The Multiverse / Video Games

• Abyss Crossing: The setting contains multiple worlds, and the out-of-control Astras in the True World are causing monsters to appear in the other worlds. Additionally, the True World is a typical JRPG fantasy world while modern Earth-like world is a non-true world.
• Anachronox takes place in one universe but deals with the universe before this one and the universe after this one; if there was a second game, we would have gone to the former. Plot: In the next universe, two forces — "Chaos" and "Order" — are pitted against one another for survival. Order managed to trapped Chaos in this universe. Chaos is trying to find a natural doorway into the previous universe where it seeks to destroy this universe and the next universe, and Order in the process.
• BioShock Infinite:
  • Elizabeth is able to open "tears" in the fabric of reality, which are open windows to parallel realities. One example is a 1980s street in front of a cinema where Revenge of the Jedi is played.
  • In the ending, it's shown there is an infinite amount of different dimensions, each of them being linked by the fact of having a man (Booker, Jack), a lighthouse and a city (Rapture, Columbia).
  • One of the Elizabeths in the ending is the beta model used in the early gameplay demos. This means that all of the Dummied Out content like Saltonstall and the incidents like saving the mailman from the Vox Populi could be a sort of quasi-canon, taking place in alternate versions of Columbia with alternate Bookers.
• Past a certain point in the game, it is quickly discovered that this is the case in Bravely Default. At the start of Chapter 5, the heroes initially think they're in a "Groundhog Day" Loop, but discount this theory as more and more discrepancies arise thanks to differences in each individual world. The final boss, prior to the final phase of the fight, starts eating other worlds to heal the damage the heroes are doing to him, taunting them that to keep fighting him is to doom entire worlds to extinction... and that's when their alternate selves on every world all attack him at once, weakening him to the point that your group can finish him off!
• The Capcom heroes reside in Capcom World, possibly explaining how there can be so many cameos and crossovers from completely different settings.
• City of Heroes:
  • Portal Corp., a company dedicated to exploring other dimensions. There are several individual missions and arcs where you get to deal with hostile other-dimensional entities, either after they've entered Paragon or at their source. The current state of the City of Adventure can be traced back to a massive invasion from Another Dimension.
  • One such alternate dimension, Praetoria, is the focus of the latest expansion, Going Rogue, which fleshes out that dimension beyond Crapsack World Mirror Universe by adding moral complexity and considerably more shades of grey.
• Eternal Darkness: After beating the game under all three ancients you find out that the other ancients (the ones that you beat in the previous two playthroughs) were killed by the main character's counterparts in other, parallel universes. Mantorok then overlaps the three realities, killing all three ancients concurrently and leaving the universe free of them forever.
• Final Fantasy in general is strongly hinted to take place in a multiverse, with each game (barring a couple exceptions like direct sequels that take place in the same world or, in the case of the implied connection between Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy X via Shinra in X-2, a Distant Sequel on another planet) taking place in parallel universes. It hasn't been officially confirmed, but every Final Fantasy game has its own version of Cid, Biggs, Wedge, Chocobos, summons (Ifrit, Leviathan, Bahamut, etc.), and the worlds they take place in seem to be similar, and yet different at the same time.
  • Though not officially stated, the Rift from Final Fantasy V seems to be a wall separating all the various universes of the Final Fantasy games. Only Gilgamesh has been shown to be able to get around it freely so far. After his banishment there by Exdeath, and his subsequent Heroic Sacrifice against Necrophobe, he sets off on a quest to collect rare weapons, appearing in the worlds of Final Fantasies I (both the remake and an alternate universe/possible prequel), IV (sequel), VI (remake), VII (in the second part of the Remake trilogy), VIII, IX, XII, and XIV. At some point, he also manages to find his way into the conflict between the gods Cosmos and Chaos, and is overjoyed to find Bartz there, having been itching to get a rematch against him. Unfortunately, Bartz has only the faintest of memories of his home world in this continuity, making ol' Gilgamesh an Unknown Rival to him. And if the DLC battles in Final Fantasy XIII-2 are any indication, the Rift also seems to connect to realms outside of these worlds' regular planes of existence, as Gilgamesh is summoned to the Coliseum at the Void Beyond.
