It’s always fascinating to find out where the architects of pop culture get their ideas from. These may surprise you.
VULCAN HAND SALUTE. Leonard Nimoy invented this for Mr. Spock during the filming of a Star Trek episode. The gesture was borrowed from the Jewish High Holiday services. The Kohanim (priests) bless the congregation by extending “the palms of both hands…with thumbs outstretched and the middle and ring fingers parted.” Nimoy used the same gesture for Spock, only with one hand.
SNOOPY. Based on the black-and-white dog that Peanuts creator Charles Schulz owned when he was 13 years old. The real dog’s name was Spike, which Schulz used as the name of Snoopy’s brother.
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. Steven Spielberg’s WWII drama was inspired by a real-life story: A few weeks after D-Day, Sergeant Fritz Niland learned that his three older brothers had been killed in action. Army policy states that no family should suffer the loss of more than two sons, so, over Niland’s protests, he was sent home.
ANIMAL (the Muppets’ drummer). Apparently Jim Henson was a rock ’n’ roll fan. He based the out-of-control drummer on another out-of-control drummer: The Who’s Keith Moon.
COSMO KRAMER. While Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld were laying the groundwork for Seinfeld, David’s eccentric neighbor, Kenny Kramer, would often pop in and bug them. Just like his TV counterpart, Kramer had no real job but dabbled in schemes and inventions (he patented glow-in-the-dark jewelry). “Unlike the TV Kramer,” says Kenny, “my hairbrained schemes work.”
DR. EVIL. Mike Myers’s inspiration for Austin Powers’s archenemy comes from the James Bond villain, Blofeld, in You Only Live Twice. But Dr. Evil’s famous mannerism comes from a 1979 photograph of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards. It shows the rocker “in the exact pinky-biting pose favored by Dr. Evil.”
Monday is the only day of the week that has an anagram: dynamo.