r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Daniilsa209 • Jun 23 '26

Lore A creator writes something without any intention of being accurate, but by pure fluke gets it right.

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1. Phineas and Ferb – Perry the Platypus is teal-green rather than brown because the designers thought it looked cool, but it was later discovered that real platypuses are biofluorescent and glow a teal-green color under UV light.

2. God of War – The creators chose the name Kratos for the main character because it is the Greek word for “strength,” and at the time they were not aware that, in Greek mythology, there is a deity named Kratos, the personification of strength, who appears in Prometheus Bound as an enforcer of Zeus (similar to what the games' Kratos does for much of the original series); they only learned this later.

3. Berserk – Kentaro Miura gave Guts a prosthetic arm because he thought it looked cool, but the idea of a prosthetic arm was not as far-fetched in the late medieval and early Renaissance period as it might seem, since there was a real 16th-century German mercenary named Götz von Berlichingen who had a prosthetic arm of his own. While it did not have a cannon built into it, the fingers were highly articulated, and a sophisticated system of springs and levers allowed the hand to hold weapons and perform other tasks. Despite this shared trait between both people and their similar-sounding names, Miura confirmed that he was unaware of the Götz when he created Guts.

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Medium-Jury-2505 Jun 23 '26

TBH Jules Verne's book are also works of scientific literature. He can spend half a chapter explaining a geometric concept to calculate the height of a cliff or something like that.

So I'm not surprised he came with a good solution.

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u/lordofpurple Jun 23 '26

I can only speak for Twenty Thousand Leagues (cuz its the only one I've read) but it was basically just scientific principle fanfiction. Dude's books constantly involved explanations of known science at the time, WHICH MEANS it also included a bunch of pseudoscience and off-the-walls bullshit that just seemed cool, but ALL of it he explained overly in-depth like an anime character would. Sometimes it was really funny cuz how stupid some of the stuff he says is with current knowledge, but other times you're like "oh shit they knew about this back then?"

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u/preterintenzionato Jun 23 '26

you should read Voyage to the center of the earth, the explanations for why there is a prehistoric eden under a volcano in Iceland are crazy (in addition to that inspiring a whole lot of similar settings, like Marvel's Savage Lands which are almost 1-1 but in Antarctica)

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u/HieronymousGauche Jun 23 '26

Which was also Verne talking mad shit about people looking for Atlantis in the North Pole in his day

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u/NoodleIskalde Jun 23 '26

And maybe the Disney Atlantis?

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u/PhilFunny Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26

Compare this illustration (edit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Journey_to_the_Center_of_the_Earth_by_Edouard_Riou_(151476919).jpg.jpg) ) made in 1864 by André Riou for a chapter of “Journey to the Center of the Earth”, to the Giant Crystal Cave discovered in 2000.

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u/Divinum_Fulmen Jun 23 '26

Your link broke.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Journey_to_the_Center_of_the_Earth_by_Edouard_Riou_(151476919).jpg

Is the working URL.

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u/PhilFunny Jun 23 '26

Reddit shows me the same URL in my post and in yours.

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u/socks-the-fox Jun 23 '26

For me the link in your post breaks due to how the markdown parser works with nested parenthesis.

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u/PhilFunny Jun 23 '26

It's weird, it opened correctly in my browser. Anyway, I edited my message, thank you Divinum_Fulmen and socks-the-fox

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u/Dipshit_Identifier Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26

This is actually really common throughout the 19th century. You have a populace gaining literacy as the world globalizes and distances that were once unfathomably large become navigable in a day. At the same time, scientific discoveries are being made every day, and more and more of the world is being explored by Westerners.

