Real-Life Crimes Inspired By Movies and TV Shows

Scream

Scream

Crime is a common theme in movies and TV shows and unoriginal criminals often take inspiration from these sources instead of coming up with their own ideas. Check out this list of crimes inspired by those on the big and small screen, some truly terrifying! Can you guess what movie inspired the most real life copycat crimes?
Though it did inspire a few real life crimes, the answer isn't Scream. Perhaps the most famous Scream copycat murder was that of 15 year old Alisson Cambier of Belgium who was murdered by 24 year old Thierry Jaradin after she turned down his advances. After she turned him down, he left the room, put on a Ghostface mask and returned with two large knives which he used to stab her 30 times. He then called police and confessed to the crime saying he had used the film Scream as inspiration for the murder. 

The Town

The Town

Ben Affleck's movie The Town about a gang of bank robbers inspired quite a few real life crimes as well. Several different people used different aspects of the movie for their real crimes such as cutting the power to the target, using miner's helmets and cleaning up with bleach, later admitting they were inspired by the movie. Other robbers even wore masks like in the movie including one who wore a nun costume.
Project X

Project X

Apparently a lot of teens missed the point that the 2012 movie Project X about an out of control party was a comedy and took it way too seriously. Instead of laughing, their reaction was "we have to do that". So copycat parties began springing up across the country. The problem is these parties are huge, involving sometimes thousands of people and leading to arrests for crimes such as possession of drugs and alcohol and vandalism. Unfortunately things have gone even further ending in some teens being wounded by stray gunfire, sometimes fatally. Even Warner Bros. has stepped in basically telling kids to stop it, it's just a movie.
Fight Club

Fight Club

After the movie Fight Club hit the big screen in 1999, real life fight clubs began to pop up all over full of men beating the crap out of each other. But at least one guy who was a huge fan of both the book and movie took things even further, by trying to blow up a local Starbucks, though he only managed to blow up a bench and minorly injure some bystanders with his homemade bomb made out of a plastic bottle and fireworks. He then made his real mistake by bragging about the event to his fellow fight clubbers. Needless to say he was arrested for the crime and sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison.
Saw

Saw

The crimes in Saw are so crazy they were bound to inspire some real life copycats eventually. Fortunately they didn't go quite like the movie. The first two boys to plan a Saw like crime, a 14 and 15 year old pair of friends, were caught by one of their mothers before they could actually hatch the plan to kidnap, torture and murder a police officer and two middle school girls.
The other crime actually took place but went way further than the teen girls involved planned. They only meant to prank call a 52 year old woman and tell her that her friend was hidden inside her home and that toxic gas was going to be released. The snag in their plan was that the woman was at a funeral when she received the call so the news was a little more than she could handle and she had a stroke. The girls were charged with phone harassment and the woman luckily survived.
Dexter

Dexter

In 2009, a 17 year old brutally strangled his own 10 year old brother with his bare hands. Before the crime, he had been reading a lot about serial killers and was watching a lot of Dexter. He even declared while being interrogated by police that he feels just like Dexter.
Interview With The Vampire

Interview With The Vampire

The night that Daniel Sterling and his girlfriend Lisa Stellwagen saw Interview With The Vampire she was awoken at about 3am to Daniel above her saying "I'm going to kill you and drink your blood." She apparently thought he was just joking around because she went back to sleep. But later that day, he did indeed stab her 7 times and sucked blood from the wounds, later admitting that he was influenced by the movie. She miraculously survived the attack and he was convicted of attempted first degree murder.

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