Fictional Brands Archive | Hacker News Reader

Fictional Brands Archive

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160 pointswallflower78 comments

A companion of sorts is Nestflix [0]: "Fictional movies within movies... Fake shows within shows... Browse our selection of over 700 stories within stories."

[0] https://nestflix.fun/

Awesome !

My favorite "movie withing movie" idea is "Wormhole X-Treme", the Stargate TV-show within the Stargate SG1 TV-show.

They use it for self-deprecating humor, by e.g. lampshading the sometime easy scenaristic shortcut they take, with some episodes where the "real" Stargate SG1 cast would (secretly) serves as advisor for Wormhole X-Treme spoof tv-show.

On top of that, the justification for it is absolutely genius: Because that way, the (in-universe) army could quell any rumor of the existence of the Stargate Command by simply saying "No, that from a TV-show, duh!".

SG1 also had some nice parodies in episode 200: https://youtu.be/whfMMfR4KKw

My brother asked once if Angels with Filthy Souls was a real movie.

Who put Rebel Alliance and House Atreides in there? Terrible lack of focus, turns it from an interesting study into a random list of stuff from fantasy worlds people like to ramble about.

>The term fictional branding refers to the design and use of brands that do not refer to any service, product, company or organization that actually exists. They can come to include any type of brand, as well as political institutions, military organizations, and more.

https://fictionalbrandsarchive.com/research.html

Yes, it's a part of the plan, but the point still stands: it dilutes what could have been a focused, interesting collection.

You can set the filter to "private" and get your focused collection. Or somebody interested in fictional political brands can filter by political and get their focused collection.

I don't disagree with the observation that fantasy entities like rebel alliance and the empire they are rebelling against are built using many of the same mechanisms brands are built with, and with similar goals (recognizability). But it's still ruining the focus of that list. Why not include dwarves? Or Robin Hood's merry men?

If it was "fictional logos", those star wars flags might have their place, but Atreides? Yeah, supposedly there's a falcon on their coat of arms, but I couldn't tell if that particular form is from the most recent movie, from a game or some fan art. And it's been only a few weeks since I've seen that movie, there can't be much visual brand going on if I don't recognize.

Only 116 entries? The fictional companies wiki has over 1000.

https://fictionalcompanies.fandom.com/

I like that archive quite better since it has many others like IBN (IBM) for example.

Both the article and this wiki are missing some big entries, like all the fake businesses in GTA. Rockstar even had websites for them back in the day.

Eris running shoes. PetsOvernight.com. Pißwasser beer. Gruppe Sechs armoured cars.

It's missing some Microsoft ones like Contoso: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20120803-01/?p=69...

That was the first one I looked for as well. Also Volcano Coffee Company, AdventureWorks, the always enjoyable Northwind Traders. (I recall working on a Visual InterDev project that had the Northwind e-commerce store). There's a bunch of others as well: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/...

I was thinking that too, but this archive focuses specifically on media (film/series/video games) as per its info page[1]

https://fictionalbrandsarchive.com/info.php

If you think they're missing a brand they have a form here to ask them to add new brands:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdt2aXH-AnZkjTaqJKH...

There's also an email address where I suppose you could send correction requests:

hello@fictionalbrandsarchive.com

I looked immediately for the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. A definite oversight.

You should "Share and Enjoy" with them this oversight :)

After looking at that form, nah.

It is going to be a long list.

Roleplaying games for instance have entire lists of them, and I am sure there is a video game somewhere that generate them procedurally, making the list effectively endless unless you have some kind of notability criteria. There are hundreds listed in here https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MegaCorp and it is just the megacorps, there are many more that are not "mega".

I think whatever is generated locally cannot be canon, since the world cannot know about it.

It is canon within your game, and it may ascend to being a true world canon if your game becomes notable enough.

But generally, I agree, I was just commenting about how many there are and how easy it is to create new ones, a lot of us probably made a few of them. Making a fictional brand is a common exercise in business or design schools, it can be done in creative writing, as an example for a presentation, in a role-playing campaign, or just for fun. If anything goes, we may be in the billions.

>It is canon within your game

It is canon to my game, but I don't expect the Fictional Brands Archive to be canon to my game. Just the same as I'm not going to edit the Skyrim wiki and put down that the Dragonborn is wanted by all the guards in Winterhold and posseses a world's best collection of cheese wheels, just because it happened in my game.

If the playthrough becomes notable enough then it's not a problem since there won't be billions of those.

I'm not positive but it looks like the list is limited to brands that have a specific, recognizable logo and name, which appear in visual media. So that should at least narrow it down.

Arasaka appeared in Cyberpunk 2020 RPG long before the video game Cyberpunk 2077 used it.

I've seen Duff beer in stores. I wonder what other fictional products have made it into real life.

IDK which one was first, but "Alpha Industries" exists as a mil-tech fashion brand: https://www.alphaindustries.eu/uk

Even the logo is kind of similar.

The company was founded in 1959 and its pretty famous for they bomber-jackets. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Industries

Either the designer in the movie didnt remember he “copied” it, or didn’t care…

Acme is a large East coast supermarket chain.

