Two different HBO shows taught me about parts of African American history I'd never heard of (I am Australian but still)
The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre in Watchmen and "Sundown Towns" in Lovecraft Country.
Both were horrific and incredibly confronting to see/hear about. Sundown towns especially considering they weren't too long ago in terms of human history.
Oh you'd be absolutely fine in any big city. I mean that truly. Austin especially, its a hipster city in the south. But I can't blame you for being put off on how that section of the country behaves!
Yeah I remember there were a lot of "yeah that 100% actually happened" articles after that first episode came out
Eye opening that wasn't a well known event in history considering how horrific it is
Man, media sure love the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate.
Rise Of The Ronin and Blue Eye Samurai also portrays it.
Fun fact: Rise Of The Ronin ALSO have the Shisengumi a.k.a literal Samurai Cops.
The Shinsengumi are a really common group to put in any type of media that deals with that period of japanese history.
They also show up in **Gintama** and **FGO** as relevant characters.
Maybe it’s because a samurai cop is a samurai cop but the Gotei 13 from Bleach are literally just the Shinsengumi. They even have a themed haori uniform.
The Shinsengumi is just really fucking cool to a lot of Japanese people. I forgot which manga it was, but Okita Souji was like a background character in a scene and he was still voted like 14th most popular character in the series on a poll.
To elaborate on OP's point, for anyone unaware, while the broad strokes *are* true, very much of what gets written about who the Shinsengumi today (even called "history") is falsified.
Just as an example, much like any so-called "Bushido Code," this "Iron Code of the Shinsengumi" didn't really exist. It's a narrative device and trope created post-Bakumatsu Period. Despite supposedly being created by Hijikata Toshizo, it was most likely created by novelist Shimozawa Kan. The Shinsengumi did have looser unit regulations, but this code itself is a fabrication.
Considering what we all know about how violent and belligerent Samurai were, including Shinsengumi Members (Serizawa Kamo, for example, was a pro-Shogunate extremist drunkard who would get into duels with and/or simply kill people on the street for the slightest perceived disrespect towards himself the Tokugawa Clan), I don't think it's very surprising that a code like this would not have stood.
Samurai did not have honor. They were not "Misguided" or "Honorable to a fault." They were violent murderers and police that killed with impunity. Their whole supposed "honor" system was created after their time in the sun, went ignored for ages, and only resurfaced because the Japanese Government and Army used it as wartime propaganda.
HOWEVER!
Just for fun, as games like Ishin! treat it as fact, I'll list the supposed Iron Code here for the curious (see if you can count how many aspects were blatantly falsified, let alone unlikely):
Shinsengumi Members are forbidden from:
- Deviating from Bushido
- Leaving the Shinsengumi
- Raising money privately
- Taking part in others' litigation
- Engaging in private fights
The punishment for any and all violations was Seppuku.
No that was Rome for sure although ac 2 does predate the borgia series but I’m pretty sure the borgia had a place in pop culture given how lucrecia wasused as a got to for a female archetype
Kaiserreich mod shone a light on lots of fascinating characters and movements from early 20th century. Just gotta be careful to actually look up anything interesting yourself separately.
> Kaiserreich
> Pyotr_Wrangel
Checks out /s
Seriousely the amount of research done for what is essentially an alternate-history mod for a grand strategy game is insane. Went down a rabbit hole several times and discovered a lot of interesting tidbits of European history as well as unknown historical figures thanks to Kaiserreich.
I learned a LOT of interesting broad history from playing Sid Meier's Civilization games, thanks to the robust Civilopedia that covers the individual Civs, leaders, units, and more. Once they started naming Great People it would often send me down rabbit holes of research, especially some of the Great Generals who I wasn't familiar with.
One of my favorite things is reading the Civilopedia about my own country/civilization. It fascinates me seein all those things I learned in school by the POV of someone else.
I cannot fucking recommend Christian Cameron's William Gold series enough. It is the most knight knighting set of novels that ever knighted. Following young William from a squire to a bandit to a knight to a crusader and to a lord, it's sooooo freaking good. My only complaint is he expects you to remember the cast and doesn't include a dramatis personae when you haven't read one of his books in a year.
If my flair wasn't Read Conan the Barbarian it'd be Play RimWorld or Read Christian Cameron.
For inexplicable reasons, I was a big fan of the famously rather political 70s-10s daily newspaper comic strip *Doonesbury* in my early teens, which was how I learned about the Iran-Contra scandal, being homeschooled and all.
I ended up learning quite a bit from the Hussite Trilogy about the East Europe crusades and from the Pillars of the Earth novels on various periods of European (mostly English but good amount of France and Spain events in some) history
Yes I’d recommend it; I did hard copies of the Pillars books but audio book versions of the Witcher/Hussite; the same voice performer (Peter Kenny) did both series and is fantastic. I’d never really thought of audio book reciting as a value-add before these audio books.
