History Main / HistoricalInJoke

* TheRoaringTwenties set ''Series/BoardwalkEmpire'' has a few. The pilot features Arnold Rothstein cheating at poker when eight years later he would be killed thanks to welching on a lost poker hand.

* ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'' had the main character shooting UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan, [[TimeyWimeyBall because, well]]: [[spoiler:In "The Best Christmas Story Never Told", he originally wanted to kill Jane Fonda because he blamed her for the war on Christmas, then he found out that she was really influenced by Donald Sutherland. Stan is prevented from killing Sutherland, but by chance runs into Martin Scorsese. He convinces Scorsese to give up drugs, which in turn causes him to lose his edge. As a result, ''Film/TaxiDriver'' is never made, so there's no star vehicle for Creator/JodieFoster, and no one for John Hinckley to become obsessed with. As a result of ''that'', Ronald Reagan is never shot, which means there was no incident to bolster public support; so [[ForWantOfANail Mondale won, and practically "handed over the country to the Commies."]] Thus, Stan Smith shoots Reagan. Also, in the same episode, Roger "invents" the genre of disco, based on a 'greatest hits of the 70's' tape Stan drops. Whew]].

* ''VisualNovel/HigurashiWhenTheyCry'' has soldiers from Hinamizawa being responsible for the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo_Bridge_Incident Marco Polo Bridge Incident]]. [[spoiler:It was the first outbreak of [[HatePlague Hinamizawa Syndrome]]]]/

* This is less a joke and more a plot point, but in ''Manga/JojosBizarreAdventurePhantomBlood'', Jack the Ripper was a vampire created by Dio Brando to take out Jonathan, who, with the help of his mentor, destroyed him using the Ripple. FridgeBrilliance kicks in where we find out why Jack the Ripper was never caught or even identified: He was destroyed by Jonathan's [[ThePowerOfTheSun Ripple attack]] before anyone even began to suspect him, and even if they did, [[NotEnoughToBury they'd never find the remaining pile of ashes]].

* A Creator/{{Dark Horse|Comics}} comic involved the Hindenburg, Literature/DocSavage, and Prof. Reinstein (the inventor) of ComicBook/CaptainAmerica's super-soldier formula.

* A quote attributed to the historical UsefulNotes/LouisXIV is, "I am the State." In fact, he said the opposite: "I depart, but the State shall always remain." In the ''Series/YoungBlades'' episode "The Girl from Upper Gaborski", [[HistoricalDomainCharacter Louis]] utters a similar quote — "I am the mighty state of France!" — while flexing shirtless in the mirror and fantasizing about how to impress women. Putting the quote in the mouth of a 15-year-old SpoiledBrat[=/=]{{Cloudcuckoolander}} — someone who's just discovered women and the fact that he has royal power — explains how the same person could say both quotes.

* The first chapter of ''VideoGame/Reverse1999'' has an especially spectacular example. Having arrived in Chicago on February 14th, 1929, Vertin and Sonetto are given the mission to prevent a hate crime against arcanists that will occur in a garage in Lincoln Park. By this point, anyone with a passing knowledge of the history of organized crime in the US or Chicago will be expecting this to be about preventing the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, [[spoiler:but the punchline is that the massacre was actually someone else's method of preventing the crime -- the victims of the massacre were the ''perpetrators'' of the crime that happened in the game world's normal history, '''not''' the victims.]]

** The first chapter of ''VideoGame/Reverse1999'' has an especially spectacular example. Having arrived in Chicago on February 14th, 1929, Vertin and Sonetto are given the mission to prevent a hate crime against arcanists that will occur in a garage in Lincoln Park. By this point, anyone with a passing knowledge of the history of organized crime in the US or Chicago will be expecting this to be about preventing the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, but the punchline is that the massacre was actually someone else's method of preventing the crime -- the victims of the massacre were the ''perpetrators'' of the crime that happened in the game world's normal history, '''not''' the victims.

* ''Film/TransformersDarkOfTheMoon'' implies that the real purpose of the Apollo 11 moon landings was to investigate Decepticon wreckage on the Moon. Also the [[UsefulNotes/{{Chernobyl}} Chernobyl disaster]] was a result of the Soviets attempt of reverse engineering Cybertronian tech.

* ''Film/BackToTheFuture'' and ''Film/BackToTheFuturePartIII'' show the "real" origin of rock-and-roll music, skateboarding, and Frisbee discs.

* In the ''Manga/InuYasha'' movie, we find out that the storm that thwarted the 1281 Mongol invasion of Japan was caused by a battle between Manga/InuYasha's father and a Chinese demon lord.

* In the ''Manga/InuYasha'' movie, we find out that the storm that thwarted the 1281 Mongol invasion of Japan was caused by a battle between Manga/InuYasha's father and a Chinese demon lord.
* In ''Manga/RurouniKenshin'', the murder of Japanese minister of the interior Okubo Toshimichi in 1878 is {{retcon}}ned to have been executed by fictional character Seta Sojiro, rather than a group of sympathizers of Takamori Saigo. They just show up and take credit for it.

* An omake in ''Manga/PsychicSquad'' reveals that it was BABEL's [[{{Tsundere}} director]] who proposed a day where "girls give presents".
%%* Half the point of ''Webcomic/HetaliaAxisPowers''.

* ''Manga/DanceInTheVampireBund'' explains the disappearance of 19th century American author Creator/AmbroseBierce by having him appear as a vampire.
* The ''Franchise/LupinIII'' feature film ''Anime/TheCastleOfCagliostro'' briefly features a scene explaining how the title nation's currency counterfeiting was responsible for the 1929 Stockmarket Crash and UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.
* As a historical fantasy, ''Manga/RedRiver1995'' has a lot. Most of it is explanations of who certain people were, or how certain things happened. For example, the [[spoiler:death of Prince Zannanza]] was caused by [[spoiler:his scheming stepmother]] and that the Art/NefertitiBust had one eye unfinished because [[spoiler:the onyx used was from an earring she gave the artist, and she didn't have the other earring for him to use]].
* In ''Anime/FlintTheTimeDetective'' many historic people and events happened because of the [[{{Mon}} Time Shifters]] who's powers were responsible or had influenced them in history.
* ''Manga/TheRoseOfVersailles'' is filled with these, both as obvious as Oscar leading the mass desertion and mutiny of a grenadier company of the French Guards to Pierre-Augustin Hulin (the historical character on which Oscar is loosely based) being one of her soldiers and, after the Guards' mutiny, her de-facto second in command.

* ''Manga/BungoStrayDogs'' is full of it, since a lot of characters and concepts are named after writers, their works and the characters they contain.

** One of the characters was supposed to be [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malinche Malinche]], but JapaneseRanguage combined with the translators not recognizing the name caused her to be called "Marinche". She's properly named in French.
** In the French version, the Heva are named "Mu", hailing from a sunken continent of the same name. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(lost_continent) Mu is a lost continent said to be something like Atlantis' counterpart in the Pacific ocean whose existence was said to be mentioned in Inca and Maya art by scholars in the late 19th and early 20th century.]]

