Follow The Leader / Real Life

Celebrities

• After the emergence of Paris Hilton's infamous sex video (and before that, Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee), you couldn't spit without it landing on a "celebrity" claiming to have been sold out by an ex or robbed, with the resulting porn video ending up on the Internet and giving said celebrity his/her fifteen minutes of fame before they slid back into has-been/never-will-be territory.
• Jen Selter is this for Kim Kardashian, according to... Kim Kardashian.

History

• Before the Japanese stock bubble burst in the early '90s, you would have tons of American businessmen reading Sun Tzu and The Book of Five Rings in the hope of boosting their business acumen somehow. Naturally, this extended to fiction, with characters like Geese Howard showing people that a little aikido and some cool war god statues can really aid in your criminal conquest of America.
• In 1519 Hernán Cortés sailed to Mexico with 600 men and conquered a big and unbelievably rich empire in a single campaign. In 1527, his second-degree cousin Francisco Pizarro sailed to Peru with 169 men and conquered an even bigger and more unbelievably rich empire in a single campaign. Soon there were thousands of tiny Spanish expeditions looking for even bigger and richer empires to conquer from Kansas to Patagonia, most of which came back empty-handed... or didn't come back at all.
• Early in the 19th century a bunch of Anglos went to Texas (including slaves, despite slavery being illegal there) and gradually took over, creating their own state and getting it annexed as a slave state to the US. And for half a century numerous Americans tried to do the same - thankfully without sustained success.
• After the French Revolution the restored Bourbons under Louis XVIII^note  The numeral in itself was a political statement - "Louis XVII" had died during the revolution as a 10-year-old without ever ruling anything passed a "Charter of Government" which they insisted was not a constitution (there is a legitimate difference between that and a "proper" constitution in that the former is "voluntarily" granted by a king and the latter is passed by the People or their representatives). It included a very limited suffrage for wealthy men, an Upper House of Parliament filled with aristocrats (whom the King had the right to appoint, so he could in essence create a majority in the Upper House if he so chose) but notably also some promises of civil rights (albeit all of them with exceptions possible if the King deemed it necessary "for the Good of the Realm"). Virtually every state in Europe (and some outside Europe) during the 19th century had some sort of Charter of Government based on this French example and one point or another - even tho the French example lasted barely a decade and a half before being replaced by a Suspiciously Similar Substitute.

