Never Live It Down/Real Life: Difference between revisions

* "Democracy is finished in England. It may be here." When Joe Kennedy, father of JFK said that in regards to the German attacks against England in [[WW 2]], he basically became the American Neville Chamberlain.

* Gilles Duceppe, leader of the Bloc Québécois for 14 years, one of the longest-serving leaders of a major political party in recent Canadian times, former Leader of the Opposition. Dude takes one perfectly normal tour of a cheese factory like any other politician, with perfectly sensible, standard-issue hygiene precautions, and for the rest of his life he's the [http://www.cbc.ca/archives/categories/politics/elections/fumbles-and-stumbles-eight-great-election-gaffes/duceppes-hairnet-raises-eyebrows.html dude in the shower cap].

 

== Entertainers ==

* Sir Alec Guinness expressed great irritation that he only seemed to be remembered for [[Star Wars|that one role]] he didn't really like in the first place and he did because [[Money, Dear Boy|he needed the money]], and once flipped out at a [[Loony Fan]] who wouldn't stop pestering him. He was bitter about this to the end of his life... and naturally, every obituary for him focused more on his role in ''[[Star Wars]]'' than anything else.

** [http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/buzz_log_anakin.html Poor, poor Jake Lloyd]. How ''dare'' an eight-year-old actor deliver a juvenile performance!

* [[Chris Columbus]] wrote ''[[Gremlins]]'' and ''[[The Goonies]]'', directed two ''[[Harry Potter (film)|Harry Potter]]'' films and ''[[Mrs. Doubtfire]]'' as well as the film adaptation of ''[[Rent]]'', but is apparently going to be "the ''[[Home Alone]]'' guy" for all eternity. On the other hand, maybe he's lucky he's not "the ''[[Stepmom]]'' guy".

** Amongst Harry Potter fans, he is very much known as the director of 1 and 2. [[Base Breaker|the fandom is divided]] as to whether or not that's a good or bad thing.

* [[Kanye West]] may be a very talented rapper, but he became most known by non-fans as "that guy who said George Bush doesn't care about black people." Several years' worth of parodies, spoofs, and (to Kanye, at least) agreement with this comment by the general public likely led him to think he could pull a similar stunt and escape unscathed. Now he's known as the guy who's [[Interrupting Meme|gonna let you finish, but]] [[X-Men|Jean Grey]] had the best [[Never Live It Down]] moment of all time. So at least he lived down the ''first'' one...

* They're ''still'' cracking jokes about Michael Fish (British weather presenter, now semi-retired) from that one time over twenty years ago that he refused to accept the Great Storm of '87 was happening, ''even as it was happening''.

* According to some of her co-workers, at least one ''[[Deadwood]]'' bit player regularly gets recognized on the street as "Dolly the blow-job whore."

* Al Gore [[Beam Me Up, Scotty|never actually said]] that he invented the Internet, but it's just too funny to forget.

* To [[MythBusters|his co-workers]] Tory Belleci will always be "the guy who (rather unsuccessfully) tried to jump a bike over a little red wagon."

* Cat Stevens' highly successful musical career has been completely overshadowed by his conversion to Islam, which included being quoted as supporting the fatwa against Salman Rushdie (he's said that the quote was taken out of context, but still refuses to actually condemn the fatwa).

* After a long movie shoot for [[So Undercover]] in New Orleans, [[Miley Cyrus]] and her friends have a goofy late night on the town. Miley curiously picks up a mysterious bottle off the street, sniffs it and giggles, and someone else obviously films the event on their smartphone. It turns out to be a bong of salvia (a legal substance, not to be confused with ''cannabis sativa'', and not likely one Miley knew about when she picked up the object), and the video gets in the hands of [[TMZ]], who make a major scandal of it in the media. Cue stories of [[Contractual Purity|Miley being a drug addict]], etc. during an already controversial period in her life, at least by her already vicious hatedom. The video becomes infamous on [[YouTube]], even though she apologizes for it later. [[Values Dissonance|What such a substance was doing]] in the middle of a New Orleans street anyway is never discussed.

