All Myths Are True

Snow White, The Big Bad Wolf, a flying monkey, a little pig, Little Boy Blue, Beauty and the Beast...yup, the gang's all here.

"Believe what?" asked Shadow. "What should I believe?"
"Everything," roared the buffalo man.

— American Gods

In fantasy, all myths, legends, and folk tales are either accurate descriptions of past events or accurate predictions of the future.

If the hero's got to do something Because Destiny Says So, these are the official mandates that forces them to do it. Saying "It's just a myth" usually marks a jaded skeptic that has lost all faith in the world or a Muggle knee-deep in what's going to hit the fan. If a character tells the hero a story and then adds: "but it's probably just an old fairy-tale" — you can bet anything it's completely true and very soon, the hero will see firsthand whatever the story was about.

Domino Revelation, From Cataclysm to Myth, and Prophecies Are Always Right are Sub-Tropes of this. For versions where the myth is based on truth but people got the details wrong, see God Guise, Cargo Cult, Ancient Astronauts, Physical God, Sufficiently Advanced Alien, and A God Am I. If this treatment is given to only one pantheon/religion/what-have-you, see A Mythology Is True. For characters who might live in a world where All Myths Are True and despite solid evidence don't believe it, see Flat-Earth Atheist.

For the scientific counterpart, see All Theories Are True. For the conspiracy nut, there's the Conspiracy Kitchen Sink. For the video game rumor counterpart, see Infallible Babble. Someone with the tendency to exclaim "That can't exist!" in one of these settings may suffer from Arbitrary Skepticism.

A not uncommon variant of this is to have only ancient myths be explicitly true and shown on screen, with the truth of modern religions going unexamined or remaining ambiguous; this is done for reasons similar to No Such Thing as Wizard Jesus, where writers avoid touching on religions with significant numbers of modern adherents in order to avoid the controversy that would come from putting them on equal footing with myths few modern readers treat seriously.

This goes hand in hand with The Law of Conservation of Detail: if a myth is mentioned in a show, it should be relevant to the plot, and the myth being true will certainly help with that. See also The Legend of Chekhov.

Not to be confused with Clap Your Hands If You Believe (and its sub-trope Gods Need Prayer Badly), where believing in a myth makes it true. One Myth to Explain Them All is if they all stem from the same source (aliens, wizards, etc). If it's the myths in our universe that are treated as all being true, then that's a Crossover Cosmology or a Fantasy Kitchen Sink. See also Public Domain Canon Welding.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Played with in AR∀GO: City of London Police's Special Crimes Investigator. For example, Werewolves don't exist, but a wolf pelt that turns a person into a werewolf-like creature does.
• Brave Raideen: In Real Life, Mu was a fabled continent◊ introduced by Augustus Le Plongeon. James Churchward subsequently identified it with the hypothetical land of Lemuria while also claiming that it was later destroyed, hence why it was unlocatable on the world map. It's existence is dismissed by many modern-day geologists because it is physically impossible for a continent to sink in the timespan Churchward provided^note Since continents float on the sima much like icebergs float on water, a continent cannot simply "sink" under the ocean. It would take several millenia for the sial rocks to erode, and the bottom of the ocean has no records of them.. In the anime, it turns out that those Real Life geologists were wrong all along and Mu really did exist — Barao just wrecked it, and then it was swept away by a tsunami.
• Castle in the Sky blends legends and myth with that of biblical events. Muska references the blast from the mystic city of Laputa with that of Sodom and Gomorrah's destruction in the bible.
• A Certain Scientific Railgun:
  • The series has this as a Running Gag, with the characters mentioning urban legends that all end up being true.
  • It is revealed in its parent series, A Certain Magical Index, that the world has had been destroyed and created many times over, thanks in part to the magical gods, nigh-omnipotent beings who each represent the religions their powers and magic are based on.
• DEVILMAN crybaby: In Episode 10, Satan reveals to Akira that demons weren't exterminated when God nearly wiped them out millions of years ago, surviving by taking form as shapeless entities that would come to possess any humans that drew them to merge with. Satan then goes on to reveal that demons that have appeared throughout human history served as the basis of all mythological monsters, gods and creatures, over the thousands of years that demonkind has remained hidden in society.
  Satan: (a montage of different still images during his monologue shows images of a Wolf-Man, Vlad III the Impaler, Ganesha, a Sphinx, a Minotaur, a Centaur, Hayagriva, and the prehistoric fossils of a chimeric monster with an avian head and lobster pincers and a manticore-like fossil) "The legends of werewolves, vampires and ogres are likely derivatives of demons who had merged with humans. Myths and stories throughout time show that there were people who were aware of our existence."
• Only three legends are ever mentioned in Fullmetal Alchemist, two of which turn out to be true. The Xingese legend of the Western Sage is about Ed and Al's father, while the Amestrian legend of the Eastern Sage is about "Father," the Big Bad of the series. The third myth is presented when Ed compares the circumstances that caused his own amputations to the story of Icarus (of Greek Mythology) flying into the sun and getting burned. Whether the Icarus myth is true in the FMA world is never clarified.
• Guyver suggests that the zoanoids changing between human and monster forms is the origin of myths like werewolves and vampires.
• Played with in Record of Ragnarok. While pretty much all of the characters from various religions and mythologies exist in the manga, there were plenty of instances where some of the finer details were misinterpreted or changed.
• Sgt. Frog: About half the time, when it's not parodied to hell and back.
• This is brought up in the second season of Spice and Wolf's anime adaptation, when Holo's past is being discussed.
• The Story of Saiunkoku:
  • The story begins with Shuurei telling her students the story of their country's founding, ending it by saying that according to legend, the eight immortal sages who helped the first emperor found Saiunkoku are still alive in secret among the people. This is absolutely true, and Shuurei goes on to become personally (albeit unwittingly) acquainted with several of them.
  • A little later in the first arc, Shuurei begins to tell Ryuuki the story of the Rose Princess and how she married a mortal man. This story is not only also true, it's the story of her parents' marriage.
• In Studio Apartment, Good Lighting, Angel Included, Shintaro comes to believe this rather quickly after Towa (an angel of the cute, Winged Humanoid variety) shows up, followed by his meeting a Yuki Onna at work. He might be right, since a vampire and a kappa also attend his school, it turns out.
• In The Voynich Hotel, not only do devils exist, the legend of the sister-witches called the Three Mothers who were treated as minor goddesses on the island where the story is set turns out to be true, along with everything dealing with their conflicts with the invading Spanish army and their eventual fates.
• In YuYu Hakusho, Genkai explains that Botan went to see King Yama. When Kaitou tells her he thought he wasn't real, she says it isn't the time for stupid questions.

Audio Play

• Double Subverted in the Big Finish Doctor Who adventure Neverland. The Doctor and the Time Lords head into a universe of Anti-Time to fix Charley's paradox, but it is revealed that the Time Lords have other motivations for heading there. It is revealed that legends on multiple planets speak of the great Time Lord Rassilon heading into the empire of Zagreus (the Anti-Verse) to face the beast himself. The legends seem to be true when they find the casket of Rassilon, which is given to them by the denizens of the Anti-Verse. However, it is revealed that the legends of Rassilon and Zagreus were planted by these so-called Neverpeople in order to lure the Time Lords into bringing the casket, which actually contains enough Anti-Time to destroy the universe. However, when the Doctor absorbs the Anti-Time into himself and the TARDIS to save the universe, a creature of Anti-Time is created inside him. It decides to take its name from a creature of legend.
  The Doctor: I have become... ZAGREUS!

Comic Books

• In the Italian comic book Attica, not only all the old myths are true and their characters exist and reincarnates, modern myths have their characters gain life. The cast includes incarnations of characters from The Adventures of Pinocchio and Snow White, Henshin Heroes referred to as Tokusatsu, and even a Starter Pokemon-esque, the latter shown explicitly to have been born as a video game.
• In Crimson, angels and demons exist and the War in Heaven is part of the story. Vampires, werewolves and a multitude of monsters are collectively referred to as darklings. Saint George plays a pivotal role in the story as God's mortal champion. The Underworld from Classical Mythology is featured with Charon the boatman ferrying the dead and other pantheons are referenced.
• The CVO: Covert Vampiric Operations series has this at its core. The titular squad of vampires fights all sorts of supernatural threats. In fact, the only major human member of CVO is their boss Overmars, whose orders the vampires follow without question (most of the time). Overmars's Number Two is an erudite demon named Nikodemus (who looks a little weird, being all red with large horns while wearing a suit). Their scientific expert is a nerdy zombie (who hasn't lost his mind or gained a taste for human flesh). In later issues, they get two more operatives, one of which is a human Genius Bruiser the size of a defensive lineman and a Japanese katana-wielding girl who can turn into a snake-like creature complete with Sssssnake Talk. Their normal enemies include everything from zombies and demons to aliens and Eldritch Abominations. They also have Magitek called Artillica, which appears to be the focus of many issues. And that's just a sampling.
• DC Comics is like Marvel in its "everything we published counts" approach, though with a few more notable exceptions — which of their Vertigo line of comics stories count and which don't isn't terribly clear, for example. Or at least, it exists in some form (like Batman of Zur-En-Arrh being a psychological construct, a "backup" for if Batman's mind should be otherwise broken). These days, with a Crisis Crossover Cosmic Retconning out everything the current writer doesn't like at least once every other year, it's hard to know what of the previous month's comics counted at any given time, let alone one from fifty years ago. However, we do have the approach to myth and legend as the trope describes: Ancient Greek and Egyptian gods? Totally exist. King Arthur? Ditto. Ghosts, The Legions of Hell, things called demons that aren't The Legions of Hell, vampires, Biblical figures? Even characters who don't primarily deal with the supernatural have had multiple run-ins with all of the above. We have main characters in most of those categories, in fact.
  • In The DCU, even if you just look at the Marvel Family, you've got Captain Marvel whose powers come from Solomon and a selection of Greek and Roman figures, as well as his rival, Black Adam who gets his powers from the Egyptian pantheon. Both collections of myths spell out "SHAZAM", so they both have the same magic transformation word.
  • The map of The Multiverse tying into The Multiversity puts it up front, with Dream (the home of the Endless), Heaven, New Genesis, Skyland (the home of the various pantheons), Nightmare, Hell, Apokolips and the Underworld (also known as the Phantom Zone) all co-existing in the Sphere of the Gods. On another level, many of the Earths have heroes that are fictional in each other's worlds.
  • Comically lampshaded and zig-zagged by Harvey Bullock during the Throne of Atlantis:
    Harvey Bullock: Atlantis? I thought that was just a gimmick.
    Aquaman: Gimmick?
    Harvey Bullock: Mad Hatter ain't from Wonderland, is he?
• Possibly to Fantasy Kitchen Sink-levels in Digger.
  Ganesh: The Earth is so old, and home to so many strange things, that there is hardly an inch of ground that was never home to a shrine, or a god, or a battle, or some magical oddity. Even under the ground, you yourself have said, there are old gods, old prophecies, old lost things. It is not odd that this bound god should be here, in this place. If anything, it is odd that we are not constantly hip-deep in such magical echoes of the past.
• The overarching plot of both Fables and Jack of Fables is, of course, that all fictional characters really exist and are living in New York. Jack of Fables introduces characters that represent literary devices, the most amusing of which is probably the Pathetic Fallacy. Characters introduced have included Snow White and her sister Rose Red, Beauty and the Beast, The Big Bad Wolf, The Frog Prince, Bluebeard, Pinocchio, Jack the Giant Killer, Prince Charming, Little Boy Blue, Old King Cole, Ichabod Crane of Sleepy Hollow fame, and many more. And that's just the comic, the game adds Mr. Toad, Bloody Mary, Tiny Tim, The Little Mermaid and the Jersey Devil (amongst others) to the mix.
• While Fine Print takes place in a world once ruled by the gods of Classical Mythology, nowadays what remains of The Old Gods have been forced to adapt, most of them being the very angelic Cupids and demon-like Succubi and Incubi. One of the Cubi families are the Morningstars, Lucifer being its patriarch.
• Hellboy is this trope, except when he's fighting Nazis, who are more often than not allied with the supernatural anyway.
• iZombie. It's got the titular zombie, a ghost, a group of vampires, and a were-terrier. And this is all in the first two issues.
• Word of God says The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen deliberately plays on this (it's less that all myths are true, instead that all fiction is true).
• Marvel Comics:
  • In the Marvel Universe, you have Thor and Hercules able to work together. Heck, in the Marvel Universe, all pantheons are real. Their leaders have the occasional meeting, for crises such as, say; Skrull invasions? In fact, the approach taken by Marvel seems to be that everything they have ever published — not just the superhero comics, but horror, science fiction, romance, western, humor etc. are all true and part of the same setting — details to be worked out on a case by case basis. Yes, even Howard the Duck.
  • Dracula (Marvel Comics): In the Marvel Universe, Dracula and his nemesis Abraham Van Helsing really existed, with Bram Stoker's novel being a fictionalized account of real events. Lampshaded in an issue of Doctor Strange, where, upon being told that Dracula is behind an attack on Avengers Mansion, Monica Rambeau reacts in disbelief and assumes Strange is joking.
  • This was the original premise of The Eternals, before they were shoehorned into the mainstream Marvel Universe. The Jack Kirby series had these beings and their enemies the Deviants, mistaken for gods and monsters and inspiring all of humanity's myths, legends and ancient religions. When they got switched to the Fantasy Kitchen Sink of the MU, they were relegated to having merely been mistaken for actually existing gods.
• The Sandman:
  • This is a series where we learn that not only are all myths true, they themselves take a backseat to an even deeper and all-encompassing group of seven siblings known as The Endless, who embody seven big forces powering all the mythos throughout the entire universe.
  • Dream is seen interacting with Greek deities, Satan himself, the cast of A Midsummer Night's Dream among many others. In one comic, Daniel Hall wanders into the Dreaming and encounters Eve, Cain and Abel. They each tell him a story, Eve tells a slightly altered version of the Book of Genesis, and Abel tells the biblical story of Cain and Abel. When Matthew the raven asks if they are the actual biblical figures, and how their life stories are supposed to fit in with the Big Bang and evolution, Abel says "Well... this wasn't exactly Earth..." before Cain cuts him off.
• Smite, just like its game. See its entry in the Video Games section for more info.
• Teen Titans: The Elseworlds Titans: Scissors, Paper, Stone features a character who has this trope as a superpower. Jamadagni Renuka is a magician who is able to cast spells from any system of magic — even systems that explicitly contradict each other, or aren't commonly perceived as magic. She knows this, and she doesn't actually believe in any of it, but everything still works for her. The entire story of the crossover is her attempt to stop a disaster she foresees by invoking a super team origin — specifically, the start of the Wolfman-Perez Titans — because that would mean the good guys would win.
• Wisdom: Rudiments of Wisdom: Lampshaded in Issue #4.
  Maureen Raven: Oh, for God's sake, the I Ching is true? Is there anything that isn't true?

