Assassination of John F. Kennedy in Popular Culture - "What If?" Themes

"What If?" Themes

Not surprisingly, the assassination of J.F.K. has been the subject of several time travel stories in science fiction film, television and literature.

Profile in Silver, a 1985 episode of the second Twilight Zone series, features a time traveler (Dr. Joseph Fitzgerald) from 2172 who is sent to record the assassination, but ends up intentionally preventing it. The interference sets up a chain of events, beginning with the assassination of Nikita Khrushchev and predicted to culminate in a nuclear war that will destroy the human race. Fitzgerald realizes his folly in disrupting history and tries to reverse his disturbance. The timeline is ultimately restored when Fitzgerald takes Kennedy's place in the motorcade, while the president is transported to safety in 2172.

The 1990 film Running Against Time starred Robert Hays and Catherine Hicks as time travelers unsuccessfully attempting to prevent the tragedy, on a theory that the Vietnam War would not have happened had Kennedy lived. In a key scene, Hays is accused of the assassination in place of Oswald.

"Lee Harvey Oswald", the 1992 season opener for the TV series Quantum Leap, finds Scott Bakula's time-hopping character Sam Beckett leaping into Oswald's identity. In the series, Sam's consciousness replaces that of various people from his own lifetime, remaining in each person until he corrects something "wrong" in that person's life or times. Shifting back and forth between earlier points in the shooter's life, Sam's guide Al Calavicci concludes that Sam is there to uncover the conspiracy. Unfortunately, Sam begins to assume the personality of the assassin, gradually finding himself powerless to change anything. No proof of conspiracy is discovered. At the critical moment, Al breaks through to Sam, prompting him to leap into Secret Service Agent Clint Hill. Hill attempts to reach the car before the shots, but fails to prevent Kennedy's death. In the final exchange, Al reveals that they have saved one life—that of Jackie Kennedy, whom Oswald had killed along with the President in the original timeline. This episode was written by series creator Donald P. Bellisario, in response to the Oliver Stone film JFK. Bellisario did not believe in conspiracy, and throughout the episode he interweaved supporting evidence from the Warren Commission Report and Volumes, while having Al speculate that people find it comfortable to believe in a conspiracy, because the implication suggests that if one man can kill the President, nobody is safe.

Tikka to Ride, a 1997 episode of the science-fiction comedy series Red Dwarf, played the time travel paradox for laughs. Craig Charles, as Dave Lister, persuades the rest of the crew to go back in time to order some curry and ends up in the Texas School Book Depository. Lister literally bumps into Lee Harvey Oswald (played by Toby Aspin), causing Oswald to fall out the sixth-floor window before he can fire his third shot and kill the President. In the resulting time line, Kennedy is impeached in 1964 for sharing a mistress with a Mafia boss, J. Edgar Hoover is blackmailed into running for President by the Mob, and Russia is allowed to install nuclear missiles on Cuba in exchange for Mafia cocaine trafficking being permitted. On a more long-term note, the crews' ship is erased from existence as Kennedy's impeachment traumatizes America, allowing the USSR to win the Space Race. After attempting to permit the assassination to take place by forcing Oswald up to the sixth floor rather than the fifth, Oswald merely wounds Kennedy, due to the steep trajectory of his shot. The crew is forced to recruit the alternate Kennedy to assassinate his past self—none of the crew being willing to kill Kennedy themselves—thus restoring Kennedy's position in history.

In the 2002 film Timequest, a time-traveler prevents Kennedy's assassination and history takes an alternate course, including the birth of a second son, James Kennedy, who was conceived on the night of November 22, 1963, when Kennedy and his wife return from Dallas.

In Stephen Baxter's novel Voyage (1996), the Dallas assassination attempt only succeeds in crippling Kennedy, but kills Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, the First Lady, instead. Kennedy is re-elected in 1964, however, and commits the United States to landing a crewed vessel on Mars, which occurs in 1986. However, this novel does not deal primarily with the assassination attempt, except as a backdrop to the crewed Mars mission that it makes possible and an alternate-universe US space program that results from Kennedy's longevity in this world.

In the 2006 novel Prologue (Cold Tree Press 2006 - AmazonKindle 2010) the usual time-travel scenario is inverted. Author Greg Ahlgren devises an alternative future wherein Kennedy was not assassinated, and the Soviet Union won the Cold War. Pursued by Soviet agents, the American time-traveling protagonists go back to the early 1960s to change history, and end up in Dallas in November 1963.

The opening credits of the movie adaptation of the DC comic book Watchmen include a scene in which the anti-hero The Comedian is portrayed as Kennedy's assassin.

In the short story collection Alternate Kennedys, Kennedy's father exercised control over his boys, and first put Kennedy's older brother up for the Presidency in 1952, then yanked him before he could seek a second term. The older brother ended up becoming John's assassin in 1963.

An early story idea for the sequel to Star Trek: The Motion Picture (which ultimately became Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan), written by Gene Roddenberry, involved the Kennedy assassination, as a historical event which Kirk and Spock must utilize time travel in order to travel back in time to ensure the occurrence of. The story idea was dismissed as it was thought to have the potential to alienate American audiences, as it was based on the premise that the assassination was "supposed to happen", rather than the storyline revisionistically preventing it from happening.

Don DeLillo's 1988 novel Libra focuses on the life of Lee Harvey Oswald and offers a speculative account of the events leading up to the Kennedy assassination. In DeLillo's 1997 novel, Underworld, characters watch the Zapruder film at a dinner party.