The misconception of lemming "mass suicide" is long-standing and has been popularized by a number of factors. In 1955, a cartoon illustrator drew an adventure comic with the title "The Lemming with the Locket". This comic, which was inspired by a 1954 American Mercury article, showed massive numbers of lemmings jumping over Norwegian cliffs.

Even more influential was a 1958 film in which staged footage was shown with lemmings jumping into certain death after faked scenes of mass migration. An investigative documentary found that the lemmings used for the film were flown in from Hudson Bay to Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where they did not jump off the cliff, but were in fact launched off the cliff using a turntable.