One day during the production of the video for "Down In It," the apparently lifeless body of Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor was shot from a number of different angles. Then, to get a dramatic overhead shot, the video crew attached a camera to a helium balloon and let it rise high into the air. Unfortunately, the balloon got away, drifted off, and later landed in a farmer's field...
Some time later, Reznor found himself at the center of a high-profile FBI investigation. The agency, it seemed, had received raw footage from a farmer... of what appeared to be a bone fide snuff film.
[Downward Spiral was recorded in the Benedict Canyon home in which the Manson family murdered Sharon Tate and several of her guests in 1969. Reznor's nickname for the house? "Le Pig," a reference to the word (pig) which was found written in blood all over the home.]
Sources
altculture.com; M. Moser, Rock Stars Do the Dumbest Things
