One Nation Under Copyright: Difference between revisions

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== [[Film]] ==
* Buy 'n' Large from ''[[WALL-E]]'' is one of these. Dollar bills have the B&L logo on them, and the CEO broadcasts messages from the Oval Office.<ref>This is merely heavily implied in the movie; [[All There in the Manual|the DVD extras confirm it]].</ref>
* The world in the [[So Bad It's Good]] ''[[Overdrawn Atat the Memory Bank]]'' (as seen on ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]'') is run by these.
* ''[[Rollerball (Film)|Rollerball]]'' (Not the 1975 version, but the real version).
* In ''[[Robo CopRoboCop]]'', [[Mega Corp|Omni Consumer Products's]] ultimate goal is to turn the movie's gritty and dystopic Detroit into "Delta City", effectively a city-state version of this trope, complete with people exercising their representative citizenship rights via the purchase of OCP shares.
* The Trade Federation in ''[[Star Wars]]'' seems to be a cross between this and [[The Federation]].
* The world in the 2010 ''[[Tekken]]'' movie is dvided into eight massive conglomerates.
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* ''The Year of the Comet'' by [[John Christopher]].
* In the [[Robert Heinlein]] novel ''Podkayne of Mars'', the Venus Corporation controlled the entire planet Venus (and ran it like Las Vegas [[In Space]]).
** In ''[[The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (Literature)|The Cat Who Walks Through Walls]]'', the Golden Rule space habitat is run by the Golden Rule Corporation, which is the law there. The General Manager of the station can pretty much do what he wants there, although he is restrained by being a [[Villain Withwith Good Publicity]] and feels he can't just kill someone without a good excuse. Failure to pay your air tax will, however, result in being thrown out the airlock (rumor has it that you are made into ground "pork" instead, though).
** And in ''[[Friday (Literaturenovel)|Friday]]'', the Shipstone [[Mega Corp]] has grown so powerful in a [[Balkanize Me|balkanized world]] that the heroine starts to think of them as the only effective government.
* In ''[[The Pendragon Adventure]]'', Blok functions like this on Quillan. They own ''everything'', even art.
* In ''[[Catch-22]]'', M&M Enterprises is set up as a way for the mess officer, Milo Minderbinder, to bilk the US Government of quite a lot of money. {{spoiler|He then goes on to make an absolute fortune monopolizing trade in the Mediterranean. Eventually he has a private army and air force, and is paid quite a lot by the Germans to bomb a US air base. Milo was supposed to be tried as a criminal, but all charges were dropped as soon as the brass saw how much money there was in bombing their own men.}} But hey, at least everybody owns a share! The film sums it up quite well when Milo hears about the death of a brother officer {{spoiler|killed by Milo's raid.}}
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* In ''The Gap Series'' by Stephen Donaldson, the United Mining Companies control human space on two different levels. There are some habitats, such as [[Com Mine]], that they own outright and control the votes of in the Governing Council. Plus, their corporate police force is the only organization capable of protecting power in space, which effectively gives the UMC CEO dictatorial powers over the central government. The entire arc is driven by his chief of police's [[Plan]] to pull a [[Heel Face Turn]] and get control over the police given back to the Governing Council.
* The Sullustan homeworld Sullust, in the ''[[Star Wars Expanded Universe]]'', is this. The SoroSuub corporation owns the planet and employs most of its inhabitants. Unlike most examples, SoroSuub is depicted as rather benign, working for the well being of the Sullustans.
* Both Beowulf and [[Big Bad|Mesa]] in ''[[HonorverseHonor (Literature)Harrington|Honorverse]]'' are run along the corporativist lines, which is hardly surprising, as Mesa was settled essentially by a group of rogue Beowulfers. Both are controlled by the board of directors, with votes arranged corresponding to the owned stock, though Mesa muddles the water a bit, {{spoiler|being secretly run by the [[Ancient Conspiracy]]}}. Manticore initially was also envisioned in the same way, though it mutated into [[The Kingdom|something]] [[The Empire|else]] [[The Federation|entirely]]. It's also mentioned that such political arrangement isn't anything unusual in the galaxy.
 
 
== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* The Blue Sun brand is omnipresent throughout ''[[Firefly]]'', appearing on everything from coffee cans to neuroimagers; [[Word of God|Word of Joss]] says that "practically half the government was Blue Sun." They're also hinted to have backed said government's [[Break the Cutie|mind-shattering experiments]] on River; she attacks the logos on their products in two different episodes.
* According to background materials and the official tie-in CD, the Brakiri in [[Babylon Five5]] are an example of this.
 
