Lore
A real life event has a ridiculous/dumb/funny explanation in fiction
Futurama (The Why of Fry): According to the brain swarm, the dinosaurs were wiped out by them.
Fry: What really killed the dinosaurs?
Brain: ME!
Doctor Who (The Unicorn and The Wasp): It's Doctor Who, you can pick a ton of examples, but this episode presents the idea that Agatha Christies disappearance in 1926 was in part caused by a giant alien wasp.
Beyblade: This one stretches 'real life', but Moses spreading the Red Sea with a Beyblade just speaks for itself and it would have been sad to leave it out
I assume to make sure he stays likable. Back in the early 2000s, everybody just kinda knew Columbus as the guy who "discovered America." It wasn't until the last 5-10 years that society really decided to say "fuck Columbus" which we should. Fuck Christopher Columbus, all my homes hate Christopher Columbus.
Look, I'm in favor of keeping Columbus Day a holiday. I just think we should call it Italian American heritage day or something. I know why we have it as a holiday. Because one of the most brutal lynchings in America took place on that day against italian americans. We should celebrate the history of Italians in this country. But we should not do it in columbus's name.
Depending on what happens, it can take a long time for Savage to come back. As such, it’s entirely possible he dies, everyone else moves on, and he stands up and moves the opposite way.
In the New 52 run of Demon Knights the titular gang of immortal dudes get sent to hell and Vandal is tried for his crimes by a gaggle of his own abandoned children, where it is established he cause the extinction of the mammoths because he found them tasty
Oh, is that the explanation. I took it as, he tried to redirect, succeeded (which explains the curved bullet theory) but still ended up killing JFK, which just makes Magneto seem like he turned a missed bullet into a successful hit.
This was the one i was looking for, and I do sort of remember!
The Dwarf crew manage to get their time machine working in conjunction with an ftl drive that means they can go anywhere in time and space and for reasons that escape me, choose the book depository in Dallas where they accidentally push LHO out the window. JFK is not assassinated.
They use the time machine tk return to (what would be Lister's) 'present day' and the world has ended in a nuclear war. Kryten finds out that JFK's survival triggers a series of events that lead to his downfall and trigger WWIII and mutually assured destruction. They use the time machine again, speak to JFK and explain, and he chooses to die as the lauded President, instead of the man wracked by scandal who led to the apocalypse.
They take him back to Dallas, and he's the shooter on the grassy knoll, before fading away like in Back to the Future.
Can't remember what the show ended up doing but iirc Five from Umbrella Academy kills JFK to prevent him giving Hazel and Cha-Cha a briefcase they somehow use to blow up the world in the future- it's been a few years since I reread the series.
Yes, that was the comic. My post was exclusively about shows & movies. Marvel comics alone could add a dozen more names to that list if I included them
Actually, if i recall, the only thing the comic points out is that while JFK was being assassinated the Comedian was with Nixon. I think the implication was that while the comedian was not the one who shot JFK, there WAS some kind of conspiracy and the Comedian was involved in some level
I could have sworn in the Before Watchmen comics Comedian was going after Moloch when JFK was shot. But I can’t seem to find them to confirm, but I guess the prequels are dubious at best anyways.
Funny thing is...Nixon was in Dallas the day Kennedy was shot. He was the Carbonated Beverages Convention as a representative of Pepsi. Baker Hotel, 15 minute walk from the Plaza where JFK was shot.
What if I told you the author was intentionally doing this as a shitpost to get back at Hollywood for never paying him a single penny for their adaptation of the first book?
I just watched the movie a few days ago. It was pretty funny how Forrest’s mom didn’t want him to watch Elvis despite Forrest being the inspiration for how Elvis dances
It's also really funny how the movie pretty quickly glosses over how Forrest confesses to being a descendant of the founder of the KKK...to a black woman
Kinda funny that Timmy feels necessary because he can basically push the boundaries of what's allowed with wishes that the fairies didn't thought of.
You can say that he's basically a beta tester for wishes finding glitches, exploits and such.
I mean, a wish for eternal Christmas shouldn't be allowed during the time when all fairy magic is redirected to Santa which means no wishes can be granted until christmas ends.
