5 Imaginary Books That Became Real
Part of fleshing out a fictional universe is filling it with media, including movies for its characters to watch, songs for them to listen to and books to read. (Often, books to write, because writers are inherently fascinating people worthy of character study. Not that we’re biased.) Sometimes, they end up fleshing out the real world, too.
God Hates Us All
Californication is mostly about David Duchovny getting believably laid, but it’s also about the adaptation of his character’s novel, a bitter screed called God Hates Us All, into a cheesy rom-com. At the height of the show’s success, Gallery Books actually published God Hates Us All, a tight 168-page story that indeed begins with the words “Daphne loved speed.” Many reviewers were disappointed that the book doesn’t actually seem to capture Hank Moody’s voice as a writer, but considering the ghostwriter credit goes to Jonathan Grotenstein, whose most popular title on Amazon is 30 Days to a Well-Mannered Dog, that’s probably a fair assessment.
Snow Falling
Simon & Schuster avoided that mistake when they hired an actual romance writer to ghostwrite the novel Jane Villanueva published in the later seasons of Jane the Virgin. It’s a full-length, thinly veiled retelling of Jane’s own romance set against the backdrop of Industrial-era Miami. Some fans complained that the story didn’t cover any new ground, while others were outraged by the omission of certain modern plot details, proving you can never make everyone happy.
Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America
The history of Pawnee written by Leslie Knope is a throwaway gag in a 2011 episode of Parks and Recreation, just a device to get Leslie on a local talk show so the plot can happen, but it was actually published by Hyperion two days before the episode aired. It goes into detail about Pawnee backstory that’s only hinted at on the show, “like the time the whole town was on fire, its ongoing raccoon infestation and the cult that took over in the 1970s.” But most importantly, it features a full-color illustration of the Ron Swanson pyramid of greatness.
The Bro Code
Barney Stinson (actually How I Met Your Mother writer Matt Kuhn) is a prolific author — Amazon lists The Playbook, Bro on the Go, and of course, The Bro Code under his published titles. The latter, published in 2008, fills in all 150 articles of the sacred text, only a few dozen of which are mentioned on the show. The Bro Code for Parents, written after Marshall and Lily start their family, is also available.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
If you were only a casual Harry Potter viewer, the announcement of a Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them series probably didn’t strike you as odd, but confused fans knew that that was the title of a textbook required for first-year Hogwarts students. How were they going to adapt a textbook? It was a real title, after all, presented as Newt Scamander’s findings over the course of his study of magizoology. Quidditch Through the Ages, the sports history text Harry reads to prepare for his first game, and The Tales of Beedle the Bard, the fairy tale anthology given to Hermione by Dumbledore instead of just telling them about the deathly hallows, are also available, proving what we’ve always known: Harry Potter fans have too much money.
