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Bluto: Over? Did you say "over"? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no! Otter: Germans? Boon: Forget it, he's rolling.
Ah yes, history, written by the victors, with all the eyewitnesses lost to time... Some say it's one of those mysteries that man cannot know... That in the end, all known history is subjective and therefore useless as a source of knowledge...
But they would be WRONG.
We very well know what happened in the past for the most part, and as we all know that history repeats itself, and those who do not know it are bound to repeat the mistakes of the past... but for some reason some people just don't seem to even want to try to understand. Mainly caused by not doing the research properly, especially when a fiction writer bases his history on the works of other fiction writers instead of actual histories.
This trope is for those who try to use history, but their knowledge of history seems to stop some time last week. They think Columbus personally discovered the United States, George Washington cut down a cherry tree, Franklin flew a kite, and that Paul Revere was the only person warning everyone about the British. (Oh, and that no history has ever happened that did not involve the United States in some way.)
Also, many authors commit what's called the "historian's mistake", the idea that historical characters acted and made their decisions with full knowledge of the future — including the repercussions their actions would cause. Although some historical individuals made predictions that came true, this is not the same thing as knowing what would happen. For instance, a character in 1919 could plausibly predict that the Treaty of Versailles would cause hardship, anger and instability in Germany (indeed, Marshal Foch himself said at the time it was "not a peace treaty, just an armistice for twenty years" — though that was because he thought it didn't crush Germany enough), but it would be stretching it for him to confidently assert that the instability would specifically result in the murders of millions of Jews, Roma, and others.
This trope is NOT for speculative history stories, which get a pass simply because they're supposed to be Alternate Continuity stories, unless they reference these events as parts of "actual" history.
Compare Hollywood History, where the facts are mostly right, just caricatured and stereotyped, when not subject to Nostalgia Filter. See History Marches On for those rare cases where new evidence or insight actually does change the historical record.
Examples
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Film
- Works which attempt to invoke Paris amid the dramatic changes of the 19th century and the gilded and wobbly vainglory of Napoleon III seem to gravitate toward two years: 1870 and 1871. Those dates are indeed memorable ones in civic history, but for all the wrong reasons. At that point in history, the real Paris was under siege, with battered soldiers anxiously discussing the war in the coffee shops, people eating their own pets just to remain alive, students manning the barricades, beggars dying from starvation in the streets, communards being shot dead by government firing squads, and monocled German officers peering down cannons from just beyond the city limits. All this reality would spoil the Parisian ambiance, of course, so it's all quietly ignored. Works that make this mistake include Joel Schumacher's Phantom of the Opera and Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire.
- In Teaching Miss Tingle, one of the main characters is a girl we're constantly told is a great brain, and she produces a final project for her History class that's an "authentic recreation" of the diary of a girl who was killed during the Salem Witch Trials, right down to the book being authentically aged to resemble a diary that had survived the period. The eponymous teacher opens the diary at random, and finds an entry on how the fictional girl fears she'll be burned at the stake tomorrow. No one was burned at the stake in the Salem Witch Trials. They hanged them or crushed them between stones, and while people were burned in Europe, it was usually for heresy not witchcraft (though, to be sure, the two were sometimes linked). The student in question is disappointed — madly so — to find she got a C on the project, but she should just have been glad she wasn't given an F and laughed out of class to boot.
- Not to mention the fact that the young girls were the ones doing the accusing and the vast majority of those accused and/or killed were men and older women (see also The Crucible, which does at least get the execution method right).
- Penn and Tellers's Bullshit made the same mistake; they made a point of apologizing for it in the advertisements for the following season.
- Fist of Fear, Touch of Death, possibly the most awful of all awful Brucesploitation films, states during a biographical sequence that Bruce Lee's grandfather was 19th Century China's greatest samurai.
