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{{trope}}
[[File:Licensehistory_3647.png|link=Bizarro|frame|Used with the permission of [http://www.bizarrocomics.com/ Dan Piraro]]]
{{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!<br />
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== 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]]''.
** On that ''Phantom'' bit: in addition to the glaring 1871 opera house date issue, the film has Christine {{spoiler|dying in 1918 as a victim of the Spanish Influenza}}. Thing is, 1918 France was not only besieged by the Influenza; it was also crawling out of the end of this little thing called [[World War One]].
* It's often said that people in [[Ye Goode Olde Days]] in England always married young, sometimes so young that [[Values Dissonance|it seems like pedophilia]] to a modern viewer. But this is simply not true. We know from church records (which have been kept since at least the reign of Elizabeth I) that the average age at marriage for men and women has barely changed since 1600, holding steady at 26 for men, 25 for women all the way up to 1960. This affects not just how we see the past but also how we see media from the past. For instance, readers who buy into this trope might assume that [[Sense and Sensibility (novel)|Elinor Dashwood]]'s fears of being an "old maid" at 19 are justified for her time period, but Austen probably meant to show her as needlessly overly anxious about a possibility that might not even occur. This is especially true since most of Austen's other female characters don't marry until they're well into their twenties. Belief in this trope can also take away much of the shock and horror that Shakespeare wanted his audience to feel over [[Romeo and Juliet|Juliet]]'s predicament, especially since Shakespeare made her 13 when she's 16 in the source text.
** So why does the misconception exist? It turns out that some people were married off at a young age - aristocrats, who until very recently were the only people mentioned in the history books despite making up about 0.1% of the population. These marriages were usually political alliances, and (unlike Juliet above) were generally not consummated until the bride was old enough to safely deliver a child. The average man or woman, on the other hand, had to work for years in order to save up enough to marry; while men underwent apprenticeships or waited for their fathers to die so they could inherit the lease on the land they farmed, women worked as household servants, dairymaids, and general farm workers.
*** 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.
**** 'Marragiblity' would be tied ultimately to the menarche, which is still wildly variable and mostly determined by weight rather than age. Some unscrupulous rich men in the 18th century would have their daughters over-fed in order to bring them to puberty earlier and get them off their hands faster (a practice still not unknown in some parts of the developing world...) (To return to Jane Austen, this explains why the thin and sickly Fanny Price is not 'brought out'- that is, allowed to mix with society and thus be eligible for marriage, until her health drastically improves at age 18, when she also is noted to suddenly get taller- whereas the highly-sexed Lydia Bennett (who the narrator notes is both tall and quite fat for her age) is 'out' at only 15.
* 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.
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** 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|Complete Monsters]] 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 (amongst many others) of assuming that the lyric "not since the Civil War" was an ''American'' reference. [[Wars of the Roses|America isn't the only country ever]] [[English Civil War|to have had a Civil War]], you know...
* 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.
*** The Spanish Inquisition was also quite methodical in gathering evidence, to the point where it ended witch burnings in Spain a full century before witch-hunts began to ''wane'' in the rest of Europe due to the lack of physical evidence for witchcraft. Again, since the main business of the Inquisition was to root out heresy, for which there was little physical evidence, this was no help to the other accused of the Inquisition.
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** It's rare for anyone to note that the Papal Inquisition ("the" Inquisition) and the ''Spanish'' Inquisition were completely separate organisations. It's hardly ever mentioned that Protestants did their own persecutions of heretics (both Catholics and often Protestants of different sects) and witches. In fact they killed more witches than the Church.
* Galileo was never tortured by the church. He ''was'' threatened with torture before confessing, but this was standard (as in, pretty much any court anywhere, secular or otherwise, had little problem with torture). His sentence for heresy was house arrest at his villa for the rest of his life. There were others, such as Giordano Bruno, who ''was'' burned at the stake for his Copernican and naturalist opinions.
** 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 Aristotilean model, which at the time was supported by the majority of astronomers at the time (people tend to forget that the first people to condemn Galileo were not priests, but secular scholars). Galileo did so, but only by introducing a very unflattering character into his writing that basically insulted his peers. Also, he mocked the Pope.
* 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 noone wanted to finance his expedition was because he was working under the assumption that Earth is much smaller than it really is; if there wasn't another continent in the way, they would all be dead.
* [[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>Debateable, since there is evidence that the Aryans ultimately originated in what is now Ukraine and southern Russia, and their ancient remains show that at least some of them had blond hair. Even today, there are blond people in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran. Of course, the Aryans were probably not all or even mostly blond.</ref> Nazi ideology built up a largely fictional mythos around the term and declared that it applied to white Northern Europeans. They also played fast and loose with their own definitions when politically necessary. For example, they declared the Japanese to be "honorary Aryans" because they needed their help in the war.
