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The criminal and the ape-thing, okay. But a woman?! That's just silly.
George: I think the Purple Potty brought us to some kind of strange, backwards universe.
Harold: No way. That kind of thing only happens in poorly written children's books whose authors have clearly begun running out of ideas!
Not to be confused with Alternate Continuity, Alternate Universe Fic or a Constructed World.
A story in which the characters we know are seen in a reality that's somehow different, often disturbingly so. If they can access multiple alternative realities, that's The Multiverse.
Sometimes everyone has an Evil Twin. Other times, everyone has a twin that's just a little different.
Allows the goodies to be baddies for an episode, or for half of the cast to be killed — but not really.
Given a long enough run, any series based on Super Hero comic books will run into these.
If the writers want to depict an Alternate Universe, but the show's genre would not usually allow an Alternate Universe per se, the depiction may be accomplished via an extended Dream Sequence.
Specific variations:
- Alternate History — Some major event changed, like Germany wins WWII.
- Another Dimension — Different worlds don't have to resemble each other, Alternate Universe is a subtrope of this.
- Bizarro Universe — A lot of things in that world are reversed from the usual context, good is evil or vice versa, etc.
- For Want Of A Nail — One small change caused a huge difference between the universes.
- In Spite Of A Nail — Tiny changes have made the world almost the same but the differences are critical.
- Mirror Universe — Often a subset of Bizarro Universe, Good and Evil are reversed, but otherwise most of the things are the same.
- The Multiverse — The people involved have the capacity to cross over to more than one additional universe.
- Elseworld — Famous character placed into a situation which potentially is wildly different.
- Wonderful Life — You get to see how the world would have turned out if you were never born.
Another type of Alternate Universe is that which doesn't take any of the characters, but instead takes concepts, or machines. Such Alternate Universes are uncommon, but exist. Gundam is the perfect example, with no less than seven separate universes, all of them rehashing essentially the same plots and concepts — in particular, the conflict between those living in space and those living on earth. With giant robots.
Examples
Anime
- During the Third Impact sequence of Neon Genesis Evangelion, Shinji is shown an alternate universe mirroring a stereotypical love comedy anime (which has since become an official Evangelion Elseworld).
- Every path in the multi-route TYPE-MOON games is a potential outcome of the main scenario, which makes it rather difficult to establish the rules of the 'verse due to the plot differences in each route; according to Word Of God, all of them are canon.
- In the fourth Suzumiya Haruhi novel, The
Vanishment Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, Kyon suddenly finds himself in a world without supernatural powers, with what SOS members remain leading normal, human lives.
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann has one of these in Episode 26 with the Big Bad's Lotus Eater Machine.
- In a different vein, the new Parallel Works music videos leading up to the movie seem to be using these.
- The last four episodes actualy take place in a different universe, which allows for some seriously messed up fights that would make any physicist cry, but they're too busy pooping their pants for sheer awesome.
- Want a giant sea in space? It's actually a super compressed form of spiral energy similar to a black hole (and ultimately, leads to the Big Bad's downfall as the heroes use the energy to create a mecha 100 times bigger than our galaxy). Want to shoot every point in space and time at the same instant? The heroes actually subvert what their computer is trying to tell them by simply ignoring the fact that it shouldn't be possible. Alter reality so you hit every time? Commonplace. Oh yeah and one more thing. Galaxy. Shurikens.
- the series also has an AU Highschool manga http://www.onemanga.com/Tengen_Toppa_Gurren_Lagann_-_Guren_Gakuenhen/
- one fan also seems to make an excellent example AU universe comic about TTGL worthy of the series http://captainosaka.deviantart.com/art/DOUBLE-K-001-82688715
- With the exception of the second season (a sequel to the first), all five seasons of Digimon exist in alternate universes from the rest. The only constants are the titular Mons and the world from which they come, and even the exact traits of the latter differ from season to season.
- In the Kyoto Animation adaptation of Key's Visual Novel Clannad, Tomoyo's arc, which was never completed properly, was showcased in an AU OVA entitled Another World: Tomoyo Arc, where Tomoya never met Nagisa and Tomoyo is the winning girl.
