Theodore Roosevelt

This a Useful Notes page.

William McKinley ← Theodore Roosevelt → William Howard Taft

File:Troosevelt3.jpg

The last thing you saw before a brutal ass-kicking.

Bully!

"Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far." —Theodore Roosevelt

"Death had to take him sleeping, for if Roosevelt had been awake, there would have been a fight." —Vice President Thomas Marshall

Theodore Roosevelt (also known as "Teddy" or "T.R.") is known for having been in the cavalry, leading the Rough Riders' charge on San Juan Hill, commissioning the Panama Canal, creating the US National Park System, and saying "speak softly, but carry a big stick" (the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt is called "the big stick" by its crew). Before he became the 26th President of the United States, he was a governor, historian, adventurer, police chief, cavalryman, cowboy, explorer, hunter, naturalist, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, author of 35 books, conservationist, etc. He was a larger-than-life figure with a bombastic reputation as a total Badass.

He was once shot in the chest on the way to give a speech. Fortunately for him, his eyeglass case and the folded speech were in the path of the bullet. Since he wasn't coughing blood afterwards, he figured he was fine, and delivered the hour-and-a-half long speech before seeking medical attention.

He was a Real Life example of Reassignment Backfire; the Republican Party (specifically, the corrupt political machines that grafted votes from immigrants) became sick of his grandstanding as a Governor of New York and appointed him Vice President, where it was assumed that he'd be powerless. Less than a year later, President McKinley was assassinated, making Teddy President, and stirring several comments along the lines of "That damn cowboy is gonna be the president?!" Teddy went on to be elected in his own right in 1904 (the first "Accidental President" to do so), won the Nobel Peace Prize (while still in office) for brokering a peace deal between the warring Japanese and Russian Empires (becoming the first US President to win the award), sent a US fleet on a nonviolent global cruise (which was more of a global series of parties really) to show the naval strength of the US, then stepped aside at the end of his second term so that William Howard Taft could be elected President.

Over the next four years, however, Roosevelt grew to dislike Taft and his governing (Taft drifted towards the conservative wing of the Republicans, while Teddy was of the liberal, Progressive wing), and decided to challenge him for the Republican nomination. When that didn't work, Roosevelt actually formed his own political party (the Progressive Party, also known by the more badass name of the Bull Moose Party) so that he could run against Taft in the 1912 election. This wound up splitting the vote and allowing Woodrow Wilson to win the election (thus showing why third parties don't last long on the national stage), but Teddy did end up getting more votes than Taft — the second and last time (not counting the spectacularly messed-up election of 1860) that a third-party candidate placed second or higher in a US Presidential election. (Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1864 on the Union Party ticket, although that is also kinda messed up.)

Ironically enough, the other president to have that last name was a Democrat, whereas Teddy was a Republican (they were fifth-cousins; Franklin's wife Eleanor was actually TR's niece). Franklin, in fact, went with the Democratic Party in order to avoid being drowned out by his distant cousin's reputation in the Republicans.

Teddy was also a real-life example of a Gentleman Adventurer and Egomaniac Hunter. He was a big conservationist, eager to make sure he'd always have something to hunt. The "teddy bear" is named after him, because he refused to shoot a black bear cub just for the sake of it. The bear was put down — the rest of his family had been already shot. Foreign ambassadors dreaded meeting him, as it usually meant that they would have to accompany him on his strenuous daily jog, with him making fun of them when they inevitably ran short of breath and started lagging behind. Edith Roosevelt, Teddy's second wife, was a real-life example of a Victorious Childhood Friend — she had been a childhood playmate of his.

He was also a famed adventurer, famously taking a big game hunt to Africa shortly after leaving the White House and later exploring an uncharted tributary of the Amazon River. Words alone can not describe the impressiveness of this later feat. This is chronicled in the book River of Doubt.

After he was through with it, it had to be renamed the River of UNQUESTIONABLE CERTAINTY!

Notable for being the youngest US President at 42 years old and, until the inauguration of Donald Trump, the only President born in New York City. (He is not, however, the youngest US President to be elected. That's John F. Kennedy, who was 43. Teddy was elected at 46.)

In case it wasn't clear by now, he was made of pure, condensed Badass, and is often portrayed as even more so than he already was. Within his own lifetime, historian Henry Adams explicitly compared him to God. In fiction, he is frequently portrayed as a Large Ham, in keeping with his boisterous nature and public persona. At her wedding, his daughter, Alice, stated that "My father wants to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral, and the baby at every christening." But she was giving as good as she got: Alice was a notorious handful, rambunctious, and known to the press as "Princess Alice." Her father had earlier snarked, "I can either run the country, or attend to Alice. I cannot possibly do both." Teddy also had a son whom he named Kermit (THAT SHOWED HIM) who joined him on some of his expeditions.

Film of President Roosevelt can be found here as he was the first President to have most of his professional career documented on film; from the Rough Riders to his death.

Compare Andrew Jackson.

It Takes More Than Tropes to Stop a Bull Moose!

• Animal Motifs: The Bull Moose.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: Sort of, although he kicked ass for some time before he had any authority.
  • Asskicking Equals Authority: A huge part of the reason his political career in New York was able to progress so far despite the fact that the political bosses hated him, was due to the fact that the public admired TR's heroic willingness and ability to face down the corrupt interests in the NY political machine.
• Badass: Doesn't even begin to describe him.
  • Ambadassador: He won the Nobel Peace Prize for overseeing negotiations between Russia and Japan to help end the Russo-Japanese War.
  • Badass Baritone: Subverted, see Vocal Dissonance below.
  • Badass Bookworm: He was a Harvard graduate, read in French, German, Italian, and English, made an effort to read a book every day before breakfast, was usually able to get two or three more in by the time he went to bed, and still found time to kick copious amounts of ass.
  • Badass in Charge
  • Colonel Badass: He led the Rough Riders as a colonel during the Spanish-American War.
  • Handicapped Badass: He was blind in one eye as a result of a boxing match. But did that ever stop him? The injury prompted him to take up a safer hobby: judo.
    • Gets even better than that. He had asthma his entire life. After a while, it was probably cowering in the corner.
    • He famously had a severe coffee habit, which in light of his asthma makes perfect sense, since caffeine is an effective bronchodilator. He was self-medicating.
    • Cracked.com put it this way: "Theodore Roosevelt was plagued by asthma early in life. Seeing this as a challenge, he proceeded to beat his asthma to death."
  • Badass Family: Teddy's sons went off to perform their own badass exploits.
    • His son, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr, landed on Utah Beach during the first wave of the Normandy Invasion... when he was 56, and suffering from heart disease and arthritis. His actions on Utah Beach lead to him being posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, after dying of a heart attack a month later.
  • Badass Boast: "I took Panama."
• Badass Moustache
• Big Applesauce: Teddy Roosevelt was born and raised in New York City, and had the Brooklyn Rage to prove it. He later became a crusading NYPD Commissioner, and famously took on corruption, even going to the lengths of personally patrolling the streets to ensure that his officers were doing their job of protecting the people. His crusade against corruption infuriated and confounded the local political bosses. He also instituted mandatory requirements for cops to stay in physical shape. He also personally walked through the slums of the city alongside muckraking journalist Jacob Riis. Riis later wrote in his autobiography:

"When Roosevelt read [my] book, he came....No one ever helped as he did. For two years we were brothers in (New York City's crime-ridden) Mulberry Street. When he left I had seen its golden age.... There is very little ease where Theodore Roosevelt leads, as we all of us found out. The lawbreaker found it out who predicted scornfully that he would “knuckle down to politics the way they all did,” and lived to respect him, though he swore at him, as the one of them all who was stronger than pull....that was what made the age golden, that for the first time a moral purpose came into the street. In the light of it everything was transformed.

• Bigger Stick: Pseudo-Trope Namer, by way of "Ballot Box Bunny".
• Blood Knight: He had elements of this. He loved boxing and hunting and said that he didn't start any wars when he was president because he couldn't stand the thought of being stuck in the White House while American soldiers fought on the front lines. See Boisterous Bruiser and Colonel Kilgore below.
• Boisterous Bruiser
• Brooklyn Rage: Probably the biggest Badass ever to come out of New York City, as this page can attest.
  • Possibly a subversion as well, as he went out West in order to learn most of that badassery. Most of the badass events are also more wildernessy hunter explorer type things.
• Catch Phrase: And what a bully Catch Phrase it was!
• Carry a Big Stick: Trope Namer
• Colonel Kilgore: He referred to the Battle of San Juan Hill as "the greatest day of my life" and even begged Woodrow Wilson to allow him to form and lead a volunteer force into WWI.
• Cool People Rebel Against Authority: He was despised by the political bosses in New York--including those within his own party--because he insisted on rebelling against their corruption, even when they were the leaders of his own party. The bosses attempted to neutralize his influence by kicking him upstairs to the often-powerless position of Vice President. Then President McKinley died. And thus, Teddy became the Badass in Charge of the whole country. Needless to say, the political bosses were pissed.
• Crazy Awesome
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: For starters: Everything he ever did, ever. Well, if you want specifics...
  • He was once shot in the chest just before a campaign speech and was saved by the copy of the speech and his glasses case in his jacket pocket, but went ahead and gave the speech with a bullet wound in his chest.
    • You may be interested to know the bullet ended up lodged in his lung. The opening line of his speech was "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose."
    • He later ran for President on the Bull Moose Party ticket. Raise your hand if you have a political party named after your Crowning Moment of Awesome. Yeah, that's what I thought.
    • To elaborate a bit further - he'd assessed his own injury by realizing that, because he wasn't bleeding from his mouth, he wasn't mortally wounded. The speech he gave lasted an hour and a half with the opening line shown above. The bullet passed through both his eyeglass case and the folded-up speech, so it didn't penetrate very far. Given that McKinley and Garfield had both died not from their assassins' bullets but from surgical complications, Roosevelt reasoned that it was safer to tell his doctors not to remove the bullet but just leave it in place. He was right.
  • He once killed a cougar. In a knife fight.
    • "Theodore Rex" tells more: "Last Winter, in Colorado, he had leaped off his horse into a pack of hounds, kicked them aside, and knifed a cougar to death. What a great fight that had been!" That feeling in your gut is the undeniable truth that you will never be a fraction as awesome as Teddy.
      • Or it's possibly the ghost of Teddy, kicking and punching you in the gut because you aren't even at least making an attempt to become that Badass yourself.
  • His crossing of the River Of Doubt, after which it was renamed The River Of Unquestionable Certainty.
    • And then to the "Roosevelt River".
  • His boat was stolen once; he built another boat and hunted the thieves down. Instead of shooting them in the middle of the woods, he hauled them to town for court, going 40 hours without sleep. He read Tolstoy to keep himself awake.
    • Even better: when he finished reading Tolstoy, Roosevelt literally forced one of the robbers to lend him a book that he had been carrying. The guy who'd tried to get away with robbing TR was now forced to "volunteer" his book for his intended victim's reading leisure. This--on top of arresting him--pretty much means that Teddy completely and utterly humiliated the robbers.
    • This would seem to be counter-productive, which makes it all the more awesome.
  • After he received letters from army cavalrymen complaining about having to ride 25 miles a day for training, in response, Teddy rode horseback for 100 miles, from sunrise to sunset, at 51 years old, effectively rescinding anyone's right to complain about anything, ever again.
  • During his time in the badlands he once walked into a hotel when a drunken cowboy was shooting up the bar-room with a pair of revolvers. The drunk noticed him, called him "Four eyes", and said that "Four eyes is going to treat." Theodore ignored him and sat down at the bar, but the drunk comes over to him, gun in each hand, and repeated his command. Theodore then says "Well, if I've got to, I've got to" and KO's the drunk in three punches.
    • Awesomeness By Analysis: as an experienced hunter and military man, he fully understood alcohol will ruin a shooter's accuracy, and also that holding two guns even as your hands tremble from drunkenness is even worse.
  • Before he became president, while he was away on a hunting trip, someone hired a man named Paddock to either scare him off his land or just shoot him off it. When Teddy came back and found out that Paddock had be hired to kill him, he personally went to Paddock's house and told him "I understand you have threatened to kill me on sight. I have come over to see when you want to begin the killing.” Obviously, the threats ended then and there.
  • How about creating a group of people so badass that an award is named after them?
• Despair Event Horizon: Passed it when his favorite and youngest son, Quentin, was killed in World War I. His health began to plummet immediately as the sheer force of will that almost literally held his body together began to fail.
  • Death by Despair: Followed less than a year after.
• Determinator: He started life as a sickly home-schooled child, but managed to become the single most manly creature in existence through sheer force of will.
  • Did we mention he had asthma growing up? He did, and after he beat asthma to death, he ate asthma's raw flesh and ran 100 straight miles off the energy it gave him.
• Egomaniac Hunter: Actually a subversion; he loved to hunt, but he was also a staunch conservationist who probably did more to protect nature and wildlife than anyone else.
  • More preserved nature = more stuff to kill later. In other words, he may have enjoyed hunting, but he wanted to do so sustainably.
    • But is that a bad thing?
• Embarrassing Nickname: He really didn't like being called "Teddy". However, it wasn't because he hated it-- it was reportedly the pet name his first wife, Alice, gave to him. Roosevelt never really got over her Death by Childbirth, so he shuddered at the thought of being called "Teddy".
• Flaunting Your Fleets: He sent the Great White Fleet (called so for its white paint job) on what amounted to a gigantic naval review voyaging all the way around the world. Naturally several naval badasses of the twentieth century were junior officers on that cruise.
• Genius Bruiser: Sure, he was a black belt in jujitsu and had a history as a champion boxer, but as mentioned above, he was also a fucking genius. Listing his intellectual achievements would take far too long, just go to The Other Wiki and look at the "education" and "writer" sections.
• Gentleman Adventurer
• Great White Hunter
• Heroic BSOD: Similar to the Despair Event Horizon above, TR was staggered for about a week by the death of his first wife, Alice. He pulled himself through by excising her memory from his life as thoroughly as possible. This worked, although their daughter (also named Alice) came to resent it in later years because her father never spoke to her about her mother, and could rarely bring himself to call her by name.
• I Will Only Slow You Down: A gravely ill T.R. begged his son Kermit to leave him behind to die during their Amazon adventure, fearing he'd only bring death on his companions if he continued on. Kermit, having promised his mother to look after his father, flatly refused, and they made it out alive, though T.R. never regained his former vigor.
• Ill Boy: Started off his life as this, suffering from severe asthma and a whole host of other ailments. He claimed to have overcome it by sheer force of will, and it seems he was right.
• Ivy League: TR was a Harvard graduate.
• Kicked Upstairs: Why he became Vice-President. He kicked right back.
• Kill Me Now or Forever Stay Your Hand
• Klingon Promotion: Well, not exactly, but he did ascend to the highest office in the land by proving himself way less killable than his predecessor.
• Large Ham
• Made of Iron: More like Adamantium given the fact he survived a bullet wound to the chest, malaria, and asthma.
• Mega Corp Buster: He built up a reputation as a trustbuster when he took on the trusts (which were the Mega Corps of their day) and won.
• Memetic Badass: Especially on Cracked.com, AlternateHistory.com and in John Hodgman's More Information Than You Require. Think Super Prototype of Chuck Norris.
  • The last thing Death sees before a brutal asskicking.
  • In a History Channel documentary he is credited as being an inspiration for director Christopher Nolan's adaptation of Bruce Wayne.
    • "To me, the key to understanding the character, is that Bruce Wayne is Teddy Roosevelt."
• Must Have Caffeine: The man loved his coffee and would drink at least a gallon on a slow day. Heck, Maxwell House Coffee's slogan, "Good to the last drop", came from a comment Theodore made about the brand, making him a Trope Namer of sorts.
• My Real Daddy: Time Magazine likes to make the argument about Teddy being this trope to the United States of America. True, the nation had already been founded in 1776, but Time argues that it was Teddy who built the groundwork for America becoming a world power.
• New York City Cops: He was the president of the board of New York City Police Commissioners from 1895-1897. During his time he reformed the department by sweeping up corruption, creating a bicycle squad, standardizing the use of firearms, setting up officer fitness standards, and would personally walk the streets making sure police officers were on duty.
• Nice to the Waiter: He was very well liked by all the White House staff and he made it an effort to find time to spend time with them after the end of his term.
• Only a Flesh Wound: On one occasion, a nutjob shot Roosevelt while he was making a campaign speech. Most Presidents would respond to this by letting their bodyguards rush them to the nearest hospital. But Roosevelt, being a Badass Bookworm, correctly deduced (in what must be one of the biggest Badass Bookworm moments ever) that since he wasn't coughing up blood he could therefore afford to wait a while. He basically just told the crowd "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose," and calmly continued his speech, not stopping until he was completely finished. Only then did he leave. He spoke for a total of 90 minutes--a full hour and a half--after being shot before he left. Truly one of the most badass moments in Presidential history.
• Our Presidents Are Different: 100% President Action, although Mark Twain thought he was a President Lunatic.
  • He can't be both?
• Outliving One's Offspring: As mentioned under Despair Event Horizon above, T.R. lost a son in the Great War, and would die himself just seven months later. His widow Edith (d. 1948) later had to endure this twice more, losing Kermit to suicide in 1943 and Theodore Jr. to a heart attack a year later.
