| 1 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cyclops_2.png]] |
| 2 | [[caption-width-right:350:Left: [[Myth/ClassicalMythology A traditional depiction of the Cyclops]]. Right: [[VideoGame/ATotalWarSagaTroy A hypothetical "real world" interpretation for the Cyclops myth]].]] |
| 3 | |
| 4 | ->''"Every era tells the Trojan War legend a little differently. That's only natural. Homer's Iliad features the gods directly influencing the action--even joining in some of the battles. I've gone so far as to shove the gods offstage... I've chosen to downplay the supernatural element in order to emphasize the human element."'' |
| 5 | -->-- '''Eric Shanower''' about ''ComicBook/AgeOfBronze'' |
| 6 | |
| 7 | A form of AdaptationalMundanity that takes a legend and reveals what 'really' happened by stripping all the fantastic elements out of it (or, at the very least, rendering them MaybeMagicMaybeMundane so that they do not have to be fantastic). This sometimes falls flat, because without the gods and magic, the audience might wonder what the point is. If Myth/KingArthur is just another warlord with no Myth/LadyOfTheLake and no Myth/{{Merlin}}, he had better be made an interesting character in his own right. |
| 8 | |
| 9 | Authors sometimes [[SturgeonsLaw forget this second part]]. In particular, the onus is on the writer to make the imagined "historical" events at least as interesting as the legend (and the actual events that inspired them sometimes weren't). |
| 10 | |
| 11 | If the historical period in which the original story is set is [[SmallReferencePools unfamiliar to audiences]] (and only [[BroadStrokes touched on]] for verisimilitude by the writer for that reason), audiences may assume that the real-life historical milieu so lovingly depicted by the art department [[AluminumChristmasTrees couldn't possibly have been the source]] for the story they know and love, and is part of the filmmaker's dastardly invention. This is complicated by the fact that RealityIsUnrealistic, plus [[RuleOfDrama less dramatic]], and so, in the course of taking some of the more fantastic elements out, a certain amount of HollywoodHistory must be added in. |
| 12 | |
| 13 | This technique is often used to give an adaptation a [[SlidingScaleOfShinyVersusGritty grittier]] and [[SlidingScaleOfRealisticVersusFantastic more realistic feel]] in situations when it is perceived that the fantastic elements in the traditional version might seem too whimsical or even silly to the intended audience. |
| 14 | |
| 15 | Expect the hero to become FamedInStory, thereby [[HistoricalInJoke setting the stage]] for the rest of the story to become ShroudedInMyth. |
| 16 | |
| 17 | This tends, as a rule, to be a retelling of the legend in its ''current'' form. As a consequence, it can explain the "real history" behind figures who obviously had no real history in the story, because they were introduced to the legend later -- even centuries later. Frequent examples include Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, and Alan-a-Dale in Myth/RobinHood stories[[note]]Little John, Much the Miller's son, and Will Scarlet (or Scathelock, Scarlock, Stukeley, Stuteley, etc.) are his oldest companions[[/note]], and Lancelot and Galahad in Myth/ArthurianLegend[[note]]Bedivere, Kay, and the greatest of them all, Gawain, are the oldest "proto-knights of the Round Table"[[/note]]. |
| 18 | |
| 19 | Incidentally, the technical term for this technique is ''Euhemerism'', named after a 4th-century BCE Greek, making the trope OlderThanFeudalism. Sometimes coupled with a less-than-subtle TakeThat against religion, particularly {{Anvilicious}} writers will give the characters [[OutgrownSuchSillySuperstitions anachronistically agnostic attitudes towards the gods]]. |
| 20 | |
| 21 | MagicalRealism can take the form of demythification in a more contemporary setting, or vice versa, especially if your Retroactive Realism involves one or two elements (often the most beloved elements) that are left [[ShrugOfGod purposefully]] ambiguous as to [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane whether or not the supernatural is in play]]. |
| 22 | |
| 23 | When a writer intentionally does this as a way of drawing out what historians "really think" inspired the legends, it is ''this'' trope. When a writer makes stuff up by way of DirectLineToTheAuthor in order to [[TwiceToldTale rewrite an existing legend]], it is an ExternalRetcon, which is a sister trope. |
| 24 | |
| 25 | When stripping away the fantastic happens ''within'' the same fictional universe that had the fantastic elements in the first place, that's DoingInTheWizard, which is a sister trope. |
| 26 | |
| 27 | When a writer takes definitely ''historical'' accounts and reimagines what actually happened, it is HistoricalFiction (or AlternateHistory if the changes are great enough). When a writer makes a subtle reference to actual history in a work of fiction, it is a HistoricalInJoke. |
| 28 | |
| 29 | See also OralTradition, TwiceToldTale. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disenchantment Disenchantment]] is a related concept, referring to the ongoing devaluing of supernatural and mythological beliefs in western society, which can motivate interest in doing this. |
| 30 | |
| 31 | Not to be confused with {{Defictionalization}} or LowFantasy. See HistoricalFantasy for the opposite, retelling history with fantastic elements - though in some cases the approaches can overlap, like putting King Arthur into a DarkAgeEurope setting instead of the usual HighMiddleAges but still including magic. |
| 32 | ---- |
| 33 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 34 | |
| 35 | !!Abrahamic Religions |
| 36 | |
| 37 | [[folder:General]] |
| 38 | * So many books and documentaries have tried to find an all-encompassing scientific explanation for the story of [[Literature/BookOfExodus Exodus]] that it's hard to trace it down to the first one that brought up the idea. Occurrences like the parting of the Red Sea and the red river are usually attributed to a natural disaster. |
| 39 | * Other biblical stories like the Great Flood in [[Literature/BookOfGenesis Genesis]] get similar treatment. It's often pointed out that other religions and cultures have their versions of flood myths, sometimes with human survivors repopulating the Earth afterwards, most notoriously as found in Literature/TheEpicOfGilgamesh which is older than the composition of Genesis. Explanations include localized floods instead of a truly worldwide one, and the loss of land and rise of sea levels at the end of the Ice Age. |
| 40 | [[/folder]] |
| 41 | |
| 42 | [[folder:Anime & Manga]] |
| 43 | * ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'' presents the Dead Sea Scrolls as being left by the god-like alien who seeded Earth with life; this is the justification for the use of Biblical names and symbols used for the "Angels". |
| 44 | * Yasuhiko Yoshikazu of ''Franchise/{{Gundam}}'' fame did some historical manga, including ''Jesus'' and ''Waga na wa Nero'' (''"My Name Is Nero"'') which go into this, both also being in the same continuity. |
| 45 | ** In the former, Jesus is strongly implied to be just a regular human preacher whose divine sonship and miracles are ambiguous at best and exaggerations, delusions and lies at worst, not entirely due to his own actions but also due to the plots of Barabbas and the Zealots who want a figurehead to rally behind against Rome. In any case, he doesn't rise from the dead like his followers think he will. A few of them who discover this before anyone else then steal his body from his tomb to keep the idea of him as the Messiah alive. One of them (the narrator) is left in the tomb to pass down the "angel's" message that he did resurrect to the women who go there later, who pass it down to Peter and the others, etc. |
| 46 | ** Later in ''My Name is Nero'' (which also deals with purely historical myths like Nero partying and making music in his palace [[WhileRomeBurns while Rome burned]] - he was outside the city at the time of the Great Fire and personally took charge of the renovation efforts), the rise of Christianity in Rome is shown with Peter and Paul's activities. Nero meets Paul in person and casts doubt on his conversion story, of him encountering a bright light and voice that claims to be Jesus; Nero asks why he should believe that was really Jesus if Paul didn't see a man and admittedly never met the man during his earthly life. When the Christians are blamed for the fire and their persecution begins, Peter has his "Literature/QuoVadis" moment where he resolves to die like his master rather than escape, but admits to his companions that he and the original apostles lied about Jesus's post-resurrection appearances, deceiving Paul and others. There's a page of him kneeling before Jesus on the road, but it's only symbolic unlike in the Quo Vadis legend where Peter actually has a vision of Jesus. |
| 47 | [[/folder]] |
| 48 | |
| 49 | [[folder:Comic Books]] |
| 50 | * ''ComicBook/TheCartoonHistoryOfTheUniverse'' sometimes goes into this while covering Biblical events, sometimes invoking RuleOfFunny: |
| 51 | ** The professor narrator says that we don't really know how the Hebrew God's name YHWH was pronounced back then, as it was forbidden under threat of getting struck by lightning. He says that it could be anything from Yahweh to Yehowah to Yahu-Wahu - at which point he gets fried. Later, Hebrews are shown yelling "Yahoo! Wahoo!" or "Yahu!" in battle, and the Hebrew God's name is shortened to "Yahuwa" or "Yahu" in dialogue. |
| 52 | ** It's pointed out that secular historians think MosesInTheBulrushes is a myth, as other figures have had similar foundling origin stories, so the comic supposes that Moses was a half-Egyptian priest or noble who developed a neurotic streak due to his contrasting backgrounds, though at the same time it is acknowledged that unwanted babies were often exposed, so he could have been an exposed child who was lucky to be adopted. He's drawn as bald or shaved and darker-skinned like the Egyptians and unlike regular Hebrews. He has a temper due to his neuroses and his murder of the Egyptian overseer is his repressed rage snapping. He's influenced by the Pharaoh Akhenaten who promoted worship of the Sun Aten as the one and only god. The plagues of Egypt are simply natural disasters the comic doesn't dwell on much that Moses attributes to the Hebrew God, the parting of the Red Sea is just said to be the Hebrews escaping after the pursuing Egyptian chariots got stuck in marshy ground, as "Red Sea" is argued to be a mistranslation of "Reed Sea" and the Golden Calf is Apis. |
| 53 | ** The prophet Samuel's mother is shown going to the priest Eli asking that God grant her a child. Later she brings her son to Eli to raise, saying he's "probably yours anyway". Plus coupled with CharacterExaggeration, Samuel's religious vow "never to let a razor touch his head" means he is later shown with GodivaHair covering his entire body like Captain Caveman, and implied to be naked under it. |
| 54 | ** The Israelites want a king so Samuel reluctantly goes to pick one. The narrator says the idea of a good king in those days was someone who looked like they could beat everyone else up, so Samuel picks Saul, the tallest guy in Israel. But later Goliath is even bigger... |
| 55 | ** The JudgmentOfSolomon story is presented as not a real event but a tale Solomon had circulated about himself as a political allegory, using it as a way of telling Israel to accept his weaker claim to kingship over his brother's to avoid tearing the country apart in war. |
| 56 | ** Elijah calling down fire from heaven to burn a sacrifice drenched with water is suspected by both his Baal priest rivals and even the narrator to be just sleight of hand, since he somehow obtained a lot of water in the middle of a drought so it may not even actually have been water but a inflammable liquid. |
| 57 | ** The writing on the wall in the story of Daniel is implied to just be graffiti, and when Daniel says it was the angel's hand that put it there, he quickly clarifies it was a metaphor to the Babylonians. |
| 58 | ** The comic goes for a subtle JesusWasCrazy angle with him being held too long underwater during his baptism and acting woozy, then later presented panel by panel in wildly different lights taken from all four canonical gospels. |
| 59 | [[/folder]] |
| 60 | |
| 61 | [[folder:Film]] |
| 62 | * ''Film/ExodusGodsAndKings'' has naturalistic explanations for at least some of the supernatural events in the story of Moses. Though it [[http://insidemovies.ew.com/2014/10/23/ridley-scott-red-sea-exodus/ "doesn’t completely shy away from the miraculous".]] |
| 63 | ** The Nile is the color of blood because an unusually severe rash of crocodile attacks killed hundreds or thousands of people in it and it's actually full of blood. |
| 64 | ** Later after most of the other plagues have hit, an advisor to the Pharaoh Rameses tries his best to come up with rational explanations for the phenomena - most of which actually make quite a bit of sense, enough for Rameses to not believe that these were actually acts of the Hebrews' God. The advisor and Rameses's priests, however, end up on death row when their explanations and prayers stop being effective at getting ''out'' of these problems. The advisor posits that the plagues are part of [[DisasterDominoes one big unfortunate chain reaction]]. The initial crocodile attacks churn up the red clay in the Nile, which seems to be more than usual. This kills off the fish and drives out frogs. The frogs die off in turn and the rotting fish and frogs attract gnats and flies, which in turn spread pestilence among both livestock and humans, specifically causing boils for the latter, and killing off a large portion of the cattle. |
| 65 | ** The parting of the Red Sea is caused by the water receding before a tsunami, which hits the pursuing Egyptian army after the Hebrews manage to escape to higher ground. |
| 66 | * ''Film/TheGospelAccordingToStMatthew'': Downplayed through the stark down-to-earth approach. Miracles happen but they're presented through {{Smash Cut}}s, so they just happen suddenly with no shining lights or other visual fanfare, and this gives the film a bit of a MagicRealism vibe. |
| 67 | * ''Film/KingDavid'': |
| 68 | ** David doesn't bring down Goliath with one stone immediately as in the Bible, instead having his first two stones deflected by Goliath's shield and having to dodge a thrown spear. |
| 69 | ** More curiously, it's unclear whether the movie deliberately rationalizes away Goliath's size or it's just a [[invoked]]SpecialEffectFailure. Camera angles and sound design (clanking armor etc.) are played up for all they're worth to make him feel like a lumbering giant towering over the young David. But once Goliath is killed, there's a wide shot of his body lying on the ground surrounded by David, King Saul and others, and he just appears be a somewhat tall man. No one at the scene actually calls attention to Goliath's height being exceptional, though as the enemy champion he is TheDreaded. Years later, the Philistine king does refer to David's God "delivering him from the giant" when talking with the adult David, but it's entirely possible he's referring to how the tale grew in the telling. |
| 70 | ** The movie also omits overt supernatural occurrences in the story like Saul visiting a witch to summon the prophet Samuel's ghost. God's voice is also never directly heard. So when David is selected over all of his older brothers to be anointed as the future king of Israel, Samuel has to divine God's will using two gems or stones (probably the mysterious ''Urim and Thummim'' mentioned in the Bible) held in his hands, and David is chosen because light shines or is reflected in them when it's his turn, unlike the others. |
| 71 | * ''Film/TheLastTemptationOfChrist'' portrays Satan and Jesus' divine origin as real, but offers a down-to-earth version of the latter and the Crucifixion. The unconventional-looking Creator/WillemDafoe plays Jesus, he is shocked when he pulls off his first miracle, the Last Supper scene avoids a LastSupperSteal by involving a lot more people than the traditional thirteen (including women) and having them seat on the ground, and the Crucifixion scenes skew from traditional religious portrayals in favor of archaeology and non-religious accounts of how Roman crucifixions happened (for example, Jesus only carries the horizontal section to Golgotha, he is nailed by the wrists and also tied, and the two thieves are nailed to dead trees). Jesus' cross looks like a traditional Latin cross by sheer accident, due to the wooden sign reading "Jesus Nazarene King of the Jews" being placed on top of it; if not for that, it would look like a 'T'. John the Baptist is portrayed as much older with greying hair, with no indication he and Jesus are related, and there's no voice from heavens when he baptizes Jesus. |
