History Main / FifteenMinutesOfFame

-->-- '''Creator/AndyWarhol''', predicting Website/YouTube with a surprising degree of accuracy.

* A dark example in ''Film/ITonya''; after having her life thrown apart and career ended by the scandal that makes her a punchline, the media immediately moves onto the next celebrity scandal: the O.J. Simpson trial.

See ADayInTheLimelight for this trope in the meta-sense. Often leads to AcquiredSituationalNarcissism. Compare AFoolAndHisNewMoneyAreSoonParted, where it is money rather than popularity that comes and goes. Also compare HollywoodHypeMachine for this trope applied to show business.

* The movie ''Hero (1992)'' is about a man who rescues people from a crashed aircraft and gets 15 minutes of fame, only he doesn't want it. Through a case of MistakenIdentity another passenger is identified as the rescuer and claims credit and the media spotlight that the real Hero has shunned.

* This happens to Sally on ''[[Series/ThirdRockFromTheSun 3rd Rock From The Sun]]'' after she punches out [[Franchise/StarWars Mark Hamill]] in a restaurant. When Mary tells a jealous Dick that this is Sally's "fifteen minutes of fame", he interprets it literally and is maddened by her "fifteen minutes" lasting considerably longer than that. It ends after a few days, however, causing Sally to start acting like a WhiteDwarfStarlet.

* This happens to Sally on ''[[Series/ThirdRockFromTheSun 3rd Rock From The Sun]]'' after she punches out [[StarWars Mark Hamill]] in a restaurant. When Mary tells a jealous Dick that this is Sally's "fifteen minutes of fame", he interprets it literally and is maddened by her "fifteen minutes" lasting considerably longer than that. It ends after a few days, however, causing Sally to start acting like a WhiteDwarfStarlet.

* From Music/Lou Reed's ''Music/NewYork1989'' album:

** "Dime Store Mystery" is a tribute to Creator/AndyWarhol, the Trope Namer.

* Gladys Glover gets her fifteen in ''Film/ItShouldHappenToYou'' by posting her name on billboards all around New York City. But begins to hate it when she has to be in an “crooked” ad.
* A dark example in ''Film/ITonya''; after having her life thrown apart and career ended by the scandal that makes her a punchline, the media immediately moves onto the next celebrity scandal, the O.J. Simpson trial.
* In ''Film/EddieTheEagle'', Eddie realizes that his one minor Olympic jump has made him a brief novelty and a flash in the pan, and that the media has already moved on to the other big underdog story of the '88 Winter Olympics, the Jamaican bobsled team. Eddie then decides to push himself even harder with an even bigger jump.

* In ''Series/TheSecretWorldOfAlexMack'', Alex and one of her friends runs across a kid trapped under a giant pipe. Her friend tries to lift it and Alex uses her powers to make it seem like he does in order to save the kid. The kid turns out to be the governor's son- which promptly puts the spotlight (and, consequently, suspicion from the main villain) on this kid who somehow manages to lift a pipe that weighs hundreds of kilograms.
* In ''Series/{{Heroes}}'', after Claire rescues a man from a fire early on, she lets Jackie lie about being the one who did it (all anyone saw was that the rescuer was wearing a cheerleader uniform), since she herself is mortified about the existence of her superpowers.

** Peg becomes famous when she claims she saw Elvis, and found a shirt of Al's with a sweat-stain of the King. At first, Al passes this off as baloney, but eventually tries to cash in on her fame by selling blue suede shoes. Unfortunately, before he can, Elvis is spotted in Youngstown and Peg's fame is lost as quickly as it's gained.

* In ''Theatre/AnyoneCanWhistle'', the mayoress of a town and her cronies set up a "miracle" to attract pilgrims and boost the town's economy. Their plan works at first, but is complicated by a number of things. The mayoress gets it straightened out just in time to see all the pilgrims (and a couple of her cronies) rushing off to the next town over, where a new "miracle" has occurred.

** Apu and Manjula have octuplets, which briefly results in them getting copious baby supplies from well-wishes, but leaves them in a dreadful situation once the reporters move on to a story about a couple who has ''non''uplets. ([[HypocriticalHumor "Nine babies? That's barbaric!"]])
** Bart accidentally destroys a set while on the Krusty the Klown show, and reflexively says "[[ImplausibleDeniability I didn't do it]]" to the audience. They find it incredibly amusing, and he gets promoted from being Krusty's off-screen "gofer" to having an entire sketch on the show dedicated to him. He loves it, then gets sick of the repetition, then accepts it again - only for it to become a DiscreditedMeme in-universe.
* ''WesternAnimation/MenInBlack'': Agent X called for a TV crew from his home planet so they'd make him the star of their show. Being unable to get rid of them, Zed punished X by offering a chance to have K instead of X as the star, which they quickly accepted. As J pointed out, fame was so fickle X didn't even had fifteen minutes of it.
* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' had an episode with a similar theme to it, with the [[AnAesop Aesop]] being directed at Rainbow Dash. After she rescued a resident of Ponyville and the town cheered her for it, her ego started to grow. This prompted the rest of the Mane Six to teacher her a lesson in humility, dressing up as Mare Do Well.

* ''VideoGame/DeadRising2: Off the Record'' shows that Frank West was celebrated as a hero and even shook hands with the President after the events of the first game. He lived off the riches and fame he got until it dried up, and now people consider him a washed up D-lister. Saving the day again in this story presumably reignited his popularity.

See ADayInTheLimelight for this trope in the meta-sense. Often leads to AcquiredSituationalNarcissism. Compare AFoolAndHisNewMoneyAreSoonParted, where it is money rather than popularity that comes and goes.

* ''Series/MarriedWithChildren'': Jefferson made a commercial and his wife didn't like the attention he got from that, his friends tried to assure her it'd be just his fifteen minutes of fame.

* The aptly-named ''15 Minutes'' (a RobertDeNiro movie) had this as the motivation for one of the murderers.

Note that ''what'' activity, exactly, causes the FifteenMinutesOfFame differs depending on the portrayal. More dramatic works will use a somewhat plausible act of heroism to get the point across--say, rescuing someone from a fire, or from drowning. This will be done to get a point across via CharacterDevelopment. In comedy, the act will be something unusual but ultimately ridiculous. Like eating a thousand scoops of ice cream, or shaking the hand of a celebrity. Here, the point will often be to make jokes at the expense of the media.

->''"In the future, everyone will be [[TropeNamers world-famous for 15 minutes]]."''

->''In the future, everyone will be [[TropeNamers world-famous for 15 minutes]].''
-->--'''Creator/AndyWarhol''', predicting Website/YouTube with a surprising degree of accuracy.

->''They love you when you're on all the covers... When you're not, then they love another...''
-->--'''Music/MarilynManson''', "The Dope Show"