History Main / InspirationForTheWork

* ''Fanfic/{{Paradoxus}} (''WesternAnimation/WinxClub, VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft''):

* ''Literature/TheHungerGames'' developed when Creator/SuzanneCollins was watching TV one night and kept flipping between news coverage of war and a reality TV show involving young people; the two sort of blurred together in her mind until she came up with the series' premise.

Occasionally, a creator will share a story on how they came up with the idea for their work. Perhaps they attribute it to a specific event; perhaps they focused on one idea or character and built the story from there. Either way, it's often interesting to learn about.

* According to Creator/EiichiroOda, ''Manga/DragonBall'' was a major inspiration for ''Manga/OnePiece'' to the point where he collaborated with ''Dragon Ball'' author Creator/AkiraToriyama for quite a few crossovers including ''Cross Epoch''.

* Speaking of Creator/AkiraToriyama and ''Franchise/DragonBall'', his increased involvement in the franchise starting with ''Anime/DragonBallZBattleOfGods'' came about from his disappointment with the live action ''Film/DragonballEvolution'' movie. More directly, the idea of bringing back Freeza for next movie after ''Battle of Gods''—''Anime/DragonBallZResurrectionF''—owes its existence to him listening to Music/MaximumTheHormone[=’s=] FilkSong “F”, with the song itself being the movie’s namesake and used as an insert song.

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* ''Machinima/RedVsBlue'': Many of the series' classic jokes (like whether the [[CoolCar Warthog]] looks more like a [[PantheraAwesome puma]] or not) came from conversations that series creator Burnie Burns had with his friends while screwing around on the Blood Gulch map in ''VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved''. In fact, Burns was inspired to actually start filming their skits as part of a web series while recording gameplay and letter boxing without the HUD, realizing that doing so made it "kind of look like a movie."

* Green Phantom Queen wrote ''Fanfic/InfinityTrainBlossomingTrail'' because she was annoyed by the lack of CharacterDevelopment [[Anime/{{Pokemon}} Chloe Cerise]] had been receiving in the anime, and the partly number of fan works exploring the character (there was only one other Chloe-focused story on [=AO3=] at the time). Ironically, the first chapter was posted just ''days'' before Episode 29, which turned out to a major Chloe-focused episode that delved a bit into her backstory. The author later admits that she was also increasingly annoyed with all of the DoubleStandard going on between Goh and Chloe.

** Creator/JohnLasseter got the idea for ''WesternAnimation/TinToy'' after seeing his infant son playing rough with toys, and wondered what it would be like from the toys' perspective. ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory'' started out as a spinoff with ''Tin Toy'''s protagonist Tinny, before being reworked into an original idea.

* ''Literature/TheHungerGames'' developed when Suzanne Collins was watching TV one night and kept flipping between news coverage of war and a reality TV show involving young people; the two sort of blurred together in her mind until she came up with the series' premise.

* Creator/StephenKing:

* ''[[Literature/{{Impossible}} Extraordinary]]'' by Nancy Werlin was inspired by the song "For Good" from ''Theatre/{{Wicked}}''. According to the author, it's specifically the part that goes,

* Creator/IsaacAsimov:

** ''Literature/TheRestOfTheRobots'': In [[InUniverse the preamble]] to "Literature/GalleySlave", Dr Asimov describes how Creator/HoraceGold requested a story from him, but he was too busy working on [[Literature/BiochemistryAndHumanMetabolism a biochemistry textbook]]. However, not long after he said that, he came up with an idea for a story and sent that in.

* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' has some examples.

* Michael Azerrad decided to write ''Our Band Could Be Your Life'', a nonfiction book on underground rock of the 80s and early 90s, after watching a rock history documentary that jumped directly from Music/TalkingHeads to {{Music/Nirvana}}, which he had found jarring.
* Creator/SeananMcGuire has [[https://twitter.com/seananmcguire/status/1332481478781857792 stated]] that part of her inspiration for writing her urban fantasy series ''Literature/InCryptid'' was a TakeThat against ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' for the writers' [[StuffedIntoTheFridge treatment of Jo Harvelle]]. Verity in particular is partially a tribute to Jo.

* Creator/AaronSpelling admitted the original pitch for ''Series/FantasyIsland'' was a joke. Spelling and production partner Leonard Goldberg were pitching ideas to Creator/{{ABC}} executive Brandon Stoddard. After the executive rejected all of their plans, at least six in all, Spelling blurted out: "What do you want? An island that people can go to and all of their sexual fantasies will be realized?" Stoddard loved the idea.
* ''Series/FawltyTowers'' was inspired when Creator/MontyPython stayed at the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay, run by Donald and Beatrice Sinclair. Mr Sinclair's irascible antics included: berating Creator/TerryGilliam for eating his meals in "too American" a way; throwing Creator/EricIdle's briefcase over a wall because of a "bomb scare" (the scare was that Idle left the briefcase in the reception area); disbelief at Creator/MichaelPalin asking to pre-book the Gleneagles TV to catch a show; after Creator/GrahamChapman requested an omelet made with three eggs, Sinclair brought him an omelet with three fried eggs perched on top; when asked by Creator/JohnCleese to call for a taxi, he argued with Cleese and took his time calling for the cab. Cleese was fascinated by what he described as "the most wonderfully rude man I'd ever met" and called Connie Booth down to experience it, and the rest is history.
* Creator/JossWhedon developed the concept for ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' after reading ''The Killer Angels'' by Michael Shaara chronicling the Battle of Gettysburg. He wanted to follow people who had fought on the losing side of a war, their experiences afterwards as pioneers and immigrants on the outskirts of civilization, much like the post-American Civil War era of Reconstruction and the American Old West. He also read a book about Jewish partisan fighters in World War II.

* Creator Ashley Lyle was inspired to create ''Series/{{Yellowjackets}}'' when Creator/WarnerBros Pictures announced an all-female film adaptation of ''Literature/LordOfTheFlies'' (that seems to have since fallen into DevelopmentHell) and noted the huge number of commenters who claimed it would never work since they believed teenage girls couldn't be as vicious as boys.

* Creator/LaurenFaust, the first executive producer of ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'', used to play with older ''Franchise/MyLittlePony'' toys, but felt the animated shows had little conflict. When Creator/{{Hasbro}} gave her the opportunity to direct the development of ''Franchise/MyLittlePonyGeneration4'', she based many of the show's settings and characters' personality traits on her own childhood imagination. In her own words, she made ''Friendship is Magic'' for her 8-year-old self.

SuperTrope to BasedOnADream (if the plot was based on someone's dreams or nightmares), SerendipityWritesThePlot (if it's inspired by a real-life technical difficulty), RippedFromTheHeadlines (if it's based on a real-life news story) and FollowTheLeader (if someone came up with the idea based on something already popular[[note]]However, if they came up with the ''idea'' on their own and merely had the popular work influence aspects of it, it still belongs here.[[/note]]).

