History Main / ExpandedStatesOfAmerica

* In ''Literature/AmericasStepbrotherAmericasEnemy'', the entire 2012 US is transported to the world of 1984. They decide to liberate the rest of the world from the totalitarian superstates, but they allow the countries they liberate to rule themselves, but many of them vote to join the United States. These include Canada, Mexico and a few Caribbean Islands.

* One of the more recent attempts to expand by the United States was, in 1946, their attempt to annex Greenland for military purposes from Denmark. The United States offered $100 million (in 1946 dollars) for the entire area, but Denmark refused (although they did agree to allow the U.S. to build an Air Force base in the territory). The idea has come up a few more times since, with the same results.

'''Notes:''' This trope does ''not'' cover alternate versions of the British Empire that [[AmericaIsStillAColony do]] ''[[AmericaIsStillAColony not]]'' [[AmericaIsStillAColony lose the American colonies in a War of American Revolution]]. '''That means cases like the Holy Britannian Empire of ''Franchise/CodeGeass'' do ''not'' count as examples.'''

[[AC:Western Animation]]
* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'', America seems to have taken over the whole world by the 31st century. The Earthican flag is the US Flag with a globe in place of the stars and the Earthican president has all the trappings and rules of the current POTUS.

** The size of the United States was increased some 20% in 1867 when the Russians, [[IdiotBall believing their territory in Alaska to no longer be economically productive]], sold Alaska to the United States. In part because Russia was on rather good terms with the US at the time, and in part simply to spite Britain, which it had lost the Crimean War to a few years prior.

* The '''standard Expanded States of America''' has the USA be more ''aggressive'', and use its military might (or subtle politics/diplomacy, whichever works) to annex at least parts of one or more bordering countries on the North American continent - meaning Canada, Mexico, Central America, and/or a Caribbean island nation - as additional states, if not take over said countries outright; more extreme examples of this kind have the US evolve into what is essentially '''United States of North America''' ([[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americas_(terminology) depending on one's definition of "North America"]]).

* In ''[[Literature/DirkPittAdventures Night Probe]]'' by Creator/CliveCussler, a major component of the plot is centered around a fictional agreement signed between Canada and the United States in 1916 which would officially unite the two countries, making the Canadian provinces into additional American states. In the story, it was more or less ignored after both physical copies of the agreement - and about half the people who knew about it - were lost simultaneously due to an unrelated train hijacking and passenger ship crash. Supposedly, the novel ends with one of the copies being recovered and the agreement retroactively enforced, but later books in the same continuity [[{{Retcon}} more or less ignore]] that development.

* U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico are legally entitled to apply for statehood if their citizens should vote to do. As yet, the advantages of territorial status have outweighed those of statehood for most voters; the only place where it might realistically happen is Puerto Rico - during the November 2012 voting, 54% of the population voted for statehood[[note]]with 61% preferring statehood if "no change" were taken off the table[[/note]]. The U.S. Democratic and Republican parties have stated they will honor Puerto Rico's decision.
** 2017 saw another referendum that had 97% approval for statehood...but only 23% voter turnout due to a boycott by the opposition parties. A scheduled 2020 referendum hoped to settle the issue definitively, by being a simple yes or no vote on statehood without regard to any other alternative options. The final vote was 52% in favor while 47% against but this depends on what happens to control of Congress in 2021.

* A hilarious academic proposal by the American migrant to Australia David Moser was that Australia become the 51st state of the US, for the advantages of, among other things, being able to "have teams in the NBA (basketball), American League (baseball) and NFL (gridiron)", despite the fact that virtually no Australians follow baseball, or even understand or care about gridiron. [[note]Australians like basketball as a school sport, but it doesn't have much of a following otherwise.[[/note]] For a short time this was covered in the media and made waves on the internet.

