21 Fictional Characters Blamed For Real Life Crimes

12. Master Chief

The case of Daniel Petric who shot and murdered his parents, killing his mother and wounding his father, represents a case where "being influenced by violent videogames" was used unsuccessfully as a defence. Petric's lawyers claimed that the defendant had a staph infection from a hockey injury, which had left him incapacitated for months and led to him playing Halo 3 eighteen hours a day. Due to this the lines of reality had blurred, leading to the terrible crime. Petric's undoing was the fact that he had placed the murder weapon in his father's hands, an act of premeditation that perceivably invalidated the idea he was under a delusional Halo-influenced spell. Once again the case brought the term "Violence in Videogames" into the fears and concerns of parents, despite there being no proven causal link between the effects of violent games on violent behaviour.

11. Michael Myers

In 1982 several months after the release of Halloween II Richard Delmer Boyer murdered an elderly couple, then tried to blame it on an acid flashback. Boyer claims the flashback gave him the delusional idea he was enacting Michael Myers' killings from Halloween II. Boyer was convicted and remains in prison today. In his later appeals he claims to have taken PCP, speed, cocaine, whiskey and marijuana on the day the murders took place. Considering this, it is difficult to imagine how he could identify an acid flashback amongst the various intoxicants in his system. It is also fair to assume that the effects of the drugs and alcohol were probably more of a factor in him killing, than Richard Rosenthal's follow-up to John Carpenter's masterpiece.