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Been There Shaped History
aka: The Zelig
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" Yeah, sir, you might want to send a maintenance man over to that office across the way. The lights are off, and they must be looking for a fuse box, 'cause them flashlights, they keep me awake."
Creating an original character is hard work. First you have to come up with a decent backstory and personality. Then you have to go and put them in these really tedious plots and situations where they have to, you know, interact with people and do things. More of a hassle than it's worth, really. So many people are doing the same thing all the time. How do you make a character really stand out?
What if it turns out that the character was responsible for a major well-known incident?
Enter this character. While in many cases an original and often very well-written character in their own right, this character simply cannot get around the fact that a good chunk of his screen time is being the driving force behind major events that have already been written or described by others. In effect, he is made more interesting by association due to having "guest starred" in a suitably major event.
Almost always the source of a Historical In-Joke. See Seemingly Profound Fool, Mistaken for Special Guest. When done poorly or overbearingly, can be a sign of a Canon Sue. Contrast Beethoven Was an Alien Spy where they simply use the real person.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen features Orlando (based loosely on the titular character of a book by Virginia Woolf), a gender-changing Immortal who fights in every major war from Troy to World War II, as well as causing the rift between Romulus and Remus and posing for the Mona Lisa. Also, he started the Renaissance.
- The Sandman occasionally features Morpheus becoming involved with or perpetuating some of history's biggest legends. Throughout the Fables and Reflections trade paperback, he is the catalyst behind the City of Glass myth, as well as giving Joshua Norton the dream to become the Emperor of the United States on a bet with his siblings. He also made an arrangement with Shakespeare, giving him the stories and the immortality he wanted in return for two plays: A Midsummer Night's Dream as a gift to Oberon and Titania, and The Tempest for himself.
- The Greek poet Orpheus was also suitably retconned into becoming Morpheus' son, with many of the Endless helping to perpetuate his famous descent into the Underworld to retrieve his dead wife. For that matter, many of Apollo's deeds are explained as Morpheus' doing, with him explaining that Apollo was a god of storytellers and legends; aspects which fall under Dream's purview and confuse casual listeners.
- All explainable by the fact that it's Dream's job to inspire people to greatness. So most people with lasting fame have interacted with him in some level.
- Booster Gold time travels into the past, meets Sinestro, and convinces him that he's part of the ... um ... Sinestro Corps. Sinestro likes the idea.
- Atomic Robo alternately averts this trope and plays it straight. Robo participates in World War II in a story where Robo is off on a side mission while real-life soldiers are fighting real-life battles; goes along for the ride for the first Mars probe mission but does not contribute anything to the actual accomplishments of NASA; and he declares himself neutral during the Cold War. He has, however, been to the moon, but probably well after humans had already made it. Essentially, Atomic Robo has Been There Shaped History in that he's around for all sorts of historical events, but he's an aversion because he never takes away from what was done by historical human beings.
- It's the stated intention of the producers not to reduce the significance of any historical figures' effort or sacrifice.
- In Marvel Comics, Rick Jones even recognized in his autobiography he was "Gumping" the Marvel Universe.
- Don Rosa likes to do this too. In The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, Scrooge is shown to be the reason Theodore Roosevelt went back into politics (and the origin of some of Roosevelt's famous quotes). Scrooge also gave Buffalo Bill the idea to do Wild West shows, and was a major influence on Jack London's The Call Of The Wild. He also meets Wyatt Earp, sails on the Cutty Sark and witnesses the eruption of Krakatoa, nearly became the owner of the real world Anaconda Copper Mine, causes the sinking of Titanic, etc. etc. etc.
- What makes this even more impressive is that Rosa definitely did the research with regard to where these people were and how they acted at the time Scrooge met them.
- Well, except Geronimo, who is far more laid back than his real world counterpart, and in place he couldn't possibly be at the time (in Buffalo Bill's circus instead of being confined in a reservation), but he makes it a Running Gag of how nobody recognizes him until the end - not even the reader if he's only familiar with his Spanish name.
- Being "The Spirit of the 20th Century", Jenny Sparks from the Wildstorm Universe was a part of every major event from 1900 to 2000, including the Titanic and "Shagging the three main players in World War Two". The most outrageous of these was when she was living in Vienna and told a local struggling artist to give up, because his paintings were no good. But he was a good public speaker, so maybe he should consider going into politics. But first he'd have to change his name, because nobody was going to vote for somebody named Adolf Schicklegruber.
- In Tag And Bink Are Dead, the title characters are inept padawans turned rebels who are responsible for several things in the Star Wars series, such as helping a young Anakin Skywalker romance Padme.
- Tag and Bink have actually had a number of comics. Somehow they find themselves involved in almost every major event of the movies, and any gaffes or plot holes from the series are usually credited to the pair.
- In Sandman: Endless Nights, a cocktail party of the gods, at the dawn of time, ends up Gumping the origins of both Superman and the Green Lantern Corps.
- Similarly, in James Robinson's Starman, Jack Knight becomes a Gump to Jor-El, father of Superman, by giving him hints of where to find Earth.
