What Could Have Been / The New Order: Last Days of Europe

"This was TNO at the beginning of Trump's presidency. Feel old yet?"

Throughout the development of The New Order, the devs released many teasers on official media channels, and released two Demo versions of the mod. These early content shown in the teasers and demos show that early TNO had significantly different directions compared to current TNO, with many cut and rewritten ideas and content.

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General

• The New Order was initially being developed for Victoria II, but it was later ported to Hearts of Iron IV as it was far more mod-friendly than Victoria, especially in regards to province modding, which is necessary to portray Atlantropa in the game.
• In the earlier stages of development, Atlantropa dried almost the entire Western Mediterranean Sea◊, which became a separate Reichskommissariat Mittelmeer under the leadership of Karl Dönitz. Since then, Atlantropa was largely downplayed◊ and, for the most part, it only opened new lands in the Adriatic Sea. Eventually, the Atlantropa project was removed altogether because it raised hundreds of Fridge Logic questions about its existence, which bottlenecked the development of the Mediterranean nations. Threatened with being stuck in Development Hell, the developers opted to remove this element of the lore instead.
• Lonely Knightess has stated that they originally thought of writing an alternate history novel before deciding to develop the novel's ideas into a proto-TNO game mod instead.
• At one point, head writer Lonely Knightess had an internal canon for a second start date in 1972. This plan has since been scrapped from the mod but would have included:
  • Hitler choosing Heydrich as his successor, but Bormann winning the German Civil War, eventually heading Germany to a slow decline.
  • Batov's Ural Military District uniting Western Siberia and being peacefully annexed by Georgy Zhukov's West Russian Revolutionary Front. In contrast, Magadan (who united the Far East) would have fought a war against Pokryshkin's Central Siberian Federation, with the latter emerging victorious. The WRRF would have proceeded to defeat the Siberian Federation, becoming a rising power in her own right once again in the 70s. After Zhukov's death in 1974, he was to be succeeded by Sergey Akhromeyev. During the second West Russian War, the resurgent Soviet Union would only manage to reclaim part of their lost territory up to Moscow before the OFN calls a ceasefire.
  • The Great Asian War ending in China's victory and Japan losing its status as a superpower.
  • The National Progressive Party in the United States never managing to win any Presidential elections (with the 1972 election being won by George McGovern). By the 1980s, the USA would be a de facto one party state, as this was before Toolbox Theory made rifts in the Republican-Democratic Coalition (then a wholly unified party) far more palpable.
  • The English Civil War ending with HMMLR losing to the collaborators and Margaret Thatcher becoming the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
  • Italy successfully undergoing democratization through Ciano’s reforms.
  • The South African War ending in the pro-OFN leaning ceasefire.
• The economic mechanics of the game underwent numerous iterations during development, both before release and for the "Toolbox Theory" update:
  • The first iteration was a rather scant prototype that only allowed the player to control military spending, civilian spending, liquid reserves, and construction, as well as providing other economic data like GDP and income. The developers are not proud of this version of the economy.
  • The second iteration was a facelift of the first version that altered its cosmetics and fixed some of its most severe flaws, such as improving the tax system, fixing government spending, and reworking the factors that would affect the economy. This was the version that was included in the final release.
  • The third iteration established many mechanics that would've been kept in the final version, such as government revenue and economic spheres. The economic screen also changed its presentation several times. It was scrapped for being unnecessarily complex, while having little effect in-game, creating an unengaging mechanic that could easily be ignored by the player. The decision to remake it necessitated the removal of some features:
    • The Employment and Sectors feature◊ was intended to track unemployment that would contribute to political radicalism towards extreme ideologies like communism or fascism, in which it would been affect stats like factory output and affected by other factors like consumer goods.
    • Purchasing Power◊ was going to be an important economic variable that would tie into the international arms market, trade system, economic spheres system, and gold standard mechanic. It would've been used to illustrate economic crashes and the value of currency, in which it would've ideally emulated an exchange rate to gold and different currencies, as well as an arms trade from superpowers to less-developed nations.
    • During the transition between the fourth and fifth rework, economic spheres were kept, but it underwent some significant changes, such as removing its role in international arms sales and production licenses.
    • The international market was a feature that would've allowed countries to buy and sell resources globally, as detailed in these rough proposals.
    • "Social" technologies like color photography were going to be implemented to reflect important technological advancements in the setting.
    • Researching technologies would've cost money, but it was cut for being an unnecessary element, especially since "Toolbox Theory" was being developed simultaneously with the "No Step Back" DLC for the official game, which would make changes to the research tree anyway and thus render any changes to research meaningless.
  • The fourth iteration◊ simplified the cosmetics and mechanics that were included in the economic screen, which would've made it an attractive addition to the game. However, the developers scrapped it because it was still a functionally broken system that barely affected the games of testers and thus felt like a pretty, but tacked-on feature. To the developers, this signified that the economy would need to be completely overhauled so that it could actually work.
• TNO, as a part of its narrative focus, was planned to feature ending slides, inspired by those from Fallout at the end of a country's game. They were implemented in the Old World Blues demo, but were cut after that due to the excessive file space that the ending slide images are taking up.
• The devs have posted a number of Real Trailer, Fake Movie-styled media as TNO teasers. It's unclear how would they be implemented into the game, if at all, and how much did their contents reflect in-game lore at the time of development (as it is very possible some of them were just jokes).
  • Corpse of Art (video has since been deleted) is a Japanese documentary that tells about the hardships jazz musicians face in the corporate and exploitative world of Japan.
  • The Ural Six is a film directed by Stanislav Rostotsky and Francis Ford Coppola, basically Seven Samurai in the Southern Urals and Very Loosely Based on a True Story.
  • Miami Untugend is apparently a TV show fictionalizing the life of Reichskommissar Kasche after he fled to Florida (back when he was characterized as a genuinely apathetic leader).
• One early leak for Japan shows that achievements were once available in game, a feature reportedly scrapped due to the achievements not being able to be carried over between games. Either this was an issue impossible to fix or it would require a whole ton of work to fix for little benefit.
• Lonely Knightess, the person formerly known as ThePinkPanzer, the interface would have◊ glowed◊, but it was never implemented.
• An update named The Final Front was originally meant to add Space Race mechanics and content to the three superpowers, before the developers of the update decided to turn it into an independent game set in an original setting not connected to TNO, which would allow them to tell the story they wanted to.

Ideologies

• The furthest right, maximally dystopian ideology in the game used to be known as Ultranational Socialism in early development.^note  While the ideology's symbol is shown in the Götterdämmerung Dev Diary as a skull on a sunwheel◊, it has a a completely different symbol◊ still present in the game's files. It underwent multiple revisions throughout development:
  • In early development, Ultranational Socialism was split into Ultranationalism (for nationalist, militarist and religious fanatics) and Burgundian System (a fanatical, ultra-dystopic, SS-centric style of Nazism), initially to prevent Gameplay and Story Segregation from arising as a result of the simultaneously ultranationalist and virulently anti-Nazi Black League. This definition of Burgundian System was criticised for being ultra-specific, playing into the myth that the SS was worse than the other Nazis (for the record, Heinrich Himmler, the creator of the Burgundian System, was actually slightly less racist towards Slavs than Martin Bormann, the orthodox Nazi, in real life), and the fact that it wasn't really that different from what the Nazis wanted to do to Eastern Europe, only this time it's western Europeans who are on the receiving end.
  • In the Toolbox Theory ideology rework, Burgundian System was expanded to and made a subideology of Esoteric Nazism, turning it into something resembling an actually coherent ideological grouping. Esoteric Nazism could then be used for far-right esotericists who are comparatively milder than normal Nazis or have no ties to the SS, like José López Rega.
  • The Ruin update turned Esoteric Nazism into a subideology of National Socialism (and its subideologies into National Socialist ones), rather than an ideology of its own. The purpose of merging Esoteric Nazism as a whole into National Socialism, according to the development team, is to prevent the misunderstanding that Hitler and non-esoteric Nazis had become the Lesser of Two Evils in comparison to Himmler and the Esoteric Nazis, meaning that Nazism as a whole has now become the furthest right ideology in TNO and would be the worst of the worst in its story.
• In the demo and release versions of TNO, the far-left ideologies used to be Authoritarian and Libertarian Socialism. In addition to being a purely quantitative instead of qualitative difference (depending on how much power exercised by the state, instead of what they actually do with that power), many felt it was an arbitrary distinction that boiled down to 'good' Libertarian Socialists versus neutral or 'evil' Authoritarian Socialists, something not helped by a fair bit of the fanbase seeing it that way and discussing it that way. This was later changed into a more objective division between Communists (who subscribe to the October Revolution's ideology) and Socialists (a broad term for socialists who do not adhere to one or more key tenets of Leninism, like the vanguard party or dialectical materialism, among others); this classification was actually the original ideological classification during early development, but was changed to AuthSoc and LibSoc at release.
• Prior to Toolbox Theory, all moderate ideologies (other than Despotism) were known by different names.
  • Liberalism was known as Liberal Democracy.
  • Progressivism was known as Social Democracy (Social Democracy is now a subideology of Progressivism, while the former subideology Progressive Democracy has evolved into the main ideology)
  • Conservatism was known as Conservative Democracy.
  • Paternalism was known as Authoritarian Democracy.
  • Liberal Conservatism used to be a sub-ideology of Conservatism before becoming a fully fledged ideological group with its own subideologies.
• Cut subideologies include:
  • Deutsche Bolshevism (used by the old DSR before it was reworked into part of Germany's second decade content)
  • Marxist Anarchism (cut alongside its sole adherent, Arrigo Cervetto)
  • Autarkic Marxism (folded into Stratocratic Communism after a brief stint as Gorky's ideology)
  • Leninism (folded into default Communism)
  • Nasserism (used by Gamal Abdel Nasser himself and Jaafar Nimeiry, folded into Left-Wing Nationalism)
  • Neocommunism (used by Enrico Berlinguer and Leonidas Kyrkos, folded into Reformist Socialism)
  • Social Liberalism (folded into default Liberalism)
  • Neoliberalism (folded into default Liberalism)
  • Revisionist Zionism (a Liberal and Conservative subideology used by Menachem Begin before a lore change made it into a dead ideology)
  • Manipulated Democracy (used by Armando Alba Zambrana, now folded into Liberal Conservatism)
  • Neoconservatism (used by Jeane Kirkpatrick when she was still a FR-NPP member, now folded into Dynastic Liberalism)
  • Guided Democracy (folded into Controlled Democracy)
  • Stratocracy (a Paternalist subideology meant to be used for military governments with more democratic participation, folded into Military Junta; not to be confused with the current Stratocracy subideology which is classified under Ultranationalism)
  • Traditionalist Monarchy (used by some African and Arab monarchies, folded into Absolute Monarchy)
  • Bandit State (folded into Warlordism)
  • Esoteric Despotism (an Ultranationalist subideology only used in Latin America and Africa that effectively only acted as a way to remove any nuance from the portrayal of these leaders, since these 'esoteric' things are done by every right-wing dictatorship)
  • Neofascism (used by the National Front in post-fascist Italy, folded into default Fascism)
  • Shia Theocracy (a cut Fascist subideology, originally meant to be used by Ruhollah Khomeini, folded into Theocracy)
  • Nationalist Stratocracy (a cut National Socialist subideology, later reimagined as Stratocratic Coproratism)
  • Ethno-Spartanism & Ultra-Spartanism (only used by Hans Hüttig and Friedrich Jeckeln respectively, folded into Spartanism)
  • Universal Nazism (Colin Jordan's personal subideology, folded into Esoteric Nazism)
  • Neo-Gothism (Alfred Frauenfeld's personal subideology which was a branch of Ultranationalism before he was toned down into a party line Nazi. An icon for the ideology was added in Silicon Dreams due to an error)
  • Agrarian Spartanism (used by the SS-Aktionsgruppe Moskowien back when it was still ruled by the Herbert Backe-Richard Walther Darré diarchy)
  • Esoteric Kemalism (an Esoteric Nazi subideology in Turkey)
• Renamed subideologies include: Bolshevism, Marxism-Leninism and Bolshevik-Leninism (formerly Bukharinism, Stalinism and Trotskyism, now called by names used by their creators instead of political opponents), Neosocialism and Stratocracy (formerly Proletarian Nationalism and Ultramilitarism, now using terms closer to real life).

Germany and the Einheitspakt

Germany

• Significant parts of German content as shown in the two-part German dev diary (Part I, Part II) were changed in the final game:
  • The power struggle between Hitler's potential successors was described as a full-fledged civil war, with Hans Speidel declaring neutrality in the area around Germania while the rest of Germany is divided between the supporters of each Führer candidate. Since it was deemed too implausible for the Reich to remain a superpower after a civil war, the succession crisis was changed into a period of instability during which Germania is paralysed until the new Führer ascends.
  • Speer is portrayed in the dev diary as a genuine reformer^note a massive Historical Hero Upgrade for the real Speer, who whitewashed his role in the Nazi government and remained an unrepentant fascist up to the day he died, and the Gang of Four is nowhere to be seen. One of Speer's more significant reforms was the creation of the Koalition der Nationen and its development would've been followed in the 1960's. In the final version, the Koalition der Nationen is only created at the end of Speer's route.
    • Related to this, an early Speer KdN focus tree teaser portrayed Speer as not merely a reformer, but a human rights defender who will create KdN peacekeepers, found an international court for human rights, provide humanitarian aid, advocate for decolonization, and even support Free France in one of their paths dealing with Burgundy.
  • Bormann in the dev diary was portrayed as a woefully incompetent, delusional and mulish leader unaware that anything is wrong with the Reich's systems, who was regarded as more of an option for the AI rather than a human player. His original incarnation was infamous for his science focus tree◊ being filled with pseudoscience and other insane ideas^note Such ideas include legitimately investing into alchemy research to turn lead into gold (with a small chance of stumbling ass-backwards into discovering something actually useful), a plane that can circumnavigate the planet in 80 seconds, and a manned mission to Mars right after the Civil War.. As the development went, Bormann became a far more complex character. Now he's a shrewd and cunning conservative who wants to fully turn Germany into a party-state and increase NSDAP members' admission standards and qualifications, a characterization that is more in-line with what the real Bormann was like.
  • Hermann Göring was originally portrayed as an arrogant warhawk who wholeheartedly believed in curing the ails of the Reich by getting back to the good old days of militarism and conquering the world—a parody of the world conquest runs popular among the Paradox Interactive fandom, with one difference: MAD exists in this world, so a world conquest attempt will always fail or either lead to nuclear apocalypse. Since this was seen as a massively unrealistic departure from his real-life personality as an opportunist who actually opposed war, Göring was reworked into a Puppet King to Ferdinand Schörner and later Otto Ernst Remer, the true advocates behind his war plans. He is even stated to have attempted to join Speer's band of reformists voluntarily, but was rejected because the militarists had gotten to him first. Nevertheless, since this did not address the inherent problems that come with a world conquest route, it was entirely scrapped for Göring's rework, which now has a wholly different focus (on Germanisation and populism).
    • Said route would progress across the world, creating various Reichkommissariats or puppet states with vast territories to loot and extract resources from, with the economy in absolute shambles, a glorified Ponzi Scheme where plunder from new conquests was used to try to patch the leaks from previous conquests. This would continue until either your invasion of a nuclear power led to thermonuclear war, the bottom finally falling out of the economy from taking too long to conquer another country resulted in Schörner seizing power in a coup, or an incompetent attempt to sideline Schörner by making him the Reichskommissar of Reichskommissariat Fernost in Kamchatka resulted in a massive Second German Civil War.
    • Before entering into War Plan C, Göring originally had the option to try taking his authority back from Schörner by reassigning him to Kamchatka. Needless to say, picking this option would provoke a rebellion from Schörner and even Speidel, Göring doesn't have enough loyalty from the Wehrmacht. In this second German Civil War, all of Göring's Reichskommissariats would begin fighting each other after picking a side in the conflict, but the situation would quickly devolve into chaos as the natives rebel against their German overlords. If the civil war lasts long enough, the Reich would completely collapse, forming nearly a dozen of splinter states out of the anarchy, spawning the German Collapse superevent and ending the playthrough on an uncertain note over Germany's future.
  • Heydrich, in the first German diary, utterly commits himself to Ultranational Socialism (the old name for the Burgundian System), and will turn Germany into a triply-Spartanist state before handing over the nukes to Burgundy. In the final game, Heydrich's path has been completely overhauled into a new Heydrich-vs-Himmler plotline. Due to the controversial reception of this path (most notably the perceived Historical Hero Upgrade of a Nazi), it was once again reworked, with Heydrich now being given a more conventional path (in which he can stay in power until after the game ends in 1982) and portrayed as the monster he really was.
  • Prior to the civil war's outbreak, Heydrich would've mobilized the SS if he wasn't chosen by Hitler as his successor, giving him a more advantageous position in the upcoming conflict. From there, the German government could've ignored Heydrich, but they also had the option to intervene by either ordering him to stand down or arresting him. Notably, picking the latter option had a small chance of getting Heydrich killed and his SS crushed◊, eliminating him as a contender early on.
• If the German Civil War lasted more than two years, it would have gone into an Anarchy stage, as the contenders can start using nukes against each other while Schörner, Speidel and Meinhof can be Promoted to Playable. While the trio had victory events and a newspaper event for one of the contenders firing the first nuke in the Demo along with the coup events first seen in the second Development Update and both Schörner and Meinhof's respective Germanies able to be spawned in the final game through the debug console, this scenario was cut for being too much work^note Among others, a two-way instead of three-way Cold War would lead to changes in large swathes of the lore, and all countries that interact with Germany need to take into account if the Reich isn't a superpower anymore.. By the time anarchy began:
  • Once the event "Anarchy Reigns◊" was triggered, all four starting contenders would've been hit with a number of debuffs to reflect the devastation, massive casualties on all sides, the increasingly worse famine, and the incoming threat of disease.
  • Bormann would have a full on Villainous Breakdown, blaming everyone but himself for the Anarchy and the end of his focus tree would give him the option to launch the first nuke of the conflict in a desperate attempt to win. Bormann's focus tree for the Anarchy can be spawned through the Debug menu, which has no loc but does have effects which includes massive deductions to Stability, War Support, and Political Power.
  • While Bormann's Anarchy tree gives him the chance to launch the first nuke, the event "A Second Sun" (which summons even more debuffs as soon as its triggered) makes no mention of Bormann specifically launching the first nuke, with Development Update II further implying that any of the original four could've launched the first nuke instead despite only showing an event for Bormann making the decision◊.
  • Reinhard Heydrich's focus trees for the Anarchy were only ever revealed in a barebones, mid-development format but from what can be seen from their names, Heydrich would've been desperate to prove his worth to Heinrich Himmler by upping his brutality judging by lovely sounding focuses such as "HGR_rape_pillage_burn" along with one involving Degrelle in some way called "HGR_degrelles_last_stand". Adding to Heydrich's desperation to prove his worth, all three of his trees begin with "HGR_buying_for_time", with at least one of them being nothing more than Heydrich literally begging for more time from his boss. Should Himmer runs out of patience and has Heydrich killed anyway◊, he then cuts his losses and annexes Alsace-Lorraine while the German SS are left leaderless and hit with massive debuffs representing their complete collapse.
  • Ferdinand Schörner would betray his nominal boss Göring^note While the original coup event seen in Development Update II◊ gives a choice whether or not the coup succeeds, the event that can be spawned in the final game only allows you to continue as Schörner.. Once Schörner's coup succeeds, he continues fighting the Civil War with pressed ganged civilians making up his forces alongside whatever is left of the Militarist armies. Should he have won, Schörner would've formed the Government of National Reconstruction (Regierung des Nationalen Wiederaufbaus) and proclaimed himself Commander-in-Chief (Oberbefehlshaber) due to his lack of legitimacy, but in essence would've been the next Führer in all but name.
  • Hans Speidel would rescind his neutrality and start actively declaring war on the contenders in order to bring the fighting to an end.
  • After the Anarchy was cut, there were initially plans to retain Speidel and Schörner as potential leaders (who can overthrow the incumbent Führer) before they were cut for good. One teaser for Schörner shows the annexation of all Eastern European RKs into Germany. Some elements in Schörner's planned path survive in Heydrich's reworked one (other than being described as a "Diet Speer" Speidel never had much at all planned in the first place).
  • The Red Army Faction could rebel against Albert Speer and takeover the liberal faction before going on to establish their own German Socialist Republic. While the only Anarchy content ever revealed by the Dev team themselves was a now deleted teaser for the DSR's victory event shown years before the first Demo was publicly released, post Anarchy content for the DSR is far more well known and detailed below.
• According to an old leak, Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski and Karl Carsten were originally going to play a role in a democratizing Germany in Speer's route, but both of them are absent in the final game.
• In earlier lore, it was stated that the Holocaust operations had largely ceased by the game's start due to how impractical it was, but the lore was changed so that the Holocaust has continued unabated until it was essentially completed, though more ambitious projects like Generalplan Ost have proven much harder to implement.
  • In early, early lore, the Holocaust wasn't ended early, the Allies never learned about it, and the English Resistance can infiltrate the Reich and leak information about it, to prevent a German-American detente.
• The Deutsche Sozialistische Republik, a communist state established by the Red Army Faction if they somehow manage to win the German Civil War, had a very infamous depiction in pre-release teasers (like this◊ one), and this DSR became one of the most controversial, speculated, and memed part of the mod. Specifically, old DSR, facing significant challenges to its rule, will resort to mass purges and eventually German auto-genocide to stay in power (it's been said that they'll purge even more than old Nazi-primitivist Heydrich). Should they stabilize, they can also invade the RKs to set up VKs in their place. The developers intended to use the DSR as a critique against radicalism in general, but the community reacted in ways totally opposite to these expectations: some liked the DSR unironically because they wanted to see the Nazis get thoroughly destroyed, some criticized it for leaning into the "both sides are the same" fallacy (especially with the "Volkskommissariat" part), and later critiques focused on its old-school TNO "killpeopleism".^note There was also a persistent community rumor that the DSR didn't really understand communism, typically used by people sympathizing with the "DSR can destroy Nazism" opinion to give their insane brutality a reasoning; lead developer Panzer's actual idea is that they are actual Communists, but they are not good or competent politicians, and are trying to do the nigh-impossible task of implementing Marxism in a country that's been fully Nazi for 30 years. The conflicts between the devs and the community over the topic of the DSR ended up creating an entire ironic and unironic fandom around the DSR (likely because it greatly annoyed the devs), and the DSR became the face of TNO meme culture. Likely due to this conflict, the entire old DSR lore was cut and reworked; with the German Anarchy being cut, the Nazis' left-wing opposition will not be able to take power until the second decade.
• In outdated lore, Joseph Goebbels was assassinated by French partisans at a Parisian movie theatre. In current lore, Goebbels was killed in Moskowien by what is assumed to be the SS; the actual culprit is Wolf-Heinrich von Helldorff, who found Goebbels wounded by Russian partisans and decided to finish him off and blame the assassination on the SS-Aktionsgruppe Moskowien. The lore was changed because the older lore was little more than a placeholder to justify Goebbels' absence in the story, while the new version can actually play a role in Helldorff's arc.
• Göring (in his early, genuine militarist characterization) was originally planned to have an evolving portrait, with him putting on more and more medals and military attire as he conquered and plundered more and more of the world.
• Originally, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was treated as one of Germany's two protectorates (the other being the General Governorate) at game start, and was meant to have a path featuring Kurt Daluege, a treacherous opportunist who has been secretly helping the Czech resistance and can overthrow Reichsprotektor Krosigk during the German Civil War, then go rogue from the Reich. In the original release, Bohemia-Moravia's only role was to be annexed after the German Civil War ends. Currently, it starts off already annexed by the Reich, appears as a tag and fights alongside Hitler's chosen successor during the Civil War, then joins the victor.
• According to one developer, Heydrich's old focus tree had focuses for kidnapping children to train them into super soldiers named the "Spartanisch Program".
• In Speer's route, Theodor Oberländer was portrayed as a pig-headed reactionary Nazi who can coup Speer and the Gang of Four to undo their reforms and reinstate orthodox Nazism, isolating Germany from the rest of the world in both travel and communication. To make him more accurate to his real-life personality (he was originally randomly picked as a hardliner without any proper research on what his views were actually like), he was reworked into a more idiosyncratic figure who has some ideas on reforming the Reich and restoring democracy, but otherwise wants to maintain its racial hierarchy. In a possible reference to this earlier mischaracterization, the news event where he coups Speer mentions international expectations for him to revert all of his reforms, only for these observers to express surprise when he actually announces further "democratic" reforms, albeit in a very vague manner.
• Bormann's second-in-command (who becomes Deputy Führer when he wins the German Civil War) was originally Baldur von Schirach, who has since been replaced by Paul Wegener and become the Reich's ambassador to the United States.
• Herbert Backe originally served as Deputy Reichskommissar of Kaukasia under Josias zu Waldeck-Pyrmont, and his only role was to be killed by Chechen partisans shortly after succeeding Josias, in the process sparking Russians and native Caucasians to rebel against the occupation. He was later moved to Moskowien as deputy leader of the SS-Aktionsgruppe Moskowien under Richard Walther Darré (and its de facto leader, since his boss is bedridden due to cancer). Since this role was a big case of Artistic License – History (Backe hated Darré, was too important for German agriculture to be sent to a colony, and didn't have much involvement with the SS), he was once again moved, this time to Germany proper, where he has continued to serve as Minister of Food and Agriculture, the same position he held in real life before the Reich was defeated.
• As explained in some trivia for the 2024 April Fool's joke, there was a scrapped mechanic for Germany to assign their Reichskommissars to different countries. An example of this is Hans Hüttig potentially becoming Reichskommissar of Ukraine◊ under Speer after the South African War.

