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{{trope}}
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[[File:Licensehistory 3647.png|link=Bizarro|frame|Used with the permission of [http://www.bizarrocomics.com/ Dan Piraro]]]
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{{quote|'''Bluto:''' Over? Did you say "over"? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when [[Critical Research Failure|the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor]]? Hell no!
'''Otter:''' [[Lampshade Hanging|Germans?]]
'''Boon:''' [[Rule of Funny|Forget it, he's rolling.]]
|''[[Animal House]]''}}
Ah yes, history, [[Written by the Winners|written by the victors]], with all the eyewitnesses lost to time... Some say it's one of those mysteries that man cannot know... That in the end, all known history is subjective and therefore useless as a source of knowledge...
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We very well know what happened in the past for the most part, and as we all know that [[Here We Go Again|history repeats itself, and those who do not know it are bound to repeat the mistakes of the past...]] but for some reason some people just don't seem to even want to try to understand. Mainly caused by [[Did Not Do the Research|not doing the research properly]], especially when a fiction writer bases his history on the works of other fiction writers instead of actual histories.
This trope is for those who try to use history, but their knowledge of history seems to stop [[Fleeting Demographic Rule|some time last week]]. They think Columbus personally discovered the United States, [[George Washington]] cut down a cherry tree, [[Benjamin Franklin]] flew a kite, and that Paul Revere was the ''only'' person warning everyone about the British... and that all of this happened in isolation with no effects from or to the world outside of the USA.
Also, many authors commit what's called the "historian's mistake", the idea that historical characters acted and made their decisions with [[Omniscient Morality License|full knowledge of the future]]—including the repercussions their actions would cause (like for example: portraying Churchill as saying his [[Darkest Hour]] [[Rousing Speech]] with knowledge that Nazi Germany was going to be defeated in 4 years). Although some historical individuals made predictions that came true, this is not the same thing as ''knowing'' what would happen. For instance, a character in 1919 could plausibly predict that the Treaty of Versailles would cause hardship, anger and instability in Germany (indeed, Marshal Foch himself said at the time it was "not a peace treaty, just an armistice for twenty years", if only because he understood it to be too lenient), but it would be stretching it for him to confidently assert that the instability would specifically result in the rise of a [[Nazi Germany|ruthless racial supremacist paramilitary regime]] in Germany that would be responsible for the systematic murder of millions of Jews, Roma, and others. (See [[The Great Politics Mess-Up]] for more on this particular fallacy.)
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{{examples}}
== Various Media ==
* Works which attempt to invoke Paris amid the dramatic changes of the 19th century and the gilded and wobbly vainglory of Napoleon III seem to gravitate toward two years: 1870 and 1871. Those dates are indeed memorable ones in civic history, but for all the wrong reasons. At that point in history, the real Paris was under siege, with battered soldiers anxiously discussing the war in the coffee shops, people eating their own pets just to remain alive, students manning the barricades, beggars dying from starvation in the streets, communards being shot dead by government firing squads, elephants at the zoo being found delicious, and [[Prussia|monocled German officers]] peering down cannons from just beyond the city limits. All this reality would spoil the Parisian ambiance, of course, so it's all quietly ignored. Works that make this mistake include [[Joel Schumacher]]'s ''[[Phantom of the Opera]]'' and Anne Rice's ''[[Interview with the Vampire]]''.
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*** The terms "engagement" and "marriage" did not have the sharp divide that exists between them today. A promise of marriage carried as much weight as an actual marriage, and subsequent marriages could be dissolved as bigamous if a previous promise to marry existed. (This is the "reason" [[Richard of Gloucester|Richard III]] of England gave for deposing his nephew and ruling as king. Coincidentally, it's also the reason for [[Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace]]).
**** There were exceptions to the childbearing rule, however- Margaret Beaufort (Henry VIII's grandmother) was married at twelve and gave birth at thirteen. Most historians agree that the reason she only had one child is because giving birth at such a young age left her unable to have any more.
**** '
* Hardly anyone realizes these days that the Byzantine Empire WAS the Roman Empire. Usually, they're treated as two distinct entities. It is somewhat understandable, as even when Rome was nominally the centre of the empire, after Constantine I the two organizations became very distinct from one another. Even contemporaries from that time recognized and understood that the entirety of the Roman Empire was divided into two distinct entities: the Latin dominated Western Roman Empire, and the Greek dominated Eastern Roman Empire. Within two centuries of the fall of Rome, the Eastern Romans fully transitioned to using Greek (which had been the Lingua Franca throughout most of the Empire for centuries) in all of its records. However, their political, economic and cultural structures were an uninterrupted descendant from the Roman systems, and they named themselves "Roman" until long after the Empire itself had fallen in 1453. This led to a little diplomatic comedy when the Latin [[Holy Roman Empire|Holy Roman Emperor]] Conrad III wrote to the Emperor Manuel I Comnenus, referring to himself as "Emperor of the Romans" and to Manuel as "Emperor at Constantinople." In his reply, Manuel called himself "Emperor of the Romans," and Conrad "friend of ''our'' ''empire''" and "king". In his rejoinder, Conrad again calls himself "truly Emperor of the Romans," and refers to Manuel only as "King of the Greeks." They never once called themselves the Byzantine Empire, that phrase wasn't invented until a hundred years after the fall of Constantinople, to themselves they were the ''Basileia Rhomanion''. Latin-speaking foreigners generally referred to them as Constantine's Empire.
** The Russians also considered themselves the moral heirs of the original Roman Empire, with the capital city of the empire referred to as "the third Rome" (the second one being Constantinople and the first one, well...[[Captain Obvious|Rome]]).
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** Many? This was actually a sport of sorts in the historian Roman circles. Historians either worked for the senators (all of them patricians, the noblest class in Rome) or were a part of it, therefore when Emperors openly defied the senators and ended up slain for it, they pretty much ''ran'' to give them an [[Historical Villain Upgrade]] to justify such actions. You can guess the results.
** When Christianity finally got a spot to itself in Roman society, the "war" among Pagan historians and Christian historians derived into this trope as well. The Emperor you're writing about wasn't a member of your faith? Let's make him even worse than he was in Real Life! Pagan Emperors were [[Complete Monster]]s who tortured people [[For the Evulz]]! Christian Emperors were traitors to the Empire! Lather, rinse, repeat. Until of course the Christians won.
* One essay on ''[[Genesis (band)|The Battle of Epping Forest]]'' (the eponymous Forest being in the South of England) made the mistake (
* Some depictions embellish the torture used by the Inquisition, which was actually forbidden to draw blood during torture.
** The Spanish Inquisition was actually highly regulated, not arbitrary as often depicted. However, since torture was an accepted way to obtain truthful confessions and denunciations were anonymous until the actual trial (which could occur as much as two years after the denunciation, during which the accused would be imprisoned without knowing who had accused them or even what the charges were), this was little comfort to its victims.
