History Main / ExpendableALternateUniverse

* In ''ComicBook/{{Flashpoint}}'', the world is an absolute shit show thanks to changes to the timeline. Aquaman and Wonder Woman are bloodthirsty tyrants engaged in a war poised to destroy the world, Gotham is ''even worse'' than normal while having a brutal vengeful Batman to keep it in check, and Superman landed in Metropolis and not Kansas, killing millions. Barry Allen, who remembers how things ''should be'' is trying to change things back, and is upset when Thomas Wayne (the Batman of this universe) makes it clear that he himself doesn't care about his reality -- he knows it's a CrapsackWorld, and can accept that the one replacing it once Barry goes back in time to fix things will be better. That and his entire reason for helping Barry is to have a reality where Bruce doesn't die.

* ''Series/TheFlash2014''/''Series/Supergirl2015'' crossover ''Fanfic/CallMeKara'' averts this. Even though [[ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} Kara]] was effectively betrayed by her home dimension, she still cares about what happens to it, and when ComicBook/{{Darkseid}} shows up both she, [[Franchise/TheFlash Barry]] and the whole Justice League go to her Earth to fight.

* {{Deconstructed|Trope}} in the ''ComicBook/DCInfiniteFrontier'' [[ComicBook/InfiniteFrontier miniseries]], by which point the existence of the multiverse has become common knowledge on Earth-Prime: [[spoiler:Director Bones and Machinehead both turn out to be part of Injustince Incarnate, an alliance consisting mostly of villains and antiheroes from other Earths who are in liege with Darkseid, who is promising them protection if another multiverse-warping event like ''Crisis on Infinite Earths'' and ''Flashpoint'' occurs. They take this offer because their universes tend to suffer the worst whenever multiversal events occur while Earth-Prime is comparatively spared. Within the alliance, there is also some resentment towards the heroes of Earth-Prime, who get to live on and celebrate the victory while other universes are radically changed or wiped out entirely]].

* ''Franchise/StarTrek'':
** Almost every ''Star Trek'' series had at least one episode where a NegativeSpaceWedgie produces a horror world, and everybody dies fixing the problem, but then our world [[SnapBack Snaps Back]], so all is well. (For instance, the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS3E15YesterdaysEnterprise Yesterday's Enterprise]]" and the ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS4E8YearOfHell Year of Hell]]".)
** A downplayed example, where the death of an alternate is treated as acceptable but still tragic, is the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS7E10Parallels Parallels]]". A NegativeSpaceWedgie rips a hole in time, and five billion plus Starships Enterprise need to get back to their home dimensions. This takes place in a second (for lack of a better term) universe where Riker is captain, and he leads the effort to fix the hole. Then a third Riker tries to stop him -- the third Riker is crazed, from a horrible universe where the Borg have conquered the galaxy, and doesn't want to go back. The second Riker has his ''Enterprise'' fire on the third, intending to dissuade it, but the travails of the third ship had already done such a number that even a light shot blew it apart. Riker isn't happy. The {{Technobabble}} that ends the episode is effectively a ResetButton, and while Worf retains his memory of it, it effectively didn't happen.
** Seen in ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''. A time-space hiccup causes there to be two Voyagers in the same place at the same time drawing off the same power source. One of the Harry Kims is killed (and one of the Naomi Wildmans dies not long after being born), so the other Voyager sends their Kim and Naomi to the functioning ship before self-destructing to take out an invading alien force. Naomi and Harry's status as alternates is never mentioned again. This is somewhat an inversion of the trope, since it is implied that the destroyed Voyager is the "real" Voyager of the series! (Though this, too, is never again mentioned.)
** In ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', there is an episode where Time Travel Disease keeps sending O'Brien forward in time to see himself die. (See: O'Brien Must Suffer.) He goes to great lengths to save himself each time until the disease kills him, at which point Alternate Timeline O'Brien goes back in his place to save the station. In a subversion of the main trope, Alternate O'Brien feels very bad about Regular O'Brien's death.
** Another ''[=DS9=]'' episode seriously looks at this trope, where the ''Defiant'' crew learns that, thanks to the TimeyWimeyBall, they'll soon crash-land hundreds of years in the past on an isolated planet. While their descendants will form a thriving colony of 8,000 people, the crew themselves will inevitably die on the planet (save for the long-lived Odo) and never see their family and friends back home, and Kira will die shortly after the crash. Sisko really doesn't want to strand his crew, and knows they could easily avoid the accident now, but that would RetGone the entire colony, effectively killing thousands of people. Ultimately, the crew reluctantly decides to subvert the trope at their own expense and go through with the crash -- only for the older version of Odo to forcibly make the ship escape and erase the entire colony, all to prevent Kira from dying. Kira herself is ''horrified'' when she learns about this, especially as she'd made peace with dying for the sake of preserving lives.
** Played straight in a ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' episode which otherwise [[RecycledPlot follows the same beats]] as the above ''[=DS9=]'' episode. The Enterprise encounters another Enterprise populated by the descendants of the crew after the ship was accidentally thrown into the past. Old-T'Pol gives the present-day Enterprise a way to avoid getting TrappedInThePast. It was only after the ship avoided the accident and the other Enterprise was nowhere to be found that anyone stopped to consider that avoiding the accident would erase them from existence.
** This gets reversed in ''Series/StarTrekDiscovery'', where a MirrorUniverse character makes it clear that he considers ''his'' universe the "real world" and the heroes' universe as expendable.
** Downplayed in the ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekS2E4MirrorMirror Mirror, Mirror]]". Kirk cares enough about the denizens of the Mirror Universe to try and convince the crew of the Mirror Enterprise, and especially Mirror Spock, to give up their violent and authoritarian ways, but it's still treated as less important than returning the trapped crew members from his home universe.
** In the ''Series/StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekStrangeNewWorldsS2E03TomorrowAndTomorrowAndTomorrow Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow]]" La'an is thrown into an alternative timeline where Earth never became enlightened and the Federation never formed. She [[spoiler: meets an alternate James T. Kirk and they are both thrown back to the early twenty-first century. Initially, Jim resists her mission to "fix the timeline" because he doesn't want to harm his friends or his reality. But he gradually recognizes his is a CrapsackWorld and starts to help La'an.]]

