As we’ve talked about before, fictional people can affect our world in wonderful ways. However, we didn’t think that was good enough, so we went out and found 10 fictional people who have not only affected our world, but have tangible achievements us lesser mortals could only dream of. Things like …
10. Directing Films
Not every film can be a winner. For every Avengers, there will inevitably be a Fantastic Four. When directors fart out turds like these, sometimes they’ll decide to pull the movie equivalent of blaming it on the dog, and credit their film to Alan Smithee. Over the years, Smithee has been a director, a writer and even an actor, despite the obvious handicap of having no face. In fact, his IMDB profile is positively brimming with movie roles, writing credits, and even a couple of award nominations.
We should mention that, though sometimes used to avoid being associated with a bad film, the Smithee name is also a form of protest, such as when a director or writer feels that executive meddling has ruined their original vision of a given film. But hey, writing and film making aren’t for every fictional person; some of them just want to flaunt what they’ve got. If you don’t feel bad about your looks right now, you’re going to when you realize a fictional person has managed to …
9. Be Named One Of The Hottest People On Earth
Manti Te’o’s career is essentially the exact opposite of Chris Brown’s. It will likely never recover from the black eye that his fictional, totally made-up girlfriend gave it. The career of his made-up girlfriend, however, is soaring, and she probably has more magazine time and stuff written about her than Manny ever will.
Her career culminated in her being named one of Maxim’s hottest women. Number 69 in fact. A number which we absolutely do not find funny in any way, shape, or form. Man, we really feel sorry for Manny; even the girlfriend he made up is too hot for him. But hey, at least she’s doing something she loves, unlike Sherlock Holmes who just keeps …
8. Annoying People With Fan Mail
Sherlock Holmes is a worldwide phenomenon. He’s had books, songs, and even feature films starring Iron Man made about him. He’s also completely fictional, though the author who originally created him made a mistake when he gave him a physical, real world address.
221B Baker Street is the official recognized residence of Holmes. Today, this address is registered to the Sherlock Holmes museum, but prior to that, it was a huge pain in the ass for Abbey National, a British-based bank. When one of their offices moved to a place that just so happened to be 221B Baker street, they were immediately inundated with thousands of letters from Sherlock Holmes fans. Letters that were addressed to a man that was both fictional and lived several decades ago. So even if fans didn’t know he wasn’t real, they should have at least assumed he was dead already.
But hey, some fictional people are still alive and ticking, and are currently …
7. Building A Bigger Fan Base Than Most Celebrities
Twitter is freaking huge. It’s pretty much the go-to yardstick for measuring whether or not something is popular. The number of followers you have is directly linked to how powerful you are as a celebrity. It’s why people like Justin Bieber are considered some of the most powerful people on Earth. The sheer effect people with that many followers can have on things is staggering. When you can have 20,000 people retweet the word “thanks,” you have a level of power most could only imagine.
So it must be a real kick in the nuts for up-and-coming celebs to realize that there are hundreds of fictional people out there with thousands of followers or more. Notable examples include The Batman, who has almost half a million. A foul-mouthed version of the Queen of England has over a million. Finally, and most awesomely, Lord Voldemort himself who has over 2 freaking million followers. However, just having a lot of followers isn’t impressive any more, fictional folk have to prove that they’ve got moxie, which is why the most awesome fictional people spin there fame and …
6. Write A Book Based On Their Made-Up Life
Mrs. Stephen Fry is a Twitter account that claims to be the long suffering wife of British intellectual legend, Stephen Fry. Despite having a Twitter account with only a fraction of the followers that The Batman has, Mrs. Fry has parlayed her fame into two books, one of which is literally just a catalog of tweets. Yes, Mrs. Stephen Fry has more books than The Batman. Soak it in.
Of course, there are other people who have created an online identity separate from their own. But Mrs. Stephen Fry is on another level. She blogs, tweets, maintains a diary and in interviews remains absolutely steadfast, never once breaking character. We can’t be the only ones who are a little creeped out by the thought of a person walking around constantly pretending to be the wife of a gay man, constantly adding layers upon layers to their elaborate web of lies. But we don’t have time to discuss that. Not when we should be talking about the fake guy who …
5. Became One Of The Most Famous Photographers On Earth
Robert Kincaid is the character played by Clint Eastwood in The Bridges of Madison County. In the film, Kincaid is a photographer for National Geographic magazine and, although he spends most of his time getting intimate with Meryl Streep’s lady parts, he does supposedly take some boss photos of a bridge. As the film’s title would imply.
