Ever heard of Joji, the fairly famous pop artist with like 18mil monthly listeners on spotify? Before his music career took off, he used to go by Filthy Frank, and he used to post some highly questionable content on youtube.
Watching Adore Delano in season 6 of RuPaul’s Drag Race and realizing it’s then-17yo then-Danny Noriega from one of the few American Idol seasons I actually followed. I always felt she was booted too early for reading as a gay boy, if Simon Cowell’s snide remarks are representative of sentiment at the time, so it was nice seeing her killing it in RPDR ans being open about her time in AI.
Edited to correct pronouns – I didn’t realize she’d come out as trans. My apologies!
George Foreman. World champion boxer AND he slapped his name on a decent countertop grill. I feel like people my Dad’s age know him for the former and people more my age know him for the latter.
Happened just the other day with YouTuber Stephanie Soo! I only ever knew her for her crime podcast Rotten Mango, and then found out she’s a mukbang YouTuber that took down Nickacado Avocado’s good public view. May seem pointless, but I was kinda shocked it was the same person
The most surprising one for me was the musician Marc Rebillet.
He went viral when he was younger for selling his spot in the iPhone line for $800 to a woman who wanted to buy a bunch of them to resell. (Too bad for her they had a limit of one per customer!)
I’d seen the video years ago, and knew of him nowadays, but had no idea it was the same person.
The guy who created the ‘none pizza with left beef’ meme was Steve Molaro, who went on to write and/or produce shows like iCarly, Zoey 101, The Big Bang Theory and Drake and Josh
Joseph Paxton, the man who designed the Crystal palace for the Great Exposition of 1851 in Hyde Park was the same guy who cultivated the Cavendish banana
Wilford Brimley. Millennials will know him from the Liberty Medical diabetes commercials, while previous generations probably remember him as the Quaker Oats guy
The guy who played Buffalo Bill in “Silence of the Lambs” also played an LAPD detective in the Michael Mann film “Heat”.
Edited to add two more: The “Libyan” who drove the VW microbus in “Back to the Future” was also a member of Fedora’s Gang in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”.
The guy who played the dead frozen FBI agent in “The Goonies” also got eaten by Jaws for the movie “Jaws”, although his scene in “Jaws” was left on the cutting room floor.
Thomas Midgley Jr. invented leaded gasoline and pushed for the use in cars to prevent a knocking sound in the engine. Leaded gasoline was an environmental disaster, as increased lead levels have a huge negative impact on developing children – especially with regards to aggression.
Then he went on to develop some early CFCs, commonly known as Freon. Their use lead to the hole in the ozone layer and they were eventually banned in 1987.
James Rash, the dean from community, won an Oscar as the screenwriter for The Descendants. Both film stuff, but surprising seeing Craig Pelton getting an academy award.
The guy who did Potter Puppet Pals and The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny is Neil Cicierega, the same guy behind Mouth Silence, Mouth Sounds, Mouth Moods, and the newest Mouth Dreams albums of weird/cool mash up songs.
The same guy who founded Atari in the heyday realized that when he sold an arcade cabinet to an arcade he got one sale while that arcade used that machine to make unlimited money.
Kind of obscure, but Shahuin from this season’s Survivor previously dated Sharri Pappini, famous for faking her own kidnapping and stating she was held captive by three weeks by “two hispanic women” before returning to her family. She then got financial compensation as a victim. Apparently she had been hiding at an ex boyfriend’s house the entire time.
He was suspected by internet sleuths to be the ex boyfriend who helped her until he spoke out about it and made it clear it wasn’t him. He gave a few interviews about it.
When I first saw him, I thought he looked familiar and couldn’t place it until Reddit came through as usual.
Around the mid-2000s there was a guy pretty well known in baseball stats circles (which I swear was a passionate community back then) for coming up with a very good system of predicting how players will do in the following season.
Separately, also a niche area, but there was a ton of buzz in early 2008 when a guy posting on Daily Kos under a pseudonym was able to predict the outcome of each Democratic primary with uncanny accuracy.
So there was a very small group of people who followed both scenes, but they were genuinely shocked when the latter revealed himself to be the former. (It was Nate Silver.)
For me it was John Green. I knew of him as an author, but I didn’t know he’s also a YouTuber and created (or co-created) the CrashCourse YouTube channel until my history professor started using his videos for our assigned readings/videos
Fritz Haber invented the Haber Process, which unpins half the world’s food supply, and also arguably invented chemical warfare, specifically chlorine gas.
I saw “Hillbilly Elegy” without really knowing who JD Vance was so when he got picked as Trump’s running mate I was like “the guy who wrote the book that that Ron Howard movie was based on?”