Fairy Tales

• In "Sleeping Beauty", when the prince comes and asks after the castle, he gets a whole slew of false answers; although one old man does know the truth, it's not the popular one.
  Everyone answered according as they had heard. Some said that it was a ruinous old castle, haunted by spirits.
  Others, That all the sorcerers and witches of the country kept there their Sabbath or night's meeting.
  The common opinion was: That an ogre lived there, and that he carried thither all the little children he could catch, that he might eat them up at his leisure, without anybody being able to follow him, as having himself only the power to pass through the wood.

Fan Works

• Cosmic Warriors, an AU Sailor Moon retelling, the author starts the story off with the first villain Usagi faces being a reincarnated hero from Irish mythology, Diarmuid Ua Duibhne.
• A Crooked Man: Johann explains to the former Hellions that the Afterlife, Heaven, Hell, Demons, God, and "a ton of stuff in between" are all true.
• Diaries of a Madman plays around with this. Several human myths are actually true, such as Merlin, but others such as the Ancient Greek goddess Athena are actually the subject of Demythification.
• Fate of the Clans: Even figures from myth actually existed and are able to be summoned as Servants. They are even able to be in possession of what was described in their legends.
• Harbinger (Finmonster) (Danny Phantom, ParaNorman):
  • The Reapers include several death gods and goddesses, like Anubis and Baron Samedi.
  • Ember is a banshee, which is an agent of the Fates (who have numerous identities in different cultures) in this universe.
• In Hearts of Ice, Ranma and Akane run into all kind of Eastern deities and mythological creatures. Shampoo meets up with an old Chinese divine dragon. Akane gets stranded in the Kami Plane, works as a bodyguard by Yuki-Onna, is trained by a Tengu and meets Susano-O. Ranma meets Emma-O and makes a deal with a Phoenix. And so on.
• How the Light Gets In:
  • Discussed when Dean is trying to brief Team Flash on the supernatural.
    Joe West: Just how many things are there?
    Dean: Witches, Ghosts, vampires, ghouls, shapeshifters, hellhounds, demons, angels. It's all real. Name an urban legend and I'll tell you if it's real.
    Wally West: (instantly) Zombies.
    Dean: Yep. Real.
    Wally West: Holy Shit.
  • Unicorns, however, are fake. Or possibly extinct, depending on who you ask.
• Infinity Train: Seeker of Crocus: During the Trip to the Cyan Desert Car, Chloe confronts Anubis who reveals that the beings who blessed her cloak (The Cloak of Marchosias and Wepwawet) are real. Upon this revelation, Lexi is ecstatic because this means mythologies of different civilizations were created by people who happened to board the Train throughout the millennia, not to mention that demons are also real. Chapters later, Wyn tells Tony Clark that the gods and demons go by different names on the Train: the Numine and the Goetias, and passengers who are lucky enough to meet them can be given contracts ("aligned" for a Numine and a "covenant" for a Goetia).
• Intelligence Factor: According to Giratina, all of the legendary Pokémon are real, and even myths with no basis in reality can become real thanks to Infinity Energy.
• Mortified: It's all but stated that all of the earth's myths are related to ghosts and the Infinite Realms, via the natural portals between the real world and the Ghost Zone. For example, Ereshkigal, the core of the Ghost Zone, has also been called Hades and Hell, the Ancients were once known as the Anunnaki during the time of Ancient Sumeria, and they were once attacked by a sorceress named Inanna who tried to conquer the Ghost Zone, referencing the famous myth of the Mesopotamian goddess Inanna's descent into the underworld.
• My Lesbian Life with Monster Girls: Monster Yurisume: In one chapter, Froze mentions that her species, the Fenrir, inspired Inuit Mythology about the great wolf Amarok, and later, Iormu states that she dated Thor, and the story of their breakup was blown out of proportion and eventually became the Ragnarok myth.
• Ned Stark Lives, after the appearance of the Others, the Night's King, the Stranger, dragons and so many creatures of tales, many characters are starting to wonder if other stories they were told by their elders were true as well.
• The Night Unfurls: Surprisingly, around half of the myths or legends about the Good Hunter have some truth to it, while the other half is either false or not confirmed.
  • A popular notion amongst the populace is that Sir Kyril can sense ill intent somehow. While it is true that Kyril is very observant, thanks to his accumulated combat experience from the Night of the Hunt, it is not explicitly shown that he can detect malicious ki/energy/intent.
  • Another notion is that Sir Kyril drinks the blood of his enemies to harvest their strength, or similarly, his Saw Cleaver drinks the blood of the traitors and the faithless. Although the two do not directly ingest the blood of his foes, and it is unknown whether the "rally" mechanic works the same way in the waking world as in Bloodborne (i.e. regaining health within a window of opportunity while continuously attacking an enemy), this is exactly what he does in Yharnam. To elaborate, his means of recovering health, levelling up, and purchasing consumables either directly or indirectly involve blood, as in, the Old Blood.
  • At the beginning of the story, Kyril has racked up a high body count of orc and goblin kind, leading to many believing that he had an intense hatred of them. In fact, he defies What Measure Is a Non-Human? and does not hold a grudge of any kind.
  • While not confirmed by the populace, the notion that Sir Kyril is nigh unkillable is certainly true, thanks to his Resurrective Immortality.
  • Some say that Kyril is a demon in human form, which is not true unless you equate "demon" with a certain slug/squid-like creature.
  • For the more absurd ones, there are stories about Kyril occasionally taking people, including teenagers like Soren, as a Human Sacrifice. This is simply not true.
• The Harry Potter fanfic One World, dramatically expands the list of mythical creatures that exist in the Harry Potter universe due to research on various myths. Thus far Hogwarts has a professor that's a Drow, Selkies and Knuckers in Black Lake, Dungeons & Dragons was invented by a former Cursebreaker that lost his magic, and Voldemort has been shown to negotiate with devils and demons.
• Percy Jackson: An Age Gone By: Like in canon, multiple pantheons are confirmed to be real. Just to name a few, the Persian, Greek and Egyptian pantheons are all confirmed to be real.
• RWBY: Reckoning shows that Adam and Eve were created, not by God, but by an oppressive species known only as the Founders. Adam grew tired of seeing humankind suffer under their rule, and decided to rebel. In the end, Adam and Eve were forced to construct a galactic portal, and escape to an uninhabited planet, armed with an array of Dust crystals.
• Silent Partner, Unfinished Business: Once you know about Shinigami, nothing else can be ruled out.
  Misa: And like, I know, okay, vampires aren't real. [...] Actually, I DON'T know vampires aren't real. Like, gods of death are real. And magic has to be real. So, like, maybe? Let me start over. I know that there is a very small chance vampires are real, and if they are, that I know any.
• Son of the Seven Kingdoms combines the mythology of A Song of Ice and Fire and The Elder Scrolls and makes it nearly everything real: the Others are Alduin's servants, vampires and Mythic Dawn want to get their hands into an Elder Scroll, Daenerys, William and Arya can use Dragon Shouts...
• Son of the Western Sea takes the premise of Percy Jackson and the Olympians to the logical extreme.The Shinto Pantheon and members of the Tuatha de Danaan have appeared while the Celestial Bureaucracy, the Hindu Pantheon, the Egyptian gods and the Koshchei have all been confirmed as existing. And those are just the ones mentioned so far.
• In The Legend of Zelda fanfic Til the Sun Grows Cold and the Stars Grow Old, all of the myths of Hyrule are proven to be true.
• The Ultimate Evil: With a dose of Crossover Cosmology added in the mix. The second installment reveals that the mother of the Demon Sorcerers is Tiamat who has taken part in every major continental/biota cataclysm on Earth. After her husband and Other Apsu's death, Typhon had her birth for him the Demon Sorcerers in exchange for the vengeance she wanted. However, instead of dying like in the original myth, she hid herself after she regretted setting the Demon Sorcerers to wreak destruction on her enemies.

