Historical AU

"Re: Elsa. Affairs of state going very well. Going to to many dinners with Princess/Kris family now, working out details of plan. Frenchman comes too. Possibility of great diplomatic coup. Recommend discussing expansion of US with congress/justices/etc. Vision-see US from sea to sea. Napoleon wanting Arendelle's aid, Arendelle needs security, we need land, Napoleon willing to sell Louisiana."

— American Legation of Arendelle, Ice on the Rhine

A specific type of Elseworld in which the cast of an established work is transplanted into the writer's historical setting of choice. While writers might use a fantastic premise to explain how they got there (such as Time Travel or Reincarnation), other instances just have the characters be born and raised in the new time period.

The appeal of this trope is seeing how established characters react to and are shaped by a drastically different society, and the usage of tropes and figures (Historical Domain Character and Public Domain Character) specific to the new time period. For example, a diverse cast might feel constrained by a more patriarchal and/or racist society, the central romance now has to unfold amidst strict etiquette and courting rules, the characters resolve a historical conflict using very different methods from the source material's, or a Historical Domain Character arrives to help wrap up the story.

In addition, certain genres that the writers might like to use, such as The Western, are strongly tied to a specific time period.

Note that this is specifically an Elseworld/Alternate Universe — the characters must not be native to the setting. Works where the characters could plausibly have lived through the time period (e.g. immortals) don't count.

Compare Period Piece and the Out-of-Genre Experience Episodes. Contrast Setting Update and Modern AU Fic, which put characters in a contemporary setting. Distant Prequel is another way an established work might want to play with historical tropes.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The One Piece anime has a series of standalone episodes comprising the Boss Luffy Historical Special, which transplants the characters into 19th-century Japan.

Comic Books

• The DC Comics characters usually interact in Present Day, save for the occasional Elseworld:
  • Batman: Thrillkiller, published in 1997, imagines Batgirl and Robin as noiry 1960s counterculture crimefighters.
  • DC Comics Bombshells turns several prominent female characters into World War II-era freedom fighters, with some changes made with powersets in mind (e.g. Flying Bricks Supergirl and Stargirl as former members of the Night Witches) and others with characterization in mind (e.g. Italian-American Zatanna is Jewish and Roma in this version and the Holocaust is part of her backstory).
  • Gotham by Gaslight sees Batman and his supporting cast as characters in Victorian England, turning the modern noir of a Gotham story into a Gaslamp Fantasy one, tangling with figures of the time like Jack the Ripper, and exploring how Batman can become the Caped Crusader in a setting that doesn't allow for his modern technology.
• The Marvel Universe is broadly set in Present Day, but occasionally shows alternate versions of the characters in historical settings:
  • Marvel 1602 is set in the tail end of Elizabeth I's reign, with various Marvel characters reimagined as court figures or involved in the colonization of the New World.
  • 5 Ronin, which transplanted Wolverine, The Punisher, The Hulk, Psylocke and Deadpool into Tokugawa-era Japan.
• Suske en Wiske: Stories are primarily set in the present, with Applied Phlebotinum time-traveling used to temporarily visit the past. However, some stories reimagine the cast as being from particular time periods:
  • "Het Geheim van de Gladiatoren" (The Secret of the Gladiators): Suske, Wiske and Lambik are Gauls living in Ancient Rome.
  • "Het Gouden Paard" (The Golden Horse) takes place in 16th century South America.
  • "De verloren Van Eyck" (The lost Van Eyck) is set in early 15th century Europe.
• In Transformers: Hearts of Steel, some of the Transformers wake up on Earth during the Industrial Revolution rather than in 1984 as they did in Transformers: Generation 1, and took corresponding vehicle modes such as trains, propeller aircraft and warships. Human characters appearing in the comic include John Henry, Mark Twain, and Jules Verne.

