Washington, Washington
Twelve stories high, made of radiation
The present beware, the future beware
He’s coming, he’s coming, he’s coming
Twelve stories high, made of radiation
The present beware, the future beware
He’s coming, he’s coming, he’s coming
Historical Domain Characters tend to get thrown around in fiction, even if it's not a Period Piece. This may have something to do with the fact their stories (or at least the basics) are interesting and thus would lead to them either having a role (of any relevance) in the story or just as a one-off gag.
However, they tend to be subject to getting a Historical Hero Upgrade or Historical Villain Upgrade in general, usually from a form of Artistic License – History. Sometimes you throw in a Historical Badass Upgrade to that one king who was best known for diplomacy and make him lead his armies to battle or make Abraham Lincoln a vampire hunter.
But what if that's not enough for the Rule of Cool? Then give them superpowers. Essentially, this trope is about historical figures (or those heavily based on them) but with supernatural abilities that can be anything (or maybe loosely based on what they're best known for or stereotypes around their nationality). These superpowered historical figures don't even need to be part of a Historical Fantasy to qualify, they can even exist in the modern-day! (When modern-day figures are the ones with powers, it’s Celebrity Power.)
A Sub-Trope of Historical Badass Upgrade and Beethoven Was an Alien Spy. A Super-Trope to Demon King Nobunaga and Julius Beethoven da Vinci. Could also lead to Weird Historical War and Historical Domain Crossover (where historical figures team up to fight).
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In Bungo Stray Dogs, every character is named after famous writers and are given powers based on their works.
- Drifters has several magical historical figures such as Hijikata Toshizo being able to summon the fallen Shinsengumi, Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova being An Ice Person, and Joan of Arc having fire-based abilities.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean has a segment in which DIO and Pucci theorize that Leonardo da Vinci was a Stand User.
- Nobunagun's premise is based around E-Gene Holders who use weapons infused with the spirits of historical figures. The protagonist is an E-Gene Holder who wields a BFG containing Oda Nobunaga.
- Puella Magi Tart Magica is a spinoff of Puella Magi Madoka Magica starring Joan of Arc as a Magical Girl. The main series also implies that many such famous girls and young women in history were also Magical Girls, including Joan of Arc, Cleopatra, Queen Himiko, and Anne Frank.
- Read or Die: The antagonists are the I-jin, superpowered clones of historical figures, fighting for a book once owned by Beethoven.
- Karin Yuuki of UQ Holder!, better known by her real identity as Judas Iscariot, is a holy power-wielding immortal.
Comic Books
- The Authority: The Doctor's past incarnations included Albert Einstein, Jesus Christ, and Grigori Rasputin.
- Crimson has The Knights Templar as some of the villains. Here, they were reorganized into an independent supernatural hunting force that commits Van Helsing Hate Crimes. They have a group of Elite Mooks called The Order of the Dragon (the most skilled and formidable Templars) who harvested Angel blood to gain supernatural strength and durability.
- In the 2004 The Dead Boy Detectives miniseries, Gilles de Rais was not only a child murderer obsessed with the occult like he was in the historical record, here his magicks actually worked, and he'd drain the lives of children around him. It's explained that this was downplayed in the in-universe history to not freak people out.
Marquez: It was more palatable that the murderer was merely a madman, and not a black magician and heretic.
- Grigori Rasputin in Hellboy is a sorcerer that worships the ancestral Ogdru-Jahad and wants to start the Apocalypse. In the original comics, he has a Healing Factor and Mind Control powers and has come back as a ghost at least twice, while in the 2004 movie adaptation he has Resurrective Immortality and comes back to life with a fragment of his god inside.
- In Invincible, the Immortal, a Flying Brick with Resurrective Immortality, was Abraham Lincoln. He was also Christopher Columbus, though the animated adaptation implicitly removed that rap sheet.
- Requiem Vampire Knight: Elizabeth I of England, Nero, Caligula, Aleister Crowley, and several others are transformed into hideous undead creatures in Hell. Meanwhile, Dracula's wife is the infamous Blood Countess, Elizabeth Báthory, a vampire with Blood Magic.