* In ''Paper Empire'', a quasi-official (Creator/AlanMoore approved it, and Marvel later confirmed its version of Captain Empire's real name) ''Comicbook/CaptainBritain'' fancomic, Captain Empire's home reality of Earth-741 has a United American Republics, which seems to include at ''least'' the USA, and unspecified chunks of South America (but not Canada, which is still part of the British Empire).

* ''Our Dumb Century'' takes the addition of Alaska and Hawaii in 1959 and turns it into "Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, Bora Bora, Samoa, Philippines, Japan Granted U.S. Statehood"
-->Resource-Rich Territories to Become 49th Through 55th States.
-->[[HypocriticalHumor Spread of Democracy Will Keep Newly Acquired Foreign Territories Safe from Foreign Imperialism]]
-->Brown-Skinned Natives to Contribute Taxes, Cheap Labor to U.S.

* ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'', takes place in an AlternateHistory where the United States of America includes the 51st state of Vietnam ... or at least speculation in the newspapers that such might happen in the near future. The [[Series/Watchmen2019 TV series]] shows that indeed happened.

* In the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "The Royale," a US flag with 52 stars dates the wreckage of an old NASA mission found by the ''Enterprise'' to sometime between 2033 and 2079. Data explains that the 2 new stars are Puerto Rico and Guam. The latter is a relatively unlikely candidate for statehood unless it experienced massive population growth during that period.

* In ''Literature/AmericasStepbrotherAmericasEnemy'', the entire 2012 US is transported to the world of 1984. They decide to liberate the rest of the world from the totalitarian superstates, but they allow the countries they liberate to rule themselves, but many of them vote to join the United States.

* The 1926 silent Colombian film ''Garras de Oro'' (Golden Claws) is about a very evil USA taking over Panama from Colombia, and thus is considered the first anti imperialist film.

* The United States in ''Literature/JulianComstock'' stretches from as far north as Canada to as far as Panama in the south. By that point however, the US had long evolved into something that neither the Founding Fathers nor a modern-day American would find very recognizable.

* S.M. Stirling's Literature/TheDraka series is chock full of superstates like this, the US included. Since Canada did not benefit from a large population boost following the American Revolution, it fell to the US invasion of 1812. Since they were free states, the slave-owning southerners lobbied for full annexation after the Mexican War. William Walker succeeded in establishing a Central American empire, which was then annexed along with Cuba, the rest of the Caribbean, and the Philippines. In a similar vein, The Grand Republic of Colombia (Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama, northern Peru and northwest Brazil) never broke up, nor the Empire of Brazil (Brazil & Uruguay), so South America is comprised of just 4 nations. Africa and the Mideast is likewise unified, but as a brutal slaveocracy under the boot heel of the eponymous Draka.

* In ''WesternAnimation/MeetTheRobinsons,'' time-traveler Lewis tries to pass himself off as a foreign exchange student from Canada. Apparently by 2037 it's a state called "North Montana."

** Thomas Jefferson pulled off the land deal of the millennium when he bought the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803. This acquired for the United States the western half of the Mississippi River watershed, doubling the size of the country.[[note]]Some say that the Constitution didn't give the President the power to make such a deal, and that Jefferson himself ''knew'' that... but it was just too good to pass up.[[/note]]

** A little known of fact is that the United States actually invaded Canada (then, the Province of Quebec) during the Revolutionary War and one of the commanding officers of the invasion was future {{Turncoat}} Benedict Arnold. The invasion was a failure. Later, at the Paris Peace Conference, the United States attempted to sue for the entire Province, but the British refused (though initially they did agree to hand it all over). They did, however, give the U.S. the southern part of the province, which subsequently became the Northwest Territory.
** Honestly, the American Revolution could be potentially be a point of expansion in several ways for America. Bermuda was heavily pro-American at the beginning of the conflict, so much so that if had been closer to the mainland, it may have joined the rebellion. Also, Nassau, the current capital of the Bahamas was occupied by America briefly, then it fell to the Spanish, who gave the Bahamas back to Britain in the subsequent treaty. Had the Americans remained, or Spain kept it with Florida, they may have fallen to American control eventually.