- Any media adaptation that exaggerates Napoleon's short height. He was 5'6" (168cm), average for a man of his time. However, he was often surrounded by much larger bodyguards, making him appear short in contrast. Also, French feet were slightly larger than English feet at the time, making him 5'2" in French units. English propaganda seized on the misperception and began portraying him as a comically miniature tyrant to mock him.
- The Passion of the Christ depicts Romans speaking amongst themselves in Latin, despite that in that region Latin was only used in edicts and announcements and the dominant language for them there was either Greek or Vulgar Latin, a form of Classical Latin commonly used in the Roman military organisation.
- To make it worse, the characters speak in Ecclesiastical Latin, a dialect that arose in the Middle Ages.
- And let's not forget the too-numerous-to-mention WWII movies which rewrite history in such a way that the Americans won the war single-handed, including breaking the Enigma codes (Alan Turing must be turning in his grave).
- From which also follow works of fiction which establish Alan Turing as the genius single-handedly breaking the Enigma codes (Marian Rejewski must be turning in his grave).
- In the trailers for Gamer, the voice-over announces "The last time Gerard Butler kicked this much ass was 300 years ago!!". This might belong in the Real Life folder.
- Numerous movies have inaccurately portrayed The Alamo with the curved roof at the time of the eponymous battle—in truth, the roof had crumbled due to neglect, and it was 1912 before the familiar facade was restored.
- Animal House: "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!" Justified by the Rule Of Funny, and by the fact that Bluto was probably drunk.
- And was holding a GPA of 0.0.
- He's also privately called out on this (see page quote). It may have been a plea from the writers, 'The character is a moron. Don't judge us by him.'
- The first X-Files movie starts off 35,000 years ago in North Texas, and depicts a pair of Neanderthals running through the snow. 1) Neanderthals never lived in North America. 2) No humans of any kind lived in North America until about 20,000 years later. This is technically Prehistory, but let's not split hairs.
- Played For Laughs in Idiocracy (where the entire world has become less intelligent) a theme park of the future thought that Adolf Hitler and Charlie Chaplin were the same person, and both sides rode dinosaurs.
- "And then the Un un-Nazied the world forever."
- In Bugsy Malone Bugsy quotes the film On the Waterfront "I coulda been a contender, charlie" a film made 30 years after the film is set (1920s)
- A Fistful Of Dynamite - John Mallory being an Irish nationalist in 1913 owns an IRA flag. Problem is the IRA didn't exist until 1919. He would have most likely been an Irish volunteer for the IRB (Irish Republican Brotherhood) if any official organisation at all.
Literature
- Dan Brown: Too many to list here — Dan Brown's research failures (in history in particular) have made him a trope namer, and have their very own page.
- The Necronomicon: The Dee Translation by Lin Carter has a scene where Abdul Alhazred ingests Black Lotus in order to see visions of the past. Among other things, he sees scenes from The Crusades where Saladin fights at Jerusalem. The problem? The text states clearly that Alhazred died in AD 738. Saladin
 was born in AD 1138. (Granted, Time Travel is a part of the Cthulhu Mythos, so it is possible that the Black Lotus can show visions from the future as well as the past. But Alhazred describes the Crusades as a perfectly well-known event that the reader is expected to be familiar with. If he were seeing scenes from the far future, you'd think he would remark on it.)
- Ellis Peters slips up in The Raven in the Foregate. One of the (many) complaints about Father Ailnoth is that he refused to come when a man's wife is having a rough delivery, and as a result the newborn dies unbaptized. Ailnoth was a twit, but let's be fair here. Under canon law, midwives (or anyone else) were allowed to baptize infants if there wasn't time to call in a priest. The situation Peters describes definitely qualifies. There is no reason for that child to have died unbaptized, other than the need to have yet one more suspect when Ailnoth turns up dead.
- She is also in error when she implies in 'The Hermit of Eyton Forest' that an ordained priest must preside at a licit wedding ceremony. Today this is true (if you can get a priest in a reasonable amount of time), but not in the 12th century — and a long time thereafter — when a declaration of intent, with or without witnesses, followed by consummation was sufficient for canonically valid marriage. However a boy under fourteen could NOT make a valid marriage, and the issue of free consent would have made this a no-brainer to any canon court.
