Bhishma, also called Devavrata, Gangaputra and Pitamaha, is a central figure of the Hindu epic Mahabharata, a statesman and commander of the Kuru kingdom. He is the son of King Shantanu and the river goddess Ganga. Shantanu promised never to question Ganga, but when she was about to give their eighth child to the river he stopped her; she explained that their sons were Vasus cursed by the sage Vashishtha to be born as mortals, left, and later returned the boy to his father, raised and taught by great sages. When Shantanu wished to marry Satyavati, her father asked that her son be heir. Devavrata gave up the throne and vowed lifelong celibacy, and so was called Bhishma, "the one who undertakes a severe vow". His father blessed him with Iccha Mrityu, the power to choose the time of his death. He served the Kuru throne for generations, and his loyalty led him to command the Kaurava army for ten days at Kurukshetra. On the tenth day Arjuna, aided by Shikhandi, laid him on a bed of arrows, where he lay for fifty-one days, teaching the Vishnu Sahasranama to Yudhishthira before dying at Uttarayana.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.