Marc Rebilett, also known as Loop Daddy, was first famous for being 1st in line for the 1st IPhone release and selling his spot on for $800, only for the person who bought his spot to learn that there was a one phone limit per person.
Gavin Free: Co-founder of the Slow-Mo guys and employee of Roosterteeth involved with various productions and departments.
(Not completely unrelated, as Slow-Mo Guys was started to help him acquire a work visa for the USA, which was/is in the USA, but different demographics. It took a year or two for me to realize it was the same person.)
I’ve been a fan of the Zelda series for a long time, and even took multiple days of PTO when Tears of the Kingdom came out because I was so excited to play it. More recently, I’ve gotten into D&D shows, so imagine my surprise when I realized that Matt Mercer, who I knew as a popular figure in D&D media, was also the voice of Ganondorf in Tears of the Kingdom.
Sonny, the lead singer of mid-2000s emo band From First to Last (the inspiration for many terrible fan-fics that I definitely did not engage with as a teen) later became fucking Skrillex.
Alfred Nobel. Invented dynamite. When his brother died the newspaper made a mistake and thought that Alfred had died, and they ran an obituary on him. They excoriated him for inventing something that raised the mortality in war. He was so concerned about his public image that he endowed the Nobel peace prize.
Hedy Lamarr. An Austrian-American actress and inventor who pioneered the technology that would one day form the basis for today’s WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth communication systems.
Marc Rebillet is the Loop Daddy improv singer from Internet fame. He is also the kid on the news who sold his spot in line for the first iPhone to that lady who tried to buy them all but could only get one.
Dwayne McDuffie, a comic book writer and creator of Static Shock (among other things) is also the person who came up with the Tommy Westphall shared universe theory connecting a ton of TV shows starting with St. Elsewhere. He and Keegan Michael Key are also half-brothers.
My husband was showing me the series of Italian films and the third one he said had the directors daughter in it. And I’m looking at it I’m like oh that’s Anthony Bourdain’s girlfriend. And he looked at me like “what?” and so I pull up her Instagram and I’m like that’s Anthony Bourdain’s girlfriend before he died I follow her because I liked him.
The kid who played Todd in Supernatural, that one who played the antichrist, was the guy who got life in prison for killing his mom so she couldn’t stop him from killing Justin Trudeau.
The super excited keyboardist in Scary Pockets and Pomplamoose is the cofounder of Patreon. Found that out last night and was entirely unaware despite being a fan of both.
I heard of Tom Ford, the fashion guy, when I was getting into fragrances. Then I heard of Tom Ford, director of Nocturnal Animals. Then I found out they are one and the same.
At this point when I hear Shel Silverstein created something unexpected I’m not even surprised anymore.
He wrote The Giving Tree, Where The Sidewalk Ends, Sylvia’s Mother, and A Boy Named Sue. He also drew illustrations for Playboy.
Looking at his Wikipedia, he also wrote a bunch of one-act plays, more music that was performed by Johnny Cash and Peter, Paul, and Mary, among others that some of you may recognize but I don’t.
He did a ton of other stuff. His resume is just crazy.
The weirdest has to be the song Father of a Boy Named Sue. The end of it is deranged.
Yesterday I found out the Hans Zimmer is the keyboard/synth player for The Buggles in the famous music video for “ Video killed the radio star” just such a wild piece of information I’d never heard till now
A fair bit less famous/historically significant than a lot of these top answers, but I remember being very much thrown for a loop when I first realized that youtuber Drew Gooden was also the guy from the “Road Work Ahead? I sure hope it does” Vine.
Chuck Lorre is the creator/producer of Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men and Roseanne. He also wrote the theme song for the 1980’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon.
Shel Silverstein wrote Johnny Cash’s song, “A Boy Named Sue.” Not completely unrelated to his other writing but at least for a completely different audience.
Fritz Haber invented a process used for the creation of artificial fertilizer which led to a global boom in agriculture. It has kindly been responsible for hundreds of millions of people not starving.
He also invented chlorine gas used in WW1 and Cyclon-B, used in the Nazi gas chambers.
Comments
Ever heard of Joji, the fairly famous pop artist with like 18mil monthly listeners on spotify? Before his music career took off, he used to go by Filthy Frank, and he used to post some highly questionable content on youtube.
Chump. Rape and being elected President.
Jonny Kim
Jared from Subway
Watching Adore Delano in season 6 of RuPaul’s Drag Race and realizing it’s then-17yo then-Danny Noriega from one of the few American Idol seasons I actually followed. I always felt she was booted too early for reading as a gay boy, if Simon Cowell’s snide remarks are representative of sentiment at the time, so it was nice seeing her killing it in RPDR ans being open about her time in AI.