- For in-universe history Lord Rust, particularly in Terry Pratchett's Jingo, falls to either this or Completely Missing The Point regarding military history. Examples include believing their army can defeat the Klatchians, citing similar battles from history as evidence. His aide is left the job of pointing out details such as "One side was mounted on elephants", "There was an earthquake", "They lost", and "That was just a nursery story".
- My Heart Is On The Ground by Ann Rinaldi failed history. The book is about Nannie Little Rose, a Lakota Native American girl who is sent to Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Firstly, Nannie probably would not have been given a diary in the first place, which discounts the whole book. But, let's say she was. She would not refer to herself as "Sioux", instead she would use her area or band. Rinaldi also gets many Lakota customs wrong, mainly by using American descriptions of them rather than finding out what actually happened. She even makes up the more "Indian" sounding words for Lakota words that already exist, such as "night-middle-made" and "friend-to-go-between-us". A detailed list of the historical inaccuracies can be found here.
- In Twilight, Rosalie grew up in the 1930s during the great depression. Her father was able to provide his family with a middle-class life because he was a banker. One of the biggest reasons why the economy fell apart was because the banks failed following the stock market crash.
- John Keats's On First Looking into Chapman's Homer compares the experience to "stout Cortez" becoming the first European to see the Pacific. Actually, Vasco Nunez de Balboa was the first guy to do this.
Live Action TV
Newspaper Comics
- In September 2009, a character in Tank McNamara was said to have researched the Vandals (the name of a college sports team) and found that they were part of Norse mythology. The Vandals have nothing to do with Norse mythology; they were a historic Germanic tribe, or perhaps Slavs, who invaded the Roman Empire.
Tabletop Games
- Witch Girls Adventures seems to be written under the premise that Vlad Dracul and Vlad Dracula are the same person. For reference, this is the same as writing a story under the premise that George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush are the same person. And not in a Beethoven Was An Alien Spy sense. They just seem to have not realized they were not only two different people, but father and son. A hint is that "Dracula" roughly translates to English as "Son of the Dragon", with "a" being the "Son of" part.
- FATAL. The only culture acknowledged is Medieval Europe, they managed to confuse Medieval Europe with ancient Roman, and completely buggered up the details on both. The review even references this page. Of course, this ''is'' FATAL.
Theater
- When Shakespeare tackles history, history usually loses. However, it's hard to fault him given his often-stated intent to entertain people. It's more of a failure when modern writers use Shakespeare as a definitive authority, something he himself might not have appreciated.
- Shakespeare was patronized by the British monarchy (in spite of possibly not being a good Protestant). He knew exactly what side his bread was buttered on.
- He also had access to a grand total of two history books, one of which rivaled the accuracy of Dan Brown and the other of which was a propaganda piece commissioned by Henry VIII to make his uncles' murderers look like a Complete Monster.
- Richard III was based on Tudor propaganda. Other than Richard's accession and death and the murders of the Princes in the Tower, he gets everything wrong.
- And even the story of the Princes in the Tower is questionable.
- Macbeth changes Duncan from a young, violent invader to a wise old king, telescopes Macbeth's 17-year reign into two years, creates Lady Macbeth almost from whole cloth, and even reimagines the Stuart family tree.
- King James was supposedly descended from Banquo through his son Fleance. Mac Beth was commissioned by James, who paid Shakespeare a king's ransom to write and stage it. Naturally Shakespeare would throw in things that would please James. This is also why at the end of the original play, Shakespeare put on another play showing the descent of the Stuarts from Fleance through to James VI. Total nonsense, but James and Shakespeare both liked it.
