Day of the Jackboot

Nazis? In my capital? It's more likely than you think.

Just one shell and governments fall like flies
Kapow die!
They stumble and fall (bye bye!)
Backs to the wall (aim high!)
We’re having a ball
The tank and bullet rule as democracy dies

— Che, Evita, "The Lady’s Got Potential"

Nazis, commies, and theocrats, oh my! These and other assorted scary people live far, far away from your country. There's no way that they could take it over.

... And even if they did, people would fight them off before they could get a foothold. Nobody would help them out.

... Well, even if they did, there's no way those kind of people could come from your country, right?

Right?

This trope is when Those Wacky Nazis, Dirty Communists, Mega Corps, Private Military Contractors or people who look and act suspiciously similar to any (or all) of them take over the protagonist's country or hometown, often but not always as the result of a war in which they invaded your hometown and won. Communism is a less common (and now even rarer) target for this now, thanks to the end of the Cold War and such, being replaced by Capitalism and Corporatism in the coming age, especially in Cyberpunk settings.

See also Invaded States of America and Oppressive States of America for something specific to the United States - columns of foreign troops marching down Pennsylvania Avenue can be a very powerful image when the last time this happened was 200 years ago. May involve The Coup, though it doesn't necessarily need to (that trope is more on the act itself, this trope is more about the after-effects). Often related to War Comes Home.

If the newly minted dictatorship is restricted to your office, your club or your school, that's Tyrant Takes the Helm.

Compare Emergency Authority, One Nation Under Copyright, People's Republic of Tyranny, Alternate-History Nazi Victory.

Has nothing to do with The Day of the Jackal.

noreallife

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade is an example. Though a sort of weird one because the pseudo-Nazis are ruling Japan. It's a criticism of how the LD Party in Japan was considered to have become more and more oppressive during the '50s and '60s. In 1955 the PM was a war criminal, for example.
• The Mystical Laws: The Godom Empire's footsoldiers successfully set foot in Inasa Beach and proceeded to detain every Japanese civilian they could find. Five months after successfully invading Tsushima, Kitakyūshū, Niigata, and Okinawa, the Imperial government renames Japan as the "Far-East Autonomous Territory" and Tokyo as the "First Controlled Special Economic Zone." Later on, after Shou turned himself over to the Godom soldiers after failing to destroy the Ultimate Destruction Weapon, the Empire successfully took over India and Western Europe.
• Subverted in Patlabor 2: The Movie, where the idea is to make people think this trope is happening, in a plan to remove Japanese complacency.
• Venus Wars: The anime film adaptation begins with an enemy invasion of the Aphrodian capital and its aftermath. Most of the second act of the film shows the young civilian protagonists trying to keep their heads down during the invaders' increasingly draconian occupation until they're inevitably forced to fight back.

Comic Books

• The 2000 AD strip Savage has the Volgans (a fascist alternative history version of Russia) invading the United Kingdom.
• Several examples in Captain Britain
  • The "A Crooked World" arc starts in an alternate world where the UK is ruled by a fascist, far-right government, then shows history repeating itself in the story's usual world, fuelled by the powers of a reality-warping mutant. Captain Britain is tasked with stopping it.
  • More generally, the Captain Britain Corps is an Alliance of Alternates and it's clear that some are from worlds where Nazi Germany won World War II and conquered Britain, whereas others represent worlds where the UK slid into fascism for unspecified reasons.
• G.I. Joe: The last volume of the comics published by IDW, from 2019 to 2020, depicted such a storyline, with the Joes on the run, and Cobra having control of Congress and the US Military.
• The Days of Future Past storyline in X-Men has the Sentinels taking control of America and incarcerating all mutants in prison camps.

