Since around 1990, our love of football culture has grown concurrently with an interest in/fascination of flags. Much in the same way that international football can inadvertently educate children on geography and capital cities (although Spain’s alternating home stadium policy screwed us up once in a school quiz, as we naturally thought that the Spanish capital was Seville due to the fact that their team had just played there), the attentive fan will gain an above average knowledge of national flags, in our case then supplemented through flag-books, atlases, and encyclopedias.
Given our preference for “destroying” history also, with series like Pixel Jersey Remix and, of course, If Football Kit Brands Made National Flag, the following artistic-concept was only a matter of time. Non-football related really, but we still thought it would be enjoyable to shove flags and symbols together that have no business being there (it is enjoyable), and basically creating some sick, fucked-up shit that is bound to offend all sides. Enjoy.
We start with the first, and possibly most fucked-up, flag we had in mind. The unholy “Union of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland”:
Actually, what if Northern Ireland left the UK, but instead of a United Ireland there was…:
Alternate version:
Two countries with an even worse recent history are Israel and Palestine. But what if they combined:
Alternate version:
Personally, we’d be in favour of an Israeli annexation of Wales:
The Welsh probably wouldn’t like that, so how about joint-masters, along with NI, of a new-age UK:
Moving on to something inspired by a suggestion from POTP Manchester, what if every US State was the Socialist Republic of Vietnam:
Maybe some day Korea will also be reunited. But first, what about the Union of North Korea and South Korea:
Something similar and needing to be done, was the merging of old friends Serbia and Croatia. Here we’ve placed the coat of arms of each onto the background of the other’s flag, and combined them:
But why stop there. How about a full-scale Yugoslav (with emphasis on the Slav) reunion:
Another request was the strange combination of apartheid South Africa with modern South Africa:
Of course one of the most logical-illogical combos is Nazi Germany and the USSR. With the respective symbols each laying on front of a red field, this seemed the most obvious way to go:
For some reason, a black and white only version seems particularly chilling:
But the above two do seem to suggest that the Nazis are more important in this marriage. So we tried this, accidentally reminiscent of a similarly absurd reference in The Simpsons:
Continuing along these lines, what if the British had surrendered to the Nazis during WW2? Hitler had wanted to keep the UK and it’s Empire as a Nazi ally state, in which case their flag might have ended up like this (with more emphases placed on the Germanic English cross wile also creating a sort of Celtic Cross):
Alternate version:
There’s also the possibility of a break-away “Nazi Scotland” state in our nightmarish re-imagined history:
A union of Scotland with Northern Ireland would probably be more palatable to many:
Or, similar to the opening flag, Scotland domination over the Republic of Ireland:
Moving back across Europe, we reunited Finland with their former Russian masters:
At the same time, what if all of Germany had become members of the USSR:
If Ireland turned communist, this simple design would probably work best:
Heading to North America, and returning to the dreaded Nazi theme, we wanted to see what would have happened had the USA also succumbed to German will in the 1940s:
Alternate version:
The poor Canadians, meanwhile, were defeated by both the Nazis and the Soviets:
Alternate version:
Ok, we’re finally done with hammers, sickles and swastikas now, promise. But we’re keeping things bizarre with the East German Republic of Israel:
May as well go for a full Israeli Germany while we’re at it:
And, of course, the Union of East Germany and Belgium:
Nearly at the end here but there’s time for one more USA-related flag, seemingly created following the reconquest of America by the British. Or is the other way around? Not sure:
Somewhat similarly, this could be the flag after another English invasion of Jamaica:
We tried the full UK/Jamaica natural combo, but it just comes out as a bit of a mess:
Lastly, we were wondering what it would look like if things had gone a different way in the 90s and the Croats were forced to leave their homeland. “Cubatia” is the result:
But then the Serbs are also kicked out of Europe, and only have one place to go:
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[…] go through each of these five formerly-independent countries, with their freshly-imposed British Fucked-Up Flags, and list their new leagues and how the names have changed below. Note that for extra titles […]
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