Edited to correct pronouns – I didn’t realize she’d come out as trans. My apologies!
George Foreman. World champion boxer AND he slapped his name on a decent countertop grill. I feel like people my Dad’s age know him for the former and people more my age know him for the latter.
Happened just the other day with YouTuber Stephanie Soo! I only ever knew her for her crime podcast Rotten Mango, and then found out she’s a mukbang YouTuber that took down Nickacado Avocado’s good public view. May seem pointless, but I was kinda shocked it was the same person
The guy that sang “You’re a mean one Mr. Grinch” also did the voice of Tony the Tiger.
Mark Wahlberg / Marky Mark
The old meme the “suh dude” guy later became the dubstep artist getter, who later became terror reid the hip hop artist
The most surprising one for me was the musician Marc Rebillet.
He went viral when he was younger for selling his spot in the iPhone line for $800 to a woman who wanted to buy a bunch of them to resell. (Too bad for her they had a limit of one per customer!)
I’d seen the video years ago, and knew of him nowadays, but had no idea it was the same person.
Ron Regan
Got recommended a video of the longest televised golf putt in history. Certainly it couldn’t have been THAT Michael Phelps.
The guy who created the ‘none pizza with left beef’ meme was Steve Molaro, who went on to write and/or produce shows like iCarly, Zoey 101, The Big Bang Theory and Drake and Josh
Drake. Knew his first big hit on the radio, then when i saw his music video, I thought, “hey wait! That’s Jimmy from Degrassi (Canadian teen drama)!
Joseph Paxton, the man who designed the Crystal palace for the Great Exposition of 1851 in Hyde Park was the same guy who cultivated the Cavendish banana
Tyler the creator actually said he stopped doing funny skit when he was being recognized as “that funny guy from tiktok” and not as a musician
he made the “I hope I don’t fall” vine and the “SIIIIIIKKKKE” même as well as a lot of high quality rap album
Hannah Waddingham on Ted Lasso, then realizing much later that she was Septa Unella on Game of Thrones.
Jesse Ventura
The Potion Seller guy wrote the Challengers movie
Wilford Brimley. Millennials will know him from the Liberty Medical diabetes commercials, while previous generations probably remember him as the Quaker Oats guy
Ted Kaczynski, the Unibomber, also had a PhD in mathematics which lead to this famous in math circles footnote.
The guy who played Buffalo Bill in “Silence of the Lambs” also played an LAPD detective in the Michael Mann film “Heat”.
Edited to add two more: The “Libyan” who drove the VW microbus in “Back to the Future” was also a member of Fedora’s Gang in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”.
The guy who played the dead frozen FBI agent in “The Goonies” also got eaten by Jaws for the movie “Jaws”, although his scene in “Jaws” was left on the cutting room floor.
Thomas Midgley Jr. invented leaded gasoline and pushed for the use in cars to prevent a knocking sound in the engine. Leaded gasoline was an environmental disaster, as increased lead levels have a huge negative impact on developing children – especially with regards to aggression.
Then he went on to develop some early CFCs, commonly known as Freon. Their use lead to the hole in the ozone layer and they were eventually banned in 1987.
James Rash, the dean from community, won an Oscar as the screenwriter for The Descendants. Both film stuff, but surprising seeing Craig Pelton getting an academy award.
Donald Glover in everything
The guy who did Potter Puppet Pals and The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny is Neil Cicierega, the same guy behind Mouth Silence, Mouth Sounds, Mouth Moods, and the newest Mouth Dreams albums of weird/cool mash up songs.
Heddy Lamarr… Mother of WiFi and successful actress.
The same guy who founded Atari in the heyday realized that when he sold an arcade cabinet to an arcade he got one sale while that arcade used that machine to make unlimited money.
So he founded Chuck E Cheese.
Nolan Bushnell.
Kind of obscure, but Shahuin from this season’s Survivor previously dated Sharri Pappini, famous for faking her own kidnapping and stating she was held captive by three weeks by “two hispanic women” before returning to her family. She then got financial compensation as a victim. Apparently she had been hiding at an ex boyfriend’s house the entire time.
He was suspected by internet sleuths to be the ex boyfriend who helped her until he spoke out about it and made it clear it wasn’t him. He gave a few interviews about it.
When I first saw him, I thought he looked familiar and couldn’t place it until Reddit came through as usual.
I’ve been that guy, and it’s kind of fun.
“Wait: The Game Informer guy became the WWE game writer guy and is now in Death Stranding?!”
