Sandbox / Appears In Archive Footage

Note: This proposal already has enough examples to be launched, but I would like any suggestions and advice that I should do to improve this page

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Media that use footage, audio, or photos of historical figures or celebrities of them so that they appear as themselves. For example, imagine you are making something that takes place somewhere in the 1980s and you decide that you want a historical figure like Ronald Reagan to make a small appearance in it, but you don't want an actor to play as him, so you use archival footage of one of his speeches so he appears as himself instead. When referring to archival footage, please note that this only refers to historical figures or celebrities appearing as actual footage of themselves, not them appearing in scenes that recreate said footage where an actor is clearly playing as them, like in Watchmen for example.

There are rare cases, like the The Umbrella Academy for example, where a figure may have a major role in the plot despite only appearing as archival footage.

Just like historical figures and celebrities, the same also happens to actors where they reprise their role as a character they played as. This is usually because of the actor being unavailable to reprise the role for reasons, mostly due to the actor dying before they were able to film or record their lines.

Related to As Himself and Not Quite Starring.Subtrope to Stock Footage.

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Historical Figure and Celebrity Examples:

Films — Animation

• Wizards has the wicked wizard Blackwolf project old Nazi propaganda films onto clouds to give his armies heart for battle (they normally chicken out). This includes Adolf Hitler giving an impassioned speech to his armies. It doesn't matter that none of the mooks speak German; they take courage from the fervency of the Nazi troops and their wehrmacht.

Films — Live-Action

• Of course, documentaries make extensive use of that. Same for period pieces where a short clip in the opening scene helps to anchor down the exact time and place. (See the numerous British WWII dramas that invariably begin with a speech by Winston Churchill or pieces that take place in 1960s America that start with a speech by Martin Luther King Jr.). A special genre, the historical docudrama, where the plot follows a select few persons navigate the time period is almost built around this footage.
• In Alien Nation, archival footage of a Ronald Reagan speech is shown on a TV and recontextualized as a declaration allowing the aliens who crash-landed on Earth to live in the United States.
• All the President's Men: A lot of politicians and reporters appear as themselves in archival footage, including President and Mrs. Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Ron Ziegler, Walter Cronkite, etc.
• American Underdog cuts in actual footage from Super Bowl XXXIV, among the carefully choreographed recreation of key plays in the game.
• The Autobiography Of Nicolae Ceausescu is ostensibly a biographical documentary about the titular Romanian dictator, created by editing together over 1,000 hours of archival footage.
• The Atrocity Montage at the start of Black Widow (2021) depicts multiple real world persons meeting with General Dreykov.
• Da5Bloods uses archival footage of historical events and speeches and ends the film with a montage of real people who weren't previously involved in the plot.
• Forrest Gump
  • The celebrities and presidents Forrest meet ^note (with the exception of Dick Cavett) all appear as footage of them.
  • Elvis Presley, however, is played by an actor in the scene where a young Forrest teaches him the hip-shaking dance move he would use, and then appears afterwards as himself in footage of his performance of "Hound Dog" on The Ed Sullivan Show.
  • A photograph of Marilyn Monroe can be seen when Forrest is inside the bathroom after drinking 15 botttles of Dr. Pepper at the White House.
• In Good Night, and Good Luck., all of the appearances of Senator Joseph McCarthy throughout the film were done through archival footage of his television interviews. Ironically, one of the big complaints critics had of the film was that the "actor" playing McCarthy was overacting his role as the man who became the symbol of the Red Scare.
• The 1991 film, JFK, uses footage and photographs taken from the John F. Kennedy assassination.
• Jonestown: Jim Jones appears in the documentary as archival footage from the Jonestown cult.
• Archival footage of LBJ appears in Nixon, a 1995 biopic directed by Oliver Stone, released after Richard Nixon's death
• Official Secrets shows Katharine Gun, as played by Keira Knightley, watching news footage from 2003 about the buildup to the Iraq War, including appearances by then-US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Additionally the conclusion of the film briefly shows news footage of the real-life Katharine Gun (who looks nothing like Knightley) commenting to reporters about her acquittal.
• Paul McCartney Really Is Dead: Near the end of the film, archival footage of the real George talking about Paul on a talk show is distorted so that it sounds like he is really saying "Faul" instead of "Paul."
• Ted: During the montage of Ted becoming a celebrity after coming to life on the 1980's, there's a scene of him appearing as a guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. The footage of Carson was taken from a 1983 episode, with Ted inserted over the actual guest, Emmanuel Lewis.

