In Spite of a Nail: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

We all know that in an [[Alternate History]] or [[Alternate Universe]], tiny changes ("[[For Want of a Nail]], the shoe was lost...") can lead to massive changes, where everything is different.

Or, as it may be, not. Sometimes what's different in the new history is less interesting than what has stayed exactly the same.

 

 

An alternate universe could arise where the human race never developed money and society is radically different, but you'll find that you were still born, still live in the same house, [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|and still have that tattered old]] [[E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial|E.T.]] [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|doll sitting on the mantlepiece]].

 

{{examples}}

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* Near the end of [[Fullmetal Alchemist (anime)|the 2003 anime version]] of ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist (manga)|Fullmetal Alchemist]]'', {{spoiler|it is discovered that the alchemist world is an alternate history of ours that branched at least 400 years ago with the discovery of alchemy. In spite of this, [[The Movie]] shows several of the characters also exist in "our world," though with different histories and motivations.}}

** Not to mention, if Britannia is descended from the ''Celts'', they shouldn't even be speaking English. Or what we think of as English, anyways.

** It's pointed out, however, that a good chunk of Britannia's official history was actually ''fabricated.''

* ''[[Katanagatari]]'' ends this way. Despite {{spoiler|Shikizaki Kiki's attempts to [[Screw Destiny]] with the Deviant Blades created via methods from the future}}, history managed to correct itself.

* A major frustration to Homura Akemi in ''[[Puella Magi Madoka Magica]]''; no matter what she does in her indeterminate number of attempts to rewind the events of the series and start them over differently, the outcome is always the same. She refers to it herself as an "endless maze".

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

** It is actually stated, in an issue of ''Exiles'', by the character Morph, in one of the early issues, that he has noticed that a key component missing on a lot of the worlds is the presence of the Norse Gods (Thor, Loki, Odin, etc). He then goes on to say that he thinks that if the Norse Gods were present many of the worlds would have turned out much more positively.

** This one is probably best handled in [[Marvel Comics]]'s ''[[Marvel 1602]]''. In this case, a foreign element (namely, {{spoiler|Captain America being sent backwards in time}}) has messed up history; the universe reacts, and "a season has dawned over three hundred years early: a season of heroes and marvels." Or more accurately, "heroes and Marvels."

* In a special story written for the 500th issue of ''Detective Comics,'' [[Batman]] is offered the chance to save Bruce Wayne's parents in an alternate universe, knowing that doing so could mean that world never has a Batman to protect Gotham. He does so anyway, and it is later revealed that the deed inspired the alternate Bruce to become Batman as a tribute to the costumed man who saved his parents.

** This is echoed in the [[Crisis Crossover]] series ''[[Flashpoint (comics)|Flashpoint]]'', where there is still a Batman, but with a twist: {{spoiler|He's really ''Thomas'' Wayne, who took up the cowl after Bruce was murdered.}} The Joker, by extension, is also an example: {{spoiler|what reason other than this trope would cause philanthropist socialite Martha Wayne to respond to her son's death by turning into a psychopathic clown?}}

* In ''[[Astro City]]'', one of the powers of Samaritan (and his arch-enemy Infidel) is immunity to [[Ret-Gone]]. Samaritan was originally sent back in time to prevent the Challenger explosion, and because of his meddling undoes his world's past, he was never born. No matter what happens to the timeline, Samaritan and Infidel will still exist. In fact, Infidel once destroyed all of space-time, and they ''still'' existed.

** Another ''[[Astro City]]'' story, "The Nearness of You", averts the trope. A man is haunted by dreams of a woman that he has never met; he knows her well enough to draw her picture, yet utterly fails to track her down. A supernatural character explains to him that the woman is/was his beloved wife, erased in a time-war, and offers to erase his residual memories of her; he declines, and is told that "no one forgets".

* In ''[[Strontium Dog]]'', it is explained that since time is so vast, time travellers usually only exert minor changes which smooth out over time. It takes a truly catastrophic event to alter history noticeably.

* Bishop of the ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]'' comics is a "chronal anomaly" who has been involved in so much time travel that he himself is never affected by it.

