Tuckerization

The standard fandom term for using a real person's name in a story as a form of in-joke or Shout-Out. Derived from the science fiction writer Wilson Tucker, well known for doing this.

It isn't always a famous person, either: sometimes a writer will use the names of friends (or enemies). Famous writers, including Stephen King and Terry Pratchett, have been known to offer their readers a chance to be tuckerized, either as the prize in a competition or as part of a charity auction. Characters created under these circumstances have a tendency to suffer a form of Death by Cameo. Sometimes falls into Theme Naming.

For the time travel variant, see also I'm Mr. Future Pop Culture Reference. For the animal version, see Tribute to Fido. For characters who take their names from the actors who portray them, see The Danza. Opposite is No Celebrities Were Harmed.

Anime and Manga

 * Ash from the Pokémon anime. His original Japanese name is Satoshi, after the creator of the Pokémon games, Satoshi Tajiri; some have hypothesised that "Ash" is in turn a contraction of "Satoshi". Gary was originally named Shigeru after Shigeru Miyamoto, the game director and Creators of such Nintendo mascots as Mario, Donkey Kong, and Link. Probably both a poke and a tribute, as their game series are rivals and Miyamoto mentored Tajiri early in Pokémon's production. Finally, Paul was named after an employee at the company who dubs Pokémon
 * Reportedly, Sky Dragon of Osiris was renamed "Slifer the Sky Dragon" in the Yu-Gi-Oh! dub, as a nod to 4Kids director Roger Slifer. Yes, it's stupid, and yes, it gets many an account of Gannon Banned.
 * Played with in Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series, which calls the dragon "Slifer the Executive Producer."
 * Shigeru Kanmuri in Yakitate!! Japan. The author's editor's name? Shigeru Kanmuri.
 * Usagi Tsukino's family members were designed after and named for author Naoko Takeuchi's actual family members. The jewelry store owned by the Osakas has an in-universe explanation for the store's name, OSA-P, but out of universe, the store was named for Fumio Osano, Takeuchi's editor at Kodansha and a good friend whom she nicknamed Osa-P.
 * The team dubbing Digimon Adventure reportedly had a hard time translating the name of a Digimon originally known as Plotmon. Instead of making an educated guess, the producer, Terri-Lei O'Malley, decided to rename it after her pet cat, and the digimon thus became known as Salamon. Hilariously, the digimon turned out to be a dog, not a kitten as the producer had assumed based on its evolved form, Tailmon.
 * Dr. Mashirito, Sembei Norimaki's nemesis in Dr. Slump, is named after Toriyama's editor Kazuhiko Torishima ("Mashirito" is "Torishima" spelled backwards).
 * The monster from the 13th and final Dragonball Z movie, Hirudegarn, was apparently named after the film's animation supervisor whose name was Hiruda. Apparently, when he saw the design for the thing his jaw dropped, an expression characterised in Japanese with the onomatopoeia "GAAN".
 * Gundam Seed has Erica Simmons, named after Mark Simmons, a Big Name Fan turned Promoted Fanboy when Bandai America hired him to help with the localization of the Gundam franchise. Erica is a mobile suit engineer, likely a nod to Mark's old website Gundam Project, which featured detailed mobile suit profiles and hand-drawn lineart.

Comicbooks

 * Ray Palmer, the Atom, is a reference to the Golden Age science fiction writer.
 * Marvel Comics frequently uses names like "Marv" (Wolfman) and "Stan" (Lee) for extras in various comics.
 * When Todd McFarlane started writing Spawn, he Tuckerized pretty much everybody he knew. He got into trouble when he did this without the permission of St. Louis Blues enforcer Tony Twist.
 * DC Comics is particularly fond of this - in Gotham City, nearly every street, building, park, subway stop, land mark, topographical feature, bridge, shanty, lean-to, or other edifice will be named after previous Batman artists, in the instances where they're not named after Gotham City itself.
 * John Byrne named Kitty Pryde for an art-school classmate, though it was because he thought the name was cool rather than as an inside joke. The actual Kitty Pryde reportedly hates the attention she gets for her name.
 * Chris Claremont named Madelyne Pryor, the Jean Grey clone, after Maddy Prior of Steeleye Span.
 * Courtney "Stargirl" Whitmore is named after Geoff Johns's deceased sister.
 * Guy Gardner is named after legendary comics creator Gardner Fox (and some fan or another, according to The Other Wiki.)
 * Paul Gambi, the underworld tailor who designs costumes for The Flash's Rogues Gallery is named after DJ and comics fan Paul Gambaccini.
 * Brazilian artist Maurício de Sousa did this to many characters in Monica's Gang (due to them being based on people he met - one of his daughters became the title character).
 * The main character of Kick-Ass was named by the winner of a contest, who chose his own name, essentially Tuckerizing himself.
 * Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew encountered a retired comic book artist named Gardener Fox after aforementioned comics creator Gardner Fox. Gardener Fox then proceeds to outline a theory of alternate dimensions originally devised by his namesake. (And, obviously, he's a fox).
 * Marc Spector, the main persona of Moon Knight, was named after a friend of creator Doug Moench.
 * In PS238 there's a villain named Von Fogg who flies around in an airship and wears a helmet shaped like a bowler hat. Comics artist Phil Foglio wears a bowler at all his public appearances, and his comics imprint is called Airship Entertainment. (See Webcomics below for the flip side.)
 * Carlie Cooper of Spider-Man was named after Joe Quesada's daughter. The fandom was not amused.
 * A few members of the Sinestro Corps in Green Lantern were named after DC staff members. Bur'Gunza (Eddie Berganza), Schlagg-Man (Adam Schlagman), Scivor (Ethan Van Sciver), and Duel Eknham (Doug Mahnke). Another member, Imecsub, was based off of actor Steve Buscemi.

Fan Fiction

 * Fans of Touhou often put the nickname of the series' creator, ZUN, into their derivative works -- most often as an Unsound Effect. Strangely enough, ZUN's real name, Oota Jun'ya is rarely used, if ever.
 * In L-Dog Z's Spider-Man Evolution series all minor mooks that are not pre-existing comicbook characters are named after comicbook writers, basically combining this trope with Take That (although they're also (fan) Cannon Immigrants from the Daredevil film adapation).

