Politician Guest Star

This is going to be special episode. This is going to be a Pilot, Pilot Movie, Grand Finale, Origins Episode, Reunion Show, or maybe even a Very Special Episode. Or regular episode, in which we want something that will make it special. We need a guest star, but not any guest star. And not another episode where Metallica's in town. We need someone real big, like, like...like president of the United States! Or Russia! Or British prime minister! Maybe even a member of Royal Family! Or Pope! No matter - he just needs to be well-recognized political or religious leader. If he's popular, cover with his face itself will earn thousands. And if for some reason people don't like him, we will just chip with him, and they will love us. It doesn't matter, if the whole story will go round about him, or he will make only short appearance, if at all - it will work perfectly.

Compare Our Presidents Are Different.

Examples of Politician Guest Star include:

The actual politician, in person

• Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue has a preface from George Bush Sr. Few kids who were watching it knew who he is, but still. Airings in other nations included similar forewords from the heads of government of those states.
• Barack Obama invited the MythBusters to the White House library to request they retest "Archimedes Death Ray"
• Tony Blair appeared on the Simpsons once. Like, the actual Tony Blair. Details here.
• Tony Blair also appeared as himself in a Catherine Tate sketch for Red Nose, meeting her sixteen-year-old schoolgirl chav, Lauren Cooper: . Can I just add he was actually the Prime Minister of Britain at the time.
• The Canadian sitcom Corner Gas had two Prime Ministers make cameos (Paul Martin and Stephen Harper), along with a smattering of Members of Parliament and mayors.
• Former Swedish prime minister Göran Persson at one point appeared on a kid's show, and danced with a woman in a cow-suit.
• Al Gore appeared on the network-mandated green episode of Thirty Rock. They had fun with it:

Al Gore: Quiet! A whale is in trouble... I have to go!

• • He also makes quite a few appearances in Futurama, owing to his daughter having worked for the show.
  • And Gore has hosted a season 28 Christmas episode of Saturday Night Live, and cameoed on a season 35 episode where he outlines his plans to act crazy (such as taping toy guns to trees and planting the trees outside a politician's house so when he walks outside, he'll think the trees have come to get their revenge) so people will take his environmental views seriously.
    • Of course, Saturday Night Live has had a lot of politicians (and political hopefuls) host and/or cameo in its 30+ years on the air, as you can see here , but does anyone remember Barack Obama cameoing on the Brian Williams episode from season 33 (a full year before Obama would become President)?
• Canadian politicians frequently make the rounds on This Hour Has 22 Minutes and The Rick Mercer Report.
  • American politicians would sometimes show up. Most memorably was then presidential hopeful George W. Bush being asked by Rick Mercer what he thought of Canadian Prime Minister "Jean Poutine".
• The Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe appeared in Doctor Who as one of Mr. Saxon's celebrity supporters.
• Top Gear has had Mayor of London Boris Johnson as a guest.
• Johnson has also made four appearances as the host of Have I Got News for You. Charles Kennedy has clocked up nine episodes, one as host. Many other politicians have also featured on the programme.
• Two NYC Mayors, specifically Rudolph "Rudy" Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, have appeared on Law and Order.
• One 2008 episode of WWE Raw featured campaign speeches from Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain. Later in that same show, Obama and Clinton impersonators went head-to-head in a wrestling match .
• British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher performed a sketch she wrote herself with the cast of the sitcom Yes Minister, where she played funnily enough, herself as Prime Minister.
• John McCain had a walk-on role in the fourth season of 24.
• NYC Mayor Ed Koch appeared in The Muppets Take Manhattan.
• Former Victorian state premier Joan Kirner appeared on the The Late Show (Australian version), singing The Arrows's "I Love Rock and Roll".
• Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy had a one-line cameo as a guest at Bruce Wayne's party in The Dark Knight; he may or may not be playing himself. Leahy is well-known to be a big fan of Batman, so... Promoted Fanboy, anyone?
• This trope is Older than Cable ... Richard Nixon once made a cameo appearance on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In.

Just the politician's likeness

• George Bush Jr. has a guest appearance in The Ultimates.
• Barack Obama got a special, short story in The Amazing Spider-Man. And thanks to Follow the Leader effect it was followed by his appearances in Thunderbolts, Secret Warriors, The Savage Dragon, Youngblood, opening of Marvel Super Hero Squad cartoon, and even making him main character in Conan the Barbarian parody comics, and sequel of some After the End comic.
  • Obama appeared as a playable 'character' (actually a skin) in the add-on to Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, although he wasn't actually President yet at the time. Sarah Palin was also playable. Sadly, he's only playable in the add-on missions, and all of them are vehicle-based, meaning you only really get to see him in the hub area, and can't take the POTUS on a mass Venezuelan killing-spree. Now that would have got Chavez pissed off.
  • Perhaps it should be mentioned that before the election (and to a lesser extent afterward) John McCain and Sarah Palin also got comics based on them. Not to mention Michelle Obama, and the new White House dog.
  • In a not so flattering example, both Obama and Palin show up as themselves in the Bomb Queen comic, only for the Villain Protagonist to humiliate and beat up the former and by implication via Inferred Holocaust later kills the latter.
• Canadian example that does this with the Queen, sort of. The absolutely terrible 1980s Captain Canada comic by Geoff Stirling features a cameo by Liz and Chuck as they are about to get stepped on by a giant robot, only to be rescued by the greatest Canadian hero ever (oh, and Captain Canada)!
• Captain Britain had Gordon Brown in it once, which naturally amused the British Newspapers immensely: Telegraph, Mail, Sun. (Clue: that looks nothing like him.)
• President Kennedy was occasionally treated like this. There was a Superman story where he reveals his secret ID to the President, causing unfortunate implications (but not Unfortunate Implications) when he died at the time the issue came out and the story could be taken to mean his secret's safe with the President because he's dead.
  • Of course Kennedy was treated like a pop star too.
  • The Kennedy Superman example also has JFK holding up a picture of John Glenn as an example and Superman being impressed. Only in The Sixties...
• Ronald and Nancy Reagan appeared in Ed the Happy Clown by Chester Brown, but they deliberately look nothing like their Real World counterparts. The prime minister of Canada shows up, too. Further subverted by the fact that the talking head of a "Dimension X" version of Reagan appears on Ed the Happy Clown's penis.
• As mentioned above, Obama appeared in Savage Dragon but he was not the first president to appear in the pages of that series. Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have appeared in the past.
• In the first episode of the live-action version of The Tick (animation), the heroes must save former president Jimmy Carter from a communist Killer Robot. The fact that it's not a real cameo is lampshaded by making him The Faceless.
• The Games had John Howard (the actor) pretending to be John Howard (the Prime Minister).
• Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy had a brief cameo (with one, defiant line) as a guest at Bruce Wayne's party in The Dark Knight; it's unclear whether or not he's supposed to be playing himself, although it's certainly possible. Leahy is a big fan of Batman, so... Ascended Fanboy, anyone?