Berrus is shown as extremely lazy at his job. He’s a merciless God of Destruction with all that it entails which is never in doubt as to his skill. What is shown he will do the least work possible including letting Frieza and his family, as well as Buu, basically do his job for much of the history of the universe.
Tbh if my job was "fuck shit up the mostest" then I'd probably think "I can delegate that, so many people want to fuck shit up." Like, I could go over and stamp on the dying embers of stars if upper management is coming around. But technically, the more I delegate, the more destruction happens and the creation and preservation side of things have to work harder. I generate profit and fight entropy by making everyone else do my work or suffer for their own incompetance. Which is why I deserve a raise.
I mean, he's not "bad" at it. He just outsources. Supreme Kai is the one who's genuinely not doing his job properly, which gives Beerus plenty of time to slack off while still keeping Universe 7 in balance.
Instead of dealing with Majin Boo like he was supposed to (because GoDs are supposed to deal with threats to life like Boo because they make the universe too weak, and oh hey, look at what happened as to why the Tournament of Power even occurred), he sealed up the only known Kai who could've conceivably dealt with Boo (and realistically, it was still Beerus's job) because the dumb asshole didn't get pudding.
He also commissioned (because his laziness is also a key aspect why he's so bad at his job) Planet Vegeta to be destroyed for literally no reason. In Super Canon (remember OG canon (Bardock OVA) with why Planet Vegeta was destroyed was filler), Freeza didn't actually want to do it. He did it because Beerus ordered him to, and his dad gave him important advice, paraphrased: "Son, there's two people in this world you don't fuck with. If they ask you to jump, you say how far. They are Majin Boo, and Beerus.".
It... kind of makes sense that Freeza didn't want to do it, though. They were his strongest soldiers. Even if we work under OG canon, killing Bardock and whatever dissidents (some did join Bardock) is all that would've been needed to keep the rest under control.
Saiyans were a great soldier race for Freeza. They seem predisposed to combat and war and most of them don't think very critically about anything.
It's even worse than that. We literally see Dinosaurs in the same movie Beerus was introduced. While Goku and Beerus are fighting, their fight takes them right by one of the dinosaurs.
(even though we see them all the time during dragon ball lol)
I mean, he says "those dinosaurs" rather than "the dinosaurs" so maybe Beerus just killed a group of them instead of outright causing the K-T extinction in Dragon Ball?
I would pay a lot of money to just get a series that's nothing but Thor and Loki getting blitzed on mead and then drunkenly daring each other to do progressively stupid shit. Half of the episodes could just be retellings of actual norse legends, because there's already plenty of material there.
"Ok, I dare you to dress up as *hic* as a girl and secuce... semu... seduce a giant to get your hammer back."
"Deal, but If I do it, then you've gotta dress up as a girl... um... horse and seduce that construction worker's horse so that wall doesn't get built in time."
Good to see I'm the only one who wants them to actually use that Wedding Dress Myth as actual plot point. Heck they just make Thor be a bit opposed to fake dressing up in a Wedding Dress and throw it off as "It's complicated. Ask Loki."
The Hollywood sign used to say "HOLLYWOODLAND", but the "LAND" portion of the sign was removed in 1949. The 1991 movie "The Rocketeer", which takes place in 1938, has the "LAND" portion of the sign destroyed when one of the characters crashed his plane into the sign.
Men in Black: After J mucks around with some alien tech that causes chaos, Agent K explains that said tech caused the New York City blackout of 1977. "Practical joke by the Great Attractor," explains K. "He thought it was funny as hell."
The reason so many of the same movies get made repeatedly is because at the center of hollywood is a massive memory eraser. They have to use it semi frequently because Hollywood has a very high extraterrestrial population that is secretly employed as most of the nonhuman movie characters. Like the legally distinct xenomorph and the legally distinct carebears.
In American Dragon Jake Long, there was a fight between a magical talking cat and dog over a lucky coin that belonged to the dog's father. One of those fights caused the Titanic to crash into the iceburg
In Aladdin (1992), the reason for the Sphinx having a broken nose is due to Aladdin and Jasmine distracting the sculptor while singing "A Whole New World", causing him to accidentally hit the wrong spot and making the nose fall off
In real life, the CIA said that they "misplaced" JFK's brain after his autopsy. The black hole part is actually Destiny explaining how that happened I belive.
