Defictionalization / Live-Action TV

• Emergency! was centered on Los Angeles County Fire Department Station 51. The number was chosen because the LACoFD didn't have one. (The one appearing on-screen was actually Station 127 in Carson.) In 1994, the County fire station at Universal City — site of Universal Studios Hollywood — was changed from 60 to 51 in honor of the show.
• The sitcom B.o.B was a show about Bob McKay, a man who created a Silver Age comic book character called "Mad Dog," which was revived and "reinvisioned" for the '90s. During the run of the show, Marvel Comics published a double covered comic book called "Mad Dog" that was one half the 50s version, and the other half the 90s, with things like an "Ask Bob McKay" feature in the middle.
• iCarly, of course, has the website from the show itself; a recent addition to its list of merchandise is Sam's Laugh Track remote. In addition, some people have begun making their very own spaghetti tacos after seeing them on the show.
• In one episode of Lizzie McGuire, Lizzie was inspired to spend more time with her mother after reading a novel titled The Orchids and Gumbo Poker Club for a school assignment. Disney later published an actual novel with that title, with notes from Lizzie included in the margins.
• Hannah Montana had a real concert tour in the late 2000s. It was a sold out tour that actually lead to a couple lawsuits against ticket scalpers! The concert tied into the Hannah Montana show because some of the footage from the tour was used in the second season. The concert featured Hannah for the first half, and Miley Stewart (who had no problem revealing her secret in front of tens of thousands of people, but the audience knows that since they've seen the show) for the second half. The concert was released as a movie after the tour in 2008, and a real movie based on the show was made in 2009.
• Sonny with a Chance:
  • Mackenzie Falls, one of the Shows Within A Show featured on Sonny, later became real (though as a short series that aired between commercials).
  • So Random! as a real life show happened as well. In fact, one commercial actually referred to it as The Show Within a Show that's now its own show.^note In fairness, this was mostly because Sonny's actor had to leave their own show to get treated for various psychological problems, thus ending the series proper... but with one thing that never got resolved (If Sonny and Chad ever reconciled and got back together).
  • Sonny also had a Halloween Special and a Christmas Special, both of which were actual So Random episodes. (The only bit of the Sonny show was in the afformentioned Halloween episode when they try to find the guest host to show up on the said episode.)
• Kamen Rider:
  • Kamen Rider Double has the radio show Healing Princess, which has actually been released on TV Asahi's website and has even been fansubbed. They are also marketing real-world copies of the heroes' clothing, complete with the Windscale designer's imprint. Naturally, the belts for all the riders can be bought. Some series even have a 1:1 scale replica made for adult fans under Bandai's "Complete Selection Modification" series of belts.
  • Kamen Rider OOO follows in its predecessor's footsteps with the flowery boxers that the titular Rider wears in-show.
  • In Kamen Rider Ex-Aid, the lead hero uses a video game called Mighty Action X, a Kirby-esque platformer, as his Transformation Trinket. To promote the show, Mighty Action X was released on the Japanese Nintendo 3DS eShop as a downloadable title for players who purchased the 1st print of All Kamen Rider: Rider Revolution. There's also a version of the Buggle Driver Zwei with a trapped Bugster!Dan Kuroto in its display released as a Premium Bandai exclusive.
• Despite not having the in-show YouTube Expy Vuuugle defictionalized, you can watch the actual web videos from the Bizaardvark Vuuugle channel (with some not seen on TV) as well as some from the other Vuuugle channels "Perfect Perfection with Amelia" and "DARE ME BRO!" on Disney Channel's official YouTube channel.
• Yay Me! starring London Tipton, a web series that London did that was brought up a few times (and sometimes even shown!) in the third season of The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, became a series of webisode tie-ins on the Disney Channel website in the past.
• You can buy an ebook version of Kathryn Kennish's book from Switched at Birth about the switch.
• In 2004, the American ABC and Wal-Mart teamed up to produce Enchantment, a perfume that previously had existed only as a product of Erica Kane's cosmetic company on All My Children.
  • Kendall Hart's book, Charm!, was also released as a real book.
    • And in-universe, Kendall's book described a perfume made by her Author Avatar. A fan requested it at a book signing, and Kendall and her team set about to making it.
