9/11's Bizarre Media Empire

When I was a young girl (if "Welcome to the Black Parade" hasn't automatically started playing in your head yet and you don't know what I mean, please check the song, it’s important), I dreamt of being an emo. I say dreamt because as a straight-A student from an upper-middle-class family, I never stood a chance―but my love for the aesthetic left me with knowledge that comes back to haunt me every 9/11.

Now it's time for that knowledge to haunt you too. Here’s the story of how 9/11 led to a vast media empire, the downfall of a famous US talk show, and at least seven Academy Awards.

My Chemical Romance

It all started with 9/11, of course. But more importantly, it started with a man named Gerard Way. You might know him as the frontman of My Chemical Romance, aka the dream man of all emos’ and emo-wannabes’ from the mid-2000s to early-2010s. What you probably didn’t know, though, is that he founded the band after witnessing 9/11 live in person. He thought the world was ending, which is a pretty understandable reaction. Even though it didn’t, he became obsessed with the idea of the world ending anyway and channeled that obsession into his music.

But that wasn’t all he channeled the obsession into.

The Umbrella Academy

Turns out, if you were disappointed by the finale of The Umbrella Academy, you can thank Gerard Way for that too. Not because he came up with the ending, but because he wrote the original comics the series is based on. In fact, the whole reason he was in New York City on 9/11 is was to pitch a show to Cartoon Network. Again, 9/11’s affect on Gerard Way is pretty obvious in The Umbrella Academy, given that the characters spend all their time trying to stop various apocalypses. Luckily the comics haven’t ended yet, so there’s still hope for a more satisfying conclusion to the story than season 4.

This is where 9/11's direct influence stops, though - and where things start to get weird.

Twilight

Ever heard My Chemical Romance’s song “Vampire Money”? Well, that's another funny story. Let’s just say a certain Stephenie Meyer got a lot of inspiration from My Chemical Romance when writing the novel (especially for the character Jacob Black), to the point that she actually asked My Chemical Romance to write songs for the movies.

Since they were not so fond of the idea―which Stephenie Meyer really should have anticipated, given the whole emo ethos―and growing tired of endless offers and questions regarding the whole Twilight topic, they came up with the ultimate answer: "Vampire Money". This 2010 song was the closest thing she got. Funnily enough, though, Gerard Way later became a big fan of Robert Pattinson, even going so far as to wear an Edward Cullen shirt during a concert in Washington.

So 9/11 caused severe trauma to Gerard Way, leading him to form a popular band, which inspired trashy vampire novel romances, and, well, we all know where that leads.

50 Shades of Grey

There’s not much to say here - it’s 50 Shades of Grey. Even if you didn’t know that it was originally Twilight fanfiction, I doubt you're surprised to find out. They changed the names to avoid copyright problems and published it. Now you know, and the universe feels a little more logical.

The only real point of interest here is that 50 Shades, and therefore 9/11 as well, maybe caused the downfall of the US talk show Ellen. Long story short, the titular Ellen was the country’s favourite lesbian aunt until she was rude to Dakota Johnson who was promoting 50 Shades of Grey on her show. After that, more and more stories started coming out about how Ellen was kind of awful behind the scenes, ultimately leading to the show’s cancellation.

But that’s nothing compared to…

Oppenheimer???

This is the craziest entry on this list and probably the least known about - even I hadn’t heard of this until I looked up all the connections for this article. At this point, we’re pretty far from 9/11’s direct influence, but the path is still there :

9/11 -> My Chemical Romance -> Twilight -> Robert Pattinson’s career taking off -> Robert Pattinson working with Christopher Nolan on Tenet and giving him a book to celebrate the end of filming

That book, of course, was a book of Oppenheimer’s speeches, which would ultimately inspire Nolan to create Oppenheimer. Maybe we can even attribute Barbie’s success to 9/11, given that Barbenheimer was a great marketing tactic. Even if we can’t, though, Oppenheimer's seven Academy Awards can be traced back 9/11.

Funny how these things happen.

So there’s the story of how 9/11 accidentally created a media empire. It’s credited with even more weird things, too, but I limited myself to TV and movies here because otherwise there’d be way too much to cover. If you're an awful person, you could turn this into a weird watchlist, but please don't. It's interesting trivia, sure, but it's important to remember that many died and even more lost their loved ones. Finding these connections interesting is one thing - making light of what happened is another.

Anyway, thanks for reading!