Web Animation / Alternate History Hub

Sit down, Jimmy.

An entire channel dedicated to the "What If?". Using knowledge of geography, population and other historical facts I predict what could have happened had things gone differently in history.

— Official channel description

Alternate History Hub is, as the quote suggests, a YouTube channel created by Cody Franklin that is dedicated to Alternate History scenarios. In addition, Cody makes videos discussing the lore of popular franchises like Fallout or The Man in the High Castle and what would happen if various pop culture scenarios would happen in real life. Another feature is his "Contro-History" videos, which takes the Alternate History approach to various controversial subjects.

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Tropes appearing in this channel include:

• Alternate History: The main theme of the channel.
• Alternate-History Dinosaur Survival: In "What if Dinosaurs Never Went Extinct?", the asteroid that caused the K-T extinction event never hit the Earth. As a result, dinosaurs remained the dominant species and continued to evolve and survive into the present day. Flightless birds like ostriches never evolve due to the immense competition from other dinosaurs, and mammals never diversified to the extent they did in the original timeline. As a result, humans don't exist, and in the incredibly unlikely scenario a species of dinosaur did become sapient, it wouldn't have the traditional "dinosauroid" body plan as often suggested.
• Alternate-History Nazi Victory: The four-part "What if Germany Won World War II?" goes in-depth about how a Nazi victory would shape society going into the 20th century. The broad strokes include a puppet government being formed in Britain à la Vichy France, a massive genocide of the Slavic people that dwarfs the Holocaust, suppression of Catholicism, and growing tensions between the Nazis and Fascist Italy. America's relationship with Nazi Germany goes down many different possible paths, ranging from budding diplomatic ties, a potential Cold War, to full-on mutually-assured destruction. Overall, the greatest influence of an Axis victory is the solidification of fascism as a legitimate ideology on the global scale.
• Alternate Techline: Posits that if the internet never happened, the main driving force in computer tech would be portable storage, since there'd be no way to download data. Also, modern cellphones would more closely resemble mini-laptops, as the lack of web pages to browse would make touchscreens unnecessary.
• America Is Still a Colony: In "What if the United States Never Existed?", America ends up losing the War of Independence thanks to the French government refusing to support the colonies in their war against the British. As a result, the United States never extends beyond the original Thirteen Colonies, the east of the Mississippi River is controlled by Quebec and native tribes, the British Empire focuses on expanding their territory in the Americas, the French Revolution is delayed making Napoleon's rise impossible, and the history of Europe drastically changes going into the 20th century.
• Analogy Backfire: Invoked for laughs in What If Britain Never Conquered India, where he discusses the high likelihood of the Maratha Confederacy dissolving into various independent states. He notes that this doesn't mean chaotic instability and constant warfare, just that it would be like Europe...
  Cody: Okay, so maybe there would be some warfare.
• Ancient Astronauts: Brought up in a video covering (and mercilessly lampooning) Ancient Aliens. Cody explains that he dislikes this idea since it implies that humanity has had zero agency throughout its entire existence, and promptly tears apart the concept by expressing that as much as it likes to ramble on about how various events in The Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, and other religious texts are supposedly "misinterpretations" of alien activity, Ancient Aliens is just as much a religion as any other because of this.
• April Fools' Day: Has done a few videos for the day:
  • What if Youtube Destroyed Us All?, which portrays YouTube and other major web sites as powerful gods and YouTube coming down to destroy all of humanity.
  • What if Trump Was Never Elected President?, which is about the obvious alternative winner... Jeb Bush becoming president, and goes increasingly off the rails as it turns into Warhammer 40,000.
  • Downplayed for the The History of the World According to 'Ancient Aliens', which is a mostly serious and scathing analysis of the wacky nature of the memetic show and its underlying ideology. Though his collab partner Knowing Better plays the trope straight as a Tsoukalos parody who unironically believes in the concept.
  • Subverted: "What if Big Bird Exploded in the Challenger Disaster?" was meant to be this, as Cody originally wanted to just look at how absurd the idea in and of itself was. But then he started researching the disaster itself, and wound up falling down a rabbit hole that pushed the video back a month.
• Atlantis: The topic of What if Atlantis Was Real? In this timeline, the Atlantean empire forms on a continent in the middle of the Atlantic a thousand years before the rest of humanity even develops agriculture. They rule the Atlantic world, setting up colonies and expelling the natives, inevitably butterflying away the existence of people like the Spanish, British, Italians, and Polish. After Atlantis is destroyed by an earthquake and tsunami, the empire collapses, but the culture it leaves behind forms the basis for many in their former lands.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • The video exploring what would happen if Trump never became President has the winner not be Clinton or another Democrat, but instead have Jeb Bush win, with Jeb Bush uniting Earth to then become the God Emperor of Man. Jeb then gets betrayed by his loyal servant Ben Shapiro and after defeating Shapiro with great cost to himself, Jeb sits on the golden throne and is sustained by thousands of clappers. It was April Fools.
  • At first, it seems like "What if Nixon Was Never President?" is about to go down a well-tread path: Hubert Humphrey winning the 1968 election instead of Richard Nixon. Cody then proceeds to admit what the video is actually about: Robert F. Kennedy surviving his assassination attempt.
    Cody: So, I apologize that the video title is a little bit of a lie, because this scenario is really asking the question "What if Nixon was never president because Bobby Kennedy was never shot?"
