48 Characters Found in Pop Culture That Are Based on Real People

Most food brands have mascots, and most of those mascots are animals or random, made-up people. We’re used to these beloved mascots not being real, but that’s not always true. Take the chef from the Chef Boyardee can. There is, in fact, a very real person behind the jolly man wearing the chef’s hat on your can of ravioli.

The real Chef Boyardee is Ettore “Hector” Boiardi, who founded the company in 1928 with his brothers. He immigrated to the United States from Italy and enjoyed huge success with the Chef Boyardee food brand. Before Chef Boyardee took off, Hector was a successful chef and even supervised Woodrow Wilson’s wedding reception catering at the ripe old age of seventeen!