Follow TV Tropes

Following

Alternate History / Web Original

Go To


  • The many, many, many varied scenarios created over the years by the members of AlternateHistory.com. You can access the site and its discussion board here.
    • Decades of Darkness (see here and here) is a very long story about a universe where seven US states (the New England states, New York and New Jersey) seceded from the US in 1810 and formed the Republic of New England, after the premature death of Thomas Jefferson. As a result, the USA keep slavery as an institution long into the 20th century, and became generally nastier. (The author describes DoD as "The Draka, but in a realistic fashion".) If printed, it would qualify as a Doorstopper. A novel taking place in the world of DoD is planned.
    • A World of Laughter, a World of Tears by statichaos is an ATL where Dwight Eisenhower suffers a heart attack on the campaign trail, forcing the Republican Party to search for a fresh candidate in the 1952 Presidential Election. Who do they pick? Walt Disney. Don't let the premise fool you, though — this timeline is extremely dark, and every update turns it more and more into a World Half Empty. Has a sequel coming at some point in the near future.
    • Holding Out for a Hero: Gustav Stresemann Survives by Faeelin. Germany doesn't turn militant in the 1930s, yet the world is not all sunshine and rainbows. Very detailed.
    • Spiralling Out of Control The very detailed Doorstopper timeline in which the Nineties get a healthy dose of deconstruction and Be Careful What You Wish For resulting in a darker turn of events. It all starts when breakup of Yugoslavia spirals out of control.
    • Superpower Empire: China 1912 — The attempt to turn China into a republic after the fall of the Qing dynasty peters out, and instead a neo-imperial regime is set up. By preempting China's fall into warlordism, civil war and revolutionary upheaval, it fast-forwards its resurgence as a great power.
    • No Spanish Civil War in 1936 by Dr. Strangelove. Francisco Franco receives an answer to a letter that went unanswered in our world, there is no military rebellion against the government, and the shaky Spanish democracy survives long enough to join the allies in WWII. All sort of hijinks ensue, including an anarchist as president of Spain, Leon Trotsky creating a new revolutionary ideology, Galeazzo Ciano leading Fascist Italy until the '70s, the Japanese invading Australia, the Germans reaching Moscow... only to be utterly defeated at the gates of the Kremlin and much more.
    • For All Time starts with FDR dying two weeks after Pearl Harbor, and leads into what is perhaps the ultimate Crapsack World. The equivalent of NATO falls apart, the Soviets gain ground everywhere (they take Italy, Austria, Turkey, Iran, all of Korea, and Hokkaido, among others), France collapses after a string of inept fascist dictators (capped off by Jean-Bedel Bokassa) American race relations take a long dive off the cliff, the Nuclear Weapons Taboo is flagrantly averted, the Reverend Jim Jones gets elected US President, and to top it all off, the Soviets get Andrei Chikatilo as their last General Secretary. Emphasis on "last" — he destroys Soviet Russia in a nuclear civil war, but not before nuking China and the Middle East.
    • Look to the West, a timeline which begins with a very minor Point of Divergence and so far has got an imperial America, a very different Steampunk French Revolution, and Russians and Lithuanians conquering Japan.
    • We'll Meet Again, where America stays within the British Empire... just... only to lead to a world ruled by sadists, dominated by war and genocides everywhere...
    • The Chaos Timeline is called by its author Max Sinister "the Mount Everest of Alternate History": A realistic timeline which starts with the death of Genghis Khan, thus erasing his conquests from history, and continuing it until the present. With the result that history changes a lot compared to our world, although some patterns seem to reappear. Features among other things a New Roman Empire, a German technocracy and a Socialist western Europe.
    • The Pax Napoleonica timeline, examining a world where Napoleonic France wasn't so down on its luck in the later years of The Napoleonic Wars. The TL is currently in the 1970s.
    • The Austria Never Forget Thy Past timeline by Imperial Vienna starts off with the restoration of Karl von Habsburg as Archduke in 1919. As time passes, Austria reclaims most of its pre-WW1 territory (except the Hungarian half), Switzerland plunges into civil war, the Bourbons and Nazi-backed Bonapartes battle for France, a different World War 2 unfolds and Otto/Franz Josef II averts the Holocaust. The Archduchy still succumbs to a (bloodier) Anschluss, though underground Habsburg cells thwart the Nazis with the covert help of Erwin Rommel. Noted for its monarchist undertones and being oddly "romantic". The current TL stopped in 1945, with a second version in the works.
