# What fiction films have had the greatest effects on the ‘real’ world? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 15, 2016, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fiction-films-have-had-the-greatest-effects-on-the-real-world/749081 "2016-03-15T16:20:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2016, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fiction-films-have-had-the-greatest-effects-on-the-real-world/749081/41 "2016-03-15T21:49:34Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > That was certainly a trend that didn’t last. It only went as far as you could spit. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2016, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fiction-films-have-had-the-greatest-effects-on-the-real-world/749081/42 "2016-03-15T21:58:41Z")
I don’t think that _Capricorn One_ increased the percentage of people who believed that the moon landings were faked. There has always been a certain amount who have believed that ever since the first landing. Can anyone find anything that gives the percentage of people in polls over the past 47 years who said that the landings were fake? ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2016, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fiction-films-have-had-the-greatest-effects-on-the-real-world/749081/43 "2016-03-15T22:01:18Z")
One film you wouldn’t think would have such a big impact is _Animal House_. At the time it was made, frats were dying off. The writers wanted to put another stake thru the Greek system. But people took the film as glorifying the frat lifestyle and enrollment in frats shot up. In turn, this promoted the big drinking and partying lifestyle that dominates too many campuses today. The effects of partying for 4 years instead of studying reduces the effectiveness of the knowledge the students are paying for and has long term effects in the workplace for decades afterwards. Ask [del]for[/del] Babs. ---
**Author:** ![jsquire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ce73a5/32.png) [@jsquire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsquire)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2016, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fiction-films-have-had-the-greatest-effects-on-the-real-world/749081/44 "2016-03-15T22:08:13Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > What about _Philadelphia_? For some reason, I think of that film as being more recent than it is, but it came out in 1993, which was still the “Silence=Death” era, really. How much effect did the film have on the AIDS landscape? It made a difference, but not all by itself. MTV’s _The Real World: San Francisco_ ran in the summer of '94, about six months later, and HIV-positive house member Pedro Zamora died in November. That really humanized the disease to MTV viewers. _Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner_ made a big impact in the acceptance of interracial marriage. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2016, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fiction-films-have-had-the-greatest-effects-on-the-real-world/749081/45 "2016-03-15T22:14:54Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > One film you wouldn’t think would have such a big impact is _Animal House_. The scriptwriters apparently invented Toga Parties. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2016, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fiction-films-have-had-the-greatest-effects-on-the-real-world/749081/46 "2016-03-15T23:58:25Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > The scriptwriters apparently invented Toga Parties. No, [they were real](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toga_party) and Chris Miller went to them at Dartmouth. > [@](#): > > The first recorded college student toga party was in 1953, when James Madison University students wore togas and ivy wreaths, and brought their dorm mattresses to freshman Mark Neuman’s home on Hillcrest Avenue in nearby Flintridge… > > Chris Miller, who was one of the writers of Animal House, attended Dartmouth College where the toga party was a popular costume event at major fraternity parties (such as Winter Carnival and Green Key Weekend) during the late 1950s and early 1960s. There’s also no evidence whatsoever that Clark Gable killed the undershirt, and the story of that urban myth is given at length in this [fantastic article](http://immortalephemera.com/42243/did-clark-gable-kill-the-undershirt/). It’s like saying that the plastics industry was affected by The Graduate. ---
**Author:** ![snfaulkner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snfaulkner/32/433_2.png) [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2016, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fiction-films-have-had-the-greatest-effects-on-the-real-world/749081/47 "2016-03-16T00:07:35Z")
_Dude, Where’s My Car_ forever impacted the way we…uh…park…cars? ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2016, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fiction-films-have-had-the-greatest-effects-on-the-real-world/749081/48 "2016-03-16T01:06:19Z")
Didn’t **Free Willy** lead to better whale treatment? ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2016, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fiction-films-have-had-the-greatest-effects-on-the-real-world/749081/49 "2016-03-16T01:56:51Z")