• Peace Through Superior Firepower: He believed in this. See the quotes page on that trope for his opinion.
• Rated "M" for Manly / Testosterone Poisoning: See the page quotes. His contemporaries claimed he would have beat up the grim reaper if he hadn't been a pussy about it and snuck up him while he was sleeping.
• Reassignment Backfire: As Mark Hanna was attributed as saying, "I don't believe it - the goddamn cowboy's President!" (He was, though, always against the New York Republicans making TR vice-president for that very reason.)
• Renaissance Man: It's easier to list what accomplishments Teddy Roosevelt was not capable of. And anything he wasn't capable of, well, he could have mercilessly beaten someone else into doing it. Pretty much his policy, actually.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Manly. William Howard Taft is the sensitive one.
• Specs of Awesome: Roosevelt took the awesome Up to Eleven in his lifetime. See above what happened to the guy that called him "Four-Eyes".
• Stout Strength
• Sweet Tooth: He drank his cups of coffee with seven lumps of sugar in them and had a passion for peaches and cream, devouring a soup-bowl-sized serving every morning when peaches were in season.
• Trope Namer: Besides the tropes mentioned above, the color "Alice blue" is named for the color of a dress worn by his daughter. Also, he's the reason we call them Teddy Bears.
• Ubermensch: His eyeglasses and moustache are even vaguely Neitzcheian.
• Unexpected Successor: Really, his enemies Should Have Seen It Coming, considering that there had been Vice Presidents that were absolutely the last people their respective parties wanted in the Oval Office but got there anyway simply because they were Vice President and the President croaked — namely Andrew Johnson and John Tyler, both of whom were still within living memory.
• Values Dissonance: Engineered the overthrow of Colombia's government purely because it was economically advantageous to the US, and didn't bother trying to pretend otherwise. A president that openly tried this today would probably face impeachment.
  • You go ahead and tell TR that he's being impeached... Go on... I dare you.
  • To be fair though, TR viewed his support of Panamanian revolutionaries against the Colombian government as being in the long-term best interests of all mankind. His belief was that by supporting the creation of Panama and building the Panama Canal there (the Panamanian revolutionaries were sympathetic to the idea of building the Canal through the isthmus, unlike the Colombian government), he would essentially be facilitating the creation of one of history's greatest infrastructure projects, one that could allow the whole world to trade more freely and thus improve the global economy and somewhat mitigate the effects of starvation and poverty, in his view. One may agree or disagree with this view, but at the very least, TR viewed it as an I Did What I Had to Do moment, and in later years still repeatedly declared his belief that the construction of the Panama Canal as his greatest accomplishment. Your Mileage May Vary, obviously, which is why this does count as Values Dissonance, and historians debate the merits of this idea to this day.
• Vocal Dissonance: Sort of. While you'd expect someone as Badass as TR to have a deep, booming voice, the single existing audio recording of him (which is of a brief speech he gave to a group of high school football players) reveals that his voice was actually somewhat high-pitched and rather posh. A short sample for your enlightenment is available here. The dissonance is even more surprising because actors portraying him often use a deep, resonant, bombastic voice. This dissonance may be caused by the fact that grew up with respiratory disease that he used a high voice which carries better when speaking outdoors, and that he was born to an aristocratic family.
• White Anglo Saxon Protestant: Certainly the most Badass example.
  • When humorist Finley Peter Dunne called Theodore a WASP, Roosevelt insisted that he was Dutch. This also means that he could kick ass in a pair of wooden shoes.
• The Wild West: Roosevelt moved to the Badlands in the Dakotas and became a rancher and cowboy for many years. He learned how to ride western-style, rope, and hunt. He wrote three books about aspects of life in the Old West based on his experiences. He also became a deputy and helped capture a dangerous gang of bandits who captured his riverboat. After hunting them down, TR sent his boat back home and escorted the bandits to their trial in nearby Dickinson, North Dakota. TR guarded them for forty hours without sleep and reading Tolstoy to keep himself awake. When he ran out of his own books, he read a dime store western that one of the thieves was carrying. That's right, he not only hunted down and captures the thieves, he escorted them to the courthouse, read Tolstoy along the way, and even commandeered one of the thieves novels to keep himself from getting bored. Yeah, he pretty much humiliated those bandits.
• The Woobie: If you read what he had to go through, you will feel bad for him. In any given book about him, there isn't a chapter where something horrible doesn't happen to him or reveals some tragic aspect or shame. Life really had it in for the guy, but he not only prevailed in spite of it, he became mighty. Not that you would know his trouble from his autobiography. In combination with the Edmund Morris Trilogy, you get the impression that the guy was an emotional trainwreck who suppressed every single traumatic event in order to stay, if not sane, then at least functional.
  • Theodore Roosevelt was a real-life example of the Riddle of Steel.

