14 Wrestling Gimmicks Blatantly Stolen From Hollywood
Wrestling owes the movies.
Despite what some might tell you, there's not really a magic formula to making a successful wrestling gimmick that gets massively over with the fans: some great characters just won't work due to poor luck or timing (Muhammad Hassan, anyone?), while unconscionable creative choices often get pushed to the moon.
With that in mind, wrestling has repeatedly returned to Hollywood's well for ideas when they run out of their own, because if a movie can draw audiences in, why wouldn't you want to exploit that on your weekly, long-form TV show? Though you might find it lazy and unimaginative, it's easy to see why Vince McMahon and other promoters would want to cling to a sure pop-culture smash hit.
Where the line between ripping off and homage is drawn, however, is always up for debate, and it's fair to say that a number of these egregious Xeroxes don't quite pass on the right side of respectful.
Here are 14 wrestling gimmicks blatantly stolen from Hollywood...
14. Tyler Breeze - Zoolander
In surely one of the most transparently pilfered gimmicks in recent WWE history, Tyler Breeze's vapid, vain, idiotic male model is about as close to ripping off Ben Stiller's Zoolander as you can get withou being litigated into oblivion.
Sure, he's a better fighter than Derek, a bit less stupid and it's a little easier to buy the "inspiration" because Breeze isn't trying to be taken seriously, but from his vocal cadence through to his weird facial expressions (especially the pouting), he is essentially copying the character.
Frankly, that WWE didn't bring Stiller onto Raw to promote Zoolander 2 (in character, of course), is one of the year's great wrestling travesties. Seriously.