History Main / AnonymousRinger

** There was a ComicBook/CaptainAmerica comic where Reagan was [[InvoluntaryTransformation transformed into a lizard-man]] that attacked Cap. He got changed back by [[YouFailBiologyForever sweating out the poison]] during the fight. No...'''really.'''

* Used blatantly in ''[[MatthewReilly Area 7]]'': the President is a main character, but he's only addressed as "Mr. President" and referred to as "the President" during the narration.

Enter the Anonymous Ringer - a character or place transparently meant to be a recognizable real-world figure, but never explicitly mentioned by name. This device allows an author to write about England being invaded by "a country to the north", the US being driven to war by "the president", or a riot at a concert of "a popular rock-and-roll band", without having to worry about Scots, Barack Obama, or the Rolling Stones firing off a cease-and-desist letter.

* Marvel Comics, which has always liked to root itself in the real world more firmly than DC, ''does'' have appearances by President Bush and other real politicians (especially UltimateMarvel, wherein Air Force One gets attacked by supervillains). Their portrayal is usually as unbiased as possible -- see Marvel writer John Jackson Miller's comments on [[http://peterdavid.malibulist.com/archives/002701.html this Peter David blog post]]. The big exception is Secretary of Defense, a position which has been held by two major Marvel characters in the last few years: the Red Skull and ComicBook/IronMan.

* Averted and played straight in different versions of ''BadDudes''. The home console versions all have you rescuing "The President", who is never mentioned by name (though at the end he resembles George H.W. Bush). The original arcade game, however, specifically asks if you're a "bad enough dude to rescue President Ronnie", and the image at the end is clearly Reagan.

** There was a CaptainAmerica comic where Reagan was [[InvoluntaryTransformation transformed into a lizard-man]] that attacked Cap. He got changed back by [[YouFailBiologyForever sweating out the poison]] during the fight. No...'''really.'''

* One of the vignettes in ''WorldWarZ'' describes a group of celebrities holing up in a Long Island mansion to wait out the ZombieApocalypse. The narrator declines to name names for fear of legal action from the survivors or their estates, but Paris Hilton, Bill Maher, Ann Coulter, Ruben Studdard, and Larry the Cable Guy are all identifiable from their descriptions. Several politicians get the treatment as well - the wartime president and veep are clearly Colin Powell and Howard Dean, the pre-war president's chief of staff is Karl Rove, and Vladimir Putin apparently declares himself Czar.

* For the most part, this is averted in the ''GlobalGuardiansPBEMUniverse'', as real world people and places were used when needed. Certain other public figures (like the current US Secretary of Defense, Dr. Andrea Coudriet, and the current in-universe Pope, Alexander IX) are purely fictional substitutes for real people.

* In ''CallOfDuty 4: ModernWarfare'', the Middle-Eastern country where Khaled al-Asad stages a violent coup is never named, but since the game has explicit map views, it's obviously Saudi Arabia.

** Of course, back when Reagan was President, he appeared in the comics a lot. Both Batman and the Martian Manhunter impersonated him on separate occasions. The Phanton Stranger punched out Reagan's evil double. No, really.

* The long-running comic book series ''ComicBook/TheAuthority'' played with this trope. One issue had Jack, the leader, tell off a hologram of Bill Clinton, telling him to watch himself. Later, a generic President is thrown through a portal into Iraq, -after- claiming that he, the President, was only a figurehead. Then Jack takes a turn as President, which falls apart after Washington D.C. is nuked flat (the radiation is magically removed). The Authority makes sure good elections happen and we are back to generic presidents. Later, characters accuse The Authority of making an ex-President vanish.

* ''Mephisto'' by German author Klaus Mann did this to the extreme. The protagonist and theatre attendant Hendrik Höfgen is a copy of the real-world Gustav Gründgens among others. Other Weimar entertainment figures receive similar treatment, including a MarleneDietrich {{Expy}} who leaves Germany to pursue a film career. Also the important figures of the Nazi regime are only referred to as "the dictator", "the pilot-general", the propaganda-minister" and so forth. This strategy however didn't stop West-German court from prohibiting publication of the book until much later.

