History UsefulNotes / Columbine

And before anybody asks: yes, there are UsefulNotes/ConspiracyTheories claiming that Harris and Klebold had been {{brainwashed}} by TheIlluminati, serving as patsies to advance draconian new gun control laws. Even if this were true--which it is not--the plan was a failure, since (as noted above) no serious gun legislation passed in the wake of the shooting.\\

In the aftermath of the massacre, an aura developed around Harris and Klebold, with many students on the bottom of the high school food chain calling them [[HeroicSacrifice heroes and martyrs]] who stood up to the [[JerkJock privileged jocks]] and [[TheBully bullies]] that ruled high schools across the nation. Trenchcoats became [[TheRedStapler a popular fashion accessory]] among such students, to which schools responded by banning such coats under their dress codes. A series of [[JackTheRipoff copycat shootings]] took place, carried out mostly by people who wanted to get revenge on their classmates and, like Harris and Klebold, leave their mark on the world. Even over two decades later, a quick search will find a surprisingly large number of tribute sites and videos for "Reb and [=VoDKa=]". The vast majority of these sites condemn the shooting but express the sentiment that Klebold and, to a lesser extent, Harris were kind, intelligent boys before suffering mental illness and (in Klebold's case) falling in with perhaps the worst influence possible, and that people should see this side of them as well. You know, with a healthy bit of [[TheInternetIsForPorn Rule 34]], too.\\

** The Estonian film ''Klass'' involves two boys being horrifically bullied until they come to school with guns and kill their tormentors.

On Tuesday, April 20, 1999, Eric David Harris (age 18) and Dylan Bennet Klebold (age 17) entered Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado and opened fire on their fellow students. By the end of their violent rampage, fifteen people were dead--twelve students, one teacher, and the killers themselves--and another 24 were injured. Following the shooting, everybody in America, from politicians to reporters, ran around like headless chickens in attempts to recount what had happened. This page is [[Wiki/TVTropes our]] attempt.

** The Gus Van Sant film ''Film/{{Elephant}}'' is probably the most well-publicized of these films.

* ''[[Fanfic/BlasterTheWigglytuffGuildMassacre Blaster: The Wigglytuff Guild Massacre]]'' is a VideoGame/PokemonMysteryDungeon fanfic with a simple premise, showing a human serial killer entering the PMD world as a female Meowstic, with her AK-47 being brought with her. Using it, she committs a mass shooting at the Wigglytuff Guild. The Columbine massacre is even mentioned at the beginning.

* [[Fanfic/BlasterTheWigglytuffGuildMassacre Blaster: The Wigglytuff Guild Massacre]] is a VideoGame/PokemonMysteryDungeon fanfic with a simple premise, showing a human serial killer entering the PMD world as a female Meowstic, with her AK-47 being brought with her. Using it, she committs a mass shooting at the Wigglytuff Guild. The Columbine massacre is even mentioned at the beginning.

* ''Website/TheOnion'''s take on the subject: Columbine Jocks Safely Resume Bullying. The article is now deleted.

Leaving the library at 11:42 AM, the killers then spent the next twenty minutes wandering the now-empty halls and cafeteria, shooting and throwing pipe bombs seemingly at random. They went back into the now-cleared library at 12:02 PM, and briefly exchanged fire with the policemen who had surrounded the school, with the killers failing to hit any targets. At approximately 12:08 PM, Harris [[AteHisGun fired his shotgun into his mouth]] and Klebold shot himself with his TEC-9 through his left temple. The last words of both killers was reported to be "One, two, three!"\\

The immediate aftermath of the massacre saw an untold number of [[UrbanLegends apocryphal events]] finding their way into the PopularHistory version of the shooting. MoralGuardians of all stripes used Columbine as an excuse to rant about whatever they felt was evil (or whatever would get them [[MoneyDearBoy the best book deals]]), everybody else was searching for answers, and American high schools came under the thrall of a number of Columbine-related concepts, some of which had never happened. The word "columbine", once the name of the state flower of Colorado, entered the vernacular as a euphemism for a school shooting, with many future school shooting plots making reference to "pulling a columbine" and a desire to "top" Harris and Klebold. Police forces, having witnessed firsthand how ineffective their traditional tactics were against spree killers who [[KillEmAll had no interest in taking hostages]], began developing new responses to such threats.\\

* The Music/{{Nightwish}} song "The Kinslayer" is about the massacre. [[http://nightwish.com/en/band/lyrics?id=25 The lyrics]] even quote real dialogue between the killers and their victims. The fifteen candles mentioned near the end refer to those who died on that day--four pink ones for the female victims, nine blue ones for the male victims, and two black ones for the killers themselves.

** He also sharply criticizes [[StrawmanNewsMedia the American media]] for doing nothing but broadcasting [[IfItBleedsItLeads sensationalized stories]] and ramping up [[YouCanPanicNow national paranoia and fear]] to the point where, rather than being a warning sign screaming for societal re-address, the massacre fuelled terror and finger-pointing by MoralGuardians that wouldn't be seen again until [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror 9/11 made terror into a war]].