Fan Works

• The Conversion Bureau universe:
  • In The Conversion Bureau: Cold War, Queen Chrysalis replaced Celestia and has been in control of Equestria for about a month and a half before making contact with humanity.
  • A flashback in the Last Train From Oblivion side story of The Conversion Bureau: The Other Side of the Spectrum fits the page quote near-perfectly. The chapter where this happens starts off innocently enough - but towards the end of this segment, Celestia announces that she has taken the Crystal Throne, reveals Earth's existence to the nation, and states her intention to "spread harmony" to this new world. The zebra ambassador angrily declares that Celestia is acting in violation of the Concordia Maxima by not consulting the other species of Equus on the matter of First Contact, while Sweetie Belle, Babs, Fancy Pants and Luna are horrified by the sudden deaths of several dignitaries onboard the Great Equestrian ship. Sadly, they are voices lost in the the crowds of ponies in the streets below them that are cheering for what amounts to the birth of the Solar Empire.
• Halloween Unspectacular: At the end of the seventh edition, Watchmeh, PURITY takes over America. The eighth edition, Blue Alert, follows up on this, portraying how they round up all empowered people to be sent to concentration camps "for their protection", President Fulton is given increasingly extended emergency powers, and all critics of the regime are arrested and killed "while trying to escape".
• Tarkin's Fist: The descent of the Earth's democracies into authoritarianism during the Empire-Earth War is gradual but steady. Following the destruction of the major cities martial law is declared in the nations whose governments haven't been completely wiped out. Wide spread anarchy in Europe and Africa leads the surviving governments to crack down hard at home and abroad, both as a means of restoring order and preventing violence from escalating. Government brutality is rationalized as a necessary means of getting everyone on Earth focused on repelling the Imperial invasion. Those who speak in opposition, such as the President of Greece, are accused of being unnecessarily divisive in a time of global emergency when action, any action, is desperately needed. The problem is, even after the war, the authorities decide the emergency isn't over.

