Skip to content
Curated playlist

Television shows adapted into video games

  • The SimpsonsMatt Groening sketched The Simpsons in a lobby after deciding not to sign away his comic strip rights.
  • Sesame StreetTest children lost interest in Sesame Street's human-only street scenes, so producers re-shot them with Muppets.
  • The MuppetsThe Muppets are an American ensemble of puppets, and Jim Henson told the story of their name two different ways. At first he claimed he coined the word as a blend of marionette and puppet. Later he denied it. The mystery suits a cast built…
  • Star TrekStar Trek's creator privately modeled it on Gulliver's Travels. Publicly he pitched a Wagon Train to the stars.
  • Grey's AnatomyGrey's Anatomy began with nine star-billed actors, and by its 19th season only three were left: Ellen Pompeo, Chandra Wilson and James Pickens Jr. The medical drama follows surgical interns, residents and attendings at a fictional Seattle…
  • Doctor WhoDoctor Who first aired 80 seconds late because Kennedy news ran long. The BBC show began on November 23, 1963.
  • The SopranosThe Sopranos aired on HBO from the 10th of January 1999 to the 10th of June 2007. It ran for six seasons and 86 episodes. At its center is Tony Soprano, played by James Gandolfini, a New Jersey Mafia boss who suffers panic attacks.…
  • Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone ComplexGhost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is set in the year 2030, in a Japan where many people have replaced their bodies with prosthetics and become cyborgs. It is an anime television series about an elite law enforcement unit that…
  • The Walking Dead (TV series)Daryl Dixon, one of The Walking Dead's most popular characters, was invented for the TV series.
  • Breaking BadBreaking Bad began as a joke about two unemployed writers cooking meth in an RV.
  • Jeopardy!A quiz show idea came to Merv Griffin's wife on a flight: give contestants the answers and ask for questions.
  • Peaky Blinders (TV series)Peaky Blinders, Steven Knight's British crime drama, left a mark that the Office for National Statistics could measure in baby names. In 2018, the name Arthur entered the top 10 boys' names for the first time since the 1920s. Ada jumped…
  • Game of ThronesHBO made the Game of Thrones pilot redo about 90 percent of its footage. The re-shoot changed cast and directors.
  • South ParkFox balked at a talking stool, and South Park's creators walked away from the deal.
  • Avatar: The Last AirbenderAvatar: The Last Airbender opens with a boy frozen in an iceberg for a hundred years. Aang wakes to a world at war.
  • Monday Night FootballMillions of Americans first heard that John Lennon had been shot during a Monday Night Football game.
  • Power RangersPower Rangers owes its existence to a hotel television in Japan. Haim Saban was on a business trip there in the 1980s. The only thing his hotel set would show was a series about five masked people in spandex suits fighting monsters. He was…
  • Ben 10Ben 10 starts with a boy and a wristwatch that was never made on Earth. The boy is Ben Tennyson. The watch is the Omnitrix, a high-tech device of extraterrestrial origin. Inside it is stored the DNA of many alien species, and Ben can turn…

Queue