- Several times, Mortadelo y Filemón have become parties to several important historical events. For example, in El Quinto Centenario, drawn to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America, they get accidentally sent to the past and become part of the crew that discovers America, next to Cristobal Colón (who resembles Felipe González, Spanish President in 1992) and Fray Requemado Sinsilla (who is drawn to be like Alfonso Guerra, Spain's vice-president in 1992), Pepe Gotera, Otilio and Rompetechos (all of them Ibáñez's characters). For example, Mortadelo and Filemón cause the sinking of the Pinta in the Americas.
- Siglo XX, ¡qué progreso! has Mortadelo, Filemón, Ofelia and Bacterio travel to the start of the twentieth century, and become part of history: they cause the Russian-Japanese War, World War I and II, Ofelia becomes Mata-Hari and kills Rasputin, they meet the Wright brothers, Mortadelo and Filemón are nearly executed during the Spanish Civil War, they become acquainted with many small and great inventions...
- Why does the Sphinx have no nose? Answer: Obelix broke it.
- First ever Doctor Doom story starring the Fantastic Four? The Thing becomes Blackbeard. Yeah. The Blackbeard.
- If you ever wonder how the real Red Baron was killed, you should ask Corto Maltese, since he was there to witness the scene. He was shot by an australian shepherd, whose aiming skills became improbable when he was drunk. He also took part in The Irish Revolution when the Sinn Fein still was a young party, just after using the Battle of Caporetto as a cover to retrieve a hidden treasure. And all of this only happens in one of his albums, Les Celtiques.
Film
- The former Trope Namer, Forrest Gump, was based around this concept. Throughout the movie (and source novel) that shared his name, he was responsible for any number of historical events: exposing the Watergate break-ins, teaching Elvis how to dance, was involved in a famous anti-Vietnam rally, and founded the real world corporation BubbaGump shrimp (although the restaurant chain was created in response to the movie). Among other things.
- In Back to the Future, we see that Marty is responsible for the skateboard, the frisbee, and rock and roll.
- Only in the alternate timeline created by his actions, though. It's not a Stable Time Loop.
- The Trope Maker, Zelig. While he doesn't actually discover anything, the earlier and influential Woody Allen film is a mockumentary detailing the title character's celebrity and includes old photos of him posed with famous people as well as interviews from real academics about him. The movie does a good job of justifying why its audience would never have heard of Zelig by treating him as one of many fads of the 1920s and 1930s, forgotten when the public discovered something new of interest.
- Monty Python's Life of Brian shows Brian attending a speech by Jesus, being mistaken for Jesus, and being involved in numerous other Bible shenanigans.
- "He's not the Messiah. He's a very naughty boy!"
- Funnily enough, the original idea for the movie was a subversion. Brian was envisioned as an unheard-of apostle who, because of various contrivances and scheduling conflicts, was constantly forced to miss the important events Jesus took part in (the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, etc).
- The second National Treasure movie featured a minor character, Nicholas Cage's character's great-grandfather, burning a vital clue to a hidden treasure given to him by John Wilkes Booth minutes before the assassination of President Lincoln, thus preventing the Confederates from recovering the treasure and having the funding to start a second Civil War.
- Jackie Chan's and Owen Wilson's characters from Shanghai Knights, Chon Wang and Roy O'Bannon (real name Wyatt Earp), have on their record, among other things, creating the names of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, getting Doyle interested in writing, and getting Charlie Chaplin interested in acting. Roy also decides not to invest some of their funds in this new-fangled device called an auto-mobile
- Ignoring the errors that they present (Chaplin was born in 1889, two years after the movie is set), there was also Chon's sister getting attacked by Jack the Ripper, and tossing him into the Thames.
- In The Man from Earth, John Oldman reveals that's he's probably the man that would later be known as Jesus.
- And he was buddies with Van Gogh.
- And he studied under the Buddha.
- The Man from Earth plays this straight and also averts it: John barely remembers a lot of the historical events he took part in, because at the time he took part in them, they were not important historical events, just things that he happened to do that day. It was only later, upon reading history books, that he realized his probable involvement. He also points at that he's just one man in one place at one time, so there is a very limited number of important or famous people that he could meet even during the course of a 14,000 year life.
- Inspired by the success of Forrest Gump, a Hong Kong movie called The Umbrella Story has three generations of umbrella makers being visited by assorted classic Hong Kong film stars from as early as the '50s.
- In the 1999 film Dick, the Watergate break-in is unwittingly exposed by two ditzy teenage girls. Who are also responsible for the 18 minute gap in Nixon's tapes.
- The fictional Czech genius Jára Cimrman has been involved in just as many historical events as Forrest Gump; for instance, in the movie Jára Cimrman lying, sleeping, his biography, he - among other things - aids Eiffel with the design of his tower, advises Anton Chekhov to write Three Sisters rather than two, and inspires Marconi to invent a wireless telegraph after accidentally breaking down his telegraph poles. Oh yes, and he also invented the light bulb, dynamite, etc. (but arrived at the patent office a minute after Edison and Nobel, respectively).
- Space Jam posits that Michael Jordan was persuaded to unretire from basketball by the Looney Tunes and evil cartoon aliens. One suspects they were not involved in real life.
