‘Seinfeld’ Plots You Didn’t Know Were Ripped from 1990s Headlines
Some of the best episodes of Seinfeld were based on real stories from the writers’ personal lives, be it an embarrassing dating anecdote or a kooky holiday invented by an alcoholic father. But the show occasionally took inspiration from real-world events, too. Some examples of this trend are more obvious, like the time Kramer fled from the cops with an accused murderer in a white Ford Bronco.
But other allusions to news stories were more subtle and easier to miss, especially now that three whole decades have passed. So, with the help of the hosts of The Place to Be: A Seinfeld Podcast, here are some of the Seinfeld storylines that you may not have known were ripped from the headlines, such as…
‘The Sponge’ Originated with an NPR Segment
We all remember the time Elaine went full Tommy Lee Jones from The Fugitive on the city of New York in order to track down the discontinued Today sponge, her preferred birth-control method.
This idea came from writer Peter Mehlman, who happened to catch an NPR segment while driving his car, all about how the sponge was being taken off the market. “He heard it on NPR, and he just thought to himself, ‘That’s funny, what if Elaine was a sponge user?’” Seinfeldia author Jennifer Keishin Armstrong told Vice, adding, “Seinfeld is very obsessed with the minutiae of everyday life, and what’s more everyday than figuring out your birth control and just hoping it will work?”
Mary Hart Really Gave Someone a Seizure
A Season Three episode found Kramer repeatedly getting seizures every time he heard the voice of Entertainment Tonight host Mary Hart.
Amazingly, Hart’s voice really did trigger a 45-year-old woman’s epileptic seizures. The story was published in The New England Journal of Medicine and was quickly picked up by the mainstream media. “It was in the papers that it was Mary Hart,” Mehlman explained, “and it just seemed funny.”
‘The Understudy’ Parodied the Tonya Harding Scandal
George and Jerry are accused of conspiring to injure Bette Midler in Season Six’s “The Understudy,” seemingly so that Jerry’s overly-tearful girlfriend will get a chance to play the lead in Rochelle, Rochelle: The Musical, which presumably featured less “sidal” nudity than the original film.
While obvious at the time, younger viewers today may not realize that the episode was constructed as a parody of the Tonya Harding scandal. In addition to being the story of two goons who seemingly take out a young woman’s competitor, the titular understudy becomes emotional after taking the stage because her boot is untied.
Which was a specific reference to Harding’s infamous lace incident at the ‘94 Olympic games.
Kramer’s Coffee Burn Was Based on an Infamous Lawsuit
We all remember the time Kramer burnt himself while trying to smuggle hot coffee into a movie theater. He ends up suing the chain and foolishly taking their first offer: a lifetime supply of free coffee.
This was clearly based on a real-life incident in which a woman sued McDonald’s after being burned by their crazy hot coffee. But while Seinfeld implied that the lawsuit was frivolous (coffee’s “supposed to be hot,” Jerry tells Kramer) as we’ve discussed before, the victim was a 79-year-old woman who was “hospitalized for eight days and required skin graft surgery.”
She simply wanted McDonald’s to pay her $20,000 to cover the medical bills, but when the company refused, she sued them — and ended up being awarded more than $2.7 million by a jury. Which is a pretty far cry from Jackie Chiles’ humiliating case.
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