Celebs truly are just like us—in the sense that some of them have incredibly unique names! Just like plenty of people around the world, the parents of many celebrities found some very rare and notable inspirations for naming their unborn babies who would go on to be rich and famous. And these are some of their stories!

In this list, we’ll take a look at the tales of ten celebrities who were named after notable things, people, or places. All ten of these stars were unborn, of course, and at the mercy of their parents’ whims and tastes. But their names were memorable from the get-go based on the inspiration these parents had. And now, after having risen to fame, we all know these stars’ tales of how they got their monikers. Get ready for a strange one!

Related: 10 Of The Most Unflattering Nicknames Given To Royals

10 Rachel Zegler

Rachel Zegler may only be in her early 20s, but she’s already made a major impression on Hollywood. The actress won a Golden Globe for her work in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, and in 2023, she starred in Shazam. Maybe it makes sense that she’s spending her life working successfully in front of the camera, though. Because the reason she was named “Rachel” in the first place all came down to her mother being a big fan of television! That’s right: Rachel Zegler is actually named after Rachel Green, the iconic character played by Jennifer Aniston on the long-running television sitcom Friends.

“That is a real fact, and nobody ever believes me,” Zegler told Jimmy Fallon during an appearance on The Tonight Show in November of 2023. “They think there’s no way I’m young enough to be named after Friends, but I am.”^[1]

9 Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift may be the biggest pop star on the planet right now, but she was actually named for an even bigger star who shone brightly long before her birth: James Taylor! Swift’s parents were big fans of James Taylor’s music, and so when they had their daughter in 1989, they decided to name her after the folk-singing sensation.

Years later, in 2015, James Taylor reminisced about how he came to learn that fact. And he was very honored by it! “It’s hugely flattering and was a delightful surprise when she told me that,” James said to the outlet Stereogum that year. “We did a benefit together… before Taylor really took off. But she was playing guitar and singing her songs, and I knew how remarkable she was. She told me that her mom and dad had been really, deeply into my music, and I got a real kick out of the fact that she’d been named after me. Obviously, it wasn’t her choice. It was her mom and dad, but nonetheless, a great connection, I think.”^[2]

8 Selena Gomez

Late in 2020, pop star Selena Gomez popped up on her Instagram account and confirmed to fans that she had been watching the then-popular Netflix series about the late Tejano singer Selena Quintanilla. The first Selena, as she was, took the American Southwest by storm and crossed cultural boundaries with both American and Mexican fans before she was tragically murdered by the director of her own fan club in Corpus Christi, Texas, in 1995. But as it turns out, this second Selena was named in a way to honor the first!

“I wanted to check in and say ‘hi’ and that I have been binge-watching the Selena series on Netflix. It’s so good,” Gomez wrote about the late superstar Quintanilla in her Instagram Story in December of 2020. “She’s such an inspiration. I was named after her, and it’s unbelievable.” It’s pretty amazing to think that a future pop singer would be named after another Latina star, but that’s how it turned out. What are the chances?!^[3]

7 Dax Shepard

Dax Shepard rose to fame on the back of pal Ashton Kutcher when the two did the iconic MTV show Punk’d together in the 2000s. Since then, Dax has taken on a number of film roles in various projects, including a memorable turn in Idiocracy. More recently, his “Armchair Expert” podcast has become one of the more popular audio shows to be streamed, and he interviews all kinds of interesting celebrity guests about all sorts of quirky and fascinating things. But he was destined for fame even before birth—because his parents were already thinking uniquely!

According to Dax’s wife, Kristen Bell, who spoke to People Magazine about her beloved husband a few years back, he was named after the protagonist in author Harold Robbins’ 1966 novel The Adventurers. Kristen went so far as to track down an original copy of that book for one of Dax’s birthdays, too. And then she had family members and friends write messages of love for the star in the book! What a way to honor one’s namesake and recall the inspiration with which his parents picked out his name. Very sweet!^[4]

6 Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey may be a household name by now and one of the most famous women to ever see her star rise on television, but things didn’t start out that way. In fact, her actual name isn’t even Oprah; it’s actually Orpah! (Notice the alternate spelling—it’s easy to miss!) As the story goes, Oprah was named after Orpah, which is a character in the Bible in the 14th verse of the first chapter of Ruth. Basically, the future TV star-to-be’s aunt Ida named her like that. But then, nobody else in the family could pronounce “Orpah” the right way, and the name quickly reverted to what we know today!

“Originally, I was named from the Bible by Aunt Ida who named me from Ruth, the first chapter at the 14th verse: Orpah,” Winfrey explained in 1983 during the audition tape that would end up earning her a turn on her first-ever morning show in Chicago. “But no one knew how to spell in my home, and that’s why it ended up being Oprah.” It’s funny how fate can be changed on a dime like that, isn’t it? We almost had Orpah Winfrey, but instead, Oprah is one of the most recognized names in all of entertainment media!^[5]

5 Leonardo DiCaprio

Leonardo DiCaprio was still in the womb when his artistically inclined mother decided on what to name him. He’s got an Italian last name, of course, so that was a natural move to give him an Italian-inspired first name, too. But that’s not the exact impetus for calling the child Leonardo. What actually happened is that his mom was at a museum in Italy while she was pregnant with then-unborn Leo. She just so happened to be standing in front of a painting produced by the legendary Leonardo da Vinci when BAM! She felt her unborn son kicking in her belly for the very first time.

DiCaprio’s mom took it as a sign that she ought to name the baby after the iconic painter, and so she did. A few months later, Leonardo DiCaprio was born and entered the world with quite a high-end namesake. Of course, we’d say that the Titanic star did pretty well for himself in carrying on the name from there. But it’s definitely funny and unique to learn that he was named after the painter following such a memorable kicking experience in the hallowed halls of a museum that housed da Vinci’s works!^[6]

4 Ciara

In 2016, the R&B singer Ciara became the face of Revlon cosmetics and fragrances. She was officially named a global ambassador for the company that year, and she was extremely happy about it. But it wasn’t just because she’d inked a big deal with a world-famous brand; it was because she was actually named after a Revlon product by her astute parents when she was still in the womb!

“I’ve been a fan of the iconic Revlon brand my entire life,” football star Russell Wilson’s wife touted in a press release celebrating her move to become Revlon’s global brand ambassador. “In fact, my name comes from the Revlon Ciara fragrance. It was a gift given to my mother from my father, and she fell in love with the scent and the name. It’s incredible to think that after all those years, I would be joining the Revlon family as the newest Global Brand Ambassador.” Amazing to think about how that came full circle, isn’t it? From being named after a fragrance by her mother to several decades later becoming the celebrity that the world associates with the brand!^[7]

3 Lil Nas X

Lil Nas X completely took the entire world by storm when his song “Old Town Road” alongside Billy Ray Cyrus debuted and shot to viral fame. And while he hasn’t been quite able to repeat that success with subsequent music, he has made headlines for plenty of other things. For one, he came out as gay after the song got big, breaking down barriers in the worlds of both hip-hop and country music. But there are even more interesting stories beyond that, too—like how he’s named after a Mitsubishi!

Lil Nas X’s given name is Montero Lamar Hill. When he was born in 1999 in Georgia, his mother was apparently really impressed with the Mitsubishi Montero. She didn’t have one at the time, but she badly wanted the SUV for herself. So she willed it into existence by deciding to name her son after the car model! “It’s slightly embarrassing, but [I’m] not embarrassed,” Lil Nas X explained on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon back in 2021. “So my mom wanted the car, the Montero, and she never got one. It’s a Mitsubishi, so ya, I’m named after a car.”^[8]

2 Winona Ryder

Before Winona Ryder was born, her father and her pregnant mother were passing through rural Minnesota. At one point, they stopped in the tiny town of Winona—which today has a population of just 25,000 people and was even smaller back then. As they were there, Ryder’s mom bent down to pick up a pamphlet about the town that was inside a laundromat where they had been washing some clothes. All of a sudden, her water broke, and she went into labor! They rushed to the hospital, and Winona was born a happy and healthy girl. But they were so amazed at the sudden birth in the tiny town that they decided to honor the village in the only way they knew how: by naming their daughter after it!