- S.H.I.E.L.D. (2010) has many famous figures in history being parts of the organisation of which S.H.I.E.L.D. is the most modern part, and fighting other such famous figures. Among others, Isaac Newton is an immortal and immoral super-scientist and former stand-in Sorcerer Supreme, Michaelangelo is the Forever Man who is everywhere across time at once, and Nikola Tesla is an electricity-wielding cyborg called 'The Night Machine'.
- One bizarre issue of Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose revealed that George Washington had a suit of wooden Powered Armor and that every President since then has been expected to don Powered Armor to defend the country in times of trouble.
- West Coast Avengers: A version of the Lethal Legion consists of these, as they were resurrected by the demon Satannish. The members are:
- Lizzie Borden ("Axe of Violence"): Gained red skin and a two-sided ax replacing her right arm, she also can throw other two-sided axes.
- Josef Stalin ("Coldsteel"): Became a hulking 8 ft. steel giant with super strength.
- Lucrezia Borgia ("Cyana"): Gained light blue skin and the ability to poison others via a kiss or her razor-sharp nails.
- Heinrich Himmler ("Zyklon"): Gained the ability to fly and can belch out poisonous gasses from his mask and gauntlets.
- In X-Statix, Henrietta Hunter was originally supposed to be Diana, Princess of Wales, who had been inexplicably restored to life and given superpowers, but Marvel editorial vetoed it.
Fan Works
- Birth of Evil: Elizabeth Báthory steals steam from women with the Shining as a way of achieving immortality and eternal beauty. She raised and taught Rose the Hat her ways, making the latter a True Knot.
- Child of the Storm:
- As in Harry Potter canon, Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel are immortal alchemists and made all the more so by Nick Fury offering them the Infinity Formula.
- As it turns out, Julie d'Aubigny was one of the many identities of in-universe time-travelling ageless Memetic Badass the Lady Knight. When she turns up, she uses Julie Maupin as a pseudonym on the grounds that it was one of her favourite lives.
- Codex Equus:
- Elvis Presley is hailed as a musical icon who changed the face of music forever, yet also derided as a joke who let himself get fat and destroyed his own legacy. Blue Suede Heartstrings (now King Caerulus Melodia Equestria-Corporatum) is a Ponified version of Elvis who, as a result of changes in circumstances and choices, becomes a "prodigy" Alicorn god of Music, Humility, Performance, and Love instead. Eventually, Blue Suede re-Ascends as a reincarnation of Mana Equus, one of the Thirteen Empyreans, changing his domains to Musical Magic, Self-Respect, Performance, Love, and Mana.
- The Trimortidae contains multiple examples as several members are based on various real-life people who died, whether way back in the past or in recent years. All of them are incredibly ancient and powerful Death deities due to Ascending to godhood post-mortem.
- James Dean is a young actor who codified the Greaser Delinquents trope, and managed to retain popularity long after his tragic death. Here, as Bronze Gear, he later became the Alicorn god of Death, Defiance, Freedom, and Technology post-mortem after helping the Trimortidae during the 'Applewood Rescue'.
- Bossa Nova Hearstrings, Blue Suede's older identical twin brother, is based on Jesse Garon Presley, Elvis Presley's stillborn older twin brother. Here, he becomes first an Angel of Death working under his adoptive father, Gavisus Manes, then an Alicorn god of Death, Music, and Joy after overcoming his resentment and obsessions with his early death. During the "Dark Ages Crisis", he also re-Ascends as a divine reincarnation 'clone' of Mana Equus, the Empyrean Magician, changing his domains to Death, Musical Magic, Empathy, Understanding, and Mana.
- The first half of A History of Magic consists of women from history who became magical girls with all of the trials and horrors that came with it such as Cleopatra VII, Joan of Arc, Sacagewea, Anne Frank, Pocahontas, Lady Jane Grey, and Mary I of England.