- In July 2009, Kyo Ani will be releasing the final DVD of Clannad: ~After Story~ that contains an extra OVA episode entitled Another World: Kyou Arc. Kyou finally gets her arc!
- A major plot twist in Rave Master involved this trope: the entire series exists within an Alternate Universe, which was created when the last survivor of the original reality manipulated time in order to create a parallel world where The End Of The World Didnt As We Know It didn't come to pass. The Omnicidal Maniac that was destroying this parallel world was in fact a balancing force created as a result of the unnatural divergence in the timestream.
- Steel Ball Run is an Alternate Universe to Jojos Bizarre Adventure, created in-continuity after Stairway to Heaven reset the universe.
- The Kirby anime is meant to be an alternate universe from the games, something many fans miss.
- Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni (and Umineko No Naku Koro Ni, to an extent) has this as a major plot point.
Comic Books
- The DCU has had many different earths before the Crisis On Infinite Earths, the Reset Button event from the mid to late 80's, and many Elseworld stories, including one where Superman turns out like this◊.
- After Infinite Crisis, the Multiverse was restored, with 52 separate realities, most of them containing the Elseworld stories. So we got to see Superman fight Communist Superman at last.
- Marvel has explicitly adopted a Multiverse as part of their canon, with "out of continuity" storylines assumed (or explicitly stated) to have happened on an alternate Earth (or alternate-wherever). The "main continuity" of most Marvel titles is labeled as taking place on "Earth-616".
- Galactus is the sole known survivor from the previous Big Bang-Big Crunch universe cycle, making him technically a native of an alternate universe.
- And then there's Age Of Apocalypse storyline. Although it was initially an alternate present for Marvel's baseline universe "Earth-616", it became an alternate reality when Jean Grey split it off into a separate universe during the events of X-Men Omega.
- The comic Exiles explores this idea to its fullest, having the main characters hop between different Marvel AU's and fixing problems.
- The Adventures of Luther Arkwright is based on the premise of an infinite multiverse of parallel universes or realities which differ with each other in many things. For example, one of the main places where the action in the comic book takes place is a 20th century world where Great Britain is still ruled by a puritan government and a descendant of Oliver Cromwell. In addition, New York is New Amsterdam and the other great powers are the empires of Russia and Germany.
Film
- The One is a cross between this and Conservation of Ninjitsu. The villain is traveling around to the various universes killing all the alternate versions of himself so he'll have all the power that would otherwise be spread out between them. Since the hero is one of the alternates, he winds up with bigger and bigger slices of the power pie as well, making for a battle royale when it's down to just the two of them.
Literature
- The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz was loosely translated into Russian. The translator modified the story as he as saw fit. When the story became popular, he wrote series of books based on his translation of the first Oz book. Those books went in a different direction than the Oz books written by Baum, effectively making an alternate Oz universe.
- Anti-Ice by Stephen Baxter, in which the discovery of an Applied Phlebotinum with properties similar to anti-matter dramatically accelerates the Industrial Age. The book begins with the Crimean War ending with the destruction of Sevastopol by a single anti-ice shell, and includes a Jules Verne-like trip to the Moon.
- In Teresa Edgerton's Celydonn trilogy, the Inner Celydonn plays this role to Celydonn proper, so that, for example, the version of Tir Gwyngelli known in traveller's tales really exists as the home of The Fair Folk.
- Robert A Heinlein's Number of the Beast and The Cat Who Walked Through Walls are based on this, exploring various fictional universes created not only by Heinlein but also others, especially Oz.
- The Wheel of Time: The Multiverse pretty much consists of these.
- Created by Hex the magic AI as an emergency dumping-ground for a thaumic overload, an orange-sized spherical universe is kept on Rincewind's desk at Discworld's Unseen University. Most of the UU faculty think this narrativium-deprived alternate reality is a silly waste of time; even so, the Archchancellor occasionally (= whenever a new Science of Discworld book is published) tasks his wizards to offset interlopers' tampering with the pocket universe's history. Silly or not, it is University property.