Networks

• Two whole networks owe their existence to this. When the Fox network became successful in the early 1990s (mostly due to The Simpsons, Beverly Hills, 90210, Melrose Place, winning the rights to the National Football League's National Football Conference in 1993, and signing a deal in 1994 with television station owner New World Communications -­­ which Fox would buy in 1997 from Ronald Perelman), Time Warner and Paramount started The WB Television Network and the United Paramount Network, respectively, in early 1995. The two even have similar origins to Fox, as all three had their roots in a group of independent stations (Fox had the six Metromedia independents^note in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Washington, D.C. and Houston, The WB had the seven Tribune Broadcasting independents^note in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago (this station, WGN, was a huge boon, as it was broadcast nationally), Philadelphia, Boston, Denver, and New Orleans, and UPN had the independents of Chris-Craft/United Television^note in New Jersey/New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Portland, OR and Paramount Stations Group^note in Dallas-Fort Worth, Washington, D.C., Houston, Detroit, Philadelphia, and San Antonio (which was a Fox station before UPN knocked it off). Both networks are gone now, as they missed that Fox had grown so quickly because of chance-taking (something the Big Three were not big on) and investing in popular, profitable sports programming (most of Tribune's WB stations dropped their sports programming roughly midway through the network's run, ironically to boost the network), though they live on as The CW, which may head in the same direction as its forebears.
• When Cartoon Network achieved ratings success in the early 2000s with their Cartoon Cartoon Fridays block, Nickelodeon tried to compete with them by launching Friday Night Nicktoons in 2002. It was pretty successful but it was nowhere near as popular as CCF.
• In 2011, ABC dropped its Saturday morning lineup (which by that point was a Rerun Farm for older Disney Channel shows) and bought a package of E/I-friendly (educational and informative) programs from Litton Entertainment to fulfill FCC guidelines for its stations. This was a sign for many of the networks as well as local stations that Saturday morning cartoons on broadcast TV was dead due to the prevalence of cable TV and the Internet. Within a few years, NBC, CBS, and CW stations started buying syndicated packages of E/I shows from Litton to air on Saturday or Sunday mornings, while Fox bought a similar package from another syndicator for similar reasons. Then, Litton started packaging syndicated shows for independent stations and even diginets that air on subchannels of local stations. In 2017, Litton was acquired by Hearst Television. As a result, the Hearst Corporation has now practically monopolized the Saturday morning broadcast market, with different programs airing across multiple stations at the same time. The only other competitor is Sinclair Broadcasting, which airs a traditional Saturday morning cartoon lineup on its stations and on ThisTV which the company co-owns.
• MeTV and the Retro Television Network singlehandedly revived the "classic TV" format long-abandoned by Nick at Nite, leading to a vast array of similarly-formatted broadcast diginets to spring up such as Antenna TV, GetTV, Decades, and the like. This turned out to be the undoing of Retro Television, as syndicators started making new deals with these new channels, leaving Retro with a string of obscure programming none of the other stations wanted and most of the channel's affiliates started dropping them as a result.
• After the success of Freeform's 25 Days of Christmas block, other networks have begun to do similar Christmas-themed programming blocks, including AMC's Best Christmas Ever and Winter Break on TBS and TNT.
• Nickelodeon annually runs a marathon of SpongeBob SquarePants on Saint Patrick's Day, with episodes focusing on Patrick Star. In 2022, Cartoon Network copied this practice by running a Teen Titans Go! marathon of Beast Boy-centric episodes on Saint Patrick's Day.
• After the rise of streaming services like Netflix, many networks turned to scheduling marathon blocks of their shows. The Nickelodeon family of networks is a major example, as their schedules since 2021 have revolved around marathons of their programming.
• Following the success of the "Every Simpsons Ever" marathon on FX in 2014, other TV shows utilized this style of marathon. Some of them, including the ones for Teen Titans Go! (as "Every Titans Ever") and PAW Patrol (as "Every Pup Ever"), even did their own takes on the marathon's name.

