Literature / A Hippie in the House of Mouse

I felt like I'd just handed Don Quixote his spurs, or Captain Ahab his harpoon. And I thought to myself "Bernie, you putz, you're in it now." And with that I consigned myself to weeks of pouring through accounting books, consulting lawyers, calling in favors, twisting nuts, and setting up Hollywood lunches. All to answer the simple question: "how does a frog swallow a mouse a hundred times his size?"

—Bernie Brillstein, Where Did I Go Right?^note In-Universe book, naturally

Most people who know about Jim Henson are aware of the fact that, towards the end of his life, he had made an attempt in the late 1980s to get Disney to purchase The Muppets^note barring Sesame Street in order to have more freedom to pursue his own projects. At the same time, he was struggling with projects that either underperformed or flopped outright, before ultimately dying in 1990 from a disease that he was too busy to properly notice. But what if he decided to get his foot in the door earlier?

In late July 1979, Jim Henson was struggling to get The Dark Crystal off the ground, with film studios lacking any interest in picking up the decidedly un-Kermit-like pitch. At the same time, Disney was struggling to remain afloat, with the death of Walt Disney just over a decade prior effectively making the company a chicken with its head cut off: flailing around with no clear direction. And had it not been for a wayward thought crossing Jim's mind while having drinks with his manager, these paths wouldn't cross for several more years.

But as you can imagine, that's not how this story goes...

A Hippie in the House of Mouse (Jim Henson at Disney, 1980) is a thread and timeline on AlternateHistory.com by Geekhis Khan, with the Point of Divergence occuring in late 1979, when Jim Henson and his business manager Bernie Brillstein raise sufficient money to buy roughly 10% of Disney common stock, gaining seats on the Board of Directors for Jim himself and his legal advisor Al Gottesman. The changes from reality pile up from there. In December 2021 (after the page limit of 500 was reached when the date in-universe was 1992), an Immediate Sequel titled When you Wish Upon a Frog (Book II of the Jim Henson at Disney saga) was published. More threads have also been created, including Hensonverse Speculation and Commentary, To Introduce Our Guest Star, That's What I'm Here to Do for Official Fan-Submitted Content, The look of the Hensonverse for fan art, and the Karen Carpenter-focused TLIAW (timeline in a week) Carpenter's Hammer: When Karen went Punk. The threads are collectively referred to as "the Hensonverse".

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This timeline features the following tropes:

Tropes A-F

• Actor Allusion: In-Universe, in Mask of the Monkey King, Abner Ravenwood, played by David Carradine, is asked to take action against a group of ninjas, and replies "Do I look like I know kung fu?"
• Adaptational Early Appearance: Batman: The Animated Series airs in 1990, two years earlier than OTL.
• Adaptational Name Change:
  • During The Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm instead is named Operation Desert Sword.
  • Touchstone Pictures is known by its originally intended name, Hyperion Pictures.
  • Cartoon Network is instead named Cartoon TV and later Cartoon City (officially Columbia Cartoon City).
  • TTL's Disney+ equivalent is called Disney Direct.
  • The 1996 Gorgo remake gives Sean the surname Nilssen and renames Professor Leroy Hendricks as Professor Gerald Hendricks. The plot is different enough that few other characters have counterparts at all, but Corrupt Corporate Executive Martin Dorling serves much the same role as circus owner Andrew Dorkin, and with a slightly similar surname. Gorgo's mother is named Poseidon rather than Ogra. (Although a Mythology Gag gives their species as Ogratitans.)
  • Due to marrying Aaron Freeman in 1997, Tara Strong is known in TTL as Tara Freeman.
  • Since the 1990s, Judith Barsi goes by Jude Barsi.
  • For the third Star Wars movie, which is initially renamed from Return of the Jedi to Revenge of the Jedi, a brainstorming session for a new title results in George Lucas taking intern Lisa Henson's suggestion of Legacy of the Jedi.
  • With surveys showing not enough recognition of The Ramayana, Disney's animated adaptation is named Invincible, derived from rough translations of Rama's home city, as well as the themes of invincibility and inevitability in the tale.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog is named Astro the Armadillo instead, though he is marketed as a hedgehog in Europe and Asia.
  • On Mystery Science Theater 3000, Crow and Tom's full names are Crowbot 4DK (instead of Crow T. Robot) and Thaddeus J. Servo, respectively, and Gypsy is renamed to Rosie Rivets.
  • Bean Bunny is known as Benny Bunny.
  • A slight spelling change: the word "brony" is spelled "broney".
• Adapted Out:
  • With Michael Eisner going over to head ABC Motion Pictures with Jeffrey Katzenberg after failing to get into Disney in 1984, SpaceCamp is not made.
  • Due to the circumstances leading to it's formation being butterflied away^note Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg going over to Disney in 1984 and then, Katzenberg being forced out of Disney in 1994, thus leading him to partner with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, DreamWorks SKG is not formed.
  • With the rise of the "Smart Slasher" trend in the 1980s, and the footnotes confirming that Daniel Harold Rolling (the Gainesville Ripper in OTL) is only able to kill his father in the 1980s before being arrested, Kevin Williamson does not write his Scary Movie screenplay.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: In TTL's Revenge of the Sith, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Owen Lars are brothers.
• Adaptation Species Change: In Disney's Hiawatha, Minnehaha's obligatory animal friends are a raccoon named Chibiabos and a hummingbird named Iagoo, named after two human entertainers at Hiawatha's wedding in The Song of Hiawatha.
• Adaptational Heroism: Disney's Medusa has her as a Tragic Monster and the main character, who petrifies Cestus herself, rather than Perseus using her severed head to do so.
• Adaptational Nationality: In the 1996 Gorgo remake, the opening scenes are set on the Yorkshire coast rather than a fictional Irish island, so the locals are English.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • In contrast, Poseidon (who could already be quite nasty in the original myths but was usually benign) is the main villain of Medusa, who is portrayed as a toxically insecure Jerkass who curses Medusa out of spite for turning him down and seeks to overthrow Zeus.
  • A cartoon adaptation of Marmaduke created by Everett Peck turns (or rather restores) the character into a colossal Jerkass of a bully akin to his earliest appearences.
  • In the Star Wars sequel trilogy, Ben Skywalker becomes a Sith apprentice named Vangar Tor.
• Alan Smithee: In-Universe, after Peter Jackson is removed from Creature from the Black Lagoon, his script is replaced with a different one started from scratch. When Jackson learns that he has a "Story by" credit in the film, he tells Jeffrey Katzenberg that he would only be credited under a pseudonym. Years later, the pseudonym of "Will Ruck"^note using Jackson's father's name and his mother's maiden name becomes a common pseudonym for screenwriters who do not wish their names attached to a film, just as "Alan Smithee" is used as a pseudonym for directors and producers.
• Allohistorical Allusion:
  • The infamous rainbow coat wouldn't be used for the Sixth Doctor, due to Colin Baker being allowed to have a darker outfit. Instead, it would be used (albeit refitted) for the Seventh Doctor.
    • Similarly, although the show is butterflied away due to a certain casting choice for the Eighth Doctor, technically speaking, Neil Patrick Harris still gets to say his first big role was as a doctor.
  • For his first Batman film, it’s stated that Sam Raimi wanted to use Scarecrow and saved The Joker for the sequel.
  • The theme of power and responsibility in Raimi's Man of Steel means he describes it as "my Spider-Man movie".
    • Many fans lament on the fact that they will never get to see Superman battle nuclear war in Superman IV, due to the film's production being stopped by Warner Bros the moment they brought the rights back from the Salkinds.
  • When Jim discusses whether The Enchanted Tiki Room is culturally problematic with actual Polynesians, one of them says "I hate to think of what you’d do with Maui."
  • Joel Schumacher emphasising the bodylines of Superman's costume in The Long Arm of Lex Luthor led to a rumour that he wanted it to have visible nipples. Schumacher's response to this rumour was "That'd be much more appropriate to a leatherboy like Batman".
  • The account of making the WED Signature Series adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, complete with a tragic ending, mentions twice that this is not the kind of animated film that has singing gargoyles.
  • The synopsis of Anansi Boys, which in this universe is a stop-motion film starring Will Smith and Jazzy Jeff, manages to include a riff on "my life got flipped, turned upside down".
  • With Tri-Star executives wanting advanced CGI and animatronics for The War of the Worlds, Tim Burton and Henry Selick (who wanted "deliberately cheesy Harryhausen-style stop-motion") are given a compromise in the form of a short film called Mars Attacks!, based on the old trading cards of the same name. Afterwards, producer David Lazer mentions that some people loved the short much better than the film and actually wished that the ''Mars Attacks!'' short had been made into a film instead.
  • In an interview looking back on Godzilla: Lord of Fire with United Productions of America (UPA)’s Henry Saperstein and Ricardo Delgado, they mention that the decision to set the film in Hawaii was because it would have been "tacky to have Godzilla plough through Manhattan just because it’s an "American Godzilla".
  • During a Disney board meeting regarding hotels, Jim Henson describes Walt Disney World's Polynesian Resort as "a trip to Tahiti", which is "a magical place".
  • Terminator 3: No Fate introduces a young teenage girl, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, who forms a relationship with John Connor.
  • Rob McElhenney and Glenn Howerton still star in a sitcom specifically The Kids Are Alright instead of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
  • This timeline's version of The Fifth Element is compared in a review to the Philip K. Dick adaptation Recall ... if Recall had been a blockbuster action film.
  • After Stanley Gold inquires on the possibility of Disney merging with Lucasfilm and thus making Star Wars a Disney IP, after A Darkness Rising is released, George Lucas remarks "It'll be a cold day in hell before I sell Star Wars to Disney!"
  • In 1991's Muppets: Impossible, Tom Cruise appears as a dying IMF spy.
  • The discussion of how musicals became the TV trend of the 2000s features an intentionally absurd list of what the new trend could have been, all of which did happen OTL (I'm With Busey, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, Celebrity Masterchef and all similar shows, and Lost):
    Let’s face it. Anything truly fresh and original was bound to break out in that era. They could have followed Gary Busey around with a camera. They could have brought back The $64,000 Question starring Regis Philbin or launched celebrity cooking competitions. They could have mixed The Prisoner with Gilligan's Island and marketed it as a cerebral action-drama and it would have been a breakout hit at that point.