** The last "official" attempt by America at gaining Canada was the so called [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama_Claims Alabama Claims]], a series of claims the U.S. held against the British for their allowance of Confederate agents to purchase unfitted warships which the Confederacy later used to raid and attack Union merchant shipping. One of the key things demanded in exchange for dropping the claims was all or part of Canada (Secretary of State William Seward, who had just bought Alaska, personally favored annexing British Columbia). This fell through due to a number of factors, and the matter was settled via arbitration.
** In 1948, shortly before the Dominion of Newfoundland unified with Canada to become the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, a significant portion of Newfoundlanders advocated instead becoming the 49th state of the United States[[note]]Alaska and Hawaii wouldn't obtain statehood for another decade.[[/note]], as US military bases established there during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII had created a positive impression and the large influx of money had revived the island's economy. The UK and Canada didn't appreciate this idea, and were able to satisfy US interests by guaranteeing that Canada would allow the US bases to remain.[[note]]Whether the US would've been willing to offer statehood at all is uncertain given its small population, though it ''was'' larger than Wyoming at the time. And there's no chance Newfoundland would've accepted becoming a mere territory.[[/note]] Joining the US was therefore not an option on the July 22, 1948 referendum and a narrow majority voted to join Canada instead of remaining a separate Dominion.

* While the Gadsden purchase, as eventually agreed upon, added a generally negligible amount of territory to the Union, originally, it had been envisioned as being much larger. This guided a creation of the one of the "packages" presented to then Mexican president Santa Ana, a $50 million (around $1.4 billion today) deal, including at least the entirety of the Baja California peninsula, and most of the modern Mexican states of Coahuila, Chihuahua, Sonora, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas. This was opposed by, of course, most Mexicans, and anti-slavery senators in the north, who saw this deal as nothing more than acquiring more slavery territory for the south, much like how the Mexican Cession itself had been viewed. Santa Ana ended up going with the much smaller $15 million ($430,000,000 today) package that sold the U.S. 38,000 square miles (98,000 km2) of desert, the minimum territory necessary for a southern railroad. In the end, due to northern intransigence over the slavery issue, the U.S. didn't even get that, cutting the territory acquired in the final treaty down by about 9,000 miles, and dropping the price to $10 million.
* At the height of the Mexican-American War, the Republic of Yucatan was still formally independent from Mexico after declaring its independence in 1841. The U.S. government, however, treated the Yucatan as being part of Mexico and blockaded the nascent state. With America's blockade, no international support (even after offering its sovereignty), the ongoing Mayan uprising known as the Caste War, and the continuing chaos in Mexico, the Yucatan government, in desperation, openly requested annexation to the United States. U.S. President James K. Polk loved the idea, as did American expansionists, and the "Yucatan Bill" actually passed the House of Representatives, but it failed in the Senate, due Congress's hesitance to commit to a war against the natives with a war in Mexico ongoing. After the Mayan insurrection was put down, the Yucatan Republic eventually agreed to re-confederate with Mexico.
* Taiwan had been a potential target of American annexation for a small period of time during the Qing dynasty era. Two American diplomats recommended that the U.S. annex Taiwan (then commonly known as Formosa) from Qing Dynasty China, mostly because it was believed that the British were also interested in the island, but the idea was rejected rather firmly by the American government. Commodore Matthew C. Perry, during his second voyage to open Japan in 1854, landed in Keelung, a major port on Taiwan. In his reports back to the government, Perry encouraged the annexation of Taiwan in order to use it as a coaling port, and because of its usefulness in countering European monopolization of the trade routes. The U.S. failed to respond to his proposal to claim sovereignty over Formosa. Ironically enough, there is a small contingent of people on Taiwan today, represented mostly by the [[https://www.civil-taiwan.org/ Taiwan Civil Society]], who claim that Taiwan is, legally U.S. Territory as it was never (technically) turned over to official Chinese control by the Treaty of San Francisco (the final peace treaty that marked the end of the war against Japan), nor was it turned over subsequently by any American government in any legal agreement, thus, they contend, Taiwan is still legally under military occupation by the U.S. (as the principal occupying power, with the Republic of China as a subordinate occupying power), with the Republic of China (which fled to the Island in 1949) essentially a government in exile. The PRC rejects this argument as they weren't a party to the Treaty of San Francisco, and thus said treaty is non-binding to them.