** In the alternate universe seen in "[[Recap/StargateSG1S1E19ThereButForTheGraceOfGod There but for the Grace of God]]", the Goa'uld actually succeed in conquering Earth and killing the counterparts of SG-1 (except for Teal'c, who never defected from Apophis in this universe). (Teal'c got to die offscreen when the base was programmed to [[SelfDestructMechanism self-destruct]].)

*** Alternate Dr. Frasier (who somehow only popped up in one of the 20+ SG-1 teams along with Carter's snake-brained love-interest Martouf; both are dead in "our" world) comes from a version of Earth where the Ori plague was still ravaging the world and a cure was still unfeasible. Alternate Frasier outright demands that her reality be taken seriously by Stargate Command, and she receives help (the cure) from them.

** Bunnyx also [[NiceJobBreakingItHero played a key role]] in this 'verse's AU having a breakdown. Not only did she needlessly harass, blame and berate her over minor differences that didn't actually threaten anything, she dragged her into the BadFuture and made ''her'' deal with Chat Blanc, [[TheScapegoat blaming her for his existence]]... and forcing Marinette face to face with a doomed version of herself. The trauma of watching her own ashen corpse dissolve away, coupled with the constant pressure of being blamed for everything that went wrong, led to Marinette deciding to remove herself from the equation as much as possible and focus entirely on her duties as Ladybug.

** Lampshaded when Pavitr Prabhakar (''ComicBook/SpiderManIndia'') [[LeaningOnTheFourthWall starts to worry]] that he's just an expendable reflection of Peter. Spider-Man UK comforts him by bringing up his own experience with other dimensions, and asking who's to say it's not the other way around?

* ''Toys/{{Bionicle}}'' does this when Takanuva ends up in an AlternateUniverse rules by a corrupt empress. That serial featured more on-screen deaths than the rest of the canon ''combined'' at the time of writing. It's a partial subversion, since Takanuva is genuinely shocked by some of the things he sees, such as [[spoiler:his younger self getting impaled by iron spikes]], and he tries to help the people in that universe as well as reaching his own goals of getting home, but after he gets out of there ([[spoiler:[[PortalCut and accidentally cuts the empress in half by way of a closing interdimensional portal]]]]), he takes only a few moments to wonder about the fate of that universe before continuing on with his quest.

* ''Film/MenInBlack3'': Griffin is an alien capable of seeing all timelines at once, though he's not certain which one he's in. This means that he's often fretting whether or not this is the timeline that something disastrous happens based on [[ForWantOfANail minor actions that seem insignificant to others]] (such as Boris being delayed at traffic lights or Kay leaving a tip for pie).

