Does the Star Trek “Infinite Diversity, Infinite Combinations” award presented to Spock count? Gene Roddenberry created it and put it into a script so he could turn around and merchandise it, and sure enough, it exists now.
Here’s an advert that once saturated the commercial TV stations in the UK.
Then someone actually wrote the book.
I think the failed toy “Flubber” came from the films The Absent-Minded Professor and Flubber.
What about the remote manipulation device from his short story “Waldo and Magic, Inc.”? In real life they became known as “waldos”.
The reference to Jean Shepherd several months ago should have reminded me of this other episode from Shepherd’s life which is sort of appropriate to the thread.
[Shepherd’s] most famous[20] stunt was a hoax he created about a nonexistent book, I, Libertine, by a fake author “Frederick R. Ewing”, in 1956. During a discussion on how easy it was to manipulate the best-seller lists based on demand, as well as sales, Shepherd suggested that his listeners visit bookstores and ask for a copy of I, Libertine, which led to booksellers attempting to order the book from their distributors.[citation needed] Fans of the show planted references to the book and author so widely that demand for the book led to claims of it being on The New York Times Best Seller list.[21] Filling the demand, Theodore Sturgeon and Betty Ballantine wrote the long-awaited book to Shepherd’s outline, with a cover designed by illustrator Frank Kelly Freas, published by Ballantine Books.[22]
So not a fictional thing that became real, but a non-existent work of fiction that became real.
Actually, Fallout New Vegas.
Nuka Cola was the Fallout 3/Fallout 4 beverage, and those are also available as real-world Jones Soda interpretations of the in-game articles.
For the first season, and the debut album that was compiled from the music in it, the band was just Brendan Small singing and playing all the instruments except the drums, which were played by Gene Hoglan. He didn’t recruit a full band until they started touring.
Thought of another example of books that started as fictional plot points and then became actual published works; Richard Castle’s mystery novels from the tv series Castle.
One of my favorite early websites, still going strong, recreates the essence of a short story by Jorge Luis Borges.
Nitpick: the story was just named “Waldo”. “Waldo & Magic, Inc.” was the name of a book containing two unrelated stories, “Waldo” and “Magic, Inc”.
Thank you for the correction.
Interesting thing about calling micromanipulators “waldoes” – science fiction authors do it (Heinlein used the term in an unrelated story, and I know Arthur C. Clarke has used it), but it apparently is not as widely-used a term as people think. A lot of people who worked in handling radioactive and hazardous material with such devices had never heard the term before.
Looking it up on Google, the Google AI contributed this:
Current Popularity and Usage Landscape
| Context | Popularity & Adoption Level | How it is Used |
|---|---|---|
| Academic & Industry | Low (Informal Only) | Avoided in official research papers and product catalogs in favor of precise terms like micromanipulator, teleoperator, or telerobotic arm. |
| Open-Source Labware | Moderate to High | Frequently used as a playful or nostalgic shorthand by makers and researchers building budget, 3D-printable laboratory equipment (e.g., “3D Printed Waldoes”). |
| Pop Culture & Sci-Fi | Very High | Deeply embedded in science fiction literature (e.g., William Gibson’s cyberpunk novels) and comic books (e.g., Spider-Man’s robotic “Iron Spider” arms). |
| Puppetry & Effects | High (Trademarked) | Widely used in the animatronics industry. The special effects company The Character Shop holds the official commercial trademark for “Waldo” regarding data-capture puppet input devices. |
What about the Taser being loosely modelled on Tom A Swift’s Electric Rifle? Does that count in this list?
How about “things/products of that sort already existed, but not with the capabilities of the fictional counterpart, which were subsequently realized?”
I’m thinking specifically of Jules Verne’s Nautilus submarine, which was not purely fictional, in the sense that submersible vessels of some sort had existed for quite a while in 1870 when 20,000 Leagues under the Sea was published. But Verne’s fictional Nautilus anticipated the submersible-vessel applications of electric propulsion, oceangoing-vessel size, hydroplanes, and other features that later technology made possible for real-world submarines.
Along similar lines, inventor Martin Cooper credited the Star Trek communicator as inspiration for his early version of the cellular handheld telephone.
When Verne wrote his book, the FRench ubmarine Plongeur could dive to a depth of 10 meters and stay down for only a very brief period. She was powered by compressed air, and had to surface at short intervals in order for her support ship, the Cachalot, to resupply. The Nautilus was a HUGE step in extrapolation, being able to dive deeper than any submarine even today could dive, and staying down for months on the strength of a single electric charge to her batteries.
Very curiously, the Nautilus did not have a periscope, even though submarines had calready been equipped with periscopes by this time. He might have seen how clumsy and inconveient they were, but imagined using huge port windows rather than thinking the periscope would be improved. He also didn’t give the Nautilus torpedoes, but preferred to have her ram opposing vessels.
Verne very properly equipped her with diving suits similar to those that were displayed at the Exposition Universelle in Paris.