Someone Asked the Internet to Share Their Craziest IRL Plot Twists and the Results Did Not Disappoint

By

Jul. 20 2018, Updated 5:17 p.m. ET

twistheader

When I moved across the country a couple of months ago, I was trying to find a short-term place to stay while I looked around for an apartment to make my home. I've gone through my share of shady sublets, and was so worried I wouldn't land a spot that I started looking for one to book months in advance. On my first day of browsing, I came across a gorgeous and affordable one-bedroom in a really convenient location, but was super skeptical of the post because of how traumatized I am from my previous experiences. 

I've dealt with creeps who ask for a cash deposit then claim they're in the hospital on the exact same day they're supposed to meet me for the keys. I've had people cancel my reservation once I've already landed in their city... Needless to say, I'm a seasoned subletter. When I found this lovely one-bedroom on Craigslist, I was sure the listing was too good to be true. So I took a proactively defensive stance when I reached out via email. I asked for boring specifications on the apartment and went over payment details with exhaustive thoroughness. I even asked if a friend could stop by to make sure there were no secret squatter tenants, or anything sketchy like that. Then, I got an email back. 

TWIST: I recognized the address from the gushing fan mail I had sent it years ago. The apartment belonged to my favorite living writer and here I was, casually emailing with her directly. Flash forward a few months and we're friendly and occasionally email each other or meet for coffee to catch up. And that's how my nightmare sublet search turned into a friendship with one of the best and most famous writers of our time.

I live for real-life plot twists like this. They keep us on our toes while we cruise through this journey of life. Which is why when u/whytho37 asked Reddit to share their most insane plot twists, the results were incredible. 

Scroll down for twists so good, you wouldn't believe they actually happened if you saw them in a film.

Article continues below advertisement

1. The Altruistic Cheater

TwistHaiti
My sister's boyfriend decided that he wanted to do more with his architecture skills so he gave his two weeks notice and moved to Haiti to help rebuild after the earthquake. They stayed together. He had bad phone service so they mostly kept in touch through emails. He would send her long emails with photos and stories of what they were doing. This went on for a couple of months.
One off-handed tip from a co-worker and a week of sleuthing later, and it turns out he never went to Haiti. He moved to Seattle to be with his fiancée and partner of nine years.

- HouPoop

2. The Delusional Grandpa

Twistgrandpa
During the last year of my grandfather's life he had dementia and was having trouble keeping track of reality. Before he was placed into hospice he kept complaining about a man that was in his house, he would say that he would come around at night and that he was taking his things and using his stuff. Grandma of course kept reassuring him that she was the only one there. His doctor increased his medications because he was losing touch with reality so badly.
Fast forward to my grandfather's funeral and a man showed up that wasn't known by more than a few people in the family. Turns out he was an old friend of my grandmother's who showed up to give his support. In a small town like that it wasn't exactly an unusual thing to have random people show up to the funeral home who knew the person at some point.
Well about a year later my grandmother lets slip that she is seeing someone, the guy from funeral. At this point nothing too odd, they got to talking at church and we thought it was sweet.
Then a bit later sweet innocent ol' grandma mentions that it's their 3rd anniversary.
Grandpa died two years prior. This man was the person that grandpa saw in his house every night. He was the reason that everyone thought grandpa was going crazy, he was the reason that my grandfather was medicated to the point of being a vegetable for the last horrible year of his life.
TL;DR Grandpa thought he saw someone in his house before he died, turns out it was grandma's boyfriend.

