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So you finally get your [[Time Travel|time machine]] working, and decide to visit some out of the way town in a quiet year. You hit the [[Big Red Button]], step out of the machine, and trip over [[Shakespeare]]. Cue the [[Historical In-Joke|Historical In Jokes]]. And probably the discovery that [[Beethoven Was an Alien Spy]].
It seems that time machines and [[Historical Domain Character|real life famous people]] have a very strong attraction. Even when you manage to avoid everyone in the history books (both real and in-[[The Verse|verse]]), you'll probably run into an ancestor.
This means that as soon as you step out of your time machine, a well known historical figure will [[Contrived Coincidence|show up]] shortly. This can either be someone who was famous in the real world, or, if the series takes place in [[The Future]], someone who became famous in the Future History.
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{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==▼
▲== Anime and Manga ==
* ''[[The Dagger Of Kamui]]'' takes place at the end of the 19th century, and has Jiro happening to meet [[Mark Twain]] (who [[Did Not Do the Research|calls himself by his pen name]]) for no reason.
* In ''[[Rose of Versailles]]'', Oscar, besides working with [[Marie Antoinette]] and Louis XVI, randomly bumps into Robespierre and Louis Saint-Juste on many occasions. The manga is even more egregious, and name-drops Napoleon for zero reason, and only a few pages, in a later chapter.
* Subverted in ''[[Inuyasha]]'': Kagome and company run into a traveling man named Nobunaga, and Kagome immediately busts out her autograph book, thinking she'd found the young [[Oda Nobunaga]], the famous warlord. Turns out it's just someone with the same given name (don't forget, these are Japanese
== [[Comic Books]] ==▼
▲== Comic Books ==
* In ''The Once and Future Duck'' by [[Don Rosa]], [[Donald Duck]] and Gyro Gearloose are testing a rather temperamental time machine at Stonehenge, because they know that even if the traveller ends up millennia in the past, there will be no buildings or the like inside the ancient structure. They all end up in the past, and immediately run into the brutish real-life King Arthur and his men. Ultimately it's their visit that inspires the legends of the Knights of the Round Table.
* Again by Don Rosa, Scrooge
* In ''[[The Kents]]'', a 12-issue miniseries [[Retcon|detailing]] the lives of [[Superman|Clark Kent]]|'s adoptive ancestors, this comes up a '''''lot'''''; In the first page of #1 alone, we get Harriet Tubman! Over the course of the story, we then get Franklin Pierce, Wild Bill Hickok, Charles Quantrill, John Wilkes Booth, Jesse James (and his brother Frank), a young John Wesley Hardin, Susan B. Antony's brother, General Custer... this is more or less [[Justified]], given that the family does get involved with both pro-abolitionists and gunslingers.
== [[Fan Works]] ==
* In ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6130321/1/Jesus_and_Hitler_A_Romance Jesus and Hitler: A Romance]'' (NSFW) Hitler literally runs in to Jesus the second he steps out of his time machine.▼
==
▲In [http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6130321/1/Jesus_and_Hitler_A_Romance Jesus and Hitler: A Romance] (NSFW) Hitler literally runs in to Jesus the second he steps out of his time machine.
* In ''[[Time Bandits]]'', the titular bandits manage (through completely random time-jumping) to run into Napoleon, Agamemnon, and [[Robin Hood]].
** Although sort of justified in that they all wanted to go to places to get lots of treasure, and kings and conquerors fit the bill. Still doesn't explain how they kept ending up in the general vicinity though.
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* ''The Man From Earth'' has the titular 14,000-year-old character ([[Meaningful Name|John Oldman]], [[Incredibly Lame Pun|har har]]) recall close meetings with Christopher Columbus, Vincent Van Gogh, Buddha, in addition to {{spoiler|[[Julius Beethoven Da Vinci|being Jesus]], though [[Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory|probably not in Purgatory]]}}.
** Not quite a time travel example, though, he'd been around the whole time. Encountering a few famous people over the course of 140 centuries is not especially unlikely.
* Western film ''[[American Outlaws]]'' does an especially hamfisted job of this. The central characters are Frank and Jesse James, and the film repeatedly has them name famous Civil War era characters, groups, and incidents as the director's way of demonstrating that they really are in the Old West.
