For Want of a Nail: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

* A Staples Business Depot TV commercial from the 90s, directly references the trope with a different scenario.

{{quote|For want of a paperclip, a page was lost.

* Toshiba Electronics commercials depict this inside the mind of the CEO, leading him to hold back on releasing the product to make sure it has all the features it needs, regardless of the cost. For example, adding shock-proof hard drives to their PC's. He imagines an electrician dropping his laptop, picking it up and plugging it into an outlet at a relay substation, which causes a spark that knocks out the power. This leads to a person's roommate opening the refrigerator, sniffing some milk, noticing it's spoiled but drinks it anyway, immediately turns into a zombie, and unleashes the [[Zombie Apocalypse]] on the world.

 

* ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]'' has a bad case of this; every arc it's something else in the initial factors—minor things like a man moving into the village or even Keiichi giving someone a ''doll''—that sets off a completely different scenario of bloody tragedy.

** The doll was important to the one receiving it. That's why it changes things.

* In ''[[Pokémon]]'', Damien's Charmander might have returned to him (as Damien wished for him to do so, due to Charmander showing strength he hadn't previously) if he hadn't decided to leave him to die out in the rain. If this had happened, Ash wouldn't have gained a new Pokémon for his team, though this wouldn't necessarily stop Charmander from evolving into a Charmeleon and later a Charizard.

 

* The [[Elseworld]]s comic, "[[Justice League]]: [[The Nail]]", where Jonathan and Martha Kent's truck is incapacitated by, you guessed it, a nail (stuck in the tire). This prevents them from going into town, which prevents them from seeing Superman's rocketship crash land, which means they never adopt baby Kal El (he is instead {{spoiler|adopted by the Amish}}), which means Superman doesn't become the DC universe's iconic hero. Without the Big Blue Boyscout around to inspire confidence and good feelings about metahumans among the general populace, the American people (particularly those in Metropolis) become highly suspicious of all superbeings, even to the point of hunting them down and locking them up simply for existing. The story even begins with the above poem.

** It turns out that {{spoiler|much of the reason for the anti-metahuman paranoia is fueled by the Kryptonian Eradicator Jimmy Olsen, which in the absence of Superman is able to operate much more slowly and subtly as far as its attempted conquest of Earth.}}

** One slightly silly issue showed the team being the nail for a change, preventing an alien invasion by [[It Makes Sense in Context|buying the last bagel in a bakery store.]]

 

* The ''[[Ace Attorney]]'' fanfic ''[[A Complete Turnabout]]'' demonstrates how easily this can happen in a universe, which's characters only have [[One Degree of Separation]] between each other. Simply, removing the DL-6 incident from the first game radically alters the history of the entire cast. Among other changes, Phoenix is now an [[Amoral Attorney|amoral prosecutor]], while Edgeworth, never having been taken in by von Karma, is a defense attorney.

* A popular concept is to rewrite the ''[[Harry Potter]]'' books with Harry "having common sense" but they change so much (and his common sense is really having unexplained knowledge of what's happening next) that the actual fic barely counts.

* [[Played for Laughs]] in the ''[[Harry Potter]]'' fanfic ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3639659/1/A_Bad_Week_at_the_Wizengamot A Bad Week at the Wizengamot]''. It starts off with the Wizengamot finding Harry guilty of underage use of magic. By the end of the first chapter, the Ministry of Magic has collapsed, 99% of all Ministry officials have been arrested by the European Magical Union, and Sirius Black has been appointed Interim Minister of Magic.

* ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4162641/1/Rurouni_Kenshii Rurouni Kenshii]'' uses this concept with the nail being that the main character is [[Gender Flip|female instead of male]]. Instead of meeting [[Love Interest|Tomoe]], she meets [[Bratty Half-Pint|Enishi]]. This causes Enishi to go from a crazed [[Big Bad]] to Kenshii's partner. Had the fanfic gotten far enough, chances are the last manga arc either wouldn't have happened or it would have been on a far smaller scale (lacking a mastermind and a budget).