“[My mom] bent over to pick up this pamphlet with a girl on the cover, which said The Legend of Winona, and she went into labor,” Winona told Vogue Magazine years later. “I was supposed to be named Laura!” Sure, while Laura Ryder may not have a bad ring to it, the name Winona is unique and beautiful. Seems to us like her parents inadvertently picked a winner with that one!^[9]

1 Jane Fonda

Jane Fonda was named after one of the most famous women to ever live: Jane Seymour, one of the wives of the long-dead King Henry VIII. In fact, Fonda is even distantly related to Jane Seymour, so the name makes some sense in that regard. Fonda revealed as much to late-night television host Jimmy Kimmel when she went on his show in 2015. Her full name is actually Jane Seymour Fonda, and the “Seymour” in her middle name is also a nod to the famous ancient wife who was murdered by her rampaging royal husband!

“She was one of the wives of Henry VIII, and we were related to her, which is how come the ‘Seymour’ appears,” Fonda explained to Kimmel during their interview. When she was a kid, it even went so far that everybody in her life called her “Lady Jane” as opposed to only knowing her by her first name. Now, that’s truly the royal treatment! But as it turned out, Jane flipped that script to become something of a modern-day royal herself—at least as far as Hollywood is concerned!^[10]

There’s a popular saying that sometimes truth is stranger than fiction which can be very true. But “stranger” is not the only adjective you can safely use in that sentence. The truth can also horrify sometimes and used to inspire fictional events and characters. We all hope and believe that the average horror story is just the product of a writer’s imagination but inspiration for even the darkest ideas sometimes comes from real life.

10. Game of Thrones’ Red Wedding was Inspired By Two Real Massacres

HBO’s Game of Thrones was one of TV’s most popular shows and millions of viewers tuned in over its eight seasons to watch. The last book was released in 2011 and even in 2023 people are still eagerly awaiting the day George. R. R. Martin finishes it to continue his epic tale. 

Most of the story is clearly fictional but there are some bits of pieces of real life mixed in, if only as inspiration. One of the most noteworthy relates to the Red Wedding.  

On the show, the Red Wedding referred to the events of Robb Stark’s wedding when their historical allies the Freys turn against the Starks and murder Robb, his wife and his mother along with all of his bannermen. The scene was incredibly brutal and shocking and is a standout for many fans.

Martin has explained that he took inspiration for this event from two real life incidents. One event, known as the Black Dinner, happened in 1440. The 16-year-old Earl of Douglas and his younger brother had been invited to dinner with 10-year-old King James II. The evening was going well until a black bull’s head was dropped on the table and the Douglas brothers were taken outside and executed for treason by the Chancellor of Scotland who feared the Douglas’ power.

Another event, the 1691 Massacre of Glencoe, was also an inspiration. All clans were ordered to renounce their deposed king and swear fealty to King William of Orange. The clans needed to send a signed oath affirming this but Clan MacDonald wanted to hear from King James himself. They ended up waiting too long and their oath was rejected.

Because they hadn’t officially sworn fealty, soldiers were dispatched. They claimed to need shelter and were welcomed by the MacDonald’s at Glencoe where they stayed and enjoyed the clan’s hospitality for two weeks. They then received orders to kill everyone, so they ate dinner with the clan, waited for them all to fall asleep, and then murdered 38 of them. The women and children who escaped died of exposure in the cold winter.

9. Skeletor Was Inspired By a Real Corpse

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe has been accused more than once of only existing to sell action figures. But that didn’t mean the show had no creativity behind it. Someone had to create the universe and the people in it and that required inspiration. 

The character of Skeletor, who is just an evil wizard with a skull for a head, seems like he might be straightforward and obviously fictional, but that’s not the case. Artist Mark Taylor created Skeletor based on his own experience as a child when he saw a real skeleton at a carnival. 

Taylor was at a funhouse called Laff in the Dark that featured a mummified old cowboy that smelled terrible. He was convinced it was real but people assured him it was just a fake prop like any other. But it turned out Taylor was right. The corpse he had seen was the actual body of outlaw Elmer McCurdy. 

McCurdy had been shot to death after a robbery and no one claimed his body. The mortician embalmed him and put him on display, charging money to see the corpse. The corpse was stolen by a carny and, in time, people forgot it was ever a real body. But Taylor had a feeling, and it inspired the character Skeletor.

8. Wes Craven Had Several real Life Inspirations For Freddy Krueger 

Freddy Krueger of the Nightmare on Elm Street film series has become a horror icon. Created by director Wes Craven for his 1984 film and played by Robert Englund, he’s one of the most recognizable characters in horror history. And though he’s a supernatural being in the films, Craven was inspired to create him by real world events. 

