During what everyone agrees qualifies as Roman history it’s form of government changed multiple times, regimes were replaced by military force, it divided into separate smaller states, it’s religion changed, it’s capital moved (not just the big move to Constantinople, eventually Rome was no longer even the regional capital of Italy), in one half it’s language changed, and we also saw the overall ethnic makeup of the citizenry shift via the assimilating of conquered peoples and immigrants.
So with that understanding of how flexible and changeable what Rome is can be, there is no real reason to refuse to accept the Ottoman Empire’s claim to simply being a change in religion and administration of the Eastern Empire. And the Tsar’s claim is just as valid since they replaced the Eastern Emperor’s role in the Eastern Orthodox Church, then WWI and it's aftermath saw those successor states’ forms of government change again back to being Republics, in name at least.
But even before the 1454 changes the Islamic states could already be viewed as Roman offshoots. After all I’ve become convinced the original Mecca was really Petra and it was in the Roman Province of Palaestina Salutaris or Arabia Petrea. And what we now think of as Islamic architecture clearly evolved out of Byzantine architecture. Arabs were already becoming a fixture of the Eastern Roman Empire even before Muhammad, just look at the history involving Mavia. And pre Constantine an Arab had become the actual first Christian Emperor, Philip the Arabian. People who study coins are also aware that prior to Abd Al-Malik the Arabs were still minting Byzantine style coins in the former Roman provinces (and Sassanid coins in Persia) using the same mints. So there is plenty of reason to view the Arab empire as also another Roman splinter state. We've also now discovered that Trajan had conquered more of Arabia then we used to think, extending to include Madain Selah, Dumat and Tayma.
But it’s not just the Eastern Empire that didn’t actually fall. Thersites The Historian has a video on how various elements of Feudalism basically evolved from the privatization of Roman Offices, Duke/Dux and Count/Comte both come from Roman titles. .The Senate continued to meet well after the Western Empire’s “Fall” into the 600s. Liberius was a roman Prefect in Fifth Century Gaul. The Pope and other Bishops had become Pontiffs so they carried on the Roman state religion clerically. Latin remained the language of the ruling class right on through the Reformation and has influenced multiple younger languages. Right on the Wikipedia Page for Sardinia it says "Early medieval Sardinian political institutions evolved from the millennium-old Roman imperial structures with relatively little Germanic influence.".
And Justinian’s reforms of the Roman law code are the foundation of Europe's legal system to this day. Certain history YouTubers have made a point out of how Rome's sense of Law and Justice was what they viewed as their defining characteristic over any other features of their culture. So how much the Laws of Europe are still Roman can be viewed as the strongest argument that Rome never fell.
In 800 AD Charlemagne was crowned the new Western Emperor by The Pope. The Holy Roman Emperors were the successors to his Principate, as later were the Habsburgs, Napoleons and Kaisers. WWI caused the end of four different Principates, but also a rise of new Republics.
And now the European Union is seeking to bring these disparate provinces back together.
Update 9/5/2020: here's a fun YouTube Video from Jack Rackman with the same premise.
Update May 2022: I made about how according to Genesis 10-11 The Bible defined Nations largely by their languages. Well the Language of Rome being Latin is in it's ancient from still the Liturgical Language of the Roman Catholic Church. But more importantly the languages as commonly spoken continued to change and evolve and split up into the modern Romance Languages, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan in the west as well as Romanian in Eastern Europe. And then while English is classified as a Germanic Language half our vocabulary comes from Latin.
My Ancestry of Charlemagne post among other things documents how Charlemagne descended from a lot of Ancient Romans, including specifically Gallo-Roman Aristocracy.
Update Ocotber 2022: Here's another Video on the Subject.
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