  • As attested by Dissidia Final Fantasy and Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, the Lufenians of the original game — or at least some of them — became a trans-dimensional race, setting off the events of those particular games in some fashion. According to Stranger of Paradise, most of the locales seen in FFI are in fact based on places from other dimensions the Lufenians had been observing and studying (the numbered installments up to Final Fantasy XV), retroactively implying their presence in the background of multiple other games.
  • Hydaelyn, the world of Final Fantasy XIV, seems to be a veritable hotspot for wanderers through the multiverse to wind up; so far we have Gilgamesh (naturally), Ultros and Typhon, Lightning, Shantotto, Brick Golems, various Yokai, Iroha, Noctis, and Clive. For the most part, they have no actual bearing on the plot and may not be canon, but Iroha at least seems to be sticking around instead of returning to her non-existent alternate timeline on Vana'diel, while Gilgamesh, Ultros, and Typhon are not part of crossover events and instead are recurring characters in side story content.
    • That said, these events often are quasi-canon to the other side of the crossover. Lightning is sent to Hydaelyn to train and in Lightning Returns she can find a Miqo'te's tradional outfit as well as weaponry branded with the seals of the Grand Companies. Noctis's crossover actually begins in his world where a Miqo'te woman, Y'jhimei, travels to Eos and accidentally brings along a group of Ixali who summon the XIV version of Garuda, forcing Noctis and Co. to stop her. At the end of the fight, the XV version of Garuda appears and finishes her off, and in the confusion the two of them disappear. This is where the other side begins and Noctis teams up with the Warrior of Light to defeat the rampaging XV Garuda, before returning home where the new Garuda joins him as one of his summons.
    • The multiverse actually plays a massive role in the expansion Shadowbringers. The world of Hydaelyn, as players knew it up to this point, is actually The Source, the location of a single whole world before the battle between the summoned gods Hydaelyn and Zodiark split it and its inhabitants into fourteen parallel dimensions, including the Source. Shadowbringers itself takes place in the First, one of these parallel dimensions. The region of Norvrandt, where the expansion takes place, is analogous to Eorzea, the primary setting of most of the game's story, and its people are the same as those found in the Source, albeit with the history of the First playing out in a different way from the Source, leading to different names for the races of the First (Elves in the First vs. Elezen in the Source, for example) and even different cultural norms (the Dwarves of the First are considered a beast tribe, even though they are practically the exact same people as the Lalafell of the Source).
  • The Interdimensional Rift from V also makes an appearance in XIV. It is where Omega ends up following its battle with Shinryu. It resides here to perform experiments to determine the ultimate life form and defeat it itself to gain an insight into the innate strength of life. While it's clear that the beings the player faces there (such as Exdeath, Chaos, and Kefka) are created by Omega, it's purposely vague about whether said beings are based on real beings from other worlds or based on old myths Omega has encountered (or both).
  • Even locations seem to have alternate versions as the two Crystal Towers of Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy XIV show.
• Fire Emblem:
  • It was thought that the different 'verses all took place on separate worlds (the Archanea and Jugdral games and Gaiden aside), until Fire Emblem: Awakening came along and introduced the concept of the Outrealm Gates linking different worlds together. In fact, it's also implied (particularly in Awakening's "The Future Past" DLC) that the Time Travel present in Awakening's main plot isn't really so much time traveling as much as it is dimension hopping, further implying that every single playthrough of each game is equally canon.
  • Taken even further with Fire Emblem Heroes since the game's setting, is not only connected to every single Fire Emblem universe known so far, from Archanea to Fódlan and even to Elyos and a version of Tokyo, it also doubles down on the idea of there being infinite timelines. The explanation of why a player can have multiple versions of the same character, not just as different alts of the character, but multiples of the same unit, is because each unit is summoned from an alternate universe. Not only that, but the game also has its own universe known as The Nine Realms.
  • Likewise, the aforementioned Outrealm Gate is implied to be how various characters from the mainline titles get pulled into the world of Fire Emblem Warriors (with the female Corrin apparently having taken a path separate from the three provided in Fire Emblem Fates), while the Original Generation cast of Fire Emblem Cipher would become Canon Immigrants in DLC chapters for Gaiden's remake, Shadows of Valentia. And if that wasn't enough, Fates made it so that, via Canon Welding, Super Smash Bros. also exists as part of the greater Fire Emblem multiverse.