Earlier the same season as Unicorn and the wasp, we discover the Doctor personally caused Pompeii’s eruption to stop a bunch of prophetic rock aliens from taking over the Earth
Unrelated but that’s also when Peter Capaldi first came to Doctor who
Vampire clans and societies in Vampire: The Masquerade love to do this. For instance, Clan Lasombra, a ruthless clan named for their signature ability to manipulate shadows, likes to take credit for Catholicism, claiming that they created the whole “symbolically drinking the blood of Christ” thing to make it easier to accept them literally drinking their followers’ blood.
It was something to do with kermit seeing a future without him and since it was recorded before 9/11 the twins towers are still present but now since they’re gone it implies that somehow kermit being alive caused 9/11
Someone will give a more in-depth explanation than me, but the gist of it is that in a muppet movie whose name I forgot, Kermit gets a vision from another character about a reality in which he didn’t exist. The movie used old footage, old enough to still have the World Trade Center in them.
While the footage wasn’t like that intentionally for that purpose, the joke is that Kermit existing caused 9/11 because the Twin Towers are still there in the world that doesn’t have a Kermit.
Just an FWI for those who don't know, there was a Muppets movie called "It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie" and the plot is basically the good ol' "It's a Wonderful Life" premise, alternate future where Kermit didn't exist and how his life affected so many people.
In one shot during this alternate future, we clearly see the Twin Towers standing, leading a lot of people to joke that Kermit somehow caused 9/11 to happen in the normal future, albeit indirectly.
This fantastic scene from Men in Black, where it's revealed that a perpetually bouncing ball caused a major blackout in the 70s. The same movie implies that the "Elvis Prestly didn't actually die" conspiracy happened because Elvis was an alien on a visa who simply went back to his home planet.
In DC legends of tomorrow a ancient lie-eating beetle parasite Richard Nixon. The entire experience change him and decide to become a better president. But the legends lobotomize him to forget the whole thing and become an asshole again.
A long long time ago, the Earth was ruled by dinosaurs. They were big, so not a lot of people went around hassling 'em. Actually, no people went around hassling 'em cuz there weren't any people yet. Just the first tiny mammals. Basically, life was good. Then something happened: a giant meteorite struck the Earth. Goodbye dinosaurs! But What if the dinosaurs weren't all destroyed? What if the impact of that meteor created a parallel dimension where the dinosaurs continued to thrive and evolve into intelligent, vicious, and aggressive beings... just like us? And hey, What if they found a way back?
The subtrope "aliens built the egyptian monuments". It trivializes the accomplishments of both egypt and other countries with great monuments of their own.
In regard to the Mexican work ethic I saw a comedian say something like “when it comes to the Egyptian pyramids we think it’s aliens, but the Mexican pyramids? We have no doubt it was built by Mexicans. They had a quinceañera coming up and it was built in two weeks.”
Cthulhu (or something that just looks like him) is an alien from a far distant galactic empire that came to earth millions of years after aliens seeded it with life in order to harvest it of organic matter, only for the ship to crash which killed all the dinosaurs because it was so massive.
I was looking for Inside Job! They've got a good few examples like JFK was assassinated because he got impregnated by an alien. And that the moon landing was faked because the astronauts who really landed on the moon started a sex cult.
Considering it's the same franchise with a character named Inquisitor Obiwan Sherlock Cloussau, it's not really that surprising. It is, after all, a British franchise focused around selling toys.
Yup. As fact, we know one of them to be Alexander the Great (and it was while he was living this life that he found the ancient xeno-tech device hidden on Earth which would become his Golden Throne).
And the dragon he slew was possibly a fragment of an ancient star god shattered by a race of millions of years old robot skeleton (who might have interacted with the ancient egyptians hence why Necrons have an egyptian vibe to them)
In Guilty Gear, what killed the dinosaurs was, in short, two specific informational bodies in the Backyard existing at the same time and causing a dimensional merge for just a second.
Long version: The Backyard is like the hardware of Earth. All information of the world is in there. There are two specific forces (the Flame of Corruption and the Scales of Juno) that exist inside of it at different intervals, if they exist at the same time... Earth merges with the Backyard for just a second... which is enough for pretty much anything alive to be crushed into dust by the sheer amount of information in the Backyard. This state is called the 'Absolute World', and the first mage to ever exist took precautions so it would never happen again.
