT'S HARD TO BELIEVE NOW, BUT BRUCE LEE WAs NOT ALL THAT WELL KNOWN IN AMERICA AT THE TIME OF HIS DEATH. HE HAD PLAYED KATO ON THE

23 Entry by jofride

James Dean's career lasted only a year. He made three movies, two of which came out after his death, including the one that turned him into a legend :

22 Entry by maximoo

Today, Gregor Mendel is considered the father of modern genetics. But when he first presented his experiments with peas, they were dismissed as being

21 Entry by Alicia_Aicila

CRACKEDCO JOHN KENNEDY TOOLE TOOLE'S COMEDIC MASTERPIECE A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES WAS PUBLISHED ELEVEN YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH AND WON THE PULITZER PRIZE

20 Entry by Zapp Rowsdower

Filmmaker Edward D. UNSPEAKABLE Wood, Jr. toiled in HORRORS FROW OUTER SPACE obscurity for most of PARALYZE his life, making ultra- THE LINING AND RES

19 Entry by Nicolae Horga

Virtually unknown outside her native Washington, D.C., Eva Cassidy recorded three albums and released only two before her death at 33 in 1996. Four ye

18 Entry by TheController

Jack THE King Kirby co- created the Marvel Universe, perhaps you have heardof it? CRACKED.COM His art defined the Silver Age of Comics and the chara

17 Entry by CasperMilktoast

CRACKED Oh, that? It's an android COM CO GU modeled on Philip K. Dick, of course. The movies COMIC: tr Blade Runner, Minority co CON Report, and Total

16 Entry by djHanDon

Paul Gauguin was born in Paris on June 7, 1848, and became a painter after working as stockbroker He created his style using bold colors and vivid own

15 Entry by Chan Teik Onn

Franz Kafka, now renowned for his works: The Metamorphosis', The Trial' and 'Amerika', was insecure his SO about capability that he burned most of h

14 Entry by Vicki Veritas

CRACKEDOON I WANT YOU TO EAT MY MEAT The real Uncle Sam was a butcher remembered for supplying soldiers with meat during the War of 1812. After his de

13 Entry by Nicolae Horga

CRACKED.COM Although today a Modigliani is worth around $60 million, in his lifetime things were different: the highest price he got for a painting wa

12 Entry by Michael Voll

The Broadway musical Rent was Jonathan Larson's first major New York effort. It went on to win the Tony Award for Best Musical, Best Book, and Bes

11 Entry by Comunacho

CRACKED.COM This is the French sculptor Camille Claudel 64-1943). Unable to attend the males-only Ecole des Beaux-Arts she did manage to become an app

10 Entry by djHanDon

EL Greco Domenikos Theotokopoulos) painter born in 1541. Was a Grete in Living in Rome in 1570, he denigrated Michelangelo's art skills SO the Roman a

9 Entry by bookitseriously

You know him as a misunderstood genius, but VINCENT VAN GOGH had begun attracting attention with his paintings before his death. Many of his most famo

8 Entry by Kevin King

Herman Melville died an unappreciatedl literary geniuso During his life, he made very little from being an author. His early work was recognized by a

7 Entry by LordHumungous

High school dropout/junkie/ ALSFIN GMAAR EaknGEN street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat was the enfant terrible of the W os New York art scene. FRC ART Hi

6 Entry by mkad

CRACKED COM h 3L Kong Qiu (551-479 But, in 212 BCE, the BCE), was twice Qin emperor prime minister of ordered the burning the small Chinese of alll cu

5 Entry by Comunacho

CRACKED CO Jane Austen (1775-1817) didn't enjoy much popularity, nor she was critically acclaimed, during her own lifetime. She wasn't much read for o

4 Entry by mkad

2011 The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo film starring Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig is released to commercial and financial success, winning an Oscar. 201

3 Entry by Giovenna Bianca Sipalay

H.P. Lovecraft, the now famous American author known mostly for his creation of the fictional creature cthulhu, only wrote for pulp magazines and was

2 Entry by Timothy Rozar

Because she could not stop for Death... Only 10 of Emily Dickinson's poems were published during her lifetime, all without attribution. Dickinson was

1 Entry by mkad

If Robert Johnson Considered one of the best guitarists in history, and really sold his soul considered an inspiration for to the devil for other lege

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