* 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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* In ''[[Teaching Mrs. Tingle]]'', one of the main characters is a girl we're [[Informed Ability|constantly told]] is a great brain, and she produces a final project for her History class that's an "authentic recreation" of the diary of a girl who was killed during the Salem Witch Trials, right down to the book being authentically aged to resemble a diary that had survived the period. The eponymous teacher opens the diary at random, and finds an entry on how the fictional girl fears she'll be burned at the stake tomorrow. ''[[Burn the Witch|No one was burned at the stake in the Salem Witch Trials]]''. They ''hanged'' those convicted, while one was ''crushed'' under weights for declining to enter a plea, and while people were burned in Europe, it was usually for heresy, not witchcraft (though, to be sure, the two were sometimes linked). The student gets a C, though not for this mistake.
** Well, ''fear'' and ''reality'' are two entirely different things.
* ''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.
* 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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** "And then the UN un-Nazied the world forever."
* ''[[A Fistful of Dynamite]]'' -- John Mallory, being an Irish nationalist in 1913, owns an IRA flag. Problem is the IRA did not exist until 1919. He would have most likely been an Irish volunteer for the IRB (Irish Republican Brotherhood) if part of any official organisation whatever.
* ''[[Kingdom of Heaven]]'' is full of this: Renaud de Châtillon was never a [[The Knights Templar|Templar]], nor was Guy de Lusignan. The latter was actually the king of Jerusalem when Renaud launched his attack on the caravan, King Baldwin having been dead for several years. Sybille's marriage with Guy was not an arranged one: her family was actually opposed; and it goes on and on...
** Indeed, the Knights Templar were explicitly forbidden from marrying, as well as owning land. Crowing a Templar as a King would have been a legal impossibility at the time.
** One particularly [[Egregious]] example is the protagonist ''teaching the desert-dwelling people how to irrigate their land and so becoming their lord''. Yeah. The people who had been farming a desert (and digging wells) for ''thousands of years'' being taught all they know by the [[Mighty Whitey]] when, if anything, during the Crusades it was sort of the other way round (medieval Europe didn't even have round towers until they got the idea from the Arabs).
*** The latter is more likely to be a case of poor presentation rather than insulting lack of research -- the idea was to show how the protagonist actively participates in neglected civic projects rather than focusing on military issues alone, as was commonly the custom at the time for a man in his position. He isn't shown actually inventing the contraption.
* ''[[Gladiator (film)|Gladiator]]'' has a number:
** A Roman senator claims, "Rome was founded as a republic!" It was founded as a kingdom. Although the Romans didn't want to think of Rome ever having been a kingdom. As far as the Romans were concerned, the ''real'' Rome was founded when they kicked the asses of the Etruscan kings and established the republic. Furthermore, the character is a politician trying to push his political agenda.
** Power passes automatically to Commodus on Marcus Aurelius' death in the film. In reality, there was no official line of succession, since the state was not officially monarchist. In fact, before Marcus Aurelius there had been a longstanding tradition of emperors hand-picking their successors from outside their biological families. The historical Commodus was in fact the first emperor "born to the purple", i.e. born during his father's reign, and did indeed break the usual tradition by succeeding his father. He also became sole emperor after Marcus Aurelius' death due to the fact that he had ruled jointly with him for four years. And note that even in the film, Marcus Aurelius tries to make someone other than his son emperor; the only oddity is the assumption that Commodus would otherwise naturally be the successor to the throne. And, of course, there is no evidence he killed his father to get the position.
** Commodus actually did fight in the arena, though he was almost certainly in no danger. The person who killed him, Narcissus, might have been a former gladiator, but he didn't slay him in the arena- he strangeld him while he was bathing. However, Commodus was never noted for any incestuous or patricidal behavior. There is a reason Marcus Aurelius was the last of the "Five Good Emperors", but it's just that the character flaws given in the film are not quite the same as those he had in real life; rather, the ''real'' Commodus was considered bad for things like believing himself to be Hercules and [[Egopolis|renaming everything in the Empire- including Rome itself- after himself]], a whole other kind of crazy.
** Asking the Senate to bring power back to the old Republican Offices would be somewhat akin to asking the French today to restart the Bourbon Monarchy in its absolutist ''Ancien Régime'' glory.
** In a similar vein, even in the heyday of the Republic, the Senate was not an elected body; members were appointed to it by a censor (later Emperor) or the Senate itself by vote, or won a major public office at election (excepting the Plebeian Tribuneship, although quite a few Tribunes were Senators). It wasn't totally hereditary, however; a Senator's son who failed the property qualification test would lose his appointment.
** 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 cannister can clearly be seen
* ''[[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.
** Scots did not actually wear kilts at the time, as they do incorrectly throughout the film. The crushed velvet that members of royalty sport in that film wouldn't be invented until centuries later. Also their style of clothing is more suited to the 15th century, not the 13th.