    • Now Blooms the Tudor Rose, a timeline by Space Oddity, is set in a world where Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn's first child, born in 1533, was a boy.
    • The Strangerverse, a loosely-tied Alien Space Bats saga of several timelines by different authors, concerns the outcomes of a time traveler's attempt to save the world. Said outcomes turn out to be (well-played) nation-wanks.
    • Reds!: A Revolutionary Timeline, a series by Aelita, depicts an alternate history in which President William McKinley was not assassinated, and in the resulting political climate (which marginalized Progressive reformers due to Theodore Roosevelt never becoming president), socialism becomes much more popular in the United States. After a much more brutal World War I (made more brutal, ironically, by the well-meaning attempts of internationalists like William Howard Taft to build stable international alliances), the American populace is radicalized and heavily divided, a powder keg ready to explode, until the Great Depression sparks a revolution in the United States.
    • The Fire Never Dies by Meshakhad also features an alternate timeline where a socialist revolution occurred in the United States in the late 1910s, with the point of divergence being several major schisms in the American socialist and labour movements being averted by the accidental early death of assassin Harry Orchard.
    • Green Antarctica by DValdron. A world that is to all appearances like ours, until Captain Cook discovers an enormous, technically sophisticated civilization in Antarctica that has been developing on its own, quite unaware of the rest of humanity. The people there are not friendly. The timeline starts with the colonization of a more livable Antarctica by humans, and the development of society and technology therein.
    • A Greater Britain by EdT postulates a world in which Oswald Mosley never becomes a fascist and instead becomes Prime Minister of Britain.
    • Isaac's Empire by Basileus Giorgios is an ongoing work following the trials and fortunes of a surviving Byzantine Empire.
    • Fear, Loathing and Gumbo on the Campaign Trail '72 is a timeline where John Julian McKeithen, the governor of Louisiana, runs for president in 1972. This leads to, among other things, a deadlocked election (thanks to George McGovern and George Wallace running for president), President Spiro Agnew because of the deadlocked election, an awesome gambit to get Agnew out of office, China turning into our present-day North Korea, a worse Vietnam War (where America wins, at least for now), a worse Troubles thanks to Edward Heath staying in office and appointing Margaret Thatcher, and lots of other nasty turmoil and unrest.
    • Fight and Be Right by EdT is a timeline where Randolph Churchill's political career takes off and he dominates Brittish politics for 20 years, by the '40s Al Capone is president of France, the Federation of Worker's Republics is suppressing an Islamic insurgency in Egypt, a social-democrat German Empire dominates Central-Eastern Europe, Czarist Russia is still a big kid on the block and Israel is in Western Australia and Yiddish-speaking.
    • The Navatlacas: Heirs to Hernan and Montezuma by Ringo Starr is a timeline in which Hernan Cortes does a bit better in the conquest of the Aztecs, and decides to go independent...
    • Damsels and Dirigibles is a timeline that brings hot chicks and airships together in an interwar (1918-1939) setting. Along with gas masks, ridiculously conspicuous uniforms, and sabers, Damsels and Dirigibles intends to create a unique aesthetic style that is chock full of fanciful anachronisms and all around pulpy fun. Although this timeline has a rather dull point of divergence (the Hague Convention of 1899), the plentiful (albeit amateur) illustrations and harrowing tales should nullify any historical boredom you happen to come upon. Original illustrations, whether they be sketches or fake newspaper clippings, periodically accompany updates, and naturally they heavily feature the titular damsels and dirigibles. Also the Cthulhu Mythos (or at least At the Mountains of Madness) is true.
    • Images Of 1984 by Will Ritson is a timeline that plays with the premise and events of George Orwell's classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, namely the theory that "Oceania" is nothing more than Britain turned into a rogue state, albeit draconian and isolated enough to make North Korea look like Disneyland. It gets worse before getting better..
