21 Fictional Characters Blamed For Real Life Crimes

2. Chucky

One of the most notable instances of a fictional character being latched upon as a reasoning behind a crime relates back to the horrifying murder of toddler Jamie Bulger in 1993. A copy of Child's Play 3 was found to have just been watched by killers John Venables and Robert Thompson, a factor which led to a revival of the Video Nasties controversy of the early eighties. Led by perennial campaigners against individual freedoms: the tabloid press, there were calls for tighter restrictions on violence in films, and even an outright banning from some quarters. It's interesting that the media latched upon the film rather than focus upon the history of abuse and neglect from the boys' respective parents, who had allowed their children to watch the 18 rated film in the first place. Nevertheless once a supposed connection between the crime and the film was established, Child's Play and its lead character Chucky, would always be synonymous with one of the worst juvenile crimes in British history.

1. Holden Caulfield

Mark David Chapman's obsession with the anti-hero of J. D. Salinger's novel has been the subject of several documentaries and two feature films: The Killing of John Lennon and Chapter 27 (which referred to the events as being an extra chapter in the 26 chapter book). In the build up to assassinating Lennon Chapman re-enacted and interpreted key steps of Holden Caulfield's journey through the New York of the book. After the shooting Chapman remained at the scene of the crime until the police arrived, and on discovery was sat reading the book on the steps of the Dakota building. He was reported to have said repeatedly that the book was "my statement". The book has been controversial and heavily censored in schools and libraries since it was first published but once it was connected to the Lennon murder there were renewed calls for "dangerous" books to be banned outright. To illustrate the complete divide of opinion on the issue, Catcher In The Rye was the most censored but also the second most taught book in American schools in 1981, the year after John Lennon was shot. Like with all the preceding crimes, in reality The Catcher in the Rye was just a small component of John Lennon's murder, yet due to sensationalist journalism it has been used to add to the mythology of the incident. In a way this gives a lot of the perpetrators what they wanted in the first place: to be noticed, to be like their heroes (or anti-heroes as the case may be) and be connected to them in any way possible. It could even be suggested that knowing the public hunger for such detail, once such a connection is made it is exploited to the fullest. We can only hope the next time a film, or game, or book, or TV show, or internet meme is targeted as the cause of an horrendous crime, those who wish to use it to enforce an agenda of banning, censorship and suppressing freedom of speech, continue to be unsuccessful.