40 Unlikely Inspirations for Some of Your Favorite Movies and TV Shows

Proof that inspiration can come from anywhere
40 Unlikely Inspirations for Some of Your Favorite Movies and TV Shows

Well, we learned a thing or two about the creative process today. Which is amazing, because we’re severely lacking in that area. It seems as though a superhero movie doesn’t necessarily need to be inspired by another superhero movie. It can be inspired by a Lil Jon music video. What the what?!?!

We were as surprised as you’re about to be. 

Anthony Hopkins

ANTHONY HOPKINS HANNIBAL LECTOR CRACKED.COM Hopkins says that his character has a deliberately feline quality. I got to move around a lot, and I sort of modeled my walk on a cat's. I like cats, and I love the way they pad around. I wanted to get that feel when Lecter is padding very quietly and stealthily in the shadows.

The Purge

CRACKED COM Movie: The Purge Inspiration: A drunk driver (and a vengeful wife) Director James DeMonaco tells the story of the time a drunk driver almost killed him and his wife by cutting them off on the road. They confronted the driver, but he showed no remorse. My wife was so worked up over this guy's attitude... and said, 'Wouldn't it be great if we all had one free one a year?' I'm like, 'That's so fucked-up, honey,' but it stayed with me. Now there's your movie.

Gal Gadot

GAL GADOT WONDER WOMAN CRACKED.COM Diana Prince has some Princess Diana in her. In an interview, she said her performance as Wonder Woman was inspired in part by the late Princess Diana. I remember a documentary about her. They say that she was full of compassion, and she cared for the people. I was like ding, ding, ding.

Tom Hanks

TOM HANKS FORREST GUMP CRACKED.COM Brotherly Inspiration. Just before Forrest Gump, Tom's brother Jim Hanks starred in the obscure B-movie Buford's Beach Bunnies. His similar hairstyle, politeness around women, and key mannerisms bear clear resemblance to Forrest's.

Don’t Look Up

JONAH HILL DON'T LOOK UP CRACKED.COM Jonah said the inspiration behind his character, Jason Orlean, in Don't Look Up was What if Fyre festival was a person, and that person had power in the White House? Maybe we should ask Ja-Rule.

Korg

Korg from Thor: Ragnarok is based on Polynesian bouncers in New Zealand. Director Taika Waititi met lots of nightclub bouncers who were big and burly, but had super-soft voices - that was the inspiration for Korg. CRACKED.COM

Geordi LaForge

Geordi LaForge was based on a disabled Star Trek superfan. His name was George LaForge, he'd suffered from muscular dystrophy, and he showed up all the time at fan conventions. Не made friends with Gene Roddenberry, and Roddenberry remembered him when he was creating characters for The Next Generation. CRACKED.COM

Wednesday

Pop culture inspirations Wednesday Jenna Ortega choreographed the iconic dance scene taking inspiration from SIOUXSIE SIOUX, вов FOSSE, LISA LORING, LENE LOVICH, DENIS LAVANT, and archival footage of goths dancing in clubs in the '80s. CRACKED

The Shining

Pop culture inspirations The Shining Stanley Kubrick was inspired by A DIANE ARBUS PHOTOGRAPH to cast the Grady sisters as twins. The original book by Stephen King does not feature twins. CRACKED

Stephanie Hsu

Pop culture inspirations Everything Everywhere All at Once Stephanie Hsu drew inspiration ة P from JIM CARREY and JOAQUIN مة S PHOENIX's performances as ? مح The Riddler and The Joker for is her role in the sci-fi epic. ? م د. LA L 6 CRACKED ما

Beetlejuice

BEETLEJUICE was inspired by bad neighbors. Writer Michael McDowell had neighbors who were extremely annoying. So his partner, Laurence Senelick, suggested flipping the premise of evil spirits preying on poor humans into a story of good ghosts having to deal with the bad people living in their house. CRACKED.COM

Saw

SAW happened because the writer went to the hospital with a severe migraine, thinking he was dying. Writer Leigh Whannell got the idea for the character of John Kramer (Jigsaw) when he was 24 and mistook his migraines for a possible brain tumor. While at the hospital undergoing an MRI and other tests, he came up with the idea of a psychopath who was told he was going to die of a terminal illness, and then decided to put his bad juju onto other people. CRACKED COM

The Blob

THE BLOB was based on a strange police report. The Philadelphia Inquirer ran an article in September, 1950, about two police officers who encountered something that fell from the sky resembling purple jelly. The blob seemed to be pulsating and was about 6-feet in diameter and nearly a foot thick at the center. Other officers were called in, and when someone touched the gelatinous thing, it started to evaporate. Years later, writer Irvine H. Millgate remembered this bizarre report, and wrote the iconic sci-fi horror movie. CRACKED.COM

