How Stephen King watching a train hit a kid led to Kiefer Sutherland making his videogame horse crap on command: A PC Gamer Causality Chain™

Causality Chain is a series at PC Gamer exploring the unlikely links between history, culture, and videogames.

Humanity has witnessed countless tragedies—but occasionally, through the alchemy of passing time, moments of singular woe can serve as a foundation for future wonders. Depending, in this case, on how broad your definition of wonder is.

Today, we once again chart the curious contours of cause and effect, tracing how a haunting moment in an American horrormeister's early years can ultimately lead to an internationally renowned actor participating in an unconventional form of simulated equine combat.

Join us, as we tip the dominoes once again:

Stephen King witnessing a childhood tragedy 🔗 Kiefer Sutherland's combat horseshit command

A tragic early chapter

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1982: Viking Press publishes Different Seasons2, a Stephen King collection consisting of four novellas. In the third story, The Body, narrator Gordon Lachance—a fiction author—recalls the conflict he and his childhood friends once entered with a gang of greasers over the discovery of the dead body of a neighborhood boy who'd been hit by a train.

Any resemblance to real events is purely coincidental, I'm sure.

Adaptation

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April 18, 1987: Stand by Me is released in theaters in Japan, where it goes on to become a beloved classic. It's referenced in Mother (renamed Earthbound Beginnings in the US) and the Gen 1 Pokémon games4. Stand By Me receives VHS editions intended to help viewers learn English5. It will still be rebroadcast on Japanese TV to sate viewer demand6 almost 40 years after release.

Every year it draws Japanese tourists7 on a pilgrimage to the Oregon town where it was filmed.

Tactical espionage action, of a sort

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2005: Kiefer Sutherland appears as Jack Bauer in a series of 24-themed Japanese commercials for CalorieMate energy products9. Aided by a massive marketing campaign for the 2003 Japanese release VHS and DVD releases of the show's first season, 24 quickly became a huge phenomenon in Japan10—particularly among binge-watching rental store patrons, who contribute to an initial word-of-mouth reputation for being in such high demand it's impossible to find.

24 even sees a Japanese remake in 202011, though it only achieves a middling reception. Sutherland, meanwhile, gains lasting recognition in Japan: At a 2012 press conference12 in Tokyo, Sutherland says "I am where I am today thanks to everyone in Japan."

Snake eater