** Played much more seriously with the Iron Legacy timeline which is destroyed by La Comodora in the leadup to [=OblivAeon=]. At that point it was considered a mercy to destroy the timeline since basically everything was destroyed and almost everyone was dead and all that's left are the Wraith and Iron Legacy, fighting against the backdrop of a broken city. La Comodora even says that erasing a timeline is not something to be considered lightly.

** ''Film/AvengersEndgame'': Subverted. When Bruce [[spoiler:shows up in the past to take the Time Stone]] from the Ancient One, she refuses, as it will doom her branching universe to extinction. Bruce promises that, with time travel, they can bring it right back to the same instant it was taken (whether that will cause her timeline to merge back into the main one or continue as a branch that isn't doomed to extinction [[TimeyWimeyBall is unclear]]). She initially refuses, since they could die before they have a chance to put the stone back, but she accepts it once she hears that her successor, Doctor Strange, is the one who made the plan possible. At the end of the movie, Steve uses the time machine again to put everything back where it's supposed to be.
** ''Film/SpiderManNoWayHome'' [[spoiler:subverts this ''and'' combines it with SaveTheVillain]]. Upon learning from Strange that [[spoiler:all the villains pulled into the Marvelverse are doomed to die]] back in their own worlds, [[spoiler:[=MCU=] Peter Parker stops Strange from sending everyone back until he can alter the fates of the rogues from the Franchise/SpiderManTheatricalFilms and Franchise/TheAmazingSpiderMan universes]].

* {{Deconstructed|Trope}} in the ''ComicBook/DCInfiniteFrontier'' [[ComicBook/InfiniteFrontier miniseries]], by which point the existence of the multiverse has become common knowledge on Earth-Prime: [[spoiler:Director Bones and Machinehead both turn out to be part of Injustince Incarnate, an alliance consisting mostly of villains and antiheroes from other Earths who are in liege with Darkseid, who is promising them protection if another multiverse-warping event like ''Crisis on Infinite Earths'' and ''Flashpoint'' occurs. Because their universes tend to suffer the worst whenever multiversal events occur while Earth-Prime is comparatively spared, the alliance is formed partly out of resentment for its heroes, who get to live on and celebrate the victory while their universes are radically changed or wiped out entirely]].

* ''Franchise/StarTrek'':
** Almost every ''Star Trek'' series had at least one episode where a NegativeSpaceWedgie produces a horror world, and everybody dies fixing the problem, but then our world [[SnapBack Snaps Back]], so all is well. (For instance, the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS3E15YesterdaysEnterprise Yesterday's Enterprise]]" and the ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS4E8YearOfHell Year of Hell]]".)
** A downplayed example, where the death of an alternate is treated as acceptable but still tragic, is the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS7E10Parallels Parallels]]". A NegativeSpaceWedgie rips a hole in time, and five billion plus Starships Enterprise need to get back to their home dimensions. This takes place in a second (for lack of a better term) universe where Riker is captain, and he leads the effort to fix the hole. Then a third Riker tries to stop him -- the third Riker is crazed, from a horrible universe where the Borg have conquered the galaxy, and doesn't want to go back. The second Riker has his ''Enterprise'' fire on the third, intending to dissuade it, but the travails of the third ship had already done such a number that even a light shot blew it apart. Riker isn't happy. The {{Technobabble}} that ends the episode is effectively a ResetButton, and while Worf retains his memory of it, it effectively didn't happen.
** Seen in ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''. A time-space hiccup causes there to be two Voyagers in the same place at the same time drawing off the same power source. One of the Harry Kims is killed (and one of the Naomi Wildmans dies not long after being born), so the other Voyager sends their Kim and Naomi to the functioning ship before self-destructing to take out an invading alien force. Naomi and Harry's status as alternates is never mentioned again. This is somewhat an inversion of the trope, since it is implied that the destroyed Voyager is the "real" Voyager of the series! (Though this, too, is never again mentioned.)
** In ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', there is an episode where Time Travel Disease keeps sending O'Brien forward in time to see himself die. (See: O'Brien Must Suffer.) He goes to great lengths to save himself each time until the disease kills him, at which point Alternate Timeline O'Brien goes back in his place to save the station. In a subversion of the main trope, Alternate O'Brien feels very bad about Regular O'Brien's death.
** Another ''[=DS9=]'' episode seriously looks at this trope, where the ''Defiant'' crew learns that, thanks to the TimeyWimeyBall, they'll soon crash-land hundreds of years in the past on an isolated planet. While their descendants will form a thriving colony of 8,000 people, the crew themselves will inevitably die on the planet (save for the long-lived Odo) and never see their family and friends back home, and Kira will die shortly after the crash. Sisko really doesn't want to strand his crew, and knows they could easily avoid the accident now, but that would RetGone the entire colony, effectively killing thousands of people. Ultimately, the crew reluctantly decides to subvert the trope at their own expense and go through with the crash -- only for the older version of Odo to forcibly make the ship escape and erase the entire colony, all to prevent Kira from dying. Kira herself is ''horrified'' when she learns about this, especially as she'd made peace with dying for the sake of preserving lives.
** Played straight in a ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' episode which otherwise [[RecycledPlot follows the same beats]] as the above ''[=DS9=]'' episode. The Enterprise encounters another Enterprise populated by the descendants of the crew after the ship was accidentally thrown into the past. Old-T'Pol gives the present-day Enterprise a way to avoid getting TrappedInThePast. It was only after the ship avoided the accident and the other Enterprise was nowhere to be found that anyone stopped to consider that avoiding the accident would erase them from existence.
** This gets reversed in ''Series/StarTrekDiscovery'', where a MirrorUniverse character makes it clear that he considers ''his'' universe the "real world" and the heroes' universe as expendable.
** Downplayed in the ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekS2E4MirrorMirror Mirror, Mirror]]". Kirk cares enough about the denizens of the Mirror Universe to try and convince the crew of the Mirror Enterprise, and especially Mirror Spock, to give up their violent and authoritarian ways, but it's still treated as less important than returning the trapped crew members from his home universe.
** In the ''Series/StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekStrangeNewWorldsS2E03TomorrowAndTomorrowAndTomorrow Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow]]" La'an is thrown into an alternative timeline where Earth never became enlightened and the Federation never formed. She [[spoiler: meets an alternate James T. Kirk and they are both thrown back to the early twenty-first century. Initially, Jim resists her mission to "fix the timeline" because he doesn't want to harm his friends or his reality. But he gradually recognizes his is a CrapsackWorld and starts to help La'an.]]

