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Daily Fun Facts: 4 Real Statues of Fictional Characters

December 30, 2014

Because why erect statues to honor only those who actually existed? Today’s Daily Fun Facts provides four examples of statues that honor TV and film characters.

Daily Fun Facts Fictional StatuesRocky

A statue of Rock Balboa (or Sylvester Stallone) was made by sculptor Thomas Schomberg for Rocky III in 1982. After the movie completed filming, producers donated it to the city of Philadelphia, where the Rocky movies were set. In a nod to the first Rocky movie’s iconic training montage scene in which Rocky runs up the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum, that’s where the statue was ultimately left.

The Bronze Fonz

Happy Days took place in Milwaukee, making it the home of the coolest person in TV history, Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli (Henry Winkler). Crafted by sculptor Gerald P. Sawyer, Fonzie is depicted in his familiar leather jacket and jeans, and giving a thumbs up, the statue was unveiled in 2008 by the tourism group Visit Milwaukee at a cost of $85,000. Most of the surviving cast was present at the dedication, including Winkler, Anson Williams (Potsie), and Don Most (Ralph Malph).

Marge Gunderson

Police chief Marge Gunderson solved one of the most grizzly murders in Minnesota history, finding the hitman hired by a local man to kill his wife killing an accomplice by feeding him into a wood chipper. And she was eight months pregnant at the time. Gunderson was honored with a statue in Fargo, North Dakota. Why Fargo? Because all of this happened in the 1996 film Fargo.

Mary Richards

In the final, freeze-framed shot of the opening credits of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Moore, in character as TV news producer Mary Richards, throws her hat up in the air because “she’s gonna make it after all.” As a promotional stunt in 2002, the TV Land network paid for the creation of a bronze statue of Richards/Moore in that exact pose…in the exact spot where the scene was filmed. Find it outside of Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis.