History Main / CreatorKiller

* In October 2013, the social news website Slashdot suffered a similar fate to Digg when it launched a beta for a redesign of the site with a simplified appearance and commenting system. While it was initially opt-in only, in February 2014 Slashdot began making it the default and migrating users over to it. The site had been declining for a few years by this point, but this was a tipping point that set off a week-long boycott of Slashdot. While Slashdot eventually backed off from the redesign, it was too little, too late, and Slashdot's userbase fled to Reddit just like Digg's before it.

* ''Film/HeavensGate'' destroyed the career of Creator/{{Michael Cimino|Director}} (the director of ''Film/TheDeerHunter''), contributed to the collapse of the Creator/UnitedArtists studio and its sale to [[Creator/MetroGoldwynMayer MGM]], and ended the "UsefulNotes/NewHollywood" [[UsefulNotes/FallOfTheStudioSystem post-studio-system]] era in which director/auteurs were [[ProtectionFromEditors given complete creative control over their projects]]. Thus, it not only destroyed the careers of the people who created it but ended an era that produced many of the best films in history. Cimino's directing career didn't immediately end after that, but all of his post-''Heaven's Gate'' outings were commercial failures. He had a chance of recovery, however, as not long after ''Heaven's Gate'' Cimino was offered a chance to direct ''Film/{{Footloose}}'', under the condition that he won't exceed the budget and schedule by a single day or dollar. However, his [[ThePrimaDonna Prima Donna]] behavior started again during pre-production, [[FromBadToWorse and when weeks before the shooting was scheduled to begin, he demanded to delay it until he rewrote the script and get $250,000 for it]]; Creator/{{Paramount}} quickly replaced him with Herbert Ross. Cimino's final film was 1996's ''Sunchaser''; its failure to get a wide theatrical release due to poor test screenings made him stop working on any more projects, as he died twenty years later.

* Longtime producer Allan Carr was a major presence in the film industry during the '70s and '80s. His biggest success was the film adaptation of ''Film/{{Grease}}''. In 1988, Carr was given complete creative control of the 1989 UsefulNotes/{{Academy Award}}s [[UsefulNotes/AcademyAwardsCeremonies telecast]] - which meant that he promised "the most beautiful Academy Awards of all time" and replicate his successes in Broadway musicals with a production number involving [[WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs Snow White]] and Creator/RobLowe performing a duet of "Proud Mary". But the attempt didn't work as well and the resulting show was cringe-inducing to watch. [[note]] That's not to say it was ''all'' bad- he was the one responsible for changing the award winner announcement from "And the winner is..." to "And the Oscar goes to...", a changeover that still remains as of 2023.[[/note]] The Academy also used Snow White without Creator/{{Disney}}'s permission and they were sued for copyright infringement. This opening show is in the book ''Literature/WhatWereTheyThinkingThe100DumbestEventsInTelevisionHistory''. As for Carr, he continued to produce theater works before dying of liver cancer in 1999.

** Doumanian resurfaced in TheNineties as the producer of a number of critically acclaimed and moderately successful Creator/WoodyAllen films. Two of them (''Film/BulletsOverBroadway'' and ''Film/MightyAphrodite'') even won Best Supporting Actress [[UsefulNotes/AcademyAward Oscars]]. Then her momentum ended in 2000 when she suddenly backed out of a movie, leaving Allen stranded, eventually resulting in both of them filing lawsuits against each other.

* Napster launched a revolution in how people listen to music, but that very revolution, particularly the legal response to it, wound up being its undoing. On February 12, 2001, the court case ''A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc.'' affirmed that Napster's copying and distribution of music at no cost through peer-to-peer file-sharing software was not protected by UsefulNotes/FairUse and thus [[DigitalPiracyIsEvil legally amounted to the enablement of bootlegging]]. Napster would only be allowed to continue to operate if they could show that they could prevent their users from uploading copyright-infringing material to their service. When Napster couldn't, they shut down their service in July 2001, paid $26 million in settlements to songwriters and music publishers, and filed for bankruptcy. The 2000s would see a flourishing of similar file-sharing services like Grokster, Kazaa, [=LimeWire=], and Morpheus, all of which were similarly sued into bankruptcy. That said, both the popularity of file-sharing and a public backlash against the entertainment industry's crusade against it eventually led to the rise of legal, paid services like iTunes, Spotify, Creator/{{Netflix}}, and Platform/{{Steam}} for distributing music, movies, shows, and games digitally.

* ''The Jay Leno Show'' was an attempt by NBC to keep Creator/JayLeno, who had recently retired as [[Series/TheTonightShowWithJayLeno the host of]] ''Series/TheTonightShow'', with the company, as well as air a cheaper alternative to the expensive scripted dramas that, at the height of the RealityTV boom in the 2000s, were seen as aging, overpriced relics. Uniquely, it was the first show on a major US TV network to air in UsefulNotes/PrimeTime five nights a week since Creator/{{ABC}} ran marathons of its megahit ''Series/WhoWantsToBeAMillionaire'' in 1999 -- and in hindsight, perhaps they should have remembered how ABC's [[WolverinePublicity oversaturation]] of ''Millionaire'' killed the hype surrounding it, because ''The Jay Leno Show'', taking up a third of NBC's prime time schedule, turned out to be a massive bomb that signaled the nadir of the network's 2000s AudienceAlienatingEra. Even worse, once ''The Jay Leno Show'' started circling the drain, NBC announced they would move it to a more natural timeslot at 11:35... where ''The Tonight Show'' was still airing [[Series/TheTonightShowWithConanOBrien under Leno's replacement]] Creator/ConanOBrien -- who was ''not'' happy that his show was being bumped back after he was hosting for ''less than a year''. (O'Brien had been subject to ''constant'' uncertainty from NBC executives dating back to the premiere of his version of ''Late Night'' in 1992- at one point, he was reportedly on a ''week-to-week'' contract earlier in his run there.) The resulting "Late Night War" between Leno and O'Brien caused the latter to quit NBC and bring his tenure hosting ''The Tonight Show'' to a premature end, though fortunately, he would soon bounce back with [[Series/{{Conan}} a new show]] on Creator/{{TBS}}. Behind the scenes, heads rolled at NBC after the ''Jay Leno Show'' fiasco. CEO Jeff Zucker was fired by Comcast (NBC's new corporate owner) in the aftermath of the Late Night War, and numerous other executives, including Marc Graboff and network chairman Jeff Gaspin, also left under their own volition. Leno returned to ''The Tonight Show'' in the aftermath of O'Brien's departure, but it was a PyrrhicVictory, as audiences who sympathized with O'Brien tuned in to TBS to watch his new show instead. Leno's return to ''The Tonight Show'', by contrast, left both him and NBC with a lot of ill will from viewers, and for the first time in fifteen years, ''The Tonight Show'' slipped to second place in the ratings behind Creator/{{ABC}}'s late-night news program ''Series/{{Nightline}}''. He would be let go in 2014 to be [[Series/TheTonightShowStarringJimmyFallon replaced by]] Creator/JimmyFallon, and would largely retire from television outside of guest appearances on other late-night shows, though he still works as a stand-up comedian and has a pretty popular car channel on Website/YouTube.

* Website/{{Yahoo}} attempted to get into the streaming content game by creating Yahoo! Screen, a proprietary content provider. It made headlines by picking up ''Series/{{Community}}'' after its cancellation by Creator/{{NBC}} and also developed original content like ''Series/OtherSpace'' and ''Sin City Saints''. None of these shows brought in desired audience numbers, however, because [[ScrewedByTheNetwork Yahoo! didn't do much advertising beyond its own properties]] and people who did try to watch were frustrated by the buggy proprietary media player that didn't work on some platforms. In the end, Yahoo! Screen posted a loss of $42 million and was shut down after one year.

