Depictions of a Bad Future in fan works.
Crossovers
- A Is A: This hits Dead Six hardest, since they had no idea about the ecological destruction that was coming their way until Team Rainbow revealed it.
- Archangel's Amazing Adventures: What happens when the crew of Archangel, along with Yzak, Dherka, Athrun, and Nicol get Trapped in Another World for a few months? Rau Le Creuset successfully gets both the Earth Alliance and ZAFT to obliterate each other, resulting in a scenario that doesn't look out of place for a Fallout scenario.
- The Bridge (MLP) eventually delves into this, albeit one we just hear about, rather than seeing for ourselves: at some point, both Bagan and Grogar escape their prisons; while Equestria and Terra both survive the resultant war, they are heavily devastated, with (among many others) Shining Armor and Cadence killed. We don't get much detail beyond that, it's bad enough that Flurry Heart ends up traveling back in time in an attempt to subtly Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
- Crossover Chaos: There's more than one of these in Crossover Chaos. The most well-known one was from v1, where a big war broke out, killing millions of people. Killer actually DIES and then gets revived without his immortality, leading him to age like a normal person, Hawkeye turns into a full-on robot, and becomes completely emotionless, BJ goes completely insane, Klinger goes blind but still manages to be badass, and Word of God says Equestria is gone, and everyone in it DEAD. This is what Killer's future self comes to the present to warn his present self about. There's also ones where Jamie didn't become Supreme God, and it's just about as hellish as you would expect. There's also some good futures, and we've seen some of them. Most of them aren't much better than the bad future.
- In chapter 41 of Ghosts of the Past, sequel of Child of the Storm, Harry's shown multiple alternate realities by an older alternate version of himself who goes by Nathan - though they were chosen by Harry's subconscious based on what he subconsciously felt he needed to see - and since he's viewing them from, technically, outside reality, they aren't confined to linear time, meaning that most of them show possible futures. Most of them are fairly pleasant - and sometimes funny. Most, however, is not all. One shows Harry locked in a brutal duel with an unidentified figure in a charred, smoke-blackened hellscape, another shows him as a ruthless assassin in the style of the Red Son who'd just systematically murdered his way through the Hellfire Club and is lighting a fire to destroy the evidence, and the last - and by far the worst - shows a version of him as the Dark Phoenix, far less human than his previous dabbling in that, sitting on the melted throne of a destroyed Asgard, with the weapons of Asgard and the Avengers (and Carol) lying broken before him, along with what's heavily implied to be the Hulk's skull, while Yggdrasil and the rest of the Nine Realms are burning in the background. And what is he doing? Laughing like a maniac. And according to Word of God, it's because he knows he's being observed by Harry and knows what he's feeling. Harry, unsurprisingly, freaks the hell out.
- Hermione Granger: The Witching Hour (Harry Potter, The Gamer): Both the Order of the Phoenix and Dumbledore's Army have been defeated despite going beyond their limits to try and win the war. Nearly everyone is dead and those who aren't await a Fate Worse than Death at Voldemort's hands. Not even the deceased are safe, with Harry and Ron's bodies being paraded around like sickening trophies. Hermione remains but has sustained fatal wounds.
- The Lone Traveler: The title character started his travels when he tried to go back in time and fix the world he was living in. Now he gets sent to various universes to help prevent Bad Futures.
- The Omnitrix Hero: In the Season 4 two-part premiere "From Time to Time", Flash Sentry is accidentally pulled into the future 20 years from his current date. It initially seems great, including aliens living on Earth with humans, humanity expanding across the universe, lots of advanced technology, and Flash himself having mastered the Omnitrix and hailed as "The Hero of 10,000 Forms". But then Flash sees how bitter and abrasive his future self has become, learns of all the horrible things that have happened to his friends, and finds out it all started on the very day he originally came from with Shining Armor's death. After he returns to the Present, Flash prevents this future from happening by saving Shining Armor's life, thus leading to an uncertain timeline.