* An ''Elseworlds'' story in the DC Universe, ''JLA: [[The Nail]]'', shows what would happen if the Kents had not been out driving their truck as baby Kal-El's ship crash-landed (due to a nail puncturing one of their tires). Instead he was raised by an Amish family and thus never ventured out into the world and never became Superman. Aside from that, not much had changed. All the other heroes still existed, but the public was just more afraid and suspicious of them (cause Superman was a really nice y'know), with debates as to whether they could be trusted. Oh and Jimmy Olsen becomes evil and hatches a plan that involves giving himself Kryptonian superpowers. In the end however, evil Jimmy ends up killing the now-adult Kal-El's Amish parents, giving him the [[Heroic Resolve]] to fight and defeat him. Afterwards, he becomes Superman and moves in with the Kents (who had been offering superpowered individuals shelter).

* In one [[Silver Age]] [[Superman]] story, Supes asked the supercomputer in his fortress to extrapolate what his life might have been like if Krypton had never exploded. The extrapolated story finally ends with an odd circumstance where this alternate Kal-El acquires super-powers and becomes Superman ''on Krypton.'' Supes and Batman turn away from the screen with just priceless expressions of astonishment.

* ''Barry Ween Boy Genius'' used this during one time travel story. When Barry and Jeremy got stuck in the Wild West, Jeremy was worried that they might change history or cause a [[Time Paradox]]. Barry dismissed his concerns, saying that humans overestimate their own significance. He claims that they could kill everyone in the town they are currently in without affecting history one iota.

* In one ''[[Teen Titans (Comic Book)|Teen Titans]]'' storyline, [[Lex Luthor]] brought a team of evil Future Titans to kill Jaime Reyes aka [[Blue Beetle]] because no matter what he did to the timeline, [[Incorruptible Pure Pureness|Jaime refused to turn evil]].

* In ''[[Justice Society of America]]'' #31 (Part 3 of "The Bad Seed"), Obsidian gets turned into a black egg, as part of the Fourth Reich's evil plot. After two unrelated storylines (and a [[Blackest Night|crossover miniseries]]), #36-39 are set in a [[Bad Future]], in which the Fourth Reich rule America. In #40, Mr Terrific of the future sends his knowledge of the Reich's plans back in time, and Mr Terrific from the end of "The Bad Seed" frees Obsidian, and the Society takes the fight to the Reich and defeats them. And then a two page coda assures us that the storylines since "The Bad Seed" happened ''exactly the same way'', only Obsidian was also there.

 

* [[For Want of a Nail]] is extremely common in ''[[Naruto]]'' [[Fan Fiction]], but no matter what that nail might be, Team 7 or just Naruto himself has about a 90-95% chance of ending up in the Land of Waves and meeting Zabuza and Haku around when it chronologically happened in canon.

** However, an increasingly common trend seems to be that Zabuza and Haku (or at least Haku) survive and join Konoha's forces.

* This happens in a number of ITV region "what if" tv mocks. In some, Carlton and Granada never get hold of the London and North West regions respectively, yet they manage to buy out the regions they purchased in our world and ITV is rendered to its consolidated state in 2003.

* ''[[Ranma ½]]'' fanfiction will unfailingly reproduce the first six volumes of the manga, despite Ranma having been born female, travelling with his [[Rogues Gallery]] as frienemies, having acquired a different curse, having not actually gone on the training trip, having learned god-smackingly-powerful magic instead of [[Martial Arts and Crafts]], et al.

* ''[[Shinji and Warhammer40K|Shinji and Warhammer 40 K]]'' is an inversion of this... it isn't the Fanfic that needed the nail, it was ''Canon''. Still plays the first several angels almost completely to canon (with minor changes in character attitudes and relationships and much greater levels of awesomeness) but at about chapter 15 to 20, depending on the reader, it suddenly stops being anything close to canon. Probabably best summed up with the line

** Another notoriously common one is that, if the Triwizard Tournament takes place, no matter what else is different, the graveyard scene will still happen, and Cedric will ALWAYS die. Considering the sheer unlikelihood of Cedric and Harry reaching the Cup at the same time, THEN deciding to touch the Cup at the same time (and even if they do, the chances of Cedric being outright killed aren't ''that'' high), the fact that this happens without fail is more than a little jarring.

