Historical Figures in Archival Media

George W. Bush influences Ewan McGregor to join the Jedi.

Works that use footage or photographs of historical figures or celebrities of them so that they appear as themselves. For example, imagine you are making something that takes place somewhere in The '80s and you want a historical figure like Ronald Reagan to appear in it as a character (or not), but you decide that you don't want an actor to play as him, you instead decide to use archival footage of one of his speeches so he appears as himself. Please keep in mind that this only refers to historical figures or celebrities appearing as actual footage or photography of themselves, not them appearing in scenes that replicates said footage/photos where an actor is clearly playing as them, such as The Baader Meinhof Complex and Watchmen. When appearing in video footage, historical figures will mostly appear as a character.

In fiction, a figure who appears in archival media will usually appear as a minor character, or be reduced to a background appearance. For example: by appearing on a television screen as footage or on a newspaper article with a photograph of them in it. While rare, it's possible for a figure to have a major role in the plot despite only appearing as archival media. Can be part of a "Mister Sandman" Sequence.

Related to As Himself and Not Quite Starring. Compare with Dropped-in Speech Clip. Subtrope to Stock Footage.

Note: No audio or documentary examples, please.

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Examples:

Films — Animation

• Lilo & Stitch: When Lilo tries to make Stitch become a model citizen by making him be like Elvis Presley, she happens to own real photograph of Presley on it.
• Wizards has the wicked wizard Blackwolf project old Nazi propaganda films onto clouds to give his armies heart for battle (they normally chicken out). This includes Adolf Hitler giving an impassioned speech to his armies. It doesn't matter that none of the mooks speak German; they take courage from the fervency of the Nazi troops and their wehrmacht.

Films — Live-Action

• Of course, documentaries make extensive use of that. Same for period pieces where it uses photographs or a short clip in the opening scene helps to anchor down the exact time and place. (See the numerous British World War II dramas that invariably begin with a speech by Winston Churchill or pieces that take place in The '60s America that start with a speech by Martin Luther King Jr.). A special genre, the historical docudrama, where the plot follows a select few persons navigate the time period is almost built around this.
• In Alien Nation, archival footage of a Ronald Reagan speech is shown on a TV and recontextualized as a declaration allowing the aliens who crash-landed on Earth to live in the United States.
• All the President's Men: A lot of politicians and reporters appear as themselves in archival footage, including President and Mrs. Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Ron Ziegler, Walter Cronkite, etc.
• The Big Lebowski opens with footage of George H. W. Bush's speech on Iraqi aggression against Kuwait in the lead-up to the Gulf War, in which he says "This will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait", a sentiment echoed by the Dude throughout the movie ("this aggression will not stand").
• The Atrocity Montage at the start of Black Widow (2021) depicts multiple real-world persons meeting with General Dreykov.
• Contact famously used Bill Clinton's speech on microbe fossils purportedly found on Martian rock to depict the President talking about the discovery of the Vega message. The producers never asked for Clinton's permission for the footage.
• Da 5 Bloods uses archival footage of historical events and speeches and ends the film with a montage of real people who weren't previously involved in the plot.
• A Dangerous Life uses the footage of Senator Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr.'s final interview before he stepped out of the plane, leading to his assassination.
• Forrest Gump
  • The celebrities and presidents Forrest meet ^note (with the exception of Dick Cavett, who plays himself) all appear as footage of them.
    • Elvis Presley, however, is played by an actor in the scene where a young Forrest teaches him the hip-shaking dance move he would use, and then appears afterwards as himself in footage of his performance of "Hound Dog" on The Ed Sullivan Show.
  • After Forrest meets President Kennedy, a photograph of Marilyn Monroe can be seen when Forrest is inside the bathroom after drinking 15 bottles of Dr. Pepper at the White House.
• In Good Night, and Good Luck., all of the appearances of Senator Joseph McCarthy throughout the film were done through archival footage of his television interviews. Ironically, one of the big complaints critics had of the film was that the "actor" playing McCarthy was overacting his role as the man who became the symbol of the Red Scare.
• The Men Who Stare at Goats features the lead character being inspired to go to Iraq to cover the war after watching George W. Bush's speech declaring war on terrorism.
• The 1991 film, JFK, uses footage and photographs taken from the John F. Kennedy assassination.
• Archival footage of Lyndon Johnson appears in Nixon, a 1995 biopic directed by Oliver Stone, released after Richard Nixon's death.
• Official Secrets shows Katharine Gun, as played by Keira Knightley, watching news footage from 2003 about the buildup to the Iraq War, including appearances by then-US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Additionally, the conclusion of the film briefly shows news footage of the real-life Katharine Gun (who looks nothing like Knightley) commenting to reporters about her acquittal.
• Pacific Rim: Though mostly set 20 Minutes into the Future, the film's opening depicts the very first Kaiju attack occurring in 2013 complete with a montage of news media coverage of the event, including Stock Footage of U.S. President Barack Obama addressing the nation.
• The Right Stuff uses archival footage of John F. Kennedy congratulating Alan Shepard and his wife (played by Scott Glenn and Kathy Baker, respectively) after Shepard completes his successful mission.
• Ted: During the montage of Ted becoming a celebrity after coming to life in the 1980s, there's a scene of him appearing as a guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. The footage of Carson was taken from a 1983 episode, with Ted inserted over the actual guest, Emmanuel Lewis.
• The prologue to Transformers: Dark of the Moon, focusing on the real purpose of the Apollo 11 mission, naturally uses historical footage of various public figures (Walter Cronkite, Richard Nixon, etc.), with John F. Kennedy being portrayed through a combination of archive footage and actor Brett Stimely.
• The Woody Allen film Zelig is a Mockumentary consisting primarily of the title character interacting with various historic events, in all cases inserting him into archival footage.