- In a way, they were; as part of his contract, Michael Jordan demanded that Warner Brothers construct a basketball court with all imaginable amenities for him to practice himself back into shape in.
- Parodied by Walk Hard - Dewey frequently meets famous musicians, from Elvis to the Beatles, but they are all deliberately horribly miscast (Jack Black as Paul McCartney?) and Dewey always refers to all of them by their full names. The scene with The Beatles takes it the furthest - they all deliberately state that there is a rift between the four of them, George Harrison complains that they never let him write songs, and they all really obviously drop the names of songs that hadn't been written yet.
- Also, Dewey apparently invents punk.
- According to Ridley Scott, Robin Hood is responsible for the Magna Carta.
- Titanic implies that its heroes inadvertently doomed the ship—the watchmen didn't see the iceberg soon enough because they were distracted by Jack and Rose kissing on the deck. These two also manage to visit every area of the ship as it sinks and one moment or another, and are even on the stern when the ship goes down. Between Jack, Rose, and a few other main characters, we see every major episode of the sinking.
- Company Man, a 2000 comedy movie, had a whole cast of these that set the stage for the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
- According to an interview by a Bill & Ted fansite, Bill and Ted was originally going to be one of these movies, with these two idiots causing the Titanic and the Holocaust as they travelled through time, but this was considered "too dark".
- A blink-and-miss moment in Sherlock Holmes A Game Of Shadows implies that Moriarty arranged the murder of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria
 as part of a carefully elaborate plan to spark a world war in 1891.
- In Batman Begins, Ra's Al Ghul claims that the League of Shadows took part in the sacking of the Roman Empire, filled trade ships with plague rats contributing to the Black Death, and burned London to the ground. Plus, their last attempt to destroy Gotham using economics turned it into the Wretched Hive it is at the time the movie takes place.
Literature
- Nick "Ace" Geraci, from The Godfather sequels, is a rare case where this turns out to be the canon explanation for events as the licensed continuation of the franchise. He is responsible for beating the two college kids who assaulted Bonasera's daughter. He executed Tessio in the first chapter of The Godfather Returns as a test of loyalty to the Family. Later on, he manipulates Fredo into unwittingly betraying Michael by offering him help with a plan that would show his worth to Michael. Finally, he kidnaps and executes Tom Hagen by strapping him into a car and driving him into the Florida Everglades.
- The Flashman series often moves in this direction, having him not only indirectly responsible for important events in British history, but also having him as the inspiration for The Prisoner of Zenda and Uncle Tom's Cabin (!). One novella, Flashman and the Tiger, has him getting the Sherlock Scan from lawyer friendly cameos of Sherlock Holmes and Watson and isn't as well done since the series (outside of the characters of Tom Brown's Schooldays) doesn't have literary characters as real people, only as the inspirations for them.
- Fictional uncertainties aside, Flashman certainly serves as a splendid Gump, as his career spans virtually every notable conflict in the world from the First Afghan War to the Boxer Rebellion (though sadly his author died before recounting some of Flashman's highest-profile adventures, e.g. the American Civil War and (most) of the Zulu War).
- He's also used to fill in some of the gaps in historical accounts. Unknown soldier leading the Charge of the Light Brigade? That was Flashman. Unidentified figure in a painting just after the Indian Mutiny? Flashman again.
- Sharpe is a similar example - if he'd been killed in India, Britain would probably have lost the Napoleonic Wars. Some things Sharpe is responsible for: the assassination of Tipu Sultan; saving the Duke of Wellington's life; the capture of Gawilghur; stopping an Indo-French treaty (by murdering an accredited diplomat no less) to force Britain out of India; capturing the Danish fleet at Copenhagen; securing funding for the Lines of Torres Vedras; the explosion at Almeida; covering up a scandal involving the Peer's brother and the British ambassador to Spain; leading the Forlorn Hope at Badajoz; shooting the Prince of Orange at the Battle of Waterloo; helping the Chilean Revolution to succeed.
- Similarly, the character of Uhtred from the Saxon Stories series is involved in most of Alfred the Great's campaigns against the Danes. His absence from historical records is explained in-universe as the result of a dislike for the pagan Uhtred on the part of the Christian monks who wrote them. In both cases, the series began as attempts to depict the careers of famous historical figures- the Duke of Wellington and Alfred the Great, respectively- from a different, more earthy perspective than usual.
- His American Civil War character, Nathaniel Starbuck was responsible for warning Nathan Evans (who is portrayed as a hilariously Lethal Joke Character) of the Union flanking movement at the First Battle of Manassas Junction, thus saving the Confederacy and setting the stage for a long Civil War.
- The Brazilian novel O Homem Que Matou Getulio Vargas (released in English as Twelve Fingers: Biography of an Anarchist) has an interesting inversion - the main character, a Serbian assassin, would be responsible for several historical events, like the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the transport of French troops to the Marne and the bribery of the jury who put Al Capone in jail, if he didn't always screw up. He does however "suicide" the titular Brazilian president (who is distantly related to him).