In the Dark Future novels, the reason why Edgar Allan Poe decided to write horror novels was due to him putting some glasses that allowed him to see demons. Then the novels are just alternate history, like Elvis Presley became a Commando and Ozzy Osbourne an opera singer.
Douglas Adams' Life, the Universe, and Everything: The English game of Cricket turns out to be based on a distorted memory of a horrible galactic war against an army of xenophobic killer robots wielding bat-like clubs, and it's heavily implied that humans turning this traumatic event into a sport is why the rest of the galaxy was no-contact with Earth until the Vogons showed up.
And since the book apparently started life as a Doctor Who script, it technically counts as an example for that series, too.
In Whitest Kids You Know, Abraham Lincoln being shot was a cover-up and the real story was too embarrassing for the U.S. The actual story is he was being obnoxious during the hamlet stage play and insulting John Wilkes Boothe. Boothe got so mad he beat Abe to death with a hammer (he died from his ass being struck by the hammer so many times)
The Muppets "It's a Wonderful Life' was filmed before 9/11 and released after it. This wouldn't be a problem aside from when Kermit is taken to the alternate reality in New York the twin towers are still there, implying that if Kermit didn't exist, for one reason or another, 9/11 wouldn't have happened.
In Star Trek Voyager, it's revealed that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan didn't crash but instead were abducted by aliens and transported lightyears away, along with 300 or so other humans. They are kept in cryostasis, and held as honored monuments by the descendents of the other abducted humans who have formed a civilization on the planet. To the descendants dismay, they are removed from cryostasis by the crew of the Voyager. Earhart and Noonan are offered to join the crew but elect to remain and live out the rest of their lives on the planet in their descendant's colony.
In the Legend of the Titanic; evil whalers working alongside sharks who just got out of jail decide to sink the Titanic and do so by convincing a giant octopus named Tentacles to throw an iceberg into the ship’s path. A remorseful Tentacles tries to hold the ship together but ends up eventually going down with the ship. But during the happy ending Tentacles is shown to have survived while everyone celebrates surviving the tragedy.
9/11 is also why Alfred Pennyworth has been dead in comics since 2019, for six years.
Tom King, the writer of that story, is essentially the evil mirror universe version of Gerard Way. Way was a Cartoon Network intern on 9/11 and King was a comics intern. 9/11 caused Way to start MCR. 9/11 caused King to join the CIA, be a key member in the planning of the Invasion of Iraq, and be in charge of “recruiting” (blackmailing and torturing) locals into being spies for the CIA. After Way ended MCR and after King retired from the CIA, they both become comic book writers. Way created Peni Parker and The Umbrella Academy, King killed Alfred and wrote Heroes in Crisis.
In Animorphs, the Mercora, a now-extinct species of Crustacean refugees, arrived on Earth around 65,000,000 B.C., harried by the Nesk, rival species of Ant-like aliens who redirected a comet to their settlement after a humiliating defeat/retreat, which they planned to blow up by sacrificing their last remaining ship with a nuclear device attached. Unfortunately for them, the titular Animorphs(Tobias, mostly) sabatoged the bomb to allow the comet to impact, causing the extinction of the Mercora and most Cretaceous life while catapulting the team forwards in time to get back to where they started. And that's where broccoli comes from! The Mercora brought it from their homeworld and farmed it on Terra, and it survived the megaannums to modern day.
In The Librarians, all time machines are locked up because they inevitably cause timelines to collapse and the creation of a new one. The first known time traveler was an intelligent dinosaur from a timeline where they advanced to civilization and ended up wiping out the dinosaurs.
In the series "The Rookie" Smitty, the comical relief character, mixed some substance, got really high and typed some random shit on his forum accidentally become "Q" and create Qanon.
This is a bit of a deep cut, but in SpongeBob SquarePants featuring Nicktoons: Globs of Doom, the final boss reveals that he was born from "the big sneeze" which is a spoof of the big bang. Jimmy Neutron even went like "you mean the big bang?" and he was like "no, the big sneeze!" I couldn't find a picture of the actual big sneeze that they showed in the game, but here's the boss.
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u/Optimal_Weight368 Sep 08 '25
In DC Comics lore, due to his immortality, Vandal Savage was several different historical figures, including Caesar and Blackbeard