* Creator/DonRosa's ''ComicBook/TheLifeAndTimesOfScroogeMcDuck'' features quite a few historical in-jokes. Apparently, during his rise to fame and fortune, Scrooge has met such personalities as Wyatt Earp, UsefulNotes/TheodoreRoosevelt, and [[TheBarnum P.T. Barnum]]. And, as Rosa explains in the collected edition, all of the scenarios are somewhat plausible, as the people in question were, more or less, where Rosa has them. (All except Geronimo, that is. Rosa just {{handwave}}d that it would be just like Geronimo to sneak out of a reservation for a while without anyone noticing.) He [[ShownTheirWork prides himself on his research.]]
* ''ComicBook/TheSandman1989'' has several, though "jokes" may not be the correct description. For a prominent example, Creator/WilliamShakespeare's talent comes as a result of a proto-DealWithTheDevil with Morpheus (he gets his talent, but Morpheus essentially becomes his patron in return).
** There's also a very meta-example. Wesley Dodds (the original Sandman in comics) was inspired by Morpheus through his dreams.
** The Literature/ArabianNights as Morpheus' deal with Harun al-Rashid, anyone?

* This trope is also featured in the ''Franchise/{{Predator}}'' comics, after it was already implied in the movies that these {{Sufficiently Advanced Alien}}s had been visiting Earth for a veeeery long time.
** In ''VideoGame/PredatorConcreteJungle'', Major Phillips (the one that sent Dutch's team to the jungle in the first movie) claims the Predators [[PhlebotinumKilledTheDinosaurs exterminated the dinosaurs]] and [[AncientAstronauts gave birth to Ancient religions]]. Both claims were ignored in later comics and even denied by some fans till they were (partially) confirmed in the ''Franchise/AlienVsPredator'' movies.
** In ''ComicBook/PredatorTheBloodySandsOfTime'', the main character discovers that Predators were responsible for the fall of Fort Douamont to the Germans in February 1916, thus triggering the Battle of Verdun as the French attempted to recover the position.

* ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}: Hearts of Steel'' has Tobias Muldoon, a young engineer, demonstrate his new invention, a 'sub-marine', to an audience that includes Creator/JulesVerne. In-story, this happens a couple of years before Verne wrote ''20,000 Leagues Under The Sea''.
* ''ComicBook/TheUltimates'' had a whole storyline about a race of aliens called the Chitauri who, as Nick Fury revealed, were the real Nazis trying to take over the world to subvert the people of Earth to their will if not for the actions of Comicbook/CaptainAmerica. They end up coming back to try again in the present day by infiltrating SHIELD, led by the very same Herr Kleiser who tormented the Allies in the past, which eventually leads to the resurrected Cap yelling the now famous quote, [[Awesome/TheUltimates "Surrender?! You think this "A" on my head stands for FRANCE?"]]

* In ''ComicBook/MarvelGenerations,'' ComicBook/TheMightyThor goes to ancient Egypt and fights ComicBook/{{Apocalypse}}; after his victory, he took the nose of their ridiculous lion-man as a trophy.
* A Creator/{{Dark Horse|Comics}} comic involved the Hindenburg, Literature/DocSavage, and Prof. Reinstein (the inventor) of ComicBook/CaptainAmerica's super-soldier formula.
* The ''Series/{{Heroes}}'' graphic novels had Mindy Sprague accidentally causing the 1978 blizzard over the Northeastern United States in an attempt to avert a meltdown at Three Mile Island.
** Also, apparently Benjamin Franklin survived his kite experiment because he had electrical superpowers.
** And the Egyptians apparently used superpowers to build the Pyramids.
* Creator/AlanMoore's [[http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/comics/2000adstrips/drandquinch/drandquinch01.shtml first]] ''ComicBook/DRAndQuinch'' comic strip for ''ComicBook/TwoThousandAD'' is almost entirely based on this trope.
* Want to know how Amelia Earhart disappeared? According to ''ComicBook/{{Empowered}}'', Imperial Pimpotron Alpha abducted her for a cosmic emperor's harem.
* ''ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}}'' has the character of The Big Topper, a man who butts in on conversations and pretends like he did bigger and better things. Usually, his boastings include him introducing things to famous people. Dilbert calls him out on it once. The response?
--> Gandhi said that too, and I said: "I'm not eating until you take that back!"
* In one ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'' Elseworlds title set in the Old West, ("Batman: The Blue, the Grey, and the Bat"), Batman is an agent of UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln who repeatedly asks Lincoln if he can come back to Washington, as he has reservations regarding the President's security precautions...
* ''Series/{{Angel}}'', the Buffy ally. A black and white tie-in comic had the UsefulNotes/WorldWarI-era Angel deciding that vampire reports from Europe needed looking into. He stabbed a lot of vampires, saving some Germans from being eaten/turned. One of them, of course, had his entire worldview altered. Corporal Hitler went back to the front lines a changed man. Oops.
* One ''WesternAnimation/WallaceAndGromit'' comic had the duo traveling through time to find Wallace's missing slipper. At one point, Wallace attempts to prevent primitive roller-skates from causing too much havoc by providing a far more angular design to his caveman counterpart, Ug-Wallace, who proceeds to get the design completely wrong and invent Stonehenge.
* ComicBook/LuckyLuke has been involved in pretty much every major event in the history of TheWildWest.
* Creator/ArchieComics' run of ''Franchise/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles'' revealed that Hitler killed himself because of the time-travelling Turtles spooking the hell out of him.
* ''ComicBook/ExMachina'': In 2004, NYC mayor Mitchell Hundred's staff member quips that Elliot Spitzer is a shoo-in to be the next New York governor unless he's "caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy," an old political joke. At the time of the comic's writing, Spitzer had already been elected to the post and resigned amid a sex scandal (with ''live'' girls).
* InUniverse example with ''ComicBook/TransformersMoreThanMeetsTheEye'': Every major event in Megatron's life, from his birth to the start of Cybertrons ForeverWar, turns out to have been caused by time-traveling Autobots [[spoiler: as they chased after a time-traveling Brainstorm who was trying to kill Megatron before he was born]].

* In ''ComicBook/EastOfWest'', the meteor strike at Armistice lines up with [[TheTunguskaEvent the Tunguska strike]]. One character even notes that it felt like it was supposed to land elsewhere.