| 72 | * ''Film/TheManFromEarth'': While the movie has one possibly supernatural element on which the whole story is based, the way it explains the myth of Jesus is quite realistic. John's immortality is given a highly speculative natural explanation. The characters themselves discuss whether it would be scientifically plausible for a man to stop ageing and live indefinitely. They conclude that it's theoretically possible, if highly unlikely. |
| 73 | * ''Film/MontyPythonsLifeOfBrian'', despite expectations, actually subverts this. It follows the whacky misadventures of a man who is repeatedly mistaken for a prophet in Roman Galilee, from his adoration by the Magi to his crucifixion by the Romans, and shows (accurately) that there were many self-proclaimed prophets in that time and place. Yet the movie does not make any comment on Jesus' nature, his Nativity scene is accompanied by a heavenly glow and music unlike Brian's, and he stays offscreen except for other scene where he is addressing people during the Sermon on the Mount. Despite this, many censors considered the film blasphemous and [[BannedInChina it was denied a release in several countries for decades]]. |
| 74 | * The mini-series ''Series/MosesTheLawgiver'' stripped bare the story of Moses. |
| 75 | * [[DownplayedTrope Downplayed]] in ''Film/ThePassionOfTheChrist''. Creator Creator/MelGibson is a Traditional Catholic and plays the Crucifixion completely as per Literature/TheFourGospels and later Catholic tradition (plus a BigLippedAlligatorMoment cameo by Satan which is all Gibson's), but portrays Jesus's scourging as [[BloodierAndGorier bloody]] as you would expect from a public torture and execution ([[ArtisticLicenseBiology if not more]]), with barely a GoryDiscretionShot. The other DancingBear of the movie is that it is entirely shot in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Latin to give it a more realistic feel, though the dialects used are modern rather than period-accurate. Gibson also refused to have Jesus ''not'' carry a Latin cross and be nailed by his hands, as in ''The Last Temptation of Christ'' above, but had the other two condemned carry only the horizontal section of their own crosses. |
| 76 | * ''Film/TheTenCommandments1956'' has a scene where Ramses tries to explain away the Plagues as natural phenomena. To paraphrase, he tells Moses that red mud seeped into the Nile River, causing the frogs to leave and the cattle drinking from it to sicken and die, whose carcasses rotted, attracting rats and bugs that spread disease. Then there's the matter of burning hail from the sky... |
| 77 | [[/folder]] |
| 78 | |
| 79 | [[folder:Literature]] |
| 80 | * ''Act of God'', similar in style to ''The Holy Blood & the Holy Grail'', raises the hypothesis that the Thera eruption was responsible for the Exodus story, the plagues, the Pillar of Smoke By Day, Pillar of Fire by Night, etc. |
| 81 | * The whole "genre" of AncientAstronauts theories concerns itself with explaining old myths and religious stories, but Abrahamic religions and the pagan mythologies of their original Semitic believers tend to steal the spotlight. To be specific, these stories are considered fanciful accounts of, like, ''totally'' mundane stuff like human-alien interaction. Nothing fantastic at all! |
| 82 | * In Creator/PoulAnderson's ''Literature/TimePatrol'' story "Brave To Be A King", Manse finds that the MosesInTheBulrushes legend is being told about Cyrus the Great in his lifetime, and learns that the actual Cyrus was exposed and killed, and the recovered one was actually the time traveler Manse was looking for. To keep history on track, they go back and intimidate the grandfather out of trying to kill Cyrus -- so the legend must have become attached to Cyrus at a later date. |
| 83 | * ''The Gospel according to Jesus Christ'' by Creator/JoseSaramago seems to start in this direction, by having Jesus being born from plain intercourse by Joseph and Mary, presenting the Angel that heralds his birth in an ambiguous manner (for example, he shows up later as one of three shepherds who adore him), having the Massacre of the Innocents limited to the village Jesus is staying in, attributing his ability to produce fish simply to good fishing skills, having him in love with Mary Magdalene, and having John the Baptist (who is unrelated to Jesus, but inspires him) be executed for criticizing Herod's marriage and not for claiming the coming of the Messiah. However, Herod learns of Jesus's birth from a dead prophet appearing to him in a dream (instead of [[AdaptedOut the Magi]]), teen Jesus works for both the Angel (who seems to be really an Angel) and another shepherd who is clearly the Devil, and as an adult, Jesus meets [[RealAfterAll God]]. [[spoiler:[[GodIsEvil Who is evil]]. And tells Jesus he indeed created him, but as [[YouCantFightFate a tool to make all people in the world]] [[GodsNeedPrayerBadly stop praying]] [[FantasyKitchenSink to other gods]] and make them pray only to himself.]] |
| 84 | * Creator/LeoTolstoy's ''[[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Gospel_in_Brief The Gospel in Brief]]'' tries to infer the life and teachings of Jesus without the myths that Tolstoy believed were later applied to them. Tolstoy goes through with this more thoroughly than Jefferson below as he applies it not only to what passages he includes and excludes, but also to the entire translation process itself. |
| 85 | * ''Gospel of Afranius'' by the Russian author Kirill Yeskov presents the [[Literature/TheFourGospels four canonical Gospels]] as [[RashomonStyle honest but one-sided eyewitness accounts]] of "Operation Pisces", a Roman secret service FalseFlagOperation to undermine right-wing militia support in Judea. While not denying (or supporting) the claim of UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}}' (who is shown as an unwitting (?) victim of the Romans) divine nature, it explains most of his miracles with actions of the DoubleReverseQuadrupleAgent Judas and his posthumous appearances, with various impostors (one of whom went on to write the Q document). |
| 86 | * ''[[http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/JefJesu.html The Jefferson Bible]]'' was an attempt by no less a personage than UsefulNotes/ThomasJefferson, a [[{{UsefulNotes/Deism}} deist]] who considered Jesus to be a great moral teacher but had a strong dislike for organized religion, to strip the Gospels of their more "fantastic" elements. Deism was a philosophy common in the 18th century that denied the existence of miracles and perceived God as a "cosmic watchmaker" who creates the laws of nature and carries out His will in accordance with them. It still exists but is much less popular and influential than at its peak, and is best recognized today for its influence on Unitarianism. |
| 87 | * ''King Jesus'' by [[Literature/IClaudius Robert Graves]], which mixes the canonical and non-canonical Christian gospels with a great deal of his own innovations, presents Jesus not as the son of God but the secret grandson of Herod. Though he does perform miracles and is resurrected at the end. He also presents the true secret name of God as coded through mathematics, musical notation and numerology as "Iieuoaa", or "Jievoaa", with the pronunciation used by the priests being deliberately misleading. Jesus finds out the secret and ultimately speaks the Divine Name aloud to resurrect Lazarus. |
| 88 | * In ''Literature/TheMasterAndMargarita'', the title character's masterpiece is a novel recounting the life of Pontius Pilate. Excerpts are given from the chapters concerning Pilate's encounter with Jesus, which depict the episode in this way: nothing unambiguously supernatural occurs, and Yeshua is characterized as a philosopher who speaks of the Kingdom of Heaven only as a metaphor and is misunderstood by his followers. |
| 89 | * Shulamith Hareven's ''The Miracle Hater'' is a mostly naturalistic retelling of Exodus, a historical depiction of a desert tribe who don't yet have the kind of religion that Judaism would eventually develop into. |
| 90 | * UsefulNotes/SigmundFreud's last work was ''Moses and Monotheism'', a speculative tale where he posits that Moses was a [[CompositeCharacter composite of two people]], the death of the first going some way to explain the development of the Jewish religion and psyche. The original Moses (whose name is in fact Egyptian in origin despite the Hebrew etymology given for it) was a son of a Egyptian princess who had her way with a Hebrew slave, who then became a follower of the Pharaoh Akhenaten who promoted worship of the Sun Aten as the one god (hence the term "Adonai"). After the initial exodus his followers murdered him, and later they merged with a desert tribe like the Midianites who followed a volcano and fire god, Yahweh. Still later, the tribal religious leader and the original Moses were merged into one man, and the legalism and uncleanliness fixations in Judaism and the eventual Messiah concept are subconscious expressions of the people's collective guilt over the murder of the Egyptian Moses and hope for his return. |
| 91 | * In Zora Neale Hurston's ''Literature/MosesManOfTheMountain'', some of the famous miracles Moses performs in Literature/TheBible while leading the Hebrews out of Egypt are really tricks he learned from his first trip into Midian: he crosses the Red Sea because of his knowledge of tides and strikes water from a stone by finding a spring he had once encountered. However, some of his miracles are still as fantastic as the biblical version, and from Moses's perspective there is no difference between them: they're all just applications of his vast knowledge of nature. |
| 92 | * Creator/OrsonScottCard does this with the legend of Noah's ark and other great floods, including the legend of Atlantis, early in ''Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus''. (The short version is that the natural rising of the Indian Ocean overran a land bridge between the ocean and the Red Sea, and that was the flood that destroyed the nearby city - which at some point became identified with Atlantis - where Noah lived; Noah had seen the rising waters of the ocean and built his ship in order to escape the flood he predicted would come.) |
| 93 | * ''Literature/TheRedTent'' does this with the story of Dinah (daughter of Jacob) in the Old Testament. In this story, instead of Dinah being raped by the prince of Shechem, they had a consensual relationship that her brothers didn't approve of. Instead of Jacob's visions and name change (to Israel) being seen as from God, they are seen as a man slowly going crazy as his family falls apart. |
| 94 | * Literature/TheBible: Out of all the naturalistic attempts to explain how the early disciples came to believe in Christ's Resurrection, one of the most interesting is the Twin Hypothesis. This posits that Jesus had a twin who was otherwise unknown and who came around and impersonated Jesus after he was crucified and buried. This theory was posited by Greg Cavin in a debate he did with Creator/WilliamLaneCraig. While it's not a popular view among scholars because it's so contrived, it would at least explain the physicality of the appearances, and would hint at an explanation as to how the tomb became empty. |
| 95 | * Creator/DavidGemmell's ''[[Literature/TheTroySaga Troy]]'' series mainly deals with Greek mythology in such a way but also features a slow-burn twist regarding this. One of the main characters in the large ensemble cast is an Egyptian named Gershom, who befriends Helikaon (Aeneas). Little by little he's hinted to be an Egyptian prince in exile/hiding. In the third book, Gershom experiences the Burning Bush as a ritual fire lit by Kassandra - she burns oracular opiates in a cave to make him induce visions of his past and future, and the fire appears not to consume the dry bush she used simply because he's high. He has a vision of him being really one of the "desert people" slaves who was secretly SwitchedAtBirth with a stillborn baby prince of Egypt, with the queen being clueless (instead of the familiar [[MosesInTheBulrushes "baby set adrift"]] tale.) By the end, the eruption at Thera is what causes the Plagues of Egypt as a series of natural disasters/phenomena - by which time Gershom has returned to Egypt to fulfill his destiny, using his real name Ahmose. Given that Gershom is the name of Moses's son in the Hebrew scriptures, the twist was kind of hiding in plain sight. |
| 96 | * ''Literature/JesusVideo'': A time traveler from TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture travels to Roman-era Jerusalem and films two tapes of Jesus preaching, with no miracles. Many people disregard him as a boring rabbi and the claims it's Jesus as a [[YourCostumeNeedsWork hoax]], though others try to live closer to what's said on the tapes. |
| 97 | [[/folder]] |
| 98 | |
| 99 | [[folder:Live-Action TV]] |
| 100 | * ''Series/{{House}}'': |
| 101 | ** One episode featured a teenage faith healer who apparently sent another patient's cancer into remission with a touch. Only to turn out that he gave her herpes that attacked the cancer, he'd been picking at his sores before he touched her. |
| 102 | ** Another episode featured a doubting priest who began having visions of Jesus, stigmata, and other "prophetic" style symptoms. Eventually, House proved all the physical signs were merely the symptoms of a disease. [[{{Handwave}} The visions he figured were just alcohol-induced]]. |
| 103 | ** Yet another has House ultimately choosing to play along with a pregnant couple who claim they are both virgins, telling them that the results prove the woman's conception is the first ever medically-proven case of parthenogenesis in humans. His "revelation" comes at the sound of church-like music. However, since this means all genetic material came from the mother, the baby is a girl. |
| 104 | * ''Series/JesusOfNazareth'': Downplayed, but when John the Baptist baptizes Jesus, John claims to hear God's voice and relays "You are my beloved Son" etc. to Jesus instead of an overt voice from the heavens saying it. |
| 105 | * The short-lived series ''Series/OfKingsAndProphets'' was (at least in part) an attempt at doing this for the Literature/BooksOfSamuel in Literature/{{the Bible}}. For example: in the show's depiction of [[DavidVersusGoliath David's famous battle with Goliath]], Goliath is not exceptionally tall, but just a [[RankScalesWithAsskicking physically imposing Philistine general]] who inspires his men by challenging his enemies to one-on-one duels. Compared to most other depictions, the fight also plays out like a realistic duel to the death: instead of a single slung stone to the head, it takes multiple shots for David to bring Goliath down, and he begins by targeting his ''knees''.[[note]] This does line up with a few scholars claiming that there's an ambiguity with the Hebrew text regarding the words usually translated as "forehead" and "greaves", with the former possibly really being the singular form of the latter; they point out that Goliath is said to fall ''face down'', not on his back which would presumably be more consistent with a frontal headshot.[[/note]] The show also leaves it deliberately ambiguous whether Samuel is ''actually'' a prophet, or just a wise man [[TheChessmaster who claims to speak to God in order to manipulate others into doing his bidding]]. |
| 106 | [[/folder]] |
| 107 | |
| 108 | [[folder:Music]] |
| 109 | * ''Music/JesusChristSuperstar'' although it doesn't debate Jesus' divinity, does question him from [[SympathyForTheDevil Judas' point of view]], and seemingly [[DoingInTheWizard does in the wizard]] with respect to physical miracles and angels incarnate. Rather than being made to look especially fallible, Jesus counsels his followers to be more sensible, but his [[ExternalRetcon best intentions are tragically unheeded by his flock]]. |
| 110 | [[/folder]] |
| 111 | |
| 112 | [[folder:Video Games]] |
| 113 | * ''Franchise/AssassinsCreed'': There is no God or afterlife, all the supposed miracles that occurred throughout history were illusions caused by pieces of lost {{Precursor}} technology stolen by Adam and Eve, who were slaves to said precursors; any and all magic and other supernatural phenomena are explained with ClarkesThirdLaw. |