Films -- Live-Action

 * William Shatner named Star Trek V: The Final Frontier's Shakaree after Sean Connery.
 * Mostly because they were hoping to get him for the movie.
 * Star Wars is littered with examples. See this Wookieepedia article. A particularly interesting example is the planet Stewjon, the homeworld of Obi-Wan Kenobi, which George Lucas named after Jon Stewart in response to Stewart asking him about Obi-Wan's homeworld at Celebration V.
 * In Shanghai Noon, Jackie Chan's character is named Chon Wang (John Wayne), and in the sequel, Shanghai Knights, Owen Wilson's character uses the name Sherlock Holmes as an alias. A nearby Arthur Conan Doyle hears the name, and likes it. While Owen Wilson's character goes by Roy O'Bannon, he reveals at the end of the first movie that he changed it -- from Wyatt Earp. Finally, the kid sidekick in the second film is none other than Charlie Chaplin.
 * Janis Ian in Mean Girls is straight but the real Janis Ian is not.
 * Parody: One of the main characters in Office Space is named Michael Bolton... and his major character trait is constantly complaining about people bringing up the other Michael Bolton. When someone asks him why he doesn't go by "Mike", his reply is "No way! Why should I change? He's the one who sucks!"
 * Pretty much everyone in the entire cast of the first Final Destination is one big Shout-Out to some influential horror director or another; for instance, the teacher is named after Val Lewton, who did Cat People. In fact, this kind of thing seems to be fairly common in horror movies. So, if you don't want a tribute of you to feature the bloody death and dismemberment of your namesake, don't become a horror director.
 * A sign in Slither promotes "Henenlotter Dairy Days". Frank Henenlotter was the director of Basket Case.
 * Raimi and Savini in The Dead Next Door, after Evil Dead director Sam Raimi and Dawn of the Dead effects artist and actor Tom Savini.
 * Fido is set in the fictional town of Stanley, named after the setting of Night of the Living Dead.
 * Captain Spaulding, Otis Driftwood, and the Firefly clan in House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects are named after Groucho Marx characters.
 * In Batman Returns, the bad guy is named Max Shreck, after horror actor Max Schreck, noted for his role in Nosferatu-- Shreck is metaphorically a "vampire" who sucks electrical energy from Gotham City for his own ends.
 * A young Wes Craven was bullied by a kid named Fred Krueger. This is probably also the origin of the character "Krug" from Last House on the Left.
 * In Apocalypse Now, Captain Willard is given an assignment by Lt. Gen. Corman and Col. Lucas, named for director Francis Ford Coppola's mentor Roger Corman and his protege George Lucas.
 * Bonus points for the fact that Col. Lucas is played by Harrison Ford.
 * Double bonus points that Willard's given name is Benjamin; Benjamin and Willard being the names of Harrison Ford's sons.
 * Which, in an incredibly strange coincidence, are the names of a 70's horror film and its sequel. Both kids were born before the movies, but still a bit weird.
 * Lord Lew in The Muppet Movie was named after The Muppet Show producer Lew Grade, who was the only person who actually gave Jim Henson's idea for The Muppet Show a chance when all the networks passed up on it. he even occupies a similar role in-movie in helping the Muppets get their big break.
 * In Dog Soldiers one of the squaddies is called Bruce Campbell, after the star of the Evil Dead films which influenced the film. Not to mention Sgt. Harry G. Wells.
 * In the movie adaptation of Fight Club, the three detectives interviewing the Narrator as he spills the beans on Project Mayhem are Detective Andrew, Detective Kevin and Detective Walker. Andrew Kevin Walker wrote the script for the David Fincher movie Se7en as well as doing some uncredited rewrites on the Fight Club script.
 * In the Doom movie, the chief scientist in such is named Todd Carmack, after the lead programmer of id Software. They could've named the same character after the company's CEO Todd Hollenshead, though.
 * The protagonist of the movie is named "John", a name shared with two of id's founders: the above John Carmack, as well as John Romero.
 * The main character of Hot Fuzz, Nicholas Angel, was named after the film's music supervisor.
 * The list of rejected housekeepers in Mrs. Doubtfire is composed of crew members whose names also appear in the end credits.
 * In Serenity, Jayne's minigun ('Lux') is named after Lux Lucre, a huge fan of Firefly who died before the film was released.
 * Narrowly averted in The Usual Suspects: Keyser Söze was originally going to be named "Keyser Sume," after the former boss of screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie. Mr. Sume, however, was not too keen on having his name attached to a Diabolical Mastermind who murdered his own family, so they changed it.
 * A promient criminal in the Daredevil film is named Jose Quesada (a fact that has become Hilarious in Hindsight after some...controversal decessions Quesada made as Editor-In-Chief of Marvel has some fans casting him as a villian common place), a "Mr. Lee" that pays for his legal fees in fish, and other characters named Jack Kirby, Bendis, and Romita, all named after writers and artists that contributed to the Daredevil mythos. Really, that filmed loved this trope.