* The (animated) film ''[[Anastasia]]'' had the title character and her entourage going [[Shopping Montage|shopping in Paris]]. Not only do they meet [[The Long List|a few historical characters]] (Maurice Chevalier, [[Sigmund Freud]], Charles Lindbergh, Josephine Baker, Claude Monet, Isadora Duncan, Auguste Rodin, and [[Butch Lesbian|Gertrude Stein]]), they're all going shopping on the same night in the same street and all [[Crowd Song|happen to know the words to the song]]. The movie features a singing ''Gertrude Stein''.
** Incredibly, that might be the most historically correct part of the movie. Both Hemingway and Bennett Cerf wrote of Gertrude's inability to walk by someone playing a piano without sitting down and singing along.
* ''[[The Stupids]]''. Buster ends up at the prehistory exhibit of a museum and believes he travelled back in time. He goes a little mad when he writes his name on a "cave" and wonders out loud what people from the future will think when they discover his name.
* In Woody Allen's ''[[
** Given, those people were all in Paris at the same time, and interacting pretty closely, which is one of the main reasons that the protagonist is so in love with that period of time. However, the speed with which he runs into them all is rather hard to believe . . . {{spoiler|unless it's all in his head.}}
* The upcoming{{when}} ''[[Men in Black III]]'' will feature a time travel plot with an appearance by Bill Hader as Andy Warhol, the very man who predicted that in the future, everyone would be famous.
== [[Literature]] ==▼
▲== Literature ==
* An example of how old the historical fiction version of this trope is, is that the Victorian novelist Thackeray complained about how contemporaries like Sir [[Walter Scott]] wrote novels where the main characters bumped into famous figures left and right.
* A novel which could be considered a subversion is [[Connie Willis]]' ''[[To Say Nothing of the Dog]]''. The time traveling main characters encounter only ordinary upper middle class Victorians, and the overall message seems to be that the "little people" affect history as much as more famous figures.
** The main character does happen to spot the author of one of his favorite books out boating on the Thames, but it's just a cameo. And while the time travelers do meet the ancestor of someone they know in the future, it's because they were specifically aiming for her.
* The ''[[Sherlock Holmes]]'' pastiche ''The West End Horror'' mainly seems to be an experiment by Nicholas Meyer to see how many famous historical figures he can cram into one novel. In the course of the story, Holmes runs into [[Oscar Wilde]], [[Gilbert and Sullivan]], [[
** Justified by the fact he is investigating a crime in the West End, where all these people worked and played.
* Averted in the short story ''Child of All Ages'', where a child claims to be hundreds of years old. When someone wishes to test their claim, they ask the child about famous events and people. The child replies that they can give the answer, but only because they can read history books, too. Seems she was too busy just surviving and that not many famous people invite random peasant children to stay with them with the foreknowledge that something important is about to happen.
* In E. L. Doctorow's ''[[Ragtime]]'' famous people aren't just bumped into, they're full-blown characters who ''also'' keep bumping into each other. These "famous people" range from still-famous magician Harry Houdini to all-but-forgotten tabloid darling Evelyn Nesbit. It gets slightly more confusing when only one fictional character, Coalhouse Walker Jr., has a full name (the other fictional characters are referred to as [[Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep"|"Mother", "Tateh", etc]]), which leads most readers to believe that he is just another forgotten celebrity.
* M.J. Trow's ''Lestrade'' novels are full of historic characters. Given the premise (a [[Deconstruction]] of [[Sherlock Holmes]] using the [[Literary Agent Hypothesis]] but telling the "true story" behind Watson's accounts) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is justified. Having Lestrade point at a baby and tell Watson he'd make a better Holmes than William Gillette, before revealing this is the infant Basil Rathbone, somewhat less so. Then there's [[Oscar Wilde]], [[Gilbert and Sullivan]], Jack the Ripper, Florence Nightingale...
* [[George Macdonald Fraser]]'s ''[[Flashman]]'' books are a non-time travel example, in which [[Magnificent Bastard]] Harry Flashman travels around the Victorian world, accidentally getting dragged into major historical events (and one or two contemporary fictional ones). There are too many historical cameos to list here, but some of the more notable ones include the Duke of Wellington, Lily Langtry, [[Oscar Wilde]], [[
* [[Harry Turtledove]]'s [[Alternate History]] books are fond of this too. We get things such as a protagonist female senator in the 1940s being invited to the office of Franklin Roosevelt, the assistant secretary of the Navy, on a regular basis. And of course another protagonist general defeats the Confederate general Patton, leading to them having a civilized conversation in the middle of a ruined city. And that's only one of his many books.