* The ''[[Back to The Future]]'' fanfic ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3993367/1/The_Almanac_Chronicles The Almanac Chronicles]'' has several, but one was very significant to the history of the [[Alternate Timeline]]. {{spoiler|President John F. Kennedy is ''not'' assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963, instead being in Sacramento at the time. He is re-elected in 1964 in a landslide, and his supporters campaign to repeal the 22nd Amendment. Kennedy himself does not benefit, but his successor Richard M. Nixon does, serving as President as late as 1984.}}

* The ''[[Pony POV Series]]'' has two separate timelines, the [[Bad Future|Epilogue timeline]], a [[Villain World]] ruled by [[Complete Monster|Discord]], and the main timeline, where Discord lost just as he did in the series. The only visable cause of the split between the timeline is that in the Epilogue timeline, Twilight Sparkle broke in the maze while she broke slightly later in the real one. [http://fav.me/d4kjgjf A piece of] [[Recursive Fanfiction]] writen explorers how this worked. {{spoiler|Discord was playing one of his "games", if he broke all six of the mane cast in one go, he got to turn Celestia and Luna into gold and silver statues. In the normal timeline, Twilight managed to avoid breaking JUST long enough for Discord to lose his game, so he instead Discorded Celestia and tried to drive Luna insane, which lead to Luna sending the letters to Twilight to free her from Discord's [[Mind Rape]] and save the world.}}

* [[Rules Lawyer]] and borderline [[Jerkass Genie]] Rumpelstiltskin offers [[Shrek]] a [[Deal with the Devil]] in ''Shrek Forever After'': Shrek gets one day as a lawless ogre in exchange for one day from his past. Rumpelstiltskin takes the day Shrek was born, thus creating a world in which Shrek never existed. One of the biggest changes is the fate of Fiona, who without anyone to save her from the tower chose to [[Screw Destiny]] and simply escaped by herself.

 

* [[The Draka]]: In the book ''Drakas!'' [[S.M. Stirling]] uses the poem in the introduction. [http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/0671319469/0671319469___1.htm\], [http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/0671319469/0671319469.htm?blurb\], [https://web.archive.org/web/20180821091153/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect], [https://web.archive.org/web/20180618083027/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel%27s_nose], [https://web.archive.org/web/20180820070839/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory], [https://web.archive.org/web/20170304192334/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Want_of_a_Nail_(proverb)], For Want of a Nail, [[Spell My Name with an "S"]]

* [[wikipedia:Malcolm Gladwell|Malcolm Gladwell]] writes about this trope, where something unknown becomes a major factor in society. [https://web.archive.org/web/20180821091222/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_point], [https://web.archive.org/web/20180903203430/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_point_(sociology)], [https://web.archive.org/web/20180817053934/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tipping_Point],

* Mary Lavin's short story "The Story of the Widow's Son" is based around this, examining the different consequences of whether the titular boy did or did not accidentally run over an old hen with his bike.

 

* ''[[Frasier]]''. ''Sliding Frasiers'' is an episode based on ''[[Sliding Doors]]'', in which two paths of Frasier's life are examined on whether he chose to wear a suit or a sweater for a speed dating service. {{spoiler|After a week, Frasier's lives meet at the same point, showing no matter which choice he made, he ended up at the same destination.}}

** 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.

'''Jones''': Hence the expression, "Keep your hair on." }}

 

* The verses to "It's All Who You Know" by the Newsboys are two scenarios of this trope.

** In the first verse, a slip-up in an actor's facelift leads to the failure of the show that would have saved a TV network.

 

 

* The current default setting for ''[[GURPS]]'' is based on mixing this idea with [[The Multiverse]] to produce an infinite number of worlds. There's at least one canon parody of the concept with the world "Enigma" in which the only difference is the band [[The Clash]] never formed (and then <s>the planet</s> [[Life After People|all humans on the planet disappeared without a trace in 1982]]).

* During [[Magic: The Gathering]]'s ''Time Spiral'' block, the middle set (representing the present) featured "alternate universe" versions of certain cards, primarily reprinting older cards into other colors that would best represent them if various mechanics hadn't been assigned as they were. Keeping in the spirit of "What if?", the flavor text on a good portion of the cards give quick looks at an entire subplot that revolved around what would've happened if [[Catgirl|Mirri]] had slain [[Our Angels Are Different|Selenia]] before Crovax had a chance to, thus fulfilling the terms of a family curse, [[Our Vampires Are Different|turning her into a vampire instead of him.]]