- Another Brazilian book, O Vampiro Que Descobriu O Brasil has a Portuguese vampire coming after the body snatching one that bit him, leading both to Brazil. They stumble on every possible historical fact.
- The Others from the Night Watch 'verse. Name a war, a cause, a philosophy, an artist - it was either them or they were The Man Behind the Man.
- They've had a few big experiments tried to fix the world they helped bring about. Including the communist revolution, capitalism, and democracy. Oh and Christianity...
- My Nine Lives By Cleo is a children's picture book about a Gump who happens to be a cat. She's the inspiration for the invention of constellations, the alphabet, sundials, forks, and parachutes, among other things. Oh, and she's the reason for the Mona Lisa's smile.
- The Science of Discworld novels posit our world being a sort of novelty science experiment on the Discworld, where the wizards' meddling is not only responsible for life in general, but more specifically William Shakespeare's and Darwin's successes.
- Inverted in the Horatio Hornblower series, where the author deliberately keeps Horatio out of the way of most of the major historical events of the time. One would imagine this gets harder as Hornblower progresses up the ranks, eventually ending up as a Admiral.
- Commodore Hornblower, set in 1812, specifically places Hornblower in the Baltic dealing with Russia. This was to avoid any mention of the War of 1812 between the British and the USA. The stories themselves were written 1937 to 1967, and avoiding any hint of conflict between the RN and the USA was a priority.
- Similarly inverted in Gustave Flaubert's Sentimental Education which, despite being set around the tumultuous events of the 1848 French Revolution, makes sure its hero is absent for the most dramatic events, (such as going on 'honeymoon' with his love interest).
- In the Earth's Children series, the protagonist Ayla was solely responsible (with a little help from Jondalar) for many of the most important technological discoveries of her prehistoric era, including domestication of horses and dogs, suturing wounds, starting fires using flint, the travois, and the atlatl.
- The Thursday Next novels start out set in a clearly alternate reality, but via the actions of the books (and healthy doses of Time Travel) the setting gets closer and closer to our world as the series progresses.
- Captain Alatriste from the Spanish series of adventure books meets several historical figures and takes part in several historical events.
- Randall Flagg from The Stand deserves an honourable mention. He remembers being involved in many of the most horrifying events in recent American History, everything from The Mason Family to handing Lee Harvey Oswald pamphlets, meeting Donald Defreeze (and suggesting the name Cinque in the first place), went to school with Charles Starkweather, and plenty else. All the more horrifying in that he has absolutely no investment in any of this, any misguided cause, or even desire to profit. He just likes to be part of the hate.
- Both main characters in Robert Merle's Fortune de France series. They interact with an lot of historical figures, and are parts of important events during XVI and XVIIth centuries.
- The Chee from Animorphs are very long lived androids who helped build the pyramids and use advanced holographic projections to masquerade as humans, appearing to age normally and eventually faking theirs deaths and assuming new identities when they decide they're getting too old. Some of the people they refer to are Moses (Erek's "father" was his law professor), Catherine the Great (Erek used to cut her hair) and Roosevelt (Erek "was the White House butler when he suggested the phrase "New Deal". Of course, it was during a poker game."). One Chee is also said to have been a famous actress in a previous life-cycle.
- Averted, too: For example, Eric mentions he worked on the pyramids—as a slave hauling blocks.
- IIRC, The Chee take care to stay out of any great historical events. Erek mentioning that he thought up "New Deal" is probably the most they've ever contributed. Most often they're just on the sidelines, such as Erek mentioning he was Beethoven's assistant for a few years, and at least one Chee is a homeless person.
- In Good Omens, Crowley owns the original sketch of the Mona Lisa. A footnote then re-constructs a conversation between Crowley and da Vinci in which the artist blows off the lower quality of the painting, because "who's going to see it?" He goes on to ask Crowley about an invention, which apparently he later takes credit for.
- Ender's Shadow retells Ender's Game from the perspective of Bean, who is revealed to have been responsible for a lot of Ender's successes, making him this trope in a fictional setting. (And provoking some people to consider him a Canon Sue.)
- John Jakes' Kent Family Chronicles. Starting with The Bastard, it takes its young French hero through young manhood - where his best friend is the Marquis de Lafayette - sends him to England in search of his true parentage, then fleeing to the Colonies when framed by unscrupulous relatives, and arriving in Philadelphia just in time to meet and take advice from Benjamin Franklin (he even becomes a successful printer!). This continues through several novels and more generations, as he and his descendants frolic through an all-star reading of history.
- Elias Vaughn in the Star Trek Novel Verse. Introduced in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Relaunch, he was an elderly Starfleet officer with a long history in Starfleet Special Operations. He went on to make apperances in novels fleshing out many established events in the Federation's history; the Tomed Incident, the Betreka Nebula Incident, and the fight to liberate Betazed from the Dominion, among others. That well-known but as-yet-unexplored historical event? Vaughn will probably have been involved. Some readers certainly feel this trope got over-used with Vaughn.
- In Time Cat the protagonist, Jason, travels through time via magic and ends up being a part of many historical events and meeting and influencing various famous figures from the past.