- One Helluva Broken Day: Loona has a dream in which SCP-990 shows her what the future holds if she and the rest of the I.M.P. crew don't stop SCP-001. She gets to see Verosika, Vortex, the former's entourage, as well as the I.M.P. crew turned into SCP-001-A and it culminates in seeing sunlight from SCP-001 entering Pentagram city via a portal to Hell that turns the demons and damned into more instances of it. This very quickly cures her of her Jerkass behavior and lets her and the I.M.P. Crew plan their next move.
- In the Tokimeki PokéLive! and TwinBee story "Prophecy of Failure!?", the Earth of the 2060s-2070s became a dry, hot desert with the exception of the polar regions and their surrounding tundras which was caused by Yoko and Ellie losing the final battle to Eggman.
- The prologue of The Weaver Option opens with one for the Warhammer 40,000 universe, showing that things CAN get worse than they already are. By the 45th Millennium, the Imperium of Man has nearly fallen to Chaos while the remaining Tyranid Hive Fleets have finally reached the Milky Way galaxy. With every major faction weakened and exhausted from constantly warring with each other, the Tyranids easily overrun the galaxy and devour almost all life. This leads the last surviving Chaos warband to perform a ritual to send a champion into the past with the purpose of better preparing the galaxy for the Tyranids' arrival.
- The Cutting Edge: Novu convinces Laurel to go back by showing her flashes of the canon timeline after her death, which, from her perspective, is this. This includes John and Thea leaving the team, Samantha Clayton's death, Quentin's death, Oliver being forced to leave a tearful Felicity to fulfill his own bargain with Novu, and Oliver's death after facing off against the army of Shadow Demons on Earth-38.
- In the distant future of the canon series, the featured Original Character accidentally released Demon from his prison, which results in the entire Digidestined being Killed Off for Real. The OC decides to travel back in time to the moment he is about to release Demon only for the time machine to malfunction and ended up travelling way too far into the past. His entrance into the past thus begins the plotline of Zero 2: A Revision.
- Survival of a Monster
has an instance similar to "Pyramids of Mars" (below). The first part takes place on the Moon in 2287 and reveals that because the Doctor didn't fully defeat King Wurzin, the villain in The Worm from Space, Wurzin has used the Tufgup to make an interplanetary empire and is about to attack Earth. The Doctor is able to avert this by going back to just after he left Wurzin before and making sure they are dead this time.
- Backward With Purpose starts in one where almost everyone is dead, convincing Harry, Ron, and Ginny to travel back in time to save everyone. Part II has Albus Potter making several jumps into the past for the same reason.
- Harry Potter and the Future Uncertain: Magic is now a crime against humanity in this world.
- Harry Potter and the Nightmares of Futures Past has a similar "everyone died, let's try again" premise, but with just Harry going back.
- Human Curiosity has this. Much of the plot takes place in the early 22nd Century where most of the Nations mysteriously vanished a century before.
- Shadows Awakening: The Mirror of Despair traps Tohru in a vision of one of these — the heroes managed to defeat Wong, only for the Queen to take control of Jade, and use the Shadowkhan to kill the other heroes and take over the world. San Francisco is shown to be in ruins, with the humans there being emotionally broken down slaves, and it's implied it's like this everywhere.
- The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time (DragonRand100): After Ganondorf takes over, everything in Hyrule gets a lot worse. The Kokiri are enslaved and abducted from their homes, Zora's domain freezes over, the Gorons are being worked to death, Kakariko village is afflicted by a demon known as the Necromancer, and the Gerudo are suffering from the threat of rebellion. Hyrule castle along with Castletown lies in ruins as it is inhabited by monsters and redead. The story hints at other bad futures, in other timelines, including the total destruction of Hyrule.
- Mario & Luigi: Darkest Timeline has this as the main premise, with Mario, Luigi, and Bowser accidentally finding themselves in a future where Bowser has taken over the Mushroom Kingdom and nearly wiped out the Toads.
