History has this funny tendency to reverse everything. Most of the greatest minds, revolutionaries, and visionaries of history have had their legacies co-opted completely—either misunderstood, commodified, or outright transformed into the opposite of what they stood for.
Waking up after centuries and seeing your own face on something you despised is a pretty awful destiny. Yes, the following 15 historical figures would be totally embarrassed if they knew how they are remembered nowadays.
Julius Caesar – Stabbed (Again) by Politics
Caesar’s legacy: complete power, betrayal, and a tragic death. Today, however, his name is thrown around by politicians who wish to be seen as sophisticated or comparing themselves to “great leaders” (Spoiler alert: not so much). Meanwhile, any power-mad office backstabber is referred to as a “Brutus,” even when it’s just stealing a co-worker’s lunch out of the fridge. If Caesar were alive today to see what everyone made of his story, he’d be saying, “Et tu, internet?”
Martin Luther King Jr. – Now Used to Sell Cars and Silence Protesters
Imagine spending your entire life fighting for radical justice—and then having your words taken and used to scold new activists. Nowadays, he is an Instagram feel-good quote, or, worse yet, a corporate conference speaker. He was not going around saying “Can’t we all get along.” He was calling for justice.
Albert Einstein – Turned into a Fun, Goofy Genius
Einstein’s brain was stolen after his death (yes, really), but the real offense is how pop culture turned one of the greatest minds in history into a goofy poster boy for “stay in school.” He hated school. He questioned authority. He warned us about nukes and nationalism. Now he’s mostly known as the wild-haired guy with the tongue-out pose on coffee mugs. He’d throw that mug right in your face.
George Orwell – His Warning of a Dystopia Became a Blueprint
The irony is deafening. Orwell penned Animal Farm and 1984 as screaming warnings about authoritarianism. Politicians and businesses now quote him and do the very thing he warned. Newspeak, surveillance, propaganda—he basically left a blueprint. And rather than reading it, we made his name a hashtag to pair with our clickbait. Orwell wasn’t concerned with being trendy. He wanted you to wake the hell up.
Che Guevara – From Revolutionary to T-Shirt Icon
Che battled imperialism. Flash forward and now he’s being mass-produced on t-shirts, coffee mugs, and cell phone covers in chain stores owned by the very capitalism he despised. The man literally wrote essays on anti-materialism, and now he’s a fashion trend for people who have no idea who he is. If he saw some teenager rocking his image on a $50 sweatshirt at the mall, he’d probably throw up.
Friedrich Nietzsche – The Philosopher Who Would Hate His Fanbase
Nietzsche warned about blind belief and toxic ideologies, but his own writings have been twisted to serve fascism, nihilism, and internet “alpha male” culture. The writer of God is dead would be horrified at the number of people who misinterpreted what he actually meant.
Karl Marx – Capitalism’s Fav Poster Boy
This man literally wrote The Communist Manifesto and has somehow become a trendy aesthetic for capitalist merchandise. Karl Marx t-shirts, coffee mugs, and credit cards are now available. The irony is so sharp that Marx himself would have to cry out into a void.
Thomas Jefferson – Quote King with a Dark Past
People love to quote Jefferson on freedom, but did they just forget the hundreds of enslaved people he kept… including the woman he fathered children with (without her consent)? He wrote “All men are created equal” with a literal plantation in the background. If Jefferson were to see contemporary America quoting him in Fourth of July speeches? He’d be horrified. Or maybe not. Either way—his is one huge contradiction, and he’d not enjoy the mirror.
Nikola Tesla – Reduced to a Meme and a Car Brand
Tesla envisioned free energy for the planet. His name now powers luxury cars for billionaires and space-faring billionaires. He died broke, cheated, and unrecognized—and if he lived to see the current-day capitalist tech circus profiting off his name as a trophy? Too bad. Tesla envisioned energy being shared, not commodified. Today, he’s being used to brand the very same system that killed him.
Vincent van Gogh – The Starving Artist Now Used to Sell Luxury Art
Van Gogh died broke, having sold almost nothing of his artwork in his lifetime. His artwork now sells for millions in high-end art markets. Worse still? His mental illness is romanticized when working-class artists today get ignored. Dude didn’t lose his ear on behalf of capitalism to be watered down into a bougie ethos.
Sigmund Freud – Today Used Just as a Punchline to an Oedipus Joke
Freud had a lot of wild theories, but he paved the way for modern psychology. Nowadays? His name is only synonymous with awful mom jokes and awkward sex references. If he saw how people talk about him today, he would probably need therapy himself.
Joan of Arc – Disneyfied Warrior Nun
Burned at the stake for heresy and a cross-dresser, Joan of Arc has been whitewashed into a white-robed Christian girlboss. But she was wild, defiant, and claimed God commanded her to fight grown men. She didn’t softly pray her way to the battlefield—she busted through it. So the soft focus edits? She’d hate.
Pablo Picasso – Cancelled, Then Celebrated, Then… Still a Problem
Picasso was a genius, umm sure… but he was also a terror. He was abusive to women, arrogant to an extreme, and intensely polarizing. And yet, he is plastered on art museums, Pinterest boards, and beginner art packets as if he were just a fun, funky painter dude.
Leonardo da Vinci – His Genius Turned Into a Conspiracy Theory
One of history’s most brilliant minds, Leonardo da Vinci, yet half of what people “know” about him is thanks to Dan Brown’s books. The inventor of anatomy, engineering, and art is now more famous for “The Da Vinci Code” nonsense.
Gandhi – Become a Peaceful Wallpaper Quote
“Be the change…” yeah, yeah—we’ve all got it on a mug. But Gandhi wasn’t all peace signs and barefoot strolls. He was complicated, controversial, and even problematic depending on what chapter you read. The guy sparked revolutions, fasted to bring down empires, and got arrested as a hobby. If he saw how blandly corporate his image is now? He’d be on another hunger strike just to protest it.
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