** 2017 saw another referendum that had 97% approval for statehood...but only 23% voter turnout due to a boycott by the opposition parties. A scheduled 2020 referendum hoped to settle the issue definitively, by being a simple yes or no vote on statehood without regard to any other alternative options. The final vote was 52% in favor while 47% against but this depends on what happens to control of congress in 2021.

** There were two efforts to form the state of Franklin (named after Benjamin Franklin, in an effort to gain his support for the first attempt) out of what are now the 12 easternmost counties of Tennessee. Initially in 1784, when all of what's now Tennessee was part of North Carolina (and consisted of only 8 counties, though covering the same land), they declared secession from North Carolina and petitioned Congress the next year for statehood. Franklin's "secession" was initially ignored and eventually ended by force. In the 1840s, after Tennessee had been established as a state, there was an attempt to revive the idea on the basis that East Tennessee was culturally and politically incompatible with the rest of the state, but this time no actual attempt at unilateral secession happened. The name "State of Franklin" is still widely used in the region even in the 21st century, though. And during the Civil War, the counties of the former "Franklin" were central to an ultimately failed attempt by East Tennessee follow the example of West Virginia and break away to rejoin the Union as a new state.[[note]]Among the ways East Tennessee differed from the rest of the state were that it had far fewer slaves and mostly wanted to stay in the Union. After the war ended, the idea was considered moot because slavery was already abolished, the whole state was back in the Union, and during the Reconstruction era the state government was dominated by East Tennesseans.[[/note]]

* There have been several attempts to make the District of Columbia into a state, though these efforts have largely been stalled since the District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment failed in 1985. Though the end effect would be a 51st state, proponents of this plan are primarily seeking representation in Congress over anything else, and some of them would be happy with an arrangement where the city's residents become voters in Maryland (the former section of DC on Virginia's side of the Potomac was already given back to Virginia as what are today Arlington County and parts of the city of Alexandria in 1846), although Maryland's Baltimore-based political alignment is opposed to a large non-Baltimore bloc joining their population. On a national level, Democrats tend to favor DC statehood (which would create two reliably liberal Senate seats) while Republicans tend to favor retrocession to Maryland (which would maintain the current balance in the Senate, only creating one safely blue House seat, possibly to be counterbalanced by a new House seat in reliably red Utah). One columnist in a local newspaper in Montgomery County, Maryland, upset that his county paid so much more in state taxes than it got back from the state, proposed that the county join the District in seeking statehood.
** One of the weird barriers against DC statehood is that the Constitution explicitly says that the national capital should be part of a "Federal District", and thus simply converting Washington, DC from a federal district to a state may be unconstitutional. In the 2020 statehood bill (the first such bill to pass the House), this was circumvented by creating a new federal district named "The Capital" whose territory is just a handful of major federal government buildings. The bill also declares that the new state would be called "Douglass Commonwealth", named after abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass, so that the city (which constitute the entirety of the state) would still be "Washington, DC". Most 20th century proposals called for the state to be named "New Columbia".

** It was also criticized heavily as a thinly-veiled attempt to gerrymander state borders, since despite a large majority of Californians being Democrats, four out of the six new states created would have Republican majorities, since no effort was made to have the "Six Californias" be similar to each other in population size. He tried again with a proposal to split into only ''three'' Californias that would be of roughly similar population (North California and South California which are about what you'd expect, and a reduced "California" consisting of just Los Angeles and a few of the surrounding counties). This failed to qualify for the ballot in 2018, and polling showed Californians overwhelmingly opposed it.