* Besides being a prominent [[Rodrigo Duterte|Duterte]] crony, having written lyrics to the tune of "Ipaglalaban Ko" (transl. "I Will Fight [For Something]") under the title "Para sa Tunay na Pagbabago" (transl. "For Genuine Change") in support of Duterte, Filipino folk singer [[Freddie Aguilar]] is certainly still derided for his [[Squick]]tastic [[May-December Romance|relationship]] with a ''sixteen-year old girl''. The affair was seen by people as not only [[Hypocrite|hypocritical]] especially in light of his folk songs pertaining to Filipino nationalism and values, the best known of which is the prodigal son tale "Anak" (lit. "Child"), but was also seen as borderline to outright [[Ephebophilia|creepy]] owing to Aguilar and his partner's age gap–at the time of their marriage, Aguilar was 60 while his partner was ''sixteen''. It also didn't help that he was able to [[Loophole Abuse|weasel around]] the age restriction by converting to Islam as the Philippines recognises Sharia law, which had no such restrictions for as long as the girl had ''her first menstrual period''. Paedo concerns aside, some also criticised the girl and her parent and came to call her a [[Gold Digger]] for riding on Aguilar's fame.

* [[Steve Harvey]] would never live down that humiliating mistake he did in [[Miss Universe]] 2015, where he erroneously announced Miss Colombia Ariadna Gutiérrez as the winner instead of Miss Philippines Pia Wurtzbach. It didn't take long for Colombians to call Harvey a ''"Hijo de puta"'' ("Son of a bitch") for his gaffe in the pageant.

 

== Everyone Else ==

* [[Henry VIII]] is sometimes thought of as having executed all six of his wives - this happened to just two (Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard). Two of the marriages Henry had annulled, another wife died in childbirth, and the last one outlived him. There's a handy mnemonic for this: [[Histeria!|Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorced, Beheaded, Survived]] (even though it should be Annulled&Died-Annulled&Beheaded-Died-Divorced&Survived-Annulled&Beheaded-Survived). Still, seeing as the average persons kills zero wives in their life time it's easy to see why it's become so notable...

* To the man on the street, [[Napoleon Bonaparte]] is not recalled for being a [[Magnificent Bastard]], a military genius, for rising from very little to become the most powerful man in the world before he was thirty-five, or for establishing the Napoleonic Code. To the public at large, he's simply [[The Napoleon|that short guy]]. In reality, he wasn't even short. That idea was mostly spread by British propaganda.

** What makes this even more ironic is that most people think Schrödinger proposed his famous thought experiment in order to highlight how wonderfully weird the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is. When, in fact, he proposed it in order to prove the Copenhagen interpretation wrong. That the cat is simultaneous alive and dead was meant to show how utterly insane the Copenhagen interpretation was, not to show deep physical insight.

* [[Catherine the Great]] was an Enlightened Despot who reformed Russia, planned a coup to dethrone her husband, lead Russia into two successful wars against the Ottomans, and brought Russia into a more important role in European politics. What is she most famous for? The myth that she died [[But You Screw One Goat!|while having sex with a stallion]] when it fell upon her. While she was known for her love life (notably with younger men), this myth is completely untrue since she died from a stroke. However, the myth manages to live on due to the fact its more exciting than what really happened, and is usually referenced in pop-cultural depictions of her.

* Samuel Adams: A great patriot during [[The American Revolution]], one of the Founding Fathers, was largely responsible for the Boston Tea Party. What's he remembered for? Beer. He wasn't even a brewer; he was technically a maltster.

* Ethan Allen gets it even worse, though. Revolutionary War guerilla hero who, among other things, captured Fort Ticonderoga. If you mention his name today, most people will think only of the furniture company that was founded some 143 years after his death. Ethan Allen himself wasn't even a carpenter.

* [[Paris Hilton]], before sex tape: obscure party-hopping heiress. After sex tape: slut. There's also the famous "Wal-mart" quote. Paris later claimed she was joking at the time. And the Hardee's commercial. That's about it, really.

** She also tried to justify having cocaine in her purse by claiming that she [[Too Dumb to Live|thought it was gum.]]

** Historically speaking, The Prince could aptly be subtitled "The game sucks and we all know it, but if one must play, this is how to win".

