The Red Stapler / Live-Action TV

#-E

• MTV's 16 and Pregnant has been linked to a small but noticeable decline in Teen Pregnancy rates during the time that it aired. The researchers who examined the link claimed that it was because the show made raising a baby at such a young age look like a harrowing, stressful job that would destroy a teenage girl's life. Oddly enough, it was also feared that the show would lead to the exact opposite effect, with teenage girls attempting to imitate the show's stars and get themselves pregnant, possibly just to get onto the show.
• Inverted by And Just Like That.... After a Peloton exercise bike was involved in an important character's death in the first episode, Peloton shares plummeted to the point that the company had to put out a press release saying that the character's death was due to an unhealthy lifestyle, not their bikes.
• Home perm kit sales skyrocketed in Britain after Ashes to Ashes (2008), which features a permed Keeley Hawes, began running.
• Atlanta caused sales of J.R. Crickets' "Lemon Pepper Wet" chicken wings to skyrocket after they were famously featured in the second episode. That episode even led J.R. Crickets to change their menu to accommodate the demand: the wings were previously called "Fester Wings", but the restaurant changed their name to "Lemon Pepper Wet" (which is what they're called in the show) because so many customers came in asking for them by that name.
• The "app" featured in The Big Bang Theory episode "The Weekend Vortex" inspired a multitude of real-life whip sound apps.
• The Bill and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit featured the 1983-1987 Mazda 626 in a few episodes (supplied by classic car rental companies), and as a result of that, it became quite popular on the used market during the '00s and '10s, with Mazda 626 LX and Mazda 626 coupe versions becoming unlikely cool cars and quite collectible.
• When the Kings Island roller coaster The Racer was featured on an episode of The Brady Bunch, not only did the ride's popularity increase but it caused a spike in interest and demand for roller coasters in general throughout the 1970s. As a result, the roller coaster industry experienced a renaissance, where it was previously at Rock Bottom since the Great Depression.
• Breaking Bad:
  • A fairly disturbing example was described when the show's creator, Vince Gilligan, was on The Colbert Report, which provides the main page quote:
    Colbert: Is there actually blue crystal meth? Did you make that up or is there actually blue crystal meth out there?
    Gilligan: There is now.
  • Apparently, the imitation Blue Sky has actually been making users ill (that is, even more than they'd normally be from using meth). The reason? Dealers adding random chemicals to their meth to get that color. The makers of the show deliberately used an incorrect formula so that they wouldn't teach viewers how to cook meth, but it didn't stop various enterprising dealers from trying to cash in.
  • The series drove up used car sales of the Pontiac Aztek, Walt's car. Ironically, the reason why the producers had Walter drive it in the first place was because it was an infamous dud of a crossover SUV whose ugly appearance was enough to burn it onto many lists of the worst cars ever made, and having Walter drive it was used to present him as a dorky suburban dad. However, since the whole plot of the show concerned Walter's Protagonist Journey to Villain that ended with him becoming a fearsome drug lord, the Aztek gained a whole new image as the kind of unassuming vehicle you'd drive if you were an actual gangster.
• After Fox aired the special Breaking the Magician's Code: Magic's Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed, there was a renewed interest in magic shows, which saw a spike in attendance. The flip side: magicians needing to constantly come up with new tricks to amaze the audience after new installments of the program revealed them.
• In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Surprise", Angel gives Buffy a claddagh ring for her 17th birthday, explaining the different meanings in how you wear it, with obvious romantic overtones. The scene caused a boost in popularity for claddagh rings.
• Charmed (1998):
  • The show's popularity led to many young people seeking out Wicca or looking to become witches themselves. Several covens reported getting calls and emails well into the 2010s from teenagers asking if they could become like the Halliwell sisters, and proprietors of neopagan supply shops found curious customers wanting to buy a Book of Shadows, an Athame, or other things they saw on the series, oblivious of what those terms actually meant to people who considered them religious items.
