Thanks for mentioning Johnny. Not only did I think he wasn’t real, I think I’ve made an error on how I defined what people meant when they refer to someone as ‘a Johnny Appleseed’.
I assumed this name was used to describe someone who was a stereotypical American - a bit like John Bull could be used for an Englishman. That doesn’t seem to be right.
I thought Judge Roy Bean was fictional. Actually, a lot of Western heroes were people I thought were fictional: Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp for instance.
I do presume that in all the movies/stories etc. they are not necessarily presented exactly as they were in real life.
Conversely, and more recently, the guy in Schindler’s List. I read that book. It was called a novel. He was a character. The protagonist, in fact. When the movie came out I thought, Hmmm, book made into a movie. (There are things in there that I don’t buy even knowing he was a real person.)
I thought Kinky Friedman was a persona, created by somebody with another name to head a band called the Texas Jewboys. Kinky Friedman also writes mystery novels, featuring Kinky Friedman. However, having met him…I think he created a persona and then became it, i.e., he seems to be exactly the persona. Except I don’t think he really solves mysteries.
Here’s one. Dick Whittington is the subject of pantomimes in the UK, and so the subsequent portrayal made me think he was fictional. But in fact he was an early Mayor of London.
When “War and Remembrance” was broadcast, one of my coworkers said Armin von Roon (Jeremy Kemp) was a real German general. Nein, dummkopf.
If you were old enough to remember the Smothers Brothers show you would have known. Bob Einstein was a writer in the show but also appeared on camera as characters.
He’s also the brother of Albert Brooks (who for perhaps obvious reasons doesn’t work under his birth name Albert Einstein).
I know a lot of people who insist that Robin Hood was real.
People make that mistake.
(And yes, I’m aware that that’s not exactly solid, ice-cold proof of the historicity of the character, to say the least. An irresistible setup for snark, though. Sorry. 
)
On an unrelated grave matter…Jack D. Ripper’s grave. Senator Ripper’s grave, at that. Huh.
He was also an occasional guest on Steve Allen’s syndicated show in the late '60s–early '70s, always assuming different characters. One time he was a guy who had been raised by wolves in the forest; another time, he was a Polish-American who was campaigning against Polack jokes. He kept an absolutely straight face and if you didn’t already know who he was, it wouldn’t dawn on you that he was a put-on artist until the third or fourth minute of the interview. By the time it was over, you’d be falling out of your chair laughing.
Hah! I remember taking that tour and thinking author Lucy Montgomery lived there.
Ellery Queen is actually two people who decided to write mysteries about a fictional detective named Ellery Queen.
When my sister lived in Atlanta everyone insisted Tara was a real place and my sister believed them. Must be some kind of southern joke.
Dunno about that because I only teach at HE, but every year I get students who believe that King Arthur was a real person and that he commissioned the Round Table that’s on display in Winchester’s Great Hall.
He also regularly appeared on the Canadian-made sketch comedy series, Bizarre, both as a fictionalized version of himself (he was one of the producers of the show, which was the ‘Bob Einstein’ character’s main role), and as Super Dave, making it fairly obvious that Super Dave was a character being played by Bob Einstein.
Arthur may have been based on a real leader, but if he was anyone he was no more than a minor Briton warlord who has all but vanished from history proper.
Huh. Curiously enough, there was a real person named Cave Johnson, though he has nothing to do with the fictional founder of Aperture Science.
I had a friend in the early 1970s (same age as me then – 22 or 23 – both of us in the UK) who was a very serious-minded intellectual, and from a devoutly Catholic family which eschewed television, and took a basically dim view of popular culture in general. This lady confused-and-conflated Monty Python, with the real-life person Marty Feldman, a goofy comedian popular in the UK at the time.
People’s misconception about Arthur as a real person, is perhaps more excusable because of the existence of the real King Alfred the Great, 9th-century ruler of the kingdom of Wessex (capital, Winchester): lawgiver, civiliser, educator, and vigorous resister of the invading Danes. Their both being heroic British / English leaders and warriors from very long ago, both with two-syllable names beginning in A, pretty well invites conflating-and-confusing by folk who don’t happen to be big history buffs.
People have been muddling Arthur and Alfred for a long time. The – IMO hilariously funny – book 1066 And All That, by the British humorists Sellar and Yeatman, first published some ninety years ago, has as its theme the stilted and unimaginative way in which history is often taught in school; and the pupils’ confused memories of it, much later in life. 1066 And… makes considerable play with the Arthur / Alfred thing.
I just had the opposite - I thought ninjas were made up for the movies, but yesterday I learned from Pawn Stars that they actually existed in Japan.
Friedman also uses real people he knows as characters in his novels.
My Grandfather always used to say to me “Who do you think you are - Barney Oldfield?” I always assumed it was some generation gap old-timey joke thing, like he was calling me Clyde Kadiddlehopper or something like that.
I found out recently that Barney Oldfield was a very famous race car driver. Then I tried to recall a specific time I’d heard him say it and it hit me - PaPaw was making fun of my driving.
Fair enough, and yer, I know all about that – what I mean is, these students assume the Hollywood stylee King Arthur (Camelot, Merlin, all that) was a real person, if you see what I mean.