History Main / CreatorKiller

* ''Anime/{{Fractale}}'' was conceived as a way for its director, Yutaka "Yamakan" Yamamoto, to make Creator/KyotoAnimation regret firing him, with all the resources put into it that you'd expect with a goal like that. He was so sure of its success that he said he'd step down if it did poorly. The end result was said to be good, if not great, by most people who watched it to the end, [[AcclaimedFlop but not many people did.]] Yamakan probably would have had to step down even if he hadn't explicitly staked his career on it doing well. It also garnered some of the worst ratings for the Creator/{{Noitamina}} animation block. Although the 2011 Sendai Earthquake didn't help matters, the show's ratings prior to the earthquake were noticeably behind the average ratings for all other series in the block. The main problem was the competition; ''Fractale'' was billed as the "moe-killer" series by the director himself, and as if to prove this it was released at the same time as a cutesy-looking MagicalGirl show. Unfortunately for ''Fractale'', that show was ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'', which was not only the most popular anime of the Winter 2011 season, but also one of the most popular anime of the entire decade.

* Allied Artists Video thought it would be a good idea to release ''Film/TheBabeRuthStory'' 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.

* A rather sad example with the notoriously-awful ''Literature/TheEyeOfArgon'', which was published when its author Jim Theis was seventeen. It is indeed as bad as its reputation claims, laden with spelling errors, PurpleProse, cliches, and {{Narm}}... which makes a lot more sense when you remember that the author was ''seventeen'' and had never really written anything before. It was originally published for a small 'zine, but then someone got a hold of it who found it to be SoBadItsGood, which eventually led to it being published and circulated on a fairly large scale--without Theis' knowledge, and without paying him anything. The story became infamous in fantasy and literary circles, and making fun of it is still a popular pastime at conventions and the like, but Theis revealed in an interview a couple decades later that the whole debacle had really hurt him, as he mostly just wanted to forget the whole thing ever happened, and led to him deciding to swear off writing. He died in 2002, ''The Eye of Argon'' [[OneBookAuthor being his only published work]].

* Radio/ChrisEvans was a pretty popular radio DJ at Creator/TheBBC. However, when time came for Evans to be the new lead host of ''Series/{{Top Gear|UK}}'' following the firing of Creator/JeremyClarkson in 2015 and the retirement of his co-hosts Creator/RichardHammond and Creator/JamesMay from the program, it marked the beginning of the show's AudienceAlienatingEra. Evans' tenure on ''Top Gear'' was widely disliked, and led to the show's decline in ratings. Chris Evans quit the show after a single season, being replaced by Creator/MattLeblanc. Coupled with sexual harrasment allegations over the next few years, Evans' stint as a ''Top Gear'' host ended up killing his career.

* Canadian animation studio CINAR went out of business in 2004 after a financial scandal and a plagiarism lawsuit (''WesternAnimation/RobinsonSucroe''). The company later resurfaced as Creator/CookieJarEntertainment. In 2013, Cookie Jar was absorbed into Creator/DHXMedia. ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'' survived for a few more years after production moved to Creator/NineStoryMediaGroup and [[Creator/SphereAnimation Oasis Animation]].
* Bruce W. Smith's Jambalaya Studio company hasn't produced another animated series since the failure of ''WesternAnimation/DaBoomCrew''. After ''WesternAnimation/TheProudFamily'' completed its run with a BigDamnMovie, the company seems to have gone defunct.
* Wolf Tracer Studios only made two movies-''WesternAnimation/RapsittieStreetKidsBelieveInSanta'' and ''Wolf Tracer's Dinosaur Island''. However, despite coming first, ''Believe in Santa'' killed any chance of the studio producing another major project. When it was in production, the special was planned to have a sequel and a soundtrack with songs by Music/WhitneyHouston. It also attracted a high-profile voice cast, including Creator/MarkHamill, Creator/NancyCartwright, Creator/JodiBenson, and Creator/PaigeOHara, and got the privilege on airing on Creator/TheWB. However, after receiving dismal ratings and being criticized for its [[SpecialEffectsFailure animation quality]] and story, the sequel was never produced and the soundtrack was never made. The special has never re-aired on television after 2002 and hasn't been released on home video; resulting in the special [[MissingEpisode being impossible to find]] for the next 13 years. The next --and final-- project did not have any major release, with a returning Mark Hamill being the only high profile actor the studio was able to obtain.
* ABS-CBN Animation's first TV series, ''WesternAnimation/TheNutshack'', proved to be their last as the show's failure with critics and audiences caused them to shift focus towards licensing anime titles for Myx TV. The same goes for the cast and crew, as none of them have done anything noteworthy following its cancellation, with the exception of co-creator Jesse Hernandez and theme composer NUMP. In fact, a few of them ended up quitting the TV industry to pursue other careers.
* Despite ''WesternAnimation/TheRealGhostbusters''' success, Creator/{{ABC}} felt the need to hire a child psychologists group called Q5 to help oversee the production of the second ABC season (the syndicated season did not have such requirements). It was during this time when the writers realized the group had absolutely no evidence to back their research as their changes for the show were either hypocritical, nonsensical, or seen as downright insulting by crew members. Needless to say, the ratings dropped afterward and Q5 was reportedly never hired again by any studio. See Phelous's review [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW51PDa_puE here]] for more information about the topic.