  • When the two lead animators for Heart of Ice, Disney's 1998 adaptation of The Snow Queen, are interviewed, one laments that the technology wasn't ready for this to be the first CGI Disney Princess movie, and the other tells her "Brenda ... let it go."
  • This timeline's version of Toy Story is called Secret Life of Toys, which in our timeline was The Series of The Christmas Toy. In further irony, the film is intentionally less like The Christmas Toy than it is OTL, while also including a few deliberate nods to its predecessor.
  • A very late chapter has the classic allohistorical allusion set up: Jim wondering what would have happened if he hadn't gone to Disney, and went to Lew Grade with a two-picture deal for The Dark Crystal. Bernie believes that he'd probably have been screwed over when Robert Holmes à Court bought ATV (which is what happened OTL; Henson ended up having to buy his own film back), that Holmes à Court would then have bought Disney and sold it for parts like he did with ATV (which did not happen OTL) and questions whether "Disney would ever be in bed with Amblin and Marvel and Star Wars without you there to facilitate" (which is... complicated, especially since it's only 1999).
  • Samuel L. Jackson narrates a documentary on rattlesnakes, named Snakes on the Plain.
  • Howard Ashman mentions that instead of Freddy Mercury's "Rock Wagner" approach, he would have made The Little Mermaid calypso and turned Clarence (TTL's version of Sebastian) into a Jamaican.
  • After concerns are raised about the title of the TV series Handmade Video, alternative titles are searched, including "the abysmally droll You-Tube".
• Anthropomorphic Animal Adaptation:
  • Don Bluth and Michael Eisner's Retriever is loosely based on The Catcher in the Rye with a canine cast.
  • This timeline's version of The Lion King is based on the Mali Epic of Sundiata, rather than Hamlet.
  • Universal's adaptation of The Canterbury Tales is basically this, and even called upon by some critics (and confirmed by the film's directors) as being similar to Disney's Robin Hood.
• Award-Bait Song:
  • For 1986's Where the Wild Things Are, the Michael Jackson cover of Love is the Greatest Magic off All and George Thorogood cover of Be the Beast I Wanna’ Be, are considered by some as the earliest examples.
  • Howard Ashman writes up one, The Song of Susan, for the film of the same name, which is performed by Freddie Mercury.
  • Freddie Mercury writes up and performs an "Oscar bait" song for Mask of the Lone Ranger with Truth Lives On Forever.
  • Dolly Parton writes and performs The Ballad of Forrest Gump for the end credits of Forrest Gump.
• Bait-and-Switch: An ongoing thread in the latter portion of When You Wish Upon a Frog was a movie Jim was pushing for now that he became head chairman of Disney, called The Road to Ruin, a throwback to the Hollywood Musical era of cinema to be directed by Francis Ford Coppola... that quickly became infamous for going severely over-budget to the point where not only were the board members becoming increasingly critical of Jim's insistence on backing it, but Hollywood at large was getting ready to declare it another "Henson's Folly"^note referring to Jim Henson's backing of Toys, which was still a failure in this timeline. It wound up becoming a box office smash hit (thanks in part to a marketing campaign coined up by Mel Brooks and Bernie Brillstein that leaned in on the negative press).
• Benevolent Boss: As IOTL, Jim Henson is beloved by those who work under him because he constantly stands up for and vouches for them; up to eleven when he sheds his conflict-avoidant tendencies (something of a Fatal Flaw he had in our world) and finds ways to resolve disputes without upsetting people. Even notoriously difficult people like Terry Gilliam come to appreciate working with him.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In-Universe:
  • Mentioned by name in the synopsis of TTL's Forrest Gump, when Bubba's death leads to Forrest having a hallucination of the goddess Eris, in an animated sequence where she and Forrest sing "Gimme Shelter".
  • Mentioned again in the synopsis of Hawaiian Vamps, where the vampires see a werewolf on top of a building, make a comment suggesting Fur Against Fang applies in this setting, and then move on, never to mention the existence of werewolves again. The whole point of the scene is a cheap pun that, at least in Hawai'i, the Fantastic Slur for werewolves is "howlies", pronounced like "haoles". Since the whole point of the entire film is a cheap pun, this is presumably par for the course.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: The post concerning The Dark Age of Comic Books is repeatedly vandalized by Deadpool due to the fact that he was butterflied away. To rub salt in the wound, Ambush Bug pops his head in to confirm that he wasn't.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp":
  • The Video Compact Disk is TTL's equivalent to the DVD.
  • Online streaming is known as "direct play" and "direct viewing".
  • Memes are called “netwits”.
  • Websites are known as "netsites".
  • Blogs are known as "netblogs".
  • The intelephone is TTL's equivalent to the smartphone.
• Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": The name N-Gage refers to a television channel instead of a video game console.
• Canon Welding:
  • The Duck Avenger cartoon (Darkwing Duck only it's Paperinik) has a cameo by Spider-Ham. Which means that the Disney Duck Universe has to be assigned a number in the Marvel Multiverse (Earth-3825, which spells "DUCK" on a keypad). Similarly, Gargoyles is assigned Earth-78663 to facilitate crossovers, which is "STONE".
  • Pirates of the Void, a Treasure Planet spin-off series, is tied into Spelljammer and subsequently visits all the major Dungeons & Dragons settings.
  • The Quentin Tarantino film Aimless Drifters is set in the Coen Brothers' 'Verse, being a Prequel to Brainard, and a Stealth Prequel to The Buddha of the Sunset Strip. It also features cameos by characters from Reservoir Dogs, El Mariachi and Sam Raimi's Relentless, apparently making the Tarantinoverse, the Cohenverse, the Mexico Trilogy and the Raimiverse all the same setting.
• Captain Ersatz: Pirates of the Void also visits a totally-not-based-on-a-series-of-books flat planet on the back of a turtle, which believes that a mysterious red star is heralding the end of the world. They did check with Terry Pratchett and make sure that he was cool with this.
• Casting Gag:
  • Having played Anansi the Spider three times in separate works, Whoopi Goldberg voices the title role in a live action Charlotte's Web. She also makes a cameo as a Black Widow in Bug Life.
  • Sparky, one of two films created from what IOTL became Cars, has a running gag of a police car named Smokey chasing a black Trans Am named Bandit, with both characters voiced by Burt Reynolds, who does his best Jackie Gleason impression for the former.
• Character Name and the Noun Phrase: Doesn't exist, at least not to the same extent as our timeline. The later Indiana Jones films follow the example of Raiders of the Lost Ark in being named after the McGuffin, and as a result Jo Rowling's novels about the boy wizard Harry Fletcher don't use it either.
• Composite Character: In universe:
  • The sixteenth James Bond film (titled A Quantum of Solace, but as unrelated to our timeline's Quantum of Solace as either of them are to the short story) mixes elements of two stories from the For Your Eyes Only collection, so that Kristatos, the informant (and actual villain) of "Risico" is a code name for Milton Krest, the millionaire from "The Hildebrand Rarity".
  • The Disney version of Hiawatha combines the actual Native American legend with elements of the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow version. The love interest is named Minnehaha, because that's the name a general audience is likely to know, but is more based on Jigonhsaseh, the Mother of Many Nations (and renamed as such at the end), while the villainous sorcerer is Tadodaho, but wears a black pearl and a vulture feather in a nod to Longfellow's Pearl-Feather.
  • The Lion King, which is based on the Epic of Sundiata, merges the soothsaying hunter, Sundiata's personal griot and blacksmith Nounfari into the shaman/griot of Nounfari, voiced by Harry Belafonte.
  • The Don Bluth adaptation of Beauty and the Beast makes the Prince's mother the sorceress who cast the curse, and also combines three characters from Beauty and the Beast (1946) (Avenant, Ludvic and the Userer) into Avenant the Moneylender.
  • Out-of-universe, TTL's Sal Minella has the name of OTL's monkey Muppet, but is closer to OTL's Johnny Fiama.
• Continuity Cameo: In universe:
  • In Star Trek: Discovery, Walter Koenig cameos as a Tellurite, George Takei as an Andorian, Nichelle Nichols as a Klingon matriarch and Robert Englund (the actor of TTL's Data) as her son, and William Shatner as Chef Bill.
• Continuity Snarl: Tara Freeman is still referred to as her married name (rather than her maiden name Charendoff) in Jude Barsi's 1996 interview and other posts set around that time period, despite not assuming said name until she married Aaron Freeman in 1997.
• Creator Cameo: In-universe:
  • For Oliver and The Dodger, Jim Henson performs Rowlf the Dog, who provides the role of the narrator.
    • In The Muppets Do Shakespeare, even though he has effectively handed off the day-to-day performance of Kermit to Steve Whitmire at this point, Jim still voices Rowlf, who provides the narration.
    • For The Musical Monsters of Turkey Hill, directed by his daughter Cheryl, Jim returns as Kermit, who "hosts".
  • Disney's animated Mort has cameos of Terry Pratchett and Jim Henson as the Lecturer in Recent Runes and the Senior Wrangler. They reprise the roles in Fox's live-action Equal Rites.
  • Forrest Gump, which is much closer to the book than OTL, cameos Winston Groom as Forrest's father, and co-writer/producer Carrie Fisher as Jenny's mother.
  • The writer and producer of Hawaiian Vamps play the vampires' first victims.
  • Stan Lee makes cameos as a reporter in Spider-Man, the driver of a Hulk-wrecked car in The Incredible Hulk, the Mayor of New York City in Spider-Man 3, an Latverian Captain in The Fantastic Four, a jailer in Black Panther, a SHIELD agent in The Mighty Thor, an US Army Signal Corps officer in Captain America and a protestor (alongside The Incredible Hulk and Black Panther director Ernest Dickerson) in Fantastic Four: Rise and Fall.
  • Walt Simonson also appears in The Mighty Thor as a historian named Dr John Kirby. (There's also a Simonson University.)
  • Rogue Planet, loosely based on Arthur C. Clarke's Hammer of God, features Clarke as a government scientist.
  • In Star Wars Episode II - The Hidden Army, George Lucas makes a cameo, in alien makeup, as the image of Senator Glurpdurp.
  • Just like OTL, Brad Bird voices Edna Mode in The Incredibles.
  • In Bug Life, Disney's Digital Division head Joe Ranft voices the caterpillar Heimlich, a role he reprises for Disney's Millennium celebrations.
• Creator's Favorite: In-Universe.
  • In Jurassic Park II: The Lost World, Winona Ryder's favourite dinosaurs are the Oviraptors, Sam Raimi's is the Pachycephalosaurus, Caroline Thompson's is the T.rex and Tim Burton's are the Velociraptors.
