The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been a staple of American popular culture since its christening in 1935. That year also marked the beginning of the popular "G-Man" phenomenon that helped establish the Bureau's image, beginning with the aptly titled James Cagney movie, G Men. Although the detective novel and other police-related entertainment had long enthralled audiences, the FBI itself can take some of the credit for its media prominence. J. Edgar Hoover, the Bureau's "patriarch", took an active interest to ensure that it was not only well represented in the media, but also that the FBI was depicted in a heroic, positive light and that the message, "crime doesn't pay", was blatantly conveyed to audiences. The context, naturally, has changed profoundly since the 1930s "war on crime", and especially so since Hoover's death in 1972.;

The FBI's role Any author, motion picture producer, or television script writer may consult with the FBI Office of Public Affairs about closed cases or their operations, services, or history. However, there is no requirement for the FBI to cooperate, and it does not edit or approve/disapprove fictional works. The Office of Public Affairs may, on a project-by-project basis, provide assistance to help ensure accuracy. Some filmmakers offer reasonably accurate presentations of the FBI's responsibilities, investigations, and procedures in their story lines, while others present their own interpretations or introduce fictional events, persons, or places for dramatic effect.

There have been many fiction and non-fiction portrayals of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, from which the following is only a small sample.

Books In 1936, British crime writer Peter Cheyney introduced G Man Lemmy Caution in his novel, This Man Is Dangerous. Another novel featuring Caution is Can Ladies Kill? (1938). In 1956 the first pulp fiction novel about Jerry Cotton was published in Germany. Since then more than 2500 novels have been published and reached altogether a circulation of more than 850 million. The popular FBI agent was also the hero of nine German feature films, most of them starring the American actor George Nader. In many of Tom Clancy's books the FBI plays a major role. The 1963 book Undercover Cat, later adapted into the film That Darn Cat in 1965 and 1997, followed Agent Zeke Kelso as he teams up with teenage sisters Patti and Ingrid Randall and their cat, D.C., to solve the case of kidnapped bank teller Helen Jenkins. In 1986, Margaret Truman (daughter of former President Truman) wrote a novel titled Murder at the FBI, dealing with the murder of two FBI agents. Many characters in Thomas Harris' novels are Special Agents of the FBI, including protagonists Will Graham and Clarice Starling. Some of the serial killers in the novels, like Francis Dolarhyde and Jame Gumb, were loosely based on real serial killers pursued by the FBI, such as Ted Bundy. In Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's Pendergast novels, the featured character Aloysius Pendergast is a Special Agent of the FBI. Gosho Aoyama's Detective Conan manga and anime has FBI agents involved in solving cases. A fictional division of the FBI, appears in SCP Foundation. As the Unusual Incidents Unit (UIU), a division created by the FBI and U.S Government during the cold war to contain and capture supernatural objects, locations and humanoids. Often appears as useless and a joke with the nicknames "Men In Black" and "UIUseless" in the SCP Foundation due to a decrease to funding after the Cold War and lack of suitable personnel. Michael Connelly's The Poet features the FBI's Behavior Sciences Unit hunting for the titular serial killer, with a focus on Special Agent Rachel Walling. Blood Work also features retired FBI profiler Terry McCaleb. Several other novels feature FBI agents and their interactions with main character LAPD detective Harry Bosch, often getting in his way, sometimes more justified than others. In the Alex Cross novels, the title character was in the FBI for six of the 20 novels. Paul Spike's secret history novel The Night Letter is set in 1940, depicting a three-cornered struggle between President Franklin D. Roosevelt, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and agents of Nazi Germany, all seeking to gain possession of a photo showing the President in a compromising position with his secretary, Missy LeHand. Eventually the Nazis are defeated but Hoover gets the photo, putting him in a position to blackmail the President - whereupon Roosevelt engages in counter-blackmail, obtaining a photo showing Hoover in a compromising position with a handsome young FBI agent... Several science fiction works depicted a dystopian United States, set in a future time or an Alternative History timeline, in which the FBI develops into a full-fledged secret police acting without any legal restraint: They Shall Have Stars, the first volume in James Blish's Cities in Flight series, is set in a 2013 in which the Soviet Union still exists and the Cold War is still ongoing; Western civil liberties have been eroded more and more, until society eventually resembles the Soviet model. The book's main villain is Francis X. MacHinery, hereditary Director of the FBI. A large part of The Coming of the Quantum Cats by Frederik Pohl is set in an Alternative History in which a dictatorial US is dominated by Fundamentalist Christians and the FBI is a greatly feared secret police. The book's male protagonist is arrested and mistreated by an FBI agent who is beautiful but harsh and cruel - though at the end she is reformed, leaves the FBI and marries him. In one of the Alternative History timelines depicted in Richard C. Meredith's No Brother, No Friend, the FBI and its "quasi-official auxiliary, the KKK" are involved in establishing large-scale "Detention Centers" for Black Americans. In Eric Norden's The Ultimate Solution, depicting an Alternative History in which Nazi Germany won The Second World War and the US is ruled by the Nazis, the FBI is taken over by the Gestapo and becomes its North American branch. In contradiction to the above, in the 2004 of Poul Anderson's Un-Man, a component of his Psychotechnic League future history, the dictatorial "Americanist Party" takes over the US but finds the FBI recalcitrant and unready to cooperate in hunting down its opponents; therefore, the new regime bypasses the FBI and sets up a new "American Security Service". By the time of the series's next story, "The Sensitive Man", the Americanist regime had fallen and its secret police dismantled, and the FBI resumes its role as a respectable, law abiding agency, with an FBI agent acting as a crucial ally to the story's protagonist.