* [[Richard Dawkins]] wrote some of the most popular and extensively-quoted books on evolutionary biology. These days, everybody knows him as the guy who wrote "The God Delusion" and is widely believed to be a frothing militant [[Social Darwinist]] who hates God, despite the fact that he does not advocate violence or force of any kind. He also [[Memetic Mutation|gave us the term "meme"]].

* Formerly known for being disabled and for being a synonym for uber-genius, [[Stephen Hawking]] is probably best known for his robot voice.

** His activity not directly observed as voice mostly appears in context of not just cosmology (which is already YMMV), but second-hand arguments at best, and yellow journalists' habit of [https://xkcd.com/799/ using him as] a living [[Magic 8-Ball]] at worst, so there's that.

* General Xiahou Dun is mostly remembered for being shot in the eye with an arrow, rather than his many accomplishments as a military leader. Though at least ''[[Romance of the Three Kingdoms]]'' let him also be (untruthfully) remembered for [[Badass|pulling out the eye and eating it]] directly afterwards.

** Likewise, Liu Shan will always be remembered as the guy who destroyed Shu. Despite the fact that there were others who were responsible for Shu's downfall.

* Baseball player Fred Merkle is to this day known as "Bonehead" for an error that cost the New York Giants the 1908 pennant. While running to second base, Merkle saw the run that would win the game cross home, and headed to the dugout to celebrate, allowing the Cubs' second baseman Johnny Evers to nullify the run by forcing him out. What's not as well-known is that this was common practice at the time as the rule against it had never been enforced; it was just Merkle's bad luck that Evers was an expert on the official baseball rules.

* Pat O'Brien covered the Super Bowl, NBA Finals, World Series, US Open tennis tournament, NCAA Men's basketball tournament, and Winter Olympics just to name a few for [[CBS]] during the 1980s and 1990s. He later transitioned himself into being an infotainment host for ''Access Hollywood'' and ''The Insider''. Yet, these days, Pat O'Brien is probably more (in)famous for his creepily obscene drunken voice-mail messages.

* [[Nikola Tesla]], sometimes called "the man who invented the modern world". Just about any modern appliance that uses electricity requires the use of a device that was invented by him, or is an adaptation of a Tesla design. What's he remembered the most for? "Inventing" the [[Death Ray]], or other such fanciful weapons of mass destruction. In fact, modern interpretations of him tend to [[Flanderise]] into a [[Mad Scientist]], despite the many, ''many'' legitimate contributions he made to the utilization of electricity.

* J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line who happened to be the highest-ranking White Star official to survive the ''[[RMS Titanic]]'' sinking. One day a chairman of a premier shipping line (which was at some point acquired by JP Morgan who wished to build an [[Mega Corp|international shipping conglomerate]]), a day or two later an overnight pariah in the eyes of the public, no thanks to sensationalist coverage especially in America, where the anti-Ismay smear campaign was orchestrated by William Randolph Hearst who was [[Strawman News Media|in control of the press]] back in the day and had a falling out with Ismay, bashing the living daylights out of the beleaguered chairman with derisive nicknames like "Coward of the Titanic" or "J. Brute Ismay". Ismay was haunted by the spectre the ''Titanic'' incident for the rest of his life, and was unable to recover from it. His reputation was damaged so much that most if not all portrayals of him in ''Titanic''-related media cast him in a wholly negative light, either as a [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]] bent at chasing the fabled Blue Ribald maritime speed record and thus attract more investors (in reality, the White Star Line was more after passenger comfort and luxury than pure speed) as in the case of the 1943 [[Nazi]] [[Propaganda Machine|propaganda film]] ''[[Titanic (1943 film)|Titanic]]'', or just some White Star figurehead who should have known better. To his credit though, he was far from the callous villain he was often portrayed as; the ''Titanic'' did have more than enough lifeboats (or at least more than enough according to the outdated standards of the time), and that he too helped usher many other passengers into lifeboats before finding a spot for himself. To this day, Ismay's (undeserving) notoriety [[Sins of Our Fathers|spilled over to his family]], who apparently received hate mail in relation to Bruce's indiscretions.

 

== Cities, Countries and Locations ==

** While we're at it, the French government's declaration that Chernobyl's radioactive cloud was somehow magically stopped at the French border still draws a lot of snark. Even though the sentence is a [[Beam Me Up, Scotty|legend]].

{{quote|"Why close the airports? We all know the cloud will stop at the border as usual." ''— Public reaction to the 2010 Icelandic ash cloud approaching French airspace.''}}

* [[All Germans Are Nazis]].

* ''[[Philadelphia (useful notes)|Philadelphia]]'': [[Memetic Mutation|They boo]] [[Santa Claus]]. Or they'll [[Memetic Mutation|throw batteries]] at you.

** And they also cheer when an opposing player suffers a serious back injury. And there was a courtroom set up in Veterans Stadium because there was so much violence and misbehavior going on.

** And unlike most other cities, Philly fans ''and'' players are largely unrepentant about these types of misbehaviors and tend to openly relish brutal or violent [[Good Old Fisticuffs|gameplay]].

** Which should not be surprising at all, considering their [[NHL]] team's nickname is the "Broad Street ''Bullies,''" who pretty much [[Good Old Fisticuffs|punched their way]] to the [[Stanley Cup]] two years in a row in the 1970s and are still fairly well-known for [[Good Old Fisticuffs|playing with their fists before their sticks]] in the 2000s.

* Kansas is forever seen as being stuck in the early 20th century, thanks to stuff like ''[[The Wizard of Oz (film)|The Wizard of Oz]]'', which was written and/or made in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century. That's like thinking that New York is still stuck in the late 1800's because you saw it in ''[[Gangs of New York]]''.

* The US joining the two world wars years after they had started, creating many 'late to the game' jokes throughout the decades.

** On the other hand, filmmaker [[Spike Lee]] seems to lay the blame for this on Indianapolis, Indiana. While it's true that Indianapolis probably had more Klansmen per capita than any other major American city in the early 20th century, it is clear that Lee [[Did Not Do the Research]] - which is rather disappointing, because (for his movies, at least) he usually ''does''.

* Devotional self-crucifixion only occurs among a very minor community in the Philippines, mostly [[wikipedia:San Pedro Cutud Lenten Rites|around the city of San Fernando, Pampanga.]] Foreigners who hear about this are understandably extremely weirded out and think that the practice is not only common in the Philippines, it's accepted and encouraged. It is '''not''': the Catholic Church refuses to endorse them. Outside of those certain communities, most Filipinos find such self-crucifixions unnecessary and unhealthy too.

* Despite the city of [[Pittsburgh]] getting rid of most of its steel industry, most people who have never been to Pittsburgh still remember it as the polluted Steel City.

** The Pittsburgh Steelers might have something to do with that...

* The Canadian attitude towards Toronto is lukewarm at best. The stereotype is that Torontonians are self-centered, money-grubbing fussbudgets who panic at the mere mention of snow. Nowhere is this attitude more prevalent than Quebec, the Prairies and Northern Ontario. Imagine the reaction when, after a particularly nasty snowfall (about a metre; child's play for Quebec, the North or the Prairies) the mayor of Toronto called in the ''Armed Forces'' to assist. With ''snow''. In ''Canada''. You don't need to, actually. The reaction was laughter. Lots of it.

* Ask anyone what immediately comes to mind when they think about Chicago, Illinois. One of the biggest cities in the Midwest? Final stop for cowboys on long cattle drives? The Sears/Willis Tower? Nope. Most of the time, it will be one of four things: Bootlegging, [[Al Capone]], [[The Mafia]] and corrupt politicians.

** Really? I would have thought... DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS DA BEARS....

** And since [http://www.unz.com/runz/our-american-pravda/ many things] equally scandalous - and some of which didn't stop being dangerous yet - tend to be [[Viewers Are Goldfish|forgotten in about five minutes]], the answer is obvious: it's Hollywood.

 

== Other ==

* A staple of basically every stand-up impressionist's act, except Pablo Francisco.

** And in Pablo Francisco's case, what celebrities can Never Live Down is their own voices, which are used to hilarious effect simply because they are funny.

* Regular comics don't have it easy either. Seinfeld is known for "What's up with that?", especially "What's the deal with airline food?"

* White South Africans and Apartheid.