The two boys were juvenile {{delinquents}} who had a history of trouble with the law. The year before the shooting, they had both been arrested for breaking into and stealing tools from a locked van. They made such a good impression on the police that, in exchange for having their criminal records made-clean, they would go through a program that included community service, psychiatric treatment, and, for {{Ha|irTriggerTemper}}rris, anger management classes. For showing good behavior and proving to their handlers that they were reformed and rehabilitated, they were discharged from the program a few months early. In the memoirs they recorded before the shooting, they bragged about how well they had [[ISurrenderSuckers fooled the police into thinking they had changed their ways]]. Following this program, the two would later made a video for a school project called ''[[http://www.acolumbinesite.com/hitmen.php Hitmen for Hire]]'' in which they played two {{Bully Hunter}}s, and Harris wrote a violent ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' FanFic for a creative writing project. Harris was also caught the year before making threats on his website to various students and teachers, and Klebold had a long history of both cursing at teachers and getting into frequent arguments with his manager at the pizza place he worked at.\\

But perhaps the most important effect of the massacre was the way that it shaped American popular culture for years to come. The most noticeable and immediate change was a trend of [[MediaWatchdog stiffer censorship]] against violence in movies and TV shows that lasted well into the TurnOfTheMillennium, and picked up further steam after the [[WardrobeMalfunction infamous]] UsefulNotes/SuperBowl XXXVIII halftime show. The teen {{horror}} genre, popularized by the likes of ''Film/Scream1996'', was all but dead by 2002 as depictions of young people being brutally murdered suddenly became [[DistancedFromCurrentEvents too unsettling]] for both the MoralGuardians and the target audiences of such media, and while ultraviolent horror movies did make a comeback soon after, the TorturePorn films of the '00s featured mostly adult protagonists. After a period of "too soon", school shootings became [[AxesAtSchool popular subject matter]] for RippedFromTheHeadlines programs, with the canonical example being the ''Series/LawAndOrder'' episode "School Daze", which was one of the first episodes of television to be advertised with such a slogan. The Columbine massacre, together with Woodstock '99 a few months later, arguably marked the beginning of the end for the viewpoints and culture of TheNineties, almost as much as the [[Film/GimmeShelter Altamont]] [[AllBikersAreHellsAngels disaster]] and the [[UsefulNotes/CharlesManson Manson Family murders]] are said to have killed TheSixties, with the time between April 20, 1999 and [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror September 11, 2001]] marking [[EndOfAnEra a period of transition]] between TheNineties and the TurnOfTheMillennium.

Although school shootings are a relatively--some would say distressingly--common occurrence in the United States (there had been one almost every year [[OlderThanTheyThink since 1966]])[[note]]That said, the worst-ever attack on a school in the US remains [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster the bombing of an elementary school]] in Bath Township, Michigan, which happened in 1927.[[/note]], the Columbine massacre quickly entered the halls of infamy for both its then-unprecedented scale and being the first major shooting spree to happen in the age of {{cell phone}}s and [[TwentyFourHourNewsNetworks the 24-hour, always-on-the-air news cycle]]. The massacre was covered on national news as it was happening, in a way that previous ones never were. Future school shootings, including those with far higher body counts like Virginia Tech (33 dead, 23 injured), Sandy Hook (28 dead, 2 injured), and Stoneman Douglas (17 dead, 17 injured), would always find themselves in Columbine's shadow. The {{irony}} of all this media attention is that [[ThanatosGambit it gave Harris and Klebold exactly what they wanted]]: their names [[FameThroughInfamy burned into the history books, whether or not the historians writing said books took favor towards it]].\\

One of the most popular targets of social backlash was [[TheNewRockAndRoll shock rock, metal, and other "Satanic", "unhealthy", or "violent" music]], with ShockRock musician and provocateur Music/MarilynManson becoming the lightning rod for those genres. In reality, Harris viewed Manson as a sellout and a poser, while Klebold was only a casual fan at best. According to Klebold's mother, he had a Marilyn Manson poster in his room, but when asked about it, he said he paid more attention to the music than the words. The facts did not stop people from claiming that Manson's music had somehow influenced the two to shoot up their school. While the massacre greatly increased his pop culture profile, it also did lasting damage to his mainstream success, which never again returned to the heights of ''Antichrist Superstar''. His interview with Creator/MichaelMoore about the shooting, which contains the quote found at the top of this page, may have been his SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome.\\

** Other lyrics that specifically mention the incident were censored in the song "I'm Back", even on the explicit version. Eminem would later repeat the censored lyric uncensored in his 2013 song "Rap God", as a bittersweet reminder that he isn't [[WhiteDwarfStarlet as big as he once was]].
** On ''The Marshall Mathers LP'''s opening track, "Kill You", Slim Shady takes responsibility for the massacre -- "''I'm triple platinum and tragedies happened in two states!''"

* On ''Music/TheMarshallMathersLP'', Music/{{Eminem}} defended both Manson and himself from the public backlash that erupted from Columbine with the single "The Way I Am". He claimed that middle-class suburbanites were hypocritical for only caring about violence once it started happening in their schools rather than [[InnerCitySchool the "ghetto" schools]]. Other lyrics that specifically mention the incident were censored in the song "I'm Back", even on the explicit version.

