* LoonyFan:
** John Lennon's assassin loved this book and claimed to use it as an inspiration for committing the murder. Whilst this certainly helped the already considerable controversy surrounding the book, it also meant that many later readers approached the work expecting it to be more brutal, violent and dark than it necessarily is. John Hinkley Jr., who tried to kill Reagan, had a copy in his hotel room. He's been reported to be obsessed with it, but that might just be in confusion with Lennon's assassin. It doesn't help that ''Film/ConspiracyTheory'' featured the link between the two assassins and the book as a plot point.
** More recently, Seung-Hui Cho, the shooter in the VTECH Massacre, sent videos to news agencies in between the two bouts of murdering. One of these videos included a rant of how he related to Catcher In The Rye.
* WhatCouldHaveBeen: This has been proposed for a film adaptation dozens of times, all of which were personally turned down by Salinger. Creator/RalphBakshi wrote a personal letter to Salinger proposing that he purchase the rights and make it into an animated film with live-action bookends. Salinger told Bakshi that he didn't feel that the novel was fit for ''any'' other medium.

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