  • "What if Big Bird Exploded in the Challenger Disaster?" was, per Cody's admission, originally meant to be an April Fools' Day video tackling the absurdity of the hypothetical. But after spending too much time researching the circumstances leading up to the disaster itself, Cody winds up reaching an alternate conclusion by the end of the video. Namely, if they managed to get Big Bird to take part in Challenger, the launch would've been pushed back, and the shuttle wouldn't have exploded.
• Biting-the-Hand Humor:
  • In a video sponsored by the The Purge TV show, Cody deconstructs and explains why the Purge will never happen in Real Life.
  • He does this again in another video on why the Earth won't have the tech and manpower to fight the aliens after the events of Independence Day, sponsored by the Independence Day: Resurgence mobile game.
• Black-and-Grey Morality: In one scenario, Cody explores what would have happened if Leon Trotsky had come to power after Lenin's death instead of Joseph Stalin. He points out that while Stalin and his policies were certainly terrible, Leon Trotsky was also a fanatic willing to kill for communist ideology. Cody concludes Leon Trotsky would have led the Soviet Union down that path of jingoism by spreading communist ideology everywhere through military action, potentially even triggering World War II by scaring the hell out of the West and legitimizing the fears stoked by the Nazis.
  Nazi sign: The Bolshevik Jews are going to invade us!
  Caption: *Bolshevik Jew invades*
• Blah, Blah, Blah: In his video on swords, he mentions that the invention of the printing press caused the spread of books teaching sword-fighting skills. He shows an image of a book that has "Blah blah blah" on it with pictures of sword stuff.
• Butterfly of Doom: Most of Cody's videos change one specific thing and see what happens. Frequently, this results in wide-ranging effects:
  • What if Trotsky had taken control of the Soviet Union instead of Stalin? Possibly Trotsky starting World War II much earlier because of his much more insistent desire for violent revolution.
  • One of the most significant changes he talks about is in What if the Fourth Plane hit its target? (9/11) He brings up the fact that, the only reason we see the White House and the Capitol Building today, both possible targets, is because Flight 93's takeoff was delayed by 40 minutes.
  • What if the Soviets Never Invaded Afghanistan? Cody proposes that even if the communist revolution in Afghanistan was delayed by just a few years, such as 1985, Afghanistan is spared 40 years of war, Al Qaeda doesn't control the country, and a 9/11-style attack on the U.S. is highly unlikely. In our timeline, the Soviet politician who ordered the Soviets to invade Afghanistan died 2 years later. By 1985, Gorbachev would've been in power, and he never would've sent the military in.
  • In What if the Civil War Never Happened? Cody reveals if the Cotton Gin was never invented, cotton would be so labor intensive and expensive that many Southern Plantation owners would just either quit farming cotton to raise sheep instead and those that can still afford to grow cotton would free their slaves since it was cheaper to hire them, which would eventually made the Southern States abolish slavery as it would be economically unfeasible to continue the practice. Furthermore, without the massive wealth they got from cotton in the original timeline, the Southern Plantation owners wouldn't have the money and influence to convince Southern Politicians to continue the practice of Slavery. On the other hand, while Slavery would be abolished with no bloodshed, non-whites are still treated as Second class citizens since the Civil War help gave non-whites equal rights in the original timeline.
  • This plays a huge part in What if Napoleon Never Rose to Power? Cody pitches a scenario where Napoleon was exiled by the Revolutionary Directory before he could take political control. The resulting Butterfly Effect makes the world unrecognizable:
    • France is left rudderless. The easiest solution is that disenfranchised Catholics eventually rise up with the help of the Pope. But left bankrupt by years of corruption and repeated wars, France doesn't affect the world for a very long time.
    • The Napoleonic Code is never a thing, and law in Continental Europe remains closer to later feudal realities.
    • The Napoleonic Wars, and their resulting Coalitions, never happen. The lack of influence and motivation to restore the monarchy in France ironically accelerates liberalization in Continental Europe, though not quite in a revolutionary way.
    • The Congress of Vienna doesn't take place. Since Germany and Italy were not reorganized under Napoleon, their respective paths to unification are more difficult. Prussia is unable to easily control the unification of Germany. Italy doesn't unify at all. Even further down the line, this eliminates the collective motivations that led to both World Wars.
    • Because France didn't conquer Spain, the revolutions in Latin America are delayed for decades.
    • Because Napoleon didn't get Louisiana, it's not easily sold to the United States. Manifest Destiny becomes much harder to achieve as they have to either buy from, or battle, Spain to extend their territory across the continent. A Spanish-American War comes half a century earlier, while the U.S. Civil War is consequentially delayed a couple decades, becoming even more catastrophic with more modern weaponry the further it is delayed.
    • The 20th century, as a result, becomes completely impossible to predict, and Cody doesn't even try to describe what could happen beyond the 1890s.
  • In The Election That Ruined Everything (And If It Never Happened), Cody explores how Woodrow Wilson's presidency impacted (read: ruined) the 20th century and how history would've changed if America had instead elected Teddy Roosevelt in 1912, which they could've had he won the Republican nomination in 1912.