* Andrew Dobson, author of ''Webcomic/SoYoureACartoonist'' and also known as Tom Preston, has always been a highly controversial artist for a large number of reasons, but for the most part of his career, had a significant fanbase along with a significant hatedom. Many times, he dealt with this by mocking his critics within his work. However, this did not work out for the better when he released the comic strip named ''[[https://64.media.tumblr.com/da563afb95b1626bcee99ef8ed1489f0/9f27295ab5d9beea-48/s640x960/689d827bd7734964c3bf2ddc5fe969c06a07b7b5.jpg BINGO]]'', where he went into further detail about things that his haters loved to bring up. The reason this backfired horribly at him was that he brought up things that the vast majority of his fanbase was never aware of, leading to them going outside of Website/DeviantArt for answers or to have the ''many'' critics, trolls and detractors provide the info for them. This eventually kickstarted a series of events that made Dobson lose a massive chunk of his fanbase, have dozens of parodies made against him to this day, and lose a great amount of respect amongst his peers. As a result, he departed from his Website/DeviantArt site, got his Twitter account suspended due to multiple factors (involving hate speech) and disappeared from social media in 2020. Even his comics [[KeepCirculatingTheTapes have been getting harder to track]].

* In the late '00s, the social news website Digg was the front page of the internet, with more traffic than even Website/{{Facebook}} and the power to drive traffic to any websites that made its front page. That changed overnight on August 25, 2010 after the controversial "Digg v4" redesign, which was [[ObviousBeta extremely buggy]] and removed many popular features. Users fled in droves to the upstart competitor Website/{{Reddit}}, whose founder Alexis Ohanian openly mocked the redesign and suggested that it was driven by venture capital investors playing FollowTheLeader with other websites. Two years later, the site was sold off to Betaworks for just half a million dollars, a tiny fraction of the $200 million it had been valued at just a few years prior. While the site still exists, it is a pale shadow of its former self, little more than a generic news aggregator among many.

* Website/LiveJournal was, from its launch in 1999 until 2007, one of the premier blogging platforms on the web, and quickly became a hub of fandoms and teenage subcultures in the early-mid '00s... until [[https://fanlore.org/wiki/Strikethrough_and_Boldthrough the "strikethrough" and the "boldthrough",]] a pair of notorious incidents in 2007 when the site permanently suspended hundreds of journals in a clumsy attempt to crack down on sexual content, apparently at the behest of a conservative Christian {{Moral Guardian|s}} group called Warriors for Innocence. Caught in the crossfire were fandom and {{fanfiction}} journals dedicated to discussing the fictional subject matter of various franchises and media properties, as well as journals for survivors of sexual assault. While the site's [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff sizable Russian userbase]] went on uninterrupted,[[note]]The Russian tech company SUP Media, which had already licensed the [=LiveJournal=] brand for use in Russia the prior year due to its popularity in that country, would buy LJ outright in December 2007. It would move its offices to Russia in 2009 and its servers in 2016, and in 2017, it changed its terms of service to comply with Russian law.[[/note]] the affair set off a massive exodus of LJ's outraged Western users to Website/{{Tumblr}} and led directly to the creation of the Website/ArchiveOfOurOwn, a fanfiction website that would be owned and operated for and by the broader fandom community, and Dreamwidth, a fork of the LJ code created by former site staff and built on a model of transparency and inclusion.[[note]]Ironically, in 2018 [[HistoryRepeats Tumblr made the exact same mistake as LJ]] and implemented a ham-fisted porn ban in response to pressure from the Apple App Store that drove off a good portion of its userbase. Tumblr wasn't ''quite'' as badly damaged by that as LJ was, though, and it remains one of the top 300 most trafficked websites in the world and one of the top 150 in the US.[[/note]] Today, the only major Western LJ journal that hasn't moved to another site is the gossip blog Oh No They Didn't.

* ''Film/CutthroatIsland'', one of the biggest box office flops of all time, was the final straw for Creator/CarolcoPictures, which went bankrupt a month prior to the film's release due to its lavish overspending on other projects. It also destroyed Creator/RennyHarlin's respectability as a director, and the careers of everyone else involved (only the film's composer Music/JohnDebney and distributor Creator/MetroGoldwynMayer came out relatively unscathed. It also [[GenreKiller killed off]] the pirate movie genre until ''Franchise/PiratesOfTheCaribbean'' came along, and even now there are no successful pirate movies outside of that franchise.