- it feels more like a memory: All the Historical Domain Superpeople in Hamilton are Seers. Everyone whose Seer status is confirmed, widely accepted, or widely debated In-Universe are famous Real Life mythological or historical figures, and it's implied the Real Life mythological figures thought In-Universe to be Seers are also thought to be real historical people who lived and died In-Universe, making them qualify for this trope In-Universe. Two characters qualify for sure: its protagonist, Aaron Burr, who has the power to see how people die when he has skin-to-skin contact with them; and Joan of Arc. Both are internationally confirmed and recognized as Seers. No other Seers are directly confirmed, but In-Universe, Cassandra, John the Baptistnote , Constantine, and Apollo’s various Pythias (more well-known as the Oracles of Delphi)note are commonly accepted as Seers, and John Calvin's Seer status is widely disputed. There are also "a bunch of quacks that no one is quite sure whether or not they were seers"
, including Nostradamus.
- JoJo New Universe: The Jojolion arc reveals that various historical figures, such as George Washington, Tokugawa Ieyasu, Genghis Khan, Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, and Aleister Crowley were Stand users (of which only Crowley's Stand, The Book of Love, is known). It's noted that history would be painted in a different light if people publicly knew about this, hence why it was kept a secret.
- Remember the King: Elvis Presley is not only dead, but he's also the ruling King of Soul Society instead of Yhawch, making him both the Big Good and the most powerful man in Bleach. He easily parries an attack by Aizen, mesmerizes Harribel into betraying Aizen with his immense spiritual pressure, and curb-stomps the rest of the Espada so utterly that Aizen's attempted coup was over before it even started.
- Scoob and Shag: The teenaged clone of JFK from Clone High appears in the comic with his Ballyhoo, Satellite, a telekinetic ability that can manipulate gravity.
- Until the End of Time: Adolf Hitler is revealed to be a Saiyan powerful enough to hold his own in a fight with Goku.
- With a Key and a Kite: All of the Historical Domain Characters from Hamilton have superpowers. Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson are projection empaths, with Hamilton able to Emotion Bomb people, while George Washington and Marquis de La Fayette are Seers. Alexander's wife, Eliza Schuyler Hamilton, heals quickly and is immune to infections and diseases and is either unnaturally long-lived or an Elderly Immortal, it's left ambiguous, her sister Angelica Schuyler Church is a mindreader, Alexander's daughter Angelica is also an empath, Aaron Burr's power is that no powers work on him, John Laurens' parents both have powers, and about a quarter of the entire European population and half of the population of the 13 colonies have superpowers.
Films — Animation
- America: The Motion Picture: Benedict Arnold, a military officer who served in the American Revolution, is a werewolf who's the Big Bad of the film.
- The antagonist of Anastasia is Grigori Rasputin, who's portrayed as a lich with Black Magic and a heavy Historical Villain Upgrade. He sets out to kill the titular character in order to finish a curse he set on the Romanovs.
Films — Live-Action
- In Netflix's Anastasia: Once Upon a Time, Grigori Rasputin has magical powers and sends Anastasia forward in time to The '80s through a portal to save her from the Bolshevik revolution.
- Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides: Blackbeard (Edward Theach) is a master of Hollywood Voodoo and wields a magical cutlass that he can use to control his ship.
- Stay Alive (2006) centers on the titular fictional survival horror game that stars Elizabeth Báthory whose spirit possesses the game. She kills the players in real life the same way their characters did in the game.
- X-Men: Days of Future Past reveals that John F. Kennedy was a mutant in a conversation between Erik and Charles.
Literature
- In The Gods of Manhattan, the "spirit city" of Mannahatta has allowed various historical figures from Manhattan, like Babe Ruth and Walt Whitman, to be elevated to godhood after their deaths. Some of them even have additional powers related to whatever they're the god of; Peter Stuyvesant, for example, is the God of Things Were Better in the Old Days, and can make those around him feel hopeless and pessimistic about the future.