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** Bruno was not condemned for his defence of the Copernican system of astronomy, nor for his doctrine of the plurality of inhabited worlds, but for his theological heresy, among which were the following: that Christ was not God but merely an unusually skillful magician, that the Holy Ghost is the ''anima mundi'', that the Devil will be saved, ''etc''. Like all heretics, Bruno had multiple chances to repent, but persisted to speak his mind. Supposedly, he even told off the judge who sentenced him to death with: "Perhaps you pass this sentence upon me with more fear than I receive it." In the end, he had his tongue pierced to stop him speaking while going to the execution site. As his last act, he allegedly turned away from the cross held up to him by a priest. Bruno was Badass.
** In addition, so long as Galileo kept to his Copernican astronomy, he was quite popular with Church officials, including the Cardinal who, as Pope, would later condemn him. It was only when Galileo claimed that his astronomy overturned Church dogmas, and began reinterpreting the Bible, that he ran into trouble. It really didn't help that, at the time, differing interpretations of the Bible were literally grounds for war and rebellion on the part of both Catholics and Protestants, and that Galileo was practically in the Pope's backyard.
** Not to mention that Galileo didn't ''really'' get into trouble until he was asked by the Papacy to include a mention towards the
* Most people in 1492 knew the world was round. (The exceptions were a few non-Pauline Christians and, as usual, proles.) [[Christopher Columbus]] never "discovered" it: [[wikipedia:Eratosthenes|Eratosthenes of Cyrene]] had experimental evidence of the roundness of the Earth and a pretty good estimate of its size a full two centuries BC.
** In fact, [[Christopher Columbus]] was the one who failed geography forever - the reason
* [[Those Wacky Nazis]] used a non-historical definition for the term "Aryan." The term predates the Nazi ideology by thousands of years. Originally, the race that swept into the Indus valley and and the Iranian plateau established the Hindi and Iranian civilizations was referred to as the "Aryan" or "noble" race. Of course, you can rest assured those people were hardly blond.<ref>
* Another common [[World War II]] history failure is the notion that the [[Those Wacky Nazis|Waffen-SS]] was an elite, special forces organization. While some did distinguish themselves in combat (mainly the first, second, and third divisions), the only extra training a Waffen-SS unit received that the normal Heer units didn't was purely ideological, and in fact, the combat training and equipment of some SS divisions were ''worse'' than the non-SS divisions. Before 1943 the SS were thought of as little more than thugs, and their military role was barely mentioned; they were bodyguards and internal security, not front-line soldiers. It wasn't until they started pushing their recruitment as front line units did they start to build the myth of elite status.
** Another, smaller issue is the tendency of many works set in World War II to refer to the German Army as the ''Wehrmacht''. The [[wikipedia:Wehrmacht|''Wehrmacht'']] was the more general, overarching organization (the equivalent in English would be saying "the military") composed of the Army (''Heer''), Navy (''Kriegsmarine''), and Air Force (''Luftwaffe''). These titles (except for ''Kriegsmarine'', it's simply ''Marine'' nowadays due to "Krieg" meaning "war") persist in the post-WWII ''Bundeswehr'', which is also often mistaken for the German Army.
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** Any media adaptation that portrays Napoleon as short. He was 5'6" (168 cm), average for a man of his time. However, he was often surrounded by much larger bodyguards, making him appear short in contrast. Also, French feet were slightly larger than English feet at the time, making him 5'2" in French units. Additional confusion arises from the fact that his men called him ''le petit caporal'', which was an affectionate nickname referencing his humility rather than a reference to his height. The English press (especially the satire ''Punch'') seized on the misconception and began portraying him as a [[The Napoleon|comically miniature tyrant]] to mock him.
** Napoleon did not speak with a thick French accent. He was born (as Napoleone Buonaparte) and raised in Corsica and subsequently spoke with a thick Corsican accent. It stood out so much that the Tsar of Russia was known to boast that he spoke better French than Napoleon. French was the official language of the Russian court (as of many others) during the period so it may have been somewhat justified.
** Thanks to British propaganda he is often portrayed as a near psychotic one step down from Hitler. While he was overreachingly ambitious and certainly ruthless when he had to be he was nowhere in
* Almost any work set in the Middle Ages will be plagued by this trope. Most of the widely-held beliefs about Medieval times were made up during the Renaissance and Enlightenment, which aimed at creating an [[Alternate History]] of the world where miracles of antiquity were followed by a thousand years of [[The Dung Ages|incredible ignorance and brutality]], after which the glorious [[Golden Age]] started. The widespread anticlericalism of the Enlightenment didn't help much either.
* It's often assumed that the mode of death in a judicial hanging is a broken neck (unless the drop is too long and the victim is decapitated), but this is only true of hangings conducted since roughly 1850. Before this time, execution via hanging was usually caused by strangulation. The victim normally either stood on a cart or sat on the back of a horse: after the noose was tightened around his or her neck, the support was gently removed and the victim would strangle to death. And it wasn't quick or pretty: the rope cutting into the throat and cutting off the breath, the twists and the contortions of the trussed body, the stench of the feces and urine as the victim's bowels and bladder emptied, and the involuntary erection (and often ejaculation) experienced by male victims were all deliberate parts of the punishment, as was the jeering, vicious crowd which would pelt the victims with dead cats, rotting meat and vegetables, and even feces as they waited to be tied to the gibbet. The families of wealthier criminals could sometimes bribe the jailers to be allowed to pull at the victim's legs to hurry death, but this was not always permitted. Of course, even this was better than the death accorded to women who killed their husbands, even in self-defence: they were burned, and (no matter what popular history would have us believe) most burning victims were ''not'' supplied with gunpowder or other explosives to make their deaths quicker. Executions were supposed to be agonizing. They were supposed to be slow. They were supposed to cause as much suffering as possible.
** Ligature strangulation generally leads to unconsciousness within a minute. As far as burning goes, the gunpowder thing is overstated, but in most civil executions (as opposed to witch or heretic burnings), the victim was strangled first (see point #1). Women were burned rather than hanged primarily for modesty reasons (billowy skirts and no underwear); the victim was actually completely surrounded by wood and straw rather than atop it. Neither punishment is particularly humane by modern standards, but they weren't intended to be the death of a thousand cuts either.
*** For that matter, even the death of a thousand cuts (''ling che'' in Chinese) wasn't really the death of a thousand cuts. The victim was usually drugged, and often killed right before the mutilation. Like burning at the stake, the punishment was more about setting a strict lesson in morality for the audience than it was about prolonging agony for the condemned.
* From [https://web.archive.org/web/20120513185353/http://www.blah3.com/article.php?story=20070124150106226 this] [[Frank Miller]] interview:
{{quote|'''Miller''': Nobody questions why after Pearl Harbour we attacked Nazi Germany. It's because we're taking on a form of global fascism. We're doing the same thing now.
'''Conan''': They did declare war on us.
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** Especially amusing, given that a "fight against global fascism" is not really the reason - in fact, had Germany not declared war on the USA, it is highly possible that the USA would not have intervened in Europe at all.
