History Main / FamousFamousFictional

* ''Manga/HonooNoAlpenRose'': When Martha recalls famous Austrian composers, she names Bach, Lizst and...''Aschenbach''. Aschenbach refers to Leonhardt Aschenbach, who's FamedInStory and said to be the secondcoming of Mozart.

* [[Literature/HarryPotterAndThePhilosophersStone Harry Potter's]] famous wizard cards have figures from mythology (Merlin, Circe), history (Agrippa, Paracelsus), and also characters unique to the Harry-Potter-universe, such as Alberic Grunnion and Hengist of Woodcroft.

The most common variant is to list famous scientists—[[UsefulNotes/IsaacNewton Newton]], [[UsefulNotes/AlbertEinstein Einstein]], Johannes Kepler, [[UsefulNotes/DichterAndDenker Werner Heisenberg]] and [[Creator/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, [[Franchise/StarTrek Zefram Cochrane]]'s warp drive. The most common inversion is one where the person lists off several fictional figures and then tosses in a real-world one--the implication being that the real-world one is just as silly as the fictional one.

[[folder:Film — Animated]]

--> '''Ms. Ribble''': ''Memorize these elements: Oxygen, beryllium, [[ParodicTableOfTheElements boringorium]],...''
* [[InvertedTrope Inverted]] in ''WesternAnimation/{{Megamind}}'', where Hal tells his captive "There is no Easter Bunny, there is no tooth fairy, and there is no Queen of England."

[[folder:Film — Live-Action]]

* Creator/JohnBarnes' ''Thousand Cultures'' novels do this ALL the time. "For almost everyone, the Slaughter was like Rome Falling, the Crusades, or the genocide of the Americans — unfortunate, vaguely remembered, nothing to do with the business of living now."

* ''Series/{{Angel}}'': Inverted in Wolfram & Hart's introductory video, which explains it had a hand in the rise of two fictional companies ([[Film/TheAdventuresOfBuckarooBanzaiAcrossThe8thDimension Yoyodyne]] and [[Franchise/{{Alien}} Weyland Yutani]]) and one real one (News Corp).

** In the episode "Infection", it's mentioned that Dr Franklin aspires to become one of the great names of medicine, alongside Fleming, Salk, Jenner, and Takahashi. This may be a subversion, as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michiaki_Takahashi Takahashi]] did develop the first Chicken Pox vaccine, but never achieved great fame for it.
** In the second season episode "Confessions and Lamentations", the Markab plague Drafa is compared by Dr. Franklin to earlier such plagues -- Black Death, AIDS, Chalmers' Syndrome.
** 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 notably, the nuclear terrorist attack on San Diego had been mentioned on the show several times before and the ruins of the abandoned city had been shown on screen in a previous episode. (This was a production in-joke; series creator J. Michael Stracynski disliked San Diego, so he wrote in its destruction as a TakeThat)
** In the fourth season episode "The Exercise of Vital Powers", William Edgars asks Mr. Garibaldi how many people actually ''belonged'' to the Nazi Party, the Communist Party, the Jihad Party. He then almost immediately goes on to list historical examples of when "the people" have handed over power to people they thought could settle scores: the Germans in 1939, the Russians in 1917 and 2013, the Iraqis in 2025, the French in 2112....
** In the first episode of the fifth season, Sheridan is threatened by someone who lists past Presidents -- Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Kyoshi, of the Eastern Bloc.
** In the fifth season episode "A Tragedy of Telepaths", this trope is first used, then stretched WAY out by Garibaldi when he points out we divide up our history by the wars -- the Hundred Years War, the War of 1812, the first three World Wars... the Dilgar War, the War of the Shining Star, the Minbari War, the Shadow War. Of these "future" wars, only the third World War and the War of the Shining Star were not previously described in-series -- the Dilgar War was mentioned first in "Deathwalker", and the last two were actually ''depicted'' in-show.
* ''Series/{{Batwoman|2019}}'' does a "famous, fictional, fictional" variation when Julia Pennyworth tells Kate she tracked a hitman from Jakarta to Metropolis to Gotham.
* The opening narration of the first-ever episode of ''Series/{{Blackadder}}'' does this:
--> History has known many great liars. Copernicus. Goebbels. St Ralph the Liar.
* ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'': In one episode Giles hangs up a banner in the Magic Shop reminding customers that Winter Solstice, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa and "Gurnenthar's Ascendence" are coming up.

--> '''Sheppard''': 1643 is the year Isaac Newton was born; 1879, Einstein; 1968—\\
'''Teyla''': The year Rodney was born.\\
'''Sheppard''': NEVER underestimate the size of that man's ego.

*** In "Threshold" Janeway tells Tom that by being the first man to [[LudicrousSpeed breach the Warp 10 barrier]], he'll be joining the ranks of Orville Wright, Neil Armstrong, and Zefram Cochrane (first human inventor of the warp drive).
*** Inverted 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 UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln. Evil, in turn, is represented by future warlord Colonel Green, MadScientist Zora, the Klingon warrior Kahless, and UsefulNotes/GenghisKhan.

