Napoleon Delusion



"Patient A: I am Napoleon!

Patient B: How do you know?

Patient A: God told me.

Patient C: I most certainly did not!"

A form of insanity far more common in fiction than reality, the delusion that one is a famous person, or at the very least the modern reincarnation of same. Napoleon Bonaparte is the most commonly used person for this, possibly because the unusual hat and hand-in-jacket pose are a strong visual that immediately identifies the delusion for the audience. God and Jesus are also frequently seen.

This trope is usually played for comedy, but can also be a bittersweet commentary on contemporary society.

It may also be used to bring extra hilarity to a person already suffering from Identity Amnesia.

Compare A God Am I. Contrast Thoroughly Mistaken Identity. See also Daydream Believer and Otherkin, for people in real life or otherwise who believe they are reincarnations of fictional characters.

Comic Books

 * In Asterix and the Big Fight our Roman-era heroes go to see a druid who specializes in treating mental problems. One of the people in the queue is dressed as Napoleon. The receptionist's comment: "No-one knows who this one thinks he is."
 * Also, see below.
 * A very early Batman story, "The Scarlet Horde", was about a cabal of scientists led by a man believing himself to be the reincarnation of Napoleon.
 * An old EC Comics sci-fi story involves an alien invasion scout ship killing a man and stealing his brain, so they can scan it to learn of Earth's defenses. They see men on horses with swords and powder rifles, and cockily decide that their one ship can conquer this primitive planet. They launch an attack...and are immediately shot out of the sky with missiles. Cut to a horrified worker at the insane asylum who just found the brainless corpse of the inmate who thought he was Napoleon.
 * The Simpsons Halloween comic "Immigration of the Body Snatchers" gives the Springfield Loony Bin an entire Napoleon Ward. It's on the Cliched Patients Wing, right next to the Charlton Heston Messiah Complex.
 * An Archie Comics story once had asylum employees mistakenly think that Jughead was an escaped mental patient and they brought him back with them. Jughead spends until the entire comic trying to prove his sanity or escape, until he finds out that the cafeteria there serves great food. In the end, Archie comes to try and free his friend, only to find Jughead deliberately pretending he's Napoleon in order to stay for the food. Interestingly, a reprint of the story years later changed it so that he pretends he's Dr. Eggman instead.
 * Achille Talon has a guy claiming to be admiral Nelson. If you think this belong to Non-Napoleon Examples, check what Nelson is famous for.

Film

 * This is Older Than Television; it was used in movies as early as 1922's Mixed Nuts, starring Stan Laurel.
 * In Highlander III the Sorcerer, Connor is strapped to a bed in the psych ward of a hospital, and uses his first-hand knowledge of the Napoleonic Wars to convince a Napoleon to free him.
 * In the brief asylum scene of The Shadow movie (in a rather Nightmare Fuel scene showing that the villain  has been put into a place where his claims of being the mind-manipulating descendant of Genghis Khan will not be believed), the inmates exclaim who they think they are. One of them is a Napoleon. Another, with a distinctly male voice, announces that he is Josephine.
 * At the end of Batman Forever, the now-institutionalized (and insane) Riddler claims to know Batman's true identity. When pressed, he insists that he's Batman. From somewhere else inside the asylum, we hear another patient respond, "And I'm Napoleon!"
 * There's a film titled The Emperor's New Clothes in which Ian Holm plays Napoleon himself, and the premise is that he escaped St. Helena and an Identical Stranger took his place. However, once he gets back to France, he is treated as one of these, and ultimately settles into a happy but mundane life.
 * There's one scene where a doctor (who suspects that Holm's character is Napoleon) takes him to a insane asylum and shows him a courtyard full of men with NapoleonDelusions, so he'll realize the danger of his claims.
 * In the animated The Twelve Tasks of Asterix, one of the people who just left "the place that sends you mad" is wearing a paper hat and his hand in his shirt.