Films — Live-Action

• 13 Minutes shows the Nazi takeover, which led to the arrest of all Communists in Germany. Elser escapes since he was never officially a Party member, despite being in the associated Red Front.
• The entire plot of 38, a film about the March 11, 1938 Anschluss, the Nazi Germany takeover of Austria.
• The 1974 French comedy film Chinese in Paris (Les Chinois à Paris) has all of Western Europe invaded by Communist China, with the film focusing on life in Paris during Chinese communist rule.
• Escape from L.A. has the United States ruled by a Christian fundamentalist president, with people being sent to L.A. penitentiary island just for being Muslim (among other so-called "offenses"). He has himself declared President for Life and moves the capital to Lynchburg, Virginia, his hometown. The US military has seemingly been weakened, as a ragtag South American army is a genuine threat to the country. We can probably blame Snake for all of this after he screwed up the President's speech in the previous movie.
• Fatherland (based on a novel by Robert Harris) is set in a 1964 where the Nazis won.
• Gabriel Over the White House is a very weird, unsettlingly positive take on a fascist takeover of the USA. It features the U.S. president declaring himself dictator, dissolving Congress so he can rule by decree, having gangsters executed immediately after military trials, and threatening war against any country that defaults on its debts to the U.S.
• The Garden of the Finzi-Continis: The jackboot had been around for 16 years by 1938, actually. But the film depicts the boot coming down on Italy's Jews as Fascist Italy passes its first anti-Semitic laws.
• Hangmen Also Die! is about the jackboot, which is by this point already firmly in place, coming down harder on Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia following the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich.
• If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? warns that communists will be taking over the United States "within the next twenty-four months". We're shown scenes of what America will be like under communist rule, which mostly consists of people being tortured, raped, and/or killed for being Christians.
• Invasion U.S.A. (1952) involves the US being invaded and eventually taken over by "The Enemy". However, this turns out to be a hypnotically induced, shared vision cautionary tale.
• It Happened Here depicts a collaborationist regime in a Nazi-occupied Britain, and the process by which an ordinary person can fall under its sway.
• Kamen Rider:
  • Kamen Rider 555: Paradise Lost portrays an alternate timeline in which the Orphenochs overthrew humanity as dominant species. The world here is ruled by a MegaCorp, and everyone inconvenient to the new regime is disposed of.
  • In OOO, Den-O, All Riders: Let's Go Kamen Riders, some time-travel shenanigans lead the heroes to an alternate timeline where Shocker (after uniting with many of the evil factions of other Rider series) already took over Japan and is close to getting the world as well.
  • This trope is revisited in Super Hero Taisen GP: Kamen Rider #3, in which Shocker's newest weapon, Kamen Rider 3, kills the original Double Riders back in the past, creating a timeline where, you guessed it, Shocker controls everything. Complete with combatmen marching on the streets, the Special Crimes Unit all dressing in snazzy Nazi-like uniforms and Zeppelins from Another World.
• Invoked in Les Misérables (1995) when Thénardier, hoping to be able to live off Andre's finances, tells Andre that the Nazis have conquered Europe. Andre eventually escapes to see that the Germans have been defeated and Europe liberated.
• None Shall Escape is a 1944 film about a trial against a Nazi officer following the end of the then-ongoing second world war where the bulk of the story told via flashbacks from the points of view of the witnesses at the trial, depicts the Nazi invasion and occupation of Poland from the point of view of the small town of Lidzbark.
• No Regrets for Our Youth (1946) is another Japanese film, this one by Akira Kurosawa, about the rise of fascism in Japan and the resistance. Noge is a leftist student who joins the underground left after graduating from university. He pays a terrible price.
• A Pearl in the Forest does this literally, with the first shot of the film being an actual pair of jackboots. They are worn by Markhaa, a State Sec officer and Buryat tribesman who is bringing the tyranny of Joseph Stalin to Markhaa's little village in 1937 Mongolia. He's hunting for ethnic Buryats who have fled to Mongolia to escape collectivization in Stalin's Russia. He winds up destroying the village.
• The Philadelphia Experiment II is partly set in a fascist American puppet regime set up by the Nazis after they won the war, thanks to the titular experiments.
• In Power Play, a group of military officers angry at the corruption and repression of an unnamed European government plan to take over the country.
• Red Dawn (1984) is about a Soviet invasion of the United States. The 2012 remake replaces the Soviets with North Korea, which itself was a last-minute replacement for China.
• The Revolt of Job shows the creeping effects of fascism and Naziism and how they affect the Jews of one small Hungarian village.
• Richard III has the Shakespearean Big Bad taking over 1930s Britain and turning it into a quasi-fascist absolute monarchy.
• The 1968 made-for-TV movie Shadow on the Land depicts a fascist dictatorship ruling a near-future, Alternate History USA and the resistance to that regime.
• In Sleeping Dogs (1977), New Zealand slides into fascistic martial law after oil embargoes and industrial disputes flare into full-blown civil war. This was the first film entirely produced and set in New Zealand.
• Timbuktu is an Islamic version of this trope, showing a jihadist group rolling into the town of Timbuktu and imposing a particularly brutal sharia law on the locals. (Inspired by… the 2012 Ansar Dine war in Mali.)
• Twenty-Four Eyes, a film about life in a Japanese fishing village from 1928 to 1946, shows how life very gradually changes as the government becomes more militaristic and oppressive. The songs the students sing change from innocent to jingoistic. The school principal burns a book deemed to be subversive, and warns the Cool Teacher that she might be called a "Red" and get thrown in jail if she doesn't watch out. Said teacher eventually quits because she can't stand to prepare her children to be soldiers.
• The Wave (1981) has this happen successfully in a High School as part of a social experiment conducted by a history teacher. It was remade in 2008 by the Germans as The Wave (2008). Fun fact: the movie and book were Based on a True Story.

Literature

• In The Childrens Story by James Clavell, a young teacher comes to class to tell the students about their bright future with their new government. She's chillingly charming, especially in the film adaptation, and quite successfully converts her class.
• Christian Nation details the rise of a theocratic state in America, as told by someone who fights against it, joining the last holdout of the resistance in New York before being captured, "born again" and released. Part of his reformation was needing to stone a gay friend.
• In the early 1950s, novelist Taylor Caldwell (better known for her historical romances) wrote The Devil's Advocate, set in a near future in which America had been taken over by a dictatorial regime called "The Democracy" which incorporated elements of both Communism and Fascism and relied on backing from the military to stay in power.
• The Fourth Protocol details how a hardline communist faction within the Labour Party could take over Britain.
• The Greg Mandel Trilogy is set against a Britain recovering from a communist dictatorship.
• The Handmaid's Tale is set in the theocratic and misogynistic "Republic of Gilead", which has seized control of most of the United States.
• The underlying theme of the Imperium series is the collapse of the Roman Republic and the coming of the Roman Empire. There is a scene in Lustrum where Cato lays out quite clearly for Cicero what is to come—the continuing habit of empowering people like Pompey with special commands will result in those commanders controlling the state. The Senate will be powerless and whoever commands the loyalty of the legions will rule. Cato also points out that the expansionism of the Roman Republic is undermining constitutional rule. At one point in Lustrum Tiro talks about how Caesar destroyed the Roman constitution and expresses a wish that Caesar is burning in hell.
• In the Presence of Mine Enemies: Nazi Germany conquered most of Europe (including England) during World War II, and the United States in the 1970s.
• The Iron Heel details the long resistance against a then-futuristic American fascist state.
• One of the original examples (1935) is It Can't Happen Here, which is about fascism taking root in the United States.
• Joe Steele is set in an alternate timeline where Josef Stalin is born in the USA and turns America into a totalitarian police state during the Great Depression and World War II.
• K Is For Killing by Daniel Easterman is about a United States in 1940 ruled by a coalition of Charles Lindbergh's America First Committee and the Ku Klux Klan led by D.C. Stephenson. Has concentration camps and the Federal Bureau of Internal Security headed by J. Edgar Hoover.
• The Man in the High Castle is an Alternate History novel in which America has been divided between the victorious Axis Powers: Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
• Nineteen Eighty-Four is probably the most famous example. In author George Orwell's own words, the book "is NOT intended as an attack on Socialism or on the British Labour Party (of which I am a supporter) but as a show-up of the perversions to which a centralised economy is liable and which have already been partly realised in Communism and Fascism... I believe also that totalitarian ideas have taken root in the minds of intellectuals everywhere, and I have tried to draw these ideas out to their logical consequences. The scene of the book is laid in Britain in order to emphasise that the English-speaking races are not innately better than anyone else and that totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere."
• Parable of the Talents has the U.S. become a theocracy in which non-Christians are put in concentration camps.
• The Plot Against America is kind of a Spiritual Successor to It Can't Happen Here, and uses the idea of Lindbergh becoming President and instituting Nazi-lite policies.
• The Resistance Trilogy by Clive Egleton depicts La Résistance to a Soviet-occupied Britain.
• The Alternate History novel Resurrection Day by Brendan DuBois is set in a United States that has become a military dictatorship after the Cuban Missile Crisis turned hot. Elections are still held, but because the Democratic Party is blamed for starting the war, the US is the equivalent of a one-party state, with the military holding the actual power.
• Seven Days in May is one of the more realistic depictions of this trope, in which a conservative general plots a Military Coup against the President of the United States after he signs a controversial treaty to abolish nuclear weapons. Both the novel and The Film of the Book go into detail showing how a real-life coup could plausibly happen, and address the often-neglected area of public support — the President is down to 29% in the polls, whereas the general is highly popular.
• The Silmarillion describes pretty much this happening to Númenor under its last king Ar-Pharazôn.
• Robert A. Heinlein wrote Sixth Column (a.k.a. The Day After Tomorrow) in 1949, in which the PanAsians take over a United States which had retreated into isolationism. In Heinlein's Future History 'verse, the USA goes through a period as a fascist Christian theocracy, begun by televangelist Nehemiah Scudder, as depicted in "If This Goes On—".
• The 1970s young-adult novel Sleep, Two, Three, Four! depicts a fascist-ruled United States in 1983. The President (obviously based on Richard Nixon) rules with an iron fist, minorities are confined to walled ghettoes, people with disabilities are shipped off to "health camps," and the government secretly hires squads of thugs to terrorize suburban neighborhoods through home-invasion robberies.
• The Small Change trilogy is set in an alternate England in which Rudolph Hess successfully brokered peace, and the main character is Inspector Peter Carmichael, who works for the Fascist dictatorship government. A number of the characters are inspired by people like Unity Mitford — upper-class high society people who favored appeasement during the 1930s and afterward.
• In SS-GB by Len Deighton, Hitler has invaded England and won. The name means SS-Great Britain. The book Fatherland seems to take a lot of its story from SS-GB. Both are excellent stories, but if you read SS-GB first (it was written first), you tend to think Fatherland is more of the same. If you read Fatherland first, you might think SS-GB is an old hat.
• Swastika Night by Katharine Burdekin (under the pseudonym Murray Constantine) takes place many centuries after Nazi Germany took over half the world, including all of Europe and Africa (with the other half being ruled by the Japanese). The protagonist is an Englishman, is treated as second-class by the Germans, and dreams of seeing his land liberated.
• Tracer by Stuart Jackson is set in a 1999 Britain controlled by a neo-fascist government as a result of the AIDS crisis. The protagonist is a policeman whose job is to track down AIDS carriers — he gets caught up in a power struggle involving the old political parties who are trying to wrest power back from the new Hard Right.
• The Trauma 2020 novels by Peter Beere (A future so terrible, you won't want to live long enough to see it!) are set in a fascist dystopian Great Britain.
• The Cyril M. Kornbluth novella "Two Dooms" is about a worker on the Manhattan Project who travels to a future in which the atomic bomb was not developed and hence the Axis powers won WWII. The United States of this future are divided between the Germans in the east and the Japanese in the west.
• A Very British Coup has British conservatives and the CIA plotting to overthrow a socialist Prime Minister.
• The totalitarian New Order in the Witch & Wizard trilogy.

Live-Action TV

• 1990 was a BBC series from The '70s in which Britain, after an economic collapse, is run by the Home Office's Public Control Department, a Vast Bureaucracy that maintains strict control of goods and services and uses Adult Rehabilitation Centres to 'cure' dissidents.
• Amerika is about a Soviet takeover of, well, guess where. It has an ambiguous ending that makes it appear that the Americans are preparing a rebellion, without actually saying who wins in the end.
• The Barrier: Most of the series takes place twenty-five years after a dictatorial government takes over in Spain. The Distant Prologue takes place on the day the takeover happens. There is an announcement on broadcast television, fighting on the streets and the army showing up at a family's appartment to take the father and anything that may be containing his research material away.
• Defiance: Season 2 opens after a 9-month Time Skip, during which the Earth Republic has taken complete control of the town. While the E-Rep's propaganda talks about how much safer and prosperous they've made the town, there's also the fact that the gulanite miners are worked so hard that half of them have become drug addicts to cope with it, and accidents are common. Meanwhile, those who speak out against the E-Rep are either locked up, or suffer "accidents".
• The Doctor Who serial "Inferno" is set in a Mirror Universe in which the UK is a fascist 'republic', whose paramilitary goons refer to a 'Defence of the Republic Act, 1943', implying the regime was the result of the UK losing the war.
• The 1971 British television series The Guardians has the UK taken over by the Guardians of the Realm, a fascist paramilitary in black uniforms; the show's intro has them marching across the streets of London, echoing the likes of It Happened Here.
• The Handmaid's Tale: After simultaneous false flag attacks on the US Supreme Court and Capitol, martial law is declared. Before people know what is happening, it's been declared illegal to employ women, with them being escorted from their workplaces by armed black-clad men. When protests occur, they're simply gunned down by the same thugs, as the Sons of Jacob take over, creating a theocracy.
• The Amazon story arc of Kamen Rider Decade takes place in a parallel universe which has been completely taken over by Dai-Shocker. The Nazi imagery is really obvious here, as the military police wear German stahlhelms and children are required to salute their superiors with a gesture that resembles the Nazi salute.
• One episode of Lois & Clark has all the swastika banners and uniforms in place after years of preparation while establishing their "all-American" identities.
• An episode of Misfits takes place in an alternate timeline where Germany won World War II and Britain was made into a Nazi province (for extra Black Comedy, the timeline is the result of a bungled attempt by a Jewish time-traveler to kill Hitler and avert the Third Reich). All things considered, the differences between the timelines are not that great, but still disturbing. The community center is now a detention center for delinquents and undesirables, and people with powers are being rounded up so that Seth the Power Dealer can transfer their abilities into high-ranking Nazi officers. Shaun, the apathetic and slightly corrupt social worker from the real timeline is now an apathetic and very corrupt Nazi official. Curtis and Alisha, being black, are reduced to second-class citizens-Alisha's drunk-driving would have earned her a prison sentence if Shaun hadn't chosen her as his "personal assistant". As a final insult, Simon has been conscripted into the local Nazi regiment, and is bullied into executing defenseless prisoners.
• The Plot Against America depicts an Alternate History America where the isolationist aviation hero Charles Lindbergh becomes president in 1940 and starts enacting Nazi-friendly policies. In spite of never explicitly demonizing Jews, his policies treat Jews as an alien population who need to be absorbed into "the real America." American government and culture quickly go down a path that draws obvious parallels with Nazi Germany. In the final episode, growing antisemitism ignites into pogroms that clearly evoke Krystalnacht.
• In Revolution, the Monroe Republic has shades of this, but Monroe is really just a dictatorial warlord and has no real ideology behind him. In season 2, the Patriots, The Remnant of the old US Government, start taking over the Eastern Seaborn and are a much straighter example with their fanaticism and brainwashing camps. The protagonists are living in a small town in Texas when the Patriots arrive to 'save' the town from a savage tribe of raiders. They soon find out that the Patriots hired the raiders themselves to create a pretext for the presence of Patriot troops. Soon enough martial law is invoked.
• The first episode of Sliders has the timelost group get stuck in a world where the Soviet Union won the Cold War and took over America, and "The People's Court" is simply an extension of the People's Police and the People's Prison.
• The article's picture is from the Star Trek: Enterprise two-parter "Storm Front", in which the Enterprise ends up in an alternate past where, due to Lenin being assassinated by a time traveler prior to the Russian Revolution, Germany, with little opposition to the East, is winning the war and has already captured much of the Eastern Seaboard. While they are hinted at being pushed back by the Allies, a group of aliens are offering the Germans advanced weapons.
• Star Trek: The Original Series: "The City on the Edge of Forever" features the crew of the Enterprise being beamed to New York City during The Great Depression of the 1930s. Bones saves the life of Edith Keeler, which creates an alternate timeline: Keeler is a political pacifist whose activism prevented the U.S.A. from entering World War II, allowing Nazi Germany to conquer the world and develop nuclear weapons. Kirk realizes that in order to keep the world safe, Keeler's death in a car accident will ultimately be for the greater good of the free world.
• Kenneth Johnson wanted to make a mini-series based on Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here. The project was originally called "Storm Warnings." It became V (1983) when the network suggested Americans would be more likely to find the specter of Soviet Russia taking over scary than a homegrown fascist movement. Johnson felt this would destroy the entire point of the source material, and instead chose to make the oppressors aliens.

Magazines

• As the storm clouds gathered over Europe and the Far East, Pulp Magazine hero Secret Service Operator #5 (1934 - 1939) fought attempts by various foreign armies from South America, Europe and the Orient to conquer the United States. The events are completely over-the-top as befits the pulp genre, except for the time the Japs destroy an entire city (Philadelphia) with their evil atomic bomb. Only Orientals would do such a dastardly deed...

Music

• Everything Everything's "Night of the Long Knives" is about rising fascism circa 2016.
• "Stars & Stripes" by KMFDM, complete with the Stock Phrase:
  "Divided and conquered. Gripped by fear. Wishful thinking that it can't happen here."
• Pink Floyd's "The Gunner's Dream":
  Where you can speak out loud about your doubts and fears
  And what's more, no one ever disappears
  You never hear their standard issue kicking in your door
• In 2112 by Rush, the Solar System is run by a fascist theocracy called the Solar Federation.

Video Games

• The narrative of Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies is told from the point of view of a young boy whose town is occupied by the fascist Eruseans.
  Narrator: "The war seemed to unfold in the blink of an eye. I don't remember exactly when the forces from the West occupied my town...Before I knew it, everything changed. The language they taught us at school...Our friendly local sheriff "disappeared," and was replaced by foriegn MPs."
• de Blob 2's early levels play this out in somewhat real time. The Downtown and Blanctown levels have Blob and Pinky uncover the corruption and growing influence of the INKT corporation and its leader, Comrade Black, in the city of Raydia, which all comes to a head in the Senate. Black brainwashes his followers, rigs the election, and immediately implements martial law after becoming president. He imprisons poll workers and political dissidents, deploys the military to stop protesters, and replaces the independent PNN News Network with his own propaganda channel. Blob and Pinky manage to liberate the Senate while the invasion is still taking place, and keep INKT from crushing the student rebellion in the State College, but outside of that, INKT's takeover is absolute.
• The Command & Conquer: Red Alert series depicts the Soviet Union taking over Europe and the USA in dramatic fashion. In their RA ending they occupy London and Buckingham Palace; in RA2 alone, they destroy the Pentagon, bombard the Statue of Liberty into rubble, mind-control the US president, turn the Eiffel Tower into a giant Tesla coil, shut down Wall Street, and start expanding into space; and in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 there's talk of renaming New York after your commander..."Commandersgrad".
• In Day of the Tentacle, the mutant Purple Tentacle enacts a totalitarian, racist takeover of America and the world.
• Chapter One of The Day The Noobs Took Over Roblox 2 shows this. After returning home with the groceries, the noobs invade the town. And it all goes downhill from here.
• Freedom Fighters (2003) opens the game with this sort of thing before moving on to La Résistance. Elements of this trope can be seen throughout the game, including the military-controlled broadcasts that are seen between levels.
• In the Frostpunk scenario "New Home", the player can adopt the "Order and Discipline" path, which pushes the city into an authoritarian state, complete with propaganda centres and prisons draped with black symbols on red banners. Appropriate, given the game's 1887 setting, when the nascent seeds of fascism were starting to develop.
• Homefront, explores this trope in a dystopian future version of the United States that has been invaded by an unrealistically armed unified North Korea.
• The New Order: Last Days Of Europe has two possible flavors of this trope for the United States.
  • Internally, this is the result if Francis Parker Yockey becomes the president. Once in power, he immediately starts unbridling the Klan, and introduce the SAFE act, which effectively muzzles American media.
  • Externally, if Göring manages to win against Russia and Burgundy, he may attempt Fall Rockwell, the invasion of the United States. However, doing so will invariably cause World War III.
• The Christmas Scenario in Plague Inc. starts with an oppresive world goverment that has outlawed all forms of fun and happiness and forces everyone to work everyday. The objective is to use the Neurax Worm to infect everyone and brainwash them into being happy.
• The Distant Prologue of Reunion (1994). Humans built a lasting Utopia, but in 2616 it ended with a sudden uprising, organized by a mind-controlling alien. You play for loyalists, who fled to an unknown star system. When you find Earth in 2930 or later, it's still controlled by the same regime.
• This is the basis of Strife; a virus borne by a comet has wiped out much of the human race, and the survivors are ruled by a militarist theocracy called The Order.
• Vandal Hearts utilizes both sides, everyone is done up in red and seem like James Bond style communists, but the Man Behind the Man and The Starscream is a short dark haired guy named Dolf...
• Wolfenstein: The New Order is set in a world where the Nazis have won World War II with advanced technology and have taken over America. B.J. Blazkowicz, the protagonist of the series in general, is less than pleased at this.
• AMC Squad has this happen in the mission "The Revolution," where a fascist political movement known as the Imperial Union takes over Highwire's home country of Russia and rules it with an iron fist. Highwire, of course, is displeased with this, and the Earth Defense Force's lack of response to the crisis prompts the Russian officer to leave the organization and lead a rebellion against the Union, with the intent of taking down the fascist government and kill its leader, Prokhor Vilmos.

Webcomics

• Midnight's War: Due to an unspecified global financial crisis, vampires have taken over the world through their control of banks, media, and national governments. Now operating openly, they demand mortals pay taxes in the form of blood to them.

Web Original

• Der Disneygang, a YouTube series based on the Hitler Rants meme, the Disney universe gets taken over by the Nazis. Unfortunately, they had all right to, because Hitler legally bought Disney.
• A complicated example appears in Reds!: A Revolutionary Timeline. Given how divided the United States had become between the left and right, the Great Depression proves to be more than the republic could handle. When the Workers' Communist Party wins a landslide election victory, the panicked establishment sees no way out but a military junta. With the constitution suspended, the Army mobilized to put down opposition, and KKK death squads murdering anyone who gets in the way, it was only a matter of time before the left took up arms as well. From the perspective of the average modern reader, neither outcome is desirable. Surprisingly, however, it all works out pretty well in the end.
• World War II: Episode 42 - "Britain Votes to Leave" covers the fall of Paris. After being declared an "open city" that will not resist the oncoming German forces in order to avoid destruction, on June 14, 1940, the Nazi swastika flies over the Arc de Triomphe followed by a military parade and a curfew imposed on the remaining citizenry of the city.

Western Animation

• Amphibia: The first half of "True Colors" is this, with the toads taking over Newtopia and imprisoning its leaders and best warriors.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • In Avatar: The Last Airbender, the occupation of Ba Sing Se by the Fire Nation. We see tanks, rhinos, and faceless firebending soldiers line the streets and Fire Nation sigils adorn the Earth King's palace. Mere hours previously, the residents of the city thought this impossible, and several weren't even aware of the war.
  • Something similar happens with the Equalist takeover of Republic City in The Legend of Korra, with troops and mecha-tanks in the streets and Amon maintaining a queue of benders to depower. They go so far as to mount a giant replica of Amon's mask on the statue of Aang, indicating either extreme commitment or way too much time on their hands.
    • Kuvira's Earth Empire pulls a similar routine on the Earth Kingdom, although Republic City isn't "taken over" so much as "besieged by giant mech".
• In The Fairly OddParents!, Fairy World gets taken over by their bureaucratic and business-oriented cousins the pixies. Everything becomes boring and corporate (and buried in paperwork!), and the pixies try to make everyone "Stop Having Fun" Guys.
  • And "Father Time" features a Bad Present caused by Timmy going back in time and preventing his father from winning a childhood footrace. His dad becomes a dictator who forces everyone to be happy... OR ELSE!
• The Justice League arc "The Savage Time" begins with the League returning to Metropolis to find Nazis marching in the streets. Turns out someone used Time Travel (again) to make Germany win World War II.
• The Star Wars Expanded Universe animated series are at times set parallel to or affected by these events from the films.
  • The Siege of Mandalore arc in the final season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars is set parallel to the events of Revenge of the Sith, and after defeating and capturing Darth Maul (who knows this trope is coming and begs for death after being defeated) Ahsoka senses the battle between the Jedi sent to arrest Chancellor Palpatine and Anakin's involvement, and shortly afterwards, Order 66 is enacted, resulting in Ahsoka's troops turning on her, even Rex, though he manages to impart a vital clue to Ahsoka before his programming takes over that eventually allows her to remove his biochip and free him from the Order.
  • Star Wars: The Bad Batch begins with this trope, adapting the events of Star Wars: Kanan in Broad Strokes. After the titular Bad Batch assist Depa Bilaba and Caleb Dume's clone force in taking out a droid force, Order 66 comes through and Bilaba is gunned down. Caleb flees into the forest with Hunter and Crosshair on his tail, Hunter being just as confused as Caleb due to his mutations rendering his own biochip non-functional and Crosshair being happy to gun him down due to his biochip still partially working. The series proceeds to explore the Bad Batch's place in the galaxy afterwards as they find themselves more alienated from their more programmed "reg" brothers than ever.
  • Star Wars Resistance: In "The First Order Occupation", as the title indicates, the First Order successfully begins to take over the Colossus platform. By "The Disappeared", they've begun arresting and removing citizens who object to their authority and posting pro-First Order propaganda in the station's public areas. In the two-part season one finale, "No Escape" Kaz and Torra witness the First Order's destruction of Hosnian Prime, Kaz's home.
• In the season 2 finale of Teen Titans "Aftershock Part 2", after seemingly killing the Titans Slade has his army of Mecha-Mooks marching victory laps through the streets of Jump City with Batman and the rest of the Justice League conveniently not noticing. His victory is short-lived as the Titans quickly regroup to save the day.

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