Grigori Rasputin in popular culture

The life of Grigori Rasputin has been the subject of a variety of media since his death.

Films

• Christopher Lee played Rasputin in the 1966 Hammer production Rasputin: The Mad Monk.

• Tom Baker played Rasputin in the 1971 epic Nicholas and Alexandra. [1]

• The 1980 Australian film Harlequin rehashes Rasputin's story in a contemporary setting; Robert Powell played the Rasputin character, a mysterious faith healer called Gregory Wolfe. The characters corresponding to Nicholas II and Alexandra Fyodorovna were called Nick and Sandra Rast ('Rast' being 'Tsar' backwards). [2]

• Alan Rickman played Rasputin in a film produced by and first aired by HBO in 1996. Rasputin also starred Ian McKellen and Greta Scacchi as the Tsar and Tsarina. Rickman and Scacchi each won an Emmy for their performance, and Rickman and McKellen each won a Golden Globe. [3]

• Christopher Lloyd voiced Rasputin, while Jim Cummings performed his singing voice using the same singing voice he used for Scar in The Lion King (Rasputin's song also shares similarities with "Be Prepared"), in the 1997 animated film Anastasia, in which the sorcerer was the primary antagonist, after he sold his soul for his powers. In this role, Rasputin had brought himself to life after dying in the Neva River, in order to complete a curse he placed on the Romanovs by killing the last of the royal family, Grand Duchess Anastasia. He is accompanied by a comical albino bat of unidentified species called Bartok. [4]

• Rasputin has also been played by Gert Fröbe in J'ai tué Raspoutine (I Killed Rasputin) (1967), featuring an interview with the real Prince Felix Yussupov. [5]

• Rasputin has also been played by actors such as Lionel Barrymore, and Michael Aldridge, to varying degrees of historical accuracy. Edmund Purdom played Rasputin in a 1960 film co-starring Lionel Barrymore's nephew John Drew Barrymore.

• Rasputin, played by Karel Roden, is the repeatedly resurrected villain of the 2004 film Hellboy, based on the comics series of the same name (see Comics, below). Years after his assassination in 1916, he is now a servant of the Ogdru Jahad, a Lovecraftian embodiment of chaos and evil, and incidentally, bald. He summons Hellboy to Earth during World War II, is killed, but later returns to employ Hellboy's mystical right hand in a bid to free the Ogdru Jahad and end the world. He has been reincaranted through the years and when he is killed a demon emerges from his body. His potential return to the film franchise was teased in promotional materials associated with the Hellboy II: The Golden Army, the second film, but he ended up not appearing in the film.

• Rasputin played a major element in the film, Case Closed: The Last Wizard of the Century.

• The evil Russian villain of the stop-motion animated series The Adventures of Pinocchio was named after Rasputin and bears a similar appearance.

• Gérard Depardieu plays Rasputin in a 2011 French-Russian production. The actor said it had long been his dream to play this larger than life character. Alongside Depardieu, the movie features French actress Fanny Ardant and Russian actor Vladimir Mashkov as the Tsars. Written by Vincent Fargeat and Pierre Aknine, the movie was directed by Josée Dayan. It was entirely shot in Russia, mostly in Saint-Petersburg, where the actual events of Rasputin's life took place.^[1]

Music

• Rasputin is an opera by the distinguished Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara who wrote both the libretto and the music. Rautavaara presents Rasputin as at once "revolting" and "magnetic," a "daringly strange but compelling creation," as the critic Robert Levine has observed.

• "Let Rasputin Do It" is a song on the Swedish rock band Fireside's 1998 album "Uomini d'Onore".

• A Rasputin show was developed by Michael Rapp, and stars Ted Neeley, of Jesus Christ Superstar fame, as the mad monk.

• "Rasputin" was also a hit song by the disco music band Boney M. The song loosely describes Rasputin and some of the events of his life, emphasizing and exaggerating his sexual liaisons. The song is featured on the Wii Just Dance 2 game.

• Rasputin is on the album cover of Electronic's third album, Twisted Tenderness (1999).

• A rendering of Rasputin's face is visible on the single Thirty-Three by The Smashing Pumpkins.

• Bob Dylan's song "I Wanna Be Your Lover" (1965) mentions Rasputin in the lines, "Rasputin he's so dignified. He touched the back of her head an' he died."

• The song "I Can't Decide" by Scissor Sisters contains lyrics referring to Rasputin's Murder. ("...I could throw you in a lake or feed you poisoned birthday cake...")