Politics

• Happens a great deal in politics and religion: the specific actions of a successful historical leader are emulated, forgetting the principles and reasons behind them. Some Mongol leaders after Genghis Khan sought to reestablish the Mongol Empire, but only to the borders the empire had at the time of Genghis Khans' death. A Christian cult in Uganda wants to ban bicycles because they didn't exist in Jesus' time. Some Muslims in Africa refuse to use toothbrushes, opting for sticks with the end chewed soft, because toothbrushes didn't exist in Muhammad's time.
• Many common practices of The Presidents of the United States, which are simply taken for granted today, can ultimately be traced back to the example set by George Washington when the office was still new. The President is still always addressed as "Mister President" (or "Madam President" should a woman be elected or ascend to the office), a term of address that Washington devised for himself in order to avoid a more aristocratic title like "Your Excellency". Likewise, the two-term limit for American Presidents became standard because Washington voluntarily stepped down after two terms in office; it wasn't until Franklin D. Roosevelt unexpectedly won four terms (almost 150 years after Washington's tenure) that it occurred to anyone to finally codify the term limit via the 22nd Amendment.
• Similarly many of The Chancellors of Germany since 1949 have to some extent followed precedents set by Konrad Adenauer (the first holder of that office 1949-1963) including a rather strong dominance over their cabinet.^note  The constitution only says that the chancellor "Sets the guiding principles of policy" which can both mean a role almost akin to a mentor and final arbitrator of cabinet or - as Adenauer and many of his successors took it - a strong role of being the one who ultimately decides every important question before the cabinet The fact that Adenauer won his first election to chancellor (held with a secret ballot) by ''one'' vote and freely admitted that he had cast a vote for himself has discouraged the old German political tradition that politicians do not (usually) vote for themselves (e.g. in a party leadership election) from applying to the chancellorship as seen by many chancellor-elections having zero abstentions. Adenauer (who was his own foreign minister at the beginning of his term) also established the strong role of the chancellor in foreign policy, personally visiting and hosting foreign leaders instead of delegating that job to the President or Foreign Minister. The tendency of German chancellors to be leaders of their party at the same time and giving up the latter office usually being an indication of giving up the former was also established by Adenauer (it hadn't been the rule in the Weimar Republic) and has largely been followed since. Something that was enforced by coalition partners, voters and now traditional inertia is a tendency of chancellors to never run for a term that would put their time in office above 16 years (i.e. a fifth term if all terms go over the normal length of parliament at four years). Adenauer had that imposed on him by his coalition partner (tho him being positively ancient by that point certainly didn't help) and Kohl did run again in 1998 after having already served 16 years but was resoundingly rejected by voters. Angela Merkel wisely decided to not run again after her fourth term ending in 2021 - even though as of a few weeks before the election she remained among the most popular politicians of her party - perhaps precisely because she did not run again.
• With the notable exception of Grover Cleveland, who served two non-consecutive terms as President (which was quite controversial even in his own party at the time), there is a very strong "They Never Come Back" tradition among US Presidents. Even holding any public office at all after leaving the presidency (Member of Congress for J.Q. Adams, Chief Justice of the United States for Taft) is so unusual that most presidential trivia buffs can cite the few exceptions from memory. This is notably different from many other Republics which have had non-consecutive terms of several leaders (in some cases even sequences like "Leader A, Leader B, Leader A and then Leader B again) and even some US states have had non-consecutive terms for governors, sometimes to avoid term limits (a handful of states only have or had limits on more than x consecutive terms but there Ain't No Rule against multiple non-consecutive terms). In parliamentary systems it is also commonly assumed that a defeated leader will remain leader of the opposition unless the defeat was particularly bad or the defeated leader decides to take this cue to exit politics (at least for a while). While the role of "Leader of the Opposition" doesn't really exist in the U.S. system, a defeated Presidential candidate (incumbent or not) is virtually never assumed to have any leading rule in their party. Apart from the above-mentioned two-term maximum, there is nothing besides custom stopping Presidents from running for office after their term ends. Related to this is that Presidents rarely comment on current politics at all (at least in public) after leaving office. That is another thing Washington established - after his Farewell Address he basically ceased to be a public figure and never publicly said anything about whether he thought his successor and former Veep was doing a good job. The only grudgingly tolerated exception seems to be former Presidents campaigning for the current candidate of their own party, but even then that happens only in the general election campaign, never in the primaries, even if the political or personal preference of the former President for a certain candidate is widely suspected.

