The following is a list of real or historical people who have been portrayed as
alternate history
scenario, or occasionally for humorous purposes. Also included are actual US Presidents with a fictional presidency at a different time and/or under different circumstances than the one in actual history.
He is mentioned as a prior commander in chief in Demolition Man with his own presidential library in San Angeles, California.
"President Schwarzenegger" was also mentioned in the Doctor Who episode "Bad Wolf".
In the 2007 film
Rainier Wolfcastle, who is himself a parody of Schwarzenegger. He gives uninformed orders to EPA Administrator Russ Cargill to seal Springfield under a giant glass dome after Lake Springfield becomes horrifically polluted because of Homer Simpson. When Cargill warns of the possibility of a public backlash after learning of Springfield becoming a no man's land (and subsequently manipulates the President into authorizing the destruction of Springfield), Schwarzenegger laments returning to making family comedies, such as "Diaper Genie" in reference to the real Schwarzenegger's failed attempts to leave the action genre. According to The Simpsons creator Matt Groening, Schwarzenegger was the president in the film rather than then-President George W. Bush because, according to Groening, "in two years ... the film [would be] out of date".[1] He was voiced by Harry Shearer
Note: In actual history, Seymour was a major Democratic Party politician during and after the American Civil War, and a Presidential candidate in 1868. It is reasonable to assume that, had the South won the Civil War - which would have severely discredited the Republican Party - Seymour might have been elected President of the Rump US. However, his fictional presidencies widely diverge from each other.
In Ward Moore's "Bring the Jubilee", during Horatio Seymour's term the United States suffered the severe economic results of its defeat in the War of Southron Independence and the reparations it had to pay to the victorious Confederacy. Inflation, which already entered galloping state under Seymour's predecessor Clement Vallandigham, became dizzying under President Seymour and precipitated the food riots of 1873 and 1874. The economy was later stabilized, but the rump United States was permanently crippled and went into the 20th Century as a poor backwards country. (Note: The book does not make clear if Seymour had two terms, 1868 and 1872, after a single one by Vallandigham, or only a single one in 1872 after two of Vallandigham.)
In the alternate history novel The Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove, Horatio Seymour secured the Democratic presidential nomination in the immediate aftermath of the Second American Revolution (1861–1864), running on a ticket with Clement Vallandigham as his running mate. He narrowly defeated President Abraham Lincoln in the 1864 election. The election was a close one and it was over a week before Seymour's victory was determined. During the election, he won 41.5% of the popular votes with 1,671,580 voted and carried 10 states (New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Wisconsin, Maryland, Oregon, and California) and received 138 electoral votes. He was inaugurated as the 17th President on March 4, 1865. Under President Seymour, the United States shifted its focus from its southern border to its northern one. In 1866, the British Empire increased the size of its garrison in the Dominion of Canada, prompting the President to pull troops out of the New Mexico Territory and the Arizona Territory. The United States, still heavily militarized from fighting the Second American Revolution, was able to successfully invade and hold Canada in short order, leading to a war with the United Kingdom. General George B. McClellan had been one of the most prominent advocates of the annexation of Canada.
its allies on July 14, 1944. In spite of this, La Follette lost the 1944 election to the Democratic candidate Thomas E. Dewey
, who became the 34th President. Smith's legacy is viewed in mixed terms. Some have argued that his decision to deal with Featherston diplomatically rather than militarily from the outset very nearly proved to be the country's undoing. Others have argued that in the situation Smith inherited (a weak economy, a weak military, restive populations who didn't want to be citizens), Smith probably made the best choices available to him.
Bruce Springsteen appears in Jim Mortimore's Doctor Who novel Eternity Weeps. President Springsteen orders a nuclear attack on Turkey and the Moon in an attempt to stop the spread of an alien terraforming virus known as "Agent Yellow".
Nagona, South Japan. Steele turned his attention back to the US, finding more traitors. He was elected to a sixth term in 1952
but died on March 5, 1953, only six weeks after being inaugurated. Vice President Garner, who was by then 84 years old, ascended to the presidency, briefly serving as the 33rd President, and ordered the executions of the Hammer and J. Edgar Hoover. The Hammer ordered the deaths of Garner and Hoover. Hoover ordered the deaths of Hammer and Garner, and succeeded in his task. Hoover became the 34th President and proved to be even more tyrannical than Steele.