  • The triquetra symbol that decorates the Book of Shadows and is associated with the Charmed Ones saw an increase in mainstream popularity. Before Charmed, it had also been used on a Led Zeppelin album cover.
  • Replicas of the Book of Shadows likewise became highly sought after, and often sell for hundreds.
• Kyra Sedgwick's simple no-frills carry-all black tote in The Closer is now selling on QVC.
• Cobra Kai caused the sales of Johnny's beer of choice, Coors Banquet, to skyrocket.
• CSI:
  • After the show started airing, applications to be forensics investigators and applications for appropriate college majors skyrocketed. Almost every Las Vegas souvenir store carries CSI merchandise now (even though the actual Las Vegas police doesn't even call them CSIs). It also gave us The CSI Effect.
  • Invoked by Chris Rock in one of his stand-up routines, suggesting that many Americans would've murdered their spouses and buried them in the back yard, except for watching CSI: "Man, they're thorough! I'd better make up, they might catch my ass!"
  • A sad example. In Chile, a university created a three-year CSI course due to popular demand. It lasted for two years, until the students realized that there were no jobs for CSI technicians in Chile. They promptly tried to sue.
• Alton Brown has lamented people purchasing products they see on Cutthroat Kitchen, even when the products are being offered as sabotages that make cooking harder.
• Dancing with the Stars has resulted in increased demand for ballroom dance classes in the US as well.
• Daredevil (2015): The town of Windham, New York gained some notoriety after appearing in season 3 doubling for Karen Page's hometown of Fagan Corners, Vermont.
• Disney's Davy Crockett caused a wild sensation in the '50s, popularizing (among other things) coonskin caps as a must-have item among children. Coonskin caps were so popular, the raccoon almost became an endangered species because of it (this was before synthetics). As seen in Back to the Future.
• A Different World (the spin-off to The Cosby Show):
  • The show increased African-Americans' knowledge of and attendance to America's Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
  • The flip-up sunglasses for eyeglasses which the character Dwayne Wayne wore saw a surge in popularity when the show was at its most popular.
• Doctor Who:
  • Since the Fourth Doctor's iconic ridiculously-long scarf premiered in 1973, fans have wanted their own copies, often improvising knitting patterns or joining normal scarves end-to-end. Eventually, the BBC published an official knitting pattern, which was sent to fans by request and published in an official Doctor Who pattern book. Licensed Doctor Who scarves of varying accuracy have also been made from time to time over the generations. Later, after the show's revival in the 2000s, demand for the scarf resurged (even though Tom Baker wasn't in the reboot, at least not until the 50th anniversary special), and BBC licensed one — but fans decried its paltry six-foot length. The next year, BBC licensed a 12-foot one to satisfy the fans.
  • The Tenth Doctor's fondness for Converse All-Stars helped contribute to their surge in popularity around that time, as well as their being paired with a suit.
  • Matt Smith's tenure as the Eleventh Doctor was so hyped up, interest in Harris Tweeds rose because he wore one as the Doctor, even before he properly debuted on the show.
  • The Eleventh Doctor would often repeat the mantra that Bow Ties Are Cool. Turns out he's right.
  • Stetson hats◊ also became popular after the Eleventh Doctor wore one.
  • At the beginning of "Before the Flood", the Twelfth Doctor talks directly to the viewing audience, describing a Bootstrap Paradox and adding "Google it." Google searches for "Bootstrap Paradox" spiked following that episode.
  • Once the Twelfth Doctor debuted his new costume in "The Magician's Apprentice", millions of fans immediately wanted the graphic t-shirt that he wears under his suit jacket. As soon as it was positively identified — as a Label Lab "Misty Mountain" design — fans dog-piled on House of Fraser, the online apparel store that sold it. It took less than a month for all of the Misty Mountain shirts to sell out.
  • The Thirteenth Doctor's scarf introduced in "Resolution" was sold out after its store page was found.
