20 Things You Didn't Know About The Truman Show

While The Truman Show may not have been the first time such a premise had been addressed, it certainly became the focal point for a specific form of paranoia.

The Truman Show Delusion refers to a condition wherein the afflicted feel as if their life is in the control of an outside source, or that their every move is being watched on camera.

The term was coined ten years after The Truman Show, when two brothers; Joel Gold and Ian Gold - a psychiatrist and a neurophilosopher - started looking into unique cases of the disorder.

Their research saw the two brothers reach out to hundreds of patients, with varying levels of the disorder.

One of the most severe cases was an upper-middle class Army veteran, who wished to climb the Statue of Liberty, in order to escape the millions of people he thought were watching him on this "show". He believed all his friends and family were all actors in his scripted life.

While the disorder isn't officially recognised, cases are widespread. And one study in the London Institute of Psychiatry referred to it as a cluster of symptoms common in early stages of schizophrenia.