*** The US was intervening in Europe with actions that completely violated the spirit if not the letter of neutrality as far back as 1940. (Lend-Lease? 'Accidentally' transmitting German submarine positions to the Royal Navy?)
***In any case Declarations of War were more than once made as favors to allies (or even to shut up a nearby bully like Germany), and everyone knew it. Britain was "At War" with both Hungary and Finland, but nothing happened to a large extent. America wanted to intervene because Germany was getting [[Understatement|mildly unruly]] and that was as good a reason as any. It was helped by the fact that just after the declaration of war, German subs started sinking American ships in American waters: that could not be dismissed as a diplomatic, "Atta, boy" to Japan.
* Gladiators:
** ''Pollice verso'', the gesture used to determine the fate of a defeated Roman gladiator, is traditionally portrayed as a "thumb's up" or "thumb's down," indicating that the gladiator was spared or condemned, respectively. This tradition was first popularized in the 19th century painting ''Pollice Verso''. Historical description is very limited on what the gesture actually looked like, and its name simply means "with turned thumb," so it's impossible to know exactly what it looked like. The best modern guess for a condemning gesture is a jabbing motion to the neck, mimicking the fatal neck-stab.
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* Like marrying age, there is a widespread misconception of historical lifespans, as though people before the Industrial Revolution magically aged faster. ''Average'' lifespans were low, but that was primarily because so many infant deaths bringing down the average, and people of any age often fell victim to now-treatable injuries and illnesses (particularly complications of childbirth). While a life of hard work and poor diet took its toll, aging progressed much as it does today.
* Post-[[Dances with Wolves|1990]], it became fashionable to refer to all Sioux as Lakota. Anyone who's looked at the north central part of a map of the United States knows why this is amusing.
* The claim that all or at least most women that were burnt as witches were wise women is completely false. It was made popular by one guy{{verify}} and accepted as truth by the public because, well, people being killed for being too badass for their time to handle is much more interesting than people being killed because their neighbors didn't like them and claimed that they were doing witchcraft. Or wanted to take their stuff.
* While we're on the subject of witch trials, witches in Salem weren't burned at the stake, they were hanged. Also, most of them were men.
* You know that "chain mail" is a tautology and some other armor types (such as "ring mail") popularized by games neither did exist nor make any sense, even before we get to [[Chainmail Bikini|armored bikini]]? Well, [//middenmurk.blogspot.com/2015/09/apocryphal-armour.html it turns out] not only all this came from XIX century pseudo-science (which is unsurprising), but from just one person: Samuel Rush Meyrick. Who put a lot of time and effort into studying depictions (like ''embroidery'') of medieval battles and wildly extrapolating from this, when he didn't have actual samples. Which doubles as [[You Fail Engineering Forever]], since if you ever tried to interlock more than two wire rings together, you will cringe from looking at some of the illustrations. Even if you didn't… can you imagine someone making a brigandine or lamellar armor would say "ooh, what if instead of punching small holes in metal plates to sew them side by side, we did extra work of rolling wire, cutting it and making rings to sew them side by side? It will be like with plates, ''but'' with a hole in the center!" — while sober, and actually go through with this, and then someone else paid for the result enough to make this work more worthwhile? If not, congratulations, you have more good sense than the "discoverer" of the "ringed mail". Then it somehow gets even weirder.
{{quote|It is ridiculous to think that someone “figured out” rustred mail existed and others believed him. Rustred mail is big overlapping rings that hang down over one another. It did not occur to Meyrick that the reason people use rings in armour is the whole interlinking thing. He somehow assumed people tried various other configurations before linking them together.}}
==
* [[Jack Chick]], where to begin? Dinosaurs lived into the Middle Ages, Allah is a god of the moon
== Fan Works ==
== [[Fanfic]] ==▼
* ''[[Light and Dark - The Adventures of Dark Yagami]]'' features a dungeon that was supposedly built in England 6 million years ago ([[Somewhere a Paleontologist Is Crying|which is before we can even confirm the existence of humans]]), and was used to execute "[[Guy Fawkes|Guy Forks]]" by shooting (in actuality, Fawkes was hanged, and managed to break his neck before he could be drawn and quartered). The best part is that this somehow happened during Watari's short reign as ''Queen'' of England (don't ask) as a result of Dark using the Everything Note in Chapter 9. [[Timey-Wimey Ball|and since he went back in time 4 days before that happened, he's saying that this fortress was built in prehistoric times by a man who has not yet become Queen]].
* Practically every "Founders fic" in the ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'' fandom hits this ''hard''. [http://pottersues.livejournal.com/499782.html One particularly egregious example] has Rowena Meredith Ravenclaw (note that "Meredith" was a male name up to the 20th century) take a train to America at one point. Yes, in the tenth century she uses a ground-based form of transportation which hasn't been invented to travel from Scotland across 5,000
* ''[[Eiga Sentai Scanranger]]'' has the all-powerful villain threaten to send one of his henchmen back to the Cro-Magnon era to be eaten alive [[Cavemen And Dinosaurs|by dinosaurs]].
* ''[[Mass Vexations]]'' has an example: [[Author Avatar]] Art mistakenly believes that the Catholic Church caused the Dark Ages as a result of his [[Hollywood Atheist]] tendencies.
* ''[[All He Ever Wanted]]''. ''[[Internet Backdraft|And this is
== Film ==
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* ''Fist of Fear, Touch of Death'', possibly the most awful of all awful Brucesploitation films, states during a biographical sequence that Bruce Lee's grandfather was 19th Century China's greatest ''samurai''.
* There are too many WWII movies to list which rewrite history in such a way [[America Wins the War|that the Americans seem to have won the war single-handed]]. Arguments can be made about which Ally contributed the most, but ultimately it was a group effort.
**A reason for this may be that the war is so [[Earth Is a Battlefield|widespread]] that no one will know what is going on except in his particular unit, and unless it is on a
* Numerous movies have inaccurately portrayed [[Remember the Alamo!|The Alamo]] with the curved roof at the time of the eponymous battle—in truth, the roof had crumbled due to neglect, and it was ''1912'' before the familiar facade was restored.
* ''[[Animal House]]'' has an in-universe example:
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** Significant legislative and executive power also rested in the Citizens' Assembly, from which Senators were excluded. The Citizens' Assembly was very much like an Athenian or Swiss Canton direct democracy—any citizen could cast a vote on a matter at hand that day. This is almost universally wrong in any movie depicting Ancient Rome. In Hollywood's mind, only the Senate existed.