* In TheEighties, TOGO, the leading amusement ride designer in Japan and operator of several theme parks in their native country, began to make a larger push to become an international leader in ride design, capitalizing on the publicity of the installation of their brand new invention, the Stand-Up rollercoaster, at Kings Island park near Cincinnati, Ohio. After nearly two decades of moderate success internationally, including the construction of Shockwave at Kings Dominion in Virginia and Viper at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey, their success ended with the construction of Windjammers Surf Racers at Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, California, in 1997. Knott's had intended the ride, which was actually two looping wild mouse style coasters that were set to race each other, to replace the beloved-but-decaying Soap Box Derby Racers coaster. But almost immediately the park started experiencing issues with the ride, including defective headrests that hurt riders, severe structural issues like misaligned track, and, most egregiously, a serious design flaw in the track layout that meant that (ironically) Windjammers was incapable of completing its run if it encountered even a small amount of wind. After trying and failing to save the ride, Knott's closed it down in 2000 and sued TOGO. The backlash at the poorly-designed ride and the ensuing legal battle killed TOGO as it once was, forcing it into bankruptcy. Today TOGO only exists as a company in Japan, mainly specializing in ride maintenance and parts supplies, not as a ride designer.
* For forty years, Schlitterbahn operated a small group of water parks in the U.S., mostly concentrated in its home state of Texas, but it was a tragedy that took place at its only out-of-state park, in Kansas City, which doomed the company. In 2014, Schlitterbahn completed construction on Verrückt, which at 168 feet (51 meters) was proudly promoted as the world's tallest water slide. What people didn't know was that Verrückt was designed by a co-owner of Schlitterbahn and his business partner -- ''not'' by any qualified amusement park ride designers or engineers. Worse still, the designers showed [[NoOSHACompliance no regard for safety standards]], which led to an issue concerning the slide's raft going airborne and colliding with the overhead hoops/safety netting. Despite attempts to mitigate the problem with some last-minute redesigns, Verrückt became blighted by accidents and injuries which the park went to great lengths to cover up. But the shit ''really'' hit the fan in 2016, when a ten-year-old boy (who just so happened to be the son of a Kansas state legislator) was decapitated on the ride. Schlitterbahn and the park director were charged with negligence and involuntary manslaughter, while the designers were charged with second-degree murder; the charges were eventually dropped [[OffOnATechnicality due to technicalities]]. Schlitterbahn, its reputation tarnished beyond repair, was forced to buy itself out to competitor Cedar Fair and now exists only in name. Verrückt was demolished in November 2018, while the rest of the Kansas City park (the only Schlitterbahn property Cedar Fair refused to buy) was demolished in late 2021 to make way for an amateur sports complex.

* Just for Feet is notable in that the entire company was killed off by a ''commercial''. In 1999, the fast-growing shoe retailer produced an ad for the UsefulNotes/SuperBowl, which depicted hunters driving a Humvee going after a barefoot Kenyan runner. The hunters give the runner a cup of drugged water and put a pair of shoes on his feet while he's unconscious, which he then tries to get off. [[OvershadowedByControversy It made their name more noticed, alright]]; the company was ''massively'' criticized for the ad's racist undertones, and its failure put a giant fork in the road for their future. The next year, the company filed for bankruptcy before subsequently collapsing.

