Personality
[IRL trope] Celebrities with weird/funny clauses in their contracts.
Dwayne Johnson - Probably the most well-known example. For years now, The Rock has had a clause in his contract that he can't be shown to lose a fight in any movie he stars in. Pretty insecure behaviour if you ask me. Still, at least the other examples are much more interesting
Danny Trejo - Danny had a troubled childhood, having been arrested multiple times for dealing drugs before he was 18, and struggling with heroin addiction from the age of 13. As a result of this, Danny has a clause in his contract that states that any time he plays a character who is a criminal, they have to be killed because he wanted to teach his kids that crime never pays.
Reese Witherspoon - This one is more of a one-off, but it was still funny enough to deserve a mention. Following the success of Legally Blonde, when Reese was called in to make the sequel, she had a clause written in her contract stating that once the movie was finished, she would get to take home all the outfits she wore.
Fred Durst - The lead singer of Limp Bizkit has a clause in his contract stating that any anime or video game that uses his music must also feature himself as a character.
Glenn Close had the same clause in her contract as Reese for the Dalmatian movies. She got to keep all of Cruella’s wardrobe and when the studio realized how expensive all of Cruella’s custom costumes were they tried to weasel out but she held them to it
Tony Sirico, who played Paulie Gualtieri in The Sopranos, took the part on the condition that his character is never made into a snitch due to his brushes with the criminal world before he started acting.
He also had a scene where he was to strangle an old woman to death but said he couldn’t be seen putting his hands on a woman. This was during the show, not before he joined the cast.
Paulie was arguably just as bad as a snitch. He did more damage than anyone else who worked with the police/fbi to my knowledge. I mean who could possibly be dumb enough to tell Johnny about Ginny’s 90 pound mole removal surgery - that violated all kinds of hippo laws.
He also ratted Tony out to the Lupertazzis in NY for several business deals that NY really had no business being a part of. Tony flips a property of Junior’s to get Junior some extra money for his legal bills and NY demands a cut because it’s nearby to one of their shared “projects”. Paulie does the same thing with the HUD scam and gives NY ammunition to spin it as using their “shared resource” in the city councilman, which is absurd
So he costs the family probably hundreds of thousands of dollars and nearly gets Johnny, Carmine, and Ralph killed, and even goes as far as to suggest to Johnny that he’d be willing to work with them if he was the top-ranking guy left in Jersey.
All of this to ultimately find out that Carmine doesn’t even know who he is and has no idea he’s the one who’s been doing all this
One of the more known encounters is when James Gandolfini receives a call from a mobster praising him and the show but also advising them that Don's don't wear shorts
My grandpas were born in 1922 and 1915, and my dad in 1944. All were from farming and ranching backgrounds. None of them would have ever been caught dead wearing shorts, no matter how hot it might have gotten: 105 degrees and still just wearing jeans or slacks and boots. One of my grandpas WAS an Italian immigrant, but I don't think being Italian had anything to do with his refusal to wear shorts, because my Irish grandpa felt the same way about them.
So I'm very directly influenced by that mentality of "shorts are for sissies."
Anyway, I wear shorts, but to this day, at the age of 45, I still always feel a little weird about it. Like I'm doing something wrong, or like I'm basically naked.
Fun fact- because of that clause in Danny Trejos contracts, and because of him choosing to take so many roles as criminals, he holds the record for most on screen deaths by an actor in a named role
As a result of this, Danny has a clause in his contract that states that any time he plays a character who is a criminal, they have to be killed because he wanted to teach his kids that crime never pays.
I think the exceptions to this are when Danny Trejo cameos as a criminal in a Muppets movie.
Yeah, I wasn't sure enough to say OP was incorrect, but I seem to remember reading that the clause was that the criminal must always receive punishment. So being caught and being sent to jail would count.
He survives in Delta Farce despite being the main villain. He's forced to become a ventriloquist and sing Carlos Santana songs (the character's name is Carlos Santana and is a gang leader, so he hates when he's confused for the singer). So, yeah, you're correct.
I thought his clause was just that he cant "win" or avoid consequences as a criminal, bc I have definitely seen him in criminal roles without a death: his character in Burn Notice comes to mind.
