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For Want of a Nail: Difference between revisions
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* ''[[Arabian Nights]]'' tale, "What a drop of honey caused" is based off this: A hunter brings a find of honey to a merchant, but a drop falls onto the ground, which attracts insects, which attract birds, which attracts the merchant's cat, who attracts the hunter's dog who kills the cat. The merchant kicks the dog out of anger and the dog dies. The hunter kills the merchant out of anger/revenge. The merchant and hunter were from neighboring villages who fight, but the villages are either side of the border between neighboring provinces, and tit-for-tat exchanges start one of the bloodiest wars in local history, all because of a drop of honey.
* In Stephen King's book ''[[Needful Things]]'', Leland Gaunt, the proprietor of the titular shop, exchanges small treasures for ridiculously low prices if the buyer agrees to do him a small, mostly inconsequential favor. The favors inevitably snowball into large-scale disasters, {{spoiler|culminating in the destruction of the entire town.}}
** King also does this with ''[[11/22/63
* Possibly subverted in Philip Roth's book ''[[The Plot Against America]]'', in which the Republican nomination of [
* This concept is the driving force behind the events in the book ''A Crack In The Line''. The book is about a boy whose mother is dead and who lives with his father and his mother's older sister. He accidentally finds a way to travel to an alternate timeline, where a female version of himself exists; her mother is still alive and she has no aunt. They discover that their two universes exist because of an event in the past that wasn't suppose to happen, causing the timeline to split off in two. Initially, they believe the divergence happened when their mother got in the accident which in the boy's world, killed her. However, the actual divergence happened when {{spoiler|their [[Extreme Doormat|grandmother]], at the time unmarried to their grandfather, refused to abort the baby that would become their mother's older sister. The girl's timeline was the one created in response to this change, in which the grandmother got the abortion}}.
* In ''The Never War'', the third installment of ''[[The Pendragon Adventure]]'', Bobby goes to Third Earth (Earth in the early 51st Century AD) to find out what would happen if he saved the ''[[Hindenburg]]''. Turns out, if said Zeppelin was saved, London, DC, and New York would've been nuked by the Luftwaffe just before D Day, and things would've gone down ''mountain'' from there.
* In the appendices of [[The Lord of the Rings]], Gandalf says how things might have been, if Smaug the dragon had not been killed in [[The Hobbit]]:
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** Another example is when we're shown Martin and Daphne's extraordinarily efficient morning routine on several occasions, but on the last one Daphne puts Martin's cereal in a red bowl instead of a yellow one. The whole routine goes to hell, culminating in Martin accidentally throwing his toast on the floor.
{{quote|'''Martin''': You know, I don't like this red bowl, it's throwing everything off!}}
* ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'':
▲** Specifically, the event here is {{spoiler|a woman in the 40s not getting hit by a car and proceeding to lead a massive peace movement that keeps the US out of [[World War Two]] for several years. This giver the Nazis time to develop nuclear weapons and win the war}}.
*
** Also "Tapestry": Q shows Picard that by correcting one mistake in his youth, a seemingly beneficial act, he never becomes captain of the ''Enterprise''. (He specified, however, just to assuage Picard's conscience, that he's "not that important" and that no one would die or otherwise be terribly affected by this choice except for himself.)
** The final season episode "Parallels" has Worf jumping from parallel universe to parallel universe, where this trope is in full effect. La Forge is dead in about half of them, Picard is dead in about a quarter of them, Wesley Crusher's a lieutenant in a few of them, and the last gasp effort to set things right is almost disrupted by an ''Enterprise'' where the Borg have pretty much conquered everything. Worf retains his memories of everything, however, which inspires him to try to romance Troi.
*** One of these universes appears to have the Bajorans throwing off the Cardassian occupation and proceeding to become as bad as the Cardassians.
* ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise]]''. The entire Temporal Cold War appears to be based on this trope.
** In "Shockwave" Captain Archer is due to be interrogated by [[Big Bad]] Silik, so he's yanked off the turbolift by time agent Daniels and taken to the 31st century Earth — which is now in ruins because of Daniels' action.
* ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'' has the "Year of Hell" two-parter involving a Krenim timeship making subtle and not-so-subtle changes to the timeline hoping to create a perfect timeline where their empire is once again powerful and all their loved ones are alive. One part featured Chakotay offering to erase an insignificant-looking comet from history, thus preventing the ''Voyager'''s interference in Krenim affairs. The Krenim captain explains that Chakotay would be wiping out half the species in the sector (a little hypocritical, given what the captain is doing) due to this comet being involved in [[Panspermia|seeding]] most of the inhabited planets in the sector billions of years ago. (As the timeship itself exists out of time, destroying it at any point causes it to ''never have been built'', and leading to a more or less happy ending for everyone involved.)▼
** In "Storm Front" Nazi Germany is winning the Second World War, apparently because a temporal agent assassinated Lenin.
** And in "Twilight" the fact that Archer is disabled by a [[Negative Space Wedgie]] means he's unable to save the human race from being wiped out by the Xindi.
* ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'':
▲**
** The ''Voyager'' novel ''Echoes'' occurs when a planet activates a revolutionary new transport system that happens to shift the residents over one universe. When the ''Voyager'' is inadvertently summoned by the energy pulse, it is immune to the shifts. Residents report small changes in the world around them as they're moved. This wouldn't be such a problem, except somewhere down the line, the planet was hit by a meteor. That universe's ''Voyager'' was tasked with trying to save a few billion people. And a few hours after that, a few billion more. And a few hours after that...
** The episode "Non Sequitur" shows what would have happened if Harry Kim was not chosen to be among those who would be in Voyager's crew, with the results also affecting the life of Tom Paris. Of course, the catch is that this is an alternate reality in which Harry Kim still remembers being a crew member of Voyager and has somehow wound up in this reality.
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* In ''[[Red Dwarf]]'', it is revealed that the pathetic and cowardly Rimmer diverged from his ludicrously cool alternate-universe counterpart [[The Ace|Ace]] at one critical juncture: one of them was held back a grade in school, and the other was not. {{spoiler|Noteworthy in that ''Ace'' was the one held back - the humiliation drove him to fight back and improve himself.}}
** More noteworthy, it is implied that every Rimmer in every dimension has the full unbridled potential to become Ace, provided they get the training and the wig.
*
** [[Lampshade Hanging]] in the episode "The Shakespeare Code":
{{quote|'''Martha:''' But are we safe? I mean, can we move around and stuff?
'''The Doctor:''' Of course we can. Why do you ask?
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** Previously done in "Father's Day" when Rose saves her father from being killed by a hit-and-run driver. In keeping with the combination of For Want of a Nail and [[In Spite of a Nail]] that [[Doctor Who]] leaps between periodically, saving one man in the past leads to...flying dragon demon things trying ot unmake reality.
*** However, this is explained in that at that moment, there were a pair of Doctors and a pair of Roses, making it, "...a vulnerable point."
* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]''{{'}}s Wishverse is the result of this trope combined with a subversion of [[Wonderful Life]]. Because Buffy never came to Sunnydale, Giles is no longer a watcher, Willow (now a skanky [[Lesbian Vampire]]) and Xander were turned into vampires, Angel became a prisoner implied to be tortured and raped for the fun of the vamps, and The Master left his underground prison, wreaking merry havoc on the town. Buffy also got herself a scar and an unrefreshing new attitude. The Wishverse debuted in "The Wish", and our favorite [[Lesbian Vampire]] crossed over into the [[Buffy Verse]] in "Doppelgangland" for even more fun.
** Although this may seem a bit less dramatic as the trope would imply. Considering that Buffy was the one to kill the Master and keep the Hellmouth in check, it's not a dramatic leap in logic for her lack of presence having disastrous consequences, unlike a kingdom falling for want of a nail.
*** We actually ''see'' the nail in the course of the show. The Master would have escaped in the pilot episode if Buffy hadn't stopped the Harvest, and the original episode establishes quite firmly that Buffy's presence was key to stopping it. (The only other available white hat who'd have had a chance of taking out the Vessel in a fight would have been Angel, and he not only avoided the canon Harvest but wouldn't even have been in Sunnydale at that time if he hadn't followed Buffy there.)
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{{quote|'''Narrator''': "A chain of critical events that led to the X disaster..."}}
** ''Air Crash Investigation'' also has episodes that explain about air crashes caused by this trope. See "Real Life".
* ''[[Dad's
{{quote|'''Mainwaring''':For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, the horse was lost; for want of a horse, the rider was lost; for want of a rider, the message was lost; for want of the message, the battle was lost; and so it was that the kingdom was lost --
'''Jones''': Hence the expression, "Keep your hair on." }}
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