History Main / FamousFamousFictional

* Creator/HPLovecraft was a master of it, though his are more like "famous, fictional, fictional," such as the following example:
-->"To myself I pictured all the splendours of an age so distant that Chaldaea could not recall it, and thought of Sarnath the Doomed, that stood in the land of Mnar when mankind was young, and of Ib, that was carven of grey stone before mankind existed."[[note]]Chaldaea is real.[[/note]]

* Creator/Lovecraft was a master of it, though his are more like "famous, fictional, fictional," such as the following example:

Usually the trope serves only to remind us that it is, in fact, the future and people haven't stopped thinking and discovering things in between our time and story's setting. It would be odd if there hasn't been any new discoveries or geniuses worth mentioning, especially if the story involves something like FasterThanLightTravel. When someone or something we already know is used as such, then author is just making a point: say, if [[StephenHawking Hawking]] is mentioned, that means people of the future in that verse think he is a genius equal to Newton and Einstein, meaning that readers also should.

** The video regarding the ancient history of {{Atlanta}}, and how all of its greatest citizens fled as it sank: "Ted Turner, Hank Aaron, JeffFoxworthy, the man who invented Coca-Cola, The Magician ..." [[note]]While this is mostly a parody of the New Age folk song "{{Atlantis}}" by Donovan, there is the flippant implication that in this world The Magician is real and as important as the other real-life figures... or just another example of ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'''s FutureImperfect.[[/note]]
* Inverted in a WesternAnimation/{{The Simpsons}} Halloween episode when Homer explains: "Vampires aren't real. Just like fairies, elves and [[EskimosArentReal eskimos.]]"

-->-- '''Mark''', ''AMiracleOfScience'' [[http://project-apollo.net/mos/mos084.html author's commentary]]

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, [[Franchise/StarTrek Zefram Cochrane]]'s warp drive.

* The BigBad of ''Anime/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 [[AndThatLittleGirlWasMe himself]].]] The trope is {{lampshaded}} by the art style: photographs of Bush and Lilly exist on-screen while the image of Eiri is obviously drawn in the same style as all the other fictional characters.

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

* It happens a lot in ''EndersGame'' and ''Speaker For The Dead''.
* 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."

* ''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:

* In ''The Literature/HyperionCantos'', Hegemony CEO Meina Gladstone is said to be often likened to Lincoln, Churchill or Alvarez-Temp.
* Inverted in PercyJackson where the list of people who have entered Hades and returned includes Hercules, Orpheus, and HarryHoudini.
* In ''{{Literature/Ringworld}}'', Louis Wu describes the voice of a Pierson's puppeteer as like "Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Marilyn Monroe, and Lorelei Huntz, rolled into one."

-->'''Garth:''' All the others before me have failed. Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, Lee Kuan, Krotus! All of them are dust! But I will triumph! I will make the ultimate conquest!
** An inversion on ''Franchise/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 UsefulNotes/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, [[Series/StarTrekEnterprise Jonathan Archer]]..."

** In "Space Seed", Lt. [=McGivers=] has several portraits of historic conquerors in her quarters, including Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte and Khan Noonien Singh.

* ''{{Futurama}}''
** Prof. Farnsworth lists his influences as Leonardo Da Vinci, Copernicus, Euclid and Braino.
** The video regarding the ancient history of {{Atlanta}}, and how all of its greatest citizens fled as it sank: "Ted Turner, Hank Aaron, JeffFoxworthy, the man who invented Coca-Cola, The Magician ..." [[note]]While this is mostly a parody of the New Age folk song "{{Atlantis}}" by Donovan, there is the flippant implication that in this world The Magician is real and as important as the other real-life figures... or just another example of ''{{Futurama}}'''s FutureImperfect.[[/note]]
* Inverted in a {{Simpsons}} Halloween episode when Homer explains: "Vampires are fictional creatures. Just like fairies, elves and [[EskimosArentReal eskimos.]]"
** In the episode where Homer undergoes a triple bypass operation he watches a documentary about obesity on TV, where the announcer says America grew up with jolly obese people like Creator/AlfredHitchcock, Dom DeLuise and Santa Claus.

