Historical Domain Character / Video Games

• Abyss Odyssey features Niccolò Paganini (or possibly a nightmare-born version of him). He apparently earned his virtuosity through a Deal with the Devil, and serves as a Mini-Boss.
• AI Dungeon 2: You can make ANY historical figure to appear in your story. It's not just their name, the AI often knows about their background and history. Though their personality is sometimes radically different. Even when you summoned vicious dictators or murderers in real life, they can be kind enough to answer your questions or care for you.
• The whole point of AkaSeka — a Massive Multiplayer Crossover of virtually all periods of Japanese history. Abe no Seimei, Prince Shōtoku, Oda Nobunaga, Hijikata Toshizō and Akutagawa Ryūnosuke all hang out together? You bet!
• Aside from Kit, Hodge, and (possibly) Kit's barely seen parents, the entire named cast of Another Sight are actual historical figures. Sort of justified, since the game takes place beneath 1899 London, but it's still strange to have the niece of Thomas Edison be directed to Nikola Tesla by his next door neighbor Claude Monet.
• The canceled MOBA game Arena of Fate features multiple historical characters from Popular History. Such as Blackbeard, Jesse James, Nikola Tesla...
• Every title in Assassin's Creed features historical characters, ranging from the famous Richard the Lionheart, Leonardo da Vinci, George Washington, and Blackbeard to the more obscure Garnier de Naplouse, Jacopo de Pazzi, Thomas Hickey, and Benjamin Hornigold.
• Louis Philippe I appears (as a penguin) in Aviary Attorney.
• The first installment of the Book Travelers series from Elephant Games features Charlotte Brontë as a significant character; she's essentially the quest giver of the plot.
• Bungo to Alchemist features many characters based on Japanese Literature.
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II has Jonas Savimbi and Manuel Noriega, both of whom were actual prominent figures during the time period of the game's flashback missions.
• Crusader Kings II has a lot of these, including the majority of characters that can be selected as your start character. Many even have Wikipedia links (or, in mods with fictional settings, links to the appropriate wiki) in their character pages. As gameplay diverges from history (generally after the first generation or two of your dynasty), there will be none left.
• Dong Dong Never Die features Zhuge Liang as one of the fighters. His intro has him showing off one of his legs.
• Dragon Age II has an In-Universe example with The Spear of Hessarian, a trashy book Isabela reads and offers to lend to Hawke's sister Bethany. It features the Archon Hessarian and the Deity of Human Origin Andraste in a... less than religious relationship. According to Isabela, it even has pictures.
• Leonardo da Vinci appears as a Bishōnen, and Lisa del Giocondo as his love interest, in Elite Beat Agents. The real Lisa was already married, but this is not the kind of game where that matters. And it's not like he ever courted someone to the music of Queen, anyways.
• The third chapter of Eternal Darkness, "Suspicions of Conspiracy", is all about the protagonist, Anthony, and his efforts to warn Emperor Charlemagne the Frank of a plot to have him murdered. He naturally fails.
• Frederick Chopin, in Eternal Sonata.
• Genpei Tōma Den has the player controlling Taira no Kagekiyo, an actual historical figure from the Japan's Genpei War. ^note Famously told in both The Tale of Genji and The Tale of the Heike. Here, he's been resurrected (after having died at the end of the Battle of Dan-no-ura) in order to take down his arch enemy Minamoto no Yoritomo, who was both the founder and first shogun of the Kamakura shogunate of Japan.
• The Great Ace Attorney, being a period piece set in the early 1900s, is the first game to also include a real person in the cast — namely Natsume Sōseki, already unhappy with his life in London but also finding himself accused of murder.
• Hakuouki is focused on The Shinsengumi, and thus is full of historical figures both in and outside of that organization.
• Hidden Expedition: The backstory of the final installment, A King's Line, features Edward I of England as a significant figure. Justified, as the game focuses heavily on Welsh history and makes mention of Edward's annexation of Wales.
• Inkulinati: Most of the famous Inkulinati fought as bosses are real figures from medieval history, mostly writers, theologians, or both, such as Dante Alighieri, Saint Francis of Assisi, and Saint Hildegard of Bingen.
• Kentucky Route Zero: One of the secondary characters, Lula Chamberlain, was a real-life obscure installation artist from Kentucky.
• The majority of the cast in Koei's Dynasty Warriors (based on Romance of the Three Kingdoms, an epic detailing the Three Kingdoms period of Imperial China) and Samurai Warriors (based on Japan's Sengoku Period). Their crossover series, Warriors Orochi, throws even more examples from Chinese and Japanese history into the pile, such as Da Ji, Taigong Wang, Yoshitune Minamoto, Kiyomori Taira, Himiko (debatably; see the Tomb Raider example below for more details), Benkei, and Seimei Abe, along with (a version of) Joan of Arc and (a version of) Achilles.