The failure of **The Three Amigos** sidelined Lorne Michaels’ film ambitions and forced him to return to **SNL** , which was nearing cancellation. Some of the people who joined the show after 1985 would undoubtedly have been big stars anyway, but a more typical outcome without the continued show would have been, in Chris Rock’s words, “Tina Fey would’ve been the funniest English professor at Drexel University.” **Singles** capitalized on grunge rock more than the other way around, but I doubt Pearl Jam and its imitators (Stone Temple Pilots, et al) would have been as big a deal without that film. Plus, MTV doubled down on the popularity of grunge and gangsta rap so heavily that they stopped showing music videos altogether by the end of the 90s. **Singles** was the pebble that started an avalanche. Not sure what the link between **The Wizard of Oz** and gay cultural identity was, but a lot of gay people have pointed to this film as the thing that spurred them to realize who they were. This was bigger than the Stonewall riots in terms of establishing a publicly-recognizable movement and identity. **Enter the Dragon** did for martial arts academies what the Beatles did for guitar stores; both had pretty much always been around in America, but they experienced a quantum leap in popularity afterwards that just hadn’t been there before. Winsor McCay’s [The Sinking of the Lusitania](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0009620/?ref_=nm_flmg_wr_12) popularized the idea of America entering WWI. It’s hard to state just how resistant most Americans were to the idea of getting involved in a European clusterfuck, and how instrumental one of the first cartoons ever made was in turning public opinion around. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2016, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fiction-films-have-had-the-greatest-effects-on-the-real-world/749081/50 "2016-03-16T14:44:31Z")
According to accounts at the time the 1983 TV movie [The Day After](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After) (which my family was about the only family in the nation that didn’t watch) supposedly spiked a huge interest in what we’d now call survivalism. According to accounts at the time, sales of everything from home generators to bunkers to wagons multiplied. Though I’d go with the already mentioned _Birth of a Nation_ as the number 1 answer. ---
**Author:** ![Smitty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Smitty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smitty)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2016, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fiction-films-have-had-the-greatest-effects-on-the-real-world/749081/51 "2016-03-16T14:54:00Z")
_The Godfather_ had a big impact on the Mafia. After the movie came out, they changed from what we today would call “street thugs” and began to purposely conduct themselves in what they felt was a more dignified fashion. > **[Why Hollywood is married to the mob](https://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/movies/why-hollywood-is-married-to-the-mob-20100913-158dl.html)** > > It's hard to tell whether Hollywood has been more inspired by the Mafia or the other way around, writes MICHAEL DUFFY. ---
**Author:** ![JoseB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/joseb/32/1530_2.png) [@JoseB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoseB)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2016, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fiction-films-have-had-the-greatest-effects-on-the-real-world/749081/52 "2016-03-16T14:57:50Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > According to accounts at the time the 1983 TV movie [The Day After](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After) (which my family was about the only family in the nation that didn’t watch) supposedly spiked a huge interest in what we’d now call survivalism. According to accounts at the time, sales of everything from home generators to bunkers to wagons multiplied. > > Though I’d go with the already mentioned _Birth of a Nation_ as the number 1 answer. About [The Day After](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After), the Wikipedia article mentions that it influenced policymakers. Copypasting from there: _President Ronald Reagan watched the film several days before its screening, on November 5, 1983. He wrote in his diary that the film was “very effective and left me greatly depressed,”[16] and that it changed his mind on the prevailing policy on a “nuclear war”.[18] The film was also screened for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A government advisor who attended the screening, a friend of Meyer’s [Meyer was the director of the film], told him “If you wanted to draw blood, you did it. Those guys sat there like they were turned to stone.” Four years later, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was signed and in Reagan’s memoirs he drew a direct line from the film to the signing.[16]_ (The text with reference [16] is taken from an article in _Empire Magazine_ published in November 2010, and the text with reference [18] is from Reagan’s book _An American Life_). ---
**Author:** ![FairyChatMom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fairychatmom/32/21906_2.png) [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2016, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fiction-films-have-had-the-greatest-effects-on-the-real-world/749081/53 "2016-03-16T15:32:41Z")
> [@JoseB](#): > > I read somewhere that Hitchcock’s “Psycho” had a similar effect with respect to showers… My husband told me the because of _Psycho_, his mother won’t shower if she’s home alone. ---
