Inserted into Historical Footage

So, you have an excellent idea for a story. But, while creating it, you come across anunforeseen problem: You need to give it a historical background for the plot. How do you create it? You don't have access to the resources needed to shoot a scene set in the past and doing a large Intro Dump can feel awkward, besides going against the principles of Show, Don't Tell. Using Stock Footage could work, but maybe what you have available sticks to the historical facts and doesn't quite work with what or who you're writing...

Well, unless you could, say, edit it. Why not? You have the footage from the event you're portraying. Perhaps the image is grainy and the edit will not be noticed. Or you could get footage from a rather unknown event, letting you edit it to fit in nicely in your work.

As for the how it can be used, well, you could, for instance, add a fictional character into a Team Shot of important Real Life personalities or a military unit, to establish his past without having to create it wholecloth. Maybe the author reworks footage of a well-known historical occurrence to give a character a Been There, Shaped History background. Or maybe the story's Phlebotinum/MacGuffin is edited into footage to establish its use on an Alternate History while still appearing to be real historical footage. Perhaps you could touch up some historical artwork to imply that someone may have been here for longer than he claims, with a rap sheet to match. It can even be used to create a Masquerade or Secret History, conveniently ignored or unknown by the Muggles in the setting, ripe for your characters to explore, while still keeping the plot grounded in historical fact.

Regardless, of how it's used, the main point of the trope is to use Real Life footage and images in order to create a historical (or allohistorical) background to a work to aid in storytelling. This trope often relies on Historical Figures in Archival Media for footage, which can make it difficult to use in animated works.

This is not a case of Manipulative Editing, as that trope tends to cover deliberate alterations meant to deceive the viewer. This trope, as mentioned above instead uses the editing in order to aid in establishing and grounding the plot.Compare and contrast with Real Footage Re-creation.

Examples:

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Comic Strips

Peanuts: Author Charles M. Schultz was a veteran of World War II and frequently had strips that paid tribute to D-Day; in 1998, the final D-Day tribute of the strip (oddly printed on Memorial Day), this was done by using a photograph of an event showing General (and future U.S. President) Dwight D. Eisenhower talking to the troops on the eve of the invasion, with Snoopy in the corner.

Films — Live-Action

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.
The Battle of Algiers: The final scene, about rising anti-French resistance in Algeria despite their counterinsurgency methods, splices in footage of a real riot in Algiers from a decade prior.
In Captain America: The Winter Soldier during Zola's Holding the Floor speech to Cap and Natasha detailing Hydra's manipulation's there is footage of the Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes edited in atop a water tower taking aim at JFK, Cap edited into a Allied propaganda reel escorting several German POWs and an image of Zola edited into group of German scientists recruited as part of Operation Paperclip.
Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022): Combined with the Roger Rabbit Effect. In the prologue, during a montage of Chip and Dale arriving in Hollywood and landing bit parts before getting their own show, a clip from an episode of Full House (specifically, "Dr. Dare Rides Again") is shown with the chipmunks inserted into it.
Citizen Kane: The fictional newsreel "News On the March" showcases Charles Foster Kane interacting with contemporary politicians of his time, from Theodore Roosevelt to Adolf Hitler, in real archival footage.
Forrest Gump uses this as part of Forrest's Been There, Shaped History story, interacting with several personalities through archived images, like the Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and John Lennon. The fact that the footage is so seamless made it an incredible special effects triumph in 1994.
Good Night, and Good Luck.: Senator Joseph McCarthy and his appearance on Edward R. Murrow's show, played in the film by George Clooney, is done entirely through archival footage of the Senator from his actual appearance in 1958. Test screening audiences who were unaware of this fact complained that the guy who played McCarthy was overacting and wasn't believable.
It's a Wonderful Life: During a montage explaining how the characters were effected by World War II, there are some shots of the actors placed over wartime footage via what seems to be rear projection. The effect is... passable, considering this is a movie from the 1940s.
In the sequel of Kiler Jerzy Kiler is shown in videos with famous people like Bill Clinton, Elizabeth II, Lech Wałęsa, Pope John Paul II or Michael Jackson.
Ted: During the montage of Ted becoming a celebrity after coming to life in the 1980s, 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.
Salt: Big Bad Orlov is shown edited into a picture of several high-ranking Soviet personnel, including among them Leonid Brezhnev.
A notable aversion in Scarface (1983). Despite the fact that the movie opens with footage of the Mariel boatlift, but Al Pacino's character is nowhere to be seen.
X-Men: Days of Future Past: An image of Magneto on the Grassy Knoll during the assassination of John F. Kennedy is used to prove he caused JFK's assassination by bending Oswald's second bullet. In reality, Kennedy was secretly a mutant, and Magneto was trying to save him.
The Woody Allen film Zelig is a Mockumentary consisting primarily of the title character interacting with various historic events, in all cases inserting him into archival footage.

Literature

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter: The original cover for the novel is a photograph of President Lincoln altered to include bloody hand prints, with Lincoln himself half-concealing a hatchet behind his back.