Literature

 * Fredric Brown's "Come And Go Mad", a rather complicated sci-fi novella from the seventies, involved a man who had once been institutionalized for believing he was Napoleon. He returned to the asylum to uncover a conspiracy, and discovered that he was, in fact, Napoleon--body-swapped through time by a conspiracy of red and black ants who secretly control all of human history. (Not to be confused with the historical novel The Red and the Black.) The revelation drives him to violent insanity; he undergoes electroshock therapy and returns home "cured", believing himself to be a salesman.
 * Invoked in Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson's Hoka stories. While the wildly imaginative Hokas love taking on roles, so that a Hoka can be Sherlock Holmes, Queen Victoria, the Lone Ranger, the Duke of Wellington, etc. -- only when speaking of a Hoka who is Napoleon does Alex feel the necessity to explain that a Hoka can be perfectly sane and still call himself Napoleon. (Well, by Hoka standards.)
 * Mentioned (but probably doesn't happen) in Animorphs, where Tobias wonders to himself if he's not in an asylum full of people who think they're Washington, Napoleon, or red-tailed hawks.
 * In the Horatio Hornblower short story The Last Encounter, a stranger calls on the retired main character (a veteran of the Napoleonic wars) claiming to be Napoleon and begging the loan of a carriage so he could return to France in time to run in the upcoming Presidential election and reclaim his rightful position..

Live Action TV

 * The Prisoner episode "The Girl Who Was Death" was an oddly loopy adventure set outside the Village, where No.6 is out to stop a mad scientist who fancies himself Napoleon (complete with a Josephine) who is plotting to blow up London.
 * A Night Court episode has Harry end up in a holding cell for the mentally ill. 'I'm in here, with the Napoleons.' Bonus points: all of them growl when Waterloo is mentioned.

Music

 * "They're coming to take me away, ha haa!" is a song from The Sixties about a man who will be soon taken to the asylum. Its author is Napoleon XIV.
 * Flanders and Swann had a song, "The Elephant", in which an elephant claimed to be suffering from this. It makes marginally more sense in context.

Radio

 * In Bleak Expectations, this is somewhat justified, as England has just emerged from Napoleonic Wars. And therefore all patients on the insanity ward think they're either Napoleon or Duke Wellington, and fights are daily occurencce.

Tabletop Games

 * Parodied by the Cheapass Games release Escape From Elba, in which you play Napoleon. So does everyone else. And each Napoleon is trying to escape the island of Elba (or at least be at peace with the fact that they're obviously crazy and trapped with a bunch of other Napoleons).

Video Games

 * In the game Psychonauts, one character in an asylum claims to be Napoleon. In fact, he's a direct descendant fighting off a Genetic Memory of his ancestor. Unlike his diminutive ancestor, Fred Bonaparte is tall and has no particular love of victory  He wasn't even a patient initially, he was the head orderly until his slide into semi-madness.
 * There was a BBS door game way back in the days of the Internet called Sanitarium in which the weapons salesman was Napoleon. Or at least he said he was - given the name of the game, you can obviously guess where it took place, and the state of its inhabitants.

Western Animation
"Dog: Butcha ain't. * puts on hat* I am!"
 * Screwy Squirrel wore a Napoleon hat as a nod to this.
 * At the end of his best-known cartoon, he finally confronts the dog about why he has been chasing him "all through the picture." The dog answers that it's 'cause he thinks he's Napoleon.


 * Futurama: In "Insane in the Mainframe", Bender briefly acted like he was under a Napoleon Delusion, though a skewed one, at the robot asylum. At another point in the episode, Bender is listing some of the great things about living at the asylum. One of these is "two Lincolns for every Napoleon."
 * "Let me tell you all a story 'bout a battle called Waterloo!"
 * "Bonjour Y'all!"
 * "Je suis Napoleon! No, really, I'm not."
 * Parodied in the Bugs Bunny cartoon Napoleon Bunny-Part, when the real Napoleon is hauled off by insane asylum orderlies who think he's an escaped paitent. One of them quips that he's the twelfth Napoleon they've had to catch all day. Bugs then gets into the act himself with the closing line: "Imagine, them thinking he's Napoleon, when I really am!"
 * Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987: A Napoleon is in the insane asylum with Baxter Stockman in episode 6, voiced by Peter Cullen.