• Legend Of Ace features many Historical Domain Characters and mythological characters as heroes, ranging from King Arthur, Heracles, Hattori Masanari, Mochizuki Chiyome, Achilles, etc. However, it also features several niche characters who are nonetheless from real history (or other niche myths/fictions) itself, such as (such as (Nakano) Takeko, (Annie) Oakley, Yim Wing Chun, Ogier (the Dane), etc)
• Limbo of the Lost stars Captain Benjamin Spooner Briggs, who certainly Took a Level in Jerkass and is more or less nothing like the sea captain or family man he was.
• Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader managed to incorporate Leonardo da Vinci, William Shakespeare, Cervantes, Hernán Cortés, Joan of Arc, Torquemada, and Queen Elizabeth I all into a single narrative, and even managed to Hand Wave most of them living within a few blocks of each other in 1588 Barcelona.
• The Lion's Song: Real figures prominent during the Austrian cultural scene, like Gustav Klimt and Sigmund Freud, show up and play various roles in the story, such as Klimt being a mentor figure for Franz Markert, a rising painter.
• Live A Live: In the Edo Japan chapter, two of Ode Iou's underlings are the ghosts of Miyamoto Musashi and Amakusa Shiro, brought back from the dead to serve his nefarious plans. And in the end it turns out that the prisoner Oboromaru was sent to rescue is none other than Sakamoto Ryōma himself.
• Mount & Blade mod Europe 1200 features an impressive cast of historical nobles and sovereigns from the era as faction's leaders and vassals. The potential party members include a mix of usually obscure historical characters, like Hildegard of Bingen^note this one is actually anachronistic, as she died before 1200 AD, Eustace the Monk, Blondel de Nesle, Francis of Assisi, Ibn Arabi, Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, etc. Some of the others ones are either characters from medieval legends (Robin Hood, William Tell, Dobrynya Nikitich, Koroglu, Ogier the Dane, etc.), and the remaining are either references to modern culture or totally made up (for example, Roger z Rykach is an Expy for Geralt of Rivia).
• My Child Lebensborn: King Haakon VII gets a few mentions and happens to be visiting the small town in which the game is set on the very last day. One of the very last decisions made by the player is to decide whether or not to allow their child to get a glimpse of him before the two of you leave town for good.
• Nioh:
  • The game story's is kicked off when Irish-born seafarer William Adams^*the historical Adams was English has his Guardian Spirit Saoirse captured by Edward Kelley because of her ability to sense Amrita, golden stones that are abundant in Japan and sought out by Queen Elizabeth. ^note The first mission, which involves William escaping the Tower of London, features Derrick the Executioner as a Warm-Up Boss, by the way. Guided to Japan by a Magic Compass left behind by Saoirse, William meets and befriends Hattori Hanzō, is given the suggestion to take up the name Anjin by Kuroda Kanbei, is brought into the employ of Tokugawa Ieyasu (who historically gave William the name Miura Anjin when appointing the sailor as his retainer), and eventually is drawn into the greater conflict between Ieyasu and Ishida Mitsunari, all while Kelley schemes to revive Oda Nobunaga — who is having none of it and goes back to the afterlife of his own accord after a brief scuffle with William. Kelley himself is working for (and a creation of) Sir John Dee, who William decides to confront at the very end of the game. This isn't even getting into all the side missions (ranging from helping Tachibana Ginchiyo find a gift for her hubby to saving a young Miyamoto Musashi from demonic hordes after the Battle of Sekigahara), the true identity of several bosses (the Yuki-Onna and Ogress are, respectively, Nobunaga's wife Lady Nō and Ieyasu's wife Senahime, both resurrected by Kelley), or the Historical In-Joke of having Akechi Mitsuhide in hiding as the onmyoji Tenkai (with his apprentice Fuku being Lady Kasuga aka Saitō Fuku, the daughter of one of his retainers).
  • DLC expansions see William return to Japan to prevent a possible rebellion by the Date clan, battle against the forces of Sanada Yukimura in the Siege of Osaka, and finally team up with Yukimura to take down Yodo-gimi, who is so embittered by her tragic upbringing and hatred of the Tokugawa that she's hoarding Amrita and unleashing all kinds of supernatural horrors upon the land. All of which is orchestrated by Lady Maria, a Spanish spy sent to procure Amrita while plunging Japan into a Civil War. They are not an actual historical character, but instead loosely based upon a fictional concubine/mistress of Masamune's bearing the same name from Mitsuteru Yokoyama's Date Masamune manga and Sohachi Yamaoka's Tokugawa Ieyasu novel — hence their first appearance in the story as Masamune's foreign attendant.
