Benjamin Franklin, one of the
Founding Fathers of the
United States of America, has appeared in
popular culture as a character in novels, films, musicals, comics, and video games. His experiment, using a kite, to prove that lightning is a form of electricity has been an especially popular aspect of his biography in fictional depictions.[1][2][3][4]
A young Franklin appears in
Neal Stephenson's 2003 novel of 17th century science and alchemy, Quicksilver.
Franklin appears in several episodes of Histeria!, voiced by actor
Billy West similarly to
Jay Leno. He is frequently shown flying his kite in a lightning storm and being electrocuted as a
running gag.
Franklin appears as a main character in every episode of Liberty's Kids, voiced by
Walter Cronkite. In the series, he is frequently addressed as Dr. Franklin.
The
Walt Disney cartoon Ben and Me (1953), based on the book by
Robert Lawson, counterfactually explains that Franklin's achievements were actually the ideas of a mouse named Amos.
The 2004 film National Treasure has the main characters trying to collect clues left by Franklin to discover a treasure that he hid.
Franklin has been portrayed in several works of fiction, such as The Fairly OddParents, as having lightning-and-kite-based superpowers akin to those of
Storm from
X-Men.
The anime Code Geass takes place in an alternate universe where Great Britain is known as the Holy Britannian Empire. Franklin, who was responsible with appealing to France for aid in the American war for independence, is instead bribed by the Duke of Britannia with promises of territories in the colonies and becomes an Earl. As a result,
George Washington is killed during the
Siege of Yorktown and the American movement for independence fails.
In
Bentley Little's short story The Washingtonians and the Masters of Horror episode of the same name, Franklin was revealed to have been a composite of the accomplishments of several different people as opposed to one real individual.
In Assassin's Creed III, Benjamin Franklin appears as a non-playable character. The player has the optional side-quest of retrieving lost pages from Poor Richard's Almanack for Ben. Also, he is present in the cutaway scenes involving the raising of George Washington to leader of the Continental Army and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In Assassin's Creed: Rogue, he has a small role as inventor and American ambassador in Paris.
Benjamin Franklin's ghost appears in several Marvel comics as a companion to the Mercenary
Deadpool. In the comic, Franklin found a way to harness the power of electricity to turn himself into a ghost.
Also in
Marvel Comics,
Dr. Strange's girlfriend
Clea was seduced by
a wizard (Stygyro) disguised as Ben Franklin during a time travel story arc. The "real" Ben Franklin made an appearance at the end of the story.
In the science fiction/alternate history short story "Existential Trips" by William Bevill, Benjamin Franklin appears, and is referenced throughout, as the inventor of a secret society of ghosts who fight crime in time and other dimensions of space, using items from Franklin including a stove and spectacles. Franklin's agents include Beatnik writers
Jack Kerouac and
William S. Burroughs.
Time-travel scenarios
The time-travel card game
Early American Chrononauts includes a card called Franklin's Kite which players can symbolically acquire from the year 1752.
In an episode of The Flintstones titled "The Time Machine" (season 5, episode 18, original airdate January 15, 1965), the Flintstones and the Rubbles travel by time machine to various periods in the future (from their perspective). One of those stops is in Philadelphia, where they meet Benjamin Franklin as he is conducting his kite-and-key experiment. When
Wilma says something Franklin deems worthy of writing down, he asks
Fred to hold the kite string. Naturally, the lightning picks that moment to strike the kite, electrifying Fred. In turn,
Barney,
Betty, and Wilma try to separate Fred from the kite string, only to be electrified themselves. "So that's how electricity works, eh?" says Franklin. "I'd better write this down."
In season 3 of Bewitched, Aunt Clara accidentally brings him forward in time to repair a broken electrical lamp.
The science-fiction TV show Voyagers! had the main characters helping Franklin fly his
kite in one episode and save his mother from a fictionalized
Salem witch trial in the next episode.
The
children's novelQwerty Stevens: Stuck in Time with Benjamin Franklin has the main characters using their
time machine to bring Franklin into modern times and then to travel back with him to 1776.
In a 2004 sketch on the TV show MADtv, Franklin, played by
Paul Vogt, sends
Samuel Adams, played by
Josh Meyers, to the future in a
time machine he made from a
rolltop desk. Franklin wanted to know if the
American Revolution was a success, but gets frustrated when Adams only comes back to tell him that
Samuel Adams Beer is a success. The time machine also brings back a man named Jerry, played by
Ike Barinholtz, who is little help to Franklin.
A Saul of the Mole Men episode titled "Poor Clancy's Almanack" uses Benjamin Franklin and
Thomas Jefferson to explain the true mainstream conflict while revealing Clancy Burrows' past. Both Franklin and Jefferson appear again in the spin-off Young Person's Guide to History.
Dana Snyder portrayed Franklin in both series.
In the webcomic Spinnerette, Franklin is pulled through time by a machine into present day. Because the timeline dictated he died in 1790, he was rendered effectively invulnerable to danger by way of preternatural luck in order to avoid temporal paradoxes. He took up hero-work and became a leading member of the American Superhero Association.
In the animated series Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot, the titular characters secure Franklin's aid to power a damaged time machine that has brought them to colonial America on the first night of the Revolutionary War.
Though he doesn't appear, Franklin is referred to in the Ben 10: Omniverse series finale "A New Dawn", in which he is revealed to have crafted various tools for George Washington's use as part of a secret society predating the series' Plumbers, a galactic law enforcement division that deals with various alien and supernatural threats.
A character clearly based on Franklin appears in Norm Novitsky's time-traveling film, In Search of Liberty, which was released in 2017.[5]
In the Kids' TV show The Fairly OddParents, Franklin appears as a side character in some episodes.
People compared to Franklin
Manuel Torres, the first Colombian ambassador to the United States, was called "the Franklin of the southern world" by newspapers on his death in 1828. He was a revolutionary, scholar and diplomat.[6]
A Benjamin Franklin impersonator appears as a playable character in the video game Tony Hawk's Underground 2. One of the character's special moves replicates the kite experiment.
The mascot of the
Philadelphia 76ersNBA team is a dog named Franklin, after Benjamin Franklin. An alternate logo for the team depicts Franklin playing basketball.
In the Cartoon Network comedy series Mad, Franklin appears as central character in some episodes.
"It's a feeling of freedom, of seein' the light It's Ben Franklin with a key and a kite!"[8]
Hamilton creator
Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote a song intended for the musical, "Ben Franklin's Song", that was entirely about Franklin, but it was not included in the finished production. In 2017, it was recorded and released by
The Decemberists.[9]
^Schocket, Andrew M. "Benjamin Franklin in Memory and Popular Culture." in A Companion to Benjamin Franklin (2012): 479-498.
^Nian-Sheng Huang, "Benjamin Franklin in American thought and culture, 1790-1990" Vol. 211. (American Philosophical Society, 1994)
online and also "Benjamin Franklin in American thought and culture, 1790-1938" (PhD dissertation Cornell University; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1990. 9018099).
^Smart, Karl Lyman. "A man for all ages: The changing image of Benjamin Franklin in nineteenth century American popular literature" (PhD dissertation, University of Florida; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1989. 9021252.
^BODZIN, EUGENE SAUL. "THE AMERICAN POPULAR IMAGE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, 1790-1868' (PhD dissertation, The University of Wisconsin - Madison ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1969. 6922351).