- Many people believe that Sir John Falstaff was a historical person because of his inclusion in ''Henry IV Parts 1 and 2". Although he may have been very loosely based on an old Stratford acquaintance of Shakespeare's, Falstaff himself is wholly fictional.
- Sir John Fastolf was a very real knight of the garter who was a contemporary of Henry V (and long outlived him). To what extent he was the inspiration for Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff is debated to this day.
- The character was originally named John Oldcastle, after a real 15th century person. Since Oldcastle had well-connected descendants, Shakespeare had to change the name.
- Shakespeare had both the Earl of Shrewsbury (Lord Talbot) and his son die in (the same) battle. In real life, the son survived to become the second Earl. Although Shakespeare's listing of Talbot's titles (including Lord Verdun) does make Alton Towers the only amusement park mentioned (albeit indirectly) in Shakespeare.
- Not to mention the Romans in Julius Caesar, who wore nightcaps and used clocks.
- Let me just re-emphasise that Shakespeare really didn't have much information about the past and that most of what we know about Romans comes from much later excavations and research.
Translation
- In episode 20 of Axis Powers Hetalia (an anime with anthropomorphic representations of countries and silly interpretations of real historical events), America is cleaning out his storage. Lithuania notices a toy soldier America has left out, at which point America runs in screaming that England is coming and to hide it. Fansubs thought it would be funny to instead translate it as "The British are coming!" presumably as a reference to Paul Revere. Back then, we still were the British. Revere and his pals (Dawes, Prescott, and others) yelled things like "The red coats are coming!" or "The regulars are coming!" They didn't call them "The British".
- "The British are Coming" is a Beam Me Up Scotty much older than Axis Powers Hetalia. The translators were probably just using a common (though wrong) figure of speech.
Web Original
- Associated Space has the following exchange in the spirit of Animal House:
Fatebane: Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man. Admiral Patton punched right through the Western Wall and sank the Japanese fleet. And that was in the days of triremes… oar-powered ships that couldn’t fire back as well as coastal fortresses.
Nazar: And how many ships did he lose in that battle?
Fatebane: It’s the principle that matters! If she could do it, so can we!
Western Animation
- South Parks I'm a Little Bit Country presents a massive historical failure on the American Revolution. Nevermind the fact that the Founding Fathers would probably support not going to War against Iraq due to their fear of big government and big armies, war was already raging in the Colonies. The Battles of Lexington and Concord had been fought in 1775, Benidict Arnold had captured a crucial British Fort to help break the Siege of Boston, and several other battles were fought. True, not everyone wanted to go to war, or even get independence, but the Founding Fathers realized it had became an inevitability and declared independence even though if they lost, they'd be declared traitors and hung.
- The Transformers movie gets a pass for a lot of things based on Rule Of Cool, but a few things are still outright mistakes.
- Hoover was involved in the construction of the Hoover dam, but he started this involvement well before he was president.
- The popular notion is that Walt Disney's animated cartoon Ben and Me is what started the misconception of Benjamin Franklin's famous kite experiment, which has found its way into every adaptation of the event. Though he did come up with the idea, there's no clear evidence that Franklin ever performed it himself, and the Mythbusters clearly showed that if Franklin attempted the experiment the way it's popularly portrayed, he would have been fried to a crisp by the lightning bolt.
- The movie is about a mouse coming up with all of Franklin's ideas. What do you expect?
- As indicated in the Live Action TV section above, the Mythbusters didn't do any better...
- At one point in Teen Titans Beast Boy proclaims "Now I know how George Washington felt when Napoleon beat him at Pearl Harbor." Raven smacks him for the condensed stupidity and wonders if he got that off of a cereal box (he did.)
- Not to mention that, in a sort of pathetic way, Mad Mod tries to pass off everything in American history as never happening and declares himself king, probably to make Big Ben look even bigger.
- Averted in Batman Beyond. Terry is trying to list the presidents, but "forgets" as soon as he got to Clinton. (The show was made in the late 90s).
Terry Mc Ginnis: Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton... I don't know.
