10 Times Pop Culture Solved Real Life Crimes

1. All the President's Men Impeaches A President

Really, though, there is no case that speaks to the ability of popular culture to affect the world around it that compares to the work of Woodward and Bernstein. As told in the book and subsequent movie adaptation starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as the pair, these investigative journalists for The Washington Post broke the Watergate Scandal story... and found so much more besides.

In looking into the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington DC, the duo found the prototypical conspiracy that "went all the way to the top!"

What began as a fringe group of right-wing loonies looking to plant bugs in the home of their nemeses turned out to have far wider-reaching implications. Due to the people involved, nobody else wanted to get involved with the story - which meant it was down to Woodward and Bernstein's reports in The Washington Post to get the word out.

As the story unfolded, it turned out that the orchestrator of the entire plot was none other than President Richard Nixon himself - and as it happened, his shady activities didn't stop at Watergate. As a direct result of their newspaper stories and book, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward managed to not only find the true perpetrator of the Watergate conspiracy, but also did what few have done before or since: lead the impeachment of a president.