* Polaroid's decline started with the Polavision, an instant home movie camera released in 1977. It was technologically obsolete even at the time of its release in the face of Super 8 film and the Platform/UMatic videotape format (to say nothing of the incoming [[Platform/{{VCR}} VHS and Betamax formats]]), its ease of use failing to make up for the fact that a single cartridge could only shoot three minutes of film. Paul Giambarda, a freelance photographer who played an integral role in Polaroid's corporate image and marketing, called the Polavision a turkey compared to similar offerings from Creator/EastmanKodak, and said that Polaroid let an obsession with engineering accomplishments [[SkewedPriorities get ahead]] of how people would actually use the camera. Polaroid lost $89 million on the Polavision, money it could ill afford to lose as the disposable camera revolution in the late '80s ate into the company's core market of instant cameras, and the company went bankrupt in 2001. The company's remains were bought out and relaunched in 2017 by the Impossible Project, founded in 2008 by Dutch enthusiasts who sought to keep making film for their instant cameras, but beyond the name, they are otherwise unrelated to the original Polaroid company.

* ''ComicBook/{{Deathmate}}'' -- the infamous 1993 IntercontinuityCrossover between Creator/ValiantComics and Creator/ImageComics -- is widely cited as the book that killed Valiant, and to some degree, [[UsefulNotes/TheGreatComicsCrashOf1996 the western comic industry in general for a while]]. While a crossover between the companies seemed like a good idea at the time, they ended up clashing horribly as not only did neither company have a proper grasp on how to write each other's characters, resulting in a disjointed story, Image was prone to chronic lateness, where by the time Valiant published their share of the work, Image's half didn't come out until at least a year later, and by that point, consumer interest had completely died while shop owners were now stuck with mountains of late pre-order shipments that were now worthless. The massive market boom tanked the reputation and sales of both companies in the following years, but while Image survived thanks to its low overhead, Valiant ended up being bought out by video game developer Creator/{{Acclaim}}, whose ill-advised choices with the company (including a massive culling of continuity and preexisting [=IPs=] while shifting towards making characters suited for video game development) led to Valiant dying a slow death by 1999, with Acclaim itself going under a few years later.

* RCA, the '''R'''adio '''C'''orporation of '''A'''merica, was once one of the most important electronics companies in the world, and was instrumental in the standardization of radio, network broadcasting (through their founding of Creator/{{NBC}}), and color TV in the US. That all changed in 1965, when David Sarnoff, RCA's leader during its golden age, stepped down as company president and left his son Robert in charge of the company. The new RCA was driven by an urge to diversify, investing in non-electronics-related businesses such as frozen food companies and rent-a-car companies, to the point where a common nickname for RCA at the time was "Rugs, Chickens, and Automobiles". However, the diversification meant that RCA's core strengths were downplayed or ignored. They attempted to enter the mainframe computer business, which was a disastrous flop and was sold off in 1971, and UsefulNotes/{{CED}}, their attempt at a next big thing after color TV, was delayed for a whopping ''17 years''--an eternity in the consumer electronics business--because no one wanted to finish it. NBC's poor performance between 1978 and 1982, which produced a long list of flops, didn't help, and the final straw was the 1980 Summer Olympics, an event that NBC had bet the farm on, being boycotted by the US, something that put RCA itself at risk of bankruptcy (something that was staved off in the meantime by selling the last of their diversified industries). By the early 1980s, RCA was doing better and NBC had become a ratings darling, but it was clear that NBC was the most valuable part of the company, and that led to takeover attempts, one of which (by former parent General Electric) was successful in 1985-1986. This spelled the end for RCA as a going concern, as GE quickly sold off the non-NBC businesses, including the RCA trademark itself (which went to French electronics maker Thomson).

* Polaroid's decline started with the Polavision, an instant home movie camera released in 1977. It was technologically obsolete even at the time of its release in the face of Super 8 film and the UsefulNotes/UMatic videotape format (to say nothing of the incoming [[UsefulNotes/{{VCR}} VHS and Betamax formats]]), its ease of use failing to make up for the fact that a single cartridge could only shoot three minutes of film. Paul Giambarda, a freelance photographer who played an integral role in Polaroid's corporate image and marketing, called the Polavision a turkey compared to similar offerings from Creator/EastmanKodak, and said that Polaroid let an obsession with engineering accomplishments [[SkewedPriorities get ahead]] of how people would actually use the camera. Polaroid lost $89 million on the Polavision, money it could ill afford to lose as the disposable camera revolution in the late '80s ate into the company's core market of instant cameras, and the company went bankrupt in 2001. The company's remains were bought out and relaunched in 2017 by the Impossible Project, founded in 2008 by Dutch enthusiasts who sought to keep making film for their instant cameras, but beyond the name, they are otherwise unrelated to the original Polaroid company.

