Walter Mitty

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Walter Mitty is a fictional character in James Thurber's short story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, published in 1941. Mitty is a meek, mild man with a vivid fantasy life: in a few dozen paragraphs he imagines himself a wartime pilot, an emergency-room surgeon, and a devil-may-care killer. He has become such a standard for the role that his name appears in several dictionaries.<ref>Walter Mitty. dictionary.com. Retrieved on 2006-06-15.</ref>

[edit] Use of the term as an insult

In 1977, Andrew Roth entitled his biography of former British prime minister Harold Wilson Sir Harold Wilson: the Yorkshire Walter Mitty. Wilson successfully sued Roth for libel arising out of a section of the book referring to Wilson's wife.

In his 1992 biography of Henry Kissinger, Walter Isaacson records that on 6 October, during the October War, Kissinger urged President Richard Nixon's assistant, General Alexander Haig to keep Nixon in Florida in order to avoid "any hysterical moves" and to "keep any Walter Mitty tendencies under control."<ref>"The October War and U.S. Policy", October 7, 2003 National Security Archives </ref>

In 2003, Tom Kelly, a spokesman for British prime minister Tony Blair, publicly apologised for referring to the late David Kelly as "a Walter Mitty character" during a private discussion with a journalist.

In his book on selection for the Special Air Service, Andy McNab wrote that people who give away the fact that they want to be in the SAS for reasons of personal vanity are labeled as 'Walter Mittys' and quietly sent home.

Also, there is a term in military slang, "Walt", which is an abbreviation of Walter Mitty, which refers to someone who has aspirations to become a soldier, but none of the necessary personal qualities. This bit of slang can also refer to someone who poses as an (ex-) soldier but who isn't a soldier (serving or former) or who poses as something he isn't or wasn't. (ie. a logistics soldier who poses as a SAS trooper).

[edit] Miscellaneous

Mitty was not the first fictional character to escape from intolerable reality into fantasies. British crime-fiction writer Anthony Berkeley Cox included a similar character in his 1931 book Malice Aforethought, which he wrote under the pen name Francis Iles.
The character served as the model for the Waldo Kitty character of the mid-70s (Filmation).
Walter Mitty is referenced in the lyrics to the song Sex and Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll by Ian Dury, In The City by Madness, Dreams by The Descendents, All Dressed Up For San Francisco by The Philosopher Kings, and in Sammy Davis City written by Joe Strummer and Brian Setzer.
The Peanuts character Snoopy is a type of Walter Mitty, as is Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes.
On the indian television Mungerilal is a character that is same as Walter Mitty. Day-dreams are often referred to as "Mungerilal's ke haseen sapne" in hindi which means "Mungerilal's beautiful day-dreams"