| 114 | [[/folder]] |
| 115 | |
| 116 | [[folder:Western Animation]] |
| 117 | * The Robot Devil in ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' drags robots who fail to follow the Robotology religion to Robot Hell (a physical place built under an amusement park in New Jersey). The original Devil is not commented upon, though God appears in another episode (and the Second Coming of Jesus is offhandedly said to have happened at one point in the Third Millennium). |
| 118 | * ''WesternAnimation/ThePrinceOfEgypt'' is a partial Demythification of the Literature/BookOfExodus, keeping in most of the overtly fantastical elements--like the Burning Bush and the parting of the Red Sea--while reimagining some of the subtler fantastical elements [[ValuesDissonance that don't translate quite as well into modern times]]. To elaborate: |
| 119 | ** Most translations of the Book of Exodus heavily imply that the Pharaoh's [[CourtMage court magicians]] possessed some degree of genuine magical abilities, which allowed them to replicate all of Moses' miracles until the Ten Plagues [[VillainousBSOD left them too weak to do magic]]. For the story's original audience, the intended message was likely that [[AllMythsAreTrue there were many forms of magic in the world]], but none of them were as powerful as God's divine miracles [[note]]This makes sense considering that earlier Judaism is {{henotheistic|Society}}, not monotheist, so the other powers are real, but Yahweh's the only one worthy of worship[[/note]]. In the movie, Ramses' court magicians [[BumblingHenchmenDuo Hotep and Huy]] are shown to be simple illusionists who use sleight of hand and stagecraft to make people ''think'' they can perform miracles, while Moses' miracles are the real deal. Case in point: Moses [[SerpentStaff transforms his staff into a snake]] and in plain view of the audience and other characters, whereas Hotep and Huy disguise them transforming theirs with darkness and a blinding flash of light, obviously insinuating that they switched their staves for snakes when no one could see; Moses also turns his snake back into a staff after the VillainSong while Hotep and Huy don't--[[RuleOfSymbolism Moses' staff-turned-snake devoured the two fake ones]]. |
| 120 | ** Many translations make reference to God "harden[ing] the Pharaoh's heart" to ensure that [[VillainBall he doesn't free the Hebrews until the Ten Plagues have run their course]] (presumably to [[ScareEmStraight make an example of the Egyptians for future generations]]), implying that God uses His power to influence certain people's behavior and actions. The movie gives him a pretty convincing FreudianExcuse that makes his actions seem much more understandable. His father Pharaoh Seti is shown to be an [[AbusiveDad emotionally abusive]] tyrant who constantly reminded his son that the fate of Egypt rested on his shoulders, and that any sign of weakness could bring his forefathers' dynasty crashing down ([[ArcWords "One weak link can destroy a chain!"]]). As an adult, Ramses takes his advice to heart and refuses to free the Hebrews because he considers mercy to be a sign of weakness, only relenting [[DespairEventHorizon when his firstborn son is killed by the Plagues]]. The movie nods to the text of the Bible by letting Ramses sing (in the song "The Plagues") "Then '''let''' my heart be hardened, and nevermind how high the cost may grow". |
| 121 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': The episode "Simpsons Bible Stories" had a segment parodying Exodus. In that segment, Moses (played by Milhouse) and Lisa performed the miracles using non-supernatural means such as when they dropped baskets of frogs on the Pharaoh and [[ItMakesSenseInContext parted the sea by flushing toilets]]. The only part that wasn't demythified was the burning bush (read: God) that snitched on Bart. |
| 122 | [[/folder]] |
| 123 | |
| 124 | !!British Mythology |
| 125 | [[folder:General]] |
| 126 | * Myth/ArthurianLegend, a kind of spinoff of wider Myth/CelticMythology, is a popular choice for this approach because of the development of the legend itself through the centuries. Arthur and those immediately closest to him are first named and described in British/Welsh/Cornish pseudohistory, myths and legends, which dates well back into the first millennium AD (aka the "Dark Ages", or Early Middle Ages), despite the texts being written down much later than the period they describe, like with the Arthurian parts of the Welsh ''Literature/{{Mabinogion}}'' cycle. Plus, while many early key texts root Arthur and his era into the Early Middle Ages, many scholars argue that Arthur may have started as an ahistorical "pan-Brittonic" figure common to the British Celts of what was to become England, Wales and Cornwall in the British Isles, and Brittany in France (as opposed to Continental Celts in the rest of France and elsewhere in continental Europe). Arthur's fate is also akin to continental myths of a Great Hero who lies sleeping in a cave somewhere, ready to awake in his people's time of need[[note]]Ascribed variably to Charlemagne, to the French hero Roland, to Holger Dansk in Denmark, and Emperor Barbarossa in Germany.[[/note]] so in this sense Arthur is "pan-European". In any case, Arthurian legend has been retold, revised and remodelled again and again to fit (perceptions of) the later High Middle Ages and onward, and "Dark Age throwback" modern retellings are a response to this. Though the handling of specific elements may greatly differ, a lot of "Dark Age throwback" Arthurian retellings often follow the same broad outline for their worldbuilding, with several things in common: |
| 127 | ** The setting is around when or after the Roman Empire's control over Britain wanes, leaving behind a mix of Celtic and Roman culture. [[Myth/KingArthur Arthur himself]] may be of Roman descent or at least be influenced by them. |
| 128 | ** The main or overarching enemies tend to be the UsefulNotes/AngloSaxons who invade/migrate into the area, if not or in addition to rival British kings or lords. |
| 129 | ** Arthur may not be called a king at first or at all, instead being or starting off as some sort of warlord. |
| 130 | ** The equivalents of knights may be less of a formal order or class with chivalric ideals and more of professional soldiers and/or champion warriors in warbands. |
| 131 | ** Myth/{{Merlin}} and Morgan le Fay may be linked to Druids or Celtic paganism in general, sometimes to the point of anachronism. |
| 132 | ** A recurring FandomSpecificPlot thread is trying to explain {{Excalibur}} and the SwordInTheStone (which are sometimes considered the same sword) in a realistic manner. And people have gotten creative. See several modern examples in ExcaliburInTheStone. |
| 133 | [[/folder]] |
| 134 | |
| 135 | [[folder:Anime & Manga]] |
| 136 | * In ''Manga/VinlandSaga'' [[spoiler:Askeladd]] is the last remaining direct descendant of King Arthur, who was really a Romano-British general named Artorius. Said character was probably named after him as well, making his original full name "Lucius Artorius Castus". (Same as the ''Film/KingArthur2004'' film, which it might have referenced.) |
| 137 | [[/folder]] |
| 138 | |
| 139 | [[folder:Comic Books]] |
| 140 | * In Creator/DonRosa's ''ComicBook/DisneyDucksComicUniverse'' story ''The Once and Future Duck'', Gyro, Donald Duck and his nephews go back in time and runs into the (extremely unheroic) warlord Arturius Riothamas (King Arthur) and his bard Myrdin (Merlin). They also accidentally create the basis for the legends of the Holy Grail and Excalibur. The main characters manage to thwart Arturius and flee back to the future, but in the end, Myrdin decides to make the entire incident look like a great victory and create a heroic song about "King Arturius and his Narts of the Round Stable", promising that it will be a huge hit in the future. It is based on a genuine [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_basis_for_King_Arthur#Riothamus theory]] about the "historic" Arthur. |
| 141 | [[/folder]] |
| 142 | |
| 143 | [[folder:Fan Fiction]] |
| 144 | * ''FanFic/DiariesOfAMadman'' plays with this. Several human myths are actually true, including Merlin, whereas others such as legends surrounding several of the human gods are instead revealed to be powerful mages. |
| 145 | [[/folder]] |
| 146 | |
| 147 | [[folder:Film]] |
| 148 | * ''Film/FirstKnight'' is still technically a fantasy film with no attempt made to ground the story in real places or a distinct historical period, but it also strips the Arthurian length down to a group of knights, their leader, the BigBad and his horde, and a LoveTriangle. No [[CoolSword magical sword]] bestowed by [[EnigmaticEmpoweringEntity some watery tart]] -- or any other magic elements, like Myth/{{Merlin}}. For example: at the end of the film, [[spoiler:Arthur isn't taken to mystic Avalon on the brink of his death by fey women--he just dies and gets a VikingFuneral]]. |
| 149 | * ''Film/KingArthur2004'' attempts (the keyword being: ''[[ArtisticLicenseHistory/KingArthur2004 attempts]]'') to present a historically accurate version of the Arthurian legends. No mean feat: the evidence is vague and contradictory. The film takes the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_basis_for_King_Arthur#Lucius_Artorius_Castus Sarmatian Hypothesis]] and runs with it, stripping out all magical elements in the process. |
| 150 | ** To name a few: Arthur is Lucius Artorius Castus, a Romano-British cavalry officer who [[IChooseToStay chooses to stay]] after Rome pulls out of Britain. The Knights are Sarmatian cavalrymen drafted by the Romans, and the Round Table is exactly that, a round table commissioned by Artorius so his men can seat without giving more preeminence to any. At the time of the film, most of the Sarmatians have died already while fighting still restless, non-Romanized Britons (called "[[FantasticSlur Woads]]"), and more die in the Saxon invasion. Merlin is the chief of the Briton rebels, who is forced to ally with Artorius to face the common threat of the Saxons. Guinevere is [[RelatedInTheAdaptation Merlin's daughter]], a [[ActionGirl warrior woman]] who develops feelings for both Artorius and Lancelot, and only looks "queenly" after [[ForegoneConclusion she marries Artorius at the end]]. |
| 151 | ** The film's version of ExcaliburInTheStone: It was Arthur's father's sword, and it was used as his tombstone by his wife and son. It remained there until a surprise Woad attack forced young Arthur to take it and use it to fight, and he kept it afterwards. In other words, the "spell" keeping the sword in place until retrieved by its rightful owner was just Arthur's legal ownership of it, which was never challenged by anyone. |
| 152 | ** Arthur is FamedInStory not only because of his own deeds but also because his father and many of his male ancestors before him, who all bore the exact same name, had led Sarmatian troops in Britain for several generations, and this began centuries before the events of the movie. |
| 153 | * In ''Film/{{Ondine}}'', the suspected [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selkie selkie]] is just a really good (human) swimmer. The "seal coat" is actually smuggled drugs, the "selkie husband" is a drug baron, her mystical song is actually a foreign pop song, and Annie getting a replacement kidney is pure coincidence. |
| 154 | * ''Film/TransformersTheLastKnight'' has the history of the Knights involving Merlin. Turns out, he was actually a drunkard who met some Cybertronians. |
| 155 | [[/folder]] |
| 156 | |
| 157 | [[folder:Literature]] |
| 158 | * Creator/MarkTwain's ''Literature/AConnecticutYankeeInKingArthursCourt'' portrays the magic in the Arthurian legend as fraudsters (including the title character) fooling the ignorant. Also subverted, when said title character falls unconscious for 1500 years so that he can personally deliver the story to Twain. |
| 159 | * ''Black Horses for the King'' by Creator/AnneMcCaffrey, told from the viewpoint of a stable boy. |
| 160 | * Jack Whyte's ''Camulod'' series removed virtually every scrap of magic from the Arthurian mythos - except the [[{{Unobtainium}} Made Of Unobtainium]] Excalibur and a few characters having [[PsychicDreamsForEveryone psychic dreams]]. |
| 161 | * Two books in Creator/RosemarySutcliff's Literature/TheDolphinRing series (''The Lantern Bearers'' and ''Literature/SwordAtSunset'') feature "Artos the Bear", the bastard nephew of Briton High King Ambrosius Aurelianus, who commands three hundred cavalrymen in chainmail against the invading Anglo-Saxons some one hundred years after the Roman Legions left. [[ElCidPloy He forbids to tell about his death in order to keep morale high]] and names a successor "until his return". His three companions are Cei (Kay), Gwalchmai (Gawain), and Bedwyr (Bedivere, who is an AscendedExtra and CompositeCharacter with Lancelot, as a way to avoid featuring Lancelot proper). Artos's sword is old and finely made, but has no name and is given to him by his uncle. The fairies are replaced by "little dark people" - short, dark-skinned pre-Celtic humans that live in caves (based in turn on Victorian speculation about the origins of fairy myths). It is ambiguous if the curse put on Artos is supernatural or just psychological. |
| 162 | * ''Excalibur!'' by Gil Kane and John Jakes. |
| 163 | * Parke Godwin's ''Firelord''. Followed by ''Beloved Exile'', about Guinevere's later life at the EndOfAnAge. |
| 164 | * Robert Aspirin's ''For King And Country'' features MentalTimeTravel to Arthurian days shortly before the Battle of Badon Hill, with one protagonist going into Lancelot, one going into Morgan le Fae, and the villain going into a traveling minstrel. Among items brought up were: |
| 165 | ** Artorius was not High King, or king at all, he was ''Dux Bellorum'', the Lord of Battle, who had supreme authority over all Britons in matter of war. Any authority he had in peace was just the result of his ability to command respect from the actual kings and queens. |
| 166 | ** The Sword in the Stone was the insignia of Artorius' personal cavalry unit. |
| 167 | ** The Knights of the Round Table were the actual monarchs of Britain, serving as subordinate warlords. There was no actual Round Table, when the monarchs met in council, they sat around a ring made of smaller tables, with the kings seated in rough alphabetical order by name of country. |
| 168 | ** Excalibur's apparently magical power stemmed from two things. First, that it was Damascus steel when everyone else was lucky to have iron weapons, and second, that the lining of the scabbard was coated in mistletoe sap, and as such the sword itself was poisoned with an anticoagulant. |
| 169 | ** Merlin was a druid and scholar. His "magic" was knowing things less educated people did not (such as how to forge Damascus steel). |
| 170 | * Henry Treece wrote three mutually exclusive versions of the historical Arthur and co. starting with the young adult novel ''The Eagles have Flown'', told from the viewpoint of a young Roman Briton who joins Arthur, then ''The Great Captains'' with Mordred and Arthur as the protagonists, and finally ''The Green Man'', a retelling of Theatre/{{Hamlet}} based on the original Danish legend, appearing when Hamlet is exiled to Britain. |
| 171 | * ''Literature/HereLiesArthur'' tells the story of how Merlin (not a wizard) built up the legend of Arthur (not a hero, but a common warlord, and a fairly stupid one at that) using a web of deceit and the help of the book's young protagonist. |
| 172 | * Courtway Jones' ''In the Shadow of the Oak King'' similarly strips out the magic except for making Arthur and his half-brother Pelleas telepaths. Merlin is a blacksmith and general wise man. |
| 173 | * Tony Hays wrote a detective/mystery series set in the Arthurian era, starting with ''The Killing Way''. The lead character is an ex-soldier of Arthur's who sleuths for him after being handicapped in battle. While not actually the first Arthurian books to take the unusual whodunit angle, they're the first ones to be historical-styled. For instance, Merlin is suspected of murder, but it seems Saxon spies did it, and it gets complicated by the warlords of Britain trying to elect a new High King. |
| 174 | * Stephen R. Lawhead's ''King Raven'' novel trilogy changes Robin Hood and his followers to Welsh and the [[SettingUpdate setting]] to the Norman invasion of Wales by William II, in order to make the anti-Norman resistance popularized by ''Literature/{{Ivanhoe}}'' less anachronistic ("Robin" is here a corruption of "Rhi Bran", supposedly Welsh for "King Raven", though since Robin's actual name is Bran then it should be "Bran Rhi"). |