* [[AllThereInTheManual According to production notes]] from ''Film/{{Aliens}}'' all of North, South and Central America unite in a socioeconomic block known as The United Americas, in order to counter another major powerblock known as the Three World Empire (consisting of an union of Great Britain, Japan and India which is also where Weyland-Yutani comes from). Though considering the United States Colonial Marines exists as a military unit within the United America's and they use the standard USA flag (as opposed to the United Americas flag which is based off the US Flag except only has one large star and has red stripes on both top and bottom) it can be assumed there's still some nominal independence within the organization.

* ''VideoGame/{{Destiny}}'': Prior to [[ApocalypseHow the Collapse]], the United States and Canada were a single, retro-nationalistic nation known as the North American Empire. However, the Empire is noted to have been more of a voluntary republic than a true government (it existed after humanity was hitting TheSingularity and conventional nation-states had begun to dissolve), meaning it's sovereignty was actually pretty limited.

* ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam00'' has a relatively low-key example with the Union of Solar Energy and Free Nations, usually just called "the Union", comprising all of North and South America, the Caribbean nations, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. There aren't a lot of details about the Union, but while the member states maintain at least some degree of autonomy, the Union President resides at the White House, and it's implied that the United States provides the bulk of the Union's military forces.

* In a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxuAgUcZNgQ sketch]] on ''Series/{{MADtv}}'', a man woke up to discover that, while drunk, he had successfully run for president of the United States. During his drunken presidency, he had bullied Cuba, Saskatchewan and Germany into becoming new states.

* The {{Music/Muse}} album ''The Resistance'' posits a "United States of Eurasia", where the US, Canada, Europe and most of Asia are combined into one supernation

* This is actually the current state of the United States since 1898, when it formally annexed Hawaii. It also has several other overseas possessions, mainly in other parts of the Pacific.

* The Atlantic Federation from the ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamSeed'' universe. It is originally comprised the US, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, the UK and Ireland. It later invades and annexes South America, which itself was its own superstate - the United States of South America (USSA). The USSA later regained its independence, with the exception of Central America, which remained a part of the Atlantic Federation.

* ''VideoGame/HeartsOfIron'' has the Armageddon campaign that portrays an alternate universe where the United States forfeited the Civil War in order to shift their focus on their war on Canada which they succeeded in resulting them to change their name to the United States of North America. Of course, since this is a strategy game, this can be expanded into the of the other flavors listed on this page.

** Later on the USA also conquers Colombia, Peru, Chile and parts of Brazil and lays claim to an Antarctic territory. This coupled to their earlier acquisition of Alaska from Canada means that the USA now claims to stretch not just "From Sea to Shining Sea", but also "From Pole to Frozen Pole".

* In ''[[Literature/TheSecondRenaissance Second Renaissance]]'', the US annexes Canada due to Quebec seceding, and since climate change was screwing the tundras up, the First Nations left. This lead to the United States to annex Canada after {{World War III}}, but this later leads to the entire United States to annex all of the Anglosphere, leading to Britain, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand to be annexed due to harsh climate change going on. Eventually the Third Mexican-American War, leads to a global devastating war that leads to the US not only to annex Mexico, but all the damn world. Talk about a happy ending........

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'', America seems to have taken over the whole world by the 31st century. The Earthican flag is the US Flag with a globe in place of the starts and the Earthican president has all the trappings and rules of the current POTUS.

