When Family Guy s21e11 (2023) parodies Sleepless in Seattle (1993), they make a point of mocking the fact that a kid left his backpack behind at the Empire State building, as if an unattended bag in a public area is an unthinkable idea.
The show is usually pretty self-aware when it comes to jokes about terrorism and post-911 hysteria, so it was surprising to see this one played straight.
It reminded me of the meme that went around in 2007 - "If it isn't an American flag, it's probably a bomb".
I worked at Disneyland in September 2001 and we received instructions at some point warning us the FBI considered us to be the 4th most likely location in the United States to be targeted and telling us to report unattended bags as possible bombs.
Left me wondering do they have any idea how many people every day set down a bag and forget about it at Disneyland? If we really cordoned and reported all of these, the Anaheim PD and local FBI would never again do anything else.