Worst outcome from a missed cue

[spyke]

So, this wasn't exactly a missed cue, but close enough. 

I was on tour with Fosse and there is a moment when a dancer comes running off stage dragging a full stage orange china silk drop.  A local stage hand and I would page the curtains for him and make sure his pathway was clear.  Right as this dancer was about to exit I would always annouce "Here he comes!"  I also had warned the stagehand that this is exactly what I would say.  Well this guy was clearly not paying any attention to me, because I announced "Here he comes!" and I stepped clear to page the the curtain while the stagehand leaned in and said "What'd you..." as he was run over by a speeding dancer and drop.  Needless to say our 150lb dancer totally took out the 300lb+ stagehand and gave him a concussion.

Thankfully no permanent damage was done.

[TheBeltOfDoom]

As light op, we had a lovely cue the SM screwed up -- fortunately it was during tech, so no harm was done, but we did get a good laugh out of it...  When the SM says "lights, go," they expect lights to change, right?  Well, not if they meant, and thought they said, "sound, go."  So instead of a lovely bird tweet, she got a red cyc.

Also, I recently called Thoroughly Modern Millie and we had a little fun with the telephone.  We were using a Tele-Q, but we needed hookups for three different phones and we only had two connections.  Fortunately there was time in between acts to switch over one of the connections -- no biggie, right?  Enter the orchestra.
Normally a hungry, restless, messy, but overall well-behaved group of musicians, one night they (inadvertently) struck.  One of them somehow knocked the phone cord out of the jack -- just as show started, so it was literally a few minutes after the sound op checked it.
Well, Millie and Mrs. Meers wait for that phone to ring...  And I double-check that the cue went...  And the sound op repeatedly presses the Tele-Q...  And nothing happens.  Mrs. Meers said something along the lines of the phone being broken, but she thinks it's ringing.
It could have been worse, but mark my words, it never happened again.

[tylerljacobs]

Although this wasn't me, it was a member of the local union.

There was a big show at the theater and there was a cue for a fog machine to be blown and it was a pretty important cue. On the clearcom the sm said "smoke, go". This union member, not being the brightest and having to wait on the stage for a while for his ONE cue without a tobacco break left the stage and went outside to smoke, thinking the sm was giving him a smoke break. You have to know that with the union, it is a fog machine, not a smoke machine.

[DPK]

I have one from a designer point of view.

I was designing a cheesy show in Chicago that involved "magic" effects that consisted of a loud noise and a flash of light. I was using some PAR 38's as audience blinders for these brief flashes, and since these units were only used a few times in the show, they were part of an A/B repatch with something else. Well, there was one particularly tricky repatch section where these lights were switched on for one cue, then immediately switched back. During one preview, the stage tech assigned to repatches missed her cue, so a few cues after the magic effect, the blinders came back on....at full.....and stayed on for about 3 minutes. Yeah, the audience LOVED that. 

[LDLady]

Not really a missed cue, but this did really suck. I was board op on a tour. In the middle of the show, in fact it was during the big musical number at the end of the first act, I go to take a cue, and all hell breaks loose. The button stuck down, so the board was flying through all the lighting cues. Totally sucked. Luckily, we had a spare board we switched out at intermission. I hate those kind of problems though, where everyone in the audiance knows something went wrong.

[stagemonkey]

In my early days of stage managing, I was the SM for a community opera company.  The opera was Carmen.  In the last act, the crowd was blocked downstage and then, on the correct musical cue, moved upstage to clear an incoming drop.  I got lost in the score (the end of this piece goes on and sounds the same measure after measure) so I called the drop "in" right on top of the chorus...ooops.  Luckily it was a dress rehearsal.  I learned right then and there to keep my pencil following each measure so that when I do have to look away from the score, my pencil in hand, is still following along!

[gypsyking]

Worst outcome from a missed cue?  Several years ago, my cell phone buzzes while I'm at a movie... I answer and then respond... "What do you mean there was a show tonight??...ahhhh...SH*T!!!!"

(actually..this never happened...but would not be cool if it had....)