* There's a conspiracy theory that there is a plan to merge the US, Canada and Mexico into the North American Union, analogous to the EU. It's unclear how much truth there is to this plan in the halls of power, though given the nature of the US Constitution, it would be far easier for Canada and/or Mexico to apply for statehood than it would be to form a superstate.[[note]]Though Canada would have to abandon [[UsefulNotes/HMTheQueen the monarchy]] to do that, since all US states must have a "republican form of government".[[/note]] Additionally, it is arguable how much the EU, or something like it, counts as a "state"[[note]] 'State' meaning "country". Since the conspiracy to bind the formerly-British States together in a political union a la 'The Articles Of Confederation' (out of which the USA got its 'Bill Of Rights') the USA has become a state in itself and not just an alliance/collection of states. Though (like Australia) the USA's states are still called 'states', they're only administrative regions/provinces/sub-states [[/note]][[note]]Well... mostly. Technically "state" means any governing body that owns land, which is usually thought of as a country. Each of the United States owns the territory it's made of by Imminent Domain, with the Federal government retaining ownership at a higher level. It's sort of a sub-let deal.[[/note]]. One of the more bizarre elements of this conspiracy theory was the claim that a new currency call the "Amero" would be established. Even though the US and Canada both call their currency the dollar, and Mexico's currency is the peso (while not ''directly'' translating to English as "dollar", the term "peso" has the same historical origin in the Spanish 8-real silver coin which was known in English as the "Spanish dollar"). Thus if such a merged currency ever happened it would almost certainly just be called "dollar" in English and "peso" in Spanish, rather than a transparent knock-off of the EU's Euro currency.

* ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam00'' has a relatively low key example with the Solar Energy Union, usually just called the Union, comprising all of North and South America, the Caribbean nations, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. There aren't a lot of details, but while the member states maintain at least some degree of autonomy, the Union President resides at the White House, and it's implied that the United States provides the bulk of the Union's military forces.

* In ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam00'' there is the Union of Solar Energy and Free Nations, consisting of the nations of both North and South America, Austalia, and Japan.

[[folder:Mixed Types and Other]]

[[folder:Mixed types and Other]]

* A hilarious academic proposal by the American migrant to Australia David Moser was that Australia become the 51st state of the US, for the advantages of, among other things, being able to "have teams in the NBA (basketball), American League (baseball) and NFL (gridiron)", despite the fact that virtually no Australians follow baseball, or even understand or care about gridiron. [[note]] We like basketball as a school sport, but it doesn't have much of a following otherwise.[[/note]] For a short time this was covered in the media and made waves on the internet.

[[AC:Animation (Western)]]
* In ''WesternAnimation/MeetTheRobinsons,'' time-traveler Lewis tries to pass himself off as a foreign exchange student from Canada. Apparently by 2037 it's a state called "North Montana."

[[AC:ComicBooks]]

[[AC:Film]]

[[AC: Live Action TV]]

[[AC: RealLife]]

[[AC:Live-action TV]]

[[AC:RealLife]]

[[AC:Film]]
* [[AllThereInTheManual According to production notes]] from ''Film/{{Aliens}}'' all of North, South and Central America unite in a socioeconomic block known as The United Americas, in order to counter another major powerblock known as the Three World Empire (Consisting of a union of Great Britain, Japan and India which is also where Weyland-Yutani comes from) Though considering the United States Colonial Marines exists as a military unit within the United America's and they use the standard USA flag (as opposed to the United Americas flag which is based off the US Flag except only has one large star and has red stripes on both top and bottom) it can be assumed there's still some nominal independence within the organization.

[[AC:Anime and Manga]]
* ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam00'' has a relatively low key example with the Solar Energy Union, usually just called the Union, comprising all of North and South America, the Caribbean nations, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. There aren't a lot of details but while the member states maintain at least some degree of autonomy, the Union President resides at the White House and it is implied that the United States provides the bulk of Union military forces.

[[AC:{{Film}}s -- Live-Action]]

[[AC:LiveActionTV]]

[[AC: Web Original]]

[[AC:WesternAnimation]]
* ''TheSimpsons'' episode "Future-Drama" has Bart's girlfriend Jenda mention the fifty-first state Saudi Israelia. A FlashForward in "The Kid is All Right" had President Lisa Simpson considering making Afghanistan a state.

