# Your 'stolen' ideas **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 2, 2005, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stolen-ideas/282696 "2005-01-02T15:38:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![bienville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@bienville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bienville)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2005, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stolen-ideas/282696/21 "2005-01-03T11:09:23Z")
In my Freshman Year of highscool (1989) I drew a cartoon- it was not part of a series with recurring characters, rather it was a “one-off”, a single drawing with a single joke. We see: **Handsome Muscle-bound Man** flexing, showing off his muscles. **Beautiful Woman** paying no attention to him. **Big Ugly Hairy Monster** just standing there looking gross. **Beautiful Woman** is hanging on the arm of **Big Ugly Hairy Monster** , fauning over him, flirting with him, pampering him, trying to win his affection. Jealous, **Handsome Muscle-bound Man** mumbles to himself > [@](#): > > “Big Ugly Hairy Monsters get all the chicks. **But I’m taking Steroids and I’m growing fast in these years. . .** ” Just a year or two later Jim Carrey used that line on **In Living Color** as a female athlete- a recurring role. It took me a long time to forgive Jim for that one. :mad: ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2005, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stolen-ideas/282696/22 "2005-01-03T18:30:36Z")
Not a creative effort, but \*\*Foam Rubber Wind Chimes \*\* for the folks who like the look but can’t stand the tinkle-tinkle-tinkle. I believe Gallagher used it in one of his manic demonstrations, and I have seen ‘Mime Chimes’ for sale in the right kind of shops (but the ‘Mime Chimes’ only used coloured strings, not foam blocks…) ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2005, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stolen-ideas/282696/23 "2005-01-03T18:53:26Z")
Hell, the evidence for mine is right here on this message board! Back in 2000, I posted about my idea for pre-measured peanut butter sticks for baking (like sticks of butter or shortening). It was post number 3 in [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=17973). Well, sometime around October they released “Jif Peanut Butter Baking Sticks.” I been robbed. ---
**Author:** ![archmichael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bb73d2/32.png) [@archmichael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/archmichael)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2005, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stolen-ideas/282696/24 "2005-01-03T19:45:44Z")
[Eddie Murphy] Back in 2000, **Max Torque** , had a dinner guest over. Dinner Guest: “Excuse me, Max. What’s that you’re posting on the Internet?” Max Torque: “Oh, that’s nothing but an idea for a new peanut butter product. I can’t measure out all that sticky stuff, you know.” Dinner Guest: “That’s a good idea. You mind if I take a peek at that post?” Max Torque: “Take a peek, man, I’ll print it out for you!” So Max Torque’s dinner guest, Frederick ‘Jif’ Armstrong stole his pre-measured peanut butter idea, patented it, and reaped untold fortunes from it. Meanwhile, Max Torque, penniless and broke continued to post the story on the internet 5 years later [/Eddie Murphy] ---
**Author:** ![Archergal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c89c15/32.png) [@Archergal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Archergal)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2005, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stolen-ideas/282696/25 "2005-01-03T20:45:13Z")
Back in college in the early 70’s, I was bored while sitting at the desk at the library where I worked. I emptied out the punched holes (the little round circles) out of a hole puncher and started drawing smiley faces on them. I’d leave them around to cheer people up. This was just before smiley faces started appearing EVERYWHERE. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![chukhung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e79b87/32.png) [@chukhung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chukhung)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2005, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stolen-ideas/282696/26 "2005-01-03T22:02:33Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > I even took a journey to the places I was writing about for inspiration. The title was also a play on “Joan of Arc”. You traveled to Arkansas to find inspiration for a poem?!? Not _that’s_ dedication to the craft. ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2005, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stolen-ideas/282696/27 "2005-01-03T22:29:19Z")
I wrote a mystery story for a comic-book fanzine, [The Case of the Reborn Ripper](http://www.fanzing.com/mag/fanzing12/fiction3.shtml), in which the killer thinks he is the re-incarnation of Jack the Ripper, and very specifically, he carried out his crimes on the exact 200th anniversary (it’s set in the future) of the Ripper crimes. A few years later, Mary Higgins Clark wrote [On the Street Where You Live](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0671004530/qid=1104790991/sr=1-13/ref=sr_1_13/103-9108437-3403025?v=glance&s=books) with an almost identical premise - man thinking he is the re-incarnation of a Victorian-era serial killer commits similar murders on the anniversaries of the earlier ones. ---
**Author:** ![by-tor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/by-tor/32/266_2.png) [@by-tor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/by-tor)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2005, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stolen-ideas/282696/28 "2005-01-03T23:26:00Z")
I thought of the matrix when I was 5. I am sure many did before me. ---