Burgundy

• Pre-Toolbox Theory, Burgundy started out controlling Belgium and most of northern metropolitan France and would conquer another third of France in the Franco-Burgundian War. Burgundy now starts off with just Belgium plus an area very loosely corresponding to the House of Valois-Burgundy's old holdings just west of Alsace-Lorraine, and the territory it seizes in the Franco-Burgundian War amounts to its pre-TT starting territory.
• Burgundy pre-release was hyped up as the ultimate Big Bad of the game, whose covert Globalpläne (puppeteering the Asturian Workers' Battalions, assassinating Farouk, and supporting Solidarist Vyatka, among others) are influencing politics around the world and pushing the world closer to doomsday, and whose importance necessitated its huge levels of Plot Armor. In the final game, Burgundy and its actions ultimately only play a regional role, and only significantly impact the politics of Western Europe. It is almost completely absent in the storylines of most countries around the world. These Globalpläne were cut because they "competency-washed" the SS from a band of brutish fanatics into a sophisticated SPECTRE-styled Nebulous Evil Organisation. Burgundy is now depicted as a wannabe nuclear power and an absolutely miserable excuse of a country that spends almost its entire tree dealing with its internal issues, and Himmler only briefly considers activating the Globalpläne Department in the peace before the Burgundian Spring crisis. (However, a significant last remnant of "old Burgundy" lives on in the game - Burgundy can start nuclear war itself, but only if Heydrich wins the German Civil War and loses the SS Civil War, giving Himmler control of Germany's nuclear arsenal, which is the largest in the world at game start.)
• Before the massive overhaul of Burgundy, an AI-controlled Burgundy could only collapse in 1981 after Himmler's death of old age, with the Ordenstaat's territory being a bombed out and ruined mess. According to a statement made by Panzer, the planned aftermath would've been Burgundy becoming an OFN mandate, France annexing the western half while the rest of the region being a wasteland after SS infighting and widespread booby trapping.
• At the beginning of the German Civil War, Burgundy originally had the option to either fully annex the French State after invading it or not launch the invasion at all. In the final version, Burgundy will always invade the French State and annex a third of what's left of its territory.
• In older versions, the Nouvel État Français (the state formed by the SS-Charlemagne when they rebel from Burgundy) was led by Paul Touvier, an OTL French Nazi collaborator and Holocaust perpetrator, and not Christian de La Mazière, the SS-Charlemagne's actual leader.
• According to the original lead developer, in the original RP that started the mod, Burgundy's secret nuclear plot was a means to destabilize Germany for the SS to sweep in and put Himmler in charge rather than wipe out the other non-Aryan races.

United Kingdom

Note: the current UK content originated as a submod called The Fallen Lion, which sought to rework Great Britain. Very few elements from pre-TFL Britain have survived after the submod was integrated into the main mod.

• The original setup of Britain had Wales and Scotland as independent, neutral republics, which were recognised by Germany after the fall of the UK. After HMMLR's uprising (then limited to England), the government in London has to reunify Great Britain by dealing with Wales and Scotland. In TFL, the UK was made whole, since Welsh and Scottish nationalisms were a very fringe thing during TNO's timeframe, and because the Nazis would have no reason to leave the job half-finished if they somehow managed to carry out Operation Sea Lion. Though Wales and Scotland have their own political paths, they usually end up mattering very little since it's nigh impossible for them to win a war against England:
  • Wales starts off led by Plaid Cymru and President Saunders Lewis, who would always lose power to either Emrys Thomas (who leads Cymru Goch, a Welsh nationalist and democratic socialist party whose presence is just as anachronistic), John Morris (a unionist who would try to return Wales back to England's fold, up to banning the Welsh language) or Julian Cayo-Evans (commander of the hardline anti-England Free Welsh Army, whose competence is greatly exaggerated from real life; in the old dev diary, he can even annex parts of western England◊, though this was cut before the initial release). Wales defeating England is so unlikely to happen that the in-game event even lampshades this◊.
  • Scotland begins the game under the Scottish National Party, who can either remain in power or be voted out and replaced by the Independent Labour Party (which seeks to expand welfare and maintain neutrality) or the Unionist Party (which advocates for the UK's reunification; when the English Civil War erupts, HMMLR's Scottish branch, led by Paddy Mayne, would reveal that the Unionists were just their civilian façade and will now be discarded). All three parties' leaders were changed during development: the SNP's from John MacCormick (who died in 1961, before game start, in real life) to Robert McIntyre; the ILP's from Barbara Castle and James Callaghan (who are both from England and moved to Scotland after the UK fell) to William Wolfe; and the Unionists from Harold Macmillan (who also moved from England to Scotland) to Priscilla Buchan. The Scottish Armed Forces under Douglas Wimberley can also overthrow the civilian government or launch a counter-coup against Mayne and the SAS. In current lore, Macmillan is PM-in-exile of the UK, Castle is in the Left Resistance and can become a Labour government minister, Callaghan is in exile in Australia, Mayne is a HMMLR general and the others aren't mentioned. After the initial release, there were also plans to change Scotland into a monarchy, the last remnant of the UK; this never happened before TFL was integrated.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality was a major theme in the original narrative of the English Civil War that was mostly cut in TFL:
  • In the original concept, most collaborators are not fascists, dislike their German overlords and are only trying to maintain a stiff upper lip because they see resistance as futile (had HMMLR not rebelled, they would try to kick out the German garrison themselves). In current lore, reluctant non-fascist collaborators are the exception, not the rule.
  • Old HMMLR also has its own skeletons in the closet, in the form of Stirling's vindictive Commandos and the communists (and in really old lore, remnants of the British Union of Fascists). After TFL is integrated, the communists are now portrayed more accurately to real life, while the fascists within HMMLR are so few in number to not matter at all.
  • While HMMLR being overall better is not something that has changed, the difference pre-TFL was much less pronounced than it is now: the good path for the collaborationists is nearly as good as HMMLR's, and the neutral paths are still clearly better than HMMLR's bad paths. Post-TFL integration, a collaborationist UK, even at its best, is comparable in quality of life to HMMLR at their worst.
  • Old lore also allowed England to pursue a comparatively independent foreign policy, especially in case of the ex-collaborators (who can complete their betrayal of the Reich by joining the OFN). In TFL, the collaborators will always rejoin the Pakt, and HMMLR will have to join the OFN if they want to survive.
  • Furthermore, adding to the this theme, both sides could resort to committing increasingly reprehensible acts as the civil war drags on, with Stirling using more collateral-damage intensive methods, and the collaborators making a desperate deal with Chesterton for manpower, increasing Fascist influence among England's political and military institutions, which can help get Chesterton elected later on.
• There were apparently plans for a "morality" system during the English Civil War, with the player's choices during the war having ramifications later in the game.
• The role of Prime Minister of the collaborationist Kingdom of England changed hands twice during the development of the main mod, and once during the development of The Fallen Lion. Initially, this was British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley (who was a fascist but wanted a strong UK and didn't like the Germans, and whom the developers considered overused in alternate history), then changed to Enoch Powell (which also made little sense since the real Powell was very anti-German), before settling on Alec Douglas-Home, while TFL initially used John Beckett, who was changed to Barry Domvile. Mosley is now dead (executed when Germany invaded the UK), Powell and Home are now affiliated with the exiled Conservative Party, and Beckett was disbarred from politics due to his Jewish ancestry.
• Originally, HMMLR (and specifically its monarchist faction) was led by Claude Auchinleck, the last British general to surrender to Germany in Operation Sea Lion. TFL initially replaced him with Maxwell Knight (as leader of HMMLR as a whole) and Christopher Lee, then settled on Fitzroy Maclean (as leader of the monarchist partisans), though both Lee and Auchinleck remain high-ranking partisan commanders; Lee also replaced Arthur Harris as leader of what remains of HMMLR's right wing if the uprising fails.
• In old lore, HMMLR was taking aids from the Order-State of Burgundy. Relying too much on Burgundian assistance led to the English Catastrophe, an old failstate for England. While changes to the lore during development meant that HMMLR is no longer dependent on Burgundy's aid and scrapped this failstate, details on the Catastrophe have been discovered in the files or from the words of the TNO team.
  • A superevent still remains in the files and can be triggered in-game through console commands but has no effect otherwise.
  • An event card for the English Catastrophe also still sits in the files, mentioning Oswald Mosley's old British Union of Fascists being a fringe sector of HMMLR while Orde Wingate leads what remained of HMMLR's Liberals and Socialists.
  • A map of the English Catastrophe◊ was later posted onto the mod's Discord by one of the Devs, showing the borders the three factions would've had along with showing Louis Mountbatten as leader of HMMLR's Militarist Wing (who in the final game, died during the Cable Street Revolt in the 1950s).
  • One of the Devs for the British content sheds more light on the Catastrophe. He states that:
    • The English Protectorate is the alliance of David Stirling and Louis Mountbatten (representing HMMLR's militarist elements and the English aristocracy respectively), that either would've become a "stratocratic cromwellian-esque republic" under Stirling or the monarchy would've been restored as a façade for Mountbatten's dictatorship.
    • The English Social Republic and the presence of the British Union of Fascists is actually from old lore when they had a small but present clique within HMMLR. The Social Republic would become German allies in exchange for support from the Pakt. If the Catastrophe dragged on for too long, the Germans would eventually get fed up and invade to establish RK Britannien.
    • The English Free State was a united front of the regular HMMLR and Liberal Republican elements under Orde Wingate and Edward Heath, who get OFN support. Similar to the Social Republic, if the war went on too long, they would eventually cede control directly to the OFN and allow the formation of the OFN Mandate of England.
    • If an OFN Mandate and RK Britannien are both established, what the Dev team called "Korea Britain" would be created in the event of a ceasefire where England is split in half between the Democracies and the Fascists.
  • Lastly, in a rework "which never really went anywhere", the Catastrophe went from having three factions to four. A resurgent Collaborationist force emerging in Cornwall (which replaced the Social Republic), Stirling starting in London, the Free State holding the North, and the Midlands being given to the newly created Socialist Republic of England, which was supposed to be Bill Alexander "going Mao levels of anti-landlord".
• According to one of the British Dev team, an early concept for Margaret Thatcher was a standard Fascist within the Royal Party (this was back when the party was Fascist by default and Enoch Powell was leading the collaborationist government), making her a Fascist and "made to fit that mold, with predictable results for her portrayal". Before this concept was scrapped, there were vague plans for her rule to be so brutal and awful that a revolution would've occurred against her, ushering in a Communist Britain and Thatcher being executed just like Louis XVI near the end of Britain's story. In the first release, Thatcher is Alec Douglas-Home's successor as leader of the Royal Party, and can become de facto dictator of Britain by the end of the first decade. Since the TFL developers found it utterly implausible that a person who took in and gave her life savings to a Jewish refugee would collaborate with Nazi Germany, or that a woman in her late 30s can become PM of Britain in the '60s, she is now a chemist responsible for making the bomb that kills PM Domvile. The flavor text reveals that she hates fascism for many of the same reasons she hated communism in real life, seeing it as an authoritarian system that ruined the prospects of advancement for people like her who aren't privileged or connected.
• The German garrison in England originally controlled the entirety of the English counties of Cornwall and Devon, before being reduced in size to only the city of Plymouth and the Channel Islands. Since TFL was integrated, the German garrison is no longer a country at all; instead, its commanders are available as generals for the collaborationist government.
• In older versions, Bill Alexander continued leading the English socialists after HMMLR won the English Civil War, and had a unique path where he can make a compromise and keep the monarchy (which is rather out-of-character for a hardline communist like him). In the first release, Alexander steps down after the civil war is won, and his successor Harold Wilson will abolish the monarchy if the Socialist Labour Party wins the first election. In current lore, he died in 1956 in the Battle of Cable Street alongside David Stirling.
• David Stirling used to have an extremely dark super event for his unification apparently suggesting that he will be gunning down protestors and executing collaborators left and right. It's since been toned down, and his teaser content in TT shows that he and the MSA are pro-democracy military men who want to abolish the Young Democracy Law. In current lore, he was captured and executed in 1956 after the Battle of Cable Street alongside Bill Alexander.
• The original release depicted Harold Macmillan and Keith Joseph (who currently serve as the Tories' PM candidates in the first general election after HMMLR's victory) as MPs in the collaborationist government, something which makes no sense, since Macmillan was on the Nazis' black list due to his opposition to appeasement and willingness to support communists against fascists and Joseph was Jewish. In particular, Macmillan, after becoming Prime Minister, will try so hard to clear the taint of fascism that he turns England into a de facto one-party state.
• The National Democratic League (a party formed after HMMLR's victory, representing its right wing) was originally led by George Jellicoe, with a left wing led by Norman St John-Stevas and a right wing led by Enoch Powell. Now, the Tories simply return from exile in Canada, Lord Jellicoe is only a general, and Stevas has no role to play.
• In the original release, Arthur Kenneth Chesterton was the face of the hardline fascists within the collaborationist government, who can take over after HMMLR is defeated. In TFL, this role is now fulfilled by Andrew Fountaine (who previously was Chesterton's chosen successor); Chesterton himself served as PM from 1953 to 1956. Additionally, TFL originally had him already having drunk himself to death by 1962; in current lore, he's still an Earl in the House of Lords and can become Home Secretary under Wallop.
• Pre-TFL Reginald Maudling was depicted as a radical collaborator MP who wants to restore democracy, albeit through reform instead of rebellion like HMMLR does. His path paints him as the last hope of British democracy after HMMLR's defeat, as he tries to clear the taint of collaboration and reform the United Kingdom as a democratic country, truly free from both the German and American boot. He was changed into a corrupt kleptocrat who essentially hands the British economy to German cartels to avoid Historical Hero Upgrade and Historical Badass Upgrade (the real Maudling, as Home Secretary, was responsible for the UK government's Northern Ireland policy during the period that included Bloody Sunday in 1972, in which he defended British soldiers shooting at unarmed children, and was forced to leave office due to an unrelated scandal in one of the companies of which he was director).
• Bernard Law Montgomery was originally the collaborationist Chief of the Defence Staff, who could launch a coup against the civilian government if the latter won the civil war but fails to dislodge the Cornwall garrison, leading to a Non-Standard Game Over. He now lives in exile in South Africa; Gerald Templer replaced him as chief of the collaborationist army.
• In TFL's old plans, the British Free Corps coup (led by Colin Jordan) against the sitting PM was originally meant to serve as collaborationist UK's Non-Standard Game Over—the BFC only has a small focus tree lasting a year that mostly serves to demonstrate how screwed up Britain is. When the developers came up with unique ideas and themes to explore with his path, Jordan was upgraded into a full path and can now take power immediately after HMMLR is put down.
• The left-wing elements of HMMLR were originally led by Harold Wilson and Reg Birch, whose contrasting portrayals epitomised the distinction between 'good' Libertarian Socialists and 'evil' Authoritarian Socialists pervasive in old TNO:
  • After HMMLR wins the civil war, the Left Resistance reforms into the Socialist Labour Party led by Wilson, whose portrayal resembles a liberal's idea of a good socialist: he abolishes the monarchy as his first action and supports free healthcare and education, gender equality, secularism and religious freedom (all much more left-wing than the real Wilson, who was moderate even by his cabinet's standards) without wishing to end bourgeois democracy, and will in fact have to purge the actual socialists from the SLP so they couldn't overthrow him. After TFL is integrated, the centre-left elements within HMMLR are represented by the exiled Labour Party led by Michael Foot (who is personally a republican, but cannot abolish the monarchy), while Wilson inherits pre-TFL Maudling's role as the most radical reformer within the collaborationist government. The developers reasoned that when Operation Sea Lion happened, Wilson was too low-ranking to be on the evacuation list to Canada, and since he was at his very core an opportunist, he attached himself to the BPP so he could rise in the ranks and reform Britain from the inside, despite his distaste for Germany—it would not make sense for an Oxford academic and political weasel like him to join an underground partisan movement.
  • On the other hand, Birch, Wilson's main rival in the Socialist Labour Party, looks like something from Red Scare propaganda, as a bloodthirsty enemy of freedom and democracy, who can overthrow Wilson if he fails to keep the SLP's left wing in check. Birch's planned content (which was never made before TFL's integration) had him build many bunkers and de-industrialise Britain. After TFL was integrated, Birch no longer has any role to play, and the British socialists are represented by different people, with more accurate depictions; they also now take power through a bottom-up revolution with popular support, instead of an intra-party coup.
• According to Dev Diary V: When in Britain, Cornwall was originally meant to have a focus tree with a plotline or whether to remain loyal to Germany or find new avenues of support. The focus trees include trade with the rest of the former United Kingdom (including a bizzare under the table deal with the United States), rebuilding and revitalizing industry, and open up their military to mercenaries and criminals akin to the French Foreign Legion. However, the country lacks any content at release.
• The commander of the pre-TFL German garrison in Britain was Franz Halder, who is 78 at game start, way above the retirement age of the Wehrmacht. The TFL developers initially replaced him with Edmund Veesenmeyer, then settled on Rudolf Wulf.
• Two paths (one each for the collaborationists and HMMLR) were cut during development of TFL:
  • Angus Maude was originally one of Rab Butler's three potential successors, advocating for free-market monetarism, but the developers found that he couldn't work within the Pakt (he would 'constantly get cucked by the Germans').
  • Kim Philby, a possible leader for the Commonwealth of Britain, was cut (and changed into an antagonist for the collaborators) because there was little information on his actual political views (other than being a communist).
• Gerard Wallop's original concept was described as the 'House of Lords path', as he turns the UK into a House of Lords dictatorship (classified in-game as Aristocratic Conservative), and will seek to maintain and expand the powers of the aristocracy, while being the most pro-German path for collaborationist Britain. After the developers found better sources on him, Wallop was retooled into the face of the Old Guard faction of the BPP after Barry Domvile's death (on a related note, this also allows Britain's aristocratic strain of fascism to survive, instead of always dying with Domvile), and much less pro-German than before.
• Before TFL, King Edward VIII's successor, if the collaborationists win the civil war, is his younger brother, the Duke of Gloucester, who takes the regnal name Henry IX. Since the real Duke of Gloucester was far closer to their brother Albert (King George V) compared to Edward and protective of Elizabeth II, he was replaced by Friedrich Josias, Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, a great-grandson of Queen Victoria and the closest relative of Edward who supports Nazi Germany.
• Scotland was originally intended to be a German puppet state, as seen in this◊, but was later revised to start off independent and OFN-leaning, starting in the American/OFN economic sphere, but not part of the OFN proper.