• I=MGCM uses this as one of its major story and gameplay premises. The enemy demons originate from Demon Realm (a distant home dimension), and they enter the universes through fluxes to eat humans' existences, resulting in the victims being Ret-Gone. These fluxes and portals are created by organisms from Demon Realm and Witches' dimension-hopping effect, which allows the demons to travel into other universes. The fluxes also cause some abnormalities between alternate universes, such as getting teleported into an alternate universe unwillingly, etc. Anyways, the infinite number of parallel worlds and alternate selves already exist before the game starts. Tobio and the heroines also meet their own alternate selves and evil doppelgangers from other alternate universes. A number of demons the heroines fight are slain and corrupted heroines' alternate selves from several parallel worlds, these include ones from the protagonist's party.
• Injustice 2 features the multiverse, both as a story element and gameplay feature.
  • In the story, Doctor Fate had saved Black Canary from being killed by the Regime by transporting her into an alternate dimension, where she met and eventually married a version of Green Arrow whose own universe's version of Black Canary had died.
  • The multiverse is featured as a gameplay mode, presented as Batman's "Brother Eye" surveillance network monitoring dimensional anomalies created in the wake of Batman having summoned an alternate universe's heroes in the previous game. In a similar vein to the Living Towers of Mortal Kombat X, parallel Earths in this game's Multiverse mode change from hour by hour, day by day, and week by week, offering different rewards for saving them. The game's resident Ladder Mode is said to take place in a dimension that is stuck in a Stable Time Loop, justifying its Multiple Endings for each character.
• According to Word of God, there are at least three timelines in the The Legend of Zelda series, starting in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The Adult Timeline has Link defeating Ganondorf and returning to the past. The Child Timeline begins when Link completes this trip, allowing him to prevent Ganondorf from coming to power. The Fallen Hero timeline was created by an alternate version of Link losing to Ganondorf. Hyrule Warriors features a fourth timeline, where Cia opens portals to the other timelines. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is revealed to be a timeline where the Great Calamity is prevented.
• Makai Kingdom introduced the multiverse concept for the various netherworlds and non-netherworlds introduced by prior Nippon Ichi games (prime amongst them Disgaea).
• Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam reveals that the Paper Mario games take place in an alternate universe from the Mario & Luigi games (and possibly the rest of the Mario franchise by extension), accessible through a book in Peach's Castle.
• The Myst franchise is concerned with "the Art," a way of Rewriting Reality that uses Linking Books to explore other worlds, called Ages. Once a Linking Book to a given Age is established, you can only make careful modifications to its text — change too much, and the link will take you to a similar but different Age whose natives won't recognize you, assuming the whole place doesn't collapse from the contradictions you introduced. The D'ni thought of the Art as exploring a "great tree of possibilities," sort of like a multiversal search engine where describing something in sufficient detail allows you to reach it, but some D'ni let this power go to their heads and insisted that they were creating worlds and set themselves up as gods over their Ages' indigenous peoples.
• The Multiverse, one of the largest Multi-User Dungeons in existence, with thousands of pages of content dating back to 2006 (if not earlier), takes place in a multiversal setting which inspires much of the content.
• The Nameless Mod mentions that other forum cities exist, and that travel between them is possible. Apparently a Planet Diablo merchant is responsible for the mana potions (that can only be used by a single unique weapon of plot importance) being in the game.
• Neptunia has so far taken place in several alternate dimensions in the mainline games: The retgone'd first game's dimension, the current canon "Hyperdimension" used in Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2; Victory, and Megadimension Neptunia VII; the Ultradimension featured in Victory; and finally the two new dimensions featured in V II called the Zero and Heart Dimensions for a total of five. And that's not even getting to the remakes, the spinoffs, the manga, and the anime.
• The Nicktoons Unite! series. The world of every Nicktoon show is actually a dimension in the Nicktoon multiverse.
• Pokémon:
  • Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire confirms in the Delta Episode that, at the very least, the mainline games exist within their own multiverse. This game specifically has Zinnia discuss two different realities: their own timeline and one where Mega Evolution was never discovered (as a result of AZ's ultimate weapon not firing three millennia prior), which is the universe where the original Pokémon games up to Black 2 and White 2 take place.
