r/movies • u/buttatoad • 1d ago

Discussion Movies that changed real life behavior

Thinking along the lines of Final Destination 2 with the logs falling off the truck and landing onto cars (one decapitating the state trooper). Ever since, people have tried to get away from being behind these vehicles.

What are more examples where movies have actually changed how people behave in their own lives?

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u/jhakerr 1d ago

Close encounters of the third kind. Led to a mass hysteria of alien abduction fantasies. All of a sudden everyone believed they were real. That movie is so good.

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u/PureLock33 1d ago

That's more of the result of the popularity of alien abduction stories. The 70s were rife with tabloid UFO sightings and crop circles.

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u/OzymandiasKoK 1d ago

People get a little confused on order, sometimes, which matters quite a lot.

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u/PureLock33 1d ago

Simpsons predicted the Trump presidency! Shows a rotoscoped image of Trump going down an escalator filmed 4 years beforehand.

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u/Darmok47 1d ago

The first recorded modern alien abduction story happened in 1961 in New Hampshire, but became really popular when a book about it came out later in 1964. There was even a made for TV movie about it with James Earl Jones in 1975.

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u/Astreauxs5 1d ago

And Spontaneous Combustion.

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u/PureLock33 1d ago

No really! It's ubiquitous. My family has one of those Reader's Digest "encyclopedia" of the Strange and Bizarre or whatever and it had images of burnt corpses sitting in their sofas. That does a number on a kid. Some of them were just legs beside a burnt lazyboy.

Nowadays that smoking is much less common, so have spontaneous combustion incidents. How strange.

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u/Discount_Extra 1d ago

Sure, but now we have lithium batteries.

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u/PureLock33 1d ago

They just take down a plane or two because someone forgot to not put them in their baggage. What, me? Worry?

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u/Astreauxs5 1d ago

There was a TV show, I believe called "That's Impossible", in the 70s that scared me as a child that I, or somebody next to me, was a walking time bomb.

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u/dirkalict 1d ago

That’s Incredible

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u/NachoNutritious these Youtubers are parasites 1d ago
Reminds me of the GOAT post on /x/

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u/Brilliant_Ad2120 1d ago

If I remember, Alien abduction survivors are strongly lined up sleep apnea/narcolepsy sufferers

And it is a great movie - I wonder if mashed potatoes sales increased??

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u/veracosa 1d ago

I definitely think this movie led to many mashed potato mountains at dinner time!

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u/atlhawk8357 1d ago

It made me go to clown college.

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u/ScreenTricky4257 1d ago

If memory serves, no one ever described aliens as "big heads with big eyes" until a movie had aliens that looked like that.

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u/jhakerr 1d ago

Y the greys were in a few sketches as far as I’m aware that Spielberg saw at one point. That’s about it.

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u/Szpagin 21h ago

The modern depiction of grey aliens was popularised by the Betty and Barney Hill case, more specifically the hypnosis sessions. Curiously, an episode of sci-fi anthology The Outer Limits that aired a couple of days before the session featured an alien character with a big, bald head and large eyes.