** NPR interviewed a pilot whose callsign was Poo. He refused to go into detail as to how he got it.

** Honestly, too many callsign stories to list here, but many, many, [[Rule of Three|many]], can be found with a Google search.

* These days, the words "Catholic priest" have basically become synonymous with "[[Paedophile Priest|paedophile]]" thanks to case after case worldwide of priests preying upon children (particularly, young altar boys)–many of them covered up by church authorities and only now coming to light. If it weren't for the cover-ups, no doubt more people would notice that the vast majority of priests ''aren't'' child molesters.

* Pretty much anyone who is well-known mainly via supermarket tabloids.

* The Space Shuttle Challenger completed nine successful missions before it exploded. But there are not mentions of those. From all the stories about it, you'd think it was the maiden voyage.

** The Space Shuttle Columbia gets this sometimes, too, especially among younger people and it flew successful missions for TWENTY YEARS before it was destroyed.

* The literary journal Social Text published a paper by physicist Alan Sokal that was a parody of postmodern philosophy as a protest against "fashionable nonsense" in the humanities. When the hoax was revealed, many people saw it as discrediting postmodernism.

* Despite the fact that Macs have been able to use multi-button USB mice for years and that Apple's mice have been capable of right-clicking for a while, a lot of Mac haters still love to deride the Mac as a computer that only has one mouse button.

* Anyone who is caught cheating on their spouse can fall under this. Many people today seem to be taught to never forgive or forget, as they will constantly remind the person that they are a horrible person because they cheated, even if they've done all they can to make up for it. It also doesn't help that many talk shows and TV drama shows display this type of behavior.

** It also doesn't help that many caught cheaters (mostly men), along with many who simply don't subscribe to monogamy, will try to excuse their behaviors with the flimsiest of rationales: "It was just sex/a fling." "It didn't mean anything." "[[I'm a Man, I Can't Help It]]." Or the ever-popular "If I was getting what I needed at home..."

* [[Joss Whedon]]'s ''[[Firefly]]'' was set in a hybrid Chinese-American culture, yet none of the leads or speaking roles are ostensibly Asian. To this day, there is still [[Internet Backdraft]] around whether it's a simple accident due to being constantly [[Screwed by the Network]], or an exhibition of a mentality that thinks of Asian culture as nothing more than window-dressing. For some of the worse detractors, they will claim that Joss "never" has any Asians in lead or speaking roles. Apparently ''[[Dollhouse]]'' doesn't count.

** ''[[Firefly]]'' being canceled after a single season led people to believe that everything Joss touched was doomed to fail, and there were petitions to save ''[[Dollhouse]]'' before it even aired. Before ''[[Firefly]]'', Joss had Buffy which ran 7 seasons, and was brought back after two series finales in season 3 and 5, and Angel, which ran five seasons. Despite its poor reviews and numbers, ''[[Dollhouse]]'' was allowed to return for a second season and a proper series finale. Yet people still act like Joss's series never make it past the first season.

* This is more or less the rule for all nicknames: commit one innocuously embarrassing act at the age of 8, and be nicknamed after it forever.

** Scott Adams, in ''[[Dilbert|The Joy of Work]]'', recommends not saying anything at all around witty people that they can use to make fun of you. He gives an example in which a speaker says they watched a movie last night, is called a "couch potato", and despite their best efforts is nicknamed "Spud".

* [[Image Boards|Anonymous]] '''''really''''' likes to do this to anyone who even so much as makes one stupid decision on the internet, especially if said person responds to any one of them. Yet another good reason [[Just Ignore It|not to feed the trolls]].

* [[wikipedia:Freedom fries|The one incident]] where the cafeterias of the US Congress and certain eating establishments in the US renamed French fries to "Freedom fries" and French toast to "Freedom toast". Because France didn't want to help them in the Iraq War. The world is NOT going to let America forget this.

** This was not the first time this happened to the USA - many people still remember the infamous "Liberty cabbage" during WWII.

** Thanks to several fairly well publicized cases, Christian Science is becoming associated with parents who let their children die of conditions that are treatable, such as diabetes.

* When most people think of Mormonism, they immediately think of polygamy, despite the LDS Church banning the practice in 1890. And magic underwear.