  • Pokémon Sun and Moon goes a step further in its own post-game subplot. There, Salon Maiden Anabel from Emerald appears in an extensive role, only it's heavily implied she's the original timeline incarnation of said character, not the Mega Timeline's Anabel. She's established to be a "Faller", a person who has inadvertently traveled through an Ultra Wormhole due to emitting a strange energy that attracts Ultra Beasts, extradimensional Pokémon hailing from Ultra Space, coming out the other side now stuck in this new dimension and with few memories of her previous life. While not through the same exact methods, a number of characters in following games (including the player character themselves) also end up having their own amensia-inducing trips through space-time that gets them stranded in other universes or time periods.
  • Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon established the infinite multiverse by having its post-game revolve around Team Rainbow Rocket, a Legion of Doom of every previous antagonist in the series and led by Giovanni, with said villains hailing from alternate worlds where the Big Bads won due to their respective player characters not even existing to oppose them.
• In the Perpetual Testing Initiative DLC for Portal 2, this is the Excuse Plot. Since Aperture Science is bankrupt, all test chamber construction has been outsourced to Apertures in other universes, which is then tested in and stolen back. The DLC comes with new Cave Johnson audio that gives us such gems as Space Prison Warden!Cave, Dark!Cave, and Hobo!Cave as well as a universe filled up entirely with money. Two of them, in fact.
• In the Ratchet & Clank games, this comes up several times as a central story mechanic. This is almost always paired with a machine called the Dimensionator, which can act as a sort of "dimensional search engine" and open up portals to them.
  • Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction has the all-knowing (for the most part) IRIS Supercomputer, who mentions that existence is divided into infinite dimensions. This game is also the debut of the aforementioned Dimensionator.
  • Ratchet & Clank (2010) delves into how the Dimensionator works via the Surinox Shard, which is used to once again defeat the bad guy of the week.
  • Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus features the Netherverse, which feels alien even among the space opera setting of Ratchet & Clank.
  • Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart fulfills the trope more traditionally, featuring a dimension with alternate versions of most of the main cast, including Ratchet and Dr. Nefarious. It's the first time that another dimension is fully explored rather than glimpsed at.
• Sacred Earth Series: The setting consists of several worlds, one of which includes the floating continent of Miltiades. Unfortunately, the events of Sacred Earth - Alternative caused a Celestial Tree to spawn, threatening the stability of all worlds.
• Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne shows that there are various Shin Megami Tensei continuities that are connected through the Amala Universe. A scene in Devil Summoner, which happens after the protagonist is killed by the Big Bad Sid Davis, shows that there are multiple, possible infinite or uncountably infinite universes or maybe even multiverses that exist separately from the Amala Universe. Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army and Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon show the existence of the Akarana Corridor, a tunnel linking several times and realities, further confirmed in Soul Hackers. The Yamato Perpetual Reactor in Shin Megami Tensei IV links at least three parallel worlds (Firmament Tokyo, Blasted Tokyo, Infernal Tokyo) together through the Reactor Room in Camp Ichigaya. It is also speculated by fans that the multiverse in the Last Bible spin-off series is also different from the other ones, and that Persona 3, Persona 4 and Persona 5 are situated in another multiverse, though this has been debated.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake has the Jellyverse which has opened due to Neptune's royal jelly, which has 7 wish worlds. Those being Wild West Jellyfish Fields, Karate Downtown Bikini Bottom, Pirate Goo Lagoon, Halloween Rock Bottom, Prehistoric Kelp Forest, Medieval Sulfur Fields, and Jelly Glove World.
• The multiverse is a key point to Suikoden Tierkreis, though the player/lead PC only technically ever gets to see one (the reason why is also a plot point).
• Super Paper Mario has this as the plot. Seeing as an Omnicidal Maniac is walking about with a dark book has the future written in it with the way how to end all of existence, Mario ends at a interdimensional crossroads to collect the Pure Hearts.
• This trope is a major plot point in Super Robot Wars: Original Generation, with the revelation that the character Gilliam Yeagar is the same character from Hero Senki: Project Olympus, having made his way into multiple Alternate Universes to get back to the world of Elpis in Hero Senki, following its events there. The Big Bad in Original Generation Gaiden is implied to be the same Big Bad of The Great Battle series, as well as the creator of Duminuss, the Big Bad of Super Robot Wars Reversal.