* Creator/JohnKricfalusi came up with WesternAnimation/TheRenAndStimpyShow through separate circumstances; Ren came about from a 1940s postcard with a picture of a chihuahua in a sweater, while Stimpy was inspired by the big-nosed cats from Creator/BobClampett's short ''WesternAnimation/AGruesomeTwosome''. A friend suggested to him that he pair the two together and the rest is history.

* Creator/LaurenFaust, the first executive producer of ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'', used to play with older ''Franchise/MyLittlePony'' toys, but felt the animated shows had little conflict. So when Hasbro gave her the opportunity to direct the development of ''Franchise/MyLittlePonyG4'', she based many of the show's settings and characters' personality traits on her own childhood imagination. In her own words, she made ''Friendship is Magic'' for her 8-year-old self.

* Creator/LaurenFaust, creator of ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' used to play with the old ''My Little Pony'' toys, but felt the animated shows had little conflict. So when Hasbro gave her the opportunity to develop G4, she based many of the show's settings and characters' personality traits on her own childhood imagination. In her own words, she made ''Friendship is Magic'' for her 8-year-old self.

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Compare RealLifeWritesThePlot as well as RealitySubtext. See also {{Homage}} and {{Pastiche}} for when one work intentionally draws influence from another. Lastly, there's InspiredBy, for when it's more LooselyBasedOnATrueStory or similar.