    • Canadian Power: The Canadian Forces as a Major Power by theMann has Canada retain its CV capability when Pierre Elliot Trudeau buys the HMS Eagle from the United Kingdom to replace the aging Bonaventure in 1972. Robert Stanfield and David Lewis force a non-confidence vote that leads to Stanfield becoming Prime Minister, through the accquisition of the Eagle, and later, military hardware like F-14s intended to go Iran before its revolution, Canada becomes a military power.
    • An Alternate History of the Netherlands tells how the Dutch managed to liberate all of Belgium in the Dutch War of Independence and was able to become a superpower by the end of the 20th century. This includes a Communist Balkan Union and a Sweden that swallows Russia after the Great Northern War.
    • XXC is a well-done, albeit sometimes confusing, timeline in which an entierly plausible, and yet divergent, 20th century is created, featuring, among other things, Artist!Hitler.
    • O Renascimento de um Império is a surprisingly thorough saga chronicling Portugal's rise as a world power from 1750 onwards. In the process, it turns into a multicultural (or at least multiethnic) empire, where the Kingdom works hand-in-hand with an independent Anglican-style Portuguese Catholic Church. On the other hand, their road to glory isn't clean.
    • The Anglo/American – Nazi War charts a world where the Nazis didn't back up the Italians in North Africa, thus freeing up troops and supplies to win the battle of Stalingrad. Stalin, enraged at the defeat, purges the Red Army's leadership, paving the way for the Nazi conquest of the Soviet Union. With the Western Allies lacking an opening to invade Europe, Hitler is free to enact all his dreams upon the continent. At least until the Nazis make the miscalculation to break their ceasefire with the Western Allies...
    • A Prussian on the Spanish Throne starts in 1870, with Spain looking for a new King after Isabella II was kicked out of Spain. A Point of Divergence happens: a Spanish politician decides not to tell the French Ambassador about the Government's preferred candidate for the throne, Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. With that small change, in a Prussian becomes the King of Spain and Spain modernizes really fast, becoming something very unlike the RL Spain of the time. Spain and Germany beat the USA in this timeline's Spanish-American War (called The War of the Two Oceans). Sadly defunct.
    • The Legacy Of The Glorious is an attempt to build an AH with the same idea as A Prussian on the Spanish Throne, but with two Points of Divergence: the same as the one in A Prussian on the Spanish Throne (although more elaborate) and a telegram that was sent with a mistake in RL gets sent correctly. Defunct, but revived in The Legacy of the Glorious (Milarqui's Cut).
    • An older example from the forum would be 1983 Soviet Union ISOT to 1984, which has the USSR of that time transported for reasons unknown into Orwell's dystopia. Once they get their act together, the result is one Curb-Stomp Battle after another over the three superpowers. It says a lot that even at their most questionable actions and motives, compared to the others the Soviets are very much the good guys.
    • A More Personal Union by Thespitron 6000 follows up what would happen if Francis II, the sixteen-year-old king of France in 1560, were to survive an autumnal cold that in our history killed him. As a result, he stays married to Mary, Queen of Scots, and forty-five years later, France is Protestant, there's been a proto-World War, and slavery has been outlawed in English North America, which has two thriving colonies. In 1605.
    • Es Geloybte Aretz by Carlton Bach posits the sudden death of Wilhelm II in the same year as his ascension, meaning that instead of a idiotic prick compensating for physical infirmities, Germany is ruled temporarily by a sane, populist, and wise regent, who is succeeded Wilhelm III, who has, in turn, become a cosmopolitan, intelligent, forward-thinking young lad. Germany, obviously, is on track to become a much happier place here.
    • A Giant Sucking Sound: Ross Perot is elected U.S. President in 1992, starts up a new political party, and the world is very different in a few years: Intervention in Rwanda, Slobodan Milosevic continues being President of Serbia, NAFTA is torn up, Brandon Lee becomes a Hollywood superstar and sooooo much more.
    • Cato's Cavalry by Marc Jones has a Centurion in Fifth-Century Britannia invent the stirrup, changing the military and political situation radically.
    • Zhirinovsky's Russian Empire: Boris Yeltsin is killed during the Soviet coup of 1991, allowing the irascible nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky to become the first leader of post-Communist Russia. His belligerence completely alters geopolitics in the Post-Cold War world.
    • To a Place You Do Not Know: The biblical Israelites are transported to New Zealand instead of invading Canaan. They develop their own civilization there, while religions in Europe and the Middle East develop quite differently in the absence of Christianity and Islam.