Films — Animation

• A few Doraemon Film Series films will feature legends of the past which, as the gang found out later, turns out to be very real.
  • Doraemon: Nobita's Great Adventure in the South Seas reveals that Sea Monsters in legends, such as the Behemoth, Kraken, Leviathan, Mokele-mbembe, are actually genetically-modified monstrosities created by the Evilutionary Biologist Dr. Clone after time-traveling from the 22nd Century to the Golden Age of Piracy, which his benefactor, Mr. Cash the billionaire, is funding in order to be sold to the future black market.
  • Doraemon: Nobita's Chronicles of the Moon Exploration reveals a race of aliens from the moon who had existed for an entire millennia, who will regularly visit earth every few hundred years to find a new home after their world was destroyed by a dictatorial warlord. One of them, Luna, arrived in Japan in Meiji times and is actually the inspiration behind the myth of Princess Kaguya from The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter.
• Monsters, Inc.: Cryptids such as the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot are actually ex-citizens of Monstropolis who have been banished to the human world.
• Tom and Jerry's Giant Adventure: Jack is startled to find out that fairy tale characters exist outside of the story books and that he's The Chosen One who is destined to slay the giant.

Films — Live-Action

• The DC Extended Universe establishes that Classical Mythology is real, with Zeus having created humanity. However, other legends with seemingly no relation also exist in this setting like underwater kingdom of Atlantis, South-American gods like the Enchantress and her brother Incubus, the New Gods of Apokolips that attempted to invade Earth millennia ago before being stopped by an alliance between humans, Amazons and Atlanteans, and according to Word of God, Native American legends are real too with one of Wonder Woman's companions in World War I actually being a demigod from Blackfoot myths. And that is not even counting the alien civilizations such as Krypton and the several races that compose the Green Lantern Corps.
• Ghostbusters (1984): Played for Laughs as Winston's job interview with the Ghostbusters involves Janine asking whether he believes in a Long List of legends and myths, including the Loch Ness monster and the theory of Atlantis, with Winston answering "If there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say." Played for Drama later when Ray and Winston have a discussion about the potential end of the world.
  Ray: Every ancient religion has its own myth about the end of the world.
  Winston: Myth? Ray, has it ever occurred to you that maybe the reason we've been so busy lately is 'cause the dead have been rising from the grave?
• Indiana Jones. The Jewish story of the Ark of the Covenant and the medieval Christian tale of the Holy Grail are both proven to be unambiguously true. But so are some elements of Hinduism and the legend of the Crystal Skulls. Not to mention stories of extraterrestrial visitation, and theories about Ancient Astronauts. Despite all this, it remains a tradition for Indy to initially express unabashed skepticism with each new installment before he's inevitably proven wrong.
  Pooka: You know, I kind of want to know how the cosmology of the Indiana Jones-verse works, given that it has, at least, an active Judeo-Christian God, active pagan gods, extraterrestrials, and psychic phenomena. And Nazis EVERYWHERE. It's like freaking Rifts.
• The TV-Movie series, The Librarian completely runs on this, especially since it's the Librarian's job to find and store all the world's legendary and mystical items in a hidden underground room in the Metropolitan Public Library so that they'll be safe and won't be used for evil purposes. The room literally has everything: Pandora's Box, The Golden Goose, the Shroud of Turn, Medusa's head, the Holy Grail, Poseidon's Trident, The Ark of the Covenant, The Spear of Destiny, Pan's pipes, H.G. Wells' time machine, Excalibur, etc.
• The Marvel Cinematic Universe establishes that at least three sets of ancient beliefs are true, though somewhat misinterpreted by humanity; the Norse gods (established in Thor), the Egyptian gods (established in Moon Knight), and the Greek gods (established in Thor: Love and Thunder). Wakanda also has its own set of (real) gods, while the Eternals are also shown to have been the inspiration for many human mythical figures. And all of these coexist with even more godlike beings, such as the Watchers, the Celestials, Dormammu, the Dweller-in-Darkness, and the Time Variance Authority.
• MonsterVerse: All but stated as of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), and it's explored a lot more in that film's novelization. It's implied that Ghidorah in particular and possibly other Titans are cases of this trope overlapping with One Myth to Explain Them All. Several of the Titans are named after, or might actually be the basis of, legendary deities. Of particular note are Leviathan, an unseen Titan which emerges from the Loch Ness, the Mokele-Mbembe (described in the novelization as having a mammoth-like trunk, glowing horn, and very large tail), and elephant-like Behemoth (which may or may not be the actual Behemoth). In the tie-in comic prequel Godzilla: Aftershock, the dead member of Godzilla's species in the previous film was known as Dagon by ancient Phoenicians (although the interpretation of Dagon as a sea god is questioned nowadays). It's also hinted in the novelization that the Hollow Earth influenced the lore of the Popul Vuh and Olympus in Greek myth. Chen says this almost word-for-word after seeing the ancient, underwater reliefs depicting Godzilla, Ghidorah, and other kaiju.
• The Mummy Trilogy establishes that the Egyptian gods existed and they cursed a priest by turning him into a mummy with immortality and unholy powers and an Akkadian warlord into a scorpion-like humanoid monstrosity. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor introduced yetis, Chinese sorcerers as well as a completely different type of mummy with the Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huangdi being able to manipulate the elements and transform into monsters. And if we count The Scorpion King series (which is a spin-off from the second movie), we can include Summerian mythology with the existence of an underworld guarded by the goddess Astarte, who has empowered her own champions to enforce her will and can be summoned using the Book of the Dead.
• Invoked in Oh, God! by God himself:
  Jerry (reading from a list of questions): "'Is Jesus Christ the son of God?'"
  God: "Jesus was my son. Buddha was my son. Mohammed, Moses, you, the man who said there was no room at the inn, was my son."
• Pirates of the Caribbean, which features zombies, Aztec and Greek (Calypso) gods, plus Davy Jones, the Kraken, the Fountain of Youth and working voodoo (done by Calypso).
• In the Sesame Street TV movie Big Bird in Japan, Big Bird sees a school's production ofThe Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. Later, he learns that the girl who he's been traveling with is the legendary Bamboo Princess. This turns out to be a bad thing, however, as she doesn't want to go back to the moon, where her memories-and those of all she met on earth, including her new friend Big Bird-will be erased.