* In ''Fanfic/FarceOfTheThreeKingdoms,'' the [[NoodleIncident offscreen]] events of ''[[ShowWithinAShow Real Concubines of Wu]]'' are real. That includes Sun Quan piling up dirt in front of Zhang Zhao's front door.
* An unusual example in ''Fanfic/TheWritingOnTheWall'': the alleged AncientTomb that [[WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic Daring Do]] is exploring is [[spoiler: actually a proposal for [[http://www.damninteresting.com/this-place-is-not-a-place-of-honor/ a real building which hasn't been constructed yet]]. TheReveal of the true nature of the building changes the story from an AdventurerArchaeologist adventure to a horror story. Includes a modified and retranslated version of the warning proposed to grace the inside of the building]]:
--> [[spoiler: This is not a place of honor. No great deed is commemorated here. Nothing of value is here.]]
* In Northumbrian's ''Harry Potter'' fanfic ''Research and Development'', which is set in 2000, George and Ron invent a magical cell phone, inspired by Hermione's new Muggle cell phone. Their first prototype turns out to be quite similar to Hermione's phone, but Ginny thinks it's impractical, so Ron and George try to improve it. Their fifth prototype looks like a pocket mirror and is "about two-and-a-half inches wide, four-and-a-half long and no more than one-third of an inch thick". The mirror is "set into this solid block of wood". The corners are "smoothly rounded". You operate the phone by touching the mirror. Hermione complains that it doesn't look like a cell phone because it lacks buttons and it is "too thin, too long and too wide". Ginny says that "perhaps in ten years Muggle phones will look like this".
* ''Fanfic/ZeroNoTsukaimaSaitoTheOnmyoji'' implies that the Mongol invasions of Japan were foiled by large groups of Onmyoji joining together to create typhoons that wrecked their fleets.
* In ''Fanfic/CodeGeassThePreparedRebellion'', Urabe compares Zero's oratory with that of an EU demagogue who would've taken over an entire member state if there weren't safeguards in place to stop him. It's implied that this demagogue was either UsefulNotes/VladimirLenin, UsefulNotes/BenitoMussolini, or UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler.
* ''Fanfic/TriptychContinuum'': From ''[[Recap/TriptychContinuumTravapestry Trav(ap)est(r)y]]''. Cluster quotes an ancient tract from Prance's original ambassador on how all future replacements should deal with Celestia: "You must always remember that the Princess is about seventeen." It's a reference to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Spring-Rice Sir Cecil Arthur Spring-Rice]], who once noted that when it came to UsefulNotes/TheodoreRoosevelt, one always had to remember that the President was about six.

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}'', the crack in the Sphinx's nose happens during the flyby in [[FallingInLoveMontage "A Whole New World"]].
* An [[BlackComedy extremely dark]] and subtle example occurs in ''WesternAnimation/CloudyWithAChanceOfMeatballs'', for those who know their American history. During the massive food storm in the climax, Mount Rushmore is hit by massive pies. Lincoln's statue (and ''only'' Lincoln) is hit in the ''[[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything back]]'' [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything of the head]], and even immediately starts [[CrossesTheLineTwice gushing fluid out of its eyes and nostrils.]]

*** Magneto is held prisoner deep inside the Pentagon due to his involvement in JFK's assassination ("What else explains a bullet miraculously curving through the air?") [[spoiler: When he's busted out he claims that he was actually trying to ''save'' JFK since the latter was also a mutant. The film gives no reason to suspect he was lying.]]

* This is half the attraction of ''{{Literature/Flashman}}'', which views the Victorian Age from its seedy underbelly.
* Many in ''Literature/JonathanStrangeAndMrNorrell''. Just a few:
** After meeting (and disliking) the eponymous [[SquishyWizard Jonathan Strange]] for the first time, Creator/LordByron went and wrote ''Manfred'' to create a wizard he liked better.
** After Strange and Byron become friends and Strange goes a bit off the dramatically inclined deep end, [[ByronicHero Byron starts taking notes.]]
** Strange's use of black magic during UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars is suggested to have inspired Creator/FranciscoDeGoya's hellish depictions of war and witchcraft.
* OlderThanRadio: Creator/VictorHugo loved these. ''Literature/LesMiserables'' and ''Ninety-Three'' have so many that it is necessary to take several encyclopedias out of the library and maybe a history and mythology degree in order to know what he is talking about sometimes.

*** Due to AccidentalTimeTravel, the protagonists are now at least somewhat to blame for [[UsefulNotes/MarieAntoinette "The Diamond Necklace Affair"]], because Albany took the real necklace when she time-travelled away from the jewelers' shop. This created an AlternateTimeline where UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution was a peaceful affair, with the Queen being deported instead of beheaded, and her son becoming a constitutional monarch.

%%%* ''Creator/DaveBarry Slept Here'' makes excellent use of this.
* In Creator/AvramDavidson's ''Full Chicken Richness'', a {{time travel}}ling cook kills off the dodo to use in his soup. (In RealLife, according to the sailors who discovered them, dodos tasted terrible.)

* Umberto Eco's ''Literature/{{Baudolino}}'', being a historical novel about an influential liar, is full of these. Among other things, it gives an alternate explanation for the death of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and reveals the "true" origin of the works of the Archpoet and the letter of Prester John, as well as the correspondence attributed to Abelard and Heloise, the inspiration for Wolfram von Eschenbach's ''Literature/{{Parzival}}'' and Robert de Boron's ''Merlin'' and ''Joseph d'Arimathe,'' the founding of Alessandria and its salvation from Barbarossa's wrath and the assassination of Emperor Alexios II Komnenos of Byzantium.