  • Udo Kier names Red Skull as his favourite role, saying that he would play the character "a thousand times".
• Crossover: An crossover special between the Disney characters and The Muppets airs in 1980, in which the Disney characters must run The Muppet Show while the Muppets head to Disneyland to begin their new "Live Show" (a back-door promotion for the new Muppets Live! animatronic show at Disneyland and Disney World).
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Bruce Campbell notes this world's The Lost World: Jurassic Park (directed here by Sam Raimi) has such a death for his Peter Ludlow in the R-rated cut: bitten in half by a T. Rex with a close up of his legs twitching and blood spraying.
• The Danza: In-Universe:
  • Will Smith as Will Holmes in Ghostbusters: West Coast Ghosts and as Cousin Will in In the House.
  • In an amusing coincidence, the title character in the 2000 remake of Dr. No is played by David Will No.
  • Jamie Foxx as Ferdinand “Fox” Jameson in Yo Homes to Bel Air.
  • Tim Allen as Tim Stone in Internal Combustion.
  • Dennis Hopper voicing the grasshopper Hopper in Bug Life.
• Death by Adaptation:
  • Richard Carpenter dies of a drug overdose in 1981.
  • Corey Feldman is killed in March 1990 in a car crash.
  • Robert Downey Jr. is killed in a crash with a driver using a cellphone in June 1998.
  • Charlie Sheen dies of AIDS-related pneumonia in May 1994.
  • Anthony Kiedis dies from a drug overdose in 1993.
  • John Kricfalusi commits suicide in 1997.
• Decomposite Character: Working on The Mighty Thor, Neil Gaiman and Sam Raimi are intrigued by the way early Thor comics portray Donald Blake as a random guy who happens to get the powers of Thor (before Stan and Jack established that he was always Thor, sentenced to live as an amnesiac mortal until he learned humility) and bring it back, with the actual Thor spending most of the movie as a Spirit Advisor within the hammer. This in turn inspires the comics to introduce a The Real Remington Steele version of Blake.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation:
  • Corey Haim dies of a heroin overdose in October 1989.
  • Michael Jackson dies of complications from surgery in 1986.
  • Joel Schumacher, after suffering the first symptoms of AIDS in 1995, undergoes a doctor-assisted suicide.
  • Bill Gates is killed in a helicopter crash in Spring 1994.
  • The Notorious B.I.G. dies in a DUI in 2003, not a drive-by-shooting in 1997.
• Different World, Different Movies: Has its own page.
• Disneyfication: invoked Discussed: After it's decided to greenlight Maus for the first film made for the Walter Elias Disney Signature Series, Bernie Brillstein immediately hit a roadblock in the form of Art Spiegelman refusing to even consider Disney touching his comic. It takes Bernie^note along with Steven Spielberg and Mel Brooks, also desiring to get the movie made emphasizing that they are being genuine and serious in making this movie that he agrees to it.
  Naturally, we almost immediately ran into a roadblock. Art Spiegelman slammed the phone in my ear when I called. He refused to even consider a Disney film of Maus. Honestly, I don't blame him. I also don't just give up. Steve [Spielberg] and I practically stalked the poor bastard until he agreed to meet with us. We met him (sort of ironically) at Katz's, along with Mel Brooks. "No fucking costumes," Art said, meaning the walkarounds. "No rides, no T-shirts, no toys, nothing. And sure as hell no fucking songs!"
  "What kind of asshole do you think I am?" I asked him. "None of those things were ever on the table!"
• Disabled in the Adaptation:
  • In Disney's Medusa, Perseus is blind, enabling him to interact with Medusa before she gets control of her powers. He can sometimes see through the eyes of his pet owl, though.
  • Screenwriter Diane Thomas suffers a car accident in 1989 that leaves her paralysed from the waist down.
• Dramatic Irony: As noted by Jim himself, who wasn't particularly happy with how war-driven G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero was, unlike the Transformers movie, GI Joe's movie didn't see anyone die.
  And Jim Henson noted, wryly, that while Transformers: The Movie had been a slaughterhouse, no one had actually died in GI Joe: The Movie, the "violent" series that he’d been so viscerally opposed to.
• Dueling Movies: In-Universe:
  • Michael Eisner deliberately pits Return of the Littles against Disney's A Small World, both featuring a Wainscot Society of Lilliputians. Disney wins handily.
  • Hollywood Pictures' Heart and Soul, based on the legend of Eros and Psyche, goes up against Disney's Medusa. This time Hollywood Pictures wins, despite Katzenburg stopping just short of sabotaging it.
  • Upon hearing that Hollywood Pictures is releasing Mike Myers' spy parody centered around Basil Shagwell, Michael Eisner gets Columbia to pick up Rowan Atkinson's own spy parody film, centered around Lord James Henry "Alby" Albion.
  • When Katzenberg briefly goes from sabotaging the animation studio to boosting it (before just deciding to ignore it after the "failure" of Spirit of the West), he doubles down on pitting the movies against Disney ones since it worked before, setting City of Gold against Disney's City of the Sun, Atlantis: The Lost Empire against Disney's Journey to the Center of the Earth, John Carter and the Princess of Mars against Columbia's Tarzan, and The Canterbury Tales against Columbia's Ruler of the Roost.
  • In 1998, three animated movies duel it out between each other, with Disney's Heart of Ice, versus Universal's East of the Sun and West of the Moon versus Columbia's Beauty and the Beast.
  • It's not emphasised like other examples and is mostly coincidence, but 1998 has both Marvel and DC releasing two films with their most famous feline-themed characters respectively: Black Panther and Catwoman.
  • In 1999, two disaster movies go head to head, with Universal's The Rogue Planet (based of Arthur C. Clarke's The Hammer of God and When Worlds Collide) and Columbia's Lucifer's Hammer.
  • When John Lasseter moves from Disney to Blue Sky Studios, he takes the idea of an animated movie about anthropomorphic cars with him, without telling them that Disney is already working on it. The result is that Blue Sky's American Car is dueling with Disney's Sparky, whether they want it to or not.
• Dueling Shows: In-Universe, Spielberg's stronger links to Disney mean that his ideas for OTL's Animaniacs become Out of the Vault!, a show starring Mortimer Mouse (a version of the scrappy original Mickey, supposed to be Mickey's older brother), plus Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Ortensia, after Spielberg uses his connections at Universal to get them back under the Disney banner. Meanwhile, at Warner Brothers, Jean MacCurdy and Tom Ruegger's ideas for Animaniacs become, well, Animaniacs, but with Ruegger's original platypus versions of the Warners. The two shows frequently take friendly potshots at each other, culminating in an official crossover where they all get captured by a team up of Pete and Ralph, and need to resolve their differences before being rescued by Mickey and Bugs.
• Everybody Hates Hades: The Poet and the Dragon makes King Yan, the stern but fair judge of the Chinese underworld, a power-hungry villain not entirely dissimilar to Hades in OTL's Hercules.
• Executive Meddling: Invoked in multiple cases:
  • Attempts to pull Duelling Movies, including Disney on their early 1980s competitors, tend to be self-sabotage. Further, Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg’s attempt to kill A Small World by releasing Return of the Littles the week before backfires due to both the crunch to reach the release and Katzenberg’s cutting the film (as he did to The Black Cauldron in our world) ruining the final product.
  • Sam Raimi was forced to use the Joker in Batman, despite wanting to save him for a potential sequel; Scarecrow was his preference choice for the Big Bad.
  • The 1998 remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon becomes a troubled production due to Katzenberg's interference. At first, his attempts to try and make the Gill-man more a straight out monster than an intelligent humanoid amphibian-creature, and turning the film from original director and writer Peter Jackson's dark fantasy into a standard horror film, result in Jackson departing, with executive producer Robert Zemeckis following suit in protest. Later, after the hiring of Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin to continue the film, a film crew is written into the film to provide comic relief, with a wise-cracking cameraman played by Andy Dick (against the wishes of Emmerich, as the role was originally written for Steve Buscemi), who engages in wild behaviour throughout the production. Due to Andy Dick being the lead of The Andy Dick Show, one of ABC's top hits, the studio resists all calls to fire him. Furthermore, the studio prevents Emmerich and Devlin from rewriting the script (which was described as being "one rewrite away from being good") and test screening the film, in order to keep its Memorial Day release date (going so far as to refuse Emmerich's suggestion of pushing it forward to Labor Day).
• Facepalm: As the Good Shepherds' claims of morality are rebuffed by Disney during their proxy battle, Nelson Peltz is noted to have been "seen burying his face in his palm".
• Fair for Its Day: invoked Noted by the retrospective post on The Song of Susan, that while it cast a straight female as the lead and had Richard Hunt play the Deuteragonist, it was nonetheless pushing back against the stigma of the time and trying to appeal to those who were shunning the gay community. It also laid the groundwork for Without Prejudice to be released just two years later.
• Fantastic Racism: Roger Rabbit 3: Bunny in the 'Burbs plays up the anti-Toon prejudice seen in the first movie, with the Stepford Suburbia's reaction to Roger and Jessica moving in being based on the real world reaction 1950s suburbia had to African-Americans.
• Fictional Social Network: In one of the epilogue posts, Terrell Little reveals he's currently running the Disney-MGM Lilypad and Kameleon accounts. Kameleon posts are called "Hisses".
• Foreshadowing: Metatextually, the fact that the post concerning Quantum Leap, a show built on Set Right What Once Went Wrong, preceded the final update of Part VII, which reveals Jim lives past 1990 ITTL.
  Does it make the pain of losing a loved one all the more painful by giving us a subconscious feeling that this is "not the way it's supposed to be?"
• Four-Temperament Ensemble:
  • Joss Whedon specifically describes the Fantastic Four in these terms: the intellectual, reserved Reed is Melancholic, the caring, hardworking Sue is Phlegmatic, the hotheaded, arrogant Johnny is Sanguine, and the dour, argumentative Ben is Choleric.
  • The "Harry Fletcher" books, this timeline's version of Harry Potter, assigns the four temperaments to each Hogwarts House^note Gryffynhart is Sanguine, Slythryus is Choleric, Corvidious is Melacholic and Burleighnohn is Phlegmatic and therefore to the four main characters, one from each House.
• From the Mouths of Babes: During Lisa Henson's wedding, it's noted that Kevin Clash (as Elmo) performed inappropriate songs.

Tropes G-M

• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: invoked.
