5 Criminals With The Worst Luck In The Entire World

5 Burglars Target A WWE Wrestler's House, Chase Scenes And Chokeholds Ensue

It's just another day at the office for you, a burglar specialized in breaking-and-entering crimes in and around Phoenix, AZ. You've located a large, nice-looking property, made your way in, and boom! Jackpot! All sorts of amazing-looking stuff, just waiting to be carried away by you and your partner-in-crime, Chad. There's just one teensy, tiny little problem: Just as you're hauling your cartoonish bags of loot away from the house, the couple who own the place return. Fuck! Still, this is not necessarily an issue. You're young. You're fast. You can outrun some surprised hipster-looking motherfucker.

So you run. He runs after you. He's also screaming at the top of his lungs, and when you risk a quick peek behind, you see that not only is he much scarier looking than you originally thought, but he's actually gaining. You make it almost 400 feet before a pair of powerful arms -- arms that were seemingly built for picking something up and throwing that something down -- close around you. You gave it your best shot. This is your world now: Pain and whimpering. With your last conscious thoughts before your fight-or-flight instinct melts into a torrent of wheezing, you manage to sneak one last glance at the man who is now going to town on your neck:

In 2014, two burglars made the stupidest breaking-and-entering decision since the guys who tried to rob Dolph Lundgren's house, by targeting the house of wrestling superstar Bryan "Daniel Bryan aka The American Dragon aka YES! YES! YES! Dude" Danielson. Bryan and his wife were walking back to their house when they noticed two dudes exiting with sacks full of their valuables. Like any responsible homeowner, Bryan was rather miffed about this development. Unlike most homeowners, his immediate reaction was to flip the fuck out and give chase to the potentially armed and dangerous criminals. He caught one of them after a spirited run (the other was able to escape, presumably thanks to the weight he lost from evacuating his entire bowels in abject horror). Then, Bryan locked the terrified thief in a rear naked choke, and held him until the cops arrived.

Held. Him. Until the cops arrived.

Let's pause for a moment to appreciate the scenario. You are being choked out by a furious Daniel Bryan. There are no ring ropes you can reach for a 5-count. There is no referee to tap out to. There is no escape. There is just you and the angry yeti playing your spinal cord like an accordion, and in some distant, glimmering point in the future, a bunch of equally angry cops whose presence will nevertheless come as a welcome respite. I'm told that the burglar spent most of the waiting time apologizing profusely, which is actually pretty badass because if faced with a 30-minute sleeper hold from an enraged Bryan, roughly 90 percent of the WWE's locker room would have just pooped in resigned silence until they fainted.

Bryan later said that he felt a little bad about the incident, and conceded that chasing possibly armed robbers and going to town on their necks was "probably not the best thing to do because you don't know what is going to happen." However, in the very same interview, he says that his reaction was spontaneous and he was genuinely furious, leading me to believe that he was talking strictly about what might happen to the next fucking guy he catches carrying away his stuff.

4 Armed Robbers Hold Up A McDonald's Where French Special Forces Are Having Dinner

Robbing a fast food restaurant is one of the best ways of knowing you're not exactly climbing up on the criminal ladder. There's just something about threatening terrified teenage cashiers and customers elbow-deep in their McNuggets in exchange for a fistful of greasy dollars that makes Spider-Man want to take a shower before and after reluctantly dealing with you.

The two armed robbers trying to hold up a McDonald's in the French town of Besancon on a sleepy summer Sunday in 2016 didn't encounter Spider-Man. Instead, they encountered something deadlier: an entire herd of Chuck Norrises.

Eleven operatives of GIGN -- the French version of the SAS and Delta Force -- had felt a hankering for a Big Mac, and were quietly enjoying their meals when the pair of robbers burst in, brandishing their guns and demanding money from the cashier. The GIGN officers sat still and did nothing.

The robbers got their loot, and started to exit the restaurant. The GIGN officers did nothing.

The robbers exited the restaurant, and one of them tripped on his way out. The GIGN officers fucking cascaded on him like a Biblical plague.

Imagine the situation from the robbers' point of view: Your panicked heist goes as planned, and you're making a hasty exit, when completely out of the blue, a quarter of the clientele suddenly jumps up in perfect unison. They then start screaming commands at you and advancing on you like a group of chiseled demons. Your friend trips. He's immediately buried under a literal half-ton of unexpected action heroes. You try to escape with the loot and pull out a gun to hold them back. Well, every single one of those fuckers is armed, too.

A few ignored warnings and a controlled shot to the stomach later, the second criminal was subdued. Presumably, both of them are still trying to figure out exactly which chaos god they managed to piss off so badly that it decided to sic a flash mob of The Expendables on them.

3 A Scooter Theft Turns Into A Hollywood Chase Scene (With An Actual Hollywood Star)

It's London, 2017. A 22-year-old guy decides to steal a scooter, which I'm surprised didn't lead to the headline "Millennials Are Killing The Baby Motorcycle Industry." This theft proves to be a mistake, because at that exact moment, the narrative laws of the universe switch to full action-movie mode. A passing stranger notices the dastardly robber, but instead of going through the usual bystander motions (move to a safe distance, dig out your phone to shoot a video for Twitter), he springs into action. Sprinting after the escaping criminal, he furiously pursues him on foot, giving absolutely zero shits about the fact that he's giving chase to a guy driving a motorized vehicle.