Literature

 * H.P. Lovecraft and his friend Robert Bloch both wrote stories in which they had a character supposed to be the other being horribly killed as an affectionate Take That.
 * He also wrote of the 'Atlantean high-priest' Klarkash-Ton (Clark Ashton Smith).
 * And to repay the kindness, Smith wrote about Egyptian priest Luveh-Keraph. Or the other way round.
 * In one of Isaac Asimov's Black Widower mysteries, the name of the guest was the name of a reader who had won a competition; the prize was to be included in the story.
 * The Discworld novel Maskerade features a brief appearance by a young woman named Colette, who draws comment for her remarkable earrings; this is a Shout-Out to a fan Terry Pratchett met at a book signing while he was working on the novel, whose name was Colette and who was wearing a pair of memorable earrings. Several subsequent Discworld novels have included characters whose names were determined by charity auctions.
 * And let's not forget Hodgesaargh, the Lancre castle falconer, based on Dave Hodges, who really does keep birds of prey. Lady Jane, the vicious gyrfalcon who keeps attacking him, is real too.
 * Dr. Follett, the former head of the Assassin's Guild, was named after the author Ken Follett.
 * Rex Stout was a midshipman on President Theodore Roosevelt's yacht from 1906 to 1908. His life was made miserable by a bullying, incompetent senior officer named Gilbert Rowcliff. Later, while writing the Nero Wolfe novels, he created a bullying, incompetent police lieutenant named George Rowcliff who showed up in a number of books. Stout later admitted that he'd followed the career of his early nemesis and had been surprised when Rear Admiral Rowcliff was named Judge Advocate General of the Navy.
 * In Elizabeth Moon's novel Victory Conditions, the section in which the villains attack the Moray shipyards features heroic deaths for a group of the author's friends.
 * As Piers Anthony's Xanth series now consists almost entirely of material suggested by fans, the series now includes many references to actual readers. A major character, Jenny Elf, is named in honor of a real girl and Xanth reader who was paralyzed in a car accident.
 * There are several of these in the Dragaera books, particularly in the introductions to the Khaavren books. One, written by "The Dean of Pamlar University" was written by author Pamela Dean; another, by a magician named Ilen was written by Neil Gaiman. Similarly, in the book Athyra, there is a reference to a Book of the Seven Wizards, with each wizard being a Shout-Out to writer friends of Brust, except for one which describes himself.
 * In the Star Trek Expanded Universe novel How Much For Just The Planet? by John M. Ford, the Enterprise visits a planet colonized by a group of eccentric artists; nearly all the colonists with speaking parts are based on the author's friends and fellow-writers, including Pamela Dean, Neil Gaiman, Diane Duane, Peter Morwood, and Janet Kagan.
 * Interestingly, How Much For Just The Planet? was used in Duane's Young Wizards Series as the title of an alien TV show.
 * Peter David has a book out called Mascot To the Rescue! which tells the story of a boy named Josh Miller trying to save a comic book character from death (you see, everything that happens to Mascot, the character, also happens to Josh). Who writes the comic that Mascot is in? Why, a man named Stan Kirby.
 * Which reminds me of an old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles book (based on the cartoon) where the Turtles meet a guy named Kirby who uses a magic pencil to bring comics to life. It always made me tear up.
 * He also wrote in Shout Outs to all the actors who played the main characters on his show Space Cases in the first four Star Trek: New Frontier novels. And he re-shouted out Jewel Staite in another novel after Firefly.
 * Also, Roger Tang, the Starfleet ground-pounder with the Catch Phrase "All part of the service" in Imzadi? Named after an enthusiastic fan.
 * A very unpleasant example by Michael Crichton: the journalist Michael Crowley, who criticised Crichton's position on global warming, was written into Next under the name "Mick Crowley". Several other details (Washington journalist, went to Yale) are given just to make sure nobody misses who it's supposed to be. The fictional Mick Crowley is a homosexual baby rapist with a very small penis.
 * The critic in question responded in an appropriately wry manner. To the point of heroism.
 * In the fourth Harry Potter book, a girl named Natalie MacDonald briefly appears and is put in Gryffindor. This was the name of a cancer patient who sent J.K. Rowling a very nice fan letter. Sadly, Natalie had died by the time the book was released.
 * Natalie's death was the reason Rowling named her as a tribute - the litle girl had asked to be told how the story ended before she died, but Rowling didn't get to respond in time, so name-dropping a character with that name was her making up for this.
 * Rowling also stated that "Potter" comes from her childhood neighbours.
 * Science fiction publisher Baen Books is probably the king of tuckerizations. David Weber, John Ringo, and Eric Flint have been doing it for years with forum members whose names are chosen to be characters. Joe Buckley is infamous as a member who appears and gets brutally killed in nearly every work of fiction at Baen after a contest started between the different authors. When the Baen Universe online magazine launched, they added Tuckerizations as a perk of the higher levels of the club.
 * Occasionally, Ringo puts out a call for fans wanting to be killed, usually in a brutal manner. Given that he writes a good bit of military fiction, science or otherwise, there are plenty of opportunities for becoming a literary corpse.
 * Samkim and Arula in the Redwall book Salamandastron are modifications of the names of two fans, Samantha Kim and Laura.
 * The "Gameras" of John Scalzi's Old Man's War series are named after classic sci-fi authors. Since the series takes place in the far future, one of them is named after a contemporary writer who has not yet been judged "classic".
 * In Esther Friesner's Majyk by... series, the three village idiots are named Lorrenz, Wot, and Evvon, a shout-out to author Lawrence Watt-Evans.
 * Taken to an art form in Bill Fitzhugh's Pest Control, whose lead is named Bob Dillon. It didn't make for a happy childhood. He spends the entire book being confused with Bob Dylan, even by the CIA.
 * A William Gibson / Bruce Sterling novel The Difference Engine featured a character named Michael Godwin.
 * Tamora Pierce does this more and more, usually with a variation in spelling. Kyrsty Street and Hollyskyt Street keep being mentioned as locations in Kugisko in Cold Fire; sure enough, the acknowledgements include a Holly Skeet and a Kirsty Something-or-other. And most members of the author's message board noticed Joshain Street in Trickster's Choice and Ratey's Inn in The Will of the Empress, both of which are variations on the usernames of Big Name Fans.
 * Matthew Reilly at one point went on the popular Australian radio show Hamish & Andy, and held an impromptu competition: Call in if you have a good-sounding name, and the best one will be in his next novel, The Five Greatest Warriors. The resulting character, General Jackson Dyer, lasted 29 pages, which is, as Reilly said himself, 'a huge number of pages for a Matthew Reilly book'.
 * Gary Russell's Doctor Who Virgin New Adventures novel Legacy featured several notable names in fandom, including an alcoholic Pakhar (intelligent alien hamster) named Hyn't'n, whose death sets up the plot. By a strange coincidence, Craig Hinton's subsequent DW novel, The Crystal Bucephalus, had a cameo by a doglike creature named Garruss.
 * The Virgin Publishing Doctor Who novels did this a lot. Take a random book and compare the names of minor characters with the rec.arts.drwho folk namechecked in the aknowledgements.
 * Simon R. Green likes having characters named after sf jounalist David Langford (starting with gossip columnist Dee Langford in Deathstalker Destiny). He frequently writes to Langford's fanzine, Ansible, to express his glee in how viciously he can kill them off.
 * The Lord Darcy stories by Randall Garrett include a brilliant magical theoretician named Sir Thomas Leseaux. Garrett was friends with the stage magician and author T.A. Waters. His sometime collaborator Michael Kurland appears in Too Many Magicians as Sergeant-At-Arms Michel Coure-Terre. Also in Too Many Magicians, there is a senior wizard named James Zwinge; the real name of stage magician and arch-sceptic James Randi.
 * Animorphs has a character called Erek (he's a Chee, i.e. holographic dog-robot, who helps the heroes out from time to time) named after a fan who won a contest.
 * Charles Dickens named the Oliver Twist villain Fagin after a man he worked with in a factory in his childhood. The real Fagin was actually a kindly man, but Dickens' memories of that period scarred him for life.
 * In his acknowledgments of The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan includes thanks to his "cadre of middle-school beta testers," the first of whom is "Travis Stoll, clever and quick as Hermes." The Stoll brothers, Connor and Travis, appear from the next book on as the new head counselors of the Hermes cabin.
 * When Ian Fleming was writing the early James Bond novels, he was informed by one Geoffrey Boothroyd that Bond's Beretta 418 was more or less a wimpy purse gun. His next novel had a "Major Boothroyd", introduced as "the greatest small-arms expert in the world", issuing Bond his iconic Walther PPK. The character was transferred over to the movies, although he was only referred to as Boothroyd in the first, as well as a blink-and-you'll-miss-it use of the name in The Spy Who Loved Me; in every other movie he was simply Quartermaster Branch, or "Q."
 * In Brandon Sanderson's Wheel of Time books, a number of minor characters are named after people who donated to charity at a particular event.
 * The Warrior Cats series has done this several times. The author has admitted to using screennames from fansites (notably Wands and Worlds and Warriors Wish), where the screennames follow the pattern of the characters' naming system. There are also three characters based on a ten-year-old fan and her parents, who all died in a tornado in 2008 - the author told an online community about it so they could show support for the girl's family, and the members gave the girl and her parents warrior names to honor them. The author used these names in the next book she was planning, and that same book is dedicated to them. One of the recent main characters, Ivypaw, is named after a baby named Ivy whose family has gone to see the author on every one of her tours.
 * Like the Animorphs example above, the final book in the Spy High series introduced major character Kate Taylor, named after Kate Harrison who had won a fan contest.
 * Birdwell Island, the setting of the Clifford the Big Red Dog series books and cartoon, is actually named after Norman Bridwell, who created this series.
 * Armand in Hothouse Flower and The Nine Plants of Desire is named after a friend of the author.
 * The Name of the Rose has one blind-bibliotecarian called Jorge De Burgos. The character was obviously (created and) named after Jorge Luis Borges. The fact that the name of the story is the same as one of Borges' most famous poems makes this even more obvious.
 * A Song of Ice and Fire makes a brief mention of Lord Trebor Jordayne of the Tor. His heraldic symbol is a quill, and he apparently has an interesting theory that time is a wheel.
 * M'chel Riss of Star Risk, Ltd. is named after author Chris Bunch's friend Michelle Rice.
 * In The Hitch Hikers Guide to The Galaxy radio drama and early versions of the novel, author Douglas Adams mentions a classmate named Paul Neil Milne Johnstone whom he considers the worst poet in the universe. (He's worse than Vogons!} The named was eventually changed to Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings in the later editions of the novel, the TV series and the movie.

