Films — Animation
- Anastasia is based around the titular Grand Duchess being the only one of her family to survive the revolution but has lost her memories and lives under the name "Anya". There's also an (already dead) Grigori Rasputin who's portrayed as an undead lich who wants to finish off his curse on the Romanov family by killing Anastasia.
- Famous Mexican painter Frida Kahlo appears briefly in the Pixar film Coco.
- "Nuvogue" from The Gate to the Mind's Eye features cutouts of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington in their video. Cheeky for a video series intending to show off then-current advances in computer animation, the cutouts use their portraits as found on U.S. currency, and these are pasted onto bodies which are clearly not meant to look like their own. Also featured is the replication of Trumbull's Declaration of Independence found on the $2 bill, the various historical figures animated to look like they are playing along with the song.
- The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists includes (heavily fictionalized versions of) Charles Darwin and Queen Vicky.
- Most of the characters in Pocahontas, albeit fictionalised.
- The Big Bad of Wolfwalkers is the Lord Protector, who's a fictionalized version of Oliver Cromwell. While he's only known as "the Lord Protector" in-story and in the credits, it's still obvious who he's supposed to be, especially since "Lord Protector" was the title Cromwell went under during his rule instead of "king".
Films — Live-Action
- 1492: Conquest of Paradise, Christopher Columbus as well as Isabel of Castile and several Spanish aristocrats.
- The Swedish comedy The Adventures of Picasso does this with Pablo Picasso and many of his contemporaries.
- Against All Flags: Captain Kidd and Roc Brasiliano (more commonly known as Roche Braziliano) were historical pirates. However, neither would have been Madagascar in 1700: Kidd was imprisoned in Boston, and Brasiliano had vanished without trace (presumed lost at sea) in 1671.
- Grand Duchess Anastasia and her grandmother from the 1950s film Anastasia and its animated remake.
- In Apache, Massai, Geronimo, and Al Sieber are all historical figures.
- Young Jane Austen, famous English writer, is the protagonist of Becoming Jane.
- The Bell Witch Haunting features the eponymous Bell Witch legend.
- Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure has loads in order to pass a history exam.
- Blackthorn features Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid and Etta Place. Additionally, Simón Patiño—the powerful Bolivian industrialist and mine owner Eduardo supposedly stole from—was also a real person.
- Brass Target constructs a Conspiracy Thriller around the death of General George S. Patton in a car accident just after World War II.
- Bridge of Spies has attorney James Donovan, American pilot Gary Powers, American student Frederic Pryor, and Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.
- The Cat's Meow is based on actual events, and its cast of characters is a veritable who's who of Hollywood in 1924: media mogul William Randolph Hearst, film producer Thomas Ince, Hearst's mistress Marion Davies, actor Charlie Chaplin, writer Elinor Glyn, columnist Louella Parsons, and actress Margaret Livingston.
- Fantasy versions of several historical figures serve as the lead characters in Dracula Untold, especially Mehmet and Vlad.
- Vlad III, better known as Vlad the Impaler, was a prince of Wallachia (a neighboring state to Transylvania, both part of Romania today) whose life has been conflated over the past 150 years with Bram Stoker's fictional Dracula. He was infamous for impaling the bodies of enemy soldiers and criminals alike on upright wooden stakes and leaving them to die while he ate his lunch nearby.
- Mehmet the Conqueror was a Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, famous for conquering Constantinople and for beginning the Turkish conquest of southeastern Europe. He serves as the film's antagonist.
- The Elder Vampire is indicated in the original script to be none other than the Roman Emperor Caligula.
- Dumas (2010): The film is based around Alexandre Dumas (the author of The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers) and his collaborator, Auguste Maquet
. François Guizot, a French historian, also appears in the film. - The Cinderella adaptation Ever After has Leonardo da Vinci as the eventual fairy godmother figure.
