WWE Chairman, Vince McMahon's limo explosion was, for story line purposes, real. Unfortunately the storyline event was then tragically followed by a real life event, the sudden death of Chris Benoit and his family. This event, happening only one week after the "demise" of the Chairman threw a crinkle of massive proportions into the story lines of the WWE. In fact this "crinkle" became so much of an issue that local media outlets, unaware or unwilling to accept the explosion as part of a storyline, started to report on the explosion. This soon added additional crinkles which then forced the WWE to change their story lines yet again to have Mr.McMahon miraculously survive. As fans of WWE found out about after the fact, the WWE did use pre-filmed footage in order to give off the appearance of an unsurvivable explosion. This was to eventually lead to the arrest of Linda McMahon on the Monday night raw that never happened, due to the Benoit family tragedy. Since the storyline was never able to be completed and was changed without any satisfactory explanation, it is easy to see why casual followers of wrestling as well as the critics of wrestling would feel that the exploding limo was just a stunt. It does seem to reek of publicity seeking in a manner that the WWE is infamous for. In this case the explosion was key to a storyline that real life decided to sadly intervene in.