Literature

• The Alteriens of Alterien are actually the reason humans created the legend of elves and fairies.
• In American Gods, all of the Old Gods of the various people that came to America exist, even if people no longer believe in them. Many of them are rather bitter about this.
• In Astral Dawn, Caspian learns the old myths and legends were inspired from beyond the mortal plane by the actual beings those myths and legends were based on.
• Baccano! gives us the Urban Legend of the Rail Tracer: a monster that slowly snatches up and devours the passengers of the train on which its tale is told on. Then a 3-way war breaks out over train-hijacking rights and... something decides to start picking off instigators and leaving their twisted and mutilated corpses. Turns out that the Rail Tracer is the entirely human and supposedly dead train conductor that first told the story, and doesn't particularly like people messing up his train. Did we mention that he's also a not-entirely-sane assassin that likes a good Roaring Rampage of Revenge?
• The Bifrost Guardians by Mickey Zucker Reichert is another all myths are true, with the melding of technology to Norse myths to Christianity.
• Stephen Marley's Chia Black Dragon trilogy Sorceress, Spirit Mirror, and Mortal Mask take place in 2nd century China, but there also appear Indian Buddhists, ancient Egyptians (in the backstory) and a few Christians. It is suggested that the mythologies and afterlives of all four religions (Chinese, Buddhist, Egyptian and Christian) all exist. In addition to Stephen Marley's own original myths and creatures, of course.
• In the universe of Christopher Moore's books the First Nation Trickster God Coyote is the younger brother of the Egyptian deity Anubis, Jesus plays poker with an upstart Cargo Cult deity and there are vampires, djinn and angels, among other things.
• Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian has a number of gods that would, in Howard's world become the basis of more modern deities. Crom, Lir, Babd, Macha, and Nemain are all Celtic, the Hyborian Mitra becomes Mithra, who's also something of a Crystal Dragon Jesus, the Shemite Ishtar becomes the Babylonian Ishtar, the Turanian/Hyrkanian Erlik becomes the Mongolian Erlik and the Stygian Set seems to be the basis for both the Egyptian Set and Apep. There are also a few purely fictional ones he borrowed from writer friends, including some Lovecraft Lite.
• The events of The Daevabad Trilogy kick off when Nahri, a conwoman in 18th-century Cairo, holds what she is absolutely sure is a sham zar to exorcise a young girl with an unspecified mental ailment, fully confident that she is taking advantage of the old beliefs in djinn and ifrit to fleece the girl's family. Nahri is taken completely aback when an actual djinn shows up and proceeds to turn her entire life upside-down because djinn, magic, and many other mythical beings (including a few Ancient Egyptian gods) are absolutely real.
• The Dalemark Quartet by Diana Wynne Jones features its own in-universe pantheon and myths, all of which are far more real than people believe (and far more factual than recorded history).
• The Dark is Rising combines Celtic Mythology and Arthurian Legend with touches of Greek and Egyptian Mythology.
• Ancestral memories of the Homo lycanthropus species in Darker Than You Think by Jack Williamson are the basis for all legends of sorcerers, werewolves, other shapeshifters, vampires, malevolent gods, etc.
• To the utter lack of surprise of many, Digital Devil Story, the original source material for the famous Shin Megami Tensei video game series, features such specimens as Kerberos, Loki, Izanami, and Set.
• Terry Pratchett's Discworld series plays with this, like everything else.
  • The universe is itself shaped by belief — if enough people believe something is true, it becomes true. Hogfather explores the extremes of this idea with such characters as the Verruca Gnome and Bilius, the Oh God of Hangovers.
  • In Djelibeybi, as seen in Pyramids, the Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Egypt, all myths are true concerning their gods, which have been evolving and developing for seven thousand years. The priests are said to "never throw away a god in case they turn out to be useful" and to be able to "give headroom to a collection of ideas that would have made a theoretical physicist give in and hand in his badge" (paraphrased).
  • The Last Continent provides the trope name: there's a legend about a man who carries the universe in his sack, but then mentions there's a debate about whether the man should be in the bag or not.
• The Dresden Files loves this trope. Legendary creatures from the folklore of every part of the world exist, deities from all pantheons are real (though some aren't active anymore), functional magic is an everyday reality, etc. It is heavily implied that these things are not real because they are myths, but myths because they are real — people who had experiences with non-mortals told stories about them that the mortal world consumed. For example, Bram Stoker's Dracula was commissioned by the White Court vampires to educate people about the weaknesses of Black Court vampires, who were prevalent at the time (and it worked — Black Court vampires are very rare in the series). Also, Mab has an autographed, personalized original copy of Grimms' Fairy Tales. This relevant because a modified version of Gods Need Prayer Badly applies. In order to exist on Earth, mythical beings need people to know about them and are unable to manifest at all if they're totally forgotten. The belief of humans can also shape these beings, as Santa Claus is an aspect of Odin that he gained relatively recently, as the myth has gained prevalence in the mortal world.
• Dr. Greta Helsing: Legendary creatures from ghouls to demons live behind a Masquerade on Earth, and figures from multiple pantheons make appearances. Referenced when it's mentioned that an Egyptian Mummy can't safely visit Hell because, as an entity that's mostly Made of Magic from a different belief system, it would be metaphysically allergic to the place.
• In the Dune novels, the Bene Gesserit have a whole system of false myths called the Missionaria Protectiva. They purposely spread made-up prophecies that any member of their order can fulfill if needed. Thus, a member stranded on an otherwise hostile world can appear to be The Woman From the Prophecy.
• "The Egg" by Andy Weir discusses this trope. Upon learning that "you" are going to be reincarnated, the protagonist posits this must mean Hinduism had it right. God just says that all religions are right in their own way. Echoes of imagery and teaching is scattered throughout the story, such as God identifying the protagonist as "my child", an Abrahamic idea, or the Buddhist teachings of sunyata or anatman, in which there is no true separation between one person and another.
• In K. A. Applegate's Everworld series, the Top Gods from various world mythologies got together and created the titular Everworld, moving there along with a random collection of their followers. We meet gods from Norse Mythology, Aztec Mythology, Celtic Mythology, Egyptian Mythology, the Yoruba religion and Classical Mythology — both kinds, since the Greeks and Romans both exist and hate each other. Also a few characters from Arthurian stories. (And some aliens.) We even get a scene where Hel, Norse goddess of the underworld, mentions that her territory borders those of Hades and Ahriman, and that she's already conquered Ereshkigal's. In a different example of this trope, Galahad actively wonders if he's "real," and notes that while he can remember getting the Holy Grail, Percival can as well, alluding to the different versions of the legend.
• In Anthony C. Gilbert's Farther Up and Farther In all myths are true about life after death. Except, apparently, the belief that there isn't any, because the narrator is an atheist but gets sent to Hell, the Christian afterlife being the default for Westerners without other positive beliefs. Escaping from Hell (!) leads to a Crossover Cosmology where he meets Freja, Pan, Monkey and others: the final message (logically, given the opening premise) is that All Gods Are One and we are One with them.
• In Matthew Laurence's Freya series, this is completely true for gods, and only gods. The only magical creatures and items in the world are those associated with or created by these deities, so unless a god decides to make a vampire, there won't be any.
• In God Complex, from the first chapters alone, it's clear that figures like Jesus, Hera and Freya all exist in the same world. With the premise that sets up THE God as being dead and other pantheons vying for his position, it becomes clear that we'll see many gods from here on out.
• Harry Potter:
  • Generally anything considered a silly myth in-series will turn out to exist like the Philosopher's Stone, the Chamber of Secrets, and the Deathly Hallows, the latter of which being the subject of a wizard fairytale.
  • Zig-zagged with Luna Lovegood, who's treated like an idiot for believing in unproven creatures in a world where countless magical creatures exist. Word of God said she ended up proving the existence of some of these creatures when she grew up.
• The Harold Shea series of short stories features a multiverse much like that of The Number of The Beast.
• Robert A. Heinlein's later novels, beginning with the novel The Number of the Beast (though he used the concept almost 40 years earlier in his short story Elsewhen), deal with the World As Myth, and expand it to the multiverse. In his multiverse, All Stories Are True and Exist, somewhere — and if you've read the stories, it's possible to visit the universe in which the story takes place. He shows this by having his four protagonists visit several universes, albeit unknowing. A side effect of this is that all worlds are part of a story, somewhere... and that anyone who writes a story has become the literal God of the universe the story creates.
• In Hell's Kitchen Sink a lot of myths and legends are either true or somewhat true. This is because the collective human minds keep forming and nourishing them. Because of the masquerade not many people know of this.
• In His Dark Materials, many divining methods are actually just "talking to Dust", the sentient matter forming most of the universe.
• The House of Shattered Wings: Fallen angels, Vietnamese deities, and ancient Greek Furies all appear, and it's mentioned that many other mythical beings exist.
• In I Knocked Up Satan's Daughter, the afterlife is described as being as diverse as Earth.
  • Heaven is described as being like a first-world country that treats its human slaves nicer than most, but with little hope of earning their freedom.
  • Hell is described as being like a former prison-colony for Heaven, now populated by the descendents of their population. They use human slaves (even retrieving more through succubi), and are even famous for treating them poorly, but they are sometimes set free by their masters.
  • Valhalla would use its human slaves for gladiator-based entertainment before they decided not to use slaves anymore.
• The basis of Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! Trilogy is that all conspiracy theories are true, especially the ones that contradict each other.
• In the Immortals After Dark series by Kresley Cole, this is explicitly stated to be the case. One character says that every myth is an example of when some being in the Lore screwed up and let humans catch them existing.
• InCryptid: Played straight, played with and subverted on several occasions.
  • Lamia are not actually snake gods who can bestow power on people who sacrifice humans to them. The residual magic they carry from passing through dimensions can be harvested though, and Naga provides Alice with Power Tattoos.
  • Although she's a succubus, Elsie is a lesbian.
  • The Seal of Solomon binds demons and certain dead things but succubi and incubi are not actually demons. The D&D manuals get it wrong, possibly due to cryptids in their editing and publishing departments.
  • Odysseus was real, but Ithaca is actually Another Dimension (and he may not have been human).
  • There are hellish dimensions, but no indication that they're where souls go after death (the ones who don't become ghosts, that is). There's no sign of a "heaven" dimension either.
• Children's author Robin Jarvis loves this trope. The ending of the Wyrd Museum series features the deaths of the Nornir by the Spear of Antioch, as well as the ice giants being finally defeated by the Eye of Balor on a spinning weathercock.
• While the Fantasy Kitchen Sink of Kitty Norville makes this trope fairly self-evident, a particularly effective and even insightful example occurs in book two when Ahmed explains that Daniel of the lion's den was really a werelion and Enkidu of Gilgamesh was a werecreature as well.
  This was thousands of years ago, remember. Humankind and animalkind were closer then — our years in the Garden together were not so long ago. And our kind, the lycanthropes, were the bridge between the two...It saddens me that the tribes in this country do not tell the old tales to one another. If we gathered to tell stories and drink more, there would not be so much fighting, yes?
• In Krampus: The Yule Lord, Krampus and Santa Claus are deities from Norse Mythology (apparently). However, angels and the monotheistic god also exist.
• Many fairy tales (if not all) are real tales from The Land of Stories.
• In Douglas Adams' The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, all the Norse gods and legends are true. Also involves a subversion of Gods Need Prayer Badly, as Thor comments at one point that humanity created the gods, but just because we no longer need them doesn't mean they go away. I Ching also has a truth, as do other "impossibilities."
• In Orson Scott Card's The Lost Gate the Westillian Families are the basis of all Indo-European pantheons. It is inferred that other cultures' deities, including the Abrahamic one, have similar origins.
• In Masques shapeshifters exist, but they can turn into many things, wolves being only one. And silver is not an effective weapon against them, iron is much more of a problem. It is played straight in-universe, as more or less all myths, stories and old tales that are mentioned prove to be true in some way or the other. And then there are dragons. Undead are so commonplace the protagonist believes in them from the beginning.
• In The Mirrorworld Series, All Fairy Tales Are True. Even Sleeping Beauty shows up!
• Lampshaded explicitly several times in both The Mortal Instruments and The Infernal Devices. Although vampires, werewolves, faeries, and warlocks exist they are all descendants of either angels or demons, and since no pagan gods appear, it's more like Christianity is True.
• True conceptually in No Need for a Core?, as the author has pulled liberally from many myths and stories including several gods from different religions. They way in which they are used may vary greatly from the original source materials.
• True in John Barnes's One for the Morning Glory. It's lampshaded as one of the distinguishing marks of the kingdom, to distinguish it from lands that are merely actual.
• In Erika Griffin's novel The One Who Waited, Alice ponders this during the course of the story, as she comes to realize that there are such things as Boogeymen and wonders if other monsters might exist as well.
• Arguably one of the most influential pioneers of this trope, the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan utilizes this trope as the main foundation of his extended universe. Stretching across the Percy Jackson books and all of their spin-offs, such pantheons and mythologies like the Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Norse are all real, and all of their deities exist within one world. It is even implied that the Abrahamic God and Jesus exist and interact with these other pantheons.
• This is the premise of the novel Out of Their Minds by Clifford Simak.
• In Prince Caspian from The Chronicles of Narnia: Caspian was always taught that the "old Narnians" were myths and fairy tales, then he learns that they are in fact real. The appearance of the Pevensies and Aslan also turns out to be this for many old Narnians.
• From Principia Discordia:
  Greater Poop: Is Eris true?
  Malaclypse the Younger: Everything is true.
  GP: Even false things?
  M2: Even false things are true.
  GP: How can that be?
  M2: I don't know man, I didn't do it.
• In Rainbow Mars by Larry Niven, all of the Martian legends are true, from H. G. Wells to Edgar Rice Burroughs.
• S. M. Stirling's works:
  • Emberverse: While not exactly working together the Christian, Celtic and Norse pantheons are all backing the Arthurtype hero in various ways against the Religion of Evil for Eldritch Abominations.
  • In the Shadowspawn series, the title beings are the basis for just about every legend of magic or monsters (especially vampires and werecreatures) there is.
• In The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, all deities in religions and myths are either part of the Elder Race, or are their children born after the fall of their homeland Danu Talis (which is actually Atlantis).
• The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries: In addition to vampires, there are Maeneds, shifters, Weres (not just wolves), fairies, demons, witches, goblins, and even vampire Elvis.
• Lizzie visits several worlds in Spider Circus and encounters werewolves, vampires, selkies and more. It seems that people who can travel to other worlds are responsible for the spreading of these myths.
• The Spiral Series doesn't restrict itself to historical myths. Everything that has, can or even will be imagined can be present at some point within the Spiral.
• In the Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms by Mercedes Lackey, all fairy tales are true, not least because a magical force known as the Tradition actively works to make them come true. Those with a good grasp of fairy tale stock plots can use this to their advantage. However, the myths that come true are usually native to the context of the kingdom, and when they aren't, the savvy characters know someone has actively interfered with the Tradition.
• The setting of A Tale of the Unwithering Realm is The Multiverse with numerous Alternate History versions of Earth, where critical parts of Biblical history went differently. Pretty much every fictional being from ancient or medieval imagination is real somewhere — there are worlds inhabited by the Svartalfar, Nagas, or the creatures from medieval travellers' tall tales (headless humans with faces on their chest, men with a single giant foot, etc.)
• Technomancer by MK Gibson: In addition to God, the Devil, angels, and demons, we also have the Norse pantheon, The Fair Folk, and Cthulhu Mythos playing roles in the story.
• In Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next and Nursery Crime series all fictional characters are real(ish) and exist in a parallel universe called the Well of Stories. Fictional characters do have a few traits that differentiate them from "real" people (it's complicated), but in the Bookworld all stories are true.
• The Tough Guide to Fantasyland: Without exception, every legend that the Tour comes across will be both factually accurate, very descriptive, and relevant to the events of the story.
• Trail of Lightning: After the Big Water flooded the world, the Dinétah nation began encountering all the monsters and legendary figures from Navajo oral history.
• In Brandon Sanderson's The Well of Ascension, the Twist Ending is that the prophecies have been deliberately altered by a powerful being in order to manipulate humanity/the heroes into freeing it.
• Underworlds: All the ancient mythologies are real here, though in different realms, with passages allowing access between them.
• John C. Wright specializes in this: both his War of the Dreaming and Orphans of Chaos series have appearances by every figure in ancient lore and myth.
• Young Wizards plays with this trope, in that many myths were inspired by the non-mythical actions of the godlike Powers That Be. For example, the extremely powerful Winged Defender is the inspiration for (among other things) Thor, Athena, Prometheus and the archangel Michael.

