The flip side of this thread–Ever think something in a creative work was real, only to discover the person made it up.
For decades I thought Catch-22 was a real psychological designation. I was amazed to discover that Joseph Heller made it up for his book.
I was shocked a few years back to learn that the Stay Puft Marshmellow man was purely an invention of the movie Ghostbusters. I’d have sworn it was a real mascot.
That’s probably because the Stay Puft Marshmallow man was similar to the marshmallow man that was on the package of Campfire Marshmallows.
The story of the missing schoolgirls in Picnic At Hanging Rock. After I saw this film for the first time, I went online to find out what the true facts of the case were… and discovered that there weren’t any. It’s entirely fiction.
I remember being all anxious and looking up whether or not any actual animals were harmed in the making or production of the Rocky and Bullwinkle show, only to find out that not only were no real animals involved (no squirrel? No moose?? :eek:) but that the whole thing was just a cartoon. I was devastated. 
-XT
Fargo.
Not a movie or TV show, but a commercial. It showed ATM cards coming out of ATMs shredded or on fire. I had a friend who refused to have an ATM card (or even a bank account) because she believed that that sort of thing happened all the time.
Yeah, because it was based on a true story.
Or not.
Ya! You betcha!
Not me, but a friend of a friend had believed for 20+ years that there was a B-list metal act called Spinal Tap that had a documentary made about them in the early '80s. I did meet this woman and confirmed that she had not known that the documentary (which she’d never seen) was fictional or that Spinal Tap was created as a parody of heavy metal bands of the time. She was a teenager in the '80s and had heard of but never seen This is Spinal Tap, as she thought it was a serious behind the scenes look at some second-rate band that she didn’t care about.
For a while I thought Spinal Tap was a real band, but only because of that one episode of The Simpsons. It wasn’t until years later I learned it was a fake band, and it was somewhat of an “in-joke” since Harry Shearer, one of the main voice actors for the show, was also one of the members of Spinal Tap in the mocumentary.
I knew they were setting the audience up when Sigourney Weaver got into her apartment, setting down her grocery bag, and you see a package of Sta-Puft Marshmallows falling out. “I never heard of that brand” I thought to myself. Plot Point!
And I was right. It seemed familiar at the time, but I figured it was the similarity to the figure on Campfire Marshmallows that NDP mentions.
And I hadn’t heard anything about the ending before I saw the film.
William Ashbless.
Of course a lot of these became real after the movies. Sta-Puft is a brand of caffinated marshmallows (!), Spinal Tap has released albums and done concerts, and so is debatabley a ‘real band’.
I actually half-listened to a radio interview with someone (Peter Weir, maybe?) once while I was waking up and showering, and he was summarizing the plot of the movie and discussing it with the host. I just caught snippets of the interview, and thought they were discussing something that had really happened, and that the guy was some researcher writing a book on the incident.
Several months later I caught the movie, and when I recognized the plot as the same story, was further convinced someone must’ve based a movie on this guys book of a real event. Wasn’t till after the film when I was talking to the people I’d seen it with that I figured out the truth.
Moral of story, setting your radio alarm to NPR is probably not a good idea.
I once got in my car and turned on NPR to find a discussion between two scientists on the philosophical implications of their research. I was really impressed by how well spoken they were - obviously smart guys, sure, but they were talking like poets, not physicists.
Turned out I was listening to a reading from a new play.
I’m a film nerd, so I was following the marketing of the Blair Witch Project as ‘found’ footage, but I realized just how good a job they were doing when my wife told me about this incredible documentary that was found about a film crew lost in the woods. She totally thought it would be right up my alley.
I thought it was both. That Spinal Tap was a real band, but also that it was a mockumentary of this funny band that saw how silly things could be sometimes.
Spinal Tap tours and releases albums. Just because they are also a joke doesn’t make them not a real band.
At a place I use to work this coworker mentioned Blair Witch and she thought it was real. I told her it wasn’t and she then said it must have been based on a real story.
She was so determined to believe it was real, or partially real that I just didn’t argue with her any more.