| 175 | * ''Literature/TheLastLegion'' by Valerio Massimo Manfredi and its [[Film/TheLastLegion film adaptation]] with Creator/ColinFirth and Creator/BenKingsley. Or rather, its [[TheEndingChangesEverything final twist]], which reveals that Uther Pendragon was the new identity of [[spoiler:the last Western Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustus]] after he fled to Britain; Merlin was [[spoiler:his British tutor, Ambrosinus]], and Excalibur was [[spoiler:Julius Caesar's sword, bearing the inscription "ensis caliburnus", meaning [[ArtisticLicenseHistory in-universe]] that it was forged by a smith of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalybes Chalybes]]]]. The only thing magical about the latter two is that Merlin doesn't seem to age and [[ExcaliburInTheStone Excalibur ends in the stone]], with natural weathering eventually [[ExcaliburInTheRust obscuring the original Latin inscription]] until only "E", "S" and "Calibur" are visible. |
| 176 | * ''The Lovers'' by Kate Hawks, about Tristan and Isolde. |
| 177 | * Creator/MaryStewart's ''Literature/TheMerlinTrilogy'', although Merlin is ''sorta'' magical and is teased to be the [[HalfHumanHybrid son of an incubus]] in the first book. After that, it's made pretty clear who his father is. |
| 178 | * Creator/TerryPratchett has a subversion in the story "Once and Future"; of course Merlin isn't really a wizard, he's ''a {{time travel}}ler''! The stone holding the sword is an electromagnet. (It's also made clear that, even without magic, the AnachronismStew of Arthurian Britain isn't any history Mervin's familiar with.) |
| 179 | * Creator/AndreNorton's novella "Pendragon: Artos, Son of Marius" - one of the quartet of stories in ''Dragon Magic'' - is set in post-Roman Britain. It ends with an explanation of the later legends of Arthur's death - he was secretly buried in such a way as to give his followers hope of his eventual return. |
| 180 | * Creator/StephenRLawhead's ''Literature/ThePendragonCycle'' series contains virtually no explicit magic, though Merlin is descended from Atlanteans (who are treated like Tolkien's Elves). |
| 181 | * Helen Hollick's ''Pendragon's Banner'' trilogy. |
| 182 | * ''Literature/TheRealmOfAlbion'', by Marcus Pitcaithly, demythifies elements of ''Literature/{{Mabinogion}}'', other Myth/CelticMythology, and the late-medieval romances ''Amadis de Gaul'' and ''Perceforest''. |
| 183 | * Joan Wolf's ''Literature/TheRoadToAvalon'' has no magical elements except for Arthur and Morgan (portrayed as Arthur's lover) sharing a telepathic link. Merlin is a Roman-trained engineer. |
| 184 | * Parke Godwin's novels ''Sherwood'' and ''Robin and the King'' change the setting to the aftermath of the Norman Conquest of England, when the idea of a Saxon Robin's resistance against the Normans makes more sense. |
| 185 | * ''The Sword and the Flame'' by Catherine Christian (published as ''The Pendragon'' in the US). |
| 186 | * ''Literature/TheWarlordChronicles'' by Creator/BernardCornwell. Nimue, Morgan and Merlin's "magic" is a masterful mix of psychology, timing and chutzpah. The UnreliableNarrator is predisposed to believe in pagan magic, and believes every trick, Merlin and co. pull until Merlin explains in detail how he did it. Sometimes he still believes, despite the explanation. Similarly, pagan ceremonial magic is a mix of [[BatmanGambit psychology]], showmanship, trickery, and taking credit for natural occurrences. |
| 187 | * N.M. Browne's ''Warriors of Camlann'' (sequel to ''Warriors of Alvana''). There are elements of magic, but it tries to address historically plausible explanations for Camelot and Arthur. Though good luck, at points, figuring out who is who with all the alternate naming. |
| 188 | * Elizabeth E. Wein's ''[[Literature/TheLionHunters The Winter Prince]]'' deals with such characters of the Arthurian Legend as Artos (Arthur), Medraut (Mordred) and Queen Morgause (Morgaine) without any magic or magical swords at all. It is about people. |
| 189 | [[/folder]] |
| 190 | |
| 191 | [[folder:Live-Action TV]] |
| 192 | * ''Series/ArthurOfTheBritons'': Arthur is a warlord attempting to unite the Celtic tribes. There's no Merlin or knights (Arthur's trusted second is Kai), the Sword in the Stone is a visual metaphor that Arthur sets up but which doesn't quite land, and so on. His foster father Llud is a demythified version of Lludd of the Silver Hand from the ''Literature/{{Mabinogion}}'', who wears a silver hand prothesis after losing his own in battle. |
| 193 | * In ''Series/DoctorWho'', an alternate-universe Camelot appears to run on {{Magitek}}, and Merlin was actually the SufficientlyAdvancedAlien Doctor. Merlin "living backwards" is revealed to be the Doctor's overuse of RetroactivePreparation, to the point that his [[Recap/DoctorWhoS26E1Battlefield final confrontation]] with Morgaine occurs before he ever travels to Camelot in the first place. |
| 194 | [[/folder]] |
| 195 | |
| 196 | [[folder:Tabletop Games]] |
| 197 | * ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}}'' |
| 198 | ** The third edition ''Camelot'' sourcebook has three settings: Traditional, Cinematic or Historical. Historical is obviously this, a no-mana setting where a 5th century Roman general named Artorius has become Riothamus of post-Roman Britain by marrying Vortigern's daughter, and defends the country against the Saxons. |
| 199 | ** In ''TabletopGame/InfiniteWorlds'', the above world is called Camelot-2. (Camelot-1 is the Traditional version, and Camelot-3 is the Cinematic one.) Camelot-2 was briefly considered by Homeline scholars to be evidence that Artorius was the real Arthur of their own history, until further exploration turned up so many timelines with a "historical Arthur" to fit basically any theory, that they retired the "Camelot" designation altogether. |
| 200 | [[/folder]] |
| 201 | |
| 202 | !!Myth/ClassicalMythology |
| 203 | |
| 204 | [[folder:Comic Books]] |
| 205 | * In ''ComicBook/AgeOfBronze'', Eric Shanower's graphic novel series based on the ''Literature/TheTrojanCycle'', the gods don't appear, and there's no evidence that they actually exist in the world of the adaptation. This is deliberate, as the afterword makes clear. |
| 206 | ** The series is set in the 12th century BC (the time the events that inspired Homer, who wrote around 800 BC, are believed to have happened) and there is [[ShownTheirWork great attention to detail]] to make architecture, dress, weapons, etc. be true to the period. So while the Homeric names, personalities and relations between characters are kept intact, they are ''cosmetically'' as far from any other adaptation of the Illiad, usually based on the Classical Greece of [[NewerThanTheyThink 500 BC or later]], as they can be. The Achaeans are Mycenaean Greeks, and Troy is mostly Hittite with some leftover Minoan influences. |
| 207 | ** The Judgement of Paris? AllJustADream. Well, a dream [[UnreliableNarrator Paris]] claims to have had, during a seductive speech he makes to Helen. |
| 208 | ** Helen of Troy is only fairly attractive, not beautiful (but she is very conscious about her image and spends a lot of time on it; this, coupled with her exotic appeal and personality, is what makes Troy fall in love with her). Odysseus and Agamemnon say that she's the most beautiful woman in the world because the Hellene soldiers will fight more willingly than they would for the real reasons for the war, which are more complicated and less glamorous. |
| 209 | ** Helen is also the daughter of Tyndareus. Her mother believes that she hatched from an egg after she had intercourse with Zeus in the form of a swan because she is insane. However, the story has taken life of its own and become a rumor that Helen is of divine origin. |
| 210 | ** Many people referred to as children of gods are actually priests of that god. Oenone, Tethys, and other nymphs are just wise women that engage in healing and divination, and call themselves the daughters of the gods they worship. Anius and the Oenotropae are just a priest of Apollo and his three priestess daughters, living in Delos; instead of Agamemnon kidnapping the Oenotropae to feed his army, he docks in Delos and uses the food left there by the Greeks over the years as temple offerings. |
| 211 | ** Heracles was a roving warlord whose strength and charisma was such that he ended up revered as a god by his own men, and was later killed by his wife. His earlier sack of Troy is narrated differently by a bitter Priam, who attributes it to "[[MythologyGag a dispute over a couple of horses]]" with Priam's father, Laomedon. Priam's sister Hesione is not saved from HumanSacrifice but taken as war bounty. |
| 212 | ** Cheiron, while called a centaur, is a big, hairy MountainMan rather than a half man, half horse creature. |
| 213 | ** The story of Iphigenia being rescued at the last minute by Artemis was invented out of whole cloth by Odysseus to try to comfort her mother. |
| 214 | ** The exceptions are the many prophecies of doom. [[TheCassandra Cassandra]]'s, of course, are the most detailed and accurate, but true to myth, they are taken for incoherent ramblings and not believed. Instead of being cursed by Apollo for refusing his advances, she was raped by a pedophile at the temple of Apollo, when she was a child, and she grew up believing that the pedophile was Apollo and that he had cursed her (in reality he just told her that nobody would believe her about the rape). The curse is a SelfFulfillingProphecy here: Cassandra acts crazy because she thinks no one will believe her, and people don't believe her because she acts crazy. |
| 215 | * ''ComicBook/TheCartoonHistoryOfTheUniverse'' briefly retells several Greek myths for its Greek ancient history section partly for flavor and partly for lack of archaic material besides archaeology, but mainly presented as beliefs, and played up for comedy.[[note]]Like Helen of Troy is drawn with a duck's head and called "my goosey" by Menelaus because her mother was ''said'' to have mated (but ''shown'' somewhat graphically mating) with Zeus in the form of a swan.[[/note]] The narrator says that the possible truth behind the myths is less important than what the myths reveal about the people who made and believed them. |
| 216 | ** In general, it's pointed out that the Greek Heroic Age that culminated in the ''Iliad'' etc. was basically a violent age of piracy and warfare, with law and order breaking down and agricultural economies being supplemented and replaced more and more by raiding, so villagers are shown fleeing, screaming "the heroes are coming!" |
| 217 | ** The story of Oedipus unknowingly killing his real father Laios on the road simply for being in each other's way reflects a wilder time where every stranger was a potential enemy. Oedipus being a foundling is cast in doubt as with Moses, Cyrus the Great, Romulus and Remus, etc. The story of the Sphinx and its riddle in meta terms is an excuse for Thebans to put aside the search for the killer of their king Laios (whom Oedipus unknowingly succeeds), though the Sphinx is drawn as real and menaces the narrator. |
| 218 | ** Jason and the Argonauts are presented as raiders of whatever the Golden Fleece really was - all we can probably say for sure is that it was gold or golden and didn't belong to them. |
| 219 | ** The Argonaut expedition is also shown opening up the route that would later lead to the Trojan War, and while the story of Helen's abduction is presented, there's also the issue of economic control over the area as disputed by the Greeks and Trojans. |
| 220 | ** Then there's an aside about the Egyptian version of the Trojan War, presented as a possible, more anticlimactic version of what could have happened - that a Pharaoh kept Helen hostage all the while after she and Paris stopped over, and the Greeks never find out she never reached Troy. |
| 221 | ** The Centaurs could be reflections of the earliest Indo-European invaders to use horses in Greece. |
| 222 | ** The myths about Zeus being a womanizer in various forms like as a bull or swan may reflect Greek men being encouraged to womanize, explaining mysterious pregnancies by chalking them up to the gods, or even straight up traditions of Greek women and bestiality. |
| 223 | ** The emergence and development of the cult of Dionysios as possibly influenced by the Egyptian cult of Osiris is bolstered and encouraged by its wild public sexual orgies and celebration of wine and given official support for economic reasons, and thus possibly helped promote grape cultivation and wine-making across Greece. |
| 224 | * The first album of ''ComicBook/{{Lilith}}'' has the titular enhanced time traveler go back to the Trojan War which is depicted with suitably archaic Bronze Age aesthetics and name spellings, with the "Greeks" being Achaian "sea people" facing the "Trojans" of Wilusa/Wilios. The Trojan Horse is a siege engine with a horse head which breaches the walls at the same time as an earthquake happens with both sides invoking the equivalent of Poseidon the god of horses and earthquakes (the engine is destroyed, but the walls fall). Lilith's uncanny appearance and superhuman abilities lead people to mistake her for a goddess or spirit, but she also pretends to be as an Amazon, from Sarmatia. As a final twist [[spoiler:she blinds and cripples Akireu (Achilles), who then survives to essentially become Homer]]. |
| 225 | [[/folder]] |
| 226 | |
| 227 | [[folder:Film]] |
| 228 | * In ''Film/HelenOfTroy'' (1956), the gods never appear in person but the characters all devoutly believe in them. Achilles's invulnerability is rumored, but one character remarks that his armor or luck is perhaps just that good, and arrows later do just bounce off his armor. He dies from the proverbial arrow in the heel after Paris prays that he may hit a weak spot, but it could be due to him falling from his chariot and hitting his head on a rock. |
| 229 | * ''Film/Hercules2014''. A constant theme of the movie is legend vs reality. The adventures of Hercules shown in the film are purported to be the "truth behind the legend", with fantastic elements rationalised as hallucinations or fanciful inventions/exaggerations; the 12 Labors were just stories (deliberately spread as they helped in his reputation). All mythical creatures are unfounded beliefs. Hercules' murder of his wife and children, the result of a curse by Hera in the legend, [[spoiler:turns out to be committed by a jealous king who'd drugged Hercules, then had his family killed while letting Hercules believe he did it later]]. However, Hercules' legitimate SuperStrength is unexplained, and Amphiarus' visions are treated as real. |
| 230 | * ''Film/{{Immortals}}'': Despite gods and magic still playing a large role in the story, the Minotaur is not a maneating hybrid of man and bull, but a [[GiantMook freakishly large]] TortureTechnician who wears a wire bull mask and likes to kill people in a Bronze Bull. |
| 231 | * ''Film/OBrotherWhereArtThou'' [[SettingUpdate changes the setting]] of ''Literature/TheOdyssey'' to Mississippi during TheGreatDepression. Ulysses is a fugitive from prison, Penelope divorces him and tells their children he died, Polyphemus is a one-eyed criminal, Zeus is the state governor, Tiresias is a blind railroad worker with a gift for prophecy, and Homer is a blind radio station manager. |
| 232 | * ''Film/{{Troy}}'' purposefully strips out the prominent supernatural elements of the original poems -- or [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane renders them ambiguous]]. The gods are never seen, and never act, despite their large roles as {{Physical God}}s in Creator/{{Homer}}s telling. Achilles is a NayTheist who pooh-poohs the gods at every turn. Hector, of all people, paraphrases Stalin: "How many battalions does the sun god command?" The priest of Apollo acts as an inverted Cassandra -- he always gives exactly the wrong advice and is always believed. There are many other changes from the original plays unrelated to the trope. |
| 233 | ** Achilles's mother has a brief scene, but she looks more like a wise woman than a goddess. When a young boy says that people believe that she is a goddess, Achilles himself scoffs at the idea. The child also asks about his invincivility, and he responds that if he were invincible, then he wouldn't be bothering with a shield. [[note]]This is a fair point, as stories of Achilles being literally invincible didn't emerge until later, more fantastical versions of UsefulNotes/TheTrojanWar. During the time that ''The Iliad'' was popular entertainment, Achilles was as vulnerable as the next soldier, but was unbeatable due to his skill.[[/note]] |