Fan Works

• By the Sea is a romance between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Commander Cody of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, except reimagining the pair as a shell-shocked World War II veteran and an injured merman, respectively.
• Calamity Jane Meets Doctor Isles plucks the characters of Rizzoli & Isles from contemporary Boston and places them in The Wild West. Rather than a cop, the Jane Rizzoli of the fanfic poses as a male outlaw named Jake Wyatt who meets Maura Isles when she moves into town with her fiancé Garrett.
• Dawn of the English Roses places the characters of RWBY into the year 1965. Team SSSN are the universe's equivalent of The Beatles, with their band being called The Yeatles.
• Detective Loomes and the Phantom Thief: The characters of One Piece are transplanted into Victorian London, with Luffy being a detective named Sherlock Loomes who has to track down both Moriarty and a dashing Phantom Thief known as Lupin.
• Drowning in Your Depths is a Gravity Falls Slash Fic that takes place during The Golden Age of Piracy, where Bill Cipher is a pirate captain and Dipper is a siren.
• Everything In The World Was Standing Still places the cast of Steven Universe aboard the RMS Titanic, changing everyone's backstories to fit the era. Rather than being the superpowered son of a Crystal Gem, Steven is instead a wealthy heir to his late mother's fortune crossing the Atlantic to a new life in America.
• A Great Endeavor takes the characters of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and imagines an alternate world where they lived alongside humans. The story is then set in World War II.
• Heimatfront is a Massive Multiplayer Crossover fic centered around Girls und Panzer that takes place in the last days of World War II.
• Ice on the Rhine: While Frozen (2013) takes place in the 1840s, the characters from the film and from Tangled are drawn into The Napoleonic Wars of the early 1800s.
• I Would Move Mountains is an Overwatch Genji/Zenyatta fic that takes the characters from their canon 20 Minutes into the Future setting to the 1600s, with the addition of High Fantasy magic.
• Lost Tales of Fantasia combines all Disney media and sets its plot against a backdrop of World War II. In it, many Disney villains have aligned themselves with the Nazis.
• Manners and Misunderstandings places the characters of High Fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire into Regency England. This includes rewriting plot points and deaths to be far more mundane, and Fantasy Counterpart Cultures getting mapped onto real-world countries.
• Petal In The Rain is a Harry Potter fic that sets Lily and James's romance during the 1940 Battle of Britain rather than the canon 1970s. Furthermore, Lily is a muggle attending a Boarding School of Horrors while James is a wizarding noble.
• The Rod Squad is basically Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, but ten years earlier, in 1979. Chip wears a tie that's as wide as a surfboard (and he uses it as a surfboard), Dale has an afro, and Gadget wears bell-bottoms and platform shoes. Together, they have to face a lot of "HASSLES" and "RIP-OFFS" on their assignment by baseball manager Charles O. Finley to prevent a Disco Demolition Night.
• The Swordsman & The Gunslinger moves the contemporary cast of Fruits Basket into The Wild West, specifically to the Arizona Territory in 1880.
• An Uncommon Witness is a Princess Tutu fic where the characters are transplanted into The Roaring '20s with a Film Noir-style plot.
• Witching Hour: The cast of Invader Zim are moved from a 20 Minutes in the Future setting to a Medieval one.

Films — Animation

• Batman Ninja: Batman, his allies, and his Rogues Gallery are transported to feudal Japan. The villains have become daimyō, and the Bat-Family learns the ways of the ninja to defeat Gorilla Grodd.

Live-Action TV

• Bones pays tribute to Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief with its 200th episode, reimagining the cast in 1950s Hollywood. Here, Brennan battles misogyny as an LAPD detective and Booth is a jewel thief framed for the murder of a rich socialite.
• Las Vegas: "Everything Old Is You Again" takes the cast back to 1962 after Danny purchases a souvenir from the Jubilee Hotel, which was located where the Montecito now stands. In this setting, they work for a mob casino, deal with issues of the times, and generate a forward-thinking money-making scheme. As a bonus, the title card is retooled to be 60s-style.
• The One Tree Hill episode "We Three (My Echo, My Shadow and Me)" primarily consists of Lucas's dream after falling asleep while watching Casablanca, which recontextualizes prior plot events in a 1940s Film Noir setting. In the dream, Lucas is the owner of Karen's Cafe, a glamorous nightclub in Tree Hill City.
• The majority of the Pretty Little Liars episode "Shadow Play" takes place in a 1940s noir setting, as hallucinated by Spencer after she pops a pill while watching an old film. In it, Toby is a Private Detective, Hanna is a switchboard operator, and Mona and Ezra are cooperating against the girls.

Western Animation

• Archer has season-long AUs brought on by Archer's coma dreams:
  • Season 8, Archer Dreamland, is a dramedy Film Noir where Archer is a Private Detective in 1947 L.A. investigating the death of his partner Woodhouse.
  • Season 9, Archer Danger Island, takes place on a Pacific island in 1939, as Nazi Germany is poised to march through Europe. Instead of a PI (or a modern-day spy), Archer is a one-eyed cargo plane pilot.
• CatDog: The episode "It's a Wonderful Half Life" is an homage to The Golden Age of Animation, wherein Cat and Dog both have dreams where they're separate animals. Dog is a happy hobo in The Great Depression and Cat is a business tycoon of The Roaring '20s.
• Phineas and Ferb has transplanted its cast into a variety of settings, sometimes collectively referred to as "Time Shift" episodes.
  • "Tri-Stone Area" goes all the way back to Hollywood Prehistory, where all the characters are cavepeople speaking "cave talk" gibberish. What they're saying is easily gleaned, as the Strictly Formula plot sees Phinabunk and Gerb inventing a wheeled vehicle, Cantok not managing to get them in trouble, and Bunka de Bunkakwan trying to foil Doofengung's plan to cause a mammoth stampede.
  • "Doof Dynasty" is set in ancient China. Doofus Khan tries to take over the Tri-Province Area in a plan that involves kidnapping Princess Isabella. The gang needs Master Perry's training to defeat him.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998): "West in Pieces" transplants the characters into the American Old West, where Professor Utonium creates the Steamypuff Girls to deal with the infamous outlaw Mojo the Kid.

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