* Just about any fanfic that tries to insert an [[Original Character]], but keep to canon. The new character might steal a few scenes from others, and may replace someone as the author's favorite character's love interest, but don't expect anything important to actually change because of this character's existence.

 

== [[Film]] ==

* ''[[White Man's Burden]]'' is set in a world in which black and white people have switched cultural roles, but besides that, 1990s America is still pretty much the same.

* ''[[Terminator]]'' 3 shows us that no matter what, the machine Armageddon shall transpire circa the turn of the century.

** Except that no matter what else changes, in every reality and time (at least when the man is around), Uncle Joey is always behind bars.

*** George fathered the three before Biff had him killed; Lorraine even says Marty looks like his father George.

** ''Part III'' had Marty embarrass Biff's [[Wild West]] ancestor and get him arrested, and Marty and Doc rob a train to drive it off a cliff. This didn't change anything at all, except that now Clayton Ravine is called Eastwood Ravine (named for Marty's [[Clint Eastwood|alias]] instead of the schoolteacher who "originally" died there).

** They actually discussed this in the commentary for ''Part II'' when Biff goes back from 2015, with Marty and the Doc still there. They discussed why it never changed, and decided it'd be better if things remained the same at that moment.

* In the [[Alternate Universe]] of ''Almost Normal'', in spite of homosexuals being in the majority (with heterosexuals being the ostracized minority), the culture and society seems to (otherwise) be much of the same. Brad still exists, along with everyone else he knew. It's interesting to note that the homo/hetero flip has led to changes in French history.

** In the case of Chekov, it actually caused him to be ''born'' sooner. It's interesting to imagine that as soon as they heard the news about the destruction of the Kelvin, Chekov's parents' first reaction was "we should have sex!", and that's why Chekov is older in the new film.

** The only other main difference is that Spock and Uhura's romance is now much more blatant and not one-sided.

** And, y'know, [[Earthshattering Kaboom|Vulcan]].

** It's way bigger than that. The film shows major cultural consequences of humanity's inability to lie, such as the fact that there's never been any fiction or ''religion'', yet all the countries seem to be the same, there was still a black plague in the thirteenth century, Napoleon still conquered half the world, Coke is still competing with Pepsi, etc.

*** And despite Christianity not existing in the film's universe, the calendar still ended up exactly identical to the Gregorian calendar. Think about it: how did they decide what year to mark as 1?

* This is done humourously in ''[[CSA: Confederate States of America]]'', to draw parallels with real history. In the [[DVD Commentary]], however, the creators noted that the Indian Wars were pretty much the same in [[Real Life]].

 

== [[Literature]] ==

* ''[[A Wrinkle in Time|A Swiftly Tilting Planet]]'' by Madeline L'Engle does this AND [[For Want of a Nail]] at the same time. Charles Wallace (and a unicorn, and Meg... sort-of) need to zig-zag though time, making a dozen changes scattered throughout history, to replace a dictator poised to start [[World War III]] with a nicer near-clone. But no matter what events they change, no other effects show up in the present. And they even screw with Meg's husband's family!

** The original comic-book version of ''[[The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen]]'' is set in a similar world, although this is far more obvious in all the "supplementary" material than the main action. (The point of divergence in this case ''might'' have been a half-fairy queen coming to rule England instead of the first Elizabeth.)

*** The history wasn't the same as ours before that, either. Things like the Trojan War never really happened, or at least not the way happened in fiction (or in Moore's comic). The half-fairy queen is just another element of the [[Fantasy Kitchen Sink]], being a reference to [[The Faerie Queene]], by Edmund Spenser.

** Interestingly, the original TL-191 novel, ''How Few Remain'', largely averted this Trope. The following ''Great War'' trilogy at least made some effort at averting it as well, with notable butterflies and Expys of post-PoD historical figures... at least on the American side of the Atlantic (in Europe, however, he played it straight).

** Similarly, his collaboration with Richard Dreyfuss, ''The Two Georges'', concerning a giant British North American Dominion born of George Washington and King George III cutting a deal featured not only Governor General Sir Martin Luther King but a used Steam-Car tycoon named "Honest Dick" in Southern California.

