Sandbox / Black Vikings Wick Check

Here a wick check will be performed on Black Vikings.

Why?:

Wicks checked: /50

Potholes will be bolded.

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There is a real life precedent/Talking about a historical figure/Was like that in the historical source material (/50)

1. Characters.Arthur King Of Time And Space: A black knight in 5th century Britain. Of course, he's from the source material.
2. Characters.Nioh Other Characters: Subverted; like most of the other characters in Nioh, Yasuke is Truth in Television - there really was an African Samurai.
3. UsefulNotes.Koreans In Japan: While no Americans ever became Samurai, roughly half of the foreign-born Samurai were Korean. Especially since the aftermath of the late 16th Japanese invasion. None of them are nearly as famous as Yasuke but they generally did see combat, unlike most European-born Samurai who were simply granted the right to carry a sword. Talking about a real historical figure who was a Black samurai

Black person in a job position unlikely but not impossible for the era (/50)

1. Film.One Hundred Rifles: Discussed. Yaqui Joe is quite surprised to find an African-American lawman in the 1910s. Lyedecker justifies it by saying that he took "a job nobody wanted, and even at that it took me a whole year to get it".
2. Film.Wild Wild West: Jim West as a U.S. Army captain in 1869. Noted to be highly unusual - many black soldiers did serve in the Civil War Union Army in real life, though mostly in the lower ranks.

Real historical figure is given a Race Lift (/50)

1. Film.The Name Of The Rose: Brother Venantius is played by half-Nigerian Swiss actor Urs Althaus and called "the black monk" by Baskerville. No explanation is given to how a black man became a monk of high position in the early 14th century Alps.
2. Theatre.Hamilton: Interestingly, the play makes no effort at all to match the ethnicity of its actors and actresses to those of the historical figures they play, to the point that in the televised version, a trio of three sisters have at minimum two ethnicities between them.

Modern day characters/Contemporary to when it was written (/50)

1. Characters.SonsOfAnarchyMarksInc: When meeting with Malone he boasts/jokes that his mother's maiden name was McDuffy. Modern day character just happens to be Black and Irish. Chairs.
2. Literature.Mephisto: Hoefgen's mistress Juliette, who's half-African (and whose relationship becomes a very guilty secret once the Nazis take power). The novel was written in 1939 and set in that year. Not an historical example.
3. Characters.Gargoyles Antagonists: In a rare modern equivalent, a black consigliere. While every other member of Dracon's organization is a stereotypical suit-wearing, slick-haired Italian-American, the guy always at the boss's side is Glasses, a black man. Word of God confirms Glasses to be The Consigliere, a role traditionally held only by pure-blooded Sicilians, and that there is indeed a story there, some personal history between Tony and Glasses, that allowed him to circumvent the Mafia's traditions.
4. Characters.UQ Holder Touta Konoes Ministra Magi: She's too light-skinned to look anything like a Middle-Eastern Jew. Modern example and saying this feels very iffy?

Fantasy world (/50)

Vikings in modern era (/50)

1. Courage The Cowardly Dog Minor Villains Season 4: Vikings in America? In the Midwest? That farm for a living? Technically, they're not actually referred to as vikings, but it's hard to see their design as anything else. Vikings in modern times, vikings in places/eras where there weren't vikings

Other misuse (/50)

1. Characters.X Men Film Series Humans New Timeline: A variant; Trask's dwarfism is never acknowledged or presented in the film proper, and is clearly something that affects the actor and not the role.

ZCE (/50)

1. Characters.Dimension 20 A Crown Of Candy: A literal example.

Unsorted (/50)

1. Characters.AssassinsCreedValhallaRavenClanAndRavensthorpe: She is a Chinese merchant that traveled to England. 9th century Europe did not have any contact with Tang dynasty China other than the Byzantines.
2. Series.BarbariansRising: Hannibal and the Carthaginian ruling elite came from Phoenician families, which would have given them olive skin and relatively Semitic traits. Here, they are played by black actors, possibly on the common rationalization that they were technically African citizens and thus "African = Black".
3. Characters.AgeOfMythologyEgyptianCivilization: Inverted. For an Egyptian, Isis is remarkably fair-skinned.
4. Creator.DevPatel:
   • In The Personal History of David Copperfield, he's just one of many actors of colour appearing in the adaptation of a novel about Victorian England. Partially justified by the movie's overall theatrical style - in theatre, colorblind casting is par for the course.
   • Then there's The Green Knight, which again looks highly experimental and not actually set in medieval England, or even a Standard Fantasy Setting.
5. Series.The Roman Mysteries: Averted in the books, which contain realistic depictions of the racial and cultural mix of the Roman Empire. However, in the TV adaptation, there are two examples of black Roman patricians.
6. YMMV.The Phantom Of The Opera: Questionable Casting: In addition to Michael Crawford's celebrated Playing Against Type turn (until this show, he was best-known as the hapless Frank Spencer in the Britcom Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em), the title character in the musical has been played by Paul Stanley (of KISS fame) and Robert Guillaume (until 2014, the only black actor to play the Phantom. In all fairness, the casting department might be trying to avoid the Black Vikings trope, as well as the Unfortunate Implications of a black man lusting after and stalking a young white woman).
7. Characters.Marvel Avengers Alliance Heroes Bruisers And Scrappers: Well, Asian Viking.
8. Film.Robin Hood Men In Tights: The parodic film (ostensibly set during The Crusades) mixes modern speech with the occasional older English line with the spoonerisms of the Sherriff of Rottingham. This is most obvious with Ahchoo, who speaks like a modern black man.
9. RealityIsUnrealistic.Live Action TV: "The Impossible Astronaut"/"Day of the Moon" were criticized by some fans because of the character of Carl Peterson, a black member of Richard Nixon's security detail. While some people claimed this was an example of Black Vikings and Political Overcorrectness, it turns out that in real life Nixon did have at least one black agent.
10. VideoGame.Assassins Creed Origins: One of the gladiators that Bayek of Siwa fights in the Cyrene arena is the Duelist, a Chinese woman. While there was some contact between Rome and China this happened well after the timespan of the game.
11. Series.Beowulf Return To The Shieldlands: A whole tribe (the Varni), plus numerous other black or Asian characters.
12. WesternAnimation.Mary Shelleys Frankenhole: Black Jesus: Discussed when Jesus sees a modern portrayal of him and constantly tries to argue against it
13. Characters.Arthur King Of Time And Space: A somewhat anachronistic Saracen knight in 5th century Britain, but as Gadzikowski has pointed out, anachronisms can't be helped in a King Arthur adaptation.
14. Characters.Sekiro Shadows Die Twice Secondary Characters: A black samurai, actually. His accent would seem to indicate that he's a foreigner, possibly from Africa, though it's also possible he's half-Japanese since it's implied that O'Rin is his mother.
15. Myth.Beti Pahuin Mythology: The Yemimfum are a tribe of native white people in Oku (distinguished from Europeans). They have Beti-Pahuin names and culture. Their warrior chief Eyene Ndong even fought the Ekang using his Evus and fetishes. This is a real life mythology so uh
16. Series.Camelot: Vivian, Morgan's servant, is black. However, Vivian tells Morgan her ancestors were brought over as slaves from Africa by the Romans, which is actually possible, as some British archaeological findings show that people of African descent (both free and slaves) really did come from Roman Africa to Roman Britain. This could also explain Sir Ulfius, Arthur's black knight, though the show doesn't acknowledge he is black as it does with Vivian.
17. Equal-Opportunity Evil: In Day Watch, there are a group of dark wizards, called the Regin brothers, who belong to the family chronicled in Norse Mythology and Wagner's Ring Cycle. While the family is of Scandinavian descent, the brothers themselves were all children adopted from poverty in various countries, and who had magical talent. So, you get black, South American, etc. vikings.
18. UsefulNotes.Tang Dynasty: The first Christians in China came during this period, ironically, in the form of Monophysites fleeing persecution from the Christian Roman Empire who deemed them heretical, as were the first Jews, Muslims, and Zoroastrians in China. The last crown prince of Sassanid Persia, Peroz III, also took refuge in China after his country was overrun by the Rashidun Caliphate. The famed Shaolin Temple was also established during this period, by a (presumed) Greco-Indian monk called Buddhabadra. With so many people from faraway places settling down in China, this was an era where blond Chinese may not have been an uncommon sight. Unfortunately for all the Chinese cosmopolitans, there was a huge backlash towards all things foreign after the An Lushan Rebellion (755-763; more details below). Towards the end of the dynasty, so-called "anti-Buddhist" campaign was launched by Emperor Wuzong in mid-9th century, culminating in an edict in 845 banning all "foreign religions" at the pain of death, targeting not only Buddhism, which has already been part of Chinese fabric for many centuries, but also relative newcomers like Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Islam. In 986, a Christian monk reported, "Christianity is extinct in China; the native Christians have perished in one way or another; the church has been destroyed and there is only one Christian left in the land."