* The critical and commercial flop of ''WesternAnimation/StrangeMagic'' was enough justification on Creator/{{Disney}}'s part to give Creator/TouchstonePictures the ax as the studio severed ties with Creator/DreamWorksSKG later that year; that studio went to mend fences with [[Creator/{{Universal}} Universal Pictures]] (which they had dumped for Disney years earlier, after the studio was spun off from Creator/{{Paramount}}) and shift distribution of DW movies to them). The company bowed down with the release of ''The Light Between Oceans'', which was also a BoxOfficeBomb that was released [[DumpMonths in September]].[[note]]Any thought of Disney reviving Touchstone was put down for good when Disney acquired Creator/TwentiethCenturyFox in 2019, rendering the label redundant[[/note]] Additionally, the failure also marked the end for Creator/GeorgeLucas' mainstream ventures apart from a single scene in ''Film/{{Solo}}'' and a possible StockScream that debuted in ''Film/TheRiseOfSkywalker'', and wound up becoming the only project from [[Creator/{{Lucasfilm}} Lucasfilm Animation]] that was not part of the ''Franchise/StarWars'' franchise.

* Allied Artists Video thought it would be a good idea to release ''The Creator/BabeRuth Story'' early in their run. After all, they were releasing dozens of other titles simultaneously, so WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong They even placed as the film's blurb a rare positive review for the film, claiming it to be "a sports-action winner featuring the king of swat". Imagine the consumers' shock, then, when what they got was a cheap B-movie cash-in on the Sultan of Swat rushed and released three weeks before his death in 1948. One bad apple, it turns out, ''does'' spoil the whole bunch, and this painted a big red target on the back of Allied Artists Video when new owner Creator/{{Lorimar}} decided to put unprofitable assets on the chopping block in 1980.

* ''Eldorado'' was a memetically disastrous attempt by Creator/TheBBC to create an American-style "decadent rich people" SoapOpera set in a community of ex-pats in southern Spain. It destroyed the careers of Julia Smith and Tony Holland, who had previously had a huge success with ''Series/{{Eastenders}}'', a much more traditional British-style kitchen-sink soap, to the point that Smith announced her retirement immediately on its cancellation. It also did non-lethal but permanent damage to the career of Creator/VerityLambert.

* ''Anime/{{Animegataris}}'' reveals that [[spoiler:the principal of the school the series takes place at once directed an anime by the name of ''Ultra Katharsis Kortisi''--the very same anime that enamoured Minoa to the world of Japaneae animation. However, he admits that the anime completely tanked his career as an animator and director, since it was so ReferenceOverdosed that nobody could tell what the actual plot was, if there even was one. His disillusionment with anime eventually leads him to place some tough laws on the anime club.]]

* ''Anime/{{Animegataris}}'' reveals that [[spoiler:the principal of the school the series takes place at once directed an anime by the name of ''Ultra Katharsis Kortisi''--the very same anime that enamoured Minoa to the world of Japaneae animation. However, he admits that the anime completely tanked his career as an animator and director, since it was so ReferenceOverdosed that nobody could tell what the actual plot was, if there even was one. His disillusionment with anime eventually leads him to place some tough lawa on the anime club.]]

* ''Anime/{{Animegataris}}'' reveals that [[spoiler:the principal of the school the series takes place at once directed an anime by the name of ''Ultra Katharsis Kortisi''--the very same anime that enamoured Miene to the world of Japaneae animation. However, he admits that the anime completely tanked his career as an animator and director, since it was so ReferenceOverdosed that nobody could tell what the actual plot was, if there even was one. His disillusionment with anime eventually leads him to place some tough lawa on the anime club.]]

