How fictional violence shapes the actions of copycat offenders

When individuals commit crimes inspired by television shows, movies, or video games, they often mimic the specific methods used by fictional characters or display extreme violence. A recent small study explored how real-world offenders adopt behaviors seen on screen and why they might sometimes diverge from their fictional blueprints. The research was published in the journal Deviant Behavior.

Over the years, media psychology researchers have tried to understand how fictional content impacts real behavior. The concept of the copycat effect suggests that popular media might influence how a person carries out a crime. Lead author Lucas Rogers, a researcher at the University of Huddersfield, along with colleagues Maria Ioannou, Calli Tzani, and Thomas James Vaughan Williams, set out to characterize how individuals who mimic fictional characters view their criminal inspirations. The team wanted to find common traits among people who commit media-inspired crimes.

Some long-standing theories suggest that heavy consumption of media can warp a person’s view of reality. The concept of “mean world syndrome” was coined by media scholar George Gerbner to describe how frequent television viewers might become excessively paranoid. To these individuals, the constant stream of televised violence makes the world appear much more treacherous than it actually is. This heightened sense of danger can normalize aggression in the viewer’s mind, creating a lens through which they understand their environment.

Other theoretical models view copycat behavior along a specific behavioral spectrum. On the practical end, an offender might simply borrow a trick from a movie, such as a specific way to hide evidence or avoid detection. On the more symbolic end, the offender might fully adopt the identity of a fictional character. This might involve matching the character’s clothing, quoting their dialogue, or treating criminal behavior as a structured ritual.

Researchers also use the General Aggression Model to explain how viewing violence affects vulnerable viewers over time. This model suggests that watching violent media can trigger aggressive thoughts in the short term. Over the long term, viewers might become desensitized to real-world pain or learn to mimic behaviors they see rewarded on screen. If a fictional antagonist successfully evades consequences, an unstable viewer might perceive violence as an effective solution to their own daily 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 yielded 55 news articles detailing media-linked offenses. The researchers read through these reports to extract information about the offenders, the victims, and the specific details of the crimes.

The team identified 30 offenders who were collectively responsible for 39 different crimes. The vast majority of the offenders were male, and their average age was around 21 years old. The researchers also identified 25 victims for whom they could confirm demographic information. Most of these victims were female, with an average age of roughly 30 years old. The majority of the crimes analyzed were homicides or attempted homicides.

The researchers then categorized the specific pieces of media that inspired the crimes. The television series Dexter was the most frequent source of inspiration, accounting for 11 cases in the sample. The horror movie Scream and the television series Breaking Bad were also frequently cited. A broad category of other media, including video games like Grand Theft Auto and movies like American Psycho, inspired single, isolated incidents within the dataset.

The thematic analysis revealed that nearly half of the offenders engaged in excessive violence. The researchers defined excessive violence as a prolonged attack where the victim suffered multiple injuries before the incident concluded. Many of these extreme acts involved sharp weapons like knives or machetes. In several cases, the highly violent offenders targeted victims with whom they shared a close familial or romantic relationship.

Twelve of the offenders directly copied aspects of fictional media during their crimes. Some individuals recreated specific settings, such as building a “kill room” lined with plastic sheeting that closely resembled the television sets used in Dexter. Two perpetrators dressed in dark clothing and wore white masks reminiscent of the antagonist in the Scream films. Offenders inspired by Breaking Bad attempted to use specific chemicals to dispose of remains, mirroring a prominent storyline from that show.

While many offenders fixated on replicating a character’s actions, the study highlighted important inconsistencies. Six offenders deviated entirely from the usual tactics of their fictional idols. In one case, an offender inspired by the Halloween films chose to use a firearm instead of a traditional horror movie weapon. This offender reportedly used a gun to avoid causing the victims prolonged pain, a motivation completely at odds with the fictional slasher they admired.

In other instances, perpetrators abandoned intricate disposal rituals because the fictional methods proved too difficult to recreate. Some individuals inspired by television left their victims at the scene or used alternate, clumsy methods of attack. The researchers suggest that the elaborate nature of the fictional crimes simply required too many resources for real-world execution. The offenders likely lacked the specialized knowledge or the time required to complete the elaborate rituals depicted on television.

The researchers also examined external background factors that might have triggered an offense. In six separate cases, a family dispute immediately preceded the violence. Sometimes these disputes were relatively minor, such as an argument over a teenager being grounded by their parents. 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 prior to their crimes.

The researchers caution that media exposure alone does not spontaneously turn a person into a criminal. A host of environmental factors, personal vulnerabilities, and substance use likely interact with media consumption to shape an offender’s mindset. Fictional media might simply provide a script for individuals who are already prone to aggressive behavior. When multiple risk factors converge, the boundaries between fiction and reality can become dangerously blurred.

The behavior of these offenders differs notably from how average viewers consume entertainment. A rational audience member recognizes a criminal character’s moral shortcomings and views a violent narrative purely as fiction. In contrast, the offenders in this study appeared to fixate on the violent actions of fictional characters while completely ignoring the moral consequences. They glorified the brutality and treated television shows as instructional manuals for real-life behavior.

The researchers pointed out several limitations regarding their methodology. Because this is a very small study spanning only 30 individual offenders, the results might not automatically apply to all cases of media-inspired behavior. The use of news articles as the sole data source also introduces potential biases. News outlets occasionally sensationalize crime details or inappropriately apply the copycat label to attract higher readership.

Future investigations could incorporate police records, trial transcripts, or interviews with offenders to build a more accurate picture of each event. Without speaking directly to a person, it remains difficult to prove that watching a movie drove their decision to commit a crime. Media influence is notoriously difficult to isolate from a person’s broader psychological history. The researchers hope that future work will continue examining how emotional vulnerabilities amplify the way people perceive criminal fictional characters.

The study, “How the Actions of Fictional Characters Influence Copycat Offenders,” was authored by Lucas Rogers, Maria Ioannou, Calli Tzani, and Thomas James Vaughan Williams. Deviant Behavior