** ''Literature/{{Rage}}'', the first novel he published under the Richard Bachman PenName, was about a school shooting. King had already pulled it from circulation in 1997 after a shooting in Paducah, Kentucky, and Columbine only made him more comfortable with his decision. Shortly after Columbine, he said that, had he written it then, it would've raised a slew of red flags and people would've thought he was mentally ill.

* The 2016 Creator/{{Pureflix}} film ''Film/ImNotAshamed'' is based around Columbine victim Rachel Scott, including the apocryphal story about the killers asking her if she believed in God.

After realizing that their bombs were duds, the killers drew their firearms (a Hi-Point 995 9mm Carbine and [[SawedOffShotgun a Savage 67H sawed-off pump shotgun]] for Harris, and an [[GoodGunsBadGuns Intratec TEC-9 Mini]] and a Stevens 311D sawed-off double-barrel shotgun for Klebold) and headed to the school's west entrance. Here, they took off their trenchcoats, killed two students and a teacher, and wounded nine others as they marched their way towards the library. At 11:29, they arrived before the library, where the main body of the massacre took place. When they walked in, Harris told everybody wearing a white baseball cap -- a tradition amongst school athletes -- to stand up. Harris and Klebold would then kill ten people, and wound twelve others.\\

Various conservative Christian groups claimed the massacre was a result of the secularization of society, the [[ScienceIsBad teaching of evolution]] and sex education, and a lack of religion in public schools. People within these groups--not all, but many--were more inclined to accept initial accounts that said two of the victims, Cassie Bernall and Rachel Scott, had been killed because of their Christian faith. The stories go that the victims were asked if they believed in God, and when the two girls said "yes", Harris and Klebold killed them. Most authoritative investigations of the massacre concluded that such stories of how Bernall and Scott died were both [[UrbanLegends apocryphal]] and based on the experience of Valeen Schnurr, a survivor who confirmed that the killers asked her if she believed in God, but subsequently spared her. Despite this debunking, many religious groups still consider Bernall and Scott to be martyrs and symbols of faith in the face of death, and a number of Columbine-inspired works created since their deaths have portrayed their killers as specifically targeting Christians. At least two future spree killers, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umpqua_Community_College_shooting Umpqua Community College]] shooter Christopher Harper-Mercer and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Lake_shootings Red Lake High School]] shooter Jeff Weise, asked at least one of their victims if they believed in God, likely as a sick homage to this urban legend.\\

With so many claims about them coming from every direction, what we do know about the killers, and their motivations, deserves to be discussed. This is easier for Harris and Klebold than with most {{Spree Killer}}s--the two left behind a treasure trove of home videos, diaries, and other records that detailed their thought processes, attitudes, and plans for the massacre. This mountain of information is also largely responsible for the mystique that built up around the two and their crimes, especially in comparison to massacres with higher body counts. Psychologists, cultural critics, and the killers' fandom have spent years examining and picking apart Harris and Klebold's personal artifacts.\\

The two boys were juvenile {{delinquents}} who had a history of trouble with the law. The year before the shooting, they had both been arrested for breaking into and stealing tools from a locked van. They made such a good impression on the police that, in exchange for having their criminal records made-clean, they would go through a program that included community service, psychiatric treatment, and--for {{Ha|irTriggerTemper}}rris--anger management classes. For showing good behavior and proving to their handlers that they were reformed and rehabilitated, they were discharged from the program a few months early. In the memoirs they recorded before the shooting, they bragged about how well they had [[ISurrenderSuckers fooled the police into thinking they had changed their ways]]. Following this program, the two would later made a video for a school project called ''[[http://www.acolumbinesite.com/hitmen.php Hitmen for Hire]]'', in which they played two {{Bully Hunter}}s, and Harris wrote a violent ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' FanFic for a creative writing project. Harris was also caught the year before making threats on his website to various students and teachers, and Klebold had a long history of both cursing at teachers, and getting into frequent arguments with his manager at the pizza place he worked at.\\

Harris and Klebold were victims of bullying, including homophobic remarks, but they gave as good as they got: They often wrote in their notebooks about how they themselves had bullied underclassmen and "fags". (Ironically, Klebold identified as bisexual online, although he [[ButNotTooBi remained closeted]] in real life until he died.) In early reports, the two were said to be members of the "Trenchcoat Mafia," a clique of gamers and self-styled outcasts who all wore black trenchcoats. In reality, they were only friends with one member of the group, and most of the group's members had graduated before the massacre. The killers were also not quite the {{loners|AreFreaks}} that early reports described them as--they had a number of friends (friends who were unpopular, but friends nonetheless), and three days before the massacre, Klebold had taken female friend Robyn Anderson to the prom without incident. The duo were avid gamers, particularly of ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' (which Harris had even made [[GameMod mods]] for), and used the names "Reb" and "[=VoDKa=]" (Harris and Klebold, respectively) as both their online handles and their nicknames.\\