* Fukushima is this to Chernobyl. Just when it looked like the world was finally going to get over its irrational fear of Nuclear power after Chernobyl, Fukushima gets hit with a double whammy earthquake, then tidal wave. Now you have people calling it the second Chernobyl, despite the fact only a fraction of the amount of radiation leaked. Fukushima is now rated on the same severity as Chernobyl; even though the area around it will be considered hazardous for decades to come due to the reactor materials buried around the site and sitting at the bottom of the nearby lake.

* The Three Mile Island incident is still regarded as a terrible accident within America, going to far as to have it rated just 2 steps down from Chernobyl, even though no radiation leaked.

* The M16 series has been the United States military's mainstay for half a century now. Thanks to both attempted sabotage and less-than-intelligent design decisions during the Vietnam War where it was first fielded, it has a reputation that would suggest it can't even fire a full magazine without some form of problem rendering it unusable. This is especially so because the primary competitor is the AK series, which has a legendary reputation for reliability to the point there are tales of leaving one in a swamp for a month and it'll still fire. Modern variations are far more reliable and even outperform the AK series in several durability areas (The AK has more open areas for stuff to get in)

** And speaking of the AK-47, the AK series is probably never going to live down the fact that it is the most widely used assault rifle amongst terrorists, criminals and insurgents. Never mind that it is the basis of almost every assault rifle, SMG and marksman's firearm East of Germany and a few to the West, or that the AK-47 and its derivatives are used by just as many military and police agencies.

** Additionally, open any article with the slightest reference to Mexico. [[Drinking Game|Take a tequila shot]] for every [[Internet Tough Guy|racist]] telling the evil immigrants to get out of "his" country. [[Step Three: Profit|Die from alcohol and vitriol poisoning.]]

* Animals will be stereotyped accordingly to one trait, or one mishap by a member of the species. This is especially noticeable in Dog breeds; just ask anyone with a Pit Bull type breed.

* [[All Psychology Is Freudian|All psychologists sit in couches, talking about your mom.]]

* Assuming you trust that stories on [[The Daily WTF]] aren't made up, the conclusion of [http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Special-Delivery.aspx this story]: Brad (probably not his real name) used to be known as '''the''' senior trader at Æxecor (probably also not its real name). Brad is now known as "the guy who bought an enormous pile of coal by accident".

* After a spate of crashes in [[The Seventies]], the DC-10 got a reputation as an unsafe airliner, even years after some of its design flaws were fixed. Try mentioning the plane in an aviation forum some time.

* Due to its heavy reliance on regular expressions and its extreme flexibility, Perl got a reputation as a programming language designed to create unreadable programs.

* The "GOTO" command in Basic, Perl, and PHP: An article was written entitled "Goto considered harmful" -- ''one'' article, mind you -- and to this day people act as if inserting a single Goto into a program will render it indecipherable.

* Police officers. It doesn't seem to matter that the majority obey their codes of conduct and have cordial to uneventful interactions with their communities. No thanks to a number of high-profile black sheep charged with crimes ranging from taking bribes to beating suspected criminals to pulp, some people have developed contempt towards them especially in marginalised communities. A number of [[Cop Show]]s and similar media portraying them and other emergency services groups have attracted scrutiny especially in the 2010s and 2020s for glorifying what critics call "copaganda" aiming to present a squeaky-clean image of police officers. One such example was the Canadian children's animated series ''[[PAW Patrol]]'', which gained controversy in 2020 due to its portrayal of police pup Chase in an overly positive light which critics juxtapose with news articles about police corruption and brutality.

* No thanks to the series of battery safety incidents in 2016, Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 became better remembered as the phone which doubles as an improvised explosive device than for its intended features.

* Anyone with the slightest bit of corporate experience knows that getting fired just once, unless you have some clear extenuating circumstance, will leave a permanent black mark on your record that will have any future employers extremely wary about hiring you, even if you buck up and completely turn your life around after the firing. Granted, most companies don't fire at the first sign of incompetence, but only after multiple rounds of disciplinary action, so it's not exactly something that comes out of nowhere. That said, even one round of disciplinary action can also be a stain that mars your chances of promotion.

* First impressions do this, for better or worse. Just the first few seconds of interaction can forever taint how you are viewed by others despite whatever evidence to the contrary emerges later.