Trivia / Vince McMahon

• Actor-Shared Background: "Stone Cold" Steve Austin once said, "the best character is yourself turned up to eleven", and Vince is always up to eleven, by default! Vince grew up in a trailer park in North Carolina with his mother and a series of stepfathers; one was an alcoholic who regularly beat Vince with "anything he could get his hands on." Vince would later lament in a Playboy interview that he thought it was "unfortunate that he died before I could kill him. I would have enjoyed that." In the same article, he talked about being sexually abused by his mother. It goes long way towards explaining his more bizarre storylines (like the incest angle he kept pushing to do...and the one he actually did!), as Mr. McMahon was both mentally and physically abusive towards his kids when he's really being nasty. He's even wrestled them: his son Shane numerous times, and his daughter Stephanie a few days before her real-life wedding to Hunter. (That little stunt got him disinvited for their reception.) His daughter Stephanie confirmed that he wanted to use her first pregnancy to push an incest storyline, with him as the father. It was Vince's cathartic attempt to work through his childhood trauma.
• Creator Backlash: He mentioned on an episode of "The Monday Night War" that he'd exorcise two things from the Attitude Era: Owen Hart's deadly accidental fall for obvious reasons, and Mick Foley's famous "Hell in a Cell" match (from King of the Ring '98), primarily because it made him genuinely afraid for Foley's life (according to Foley, McMahon sat him down afterwards and told him "You have no idea how much I appreciate what you've done for this company, but I never wanna see anything like that again.")
• Executive Meddling:
  • Foley's book Countdown to Lockdown confirmed what a lot of people already knew, that Vince has a habit of providing loud and heated "feedback" to his announce team, mostly on matters of terminology and pushing storylines. This brought him to grief with Foley when he was on the announce team for close to a year; Foley did extensive research and consulted with the wrestlers themselves to provide make his commentary more in-depth and interesting. For the most part, his announcing tenure was a great critical success, but by the end of his contract, Foley was low on morale and decided go work for TNA. Though he very much enjoyed announcing, he couldn't deal with the stress of knowing an angry Vince McMahon would start yelling into his one good ear without warning.
• Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": Most people associate the "Mr. McMahon" character with him post-Montreal, but he played a prototype of this character in a crossover with the USWA, which also featured Jerry Lawler.
• Promoted Fanboy: He's acknowledged that, growing up, his favorite wrestler was Dr. Jerry Graham.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: A complicated, zig-zagging Death of a Thousand Cuts example:
  • Vince temporarily resigned as chairman and CEO of WWE in June 2022 amid an internal investigation that he allegedly paid $12 million in hush money to hide affairs with four former female employees, additionally revealing NDAs he and executive John Laurinaitis made with other female employees regarding sexual misconduct. When the SEC launched an investigation that he allegedly paid $14.6 million in "unrecorded expenses" in 2019 — forcing WWE to restate its financial results for 2019, 2020 and 2021 as well as seemingly confirming the merits of the above investigation — this led to him announcing his full-blown retirement in July 2022, with his daughter Stephanie taking over as chairwoman and co-CEO, while his son-in-law Triple H took over as content director.
  • This ended up being backpedaled in January 2023 when he came out of retirement and forced himself back into the company, primarily due to upcoming media rights negotiations and a potential sale of the company — because he was still a majority shareholder at the time, he claimed that no media rights deals or company sales can be completed without his approval. However, this didn't result in much in his favor — a deal was eventually finalized between WWE and Endeavor, but while Vince was granted a lifetime chairman position, he was also reduced to a minority ownership position (marking the first time in WWE/F history when a McMahon wasn't in majority ownership of the company), and was also permanently removed from creative control, a decision personally made by Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel, who was fully aware of Vince's shenanigans^note During a Q3 2023 SEC filing, the TKO Group (the new encompassing business entity following the WWE/Endeavor merger) outright listed Vince McMahon as a "significant risk", describing him as being necessary for the merger to occur but otherwise a problematic liability due to his chronic scandals, as well as his advanced age and as well as the noticeable improvement in WWE's business following Triple H taking over as head of creative, opting for the latter to keep his position. In short, while this series of events didn't completely remove him from the WWE (at least for the time being), this significantly iced him from any of the meaningful power he used to have, effectively rendering him an Authority in Name Only.
  • The real killing blow would arrive near the end of January 2024 only days before that year's Royal Rumble, when ex-employee Janel Grant filed a new lawsuit against Vince, complete with horrific accusations of rape and even sex trafficking, along with ample evidence to back the accusations up. Shortly after the lawsuit became public knowledge, the first domino to fall was Slim Jim reportedly pulling their sponsorship from WWE, with the implication that more such dominoes would fall as long as Vince was with the company. Vince would resign completely from TKO and WWE later that same evening, and although he maintained his innocence, TKO has began gradually scrubbing him from their current-day image, with president Mark Shapiro claiming that he will never return.
• Throw It In!: "No Chance in Hell" was the theme song of the 1999 Royal Rumble, with Vince winning the signature event. Since he didn't have any theme music, "No Chance in Hell" was played after the victory just to play something during his victory celebration. However, the lyrics fit the character of "Mr. McMahon" so well that the theme song stuck with him, and Vince used it as his personal entrance music after that.
• What Could Have Been: 2007 was supposed to mark WWE's biggest storyline to date, lasting all the way to the following WrestleMania: the Death of Mr. McMahon, which only got as far as Vince's "death" before Chris Benoit's murder-suicide forced them to slam the brakes on the whole thing. The original plan was that his murderer would be revealed to be Linda McMahon (the night she would have been "arrested" ended up being the same night of the Benoit tragedy), and would lead to a long battle for the company between Mr. Kennedy (who in kayfabe would be revealed as Vince's illegitimate son, an angle that was itself scrapped due to Mr. Kennedy's own wellness policy violation) and Triple H (both in kayfabe and in real life, Vince's son-in-law). Triple H would end up victorious at WrestleMania, with Vince re-emerging to reveal it was all a ruse to give the company to his "true" son^note Ouch, Shane.
• Written by Cast Member: Basically all backstage vignettes on the final episode of WCW Monday Nitro showed him doing things like making out with Trish Stratus or burying WCW in general.

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