    • Unlike Wilson, Roosevelt was a bellicose person who sought to promote America on the world stage. Once World War I broke out, Roosevelt would've immediately brought America to war as soon as he could. An earlier entry into World War would mean that Germany would've been beaten by 1917. This also would've ensured Russia wins the war, possibly with the help of American aid, and thus it doesn't fall to the Bolshevik. This prevents Hitler's rise to power, since there would be no fear of communism that Hitler capitalized on..
    • Wilson promoted a paternalistic foreign policy agenda, known as Wilsonianism, in which America would intervene militarily in other nations to promote American interests while claiming it was for the "good" of others. The rise of communism led to America's foreign policy becoming Wilsonian. Woodrow Wilson's actions contributed to the Cold War and later the War on Terror.
    • The absence of communism means more pro-worker policies are implemented without a Red Scare disuadding people away from such legislation and Roosevelt as President could implement more progressive legislation in the aftermath of a successful American victory, like recall elections for judges and a national health care system.
  • What if Japan Had Converted to Christianity? downplays widespread shifts in history. In a scenario where a failure of Tokugawa to unite Japan enables Catholicism to take root, all it does within Japan is delay some of the internal conflicts of the OTL and change their motives. But Cody does see a possible scenario where Catholicism leads to the Latin alphabet more directly influencing the Japanese language—though via Portuguese instead of English. Japan potentially conquers and converts Korea sooner, and expands that mission further into the Orient. A Catholic Japan also allies more closely with the Portuguese and Spanish, and has more interest in the Spanish Philippines, leading to a complication to the Spanish-American War.
  • In What if the Muslims Kept Spain?, a re-telling of a previous timeline where the Reconquista didn't happen, preventing the rise of Navarre in particular butterflys away most of the rulers of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance; in all likelihood, the British isles and English language (if it survives) become a lot more French as a result. Cordoba would become one of the drivers of intellect in Europe. This also greatly mutes—if not totally averting—the Protestant Reformation, since many of the issues Martin Luther had with the Roman Catholic Church are either non-existent or not as bad. While perhaps delayed, Al-Andalus would eventually do everything Portugal did in the OTL, eventually sailing down the coast of Africa—and all it would take is for one of their ships to be blown off-course at the right point for them to discover America.
  • While What if Nixon Was Never President? leans more in the other direction, not having Nixon as President does come with one important change: Jimmy Carter is never President later, and therefore there is no Camp David Accords. Cody only notes that this results in the Arab world not being fractured by the peace between Israel and Egypt. His implication frames this as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, suggesting that Israel's relatively free hand against Palestinians is the direct result of Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan assassinating Robert F. Kennedy.
  • What if Russia was Muslim? In a scenario where Vladimir the Great selects Islam over Greek Orthodoxy, Cody sees Novgorod being protected by Sweden and Poland-Lithuania, developing into a republic, and potentially becoming an inspiration when liberalization comes to continental Europe. Poland-Lithuania becomes stronger, and takes over as the protector of the Slavs when the Byzantine Empire is conquered; in fact, Greek Orthodoxy becomes much weaker, or possibly dies outright, without preservation by a Russian Orthodox Church, and the Slavs and Novgorod become Catholic as a result. Kievan Rus becomes a sultanate that focuses its trade more on the Volga River than on the Black Sea. Instead of protecting the Orthodox Slavs, they potentially become protectors of the Muslims of Central Asia and China.
• Captain Obvious: When explaining the twist in "What if Nixon Was Never President?", Cody mentions that Robert F. Kennedy was the one person (besides Humphrey) who could've won the 1968 election instead of Nixon, but was unable to run "because of, uh... reasons".
• Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys: In "What if France didn't Surrender in World War II", Cody explains and justifies the Trope Namer: He points out that World War I left France depleted, and they hadn't really recovered by the time World War II broke out. By the time France surrendered, it had already lost all of its best soldiers (either captured or dead), and fighting on past this point would only bring about Nazi retribution. In particular, it's theorized that Paris would have seen the same fate as Warsaw: bombarded to near-annihilation, with an associated untold loss of artistic and cultural capital.
• Content Warnings: In Did NATO Really "Betray" Russia?, Cody gets out a button while explaining possible rationale in Putin's mind behind his 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It plays the theme for The Price Is Right, and displays "THIS DOES NOT JUSTIFY RUSSIA'S ACTIONS AGAINST THEIR NEIGHBORS".
• Crapsack World:
  • One gradually comes into fruition in the four-parter "What if Germany Won World War II?" Assuming the best-case scenario plays out for the Nazis, they successfully dominate Europe, transforming nations like Britain and France into puppet states. Poland, Ukraine, and most of Russia are assimilated by Germany, with over 50 million of their people dead as a result of the hunger plan, and the survivors either enslaved or "Germanized," their history and culture eradicated. Each generation born in Germany becomes more and more fanatical and xenophobic, sacrificing their individuality for the prosperity of the state, ready to kill and destroy their perceived enemies. The nations around the world now have to accept the existence of Nazi Germany, and thus fascism ends up playing a much larger and more pivotal role in shaping mankind's future. One of the projected outcomes of this timeline, where America and Nazi Germany destroy each other in a nuclear war, actually seems like the better alternative.
  • The opposite scenario is depicted in "What if Germany Had Been Split Differently After WWII?", where the Morgenthau Plan was implemented: Germany would not only become a hellhole of famine and death after the country is brutally looted, but the horribly mistreated German population would effectively turn away from democracy and embrace Nazism.
