30 Funny, Weird, And Unexpected Plot Twists People Saw In Real Life

When I was in college, I was walking one morning with my then-boyfriend and saw a pitch black burnt pizza in a tree. We took a picture, laughed about it and went on our way.

A year later, I'm hanging out with some friends of friends. I'm on their balcony and realize it looks over the tree where the pizza was. I tell them the story and they confirm that yeah, it was their old roommate who got drunk, burned a frozen pizza and flung it out the window. I never thought I would end up learning the story behind that burnt pizza.

When I started high school, a guy in my class had the same, quite unusual, name as my childhood dog. To give you an idea of how rare the name is, only about 3 people in 100 000 have this name (my dad chose it as a tribute to his favorite football club). So, let's say the name was Burnley. I of course told my parents about the coincidence, and they thought I should tell my new classmate. I argued it would be weird to blurt out: "I once had a dog with your name", so I decided not to.

A year passed and Burnley was now in my circle of friends. We had all gone to a party together and I was in earshot of my friends talking about how long it'd been since they'd seen me and how they missed me. Weird. I've never known anyone with my name (let's call me Adia) and, as far as I knew, they didn't know anyone else with my name either as only about 40 people in 100 000 share it. They then said that they really wanted to pet me. The weirdness of it all got to me and I jokingly asked them what they wanted to do to me, to which they replied: "Oh, not you - Burnley has a cat called Adia".

And that's the story of how I found out about the other Adia and Burnley of the other Burnley.

My roommate and I discovered after living together for several years our great-grandparents were next-door-neighbours for decades in the early twentieth century and remembered each other. We met at university with zero prior connections.

Was studying in my uni library one day minding my own business when the guy in the seat next to me popped his head round the partition and silently offered me Cheetos. I'd never met this person before in my life and wasn't a huge fan of Cheetos so I politely turned him down.

Fast forward several months I'm on a bus coming back from a whole different State. The bus is relatively empty and there was no assigned seating. An hour in the guy sitting in front of me gets onto his knees on the chair and turns around. It's the same dude from the library that one time. And what does he do? Stick his hand out and offer me Cheetos.

20 years ago I was a regular on an online law forum. Admin was a lawyer from a town 500 km away. He occasionally shared anecdotes about his goofy secretary.

At the same time I met a woman I became close friends with. She told me anecdotes about her goofy best friend who was a secretary for a law firm.

Turns out the goofy best friend and the goofy secretary
are the same person. (And it was interesting to hear the other side, apparently the lawyer was an alcoholic.)

On a vacation several hundred miles from home. I’m wearing an athletic shirt with my unusual last name on it. A tourist behind me says hello, do you happen to know XYZ Mylastname? I said yes, that’s my uncle! Turns out he was the same age as my dad, grew up in my hometown and moved to my dad’s hometown after college. He and my dad had a ton of overlapping friends, to the point where he had stayed overnight in my current room 20 years before during a sleepover.

Divorced my husband 36 years ago. Best thing I ever did. The day I put his stuff in the front yard and changed the locks someone set him up on a blind date. He ended up moving in with her immediately and they've been together ever since. Years later one of our daughters got into ancestry.com and started mapping all of our families. Come to find out the woman he married is actually a cousin of mine. Turns out all three of us were originally from a little town in Florida. She and I share a great grandfather. I am descended from his illegitimate family and she is descended from the legitimate family. Then we find out my ex-husband is related to both of us. We're all distant cousins.

My dad's family hated my mom's family. The land my father and his parents are buried on once belonged to my mother's family. I absolutely love it.

Deployed during deep water horizon. Away from my partner. I start getting a burning sensation when I pee. They drop me off the ship and I start driving back to the hospital. Get cell signal and call my partner to ask if there’s something I should know. She responds with “S**t, f**k, goddamnit” and then hangs up the phone.

Turns out it was a UTI from the oil.

Never would have suspected infidelity otherwise.

Finding out that I happened to have bedded another set of cousins after saying I would never do it again - even though both times I had no idea these people were related.