- "Roundworld" is, of course, our own universe.
- In Dragonlance, Raistlin succeeds in becoming a god and killing every other god as well as all life in Krynn. Then Caramon time travels back to prevent him from succeeding.
- The Myriad Universes Star Trek novels have the "for want of a nail" version of this trope.
- The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick contains an alternate 1960s California controlled by the Japanese after a defeat of the allies during WWII. There is mention of another alternate reality, apparently revealed to an author who writes a book about such an alternate in which the US does not lose WWII. This is slowly revealed not to be "our" alternate, but one dreamed up by the writer, and of no special significance. The book was written using the I-Ching as a guide to the character's actions.
Live Action TV
- Andromeda did several episodes exploring Alternate Universes in various ways: as a Near Death Experience, and as a result of one character's ability to view potential futures. The most noteworthy was "The Unconquerable Man", which was an entire Clip Show playing out events from the show's history with a different lead character.
- Birthdayverse in Angel
- The Wishverse in Buffy The Vampire Slayer (and the asylum-universe of "Normal Again")
- Not to mention the alternate universe without shrimp and the alternate universe comprised entirely of shrimp, which come up a few times (first mentioned by Anya in "Superstar", which itself mostly takes place in an alternate reality where Jonathan is the eponymous Marty Stu).
- Charmed employs a literal Mirror Universe, which could be accessed through a mirror.
- The mirror universe in the last episode of Red Dwarf uses the same joke.
- Lois And Clark had an Alternate Universe in which Lois was lost in a jungle and Clark had not made himself into Superman.
- "Ace" Rimmer (what a guy!) on Red Dwarf came from an Alternate Universe, and travelled between dimensions. The Red Dwarf crew themselves had previously travelled into an Alternate Universe in the episode "Parallel Universe". Some episodes have featured similar alternate versions of characters and events, but were a result of time travel rather than passing into another Universe (notably "Timeslides" and "Inquisitor").
- Nate experienced an Alternate Universe during a Near Death Experience in an episode of Six Feet Under.
- The series Sliders used this as its central premise.
- "Mirror, Mirror" in Star Trek — the mirror universe was used often in Star Trek Deep Space Nine.
- And the mirror universe provided the means for
arguably the best episode of Enterprise. Hooray for mirror Hoshi!!
- Star Trek Voyager didn't make use of the Mirror Universe, but in "Living Witness" a historian hundreds of years in Voyager's future has created a "historically accurate" holo-program depicting the crew as murderous thugs who started a war on his planet. It's up to the Emergency Medical Hologram (the only surviving witness) to put things right... which isn't easy, as he's being portrayed as a Mad Doctor. Star Trek The Next Generation also didn't have the mirror universe, although it did have alternate universe stories (as the term "mirror universe" in Star Trek refers specifically to that featured in The Original Series and Deep Space Nine).
- Was this Voyager episode made after the Babylon 5 episode in which a later Earth dictatorship reconstructs the Bab5 group and makes them into "goodfact" to support their policies?
- "Parallels" in Star Trek The Next Generation — "I do remember. I just remember it differently."
- Smallville had an interesting subversion: Clark wakes up in a mental asylum, and apparently he started having delusions of superdom in high school, and his "saving" of Lex in the first episode actually cost Lex his legs. Oh, and Chloe is a freaking nutcase. Of course, it didn't really happen, or something... this Troper can't really remember the end.
- He was trapped in the Phantom Zone. He escapes by killing (sort of) the Kryptonian that was keeping him captive there.
- He'd been attacked in his barn by an escaped prisoner from the Phantom Zone. It invaded his mind, and the asylum was a delusion it caused. John Jones (the Martian Manhunter) helped him escape by entering the illusion (as another inmate), and capturing the creature in Kryptonian crystal.
- In Seinfeld episode #137 "The Bizarro Jerry", Elaine is in a similar social circle where the Kramer equivalent is neat, George's is responsible, etc.