• Just about anything that can be defictionalized from Star Trek has been, to the point that it arguably helped mold the world you live in today, though the line between simple replica prop and actual functional item can be blurred a bit more so for some iconic devices than others.
  • In How William Shatner Changed the World, Motorola chief engineer and inventor of the cell phone Martin Cooper states that he invented the cell phone because he wanted a real life Star Trek communicator.
    • Plus there's a licensed communicator replica that actually works as a VOIP phone.
    • Also, hackers have created and circulated plans to turn a toy communicator into a working bluetooth phone.
  • Another example is the Klingon Bat'leth; a number of functional (read: deadly) replica swords have been fashioned by amateurs and production companies. A replica Bat'leth was even famously turned in during the UK's many Knife amnesties.
  • The Klingon language; it is an actual, legitimate constructed language, to the point where Oregon actually solicited Klingon interpreters for psychiatric hospital patients (for use in the unlikely event of a patient who insisted on speaking only in that language.). Also, a single quip about "enjoying Hamlet in its 'original' Klingon" in the sixth Star Trek movie resulted in Hamlet, along with many of Shakespeare's other works, being translated into Klingon. Also, the Bible has been translated into Klingon, and in some places you can get married by a minister in full Klingon regalia with the vows delivered in Klingon.
  • And for more Klingon fun, they've defictionalized the paq'batlh, or "Book of Honor", the epic tale of Kahless the Unforgettable.
  • 3D-chess boards, played by characters in some of the Star Trek series, are another item. An actual set of rules was created to make the game playable.
  • You can buy six-packs of Romulan Ale. At first glance, it appears to come in blue bottles. After you pour it out, you discover that the bottles are transparent: the ale itself is blue.
  • Also, while there may not be a Starship Enterprise yet, NASA did build a Space Shuttle which was named Enterprise due to a petition campaign spearheaded by Trek fans, though it never actually flew in space (it was only used for in-atmosphere tests, so they didn't bother including engines or a reentry-capable heat shield). Weirdly, Star Trek: Enterprise implies that the starship was named at least in part after the shuttle. This is all due to real-life circular appreciation. Originally, the titular starship was to be named Constitution, after the famous and undefeated US sailing ship, but they changed the ship name to Enterprise (also a series of honored naval vessels) and left "Constitution" as the ship's class name. The prototype Shuttle Orbiter was also to be named Constitution before the show's fans petitioned for a strangely similar renaming.
  • Virgin Galactic's first commercial spacecraft was named VSS Enterprise. Trek fans everywhere cried—first in joy, then in sadness— when the prototype suborbital spaceplane was destroyed on October 31, 2014 due to pilot error. The sister ship was to be called VSS Voyager but was renamed to Unity in 2016. Perhaps vessels with a Meaningful Name might have to live up to its real or fictional reputation to be entitled to wield it.
  • This is actually an example of fictionalization and back again - the first Enterprise was the French ship L'Enterprise, captured by the British and commissioned into the RN as HMS Enterprise way back in 1705. In the 1990s, the British named an Echo-class survey ship Enterprise, apparently inspired in part by the one in Star Trek.
  • In the mid 1990s you could go out and buy yourself a functional tricorder. There was a clause in Gene Roddenberry's contract that anyone who could make a working Tricorder was allowed to call it that; a now defunct Canadian company produced the "TR-107 Tricorder Mark I." It was about the size of a huge novelty universal remote, was done up to look like a TNG tricorder and loaded with the appropriate sound effects, and could detect EM fields, barometric pressure, temperature, light values and color values.
    • An Android smartphone developer known as moonblink made a Tricorder app which used the phone's built-in GPS, microphone, wifi, and other functionality to actually scan for and detect magnetic fields, sound levels, and so on. All was well and fans had defictionalized tricorders, until CBS made them take the app down.
    • Real tricorders are being developed again.
  • Eddie Izzard has used a variant on this line in several of her shows; "Those doors from Star Trek? (She may or may not make the door-opening noise at this point) We've got them now!"
    • It's amazing how many people think the doors in the original 1960s show were real. In fact, they were worked by stage hands.