- In Uller Uprising, the heroes get much-needed information from a porn novel whose author is a stickler for historical detail mixed in with the pornography. The main character of the novel is a very HOT Gump.
"The heroine is a sort of super-Mata-Hari, who is, alternately and sometimes simultaneously, in the pay of the Nazis, the Soviets, the Vatican, Chiang Kai-Shek, the Japanese Emperor, and the Jewish International Bankers, and she sleeps with everybody but Joe Stalin and Mao Tse-tung, and of course, she is in on every step of the A-bomb project. She even manages to stow away on the Enola Gay, with the help of a general she's spent fifty incandescent pages seducing."
- In the Jin Yong novel The Deer And The Cauldron, Wei Xiaobao blunders his way into several historical events, including the signing of the first equal treaty between China and a foreign power and being the first to step foot on an island that later fell into dispute between China and Japan.
- The point of half the novel Hundraåringen som klev ut genom fönstret och försvann (The Hundred-year-old who stepped out through the window and disappeared), which devotes every other chapter to the long and exciting life of its protagonist.
- The Amelia Peabody novels center around a family of Egyptologists working in Egypt in the 1880's-1920's (so far). Since they have to make discoveries periodically, the author has them make all the discoveries of Flinders Petrie, a real-life Egyptologist who worked in the same era. In order to avoid awkwardness due to actually meeting him, the author gave the main character's husband an uncontrollable dislike of him.
- Andre-Louis Moreau, the protagonist of Scaramouche, is shown as one of the driving forces behind the French Revolution.
- In The Pillars of the Earth two main characters are present at the assassination of Thomas Becket. William was one of the assassins, and it was Philip's idea to make a saint of him.
- In Tom Holt's Flying Dutch, the immortal alchemist Montalban turns out to secretly be responsible for pretty much all of modern science and technology—all of which he developed in an attempt to cure the horrific stench that was an unfortunate side-effect of his immortality potion.
Live Action TV
- The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Befriending T.E. Lawrence and helping him take Jerusalem, drinking with Picasso, losing his virginity to Mata Hari, inspiring the Red Baron to paint his plane red, killing Dracula himself, and hunting Al Capone is just some of the less extreme contrivances in young Henry Jones Junior's life. If he or she's famous in the 20th century, Indy has probably met, befriended, fought, fallen in love with, killed or slept with that person.
- The book series added a bit more. For example, Indy was discussing the origins and bases of the character of Sherlock Holmes with Arthur Conan Doyle shortly before returning to the United States. Aboard the Titanic.
- And in a reversal, Jenny Sparks from The Authority is said to have known Indiana Jones and convinced an Austrian painter named Adolf to take up politics.
- Somewhat justified there, in that Jenny is the "spirit of the 20th century" — being Been There Shaped History is part of the job description.
- In Just Shoot Me!, Nina Van Horn's A&E Biography had her responsible for busting Studio 54, breaking up the Eagles, and a historic answer to Wheel of Fortune, among other things.
- Like Forrest Gump, the Cigarette Smoking Man from The X-Files has been responsible for the JFK assassination, rigged the Oscars, sabotaged the Soviet Union's goalie to allow for the US comeback in the 1980 Olympics, arranged a change of venue for the officers involved in the Rodney King beating, and has vowed that the Buffalo Bills will never win a Super Bowl and has taken steps to make that happen.
- Lampshaded when CSM delivers a long, cynical speech that begins with "Life is like a box of chocolates..."
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: A flashback in the Anya-centric "Selfless" episode shows the ex-vengeance demon and her friend Halfrek dining in a room full of massacred victims in St. Petersburg in the year 1905. Halfrek praises her for granting a wish which seemingly sparked the Russian Revolution.
Halfrek: There’s a revolution going on outside that you are somewhat responsible for. Aren’t you the teeniest bit interested?
Anyanka: Well, what is there to be interested in? The worked will overthrow absolutism and lead the proletariat to a victorious revolution, resulting in socio-economic paradise on Earth. It’s common sense, really.
- Anya's past Marxism is a comical allusion to her later Patriotic Fervor which sees her fall deeply in love with capitalism.
- The Darla-Angel-Drusilla-Spike family have been linked to various events, but not necessarily causing them. From the Boxer Rebellion to Angel hanging out with Elvis and The Rat Pack in Vegas.
- In "School Hard" one of the random vampires claimed to have been at the Crucifixion. Spike was highly skeptical of that, for good reason; the Sun was only dark for 3 hours and it was noon when the darkness started.
Spike: If every vampire who said he was at the Crucifixion was actually there, it would've been like Woodstock. I was at Woodstock; that was a weird gig. Fed off a flower person and spent the next six hours watching my hand move.
- Doctor Who: The Doctor, the Doctor, the Doctor. So far, not counting offhand references, which would fill a page all on their own, he's:
- Inspired Shakespeare;
- Started the Great Fire of London;
- Accidentally inspired Nero to start the Fire of Rome:
- Been responsible for a spaceship crashing into Earth and killing off the dinosaurs;
- Made Mt. Vesuvius explode;
- and even ensured that the "spark" that kicked off the development of life would take place.