*** Averted when the Doctor is thinking of adopting the name of a famous doctor. He considers [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galen Dr Galen,]] [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk Dr Salk,]] or [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Spock Dr Spock,]] though the last is also a StealthPun regarding the famous Franchise/StarTrek character.
*** In "Space Seed", Lt. [=McGivers=] has several portraits of historic conquerors in her quarters, including UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat, UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte and Khan Noonien Singh.
*** In one episode, [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration Picard]] lists (only) two infamous men in history: UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler and [[Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan Khan Singh]].
*** [[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Benjamin and Jake Sisko]] play holographic baseball with all the greats, like Tris Speaker, Ted Williams, and Buck Bokai, in "If Wishes Were Horses". Bokai's name pops up a few times during the series and it's clear he's one of the most accomplished players in the (now several-hundred-year) history of the sport.
*** [[Series/StarTrekVoyager Captain Janeway]] mentions [[GodzillaThreshold The Omega Particle]] in the same breath as the most dangerous creations of [[UsefulNotes/NuclearWeapons Albert Einstein]] and [[Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan Carol Marcus]].
*** When ''Voyager'' later encounters a memorial to the victims of a massacre, Janeway compares it to "the obelisk at Khitomer[[note]]The Klingon colony that was the site of the peace agreement between the Federation and the Klingon Empire in ''Film/StarTrekVITheUndiscoveredCountry'', and was also attacked by Romulans; the victims included Worf's parents[[/note]]...the fields of Gettysburg".

*** The opening credits sequence for ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' is a visual example, presenting a montage of real historic advancements in human exploration - sailing, flight, undersea, near space - culminating in the fictional invention of next-generation orbital shuttles, warp drive, and the launch of the titular starship.

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

*** Lee Kuan is also mentioned by Spock in an almost identical context in "Patterns of Force":
---->'''Spock''': Earthmen like Ramses, Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, Lee Kuan. Your whole Earth history is made up of men seeking absolute power.
*** In "Charlie X", the title character uses his mind powers to force Spock to recite poetry from Creator/WilliamBlake's ''The Tyger'', Poe's ''Literature/TheRaven'', and what appears to be a 'future' poem.

*** He also refers to great Alpha Quadrant artists: "Verdi, da Vinci, T'Leel of Vulcan..."

*** In the ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode "Court Martial", SimpleCountryLawyer Samuel Cogley invokes Literature/TheBible, the Codes of Hammarubi and [[UsefulNotes/ByzantineEmpire Justinian]], the Magna Carta, the U.S. Constitution, the Fundamental Declarations of the Martian Colonies, and the Statutes of Alpha III.
*** In "The Muse" episode of ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', an alien named Onaya lists artists she's "influenced" over the centuries such as Catullus, Creator/JohnKeats, and Phineas Tarbolde. [[ContinuityNod Tarbolde was identified as an author]] in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" of the original series (but did not receive significant development beyond these mentions).
*** "The Ultimate Computer" shakes up the RuleOfThree by using only one real person: Einstein, Kazanga, and Sitar of Vulcan.
*** In "The Ensigns of Command", when the captain tells Data his violin playing is "quite beautiful," Data responds, "Technically speaking, Sir, it is not ''my'' playing. It is a precise imitation of the techniques of Jascha Heifetz and Trenka Bron-Ken."
* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985'': In "The Convict's Piano", the notorious 1920s UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}} gangster Mickey Shaughnessy is compared to Dutch Schultz and UsefulNotes/AlCapone.

* ''Anime/HonooNoAlpenRose'': When Martha recalls famous Austrian composers, she names Bach, Lizst and...''Aschenbach''. Aschenbach refers to Leonhardt Aschenbach, who's FamedInStory and said to be the secondcoming of Mozart.

*** When ''Voyager'' later encounters a memorial to the victims of a massacre, Janeway compares it to "the obelisk at Khitomer[[note]]a Klingon colony that was attacked by Romulans; the victims included Worf's parents[[/note]]...the fields of Gettysburg".

*** In an early episode of Series/StarTrekDiscovery, Lorca asks Stamets if he wants to be remembered like UsefulNotes/TheWrightBrothers, UsefulNotes/ElonMusk, Zefram Cochrane. [[note]]As Musk's star has fallen, it's become HilariousInHindsight to note that [[spoiler:this Lorca is from the [[EvilCounterpart Evil]] MirrorUniverse.]][[/note]]

A subtrope of CrypticBackgroundReference. Sometimes overlaps with BreadEggsMilkSquick. A form of TheTriple.

*** In an early episode of Series/StarTrekDiscovery, Lorca asks Stamets if he wants to be remembered like UsefulNotes/TheWrightBrothers, UsefulNotes/ElonMusk, Zefram Cochrane. [[note]]As Musk's star has fallen, it's become HilariousInHindsight to note that [[spoiler:this Lorca is from the [[EvilCounterpart Evil]] AlternateUniverse.]][[/note]]

*** In an early episode of Series/StarTrekDiscovery, Lorca asks Stamets if he wants to be remembered like UsefulNotes/TheWrightBrothers, UsefulNotes/ElonMusk, Zefram Cochrane.