Live-Action TV

• Babylon 5:
  • Averted in the episode "A Late Delivery from Avalon" — an arrival on the Babylon 5 station claims to be King Arthur, brought back among humanity after a long hiatus (when he was "taken to Avalon" on a mysterious "ship"). There is actual discussion among the main characters as to whether this could be true, since there was already a known case where the Vorlons did abduct a historical figure (Jack the Ripper) and used him to do their bidding in other times ("Comes the Inquisitor"). But it turns out he was from the present time, suffering trauma-induced delusion from being the officer who fired the first shot that started the Earth-Minbari War years ago.
  • Then (perhaps) played straight in Babylon 5: The Lost Tales, where a man possessed by a demon turns up on the station.
• Subverted as a Running Gag throughout Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Despite living in a world where vampires, werewolves, witches, dragons, demons, and zombies are all real and have been encountered by the main cast at one point or another, everyone agrees completely unanimously that leprechauns aren't real. Unfortunately, Santa is also real, a child-eating demon who comes down chimneys. Double Subversion as of the Season 10 comics; as it turns out, leprechauns do exist.
• Charmed (1998):
  • Angels? Check. Vampires? Check. Titans? Check. Leprechauns? Check. Demons? Check. Genies? Check. Human representations of the animals in the Chinese calendar? Sure, why the hell not?
  • An interesting case occurs with Pandora's Box. In the season 3 episode "Sin Francisco", Leo claims a box holding the seven deadly sins inspired the legend of Pandora's Box, implying it didn't exist. The Season 7 episode "Little Box of Horrors" would have the Charmed Ones deal with the actual Pandora's Box.
• You got a little bit of everything in The Chronicle. The show picks up on the plot line in Men in Black that everything written in tabloids is true and runs with it. The very first episode has an ugly-looking creature that kills dogs. The creature turns out to be a priest from a peaceful alien culture who only kills small animals for sustenance. It also introduces a half-man/half-pig who works in the Chronicle archives. One of the main characters is a multiple-abductee. Another episode features a technopathic ghost.
• Doctor Who: After decades of episodes, it's almost hard to think of a myth that hasn't turned out to have a factual basis — with the caveat that it always (well, almost always) turns out to be Alien Fair Folk or something similar. Examples include the Mara, more than one Minotaur, and several of the aliens' fairy-tales and legends.
• Fringe started off seeming like a Spiritual Successor to The X-Files, focusing on a unit of the FBI investigating seemingly paranormal phenomena and switching between Monster of the Week episodes and Myth Arc episodes. However, it's gradually revealed that everything paranormal is part of one pattern that began when Walter crossed into an alternate universe to save that universe's version of his son. In other words, what seems paranormal is only pseudoscientific. Also, in one episode, Walter makes it clear that while he believes in many things, he draws the line at ghosts.
• Legacies takes this approach. While the parent shows The Vampire Diaries and The Originals only had vampires, werewolves, witches, and ghosts, this show introduces many other mythical creatures, such as dragons, gargoyles, dryads, zombies, necromancers. The characters themselves point out that they are woefully unprepared to deal with things they didn't even know were real. The explanation seems to be that a golem called Malivore trapped most supernatural creatures in a magical prison, while simultaneously wiping out all memories and any non-fictionalized records of them from the world. And yes, the list of creatures also includes Santa.
• The Librarians 2014 has its heroes encounter beings from mythology, fairy tales, literature and urban legend. The Minotaur, dragons, a genie, Dorian Gray, the big bad wolf, Santa Claus, King Arthur's knights, a demon, Frankenstein's monster, The Queen of Hearts, Sherlock's nemesis Moriarty and Shakespeare's Prospero have all boasted screen time. Word of God from series creator John Rogers is that all the mythologies we've heard of are correct, but maybe not the exact version we've heard, allowing the writers to draw upon all of those for characters to appear in the show.
• In Lost Girl, all mythological creatures (including phoenixes and unicorns) are real and are really Fae. Kenzi takes it all in stride, then becomes absolutely terrified when she realizes this means Baba Yaga is real. Later, nobody can find any references to the Garuda, because the race actually predates the Fae and no myths or legends of them were written or told. Which is odd, because Garuda IS a real figure in Hindu Mythology and enemy of the Naga, just as in the show.
• The Outer Limits (1995): In "Under the Bed", the child psychiatrist Dr. Jon Holland figures out that various myths about child snatching monsters such as trolls, the boogeyman and Baba Yaga were inspired by real creatures. Furthermore, their ability to shapeshift inspired the Hindu myth of Rakshasa. This, coupled with the fact that they move around in the cover of darkness, has allowed them to (mostly) hide their existence from humanity. One such creature has been snatching children in Jon's home town Buford, including his brother, since at least the early 1800s, taking one each month on the night of the full moon. No one notices the area's far, far higher than average number of child abductions until Jon and his girlfriend Detective Caitlin Doyle are on the case in true Mulder and Scully style. The creature turns to stone when exposed to direct sunlight but there is another lurking under a little girl's bed in Paris.
• Paranormal (2020): Each episode presents a different mystery that seems to have supernatural elements, and does turn out to actually have supernatural elements, despite Rifaat's efforts to convince himself otherwise.
• Primeval: Or at least some of them. The animals that travel through the anomalies explain gaps in the fossil record, Lazarus taxa, the Loch Ness monster, mermaids, chupacabra, dragons, sea serpents and other monsters, thunder birds, Egyptian mythical beasts and even gremlins and haunted houses.
• The final Quatermass serial has stone circles (which do nothing; the stones only mark the places where people congregated in the past) around the world becoming activated; people congregate there (an activated race memory), expecting to be: contacted by aliens, "raptured" into heaven, "go to the planet", etc. Instead, they are "harvested" by an interstellar energy beam that reduces them to dust, with a tiny fraction lost to the beam. It is further suggested that all religions, and by extension, all of human politics, wars and history, have been the result of this race memory: to congregate and be harvested.
• Resident Alien: Harry confirms to Asta at the UFO conference all the reported aliens do exist (his people didn't get seen before apparently).
• Stated verbatim by Jace in Shadowhunters. The series indeed has vampires, warlocks, werewolves, and countless demons.
• In Supernatural, everything but Bigfoot, and possibly unicorns, has been confirmed to exist in some shape or form. Makes you feel sorry for the poor bastards who exist in that reality, given how practically every monster, folklore, wives tale, myth and legend either hates humanity or loves to eat humanity. Angels, demons, werewolves, zombies, gods (including the big cheese Himself), ghosts, witches, fairies, ghouls, djinn, shapeshifters, hellhounds, banshees, golems, and wendigos, among others, have all had screentime at one point. "Wendigo", one of the first episodes, highlights how monster hunters are aware of this trope. The main characters interview a witness to a monster attack who swears it was a demon, even though he fears they'll think him crazy. When they leave him, they discuss matter-of-factly how it couldn't be a demon because a demon wouldn't have needed to open the door; when they find out it's a wendigo later, their first reaction is "But you don't get wendigos in this part of the country."
• The Twilight Zone (1985):
  • In "Ye Gods", Todd Ettinger discovers that Cupid, Megaera, Bacchus, Jupiter, and all of the other gods and demigods of Classical Mythology really exist.
  • In "Tooth and Consequences", Dr. Myron Mandel learns that the Tooth Fairy really exists when he appears in his office and grants his wish to be respected and loved by his patients.
  • In "The Leprechaun-Artist", three teenage boys named Buddy, Richie and J.P. discover that Leprechauns are real when they capture one named Shawn McGool and he is forced to grant them Three Wishes.
  • In "The Last Defender of Camelot", Tom learns that Merlin and the rest of the figures from Arthurian Legend really existed when he is hired by Morgan le Fay to bring Lancelot to her.
• It's almost a guarantee in the Ultra Series that whenever a myth or legend plays a role in an episode, it is 100% real and involves a kaiju that will be battled by the series' title Ultra. And about half of the time, the Ultramen themselves are connected to or inspired the myth.
• Warehouse 13 features a team of government agents working at a secret government warehouse containing an endless array of magically enchanted objects known as "Artifacts" which usually cause all manner of fantastical things to occur when their effects are activated. In many cases, the myths aren't exactly true as much as they are slightly fictionalized accounts of the effects from the latest recovered Artifact that the Warehouse agents can conveniently pass off to the public as fairy tales and the like to protect the Masquerade.
• Wizards of Waverly Place seems to be something of a kitchen sink fantasy series. Always Played for Laughs.

Other

• Steampunk-themed band Abney Park explores this in many of their songs, most notably in the aptly named "All the Myths are True".
• BIONICLE has made liberal use of this, though most of the myths have been distorted through the ages, and the rest have other things keeping them from being perfectly straight examples:
  • In the first few years of the franchise, each time a new threat appeared, the Turaga elders had a legend ready to explain their presence. Eventually, the Toa got rather annoyed with being kept out of the loop until the last minute, finally getting the Turaga to explain just where they got all their information:
  • The original backstory said that the Great Spirit brought the Matoran out of darkness to the island of Mata Nui. We later find out that it was actually the Turaga who rescued them (as Toa Metru) from their ruined city of Metru Nui, they just credited the Spirit with giving them the strength and abilities to do so. (They also treated Metru Nui's existence as a Greatest Story Never Told to keep the Matoran from remembering and getting homesick.)
  • One story said that poor workers were sent to the dreaded realm of Karzahni to be punished. In truth, poor workers were sent to Karzahni to be fixed; it's just that Karzahni was a really crappy healer and he never let anyone leave.
  • One legend that isn't real is that of the monster Irnakk — that is, it wasn't real, until the Piraka entered an area that brought worst fears to life... (Thankfully, Irnakk only existed briefly before vanishing.)

Podcasts

• If a creature appeared anywhere in mythology, chances are it can be found within Residents of Proserpina Park. To give just one example, the finale of season two has Terry, a child of the Greek god Hades, leading the heroes on a quest to find a vetala, a ghoul-like creature from Hindu Mythology, and the heroes also have their faithful lion dogs, creatures from Chinese Mythology, at their beck and call.

Roleplay

• Solomon Academy has this as the premise — every mythology is true, and the characters are the children/descendants of mythical beings. It pulls from the expected mythos like Greco-Roman, Egyptian, and Norse, but also less standard ones like Celtic and Aztec.