[[AC:Anime and Manga]]

[[AC:Fanfiction]]

[[AC:Film]]

[[AC:Live-Action Television]]

[[AC: Web Original]]

[[AC:Real Life (Sort Of)]]
* One of the long-term goals of the Confederacy following their victory in the UsefulNotes/AmericanCivilWar was to have been aggressive expansion into Central and Southern America. They got hung up on the step before that, though.

SubTrope of DifferentStatesOfAmerica.

* In ''The Trojan Horse'', a Canadian made-for-TV movie starring Paul Gross, Canadians vote to join the United States. Their territory becomes six new states, and Canada's former prime minister (Gross) becomes eligible to run for President of the United States, since, like the first 9 Presidents, he was born in a territory that later became a state.

* Taiwan had been a potential target of American annexation for a small period of time during the Qing dynasty era. Two American diplomats recommended that the U.S. annex Taiwan (then commonly known as Formosa) from Qing Dynasty China, mostly because it was believed that the British were also interested in the island, but the idea was rejected rather firmly by the American government. Commodore Matthew C. Perry, during his second voyage to open Japan in 1854, landed in Keelung, a major port on Taiwan. In his reports back to the government, Perry encouraged the annexation of Taiwan in order to use it as a coaling port, and because of its usefulness in countering European monopolization of the trade routes. The U.S. failed to respond to his proposal to claim sovereignty over Formosa. Ironically enough, there is a small contingent of people on Taiwan today, represented mostly by the [[https://www.civil-taiwan.org/ Taiwan Civil Society]], who claim that Taiwan is, legally U.S. Territory as it was never (technically) turned over to official Chinese control by the Treaty of San Francisco (the final peace treaty that marked the end of the war against Japan), nor was it turned over subsequently by any American government in any legal agreement, thus, they contend, Taiwan is still legally under military occupation by the U.S. (as the principal occupying power, with the Republic of China as a subordinate occupying power), with the Republic of China (which fled to the Island in 1949) essentially a government in exile. Among general Taiwanese, according to polls, given the Choice between joining China and becoming a U.S. state, most Taiwanese would support statehood.

* ''TheSimpsons'' episode "Future-Drama" has Bart's girlfriend Jenda mention the fifty-first state Saudi Isrealia. A FlashForward in "The Kid is All Right" had President Lisa Simpson considering making Afghanistan a state.

* In ''Franchise/MassEffect'', Canada and Mexico were annexed to form the United North American States at the end of the 21st century. Outrage from the annexation sparked off a terrorist bombing of the Statue of Liberty and the Second American Civil War, which was won by unionist forces.

* All of North America unites in ''Franchise/MassEffect'', forming the United North American States. It's stated in the backstory that the decision to do this triggered a Second American Civil War in 2096 (which led to the [[MonumentalDamage destruction of the Statue of Liberty]], incidentally). Interestingly, and perhaps due to the relatively recent unification of North America in the franchise's lore, people in the UNAS seem to retain modern regional identities. A Vancouver-born character for instance identifies himself as Canadian on multiple occasions in ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'', and FlavorText refers "Mexican" and "American" corporations that exist in the game's world.

** One of the weird barriers against DC statehood is that the Constitution explicitly says that the national capital should be part of a "Federal District", and thus simply converting Washington, DC from a federal district to a state may be unconstitutional. In the 2020 statehood bill (the first such bill to pass the House), this was circumvented by creating a new federal district named "The Capital" whose territory is just a handful of major federal government buildings. The bill also declares that the new state would be called "Washington, Douglass Commonwealth", named after abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass. Most 20th century proposals called for the state to be named "New Columbia".

* In Calbear's Literature/TheAngloAmericanNaziWar, the Russian Far East [[http://quantumbranching.deviantart.com/art/The-Anglo-American-Nazi-War-258952264 becomes the US state of West Alaska]]. The Marianas later joins as the 52nd state.