** Neither Marcus Aurelius, nor anyone else in the government, had any interest in democracy.
** Ancient Roman chariots didn't run on compressed gas. In the arena battle scene, one flips over and a gas
* ''[[300]]'' is so obviously not meant to reflect actual history. In fact, historical records of the event are already believed to be rather sensationalized and greatly embellished. [[Zack Snyder]] and [[Frank Miller]] also drew inspiration from ancient artwork, which, much like Hollywood, glamorize battles of the past. Audiences have loved muscle-bound, half-naked supermen kicking the snot out of each other for [[Older Than They Think|quite a while]]. It's fairer to say that ''300'' didn't ''fail'' history so much as kick it into a well and give it the finger. The embellishment is heavily implied as part of the Greek propaganda even during the film. On the other hand, Zack Snyder did state rather audaciously that the history presented in the film is "90% accurate, although the visuals are pretty crazy".
* ''[[Braveheart]]'' is particularly well known for its lack of historical accuracy, to the point that Scottish historians are still complaining about it more than 15 years later. No mercy is granted for the film essentially admitting its [[Hollywood History]] nature in the opening narration.
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** The Scots had stopped using the blue woad worn by Wallace and his men around the time of the Romans, though its presented as something of a throwback within the film.
** William Wallace always staunchly supported Robert the Bruce's claim to the throne. He never directly betrayed William Wallace either.
** King Edward I gets a [[Historical Villain Upgrade]]. The film portrays him almost as a [[Card-Carrying Villain]], whilst in reality his record was pretty mixed - whilst a brutal conqueror abroad (not to mention an anti-
* ''[[Agora]]'' repeats [https://web.archive.org/web/20110717220859/http://armariummagnus.blogspot.com/2009/05/agora-and-hypatia-hollywood-strikes.html popular] [http://armariummagnus.blogspot.com/2010/05/hypatia-and-agora-redux.html myths] about Hypatia and the Library of Alexandria to preach about atheism. To what degree the movie does so is, however, somewhat [http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2010/08/agora-review.html open to debate].
* Judge Doom's ultimate goal in ''[[Who Framed Roger Rabbit?]]'' is to build the Pasadena Freeway on the land where Toontown stands; his shutting down LA's trolleys is a Shout
** In that same film Eddie and Roger watch the Goofy cartoon "Goofy Gymnastics" in the film theater. Despite the fact that this cartoon was released in 1949!
** Several cartoon characters in the movie would only make their debut several years later: The Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote (1949), Tinkerbell (1953), the penguins from [[Mary Poppins]] (1964),... However, the makers defended themselves by saying that these characters were simply not employed yet by their studio's in those years.
** There's internal evidence in the film suggesting that it actually takes place in an [[Alternate Universe]] and not our own, which could explain the discrepancies...
* Tanis, Egypt from ''[[Raiders of the Lost Ark]]'' is a real place. It could not have been rediscovered by the Nazis in 1936 because ''it was never lost in the first place''. In fact, there were numerous archaeological digs in Tanis before the Nazis even came to power. It was also under British control in 1936, when the movie is supposedly set.
* ''Everyone's Hero'' could have been a good movie about Babe Ruth's called shot in the 1932 World Series...if they had not gotten EVERY SINGLE historical fact wrong in that movie. The list of historical inaccuracies in the film would take up this entire page (for example, the 1932 World Series did not go into seven games or have a 3-4 home field advantage format).
* ''[[Australia (2008 film)|Australia]]''. In reality, the Japanese never set foot on Australian soil. They bombed Darwin, then left. The bombing also actually occurred in 1942, not 1941.
* ''[[The Godfather]] part III'' features the death of Pope Paul VI and John Paul I in the year 1979, while all these events actually took place in 1978!
* ''[[Barry Lyndon]]'' takes place in the eighteenth century. Yet somewhere in the film "the kingdom of Belgium" is mentioned, despite the fact that Belgium would only become a kingdom in 1830!
== Literature ==
* In The ''[[Dresden Files]]'' book ''[[The Dresden Files/Dead Beat|Dead Beat]]'' said that people didn't accept the earth was round until someone circumnavigated it. The first Circumnavigation started in 1519 and ended in 1522 (AD of course). This is of course after Columbus sailed the ocean blue under the accepted consensus that the planet was round (while simultaneously rejecting the consensus of the estimation of the planet's size). ~240 BCE Eratosthenes tried to calculate the circumstance of the earth and came within five to ten percent of the actual figure! Certainly better than Columbus did. The Western and Islamic Worlds knew (and accepted) the earth was round ''way'' before humans accomplished the task circumnavigating it.
* [[Dan Brown]]: Too many to list here—Dan Brown's [[Did Not Do the Research|research failures]] (in history in particular) have made him a [[Dan Browned|trope namer]], and have their [[Dan Browned/Dan Brown|very own page]].
* ''The Necronomicon: The Dee Translation'' by Lin Carter has a scene where Abdul Alhazred ingests Black Lotus in order to see visions of the past. Among other things, he sees scenes from [[The Crusades]] where Saladin fights at Jerusalem. The problem? The text states clearly that Alhazred died in AD 738. [[wikipedia:Saladin|Saladin]] was born in AD 1138. (Granted, [[Time Travel]] is a part of the [[Cthulhu Mythos]], so it is possible that the Black Lotus can show visions from the future as well as the past. But Alhazred describes the Crusades as a perfectly well-known event that the reader is expected to be familiar with. If he were seeing scenes from the far future, you'd think he would remark on it.)
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** She is also in error when she implies in ''The Hermit of Eyton Forest'' that an ordained priest must preside at a licit wedding ceremony. Today this is true (if you can get a priest in a reasonable amount of time), but not in the 12th century—and a long time thereafter—when a declaration of intent, with or without witnesses, followed by consummation was sufficient for canonically valid marriage. However a boy under fourteen could ''not'' make a valid marriage, and the issue of free consent would have made this a no-brainer to any canon court.
** To be fair however Canon Law was still in the process of being codified in the 12th c. and laymen were to continue being confused about it for centuries after it was. Still, Father Abbot at least should have known better.
* For in-universe history Lord Rust, particularly in [[Terry Pratchett]]'s ''[[
* ''[[Dear America|My Heart Is On The Ground]]'' by Ann Rinaldi failed history. The book is about Nannie Little Rose, a Lakota Native American girl who is sent to Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Firstly, Nannie probably would not have been given a diary in the first place, which discounts the whole book. But, let's say she was. She would not refer to herself as "Sioux", instead she would use her area or band. Rinaldi also gets many Lakota customs wrong, mainly by using American descriptions of them rather than finding out what actually happened. She even makes up the more "Indian" sounding [[You No Take Candle|words]] for Lakota words that already exist, such as "night-middle-made" and "friend-to-go-between-us". A detailed list of the historical inaccuracies can be found [https://web.archive.org/web/20120202063423/http://www.oyate.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=111:my-heart-is-on-the-ground&catid=35:avoid here].
* [[John Keats]]'s ''On First Looking into [[Woolseyism|Chapman's]] [[Homer]]'' compares the experience to "stout Cortez" becoming the first European to see the Pacific. Actually, Vasco Nunez de Balboa was the first
** Assuming that Marco Polo never looked left on his trip from Beijing to Hangchow. But there are also people who doubt that Marco ever set a foot into China, so...