- Stargate SG-1 has had many different alternate universes. Oftentimes the "alternate" Sam Carter is not in the military and is engaged/married to the "alternate" Jack O'Neill. Alternately Daniel Jackson was never part of the Stargate programme. More often or not when this is used Earth is under imminent Gou'ald attack.
- Atlantis also does this, though the details vary, and the universes aren't usually quite the Crapsack World versions that SG-1 is fond of.
- VR.5's Missing Episode, "Parallel Lives" had Duncan wake up one morning to find himself in a universe where Sydney, rather than her sister, had died in a car crash years earlier (Of course, it eventually turned out that neither sister had actually died; both the car crash and the parallel universe were complex VR hoaxes. The episode was intended to test the viability of replacing the central character for the second season, a possibility which became moot when the series was not renewed.)
- A slightly different take on this was done in "Author Author" in Star Trek Voyager, in which the Doctor created a holodeck program peopled by altered vesions of the Voyager crew.
- Doctor Who:
- "Inferno" an alternate totalitarian Britain (branching off with the 'defence of the republic act, 1943'), which is in a still greater rush to get free power from tapping the magma of the Earth. It is destroyed, with the Doctor able to just avert the similar events happening a few hours later in his 'home' alternate. Not bad at all.
- "Rise of the Cybermen"/"Age of Steel" has the TARDIS fall through a crack in time and land in a universe where the Cybermen were being created on Earth. Mickey explicitly references how common the trope is in comics. This universe crossed over again in "Army of Ghosts"/"Doomsday" and its effects continued to be felt in Torchwood's "Cyberwoman" episode. And in the finale of Series 4 of Doctor Who.
- This universe is based on an audio adventure called 'Spare Parts' where the Davison Doctor visits Telos, a world where people are being saved by repalcement of defective parts... the past of all the original Doctor Who Cyberman stories.
- "The Satan Pit" had a variation, where "The Beast" claimed to be from the universe that existed before this one.
- Sci-fi series Lexx made this its staple. The first season of the show involved the characters jumping through an inter-universe rift twice, and in the second season once at the beginning, before the entire Light Zone was wiped out in the second Season Finale, forcing the Lexx (and a large amount of particle matter from the zone) to get forced back out into the other universe.
- Homaged in Mystery Science Theater 3000, "Last of the Wild Horses", where Dr. Forester and TV's Frank get to quip at the movie, and evil Mike and Bots watch on from Deep 13.
- An Alternate Universe is seen in the Supernatural episode "What Is And What Should Never Be", but it's really all in Dean's head and everything is his perception - He's an utter bastard, Mary's perfect, Sam's a bit wussy and his soulmatey girlfriend looks like the reaper from the premiere. In his fantasy, his mother Mary and Sam's girlfriend Jessica were never killed by Azazel, so the Winchester family live perfectly normal lives and his Dad died peacefully.
- Another Alternate Universe, or rather a series of them, pops up in the episode "Mystery Spot" thanks to a repeating time loop in which Dean keeps dying. The iteration before the final time loop lasts months instead of the standard day, resulting in a dark, isolated Sam.
- Most recently in the episode "It's a Terrible Life" where Dean is a Marketing Director for a firm and Sam is a techie in the same building with no memory of their hunter life beforehand apart from a few dreams. It's revealed that this was all a test from an angel to discover whether Dean would still revert back to his hunter ways being told it's in his blood and he will always find a way to be a hunter. This is also a play on the Wonderful Life trope.
- Kamen Rider Decade has a bunch of them created in-universe: considering that each Kamen Rider series is part of a multiverse, the distortions that are causing the worlds to merge into each other have also warped them into alternate universes of their canon selves. This is mainly used to justify the Jonas Quinns running around.
Tabletop Games
- TORG features several different dimensions/realities, each corresponding to a different genre (such as Aysle, a traditional world of Medieval European Fantasy; the Cyberpapacy, a Cyber Punk world run by a Corrupt Church; the Space Opera-influenced dimension of the Space Gods; Orrorsh, a Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror Story in a Heart of Darkness style British colonial jungle setting; the Nile Empire, a world of Pulp Action Adventure; the Living Land, with sentient dinosaurs; and others), all cooperating to invade Earth.