Cloverfield

CLOVERFIELD was inspired by the Escape from New York movie poster. ESCAPE FRUITI NEW YORK Director Matt Reeves explained: The poster had an image on it of the head of the Statue of Liberty and that image was nowhere in the movie! And it's an incredibly provocative image. And that was the source that inspired (producer) J.J. (Abrams) to say, 'Now this would be an interesting idea for a movie.' CRACKED COM

Host

HOST was inspired by a prank. Director Rob Savage pulled a jump-scare prank on his friends during a Zoom chat. Не pretended to inspect noises in his attic while all his friends were watching. At one point he deliberately fell off his ladder. The prank went down so well that he wrote and produced the movie in mere months during the COVID-19 pandemic. CRACKED COM

The Hills Have Eyes

THE HILLS HAVE EYES is a sci-fi take on a 16-century Scottish legend. Creator Wes Craven said the idea came after he heard about the legend of Sawney Bean, a seemingly mythical leader of a cannibalistic clan of Scottish rebels. The story goes that Bean met a witch named Agnes Douglas and together they lived in a cave, raised a large and incestuous family, and survived on laying traps and eating their prey (that were sometimes human). CRACKED COM

Tusk

TUSK was inspired by a really weird rental ad. Writer-director Kevin Smith was telling listeners on his podcast about an ad he saw in which the landlord was offering free accommodation, as long as the occupant agreed to dress as a walrus. Smith then asked his listeners to vote on whether they'd want to see a movie about it. CRACKED COM

The Wretched

THE WRETCHED was inspired by a tree. The directing brothers Drew and Brett Pierce had a gnarly old tree in their backyard when they were kids. This tree inspired the witch's woodland lair. Lightning had struck and kind of half-killed the tree. It had a big old hole in it and we used to dare each other to reach inside. CRACKED.COM

Mr. Burns

Mr. Burns' body language is based on a praying mantis. That's why he's bent forward and always has steepled fingers. CRACKED.COM

Harry Potter

75 infor A running joke in Harry Potter was inspired by This Is Spinal Tap. In that mockumentary, Spinal Tap keeps having to replace their drummer (each new one dies of things like choking on vomit, a bizarre gardening accident, or spontaneous combustion). J.K. Rowling liked that, so she made Hogwarts have to replace its Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher every year. CRACKED.COM

Sylvester Stallone

Sly Stallone's performance in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 drew on Babe. He wasn't sure how to deliver his line at Yondu's funeral, so he asked James Gunn, who told him to say it in the same way as the line That'll do, pig, in Babe. CRACKED.COM

John Wick: Chapter 2

A John Wick: Chapter 2 scene is there because of a random restaurant encounter. While eating at a kosher steakhouse, the filmmakers started talking with some of the Hasidic Jews who were there, and decided to put them in the movie. They were OK with it as long as we're bankers --and so the secret bank scene was born. CRACKED.COM

Captain America: Civil War

DJ Snake & Lil Jon's Turn Down for What music video influenced Captain America: Civil War. The lighting style and the overall look of the scene in Bucky's apartment were partly based on that video. CRACKED.COM

Scarface

Al Pacino's Tony Montana was inspired by Sophie's Choice. Pacino admired how Meryl Streep played an immigrant from another country and another world in that movie, and he partly based his Scarface performance on that. CRACKED.COM

Rick and Morty

INTER DIMENSIONAL CABLE I E:0-г lanlz The interdimensional cable in Rick and Morty was inspired by Justin Roiland wanting to see a version of Who's The Boss in a world where every name begins with either Schmoo or Schmla. CRACKED.COM

Prometheus

DAVID - Michael Fassbender based his acting in Prometheus on an Olympic diver. He remembered the image of U.S. Olympic diver Greg Louganis walking on a diving board in a measured way, his arms stiff, and partly based his performance as David on that. CRACKED.COM

Gollum

Gollum's voice was inspired by Andy Serkis' cat coughing up a hairball. He was sure the voice should be generated involuntarily, but he wasn't sure what that would actually mean. Then he watched and listened to his cat cough up a hairball, and the rest is cinematic history. CRACKED.COM

Hot Fuzz

For Hot Fuzz, Edgar Wright was inspired by Tony Scott's editing style in Domino (2005). Не used that (pretty dramatic) style for the scenes where Nick does paperwork, because the cops he'd interviewed while making the film said they'd never seen a movie dramatize the paperwork involved in policing. CRACKED.COM

