Historical Villain Upgrades in anime and manga.
Examples using real people
- Black Butler:
- The manga turns Jack the Ripper into Grell (a clumsy butler who is actually a sadistic chainsaw-wielding Shinigami) and Madame Red (protagonist Ciel's aunt and an abortion doctor, who was angry that her victims could get pregnant when they didn't want children and thus chose to get abortions, when she herself wished to get pregnant and could not).
- The first season of the anime does this to Queen Victoria, of all people, who sides with Angela/Ash the angel in an attempt to "cleanse" the world of sin with the implication that she sided with him/her after her husband Prince Albert died and it unhinged her. She's a straight Cool Old Lady in the manga, however.
- Le Chevalier d'Eon turned several real-life historical figures (including the title character) into heroes and villains of a life and death struggle for control of the world. The Big Bad of the series ultimately turned out to be King Louis XV.
- Code Geass:
- Benjamin Franklin betrayed the American Revolutionary movement after being bribed with titles of nobility. This led to a British ambush where George Washington was murdered and the American Revolution was crushed into fine dust.
- In Code Geass: Tales of an Alternate Shogunate, Matthew Perry uses Geass to force Japan to open its ports, oppresses Japan for his own selfish ends much like Britannia did in the original series, and in the final battle against the Black Knights and the Britannians, who have realized that he's acting in his own interests, fires the Hadron Cannons on his ship, hitting his own men along with the enemy.
- In Drifters, the so-called Drifters are dead heroes from our world. They are sent to other worlds to battle the Offscourings - also heroes from our world, but decidedly anti-humanity. Amongst the Offscourings are people like Jeanne d'Arc (a Pyromaniac) and Anastasia Romanova (An Ice Person). It's implied that Drifters are generally less-than-stellar paragons of humanity who died as they lived (Oda Nobunaga is a drifter), while Offscourings are people who were noble and good in real life but died unjustly (explaining why they've obtained a violent hatred of humans). The leader of the Offscourings is implied to be Jesus.
- Hellsing thanks to pulling from Vlad the Impaler’s history to make him more sympathetic, gives this treatment to the Ottoman Sultan, whom is unnamed in Hellsing but who’s Real Life counterpart is Murad II. While it is true Murad II held young Vlad and his brother Radu as political hostages during war and Vlad was beaten for impoliteness against his trainers, he still reportedly suffered nothing worse. In Hellsing on the other hand, Murad II is an outright pedophile who rapes little Vlad triggering his Start of Darkness and abandonment of god leading to him becoming a vampire. While it does effectively justify Alucard’s cynical beliefs, it’s widely different from real history where the Sultan reportedly strived to be a “Ghazi King” a noble and just ruler who was against such depravity.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood:
- Jack the Ripper is turned into a vampire working for the Big Bad, Dio Brando. It also explains why he disappeared, The main character, Johnathan Joestar disintegrated him. To top it all off, he fights by shooting scalpels embedded in his muscles!
- Elizabeth I gets this once again this being portrayed as a card carrying unambiguous Evil Queen who unjustly murdered Bruford and Turkus’s kindly mistress Mary, Queen of Scots. The manga noticeably makes no mention about how Mary was hardly a innocent woman in real life herself, in order to solely highlight Lizzie’s cruelty.
- The Mysterious Cities of Gold has La Malinche, who's a controversial figure in real life but is unmistakably a villain here.
- Puella Magi Tart Magica, which focuses on the life of Joan of Arc, who was a Magical Girl in this series, has Isabeau of Bavaria as the Big Bad. And let’s just say she is much worse than her real life counterpart.
- Pretty much all of the villains in Read or Die are this where they are given weapons based on what they created. Though they are actually clones of said historical people.
- In Record of Ragnarok, the setting really pushes for making all characters as badass as they can possibly be, with that historical and mythical figures, good and bad, have their commonly known backstories completely revised if they contained any shameful moment in them, such as loss, a moment of weakness, cowardice, etc. Case in point: a common record of Lu Bu's final moments was him throwing a fit upon being captured by Cao Cao's forces and being denied a chance to work with their army, as he was known as a serial betrayer; this series, however, changes that event into Lu Bu being completely calm in his final moment, going as far as to say the previous record is completely false, the "truth" being that Lu Bu actually allowed himself to be captured, the man was so bored of being unmatched in battle throughout his entire life that nothing mattered anymore, so he might as well free himself of such a meaningless life.
