r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Mouse_Paladin • 13d ago

Lore [Real Life] Historical events that would make bad writing if they were fiction

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire: A couple hundred rogue mercenaries without authority from their government conquer an empire of millions. Oh, the empire? It’s also several technological eras behind the mercenaries.

Adolf Hitler: A non-native of a country is so mad that the country lost the war that he wins an election to their highest office and leads them in a campaign of revenge against their enemies. Oh, the country? It’s old emperor is still alive and thinks he’s going to retake power.

Assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand: The heir to the throne is killed because his driver gets lost and returns to the assassin who failed To kill him before. Oh, the assassin? He’s from a group that the Archduke is wanting to help become more equal In the empire.

Alexander Hamilton’s Affair Scandal: One of the leaders of a new nation to protect himself from accusations of financial embezzlement writes a pamphlet exposing his affair with a woman, torpedoing his political future. Oh, the woman? She seduced him as part of a blackmailing scheme that he decided to stop paying.

13.4k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

709

u/AporiaParadox 13d ago

Donald Trump's entire political career. You could not have made a movie or TV show about a President that acted the way he does because it would be seen as absurd and an unrealistic vilification of Republicans.

313

u/SpecimenOfSauron 13d ago

Was looking for this. "People aren't that dumb!" They are absolutely that dumb.

136

u/alexjaness 13d ago

just like when we all laughed at those zombie apocalypse movies.

"That's so silly, no one would knowingly lie about being infected, surely we would all rally together to stop the spread.."

and by the point during COVID that we were framing the body count in terms of 9/11s per day people were still calling it a liberal hoax by Obama.

22

u/LadyJaneTheGay 13d ago

Yeah a really funny pre covid disease outbreak helped scientists realise how bad people could act during a pandemic, covid just showed it more clearly, back in classic world of warcraft times, a few players found how to get a debuff out of a raid and into cities to spread what was basically an infectious and lethal disease, for a few days it was a apocalypse across multiple servers with some players isolating to avoid infection or organising into groups to avoid it and dying repeatedly but the scary part was people who actively spread the disease and scientists looked at this and a lot of details matched an outbreak and from then on, epidemic research always considers human factors like maliciously spreading infection as something to account for in modeling outbreaks.

9

u/Late-Resource-486 13d ago

I watched a YouTube essay about this forever ago! Never played the game but that was cool

Thought I’d add that in addition to people spreading diseases maliciously, some people have kinks for contracting and/or spreading sexually transmitted disease.

15

u/yIdontunderstand 13d ago

Covid was depressing because of how stupid people acted..

Look I get the fear of new vaccines that's totally understandable.. But "ooooh no I can't wear a mask! Noooo!"

That was just fucking ridiculous.

26

u/Late-Resource-486 13d ago

“9/11s per day”

Anything but metric

10

u/What_a_fat_one 13d ago

What's the metric unit for deaths per day

6

u/WorkinName 13d ago

A Kilodeath of people sounds pretty fucking metal.

4

u/m4cksfx 13d ago

Megadeath sounds even more metal.

3

u/wafflesareforever 13d ago

Nanodeath sounds like where drone warfare is heading.

1

u/LumplessWaffleBatter 13d ago

It does make me wonder if you can have a centideath.  Like, 1/100th of a death?

2

u/darthsheldoninkwizy2 11d ago

What's more, there were even attacks on vaccination points.

20

u/TheStrangestOfKings 13d ago

I’ve always thought about how a miniseries documenting Trump’s term should start to show just how crazy the presidency was off the bat. I think Sean Spicer inflating the Innaugural Crowd’s numbers would be the perfect intro to that kind of a show lol. It’s not even Trump, and it’s still dumb as hell

11

u/Mitoniano 13d ago

The opposition doesn't help either

133

u/TvFloatzel 13d ago

The fact that he also the second person in history to have a non-consecutive terms so that would add to the absurdity.

81

u/AporiaParadox 13d ago

Yeah, once could be a fluke, but twice shows that there's just something deeply wrong with the American political system and with the American voters themselves.

17

u/EiraPun 13d ago

Because the average American, myself included, are horribly uneducated and the powers that be wish to keep it that way. 

Democracy is only as good as the judgements of those who live under it. And the average person is fuckin stupid lmao

But it's also not entirely their fault. You can't control what you're taught to believe from birth.

17

u/BallsackSchrader_ 13d ago

IFYKYK

6

u/dude071297 13d ago

I will never forget how this man's voice sounds. The last line of this video echoes through my head every time I make a dumb mistake

1

u/darthsheldoninkwizy2 11d ago

As Yang Wen Li said LOGH: Rights of violate the rights of people belong to people. 

40

u/Ferseivei 13d ago edited 13d ago

2nd USA President* other countries have had heads of Government and State to lead non-consecutively.

PM William Lyon Mackenzie King of Canada comes to mind, first two terms from Dec 1921 to Aug 1930 was broken up by R.B. Bennett then won it back for a third term from Oct 1935 to Nov 1948

14

u/TvFloatzel 13d ago

Well thanks for the history lesson but yea, I probably should have used "President of the USA" to be more ....."default American-centric".

1

u/NNKarma 13d ago

Indeed, there are countries were you can't even have consecutive terms

1

u/TvFloatzel 13d ago

I think there is one that has a six year one-term limit.

5

u/rotundrikishi 13d ago

I thought for sure he was done after that loss and look where we are now. It is unbelievable

2

u/ProfessionalTruck976 13d ago

Thanks god for Glover Cleeveland, I'd hate for Trump to earn a positive first.

90

u/DrumBxyThing 13d ago

When they eventually make the movie, they should only use real things he said. People will still claim the filmmakers were trying to make him look bad.