** A standard trope for Turtledove, [[Richard Nixon the Used Car Salesman|who likes to put famous people in unfamiliar roles.]] Like a George Armstrong Custer who's still around for [[World War
** More boggling yet is the sheer number of famous people who still exist in a 1980s where the American colonies remained part of Britain.
** ''[[Literature/The Case Of The Toxic Spell Dump|The Case Of The Toxic Spell Dump]]'' has a cameo by a very stern US federal judge of Muslim origins. His name: Judge Ruhollah Khomeini.
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** Other famous people who show up: William Henry Harrison and Honoré de Balzac, and a recurring role for Tecumsah's brother Tenskwatawa.
*** Plus Denmark Vesey, Mike Fink, and John James Audubon.
* In [[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s ''[[
* Like the Turtledove examples above, it's alternate history rather than time travel, but in Robert Harris' ''[[Fatherland (
** That's actually somewhat less implausible than most of the examples given: all of the four Beatles in our timeline (and presumably the fifth one in this timeline) would have been alive during World War 2, albeit as infants or toddlers. Their musical talent would remain intact, and since the Beatles had no formal musical training in our timeline the matter of education doesn't even come into play. The kind of music the alternate Beatles are playing, and the circumstances under which they can perform, on the other hand, ''would'' be completely different.
* In [[Edward Eager|The Time Garden]], the children occasionally do this. Though they ''do'' wish for some of the things, a lot of meetings are still entirely accidental. For example, at one point they wish to see "the Queen of England" (Elizabeth) and wind up meeting Queen Victoria (who is not amused).
* The very first person ''[[
{{quote|
* Occurs several times in ''[[The Magic Treehouse]]'' series of books. Usually justified as the famous person is related to Jack and Annie's current quest, but sometimes it's done gratuitously.
* Averted in ''[[In the Keep of Time]]''. Other than King James II, who is only viewed from afar, no one of historical significance appears in the story, with all the characters the children meet being original characters, or at most archetypes and positions likely to be expected in the time period. The exception might be the Laird of Smailholm who may have been a real person, but since none of the children had heard of him prior to their adventure, meeting him doesn't fully hew to this trope either. Sir Walter Scott is mentioned as having stayed at Smailholm Cottage, but this tale seems to be included simply for historical flavor (and accuracy—not only is this story true, Scott wrote of the tower, including it in his poems ''The Eve of St. John'' and ''Marmion'').
* Subverted in ''[[Tim Powers|The Anubis Gates]]'', in which the only [[Real Life]] historical figure the protagonist meets is Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whom his employer deliberately sought out. For a while he ''thinks'' he's also encountered Lord Byron, but {{spoiler|it's really a magical clone of Byron, who wasn't even in the country at the time}}.
* Neal Stevenson's novel ''[[Cryptonomicon]]'' and ''[[Baroque Cycle]]'' trilogy are full of this. The former includes, for example, Alan Turing, Douglas
** Justified in that the primary protagonist of the ''Baroque Cycle'' was a member of the Royal Society (which included most of the prominent natural philosophers of the English-speaking world at the time) and therefore it makes sense that he would interact frequently with other Royal Society members and possibly even their rivals (Leibniz, who was encountered [[Young Future Famous People|before he was famous]]).
* The spirit of this trope is present in the ''[[Riverworld]]'' novels. Every human who has ever lived is resurrected on an alien planet, upwards of 10 billion people, and yet the protagonists keep running into notable historical figures, like [
* Justified in the ''[[Never Again]]'' series of novels, as the time travelers' whole objective is to [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong|change the past]], so of course they will run into famous people. It's really only played completely straight in the first book, because later books include people in the past who never existed in [[Real Life]] as major characters.
* Averted in the short story "The Gnarly Man" by [[L. Sprague
* ''[[
* Mostly averted by the ''[[
* The new series of ''[[
▲== Live Action TV ==
▲* The new series of ''[[Doctor Who (TV)|Doctor Who]]'' has done this quite a bit, with Charles Dickens fighting off an alien invasion in "The Unquiet Dead", werewolves trying [[The Virus|to infect]] Queen Victoria in "Tooth and Claw" and Madame de Pompadour falling in love with the Doctor in "The Girl in the Fireplace".