*** That and the Nazis somehow are able to pull off stunts that resemble modern day terrorism's finest dreams despite having much lower levels of tech and having been completely and utterly raped and burned in ways that modern day extremists are lucky they haven't been.

**** Also, Heydrich's real-life assassination, the one whose failure is the PoD, wasn't just a random attack by partisans; it was planned in real life by [[MI 6]], who by that time really wanted Hedyrich dead for a number of reasons, not the least that he was threatening several high-placed German double agents. It's doubtful they would have just given up after one attempt.

** It gets worse. For the majority of the middle ages, the northern part of England was ruled by a Fairy-sponsored magician-king. This has almost no appreciable effect on the timeline.

* In a series of books by Vasiliy Golovachev, people with any psychic power are explicitly said to be resistant to past-altering powers. To be more exact, their personalities and memories are. Should their parents never meet, they will be born from other parents. This probably should cause a lot of confusion, as they might not know who their new parents are, and previous parents will forget them. The world once changed the sentient life in the past (sentient cockroaches to sentient apes), and there were people to witness it.

** The books mention that in Eurasia, dragons are seen as little more than very large, more-or-less intelligent horses that can fly. Because most people are afraid of them, the dragons are kept away from civilization and these myths are allowed to perpetuate, and the dragons are prevented from impacting the culture. The cultures that are noted as being different are the ones that treat the dragons as the equals they really are (the Africans mentioned are actually led by dragons, and the Incan empire is still intact in the 1800s, having used dragons to drive the Spanish off).

** Note also that the relationship of non-European peoples and powers to the European powers is quite different in the world of ''Temeraire'' than in ours. Here, China is a Great Power, able to make Britain walk and speak softly when dealing with it (though racist attitudes vis-a-vis Chinese still exist), the Inca have been able to hold off the Spanish for centuries, and the African empire {{spoiler|drives the European colonists and slavers clean off the continent, with great slaughter}}.

* In [[Diana Wynne Jones]]' [[Chrestomanci]] books, most of the main characters live in a universe where magic is functional and the French won the Battle of Agincourt. A substantial fraction of the people there explicitly have counterparts in our world (one character runs away to yet another world, leaving her counterpart from our world as a replacement; also, people whose counterparts all died in infancy are more powerful wizards).

** Specifically, the titular Chrestomanci is a powerful wizard who has nine lives due to his eight counterparts in the local area of the multiverse dying at birth or simply never being born. The lives have to go somewhere, so they end up in the one remaining person.

** The Discworld runs on Narrative Causality, which may have also had a hand in it (or be another side of the same thing as Historical Imperative...).

*** An alternative view, with some substantiation based on other appearances of the History Monks, is that "Historical Imperative" is shorthand for "that version of events favored by the History Monks".

*** Not to mention that this causes Richard Dawkins to write the real ''Origin'' (as in "of Species") later, with the shown excerpt worded identically to Darwin's version.

* ''[[Nation]]'' by Terry Pratchett is set in an alternate universe where the geography of the Earth is different, several new species of animal exist, most of the British royal family died in a plague in the mid-nineteenth century, and over the course of the story it is discovered that {{spoiler|an advanced civilisation arose in the Pacific islands 35,000 years ago. This fact becomes common knowledge and the subject of major scientific interest}}. The epilogue takes place in the present day and namechecks several real-life scientists who apparently still exist and work in the same fields.

* ''[[Johnny and The Bomb]]'' has the protagonists overcome their worries about [[For Want of a Nail]] and save a couple dozen people from getting bombed. As a result a couple streets have different names and a few shops have changed, but that's about it.

* Lampshaded in ''Lathe Of Heaven'' by [[Ursula K. Le Guin]], but [[Better Than a Bare Bulb|not justified]], particularly considering that the protagonist changes humanity's evolutionary history at one point.

{{quote|Get at it: they want to change not a history, but a [[Hollywood History|schoolbook of history]]... See the difference? And can't grasp, dullards, that [[Reality Is Unrealistic|schoolbooks are used to be fixed not in the past, but in the present]].}}

* In ''The Dragon Waiting'' by [[John M. Ford]], Christianity never took hold in the Roman Empire, Constantinople didn't fall to the Turks, and France was partitioned between England and Byzantium sometime in the 12th century. The Wars of the Roses still seemingly happen exactly as they do in reality up through the crowning of Edward IV, with the exception of one relatively insignificant death.