  • The world after The Snap isn't a paradise of peace and prosperity. It's a hellish mess of famine, refugees, political instability, extinction, and runaway climate change.
• Creative Sterility: Discussed during his video on Ancient Aliens and what history is like according to its theories. Much to Cody's frustration, it's not merely that the series isn't even creative with its theories (literally every one it presents amounts to "take documented human history" and add "actually it was aliens") but that it also implies that in the entire course of human history, humans have had zero agency over how they've ever developed, and that we as a species are incapable of anything that isn't devised by a higher power (which Cody finds ironic for a series that claims to be atheistic in approach).
• Crossover:
  • Cody had one with the The Great War which focuses on the failed Schlieffen Plan and he guesses on what would happen if the plan succeeded.
  • He and Emperor Tigerstar did a 4-part series detailing Harry Turtledove's Timeline-191 books and how this alternate timeline is different from ours.
  • Cody and Tigerstar would later cover the Turtledove series The War That Came Early, which turned into a shorter critique of Turtledove's literary stylings in general as neither liked the series.
  • Cody makes a surprise cameo in History Buffs near the end of the Apocalypto review where he "tries" to help explain to Nick over one of the movie's jarring plot points, particularly how the Spanish could have encountered the Classic Mayan civilization hundreds of years much earlier than they did in Real Life which when they actually did came to South America, the Classic Mayan civilization had collapsed.
  • Cody makes another cameo on Extra History on their video on the Articles of Confederation to advertise his what-if scenario on what if the Articles were kept? Dan returns the favor by appearing at the end of Cody's video.
  • Cody does a collaboration with The Cynical Historian on The Election That Ruined Everything (And If It Never Happened) which is a follow up on the latter's criticisms on Woodrow Wilson.
  • Cody does a collaboration with Whatifalthist, in which they each explore a different scenario for Germany being divided after World War II. Cody explores the Morgenthau Plan ^note the plan to divide and deindustrialize Germany while Rudyard explores the Roosevelt Plan^note which would break Germany into smaller states.
  • Cody did a collab with Emperor Tigerstar and Mr. Beat on various what-if's about American presidents. Cody's was about if Herbert Hoover was elected in 1920 instead of 1928.
• Darkest Africa: Multiple:
  • In the timeline presented in What if Africa was never colonized?, Central Africa remains largely tribal and underdeveloped, surrounded by large coastal kingdoms and empires.
  • He subverts it in the scenario on "What if the Sahara was green?" The lack of the Sahara desert meant the Roman Empire and other early European nations could've interacted much more with Africa beyond the North Africa shores.
• Deathbringer the Adorable: Cody does a brief tangent during City Flags are Abominations to point out the "ermine", the symbol used for the flag of the French region of Brittany:
  Cody: It's often paired with the stoat, which looks a lot less threatening and a lot more adorable than the emblem depicts. (shows side-by-side of the heraldic Stoat; and a real-life picture of a stoat, which is essentially a relative of the ferret)
• Deconstruction: Several of his videos debunk several scenarios in not only alternate history but pop culture.
  • One scenario shows how Thanos' snap would cause horrific societal collapse due to not only the billions of people lost, but the destruction of a lot of wildlife.
• Distracting Disambiguation: In producing What if the Middle East had unified?, Cody's contextualizing for the video grew so large that it turned into its own video: The Decision that Ruined the Middle East, where he details how the post-WWI "mandates"—and the French and British betrayal of the Hashemites in allowing their creation—set the stage for the modern climate of Islamist extremism in the Middle East, as an Unwitting Instigator of Doom.
• Divided States of America: Multiple:
  • In both What if America had a King? and What if we kept the Articles of Confederation?, the early United States ends up fracturing and splitting up.
  • Many other scenarios, such as What if Cars Never Existed? feature a downplayed example of this trope where United States continues to exist as a single entity, but states wield more power than the federal government and American citizens identify themselves as Texans, New Yorkers, New Englanders etc. rather than as Americans.
  • How California Almost Split In Two (And If It Had Happened) is an example that happens to an entire state, specifically the southern half seceding from California and becoming the state of Colorado.
• Dystopia:
  • Cody explores the concept in Utopia is Dystopia with Thomas More's novel. While it's presented as a perfect society, it contains elements that have since been incorporated into many modern dystopian works: communal living, slavery, a lack of privacy, lifetime leaders, etc. He also points out that, even with today's problems, we can't simply say we've entered a Dystopia. It's not just a bad society, but one that's completely inescapable, undefeatable, and nobody would even realize anything is wrong with it.
  • Also touched upon in his video "Worlds That Didn't Make the Cut," where he discusses how one person's version of a Utopia can be another person's Dystopia. For example, Herman Sörgel's vision of the Atlantropa Project was one that would ensure peace and prosperity for Europe, but would inevitably have to ensure 19th-century imperialism would carry on, ensuring the assimilation and even eradication of much of Africa for the project.
• Eagle Land: When the United States is personified, it's always as a blue person with aviator sunglasses. Cody himself is American and makes plenty of jokes that poke fun at the U.S.
• Epic Fail: What if the Haitian Revolution Failed? becomes this, as the entire scenario Cody works through becomes too similar to what really happened for his liking. It only pushes historical timelines in the Americas back a few decades. He notes he'll think of a better scenario.
