15 Minutes of Fame

"In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes."

— Andy Warhol, predicting YouTube with a surprising degree of accuracy

So, it looks like it's just going to be another one of those normal regular old days when, all of a sudden, something exciting happens! One character does something unusual that stands out enough that there's a sudden media spotlight on them — there's all this attention headed their way, and they can't get enough of it!

...Until, inevitably, the media gets bored and moves on to some other bizarre story. Ah, well. At least you had your fifteen minutes of fame. Has a high chance of leading to An Aesop about being satisfied with what you have, and not to be too bummed when everybody gets bored by your one-note gag.

Note that what activity, exactly, causes the fame differs depending on the portrayal. More dramatic works will use a somewhat plausible act of heroism to get the point across, such as rescuing someone from a fire or from drowning. This will be done to get a point across via Character Development. In comedy, the act will be something unusual but ultimately ridiculous. Like eating a thousand scoops of ice cream, or shaking the hand of a celebrity. Here, the point will often be to make jokes at the expense of the media. Alternatively, a person may win short-term fame or "go viral" on social media with an inflammatory or offensive remark or a risqué photo or video. With the last category, An Aesop may result on "looking before you leap". The short term fame might also end up being a good thing, since a character might not want fame (or that particular kind of fame, depending on whether it's infamy or not) in the first place, and ends up feeling relieved after it passes.

A character trying to keep a low profile will often let another person bask in the fifteen minutes of fame, for fear of being discovered.

See A Day in the Limelight for this trope in the meta-sense. Often leads to Acquired Situational Narcissism. May overlap with Accidental Celebrity. Compare A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted, where it is money rather than popularity that comes and goes. Also compare Hollywood Hype Machine for this trope applied to show business. Compare You Are the New Trend where the character becomes briefly famous for a distinctive look or outfit rather than actions.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Volume #11 of School Rumble. Lala Gonzales accidentally adopts a new, very distinctive temporary look, then displays her fighting ability in Shibuya. She becomes "Queen of Shibuya", with girls aping her odd style, and for a week becomes a poster girl for cosmetics and the like. But when her CD single flops, Lala returns to her normal exchange student life.

Asian Animation

• Happy Heroes: In episode 9, Smart S. breaks the record for planet Xing Xing's fastest runner and becomes a celebrity who gains a lot of fans from it. However, he eventually gets so distracted by people making him try their special products that it causes him to lose a race to Big M., who then gets all the attention.

Comic Books

• After his father made his disappearance into Batman: No Man's Land incredibly public in his quest to have Tim returned to him he becomes a minor celebrity against his wishes, he's especially annoyed the government was willing to save one rich kid from the city it abandoned and cut off from the world but not the many others still trapped there. "People point at me everywhere. 'There's Tim Drake-the kid who got trapped in Gotham.' The President wanted to meet me."
• In the Teen Titans Go! Volume 2 issue "Starstruck," Robin becomes a teen idol in an effort to impress Starfire, who has become a big fan of another teen idol. It works too well, as Robin soon finds himself swarmed by a Groupie Brigade everywhere he goes, which ruins his effectiveness as a crimefighter. Luckily, his fame is short-lived, as Cyborg points out that his fifteen minutes of fame are up as everyone, Starfire included, moves on to another teen idol.
• In the Ultimate Marvel universe Kitty Pryde saved the world from Galactus during Cataclysm: The Ultimates' Last Stand. When the All-New Ultimates start, she's hiding at Jessica's home because she can not withstand the fame. Some issues later, she can go out again, as people have turned their interest to some other fad.

Fan Works

• Some Things Never Change: During their final encounter, Squidward brings up his victories over Squilliam during the events of "Band Geeks" and later "House Fancy" as his one and only trump card. However, Squilliam laughs it off, pointing out how the true measure of fame isn’t gaining it but holding onto it and leaving your mark on society. Squilliam by this point (and after his death) has had a lifelong career of countless achievements, and has been immortalized by Bikini Bottom as a Renaissance Man. Meanwhile, Squidward's past accomplishments have long been forgotten, only remembered by the very few who even bother to care about him (like Sandy and Spongebob). This turns out to also be something of a good thing though, as while Squidward's fame might not have lasted, at least his failures and past mistakes can't really haunt him anymore after his epiphany with Sandy. Squilliam's past misdeeds however, end up coming back to damage his reputation severely.