** It does add one very unusual twist: whatever force is responsible has to proactively create the new people and ensure they fill those roles. This becomes plot-relevant due to details of an action's morality and a person's afterlife being testable in-universe. To use the Hitler example, killing Hitler wouldn't prevent any of his atrocities or their consequences in history, but Hitler himself would die without having committed any of his evil acts (or having ''chosen'' to commit some of them), and his replacement, having no free will or way to avoid doing everything Hitler "should have" done, would be personally blameless for all of them (though he or she would still be born with the innate ''potential'' to choose to be Hitler, and would probably be badly affected by living Hitler's life). {{spoiler|This distinction drives the last hundred pages of the story, after the climax.}}

* The book ''[[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|What Ifs? of American History]]'' is a collection of essays by historians on what could have happened had certain pivotal events gone differently. Most of them play [[For Want of a Nail]] straight (though most of them do point out the ultimate futility of speculating on "what could have been"), such as [[Grover Cleveland]] not backing down from conflict with Britain in 1896 resulting in aversion of WWI (and presumably WWII too) thanks to America becoming a non-isolationist world power early on, but the one about what could have happened had the Japanese government called off the Pearl Harbor raid presents an outcome in which it takes America slightly longer to enter WWII - but only slightly, as the Japanese prove to still be so bitter toward America that they give the Americans their "day of infamy" in 1942 anyway, and the Axis powers are still defeated in the end, complete with two atomic bombings on Japan.

* Notably averted by the ''[[Wheel of Time]]'' series, which is kind of odd in a series in which destiny is so important. In the second book we get a glimpse of dozens of timelines: several alternate ways the life of [[The Chosen One]] could have gone, plus one timeline in which humanity has been extinct (or so it appears, at least) for hundreds of years. The main character could have died young, could have [[Jumped At the Call]] instead of running from it, could have been an [[Evil Overlord]], and probably was never born at all in some timelines (or at least, [[Reincarnation|was not born within centuries of when the character we know was born]]), and it's safe to say that the same is true of most if not all other characters as well.

* Isaac Asimov's novel ''The End of Eternity'' has an organisation that exits outside of time, in a location called "Eternity", from which they effect changes on "Reality". It is stated that even for major changes, the effects die away after some centuries; thus all changes are pretty much local.

* The grand daddy of them all "A Sound of Thunder" - they go back more than 65 million years, step on a butterfly and the changes roll down through the ages until they get back and the only apparent difference is that no one can spell and everyone is a fascist. They're not even surprised at who got out of the time machine.

 

* Pretty much every single episode of ''[[Sliders]]''.

** Especially the one where everything was exactly the same except that women had moustaches, and the one where the sky was purple but things were much the same until the [[Robot War]].

** The ''TNG'' [[Expanded Universe]] novel ''Dark Mirror'' treads similar ground; there's still an Enterprise-D, with most of the same crew in most of the same roles, except that Worf is a galley slave and Wesley Crusher is a ''total badass'' who attempts to [[Klingon Promotion|kill Picard and take over the Enterprise.]]

** Similarly, in the ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'' episode "Yesterday's Enterprise", history changing so that the Federation has been at war with the Klingons for the past twenty years has no apparent effect on the Enterprise's command roster except for the absence of Worf and Troi and the survival of Tasha Yar. It does affect the rest of the ship's compliment, though, as instead of nominally carrying 1,014 in Starfleet personnel, civilian crews, families, and passengers, it was a militarized ship capable of carrying 6,000 troops, and the only observed civilian on board was Guinan. ([[Creator's Pet|Wesley]] was still there, but as a fully-commissioned officer, when his "main" counterpart was still an acting ensign.)

** In ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine|Deep Space Nine]]'', the Mirror Universe has the station inhabited with largely the same characters, even if some of them are there for vastly different reasons; such as O'Brien, who is (strangely) virtually the same as ''normal'' O'Brien (and not, like almost everyone else, evil), and is only on Deep Space Nine as a ''slave''

*** And yet a later episode explicitly stated that Jake Sisko was never born there. So any future descendants of Jake will not have counterparts there either.