• Evil Versus Evil: What if Germany Had Been Split Differently After WWII? involves 25,000,000 Germans starving to death as Allied occupying forces watch. In this scenario, World War Two is seen as a war where both sides are monsters.
• The Extremist Was Right: In What if Germany Had Been Split Differently After WWII? Cody explores how the Allies effectively plundering Germany and causing tens of millions of Germans to die by implementing the Morgenthau Plan would've only validated the Nazis in the eyes of the Germans, and lead to a potential renaissance of Nazism in the future.
• Fantastic Racism: Inverted from the usual scenario in What if (X-men) Mutants were Real? Instead of mutantkind being oppressed second-class citizens, they would be the ones on top. Being on an entirely different level of strength and power from humankind, mutants would be the ones who decide the fate of nations and shape the course of history. Normal humans, meanwhile, would be little more than a Slave Race subject to the whims of whichever mutant leader is in power.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: Occasionally Cody takes a break from creating alternate history scenarios, though that is what he's most known for.
  • Before the creation of the Knowledge Hub spinoff channel, Cody also covered various real-world history topics, usually lesser-known ones, such as the Beaver Wars.
  • He also often discusses Alternate History fiction, or Alternate Universes of established fiction; such videos are tagged "[LORE]." He has covered Attack on Titan, Injustice, among others. The longest of these is his collaboration with Emperor Tigerstar, a 4-part series detailing Harry Turtledove's Timeline-191, rather than creating his own alternate history of a Confederate victory (which he'd already done in a previous video).
  • The video on the Armenian Genocide does not deal with alternate history, but rather to show why there really was a genocide of Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians in spite of Turkey's denial. The video is completely serious, with no humor or even music, fitting for the somber nature of the genocide.
  • The video How A Corporation Conquered A Sub-Continent profiles the rise of the British East India Company, and how mercantilism drove colonialism in the East Indies, leading to British dominion over India, and (as a subplot) Dutch dominion over present-day Indonesia.
  • He once did a video featuring 3 scenarios he planned to do, but ultimately found the results would've been too short or underwhelming for a single video. These include Atlantropa (ends on a depressing note), Deseret (suffers from In Spite of a Nail), and the Empire of Ethiopia undergoing their own industrialization a la Meiji Japan (ends on a depressing note and in spite of a nail).
  • Cody also made an incredibly serious video in regards to how news media helped fuel violent mass shooting in relations to increased frequency of mass shootings in public places (such as the recent Parkland school shooting, the Waffle House shooting, and the Santa Fe shooting in a three month time period). According to him, he wanted to "get this off his chest" and the video is not a discussion about solutions since something like gun control is just too controversial to talk about.
  • The Fires of Kiev, a Ukrainian Revolution is just footage of the riots in Ukraine during the 2014 Russian Intervention in Ukraine. Cody also writes in the description about protests elsewhere in the world against regimes in Venezuela and Thailand.
  • In December 1st, 2018, Cody held a live stream with two other YouTubers, Emperor Tigerstar and Tristan from the Step Back History channel, discussing the implications of the Kerch Strait incident where Russia closed off the Sea of Azov from Ukraine and seized some of their ships.
  • In response to the United States government's threats to declare war on Iran in June 2019, Cody makes a self-explanatory video Why War With Iran Is Just....A Horrendous Idea and discusses the ramification of such a conflict would create another (and possibly much worse) repeat of the Iraq War.
  • In one video he reviews (Read: Takes the piss out of) Spike TV's Alternate History pilot and its historically inaccurate and cliche-ridden take on a Nazi victory world.
  • In this video his explores Russia's, or more specifically Putin's, (supposed) grievances against NATO and whether this justifies the Ukraine invasion^note No, Putin's actions are not at all justified..
• Greater-Scope Villain: It's argued that Woodrow Wilson, America's 28th President, is responsible for many of its modern problems due to his election to office. On top of his racism and hypocrisy, his mismanagement of World War I and its aftermath set the stage for many of the problems of the 20th and 21st century.
• High-Class Glass: England/Britain wears one.
• Historical Hero Upgrade: Discussed in "What if Trotsky Came To Power Instead Of Stalin?" with Cypher. The main reason Trotsky is viewed as a what if and people think he would have been better than Stalin is due to Animal Farm. In reality, it was extremely unlikely he could have come to power, and there is a very good chance he would have been as bad as, if not worse than, Stalin, with the main positives being that The Holodomor is nowhere near as severe and the economy is somewhat better run. This would come at the cost of Trotsky most likely sending significantly more people to the Gulags due to being an ideological purist, and starting World War 2 early in his drive to spread the revolution by force, causing the Western Democracies to ally with the fascist states, and legitimizing fascism as an ideology.
• Istanbul (Not Constantinople): In How California Almost Split In Two (And If It Had Happened), Colorado is instead the southern half of California that became its own state in an alternate timeline
• In Spite of a Nail: Cody has several videos regarding stock Alternate History scenarios where despite the changes very little is actually different, with some events being practically inevitable. This also includes situations that do not go the way some alt-history fans hope they would.
  • What if Texas remained independent? Easy answer: it couldn't have. No matter what divergence takes place, Texas would have not been able to remain independent forever, overshadowed by its neighbors. It would at best be a rump state in diplomatic limbo as other nations don't really interact with Texas out of fear of damaging relations with the US and Mexico.