    • Independence Day 1996 explores the world in the aftermath of the alien attack in Independence Day. Australia becomes a center of the global economy, the ACLU advocates for the rights of the aliens, world religions are completely altered, and a lot more.
    • Twilight Of The Red Tsar, by Napoleon IV has Joseph Stalin survive the stroke that killed him in 1953. The ever murderous Stalin's continued governance leads to a much hotter Cold War, including a Soviet Holocaust, a Sino-Soviet War, and a purge that takes out Georgy Zhukov and Nikita Khrushchev.
    • The Falcon Cannot Hear: President-elect FDR is assassinated in 1933, thus meaning that there's no New Deal to drag America out of the Great Depression. As such, the economy continues to sink, and political tensions rise, causing a surge in groups to both the left and right. It ultimately leads to the Bonus Army killing the President and Vice-President, Douglas MacArthur staging a Military Coup in reaction, and a counter-coup being staged against him, all leading to a five way Civil War that deeply divides the country.
    • Blue Skies in Camelot: Set around the premise of Marylin Monroe not dying in 1962 leading to JFK surviving his own assassination the following year, Blue Skies in Camelot showcases a more hopeful alternate 1960s with a surviving JFK at the helm.
    • Decisive Darkness takes place in a world where Japan refuses to surrender in 1945, even after the atomic bombings and the threat of Russian invasion. This forces the United States to go ahead with Operation Downfall, the invasion of the Japanese home islands. The results are unpleasant to say the very least...
    • Eyes Turned Skywards follows the alternate path of NASA and other space programs as Saturn and Apollo hardware continues to be used and the Space Shuttle is never developed.
  • The Alternate History Wiki has quite a few, naturally.
    • 1983: Doomsday involves a world where a worldwide nuclear exchange between the Soviet Union and the United States happens on September 26th, 1983. The United States has ceased to exist, the Soviet Union is a rump state in Siberia (still called the USSR), the Commonwealth of Australia and New Zealand is the most powerful nation on Earth and South America is an economic powerhouse.
      • Other parts of the world range from well-off (parts of Europe, Canada) to isolated (Japan) to apocalyptic (Eastern Europe, China)
    • Aztec Empire has the Aztecs surviving their encounter with the Spanish. Today, its borders include Mexico and parts of the United States stretching past Louisiana, but not, curiously enough, Baja California.
    • Great White South has Antarctica as a habitable, if not particular friendly, continent. The South Pole is, of course, a Neutral International Zone.
    • Ohga Shrugs features a world where the PlayStation is never invented, leaving Sega and Nintendo the chief players in the video game console market to this day.
  • The YouTube channel Alternate History Hub is entirely dedicated to coming up with realistic, highly detailed and oftentimes amusing answers to questions like "what if Germany won World War I" or "what if Trotsky rose to power instead of Stalin". The channel will also commonly use a similar formula to analyze fictional settings of popular works and try to figure out how such a scenario would play in real life. Think of it like a video version of What If?, except it's for history instead of physics.
  • Anathema is set in a world similar to our own until February 24th, 2010, when the Pulse happened. After that event, people all over the world began developing supernatural abilities.
  • Ansem Retort has one, where Ronald Reagan turned into the Incredible Hulk to tear down the Berlin Wall, Jimmy Carter did not exist, the Flying Spaghetti Monster created time, and a time-travelling Sinistar ate the Challenger.
    • Later, Xemnas starts changing history. Chicago was destroyed, Canada was the Soviet Union instead of Russia, and Michael Bay was an Oscar winning visionary. That last one was what clued Riku in that history was changing and he wasn't just losing it.
  • The Black Legion of the Dark Lord Sketch Melkor supposedly invaded Canada, with Gothmog the Balrog Lieutenant from The Silmarillion heading that particular expedition.
  • Boldly Going explores a world in which the CIA et al. Overestimate the Soviet Space program in the early 1980s, and Reagan demands a response, resulting in Space Station Enterprise, built from the converted frame of the never-flown orbiter of the same name. The outcome of an American Space Station in the late 1980s is explored through the 2020s.
  • The Channel Awesome universe to a small extent. It mostly reflect our own world but their are small divergances such as Super Mecha Death Christ killing Hitler a year early.