- He claims he was the reason Jesus was born in a manger: The Doctor took the last room at the inn.
- And, going with the theme of Watergate being mentioned, the Doctor, very clearly, tells Nixon to keep his tape on constantly, so he never forgets anything. Now, who knows what ACTUALLY happened in those missing 18 minutes?
- In fact, if it happened at all, it was probably the Doctor.
- And it's not just him; his companions get in on the act, too. Martha was seen inspiring some Shakespearean poetry too, and Amy specifically covered Vincent Van Gogh's garden in sunflowers to trigger the creation of a rather famous painting.
- Not to mention the side character who killed Jack the Ripper. Side character. And she's the in-universe inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, too.
- In a Doctor Who Expanded Universe comic, Rory saves the life of Ian Fleming, inspiring the creation of James Bond.
- An episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine takes a slightly different track. During an episode where much of the main cast was transported to the time period of the original series, they were responsible for many off-screen events which took place during "The Trouble With Tribbles" episode. Thus, it is an example of DS9 playing this to another fictional series.
- Particularly notable because the technology used to insert Forrest Gump in historical footage is exactly the one used to create this episode. The very episode was inspired by a technician showing off some quick'n'dirty insertion in an original Star Trek episode. (It helped that the TOS masters were surprisingly well preserved.)
- Immortals in Highlander:The Series live for centuries, so they have plenty of opportunity to mix with some pivotal events. Given their potential lifespan, if a character doesn't actively seek out an historic event, it's likely that one will just happen while they're around.
- Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and to a greater extent Xena: Warrior Princess each had the titular characters delving into full-on Gumpdom.
- Hercules embedded Excalibur itself in stone, found himself caught up in the Norse gods' Ragnarok, invented the Olympics (with Salmoneus providing the name), saved King Midas from his gold curse and was present at the destruction of Atlantis. Iolaus, meanwhile, was implied to be one of the Three Wise Men and helped claim the Golden Fleece.
- The Golden fleece makes sense seeing as Hercules was one of the Argonauts.
- Xena was responsible for Lucifer's fall from grace. She also gave a donkey to a certain pregnant couple on their way to Nazareth. By way of Greece. She took the Sword out of the Stone and then put it back in. She aided Boadicea's army and was the pirate captain that captured Gaius Julius Caesar. Yes. Xena is the master chef of the Anachronism Stew. She puts a bit of herself into each delicious bowl.
- Drew Carey's mother in The Drew Carey Show was apparently responsible for a number of famous things, including inventing the term "Rock and Roll". Drew refers to her as "Florence Gump".
- Brazilian miniseries Copas de Mel had the titular character and her husband helping Brazil conquer most of its FIFA World Cups.
- Vorenus and Pullo on Rome have been described as the Forrest Gumps (Sylvanus Gumpae) of Ancient Rome. They are the direct cause of, or at least heavily involved in, several key events during the late republican years through the rise of Augustus. A few examples include: Pullo actually fathering Caesarion (Caesar's son by Cleopatra), the results of one of Pullo's barfights leading to Caesar crossing the Rubicon, saving Octavius from captivity, finding Cleopatra, Vorenus helping Marc Antony committ suicide, Vorenus' departure from the senate house making it possible for Brutus and company to murder Caesar, Pullo killing Cicero... And that's just a few examples.
- Lampshaded in that one of the aforementioned episodes is even called "How Titus Pullo Brought Down the Republic."
- In another they have a chance to capture Pompey after the Battle of Pharsalus but let him go. Caesar is not amused but concludes they must have "powerful gods on their side" considering how much unlikely shit they've gone through and decides not to punish them.
- Quantum Leap often had Sam Beckett being responsible for a great many things while in the guise of various people. Creator Donald Bellisario referred to these as "kisses with history," giving Sam a chance to slyly affect the world more than just what the main plot required. Among the many things that Sam is responsible for are teaching The Twist to Chubby Checker, performing the Heimlich Maneuver on Dr. Heimlich, giving a young Stephen King ideas for some scary stories, encouraging Buddy Holly to continue with music (even helping him write "Peggy Sue" by trying to catch a pig), and teaching the Moon Walk to a young Michael Jackson.
- By the last season, these became less subtle. Sam leapt into Marilyn Monroe's personal bodyguard (keeping her alive long enough to make The Misfits), Lee Harvey Oswald (where it turns out that Jackie Kennedy died in the original history) and Elvis Presley (having to ensure the King of Rock and Roll would get his big break).
- In the flashbacks of LOST's fifth season finale, the infamous Jacob appears repeatedly in other peoples' flashbacks, always being responsible for something important in those characters' lives: he buys Kate the lunchbox she uses for her time capsule, gives Sawyer a pen with which to write his letter to the real Sawyer, preventing Sayid from being hit by the car that kills Nadia, saying hello to Sun and Jin at their wedding, asking Ilana for help with an unspecified task, speaking to—and possibly reviving—Locke after he is thrown out a window, giving Jack a candy bar after his first surgery, and convincing Hurley to return to the island.
