History Main / SadlyMythtaken

** The "HolyGrail as granter of eternal life" plot of ''[[Film/IndianaJonesAndTheLastCrusade The Last Crusade]]'' is not based on the Bible or later Christian tradition either. The writers came with it after toying with the idea of having Indy find the Holy Grail in the ActionPrologue and then go to look for some version of the FountainOfYouth in the movie proper. Somebody suggested mixing the two, and the rest is (movie) history.
** The Holy Grail itself, in this movie and many other movies and stories, is a prime example. First of all, the term "Holy Grail" originally referred to an object, not clearly defined, probably a bowl, but definitely not a cup, that was wholly (no pun intended) fictional, purely a literary device. At some point, it somehow became conflated with the Holy Chalice, the cup that Christ drank from at the Last Supper, which was offhandedly mentioned in the bible, but as nothing more or less than what it was: a cup. The Christian religion has no significant tradition regarding the Holy Chalice, merely saying that it is Holy by virtue of the fact that Christ handled it, so in the same sense that Christ's sandals could be called "The Holy Sandals".
** According to Christian tradition, there appears to be two Holy Grail legends. The first Grail legend states that it is the cup that Jesus used at the Last Supper to turn water and wine into his blood. The 2nd Grail legend states that the cup belonged to Joseph of Arimathea, a disciple, who was at the Crucifixion. When Longinus, a Roman centurion, pierced Jesus' side with his lance to make sure that he was dead, Joseph used the cup to catch the blood of Jesus in it as it rained down from above him.
** In ''Dial of Destiny''[[spoiler: Both Greeks and Romans imagined dragons as giant, constricting, venomous snakes - and not a fiery, flying beast]].

** Ulysses appears as a wandering sorceror in traditional Japanese garb, rather than a Greek warrior-king (albeit with a {{Trickster}} side).

* ''ComicBook/BlackPanther'': Wakanda has always worshipped a panther deity, but the volume 3 series, published in 2000, {{retcon}}ned the PatronGod of Wakanda to be an aspect of the goddess Bast--an ''Egyptian'' goddess, not an East African one (first introduced to Marvel in ''ComicBook/FantasticFour'' #52 in 1966). The 2009 ''[[AllThereInTheManual Encyclopedia Mythologica]]'' retroactively justifies this as an example of InterfaithSmoothie: Wakanda is close enough to southern Egypt that it absorbed some of ancient Egypt's religious practices through cultural exchange.

* A panel in ''ComicBook/Aquaman1962 #17'' has Aquaman mistakenly call Poseidon Zeus's son instead of his brother. All other instances in the story correctly depict them as brothers, so we can assume this was an in-universe mistake.

* ''Franchise/MarvelUniverse'':
** The setting's versions Ares and Achilles both mention fighting side by side at Troy. In ''Literature/TheIliad'' Ares was in the Trojan camp.
** ''ComicBook/BlackPanther'': Wakanda has always worshipped a panther deity, but the volume 3 series, published in 2000, {{retcon}}ned the PatronGod of Wakanda to be an aspect of the goddess Bast--an ''Egyptian'' goddess, not an East African one (first introduced to Marvel in ''ComicBook/FantasticFour'' #52 in 1966). The 2009 ''[[AllThereInTheManual Encyclopedia Mythologica]]'' retroactively justifies this as an example of InterfaithSmoothie: Wakanda is close enough to southern Egypt that it absorbed some of ancient Egypt's religious practices through cultural exchange.
* ''ComicBook/DoctorWhoTitan'': "The Swords of Kali" falls squarely into the British imperialistic "Kali is the Hindu GodOfEvil whose followers were all Thugee" misconception. Some later editions of the collection use a different name for the character following complaints about this.
* ''ComicBook/TheFlash'' features a speedster who took the name Savitar, because somebody skimmed the bit in Savitr's Wikipedia page which says "he is lord of that which is mobile and is stationary", and concluded this solar deity was the "god of speed". More egregious, however, because unlike the TV Savitar, the comics version is implied to actually be Hindu.

* In ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold,'' one of the [[BatmanColdOpen opening sequences]] has Batman and Comicbook/{{The Outsiders|DCComics}} fighting the Kobra Cult. The cultists are feeding a HumanSacrifice to a giant snake called a Kali-Yuga, which will usher in the Age of Chaos. In Myth/HinduMythology, Kali Yuga ''is'' the Age of Chaos (that's basically the translation), and we've already been in it for more than 5,000 years. No giant snake was involved.

* ''Literature/LifeOfPi'': It's offhandedly mentioned that a guy visiting the zoo tried to kill some Mouse Deer with the intent of punishing "Evil Ravana" who took the form of a deer when kidnapping Sita in the Literature/Ramayana, when it was another rakshasa named Mareecha who did that, not Ravana himself.

* The first ''Film/{{Twilight}}'' movie mentions a creature from Native American mythology called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apotamkin Apotamkin]], claiming it is a type of vampire... except it is actually described as a gigantic, monstrous [[SeaMonster sea serpent]] with long red hair that is said to live in Passamaquoddy Bay and eats anyone who wanders close to its domain, partcularly unsupervised children.

* ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'': In ''Twilight'', Meyer describes varacolaci as being "a powerful undead being who could appear as a beautiful, pale-skinned human", while they are more famously known as wolf demons that cause solar and lunar eclipses by swallowing the sun and moon respectively. They also appear as ''dry'' pale-skinned humans, not beautiful. In ''Breaking Dawn'' and ''Midnight Sun'', Meyer cites the incubus and succubus as vampires who are known in mythology as being promiscuous and seduced women and men, respectively. Both of them were demons who were believed to be the cause of nightmares and wet dreams. Also in ''Breaking Dawn'', the cleaning lady at Bella and Edward's honeymoon site believes that Edward is a "libishomen", described as "a blood-drinking demon who preys exclusively on beautiful women". In reality, the lobisomem (the real name of the "libishomen" in Myth/BrazilianFolklore) is the Iberic version of the werewolves, and while they do drink blood in oral tradition, they are never said to target beautiful women in any way, at the very most pregnant women. One of those is actually justified; Edward implied that myths about incubi were made up by humans based on vampires like him. The other cases are valid, though, and there was also a mention of 'actual' werewolves that operate on 'full moon and silver bullets' logic. The silver bullets are more of a Hollywood concept.

* ''Series/That70sShow'': One episode has Midge return home from a feminist group meeting and make reference to "Aphrodite the goddess of war". For those unfamiliar with Greek mythology, Aphrodite was the goddess of ''love'', and lover to the God of war Ares. It should be noted that while Midge is certainly not very bright, the info is implied to have come from a speech she heard that evening rather than her own lack of intelligence, hence her even knowing the name Aphrodite. It's possible the mixup was with Athena, who while generally associated with wisdom is also the goddess of warfare in Greek mythos.
** This one is accidentally correct - Aphrodite, in her earlier incarnations, was, in fact, a god of War, which makes sense as the similar Primordial Venus gods, and those which influenced her, such as Inanna/Ishtar, were gods of Love and War. Even in later Hellenic mythology, in Laconia, she was worshipped as a warrior goddess, and the Roman Venus had a war aspect as well. Whether the writers knew this is unknowable, but Midge absolutely would not have.

** Also Savitar claims he sought godhood because God doesn't feel pain; though it is true that he doesn't feel physical pain,  the Old Testament does include multiple passages where '''יהוה''', [[note]]'''YHWH''', Romanised '''JHVH'''; Pronounced: '''Yahweh''', Romanised '''Jehovah''' (more commonly used pronunciation)[[/note]] ''(That's the name of the Abrahamic God)'' states he's feeling emotional pain, which is what Savitar was referring to. It appears that even though he's been around for thousands of years, he has '''never once''' bothered to actually ''read a Bible'' or any other religion's holy text either. Plus, Savitar has only referenced [[SmallReferencePools commonly known myths]] and hasn't shown any in-depth knowledge.