The Man With The Iron Fists

In The Man With The Iron Fists, Russell Crowe channeled Ol' Dirty Bastard. ODB's cousin Rza directed the movie, and wanted ODB's spirit in the film, which meant totally basing Crowe's character on ODB. That shows up when, say, Crowe performs oral sex on a woman in a bathtub with beads in his mouth -- that's an ODB tactic, Rza says. CRACKED.COM

Gilligan’s Island

Gilligan's Island is based on the seven deadly sins. Each one of the castaways symbolizes a sin: Skipper is Anger, Professor is Pride, Ginger is Lust, and so on. That's not a fan theory or anything, it's how creator Sherwood Schwartz conceived of the characters. CRACKED.COM

The Shape of Water

CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON - RICHARD CARISON-JULIA ADAMS ROWN - MORENO - - - - - - ST OF E- IEW LE - ENIN OF The Shape of Water was Guilermo del Toro's way of dealing with a childhood disappointment. When he saw the ending of Creature From the Black Lagoon, in which the underwater monster doesn't get the woman it's pursuing, 6-year-old del Toro was shocked --he was hoping they'd end up together. He decided he'd someday have to correct that, and finally did in 2017. CRACKED.COM

Predator

ALBOA ROCKY IV - - TOK any After Rocky IV, people in Hollywood started joking that the only thing left for Rocky to do is fight an alien. Screenwriters Jim and John Thomas thought that'd be a great movie, so they wrote a screenplay for it, and it turned into Predator. CRACKED.COM

Old School

BRAD PITT EDWIRD NORTON I DAVID FUNCHER FILM CLOP MIS CTU AVHI ME SOAP ALT KING ... ... IN .. JUL LIES EN THE EMBIRIA PLA - - 40 O KA Old School is just a comedy take on Fight Club. Writer and director Todd Phillips says he was thinking of Fight Club throughout writing the whole screenplay, and it shows: a ton of scenes are ripped straight from Fight Club with a minor twist or two. CRACKED.COM

Avatar

Avatar: The Last Airbender was inspired by Antarctic exploration documentaries. Animation director Michael Dante DiMartino went through a period of being into documentaries about Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, and the idea of a small band of people surviving in harsh conditions stuck with him. One night at Bikram Yoga, his friend Bryan Joseph Konietzko had the idea to combine that with a sketch they'd made of a bald kid with an arrow on his head. CRACKED.COM

Face/Off

VA Metrics IT 100% 61 Opt T T TT Tr fi o st A English: USA Face/Off was inspired by a hang-gliding accident. A friend of co-writer Mark Werb's was in a grisly hang-gliding accident that led to doctors having to take his face off, resculpt the underlying tissue, and then put it back. They wanted to make a movie where the bad guy and the good guy could become each other, and the hang-gliding accident pointed at how that could happen. CRACKED.COM

Lost in Translation

Sofia Coppola got the idea for Lost in Translation when she saw a friend singing. The guy nicknamed Charlie Brown in the movie is a real-life friend of hers. When she saw him singing God Save the Queen at a karaoke bar, she said I have to put this in a movie. CRACKED.COM

Baby Driver

BABY DRIVER Edgar Wright based Baby Driver on a 2004 music video he'd directed. The video for Blue Song by Mint Royale has a getaway driver chilling and listening to music in his car while waiting for his buddies to finish a heist. Wright just expanded the concept. CRACKED.COM

Groundhog Day

THE SENSATIONAL NATIONAL BESTSELLER Anne Rice АСТНОКО THE QUKEN OF THE DAMNED The Uampire Lesiat a TIME THE LAMORI CHOCOLASTES - wd Anne Rice's work led to Groundhog Day. Her book The Vampire Lestat made screenwriter Danny Rubin start to wonder about how someone would act if they lived forever. Не thought it'd make a good film, but it'd be too hard to make. Then he remembered an old idea he'd about a guy who repeats the same day over and over, and combined the two concepts. CRACKED.COM

The Sixth Sense

Are You of the Afraid Dark? A Nickelodeon show inspired The Sixth Sense. An episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? Called The Tale of the Dream Girl is about a guy who's having a very weird time and, somehow, only his sister talks to him. At the end of the episode, he realizes he's dead and she's the only one who can see him. CRACKED.COM

Ghostbusters

ing 2 THE JOURNAL OH PARAPSYCHOLOGY VENKH - KING - - T 1 رسية Runwin - Insurance - The Prehance - - Experience Service .. down - - 1a - - - - ٢٠٧٠ Colley - Campa . of - / - Korean - - Festival ١٠٤ - for - . Itne Per Engue - - - - There'd be no simos - - - N can THIS Same Cannot Compre FL Decome ... Email.com frumo Town Ghostbusters if PIM ENVIRON FLASH ...... Dan Aykroyd didn't read parapsychology journals. Не got the idea for trapping ghosts after he'd read a

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