• The Dukes of Hazzard:
  • It revitalized popularity in the late-1960s model Dodge Charger. Dodge produced around 45,000 for 1970, so while they are not scarce, the popularity has driven the price higher than the equivalent Plymouth model, especially given how many they wrecked while shooting the show's car stunts.
  • The Ms. Fanservice character Daisy Duke also popularized short shorts, particularly tight jeans cut off just below the buttocks, which came to be named after the character.
• Emergency! is popularly thought to have been the best advertisement about the merits of the paramedic program ever. While that may never be confirmed, it's definitely true that during the show's run (1972-1978), paramedics went from a new and unproven concept to a well-established fact across the United States, with more than half the population living within range of a paramedic unit. It's also certain that the series inspired many people to become paramedics and/or firefighters.
• Applications to ER medical residency programs skyrocketed after ER premiered.

F-J

• Everyone can thank Steve Urkel from Family Matters for popularizing the tiny and quite strange BMW Isetta bubble car outside Western Europe.
• Farscape: During Harvey's first episode he dons a Hawaiian-style shirt from Australian clothing company Mambo. The shirt was an instant hit with fans of the show who bought up as many of them as they could get their hands on. These fans would then go on to hold meet-ups at conventions where they all wore their Mambo shirts together.
• The home renovation show Fixer Upper has been credited with popularizing "farmhouse chic" interior design in the late 2010s, as well as bringing a wave of tourism to Waco, Texas, the hometown of the show's creators and stars Chip and Joanna Gaines.
• Season two of Fleabag was credited with boosting sales of The Priest's drink of choice, Marks & Spencer canned gin and tonic. Additionally, the black jumpsuit worn by Fleabag also sold out after the show aired.
• The British popularity of the Danish TV series Forbrydelsen led to a surge in demand for the Faroese jumpers worn by the main character, Sarah Lund.
• Friends:
  • The "Rachel" cut, the flat, straight, square-layered hairstyle worn by Jennifer Aniston in the first couple of seasons of Friends, was so popular with women that it came to be associated with The '90s the same way that frizzy, voluminous hair defined the preceding decade. The funny thing is that this was unintentional. The stylist originally wanted Aniston to have even-length hair, but wasn't sober and accidentally cut off a bit too much on the front right; instead of matching all the rest of her hair to it, he just cut off a bit on the other side to make it symmetrical. In an interview, Aniston claimed that she hated the haircut and didn't get what the "big deal" was.
  • The success of Starbucks in the UK when it opened its first branches there in the '90s owed a lot to another US import — prestige American comedies that played in an extremely popular Friday night block. The biggest hit was, of course, Friends, though Frasier picked up the slightly older/middle class/sophisticated demographic. A population was eager to hang out in Central Perk (with which Starbucks shared its casual and comfortable vibe) and/or Cafe Nervosa (with which it shared its Seattle roots).
• Game of Thrones:
  • The show heavily boosted tourism in all shooting locations, particularly Spain, Croatia, and Northern Ireland.
  • As for the prequel series House of the Dragon, a promotional interview snippet of Emma D'Arcy for the series had them naming a Negroni Sbagliato their drink of choice. It turned the cocktail into a social media sensation, prompting everyone from TikTokers to daytime Talk Show hosts to try the beverage.
• Gentleman Jack, a drama about real-life 19th-century lesbian Anne Lister, was filmed at her home, Shibden Hall in Yorkshire, now a public historic site, and led to visitor numbers to the house tripling, forcing opening hours to be extended.
• Glee:
  • Not only was the show's soundtrack of covers performed by the cast a cash cow, but whenever the show featured a song that was either obscure or hadn't been big in several years, the publicity caused sales for the original song to go up hand-in-hand with the cover.
  • During its run, it also created a mainstream interest in show choir.

• One of the most famous examples: When J.J. went out and got a library card in an episode of Good Times, it inspired many young African-Americans to do the same.
• When fans of Gossip Girl learned where Chuck's trademark hideous scarf from season one could be purchased, it sold out in a matter of days.