Ireland

• Ireland's first iteration is a fascist dictatorship (referred to by its Irish name, since the new government dropped English as a co-official language) led by the National Council (an equivalent to the Grand Council of Fascism) and Ceannaire Gearóid Ó Cuinneagáin, who could embrace pan-Celtism or be overthrown by the government-in-exile in Scotland.
• Ireland's second iteration is led by Taoiseach Éamon de Valera, who has held power for around 30 years. He's portrayed as an aging, paranoid man who grew increasingly authoritarian due to the threat of Fine Gael (which has embraced fascism under Oliver J. Flanagan's leadership), and many in his party began defecting to a rival faction led by the reformist Seán Lemass. Current Ireland is instead led by Taoiseach Lemass (who keeps de Valera's character of being an increasingly authoritarian Taoiseach), while de Valera now holds the ceremonial position of President; Fine Gael is now a liberal party and the fascist plot has been cut.
• Ulster (Northern Ireland) was originally an Irish autonomous province led by unionist Basil Brooke, who managed to negotiate Ulster's autonomy despite Irish annexation; an important part of old Ireland storyline would've been the Ulster conference, which does not exist in current TNO.
• The Fallen Lion originally had plans to rework Ireland as well, changing both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland (which is still loyal to the exiled pre-war UK government in Canada) into OFN members. These were scrapped before the submod was integrated into the main mod.

France

• Free France originally could return to continental Europe◊ by invading their way through Northern Africa and landing on France's southern coast, a path some developers described as the hardest path in the mod. Since such a path was deemed too unrealistic, this requirement was cut and their return to France now merely requires a victory in the West African War, whereupon they can invade Metropolitan France with Iberian support.
• Brittany◊ was a former playable country that, with Germany's permission, splintered from the French State to escape the consequences of its economic crash. It was eventually cut not because it was implausible or unrealistic, but because it was a massive white elephant for the mod as a program; since almost every country, even Russian warlords, could in some way interact with the Breton black market, Brittany wound up taking up whole gigabytes of content that TNO was freed of in Toolbox Theory. Politically, Brittany had multiple routes the player could take:
  • Olier Mordrel, the starting leader, could've been kept in power to keep up the illegal trade, effectively turning the country into a corporation, with himself as its CEO.
  • Raymond Delaporte was the reformist path, ending the black market trade and returning Brittany to Enlightenment values. After he reforms Brittany into a liberal democracy, he could be replaced by Yann Fouéré, a radical reformist who envisions the country as a bastion of liberty to inspire the rest of Europe to follow, or Goulven Pennaod, who, fearing the rise of a left-wing government, would continue democratic reforms under the guidance of the military clique and hold new elections when the mission is complete.
  • Célestin Lainé was the most hardline nationalist of the available leaders, either turning the black market into an active force for corruption, focusing on slavery and drugs to destroy the free world from within, isolating the country from all "degenerate" foreign influence via pure autarky (the "Hermit Kingdom" path), or even pursuing the Burgundian System, opening relations with Burgundy, which would backfire because the latter would just invade them in an unwinnable war.
• The first iteration of the cut French Civil War involves three sides (the French State, French Resistance and OAS) and erupts after France rejoins the Pakt but fails to invade and annex Brittany. After Brittany was cut, the civil war could erupt if Pierre Poujade fails his war against the 200 families (as the same three-way conflict as before) and is guaranteed to happen against Pierre Sidos (as a seven-way war between the aforementioned three belligerents plus the left-wing Revolutionaries, the Milice, the pro-German Revolutionary Nationalist Groups, and the pro-Italy Movement for National Reconciliation). After another lore revision, the only civil war that could happen is when Free France returns home.
• France's starting President and Prime Minister were changed from Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour and Pierre Poujade to Charles Huntziger and Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour (though since the same lore revision also changed France from a presidential to a parliamentary republic, Tixier-Vignancour remains the starting in-game leader and protagonist of France's story).
• One cut successor for Tixier-Vignancour was Pierre Gaxotte, leader of the monarchist Action française, whose platform is to invite the Orléanist pretender (Henri, Count of Paris) to the French throne. If the monarchist restoration referendum succeeds, King Henri VI will take the throne, only for his government to immediately collapse and be overthrown by Pétainists; if it fails, Henri VI abdicates and leaves the throne to his son, who will establish a constitutional monarchy with three Prime Minister candidates: the reformist Olivier Guichard, the moderate Jean d'Ormesson and the reactionary Pierre Pujo. He was replaced by Henri Barbé, as a leader who could take power half-way through the first decade.
• The possibility for France to join the OFN in old versions was removed, since both Germany and America are uncomfortable with an OFN member state directly bordering Germany.
• In outdated lore, Pierre Laval was Philippe Pétain's successor, who enacted some initial democratising reforms before dying in 1958. In current lore, Paul Collette's attempt to assassinate him in 1941 succeeded, unlike in real life. For the same reason, Joseph Darnand's far-right league was renamed from Milice to Legionary Order Service, since the real Laval was responsible for transforming the SOL into the Milice in 1943.
• France's ruling party at game start was renamed from National Party to Rally for the National Revolution.
• Old lore has Jacques Doriot die early, which explains why the French Popular Party is led by Pierre Sidos instead. In current lore, Doriot is still active in politics and Sidos has been moved to the traditionalist wing of the RRN.

Ukraine

• Original lore mentioned that the only resistance movement in Ukraine was the OUN, which was divided by a schism between Andriy Melnyk and Stepan Bandera (the latter of whom was classified as an Authoritarian Democrat, which was a massive case of Historical Hero Upgrade). At some point in a Ukrainian playthrough, the latter would've openly rebelled against the German colonial regime and started a two-sided civil war with them. The OUN (m) (now called Ukrainian National Committee) remains one of the major collaborationist groups but no longer has a path, while the OUN (b) is now led by Dmytro Klyachkivsky after Stepan Bandera died in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
• One of the pre-rework partisan groups in Ukraine were the Cossacks led by Ivan Kononov, a band of raiders who would've temporarily taken◊ Luhansk and Rostov, requiring the Reichskommissariat to put them down and initiate a process of Decossackization.
• The RK Ukraine dev diary during early development showed several old paths for Ukraine, none of which survived to release:
  • Alfred Fraufenfeld's path was focused on taking the Crimean peninsula from Germany during their civil war and dealing with Melnyk's faction of the OUN, either through compromise or by outlawing them.
  • Hans-Adolf Prützmann was described as being "twice as ruthless as Koch", in which he would've restarted Germanization pograms in Ukraine and can even invade the Generalgouvernement to steal more slaves. Prützmann is now only a minor character in Ukraine's story.
  • Theodor Oberländer was a reformist leader, who would've granted more liberalization to the native Ukrainians and even possibly stepped down to give them their independence. In the release version, Oberländer has been moved to the Reich proper as the President of the Reichstag, who supports Albert Speer in the German Civil War before becoming the face of his hardliner opposition, rather than an outright liberal^noteThe idea of Oberländer being a full-on liberal is a Historical Hero Upgrade to the real Oberländer, whose conduct in occupied Eastern Europe became a point of scandals in post-war West Germany, after he returned to politics. His role was initially inherited by Otto Bräutigam, who was later replaced by his nephew Hans Otto since the developers couldn't find a good portrait source for the elder Bräutigam.
  • Alfred Rosenberg was an unorthodox Nazi who could've taken power by either being invited by Oberländer or couping the government if their treatment of the natives got too cruel. Once in power, Rosenberg would've focused on reducing Nazi influence in Ukraine and the rest of Eastern Europe, promoting cooperation between Germans and Slavs. Rosenberg is now only present in the game in the form of his personal subideology, which still has adherents among German colonial administrators in the east, but Rosenberg himself is only a retired pensioner with no real influence (the real Rosenberg got massively sidelined and did not have the strength or will to push for his plans, which only went forward if the actual people on the ground decided to enact them).
  • Erich Koch can survive his assassination and go further down the deep end, amplifying his genocidal rule and even allying himself with Heydrich's Germany or Himmler's Burgundy.
• Pieter Schelte Heerema was originally meant to lead his own side in the Ukrainian Civil War (the Dutch East Company, consisting mostly of Dutch colonists in Ukraine) after his failed coup following Hitler's death. Because the developers find this implausible and want to use the RK's characters in Heerema's content, the NOC as a tag was cut; Heerema can instead overthrow the Reichskommissar and take over the RK mid-way through the first decade.
• An old set-up◊ of the Ukrainian Civil War featured two scrapped country tags (Oberfeldkommandantur Tschernigow-Charkow and Oberfeldkommandantur Nikolajew-Jekaterinoslaw), representing Wehrmacht divisions isolated from the Reichskommissariat. They are not meant to be playable and will return to the RK's control if it puts down all partisans.
• According to an outdated teaser, Ivan Dziuba, for some reason, views Germany (a superpower caught in a power struggle that will not take very long to wrap up) as less of a threat than Russia (a former major power that was defeated 20 years ago, whose heartland is occupied by no one other than Germany while the other territories are stuck in anarchy).
• The Ukrainian SSR's leader changed hands twice during development: initially Sydir Kovpak, then Oleksiy Fedorov, and currently Oleksandr Shumskyi.

Gotenland

• In the first release, when it is cut off from Germania (becoming a separate tag in the process) in the German Civil War, Admiral Karl Dönitz sidelines Gauleiter Franz Maierhofer and the civilian government, and takes over Gotenland to prevent the Kriegsmarine from fighting each other in the civil war. This no longer happens; instead, Maierhofer remains in charge throughout the civil war.
• Another cut leader from Gotenland is Alfred Frauenfeld, who was portrayed as a Neo-Goth who would try to revive the long-dead Gothic language and culture, before being toned down to a somewhat heterodox Nazi.

Moskowien

• Moskowien was meant to have a population transfer mechanic used to separate German settlers and native Russians in order to prevent a race war. This was removed because it was seen as an endorsement of ethnic cleansing.
• Initially, Siegfried Kasche was characterized as an apathetic governor who blatantly tells the German government that his efforts to Germanize Moskowien have failed and that he has no intention of fixing the problem. His current personality is much more accurate to real life: a fanatical Nazi who is desperately trying (and failing) to implement Generalplan Ost over the colony he lords over.
• Moskowien at release (well after the population transfer mechanic was cut) can undergo a "two-state-solution" (as an alternative to total collapse) after Kasche flees from the RK, with the Germans and the Russians agreeing to chop up the RK along German and Russian ethnic lines to avoid collapse. This would create two new countries, a German Sovereign Zone and a Moscow Autonomy, each holding the majority population regions of Germans and Russians in Moscow, and each will have tons of enclaves and exclaves within each other due to the uneven population distribution in the region, creating a mess on the map. This entire situation was cut when Moskowien entered proper development.
• In early versions, the Moskowien SS was led by a diarchy consisting of Herbert Backe and Richard Walther Darré, who were replaced by Odilo Globočnik (who led it in even earlier versions) and Rudolf-August Oetker.
• The warlord state located around Paulusburg in the lower Volga used to be named Wolgastaat, and was a full-fledged autonomous zone within RK Moskowien ruled by the Volga Germans, who have lived in Russia for centuries. Its narrative would've been about the Volga Germans struggling to co-exist with the German settlers, while setting up a democratic government previously unheard of within the Pakt. Currently, it is known as Notfallverwaltung Paulusburg, and is the remnant of former Deputy Reichskommissar Wolf-Heinrich von Helldorff's administration after RK Moskowien's collapse. The Wolgastaat can now only be formed by Albert Speer after he pacifies Moskowien, and encompasses only the German-majority areas (and not the entire lower Volga).
• An old version of the Oberkommando Sankt Peterburg (formerly Brauchitschstadt) was just another Wehrmacht remnant led by Erich von dem Bach, before it was changed to what amounts to a miniature Kaiserreich within Nazi Germany.
• The German megacorporations in Moskowien used to have their own warlord state, the Special Economic Zone of Tambov (Sonderwirtschaftsgebiet Tambow), whose in-game leader is Vladimir Gil, a collaborator who serves as their chief enforcer. Their content is now a path for Helldorff's Notfallverwaltung Paulusburg.
• The Winners communist partisan group used to be represented by two tags (led by Dmitry Medvedev and Nikolai Kuznetsov). Kuznetsov's tag was later folded into Medvedev's to reduce lag.
• The Shishki partisans' former leader was Valentin Purgin, a fraudster who plays up his heroic deeds so he can rally supporters and pillage Moskowien for himself.
• Throughout Moskowien's development, many◊ warlords have been cut entirely, including:
  • Oryol (led by partisan Andrey Fedosyutkin) and Penza (led by Pyotr Dolgov, a member of the Soviet Air Force) were two loreless warlords that were present in the first reelase.
  • Bogi Smerti, a group of bandits that pretended to be Satanists and were led by infamous serial killer Andrei Chikatilo. They were cut and replaced because their concept, and idea that the notoriously un-charismatic Chikatilo could lead a bandit group, made little sense. Their concept would be recycled into the Brotherhood of Cain in After Midnight, where things have gone far enough into hell that something that insane would make sense.
  • Zolin Brigade (Bogi Smerti's replacement after its removal), another bandit group led by OTL HotSU-turned-criminal Pyotr Zolin, portrayed as a cynical veteran-turned-bandit.
  • Operationzone Holmgrad, led by Siegfried Grabert and representing the Wehrmacht remnant opposing Backe's puritan SS forces in Pleskau.
  • Red Star United Army, a band of ex-Red Army soldiers who turned to banditry (but kept their aesthetics), commanded by OTL veteran-turned-corrupt bureaucrat Mkhitar Ambartsumyan.
  • Notfallverwaltung Tichwin was originally led by Otto Weidinger, a Freikorps commander and war criminal.
  • Rzhev Autonomy, an autonomous region run by Russian collaborators led by Igor Reshetnikov.
  • Basegi Black Brigades, a group of bandits led by Sergey Protopopov (or in older versions, Vasily Mordakov) who adheres to a social Darwinist philosophy (ideologically classified as fascist).
  • Free Smolensk Revolt, a splinter partisan group from Kovner's UPO in Ostland and led by the Jewish resistance fighter, Simcha Zorin.
  • The Council of the Russian Republic, a clique of non-Nazi Russian collaborators centred around Oryol (or in the first release, Voronezh) led by Mikhail Gorbachev that would seek to turn RK Moskowien into an independent collaborationist Russian Republic. Gorbachev was moved from Moskowien to Russia due to his young age (he would have no plausible opportunity to form his own collaborationist group after the war) and the difficulty of using the organisations that were meant to serve as his subpaths (the National Alliance of Russian Solidarists was generally disliked by the Germans and the Political Centre for the Fight against Bolshevism was quite insignificant in real life).
  • Operationzone Brjansk, controlled by the disgraced and incompetent 50th Corps of the Wehrmacht, and commanded by the equally unremarkable Eberhard Pasternack.
  • Georg von Plettenberg originally led the Operationzone Penza.
  • Operationzone Wolgodonsk, a Wehrmacht clique led by Kurt Andersen, who only joins von Saucken's uprising to advance his station and rank.
  • Reinhard Reche was the original leader of the Operationzone Astrachan, being characterized as a loyalist to the OKW high command over Helldorff's naked power grab.

Ostland

• Abba Kovner's United Partisan Organization was originally genocidally violent, and aimed to utterly destroy Ostland as revenge for the Holocaust. They were toned down to being vengeful but not genocidal in the Ostland rework, as the idea of an anti-Nazi partisan being worse than the people he fought against was rather offensive to the real Kovner.
• Before Kovner and the United Partisan Organization were reworked to go in a less vicious and genocidal direction, they could execute nearly every other contender in Ostland's civil war should they defeat them:
  • Otto-Heinrich Drechsler was originally◊ doused in gasoline and lit on fire.
  • Franz Walter Stahlecker would be captured and made to beg for his life◊ from atop a building, with his pleas for mercy being broadcasted across the entire Reichskommissariat via radio. Needless to say, the UPO shows him no mercy, pushing him off the tower and being sent to his death, with his entire fall being broadcasted as well, complete with a Sickening "Crunch!".
  • Both Andreas Meyer-Landrut and Friedrich Jeckeln would be Torn Apart by the Mob. Jeckeln's death◊ would've involved him being torn apart on live television, Meyer-Landrut's death scene◊ would've taken it a step further by executing the student reformers that sided with him and record their last words just to further torment their victims' families. (Meyer-Landrut is currently the only leader Kovner spares.)
  • Michał Vituška would be the only one to escape the UPO's wrath, having fled Ostland◊ while Kovner's forces were tearing their way through his remaining forces.
• According to several separate dev remarks on discord, Michał Vituška was originally portrayed as an "apolitical strongman" (a massive Historical Hero Upgrade to the real person, who was a Kaminski-level mass murderer and Nazi collaborator), and his old lore painted him as a charismatic super-manipulator who can trick the Germans into giving him power. Both of these depictions appear to be reworked (or are undergoing rework).