* In Creator/NeilGaiman's ''Literature/{{Neverwhere}}'', Croup and Vandemar were responsible for burning Troy and spreading [[ThePlague the Black Death]]. It is also hinted that they were the men who crucified UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}}.
* ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'':
** Erek is more than five thousand years old, was UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt's butler, and apparently coined the phrase "New Deal" during a card game. Going back even further, he personally helped build the pyramids (No, he did not design them, he helped carry bricks) and then cut UsefulNotes/CatherineTheGreat's hair several centuries later.
** Broccoli tastes bad to humans because it was brought to Earth by alien colonizers during the time of the dinosaurs. These aliens were then wiped out by the impact that killed off the dinosaurs, which was brought down by refugees of another race that had lost a war to the first mentioned race. A handful of survivors from one of those alien races apparently evolved into ants.
** Elfangor (an alien in human form) was once friends with two guys named Bill and Steve, to whom he explained computers. They were unable to grasp the more complex concepts, so he had to simplify matters and explain it to Bill with the term "Windows."
** Also, Mr. King was the one who suggested heat to Pasteur as a means to kill bacteria. Also, remember that painting of Washington crossing the Delaware? The kids go back in time and find out the river and the night were freezing. So not only did the kids see first-hand that Washington never posed like that, they directly state that if he posed like that in the middle of the night on the front of a boat crossing an ice-cold river, his soldiers would have thought he was a loon.
* In ''Behold the Man'' by Creator/MichaelMoorcock, a man goes back in time in an attempt to meet UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}}. However, he finds that [[spoiler: Jesus' life is a total myth. He then takes it upon himself to become Jesus, preaching the teachings he learned in the future until he is finally crucified by the Romans]].
* ''Grim Tuesday'', the second book of Creator/GarthNix's ''Literature/KeysToTheKingdom'' series, reveals that TheGreatDepression was caused by Grim Tuesday's greedy meddling. This also counts as ParentalBonus as it's not outright stated and most of the 9-12-year-old kids that the books are marketed towards probably wouldn't know enough to make the connection.
* ''Literature/TheAreasOfMyExpertise'', by John Hodgman, is filled to the brim with them. Its sequel, ''Literature/MoreInformationThanYouRequire'', has one on ''every page''.
* The novel series about Literature/ErastFandorin ''revels'' in Historical In Jokes. [[AncientConspiracy What caused the rapid scientific advancement of late 19th century?]] [[Literature/TheWinterQueen A secret society]] of [[WellIntentionedExtremist Well-Intentioned Extremists]]. [[SpyDrama Why did the Siege of Pleven take place?]] [[Literature/TheTurkishGambit The machinations of a clever Turkish spy]]. [[ProfessionalKiller Who murdered General Skobelev?]] A hitman [[Literature/TheDeathOfAchilles hired by the government]]. Who was UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper ''really'', and why did his London murder spree end? He was a Russian med student, [[Literature/SpecialAssignments and he went back home]]. [[DiabolicalMastermind Who was behind the Khodynka Tragedy?]] [[Literature/TheCoronation A criminal mastermind who kidnapped a Romanov prince]].
* The two-part ''Franchise/StarTrek'' novel ''The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh'' is an attempt to reconcile real-world history with the fact that, in the ''Star Trek'' timeline, the Eugenics Wars occurred in the 1990s.
* Jonathan Stroud's ''Literature/TheBartimaeusTrilogy'' is filled with this, mostly in footnotes, where the titular demon often refers to his previous masters, most of them being real famous (along with a few more obscure) historical figures.
* In the [[Literature/SongOfSusannah sixth book]] of ''Franchise/TheDarkTower'', the protagonists are trying to get rid of Black Thirteen, a cosmic artifact that continually brings bad luck and catastrophe to whoever holds it. As part of a plot necessity, they travel to New York City in 1999 and get a brilliant idea to stash the trouble-making object in a storage locker under the World Trade Center towers. As they leave the scene, Jake looks up at the towers, and wonders idly whether the object might be destroyed if say, the towers just ''happened'' to crumble on top of it somehow. It's further intimated that due to its evil nature, the presence of Black Thirteen may have ''caused'' the WTC attacks.
* The sequel of ''Series/IClaudius'', ''Claudius the God,'' features the Emperor Claudius' lifelong friend, King Herod Agrippa of Judea, the grandson of [[MagnificentBastard Herod the Great.]] Herod Agrippa sends Claudius a letter warning him about a cult that believed that the now-deceased [[UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}} Joshua ben Joseph]] was the Messiah and asking for permission to do something about their current leader, Simon-called-Peter. Claudius barely cares. Interestingly, the book has Herod Agrippa meeting the same fate that both Josephus and the New Testament's Book of Acts gives him, being eaten alive from the inside by worms after proclaiming himself a god, which feels a bit out of place in the realism the rest of the novel promotes.
* ''Literature/{{Dracula}}: The Un-Dead'' -- UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper is actually [[spoiler: Countess Elizabeth Bathory]].
* YA novel ''Kruistocht In Spijkerbroek'' (''Literature/{{Crusade In Jeans}}'') by Creator/{{Thea Beckman}} has a number of these. Most notably, the time-travelling hero meets a medieval guy named Leonardo da Pisa, who becomes his best friend during the story. He teaches Leonardo modern math. The guy turns out to be Fibonacci.
* In the first ''Literature/PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians'' novel - ''The Lightning Thief'' - when Grover is explaining to Percy about demi-gods, he mentions some famous demigods who successfully ventured to the Underworld and returned.
--> '''Grover:''' ...Orpheus, Hercules, Houdini...
** There are more Historical In Jokes like this in the series since one of the plot points is that the Big Three (Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades) are not supposed to have any more half-mortal children, because the powers of their children keep leading to history being screwed up. World War II is mentioned as a battle between the children of Zeus and Poseidon, against the children of Hades.
* ''Literature/TheSquiresTales'' has Geoffrey of Monmouth as a scholar at Myth/KingArthur's court.

* Several times in ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles''. Most notably, the White Court of vampires had ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'' written as an all-purpose how-to guide for killing the rival Black Court, a godlike necromancer named Kemmler was responsible for UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, and Ebenezar [=McCoy=] caused Krakatoa and TheTunguskaEvent. There's plenty of others, though-- for instance, Bob's offhand mention of the last time a [[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent loup-garou]] got loose.
** The last time prior to the series that lead Denarian Nicodemus and his rival Tessa teamed up, the result was the Black Death.
* In Creator/MercedesLackey's ''Literature/ElementalMasters'' series, two mages discuss some magical NoodleIncident which will probably make Loch Ness infamous. On the darker side, in another novel an evil Earth Master engineers and sends out the flu strain of 1918 in order to prolong the War. Then there was backlash after that earthquake when the Fire Master was killed in California... Throw a stone, you'll catch one such reference in the books.