Theodore Roosevelt in Fiction

Comic Books

• Teddy is the star of Tales From the Bully Pulpit, widely considered one of the most awesome graphic novels ever written. He and the ghost of Thomas Edison steal H.G. Wells' time machine to slaughter Nazis on Mars in the future. And considering Teddy's strength and machismo, the concept works.
• T.R. received a Shout-Out in a Peanuts story arc in 1974, in which Charlie Brown's sister Sally brings Snoopy to the playground with her to terrorize would-be bullies. Her motto: "Speak softly and carry a beagle."
• In Don Rosa's The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, Scrooge meets Theodore Roosevelt a number of times on the road to making his fortune.
  • And in this series, TR is nearly as badass as Scrooge himself. Before you get confused, let me remind you that this is Don Rosa's young Scrooge McDuck, who, in a fit of rage, tore an entire steamship in half and threw a grand piano through a window, and regularly took on the most badass men in the world. The fact that TR came close to beating him in a one-on-one brawl is a mark of honor.

Film

• T.R. was played by Robin Williams in the Ben Stiller vehicle Night at the Museum and its sequel.
  • A less-celebrated fact of T.R.'s life is that he reformed the New York Police Department. Which is why his statue is in the Natural History Museum there.
• Brian Keith gave a very true-to-life portrayal in John Milius' The Wind and the Lion.
• The Atlantis: The Lost Empire spinoff travel guide book, "Atlantis: Subterranean Tours" says Teddy was invited to Atlantis after the events of the film by Whitmore, who had established top secret trips to the lost city for celebrities, staff and colleagues of his.
• Martin Scorsese has had a biopic of Roosevelt in Development Hell for years now,^[when?] with the intention of T.R. being played by Leonardo DiCaprio.
• At the end of Newsies, then-New York Governor T. R. shows up at the end to aid the newsboys.

Literature

• In the Timeline-191 Alternate History series by Harry Turtledove, Roosevelt is a main character in the original novel How Few Remain and in the subsequent Great War trilogy. In How Few Remain he funds and leads his own militia regiment (The Unauthorized Regiment) in rural Montana fighting against Canada in the Second Mexican War (Canada being allied to the Confederacy). In the Great War trilogy he is the (Democratic) President during World War I and he leads the Union to victory against the Confederacy (the Union fighting on the side of the Central Powers, and the Confederacy on the side of the Entente).
  • Crowning Moment of Awesome: After having finally led the United States to victory over their long-time enemies in the Confederacy, the US reannexed certain parts of territory from the CSA... including one little portion in Virginia where Robert E. Lee's house lies. Roosevelt's dying request is to be buried in front of Lee's house, spiting the Confederates one last time by soiling the memory of their hero. General Custer also gets buried in the same plot of land, and it was his strategies that led to the Confederacy's defeat. Theodore is hailed as the greatest Union president in (alternate) history.
    • Truth in Television: You know what that little plot of land is called in our current history? Arlington National Cemetery!
• Mike Resnick wrote a series of short stories about Theodore Roosevelt called "The Other Teddy Roosevelts". Among his adventures, Teddy goes after Jack the Ripper ("Redchapel"), takes on a vampire lord in New York ("Two Hunters in Manhattan"), and leads the resurrected Rough Riders into WWI and gets slaughtered. ("Over There")
• More Information Than You Require grants T.R. full Memetic Badass status.