Craven once told the story about how an article in the LA Times inspired Nightmare. It was an article about Cambodian refugees, and how the son was afraid to sleep because he thought his nightmares would kill him if he did. Eventually he went to sleep and died one night. 

On the commentary track for the film, Craven also explained that part of the inspiration came from a man he saw out of his window as a child who scared him and made him wonder why an adult would do something like that to a kid. 

7. Jeepers Creepers’ Opening Was Based on Actual Events

Jeepers Creepers was a popular horror franchise for a time, though lesser known than ones like Halloween or Hellraiser. The writer/director of the original movie was outed as a convicted child molester which seemed to end the franchise for a time, though someone else tried to resurrect it in 2022.

In the original movie, one of the more memorable scenes, before audiences even know who or what the villain is, involves the Creeper dumping bodies down a pipe and then chasing witnesses. This was inspired by real life killer Dennis DePue. 

In 1990, a couple out for a country drive were playing a license plate game where they tried to make words out of the letters on plates. A truck rushed up behind them and they made a joke about the letters. The truck passed but later the couple saw it again parked at an abandoned schoolhouse. They also saw the driver carrying a bloody sheet over what looked like a body. 

As the couple discussed what to do, the truck rushed up behind them and chased them for miles. All of this plays out almost exactly in the movie. In real life, it was DePue in the truck and the body had been his wife’s. He’d murdered her and was trying to dispose of the remains.

6. Dragonball Villain Frieza Was Based on Real Estate Agents

Trying to apply much real world science or reason to Dragonball is not an easy task. The story involves some hugely fantastic elements and is never presented as realistic. Despite that, there is still real world inspiration to be found, especially in the character of Frieza.

Series creator Akira Toriyama explained that the alien Frieza, who takes over whole planets and then sells them, was based on what he called “the worst kind of people:” real estate speculators.

The villain dates back about 30 years at this point and was the first major villain in the show. Back when Toriyama thought him up, he was inspired by the proliferation of predatory real estate speculators in Japan in the ’80s, who preyed on homeowners to turn a profit during the housing bubble.

5. Moby Dick Was Inspired By a Real Whale Attack

Nearly everyone knows the story of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. It’s a tale of being consumed by revenge and the use of the white whale sometimes seems like it shows just how lost Ahab is, by focusing so much on an animal which clearly couldn’t have had malicious intent when it first wounded him. But you can forgive Melville for taking this tack since whales had a history of causing some serious mayhem.

Melville was inspired by the true tale of the Essex, a whaling ship that was rammed by a sperm whale. The crew had to abandon ship thousands of miles from shore and few survived the 92 days at sea. Those that did had resorted to cannibalism.

4 Chucky From Child’s Play was Inspired by A Real Doll

Horror fans know that the doll Annabelle is inspired by a real doll once owned by Ed and Lorraine Warren. Less well known is that the foul-mouthed killer doll Chucky from the Child’s Play franchise is also inspired by a real doll named Robert. 

As the story goes, Robert the doll was once owned by a painter named Robert Eugene Otto. A woman who worked for the family as a servant in 1903 hand made the doll for the painter when he was a child. She was said to have practiced voodoo, something that relates to Chucky’s creation in the movies, and the doll got revenge for the family’s mistreatment of her.

Like Chucky, Robert was said to secretly cause mayhem that the real boy was then blamed for. Later stories said that Robert could blink, move and even talk. After Otto died, a woman bought his estate and claimed Robert the doll was just as alive as ever. She did what anyone would do when confronted by a cursed doll and donated it to a museum. You can still find him there today.

3. Pearl Jam’s Jeremy Was About a Real Suicide

Jeremy was one of Pearl Jam’s biggest hits and the lyrics make it clear the song is about a school shooting. It’s also based on a real life incident in which a boy committed suicide in his school in front of his classmates.

Singer Eddie Vedder had read an article about Jeremy Wade Delle being sent to get a late slip and returning with a gun in the paper and was inspired to write the song. Though it became a hit for the band, and Vedder wanted to sing it to spread some awareness, at least one student who had been in the room at the time was upset that the band even wrote it. 

2. The Movie Orphan Was Inspired By Real Case of a Woman Pretending to Be a Child

The horror movie Orphan is an underrated movie about an adult murderer who pretends to be an orphaned child because she looks like a young girl, and then continues her murderous ways when she’s newly adopted in America. 

The movie has been accused of having an absurd premise, and that may be true. It’s also true it’s based on a real incident. 

The true story is decidedly different from the film, but still involved a woman in her 30s named Barbora Skrlova pretending to be a 13-year-old boy. Skrlova had taken up residence with a pair of sisters who had young children and convinced the adults that the children needed to be punished for bad acts they never committed. This ultimately lead to some severe child abuse before Skrlova was forced to flee the police.

1. Adam Sandler’s  50 First Dates Was Inspired By a Real Case of Amnesia

Most of what we’ve seen on this list has been horror, but how about a comedy? Adam Sandler’s 50 First Dates came out in 2004 and featured Drew Barrymore as a woman who lost her memory every day thanks to an accident. It’s played for laughs on film but it was inspired by a real person.

Michele Philpots had lived the same day of her life for 29 years. She had been involved in two different traffic accidents several years apart, one in 1985 and one in 1990 suffering head trauma each time. By 1994 she was having seizures and memory issues. She was fired from her job after photocopying the same document over and over, forgetting she’d done it.

Her memory failed completely in 1994. Not only is she not aware of the passage of time, sometimes she can’t even remember a full day and will forget everything within minutes. She’s constantly having to have what happened explained and deal with the fact she and everyone she knows is getting older and older which, to her, will always be a shock.

The inspiration for famous fictional detectives is a topic of great interest among fans of the genre and, to a large extent, the general public as well. So, where do writers come up with their ideas about the often peculiar personality traits and the methods of such engaging characters?

As it turns out, most are based on either actual people or members of their own ranks: fellow fictional detectives. As this list of 10 inspirations for famous fictional detectives shows, there is good reason for the enduring curiosity about the origins of these engaging sleuths.

Related: 10 Legendary Exploits Of The Pinkerton Detective Agency

10 The Right Reverend Monsignor John O’Connor and Father Brown

Father Brown, the humble Roman Catholic priest, solves crimes based on his understanding of human nature as illuminated by his Christian faith as much as he does by his analyses of clues. As such, he remains as popular today as he was when G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) first introduced him to the world in his 1910 short story “The Blue Cross.” The character has not only appeared in several of Chesterton’s own volumes but also in several movies and television series. Currently, he is the protagonist of the BBC One series Father Brown, starring Mark Williams, which is now in its ninth season.

The inspiration for this enduring character was himself a man of the cloth, the Right Reverend Monsignor John O’Connor (1870-1952). And he taught Chesterton a lesson the famous writer would never forget. After a spirited philosophical discussion with two Cambridge University students, during which Chesterton was present, O’Connor retired for the evening. The students then admitted that the clergyman was, indeed, a wise and brilliant man but, due to his vocation, most likely rather “insulated and naive.”

Chesterton was much amused by their opinion, having been earlier shocked at learning just how much O’Connor knew about “certain perverted practices.” This, of course, was the result of his having heard the confessions of those who had performed such acts. Chesterton had found a model for his own priest-detective, who would solve mysteries by practicing the arts of both the rational detective and the spiritual priest.^[1]

9 Dr. Joseph Bell and Sherlock Holmes

In an interview with The Strand magazine in which his short stories concerning his world-famous detective were published from 1887 to 1927, as well as in radio interviews and his 1923 autobiography Memories and Adventures, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) explains the origin of Sherlock Holmes. During his student days, Doyle served as a clerk at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary for the surgeon who became his mentor, Dr. Joseph Bell (1837-1911).

In this capacity, Doyle was able to observe how Bell interacted with his outpatients and learned that the physician was able to discover more about them by his own observations and inquiries than Doyle had obtained by questioning them directly before their appointments occurred. As a result of seeing Bell at work, Doyle wrote, “I used and amplified his methods when in later life I tried to build up a scientific detective who solved cases on his own merits and not through the folly of the criminal.”^[2]

8 Jacques Hornais and Hercule Poirot

Philosophers warn us not to confuse correlation with causation. Coincidences may be intriguing, but they don’t prove anything. Still, there could be a cause-effect connection between such incidents. The problem is that such a link cannot be demonstrated. Nevertheless, the striking coincidences between Agatha Christie’s possible acquaintance with refugee Jacques Hornais (1857-1944), a Belgian gendarme whose actual surname was Hamoir, and the detective Hercule Poirot she would later create are suggestive, indeed. Not only are they both Belgian, but they are also detectives—and there is a striking resemblance between Hornais and Poirot, whom Christie (1890-1976) describes as exhibiting a “stiff” bearing and wearing a mustache.