  • In this case, Japanese Love Halyx. After successful summer engagements at Disneyland and Epcot Center in 1982, Disney arranges for Halyx to play a week of shows in Tokyo Disneyland, and a rabid fandom for the band springs up overnight; a promotional single released in Japan actually charts in the Oricon top 10. A hastily arranged multi-city tour (the first of many) follows — not to mention, eventually, a licensed cartoon created by Toei Animation that developed a fandom of it's own; for a lot of Japanese kids in 1983, the Halyx show WAS their Star Wars.
  • The Japanese appreciation for The Dark Crystal is also addressed and expanded; after being upset at the film’s lukewarm US reception (if still better than our timeline’s), Henson is floored when, during a trip to Tokyo, he sees how much more love the film got, even overshadowing his bigger franchises. This implicitly helps bolster its reputation into being a Disney classic, with successful games, a movie sequel a few years later and even a TV show.
  • They also love Waterworld, here a family-oriented B-Movie produced by Roger Corman, to the point some anime and games take influence from it.
• Gender Flip: In the 1990 Buck Rogers series, Twikki is a Fem Bot voiced by Fran Brill.
• Generation Xerox: In 1993, an 30th Anniversary Special of Doctor Who, "Calling All Doctors" includes an appearance from all previous Doctors, including the 3rd Doctor, played by Jon Pertwee's son, Sean Pertwee. This is all part of a lead-up for Sean to become the 10th Doctor in 1997.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: In-Universe, this is the case for both series that take the place of Animaniacs: the Spielberg-less show by that title, despite starring three male platypi, is close enough to our version to include stuff like the "fingerprints" gag. Meanwhile, Spielberg's Out of the Vault! for Disney has jokes that make Roy E. Disney furious once someone explains them to him, often involving the characters' tails.
  • This possibly applies to the butterfly when Haim Saban, while looking for material for a show to help ABC cash in on the 1980's and 1990's trend of Spooky Kids Media horror/sci-fi shows for kids, comes across a copy of British author Jamie Rix's Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids in late 1992, leading to an animated series that, while heavily Americanised, has its source material (often involving the horrific, supernatural deaths or disfigurements of the stories' bratty child protagonists) virtually unchanged.
• George Lucas Altered Version:
  • With the fourth Willow film, Shadow Star showing relatively small armies of extras on the battlefields, the disappointed George Lucas later digitally remasters the film to add larger armies, as well as smooth out effects limitations of the era, with him going so far as to replacing the go-motion animated objects in the first film with CGI, to much controversy.
  • The Star Wars Original Trilogy gets digitally-remastered "Special Editions" as in OTL, but due to Lisa Henson (who is working as the head of Fox Studios at that point) being tasked to work with Lucas, she manages to convince Lucasfilm to retain copies of the masters of the original films “as historical documents worth preserving”, as well as working around the "Han and Jabba" scene in Episode IV by simply suggesting that Jabba could be a hologram, and convincing Lucas to keep the "Han shoots Greedo first" scene.
    • After being impressed with the "all-digital" Yoda, Moog and Ba-Ba utilised for The Hidden Army, Lucas digitally inserts the all-CG Yoda and the all-CG Moog/Ba-Ba over the Yoda/Moog/Ba-Ba originally filmed in A Darkness Rising, similar to Lucas replacing the puppet Yoda with a CGI Yoda in re-releases of OTL's The Phantom Menace.
  • With Terminator 3: No Fate casting Bruce Willis as General John Connor, James Cameron reshoots a scene from the opening of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, to replace Michael Edwards as adult John Connor, with Willis in his place.
  • Jurassic Park has two special editions, the first one being a "Drive-In Matinee Edition" which is in black and white via digital colouring techniques, and a second being a "Harrywood Edition", which replaces the CG and animatronics with stop-motion and forced perspective techniques, which was Burton's original intention for the film to portray the dinosaurs in a very deliberately dated way.
• Greedy Jew: Subverted for Nelson Peltz, who is made out as one when he lists all of his hypothetical "improvements" to Disney (which involve making massive cuts solely to save money) in his plans for a hostile takeover in 1998, but after Disney makes its case against the Good Shepherds with (among others) several prominent Jewish figures, he is shown to be willing to cooperate with Jim Henson to keep Disney financially stable.
• Hard Work Fallacy: Addressed by Imagineer Jack Lindquist in his memoirs, in reference to the Tomorrowland band Halyx (who remained almost complete unknowns IOTL).
  As a professional "hype man", to use the vernacular, people always ask me what it takes to become "famous". What is the "secret" to breaking out? And the only honest answer that I can give is dumb luck. Be seen by the right people with the right connections at the right time. The truth is that some of the most talented musicians in the world can languish in obscurity for decades while some hack with three chords to his repertoire becomes an international superstar. And it is entirely possible if not likely that Halyx might have played over the summer and sold some albums through Disney and largely went about their lives. But they got lucky: John Henson was a fan.
• Hollywood Voodoo: Referenced by Terrell Little when describing the making of Kindred Spirits (Corpse Bride relocated to Jazz Age New Orleans, and therefore given a chunk of The Princess and the Frog) and consciously averted:
  Vodou would feature heavily, but be done right. No "voodoo doll" bullshit. Our hero would wear a Gris Gris along with his cross. Maman LeBeaux would be a forthright if eccentric helper. Even The Baron would be his usual boisterous self rather than a flat villain.
• Hostility on the Set: In-Universe, the troubled production of Creature from the Black Lagoon is made worse with Andy Dick, who stars as comic-relief cameraman Reggie. Appearing late to the production so many times, he would often be drunk and high, bullying the native extras (and his co-stars), annoying director Roland Emmerich by interrupting his direction and stalling filming by ad-libbing bizarre lines whilst his co-stars were speaking. In the documentary chronicling the hellish production, Black Lagoon: The Doomed Journey, Danny John-Jules recounts how Dick gave a Nazi salute and goose-steps away from Emmerich after being reprimanded for turning up late "for the umpteenth time". Worse of all, much of the cast and crew (including Lena Headey) come forward years later of claims of sexual misconduct from Dick. When Dick has his very last scene in the film shot, Emmerich says simply; “Get that bastard off this set.”
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • Early into his tenure at Disney, Jim tries to improve The Fox and the Hound with two suggested changes: killing off Chief to give weight to Copper’s Revenge Before Reason in the third act, and a "Ray of Hope" Ending with his and Tod’s children, suggesting they could avoid their fathers’ mistakes. His position in Disney being not that strong means he’s denied, but proven right when the film is released and critics take note of Chief's survival being a narrative weak point.
  • Impressively, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure manages to be the exact same film as OTL.
    It was like fate; preordained. Or like if some sort of radical time traveler was, like, interfering to make it happen in just a certain way.
  • Due to an assumption that Donald P. Bellisario had "his own personal set of objectives" and "a high degree of independence", Quantum Leap was developed the exact same way as IOTL, right down to starring Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell.
  • In spite of Tim Curry being cast as the Joker in Batman: The Animated Series, Mark Hamill still gets his chance to voice his iconic role when he replaces Tim Curry in 1992 after Tim prices himself out.
    • And in spite of B:TAS being made in 1989, Harley Quinn still gets created (still voiced by Arleen Sorkin), with her inspiration being a female follower of the Joker in the 1989 Batman movie, and her real name being Harriett Lee instead of Harleen Quinzel.
  • Alfred Molina still gets to play Doc Ock; first as an Early-Bird Cameo in 1991's Spider-Man, then in 1993's Spider-Man 2.
  • An incident recounted in the OTL version of Bruce Campbell's autobiography concerning two Deadite actors "boning" on set still occurs and is acknowledged in the TTL version, even concidering Army of Darkness is made as a Tales from the Crypt movie.
  • Michael Eisner still recruits Jeffrey Katzenberg, and then appoints someone else in a higher position over him leading to increasing tensions between the two. It just happens at ABC instead of Disney.
  • Muppet Treasure Island doesn't exist, but Tim Curry still gets to ham it up as Long John Silver in Treasure Planet.
  • Susan Egan still stars as the female lead in a Ancient Greece-set Disney movie after starring in a Broadway musical of a Disney movie... only it's Medusa in 1996 rather then Hercules in 1997 for the former, and for the latter, Mort instead of Beauty and the Beast.
  • While Craig McCracken manages to keep the original title of The Whoopass Girls, the MTV cartoon still manages to utilise The Powerpuff Girls in one episode, when the Mayor of Townsville has a science firm create a "proper, family friendly" alternative team to the Whoopass Girls.
  • While Eddie Murphy has the role of Winston Zeddmore in Ghostbusters (1984), Ernie Hudson does eventually appear in the franchise, as the father of Will Smith's character in Ghostbusters: West Coast Ghosts. In addition, West Coast Ghosts is a 1996 action blockbuster starring Smith and Jeff Goldblum, essentially taking the place of Independence Day due to Roland Emmerich taking on Arachnophobia instead of getting the idea to do Independence Day.
  • The Muppet Christmas Carol is still the exact same movie, with the only differences being that the film is titled as A Muppet Christmas Carol, the song "When Love Is Gone" is retained in the theatrical cut, and that Jim Henson living past his OTL death means the film is merely dedicated to Richard Hunt.
  • In Star Wars Episode I - A Darkness Rising, despite that Benicio del Toro portrays Mauk Shivtor (TTL's Darth Maul), Ray Park still performs as his stunt double in the fight scenes.
  • Tim Allen still is one of the lead voice actors in TTL's Toy Story. This time? He's voicing the cowboy.
  • Samuel L. Jackson is still Mace Windu in the Star Wars prequel trilogy.
  • Captain America casts Rachel Weisz as Peggy Carter, and while her doing an American accent is considered, they decide to use her natural English accent, so Peggy gets the same Adaptational Nationality as her MCU counterpart in OTL.
  • Hugo Weaving is still Agent Smith in The Matrix.
  • Even though the Ruby Ridge siege has been butterflied (according to the author) and the Waco siege ended differently from OTL, a federal building is still the target of domestic terrorism in 1995. This time, it is the J. Edgar Hoover Building.
  • A US ship is the victim of a bombing in 2000. Instead of the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen sustaining damage, the USCGC Chincoteague (WPB-1320) is sunk in the Gulf of Mexico by the explosion of a cigar boat containing a dirty bomb.
  • David Tennant has a major role on Doctor Who during the Tenth Doctor's run, despite not portraying said character. He's cast as the Master, meaning he still gets to play a Time Lord.