In regards to motive, the general consensus amongst investigators says the pair--particularly Harris--were [[StrawNihilist nothing short of nihilists]] who wanted to leave a mark on the world. Posthumously-conducted personality profiles of Harris stated that he was an anti-social, paranoid, [[ItsAllAboutMe narcissistic]] [[TheSociopath sociopath]] with unrestrained aggression; Harris's journal reveals an {{Ubermensch}} mindset, with frequent references to [[TheSocialDarwinist "natural selection"]] (a slogan which happened to adorn the shirt he wore during the massacre). One entry in Harris's journal is a discussion on how he wanted to put everyone into a super-''Doom'' game and see to it that only the strong survive.\\

It's also worth mentioning, both diaries made frequent references to the Oklahoma City bombing, the Waco Siege, and other past domestic and international disasters and massacres, noting how they desired to "outdo" these events. Their collective codename for the sequence of events was "NBK"--an acronymic reference to one of their favorite films, ''Film/NaturalBornKillers'', in which the main characters go on a killing spree and become celebrities in the process.\\

The location and timing of their massacre was no coincidence either, and it emphasized their lack of specific targets. If jocks or the school's social elite were the targets, then the killers would have presumably attacked a school sporting event or the prom, the latter of which happened to occur three days earlier. Eric's journal specifically mentions wanting a [[IfItBleedsItLeads "media-friendly killing"]] that would shock all of America in their everyday routine, not something [[HorrorDoesntSettleForSimpleTuesday tied to a particular event]]. No experience could be more universal than a normal day at school.

Harris and Klebold started planning their attack a year well in advance. Their plan was to build a number of large bombs, which they would plant in the cafeteria, then detonate them at lunch time to destroy the cafeteria and the library above it. (Had this come to pass, they would have killed hundreds of students in what would have been the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in American history--which is why they thought they would "top" Oklahoma City's death count of 168.) After the explosion, they would pick off survivors outside as they fled the burning school. Notes in their journals also contain thoughts about heading to Denver International Airport, [[HarsherInHindsight hijacking a plane]], and [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror crashing it into a building]] in UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity, as well as [[RunForTheBorder fleeing to Mexico]]. The date of the massacre--April 20--coincides with UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler's birthday, which led some to speculate that the killers were neo-Nazis. But most evidence suggests they had originally planned to attack the school on Monday, April 19, the anniversary of both the Oklahoma City bombing they hoped to top, and the conclusion of the fifty-day-long Waco Siege. They were forced to push it to the next day because a cache of ammunition they needed was delivered the night of the 19th. Others have speculated that they chose April 20 because it was the day that many of the school's [[TheStoner stoners]], whom they were generally apathetic towards, would be cutting class to get high ("4/20" and all).\\

Leaving the library at 11:42 AM, the killers then spent the next twenty minutes wandering the now-empty halls and cafeteria, shooting and throwing pipe bombs seemingly at random. They went back into the now-cleared library at 12:02 PM, and briefly exchanged fire with the policemen who had surrounded the school, with the killers failing to hit any targets. At approximately 12:08PM, Harris [[AteHisGun fired his shotgun into his mouth]] and Klebold shot himself with his TEC-9 through his left temple. The last words of both killers was reported to be "One, two, three!"\\

Although school shootings are a relatively--some would say distressingly--common occurrence in the United States (there had been one almost every year [[OlderThanTheyThink since 1966]])[[note]]Although, in a grim irony, the worst-ever attack on a school in the US remains [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster the bombing of an elementary school]] in Bath Township, Michigan, which happened in 1927.[[/note]], the Columbine massacre quickly entered the halls of infamy for both its then-unprecedented scale and being the first major shooting spree to happen in the age of {{cell phone}}s and [[TwentyFourHourNewsNetworks the 24-hour, always-on-the-air news cycle]]. The massacre was covered on national news as it was happening, in a way that previous ones never were. Future school shootings, including those with far higher body counts like Virginia Tech (33 dead, 23 injured), Sandy Hook (28 dead, 2 injured), and Stoneman Douglas (17 dead, 17 injured), would always find themselves in Columbine's shadow. The {{irony}} of all this media attention is that [[ThanatosGambit it gave Harris and Klebold exactly what they wanted]]: their names [[FameThroughInfamy burned into the history books, whether or not the historians writing said books took favor towards it]].\\

The immediate aftermath of the massacre saw an untold number of [[UrbanLegends apocryphal events]] finding their way into the PopularHistory version of the shooting. MoralGuardians of all stripes used Columbine as an excuse to rant about whatever they felt was evil (or whatever would get them [[MoneyDearBoy the best book deals]]), everybody else was searching for answers, and American high schools came under the thrall of a number of Columbine-related concepts, some of which had never happened. The word "columbine", once the name of the state flower of Colorado, entered the vernacular as a euphemism for a school shooting; many future school shooting plots made reference to "pulling a columbine" and a desire to "top" Harris and Klebold. Police forces, having witnessed firsthand how ineffective their traditional tactics were against spree killers who [[KillEmAll had no interest in taking hostages]], began developing new responses to such threats.\\

The image of the psychotic BadassLongcoat spree killer took off, not helped by the fact that films such as ''Film/TheMatrix'' having been released three weeks prior to the shooting. In reality, the killers had [[TheCoatsAreOff taken their trenchcoats off]] as soon as the shooting began; they wore ball caps, T-shirts, and jeans, leading many to believe that the coats were more about projecting a scary, iconic image to the victims and the media than anything. (If so, then it largely worked.) The change of clothes also succeeded in confusing early reports on how many shooters took part in the killing.\\