***Depending on whether you count the East China Sea, Yellow Sea, and Indian Ocean as part of the Pacific, which may be the convention in the case of the first two but is not in the case of the second. Depending also on whether the convoy commodore preferred sticking to the shore where he could see landmarks or wanted to detour to port, risk the life of a princess, risk an important marriage alliance, risk himself dying of thirst and/or starvation and risk being [[You Have Failed Me...|tortured to death]] if he got back just to ensure that he saw the parts of the Pacific which were not in his mission orders to visit.
** According to my high school English teacher this was known enough in Keats's time so that it was probably a deliberate stylistic choice under [[Rule of Cool]]: would "stately Balboa" have sounded nearly as pretty in a poem?
** Or, it may have been a deliberate metaphor, in that Keats and Cortes were surveying a scene which was new to them but had already been viewed by others.
* ''[[
* ''[[Alex Cross's Trial]]'' by James Patterson. This book, set when Teddy Roosevelt was president (i.e., between September 14, 1901 and March 4, 1909) and which claims to be historically accurate, makes the following mistakes:
** The book focuses on lynchings taking place in the South, stressing that this is unusual and is not happening anywhere else, even though lynchings have taken place
** Roosevelt sends the white hero, Ben Corbett to his hometown of Eudora, Mississippi and report on lynchings and Klan activities. The modern version of the Klan was not founded till 1915, in Georgia, and wasn't any kind of a really big deal until after World War I. The Reconstruction Klan was dissolved after ca. 1877. Patterson admits that it had been disbanded officially, but maintains that it existed at the time of the story (possible) and that its impact was so great as to merit Presidential investigation (not supported by historical record).
** Three "White Raiders" (read: Klansmen) are arrested ([[You Fail Logic Forever|by a sheriff who's a Klansman and who believes in what they're doing]]) and Roosevelt sends one Jonah Curtis to prosecute the case. Jonah is, of course, a black man. It's not that Jonah's black and practicing law; the first African-American to be admitted to a state bar was [https://web.archive.org/web/20131213133626/http://www.duhaime.org/LawMuseum/LawArticle-467/Allen-Macon-1816-1894.aspx Macon Bolling Allen] in July 1844. The problem is that Jonah is a black man who, between 1901 and 1909, apparently works for the federal government and is recognized by the state of Mississippi as an attorney. To find a situation that's more or less analogous, the first black man to serve as an assistant U.S. Attorney in Mississippi since Reconstruction was [https://web.archive.org/web/20110827124348/http://www.mssc.state.ms.us/appellate_courts/coa/bios/judgeirving.html Tyree Irving]. He was hired by the Northern District of Mississippi in 1978. NINETEEN SEVENTY-EIGHT.
** Roosevelt claims that the above lawsuit will ensure him the black vote for all time. I guess Patterson hasn't heard of common ways that white people of the period kept blacks and other minorities from voting. Like, oh, [[wikipedia:Poll tax|the poll tax]] and [[wikipedia:Literacy test|literacy tests]].
** At the end of the book, Ben takes Moody Cross (Alex's ancestor) into Eudora, walking hand in hand with her and walking into restaurants and stores demanding that they be served—and actually expecting the store owners to comply. Because it's not like segregation and Jim Crow laws existed, or that an attorney would know about either.
** Special mention must be made of the treatment of black civil rights leaders in this book. Leaders of the time, like [[wikipedia:W.E.B. DuBois|W.E.B. Du Bois]] and [[wikipedia:Ida Wells-Barnett|Ida Wells-Barnett]], are mentioned, but the book doesn't say who they are or what they did. Consequently, all we have are names and no context. And in the end, they're reduced to leading a group of blacks through town, chanting. Although it's never stated, it's implied that they're doing this because that's what civil rights leaders ''do''. It's not like they found things like the [https://web.archive.org/web/20131008233724/http://www.naacp.org/content/main/ NAACP] (which Du Bois did in 1909) or work as journalists for Chicago papers and write books and give lectures throughout Europe about lynching (which Wells-Barnett did, starting in 1893).
* In ''The Chalet School in Exile'', which is set during World War 2, the [[Chalet School|titular school]] relocates to Guernsey. As [http://lampandbook.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/chalet-school-in-exile-2.html this article] points out, the school would have been ''utterly screwed'' if it had relocated there, as it was occupied by the Nazis at the time.
* Anne S. Lindbergh does this a lot. In ''The Hunky-Dory Dairy'' which features some families from 1881, trapped in the present day, the families still believe in witchcraft. When they hear of modern technology, such as helicopters, they believe it is literally powered by devils. Never mind that, by the 1880s, the Industrial Revolution had started a century before, and experiments in human flight were already underway.
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* [[The Bible]] has a few of these. Not helped by the fact that its contents were written by very different people at very different times.
** Battle of Jericho: according to the Bible the Israelites conquered Jericho after God knocked down the walls. According to archaeologists the Israelites were conquering this region in 1400 BC and by 1562 BC Jericho was abandoned and didn't have any walls. So the Israelites were over 150 years too late.
***There was no [[Artistic License Military|Battle of Jericho]] mentioned in the Bible. That was from a hymn with a catchy beat suitable for Sunday School or for a congregation with low-church camp-meeting style liturgical tastes. The garrison of Jericho is not recorded as [[Hollywood Tactics|coming out of the gates and deploying in the open field.]] There was a [[Insistent Terminology|siege]] of Jericho, in fact probably more then one.
** That may depend on the archaeology. Jericho has been recorded at dozens of varying locations thanks to the fact that the city was repeatedly being rebuilt before being destroyed (hence why in the Gospels Jesus was recorded as both "entering Jericho" and "exiting it" at the same time.) At one site, though, they did find the walls. They were completely sunk into the ground.
** King Herod's massacre in Bethlehem is only recorded by Matthew; even chronographers that didn't like Herod don't mention it.
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* Occasionally shows up in [[Time Scout]]. Some historical facts are mangled, particularly glaring is the presence of Aleister Crowley in Victorian London as a Satanist. He was alive, yes, but he was only ''nine years old''.
* In the ''[[Silence of the Lambs]]'' sequel, ''Hannibal Rising,'' Hannibal Lecter is shown watching the opening of Operation Barbarossa---the German invasion of the USSR in WWII...from his parents' aristocratic estate ''in Lithuania.'' Lithuania had been invaded by the Soviets a year or so before, and by that time, the Lecters and all other local aristocrats would have probably been in Siberia.
== Live Action TV ==
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** And Lady Godiva didn't really ride naked on a horse.
*** There actually seem to be disagreeing sentiments on the matter by historians, so, as yet, one can't say for sure.
* On ''[[The West Wing]]'', many of President
* In ''[[Star Trek]]'', Louis Pasteur is frequently referred to as a medical doctor. In the real world, Louis Pasteur was a chemist (although one who saved more lives with his work than many real doctors).
