And there's certainly nothing wrong with that.
Historical Catalyst sounds fine to me as a redirect.
edited 11th Oct '10 12:22:05 PM by SeanMurrayI
To keep it consistent with Beethoven Was an Alien Spy, how about calling it "Forrest Gump Destroyed Sodom" ? Every bit as ridiculous, and gets the idea across perfectly. Or better yet: Ret Con Sue.
edited 28th Nov '10 4:01:51 PM by BulldozerBegins
That's sort of unintelligible to me. I think it's more misleading than anything. Beethoven Was an Alien Spy makes perfect sense—conspiracy people in historical figures.
edited 28th Nov '10 4:10:44 PM by helterskelter
Perhaps Ret Con Sue as a redirect then? If you think about it, it's creating a brand new character to explain a historical plothole in actual history. The character serves no purpose other than to rewrite history to fit the story's universe.
I'd make the name Historical Catalyst Character to specify that it's a person and not an event that we're talking about.

Nearly all the examples from what I could tell, are correct uses- the example in question is a person directly responsible for a certain event in history.
The problem with this trope is that both names are named after a person. There needs to be a redirect with much more straightforward name.