* In ''Literature/{{Dinotopia}}'', escapees from the island formed the Egyptian civilization, and it's suggested that Poseidos was the source of both the Atlantis myth and the sea-god's name.
* The finale of ''Literature/BrideOfTheRatGod'' is the cause of the [[http://www.westland.net/venicehistory/articles/pickpier.htm 1924 Lick Pier fire]].
* The entire ''Literature/SixteenThirtyTwo'' series is full of these.
** One of the more brutally ironic ones comes in ''1635: The Dreeson Incident''. Don Francisco Nasi (a Jew) names the ruthless purge of all organized anti-Semitic and witch-hunting activity in the USE "Operation [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht Kristallnacht]]".
** ''The Kremlin Games'' deals with an up-timer hired by the Russian royal family to help modernize the nation. Among other things, he insists on designating the newly designed rifles the AK series. [[labelnote: *]] By a lucky coincidence the lead gunsmith involved in the design is named Andrei Korsonov. [[/labelnote]] By the end of the book the most high-tech model available is a modified version of the fourth production series designated the AK 4.7
* ''[[Literature/HoratioHornblower Hornblower and the Hotspur]]'' has the ''Hotspur'' drop anchor in the neutral Spanish port of Cadiz, near an American frigate, the USS ''Constitution''. The narration mentions in passing that the ship's captain, Commodore Preble, is the latest in a [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption long series of American officers]] tasked with fighting a war against Tripoli. Historically, Preble is famous for successfully drawing the [[UsefulNotes/BarbaryCoastWars First Barbary War]] to a conclusion after besieging and shelling the city.
** ''Flying Colours'' also has Hornblower see another American ship and speculate that the Americans are going to be drawn into the Napoleonic conflict sooner or later. He's just not sure if they'll fight France or [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOf1812 have another go at England]].
* Several at the end of the ''Literature/TideLords'' series. For example [[spoiler: Cayal was Jesus, Crystal skulls were made to hide the key, and the asteroid belt is the leftover remains of Amyrantha]].
* ''[[BigfootSasquatchAndYeti Sasquatch]]'', a 1998 novel by Creator/RolandSmith, features a character named Buckley Johnson, who eventually admits he is D. B. Cooper (who hijacked a Boeing 727 in November of 1971 and demanded a ransom of 200,000 dollars) to the novel's protagonist, a boy named Dylan Hickock. Sadly, after jumping out of the plane with the ransom money, Johnson broke his leg when he landed, and so was unable to use his ill-gotten gain for its intended purpose: paying for cancer treatments for his son, who died before his father could return home.
* In ''Literature/NecessaryEvil'' by Ian Tregillis, the third book in ''The Milkweed Triptych'', the Germans' slow response to the Dunkirk evacuation is due to Gretel giving the generals really bad advice (after having already established her precognitive abilities to them, so they'll take her seriously). The first two books in the trilogy show what happens if she gives them good advice instead: [[spoiler: TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt occurs sometime in the 1960s]].
* In ''The Hour of the Donkey'' by Creator/AnthonyPrice, the Germans' slow response to the Dunkirk evacuation is explained as being the result of a convoluted British false flag operation.
* ''Literature/XanthippicDialogues'' explains that the titular character and [[Creator/{{Socrates}} her husband]] were actually happily married and she was the one to stay with him as he died, not his students. There's also some psychoanalysis of Creator/{{Plato}}.
* ''Literature/TheDeadZone'' protagonist and [[{{Psychometry}} psychic]] Johnny Smith makes a habit of shaking the hand of various politicians. When he meets UsefulNotes/JimmyCarter, he flashes on the fact that Carter will become President.
** The book was published just a little too early, however, for him to have a similar reaction when he shakes the hand of UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan. The book excuses missing any such future developments by saying that for many of the politicians, shaking hands has become so routine as to become meaningless, thus preventing Johnny from getting much of a read on them.
* in the ''Literature/HarryPotter'' universe, there is debate among the wizarding community whether if The Great Fire of London began in the bakery or in the basement of the house next door, where legend has it a young Welsh Green dragon was being kept.
* In Literature/TheTroySaga, Odysseus is a co-founder [[spoiler: of the settlement that will eventually become the city of Rome, known as the Seven Hills Settlement in the series. All the more amusing as the Romans hated Odysseus (known to Ulysses as them in Latin) for his role in destroying Troy as they considered themselves to the descendants of surviving Trojans.]]

* ''Series/TheAdventuresOfBriscoCountyJr'' has historical in-jokes in virtually every episode, as Brisco encounters some gizmo which is sure to be the next "coming thing".

*** Spike knows Dracula (Dracula owes him money) and is rather annoyed at the latter for writing a book about his exploits, [[NiceJobFixingItVillain thus making it so that most mortals know how to kill vampires.]]

'''The Doctor:''' [[CoconutMeetsCranium Dropped an apple on his head.]]\\

*** The Tenth Doctor accidentally suggests a good many of his most famous lines to the Bard, including "to be or not to be".

*** That same episode also deals with Creator/AgathaChristie's infamous disappearance. According to ''Doctor Who'', a [[spoiler:giant alien wasp started killing people in the same way as in her books, due to being linked to her. So when the alien died, she in turn fell into a deep sleep and then turned up in the hotel that was historically tied to her disappearance.]]
** In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E17E18TheEndOfTime The End of Time]]", Ten informs Ood Sigma (who seems completely unimpressed, and probably has no idea what he's talking about anyway) that he married Queen Elizabeth I and that one of her nicknames is no longer accurate. We get to see the wedding later on, in "[[Recap/DoctorWho50thASTheDayOfTheDoctor The Day of the Doctor]]".

*** The same episode also explains why there is a two-second gap between the words "That's one small step for man" and "One giant leap for mankind". [[spoiler:The broadcast was briefly hijacked during this time, featuring an out-of-context clip of a member of The Silence, who tells the viewers to kill any of The Silence on sight. All future reuploads would carry this order, with the viewers unknowingly killing The Silence due to having their memories blanked after taking their eyes off one.]]

** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS38E4NikolaTeslasNightOfTerror Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror]]": It turns out that UsefulNotes/NikolaTesla really ''did'' pick up a signal from Mars. [[spoiler:He detected the ship of a scavenger race called the Skithra, who decided to abduct him to force him to repair their ship after he sent a message ''back''.]] Furthermore, the climax of the episode involves Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower being activated to shoot lightning. The tower really was activated the night of July 14, 1903 (the year the episode is set) and was seen to be shooting lightning, and Tesla never explained why.

* ''Series/{{Grimm}}'': According to Gaugin's accounts, the reason why Creator/VincentVanGogh went mad and cut off his ear was because of a [[TheMuse muse (the mythical kind).]]

* ''Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus'' got some nice examples. Like in e.g. 'The Funniest Joke In The World': "It was a fantastic success, over 60.000 times as powerful as Britain's great pre-war joke ''(cue PM UsefulNotes/NevilleChamberlain waving around a ''certain'' piece of paper in public ''[[note]] The Munich Agreement.[[/note]]'')''!".

*** Doyle returns in a later episode when they call him in to try and break through the delusion of a man who believes himself to be Sherlock. Doyle tries pointing out that Holmes died at Reichenbach Falls, and is taken aback when "Holmes" has a perfectly coherent explanation for both how he survived and where he's been since - the same one Doyle uses in "The Adventure of the Empty House". The episode also features a real criminal, who "Holmes" believes to be one of Moriarty's henchmen, called Sebastian Moran. Doyle mentions he likes the name.

** Sam also suggests that a young would-be boxer who worked in a meatpacking factory train by sparring with the frozen beef carcasses hanging around his workplace, mentioning that it was "something I saw in a movie." The grateful young boxer thanks Sam and closes his locker, upon which is his name: "[[Creator/SylvesterStallone S. Stallone]]".

** One good example is the second episode, where the attack on Marc Antony by Pompey's men when he's heading for the Senate is actually an attack on Pullo by a random thug Pullo gambled and argued with (and killed his friend). This attack on Antony is believed to be Pompeius's thugs trying to prevent Antony from wielding his lawful power of veto, and becoming the key incident that led to Caesar crossing the Rubicon. The episode is even titled "How Titus Pullo Brought Down The Republic".

** ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' pulled a cute one in the episode "Carbon Creek". ''Star Trek'' {{canon}} states that humanity met the Vulcans in the late 21st century after Cochrane's warp flight. Apparently, a little-known fact is that a Vulcan survey ship crashed in Pennsylvania in the '50s. A Vulcan woman raises money for a boy to go to college by introducing the bank owner to a strangely adhesive fabric, [[ETGaveUsWiFi better known as Velcro]], invented in the real world by "George" de Mestral. (The name of one of the Vulcans? Mestral.)

* ''Series/That70sShow'' did this a few times. One instance had Jackie being annoyed because a regular television program she watched wasn't airing as usual because it was bumped by [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis some hostage crisis]] being on the news. In another case involving wrestling, wrestler Rocky Johnson talks with Red and Eric about his own son, and his belief that he'd grow up to be the most [[Wrestling/DwayneJohnson electrifying man in all of wrestling.]] Red wishes him sarcastic good luck with that.

* It's something of a RunningGag in ''Series/XenaWarriorPrincess'' for Xena and Gabrielle to inadvertently stumble across historical or mythological events or people. Among other things, Xena is revealed to have led the pirates that kidnapped Julius Caesar, Gabrielle attended a bard competition with a young Homer (no, not [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons that one]]), Xena's experience with healing inspired Hypocrites' famous Hippocratic oath, ''and'' they both fought at Troy (although between this show and Hercules the Trojan war happened at least 4 times, once against fish people). [[AnachronismStew Never mind that said events occurred and people lived many centuries apart.]] [[MST3KMantra It's all part of the fun.]]

* Issue #325 of ''Magazine/{{Cracked}}'' includes a fictitious guide to collecting the magazine. Included in the guide to said issues are entries reading "Ghost of editor's dead wife hired as art director", "Ghost of editor's dead wife promoted to editor", and "1st appearance of editor's son as cover artist". These are all references to Paul Laikin's short tenure as editor in TheEighties, which really did include him crediting his deceased wife as art director/editor and hiring his son as cover artist.

* Due to heavy cross-marketing between the TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}} and TabletopGame/{{Earthdawn}} games, a number of early Shadowrun products indulged in this trope with immortal-elf references. If the spinoff novels are to be credited, Queen UsefulNotes/ElizabethI was a usurping immortal elf in disguise, as was Creator/LeonardoDaVinci and (implied) the Apostle Thomas.
* In one of the {{Sourcebook}}s for ''TabletopGame/MageTheAwakening'', it states that the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_explosion Halifax explosion]] was actually caused by a battle between Pentacle mages and ChurchMilitant members of the [[AncientConspiracy Seers of the Throne]]. Mages are said to refer to the explosion as the "Battle of the Maritime".

* Unsurprisingly, given its premise as a TimeTravel game, TabletopGame/{{Continuum}} has its fair share of these- of particular note is the usual answer when asking members of the Thespian Fraternity how many times they've had to impersonate [[HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct Adolf Hitler]] is a cold "[[ArcWords Further Information is not available here]]".

** Upon Sofia mentioning that she posed for a certain Albrecht Dürer, Ezio asks if he's an artist of some renown. Even better, the painting that Sofia has that Dürer painted of her is an ACTUAL Dürer painting, "Portrait of a Young Venetian Woman".

** In ''[[VideoGame/AssassinsCreedRogue Rogue]]'', the ''Assassins'' of all people are responsible for both the 1751 Port-Au-Prince and the 1755 Lisbon earthquakes, thanks to their negligent explorations of First Civilization sites , setting off devastating mechanisms contained inside. The latter earthquake in particular, triggered by the protagonist Shay, proves to be such a DespairEventHorizon for him that he defects to the Templars. In real life, the sudden nature of and the massive loss of life caused by the Lisbon earthquake had a profound effect on philosophy as a whole, in particular massively Liebniz's famous stipulation that "we live in the best of all possible worlds".
* In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3SnakeEater'':
** The Cuban missile crisis was actually resolved by handing over a Soviet scientist who'd defected to the West, and the Turkish nukes were outdated and going to be removed anyway.
** Later, Snake makes a joke that the prototypical Russian helicopter which is smaller than the Hip should be called a Hind. His [[BunnyEarsLawyer support team]] agree to use Hind as the code for the kind of helicopter from now on. Also a ContinuityNod, since a Hind helicopter was a boss fight in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid''.
** Snake performing the world's first HALO jump (which ''was'' actually first performed in 1964 in real life), as well as Snake finding an [=XM16E1=] and making suggestions for how it would be a better rifle, echoing complaints from soldiers in Vietnam who made the same suggestions that were ultimately incorporated into the rifle's design.

* ''Franchise/TouhouProject'' mostly just messes with mythology, but some actual history does get involved. Among other things, Apollo 13's failure was apparently caused by Eirin, and Futo burned down Japan's first Buddhist temple.
* The ''VideoGame/ShadowHearts'' series. Many of the catastrophes that occurred around World War I was all because of Lovecraftian hellspawn.

* In ''VideoGame/IndianaJonesAndTheFateOfAtlantis'', Indy wonders why the Minoan civilization had this obsession with bull-headed figures (like the tale of the Minotaur living in a labyrinth underneath Knossos); the game heavily implies that the RealLife Minoans tried to imitate the aesthetic style of Atlantis and [[spoiler: also the Atlanteans built a god-creating machine, which its first failed tests created mutants ''with horns'', providing the origin for the myth of the Minotaur]].
* ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty'':
** There's one in ''[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyModernWarfare3 Modern Warfare 3]]'', where Berlin falls to the Russians. ''[[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII Again.]]''
** ''[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyWorldAtWar World at War]]'' has one to its own series - in the [[VideoGame/CallofDuty1 first game]], the final level has you playing a Soviet soldier in the battle at Berlin, ending with player witnessing another soldier wave the Soviet flag over the Reichstag. The final level of ''World at War'' has the same setting, except now ''the player themself'' is the one planting the flag over the Reichstag.
* ''VideoGame/WolfensteinTheNewOrder'' has one in a rather ironic parallel of the Bolshevik Revolution. The Nazis won the war on the Eastern Front when the Russian people revolted against the Soviet government following large numbers of casualties and military defeats.
* ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoSanAndreas'' is set in [[TheNineties 1992]]. The primary antagonists of the game are police officers, Frank Tenpenny and Eddie Pulaski. Late in the game, their many, many crimes catch up with them and Tenpenny [[note]]Pulaski dies in an earlier mission[[/note]] is arrested, put to trial... and acquitted. The city of Los Santos riots in response. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots Sound familiar?]]
* ''VideoGame/Yakuza0'' takes place during Japan's "Bubble Economy", a period of economic prosperity. One of Goro Majima's sidequests involves rescuing a politician being attacked by store owners for wanting to implement a sales tax. Afterwards, Majima talks with the politician and makes some suggestions which, in retrospect, would be implemented only a few years later and result in the "Lost Decade", a severe economic recession that Japan is still recovering from to this day.
* In ''VideoGame/MedalOfHonor'', it's heavily implied that [[OneManArmy Jimmy Patterson]] and [[MissionControl Manon]] settled down together after the war, by ''Heroes''' post-credits narration and the fact that the main character of the [[VideoGame/MedalOfHonor2010 2010 reboot]] is Jimmy's grandson. The in-joke is that Manon's character is based on a real-life woman named Helene Deschamps Adams, a French OSS operator who worked closely with an American Army Lieutenant during the war and ended up marrying him. [[EarnYourHappyEnding Aww.]]
* The Bakumatsu chapter of ''VideoGame/LiveALive'' sees the ninja Oboro-maru set out to stop a man named Ode Iou from throwing Japan into war by infiltrating his castle, rescuing a man he has prisoner, and killing him. The man turns out to be [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakamoto_Ryoma Ryoma Sakamoto]], and you have the option of joining him at the end of the chapter. If you choose to, Oboro-maru becomes Sakamoto's bodyguard and is seen stopping an assassination attempt. In real life, Ryoma Sakamoto was assassinated.