[[folder:Films -- Live Action]]
* Creator/WillSmith conceived the story for ''Film/AfterEarth'' when he was watching ''Series/IShouldntBeAlive'' with his brother-in-law Caleeb Pinkett.
* The idea for ''Film/AguirreTheWrathOfGod'' began when Creator/WernerHerzog borrowed a book on historical adventurers from a friend. After reading a half-page devoted to Lope de Aguirre, the filmmaker became inspired and immediately devised the story. He fabricated most of the plot details and characters, although he did use some historical figures in purely fictitious ways.
* According to Creator/ShirleyMacLaine in her autobiography ''My Lucky Stars'', the idea for ''Film/AllThatJazz'' was hatched when Creator/BobFosse was hospitalized for a heart attack. [=MacLaine=] claims she was the one who gave him the idea to do "a musical about his death", though she said Fosse seemed to not remember this later. However, Fosse did offer her the role of Audrey Paris, she wrote.
* According to his Oscar speech, screenwriter Alan Ball was sitting at the World Trade Center plaza when he saw a paper bag floating in the wind and was inspired by it to write ''Film/AmericanBeauty'', which was originally conceived as a stage play.
* Creator/PaulSchrader first conceptualized ''Film/AmericanGigolo'' whilst teaching screenwriting at the Film & Television School of UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles). During a class exercise, Schrader conceived of the idea of a male character working as a gigolo and that such a character could be called an American gigolo. Moreover, Schrader characterized his American gigolo character as an affection giver rather than one interested in just self-gratification. The title of the film ended up being "American Gigolo".
* The initial concept for ''Film/TheApartment'' came from ''Film/BriefEncounter'', in which Laura Jesson has an affair with Dr. Alec Harvey in his friend's apartment. However, due to the Hays Production Code, Creator/BillyWilder was unable to make a film about adultery in the 1940s. Wilder and I.A.L. ADiamond also based the film partially on a Hollywood scandal in which high-powered agent Jennings Lang was shot by producer Walter Wanger for having an affair with Wanger's wife, actress Joan Bennett. During the affair, Lang used a low-level employee's apartment. Another element of the plot was based on the experience of one of Diamond's friends, who returned home after breaking up with his girlfriend to find that she had committed suicide in his bed.
* Creator/JohnMilius was inspired to write ''Film/ApocalypseNow'' because of his college English professor, Irwin Blacker of USC. Blacker challenged his class by saying, "No screenwriter has ever perfected a film adaption of Creator/JosephConrad's ''Literature/HeartOfDarkness''".
** Milius was influenced by an article written by Michael Herr titled, "The Battle for Khe Sanh", which referred to drugs, rock 'n' roll, and people calling airstrikes down on themselves.
* Creator/MikeMyers got the idea for ''Film/AustinPowers'' while driving home from ice hockey practice. Hearing "The Look of Love" by Burt Bacharach on his car radio, he wondered "Where have all the swingers gone?" and conceived the character who would become Austin Powers.
* Creator/EdgarWright's repeated listening to ''Orange'' by Music/TheJonSpencerBluesExplosion provided the impetus for ''Film/BabyDriver''.
* The origins of ''Film/BachelorParty'' came from an actual bachelor party thrown by producer Ron Moler and a group of friends for fellow producer Bob Israel. In fact, several members of the cast and crew involved with the production of the movie were at that party when the idea began to take shape.
* Bob Gale conceived ''Film/BackToTheFuture'' after he visited his parents in St. Louis, Missouri. Searching their basement, Gale found his father's high school yearbook and discovered he was president of his graduating class. Gale had not known the president of his own graduating class, and wondered whether he would have been friends with his father if they went to high school together.
* ''Film/{{Baseketball}}'' was based on a real-life game that David Zucker created with his friends, literally played in the driveway of his home. Many of the reappearing teammates are friends of Zucker and actual original players of the Zucker-driveway game, asked by the director to be in the movie to pay homage to origins of [=BASEketball=].
* Screenwriter Craig Boloting got the idea for ''Film/BlackRain'' while visiting a friend in Japan. While standing on a street corner, he saw big American cars pass by. His friend told him that they belonged to the Yakuza.
* While film students at the University of Central Florida, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez were inspired to make ''Film/TheBlairWitchProject'' after realizing that they found documentaries on paranormal phenomena scarier than traditional horror films. The two decided to create a film that combined the styles of both.
* Creator/BrianDePalma came up with the basic idea for the story of ''Film/BodyDouble'' after working with a body double for Creator/AngieDickinson's infamous ShowerScene in ''Film/DressedToKill''.
** [=De Palma=] got the idea for ''Film/BlowOut'' while working doing the sound mix on ''Dressed to Kill''.
* The idea for ''Film/{{Breakin}}'' came from Menahem Golan's daughter who one day while at the beach saw a group of break dancers performing before a crowd in Venice Beach.
* Troy Duffy was inspired to write ''Film/TheBoondockSaints'' by his disgust at seeing a drug dealer taking money from a corpse across the hall from his apartment.
* Creator/JuddApatow came up for the idea of ''Film/TheBubble2022'' after hearing his wife talk about the troubles of filming ''Film/JurassicWorldDominion'' during the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic.
* Creator/JossWhedon got the idea for ''Film/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' "from seeing too many blondes walking into alleyways and being killed. I wanted, just once, for her to fight back when the monster attacked, and kick his ass. It was a simple thing for me to write because I knew exactly how I wanted things to work. I have special powers and I thought it would be great to have vampires as the villains. She wouldn't be able to fit into normal society because she had these powers and this job that kept her from being what she wanted to be."
* Creator/EliRoth originally got the idea for ''Film/CabinFever'' while working in Iceland on a horse farm. He got such a bad skin infection from the rotting hay in the barn that his face broke out in sores, bled and peeled off when he shaved.
* First time screenwriter Lou Holtz, Jr. had the idea for ''Film/TheCableGuy'' while working as a prosecutor in Los Angeles, declaring that he once saw a cable company employee in the hallway of his mother's apartment building and started thinking, "What's he doing here so late?"
* Creator/TomHanks said he first got the idea for ''Film/CastAway'' after reading an article about [=FedEx=]. "I realized that 747s filled with packages fly across the Pacific three times a day. What happens if one of those goes down?," he said. He took that idea and combined it with his interest in how to survive without the five required elements for living - food, water, shelter, fire, and companionship.
* According to Creator/RobertTowne, Carey [=McWilliams=]' ''Southern California Country: An Island on the Land'' (1946) and a West magazine article called "Creator/RaymondChandler's L.A." inspired his original screenplay for ''Film/{{Chinatown}}''. In a letter to [=McWilliams=], Towne wrote that Southern California Country "really changed my life. It taught me to look at the place where I was born, and convinced me to write about it."
* ''Film/{{Collateral}}'': Australian Screenwriter Stuart Beattie was only seventeen when he took a cab home from the Sydney airport. It was on that ride that he had the idea of a homicidal maniac sitting in the back of a cab, with the driver nonchalantly entering into conversation with him, trusting his passenger implicitly. Beattie drafted his idea into a two-page treatment. Later, when he was enrolled at Oregon State University, he fleshed it out into his first screenplay. Titled ''The Last Domino'', he put the script away, taking it out occasionally for revisions and re-writes over the following years.
