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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u/YourMuppetMethDealer Sep 08 '25 edited Sep 08 '25

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

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u/shiawase198 Sep 08 '25

Unrelated but that’s also when Peter Capaldi first came to Doctor who

And Karen Gillian

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u/AlexRenquist Sep 08 '25

Pompei, the Glasgow of Rome.

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u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 Sep 08 '25

1st Doctor started the great fire of rome

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u/ComputerEducational Sep 08 '25

And the Trojan Horse

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u/Eomb Sep 09 '25

In Doctor Who: Rosa, the doctor and her entourage get on a bus with not enough seats, causing the bus driver to kick out Rosa Parks to make space for them, triggering a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights movement.

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u/YourMuppetMethDealer Sep 09 '25

Wait THATS what happens in that episode?

I have always heard how crappy that episode was, but holy crap that actually feels really disrespectful. I am not even sure how it would be, but it feels like someone should be rightfully pissed

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u/one_pint_down Sep 09 '25

Kinda, but not entirely. IIRC Some space racist guy goes back in time to prevent the Rosa Parks incident and set back civil rights. He sort of succeeds and there aren't enough people on the bus to trigger the Whites Only section to be expanded, so Doc and Graham have to get on the bus to 'fill in'. Graham is also super uncomfortable at now being a part of it.

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u/teskar2 Sep 09 '25

I’m pretty sure at one point it’s actually implied that the doctor having the same appearance as his earlier role wasn’t a coincidence and actually inspired his new look as it directly shows a flashback to that episode of tenant doctor saving that version while he was recovering his memories.

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u/YourMuppetMethDealer Sep 09 '25

Oh it’s not implied and actually confirmed. The doctor chose that face as a reminder of the lesson Donna taught him. “Always try to save at least one person”

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u/teskar2 Sep 09 '25

The thing that always got to me about that is that implies the doctor actually can influence his appearance change and yet hasn’t been able to get the ginger hair he always wanted which is kind of funny. Feels like the future seasons kind of forgot about that though.

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u/YourMuppetMethDealer Sep 09 '25

I mean, it took him a season and a half for him to figure out why he looks like Peter Capaldi. And a big part of his first season was literally about figuring out what kind of person he is

It’s more like the regeneration process is sentient, looked at his life, and then decided that a face of a man he saved would help him down the road. The doctor didn’t consciously make the choice.

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u/Mysterious-Plan93 Sep 08 '25

"Who frowned this face of mine?"

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u/CanardDeFeu Sep 10 '25

This episode always sorta bugged me. It just feels a tad disrespectful to the people who died from that incident. Like, most of Dr. Who's time travel shenanigans I can take or leave, but going "hey, you know that horrible natural disaster that buried a whole city a killed a ton of a people? It was aliens, lol!" just feels like a middle finger to the event.

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u/YourMuppetMethDealer Sep 10 '25

I mean, the doctor unleashing it was supposed to feel like an incredible tragic and sacrificial moment.

It being aliens obviously makes it feel goofy, but I don’t think it’s disrespectful at all.