Stuff invented by Hollywood: "torture works", Russian Roulette and leather-wearing gays

[DetlefK]

http://www.cracked.com/article_24484_5-extremely-unexpected-ways-movies-tv-changed-world.html

People think that torture works because it worked in the TV-series "24"

After the fifth season ended, the fussy old dean of the U.S. Military Academy, Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, requested a meeting with the show's producers in California. His complaint: teaching the next generation of the armed forces wasn't easy, what with his lessons being contradicted every week by America's favorite Lost Boy. While Finnegan was trying to instruct his students in the art of actual effective interrogation techniques, his pupils just wanted to know when they start shooting bad guy limbs, and how hard.

Finnegan wasn't the only educator at West Point with complaints. Professor Gary Solis, who teaches wartime law, exasperatedly explains to his students how Jack Bauer would actually be the biggest war criminal who ever lived -- we're pretty sure even Saddam had trouble violating international law over 10 times in 24 hours. But trying to convince his students that torture was not just illegal and immoral, but completely ineffective was, in Solis' words, "like trying to stomp out an anthill."



Mexico didn't have "Day of the Dead"-parades until they copied the James Bond-movie "Spectre"

But when Spectre came out, Mexico worried that the movie's completely fabricated parade made them look cooler than they could actually pull off. So in 2016, Mexico City held its first ever Day of the Dead parade, including props from the movie, all to draw in tourists who didn't know it wasn't a real thing.

The parade was a big success, and the city hopes to make it an annual tradition, so that decades from now, nobody will know that the whole idea came from one of the more forgettable Bond films.

(Although: "Grim Fandango", a videogame classic, invented "Day of the Dead"-parades two decades before "Spectre&quot


"The Deer Hunter" made Russian Roulette popular

In the decade following the movie's release in 1978, there were 43 individual cases of death via Russian roulette in the United States that could plausibly be tied to people watching The Deer Hunter.



That diarrhea-prank from "Wedding Crashers" nearly killed several people by poisoning

While one of the real symptoms of Visine poisoning is diarrhea, the movie glossed over other symptoms, like heart problems, difficulty breathing, coma, and death. The active ingredient in Visine is a neurotoxin that works fantastically at decreasing redness when applied directly to the eyeballs, but sends your nervous system into panic mode when applied directly to the digestive system.



The biker-movie "The Wild One" inspired gay leather culture

Brando was the original leather-clad outlaw biker, who epitomized the rugged manly man, and he did so at a time when post-WWII gay culture was looking for a way to define itself.

Being gay in the 1950s was tricky: You had to present yourself with as much masculinity as possible, putting aside any doubt whatsoever that you might be attracted to men. And yet, you also had to let other gay men know that you might be attracted to men, otherwise how would you net yourself an attractive man? So they needed a code. And the code they came up with was Brando's undeniably masculine Wild One outfit

[gordianot]

1. I would add to that throwing pried up bricks at protests.

The shit head in the Oval Office is living in some grand late 1960's world channeling Richard Nixon law and order arguments, he wants blood and an excuse.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. It doesn't say Hollywood invented Russian Roulette, though

It says there was a series of copycat deaths following The Deer Hunter.

Reference works say the practice dates back to Russian officers in 1917; first appearance in print for the term is in 1937.

[DetlefK]

3. Well, I needed a short title for this thread.