* Creator/CharlieChaplin loosely based ''Film/ACountessFromHongKong'' on a woman met in France, named Moussia Sodskaya, or "Skaya", as he calls her in his 1922 book ''My Trip Abroad''. She was a Russian singer and dancer who "was a stateless person marooned in France without a passport". The idea, according to a press release written by Chaplin after the film received a negative reception, "resulted from a visit I made to Shanghai in 1931 where I came across a number of titled aristocrats who had escaped the Russian Revolution. They were destitute and without a country; their status was of the lowest grade. The men ran rickshaws and the women worked in ten-cent dance halls. When the Second World War broke out many of the old aristocrats had died and the younger generation migrated to Hong Kong where their plight was even worse, for Hong Kong was overcrowded with refugees".
* The idea for ''Film/CrocodileDundee'' came about when Creator/PaulHogan visited New York City and felt like an outsider and that people had thought he was Scottish and it inspired him to write the movie.
* In 1981, John Russo's girlfriend, who was working at a rest home, told him that an old black man with a harmonica had been admitted. Fusco went to visit him and on the way dreamt up a story about what would happen if the player was a legendary blues player. This gave him the idea for ''Film/{{Crossroads}}''.
* Creator/JohnSchlesinger claimed that the original idea for ''Film/{{Darling}}'' came from a chance remark made to him by newspaper columnist and television personality Godfrey Winn, when the latter was playing a brief acting role AsHimself in ''Film/BillyLiar''. The character of Diana Scott was based on a real person whom Winn had known.
* The idea for ''Film/DawnOfTheDead1978'' began in 1974, when Creator/GeorgeARomero was invited by friend Mark Mason of Oxford Development Company—whom Romero knew from an acquaintance at his alma mater, Carnegie Mellon—to visit the Monroeville Mall, which Mason's company managed. After showing Romero hidden parts of the mall, during which Romero noted the bliss of the consumers, Mason jokingly suggested that someone would be able to survive in the mall should an emergency ever occur. With this inspiration, Romero began to write the screenplay for the film.
* ''Film/DaysOfThunder'' was conceived by Creator/TomCruise when he and Creator/PaulNewman were allowed to test one of Rick Hendrick's race cars. Tom's first lap was in excess of one hundred eighty miles per hour.
* ''Film/{{Doomsday}}'': Neil Marshall lived near the ruins of Hadrian's Wall and fantasised about what conditions would cause the Wall to be rebuilt and imagined a lethal virus would work. Marshall had also visualised a mixture of medieval and futuristic elements: "I had this vision of these futuristic soldiers with high-tech weaponry and body armour and helmets—clearly from the future—facing a medieval knight on horseback." The director favoured the English/Scottish border as the location for a rebuilt wall, finding the location more plausible than a lengthy boundary between the United States and Canada. Additionally, Scotland is the home to multiple castles, which fit Marshall's medieval aspect.
* Creator/SpikeLee first got the idea for ''Film/DoTheRightThing'' after watching the ''Series/AlfredHitchcockPresents'' episode "Shopping for Death," in which the main characters discuss their theory that hot weather increases violent tendencies. He was also inspired by the 1986 Howard Beach racial incident, in which an African-American teenager was killed; and also the shooting of Eleanor Bumpurs by police.
* As a young man, Creator/BrianDePalma, at his mother's urging, actually followed his father and used recording equipment to try and catch him with another woman. That incident inspired ''Film/DressedToKill''.
* Creator/PeterFonda got the idea for ''Film/EasyRider'' after seeing a picture of he and Creator/BruceDern on their motorcycles in ''Film/TheWildAngels''. He got Creator/DennisHopper (who was planning to get out of the acting business and become a teacher at the time) involved when he promised him he could direct the film.
* Creator/JohnCarpenter originally wrote the screenplay for ''Film/EscapeFromNewYork'' in 1976, in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal. Carpenter said, "The whole feeling of the nation was one of real cynicism about the President. I wrote the screenplay and no studio wanted to make it because it was too dark, too violent, too scary, and too weird." He had been inspired by ''Film/DeathWish1974'', which was very popular at the time. He did not agree with the film's philosophy but liked how it conveyed "the sense of New York as a kind of jungle, and I wanted to make a science fiction film along these lines".
* ''Film/FaceOff'' co-screenwriter Mike Werb got the idea for the face surgery from a friend who had a hang-gliding accident. They had to remove most of the skin from his face, reconstruct the bone matter, and put his face back on.
* Rob Cohen was inspired to make ''Film/TheFastAndTheFurious2001'' after reading a 1998 Vibe magazine article called "Racer X" about street racing in New York City and watching an actual illegal street race at night in Los Angeles.
* Peter A. Dowling had the idea for ''Film/Flightplan2005'' in 1999 on a phone conversation with a friend. His original pitch for producer Brian Grazer involved a man who worked on airport security doing a business trip from the United States to Hong Kong, and during the flight his son went missing.
* Creator/JohnCarpenter stated that the inspiration for ''Film/TheFog1980'' was partly drawn from The Trollenberg Terror. He has also said that he was inspired by a visit to Stonehenge with his co-writer/producer (and then-girlfriend), Debra Hill. While in England promoting ''Film/AssaultOnPrecinct131976'', Carpenter and Hill visited the site in the late afternoon one day and saw an eerie fog in the distance. In the DVDCommentary, Carpenter noted that the story of the deliberate wreckage of a ship and its subsequent plundering was based on an actual event that took place in the 19th century near Goleta, California (this event was portrayed more directly in the 1975 Tom Laughlin film, ''The Master Gunfighter''). The premise also bears strong resemblances to the John Greenleaf Whittier poem The Wreck of the Palatine which appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in 1867, about the wreck of the ship Princess Augusta in 1738, at Block Island, within Rhode Island.
* ''Film/{{Following}}'': Creator/ChristopherNolan's home was broken into, and he found himself wondering about the identity of the burglars.
* Creator/BillyWilder came up with the idea for ''Film/TheFortuneCookie'' when he saw a player run into a cameraman on the sidelines while watching a football game.
* The inspiration for ''Film/FourWeddingsAndAFuneral'' came when writer Richard Curtis was flipping through some old diaries and realized that he had been to 72 weddings in 10 years.
* Creator/MartinScorsese got the idea for ''Film/GangsOfNewYork'' in 1970 when he came across Herbert Asbury's book ''The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld'' while he was house-sitting and saw the potential for an American epic about the battle for the modern American democracy. While growing up in New York in TheFifties, he noticed there were parts of his neighborhood that were much older than the rest, including tombstones from the 1810s in Old St. Patrick's Cathedral, cobblestone streets and small basements located under more recent large buildings; this sparked Scorsese's curiosity about the history of the area:
-->I gradually realized that the Italian-Americans weren't the first ones there, that other people had been there before us. As I began to understand this, it fascinated me. I kept wondering, how did New York look? What were the people like? How did they walk, eat, work, dress?
* David Howard stated he got the idea for ''Film/GalaxyQuest'' while at an IMAX presentation, and while waiting for the show to start, one of the trailers for an upcoming "Americans In Space" film featured the voice of Creator/LeonardNimoy. The trailer got Howard thinking about how the other ''Franchise/StarTrek'' actors had becoming pigeonholed in these types of roles since the cancellation of ''Star Trek'', and then came up with the idea of what if there were real aliens involved. From there, he considered the rest of his script "that, in a lot of ways, just wrote itself, because it just seemed so self-evident once the idea was there".