There is more reason to suppose that Christie may have modeled Poirot on Hornais. In her autobiography, the author herself muses, “We had quite a colony of Belgian refugees living in the parish of Tor. Why not make my detective a Belgian? I thought. There were all types of refugees. How about a refugee police officer? A retired police officer.” Despite the lack of definitive proof, the possibility that the refugee Belgian police officer inspired Christie’s Belgian detective is intriguing enough to warrant further investigation.^[3]

7 Eugène François Vidocq and C. Auguste Dupin

Despite the brevity of his life, Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was not only productive, but he was also inventive, creating both the modern psychological horror story and the amateur detective story that would become the model for the detective fiction that followed. His detective, C. Auguste Dupin, made his debut in Poe’s 1841 short story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and reappeared in two subsequent stories, “The Mystery of Marie Roget” and “The Purloined Letter.” As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle points out, “There is no doubt that in the Dupin tales, Poe created the basic template for the detective stories of the future.” However, Doyle takes issue with Dupin’s flat, lackluster character.

Poe’s own source was Eugène François Vidocq (1775-1857), who lived in France at a time during which neither France nor Britain had either police forces or detectives. It was not until the 1820s that the Sûreté, or “French crime bureau,” was formed and not for over two decades later, in 1842, that London’s Metropolitan Police (aka Scotland Yard) added detectives to its force. Lacking a law enforcement source for a model, Poe based Dupin on Vidocq, the former criminal mastermind who’d reinvented himself as a private detective after serving as the Sûreté’s chief. According to Doyle, Poe used “the folly of the criminal [to] build up a scientific detective who solved cases on his own merits.”

A New York Times article summarizes Vidocq’s contributions to criminology. Long before such matters were customary in police work, he was looking into fingerprinting, ballistics, blood tests and the use of science to fight criminals.^[4]

6 Jim Grant, Lawrence Dallaglio, and Jack Reacher

The protagonist of Lee Child’s thrillers, Jack Reacher, is derived from a mixture of sources, including Child himself. According to Bryan Curtis, Child (the pen name of Jim Grant) is, like Reacher, a former U.S. Army military police officer who drinks an excessive amount of coffee every day, chain smokes, wears jeans and a T-shirt, and tends to be taciturn. Reacher, it so happens, is also the same height as his creator, “six-foot-five.” However, Reacher’s size, like his appearance, is also based on that of former professional soccer player Lawrence Dallaglio, who stands in at six-feet-four. Perhaps with Dallaglio in mind, Child has described Reacher’s face as looking “like it had been chipped out of rock by a sculptor who had ability but not much time.”

In developing Reacher’s character, Child used multiple sources, including stories of the knight-errant, the mysterious stranger, the Japanese ronin myth, and Robin Hood, a type of “character he says, that, “forced out of Europe as Europe became more densely populated and more civilized,” migrated to the American frontier.^[5]

5 Dave Toschi, “Dirty” Harry Callahan, and Frank Bullitt

Clint Eastwood’s Inspector “Dirty” Harry Callahan, who appears in Dirty Harry (1971) and four other gilms, along with Steve McQueen’s Lieutenant Frank Bullitt, of Bullitt (1968), are both based on the same person, the San Francisco Police Department’s Inspector David Toschi (1931-2018).
https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/SF-cop-who-hunted-Zodiac-killer-dies-Dave-Toschi-12488886.php
According to Kevin Fagan, it was Toschi’s “penchant for bow ties, snappy trench coats and the quick-draw holster for his .38-caliber pistol [that] drew the attention of Steve McQueen (1930-1980), who patterned his character after” the dapper detective, and Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry character was also “partially inspired by him.”

