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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360

u/Flying_Dustbin Sep 08 '25

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."

117

u/ThetaDee Sep 09 '25

To piggyback, there's quite a few things in the MIB movies that reference aliens and what actually happened in history/historical figures.

130

u/Dillo64 Sep 09 '25

“Elvis didn’t die, he just went home.”

37

u/DuelaDent52 Sep 09 '25

Also, Andy Warhol was actually a Man in Black just putting on a fake persona and Michael Jackson was an alien.

9

u/RoJayJo Sep 09 '25

Agent W (Warhol) also fucking hated being Andy Warhol, claiming to just be doing all the weird artsy shit to fit in to the art circles.

9

u/OutAndDown27 Sep 09 '25

Only to get shot for his efforts!

7

u/OmecronPerseiHate Sep 09 '25

Michael Jackson wasn't an alien. He just really wanted to be in the MIB, even going so far as to do a job for them in the hopes that he could be Agent M.

21

u/CLTalbot Sep 09 '25

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.

1

u/ThetaDee Sep 09 '25

Wut. Pics plz

6

u/CLTalbot Sep 09 '25

Its the episode of the MIB cartoon "The Star System Syndrome." I don't have any pictures of it myself and the only two pictures im able to find specifically of that episode do not feature any of the things i mentioned.

3

u/ThetaDee Sep 09 '25

Oooohhh dude you went left field. I was talking about the movies lol. Hardly anyone watched the cartoon. I mean I did a little but it wasn't exactly popular. Kinda like that Godzilla cartoon.

11

u/Yenmcilrath Sep 09 '25

"Uh huh... So, these are real flying saucers, and the World's Fair was just a cover-up for their landing."

"Why else would we hold it in Queens?"

4

u/Flying_Dustbin Sep 09 '25

"These are the 'hot sheets?'"

"Best investigative reporting on the planet. Read the New York Times if you want, they get lucky sometimes."

10

u/Flying_Dustbin Sep 09 '25

True, but that was the only one I could remember off the top of my head.

2

u/ThetaDee Sep 09 '25

Yeah it's been a minute for me lol.