- turnsouthewasreal

Article continues below advertisement

3. The Simultaneous Victim-Perp

twistvictimperp
1991, I'm 19, just signed the lease for my first (solo) apartment, just got the first paycheck from my new job, I deposit the paycheck at an ATM (another first! I'd always gone into the bank to do it). Two weeks later, I get my bank statement in the mail, and see with horror I have only $1.87 in my account. Way wrong, I should have at least $200, I'd been very careful with my spending. I'm freaked, I came within $2 of bouncing my first rent check.
I'm literally reaching for the phone to call the bank when the phone rings. It's the police, asking if my ATM card was stolen. I check my wallet and the card is missing (my job at a theater pub came with cash tips so I didn't use the card often), and tell them I was going to call them anyway because I was missing $200 from my account. "Well, we've got your card, and your $200, so come down to the police station," they tell me.
I can't figure out how they have my card AND the cash. Doesn't make sense. I drive down there.
Detective says someone (let's call him Bob) pulled in to use an ATM and saw a man acting suspiciously while he was using it, moving back and forth as if trying to dodge the camera. Bob says the man then left the ATM, got into a car, and drove away at high speeds as if fleeing. Bob then went to the ATM and put his card in, which popped out. Bob then withdrew $200, and then another ATM card popped out. My card. Bob's card had popped out because the crook had left my card in the ATM before speeding away. Bob realized he had withdrawn the money from my account and not his, so he brought my card and the cash to the police and reported the attempted theft.
The detective gives me the description of the crook. According to Bob, it was a man 5'7", brown hair, round gold-rimmed glasses. I say out loud "So, about my height, my color hair, and glasses like mine," before realizing Bob was describing me.
I'd never deposited a check in an ATM before, so I was moving back and forth, following the instructions on the screen, filling out the envelope with my account number, punching the amount in, etc. I then forgot to take my card out and just left because I'm a fucking idiot. I drove away at high speeds because I was 19 and that's how I drove everywhere.
Worried the detective might be annoyed, I didn't tell him I was the crook, I just thanked him and left with the money I stole from myself. Somewhere in a box in my closet I still have the police report where I'm both the victim and the perp.

- chrislivingston

Article continues below advertisement

4. These Mile-High Flirts

airplaneflirt
 Was on a flight from Paris to Boston. I had the aisle seat across from a little hall of bathrooms in the middle of the plane. At one point a man from a few rows up goes into a bathroom and after a couple of minutes comes out and is just standing in the aisle so it gets my attention. He keeps going in and coming back out looking up towards where he is sitting. I see a woman who is sitting next to his empty seat shake her head at him but he doesn’t give up. Finally after like 5 times of coming in and out he finally gets the woman to come back there. The lights are out and most of the plane is sleeping and once she comes back to him they start making out in the bathroom hallway before he goes into one and pulls her in with him.
They are in there for quite awhile and then he comes out and goes back to his seat and a few minutes later she comes out and does the same. They are really flirty in their seats and about an hour later repeat it. The man goes in and then she joins him. They end up doing this three times throughout the flight. My husband who is sitting next to me has caught on to what they are doing as well and we made a joke about how they must be newlyweds on their honeymoon.
We get off the plane and the woman is standing at the gate waiting and the man is nowhere in sight. As the people from the back of the plane get off a completely different man goes up to her and gives her a kiss on the lips and asks her if she was able to get any sleep on the flight and calls her dear. Then they walk off towards the luggage area with their arms around each other. So apparently what we thought was an adventurous newlywed couple was actually a woman hooking up with her seat mate while her husband was sitting in the back of the plane.

- lostmyshade

Article continues below advertisement

5. The Aesthetician With Commendable Self-Control

twistwax
My esthetician was giving a Brazilian wax to a new client. New client goes on and on about this new guy she is dating, and how he's a bartender at XYZ. Estheticians boyfriend was the bartender.
Always fun to find out you are knee deep waxing the p--sy of the woman you are being cheated on with.

- 248Spacebucks

Article continues below advertisement

6. The Guy Who Just Wanted a Passport

twistpassport
I used to work with a guy in his early 20s that at the time of the story was getting ready to go with his family for his first out of the country. He was pretty damn excited and we were getting the play-by-play of all the things —  where they were staying, what they were going to do, he was preparing...
Specifically he would need to get a passport, but his birth certificate had been lost. When the replacement one arrived, 'mom's' name isn't the woman he's called mom his whole life, it's his 'sister.' Turns out his 'sister' had him super young, and his grandparents basically took him on and raised them as their son and no one ever told him the truth. So Sister was actually Mom and Mom and Dad was actually Grandpa and Grandma. Real dad is unknown.
He took a few days off work to sort himself out, still went on the trip, still apparently had a blast.

