History Main / FamousFamousFictional

** An episode of ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', "The Muse", an alien named Onaya lists artists she's "influenced" over the centuries such as Catullus, JohnKeats, and Phineas Tarbolde. This is also a ContinuityNod since Tarbolde was mentioned in an episode of the original series.

* The BigBad of ''SerialExperimentsLain'' lectures the eponymous character on the history of computers, elaborating on [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush Vannevar Bush]] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Lilly John C. Lilly]], and, since ''Lain'' is set in an AlternateUniverse of some kind, concludes with Masami Eiri, the creator of the Most-Definitely-Not-the-Internet and an evil {{Expy}} of Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, [[spoiler: [[AndThatLittleGirlWasMe who is, in fact, the BigBad himself]].]]

* ''{{Diaspora}}'' by GregEgan is a story of exploration and discovery by our virtualised descendants. It has physicists front and centre. The real-world Planck and Wheeler are joined in 2055 by Renata Kozuch. Wheeler suggested the vacuum is made out of a maze of microscopic quantum wormholes. Kozuch takes this idea and tranforms it into the foundation of particles physics: all ''particles'' are wormhole mouths. This is a rare example where the future member of the trio explicitly builds on the work of the real-world pair.

* * This is #5 of ''Website/{{Cracked}}'''s [[http://www.cracked.com/article_17392_6-sci-fi-movie-conventions-that-need-to-die.html 6 Sci-Fi Movie Conventions (That Need to Die)]], the example being "Newton, Einstein, [[Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan Sulak]]".

** In ''{{Voyager}}'', the Doctor lists some of the greatest performers of ''LaBoheme''. The first two pairs are real people, the other is a pair of Vulcans.

* In DavidBrin's ''{{Uplift}}'' saga, it is mentioned that, as any animal may possibly become intelligent at some point in the future, making species extinct is a serious crime in galaxy, akin to genocide. Humanity managed to clear up their biology and history textbooks to prevent aliens from knowing what they did to lamantines, dodos and ''orang-outangs''.

!!Examples

* ''BillAndTedsBogusJourney'' opens with Rufus bringing important historical figures to the future as guest lecturers for his class, including historical figures from TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture.

* In DavidBrin's ''{{Uplift}}'' saga, it is mentioned that, as any animal may possibly become intelligent at some point in the future, making species extinct is a serious crime in galaxy, akin to genocide. Humanity managed to clear up their biology and history textbooks to prevent aliens from knowing what they did to lamantines, dodos and ''orang-outangs''.
* ''ThisPerfectDay'' by Ira Levin has a nursery rhyme paying tribute to the four people who are considered the spiritual forefathers of the society in which the book is set. The pattern of the rhyme requires four names, so there's two past people and two future people:
-->Christ, Marx, Wood and Wei
-->led us to this perfect day...
* Lampshaded in ''TheLastStarfighter'', when Centauri brings up three people, but Alex doesn't recognize the last one.
-->'''Centauri:''' Alex! Alex! You're walking away from history! History, Alex! Did Chris Columbus stay home? Nooooo. What if the Wright Brothers thought that only birds should fly? And did Galoka think that the Ulus were too ugly to save?
-->'''Alex:''' Who's Galoka?
-->'''Centauri:''' Never mind.
* ''{{Diaspora}}'' by GregEgan is a story of exploration and discovery by our virtualised descendants. It has physicists front and centre. The real-world Planck and Wheeler are joined in 2055 by Renata Kozuch. Wheeler suggested the vacuum is made out of a maze of microscopic quantum wormholes. Kozuch takes this idea and tranforms it into the foundation of particles physics: all ''particles'' are wormhole mouths. This is a rare example where the future member of the trio explicitly builds on the work of the real-world pair.
* In the ''{{Babylon 5}}'' episode "Infection", it's mentioned that Dr Franklin aspires to become one of the great names of medicine, alongside Fleming, Salk, Jenner, and Takahashi.
** In the third-season episode "And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place":
--->'''Sheridan''': When we've had wars back home sometimes one side would leave a few areas of enemy territory undamaged. That way you'd get maximum results when you finally hit them with something big. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, San Diego...
** Although the nuclear terrorist attack on San Diego had been mentioned several times and the abandoned city seen once, so it was simply keeping in step with that.
* In the FilmOfTheBook ''ASoundOfThunder'', Ben Kingsley's character is [[LargeHam hamming up]] a speech for the Time Safari tourists, with the last name a ShoutOut to ''CapricornOne''.
-->'''Charles Hatton:''' Today you stood shoulder to shoulder with Columbus discovering America. Armstrong stepping on the moon, Brubaker landing on Mars.
* Used a few times in works by ArthurCClarke:
** ''RendezvousWithRama'', "Rama needed the grandeur of Bach or Beethoven or Sibelius or Tuan Sun, not the trivia of popular entertainment."
** ''TheFountainsOfParadise'': "Having first made his name with a new cosmological theory that had survived almost ten years before being refuted, Goldberg had been widely acclaimed as another Einstein or N'goya."
* In the third ''WarAgainstTheChtorr'' book by David Gerrold, "The screams got louder, sounding like Auschwitz, Hiroshima or Show Low"
** Although, to be honest, the Show Low incident was discussed in detail in book one.
* There's a bit in a ''Series/RedDwarf'' novel, where Lister realised he's returned to Earth when he sees Mount Rushmore. The faces are Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, Lincoln, and [[RushmoreRefacement "possibly America's greatest President, Elaine Salinger".]]
* An example that may not even be found anymore, but when the [[Film.StarshipTroopers Starship Troopers]] film was released, the accompanying website which contained a lot of character bios and historical information listed the Mobile Infantry alongside historically [[ElitesAreMoreGlamorous prestigious military units]] such as TheKnightsTemplar, [[PolesWithPoleaxes the Winged Hussars]] [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and the Navy Seals]].
* This is #5 of ''Website/{{Cracked}}'''s [[http://www.cracked.com/article_17392_6-sci-fi-movie-conventions-that-need-to-die.html 6 Sci-Fi Movie Conventions (That Need to Die)]], the example being "Newton, Einstein, [[Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan Sulak]]".