* Played straight in FrederickForsyth's 'The Devil's Alternative' where the female Prime Minister in power in 1979 is 'Joan Carpenter'. Averted in his next novel, The Fourth Protocol where Margaret Thatcher was referred to by name. The novel also used Ken Livingstone as a key player in a soviet plot.

* ''[[TheDemonHeadmaster The Prime Minister's Brain]]'' by Gillian Cross is one of many British stories from the 1980s that referred to "the Prime Minister" but [[PronounTrouble notably avoided mentioning said character's sex.]]

* The ''BlakeAndMortimer'' story "SOS Meteors" is about a plot by a hostile superpower in Eastern Europe to destabilize the West and invade it. Said superpower's agents have Slavic-sounding names and boast about the superiority of their ideology. But at no point in the story is the Soviet Union mentioned by name.

* Largely averted in the webfiction ''WhateleyUniverse''. There are two created countries run by supervillains (Wallachia in Eastern Europe and Karedonia in the Caribbean), but other than that, real countries are named and real people are used.

->''The 39 Steps is an organization of spies collecting information on behalf of the foreign office of...''\\
'''(BANG!)'''
-->-- [[spoiler: Mr. Memory]], ''Film/The39Steps'' (1935)

* The long-running comic book series ''TheAuthority'' played with this trope. One issue had Jack, the leader, tell off a hologram of Bill Clinton, telling him to watch himself. Later, a generic President is thrown through a portal into Iraq, -after- claiming that he, the President, was only a figurehead. Then Jack takes a turn as President, which falls apart after Washington D.C. is nuked flat (the radiation is magically removed). The Authority makes sure good elections happen and we are back to generic presidents. Later, characters accuse The Authority of making an ex-President vanish.

* ''Mephisto'' by German author Klaus Mann did this to the extreme. The protagonist and theatre intendant Hendrik Höfgen is a copy of the real-world Gustav Gründgens among others. Also the important figures of the Nazi regime are only referred to as "the dictator", "the pilot-general", the propaganda-minister" and so forth. This strategy however didn't stop West-German court from prohibiting publication of the book until much later.

* In the ''JusticeLeague Elite'' mini the resident spymaster has a phone conversation in which he suggests to an unseen clueless world leader to have his daddy and his uncle Dick explain things to him.

** The Timeline 191 books are pretty bad when it comes to this trope thanks to Turtledove's de-emphasis on geopolitics. Except for a few mentions of Churchill, leaders of countries other than the USA and CSA are only referred to by title ("the Kaiser", "the Czar", etc.).

* ''The Prime Minister's Brain'' by Gillian Cross is one of many British stories from the 1980s that referred to "the Prime Minister" but [[PronounTrouble notably avoided mentioning said character's sex.]]

* In ''CallOfDuty 4: ModernWarfare'', the Middle-Eastern country where Khaled Al-Asad stages a violent coup is never named, but since the game has explicit map views, it's obviously Saudi Arabia.

** Al-Asad refers to a "monarchy" that was replaced by Al-Fulani during in a revolution. Saudi Arabia is the only monarchy in the region, neither Iraq nor Iran nor Yemen having monarchies. Kuwait could qualify, being an Emirate but unlikely.
* VideoGame/ResidentEvil4 takes place "in a rural part of Europe", though a character mentions he used to be a cop in Madrid. In yet another case of RE's infamous voice-acting quality, [[{{Spexico}} the characters speak in Mexican dialects instead of Spanish ones]]. One might argue this was to make the game's setting harder to pinpoint.

* Comics, particularly DC ones, from 1939-41 (when WW2 was going on but the US was still neutral) often had foreign villains from anonymous Germany and Japan (or sometimes named fictional analogues).

* Exception: RobertLudlum used real life terrorist mastermind Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez, a.k.a. "Carlos the Jackal", as the BigBad in his [[Literature/TheBourneSeries Jason Bourne novels]], and even killed him off at the end of ''The Bourne Ultimatum''. (In real life, Carlos faded into obscurity and was eventually captured in 1994.)

* In "Dead and Buried", an episode of ''TheBill'' (a show that usually names countries), the plot involves a diplomat from an unnamed Eastern European country. It also has a character mislocate Prague as Western Europe ("Central Europe" is the more accurate term).

'''(BANG!)'''\\
-- [[spoiler: Mr. Memory]], ''Film/The39Steps'' (1935)