 
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* ''[[Galactic Civilizations]]'': The Korx would sell you their own mothers if they hadn't already sold them to someone else.
* Activision's ''[[Civilization]]: Call To Power'' games (a sub-series made in Meier's absence) has a futuristic form of government called "Corporate Republic."
* In much the same vein, Morgan Industries in ''[[Sid MeiersMeier's Alpha Centauri]]'' is supposed to be more or less one of these, but [[Gameplay and Story Segregation|you can't directly make that choice in Social Engineering]].
** The reason for that is likely that if you could, Morgan Industries could be a [[Fridge Logic|non-corporate state]]. As it stands, the available choices [[Alternate Character Interpretation|can be seen]] as representing different ''variations'' of One Nation Under Copyright (Democracy: ''One Man, One Share'', Fundamentalist: ''God, Incorporated'', Green: ''A green economy is a sustainable economy'', Power: ''Power is the shortest path to wealth'')
* On the [[Older Than the NES|old]] BBC Micro there was a space-trader game called ''[[Elite]]''. This featured some planets that were corporate states.
** ''Frontier''. the sequel, also had these. They varied from reasonably civilised places to pirate infested systems which were happy to trade slaves and battlefield weapons to anyone visiting.
* The Shin-Ra company from ''[[Final Fantasy VII (Video Game)|Final Fantasy VII]]''. Ostensibly, there is a mayor to the city of Midgar, but his offices are in the company building, and he does not have any real power. His only real job is managing all of Shinra's archived files.
* In ''[[Crusader: (VideoNo Game)Remorse|Crusader]]'', the [[Big Bad|WEC]] arose from the merger of the economic bodies that themselves took over the running of the various continents from more conventional governments when they toppled or became too weak. interestingly, the WEC actually claims to ''not'' be a government, merely a steward for the powers of government, even as it goes about cheerfully tightening its grip on the ways, the means, the sources, and the consumers of production.
* The Czerka Corporation from ''[[Star Wars]]: [[Knights of the Old Republic]]'', while functioning like a normal mega-corporation in Republic Space, actually has complete control over at least two known planets, Tattooine and Kashyyyk, in the first game.
** One of the loading screens says they and other mega-corps police themselves, being too large for the Republic to control. Czerka seems to still be in The Reblic's good graces in the second one despite openly dealing arms to both sides.
* The Caldari State, one of four playable races in ''[[Eve Online]]'', is a conglomeration of Mega Corporations. They outright call themselves a corporate state, and the company rivalries are so deep-seated the only thing that really bands them together is the fight to reclaim their homeland.
** Since the death of [[Only Sane Man|Otro Gariushi]] and the recapture of Caldari Prime, the glue holding the State together has increasingly become [[Putting Onon the Reich|Tibus Heth and his underlings.]]
* With the possible exception of ''[[Armored Core (Video Game)|Armored Core]] 2'' and its successor, Another Age, the world is dominated not by one, but multiple corporate states.
* In ''[[Mass Effect]]'' the whole planet of Noveria is a conglomerate of corporations. The planet is exempt from all but the [[The Federation|The Citadel's]] most anti-catastrophic laws. Corruption is rampant and generally ignored as long as it doesn't impede regular business. Also arguably the Volus species which are like the Ferengi but with morals. A variant in the Turians, who are instead of a nation corporation are a nation military, to the point the advancement in military rank is an advancement as a citizen as well (though non-military jobs are not lesser or looked down upon).
** Interestingly, the volus find the idea of parents "owning" their children to be absurd, which is why they associate by clan rather than family.
* The ''[[X (Videovideo Gamegame)|X-Universe]]'' series of games have the Teladi, a race of [[Petting Zoo People|anthropomorphic lizard-people]] with [[Planet of Hats|an almost religious devotion toward profit.]] They even refer to their race as 'The Teladi Company' and their ruler's official position is chairman.
** Whose name in the first game is Ceo. [[Lampshade Hanging]], much?
* [[System Shock|TriOptimum Corporation]] filled this role, until things went [[AI Is a Crapshoot|horribly]] [[Kill'Em All|horribly]] [[The Virus|horribly]] [[Gone Horribly Wrong|wrong]].
* ''Kaiserreich: Legacy of the Weltkrieg'' features AlgOstAsien GmbH, a German corporate consortium which controls the southern half of China as a de-facto government under the nominal sovereignty of the Qing Empire.
* The Vector corporation in the ''[[Xenosaga (Video Game)|Xenosaga]]'' series fits this trope to a T. Almost to the degree of being ridiculous, given certain revelations in the third game {{spoiler|such as the fact that Vector's CEO is the head of a religious organization hell-bent on Vector's destruction too}}.
* ''[[Team Fortress 2 (Video Game)|Team Fortress 2]]'': Reliable Excavation and Demolitions controls one half of the world. Builders League United controls the other half. The woman officiating the [[Forever War|Neverending War between the two companies]] ''[[NGO Superpower|is the CEO]] of [[One World Order|both of them.]]''