** Stirling Bridge is nowhere to be found in the Battle of Stirling Bridge. Some of these errors were intentional decisions to create more drama, while others were simply errors.
*** Also, Andrew Moray, a Scottish resistance leader, was vital to the planning and execution of the battle. Absent from the film.
** 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-semite), he did not oppress his ''English'' subjects, and was in fact considered fairly radical in European circles. His laws established Parliament as a permanent institution, set up a working taxation system and ushered in a newer, progressive law for England. Edward I Longshanks did not kill his son's lover by throwing him out of a window. Nor did English barons invoke ''primae noctis'' (the supposed right of lords to take the virginity of their female subjects). In fact, ''primae noctis'' likely did not exist. It's a throwaway line but Edward is mentioned as "following pagan gods'. No evidence that he was any less (or more) devout than your average monarch.
* ''[[Agora]]'' repeats [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 Out to the Great American Streetcar Scandal. However, the film is set in 1947 - the Pasadena Freeway was already built in 1940.
** 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.
* 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]]''. 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!
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* ''[[Harry Potter/Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets|Harry Potter]]''. Witches weren't being burned at the stake or persecuted in any noticeable way in the 10th century, and the Founders probably wouldn't have had surnames.
* ''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 EVERYWHERE in America--the South, the Midwest, the West and yes, in the North.
** 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 [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 [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.
** 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 [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.
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** 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.
*** However, given the size of Bethlehem, don't picture an infant bloodbath. Maybe a dozen toddlers would have been killed.
** There is still the problem that the explanation given for Joseph and Mary to go to Bethlehem in the first place is fictional; the Romans never demanded anybody to return to the home town of their ancestors for the sake of taxation. Since the whole Bethlehem-episode is only present in the Gospels aimed at the Jews, modern historians consider it more likely that Jesus was actually born and raised in Nazareth. It's further supported by the fact that the custom of the period was to name people after the town of their birth, not the one they settled in.
** Another curious fact: the word "cross" is never used in the original manuscripts of the Bible. To this day we don't know the exact shape of the piece of wood that the Romans nailed Jesus on. What we see in churches is the general approximation, and has several variations in different denominations.
** In general rule of thumb, the older the events described are, the harder it is to tell the difference between truth and fabrication. As such most of the Old Testament is very difficult to verify either way, but most of the New Testament can be put to a test, and parts of it have been verified quite reliably, while others have been found extremely suspect.
* ''[[Twilight (novel)|Twilight]]''. While there's a fair bit of general history fail, Carlisle's story is particularly bad. The fact that the sewers where he found fellow vampires didn't exist at the time is only the tip of the iceberg. Rosalie's history is also a bit cringe-worthy: apparently her family remained prosperous during the [[The Great Depression|Depression]] because her father worked in a ''bank'', apparently ignoring the fact that banks took one of the hardest hits after the Stock Market crash.
* The ''[[Oera Linda Book]]'' claims the Greek alphabet was based on a North European (Frisian) alphabet, among other things.
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* ''[[Detectives in Togas]]'' (set in Ancient Rome) has some of them. One boy claims to have goldfish (can't be, they originated in China). Or when one boy calls another one a turkey (which came from America).
* 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.
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*** Another thing -- the atmosphere of primordial Earth would have been unbreathable and poisonous. You know what, though? [[Acceptable Breaks From Reality|Don't]] [[MST3K Mantra|worry]] [[Rule of Fun|about it]].
** The new series episode "The Shakespeare Code" repeatedly shows plays being performed in the Globe Theatre at night. Plays in Elizabethan England were performed during the day, since several hundred years prior to the invention of electric lighting, they would have had no way to light the stage properly when it was dark. Oh well, [[Rule of Scary]], right?
*** Though this is more likely to be because the location was mainly available over-night, the recreated Globe being a working theatre that performs and rehearses its shows during (as far as possible) daylight.
** 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?
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** [[Sarcasm Mode|What? She was lying?!]]
** And in season 2, she says that Will and the new football coach will be "sorrier than the Mexican Indian that sold Manhattan to George Washington for an upskirt photo of Betsy Ross!"
* 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. 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.
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== Newspaper Comics ==
* In September 2009, a character in ''Tank McNamara'' was said to have researched the Vandals (the name of a college sports team) and found that they were part of Norse mythology. The Vandals have nothing to do with Norse mythology; they were a historic Germanic tribe, or perhaps Slavs, who invaded the Roman Empire.
** This misinterpretation comes from the fact that the Swedish kings used to style themselves as "Suecorum, Gothorum et Vandalorum Rex" Vandalorum being the Wends (or the Vends), not the Vandals. They lived in the same area, but in different time periods.