** In season two, Peter visits a future where ''93% of the population'' is dead. That is, the human population. Of Earth. The planet. This is made worse by the fact that Peter's girlfriend is abandoned there when his powers deposit him back in the 'present'. So he attempts to save her by stopping that future happening. In Season 3, [[spoiler:Peter's apparently forgotten that she ever existed...]]

* Oh, ''Series/StargateSG1''...
** In the alternate universe seen in "[[Recap/StargateSG1S1E19ThereButForTheGraceOfGod There but for the Grace of God]]", the Goa'uld actually succeed in conquering Earth and killing the counterparts of SG-1 (except for Teal'c, who never defected from Apophis in this universe). (Teal'c got to die offscreen when the base was programmed to [[SelfDestructMechanism self-destruct]].)
** As an exception, "[[Recap/StargateSG1S3E6PointOfView Point of View]]" had "our" team travel to an AlternateUniverse to help stop the Goa'uld invasion of Earth (although they still did it only after they found out that the alternate Samantha Carter couldn't stay in their universe). Although, oddly, this episode, while not following the trope, does explicitly state it. Teal'c (rather nonchalantly) kills his alternate, and when he's questioned about it by his (incredibly freaked out) teammates, he doesn't hesitate to matter-of-factly state "ours is the only reality of consequence". While this seems unusually callous of Teal'c, FridgeBrilliance may be relevant: he's TheAtoner, so he would be particularly willing to kill a version of himself who was still guilty of what the "real" Teal'c was trying to atone for.
** The episode "[[Recap/StargateSG1S4E162010 2010]]" sees the SG-1 of the year 2010 (ten years in the future of the time the episode aired) come up with a plan to erase their timeline, despite having defeated the Goa'uld with the aid of their allies the Aschen, because they've learned that the Aschen are sterilizing ninety percent of Earth's population to make humanity their slaves, with the Tau'ri lacking the resources to oppose the Aschen on their own and concluding that the only way to stop them is to prevent this alliance from ever being formed in the first place.
** "[[Recap/StargateSG1S9E13RippleEffect Ripple Effect]]":
*** Alternate Dr. Frasier (who somehow only popped up in one of the 20+ SG-1 teams along with Carter's snake-brained love-interest Martouf; both are dead in "our" world) comes from a version of Earth where the Ori plague was still ravaging the world and a cure was still unfeasible. Alternate Frasier outright demands that her reality be taken seriously by Stargate Command, and she receives help (the cure) from them.
*** The episode does also follow...or perhaps invert the trope: one of the other [=SG1=] teams is planning to sacrifice "Earth-1" to save their own Earth. Technically, the other SG-1 wasn't planning on sacrificing Earth-1. They just wanted to save ''their'' Earth by getting the prime universe's ZPM, figuring that a three-week ride on the ''Daedalus'' instead of an Earth-to-Atlantis gate wasn't too bad. (SG-1 of the prime Earth argued that the ZPM was also needed to power the city's shield and other defenses, but their alternates weren't really bothered about that). On the other hand, once the alternate SG-1 is stopped and sent back, the prime SG-1 team doesn't seem very concerned about the alternate Earth still lacking adequate defenses against the Ori.
** Subverted in the audiobook "Gift of the Gods", which revealed that Daniel Jackson from "our" universe was KilledOffForReal before the episode "Fair Game" and replaced by an alternate universe counterpart.
** The main role of O'Neill's friend Major Kawalsky is to die in every single timeline, whether they find it or create it with time travel. (Except for [[spoiler:"Point of View", the aforementioned exception to this trope, which is the only one where he survives]].)
** In the season 10 episode "[[Recap/StargateSG1S10E13TheRoadNotTaken The Road Not Taken]]", Carter and her counterpart in another universe are experimenting with an Ancient device simultaneously. Something goes wrong and our Sam is transported to the other side. The other Sam wasn't so lucky. No one from the other side seems too upset about this, whereas our SG-1 is extremely worried for the duration of our Sam's absence.
* ''Series/StargateAtlantis''
