Yes, and I always found that to be interesting. Henry hailed from Bloomington, Indiana, home of Indiana University, but went to college at Illinois and used a coffee mug with a big letter “I” on it - which stood for Illinois, not Indiana. And Bloomington, Illinois is home to Illinois State University. It all seems rather needlessly confusing. Maybe that was the joke.
And, he regularly wore a dark blue and orange letter sweater with an “I” on it, the colors of the University of Illinois (whereas both Indiana and Illinois State’s colors are red and white).
I’ve got to go fictional. We’ve got some real alumni that are more famous but at least my college made it into a John Wayne movie: Bud Elder
Yes, the colors are consistent with the school he actually attended.
I just always found it amusing that he lived in a city with a Big Ten university, and went to a different Big Ten university in the next state.
My sense of humor can be weird.
I went to MIT, so we’ve got a ton. My particular favorites are Tony Stark, Killmonger, Howard Wolowitz, and Gordon Freeman.
Brantley Foster (Secret of My Success)
Oliver Lang* (Arlington Road)
Same here (went to WVU and don’t know of any fictional alumni).
Fiction writers seem to think that everyone in West Virginia comes from a small town with a name like Rock Throw or Pigeon Hollow and that we all live in dilapidated shacks without electricity or indoor plumbing.
Same here.
Digression re: UofI, I remember reading a novel by a Native American author. I thought it was Sherman Alexie, but I don’t believe it was. In the novel, a NA youth who is good at basketball gets recruited to play at UofI. Once there, he and a friend plan on stealing a prize hog from the South Farms - I think it ends up eating the Morrow Plots. At one point, the cohort comments that back on the fame he had fucked a pig. The NA character asks, “What was it like?” And the other guy responds, “Pretty much like a sheep!”
That exchange has stuck with me for 20+ years! But, since I can’t even remember the book title/author, I can’t nominate either character for this thread!
Misreading the OP, my first thought was Johnny Weissmuller, who attended my high school - Lane Tech in Chicago. Tho Johnny was very real, much of his fame was due to portraying a fictional character - Tarzan.
On NCIS, former Very Special Agent Anthony “Tony” DiNozzo went to THE Ohio State University.
My dad went to Lane Tech!
(not fictional or famous but interesting)
The Professor on Gilligan’s island has a BS from UCLA!
He also has degrees from SMU, TCU, and USC.
Regarding Tom Cruise in Risky Business: after he thinks that he blew the interview to Princeton, he makes the statement “looks like University of Illinois.” But after the interviewer hangs around the party “talking” to the prostitutes, he does get accepted to Princeton.
Also, for my alma mater, the University of Texas, Ian Malcolm is one of the most famous graduates and professors. They’re talking about naming a building after him!
Other intra-Ivy jokes:
We relished the occasional road trip from ugly New Haven to idyllic Ithaca, and had many Cornell friends. They referred to the place as “the trade school of the Ivy League.”
An old article in SPY magazine included an solicitation for sperm donors, specifying “an Ivy degree (not Penn).”
So did MY dad! Him, class of 37. Me, 78.
We Aggies and the Human Ecology girls (formerly Home Economics) were looked down upon by the Artsies, but the lowest rung were the Hotelies (Statler School of Hotel Administration). I had a Hotelie housemate who spent our entire Senior year in a Laz-E-Boy in front of the TV in the living room. He probably ended up making six figures as a hotel manager.
In Breathless (1983), outlaw Jesse (Richard Gere) romances UCLA student Monica (Valerie Kaprisky) in the campus’ sculpture garden before making out with her in an off-campus apartment.
My fictional alumni also include all of the young females seen in the shower sequence of Slumber Party Massacre (1982), which was shot in the girl’s gymnasium at the Junior High School I attended.
The kids from the novel The Fault is in Our Stars went to North Central High School in Indianapolis, same as I did. When the male protagonist threw up in the parking lot, it was on 86th and Ditch, on the other side of the street from the Blockbuster I used to work at. Back when I lived there, it was a Village Pantry, kind of the Indiana version of a 7-Eleven.
There was a scene that took place in Holliday Park, where I used to go every now and then.
I still haven’t watched the movie, but I don’t really feel compelled to, because it was filmed in Pittsburgh instead of Indy.
I could have sworn that Lafayette College was mentioned on either Schooled or Goldbergs. Can’t find anything to confirm it, and I’m not going to watch them again. I want to say that Charlie Brown on Schooled mentions it. Since they are both set in eastern Pennsylvania, the likelihood of Lafayette (and those other schools, Moravian and Lehigh) being mentioned is rather high.
The library stood in for the Leslie Knope Library on Parks and Recreation.
I went to Texas A&M.
Fictional alumni? Probably the only one I can think of is that apparently the current PC principal on South Park was a graduate of my school. Which is likely a joke in its own right, as A&M is not known for liberalism at all, but is known for being a lot like the character otherwise.