A similar thing happened with the movie War Games with Matthew Broderick. Didn’t the CFAA come from politicians being scared some hacker kid would start WWIII?
Roddy Piper’s, too. Apparently.
His defense team should have introduced Capricorn One into evidence, as proof positive that their client’s protestations of innocence were not acting, a skill in which he was utterly incapable.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers?
This film was completely grounded in '50’s anti-communist paranoia, according to which those godless commie rat bastards were able to do anything, even the impossible kind of brain-washing shown in the movie, and that was why we had to have eternal vigilance and paranoia. Eternal vigilance, I tell you!
I nominate The Thing (From Another World!) from 1951 that probably served to kickstart the fear of horrible alien monsters and alien abductions; and Forbidden Planet from 1956 reminded us how much we have to fear from very smart people.
Well, there was the death of a person trying to find the hidden ransom money from Fargo. Even though the Cohen Brothers admitted that it was fiction years before.
The real story of the woman who “died looking for the money from Fargo.”
Made my drink come out my nose from laughter when I read that…first thing I think of when anyone talks about Gilligan’s Island, too.
Surely if Gilligan owned the island it’s location would be noted on a deed somewhere!
I’d say the radioplay of *War of the Worlds *beat both of these by a substantial margin.
Like many of the examples above, this may not be what the OP was looking for, but I’ve met a disturbing number of people who think Sherlock Holmes was real. Not in the “great game” sense that Cecil has expounded upon, either.