Inspector Spacetime was a fictional Dr. Who parody on the show Community. Now the actor who played him in the show within the show is trying to get funding to make it a real web series.
The Necronomicon was a fictional book in the Lovecraft universe but eventually “real” versions were published.
Any other examples of media within media that itself became real?
The movie Machete was originally was originally just a parody trailer that ran with the movie Grindhouse. But the trailer was so popular they went ahead and made the movie.
There’s enough examples to cover a very long TV Tropes page.
My favourite example is My Little Pony’s ‘baked bads’ - in universe, an attempt to make chocolate chip muffins that goes horribly, horribly wrong because one of the ponies who’s cooking them is zoned…out of universe, a sign that MLP fandom is INSANE, and will eat a food made of potato chips, cola and gummy worms (they’re apparently surprisingly good).
Spinal Tap
Widgets.
There are plenty of examples of foods that became real. I think my favorite (conceptually, at least) is chupaquesas, from Schlock Mercenary. Fans who have made them report that they’re quite good, in an artery-clogging way, but tricky to get just right.
And Locrian, unless you meant “waldoes” there, I’m not sure what widgets you’d be referring to.
In one episode, the Springfield Isotopes minor league baseball team on The Simpsons threatened to move to Albuquerque. Now there’s a real team called the Albuquerque Isotopes.
Schweddy balls.
Wonka Bars?
“Madison” as a girl’s name.
That’s a perfectly cromulent name.
Star Trek communicators. Also some of the features advertised for the new IPhone sound sort of like the Universal translator.
Possibly the name “Wendy.”
Well, now it is.
1.) Some of the space ship parts named by Kurd Lasswitz in his science fiction novel Zwei Planete (“Two Planets”) reportedly became real.Although virtual unknown in the US, Lasswitz was to Germany as Jules Verne (his contemporary) was to France in science fiction. His enthusiastic readers included a lot of the German Rocket Society members that ended up at Peenemunde, including Werner von Braun and Willy Ley.
2.) Flash Crowds – Larry Niven predicted these as a consequence of easily available teleportation technology. They became real because of easily available social networking technology. I’ll bet most people don’t realize the phenomenon is named after a science fiction concept.
3.) Navigation satellites and Space Stations – Edward Everett Hale (best known for his story “The Man Without a Country” wrote a short story “The Brick Moon” about a ceramic sphere put into orbit as a navigational aid (you took sightings of its altitude) in 1869. He wrote a sequel. It was supposed to be unmanned, but people were accidentaly on board when it was launched, so it’s the first fictional space station.
4.) The Atomic Bomb – this is a pretty famous example. H.G. wells wrote The World Set Free about a future was fought with “atomic bombs” (Wells got the idea from physicist Frederick Soddy), and Wells’ thoughts on its implications famously goaded Leo Szilard into thinking about it as a reality. Wells also described the effects of aerial warfare and the use of “land ironclads” (tanks) which turned out to be quite correct.
5.) Waldoes and The Water Bed – Heinlein’s ideas for mechanical manipulating hands and the water bed.
6.) Using ping pong balls to raise a ship – used in a Carl Barks Donald Duck story, this technique was reportedly taken in for a patent, which was denied because of the Barks comic. I think Mythbusters did a segment on this.
O Brother Where Art Thou was a fictitious movie within a Preston Sturges movie, Sullivan’s Travels, and now it’s a movie.
Bongo Comics publishes Radioactive Man.
Toad the Wet Sprocket, a joke band in a Monty Python sketch, is the name of a 90s alt.rock band.
Willie and the Poor Boys, a fake band mentioned in a Credence Clearwater Revival song (“Down on the Corner”), was later the name of a Bill Wyman side project band in the 80s.
The guy who played the Soup Nazi now runs a chain of soup restaurants, but he apparently had one long before he was on Seinfeld.
Bubba Gump Shrimp Company
The Monkees toured and performed towards the end of their initial TV career.
Speaking of which, does the Nautilus count?
Not really. The Nautilus in the Jules Verne story was probably named after a real one.
I think it does Verne’s Nautilius was named after an existing submarine (and a good choice of name it is – the cephalopod nautilus does vary its buoyancy by inletting or discharging water from its shell, just like submarines), but two 20th century submarines named Nautilus tried to duplicated the feat of Verne’s Captain Nemo of sailing under the polar icecap to the pole – only the North Pole, instea of the South (Verne hadn’t reckoned on Antarctica being a solid land mass under there). Only the second Nautilus – the nuclear-powered one – succeeded.