- An immortal Nicholas Flamel appears in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone as a supporting character.
- The Russian Conspiracy Thriller novel Look Into the Eyes of Monsters is set in an Alternate History where Earth is secretly ruled by powerful cabals of immortal magi sustained by a substance called "xerion". Its protagonist is the Russian poet Nikolay Gumilyov who was shot by the Bolsheviks in 1921 in real life but is saved by the Fifth Rome cabal in the book and eventually becomes a full member in it, gaining eternal youth, a Healing Factor, and a number of other xerion-powered superhuman traits.
- Percy Jackson and the Olympians is very heavy on Beethoven Was an Alien Spy, practically any historical figure who appears or is mentioned in the series is said to be a demigod. Apparently George Washington was Athena's son, Blackbeard Ares's, Winston Churchill Poseidon's, and Harriet Tubman was Hermes' daughter.
- In The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, all of the immortal humans are Historical Domain Characters such as the titular Nicholas Flamel and his wife, the Count of St. Germain, John Dee, and Billy the Kid. All of them can use magic.
- In an Older Than Steam example, The Song of Roland ascribed superhuman abilities to the titular Roland, portraying him as so strong and durable that the only reason he died was that he had burst his temples blowing his horn to summon aid for his mortal troops and bled out. The poem also portrays an elderly Charlemagne as still having strength enough to kill the villain Baligant single-handedly.
- Charles Manson is already guilty of orchestrating murder and establishing a cult, but in R.S Belcher's Urban Fantasy novel The Night Dahlia, Charles Manson has achieved a twisted form of Enlightenment Superpower and can conjure horrific Eldritch Abominations known as the Nightmare Tulpa from the depths of his madness.
Live-Action TV
- Doctor Who:
- In the 2007 episode The Shakespeare Code, a cabal of alien witches plan to use William Shakespeare to cast a spell that will help them take over the Earth, because their powers are based on language and Shakespeare is such a talent that he can use their abilities better than even they can...and ultimately, once their scheme is exposed, he even uses it to defeat them instead.
- In the 2022 special The Power of the Doctor, Gregori Rasputinnote was really The Master. It's ambiguous whether he pulled a Kill and Replace on the real Rasputin or if he was always the real Rasputin, but either way, he uses his powers of hypnosis to manipulate Tsar Nicholas and his advanced technology to orchestrate a complex scheme across time and space to kidnap The Doctor from the future and wreak havoc on the universe.
- Heroes: One of the expanded universe comic books implied Benjamin Franklin had the power to absorb electricity, since, according to his secret journal, he was shocked with enough electricity to kill a man during his famous kite experiment and survived unscathed, discharging it through a small static shock to his pet cat.
- Moon Knight (2022) has godly avatars, humans who speak for the Egyptian gods and are imbued with mysterious powers as a result. The fourth episode reveals that the final avatar of the goddess Ammit was none other than Alexander the Great.
- Sanctuary (2007): Nikola Tesla became the first modern vampire. He loses the vampirism and gains electromagnetic powers, and then later regains his vampirism.
- Star Trek: The Original Series: In the episode "Requiem for Methuselah" the Enterprise crew meets an old human named Flint who is both immortal and possessed of superhuman strength. Flint was originally born around 3800 BC and lived as many notable historical figures during his long lifetime including King Solomon, Alexander the Great, Johannes Brahms, Leonardo da Vinci, and Lazarus. He kept his immortality secret by letting each persona eventually "die" and establishing a new identity elsewhere.
- What We Do in the Shadows (2019): Laszlo, with his vampire gifts of flying, glamoring, and turning into a bat, reveals to Nadja and Nandor as they think they're dying that he was Jack the Ripper.
Music
- TheRealBradNeely's George Washington video portrays the titular US President having Super-Strength (as seen when he throws a British soldier to the sky and cuts several more in half with kicks), Eye Beams, and at one point as being a 12 feet tall radioactive man.
- TheRealBradNeely also made History Lesson (JFK), which asserts John F. Kennedy could fly and read minds.