  • "Far Beyond the Stars," a fictional 1950s scifi novel from the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode of the same name, was actually written and released after the fact as part of Paramount's Tie-In Novel line.
  • Laser enthusiast Trekkies have put burning laser diodes into toy phasers.
  • QuickTime video began with some Apple developers admiring the windowed full-motion video seen on displays in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and deciding to recreate it in real life.
  • The official Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual contained the assertion that thanks to the fluidity of the LCARS interface, a crewmember could theoretically fly the entire ship from a PADD (the little touchscreen gadgets everyone carried around) while walking down a corridor. There are now iPhones being customized for use on the International Space Station which include navigation software; theoretically astronauts could navigate the station through space with their iPhones.
    • And if they trade in the iPhones for iPads, Playbooks, Galaxy Tab, or some other tablet, they've now got a perfect real-life example of a PADD, right down to the size.
    • A German Trekker has made a Rainmeter skin that will turn your device into a semi-functional PADD in that, in addition to looking like a piece of Starfleet technology, it is a functional interface for using the device.
  • 3D printer company MakerBot markets a line of printers called "Replicators."
  • Scotty gave away the secret to creating "transparent aluminum" in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. While we've long been able to create clear aluminum compounds that can act like, and are indeed much stronger and often lighter than glass, no material has yet lived up to Scotty's transparent aluminum. Guess what Oxford University is working on!
  • Star Trek: The Experience, in Las Vegas, featured a Quark's Bar prior to its closure.
  • The theoretical FTL Alcubierre warp drive was inspired at least in name by the warp drives used by the Trek ships.
• In a double-layer case: Al Yeganeh, the stern soup-making chef that inspired Seinfeld's Soup Nazi, has packaged versions of his soup in stores under the "Original Soup Man" brand. So it's real soup, made fictional, and then defictionalized again. The tagline on the box is "Soup For You" — an obvious callback to his fictional counterpart's belligerent "No soup for you!" Catchphrase.
  • Muffin tops are finally available for sale, in the frozen breakfast aisle. In fact, muffin top pans can be bought at many stores, and many bakeries also sell muffin tops as well.
  • Aluminum poles to celebrate Festivus are available for sale as well (although selling them does seem to go against the spirit of the holiday).
• Sterling's Gold, Roger Sterling's memoir from Mad Men, was released as an actual book (although instead of a memoir, it contained quotes from the character).
• You can go into a real bookstore and purchase mystery novels "written" by J.B. Fletcher, Angela Lansbury's character from Murder, She Wrote.
• Richard Castle's novels in the "Nikki Heat" series have been released (and made the New York Times bestseller list), along with a graphic novel "adaptation" of Deadly Storm. He also has a website, Twitter feed and Facebook account. The catch, of course, is that Richard Castle is the entirely fictional mystery-writer-turned-police-consultant on Castle. The production team are clearly having fun with it, having put on the website an entire bibliography for a fictional author consisting of over twenty books, of which only three or four are actually 'real'. The "Nikki Heat" books get special mention; they're written entirely in character, including dedications, acknowledgements, interviews with the author, 'About the Author' sections, and back-cover blurbs, with pictures of actor Nathan Fillion used to represent the fictional author he plays.
  • They've also released three new Derrick Storm books which are set after Storm Fall (the book where Castle killed off Derrick). One of them is actually a crossover with Nikki Heat (called Heat Storm to fit with the the Epunymous Title naming conventions used for both series).
  • Plans are in place to adapt the Derrick Storm novel series as a TV series of its own, which takes the defictionalization to a whole new meta (defictionalizing a book that later gets adapted as its own fictional work on TV).
• You, too can own Buffy the Vampire Slayer's scythe! It slices, it dices, it even makes Julienned Vampire (right before they dust). You can also buy a Puppet Angel (or Spike). There's also a published Slayer's Handbook, and Fred's stuffed toy rabbit. On a different side of things, Lorne headlines a Las Vegas show in one episode. This was done by having Lorne headline a show in Las Vegas, and filming it.
• Stephen Colbert:
  • Tek Jansen has been made into a real comic by Oni Press, an independent comic company. One can argue that the original prose novel which served as the first appearances of Tek Jensen (with an outdated character design of Colbert photoshopped in a spacesuit) has not been released, so there is no true defictionalization yet.
