YOU’RE MY INSPIRATION

It’s always interesting to find out where the architects of pop culture get their ideas. Some of these may surprise you.

CAESAR THE APE: Andy Serkis’s motion-capture character from the Planet of the Apes prequels goes from wise leader to vengeful revolutionary. To portray the leader, Serkis (who also played Gollum and King Kong) asked himself, “Who is an example of a really intelligent, powerful but egalitarian leader?” His answer: Nelson Mandela. When it came time for him to portray the vengeful Caesar, Serkis took inspiration from Clint Eastwood’s character in The Outlaw Josey Wales.

LANA DEL REY: When the soulful singer-songwriter (“Video Games,” “Summertime Sadness”) was 11 years old, “I saw Kurt Cobain singing ‘Heart-Shaped Box’ on MTV and it really stopped me dead in my tracks. I thought he was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. Even at a young age, I really related to his sadness.” The Nirvana front man remains an influence on Del Ray, especially “in terms of not wanting to compromise lyrically or sonically.”

DONALD DUCK: It’s obvious where his surname came from (he’s a duck), but what about “Donald”? The most likely theory: When Walt Disney was creating Mickey’s best friend in 1932, he read about Donald Bradman in the papers. The Australian cricketing legend, while on a North American goodwill tour in 1932, scored what’s called a duck (similar to a strikeout in baseball). A popular editorial cartoon featured a somewhat familiar-looking duck wearing a shirt that says “Donald’s Duck.” Not long after, Disney’s Donald Duck debuted.

“JUST DO IT”: In 1988 an ad man named Dan Wieden read about the 1977 execution of convicted murderer Gary Gilmore, whose last words were “Let’s do it.” Wieden really liked the directness of the statement and pitched “Just Do It” to Phil Knight, whose Nike shoe company was struggling. Knight was apprehensive, in part because of the grisly inspiration. According to Wieden, “I said, ‘Just trust me on this one.’ So they trusted me and it went big pretty quickly.”

CHUCKIE FINSTER: In the 1990s Nickelodeon cartoon Rugrats, the character of Chuckie was based in part on the man who wrote the show’s music, Mark Mothersbaugh (who fronted Devo and later scored such films as The Royal Tenenbaums, The Lego Movie, and Thor: Ragnarok). “We both had thick glasses,” said Mothersbaugh. “We’re both nearsighted. And I had pretty wild hair back then. I didn’t have kids yet, so it still had color in it.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald was the first writer to use the word “wicked” to mean “wonderful.”