Filmgoers were so intrigued by this enigmatic, stone-faced photographer, that many of them contacted National Geographic directly with inquires about viewing Kincaid’s work, only to be told by weary receptionists that said work didn’t exist, because Kincaid was just a made-up character in a film. Which, oddly enough, didn’t deter anyone, as even when told point blank that Kincaid didn’t exist, people still asked to see his other work. We don’t have a joke here; the previous sentence is so densely stupid, any joke we write would just be caught in its gravity.
Taking photos is all well and good, but we feel like this list needs someone who …
4. Became A War Hero
George P. Burdell was the result of a bored student accidentally getting two college enrollment forms for Georgia Tech. Rather than send it back or throw it away, the student filled it in with the name George P. Burdell, and did twice as much work for their entire time at college, because that’s a totally normal thing to do. This student eventually earned George a Masters Degree. To this day, students still hand in work on George’s behalf. But earning a metric ton of degrees wasn’t enough for George, which is probably why he decided to help out during WW2.
And by help out, we mean be freaking everywhere. He was part of the flight crew on a B-17, served in Africa, and even attended Harvard as part of a Naval unit. We’re surprised history hasn’t been amended to state that George personally slapped Hitler to death.
Later in life George, earned even more degrees, and was even considered as the Time Person Of The Year. What have you done with your life lately? But don’t feel bad, you’ll always be a better person than the made up person who …
3. Duped The National Media
Kodee Kennings was supposed to be the 8-year-old daughter of an American soldier serving in Iraq. Unless you’ve suffered a massive head wound while reading this article, you can probably guess that Kodee didn’t exist. She was, in fact, the creation of one Jaimie Reynolds, who fabricated Kennings and her story to dupe, of all things, a student newspaper.
However, the story very quickly gained traction, eventually receiving worldwide attention. Reynolds, seemingly in an attempt to earn a place with air conditioning in Hell, even went as far as getting a young girl to play Kennings for public appearances, under the guise that she was playing Kennings in a movie.
Then, just to stick the knife in, Reynolds said that Kodee’s father had been killed and that there would be a memorial service, which is when her hoax fell apart. The resulting investigation by the newspaper involved actually won them an award, so not only did this fictional little girl fool mainstream media, she also helped people win an award. Wow, lying is awesome! Especially when it’s used for …
2. Making Hundreds Of People Paranoid And Inspiring A Drink
You’ve no doubt heard of a Tom Collins; it’s a drink old people order on TV. However, have you ever wondered who Tom Collins actually is? The short answer is, he doesn’t exist. The awesome answer is, he was part of a huge elaborate joke.
The story goes that back in 1874, a fairly substantial amount of people all collectively decided that they wanted to mess with random people on the street. To do this, they would casually approach a member of the public and mention that a mysterious stranger, identified only as Tom Collins, was talking all sorts of smack about them just around the corner. The hope was that this person would then go try to seek out this man to punch him in the face.
The hoax was so successful that Tom was mentioned in several news reports of the time, which hilariously decided to perpetuate the hoax by mentioning that this foul-mouthed stranger had been seen in various parts of America. Two years later, the Tom Collins cocktail was born, making him twice as notable as everyone reading this. Who knew being an ass to strangers could make you so famous; maybe Internet trolls are onto something.
Then again, Tom never …
1. Became A Pop Superstar
The one common theme with all of the people mentioned in this list is that none of them have faces, which is kind of expected when you don’t exist. Faces tend to be exclusively owned by people who can dunk a basketball or pat a dog, or so we thought. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Japanese superstar, Aimi Eguchi.
Whereas most fictional characters are only described, drawn, or played by actors in films, Aimi was introduced to the world in a video declaring that she was the newest member of AKB48, who are described as an “idol girl group” by Wikipedia. And as girls dressed like school girls by us, right now.
Almost immediately after this announcement, fans went crazy trying to discern who the hell Aimi was, only to be disappointed when it was revealed that she was little more than a composite of 6 other members of the group.
Though you’ve likely never heard of AKB48, they’re recognized as being one of the highest earning groups in music, making Aimi a double world record holder, as the band also holds the unique distinction of being the largest music group on Earth, with around 90 members.
So the next time you feel sad, just remember that a fictional Japanese school girl instantly gained legions of fans, joined an award-winning music group, and appeared in an adult magazine (because Japan) without ever working or contributing to the world in any way. If a fictional person can do something that awesome with no effort, imagine what you could do.