  • The Colbert Report itself began as a series of fake trailers on The Daily Show; they originally had no intention of actually making a spinoff. The trailers rip off The O'Reilly Factor even more than the actual show does. Jon was quite baffled.
  It was a vehicle where Stephen Colbert would basically, in a megalomaniacal way, bring his opinions to the fore of the issue of the day. It was very funny... quite a joke... Anyway, Comedy Central ended up buying the show.
• Breaking Bad:
  • Vince Gilligan was asked, "Is there really such a thing as Blue crystal meth?" He responded, "There is now."
  • SaveWalterWhite.com is an actual website. The donation button at the bottom of the page once linked to the National Cancer Coalition's website where visitors could donate to them, but the link was replaced with one to the official Breaking Bad website after the NCC was named one of the worst charities in America.
  • Inverted with several show locations: during the show, several businesses are or become criminal fronts, such as A-1 Car Wash, Laser Base, and Los Pollos Hermanos. During El Camino, after the empires fall apart, we see that the businesses are resold, returning to their real-life locations: Octopus Car Wash, Hinkle Family Fun Center, and Twisters, respectively. (Twisters still has the Los Pollos Hermanos mural inside.)
• How I Met Your Mother:
  • The shows resident wacky guy/lech Barney proudly proclaimed that there was a written Bro Code, that all Bros must follow. An actual written version was released into book stores. Also available are "Bro on the Go" and "The Playbook".
  • Pretty much every website that the show mentions has been set up before airing by the showrunners.
  • Robin's music videos from her "Robin Sparkles" Canadian teen idol days were only seen in excerpts in the show, but are available in full online (and are awesomely bad) at Robin Sparkle's MySpace page.
  • "Ted Mosby is a Jerk!", which includes a 22-minute song about how horrible Ted (actually, Barney using his name) was to the woman who made the webpage.
  • Barney Stinson's Video Resume (sponsored by Barney's fictional employer Goliath National Bank), which is available in both "awesome" and "not-as-awesome" resolutions. They're not wrong. It's awesome!
  • http://www.guyforceshiswifetodressinagarbagebagforthenextthreeyears.com, which is basically Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Along with being one of the longest of Long URLs.
  • Lily And Marshall Sell Their Stuff was a real-life charity auction of How I Met Your Mother swag. Sadly now defunct.
  • CanadianSexActs.Org, which includes every single act mentioned in the show, complete with an age verification system, bilingual warnings from the Canadian government about content, and a disclaimer regarding "any possible physical or emotional trauma suffered as a result of undertaking any of the acts described". The links for each act are hilarious. Every link is to a different picture of Alan Thicke (of Growing Pains) captioned with a variety of "sorry, we're experiencing technical difficulties" explanations in exaggerated Canadian English
  • There was a Slap Countdown too, counting down to the Slapsgiving episode, but honestly it was just a timer so it was pretty boring.
  • itwasthebestnightever.com, which is hilarious.
• Lost has had a few examples:
  • The novel Bad Twin is supposedly written by a passenger in the plane crash which occurred in the pilot episode. Remember the guy who got sucked into the airplane engine before it blew up? That's supposed to be him.
  • Apollo Candy Bars were released in the real world.
  • The show's fictitious band Geronimo Jackson had a single, "Dharma Lady", released on iTunes.
  • "You All Everybody" (the single that Drive Shaft, Charlie's band, wrote) and "Dharma Lady" have both been adopted into DLC for Rock Band.
  • In a recent large multi-state lottery, over 26,000 players across the United States played Hurley's cursed winning lottery numbers, which while not winning the jackpot did match enough of the drawn digits to win them each $150. Jorge Garcia, who played Hurley, good-naturedly congratulated the winners on their "cursed" winnings on his blog.
• An episode of L.A. Law introduced the world to a sexual technique called "The Venus Butterfly", which Stuart uses to great effect on his wife, Ann. Or at least that's what we're told, afterward. Not only is the act or actions never described or shown on screen, the writers made the whole thing up (and didn't even have a specific sex act in mind when they wrote the script). Despite this, the show's writers were flooded with requests to describe the technique. Dr. Sue Johnson finally officially put moves to the name in a 2005 book. (Google it, if you must know what it entails).