- "Spider Family: The Next Generation" features Spider-Man's children from various futures coming to the present due to an anomaly in the web of life. Some of these futures are generally positive, but one particularly grim future is the future of Viktor Kravinoff Parker/Apex Spider, the child of Peter Parker and Ana Kravinoff (daughter of Kraven the Hunter); in this reality, Otto Octavius's time as the Superior Spider Man permanently ruined Peter's life even after he regained his body, as his heroic allies refused to let him explain and his civilian allies rejected him for his recent arrogance, eventually ending up with Ana Kravinoff after he delivered a particularly brutal defeat to Kraven because Peter no longer cared as much about holding back.
- Crucible started when a ship named Ad Astra and the antagonists came from a version of future where everything has gone so much wrong. Jane and Garrus didn't marry due to his shotgun wedding with a racist general's daughter. When they managed to get together again, she was killed, Garrus was forced to abandon their son Gaius to Sidonis. The hybrids were hunted to be war machines or lab rats or slaves by both parents' species and the Quarian. Miranda was tortured to death by Cerberus's remains while Victus was killed in the 2nd Krogan rebellion. Gaius's family was destroyed in the worst way possible. And that was just the short version.
- Mega Man Recut has "Future Shock," which is much darker than the show, with scientists essentially being lobotomized. This also extends to the future versions of Mega Man's family.
- Reboot: At some point Hawk Moth (whom Marinette learns the secret identity of) finally gets the ladybug and cat miraculouses and wishes for the return of his wife, setting off a chain reaction that leads to The End of the World as We Know It. It is so serious that Master Fu sends Marinette's soul back in time to her thirteen-year-old self despite how dangerous time magic can be.
- Weight Off Your Shoulder plays with this:
- Firstly, it diverges from the Canonical series during the Season Four episode "Gang of Secrets". When Marinette considers giving up her Guardianship and passing on her Earrings to somebody else, Bunnyx shows up to dissuade her... but accidentally reveals that things will be getting much worse when she accidentally name-drops Monarch. Upon learning what that means, Marinette sets out to prevent that from happening — and succeeds, with Future!Alix trying to Make Wrong What Once Went Right because she wants to ensure she still gets to become Bunnyx, regardless of how much everyone suffers as a result.
- Then it turns out that canon itself is the result of Future!Alix being a Time-Traveling Jerkass who's become obsessed with manipulating events so that Marinette and Adrien end up together in the end... despite the fact that these efforts have created several other bad futures, which Future!Alix staunchly refuses to learn anything from.
- One of these bad futures involves Marinette and Adrien getting married, just like Future!Alix wants...but the relationship is All Take and No Give, with Adrien expecting Marinette to keep not just their failing marriage afloat, but the remnants of his failing company as well. Marinette finally decides enough is enough and divorces him, with both Adrien and Future!Alix Dramatically Missing the Point.
- Future!Alix also justifies her desire to keep Adrien Locked Out of the Loop regarding Gabriel's Secret Identity by revealing that several bad futures had him taking the news exceedingly poorly, pulling a Face–Heel Turn either to support his father's villainous crusade or becoming a new villain in his own right. Naturally, she completely ignores that the current Adrien has already learned the Awful Truth and taken it much better than those counterparts, having a Jerkass Realization instead of turning evil.
- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Paradox: Almost 76 years after the events of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, an artificial intelligence called JUNO laid waste on Earth, wiping out almost 98% of the human race and every living creature in the universe, ruling the Earth with an iron fist. So, time travelers are forced to find a way to prevent its uprising. Sounds familiar? While there's still opposition against the AI, there are some willingly surrendered their humanity to JUNO, being converted into cyborgs, at the cost of their human souls.
- Flashback has the canon plot end in one of those. About 12 years after the canon series started, aliens invaded and did to multiple locations on Earth what the Allies did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. It was so bad that All for One was a Token Evil Teammate to the heroes, and Eri ultimately sent her consciousness back to her past self's body, with a second One for All.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- A fairly common fanfic scenario to set a story in one of these in which the Sonic Rainboom never happened, meaning that the Mane 6 never became friends, most of them are depressed, and Nightmare Moon will probably win/already has won.