** Spin-off fiction takes it further; there are Terran Resistance cells equivalent to the ''[[Star Trek: Voyager|Voyager]]'' crew (including Neelix and Kes!), the Stargazer crew, the New Frontier crew, the Titan crew, etc. And they fight Alliance members who are counterparts of the aliens in the same crews.

** Some of the universes in the ''Myriad Universes'' spin-offs are even worse than the [[Mirror Universe]]. If Khan Noonien Singh won the Eugenics War, and humanity spent the next four hundred years being genetically engineered and only breeding according to strict eugenic principles, it beggars belief that the ''Deep Space Nine'' cast even ''exist'', let alone are patrolling Bajoran space in a ship called the ''Defiance''.

** Then there's a less extreme example in ''[[Star Trek: The Animated Series|The Animated Series]]'' episode "Yesteryear", in which Spock died at the age of seven because he failed to go back in time to save his own life. Nothing changes on the ''Enterprise'' except that the first officer is an Andorian we've never met before. Everyone we know but Spock is still alive, in the same positions, and they are still on the same assignment.

*** A ''Myriad Universes'' story explores the alternate universe in more detail and follows the life of said Andorian. There's no major difference in the timelines until the events of ''[[Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan|Star Trek II the Wrath of Khan]]'', at which point divergences begin to happen almost exponentially.

* This trope is explicit in ''[[Farscape]]''. First mentioned in "Different Destinations...", when Harvey tells Crichton that "events have a way of restructuring themselves" if it is at all possible to get back to the original timeline. It's confirmed by the Ancient "Einstein", and soon put to use again when the crew has to [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong|fix Crichton's past]].

* A couple of examples from the [[Timey-Wimey Ball]] that is ''[[Doctor Who]]'':

** Which, given how bloodthirsty the Sovereign was, kinda makes you wonder why people in "our" world weren't dropping dead left and right as he cut down their doppelgangers.

** It was also later discovered that if you were in the limbo-like realm which connected the two worlds when your counterpart died, you would not be affected. This was how the AU Iolaus was able to survive his counterpart's death and how Hercules was able to survive the Sovereign's death in later episodes.

** [[Rubber Band History]]. It's stated pretty explicitly that there is some sort of intelligence guiding the "Journeys," and that is what keeps everything nearly identical. Likewise, Dan's son becoming a daughter was used because otherwise, what [[Unfortunate Implications|reason]] would he have to undo the massive technology jump he caused?

* In the ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' two-part episode "Moebius", the team muddles around with Egypt 5000 years ago. Their admittedly small changes result in a world where the Stargate hasn't been discovered and the main characters aren't quite as cool. Those characters go back and fix things, which results in everything being the way it was before, with the exception of a pond that was but now is no longer devoid of fish <s>[[Stargate SG-1/WMG|and the sudden existence of a certain lieutenant colonel]]...</s>

** ''[[Red Dwarf]]'' was a repeat offender. The 3rd season episode "Timeslides" had Dave Lister changing history so that he became a millionaire and never left Earth, prompting the Cat and Kryten to vanish from existence ... yet, bizarrely, Rimmer (who was only revived as a companion for Lister) is still stuck on the ship, 3 million years into deep space. Likewise, 7th season episode "Tikka to Ride" has the crew accidentally avert the assassination of John F Kennedy, which results in a [[Crapsack World]] future where the US space program, and hence Red Dwarf, never existed ... yet, bizarrely, the crew and their time machine aren't similarly erased from existence. Then there's ... you know what? [[MST3K Mantra|It's probably best not to think about it.]]

*** Especially when you realize that Lister's children from his one-night stand with his own alternate universe female version were written out even though future echoes implied they'd be on Red Dwarf for decades, not to mention the fact that Lister effectively creates an ontological paradox where he becomes his own father (or, more accurately, has always been his own father). [[Timey-Wimey Ball|Time travel in the Red Dwarf universe is insane]] ''at best''.