In Harry Turtledove's alternate history novel Joe Steele, which is an extension of the short-story of the same name, Steele's role is expanded and more info is revealed and changed. For example, he no longer runs unopposed in the 1944, 1948 and 1952 presidential elections. Instead, he defeats Thomas E. Dewey in 1944, Harold Stassen in 1948, and Robert Taft in 1952.
Race in 1965. The then Vice President Stassen was not privy to Warren's decision to attack the Race's Colonization Fleet in 1962. In the aftermath of President Warren's death, Stassen set about removing those members of the Warren administration who had known about his actions. President Stassen was already certain that he would be elected to a term of his own in 1968, a belief which he shared in private with the Soviet premier Vyacheslav Molotov
. Stassen soon learned of the new American use of rocket propelled asteroids as a weapon. During a meeting with Sam Yeager, the man who had revealed President Warren's actions to the world, Yeager attempted to broach the subject with President Stassen, who pointedly shared nothing with Yeager.
In one of the alternate timelines featured in Michael P. Kube-McDowell's novel Alternities, Adlai Stevenson is mentioned as having been elected president in 1956, defeating the incumbent Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, and serving for two terms, though he is quoted as describing his second term as a curse. His vice president was Estes Kefauver.
In the
artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, by the Soviet Union in October 1957. Although the story ends immediately after President Stevenson has decided to resign, it is heavily implied that Nixon, already the front runner for the next Republican nomination, will defeat Kennedy in the 1960 election
. This is due to the public's antipathy towards the Democrats and the fact that Kennedy is a much derided figure due to his marriage to Monroe.
In a
Roswell UFO incident in July 1947 public knowledge and signed the Reticulan-American Free Trade Agreement (RAFTA), giving the US access to advanced Reticulan technology. This led to a human mission to Mars
in the 1990s.
In the alternate history novel
Lord Beaverbrook, speculated that Stevenson would follow in Roosevelt's footsteps and pursue an interventionist foreign policy when it came to European affairs. Several weeks later, President-elect Stevenson gave a speech indicating that he intended to begin trading with the Soviet Union
In the alternate history short story "Truth, Justice and the American Way" by Lawrence Watt-Evans contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by Mike Resnick, Herbert Hoover defeated Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 after Al Smith ran a third-party candidate and split the Democratic vote. Henry Stimson continued to serve as Secretary of State. On Stimson's advice, Hoover went to war with the Empire of Japan in 1934. After defeating Roosevelt in 1936, Stimson became the 32nd President and, under his leadership, the United States emerged victorious from the war. However, President Stimson was criticized for not crushing Japan entirely by invading the Home Islands. Stimson was re-elected in 1940, once again defeating Roosevelt. In 1948, Adolf Hitler was overthrown and killed by a cabal of generals and Hermann Göring succeeded him as the second Führer, continuing to serve in that position until at least 1953. Due to the survival of Nazi Germany, totalitarianism and antisemitism grew stronger across the world well into the 1950s.
In the alternate history novel The Probability Broach as part of the North American Confederacy Series by L. Neil Smith in which the United States became a libertarian state after a successful Whiskey Rebellion and George Washington being overthrown and executed by firing squad for treason in 1794, Harriet Beecher Stowe becomes the 13th President of the old United States from 1859 after Arthur Downing died in office and she was the first woman to hold the office of the presidency. During her presidency, Stowe advocates on banning alcohol, though her plan is never put into action. She served as president until 1860, from when Lysander Spooner was elected.
In one of the alternate timelines featured in Michael P. Kube-McDowell novel Alternities, Robert Taft was elected as the 34th President in 1952, defeating Adlai Stevenson, after Dwight D. Eisenhower was killed in a plane crash the year before. President Taft pursued a policy of isolationism which subsequently allowed the Soviet Union to emerge as the dominant superpower. He later died in office.
