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30 Bonkers Inspirations Behind Iconic Movies And Shows

November 01, 2021

It's no secret that many of our favorite movies and shows are inspired by real-life events. After all, truth is often stranger than fiction. However, there are some surprising inspirations behind some of our favorites that you might not be aware of. For example, did you know that the movie "The Shining" was based on a true story? Stephen King was reportedly inspired to write the novel after he experienced a number of strange events while staying at the Stanley Hotel in Colorado. Another example is the show "Breaking Bad." The main character, Walter White, is based on a real-life chemist who turned to cook meth after he was diagnosed with cancer. While some of these stories may be fictionalized, they offer a fascinating glimpse into the real-life inspirations behind some of our favorite movies and shows.

The inspiration for the Hulk came from Jack Kirby after encountering a superhuman feat of strength. More on that and 29 other wild inspirations behind beloved movies and shows:

30

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 — Boing Boing

29

INTER DIMENSIONAL CABLE I E:0-5 lanly 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 — Film School Rejects

28

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 — Entertainment Weekly

27

For his character in Back to the Future, Christopher Lloyd was inspired by a Philadelphia Orchestra conductor. Even though Lloyd took inspiration from Albert Einstein (naturally), he largely based Emmett Doc Brown on the classical music conductor Leopold Stokowski. Especially the hair. CRACKED.COM — 15 Iconic Characters' Inspirations

26

South Park, Colarado SOUTH PARK CRACKED.COM The small town of Fairplay, Colorado, was once named South Park City and has understandably claimed itself as the inspiration for the show's setting. — 9News

25

The Secret of NIMH was based on a real (and horrific) experiment. The book and movie are about rats escaping from the lab that made them super-smart. That was inspired by an experiment in which mice were put into a very safe environment and left to breed until the whole place got crowded (it was pretty violent and gory). Robert C. O'Brien saw that, and got the idea to write a kids' book about a rat who escapes from it. CRACKED.COM — The Secret Of NIMH Was Inspired By A Horrific Experiment

24

A turn-of-the-century traveling illusionist inspired The Wizard of Oz. KFILAR Harry Kellar was one of the world's most popular illusionists when the book was written, and he inspired the Wizard - - early illustrations of the Wizard looked a lot like Kellar, too. CRACKED.COM — FilmSchoolRejects

23

CRACKED.COM Aladdin The design of the Genie owes a lot to the flowing, minimalistic style of American caricaturist Al Hirschfeld (1926-2003). — Los Angeles Times & Illustration Chronicles

22

THE RANCOR IS A CROSS BETWEEN A BEAR AND... A POTATO. + Phil Tippet, the stop-motion animator for Return of the Jedi, admitted that he took LSD while working on the film. The idea for the Rancor came to him after this powerful LSD trip, in which he also conversed with his cat. CRACKED.COM — 12 Bizarre Inspirations Behind Star Wars Movie Characters

21

Denis Villeneuve

Denis Villeneuve was specifically inspired by Star Wars Tatooine scenes for Dune. As he put it, When I saw the very first 'Star Wars' in 1977 my favorite scenes were the ones that felt the most natural. The one when we see the droids at the beginning - there was something about the strength of nature. CRACKED.COM — Source

20

Dan Aykroyd is a lifelong believer of the paranormal, and drew on that for Ghostbusters. Not only did his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather all study the paranormal, but he himself has experienced many, many paranormal events in his life, he says. CRACKED.COM — Yahoo

19

A real-life whaling disaster inspired Moby Dick. MOBY DICK It was the sinking of a ship called the Essex, and Melville read about it in the Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex. That gave Melville the idea for the end of Moby Dick, in which the whale sinks the Pequod. CRACKED.COM — New York Times

18

The Netflix show Midnight Mass is an extremely personal project, it turns out. It was heavily inspired by creator Mike Flanagan's Catholic upbringing, and he wanted to explore his own views of faith and religion with it. CRACKED.COM — Source

17

GRACKED.COM Smokey and the Bandit is a film about two bootleggers attempting to transport hundreds of cases of illegal Coors beer. It was inspired by director Hal Needham's encounter with a hotel maid who had been stealing his Coors beer. It prompted him to think about the lengths { one would go for Coors. — 22 Eyebrow-Arching Ways Creators' Lives Influenced Their Work