    • One possibility he sees for the inevitable demise of Texas is them surviving long enough to join the Confederacy instead of the United States. His scenario states that the United States don't use annexation of Texas as pretense for the Mexican-American War. As a result, when Texas joins the Confederacy, Mexico allies with the Union, turning the U.S. Civil War into a two-front war.
  • What if Lincoln Was Never Assassinated? American history in the long term would still remain the same even if Abraham Lincoln lived. Lincoln was guaranteed to ensure black civil rights (though he wanted to give educated and combat veteran blacks the vote), but his survival doesn't mean the end of racial discrimination and blacks would still be segregated under the Jim Crow laws. The only differences is that the South would take much longer to fall back into the Union due to the Southerners' hatred of Lincoln, and Lincoln never agreed with the Radical Republicans' plans for Reconstruction.
  • What if the 'War on Terror' never happened? Everything we experience today-the 2008 recession, the Arab Spring, the rise of Islamic extremism, a civil war in Iraq, the refugee crisis-all of that would've still happened, just a few years later. These events had been building up for decades and 9/11 was simply the spark that ignited the powder keg. The biggest changes are simply that America never launches a full invasion of any Middle Eastern country and Saddam Hussein remains in power.
  • What if Germany had invaded Britain? He concludes that the goal of forcing a surrender was unlikely, German troops would be stranded on the island and the mission would be a complete failure, even if all of Hitler's conditions were met and Germany's pathetic navy had everything in their favor. In fact, the main change would have been that Germany would have been humilated after losing a large amount of manpower and equipment, with the British proving that the Nazis aren't unstoppable and that they will never surrender.
  • What if the State of Deseret was founded? It would eventually join the United States. At best, it would just be a bigger version of Utah.
  • What if Japan won the Battle of Midway? Even if the Japanese had a Naval Victory off of Midway, their amphibious-landing forces would have been destroyed by the American presence on the island, resulting in an overall American Victory. On top of that, the US had a far greater industrial capacity than Japan, who couldn't replace their naval losses whereas the Americans can. In the end, Japan's defeat in its War against the US was inevitable.
  • Would German Jets Have Changed WWII? Even if Hitler had not interfered and allowed the Luftwaffe to put jet engines on all their fighters instead of limiting them to bombers, Germany would still be defeated by the Allies since the latter had more fuel, resources and planes while the former was suffering a shortage of fuel and materials needed to make new jets.
  • What if France didn't Surrender in World War II? France would still be conquered and, consequently, its cities such as Paris are reduced to ruins by the German military.
  • What if the Communists Lost the Chinese Civil War? A more Downplayed example. China would still be an authoritarian one-party state, and global economic power under the Kuomintang. As Cody points out, the Kuomintang grew from a "pro-democracy" entity into a domineering unitary state not so different from the Communists. The major difference is that a Nationalist China would ensure the Korean War and Vietnam War would end in communist defeat, the Cultural Revolution never happens and the old Chinese culture and ideals are preserved, and the Cold War would primarily be focused on Europe rather than extending into Asia.
  • What if the Fourth Plane hit its Target? (9/11) While it would change the perception of the attack on the country, along with its effects on culture, the United States and the world ultimately carry on like normal. The biggest change is likely a more extreme War on Terror.
  • What if there was an 8th continent? Surprisingly, even with another continent, human history doesn't really change up until the 13th century, when the Polynesians arrive and grow in population by the thousands. It isn't until Europe makes contact with them 500 years later, when the continent is colonized by the British, that history truly starts to shift.
  • What if the Byzantine Empire survived? The only way Cody could see the Byzantine Empire surviving beyond the mid-15th century was if the Turkic people somehow never needed to migrate west from central Asia several centuries earlier. This pre-empts the Fourth Crusade, permitting them to rebuild from the first three Crusades. And for all the changes this would cause to the world as a whole (like erasing the Teutonic Order and Prussia, thus resulting in a very different Germany assuming it united at all; and the implications for the Protestant Reformation of a stronger Eastern Orthodox Church), all this ultimately does for the Byzantines is delay the inevitable. Eventually, caravel ships are invented, putting an end to the importance of the Silk Road, and sapping the Byzantine Empire's possible economic power. This puts them in the position of the Ottoman Empire as "the sick man of Europe" by the 19th century. It would eventually have to let go of its desire to reunite the Romans, and reform into a modern state akin to present-day Greece (as the Ottoman Empire did with Turkey).
  • What if France won the 'French and Indian War? While France won the Seven Years War/French and Indian War and reaffirmed its claims to North America, France is still left economically exhausted from the war and would inevitably fall into revolution.
  • What if Hawaii Was Never Annexed By America? Based on a scenario where a conflict between the US and UK that was resolved peacefully in the OTL goes hot (and changes John Tyler from a forgotten president to an infamous pariah for getting the US into a needlessly costly war), the monarchy would still have been abolished by the turn of the 20th century, as it was doomed the moment the sugar plantations came. The best case scenario would be a Polynesian version of South Africa, where a White upper class dominated a working class that was mostly Asians. It would fall on hard times as sugar production was further outsourced to cheaper producers, and the Whites simply leave with it. Darker aspects of the scenario see native Hawaiian culture dying out completely. By the end of the 20th century, it's just another troubled Pacific island country occasionally heard about on the news, with average Americans not caring much about it, much less seeing it as a must-go tourist destination. Cody goes out of his way to say that a utopian kingdom without America's influence simply wasn't possible, and suggests that its current reality—as the 50th United State, with a strong tourism industry and a preserved native culture in spite of the imperfections of its past—is most likely the best result it could hope for given the circumstances.