** Subverted in "[[Recap/StargateAtlantisS03E08McKayAndMrsMiller McKay and Mrs. Miller]]"; the techies have no qualms doing great damage to an alternate reality until they find out that life also exists in it (a chance that was considered astronomically small).
** Subverted in "[[Recap/StargateAtlantisS05E04TheDaedalusVariations The Daedalus Variations]]"; the team is stuck on an alternate reality ''Daedalus'' which is jumping through different realities. In one reality, an unknown alien race starts attacking Atlantis. Sheppard insists on intervening, convinced that this reality's Atlantis are still the "good guys". It leads to the aliens attacking them as well, but the alternate Atlantis helps, so it works out. Played straight with Ronon however. Teyla at one point wonders if her dead counterpart had a child as well only for Ronon to say worrying about every single reality's Teyla and her child is pointless.
** The penultimate episode, "[[Recap/StargateAtlantisS05E19Vegas Vegas]]", is [[AlternateRealityEpisode set in a separate alternate universe]] where Sheppard is a CSI-style detective in Las Vegas hunting down a rogue Wraith that somehow got to Earth. However, before the Wraith dies, it transmits a signal throughout the multiverse shouting Earth's location. The alternate Woolsey's response to this is that it's pointless to worry about saving every possible universe and is sufficiently pleased to have prevented the invasion in his own. Unfortunately for the primary versions of the cast, the message makes it to their universe, setting up the finale.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
** The original series subverts this by having the Doctor traumatized by seeing an alternate Earth being destroyed in the story "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS7E4Inferno Inferno]]". He spends much of the next episode after its destruction in a HeroicBSOD, and the story "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS8E2TheMindOfEvil The Mind of Evil]]" reveals that his memory of seeing a world consumed by fire is his worst fear.
** The episode "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E3PyramidsOfMars Pyramids of Mars]]" has Sarah Jane asking the Doctor why they have to risk their lives to save Earth in the past, since they both know Earth is just fine in the present. The Doctor answers her question by bringing her back to the present... and opening the TARDIS door to reveal the wasteland the present will be if they don't stop Sutekh in the past. So they go back and stop Sutekh, and the wasteland present never happens, but the Doctor and Sarah remember it.
** In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E6TheAgeOfSteel The Age of Steel]]", Mickey [[IChooseToStay decides to stay]] in the parallel universe, replacing his counterpart Ricky, instead of going home, because he feels he can help make this world better. (And because his alternate grandmother is still alive.)
** In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E13Doomsday Doomsday]]", Rose is considered to have as much of a "happy ending" as she can without the Doctor -- her mother and father are reunited. Only it's the parallel counterpart of her dad -- the home version is still dead, and the alternate version of her mother is [[AFateWorseThanDeath not around for various reasons]].
*** The season 4 finale confuses things once more by having [[spoiler:Rose]] make a herculean effort to contact the Doctor to warn him of a crisis that threatens ''every'' universe. The Doctor's world isn't so far into crisis as the alternate one, where "the stars are going out". By the end, a reshuffle has taken place: [[spoiler:Mickey's granny is revealed to have died, and he and Rose have concluded their unfinished business; so he returns home. The Doctor's almost-clone goes with Rose and Jackie to the alternate universe.]] Meaning that there's a character in the alternate universe who is -- sort of -- the counterpart of a character in the Doctor's universe, even though he originates from the Doctor's universe himself. Confused?
** Done with an alternate timeline, but still averted in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E10TheGirlWhoWaited The Girl Who Waited]]". Amy is stuck in a faster time stream, and when the Doctor and Rory break into it to rescue her, 36 years have passed leaving her old and bitter. They realize they could yank the younger Amy ahead to their time, but rescuing her would cause Old Amy to cease to exist. Old Amy refuses to help them, being unwilling to "die" and feeling after all this time she ''deserves'' to rescued. She and Rory demand the Doctor find a way to save both versions of Amy, which he does. [[spoiler:Then it turns out that was a lie, only one can be rescued. Old Amy is left behind to be erased (the Doctor considers her to be a worse person than Young Amy), an act that is both heartbreaking and paints the Doctor as unrepentantly manipulative]].
** ''AudioPlay/BigFinishDoctorWho'' has fun with this through the character of Elizabeth Klein. She comes from a timeline inadvertently created when the Doctor left a piece of laser gun technology in Colditz Castle in the middle of World War II, [[AlternateHistoryNaziVictory giving the Nazis the push they needed to win the war.]] The Doctor manages to fix his mistake and correct the course of history...but Klein's now stuck in the main timeline, and sees her timeline as the "correct" version which the Doctor meddled with and altered. [[FromBadToWorse Then she gets hold of a time machine.]] ''The Architects of History'', in particular, raises the question of [[NotSoDifferentRemark what makes the Doctor's meddling different from Klein's:]] a lot of his qualms about killing and collateral damage are shrugged off when it comes to Klein's universe, since it's not "the real one" anyway.