- In a simply "stumbling through history" case, Nikki and Paulo's episode shows them discovering the Beechcraft and the Pearl station before the other castaways, and seeing major events of the show (the plane crash, the "live together, die alone" speech, and in a deleted scene, the discharge).
- A episode of Blossom spoofed the trope namer in a dream sequence. Blossom had this role and was responsible for inadvertently giving Michael Jackson the inspiration for the moonwalk. The parody is spoiled because the writers didn't do their research — they meet after the Pepsi commercial shoot which left him injured, which was in 1984. He first performed the moonwalk the previous year.
- In an episode of Red Dwarf, Lister ends up playing a part in the JFK assassination, thanks to time travel abuse. (He doesn't actually pull the trigger, he merely convinces JFK to go back in time and assassinate himself.)
- Dr. Helen Magnus from Sanctuary is 160 years old, has lived through the entire 20th century (give or take a few decades in Victorian London), and has had various run-ins with various historical figures including most U.S. Presidents and world leaders. The last time she was shipwrecked was "April, 1912." The opening theme has shown photographs of her with Albert Einstein, Amelia Earhart and Gandhi. She and a couple of school chums were directly responsible for the success of the D-Day invasion at Normandy - and the school chums in question were Nikola Tesla and James Watson (Sherlock Holmes himself). Oh, and her fiance was Jack the Ripper.
Helen: There is such a thing as before my time!
Will: *skeptical look* Really?
Helen: Cheeky monkey!
- According to Jack of All Trades, there was no Louisiana Purchase. Napoleon lost all the territory in a card game with the Daring Dragoon.
- Also, the Daring Dragoon prevented Napoleon from using a certain statue he planned to give to the US as a Trojan Horse, while distracting the French with a friendly game of American football... which wasn't invented until over 80 years later.
- This didn't prevent Jack from claiming that it was an American tradition to play football during Thanksgiving. Given that there were no TVs then, he couldn't very well say "watch football", but still...
- In Once Upon a Time, Rumpelstiltskin is present throughout most of the different fairy tales, even replacing the role of the Fairy Godmother in "Cinderella" and the Beast in "Beauty and the Beast".
- According to the Russian mini-series Wolf Messing: Seeing through time, the Real Life psychic Wolf Messing was responsible for the peaceful resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis. When Khrushchev asked Messing if there will be a war as the result of this, Messing explains that he doesn't see one... as long as Khrushchev backs down and takes the missiles out of Cuba. When indignant Khrushchev claims that the great Soviet Union cannot back down, Messing assures him that the Americans will reciprocate by removing their missiles from Turkey.
- Additionally, Messing supposedly accurately predicted the month and the year of the Soviet victory at Stalingrad and of the surrender of Germany. He also has a vision of Stalin's younger son's death in a plane crash. However, Stalin only chooses to save his son, deciding to test the prediction. When Messing finds out about the plane crash, he has a Heroic BSOD.
- Sophia Petrillo from The Golden Girls is a case combined with Unreliable Narrator, thanks to a combination of a slight stroke, general old lady nuttiness, and a tendency to stretch the truth in her stories if she's trying to make a point. One should take her stories with a grain of salt. However, she claims to have had romantic trysts with Pablo Picasso, Sigmund Freud, and Winston Churchill, opened a pizzeria with the woman who would later become Mama Celeste, was friends with Golda Meir, and she and Sal had a flat tire at the same building as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre (although in a later episode she claimed "I was at the movies that day. All day.")
Music
- In Australian singer-songwriter Iain Campbell-Smith's song, Century Girl, the narrator (possibly the "Spirit of the 20th Century", see Jenny Sparks above) describes his life of having participated in every important moment of the 20th century, from fighting in Gallipoli to being a hippie. My ass got burned when Saigon fell, re-education was another kind of hell, uh huh!
- The music video of Wir sind Wir. The photographer is there during the reconstruction post WW 2, was at a famous soccer game, and the fall of the Berlin wall (he even took pictures of it going up).
- Sympathy For The Devil includes the narrator being involved, or at least present, in the life and death of Jesus, the Russian revolution, the Blitzkrieg, the Hundred Years War, and the assassination of both John and Robert Kennedy.
Newspaper Comics
- Doonesbury's Uncle Duke. Lampshaded in a '90s strip in which his son (after learning about the time in the '80s when he was simultaneously dealing junk bonds with Michael Milken, skimming HUD money, and working for John Gotti) refers to him as "Forrest Gump's Evil Twin."
Tabletop RPG
- In Vampire The Masquerade, vampires are usually behind the scenes in most of the biggest scenes in recorded history, right down to the first of all vampires being Cain(e)'s curse after slaying Abel. Although sometimes it is hard to tell what's truth and what's a lie; for instance, no fewer than three of the clans proudly claim to have Rasputin among their numbers.
- The clanbooks usually implied the Storyteller was free to decide which, if any, claims were actually true.
- It gets even better when you add the other Old World of Darkness games into the mix and it's revealed that among the Cherusci of Arminius were not only Brujah vampires but also Get of Fenris werewolves, Verbena mages and probably a half dozen other supernatural creatures - that never met each other. In more modern times, you can have a mayor in any given city that is ghouled by the vampires, bribed by the werewolf Big Bad Pentex, mindcontrolled by the Technocracy and puppeteered by the wraiths...
