Correction: the Mexican government now officially recognizes a Dia de los Muertos parade. They were always a thing; they just used to be more ad-hoc.
Many times, it appears, Broadway, Berlin(!) etc.
IRL, not lamps, but there were Nehi ads featuring a pair of legs (up to the knee, of course0 and a bottle of soad, some were lit.
In the category of “things” - a lot of mobsters were inspired by the movie The Godfather and adopted some of its themes.
Much like the leg lamp, you can buy Marty Moose glass eggnog mugs like Clark and cousin Eddie use in (National Lampoon’s) Christmas Vacation.
I believe xtenkfarpl was talking about the actual musical Springtime for Hitler, not The Producers which it’s a part of. That is indeed one of the most successful musicals of the 21st century, and the Springtime for Hitler part in it is quite a bit longer than in the original 1970s movie. I hope that a whole evening of Springtime for Hitler would not attract a very large audience.
Star Trek communicators. Leonard Nimoy mentioned once opening his new “flip phone”, and some random passerby did a double take and started laughing because right there was “Spock”, using his “communicator”.
The experimental weapon MAHEM which fires an electromagnetically accelerated jet of molten metal is a real life version of a weapon Arthur C. Clarke called The Stilletto in his novel Earthlight.
Interestingly he never thought it was possible. He just wanted a scene where a spacecraft got blasted by an “impossible weapon”, namely a glowing beam in a vacuum (since lasers are not actually visible in one), which shocked the person watching it in the story because they knew perfectly well lasers don’t do that.
Puzo got “going to the mattresses” from The Valachi Paper. Joe never said whether the term was mob-wide, or just from his Family.
We have a set. Hubby saw them and couldn’t resist.
They didn’t put of the actual show, but when the Lecture Series Committee at MIT had a showing of the original The Producers they handed out fake Playbills for the show, complete with character biographies and some hilarious dining reviews making fun of the MIT dining halls.
That’s also a common sight at “play within a play” productions like Noises Off and The Play That Goes Wrong.
The Playblll for Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth is particularly interesting for the actor biographies it includes.
Nitpick: Jean, not Gene. IIRC, he was named after his father, whose heritage was French. In A Christmas Story, the bit about Randy getting a bunny suit from an aunt who believes he’s a girl is a call back to Jean’s actual experience of relatives confused by his name.
I’m not a huge Harry Potter fan, but I know that one can now buy magic wands. And didn’t real-world Quidditch become a thing, presumably with real-world equipment?
Magic wands were a thing long before Harry Potter! Being able to buy plastic ones might be new.
Well, yes, of course, but fancy ones (not always plastic) resembling those from the movies became immensely more popular and common after the books and movies.
Were muffin tops a thing before Seinfeld? Not the body shape - I mean the tops of muffins. I don’t know if they were ever sold in bakeries (probably were) but you can buy muffin top pans.
I don’t know if it’s still available, but the Trailer Park Boys did something similar:
But imagine the potential for meta-entertainment. You could have an actual audience walking out in disgust! And then finding it alluringing hilarious…
and the stocking was knee high.
The self-tieing shoes became real.
There used to be an Adam’s Ribs in Chicago, cira 2011. On Washington Boulevard rather than Dearborn Street.