• UFO (1970): Funds were raised for "The Explorer Motor Company'' to produce a real-life version of the futuristic, gull-winged car driven by Commander Straker. A plastic mold of the vehicle was made (to be called "Quest"), but the company never got off the ground.
• Battlestar Galactica (2003) makes much use of the fictional swear-word "frak", so the set designers gave Adama an actual IKEA FRÄCK to use for shaving.
• Late Night with Conan O'Brien: In an example of a Justified Trope, one of Conan's skits at one point featured a guy watching a "webcam manatee". Riffing a bit at the end, he joked that the man was at HornyManatee.com, unaware that he had just forced NBC to buy that domain name (to avoid some random person buying the site and putting on offensive material). Making the most of things, Conan's staff decided to actually put content on the webpage, and made it into an example of Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Since Conan got Screwed by the Network, the URL now redirects to NBC.com.
• You can now buy Grey's Anatomy inspired scrubs in hospital uniform stores. They're ridiculously soft, too.
• The University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro opened in Plainsboro Township, NJ, in 2012—the final year that House, set at "Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital" (presumably also supposedly located in Plainsboro and affiliated with Princeton University), was on the air.
• The Australian sketch show Full Frontal did a sketch in the early 1990s for an engine lubricant called Start You Bastard. Automotive supplier Nulon later picked up that ball and ran with it.
• Kids' TV show Teletubbies was so popular in the UK it prompted real life versions of the characters' trademark favorite foods: Tubby Custard and Tubby Toast.
  • Tubby Custard was available in the U.S. as well as part of a Burger King promotion for the show. It was pretty much just vanilla pudding with pink food coloring.
• The Saved by the Bell diner "The Max" has been defictionalized in Chicago.
• Copies of the outlaw tags worn by the main characters in the BBC's version of Robin Hood were marketed. Since they served no practical purpose on the show, one suspects that this was the only reason why they were included at all.
  
  In the first season, they provided a plot point when Little John was captured and were rarely mentioned otherwise. In one of the earliest episodes of the second season, a bunch of kids help the gang, and are honored with tags... just like you can be, too! The tags came out between season one and two.
• Fans of True Blood can now enjoy the eponymous drink. Well, okay, it's not quite the blood substitute advertised in the show, but it has the same packaging. The drink is manufactured by Omni Consumer Products, a company that makes Defictionalization their business.
• Fans of Life On Mars and Ashes to Ashes (2008) can buy two police handbooks supposedly written by Gene Hunt, in which he explains what being a copper is really all about.
• Satirised in an episode of The Daily Show. John Oliver announced that scientists were working on Iron Man armor and using genetics to turn lizards into dragons.
  • There ARE companies making powered exoskeletons in real life. The two leading models are Raytheon Sarcos' XOS, which deliberately played up the Iron Man connection by holding a press conference about the XOS-2 on the day Iron Man 2 was released to DVD, with a member of the movie's cast present, and Lockheed Martin's HULC. So far, they have been made with intent of aiding with heavy lifting, not direct combat, and cannot fly.
• The Bones episode "The Gamer in the Grease" had the fictional retro arcade game Punky Pong, which actually exists on Fox's website.
• The Amanda Show: "I have my own Amanda website you know, www dot amanda please dot com"
• Doctor Who:
  • Fans can buy a genuine (albeit smaller) Journal of Impossible Things (from "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood") with a whopping 78 pages of writings and illustrations (we only got to see a few of them in the show proper).
  • In a reverse-defictionalization, the TARDIS key props used in the 1996 Doctor Who TV Movie were licensed replicas of the classic series' TARDIS key in production at the time, which the production team bought from an American scifi memorabilia catalog.
  • There was an online petition to let David Tennant light the Olympic cauldron for the 2012 Olympics as he did in the episode "Fear Her". In the end, he was not involved. However, it did partially become true, with Tennant's successor, Matt Smith, carrying the torch through Cardiff, where Doctor Who is filmed.