* ''VideoGame/ShadowHeartsFromTheNewWorld'' takes place in TheRoaringTwenties. Being that the game begins in Chicago, Al Capone is of course a side character, and a subplot involves one of his (many) rival mob families trying to get into his turf. Later on, the player goes to Las Vegas and the rival gang has indeed gone there. At the time? TheMafia ''did'' indeed start to make their way into Las Vegas, Al Capone himself even had his eye on the city.

* ''VisualNovel/HigurashiWhenTheyCry'' has soldiers from Hinamizawa being responsible for the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo_Bridge_Incident Marco Polo Bridge Incident.]] [[spoiler:It was the first outbreak of [[HatePlague Hinamizawa Syndrome]].]]

* In ''Webcomic/TheDreamer'', Bea has dreams that she is in the American Revolution and meets some very important people along the way.
* ''Webcomic/TimesLikeThis'' has generous amounts of this trope.

* ''Webcomic/{{Consolers}}'' is this with video game history and recent events.
* ''Webcomic/DeadDuck'' has a bit since D.D's job involves going into the past to make sure historical figures died. Let's just say there are some things history overlooked.

* Pretty much the entire premise of "Peabody's Improbable History" segment on ''WesternAnimation/RockyAndBullwinkle''. The legend of the Kerwood Derby, which reportedly made its wearer the smartest person in the world. Newton wore it when he discovered his theory of Gravity, Archimedes wore it in the bath when he discovered his theory of water displacement (or at least remembered where he left the soap) and Einstein wore it when he discovered his Theory of Relativity. Reportedly the Kerwood Derby was worn by UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat when he conquered the world, by Ghengis Khan when he conquered the world, by Philip of Macedonia when he conquered the world, and by Music/ElvisPresley [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking when he...]] well, you get the idea.
* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' is fond of this, in [[CutawayGag flashbacks which sometimes don't even relate to the show in any way]]. For example, when Peter was arguing that Stewie might be too young for potty-training, a flashback suggested that the Lindbergh baby was accidentally flushed down a toilet. And that Amelia Earhart was done away with for witnessing it.
** John Wilkes Booth killed UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln not to avenge the South, but for [[DisruptingTheTheater obnoxiously talking on his cellphone during the play they were attending]].
** Peter killed Nicole and Ronald. OJ was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Another incident showed a drunken Stewie telling OJ to kill his wife.
* ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'' had the main character shooting UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan, [[TimeyWimeyBall because, well]]: [[spoiler:In "The Best Christmas Story Never Told", he originally wanted to kill Jane Fonda because he blamed her for the war on Christmas, then he found out that she was really influenced by Donald Sutherland. Stan is prevented from killing Sutherland, but by chance runs into Martin Scorsese. He convinces Scorsese to give up drugs, which in turn causes him to lose his edge. As a result, ''Film/TaxiDriver'' is never made, so there's no star vehicle for Creator/JodieFoster, and no one for John Hinckley to become obsessed with. As a result of ''that'', Ronald Reagan is never shot, which means there was no incident to bolster public support; so [[ForWantOfANail Mondale won, and practically "handed over the country to the Commies".]] Thus, Stan Smith shoots Reagan. Also, in the same episode, Roger "invents" the genre of disco, based on a 'greatest hits of the 70's' tape Stan drops. Whew]].

* ''WesternAnimation/TimeSquad'' did this almost every episode, as the entire premise of the show was that they went back in time to make sure that history happens correctly. The main characters are singlehandedly responsible for such things as The Boston Tea Party, the Battle at the Alamo, and the invention of peanut butter.
** Another episode had Betsy Ross and the rest of Washington's army become hippies only to regain their fighting spirit by coffee. One of the hippies likes the coffee so much that he vows to "spread it throughout this great land". His name as a hippie? Starbuck.
** After a whole episode dealing with putting UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln's presidency back on track, the time travelers return to the future just as Abraham suggests to his wife that he feels like visiting Ford's Theater...
* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}: Bender's Big Score'', the titular robot travels back to the year 2000, where his virus-induced homicidal rampage accidentally destroys a large number of ballots in Florida. This virus was used by a group of greedy, nudist, and narcissistic alien scammers to make Bender go back in time and steal treasures, and as a result, he is seen with several artifacts that have gone missing, like the Sphinx's nose and the Holy Grail.
** His time-traveling also causes several in-show historical in-jokes as well. For example, one episode revolved around Fry finding his pet dog Seymour as a fossil in a museum and his attempts to resurrect it. In the movie, while the scammers are forcing Bender to assassinate Fry in 2012, the year Seymour died at a "healthy old age", one of Bender's futuristic weapons misses him and encases the poor dog in stone. [[spoiler:This quickly goes from a joke to a happy when one recalls that Fry decided not to bring Seymour back because he thought he died of old age, but now we find out he died of old age after spending an entire life with Fry's time-clone.]]
** Time-travel is also how Zoidberg became the [[RoswellThatEndsWell Roswell alien]].
** One of the Brainspawn also killed the dinosaurs.

** A blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to an alternate past comes near the end of the special "The Secret Origin of Denzel Crocker". Right after '70s-Jorgen shows up to erase everyone's memories of the fairies being revealed, present-Jorgen shows up to take Timmy back to his own era and says that Timmy is forbidden from returning to March of 1972, but can still travel to any of the other months "so long as you don't interfere with the election of President [=McGovern=]". This implies that either ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'' takes place in an alternate continuity where [[UsefulNotes/RichardNixon Nixon]] was never re-elected, Timmy didn't listen and is somehow responsible for Nixon's re-election, or Timmy's interference already made [=McGovern=] the president without Jorgen realizing it.
** There was the one where Timmy released three godkids from Cosmo and Wanda's "Hall of Infamy". One of them "took out" Archduke Franz Ferdinand, triggering UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, and most conflicts that followed, including UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, the Holocaust, and the Cold War. [[EpilepticTrees Maybe that's why the rule that you can't wish for someone to be killed exists.]]
** In "Father Time!", present Cosmo and Wanda inspire a young boy to "connect every computer in the world together". 70's Wanda's response? "That Billy Gates and his CRAZY ideas," Of course, thanks to Cosmo, he gets the name wrong...