In the short story "We Could Do Worse" by Gregory Benford, Robert Taft was chosen as the Republican candidate in 1952, winning over General Dwight D. Eisenhower with the support of Richard Nixon, and took Joseph McCarthy as his running mate. He was elected as the 34th President and died in 1953 as he did in real life. McCarthy succeeded him as the 35th President and went on to make himself a brutal dictator. Two federal agents, the principal characters of the story, were grateful that Nixon delivered the California delegation to Taft at the 1952 Convention as it prevented Eisenhower, a "pinko general" with a "Kraut name," from securing the nomination. Furthermore, they regarded Taft's death as a godsend as it allowed McCarthy to accede to the presidency. Taft was the son of William Howard Taft, who had served as the 27th President from 1909 to 1913. After John Adams and John Quincy Adams, the Tafts were the second father-son pair to both serve as president.
In the alternate history novel
Lord Beaverbrook
, speculated that Stevenson would follow in Roosevelt's footsteps and pursue an interventionist foreign policy when it came to European affairs.
Similar to the above, Robert Taft is also the US president in
Pacific
Oceans, would be adequate to protect America even if Germany overran all of Europe.
Progressive Party candidate, Roosevelt went on to defeat both William Howard Taft, the extremely unpopular incumbent Republican president, and their Democratic opponent Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 election. Shortly after the sinking of the passenger liner RMS Lusitania by the German U-boatU-20 on May 7, 1915, Roosevelt brought the United States into the Great War, resulting in the defeat of the German Empire by the US and its allies within less than a year. This made the United States a world power. In spite of this and the fact that the economy was experiencing a boom, Roosevelt was widely expected to lose the 1916 election
to Wilson. At his 58th birthday party on October 27, 1916, Roosevelt attributed his consistently poor performance in the polls to the fact that his erstwhile colleagues in the Republican Party were bitter that he had run as a Progressive Party candidate in 1912 and defeated Taft. He claimed that the Republicans owned three-quarters of the newspapers in the United States whereas the Democrats owned the remaining quarter, meaning that the vast majority of the press coverage was hostile.
In
Great War (1914–1917), and the two quarreled from time to time. He continued to do so after the Socialists won control of Congress and he was stripped of his chairmanship. In 1919, he opposed a resolution which she called for condemning the Freedom Party's persecution of blacks in the Confederate States of America
.
In the alternate history novel
Donald R. Bensen, Secretary of WarWilliam Howard Taft appears very briefly at the beginning of the book. His one and only cameo comes in 1908, when he and President Theodore Roosevelt are discussing the effects that the presence of extraterrestrials could have on the election. He is asked by the Republican National Committee to relinquish their nomination for president, news that overjoys President Roosevelt, who assumes that he will be the new nominee. It is Taft who delivers the startling news that the Committee plans to nominate Thomas Edison
In the short story "How the South Preserved the Union" by Ralph Roberts in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by Mike Resnick, both Zachary Taylor and his vice president Millard Fillmore were killed in a carriage accident in 1849. President Taylor was succeeded by David Rice Atchison, the President pro tempore of the United States Senate and a prominent pro-slavery activist, who became the 13th President. Shortly after President Atchison's accession, the American Civil War broke out on April 17, 1849, with the secession of Massachusetts from the Union and the Second Battle of Lexington and Concord, from which the rebelling abolitionists, who styled themselves as the New Minutemen, emerged victorious. New Hampshire and Vermont seceded shortly thereafter and were soon followed by the rest of New England, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The seceding Northeastern states banded together to form the New England Confederacy with Daniel Webster as its first and only President and the revolutionary abolitionist John Brown as the commander of its army. The war came to an end in 1855, two years after President Atchison had issued a proclamation promising that any slave who fought in the United States Army would be granted his freedom following the end of the war and that any factory slave who worked satisfactorily would be granted his or her freedom after the war and would be paid for that work from then onwards.
In the Southern Victory novel How Few Remain by Harry Turtledove, Zachary Taylor served as the twelfth president of the United States as he did in real life. Despite him being born in Virginia, Taylor was still appreciated in the United States due to his military success, even after the War of Secession. During his youth, Theodore Roosevelt was a great admirer of Taylor's military works, viewing him as a great conqueror and leader ranking with George Washington and Napoleon.
William Hale Thompson, as the Whig party candidate, defeated populist President Thomas R. Marshall in 1920, and won a second term against Al Smith in 1924 in Ward Moore's novel Bring the Jubilee.