* ''Anime/{{Animegataris}}'' reveals that [[spoiler:the principal of the school the seroes taoes place at once directed an anime by the name of ''Ultimate Catharsis Kotorsi''--the very same anime that enamoured Miene to the world of Japaneae animation. However, he admits that the anime completely tanked his career as an animator and director, since it was so ReferenceOverdosed that nobody could tell what the actual plot was, if there even was one. His disillusionment with anime eventually leads him to place some tough lawa on the anime club.]]

* The switch to [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks a new layout]] is genuinely agreed to be what killed Creator/AdultSwim's forums in November 2016. It was derided as being a much worse clone of Website/{{Reddit}} that also caused over twelve years' worth of content to [[KeepCirculatingTheTapes fall by the wayside]]. Users and curious visitors left the site in droves, and the switch caused its shutdown in less than a year. [[ConspiracyTheorist Some people]] think that this was an ''intentional'' move to destroy the forums, since it had long been regarded as a [[WretchedHive cesspool of Internet hatred]], with angry anime fans going after people who liked [as]' live-action programming, and home to a bunch of trolls in general. They changed the layout into something awful so the diehard users would leave, and eventually, there would be nobody left to care about it.

* The infamous "FingerpokeOfDoom" event during a 1999 episode of ''Wrestling/WCWMondayNitro'' is often cited as the beginning of the end for Wrestling/{{WCW}},[[note]]If it wasn't this, then Creator/DavidArquette's ill-fated world title run did it for sure.[[/note]] but the event that truly sent the promotion to the point of no return was when all WCW programming was canceled by order of parent company [[Creator/TedTurner Turner Broadcasting]]'s then-chairman-and-CEO Jamie Kellner, who was seeking to sell the promotion off after Turner's parent company, [[Creator/WarnerBrosDiscovery Time Warner]], merged with AOL and wanted to rid the conglomerate of assets costing them millions. Wrestling/VinceMcMahon's [[Wrestling/{{WWE}} World Wrestling Federation]], WCW's rivals, bought the promotion's remaining assets and programming library for ''$4 million'' (WCW was worth over '''$500 million''' at one time) just so that AOL Time Warner can desperately rid their portfolio of professional wrestling. An extreme example of an entire ''company'' being ScrewedByTheNetwork.[[note]]Well, not exactly. Over the 18 months or so before this, WCW had posted a loss somewhere in the neighborhood of ''$120 million''. We'll never know if AOL-Time Warner would have kept WCW around had they been profitable or even kept losses in the single digit millions range (Kellner absolutely hated pro wrestling), but the massive amount of red ink made the decision to put it down for the 3 count once and for all a lot easier.[[/note]]

* Two examples from the territory days: The original Sheik and Nick Gulas. Both promotions died due to fan backlash. In the Sheik's case, he kept himself on top of his own territory for too long, and the fans got sick of the same act after twenty years. Gulas tried to push his son George into the main events, effectively killing the towns he promoted in[[note]]Verne Gange did the same thing in the AWA with his son Greg, though that was really the least of the AWA's problems at that point.[[/note]]. This led to the split with Jerry Jarrett when Jarrett refused to allow George to work on top in the towns Jerry controlled. Coincidentally, The Sheik was one of the few promoters to back Gulas in the ensuing war between Gulas and Jarrett.

* ''ComicBook/{{Deathmate}}'' -- the infamous 1993 IntercontinuityCrossover between Creator/ValiantComics and Creator/ImageComics -- is widely cited as the book that killed Valiant, [[ForWantOfANail and to some degree]], [[UsefulNotes/TheGreatComicsCrashOf1996 the western comic industry in general for a while]]. While a crossover between the companies seemed like a good idea at the time, they ended up clashing horribly as not only did neither company have a proper grasp on how to write each other's characters, resulting in a disjointed story, Image was prone to chronic lateness, where by the time Valiant published their share of the work, Image's half didn't come out until at least a year later, and by that point, consumer interest had completely died while shop owners were now stuck with mountains of late pre-order shipments that were now worthless. The massive market boom tanked the reputation and sales of both companies in the following years, but while Image survived thanks to its low overhead, Valiant ended up being bought out by video game developer Creator/{{Acclaim}}, whose ill-advised choices with the company (including a massive culling of continuity and preexisting [=IPs=] while shifting towards making characters suited for video game development) led to Valiant dying a slow death by 1999, with Acclaim itself going under a few years later.