* Deconstructed in ''Series/{{Farscape}}'''s final season episode "[[Recap/FarscapeS04E18Prayer Prayer]]". [[ItMakesSenseInContext Long story short]], John needs some information, and to get it [[spoiler:he has to kill someone]] in an alternate universe where everyone on Moya was combined for some reason. And [[spoiler:that someone is the combined Chiana-Aeryn, Aeryn being his love and Chiana being his little sister-figure. He points his gun, she starts begging for her life in a way that makes it clear she doesn't take it seriously because she can't believe John would do this... a tear rolls down her eye... John puts down the gun, says he can't do it. Which is probably why he brought his arch-nemesis/[[ShadowArchetype shadow]], who predictably grabs John's hand and the gun and executes Chiaeryn.]] He also had reason to believe that they were all going to die within the arn if he hadn't become involved. [[spoiler:This is hopefully why he shrugged off the deaths of two other crewmembers fairly easily.]] Scorpius directly pointed out to John that, officially, the entire alternate universe would ''wink out of existence'' the moment they left it, so anyone who "died" in it would also be ''wiped from existence'' soon enough -- but he still felt bad about it.
* ''Series/HerculesTheLegendaryJourneys'' subverted this trope: Early in the show's run, one episode featured in a throwaway MirrorUniverse where everyone's personalities were swapped: Herc was an evil despot, his {{sidekick}} Iolaus was a cowardly jester, Ares was the God of Love, etc. Many seasons later, after Iolaus had been killed off, Herc wound up with mirror-Iolaus, who has [[CharacterDevelopment developed into an actual character]].
* In ''{{Series/Lexx}}'', they simply abandon their own universe and jump to another after dooming the first one to get consumed by an armed menace...
** Lexx actually has two parallel universes co-existing as equal halves, one "Light" (rigid fascist order) and one "Dark" (chaos - the one our Earth is in). They aren't actually duplicate timelines of each other, so this trope probably shouldn't apply.
* In ''Series/SevenDays'', it is not unusual for most of the main cast to have killed each other before a Backstep.
** There is also an episode where the Sphere glitches, and Frank ends up in a MirrorUniverse, where the US is a dictatorship, everything is written backwards, and all characters are their polar opposites. Naturally, some characters get killed, and Frank gets back to his own reality.
* In ''Series/KamenRiderDecade'', something is causing alternate realities to meld together, so the Kamen Riders entrust Decade with the task of destroying dimensions in order to stop the chaos. While traveling the dimensions (almost all alternate versions of the past ''Kamen Rider'' shows), Decade instead befriends the other Riders and helps them solve potentially world-shaking crises before moving on. In the final arc, the original Riders call Decade to task for not doing his job, and turn on him. [[spoiler:However, it ends up a subversion, as it turns out that destruction ''was'' the correct course of action. Decade's goal was to bridge the worlds, then destroy them to end the merging, at which point those connections would bring everything back as it was and restore balance to the multiverse.]]
* Played with, and ultimately subverted, in ''Series/{{Fringe}}''. At first, it seems that Walter feels this way about his counterpart with the revelation that he [[spoiler:stole his counterpart's son after his own Peter died of a rare disease, but we later find out he intended to send Peter back after curing him; in his grief, he couldn't bring himself to give Peter up]]. Because of our Walter's action, which has also caused fissures in reality and mass casualties in the parallel universe, Walternate felt this way about OUR side, and used his position as Secretary of Defense to prepare for a war with it. The revelation that the universes are slowly destroying each other even gives the parallel universe a legitimate reason to want to destroy the main one. Most of the third season is spent with episodes switching between universes, enabling the audience to gain sympathy for the parallel universe while believing that only one universe can survive, until [[spoiler:the season's final episode shows that the opposite is true - the survival of each universe is ''dependent'' on that of the other, and if one is destroyed the other will ultimately fall apart as well, so they have to work together and learn to trust each other]]. In the fourth season, Walter's dealing with a lot of guilt over the damage he did to the parallel universe. So, thoroughly subverted in the end.