  • In "Blink", a character mentions having a T-shirt that says "The Angels have the phone box". Online retailers such as ThinkGeek, Zazzle, and CafePress soon began selling versions of the T-shirt.
  • The TARDIS prop itself is a convoluted example. Originally, the TARDIS design was meant to mirror the MacKenzie-Trench Police Call Box of 1923, which by the early '60s was a common sight on London streets. However, with the advent of communications technology, police boxes became less and less common, the last (save a few left standing either from historic preservation or through apathy) being dismantled by the late '80s. By that time, people who had never seen the MacKenzie-Trench Police Call Box only knew the blue box as the TARDIS, and by the 21st Century, a British court had taken the trademark rights for the box away from the Metropolitan Police and awarded them to the BBC, who were actually doing something with it. Both they, and many, MANY, determined fans, have built many TARDISes, real in all ways save the understandable lack of being "bigger on the inside," and even a British newspaper heralded the decision of a British town to sell its remaining police box with a headline announcing you too could own your very own TARDIS.
    
    There have been (and probably still are) "speakeasies" in New York City that use a TARDIS replica as the entrance from a small storefront to a much larger back room where liquor is served. Semi-defictionalizing the "larger inside" aspect. For one example, The Way Station bar in New York has designed the blue police box as the entrance to their restroom. It really is bigger on the inside, though still as cramped as a typical pub loo.
  • The Angel's Kiss, the book the Doctor, Amy, and Rory were reading in "The Angels Take Manhattan", has been written as an ebook for the Kindle. Though it's not exactly the book from the episode — it reads more like a prequel.
  • Also available as an ebook is Summer Falls, a novel published in the 1950s, written by Amelia Williams, and briefly mentioned in "The Bells of Saint John". Clara thought Chapter 11 was the best part of the book, saying, "You'll cry your eyes out. The good kind of crying."
  • The website thinkgeek.com frequently features a number of defictionalized Doctor Who items, including the Fourth Doctor's scarf and the Master's pocket watch from "Utopia".
  • And of course, there are many Sonic Screwdrivers that fans can buy. One of them even can act as your TV remote!
• The Bull & Finch Pub, the real Boston pub that inspired Cheers, was renamed to Cheers and references the show prominently in its marketing. A replica bar opened in 2001 in Faneuil Hall that closed in August 2020. There was also a chain of airport bars.
  • Also, the "Screaming Viking" is now a real drink.
• In 2003, Chappelle's Show had a sketch that parodied the Discovery Channel show "Trading Spaces". The sketch was called "Trading Spouses" and it was about two families, one white, one black, who appear on a reality TV show in which they exchange husbands for a month. (Both husbands were played by Dave Chapelle.) Three years later, by what they insist is pure coincidence, Fox Network released an actual show called Trading Spouses with basically the same premise, except that the wives switch instead of husbands. (It came out a few months before the more successful ABC equivalent Wife Swap, but a whole year after the original British version.)
• "Mocny Full" beer from the Polish sitcom Swiat Wedlug Kiepskich was at one point defictionalized but it was discontinued due to copyright infringement — the company had no rights for the mark and its logo.
• The producers of Fringe defictionalized the 70s psychedelic rock album Seven Suns by Violet Sedan Chair (an anagram of Olive Can Read This) that appears in an episode of season 3. The producers went to great effort to make the defictionalization authentic by releasing the album only in the form of beat-up LPs in the bargain bins of used record shops. More info at Fringe Bloggers.
• The medical drama-parody Childrens Hospital included ads for a fake action-drama spoof in the vein of 24 called National Terrorism Strike Force: San Diego: Sport Utility Vehicle:: (or NTSF:SD:SUV::).NTSF:SD:SUV:: would become its own series on [adult swim].
• In It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia:
  • Charlie's ridiculous stage play "The Nightman Cometh" proved so popular that the gang staged it in real life in 2009 and took it on a six city sold-out tour.
  • People have also come up with recipes for Charlie's favorite foods, the Grilled Charlie and milk steak. And yes, there are also recipes to make Rum Ham (not to be confused with the existing recipe for wimpy rum-glazed ham).
  • Ladies and gentlemen,I present you with Dicktowel.com. Very NSFW.