Restaurants

• The restaurant industry apparently loves this trope. Think about when various chains started offering (or offering more of or emphasizing): angus, chipotle, salads, chicken, sliders, chipotle chicken salads…
  • And chicken sandwiches with only pickles and a buttered bun, a la Chick-fil-A. Popeyes' venture at making one of these sandwiches stoked up a raging Flame War on several social media platforms due to its immense popularity; even the social media accounts of the two fast food chains weren't above throwing potshots at each other during the fight!
  • Pretzel buns anyone? It's gotten to the point where some pizza chains have started introducing pretzel pizza crusts...
  • On that note, there also seems to be a cyclical sort of thing with stuffed pizza crusts: 1. One of the bigger chains starts advertising stuffed/pull-apart pizza crusts. 2. Other chains start copying off the idea, with their own stuffed crust pizzas being advertised soon after. 3. The "original" stuffed crust pizza fades out of the minds of the public, causing the copycats to soon fizzle out as well. 4. A significant amount of time later, one pizza chain advertises the stuffed crusts again, possibly with a slight twist, and the process reverts to phase 1.
• Similar to the previous one, the popularity of Ray's Pizza in New York led to a number of ripoffs like Ray's Famous Pizza, Original Ray's Pizza, Ray's Original Pizza, etc. According to That Other Wiki, much of the other restaurants with "Ray's" in the name ended up becoming authentic Ray's restaurants after Ray's became a chain of restaurants and much of these restaurants' owners bought franchises, with one oddly retaining the name Not Ray's Pizza after doing so, though it didn't say if there were any ripoffs still out there after the original restaurant's expansion, so checking whether they're real Ray's Pizza restaurants would be a good idea for someone not from NYC. Conan O'Brien briefly mentioned Ray's Pizza and other pizzerias with "Ray's" in the name on his eponymous TBS show during a week of shows in New York City, but he ended up going to Joe's Pizza rather than any of the Ray's pizzerias because he had a fondness of Joe's when he was in New York doing Late Night.
  • Likewise with (Original) Tommy's Hamburgers in Los Angeles, a fast food joint known and loved for its greasy chili burgers. A glut of Tommie's, Tomi's, and similar wannabe-clones came and (mostly) went.
  • Southern California has any number of "fast Mexican" joints named something-berto's (Aliberto's, Eriberto's, Umberto's, Roberto's, etc.), all with very similar menus. Which is the "original" is a little obscure, but Alberto's is probably the largest and most popular chain.
• Baskin-Robbins' "31 flavors" trademark was based on Howard Johnson's restaurants and their claims of "28 flavors". Then Bresler's 33 Flavors copied the idea as well.
  • Similarly, Howard Johnson's (back when it was both a motel and restaurant chain) was known for the unique designs of its Motor Lodges and restaurants: the former had massive A-frames, and the latter had a modernistic streamline design with porcelain roofs. Both were copied strongly by local businessmen.
  • The influence extended into the music world, with the hit song "32 Flavors" by Ani DiFranco (a Top 40 hit for Alana Davis).
• Also, Holiday Inn's huge, flashy motel signs with a yellow chase arrow were copied endlessly, even by other motel chains.
• If McDonald's has done anything in fast food, chances are that other chains will follow. Fish sandwiches, chicken nuggets, kids' meals, on-site playplaces, upscale coffee drinks, you name it. And if they weren't the first to develop something (the defunct Burger Chef was actually the first chain to offer kids' meals), nearly every other chain will at least copy their example.
• The Hard Rock Cafe restaurant chain was established in The '70s but took off in tourist towns worldwide in The '80s with its combination of hearty, familiar food and fun, authentic music memorabilia as wall decor. In The '90s, a theme restaurant boom arrived as a slew of rivals applied the Hard Rock formula to other concepts. While Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville, and Rainforest Cafe have proved thriving chains, most of the highly-hyped Planet Hollywood locations have long since closed, and the business is littered with outright flops: Fashion Cafe, Official All-Star Cafe, ESPN Zone, etc.
  • Similarly, many other chains such as Applebee's, TGI Friday's, Bennigan's, Ruby Tuesday, and Fuddrucker's also copied the idea of putting memorabilia on the walls, but most have since backed down and gone for a sleeker, more "upscale" appearance. (Cracker Barrel also does the "stuff on the walls" motif, but they set themselves apart by going for a homey, rustic feel and including a gift shop.)
• When Kentucky Fried Chicken pioneered fast-food chicken in The '60s, many other chains began pursuing fried chicken as well. Many burger chains such as Hardee's and Red Barn began selling it, and flash-in-the-pan chains such as Minnie Pearl's Fried Chicken sprang to life. Perhaps the most notable competitor to spring out of the fried chicken boom is Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, which is still the second largest chicken chain after KFC by number of locations, and was also second-largest in revenue until the meteoric rise of Chick-fil-A in the current century.
• In a case of following the leader that was itself following another leader, there's Disney's failed Disneyquest, an arcade/restaurant hybrid, which itself was following Gameworks (a collaboration between Dreamworks and Sega), which in turn, was following Dave and Busters - Gameworks has survived (albeit its management has changed hands several times), but Disneyquest was a flop, only opening 2 branches (with the last one closing on July 2, 2017). Similarly, there was Club Disney, which was Disney's attempt to copy the success of Chuck E Cheese - CD was able to open more locations than Disneyquest (5 compared to the 2 Disneyquests), but lasted shorter (2 years compared to DQ's 19 years).
• There is a sheer endless number of fried chicken chains in all Central American countries - most of them domestic - interestingly enough, Kentucky Fried Chicken has only the scarcest of presences in Central America.

