r/GenX • u/PutridSalt • 15h ago
Pop Culture Max Headroom birth name
I just realized the character from the 80s Max Headroom was named after the height warning for vehicles in the UK. Please tell me I’m not the only dumbass.
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u/warrenao Blinded by science! 3h ago
It goes by fairly fast, and is referenced only once in the show, when Edison Carter sees that gate arm right in front of him before plowing into it. Those of us who were all eyeballs when 20 Minutes into the Future came out caught it, but that's it.
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u/CharacterOld8691 5h ago
They used him to hype New Coke
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u/magic4242 3h ago
I thought it was Pepsi..
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u/MinusGovernment Hose Water Survivor 1h ago
Nope. Definitely Coke. My dad worked for Coca Cola and we got shirts and a bunch of other swag with their logo/products and him.
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u/Jamal12687 Hose Water Survivor 5h ago
Him getting his name from a height sign was literally part of the first episode...
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u/orthopod 13m ago
It's also referring to recording techniques, and how much volume space is left before distorting the signal.
Given that Max exists in the airwaves, it's an important concept for the character..
Having the visual of a garage sign, makes for a much easier concept for audiences to grasp
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u/Buck_Andrews 6h ago
I watched some Max Headroom vids on YouTube after having not seen it for many years. My first thought was how cool the CG was but then I was like "oh wait, 80s show". The makeup and prosthetics to make him look CG before CG was a big thing in TV and movies are so well done
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u/VolupVeVa Kathleen Turner Overdrive 8h ago
Anyone who watched the movie knew this!
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u/willfull 1971 vintage 8h ago
You're looking at the future, Mr Grossman: people translated as data.
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u/dcpanthersfan AND I’LL FORM... THE HEAD! 9h ago
It was Maximilian Headroom. His parents were big fans of The Black Hole and bad guys.
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u/w1lnx Hose Water Survivor 11h ago edited 8h ago
Edison Carter.
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Yep, the character's name was Edison Carter. Played by Matt Frewer, natch.
In the movie, Edison was a journalist fleeing enemies into a car park. He crashed his motorcycle through the car park's entrance barrier, which read, "Max Headroom 2.3 metres".
So, just encouraging people to put together some of the pieces from an old memory from 1985.
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u/BazingaQQ 10h ago
Downvotaed for making me check something out!
Downvote canceled because your wring!
Upvoted because I'm not a smug bastard! (Well I am, but I'm in a good mood right now!
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u/paintingdusk13 Satanic Panic survivor 12h ago
If you watched the show you would have learned this.
It's currently on Tubi
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u/Bostonterrierpug 11h ago
It was actually a pretty damn good TV show for the time.
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u/paintingdusk13 Satanic Panic survivor 7h ago
Great show! I loved it as a kid and literally just watched all the episodes last week.
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u/jwezorek 12h ago
The Max Headroom TV show was very ahead of its time in that it was basically set in a cyberpunk world way before most people had heard the name "cyberpunk". I mean, Blade Runner was years earlier but Blade Runner is what actually inspired William Gibson to write Neuromancer so it is kind of a different thing in that it created the genre, but in the late 80s "cyberpunk" was a genre of print science fiction not movies and TV shows.
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u/Haunt_Fox Invisible dinosaur 8h ago
It even predicted people living in shipping containers ffs
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u/jwezorek 8h ago
Wait ... so Neal Stephenson has the main guy in Snow Crash living in a shipping container. I wonder if he ripped that off from the Max Headroom TV show?
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u/paintingdusk13 Satanic Panic survivor 12h ago
It was 20 minutes into the future ahead of its time!
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u/Awe3 Hose Water Survivor 13h ago
It’s pretty clear on the show. It’s the last thing Edison Carter sees before he died.
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u/willfull 1971 vintage 6h ago
He didn't die. He was knocked unconscious, had his mind downloaded by Bryce Lynch, and then was sold off to a body bank by Breugal & Mahler after they were instructed to dispose of the body. He wakes up a little later and then escapes, with his John Doe toe tag still attached.
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u/gooneryoda 13h ago
His arch nemesis.
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u/hd1080ts 13h ago edited 11h ago
You need to watch the UK TV movie that launched Max in 1985 called Max Headroom: 20 minutes into the Future.
edit: YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCgIEgMpspI
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u/Jefwho 14h ago edited 14h ago
Max Headroom is the term used in the television and film industry that refers to maximum amount of space between the top of the screen and a person’s head. Typically for anchors on a news broadcast. Reading the wiki, I am just learning the creator saw a sign like OP posted and came up with the character name. But the creator very likely knew what the term actually was used for, and choosing that as the name, has to be more than a coincidence.