Tabletop Games

• The Eberron setting of Dungeons & Dragons has a version of this: in contrast to most settings in which Clerics derive their powers from one of a set of specific gods chosen by the DM and which definitely and demonstrably exist, in Eberron, anything a cleric believes in sufficiently works. Clerics can be devoted to abstract concepts (like "Justice") instead of specific gods, and there's at least one religion in which the followers know their god doesn't exist (yet) because they're in the process of building him.
• Pathfinder has very few myths that aren't at least partially rooted in truth. It makes sense when you consider this is a setting where some races live centuries and sufficiently powerful spellcasters can directly ask questions of the gods.
• There are many religions sharing the world of Pendragon, often with wildly differing beliefs about history and metaphysics. Each one is described by the books as if it was the objective truth, and each one can back up its claims with actual miracles.
• In RuneQuest, the different races and cultures each have their own religion, with mutually incompatible stories about the creation of the world and the nature of reality. However, in-game, all myths are true, and priests of the rival pantheons are equally powerful.
• Scion:
  • The gods of the old polytheistic pantheons are real, and you play one of their children. Second edition tweaks this; most of the gods are real, but some gods assume different aspects in different cultures. The Greek pantheon are the most notorious in this regard, also being the Etruscan and Roman gods in their other aspects.
  • In Scion 1e, however, the Abrahamic god is ultimately a facade for one of the Titans.
• Shadowrun has everything from Sasquatch to both Western and Eastern Dragons reappearing after 2012. And pretty much every tradition of magic actually works now and summons different spirits ranging from angels to kami to nature spirits.
• The World of Darkness:
  • There is a general World of Darkness skill called "Occult" which allows you to attempt to tell whether some myth is true or not. This is exceptionally valuable in Mage: The Ascension because of the nature of a mage's power: if they get it wrong, it may be correct for exactly as long as they're paying attention to it, then revert to the way it actually really is the moment they stop paying attention. This can be even worse than getting it wrong in the first place. Consider trapping a vampire in a corner by leaving a holy symbol in the middle of the room, then going out for coffee... with the vampire no longer trapped the moment your back is turned.
  • Subverted in Mage: The Awakening, where part of being a mage is sorting through which myths are true and which are not. Note that, in this case, "true" probably means "contains a tiny kernel of actual supernatural, historical or cosmic insight which was either implanted or leaked through into the human consciousness", while "not true" probably means "was deliberately fabricated by other mages in order to mislead those who would seek the truth, was deliberately fabricated by other mages in order to manipulate the course of human culture, or was just a myth that people came up with".
  • Fan-made Genius: The Transgression has a particularly weird variant with the concept of Bardos; Mania, the energy used by Genii to fuel their abilities, actually is raw creative and thinking made into energy, and as a result any idea or theory contains a large amount of it. When a theory or belief is proved false, all the Mania is unleashed and ends up creating a pocket dimension where the idea's concept is true. For example, when a satellite made it to Mars and confirmed that yes, the Red Planet was indeed inhabited, the resulting Mania created in a few minutes a Martian Empire who immediately proceeded to attempt an invasion.

Video Games

• Assassin's Creed:
  • According to this series, the Greco-Roman gods Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, among others, were actually an ancient and highly-advanced species of humanoid beings who evolved on Earth and created humans in their own image. The humans rebelled, led by Adam and Eve, who were human-precursor hybrids. The series plays around with a lot of ancient myths to fit a grand narrative.
  • Assassin's Creed: Odyssey in particular notes Atlantis as being an Isu (the species name of the precursor race) city, and features three Cyclopes, a Sphinx, Medusa and a Minotaur, revealed as Humans transformed by Isu artifacts.
• BlazBlue borrows seiðr (here rendered as "seithr"), as well as the symbolism of Ragnarök and Ratatoskr from Norse myth. It also has playable vampires and werewolves. Though the heaviest influence is Shinto, with Murakumo (Nu), Susano'o (Hakumen) and Orochi (Black Beast) being integral to the "Groundhog Day" Loop of Calamity Trigger, while Amaterasu (Master Unit) and Kusanagi (Mu) are central to the plot of Continuum Shift. And in Chronophantasma, the Greater-Scope Villain is revealed to be none other than Izanami herself, while in Central Fiction Yuuki Terumi is actually the physical embodiment of the will of the god Susano'o himself, with his body having been used by Hakumen for the past three games before he finally takes it back.
• In Breach, mythological creatures of all kinds were transferred to an alternate-reality Earth for the last 70,000 years to protect humans from utter destruction. That changes when the Veil splitting the Earth we know from the alternate one gets shattered and modern-day humanity learns these myths were anything but — the hard way.
• In the Castlevania series just about every fictional creature has appeared at some point, mostly as the enemies the player fights.
• Some of the local legends recounted to the protagonists of Chrono Cross turn out to be... slightly skewed.
• The Creepypasta Land series is this, but with creepypastas. Slender Man, Jeff the Killer, Ben Drowned, Laughing Jack...
• In the Dark Parables series of PC games, all fairy tales are true — and interconnected. Their sister series Cursery says that all nursery rhymes are true and created by Mother Goose herself.
• In Deus Ex, all conspiracies are true. If someone brings up a conspiracy at any point in the game, no matter how outlandish it is, you can bet it'll show up in game at some point.
• Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening: The legend of Sparda became an In-Universe tale. As Lady narrates it in the prologue, she originally thought that it was just a story told by her father, then she realized that the legend is actually true when she personally met the two sons of Sparda.
• The Dragon Age franchise plays with this.
  • First, we're presented with a hodgepodge of different systems of beliefs from cultures current and gone, and at times, contradictory, yet every group vehemently insists that all their beliefs are true. (So, pretty much like the real world, then...) It's difficult to reconcile the elven gods, the Maker, the Old Gods of Tevinter, and dwarven beliefs in the Stone as being part of the same cosmology. As the franchise develops, however, we gradually learn that while most of the myths (such as the Tevinter magisters' foray into the Black City, the elves' loss of their gods and immortality, or the dismantlement of the first Inquisition) have some basis in fact, the truth was quite different, distorted over centuries of misinterpretation — as verified by people who really were there at that time...
  • There are also fewer direct contradictions than you'd think. For instance, the dwarves and elves don't have universal creation myths of any kind, only ones about how specific things were created. Absolutely nobody questions whether the Old Gods exist, only if they count as gods. The Chantry story of the mages who blackened the Golden City and unleashed the Blight is doubted by many (Anders, for example, thinks it was made up to justify anti-Mage policies), but the blackening of the city is a historical fact confirmed by mages in other cultures and the first Blight did start shortly afterwards. The really big revelation (that the spirit world known as the Fade and the mortal world were only separated shortly before the beginning of recorded history and long after the first civilizations had been established by elves dwarves and humans) was something they all got wrong.
  • The Legacy DLC for II confirms the Golden City story, as Corypheus was one of the mages who did it, he was a Tevinter Magister, and he did get turned into a Darkspawn. He, however, claims that the city was always black, but Inquisition brings up the possibility that he misremembered.
  • Inquisition brings Elven mythology into focus, but even as the player learns that the Dalish were right about a lot of things (for example, the player has met a few of their gods), it's also emphasized that the Dalish are still a remnant of the old Elven empire, had most of their records destroyed over the centuries, and are generally working off incomplete information. So their myths are true, but somewhat misleading as a lot of context is missing. For one thing, the pantheon they revere were evil; they were slaveholding nobility who murdered Mythal (the goddess of justice and motherhood), who was the only reasonable one among them. The Loki equivalent, Fen'Harel, was actually the leader of a slave rebellion and sealed them away with the Veil to protect the world from them. Also, his name isn't even Fen'Harel; it's Solas, and Fen'Harel was an Appropriated Appelation.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • In the series' lore, this is the implication of the many differing religious beliefs and creation myths. While there are many shared elements, there are numerous contradictions as well. Despite this, they all seem to have elements of truth regardless of the contradictions. At the very least, it is implied that all myths are at least Metaphorically True.
  • Not helping this is the concept of "Dragon breaks", where certain types of events can cause consistent linear time to temporarily get put on hold, allowing multiple contradictory timelines to occur simultaneously (one good example being the ending of Daggerfall, where the player character essentially chose to side with every faction at once despite having only one MacGuffin to give out). There heave been a few in recorded history, but when you're talking creation myths, some of the events detailed essentially happened before Akatosh had even invented consistent linear time, so really all bets are off.
  • Morrowind plays with this trope a good deal. A major historical event has multiple different recountings, but it's unclear if a Dragon Break was involved (since most accounts agree that somebody messed with the Heart of Lorkhan) or if it was just mundane historical revisionism, since all parties involved either died at the scene or were highly biased. The possibility is also brought up that you are not the Chosen One and that there is no such thing, but the ultimate conclusion is that it doesn't really matter, since somebody's gotta deal with Dagoth Ur before he turns everyone in Morrowind into Corpus zombies and you're fulfilling all the requirements. The possibility is also brought up that the prophecy wasn't so much a prediction as a how-to guide; the Neverarine is the person who passes the prophecy's challenges, so if you do so, then you must be the Neverarine.
  • Played with humorously in Oblivion where Sheogorath asks you (or you ask yourself if you've become Sheogorath) to fulfill a prophecy a small village has about the end of the world that includes attacks by rats and FLAMING DOGS DROPPING FROM THE SKY. The prophecy is used as little more than a prank.
• The goal of Eras of Alchemy is to help an alchemically powered A.I. recreate life on Earth after a meteor strike wipes out most life on the surface. Players are given the task to create griffins, pegasi, fairies, dragons, flying unicorns (or "pegacorns"), and phoenixes during the "Mythical Era," after having re-created dinosaurs and extinct ice age megafauna.
• The Game Boy game Final Fantasy Legend II avoids this. One world your characters explore has a myth that turns out to be true and another myth that turns out to be false. Also, there are actually 78 "MAGI", not just 77 as mentioned at the beginning of the game.
• In Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, the heroes learn that a medallion holds a dark god who will bring The End of the World as We Know It if freed, and it can be freed by Magic Music or a huge war. The fact that certain people can become mindless berserkers by wielding the relic reinforces this belief. But in the sequel, Radiant Dawn, it turns out to be a lie spread by the Dragon Laguz king in vain hopes that it would prevent war between everyone in Tellius. In truth, endless war would actually awaken the goddess Ashera, who will see the wars as a sign that those living in Tellius are failures, and must be purged away to allow for a perfect world.
• God of War:
  • While predominately focused on Greek mythology, creatures from outside the Greek pantheon have appeared. Chains of Olympus features the appearance of a Basilisk and an Efreet, both from Arabian mythology, and the PS4 game shifts the focus to Norse mythology. David Jaffe's original plan for the series was that after the destruction of the Greek pantheon, Kratos would join forces with his Norse mythology equivalent to destroy the Norse pantheon, and then the two teaming up with their Egyptian mythology equivalent to destroy the Egyptian pantheon. From there, the series would end with the three former gods going to a star in the north and witnessing the birth of Jesus.
  • God of War (PS4) actually takes this even further: When Kratos and Atreus explore the hidden vault of the Norse War God, Tyr, they discover that there are many different realms inhabited by many different mythological pantheons, with artifacts and paintings from Aztec, Shinto, Egyptian, as well as many other pantheons shown throughout the vault.
• In Granblue Fantasy, this is Played for Laughs in one particular Summon's description. The Gorilla is defined as "A denizen of the dense and mysterious jungle, once thought to exist solely in folklore."
• Homeworld: During Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak (which takes place 106 years prior to the original game), the main religious clan opposes any development of spaceflight, saying that it is opposed by Sajuuk (the creator/god of the Kushan people), and that any attempt to achieve spaceflight will result in Sajuuk's wrath destroying Kharak. Unknown to anyone at the time, any attempt to achieve spaceflight (more specifically, hyperspace) WILL result in the destruction of Kharak, and that there is a very real truth behind the myth. A few thousand years earlier, the Higaran Empire lost a war, which resulted in Higara being taken over by the Taiidan, and the remnants of the Higaran civilization exiled to Kharak (where they forgot their history, regressed to the stone age, and developed a new identity as the Kushan). A treaty was signed which spared their lives on the condition that they never attempt to develop hyperspace travel again. Kharak is observed by the Taiidan over the next few millenia, and when the Kushan do develop hyperspace at the beginning of the first game, the Taiidan immediately take action, and the results are unpleasant to say the least. Orbital bombardment would appear to be the wrath of a vengeful god to a primitive people.
• The King of Fighters:
  • Series lore establishes that Orochi is the offspring of Gaia, the Mother Goddess of Greek mythology, with various members of the Orochi clan and those knowledgeable of the entity's existence referring to it as "Gaia's Will." Orochi is none too happy about how humans have treated the earth and seeks to rectify the situation, only relenting and settling upon Humanity on Trial after its defeat and resealing in KOF '97, while Gaia herself is The Ghost, her current whereabouts unknown. That the group responsible for dealing with Orochi, the Three Sacred Treasures, consists of three clans wielding the Imperial Regalia of Japan suggests Amaterasu likely exists as well, though her connection to Gaia and Orochi is never specified.
  • Additionally, Athena Asamiya is — as per her origins in Psycho Soldier — the descendant (and implied reincarnation) of the goddess Athena, who is presumably descended from the aforementioned Gaia and resides in an Olympus-esque Fluffy Cloud Heaven known as the Kingdom of Victory... which is outright called Heaven in SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos. In that game, Goddess Athena works as an agent of a Top God who resembles the classical depiction of the Judeo-Christian God and is addressed as "Lord" in the English localization.
• Played with in Knytt Underground. The goal is to ring the six Bells of Fate to prevent the world from ending. Every time you get to a bell, your two fairies will argue about whether or not ringing them actually does anything. The game ends with you ringing the last bell and that plot thread left unresolved.
• Metro: Last Light does this to a fair degree. While the novel of Metro 2033 was pretty steeped in ambiguity, Last Light takes a different route with its storytelling. The nosalis rhino is said to be a legend one level before it's fought and, of course, who could forget: "You may still harbor dreams of looking for some legendary artifacts, like the proverbial Map of Secret Metro, but... I think I'll have to disappoint you."
• In Mortal Kombat 9's Story Mode, Nightwolf can sometimes be heard referring to Raiden as "Haokah", the lightning spirit of the Lakota tribe, giving credence that Raiden has at least appeared to their culture and is likely the god of thunder to anyone else who had one (Zeus, Heracles, Thor, etc.). A nod to this first appeared before, in Mortal Kombat 4 and Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, which noted that he had a hammer suspiciously similar to Mjolnir, despite being named after the Japanese thunder god.
• Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door:
  • Professor Frankly encounters conflicting theories on the nature of the treasure he's looking for. Eventually one of the theories turns out to be true: the treasure is an ancient demon. But later it is revealed that the "real" treasure was a Dried Shroom, the weakest healing item in the game.
  • In the same district of Rogueport that Frankly's house is located in, you can find a quirky storyteller who is glad to spin all sorts of old stories. But that tale about the horrible evil monster and the four heroes who fought it before being themselves sealed away couldn't be true, right? Of course it is. The monster is a demon sleeping underneath Rogueport right now and Mario actually encounters each of the heroes in the form of talking cursed treasure chests. They're pretty nice.
• Pokémon:
  • All myths and legends centered around Pokémon that are... well, Mythical and Legendary are almost always accurate, with almost no one suggesting they're "merely" stronger than average animals. The grass fairy said to travel through time? It can, and it does. The fiery critter said to ensure victory? Yep, that's true. The beings said to have created time, space, emotion and the universe? No wizards have been done in here. About the only Legendary Pokémon whose myths are exaggerations or misinterpretations of the truth are Solgaleo and Lunala, who are said to be the emissaries of the sun and the moon, but are really extradimensional aliens that aren't that special in their own world.
  • For a more minor aversion, Pokémon X and Y make reference to a legend in which a Lucario became the first Pokémon to Mega Evolve. But in Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, Rayquaza is said to be the first Pokémon to Mega Evolve. Seeing as these two stories contradict each other, it logically follows that at least one of them is untrue.
• In the Shadow Hearts series most enemies are creatures from various mythologies. In Asia you're likely to encounter various Yōkai, in Europe it's mishmash of several local mythologies and random "evil spirits", and in America (in From the New World) it's creatures from Native American beliefs. Slavic pagan pantheon is represented by shadowy figures that Yuri fights in Covenant, Arabian folklore can be seen in several Fusions, and so on. Most of these creatures, however, are depicted in ways strongly different from the original myths, often incorporating a lot of Body Horror and other Sanity Meter-sapping nastiness.
• Shadow Realms has people from Earth being able to travel to a world "where the magic, legends and monsters that inspired our myths are real". People from that world visited Earth long enough to inspire stories, but didn't want to stay, since Earth's low-magic environment isn't very hospitable to them (it's compared to visiting the moon).
• Shin Megami Tensei's Crossover Cosmology means that all of its games have this to some extent, with Thor, Lucifer, YHVH, Shiva, Cerberus, etc. all existing in the same time. However, the Persona sub-series might fit this trope the most because it's the most mundane and closest to current Earth in term of setting and mythology. People are aware of the legends and often discuss it if the topic is brought up, but only a select few are aware that those gods are exist and can be summoned. Since this particular verse, especially in Persona 2, operates on Clap Your Hands If You Believe, if a rumor circulates and people en masse come to believe it, it will without fail become reality. And since mythology exists in the first place as a belief, you do the math. The exact mechanics of it vary depending on the particular work, but the basics are the same.
  • Persona: A demon summoning game turns out to summon real demons! And there's also a Man in the Machine situation involved to put the entire world into a Lotus-Eater Machine where Clap Your Hands If You Believe is enforced.
  • Persona 2: It's even integrated into gameplay! Rumors will comes true because the Anthropomorphic Personification of both the good and bad sides of humanity decided to make a bet over humanity's survival, who themselves manifest as semi-mythological figures (Philemon and Nyarlathotep, respectively). A ramen shop turns out to be a secret weapon cache? Ancient Astronauts? Hitler's still alive and amassing an army? All can happen and it does happen, depending on how you spread the rumor.
  • Persona 3: A local apocalypse cult that worships a Goddess of Death (who happens to be Nyx, the ancient Greek goddess of the night) gains power and influence among public, which then empowers said Goddess of Death into granting them said apocalypse. Also, your school nurse's rambling about Tarot Arcanas is reflected in your Social Links. Also, "The Answer" reveals that the true personification of mankind's desire for death is Erebus, the ancient Greek personification of darkness.
  • Persona 4: The Midnight Channel, a television channel that only appears in a rainy midnight hour will foresee your future soulmate. The second part isn't exactly true; the channel only shows a person the audience wants to see. Within the channel, a Shadow of that person will take the form of what the audience wants to see combined with what said person actually is. If that person is rumored to be a man when she's actually insecure and hiding her gender, the Shadow has its appearance twisted and takes form of an Opposite-Sex Clone. Additionally, the being who created the Midnight Channel turns out to be Izanami, the Shinto goddess of creation and death.
  • Persona 5 downplays this somewhat, but the being pulling everyone's strings turns out to be Yaldabaoth, the Demiurge. This makes the identity of the sequel's main antagonist rather interesting, considering they're also the Demiurge — the Platonic Demiurge to be exact. While EMMA's evolved form does assume the same role as Yaldabaoth, shares a handful of traits, and possesses somewhat similar goals, the fact that she and Yaldabaoth are based on different interpretations of the same entity likely means they are not one in the same as far as humanity's Collective Unconscious is concerned, and the Phantom Thieves don't treat EMMA as the second coming of Yaldabaoth. For bonus points, EMMA/the Demiurge additionally dubs themselves as "the Ark of the Covenant", just to make things that much more confusing.
• Scribblenauts: There's plenty of choices in the "mythical creatures" department, including Cthulhu!
• Smite is a MOBA where you can have deities and mythical beings from almost every major human civillization and culture in the world's history fight each other. There are also several Arthurian, Voodoo and Lovecraftian characters.
• Averted in Star Control II. The Black Spathi Squadron is fictional and has no effect on the plot, and many religious beliefs and local legends are brought up which are never mentioned or investigated again.
• Tomb Raider does this quite a bit.
  • Atlantis was ruled by alien gods and King Arthur's Excalibur was a supernaturally-powerful weapon. A shard of Excalibur was later used by a Crusader. The rebooted games, from Legend onwards, establish the idea of the "monomyth", that all the legends and folklore of the world can be traced back to a "single remnant of the ancient world."
  • Tomb Raider (2013) has Lara start out as a skeptic, but over the course of the game, she discovers that the legends of Himiko, such as her power over the weather, aren't just legends.
    There are so many mysteries that people dismiss as mere stories.but the line between our myths and truths is fragile and blurry. I need to find answers. I must understand.
• Uncharted has a combination of this and Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane, where each adventure features an encounter with something that establishes the myths and legends of the cultures around the world are at least based on something otherworldly.