• The Great British Bake Off caused a noticeable surge in demand for home baking ingredients and other paraphernalia. The presenters were much happier about it than Alton Brown.
• Jersey Shore quickly became notorious for the behavior of its stars, which included sex, swearing, partying, and acting like Lower-Class Louts in general. As a result, it sparked Urban Legends claiming that brands went out of their way to not be featured on the show, lest they fall on the receiving end of an inversion of this trope.
  • One claims that the luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton sent Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi free merchandise from their competitor Gucci as an "unbranding" exercise, one that was meant to make Gucci look trashy and déclassé by associating it with one of the show's most infamous cast members. Snooki has denied this, however, saying that she wished she got free luxury clothes and handbags.
  • Another one claims that Abercrombie & Fitch paid Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino to wear anything but their clothing on the show, again to prevent it from being associated with him.
• Following the release of Jessica Jones (2015) season 2, Google searches for “octopus DNA” spiked in response to a variety of various actual facts about octopuses that an incarcerated asylum patient rattles off to Jessica. Even the show's Twitter account lampshaded it:
  "Haven’t seen this much Octopus DNA since finding The Whizzer’s stash of tentacle porn."

K-P

• Inversion: Australian TV show Kath & Kim decreased the popularity of chardonnay in Australia (which is a shame, because Australia really does make some good chardonnay). Having it drunk by two of the least classy middle-class women in all of Melbourne, one of whom pronounces it "card-donnay", might have something to do with it.
  Kim: Card-onnay, card-onnay, you pack of chunts!!
• Played with for the Canadian show Kim's Convenience. The interior parts of the titular store are filmed on a sound stage, while the exteriors are shot at a real convenience store in Toronto called "Mimi's Variety", which was redressed into Kim's, including new signage and a mural on an exterior wall. The store has kept the redressed Kim's signage, making it appear to be the same, but has not officially changed its name.
• Due to the run of the original Knight Rider, there was an increase in demand for third-generation (1982-92) Pontiac Firebird Trans Ams, especially ones with all the gadgets KITT possessed, like the red nose-mounted scanner lights and control yoke instead of a regular steering wheel. Unfortunately, vehicle regulations and traffic laws meant most of those flashy lights and such were either illegal or not allowed on non-emergency vehicles. Eventually, the show stopped referring to the car as a Trans Am altogether, so that people would stop showing up at car lots and requesting options they couldn't get. You can, however, buy a Knight Rider-themed dashboard GPS that speaks to you in KITT's voice.
• When the game show Legends of the Hidden Temple was on Nickelodeon, everybody wanted one of the team shirts the contestants wore, and there were a few playground arguments over which of the six teams was the coolest. Since they were a prop and only available to the actual contestants, many kids were disappointed. Over 15 years and a Nostalgia Filter later, the demand is still so high, they keep a couple of Internet companies in business. Like this one.
• After the Lost episode "Numbers" debuted, there was a marked rise in purchases of lottery tickets using the numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42. And indeed, there have been several reports of people winning large amounts of the money by playing those numbers and winning from some or most of the numbers. A reported jackpot with all of the Lost numbers has, to date, never been reported.
• Mad Men
  • The show created a renewed wave of '60s nostalgia, especially in fashion.
  • Don Draper's signature Old Fashioned was long forgotten when the show aired and has seen a comeback, along with the Manhattan, synergizing with the more general renewal of interest in traditional cocktails that started around the mid-to-late 2000s. Hilarity generally ensues when younger fans used to lighter concoctions try these rather strong cocktails for the first time, as an Old Fashioned is mostly whiskey.
• Miami Vice: If Sonny Crockett wore it or drove it, it would become wildly popular.
  • The T-shirt and suit look became popular enough for a few years that it's been used as shorthand for The '80s.
  • Crockett's Perma-Stubble inspired a specialized razor called the Miami Device, and later the "stubble" setting on electronic razors.
  • The SCARAB he drives in the second season became popular enough that Wellcraft released an exact replica.
