History Main / SchrodingersGun

** To a lesser degree, the Athletic Club in ''VideoGame/{{Persona 4}}'' -- you're still hanging out with [[ThoseTwoGuys Kou and Daisuke]] -- only difference is which one is the focus character.

* Castaways and leaflings in ''VideoGame/Pikmin4'' are always rescued in a set order. It doesn't matter which cave you find the first person in, it will always be Russ. In the case of leaflings, this also means that peoples' hair colour is based on the order they are cured.

* ''VideoGame/{{Contra}}: Hard Corps'':

* If Creator/{{Sierra}} [[AdventureGame adventure games]] can't kill your character off with something because you noticed it, they may not bother with it at all. Your car only has a fault if you don't perform the safety inspection. (''VideoGame/PoliceQuest 1''). The policeman's only there if you're indecent. (''VideoGame/LeisureSuitLarry1InTheLandOfTheLoungeLizards''). There's only a car coming if you don't LookBothWays. (''VideoGame/TheDaggerOfAmonRa''). The biggest example is in the latter: giving the wrong item to a speakeasy doorman would make the game {{Unwinnable}}, so it also causes a completely random person to walk in from offscreen and stab the protagonist to death. The game then quotes [[HaveANiceDeath knife crime statistics]].

* On November 5, 1996 (Election day in the US, with UsefulNotes/BillClinton and Bob Dole as the presidential candidates), the New York Times crossword puzzle's key phrase was two words, each seven letters long, with the clue "Lead story in tomorrow's newspaper(!)" [[http://barelybad.com/xwdthemes_110596.htm More]] [[https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=11/5/1996 details.]] The words that crossed the first word (specified below along with their clues) were such that either "CLINTON ELECTED" or "BOBDOLE ELECTED" could have been valid solutions.

* In ''VideoGame/NoUmbrellasAllowed'', the AmnesiacHero's true identity [[TomatoInTheMirror is revealed to them by the Blackmailer at the end of Week 5]]. [[spoiler:He turns out to be one of the four people who went missing in the fire at CARI, and his identity depends on the choices he made throughout the game.]]

* The 1995 movie ''Mr. Payback'' had the audience vote at several points to determine how the movie proceeded.
* Purposefully used by Creator/GeorgeRomero in ''Film/{{Martin}}''. For purposes of making the film he decided the title character was ''not'' a vampire, but admitted in an interview that it could be open to other interpretations.

* In ''VideoGame/NoUmbrellasAllowed'', the AmnesiacHero's true identity [[TomatoInTheMirror is revealed to them by the Blackmailer at the end of Week 5]]. [[spoiler:He turns out to be one of the four people who went missing in the fire at CARI, and his identity depends on the choices he made throughout the game.]]

** In ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion Oblivion]]'', in the ''Shivering Isles'' expansion, you are tasked with taking care of a bunch of adventurers invading a dungeon. They make their way through 3 sections, and in each of them you sit in a safe spot and must press one of two buttons that will determine their fate: one results in one of the adventurers dying, while the other drives one of them to insanity. In the second section, two of the remaining adventurers come across a tightly locked cage filled with riches. Your choice is either activating a fire trap that blasts them, or making hundreds of keys appear in the room. This trope into play with the orc adventurer's behaviour: even though the circumstances are exactly the same, depending on your choice, the orc makes a completely different decision. If you choose to release the fire trap, he will try to pry the cage's bars open moments before the trap activates. If you release the keys, he will instead be vary of the cage and decide that they should just go away, moments before the keys appear.

** However, this turned out be rather sloppy; one of the tie-ins had already ''explicitly and unambiguously shown that Hawk could not possibly be Monarch''. The final reveal made no attempt to address this discrepency, and combined with Hawk's dubious-at-best reasoning for a HeelFaceTurn, the whole thing came off as a cheap AssPull.

* During the ''Rogue One'' adaptation in ''WebComic/DarthsAndDroids'', Bria (a.k.a. Jyn) instictively shoots an Imperial combat droid, implicitly Sally's character K-2SO, rolling high enough to destroy it. Not wanting to kill off a PC so suddenly, the GM immediately declares that Bria shot a ''different'' combat droid, and K-2SO is really standing behind it.