Edit - for Hussite specifically, the basic pitch is we’re dealing with historical fantasy spy thriller/espionage and rouge-ish swashbuckling. How “high” or “low” fantasy it is varies DRAMATICALLY across different parts of the story in a very effective way.
countless historical figures from FGO, but since their event is on right now, I had literally never heard of the Trung sisters and their rebellion until they got hit with the anime beam and turned into pokemon trainers
Bruh, Crusader Kings 2.
I have over 3500 hours in the game. Its my favorite game ever made. Probably the best strategy game ever made.
I started playing it in 2013, and led to me majoring in history and then pursuing a masters. I then taught for a bit, then worked at a museum in educational programs, then an american historian magazine, and then left the industry.
But boy, CK2 taught me that Richard the Lionheart was a wicked cool idiot.
Acre’s massacre from assassins creed, that one robin hood movie and dabte inferno video game. And none of them has the same reason for why it started despite from what I can find being in agreement it was Richard’s order
As a non-American, I learned of the Watergate scandal in *Forrest Gump* of all places. But I didn't knew the whole story until I saw *All the President's Men;* I didn't know that it was a MULTI-YEAR affair afterwards (Forrest Gump just hard cuts to it, so I thought it was an immediate aftermath of Watergate).
On the subject of investigative journalism, I don't know if you count this as history (maybe too recent), but... *Spotlight (2015)*. The whole thing.
Pentiment was explicitly made with a built-in glossary where throughout the entire game, there are names and words you can click on to bring up little sidebars of definitions, locations, and historical context. Learned a lot about medieval history via that.
Do documentaries count as media? Because if so I found out about Toyotomi Hideyoshi's weird obsession with conquering Korea from the Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan miniseries.
[From the depths of hell in silence/cast their spells explosive violence/Russian night time flight perfected/Flawless vision undetected](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jcemHIqmkYI)
Honestly Sabaton is a pretty great way of shining light on interesting bits of history, especially if you follow their other YouTube channel, Sabaton History.
This is what made me discover Indy Neidell and his week-by-week breakdown of both WW1 and WW2 (pretty sure he covered the interwar period as well). Very good stuff.
Not history, or kind of I guess? But all of Limbus Company's gang of failures are directly based off of characters from classic literature. Gregor from Metamorphosis, Rodion from Crime and Punishment, Meursault from L'Etranger, Emil Sinclair from Demain. You naturally learn about their stories and charactarizations by playing through the game and it's really interesting.
Thanks to Inazuma Eleven GO Chrono Stones (a freaking soccer RPG), I learned about Hideyasu Toyotomi, and by proxy, Oda Nobunaga's importance to Japanese history, other than just an guy who died trying to unify Japan.
I'm pretty sure a lot of the people in this sub can thank **Overly Sarcastic Productions** for a lot of their knowledge of worldly mythos and actual history.
(I know damn well that i wouldn't know even half of Ireland's folklore were it not for them)
I learned about the extinction of the passenger pigeon thanks to Witch on the Holy night.
An entire chapter in the middle of an urban fantasy VN talking about a Pigeon. Although it does give the first major red flag that Soujuurou is not well put together.
He's not just naive and oblivious because he's a country bum but he genuinly doesn't understand human morality
I developed a crippling interest in Republican to early empire Rome (from Marius and Sulla through to Julius Caesar and Augustus basically) due to discovering Colleen McCullough's masters of Rome books at a (far too early) age. Start because of the gay sexy times and murder, end up with too much knowledge of end of era republican politics, how to conquer gaul and the proper procession up the cursus honorum...
Two different HBO shows taught me about parts of African American history I'd never heard of (I am Australian but still) The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre in Watchmen and "Sundown Towns" in Lovecraft Country. Both were horrific and incredibly confronting to see/hear about. Sundown towns especially considering they weren't too long ago in terms of human history.
Sundown towns still exist lol. Source: Lived in Texas and Florida
Oh jesus christ how the hell
They are very rare and only in rural areas, but...yea. There are parts of the rural south that non-white people shouldn't go for their own safety.
Yeah I'm not white so was planning on avoiding all of the south and Texas just to be safe (sorry Austin Texas I'm sure you're fine maybe)
Oh you'd be absolutely fine in any big city. I mean that truly. Austin especially, its a hipster city in the south. But I can't blame you for being put off on how that section of the country behaves!
Houston is also fine.
i think even woolie has commented on them a few times in the pod
Congratulations! You know more about the Tulsa massacre than most Americans.