  • The Dawn of Victory setting originally started as a total conversion mod for Sins of a Solar Empire. Unfortunately, the developers were forced to shut down the mod project for Real Life reasons but have continued to develop the setting by posting articles. The basic premise is loosely based on Harry Turtledove's Worldwar novels (with some elements borrowed from The War of the Worlds, as the aliens are using tripods), with an advanced interstellar empire attacking Earth in the middle of World War II. Humans are being crushed by the superior enemy until the major powers develop atomic weapons and push the enemy back to the Southern Hemisphere. Afterwards, the three major powers (Democratic Federation, Soviet Union, and Greater German Reich) dominate the post-war world. They use the remains of Scinfaxi technology to advance and eventually develop first space and then interstellar travel, settling a number of extrasolar colonies. When hostilities on Earth resume, humanity evacuates the planet en masse and then nukes the entire surface to keep it out of Scinfaxi hands. Now, human space is split up between the three major powers, as well as minor nations like the Empire of Japan, the United Centauri Republic, the Islamic Arab Republic, the Federal Nordic Cooperative, the Vega Confederation, the Italian Social Republic, and the Spanish State. And, of course, the Scinfaxi still represent a major interstellar threat, although they mainly stay out of human affairs. For bonus points, some of the videos made of the setting show that the Soviets and the Nazis have completed a number of projects that have historically been scrapped, such as the Palace of the Soviets and the Volkshalle.
  • A Day in Time takes place in an Alternate History were the bombing of Hiroshima drew the attention of hostile aliens, which invaded Earth and attempted to wipe out humanity. The protagonists are refugees living on the moon. Now that one of them has gone back in time to World War II, it seems likely that we're going to see a new alternate alternate history as well.
  • Dresden Codak parodies this, as Kimiko wonders what would've happened if the Permian and Cretaceous extinctions never happened oh my God it's alternate prehistory fanfiction!
    • It was a thinly-veiled ship-fic between her and her old physics TA.
  • Enthalpy is set in 2001. A giant wall was constructed in Earth's orbit to deflect the (real-life) asteroid AL00667. Also, children drive hovercrafts and advanced genetic engineering allows for the creation of giant insects and cans that spray instant pig clones.
  • For All Nails expands on Robert Sobel's For Want of a Nail. The similarity of the title to For All Time is intentional-For All Nails offers a darker, more dystopian take on Sobel's timeline.
  • The Fountainhead Filibuster: Tales from Objectivist Katanga — Explores what might have happened if Ayn Rand and L. Ron Hubbard had decided to cooperate in creating an Objectivist nation-state...in the former Belgian Congo.
  • For King And Country is an AAR for Hearts of Iron II, chronicling the rebirth of the British Empire and its implications on the rest of the world.
  • Goodbye Strangers is set in a world where cities are being infested by weird creatures called strangers that most people can't see, but the history of this world is not quite the same as ours. One of the most notable differences is that the Pokémon franchise was never as popular.
  • Ill Bethisad is a world that diverged from ours rather often since Roman times. The Holy Roman Empire never fell, the USA don't exist as such and nuclear weapons are used a bit more freely. History is still remarkably similar. For example, the Second World War is started by the German chancellor Hessler. Many aspects of this particular universe seriously disregard the basic rules of casauality, so it's one of the softer, less realistic alternate histories, but still rich in content and plenty of fun.
  • In the original fiction version of Keit-Ai, the girl's strange area code isn't the only thing that's different compared to the boy's universe. In the boy's timeline, the Lost Decade of Japan never happened, the Nintendo Ultra CD exists, the Sony PlayStation and the Virtual Boy don't, and the WWE is still the WWF.
  • Mahu: In "Crownless Eagle" Poland not only survives the 18th century, but also turns from a decaying monarchy into a Republic which becomes one of the world's main superpowers.

  • Webseries/ love, death and robots tv anthology has an ep; alternate histories changing how Hitler is killed.

  • THE MONUMENT MYTHOS drops subtle hints about history not being the same. Most examples fall under Richard Nixon, the Used Car Salesman, but some don't :
    • The US declared independance in 1786 (originally 1776).
    • Abraham Lincoln's iconic hat was a bowler (originally a stovepipe hat).