Live-Action TV

• Arrested Development: Then-president Donald Trump appears on a television when Lucille watches his infamous “We need to build a wall” speech, when she comments that she came up with the idea first.
• A plot point in Bye Bye Birdie is an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. The musical is set in 1958, the stage show premiered in 1960 and the first movie came in 1963, all of which are well within the run of The Ed Sullivan Show, and Ed Sullivan appears as himself in the movie. When the TV remake came along in 1995 Sullivan had been dead for decades, so the role was reduced to a bit of stock footage on screens and Sullivan no longer travels to Sweet Apple, Ohio himself; the Conrad Birdie/Kim MacAfee segment will be filmed by a separate film crew and the footage broadcast to New York City.
• Happy!: The episode "Arlo and Marie" has Orcus revealing that he has manipulated many historical figures, which also has a montage showing the Wishees photoshopped into pictures with JFK, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, and others.
• Done frequently in JAG including with footage of then-president Clinton, using a clip where he's jogging; we're to believe main character Harm is in the security detail jogging along with him. JAG also used a lot of clips of real military maneuvers and equipment, with amusingly grainy image quality that stands out from the rest of the episode.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: On the episode "2020: A Year In Review," Rudy Giuliani appears in archive footage of his Four Seasons Total Landscaping speech, with Frank added in the background. The episode reveals that Frank is his hairdresser and is responsible for his hair dye running. In other scenes, he appears as a Fake Shemp.
• Micro Men: As the home computer market turns sour, Alan Sugar appears by way of an archived interview.
• Red Dwarf: "Timeslides" had Adolf Hitler appear in archive footage, which Lister is inserted into. This leads to a humorous opening with "Tonight's Special Guest Star: Adolf Hitler As Himself”.
• The Umbrella Academy:
  • Season 2 takes place in 1960s Dallas, Texas around the time of the JFK assassination, which is the center topic of the season. Despite this, Kennedy himself doesn't make physical appearances outside of archive footage taken of him from that day, not even in the episode "743", which takes place on the day of his assassination.
    • JFK also appears as archive footage in the season 1 episode "Number Five" in a throwaway moment where Five explains how he got back to the present day.
  • Jacqueline Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson both appear in the series as archival footage as well. The former appears only in footage with JFK while footage of the latter appears on a television screen after JFK dies.
• Witchblade: Sara spends one season two episode having a long chat with a man seated such that his face is hidden by the shadows. At the end of the episode, he leans forward to reveal the face of John F. Kennedy, whose face has been unconvincingly superimposed over the actor from news footage.

Video Games

• Call of Duty: Black Ops
  • The ending of the game reveals that Alex Mason was present in the background of numerous photos and clips taken during the assassination of John F. Kennedy, heavily implied to have been under the influence of the numbers brainwashing program and also involved in his death. JFK himself, in contrast to his earlier depiction in the level "U.S.D.D." (complete with a voice actor and a full character model), is the actual JFK as depicted in the archival footage of the time.
  • Archive footage of Lyndon Johnson appears in the game, which takes place during The Vietnam War. Members of his cabinet appear in an in-game cutscene, though the scene takes place back when Kennedy was still in office.
• News footage of then-President George W. Bush giving his infamous "Mission Accomplished!" speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln can be seen playing on a television set during the start of The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes, setting the game's timeline days after the US Military's victory over Iraq in 2003.
• The opening cinematic for Command & Conquer: Generals shows brief live-action clips of prominent War on Terror figures such as George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. They otherwise don't appear (or are referenced) in-game. But it still drives home the point that the game is a Post 9/11 Terrorism Video Game.

Western Animation

• Inside Job (2021): A Freeze-Frame Bonus occurs in the form of glitched images that appear at the very beginning of each episode just after the "A Netflix Series" title card ends. Three of them that appear in the episodes "Clone Gunman", "Buzzkill", and "Inside Reagan" show edited photographs of John F. Kennedy, Buzz Aldrin, and Ronald Reagan respectively.
• Ready Jet Go! has access to NASA's archives, which allows them to use such footage. In "A Hammer and a Feather", they showed a video of David Scott dropping a hammer and a feather on the moon at the same time. Both "Earth Mission to Moon" and "One Small Step" show footage of the Apollo 11 launch, as well as Neil Armstrong's famous 'one small step' quote.
• The Simpsons: In the episode "Gone Boy", Bart watches footage of John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address after falling inside of a bunker.

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