Real people sometimes adopt fictional symbols inspired by themselves.

Evidence

But there are also cases in which the source of inspiration and the ultimate consumer are identical and reinforce each other. Certain fictional symbols are inspired by real characters who nonetheless do not embody them in reality. These symbols then become attractive to the individuals who inspired them, who subsequently model their own real image on the fiction they engendered. Mafiosi never viewed the prickly pear as anything other than a prickly pear. But now that that ingenious photographer has used it as a symbol of their murders, what would you think if you found this arboreal specimen in your mail box while on business in Palermo? — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 346

Categorization

• STORYSTEM: A feedback loop where fiction shapes its own real referents suggests a story device: a persona invented for an image/role who then becomes that persona. Strong narrative engine.
• QUESTION: This self-referential loop of symbol adoption could generalize — do other enforcement regimes (police, private security) absorb media-created imagery in the same closed loop?
• XREF: connects to: An American Family made ordinary people fleetingly famous just for being themselves — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 842; Media-created reputations attract members who join a fictional version of a movement — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 74