In the short story "Patriot's Dream" by Tappan King in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by Mike Resnick, Samuel Tilden defeated Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, becoming the 19th President, after a series of nightmares help convert him from a low-key corporate lawyer to a crusading reformer. He was re-elected in 1880. His vice president was Winfield Scott Hancock, who succeeded him as president with Grover Cleveland being his vice president.
In "I Shall Have a Flight to Glory" by Michael P. Kube-McDowell, also contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by Mike Resnick, Samuel Tilden, still bruised by his loss to Hayes in 1876, adopted similar tactics against his Republican opponent James A. Garfield to defeat him in the 1880 election. However, Garfield, with the help of Charles J. Guiteau (his assassin in real history), vainly attempt to convince Tilden that they can fix the corrupted electoral system. When he declines the offer, Garfield and Guiteau assassinate him before he could be inaugurated as the 20th President.
In the first
Southern Victory Series novel How Few Remain by Harry Turtledove, Samuel Tilden is referred to as having served one term from 1877 to 1881. Elected in 1876, he became an unpopular president after he removed the twelve stars on the U.S flag that represented the Confederate States. Tiden was defeated in his bid for re-election in 1880 by his Republican challenger James G. Blaine. Confederate States PresidentJames Longstreet expressed disappointment at the more hardline Blaine's election as Tilden had given the Confederate States of America a free hand throughout his presidency, as had all of his Democratic predecessors since the War of Secession
(1861–1862).
In Barney Hardman's short story "Compromise? What compromise?", Supreme Court Justice
Reconstruction Era and keep the federal troops whose support was essential for the survival of Republican state governments in South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana. While the Compromise ended Tilden's troubles with the Republicans, it alienated a large part of his own party, many Democrats considering him "a turncoat". It also resulted in an upsurge of violence in the South and a renewal of the Ku Klux Klan activities. Increasingly driven to rely on the support of the Republicans against his own party, and seeing virtually no chance of being re-nominated, Tilden in 1880
altogether bolted the Democratic Party and was re-elected as a Republican, with Rutherford Hayes as his running mate.
In the Second Chance pilot episode, it was mentioned that John Travolta had been president at some point prior to 2011. By that year, his picture was on the fifty-dollar bill.
The alternate history short story "The More Things Change..." by Glen E. Cox, contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by Mike Resnick, tells the story of the 1948 election in reverse, with the underdog Thomas E. Dewey eventually defeating Harry Truman, the incumbent and the early overwhelming favorite, by playing to anti-communist fears. Dewey therefore succeeds him as the 34th President. The story contains a reference to the famously inaccurate banner headline "Dewey Defeats Truman". Given that it was obvious to everyone—even before it happened—that Dewey would lose the election, the front-page headline of the Chicago Tribune on November 3, 1948, erroneously reads "Truman Defeats Dewey". The front cover of the anthology depicts a grinning Dewey proudly holding up the relevant edition of the Chicago Tribune in the same manner as Truman did in real life.
. Truman was photographed holding up a copy of the paper by the media.
In the alternate history novel
Senate in November 1946. The Truman administration saw no choice but to begin the withdrawal of American soldiers towards the end of 1947. Shortly thereafter, Heydrich was finally located and killed by American troops. Although the administration's critics saw this as even greater reason to pull out troops, Truman worried that Heydrich's death did not mean the death of the GFF. This fear proved to be correct as his second-in-command Joachim Peiper soon picked up where Heydrich left off, launching a series of commercial airline hijackings. While Truman planned on running for election in 1948, it was widely expected that he would lose the election to his Republican opponent. By early 1948, one of the front runners for the Republican nomination was the Governor of New YorkThomas E. Dewey, in spite of the fact that he had previously lost the 1944 election
to Roosevelt.
In the Hot War Series by Harry Turtledove, although Harry S Truman successfully helped lead the country to victory in World War II in 1945, his political miscalculations over the Korean War helped spark World War III in 1951.
In the 2018 Doctor Who episode Arachnids in the UK, Donald Trump is mentioned as the incumbent president. A decades-long dislike of him motivates businessman Jack Robertson (himself, a Trump analogue) to run as president in 2020, which is ultimately derailed following revelations of his company's practice of building luxury hotel complexes atop dumping grounds for industrial waste, which in Sheffield resulted in an infestation of giant mutant spiders. In Revolution of the Daleks, Robertson falsely takes credit for saving the world from Daleks, suggesting that he may run again in 2024.