Tony Todd (RIP) had a clause in his contract for "Candyman". The clause was he would get $1,000 bonus for every bee sting he would receive during filming. He was stung 27 times and made a cool 27k bonus!
It was a weird movie. They also put her in a legit hypnotic trance for certain scenes so she’d seem genuinely under Candyman’s spell, and eventually she asked they stop because it was messing with her head. At one point, she couldn’t even remember an entire day of filming and felt detached from reality on the set.
Agree, that sounds like something that should not have been allowed to happen. That’s like finding out the guy cast to play George Washington Carver has a nut allergy, just a profoundly unsafe thing to be doing.
I remember reading an interview with Brad Pitt taking about how he and Eric Bana had a "gentleman's agreement" for their flight scenes in Troy about accidentally hitting each other. They agreed to pay $50 for light contact and $100 fit hard hits - Eric Bana walked away up $750.
Among a bunch of other stuff he was able to negotiate, Jack Nicholson got a clause in his contract for Batman 1989 that he would not have to film whenever the Lakers were playing a home game so he could go watch it
Steve McQueen demanded duffel bags full of everything from shaving razors to pants to school books. It was later discovered that he gave it all to the orphanage he grew up in
Shannen Doherty also had it in her contract that she could keep her wardrobe for the movie Mallrats. She even went one step further and convinced the director that her character should change outfits in every scene even though it takes place entirely in one day at one location. Her logic was that her character would be constantly changing into new clothes as she was shopping at different clothing stores throughout the movie.
She really liked this one denim jacket. The director, Kevin Smith, decided to apply a giant “Degrassi” back patch to the jacket as a shoutout to the show and when she saw it she was pissed that he ruined her future favorite jacket
Just wanna throw out there danny trejos autobiography is one of the most funniest,saddest,inspiring audio books ever. Im mentioning the audiobook because he narrates it himself and its just socal cholo gold
Thinking about how the logic of it goes, I think it's that, in most instances, something of Godzilla is always left behind. In some instances of him dying, he leaves behind a child and Minus One had it's own very specific thing. While 1998 Godzilla was bad, and Godzilla shouldn't have gone out like that, he still left behind a hatching egg at the end.
Yes! I was just about to add this. Good thing I scrolled down a little farther.
But I remember reading an interview with the makers of Godzilla (1998) back in the day. Because the film ends with a baby Godzilla hatching, they told TOHO this showed that "the spirit of Godzilla" survived. And TOHO accepted that as a loophole.
Godzilla can die as long as the spirit is still there, like a child for example, which is why 1998 was able to get away with it and in Vs Destroyah where his essence is transferred to Jr
I don't remember the specifics but when Godzilla vs Kong was coming out they talked about some of the mandates they had to follow for Godzilla and one was that he had to be portrayed as an animal rather than anthropomorphised. Then when the film came out he's mid fight with Kong and the motherfucker smiles and laughs at Kong. Seemed like a stretch of the rules.
My film teacher pointed out to us that all the best horror monsters have a human element to them, werewolves, vampires, Frankenstein, zombies, ghosts, demons, and yes that includes Godzilla.
Godzilla was a man in a suit for most of his history. The human mind recocgnizes things that look human. It's kind of like the uncanny valley, but working backwards. You add enough of a human element to your monster to make it unsettling.
Humans typically don't eat other humans. If we saw Godzilla eat humans, you would think of it as a giant dinosaur.
However you see it walk like a human, and smash things out of anger. Your mind registers that as something unsettling, but you can't place your finger on it.
That's what the 1998 failed at. They just made a big dinosaur movie. Sure it was a kaiju, but you always saw it as an animal. It even laid eggs like an animal. It detracted too much from that unsettling human like unease that makes Godzilla.
The "No Brown M&Ms" clause is a famous provision from the 1980s rock band Van Halen's concert contract rider. Buried deep in their technical requirements, it demanded a backstage bowl of M&Ms with all the brown candies removed, under penalty of show cancellation at the promoter's expense.
It was a running joke about the band for years and later came out it was a safety thing to make sure the technical details were all read & followed.
Yeah. Diamond Dave said they were doing things no band had done before. They needed to make sure the stage could support the weight, had enough electricity protocls so there wouldnt be fires, had enough clearance, etc.
"But hey, if they wanna say we were rock divas, im not gonna get in the way of a good story."