| 234 | ** Achilles' blasphemy tends to be followed by bad luck, and of course he is shot in both the heel and the chest (several times, in fact), but he removes the arrows from his chest before dying and his men find him dead with just the one arrow stuck in his heel. |
| 235 | ** In general, the film seems to interpret anything where the gods would be involved as a metaphor or exaggeration. This isn't too far from how some historians view it, with a common reading being that any kind of major feat or unlikely event would be credited to the gods - for instance, a passage going something like "Athena blocked a spear thrown at Achilles" could be read as "the spear thrown at Achilles miraculously missed him." |
| 236 | [[/folder]] |
| 237 | |
| 238 | [[folder:Literature]] |
| 239 | * ''Literature/Area51'': A number of artifacts from religious and mythical lore get shown to be alien technology. The effect of this upon religious belief is pondered, since this includes many important ones like the Ark of the Covenant and Holy Grail, with the question raised of whether this disproves Judaism or Christianity. In one case, a fanatical Orthodox Jew uses a {{suicide attack}} by crashing the helicopter he's flying on the Ark as it wasn't made by God. |
| 240 | * In ''Chariots of the Gods,'' Erich von Daniken put forth the theory that [[AncientAstronauts classical mythology was based on ancient people's encounters with extraterrestrials]]. |
| 241 | * Dares Phryx (5th or 6th c. CE) and Dictys Cretensis (2nd or 3d c. CE) both wrote more-or-less realistic narratives of UsefulNotes/TheTrojanWar, with a strong sense that this is the later-corrupted "real story" (both authors' pseudonyms are names used in Homer -- they're presented as eyewitness accounts by Trojan War veterans); e.g., in Dares, rather than using a giant wooden horse, the Greeks enter Troy through a gate decorated with a picture of a horse. |
| 242 | * The Edison Marshall novel ''Earth Giant'' featured a demythified portrayal of the life of Heracles. For example the famed tale of how he crushed two snakes to death as an infant is changed to him having been five years of age and the snakes had been residing in a sack of dry cornstalks, eventually making their way to the chamber where Heracles and his brother Iphicles slept, rather than being sent by Hera, though it is believed by those in-story to have been the case. Another example would be that centaurs are simply men riding upon horses at a time when most people used chariots, something that Heracles does not find to be any less wonderful than meeting someone who is half-man and half-horse would be. A third example would be the Nemean Lion, named Iniquity here, who is simply a very cunning lion, rather than having hide that no weapon can pierce, and it is because of his cunning, which allowed him to ravage the pastures of the Nemean Plain for five years, that Heracles considers Iniquity to be a WorthyOpponent. |
| 243 | * Achilles dying from a single arrow to the heel is sometimes rationalized by the arrow being poisoned, though no classical source claims this. It seems to have first appeared in the anonymous medieval work ''Excidium Troiae'', and several modern retellings like ''The Firebrand'' by Creator/MarionZimmerBradley follow suit. |
| 244 | * ''The First Fossil Hunters'' (2000) by Adrienne Major introduced the idea that cyclopes were based on findings of dwarf elephant skeletons in Mediterranean islands (or made it mainstream, at least). Without tusks, elephant skulls are almost as round and flat on the front as human skulls, and the trunk socket can be easily confused for a single eye. Furthermore, elephant leg and foot bones are oddly humanoid-looking when compared to other herbivorous mammals. The same book attributed griffins to the finding of ''Protoceratops'' skeletons in Central Asia. |
| 245 | * The short story "The Gardens of Tantalus" by Brian Stableford, collected in ''Classical Whodunnits'', is a Demythification of the [[SnakePeople Lamia]] incident in Philostratus's ''Life of Apollonius of Tyana'', in which the "lamia" is a human, but metaphorically venomous, FemmeFatale, and Apollonius's own "magic" is a combination of natural philosophy and common sense. The story is [[DirectLineToTheAuthor supposedly written]] by [[TheWatson a student of Apollonius]], who is tired of mythological tales attaching themselves to a rationalist philosopher. |
| 246 | * Herodotus, as the "Father of History", had offered some rationalization to some myths, for instance the abduction of Europa, where she had been abducted by Hellenes, most likely Cretans, as revenge for the abduction of Io of Argos. |
| 247 | * A [[FootnoteFever footnote]] in ''Literature/HouseOfLeaves'', containing an idea that a character in the book thought up and then abandoned, explains the Minotaur as King Minos' deformed son -- the body of a man, the head "of a bull"- who was born so ugly that Minos would publicly accuse his wife of bestiality rather than [[BeautyEqualsGoodness accept his son as an heir.]] The labyrinth was a prison so complex, with the Minotaur himself being [[TheGrotesque "gentle and misunderstood,"]] that the Athenians who were "fed" to the Minotaur died mostly of starvation. Guess what the author of that idea (and, hypothetically, King Minos) [[UglyHeroGoodLookingVillain thinks]] [[NiceJobBreakingItHero of]] [[RonTheDeathEater Theseus.]] |
| 248 | * ''Literature/TheKingMustDie'' and ''The Bull From the Sea'', Creator/MaryRenault's novels about Theseus. Successful in that Renault ''does'' make Theseus a complex and compelling character in his own right. She also succeeds in capturing much of the spirit of the myth because her first person narrator, Theseus, believes in the gods and their influence in his life, even if none of the book's events are depicted as blatantly supernatural - modern readers would interpret them quite differently. |
| 249 | * Creator/UrsulaKLeGuin's novel ''Lavinia'' is a mostly realistic version of Vergil's "Aeneid," though it does add the supernatural touch of Lavinia having proleptic conversations with the spirit of Vergil. By the end, Lavinia has learned how to use people's ''perception'' of the supernatural to her advantage. |
| 250 | * A few stories in ''The Lost Books of the Odyssey'' present the story of ''Literature/TheOdyssey'' as one put together by far more mundane sources, such as Odysseus as a wandering bard, who ended UsefulNotes/TheTrojanWar in a matter of months but spins out a far grander tale to get away from the boredom of kingship. |
| 251 | * OlderThanFeudalism: "On Incredible Tales" by the Ancient Greek author Palaephatus makes the Bull that carried off Europa and the bull that fathered the Minotaur both men named "Taurus", the Amazons crossdressing men, and the Sphinx an Amazon woman named "Sphinx." |
| 252 | * Plato's ''Phaedrus'' competes with ''On Incredible Tales'' for the title of UrExample, having a scene where, upon being asked about whether he believes the tale of the North-wind god Boreas carrying Orithyia off to rape her, Socrates says: "I could claim that a gust of the North Wind blew her over the rocks where she was playing with Pharmeceia; and once she was killed that way [[DogGotSentToAFarm people said she had been carried off by Boreas]]". However, he then says that [[SubvertedTrope he believes what is generally believed]], that he has no time to debunk myths because he is busy looking inward and [[UnbuiltTrope that the man who does is not to be envied]], as he'll then have to provide a "rational" explanation for [[HeinzHybrid Hippocentaurs, Chimeras]] and the like. |
| 253 | -->'''Plato([[WordOfSaintPaul through Socrates]]):''' Anyone who does not believe in them, who wants to explain them away and make them plausible by means of some sort of rough ingenuity, will need a great deal of time. |
| 254 | * Robert Graves: |
| 255 | ** ''Hercules My Shipmate'' retells the story of Jason and Argonauts. The gods are real for the characters but their physical reality is not clear. As for other mythological subjects, Minos was merely a sun god, with his chief priest being styled as "Minos" for short, and the Minotaur his sacred bull, who chased sacrifices. |
| 256 | ** ''Homer's Daughter'' is based on Samuel Butler's theory that the Odyssey was written by a young woman, who based it on her own realistic experiences, and based the character of Nausicaa on herself. |
| 257 | * Creator/CSLewis's ''Literature/TillWeHaveFaces'' is a retelling of the myth of Myth/CupidAndPsyche. The jealousy of Ungit (Venus) for Istra (Psyche)'s beauty is presented as the jealousy of the priest of Ungit for drawing away worshippers. Psyche's "marriage" to the god of the Grey Mountain (Cupid) is being chained to a tree on the side of a mountain as a sacrifice. Orual later finds Istra living on the mountainside, clearly insane and claiming to live in a palace that Orual cannot see. [[spoiler:However, Orual later sees the god with her own eyes.]] |
| 258 | ** The trope is discussed within the story, as Greek philosophy is taking hold and some of the characters themselves are Euhemerists. A younger high priest of Ungit speculates that the stories of Ungit being both the mother and the lover of the God of the Grey Mountain are just allegorical ways of saying the earth (Ungit) creates the air, which in turn nourishes the earth with rain. The heroine silently wonders why they bother to wrap that up in a myth, if that's all the myth is saying. |
| 259 | * Creator/DavidGemmell's ''[[Literature/TheTroySaga Troy]]'' trilogy of novels dispenses with the gods so prominent in the original poems like the movie ''Troy'', with the first book coincidentally coming out the year after it did, but the trilogy and the movie go in very different directions. Aside from possible visions of the future via seers, near-death experiences, and [[TheCassandra Kassandra]], just about all the mythical elements of the conflict from the original stories/myths are excised in this iteration. |
| 260 | ** The protagonist Helikaon (Aeneas, who prefers the name his mother gave him) is not a demigod and the son of Aphrodite/Venus. His mother is simply his father's first wife. |
| 261 | ** Odysseus tells fantastical tales akin to events in the ''Odyssey'', like a run-in with a Cyclops, before they've supposed to have happened. |
| 262 | ** In the first book Odysseus makes reference to a story about a witch-queen who turns men into pigs, clearly referencing Circe. Early on in the second book we actually meet Circe and she's just an elderly pig farmer who Odysseus sometimes does business with. |
| 263 | ** Achilles and Hektor face each other in a boxing match before the war proper starts, and Achilles is knocked out after a long hard bout, not being invulnerable. |
| 264 | ** Paris did not exactly steal away Helen from Sparta, rather Helen fled Sparta and sought refuge in Troy after Agamemnon and the Mykene took it by force, with a marriage promise to his brother Menelaus being of no avail to stop the invasion, so she had never actually married Menelaus. Later, Paris being married to Helen by Trojan law is used by Agamemnon as an excuse for war. Also, Helen is not particularly beautiful. |
| 265 | ** The trick of the Trojan Horse is not soldiers inside a giant wooden horse but simply DressingAsTheEnemy to open the gates, since "the Trojan Horse" is the name for the Trojan elite cavalry units. |
| 266 | * ''Literature/TheEgyptian'' portrays the Minotaur as a DecompositeCharacter of sorts, with "Minotaur" being the name of the Cretan high priest who wears a bull mask a majority of the time, to the point that he is mistaken for a bull-human hybrid when he is first encountered in dim light. The Cretan God subverts the Demythification, being a bull-headed sea serpent, but otherwise just an average, man-eating beast... That is dead. |
| 267 | [[/folder]] |
| 268 | |
| 269 | [[folder:Live-Action TV]] |
| 270 | * The BBC documentary ''Atlantis: End of a World, Birth of a Legend'' is actually a dramatized retelling of the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_eruption Thera Eruption]] around 1628 BC, which is identified both as the reason for the decline of the Minoan civilization and the inspiration of the myth of Atlantis. The narrator - only one who ever says "Atlantis" - likens Plato's description of the Atlantean capital being built in concentric rings of land and water to Santorini (Thera)'s [[http://www.grecotour.com/img/cms/grecia/santorini/santorini-grecia/mapa-santorini-grecia.gif shape]]. |
| 271 | * Hallmark's miniseries ''Series/{{Hercules}}'' (2005). The existence of the Gods made rather ambiguous (Hercules being fathered by an escaped prisoner of war with a lightning shaped scar), but they do throw in mythical creatures of UsefulNotes/AncientGreece. It's heavily arbitrary on when to dismiss the fantastic. In addition, Hercules' SuperStrength and fighting prowess is explained as a CharlesAtlasSuperpower brought on by TrainingFromHell. |
| 272 | [[/folder]] |
| 273 | |
| 274 | [[folder:Theatre]] |
| 275 | * ''Theatre/OedipusTheKing'' and most adaptations of the same story downplay the Sphinx. The in-depth human tragedy seems to lose something by also having a Riddle-Spewing Man-Eating She-Beast going around in the {{backstory}}. |
| 276 | [[/folder]] |
| 277 | |
| 278 | [[folder:Video Games]] |
| 279 | * It is easy to forget now because of [[FollowTheLeader all copies it spawned]], but ''VideoGame/AgeOfEmpiresI'' was the first RTS game that was explicitly history-based, not fantasy like ''Videogame/{{Warcraft}}'' or sci-fi like ''Videogame/{{Starcraft}}''. Consequently, fantasy and sci-fi units are absent (except as cheats), the Trojan War scenario features neither gods nor the famous Horse, and mythological heroes like Jason, Perseus, Hector, Ajax, Achilles, and Odysseus (plus the few non-Greeks [[Myth/EgyptianMythology Amon-Ra]], [[Myth/JapaneseMythology Xu Fu, and Shotoku]]) are common swordsman, cavalry, archer, or priest units with just slightly better stats. |
| 280 | * In ''Franchise/AssassinsCreed'', The AdvancedAncientHumans known as "The First Civilization", "Those Who Came Before", or the "Isu" are given as being the inspiration for many if not all gods from ancient mythologies, the first individual to explicitly appear being named Minerva as the player character, Ezio Auditore in this case, immediately identifies her as such a god but she denies any actual divinity. |
| 281 | ** ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedOdyssey'' is set in Greece during the Peloponnesian War with many landmarks being based on mythology as both real historical sites that inspired the myths--the palace of Odysseus on Ithaca, for example--as well as completely fictional ones such as the gigantic stone statue of Zeus in the first real area of the game. In the series' typical fashion, many myths are also alluded to in other ways such as the first larger sequence of the game concluding with the Eagle Bearer having to fight "the Cyclops of Kephallonia", a one-eyed bandit leader who wields a huge spiked mace and is noted as keeping goats, much like how Polyphemus is portrayed in ''The Odyssey''. [[spoiler:[[SubvertedTrope This makes it all the more surprising when an]] ''[[SubvertedTrope actual]]'' [[SubvertedTrope cyclops appears later]]. [[DoubleSubverted It's ultimately still connected to Clarke's Third Law, though]].]] |
| 282 | * ''VideoGame/EmpireEarth'' zigzags this for its Greek campaign. The first level has a village chieftain named Hierakles leading his people to a new land where they build a temple and a city on top of a hill (the Acropolis), the Trojan War is fought without divine intervention, while Theseus was a leader of Athens who united the outlying city-states against Sparta and Thebes. The last (of very few) supernatural events is when Theseus ascends to become a god; this marks the campaign moving from being based on Greek myth to being based on history. |
| 283 | * ''VideoGame/ATotalWarSagaTroy'' breathes this trope as part of its "truth behind the myth" approach to the Trojan War. All throughout the game are references to Greek Mythology conveyed through more realistic and plausible explanations that could have inspired them. |