- The Rose of Versailles turned some historical figures (like Madame du Barry and especially both the Countess of Polignac and the Duke of Orleans) into series antagonists, which result in some God-awful moments for people who actually know a thing or two about those characters. i.e., the real Countess of Polignac was extravagant to the max and apparently more than a little cold and calculating, but nowhere near the levels she gets in the show, and the Duke of Orléans wasn't exactly a peach either but he wasn't as much of a Smug Snake as the series shows.
- Souten Kouro's Zhang Rang, leader of the 10 eunuchs. He manages to rape Shui Jing despite not having the necessary instrument.
- Vinland Saga:
- The Danish chief Thorkell the Tall, who was one of the commanders in the occupation of England, is turned into a larger than life Blood Knight Psycho for Hire who will work for anyone if it promises to get him into lots of brutal battles. In real life, he defected to the losing English side due to genuine remorse over not being able to stop his men from drunkenly killing an archbishop, but here he simply does it for the sake of a better challenge.
- Danish royals Sweyn Forkbeard and his son Canute were Viking rulers that spearheaded the invasion of England, but there's no historical indication that the former tried to have Canute killed and the latter poisoned his brother Harald.
- In The Vision of Escaflowne the Big Bad is eventually revealed to be Isaac Newton. Though to be fair, the real Newton was said to be kind of a dick and Dornkirk's ultimate goal was making everyone's wishes come true. He thought the ends would justify the means. One of his interests historically was Alchemy.
In-Universe examples
- Mobile Suit Gundam 00 features a segment in The Movie where some of the characters go to an in-universe movie depicting the events of the series. Among the many other things that it gets wrong, it depicts Alejandro Corner, the Big Bad Wannabe who was killed at the end of the first season, as being the actual Big Bad.
- Naruto:
- Naruto has the Fourth Kazekage, who we only meet after his death and mostly showed up in flashbacks of the son he abused. By the time he actually showed up for readers to objectively see, he'd been solidly in the villain category for years. Turns out her was more along the lines of an extremely pragmatic ruler who faced a lot of sadistic choices in his life. Though most generally agree that his decision to force Gaara's caretaker to tell him that he hated him and that he was and never would be loved after attacking him in order to measure his worth was just downright stupid, which he later on came to acknowledge.
- Madara Uchiha was primarily remembered in Konoha for betraying and fighting the first Hokage and summoning the Kyuubi out of jealousy, with his sole monument dedicated to that battle. The truth ended up being a lot more complex (whether jealousy is still a part of the true underlying reasons is debatable, but it isn't at all the only one). His reputation was even worse in other nations, and the current Tsuchikage of Iwa remembers him as a war criminal (though that reputation is admittedly more justified).
- Perhaps one of the biggest examples for him was the story of how he obtained his Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan. It's implied that the general consensus was that he forcibly stole his brother Izuna's eyes, but the truth was that Madara loved his brother above all else (to the point that, for a time, he lost the will to live on after said brother died) and those eyes were willingly given to him by Izuna.
- Kakashi's father Sakumo Hatake was disgraced for botching a mission in order to save his comrades. A young Kakashi was seriously shocked when his peer Obito Uchiha admitted to admiring Sakumo's actions, and it's implied Kakashi had always pushed himself so hard to make up for his father's disgrace.
- Intentionally done by Itachi Uchiha who wanted to be the villain so his brother could be the hero. However lately the truth's been starting to come out in-universe as well.
- Revolutionary Girl Utena episode 34 "The Rose Signet": "The Tale of the Rose" portrays the Rose Prince as the victim of an evil witch who turned out to be his little sister. In the play, she became bitter because she's the only girl her brother couldn't turn into a princess, so she locked him up as a witch. The play fails to mention that Anthy "sealed" her brother away because he was on the brink of death from yielding to the demands of an uncaring society.
- Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-. Princess Emeraude of the Country of Jade is remembered as a fiend who kidnapped children by luring them away to her castle with the power of one of Sakura's feathers, and the townsfolk believe her ghost is at it again when local children start going missing. In reality, Emeraude was a Friend to All Children who had used the feather's power to set up her castle as a safe haven for them during a time of plague. When Syaoran and the others set off to continue their journey, they leave behind proof of their discovery and ask the townsfolk to start spreading the real story of Princess Emeraude.