* Creator/BusterKeaton got the idea for ''Film/TheGeneral'' from William Pittenger's 1863 memoir ''The Great Locomotive Chase'', about [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Locomotive_Chase the 1862 Great Locomotive Chase]].
* Creator/CharlieChaplin claimed he got the idea for ''Film/TheGoldRush'' when he saw pictures of gigantic lines of prospectors heading up to the Alaskan gold fields. He was also inspired by [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donner_Party the Donner Party]].
* Gillian Flynn said she inspired to write ''Film/GoneGirl'' after hearing about the Laci Peterson case, where the handsome, seemingly perfect husband of a heavily pregnant woman was shown to be curiously unfeeling and calm regarding the disappearance of his wife. Turns out he was having an affair, too, and attempted to continue the affair all throughout the search efforts. The difference is that the husband was eventually convicted of murdering his wife, while Amy was actually the mastermind behind her disappearance.
* Creator/CharlieChaplin was inspired to make ''Film/TheGreatDictator'' after viewing ''Film/TriumphOfTheWill'' with French filmmaker René Clair at the New York Museum of Modern Art. Creator/LuisBunuel reports that Clair was horrified by the power of the film, crying out that this should never be shown or the West was lost. Chaplin, on the other hand, laughed uproariously at the film, thinking Hitler was the greatest comedian he'd ever seen.
* Creator/ChrisColumbus' inspiration for ''Film/{{Gremlins}}'' came from his loft, when at night "what sounded like a platoon of mice would come out and to hear them skittering around in the blackness was really creepy".
* ''Film/{{Grindhouse}}'' came to Creator/RobertRodriguez and Creator/QuentinTarantino when Tarantino set up screenings of double features in his house, complete with trailers before and in between the films. During one screening in 2003, Rodriguez noticed that he owned the same double feature movie poster as Tarantino for the 1957 films ''Dragstrip Girl'' and ''Rock All Night''. Rodriguez asked Tarantino, "I always wanted to do a double feature. Hey, why don't you direct one and I'll do the other?" Tarantino quickly replied, "And we've got to call it Grindhouse!"
** Rodriguez first came up with ''Film/PlanetTerror'' during the production of ''Film/TheFaculty'':
-->I remember telling Creator/ElijahWood and Creator/JoshHartnett, all these young actors, that zombie movies were dead and hadn't been around in a while, but that I thought they were going to come back in a big way because they’d been gone for so long. I said, "We've got to be there first". I had [a script] I’d started writing. It was about 30 pages, and I said to them, "There are characters for all of you to play". We got all excited about it, and then I didn't know where to go with it. The introduction was about as far as I'd gotten, and then I got onto other movies. Sure enough, the zombie [movie] invasion happened and they all came back again, and I was like, "Ah, I knew that I should've made my zombie film".
** Tarantino came up with the idea for ''Film/DeathProof'' when he was having a drunken hotel night with friend Creator/SeanPenn. Tarantino wanted to buy a Volvo because he "didn't want to die in some auto accident like the one in ''Film/PulpFiction''". In regards to the safety of the car, Penn said, "Well, you could take any car and give it to a stunt team, and for $10,000 or $15,000, they can death-proof it for you." The "death proof" phrase had stuck to Tarantino after that.
* ''Film/GroundhogDay'': While waiting in a theater for a film to start, Danny Rubin was reading ''Literature/TheVampireLestat'' and began musing about vampiric immortality and what one would do with their time when it was limitless. He reasoned that vampires were like normal people without being forced to adhere to the same rules or moral boundaries. He questioned if and when it would become boring or pointless, and how a person would change over time, especially if that person was incapable of substantial change within their own limited mortal life. He singled out men he deemed to be in arrested development, who could not outlive their adolescence.
* ''Film/Halloween1978'' was based on an experience Creator/JohnCarpenter had in college touring a psychiatric hospital. Carpenter met a child who stared at him "with a look of evil, and it terrified [him]."
* ''Film/HannahAndHerSisters'' was originally about a man who fell in love with his wife's sister. Then Creator/WoodyAllen re-read ''Literature/AnnaKarenina'' "and I thought, it's interesting how this guy gets the various stories going, cutting from one story to another. I loved the idea of experimenting with that."
* Gregory Widen was inspired to write ''Film/{{Highlander}}'' while visiting Scotland on vacation. He was visiting a museum in Edinburgh, came across a suit of armor, and wondered what it would have been like if the man who wore the armor were alive today.
* Creator/WesCraven got the idea for ''Film/TheHillsHaveEyes1977'' while looking up "terrible things" at the New York Public Library. While going through the library's forensics department, Craven learned of the legend of Sawney Bean - the alleged head of a 48-person Scottish clan responsible for the murder and cannibalization of more than one thousand people. What interested Craven in the legend was how, after Bean's clan was arrested, they were tortured, quartered, burned and hung. Craven saw this treatment of the Bean clan by supposedly civilized people as paralleling the clan's own savagery.
* Producer David Kirschner came up with the idea for ''Film/HocusPocus'' one night. He and his young daughter were sitting outside and his neighbor's black cat strayed by. Kirschner invented a tale of how the cat was once a boy who was changed into a feline three hundred years ago by three witches.
* ''Film/HomeAlone'' arose from a personal experience of Creator/JohnHughes. Imagining that children are naturally most scared of robbers, Hughes also worked that aspect into the plot of the film.
-->I was going away on vacation, and making a list of everything I didn’t want to forget. I thought, 'well, I'd better not forget my kids". Then I thought, "what if I left my 10-year-old son at home? What would he do?"
* Creator/EliRoth came up with the idea for ''Film/{{Hostel}}'' while brainstorming in Creator/QuentinTarantino's pool. He was inspired by a Thai "murder vacation" website he came across on the dark web.
* Tom Six claims that he got the idea for ''Film/TheHumanCentipede'' from discussions with a friend on how to punish pedophiles. One of them came up with stapling the pedophile's mouth to the ass of a fat truck driver.
* Creator/RolandEmmerich and Dean Devlin got the idea for ''Film/IndependenceDay'' while fielding a question about the existence of alien life during promotion for ''Film/{{Stargate}}''. A reporter asked Emmerich why he made a film with content like that if he did not believe in aliens. Emmerich stated he was still fascinated by the idea of an alien arrival, and further explained his response by asking the reporter to imagine what it would be like to wake up one morning and discover fifteen mile-wide spaceships were hovering over the world's largest cities. Emmerich then turned to Devlin and said, "I think I have an idea for our next film."
* Creator/ChuckNorris said he got the idea to make the ''Film/InvasionUSA1985'' after reading an article in ''Reader's Digest'' that said hundreds of terrorists were running loose in the United States.
-->I thought, "Boy, that's scary. What if some guy on the order of a Khomeini or a Khadafy mobilized those guys and started sending them out to every major city?"... know it's going to happen, and even in the movie, the head terrorist says, "It's so easy because of the freedom of movement in this country". So we're really accessible to this. The movie is not meant to scare people, but to make us aware of a potential problem.
* The idea for ''Film/TheJerk'' came from a stand-up routine of Creator/SteveMartin (included on his debut comedy album, ''Let's Get Small''), in which he claimed to have been "born a poor black child" and how, after hearing his first Mantovani record, he "decided to become white."
* Denys Arcand was inspired to make ''Film/JesusOfMontreal'' when he went to see a Passion Play, starring an actor who had auditioned for one of his works, performed at St. Joseph's Oratory, a church in Montreal.