| 284 | ** The game depicts various mythical creatures in more mundane forms that could possibly be distorted by future audiences into their more recognizable fantastical forms. [[OurMinotaursAreDifferent The Minotaur]] is a Cretan outlaw with a bull skull headdress and labrys harkening back to the old Minoan culture, the Cyclops is a muscular feral shepherd or pirate (the latter referencing how some Cyclopes, including Polyphemus, were sons of Poseidon) wearing a dwarf elephant skull, the [[OurCentaursAreDifferent Centaurs]] are [[BornInTheSaddle equestrian tribesmen]] who would have among the first instances of horsemen encountered in the Greek world, the [[HarpingOnAboutHarpies Harpies]] are marauding bands of bandit women wearing feathered cloaks, and the [[AmazonBrigade Amazons]] are Scythian warrior women (excavations of Scythian kurgans have uncovered skeletons of warrior women). |
| 285 | ** Several of the heroes in the game have subtle design influences that call back to their mythological inspirations. Achilles (and his Myrmidons) wears a helmet with cheek-guards resembling ant mandibles, a reference to the mythical origin of the Myrmidons being transformed from ants. [[Literature/TheAeneid Aeneas]] has several costume elements that harken toward his supposed Roman descendants, such as his cheek guards resembling a legionary's galea, his sash and cingulum, and his sword and shield resembling the iconic gladius and scutum. |
| 286 | ** The iconic TrojanHorse is given three possible interpretations in game. The first are mundane siege towers with sail crests that resemble a horse's mane. The second is a horse-prowed covered boat that can be used to sneak troops into the city, which requires the services of [[Literature/TheOdyssey Odysseus]] much like how he devised the plan for the original Trojan Horse. The third are earthquakes, which reference how Poseidon was the God of both Horses and Earthquakes; a symbolic horse rather than a physical construct. |
| 287 | [[/folder]] |
| 288 | |
| 289 | [[folder:Webcomics]] |
| 290 | * ''Webcomic/WaywardSons'': The Greek gods weren't gods, they were superpowered aliens. |
| 291 | [[/folder]] |
| 292 | |
| 293 | [[folder:Western Animation]] |
| 294 | * In ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'', cyclopes, centaurs, and Amazons have appeared as inhabitants of other planets, though these were presumably unrelated to their counterparts in Ancient Greece. |
| 295 | [[/folder]] |
| 296 | |
| 297 | !!Fairy Tales |
| 298 | |
| 299 | [[folder:Ballads]] |
| 300 | * The Tale of Two Sisters, found across much of Europe, is usually some variant of this: Two sisters loved the same man, who was engaged to the younger. The older one arranged to have her drown so she would inherit the engagement. The body of the younger girl is found by a bard (who may mistake her for a swan) and uses her bones or hair to make a harp or fiddle. The bard is invited to play at the older one's wedding and brings along the instrument, but before the ceremony starts it sings out what happened in the girl's voice. However one Gaelic version removes the animated instrument by having the married sister compose and sing the song while the tide rises around her, which the other hears and later sings to her stepchildren, and the widow overhears her. |
| 301 | [[/folder]] |
| 302 | |
| 303 | [[folder:Film]] |
| 304 | * ''Film/AIArtificialIntelligence'' is a sci-fi spin of ''WesternAnimation/{{Pinocchio}}''. Instead of a magical puppet, the protagonist (David) is a prototype for a [[RidiculouslyHumanRobots Ridiculously Human]] RobotKid who can feel love. His designer is an A.I. engineer who made him as a ReplacementGoldfish of his dead son. Jiminy Criket's role is played by [[ADogNamedDog a robot teddy bear named Teddy]], and Pleasure Island is a red district-type city. David looks for his father not inside a whale, but in a building in flooded New York City, and wants the Blue Fairy to turn him into a human boy so his human "mother" will love him back. He thinks he found her in flooded Coney Island, but it's just a statue. Thousands of years later, he is found by blue-colored highly advanced robots who... still can't make him into a real boy... but can make a clone of his mother who will love him. |
| 305 | * ''Film/EverAfter'' does this for the ''Literature/{{Cinderella}}'' fairytale, with the story in a somewhat more down to Earth environment devoid of external magic. The Cinderella character is Danielle, a French noblewoman [[FallenPrincess who's reduced to servanthood]] by her stepmother and one of her stepsisters after her dad dies. The crystal slippers actually are based on the shoes that belong to Danielle's MissingMom and the PimpedOutDress was made by humans, not by magic. There's no Fairy Godmother... but there ''is'' a CoolOldGuy and sorta Crazy Inventor Godfather, who's none other than ''Creator/LeonardoDaVinci''. To go to the Ball, Danielle gets help from her other stepsister Jacqueline as well as the family servants. The Prince, Henry, is a flawed human being with both pros and cons, and he doesn't take the revelation about Danielle being a "commoner" well, so Leonardo has to give him a harsh pep talk before he goes and apologizes to her. |
| 306 | * Creator/HansChristianAndersen's ''Literature/TheSnowQueen'' was an omnipotent HumanoidAbomination who was implied to be the living embodiment of winter itself and possibly a member of TheFairFolk. In ''WesternAnimation/Frozen2013'', however, Queen Elsa is a human being born with [[AnIcePerson winter powers]]. ''WesternAnimation/FrozenII'' changes this a bit [[spoiler:when it's revealed that Elsa's powers come from being the magical half of the fifth spirit, a bridge between magic and humanity]]. |
| 307 | * The 1955 [[Creator/MetroGoldwynMayer MGM]] musical ''The Glass Slipper'' is another down-to-earth "Literature/{{Cinderella}}". The normally magical elements are given practical explanations, though the overall style does still verge on the edge of MagicalRealism. |
| 308 | * ''WesternAnimation/Klaus2019'' is an origin story for SantaClaus, except that he's just a lonely old man who winds up distributing toys to a small village. The children come to believe he's magical, but the various traditions are given mundane explanations: Why don't the children ever see him? Because Jesper is ''very'' good at sneaking into houses and delivering presents. Why does he come down the chimneys? Because they are usually the only way to get into the heavily fortified houses of [[WretchedHive Smeerensberg]]. The coal in the stocking and the Naughty List? Made up on the spot by Jesper punishing a bully who was a jerk to him when he first arrived. Workshop full of elves? Just an appreciative Sami family giving a helping hand. Flying through the sky on a sled pulled by reindeer? [[ItMakesSenseInContext Ehh, it's a long story]]. [[spoiler:However there is no explanation for the strange wind that may be the spirit of Klaus' deceased wife, and [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence whatever happened to enable Klaus to continue delivering presents even after his own passing]].]] |
| 309 | [[/folder]] |
| 310 | |
| 311 | [[folder:Literature]] |
| 312 | * ''Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister'' by Gregory Maguire does this to "Literature/{{Cinderella}}", using PerspectiveFlip as the mechanism. |
| 313 | * ''Literature/JustElla'' by Margaret Peterson Haddix also retells "Literature/{{Cinderella}}". |
| 314 | * The short story anthology ''Literature/TimeLordFairyTales'' replaces magical events in classic fairy tales with various sci-fi equivalents and {{technobabble}}: "[[Literature/SleepingBeauty cursed into eternal slumber]]" becomes "trapped in suspended animation" while "[[Literature/BeautyAndTheBeast fairy's curse turns man into beast; woman's love saves him]]" becomes "time stream accident alters man's DNA and transforms him into a beast-man; woman who loves him administers the engineered cure". |
| 315 | %% * In ''Literature/PeterAndTheStarcatchers'', the "fairy dust" of ''Literature/PeterPan'' is actually "[[GreenRocks Starstuff]]", a highly dangerous AppliedPhlebotinum that can do anything. Besides being [[BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy the creative force behind every genius in Earth's history]], Starstuff can make people fly, turn birds into "fairies" and fish into "mermaids", and keep you from dying or growing older if you survive prolonged exposure. %%As written, this honestly sounds ''more'' magical than Barrie's fairy dust. |
| 316 | * ''Literature/TheWickedYears'' series removes or tones down a lot of the magic and weirdness from the ''Literature/LandOfOz'' books. For example, Glinda and Ozma are humans instead of fairies. |
| 317 | [[/folder]] |
| 318 | |
| 319 | [[folder:Theatre]] |
| 320 | * Rossini's opera ''La Cenerentola'' tells the story of Literature/{{Cinderella}} minus the magical elements. As in ''Ever After'', the Fairy Godmother figure is a CoolOldGuy, in this case the prince's tutor Alidoro who gives Cinderella her elegant clothes and takes her to the ball after she [[OldBeggarTest shows him kindness while he's disguised as a beggar.]] The glass slippers are replaced by a pair of matching bracelets, and instead of having to leave the ball at midnight, Cinderella chooses to leave to make the prince search for her and test whether or not he'll accept her even in rags. |
| 321 | [[/folder]] |
| 322 | |
| 323 | [[folder:Webcomics]] |
| 324 | * In ''Webcomic/KevinAndKell'', everybody knows the Easter Bunny is real. But while people may assume it's magic, in reality is the rabbit council who is in charge of a whole program to dispatch different easter bunnies to different areas to take care to hide the eggs. |
| 325 | [[/folder]] |
| 326 | |
| 327 | [[folder:Western Animation]] |
| 328 | * In ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'', Robot Santa was built as a {{defictionalization}} of Santa Claus by The Friendly Robot Company in 2801. He lives in Neptune, assisted by local Elf-like Neptunian aliens, and spies on Earth's inhabitants 24/7 to decide who has been bad or good before visiting every Christmas Eve (or "[=Xmas=]"). Unfortunately, his standards are so high that almost everybody is put on the naughty list and he attacks them with all sorts of weapons, turning [=Xmas=] into a night of traditional [[BadSanta hiding and terror]]. |
| 329 | [[/folder]] |
| 330 | |
| 331 | !![[Myth/NorseMythology Germanic Mythology]] |
| 332 | |
| 333 | [[folder:Comic Books]] |
| 334 | * ''ComicBook/TheMightyThor'': The Norse gods are real, [[SufficientlyAdvancedAliens but not gods]]. They are extremely long-lived interdimensional beings who have technology so advanced that it looks like magic to humans. Also actual magic in some cases. They were confused with gods and worshipped by ancient Scandinavians. (DependingOnTheWriter -- some say otherwise, and some say "What's the difference?" Notably, this explanation ''isn't'' in place for ''Comicbook/TheIncredibleHercules'', which just says Greek myth is ''true'', but there's never any suggestion that the Olympians don't consider the Asgardians to be the same kind of beings as they are.) |
| 335 | [[/folder]] |
| 336 | |
| 337 | [[folder:Film]] |
| 338 | * Though ''Film/The13thWarrior'' adds magic in comparison to the book source below, in the form of an old seer woman, it also gets rid of the MaybeMagicMaybeMundane dwarf daggers, so the duel with the Mother is closer to the original from ''Literature/{{Beowulf}}'' but still demythified. In the poem, the Mother breaks Beowulf's sword and he kills her with an older, more powerful sword in her lair; in the movie, he simply kills her with his sword and loses it while fleeing from her lair. |
| 339 | * ''Film/Beowulf1999'' changes the setting to TheFuture AfterTheEnd and is arguably ''more'' supernatural than its basis (not only are Grendel and his mother demonic entities, but Beowulf himself is [[AdaptationSpeciesChange half-demon]]). ''One'' element is less supernatural, however: Instead of Grendel sparing Hrothgar because he is a king and [[ValuesDissonance kings have divine protection]], he does it because [[spoiler:[[RelatedInTheAdaptation Hrothgar]] [[BloodIsThickerThanWater is his father]]]]. |
| 340 | * ''WesternAnimation/Beowulf2007'': Hrothgar, Beowulf and Wiglaf are stripped completely or almost completely of [[BlackAndWhiteMorality classical heroism]] and depicted as [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation very flawed people]], Grendel is a TragicMonster who won't hurt Hrothgar because his mother forbid him to, Beowulf uses a chain and a door to rip Grendel's arm off instead of his bare hands, the killing of his mother [[spoiler:is a flat out lie]], and the epic as we know it is just [[VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory a very distorted version]] of events that Beowulf tries to disown in his dying breath, [[HeelFaceDoorSlam without success]]. Grendel, his mother, and the dragon are still real and supernatural, however. |
| 341 | * ''Film/BeowulfAndGrendel'': |
| 342 | ** Grendel is the [[LastOfHisKind last]] "troll" - [[AllTrollsAreDifferent trolls]] being either [[AllCavemenWereNeanderthals Neanderthals or Neanderthal-like cavemen]]. They are taller, stronger, and hairier than (other) humans, but not excessively so, and still use weapons and clothes. They can also go out during the day (but Grendel only attacks at night) and don't turn to stone (though Grendel apparently manages to disguise himself as one while at night, Beowulf missing him despite sitting right in front of him). |
| 343 | ** Grendel is [[NonMaliciousMonster also mentally challenged]]. His name was given because he grinds his teeth in his sleep, but the poem writer will make the world know him as a grinder of man bones. And he attacks Hrothgar's hall [[AdaptationalVillainy because his men]] [[ItsPersonal killed his father]], but won't attack Hrothgar himself [[BecauseYouWereNiceToMe because he spared him as a child]]. Finally, Beowulf doesn't rip Grendel's arm out with his own strength; he merely traps it, and [[LifeOrLimbDecision Grendel cuts it to free himself]]. One of Beowulf's men worries that, as a troll, he might be able to grow it back. Of course, this does not happen and he dies from the injury. |
| 344 | ** [[BigLippedAlligatorMoment Confusingly]] (and disappointingly, for those who were looking for a complete demythification of the story), Grendel's mother is still a superpowered aquatic monster. At least there are no giant snakes around her watery lair. Another man offers to swim into it, but Beowulf turns him down and [[FrontlineGeneral does it himself]]. |
| 345 | ** Grendel "spares" a praying Christian priest, which convinces the Danes to convert to Christianity in order to be protected against Grendel. In reality, Grendel spared the priest because he was confused about his behavior and ultimately didn't see him as a threat. [[spoiler: When Grendel is killed, the furious mother comes to town with a vengeance and kills everyone on the way to the hall, Christian and Pagan priests included.]] |
| 346 | ** The OriginalCharacter Selma the Witch never does any witchy stuff. She's just a local woman who lives removed from other people and has more knowledge of, and sympathy for Grendel. |
| 347 | * ''Film/TheNorthman'' is either a [[SubvertedTrope subversion]] or a [[ZigZaggedTrope zig-zagged example]]. It is based on the ahistorical story of Amleth from the 12th century ''Literature/GestaDanorum'', which also inspired Creator/WilliamShakespeare's ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'', and is in turn speculated to have originated as a poem in 10th century Iceland. However there is no definitive proof of this, and common tropes with stories of Roman, Greek, and even Egyptian Mythology makes it likely that the original is much older. Anyway, the film takes great pains to set the story in the Viking Age and be true to the era; for example Fjölnir, the movie version of Feng/Claudius, loses his Danish kingdom to the historical Harald Fairhair and becomes a exile in Iceland, where most of the movie takes place instead. There is also a heavy dose of DeliberateValuesDissonance, and the movie had to be recut to make it [[ViewersAreGeniuses more accessible]] to audiences who were not experts in Norse culture. However it also incorporates magic and many elements of Norse Mythology that are played completely straight, with no attempt to rationalize them. |
| 348 | [[/folder]] |
| 349 | |
| 350 | [[folder:Literature]] |
| 351 | * In ''Literature/DanceOfTheTiger'', "trolls" are Neanderthals, and "[[ChangelingFantasy troll children]]" are Human-Neanderthal hybrids, stronger than either parent because of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis hybrid vigor]] but "cursed" with sterility (as some hybrid animals are). The ''schelch'', an unidentified and possibly mythological animal mentioned in the ''{{Literature/Nibelungenlied}}'', is the extinct giant deer ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_elk Megaloceros]]''. |