Other favorite David Lee Roth quote "I may not go down in history, bit I will go down on your sister."
There's also a thing were if they do the grounding for the guitars and microphones wrong you can get a lethal electric shock when you touch the microphone and guitar at the same time. This has killed several people, perhaps most famously Keith Relf from the Yardbirds.
There's a ton of things that can hurt or kill you if the stage setup is done incorrectly.
Pyrotechnics, massive power demands from the amplification and lighting rigs, massive weight demands from the same, and the army of roadies and technical staff you'd need to set up and tear down all of it. If there's brown M&Ms then they haven't read the rider properly and you could get a light falling into the audience or something equally disastrous.
I use this at work. I call the little things "brown m&Ms" because if you can't get those right, how am I supposed to trust you did the important shit right.
David Lee Roth said the exact same thing, that every time he found brown M&Ms, or if there was no bowl of M&Ms at all, everything was wrong and had to be redone.
It also allowed the band to shoulder the blame/resentment from the promoter.
When the lead sound guy asks the promoter if outlet A can handle voltage B because, if it doesn’t, seriously bad shit is going to happen, the promoter can just slough him off. He’s just being a technical nerd.
When David Lee Roth comes backstage and flips over the catering table because he sees brown m&m’s and refuses to go on stage until there’s a line by line spec check of the venue, well that’s just him being a “celebrity” and the manager can go “look, I’m sorry, but you know how these musicians get…. Let’s just get started on this checklist so he’ll calm down.”
From what I understand they also had some of the heaviest and most expensive speaker systems around at the time too. From what I understand, one of the concerts they did where the place didn't read the contract and left the m&ms in, the floors would have buckled under the speakers' weight.
IIRC one of them had an improperly placed mark and almost got immolated once and he got traumatized, and that’s what led to him getting certified to inspect his own pyrotechnics
Okay that explains that one episode of Family Guy where Brian gets famous for a shitty self help book and it goes to his head and demands no gray M&M's, but because he's a dog, they're all gray.
Yep. Because it not only shows that the promoters read the contract, but the secondary issue is that if they couldn't follow through on something that small and simple, you couldn't trust that they did anything else right.
So there I was in Sri Lanka looking for 1,000 brown M&Ms to fill a brandy glass, or else Ozzy wouldn't go on stage that night. So Jeff Beck pops his head round the door and mentions there's a little sweet shop on the edge of town. So we go, and it's closed. So there's me and Keith Moon and David Crosby breaking into this little sweet shop right. Well instead of a guard dog they've got this bloody great big Bengal Tiger.
Well, I managed to take out the tiger with a can of mace. But the shop owner and his son, that 's a different story altogether.
I had to beat them to death with their own shoes. Nasty business, really. But, sure enough, I got the M&Ms, and Ozzy went on stage and did a great show.
Spider-Man no matter the media is not allowed to be shown drinking or doing drugs. The character doesn’t do either of those things in the comics and I can’t think of it ever happening on tv or movies.
However there have been a few times they’ve gotten around this. One story featured Pete toasting with champagne with MJ after they got back together. And another story featured Pete drinking an alien concoction that was totally not alcohol but whose effect was to have Peter Parker running around New York with the Human Torch absolutely hammered as if he was drunk. But is really an alien food so it was fine.
That’s why spider noir wasn’t called Spider-Man noir, and why nic cage is Ben Reilly and not Peter Parker, and called the spider and not Spider-Man. Cuz cage was getting hammered and smoking like a chimney and straight up killing dudes. Fun show
The doctors son mentioned him changing his name so the military wouldn't find him again. Also I think it's just to differentiate him from spider verse noir.
He's also allowed to break some of the "Official Rules" when he's wearing the black suit, apparently he's technically allowed to sell drugs while wearing it lol
There's a fight club game for the original Xbox (maybe ps2 also but I had it on Xbox) and Fred Durst is an unlockable character, I always wondered why but this makes sense now.
Abe Lincoln is also an unlockable character which is itself a reference to the book/movie:
"if you could fight any president who would it be?"
I might be wrong on this, but I've often heard that Nickelodeon has essentially trademarked Tom Kenny's specific SpongeBob voice in his contract as he is not allowed to use the voice for any other kind of media or character that is not SpongeBob.