- Bad Future Crusaders, by TonicPlotter, adapted from a series of images by an artist on DeviantArt that were designed to be this trope distilled through a FIM setting — at some point, Princess Celestia died, followed by Twilight Sparkle and Princess Luna engaging in a fight that destroyed Ponyville, killing or scattering its inhabitants; the other bearers of the Elements of Harmony are missing, presumed dead; Twilight, now Queen, has turned Equestria into a totalitarian Police State/Empire; and formerly sweet and kind characters have grown to be either villains, Anti Heroes, or have lost everything they care about.
- The Solar Empire in The Conversion Bureau: The Other Side of the Spectrum, thanks to that Mirror Universe's Celestia deciding to convert all humans into newfoals after promoting herself to queen, Luna is petrified, the main characters are Brainwashed and Crazy xenophobic fanatics, Equestria is an Orwellian nightmare that's overpopulated, polluted, and drowning under the swell of newfoal immigrants, and literally every good thing about the land is slowly and systematically being stripped away. The reason for all this? Because TCB!Lyra Heartstrings decided to go on a little scuba diving trip and uncovered an Artifact of Doom that craving revenge against ponykind and humanity because a group of ponies and a little girl named Megan defeated its maker over a thousand years ago.
- In the Firehooves Cycle, the basic premise is that a Darker and Edgier take on G1 is actually the far future of G4, after a series of Götterdämmerung events.
- Harmony Theory takes place in a future where Princess Celestia and Luna are dead, Equestria has been divided into two nations on the brink of war, much of the magic has left the world leading to the extinction of many sapient creatures and the surviving ones being severely weakened, an Omnicidal War God has returned to finish what she started, and the world is so violent you can get a Cutie Mark in killing.
- The Pony POV Series chapter "Epilogue" depicts one of these ruled by Discord where the Mane Cast never broke free of his power. Not only are they now his immortal servants, Twilight is now The Dragon and the dead rising from the grave to eat their loved ones happens a lot. That is, before Twilight's hope is restored and she is redeemed.
- Then there's the futures Nightmare Paradox has created during her "Groundhog Day" Loop plan, which manage to be Bad Futures for the Bad Future! The worst of which involved Spike, Luna, and Applejack sacrificing themselves to beat Discord, Derpy dying of Rapid Aging when Discord is beaten by the Elements, breaking his spells, Celestia died protecting Twilight from Rarity, who'd given into her greed and tried to take Twilight's Element by force forcing Twilight to kill her, Queen Tiamat and the Dragons had died in the battle, the Changelings have been wiped out, and actually using the Elements had caused a massive cataclysm. All this was what forced that Twilight over the edge into accepting Paradox's offer to become her. And that's just one out of what's most likely billions of bad ends Paradox's scheme has seen happen!
- Thankfully, this all ends happily when the final loop see Discord defeated, the world restored, Nightmare Paradox vanquished. Not only is the world freed from Discord's tyranny Discord himself is reformed, Rarity becomes Queen Libra, and many of the causalities of Discord's reign are brought Back from the Dead, and a lot of Discord's changes are repurposed to good use. Overall, despite how cynically it started, it ends surprisingly optimistically.
- According to the ghost of Twilight and Shining Armor's uncle, this would be the result of either Makarov or the Blank Wolf succeeding in absorbing or erasing (respectfully) Shining — without him in existence, the Hooviet Empire, under Makarov's command, would spread out and conquer the entire world, even Equestria, leaving everything at Makarov's nonexistent mercy. And there's the fact that without Shining Armor, the Reharmonized timeline would become the Dark World timeline.
- The Wedding Arc has Cadence receiving a vision of what will happen if Chrysalis succeeds in her plans — ripping out the emotions of everything in Equestria, absorbing them and becoming a being more powerful than Discord, using that power to reshape the world to her want, and leaving everything as her twisted puppets.
- Then there's the futures Nightmare Paradox has created during her "Groundhog Day" Loop plan, which manage to be Bad Futures for the Bad Future! The worst of which involved Spike, Luna, and Applejack sacrificing themselves to beat Discord, Derpy dying of Rapid Aging when Discord is beaten by the Elements, breaking his spells, Celestia died protecting Twilight from Rarity, who'd given into her greed and tried to take Twilight's Element by force forcing Twilight to kill her, Queen Tiamat and the Dragons had died in the battle, the Changelings have been wiped out, and actually using the Elements had caused a massive cataclysm. All this was what forced that Twilight over the edge into accepting Paradox's offer to become her. And that's just one out of what's most likely billions of bad ends Paradox's scheme has seen happen!