- A running joke in our gaming group was that only four humans have nothing to do with the myriad supernaturals (and their human hangers on) in the oWoD, and three of them are Elvis.
- It was Lucifer, of all people, who single-handedly started the Scientific Revolution.
- A review of Vampire The Dark Ages criticized it for creating the impression that, in the World of Darkness, humans had almost no part in human history.
- The New World of Darkness has taken a few steps away from this, for the most part. For the most part. Requiem for Rome implies that Rome's vampires were pulling a lot of strings during the Roman Empire's heights. And the first one was Remus.
- Promethean: The Created hints that a Promethean was "the Person from Porlock" who prevented Coleridge from finishing "Kubla Khan", and that a Qashmallim inspired it in the first place.
- All in all, the Supernatural generally moves along with human developments rather then setting them off...which makes a good deal of sense when you think about it, there are more mortals then Supernaturals, and most Supers are too busy handling their own stuff to really mess around with human society too much. Throw in the Masquerade, Veil, and the general "Do NOT let the normals know what's REALLY going on" approach the varying splats take, minor influence and the occasional nudge is about all the Supernatural does to influence the wider world...Of course, there are exceptions, such as Tunguska being caused by SOMETHING involving the Quasmalilim, and Dracula having been a very powerful Kindred, but these are exceptions rather then the general rule of thumb.
- Time and Temp lets the time-traveling PCs do this if they do a good enough job.
- Witch Girls Adventures has a lot of it. Most gods, mythical heroes, legendary monsters and the like are somewhat distorted accounts of witches and otherkin; witches were major players in the Underground Railroad and were responsible for starting the American civil war; open Witch and Otherkin influence was pivotal in the flourishing of science and the arts in the late 19th and early 20th century and Allied victory in World War II — but was later erased from records and memory by the witches; the Flower Power movement was the result of a large-scale spell cast by the counselor and several students at Coventry school for girls... it goes on like this for a bit.
- Warhammer 40 K: The (not yet) God Emperor of Mankind was born some 8,000 years BC, and has secretly (or not so secretly) influenced human history since.
Video Games
Web Original
- In the SPECWEAPS story series, a lot of events throughout history and the modern day have apparently been caused by weaponization of and warfare between Eldritch Abominations. Specifically, the originals.
- The collective story of the AH.com Eternals strays into this. The immortal named Gregorios has so far served as an ambassador for the Emperor Anastasius, been a trader on the Silk Road, lived as a farmer (and charged as a witch) in Anglo-Saxon England, been "executed" by the Sassanids, fought in the Battle of Septimania, inspired the writing of Beowulf, worked as a merchant in Tang China, lived as a Yakut nomad, served in the Byzantine navy, defended Paris against a Viking invasion, circumnavigated medieval Ireland, fought in the Welsh armies against the invading Anglo-Saxons, went with Leif Ericsson to discover Vinland, became a tribal chief in the Miqmaq nation, served as an interpreter in the Crusader States, became Balian of Ibelin, was sold as a slave after the Venetians sacked Constantinople, served as interpreter and guide for Marco Polo, inspired the image of The Grim Reaper, fathered the Romanov dynasty, fought at the final Fall Of Constantinople, sailed with Christopher Columbus to the New World, got painted into "The Last Judgement Day," fought with the Catholic League during the French Wars of Religion, took part in the first production of Romeo and Juliet, became one of the founding members of the Plymouth Colony, served as a professor or languages at Harvard, rode circuit as a doctor in colonial Virginia, dumped tea at the Boston Tea Party, and fought in both the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.]] And he's only told his story up to 1827.
- The "Sarkozy Was There" meme does this to French President Nicholas Sarkozy. This was done in reaction to having falsely claimed a photo of him taking a hammer to the Berlin Wall was taken on the day that it fell, when it was actually taken a full week later.
- Although the write-ups usually try to hint rather than state things outright (it's more fun that way), several SCPs are implied to have been involved with or caused various historical events, including what we thought was the atomic bomb.
- In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic My Little Mission: Sneaking is Magic, among other things, Snake's visit to Equestria is why he starts off Metal Gear Solid 2 with a tranq pistol.
Web Comics
- In The comic The Dreamer, Bea has dreams that she is in the American Revolution, and meets some very important people along the way.
- Gordon Frohman in Concerned.
- In ''Darwin Carmichael Is Going to Hell', Skittles the Manticore, being several thousand years old, has gotten around a bit. He suggests he was responsible for Michaelangelo's art and Oscar Wilde's Wit, both of whom took credit for themselves. There is also a muse, who is seen repeating some of the art she has inspired in others, including the Mona Lisa.
- In Homestuck, Vriska Serket is this... or so she thinks. Due to how fate works in the Skaiaverse, she is just doing things that had to happen anyway, but is inserting herself to make herself more important.
- The time-travel-humor webcomic Times Like This uses this trope on a regular basis. A sampling of some "Gumpifications" (as the author calls them):
Western Animation
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