  • Tara Strong (known as Tara Freeman ITTL) voices a My Little Pony character, but it's for a cameo in this world's version of Toy Story instead of the lead role of a TV show. She also still voices a unicorn, albeit in TTL's Shrek as part of an in-universe cartoon Shrek watches.
  • Adam Baldwin still portrays Jayne, in TTL's version of Firefly (which is known as Tranquility), but instead of being part of the main cast, he's the brother to Nathan Fillion's Jubal E. Kaine.
  • Jackie Earle Haley, who originally auditioned to play Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street, still gets a chance to play him. Instead of playing him in the remake, Jackie plays a corpse who is transformed into Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street Part V: Freddy Reborn.
  • Sydney and Athens still host the Summer Olympic Games, but their years are switched around, with Athens hosting the 2000 Summer Olympics and Sydney hosting the 2004 Summer Olympics.
  • Billie Lourd and Lupita Nyong'o are still cast in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, this time as Jaina Solo and Sith Lady/Empress Bogana Mal’qi.
  • Lars Mikkelsen still gets cast as Grand Admiral Thrawn in live action, only this time, during the Star Wars sequel trilogy.
• Christian Bale still portrays Batman, albeit as a Robin who temporarily takes on the role.
• Insult Backfire: A political cartoon portrays the Reform Party as a skunk, trailing a "stink" of populist policies. Just as the Republicans and Democrats did with the elephant and donkey, the party adopts it, describing the skunk as "resourceful, self-sufficient, and solitary. It's neither aggressive nor fearful, and despite its small size, no other beast, however strong and fierce, ever messes with it twice."
• "I Am Becoming" Song: In Anansi Boys, the three villains, the local drug gang head Bigg Puma, the local District Councilman Barry Bengal Jones, and the Assistant DA Vance “The Tiger” D’Angelo (who are all voiced by Eddie Murphy) all sing “A Shake of the Hand”.
• "I Want" Song:
  • The protagonist Maria of A Small World, gets one called “A World of My Own”.
  • Mentioned by name in the discussion of Hiawatha, regarding the title character's "A Warrior Born". It also gets a Dark Reprise when he sets out for vengeance.
  • Both Meng and Longzhu get one in the opening scenes of The Poet and the Dragon: Meng breaking out of a song about bureaucracy to sing about wanting a connection to the celestial sphere, and Longzhu similarly disrupting the Celestial Bureaucracy to sing about wanting a connection to the Earth.
  • Don Bluth's Beauty and the Beast has one with Belle's "Reflections in Me" (said to be akin to "Reflection" in OTL's Mulan).
  • City of the Sun's "One Look/Una Mirada" is said to be akin to a three-way "I want", with Tizic falling for Nicté, while Nicté in turn is falling for Tizic's brother Kinich.
• It Will Never Catch On:
  • In his autobiography All You Need is a Chin: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor, Bruce Campbell mentions that he tried talking Sam Raimi out of doing Friday the 13th 5 because of how unimpressive the script sounded. But Raimi insisted, and even went as far as rewriting the script, and sure enough:
    He was right. He redefined a freaking genre. My bad.
  • Sean Connery turns down the role of Timothy Harmon (TTL's John Hammond) in Jurassic Park (which eventually goes to Christopher Lee) because he's convinced that the project will be a failure. Needless to say, he's proven very wrong.
  • When Jim Henson joins Disney, a quote attributed to a businessman, Richard DeVos, sums up that Henson's tenure at Disney is doomed to fail:
    It will never work. They’re bringing a peace-and-love flower child into a board full of Reagan Republicans. They’ll tear him apart.
• Jerkass Has a Point: This winds up being the key reason why Jim Henson lives past 1990. After injuring his leg and putting off seeing a doctor for several days, he met up with Dick Nunis to go surfing... who then promptly dragged Jim to a hospital the moment he saw his untreated wound, all the while shooting down Jim's repeated desire to not be a bother. His wound was promptly treated and cleared, and after being told by a doctor in detail about how he was at risk of going into septic shock, Jim (properly scared straight^note thanks in part to having seen Howard Ashman suffer from it weeks prior) decides to start taking better care of himself and take advantage of being given more time to live.
  [2] It’s necessary to be a Dick some days.
  • Jim has a similar realisation after shareholder dissatisfaction with his underperforming passion projects, putting artistic merit above financial profit and putting money into environmental initiatives and PSAs almost leads to Sid Bass selling a major share of Disney to Michael Eisner; while not sacrificing the artistic angle, he endeavours to start recognising the needs of the shareholders and green-lighting more projects with "popular appeal" into production, recalling also that he’d done this to get The Dark Crystal made, with two additional seasons of The Muppet Show that he’d otherwise not wanted to make.
• Killed by Request: In-Universe: Well, Stayed Dead By Request, but Malcolm Morrison is not brought back for TTL's The Lost World because Johnny Depp (his actor) expressed disinterest in reprising the role:
  "Well, shortly after that news dropped, Johnny gives me a call and says, “Look, Tim, I’ve made a decision – I’m not going to do what Bob Downey and Gary Oldman and Nic Cage are doing. I don’t care about the spray-painted action figures – I don’t buy into all that shit. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to be in on this – I’ve got a Lovecraft movie with Richard Stanley in the pipeline."
• Landmarking the Hidden Base: The Ghostbusters: West Coast Ghosts equivalent of the Shandor Building is Coit Tower.
• Laser-Guided Karma: invoked In essence: After WCW and AWA merged, shortly before the Anita Hill case kicked off an earlier #MeToo movement, Ted Turner and Columbia found themselves needing to crack down hard on the wrestling corporation, resulting in a mass purge of wrestlers (including the Four Horsemen). Vince McMahon is reported to have celebrated the debacle... which only served to blow up in his face when his own corporation soon came under fire as the company’s own skeletons began coming to light^note such as the rape and pedophilia accusations surrounding Pat Patterson, Jerry Lawler and Jeff Jarrett, Jimmy Snuka's murder of his girlfriend, "human trafficker Fabulous Moolah", Grizzly Smith, alongside the massive amount of legal trouble soon flung his way^note the Steroid Trial, illegal union busting, forcing contractors to share revenue, the World Wildlife Federation renewing their lawsuit over the use of the WWF acronym. The end result: Vince is sentenced to up to 15 years in jail, all of his wealth and assets are seized, and WWE comes to an end.
  Turner will remark years after the fact that WWE collapsing due to something that started with WCW feels karmic.
• Literal Metaphor: In TTL's version of Finding Nemo, Coral is still alive, because Jim wants the film to be as scientifically accurate as possible, and the marine biologists explained what would happen if she wasn't. When Finn (Marlin) is reluctant to leave the anenome to find Nemo, Coral snarks that, "I’ll find Nemo myself and you can stay here and be the Mommy!" to which Finn replies "But I'm not ready to be the Mommy!" It looks like a joke about the division of parental responsibility, unless you know that it's literally true that if Coral disappeared, Finn would "become the Mommy".
• Logo Joke:
  • As with OTL Indiana Jones movies, Mask of the Monkey King: An Indiana Jones Adventure opens with the Paramount logo Match Cutting into a scene; in this case a mountain in China.
  • Jurassic Park is an MGM production, and replaces Leo with a T-rex.
  • In a trailer for the-upcoming The Road to Ruin, Leo doesn't roar, but instead whimpers dejectedly and covers his eyes with his paws.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Is called "Magic Dragon Girlfriend" ITTL, even though Longzhu in The Dragon and the Poet isn't really an example.
• Merchandise-Driven:
  • Averted in the case of Disney, as Jim Henson's opposition to making merchandise-driven shows leads him to put his feet down on Disney falling in that same trap as many other animation studios in the '80s. But it does lead to an amusing idea on parodying the concept, with a November 1985 episode of Disney's World of Magic featuring a fake, satirical advertisement for "The Merchenaries".
  • Bruce Campbell notes that Warner Bros. was pretty much this during Batman 3: The Killing Joke.
    And if The Penguin feels a little extraneous and tacked-on to this story, then, well, he is. The studio, in particular every nerd’s best friend Tom Rothman, made us do it. More villains = more toys, after all. Tom’s also the reason for the many new vehicles like Nightwing’s and Bat Girl’s motorcycles and the Bat Jet and the Clown Cars and the rest of “toyetic” crap we had to shoehorn in there (each sold separately! Collect them all, you nerds! From Galoob!). If Mira Velimirovic, our former Exec and at the time head on the animation side, hadn’t pushed back, we’d have been completely turned into a damned toy commercial.
• Meta Origin: The Marvel Movie Universe almost had one — it's stated that the Asgardians' Odinforce is the same thing as Professor Erskine's "Vita-Rays", and all-but-confirmed that the Odinforce explosion in Captain America was responsible for the increase in mutant births post 1940s, but the idea that this force was also the FF's "cosmic rays", the Hulk's "gamma energy", the power behind Tony Stark's arc reactor, and even responsible for the creation of vibranium and adamantium, is raised briefly in Fantastic Four: Rise and Fall, and then largely dropped as "too much".
• Mis-blamed: In-Universe: Certain factions of Star Wars fandom blame Lisa Henson for the Roona (TTL's Gungan) in A Darkness Rising, when they were definitely a George Lucas idea (as in OTL, inspired by his son). Conversely, Lucas is praised for including the Mandalorians in the third act, which was Lisa's idea.
• "Miss X" Pun: The equivalent of the smartphone is the "intelliphone", punningly abbreviated to "inpho". Consequently, the stereotype of the suburban woman sharing misinformation on social media is "Miss Inpho".
• The Mockbuster: In universe, Roger Corman's Lion-Man to Black Panther.

Tropes N-Z

• Nazi Nobleman: Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, the Cyclops of Ulysses: An Indiana Jones Odyssey is "an old-school Junker aristocrat who tolerates Hitler because he’s making Germany great once again".
• "No. Just… No" Reaction: Just like IOTL, Disney wasn't interested in picking up Back to the Future because of the "incest subplot" concerning Marty's mom falling in love with him. Unlike IOTL, however, Jim and Bernie vouching for it winds up leading to it getting greenlit for the Fantasia Films label^note which he and Jim founded along with Ron Miller, "specifically as a place to distribute and showcase outside talent like Time Bandits".
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: After the remake of Song of the South manages to become a success despite the controversy surrounding it. Frank Wells wonders if the film did well because of the controversy.