• Rasputin Music is an independent chain of music stores located in and around the San Francisco Bay Area. The first store, founded in Berkeley, California in 1971, was named after the Russian monk, and the chain today uses pictures of Rasputin in their store decorations and marketing/promotional materials.[6]

• Rasputin and The Mad Monks were a garage band from Lawrence, Massachusetts. In late 1967 they cut a 4-song demo, including a cover of The Electric Prunes hit "I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night" which (2+ decades later) appeared on the compilation Beyond the Calico Wall. They are sometimes confused with Rasputin and the Monks, a prep-school garage band from New Hampshire who released a one-sided covers LP called "Sun of My Soul" (Trans Radio 200836) in 1965 or 1966.

• There was another band called Rasputin And The Mad Monks, this one, formed near Cornell University circa 1966-1967, featured future Magic Tramps drummer Sesu Coleman. The group moved to Boston in 1967 and changed their name to "The Looking Glass".

• Rasputina is an alternative rock cello band from Brooklyn, New York. The band was named for founder Melora Creager's obsession with Rasputin at the time.

• There is a UK-based indie band named 'You Remind Me Of Rasputin!'

• Rasputin is the subject of a song by Therion, "The Khlysti Evangelist".

• Rasputin is also the name of a song by Johnny Hollow and the lyrics reflect on his life.

• Rasputin is depicted on the cover of Type O Negative's 2007 album, Dead Again.

• The Austin Lounge Lizards depicted Rasputin's encounters with the American medical system in their song "Rasputin's HMO"; this portrayed Rasputin as being unable to obtain medical treatment fom his HMO despite having been poisoned, burned, exploded, shot, and thrown in a river.

• The Finnish folk metal band Turisas used to do a live cover of Boney M's song Rasputin. In 2007 they even recorded a studio version and released a single called "Rasputin".

• The American progressive metal band Mastodon released a concept album in 2009 entitled Crack the Skye. It features a track called 'The Czar' which is about Rasputin.

• The Brazilian/American Thrash Metal band Cavalera Conspiracy wrote a song entitled "Rasputin" on their second album Blunt Force Trauma.

Computer and video games

• In Team Fortress 2, there is an achievement for the Heavy class named after Rasputin, given for being shot, burned, bludgeoned and exploded in a single life. This is a reference to Rasputin's alleged survival of being poisoned, being shot several times, and being badly beaten before finally drowning.

• Grigori Rasputin plays a major role in the game Shadow Hearts: Covenant. In the game, he is a genuine mystic with dark powers, and he is head of a secret group which is plotting the overthrow of the Czar.

• In White Wolf Game Studio's World of Darkness role-playing game metaverse, many factions of supernaturals claim Rasputin as one of their own, including one faction of mages (the Cult of Ecstasy), at least five factions of vampires (the Brujah, Malkavians, Nosferatu, Ventrue, and Followers of Set), and one faction of werewolves (the Shadow Lords). The second edition of Wraith: The Oblivion has a description of the 'Stamina' attribute referring to the stories of Rasputin's assassination. The in-game "truth" is still disputed, though Ethan Skemp (developer of Werewolf) has since mentioned that the multiple conflicting stories were meant as little more than an in-joke running through many of White Wolf's early books.

• Rasputin is a playable character in Alpha Denshi's 1992 coin operated 2-D fighter arcade game World Heroes as well as its sequels. The character bears his likeness and uses a combination of bizarre and magical attacks against opponents, while preaching for a worldwide peace. The arcade games had high distribution in terms of available machines, but were poorly received by gaming critics. [7]

• The main character in the PS2/Xbox game Psychonauts is called Razputin (better known as 'Raz'). Due to his psychic abilities, he is presumably named after Rasputin. The backstory of the character Raz includes a fear of drowning (like Rasputin's siblings) and a life in the circus (like his daughter Maria).

• In Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, the character Yuri was most likely inspired by Rasputin; he is a mysterious man with special powers who has a hold on the Russian leader.

• Rasputin appears as a primary antagonist in Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army.

• In the game Resident Evil 4, the village chief bears a striking resemblance to Rasputin. Also, as Rasputin cared for the peasantry, Chief Mendez is the only possessor of a queen Plagas that shows any care for the ganados as revealed by a note encountered shortly before the boss battle with him.

• In the Call of Duty: World at War Nazi Zombies mode, on the Downloaded map Shi No numa, Nikolai Belinski can be heard saying after killing a zombie "Who are you, fucking Rasputin? Stay dead this time!"

• In Assassin's Creed II, a series of glyphs and codices describe Rasputin as a Templar agent who infiltrates the Czar's palace so he can steal a powerful artifact in the Czar's possession.

