Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
Dr. Gregory House, of the TV show House, is actually based on Sherlock Holmes. Like Holmes, Dr. House uses drugs, is seriously antisocial, and can solve seemingly impossible mysteries. He even has a best friend, Wilson, who is a bit like Watson, and lives in apartment 221b, which is a shout out to Holmes's own Baker Street digs. (Source)
Conan Doyle went about a decade without publishing any Holmes stories, but Sherlock Holmes himself was only off playing dead for about three years. Sherlock Holmes fans and critics call this period the "Great Hiatus" and there is tons of fan speculation as to what Holmes was doing during those three years. (Source)
The TV show Sanctuary actually had a character who was the "real" Sherlock Holmes, a Dr. James Watson. There's been lots of speculation over the years as to whether or not Holmes was real, or was based on a real person. One of the more popular theories is that Conan Doyle was actually publishing the exploits of a real super crime solver named James Watson. (Source 1 and Source 2)
Gil Grissom on CSI is another fictional TV sleuth who owes a lot to Sherlock Holmes. CSI even devoted an entire episode, entitled "Who Shot Sherlock?", to a Sherlock Holmes-type of case where a murder took place at a Sherlock Holmes reenactment game. (Source)
There's been some criticism written about how book Watson is different from movie Watson. In most Sherlock Holmes movies, Watson becomes the comic relief and is a sort of bumbling moron. The Watson in the books isn't all that ridiculous and he definitely isn't clumsy. (Source: "Introduction" by Loren Estelman, Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Volume I. Bantam Classics: New York, 2003)
The fact that Sherlock Holmes used to use cocaine probably raises a few eyebrows, but back in the 1890s cocaine wasn't considered all that dangerous or even addictive. It had only recently been discovered and lots of people considered it good for medicinal purposes. (Source and "Introduction" by Loren Estelman, Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Volume I. Bantam Classics: New York, 2003)