** When the Beatles performed on ''The Ed Sullivan Show,'' the reason why everyone in the audience was screaming was because of a monster scaring them, not because of hysteria over The Beatles' music.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'': Arthur tries to justify his breaking of a window to his sister DW that kids have done important things in history. He tells of how [[UsefulNotes/{{Tutankhamun}} King Tut]] broke his dad's new sphinx with a baseball, the roman 'Arthurius' playing with his discus and cutting off the arms of the Art/VenusDeMilo, and an American kid hitting the Liberty Bell and cracking it, with braying horses in the background.
* In ''WesternAnimation/ExtremeGhostbusters'' many events in history happened because of ghosts, a gremlin was responsible for sinking the Titanic, and the disappearances of ships and planes in the Bermuda Triangle were the cause of a giant fog EldritchAbomination.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Archer}}'': Mallory Archer has been involved in Operations [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio Gladio]] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_ajax Ajax]] and ''Woodhouse'' of all people is revealed to have been the one who performed the botched William Tell routine that led to the death of Creator/WilliamSBurroughs' wife as part of a bet for drugs.

* The PostCreditsScene of an episode of ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'' has a pair of time-travelling 5th dimension beings skimming across history looking for Rick to take revenge. Instead, they find a similar-looking elderly scientist, beat the crap out of him, and tell him not to mess with time before leaving. Said man composes himself, limps to the chalkboard defiantly declaring "I ''vill'' mess vith time!" and begins [[UsefulNotes/AlbertEinstein writing the Theory of General Relativity on the board]].

-->"To think that the infamous dictator Saddam Hussein tried to hide his weapons of mass destruction by sending them forwards in time, where his evil descendents could use them to conquer our now peaceful planet."

** John Wilkes Booth killed UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln for talking on his cellphone.

[[index]]
* The HistoricalInJoke/SCPFoundation has its own subpage. The Website/SCPFoundation documents will often list dates when artifacts first came to their attention or notable containment breaches occurred. With some investigation, it's possible to link these dates and associated locations to major catastrophes. These include everything from TheTunguskaEvent to the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1857_Basilicata_earthquake Great Neapolitan Earthquake]]. Also, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloop the Bloop]] was a sound caused by [[KrakenAndLeviathan a continent-sized underwater creature]]. The site actually has advice against having an SCP cause the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, because there are already ''several'' articles that did.
[[/index]]

** A different episode had Creator/ArthurConanDoyle visiting the police station, where he finds Inspector Brackenreid is a great fan of his work. All through the episode, Brackenreid keeps telling him about an idea for a new Literature/SherlockHolmes book he had, and had thought of calling it "Literature/TheHoundOfTheBaskervilles". Doyle walks away at the end of the episode repeating the title to himself.

** The episode "All That Glitters" has two: in the main story, Murdoch's investigation of the murder of an Ontario surveyor leads to the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_Silver_Rush Cobalt Silver Rush]]. In the B-plot, the painting Inspector Brakenreid did during his TenMinuteRetirement at the beginning of the season has been entered into a competition, and a young man is very impressed by it. The man, who particularly likes the way Brakenreid paints foliage with non-representative colours to make it stand out more (he ran out of green), eventually buys the painting for $15 to inspire his own work, at which point we learn his name is [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Thomson Tom Thomson]].

** In ''Asterix Meets Cleopatra'', Obelix is revealed to be responsible for the Sphinx's missing nose.

** ''[[VideoGame/AssassinsCreedRevelations Revelations]]'' had more Historical In-Jokes compared to the first few games.
*** Set in the Ottoman Empire, particularly in Constantinople. [[IstanbulNotConstantinople Constantinople/Istanbul]] jokes fly around.

** Upon Sofia mentioning that she posed for a certain Albrecht Dürer, Ezio asks if he's an artist of some renown.
*** Even better, the painting that Sofia has that Dürer painted of her is an ACTUAL Dürer painting, "Portrait of a Young Venetian Woman".

* In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3SnakeEater'', the Cuban missile crisis was actually resolved by handing over a Soviet scientist who'd defected to the West, and the Turkish nukes were outdated and going to be removed anyway.

** In fact, [=MGS3=] is ''rife'' with instances of this, including Snake performing the world's first HALO jump (which ''was'' actually first performed in 1964 in real life), as well as Snake finding an [=XM16E1=] and making suggestions for how it would be a better rifle, echoing complaints from soldiers in Vietnam who made the same suggestions that were ultimately incorporated into the rifle's design.

* A sketch on ''Series/MADtv'' referenced William R. D. King, who was said to be a great Vice President. The joke is that William R. D. King was the only Vice President to never even make it to the White House, making him the most unimportant one in American history.

* There are several examples in the VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlertSeries.

The most common variation is that the characters are responsible for some famous bit of damage: Venus de Milo's arms, Art/TheSphinx's nose, etc. Usually, these are shown to occur when the artifacts are new, even if the real damage occurred much later.

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Hercules}}'', it's indicated that the reason the ''Venus de Milo'' has no arms is because Hercules accidentally broke them off. This is similar to a joke from ''WesternAnimation/TheTwelveTasksOfAsterix'' where Obelix also accidentally does this.

* Plenty of such jokes in ''The Time Machine'' ride at the Ride/{{Futuroscope}}. The VideoGame/RavingRabbids happen to be responsible for the Lascaux paintings, the Venus of Milo losing her arms, the invention of the Olympic games, Beethoven's composition of the Fifth Symphony, etc.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'': Arthur tries to justify his breaking of a window to his sister DW that kids have done important things in history. He tells of how [[UsefulNotes/{{Tutankhamun}} King Tut]] broke his dad's new sphinx with a baseball, the roman 'Arthurius' playing with his discus and cutting off the arms of the Venus de Milo, and an American kid hitting the Liberty Bell and cracking it, with braying horses in the background.

* In ''Fanfic/RhythmicPrettyCure'', Tsumugi's mother Kazuko (birth name Cassandra Logan) is stated to have competed as a rhythmic gymnast at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

** Strange's use of black magic during UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars is suggested to have inspired Francisco Goya's hellish depictions of war and witchcraft.

** Several characters, like Pizarro and Mendoza, are based on historical people. Also, the term "Children of the Sun" is the name the Incas sometimes called themselves. "Child of the Sun" was a title given to a Spanish man named Alvarado, Cortez's right hand man by the Indians.