- The Gunfight at Dodge City: Bat Masterson, Ed Masterson and Dave Rudabaugh were all historical figures who would have crossed paths in Dodge City, although not in the way the film depicts.
- Houdini & Doyle: There are a few historic people other than the two titular characters that appear in the show.
- The 1939 film of The Hunchback of Notre Dame features King Louis XI of France.
- Virtually every character in Jackie is a real life historical figure including the main protagonist. The only exceptions are The Journalist (a Composite Character based on Theodore H. White, Arthur M. Schlesinger and William Manchester) and The Priest (a Canon Foreigner original to the film).
- I Shot Jesse James features Jesse James, his killer Robert Ford, Ford's rival Edward O'Kelley (called John Kelley in the film), and Frank James (Jesse's older brother and fellow bandit) as major characters.
- Most of the characters in Marie Antoinette (2006) are historical figures, mainly from late 18th century France. They include but is not limited to the titular character who became the Queen of France, Louis XVI, Louis XV, Princess Victoire, Princess Sophie, Maria Theresa, Madame Du Barry, Axel von Fersen and the Princesse de Lamballe.
- Che Guevara, in The Motorcycle Diaries.
- The protagonists of Ned Kelly (1970), Ned Kelly (2003), Mad Dog Morgan, Captain Thunderbolt, The Outlaw Michael Howe, and Van Diemen's Land are all based on historical Australian outlaws.
- The Outlaws IS Coming! features Annie Oakley, Rob Dalton, Wyatt Earp, Johnny Ringo, Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Bat Masterson, Cole Younger, Wild Bill Hickock and Belle Starr. An historical accuracy is purely coincidental.
- Outlaw Women: Sam Bass and Johnny Ringo were Real Life Wild West outlaws.
- Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides features Blackbeard, with smaller appearances by King George II of England and some of his ministers, and a brief cameo by King Ferdinand VI of Spain.
- Nikola Tesla appears in The Prestige.
- The MST3K-bait film Quest of the Delta Knights has a young Leonardo Da Vinci as a central character - then proceeds to posit that all his great ideas were just ripped off from Archimedes.
- Sherlock Holmes meets Dr. Sigmund Freud in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution.
- And Thubten Gyatso in Sherlock Holmes: The Missing Years. (This is referred to in "Empty House", but the pastiche is worth noting because the author is one of the more warlike proponents of a free Tibet, so the thirteenth Dalai Lama is right up his alley.)
- William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and Queen Elizabeth I, as well as the rest of the theatre company, in Shakespeare in Love.
- Shanghai Knights includes as a supporting character a young Arthur Conan Doyle.
- Shanghai Noon reveals at the end that major character Roy O'Bannon is actually Wyatt Earp.
- Sunset has retired lawman Wyatt Earp and cowboy actor Tom Mix teaming up to solve a mystery in 1920s Hollywood.
- Apart from the film crew, every character in Tombstone Rashomon is a historical figure connected to the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
- Unconscious has brief appearances by Drs. Alzheimer and Freud, as well as Alfonso XIII of Spain.
- Eliot Ness, Al Capone, and Frank Nitti in The Untouchables.
- Vamps: Vlad Tepes is one of the vampires. He went to America in 1583.
- When the Last Sword Is Drawn: Saitou Hajime, one of the more famous of The Shinsengumi, is the primary viewpoint character for his fictional comrade Yoshimura Kanichiro's life. The film also includes fellow Shinsengumi Hijikata Toshizo and Okita Soji. The last shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, also appears, as does historical government figure Oukubo Toshimichi (considered one of the co-founders of the modern Japanese state).
- Manfred von Richthofen (the The Red Baron) appears in several WW1 movies, amongst which are Wings, Hell's Angels and The Blue Max, and has a rather large role in several movies named after him.
- Aberline from The Wolfman (2010) is a fictionalized version of the real life Inspector Frederick Abberline.
- President Richard Nixon in X-Men: Days of Future Past. As one of the most famous leaders in the 1970s.