Real Life

 * The origin of this trope is believed to have occurred when John D. Rockefeller had donated money to help restore the Eastern State Mental Hospital in Williamsburg, Virginia. While there, he was walking the grounds and introduced himself to a patient. The patient did not actually believe he met Rockefeller and he sarcastically quipped that he was Napoleon Bonaparte.
 * Semi Truth in Television - after going crazy from syphilis, the French playwright Georges Feydeau thought that he was Napoleon III.
 * American General George S. Patton believed himself to be the reincarnation of Napoleon and Caesar.
 * Involved in the Urban Legend debunked here, where a French chef named Napoleon briefly Goes Among Mad People because he told a bus driver he was going to meet the president - just Not That Kind Of President.
 * Francisco Solano Lopez, dictator of Paraguay (1826-70). In one of the tragicomic episodes that occasionally punctuate South American history, he started a war with three countries at once, leading to his death, along with most of his subjects, the partial dismemberment of his country and its economic devastation for many decades thereafter. So yeah. Don't Try This At Home.
 * Also, Simon Bolivar, one of the great Liberators of South America, modeled himself after Napoleon, but he wasn't insane and actually met with some success.
 * Gabriel of Sedona, cult leader extraordinaire, claims to be the reincarnation of Napoleon. Additionally, he's a reincarnation of Jesus and Abraham Lincoln, too (never mind that Lincoln and Napoleon were alive concurrently). "Either I am who I say I am, or I'm completely crazy," is a direct quotation. Well then.

Anime and Manga

 * The ending of the anime Perfect Blue has this happen to
 * An episode/chapter of Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei involves a weird guy who thinks he's Mathew Perry and starts opening everything at the school.

Comic Books

 * In The DCU, there's also mobster Julie Caesar. Guess who he thinks he is.
 * And Maxie Zeus, first two guesses don't count!
 * Charlie Caligula deliberately based his criminal "empire" and theme on both of the above, making him a borderline example; he doesn't actually think he's Caligula, but likes to pretend.
 * In "The Goofy Superman!" first printed in Superman #163, Clark Kent, behaving erratically due to Red Kryptonite, is admitted to an insane asylum, where they believe him to be a lunatic who thinks he's Superman. There are several actual delusional patients, including a Napoleon. The most important is a "General Grant," who quickly realizes that Clark is the genuine Superman. (He's crazy, not stupid.)
 * In a multipart story more recently, Brainiac downloaded his own mind into Superman's body ... and Superman's mind into a young boy in a Bedlam House who believed he was Superman. In the end, Superman mindlinked with the boy, found out the reason he wanted to be Superman so badly, and they took on Brainiac together.
 * At the Cereal Convention from Sandman, at least two of the serial-killer attendees considered themselves to be God. Their name tags designated them "God 1" and "God 2", presumably based on who'd gotten to the registration booth first.
 * A Golden Age Batman story has a non-insane Joker (this'll tell you how old the story is) get himself committed to an insane asylum in order to pump an inmate for the location of a McGuffin. In order to find out what he's up to, Batman has himself committed in the disguise of a stereotypical mind-reading Eastern mystic (turban and all). The inmates include the mandatory Napoleon, an Issac Newton and... a Batman, complete with full costume. Hilarity ensues when the Joker captures the real Batman after seeing through the fake mystic guise, only for the fake Batman to turn up to rescue him -- and then decide that Bruce (who has doffed his disguise in an attempt to confuse the Joker) must be the Joker! With the real Joker standing there watching, of course. In the end, the Joker is so confused that he has to explain that he's not really mad and it was all a plot, simply to convince himself that he's actually sane! Boy, they couldn't do that one these days...
 * An issue of the MASK comic book is centered around an escaped asylum patient who thinks he's Guy Fawkes. There is also a patient who thinks he's Napoleon, but he's not important to the plot.