Visual Novels

• Nasuverse:
  • The Nasuverse is filled with nearly every mythological being you could possibly think of, plus a few more. Vampires, werewolves, two different types of ghosts, demons, unicorns, so many more monsters, gods and of course, the incredibly complicated Functional Magic. Fate/stay night has the Holy Grail War, with the Masters summoning Servants that are based on heroes that actually existed there except for Fake Assassin.
  • Some Servants take this even a step farther with their Noble Phantasms. A Noble Phantasm is the embodiment of the Servant's fame as an ability or weapon, i.e. the heroic spirit of King Arthur has Excalibur as a Noble Phantasm. Since these are born from the Servant's fame, they aren't limited to things the Servant actually did/had in life. For example, Vlad the Impaler was not actually a vampire but due to the fame of Dracula he has a Noble Phantasm that grants vampiric powers. Likewise, the Berserker in Fate/Zero has several conceptual Noble Phantasms that grant him abilities such as forming illusions and creating improvised weapons, which he never held in life but are derivatives from various myths about Sir Lancelot.
  • It's also possible to summon a Servant who's a fictional character, if the story is famous enough and there's a historical figure who the character was loosely based on who can fill the role. In this case the historical figure will gain the traits and memories of the fictional character that he or she lacked in their actual life. In some cases this will result in a Composite Character of the in-universe historical figures to bring together the most important traits of the myth, as with Fake Assassin (Sasaki Kojirou) in Fate/stay night. So even if a myth isn't true, the Servant system can make it true. Servants who don't exist in a particular universe can also be summoned from an alternate one where they do exist. For example, Fate/Grand Order reveals that while Sasaki Kojirou doesn't exist in the Fate/stay night universe, he does exist in the AU that the female version of Miyamoto Musashi came from. And somehow, this AU real version is identical to the fake version who was summoned in Fate/stay night. Given the infinite number of universes, there's always going to be at least one where any given myth is true.
  • Fate/Grand Order hangs a gigantic lampshade on the idea. When discussing whether he was a real person or a fictional character brought to life, Sherlock Holmes launches into a speech pointing out how a world where all (or most) myths are true, and still ended up becoming our modern world on top of that, makes no sense whatsoever. He sadly doesn't get much further into that train of thought, after deducing that his unexplained reclassing from Caster to Ruler (the "impartial overseer" class) was the world's way of telling him that trying to unravel the Truth of the world like that is extremely dangerous.
• Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane:
  • There's a legend about the origin of magic in Wyverngarde. Rathallion the Scaled Lord came down from the heavens and imbued four heroes with magic so they could win the war they were losing. These heroes were the first mages, and went on to found the noble houses of Wyverngarde. Rathallion did exist, and appears in case 5 to fill the role of the judge.
  • Harold Haroldson tells Tyrion about legends involving humans making pacts with demons. Several people in the game do have a Blood Contract with the Empress of Discord at one point or another, including but not limited to Beatrice, Celeste, Aria, and Tymora. Harold also says that some demons can nullify magic, which is why the Sword of Spell Eating has that property. Indeed, Marrunath the demonic familiar is able to nullify the Eye of Horus. Finally, the Armbands of Intellect are said to augment a creature's intelligence beyond a human's. Which is proven to be true when Eugene the monkey is revealed to be very intelligent when he's wearing them.

