"99.99999999999% will not be able to answer any of these questions."
Yeah, but those are irrelevant questions, because the answers would be three different people. When the answer to all three questions is the same person, plus the other things, such as being a college football star, mooning US President Lyndon B. Johnson on live national TV, running across the entire country several times in a row, appearing on a national TV talk show (The Dick Cavett Show) alongside John Lennon and inspiring the lyrics for one of his most famous songs ("Imagine") on that very show.
His ping pong victories over the commies alone would have put his fame on the level of Bobby Fischer. Neither ping pong nor chess tend to produce many celebrities on their own; it was the circumstances that made Fischer a household name; i.e., he was a Cold War icon. Him defeating the commies at what had become "their own game," was seen as a symbolic victory for the whole country.
On top of all of that, he was a major underdog due to his mental disability. People love a good underdog story; the media would have had a field day with him, especially during the few years when he was constantly a current event due to his enigmatic runs across the country. There would have been countless human-interest stories done on him, from local newspapers and newscasts to national magazines and TV shows like "Time" and "60 Minutes."
"Nothing Forrest did would make him a household name."
Of course he would have been a household name. Even people who didn't recognize his face would have recognized the name. When he introduced himself they would have said something like, "Forrest Gump? The Forrest Gump?"
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