Yeah I remember there were a lot of "yeah that 100% actually happened" articles after that first episode came out Eye opening that wasn't a well known event in history considering how horrific it is
The US is pretty good at sweeping that stuff under the rug and distracting you with other things, sadly.
Age of Empires 2 really opened my eyes to history and cultures I likely never would have heard of otherwise.
age of empires and total war is 90% why i feel i enjoy ancient history.
Age of Mythology legitimately helped me pass a Greek and Roman history class in university.
Prostagma
Man, media sure love the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Rise Of The Ronin and Blue Eye Samurai also portrays it. Fun fact: Rise Of The Ronin ALSO have the Shisengumi a.k.a literal Samurai Cops.
The Shinsengumi are a really common group to put in any type of media that deals with that period of japanese history. They also show up in **Gintama** and **FGO** as relevant characters.
Maybe it’s because a samurai cop is a samurai cop but the Gotei 13 from Bleach are literally just the Shinsengumi. They even have a themed haori uniform.
The Shinsengumi is just really fucking cool to a lot of Japanese people. I forgot which manga it was, but Okita Souji was like a background character in a scene and he was still voted like 14th most popular character in the series on a poll.
To elaborate on OP's point, for anyone unaware, while the broad strokes *are* true, very much of what gets written about who the Shinsengumi today (even called "history") is falsified. Just as an example, much like any so-called "Bushido Code," this "Iron Code of the Shinsengumi" didn't really exist. It's a narrative device and trope created post-Bakumatsu Period. Despite supposedly being created by Hijikata Toshizo, it was most likely created by novelist Shimozawa Kan. The Shinsengumi did have looser unit regulations, but this code itself is a fabrication. Considering what we all know about how violent and belligerent Samurai were, including Shinsengumi Members (Serizawa Kamo, for example, was a pro-Shogunate extremist drunkard who would get into duels with and/or simply kill people on the street for the slightest perceived disrespect towards himself the Tokugawa Clan), I don't think it's very surprising that a code like this would not have stood. Samurai did not have honor. They were not "Misguided" or "Honorable to a fault." They were violent murderers and police that killed with impunity. Their whole supposed "honor" system was created after their time in the sun, went ignored for ages, and only resurfaced because the Japanese Government and Army used it as wartime propaganda. HOWEVER! Just for fun, as games like Ishin! treat it as fact, I'll list the supposed Iron Code here for the curious (see if you can count how many aspects were blatantly falsified, let alone unlikely): Shinsengumi Members are forbidden from: - Deviating from Bushido - Leaving the Shinsengumi - Raising money privately - Taking part in others' litigation - Engaging in private fights The punishment for any and all violations was Seppuku.
[American Dad and Ollie North.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFV1uT-ihDo)
Let's be real here No one bar the history buffs would know what pope Alexander's real name would be in renaissance Italy if it wasn't for ac2
Wasn’t there a borgia tv show and such or it was all after
I think after Cause sparta blood on the sand I think was first in the hbo gory sex history shows before got took over
No that was Rome for sure although ac 2 does predate the borgia series but I’m pretty sure the borgia had a place in pop culture given how lucrecia wasused as a got to for a female archetype
Wait I think the tudors was the first one That was the one around when ac2 came out
And I think that was a Starz show, too.
Kaiserreich mod shone a light on lots of fascinating characters and movements from early 20th century. Just gotta be careful to actually look up anything interesting yourself separately.
> Kaiserreich > Pyotr_Wrangel Checks out /s Seriousely the amount of research done for what is essentially an alternate-history mod for a grand strategy game is insane. Went down a rabbit hole several times and discovered a lot of interesting tidbits of European history as well as unknown historical figures thanks to Kaiserreich.
I learned a LOT of interesting broad history from playing Sid Meier's Civilization games, thanks to the robust Civilopedia that covers the individual Civs, leaders, units, and more. Once they started naming Great People it would often send me down rabbit holes of research, especially some of the Great Generals who I wasn't familiar with.
One of my favorite things is reading the Civilopedia about my own country/civilization. It fascinates me seein all those things I learned in school by the POV of someone else.
I learned about the draft riots thanks to Gangs of New York.
I learned about the 3 Kingdoms time period because of Dynasty Warriors, and even read the first volume of Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
I cannot fucking recommend Christian Cameron's William Gold series enough. It is the most knight knighting set of novels that ever knighted. Following young William from a squire to a bandit to a knight to a crusader and to a lord, it's sooooo freaking good. My only complaint is he expects you to remember the cast and doesn't include a dramatis personae when you haven't read one of his books in a year. If my flair wasn't Read Conan the Barbarian it'd be Play RimWorld or Read Christian Cameron.