** An episode of ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]'' featured a [[Those Wacky Nazis|Nazi]] like planet. The man who created the society was a historian who thought the Nazis were the embodiment of efficiency. [[Fascist but Inefficient|Any actual historian would tell you that this wasn't the case.]] Of course, [[History Marches On|the episode was written in the 1960s,]] before many historians and most of the general public fully appreciated just how [[Fascist but Inefficient]] [[Nazi Germany]] was.
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** "City of Death" has a doozy—even when the episode aired, people were pointing out that life began on Earth about 3-4 ''billion'' (thousand million) years ago, not 400 ''million''. Given a lovely [[Hand Wave]] from producer Graham Williams:
{{quote|''"The good Doctor makes the odd mistake or two but I think an error of 3,600 million years is pushing it! His next edition of the'' Encyclopedia Galactica ''will provide an erratum."''}}
▲** In the season 4 episode ''The Next Doctor,'' the date is explicitly said to be December 24, 1851. There is a splendid full moon that night and early that morning—though on that precise day, the moon was actually a [http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/phase/phases1801.html waxing quarter.] This is totally justified because no one could possibly know that without having to look it up. Oh, and [[Rule of Cool]], I guess.
* In ''[[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers]]'', the city of Angel Grove was colonized by the British in the early 18th century. The city of Angel Grove is in ''southern California''. Which coast were the original 13 colonies on, again?
** To be fair, [[Where the Hell Is Springfield?|it was never actually stated Angel Grove is in California]]—just assumed by most of the fanbase.
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*** Also to be fair, it's suggested that Angel Grove is one of the towns that moved to California during the Gold Rush, as a fair few did. Which is backed up by which side of the town the ocean seems to be on in "Return of the Green Ranger", plus the lack of any sign of the Command Center, while during "Wild West" Rangers the town is definitely out in the American West in the 19th century and the Command Center is in reach.
* An episode of ''[[Bones]]'' has a case where a [[Conviction by Counterfactual Clue|crucial piece of evidence are the bones of a]] [[Burn the Witch|Salem witch, stolen from her grave,]] [[Dan Browned|despite the fact that the Salem residents executed for witchcraft were just dumped outside town, and were never given proper graves.]] A memorial was erected many years later, far from anywhere significant when the events happened.
** Also in that episode, references to "The Salem Witches"...as if all the accused in Salem ''actually'' identified as witches (or even
** In another episode, Booth claimed to be a
***
* ''[[Highlander the Series]]'' had the MacLeod clan leader living in a hut with the clan. But historically, and even today, the Scottish clan leaders lived in castles—the MacLeod clan leader still lives in Dunvegan Castle today.
** Additonally, Glen Finnan, the birthplace of Duncan and Connor, is way outside MacLeod lands.
** And there's the infamous "Battle of Waterloo with snow" episode, "Band of Brothers" (not to be confused with the TV miniseries by that name)...the producers just couldn't wait for a snowless day to film, they had to work with what they had.
* In ''[[Glee]]'' [[Refuge in Audacity|Sue Sylvester]] delivers [[Rule of Funny|this incredibly historically inaccurate tirade]].
{{quote|'''Sue:''' That's what they said about a young man in Chicago in 1871 who thought he'd play a 'harmless prank' on the dairy cow of one Mrs. O'Leary. He successfully ignited its flatulence, and the city burned, William! That young terrorist went on to become the first gay president of the United States: ''Abraham Lincoln
* A number of 2012-focused "documentaries" wistfully wonder what the Maya would say about 2012 doomsday theories if they were still around. Evidently, someone forgot to inform the [[wikipedia:Maya peoples|roughly 7 million living Maya]] of their non-existence.
* In ''[[Babylon 5]]'' Captain Sheridan locates the [[Jack the Ripper]] killings in London's West End instead of the East End. Series creator/writer/producer [[J. Michael Straczynski]] admits it was a typo and it was overdubbed in the DVD release.
* The second episode of ''[[Bonekickers]]'', which has a shipment of slaves that takes place a good decade or so after Britain outlawed the slave trade.
* A minor example, but an eye-roller nonetheless: the ''[[Human Target]]'' episode "Imbroglio" attempts to show [[Badass]] Guerrero as an opera aficionado, but he identifies composers Rossini & Verdi as being from the Baroque era (neither is).
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{{quote|'''Michael:''' Abraham Lincoln once said, "If you are a racist, i will attack you with the North."}}
** Later in an episode where Michael sends Jim on a scavenger hunt, one of the clues states "You will find me in the parking lot under the first president." Jim, seeing through the mistake, checked under a Lincoln.
* ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]'': Robin describes the division-winning 2004 Vancouver Canucks as "a scrappy, little underdog team that prevailed despite very shaky
* ''Combat!'' was a television series depicting American G.I.'s fighting Germans in France during World War II. It lasted five seasons, although historically, after D-Day France was liberated in about four months, and Germany surrendered after less than a year. Total U.S. involvement in World War II was less than four years.
* ''[[Wednesday]]'' has a sort of in-universe example. When Wednesday reluctantly volunteers her time at Pilgrim Land (a place she already despises due to its [[Politically-Correct History| "pathetic whitewashing of American history"]]) she has to pass out fudge samples at a candy store; she points out to the customers that fudge would not be invented for about 285 years after the founding of Plymouth.
== Newspaper Comics ==
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* ''[[Witch Girls]] Adventures'' seems to be written under the premise that Vlad Dracul and Vlad Dracula are the same person, and not in a [[Beethoven Was an Alien Spy]] or [[Julius Beethoven Da Vinci]] sense. For reference, this is the same as writing a story under the premise that George '''''H'''''. W. Bush and George W. Bush are the same person. They just seem to have not realized they were not only two different people, but father and son. A hint is that "Dracula" roughly translates to English as "Son of the Dragon", with "a" being the "Son of" part.
* ''[[Grave Robbers From Outer Space]]''. Subverted with the Re-interpreted Historical Figure Who Probably Wasn't As Evil As All This.
* ''[[FATAL]]''{{'}}s creator Byron Hall claims that the game is absolutely historically accurate—when he's not claiming that some hideously offensive magical item was included for controversial humor. In practice, "historically accurate" in this case means that he just looked up stuff that people used to believe at one point or another, and treated it as though it's actually true.
* Swashbuckling adventure game ''[[7th Sea]]'' tries its best to justify this by being set in a world which is not explicitly Earth ("Theah"), but instead has nearly-identical geography (except for lacking the Americas), and is made entirely of [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture]]s with [[Significant Name]]s. The result is a world much like our own, circa 1560 (the Queen of "Avalon" is a clear Elizabeth I expy) through 1700 (... while a [[Shout-Out]] to Louis XIV is at the height of his power). Woe betide the GM who tries to use its books for anything set in the ''real'' [[The Cavalier Years|Cavalier Years]].
== Theater ==
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** Not to mention the Romans in ''[[Julius Caesar]]'', who wore nightcaps and used clocks.