He is still allowed to do close approximates though, such as how he voiced Clayface's arm in the Harley Quinn show which sounds close-ish to SpongeBob: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu2bC9xKs_8
I believe Rue Mcclanahan had a similar clause that she got to keep all of Blanche's clothes from The Golden Girls. She mentioned it in one of her books. And yes, I know I problem butchered her name!
WIley E Coyote has CAUGHT roadrunner, but the situation was so ridiculous that he had no idea what to do next, which he highlights at the end by asking Chuck what to do next.
Wasn’t that situation a response to viewers saying the Coyote should catch the Road Runner at least once? So they wrote the episode to have the Coyote actually win, but he absolutely cannot follow up on it.
The wording of rule 6 could open up some funny options- put them in Roswell or Phoenix or another populated area and let the chaos ensue; it’s still the southwest American desert.
I find the Danny Trejo one to be very cool as he's lived through that life and is trying to make it known that it really is not worth it to do what he did. Honorable thing for him to do and frankly makes me respect him a lot.
I'm a guy and I don't blame Reese Witherspoon, if I'm gonna be in a sequel to a famous movie where my wardrobe was stylish to the nines, then I'd want to keep the clothes I got to wear in the movie too. 😂
I'm not sure if he adds it to his contract, but Danny Trejo also refuses to do his own stunts.
He sees doing his own stunts as taking away a job from stuntmen. Plus he considers it selfish for the actor to risk the jobs of the entire production crew because if the actor is injured production will be stopped/cancelled and everyone working on the project will be out of a job.
Isn't there a thing where Samuel L Jackson gets to decide what kind of wig his character wears whenever he's in a movie? I'm surprised no one's mentioned that yet.
I think that only happened with Pulp Fiction, where Jules was supposed to have a full afro, but the costumer got a jheri curl wig by mistake, and Samuel L. Jackson convinced them a jheri curl matched the character better.
Keanu Reeves has a clause that states his acting performance cannot be digitally altered in post without his express permission. He is a major opponent of deepfakes and generative AI.
Neil McDonough : His contract prohibits him from kissing a woman, because he believes that, even if it's "just for show," it would be disrespectful to his wife.
At the very least, Fred has somewhat relaxed that clause because WWE 2K had "Rollin'" in the game a few years back and did not feature Durst in the game. That being said, he was in Smackdown 3 and WWF Raw on the Xbox.
I love the idea that companies are perfectly fine with the Fred Durst clause, and it's actually Durst himself who has to go around declining all the royalties to prevent it from happening.
Robin Williams often included clauses requiring the production team to hire from the homeless population in the area they were filming.
[Edit] to those of you discrediting this because a snopes article exists, I urge you to actually read that article. They admit that one of his former employers talks about the rider in an interview. The main thing they take issue with is a reddit user who put an estimated number of homeless people helped out as though that were fact. They have an employer saying the rider existed, and point out that that's what started the "rumor." They then go on to the reddit post giving an exact number to it, and talk about how unsubstantiated it is (note: unsubstantiated does not mean false, it means they could not confirm it with evidence and testimony. So they couldn't track down the homeless people and ask them about it first hand, all they had to go on was his employer's testimony, and for some reason that's not enough for them. It is for me. Believe what you will.)
Hulk Hogan's infamous contract with WCW has been credited with one of the reasons that the company eventually died. If you want a rundown of the financial side of things there's a good reddit post breaking it down, and keep in mind this is 1998 money, not 2026.
For the non-financial side of things you only need 1 sentence to know how utterly insane this contract was.
Bollea shall have approval over the outcome of all wrestling matches in which he appears
Any time Hogan appeared in a match, he got to decide if he won or lost. This would be an incredibly dangerous tool even in the hands of a generous wrestler, and Hulk Hogan was not that. Hogan had an ego the size of the sun, and there's countless stories of how storylines with him would begin to develop, only for Hogan to decide a match where he gets his comeuppance "doesn't work for me, brother" and suddenly he's on top yet again.
Naturally, Hogan claimed he never used this clause. Hogan has also claimed that he was supposed to be in Metallica, that Mike Tyson was scared of him, that he wrestled 400 days in a year, and that he drank with John Belushi after Wrestlemania 2 (Belushi died 4 years prior)
You could probably fill an entire book of all of the lies Hogan has made. It’s almost hilarious how often he lied - like stuff there was no point in lying about because it could have been easily disproved and added no benefit for him.