Theatre
- Michael Jackson: ONE presents a very magical version of the titular musician and the misfit protagonists are searching for his clothes, which are also magical. Enforced due to Michael Jackson's estate serving as a co-producer of the show.
Video Games
- Assassin's Creed has the Sages, a type of Half-Human Hybrid who are essentially a reincarnation of the Isu, the Precursors of the setting, created by Lost Technology and genetic engineering (it's very complicated). While the Sages don't have any combat-related powers, they can use Precursor/Isu technology, which is generally locked and thus cannot be used by regular people. Some of these Sages are also real-life historical figures as well such as Jacques de Molay and Harald Fairhair.
- Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag: Bartholomew Roberts (a reincarnation of Aita) is one of these Sages who had a hand in inventing quite a bit of Precursor technology.
- Empire Earth: Strategist heroes (historical characters who often get a Historical Badass Upgrade as well) get a Battle Cry ability that greatly reduces enemy armor and have a single-target healing ability. Including the likes of William the Conqueror, Isabella of Castille, Elizabeth I, Napoléon Bonaparte, and Charlemagne.
- 10tons's Tesla vs. Lovecraft have both famous individuals get this treatment. H.P. Lovecraft has called upon the power of the Great Old Ones to summon monsters throughout Great Britain, but they're no match for Tesla who uses Super Science to augment himself and manufacture weapons that are more appropriate to Star Trek than the Victorian Era.
- In Wasteland 3, Ronald Reagan appears in the post-apocalyptic wasteland reborn as a Humongous Mecha with Eye Beams who is worshiped as a living god by a cult known as "The Gippers" (named after Reagan's nickname from the movie Knute Rockne, All American ). Though ultimately subverted: it's a highly corrupted AI copy of Reagan's mind that Mother Nancy Reliance exploits to maintain control over the cult, and Morningstar, who knew the real Reagan, points out that the man was a devout Christian and would have hated being worshiped.
- The World Heroes series is about historical characters (as well some contemporary ones like judoka Ryoko Tani and football player Johnny Maximum ) fighting against a great menace invoked by a time machine traveler, having all these famous characters their own powers, some of them being elemental. The only non-famous characters are a cyborg created by the Nazis and the scientist who created the time machine and reprogrammed the cyborg to help him in his mission.
Visual Novels
- Fate Series: Historical figures can be summoned as magical beings called Servants to fight in the Holy Grail War. Servants are far more powerful than normal humans and their Noble Phantasms can leave areas in ruins (some are capable of wiping out entire cities). Some highlights include:
- Fate/stay night: Sasaki Kojiro's Tsubame Gaeshi can twist dimensions so as to allow him to attack with three different strikes all at once. Hassan-i-Sabbah is actually a title given to multiple people over generations, each one with their own unique ability, with the one portrayed here having the ability to create a replica of a person's heart that's magically connected to the real heart.
- Fate/Zero: Alexander the Great has lightning powers as a result of being a descendant of Zeus, drives a chariot pulled by two divine bulls, and is portrayed as a huge muscular man whose account of being too small to sit on Darius III's throne is only because Darius is even bigger. Gilles de Rais, while not an actual mage, owns a spellbook that allows him to summon Eldritch Abominations.
- Fate/Apocrypha: Solomon ibn Gabirol is a master golem creator. William Shakespeare is a Master of Illusion who can trap people in recreations of their past that he narrates over.
- Fate/strange Fake: Alexandre Dumas can magically create Effective Knockoffs of any Noble Phantasm. Richard the Lionheart can give any object the powers of Excalibur simply by insisting that it is Excalibur. Francois Prelati is a Master of Illusion with Born-Again Immortality and demon blood inside him due to making contact with Beelzebub.
- Fate/Grand Order: Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova has ice magic and formed a contract with Viy, who also serves as her Noble Phantasm. Attila the Hun was born from the remains of an alien superweapon and wields a Laser Sword that can summon a Kill Sat fired down by Mars. Helena Blavatsky has actual psychic powers due to having magic circuits. And this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this game.
