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Weird Ways Entertainment Spilled Over Into Reality

The real world is often not such a fun place. That's why we escape to fictional worlds, created by people who feel the same way. And that escapism makes it a little easier to bear existence in the sometimes not fun place. 

It's easy to think of entertainment as being off in its own pretend universe, just happily bumping into itself and giving the real world a wide berth. Yeah, that happens sometimes but not always.

The thing is, sometimes pop culture affects the real world. It just barges right out of its make believe zone and right into our reality. Hello, you fictional thing that is somehow now a sorta real thing and right in front of us. And we're not just talking about the action figure market. The fictional stuff we consume has a weird way of pushing into every aspect of the real world. Sometimes it gets downright pushy.

For example:

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Entry by Andrea Meno

Harry Potter revived the British boarding school industry. LIIILE EIIL!ELL 1111 LAOOGR The number of students in boarding schools fell every year from

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You're toast. That usage of the word toast was introduced to the world by Bill Murray's character in the movie Ghostbusters.

Lucky Strikes cigarettes experienced a huge sales boom because of Mad Men. When the show first aired, the company sold 23 billion packs a year. By 201

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Entry by femshep87

CRAGKEDDCON ORANGE is BLACK the new In Minority Deport, Gloria is told about a (real) hotline that immigrants can call to receive a pro bono lawyer

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Entry by PollyDarton

CRACK According to residents, Portland is a lot less weird due to PORTLANDIA Since its debut there has been a steady influx of new residents and touri

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Entry by mwjr

The Jungle changed an entire industry and helped jump-start Progressivism. THE JUNGLE UPTON SINCLAIR Upton Sinclair's description of the unsanitary pr

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Entry by Tee Ngin Rui

Studio Ghibli Fans Caused Problems Because Of A Rumor. People began trespassing in a shipyard to take Instagram photos after a rumor circulated that t

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Entry by Busteq

Lionel Messi, Zinedine Zidane, and Alessandro Del Piero ... eo They all claim to have been inspired to become soccer players by the anime Captain Tsub

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Lincoln inspired two guys to research the Thirteenth Amendment (which abolished slavery) and they discovered that Mississippi never officially ratifie

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Mars refused to grant permission for Steven Spielberg to use M&Ms in ET The Extra- Terrestrial SO Elliot instead uses a trail of Reese's Pieces to lur

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Entry by Chan Teik Onn

CRACKEDce Rambo (2008) gave the Karen rebel group in Myanmar a morale boost. The film's portrayal of the Karen rebel group struck a chord with the Bur

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Entry by obraxi

Jules Verne's PUFFIN 8 CLASSICS Twenty Thousand TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES Leagues Under UNDER THE SEA JULES VERNE the Sea inspired the first successful

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Entry by Andrea Meno

Lisa Simpson made young girls crazy for CRACKED.COM saxophones. ENRIELO ILEVATARY When The Simpsons started airing, lots of pre-teen girls started pla

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Entry by K. Haeg

PhD student Steve Ramirez successfully implanted memories in the brains of mice based on an idea inspired by Inception After earning worldwide attenti

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Entry by PookieJones

Nowadays, Game of Thrones is more than a show - it's a college-level course. Some curriculums include medieval studies inspired by GoT, while others o

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Entry by LAJL

24 made cadets think that torture is the best method of interrogation. Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, dean of the U.S. .Military Academy, met wit

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Entry by Chan Teik Onn

Rosetta (1999), a bleak French-Belgian drama film about a teen struggling to find a job sO she could escape her abusive family, prompted the Belgian g

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Entry by MrDrew

The CRANE KICK was created by Darryl Vidal for THE KARATE KID. It is widely considered by martial artists to be a move too impractical to be used in r

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Entry by Chan Teik Onn

James Cameron's Avatar captivated the audience with its immersive, fictional world back in 2009. This film also caused some fans to develop depression

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Entry by K. Haeg

Fight CIub inspired numerous real-life fight clubs, and multiple would-be bombers have cited their desire to create their own Project Mayhem. In the

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Entry by LAJL

Trevor (1994) is a short film about a gay teen facing prejudice from his parents and friends. 1994 BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT A FILM BY PEGGY RAJSKI revor

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Entry by Andrea Meno

Hacking was outlawed because of Wargames. WIIILILIULL After President Reagan watched Wargames, he asked if that could really happen. He found out much

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Entry by obraxi

The Simpsons changed how we talk. In 2005, University of Pennsylvania linguistic professor Mark Liberman wrote that the Simpsons took over both Shakes

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Entry by Gareth

Wendy wasn't a name before Peter Pan. One of J M Barrie's childhood friends affectionately called him Friendy, which came out as Wendy. When Barri

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Entry by LAJL

CRACKED cO CON The UK's high-end department store John Lewis & Partners reported that sales of the flat cap (also known as the newsboy's hat) skyrocke

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Entry by Andrea Meno

Deliverance created tens of thousands of new river boaters (and killed some). Before Deliverance, a few hundred people paddled down the Chattooga rive

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Entry by Andrea Meno

In honor of Star Trek, NASA's first Space CRAUN Shuttle was named Enterprise. NGA United States Trek fans mailed hundreds of thousands of letters aski

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Entry by Chan Teik Onn

Twilight effectively ended a small town's recession. Dazls twilight Forks, Washington, the town where the story is set, had been suffering economicall

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Entry by Gareth

Office Space made life for TGI Friday's servers a little more dignified. The Chotchkie's flair policy was taken directly from TGI Friday's, but when

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Entry by DingDongKun

Paracho, a small city in Mexico dedicated to making guitars, experienced a huge demand when Coco was released. PARACHO When sales boomed, the city dec

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Entry by DingDongKun

The Big Bang Theory inspired people to learn physics. University admissions for physics CRAT degrees went up by 10% after the show had its first seaso

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Entry by Tee Ngin Rui

Women are donning the ed-and-white costume from The Handmaid's Tale as a protest symbol. The red cloak and white bonnet from the show has become a pro

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For more, check out 12 Fictional Things That Had Real-World Consequences and 18 Sci-Fi Locations That Exist In The Real World.

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