Live Action TV

• Happy!: The episode "Arlo and Marie" has Orcus revealing that he has manipulated many historical figures, which also has a montage showing the Wishees photoshopped into pictures with JFK, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, and others.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: On the episode "2020: A Year In Review," Rudy Giuliani appears in archive footage of his Four Seasons Total Landscaping speech, with Frank added in the background. The episode reveals that Frank is his hairdresser and is responsible for his hair dye running. In other scenes he appears as a Fake Shemp.
• Red Dwarf: "Timeslides" had Adolf Hitler appear in archive footage, which Lister is inserted into. This leads to a humorous opening with "Tonight's Special Guest Star: Adolf Hitler As Himself.
• The Umbrella Academy:
  • Season 2 takes place in 1960s Dallas, Texas, around the time of the JFK Assassination, which is the center topic of the season. Despite this, Kennedy himself doesn't make physical appearances outside of archive footage taken of him from that day, not even in the episode "743", which takes place on the day of his assassination.
    • JFK also appears as archive footage in the season 1 episode "Number Five" in a throwaway moment where an adult Five aims his rifle at Kennedy, but decides to use his powers to go back to the present instead.
  • Jacqueline Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson both appear in the series as archival footage as well. The former appears only in footage with JFK while footage of LBJ appears on a television screen after JFK dies.
• Witchblade: Sara spends one season two episode having a long chat with a man seated such that his face is hidden by the shadows. At the end of the episode, he leans forward to reveal the face of John F. Kennedy, whose face has been unconvincingly superimposed over the actor from news footage.

Video Games

• Call of Duty: Black Ops
  • The ending of the game reveals that Alex Mason was present in the background of numerous photos and clips taken during the assassination of John F. Kennedy, heavily implied to have been under the influence of the numbers brainwashing program and also involved in his death. JFK himself, in contrast to his earlier depiction in the level "U.S.D.D." (complete with a voice actor and a full character model), is the actual JFK as depicted in the archival footage of the time.
  • Archive footage of Lyndon B Johnson appears in the game, which takes place during the Vietnam War. Members of his cabinet appear in a in-game cutscene, though the scene takes place back when Kennedy was still in office.

Western Animation

• DC: The New Frontier: The animated adaptation ends with an archive recording of John F. Kennedy making his New Frontier speech.
• Ready Jet Go! has access to NASA's archives, which allows them to use such footage. In "A Hammer and a Feather", they showed a video of David Scott dropping a hammer and a feather on the moon at the same time. Both "Earth Mission to Moon" and "One Small Step" show footage of the Apollo 11 launch, as well as Neil Armstrong's famous 'one small step' quote.
• The Simpsons
  • In the episode "Gone Boy", Bart watches footage of John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address while being trapped inside of a bunker.
  • In "Bart Stops To Smell The Roosevelts", Bart listens to a recording of Theodore Roosevelt, who is listed in the credits as a special guest star.
• South Park: In "Go Fund Yourself", NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is depicted as a malfunctioning "Goodell-Bot". The scene is a reference to his controversial statements regarding a series of abuse scandals that plagued the league in 2014, and actual audio from the news conference was used.

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Actor Examples:

Note: This refers to actors who appear in archival footage or audio of them as a character they play as. Any examples where actors appear as stand-ins should go to Fake Shemp

Film - Animated

• Cars 3: For scenes where Lightning remembers advice from the late Doc Hudson, the character speaks with dialogue that Paul Newman recorded for, but was dropped from, the first movie.
• Toy Story 4: Because Don Rickles passed away before recording began, the filmmakers, with permission from Rickles' family, had him "voice" Mr. Potato Head one last time with dialogue from earlier Toy Story projects.

Film — Live Action

• In Goodbye Lenin, historical footage of actress Katrin Sass at an official reception was used for her character's appearance at an in-universe award ceremony.

Live-Action TV

• Doctor Who: During the 50th Anniversary Special, all of the Doctors are able to appear using judiciously chosen bits of archival footage from the show's long run. The Reveal is a made of awesome.
  General: It's delusional! The calculations alone would take hundreds of years.
  11th Doctor: Oh, hundreds and hundreds...
  10th Doctor: ...But don't worry. I started a very long time ago.
  1st Doctor: Warning the War Council of Galifrey, this is The Doctor.
  11th Doctor: In fact, you might say I've been doing it all my lives!
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Trials and Tribble-ations has the DS9 crew Time Travel back to the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Trouble with Tribbles", having them take part in the events of the episode by skilled use of archival footage. They even matte the new actors into several of the old shots so that, for example, Miles O'Brien is now one of the Enterprise crew members that Kirk chews out for the Bar Brawl.

Video Games

• In LEGO Dimensions, the older Doctors from Doctor Who are "voiced" by audio pulled from archived footage. Only the Twelfth Doctor, the then-most recent incarnation, has proper voice acting since he plays a major role in various parts of the game.

Western Animation

• Get a Horse!
  • All of Mickey's dialogue came from lines Walt Disney had recorded for the Classic Disney Shorts. In fact, editors splice audio from three different sources just to make Mickey say "Red!".
  • Minnie and Pete were respectively "voiced" by Marcelite Garner and Billy Bletcher, although Russi Taylor and Will Ryan were brought in to record newer, plot-specific dialogue.
• South Park: "The Return of Chef" has Chef's dialogue consists of spliced together dialogue from previous episodes, as his actor (Isaac Hayes) had been forced to quit the show by the Church of Scientology. The dialogue is also deliberately poorly spliced when he's been brainwashed, and more naturally once he is (temporarily) freed from it.
• Star Trek: Prodigy: The episode "Kobayashi" has Dal run the Kobayashi Maru training simulation, using Spock, Uhura, Odo, Scotty, and Beverly as fellow crewmates. With the exception of Beverly Crusher (who's actress recorded new lines), the others use lines taken from old archival recordings, as their original actors are now either dead or incapacitated.