** In "Space Seed", Lt. McGivers has several portraits of historic conquerors in her quarters, including Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte and Khan Noonien Singh.

** In a ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' episode, Janeway mentions [[GodzillaThreshold The Omega Particle]] in the same breath as the most dangerous creations of [[TheDeadliestMushroom Albert Einstein]] and [[Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan Carol Marcus]].

A variation occurs when it's alternate reality: say, when someone mentions [[AlexanderTheGreat Alexander]], [[NapoleonBonaparte Bonaparte]] and [[JosefStalin Stalin]] as world dominators who failed, it means that in this reality the changing event is somewhere between the mid-18th century and the early 20th century, which made Stalin and not [[UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler Hitler]] start UsefulNotes/{{WWII}}.

** In one episode of [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration Next Generation]], Picard lists (only) two infamous men in history: AdolfHitler and [[Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan Khan Singh]].
** In another [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration TNG]] episode Picard mentions [[WorldWarII Pearl Harbor]] and [[NoodleIncident Station Salem One]] as stages for bloody preambles to war.

* In the FilmOfTheBook ''Film/ASoundOfThunder'', Ben Kingsley's character is [[LargeHam hamming up]] a speech for the Time Safari tourists, with the last name a ShoutOut to ''Film/CapricornOne''.

A variation occurs when it's alternate reality: say, when someone mentions [[AlexanderTheGreat Alexander]], [[NapoleonBonaparte Bonaparte]] and [[JosefStalin Stalin]] as world dominators who failed, it means that in this reality the changing event is somewhere between the mid-18th century and the early 20th century, which made Stalin and not [[AdolfHitler Hitler]] start UsefulNotes/{{WWII}}.

* 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 [[AndThatLittleGirlWasMe himself]].]] The trope is {{lampshaded}} by the art style: photographs of Bush and Lilly exist on-screen while the image of Eiri is obviously drawn in the same style as all the other fictional characters.

** An inversion on ''Franchise/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.

* Inverted in a {{Simpsons}} Halloween episode when Homer explains: "Vampires are fictional creatures. Just like fairies, elves and [[EskimosArentReal eskimos.]]"

--> "Klingon ''mok’bara''. Andorian ''shan-dru-shaan''. Human jujutsu. Any style relying more on finesse and leverage than brute force."

** In a ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' episode, Janeway mentions [[GodzillaThreshold The Omega Particle]] in the same breath as the most dangerous creations of [[TheDeadliestMushroom Albert Einstein]] and [[Film/StarTrekTheWrathOfKhan Carol Marcus]].

** ''Film/{{Star Trek II|The Wrath of Khan}}'' was formerly the TropeNamer.

* 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]].]] The trope is {{lampshaded}} by the art style: photographs of Bush and Lilly exist on-screen while the image of Eiri is obviously drawn in the same style as all the other fictional characters.

* Inverted in ''ExMachina'': a traveler from an AlternateUniverse arrives in the comic's universe (which is mostly identical to ours) and attempts to gather information by ordering his suit AI to connect to "gharity.com" and "skyvann.com". When both fail, he connects to...[[TheOtherWiki Wikipedia]].

** 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 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.

* 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]]".

* Inverted in a {{Simpsons}} halloween episode when Homer explains: "Vampires are fictional creatures. Just like fairies, elves and [[EskimosArentReal eskimos.]]"

A variation occurs when it's alternate reality: say, when someone mentions [[AlexanderTheGreat Alexander]], [[NapoleonBonaparte Bonaparte]] and [[JosefStalin Stalin]] as world dominators who failed, it means that in this reality the changing event is somewhere between the mid-18th century and the early 20th cenutury, which made Stalin and not [[AdolfHitler Hitler]] start {{WWII}}.