In the 2019 alternate history short-story
killed in a plane crash in July 1999. The election was close, with Trump winning major swing states such as Florida and Ohio, though he was not able to crack the "Blue Wall" and Kennedy was able to win Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. It took until the early morning hours that the election was finally called. Trump gave his concession speech while surrounded by his family at Trump Tower in New York City. It was not a gracious speech: while Trump conditioned his concession on the presumption that the election was indeed "free and fair", he did gloat that he'd scared the elites and that he'd run again in 2020
. To the relief of many, he did not refuse to concede or incite his supporters to violence. He did call Kennedy to congratulate him, but the call was a typically sour affair.
In the 2019 joint BBC-HBO miniseries
Russell T. Davies, Donald Trump is shown to have won re-election in 2020, although the Democrats accuse Russia of election interference, there is a voting scandal in Florida and France refuses to accept the validity of the vote. His second term witnesses heightened tensions with China, culminating in his authorisation of a nuclear strike against Hong Sha Dao (a Chinese artificial island housing a military base) days before leaving office, resulting in international sanctions against the US and the United Nations threatening to withdraw their headquarters from New York. He is succeeded as president by Mike Pence, who is widely regarded as being Trump's puppet. By 2027, Trump's likeness is mentioned as becoming the fifth of a US president to be carved into Mount Rushmore
.
In
James Morrow and Cat Rambo, Donald Trump was re-elected as president in 2020 but died during a second coronavirus
pandemic in 2024. The presidencies of both him and his successor, Mike Pence, saw the United States transformed into a right-wing, Christian fundamentalist, authoritarian state. By 2031, the policies of the Trump and Pence administrations instigated the last states controlled by Democrats to secede as the nations of Pacifica (comprising California, Oregon and Washington) and Newtopia (comprising New York, New Jersey and New England).
In the novelisation of the Doctor Who episode Dalek by Robert Shearman, it is implied that Donald Trump is the incumbent president, the 'owner of the Internet' Henry van Statten having had a meeting with him at a Florida golf course. (This retcons the original televisual story, which was set in 2012 with van Statten considering determining the outcome of that year's election due to the incumbent President being behind in the opinion polls, asking his staff if the next President should be a Democrat or a Republican.)
Rexford Tugwell is president in The Grasshopper Lies Heavy by Hawthorne Abendsen, an alternate historynovel-within-a-novel which forms a major part of the plot of The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick. This is an example of recursive science fiction. In The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt was not assassinated by Giuseppe Zangara on February 15, 1933, as he was in the world of The Man in the High Castle, and went on to serve two terms in office. In 1940, Roosevelt declined to run for a third term and his fellow Democrat Tugwell was elected as the 33rd President. President Tugwell removed the U.S. Pacific fleet from Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, saving it from Japanese attack and ensuring that the United States entered World War II as a well-equipped naval power. The United Kingdom retained most of its military-industrial strength, contributing more to the Allied war effort, leading to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's defeat in North Africa, a British advance through the Caucasus to guide the Soviets to victory in the Battle of Stalingrad, Italy reneging on its membership of and its betrayal of the Axis powers and British Army and the Red Army jointly conquering Berlin. At the end of the war, the Nazi leaders—including Adolf Hitler—were tried for their war crimes. The Führer's last words are Deutsche, hier steh' ich ("Germans, here I stand"), in imitation of the priest Martin Luther. Post-war, Winston Churchill remained Prime Minister and, because of its military-industrial might, the British Empire did not collapse. President Tugwell established strong business relations with Chiang Kai-shek's right-wing regime in China, after vanquishing the Communist Mao Zedong. The British Empire became racist and more expansionist following the end of the war while the United States outlawed Jim Crow, resolving its racism by the 1950s. Both changes provoke racialist-cultural tensions between the US and the UK, leading them to a Cold War for global hegemony between the two vaguely liberal, democratic, capitalist societies. Although the end of the novel was never depicted in the text, one character claimed the book ended with the British Empire eventually defeating the US, becoming the world's only superpower.