16

CO CON NTE INT SAN A IC JAMES DEMONACO has had a lifelong fear of guns. There's nothing scarier than getting shot, he has said. Не sees The Purge as a metaphor for America's obsession with guns and violence. CRACKED.COM — Den of Geek

15

An ancient way of calling cattle home inspired a song in Frozen 2. The unnamed voice that calls to Elsa in Into the Unknown draws on the art of kulning -- a way of calling cattle in which each herd would have its own song. CRACKED.COM — Vanity Fair

14

CRACKED.COM BACK THE TO FUTURE II IIIII According to Bob Gale, the film's screenwriter, the inspiration for Biff Tannen was someone famous... who also encourages every citizen to call him America's greatest living folk hero. — 22 Real-Life Inspirations For Your Favorite Movie & TV Moments

13

30 Bonkers Inspirations Behind Iconic Movies And Shows — 12 Bizarre Influences Behind Famous Movies And Shows

12

‘The Godfather’s Influence on ‘Black Panther’

BLACK PANTHER took inspiration from THE GODFATHER. a man's Ryan father Coogler dies, and suddenly he has to step into realized that this position of power was pretty much a summary of The Godfather - so he watched all the Godfather films, taking notes. CRACKED.COM — Esquire

11

An 18th-century painting inspired the look of alien technology in Prometheus. The sequence where David works with the big map hologram was inspired by A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery, a 1769 painting by Joseph Wright of Derby. CRACKED.COM — Film School Rejects & Wikipedia

10

All of Liev Schreiber's roles were partly based on his maternal grandfather. His name was Alex Milgram, and he was an old-school stoic type who influenced Schreiber so much that Schreiber partly modelled all his roles after him. CRACKED.COM — Vanity Fair

9

Succession

The Sulzbergers were part of the inspiration for Succession's Roy family. The Sulzbergers control The New York Times, but they weren't the only inspiration -- the biggest one was probably media mogul Rupert Murdoch. CRACKED.COM — NY Times

8

The ridiculous meet-up instructions in All the Money in the World were real. They include steps like driving to a point at which a man will throw gravel at your car window, and the real kidnappers came up with them. CRACKED.COM — Vanity Fair

7

CRACKED.COM The Devil Wears Prada Andy Sachs is pretty much Lauren Weisberger, The book is partly fiction, partly based on Weisberger's work experiences I see a lot of myself in Andrea, from her love of writing to her tendency to get SO wrapped up in things that she somehow finds it difficult to see the big picture. — Random House (via archive.org)

6

CRACKED.COM Mr. Burns' look was inspired by Barry Diller, former chief executive of Fox Broadcasting. Meanwhile, his body language - especially the famous hand gesturing -- was based on a praying mantis. Excellent. — Characters Based On Celebs, Really

5

This is Louis Red Deutsch, a New Jersey bartender and ex-boxer. In the '70s, prank callers Jim Davidson and John Elmo would constantly call him asking about patrons with made-up names. Red would go hilariously insane, and swear a blue streak at the callers. You know him as мое SZYSLAK. CRACKED.COM — 5 Villains That Were Thinly-Veiled Versions of Real People

4

+ SCROOGE McDUCK is a feathered ANDREW CARNEGIE. Just like Donald's rich uncle, Carnegie left his native Scotland at an early age to seek (and find) fortune in America. CRACKED.COM — PopMatters

3

Jack Kirby came up with The Hulk after seeing a woman lift a car. Her baby got caught underneath it, and in her desperation, Kirby says she lifted the rear of the car to save her baby. Не realized that we can all do something like that in desperation or rage, which led him to The Hulk. CRACKED.COM — TCJ

2

HR Giger's nightmares inspired ALIEN. Giger had a diary called his dream book where he would sketch his recurring nightmares to make them go away. Alien writer Dan O'Bannon saw these images, and they stuck with him. His paintings had a profound effect on me. I had never seen anything so horrible and yet quite SO beautiful in my life. And so I ended up writing a script about a Giger monster. CRACKED.COM — 6 Hilariously Improbable Events That Resulted In Huge Movies & Shows

1

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 — 7 Insane Ways Actors Got The Ideas For Famous Performances

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