"Acme" as a brand name was very common in a number of industries and predates Looney Tunes.

Wonka Candy was a Nestle brand of candy.

US Robotics was a major modem manufacturer (but not robots).

IOI is a large Malaysian palm oil producer.

The whole reason the 1971 movie was made was because Quaker Oats had already decided to release “Willy Wonka” branded candy. That’s why Quaker Oats funded the movie, and why the title differs from the book, because Quaker Oats insisted “Willy Wonka” be in the title for the tie-in.

The Wipeout game series has a broad set of racing companies complete with in-universe histories and branding that evolves with each release.

https://wipeout.fandom.com/wiki/Teams

The Designers Republic did an incredible work by providing wipEout with its signature Y2K aesthetics.

The fictional brand logo animations in wipEout 3's intro still give me futuristic goosebumps a quarter century later: https://youtu.be/DaI_084xDsg

Looks like they don't accept fictional brands from books that haven't been adapted into some visual form of media. I am disappointed! Would love to see the brands from William Gibson's Sprawl Series, like Ono-Sendai and Tessier-Ashpool S.A. There are no known logos for the brands, although others have attempted to imagine them: https://www.reddit.com/r/Cyberpunk/comments/2mf54c/my_neurom...

The America First Party was most definitely NOT a fictional brand - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_Party_(1943)

Seems there is nuance involved.

>The fictional movement resemble some real associations that in the same period had similar intents.

https://fictionalbrandsarchive.com/item.php?id=98

The Plot Against America is alternative history and build on real people, organizations, and events. They are the same organization. But I guess that means that I can add the Catholic Church from Hyperion as a fictional brand too.

There are so many can be added not just from movies but tv shows and anime as well. For example, Capsule corp from DBZ is quite famous. Then there is Incite Inc from Westworld and Westworld is not a company but a park created by Delos.

No Yoyodyne? John BigBoote is gonna be sad

Are we going to attribute it to Gravity's Rainbow or to Buckaroo Banzai?

I like the attention to detail and the background information on this site. However, it looks like the form to add a new entry requires signing in with a Google account, which is a shame.

If anyone has screenshots of KrebStar Industries products from the Adventures of Pete and Pete, please feel encouraged to submit it to the database (and post here that you’ve submitted it) or share a link to the screenshots, so I don’t spend the whole day getting lost down that rabbit hole of nostalgia.

Here’s a list of KrebStar products: http://pnp.norecess.org/kreb.html

I came here to mention Krebstar as well.

No Binford Tools? No Setec Astronomy? No Strickland Propane?

Setec Astronomy was never the name of a fictional company, even in-universe they didn't pretend it was a front operation or anything. Merely a phrase, more of a password.

Boy, E Corp sure does look familiar…

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron

The show goes a bit deeper in the references to it. Second season shows some widespread blackouts/burnouts due to events from the first one.

This entire show is a jewel of good storytelling (and technical accuracy that should already have captured the attention of HN folks)

The FONY (ie SONY) logo in Akira is really important to me. It’s a flawless pun, a fake brand, and does it in only 4 characters!

Is there to submit corrections or additions? I couldn't find anything about it on the website; I must be missing it

There’s a link to a form for submitting additions here:

https://fictionalbrandsarchive.com/info.php

Thanks

This made me check if there is a similar thing for fictional bands. Not really; but there’s a few articles, like: https://variety.com/lists/best-fictional-bands-movies-tv-sho...

Hurry, build it and add Driveshaft to the list.

It's a good start. One might populate a lot more database from Wikipedia. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Brawndo&redirect=...

And

https://fictionalcompanies.fandom.com/wiki/Brawndo

And

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Q1462364...

US Robotics sold modems in late 90s

They named the company after the fictional one in Asimov's stories.

It’s cool, but it needs Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong, among many others mentioned here.

No Zik-Zak or Network 23?

https://www.maxheadroom.com/index.php?title=File:Mh-zik-zak-...

Hey, I have one of those as a T-shirt:

https://fictionalbrandsarchive.com/item.php?id=110

Submitted Veridian Dynamics. Hopefully it will be added :D

I submitted Initech over a week ago and still don't see it.

Mine got published yesterday! Good lock with yours :)

No love for IBN?

It's the fictional IBM from the Steins;Gate series of visual novels, anime, and games which uses the IBM (IBN in this case) 5100 Portable Computer.

It's missing Buttfucker's and Tarrington from Idiocracy, amongst others. "If you don't smoke Tarrington, Fuck You!"

Where is "Blammo" the maker of Log?

How did Pied Piper not make the list?

No Veridian Dynamics either. They even have ads to get a feel for their corporate style from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEEBE7_-aMM

They could fill their database from the Simpsons. Just some of what they missed:

Osaka Food Concern

Laramie Cigarettes

Krusty Burgers

Powell Motors

Chalmskinn Productions

TFA missed Darlington Electronics Inc. of "Real Genius."

Morley cigarettes?

No Octan. No love.

Kruger Industrial Smoothing, Seinfeld, season 9.

Vandelay Industries (!)

Missing Initech from Office Space.

No love for Let's Potato Chips?

needs more ono-sendai

ubik - pk dick - everything

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