  • His Bren Ten pistol became so popular, the company that produced it couldn't keep up with the demand and went bankrupt in 1986.
  • Miami itself became a major tourist destination, which contributed to the revitalization of the area.
• In Spain, when The Ministry of Time was broadcast, there were noted spikes in searches for the historical characters that made an appearance in each episode.
• Mr. Bean caused a spike in demand for antique Mini cars in several countries in the late 90s due to its title character driving a BMC Mini.
• Tickets to The Muppet Show were requested by fans during the show's original broadcast run. People actually believed it really was taped live in a theater because of the laughter, applause, and camera shots of the theater's audience.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000:
  • It was known for providing the Colbert Bump to many of the films it riffed, which would later cause problems because the movies would become popular enough to be too expensive to redistribute.
  • The show was also known to cause increased demand of things in the movies it featured. Case in point: The "hero" of Time Chasers wears a Castleton State College T-shirt through most of the movie. That shirt got popular enough to be demanded in real life (and the film got itself a DVD release). Eerily enough, one of Crow's riffs during the episode was "remember when everyone got the Nick Miller haircut and started wearing Castleton T-shirts?"
  • Fans of the show often try to build their own bots at home. Unfortunately, most of the assorted household goods and novelty toys used to build the bots are no longer manufactured and go for exorbitant prices on the secondary market. If you've ever hit a dead end looking for, or been too short on cash to purchase, a Schwartz Plastics Co. soap dish or Money Lover's Barrel Bank, it's because fans have been using them for Crow's eye socket and Tom Servo's torso, respectively. (The show itself eventually started using custom-molded replicas when the show's characters needed to be rebuilt, rather than try and keep the original items in stock.)
• You can now buy Dunder Mifflin brand paper (from The Office) from Quill.com (owned by the store franchise Staples—who, funnily enough, are repeatedly mentioned as Dunder Mifflin's main competition).
• At the height of its popularity in The '90s, Power Rangers got a lot of youngsters fixated on martial arts, although it was less of the "take classes, study disciplines, and earn belts" sort than it was the "yell 'hi-yah!' and kick your cousin in the groin" variety.

Q-S

• The Queen's Gambit led to huge sales of chess boards and books on chess techniques, as well as raising membership in chess clubs.
• In Korea, the series The Return of Superman features celebrity fathers spending time with their children. Some of the featured fathers have triplets and twins, leading to a spike in couples seeking fertility treatments. It became enough of an issue that the producers had a regular family with five children (one set of triplets followed by a set of twins) come on to discuss the sheer expense of taking care of so many small children at once to try and dissuade fans. The sight of celebrities getting to spend time with their children resulted in enough resentment from everyday Koreans (who have some of the longest working hours in the world) that the government actually forced employers to give employees more time off.
• RuPaul's Drag Race popularlized drag performance in the mainstream public, though the drag community is split on whether or not that's a good thing. On one hand, the show is praised for normalizing gender-nonconformity in young people and for increasing foot traffic into gay bars, either for Drag Race viewing parties or for their own drag shows. On the other hand, many drag queens and fans that have been into the scene for decades miss the days when it was still underground and not inextricably tied to a reality show. People whose first exposure to drag was through the show might not realize that most local queens only perform as a hobby and might not have the money or skills to look as polished as the queens on TV (and many don't aspire for that anyway). Additionally, fans of Drag Race who go to a real drag show expecting things to be like what they've seen on TV are likely to find themselves disappointed. Even most contestants urge their fans to learn more about drag beyond Drag Race and to support/respect their local queens. As Season 5 winner Jinkx Monsoon put it, "Watching RuPaul's Drag Race doesn't make you an expert on drag, it makes you a fan of a TV show."
• Tommy Hilfiger's popularity in the hip-hop scene can be traced to Snoop Dogg wearing a Tommy shirt during his Saturday Night Live performance.
• Schitt's Creek features a main character, David Rose, opening up an upscale store in a rural town that features locally sourced beauty products. The show then partnered with a similar store in upstate New York to release a line of beauty products under the name Rose Apothecary.
