I got a mail from a friend the other day with a funny image. It was depicting Ed O’Neal’s characters reading the newspaper in two famous TV Shows: Married with Children and Modern Family. Nothing strange so far until… I noticed that it was the same newspaper, although the series were released 20 years apart. It could not have been a coincidence, so I decided to dig deeper into the subject. I found out that this particular newspaper prop was used in many more movies over the last decades, and if you pay attention you may see it again in popular shows of today. My guess is that the studios are using the same fictional royalty free newspaper in order to avoid using a real newspaper that may result in copyright lawsuits.
If you want to see some of the movies and TV shows where the famous newspaper appeared, you should check Katalin Szucs’s profile page on Google Plus. You will learn that the newspaper (or parts of it, especially the news with the brunette lady) appeared in movies like Back to the Future, A murder of crows, Absolute Power, No Country for Old Men, Casper, The Resurrected, Power Rangers Zeo 4, Knight rider, Dallas, That 70’s Show, Angel, Charmed, Six Feet Under, Desperate Housewives, Scrubs, Wildfire, Worst Week, Jonas, 10 things I hate about you, Cougar Town, Huge, Twin Peaks, Will & Grace and House. This royalty free prop for television shows and movies reminds me of the famous Wilhelm scream used as a sound gag in so many movies. People in the business will definitely say that the newspaper prop is an Easter Egg, like so many others …
PS. If you wonder what’s the title that appears in the famous brunette lady article you should know that is “She’s 3rd Brightest but Hard ‘Gal’ to See”.
