My conspiracy theory is that "24" was funded by the CIA (etc.) to build public support for measures like the Patriot Act. "24" debuted 11 days after the Patriot Act became law, so they were being worked on at the same time.

Don't forget the X-Files spinoff The Lone Gunmen. During its pilot episode, first airing March 4th, 2001, members of the U.S. government remotely hijack an airliner and try to crash it into the World Trade Center, blaming anti-American terrorist groups in order to start a new global war on terrorism for the profit of defense industry contractors.

Yeah; how many times in 24 hours can one vigilante commit acts of thinly-narratively-justified but actually-illegal torture without audiences clueing in?

MIC influence is very likely, but 24 was written before 9/11.

The neoconservative wing of the Republican Party had a hardon for war before the attack. What they couldn’t agree on was where… an invasion of Colombia under pretext of drugs, or something in the Middle East after the second intifada.

Once the planes hit, they could all agree where. South America was forgotten for a while.

Any direct connection to 24 would likely be tenuous, if only because (a) MIC propaganda is all over Hollywood even in peacetime, and (b) dark (i.e., on-camera physical interrogation) political thriller was already a high-selling genre in 2001.

Same with Homeland. How many times do you see Carrie stymied by the law and cheer when she eventually breaks it?

Is that even a conspiracy? It's well documented how closely the military works with Hollywood -- of course government apparatuses are interested in funding media that aligns with their goals.

I was going to say the same about James Bond, but it turns out they literally boast about helping in its production on their website, so it's not really a conspiracy theory https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/the-cia-and-pop-culture/

You’re missing something else that happened right before 24 debuted on November 6, 2001.

It doesn’t even need to be secret or underhanded. The government can simply foster the media that drives their strategic goals. Same kind of idea as stochastic terror.

I don't know if that is a conspiracy theory; it probably is a bit unlikely to have a direct connection to the CIA. But what is definitely not a conspiracy theory is that the USA uses taxpayer's money to fund propaganda, e. g. a pro-war image. There are numerous examples for this, also for directors who refused to accept such deals since that heavily ruined movies. The movies with bribes from the US military are often incredibly dumb and simplistic. Propaganda often works in such a way that it dumbs down everything. Then again, movie quality also declined a LOT in the last some 20 years or even 30 years now. With AI movies upcoming, the slop spam section has finally won. People are not going to pay money for awful AI slop.

Except people love torture anyway. Even people who say they're opposed to torture usually do so in terms of "it's bad to torture people, but like, it would totally work". It is a ludicrously common sentiment.

The actual conspiracy was the CIA told the Zero Dark Thirty producers that the Intel to find bin Laden came from torturing a detainee, which was a straight up lie (namely: under standard interrogation he provided the intelligence they needed...then they waterboarded him over 100 more times which provided absolutely nothing).

Why do you need the detour through the CIA? Our de jure Constitutional government is merely part of a much larger de facto government formed by large corporations and the billionaire (oligarch) class. The same group of people who funded the lobbyists that had the "Patriot" Act ready and waiting on September 10th also funded "24", the politicians and think tanks behind the Iraq War, and so on. The main difference is that production of "24" was a direct bona fide business expense for tax purposes.