Theodore Roosevelt and his son Kermit explored Brazil's legendary River of Doubt. After they were done, it was renamed THE RIVER OF UNQUESTIONABLE CERTAINTY.

• • Entirely Truth in Television, as seen here and here.
• In the Alternate History work Fight and Be Right, he becomes Governor of the American-protected Congo Free State.
• Monster Hunter International attributes the creation of PUFF (Perpetual Unearthly Forces Fund), which pays bounties on dangerous monsters, to Theodore Rossevelt. The RPG expands on this and states he most likely "fought a vampire that was preying on the residents of New York City’s slums and a pack of human-eating chupacabra in Cuba", but the lack of records make what exactly he saw unclear.

Live-Action TV

• T.R. was played by Tom Berenger in the 1997 miniseries The Rough Riders, which was also written and directed by John Milius.
• Paul Giamatti provided the voice of T.R. in Ken Burns' 2014 PBS documentary series The Roosevelts: An Intimate History. The series also profiles T.R.'s niece, Eleanor, and fifth cousin, Franklin Delano.
• Likely would have appeared in Deadwood had it not been canceled - the show's Historical Domain Character protagonist, Seth Bullock, was one of Teddy's closest friends.
• Teddy went up against Lawrence of Arabia in the third season of Deadliest Warrior. He won.

Theatre

• In the play Arsenic and Old Lace, Teddy Brewster believes that he is Theodore Roosevelt and behaves accordingly.

Video Games

• You get to rescue Teddy and his son Kermit in a portion of the Edutainment Game Amazon Trail II. He helpfully introduces himself as "Teddy Roosevelt, explorer and former President of the United States".
  • This is completely inaccurate. Teddy Roosevelt would never need to get rescued.
    • It's implied he rescued himself after the player gives him some medicine. He had a pretty badly hurt leg.
    • The "badly hurt leg" actually plagued Teddy Roosevelt for the rest of his life and may have shortened it, as well. His leg was badly infected during his Amazon River voyage and most of his companions thought he wouldn't make it home, but he did, though he was never in the same health again.
  • What is inaccurate is that he would never introduce himself as Teddy, as he thought the nickname was ridiculous. Only Theodore was good enough for him!
• Doctor Robotnik/Eggman of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise began life as a parody drawing of T.R. His appearance is about all the good doctor shares with Roosevelt.
  • But at least Robotnik is still a Large Ham.

Web Comics

• Hark! A Vagrant: "Russia, Japan, must you kill each other so? We can negotiate! Or, if you want to, we can safari! FUCK IT LET'S DO BOTH"
• Subnormality features a strip where two time-traveling neo-Nazis try to kill him. They fail, not because of Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act, but because Teddy is about to chuck their car at them.
  • They also failed because they were trying to kill the other Roosevelt.

Web Original

• For what it's worth: Theodore Roosevelt, Gentleman Adventurer.

Western Animation

• The Looney Tunes short "Ballot Box Bunny" (1951), Bugs dresses up as Teddy and uses his motto "I speak softly, but I carry a BIG stick," to which Yosemite Sam replies, "Well, I speak LOOOUUUDLY, and I carry a BIIIIIGGER stick! And I use it, too!"
• Another Looney Tunes short, "Hillbilly Hare," references him: "And just who might you be?" "Well, ah might be Teddy Roosevelt, but ah ain't."
• TR was featured in an episode of The Legend of Tarzan. He was portrayed as a squat, obese hothead who was taught by the cast that hunting animals is wrong.
• An oil lobbyist wanted to drill in his statue's head for oil in The Simpsons episode "Mr. Lisa Wants to Go to Washington".
  • Later decapitated in Itchy's gruesome tirade in "Itchy the Lucky Mouse in Manhattan Madness" in episode "The Day The Violence Died". Quite unfortunate for the Old Knickerbocker! But all in good humor!
  • After brutality beaten up by Teddy, the writers give him the proper respect he deserves in the episode "Bart Stops to Smell the Roosevelts" where Bart gets inspired by T.R. to dabble in his own badassery.

Other

• A single-panel cartoon, artist's name not attached, claimed that when The Grim Reaper came for Theodore Roosevelt, "the last thing Death saw before suffering a brutal asskicking" was a pillow with Roosevelt's face drawn on it in the bed. Looming behind Death's shoulder was the real T.R..... This was no doubt a reference to one of the page quotes above.

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