* ''Film/JingleAllTheWay'' drew inspiration from the high demand for Christmas toys, such as the Toys/CabbagePatchKids and ''Series/MightyMorphinPowerRangers'' in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which often led to intense searching and occasional violence amongst shoppers. Randy Kornfield wrote the film's original screenplay after witnessing his in-laws go to a Santa Monica toy store at dawn in order to get his son a Power Ranger. While admitting to missing the clamor for the Cabbage Patch Kids and Power Rangers, Creator/ChrisColumbus experienced a similar situation in 1995 when he attempted to obtain a Buzz Lightyear action figure. As a result, he re-wrote Kornfield's script.
* Creator/JoaquinPhoenix's performance in ''Film/{{Joker 2019}}'' was, according to WordOfGod, partly inspired by Creator/RayBolger's performance of "The Old Soft Shoe".
* Part of the ''Film/{{Kingsman}}'' concept came about as Creator/MatthewVaughn was being measured for a new suit and he saw all the portraits and photos of notable customers on the walls of his tailor's shop. He wondered what might have happened if such powerful men banded together and pooled their resources to shape world history from behind the scenes.
* In an interview with Creator/PeterBogdanovich, Creator/AlfredHitchcock revealed that ''Film/TheLadyVanishes'' was inspired by a legend of an Englishwoman who went with her daughter to the Palace Hotel in Paris in the 1880s, at the time of the Great Exposition:
-->The woman was taken sick and they sent the girl across Paris to get some medicine in a horse-vehicle, so it took about four hours. When she came back she asked, "How's my mother?" "What mother?" "My mother. She's here, she's in her room. Room 22". They go up there. Different room, different wallpaper, everything. And the payoff of the whole story is, so the legend goes, that the woman had bubonic plague and they dared not let anybody know she died, otherwise all of Paris would have emptied.
* According to Screenwriter Jonathan Beutel, the idea for ''Film/TheLastStarfighter'' came about because he wandered into a video arcade and saw a young boy playing a video game, and also at that time, he read ''Literature/TheOnceAndFutureKing'' and it occurred to him, that what if a video game had been a sword in a stone, and a boy had scored an incredible number in the video game, which sent out a ripple effect across the universe.
* ''Film/TheLavenderHillMob'': screenwriter T. E. B. Clarke is said to have come up with the idea of a clerk robbing his own bank while doing research for the film ''Pool of London'' (1951), a crime thriller surrounding a jewel theft. He consulted the Bank of England on the project and it set up a special committee to advise on how best the robbery could take place.
* According to Creator/MichaelPowell and Emeric Pressburger, the idea for ''Film/TheLifeAndDeathOfColonelBlimp'' did not come from the newspaper comic strip by David Low but from a scene cut from their previous film, ''Film/OneOfOurAircraftIsMissing'', in which an elderly member of the crew tells a younger one, "You don't know what it's like to be old." Powell has stated that the idea was actually suggested by Creator/DavidLean (then an editor) who, when removing the scene from the film, mentioned that the premise of the conversation was worthy of a film in its own right.
* ''Film/LittleMissSunshine'' was apparently inspired by a speech by Creator/ArnoldSchwarzenegger, where he stated that the people he hates most in the world are losers. The screenwriter took offense to this comment, believing that everyone is a loser in some way, but that doesn't make them a bad person. He wrote the screenplay to refute that kind of black-and-white thinking.
* Creator/AdamSandler says he got the inspiration for ''Film/LittleNicky'' when he and his friends went to see ''Film/AngelHeart''. Afterwards they joked about the idea of Satan in that movie having a loser son that he has to drag around.
* Creator/HalRoach came up with ''Film/TheLittleRascals'' when he looked upon the antics of a group of children from his office window and felt that a series of shorts about a motley group of moppets could make good comedy and have audience appeal.
* Al Ruddy says that his inspiration for ''Film/TheLongestYard'' came from a friend of his who was a promising football player. After a career-ending injury, his life took a downward spiral. He was working a minimum-wage job at a sandwich shop and was being mistreated by his snobbish girlfriend. Ruddy took the scenario from there.
* ''Film/TheLongGoodFriday'': Living in a Greenwich flat at the time, Barrie Keeffe could see the derelict Docklands from his window, and his ideas entwined following a chance meeting with an Irish Republican in a pub. Gangsters against terrorism soon became a going concern. Harold Shand's vision about how the Isle of Dogs could make Britain proud again was based on rumblings about the redevelopment of the Docklands that Keeffe heard from council officials.
* Amy Heckerling was inspired to write ''Film/LookWhosTalking'' after her husband and writer Neal Israel started playfully talking in a different voice to pretend what their new baby would say. Her husband also has a cameo as Mollie's boss.
* Sam Levinson based ''Film/MalcolmAndMarie'' on a personal incident where he forgot to thank his wife at the premiere of his previous movie, ''Film/AssassinationNation''.
* ''Film/TheManWhoWasntThere2001'' was inspired by a poster that showed various haircuts from the 1940s that Creator/TheCoenBrothers had seen while filming ''Film/TheHudsuckerProxy''.
* The idea for ''Film/{{Manhattan}}'' came when Creator/WoodyAllen was listening to a Music/GeorgeGershwin album of overtures and thought, "this would be a beautiful thing to make ... a movie in black and white ... a romantic movie".
* Michael Gottlieb got the idea for ''Film/{{Mannequin}}'' when he was walking by a store window and was startled to "see" a mannequin move by itself. He realized it was just an optical illusion caused by a combination of lights and shadows, but began to wonder what would happen if a mannequin actually DID come to life.
* Mark R. Burns got the idea to write ''Film/MarriedToTheMob'' when he was ten years old, a house in his suburban Long Island neighborhood was raided, and the father was discovered to have been in the mob.
* ''Film/AMillionWaysToDieInTheWest'' originated as an inside joke between Creator/SethMacFarlane and co-writers Alec Sulkin and Wesley Wild while they were watching ''Film/HangEmHigh''. The joke evolved into "riffing on the idea of how dull, depressing, and dangerous it must have been to live in the Wild West."
* Creator/CharlieChaplin got the idea for ''Film/ModernTimes'' while on a European tour promoting ''Film/CityLights'', from both the lamentable conditions of the continent through the Great Depression, along with a conversation with UsefulNotes/MahatmaGandhi in which they discussed modern technology. Chaplin did not understand why Gandhi generally opposed it, though he granted that "machinery with only consideration of profit" had put people out of work and ruined lives.
* ''Film/MontyPythonsLifeOfBrian'' came when Creator/EricIdle, frustrated by paparazzi badgering Creator/MontyPython about what their next project would be, said that their next film would be ''Jesus Christ: Lust for Glory''. He only said it to shut them up, but Creator/JohnCleese was intrigued and suggested developing it.
* Creator/MelBrooks was a writer for the Creator/SidCaesar variety program ''Your Show of Shows'' early in his career. Creator/ErrolFlynn was a guest on one episode, and this real-life occurrence inspired Dennis Palumbo's largely fictional screenplay ''Film/MyFavoriteYear''.
* ''Film/TheNavigator'' came about when Creator/BusterKeaton's art director Fred Gabourie was scouting shipyards in San Francisco for another project, ''The Sea Hawk''. He was shown the former USAT Buford, a 5,000 ton, 500 foot ship that was being sold for scrap metal. He was told that a film production could do anything with the ship, including set it on fire or sink it. Gabourie rushed back to Los Angeles to tell Keaton about the ship. Keaton immediately began planning a film centered around the Buford and had producer Joseph Schenck chart the boat for $25,000 with a crew and sail it to Los Angeles.