Retail

• Stuckey's pioneered the concept of a gift shop/restaurant/convenience store combo. As a result, many other chains such as Nickerson Farms, Horne's and Dutch Pantry copied the concept; Horne's was even started by a former Stuckey's owner. The competitors all fell by the wayside in the 1970s (largely due to the gas shortage), and although Stuckey's is greatly reduced in numbers, it still exists in the Southern states. Even Cracker Barrel copied the concept in its early years, but it was able to escape this trope by ditching the gas station/convenience store parts entirely in favor of a restaurant/gift shop.
• In 1962, the dime store chain S.S. Kresge started a little discount store called Kmart. Meanwhile, Sam Walton opened the first Walmart, and Dayton's department store of Minnesota opened the first Target. Kmart was so successful that by year's end, competing dime store chain F.W. Woolworth had its own discount arm called Woolco. Fellow dime store chains J.J. Newberry, W.T. Grant, G.C. Murphy and T G & Y rolled out their own discount stores (Britt's, Grant City, Murphy's Mart and T G & Y Family Center). Even Montgomery Ward got into the fold briefly with its Jefferson Ward division. The chains that were spun off from the competing dime stores all failed between 1976 and 1985, with Grant City, T G & Y and Woolco even selling many of their locations to Kmart. Ultimately, Kresge gave up on the whole dime store thing in 1987.
• And it happened again. When Walmart opened its first Supercenter in 1990, Kmart and Target both began superstores of their own (although the concept was Older Than They Think, having been started by Michigan-based Meijer in — you guessed it — 1962, and arguably pioneered by future Kroger subsidiary Fred Meyer in 1931). By aggressively expanding so that nearly every town of any significant size now has a Supercenter, Walmart has pounded Kmart flat. Meanwhile, Target has distanced itself by abandoning the supercenters and going for a more upscale design. The Supercenter binge also had the side effect of knocking out nearly every remaining discount chain, which again fueled Walmart as it bought many locations from the fallen Ames, Caldor and Jamesway.
• Lowe's started out as a traditional hardware store chain similar to True Value or ACE. They adopted the big-box superstore format in the 1980s once The Home Depot started opening in Lowe's home base of North Carolina.
• Early shopping malls were typically open-air concourses (although some were enclosed) located in the city proper. They were more oriented to the immediate community, with the biggest stores typically being dime stores, drugstores, and supermarkets. The enclosed malls designed by Victor Gruen in the 1950s and 1960s, starting with Southdale in Edina, Minnesota, introduced the now-iconic concept of big department stores as "anchors" to give the centers more of a regional draw, while the postwar suburban development helped moved the mall from the inner city out to their iconic place in suburbia. Development in the 1970s was furthered by A. Alfred Taubman, who introduced other prototypical mall concepts such as fountains and skylights, while also making two-level malls more commonplace. Rouse Corporation (now part of General Growth Properties) introduced the food court in 1974. Outlet malls came in the 1980s, and the first "lifestyle center" malls (i.e., "upscale" stores on a streetscape) were built in Memphis later in the 80s.