Thanks to the media's early rush to judgment, students who were [[LonersAreFreaks socially isolated or seen as "outcasts"]] suddenly became viewed as potential mass murderers in waiting, even though Harris and Klebold weren't outcasts or a particular target of bullying. A pair of heavily-publicized school shootings in the two years prior--one in Paducah, Kentucky and one in Springfield, Oregon--had killers who did fit the profile of the "lonely outcast", so the media automatically assumed that the Columbine killers were loners as well. And despite early reports of the spree being a vengeance killing with a particular targeting of jocks, Christians, and minorities, all facts point to [[AxeCrazy a random killing spree with no specific category of victim]]. (Of the aforementioned shootings, the only one in which the killer targeted a specific category of victim was [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heath_High_School_shooting the Kentucky shooting]], in which the killer fired upon a Christian prayer group.)\\

In particular, the {{goth}} subculture suffered a huge backlash because of the shooting; their outcast status and "dark" personas made everyone else suspicious. No evidence suggests either Klebold or Harris embraced the goth subculture, preferring a more militaristic vibe in their personal style. (And goths generally tend to be passive and pacifistic, with the old stereotype being that they are violent towards [[SelfHarm themselves]] rather than others.) In any case, numerous schools modified their dress codes to ban trenchcoats and band merchandise as well as restrict the amount of black clothing a student could wear.\\

[[MurderSimulators Violent video games]] became one of the most popular scapegoats for the massacre after the media learned that Harris and Klebold were fans of ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' and ''VideoGame/Wolfenstein3D''. Armchair psychologists claimed that the killers had become desensitized to, and obsessed with, realistic violence as a result of playing such games. Infamous attorney Jack Thompson entered the public consciousness as an anti-video game activist because of the massacre, which began a career trajectory that would ultimately lead to his disbarrment. Once people learned that Harris had made [[GameMod various levels]] for the game, the media almost immediately began claiming that those levels had been based on Columbine High School, with the demons replaced with students and teachers. Neither of those claims held true. The most elaborate of the so-called "Harris levels", titled "UAC Labs", can be downloaded [[http://www.doomworld.com/10years/bestwads/infamous.php at doomworld.com]] (third down the list) alongside commentary on the massacre and its effect on the gaming community.\\

The massacre also re-ignited the debate on [[UsefulNotes/AmericanGunPolitics gun control]], with each side repeating its talking points. Gun control advocates said the tragedy could have been averted had there been more restrictions on the purchase of firearms, noting that Harris and Klebold had acquired their weapons through (mostly) legal means, specifically counting on the lack of background checks at gun shows.[[note]]By "legal", we mean in the sense that they did not steal their guns or go through the black market to get them; instead, they had Klebold's friend, Robyn Anderson, purchase the guns for them (a straw purchase), which is a felony offense in the US. Ever see one of those "Don't Lie for the Other Guy" posters at gun stores? This is why.[[/note]] On the other side, gun rights advocates claimed that gun control--particularly the "gun-free" zones around schools--had left the students and teachers defenseless, which made the situation worse than it had to be. While Colorado would soon close the "gun show loophole" in-state, no significant federal gun control legislation was passed as a result of the shooting; five years later, the federal Assault Weapons Ban would expire without being renewed.\\

Various conservative Christian groups claimed the massacre was a result of the secularization of society, the [[ScienceIsBad teaching of evolution]] and sex education, and a lack of religion in public schools. People within these groups--not all, but many--were more inclined to accept initial accounts that said two of the victims, Cassie Bernall and Rachel Scott, had been killed because of their Christian faith. The stories go that the victims were asked if they believed in God; when the two girls said "yes", Harris and Klebold killed them. Most authoritative investigations of the massacre concluded that such stories of how Bernall and Scott died were both [[UrbanLegends apocryphal]] and based on the experience of Valeen Schnurr, a survivor who confirmed that the killers asked her if she believed in God. Despite this debunking, many religious groups still consider Bernall and Scott to be martyrs and symbols of faith in the face of death; a number of Columbine-inspired works created since their deaths have portrayed their killers as specifically targeting Christians. At least two future spree killers, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umpqua_Community_College_shooting Umpqua Community College]] shooter Christopher Harper-Mercer and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Lake_shootings Red Lake High School]] shooter Jeff Weise, asked at least one of their victims if they believed in God--likely as a sick homage to this urban legend.\\

One of the most popular targets of social backlash was [[TheNewRockAndRoll shock rock, metal, and other "Satanic", "unhealthy", or "violent" music]]; shock rock musician and provocateur Music/MarilynManson became the lightning rod for those genres. In reality, Harris viewed Manson as a sellout and a poser, while Klebold was only a casual fan at best. According to Klebold's mother, he had a Marilyn Manson poster in his room, but when asked about it, he said he paid more attention to the music than the words. The facts did not stop people from claiming that Manson's music had somehow influenced the two to shoot up their school. This ultimately became a case of NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity for Manson, as the massacre greatly increased his pop culture profile; his interview with Michael Moore about the shooting--which contains the quote found at the top of this page--may have been his SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome.\\

