Philip Sidney in The Lady of May, the little entertainment he staged in 1578 at Leicester's park and gardens of Wanstead, went so far as to impose an unscripted speaking part on the Queen, presumably without warning, forcing her to adjudicate between two fictional rival suitors.
So when Quebec vlogger Murphy Cooper invented a fictional rival for the hydro-electric energy service Hydro-Quebec last month, thousands of naive onlookers flocked towards the imaginary alternative, Hydro-Jeanson.
In bringing together these seemingly contradictory characteristics, Holmes is a more realistic scientist, and human being, than any of his fictional rivals.
His ability to swiftly and convincingly create a variety of fictional characters rivals that of Charles Dickens.
Mario, the mustached Italian plumber he created almost 30 years ago, has become by some measures the planet's most recognized fictional character, rivaled only by Mickey Mouse.
In the first ever Agatha Christie sequel, the Belgian sleuth is resurrected by Sophie Hannah, who has chosen to keep him (in contrast to Sherlock's creators' updating of the rival fictional detective) in his original period, the 1920s.
The tiny, birdlike Ms. Rainer (who celebrated her 102nd birthday on Jan . 12 would play Strauss's long suffering but steadfast wife (a wholly fictional creature); her romantic rival, Carla, an opera star of voluminous figure and voluminous passions, would be played by Miliza Korjus, an Estonian coloratura who had gained fame with the Berlin State Opera.
Mr. De Mille's Bellarosa is the modern equivalent of Fitzgerald's Gatsby, with his fictional, ostentatious Easter party rivaling in vulgarity those that the financier Otto Kahn used to give on his 600-acre, 125-room Woodbury estate.
Earth Day Dallas, launched by Trammel S. Crow, Jr., scion to a commercial real estate fortune that rivals the fictional wealth of J.R. Ewing, has become an annual event and is now second in size only to New York City's event.
His one genuine legacy was the creation, in 1941, of a fictional feminist super-being to rival Batman and Superman in the pantheon of comic-book greats.
They assemble and paint small model fighters from a chosen army (several to collect) and using dice, tape measures and special rule books, battle rival militia in a fictional science fiction universe set in the 41st Millennium, called Warhammer 40,000.
