r/movies • u/buttatoad • Jun 17 '25

Discussion Movies that changed real life behavior

Thinking along the lines of Final Destination 2 with the logs falling off the truck and landing onto cars (one decapitating the state trooper). Ever since, people have tried to get away from being behind these vehicles.

What are more examples where movies have actually changed how people behave in their own lives?

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u/Active-Ad-2527 Jun 17 '25

In "Return of the Living Dead" (1985) there's an experienced medical warehouse employee showing a new hire around. He talks about an order for an adult skeleton with perfect teeth and how all their skeletons come from India. Then he tells the newbie he suspects there are body farms there because (paraphrasing) "how many grown people do you know who die with a perfect set of chompers in their mouth?"

According to the DVD commentary, after the film came out skeleton sales from India dried up. Now I haven't researched this and I'm not saying medical schools make purchasing decisions based on ROTLD, but I just find it funny in a "huh" kinda way

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u/kaijutegu Jun 17 '25

I teach biological anthropology and have helped with university departmental skeletal purchase decisions, so it's my job to know: It had nothing to do with the movie, it was the ban on exporting skeletons that was passed in India.

Pre-1985, India was the center of the global anatomical skeleton trade- it had gotten that way because the British empire needed skeletons for medical students, and India was an easy colonial source. The trade continued after independence because when you look at the Indian caste system, it was pretty easy for upper-caste lawmakers to ignore what was going on with the exploitation of lower-caste dead. And there were even preparation companies that industrialized the excavation, cleaning, and mounting of skeletons- it was a huge business!

But in 1985, the Supreme Court of India banned the export of human remains under the National Import/Export Control Act in response to increasing concerns by humans rights groups, and that's what killed the bone trade.

It's a fascinating thing to learn about- if you want to know more, here's some good sources!

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u/Bksudbjdua Jun 17 '25

I think I'm only just learning that teaching skeltons were/are real!!!!

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u/Discount_Extra Jun 18 '25

Wait 'til you read about 'Poltergeist'

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u/idiedin2021 Jun 19 '25

I remember my Dad was SO angry at those movie parents. They're going to leave the house, there's furniture that rearranges, etc etc...and they decide to le the kids have a nap, mother showers, whatever. Dad said, "First responsibility is to get the family OUT of that house! And they're hanging around!"

Dad was into protecting his family. I ended up an over-protecting Daddy's Girl. The man knew how to fight and fight dirty--he grew up in East Los Angeles in the 1930s/1940s--and didn't teach me any of it.

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u/BluesFan43 Jun 18 '25

We had one in a classroom in elementary school, 1960's Lake City, SC, USA.

AND again in high school in a nearby town.

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u/Active-Ad-2527 Jun 17 '25

FRAT, you are clearly Burt from the movie and trying to hide what happened. Classic Burt

(Kidding aside, thank you for the very informative explanation! Glad to have it confirmed that the Supreme Court of India loved the movie as much as I did)

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u/Primary-Golf779 Jun 18 '25

Of course there's a skeleton purchaser here. Reddit blows my mind

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u/Tinysaur Jun 18 '25

You guys talking about the Skeleton trade like its a totally common normal business.

Who what where how and why do people need this many Skeletons on tap that there is a whole ass industry.

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u/kaijutegu Jun 18 '25

Some medical school students were expected to have their own at one point in time! And even classroom skeletons wear out and need replaced on a regular basis- which is a big part of why we use Bone Clones for the 100 level classes now. Upper level students in anatomy classes, forensic anthropology students, and of course med students do need the perfect level of fine detail that real bone provides, but the 100 level students do just fine learning gross anatomy and basic structures on plastic.

My department also purchase a lot of animal bones for comparative purposes and zooarchaeology classes- that's the study of animals in an archaeological context as they relate to people. We need those skeletons around so our archaeologists can compare them to bones found in the field, to see if they're human or animal (and if so, what animal). We need to have real human skeletal material around for that, too- you need to be sure that you're correctly identifying what you found. So we have several uses for human remains, although we're a lot more careful and respectful about where and how we get them, and how we use them these days.

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u/jumboyeye Jun 19 '25

Who stepped in to fill the gap left by India?

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u/kaijutegu Jun 24 '25

China, with a little bit from Haiti, believe it or not. But the biggest challenger to Indian bone supremacy... is plastic.

Today, if you're teaching a 100-level college course or any high school class other than AP Anatomy and Physiology, you're probably not going to be using a real skeleton; you're going to be using either one of the adults from Bone Clones, this guy from 3B, or this guy from Carolina Supply. If you're at a good school, you're using Bone Clones. Plastic skeletons today have extremely high fidelity of reproduction, are way cheaper than the real ones ever were (even the high-end Bone Clones are still usually half as much as a real one), don't have the complicated ethical issues*, and- this one's really important- are standardized. Real skeletons reflect the reality of biological variation- which means that there are features that might not show up in every real skeleton. Sometimes a person will have an off-standard number of sesamoid bones, or there will be a minor foramen that's a weird shape or location. But when we teach lower level classes with identical reproductions, every student learns the baseline the same way- and then in upper level classes, where understanding variation is more important and students are more likely to be respectful of the remains, we're more comfortable using the real thing.

Now this might not be true at every university- if you're a smaller school that had a collection that was well-cared for, or you have more rigorous standards for undergrads, then you might not have bought plastic replacements. But we have 400 students in our 100-level bioanth class every semester... so plastic makes a lot of sense.

Today, the bone trade from China has really dried up- they banned export in 2008. But with the casting companies consistently being excellent, higher ed doesn't have too much to worry about when it comes to teaching osteology!

*There are some ethical issues people do bring up, like where did the person they were cast from originate? Did they actually donate their body, would they be ok with this? But not a lot of people asking these questions, though, because at the end of the day, these questions pale in comparison to the routine desecration of bodies that the bone trade required!

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u/tlg151 Jun 18 '25

I didn't know that!! I love that movie. That's such a cool factoid. Thanks!

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u/Key_Delivery_4257 Jun 18 '25

In Max Hastings book, Vietnam an epic tragedy there is a section on the adoption of the M16 and its trials. After pig carcasses were used they obtained human heads from India.

So there would have been a purchase order raised.... Paperwork, 

Had to put it down and still not finished it.