- sm4k

Article continues below advertisement

7. The Girl Whose High School Memories Came Back to Haunt Her

twistsinglewhitefemale
Source: Columbia Pictures
 When I was a senior in high school, there was freshman girl that “Single White Femaled” me. She would follow me around and tell me how cool and funny I was. She asked what hair product I used, what body spray, where I bought my clothes, etc.
I was not funny or cool, and honestly it was flattering at first. She styled her hair like mine but it was high school in the 90’s and we all pretty much did our hair the same. Then she started dressing like me. Then she got involved in all the activities I was in. Then she started telling people we were cousins. She found my home number in he phone book (again, the 90’s) and would call me all the freaking time. It was weird. I just went out of my way to avoid her.
After my graduation ceremony, she found me on the field and hugged me. She was sobbing — big ugly snotty sobs — telling me how she was going to miss me and school wouldn’t be the same without me there. I peaced out and then completely forgot about her.
Flash forward nine years and I’m just beginning to date the man that is now my husband. We’re going through old pictures and I see this girl from high school. And I’m like, “Hey! I know this girl! She was this weird chick that stalked me in high school! Why do you have a picture of her?”
It was his ex-wife.

- WaymoresBlues

Article continues below advertisement

8. This Mixed Canberra Connection and Subsequent Meta-Twist

twistcanberra
I graduated law, and got engaged to the girl I had been with through university. We both applied for the same graduate program and ended up working in the same office in Canberra.
Three months before our wedding I found out she was cheating on me with our mutual boss, and I broke it off with her. Long story short, it got really, really ugly and the two of us ended up in a very bitter court case over property.
Canberra is a pretty small city and the legal world is pretty bloody small there, too, and everywhere I went I bumped into my ex. It was beginning to seriously get me down (her too, as it transpired), and I applied for an Australian government overseas development job in Tuvalu, a Pacific island with about 11,000 population. It's quite a prestigious job to get, with only two positions offered for a two year contract on a rotating basis.
I was successful in the application and moved on-island to start my posting. To discover that my ex was the other successful applicant.
I spent the next two years sharing a tiny office on a tiny island with the person that I quite honestly loathe more than any other in the world.

- larriedbutmooking

And if that wasn't crazy enough, twobynight wrote this in the comments:

You left in 2006. I was one of the guys who replaced you on this program.
You story was told to me at the bar at the Funafuti about 100 times in the first month I was there.
I cannot believe that I am now seeing this on Reddit.
Holy f**king sh*t.

Which larriedbutmooking responded to with

Yep, that was me. I hid out in the Funfuti Lagoon Hotel about 5 nights a week :D
Small world!

Before withoutthes cracked the joke that was on everyone's mind:

One of the smallest plot twists is seeing Canberra mentioned anywhere other than r/Canberra.
Article continues below advertisement

9. The Elderly Woman Who Got Her Cosmic Revenge

twistoldlady
 An 85-year-old woman, the widow of a hero soldier in WWII, neglected by her friends and her children, having to sell her house that she could not afford and move to a much smaller one, but always helping people and looking after others, unfailingly polite and kind...
...Suddenly announced to the sensation of the the entire village in Scotland where she lived, that the new tenant of the castle on the fringes of which was her small cottage, had asked her to marry him. He too was an elderly man but he was — and indeed is — a brilliant geneticist (the man who cloned 'Dolly the Sheep'), he's a knight, a professor at Edinburgh University and a multi-millionaire many times over because of all his patents.
They were married last year. And all her rich, grand friends who neglected her and only invited her round to their nice manor houses because she would pour tea and act like a maid, must now defer to... Lady Wilmut.