Film

 * The play and movie Arsenic and Old Lace has a character who believes he's Teddy Roosevelt. Another character notes that this is largely voluntary on his part; at some point in the past, when they suggested he be someone else, he sank into a week-long funk ("and refused to be anyone at all"). When he has to be intimidated, the best way to do it is to claim you're Woodrow Wilson. In the movie version, the asylum director complains that Happy Dale already has a surfeit of Teddy Roosevelts, and sadly, no Napoleons.
 * In the movie Bubba Ho-Tep, it's left to the viewer whether or not the main character and his friend are really Elvis and JFK, or just really, really delusional. Oh, and the guy who thinks he's Kennedy is played by Ossie Davis.
 * The Ruling Class features Peter O'Toole as an heir to a noble title who believes he's Jesus. He's put into psychiatric treatment,
 * Miracle on 34th Street involves an elderly gentlemen named Kris Kringle who claims to be Santa Claus. The film leaves open the possibility that he actually is, however.
 * Airplane!: "It's Lieutenant Hurwitz. Severe shell-shock. Thinks he's Ethel Merman." He is.
 * In the sequel, air traffic controller Steve McCroskey (Lloyd Bridges) is said to have gone senile, and now "thinks he's Lloyd Bridges."
 * In the film and play They Might Be Giants (not to be confused with the band named after it) is about a wealthy man who has come to believe that he's Sherlock Holmes. His psychiatrist is fittingly named Dr. Watson.
 * In Revenge of The Pink Panther, Clouseau, dressed in women's clothing, is dragged by the police to a psychiatric hospital. He insists that he isn't crazy, that he's Europe's greatest detective, and gets confronted by a patient who maintains that he is Europe's greatest detective - Hercule Poirot.
 * In The Dream Team, one of the main characters believes himself to be the second coming of Jesus.

Literature
"Dr. Felix Funck: He think's he's Superman,"
 * As detailed in Making Money, the Discworld equivalent is Vetinari Delusion. The main villain is shown descending from wanting to be like Vetinari and having Vetinari's posessions stolen to better emulate him, to actually believing he is Vetinari.
 * Referenced in The A.B.C. Murders by Agatha Christie; Hercule Poirot, explaining that a madman's actions always make sense if you understand his peculiarly biased point of view, uses the example of a man who believes himself to be Mahatma Gandhi.
 * The Archangel Gabriel in Kathryn Hulme's The Nun's Story.
 * Averted in the case of the Abbess, whom Sister Luke thinks must be delusional (but isn't).
 * A Larry Niven short story concerns an epidemic of people becoming convinced that they're Superman.
 * There's a Norman Spinrad short story ("It's a Bird! It's a Plane!") involving the same thing.


 * In The Ball and the Cross by G. K. Chesterton, the two protagonists realise they've broken into a lunatic asylum when the two men they've met claim to be God and the King. Since the protagonists are, respectively, an atheist and a Jacobite, they each take the opportunity to vent some steam at their respective hate figures.
 * House of Leaves features a throwaway anecdote from Johnny Truant about a former landlord who woke up believing he was Charles de Gaulle.

