10 People Who Copied Movies In Disturbing Ways
2. Money Train's Fire Attacks Were Replicated By Two Real-Life Criminals
1995's Money Train stars Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson as two cops attempting to hunt down and apprehend a serial killer known as The Torch.
One of The Torch's horrible methods is to approach a subway token booth, spray some gasoline inside, and threaten to set the attendant on fire unless they hand over the cash. We see The Torch do this a couple of times throughout the story, and these scenes inspired a pair of real-life criminals to enact a similar plot not too long after the movie's release.
In November '95, two men took some flammable liquid and a match and set a subway token booth ablaze, with the attendant trapped inside. This attendant - 50-year old Harry Kaufman - suffered second and third-degree burns over most of his body and died of his injuries two weeks later.
Understandably, the authorities pinned some of the blame for the attack on the fire booth sequences in Money Train, due to the fact that the movie was playing in cinemas at the time. There were also a couple of similar token booth attacks surrounding the movie's release, but thankfully, none of these resulted in any deaths.