* [=3dfx=] revolutionized the PC gaming market in the mid-1990s with their Voodoo line of graphics chips, which finally made 3D graphics a feasible prospect on the average home computer. However, two major blunders would see the company go from establishing the 3D accelerator market, to dominating that market, to being forced into bankruptcy in the space of just four years. The first came when the company's board decided they wanted all the profits from [=3dfx=] graphics cards to themselves rather than having to share them with the third-party manufacturers who produced the cards, and so bought out graphics card manufacturer STB. This ultimately proved a disastrously mistimed gamble, as not only did [=nVidia=] release their revolutionary [=GeForce=] UsefulNotes/GraphicsProcessingUnit less than a year later, the move came around the same time that many other graphics processor manufacturers were either going bust or dropping out of the market, giving [=nVidia=] an effective monopoly over third-party graphics card manufacturers[[note]](ATI and Matrox, the only other major GPU manufacturers who survived the TurnOfTheMillennium, made all their graphics cards in-house at time, though ATI would switch to supplying their [=GPUs=] to third-party board manufacturers a few years later)[[/note]] and leaving [=3dfx=] unable to compete. The second fatal blunder came when they pushed back their first true GPU, "Rampage", in favor of the VSA-100 series, which was designed around being able to use 1, 2, or 4 graphics chips on a single board. With the VSA-100 suffering an outdated feature set, anemic performance, and [=3dfx=] never being able to produce the headline quad-processor version of the card due to its complexity and the company's failing finances, it proved the final nail in the coffin, and resulted in the company being bought out by [=nVidia=] at the end of 2000.

* While it's [[VindicatedByHistory now regarded]] as one of the UsefulNotes/{{great American novel}}s, in its time ''Literature/MobyDick'' was a bomb that killed Creator/HermanMelville's career, selling only 3,200 copies in his life. A major part of the problem was that the British version omitted the epilogue that revealed that Ishmael survived (closing the perceived PlotHole of how the first-person narrator lived to tell his tale), and so the British critics rejected it -- and in 1851, American critics were expected to echo the opinions of their British counterparts if they wanted to be considered sophisticated. All of his subsequent books were failures, and by 1876 all were out of print.
* ''Literature/TheGreatGatsby'', while [[VindicatedByHistory now regarded]] as one of the UsefulNotes/{{great American novel}}s, was a flop upon release, selling less than half of what Creator/FScottFitzgerald's previous novels sold and leaving many copies on the shelves. Fitzgerald himself believed he only made $2000 off the book. The problem was believed by Fitzgerald to be a problem of audience: most novel readers at the time of release were women, and ''The Great Gatsby'' did not have an admirable female character. The book's failure likely contributed to Fitzgerald's drinking issues and poor finances during the 1930s. His fourth and final novel was also a flop, and Fitzgerald died in 1940 believing himself a failure as a writer - just two years before the [[UsefulNotes/YanksWithTanks United States military]] included the book for distribution to soldiers serving overseas, where its 1920s nostalgia caught on with the troops and ensured it massive postwar popularity.

* ''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 Platform/YouTube.

* While ''WesternAnimation/PinkyDinkyDoo'' was a success, it was cancelled in 2010 and Jumbo Pictures has gone dormant since. They made a block for [[Creator/{{Sprout}} PBS Kids Sprout]] called ''Musical Mornings with Coo'' in 2007, but that ended up failing due to low ratings. [[note]]The block started at 6 a.m. EST and ended at 9 a.m..[[/note]]

* Just for Feet is notable in that the entire company was killed off by a ''commercial''. In 1999, the fast-growing shoe retailer produced an ad for the UsefulNotes/SuperBowl, which depicted hunters driving a Humvee in the African desert... who turned out to be targeting a barefoot Kenyan runner. The hunters give the runner a cup of drugged water and then put a pair of shoes on his feet while he's unconscious. [[OvershadowedByControversy It made their name more noticed, alright]]; the company was ''massively'' criticized for the ad's racist undertones, and its failure put a giant fork in the road for their future. The next year, the company filed for bankruptcy before subsequently collapsing.

* Canadian animation studio CINAR went out of business in 2004 after a financial scandal and a plagiarism lawsuit (''WesternAnimation/RobinsonSucroe''). The company later resurfaced as Creator/CookieJarEntertainment. In 2013, Cookie Jar was absorbed into Creator/DHXMedia. ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'' survived for a few more years after production moved to Creator/NineStoryMediaGroup and Oasis Animation.

Compare TrendKiller, GenreKiller, FranchiseKiller. [[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant Not to be confused]] with DiedDuringProduction (where the creator dies before their work is completed), RageAgainstTheAuthor (where the creator can ''literally'' be killed by his/her work) or TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou (same). See StarDerailingRole when it happens to the performers. See CreatorBacklash for when a creator turns against their work and BuryYourArt if they refuse to let it see the light of day, regardless if the work itself destroys their credibility. See ToughActToFollow when one's career was not killed by a flop but the inability to follow-up a massive success. A RoleEndingMisdemeanor is when this trope is caused by [[OvershadowedByControversy personal scandal]] rather than a failed work. Contrast BreakthroughHit (when the work makes the creator a big name), CareerResurrection (when the work makes the creator a big name again after a Creator Killer) and WinBackTheCrowd (same). For understandable reasons, many of these overlap with TroubledProduction. If it literally, and directly, kills them, then it's probably an example of FatalMethodActing.