The most common variant is to list famous scientists, [[IsaacNewton Newton]], [[AlbertEinstein Einstein]], Kepler, [[DichterAndDenker Heisenberg]], [[LeonardoDaVinci Da Vinci]] being quite popular, followed, finally, by a scientist from the future. Occasionally their inventions are also listed: Newton's mechanics, Einstein's relativity, [[StarTrek Zefram Cochrane]]'s warp drive.

* From the ''StarTrek'' universe:
** ''StarTrekII'' was formerly the TropeNamer.

** ''StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode "Whom Gods Destroy".

** An inversion on ''StarTrek'' occurs in the original series episode "The Savage Curtain," where a battle between good and evil has "good" represented by Vulcan sage Surak, Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and AbrahamLincoln. Evil, in turn, is represented by future warlord Colonel Green, MadScientist Zora, the Klingon warrior Kahless, and GenghisKhan.
** The novels get in on this too. From the StarTrekDeepSpaceNineRelaunch: "He had learned all he could about Earth's eminent explorers -- Leif Eriksson, Ferdinand Magellan, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, Neil Armstrong, [[StarTrekEnterprise Jonathan Archer]]..."

** In one episode of [[StarTrekTheNextGeneration Next Generation]], Picard lists (only) two infamous men in history: AdolfHitler and [[StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan Khan Singh]].
** In another [[StarTrekTheNextGeneration TNG]] episode Picard mentions [[WorldWarII Pearl Harbor]] and [[NoodleIncident Station Salem One]] as stages for bloody preambles to war.
** An episode of StarTrekDeepSpaceNine, "The Muse", an alien named Onaya lists artists she's "influenced" over the centuries such as Catullus, JohnKeats, and Phineas Tarbolde. This is also a ContinuityNod since Tarbolde was mentioned in an episode of the original series.
** Also from StarTrekDeepSpaceNine, in "If Wishes Were Horses", Benjamin and Jake Sisko play holographic baseball with all the greats, like Tris Speaker, Ted Williams, and Buck Bokai.
** In the StarTrekTheOriginalSeries episode "Court Martial", SimpleCountryLawyer Samuel Cogley invokes Literature/TheBible, the Codes of Hammarubi and [[ByzantineEmpire Justinian]], the MagnaCarta, the U.S. {{Constitution}}, the Fundamental Declarations of the Martian Colonies, and the Statutes of Alpha III.

* There's a bit in a ''RedDwarf'' novel, where Lister realised he's returned to Earth when he sees Mount Rushmore. The faces are Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, Lincoln, and [[RushmoreRefacement "possibly America's greatest President, Elaine Salinger".]]

* This is #5 of ''WebOriginal/{{Cracked}}'''s [[http://www.cracked.com/article_17392_6-sci-fi-movie-conventions-that-need-to-die.html 6 Sci-Fi Movie Conventions (That Need to Die)]], the example being "Newton, Einstein, [[Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan Sulak]]".