*** True in John Wayne's case, but the lung cancer rate among the other cast members and crew on the set of the ''Conqueror'' was still significantly above average due to their own radiation exposure. Reagan's dying of lung cancer because he was on set is still an entirely plausible outcome, even if Wayne's survival is not.

 

* The ''[[Legacy of Kain]]'' games deal with the attempts of the immortal vampire Kain to change his fate and that of the world of Nosgoth, which are tied. Frequent use of time travel is made by Kain, Raziel, and Mobius the Timestreamer to advance their own agendas. For example: Mobius traveled back in time in the first chapter of the series "[[Blood Omen]]" and corrupted the King William the Just, turning him into The Nemesis, who threatened to conquer all of Nosgoth in the future. Kain inadvertently travels back to this time period, where he kills William the Just before he manages to become The Nemesis. When he returns to the present, Kain realizes that by killing William the Just he has sparked a genocide against vampires that left him the last in all of Nosgoth.

* One of the drama CDs based on ''[[Guilty Gear]]'' revolves around an [[Alternate Universe]] in which the war lasted ten years longer because Ky Kiske was killed in the penultimate battle, and in which the Gears would have ''won'' if I-No hadn't [[Temporal Paradox|gone back in time]] to rescue him.

* {{spoiler|The rope}} in ''[[Cave Story]]''. It's the single most important key to stop {{spoiler|the destruction of everything in the island, including a large percentage of the cast}} and get the happy ending. [[Guide Dang It|And it's incredibly easy to miss]]. If you don't get it, expect some rough times in the plot.

 

* ''[[Erfworld]]'' Book 1 starts with this trope. The narrated opening scene shows the world's creators dropping one extra gem into a [[You Require More Vespene Gas|resource spot]], which pays for an extra squad of units to go to field against Gobwin Knob's army, which is just enough to tip the balances in a heated battle, which means that Gobwin Knob's chief warlord gets an arrow between the eyes, which means that Gobwin Knob needs a new chief warlord before [[The Alliance]] shows up on their doorstep, which means that Wanda Firebaugh's bad day is about to get a lot worse. {{spoiler|And then [[A Protagonist Shall Lead Them|Parson]] blows up a volcano.}} Judging from the way the story is going, this was just the start.

* In a time-travel example: the ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' time-travel plotline in Book 6 invokes this trope, but isn't itself an example.

* [http://www.viruscomix.com/page556.html This] [[Subnormality]] strip. If you look closely enough, the last panel nearly spells out this trope.

 

* ''[[Decades of Darkness]]'' has president [[Thomas Jefferson]] dying of a heart attack. His bumbling successor [[James Madison]] manages to anger the New England states enough so they leave the union and defend themselves successfully in a war, splitting the USA forever. The slave states get the majority and transform the rest into an expansionist slave-holding empire.

* ''[[Look to the West]]''`s very different world ([[Steampunk]] revolutionary France, a divided India, French Australia, loyalist America) all stems from George II tripping on the carpet at his coronation in 1727.

* [[1983: Doomsday]] starts off with [[wikipedia:Stanislav Petrov|a certain Soviet Air Defense forces officer]] being assigned to a different bunker in September 1983. The officer who takes his place mistakes a false alarm for an American nuclear attack, leading to [[World War III]].

 

* ''[[Star Trek: The Animated Series]]'', "Yesteryear"

* ''[[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-math 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 ''Rated A for Awesome'' episode "Thera's Date With Destiny" Noam's new future-predicting invention shows that Thera will be going to prom with [[The Bully|Chet]]. They try to change the outcome, but each attempt either has them start dating even sooner or she goes to prom with someone else she doesn't want to go with. That is until the last vision, which doesn't show her date's face, but it's hinted to be Noam. Each vision after the first also shows her with a different hairstyle.

 

* Despite having multiple redundant systems and some of the most stringent inspection and safety standards in the world, almost all airline crashes can be distilled down to this trope.

** United Flight 232 in 1989 crashed because of a microscopic, metal-fatigue induced, hair-line crack in the compressor fan of its #2 engine. This crack caused the compressor fan to fail catastrophically, causing shrapnel to sever ALL THREE hydraulic system lines, causing complete loss of flight controls, causing the plane to crash and 111 passengers to lose their lives.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Sociology Tropes]]

[[Category:Settings]]

[[Category:Alternate History Tropes]]

[[Category:Pages with working Wikipedia tabs]]