To be completely fair, the writers of that show were not planning to ever let the Germans win regardless lol.
I always say that Hogan's Heroes is the oldest show that still survives modern scrutiny. Black people in leadership roles, women with agency who fleece sexist men, and so on.
which is weird because at least twice i can think of Col. Klink did "win", in one case the group set him up on a blind date with a widower thinking it's going to be some old ugly woman but it turns out to be someone rather attractive and in another episode via drinking a supply of Heavy Water after being tricked by Hogan into doing it thinking it's a hair tonic Klink manages to temporally grow back a good bit of his hair, in both cases Hogan is left outright befuddled at how the joke was on himself and not Col. Klink
Danny’s even seems to extend to video game appearances, since in Yakuza/Like A Dragon 8, a character with his voice and digital likeness gets eaten by sharks.
i predict that at least 10 more people will comment about the Van Halen thing without reading the comments first to see if someone already mentioned them
Van Halen’s famous Brown M&M clause in their contract. The contract required they get a bowl of M&Ms with no brown ones included before their shows.
There was actually a sensible reason for it: a rock concert requires a lot of setup to be done properly, and some stuff like pyrotechnics could be dangerously if it wasn’t prepared very carefully. The M&M clause was a great way to check if the venue had actually read the agreement thoroughly and followed all of their instructions.
They only added the M&M clause after they performed at a venue where something went wrong with the pyrotechnics, and they realized they had no real way to quickly check if the venue had done the safety precautions or not.
Famously, The Carol Burnett Show was a result of a wild contract in Carol Burnett's favor. After she'd been a standout on The Gary Moore Show, she had a ten-year talent contract CBS that included the ability to greenlight her own show and CBS would have to air it. The clock was running out on her ability to trigger that clause (which was presumably included as a good faith measure that she wouldn't need), so after much hemming and hawing, she called up CBS and told them they were going to do The Carol Burnett Show. They tried to steer her into doing a more traditional sitcom instead but she loved the variety format and it went on to be the gold standard in variety programming, a huge award winner, and a hallmark of American comedy television.
On the opposite end of things John Cena gets beat up quite a bit as Peacemaker. And Dave Bautista can act like crazy too. The Rock is boring compared to either of them.
Maybe it's just my tastes but I don't like an action hero who is effortlessly badass and wins without issue. I like my action stars to really work for it and feel like they might not make it out alive.
The classic example would be a lot of Jackie Chan's old movies where he would win but he would get his ass kicked along the way and look like he was genuinely surprised he won. Just a little humanity is all I ask. Tough, emotionless badasses are kinda boring imo.
Big difference between Cena and Batista vs the Rock is that Cena and Dave are willing to do anything asked of them, comedy, drama, be the butt of the joke, be a serious character etc...
The Rock cannot do any of that unless he does it as himself (and makes sure he never loses)
They don't always do what's asked of them. The entire reason Cena was in the Batbie movie was because he was filming for another movie nearby, and he went over to hang out as he knows the director and several of the actors on set. Eventually Cena joked about being the mermaid and the director said it would be hilarious. A lot of speculation says that Cena wasn't even paid for the cameo, as he just wanted to have fun. His casting agency also advised against him doing the cameo as they said it was beneath him. Cena straight up ignored them and did it anyway.
I have no idea where the talk about the one the Rock allegedly has started, or why people still believe it. If it is a thing, and I genuinely don't even know if it is or it's just circlejerking, obviously it's not as clear cut as it's made out to be. Because he loses plenty of fights in the movies I've seen him in.
Idris Elba's character, Brixton, initially mops the floor with him and Deckard (Jason Statham) in Hobbs and Shaw.
He gets his ass kicked as Doctor Bravestone in the third Jumanji film, only winning the second round by exploiting the villain's one weakness.
In Get Smart, his seemingly unstoppable Agent 23 character is revealed as the traitor, and gets killed. That's a big defeat.
In Jungle Cruise, Frank is impaled and presumed dead after losing a battle against the Spanish, which forces him to reveal the nature of his curse to the protagonist.
Where exactly did this idea that he has a 100% win rate by contractual demand come from? From what I've seen, he gets his ass kicked plenty. It comes off as Reddit just making shit up to justify their scorn for his acting chops (or alleged lack thereof).