* Dan Gilroy conceived the idea for ''Film/{{Nightcrawler}}'' in 1988, after reading the photo-book Naked City, a collection of photographs taken by American photographer Weegee of 1940s New York City residents at night. Often lewd and sensationalized in content, Weegee would sell these photos to tabloid newspapers. Intrigued by what he described as "an amazing intersection of art and crime and commerce", Gilroy wrote a film treatment with a "''Film/{{Chinatown}}'' feel". However, when ''The Public Eye'' was released, a film loosely based on Weegee's life, Gilroy shelved the idea. Two years later, he moved to Los Angeles, and noted the predominance of violent crime stories on local news stations. "I suddenly became aware of and intrigued by the idea that it must be a powerful force for a TV station, when they realize their ratings go through the roof when they show something with the potential for violence, like a police chase", says Gilroy. Sometime later, he discovered the stringer profession, and considered it to be the modern day equivalent of Weegee. Unaware of any film that focused on the livelihood of stringers, he began writing a screenplay.
* ''Film/ANightmareOnElmStreet1984'' was inspired by several newspaper articles printed in the Los Angeles Times in the 1970s about Southeast Asian refugees, who, after fleeing to the United States because of war and genocide in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, suffered disturbing nightmares and refused to sleep. Some of the men died in their sleep soon after. Medical authorities called the phenomenon Asian Death Syndrome. The condition afflicted men between the ages of 19 and 57 and was believed to be sudden unexplained death syndrome or Brugada syndrome or both. The 1970s pop song "Dream Weaver" by Gary Wright sealed the story for Creator/WesCraven, giving him not only an artistic setting to jump off from, but a synthesizer riff for the movie soundtrack.
** One night, a young Craven saw an elderly man walking on the sidepath outside the window of his home. The man stopped to glance at a startled Craven and walked off. This served as the inspiration for Freddy Krueger.
* According to Creator/ThandieNewton, Creator/EddieMurphy got the idea for ''Film/{{Norbit}}'' after watching online videos of large African-American women beating their tiny husbands.
* ''Film/NothingButTrouble'': was based on Creator/DanAykroyd's personal experiences. In 1978, he was pulled over for speeding in upstate New York and was taken to the justice of the peace to stand trial in what Dan referred to as a "kangaroo court", and after he was fined $50, the justice of the peace invited Dan to stay for tea, and he ended up staying there for four hours.
* The idea for ''Film/OldSchool'' came when Creator/ToddPhillips was talking to a friend of his who had seen and enjoyed Phillips' movie ''Frat House'' and told him, "You know what would be funny is a movie about older guys who start a fraternity of their own." After being told by Phillips to write it, he presented Phillips with a "loose version" of the finished product.
* ''Film/TheOogielovesInTheBigBalloonAdventure'': After seeing ''Film/MadeaGoesToJail'' in a theater, where he saw how the audience members would shout out advice to the characters on screen, Ken Viselman was partially inspired to create a children's film in the vein of ''Series/{{Teletubbies}}'' with the interactive aspect, allowing the children to sing, dance, and respond to the characters on screen. He felt that "The idea of interactivity isn't new, but the idea of interactivity in a theater is."
* Around 2009, Creator/QuentinTarantino discovered the centerpiece for ''Film/OnceUponATimeInHollywood'' while filming a movie with an actor that had the same stunt double for 20 years. Even though there was nothing but a small bit for the stuntman to do, Tarantino was asked to use him, and he agreed. The relationship fascinated Tarantino and inspired him to make a film about Hollywood.
* The idea for ''Film/OnTheWaterfront'' began with an expose series written for ''The New York Sun'' by reporter Malcolm Johnson. The 24 articles won him a Pulitzer Prize and were reinforced by the 1948 murder of a New York dock hiring boss which woke America to the killings, graft and extortion that were endemic on the New York waterfront. Budd Schulberg was captivated by the subject matter, devoting years of his life to absorbing everything he could about the milieu. He became a regular fixture on the waterfront, hanging out in West Side Manhattan and Long Island bars, interviewing longshore-union leaders and getting to know the outspoken priests from St Xavier's in Hell's Kitchen.
* ''Film/PacificRim'': While walking on the beach near Santa Monica Pier, Travis Beacham imagined a giant robot and a giant monster fighting to the death. "They just sort of materialized out of the fog, these vast, godlike things." He later conceived the idea that each robot had two pilots, asking "what happens when one of those people dies?"
* ''Film/{{Paparazzi}}'' came about when a group of celebrities talked about their nightmares involving the paparazzi. One of them, Creator/MelGibson, thought that these stories had the making of a great revenge fantasy; he would become one of the film's producers.
* Halfway through writing ''Film/PeeWeesBigAdventure'', Creator/PaulReubens noticed everyone at Creator/WarnerBros had a bike to get around the backlot, and so he requested one of his own.
* Creator/BrianDePalma got the idea for ''Film/PhantomOfTheParadise'' in 1969 when he was shocked to hear "A Day in the Life" by Music/TheBeatles as elevator muzac.
* The inspiration for making ''Film/PineappleExpress'', according to Creator/JuddApatow, was Creator/BradPitt's character in ''Film/TrueRomance'', a stoner named Floyd. Apatow "thought it would be funny to make a movie in which you follow that character out of his apartment and watch him get chased by bad guys".
* ''Film/{{Predator}}'' came to be as the writers decided to follow a joke regarding how ''Film/{{Rocky}}'' was receiving so many sequels he would soon be fighting an extraterrestrial.
* Creator/JohnHughes was inspired to write the story for ''Film/PlanesTrainsAndAutomobiles'' after an actual flight from New York to Chicago he was on, was diverted to Wichita, Kansas, thus taking him five days to get home.
* Paul Maslansky says he got the idea for ''Film/PoliceAcademy'' when in San Francisco filming ''Film/TheRightStuff'':
-->I noticed a bunch of ludicrous-looking police cadets being dressed down by a frustrated sergeant. They were an unbelievable bunch-including a lady who must have weighed over 200 pounds and a flabby man of well over 50. I asked the sergeant about them, and he explained that the mayor had ordered the department to accept a broad spectrum for the academy. "We have to take them in,"...[he said]..."And the only thing we can do is wash them out."
* Once brothers Jim and John Thomas heard a joke that Franchise/{{Rocky}} would need to fight an extraterrestrial after running out of earthly opponents, they wrote ''Film/{{Predator}}'', about muscled men forced to fight an alien hunter.
* The genesis of ''Film/PrettyInPink'' emerged when Creator/MollyRingwald asked Creator/JohnHughes to write a movie based on Music/ThePsychedelicFurs song "Pretty in Pink", which was her favorite song at the time.
* James [=DeMonaco=] got the idea for ''Film/ThePurge'' from a road-rage incident. He and his wife were driving on the freeway when a drunk driver cut them off nearly killing them. After both cars stopped, the other driver's lack of remorse enraged [=DeMonaco=] enough to engage in a fistfight and police eventually had to get involved. After the incident was over, [=DeMonaco=]'s wife turned to him and commented how great it would be to have one free murder a year. He felt bad admitting this because she's normally a "sweet woman".
* Creator/JohnCarpenter became inspired to make ''Film/PrinceOfDarkness'' while researching theoretical physics and atomic theory. He recalled, "I thought it would be interesting to create some sort of ultimate evil and combine it with the notion of matter and anti-matter."
* ''Film/{{Roar}}'' was conceived by Noel Marshall and Creator/TippiHedren in 1969, after she had starred in ''Satan's Harvest'' in Mozambique. During filming, they came across an abandoned plantation house in Gorongosa National Park which had been overrun by a pride of lions, and were told by their bus guide and local residents that animal populations were becoming endangered due to poaching; this inspired them to consider making either one or a series of films.