** Not to mention [[William Shakespeare]] battling alien witches ("The Shakespeare Code") and Agatha Christie solving a murder mystery with the Doctor (along with a giant alien wasp, in "The Unicorn and the Wasp").
*** To be fair, the Doctor ''was'' aiming for Shakespeare that time, and possibly [[
** Also, earlier Doctors have done the same thing. The Doctor standing in for Doc Holliday in the OK Corral, meeting Nero and giving him the idea of burning down Rome, riding with [[The Travels of Marco Polo
** Possibly justified in that the TARDIS is sentient, and purposely takes the Doctor where he needs to go. If the Doctor isn't aiming for an important point in time, chances are the TARDIS is.
* ''[[Star Trek:
** This is [[Justified Trope|justified]] in the [[Star Trek]] [[Role
** In ''City on the Edge of Forever,'' Spock gives a similar explanation of why they wound up in the same place that Dr. [[
* ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'' has done this twice, both times running into famous characters from their own [[The Verse|'Verse]]. They ran into a martyred civil rights activist in "In Past Tense", and the [[Star Trek:
** Justified in ''Tribble-ations'' because they were there/then to stop a bad guy who had gone to that place and time specifically because he knew the original Enterprise and Kirk were there.
** "In Past Tense" is more a case of {{spoiler|[[You Will Be Beethoven]], as Sisko takes the place of the martyred civil rights activist and makes the demands that lead to reforms of the Sanctuary Districts}}.
* This is the driving premise behind the ''[[
** As the show creators themselves have noticed, Blackadder's intelligence seems to rise as his fortunes fall. The Blackadder in Rome is scarcely above a grunt. However, the trope is affirmed and indeed parodied when you take into account the amount of times those same people are hanging around Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie....
* The "Soldier's Heart" episode of ''[[New Amsterdam]]'' contains a particularly glaring example of this. Throughout the episode, the 400-year-old main character John Amsterdam flashes back to an incident that happened when he was an army surgeon in the American Civil War, and a patient whose leg he had to amputate took drastic and violent action. The understanding Amsterdam gained of the "soldier's heart", which he discusses with his orderly Walt, helps him understand the current-day mystery he faces concerning psychologically troubled veterans. None of this has anything to do with what happens in the episode's last flashback, where Walt out of nowhere tells John "I want to give you a copy of this book I wrote" and hands him a book whose title page reads ''Leaves of Grass'', revealing "Walt" to be famous poet Walt Whitman.
* ''[[
* ''Mostly'' averted in ''[[Quantum Leap]]'', where the majority of the characters Sam becomes are ordinary
** He also becomes [[Elvis Presley]] and Dr. Ruth in other episodes. And there were plenty "cameos" of famous people, like a young [[Michael Jackson]] or [[Sylvester Stallone]].
** As well as a teenage [[Stephen King]], who decides to become a horror writer thanks to him.
** And Marylin Monroe. Most of the celebrity encounters happened in the last season when they were doing everything they could to boost ratings.
** The ancestor variant shows up when Sam leaps into his own great-grandfather, a Union general near the end of the Civil War. At the end of the episode, he talks with a newly freed slave who declares that, since being emancipated has made him feel like royalty, he will be taking the surname King. [[Civil Rights Movement|You can probably guess where this one's headed...]]
* Played with in an episode of ''[[
* Pretty much the entire premise of ''[[Voyagers]]''.
* Also the entire premise of ''[[
* Happens fairly frequently in ''[[
== [[Video Games]] ==▼
▲== Video Games ==
* In ''[[Day of the Tentacle]]'', a character gets stranded 200 years in the past. Without even leaving the house, he runs into [[George Washington]], [[Thomas Jefferson]], Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock and Betsy Ross.
** Which is really silly given that Jefferson wasn't even in the same country as the others at the time that this was implied to be occurring in. This is just one of the many historical errors in that game, which the programmers were aware of, [[They Just Didn't Care]].