  • Nioh 2 is, for the most part, a prequel focusing on the exploits of a younger (and still heroic) Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who is dead by the time of the original but has a Villainous Legacy carrying on into the narrative much like Nobunaga. The reality is a little more complicated: "Toyotomi Hideyoshi" is an identity shared between two people. One half of this duo is the Player Character Hide, who is genuinely a good person. The other is their friend Kinoshita Tokichiro (a name the historical Hideyoshi went by when coming of age and serving the Imagawa clan), a Plucky Comic Relief type whose ambition to become the shogun makes him an easy target for manipulation. This results in them becoming far more ruthless and cruel, going on to commit the various atrocities Hideyoshi is known for in the first game. Several other characters who were not present in Nioh (usually for similar reasons) appear here, such as Azai Nagamasa and Oichi, as do younger versions of Nobunaga, Mitsuhide, and Nō.
• H. P. Lovecraft appears as a playable character in Oh...Sir!! The Insult Simulator; his sore-spot is insults about his racism and/or boring and mundane things ("Your cousin's car smells of an ordinary pigsty and your beloved auntie is racist!").
• Onmyōji (2016) has Abe no Seimei and Minamoto no Hiromasa who both go through Historical Beauty Upgrade and, in the latter's case, a great change in image, from a renowned musician to a Mage Marksman.
• The first Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan has a fat Cleopatra who decided to have her slaves build a pyramid... to lose weight and impress Mark Antony.
• In Persona 5, Ryuji and Yusuke have real people as their eponymous Personas — William Kidd from the The Golden Age of Piracy and Ishikawa Goemon, respectively.
• In the Sierra city-building game Pharaoh, you play your way through all of the ruling dynasties of ancient Egypt; this includes the final ruling house, the Ptolemies, if you add the expansion pack Cleopatra: Queen of Kings.
• Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell features Johnny Gat and Kinzie Kensington teaming up with some of the history's worst criminals: Blackbeard, Vlad the Impaler, and William Shakespeare.
• Used pretty regularly in Samurai Shodown. Hattori Hanzō, Amakusa, Andrew Jackson...
• Lincoln, Washington and Einstein are the only three specific, real life people (excluding the developers) that can be summoned in Scribblenauts.
• Although he only appears in flashbacks, Leonardo da Vinci is (as the title suggests) heavily involved with the plot of Secrets of da Vinci: The Forbidden Manuscript. One of the French kings is also a character in the game.
• Everyone from Sengoku Basara.
• The Shadow Hearts series contains numerous examples, both well known and obscure, as heroes, villains, and cameo characters. Notably includes Edward Plunkett, Roger Bacon, Margaretha Zelle, Anastasia Romanov, Grigori Rasputin, Yoshiko and Naniwa Kawashima, T.E. Lawrence, Al Capone, and Elliot Ness. Many of these include some form of Historical Upgrade.
• Tesla: The Weather Man features Nikola Tesla and Mark Twain as the heroes and Thomas Edison as the villain.
• In Tin Star (Choice of Games), you can personally correspond with President Andrew Johnson at one point. Other historical figures are mentioned in the narrative, but don't appear personally.
• The plot of Tomb Raider (2013) kicks off when a research vessel seeking out the legendary kingdom of Yamatai and its queen, Himiko, is wrecked in storms which are revealed to be controlled by Himiko's restless spirit. Himiko is referenced by Chinese historical records dated to the 3rd century A.D., who have her ruling a kingdom called Yamatai-koku, and state that she died sometime around the year 248 A.D. So Himiko may have, in fact, really existed. Unfortunately the historical record is rendered even murkier by the fact that the earliest known Japanese histories (8th century A.D.) make no mention of her at all. The controversy and debate over Himiko and Yamatai's existence, which forms the basis of the game's backstory, is still a hot-button topic of debate among historians.
• The indisputable master of this trope has to be Martian Dreams, a Worlds of Ultima game. It features a plethora of 19th century big names in an adventure on Mars, including Sigmund Freud, Theodore Roosevelt, Wyatt Earp, Marie Curie, and Rasputin.
• All of the Uncharted games involve Nathan Drake and his friends following the written records of discoveries made by various famous explorers, each being mentioned in the historical backstories. Drake's Fortune had Sir Francis Drake (who Nate claims to be a descendant of), Among Thieves had Marco Polo, Drake's Deception had T.E. Lawrence, and A Thief's End had Henry Avery.
• Vampyr (2018) features William Marshall, 1st Earl of Pembroke, a real-life Knight in Shining Armor that served under five different kings, and here is revealed to be an ancient vampire. The main character gets to meet him in the ending after the final boss.
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines has Smiling Jack, who is heavily implied to be the real life 18th century pirate, "Calico" Jack Rackham, who has survived into the modern day via being turned into a vampire.
• Wolfenstein: The New Order has a mysterious African-American soldier named J. A talented rock guitarist who plays his guitar in his left hand, brews his own acid, and goes out playing a rock version of "The Star Spangled Banner". The more astute may catch on to his identity.

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