People who commit crimes inspired by TV shows, movies, and video games often imitate certain methods used by fictional characters or display extreme violence. A recent small study investigated how real-world criminals adopt the behaviors seen on screen and why they sometimes deviate from their fictional blueprints. The study was published in the journal Deviant Behavior.
Media psychology researchers have been trying to understand how fictional content influences real-life behavior for years. The concept of imitation effects suggests that popular media can influence the way people commit crimes. University of Huddersfield researcher and lead author Lucas Rogers, along with colleagues Maria Ioannou, Kari Czani and Thomas James Vaughan Williams, set out to characterize how individuals who imitate fictional characters view their inspiration for crimes. The research team wanted to find common characteristics among people who are influenced by the media and commit crimes.
Some long-standing theories suggest that heavy media consumption can distort a person’s view of reality. The concept of “meanness syndrome” was coined by media scholar George Gerbner to explain how people who frequently watch television can become overly paranoid. For these people, the constant violence shown on television makes the world seem much more dangerous than it actually is. This heightened sense of crisis normalizes aggression in the viewer’s mind and creates a lens through which the viewer understands their environment.
Other theoretical models view imitative behavior along a specific behavioral spectrum. In reality, criminals may simply borrow tricks from movies, such as specific ways to hide evidence or evade detection. In more symbolic cases, criminals may fully adopt the identity of a fictional character. This may include matching characters’ clothing, quoting lines, or treating criminal acts as structured rituals.
Researchers also use the general aggression model to explain how viewing violence affects vulnerable viewers over time. This model suggests that viewing violent media can lead to aggressive thoughts in the short term. In the long term, viewers may become desensitized to real-world pain or learn to mimic behaviors when they see rewards on screen. If the fictional adversary is able to successfully avoid the consequences, unstable viewers may perceive violence to be an effective solution to their everyday problems.
To explore these themes, Rogers and his team conducted a qualitative analysis of public news sources. They searched online using specific keywords, targeting news articles about crimes inspired by television, movies, or video games. This web search found 55 news articles detailing media-related crimes. Researchers read through these reports and extracted information about the offender, victim, and specific details of the crime.
The team identified 30 offenders who were collectively involved in 39 different crimes. The majority of offenders were male, with an average age of approximately 21 years. Researchers also identified 25 victims for whom demographic information could be verified. Most of the victims are women, with an average age of about 30 years old. The majority of crimes analyzed were murder or attempted murder.
The researchers then categorized the specific media that triggered the crime. The television series “Dexter” was the most frequent source of inspiration, accounting for 11 instances in the sample. The horror film “Scream” and the television series “Breaking Bad” were also frequently cited. A wide range of other media categories contributed to single isolated incidents in the dataset, including video games such as Grand Theft Auto and movies such as American Psycho.
Thematic analysis revealed that nearly half of the offenders used excessive force. Researchers defined excessive force as a prolonged attack in which the victim sustains multiple injuries before the incident is over. Many of these extreme acts involved the use of sharp weapons such as knives and machetes. In some cases, extremely violent offenders targeted victims with whom they shared a close family or romantic relationship.
Twelve of the offenders directly copied aspects of the fictional media during their crimes. Some recreated certain settings, such as building a “murder room” lined with plastic sheeting, much like the television used in Dexter. The two suspects were dressed in black and wearing white masks reminiscent of the villains in the movie “Scream.” Inspired by Breaking Bad, criminals sought to dispose of bodies using certain chemicals, mirroring the show’s prominent storylines.
While many criminals were obsessed with recreating the actions of their characters, this study highlighted an important contradiction. The six criminals were a complete departure from the usual tactics of their fictional idols. In one case, criminals inspired by Halloween movies chose to use firearms instead of traditional horror movie weapons. The criminals reportedly used guns to avoid inflicting prolonged suffering on their victims, but their motives were completely at odds with the fictional killers they admired.
In other cases, perpetrators abandoned complex disposal rituals because the hypothetical methods proved too difficult to reproduce. Some people inspired by television have left their victims at the scene or used alternative, clumsy methods of attack. Researchers suggest that real-world executions simply required greater resources due to the elaborate nature of the fictional crimes. The perpetrators may have lacked the expertise or time necessary to complete the elaborate rituals depicted on television.
The researchers also looked at external background factors that may have contributed to the crime. In six separate incidents, the violence was immediately preceded by a dispute between family members. In some cases, these disputes were relatively minor, such as an argument between teenagers over their parents’ ban on exercising. Six other cases involved a history of drug use. The analysis also found that six of the offenders had a documented history of mental illness before committing the crime.
Researchers warn that media exposure alone does not automatically turn people into criminals. Many environmental factors, personal vulnerabilities, and drug use may interact with media consumption to shape an offender’s mindset. Fictional media may simply be providing a script to individuals who are already predisposed to aggressive behavior. When multiple risk factors come together, the line between fiction and reality can become dangerously blurred.
The behavior of these criminals is markedly different from the way the average viewer consumes entertainment. A rational audience recognizes the moral shortcomings of criminals and views violent stories as purely fictional. In contrast, the offenders in this study seemed fixated on the violent acts of fictional characters, with complete disregard for moral consequences. They glorified brutality and treated television programs as instruction manuals for real-life behavior.
The researchers noted several limitations with their methodology. This is a very small study with only 30 offenders, so the results may not automatically apply to all media-inspired cases. Using news articles as the sole data source also introduces potential bias. News organizations may sensationalize details of crimes or inappropriately apply copycat labels to attract more readers.
Future investigations could incorporate police records, court records or interviews with offenders to build a more accurate picture of each case. It remains difficult to prove that watching a movie led to a decision to commit a crime unless you talk to the person directly. Media influences are notoriously difficult to separate from an individual’s broader psychological history. The researchers hope that future research will continue to explore how emotional vulnerability amplifies the way people view crime novel characters.
The study, “How the actions of fictional characters influence copycat criminals,” was authored by Lucas Rogers, Maria Ioannou, Kari Czani, and Thomas James Vaughan Williams. deviant behavior