  • Just to give you a clear idea on the "Banpresto Multiverse," Original Generation is effectively tied into the events of the "Classic Timeline", The Great Battle series, Super Robot Wars Alpha, Super Hero Sakusen, Reversal, Endless Frontier and Another Century's Episode R. Due to the crossover nature of Endless Frontier into Namco × Capcom and Project × Zone, this implies the multiverse of Super Robot Wars can potentially be one of the largest in fiction.
  • Super Robot Wars Z uses this via a Space-Time Oscillation Bomb that brings in multiple universes and groups them into one (think Super Robot Wars meets Crisis on Infinite Earths). Central to Z are the mysterious artifacts called "Spheres" which allow its holder to travel and summon people between dimensions. The Big Bad even summon multiple versions of himself from different dimensions to aid him in the last battle.
• Touhou Project involves quite a bit of world-hopping. Based upon a relatively Buddhist notion of the universe, like the Nippon Ichi example above, with multiple hells (Jigoku) and netherworlds (Makai), it gives the heroines plenty of reason to go To Hell and Back. This seems to have been more frequent earlier on in the series, when there weren't as many characters, and Gensokyo wasn't as fleshed out. Gensokyo itself seems to be a semi-self-contained world kept vaguely apart from the real/outside world by the Great Hakurei Barrier, in spite of being physically built in Japan. Alternate worlds the heroines may visit include:
  • In the original game, Highly Responsive To Prayers, Reimu has to close an open portal to Jigoku / Hell.
  • Phantasmagoria of Dim.Dream features "scientists" who visit Gensokyo from an alternate dimension in order to "study danmaku" using a "probability hyperdrive vessel".
  • Lotus Land Story has Reimu and Marisa competing to fight their way into the world of dreams, where Kazami Yuuka resides. Reimu and Marisa also visit another dimension that isn't very well explained in the extra stage, just to beat up the creators for no reason at all.
  • Mystic Square features the heroine of the player's choosing invading Makai, the world of demons.
  • Perfect Cherry Blossom features the Netherworld, and Hakugyokuro, land of restless spirits, and effective equivalent of Purgatory. It also has the legendary lost land of Mayohiga, home of the Yakumos.
    • Yukari Yakumo, a Reality Warper, deserves special mention, as her power of "Borders" allows her to generate portals to any other location or dimension she can conceive of. She can even seemingly create new dimensions, by manipulating the boundary between fantasy and reality, and so make a dream or thought into a real dimension, and then open a portal to it. Needless to say, this makes her a Physical God for all intents and purposes.
  • Imperishable Night has... the Moon. Turns out, there's an extremely different world underneath all that barrenness — a highly advanced civilization hiding itself from the "impurities" of the Earth. Revisiting the Moon also becomes the objective in Silent Sinner in Blue.
  • Phantasmagoria of Flower View has the Sanzu no Kawa, a mythical, River Styx-like river that separates the land of the living from Higan, the land where the dead wait for their judgment, and, as a result, can wind up in Heaven, Hell, or get reincarnated.
  • Subterranean Animism has the Hell of Blazing Fires lying in the cave networks beneath Gensokyo and the Earth in general, presumably in some sort of vague pocket dimension in the Earth's mantle that only appears in Gensokyo version Earth.
  • Undefined Fantastic Object has Makai (although some debate as to whether it is the same Makai from before, there's some evidence that it is.) Byakuren was sealed within Makai for trying to unite humans and youkai (and getting hordes of racists on her ass), but is released thanks to the result of her followers' actions.
  • Wily Beast and Weakest Creature has Hell (the one accessible via Higan) and the Animal Realm.
  • Fan game Touhou LostWord has this as its premise. The characters travel between universes to prevent them from collapsing.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links contains various playable worlds representing each individual series in the overarching Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise, including the original manga, the Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions movie and all of the subsequent anime spinoffs. While initially presented as simple Gameplay and Story Segregation, later story events for each of the series makes it clear that Duel Links (the program that Kaiba invented as a virtual reality for Dueling) has somehow metaphysically connected these distinct universes to each other, although the "how" and "why" remain a major mystery (that primarily concerns the Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS cast).

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