• Ernie's Signature Song "Rubber Duckie" from Sesame Street helped make the squeaky yellow ducks a common bathtime toy among children. This was a revival, as the rubber duck has enjoyed periods of popularity on and off since its invention in the 1890s.
• The title character's coat in Sherlock was a discontinued, limited edition item (a fact mentioned in dialogue in the series). There were so many demands for it after the show aired that Belstaff brought it back.
• The TV miniseries adaptation of James Clavell's Shogun launched the American fascination with Japanese cuisine during The '80s. In the late '90s, direct-to-video anime would take up that baton.
• In Germany, there was a notable increase in the number of young people wanting to go into gastronomy and hotel management after jobs in these fields were disproportionately frequently given to Soap Opera characters.
• Squid Game: Dalgona, a Korean honeycomb candy which was featured in the third episode, has had increased sales in vendors and candy stores in South Korea as well as increased recipe searches by international audiences due to how successful the show has been.
• Star Trek: The Original Series showcased a lot of space-age technology and coolness that people wanted to have for themselves:
  • The managers of a fancy hotel once contacted the producers asking them what they did to get the fancy automatic doors to work right. They were nonplussed to hear that the doors on the Enterprise worked by having a guy pull on a rope. When technology marched on, automatic doors would wind up working exactly like they did on Star Trek.
  • James Doohan's Montgomery Scott character has inspired so many to become engineers that he received an honorary degree in Engineering from one such school. Similarly, Dr. McCoy is said to have encouraged many fans to pursue careers in medicine. And many black women who went into STEM and space exploration fields did so because of Nichelle Nichols.
  • As soon as it was technically possible, cell phones were produced to have a clamshell case design because Star Trek communicators popularized such a look. In fact, you can even get phones that look exactly like a communicator.
  • Uhura's headset looks very much like the Bluetooth headsets of today. You can, of course, now purchase officially-licensed exact replicas that actually work as Bluetooth earpieces.
  • The starship Enterprise herself inspired NASA to name a training shuttle Enterprise (though the effect is lessened when one learns that shuttle never went into space). Weirdly, in later Star Trek series, that shuttle is called out as the namesake for the in-universe Enterprise. Trekkie Richard Branson named his prototype Virgin Galactic (low-orbit) spaceship Enterprise as well. And he named the second one Voyager.
• Ford Motor Company marketed a Starsky & Hutch version of its Torino during the height of the series' popularity, white stripe and all.
• Stranger Things:
  • Sales of Eggo frozen waffles went up after they became Eleven's Trademark Favorite Food.
  • The show has also been credited with reviving interest in Dungeons & Dragons, which had fallen into Mainstream Obscurity after its '70s/'80s heyday outside geek circles.
  • Millie Bobby Brown shaving her head to play Eleven is, together with Charlize Theron doing the same for Mad Max: Fury Road, often credited with breaking down the taboos around women shaving their heads. Ironically, Eleven's buzzcut was meant to show how the Government Conspiracy holding her captive had dehumanized and defeminized her and treated her as a weapon rather than a person, which comes up again in season four when Eleven is horrified to find that, after she agrees to undergo a procedure to regain her Psychic Powers, her head has been shaved again. However, Brown made it look badass even at her young age, quickly causing Eleven to become one of the show's Breakout Characters.
  • When season two featured Dustin wearing a vintage dinosaur hoodie from the Science Museum of Minnesota, viral demand skyrocketed and official reprints of the shirt produced by the museum would be enough of a smash hit to crash their website on the first day, and the museum reported lines out the door at the on-site gift shop. Ironically, because the museum no longer had the patterns for the original sweatshirt, they actually turned to the one used in the show to recreate them.