Live-Action TV
"Dean: What kind of a douchebag names a character after himself? Sam: Oh, that's not right."
 * In Babylon 5, Psicorps agent Alfred Bester is named after the science fiction writer, whose work often dealt with Psychic Powers. In particular, his novel The Demolished Man is about a set of psychics that bear a marked resemblance to the Psicorps.
 * Dr Lillian Hobbes won a charity auction where the prize was to be the 'victim' of this trope.
 * The Expanded Universe reveals that Bester was named after the author in-universe as well, since the man who took him to be raised by Psi-Corps after his parents' deaths was a big fan and entered him under the name.
 * Neil Gaiman has an entire race named after him; the Gaim, whose heads resemble The Sandman's helmet.
 * Half the characters in Space Cases have names that are Tuckerized references to writers and scientists.
 * Half the characters on SCTV are named for Canadian celebrities, but the name is often the only resemblance. For instance, oily Melonville mayor Tommy Shanks was named after decidedly non-oily Alberta jazzman (and now Senator) Tommy Banks, while stuffy alcoholic Floyd Robertson/"Count Floyd" is named after sober, down-to-earth CTV news anchor Lloyd Robertson (who's still on the job).
 * One of the characters on The Wire is Sergeant Jay Landsman, who is named after and shares certain similarities with a real life Baltimore homicide detective that series creator David Simon met while writing Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets. Even stranger, the real Landsman retired from police work and became an actor, and he appears on The Wire as Major Dennis Mello, a character named after another real-life Baltimore cop.
 * Stranger than that, Mello meets with Landsman's expy from the television series, none other than John Munch.
 * A large corporation that's popped up a couple of times on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit is Taucher-Leto Pharmaceuticals. Take a look at the end credits sometime and see if you can't figure out why the names seem so familiar...
 * Gene Roddenberry allegedly named Khan Noonien Singh after an old friend with whom he'd lost touch, in the hopes that the friend would see it and contact him. Though it's a bit odd, in that case, that he gave the name to a villain...
 * The Klingon race was named after Lieutenant Wilbur Clingan, who served with Roddenberry in the Los Angeles Police Department.
 * Geordi LaForge was named after George LaForge, a quadriplegic fan of the original Star Trek who had died in 1975.
 * The Bolians are named after Cliff Bole, the director of the first episode a Bolian appeared in. Also, the Cliffs of Bole are named after him.
 * Samantha Wildman of Star Trek: Voyager was named after a young girl who died in an accident, and whose organs were donated to the ailing wife of one of the screenwriters.
 * "Jefferies Tubes" (the maintenance area of the ships) in the Star Trek universe were named after Original Series art director Matt Jefferies, as an in-joke.
 * Angel's Gunn was named so after the brothers James Gunn and Sean Gunn, with whom Joss Whedon had worked.
 * Bill Lawrence admits on a Scrubs DVD commentary that he's terrible at naming characters, so he named a bunch of character after real people. Included are JD, Todd Quinlan (The Todd), Molly Clock, Randall Winston, and Turk. Not too mention a lot of patients, including Will Forte, Jill Tracy, Mr. Burski, and many others. Interestingly, Jill Tracy the patient was named after the real Jill Tracy, who later played a heart transplant patient named Elaine. Randall Winston was named after the real Randall Winston, who plays the security guard with the giant afro. It can get confusing.
 * A number of characters from The Thick of It were named after players from one writer Jesse Armstrong's five-a-side football team. They include Malcolm Tucker, a particularly neat example of this trope.
 * Celebrity Deathmatch held a contest with the prize being the honor of appearing on the show. The winner got to see his Claymation self right in the center of the Deathmatch ring -- where his liver was promptly ripped out by John Tesh.
 * In the episode "Breaking and Entering" from the 2nd season of Burn Notice, Michael's cover ID for infiltrating a mercenary company is Terry Miller, which is the name of the show's unit production supervisor.
 * The lead character himself is an example: Michael Westen, not to be confused with actor Michael Weston, who appeared in Garden State, had recurrent roles on Scrubs, Law and Order SVU, and House--and made a guest appearance on Burn Notice.
 * Collective example: A written list of murder victims seen on Forever Knight consisted entirely of the names of Real Life fans, from a newsgroup dedicated to the show.
 * Roger Last was a production assistant on Monty Python's Flying Circus. His last name was appropriated by Michael Palin in the "Fish License" sketch, and his full name was appropriated by John Cleese for "Is There?"
 * The 'buying the mattress' sketch features a Mr. Verity and a Mr. Lambert, named after BBC producer Verity Lambert.
 * Claude Rains in Heroes is named after the actor who played The Invisible Man in the 1933 movie. This is quite appropriate, Claude's power being invisibility and all. It's hinted that this isn't his real name and he chose the name himself.
 * Lost has done this a few times. A character in the 2009 ARG was Hans van Eeghen, likely named after the show's film editor Henk van Eeghen. The minor character "Simmons" in season 6 was hinted to be named as a shout-out to sports columnist Bill Simmons.
 * The surnames of all the Red Dwarf crewmembers (prior to the accident) were taken from people Rob Grant and Doug Naylor went to school with. Rimmer was named after a snobby prefect and Kochanski was named after the school bully.
 * Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Tommy Oliver, the Green/White Ranger is named after producer Tony Oliver. Tommy's White Ranger weapon, Saba, is likely named after Haim Saban. Billy Cranston, the Blue Ranger, is named after Saban voice actor Bryan Cranston.
 * Supernatural: Bobby Singer named after director/writer/executive producer Robert Singer. Lampshade duly hung in "The French Mistake" when Dean and Sam are zapped into "our" reality and meet Rob.