Thanks to the date of the massacre, rumors emerged that the killers were either [[ThoseWackyNazis neo-Nazis]] or had a fascination with UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler and [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany his regime]]. Supporters of this theory point to the date of the massacre--April 20, Hitler's birthday--and the fact that the killers were fans of Music/{{Rammstein}} and Music/{{KMFDM}}, two bands often hit with accusations of being MusicToInvadePolandTo. Robyn Anderson and Devon Adams, who were close friends with Klebold, denied that either of the boys were neo-Nazis. Additionally, Klebold's mother was Jewish (although his father was Lutheran), and videotapes recorded by both boys before the massacre referred to it being planned for a following Monday, not Tuesday. Klebold's mother [[http://forward.com/news/breaking-news/333862/columbine-shooter-had-jewish-roots-dreaded-passover-seder/ later described]] an incident a few weeks before the shooting where Dylan refused to attend the family's Passover seder, saying that Harris learning of Klebold being Jewish created a temporarily tense moment between them. Most likely, the killers considered the Nazi regime's [[TheSocialDarwinist social Darwinism]] and policy of genocide and extermination as philosophically appealing, but viewed [[MisanthropeSupreme all of humanity]], rather than any specific ethnic group, as "the enemy". Harris in particular had a distinct tendency for PuttingOnTheReich with Nazi salutes and quotations, if apparently mainly for [[{{Troll}} shock value]].\\

Harris had been taking the anti-depressants Luvox and, before that, Zoloft; this was a point of note for many people critical of the perceived over-prescription of psychiatric medication in today's society, particularly amongst teenagers. Later investigations discovered that Harris had been rejected for military service due to his use of these medications. People then speculated that this rejection either drove him over the edge or led to him going off his medication in an attempt to be accepted. In truth, Harris had not received news of his rejection by the time of the massacre, and both he and Klebold were planning the shooting long before the recruiter had cold-called him.\\

The media also tossed allegations of [[AdultsAreUseless neglectful parenting]] at the killers' parents, as people claimed that, had they been paying any attention to their kids, they could have stepped in and stopped it. In the so-called "Basement Tapes" recorded before the killing, Harris and Klebold absolved their parents of responsibility and joked at how adept they were at fooling them; this is especially true for Klebold, since all the weaponry and tools for the massacre were stored at Harris's house. At the very least, the killers wanted the shooting to be perceived as an act carried out by them and them alone.\\

Ultimately, one of the most popular culprits for the shootings was [[SocietyIsToBlame society in general]]. For the first time, there was genuine examination and criticism of the [[PopularityFoodChain social hierarchy]] of high school--particularly the high status that athletes enjoy within it. Schools began to crack down on bullying within their halls, and most people who were of school age soon after Columbine will most likely recall all of the assemblies calling for tolerance and respect for fellow classmates. The fact that we still have the PopularityFoodChain shows that such efforts were futile, and 1999 became ancient history for a new generation of high school students who were only in elementary school when the shooting took place. It took [[HereWeGoAgain another cycle]] of bullying-related suicides a decade later before people started asking these questions again.\\

In the aftermath of the massacre, an aura developed around Harris and Klebold, with many students on the bottom of the high school food chain calling them [[HeroicSacrifice heroes and martyrs]] who stood up to the [[JerkJock privileged jocks]] and [[TheBully bullies]] that ruled high schools across the nation. Trenchcoats became [[TheRedStapler a popular fashion accessory]] among such students; schools responded by banning such coats under their dress codes. A series of [[JackTheRipoff copycat shootings]] took place, carried out mostly by people who wanted to get revenge on their classmates and, like Harris and Klebold, leave their mark on the world. Even over two decades later, a quick search will find a surprisingly large number of tribute sites and videos for "Reb and [=VoDKa=]". The vast majority of these sites condemn the shooting but express the sentiment that Klebold and, to a lesser extent, Harris were kind, intelligent boys before suffering mental illness and (in Klebold's case) falling in with perhaps the worst influence possible, and that people should see this side of them as well. You know, with a healthy bit of [[TheInternetIsForPorn Rule 34]], too.\\

But perhaps the most important effect of the massacre was the way that it shaped American popular culture for years to come. The most noticeable and immediate change was a trend of [[MediaWatchdog stiffer censorship]] against violence in movies and TV shows that lasted into the early TurnOfTheMillennium. The teen {{horror}} genre, popularized by the likes of ''Film/Scream1996'', slowly died out as depictions of young people being brutally murdered suddenly became [[DistancedFromCurrentEvents too unsettling]] for both the MoralGuardians and the target audiences of such media. After a period of "too soon", school shootings became [[AxesAtSchool popular subject matter]] for RippedFromTheHeadlines programs, with the canonical example being the ''Series/LawAndOrder'' episode "School Daze", which was one of the first episodes of television to be advertised with such a slogan. The Columbine massacre, together with Woodstock '99 a few months later, arguably marked the beginning of the end for the viewpoints and culture of TheNineties, almost as much as the [[Film/GimmeShelter Altamont]] [[AllBikersAreHellsAngels disaster]] and the [[UsefulNotes/CharlesManson Manson Family murders]] are said to have killed TheSixties, with the time between April 20, 1999 and [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror September 11, 2001]] marking [[EndOfAnEra a period of transition]] between TheNineties and the TurnOfTheMillennium.

