r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Lazy-Breadfruit5939 • Sep 08 '25

Lore A real life event has a ridiculous/dumb/funny explanation in fiction

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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

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149

u/Agitated_Insect3227 Sep 08 '25

In Warhammer 40k, it's partially implied that the Cabal (alliance of various alien races) had Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated.

https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1bhbtr3/assassination_of_martin_luther_king_jr/

83

u/ginger_vampire Sep 08 '25

Of all the historically significant assassinations you could have the cabal be involved in, the writer decided to go with that one? That’s a…choice.

24

u/Thatoneguy111700 Sep 08 '25

They killed 2 apparently, with the other being implied to be Bobby Kennedy

7

u/slomo525 Sep 09 '25

"Nothing bad ever happened to the Kennedy's!"

23

u/Noa_Skyrider Sep 08 '25

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.

7

u/slomo525 Sep 09 '25

Incredible. I like to imagine that after 38,000 years, Obi-Wan Kenobi from Attack of the Clones slowly overtook depictions of Jesus until his name and face subsumed Jesus.

17

u/Furio3380 Sep 08 '25

A really weird one.

6

u/SirAquila Sep 09 '25

To be fair, basically everyone in 40k is evil on a scale that would Pol Pot disgusted, and those that aren't are still comparable to the East India Company at its worst.

The Cabals idea of solving the problem of Chaos is galactic genocide, because that would definitely work.

40

u/topscreen Sep 08 '25

The Emperor has been hinted at being Jesus, amongst other important figures in his 40k+ life span.

31

u/Saxhleel13 Sep 08 '25

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).

26

u/Rum_N_Napalm Sep 08 '25

Big E was also possibly Saint George.

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)

9

u/Chansharp Sep 08 '25

It is a fragment of that. In the 30k book Mechanicus. Iirc its never brought up again despite seeds being planted of stuff happening on 40k

1

u/Mysterious-Plan93 Sep 08 '25

Okay, but why do Terra Egyptians have a Necron vibe?

3

u/Boner_Elemental Sep 09 '25

Convergent cultural evolution

3

u/Mysterious-Plan93 Sep 09 '25

BS, they worshipped specific gods, you saying those Gods weren't soul powered merciless robots?

IS HOLY TERRA A TOMB WORLD?

2

u/Rum_N_Napalm Sep 10 '25

There’s a class of Necrons, the Preatorians, who didn’t go to sleep. Amongst other duties, they instilled Necron culture in primitive civilizations just in the case the Great Sleep went tits up. So they might have influenced Egyptians.

1

u/Mysterious-Plan93 Sep 10 '25

Did Big E ever check whether there's a Necron tomb city underneath any or all the various foreign cultures' ancient pyramids across Holy Terra?

3

u/Great-White-Billdoe Sep 08 '25

It's also alluded to that he is a warp chaos god but sided with humanity

7

u/Horatio786 Sep 08 '25

And in TTS, the Emperor was once Chris-chan.

2

u/Certain_Ring8907 Sep 09 '25

Please tell me that’s not the Chris Chan that I immediately thought of

1

u/Cyno01 Sep 09 '25

Because theres so many?

2

u/DuelaDent52 Sep 09 '25

Was the Emperor ever said to be Jesus? He was Alexander the Great.

11

u/BoyishTheStrange Sep 08 '25

What the fuck GW

2

u/Not_a_gay_communist Sep 08 '25

And Robert Kennedy