  • In 2022, Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill", a minor hit of hers in the US, albeit a well-loved one, was prominently featured in a pivotal moment in season four that gave it a massive resurgence in popularity, hitting number one on the iTunes charts and having a major increase in views on YouTube (where almost every single comment is talking about the show). Owing to Stranger Things, "Running Up That Hill" was reissued and charted higher than it ever had before: #3 in US, improving on its original #30 peak, and #1 in Bush's native UK.
• Supergirl (2015) caused an upswing in the popularity of the dresses worn by Andrea Rojas (portrayed by Julie Gonzalo) when she appeared from Season 5 onwards, and people tried to buy the Alternate Company Equivalent produced by Marks & Spencer in the United Kingdom.
• Supernatural revived interest in the fourth-generation Chevrolet Impala, especially four-door hardtop models, thanks to it being Sam and Dean Winchester's personal vehicle. Before, they were considered fairly anonymous '60s family sedans and went for about $500, but now, a fully-restored model (especially one in black like "Baby") can run anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000.

T-Z

• A few years after it started airing in 1979 This Old House got a lot of people willing to build or renovate a home of their own for the first time, or even just to finally tackle a long-put-off home improvement project.
• For a show which spends most of its time talking about unaffordable supercars, Top Gear has a reputation as being able to destroy an everyday car's sales with a single negative word. Manufacturers will occasionally refuse to provide a car for the show to review, fearing they'll hate it, but this tends to rile the presenters more, and they'll often name and shame such cars before going on to review them "covertly" anyway. The presenters would add that, in spite of that, too many of the cars they've trashed have gone on to sell well anyway.
  • Due to Ferrari's reluctance to allow Top Gear to obtain an Enzo Ferrari for testing and review, Jeremy Clarkson recruited Nick Mason of Pink Floyd to allow the show to use his Enzo for review and testing. Mason agreed, under the stipulation that they "promote" his book, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd.
  • For their American Supercars special, Dodge refused to loan them a Challenger because they'd given so many of their other cars bad reviews. So Richard Hammond bought one — and he loved it.
  • The presenters spent one series mocking the forthcoming Dacia Sandero before it had even been finished. By the start of the next series, Renault had delayed the UK release of not only the model, but the whole brand (while the official reason was because of the greater-than-anticipated demand in Continental Europe, one can't help but wonder why Renault would release that statement when they did). But Season 14 has James May drive the Sandero in Romania, and he liked it so much that he wanted to take it back to the U.K. with him (before a lorry driver "accidentally" backed into it, much to Clarkson and Hammond's amusement). That may have been enough to give Dacia a respectable showing in the UK. May would later take a Sandero with him on the Ukraine trip, and it would be the only car of the three not to run out of gas before reaching the border.
  • Top Gear's power lap certainly gives lower-profile sports car companies a chance to get some recognition: the Gumpert Apollo was best known for several years as the "fastest car round the Top Gear track." Sometimes, though, the opposite is true: Clarkson royally took apart the reliability and safety of the Caparo T1.
  • When testing luxury cars in Albania, Bentley refused to provide a car. Clarkson took a beaten-up Yugo instead, all the while pretending it was "really" a Bentley.
  • The real red stapler, though, is the military. Every challenge featuring the military provides the British armed forces with a chance to show off their state-of-the-art military hardware to millions of prime-time (often male, young adult) viewers. Top Gear is one of the best recruiting ads out on the BBC, second only to James Bond.
• The popularity of Whose Line Is It Anyway? in the late 1990s and early 2000s heralded a massive increase in the number of participants in improv theater courses for a short time. Many improv games original to the show have since become common tools used in improv classes as well as common features in improv performances.
• The X-Files:
  • The massive popularity of the show's early seasons had viewers clamoring for Mulder's UFO-themed office poster. However, the image on the poster was created (and owned) by the show's production team, and couldn't legally be mass produced. Eventually, the show's merchandising department remedied the problem by redesigning the poster used in the show itself, adding the iconic "I Want to Believe" catchphrase to a (similar) pre-existing image of a UFO.
  • The show also greatly increased the interest in UFOlogy and probably inspired many young conspiracy theorists.

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