*** And read books with pages, as well as the entire events of Caesar's murder, burial, and arrival of Octavius all being compressed into the same day, the actual events occurring within the period of a month.
*** Books with pages aren't as bad a problem as usually assumed—vellum
*** And Caesar saying "For I am constant as the Northern Star"; the location in the sky of the North Celestial Pole varies due to the Precession of the Equinoxes, and in Roman times it wasn't near any star.
** Shakespeare's portrayal of Henry V as a wild vagabond when he was the heir to the throne is also inaccurate. Henry was always the same duty-bound, serious man his whole life.
** Shakespeare has King John say, "The thunder of my cannon shall be heard" in France. The first English cannons were used at the battle of Crécy in 1346 – 130 years after the death of King John. Cannon are also mentioned in ''
* [[Christopher Marlowe]], an Elizabethan dramatist who influenced Shakespeare, was also prone to this. In his ''Tamburlaine'' plays, the eponymous (anachronistic) Scythian conqueror takes control of the Persian Empire (which ceased to exist in 330 BCE, unless he meant the contemporary Safavid Empire, which did not exist in "Tamburlaine's" time) by capturing its capital, Persepolis (which was burned down by [[Alexander the Great]] over a millennium ago), capturing the King of Turkey (which was a sultanate) and marrying the daughter of the Egyptian (Mamluk) Sultan, Zenocrate (who, aside from being invented, has a Greek name).
* ''[[The Crucible]]'' has so many inaccuracies about the [[Burn the Witch|Salem Witch trials]] that it practically needs its own page.
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*** The above is actually an example of this trope. Historians have discounted the ergot hypothesis for a while now because a drought had recently hit the area, which didn't exactly provide ideal conditions for ergot to grow.
* Happens sometimes in [[The Royal Diaries]] series, about historical famous princesses. A rare [[Justfied Trope|justified]] example because quite a few of them existed during a time period that not much is known about, and the authors will admit to taking some artistic license.
== [[Video Games]] ==
* ''[[Evony]]''. Apparently Napoleon's diary was written in the medieval era.
* The video game ''[[Gun (video game)|Gun]]'' by [[Activision]], while a very good game, has a number of issues with dates extending beyond history, and going to [[Writers Cannot Do Math|problems of basic addition and subtraction]], but one of the major plot points of the game is [[The American Civil War]], which, in the game, [[Critical Research Failure|apparently ended in 1870]].
* ''[[Command & Conquer: Red Alert]]'': Ignoring the alternate paths that history takes and the futuristic technologies that develop in the actual games (which are just [[Rule of Cool]]), artistic license is taken with the backstory. [[Adolf Hitler]] was removed from history when Einstein
** An [[Ancient Conspiracy]] on the part of [[Big Bad]] Kane and the Brotherhood of Nod is probably the answer to your first question. Also. while Stalin did adopt Socialism in One Country as a more pragmatic alternate to the old theory of Permanent Revolution, he still very much plotted [[World Domination]], and Moscow continued to directed Communist parties throughout the world to this end (though it came second to Stalin's interests and was sometimes quite
** Viktor Suvorov's ''The Chief Culprit'' would provide significant support for the Red Alert timeline... were it not for the fact that it was published in 2008 (and Red Alert came out in 1996). So maybe it was a lucky guess... the 1945 borders are a pure mistake, though.
*** Viktor Suvorov would also provide significant support to the timeline if he was actual a credible historian too.
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** It's also stated at one point that there is a United Nations. What happened to the League of Nations?
* Part of the backstory for ''[[Killer7]]'' involves an elementary school that has decided who the president of the United States would be since [[George Washington]], located in Seattle, Washington. At the time of Washington's presidency, Seattle didn't exist, only populated by the tribes already living in the area. Seattle wouldn't be founded until 1851, sixty two years after Washington's election. Even with the extremely bizarre nature of the game, there is no reason to make such a mistake.
* The game ''Imperium Romanum'' has a scenario set in 132 BC. The very first words of the description claim that Augustus Caesar currently has a firm hold on Rome as the first Emperor. This is off by more than a hundred years: Julius Caesar (let alone his adoptive son Augustus) hadn't even been born yet. This is not hard to notice if you're aware of the widely known fact that Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC.
* ''[[God of War (series)|God of War]]''; putting aside the enchanted weapons and the fantastic monsters and settings, Kratos does ''not'' look like a Spartan ''at all''. Spartans were known to cherish their long, braided hair (Kratos is bald) and they tended to wear plate armor and avoid Kratos' "bare-chested barbarian" look, and while he pretty much embodies their violent and warmongering reputation, they tended to be team-players. [[Word of God|Director David Jaff]] does not deny these inaccuracies, claiming, "Kratos may not totally feel at home in ancient Greece from a costume standpoint, i think he achieves the greater purpose, which is to give players a character who really does just let them go nuts and unleash the nasty fantasies that they have in their heads." Hard to argue with ''that''.
* ''[[Homestuck]]'' features the female (and referred to as such) Marquise Mindfang. The proper title for a female marquise is ''marchioness''. Granted, the character is from another planet, so the rules of titles may be different.
** Marquise is actually the proper term, in French.
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'''Nazar''': And how many ships did he lose in that battle?
'''Fatebane''': It's the principle that matters! If she could do it, so can we! }}
* [http://xkcd.com/771/ This] ''[[
* [http://www.sff.net/people/lucy-snyder/brain/2005/12/playing-poker-with-tarot-cards.html This] article on a Tarot [[Poker]] game in a fantasy novel claims that the Tarot deck is the ancestor of the modern playing card deck. Modern European playing cards only appeared sometime around 1370, and the earliest Tarot decks appeared circa 1440.
* In 2009, the dressup game site ''Poupeegirl'' held a [https://web.archive.org/web/20090928032137/http://www40.atwiki.jp/poupeegirl/pages/446.html Time Travel event], with avatar items representing "Western" and "Middle Ages" themes. Which was all well and good, except the Middle Ages themed items were all [[wikipedia:Rococo|Rococo-era]] styles.
* In "[[Invention Pioneers of Note]]", the episode on Alexander Graham Bell asserts, among other things, that he fought in World War 2. While the error is definitely intentional, it's not as clear if this is supposed to be a [[Critical Research Failure]], or [[Blatant Lies]], or something else.