• The Other Marty: invoked Because of The Money Pit undergoing a disastrous production, Shelley Long (who played Anne) eventually decides to leave the film (due to being pregnant), causing the filmmakers to bring in Diane Keaton to replace her. This incident is what causes the trope ITTL to be known as "The Other Anne".
• Our Presidents Are Different:
  • Al Gore (D-TN, 1993-2001) is President Personable for his environmental stances, and President Iron for sending troops to the Congo during the Congolese Civil War.
  • Dick Gephardt (D-MO, 2001-2005) can also be described as President Iron pledging for more military aid to the Northern Alliance.
  • John Heinz (R-PA, 2005-2013) is also President Personable for co-signing a peace treaty to end the Congolese War.
  • Kathleen Sebelius (D-KS, 2013-2021) is President Minority for becoming the first female President.
  • Barack Obama (D-IL, 2021-) is also President Minority as the first African-American president, like IOTL.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Invoked with Jim's desire to stretch beyond the Muppets. He complains to Bernie Brillstein that when other studios look at him "all they see is Kermit".
  • In Batman (1989), Willem Dafoe is cast in the lead role rather than a crazed creep and more notably, the Joker is played by Robin Williams - giving him a villainous role over a decade sooner than in our world.
  • Chris Barrie plays the evil Poseidon in Disney's Medusa rather than neurotic everymen.
  • In the cheap Home Alone knock-off Lady of the House, Mara Wilson plays a young girl who is horrible rather than the sweet ones she plays in both timelines.
  • Robin Williams also has another role which he plays against type, with the stern, unfunny, militaristic taskmaster Colonel Gooch in Forrest Gump.
  • Rob Paulsen voices twisted Mad Scientist Scorponok in Transformers: Evolutions.
  • Adrian Edmondson plays the human antagonist Joe in Jurassic Park III, although Edmondson sees it as closer to Playing with Character Type.
  • Dermot Morgan plays the fanatical leader of a Kaiju-worshipping Apocalypse Cult in 'Godzilla 3.
• Power Trio: The trio of Ron Miller, Jim Henson, and Frank Wells, nicknamed "The Three Mouseketeers" by the press.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: invoked Jeff Katzenberg and Michael Eisner's desire to create a Ringworld series^note mainly because Eisner couldn't make a Star Wars series under their Hollywood Pictures Television (HPTV) brand ran into a major hurdle: the fact that Larry Niven had sold the rights to the Kzinti species to Paramount back in the 1970s, and Paramount wouldn't sell them back. However, there was a solution: when acquiring the Known Space rights from Niven, Katzenberg had also acquired the rights to The Draco Tavern as well... meaning they could use the Chirpsithra species to replace the Kzinti. Or, in other words:
  So, the series went forward as a sort of hybrid of Ringworld, Gil "The Arm" Hamilton, and Draco's Tavern centered somewhat loosely around the events of the Ringworld novel series, with plot lines from the other stories lifted and repurposed into episodes.
• Production Posse: In-Universe, Tim Burton has a group of regular collaborators for his stop-motion pieces, including Rick Heinrichs, the Chiodo Brothers, and (later) Henry Selick.
• Promoted to Love Interest: The title character in Disney's Medusa marries Perseus at the end. No, really, It Makes Sense in Context^{Context in question}Both are after the same Macguffin and agree to work together, and bond..
• Punny Name: When the in-universe sources aren't autobiographies, they're generally written by fictional figures whose names are either plays on the OTL writers of equivalent books (e.g Jay O'Brian, who writes Henson's biography in place of Brian Jay Jones) or just puns (e.g. Derek N. Dedominos).
• Race Lift: Tiny Lister plays Ben Grimm in the Fantastic Four movie.
  Stan Lee: If only I'd known Tiny back in '61, I would have totally made Ben look like him! Let the jerks complain about the race change all they want, Tiny nailed Ben. I’m sure Jack, God rest his soul, would have agreed. And on a side note, yes, geniuses, there are Black Jews in real life. Ever heard of Sammy Davis Jr.? How about Ethiopia?
  • In the 90s Spider-Man trilogy, due to a casting director believing that Norman and Harry Osborn are black/biracial due to some of the comic images making them appear so due to their skin tone and hair, Joe Morton gets cast as Norman Osborn in a cameo in Spider-Man 2, reprising the role in Spider-Man 3, where Henry Simmons is cast as Harry Osborn.
  • In Ron Howard's Captain America, Jamie Foxx is cast as James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes.
  • Universal Animation's John Carter and the Princess of Mars makes John Carter (played by Kevin Michael Richardson), not a former soldier for the Confederate Army, but a black slave who had fought for the Union Army in the Civil War.
• Real-Life Relative: In-Universe.
  • The adaptation of "The Ash Tree" in Mark Gatiss's animated Anthology Film of M. R. James ghost stories stars Timothy West as 17th century landowner Sir Matthew Fell, his wife Prunella Scales as the woman he accuses of being a witch, and their son Samuel West as Matthew's grandson Sir Richard.
  • Terminator 3: No Fate features Bryce Dallas Howard as a teenage girl who will be one of John Connor's lieutenants in the future, and Ron Howard cameoing as her father, a Cyberdyne scientist.
  • Hunter Johansson appears alongside his sister Scarlett in Annie (1995) and The Horse Whisperer, although in neither do they play siblings.
  • Carrie Fisher's daughter Billie Lourd is cast as Leia's daughter, Dame Jaina Solo, in the Star Wars sequel trilogy.
  • Alongside River Phoenix (who plays teen Indiana Jones) in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, his sister Summer Phoenix plays Marion Jones, the sister of "Henry the 4th", played by Joaquin Phoenix.
• Recast as a Regular: In-Universe: In DC's movie universe, Morgan Freeman portrays Mayor Frank Berkowitz in 1992's Man of Steel, before being cast as Nudis Vulko in 2000's Aquaman.
• Related in the Adaptation:
  • In Disney's The Snow Queen adaptation Heart of Ice, not only are Kai and Gerda brother and sister, as happens in many adaptations, but the Snow Queen is revealed to be their mother.
  • In Ron Howard's Captain America, Denzel Washington's James "Rhodey" Rhodes is the grandson of Jamie Foxx's Bucky Barnes.
  • In the Aquaman movie, Leron, King of the Xebelites, is Mera's brother.
  • In TTL's Revenge of the Sith, the mystery of Anniken's father is revealed, with Palpatine initially claiming to be his father, only for it to be revealed to be Baron Cetu Thorpe.
• Related Differently in the Adaptation: In the Aquaman movie, Thomas Curry is not Arthur's father (as pre-Crisis and post-Flashpoint) or adoptive father (as post-Crisis), but his maternal uncle, since he's the son of Atlan (as post-Crisis) and a surface woman named Theresa Curry (Canon Foreigner). Atlanna is his stepmother rather than his mother, and Ocean Master is still his half-brother, but as the son of Atlan and Atlanna, while Orvax (Orm's father and the former King of Atlantis post-Flashpoint) is now their Evil Uncle, brother to the late King of Atlantis.
• Required Spin Off Crossover: All the original Ghostbusters make appearances in Ghostbusters: West Coast Ghosts. Dan Aykroyd's Ray has the largest, as the San Francisco team's mentor.
• Remake Cameo:
  • Disney's Buck Rogers series starring Bruce Campbell features guest appearances by Gil Gerard and Erin Grey as admirals and Mel Blanc voicing a computer.
  • Sam Raimi's Superman reboot script for 1992's Man of Steel cameos Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder as the Kents.
  • The 1992 The Lone Ranger movie has Clayton Moore as the title character's father in flashbacks, confirming that the franchise is trying to make up for the unfortunate incident in both timelines when the then-rights owners tried to pull a trademark violation on him.
  • The 1994 The Incredible Hulk movie has Lou Ferrigno as a paramedic (along with Michael Clarke Duncan and Bill Barretta, who are doing body work and puppetry for the animatronic Hulk), as well as providing the Hulk's voice. And Bill Bixby, in his final screen role, picking up a hitchhiking Banner at the end as a version of "The Lonely Man" plays.
  • The 1996 remake of the British Kaiju movie Gorgo casts Vincent Winter, the original Sean, as a newsreader.
• Reverse Psychology: This winds up being the reason why The Road to Ruin (which, due to reports of how disastrous the increasingly over-budget production was destined to become, was being preemptively written off as a flop) wound up being a box office success: producer Mel Brooks, figuring they had nothing left to lose at this point, pitched to Bernie an idea to lean in on the negative press. The end result was a trailer that openly declared that the movie was going to suck, more or less daring people to go see it.
  It was brilliant and that target demographic of 16-40 was salivating for the chance to say they were there when Ruin crashed and burned... or didn't.
  We went from the laughing stock of Hollywood to the talk of the town.
• Richard Nixon, the Used Car Salesman:
  • Jim Henson, after getting a seat on Disney's Board of Directors as a creative consultant, later becomes chief creative officer and then chairman of the company.
  • Jane Nebel Henson, Jim's wife, becomes the President of Children's Television Workshop, replacing Joan Ganz Gooney.
  • After an internship at Lucasfilm, Lisa Henson becomes a producer at Amblin, before becoming the chairwoman and president of Fox Studios and later, her father's successor as chairman of Disney.
  • After interning with Walt Disney Imagineering and studying at CalTech, Brian Henson works in Disney's special effects division, rising to become Vice President of Special Effects and Chairman and CEO of Imagineering.
  • After graduating from CalArts, Heather Henson founds an multimedia collective and studio in Van Nuys, Whoopass Studios, with Leslie Iwerks (the granddaughter of Ub Iwerks) as well as Craig McCracken, Genndy Tartakovsky and Rob Renzetti.
  • Al Gore becomes President of the United States in 1992. His successor is Richard "Dick" Gephardt, his Vice President during Gore's second term in office (succeeding Senator Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts).
  • Due to the earlier #MeToo movement causing trouble for his father in the 1992 Presidential election, George W. Bush, minority owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, is discouraged from entering politics and becomes Commissioner of Baseball, succeeding Fay Vincent. He later becomes a member of the Disney Board of Directors in 2001.
  • Since Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket underperformed at the box office, Owen Wilson joins the US Marines and serves for four years as a CH-53 mechanic, before returning to Hollywood, with his brother Luke Wilson becoming a bigger star as a result.
  • Dwayne Johnson doesn’t suffer a knee injury during his time at the University of Miami and with the collapse of the WWF, he gets drafted by the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams in 1995 as their star defensive tackle.