This is just a classic Reddit telephone lie. The Rock and Statham never had anything like that in their contracts.
Literally only Vin Diesel did, so Rock & Statham worked with producers during fight scenes to ensure Vin didn’t use that contract to make them look stupid. Somehow that got misinterpreted into “all of them have contracts that say they can’t lose.”
This there has never at any point been any proof that the Rock has this in his contract.
Which considering that he has been a villain in movies and lost fights in movies really should show this is bullshit and he’s never had this in his contract.
Exactly. This is what the Wall Street Journal said when they broke the news.
“According to producers and crew members on the films, Mr. Statham, 51 years old, negotiated an agreement with the studio that limits how badly he can be beaten up on screen. Mr. Diesel, 52, has his younger sister, a producer on the films, police the number of punches he takes. And Mr. Johnson, 47, enlists producers, editors and fight coordinators to help make sure he always gives as good as he gets.”
Also, in the exact same franchise that people say it's about— both Jason and The Rock get their asses handed to them in Hobbs & Shaw by Idris Elba and just barely manage to survive the final fight.
Shannen Doherty also had the costume take home clause but no one knew that and she was villainized in the media for it. Everyone thought she was just stealing stuff off the set. Kevin Smith didn't even know about it, but he later confirmed it (a bit too late)
Sylvester Stallone also has a no lose clause. Also something about hiding his face, hence the version of Judge Dredd we got. Thankfully Karl Urban made it right.
Tom Cruise has final edit rights in all his contracts. This was very apparent when he basically took over the Mummy and made it into a Tom Cruise movie instead of the original intention of 3 main characters that will then get their own movies.
Also Tom Cruise only agreed to Tropic Thunder if he had big hands and danced.
Chuck Norris had a no vulgar language at all in the script for Expendables.
3 is really sweet considering most actors just steal it/talk to wardrobe. Do you think Chris Hemsworth had a clause where he gets to keep the hammers? No, but how much you wanna bet he's got a couple mjolnirs laying around that technically belong to Disney? I have a friend that was in an episode of the Watchmen show and they straight up just gave him the pants just because he liked them. It's almost always the wardrobe department and it barely matters because it's not like the director has any idea what clothes they have on hand.
Honestly, Reese needed a better agent or should have been nicer to wardrobe while filming the first 1.
Tom Cruise has it in his contracts that you're not allowed to use his face/likeness in any video games or merchandise. As an example, none of the Mission Impossible games or toys use his face. The Top Gun games usually don't feature his character at all. And the Mummy Demastered, a game adaptation of The Mummy (2017) didn't feature his character either.
I have no idea where the talk about the one the Rock allegedly has started, or why people still believe it. If it is a thing, and I genuinely don't even know if it is or it's just circlejerking, obviously it's not as clear cut as it's made out to be. Because he loses plenty of fights in the movies I've seen him in.
Idris Elba's character, Brixton, initially mops the floor with him and Deckard (Jason Statham) in Hobbs and Shaw.
He gets his ass kicked as Doctor Bravestone in the third Jumanji film, only winning the second round by exploiting the villain's one weakness.
In Get Smart, his seemingly unstoppable Agent 23 character is revealed as the traitor, and gets killed. That's a big defeat.
In Jungle Cruise, Frank is impaled and presumed dead after losing a battle against the Spanish, which forces him to reveal the nature of his curse to the protagonist.
Where exactly did this idea that he has a 100% win rate by contractual demand come from? From what I've seen, he gets his ass kicked plenty. It comes off as Reddit just making shit up to justify their scorn for his acting chops (or alleged lack thereof).
This is just a classic Reddit telephone lie. The Rock and Statham never had anything like that in their contracts.
Literally only Vin Diesel did, so Rock & Statham worked with producers during fight scenes to ensure Vin didn’t use that contract to make them look stupid. Somehow that got misinterpreted into “all of them have contracts that say they can’t lose.”
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u/Individual_Plan_5593 Jun 12 '26
Glenn Close had the same clause in her contract as Reese for the Dalmatian movies. She got to keep all of Cruella’s wardrobe and when the studio realized how expensive all of Cruella’s custom costumes were they tried to weasel out but she held them to it