Warning: This story contains spoilers for “Zero Day,” “G20″ and “Paradise.”

Another U.S. president was accused of being unfit for the job.

No, I’m not talking about Donald Trump’s questionable leadership or even the criticism Joe Biden faced last year during his reelection campaign. This is an accusation Robert De Niro’s former President George Mullen faces in “Zero Day,” Netflix’s latest political thriller that tackles cyberterrorism.

While investigating the titular zero day event, Mullen’s authority is called into question when he shows signs of cognitive decline, making the already difficult task of quelling an anxious nation even harder. Had this storyline been hatched after Biden’s feeble mental state became the subject of ridicule during the 2024 election cycle, you would think “Zero Day” was mimicking real-life events. But, considering the series itself was conceived in November 2021, that storyline and other timely elements that surface in the show just “may have been ahead of their time.”

“I can’t say that we were predicting anything; it just worked out that way,” co-creator Eric Newman shared in a Tudum interview, also noting the show’s portrayal of a Black woman as president (Angela Bassett) and a “sociopathic billionaire trying to meddle in the government” (presumably a dig at Elon Musk).

It’s quite an uncanny coincidence, but these are just a few foreknowing parallels that reflect the state of American politics today — and “Zero Day” isn’t alone.

Onscreen entertainment has always found itself intertwined with politics in one way or another. Whether through realistic depictions, fictional drama or direct commentary on the landscape, watching TV and film penetrate the world of power and influence in the most imaginative, scripted ways is always interesting. On the flip side, there is something unsettling about seeing aspects of our political reality mirrored so vividly in popular media, especially when it feels as though certain events have been foreshadowed.

That notion was at the forefront of my mind in the lead-up to the 2024 election, when 2010s shows like “Veep” and “Scandal” saw a resurgence in relevance, as their prophetic portrayals prepared us for what could have been America’s future — electing the first female president. Add to that last year’s bizarro plot twists — Biden dropping his reelection bid and endorsing Kamala Harris mere months before Election Day — and whiplash headlines — Trump surviving an assassination attempt — it seemed as though the line between real political spectacles and fictitious narratives had blurred.

Things grew even more obscure in January when Trump reentered the White House, kicking off his first few months in office with a record number of executive orders that make the hands of time look like they’re swiftly ticking backward. At the same time, political disarray found a place onscreen, too, as new additions to the zeitgeist, like “Zero Day,” gained avid viewers, and not necessarily for offering an escape from our morbid reality.

Instead, the current political climate — and the lack of transparency from the chaotic Trump 2.0 era — seems to have heightened our appetite for new White House thrills (or, at the very least, a window into the presidency). Even in the most subtle ways, these recent onscreen offerings have hinted at facets of the administration and U.S. politics as a whole. However, the fact that some of those aspects have also been foretold very recently, though purely by chance, adds another eerie layer to the political entertainment we consume.

Take, for instance, “G20,” Prime Video’s Viola Davis-led political thriller that started streaming Thursday. Although Trump is a far cry from the action heroine who single-handedly whoops bad guys and rescues hostages in the film, parts of it feel particularly relevant when you consider the latest White House mishaps.

“G20” takes place at the titular global economic summit in South Africa. Davis’ President Danielle Sutton and other world leaders are taken hostage by mercenaries who force them to record deepfake videos in a determined conspiracy to tank the global economy and corner the cryptocurrency market. As the most powerful figure in the room, Sutton becomes the No. 1 target for the puppet scheme, and when she refuses to cooperate, the world’s financial markets crash.

In real life, global stocks saw a significant dip last week amid Trump’s threats of higher tariffs in his ongoing trade war; he’s since announced a temporary pause. An adviser to the president claimed that his sweeping tariff policies are not a ploy to sink the stock market, but uncertainty remains. “G20” toys with this idea a bit, too, portraying the threatened fate of the world’s top currencies as a fraudulent media scheme sends crypto to new highs — this happening just after the Justice Department shut down its cryptocurrency fraud unit IRL.

When you think about it, the movie’s core plot — outside of Davis playing an ass-kicking president who survives a terrorist attack — doesn’t seem too far-fetched in the world of politics, which only gets more unpredictable by the day. Who’s to say a crypto-obsessed profiteer couldn’t attempt this?

In an interview with Far Out Magazine, director Patricia Riggen insisted that there was a “very conscious decision not to make [‘G20’] political.” And yet, so much of it is. A socio-economic crisis is the backdrop for the entire film, which was shot before widespread concerns of an impending recession in 2025. Riggen even said she felt it was “appropriate” to add a timely component like the abuse of artificial intelligence to her “popcorn” action flick, especially after seeing “the deepfakes of presidents online” herself.

“I’m like, ‘Oh my god,’” she told Far Out, “‘It’s actually happening.’”

Again, the boundary between fiction and reality feels increasingly hazy when films like “G20” reference so many contemporary issues. But that’s virtually unavoidable for any material that steps into political territory.