  • Wayne Brady becomes a Muppet performer on Too Late With Miss Piggy.
  • Due to Margaret Thatcher lasting a year longer in office as Prime Minister, Labour leader Neil Kinnock becomes the new prime minister, leading a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition in 1991. Due to the Beatrice AD disaster, Neil Kinnock resigns in March 1998 and is replaced by Gordon Brown. After initially losing the 1999 UK General Election to the Conservative MP for Enfield Southgate and leader of the Conservative Party, Michael Portillo, Gordon Brown returns as PM in 2004.
  • After the departure of Eric Saward, Joan Ganz Cooney becomes the new Doctor Who showrunner, before eventually rising to become head of US Production for BBC Overseas Production, and President of BBC America.
  • With George W. Bush not entering politics, Ann Richards is re-elected for another term as Governor of Texas, before she becomes the first female Vice President in 2000.
  • During the 2004 US Presidential Election, Republican Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania (who does not die in a plane crash in 1991), is elected President of the United States.
  • In the 1994 Mid-term elections, John Ellis "Jeb" Bush wins in the Florida Senate against Buddy McKay. Then, after failing to acquire the Republican nomination for President during the 2000 Presidential Election, Jeb Bush becomes the running mate of Senator John Heinz in 2004, and Vice President of the United States after Heinz wins the election.
  • Kansas Governor and former Secretary of Education Kathleen Sebelius wins the 2012 Presidential Election.
  • After serving as Vice President to Kathleen Sebelius, Barack Obama does become President of the United States, in 2020, instead of 2008.
  • Paul Martin of the Liberal Party becomes Prime Minister of Canada in 1997, a few years before OTL. Then a no-confidence vote leads to Jack Layton of the New Democratic Party becoming Prime Minister in 2006.
  • With the foiling of the Gang of Eight's plan to launch a coup, Mikhail Gorbachev oversees the signing of the New Union Treaty, which reforms the USSR into the Union of Sovereign States, and becomes President of the USR until 1995, when Boris Yeltsin is elected. Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov of the Democratic Union Party becomes President in 2000.
  • Deng Xiaoping's successor as Paramount Leader of China is Qiao Shi rather than Jiang Zemin. Qiao Shi serves up until 2004, when Hu Qili takes his place.
  • Vladimir Putin does not go into politics, but becomes the Director of the FSB. Until he is arrested in 2001 for allegedly plotting with opposition politicians to launch a coup in the USR.
  • Michael Eisner, after losing his position at Paramount, and this time, not being hired by Disney, instead takes the offer to head up ABC Motion Pictures as its President and Chairman^note an option that Eisner was offered in OTL, where he renames it as Hollywood Pictures. Then, after becoming the President of ABC Entertainment, after his attempt to get rid of Jeffrey Katzenberg and Bob Iger results in him being forced out, Eisner takes up Ted Turner's offer to become Chairman and President of Columbia Pictures and Chief Creative Officer of Columbia Entertainment, before becoming Turner's successor as Chairman and CEO of Columbia Entertainment in 2003.
  • Jeffrey Katzenberg moves from Paramount to become the studio head of ABC Motion Pictures/Hollywood Pictures, then leaves to head up Universal Studios after Universal and ABC merge. After Comcast buys out Warner Bros. in 2003 following their merger with Leap, Katzenberg becomes the new Chairman and CEO.
  • Joe Ranft, who is promoted to head Disney's Digital Division after John Lasseter is placed on probation, becomes Jim Henson's successor as Chief Creative Officer.
  • Due to Jim Henson and Frank Oz's commitments, Jerry Nelson and Jerry Juhl head the Muppets franchise. By 2018, this role is filled by Kevin Clash.
• Ripped from the Headlines: In-Universe:
  • The Aum Shirinkyo attacks in 1995 leave a huge impact in pop culture afterwards, with Detective Conan, Perfect Blue and Cowboy Bebop taking influence from the Shoko Ashara assassination, while the attacks and the assassination influence numerous American comics, TV shows and movies.
• Role Reprise: In-Universe:
  • Jim and Pratchett reprise their cameos as wizards in Mort for the live-action Equal Rites, as does BRIAN BLESSED in the more substantial role of Archchancellor Ridcully^note replacing Archchancellor Cutangle from the book.
    • Christopher Lee reprises his role as Death from Mort in 20th Century's live-action 1996 adaptation of Good Omens.
  • Whoopi Goldberg, who played Aunt Nancy (Anansi) in the 1986 recut of Song of the South, reprises the role for The Lion King. And again in Anansi Boys (although for the bulk of the film Anansi is played by Eddie Murphy).
  • Helena Bonham Carter becomes the first person to win an Oscar and an Emmy for playing the same character, getting the first for the role of Cleopatra in the 1995 movie The Assassination of Julius Caesar, and the second for the title role in the 2002 PFN miniseries Memoirs of Cleopatra. Several other actors, including Patrick Stewart as Caesar, also reprise their roles in the series.
  • Michael Biehn reprises his roles as Dwayne Hicks in Alien 3 and Alien Homeworld, and has a cameo as Kyle Reese in Terminator 3: No Fate.
  • Jean Reno, Anne Parillaud, Tchéky Karyo and Jean-Hugues Anglade reprised their roles as Victor, Nikita, Bob and Marco in Victor: The Professional, here a more overt sequel to 1990’s Nikita.
  • Udo Kier reprises his role as Red Skull from the Avengers cartoon in Captain America.
  • Judith Barsi reprises her role, this time in live-action, as Luke Skywalker's Twilek apprentice Halixiana from the Star Wars: Heir to the Empire animated series, in the Paramount-Fox Network TV Special Star Wars Stories: Luke of Tatooine, then the Star Wars sequel trilogy.
  • Adam Wylie reprises his role as Stanley O'Brian, the third Spider-Man, from the second Spider-Man trilogy, in 2009's Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon as well as the 2016 Spider-Man video game.
• Science Marches On: In-Universe. The swimming theropod in the third episode of Where Dinosaurs Roam (set in the Kimmeridge Clay ITTL), based on a skeleton found in the Kimmeridge in 1984, is simply called a "stokesosaur" - it is now known as Juratyrant (as OTL).
• Scrapbook Story: The chosen format for the thread. Book and magazine excerpts, video transcripts, and forum posts are all used to assemble the plot.
• Seasonal Rot: In-universe, The Muppet Show gets two more seasons as part of Disney's agreement to distribute The Dark Crystal, which aren't seen as good as the first five.
• Setting Update:
  • Ulysses: An Indiana Jones Odyssey is The Odyssey relocated to World War II and starring Indy as Odysseus/Ulysses.
  • Sidney Poitier directs a movie of Othello set in 19th century Jamaica rather then Venice.
• Shown Their Work: In-Universe:
  • After Disney animator Terrell Little heads to Japan on an exchange program to work with Studio Ghibli on Hayao Miyazaki's Porco Rosso, the experience of working on the movie and drawing Savoia-Marchetti S.55 flying boats inspires him to remember that when drawing machinery, it "has to work" and that "the little detail counts", so he works on ensuring that the waves formed by a take-off and landing of a flying boat "looks" correct as well as reading books on internal combustion and aerodynamics.
  • Next, while working as lead artist on TaleSpin, Little studies old Pratt & Whitney Wasp radial piston engines and how the pistons move, and even goes so far as to study an engine repair of an AT-6 Texan, all to ensure that the engines of the Sea Duck "works right", an effort that earns praise for TaleSpin by aviation enthusiasts.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • Woolie Reitherman does not die in his OTL car accident in 1985 due to that Disney provides him with a driver.
  • Judith Barsi lives as does her mother Maria due to her father József being arrested and sent to prison.
  • Instead of being cast in Lime Street (which led to her death via a plane crash), Samantha Smith becomes the lead star of CBS' The Littlest Diplomat, which runs from 1984 to 1986 and starts off Smith's career as an actress.
    • Samantha's survival also ensures that Rebecca Schaeffer lives TTL, due to Robert John Bardo retaining his stalking obsession with Smith, rather than shifting his attentions to Schaeffer after Smith's death in 1985 and murdering Schaeffer.
  • After getting a random false positive HIV test in 1982, Freddie Mercury starts becoming more cautious and lives past his OTL death.
  • River Phoenix manages to survive a drug overdose in 1992 with the help of Bob Forrest, John Frusciante, and Johnny Depp as well as a registered nurse, who give Phoenix medical attention until the ambulance arrives, and enters rehab, which prompts him to stay clean.
  • After suffering a heart attack on the set of Deadheads in 1993, John Candy is prompted to change his lifestyle with River Phoenix's help, which results in him losing weight and living past his OTL death of 1994.
  • Due to butterflies, Diane Thomas (screenwriter of Romancing the Stone) does not get killed in a car accident on October 21, 1985.
  • Jim Henson manages to survive past 1990, thanks to Dick Nunis' insistence on Henson going straight to a hospital after discovering an untreated cut on Jim's leg.
  • Chris Farley lives past 1997, after surviving an overdose.
  • Karen Carpenter does not die of anorexia complications in 1983.
  • Frank Wells does not die in a helicopter crash in April 1994.
  • Lillian Disney, while suffering a minor stroke on December 15, 1997, survives due to her grandson Walt Disney Miller visiting her at the time and getting her medical attention.
  • Tupac Shakur is not killed in a drive-by-shooting in 1996.
  • Brandon Lee is not killed on the set of The Crow (1994).
  • Kurt Cobain does not die of a drug overdose.
  • Heather O'Rourke, due to not being misdiagnosed with Crohn's disease, survives her OTL death and grows up to become a director after a career hiatus.
  • Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania is not killed in an air crash in 1991.
  • Thuy Trang is not killed in a car crash in 2001.
  • Joe Ranft is not killed in a car crash in 2005.
  • Phil Hartman is not shot dead by his wife Brynn Omdahl in 1998.
  • Aaliyah is not killed in an air crash in 2001.
  • John Henson does not die in 2014.
  • Kristen Pfaff does not die of a heroin overdose in 1994.
  • Layne Staley does not die of an overdose in 2002.
  • Thanks to meeting Kurt Cobain, who ensures his drug and alcohol habits are dropped, Elliott Smith does not die in 2003.
  • Thanks to John Candy's influence ensuring his continued participation in a weight-loss program, Big Pun does not die in 2000.