* ''[[The Sarah Jane Adventures]]'' episode "The Temptation of Sarah Jane" claims that when history gets "diverted", it ''tries'' to correct itself, explaining why, in a world enslaved by the Trickster since 1951, Rani's mum still exists and they "happen" to run into her.

** In season 2 we find out the full extent of the changes: {{spoiler|the team has a new base, also Claudia isn't really gone, she just has a different name and personality}}. This is despite Professor Cutter repeatedly stating that screwing around with history has sent evolution down a completely different path.

** This issue is actually given as a reason why everyone thinks Professor Cutter has just gone a bit nuts instead of history actually being changed. His response is that there could be many more changes he doesn't even know about.

* [[Fridge Logic]] gives this from ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' season 5, when you realize for [[Buffy Verse]] canon to make sense, before season 5 Dawn must have had very little, if any, actual effect on the world.

** This is covered in the comic collection ''False Memories'' (June 2002), where we see some events of the past seasons from Dawn's perspective. She also appears in comics from 2003-2004 set before "Welcome to the Hellmouth".

** Considering that Dawn would have been a quite young child during the early series, and that Buffy was trying to keep her separate from any Slayer-related activity even when she was 14 and beyond, it's no surprise that she had no influence to much of the plot.

** In the alternate Wishverse, Giles somehow got to Sunnydale despite Buffy's not being there and Giles not knowing that Buffy was supposed to be there, even though his sole reason for coming to the town in the normal timeline was to find Buffy and become her mentor. Cordelia questions this, but is killed before we can get an explanation.

** For that matter, why is there a Babylon 5 at all? One can presume that the Shadows destroyed Babylon 4 as they planned to - but they planned to because they recognized it from the past war. Perhaps this isn't a problem because the Shadows are a higher species.

** Not to mention the Babylon Project itself. In this timeline either it started without being prompted by an Earth-Minbari War or the Earth-Minbari War ended without Sinclair being revealed as Valen to the Grey Council - the Minbari wouldn't know who Valen was, and there theoretically wouldn't be a Grey Council without Valen.

** All this is because the ''Babylon 5'' time travel works on the system of the [[Stable Time Loop]]: There is only one timeline, but it involves time travel.

* The 4th season of ''[[Eureka]]'' plays havoc with this trope. Five of the main characters accidentally travel to 1947 (the founding of Eureka) and bring the guy responsible for the city back with them to 2010. Specific things have changes while others are completely the same:

** Allison is no longer head of GD (Fargo is) -- yet she still lives and works in Eureka (as chief medical officer).

** All of the highly improbable events that occurred in previous seasons are assumed to still have happened, like Nathan being vaporized by a rogue experiment on his wedding day.

** Henry uses the term "ripple effect" to explain why little if any history has changed on a global scale: the time travel hit Eureka profoundly like a wave, causing major changes which would have caused other changes - ripples - which would have caused other changes and so on, and affected areas besides Eureka, but the further away from Eureka, the less significant the changes would be, and the ripples would eventually stop.

* While the exact point of divergence of the two universes from ''[[Fringe]]'' is not yet known, it's hard to imagine it could be later than about 1900 and revelations from Season 3 suggest it could possibly predate the dinosaurs. Despite this the majority of characters exist on both sides.

** Barack Obama is president of the United States during the 2009-2013 term in both universes. In one of them, no one has heard of Andrew Jackson, who (in our universe) basically founded the U.S. Democratic Party that Obama belongs to.

** Examined in the season 4 episode "Everything In Its Right Place", where two versions of Lincoln Lee compare their lives to find out where they diverged into Captain Lee being a hyper-confident [[Badass]] and Agent Lee being a cautious [[By-The-Book Cop]], and find that their lives were identical, down to every last detail, through high school. The confident version rejects the idea that his personality has to be dictated by his past circumstances, and proposes that he's the way he is because it's what he chose to become.

* In Season 6 of ''[[Supernatural]]'' an angel goes back in time and saves the Titanic from sinking. This resulted in thousands more people being alive today and many changes. However, the brothers are so central to the destiny of the world that new timeline arranges itself around them. They themselves are pretty much unchanged but the people near them have their lives altered in some ways big and small. Most likely this protection only applies to people closely connected to the brothers.