Such is the case in “Zero Day,” which sees sitting U.S. President Evelyn Mitchell (Bassett) — yet another female president character who warrants more Harris comparisons — tap retired President Mullen (De Niro) to lead an investigation into the deadly cyberattack that paralyzes the nation.

This wouldn’t be the first time television reimagined a 9/11-level terrorist attack — see, for instance, “The Looming Tower” and “Homeland.” However, it’s interesting that “Zero Day,” released Feb. 20, sparked a new dialogue about digital security risks — amid today’s disinformation age — shortly before Trump fired the head of the National Security Agency and allowed his administration to halt funding for two cybersecurity efforts. A coincidence, yes, but still just as chilling.

“I saw this as an opportunity to say, ’OK, the federal government was never able to show the public what a cyber Pearl Harbor [or a] cyber 9/11 [could] look like,” “Zero Day” co-creator and executive producer Michael S. Schmidt, also a New York Times journalist, explained to Tudum. “Let’s take that opportunity and provide people with an example of that.”

The miniseries takes some obvious creative liberties with its portrayal, as the culprits behind this particular attack came from inside the White House — Speaker of the House Richard Dreyer (Matthew Modine) and Mullen’s daughter, Alex (Lizzy Caplan), along with finance billionaire Robert Lyndon (Clark Gregg) and the Elon Musk-esque tech billionaire Monica Kidder (Gaby Hoffmann) — and not some foreign land. But the general idea, according to Schmidt, was to show, “If there was something majorly catastrophic that happened to our country right now, how would the country react?”

Schmidt, Newman and co-creator Noah Oppenheim pooled their collective understanding of U.S. politics to probe their TV examination, but they also turned to expert consultants (like a former FBI agent and a former White House deputy press secretary) to inform its realism, hence the parallels with past and present news.

“One of the most important parts of this show was that this had to be as realistic and believable as possible,” Schmidt noted to Tudum. “Yes, we have to tell a great story, and we have to have a thriller aspect to this, but it still needs to be as authentic as possible.”

Hulu’s “Paradise,” which premiered on the streamer in January and is now airing weekly on ABC, follows a similar approach to real-world problems stemming from a White House conspiracy. While the series is more a musing on the aftermath of a nuclear mass extinction event that wipes out nearly all of humanity, it does have a few political tendencies.

For example, the show’s doomsday plot forces 25,000 citizens into a hidden bunker and was triggered by a supervolcano erupting in Antarctica. It’s no doubt a wink to years of insistent warnings of climate change, which Trump has famously called a “hoax” and continuously attacked. There’s also the assassination attempt and brutal murder of a president (James Marsden) under the watch of lead Secret Service agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) that uncovers a lot of the show’s darkness. Of course, that’s not meant to reflect the attempts made on Trump’s life last year, but the timing is serendipitous.

Those aren’t the most striking resemblances I noticed in “Paradise,” though — that would be the show’s titular hideout.

In “Paradise,” Samantha “Sinatra” Redmond (Julianne Nicholson), a powerful tech billionaire with very close ties to the government (much like Musk), comes up with the idea to build “the world’s largest underground city” beneath a mountain in Colorado after hearing a lecture about an imminent global catastrophe. With her resources and influence, Sinatra, along with a team of billionaires, controls the only known advanced civilization that remains on Earth.

That’s a lot of political power to give to someone without a political background, although we’ve seen this happen before. We also heard about the doomsday billionaire bunker trend before “Paradise” brought it to fruition.

In 2024, Vice published a report on the Silicon Valley elite building bunkers to escape an apocalyptic calamity. The year prior, Wired released an investigation into Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million secret Hawaii compound, a project that was said to include “bunker-like qualities.” Because of that news, Atlas Survival Shelters CEO Ron Hubbard told The Hollywood Reporter last year it “caused a [bunker] buying frenzy.” Even without “Paradise,” end-of-the-world scenarios are clearly on the minds of the wealthy — and perhaps they’re not as irrational as we might think.

But that’s just a piece of the show that draws viewers in, and it gives me pause about what inspires such political-esque storylines.

What makes media like “Paradise,” “Zero Day” and “G20” so popular among audiences is not staking claim over any particular narrative or being an insider scoop on the American government. But if they get close enough to that, people are willing to tune in.

“Feeling like you have an inside track to that world is appealing to a lot of people,” pop culture enthusiast Hunter Harris told Town & Country.

There’s also the playing on societal fears that derive from what could be happening at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. that get people so engrossed in political entertainment. I mean, that’s what makes a White House murder mystery like “The Residence” sound more fun than frightening, right?

Still, what are we to make of these fictional parallels onscreen if not subtle observations of what could be or, perhaps, what shouldn’t be happening in this country’s political sphere? In the end, it’s not just the thrill that keeps us watching — it’s the curiosity about how close to the truth these wild stories really are.