 * How I Met Your Mother has several examples of this, most notably MacLaren's Bar, and its bartender Carl which were together named after one of the creators' assistants.
 * iCarly: Used occasionally to reference the creator Dan Schneider, such as St. Schneider's Hospital and Schneider's Convenience Store.
 * Also done with one of the other staff members, Robin Weiner, whose name gets attached to some hot-dogs.
 * Cameron from The Sarah Connor Chronicles was quite obviously named after James Cameron, the creator of the entire Terminator series.
 * The surnames of the The X Files main duo: Mulder is the maiden name of Chris Carter's mother, and Scully is after Dodger announcer Vin Scully. And it appears every now and then in the series (for instance, the Creepy Twin Clones from "Eve" are named after the writers' wives).
 * Piz from Veronica Mars was named after a regular director for the show, Piznarski.
 * Gil Grissom on CSI is named after astronaut Virgil 'Gus' Grissom; Petersen is a space buff.
 * Mac Taylor on CSI: NY gets a double. 'Mac' is after Gary Sinise's son, McCanna, who's called Mac as a nickname. (McCanna has actually been said to be Mac Taylor's full name, but never onscreen.)'Taylor' is after Sinise's Forrest Gump character, Lt.Dan Taylor.
 * Another collective version: All the background officers on Adam-12 were named for officers Jack Webb knew during his radio days.
 * Screenname version: Buffy the Vampire Slayer had an episode in season 4 with a Polgara demon, the name of which was after a regular poster's screenname at the Bronze board.
 * Peter Kay and Paddy McGuinness named a one-off character in Max & Paddy's Road To Nowhere Alison Graham, after a journalist who had championed their previous series Phoenix Nights.

Music

 * Lynyrd Skynyrd named itself after a rather authoritarian teacher at their former high school, with slightly different spelling
 * Edguy is an affectionate epitaph for a Mr. Edgar Siedschlag, who was their math teacher from when they were young.
 * The Dead Milkmen's "Stuart" mentions a kid named Jonny Wurster: Jon Wurster is the drummer for Superchunk and a friend of the band.
 * Sloan are named after an old friend of the band, sort of: their friend Jason Larsen was frequently called "slow one" by his boss, but due to a heavy french accent it sounded more like "Sloan", which became his nickname. Larsen agreed to let them name their band after him on the condition that they put him on an album cover, and sure enough his face is on the cover of Peppermint, their first EP.
 * Miike Snow took their name from their friend Mike Snow, then added an extra "i" as a Shout-Out to Takashi Miike.

Newspaper Comics

 * Peanuts - Charles "Sparky" Schulz named his two characters, Charlie Brown and Linus Van Pelt, after his two co-workers at the correspondence art school he worked at, although Charlie Brown quickly became semi-autobiographical, including references to his (illiterate) father the barber. The unnamed Little Red Haired Girl, whom Charlie Brown could never get the courage to meet, is based on a young woman who rejected Sparky's affection.
 * Garfield is named after Jim Davis' grandfather.

Tabletop Games

 * Practically half the names of people and places in the World of Greyhawk setting for Dungeons and Dragons are named after people E. Gary Gygax knew, and then there's Xagyg himself.
 * Some examples from Magic the Gathering: Nevinyrral's Disk is named after writer Larry Niven, while Jalum Tome is named after former Magic game designer Joel L. Mick (initials: JLM).
 * There's also Mons's Goblin Raiders for Mons Johnson and Jayemdae Tome for J. Michael Davis. Also there are a number of Arabian Nights cards containing anagrams of Richard Garfield's friends' names when he ran out of Gratuitous Arabic. Oh, and Pheldagrif/Garfield PhD.
 * Maro is named after lead designer Mark Rosewater.
 * The adventure scenario "...And I Feel Fine" for Unknown Armies (in the supplement One Shots) includes two ready-to-play characters named after RPG designers: Rebecca Borgstrom and Rich Dansky.

Theatre

 * The Most Happy Fella does this in the prelude to the title song, when the postman calls out the townspeople's names: "Johnson" and "Sullivan" were named after the original production's featured actresses Susan Johnson (as Cleo) and Jo Sullivan (as Rosabella), and "Herbie Greene" after the conductor, Herbert Greene.

Theme Parks

 * At The Haunted Mansion from Disney Theme Parks, Master Gracey, the Ghost Host (maybe), is named after Yale Gracey, who designed a lot of the ride's special effects.
 * Also, Madame Leota is named after Leota Toombs, a ride designer and the face of Madame Leota.

Toys

 * Bionicle: Kiina is named after writer Greg Farshtey's wife, Jackina, and a trio of Order of Mata Nui agents (Jerbraz, Johmak, Tobduk) is named after the three artists who worked on the BIONICLE Atlas book.

Videogames

 * In the Armored Core series, the obscenely powerful Karasawa laser rifle is named after one of the series' producers. It's always one of the strongest weapons in the game, if not the strongest.
 * Quite a few NPCs and items in World of Warcraft are named after real people, often in their memory. One of the more recent is Crusader Bridenbrad, named for Bradley Bridenbecker, the brother of one the Blizzard Employees, who had died of cancer.
 * One of the more bizarre ones is Gorge the Corpsegrinder, a Horde NPC named after George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher of the band Cannibal Corpse. Fisher is apparently a huge fan of the game, owning multiple accounts and often lamenting in interviews that he doesn't get a chance to play as much as he'd like on the road, as well as the presence of elves in the Horde.
 * Many characters in the Ultima series are named after the games' creators and their friends, most notably Lord British and the Avatar's Companions (although Lord British may canonically be, quite literally, Garriott himself).
 * In the Martian Dreams spin-off from Ultima VI, you get to hang out with Warren Spector, one of the game's designers.
 * And in the previous game, Savage Empire, Warren Spector also shows up as.
 * In Fatal Frame: Crimson Butterfly, several of the photographed ghosts bear the names and faces of people who won a contest to be placed in the game.
 * Is it not odd that the main character of Confidential Mission is named Howard Gibson, while the chief localizer of said game just happens to bear the name Howard Gipson?
 * Noob Saibot from Mortal Kombat is the names of two of the developers (Boon and Tobias) backwards.
 * Sometimes the developers of Japanese RPGs actually make it into the game themselves. Examples include Motoi Sakuraba, the music composer, in Tales of Phantasia and Tales of Destiny and Shinji Hashimoto, the producer of The World Ends With You.
 * Spiderweb Software loves to do this in its games. See this thread for a list.
 * Many characters and locations in City of Heroes are real-world references, such as Perez Park and Gaiman Woods.
 * In the Japanese version of Animal Crossing, the character known as K.K. Slider in foreign versions is called Totakeke, which is the nickname of Nintendo composer Kazumi Totaka. He's the one to go to if you want to hear Totaka's Song in this game.
 * Contest winner Kurt Zisa got a powerful US-exclusive Bonus Boss named after him in Kingdom Hearts.
 * Let's not forget Isaac Asimov Clarke from Dead Space.
 * On that note, Jason Fleming.
 * Ozzy, Slash and Flea in Chrono Trigger were Shout Outs to Ozzy Ozborne, Slash from Guns N Roses, and Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers. (Their Japanese names were references to food sauces.) This caused some problems in the sequel, where there was a new character named Slash, whose name had to be changed to Nikki, after Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue.
 * Shigeru Miyamoto originally intended to name Link from The Legend of Zelda "Chris" or "Christo" after his godfather. Executive Meddling stopped his plans.
 * Mario was named after Nintendo of America's landlord, Mario Segali.
 * Depending on who at Nintendo you ask, Kirby was either named after a lawyer who helped Nintendo in their legal battle against Universal over Donkey Kong, or Kirby vacuum cleaners.
 * Practically every street name in the town of Silent Hill is the name of a horror, fantasy/SF, mystery or true-crime author -- or director. Finney Street, Matheson Street, Bloch Street, Koontz Street, Bradbury Street, Levin Street, Bachman Road, Crichton Street... and let's not forget Midwich Elementary School, Overlook Penitentiary or DiArgento Cemetery.
 * Online flash-based game Dragon Fable's developers, Artix Entertainment, awarded about 10 players cameos as in one of the late quests of the Fire War.
 * In Golden Eye 1997 007, a gun called the Klobb is named after Ken Lobb, a Nintendo of America employee at the time who helped develop the game. This wasn't originally planned - the gun was originally named the Spyder (and the manual even referenced it with this name), but when the developers discovered such a gun really existed, they had to quickly change it to something else for legal reasons. There's also a Dr. Doak, after one of the developers, David Doak.
 * The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind contains the ashes of two members of the official forums who died before the game shipped.
 * Almost every single randomly-generated Red Shirt soldier in the Call of Duty series is named after members of their respective game's development team. The most prominent is Staff Sergeant Griggs from Modern Warfare, who is named after, looks like, and voiced by Infinity Ward's lead animator at the time.
 * Some of the pitchers and batters in 2020 Super Baseball and Baseball Stars 2 are named Kawasaki, a reference to SNK's president.
 * The main character of Robotron 64 is called Eugene, a reference to the creator of the original game, Eugene Jarvis.
 * In the Rockman.EXE series, both the games and the anime, there's a character named Meijin Eguchi (literally, "The Famous Eguchi", Mr Famous in the Translations), who plays a minor role in each game (mostly a fan-Navi vehicle) and is basically the commander in the anime. The name of the scenario writer for EXE? Eguchi Masakazu.
 * The only guaranteed shopkeeper in Nethack is Izchak, named for the late coder Izchak Miller (who did a lot of work on the shopkeeper logic). Extinctionist gameplay is very ropey on whether it's acceptable to kill him (anything other than extinctionism and the rule is simple; don't).
 * One of the hunts in Final Fantasy XII, Yazmat, is named for Yasumi Matsuno, the game's original director and a long-time developer at Squaresoft (later Square Enix). Matsuno frequently went by "Yazz" amongst his colleagues. The dialog for the quest makes an oblique reference to his stepping down from the game's development and subsequent departure from Square Enix before the game was completed. The English version mistranslated this to "Yiazmat", not understanding the reference.
 * Satomi Tadashi, the (group of) people who run the drugstores in Persona, are named after the scenario designer.
 * Scott Dolph, head of the Marine Corps in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, was named after the American coordinator working on that game and the first. Cécile Cosima Caminandes in Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker is named after Konami's real life French coordinator, since Kojima thought her middle name and last name sounded like 'Kojima kaminandesu' (Kojima is God). The character is modelled to look somewhat like her as well.
 * The original Metal Gear Solid had the inept guard Johnny Sasaki, named after character model designer Hideki Sasaki. For some reason, he dropped the Sasaki surname in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
 * When the Data East shmup Makyou Senshi was localized, it was renamed Gondomania. The lead designer's family name happened to be Gondo...
 * Veteran RPG writer Dennis Detwiller contributed the story for Prototype, but before that, he was well-known for his work on Delta Green alongside writers like John Tynes. Among the various characters Alex ends up eating as part of the Web of Intrigue is a Dr. Jon Tynes.
 * Many of the characters in the Kunio Kun were named after employees of Technos Japan Corp., or people they knew. In fact, Kunio himself was named after Technos Japan's president, Kunio Taki.
 * In the Fire Emblem Tellius series, one of the villains is named Izuka (who appeared only as a brief cameo in Path of Radiance only to come back with importance in Radiant Dawn), which is also the surname of the character and set designer for Path of Radiance, Daisuke Izuka.
 * No One Lives Forever did similar to Goldeneye's Klobb: one of the sniper rifles was named the "Geldmacher SVD", after Jim Geldmacher.
 * The Pokémon Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan are named after Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan respectively. Their Japanese names, Sawamular and Ebiwalar are taken from Tadashi Sawamura, the world's first kickboxer, and Hiroyuki Ebihara, a world champion Japanese boxer.
 * Ebsiumaru, Goemon's partner in Ganbare Goemon, was named after Konami programmer Ebisu Etsunobu, who programmed Ganbare Goemon 2 for the Famicom (which was incidentally Ebisumaru's debut game).
 * The leaders of the Rebellion in EV Nova have surnames from the development team. (Or a codename, in Frandall's case.)
 * Fallout 2 has a couple of special encounters with Tuckerization.
 * 'The Cafe of Broken Dreams' - One of the characters tells of a player who went to great lengths to keep Dogmeat alive in the original Fallout. Based on a real player.
 * 'The Unwashed Villagers hunting a spammer' - From the Fallout wiki, "A reference to a real life flamewar between a Fallout internet community and a forum 'troll'." The villagers are named with the handles of the people involved.