- Part of what made TORG such an interesting game is that it was based on distinctly different rules for how reality worked, depending on the context of the home dimension. The Nile Empire, for example, had no room for moral ambiguities: every character was either Good or Evil, though they could change from one to the other under the right circumstances. Characters could engage in literal 'reality duels' with opponents from different dimensions, and the High Lords could do the same with entire areas of real estate.
- The GURPS Infinite Worlds setting involves the PCs as agents travelling through alternate universes. Officially all GURPS settings are universes within the Infinite Worlds. This includes assorted Alternate Histories (GURPS Technomancer, GURPS Reign of Steel), several universes where All Myths Are True (GURPS Camelot, GURPS Atlantis) and even universes inexplicably modeled on the popular fiction of the baseline universe (GURPS Conan, GURPS Discworld)!
- The enemy timline in Infinite Worlds is Centrum, a scientific state that wants what is best for all, and for this to continue (discovering where this one branched off is a suprise)... others in the Alternate Worlds books have included Tesla, where that fellow's inventions became the dominating science; Excalli, where the dominant empire is an Aztec-dived one; Roma Aeterna, where the Empire of Rome simply carried on, with the adoption of science; an alternate where China continued to trade overseas; and the usual 'Nazis triumphant' parallel.
- The two Dungeons And Dragons campaign settings of Greyhawk and Mystara are both alternate universes to Earth and each other, though this is rarely referenced in game materials and comes mostly from Word Of God.
- Greyhawk exists in a Multiverse (along with Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms), but it's not made up of alternate universes. Rather, it's the term used for the system of heavens and hells, elemental planes, the Astral Plane, and so on; the different campaign settings are planets in the same universe.
- The entry for 1357 DR in The Grand History of the Realms notes that in that year, on an alternate Material Plane world known as Earth, Ed of the Greenwood gathered together various books and maps given to him by Elminster of Shadowdale, and made the first publication of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting.
- Mystara somehow exists in a different multiversal set-up from the other campaign settings. In addition to Earth, it also crossed over with another universe with futuristic technology; a starship from that universe crashed on Mystara and its radioactive engine became a major source of arcane power.
- The point here is that, unlike most other official Dungeons And Dragons settings, Mystara and Greyhawk share background elements pulled from early games (such as the aformentioned starship crash, the Barony of Blackmoor, and connections to Earth), but in slightly different formats.
- What of the 'Blackmoor devices' that caused the previous civilisation to fall?
- Urban Arcana's worlds on the other side of Shadow could be this, but the nature of Shadow makes travel between universes... tricky. As in, 'you can't go back'. One of the adventures includes a character from the other side that have figured out how you can travel between the Earth of UA and his world. This character, and his organisation, also appeared in Planescape...
Video Games
- The Super Robot Wars games are set in an Alternate universes for each of the series portrayed in it(the alternate, of course, being that they're all happening at the same time in the same place). Each game or series is, additionally, an alternate universe from each other. Then there is the Original Generation universe, which contains all the original characters and mecha from the other games and then some, which also has its own Mirror Universe, the Shadow-Mirror universe, which is itself the Original Generation version of the Shadow-Mirror universe from Super Robot Wars Advance. Confused yet? We haven't even gotten to the Endless Frontier!
- Nearly every character from Kingdom Hearts is an alternate version of his/her Disney or Final Fantasy counterpart (otherwise the game would run into some serious continuity problems). This is implicitly stated in the Tron world.
- The two Sonic Rush games feature a parallel universe.
- Technically, the entire plot of the Subspace Emissary hints that the Super Smash Bros series takes place in an alternate reality where various video game characters fight and exist as trophies.
- Kirby and the Amazing Mirror takes place in another literal mirror universe (akin to the Charmed and Red Dwarf ones above), parallel to Dreamland and containing mirror versions of Meta Knight and Kirby.