    • George Washington chopped down his father's apple tree (originally a cherry tree) officialy; in reality, it was a Special Tree.
    • John D. Rockefeller, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton have been elected presidents, but the biggest change about the POTUS is the election of James Dean (yes, that James Dean) instead of Richard Nixon.
    • All of the US high-tech companies have been amalgamated as the Department of Technology and it's commercial arm, Maize Machines (an obvious parody of Apple).
    • Personal computers were banned in 1980 following the failure of Operation Horned Serpent, leading to technology slightly behind ours; personal cameras are low-rez and disposable, computers are very specialized machines (personal movie editor ones are quite popular) and, while social networks such as TWTTR exists, bulky terminals akin to the first cell phones are required to use it.
    • The Statue of Progress, a sister statue to Lady Liberty, was built instead of the Port Said Lighthouse.
    • The United States reformed themselves as the United Zones, merging all states save Alaska in 3 zones ; Washington D.C. is however still the national capital. A first merge happened in 1980 but didn't last long, while a second merge in 2003 is expected to last at least for the next few decades.
    • The Statue of Freedom topping the Capitol was taken down following a riot in 1977 during which she fell and crushed people, before being moved to the Grand Canyon. The real reason is that Freedom is a very angry Living Statue who has been turned into an executioner for terrorists.
    • The Nixonverse isn't immune to changes either: the first man on the Moon in their verse was Ed Dwight.
  • This Onion Article is about a new show on the Sci Fi Channel that is about a world where Germany didn't win World War II. Apparently a Nazi victory stops Sci Fi from changing its name.
  • The RDNA-verse is one, and in part an Hetalia: Axis Powers AU. It follows an alternate Earth where where the course events (at once distinct and very familiar) turned generally for the better. That was until an upheaval called the Terror changed history irreversibly in the 1920s...among other things as various stories unfold over the next 100 years. The name itself comes from one of the prominent countries: The Royal Dominion of New Austria, which would have been Mexico in OTL.
  • RPC Authority: RPC-612 which is the statues from alternate timelines creep into mainline reality and change to fit the one they came from. Examples:
    • A marble slab commemorating a terrorist plane attack
    • A statue of Grigori Rasputin in a timeline where he was cannonized as a saint equal-to-apostals
  • The Salvation War is pretty much one of these being written in real time. On the story's starting date in 2008, God announces to the world that the gates of Heaven are closed, and humanity should just lay down and die, accepting that they'll go to Hell. Unsurprisingly, a significant portion of the population takes issue with this and declares war on Hell, and then Heaven. All kinds of real life figures factor into the story, and some real events are worked in shortly after they happen.
  • SCP Foundation:
    • A real freaking scary example is SCP-093, the "Red Sea Object". The Foundation discovers that the object can be used on mirrors to open a portal to an unknown world filled with futuristic technology and bizarre humanoid monsters that attack and absorb any living thing they see. Eventually while exploring they discover a journal belonging to a third alternate universe's version of an SCP agent. The journal reveals that the strange world is an alternate version of Earth and tells what happened to it. An omnicidal, god-like being known only as He arrived on that version of Earth during the Industrial Revolution and caused a huge tech boom before starting a massive Earth that both left most of humanity destroyed but also turned those who weren't killed into the humanoid monsters that now roam the Earth. Not only that but there are numerous copies of the Red Sea Object that are all linked to other parallel universes, and there's a possibility that He could use the Red Sea Object copies to travel to any of those alternate worlds... including ours.
    • There is one object in the Spanish branch, a VHS player that when a movie tape is inserted it plays the What Could Have Been version of the film, but when a documentary is inserted the display is this trope. A documentary about Nelson Mandela's road to unite South Africa becomes one about racial riots that destroyed the country; another about the fall of Carthage becomes one about its rise (complete with radical changes in alphabet and dominant language); and documentaries about the Cuban missile crisis and the evolution of man displayed results that were expunged. Of course, it's not too hard to imagine what the former was about. The latter, meanwhile, was apparently so disturbing the O5 forbid further experimentation with historical non-fictional material.