Web Animation

• DarkMatter2525: Throughout various videos, the canon mostly focuses on Christian theology, with Yahweh as God, Jesus as his son and mankind's savior and the Holy Bible's tenets as God's law. Not-Muhammad (a stand-in for The Prophet Muhammad^note Peace Be Upon Him) also exists however, referring to Yahweh as Allah and sharing space in Heaven with Jesus^note Justified, since Jesus is still considered a prophet in Islam. In other circumstances, Allah and the Islamic incarnation of Heaven are separate entities to Yahweh and the Christian Heaven. To take it a step further, deities from other religions like Zeus make appearances, with Yahweh actually being a student from the same Deity college as the pagan gods. God even has his own god in one video.
• Stupid Kids: Both discussed and implied in Utolsó felvonás (Final act), it is said there are an infinite amount of universes coexisting, many mythological places such as Atlantis, the Garden of Eden, and the gods' home in Olympus are all real and exist in other universes, and humanity's knowledge of them originate from people throughout history having the opportunity to travel there.

Webcomics

• Abe Kroenen: Subverted in this comic. Of course, everyone present takes the fact that Atlantis exists in the first place as unsurprising.
• Baskets of Guts: Races existing in the setting are added when they're needed, but author is quite careful about not slipping into Fantasy Kitchen Sink.
• Gifts of Wandering Ice: The legend of the black iceberg is a fairy tale little kids love so much that it turns out to be a real story where ancient technology is described as magic.
• Hexameron: The legends of the summer camp turn out to all or mostly all be real.
• Hexenringe: All legends and myths known in the real world are based on actual events in Xanadan (faerie dimension) and when any legends and myths (or any story, actually) are recorded or represented through creative means, such versions appear in Märagan (Imaginary dimension).
• Holy Bibble starts from the origin of the universe and begins to unfold the story of all myths, using character types (such as the God of War) to merge multiple gods into one person.
• The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! seems to go with at least all cryptid stories being true. We've seen dragons, bigfeet, unicorns, and the Loch Ness Monster. Jean has expressed a scientific interest in traveling the world to find more, using Bob's Weirdness Magnet power to draw them out.
• The Order of the Stick:
  • Invoked. There are four pantheons worshiped in different parts of the world, mirroring real-life pantheons. The Northern Gods include Thor, Loki, Odin, Hel, and so on from Norse mythology, the Southern Gods are the 12 animals of the zodiac from Chinese mythology, and the Western Gods are from Mesopotamian/Babylonian mythology: Marduk, Tiamat, etc. There is no mention made of Greek Gods (despite these having been used in edition 3.5 of D&D) until Shojo reveals that they were the lost Eastern pantheon, having been killed off by the Snarl. Despite the existence of these four, seemingly contradictory, pantheons, the afterlife used is a slightly modified version of the standard D&D afterlife, as is the existence of other planes (including the elemental planes of air, water, etc., and the baffling semi-elemental plane of ranch dressing). Furthermore, the creation story (explained in the linked comic and four strips afterwards) is entirely new, using none of the pantheon's creation stories.
  • Furthermore, the comic uses the standard D&D practice of borrowing from a wide variety of stories. Traditional D&D monsters like owlbears, mind flayers, and beholders all appear (however briefly), as well as the standard fantasy races like orcs, goblins, lizardfolk, elves, halflings, gnomes, dwarves, and so on and undead like vampires, zombies, wights, skeletons, liches, and golems. Dinosaurs also appear as the actual, real-life creatures. Nobody questions this, although the existence of Brontosaurus is lampshaded (an Apatosaurus body with the head of another dinosaur is practically normal when gryphons are common). The only fantasy creature that hasn't shown up yet are leprechauns: they have been mentioned several times (once by Belkar, who at the time was wildly sick), but never shown, and Thog's ridiculous leprechaun costume seems to indicate that they may be a myth in-universe.
• Realmwalker involves Norse, English and Celtic mythology. The creatures and gods from these stories are all alive and well, and have adapted to modern life.
• Sire: All works of classic literature actually happened and the protagonists passed on their narratives down the bloodlines, bestowing their descendants with gifts and curses relating to their stories.
• Stand Still, Stay Silent: The comic takes this approach towards the religions and mythologies it touches on. The Finnish and Christian deities and afterlives, in particular, have taken active roles in the comic, as has Norse Runic Magic.
• Tales of the Questor: Myths and superstitions tend to be problematic after a few too many generations. Some of them end up being accurate, but for each one that actually is, you've got a few dozen that are corrupted from translation issues or pure age, and hundreds that are plain false or started up from illogical premises. It's also a rule for the setting that no one can see the future, so prophecy tends to always be wrong.
• Wayward Sons focuses mainly on Greek mythology, but features figures from several other ancient cultures.

Web Original

• In Phaeton if a myth isn't true already then it can become true through the power of the Enigma. Sometimes mythical versions of creatures who already exist become true, that's when things get complicated.
• SCP Foundation:
  • The Foundation possesses entities and artifacts from virtually every human mythology and religion, including (but not limited to) Cain & Abel, Ananta Shesha, Baba Yaga, Krampus, and more.
  • The Wanderer's Library acts as a multiversal Great Big Library of Everything, and as such, almost anything can be found within, from The Grim Reaper to Native American gods.
• In Tales of the Big Bad Wolf there is the belief that myths are true accounts of past, present, and future of some characters but this point is arguable. It appears that "some" may be under debate as that has some problematic consequences for the figures who have a counterpart in fairy tales and myths.
• Parodied in this collection of ironic Teach the Controversy t-Shirts.
• In Void Domain, Arachne is the Arachne. A Japanese spider demon, a Jorogumo, is mentioned. Ylva is the daughter of Hel from Norse Mythology. Elves exist. The Ars Goetia comes into play with a King of Hell in the second book.

Web Video

• Everyman HYBRID pretty much applies this to a number of creepypastas, having Slender-Man, the Rake, Candle Cove ... all being part of their story, in addition to the multiple other Slender-blogs/-vlogs they've crossed over with.
• In Stampy's Lovely World, if you ask about childhood story elements, they seem to be around every corner. Santa Claus? He stops by every Christmas and one of his reindeer is one of Stampy's close friends. The Easter Bunny? He drops by every year or so to hold an Easter egg hunt. The Tooth Fairy? She operates a dentist's office downtown. Extraterrestrial life? Stampy befriended them once and now they show up every once in a while. Hell itself? Yep, that exists too.^note The last one is more implied than anything, but the point stands since the deceased Big Bad respawned in the Nether after dying, i.e. in Minecraft's equivalent of H-E-double-bent-straws.

Western Animation

• Ben 10:
  • On average, for every five or six that can be attributed to aliens, there's one that can't. Alien Force heavily implies that most if not all of these have some Doing In the Wizard explanation in the realm of sci-fi.
  • In Ben 10: Alien Force, Grandpa Max reveals to Ben and co. that many beasts and cryptids are real and in fact aliens... but he dismisses Bigfoot as just some guy in a costume.
• Dan Vs.: The first episode of the series has Dan square off against the Wolfman. The second episode also confirms the existence of aliens in the show's universe. Other mythical entities include a yeti, a mummy, and the ghost of George Washington.
• Futurama:
  • Played for Laughs in the episode "Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles", when the teenaged Leela finds out about the Fountain of Aging in a children's book.
    Farnsworth: The Fountain of Aging? Hmm. It is just a legend. Still, they called the Tooth Fairy a legend, and now he's head of the FBI!
  • Zig-zagged with regard to various popular Sci-Fi series, which are sometimes referred to as fictional in-universe and sometimes referenced as if they were a part of the show's reality, according to Rule of Funny.
    Farnsworth: A billion robot lives are about to be extinguished! Oh, the Jedis are going to feel this one!
• Gargoyles took the stance that "All things are true, few things are accurate." Through the course of the series we find out that Odin and Anubis are members of the Third Race, Greek Mythology was based on the inhabitants of an island called New Olympus, and Cu Chulainn has been reincarnated in the modern day. Also, several recurring characters are from William Shakespeare's plays, and when the Weird Sisters attacked Avalon, the protagonists woke up King Arthur. In one of the spin-off graphic novels, King Arthur references this trope: "All things are true; few things are accurate."
• Jackie Chan Adventures: This is a world filled with all kinds of magical objects and beings, including wizards, demon sorcerers, dragons, oni, shadow spirits, chi vampires, trolls, chupacabras, etc. It's zig-zagged whether or not the Loch Ness Monster exists. Jade is briefly mistaken for it in the dark while in Scotland, and later she summons it in a dream. During the Christmas episode, it is revealed that the Tooth Fairy doesn't exist, even though Santa Claus does. Except for Stonehenge being magical (it's really a landing pad for flying saucers).
• Many episodes of M.A.S.K. revolve around Venom trying to steal powerful legendary artifacts of one sort or another, which have legitimate powers. One episode, however, climaxes with Mayhem trying to use his newly acquired doobah, only to discover... its powers really were just a legend. This could be hysterical, except that the other characters appear completely blind to the irony of the situation, with Matt casually observing that of course it was only a superstition, and believing otherwise would be silly.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Pretty much every legend in the story turned out to be proven historical. This includes the legend of Nightmare Moon, the legendary founding of Equestria under the threat of Windegos, the existence of Grogar (or at least his bell), and even the Daring Do novels were retconned as being historical in nature.
• The Owl House: According to Eda, all the myths of Earth are the result of creatures from the Demon Realm bleeding over to ours. This includes griffons, vampires, and giraffes.
  Luz: Giraffes?
  Eda: Oh, yeah, we banished those guys. Bunch of freaks...
• In one episode of The Real Ghostbusters, the Ghostbusters must deal with a creature from Irish folklore. According to legend, the creature can only be stopped by a Four-Leaf Clover. All the characters go out searching for one, except Egon, who, playing the role of Agent Scully, insists that the creature can be captured using the same "scientific" methods they always use. In the end, the four-leaf clover fails (it was a fake taken from a parade float), and Egon saves the day by capturing the creature "scientifically", exactly as he said he would. Despite this exception, the show generally followed this trope faithfully, as did its Sequel Series Extreme Ghostbusters.
• Roswell Conspiracies: Aliens, Myths and Legends: All mythological creatures are actually aliens who have been on Earth for centuries, or millennia.
• Samurai Jack: Jack's sword was forged by the gods Odin, Ra, and Vishnu, from Norse, Egyptian, and Hindu mythology, respectively, and another episode, "Jack and the Swamp Wizard," mentions the existence of Cronus and Zeus, both of Greek mythology. It seems like only things that are myth or legend only in-universe may be untrue, like that a giant talking worm will grant wishes. Even so the myths hint accurately at many many things that could get Jack what he wants, not that he ever gets to use them for that.

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