History Main / PointOfDivergence

->''"Victory over Russia in the spring of ’43—a triumph for the Führer's strategic genius! The Wehrmacht summer offensive of the year before had cut Moscow off from the Caucasus, separating the Red armies from the Baku oilfields. [[UsefulNotes/JosefStalin Stalin's]] war machine had simply ground to a halt for want of fuel.''

->''Peace with Britain in ’44—a triumph for the Führer's counterintelligence genius! ... [A]ll the U-boats had been recalled to their bases on the Atlantic coast to be equipped with a new cipher system: the treacherous British, they were told, had been reading the Fatherland’s codes. Picking off the merchant shipping had been easy after that. England was starved into submission. [[UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill Churchill]] and his gang of warmongers had fled to Canada."''
-->-- ''{{Literature/Fatherland}}''

* In ''Literature/FullMetalPanic'', the point of divergence is New Year's Eve of 1981, with everyone born on that day possessing low-level PsychicPowers and knowledge of science and technology far beyond than the current level of human progress; these people have been dubbed "Whispered". [[spoiler:The actual cause was the "Yamsk 11 Incident", wherein Russian experiments on a psychic girl named Sofia somehow gave her that advanced knowledge and [[PsychicLink mind-linked]] her to everyone born at that moment, making her the "Whisperer" who grants them that knowledge]]. This in turn spurred more changes: UsefulNotes/MikhailGorbachev was assassinated, halting his ''Glasnost'' policy and prolonging the Soviet-Afghan war, meaning the Soviet Union still exists in the early 21st century; meanwhile, Whispereds working on UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan's "Star Wars" defense initiative produced HumongousMecha, among other things.

* In the ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' series, the [=PoD=] is shortly after UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. The transistor (invented in 1947 in reality) wasn't invented until the 2060s, leading to desktop computers, robots, and other technology to use vacuum tubes instead, remaining bigger and bulkier, giving the series its RaygunGothic and {{Zeerust}} aesthetics. For unclear reasons, this also stifled societal development, leaving the world stuck in the social norms of the TheFifties.

* ''Fanfic/ForWantOfAName'' began when Amamiya Ren ''remembers'' the face of the man who ruined his life with the false assault case and how the Phantom Thieves went after the man ''first'' as their target, shortly after the group was fully established.

* ''VideoGame/FireEmblemWarriorsThreeHopes'' is an alternate time line to ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses'', with the point history changed is Monica being saved by Shez before "those who slither in the dark" can kill her, causing their premature exposure and leading to a much different political scene than ''Houses'' had.

* The entire ''Fanfic/{{Eleutherophobia}}'' diverges from ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' canon at the start of the last book. Rachel attacks Tom on the Blade ship ''before'' he morphs, rather than after, giving the real Tom a brief window of time to [[SparedByTheAdaptation save himself]].

A point of divergence is a specific event in an AlternateHistory's or AlternateUniverseFic's {{Backstory}} that occurs differently than it did in RealLife. Most alternate history authors will change a single event, creating a "ripple effect", however, the point of divergence may range in importance and realism from a missing horseshoe nail to TimeTravel and AlienInvasion.

A point of divergence is a specific event in an AlternateHistory {{Backstory}} that occurs differently than it did in RealLife. Most alternate history authors will change a single event, creating a "ripple effect", however, the point of divergence may range in importance and realism from a missing horseshoe nail to TimeTravel and AlienInvasion.

* ''Fanfic/{{Handmaid}}'': There are actually two points that divert this fic from ''Series/TheTudors'' (and technically real life). The first is that Henry VIII, at Katherine of Aragon's urging, revives the handmaid system to take a lady in waiting on as a handmaid to bear children on Henry and Katherine's behalf, rather than Henry deciding to divorce Katherine. They ask Anne Boleyn to be the handmaid, and she happily accepts, having no aspirations on the throne itself because of the ''other'' point of divergence-she falls for Katherine instead of Henry. [[spoiler:The end result is the English Reformation is stalled-if not stillborn entirely-since Henry never clashed with the Catholic Church, Henry and Anne's son Edmund becomes King of England, and the unification of England and Scotland happens much sooner than real life when he marries MaryOfScotland.]]

* ''Fanfic/{{Handmaid}}'': There are actually two points that divert this fic from ''Series/TheTudors'' (and technically real life). The first is that Henry VIII, at Katherine of Aragon's urging, revives the handmaid system to take a lady in waiting on as a handmaid to bear children on Henry and Katherine's behalf, rather than Henry deciding to divorce Katherine. They ask Anne Boleyn to be the handmaid, and she happily accepts, having no aspirations on the throne itself because of the ''other'' point of divergence-she falls for Katherine instead of Henry.

* ''WebOriginal/AtlasAltera'' does not involve a single POD, but instead many ways history might have gone different.

[[folder:FanFic]]
* ''Fanfic/ASagaOfParallelWorlds'' diverges from canon when Hiroshi Yamauchi makes an urgent phone call to Norio Ohga in 1991. This sets into motion a chain of events that lead to a four-way console war between Nintendo, Sega, Microsoft and Bandai.

[[folder:Film]]

A point of divergence is a specific event in an AlternateHistory {{Backstory}} that occurs differently than it did in RealLife. Most alternate history authors will change a single event, creating a "ripple effect", however, the point of divergence may range in importance and realism from a [[ForWantOfANail missing horseshoe nail]] to TimeTravel and AlienInvasion.

Alternatively, an older name for this trope is "Jonbar hinge" - a reference to Creator/JackWilliamson's ''Literature/TheLegionOfTime'', in which such an event is pivotal.

* With the exception of ''Film/{{Logan}}'' as it's set in its own timeline, every entry in the ''Film/XMenFilmSeries'' released after [[spoiler:''Film/XMenDaysOfFuturePast'' is set in a new AlternateTimeline following the big CosmicRetcon in 1973.]]

* The Kelvin Timeline ''Franchise/StarTrek'' movies were named as such after the timeline-diverging event in the [[Film/StarTrek 2009 movie]]'s prologue where the USS ''Kelvin'' (and with it Kirk's father) is destroyed by the time-displaced future Romulans whereas it wasn't in the PrimeTimeline. Both timelines exist running parallel to each other and have had sporadic contact with each other with ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' being the only canon they share.