* ''Series/{{Community}}'' episode [[Recap/CommunityS3E04RemedialChaosTheory Remedial Chaos Theory]] explores this. Jeff rolls a die to decide who gets pizza and creates six different timelines, each one of them starting events that develop depending on who leaves the group. In the main timeline, Abed catches the die, but in the timeline where [[TheHeart Troy]] leaves, things go very bad, very quickly. Pierce gets shot in the leg and dies, Annie gets locked away in a mental institution, Jeff loses an arm, Troy destroys his larynx, Shirley falls OffTheWagon and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Britta...dyes her hair blue]]. Abed and Troy decide that since this is obviously the darkest timeline, they should commit to being evil and find way to the main timeline, kill their alternate selves and reclaim their lives. This becomes a plot point later in the season, [[spoiler:as Abed starts seeing Evil!Abed in times of great insecurity, culminating in Evil!Abed taking over Abed's body in the season finale.]] Of course, since ''Series/{{Community}}'' is not a sci-fi show, any or all of this [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane may just be Abed's imagination.]]
* In an episode of ''Series/EarthFinalConflict'', Liam and Augur have a shuttle accident and find themselves in an alternate universe where the Taelons are invading Earth. Human civilization has also taken a different track, eschewing large settlements and preferring to live in harmony with nature with trade centers being the only permanent places with structures. Nevertheless, they are better prepared to fight the Taelons due to millennia of conflict amongst themselves (they have energy weapons, for example). A number of LaResistance members in this 'verse are killed (including Sandoval's double Jason, who is the leader), but Liam and Augur (along with Jason's girlfriend) manage to escape. Only a few episodes mention the other universe, but it is quickly forgotten.
* ''Series/{{Charmed|1998}}'' introduced an evil counterpart to the main universe so whenever good succeeds in "our" world, evil succeeds in the other. Things have to be that way so the sisters can't help the other world but they continue to do good in our world knowing that means that they are doing evil to alternate people in the other.
* Canadian scifi series ''Series/{{Continuum}}'' plays this kind of loose, given that most of the characters within it don't seem to grasp their own time travel rules. Characters in the earlier seasons openly wonder if their "future" selves and families will continue to exist, or if even the ripple-effects of their mere presence in the past have already altered the timeline so drastically that their own parents will never meet. The mysterious time-traveling conspiracy from even farther in the future - known as "The Freelancers" - give a an explanation in Season 2: ''every'' time-travel event creates a branching timeline, co-existing alongside the original. When Cameron and the [=Liber8=] terrorists traveled back in time, they ''created'' Timeline-2. This is explicitly why they are able to avoid grandfather paradoxes: Kellog's own grandmother was killed in Season 1, but he didn't wink out of existence. This was because it wasn't really ''his'' grandmother from Timeline-1, but an exact duplicate made along with Timeline-2. Thus it is ''impossible'' for [=Liber8=] to prevent the rise of the corporate-ocracy in Timeline-1: all they can do is prevent it from rising in Timeline-2...which wouldn't even have existed in the first place if they hadn't traveled in time. It is also difficult to impossible for Cameron to return to her own son in Timeline-1's 2077.
** This isn't entirely perfect, though, as killing the guy who invented the time machine you used to get there ''will'' create a time paradox. In the Season 3 premiere, Alec from Timeline-2 travels back in time a week to save his girlfriend's life, creating Timeline-3. If the Freelancers are correct, he didn't "save" the original, he simply created an exact duplicate...along with a duplicate of ''himself'' from one week in the past, who proceeds to become his rival for an entire season (both debating which has more right to claim their identity). Because Alec goes on to invent time travel, removing himself from Timeline-2 is an unsustainable paradox - his younger self can't be "killed" (removed from the timeline) with a time travel machine he hadn't even invented yet. We actually see Timeline-2 and Timeline-3 briefly coexisting, before Timeline-2 ''collapses'' and everyone in it dies.
** ...then it turns out that the new Timeline-3 future is even worse than Timeline-1: [=Liber8=] didn't succeed in stopping the corporations from taking over world government, only weakening them just enough that the fighting stalemated, eventually degenerating into multi-faction anarchy, so that the alternate 2030's are a hellhole of constant warfare...in which Kellog is a major faction leader. Basically, anyone who wants to change their own timeline cannot, but if you just want to create a new timeline/universe where you can live like a king by abusing your knowledge of the (alternate but similar) future timeline, that is possible - which suits Kellog just fine.
** The finale ''apparently'' created a final, Timeline-4 in which things worked out - though the show was forced to end quickly with a truncated fourth season, and the showrunners insisted that he planned out a longer storyarc than that.
* A variation appears in the ''Series/TheOrville'' novella [[note]]originally written as an episode but derailed by COVID-related production problems with overseas shooting[[/note]] "[[Recap/TheOrvilleNovellaSympathyForTheDevil Sympathy For the Devil]]". [[spoiler:An infant is left in the care of a simulator for thirty years, and ends up becoming an SS officer in charge of a death camp within the simulated environment. When he is brought into the real world of the 25th century, the crew wrestles with the issue of his moral culpability for evil acts that didn't hurt any ''real'' people but have shaped him into a Nazi true believer]].