* ''Diaspora'' by GregEgan is a story of exploration and discovery by our virtualised descendants. It has physicists front and centre. The real-world Planck and Wheeler are joined in 2055 by Renata Kozuch. Wheeler suggested the vacuum is made out of a maze of microscopic quantum wormholes. Kozuch takes this idea and tranforms it into the foundation of particles physics: all ''particles'' are wormhole mouths. This is a rare example where the future member of the trio explicitly builds on the work of the real-world pair.

* For the most part averted in ''Literature/HonorHarrington''. Every treecat named after a naval commander is named after someone in our history. Which is odd, really -- thousands of years into the future, people remember Chester Nimitz, but they don't remark on the eerie similarities between Haven and Revolutionary France?
** It's possible that they're not named for naval commanders, but for traditional battleship names. They don't remember Chester Nimitz, but they remember recent warships known as the ''Nimitz''.
** It's played straight at least once -- someone is listing off horrible monsters, includes Hitler and a few other familiar modern examples, then jumps into several more names presumably from the future. Interesting in that there are more than one-third future names, which makes sense given that it's been ''two thousand years'' since Hitler or anyone else we would recognize.
*** It's actually kind of a wonder there are any names we know at all... Several future calamities have dwarfed WWII (the "Final War" -~ 3000AD particularly comes to mind). Mind, this is largely because the future population is on the order of a ''trillion''-- with numbers like that it doesn't take all that intense an atrocity to pile up far more bodies than the 2-billion-some-odd humans alive circa 1940 could manage.
* An example that may not even be found anymore, but when the [[Film.StarshipTroopers Starship Troopers]] film was released, the accompanying website which contained a lot of character bios and historical information listed the Mobile Infantry alongside historically [[ElitesAreMoreGlamorous prestigious military units]] such as TheKnightsTemplar, [[PolesWithPoleaxes the Winged Hussars]] [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and the Navy Seals]].

** In the StarTrekTheOriginalSeries episode "Court Martial", SimpleCountryLawyer Samuel Cogley invokes TheBible, the Codes of Hammarubi and [[ByzantineEmpire Justinian]], the MagnaCarta, the U.S. {{Constitution}}, the Fundamental Declarations of the Martian Colonies, and the Statutes of Alpha III.

** The novels get in on this too. From the StarTrekDeepSpaceNineRelaunch: "He had learned all he could about Earth's eminent explorers - Leif Eriksson, Ferdinand Magellan, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, Neil Armstrong, [[StarTrekEnterprise Jonathan Archer]]..."

* For the most part averted in ''Literature/HonorHarrington''. Every treecat named after a naval commander is named after someone in our history. Which is odd, really - thousands of years into the future, people remember Chester Nimitz, but they don't remark on the eerie similarities between Haven and Revolutionary France?
** It's possible that they're not named for naval commanders, but for traditional battleship names. They don't remember Chester Nimitz, but they remember recent warships known as The '' Nimitz''.
** It's played straight at least once--someone is listing off horrible monsters, includes Hitler and a few other familiar modern examples, then jumps into several more names presumably from the future. Interesting in that there are more than one-third future names, which makes sense given that it's been ''two thousand years'' since Hitler or anyone else we would recognize.
*** It's actually kind of a wonder there are any names we know at all... Several future calamities have dwarfed WWII (the "Final War" ~ 3000AD particularly comes to mind). Mind, this is largely because the future population is on the order of a ''trillion''-- with numbers like that it doesn't take all that intense an atrocity to pile up far more bodies than the 2-billion-some-odd humans alive circa 1940 could manage.

** In the StarTrekTheOriginalSeries episode "Court Martial", SimpleCountryLawyer Samuel Cogley invokes the Bible, the Codes of Hammarubi and Justinian, the Magna Carta, the U.S. Constitution, the Fundamental Declarations of the Martian Colonies, and the Statutes of Alpha III.

'''Extremely''' prone to RuleOfThree -- meaning we go far enough to the future to see a new example but not far enough to not remember those we know currently. It is much harder to find an example which doesn't follow a "present, present, future" (or for added symbolism, "past, present, future") scheme. When there is a long list of examples, expect a third of them to be from the future.

** Also from StarTrekDeepSpaceNine, in "If Wishes Were Horses", Benjamin and Jake Sisko play holographic [[baseball]] with all the greats, like Tris Speaker, Ted Williams, and Buck Bokai.

** ''StarTrekII'' gives us the TropeNamer.

* There's a bit in a ''RedDwarf'' novel, where Lister realised he's returned to Earth when he sees Mount Rushmore. The faces are Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, Lincoln, and "possibly America's greatest President, Elaine Salinger".