• The song Rasputin is featured in the game Just Dance 2

Television

• In 2001 on the daytime drama Passions, the witch Tabitha Lenox has a flashback to 1916 Imperial Russia where Rasputin is established as her love interest. Tabitha gives Rasputin advice of how to bring down the imperial family, and also gives him the idea to spare one certain member to which he agrees.

• Rasputin was referred to in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer novel Spike and Dru: Pretty Maids All in a Row, implying that Rasputin was a demon with mind-controlling powers which resided on his eyes. A 5th-season episode of the show also has a scene where Buffy debates with a history professor over whether Rasputin had genuinely been killed. A 5th-season episode of Angel featured a vampire named Nostroyev who claimed to have been Rasputin's lover.

• One of the Punk Frogs in the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon was named Rasputin the Mad Frog.

• Rasputin appears in an Animaniacs short (voiced by John Glover), suffering from a toothache and treated by the palace dentists, the Warner Brothers and Dot. In one memorable and hilarious scene he is given anaesthesia--in the form of a mallet to the head wielded by a young girl. Dot comments on the obscurity of the joke and tells kids to ask their parents what it means. Rasputin loses his hypnotic talents when all his teeth get yanked out and he cannot properly enunciate.

• In the cartoon The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, he appears with Attila the Hun and Abraham Lincoln to give Mandy advice after she summons spirits from Grim's skull. He is shown with a sword through his head, although no accounts of Rasputin's death involve a head injury.

• In the Red Dwarf episode 'Meltdown', Rasputin is one of the rogue wax droids. The Abraham Lincoln wax droid mistakenly refers to him as "Rice-puddin'".

• In the Seinfeld episode "The Suicide", Jerry asks Elaine, "If you named a kid Rasputin do you think that would have a negative effect on his life?" Later on in the episode two friends of George name their son Rasputin.

• In Smallville Episode "Run", Lex purchases a manuscript that was said to be the only thing that was hanging in Rasputin's chamber while he was studying at the Grigori monastery. He believed it would lead him to unimaginable power. Legend has it that Rasputin would stare at it for days at a time hoping to penetrate its secrets. The border designs of the manuscript say, in kryptonian, "look deeper", and when Clark uses his X-Ray vision he sees that there is a map which leads to one of the three stones of power.

• In an episode of M*A*S*H, Trapper mentions to Radar that "Rasputin" (Hawkeye) "swallowed a whole drug store," and didn't fall asleep (as Trapper was trying to sedate Hawkeye).

• In Metalocalypse, the Tribunal member Vatar Orlaag has a physical appearance that resembles Rasputin.

• In the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Top Cat and the Beverly Hills Cats, the antagonist's canine companion is called Rasputin.

• In the BBC Past Doctor Adventures novel The Wages of Sin, the Third Doctor and his companions Jo Grant and Liz Shaw meet Rasputin prior to his death and learn that he is actually a more pleasant individual than history records — the Doctor noting that all evidence of his villainy was written by his enemies who filled in certain blanks to suit themselves, such as their ignorance that the reason he was so close to the royal family was his secret treatment of the young prince — but the Doctor is nevertheless forced to allow Rasputin to die, despite having the chance to save him, in order to preserve history.

• Warehouse 13 featured his prayer rope, used to conjure images of the dead. Apparently after being successfully assassinated the first time, his followers used it to make it seem like he had cheated death.

• In "Doctor Who episode Let's Kill Hitler, one of the tessalector crew says that in their previous assignment they copied Rasputin but got the skin tone green.

Comics

• Rasputin is a recurrent villain in early collections of the ongoing comic book series Hellboy, responsible (in cooperation with a Nazi occult/scientific program) for summoning Hellboy to Earth during World War II and later for "cracking the prison" of the universe's embodiment of evil and chaos, the Ogdru Jahad, to whose worship he has converted after his failed assassination in 1916. Rasputin is destroyed by Hellboy at the end of their first meeting, but his spirit survives to catalyze several subsequent plots due to his having given part of his soul to the Baba Yaga as a boy, in the folkloric manner of Koschei the Deathless. His spirit dwindles over successive encounters, ceding chief villain status in the series to the goddess Hecate, the witch Nimue, and eventually the Ogdru Jahad itself/themselves.

• Fantagraphics also released a comic book in 2006, Hotwire Comix & Capers, which features a six-page story about Rasputin by cartoonist M. Wartella.

• a character called Rasputin (with little similar to the actual Rasputin except for some personality traits and his physical appearance) is also depicted in Hugo Pratt´s comic book series Corto Maltese as a sea-pirate during World War I.