Technology

• Take a look at a good portion of smartphones out there. Odds are, its features (either in UI, software, design, or all three) have some resemblance to the iPhone. And every tablet released since 2010 will likely share similar resemblances to the iPad.
• After Barnes & Noble released the Nook Color, an Android-based color e-reader by an established ebook company out come the Kindle Fire and Kobo Vox, also Android-based color e-readers by established ebook companies.
• This is all too common in railroading, as one builder or line tries to capture the success of another.
  • The Japanese Shinkansen ("New Main Line"), a high-speed electric train run on a dedicated line, was developed in the 1960s and made the Japanese railways competitive against the highways and airplanes. This prompted the European railways to spend the 1970s onward commissioning similar express services, nearly all of whom are named "High Speed Train" or "Inter-City Express". This has now spread to China, Russia, Turkey, and other countries. Et voilà High Speed Rail.
  • The "streamliner" craze of the 1920s-1940s. After World War I, people in The Roaring '20s became fascinated by airplanes and their speed. The railroads developed new Art Deco trains, initially steam and later diesel, with streamlined bodies to not only go fast but also look fast, and keep the passenger train competitive against the airplane and the highway. Some streamliner designs, such as the Super Chief, the Mallard, the Hiawatha, the Daylight, and the Dreyfuss Hudson, are legendary. But other designs such as the Alco P/F-series diesels, the Union Pacific steam streamliners, or the streamliners of the minor railroads were seen as Follow the Leader and are not so well celebrated.^note Although the Alco PA/FA are often considered some of the most beautiful streamliners ever built.
  • After streamliners, Alco made some diesel locomotive models in The '60s that are similar to competitor GM's Electro Motor Division (EMD) General Purpose (GP#) and Special Duty (SD#) engines.
    • Actually, Alco was the leader itself at some points. Alco's RS-1 was the first ever hood-unit road-switcher, of which practically all modern diesels are, and also had the first AC-powered diesel.
  • After World War II, the Italian railways needed to replace much of their light train fleet with a cheap and reliable diesel railcar. FIAT provided the ALn 668, that proved so efficient at the task that numerous other countries made their own versions of this railcar, if they didn't outright buy or licence make it.
• The iPhone can be considered the first smartphone as we know them today (with pre-iPhone smartphones having physical keypads), and the one from which inspired most other smartphones. However, in recent years, Apple's actually fallen behind the times of its competitors. It wasn't until 2016's iPhone 7 that they delivered an iPhone with IP67 dust/water resistance certification, and it wasn't until 2017's iPhone 8, 8 Plus and X, that iPhones began to have wireless charging. Water resistance and wireless charging are things that Samsung had been doing since the Galaxy S5 in 2014. USB-C charging, though introduced in 2015 by Chinese company LeTV, started going mainstream with the 2016 introduction of the Galaxy Note 7, and was ubiquitous in non-Apple smartphones by 2020. Apple, however, didn't migrate the iPhone to USB-C until the iPhone 15 in 2023—and that move was mainly due to a coming EU mandate. Lampshaded in one Galaxy S8 / Note 8 ad.
• Following the release of the iPhone X, a lot of smartphone manufacturers have turned to creating phones that imitate the notch that is the signature of the iPhone X.
• Another Apple example/aversion: Since the introduction of the first iPad in 2010, the front-facing camera of all models had been placed on the device's short edge (i.e., in portrait orientation). Not a problem, since the device was conceived to be used in that configuration. However, over time, the iPad became more of a computer replacement, despite the limitations of iOS (now forked into iPad OS), with the vast majority of tablets being used with keyboard cases. Apple's competitors in the tablet sphere responded to this trend by placing their front-facing cameras on the long edge (landscape orientation). With tablets becoming a popular video conferencing tool, especially during peak COVID, Apple's camera placement was increasingly criticized. Apple initially created a software/hardware kludge that allowed the front-facing camera to keep the user in the center of the frame, but finally bowed to the inevitable in 2022... though in a completely unexpected way. Given that companies typically introduce new features on their highest-end devices, you'd expect the first iPad with its front-facing camera on the long edge to be the iPad Pro. Nope. Apple didn't introduce it there, or in the mid-range iPad Air, but in its consumer-level iPad line.

Weapons

• Happens occasionally in firearms development. For instance, the M16 came with a combination carry handle/rear sight that was copied by many other weapons since. Including the British SA80, which otherwise started the alternate trend of rifles without traditional iron sights at all, like the H&K G36.
• In 1982, the handgun industry was changed forever when Gaston Glock created the Glock 17. While it took a while for the shooting public to move away from the standard of metal-framed, hammer-fired handguns, the Glock series pistols eventually became the most widely used personal sidearm for civilians, law enforcement, and many militaries around the world. Competition for the Glock was slow to materialize; in the 1990s, Smith & Wesson had its Sigma series, but the Sigma got killed by a lawsuit filed by Glock because it was too similar. In the 2000s, the Springfield XD series, the Ruger SR series, and the Smith & Wesson M&P series were the chief competitors (along with the Sigma's successor, the SW VE and later the SD VE lineup, which are essentially economy versions of the M&P). But it wasn't until the late 2010s when the rest of the gun industry finally entered the market for polymer-framed striker-fired handguns. Spurred on by the conclusion of the U.S. military's Modular Handgun System competition, SHOT Show 2017 featured many, many major manufacturers rolling out their versions of black polymer guns, all aiming to dethrone Glock's dominant position in the industry. These include the CZ P10 C, the Beretta APX, the Remington RP9, the Ruger American, the Fabrique Nationale 509, new iterations of the Walther PPQ and H&K VP series, and more.
• In January 2018's SHOT Show, SIG Sauer released the SIG P365, a micro-compact 9mm pistol that held a whopping ten rounds in a slim and easily concealable package. This was game-changing for the concealed carry pistol category, as no manufacturer had ever managed to make a pistol this small and thin with a double-digit magazine capacity in a centerfire cartridge (as opposed to much weaker rimfire rounds). The P365 was an instant hit in spite of a rocky launch that saw a lot of broken firing pins and dead triggers, and consumers couldn't get enough of it. Competition soon emerged when Glock unveiled their Glock 43X model at SHOT Show 2019 the next year, although this was more of a modification to the earlier Glock 43 model than an outright copy. However, genuine competition surfaced in September 2019 when Springfield Armory released its Hellcat pistol, with very similar dimensions to the P365 and still managed to cram an additional round for 11 shots in the magazine. Then in March 2021, both Ruger and Smith & Wesson released their 10-round entries into this market with the MAX-9 and the Shield Plus, respectively.
• While wheeled assault guns/tank destroyers had existed for a while, the concept didn't really spread until the Italian B1 Centauro was deployed in peacekeeping missions to Somalia and the former Yugoslavia, where it proved surprisingly useful for both combat and reconnaisance thanks to its combination of tank-like firepower, high mobility, and invulnerability to small arms, resulting in various other countries developing their own versions such as the M1128 Mobile Gun System (developed after the US Army found the Centauro too heavy for its needs), the Type 16 maneuver combat vehicle, and the ZTL-11 variant of the Type 08 IFV.

Other

• A strange attempted example with Mike the Headless Chicken, as noted on The Other Wiki: "Olsen's success resulted in a wave of copycat chicken beheading, but no other chicken lived for more than a day or two."
• Brazen crimes, such as mass shootings, are sometimes met with copycats that are seeking fame by trying to do the same thing that happened in the original crime. Luckily, most police forces know of copycatters and are high alert when a major crime has occurred so that they can stop said copycats.
• The reason why the chevron is prevalent in space agency insignias is due to one little agency "winning" The Space Race.
  • Inversely, NASA itself was modeled after the British Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and the French ONERA during World War I.
• Perfume loves this trope:
  • In 1917 Coty released Chypre, which has since become the name of a whole fragrance family bases on oak moss, patchouli, musk and citrus notes.
  • The success of Chanel No. 5 brought aldehydes on the map of perfumers.
  • Thierry Mugler's Angel is a shriekingly loud divisive combination of Chocolate/Caramel, white flowers and patchouli. Due to its surprisingly raving success it inspired hundreds of knock-offs by brands in all price ranges.
  • Even though other celebrities have released their own perfume before, the hype didn't really start until Jennifer Lopez released her first fragrance in 2002. Now literally every pop starlet as well as all kinds of other celebrities will sooner or later throw their own scent on the market.

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