Film

• One of the stories in the movie The Ten had a guy get stuck in the ground after a skydiving accident and wrest fifteen minutes of fame and a short-lived sitcom out of it ... until the media got bored with the story.
• In Bedazzled (1967), Stanley wishes to become a pop star. The Devil grants his wish, but his stardom lasts even less than fifteen minutes — just the length of one song, after which the Devil makes him yesterday's news with his own new pop act.
• In Chicago, the fleeting attention of the media is a major frustration for Velma; she's hoping to use the publicity of her murder trial to re-launch her career, only to be upstaged by Roxie's own murder trial. She manages to exploit Roxie's fame by becoming a material witness in Roxie's trial, but immediately after Roxie is acquitted the media has already moved on to a different murderer.
• The aptly-named 15 Minutes (a Robert De Niro movie) had this as the motivation for one of the murderers.
• The movie Accidental Hero is about a man who rescues people from a crashed aircraft and gets 15 minutes of fame, only he doesn't want it. Through a case of Mistaken Identity another passenger is identified as the rescuer and claims credit and the media spotlight that the real Hero has shunned.
• Gladys Glover gets her fifteen in It Should Happen to You by posting her name on billboards all around New York City. But begins to hate it when she has to be in a “crooked” ad.
• A dark example in I, Tonya; after having her life thrown apart and her career ended by the scandal that makes her a punchline, the media immediately moves on to the next celebrity scandal: the O. J. Simpson trial.
• In Eddie the Eagle, Eddie realizes that his one minor Olympic jump has made him a brief novelty and a flash in the pan and that the media has already moved on to the other big underdog story of the '88 Winter Olympics, the Jamaican bobsled team. Eddie then decides to push himself even harder with an even bigger jump.
• Scream:
  • In Scream 2, this is Mickey's motivations for the murders. Unlike every other Ghostface, he actually wants to get caught, looking forward to the media sensation that will follow and the lasting infamy he will have.
  • Jill from Scream 4 is even worse, and actually lists this by name. She committed the murders so that she can be immortalized as a Final Girl, just like her cousin Sidney.
  "My friends? What world are you living in? I don't need friends. I need fans. You had your 15 minutes, now I want mine!"
• Navin Johnson, the protagonist of the Steve Martin vehicle The Jerk, is a regular gas station attendant who hits it big when he creates a device that holds eyeglasses in place. His fame and fortune are short-lived when the entrepreneur he sold the idea to files a class action suit after the device causes his eyes to be permanently crossed.
• In That Thing You Do!, the Wonders get to ride the high of a hit single, and within two months, have broken up.

Literature

• Happens in Audrey, Wait! when Audrey's ex-boyfriend writes a hit song about his break-up with her.
• So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson is about people who get their 15 minutes for the wrong reasons.
• The Goosebumps story "How I Learned To Fly" has the protagonist learn to fly (along with another kid who's the living embodiment of Always Someone Better), gaining the attention of the media and the government, and ends with him suddenly being unable to, crashing to the ground in front of a crowd who'd gathered there to watch him. He has utterly lost his ability to fly, much to the frustration of his Stage Dad, but the end reveals he actually still can, he just wanted his attention-free life back.

Live Action TV

• In The Secret World of Alex Mack, Alex and one of her friends run across a kid trapped under a giant pipe. Her friend tries to lift it and Alex uses her powers to make it seem like he does in order to save the kid. The kid turns out to be the governor's son- which promptly puts the spotlight (and, consequently, suspicion from the main villain) on this kid who somehow manages to lift a pipe that weighs hundreds of kilograms.
• In Heroes, after Claire rescues a man from a fire early on, she lets Jackie lie about being the one who did it (all anyone saw was that the rescuer was wearing a cheerleader uniform) since she herself is mortified about the existence of her superpowers.
• This happens to Sally on 3rd Rock From The Sun after she punches out Mark Hamill in a restaurant. When Mary tells a jealous Dick that this is Sally's "fifteen minutes of fame", he interprets it literally and is maddened by her "fifteen minutes" lasting considerably longer than that. It ends after a few days, however, causing Sally to start acting like a White-Dwarf Starlet.
• Natalie on Monk gets a ridiculous amount of fame from a brief stint as a lottery girl.
• The crew in Leverage does this to their mark deliberately in the aptly named episode "The Fifteen Minutes Job".
• Married... with Children:
  • Peg becomes famous when she claims she saw Elvis and found a shirt of Al's with a sweat stain of the King. At first, Al passes this off as baloney but eventually tries to cash in on her fame by selling blue suede shoes. Unfortunately, before he can, Elvis is spotted in Youngstown, and Peg's fame is lost as quickly as it's gained.
  • Jefferson made a commercial and his wife didn't like the attention he got from that, his friends tried to assure her it'd be just his fifteen minutes of fame.
• In the Wings episode "Just Call Me Angel", Brian becomes a media sensation when he lands a commercial flight (on which he and Joe had been passengers) when the pilots fall ill. His celebrity vanishes almost instantly when everyone becomes obsessed instead with a cat who saved her owners from a house fire. Brian is extremely depressed over this, but Joe pulls him out of it by reminding him that while the rest of the world may no longer care, everyone who was on that flight will always remember his heroism.
• In autumn 2022, The BBC ran a competition called "15 Seconds of Fame." The prizes were appearances as extras on popular TV shows.
• The Suite Life of Zack & Cody: In the episode "Aptitude" Maddie saves the life of a Moroccan ambassador from choking. As Maddie is being interviewed by the news, a jealous London plans to stage saving a man from choking so she too could get the media attention, only for Maddie to have to save London from choking too. By the next week, the public no longer knows or cares about Maddie's hero status which London explains to a disappointed Maddie how fame works.

Music

• Sugar Ray referenced the phrase by naming their post-breakthrough album 14:59.
• Kraftwerk has a song named exactly this.
• The main thrust of the Eagles' "New Kid In Town" is the fleeting nature of both love and fame.
  "They will never forget you 'til somebody new comes along..."
• From Lou Reed's New York (1989) album:
  • Mentioned by name in "Hold On," doubling as a Mythology Gag.
  "There's no Mafia lawyer to sit in your corner
  For your fifteen minutes of fame"
  • "Dime Store Mystery" is a tribute to Andy Warhol, the Trope Namer.
• David Bowie, who had a more fleeting acquaintance with Warhol, wrote the line "Andy where's my fifteen minutes" in the Tin Machine song "I Can't Read".
• As with much of everything else, Marilyn Manson puts a sarcastic twist on the phrase in "I Don't Like the Drugs (But the Drugs Like Me)":
  Norm life, baby
  We're rehabbed and we're ready for our 15 minutes of shame

Theatre

• In Anyone Can Whistle, the mayoress of a town and her cronies set up a "miracle" to attract pilgrims and boost the town's economy. Their plan works at first but is complicated by a number of things. The mayoress gets it straightened out just in time to see all the pilgrims (and a couple of her cronies) rushing off to the next town over, where a new "miracle" has occurred.
  • Also used in how quickly the people in the town turn from Hapgood, whose praises they were literally singing, once they heard that he was responsible for the "miracle" running dry.

Video Games

• Dead Rising 2: Off the Record shows that Frank West was celebrated as a hero and even shook hands with the President after the events of the first game. He lived off the riches and fame he got until it dried up, and now people consider him a washed-up D-lister. Saving the day again in this story presumably reignited his popularity, though a lot of this adventure is non-canon to the overall series, save for what happened between games. Dead Rising 4 reveals that the book Frank wrote about the incident at Willamette was derided as conspiracy theorist nonsense, that his only true fans are also loopy conspiracy theorists, and the meeting where Frank shook hands with the President actually ended in Frank accidentally punching him in the throat.
• Subverted with the Squid Sisters in Splatoon. The duo was very popular in the timeframe of the first game, and while they no longer host Inkopolis News come Splatoon 2, that's because their careers had exploded in the years since. Callie in particular became quite the film and TV star, while Marie made a name for herself on radio. That said, younger Inklings aren't quite as familiar with them, and Agent 4 in particular has no idea who they are (with the character's official biography explaining that they just never watch TV).
• Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time: The Grizz spent a brief time swiftly going from a common street thug to a universally recognized fine-artist with the art world praising his work as "Neo-Paleolithic Urban Expressionism." But, after a while, they slowly came around to the fact that his art was just plain bad and his swift fall from popularity left a big enough mark on him to become an art thief to get revenge on those that abandoned him. Grizz eventually joins Le Paradox in a Time Travel for Fun and Profit scheme involving creating fake cave paintings when his 15 minutes ran out for good.

Web Original

• #1 of Cracked's 6 New Kinds of Anxiety the Internet Gave Us is "The Shock of Instant, Unintentional Fame".

Western Animation

• A common plot device on The Simpsons. To wit:
  • Homer bowls a perfect game. The excitement the townspeople have over this is lampshaded when Brockman notes how pathetic the town must be for him to be covering a story like this.
  • Apu and Manjula have octuplets, which briefly results in them getting copious baby supplies from well-wishers, but leaves them in a dreadful situation once the reporters move on to a story about a couple who has nonuplets. ("Nine babies? That's barbaric!")
  • Bart accidentally destroys a set while on the Krusty the Clown show and reflexively says "I didn't do it" to the audience. They find it incredibly amusing, and he gets promoted from being Krusty's off-screen "gofer" to having an entire sketch on the show dedicated to him. He loves it, then gets sick of the repetition, then accepts it again - only for it to become a Discredited Meme in-universe.
• Tiny Toons Looniversity: In "Twin-Con," Plucky records Hampton leaping through the air and flailing, leading to Hampton becoming internet famous. Unfortunately, after embracing his fame, he finds that he is not universally famous.
• Men in Black: The Series: Agent X called for a TV crew from his home planet so they'd make him the star of their show. Being unable to get rid of them, Zed punished X by offering a chance to have K instead of X as the star, which they quickly accepted. As J pointed out, fame was so fickle X didn't even have fifteen minutes of it.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic had an episode with a similar theme to it, with the Aesop being directed at Rainbow Dash. After she rescued a resident of Ponyville and the town cheered her for it, her ego started to grow. This prompted the rest of the Mane Six to teach her a lesson in humility, dressing up as Mare Do Well.
• My Little Pony: Pony Life has the segment "Ponies of the Moment" where the Mane Six become famous for a day after Spike uploads a silly video of Pinkie Pie online.
• One episode of Cow and Chicken had Red Guy exploiting this with Cow. He makes her into a supermodel, which makes her super popular for about a day, maybe only a few hours at most. Then, when she becomes upset after becoming unpopular and yearns for the spotlight once again, he puts her to work as the live entertainment at his seedy milk bar. The episode ends with Chicken also getting his 15 minutes, though it doesn't go to his head.

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