* In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheSacredStones'', there's a plot choice point of which main character to follow. Excluding the main character, you get all the current secondary characters ''and'' the same new characters (with a few exceptions) appear in each chapter. Your chosen lord will even have the same encounters with the BigBad and [[spoiler: the BigBad will always take the Sacred Stone from whichever lord you picked.]]
** That being said, there ''is'' a difference in the routes, at least storyline wise. In Eirika's, [[spoiler: Lyon's spirit is subsumed and killed by the demon king's.]] In Ephraim's, [[spoiler: Lyon's spirit ''unites'' with the demon king's and does a full (if very sad) FaceHeelTurn.]]

* This is the difference between a divergent-timeline fic based on "Supposing this happened in the fictional universe?" and one based on "Supposing the writers decided to do this?" If you're writing, for example, a fic with a PointOfDivergence somewhere in the 23rd century of ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' then, in the former case, you have to remember that ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' has "already happened" by that point, so you can't contradict it (much). In the latter case, ''Enterprise'' hasn't been written yet, so you can contradict anything you like; when (or if) ''Enterprise'' is created in your universe, it'll tie in to that canon.

* The villain of Franchise/TheDCU CrisisCrossover ''ComicBook/{{Armageddon 2001}}'', the mysterious Monarch, was originally intended to be the superhero ComicBook/CaptainAtom. After fans figured it out too soon, DC changed the story, and the Monarch wound up being a different superhero entirely. (However, the ''[[LegacyCharacter latest]]'' Monarch, villain of ''ComicBook/CountdownToFinalCrisis'', actually ''was'' Captain Atom ([[HeelFaceTurn but he got better]]). You couldn't make this stuff up.)

* The 1995 movie ''Film/MrPayback'' had the audience vote at several points to determine how the movie proceeded.

*** Whether [[spoiler:Nanako]] dies or not is dependent on which of the MultipleEndings you're on, but the choices you make that determine which ending route you're on have no real connection to the conditions that cause that character to die. Thus you have [[spoiler:Nanako dying in the bad ending, in a coma in the neutral ending, and miraculously recovering in the good ending, seemingly ''just'' to make those endings happier or sadder]].

* ''VideoGame/BaldursGateII'' has a sidequest where one of your companions returns home to find his sister has been murdered, and an investigation is still in progress. His father is convinced it was a hit from a rival and tells you to kill him in revenge. [[MortonsFork If you kill the rival, you later find out that he was innocent; if you spare him, he was guilty all along.]]

* One of the characters you can date in ''VideoGame/{{Amorous}}'', Lex the husky, dresses androgynously until the second date. Whether they turn out to be male- or female-presenting changes depending on your choices.

* In WebVideo/TheSpoonyExperiment's LetsPlay of the FMV game ''VideoGame/Phantasmagoria2'', Spoony mocks how the game tries to get around this--that the protagonist Curtis could experience the various supernatural death threats in a different order--by having him seem newly surprised in each clip, as though every one was the first (which it could be, depending on what the player does). In the finale of the LetsPlay, [[spoiler:Spoony is trapped in a similar setting and actually gets '''more''' exaggeratedly shocked every time something supernatural happens]].

* [[Literature/{{Discworld}} Ankh-Morpork]] [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_of_the_Discworld#Stealth_Chess Stealth Chess]] adds the Assassin pieces, who as long as they are on an outer file they alone can be in (these files are called the Slurks) move as though on a second, hidden board beneath the main one. However many moves an Assassin made in the Slurks when reentering the main board is the the furthest away[[labelnote:*]]by orthogonal moves, since Website/TheOtherWiki says the maximum needed to turn up anywhere is fifteen Assassin moves[[/labelnote]] from the square from which it entered the Slurks that the Assassin can turn up again. The player can change plans suddenly.

** The Master Sword in the ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOracleGames'' can come from two conflicting sources depending on which game you play first. The games also include a Schrödinger area of the game map: at a certain point in the game, you can earn a flute that will eventually allow you to summon one of the three animal companions. Each of them have skills that allow you to reach places Link can't reach alone, and depending on which flute you get, part of the map ends up being an area that requires that companion to get through. (If you go to that area ''before'' getting a flute, the game forces the choice for you.)

** When you do the first [[spoiler: Looker]] sidequest in ''VideoGame/PokemonXAndY'', the 5 tickets you need to find have text on them. No matter what order you do them in, the text they read is dependent on when you find it, not where it is. Which raises the question: how did [[spoiler: Looker]] know what order you'd go for?as