Who Knew?Charles
Montgomery
Burns, the
richest man on
The Simpsons
john d. rockefeller
was the richest man
in the world; Montgomery Burns is the
richest man on The Simpsons. For years,
Rockefeller had an oil monopoly
(his Standard Oil controlled 90 percent
of refineries in the United States);
for years, Burns has craved a monopoly
of anything and everything. Rockefeller
cracked down on striking workers;
Mr. Burns cracks down on malingering
workers, such as Homer Simpson.
Do you see a pattern? That’s because
Simpsons creator Matt Groening mod-
eled his town’s miserly billionaire after
the patriarch of the Rockefeller clan,
with a soupçon of Mr. Potter, the bad guy
from It’s a Wonderful Life. To add an extra
dash of dastardliness, Burns’s physique
was based on that of a praying mantis.Harry Potter’s
Severus Snape
Severus Snape, the
calculating Slytherin
House headmaster in
the Harry Potter series,
is a cold, unsmiling
taskmaster who terrifies his pupils. He
is also loosely based on some acquain-
tances of J. K. Rowling’s, one of whom
is likely her former chemistry teacher,
john nettleship. Like Snape, Nettleship
had long, straight dark hair and a strict
disposition. Understandably, Nettleship
was not thrilled to hear the comparison.
“I was rather distressed about this,”
he told the BBC. “But [my wife] said, ‘I
realized that a long time ago, but I didn’t
dare tell you.’ Joanne [Rowling] has said
that Snape is based on three people. I’ll
just have to hope that the worst bits of
Snape are based on two different ones,
won’t I?” He added, “There are ways of
pupils getting their revenge, but this is
a much more sophisticated retaliation.”via rd.com^121
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