History Main / BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy

** The "person from Porlock" who stopped Coleridge from finishing ''Kubla Khan'' was actually a [[TabletopGame/PrometheanTheCreated Promethean]] who sensed Coleridge was inspired by a ''qashmallim'' and felt it necessary to disrupt its plans. A Promethean also caused TheTunguskaEvent by trying to summon one of said ''qashmallim'', despite [[TabletopGame/HunterTheVigil the Knights of St. George's]] best efforts to stop him.

** Elliot Ness was a member of the taskforce that Cade led in destroying [[Literature/TheShadowOverInnsmouth Innsmouth]].

* In Creator/DanielHandler's ''Literature/ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents'', the narrator and his comrades imply that V.F.D. dates back to UsefulNotes/AncientGreece, that Martin Luther King, Creator/EdithWharton, and Thomas Malthus were involved with it — although Malthus was on the evil side of the schism — and that Shakespeare may be alive. However, these may be the result of revisionism in accordance with V.F.D.'s own views.

* In ''LightNovel/TheMasterOfRagnarokAndBlesserOfEinherjar'', it is outright stated that protagonist Yuuto Suou is the likely source of Norse mythology, as the world Yggdrasil is supposedly around 1500 B.C., Yuuto's name translates to Surtr in Norse, and several of his more high-profile battles match Norse oral lore quite well...
* ''LightNovel/NyarukoCrawlingWithLove'' reveals that the various {{Eldritch Abomination}}s of the Franchise/CthulhuMythos were actually members of alien species who visited Earth incognito. One Nyarlathotepian befriended Creator/HPLovecraft and told him stories about these beings, which inspired Lovecraft to create the Mythos.

* In ''Literature/SacreBleu'' Creator/VincentVanGogh doesn't commit suicide; he's murdered by a millennia old shaman who works with the Muse of Painting. Other painters involved, past and present, with the duo are Creator/HenriDeToulouseLautrec, Camille Pissarro, Creator/ClaudeMonet, [[Art/LeDejeunerSurLHerbe Édouard Manet]], Pierre-August Renoir, Creator/MichelangeloBuonarroti, Georges Seurat and Joseph Turner. The shaman, named The Colorman, is hinted to be the inspiration for [[Literature/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame Quasimodo]]. Later a drunken Lautrec gives his version of things to an equally drunken Creator/OscarWilde and it becomes the seed from which ''Literature/ThePictureOfDorianGray'' grows.

** In a flashback in ''[[Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventureStoneOcean Stone Ocean]]'', DIO and Pucci theorize that UsefulNotes/LeonardoDaVinci was a [[FightingSpirit Stand]] User.

** Jack accidentally kills [[spoiler:Nemo]], [[spoiler:Creator/JulesVerne]] is running ThePlan, [[spoiler:Jamie Barrie]] is Peter Pan's greatest enemy after Captain Hook, also known as [[spoiler:Mordred, Mordred and Merlin are brothers, their father was Odysseus, who was six generations removed from Deucalion son of Prometheus, their mother was Calypso, Arthur is the son of Merlin and married to a descendant of the Jesus (the HolyGrail), an alternate version of Charles burned down the Library at Alexandria, Mark Twain had an agent (Hank Morgan) at the tournament where Arthur became the High King and Hank's banner was a]] Cubs pennant, which apparently used to mean Triumph over Adversity, but now better represents Impossible Quests and Lost Causes, [[spoiler:Jack is the Jack of Jack and the Beanstalk, the Pandora are a group of three witches, Mordred was the good guy until the fire of Alexandria and Merlin was the bad guy, "Aragorn" is a corruption of "Argo", Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini were rogue Caretakers, Houdini had a pair of wardrobes that formed a passage between them and those were the inspiration for the wardrobe into Narnia, the Red Dragon ship was originally the Argo, the Yellow Dragon is the Nautilus, Pythagoras built Archimedes, a clockwork owl, Alexander the Great was descendant of the Argonauts, Verne was an apprentice of Twain, Caliburn (better known now as Excalibur) was the sword of Aeneas (a hero of UsefulNotes/TheTrojanWar and one of the possible ancestors of the guy who founded London)]], etc. These books are ''full'' of nothing but plot and this trope. Any genius in history was a Caretaker. [[spoiler:Oh, and Da Vinci wasn't a genius, he was just a plagiarist. All of his sketches and paintings were originally by Bacon. Mona Lisa was smiling because Bacon was doing something rather obscene while he painted her.]]

** A ''Magazine/{{Dragon}}'' article on using the Historic Sourcebooks to set a ''Red Death'' game prior to the 19th century was all over this. Heroic qabalists included Plotinus of Alexandra, Hypatia, Galileo, possibly UsefulNotes/LeonardoDaVinci, and Queen Christina of Sweden, with at least Hypatia and Christina having magic abilities. Monsters included doppelgangers in the Paetorian Guard (including Cassius Chaerea), Ganelon from ''Literature/TheSongOfRoland'' who is actually a pit fiend, and Cardinal Richlieu who is actually a lich. Creator/WilliamShakespeare gained his inspiration by being fey-touched and Nostradamus was empowered by the Red Death.