**Author:** ![Shaky\_Jake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/90db22/32.png) [@Shaky\_Jake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shaky_Jake)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2005, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stolen-ideas/282696/29 "2005-01-04T02:14:25Z")
Oh, I should be retired on a beach…my own beach. My buddies and I were sitting around in high school, circa 1978, commenting on mundane tasks that are the bane of existance like doing laundry at a laundromat. I came up with the idea of a combination laundromat and bar. We commenced to work it out so as to assure machine turn-over and prevent people from getting smashed and allowing their finished load to languish (some sort of chit system as I recall). A few years later, I read an article in TIME about just such a business in Cleveland (IIRC), making killer profits. Later, Suds-N-Duds. There could have already been such establishments (seems a natural), but we had never heard of one…and talked about it for months afterwards, convinced it was a goldmine. I always keep my watch fast. Occasionally, when asked the time in a group, someone will correct me regarding the time. 10 years ago or so, I started bullshitting people that my watch was EXACTLY right because it is synchronozed with a cesium clock in NORAD headquarters in Chyenne Mountain, Wyoming, accutare to the 1/1000th of a second. Now, of course, all sorts of watches are available that synchronize their time. Killing time at some lame work birthday gathering, I somehow got on the subject of funerals, and decided that a great opportunity existed for the FUNeral - “emphasizing the FUN in funeral” . Gramps was an avid fisherman? No dreary casket - we’ll prop him up by a pond scene, rod in hand, and y’all set a spell with him. For an additional fee, we’ll incorporate tasteful animatronics and Gramps will cast away, reel one in…and lie about it. Several months later, someone at work brings me an issue of a national news magazine with a story on “theme funerals”. A few Thanksgivings ago, I stumbled upon the observation that 2 sure-fire ways to make money in this country are religion and diets. The next natural thought was to combine the two. Dieters for Christ/Losing for the Lord or some such. A Thanksgiving guest even came up with a little holiday carol we could use: Away in the manger/no crib for a bed/the little Lord Jesus/refused to be fed. [Curses, foiled again](http://www.wdworkshop.com/class.asp) Jake ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2005, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stolen-ideas/282696/30 "2005-01-04T04:13:20Z")
Happens all the time. I’ve got more decent story ideas than I’ll ever have time to write; they just pop out of the air. But developing an idea into a book or movie that actually engages people – that’s the hard part. I had the idea for _Galaxy Quest_ around 1995. But my imagined treatment wasn’t as funny. In the early 1980’s, I imagined a 14th century monk solving a mystery in an Italian monastery, involving a lost work of Aristotle and the Inquisition. But I never could have written _The Name of the Rose_. I thought of writing a murder mystery starring Oscar Wilde, set during his lecture tour of the American West. Apparently, Walter Satterthwait beat me to it with _Wilde West_, and probably did a much better job than I would have. During a week of high fever caused by a ruptured appendix, I dreamed an entire episode of “Seinfeld”. It included Kramer’s attempted introduction of a product called “Frosty Pizza Pops”, an attempt to “combine the spicy meat and cheese of pizza with the smooth lickability of ice cream!” Okay, I probably don’t have to worry about that one coming true. ---
**Author:** ![Trunk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/87869e/32.png) [@Trunk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trunk)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2005, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stolen-ideas/282696/31 "2005-01-04T14:19:12Z")
While watching the first “American Idol,” I remember turning to my wife and going, “they ought to do this with comedians.” I also thought, for the longest time, that HBO needed to do the Western. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2005, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stolen-ideas/282696/32 "2005-01-04T14:43:08Z")
> [@archmichael](#): > > [Eddie Murphy] > Back in 2000, **Max Torque** , had a dinner guest over. > > Dinner Guest: “Excuse me, Max. What’s that you’re posting on the Internet?” > Max Torque: “Oh, that’s nothing but an idea for a new peanut butter product. I can’t measure out all that sticky stuff, you know.” > Dinner Guest: “That’s a good idea. You mind if I take a peek at that post?” > Max Torque: “Take a peek, man, I’ll print it out for you!” > > So Max Torque’s dinner guest, Frederick ‘Jif’ Armstrong stole his pre-measured peanut butter idea, patented it, and reaped untold fortunes from it. Meanwhile, Max Torque, penniless and broke continued to post the story on the internet 5 years later > [/Eddie Murphy] Stop it before you make me smile! ---
**Author:** ![Knowed\_Out](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knowed_out/32/7380_2.png) [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2005, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stolen-ideas/282696/33 "2005-01-04T15:14:15Z")
Years ago, my friend Scott and I came up with an idea for a ST:TNG story. It’d be a _Mirror Mirror_ type episode that took place in the good universe. The evil versions of Riker, Worf, Data and Wesley would show up and try to take over the _Enterprise_. Riker would be the conniving manipulator who arranges for Picard’s demise, Worf would be his assassin, Wesley would be the ultimate snot-nose punk that everybody hated, and Data would be just a machine that nobody in the evil universe regarded as human, then he sees the measure of respect he has in the good universe and turns on his comrades. Sure enough, Star Trek stole the idea. Only they used it in DS9. And it took place in the evil universe. And it was Kira, Dr. Bashir, and somebody else. Dammit. ---
**Author:** ![Torgo\_ate\_my\_hamster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/71c47a/32.png) [@Torgo\_ate\_my\_hamster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Torgo_ate_my_hamster)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2005, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stolen-ideas/282696/34 "2005-01-04T16:22:40Z")
After I had seen Independence day, I got the idea to write a spoof of the movie for our high school drama group. The premise of the story were aliens attacking Slovenia on our independence day and people getting rid of them by pure luck. No muscular heroes, no intricate mothership computer hacking plans and no altruistic hippy fighter pilots involved. Then Burton made Mars Attacks and we decided to drop the project not to be percieved as copycats. ---
