A true artistic work is "revealed" to have been created with some other purpose in mind. Perhaps some god or devil had a hand in it. Perhaps it was a summoning ritual, à la The King in Yellow. Perhaps it was part of a ritual to attain godhood, which is why everyone's so enraptured by it. Either way, someone, or something, other than the author had a hand in it, and we're just finding out for the first time.
Dracula is mentioned in almost every Urban Fantasy work with vampires, with Bram Stoker usually having an ulterior motive of some kind when writing the book. William Shakespeare is another popular subject for references, although in much more eclectic media.
Similar Beethoven Was an Alien Spy, but applying to the artistry rather than the artist. Contrast Fiction Science, when Real Life science is used to examine fictional works. Sub-Trope of Shout-Out (a reference to another work/person).
Examples:
Anime & Manga
- Read or Die: The OVA features a literal Beethoven Was an Alien Spy that also applies here; one of Ludwig van Beethoven's symphonies drives anyone who listens to it to suicide; earlier researchers who examined the music killed themselves, but the I-Jin were drama queens. Hence why their method consisted of a clone of him flying around on a massive rocket-powered steam organ.
Comic Books
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier: One of Shakespeare's fictional plays (Faerie's Fortunes Founded) is basically the minutes for the meeting in which the first League was founded.
- The Sandman (1989):
- Shakespeare puts on his debut performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream for Oberon, Titania, Robin Goodfellow, and Morpheus. Robin Goodfellow escapes into the world to pester others, and it's implied that Titania is responsible for the death of Shakespeare's son Hamnet. It's explicitly stated that Morpheus commissioned both A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest, in exchange for making Shakespeare a skilled writer.
- Morpheus has had his hand in the Arabian Nights anthology. Specifically, the city of Baghdad is originally full of magic and wonders, but Haroun al-Rashid grows afraid it wouldn't survive that way, so he makes a deal with Morpheus; Baghdad would become a mundane city, and Morpheus would preserve a dream version which became the stories in the Arabian Nights.
Literature
- Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency:
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge gets possessed by an alien ghost, who leaves messages in his poetry. Later, Dirk is revealed to be the infamous "Person from Porlock" who disrupted "Kubla Khan" because if completed the poem would've caused the end of the world.
- The entire works of Johann Sebastian Bach are actually the music of the motions of every particle of matter as read by an alien supercomputer and injected into history by a time traveller because he felt bad about blowing it up.
- The Dresden Files: Bram Stoker is commissioned by Lara Raith of the competing White Court of Vampires for the explicit purpose of teaching humans how to kill Black Court vampires. Because of this, the few surviving Black Court vampires are exceptionally clever and dangerous.
- Interview with the Vampire: The aforementioned book itself serves a similar function In-Universe. When Lestat awakens in the sequel, he discovers his name and many details of his life with Louis are now famous and part of popular culture. The Vampire Lestat is framed and written as his response —cashing in on the popularity to promote his new rock and roll career, correcting misconceptions about his person, detailing his origins, and officially breaking The Masquerade while calling on other vampires to do so as well.
- The Science of Discworld:
- II: The Globe: The wizards of Unseen University visit the "Roundworld" to fight off the elves as they disrupt A Midsummer Night's Dream.
- SOD III: Darwin's Watch: The wizards try to make sure that Charles Darwin completes The Origin of Species
- Songs of Earth and Power: All pieces of Art ever created by humanity posses unique magical properties; either through The Power of Rock or in an Art Initiates Life sense.
- The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries: A short story reveals that Bram Stoker was one of the vampires who wanted to come out early. His sire, Dracula, wished to be the main character.
- Three Days to Never: Charlie Chaplin works symbolic imagery into City Lights as part of a magical ritual to attempt to bring his son back from the dead. An earlier movie he worked on but never shown to the public is part of the MacGuffin; Albert Einstein talks Chaplin out of showing the movie, as the mojo generated by the imagery would likely fry some audience brains.
Live-Action TV
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: "Buffy vs. Dracula" reveals that the real Dracula helped write the original book. He just wanted to get famous, but Spike gripes that thanks to him, everyone knows the weaknesses of vampires.
- Doctor Who:
- "The Unquiet Dead": Charles Dickens is inspired to write the episode's monsters into The Mystery of Edwin Drood so the world will know the truth. Of course, he Died During Production before finishing it.
- "The Shakespeare Code": Shakespeare's lost play, Love's Labours Won, was influenced by a trio of aliens to serve as a summoning ritual for their species.
- Jekyll: It's revealed that The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a trap to kill anyone seeking Jekyll's abilities, as the potion described is poison. The real source of the abilities turns out to be Jekyll's maid.
Roleplays
- Squadra dei Falchi di Gradara: An entire school of magic, the Flame of the Heart school (a Fire elemental list of spells focuses on buffing and battlefield control) is supposedly based on a series of in-universe Heroic Fantasy books whose author is believed to also secretly be an elementalist archmage.
Tabletop Games
- New World of Darkness: In the sourcebook Reliquary, Shakespeare's lost play The Witches serves as a summoning ritual that opens a portal to... well, it's not a very nice place. The backstory says Shakespeare got the entire audience together after the first performance to promise that it would never be used again.
- Promethean: The Created: One sourcebook hints that the poem "Kubla Khan" was inspired by a qashmallim for purposes unknown. The visitor who interrupted Coleridge and ruined his vision was a Promethean who feared dire results if the poem was finished.
- Vampire: The Masquerade: Dracula influenced Stoker's writing as a "parting gesture" to Kindred society. In Vampire: The Requiem, meanwhile, the Ordo Dracul, a vampire society Dracula founded, are suspicious of the book's origins—it seems too much of a Contrived Coincidence—but ultimately don't know what's up with it.
Video Games
- Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within: One of Richard Wagner's operas is capable of outing werewolves.