* ''Film/BacktotheFuture'' suggests Chuck Berry invented rock and roll through a secondhand account from a time traveller from the future.

* In ''Literature/SacreBleu'' Creator/VincentVanGogh doesn't commit suicide; he's murdered by a millennia old shaman who works with the Muse of Painting. Other painters involved, past and present, with the duo are Creator/HenriDeToulouseLautrec, Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, Pierre-August Renoir, Creator/MichelangeloBuonarroti, Georges Seurat and Joseph Turner. The shaman, named The Colorman, is hinted to be the inspiration for [[Literature/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame Quasimodo]]. Later a drunken Lautrec gives his version of things to an equally drunken Creator/OscarWilde and it becomes the seed from which ''Literature/ThePictureOfDorianGray'' grows.

** His earlier book, ''Literature/AngelsAndDemons'', includes similar fictional insights into the lives of Galileo and Bernini.

* Scholastic's ''Literature/The39Clues'' claims that every single influential person in the world is a member of the AncientConspiracy family, the Cahills. And that they're all part of four hou - er, ''branches'' reminiscent of Literature/HarryPotter. Well, not ''every single'' influential person in the world. Anyone born before the 16th century is out, for starters, and while the Cahills try to get people to marry into the family, it doesn't always work; Rembrandt is a canonical example.

->''"Historians still argue as to whether Shakespeare was gay, a front for the Earl of Oxford and/or Sir Francis Bacon, or a cyborg from the future sent back in time to found Western civilization, thereby hastening the creation of the [=McRib=] sandwich."''

* In ''Ring Shout'' by P. Djeli Clark, the Klan was born from an order of white supremacist wizards, and ''Film/TheBirthOfANation1915'' was not just racist propaganda, but a spell that not only stoked racism higher (in RealLife, the film is indeed credited with a revival in KKK membership), but also turned most Klan members--including people who joined afterwards--into {{Eldritch Abomination}}s. The main character and her friends are part of a secret group that fights these creatures. [[spoiler: The AndTheAdventureContinues ending has Maryse's otherworldly patrons telling her about a writer in Providence, RI touched by the same beings, obviously meant to be H.P. Lovecraft.]]

** ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreed'': Takes place during the Crusades when the Templars were working openly, so naturally Robert de Sable was a Templar.

* ''Fanfic/NihonversePocketville'' has Kyuubi Emiko, an Otherworlder hailing from Great Britain who is a folklorist figure for the [[{{Wutai}} Japanese-like]] queendom of Onmyou. They reveal that Emiko was in fact [[UsefulNotes/ElizabethII Queen Elizabeth II]] herself. Apparently the Queen of England is UsefulNotes/{{Shinto}}, a mage, and a [[AsianFoxSpirit Kitsune]]…

* ''WesternAnimaion/AgentElvis'': As its teaser shows, the series will follow Music/ElvisPresley as he moonlights as a government secret agent.

*** Gilgamesh has an Ancient Indian spaceship in ''LightNovel/FateZero''.

** ''LightNovel/FateApocrypha'': Subverted with Shakespeare. Despite being summoned as a Caster, in life he was exactly what history recorded him as: An excellent writer, but nothing more. He had no knowledge of magic or connection to that world. He is famous enough that he still qualifies as a Heroic Spirit, and the Grail gave him a large power boost when he was summoned. He is by far the weakest Servant and spends most of the War recording the events as a story, but he is at least theoretically capable of fighting another Servant.

** It's similarly implied one of the [[{{Reincarnation}} past lives]] of the ayakashi medium was the shaman [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyo_(queen) Toyo/Iyo]] or her mother [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himiko Himiko]]. The current ayakashi medium Suzu is partially an {{Expy}} of the heroine of Creator/KentaroYabuki's first manga, ''Yamato Gensouki'', who is [[HistoricalDomainCharacter a fictional version of Iyo]].

* ''Film/AssassinsCreed2016'': The main historical figure behind the Spanish Inquisition, Tomás de Torquemada, also happens to be a Templar seeking to eradicate Assassins in Spain and trying to get his hands on an Apple of Eden.

** Garaku Utagawa is an ayakashi created from the effort "a famous painter" painter put into his brush. That painter is very heavily implied to be [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utagawa_Kuniyoshi Kuniyoshi Utagawa]]. Kuniyoshi often painted and made wood-prints of cats, which is why Garaku loves cats so much.

The "revelation" that a famous historical figure actually had a secret life far more fantastic (figuratively or literally) and/or magical than history records. A historical {{retcon}}, if you will. Artists and writers tend to be the most common examples, followed by American Presidents. (At times, per the ''Film/MenInBlackII'' example below, a ''current'' figure also can be a subject of this trope, as can ''groups'', per the ''Film/NationalTreasure'' and ''Film/{{Transformers}}'' examples below.)

* Chapter 36 of the ''VideoGame/Persona4'' fanfic ''[[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6813246/1/Persona_4_Welcome_to_Tokyo_Act_II_End Welcome to Tokyo]]'' implies that UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat, UsefulNotes/JuliusCaesar, UsefulNotes/OdaNobunaga, UsefulNotes/JoanOfArc, and UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy may have been Wild Cards, much like the main characters of the Persona games.