Live-Action TV

The intro to : shows members of the Blackadder family in important events or around people important in Great Britain, like Winston Churchill to which whom he flips a bird.
Doctor Who is no stranger to this trope:
- In "Rose", Clive shows Rose a photograph of the JFK Assassination, which has been edited to show the 9th Doctor in attendance, as part of the growing evidence he has of the mysterious time-traveling alien.
- "Vincent and the Doctor" has a painting example; the Inciting Incident involves the Doctor noticing an alien creature in the window of a house in one Vincent van Gogh's paintings. The ending shows that, while the Doctor and Amy were unable to prevent Vincent van Gogh from committing suicide, his iconic Sunflowers painting now includes the words "For Amy".
- In the opening of "The Impossible Astronaut", the Doctor appears in a Laurel and Hardy film and breaks the Fourth Wall to wave at Amy and Rory.
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.
Grimm: The Season 1 episode "Three Coins in a Fuchsbau" ends with Nick viewing footage of Adolf Hitler giving a speech; Hitler briefly shifts into a Blutbad at the end, showing that the leader of the Nazi party was a ''wesen''.
The Good Wife: Diane Lockhart keeps a photograph of herself in a public appearance with Hillary Clinton in her office, created by the show from an archival photo.
Done in JAG with footage of then-president Clinton, using a clip where he's jogging; we're to believe main character Harm is in the security detail jogging along with him.
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.
A 2013 mockumentary on The History Channel called "The Great Martian War" blended film footage from World War One with CG of Martian tripods. Watch some footage of it here. There was also a video game based on the film.
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”.
Warehouse 13:
- The intro for the first two seasons shows crates from the warehouse inserted into historical photographs, implying the people in the photos are warehouse agents. Nikola Tesla also briefly appears before a shot of his eponymous weapon, the Tesla Stun Gun, is seen.
- Occasionally, the show will reveal the nature of the artifact of the week by showing it in context with a photo of the person who owned it; for instance, in the "Freaky Friday" Flip episode "Merge With Caution", the bookends are shown in a photograph alongside Robert Louis Stevenson, and in "Trials", Real Life Intrepid Reporter Walter Winchell is seen wearing a monogrammed tie pin and cufflinks, which he didn't actually own.

Music

"Weird Al" Yankovic's "Gump" spoofs the Forrest Gump examples by showing the actor playing Forrest inserted into various absurd historical situations, including walking on the Moon and watching an atomic explosion.

Video Games

Assassin's Creed II makes a minigame of sorts out of this; Subject 16, the previous test subject before Desmond, did something to the Animus that caused glyphs to appear that can be interacted with, and several of them involve solving puzzles by locating Pieces of Eden in historical photographs and portraits; the third puzzle has the player locating Pieces of Eden in slightly edited images of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Houdini, and Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi.
Bioshock Infinite: Part of the marketing push for the game included brief snippets of a program from the 1980s called "Truth From Legend", a paranormal documentary show; two videos were released covering the city of Columbia, using images from the 1893-1894 World's Columbian Exposition that had been altered to include the floating metropolis and footage of a building that fell from Columbia somewhere in the Alps.
The ending of Call of Duty: Black Ops shows an edited picture of the day of the JFK assassination with protagonist Alex Mason edited into.
Used for an Historical In-Joke in : In the briefing for one of the Soviet missions, the player is shown a picture◊ of Stalin, with Yuri edited in on his right. This picture really exists◊ and is famous for being doctored, the real-life version showing Stalin sat next to Lenin. This version of the picture, created at the behest of Stalin, is a forgery to try and give him more credibility as one of Lenin's closest collaborators. The result of this forgery of a forgery is that neither person in Yuri's photo actually was there when it was taken.
Iron Harvest intro has footage from WW1 edited with the mechs of the game. It works quite well, with the film grain and limitations of the original footage managing to look like real footage.
Ring of Red does the same thing with WW2 footage.

Web Original

THE MONUMENT MYTHOS: Several historical photographs and pieces of footage have been altered or used in a different context to tell the story; for instance, the episode WASHINGTONWORMHOLE shows photos of the Washington Monument under construction as a container for a 'special tree', and AIRFORCEONEANGEL uses altered photographs of an actual incident where the President's personal plane^note went on a flyby of the Statue of Liberty without warning either New York or New Jersey in advance.
SCP Foundation:
- SCP-4444 uses edited images of Al Gore during the 2000 U.S. Election; Gore in this narrative is some kind of extra-dimensional alien, and the Foundation is interfering with it to prevent him from becoming president.
- SCP-1981, AKA "RONALD REAGAN CUT UP WHILE TALKING", has edited footage from Reagan's 'Evil Empire' speech, showing him being slowly mutilated by an unknown force.
The Slender Man Mythos was kicked off by a pair of images in this style, both prominently featuring children being stalked by the faceless figure in the mid-1980s, with an ominous caption claiming that the images were recovered after a fire at a library and that the photographers have vanished. It's unknown what the source image actually is to this day.

Western Animation

American Dad!: In "The Return of the Bling", Stan learns that one of Roger's personas is Chex LeMeneux, a prominent member of the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" U.S. Men's Olympic Hockey Team. Roger dons his persona and takes Stan to a player's reunion, where everyone watches a clip show of the games, all with Chex added in to show him causing chaos to the Russian players.
Family Guy: The episode "Yug Ylimaf" has Brian taking one of his dates back in time to the destruction of the Hindenburg, with an edited version of the original video showing the two of them having a make-out session during all the chaos and the narrator mentioning them.
Squidbillies: One episode has Dan Halen photoshopped into a video of the Nazi movements as a commander and in a photo of the police riot outside the 1968 Democratic convention where he's shown participating in the brutality, both being only two examples of how unfathomably old he is and all the atrocities he's committed during his lifetime.

Inserted into Historical Footage - TV Tropes (2024)

Examples: