It was always fascinating how in 2006 a feature film was released (albeit limited) called Death of a President which was about a fictional assassination of George W Bush and it’s political ramifications. There was a lot of controversy about that and researching it at the time I was surprised to find a number of similar works set during that time where George W Bush is also killed though I can’t remember their exact titles at the moment.
I was wondering, are there any other fictional works that involved the President of the United States dying (or at least seriously injured), and in those works the President of the United States is very much confirmed to be the current sitting President? As in, it can’t be a fictionalized or unnamed version, it very much has to be deliberately and distinctly the same person as whoever was actually President during that time. I imagine you’d probably see more comedic works do this so comedic shorts I probably won’t count, it has to be an actual fully realized premise.
He only appeared from the back, but in the utterly weird Kingsman: The Secret Service, Barack Obama’s head explodes alongside other World leaders.
Edited to add: I didn’t fully read your OP. You were asking for characters clearly defined as the actual Presidents, and also too comedic to fit with what you asked for. Sorry. Nothing to see here.
In the Secret Empire story arc in '74 Captain America, Cap chases the lead villain into the Oval Office, where the villain unmasks himself before taking his own life. It’s not made explicit, but from Cap’s reaction, it’s clear that it was supposed to be Nixon under the mask. Cap’s so disturbed by it that he gives up the Captain America identity for a while.
Doesn’t fit the OP, though, because it’s not confirmed on-page to be Nixon, and I think the book came out after his resignation.
The 480 by Eugene Burdick (one of the authors of Fail Safe) is clearly set in the last days of the Kennedy administration, though the President is never mentioned by name.
This is one helluva good book, BTW, and I’m surprised it was never made into a movie.
As with replies above, a near miss to the OP request, but in a different direction.
I’ve been watching the TV show Last Man On Earth, where everyone on Earth except the on-screen cast dies from a terrible virus in late 2020. A brief bit of television news on screen refers to the funeral of ‘President Pence’, so the death is of the incumbent real-life US Vice President. By implication the current guy is no longer around, and his early death from the virus could be reasonably assumed (although he might have been impeached I guess), as the broadcast of Pence’s funeral procession is closely followed by the announcements of the deaths of Presidents Paul Ryan, Rex Tillerson, Steven Mnuchin, Jeff Sessions and Betsy DeVos.
Not a POTUS but Kim Jong Un dies a very grisly death in Red Phoenix Burning, which is a Larry Bond novel about a third (Red Phoenix detailed the second) Korean War.
Not a movie, but in season 1 of the TV show NCIS, there was assassination attempt on President George W. Bush on Air Force One. They mentioned him by name, and put in some footage of him giving a speech. So folks definitely knew it was about him.
Maybe Debt of Honor would qualify as Jack Ryan mentions that he’s not of the same party as the sitting president. Clinton would have been the real life president and Ryan is clearly Republican.
The president dies when an airplane crashes into the US Capitol, and this was written well before 9/11.
This was comedic, but I just wanted to mention that back when I was in high school, my best friend and I would make improvised audioplays on a tape recorder. We had one where we were living in the Amityville Horror House with Barry Manilow. Anyway, then President Jimmy Carter came over and brought his daughter Amy along with him. Jimmy went down in the basement, to prove it wasn’t haunted or something, and was immediately killed by the evil spirits down there. The Secret Service was too scared to come get either him or Amy, so the three of us just sort of adopted Amy, And we just left Carter’s corpse down in the basement, because any time we went down there, the corpse would bite our ankles. He had those massive teeth, you see.
We weren’t really Amy Carter fans. We just needed a creepy little girl to make friends with Jody the Red-Eyed Demon Pig.
Clancy’s Presidents stop lining up with the real ones as of about Reagan (or possibly Bush I although that name-check is in Against All Enemies which is outside the Jack Ryan continuity).
In Debt of Honor, Roger Durling is the president who replaced Fowler. Fowler was POTUS in The Sum of All Fears and threw the election after almost starting WWIII.
Durling’s VP was Ed Kealty, who was your generic sleazy politician who roofied an aide and was all set to resign when the story was about to come out. The story never did end up coming out because back then newspapers couldn’t handle two scandals at once (and people called Clancy a prophet, ha!). Kealty handed in his resignation but after the events of DoH he snuck back into an office and un-resigned so he could try to lay claim to the Presidency. However, at one point in Executive Orders he tries to sue the Ryan administration and the judge tells him that since he has named Ryan as President in his lawsuit, he has thus lost his claim to being the real POTUS.
President Ryan had Robbie Jackson as his VP and Robbie was killed by some racist redneck. Ryan decides not to run for a second term and Kealty ends up becoming President. Kealty at this point (in Locked On) becomes an absolute caricature of an evil librul who seems to be based on Al Gore. Ryan gets sick of his bullshit and runs for election again. Fortunately for Ryan, Kealty had some foreign entanglements that once exposed lead to the end of his presidency and another swing and a miss for the Prophet Clancy.
I beg to differ. Kealty was obviously based on Ted Kennedy, a privileged rich piece of sleaze who never held any real job and knew members of minorities only as household servants. (I’m paraphrasing Clancy here.)
Fowler elected to resign after almost starting WWIII, though he had little choice. His blunders were going to be reported to Congress and thereby made public. It was implied, however, that he recognized he was no longer fit to govern and left office more or less willingly.
Fowler’s predecessor, heavily implied to be Bush Sr, was the one who threw the election to avoid a scandal over his administration’s covert operations in Colombia, and his abandonment of the special forces sent there.
I haven’t read Locked On yet. I’ll pick up a copy next weekend and start plowing through it.
Toward the end of Twilight’s Last Gleaming (1977), the “dark horse” President played by Charles Durning is killed while helping thwart a plan to launch a nuclear strike if the government doesn’t release secret documents.