Kaukasien

• In old versions, the starting Reichskommissar of Kaukasien is Josias, Prince of Waldeck-Pyrmont, who succeeded Arno Schickedanz after he committed suicide in the West Russian War. In contrast to both the Nazis' actual plans for Kaukasien (which was meant to have the most hands-off administration of any RK) and his own real life counterpart (a moderate by Nazi standards), Josias has adopted the Burgundian System and become one of the most brutal colonial administrators in the Reich, as a result of being tortured to near death by Lavrentiy Beria. After the German Civil War, he could even go so far as to distance himself from Germany entirely and crown himself King of Caucasia (which is likely the reason why the original developers put him, a Nazi Nobleman, in the Caucasus in the first place).
• In the German Civil War, Josias can also be overthrown by Paul Pleiger, an industrialist who adopts a more pragmatic approach of token concessions to the native people so they won't rebel. He has since been moved to Germany proper.

Poland

• Super early RP-based TNO plans featured an RK named "RK Poland", encompassing the Western half of the Second Polish Republic and Königsberg. It was supposed to have been a fully Germanized RK. Officially, it was supposed to represent the Polish territory annexed by Germany, but be playable as a state within the Reich.
  • RK Poland was infamously, and memetically, known for being rendered as "Falangist Poland" in an early teaser, which is the default HOI4 name for Fascist Poland.
• Outdated lore characterized Hans Frank as a comically buffoonish governor who has totally failed to Germanize Poland, yet claimed that Poland was "70% Germanized" in his reports back to Germania. This was later updated so that Frank is a great deal more competent than his original depiction and his administration, while still corrupt and inefficient, is nowhere near as grossly mismanaged as it was once portrayed.
• The Polish Home Army was originally led by Kazimierz Sosnkowski instead of Emil August Fieldorf.

Serbia

• The Serbian collaborationist government was originally led by Milan Aćimović, while the centrist nationalist faction of the Serbian resistance was formerly represented by Borisav Jović. They were replaced by Dimitrije Ljotić and Dobrica Ćosić respectively.
• Originally, when the Serbian resistance rises up, the German garrison, then led by Hartwig von Ludwiger, would take control over the collaborationist government (and will almost always be defeated). In current lore, the government retains primacy over the garrison; initially, Ljotić's immediate successor after his death was Konstantin Mušicki, who now serves as security minister under Ljotić's younger brother Jakov.
• Sepp Janko, who used to be the only option for Reichsprotektor of Prinz-Eugen-Land if Serbia rejoined the Pakt, was replaced by Borivoje Jonić and Milorad Mojić.
• The leader of the Serbian National Liberation Front was changed from Vlada Zečević to Aleksandar Ranković.
• In the original release, the far-right Serbian partisans are represented by the Serbian Homeland Liberation Movement (which forms part of the Serbian National Liberation Front) led by Nikola Kavaja, portrayed as the most ruthless of the Serbian partisans and a terrorist who resorted to any crime to liberate his country. After a lore revision, the SOPO was moved to Croatia and replaced by the Ravna Gora Movement (commonly known as Chetniks) led by Nikola Kalabić, who fight as a third side against both the collaborators and the Serbian National Liberation Front. Since this setup went against the policies of both Nedić and Ljotić of unifying Serbia's national forces and legalising the Chetnik movement, the Chetniks are now depicted as active collaborators; in current lore, there are no far-right partisan factions in Serbia.

Iran

• In the first release, Iran lore before game start is almost identical to real life, with one major difference: the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was transferred from the UK to Germany at the end of World War II (and the coup that ousted Mohammad Mosaddegh after he nationalised it was orchestrated by Germany instead of the US and UK). In current lore, the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran (which deposed Reza Shah in real life) never happened; after World War II, the Shah nationalised the APOC, only to be overthrown by the fascist Azure Party and junior officers with ties to Nazi Germany and Italy. Mosaddegh was also never Prime Minister, and the National Front is not the dominant opposition to the Shah.
• In old versions, Mohammed Reza Shah is assassinated shortly after the Oil Crisis begins, plunging Iran into a civil war between the Pahlavi dynasty (led by the late Shah's wife, who serves as regent for their young son) and an alliance of assorted opposition forces: the Democratic Republic of Iran (pro-USA liberal republicans, led by Karim Sanjabi), the Shahdom of Iran (constitutional monarchists, led by Shapour Bakhtiar, who in real life was a republican and ally of Sanjabi), the Islamic Republic of Iran (pro-Japan Islamists, led by Ruhollah Khomeini), the Socialist Federation of Iran (communists, led by Iraj Eskandari) and the Balochi Liberation Front (led by Sher Mohammad Marri, who was classified as an Islamic Conservative, despite his real life counterpart's Marxist views). If the Pahlavis are defeated, the revolutionary alliance will collapse; the Balochs will peace out and declare independence, while the other factions declare war on each other until only one is left. The entire civil war, alongside these paths, was removed because it doesn't make sense (Iran, much like in real life, would benefit from the Oil Crisis).

Denmark

• Old lore had the Departementschefstyret (led by Werner Best, a Punch-Clock Villain who was open to compromise and opposed to the Holocaust) still in place and ruling Denmark by 1962; in current lore, it was abolished and democracy was restored in 1952.
• Following the German Civil War, Best would be succeeded by a number of possible figures:
  • Nils Svenningsen, a diplomat who wishes to restore democracy to Denmark.
  • Hermann von Hanneken, leader of the Wehrmacht garrison who may lead a coup to ensure Denmark remains a satellite state to Germany.
  • Knud Børge Martinsen, a Danish collaborator who will remain loyal to the Reich, but keep Denmark independent from them.
• Old versions had Germany reclaim Northern Schleswig, whose predominantly-Danish population voted to secede from Germany and join Denmark in a plebiscite in 1920, even though in real life Hitler himself considered it part of Denmark instead of Germany, the only territorial loss that the Nazis accepted (the Denmark developer attributes this to 'devs mappainting').
• The starting leader of the Social Democrats and prime minister of Denmark was changed from Jens Otto Krag to Viggo Kampmann.

Other

• In old lore, OTL communist Alexander Dubček was going to be a potential fascist leader of Slovakia, who would liberalize the country in a program called "National Socialism with a human face".^note Amusingly enough, the "National Socialism with a human face" focus made its return in the German facelift.
• Before Europas Narben, where Reich/Eastern Europe interactions will be overhauled, Fuhrer Speer's interactions in Eastern Europe involved first reintegrating the RK territories as military governorates, then reorganizing them into either semi-independent countries (reformist) or into Reichslands (conservative). The Reichslands would be goverened by native collaborators and had no active Germanization efforts, but they're still considered fully integral components of the Reich and involved German colonialism through more insidious avenues.
• In older versions, the chaos following Hitler's death in Eastern Europe involve copious amounts of infighting between Germans (all of which has since been cut), whether these be rival factions within a RK or the Reich invading and subjugating dissidents after the succession crisis at home wraps up.
• The Romanian-Hungarian War, fought over the disputed territory of Northern Transylvania (which was in Hungarian hands by the end of World War II, but is considered by the Romanian constitution to be its integral territory), was pushed from the 1950s (before the game's timeframe, ending with Romania taking back Northern Transylvania and both countries expelled from the Pakt) to the 1960s (within the game's first decade, as a conflict that the player can influence).
• In the original release, Romania starts the game under a provisional government led by King Michael I. In current lore, Romania is led by the National Peasants' Party under Ion Mihalache (who replaces Dumitru Dămăceanu as Prime Minister), the most functional liberal democracy within the Pakt.
• Reichskommissariat Pazifik, a Reichskommissariat that could only be formed through a successful War Plan C, use to have PinkPanzer (as Lonely Knightess was known at the time) herself as Reichskommissar as an Easter Egg Creator Cameo. Following an unidentified patch, the cameo has since been replaced with Otto Ernst Remer taking the role as Reichskommissar.
• In old versions, Hungary's Regent by game start is Béla Imrédy, who now serves as Prime Minister under István Horthy.
• Western Banat and Transnistria used to be annexed into Romania before the former became a Serbian territory and the latter became its own country tag.
• In old lore, Slovakia retook the southern territories they lost to Hungary in the First Vienna Award and Little War. Now, Hungary owns these lands.

America and the OFN

The United States of America

• Robert F. Kennedy used to be able to resign from office, letting his Vice President Hubert Humphrey become the new President. In the final game, the only person who can replace RFK as the president mid-term is Strom Thurmond due to both RFK and Vice President William Guy dying after an assassination with Strom blackmailing the the Speaker of the House in order to ascend to the presidency.
• The US used to be able to support Hồ Chí Minh and the Viet Minh in their struggle for independence from the Empire of Japan. This was later cut, because the US would have a very difficult time sending aid to Vietnamese partisans through Sphere-controlled waters.
• The Falklands Islands was originally an occupied territory of the United States before it was later given to Canada, which houses the British government-in-exile from Europe.
• Commented out events details the development of A New Hope involving 20th Century Fox and George Lucas negotiating with the Italian government to get permission to film in Tunisia (where the Tatooine scenes were filmed in our world). Depending on America's relations with Italy, the Italian government can either grant them permission to film in Tunisia◊ or deny their requests◊, forcing a script rewrite that, among other details, has Skywalker born on the tropical Yavin 4 due to having to film in Guatemala instead.
  The aforementioned events, along with two more that detail the impact of the New Hope filmed in Tunisia◊ or the one filmed in Guatemala◊, were scrapped due to filming not having begun until March of 1976, well past TNO's current timeframe. The events also have not been updated to keep up with new developments in the lore, such as mentioning Tunisia being an Italian colony^note Which was later reworked into an Italian puppet state with Toolbox Theory. and Goring's Sun Gun^note A piece of old lore that only served as a Brick Joke for one of Oskar Dirlewanger's deaths..
• The original reason for the United States' weaker position in World War II was because Franklin Delano Roosevelt's campaign for the New Deal was compared unfavorably to Bukharin's disastrous New Economic Plan, meaning he never rose to political prominence and Herbert Hoover won a second term by a hair's breadth. As such, Joseph P. Kennedy was the Democratic candidate who was elected in 1936, where he had a more limited response to the Great Depression and preached isolationism in World War II. This left the United States ill-prepared to fight the Axis when it did join the conflict and contributed to the Allies' ultimate defeat. As part of an overall reworking of the United States' political landscape, the lore was changed so that the point of divergence for America was Roosevelt's adherence to the two-term limit under the assumption that Harry Hawkins would continue the New Deal, the discovery of Hawkins' stomach cancer inducing his loss, and a victorious Thomas Dewey's neutering of the New Deal and of Roosevelt's attempts to bring America out of isolationism. Dewey's counterproductive policies subsequently led to defeat in World War II.
• In very early development, Lyndon LaRouche was a potential Presidential candidate for the NPP, who would jump to a different NPP faction (from left-wing to right-wing) every election.
• The partisan politics in the United States were drastically changed:
  • Originally, the Axis victory under two Democratic presidents (Joseph P. Kennedy and Harry S. Truman) led to the collapse of their party, leading most of their remnants to defect to the Republican Party to form the new Republican-Democratic Party. Meanwhile, the National Progressive Party rose up as an anti-establishment faction opposed to the R-Ds, retaining the two-party system in the United States. This was later changed so that the Democratic Party is still alive and only in a coalition with the Republicans, while the National Progressive Party was split into fourteen separate parties working in a similar partnership (now called the National Progressive Pact), meaning that there are technically sixteen political parties now.
  • Due to the absence of the New Deal it was originally stated that the Democrats never became more liberal and the Republicans more conservative, supposedly like in OTL around 1964 after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. As a result, in this iteration, the Republicans represented the liberal wing for the R-Ds, while the Democrats represented the conservative wing. However, this arrangement failed to acknowledge that the Republicans had a dominant conservative wing even before the New Deal with Calvin Coolidge being president, and eventually the relationship became as it is OTL when the lore was reworked (though with an added level of nuance; rather than simply being divided by liberal-or-conservative lines, the Democrats - with their precursor social liberals in the form of the Labor Democrats and their segregationist Dixiecrats - represent the radical wing of the coalition, while the Republicans - with Rockefeller's comparative moderate liberals and Goldwater's libertarian "natural conservatives" - represent the moderates). Related to this, while in older lore the Southern Democrats have all defected to the FR-NPP, in current lore some have stayed with and remain influential within the Democratic Party (though both potential Dixiecrat presidents are in the NPP).
• Astronaut turned senator John Glenn was originally a Republican presidential candidate during the 1968 elections (again predating the reworked partisan mechanics, so he was the liberal candidate in contrast to Barry Goldwater). He would've focused on a mixture of social welfare programs, appointing scientific and political experts in a vaguely technocratic system, and, naturally, the Space Race, including potentially overseeing the Ares program and a manned mission to Mars. He also focused on trying to "win" the Cold War through nuclear escalation, trying to create such a stockpile of weapons that any attempt at war would result in Mutually Assured Destruction, potentially even to the point of attempting nuclear piracy on the other superpowers, which could work to reduce tensions but could also catastrophically backfire, meaning he was actually pretty likely to cause a thermonuclear war despite not otherwise being very hawkish. He was replaced with Philip Hart by the Unfinished Business expansion from Toolbox Theory, both because plans are being made to expand Space Race mechanics and make them more independent of individual presidents, and because some of the creative team considered his content mediocre in quality and unfitting to his real-life self. (One described him as a "lackluster IRL Atari Dem who was a corrupt party stooge and deficit hawk who opposed social spending, and someone who couldn't give a speech to save his own life.")
• In 1972, many of the possible presidents were changed or switched around:
  • Jeane Kirkpatrick was originally the candidate of the NPP-FR^note the original name for the Nationalist caucus of the NPP before she was moved to the Democratic Party and replaced by Phyllis Schlafly. Ironically, her actual policy decisions didn't change that much; she was already an NPP "compromise candidate" in the mold of Margaret Chase Smith, marrying progressive social values and social welfare to her harsh, warhawk attitude to represent the interests of both the NPP-FR and NPP-P.
  • George McGovern was the original Republican (back when they represented the liberal wing of the R-Ds) nominee, who ran on a platform of increased social programs and attempted pacifism to prevent further unnecessary casualties around the globe and limit the influence of the military-industry complex, although his initial content also involved reaffirming commitments to defent OFN treaty allies. When the developers reworked the American parties and the 1972 election, they couldn't find a place for McGovern (it was felt the most plausible anti-interventionist movements in an Axis victory scenario would stem from leftist or paleoconservative isolationism, and supporting outright pacifism would be downright idiotic), so they opted to move Kirkpatrick into his spot as the liberal candidate (since she was being replaced by Schlafly in the NPP anyway) and save him as a future president for 70's content. Amusingly, this became a Development Gag in a teaser◊ that mentions McGovern attempted to run in 1972, but was beaten out by the Kirkpatrick, whether due to a lack of focus in his campaign or Kirkpatrick's willingness to play up her hawkish and brutal side to a bloodthirsty voting base. (Hunter S. Thompson opines the latter.)
  • Robert McNamara was the original Democratic (back when they represented the conservative wing of the R-Ds) nominee, acting as a ruthless pragmatist who prioritized objective results over any moral code or political concerns and preparing to engage in dubious actions for the good of the OFN. He was replaced with George Romney, who is much more closely aligned to Bennett's brand of "don't rock the boat" conservatism, because it was felt that the real life McNamara had neither the charisma nor the ambition to attempt to become president in his own right and the 1972 elections already had three militaristic presidents.
• The original design philosophy of the communist and fascist caucuses of the NPP was that they both were equally evil, since neither supports capitalist democracy or sees America's institutions as sacrosanct, even though their actual intentions and policies couldn't be more different. The developers' efforts to force a negative perception of the communists and aggressively ban any so-called 'Hall apologists' from the Discord server weren't particularly well-received by players and other team members alike (including non-communists), and in some cases veered close to apologia for segregationists (who were clearly the worst non-radical options for America). The current policy is that the communist presidents can be perceived as good or bad (depending on your own values), like the moderate ones can (the only unambiguously bad things about them beyond the actual policies and pitfalls every president has are that they can only be elected if America is utterly screwed up and they will lose the Cold War); only the fascist presidents are completely evil.
• Related to the above, Gus Hall's initial 100-day tree originally featured him starting a Lavender Scare as an excuse to purge FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. This was cut for being contrived at best (Hoover died in May 1972 in real life, Hall takes office in January 1973, and the President can simply dismiss the FBI director as he desires) and offensive at worst (in real life, the people that would make up Hall's support base were the victims of the Lavender Scare, which was used by the American establishment to silence left-wing dissidents). As one writer put it, it was fabricated out of whole cloth to make Hall somehow morally equivalent to Yockey (an actual neo-Nazi). It was replaced with Gus Hall dealing with the FBI's refusal to play ball with him by airing their dirty laundry on live television and mixing in some personal theories that they were behind the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X to incite massive riots and destroy the FBI's power, a better indicator of the consequences of his unfettered and uncompromising approach to government and to American institutions that stand in his way.
• Robert F. Kennedy’s Vice President was originally Hubert Humphrey (who, in current lore, has stayed in the Democratic Party instead of leaving to join the Progressives) before he was replaced by William L. Guy.
• A list of other presidential candidates that were considered to replace Glenn before Hart was chosen was given on Discord, these candidates included Hubert Humphrey (who plays a significant role in Hart's storyline), Walter Reuther (who also plays a big role in Hart's content), Edmund Muskie (who currently serves as LBJ's Vice President), Sargent Shriver, Abraham Ribicof, Chep Morrison (who is Hart's Vice President) and Richard Daley. Philip Hart was ultimately chosen as he was the best fit for the policy goals the developer wanted to explore in America's content.

Canada

• Pierre Trudeau was originally meant to be a potential Prime Minister of Canada before being cut.
• One of Canada's national spirits would've addressed their Native Reservations and the horrid living conditions that the Native Americans were subjected to, which would've induced several gameplay debuffs. It would've even been a significant subject in Canadian politics, where the Liberals would've wanted to strengthen efforts to "integrate" the Native Americans and the Tories wanted to cut funding for such efforts. While this discrimination is still shown via in-game events and can be affected by the player, this specific spirit was later removed for being anachronistic, because the mistreatment of Native Americans was an issue largely ignored by the public during the 1960's.

Other

• Iceland was originally portrayed as not even an independent country, but an occupation zone ruled directly by the local US Army garrison, who invaded the country in the aftermath of World War II. In current lore, the Republic of Iceland is de jure independent, albeit with a 'special' relationship with the US that allows American troops to occupy its territory and appropriate large parts of its resources.
• The US Administration of Iceland could originally launch a program called "Civilian Outreach and Opportunities for Labor" or COOL for short as part of a plan to increase the fading popularity of their military regime. Meant to make the United States Forces in Iceland attractive among the youth, its description and lore invokes Totally Radical and had a very familiar cat as a mascot, with dev statements implying that the total cheesiness of the COOL propaganda would give rise to this world's first modern memes. In the final game, Iceland has no focus tree.
• All of the Guianas used to be ruled by the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, an apartheid, sham democracy led by Forbes Burnham, who abused his power to arrest hundreds of his critics and execute dozens more. After a few months from the game's start, the United States would invade to remove him from power out of concern that his authoritarianism with the backing of the OFN would threaten the PR of the Nixon administration, replacing him with the exiled former President Cheddi Jagan. More significantly, it would lead to John F. Kennedy's assassination by a Guyanese nationalist and contribute to the subsequent political crisis in the United States. In a later update, the intervention was completely removed; Guyana now has the same territory as real life, is still a dominion of the exiled United Kingdom and starts as a more genuine democracy.
• Australia initially started out as a republic, having abolished its monarchy after Britain was conquered by Germany during World War II; in the current version, the monarchy is still in place as of 1962. Its starting Prime Minister was also changed from Harold Holt to Kim Beazley Sr.