Was surprised to find that Mike White, whom I knew as the mousy Mr. Schneebly in School of Rock, is the creator and director of White Lotus.
The guy who does songs like “taco cat” on YouTube is also the frontman from Nerfherherder. The one and only Perry Gripp.
Around the mid-2000s there was a guy pretty well known in baseball stats circles (which I swear was a passionate community back then) for coming up with a very good system of predicting how players will do in the following season.
Separately, also a niche area, but there was a ton of buzz in early 2008 when a guy posting on Daily Kos under a pseudonym was able to predict the outcome of each Democratic primary with uncanny accuracy.
So there was a very small group of people who followed both scenes, but they were genuinely shocked when the latter revealed himself to be the former. (It was Nate Silver.)
Creed Bratton was in the band The Grass Roots (Midnight Confessions & other hits) and later became one of the stars on the NBC show The Office
For me it was John Green. I knew of him as an author, but I didn’t know he’s also a YouTuber and created (or co-created) the CrashCourse YouTube channel until my history professor started using his videos for our assigned readings/videos
Joe Keery.
Stranger Things and then a song I heard a hundred times last year called End of Beginning by Djo.
Recently found out Joe Keery is Djo.
Fritz Haber invented the Haber Process, which unpins half the world’s food supply, and also arguably invented chemical warfare, specifically chlorine gas.
Gwyneth Paltrow the actor and gwyneth paltrow the jade egg hawker
The lead in the show Grimm was just randomly Dave from Road Rules South Pacific
Fuzz Townshend: drummer with 80’s band Pop Will Eat Itself, presenter of Car SOS
David McCallum (medical examiner Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard) on NCIS was also a great musician.
His song “The Edge” was used in Dr. Dre and Snoop Dog’s song “The Next Episode”.
Read about it here: https://www.biography.com/actors/a45325227/david-mccallum-the-edge-song-samples
I saw “Hillbilly Elegy” without really knowing who JD Vance was so when he got picked as Trump’s running mate I was like “the guy who wrote the book that that Ron Howard movie was based on?”
Ted Nivison when he made the video about his “viral tiktok sound”. this is an absolutely chronically online take but I was flabbergasted
Marc Rebilett, also known as Loop Daddy, was first famous for being 1st in line for the 1st IPhone release and selling his spot on for $800, only for the person who bought his spot to learn that there was a one phone limit per person.
Gavin Free: Co-founder of the Slow-Mo guys and employee of Roosterteeth involved with various productions and departments.
(Not completely unrelated, as Slow-Mo Guys was started to help him acquire a work visa for the USA, which was/is in the USA, but different demographics. It took a year or two for me to realize it was the same person.)
I’ve been a fan of the Zelda series for a long time, and even took multiple days of PTO when Tears of the Kingdom came out because I was so excited to play it. More recently, I’ve gotten into D&D shows, so imagine my surprise when I realized that Matt Mercer, who I knew as a popular figure in D&D media, was also the voice of Ganondorf in Tears of the Kingdom.
Sonny, the lead singer of mid-2000s emo band From First to Last (the inspiration for many terrible fan-fics that I definitely did not engage with as a teen) later became fucking Skrillex.
Drink mogul Arnold Palmer also played professional golf.
Shout out to Scrubs for this one.
Matt Damon singing Scotty Doesn’t Know
Hedy Lamarr-great actress and also helped develop frequency hopping technology that led to wi-fi
Alfred Nobel. Invented dynamite. When his brother died the newspaper made a mistake and thought that Alfred had died, and they ran an obituary on him. They excoriated him for inventing something that raised the mortality in war. He was so concerned about his public image that he endowed the Nobel peace prize.
Nobody has mentioned Brian May?
Most known for his music career with Queen, he’s also an astrophysicist.
Hedy Lamarr. An Austrian-American actress and inventor who pioneered the technology that would one day form the basis for today’s WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth communication systems.
harpo marx-great comedian and spy
Marc Rebillet is the Loop Daddy improv singer from Internet fame. He is also the kid on the news who sold his spot in line for the first iPhone to that lady who tried to buy them all but could only get one.
Brian Cox, physicist, tv personality and before his academic career, Cox was a keyboard player for the British bands Dare and D:Ream.
Director Todd Field also invented Big League Chew gum
Thomas Midgley Jr. The guy who invented leaded gasoline is also the guy who invented CFCs. Nearly destroyed civilization twice.
Professor Brian Cox, world renowned physicist, was the keyboard player with a popular band called D:ream.