    # Recap.Merlin S 02 E 04 Lancelot And Guinevere: Downplayed. Heningst easily believes Gwen is Morgana, so clearly the idea of a dark-skinned high born lady isn't unusual to him.
19. VideoGame.Humankind: Very much possible with choices of cultures, which could combine ancient, classical, medieval, etc. cultures from different parts of our world. For actual black Vikings, for example, you could choose Nubians (in ancient times) and/or Aksumites (classical), then pick Norsemen in the Medieval period.
20. Humans Are White: Arguably a little more justified in Sword and Sorcery works, which are usually set in an iron age culture where travel is difficult, and you might have to travel a long distance to encounter significant ethnic diversity. Plus, if the story is based around a particular real world culture's legends and mythology (Greek, Norse, Japanese, Zulu, whatever), it is to be expected that most of the cast will belong to that ethnicity (indeed, exceptions run the risk of being Black Vikings).
21. Characters.Vikings Valhalla Norsemen: A North African-descended woman in a position which neither is known of having. The closest thing is the Heljarskin-brothers, who were of White Sea-descent which places them much closer to Norway and it's trade routes.
22. Film.Captain America The First Avenger: Lampshaded when Dum Dum Dugan notices that another POW, future Howling Commando Jim Morita, is Asian. Mistaking him for a Japanese national, Dugan asks, "Are we taking everybody now?", only for Morita to flash his dogtags and respond, "I'm from Fresno, Ace." Morita belongs to one of the Nisei (American-born Japanese) battalions that fought in the US Army's European theater during World War II. The US Armed Forces avoided sending them to the Asian theater of the war in case they had conflicting loyalties about fighting Japanese nationals, and to avoid being shot by friendly fire. Ironically, if you were an Allied soldier from a white or other colored division in Europe and you saw a division of Asian troops, you'd instantly know they were Allies and didn't have to question whose side they were on.
23. PlayingWith.Divine Race Lift: Inverted: Daimyo Raiden looks very out of place as a muscular Nordic man as a general in Imperial Japanese army. He is later revealed to be the god Thor. His appearance matches the usual depiction but caused him to look massively out of place because of it.
24. Characters.Donkey Kong Snowmads: Or Japanese Viking in this case. Fugu is the Japanese word for pufferfish and the name of a Japanese dish made with a poisonous species that can kill people if not prepared correctly.
25. Artistic License – Military: Incorrect depiction of groups that traditionally aren't (or weren't) members of the military. Militaries did not historically allow women or ethnic minorities, or if they did segregated them into their own units or forbade them from having certain jobs like infantry. That may have changed, but some works that depict a historical war will happily use modern demographics when this would not have been allowed. A few may make it a point to show that it's not allowed but nobody cares, or that they're making an effort to blend in (including women pretending to be men). Conversely, there are also prominent historical segregated minority units or minority individuals that get overlooked due to institutional racism and queerphobia limiting circulation of their stories.
26. Characters.A Thing Of Vikings: His father used to be in the Varangian Guard under Emperor Basil and his mother was an Ethiopian slave that his father freed and took back home with him as a concubine.
27. Film.Transformers The Last Knight: One of the Knights of the Round Table (Palomides?) is black.
28. Sub-Trope: Black Vikings is a sub-trope of Politically Correct History and Colorblind Casting.
29. Series.The Great: Actors of color play high-ranking nobles both major and minor, most notably Sacha Dhawan (British Indian) as Orlo and Bayo Gbadamosi (Black British) as Arkady. Their ethnicities would be unusual in the real-life 18th-century Russian court.
30. Characters.Shing: Has a Scottish accent and is dark skinned. Justified as he mentions his ancestors were once nomadic desert wanderers before settling in a giant tree, Glusasil, that sprung out from the dunes after it was created by the Worldssprout which lay within. It eventually turned the land lush and green, allowing them to live among it's branches, with the Worldsprouts disappearance it's begun to wither, revealing it is for his people's sake that Wilhelm must find it.
31. Recap.Doctor Who S 33 E 3 A Town Called Mercy: Set just after the American Civil War, the local preacher being black is possible, but unlikely. It may be explained by Isaac's "This town was named Mercy for a reason" line.
32. Characters.Blac Kk Klansman: He is very obviously of Italian heritage, yet is playing a card-carrying member of the KKK, who demand only Anglo-Saxon Protestants as members.
33. Film.OSS 117 Lost In Rio: During the Nazi Party scene, a few of the SS officers in the backgrounds are black. That is probably intentional. Black Nazis played for comedy. How do I label this
34. Literature.Celestial Matters: Yellow Hare, Aias' bodyguard onboard Chandra's Tear, is a Cherokee-turned-Spartan soldier. Justified, however; a great deal of North America, including Cherokee lands, are League territory, and it is shown many times that the League values a person's ability to perform and aid in the war effort much more than their ethnicity.
35. Film.With A Kiss I Die: Juliet, a Medieval Italian noblewoman, is Black here. While not impossible, it would have been unlikely for a noble Veronese family like Capulets to be of African descent. This isn't commented on in the film.
36. VideoGame.Battlefield 1: While the black (and for the British, Sikh) models in American, French and British Forces do indeed make sense given their history (along with a lack of variation for multiplayer models), routinely finding black German troops (German Scout and Cavalry Kits) fighting on the Western and Eastern Fronts is less so, given the fact that Germany hardly used colonial forces in Europe.