- The comic Recall the Time of No Return has everyone but Twilight travel 1000 years into the future (with some help from the Doctor). In this future, Twilight becomes an Empress and controls everything with an iron hoof after a crimson Changeling invasion which was actually caused by Zygons, and we have Spike and one of Twilight's former students leading La Résistance.
- Another long-delayed fic, Repercussions, involves the Mane 6 using a spell to visit the bodies of their future selves. Again, Twilight has apparently been re-Discorded and assassinated Celestia and Luna before taking over, with Pinkie her Dragon driven insane by the death of her family during the initial rebellion, Rarity a successful but corrupt fashion superstar who uses Pinkie to eliminate the competition and somehow helped with the coup, Rainbow Dash the star of the Wonderbolts but far more of a self-centered Jerkass, and Fluttershy also having helped kill Celestia in revenge for Angel Bunny dying from an accident with the Princess's chariot. (Applejack is relatively normal, and Spike is the leader of La Résistance.) The present ponies become more involved once the spell goes wrong (of course) and materialize in their own bodies. It is worth noting that, rather than the direct future of the travelers, this is technically an alternate universe ala Timeline ("quantum foam" and all).
- Time Waits For No Mare features Applejack flung about three centuries into one of these by (naturally) a botched spell by Twilight Sparkle. During the interim, Twilight apparently became obsessed with a longevity spell (forbidden because it works proportionately to the amount of magic inside its recipients, so it would inevitably stratify the pony tribes if widely used), went mad with magic and/or power (not to mention guilt), became an alicorn somehow, petrified Princess Celestia (and drove off Luna) when the Princesses tried to dissuade her from casting the longevity spell, and took over as Chancellor of Equestria (although it is implied there may have been more to her story). Then the griffons invaded and the zebras started playing both sides against each other. The end result: earth ponies herded as slaves by long-lived pegasi, all lorded over by far-longer-lived unicorns, all of these mostly stuck in one megacity surrounded by old warzones and balanced on a diplomatic knife's edge between the neighboring griffon and zebra territories.
- Twilight Then, Twilight Now Universe: Equestria succumbs to social ruin after multiple wars against both risen evil forces like Grogar or Discord and amongst themselves. The Alicorns have all been killed except for Cadance, who is now despised as a pariah by the descendants of the fallen Crystal Empire for having left the battlefield due to hearing that her beloved husband Shining Armor was killed. Pony society has fractured into a number of warring splinter-nations, such as the Earth Pony supremacists of Coltonville, who absolutely despise pegasi and unicorns. To the point that they amputate the horns and wings of unicorn and pegasus foals born amongst their ranks to "prevent them from growing up to become tyrants". Ponies have also become a matriarchy because a curse on their race makes stallions inherently more aggressive than females, especially when gathered in numbers, to the point that they were so prone to flying into deadly rages that all males are now outcast and compelled to live as wandering nomads, permitted access to female society only in brief periods for mating. Applejack so hates the current state of Equestria that she actually teams up with a Big Bad who offers her a chance to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
- Pokémon Reset Bloodlines had one mentioned in Chapter 26: featuring a Bloodliner War, clashes between Shadow Pokemon, Legendaries, Ultra Beasts, and Mirage Pokemon, and the deaths of several characters. Oddly enough it's noted that this bad future was already averted before Ash ever was told about it.
- In the sidestory Red Seven Island Interlude, Red has what it's heavily implied to be an experience in the Dream World, and arrives in the realm of the Unown, where he gets glimpses of a future where he ended up clashing with Ash in Geosenge Town, heavily implying that he intends to use the Ultimate Weapon to bring someone he cares about Back from the Dead. Whether this still will come to pass or not, it's uncertain.