* The unpublished September 1999 issue of ''ComicBook/{{Hellblazer}}'', entitled "Shoot", depicted a study of a series of fictional school shootings. Since it was set to come out just five months after Columbine, one can imagine [[DistancedFromCurrentEvents why DC withheld it from publication]].
** The plot was basically [[spoiler:the idea that modern life is so banal and empty that many school shooting victims want to die, and the title was one of the victims giving an instruction to the killer]], so that might also have had something to do with it.

** ''Film/ZeroDay'' centres on the killers' preparations and home videos, presenting them in the style of a {{found footage film|s}}.

* The BlackComedy ExploitationFilm ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck!_The_Carbine_High_Massacre Duck! The Carbine High Massacre]]'', released exactly one year after Columbine, was the first film made about the killings. It is also, without any doubt, [[CrossesTheLineTwice the most]] [[BlackComedy tasteless]] of such films. The filmmakers were arrested and briefly imprisoned for bringing guns onto school grounds to shoot their movie--something that they proudly boasted about on the film's cover. What else would you expect from a film made by two guys from {{J|oisey}}ersey calling themselves William Hellfire and Joey Smack?

* Creator/TimBurton's 2005 adaptation of ''Film/CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory'' had Mike Teavee--now a video game addict, as opposed to a TV addict in the original--come from suburban Denver, Colorado. This was possibly a subtle reference to the Columbine massacre, particularly the role that [[UltraSuperDeathGoreFestChainsawer3000 violent video games]] [[MurderSimulators allegedly played]] in it.
** When introduced to Mike in this film, the first thing viewers see is the exterior of a house accompanied by the sound of bullets echoing through the air and flashes of light through the windows. The caption saying "Denver, Colorado" does not help matters here.
* ''Film/TheBoondockSaints'' had its American theatrical release limited to just five theaters partly as a result of the Columbine massacre.[[note]]The chief reason, however, was because of PrimaDonnaDirector Troy Duffy's gigantic ego, which led him to burn all his bridges with distributor Miramax.[[/note]] the film essentially become a DirectToVideo affair as a result.
* Being released just ten days after the massacre is often cited as the reason why the [[SlidingScaleOfComedyAndHorror horror-comedy]] film ''Film/IdleHands'' flopped at the box office. The film's plot involves a boy's hand being [[DemonicPossession possessed by a demon]], causing him to kill his parents and his best friends; the climax involves the hand going on a bloodthirsty rampage at the HighSchoolDance.

* ''Film/GingerSnaps'' was hit with Columbine-related controversy [[CanadaEh north of the border]]. News that Telefilm Canada was funding a "[[CowboyBebopAtHisComputer teen slasher flick]]"--and one with a {{goth}} protagonist, at that--right after both Columbine and a copycat shooting in Alberta caused a media frenzy, which forced Telefilm Canada to publicly defend their decision. In the end, all the clamor may have helped a small, independent horror film [[NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity gain wider recognition]]: It wound up becoming the fifth highest-grossing Canadian film that year.
* ''Film/{{Scream 3}}'' was heavily rewritten in the wake of Columbine in order to tone down the violence. According to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HaYYh-aIz0 this interview]] and other sources, the original script revolved around Sidney's return to Woodsboro with [[spoiler:Stu from the first film]] returning as the main killer.
** The effect of the massacre is also discussed within the film itself. One of the producers of the [[ShowWithinAShow Film Within a Film]] ''Stab 3'' notes how violence in cinema has become a touchy subject recently, with Columbine being the unstated-yet-obvious reason why.

* The protagonist, Celeste, in ''Film/VoxLux'', narrowly survives a massacre that somewhat resembles Columbine, in both the year (1999), notoriety, a trench coat wearing killer, and a conversation between a shooter and a young teenage girl who talks to the protagonist about God before being shot and surviving.

* Creator/StephenKing once referred to [[Literature/{{Carrie}} Carrie White]] as a DistaffCounterpart to the Columbine gunmen.
** His first novel, ''Literature/{{Rage}}'', was about a school shooting. King pulled it from circulation after Columbine and several other subsequent school shootings.

!!Media that is about, references, or was affected by the Columbine shooting by FunnyAneurysmMoment, HarsherInHindsight, and DistancedFromCurrentEvents:

The killers arrived at the school at 11:10 AM, and went to the cafeteria with the large duffel bags containing their bombs, each wired to detonate at 11:17 AM, shortly after the start of lunch. Planting and priming the bombs, the two rushed back to their cars to wait for them to detonate. [[WheresTheKaboom The bombs failed]] thanks in part to [[EpicFail their lack of finesse in the finer points of bomb-making.]][[note]]The "bombs" in question were really crudely-made amalgamations consisting of carbon dioxide canisters, galvanized pipe, and metal propane bottles that were to be primed via a lit match. The weekend prior to the massacre, the two reportedly spent upwards of a few hundred dollars at local hardware stores and gas stations, buying a good amount of their stock. The bombs set to detonate within the cafeteria specifically were made from one 20 lb. (9.1 kg) propane tank each, with a gallon gas can attached.[[/note]]. The only bomb that ended up detonating was a decoy that they had planted in a field near the school earlier that morning. Going off at 11:14, it caused a small fire, but since the explosion and subsequent fire occurred so close to the time the shooting began, it did nothing more than vaguely alert local authorities that ''something'' wasn't right.\\

