10 Horror Characters That Appeared Outside Their Own Movies
2. Norman Bates - Oatmeal Crisp Commercial
This one is just weird.
In 1960, Anthony Perkins gave an unbelievably good performance in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho as Norman Bates. A reclusive who suffers from dissociative identity disorder, Bates' life is a constant struggle between his more innocent persona and his killer alter ego, modelled after his late mother.
His character is explored further in the several Psycho sequels, but there's no way in hell we're bringing any of those into this discussion.
All in all, Bates is a very complex, very challenging character that scholars have written about for decades. Naturally then, one ad executive saw this and went "He'd make a great cereal salesman!"
In 1990, Perkins once again took on the role of Bates for a commercial flogging Oatmeal Raisin Crisp. In the advert, he talks about how he always does what Mother tells him, except when it comes to eating oatmeal.
But killing innocent women in showers, that's just fine.
The commercial is certainly memorable, but it is a teensy bit of a stain on the character's legacy.
Who are we kidding, we already mentioned the Psycho sequels. There was no coming back after that.