10 Movies That Changed Everything In Ways You Didn't Expect
Scream tripled the use of caller ID overnight.
At their very best, movies have the power to not only entertain us but to change the way we see the world, and perhaps even change the world itself.
We all know that Jaws forever altered society's relationship with sharks, while Bambi put a massive dent in deer hunting for years, but what about those films that impacted the world in ways nobody saw coming?
These 10 movies, from modest successes to massive hits, all had an unexpected effect on the world around us, changing behaviour for years or even decades afterwards in ways both good and bad.
Perhaps a film's mockery of a product caused its sales to crater globally, a scary movie inspired mass audiences to beef up their personal security, or maybe it even resonated deeply enough to influence political decisions around the world.
This sort of impact almost never happens on purpose, because it's so difficult to intentionally design something that mass audiences will latch onto.
And so, most of these filmmakers could've never imagined the stunning legacy their movies would have, far beyond the basic love for the film itself...
10. TGI Fridays Ditched Employee "Flair" - Office Space
In Mike Judge's masterful workplace satire Office Space, Jennifer Aniston's love interest character Joanna works at a restaurant called Tchotchkie's, which is clearly a thinly-veiled parody of the real-world eatery TGI Fridays.
Numerous scenes make fun of the expectations Tchotchkie's has of its wait staff, namely to wear pieces of "flair" on their work outfit - ornaments and badges with "funny" sayings on them - in order to express themselves.
Naturally Joanna just wants to get through her shift without having to showcase her apparent individuality, and given that TGI Fridays itself encouraged its employees to wear flair at the time, Judge was very clearly thumbing his nose at the real practise.
Office Space ultimately did such a fantastic job of mocking TGI Fridays that the restaurant actually retired flair a few years later, and the world was all the better for it. In Judge's own words:
"About four years after Office Space came out, TGI Fridays got rid of all that (button) flair, because people would come in and make cracks about it. One of my ADs asked once at the restaurant why their flair was missing and they said they removed it because of that movie Office Space. So, maybe I made the world a better place."
That you certainly did, Mike.