- pistolsfortwo

Article continues below advertisement

10. The Love-Struck Starbucks Barista

I was a Starbucks barista before the whole "names on cups" thing was big —  or at least, it wasn't really practiced in my tiny store.
There was this very cute guy who came in maybe 4-6x a week. A little often, but nothing out of the ordinary. I flirted like mad. He flirted back. It was all great. Then he comes in with his fiancée. I was betrayed and treated him coldly from then on.
A month later, two of him come in together and I find out that he--uh, they--are twins and I'd shot down any chance I had with the single one.

- mindovermacabre

Article continues below advertisement

11. The Busy Grandfather

twistgrandfather
My grandfather’s funeral. He was always a fairly reserved and distant father as far as I understood. Would fit the stereotype of a northern dockworker who comes home expecting dinner to be in the table and then goes to the pub all evening via the bookies.
Anyway, an unsurprising heart attack later, we’re all gathered for his funeral. We’re a big, but close family so we know everyone, including his friends. However, one guy turns up, about the same age as my dad and his siblings who nobody knows.
Long story short, turns out it was my grandfather’s son. From another family. From another marriage. That went on for as long as his marriage to my grandmother. My grandfather had maintained two marriages over 40 years, having 7 children with my grandmother and just the one with this other woman. They knew about our family and kept away and apparently my grandmother knew about them but kept quiet.
Turns out he wasn’t going to the pub every night.

- achybreakyballs

Article continues below advertisement

12. The Motorbike Rebel

twistmotorbike
A friend of mine, apparently he was sneaking out for a trip outside the city with his friends since his parents didn’t let him go. They were on motorbikes, already on their way outside of the city suddenly he got into an accident with another bike. It was his dad he crashed into.

- fuj-ii

Article continues below advertisement

13. The Couple That's Too Good to Be True

twistcousins
When I was in college, I worked with a really young guy in two-person office for 40+ hours a week for just under two years. I was pretty close to 30 at the time and I think he had just barely turned 20, so he sort of saw me as a mentor. Needless to say, we talked about a ton of things and became pretty good friends.
Anyway, a few months into knowing the guy, he got a new girlfriend. I heard about every date, their first kiss, their first fight, their first trip, their first time in bed. Pretty soon, the kid found himself in love. I had been married and divorced, so I shared many of the things I learned during my marriage (and life in general) so that this kid could make better decisions that I had made.
My girlfriend and I double-dated with him and his girlfriend a quite few times and despite being mistaken for parents more than once, both of us thought they made a wonderful couple. Since something had come up last-minute and prevented him from taking her home during Thanksgiving, he was super excited to take her home to meet his folks over Christmas break. Much of his extended family was going to be there.
Within a few days, it all unraveled. He told her about family members that were going to be attending and she started recognizing people. They drew out family trees on paper and learned that they are first cousins — by blood, not by marriage. As neither were from Alabama, they ended their relationship. He had been saving up for an engagement ring.

- Nevermind04

Article continues below advertisement

14. The Diabolical Pregnancy

The one guy I worked with was having a baby. He told me about his gf, "yeah she's pretty big but she's amazing, she's the one for me." I didn't know him very well but as he talked about the pregnancy and so forth and I gave him encouraging words and how his life was going to change so much we bonded a bit. His baby was going to be born right before Christmas, he missed our work xmas party because his baby was being born! We expect him to be gone for paternity leave, but he shows up a few days later. I feared the worst, that the baby had died.
It turned out his girlfriend was lying about being pregnant to spend more time with him. I didn't think much of it at the time, but the fact that he brought up she was fat for no reason must have meant she was so fat you couldn't tell whether she was pregnant or not. She showed him someone else's ultrasounds, they talked about what they would name their baby, how they'd handle taking care of it, all that shit.
I don't know what she thought was gonna happen when nine months passed and no baby. I guess it's good she came clean though, a more diabolical person would have faked a miscarriage or something. But that was seriously messed up. Shortly after the dude left so I don't really know how he handled it.

- Oberon_Swanson

Article continues below advertisement

15. The Tale of Two Doppelgängers

twistdoppelgangers
Met a guy online, he was cool, found out he lived less than two hours from where I live.
We meet up. First time seeing each other's actual faces.
f**king doppelgangers.
Turns out his father is my bio father's older brother. Both our bio dads bailed before we were born. We both were sexually abused as kids by teachers (him at 15, me at 13). Both us have soy allergies and Lysinuric Protein Intolerance (it's genetic).
and both us joined the army and failed out during BCT due to undiagnosed mental health issues.
Our lives had run parallel to each other. He's only a year older than me.

- WeirdWolfGuy

Article continues below advertisement

16. The Womanizer's Karma

twistwomanizer
My friend in college was such a jock. Worked out constantly, total womanizer, had posters of women in swimsuits. Also pretty conservative politically. Few years later he's in a relationship with a black guy and also converted to Judaism. They adopted a baby girl from Korea.

- KingGorilla

Article continues below advertisement

17. The College Mentor Turned Birth Father

twistsupport
I was adopted from South America to the US when I was a toddler and have no memory of my birth parents. I had an older friend/mentor I met in college. I knew him as Mike. When I learned that my birth mother passed away I got a few of her belongings including some pictures. Who was in these pictures? Mike. 
He was my birth father.

- aaareed

Article continues below advertisement

18. The Thief Who Hasn't Done His Research

twistcar
I had my four wheeler stolen years ago, and the thief tried to sell it to my father, because he didn't know we were related. 😂
Edit: He didn't even bother to remove my Deadpool decals 😂

- b400k513

Article continues below advertisement

19. This Family Misunderstanding

twistdadson
 I never tried to have a girlfriend because I was certain that my father would be mad and ground me for years, if not something worse. He secretly worried why I "never had any luck" with girls. I avoided and rejected them because I was afraid of him.

- Wonderdull

Article continues below advertisement

20. The Family Run-In

twistotherfamily
Was out with a friend of mine, who ran into her dad....and his OTHER family.

- sci_lit

Article continues below advertisement

21. The Abusive Husband With a Good Excuse for his Behavior

twisttumor
I knew a woman who was going through divorce proceedings with her husband. He was always argumentative and borderline abusive towards her, certainly always shouting and demeaning.
Then, just as the divorce was entering it's final stages he very suddenly died.
His autopsy showed that he had a massive undiagnosed brain tumour, which had been physically altering his personality. His wife felt all kinds of guilty afterwards and took it out on everyone she talked to and lost a lot of friends in the process.

- Torien0

Article continues below advertisement

22. The Painful Crush

twistcrush
One of my good friends in high school started hanging out with this guy from the other public high school in our city & before long they were basically joined at the hip. She had a HUGE crush on him and was pretty sure he liked her too, but she’d never had a boyfriend before & was too shy to make the first move. One night they were hanging out and he told her he had something huge to confess... he was gay.
They remained close friends. Then a few months later at a party, the guy introduced all of us to his younger (by one year) brother. The dude and his brother looked similar, had similar personalities, and the exact same sense of humor. Fast forward 20 years, and my friend is happily married to the brother, her best friend is her brother-in-law, and he and his husband are godfathers to her kids.
Sometimes the painful crush on the gay dude pays off.

- Basketeetch

Article continues below advertisement

23. The Airport Mixup

twistfirstclass
I was getting late to catch a flight and hadn't checked in. Discovered when I reached the airport that I actually came to the wrong airport. Had to travel about 30 minutes to reach the other airport. Went to check-in about 20 minutes before my flight. They didn't have any seats so updated me to business class. Best flight of my life, so far.

- clottedbutter


More from Distractify

'Tinder Nightmares' Has People Sharing The Worst Pickup Lines They Ever Received

People Are Sharing Their Craziest Childhood Stories And How Did Any Of Us Survive?

26 Dating Red Flags That Will Make You Cringe

Advertisement

Latest Humor News and Updates

    Opt-out of personalized ads

    © Copyright 2024 Distractify. Distractify is a registered trademark. All Rights Reserved. People may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.