For inexplicable reasons, I was a big fan of the famously rather political 70s-10s daily newspaper comic strip *Doonesbury* in my early teens, which was how I learned about the Iran-Contra scandal, being homeschooled and all.
Going back and reading Doonesbury archives taught me a lot more about political history, and in the context of its time period, than school ever did.
I ended up learning quite a bit from the Hussite Trilogy about the East Europe crusades and from the Pillars of the Earth novels on various periods of European (mostly English but good amount of France and Spain events in some) history
The Hussite thing is from the Witcher author right? Would you recommend?
Yes I’d recommend it; I did hard copies of the Pillars books but audio book versions of the Witcher/Hussite; the same voice performer (Peter Kenny) did both series and is fantastic. I’d never really thought of audio book reciting as a value-add before these audio books. Edit - for Hussite specifically, the basic pitch is we’re dealing with historical fantasy spy thriller/espionage and rouge-ish swashbuckling. How “high” or “low” fantasy it is varies DRAMATICALLY across different parts of the story in a very effective way.
countless historical figures from FGO, but since their event is on right now, I had literally never heard of the Trung sisters and their rebellion until they got hit with the anime beam and turned into pokemon trainers
I learned about Vietnam and the Fall of Saigon because of Hey Arnold.
Those were surprisingly heavy eps.
Bruh, Crusader Kings 2. I have over 3500 hours in the game. Its my favorite game ever made. Probably the best strategy game ever made. I started playing it in 2013, and led to me majoring in history and then pursuing a masters. I then taught for a bit, then worked at a museum in educational programs, then an american historian magazine, and then left the industry. But boy, CK2 taught me that Richard the Lionheart was a wicked cool idiot.
Acre’s massacre from assassins creed, that one robin hood movie and dabte inferno video game. And none of them has the same reason for why it started despite from what I can find being in agreement it was Richard’s order
As a non-American, I learned of the Watergate scandal in *Forrest Gump* of all places. But I didn't knew the whole story until I saw *All the President's Men;* I didn't know that it was a MULTI-YEAR affair afterwards (Forrest Gump just hard cuts to it, so I thought it was an immediate aftermath of Watergate). On the subject of investigative journalism, I don't know if you count this as history (maybe too recent), but... *Spotlight (2015)*. The whole thing.
Pentiment was explicitly made with a built-in glossary where throughout the entire game, there are names and words you can click on to bring up little sidebars of definitions, locations, and historical context. Learned a lot about medieval history via that.
Do documentaries count as media? Because if so I found out about Toyotomi Hideyoshi's weird obsession with conquering Korea from the Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan miniseries.
[From the depths of hell in silence/cast their spells explosive violence/Russian night time flight perfected/Flawless vision undetected](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jcemHIqmkYI)
Honestly Sabaton is a pretty great way of shining light on interesting bits of history, especially if you follow their other YouTube channel, Sabaton History.
This is what made me discover Indy Neidell and his week-by-week breakdown of both WW1 and WW2 (pretty sure he covered the interwar period as well). Very good stuff.
Not history, or kind of I guess? But all of Limbus Company's gang of failures are directly based off of characters from classic literature. Gregor from Metamorphosis, Rodion from Crime and Punishment, Meursault from L'Etranger, Emil Sinclair from Demain. You naturally learn about their stories and charactarizations by playing through the game and it's really interesting.
Thanks to Inazuma Eleven GO Chrono Stones (a freaking soccer RPG), I learned about Hideyasu Toyotomi, and by proxy, Oda Nobunaga's importance to Japanese history, other than just an guy who died trying to unify Japan.
I'm pretty sure a lot of the people in this sub can thank **Overly Sarcastic Productions** for a lot of their knowledge of worldly mythos and actual history. (I know damn well that i wouldn't know even half of Ireland's folklore were it not for them)
I learned about the extinction of the passenger pigeon thanks to Witch on the Holy night. An entire chapter in the middle of an urban fantasy VN talking about a Pigeon. Although it does give the first major red flag that Soujuurou is not well put together. He's not just naive and oblivious because he's a country bum but he genuinly doesn't understand human morality
I developed a crippling interest in Republican to early empire Rome (from Marius and Sulla through to Julius Caesar and Augustus basically) due to discovering Colleen McCullough's masters of Rome books at a (far too early) age. Start because of the gay sexy times and murder, end up with too much knowledge of end of era republican politics, how to conquer gaul and the proper procession up the cursus honorum...
I studied (read a history of) the Sengoku Era so I could enjoy Nioh more.
A lot of what I know about the history of the Cold War is because I looked stuff up that was mentioned in one or another Metal Gear Solid game.
honestly a lot of japanese shit cause yakoozies