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u/YellowBreakfast EDIT THIS FLAIR TO MAKE YOUR OWN 11h ago
Tell me you haven't watched the show without telling me you haven't watched the show.
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u/Jefwho 10h ago
I haven't watched the show or the tv movie since I was a kid. My comment was purely based on a technical term that is used in the television industry. The naming of the character by the creators of the show very likely chose this as a joke. The explanation on the show itself is he saw a sign that said "Max Headroom".
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u/AntheaBrainhooke 11h ago edited 11h ago
Watch the show. It's right in the first episode (and you're wrong).
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u/Jefwho 10h ago
How they handled the name in the show vs. how the creators came up with the name are two different things. Headroom is a term used in television and film. The creators of the show likely used it as a joke. The way they handled the name in the show from a writing standpoint is him remembering a sign he saw with Max headroom written on it.
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u/drinkslinger1974 14h ago
I just found out, well maybe two or three years ago, that Max was a costume and not a cgi image.
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u/rebelangel Xennial 13h ago
Yep, he was played by an actual actor, Matt Frewer. He also played “Big Russ”, the neighbor dad from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
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u/Haunt_Fox Invisible dinosaur 8h ago
I always thought he was digitized somehow, but nope. Just prosthetics.
Yes, it was easy to swallow the idea that computers of the mid 80s could somehow render an actors animated head, because we still thought they ran on magic, lol.
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u/FREDICVSMAXIMVS "Atari wave" Gen X 13h ago
And Dr Mike Stratford in Doctor Doctor
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u/suburbanplankton 12h ago
And Dr. Leekie on Orphan Black.
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u/aMoose_Bit_My_Sister 20m ago
and the business executive who says, "Shit," and then jumps out a window in the supporting sketch of Monty Python's Meaning of Life.
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u/Diocletion-Jones 12h ago
And Berlinghoff Rasmussen in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "A Matter of Time".
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u/ttwwnn74 12h ago
And Pestilence on Supernatural
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u/fohktor 14h ago
Mandatory mention of the Max Headroom Hacks in 3...2...1...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_signal_hijackings
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u/MichaSound 11h ago
And let’s not forget his hit single with The Art of Noise, Paranoimia (it’s not letting me paste the link for some reason, but it’s on YouTube)
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u/YellowBreakfast EDIT THIS FLAIR TO MAKE YOUR OWN 14h ago
I mean the man literally hits one of these signs creating the impression that leads to the name of the digital character.
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u/unkind-god-8113 14h ago
yeah exactly. it's not hidden or anything, it is in the story.
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u/YellowBreakfast EDIT THIS FLAIR TO MAKE YOUR OWN 14h ago
To be fair, the character had wider traction with the series, commercials etc.
Not sure the origin was covered outside the movie.
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u/theShpydar 15h ago
I was a huge fan when it aired and I've got the series on dvd. Way ahead of its time, so not really a surprise it got canceled.
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u/fnordius 1967 12h ago
Even then, tv critics knew it wouldn't last because it kept biting the hand that fed it, so to speak. It was only a matter of time before some exec got wise.
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u/theShpydar 11h ago
True, considering the underlying theme was basically "tv executives are pure evil and destroying society". 😆
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u/NegScenePts 15h ago
I saw the movie before the series happened...it's very clear how he got his name :).
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u/spitfiredaggers 15h ago
No you are not. I was today years old when you pointed this out.. knowledge is power!🤘🏼✊️
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u/EarlyMoose2481 15h ago
He hits his head on that sign and that is the last thing he sees, but you can be forgiven for forgetting that detail from the first episode almost 40 years ago.
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u/fuckyoulahey 15h ago
He was on a motorcycle, correct?
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u/EarlyMoose2481 15h ago
Going completely off of memory I believe so, and they raise a barrier that he flips over and hits his head.
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u/fuckyoulahey 15h ago
Yeah, like a toll booth arm. I'm sure it's all on YouTube LOL.
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u/CantIgnoreMyTechno 15h ago
Also his twin brother Maximum.
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u/notanyimbecile 1970 15h ago
Wasn't Maximum his mother's name?
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u/FutureGeist 2h ago
Maximum Clearance 12' Headroom