In the aftermath of the massacre, an aura developed around Harris and Klebold, with many students on the bottom of the high school food chain calling them [[HeroicSacrifice heroes and martyrs]] who stood up to the [[JerkJock privileged jocks]] and [[TheBully bullies]] that ruled high schools across the nation. Trenchcoats became [[TheRedStapler a popular fashion accessory]] among such students; schools responded by banning such coats under their dress codes. A series of [[JackTheRipoff copycat shootings]] took place, carried out mostly by people who wanted to get revenge on their classmates and, like Harris and Klebold, leave their mark on the world. Even a decade and a half later, a quick search will find a surprisingly large number of tribute sites and videos for "Reb and [=VoDKa=]". The vast majority of these sites condemn the shooting but express the sentiment that Klebold and, to a lesser extent, Harris were kind, intelligent boys before suffering mental illness and (in Klebold's case) falling in with perhaps the worst influence possible, and that people should see this side of them as well. You know, with a healthy bit of [[TheInternetIsForPorn Rule 34]], too.\\

An even deadlier shooting two years later has a similar impact in Polly's world as Columbine did in reality. On the 14th of February 2001, [[spoiler:Christian Weston Chandler--yes, [[Webcomic/{{Sonichu}} Chris-Chan]]--shoots up his high school in Midlothian, Virginia, killing eighteen classmates (fourteen of them female) and three faculty members, one of whom was Creator/ShondaRhimes (her Hollywood career fizzled out in Polly's world and [[RichardNixonTheUsedCarSalesman she became an English teacher]]).]] A similar backlash against video game violence erupts when people learn that [[spoiler:Chandler]] was a huge fan of games like ''Arbiter of Sin 2'', an [[UltraSuperDeathGoreFestChainsawer3000 ultraviolent]] FirstPersonShooter about a soldier turned minion of {{Satan}} fighting the forces of Heaven that [[RatedMForMoney seemed like it was designed to cause outrage]]. Infamous Florida attorney Jack Thompson, joined by eight of the victims' families, sue both Creator/{{Nintendo}} and Creator/{{Sega}}. On an even more depressing note: Just as our world's Columbine massacre led to the widespread distrust of {{goth}}s and [[LonersAreFreaks other teen outcasts]], the "Valentine's Day Massacre" of Polly's world leads to the stigmatizing of people on the autism spectrum after early reports--later determined to be untrue--claim that [[spoiler:Chandler]] was autistic. The phrase "sperging out" enters the lexicon to describe going on a mass murder spree, similar to GoingPostal, while anti-vaccination activists claim that vaccines are responsible for turning [[spoiler:Chandler]] into a murderous psychopath.

** To this day, Pico remains the mascot of Newgrounds. Scroll halfway down on any Flash video on the site and you will see an option to rate the video. There he is! He has a whole holiday on the site devoted to him, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin "Pico Day"]], and even [[ExpandedUniverse a spinoff series]] with an evil twin known as "Piconjo" (an extremly pale Pico with a BFS and [[GagPenis a dong the size of a tree]], resulting in 99% of his apparitions culminating in a penis joke or something related), described by Newgrounds itself as the VideoGame/{{Wario|Land}} to Pico's [[Franchise/SuperMarioBros Mario]]. Pico, Piconjo, and Pico's best friends Darnell (a black PyroManiac and MadBomber kid) and Nene (a suicidal Chinese girl with [[KnifeNut quite an addiction to blades]] and a comical tendency to catch herpes due to her [[ReallyGetsAround loose morals]], who is often portrayed as Pico's LoveInterest) are only the main characters of the whole Picoverse, which includes gems such as the Uberkids (cloned "genetically perfect" kids who duel Pico and friends in a ''rock-paper-scissors RussianRoulette tournament in their first apparition''), the goth kids (which includes a neo-nazi one-eyed punk, a Ninja who loves fighting in the dark and aiming for the crotch, a medium/telekinesist and [[spoiler: the alien mentionned before]]. If RefugeInAudacity could have a mascot, it would likely be Pico.

* The fanfic ''Fanfic/HitList'' is a ''Franchise/LegendOfZelda'' HighSchoolAU where a group of students, led by Ganondorf, plant and detonate bombs around exits in the school and take hundreds of people hostage.

Leaving the library at 11:42 AM, the killers then spent the next twenty minutes wandering the now-empty halls and cafeteria, shooting and throwing pipe bombs seemingly at random. They went back into the now-cleared library at 12:02 PM, and briefly exchanged fire with the policemen who had surrounded the school, with the killers failing to hit any targets. At approximately 12:08PM, Harris [[AteHisGun fired his shotgun into his mouth]] and Klebold shot himself with his TEC-9 through his left temple.\\