Live Action TV

 * In the Adam West Batman TV series, there was a villain who believed he was King Tut; he's since been introduced in the comics.
 * A Mash episode had a soldier convinced he was Jesus. Unlike most examples, there were some who speculated that he was faking it to go home. Turns out he wasn't. The Tag showed Klinger declaring that he was Moses, complete with costume, in an effort to repeat the soldier's success at getting sent home.
 * Also, in the finale episode when, he mentions to Sidney that there are two patients who suffer from this, one who thinks he's General MacArthur and "wades ashore in his bathtub every morning".
 * Barney Miller had an arrestee who believed he was Jesus, as well. Since he had previously thought himself possessed by Satan, this delusion was kind of therapeutic.
 * A teenage boy on Boston Public also became convinced he was Jesus after he saw a little boy run over by a bus and later received a nasty electrical shock from a projector. He managed to convince a few other people too.
 * In another episode Harvey believes he is George Washington reincarnated. The interesting bit is that he is so knowledgeable about Washington that he actually convinces his class that there is at least a chance that he might really be the founding father reborn.
 * In the Community episode "Studies In Modern Movement", Britta picks up a hitchhiker to prove to Shirley that she has a moral compass despite being an atheist. This backfires on Britta when the hitchhiker reveals that he is a devout Christian. Shirley is thrilled, but then it backfires on her when the hitchhiker turns out to be wacko who believes that he is literally Jesus Christ (oh, and "Jesus" thinks marijuana should be legal). Finally, he declares that he's going to sing a song he wrote about race-mixing called "Don't You Do It", prompting Britta to slam the brakes and both Britta and Shirley to yell "GET OUT!"
 * In the Babylon 5 episode A Late Delivery from Avalon, we meet a passenger that is convinced that he is the reincarnation of King Arthur, returning in Earth's, and therefor Britain's, darkest hour. . It should be noted that this is not played for humor.
 * The characters -- having met another historical character preserved by the Vorlons -- seriously consider the possibility that he is King Arthur.
 * Lois and Clark had a woman who thought she was Mary Todd Lincoln. She ends up witnessing Clark using is powers, but then she starts calling him General Grant.

Tabletop Games

 * In Warhammer 40000, members of the Blood Angels Space Marines chapter would sometimes permanently succumb into so called Black Rage, in which they believe they're the Chapter founder Sanguinius. The rest of the chapter rounds them up into Death Seeker squads when possible, or else just locks them away. It's normally played for drama... but you can't really help but throw in a few jokes about it.
 * They have a reason; the death of their angelic Primarch left a psychic imprint across the entire Chapter, permanently cursing them with that insanity, and a thirst for blood...
 * In the Shadowrun game-universe, professional baseball players use skillsofts that perfectly mimic the performance of historic ball players, allowing for proxy match-ups between such combinations as Ted Williams vs. Mark McGuire, or two different seasons' Babe Ruths playing against one another. In the short story that introduced this idea, an ex-player who'd been chipping Babe Ruth when he was struck on the head by a line drive suffered brain damage as a result, causing the Babe's personality to be imprinted permanently over his own.

Theatre
"Doctor: Well, here did my Froggies hide, in the boiler room! Get back to the ward, guys!
 * Arthur Kopit's play Chamber Music is about a group of women in an insane asylum who think they're various historical figures, including Susan B. Anthony, Gertrude Stein, Joan of Arc, Amelia Earhart, and Mozart's wife.
 * There was a cabaret sketch with two guys speaking in Gratuitous French, only to be interrupted by a doctor:

"Frenchmen": [do not notice]

Doctor: Richelieu et l'hospital!"


 * The Physicist has 3 characters, an Isaac Newton, an Einstein, and one who believes he is simply visited by Solomon..
 * The titular Elisabeth visits patients in an insane asylum while trying to distract herself from her unhappy life as Empress of Austria-Hungary and meets a patient there who believes herself to be Elisabeth. In a twist on the trope, the real Elisabeth envies the woman's ability to be happy in this delusion when she herself is so miserable. She has to consciously tell herself to stay strong and not give into the temptation to allow herself to go mad too, where they can "only bind your arms but leave your soul free".
 * In Arsenic and Old Lace, Mortimer's brother Theodore thinks he's... well, Theodore.