• There are a surprising number of Degrassi related items for sale for fans. Most notably, you can buy the t-shirt worn by employees at The Dot. Other items can be seen here (some of which are unfortunately out of stock now).
• The quirky American ice cream manufacturer Ben & Jerry's has made Saturday Night Live's infamous Schweddy Balls into a flavor (it's chocolate and rum malt balls in vanilla ice cream). They did sell these in stores for a time, until Moral Guardians chased it off the shelves due to how vulgar the name was. They are still sold in Ben and Jerry's ice cream stands.
• Allegedly, during the run of the original Knight Rider, Pontiac was deluged with requests for a Knight Rider edition Trans Am. Potential liability kept it from happening officially, but to this day there's a decent market for conversion parts of varying fidelity to the show to make KITT replicas. Some people have even worked to integrate various computer AI/bots into them, though naturally none is anywhere close to what was seen on the show.
• For the long running comedy The Office (US), novelty items branded with the name and logo of fictional paper company Dunder Mifflin have been available for years, however in 2011 Staples announced it would begin to sell actual Dunder Mifflin branded paper products in its stores (which is rather ironic, considering that on the show, Staples was Dunder Mifflin's biggest competitor).
  • Also, replicas of Michael's iconic "World's best boss" mug are sold by NBC as official merchandise.
  • Dwight Schrute's bobble head figure of himself can be bought as well as bobble heads of the whole main cast.
  • In the episode "The Chump", mention of a fictional video game, Rock Band: Billy Joel, made one Entertainment Weekly reviewer comment that "let's hope that never gets made". In a Take That!, Billy Joel contacted Harmonix Music Systems, the makers of Rock Band, insisting they include his songs within the game, which Harmonix was very happy to oblige.
• The Canadian children's show Theodore Tugboat features anthropomorphic model tugboats and ships who work together in Halifax Harbour. A real tugboat, called Theodore Too, was decorated to look like Theodore and stationed in Halifax Harbour.
• The US Air Force enjoys Stargate SG-1, (The franchise Backed by the Pentagon to the of the Navy lending them a submarine) and the real life NORAD facility at Cheyenne Mountain has a door labeled "Stargate Command". (It leads to a broom closet. Allegedly.)
• In honour of one of Loriot's birthdays, a German chain of bakeries produced a real-life version of the Kosakenzipfel, an item of pastry that caused the bitter falling out of two families in one of his television sketches when there is only one of them left.
• A character in Family Affair carried around a doll called Mrs. Beasley, which became so popular that Mattel produced Mrs. Beasley dolls for the mass market.
• Community fans have banded together to create the video game "Journey to the Center of Hawkthorne". Project Hawkthorne can be found here.
• The Big Bang Theory:
  • The personal soundtrack shirt, the periodic table shower curtain, and Sheldon's The Flash t-shirt available on ThinkGeek.
  • Apparently, fans have also created a real-life version of the "Mystic Warlords of Ka'a" tabletop game that was featured in a few episodes of the show.
• A Chinese fan of Friends has cloned the gang's "Central Perk" cafe into a real cafe in Beijing.
• Psych: The book that Shawn and Gus wrote - "Psych's Guide to Crime Fighting for the Totally Unqualified" - is a real book.
• "Good Burger," home of the Goodburger, was a fictional fast food restaurant that appeared in a recurring sketch in All That and a spinoff movie. Today, you can eat at one in New York City.
• The opening credits to two 1950s TV series, Kraft Television Theatre and The Kraft Music Hall, showed a small, spinning, abstract figure of a studio cameraman and his camera, bearing the letter "K" for the sponsor, Kraft foods. When people began asking for copies of that figure, Kraft made it available through a special offer, involving lids and other proofs-of-purchase from products like Velveeta and Parkay Margarine. The Kraft Cameraman figure was plastic and is now highly sought after on eBay.
• NCIS:
  • A Christmas Episode featured the characters drinking a beer called "Theakston's Christmas Ale." Theakston is a real brewery in England, but they never produced a specific Christmas beer - until fans of the show started ringing up trying to order it and they decided it would obviously make money.
  • Bert The Farting Hippo.
• Through the 90s several companies made stuffed teddy bears exactly like the one Mr. Bean had as a friend.