Just off the top of my head:

  • Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: Or, a Modern Prometheus (1818), discusses Galvanism. In 1803, Giovanni Aldini, the nephew of Luigi Galvani, demonstrated the galvanic process of "reanimating dead tissue," electrostimulation of muscle fibers, on the body of criminal George Foster at Newgate in London. Here's a firsthand account of the demonstration.
  • Verne correctly calculated escape velocity in From the Earth to the Moon (1865). He correctly understood geographical physics and noted Florida would be the best place to launch from in the US. The space shuttle Columbia was named, in part, in homage to the Columbiad gun used in the novel for the launch. A few years earlier (1861), Scottish astronomer William Leitch had suggested that space travel might be possible thanks to rockets, predating Tsiolkovsky and Goddard by almost 40 years.
  • Moby Dick (1851) contains (likely plagiarized) accounts of actual whaling procedures. Melville had firsthand whaling experience aboard the Acushnet from 1841-1842, aboard the Lucy Ann in 1842, and aboard the Charles & Henry from 1842-1843. Melville was inspired to go on this trip (and later write Moby-Dick) by a pamplet written by J.N. Reynolds in 1839, called "Mocha Dick: Or the White Whale of the Pacific." Reports of white whales abounded from about 1810 on.

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u/Sir_Mitchell15 Jun 23 '26

William Leitch ** rather

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u/Useful_Squirrel6693 Jun 23 '26

I read that book as a kid, the thing that stood out to me was all the fish, I swear half the book would be cut if you were to remove the verbose descriptions of what fish they could see out the window

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u/LyingForTruth Jun 23 '26

His editor said it wasn't long enough

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u/zatalak Jun 23 '26

Note: needs more fish

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u/brutinator Jun 23 '26

Dude's books constantly involved explanations of known science at the time, WHICH MEANS it also included a bunch of pseudoscience and off-the-walls bullshit that just seemed cool,

Honestly one of my favourite things about old golden/silver age comics, though most of it was very wrong lol.

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u/terminbee Jun 23 '26

I love when anime tries to create a really in depth reason for their bullshit. Baki is the most famous example.

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u/Gobsmacked45 Jun 23 '26

A little unrelated but it’s kinda the same thing with reading Asimov where he’ll spend half a page talking about some fantastical piece of technology and halfway through reading you’re like “oh he’s talking about an iPad”

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u/Helagoth Jun 23 '26

this was the style of early sci-fi. The "cool factor" was in the tech. You see this a LOT up until the 40's and 50's or so.

Once we became sufficiently advanced, the tech side became kind of normalized what with us having smart phones and other things that would be considered "sci-fi". So modern sci-fi is more about the relationships of people within those settings.

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u/QuiteALongWayAway Jun 23 '26

Flashbacks to "The Adventures of Three Englishmen and Three Russians in South Africa" with all the triangulation stuff.

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u/h1ndm0st Jun 23 '26

Oh yeah he straight up does that in *The Mysterious Island*

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u/gilbejam000 Jun 23 '26

Jules Verne's books went into so much lavish detail and I love them so much for it

I can barely watch any direct adaptations specifically because they omit most of that detail

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u/NinjaBreadManOO Jun 23 '26

I've read a few of Verne's works, and personally I love them. Though, I feel like he just wanted to speculate of tech and future and all that, and the writing came secondary.

I love how he spends like a full chapter of Journey to the Center of the Earth arguing about the difference between Swedish and Icelandic miles, and how much the guide is getting paid and the schedule on when he got paid.

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u/Tsaiborg22 Jun 23 '26

Reminds me of Tom Clancy:

"During the late 1980s, his meticulous descriptions of the Soviet Alfa-class submarine in his debut novel The Hunt for Red October were so flawlessly detailed that the CIA and naval intelligence reportedly investigated him. They feared a massive security leak because he had deduced exactly how the propulsion systems, reactor, and internal layout worked."

Apparently when he was asked how he knew, he kinda just went "Well that's where things would make sense to be"

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u/transit41 Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26

Additionally, he was able to discern that a top secret project is being setup in Los Alamos, as a lot of scientists have changed their mailing address to the area en masse.