* The Sinclair brand of affordable consumer electronics, most famous for the UsefulNotes/ZXSpectrum, was felled as an independent entity by the combined failures of the [[http://rk.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/vehicles/c5.htm Sinclair C5,]] an early attempt at an electric vehicle that underperformed against an ordinary bicycle; and the [[http://rk.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/televisions/tv80.htm TV80,]] an expensive-to-build attempt at a portable television with an incredibly narrow viewing angle and a specialised CRT that would soon be obsoleted by LCD technology. Without [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Enterprise_Board the NEB]] to save them (as when the [[ObviousBeta Sinclair Black Watch]] flopped just as miserably), Sinclair Research was forced to sell the Sinclair brand and the computer products that bore it to their rival {{UsefulNotes/Amstrad|CPC}} just to stay afloat. Sinclair Research itself lived on as a one-man company through which founder Clive Sinclair marketed his inventions until he passed away in 2021.

* The failure of ''WesternAnimation/TitanAE'' brought down Creator/DonBluth's career, shut down [[Creator/TwentiethCenturyStudios Fox Animation Studios]], and helped end the [[UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfAnimation post]]-[[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfAnimation Golden Age]] era known as UsefulNotes/TheRenaissanceAgeOfAnimation where the animation medium re-surged in both popularity and quality thanks to increasing challenges by filmmakers and artists against the AnimationAgeGhetto that had dominated the medium for decades. Thus, not only did it bring down the career of a celebrated animator, but also helped end an era that brought out some of the greatest animated media in history. A handful of other 2D animated film flops from Bluth's rivals at Creator/{{Disney}} and Creator/DreamWorksAnimation piled on to ''Titan A.E.'' and ended cinematic 2D animation until the end of the 2000s with the releases of ''WesternAnimation/ThePrincessAndTheFrog'' and ''WesternAnimation/WinnieThePooh2011''. Since then, the only [=2D=] films released in theaters have been based on TV shows: ''[[WesternAnimation/TheSpongeBobMovieSpongeOutOfWater The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water]]'' in 2015, ''[[WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyTheMovie2017 My Little Pony: The Movie]]'' in 2017, ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitansGoToTheMovies'' in 2018, and ''WesternAnimation/TheBobsBurgersMovie'' in 2022.

[[folder:Websites]]

* While no careers have to date been damaged by appearing on the show, the titular ''Series/{{Taskmaster}}'' frequently jokes that [[SelfDeprecatingHumor his show is so terrible]] it's guaranteed to kill the careers of every comedian, actor and other celebrity who appears on it, due to them trying and often failing to complete odd, unusual and eccentric tasks. but at least they have a shot at getting the "overtly sensual" statue of his head.

* Website/LiveJournal was, from its launch in 1999 until 2007, one of the premier blogging platforms on the web, and quickly became a hub of fandoms and teenage subcultures in the early-mid '00s... until [[https://fanlore.org/wiki/Strikethrough_and_Boldthrough the "strikethrough" and the "boldthrough",]] a pair of notorious incidents in 2007 when the site permanently suspended hundreds of journals in a clumsy attempt to crack down on sexual content, apparently at the behest of a conservative Christian {{Moral Guardian|s}} group called Warriors for Innocence. Caught in the crossfire were fandom and {{fanfiction}} journals dedicated to discussing the fictional subject matter of various franchises and media properties, as well as journals for survivors of sexual assault. While the site's [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff sizable Russian userbase]] went on uninterrupted,[[note]]The Russian tech company SUP Media, which had already licensed the [=LiveJournal=] brand for use in Russia the prior year due to its popularity in that country, would buy LJ outright in December 2007. It would move its offices to Russia in 2009 and its servers in 2016, and in 2017, it changed its terms of service to comply with Russian law.[[/note]] the affair set off a massive exodus of LJ's outraged Western users to Website/{{Tumblr}} and led directly to the creation of the Website/ArchiveOfOurOwn, a fanfiction website that would be owned and operated for and by the broader fandom community, and Dreamwidth, a fork of the LJ code created by former site staff and built on a model of transparency and inclusion.[[note]]Ironically, in 2018 [[HistoryRepeats Tumblr made the exact same mistake as LJ]] and implemented a ham-fisted porn ban that drove off a good portion of its userbase. Tumblr wasn't ''quite'' as badly damaged by that as LJ was, though, and it remains one of the 100 most popular websites in the US and one of the top 200 internationally.[[/note]] Today, the only major Western LJ journal that hasn't moved to another site is the gossip blog Oh No They Didn't.

