What Ever Happened to ‘The Real World’ Star David ‘Puck’ Rainey?

MTV’s riveting 1994 season of The Real World introduced one of reality TV’s first villains in David “Puck” Rainey, who created conflict for camera time.

Rainey, then 25, was one of seven people chosen to live together for The Real World: San Francisco, which filmed from February 1994 to June 1994. At the time, Rainey was a part-time bike messenger who made a splash for his lack of personal hygiene and his frequent clashes with his housemates, including Pedro Zamora.

“I’m not into the fluffy, sterile part of life,” Rainey told PEOPLE in 1994. “I think everyone should act a little crazy.”

As one of the earliest TV villains, Rainey would dip his fingers in the group’s peanut butter jar, was accused of never changing his socks and blew his nose without a tissue.

He and then-22-year-old Zamora, one of the first openly gay and HIV-positive men on reality TV, also went head-to-head, with the latter threatening to leave the house unless the castmates evicted Rainey, which they unanimously agreed to do.

“They wanted me to change, and that’s not in my book,” Rainey told PEOPLE. “They made it clear they didn’t want to participate in my life.”

“What led us to throw him out was a lot more than his lack of hygiene. It was about respect. We all felt like we had to fight to speak when Puck was around,” Zamora told PEOPLE before his tragic death in November 1994, hours after the season finale of The Real World aired.

Reality TV Career

Even after Rainey’s eviction, he appeared in the remaining nine episodes of the show.  

The reality TV star also appeared in 1995’s The Real World Reunion, which reunited casts from the show’s first four seasons, and he continued to argue with both his previous castmates and those from other seasons.

In 1998, Rainey hosted Road Rules: All Stars (now considered in the first season of The Challenge). He competed on the sixth season, then titled Real World/Road Rules Challenge: Battle of the Sexes. On the show, he married wife Betty Garcia, with whom he shared son Bogart.

He also appeared in a 2003 episode of MTV Cribs.

Personal Life

Rainey and Garcia later welcomed two more children.

During a 2013 interview with MTV News, Rainey revealed he had welcomed four more children with other women since his time on the show.

However, seven years later, during an appearance on the Good Company with Bowling podcast, Rainey claimed he hadn’t seen his children in nearly eight years.

Legal Woes

Rainey was arrested in June 2011 and charged with domestic violence, according to the Los Angeles Times. The outlet reported that he had been previously arrested for alleged domestic violence in 2003, but no charges were filed. In 2009, he was sentenced to a year in jail after pleading no contest to charges of battery on his girlfriend. That same year, he pleaded no contest to felony possession of ammunition and was placed on three years’ probation, according to the outlet.

In March 2010, Rainey and his then-8-year-old son were involved in a car accident, and he was arrested on a DUI charge.

In 2012, TMZ reported that Rainey pleaded no contest to stalking an unidentified woman and was sentenced to two years in prison, but was expected to serve less than a year.  

During his 2020 episode of the Good Company with Bowling podcast with host Scott Bowling, he said that he had been released from prison in 2019 after serving two years, but did not specify as to why.

Life After Reality TV

As of 2008, Rainey was working as a truck driver.

In the 2013 interview with MTV News, Rainey said he was living on a farm “off the grid,” raising chickens and growing vegetables. Rainey previously shared some photos of farm life on Instagram, but stopped posting in 2019.

On the Good Company with Bowling podcast, he defended his actions during his time on The Real World, saying, “I’m not trying to be your friend, man. This is a TV show. I want to make you cry. I want to kick your dog or something.” 

At the time, Rainey said he was living in Hawaii with his mom and working on a new series where he would travel in his van.

Rainey joined Cameo in 2021 and recorded a video from inside the vehicle.