For Want of a Nail: Difference between revisions

** 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!}}

** 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.

** 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.

* The video for "Has It Come To This?" by The Streets features a split-screen of two possible [[A Day in The Life|day-in-the-life situations]] of Mike Skinner.

* "The Want of a Nail" by Todd Rundgren.

* [[Bowling for Soup]]'s "Almost"'s verses each have chain of events that might have happened, if not for the first event in the chain only "almost" happening:

** Verse 1: "I almost got drunk at school at 14 / and I almost made out with the Homecoming Queen / who almost went on to be Miss Texas / but lost to a slut with much bigger [[Painful Rhyme|breastes]] / who almost dropped out to move to L.A. / and was almost famous for almost a day"

 

== Western Animation ==

* ''[[Futurama]]'''s "The Farnsworth Parabox," which features a universe "exactly like ours" except for the fact that the results of all coin tosses (or at least those in the recent past) are reversed. (According to the DVD commentary, it's a probability-maths injoke.) This leads to results like Bender being gold-plated, and Fry and Leela being married. [[Bizarro Universe|Oh, also the colors are all mixed up, the sky is bright and swirly and the background music is a Theremin.]] How'd we forget that?

** In the same episode, other parallel universes are visited, including a universe where everyone lack eyes, where their heads are bobble-heads, where everybody is a robot, a Roman Empire themed universe (complete with Roman numerals calculus) and a Hippie universe... However there do seem to be universes without the main characters, such as an octopus universe, a universe filled only with women and a completely frozen universe.

** In "All The President's Heads", the gang travels back in time to [[The American Revolution]] to stop Prof. Farnsworth's ancestor David, who betrayed the Revolutionaries by counterfeiting money. After they stop David, Fry burns the counterfeit bills with a lantern he found in a church, which turned out to be one of the lamps used to signal the coming of the British (one if by land, two if by sea). Because of this, the British win the war and the gang come back to an America that's still under British rule.

** Averted. Cosmo was the one who originally caused Crocker to become the way he was. Timmy just inadvertently caused it again except things also played out so Crocker now has better Fairy Hunting tech.

** Not to mention the episode where he wishes he was never born. Tuns out his gender is a nail as well - his parents had a girl instead, and the life of everyone Timmy knows is better for it.

*** Though there is still the question of if BW Megs absorbs G1 Megs Spark meaning in the "restored" timeline G1!Megatron is a sparkless shell.

** He isn't. In a scene cut from the last episode, G1 Megatron is shown with his spark being restored to him. Presumably this was ''how'' he learned of the later technology that made the entire concept possible, resulting in a [[Stable Time Loop]].

** Considering he likely had a hand in a fair amount of it, how is that a catch?

* ''[[The Simpsons]]'' inverts it as well by having Homer's guardian angel [[Hogan's Heroes|Werner Klemperer]] show Homer what his life would have been like had he not married Marge. In the alternate timeline, Homer is rich and happily married to a beautiful woman, while Marge is the President, enjoying both success and popularity. Needless to say, this was not a successful trip for the guardian angel.

** And, the criticism of the press of the world notwithstanding, it was too small and too slow to have been of much good anyway. Its few lifeboats could have been used to pick up survivors struggling in the water...but then again, many of ''Titanic'''s boats were half-full and still did not pick up survivors.

* The Norman Conquest of England had the weather as one of its nails. William of Normandy's invasion fleet was assembled and ready to launch by August of 1066, but was delayed by unfavorable winds until late September. Between August and September the Saxon king Harold Godwinson faced two crises that depleted his forces: the term of his conscripted troops (who were mostly farmers and needed to tend to their harvests) came to an end, and Harald Hardrada of Norway invaded England from the North. By the time William's fleet reached England, Harold Godwinson's army had been reduced to a fraction of its former strength. Had the weather cooperated and William had been able to launch his fleet earlier, he would have faced Harold at full strength. Even with Harold's forces depleted, William faced stiff opposition and his troops were often outnumbered on the battlefield. Facing a full-strength Saxon army, William would likely have been defeated, and the Norman Conquest would never have taken place.

** It's highly doubtful that the Archduke's life could have been saved even if his staffers and doctors had been able to get his tunic off immediately. The bullet had crashed through his neck, severing his jugular vein, damaging his trachea, and lodging in the spine. In point of fact, it wasn't removed during the autopsy because doing so could have damaged blood vessels that needed to be kept intact for the process of embalming the body (which suggests that even if surgery could have been performed, it wouldn't have been any use to remove the bullet). Duchess Sophie, the Archduke's wife, couldn't have been saved in any case; her fatal bullet severed the main artery and vein in her lower abdomen, causing death within several minutes from massive internal bleeding.

** It's almost as if [[Epileptic Trees|there were a bunch of time travelers trying to interfere with this event and prevent WWII]]...

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