    • SCP-1730 is an alternate timeline in which the Foundation's most prominent site, Site-19, was never constructed in favor of a Site-13. 13 was far more expensive to maintain, and after President Bob Dole cut off the United States' funding to the Foundation when terrorists used anomalous means to destroy the Sears Tower, the Foundation was left on the verge of financial ruin. As a result, they willingly allowed themselves to be absorbed by their more radical rival the Global Occult Coalition, and ended up Jumping Off the Slippery Slope. All anomalies were incinerated once they stopped providing useful data including the human ones, dissenters were summarily executed which killed off many prominent researchers, and The Wanderer's Library was destroyed.
  • Shattered World starts with a war between Nazis and Soviets in, which goes better for the Soviets as Stalin didn't purge the officer corps. A very short ceasefire occurs, just before a WORSE World War Two that is still ongoing in 1949, with nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons being commonly used. There's even a wiki for it.
  • The Speculative Dinosaur Project takes place in an Alternate Universe where the K-Pg asteroid never hit. It doesn't look fun.
  • The Speculative Evolution forums have a fair amount of alternate histories, such as one project in which the K/T Extinction happened in the Jurassic, and one in which all fantasy creatures really exist.
  • Uchronia is an alternate history literature list.
  • Unclassified Encounter turns World War II into a Weird Historical War, where it turns out that various alien and supernatural threats are not only real, but were involved or intervened in a number of battles during the war, with both the Allied and Axis Forces often acquiring the weapons wielded by these more advanced civiliazations or the corpses of the monsters that attacked their troops.
  • Vita Carnis: The series takes place in a world where the Crawl and its various meat creature offshoots started appearing on Earth in the early 1930s, and from what we are shown, humanity and the world in general seems to have more or less adjusted in the following 50 or so years.
  • In Winchester, Germany is allowed to keep its African colonies after WWI. As a result, WWII begins in 1956, with a much richer Germany being able to prolong the war until the early 70s. Both America and Germany develop the atomic bomb and begin to annihilate each others' cities in a low-intensity campaign, which peters out as both sides lose the necessary infrastructure and collapse.
  • In Within the Wires, small details revealing how the retrofuturistic Alternate Universe became so different from our own are gradually parceled out over the faux cassette tapes that make up its episode format.
    • Season 1's "Cassette #3: Insomnia, Feet" provides clues that the story is set in the early Eighties, while "Cassette #5: Focus, Nose" reveals the point of historical divergence, when it was decided that nationalism, tribalism and familial loyalty were the root causes of war and violence, to be eliminated through drastic social engineering, in the aftermath of an alternate World War II.
    • Season 2's "Cassette 1: Tate Modern (1971)" terms the Point of Divergence "The Great Reckoning" and implies that it was comparatively brief, (ending in a peace accord by 1938) but exponentially more devastating on a worldwide level, which facilitated creation of the One World Order called "The Society" within a decade.
  • Worm is set on Earth Bet. On May 20th, 1982, a cruise ship crossing from Plymouth to Boston discovered a golden man floating over the ocean. He was Scion, the world's first superhero. After his appearance, people all over the world started developing powers. A parallel earth known as Earth Aleph also exists where this did not take place, but the two were joined up when a tinker created a portal between them, allowing communications and media to spread. The protagonists watch both earths' versions of the Star Wars prequels and conclude both suck.
    • The Endbringers have devastated huge areas of the world and killed millions of people since their appearance in the mid-90's. Because of them, Japan has been reduced to third-world status, several landmasses, including Newfoundland, are underwater, and cities like Rio de Janeiro and Moscow have become irradiated wastelands.
    • Several other inhabited Earths make appearances as well: Earth Shin also had superpowers appear, albeit in very small numbers compared to Bet... but one of those was a mind-controller who enslaved every parahuman on the planet and set herself up as supreme ruler of all humanity, whom nobody can oppose because superpowers trump any weapons they could raise against her. Earth Cheit, meanwhile, had a very different sort of religious reform in place of the Protestant Reformation, which ultimately lead to a global theocracy with absolute power ruling over mankind. Also, their population is over ten billion.
  • A sadly defunct-for-years website contained rules for a tabletop RPG set in alternate world where, in the Old World, the hominid family tree branched out into half a dozen sentient species that were all analogous to various fantasy races (elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, orcs, goblins, and of course humans), while in the New World dinosaurs never went extinct and gave rise to several races of intelligent saurians (all with culture similar to the Aztecs). Also, dragons. Completely illogical, but fun.


Top