Recently, we asked those in the BuzzFeed Community who've signed now-expired nondisclosure agreements to tell us the secrets and stories they were forced to keep under wraps. Here are the most SHOCKING things they revealed:
We've also included some answers from this Reddit thread because they were too good not to include.
In addition, please note that we cannot confirm the validity of each claim made in these submissions.
1. "I was a model for a few big-name/well-known makeup companies. I did several print ads for magazines and a few television commercials. The makeup artists do use the product advertised, but MINIMALLY. That mascara they're touting? It's over REALLY GOOD fake eyelashes, and they also used another brand of mascara along with the one they're trying to sell you. Also, the clothes in the ads you see are pinned to high heaven on the model. They fit nothing like how they look. It's not you; it's not your body. It's fake advertising. Most of us models look just like you wearing that crap without all the pins and tucks and double-sided tape."
2. "A House Hunters guest checking in. I never made the show because I didn’t close on the house, but here are my secrets: 1) I had to have a house under contract before going on the show, 2) producers would select the other houses we were 'interested' in, and 3) I was assigned another significant other who was more 'interesting' than my actual significant other."
3. "I'm a journalist, and I had to sign an NDA to meet Michael Jordan for a collab launch. I thought it was strange because as a journalist, I usually do interviews, but the tables were reversed and he asked me lots of questions. I had just had a baby and he was telling me how to sleep-train and saying that I would thank him later. The NDA has now expired, and I have Michael to thank for helping me survive those early months/years. I wish he would actually go public with his advice — imagine all the new sports-obsessed parents who would listen to him!"
—Anonymous
4. "I was a translator for the US military. I also translated Marvel comic books. Marvel had tighter security."
5. "In 1990, I signed an NDA at Chili's when they showed me how to make their new Awesome Blossom. No other restaurant in town had anything like it, and it was hugely popular at the time."
6. "I worked at a very popular college bar, and given that I also worked for a newspaper, they made me sign an NDA when I started bartending. The bar had some of the worst health violations I’d ever seen. The kitchen was infested with rats, and the fruit was often old and moldy and was sometimes covered in ants. We also 'cleaned' the floors with water and leftover lemon juice that was old and moldy. I ended up quitting the job after I got so sick that I had to go to the ER with strep throat, pneumonia, and pink eye in both of my eyes, and the only thing I was doing was working. After I called my boss telling him I was super sick, he said I was still expected to be at work that day, so I just never showed up."
—Anonymous
7. "I worked for a popular national pet store chain. We told our customers that we got our puppies from 'reputable breeders and not puppy mills.' We got them from puppy mills, and I can't express how many came in on the back of a large, pitch-dark freight truck, malnourished, scared, and sick. We also adopted the cute kittens from the local shelter and charged customers outrageous amounts of money. Don't support national chain pet stores that sell puppies."
8. "A huge part of The Bachelorette was scripted. The company I worked for at the time was a major tourism service provider and was featured prominently in one of the seasons. The 'Bachelorette' herself was clearly there to further her public profile or 'acting' career. The scenes were always 'set up' before filming. Behind the camera, nothing was happening. The cast was told where to go, what to do, and how to do it. If half those guys weren't on their phones texting their real girlfriends most of the time, I would be surprised — 100% fake."
9. "I signed an NDA when I worked as a fit model for Katy Perry’s shoe line. Basically, a fit model is used for their proportions to test out the fit of garments. I’m a solid size 7.5, so hooray for being average. I was hired on two occasions and got to hang out and give her my opinion on the fit, feeling, and comfort of different shoes. I didn’t think she’d actually be there, but both times she was present and totally running the show."
10. "A friend of mine got a job at a prominent local distillery that makes an extremely popular flavored whiskey. They literally buy whiskey from a third-party distillery and dump Torani flavoring syrup into it."
11. "I worked at a matchmaking company. It’s all bullshit. It’s just throwing darts at a wall until something sticks. There’s no science or magic to it at all."
12. "I was an extra on Murder on the Orient Express for the Istanbul scene (over a week of filming, and it's literally about 20 seconds of the film). Michelle Pfeiffer had to be fed her lines by Kenneth Branagh, which I thought was weird. Like, every line, she'd be like, 'How do you want me to say this?'"
13. "When I was a kid, I visited the dentist for a cavity. While there, the dentist slipped while drilling my tooth and drilled a hole under my tongue. My mom saw me tense up, and my dentist said, 'Oh, I nicked her there a bit, so you might see a little blood.' I got home, and after an hour, my entire neck was swollen up like a frog and my voice was squeaky because of the air pressure. A pocket of air was pressing against my heart, and dirty air, at that, because of the bacteria in my mouth. I was admitted to the hospital as a 'Code 4,' with a 'Code 5' being dying."
"When my mom tried to sue the dentist for damages, he claimed I was kicking and screaming and 'out of control” during the appointment, even getting his secretary to vouch for him and testify. (TOTAL bullshit.) My mom’s lawyer was super pessimistic and told her just to settle and sign an NDA because she had only a 'small chance' of winning. So being naive and scared to take on an office full of liars, my mom settled. She could never disclose who the dentist was, and we’ve heard other horror stories throughout the years about this dentist screwing up other people’s mouths. It sucks because every lawyer we’ve talked to after the fact said we had a very strong case, and it’s likely we would have won. Like, really won."
14. "I got to see a test screening of a movie and had to sign an NDA. The movie was a live-action version of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and it sucked. People at the screening gave it such negative feedback that I guess the studio decided to promote it way less than they originally planned to."
15. "One of my friends' brothers was on the MTV show Room Raiders. Everything on the show is staged. All of the items that they would find were planted. At the end of the show, the prize was not a date with the girl that he 'picked' — he just got her phone number."
—Anonymous
16. "I worked for a casino. The golf courses lost a ton of money for us, as did the advertising for the courses. We generally broke even on food because of all the comps. If a crime was committed by a dealer, they would watch the dealer for three months to see if there were accomplices. They used facial recognition and would match you, so if the same person sat with the same dealer over and over, they would know. This way, they could look for accomplices. Then, when they busted you, they would sit you down and make you watch a video of you breaking the law. They did this because they wanted you to plead guilty as opposed to having an expensive trial."
17. "Not me, but a guy I know was on Cash Cab. Allegedly, a lot of it was faked. He was told he would be on a travel food show and would get picked up by a fake taxi at a certain location at a certain time. There were camera crews outside the taxi, and there's no way on Earth you might mistake it for a real cab."
18. "A prominent vehicle company replaced our car because the high-pressure fuel pump failed six times within six months. However, the recorded reason for the replacement of the car was 'stained interior from dirty mechanic hands,' so it wasn’t replaced via the lemon law."
19. And lastly: "I was actually an actor in a commercial that said I wasn’t."
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.