You get home from a long, grueling day at work, desperate to just collapse in front of the TV and let your eyes gratefully glaze over.

But these days, it's hard to find any show that doesn't drag you right back to reality: From "The Office" to "Lost" to "The Simpsons," there are parallels to real-life companies everywhere you look. The Simpsons' Kwik-E-Mart inevitably makes you wish you had stopped at your local 7-Eleven for a Slurpee on the way home, while the office drones of Dunder Mifflin remind you that you forgot to order more paper for the office printers before you left work.

And going to the movies is just as bad: Whether it's "Iron Man" or "Wall-E," there's no way to kick back and zone out without seeing parallels to some of the best-known -- and most controversial -- real-world corporations.

Minyanville presents the 10 most startling examples of art imitating corporate life.

Continued: "Lost"

Underpinning a robotic romance in the Pixar film "Wall-E" is a bleak depiction of Earth ruined by mass consumerism and unchecked monopolies. At the center of the futuristic wasteland is a worldwide mega-corporation called Buy n Large -- a big-box conglomerate that eventually acquired all its competitors as well as national governments.

Buy n Large can be seen as an amalgamation of many brands, but standing above all others is its real-world counterpart, Wal-Mart. The comparison is not far off: The largest private-sector employer in the U.S., Wal-Mart operates more than 7,800 locations worldwide and reported $401 billion in revenue last year. More than 2 million people report to work there.

But Buy n Large and Wal-Mart share more than their massive size and unending reach: The Pixar-imagined superstore gobbled up gas companies; Wal-Mart operates gas pumps at hundreds of stores. Buy n Large acquired banks; Wal-Mart offers banking services such as money transfers and check cashing.

For more on how the movie's mega-company resembles the big-box retailer so many Americans love to hate, click here.

Continued: "Iron Man"

From its line of advanced aircraft to its corporate logo, Stark Industries of "Iron Man" fame is a spitting image of Lockheed Martin, the aerospace and defense behemoth that brings in more than $40 billion annually from Department of Defense contracts.

More specifically, Stark Industries is a fairly obvious wink at Lockheed's Skunk Works division -- a top-secret department that's been responsible for building some of the military's most advanced aircraft, such as the U-2 and F-22.

In older editions of the Marvel comic "Iron Man," Stark, like Skunk Works, sold weapons that would help the government against a Cold War communist threat. In today's films, the company has been updated to sell high-tech gadgets that help fend off terrorism. In both cases, the principle is the same: Stark Industries, just like Lockheed Martin, is at the epicenter of the grand military-industrial complex.

Former company President Tony Stark even bears a strong resemblance to Howard Hughes, the American Hollywood mogul and aerospace pioneer who worked with Lockheed in engineering military craft.

Learn more about Tony Stark's resemblance to Howard Hughes here.

Continued: What do you think?