    Cody: Now, uh, I'm gonna be honest with you. If you went into this video expecting Hawaii to remain the same tropical paradise, and simply exist in the Pacific as a lone Polynesian nation, I've got some bad news.
  • What if Nixon Was Never President? Cody posits RFK not being assassinated in 1968, and going on to beat Nixon. As a result, he is seen as too friendly with minorities. He is further scapegoated for the inevitable loss in Vietnam (even if his plan to end the war isn't as bloody as Nixon's ended up being). If he tries to make peace with China like Nixon did, it results in enormous backlash, especially combined with Vietnam. The different presidency doesn't change the times that much, and Bobby Kennedy will be blamed for the bad effects. His only hope is if he decides to implement universal healthcare. But the ultimate end result: Ronald Reagan becomes President sooner. Reagan also succeeds at making peace with China, as it's only welcomed coming from a hard-liner conservative, as was the case with Nixon. And while there is no Watergate, Vietnam is still enough to foment the mistrust in federal institutions that persists to this day.
    • As a further aside: there is still some sort of EPA without Nixon; The '60s were just too polluted for there not to be some sort of federal reaction no matter who is in charge.
  • What if the Haitian Revolution failed? This wouldn't have made Haiti a paradise, but the lack of the only successful slave revolt in the West means that it remains a French colony for a few more decades before slavery is abolished anyway, and it wouldn't have been as impoverished and isolated as it is today. The failure also means there would be no massacres of remaining whites in Haiti, which wouldn't have scared the Confederacy and been used as propaganda to maintain the institution, although that just becomes one fewer justification for them to secede. The only notable changes are that America takes longer to buy the Louisiana Territory and Simon Bolivar doesn't have a place to retreat to and catch his breath, although Cody points out that Spain likely wouldn't have been able to hold their Latin American colonies for long anyway.
  • What if Sweden Won the Great Northern War? Even if Sweden won the war, the Swedish Empire would not be able to hold on to its territories for long due to lacking a larger population of Swedes and instead relying on its non-Swedish subjects to maintain its dominions, which would only allow them to exploit on Sweden's weakness. The best chance of Sweden retaining its power is having itself the leader of a Scandinavian union and in time developed a better alliance with its neighbors. However, Sweden will be in constant wars against Russia, who only saw its loss in the Great Northern War a temporary setback and are firmly determined to gain access to the Baltic Sea, and will inevitably loses its territories to the Russians.
• Invisible Anatomy: Characters are drawn with no visible arms or legs.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Cody characterizes Woodrow Wilson as this in "The Election That Ruined Everything (And If It Never Happened)." He was a man who arrogantly believed in his own intelligence and moral superiority. This led him to catastrophically mismanage America's involvement in World War I, to the point its consequences are still being felt.
• Left Hanging: Cody doesn't give a conclusion to What if Russia Was Never Invaded By Nazi Germany?, only stating that the only way that happens is if Neville Chamberlain stays in power in the United Kingdom, and they give up. If that happens, then Cody says the Soviet Union would immediately begin plans to invade Nazi Germany, while an undistracted United States would be able to focus all its attention on Japan when they inevitably attack (Cody sees Pearl Harbor as a Foregone Conclusion regardless). The only clue Cody gives on how that goes is that he says the results largely depend on whether Hitler actually conquers the United Kingdom, or leaves them alone once they submit.
• Mayan Doomsday: Referenced at the very end of "The History of the World According to 'Ancient Aliens'", where he dramatically presents the series' theory of how the world would end in the biblical apocalypse on the day of December 20th, 2012. The video itself was posted on April 2021.
• Meaningless Villain Victory:
  • What if Japan won the battle of Midway? turns into this, with the Japanese unable to follow up on their success at sea by actually taking Midway Island, much less overcoming America's massive materiel advantage.
  • What if Mussolini remade the Roman Empire? posits that given Italy's military incompetence, they would be completely unable to hold their new territory, suffering rebellions in Africa and invasions from their former German allies.
• Middle Eastern Coalition: Well, beyond the coalition What if the Middle East had unified? presents the scenario on if Britain remained true to their initial deal with the Hashemites and presented a unified Arabia. However, despite this, it would not necessarily be peaceful. Granted, the Hashemites would be in charge rather than the House of Saud, (see the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan as a general direction). However, the Arab state is largely shaped by struggles between differing ideologies regarding tradition, liberalizing or so on (due to the Cold War.) Cody has admitted the most likely one would be of Hashemite Arabia being in the NATO sphere and modernizing over a long period of time, thus reducing the chance of reactionary back lash. He has also mentioned that the Baathists could take over as a form of "third way" and set them in conflict against the remaining Sauds and other reactionaries. However, the biggest change is that the region could see actual social progress and change rather than setbacks and reactionary movements. He did mention religious extremists would still exist, but without the funding they recieve in OTL, they are much less prominent.