* In ''Anime/HermesWindsOfLove'', the title character and Aphrodite named their baby son Eros, which is far from accurate to the original source material. While some of the original myths depict Eros as Aphrodite's son or created from the concepts of Dawn and Night, none of them depict Hermes as his father. Moreover, Happy Science probably took this license because they didn't want to deal with any implications that could come from the name of Hermes and Aphrodite's ''actual'' son, {{Hermaphrodit|e}}us.

* ''Manhwa/Ragnarok1997'' has the [[TheStoic stoic]] Loki and the woman Fenrir, which people like to pair up. In mythology Loki was a TricksterGod and Fenrir was not only his ''son'', but an ''absolutely [[AttackOfThe50FootWhatever gigantic]] wolf''.

** The queen of the underworld is Medusa, [[DemonicSpider Pluton]] is a common enemy that steals your weapons, Pandora is a giant soap bubble and goddess of calamity and deceit, your loot can be solen by the god of poverty even though poverty was the domain of the ''goddess'' Penia and Thanatos is a snake that lives in Medusa's hair.

* In ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold,'' one of the [[BatmanColdOpen opening sequences]] has Batman and Comicbook/TheOutsiders fighting the Kobra Cult. The cultists are feeding a HumanSacrifice to a giant snake called a Kali-Yuga, which will usher in the Age of Chaos. In Myth/HinduMythology, Kali Yuga ''is'' the Age of Chaos (that's basically the translation), and we've already been in it for more than 5,000 years. No giant snake was involved.

** ''VideoGame/GodOfWarPS4'' does a similar spin with Myth/NorseMythology. For example, both the myths and the game has Baldur be associated with light and invulnerable to all things save for mistletoe. But while the former is [[FantasticLightSource so bright and beautiful that light shines off of him]] and was granted his invulnerability by his mother getting nearly everything in existence to swear to not hurt him, the latter is noticeably capable of SuperSpeed and [[spoiler:driven mad by his invulnerability because his mother caused it by casting a spell without his consent that had the side-effect of [[SenseLossSadness utterly removing his ability to feel]], and the mistletoe vulnerability is because all Vanir spells have some sort of [[NecessaryDrawback required weakness]]]]

** There is a monster called a Medusa, which is ye olde snake-haired woman. In the original mythology, Medusa was an individual's name, and she and her sisters were collectively called Gorgons. D&D ''has'' creatures called "gorgons", but the mythic creature they most closely resemble is the catoblepas (a reference to a medieval bestiary that identified the two as one and the same). And [[DeadlyGaze the D&D catoblepas]] is a completely different creature that looks like a cross between a warthog and an apatosaurus.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'' tends to be more faithful to mythology than ''[=D&D=]'', especially considering that they use dozens of incredibly obscure creatures pulled from across the globe, but has its own share of mistakes and poor research:

* ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'' tends to be more faithful to mythology than ''[=D&D=]'', especially considering that they use dozens of incredibly obscure creatures pulled from across the globe, but even they have to make exceptions:

** A few of the monsters taken from medieval bestiaries are given heavy artistic license due to RuleOfCool. Bestiary 4's Barometz refers to a gigantic ram-shaped mass of vegetation created by druids as a nature guardian whereas the mythical one was simply a very odd plant with a lamb attached to it like an umbilical cord. Also from ''Bestiary 4'', the Myremecoleon is an elephant-sized insect that spews acid while the mythical inspiration was a giant ant with a lion's head whose gimmick was it could not eat plants or meat, so it always starved to death.