• A recent X-Men miniseries revealed the superhero Colossus to be a descendant of Rasputin, who had worked with future X-Men foe Mister Sinister during Rasputin's lifetime to develop a means of bringing Rasputin back to life in the body of a descendant. This plan was defeated when Colossus's brother Mikhail willingly exiled himself to another dimension where he could never return and would never die, meaning that, even if Colossus died without any children, Rasputin would simply be stuck in Mikhail's body in a barren universe.

• A Dilbert Comic strip, published August 13, 2000, features a Rasputin as a "Consultant", as a stand alone joke. The character is likely heavily inspired by the real life Rasputin, including similar features and mystical powers. In the end of the comic, he was apparently killed by Wally due to the latter's "anti-charisma".

• In a bonus story in the first book of Atomic Robo, the ghost of Rasputin is sent by Thomas Edison to kill the titular Atomic Robo.

• In DC Comics' Firestorm, Mikhail Arkadin meets a psychic named Rasputin. He asks if the man is named after "the mad monk of legend"; the man responds "Perhaps. Or perhaps I am the mad monk of legend."

• In Big Wolf On Campus, Merton Dingle has a pet snake which he named "Rasputin"

• In Kid Eternity #15, Master Man (Quality Comics) summons up Rasputin from Stygia (Hell) to help engineer a jail break, which he does by hypnotizing a guard.

• In Assassin's Creed: The Fall Rasputin's grave is exhumed by the assassin Nikolai Orelov to retrieve the shard from the Staff of Eden.

Manga and anime

• Rasputin is a primary antagonist in the anime Master of Mosquiton. In the series, he is an immortal alien who has been on Earth since the dawn of humanity, and the name Rasputin is simply the latest of his many aliases.

• Rasputin appears in the manga Steel Angel Kurumi as one of three mystics who helps set up a barrier for a Steel Fight.

• Rasputin is a primary antagonist in the anime Raimuiro Senkitan.

• Rasputin makes a small cameo in the Soul Eater manga and anime, where he briefly fights the living scythe Soul Eater and Soul's wielder and partner, Maka.

• Rasputin is an antagonist in the Blood+ manga and anime, where he serves Diva as the second of her Chevaliers.

• Rasputin is an antagonist in the manga Drifters, where he, together with the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, serves the Black King as an Ends.

Other media

Icon of Grigori Rasputin

• Todd McFarlane's toy company, McFarlane Toys, made a Rasputin action figure.

• Skaters Natalia Bestemianova and Andrei Bukin performed an ice dance program titled Rasputin in 1991. Choreographed to tell the story of the Romanovs, Bukin as Rasputin "died" four times at the beginning of the program. Rasputin is considered one of the most over-the-top routines ever seen in the melodramatic world of ice dancing, and led to an IOC rule that skaters must not "die" as a part of their routine. [8]

• Rasputin was portrayed on stage in the play Rivers of Blood [9], written by the American playwright Jay Jeff Jones. This was presented in a workshop production in New York City in 1982 and received a full production at The Eaton in London in 1983. It was directed by the Irish novelist and poet Dermot Healy and Rasputin was played by Gabriel Connaughton, brother of the Oscar nominated writer Shane Connaughton.

• North Coast Brewing Company's Old Rasputin Imperial stout bears his name. According to its website, the stout is brewed in the tradition of 18th Century English brewers that supplied the court of Catherine the Great.

• Rasputin and The Mad Monk appear as playable collectable figures in the Horrorclix game produced by Wizkids Games.

• Comedian Richard Herring played Rasputin in his self-penned 1993 Edinburgh show "Ra-Ra Rasputin" which told the story of the Mad Monk, set to the music of Boney M, which also drew parallels between the British Royal Family and the doomed Romanovs. Richard appeared on Celebrity Mastermind on 27 December 2010, his specialist subject was Rasputin.

• In the book Our Dumb Century produced by The Onion, one of the articles for the March 16, 1923 edition is "Russians Continuing to Kill Rasputin", in which Rasputin not only is poisoned, shot, stabbed, and drowned, but is also run over by a freight train, shot from a cannon, set on fire, and decapitated twice (among many other things), yet still refuses to die.

• Beardo, a musical loosely based on the life of Rasputin, was written by Jason Craig for the Berkeley, CA based Shotgun Players theater group.

References

1. ^ http://www.lefigaro.fr/cinema/2011/04/15/03002-20110415ARTFIG00691-depardieu-dans-la-peau-de-raspoutine.php