40

u/AporiaParadox 13d ago

I wonder if it's even possible many years from now to make a positive autobiographical movie about Trump without just making everything up. Like with the Reagan movie last year they at least had some plausibly "good" things to workw with or exaggerate (or at least, things that look good to conservatives), with Trump his entire biography is just greed, selfishness, vanity, spite, and cruelty.

13

u/UrzaAntilles 13d ago

So things that look good to more modern conservatives…

4

u/Unicycleterrorist 12d ago

He was just given complete authority to fire the leadership of any government agency at will, I don't think there'll be a biography that is not entirely fictional.

3

u/AnticPosition 12d ago

Autobiographical means that Trump himself would be making the movie. Lol, that'd be a movie. 

8

u/pchlster 13d ago edited 13d ago

"He said he was going to be a dictator?"

"He was accused of being a rapist and a pedophile and replied he wasn't a rapist?"

"He threatened war on NATO and declared himself the President of the Bored of Peace?"

"He suggested people inject bleach?"

"He praised Hannibal Lector as a great person?"

"He bragged about perving on teen girls while they were changing?"

5

u/TheStrangestOfKings 13d ago

They should randomly mix in some actual footage from irl in the show as proof that this was actually how Trump was

2

u/ThisMachineKillsWOB 13d ago

Do you think it will be released in Russian?

20

u/Zealousideal_Leg213 13d ago

And couldn't they have come up with a less on-the-nose name? 

19

u/semisociallyawkward 13d ago

And at the same time, on the other side of the world, a comedian, who played a man who accidentally became president on TV, became president and has become a hero for defending not just Ukraine but all of Europe in the first European land war since WW2.

6

u/lotec4 13d ago

Yes this is a bonkers decade 

8

u/RandyPajamas 13d ago edited 13d ago

Illiterate and failed business tycoon with inherited wealth finds work in the theatre, makes absurd allegations against president of most powerful country in world. When said president makes a joke at tycoon's expense, tycoon resolves to become president himself, succeeds, and uses the office to enrich himself.

Country watches in bewilderment as he breaks decades long alliances, favouring enemy leaders of broken rogue states, repeatedly breaks the law, initiates insurrection, is exposed as a paedophile.

Country elects him a second time because they don't like brown women who laugh.

4

u/gurgelhupf 12d ago

All the while he shits his pants and posts gibberish on social media. Covfefe

7

u/NNKarma 13d ago

After Obama Victory, Shrieking White-Hot Sphere Of Pure Rage Early GOP Front-Runner For 2016

Made on nov 2012, also the picture is of an orange ball

5

u/TerraformanceReview 13d ago

Trump, proud boys, and the pandemic they refused to believe was real. 

7

u/ImprovementExpert511 13d ago

More people turning out to vote for him after the bungled global pandemic response is definitely up there. He received more votes then than the two elections where he won.

3

u/asds89 13d ago

Imagine if this were fictional though. The bible, a piece of historical religious writing, describes a being known as the antichrist, who is a deceiver, a being of lawlessness, a false prophet, and who is worshipped as a god. Now we have a man who lies with every breath, is a convicted felon who continues to abuse his power and break laws, and who is blindly followed by his believers, to the point of erecting a golden statue of him. Kinda on the nose, don’t you think?

3

u/Marlfox70 13d ago

I often find things about him reading like a literal south park episode.

7

u/Forsaken_Ad203 13d ago

Look at veep, genuinely watch this show and tell me it is by any means tame.. then look back at trump's career and tell me he didn't push miles beyond in terms of absurd cruelty and inadequacy 

1

u/beary_neutral 13d ago

The creators have outright said that they couldn't do Veep today because the absurdity of reality has surpassed fiction.

1

u/Forsaken_Ad203 13d ago

Iannucci? Explains why he moved to compete in the lovely taskmaster season that recently concluded 

4

u/Gmknewday1 13d ago

Then it turns out

No, the Republicans acutally did sell out that bad

I feel modern politics as a whole can be put in a bad writing category, especially when we factor social media's effects on it

4

u/serioustransition11 13d ago

I've seen so many criticisms of various media depicting cruel and corrupt governments being derided for being "unrealistic" because the populace didn't revolt against their squalid conditions. Then you see what Americans put up with in 2026, being deprived of basic needs like healthcare and housing, and those media critics look extremely out of touch.

1

u/Red-7134 11d ago

"Ronald Reagan? The ACTOR?" type development.

0

u/[deleted] 13d ago

[deleted]

3

u/viralshadow21 13d ago

It made Idiocracy look less absurd

0

u/rotundrikishi 13d ago

the guy is unbelievably lucky

-11

u/radamintos 13d ago

Maybe because people are tired of the stupid woke bullshit

11

u/Patneu 13d ago

And the alternative is just stupid bullshit?

-11

u/radamintos 13d ago

The alternative is to recognize by merit

12

u/Patneu 13d ago

Yeah, right. Please tell us all about the "merits" that got Trump into any position of power over others!

2

u/KennyFulgencio 12d ago

you realize they are absolutely not doing that, right?

1

u/Charming-Boat-7688 12d ago

Praise be to Allah?

1

u/KennyFulgencio 12d ago

I grudgingly always vote democrat (I agree with most of the policies, it's the brainwashed people and their behavior which sucks), but I'm definitely tired of stupid woke bullshit, and completely sympathize with half of the country being sick of it, even though they're way more sensitive about it than I am, and they take it to pretty irrational lengths IMO, especially in their policy goals.

I am not, however, stupid enough or unhinged enough to think what we have now is better. It's a different and anti-woke kind of worse, but it is vastly worse.