**Author:** ![BiblioCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ed8c4c/32.png) [@BiblioCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BiblioCat)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2005, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stolen-ideas/282696/35 "2005-01-04T18:54:42Z")
When I was just a little BiblioKitty (this would have been the early 70s), I thought it would be neat to have a device on your phone to let you know exactly who was calling when the phone rang. I thought a little readout thingy right in place of where your own phone number was located would be just right. (Why did you need that strip that listed your own phone number anyway? Don’t you know your own number?) Then someone went and invented CallerID and stole my idea. I also thought it would be neat to have a device on the TV that would let you stop and start TV shows so you could watch them whenever you wanted, if you had to go away in the middle of a show, or if you missed it, or in my case, if your mom made you go to bed at 8:30. Then someone invented the VCR, and then Tivo. Bastards. That’s my money you’re raking in! ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2005, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stolen-ideas/282696/36 "2005-01-04T20:28:11Z")
> [@BiblioCat](#): > > I also thought it would be neat to have a device on the TV that would let you stop and start TV shows so you could watch them whenever you wanted, if you had to go away in the middle of a show, or if you missed it, or in my case, if your mom made you go to bed at 8:30. > Then someone invented the VCR, and then Tivo. Back in the late sixties and early seventies, many of my friends considered me something of a nut case because I had a kind of obsession with explaining how videotape could come in plastic cartridges, just like audiotape, and recording devices using such videotape cartridges could be built that would have timers so that you wouldn’t need to be at home to watch your favorite show. You could go to a party or whatever, and just watch the tape when you got back. All I got were amused and/or condescending smiles. I tried to explain that the basic technology already existed and it was just a question of getting it to market, but no one would listen. Towards the mid-seventies (at least a couple of years before the Apple II was first marketed) I worked in a computer room with great big old Honeywell mainframes that had less memory and computing power than my first Mac. I told my co-workers that someday computers would be maybe the size of a bread box, and they’d be in every home. You’d have one on your desk, and it’d be connected to other computers over phone lines, and people would use them for sending messages to each other and playing games and even for shopping. I got the same amused/condescending smiles. The idea wasn’t spectacularly original, though. I’d already read about it in Murray Leinster’s short story, _A Logic Named Joe_. ---
**Author:** ![Cliffy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/59ef9b/32.png) [@Cliffy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cliffy)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2005, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stolen-ideas/282696/37 "2005-01-04T22:54:16Z")
> [@even sven](#): > > I once told my mom the entire plot for **Boys from Brazil** when I was like ten. I was crushed when she told me someone else had already done it. A few years ago I described an idea I had for a play based on the extraordinary courtship of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning to a friend. She told me it had already been made into a play. –Cliffy ---
**Author:** ![Don\_Draper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Don\_Draper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_Draper)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2005, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stolen-ideas/282696/38 "2005-01-04T23:51:50Z")
Once upon a time, I concocted the most absolutely brilliant “surprise twist” idea for a murder mystery novel of all time. Then I happened to read “the Murder of Roger Ackroyd” by Agatha Christie, and realized she STOLE MY IDEA roughly 45 years before I was born! (Dunno how she did it, but it was MY idea and she STOLE it!) ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2005, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stolen-ideas/282696/39 "2005-01-05T00:00:06Z")
> [@Art Vandelay](#): > > Once upon a time, I concocted the most absolutely brilliant “surprise twist” idea for a murder mystery novel of all time. Then I happened to read “the Murder of Roger Ackroyd” by Agatha Christie, and realized she STOLE MY IDEA roughly 45 years before I was born! (Dunno how she did it, but it was MY idea and she STOLE it!) If it makes you feel any better, there are an awful lot of mystery fans and critics who still think she cheated in _Roger Ackroyd_. ---
**Author:** ![dotchan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@dotchan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dotchan)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2005, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stolen-ideas/282696/40 "2005-01-05T00:15:52Z")
I have a tendancy to do a lot of retconning, so I can’t really remember which ones are really mine and which ones got cross-pollinated by everything else I’m in contact with. I am, however, still incredibly creeped out at meeting the real life counterpart of one of my fictional characters. See, the summer before I got a job working at the local community college, I did my first official drawing of him. When I started work several months later, I found myself staring at this guy that looked like he had leapt straight out of said drawing: rumpled shirt, ponytail, 5 o’clock shadow, and earring in his left ear. Weirdest. Coincidence. _Ever._ :eek: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-stolen-ideas/282696.md?page=1)