* Edward Neumeier stated that he first got the idea of ''Film/RoboCop1987'' when he walked with a friend past a poster for ''Film/BladeRunner''. He asked his friend what the film was about and his friend replied, "It's about a cop hunting robots". For him, this sparked the idea about a robot cop.
* Creator/SylvesterStallone wrote the screenplay for ''Film/{{Rocky}}'' in three and a half days, shortly after watching the championship match between UsefulNotes/MuhammadAli and Chuck Wepner that took place at Richfield Coliseum in Richfield, Ohio on March 24, 1975. Wepner was TKO'd in the 15th round of the match by Ali, with few expecting him to last as long as he did. Despite the fact that the match motivated Stallone to begin work on the script, he has subsequently denied that Wepner provided any inspiration for the script.
* Creator/HaroldLloyd got the idea for ''Film/SafetyLast'' when he saw Bill Strother climbing the Brockman Building in Los Angeles as a stunt one day. Lloyd - who had a difficult time watching anyone else perform a dangerous stunt because he had no control over that situation - hid behind a corner, peeking to check on Strother's progress every few moments. After Strother reached the roof, Lloyd went up and introduced himself.
* Creator/MikeWhite was inspired to write ''Film/SchoolOfRock'' when he moved in next to Creator/JackBlack - who would frequently play loud rock music and streak in the halls.
* Creator/AkiraKurosawa had originally wanted to direct a film about a single day in the life of a samurai. Later, in the course of his research, he discovered a story about samurai defending farmers. The result was ''Film/SevenSamurai''.
* ''Film/ShadowOfADoubt'' began when the head of David O Selznick's story department, Margaret [=McDonell=], told Creator/AlfredHitchcock that her husband Gordon had an interesting idea for a novel that she thought would make a good movie. His idea, called "Uncle Charlie," was based on the true story of Earle Leonard Nelson, a mass murderer of the 1920s known as "the Gorilla Man".
* Writer Marc Norman got the idea for ''Film/ShakespeareInLove'' when his son Zachary called him from Boston University and suggested doing something on Creator/WilliamShakespeare as a young man in the Elizabethan theatre. It took two years for Norman to come up with the idea of having Shakespeare struggling with writer's block on ''Theatre/RomeoAndJuliet''.
* ''Film/TheShapeOfWater'' was primarily inspired by Creator/GuillermoDelToro's childhood memories of seeing ''Film/CreatureFromTheBlackLagoon'' and wanting to see the Gill-man and Kay Lawrence succeed in their romance.
* Peter Howitt got the idea for ''Film/SlidingDoors'' after almost getting hit by a car. He was late in meeting a friend, and innocently walking along London's Charing Cross Road. "I couldn't decide if I should run for the train or first call my mate at a public phone," Howitt recalled. "I impulsively dashed across the street, and was nearly hit by a car, and that brush with death got me thinking. Something inside my head thought, 'That's interesting. What if he had hit me then?' What are the knock-on effects, the domino effects."
* ''Film/ShortCircuit'' was conceived after the producers distributed an educational video about a robot to various colleges. Studying other films with a prominent robot cast for inspiration, they decided to question human reactions to a 'living' robot, on the premise that no one would initially believe its sentience.
* Where did the idea for ''Film/SmokeyAndTheBandit'' come from? Hal Needham, after being given a case of Coors by a friend, began to notice it vanishing from his fridge... and after installing a hidden camera, discovered his maid was stealing it. He pondered over the lengths people would go for Coors, and it spiraled from there.
** At the time of filming, Coors would not ship beer more than 1000 miles from the brewery in Golden, CO. Possibly due to their beer not being pasteurized. Texarkana, TX, is roughly 975 miles from Golden.
* While working in an alien invasion film and reading an Creator/ArthurCClarke article on how space is too big for extraterrestrials to actually reach Earth, Dennis Feldman had an idea about aliens contacting through information, and a message would contain instructions from across the void to build something that would talk to men. The result was ''Film/{{Species}}'', about an alien-human hybrid created through such a message.
* Creator/RobertRodriguez got the idea for ''Film/SpyKidsAllTheTimeInTheWorld'' from an incident on the set of ''Film/{{Machete}}''. Creator/JessicaAlba had her then-one year old baby Honor Marie and was dressed to appear on camera when her diaper "exploded". Watching Alba change the diaper while trying not to get anything on her clothes prompted Rodriguez to think "What about a spy mom?"
* Creator/RolandEmmerich decided to make ''Stonewall'', about the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots 1969 riots]], centered around a recently uncloseted migrant after doing charity work for the Gay and Lesbian Center in Los Angeles, where many of the people helped were from the countryside who moved to the big city only to find themselves in unfavorable conditions of homelessness, drug abuse and prostitution.
* Graduate school friends start a discussion about topics too taboo to be explored, ultimately deciding that [[spoiler:a son molesting his father]] was the most unfathomable thing they can think of. One of the friends in the discussion later went on to play the main antagonist in the short film ''Film/TheStrangeThingAboutTheJohnsons'', which another friend -- Creator/AriAster -- later wrote and directed as his thesis film.
* For ''Film/TheTexasChainSawMassacre1974'', Creator/TobeHooper credited the graphic coverage of violence by San Antonio news outlets as one inspiration for the film and based elements of the plot on murderer Ed Gein. The idea of using a chainsaw as the murder weapon came to Hooper while he was in the hardware section of a busy store, contemplating how to speed his way through the crowd.
* Creator/ChristopherGuest was inspired to create the Nigel Tufnel character for ''Film/ThisIsSpinalTap'' after waiting for a friend in a hotel lobby and seeing a British band checking in, when the bass player realized he'd left his bass at the airport.
* The ''Film/{{Tremors}}'' films were inspired by writers/producers S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock after they were climbing a large boulder in the desert and suddenly wondered "What if there was something that wouldn't let us off this rock?"
* The inspiration for ''Film/{{TRON}}'' occurred in 1976 when Steven Lisberger, then an animator of drawings with his own studio, looked at a sample reel from a computer firm called MAGI (who would work on the film itself, handing the iconic Light Cycle scene and shots of the Master Control Program) and saw ''VideoGame/{{Pong}}'' for the first time. He was immediately fascinated by video games, and wanted to do a film incorporating them.
* Creator/BenStiller got the idea for ''Film/TropicThunder'' while working on ''Film/EmpireOfTheSun''. A few actors were getting cast in war movies and compare it to boot camp, prompting Stiller to wonder what would really happen if actors were in a warzone.
* The basis for ''Film/{{Videodrome}}'' came from Creator/DavidCronenberg's childhood. He used to pick up television signals from Buffalo, New York, late at night after Canadian stations had gone off the air, and worry he might see something disturbing not meant for public consumption.
* Creator/MichaelCrichton became inspired to write ''Film/{{Westworld}}'' after a trip to Disneyland, where he saw the ''Ride/PiratesOfTheCaribbean'' ride, and was impressed by the animatronic characters.
* Creator/RogerCorman became interested in making a film about the Hells Angels after seeing a photo in the January 1966 of ''Life'' magazine for a biker funeral. The result was ''Film/TheWildAngels''.
[[/folder]]

!!Examples

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

* [[https://twitter.com/XiranJayZhao/status/1405980872671588355 According to the author Xiran Jay Zhao]], the idea for the Myth/ChineseMythology-infused HumongousMecha ''Literature/IronWidow'' came about from spite and dissatisfaction at the direction ''Anime/DarlingInTheFranxx'' took after the first thirteen episodes. The book was also pitched as ''Film/PacificRim'' [[JustForFun/XMeetsY meets]] ''Literature/TheHandmaidsTale''.