* Website/LiveJournal was, from its launch in 1999 until 2007, one of the premier blogging platforms on the web, and quickly became a hub of fandoms and teenage subcultures in the early-mid '00s... until the "strikethrough" and the "boldthrough", a pair of notorious incidents in 2007 when the site permanently suspended hundreds of journals in a clumsy attempt to crack down on sexual content, apparently at the behest of a conservative Christian {{Moral Guardian|s}} group called Warriors for Innocence. Caught in the crossfire were fandom and {{fanfiction}} journals dedicated to discussing the fictional subject matter of various franchises and media properties, as well as journals for survivors of sexual assault. While the site's [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff sizable Russian userbase]] went on uninterrupted,[[note]]The Russian tech company SUP Media, which had already licensed the [=LiveJournal=] brand for use in Russia the prior year due to its popularity in that country, would buy LJ outright in December 2007. It would move its offices to Russia in 2009 and its servers in 2016, and in 2017, it changed its terms of service to comply with Russian law.[[/note]] the affair set off a massive exodus of LJ's outraged Western users to Website/{{Tumblr}} and led directly to the creation of the Website/ArchiveOfOurOwn, a fanfiction website that would be owned and operated for and by the broader fandom community, and Dreamwidth, a fork of the LJ code created by former site staff and built on a model of transparency and inclusion.[[note]]Ironically, in 2018 [[HistoryRepeats Tumblr made the exact same mistake as LJ]] and implemented a ham-fisted porn ban that drove off a good portion of its userbase. Tumblr wasn't ''quite'' as badly damaged by that as LJ was, though, and it remains one of the 100 most popular websites in the US and one of the top 200 internationally.[[/note]] Today, the only major Western LJ journal that hasn't moved to another site is the gossip blog Oh No They Didn't.

* In-universe example: ''Manga/PeepoChoo'' creator Ringo Plum [[spoiler:became impoverished after the original manga bombed hard in UsefulNotes/{{Japan}}. Before he started serializing it, he was beloved as a children's author and very popular for his picture books. ''Peepo Choo'' was his attempt to break away from his usual output and an attempt to tackle more complex and absurd themes, but the off-brand ToiletHumor and craziness made the manga very unpopular, and it was canceled three years into its run. Tragically, the series would do ''far'' better in the United States and would even gain an underground fanbase in Japan, but he would never see any of it.]]

!!Fictional/In-Universe Examples
* While no careers have to date been damaged by appearing on the show, this is often joked about as a likely consequence of appearing on ''Series/{{Taskmaster}}'', revolving as it does around comedians, actors and other celebrities trying and often failing to complete odd, unusual and eccentric tasks.

* The titular ''Series/{{Taskmaster}}'' frequently jokes that [[SelfDeprecatingHumor his show is so terrible]] it's guaranteed to kill the careers of every comedian who appears on it, but at least they have a shot at getting the "overtly sensual" statue of his head.

* Two examples in one: The one-two punch of ''Anime/{{Charlotte}}'' and ''Anime/TheDayIBecameAGod'' ruined all remaining goodwill towards Jun Maeda to the point where most discussions surrounding him and his works in the years afterward concerned his fall from grace, his {{Franchise Original Sin}}s, and little else.

Not to be confused with DarthWiki/FallenCreator, where a once-respected creator is permanently ''disgraced'' due to a string of flops or personal misbehaviors. A creator/business that went defunct after one or two serious flops/mistakes could still leave a lasting legacy and be fondly remembered in hindsight.

* The one-two punch of ''Anime/{{Charlotte}}'' and ''Anime/TheDayIBecameAGod'' ruined all remaining goodwill towards Jun Maeda to the point where most discussions surrounding him and his works in the years afterward concerned his fall from grace, his [[FranchiseOriginalSin Franchise Original Sins]], and little else.