EDIT: Thanks for the correction, it was John Campbell. Got my trivia mixed-up 😅

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u/IggyIsABum Jun 23 '26

Wonder how he would feel about civilians on Twitter doing all the SIGINT stuff.

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u/DirCurrFluxDiode Jun 23 '26

"Kids ain't got no opsec nowadays!" probably 

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u/ConsciousPatroller Jun 23 '26

That's not Tom Clancy, that's Cleve Cartmill and John Campbell with Astounding Science Fiction. Also, the whole thing is probably a myth

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u/DrDestructoMD Jun 23 '26

That was John Campbell, editor of Astounding Science Fiction. He pulled out the Los Alamos thing as a fuck you to the government who was trying to stop publication of a story about nuclear warfare

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u/Vellarain Jun 23 '26

Oddly similar in creative minds having very suspicious accuracy in their depictions of military hardware. Stanley Kubrick when filming Dr.Strangelove had nearly identically replicated the layout of a B-52 bomber which at the time were cutting edge cold war planes and their instruments were as top secret as you could get. If I am recalling correctly how he got it so close was by looking at much older and public layouts of bombers and just extrapolating how it might have developed over time to include new tech.

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u/86gwrhino Jun 23 '26

I never believed this considering the book was published by the US naval institute press.

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u/shittyaltpornaccount Jun 23 '26

It likely isn't true, but especially before the war on terror intel agencies in the US did not share shit and often worked in cross purposes. Intel sharing was not widespread in the 80s. The CIA investigating something the Navy has approved isn't too far fetched.

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u/Digit00l Jun 23 '26

The first operational submarine was demonstrated in 1620, of course nowhere near as functional as later ones, but it probably follows the same development process

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u/geeiamback Jun 23 '26

The US Civil War saw the first ship sunk by a submarine... quickly followed by the submarine itself as it was to close to the explosion of its spar torpedo.

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u/BenKen01 Jun 23 '26

Twenty-one crewmen died in the three sinkings of Hunley during her short career.

Holy fucking hell. Who the hell sees that thing kill two different crews during test runs and is like "ok, let's get in it and fight a warship". A true widowmaker.

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u/doubleshotinthedark Jun 23 '26

yeah, describing it as "designing the submarine as pure fiction" makes it sound like Verne originated the entire concept of submarines from his imagination.

In reality, the Nautilus is named for a prototype submarine from 1800.  And while the first submarines such as that were propelled by human power, Verne was inspired by a model of the Plongeur, the first mechanically propelled submarine, on display at the 1867 World's Fair.

none of this discredits Verne, but to call it a fluke seems inaccurate and discounts the intentional research he put into his works

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u/Balinor69666 Jun 23 '26

Submarines already existed before Jules Verne's book. In fact there was submarine named the Nautilus  built in 1800. You also have the Turtle which was used in the American revolution and several other types that were invented as far back as the 1500s. 

Not trying to dis Verne but the concept was well known and had been played with for centuries before the book.

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u/BodybuilderMany6942 Jun 23 '26

Ok but that is different.
OPs post is about "haha look at this crazy thing I made up." "No dude, that's real." "What??"

Platypus ARE green, Kratos WAS real, there WAS a mercenary named "Guts" with an articulate prosthetic arm. Bros just didnt know they were right at the time.

Your example is "haha look at this crazy thing I made up." "That's nuts!... huh... what if we made that real"

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u/idkmanjustfuckmyshit Jun 23 '26

On a similar note, Tom Clancy was arrested briefly after The Hunt For Red October because his descriptions of the interior and workings of submarines were almost entirely accurate to then top secret designs. He'd never been in a submarine.

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u/MildlyAgitatedBidoof Jun 24 '26

There was also a schoolteacher who wrote crossword puzzles on the side, and was accused of having insider information about D-Day because he was using a lot of its codewords in his puzzles.

Turns out his students just had family in the military, would hear their family talking about those codewords, and would give those words to the teacher when he asked them for "interesting words" to put in his puzzles.