History Main / CaligulasHorse

** 30 years later, two comedy newspapers from Rio de Janeiro launched a mayoral campaign for [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaco_Ti%C3%A3o a grumpy chimpanzee]], who ended up in third place overall (the estimates are 400,000 votes).

** Mel Carnahan died before he could assume offive aftert winning an election, so his wife Jean served in his place.

Also, it doesn't necessarily have to be an ''animal'' — making a statue a vice president would also qualify. If you're lucky with this variant, you'll be dealing with a CompanionCube which will prove [[RuleOfFunny surprisingly competent]] as long as it stays funny.

* ''ComicBook/TheSimpsons:'' Given a nod during a re-enactment of ''Theatre/JuliusCaesar''. Caligula (Homer) comments that Caesar (Mr. Burns) is insane, not to Moe, but to the horse next to him.

* {{Subverted}} In ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'': The ruler of Azure City has a cat as a trusted adviser, but he doesn't actually take its advice -- it's just to make people [[ObfuscatingInsanity think he's senile when he isn't]].

** In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS14E15CEDoh C.E.D'oh]]", Burns reveals the nuclear plant is actually owned by a canary, so that if the government ever conducts a proper investigation, [[PromotedToScapegoat the canary is the one that will go to jail]]. Mr. Burns implies that this is standard practice, saying "Standard Oil was once owned by a half-eaten breakfast." Homer is shown at the very bottom of the nuclear plant's employee hierarchy via a chart (the canary being at top, with Burns directly below him). Directly above Homer is the inanimate carbon rod.

* On ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'', it is discovered that the real town founder was Quentin Trembley, a CloudCuckoolander who was once elected President in a landslide (as in, every other candidate was buried by one). Among his acts during his short term, he appointed babies to the Supreme Court. [[spoiler: Those same babies later helped [[{{unperson}} erase him from the history books]].]]

** John Ashcroft infamously lost an election to an opponent who died during the campaign, with the dead man's widow serving in his place.

* ''WebOriginal/LoomingGaia'': [[https://loominggaia.tumblr.com/post/673029857702215680/anonymous-asked-ruled-by-a-house-cat-ok-now-i A Matuzan queen once declared a cat to be the heir to her throne]]. She died soon after, and the kingdom was ruled by a cat for three days, until it was usurped by one of the queen's children.

* Lord Midnight[[note]]... who always voted Neigh[[/note]] in the {{backstory}} of the ''Literature/VorkosiganSaga'', a horse who was appointed the official heir by Count Vortala during a feud between the Count and his son. [[note]]Count Vortala had infamously proclaimed the page quote, "If a horse's ass can be Count, why not the whole horse?"[[/note]] The funniest thing about Lord Midnight is that he is an ''important legal precedent'', because when his appointment was challenged it was upheld by a rump majority of the Count's friends and political allies. This established that a Count's designated heir need not necessarily be his own descendant, or even human. This becomes important when cloning and genetic engineering technology starts to blur the traditional definitions of what makes someone a descendant, or a person. Midnight fortunately/sadly predeceased the Count, who then designated his now reconciled son as heir once again.

* Lord Midnight in the {{backstory}} of the ''Literature/VorkosiganSaga'', a horse who was appointed the official heir by Count Vortala during a feud between the Count and his son. [[note]]Count Vortala had infamously proclaimed the page quote, "If a horse's ass can be Count, why not the whole horse?"[[/note]] The funniest thing about Lord Midnight is that he is an ''important legal precedent'', because when his appointment was challenged it was upheld by a rump majority of the Count's friends and political allies. This established that a Count's designated heir need not necessarily be his own descendant, or even human. This becomes important when cloning and genetic engineering technology starts to blur the traditional definitions of what makes someone a descendant, or a person. Midnight fortunately/sadly predeceased the Count, who then designated his now reconciled son as heir once again.

* TropeNamer: Emperor UsefulNotes/{{Caligula}} famously planned to appoint his favorite horse Incitatus to the consulship, the (by this point purely titular) highest political office in Rome. However, it's a little more complicated than it sounds: he may have done this in order to mock the Senate ("My horse could do as good a job as any of you clowns! I'll just teach him to stamp once for 'yes' and twice for 'no comment'"), it may have been a rumor started after his death, he could just have wanted the year to be named after Incitatus (the first consuls of the year were eponymous), or he genuinely might have been completely insane (this was the firm position of most ancient writers...[[UnreliableExpositor many of whom were the clearly and deliberately insulted Senatorial class]]).

* This is revealed to be the reason that names in the ''FanFic/OversaturatedWorld'' are similar to their Equestrian counterparts. At one point, a king appointed his horse Glitterhoof (see ''Crusader Kings II'' below) as his successor, and the nobles agreed that the horse was a better option than the king's sons. Combined with some clever proxy ruling and surprisingly good luck, the horse-led nation conquered most of europe in a few generations, and people began using horse puns in their language as a result; the kingdom later collapsed, but the naming convention stuck around.

* In ''VideoGame/RatchetAndClankUpYourArsenal'', Big Al of the Q-Force loses the position of Chief Science Officer, a position he is unquestionably the most qualified for of the team, to Skrunch the Monkey.

** The opening cutscene for ''VideoGame/RatchetAndClankAll4One'' has Qwark, now president of the Polaris Galaxy, mention "Vice-President Skrunch". To be fair, making a monkey the vice-president was probably the least-damaging choice Qwark made since his inauguration.

* ''VideoGame/LoveAndPies'': In the Rival Season Pass, Betty mentions that a goat was once made mayor of Appleton.

* In ''VideoGame/CrusaderKingsII'', if your character has the Lunatic trait, you can get a random event where you decide to appoint your horse as your chancellor. Previously, this just dismissed the current chancellor and left the position vacant, but a later patch made the event generate an actual horse character named Glitterhoof to fill the position. Naturally, someone took it to the logical extreme and used an exploit in order to [[https://imgur.com/a/K1utf make a horse the ruler of the restored Roman Empire]].

** The opening cutscene for ''VideoGame/RatchetAndClankAll4One'' has Qwark, now president of the Polaris Galaxy, mention "Vice-President Skrunch". To be fair, making a monkey the vice-president was probably the least-damaging choice Qwark made since his inauguration.

** Mr. Burns ''loves'' this trope. In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS5E9TheLastTemptationOfHomer The Last Temptation of Homer]]", it was shown that he had, aside from hiring an illegal Iranian immigrant worker, also hired a duck named "Stewart" as a low level employee who tows nuclear waste (he also berates it to "get back to work!" when it briefly stops to catch it's breath). This may be less outright insanity and more Mr. Burns' cheapness combined with a callous disregard for life. Later in the episode Burns is scanning the security monitors, trying to find a pair of employees who are ''not'' currently fighting with each other to send as his representatives to a convention; not only is the duck seen fighting another employee, he's ''winning''.

* The ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' episode "Douche and Turd" had a camp of [=PETA=] members who had a goat (one that was a doctor, apparently) as their leader.

** In the same year, the Youth International Party (the Yippies) famously nominated a pig named Pigasus as their presidential candidate, saying the Democratic and Republican Parties had [[TakeThat done the same thing already]] with their candidates Hubert Humphrey and UsefulNotes/RichardNixon.

** In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS5E1HomersBarbershopQuartet Homers Barbershop Quartet]]", Homer briefly quit his job. When he returned to the plant he found he had been replaced with a chicken. Which he later ate.