 

* The ''[[GURPS]] 4th Edition'' sourcebook ''Infinite Worlds'' calls parallel worlds that are very similar, despite drastic divergence, "high-inertia". Probably the best example is "The United States of Lizardia", which is very similar to Earth, but with different historical figures. Oh yeah, and instead of humans there are six foot tall lizards. This is, however, explicitly noted as a "weird parallel", and there's a [[Lampshade Hanging]] in the fact that the text description of the worldline mentions that even some scientists who've been studying the USL for years "don't really believe in it".

** A multiverse of infinite possibilities would mean a world where history was identical but with lizards (or bears, or triffids) would surely be inevitable.

*** The infinite multiverse is tempered somewhat by the inability to see or travel to universes beyond a certain number of quantum levels away. They've also only been doing it for about forty years so there would still be lots of surprises around.

** A character can also have Temporal Inertia as a personal trait; it ensures that he will exist in all versions of the present, as long as it's at least marginally plausible. There's also its opposite trait, Unique; a character with that one is likely to be among the first things to disappear if history changes even slightly.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* ''[[Europa Universalis]]'' and its sequel feature historical events and rulers largely unchanged from our timeline, even in the default start. Mostly averted by the third game.

** There is, however, an option to [[Enforced Trope|enforce]] this upon the game. If you switch on the "Historical Rulers" option, your nation will have the same monarch names as in real life and the same relative military, diplomatic and administrative capabilities. Of course, given that a lot of nations in an average game will exist outside of when they did historically (or nations may exist that were never formed in reality) you can easily end up stuck with the same inept King for hundreds of years. With this option switched off, rulers will be generated randomly

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

** I think Dan said, at some point, that every possible dimension has a Tedd.

** Besides there always being a Tedd, all female versions of him shown so far are in relationships with Elliot.

*** And all female versions of Elliot shown so far, sans the Second Life universe. (Though Tedd's counterpart ''wanted'' a relationship with Ellen, the closest thing to a female Elliot that universe had.)

** There's sort of a reason for it. When you travel back in time to fix something, you don't actually prevent the Bad Thing from ever happening; you create a quantum split at the point you emerge in the past that creates two universes; one where you didn't arrive, thus creating the timeline you lived through that was so shitty you had to go back and fix it, and one where you ''did'' arrive, thus allowing you to avert the Bad Thing you came back to prevent, but in all likelihood there's going to be another Bad Thing that's just as cataclysmic rolling down the track in its place, which will send the newer, younger you traveling back through time to fix that (Chuck has apparently done this at least five times).

 

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

* In [[Green Antarctica]], something happened so that Antarctica didn't have the glaciers and ice sheets that they did in OTL. Yet World History still went on the same until the Tsalal got into the picture.

* In [[Red Dawn Plus 20]], the Chernobyl disaster still happened as scheduled, but this time, instead of Soviet engineering incompetence, it was American military intel incompetence that destroyed the reactor. Intel said the reactors weren't online when they were set to be targeted. [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|Oops]].

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

** For that matter, some of the opening credits' "sofa gags" might constitute close parallel universes of their own.

* On ''[[Danny Phantom]]'', in "Masters of All Time", Danny goes back in time to prevent the accident that gave Vlad ecto-acne and his powers... and he succeeds in this, but Jack gets hit with the blast instead, becoming half-ghost in Vlad's place. Apparently ''somebody'' had to fill that role. Not only that, but Jack's ghost form has the exact same costume that Vlad's has in the real timeline... with no real explanation as to why this should be.

** On the other hand, if the alternate universes presented by the What-If Machine in the "Anthology of Interest" stories are accepted as true, then Fry becoming his own grandfather is a ''set'' point in time that can't be avoided (in the AU where he never goes into the future, his destroying the Cryo-Chamber ''destroys the universe''). In other words, the events of the Roswell episode are quite possible all part of a [[Stable Time Loop]] - the assault and its aftermath might well be events unrecorded by history (especially given its unreliability back in the 1940s-50s, including the lack of advanced technology to record such events as faithfully as in the present). But who can say for certain?

 

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Time Travel Tropes]]

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]

[[Category:Alternate History Tropes]]