Japan and the Co-Prosperity Sphere

Japan

• Ino Hiroya was the former starting Prime Minister before he was replaced by Funada Naka. He has since been relegated to Minister of Justice under PM Kishi Nobusuke.
• Initially, the Economic Wars event and the Yasuda crisis would've occurred a few months after the outbreak of the German Civil War. Current versions of the mod featured the event occurring a few months prior to the civil war instead.
• One Japan teaser showed a Liberal Democratic path for Japan under General and Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni; according to official dev lore clarifications, his portrayal as a liberal is inaccurate to reality, who was a militarist but was "liberal" in comparison to the other generals, and had dovish foreign policies. In Toolbox Theory, Higashikuni was reworked into the leader for the Palace Coup path, and will dismantle Japanese democracy to institute an Imperial dictatorship, before the coup itself was cut in the rework.
• The Japan dev diary and later teasers showed paths for Ikeda Masanosuke, Takagi Sōkichi, Kaya Okinori, Kido Kōichi, Konoe Fumimaro, Tanaka Kakuei, and a hidden figure (separately revealed on Discord much later as Ryōichi Sasakawa◊). In the original release, only Ikeda and Takagi's paths were implemented (with Kaya's being added later on); in current lore, only Kaya, Konoe and Tanaka can become PM.
  • Ikeda Masanosuke was the status-quo candidate who takes over Ino's faction after the latter's disgraceful resignation. His path largely focused on making Boring, but Practical reforms to clean up the corrupt legacy of the Ino administration, while still preserving the Sphere's corporatist, colonial system. Like Ino, he's now instead a potential minister.
  • Takagi Sōkichi was the reformist successor to Ino, fighting for more leniency towards Japan's satellite states (albeit while still supporting Japanization and Japanese colonialism), anti-corruption reforms, and passing more civil liberties for the average Japanese citizen. In the reworked lore, he's just a retired admiral and his role is inherited by Kōno Ichirō.
  • In the first release, Kaya Okinori was the more hardline PM candidate, characterized as the leader of the Reform Bureaucrats (ideologically classified as National Socialist), then recharacterized into the leader of the YSK technocrats (ideologically Despotist, with Paternalist New Bureaucrat and Fascist Reform Bureaucrat sub-factions) in TT, where he could build a strong, if still quite authoritarian Japan through his pragmatic and technocratic reforms, then either try to make Fukuda Takeo the new prime minister, implied to be the better choice, or side with/lose control to Kishi and see him replaced by Shiina Etsusaburō of the Reform Bureaucrat faction. In the Japan rework, he is no longer an option at the start, having already left the reins of his clique to his protégé Ikeda Hayato, and only takes charge after Ikeda's untimely death.
  • Kido Kōichi, a disgraced former prime minister in the old lore, would've focused on reforming the Japanese civilian government by unifying the Yokusankai and reducing the military's influence. His playthrough would've essentially been a Timed Mission, as his agenda is incredibly divisive within the Diet and the military, giving him a limited window to enact his reforms before the government loses patience with him. Kido has since been cut as Prime Minister, since it made no sense for him to resign as Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal to become Prime Minister (a less powerful and much less stable position).
  • The focus tree for Ryōichi Sasakawa, the secret prime minister for Japan, implies that he would've implemented drastic economic reforms to curb the influence of the Zaibatsu and implement a social market economic system.
• At release, the failure of the Dai Li Conspiracy and the Gekokujo crisis infamously resulted in Order 44, where Reform Bureaucrat hardliner leader Kishi Nobusuke leads a clique of vaguely-defined "National Purists" (ideologically Ultranationalist, practically composed of super-hardliners and opportunists willing to be fellow-travellers with them) to coup the government, purge his rivals, and massacre all dissenters, paving the way for the entire Japanese empire to be put under the same brutal thumb as the Manchurian system. This portrayal is considered to be too over-the-top for Kishi, and was cut and replaced with the IJA and Palace Coup events, with Kishi becoming the grey eminence for Kaya's technocrats, and the economy minister under his ally Mutō Akira (leader of the IJA coup, and formerly Kishi's security minister). When Japan was later reworked, his role once again changed: after his failure to recreate the Manchurian experiment in Guangdong, he was forced to resign as Prime Minister in disgrace, and can only become politically relevant again if Kōno Ichirō dismantles the YSK. The IJA coup has also been removed with the rework, due to the mischaracterisation of Mutō himself (who was very loyal to the YSK and anti-coup in real life) and the IJA in general (who never truly cared about taking over the government)—and because throughout the Empire of Japan's lifespan, no cabinet was toppled through violence.
• The Kempeitai originally served as Japan's intelligence agency, which was later deemed historically inaccurate and replaced with the Daihonei Tokumu Soukanbu. They do still serve as the military police in several places, notably Guangdong.

China

• In very early builds of the mod, most of China was largely controlled by a Japanese colonial government called "Shina" ^note  "Shina" was a Japanese name referring to China and is now considered a derogatory term for it , later◊ renamed "Chūgoku◊"^note The Japanese reading of the Chinese characters for China; it's the standard way China is referred to in Japanese today., while China proper was relegated to the northeastern territories below Manchuria, though both were officially considered a part of the same nation.
• Initially, the President of the collaborationist Republic of China by game start was Gao Zongwu, a closet nationalist only collaborating with Japan to gain enough power and resources to modernize the Chinese economy, government, and military enough to launch the Great Asian War and overthrow Japanese hegemony so that China could be free; he is now the Minister of Foreign Affairs under Lin Bosheng and, while still a reformist and nationalist, much less insubordinate, at least to start with, intending to try to work within the system to realize the stated goals of pan-Asianism rather than letting China languish as a Japanese colony.
• In the original release, the Sichuan clique led by Tian Songyao, which split from Xikang in the lore to side with Japan but failed to conquer them completely, controls the whole province. It was initially cut (with Sichuan being represented as a demilitarised territory of the RGOC), then re-added but only controls the western half of Sichuan.
• Fu Zuoyi was originally a Dirty Coward with no set ideology, after he grew disillusioned with the Kuomintang and betrayed them during the Battle of Xian when he surrendered it to Japan (mirroring how he defected to the Communist Party of China by surrendering Beijing to them historically). He was later reworked into a Kuomintang loyalist who only agreed to become The Quisling to Japan so that he could secure safe passage for his comrades out of the Japanese occupied territories and continue their war for China's liberation.
• Gansu was changed from an IJA-occupied territory (led by Tsuji Masanobu) to a military garrison of the collaborationist Reorganised Government of China. In very early versions, it was called "Hui"; presumably, it was supposed to be a nation state for China's Hui Muslims (in the same vein as Manchuria) established under Japanese pan-Asianism that eventually degraded into Tsuji's warlord state.
• The lore of Yunnan and the Western Insurrection was overhauled in the Toolbox Theory update:
  • Lu Han was characterized as a shameless Japanese collaborator, who took joy in the wealth he could extract from enslaving the people of Yunnan, in addition to betraying Long Yun to get into Japan's good graces, only keeping him alive and torturing his cousin out of a twisted sense of familial obligation. Since this portrayal was seen as an unjustified Historical Villain Upgrade of the real Lu Han, his personality was reworked into a reluctant dictator who only collaborates with the Japanese out of a belief that future resistance was futile.
  • Long Yun was originally written as a complete madman, who slaughtered anyone who had even remotely worked with the Japanese while ordering the mass destruction of all Japanese culture, impressed all non-Japanese foreigners into penal battalions, executed his cousin Lu Han for his betrayal, and was bizarrely described with Christian imagery. He would engage in extremely self-destructive industrialization and militarization in a desperate, mad dash to liberate China from Japanese control that was described as even more destructive than the usual Great Asian War would be, and would perish if his campaign stalled out, he was utterly defeated, his general turned on him, or he managed to push the Japanese back to their core territories. He's since been massively toned down, to the point of having the option to de-escalate his Ultramilitarist revolt to a Despotic republic, and potentially even to an implementation of Chinese democracy, and his lore was expanded with him working with other Chinese remnants in an actual Great Asian War. Further, the original Long Yun was treated in the narrative as a Walking Spoiler who only appears midway in a Yunnan playthrough after escaping from prison, whereas he's now the deputy of Lu Han and an NPA sympathizer from the get-go before he rebels.
• Mongolia was originally split between the People's Revolutionary Council, Mengjiang, and the Mongolian People's Front (formerly Tsagaan Mongol Ulus), a native-led rebellion spearheaded by Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal. The latter two would start out at war with each other, with the Front usually crushed by Mengjiang thanks to Japan's aid, after which Mengjiang would then try to invade the PRC without it. Depending on how the conflict goes, the PRC could end up keeping western Mongolia in case of a victory and ceasefire, try to take all of Mengjiang but call in the entire Sphere in a conflict they had little hope of winning, or be beaten back to Tannu Tuva if they were defeated. Now, Mengjiang controls all of Mongolia.
• When Long Yun was portrayed as a bloodthirsty maniac waging a brutal retaliatory war against Japan, the NRA 24th Army (based in Xikang) had a small focus tree◊ of how to approach the conflict, whether launching a preemptive strike or adopting a defensive stance. Following Long Yun's recharacterization, the NRA 24th Army became one of the easier warlords to convince to join the Western Insurrection.
• The anti-RGOC warlord based in Qinghai used to be known as NRA 40th Army Group (commonly called Ma Clique) and led by Ma Jiyuan, before being recharacterised into a broader front of Chinese resistance forces.

Guangdong

• Guangdong was a "Special Administrative Region" in older lore, but was upgraded to a de jure and de facto independent state in later lore.
• When designing the PTRG's products and interventions, the idea of the companies designing early "mechs" based of 1960s exoskeletons to test in the Iberian Wars was joked about on the team, and became seriously considered when an artist made a 3D model for them. This was cut before release, due to the changing scope of Japan's involvement in the Iberian Wars.
• According to a developer for Guangdong, one subplot that was cut from Guangdong's content involved Yuan Geng (in OTL, a Shenzhen-based CPC war hero and spy who would become a state-backed entrepreneur and major proponent of Deng Xiaoping's market reforms) as a spy sent to Guangdong by Communist Party of China remnants who would eventually go onto to form his own company and build up Shenzhen with it, while also preparing for the Great Asian War. Yuan would find his loyalties conflicted as the story went on and he was even meant to be able to take over Guangdong in TNO2, having his own portraits. The subplot was eventually cut due to lack of resources.

Malaya

• Before the Nanpo Gunseikan was conceived in the lore, the Syonan government used to own all of North Borneo.
• Malaya was originally under the total control of the Japanese colonial government, led by Sultan Ibrahim of Johor, a Japanese collaborator who served as a Puppet King to them. He would later pass from natural causes and be replaced by Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien III, whom would enact reforms to turn Malaya into a Conservative Democracy led by Tunku Abdul Rahman.
• Originally, after the Japanese collaborators win the Malayan Emergency and hold elections, Dato Onn Jaafar was meant to be the conservatives' initial candidate (despite having died in OTL at the start of 1962) before dying and being succeeded by Syed Jaafar Albar, who now leads the conservatives from the start.

Indonesia

• Indonesia was originally led by Kumakichi Harada, the OTL head of the IJA's 16th army. In old lore, Kumakichi grew tired of governing Indonesia and Japan refused to let him retire, driving him into indulging in vices, like drinking and gambling. Sukarno meanwhile was a resistance fighter opposing Japanese rule and was the leader of Free Indonesia before, ironically, being turned into The Quisling for Japan in later builds.
• During development, the Indonesian War was going to start in 1963, but it was later changed so that this conflict starts in the mid-1960's, around the time that the Republic of Indonesia completes its initial focus tree.
• The Indonesian War was initially a two-sided civil war between Sukarno's loyalists and Suharto's resistance before it was changed to a multi-sided conflict.
• Sukarno's descent into dictatorship was originally motivated to stop terrorism from plaguing the country and would be authorized early in the game with Decree 01/62. In the overhauled skeleton content, his descent was changed to a mid-game event and would occur after a failed coup against him.

Thailand

• In older versions, Thailand was still ruled by a constitutional monarchy (with Rama IX only appearing briefly as in-game leader after Plaek Phibunsongkhram's death). In current lore, after his coup, Plaek abolished the monarchy, which now doesn't have any role to play in the story.
• Sarit Thanarat was originally one of Plaek's three potential successors (despite having died of natural causes before Plaek did in real life), serving as a mild Internal Reformist between the more conservative Thanom and the more radical Thawan. He was later replaced by Chatichai Choonhavan.
• Pramarn Adireksarn was originally used to be taken over Chatichai Choonhavan by "revolutionary nationalism."(Post-Oil Crisis, he was replaced later by making Chatichai a puppet instead of taking over him.

Burma

• Dummied out (and probably cut) localizations for the Shan State breakway in Burma suggested the existence of an Ultranationalist path for the Shan state, under the leadership of Chinese KMT general Li Mi (who in OTL led an extremely messy KMT holdout in Burma in the 50s that eventually decayed into a warlord narco state). Li Mi is now the Economy Minister for the National Protection Army.
• Super-old TNO maps indicated that Burma originally annexed the Assam regions of Bengal, Arunachal Pradesh, and western Yunnan.
• Ne Win was originally characterized as a Bamar ultranationalist who would've been classified as National Socialist in-game.
• The former leader of Burma was Ba Maw, portrayed as a deeply unpopular and incompetent figurehead to the Japanese.
• In early builds of the mod, Burma could fall into a very complicated civil war, as a result of ethnic minority uprisings.

Philippines

• The Philippines used to remain whole under the Second Philippine Republic, led by Benigno Aquino Jr., a former journalist who in TNO became President because his father was previously held the office and the Japanese rigged the election in his favor. In power, Benigno would have to contend with balancing the interests of the rebels, hacienderos, zaibatsus, and other factions that threaten to tear apart his country. This was presumably cut as it would have been a serious Historical Villain Upgrade for Benigno Aquino Jr, who was historically a major advocate of democracy in the Philippines and opponent of the Marcos Dictatorship. In TT, Aquino Jr. now only appears as the Speaker of the House of Representatives if KALIBAPI wins the civil war.
• The initial version of the pro-US faction in the Philippine War is the United States Forces in the Philippines, remnants of the old garrison, led by US Colonel Wendell Fertig, who have since gone underground and can either become an actual country (the Free Philippine Republic) or an OFN mandate after victory. It now starts off as the Free Philippine Republic.

Vietnam

• In outdated lore, Hồ Chí Minh was depicted as a Confucian socialist (classified in-game under Liberalism) who advocated for class collaboration (which is a very liberal interpretation of his actual political views).
• Ngô Đình Diệm was originally depicted in Development Diary XI as a brutal and devout Catholic that wanted to mold Vietnam into a nation like the German Reich or Italy, his ideals being called National Socialism with Vietnamese characteristics. The most notorious part of Diệm was his ability to turn Vietnam into a narco state◊ where opium, straight heroin, cocaine and crystal meth all become Vietnam's main exports and could potentially cause a heroin epidemic across Southeast Asia.
• Another path described in the dev diary involved Nguyễn Tôn Hoàn, who would try to reform Vietnam from an agrarian backwater into a modern democracy and attempt a (comparatively) peaceful resolution to the communist insurgency by convincing individual rebels to defect and potentially arresting Hồ Chí Minh in a meeting.
• Vietnam was originally portrayed as an absolute monarchy, with Emperor Bảo Đại being a Puppet King who is only used by the Japanese as a tool to justify their oversight of the country, and Prime Minister Phan Huy Quát (who has since been replaced by Vũ Ngọc Anh) being an ineffectual politician who could do nothing against the communist insurgency until he's assassinated a few months after game start.

Laos

• In the original release, Laos starts the game as a republic led by Souvanna Phouma (a rather standard liberal) and was planned to feature three paths under Souvanna Phouma, Souphanouvong (a socialist who loves Japan for some reason, in contrast to the actual Souphanouvong) and Boun Oum Na Champassak (a monarchist who can overthrow the republic with the help of the CIA and French remnants). The current Laos developer has said that his predecessor 'understood literally nothing about the nation whatsoever and made up content plans presumably using hallucinogenic drugs'.

Kampuchea

• The first setup for Kampuchea is a monarchy under King Sihanouk, who can consolidate his power or be overthrown by Lon Nol's military coup, a socialist revolution led by Tou Samouth, or a republican rebellion under Sơn Ngọc Thành (who either becomes a dictator or holds elections depending on whether the Việt Minh is successful or not). The new setup (a republic under President Thành and Prime Minister Ieu Koeus) more accurately reflects the legacy of the Empire of Japan's ambitions and proxies in Indochina, instead of being just real life with minor changes.

The Triumvirate

• Originally, it was possible for Italy to keep the Triumvirate together, which was described in a dev diary as a Herculean task. Now, the Triumvirate is doomed to collapse, no matter what the player does.

Italy

• Original lore stated that Benito Mussolini welcomed thousands of Jewish refugees escaping the Holocaust as a jab towards Adolf Hitler and Germany. This was later retconned.
• If a Göring-led Germany successfully invades◊ Italy, the Iberian Union and Turkey would've swept in to take some of their colonial territory, Libya would've gained independence, and Italy itself would've been divided between the pro-German Italian Social Republic and a southern rump state, Mezzorgiorino. This outcome was removed from the released version.
• In a cut route, Italy could've formed an alliance with Burgundy to invade◊ Germany and some more overseas territories without inciting nuclear war.
• Galeazzo Ciano, Il Duce of Italy, was originally depicted as a disillusioned fascist who now seeks to bring back democracy to Italy with King Umberto II's support, believing that fascism has failed his country. Before leaving office, he would secretly order General Giovanni de Lorenzo to protect Italy's nascent democracy by launching a military coup named Piano Solo against radicals who would destroy it. His current portrayal is more accurate to what the real Ciano was: a very committed fascist and a somewhat incompetent politician. The man responsible for restoring democracy is now King Umberto, who deposes him after Ciano focuses his energies on dealing with his internal fascist opposition, and the Piano Solo coup has since been removed.
• The original iteration of a democratic Kingdom of Italy was essentially a transplanted version of the contemporary real life Italian Republic, which fails to account for the different circumstances of democratic restoration and the influence of the monarchy—which was glossed over by making King Umberto II an ideal constitutional monarch, who does not exercise actual power and fully respects the will of the elected government, and is beloved to the point that even republican parties have to work with him, since advocating for a republic is political suicide. In current lore, liberal democratic Italy has been reworked to resemble the pre-Mussolini days: Umberto's coup is more of a power grab against the PNF and not motivated by any genuine anti-fascist sentiments (seeing how he himself sympathised with fascism in real life); he then restores the old constitution, which allows him to frequently meddle in politics to thwart socialist parties—and the abolition of the monarchy is now possible and an overall good thing for Italy. On a related note, the Piazza Fontana bombing and the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro, two real events imported into TNO, have also been removed.
• Carlo Scorza used to be the only person who could succeed Ciano as Duce of Italy if the country remained fascist, who can adopt a wide range of Fascist policies ranging from the reactionary to the Futurist. He now only serves as caretaker Duce, when the Quadrumvirate (Alessandro Pavolini, Italo Balbo, Ettore Muti and Niccolò Giani) are busy eliminating each other after ousting Ciano. According to the developers, this was done because Scorza was a relatively unimportant politician in real life, and the fact that he was the only potential Duce meant that he needs to be a blank slate that can do anything and everything; in contrast, each member of the Quadrumvirate can be more easily developed as a character.
• Pietro Nenni would try to hold a referendum to turn Italy into a republic after winning elections within the newly democratic Italy. It would always fail, with Umberto II being one of the most beloved pro-democratic figures in Italy. The socialists would then have the option to try to dismantle the armed forces and smear the king as a homosexual while forcing a second referendum on the issue; this would lead to Lorenzo's Piano Solo coup.
• Cut and/or replaced Prime Minister candidates of a democratic Kingdom of Italy include:
  • Enrico Berlinguer (a communist who can get elected into power in a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and reform the country towards socialism; the developers later decided that since everything that allowed him to rise to prominence wouldn't happen in TNO, he's now just another deputy)
  • Giuseppe Saragat (leader of the Italian Democratic Reformist Party, which was deemed too minor to be electable)
  • Marco Pannella (a progressive liberal who formed the Radical Party after splitting from the Italian Liberal Party; in TNO, there's too little time after the restoration of 'democracy' for such a development to happen)
  • Ugo La Malfa (leader of the real life Italian Republican Party, who couldn't enter progressive politics due to the fascist dictatorship)
  • Amintore Fanfani (the most centrist Christian democrat, replaced by Carlo Donat-Cattin)
  • Achille Lauro (candidate of the Monarchist National Party, replaced by Alfredo Covelli)
  • Giorgio Almirante (initial leader of the fascist National Front)
• Albania, Montenegro and Tunisia were originally integral parts of the Kingdom of Italy, before being changed to nominally independent puppets.
• Muti was originally designed as a trap path doomed to fail, but when his unique ideology of Sansepolcrismo was created, this was changed so that he could succeed, albeit with much difficulty.
• Fernando Mezzasoma was the original "radical Duce" of the Quadrumvirate before he was replaced by Giani because the developers liked the latter's planned content better.
• If Italy transitions into a liberal democracy, the big tent Christian democratic party and the far-right party formed by former low-ranking National Fascist Party members were originally named Christian Democracy and Italian Social Movement, the same names they had in real life. The former was renamed to Italian People's Party (its name in the 20s, before the point of divergence) due to the different circumstances in which it is (re)formed; the latter to National Front since its namesake, the Italian Social Republic (the second incarnation of the Fascist Italian state), never existed in an Axis victory timeline.
• If Italy undergoes a socialist revolution, it was originally planned to feature nine leaders, three of whom were cut due to lack of planning and resources: Laura Conti (an eco-socialist influenced by Antonio Gramsci), Arrigo Cervetto (who adheres to a combination of anarchism and Marxism) and one whom the developers haven't shared.
• The Battle of Italy (a shadow war of influence between the US and Japan that ends in Italy and all of its satellites joining the victor's faction) was cut because there are no real pro-America factions in Italy (the Italian Liberal Party, the one closest to the US, still prefers Japan), but not even the most pro-Japan groups actually want to join the Sphere.
• A Yugoslavia teaser apparently showed Montenegro seceding from Yugoslavia, while both countries (it is unclear who leads who) are under partisans Andrija Hebrang and Josip Broz Tito (both Croats, for what it's worth). No dev explanation have been provided for the exact circumstances behind this strange setup.

Iberia

• In early game files, the Portuguese Civil War used to involve four contenders: the stratocratic Government of National Salvation (which is responsible for instigating the war), the moderate fascist Portuguese State (which was cut before release), the liberal Portuguese Provisional Republic and the communist Portuguese People's Republic. Currently, it is a two-sided war between monarchists and opposition figures who bandwagon on republicanism.
• In an old Iberian Wars teaser, the leaders of the Basque Republic and the Portuguese Provisional Republic are Carlos Garaikoetxea and and Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho respectively.
  • The same teaser also shows what seems to be an Iberian remnant on the Balearic Islands (apparently named Iberian Admiralty in the game files), led by Francoist admiral Luis Carrero Blanco.
  • In the teaser, Admiral Fernando de Quintanilha e Mendonça Dias, the leader of the Gibraltar Dam Zone, gave himself the extremely long title of "Lord Protector of the Gibraltar Dam, the Most Serene Admiral". This title has been cut as of a later teaser (shown below).
  • The same teaser also shows a tiny Algeria around Oran and a tiny blue country apparently named "Kabylia". It's unknown what happened to these two countries.
• The leaders of the Spanish Republic, the Basque Republic and the Republic of Catalonia, as seen in an old teaser, were respectively Adolfo Suárez, Jesús María de Leizaola and Laureà López Rodó. In the release, they were replaced by Torcuato Fernández-Miranda, Telesforo Monzón and Josep Tarradellas.
• Originally, there was going to be a decision to make peace during the Iberian Wars, as a belligerent's war support diminishes as the conflict drags on and carries increasingly negative debuffs that would pressure the player into suing for a ceasefire. This would mean that the peninsula remains divided as an "iberianized" Iberia for many in-game years.
• A cut faction from the Iberian Wars was the Asturian Workers' Battalions, a communist group led by Horacio Fernández Inguanzo and secretly controlled from behind the scenes by Burgundy (back when it was still depicted as the mod's Big Bad).
• Iberian (Spanish) Guinea used to be significantly bigger than its OTL size, encompassing parts of French Cameroon and French Gabon; it was reduced to its OTL size in the Toolbox Theory update.

Turkey

• Turkey was originally a National Socialist dictatorship ruled by Başbuğ Alparslan Türkeş at the game's start, with its own incomplete focus tree◊.
• The Penelope's Web diary described a path for when the CHP manages to hold on to power after losing the Second Italo-Turkish War. It was cut because the developers think that it's redundant to have two CHP paths (victory and defeat, with only minor differences) and that it doesn't make a lot of sense for them to lose the war without being voted out of power.
• The Grand Council of Kemalism originally appeared in a teaser under the name Grand Council of Fascism, the same as its Italian inspiration.
• Armenia was changed from being fully occupied by Turkey at game start (and capable of rebelling to achieve independence during the game) to a nominally independent puppet of Turkey.
• The Turkey Civil War was originally known as the Turkish Collapse, which had belligerents that have since been scrapped. The most notable ones include the Greco-Turkish People's League and the Great Eastern Islamic Raiders' Front (who were removed because its leader Salih Mirzabeyoğlu was deemed too young, having been born in 1950 and was the youngest leader in first decade content).
• Planned Turkish Presidents who ended up being scrapped are Celâl Bayar (now dead since 1949), Behice Boran, and Türkân Akyol (who are turned into supporting characters since they're too young, and in case of Boran, too left-wing).
• Turkey's old borders used to encompass northern Iraq, all of Syria, and a greater portion of Georgia than just Batumi.
• In old lore, Mosul and Kirkuk was a semi-autonomous puppet state of Turkey, reluctantly governed by Ahmed Barzani and the Barzani clan. Now, Mosul and Kirkuk is an Inspectorate-General, with no illusion of it being anything more than a Turkish colony.
• Romania used to be able to join◊ Turkey's faction before this was cut.

Switzerland

• In the original release, Switzerland has retained both its democratic system and long-standing neutrality, even after an Axis victory. Neither of this is true anymore; since 1939, Switzerland has been controlled by the Full Powers Regime, who has assumed emergency powers (classified in-game as Anocratic) and aligned the country towards Italy (being a Triumvirate observer by game start).
• Switzerland's head of state was originally recognized as the President of the Federal Council, including figures like Paul Chaudet. Now, the position is occupied by the Federal Council as a collective.

Croatia

• Croatia was changed from an Italian puppet ruled by a government of Italians to a client state under Prime Minister Branimir Jelić, who leads the Ustaše's pro-Italy wing.
• Initially, the leader of the Yugoslav Partisans in Croatia is Josip Broz Tito, like in real life. He was replaced by Milan Gorkić, who was never purged in this timeline, and moved to Serbia.
• There are several unused portraits for potential leaders of Croatia for Ustaša loyalists such as Viktor Pavičić, Miroslav Navratil, Vjekoslav Luburić, and even Ante Pavelić himself (who died in 1959 in the TNO timeline). There are also portraits for dissidents Juraj Krnjević (president of the liberal Croatian Peasant Party), Vladimir Bakarić, and Andrija Hebrang (both being Communists).

Iraq

• In Development Diary XVI, Iraq was led by the Golden Square Party, with the starting president of Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr (a Ba'athist leader in current TNO), who would've had to investigate the mysterious murder of his predecessor, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani. However, the investigation's conclusion would've been sabotaged by a bombing in Baghdad, inciting a period of political turbulence between the Golden Square Party, the July 14 Movement, and the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party.
  • In said dev diary, Yasser Arafat was the leader of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party in Iraq, and is ideologically A Nazi by Any Other Name. He is now the Democratic Socialist leader for Palestine following a successful Jerusalem Conference.
  • One path depicted in said dev diary showed that Iraq, presumably under the Ba'athists, would've been able to conquer◊ the entire Middle East and East Africa under a United Arab Republic.
• Of all people, Saddam Hussein was initially depicted as a democratic option for Iraq (an outright Liberal Democrat in the early Golden Square Iraq lore, and an Authoritarian Democrat civil war leader in the later Qasim Iraq lore) before being replaced by Abd al-Rahman al-Bazzaz following the release of Toolbox Theory.

Egypt

• In an old map leak on the Egyptian Civil War (translation here), the map depicts multiple additional factions in Sudan that are not present in the current game. These include Islamists, fascists, Beja Congress, and the "White Army" (presumably the Nuer White Army). It should be noted that it's unclear how much of the map reflected actual in-dev content.
• Egypt was originally governed as an absolute monarchy before it was changed to a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary democracy (albeit a deeply flawed one), which establishes better continuity with the long-term outcome of the Egyptian Revolution in 1919. King Farouk had a short focus tree which was mostly about him going on wild parties rather than actually governing his country.
• Related to the above, since Crown Prince Fuad is still a child when King Farouk dies, he would need a regent, all of whom were scrapped: Muhammed Abdel Moneim (the status quo leader), Anwar Sadat (a reformer), and Adalberto di Savoia-Genova (an Italian viceroy). The civil war between said regent, the Egyptian Revolutionary Command Council (led by Gamal Abdel Nasser) and the Muslim Brotherhood (led by Sayyid Qutb), which would erupt after the Oil Crisis, was also cut; both factions now take power through different ways.

Levant

• The Levant was changed from a colony of Italy (led by Carlo Alberto della Chiesa) into a de jure independent country controlled by an Italian occupation (led by Luca Pietromarchi).
• Yitzhak Rabin was the original leader of Israel if a peaceful dissolution to the Levant was achieved.
• Lebanon and Syria used to be divided between Turkey and Italian Levant, and the dissolution of the Levant would've produced a state named "South Syria". The new starting borders has Turkey owning all of Syria and the Levant owning all of Lebanon.
• The dissolution of the Italian Levant had four outcomes that have since been cut:
  • If the Jerusalem Conference succeeded, the Levant would peacefully transform into a pluralistic Levantine Confederation, led by Yasser Arafat.
  • The Jerusalem Conference could also result in Italy handing over the entire Levant to the Jewish Resistance Movement, a military junta consisting of various Jewish militant groups led by Yisrael Galili.
  • If Italy lost the Second Italo-Turkish War and mishandled the Jerusalem Conference, the Levant would end up in the hands of Avraham Stern or Ahmed Jibril, Jewish and Arab ultranationalists respectively who would begin inciting pogroms against the other group.

Other

• In the Penelope's Web dev diary, Italy would occupy part of Turkey after a victory in the Second Italo-Turkish War, something that no longer happens.
• Greece used to be led by Sotirios Gotzamanis, which made little sense since he already died in 1958 of natural causes in real life.

Russia

West Russia

• Warlord states cut from West Russia include:
  • Kazan◊, a communist WRRF remnant led by Pyotr Gavrilov; its territory was given to Tatarstan. It had two notable trivia points:
    • Gavrilov's (now-cut) lore noted that he freed Dmitry Karbyshev, the Black League's founder, from the concentration camp where the real Karbyshev died.
    • Based on the lore, the Pyotr Gavrilov leading Kazan was meant to be ethnic Tatar officer Pyotr Mikhailovich Gavrilov, but the portrait he had was actually that of tank commander Pyotr Filippovich Gavrilov; the latter is still in the game, having been given an updated portrait and moved to Tomsk as a general.
  • The Governorate of Berezniki, a state controlled by Alexander Kazembek and his monarcho-socialist-fascist Mladorossi, whom were nominally aligned with Vyatka. Since the Mladorossi historically ceased to exist long before the start date, and the developers found that their actual ideology wasn't as 'interesting' as it initially appeared, Berezniki was cut with its territory divided between Vyatka and the Order of Saint George, and Kazembek is now Shulgin's Foreign Minister.
  • The Free City of Kostroma, a small state controlling a very small territory around the eponymous city. It was led by Sergei Bolshakov, and was described as an autonomous region of Vologda and a Merchant City between the Russians and Germans. It was planned to have "content" during development, but the details are unclear. At release, Kostroma only existed to be annexed by Vologda very early in the game; its territory now starts off already controlled by Vologda.
• Alexander Altunin, as shown in earlier leaks and having a reunification event in the demo, was a third path for the WRRF before his path was merged with Zhukov's. This was because his planned path had him sticking to the course set by Voroshilov, with little helping him stand out from other communist unifiers. He now leads the North Russian Liberation Front, a warlord nation that comes out of the former WRRF after the collapse of the Holy Russian Empire.
• The most right-wing leader for Samara was Viktor Maltsev, Red Army defector and commander of the ROA Air Forces, who was replaced by Mikhail Oktan in the final game. The development of Samara's furthest-right path also gradually shifted from "hardline Nazi collaborator" to "fascist kleptocrat" as Maltsev transitioned into Oktan. In the final game, some localization files still show that a lot of Oktan's focuses were originally named after Maltsev.
• The Aryan Brotherhood in early leaks and the original demo was led by "Andreas Maier", real name Alexander Medvedev, a Hero of the Soviet Union from Perm. As this portrayal of Medvedev (who was a loyal Soviet soldier and anti-fascist in real life) was unacceptably out-of-character and offensive, especially with the risk of his surviving family found out due to constantly seraching the Internet for mentions of him, Medvedev was rewritten into an anti-AB fighter, and his old role is now fulfilled by Alexey Dobrovolsky (an actual neo-Nazi in real life). According to the original leader bio of Andreas Maier, the Aryan Brotherhood originally aimed to unify West Russia before "submitting themselves to RK Moskowien in the west". It's unclear how this would impact the general Russian/German gameplay, and by the time Medvedev was replaced by Dobrovolsky, the Aryan Brotherhood was changed to a conventional Russian unifier. Presumably, this was scrapped because doing so would mean that whoever unified the other three regions would have to fight Moskowien to reclaim West Russia, and doing so would likely trigger a war between the Russian unifier and Germany before full preparations were made for the Second West Russian War, to say nothing of how this would impact other things that could be happening in Germany.
• At release, the Aryan Brotherhood was depicted as a Nazi cult whose members have grown so deluded that they now worship the same people who invaded and destroyed Russia, up to speaking 'Deytsch' (broken German represented by transliterating German words into Russian Cyrillic then back to English)—something that would be laughable if they weren't also Nazis. In the rework, Alexey Dobrovolsky and Valery Yemelyanov are now depicted more accurately to real life (the AB's designer describes that their previous portrayal is just OCs and that such a thing would fit better in occupied Moskowien than in warlord Russia).
• In the demo and early versions, Gorky was portrayed as an armored bandit state led by Hero of the Soviet Union Nikolai Averin, who launches tank raids into RK Moskowien to enrich themselves. Gorky is now portrayed as a hyper-militant WRRF remnant led by Ivan Chernyakhovsky, who launches tank raids into RK Moskowien to weaken the Germans.
• Onega was originally led by Nikolai Titovich Omelin, before being replaced with Vladimir Vasilevich Kirpichnikov, who was actually captured by Finns.
• Kliment Voroshilov was the original leader of the West Russian Revolutionary Front before he was replaced with Alexander Yegorov, a general with a better reputation for competency.

Komi Republic

• The earliest idea for Komi (then called Syktyvkar) was them being a Commie Nazi state under a blackwashed local Hero of the Soviet Union (Ivan Vasilievich Korolkov), who was replaced by Nikolai Voznesensky some time after Komi was reworked into an unstable republic. The concept of a Commie Nazi republic in Komi survives only through Serov and his "Ordosocialism" in the final release.
• According to developers, the original Burgundian System path for Komi was led by Andrey Dikiy, who would form an SS LARP brigade called the Sturmoviks. Dikiy was switched out for Taboritsky relatively late in development, and the SS-LARPing BurgSys path is replaced with Taboritsky's more flavorful Holy Russian Empire path, with the name "Shturmovik" retained for Taboritsky's State Sec. Dikiy is now Taboritsky's Foreign Minister and can lead the post-Taboritsky Regency of Holy Russia.
  • Former lead developer Lonely Knightess indicated that their original plans for Komi's BurgSys path involved Neo-Pagan extremists trying to create an artificial Russian culture completely free of any foreign influence^note The cut "Hyperborea symbol" was originally developed for this path, being a fictional combination of several Slavic neo-pagan symbols.. It's unknown how much of it manifested in Dikiy's SS-LARPing BurgSys path, but many elements of the idea would be folded into the Aryan Brotherhood's Hyperborea route.
• The original leader of the Union of Young Reformers (Komi's Liberal party) was Alexei Kosygin, an OTL Soviet economist, who in TNO believed that socialism was best implemented through liberalism. He was later moved to Irkutsk and replaced by Andrei Sakharov because it made little sense for a committed socialist like Kosygin to become a liberal.
• Leonid Kantorovich, Nikolai Voznesensky's economy minister, was originally able to succeed him as leader of the People's Democratic Socialist Party (and potentially President of Komi) if Voznesensky's favors from Zhdanov were discovered ^note  Specifically, Voznesensky would need to get as many favors as possible from Zhdanov, cut ties with him, ignore Stalina's advice to be cautious, and try sending Yuri Andropov to stop a leaker from revealing the aforementioned favors. . However, Kantorovich had no content for himself; all of his events and focuses were the same as Voznesensky's, until Alexander Yakovlev takes over the DSNP's leadership.
• Ivan Serov originally had an event◊ where, trying to determine exactly how industrialization in the Soviet Union failed catastrophically enough to trigger a Nazi victory in the Second World War despite it not making much sense, he would fabricate a crazy anti-Korean conspiracy theory and begin discriminating against the nation's Korean population, blaming them for many of Russia's historical problems as "hereditary reactionaries". The event was later cut, likely because, realistically, most of the Russo-Korean population would be concentrated (depending on whether the 1937 deportations took place under Bukharin) either in Primorsky Krai (and thus annexed by Manchukuo) or in Central Asia (and thus outside of Serov's territory until much later). Other aspects of Serov's policy were eventually toned down and/or made more flexible, leading to his displacing Taboritsky as Komi's initial Fascist leader and having more ability to prioritize either the "ordo-" or the "-socialism" part of Ordosocialism.
• Over the course of his existence in the mod, Taboritsky made the journey from starting as a comparatively innocent Despot (which turned out to be too inconsistent with his wholehearted admiration of the RK Kaukasien), then shifting to a Corporatist upon Toolbox Theory, before finally ending as a Clerical Fascist. From there, the jump to his Esoteric Nazi "Imperial Cult" was less jarring, but ended up being more sensible.
• Taboritsky has an unused portrait for blinking◊, most likely meant to be seen in the leadup to him reaching Midnight.
• There were two plans for Komi's Conservative path during development, both of which were cut before release and replaced with monarchist remnants from Vyatka:
  • One planned conservative leader was Alexander Yakovlev, who was changed for not making much sense.
  • Another planned leader was Alexander Stepanovich Belozerov, the husband of Russian teacher and Hero of Socialist Labor Polina Stepanovna Markova. Belozerov was hinted in a few dev posts on Discord, and was noted to be the most obscure leader in the game. He was cut because the devs didn't find his path interesting enough.
• While Svetlana Bukharina was always meant to be Komi's Libertarian Socialist/Left Communist unifier, her first portrait was actually a photo of Nikolai Bukharin's second wife Anna Larina before switching to a portrait of Bukharina's birthmother Esfir Gurvich and pass it off as a Strong Family Resemblance. This was because photos of Bukharina are incredibly scarce, forcing the dev team to make do with what they had before they miraculously found a period appropriate photo of her.

West Siberia

• In the first demo, Vorkuta was a Red Navy Pirate warlord state under the rule of Arseny Golovko. In subsequent leaks, the new (and current) Vorkuta lore based on the Vorkutlag was developed, and "old Vorkuta" was renamed and reduced to a new warlord state named Salekhard. Later, Salekhard and its "Red Navy Pirate lore" was transplanted onto Kamchatka^note Due to both the new Vorkuta lore and the improbability of piracy in the Arctic Circle, with Yugra taking Salekhard's former territories.
  • Old Vorkuta was planned to have three political paths: a status-quo path under Golovko, a Communist path under Vladimir Kasatonov, and a Democratic path under Valentin Drozd. All three were cut, and current Kamchatka has no playable content.
• Yugra was planned to be a unifier once they broke free from Zlatoust's control, and also had three paths: Jaba Ioseliani's criminal status quo, gone Liberal Democractic under Anton Antonov-Ovseenko, or turn into an Authoritarian Democratic Orthodox Republic under Sergey Izvekov, better known as Patriarch Pimen I of Moscow. These paths were cut due to the low priority of the country; Antonov-Ovseyenko now leads Khanty-Mansi if West Siberia's would-be unifier fails to defeat Zlatoust, and Izvekov is recycled into a potential foreign minister for Sverdlovsk and Samara's leader in a post-Taboritsky Russia.
• Lazar Kaganovich's older brother Mikhail was set to be a Libertarian Socialist option for Tyumen; in the final game he's only Lazar's economic minister.
• In early TNO development, Pavel Batov was planned◊ to have a bizarre Despotist regent path, where he betrays the revolution and plans to restore the Romanov Tsars, and if he fails, he would get couped by Yakov Kreizer who would restore the Authoritarian Democratic military junta.^note The path was likely influenced by Batov's position in Sverdlovsk, as Tsar Nicholas II and his family were imprisoned and eventually executed in this city. The idea was not developed beyond its basic concepts and quickly scrapped because of how nonsensical it was. Notably, though the path sounds extremely similar to Taboritsky's mad regency in the final game, there is no actual conceptual relationship between the two, as Taboritsky's path was developed from the original plans for Dikiy's BurgSys path rather than this scrapped Batov regency path.
• Omsk was planned to have a "Moderate" Black League path which was classified as National Socialist. Said path never even made it off of the drawing board.
• Early plans for the Free Aviators featured a mini-game which would involve trying to shoot down German planes terror bombing the western half of Russia, before Hitler's death and the German Civil War put these to pause (after which the only thing to do was to wait until the Free Aviators join a unifier).
• The original Omsk collapse (due to a successful Pavel Batov insurgency) resulted in four sucessor states◊: Batov's Russian National Reconstruction Committee in Sverdlovsk, the Vorkuta Provisional Authority (a Black League remnant led by Alexander Lazarenko), Omsk ('controlled' by feuding ex-Black League officers), and two blank placeholders called Yugra and Surgut led by generic leaders. With the release of Toolbox Theory, Omsk's collapse was overhauled into eight different factions.