Dwayne McDuffie, a comic book writer and creator of Static Shock (among other things) is also the person who came up with the Tommy Westphall shared universe theory connecting a ton of TV shows starting with St. Elsewhere. He and Keegan Michael Key are also half-brothers.
NPH is a very well known actor/personality and also an accomplished magician.
Darius Rucker has made a name for himself in country music but was previously Hootie of Hootie and the blowfish who had some hits in the 90s
John Green the author and John Green the YouTuber took a long time to connect in my brain.
The youngest Marx brother, Zeppo, was a skilled engineer. His company made the clamps used to release the atomic bomb onto Hiroshima.
He also had the patent for a wristwatch that monitored your pulse – so he kind of invented the Fitbit, too.
My husband was showing me the series of Italian films and the third one he said had the directors daughter in it. And I’m looking at it I’m like oh that’s Anthony Bourdain’s girlfriend. And he looked at me like “what?” and so I pull up her Instagram and I’m like that’s Anthony Bourdain’s girlfriend before he died I follow her because I liked him.
Charlie Brooker, who is an excellent English comedian known for his sarcastic and cynical analysis shows like Screenwipe also created Black Mirror.
Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) also composes movie scores.
Steve Martin is also a Grammy award winning banjo player.
Not in a “celebrity buys a Grammy award” way, he’s actually insanely good.
Everlast/Whitey Ford and House of Pain lead. Still singing, but vastly different genres.
Barbara from Abbott Elementary is the mom who hates music from Sister Across 2. She has barely aged!
Also, Lauryn Hill plays her daughter in the movie.
The lead singer for The Offspring (Bryan Holland) has a doctorate in microbiology.
The kid who played Todd in Supernatural, that one who played the antichrist, was the guy who got life in prison for killing his mom so she couldn’t stop him from killing Justin Trudeau.
The super excited keyboardist in Scary Pockets and Pomplamoose is the cofounder of Patreon. Found that out last night and was entirely unaware despite being a fan of both.
I heard of Tom Ford, the fashion guy, when I was getting into fragrances. Then I heard of Tom Ford, director of Nocturnal Animals. Then I found out they are one and the same.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy – played the fictional president of Ukraine in a satirical comedy series and now the actual president of Ukraine.
Brian Cox – member of D:Ream and later a celebrity physicist token “brainy person” on the BBC.
JK Rowling – Author and creator of the most popular and well-known children’s book series of the past 50 years and transphobic Twitter addict.
At this point when I hear Shel Silverstein created something unexpected I’m not even surprised anymore.
He wrote The Giving Tree, Where The Sidewalk Ends, Sylvia’s Mother, and A Boy Named Sue. He also drew illustrations for Playboy.
Looking at his Wikipedia, he also wrote a bunch of one-act plays, more music that was performed by Johnny Cash and Peter, Paul, and Mary, among others that some of you may recognize but I don’t.
He did a ton of other stuff. His resume is just crazy.
The weirdest has to be the song Father of a Boy Named Sue. The end of it is deranged.
Glock- pistols and horse insemination
Yesterday I found out the Hans Zimmer is the keyboard/synth player for The Buggles in the famous music video for “ Video killed the radio star” just such a wild piece of information I’d never heard till now
I always enjoy showing students John Green needing out on a Crash Course video, and then pointing out the author’s name on The Fault in Our Stars.
A fair bit less famous/historically significant than a lot of these top answers, but I remember being very much thrown for a loop when I first realized that youtuber Drew Gooden was also the guy from the “Road Work Ahead? I sure hope it does” Vine.
Anthony Scaramucci was one of the lawyers involved in the Pepsi Harrier Jet Commercial lawsuit
Alfred Nobel founded the Nobel foundation (Nobel Peace Prize) as penance for creating dynamite
Chuck Lorre is the creator/producer of Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men and Roseanne. He also wrote the theme song for the 1980’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon.
International CIA killer Chuck Barris also made the Gong Show and the Dating game, if you believe him.
Eartha Kitt who sang ‘santa baby’ voiced Yzma, the villain from the Disney film ‘The Emperor’s new groove’
The shock I endured when sexy Dracula from Van Helsing turned out to be the sniveling Count from Moulin Rouge. Talk about RANGE
Shel Silverstein wrote Johnny Cash’s song, “A Boy Named Sue.” Not completely unrelated to his other writing but at least for a completely different audience.
The jazz legend Charles Mingus also published a book on how to toilet train your cat.
Fritz Haber invented a process used for the creation of artificial fertilizer which led to a global boom in agriculture. It has kindly been responsible for hundreds of millions of people not starving.
He also invented chlorine gas used in WW1 and Cyclon-B, used in the Nazi gas chambers.