• Recursive example: in Jessica Jones, an updated version of the old Patsy Walker comic is featured◊ as an adaptation of Trish Walker's old sitcom. Patsy Walker, a.k.a. Hellcat! features this art as an alternate cover◊ of the issue Patsy teams up with Jessica Jones.
• The Lost Room, a show about people trying to collect various ordinary-looking Objects with incredible powers, prompted a rush of fans trying to collect various replicas of the Objects (no powers though). The most popular were The Key to the titular Lost Room with the attached fob and Wally's Bus Pass to Gallup, New Mexico, as these were most prominently used in the show, although useable replicas such as The Pen, The Comb, and The Deck of Cards were also popular.
• The cabaret club 54 Below staged Hit List from the TV series Smash for several shows, featuring Andy Mientus, Jeremy Jordan, and Krysta Rodriguez reprising the roles they had in the show.
• Not Born Beatiful, the Russian remake of Yo soy Betty, la fea, had the main character working for a fashion company called Zimaletto. In 2006, Amedia (the producers of remake) sold the Zimaletto brand to SELA, an actual fashion company, who used it for their luxury clothing. There are a few Zimaletto shops, even.
• Pee-wee's Playhouse: Matchbox Toys produced a full-size replica of Pee-Wee's puppet, Billy Baloney. There was also a child-sized version of his famous scooter.
• The Monkees - created for a TV series, the band recorded albums and did concert tours, and their career as a band continued past the end of the series. Singer/drummer Micky Dolenz will go on in every interview about how this was akin to "Leonard Nimoy becoming a Vulcan."
• Volodymyr Zelensky played the president of Ukraine in the 2015 TV show Servant of the People. In the 2019 presidential elections, he ran as a candidate under the Servant of the People party... and ended up winning and becoming Ukraine's president.
• Part of the promotion for Black Mirror: Bandersnatch included a real Tuckershop store and a downright playable Nohzdyve that even requires a ZX Spectrum emulator.
• CSI: NY: Lookinatchu, the chat roulette site in season 7's "Unfriendly Chat," was made real for a while.
• Game Shakers: The games that the characters developed in the show were playable on Nickelodeon's website. Some of them, like Sky Whale, were also made available as actual game apps for smartphones.
• The Legend of Greemulax, the novel featured in the final season of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, wound up turned into a real book by author Sarah Mlynowski. Kimmy herself reads the audiobook.
• In Snowpiercer, Evelyne Brochu's "Copie Carbone" is used as one of Miss Audrey's records that Wilford plays on repeat. Lena Hall, the actress and singer who plays Miss Audrey, went on and recorded an actual Cover Version of the song for her Snowpiercer-inspired album, 1001.
• Letterkenny: Puppers, the staple beer of the show, was produced as a real-life beer by craft brewery Stack Brewing, then more recently by Labatt Breweries under the name Puppers Golden Lager.
• In the Schitt's Creek episode "The Hospies", Alexis auditions for a local musical production by singing and dancing to "A Little Bit Alexis", her "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune for a short-lived reality show within a show of the same title. The day after the episode first aired, Annie Murphy, who played Alexis, had a full studio version of the song released as a digital single, with some of the proceeds going to charity.
• Inai Inai Baa!:
  • The special edition of the "Hiyoko Ondo" DVD came with a real-life version of Super Wan's cape.
  • The NHK character store sells gloves that resemble Wan Wan's Pakupaku-san and Pakuko hand puppets. Another version came with the special edition "Pachipachi Parade!" DVD.
  • A real life Moufu blanket was made as an arcade prize.
• Squid Game, which revolves around numerous people participating in a Deadly Game to achieve a life-changing amount of cash, has been replicated a few times in real life, such as by MrBeast and by Netflix themselves as Squid Game: The Challenge — albeit for legal and practical reasons, none of the real life losers were actually killed.
• The famous Twist Ending to an episode of The Twilight Zone (1959), "To Serve Man", as well as the short story that the episode was based on, is that the book accidentally left behind by one of the seemingly benevolent aliens with the title "To Serve Man" is a cookbook. Amazon.com has a listing for To Serve Man: A Cookbook for People by Karl Wülf.

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