**Author:** ![epbrown01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7ba0ec/32.png) [@epbrown01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/epbrown01)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2016, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fiction-films-have-had-the-greatest-effects-on-the-real-world/749081/54 "2016-03-17T01:32:34Z")
_The Fast and the Furious_ popularized the until-then small Japanese import scene. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2016, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fiction-films-have-had-the-greatest-effects-on-the-real-world/749081/55 "2016-03-17T03:21:38Z")
So no one can think of any impact James Bond movies had? ---
**Author:** ![theR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@theR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/theR)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2016, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fiction-films-have-had-the-greatest-effects-on-the-real-world/749081/56 "2016-03-17T03:52:53Z")
I agree with _WarGames_. It literally led to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) being passed in 1984. You could even argue that Reagan thought it was nonfiction based on what he said about it. I’ll post an excerpt from the article linked by **Tired and Cranky**. > [@](#): > > “WarGames” inspired these extra-long prison terms. As soon as it was released in June 1983, the movie, starring Matthew Broderick as a teenage hacker who broke into NORAD’s mainframe and nearly ignited World War III, electrified Capitol Hill and kicked off an anti-hacker panic. > > No fewer than six different anti-hacking bills were introduced that year, and Congress convened its first hearings as soon as politicians returned from their summer recess. Rep. Dan Glickman, a Kansas Democrat, opened the proceedings by saying: “We’re gonna show about four minutes from the movie ‘WarGames,’ which I think outlines the problem fairly clearly.” A House committee report solemnly intoned: “‘WarGames’ showed a realistic representation of the automatic dialing and access capabilities of the personal computer.” > > “WarGames,” the first movie to profile hacking so prominently, spilled over into unrelated discussions about national security: a biography of Ronald Reagan recounts how the president asked a group of Democratic congressmen meeting at the White House to discuss arms reduction if they had watched the movie. Rep. Vic Fazio, a California Democrat, recalled Reagan saying: “I don’t understand these computers very well, but this young man obviously did. He had tied into NORAD!” > **[From 'WarGames' to Aaron Swartz: How U.S. anti-hacking law went astray](https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/from-wargames-to-aaron-swartz-how-u-s-anti-hacking-law-went-astray/)** > > The 1983 movie "WarGames" led to an anti-hacking law with felony penalties aimed at deterring intrusions into NORAD. Over time, it became broad and vague enough to ensnare the late Aaron Swartz. ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2016, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fiction-films-have-had-the-greatest-effects-on-the-real-world/749081/57 "2016-03-21T23:14:04Z")
I don’t know if it’s truth or urban legend, but I’ve heard that the deer hunting industry took years to recover from _Bambi_. ---
**Author:** ![Saltire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saltire/32/553_2.png) [@Saltire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saltire)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2016, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fiction-films-have-had-the-greatest-effects-on-the-real-world/749081/58 "2016-03-21T23:43:46Z")
> [@epbrown01](#): > > _The Fast and the Furious_ popularized the until-then small Japanese import scene. I assume you mean for street racing. There was no lack of Japanese import cars before that movie. ---
**Author:** ![Declan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecae2f/32.png) [@Declan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Declan)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2016, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fiction-films-have-had-the-greatest-effects-on-the-real-world/749081/59 "2016-03-22T00:15:55Z")
I think it influenced a number of things in the real world. If I remember right, the russian astronaut brought over the fresh bottle of 02, and it had a nonstandard plug in. Which meant A for effort, but did not help. So it was instrumental in standardizing a bunch of different things, in space craft design on both sides. Another was a book about the space shuttle having to do an abort, and landing on Easter Island, and having to come up with Passports, which at the time was never needed. So anything manned going up, had some sort of documentation if needed. In the book, they took the refueling probe off an A7 or F-8, as the 747 lifter, had no inflight capability. In the real world, I dont recall if the lifter has inflight capabilty. Declan ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2016, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fiction-films-have-had-the-greatest-effects-on-the-real-world/749081/60 "2016-03-22T00:50:25Z")
[A single line](http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2014/10/06/sideways-killed-merlot/15901489/) in the film _Sideways_ depressed sales of Merlot wine for years. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fiction-films-have-had-the-greatest-effects-on-the-real-world/749081.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-fiction-films-have-had-the-greatest-effects-on-the-real-world/749081.md?page=4)