** Seemingly played straight but then averted with ''Super'''s Universal Survival Saga. The premise is that 8 of the 12 universes fight in a battle royale for their survival; the losers are erased from existence and the winning universe survives and gets a wish on the Super Dragon Balls. [[spoiler:It's averted as the winner, Universe 7's Android 17, uses his wish to bring back the erased universes. The Omni-King(s) were actually expecting the winner to subvert the trope's mentality as a SecretTestOfCharacter on part of the multiverse's mortals; if any of them made a "selfish" wish, then every other universe, including the ones that didn't compete, would've been erased as well.]]

* A variation appears in the ''Series/TheOrville'' novella [[note]]origianlly written as an episode but derailed by COVID-related production problems with overseas shooting[[/note]] "[[Recap/TheOrvilleNovellaSympathyForTheDevil Sympathy For the Devil]]". [[spoiler:An infant is left in the care of a simulator for thirty years, and ends up becoming an SS officer in charge of a death camp within the simulated environment, When he is brought into the real world of the 25th century, the crew wrestles with the issue of his moral culpability for evil acts that didn't hurt any ''real'' people but have shaped him into a Nazi true believer]].

The reason for this is that an Alternate Universe often feels like a cheap copy of our own. It's just an extra us, so its people [[UniquenessDecay aren't]] [[UniquenessValue unique characters]], and under the SecondLawOfMetafictionalThermodynamics, ‘not being unique’ automatically makes one expendable. It is extremely rare for so much as a single refugee to escape a doomed AlternateUniverse, because that refugee will ruin CastSpeciation for the Earth-1 version unless the refugee will become a SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute. In-universe, this is often simply pragmatism from the characters: Works that feature [[AlternateUniverse alternate universes]] often use the "infinite variations" model of TheMultiverse, and the leads simply can't afford to worry about saving every single possible universe.