Matt Groening named his character for the TDotL character. All of the Simpsons except Bart have the names of Groening’s real-life family members. He used the last name “Simpson” in order to have the father be Homer Simpson.
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Has anyone seen the film The Day of the Locust with Donald Sutherland as Homer? I remember it as being pretty amazing.
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I can finally keep Starbuck from “Moby Dick” separate from Starbuck from “Battlestar Gallactica” from Starbucks coffee. 
And Robert Muldoon also turns up in Jurassic Park as the game warden (played on-screen by Bob Peck).
That’s f*n crazy!
I can’t believe I almost forgot this one:
When the film Jurassic Park came out (I never read the book), I found the name of the main character, Alan Grant, distracting, because back in the 1950s, Josephine Tey wrote a series of mystery novels, including her fairly well-know (still in print after all this time) The Daughter of Time, featuring a Scotland Yard detective named Alan Grant.
To me, Michael Crichton pilfered from Josephine Tey, but I’ve heard from a couple of people who picked up either The Daughter of Time, or one of her other books (a couple were dramatized on PBS’ Mystery), and found the name “Alan Grant” distracting, because they kept expecting Velociraptors to appear.
I don’t think there was any plagiarism. It’s a pretty common name.
Near the beginning of Catch Me If You Can, Christopher Walken receives some kind of award from his local club. He thanks “Mayor Robert Wagner” then goes on to tell a little story about two mice who fell into a bucket of cream - in which one of the mice drowns.
This scene was a little jarring for anyone who knows about the death of Natalie Wood.
Robert Wagner actually was mayor of New York in the 1950s and 1960s.
The story I read somewhere was that one of the two Starbucks founders was obsessed with Moby Dick, and was pushing for Pequat (the name of the ship…and my favorite insult) or Ishmael’s Coffee. Luckily, someone remembered the name of the first mate…
…
A minister in our town was named Steve Erkel. He and his cousin Steve Erkel had a friend, Michael Warren, who needed a name for a TV character… Warren regrets this. He had no idea the character would persist after an episode or two… (from Wiki):
Due to the show and the character’s tremendous popularity during the early 1990s, [Steve] Erkel encountered difficulties using his own name; he received many prank phone calls from “Laura” asking for “Steve”, and businesses found his name to be suspicious.
Nitpick: Pequod
Well, Richard III was known as the White Raptor in Shakespeare’s plays so it all fits.
Maybe they made an exception to the rule, and named it after DeWitt Clinton.
I’ve never made that connection.
On the other hand, I’ve noticed that a lot of Turkish names (and names from ancient Asia Minor) bear a striking resemblance to a lot of the alien names in Star Trek.
It was named for DeWitt Clinton until renamed for Pierce.
Greg Egan’s novel Distress from 1994 or so, features a character named Ned Landers, which I found distracting upon rereading.
But the Mt Clinton road remains to remind folks.
Don’t forget Starbuck in the movie The Rainmaker (1956, Burt Lancaster)
I’m wondering if it’s a factor in why I was comfortable approaching the blind woman I met in 1977 and married six years later.
Just the kind of thing a Pequod would say…
And served to completely confuse my daughter when we had to road walk back to my truck after coming down Eisenhower (dad, there isn’t a Mt Clinton on my map, and the road kinda leads to Washington…).