Webcomics

 * This is what happens to people who win a cameo appearance in Sluggy Freelance.
 * Similar to the Sluggy Freelance example above, Knights of the Old Coding had a couple contests where the victor got to be killed by the cast member of their choice.
 * Worth pointing out is that Knights of the Old Coding predated Sluggy Freelance on this trend.
 * Similarly once more, the only character in Earthsong to be Tuckerized in was killed...ish within the first 25 pages.
 * Before the reboot, the character of Alyss had the name "Tehmel", which was an explicit reference to a close friend of the author. The name was altered when the character was reintroduced during the Redux because the author didn't particularly like how akward the name sounded. Alyss is apparently still a reference to the same person.
 * And Shine Heaven Now takes this to extremes, with a mostly-annual storyline in which fans of the series (it's a Hellsing fancomic) are drawn in by the dozens. Another storyline had a few of the main cast visiting a convention, which was staffed by real-life con volunteers.
 * Penny Arcade auctions off cameo appearances for the Child's Play charity.
 * An example of this can be seen here.
 * For the last two years, as evidenced by the strip linked above, Tycho and Gabe have completely forgotten to do the cameo strip. And in all but the first case, they have pointed out that the people that buy the cameo appearances are either a group (as in the first case), or otherwise in possession of a lot of money. Their second cameo strip consisted entirely of them trying to convince the person who had won the appearance to buy them cars (he had won the auction with a bid of $20,000).
 * Trawn from Electric Wonderland shares the same first name as one of the cartoonist's friends: Eileen Cruz, founder of Toon Zone.
 * In Girl Genius there's a villain named Baron Aaronev who is served by mooks with a strong resemblance to characters in comics drawn by Aaron Williams. Williams returned the favor by making Phil Foglio a villain in PS238 (see Comics, above).
 * Homestuck has Gamzee Makara was named for a Turkish fan named Gamze (better known as Gammy), who was a member of the forums at the time the trolls were introduced. A variety of variations on her name were suggested (as her name at 5 letters was too short), and "Gamzee" ended up being selected, as Hussie thought it was a Meaningful Name. A similar thing happened with Tavros Nitram, as his last name is just "Martin" backwards, named after another fan. Because of these two incidents, Hussie became more selective with name suggestion, and after the trolls were fully introduced, no further naming has been possible by the fans.

Web Originals

 * Survival of the Fittest has a character named for hockey player Sidney Crosby. A slight variation in that the character is based off the real person rather than simply sharing his name.
 * Darwin's Soldiers has three notable instances.
 * The fictional actor Stephen Di Georgi mentioned in the third RP is a fusion of the names of two people that Serris knows in real life.
 * Jessica Boyle of Escondido, a fictional play mentioned in the first RP, is named after a person LB&T knew in real life
 * The scientist Dr. Rudyard Oscar Shelton takes his first two names from the authors Rudyard Kipling and Oscar Wilde.
 * Many stories on Alternate History Dot Com have this. Taken to ridiculous levels in Doctor What's novels. Snake Oil has no less than 24 cameos.