| 352 | * Creator/MichaelCrichton wrote ''Literature/EatersOfTheDead'' as a bet, after hearing a scholar friend claim that the story of ''Beowulf'' was "a bore". Crichton [[SeriousBusiness took offense]] and set out to prove that the story was not a bore if presented in a way that [[ValuesResonance resonated]] with modern audiences, just like the original resonated with early Medieval audiences. The result is a [[{{mockumentary}} fake scholar book]] combining the story of ''Beowulf'' with Ahmed ibn Fadlan's historical travelogue of Eastern Europe in [[SettingUpdate the 10th century]]. In this version, ibn Fadlan joins a Norse rescue mission to face a seemingly supernatural enemy in Denmark. Instead of Grendel, the enemy is a remnant tribe of cannibalistic Neanderthals, called the Wendol. Grendel's invulnerability to human weapons is a misunderstanding, because the Wendol always take their dead and wounded with them, leaving only Norse bodies behind after a battle. Grendel's arm is just one Wendol's arm, but it is a valuable trophy because it is the first incontestable evidence that the Wendol can be injured. Grendel's mother is replaced by the tribe's matriarch, and the snakes guarding her watery lair are replaced by Wendol camps around her lair ''and'' live snakes she keeps over her body. The dragon (or "fire-wyrm") is an optical illusion created by Wendol raiders carrying torches as they descend from their mountain lair. In a departure from ''Beowulf'', the book also includes a "tribe" of mystical dwarves that the Norse believe have magical powers, but the main character is skeptical. They are explicitly Norse people with dwarfism that are kept apart from their original communities since birth. |
| 353 | * "Frost and Thunder" by Creator/RandallGarrett has the main character, Theodore, time-transported to ancient Scandinavia. He uses his pistol to help the locals defeat an enemy tribe of man-eating "giants" (implied to be non-''Homo sapiens'' hominids as in Crichton's ''Eaters of the Dead'') before being returned to the present. Afterwards, he muses that he was probably assumed to be a god -- specifically Thor, with his "hammer" that creates thunder, kills distant enemies, and returns to his hand as if it never left (his gun was initially taken for a hammer because he was using it to crack nuts). |
| 354 | * Creator/SnorriSturluson's ''Literature/ProseEdda'', one of the major sources for Norse Mythology, uses this technique in the prologue. As a 13th century Christian, Snorri advanced the theory that the Norse gods were warriors who left Troy after it was destroyed, travelling to Northern Europe where their advanced knowledge meant they became chieftains. After they died, hero cults arose around their tombs, which eventually led to them being worshipped as gods. The same outlook is also presented in another work attributed to Snorri, ''Literature/YnglingaSaga'', but here, the Aesir are not identified with surviving Trojans, but an unrelated people whose home city Asgard was located somewhere in southern Russia or the Caucasus, and who migrated northwards to evade [[AncientRome Roman]] imperialism (about a millennium after the destruction of Troy). As ''Ynglinga saga'' is about a decade younger than the ''Prose Edda'', it seems Snorri eventually dismissed the identity of the Norse gods with the Trojans. |
| 355 | [[/folder]] |
| 356 | |
| 357 | [[folder:Live-Action TV]] |
| 358 | * ''Series/{{Vikings}}'' uses [[Literature/RagnarLodbrokAndHisSons Norse sagas]] that feature monsters and supernatural events as part of its source material, but gives the supernatural elements of them a MaybeMagicMaybeMundane approach (sometimes leaning farther into Unexplainably Magic with its prophecies). No one questions that Aslaug is the daughter of [[Literature/TheSagaOfTheVolsungs Sigurd the dragonslayer and Brynhild the Valkyrie]], but whether they actually are her parents or even existed is left ambiguous. The show integrates the legendary inspirations with other historical sources, and often changes around both to fit its needs. |
| 359 | [[/folder]] |
| 360 | |
| 361 | !!Other Mythologies |
| 362 | |
| 363 | [[folder:General]] |
| 364 | * The legend of Queen Boudicea having spikes on the hubcaps of her chariots - which modern archaeologists and historians are absolutely sure never happened - turns out to be a Victorian invention, based on the Irish legend of the chariot of the hero Cu Chulain being festooned with hooks and rending spikes on all its outer surfaces, so as to make life difficult for opponents. Romantic Victorian thought reasoned that 'all'' Celtic chariots followed this model. |
| 365 | [[/folder]] |
| 366 | |
| 367 | [[folder:Anime & Manga]] |
| 368 | * Creator/OsamuTezuka's ''Manga/{{Phoenix}}'' series often features this, despite the title character being an immortal god-bird. Many characters in the earlier historical chapters are gods and other figures from Myth/JapaneseMythology re-imagined as ordinary humans and ''Strange Beings'' & ''Robe of Feathers'' imply that various mythical creatures are actually aliens or time travelers. Tezuka dispensed with this as time went on, however, with the final completed volume, ''Sun'' featuring such oddities as battles between {{Youkai}}s and Bodhisattvas and retconning the alien angle out of the aforementioned ''Strange Beings'' (although ''Sun'' goes back and forth between the past and the (then) future of 2008, and it's entirely possible the part bits are an hallucination). |
| 369 | * ''Literature/RequiemFromTheDarkness'' features a strange subversion where a trio of outright supernatural beings are using their powers to fake or perpetuate myths of other supernatural beings. Through the series many myths and legends are examined and many of them are simply the trio using trickery to fool others. For example a sociopathic murderer is explained away as a ''tanuki'', a shapeshifting badger dog, who is suffering from ShapeshifterModelock. |
| 370 | [[/folder]] |
| 371 | |
| 372 | [[folder:Comic Books]] |
| 373 | * In ''ComicBook/BatmanOdyssey'', a story clearly inspired by ''Literature/JourneyToTheCenterOfTheEarth'', the Egyptian gods are not gods but weird denizens of the HollowEarth. |
| 374 | * ''ComicBook/TheCartoonHistoryOfTheUniverse'' briefly presents Gilgamesh as a bald brutish regular king and Enkidu as a similarly brutish but regular insane wild man he hung out with. While other kings at the time claimed to be half god, Gilgamesh outdoes them by claiming to be two-thirds god. When a bystander gasps and asks if that means he had ''three'' parents, Gilgamesh just guffaws. Then instead of Gilgamesh spurning the advances of the goddess Ishtar, he does the unthinkable by refusing to do the annual fertility sex rites with the ''priestess'' of the goddess Inanna (Ishtar's precursor), and the monsters he defeats are just foreign tribes he raids for booty and slaves. |
| 375 | [[/folder]] |
| 376 | |
| 377 | [[folder:Film]] |
| 378 | * ''Film/TheAlamo2004'' dips into this approach quite possibly in response to previous depictions of the historical events like ''Film/TheAlamo1960'', ''The Last Command'' and ''Series/DavyCrockett1954'', most notably with the figure of [[InsistentTerminology David]] Crockett, exploring what it means to be a LivingLegend. |
| 379 | ** Crockett's death in American popular imagination has him going down fighting (explosively in the first two other movies), but this movie uses the alternate possibility that he was captured alive and executed after the battle. It's very much debated which version is more plausible based on conflicting sources. But he is still DefiantToTheEnd. |
| 380 | ** The deaths of the other Alamo leaders are also less romantic: Jim Bowie still goes down fighting on his sickbed, shooting his pistols before he dies, but he's killed before he can reach his namesake knife in contrast to other depictions which have him getting a last stab or two in. William Travis is randomly dropped by a headshot early in the battle instead of going down late in the battle surrounded on all sides, like how Crockett is usually depicted. |
| 381 | * ''Film/TheBounty'' from 1984 is a more historically accurate recounting of the mutiny on the ''Bounty'' than previous movie versions, both titled ''Mutiny on the Bounty'' and from [[Film/MutinyOnTheBounty 1935]] and [[Film/MutinyOnTheBounty1962 1962]]. These older movies were ultimately based on [[Literature/TheBountyTrilogy somewhat fictionalized novels]] and fictionalized the story further for the screen, which all contributed to the popular image of the events. In the 1984 movie however, instead of depicting Captain William Bligh as a corrupt ogreish tyrant, he is well-meaning but with poor "people skills" and probably more lenient than he needed to be in enforcing discipline when it mattered most. The mutineers' leader, the first mate Fletcher Christian, is less of a stock heroic rebellious authority figure and more like an unstable powder keg of a man who blows up screaming, stunning even his fellow mutineers speechless. |
| 382 | * In ''Film/TheGreatWall'', the Tao Tei, described in many classical Chinese texts as gluttonous monsters and one of the Four Perils, are changed to a species of aliens that arrived on earth in a comet. They attack China every sixty years to gather food to feed their queen and [[AlternateLandmarkHistory the Great Wall was built to repel them.]] |
| 383 | * ''Film/GoyoAngBatangHeneral'' (''Goyo the Boy General'') depicts the death of Filipino general Gregorio del Pilar rather anticlimactically compared to how it's been taught to schoolchildren for generations and how previous local movies portrayed him. The more romantic image of his death has him being shot on horseback, saber upraised and charging at the foe against hopeless odds (and a 1990s movie version even had him as pretty much the last man standing on his side), which ultimately comes from a newspaperman's account, and this is judged by some contemporary local historians as myth-making in light of other sources. The film instead follows these other sources, eyewitness accounts from his own soldiers who said he was sniped rather suddenly and while standing on the ground during a lull in the battle, and this leads to a panicked retreat by his men. Plus in general, the film goes for a WartsAndAll approach and avoids putting him on a pedestal, unlike the "textbook" approach and romanticizing tendency of many Filipino historical biopics. |
| 384 | * Although it's basically HistoricalFiction, and accurate in many respects (less so in [[ArtisticLicenseHistory others]]...), ''Film/KingdomOfHeaven'' has tendencies towards this school of film-making with respect to the legends of the Crusades. However, the Director's Cut of the movie heavily implies that [[NoNameGiven the Hospitaller]] is an angel. Also invoked when Balian throws a stone at some kind of naturally oily desert plant, causing a spark that makes it burn, and he says that's what Moses saw. |
| 385 | * ''Film/Lifeforce1985'' (aka "[[BestKnownForTheFanservice The naked space vampire movie]]") posits that [[OurVampiresAreDifferent vampire]] legends are based on a race of alien LifeEnergy parasites. |
| 386 | * ''Film/TheMessengerTheStoryOfJoanOfArc''. This is a borderline case, however, as more than one interpretation is offered for the Visions, and indeed implied [[{{Satan}} for 'the Conscience']]. Of course, since Joan of Arc was definitely a real person, ''The Messenger'' might also be accused of going the opposite route and adding fantastic elements (though this gets into a tricky theological debate). |
| 387 | * ''Film/PopeJoan'' firmly places the legendary character in the 9th century (moreso the source novel) and offers a ''plausible'' biography of her. Instead of being educated in Athens by her lover as in some versions of the legend, she has a Greek tutor in her German hometown years before meeting that lover and going to Rome, never visiting Greece. |
| 388 | [[/folder]] |
| 389 | |
| 390 | [[folder:Literature]] |
| 391 | * Though mythological creatures are still present in ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', they tend to be subdued and more 'realistic' in some way: |
| 392 | ** Dragons have two wings and two legs instead of four. |
| 393 | ** Giants are [[FrazettaMan gorilla-like hominids]], more like Bigfoot than straight giant humans. |
| 394 | ** Unicorns are goat-like creatures (or surviving ''Elasmotherium'', according to some fan speculation). |
| 395 | ** Manticores are scorpion-like arthropods. |
| 396 | ** Basilisks are venomous reptiles that kill with their bite, not their glare. |
| 397 | * ''Literature/{{Baudolino}}'' by Creator/UmbertoEco does this with the "conspiracy" version of the various Grail and Templar legends surrounding the Crusades - the same material that Eco dealt with earlier in ''Literature/FoucaultsPendulum''. The historical conspiracy is replaced by two petty criminals and forgers trying to make a profit by selling fake relics. Although it's clearly fiction, and the way that these two characters come up with nearly all the Creator/DanBrown stuff on their own without planning is meant as a joke, the gist of it must be closer to reality than the organised, large-scale conspiracy version. Also, Baudolino himself is basically a medieval [[TheMunchausen Münchhausen]]. |
| 398 | * ''Literature/{{Blindsight}}'' explains that vampires are not supernatural beings, but a HumanSubspecies that evolved to prey on normal humans in prehistoric times. Since they were predators, they had superior pattern-recognizing skills and general intelligence, larger canines, better night-vision and the ability to put themselves into suspended animation for long periods of time. However, their intelligence came with a price: their advanced pattern-recognition, combined with the vertical and horizontal receptors crosswired in their visual cortex, caused them to experience fatal seizures whenever right angles take up more than 30 degrees of their visual field. This explains why they were warded off by crosses and ultimately lead to their extinction when humans invented architecture. |
| 399 | * The ''Literature/{{Cryptozoologicon}}'' is a tongue-in-cheek attempt by paleontologist Darren Naish and artists C.M. Kosemen and John Conway to reimagine the creatures of cryptozoology in a scientifically plausible manner as much as to subvert clichés and expectations. The rejection of LivingDinosaurs and [[StockNessMonster plesiosaurs]] is recurring: the Mokele-mbembé is a long-necked tortoise, the [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment Mbielu-mbielu-mbielu]] a giant bichir fish, and the Gambo a marine platypus relative. Meanwhile, the {{Chupacabra}} is a kangaroo-like predatory opossum, the Maryland Goatman is a predatory bipedal monkey instead of a transparent copy of a classical satyr, and the [[BigfootSasquatchAndYeti Yeti]] is a brown-furred, medium-sized bipedal ape more related to orangutans than humans, neither abominable nor in the snow if it can avoid it. |
| 400 | * Happens InUniverse in ''{{Literature/Discworld}}'' with Pastor Oats, an Omnian who's very bad at his job because he can't help but pick up on the inconsistencies in his holy text, such as a prophet defeating a SeaMonster that turned the seas to blood combined with his knowledge of red algae that turn the water poisonous to sea life; or the one who caused a famine with the knowledge of the wind patterns that can cause droughts for years. |
| 401 | * The ''Franchise/DoctorWhoExpandedUniverse'' introduces [[Franchise/CthulhuMythos the Great Old Ones]] and their cults, which are able to create all kinds of blatantly magical effects with incantations and rituals. The Doctor, as usual, handwaves the entire thing: just as the Time Lords use mathematics to achieve their [[ClarkesThirdLaw sufficiently advanced technology]], the Great Old Ones used language, and brought their own physical laws forward into our universe with them. (This is roughly the same explanation that would later show up in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E2TheShakespeareCode "The Shakespeare Code"]].) ''Millennial Rites'' takes this even further, introducing a character from the ''next'' universe who appears to do the same thing through sigils. |