* Parodied in [[Jon Lajoie]]'s "WTF Collective 2" song with MC Historical Inaccuracy:
{{quote|''I drop lyrical bombs like Hiroshima in '73
''I write rhymes like Shakespeare when he wrote Anne Frank's Diary
''Which is about the civil war of 1812 in Germany
''I'm like the Spanish Inquisition when they killed [[Jesus]]
''And Abe Lincoln's suicide was the theme for my thesis
''Like Moses when I focus I can split the red sea
''Like he did in 1950 with the Chinese army }}
* [http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_akLHpeO7qyA/TAIR9GmXr5I/AAAAAAAABKg/vnv9Wli_x54/s1600/49899909839308766025308.jpg This] [[Demotivational Poster]]. It plays [[Medieval Morons]] and [[The Dung Ages]] perfectly straight and exaggerates them [[Up to Eleven]]. ''No'', Ancient Greece and Rome did not have science as we know it (though they did come up with some of the important precursors.) In any case, they were definitely not as advanced as the eighteenth century. No, the [[Middle Ages]] were not completely stagnant. And ''no'', the rise of Christianity most ''definitely'' did not [[Critical Research Failure|set all of civilization--]] [[Unfortunate Implications|even the ones which had never heard of Christianity or the West at that point in time--]] [[Critical Research Failure|back to conditions circa 1000 BCE.]]
* Played for laughs in the ''[[Atop the Fourth Wall]]'' review of the Doom comic. 90s Kid actually believes the soldiers in WWII had to fight space aliens.
* Some of the editors of the [[wikipedia:Icelandic Commonwealth|article on the history of the Icelandic Commonwealth]] on [[That Other Wiki]] seem to be (very unsubtly) shilling in their ideas about it as "a model anarchist commune".
* [http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Wqo9IVCWV5E/SRr_T7IbTKI/AAAAAAAABgI/Vlgydog2iRs/s1600/Bizarro%2BPinata%2B11-09-08%2BWB.jpg This] ''[[Bizarro]]'' strip.
== Western Animation ==
* In the ''[[Hey Arnold!]]'' episode "pig war" the kids pull a Trojan Horse knock off using a giant wooden pig. While doing so Arnold states with great certainty "This worked for the
* ''[[South Park]]''{{'}}s "I'm a Little Bit Country" presents a massive historical failure on the American Revolution. Determining exactly how the Founding Fathers would view the invasion of Iraq is a debate much too large for this page, but the armed conflict of the Revolution itself ''was already raging'' in the Colonies. The battles of Lexington and Concord had been fought in 1775, Benedict Arnold had captured a crucial British fort to help break the siege of Boston, and several other battles were fought. Not everyone wanted to go to war, and many of the Founding Fathers even opposed independence itself, but they recognized that the violent struggle was an inevitability.
** [[Rule of Funny]] is probably an explanation for these inconsistencies.
** Also, Cartman, who had the vision, is a [[Jerkass]], [[Butt Monkey]], [[The Ditz]], and saved from being a [[Complete Monster]] only by generating a bit of sympathy via [[Rule of Funny]]. Any historical errors can easily be chalked up to Cartman.
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* Any and all witch burning scenes that claim they are from the Salem Witch Trials (see ''[[Teaching Mrs. Tingle]]'' under {{smallcaps|[[Film]]}}). Example of both used in ''[[The Fairly OddParents]]'' and ''[[Danny Phantom]]''.
* From ''[[Family Guy]]'' we have the episode ''The Road to Germany'' where Stewie and Brian travel back to 1939 to save a wayward Mort Goldman who accidentally went crap in Stewie's Time Machine. When learning that Nazi Germany was making a Nuclear Bomb, Brian attempts to pull an [[Author Filibuster]] when Stewie asked 'Why doesn't America go and kick their asses?' which Brian replies 'Probably because they didn't have any oil'. Well, this joke falls flat for several reasons.
** Note that Brian glares at the viewer when saying this, and Stewie's acknowledgement of the obvious filibuster suggests that the joke is about a deliberately weak "Author Filibuster" rather than the writers actually screwing up history to to push their politics.
** Another from Family Guy, this one from "The Big Bang Theory". It is shown that Leonardo da Vinci was Stewie's ancestor. However, Leonardo never married or had any by blood children, legitimate or otherwise. In fact, he was almost certainly gay.
*** Ah, but as it turns out, {{spoiler|[[My Own Grandpa|Leonardo wasn't Stewie's ancestor after all.]]}}
**** Still, you'd think [[Evil Genius|Stewie]] and [[The Smart Guy|Brian]] might have known about that. Especially Stewie who has an [[Improbably High IQ]] (probably).
* ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|
{{quote|'''Bart:''' What a piece of junk.
'''Grandpa:''' Junk?! That's the Wright Brothers' plane! At Kitty Hawk in 1902, Charles Lindbergh flew that on a thimble-full of corn oil. Single-handedly won us the Civil War, it did!
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* The ''[[Looney Tunes]]'' short ''Yankee Doodle Bugs'' has [[Bugs Bunny]] helping his nephew Clyde study for a test by giving him a crash course in early American history. The accuracy of Bugs' accounts can be measured by Clyde's response after he returns home from school and Bugs asks how he did: glaring angrily, pulling out a [[Dunce Cap]], and placing it on his head. ("Does ''this'' answer your question?")
* Hilariously parodied in an episode of ''[[The Powerpuff Girls]]''. Mojo Jojo, drafted into babysitting the girls, tells them a horribly inaccurate version of Napoleon's life. Before he can finish, the girls shut him down by pointing out the flaws in his story in between hitting him with pillows.
* ''[[Robot Chicken]]''{{'}}s [[Real Trailer, Fake Movie|trailer]] for [http://robotchicken.wikia.com/wiki/1776 1776]. "It ain't accurate, but it'll blow your fucking mind!"
* Although the old ''[[Schoolhouse Rock]]'' shorts could be remarkably informative for young audiences, "No More Kings", the one about the American colonies and Revolution ("Rockin' and a-rollin', splishin' and a-splashin'", etc) harps on and on about George III's tyrannical unfairness. King George's recurrent mental illness was such that he seldom exerted true control over ''Britain'', let alone the colonies; it was '''Parliament''' which instituted the tax policies which (some) American colonists found so intolerable.
** His illness didn't really hit him until later on in life; the British ''constitution'' on the other hand ''did'' limit his role in government anyway. He also was probably one of the ''nicest'' Kings Britain ever had; not a saint or anything but very much considering the crown a duty rather than something that gave him the right to be a dick, so he wasn't a tyrant by any real stretch of the imagination. He supported the war on the colonies because countries generally do not tolerate armed internal rebellions, and for all that was still happy to make peace once his side lost, treating the other side as a [[Worthy Opponent]] if anything.
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** Acknowledging that Parliament was to blame for the excesses would have amounted to a ''de facto'' recognition of Parliament's ability to govern and control the colonies; the colonials were ''subjects'' of the King, but not ''citizens'' of Great Britain.
* In an episode of ''[[Camp Lazlo]]'', a very excited Lazlo makes an incredibly inspired speech to encourage the other campers.
{{quote|'''Lazlo:''' Did Napoleon give up the moon to the Swiss? Don't you think he would've planted his butt on a
** The others do appear confused by this, but the speech does its job anyway.
* ''[[Animaniacs]]'', with an example ''not'' covered by the [[Rule of Funny]]: in the Presidents Song, the Warner siblings inform us that Woodrow Wilson brought America into World War 1 in 1913. Not only is this four years before America joined in, it's one year ''before the war actually started''.
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