Inspired by the SD Classic Dracula thread. While most moderately informed people know that Dracula was loosely inspired by the real life Carpathian nobleman Vlad Tepes, who are some other famous fictional characters who had real life inspirations? It doesn’t have to be “absolutely inspired by”- i.e. still lots of room for the writer’s imagination- but there are important parallels.
King Arthur was probably inspired by an actual personage who lived in the fifth or sixth centuries after the British withdrawal of Rome and was probably Roman-Celtic in culture. The evidence is that there was a generation in which Anglo-Saxon encroachment seemed to stop in the 6th century, the given name Arthur and variants became extremely popular in the 6th and 7th centuries, references to a warlord called ‘The Bear’ in St. Gildas who was contemporaneous with Arthur (Arthur comes from the Celtic word for bear) and a mention of Arthur as a synonym for military brilliance in the 6th century Welsh poem Gododdin. The round table, chivalry, the love triangle with Guin & Lance, and most of the other stuff associated with Arthur were almost all certainly medieval embellishments and inventions, but there probably really was a warlord who began the Arthurian ball rolling.
John Blackthorn, the main character in the bestseller and miniseries Shogun, was patterned- at times very closely- after Will Adams, a Tudor-Stuart era English sailor who, like Blackthorn, really was shipwrecked in Japan and really did become a samurai and valued advisor to a Japanese Lord (Tokugawa, inspiration for Torenaga in the novel) who became Shogun.
Some Dickensian scholars believe that Ebeneezer Scrooge may have been partly inspired by real life English misers Daniel Dancer and John Elwes, two 18th century figures who were long dead but still well known in pop culture (both inspired things like Toby jugs and tavern names) at the time Dickens wrote Christmas Carol in the early 1840s. Dancer and Elwes (no relation and to my knowledge not acquainted with each other) were both filthy rich- estates worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, easily on the short list of richest men in England- but were both neurotically stingy; Dancer would eat contaminated meat if it was free and Elwes’s sons were illiterate because he wouldn’t pay the pittance to have them given the same education a tavern keeper’s son might get (though he did leave them very rich) and both had overworked underpaid employees ala Bob Cratchit. There’s no evidence either ever went hog wild helping people after one Christmas though.
Robinson Crusoe probably based on Alexander Selkirk.
Helen Lawson (Valley of the Dolls) probably based on Ethel Merman (and many more in JS’s novels)
DeNiro’s Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver), based on Arthur Bremer (who had shot George Wallace to impress a young thang.)
I’m not sure if the fictional character is “famous”, but it’s an open secret that the villianous character of Irwin in Alan Bennett’s play The History Boys was modeled on my former college advisor, Niall Ferguson.
Honor Harrington is somewhat based on Admiral Lord Nelson. Even to the point of suffering similar wounds, although at least she could get cybernetic replacements for her lost eye and arm.
Sheridan Whiteside in the Kaufman and Hart play “The Man Who Came to Dinner” was based on Alexander Wolcott, who was originally meant to play the character on Broadway. Because of schedule conflicts he was unable to, but he did play the character in the west coast production. In the same play, the character of Banjo is loosely based on Harpo Marx, who also played “himself” in the west coast production