Eastwood got the role after Frank Sinatra (1915-1998) and Paul Newman (1925-2008), the initial choices for the part, turned them down. Sinatra because an injury to a tendon in his hand made it painful to hold a gun, and Newman because he “objected to its politics.” Ironically, Toschi seemed to regard Eastwood as an unlikely choice for the part. Despite his stardom, Toschi said, Eastwood’s detective impressed him as “an almost shy person [dressed in] faded jeans, a T-shirt, [and] white tennis shoes.”^[6]

4 Porfiry Petrovich, Father Brown, and Columbo

Bing Crosby (1903-1977) would have played the disheveled, one-eyed, cigar-chomping police detective in the wrinkled trench coat had William Link (1933-2020) and Richard Levinson (1934-1987), the creators of Frank Columbo, had their way. However, the part went, instead, to Peter Falk (1927-2011). The actor’s portrayal of the seemingly scatterbrained, humble inspector created as enduring a character as exists in the history of Hollywood. To create their star detective, Link and Levinson based Columbo on both Porfiry Petrovich and Father Brown.

As childhood friends, Link and Levinson had long enjoyed detective stories and mysteries. They were fans of Crime and Punishment (1866) by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881), from which they borrowed aspects of Porfiry Petrovich, and of G. K. Chesterton, whose Father Brown provided both Columbo’s humble demeanor and his ability to seemingly disappear among others who thought the cop apparently irrelevant. As Shaun Curran points out in his online BBC Culture article, Columbo’s “distinctive posture, exaggerated hand gesticulations and a contrived forgetfulness—his habit of leaving a room, only to return having remembered ‘just one more thing’ became his trademark.”^[7]

3 Inspector Clouseau, Lt. Columbo, Sherlock Holmes, Porfiry Petrovich, and Adrian Monk

Adrian Monk, of the television series Monk, was based on more other fictional detectives than most of his peers. The first inspiration for the obsessive-compulsive detective was inept Inspector Clouseau of Pink Panther fame. However, the French detective was not Monk’s creators’ inspiration. Instead, it was that of an ABC executive “looking for an Inspector Clouseau-type show.” It was co-creator David Hoberman who thought up a brainy investigator who not only had a welter of personal problems but also suffered from an obsessive-compulsive disorder, as Hoberman did himself. Although the condition was never officially diagnosed, Hoberman related, Monk’s compulsion to “walk on cracks [and] to touch poles” was inspired by Hoberman’s own perceived need to do so.

Monk is also influenced by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and by Columbo, writes Alessandra Stanley. She contends that Monk is cast, in episodes featuring his brother Ambrose, as Sherlock to his “smarter” sibling Mycroft. Also, as “class [distinctions] drove suspects to underestimate Lieutenant Columbo, Peter Falk’s coarse accent and humble demeanor always lulled rich, sophisticated killers into a false sense of superiority.” Both Monk and Columbo, she said, in turn, are influenced by Dostoevsky’s courteous, plodding investigator, Porfiry Petrovich.^[8]

2 William Oliver Wallace and Jonathan Creek

David Renwick’s Jonathan Creek, who creates magic tricks for the magician who performs them, also acts, at times, as an amateur detective. Not surprisingly, given his area of expertise, Creek was based on professional magician William Oliver Wallace (1929-2009), who went by the stage name Ali Bongo. The flamboyant magician was a superb choice for the television series’ magic consultant.

As an online article in The Guardian points out, Wallace’s interest in magic began at age five. After a stint in the Royal Army Pay Corps, during which he co-wrote Naafi shows in which he appeared, he was convinced that he had the experience and skills to succeed in the entertainment business. So he founded the Medway Magic Society, appearing as Ali Bongo, which, at first, included dialogue but later became a pantomime act. Subsequently, he landed the position of chief consultant for Thames TV’s David Noxon’s Magic Box due to his “encyclopedic” knowledge of magic.^[9]

1 James Bond and Thomas Magnum

Agent 007, aka James Bond, is the quintessential British spy. Whether portrayed by Sean Connery, David Niven, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, or Daniel Craig, the debonair agent of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, created by Ian Fleming (1908-1964), is well-known around the world. It’s little wonder, then, that the creative team who created Thomas Sullivan Magnum IV initially wanted to model their character after Bond.

Instead, the team accepted Tom Selleck’s suggestion to make his character more an ordinary kind of guy, an average Joe, but one who is also charming—and mustachioed. In fact, as writer Dana Sivan points out, Selleck’s mustache, one of both his and Magnum’s most iconic features, was “entered [into] the International Mustache Hall of Fame.”^[10]