Western Animation
"Frank: Yep. Told you he'd come."
 * In the Made for TV Movie The Electric Piper, an animated musical set in the late 60s, the main characters are named Janice, Mick, and Sly (if you don't get it, your parents will).
 * In Transformers Animated series, there's a human supervillain called the Angry Archer, named after Aaron Archer, design-work Grand Poobah for the toyline.
 * And the villainess Slo-Mo is named after and resembles Samantha Lomow, Hasbro's VP of marketing.
 * The design of one of the street racers in the Master Disaster episode is based on one of the writers' daughters.
 * The trend goes up to ridiculous levels in the Allspark Almanac, a guidebook to the show's characters and settings. Every seemingly irrelevant throwaway name is either a reference to another show/movie or to a real life person, often friends or family of the writers.
 * Several sector and zone names in Beast Wars were named after fans on the transformers irc channel.
 * An example from Looney Tunes: in a Bugs Bunny episode, the wolf which chases Bugs is named "Charles M. Wolf". Guess what the "Charles M." stands for. (The episode was, actually, directed by Friz Freleng.)
 * All of the members of The Simpsons family are named after Matt Groening family members, except Bart, which is an anagram of "brat".
 * Also, they all have the middle initial "J", as a tribute to Jay Ward, who created Bullwinkle.
 * Also, John Frink is an executive produced of the show.
 * In an attempt to subvert this trope, when Groening decided it was time to give Grampa a real name he didn't want to use another name from his family and just asked the rest of the writing staff to come up with one. They decided on Abraham, not knowing that this was in fact the name of Groening's paternal grandfather. He decided to keep the name anyway.
 * Several other characters are named after streets in Portland, Oregon, including Flanders, Lovejoy, Quimby, Burns(ide), Terwilliger, Kearney, and Van Houten. Perhaps the most abnormal is of Aunt Patty's iguana, Jubjub. Jubjub was, reportedly, named after what Conan O'Brien would say during awkward silences in meetings. The story goes that when the time came for the writers to name it, the whole room went awkwardly silent. The rest is history.
 * Groening has stated that he doesn't know which of his family members are more angry with him: the ones who got characters named after them, or the ones that didn't. He also named one of his sons Homer to "make it up" to his father.
 * On Disney cartoons where Goofy plays all the characters in a sports team, the names of the players are those of various Disney artists.
 * Mozenrath of Disney's Aladdin is named for series writers Bill Motz and Bob Roth.
 * Razoul was also named after Rasoul Azadani, Disney's layout supervisor.
 * It was a rare episode of Teen Titans that didn't feature a crew member's name snuck into the script somewhere. One Egregious example was the Tamaranian-language joke: "How many Okaarans does it take to Hoegee a Morflark? Finbar!", with Hoegee and Finbar being crew members' names.
 * Hell, sometimes the creators just went ahead and drew themselves in the series as random civilians!
 * Story editor David Slack is the human form of Plasmus.
 * In the episode "Deep Six", a cargo ship that gets attacked by the villain in the Cold Opening is called the S.S. Vargas, after the producer A.J. Vargas.
 * In "Sisters", the creepy abandoned warehouse where the rave is held has huge giant letters on the roof spelling "SOTO", after episdoe directer Alex Soto.
 * There is also a sort of minor villain called Soto. Not sure if it's a Tuckerization or not, but as the character is an incredibly childlike rockish alien with a spaceship like a playpen, it seems likely.
 * In the Trapped in TV Land episode, there's a talk show where the guest is "Dr. Victor Payton who has discovered the secret to world peace." Victor Payton is the father of Cyborg Voice Actor Khary Payton.
 * In South Park, Stan's parents and sister are named after Trey Parker's parents and sister, Kyle's parents are named after Matt Stone's parents, Cartman's mom is named after Parker's fiancee who left him for another man, Cartman's name is based off their friend Eric Carpman, Butters is named after their friend and then-animation director (now a producer) Eric "Butters" Stough, and Living Prop Jason is named after close friend Jason McHugh who worked on Cannibal! The Musical and Orgazmo.
 * In the Phineas and Ferb episode "Dude, We're Getting the Band Back Together," the band in question is composed of Danny (named after Dan Povenmire, one of the creators), "Swampy" Sherman (the other creator, Jeff "Swampy" Marsh), and Bobbi Fabulous (whose name comes from Bobby Gaylor, a writer on the show). The last one is...subtlety at its finest...
 * Also in Phineas and Ferb, Ferb is named after a real life friend of Dan and Swampy's named Frank. But everyone called him Ferb, but his name were Frank. Like the fictional Ferb, Ferb has every tool imaginable.
 * The Fairly Odd Parents: Elmer, Butch Hartman's real name, is used as the name of one of Timmy's friends. His boil, Bob, is named after art director Bob Boyle.
 * The doctor on Family Guy was also named after Butch Hartman. His name: Dr. Elmer Hartman.
 * In the Ben 10 Alien Force episode "Pet Project" Gwen mentions that a store called McDuffie's, named after Dwayne McDuffie, one of the writers, is closing down.
 * Heartwarming in Hindsight, given McDuffie's untimely death in February 2011.
 * "It was forseen that you would come. Forseen by...Frank."


 * Two gargoyles from Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame are named Victor and Hugo (after the author of the book in which the film was based off of), respectively.
 * Those other scarers from Monsters, Inc.. They're all named after the staff of Pixar.
 * The RLS Legacy starship from Treasure Planet was actually named after Robert Louis Stevenson, the writer of Treasure Island.
 * The Fa family ancestors from Mulan are actually all named after the film's cast and crew.
 * Darla, the supposed main antagonist from Finding Nemo, is actually named after Pixar staff member Darla K. Anderson.
 * Doctor Frankenollie, the Mad Scientist from Runaway Brain is actually named after former Disney animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, respectively.
 * Lightning McQueen, the hero of the Cars series films, is named after the late Pixar regular Glenn McQueen.
 * On Recess, T.J. was going to be named P.J., to stand for the first initials of the show's creators (Paul (Germain) and Joe (Ansolabehere)), but was changed to T.J. shortly before animation was done to the pilot.
 * Mikey Blumberg's last name is a Shout-Out to Disney TV executive Barry Blumberg, who gave Recess the greenlight.
 * The title character of Doug was named after creator Jim Jinkins' godson.
 * Patti Mayonnaise was named after two girls Jim Jinkins had crushes on as a middle school students: Patti and Mayo.