* ''TabletopGame/InNomine'': The Words and interests of the Princes whose names were drawn from real-life demonology and religion were assigned more or less at random, and often don't really match their traditional associations. For instance, Asmodeus is Hell's inquisitor instead of being the ruler of Lust, which instead in the charge of Andrealphus, who in medieval demonology oversaw geometry and measuration. Similarly, Haagenti was associated with the transmutation of substances but is here the Prince of Gluttony, Furfur is a metalhead rocker rather than a deer-like figure who creates weather and storms, Kronos is concerned with manipulating human lives for the worse instead of being a deity of time, and Malphas is a patron of factionalism and paranoia rather than a creator of buildings and fortresses. The primary exceptions are Mammon, who retains his traditional association with the sin of Greed; Valefor, who tempeted people into theft and is here the patron of thievery as a concept; and Vapula, originally a minor figure in demonology associated with philosophy, mechanics, and science and who is here the Prince of Technology. The Archangels hew closer to their sources, overall -- Michael retains his status as Heaven's great warrior and (original) general of the Host, Gabriel is still Heaven's messenger and herald of the Final Battle, and so on.

* ''TabletopGame/InNomine'': The Words and interests of the Princes whose names were drawn from real-life demonology and religion were assigned more or less at random, and often don't really match their traditional associations. For instance, Asmodeus is Hell's inquisitor instead of being the ruler of Lust, which instead in the charge of Andrealphus, who in medieval demonology oversaw geometry and measuration. Similarly, Haagenti was associated with the transmutation of substances but is here the Prince of Gluttony, and Kronos is concerned with manipulating human lives for the worse instead of being a deity of time. The primary exceptions are Mammon, who retains his traditional association with the sin of Greed, and Vapula, originally a minor figure in demonology associated with philosophy, mechanics, and science and who is here the Prince of Technology. The Archangels hew closer to their sources, overall -- Michael retains his status as Heaven's great warrior and (original) general of the Host, Gabriel is still Heaven's messenger and herald of the Final Battle, and so on.

** The queen of the underworld is Medusa, [[DemonicSpider Pluton]] is a common enemy that steals your weapons, Pandora is a giant soap bubble and goddess of calamity and deceit, and Thanatos is a snake that lives in Medusa's hair.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}}'''s portrayal of most mythic beings, for example the Banshee causes deaths rather than just foretelling them and Sleipnir has four legs instead of eight. However ''Gargoyles'' does not claim to represent the myths, but rather the "real" events that evolved into the myths, so this is mostly deliberate. The various gods and such were clearly presented as being related to TheFairFolk of European folklore, in keeping with the show's world-spanning CrossoverCosmology. And not everything is different from the myths: for example, Anubis is quite neutral and emphatic about his nonpartisan role, not evil as in many modern stories. Also, the series' co-creator has explained that the error involving Sleipnir's legs was due to the animation company being unable to animate an eight-legged horse, and presenting him as a four-legged one was better than not having him at all, or just using crappy animation. He stated he would've greatly preferred an eight-legged horse, but had no choice. So, he {{hand wave}}s as best he can in his mind: like all the other Third Race, the horse is also a shapeshifter.\

** D&D has angelic beings known as Asuras and Devas. Both of which are the names of benevolent spirits...but in different cultures (Iran and India respectively) both which use a variant of the OTHER name for a class of EVIL spirits. The angels themselves lack faces, at least in 4th edition, where Devas are metal-skinned humanoids with hundreds of past lives.

* ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'': Changelings, rather than being fairy children swapped out for human infants, are shapeshifters capable of taking on any form. Although the card [[https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=489685 Crib Swap]] indicates that changelings do sometimes pull this trick.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'' tends to be more faithful to mythology than ''[=D&D=]'', especially considering that they use dozens of incredibly obscure creatures pulled from across the globe, but even they have to make exceptions:
** The {{Nuckelavee}} is portrayed accurately by the artists, but the fluff describes it as "[[GaiasVengeance a manifestation of nature's rage against all who despoil its beauty]]". The mythological Nuckelavee (and the one in ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'') is just a murderous monster.
** {{Tengu}} are depicted as street rats who care little for religion, and yamabushi are described as a type of [[OurDemonsAreDifferent oni]] that disguises itself as an evil tengu. A yamabushi is actually [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamabushi a type of hermit-monk in the Shugendo religion]], also known as a shugenja. Tengu themselves generally appear in myth as exaggerated yamabushi, even more distant and spiritual than their human counterparts, with elements of TheTrickster.
** Shikigami are portrayed as a race of tiny rock-men skilled with improvised weapons. In UsefulNotes/{{Onmyodo}} a shikigami is any creature bound to a spellcaster as a servant, making it essentially identical to the {{Familiar}} of the wizard and sorcerer (but not witch) classes.
** A few of the monsters taken from medieval bestiaries are given heavy artistic license due to RuleOfCool. Bestiary 4's Barometz refers to a gigantic ram-shaped mass of vegetation created by druids as a nature guardian whereas the mythical one was simply a very odd plant with a lamb attached to it like an umbilical cord. Also from ''Bestiary 4'', the Myremecoleon is an elephant-sized insect that spews acid while the mythical inspiration was a giant ant with a lion's head whose gimmick was it could not eat plants or meat, so it always starved to death.
** Leshies are depicted as tiny {{Plant Pe|rson}}ople created when nature spirits are called to inhabit a specially-grown plant, exist to protect and guide natural processes, and come in various different types tasked with overseeing a different aspect of nature, such as leaf leshies, seaweed leshies, fungus leshies, cactus leshies, flytrap leshies and so on. The leshies of Slavic folklore are forest spirits resembling bearded human men and which can shapeshift into other forms, and are generally more similar to fey or minor tutelary deities than anything else.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}'': Rakshasa in Hindu scripture are demon-like demigods who are generally evil. Raksha in ''Exalted'' are [[EldritchAbomination sapient vortexes of chaotic energy]] that happen to take human form, and serve as TheFairFolk. This came about in part because of [[http://nobilis.me/quotes:secret-history-of-the-raksha a writing issue]]: a lot of material for the first edition Fair Folk book came in way too close to publication for a proper rewrite, yet not delivering anything near what the line developer wanted, meaning that the developer and one writer on hand ended up slotting in Hindu mythological concepts and Sanskrit words just to get something other than the European fae clichés they'd been given.
* ''Golden Age TabletopGame/{{Champions}}'': An InUniverse example in the Fourth Edition. The sample villains included the Doberman, a less-than-competent "master villain" obsessed with dogs and dog-themed crimes, who dresses like the god Anubis (who he believes to be the Egyptian god of dogs). Justified in that:
** The guy is completely bonkers.
** Anubis is playing along with this because giving heroes someone to practice on is worth a misdirected prayer.
* ''TabletopGame/BetrayalAtHouseOnTheHill'' has a scenario called "Worm Ouroboros", involving a giant two-headed snake that is trying to grow big enough to crush the house. The snake has more in common with the Aphisbaena (a snake with two heads, one at each end of its body) that the ouroboros (a snake eating its own tail).

** Also, the two kings Lyacon tricks Zeus into destroying are named as Tantalus and Sisyphus. Needless to say, while these two also angered the gods, and both got severe punishments- Tantalus being forced into having food enchanted away from him (this being where we get the word "tantalize") and Sisyphus being forced to roll a boulder up a hill only for it to roll out of his hands all the way back to the bottom and force him to start again- neither of them ever interacted with Lyacon.

* The app ''Gods of Olympus'' has this in its story mode, where the main villain turns out to be Lyacon of Arcadia. Here, he is portrayed as a ManipulativeBastard who tricks Zeus into destroying the empires of two rival kings before luring him into a trap with the intent to kill him, which results in his empire being destroyed when Zeus escapes and rallies the gods together. This never occurred at all in mythology, where Lyacon was merely a king who tested Zeus' omnipotence by serving him the flesh of his murdered son, and was turned into a wolf as a result (this also being where we get "lycan", genus word for wolf).