• Springtime for Hitler: Tom Rothman's plan to sabotage Postcards from the Edge by hiring an inexperienced director and a volatile cast, slashing budgets, heavily interfering, and encouraging the cast to ad-lib completely blows up in his face once it receives acclaim among critics and audiences, becomes a box-office smash hit, and wins several awards. The associated article compares it to the Trope Namer from The Producers.
• Stepford Suburbia: Where Roger and Jessica Rabbit are living in Bunny in the 'Burbs, to the point that their most prejudiced neighbours are literally named the Stepfords.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The entire Californian Ghostbusters team in Ghostbusters: West Coast Ghosts are intentionally designed as derivatives of the original team: Will Smith's Will Holmes is the fast-talking Venkman type, Jeff Goldblum's Daniel Roseman is the Ray Stanz true believer, Benicio del Toro's Lou Delgado is the Egon-like nerd, and Chris Farley's Jimmy Moran takes Winston's role as the everyman who gets roped into all this, and Rosario Dawson’s Rosalita Los Santos, as Will's love interest who is also tied to the main threat somehow, is basically in the role of Dana.
• Take That!: In-Universe:
  • Trey Parker and Matt Stone's student film The Enlightener jabs at the anti-development green aesops in the then-latest Friday the 13th films.
  • The 1996 Gorgo remake has the mother-monster's rampage across London specifically take down the NatWest Tower, one of the most disliked additions to the London skyline at the time.
  • The Whoopass Girls has an episode titled "The Powerpuff Girls" that was made as a response to complaints made against the show by parental groups, in which the Mayor of Townsville orders an outside science firm to create the title characters as a "wholesome", hyper-saccharine alternative to the Whoopass Girls. Their ineffective attempts to foil the villains (by trying to give them "a good talking to") results in Townsville being taken over by the villains, forcing the Mayor to rehire the Whoopass Girls to save the day.
• Town Girls: Cheryl Henson notes this dynamic between herself and her sisters, Lisa and Heather; Cheryl herself is Femme, having loved playing with dolls and playing dress-up as a child and later becoming a costume designer, Lisa is Butch, being more outgoing, and Heather is Neither, as she's "always finding her own way like some modern-day hippie".
• Transatlantic Equivalent:
  • Thanks to the partnership between Robert Holmes à Court and Ted Turner, the classic case of British TV shows getting adapted for American audiences gets reversed with the airing of British equivalents of Taxi, Little House on the Prairie, Happy Days, The Andy Griffith Show, Rawhide, Dallas and Battlestar Galactica.
  • The Kids Are Alright, like its OTL counterpart, gets a British remake called Days Like These, which is more successful than its OTL counterpart.
• Teenage Mutant Samurai Wombats: Used within the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, with the third movie, 1996's TMNT 3: Turtle Power! (written and directed by Terry Jones), giving them Evil Counterparts in the form of the Transgenic Teenage Kung-Fu Iguanas, all named after modern artists, Salvador, Vincent, Pablo, and Warhol.
  • There is also a mention of Star Snakes, a cartoon about heroic astronaut snakes, widely considered In-Universe as the Last of His Kind.
• Troubled Production: In-Universe:
  • The Money Pit becomes proverbial for this, not least because the inflating costs due to unexpected disasters mirrors the plot of the movie itself. The leads (Kelsey Grammer and Shelley Long) hate each other, with the crew taking sides, until they have to film their scenes separately, and then Long walks out. The set costs a fortune (they couldn't find a real house that works), plus another fortune to add all the "this house is collapsing" effects, which bring it very close to being an actual deathtrap. Executive Meddling then leads to the director walking out, and the writer having to fill in. The executives continue to meddle after it's in the can, getting into a three-way editing war with the writer-director and the actual editor. And then, for unrelated reasons, the executives walk out, and the new suits disown the picture entirely.
  • Disney’s adaptation of Mort is gruelling on much of the crew, especially due to most being Locked Out of the Loop regarding Howard Ashman’s illness. The animators are already disgruntled at having to leave their homes, with Howard’s mood flipping from sweet to aggravated on the regular, and even Terry Pratchett almost walking out on the project before he’s privately let in on the secret. It’s only when they see his secret cameo in The Song of Susan that they understand why Ashman was so difficult to work with; fortunately, the film proves highly successful on release in spite of it all.
  • The 1998 remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon is an absolute nightmare due to Katzenberg's Executive Meddling, from the moment that the cast learn Peter Jackson is no longer involved, despite him being the one who got most of them interested, and the script they were so impressed by has been binned by Katzenberg, to the moment when Andy Dick, playing a comedy relief documentary cameraman, is finally eaten by the Gill-Man and can be removed from the set (having been a troublesome actor who did not get on well with the cast and crew, and was unable to be fired due to studio interference). The film is a disaster, which Charles Dance describes as "nowhere near worth what we had to endure".
  • The 1996 MGM musical, The Road to Ruin became this from its first inception. Jim Henson, who pushed for the film, insists on getting the film greenlit in spite of Bernie Brillstein's prediction that a throwback film to the Hollywood musical era of cinema would never work. Plus, the film's costs spiral so much out of control to around $82 million and the film runs behind schedule (thanks to director Francis Ford Coppola's perfectionist tendencies) and Disney stocks go so far as to trade lower in anticipation for the film being a box office bomb. Not helping is that the film Annie, a test to see if such a film like Road to Ruin could work, underperforms, resulting in the Disney board becoming critical of Jim, now the Disney chairman, for pursuing it and the film becomes a joke amongst Hollywood as they declare it to be another "Henson's Folly" and a flop on a level as Heaven's Gate. Rival Hollywood studios even get to the point of releasing other films not expected to to be commercial hits to go up against Road to Ruin, expecting an "easy win", whilst Disney and MGM put pressure on the productions of Spider-Man 3, X-Men, The Lost World and the Disney animated features to “make up for the loss”. In the end, due to a marketing campaign coined up by producer Mel Brooks and Bernie Brillstein leaning in on the negative press, with even the main stars Robin Williams and Wayne Brady joining in, the film becomes a box-office success due to word of mouth causing many people to go see the film.
  • In 1985, Don Bluth (who is looking into new projects to work on for his Bluth Group), is contacted by Steven Spielberg, who has formed a partnership with Gary Kurtz and Richard Williams to put the latter's The Thief and the Cobbler, into full production. With Disney's animators overworked with multiple projects, Bluth and his company are contacted to provide animators. But the film's development becomes troublesome, not helped by the film (two decades in the making at that point) having no central plot, with a mix of characters and plotlines that were unrelated to the central narrative. Bluth immediately clashes with Williams due to Bluth's desire for a stronger story clashing with Williams' attention focusing solely on the set pieces, as well as arch-perfectionist Williams attempting to throw out entire completed scenes because of small quality concerns. Thus, the two of them are described by animator Gary Goldman as "two deservedly big egos in one very small room" and by Gary Kurtz as being like "working with two Georges". In mid-1986, the budget of $24 million ($12 million from Amblin and Disney each) is nearly exhausted, in spite of Bluth's attempts at saving costs, and Frank Wells begrudgingly parts with another $7 million, with a stern warning that there wouldn't be any more. After the ultimatum is issued by Kurtz, the two of them make a pact to finish the project together on time and within budget.
  • Bruce Campbell recounts on how the "gossip mags" were not only right about how much of a nightmare production The Crow (1994) was, they had actually failed to capture the extent of it.
• Trickster Mentor: Mentioned by name in the discussion of Hiawatha, which notes that that film's Crow, Lion King's Anansi, Shrek's Donkey, and Aladdin's Genie are all based on the same archetype.
• Unreliable Narrator: Word of God warns us that some of the people telling this story are inevitably going to fall to the temptation to lie or prevaricate to make themselves look better or others look worse. The obvious example is Bernie Brillstein, whose sheer gusto sweeps aside the question of whether his foresight was really as good as he makes it seem in retrospect.
• A Very Special Episode: The Song of Susan is an invoked example where, in light of learning that Richard Hunt and Howard Ashman are dying, Jim endeavours to break the stigma of HIV/AIDS by raising public awareness. The film features a teenage girl who contracts the disease from a blood transfusion and is shunned publicly for it, leading to her friendship with an older man played by Hunt (metatextually playing himself); Ashman also cameos (a One-Scene Wonder due to being in his hospital room). The film, a Fair for Its Day success with several award wins, has all profits donated to HIV/AIDS charities.
• Video Game Movies Suck: Averted In-Universe, after the release of TTL's Super Mario Bros. which is directed by Joe Dante. The film's success prompts Warner Bros to immediately start work on Astro the Armadillo, Columbia with Bentley Bear, New Line Cinema on Mortal Kombat and Universal on Street Fighter.
• Villain Song:
  • For Medusa, the main villain Poseidon has one in the form of "Born To Win", at the request of Chris Barrie.
    Chris Barrie: If I'm playing a Disney villain, I've got to bloody sing!
  • A infamous non-Disney example is sung in Water World, with Bruce Campbell's Deacon singing "Drown ‘Em".
  • Invincible has Gary Oldman's Ravana sing “Getting Ahead in the Game”.
  • In Kermit: Prince of Denmark, Jason Alexander's Claudius sings "Claudius Rejoices (King For Awhile)".
  • Another non-Disney example is sung, with Queen Livia singing "Dark Roses" in Don Bluth's Beauty and the Beast.
• Wham Line: During a discussion of how Disney could buy assets to dilute their stock and prevent a takeover.
  Caroline Ahmanson: Gentlemen, isn't it obvious? There’s a company that's a perfect fit. They have existing IP that's a seamless match for Disney's brand. We've even been working with them for years now: Henson Associates.
• Write Who You Know: In-Universe, the Discworld novels Spell Binding and Hyper Text follow on from the idea that Esk was somewhat based on Rhianna Pratchett's childhood, by having her become involved with Invisible Writings and Hex as she pushes against the Unseen University's institutional sexism, mirroring Rhianna's experiences in the video game industry.
• Xanatos Gambit: Is known as Lex Plan, after the portrayal of Lex Luthor in TTL's version of Superman: The Animated Series.
• You Look Familiar: In-Universe:
  • Jeroen Krabbé, who plays General Georgi Koskov in The Living Daylights, returns to play Auric Goldfinger in 2001's Goldfinger.
  • Jeffrey Combs plays both Zefram Cochrane (after having portrayed him in Star Trek: Envoy) and Commander Shraa in Star Trek: Discovery.

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