Films

Warner Brothers' G Men (1935) was a deliberate attempt to rehabilitate crime movies by transforming the "gangster movie", wherein criminal protagonists were shown as leading exciting, affluent lives and living above the law, into stories where the heroic G-Man, or FBI agent, triumphs against the nefarious criminal underworld. The title of the movie is from a term allegedly coined by Machine Gun Kelly and appropriated by J. Edgar Hoover as a name for his federal agents that would strike fear in the hearts of criminals. According to the FBI's own history, Machine Gun Kelly "was caught without a machine gun in his hands and cringed before the federal agents and pleaded, 'Don't shoot, G-Men! Don't shoot, G-Men!'" James Cagney was recruited for the lead role as the well educated and incorruptible Brick Davis. G Men was essentially intended as a corrective to the film that catapulted Cagney to fame, The Public Enemy (1931). Just as he adopted G-Man as a badge of honor for his men, J. Edgar Hoover also attempted to re-invent the "Public Enemy" label by referring to the most notorious criminals as "public rat number one". The G-Men concept was extended in the 1940s to include the Junior G-Men film serials. The Dead End Kids, a group of wisecracking New York City street toughs who appeared in numerous films, were transformed into amateur detectives, helping the FBI solve cases. Walk East on Beacon! (1952), produced by Columbia Pictures and starring George Murphy, portrays the activities of the Bureau in their hunt for Communist spies in Boston. Released during the height of 1950s anti-Communist hysteria in the United States, the film's pedantic narrative, its presentation in the style of a documentary, and its basis in a story written by J. Edgar Hoover himself and published in Reader's Digest, indicates it is blatant propaganda. Samuel Fuller's Pickup on South Street (1953) aroused the ire of J. Edgar Hoover, who met with Fuller and Darryl F. Zanuck of 20th Century Fox to express his disapproval of many aspects of the film. Zanuck refused to make the changes Hoover demanded, and consequently, the advertising for the film had to remove all references to the F.B.I. The FBI Story (1959), produced by Warner Bros. and director Mervyn LeRoy, relates the history of the FBI from the point of view of a fictitious character, Chip Hardesty (played by James Stewart). FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover served as consultant on this film, which forced director LeRoy to reshoot several scenes that did not meet with the FBI's approval. Producer Robert Evans claimed that during production of The President's Analyst (1967), he was visited by FBI Special Agents who told him that due to its unflattering depiction of the FBI, the Bureau wanted the film altered or canceled. However, Evans refused either to stop or to make changes to The President's Analyst. Only when pressure came from his studio did he change the FBI to the FBR and CIA to CEA by redubbing the voice track. Evans believed his telephone was monitored by the Bureau from then on. Disney's That Darn Cat, based on the 1963 book Undercover Cat, follows Agent Zeke Kelso as he teams up with teenager Patti Randall and her titular pet cat, D.C., to solve a kidnapping case. The 1965 film had Kelso portrayed by Dean Jones, Patti by Hayley Mills, and Grayson Hall portraying the victim, a bank teller kidnapped by two robbers (Frank Gorshin and Neville Brand). The 1997 remake had Kelso portrayed by Doug E. Doug, Patti by Christina Ricci, and Rebecca Koon portraying the victim, the housekeeper of a wealthy couple (Dean Jones and Dyan Cannon), whom the kidnappers (Rebecca Schull and Peter Boyle) mistook for the wife in an effort to obtain a ransom. FEDS (1988), starring Rebecca De Mornay alongside Mary Gross, although a comedy, provides insight into how women train at the FBI Academy. This movie had a limited release and could only be found on VHS as of August 2009. Mississippi Burning (1988) is a fictionalized account of the investigation into an actual civil rights murder case, the murders of three civil rights workers in the state of Mississippi in 1964. The Silence of the Lambs (1991), starring Jodie Foster as FBI Trainee Clarice Starling in pursuit of serial killer Buffalo Bill, aided by the cannibalistic serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter (played by Anthony Hopkins), is a movie sequel to Manhunter (1986), the first film adaptation of the 1981 Red Dragon. The 1991 film received five Academy Awards, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor for Hopkins, and Best Actress for Jodie Foster, and spawned another sequel, Hannibal (2001), and a remake of Red Dragon (2002) starring Edward Norton and Harvey Keitel. Point Break (1991) is the story of an undercover FBI agent Johnny Utah, who is sanctioned by the FBI to learn surfing in order to infiltrate a gang of thieves. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), a prequel/sequel to the television series Twin Peaks, includes the character Special Agent Dale Cooper as well as several other FBI agents, but to a more limited degree than in the television series.