As the thief is making his escape on roads, the man immediately goes off-road. He vaults over walls. He takes shortcuts through back gardens and building sites. Finally, after clearing a Bourne Ultimatum-worthy obstacle course of urban landscaping, he manages to catch the scooter driving around the block, bringing the chase to an end as the terrified thief crashes his ride into a $50,000 Mercedes. Victorious in his hunt, Tom Hardy grabs the thief by the neck, and howls at the merciless blue skies: "I got the c**t!"

You know, I'm not even all that surprised. Whether he's in Mad Max, or The Dark Knight Rises, or Bronson, or just walking on the street casually eating a lollipop, Hardy has that weird aura of menace that can't be all acting. Hearing that he's actually in the habit of randomly launching into angry big-budget chases just to catch the lamest kind of vehicle thief (Scooters, guy? Really?) just causes you to nod and think: "Yeah, that makes sense."

In the interest of accurate reporting, though, it is worth mentioning that this story originally came from The Sun and the Scotland Yard initially expressed doubt over its veracity, stating that the arrest was actually made by police officers and there were no civilians giving chase. However, they've since done a mysterious U-turn and pretty much confirmed the story. And there's no way you can ever convince me this about-face wasn't because Tom Hardy dropped by and silently glowered at the entire Scotland Yard until someone gave in and issued the full story.

2 A Restaurant Customer Casually Stops A Robbery While Proposing To His Girlfriend

Robberies are intimidating. That's kind of their whole point. Regardless of our fantasies about how we'd totally wrestle the weapon away from a robber and subdue him with our mad skills (skillz) acquired from years of playing Tekken, the most impressive special move most of us could muster in the face of an armed robbery would be the old, time-tested "cry and pee a whole lot."

You know what else is intimidating? Proposals. Asking the Question With A Capital "Q" is one of the most important things you'll do in your life, and it takes a lot of both planning and nerve. So, by that logic, a robbery at the place where you're nervously preparing to propose to your girlfriend should pretty much immediately reduce you to a sweaty, whimpering puddle. That is, unless you're Nicholas Anderson, in which case you resignedly put the ring back in your pocket and spring into action.

Anderson had carefully planned his proposal to his girlfriend Deanna with their son, Brighton, who smartly picked a local Mexican restaurant for the place. That's a solid move, kid -- even if she says no, everyone gets tacos. There was only one hitch: Unbeknownst to Nicholas and Brighton, the restaurant they chose was something of a robbery hotspot that had already been held up two times that month. As they were sitting there and Nicholas was working up the nerve to ask the question, a third time materialized in the form of a man bursting in and declaring intentions of robbery. This was obviously ten kinds of bullshit, and Nicholas made his views about the interruption known. When the robber attempted to exit the restaurant, he very casually leapt up, yanked the guy back in, and choked him out in a matter of seconds.

Then, after the obligatory round of applause from the adoring public, his troupe took off to a nearby park to actually carry out the proposal, just like nothing had happened. I like to think that a mugger attempted to hold them up on their way there, only for Nicholas to let out an audible sigh and backhand him right back into the bushes without as much as breaking stride. "Here we go again," Nicholas might utter, just before the credits rolled.

1 A Supermarket Robbery Turns Into Australia: The Movie

Remember when Mel Gibson used to only act like a crazy person? Namely, Martin Riggs from the Lethal Weapon series? Loose cannon cops were nothing new even back then, but Riggs took the looseness and cannon-ness of the trope above and beyond by actually being batshit insane. There was no telling what the guy could do. "There's a guy threatening to jump? No problem, I'll just handcuff myself to him and fucking jump with him."

Of course, in reality, that amount of balls-tripping crazy is a completely inefficient method of stopping crime. That is, unless you're in Australia, where it's second nature to even civilians. So, here's a real-life Martin Riggs foiling a robbery with nothing but pure, glorious insanity:

If you can't watch that video, my advice to you is GO SOMEWHERE WHERE YOU CAN WATCH THAT VIDEO, preferably with sound on. Then, go watch the TV interview they gave about the incident, because that's some good shit.

This is the sad story of two criminals who were breaking into an Oporto service station supermarket in 2016, only to run into the most dangerous thing Australian wildlife has to offer: A half-naked Aussie man, drunk off his ass and brandishing a broken flip-flop. The man was James Ross-Munro, and he and his camera-phone-happy friend happened to be passing by when they noticed the burglary. After assessing the scene, Ross-Munro did the most logical thing he saw in the potentially dangerous situation: He sprinted to the criminals' car, stole the key from their ignition, and fucking ripped off his shirt.

This sounds like the start of a story that ends with a frat house being closed for renovations, but in this case, you'll probably actually feel a little better about the world. Ross-Munro didn't run away from the car after he decided that he needed a bare chest for the occasion. He stood right there by the car, brandishing the key, pointing at the wannabe criminals and sprouting hilarious profanities at the top of his lungs ("Fucking shit-c**ts!"). When one of the criminals tried to get in the car, presumably praying that it would magically start without the key that the maniac haunting them was now brandishing, Ross-Munro jumped in the car with him, pelting the criminal with punches and a steady stream of X-rated commentary until he was forced to flee. Thoroughly foiled, the robbers fled into the merciless, spider-infested night, one escape vehicle poorer and with precisely zero loot. Ross-Munro briefly gave chase, because of course he fucking did.

Moral of the story: If you're planning to go on a crime spree in Australia, your best bet is to hope that the poison platypuses finish you before you run into a drunk local.

Pauli Poisuo is a Cracked columnist and freelance editor. Here he is on Facebook and Twitter.

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