Video Games

 * In the asylum levels in The Darkness II one of Jackie's mafia henchmen, Aldo, believes he is Adolf Hitler.

Western Animation
"Fry: Let me guess, he thinks he's Lincoln?
 * The above mentioned Futurama episode also features the following exchange in regards to a robotic Abraham Lincoln:

Unit 2013: Well, he's supposed to. Problem is he's got multiple personalities -- all of them Lincoln.

Robotic Lincoln: I was born in two hundred log cabins."


 * The Batman comics and animated series also had Maxie Zeus, who was under the impression he was the Greek god--though sometimes the delusion seemed to be more playing a part than genuine insanity.
 * An episode of The Simpsons had Duff Man working in a men's shelter after being fired from his mascot position. After the family convince him to come out of his Ten-Minute Retirement and he rips off his suit to reveal his old costume a scraggly looking man is seen saying "Then if he's Duff Man... I must be Jesus!" and promptly jump out a window.
 * There's also the episode where the family befriends a large, bald, white man... who insists he's Michael Jackson. The joke of this episode is that while Homer has heard of Michael Jackson from his kids, he has no idea who the guy is, and thus not understanding why this guy couldn't possibly be the Prince of Pop (for one thing, he's white). Though they did get the real life Michael to voice the impostor.

Web Comics

 * Avatar of Supermegatopia, a former archaeologist with multiple personalities, repeatedly assumes the identity of various deities, such as Quezalcouatl, Thor, Set and Jehova. (She also uses the ancient UFO she found to simulate divine powers.) Unfortunately she must not have been an attentive student, since she gets a lot of details wrong, such as referring to Thor's hammer as "Mitch". (Not to mention several of her divine identities are supposed to be male, and Avatar is very much a woman.)
 * =A Hres= of Union of Heroes believes himself to be the reincarnation of Ares, the god of war.

Music
"Met a man on a street last night, said his name was Jesus
 * Big And Rich's "Live this Life"

Met a man on a street last night

Thought he was crazy 'til I watched heal a blind man

I watched him heal a blind man, now I see."


 * The song "Committed to Hartview" as sung by the Highwaymen, mentions a fellow who thinks he's Hank Williams (does not specify Junior or Senior) and his singing.
 * The Dire Straits song "Industrial Disease" includes the line "Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong..."

Real Life

 * A surprising number of people suddenly declare themselves as a prophet, messiah, or Jesus returned on entering Jerusalem.
 * Hong Xiuquan, the founder of the "Heavenly Kingdom of Transcendent Peace" and leader of the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) in China, proclaimed that he was the younger brother of Jesus. The rebellion cost 20-30 million lives, making it distinctly Dude, Not Funny.
 * One of the seven prisoners in The Bastille at the time of the storming was an old man who thought he was Julius Caesar. This is, of course, before Napoleon was famous.
 * making this older than film, and older than the trope namer himself.
 * Actor/director Billy Bob Thornton once declared he was the reincarnation of Benjamin Franklin.
 * The Three Christs of Ypsilanti documents the unusual case of three men who claimed to be Jesus Christ met in a lunatic asylum. The psychiatrists capitalised on this to try to devise a treatment, alas to no avail.
 * George Patton claimed that he lived previous lives so that he could fight in every (major) war in history.
 * Emperor Norton of San Francisco was well known in the latter part of the 19th century, proclaiming himself as the emperor of the US and protector of Mexico. He would be often seen inspecting public transportation for defects as a form of quality control. The citizens liked him so much that they went along with this to the point that his homemade currency was accepted in fine restaurants all over the city. City officials even made him a new and improved outfit. However, it was found at the time of his death that he hadn't a penny to his name.
 * And his Real Life story was so epic that Neil Gaiman included it in The Sandman mythos.
 * Internet crackpot Archimedes Plutonium claims to be the reincarnation of Archimedes.