Central Siberia

• In the first demo, Novosibirsk was an Old Believer theocracy led by Bishop Flavian^note Real name Feofilakt Feofilaktovich Slesarev, the First Hierarch of the Old Believers from 1952-1960.. This was changed as Novosibirsk is one of the largest cities in Russia, while the majority of Old Believers live in the countryside.
• The first demo's Altay◊ was a rather nonsensical fascist Altaic ethnic republic led by OTL writer Lazar Kokyshev. It seemed to have merged with old Novosibirsk lore and morphed into Oyrotia. In the final game, Kokyshev is only Oyrotia's Head of Government and plays next to no role in the Russian Smuta.
• Old Krasnoyarsk in early demos was an odd, largely loreless warlord state under Mikhail Kilchichakov. In later leaks, and in the final game, the lore of old Ust-Ilimsk (i.e. current Krasnoyarsk) was moved to Krasnoyarsk, and Kilchichakov is now a general in the SBA.
• Tomsk has one more leader in the code that cannot be accessed normally: Anna Akhmatova, classified under the aforementioned Market Liberal ideology and is Lev Gumilyov's mother amusingly enough. Viktor Nekrasov is another formerly inaccessible leader that used to be classified as a Libertarian Socialist (when the Humanists were considered Social Democrats); he now leads the remnants of Tomsk if the Siberian Black Army collapses.
• The character of the Anarchist Ideologue in the Siberian Black Army (and its predecessor, Khakassia) switched between multiple individuals across development. The figure was originally applied to Hero of the Soviet Union recipient Stepan Eliseevich Valenteev (currently an SBA general), was switched to Russian left-wing dissident Lev Nikolaevich Krasnopevtsev at release, switched again to another left-wing dissident Yuri Timofeyevich Galanskov in another update, and finally settled on the Russian striker and later anarcho-syndicalist Pyotr Petrovich Siuda.
• According to dev statements, Nikolay Krylov (Rurik II) in Kemerovo was originally characterized as being genuinely insane, rather than being ambiguously insane and eventually revealing that he was sane all along.
• Early plans for Tomsk (before its "Salon democracy" lore was developed) characterized it as an intelligentsia-ruled democratic republic with two major parties, each encompassing multiple ideology blocs. The first was the Modernists (who are unrelated to the current Modernists), who were pro-modernization and pro-westernization, and encompassed ideologies from Social Democracy to Conservative Democracy. The second was the Novgorodians, who supported agrarianism, isolationism, and Russian communal-based traditional democracy, and ideologically encompassed Authoritarian Democracy and Libertarian Socialism.
• The People's Revolutionary Council:
  • Svobodnyy Organ◊ was the early name for the People's Revolutionary Council.
  • The People's Revolutionary Council used to have a whole reunification path uniting Russian under a democratic communist stratocracy, under Vasilevsky's control. Most of its content was all but gutted after Unfinished Business and by the relase of Toolbox Theory 3, all they do is fight a war against Mengjiang.
  • The People's Revolutionary Council originally controlled parts of western Mongolia before being restricted to just Tannu Tuva.
  • While the People's Revolutionary Council was still a unifier, it used to have a contentless path under Jamyangiin Lkhagvasüren which would see the PRC focus more on Mongolia instead of Russia. This would notably lock out the PRC from unifying Russia (essentially being a fail-state for the country, as the Mongolian path had no content added on to it.)
  • When the People's Revolutionary Council's reunification superevent was first added in the Cutting Room Floor update, the song that played was the Song of the Far Eastern Army. Post Toolbox Theory, it was changed to Let's Go! for unknown reasons.

The Far East

• Valery Sablin was originally able to follow one of two paths: a Sablinite one (classified as Libertarian Socialist) in which he sticks to his 'libertarian' idealism, and a Bukharinist one (classified as Authoritarian Socialist) in which he resorts to 'authoritarian' pragmatic policies; the former was considered one of Russia's best paths as a whole, while the latter was merely considered good. Originally intended as a kind of dichotomy between "Lenin's revolution as it should have been" and "Lenin's revolution as it was in practice," they were eventually merged, both to better represent a "Leninist" political affiliation without sanitizing or disparaging it and to avoid a false dichotomy between the two paths, since one was felt to be too idealized (two developers describe this path as 'the pipe dream of a Western liberal thinks a communist should be' and 'someone uneducated on communism determines what communism is') and the other to misrepresent the stresses and troubles that led to the darker parts of Lenin's regime.
• Aldan was a cut warlord state controlled by a group of partisans, led by Gurzhap Ochirov, that seceded from Genrikh Yagoda's government out of opposition to his tyranny. Their only purpose was to be either conquered or peacefully reabsorbed by Irkutsk or Buryatia, respectively, taking up time while the Harbin Three settled things among themselves in the lead-up to the final showdown. The reworked Second Smuta mechanics meant it was no longer necessary to delay that conflict. Its territory was given to Yakutia, and the concept was recycled into a Divine Mandate collapse warlord.
• Yakutia (then called Yakutsk) in earlier demos and teasers was a warlord state made up of NKVD agents under Valentin Pavlov, who were disillusioned with Yagoda's authoritarianism and incompetence, and defected when his state began to collapse. Said lore was completely replaced with the Yakut ethnic republic lore during development.
• Amur's head of government Lev Okhotin was the original leader in Magadan, as seen in the Old World Blues demo and a few icons still baring Okhotin's name in the files, before being replaced by Mikhail Matkovsky.
• According to devs on Discord, Mitchell WerBell III originally had a "Tsar" path where he could declare himself some sort of royalty, and have his portrait change into a royal attire (as seen in this portrait leak). The path would've involved WerBell dying sometime during his wars and starting a Succession Crisis between his generals in the same vein as the Macedonian Succession Wars. Interestingly, the alternate royal portrait exists for his used portrait that came with the Cutting Room Floor update, hinting that this concept was scrapped rather late in development.
• The Anarchy in Northeast Siberia was originally represented by several named territories: Chernyshevsky, Vilyuy, Kolyma, Omolon, and Chukotka. Their only role was to be annexed by Omolon and turned into the Divine Mandate of Siberia. To better represent the complete lack of authority in the area, they were all merged into a single nameless, white entity before Alexander Men appears.
• A former developer revealed some event chains for the Divine Mandate that got cut right before the release. In the early-game, the Father's rise would've been foreshadowed through a series of monthly events, following the journey of Alexander Men and the followers he accumulates until they become a mass movement. In the superregional stage, Men would suffer a Pyrrhic Victory after his power struggle with Sudoplatov, where he's still technically in charge, but has lost control of his followers, first foreshadowed when they lynched Rodzaevsky without Men's say-so.
  Developer: The irony is supposed to be that evil is committed in the name of the saintly symbol while the man with his faults is the one trying to prevent the evil.
• The collapse of the Divine Mandate went through two different revisions:
  • Originally following Sudoplatov's coup, there would be four states arising from the aftermath◊: the Siberian Protection Committee (lead by Sudoplatov based in Kamchatka), the People's Republic of Yakutia (lead by Evodokiya Gorokhova), the Chita Republic (lead by former Irkutsk general Gurgen Nagolyan), and Republic of Buryatia (lead by Solomon Ivanov).
  • With the release of Toolbox Theory, the Divine Mandate's collapse was changed to result in eight different factions, with Buryatia collapsing into a civil war between partisans and remnant Communists/quasi-Men successors, the Siberian Protection Committee being moved to Magadan, the Transbaikal Governorate replacing the Chita Republic, Yakutia becoming the First Army "Dmitry Donskoy", and the addition of the Kamchatka Naval Authority. However, Alexander Men's government collapsing was removed in the last version of Toolbox Theory; in the event that Onega, Zlatoust or Batov's insurgency, or the Siberian Worker's Federation succeeded in preventing the reunification of their respective regions, the collapse of the Divine Mandate on top of all that would have ensured that the reunification of Russia would have been impossible.

Other

• In early development, as a dev confirms, Russia originally wasn't going to be balkanized. When the idea to balkanize Russia was proposed, other devs thought it impossible to make content for all those states. Well, look where they are now...
• In early demos, as a result of dev-admitted error, some Russian warlord states had names that made no sense either geographically or historically: the town of Kotlas was actually located in Komi instead of Kotlas (now called Plesetsk), and Ust-Ilimsk, despite having only been founded in 1965 in real life, was the capital of another warlord (now moved to Krasnoyarsk).
• Panzer initially intended to portray Russia as a Fallout-styled total wasteland, with the individual warlord "countries" instead being city-based warlord governments and their influenced areas, and the reality on the ground being even more chaotic than what's seen on the map. Due to the focus on statebuilding in the Russian states that have content (i.e. the unifiers), this vision ultimately isn't fully represented in-game, with only the oldest Southern Urals region being portrayed as a Fallout-styled total anarchy where statebuilding is completely impossible.
• This early map of the Russian anarchy featured fewer states than seen in the final release.
• Georgy Malenkov and Bauyrzhan Momyshuly, leaders of Communist Orenburg and Kyzylorda, were both planned to be potential unifiers of Russia, before being cut since the unification mechanics were only built to accommodate Russia's main four regions, and not the Southern Urals or Kazakhstan.
• Prior to Toolbox Theory, all unifiers based in Western Russia or Western Siberia could invade and/or annex Kazakhstan after reaching the superregional stage. This was Dummied Out for all unifiers except for Taboritsky following TT's release, but can still be done with console commands, complete with integration decisions. This decision was apparently made to set up future independent Kazakhstan content.
• Before the After Midnight update, when the Holy Russian Empire collapses, the entire country gets turned into an anarchy-like nameless state with the leader "Radio Silence", with the ideology of Ultranationalism.
• Georgy Malenkov was a potential leader in Orenburg, being a dogmatic Communist hardliner in opposition to Burba. If Malenkov won the power struggle against his rival, he would pursue several long-term campaigns to implement communism in the Southern Urals, often leading to disastrous consequences^note One memorable focus of rapid industrialization was an Allohistorical Allusion to the Great Leap Forward and end just as badly as it did in OTL). Now, Malenkov is affiliated with the Ultravisionary Socialists.
• In old lore, Joseph Stalin died from an "industrial accident" during the rule of Nikolai Bukharin. In current lore, he served as Commissar of Nationalities during Bukharin's time as General-Secretary; after the fall of the USSR, he fled to Tyumen, established the West Siberian People's Republic, and led it until his death in 1955.

Central Asia

Kazakhstan

• Kazakhstan used to be shattered into warlord states like Russia and had to be reunified. Among the seven warlord states present in the first release, four have survived in some form:
  • Kyzylorda, the continuation of the Kazakh SSR led by Bauyrzhan Momyshuly, a Soviet loyalist who would pass power to Dinmukhamed Kunaev after reunification. The Kazakh SSR now controls the entire country and starts the game led by Kunaev.
  • Pavlodar, a bourgeois nationalist democratic republic led by famed writer Sabit Mukanov. The concept survives in the form of the Kazakh Defense Force, which can rebel against a pro-Russian Kazakh SSR and replace it with a capitalist Republic of Kazakhstan, and the Free Kazakh Clans, a post-Midnight warlord.
  • Kostanay, an Islamic theocracy led by OTL HotSU recipient Nikolai Zabelkin, who in TNOTL became a bandit warlord after the Soviet collapse, before turning into a theocrat after surviving a bandit attack.
  • Aktobe, a nationalist republic led by OTL HotSU recipient Nikolai Onoprienko that could suffer from a famine. In TNOTL, Onoprienko created an unorthodox "National Renewal" ideology combining elements of capitalism, communism, and fascism.
  • Kokshetau, a bandit state led by OTL HotSU recipient Abu Dusukhambetov, who in TNOTL proclaimed himself Abu Khan and adopted nomadic warrior aesthetics.
  • Aktau, a clique of Russophobic Kazakh ultranationalists (ideologically National Socialist) seeking to ethnically cleanse Kazakhstan and collaborate with the Nazis against a common Russian threat. It was originally (and nonsensically) led by ethnic Russian OTL HotSU recipient Viktor Kuzmich Boychenko in early development, who was later replaced with Safa Gazizov. As the mod broadly moved away from gratuitous Historical Villain Upgrades, Aktau was reworked into the Kazakh Purification Army, a post-Midnight warlord state with a more justified characterization for their ultranationalism. Notably, Aktau was removed much earlier (with its territory given to Aktobe) than the Kazakhstan rework which did away with the warlords entirely.
  • The Polish Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (commonly called Nowa Polska), which was originally formed by Bukharin for Poles who were exiled from Europe by the Nazis and congregated in western Kazakhstan, and became de facto independent after the fall of the USSR. Nowa Polska served as Kazakhstan's 'deunifier'; instead of reunifying the country, it would instead divide the rest of Kazakhstan (not inhabited by Polish settlers) into two countries, the Republic of Aktobe and Republic of Kazakhstan. While the Polish ASSR still exists in lore, it is no longer a tag since the Kazakh SSR is still unified and it's now possible to elect Stanisław Skrzeszewski (a Pole) to lead the Kazakh SSR.

Other

• The earlier borders for Central Asia largely followed the real life borders of Central Asia; the Toolbox Theory Central Asia rework shifted the region's borders around (later slightly reworked again in Silicon Dreams), now apparently suggesting that the Soviet Union drew different borders in TNO, and that Afghanistan and Iran annexed bits of territories on the edges of the region.
• Karakalpakstan was originally led by Ibrahim Yusupov from the start. Currently, it is a socialist country led by Kadyrov Abdurashit at the start, with the possibility for Yusupov to take over.
• Poda Annaorazov from Turkmenistan was originally a committed anti-communist and enjoyed his leadership position before his personality was completely reversed into being a Bolshevik who despises the peacetime administration he leads.
• Uzbekistan, in its earliest renditions, was originally a nationalist dictatorial republic under Abdulla Qahhor. At release, it was reworked into a pan-Turkic fascist dictatorship under German collaborator Veli Kayyum Han. In another rework, Veli Kayyum Han's Turkestan Legion is now a rebel group against the Islamic Marxist government ruling in Tashkent.
• The Kyrgyz Socialist Republic used to be a military junta, led by Russian general Ivan Grishin, that was characterized as being socialist in name only.
• Turkmenistan's backer in the Turkes Kenes conference was changed from the US to Turkey.

South Asia

India probably has most chaotic development history in TNO. According to one of the devs, the old Asia team made up of non-asians that didn't respect South Asian history and were more concerned with making the India independence movement into a source of comic relief, resulted in weird and sometimes distasteful ideas that totally go against the philosophy of Modern TNO development. While currently India development has an active team, it is seemingly making very little progress as most developers are busy with other content.

• Sri Lanka was originally owned by the Republic of India, before becoming an independent country in an early update.
• In India's original pre-rework plans, Savitri Devi was meant to be a potential Burgundian System leader of India, even having her own bio and flag◊ before being cut from the game. She would've had a cabinet full of other esoteric fascist and Nazi thinkers from around the world, and would've started out winning an election in Azad Hind. Based on her leftover localizations in the game files at release, her policies involved Burgundian-levels of enforcing eco-fascism to reduce world population, and according to some devs on Discord, she wanted to dam the Ganges as a part of her plans.
• In earlier development, there were teasers for a dystopian British Raj restoration path as a possible path for India. According to multiple dev statements on Discord, the path specifically involved an Ultranational Socialist (later Ultranationalist) faction named "British Empire Expeditionary Forces◊", or BEEF for short, rising up as an Indian Civil War Anarchy faction, led by Lord Louis Mountbatten^note Who, hilariously, was also being developed into a leader in the English Catastrophe scenario (see above), at the same time in development (meaning that he can be simultaneously at two locations at once), who had gone mad, and is now hearing voices that tell him to reconquer the British Raj with an Indian garrison he hid inside India for 20 years. The contents of BEEF were a fever dream of horrific war crimes and nonsensical atrocities, such as burning down Gandhi's village For the Evulz, engaging in outright cannibalism to feed their soldiers during the ICW famine (event here◊, NSFL warning), and, allegedly, Mad Jack Churchill engaging in human sacrifices to revive King Arthur. Internal dev reception of BEEF was near-universally negative for its sheer, disastrous tastelessness (even during early TNO when expectations for writing qualities were laxer); BEEF was initially reworked into a "saner" version, before being fully cut during development (before Old India as a whole was cut for its general low quality writing).
• Pre-rework India was planned to have Indian ideologue and cult leader Rajneesh as a potential National Socialist leader for Azad Hind, who would implement many deranged policies (such as abolishing marriage, launching a pyramid scheme in India, and renaming every city to Rajneeshpuram). Most bafflingly, he could have John Lennon◊ as one of his ministers. Only one peek into his rule, where he decriminalizes homosexuality, was revealed to the public, although his localizations have survived in the game files at release.
• One of the plans for the Republic of India was a mechanic revolving around putting resources to resolve a famine in remote parts of India, before in the end revealing that the entire famine was fake and was made up by the Azad Hind Government in a covert operation. It was cut because the whole mechanic felt pointless, and made the Republic of India look excessively incompetent.
• Bal Thackeray was originally a potential leader for Azad Hind, leading a far-right Hindu ultranationalist faction of the All-India Forward Bloc. He was removed because his real life counterpart was a far-right Marathi nationalist and only politically relevant in his home state (which lies firmly within the Republic of India). According to separate dev statements on discord, as well as remnant localizations present in game files at release, Thackeray would've been portrayed as a Hindu ultranationalist, and initially aimed to conquer India, Afghanistan, and Indochina to reclaim the Akhand Bharat. However, he then would've invaded regions with major Indian populations beyond South Asia, including the Persian Gulf and most ridiculously Guyana. Invading Guyana would've caused a nuclear war.
• In the early demos, before the Azad Hind occupation lore was developed, Bhutan was led by Jigme Dorji Wangchuck from the start.
• In Dev Diary XIV, one unusual Indian Communist faction are the Raoists. They're officially the Telanganites (named after the Telangana rebellion), and are agrarian socialists led by Chandra Rajeswara Rao, who subscribe to Raoism as an equivalent to Maoism. They can take power if the Communists won the Indian Civil War, and would've implemented Maoist/pseudo-Pol Potist policies, including launching a Cultural Revolution in their bad path. A few other socialist paths, notably the Libertarian Socialists under Harold Wilson in HMMLR Britain, referenced their ideas internationally at release. Since Mao Zedong Thought still exists in the new post-TT TNO lore, and because the real Rao wasn't a Maoist, the Raoists appear to have been cut in the India lore reworks.
  • In the initial released versions of the mod, one Dummied Out loc depicts a country named Peasant Republic of Odisha ruled by Raoists; this appears to be an Indian Anarchy splinter faction, and amplifies the extremism of the Raoists to outright anarcho-primitivist levels. Raoist Odisha's focus tree has them embrace "post-socialism" and purge all other socialists as "pre-socialists", ban religion, abolish the currency, abolish the Odia and Indian identity, abolish the ideology of socialism and embrace "post-socialist" "human nature", destroy all industry and technology and force everyone to farm, and abolish the military and arms industry and fight with militias armed with improvised weapons, all the while insisting that "There is no famine in Odisha".
• Azad Hind was originally portrayed as persecuting believers of Abrahamic faiths in its territory, a plot point that would've influenced some political developments in the country.
• This teaser showed an Ultranationalist (likely a representation of Islamic fundamentalist, as the teaser was from before subideologies) Pakistani Mujahideen revolting against the Republic of India, led by OTL Pakistani ISI director Mahmud Ahmed. Notably, his portrait is actually created from a photo of Khuzestani Arab separatist Mahmoud Ahmad Al-Ahwazi.
• TT skeleton content included 1972 candidates in the Republic of India: Amar Nath Vidyalankar (Democratic Socialism), Neelam Sanjiva Reddy (Paternalistic Conservatism), E.M.S. Namboodiripad (Revolutionary Front), Mani Ram Bagri (Agrarian Socialism), N. G. Ranga (National Liberalism), Raghu Vira (National Conservatism), and Atal Bihari Vajpayee (Fascist Populism). The only one who has a portrait is Vajpayee, and all have since been cut.