- Power Rangers Mythos sees five Rangers from the past taken into the year 2600, where the alien alchemist Avanth has already basically conquered the world and killed the era’s original Rangers; it’s not a total dystopia, but it’s not a positive future.
- SPD Psycho (which has since vanished from the 'net) is a fic where Grumm (Power Rangers S.P.D.) manages to reactivate the Red Psycho Ranger, who hijacks a time machine and travels back to the events of "Countdown to Destruction" while pursued by Jack Landors. When Jack attempts to take Psycho Red back to his time, he unintentionally brings Jason Scott (Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers), Tommy Oliver (Power Rangers Zeo), and Andros (Power Rangers in Space) to the future with him, creating a timeline where Evil won because Andros wasn't there to kill Zordon. As a result, Jason, Tommy, and Andros have to face the Goldar, Zedd and Zhane of this time (Zhane having chosen to side with Astronema rather than resist) while Jack goes after Psycho Red to retrieve the time-travel technology and return the past Rangers to their own time.
- In the Empath: The Luckiest Smurf story "Days Of Future Smurfed", Empath receives visions of his future and that of his fellow Smurfs. It starts off well, with Empath and Smurfette getting married and having a child. But from there, things start to deteriorate: first Papa Smurf dies, then Smurfette dies, then only he and Brainy are the last of their generation of Smurfs surviving when the Smurf Village is destroyed by an earthquake and Brainy is swallowed up by the earth, and then Empath is left alone in the Smurf Forest with his great-grandson. By the time it reaches the present time of 2005 (which is when the story begins), the Smurf Forest is nearly devastated, and Empath and his great-grandson end up living within a treestump, foraging what they can from the forest in order to survive.
- Robb Returns: From the point of view of the characters, the canon events are one of these, which those in the know work hard to avert. And then there's another one, viewed through dream visions had by several characters, wherein the Others succeed in invading and overrunning Westeros; understandably, they're working hard to stop this one, too.
- Heavily implied for Silver and Blaze in Always Having Juice; Blaze specifically states that she was the only source of heat for miles, and the only thing Silver has ever "said" about his situation was a wordless image of him sitting alone in what appears to be a very large bookshelf.
- Played with in "The Road Not Taken", an AU Fic of StarSword's fanfic series. As discussed in the discussion thread, things are slightly worse overall here than in the prime universe (there's a mention that the Battle of Vega Colony ended in the complete destruction of the Starfleet side "because there wasn't a plot-armored player character present", rather than the severe but non-total losses suffered in From Bajor to the Black), but Eleya actually seems to be happier as the security chief of Deep Space 9 than as commanding officer of a starship.
- End of an Era is set in a Bad Future for the series where steam engines were made illegal, and the authorities of scrappers and Diesel engines scrap any steam engine they find. The plot focuses on a tank engine named Johnny who is sent to Smokey Valley Railroad (by now the world’s last remaining privately owned railroad) and joins a resistance of surviving steam engines and their crews. Eventually, Johnny is attacked by diesels intent on scrapping him, but he’s saved by an older Thomas, who becomes allies with Johnny and explains that after even the railways on Sodor closed, he was lost during the auction of the Sodor engines and sent to a small railway where he was overworked and abused (while his friends ended up in museums). Thomas managed to escape, but every museum he went to refused to take him in, forcing the Tank Engine to live as a vagabond.
- The Shape of the Nightmare to Come manages to do this, incredibly, to the source material, which is already a Bad Future for our entire galaxy. 10,000 years after everything's already on the verge of collapse, humanity's primary Hope Spot not only died but was horribly warped, the Big Bad won for a while, and two more forces merged and ate half the galaxy. And then the author did a sequel for that.
- From Young Justice: Darkness Falls, Bart Allen travels through time again, only this time, he only jumps 5 years forward in time, leading to a world under the rule of Darkseid. The Earth's people are mostly enslaved, and his rule is enforced by Parademons, Suicide Jockeys, the Supermartian child of Superboy and Mrs. Martian, and the evil Wally West. La Résistance is by necessity a band of teenagers, the Justice League was killed off a few years before, and overall, it's very similar to how Bart's original future was under the Reach.