| 402 | * "The Count of Time" story in ''El tiempo es el que es'' ("Time is what it is"), a novel of ''Series/TheMinistryOfTime'', has the legend of Bernardo del Carpio arising from a time-traveler left behind in the year 808 (Carpio was believed to be a historical figure for centuries but he is considered wholly fictional now). |
| 403 | * In ''Literature/TheDreamsInTheWitchHouse'', the titular Witch vanished from a cell in Salem because she found how to travel though different dimensions after discovering some advanced form of physics, which was understood by her and her 17th century contemporaries as witchcraft. |
| 404 | * ''En busca del unicornio'' ("In search of the unicorn") by Juan Eslava Galán tells the story of a mid-15th century Spanish expedition to Africa with the mission of finding a {{unicorn}} for King Henry IV of Castile. They expect the unicorn to be as in the legends, and are disappointed when they find a rhinoceros and realize that this is what the mythical beast actually was. |
| 405 | * Creator/RobertSilverberg's ''Gilgamesh the King'' is a retelling of Literature/TheEpicOfGilgamesh, sans supernatural elements; the "scorpion people", for instance, are just a family with a skin condition. |
| 406 | * ''Literature/IAmLegend'' does away with anything supernatural about vampirism. It's all caused by a bacteria. All legends of supernatural effects are either given a scientific-sounding explanation or else turn out to be mere legends. For example, repelling vampires with a cross works but is unreliable. Why? The sight of formerly revered items causes self-loathing in the vampire; a once-faithful Christian might be repelled. A formerly Jewish vampire is repelled by the Torah, but unaffected by crosses. |
| 407 | * Caleb Carr's ''The Legend of Broken'' mostly plays this straight. The "sorcerer" Caliphestos is just a scholar, healer and proto-scientist (and hates being called a sorcerer) and the Bane a tribe of goblin-elves is the product of inbreeding among people exiled for not matching up the the physical standards of the City-state of Broken. However it's hinted that the lost manuscript on which the story is based was written by Broken's founder based on dream visions and Caliphestos has a [[BondCreature seemingly supernatural rapport with the pantheress Stasi]] that's never really explained. |
| 408 | * Creator/ScottWesterfeld does this in ''Literature/{{Peeps}}'', where vampires, and all of their traits, such as being afraid of sunlight and mirrors and crosses are explained away as parasites affecting brain chemistry. Even vampires turning into bats is explained. |
| 409 | * ''Sidi'' by Creator/ArturoPerezReverte retells the exile of El Cid in a realistic manner, with AntiquatedLinguistics, elements combed from 11th century sources (Christian and Muslim), DeliberateValuesDissonance, and [[WarCrimeSubvertsHeroism war crimes]]. The early part of the book is inspired by Creator/JohnFord's {{western}}s, of all things, and the latter deals with his service in Zaragoza. However Alvar Fáñez "Minaya" is still El Cid's [[TheLancer right-hand man]] (really existed, but never served El Cid) and the sword Tizona appears in the climax (in this version taken not from a Moorish king but from Count Berenguer, traditionally said of [[CompositeCharacter El Cid's other sword, Colada]]; Berenguer here claims that Tizona belonged to a Moorish king before him). |
| 410 | * ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoNewAdventuresTimewyrmGenesys Timewyrm: Genesys]]'' featured the Doctor and Ace wandering into the middle of ''Literature/TheEpicOfGilgamesh''. Enkidu is a neanderthal, Gilgamesh is a perfectly human BoisterousBruiser... and Utnapishtim is an alien starship captain, his flood-defying ark is a spacecraft, and the Scorpion Men are robots with lasers. Oh, and Ishtar is being impersonated by an alien criminal who Utnapishtim is trying to hunt down. |
| 411 | * Creator/NealStephenson's ''Literature/SnowCrash'' posits that Sumerian mythology and the Babel story are distorted retellings of real events surrounding the fragmentation of language. |
| 412 | [[/folder]] |
| 413 | |
| 414 | [[folder:Live-Action TV]] |
| 415 | * Creator/AnimalPlanet [[{{mockumentary}} mockumentaries]]: |
| 416 | ** ''Film/DragonsAFantasyMadeReal'' explains dragons and [[StockNessMonster reptilian sea monsters]] as a unique lineage of crocodile relatives that arose in the Triassic, evolving flight and the ability to make fire from their mouth through a chemical reaction, which they use for defense and [[MundaneUtility to cook their meat]]. Originally all dragons were bipedal tetrapods (so wyverns) but one aquatic lineage evolved six limbs and survived the K/T mass extinction, from which it recolonized the continents and gained flight again. |
| 417 | ** ''Film/MermaidsTheBodyFound'' explains mermaids as an offshoot of the early hominid evolutionary tree that went back to live in the sea. Since they are primates (therefore, mammals) these mermaids have scale-sless skin and up and down propulsion, like dophins instead of fish, and their flukes are modified feet with bones, similar to a seal. They also live in pods and not all are female. |
| 418 | ** ''Werewolves: Dark Survivors'' explains myths surrounding [[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent werewolves]] as a [[TheVirus derived strain of rabies]] that causes porphyria and other symptoms, with a few historical tidbits about berserkers for good measure. |
| 419 | * Some episodes of ''Series/CriminalMinds'' start with the premise of "what if this popular fictional creature was a modern SerialKiller", including vampires, werewolves, and ''Cinderella'', among others. Naturally, magic is always replaced by some kind of psychosis. |
| 420 | ** The second season of the spin-off ''Series/CriminalMindsBeyondBorders'' has non-supernatural versions of a StringyHairedGhostGirl [[note]]a WomanScorned turned reclusive and addicted to plastic surgery[[/note]], a [[OurZombiesAreDifferent Caribbean zombie]] [[note]]a brain-damaged hitman who clawed his way out of a shallow grave after surviving his execution[[/note]] and a yeti [[note]]a brain-damaged mountaineer who was lost in the Himalayas after surviving an avalanche and turned [[IAmAHumanitarian cannibalistic]][[/note]]. |
| 421 | * ''Series/DoctorWho'' does this occasionally. Almost any supernatural element in the show is explained as either alien or extradimensional. Even vampires turn out to be alien ''fish'' using perception filters to appear human. The "teeth" are the product of human subconscious trying to warn the person of a threat. (At least, [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E6TheVampiresOfVenice some]] vampires are. [[Recap/DoctorWhoS18E4StateOfDecay Other]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoS26E3TheCurseOfFenric vampires]] are actually blood-sucking, TheVirus-spreading monsters, repelled by faith [a "psychic barrier"] or garlic [or "garil", which is space-garlic], and only killable by driving a stake through the heart. But they're still from space or the future, so that's okay.) |
| 422 | * ''Series/ElCid2020'' dials back the legendary elements of the [[Literature/CantarDelMioCid literary cycle]] and adds historical figures and locations from the 11th century, but doesn't let go completely of the post-1200 legend (or HollywoodHistory). For example, the death of Ferdinand I is clearly based on the ''Romance of the Siege of Zamora'', with his children and El Cid being present for his agony and the division of the kingdom, but instead of portraying El Cid as a celebrity respected by everyone like the romance, he's there as an [[YoungFutureFamousPeople unknown young squire]], as he would be at the time of Ferdinand's death. Urraca's actress also said that the iconic Oath of Santa Gadea would be featured in the show even though it's known to have never happened. |
| 423 | * ''Series/TheMinistryOfTime'': The legendary version of El Cid is the result of a [[spoiler: 1960s [[TimeTravel time-traveler]] [[YouWillBeBeethoven impersonating]] the real Cid after accidentally killing him and]] [[StableTimeLoop trying to live up to the legend]] he's familiar with. The ElCidPloy is [[spoiler:Alonso]] donning this [[spoiler:time-traveler's]] armor after he dies in battle, rather than his corpse being sat upon his horse to win a battle after his death. The real Cid? A skilled, but unheroic Medieval warrior. |
| 424 | * ''{{Series/Primeval}}'' often "explains" legendary creatures and phenomena like dragons, mermaids, haunted houses or the Egyptian monster Ammit, as prehistoric (or future!) animals that passed through the time portals into historical times and were embellished by people.[[note]]The above animals were the dinosaur ''Dracorex'', future sea-adapted primates, a maybe primate future creature capable of cammouflaging itself, and the Eocene "running crocodile" ''Pristichampsus''.[[/note]] |
| 425 | * ''Series/{{Rome}}'' does not have Julius Caesar say his famous LastWords "EtTuBrute" or "You too, Brutus?" right before he dies, like how CommonKnowledge and pop culture has it (thanks to Shakespeare's play). This is following the ancient sources like Suetonius and Plutarch who assert that he said nothing, though Suetonius also says that it was ''rumored'' that he said "you too, my child/son" in Greek (''Kai su, teknon'') to Brutus. The show has Caesar convey the sentiment to Brutus wordlessly, through his facial expressions. The show also pointedly does not have Caesar saying one of his other famous quotes, "Alea iacta est" or "The die is cast" before crossing the Rubicon with his army. It just happens, with the common soldier viewpoint character Titus Pullo realizing the import of it - that the point of no return has been passed and this means civil war. In both cases it's left for the viewer to imply that the famous phrases were cooked up later. |
| 426 | * While ''Series/TheXFiles'' most often veered into the supernatural, it would sometimes do the opposite and offer mundane explanations for supernatural [[TwiceToldTale Twice Told Tales]]. [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane Maybe]]. |
| 427 | ** "[[Recap/TheXFilesS01E05TheJerseyDevil The Jersey Devil]]" [[InNameOnly threw away every aspect]] of the Jersey Devil mythology except the name and the New Jersey Pine Barrens location, recycling the titular monster as a maneating Bigfoot. Which was later revealed to be an anthropologically modern family of (white) cannibals living buttnaked in the woods. [[TheUnreveal Maybe]]. |
| 428 | ** "[[Recap/TheXFilesS02E19DodKalm Dod Kalm]]" explained rapid aging and ghost ships as side effects of bacterian activity. |
| 429 | ** "[[Recap/TheXFilesS03E22Quagmire Quagmire]]" had Mulder and Scully come to investigate a series of deaths attributed to a StockNessMonster, only to discover that they were committed by an alligator. [[RealAfterAll Maybe]]. |
| 430 | ** "[[Recap/TheXFilesS04E11ElMundoGira El Mundo Gira]]" explains the Chupacabra as a man carrying an enzyme that makes otherwise inoffensive fungi grow rapidly fast, deforming him and killing any animal or human he comes in contact with. Mulder, naturally, believes that the enzyme came from outer space, but an UFO "seen" in an area of Chupacabra activity turns out to be a hazmat team coming to retrieve one of the Chupacabra's victims. The legend is shown to evolve rapidly as it is retold by superstitious Mexican immigrants, diverging according to their own biases (Flakita's version features the UFO and TheGreys coming out of it, Gabrielle's version has no aliens but is melodramatic and SoapOpera-like). |
| 431 | [[/folder]] |
| 432 | |
| 433 | [[folder:Tabletop Games]] |
| 434 | * In ''TabletopGame/ConspiracyX'', psychic phenomena are simply another aspect of physics which mainstream human science still haven't figured out. All humans (excluding extremely rare mutations) are psychic, to a degree (explaining things like "intuition" or "empathy"). "Magic" and most magical creatures are actually also a result of this: the vast majority of humans produce more psychic energy than they use, and the excess "seeps" out of their body to create a sort of psychic background force, the so called "Collective Subconscious" of humanity. "Magic" is the manipulation of this psychic "seepage" to achieve all sorts of effects (the rituals work because enough people subconsciously believe they should), demons and spirits are intelligent manifestations of people's fears, and vampires and werewolves are people who were "infected" by the seepage until they were physically and mentally transformed into subconscious archetypes: "The Stalker" and "The Predator", in this case. |
| 435 | [[/folder]] |
| 436 | |
| 437 | [[folder:Video Games]] |
| 438 | * ''VideoGame/AgeOfEmpiresII'': |
| 439 | ** Like its predecessor, this is a Medieval RTS that is based on history and devoid of fantasy. The scenario editor contains some Myth/ArthurianLegend, Myth/RobinHood, and ''Literature/{{Nibelungenlied}}'' hero units to be used at the player's discretion, but they are all common swordsman, cavalry, archer, or monk units with better stats. Anyone that would require magic (like Merlin or Morgaine) is absent. Likewise, the campaigns may include legends or references to them for storytelling purposes, but they are not supernatural: Barbarossa's "The Emperor Sleeping" scenario is about carrying his body to be buried in Jerusalem rather than him being a KingInTheMountain, UsefulNotes/GenghisKhan's campaign ends with the Mongols believing that he will come BackFromTheDead one day rather than him doing so, the only supposed miracles of UsefulNotes/JoanOfArc referenced are those that can be rationalized in some other way, etc. |
| 440 | ** In the scenario "The Battle at Hanoi" of the ''Rise of Rajas'' expansion, Lê Lợi receives 500 gold and his sword Thuận Thiên ("Heaven's Will") from a "Turtle Monk" after escorting him safely to Hanoi. In the legend, Lê Lợi received the sword from the golden turtle god Kim Quy. In addition, the sword only increases Lê Lợi's attack by 4, rather than making him a giant with the strength of 1000 men. This sidequest is completely removed in the ''Definitive Edition''. |
| 441 | ** The nats, vengeful spirits of Burmese folklore, appear in the Bayinnaung campaign as hostile "enchantresses" who gain attack by killing units (with a knife). |
| 442 | ** The nagas in the Prithviraj campaign are described as a "[[SnakePeople Serpent People]]", but are actually hostile priests and monitor lizards. No word on them being [[SemiDivine demigods]]. This goes even further after the release of the ''Dynasties of India'' DLC, where the nagas are substitued by the unambiguously human Paramaras (a Rajput clan). |
| 443 | [[/folder]] |
| 444 | |
| 445 | [[folder:Western Animation]] |
| 446 | * WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}: |
| 447 | ** [[Recap/FuturamaS2E12TheDeepSouth "The Deep South"]]: Mermaids are mutated humans living in the underwater ruins of [[UsefulNotes/{{Atlanta}} Atlant... a]]. |
| 448 | ** [[Recap/FuturamaS2E18TheHonking "The Honking"]] parodies Horror tropes with a HauntedHouse with in-built [[PortraitPaintingPeephole Portrait Painting Peepholes]], "robot ghosts" that are actually holograms leaking from improperly shielded "dead robots", robots turning into "[[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent werecars]]" who turn other robots into werecars after running them over and infecting them with a computer virus (victims in the Arctic are turned into "abominable snowmobiles"), and revealing that [[spoiler:Calculon]] has lived 1000 years by upgrading himself and going through different identities. |
| 449 | ** [[Recap/FuturamaS3E17APharaohToRemember "A Pharaoh to Remember"]] parodies AncientAstronauts with the planet O'Cyris IV, whose culture is modeled on Ancient Egypt. Fry takes this as confirmation that aliens created the Egyptian civilization, but one of the natives clarifies that it was the Egyptians who took to the stars and colonized O'Cyris IV. Another episode, [[Recap/FuturamaS6E8ThatDarnKatz "That Darn Katz"]], later shows that ''other'' aliens visited Egypt in 3500 BC, built the Great Pyramid, and were worshipped as gods. We know them as [[spoiler: [[AlienAnimals house cats]].]] |
| 450 | * The supernatural is quite real in ''WesternAnimation/Castlevania2017'', but it has an explanation for crosses being effective against vampires pretty much akin to ''Literature/{{Blindsight}}'' above, as geometric shapes naturally messing with their differently-evolved brains. This is when the show introduces its version of the throwing cross subweapon from the games. |
| 451 | [[/folder]] |
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