Not sure if it quite qualifies as art, but in the genre of words like embiggen and cromulent, President Bush the Elder was a fertile source of novel coinages that have crept into the lexicon. With some still in use today.
My personal favorite is “misunderestimate”. As “My opponents misunderestimate me at their peril.”
I use it, I use it as Bush intended it to mean, and I’m totally imitating him. I’m not alone in doing so. Is politics a form of performance art?
Many of his other novel malapropisms have fallen by the wayside, but this one seems to have staying power.
Another example from “The Simpsons”: Albuquerque’s minor league baseball team was named the “Isotopes” after an episode where the Springfield Isotopes were planning a move to Albuquerque.
Gangsters were imitating movies long before The Godfather.
When Edward G. Robinson played crimelords, the costume designers dressed him in an aggressive, alpha-male style: double-breasted suits with shoulder pads, wide lapels, and strongly-contrasting pinstripes. Also, hats with a slightly taller crown, and a slightly wider brim, than most people were wearing. Police reported real-world gangsters imitating the style.
The black-shirt-and-white-necktie combo was another style invented for Hollywood gangsters (most famously, Richard Widmark’s character in Kiss of Death), then imitated by real-life gangsters (most famously, “Crazy Joe” Gallo).
The opening scene of the 2015 James Bond film Spectre features a then-fictional parade in Mexico City for the Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) holiday. However, inspired by the film, in 2016 Mexico City decided to stage a real parade for Día de los Muertos, which is a tradition that, as far as I could find online, still continues to this day.
Well, to be completely pedantic about it, the first Klingon dialog appeared in ST:TMP, and it WAS just nonsense gibberish created by James Doohan. When Okrand developed the full language, he designed it so that Doohan’s gibberish was meaningful and grammatical in his language.
The modern use of the word “nimrod” to mean a fool or an idiot seems to trace back to Bugs Bunny. Nimrod was a grandson of Noah in the bible, and was a great hunter. In A Wild Hare, the first pairing of Bugs and Elmer Fudd, Bugs outsmarts Elmer and refers to him as “Nimrod”, and from the context it took on a new meaning.
Another name more or less invented by an art form - Kayleigh.
There were less than twenty registered in England from when records began to the end of 1984. Then along came Marillion with a hit single, and along came around 2500 new babies called Kayleigh in 1985.
Bizarrely, the girl it was written about wasn’t even called Kayleigh - she was called Kay. But that doesn’t scan very well.
And on the topic of insulting nicknames borrowed from popular media, “Poindexter” as a nickname for a nerdy brainiac type is from the old “Felix the Cat” cartoon, which had a brainy character named Poindexter. If I recall from memory, one of the writers took it from the actual last name of someone they knew. So, maybe more of a “life imitates art imitating life” example
Gem Plumbing, a local company here in New England obtained the toll free phone number (866) 867-5309 and has defended it’s use as a trademark. The phone number 867-5309 is well known from the Tommy Tutone song Jenny.
In basic training, I remember thinking “these drill sergeants sure are quoting Major Payne a lot”. Then at the end of basic, the night before graduation, we had a pizza party and watched Full Metal Jacket. It was the first time I’d seen it, and so then I found out where the rest of the things the drill sergeants said came from.