Max Gibson: Come on. Clinton was the fun one, then came the boring one.
Terry Mc Ginnis: They're all boring.
- This is also an example of Hilarious In Hindsight, as Terry should have easily been able to remember a two-term, son-of-a-president (a reverse of the second and sixth presidents) followed by a very NOT BORING president afterward.
- George W. Bush was a lot of things, but boring is not one of them (Choked on a pretzel, got a shoe thrown at him, etc. we all know the list). Perhaps Batman Beyond was predicting that Gore was to win the 2000 Presidential Election?
- Any and all Witch Burning scenes that claim they are from the Salem Witch Trials. Example of both used in Fairly Oddparents and Danny Phantom. Something tells me that Butch Hartman failed history.
- That same Danny Phantom episode also had Vlad claiming the Wright brothers' infamous flight as the "first airplane" which is far from the truth.
- Grandpa Simpson very often mixes historical events and/or relates them in a totally surrealistic and nonsensical way, and often claiming to have taken an active part in them. This might be a result of ignorance, severe senility, or both. Nobody around ever corrects him, however. In fact Bart did once praise his knowledge on early aviation (without realizing it was all bollocks):
Bart: What a piece of junk.
Grandpa: Junk?! That's the Wright Brothers' plane! At Kitty Hawk in 1902, Charles Lindbergh flew that on a thimble-full of corn oil. Single-handedly won us the Civil War, it did!
Bart: How do you know so much about history?
Grandpa: I pieced it together, mostly from sugar packets.
- Not to mention this:
Homer: Are you sure you don't want to come? In a Civil War re-enactment we need lots of Indians to shoot!
Apu: I don't know what part of that sentence to correct first.
- In Futurama, it seems that 31st century Earth is very ignorant of its own history. There is for example, an episode where Fry, Bender and Leela go to a "Historical theme park" set in 20th century New York. The commercial for which features cowboys hunting a mammoth while riding 1980s Italian Scooters, as well as Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, and Hammurabi disco dancing in a hot air balloon.
- This, of course, is a fairly realistic commentary on how 21st century people mix up historical periods from the last thousand years and before.
- We're Whalers on the moon! We carry a Harpoon! But there ain’t no whales, so we tell tall tales and sing our whaling tune!
- The Looney Tunes short Yankee Doodle Bugs has Bugs Bunny helping his nephew Clyde study for a test by giving him a crash course in early American history. The accuracy of Bugs' accounts can be measured by Clyde's response after he returns home from school and Bugs asks how he did: glaring angrily, pulling out a dunce cap, and placing it on his head. ("Does this answer your question?")
- Hilariously parodied in an episode of The Powerpuff Girls. Mojo Jojo, drafted into babysitting the girls, tells them a horribly inaccurate version of Napoleon's life. Before he can finish, the girls shut him down by pointing out the flaws in his story in between hitting him with pillows.
Video Games
Fan Fic
- Light And Dark The Adventures Of Dark Yagami features a dungeon that was supposedly built in England 6 million years ago, and was used to execute Guy Fawkes by shooting (in actuality, Fawkes was hung, and managed to break his neck before he could be drawn and quartered). The best part is that this somehow happened during Watari's short reign as Queen of England (don't ask) as a result of Dark using the Everything Note in Chapter 9.
- Practically every "Founders fic" in the Harry Potter fandom hits this hard. One particularly egregious example has Rowena Meredith Ravenclaw (note that "Meredith" was a male name up to the 20th century) take a train to America at one point. Yes, in the tenth century she uses a ground-based form of transportation which hasn't been invented to travel from Scotland to an America which Europeans (or, at least, European Muggles?) haven't discovered yet. The language issue is usually glossed over too, even though Britons of the time would have spoken a profusion of Anglo-Saxon, Gaelic, Welsh, Cumbric, Pictish, Manx, Cornish and perhaps some learned people speaking Latin or Greek.
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