== Tabletop Games ==
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** ''[[Richard III]]'' is Tudor propaganda based on dubious sources. Other than Richard's accession and death and the murders of the Princes in the Tower, the Bard gets everything wrong.
*** And even the story of the Princes in the Tower is [http://harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=50 questionable].
*** It's worth noting, however, that much of what he tells us about Richard III was already "Common Knowledge" at this point, so it's not all his fault.
**** And of course, as hinted above, the guy who deposed Richard III was Henry VII, Elizabeth I's grandfather. So it wouldn't have been a good idea to try and paint a positive picture of Richard III.
** ''[[Macbeth]]'' changes Duncan from a young, violent invader to a wise old king, telescopes Macbeth's 17-year reign into two years, creates Lady Macbeth almost from whole cloth, and even reimagines the Stuart family tree.
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** Many people believe that Sir John Falstaff was a historical person because of his inclusion in ''Henry IV Parts 1 and 2". Although he may have been [[Very Loosely Based on a True Story]] on an old Stratford acquaintance of Shakespeare's, Falstaff himself is wholly fictional.
*** Sir John '''Fastolf''' was a very real knight of the Garter who was a contemporary of Henry V (and long outlived him). To what extent he was the inspiration for Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff is debated to this day.
*** The character was originally named John Oldcastle, after a real 15th century person. Since Oldcastle [[Executive Meddling|had well-connected descendants]], Shakespeare had to change the name.
** 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 codexes bound in wood did exist in the Roman times.
*** 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.
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* ''[[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
** 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 disastorous for the parties in question, especially in Spain and Germany). His plan was to make Russia the industrial equal of any Western Great Power (he half-succeeded, at huge human cost) and then wait for the predicted and (to Marxists everywhere, and some others) inevitable [[The Great Depression|next big economic crisis]] and [[World War Two|next big global conflict]] (planning for Russia to [[Xanatos Gambit|stay out of it]] and then taking over Europe after the dust settled, though only partly by armed force, mainly by inspiring working class revolution in these countries-in-crisis thus sweeping the native Communist parties into power (either by election or armed revolution). This is mostly what happened, though it was hampered when Hitler invaded Russia so he only got Eastern Europe (though Hitler's actions ''did'' give him a much better excuse to march over Europe).
** 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.
**** Suvorov's credibility aside, he has been [[Older Than They Think|publishing books and articles about his theory since the 80-s]] and accused of unoriginality often enough - usually of repeating [[Godwin's Law|Goebbels]], to which he commonly answers he quotes the Soviets, not Germans.
** It's also stated at one point that there is a United Nations. What happened to the League of Nations?
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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".
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** Not to mention that, in a sort of pathetic way, Mad Mod tries to pass off everything in American history as never happening and declares himself king, probably to make Big Ben look even bigger.
* 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 Odd Parents]]'' 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.
## In 1939, the American Army was well, crap, and its Air Force was still using outdated aircraft, many of which were behind the rest of the world (and moreover, it was [[Nazi Germany]] that had perhaps the most advanced in the world). So even if they wanted to attack at that time...they didn't have the means. The army at the time couldn't even afford enough guns and was using wooden replicas during live-fire drills, and they had no comparable tanks to face the German Panzer Divisions. And the Army Air Force, the P-40 and P-39, two planes which could compete (but not very well) against the FW-190 and BF-109 were a year away from being deployed, thus they only had metal biplanes and the already obsolete P-35 Hawk.
## In 1939, the United States was still gripped in [[The Great Depression]] and was firmly Isolationist despite Roosevelt's attempt to send aid to Great Britain.
## Nazi Germany's nuclear program...was kind of crap. They hadn't even produced enough uranium to produce a bomb at that point, and Hitler...frankly didn't care. Additionally, German physicists had messed up the math, and didn't think an atomic bomb was even possible.
## America at that point had all the oil they needed and didn't have to rely on foreign supplies. In fact, America was producing more oil than the rest of the world combined (the oil fields in the Middle East were largely undeveloped). And oil at that time was generally cheaper than water unless you were at war with half of the world.
** 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.
## On the Invasion of Poland itself...they forgot to add Stuka Dive Bombers as part of the German arsenal, as well as the twin engined Medium Bombers.
## Another error: The British never went for daytime bombing raids after the early 1940s. They instead relied on a night-time campaign. It was the Americans who did the daytime raids. Not only that, the Lancaster Bombers weren't even on the drawing board in 1939.
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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.
** It also suggests that England directly governed the colonies before the 1770s. In fact, the colonies had been largely allowed to govern themselves before then, and it was Parliament's attempts to impose more control on the colonies that was met with resistance.
** 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 pinecone to keep the moon base from falling to the barbarians?!}}
** 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''.
* The [[Anastasia]] film feature is plagued by this, granted, it was directed mainly at children but still:
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