Latin America

Brazil

• Prior to the integration of "Cold Southern Springs", Brazil's starting leader was Juscelino Kubitschek, who can now only come to power if he wins the 1965 elections.
• On AlternateHistory.com, one of the members of TNO's South America team has given statements on scrapped content concerning South America, particularly Brazil:
  • The member pitched an idea for an Ultranationalist Catholic path for Brazil led by Plinio Correa de Oliveira, being similar to the National Redemption Front. It was rejected by the rest of the team for being "too memey".
  • Other content rejected by the rest of the TNO South America team includes:
    • Henning Boilesen was once Carlos Lacerda's economic minister, later replaced by Hélio Beltrão, who was once João Figueiredo's economic minister.
    • Plínio Salgado was classed as a Despotist but was later changed for three reasons: Because Despotism is an anti-democratic ideology, the South America team found evidence that Salgado was far more Fascist than at first glance, and because sub-ideologies made it perfect for him to be classed as a Fascist.
    • Adhemar de Barros was able to rewrite the election law and rule for a second term, but this was cut since it would overcomplicate every single election afterward.
    • Filinto Müller was meant to have a route, described as being a hardliner akin to a right-wing Leonid Brezhnev. This was cut after the team found out that he never had aspirations to rule and preferes to be The Man Behind the Man.
• An early teaser for Brazil in Cold Southern Springs shows Tancredo Neves being the 1965 election candidate for the PSD, instead of the current one Juscelino Kubitschek.
• After a portrait for Juscelino Kubitschek's wife Sarah was found in the files, it was revealed on this Discord post◊ that an initial idea for Kubitschek was him running his wife as a possible candidate for the Presidency after his term limit ended.
• According to this other Discord post◊, Adhemar de Barros was supposed to be the starting President of Brazil at some point.
• It was revelead in this QnA that it was suggested for Salgado to have a black foreign minister but it was rejected due to be considered "too much optimistic" about the status of racism in Brazil during the 60s.
• According to a conversation between a Brazilian contributor and CSS's original Brazilian Dev, Vargas would be in power in 1962, as the Brazilian starting leader under Despotism and Tancredo Neves would be his head of government with Felinto Müller as the security minister. Vargas would die in the carnival of 1962 and this would cause a government collapse that would result in a coup made by Lott that would put Tancredo as the head of a interim government to call new elections. The original Dev also recalled that the other presidential candidate would've been Affonso Arinos and the capital would still be in Rio (with Brasília only being built if Juscelino Kubitschek became President).
• Lacerda was planned to run for the 1970 election, which was dropped so that someone else can be used in his place and give more gameplay variety.

Argentina

• Juan Carlos Coral was the original 1969 president for the Partido Socialista, exploiting older mannerisms to appeal to the rural population and hiding his more extreme Trotskyist views so that the military doesn't coup him. He was later removed because he was deemed too young and extreme to have had the political prestige to run for president.
• Rogerio Julio Frigerio originally ran for president himself in 1963. It is now Carlos Alberto Pérez Companc who campaigns for the position, while Frigerio acts as his Dragon-in-Chief.
• In old lore, the Radical Civic Union was still one party divided into two wings led by Arturo Frondizi and Ricardo Balbín, which the player needs to keep united◊ so that it can remain electorally relevant. This was reworked so that both factions have split into distinct parties before game start.
• The candidate who runs in the 1964 Presidential elections on the platform of bringing back Perón (and does exactly that after victory) was changed from Andrés Framini to Vicente Solano Lima.
• Juan Carlos Onganía◊ used to be a possible President if the electoral college entered a gridlock in 1963, where he would be put forth as a national unity candidate by his allies and forced to model Argentina after Japan and its YSK politics.

Peru

• Skeleton content used to expand into 1963 elections, including:
  • Manuel Seoane, a progressive who ran on a program of more welfare for all Peruvians.
  • Pedro Beltrán, a liberal conservative hated by the Peruvian left for his welfare cuts.
  • Moreyra Paz Soldán, a successor and continuation of Manuel Prado Ugarteche's administration.
  • Hector Cornejo Chávez, an obscure conservative figure, whom many suspect to be a puppet controlled by the Alianza Conservadora Democratica Nacional.
• If Prado was assassinated and the 1963 elections become too chaotic, Ricardo Pérez Godoy would lead a military coup and establish a junta, under a vague promise that it will be dismantled when "order is restored".

Caribbean

• Fidel Castro initially started out as a US-backed Authoritarian Socialist (a communist, before the far-left ideologies were reworked) who was landed at the Bay of Pigs by the CIA to depose the German-backed Batista. This has been changed following the integration of the Cold Southern Springs mod to TNO proper, where Castro is a Cuban nationalist who can become a democratic socialist or Mexico-inspired dictator depending on his choices. ^note This is arguably a more accurate portrayal of Castro, as Castro seemingly embraced communism through his alignment to Moscow following the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the culmination of worsening relations between him and the US. During the revolution itself, he appeared to really hold no ideology other than a vaguely left-wing outlook alongside his own nationalism, and even Che Guevara stated shortly after their victory in 1959 that he personally believed Castro wasn't a communist.
• The Dominican Republic's starting President used to be Joaquín Balaguer; he now serves as Prime Minister under President Rafael Trujillo.
• François Duvalier was originally Haiti's fascist President by game start. He was replaced by Louis Déjoie as the starting President, and is no longer depicted as a fascist.
• When Kirkpatrick was originally an NPP presidential candidate and before the Puerto Plata invasion was implemented, her first mission as President was to overthrow Balaguer/Trujillo (depending on the game version) and install a pro-American puppet state in the Dominican Republic.

Other

• Older versions of the game featured Victor Paz Estenssoro as Bolivia's starting leader, until he was replaced by Armando Alba Zambrana.
• Back in the early days of the mod, Venezuela was meant to be the site of a civil war. According to the dev in the link, it's why Venezuela has a lot of states despite not playing any role in the world.
• In this AlternateHistory.com post a dev from the Latin America team informed that during the early stages of the Cold Southern Springs mod he suggested for esoteric far-right dictator Maximiliano Hernández Martínez to start as the leader of a Burgundian System regime in El Salvador. Said idea was rejected due to due the fact that the generation of military officers that kept him in power was retiring and newer officers were against his dictatorship resulting in they overthrowing it like in our timeline.
• David McDonald and Oscar Mario Aguerrondo were the original leaders of the Panama Canal Zone and the Uruguayan Occupational Zone, respectively.
• Colombia was originally a whole country and a liberal democracy led by Alberto Lleras Camargo, implying that La Violencia ended the same way it did in real life. In current lore, La Violencia is still ongoing (with a ceasefire being in place by game start), represented by Colombia's territory being divided into three separate countries, which declare war on each other when the truce breaks and the Civil War resumes.
• The leader of the Colombian industrialists, who could overthrow the National Fascist Party after New Granada wins La Violencia, was changed from José Lisandro Sierra Velásquez to Diego Garcés Giraldo.
• José María Velasco Ibarra was the original starting President of Ecuador. Currently, by game start, Carlos Julio Arosemena Monroy leads Ecuador while Velasco is living in exile, though he can return to power under the right circumstances.
• According to this old biography◊ of Carlos Julio Arosemena Monroy, Peru invaded Ecuador because former President Camilo Ponce Enríquez tore apart the Lima Treaty in a desperate bid to save his unpopular presidency. This was later changed so that Ecuador was invaded because a communist revolution took place and Peru sought to put it down before it could reach Peru.
• The original far-right path for Uruguay involves a coup by the Death Squad led by Juan Pedro Ribas. He was replaced by actual fascists because conceptually the path couldn't work—most of the army is still legalist and wouldn't accept a Francoist paramilitary leader with ambiguous loyalties like Ribas.
• In the first release, Venezuela's situation was the same as real life: a liberal democracy dominated by President Rómulo Betancourt's party, Democratic Action. When the country entered design, the decision was made to have Betancourt die before game start so the Venezuelan political scene would be more colourful.

Africa

West Africa

• Old demos showed that Guinea was originally led by Lansana Conté before being replaced by Ahmed Sékou Touré.
• Inland West Africa was once represented as a large patch of Anarchy, showing that Germany's bombing campaign of the region has completely wiped out all forms of authority there. Countries would only begin to emerge from the rubble when Germany falls into civil war and stops the terror bombing. This African Anarchy was later removed and the states that normally would pop out of West Africa are present from the start, though they are all demilitarized to showcase the effects of the bombings.
• A country named Songhai used to occupy where Sokoto currently exists in West Africa.
• Guinea originally controlled the region between the Bafing, Senegal, and Falémé rivers in Mali (as a panhandle), but the territory was given to the Kayes Government when the devs realized that the eponymous city of Kayes lies within this region.
• Gbeland was originally led by Ibrahim Babangida, a completely out-of-place Nigerian statesman and military general.
• One dev produced content for Free France without telling the rest of the team, which included a ton of provinces for the Ivory Coast and four monarchist paths. Due to the dev going rogue and his implementations breaking the mod, the dev was sacked from the team and very little of his content is known publicly.
• The president of Wolofia installed by the FMA if they defeated the WAA in the West African War was changed from Mamadou Dia to Cheikh Tidiane Sy.
• In old versions, Wolofia had the Haven of Africa national spirit, describing it as one of the few functional liberal democracies in Africa. It was removed to avoid unwarranted Historical Hero Upgrade for Léopold Sédar Senghor, whose real life counterpart employed many repressive measures to enforce his rule as a lackey of France.

African Reichskommissariats

• Hans Hüttig's Großafrikanischer Reichstaat was originally meant to be able to last for a year at most, to the point that the original lead developer considered it potentially a less bad outcome than the US establishing the three OFN mandates (which can be mired in a very long and bloody insurgency). In the release, the Reichstaat can last much longer than a year.
• The African Reichskommissariats formerlly had an option to not join the Afrika-Schild and presumably avoid participating in the South African War.
• The left-wing resistance in Angola was renamed from the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola to the Party of the United Struggle for Africans in Angola. In this timeline, the MPLA never formed because the Soviet Union dissolved before it could pressure PLUAA to merge with the MINE and the PCA, hence the divergence.
• Madagascar was originally a German Reichskommissariat led by Emil Maurice. In current lore, Madagascar is still controlled by the French State (one of its last two colonies alongside Algeria), with Maurice now serving as Military Commissioner. Reichskommissariat Madagaskar's flag is reused for the Paktkommission Madagaskar.
• The Madagascar Civil War would've erupted shortly after Germany collapses into civil war, though this was later changed so that it occurs around a year prior.
• The initial version of the war in Madagascar involved four sides, of which only two have survived to the current iteration. The two that got cut were:
  • The Militärstaat Madagaskar (originally led by Werner Goldberg, then changed to Erhard Milch) was a faction of German loyalists who discovered Reichskommissar Maurice's disloyalty and rebelled against him, only to be branded traitors by Germania (though in later versions, they were pardoned and allowed to rejoin the Pakt if they managed to win).
  • The Hitnagdut Movement was a group of Jewish rebels led by Zvi Ofer in early teasers and Haim Bar-Lev in the release. At the start of the conflict, they would've made an uneasy truce with the Republic of Madagascar and fought against both the Reichskommissariat and the Militärstaat; should they win the war, they will declare the creation of the Republic of Eretz Ashkenaz. Their territory was given to the nationalists, which in turn were moved north from the inland mountains that were passed to the OFN Mandate.
  • In older builds, the OFN Mandate in Madagascar could've only been formed under very specific circumstances^note  The Reichskommissariat would've needed to lose their capitol (but not lose enough victory points to capitulate), get the United States to agree to evacuating Maurice, and survive for a few more weeks before the Mandate is established.. This was later changed so that Maurice successfully defects to the OFN and abolishes the Reichkommissariat to create an OFN Mandate, starting the Madagascar Civil War.

Algeria

• In pre-rework lore, Algeria was only de jure part of the French State; the city of Algiers is controlled entirely by the OAS (represented in-game as a demilitarised zone), with the rest of the country entirely split between the Iberian Union and Italy (in super-early builds, these territories were directly annexed; later builds turned them into colonies with separate tags). This was later reworked so that the French State's control was expanded to include all of the coastal cities (with the inland desert being a demilitarised zone controlled by rebels); Italy and Iberia will only intervene when the Algerian War begins. After another lore revision, Iberian Algeria was cut entirely.
• The Algerian War was originally a two-sided conflict between the Iberian Union and Italy before it was expanded into a four-way war with the participation of the French OASA and native Algerians.
• Italy's Algerian colony was led by Giuseppe Castellano, who was portrayed as a corrupt and unpopular Italian general who was eager to take the country for Italy in the hopes of repairing his negative reputation. He was later replaced by Massimo Invrea.
• In preparation for the Algerian War/peace settlement in older versions, the Iberian force in Algeria would've replaced their original leader, Frederico Gómez de Salazar, with Jorge Pereira Jardim, characterized as an opportunist only interested in accumulating more power in an Iberian-influenced Algeria. Now, Salazar will no longer be replaced by Jardim.

Italian East Africa

• In the a dev diary dedicated to the Italian colonies, Italian East Africa could originally come under the rule of Italian oil baron Enrico Mattei, who would coup Amadeo's hand-picked successor Enrico Cerulli. In power, Mattei was portrayed as an Evil Colonialist aiming to maximize colonial profits, and can go rogue from Italy and declare a mad Rhodesia-expy called "Republic of Correntia". Said portrayal was a very liberal interpretation of the real Mattei, and Mattei was later reworked into a potential governor of the Italian Gulf after an Italian victory in the Italo-Turkish war, ruling his domain in a far more reasonable manner.
  • Correntia underwent a rework in development, becoming a small Italian remnant state led by Italian mercenary Tullio Moneta ruling over bits of Somalia after the East African Collapse. It's since been cut entirely.
• In early versions of Toolbox Theory, one of the two Ethiopian factions that would appear after the East African Collapse was the Black Lions Movement, led by Asrat Desta. According to the developers, they were removed because the Black Lions Movement was largely extinct by 1936, so their existence in the 1960's made little sense. They were replaced with Ethiopia.
• Before being completely reworked in "Penelope's Web", only had five factions: Ertirea led by Hamid Idris Awate, Somalia led by Abdullahl Issa, Kenia led by Tom Mboya, the Oromo Liberation Front led by Tadesse Birru, and Ethiopia led by Abebe Aregai.

South Africa

• The original dev team found a very passionate writer willing to work on South African content in some of the earliest days of the mod, when a direction for South Africa didn't yet exist. After someone made a joke about a silly path where Nelson Mandela becomes God-Emperor of South Africa, said writer exploded into a rant about how Mandela was a terrorist who destroyed Africa, revealing himself to be an Afrikaner nationalist and that, in the words of the original lead, "the dude was racist as all shit and his passion about South Africa had been the worst kind." After he was removed, no one was quite sure what to do with South Africa until the lead developer hit on the idea of having the Reichkommissariate invade during the German civil war, sparking the South African War that would turn into a huge disaster for everyone involved.
• The Boer ethnostate that secedes from South Africa and sides with the Nazis was renamed from Boer Republic to Afrikaner Volkstaat. Its leader Albert Hertzog's ideology was also changed from Revolutionary Nationalism to Clerical Fascism to better represent the real Hertzog's views in OTL, namely his pan-Afrikaner beliefs and his hardline Calvinism.
• A cut participant in the Third South African Civil War was the OFN Forces South Africa, led by John McCain III, who led a small army of stranded OFN POWs who had escaped from Huttig's prison camps, and struck a deal with Taffy Williams and Robert Oppenheimer to help protect them from the SS, in exchange for weaponry. they have been cut as a separate state, and have been moved into being part of the South African Republic proper.

Antarctica

• An early Ahnenerbe Antarktis Gruppe teaser featured Otto Ohlendorf as its security minister—as it was made before the submod was integrated, the developers had yet to know that he was being used in Ukraine.

Others

• In the demos, Sweden's starting Prime Minister was Olof Palme, who succeeded Tage Erlander in 1959, ten years before he did so in real life. In the first release, Erlander is still leading Sweden by game start, before being assassinated and succeeded by Torsten Nilsson in 1963. After yet another revision, Erlander took over Nilsson's role while his old role is taken by Herman Zetterberg.
• East Turkestan was originally a country that existed on the map from the start (located in Northern, and later, Southwestern Xinjiang), led by Isa Yusuf Alptekin, before being cut.
• Originally, Muhammad Amin Bughra could've started a revolt to form a East Turkestan Republic. Only an incomplete focus tree and a single event remain.
• Panzer once briefly remarked that there can be four possible Israel nations across the world. Two proper Jewish states were found in the game at release (Israel in Italian Middle East, and Eretz Ashkenaz in Madagascar), and old lore genocidal Kovner's UPO had some Zionist undertones^note Kovner's old focus tree involved funneling as many Jews out the reach of Germany as possible. The fourth Israel, meanwhile, was a Jewish settlement in Alaska, as a Shout-Out to The Yiddish Policemen's Union. Eretz Ashkenaz was cut in Toolbox Theory, old lore Kovner was reworked in Europas Narben, and Alaskan Israel was cut during development.
• Kuwait was originally owned by Italy (later the Italian Gulf), and was later given to Iraq.
• A teaser on the Middle East from 2019 depicted several weird factions and wars in Arabia. These include Saudi Arabia becoming the Arabian Republic (and not from an invasion by the Yemen Arab Republic), Yemen being divided into North and South Yemen, the country of Hejaz, Iraq being divided into "Sunni Iraq" and "Iraqi Islamic Republic", and Iraq and Jordan expanding into Arabia.
• Finland was originally a military dictatorship ruled by general Karl Lennart Oesch, even having an incomplete focus tree◊ dealing with its neutrality between the OFN and the Pakt, the delayed promises of an election, and the Russian territory it acquired after World War II.
• In older versions, the Communist Party of Finland and the Patriotic People's Movement could take power in Finland after Oesch's government loses the war with West Russia and is forced to cede back all territories Finland originally seized from the USSR. Currently, the communists can rebel in the middle of said war, followed by the fascists being put in power after President Rihtniemi's resignation.
• In early versions, Urho Kekkonen appeared as a possible President of Finland in the aftermath of liberal democracy's return. In current lore, he is politically irrelevant, since his opposition to Nazism would never have allowed him to climb the ranks of the Agrarian League, which has remained unapologetically pro-Nazi in this timeline.
• Prior to the implementation of the Murmansk People's Republic, the war between Finland and West Russia could've ended in a ceasefire, where the Kola Penisula and Onega are given to Russia, while Eastern Karelia becomes a buffer state between the two known as the Karelian Autonomy, led by Jaakko Sakari Simelius.
• Before Sweden's lore was overhauled, the developers released a teaser◊ on what their skeleton content would have looked like, if it was finished. Here, Tage Erlander would have been assassinated under mysterious circumstances and put Torsten Nilsson in charge of the country, mere months before the 1964 elections. In the midst of these troubles, there were four possible candidates to take over:
  • Nilsson could have won the incumbent SAP another term, continuing the social democratic status quo.
  • Bertil Ohlin, who focused on normalizing relations with the OFN.
  • Jarl Hjalmarson, who would push market-liberal policies and try to democratically align with the OFN over the Einheitspakt.
  • Nils Flyg, who led a confusing coalition of far-right and far-left movements, and is considered the dark horse of the election. One notable member of the coalition was Hilding Hagberg, another potential head of state and a communist whose had to moderate his beliefs so that he can appear more palatable to the public.