- In Tsukihime and the Nasuverse, Alternate Universes are pretty much canon. As such, that means there may be at least five separate continuities for Tsukihime, and three for Fate/Stay Night, not to mention all the bad endings. Which ending the sequels use varies quite a bit.
- Chrono Cross had alternate universes replacing time travel as the main hook.
- The Mega Man series has two universes: the main one (Classic, X, Zero, ZX and Legends), and the alternate one (Battle Network and Star Force). The difference between these two timelines is that the latter has internet technology prosper instead of robotics (as was the case in the former).
- The World Ends With You has Another Day. This takes place in a world where Neku and his friends never died Shuto is The Hero with Neku as The Lancer. Tin Pin Slammer is Serious Business Eri's parents decided to call her Shiki for some reason, and Neku is less emo.
Web Animation
- The 150th Strong Bad Email had Strong Bad visiting many of the website's alternate universes.
Web Comics
Web Original
- Tasakeru takes place in an alternate universe where humans have never existed.
Western Animation
- "Life, the Negaverse, and Everything" in Darkwing Duck — a mirror universe set up to explain the origin of Negaduck. (not to be confused with the self-proclaimed Negaduck whom Megavolt accidentally created in another episode by dividing Darkwing into good and evil clones) The portal to the Negaverse was lost at the end of this episode, in a traditional Status Quo Is God ending.
- Futurama had lots of fun with this trope in "The Farnsworth Parabox". In an earlier episode, Fry goes to the edge of the universe, and sees alternate versions of himself and his friends (all of whom are wearing cowboy hats).
Fry: So it's true, there is an infinite number of universes.
Professor Hubert Farnsworth: No, just the two.
Fry: Oh, well. I guess that's enough.
- The What-If scenarios shown in the two "Anthology of Interest" episodes could also be seen as taking place in alternate universes.
- There was also an episode where an alternate universe was inside a box. The other world was exactly the same, bar the outcome of coin tosses.
- In this same episode, there are many boxes, each containing an Alternate Universe within.
- Justice League had several — the retro-styled world of the Justice Guild, the dark dystopia of the Justice Lords, the Vandal Savage-ruled world created through time travel, and others.
- Notably, the Justice Lords Universe depicted Arkham Asylum, and Gotham City for that matter, as very bright, Metropolis-esque places, in one of the few instances of the city being shown during the day.
- Superman The Animated Series also featured a universe where Lois died, prompting Superman to team up with Luthor and take over Metropolis.
- The various incarnations of the Transformers franchise have done this quite a bit, with alternate timelines galore.
- Perhaps most notably is "Shattered Glass", the 2008 Bot Con event featuring heroic Decepticons and evil Autobots. With goatees. And eyepatches.
- Bionicle has the Olmak, also called the Mask of Dimensional Gates. Does exactly that. Its wearer, Brutaka, has used it both to teleport and to send enemies to a dimension they probably won't return from. He tried to send his former friend Axonn into the Zone of Darkness (a pitch-black dimension with only flat, featureless plain with gravity), and also used his (now damaged) mask to teleport Takanuva to Karda Nui to warn the heroes of a great danger. However, the mask malfunctioned, and sent Takanuva into both Alternate History and a Bizarro Universe. After finally finding the Olmak of that universe, Takanuva entered inter-dimensional space and got to his intended destination. This is a Multiverse with a twist, as "our" dimension is explicitly called "the real universe", the rest are only pocket dimensions that shows how things would've turned out if they were done differently. Brutaka's mask was destroyed eventually, but the lunatic villain Vezon managed to get his hands on another one... and it ended up fusing to his face. Now he is a living dimensional gate, and has already visited several other universes. Let us hope he wouldn't learn to control his new powers too soon...
- Survival Of The Fittest has had several small-scale AU RPs. These range from simple 'What-If' scenarios (What If the students had been rescued on Day 3, What If SOTF really was a TV show, etc) to radically different concepts such as Mech SOTF and SOTF with zombies.
- In an episode of Rugrats, Tommy and Chuckie think they're in a "Mirrorland."
- An episode of GI Joe featured a timeline where Cobra had succeeded in taking over the world.
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