* The ''[[Shadow Hearts]]'' series features a degree of the historical fiction version, with the heroes bumping into such famous historical personages as Kawashima Yoshiko (As a note, the little girl in the second game is supposed to be the historical
* ''Lionheart'', a game set in an [[Alternate History]] version of 1588, manages to have [[Shakespeare]], Leonardo da Vinci, Tomas Torquemada, Cervantes, Nicolo Machiavelli, Hernando Cortez, and Jacques de Molay all living within a few blocks of each other in Barcelona. Nostradamus, Queen Elizabeth I, and Joan of Arc also turn up later in the game.
* In ''[[Star Control]] II'', a member of the Pkunk alien race (think happy-go-lucky Space Gypsies) explains why psychics always tell you that you were someone famous in a past
* The Animus is not technically a time machine, but in ''[[Assassin's Creed]]'' Altair/Desmond winds up meeting {{spoiler|[[Richard the Lion Heart|King Richard I.]]}} In the interests of remaining historically accurate, he's a bit of an asshole.
** The sequel, set in [[The Renaissance|Renaissance Italy]], features [[Leonardo
*** Justified, since, according to the game, just about ''every'' famous inventor/artist/mind of the era was either an [[Ancient Conspiracy|Assassin or a Templar.]]
== [[Web Comics]] ==▼
▲== Web Comics ==
* We learn something interesting about ''[http://www.angryflower.com/ Bob the Angry Flower]'' in the strip [http://angryflower.com/morero.gif "More Romantic Problems"], concerning risky time travel, antimatter, and Julius Caesar. And a bag of chips.
* ''[[Narbonic]]'' explained Dave meeting people he knew when he time-traveled by having him [[Mental Time Travel|travel to his own body in the past and future]]
** Lest you think Shaenon Garrity deserves all the credit, remember that the whole arc was largely inspired by ''[[Slaughterhouse-Five]]''.
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20140906190409/http://dresdencodak.com/cartoons/dc_040.html Kimiko] is on the receiving end of this in ''[[Dresden Codak]]''.
== [[Western Animation]] ==▼
* Totally describes an episode of ''[[Jem]]'' where the [[Reed Richards Is Useless|Misfits send the Holograms back in time]] to keep them from performing at a concert. The girls get sent back to the 1700s, the 40's, then the 60's, where they just happen to meet Mozart, Glenn Miller, and [[Jimi Hendrix]] (though for legal reasons, the last two are referred to as "Ben Tiller" and "Johnny Beldrix"). [[
▲== Western Animation ==
* Almost every episode of the series ''Time Warp Trio'', on the Kids' Discovery Channel, is based on this trope. Somewhat justified since they time-travel via a magic history book, which a magician uncle gave one of the
▲* Totally describes an episode of ''[[Jem]]'' where the [[Reed Richards Is Useless|Misfits send the Holograms back in time]] to keep them from performing at a concert. The girls get sent back to the 1700s, the 40's, then the 60's, where they just happen to meet Mozart, Glenn Miller, and [[Jimi Hendrix]] (though for legal reasons, the last two are referred to as "Ben Tiller" and "Johnny Beldrix"). [[The Agony Booth (Website)|The Agony Booth]] did [http://www.agonybooth.com/tv/Jem/Journey_Through_Time.aspx a recap] of this one.
▲* Almost every episode of the series ''Time Warp Trio'', on the Kids' Discovery Channel, is based on this trope. Somewhat justified since they time-travel via a magic history book, which a magician uncle gave one of the trio -- apparently with the idea that the kid would eventually (1) learn a lot of history and (2) ''learn how to steer the book''.
** This is the same for the series of stories the cartoon was based off of.
* Lampshaded in [[Futurama]] episode "All the President's Heads".
{{quote|
Benjamin Franklin: Not here, but you know, i have a friend in Boston who's an expert silver smith, they could be connected.... there's only like 40 people who do anything around here. }}
== [[Other Media]] ==
* Combine this trope with [[Reincarnation]], and you get Everyone From The Past Was Famous, in which a suspiciously-high proportion of believers in past lives insist that they were once famous people, or closely associated with somebody famous. Cleopatra is a classic one for women to claim as a previous incarnation.
** The number of people who claim to have been passengers aboard the ''Titanic'' exceeds the actual passenger manifest of that ship considerably and is a
{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Time Travel Tropes]]
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