- Fate/stay night: Sasaki Kojiro's Tsubame Gaeshi
Web Animation
- The premise of Super Science Friends is that historical scientists form their own team of Science Heroes led by Winston Churchill, do time travel and fight Nazis. The members consist of:
- Sigmund Freud: The team's telepath who has the ability to control people's sexual thoughts.
- Nikola Tesla: Fittingly has electrical powers.
- Marie Curie: Her ring gives her various radiation powers such as shields, disintegration, and x-ray vision.
- Tapputi (The world's first chemist): Her tonics and perfumes create seductive illusions to fool men.
- Albert Einstein: A teenage clone of the original who has Super-Speed as a result of understanding that time is relative.
- Charles Darwin: Has the ability to shapeshift into any living (or extinct) animal.
Webcomics
- In Spinnerette Benjamin Franklin was accidentally transported to the present day by a time traveler attempting to kill Hitler, where he discovered that since one of his later inventions will make time travel possible the universe won't let him be seriously harmed, he takes advantage of it to fight crime.
Western Animation
- Miraculous Ladybug: Various historical figures have been confirmed to have been Miraculous holders. These include Joan of Arc and the Marquis de La Fayette.
- In The Simpsons, one "Treehouse of Horror" story featured a guest appearance by Lucy Lawless, playing herself. At the end of the story, she grabs Bart and Lisa and flies off with them, revealing that she has superpowers.
- The Venture Bros. is rife with examples, befitting an Alternate History universe complete with '60s era Super Science! and real Functional Magic. To note:
- The original incarnation of the Guild of Calamitous Intent included several Historical Domain Characters with implied supernatural/technological abilities including Aleister Crowley, Samuel Clemens, Oscar Wilde, and "Father of Bodybuilding" Eugen Sandow. They were rivals of Nikola Tesla, who fielded an army of airships along with his Avon Ladies. Col. Lloyd Venture, another founding member and great-grandfather of the eponymous brothers, was a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of Theodore Roosevelt (later revealed to be the actual first person on the moon, doing so in 1902).
- Zig-Zagged with the Guild Sovereign, one David Bowie, who is shown to have Shape Shifting abilities. However, in later seasons, it is revealed that the Guild Sovereign isn't the real David Bowie, merely a shapeshifter in his form. However, the two have met and collaborated, with it said that the creature on the cover of Bowie's Diamond Dogs album to be the shapeshifter's true form.
- Buddy Holly and The Big Bopper were recruited into the guild by Fantômas, with the plane crash that killed them in real life being a cover for their induction into the guild. They became the supervillains Red Mantle and Dragoon, respectively, the former being a Geomancer (with other magical abilities implied) and the latter possessing Stout Strength enough (even in his old age) to battle the much younger and superpowered Phantom Limb.
- Iggy Pop and Klaus Nomi were two of the guild Sovereign's closest associates, the former capable of tossing Energy Balls and the latter with Super-Scream powers.
- Numerous other guild members, most often shown in flashbacks or bit appearances, bear a strong resemblance to deceased musicians and possess superpowers:
- Mister Fahrenheit, "the Supersonic Man", is a Speedster who physically resembles Freddie Mercury and whose name is taken Queen song Don't Stop Me Now.
- Stab Girl is pretty clearly Wendy O. Williams of The Plasmatics with an outfit based on Tank Girl.
- Shrill Specter is Phil Spector with sonic abilities.
- Scary Nilsson is a werewolf Harry Nilsson.
- Dr. Henry Killinger is strongly implied to be Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon's Secretary of State. He serves as a Magical Guardian and Trickster Mentor with a functional Parasol Parachute and a Bag of Holding that can produce anything his clients could possibly need.
- The original incarnation of the Guild of Calamitous Intent included several Historical Domain Characters with implied supernatural/technological abilities including Aleister Crowley, Samuel Clemens, Oscar Wilde, and "Father of Bodybuilding" Eugen Sandow