• Monumental Damage: In What if France didn't Surrender in World War II?, Parisian monuments such as the Eiffel Tower and the Notre-Dame Cathedral are destroyed by the German military in stark contrast to their real-life counterparts which survived because France chose to surrender rather than being reduce to rubble by the Germans.
• MST3K Mantra: Cody invoked this in "What if the Sahara Was Green?" and "What if the Moon was Habitable?".
• Multiple Endings: Some of Cody's scenarios branch off into multiple possibilities. At the end of 2022, Cody noted in What if Hoover Was President Earlier? that he wanted to start doing multiple-outcome scenarios more often.
  • In one of Cody's first videos, What if America "Won" the Vietnam War, he gives two routes for American victory. If the Soviet Union and China simply don't support North Vietnam, then the whole thing becomes South Vietnam, with occasional peasant uprisings continuing for a decade or so but eventually fading away. If America succeeds at shutting down the Ho Chi Minh trail, then South Vietnam is better able to defend itself, and it becomes a stalemate much like the Korean War, with two Vietnams.
  • In What if Russia Kept Alaska?, he has two possible futures, both branching off from the Bolshevik Revolution. In the more likely scenario, the White Russians escape to Alaska, and the Red Navy cannot pursue them across the Bering Strait.^note The ineptitude of the Russian Navy at the time of World War I was well known. Alaska eventually becomes kind of a Russian version of Taiwan. In another scenario even Cody acknowledges is "wacky", the Bolsheviks somehow hold onto Alaska, and become far better at countering the United States for it.
  • And then there's What if Anyone Won the War of 1812?:
    • If the British win, it would realistically only delay Manifest Destiny for a few decades. It could, however, also result in—at least for a while—a recognized nation-state of Native Americans. It would also make it unlikely for Andrew Jackson to become U.S. President, which would be a far greater influence Cody intends to expound upon at a later time.
    • If the Americans win, they annex Canada. If the British find it too costly to support their Canadian holdings—and they were still fighting The Napoleonic Wars at this time—the most likely result Cody sees is American displacement of the fledgling Canadian culture. Even Quebec's relatively greater autonomy would eventually fade away, turning it into a northern version of New Orleans. As part of Manifest Destiny, America would eventually also buy the Canadian North, "Rupert's Land", from the Hudson's Bay Company. This also drastically changes the slavery compromises of the first half of the 19th century, though Cody only glosses over that.
  • In What If Alexander the Great Never Died Young?, Cody posits that, if he didn't die at age 33, Alexander could've circled back and conquered the then-burgeoning Italian peninsula long before Rome could establish itself. As a result, Christianity never rises, and neither does the Latin alphabet, resulting in Europe's writing being based on the Greek alphabet and its religion retaining its paganism—and he might even succeed at becoming reknowned as a God, potentially in multiple religions. But realistically, he would've just conquered Arabia, and not bothered going west into Continental Europe, content with trying to blend Greek and Persian culture (and Cody doubts he would've been successful at that).
  • In Parts 3 and 4 of his What if Germany Won World War II series, Cody posits several outcomes that hinge on what relationship America and the victorious Reich have.
    • A transatlantic war breaking out between America and the Third Reich, culminating in nuclear exchange once one side (most likely America) gaining a nuclear weapon.
    • America and Nazi Germany become business trade partners as companies seeks to enjoy the fruits of trade with a growing Reich, racist groups like the KKK gaining more prominence, and ideas like civil rights and racial equality are held back for decades.
    • A Cold War between America and Nazi Germany, with fascist and fascist-like movements becoming more prominent around the world, and Nazi Germany surviving decades into the future.
  • Cody does this in What if Hoover Was President Earlier? primarily because leaving it with a situation where FDR was elected in 1932 anyway was too easy:
    • The default situation is that Hoover's laissez-faire government style—which becomes the Harding and Coolidge presidencies without the scandals the former was known for and the latter had to focus on cleaning up after—makes him one of the better-remembered Presidents in American history (and potentially, Reagan ends up getting compared to this version of Hoover when he becomes President). Literally any successor wouldn't screw up the Great Depression as bad as he did in the OTL, but they are still likely to be one-term presidents succeeded by FDR.
    • As a subthread to this, with the global effects of Hoover's OTL policies (particularly the Smoot-Hawley Tarriff Act) not worsening the situation outside America, that might be enough to prevent Adolf Hitler from taking power in Germany.
    • The one potential Republican successor to Hoover that Cody gives a chance to salvage a second term is Illinois governor Frank Lowden, since his laissez-faire policies were similar to Hoover's. If Lowden manages to salvage a second term, it would have a ripple effect that could stifle the growth of the American federal government.
    • If Hoover runs for, and wins, a third term, then his OTL 1928 term asserts itself, and his reputation is ruined. However, his disastrous third term makes it politically radioactive for FDR to try to run for his own third term in 1940 even with WWII breathing down America's neck.
• No Swastikas: Due to YouTube's demonetization policy, as of the video What if Mussolini Remade the Roman Empire?, all Swastikas on the channel are being replaced with other symbols; first smiley faces, and then (as of What if Russia was Never Invaded During WWII? with YouTube Play Buttons.
• Our Dragons Are Different: In What if Dragons Existed?, European dragons would be hunted to extinction due to being a threat to humanity.
• Our Presidents Are Different: In The Election That Ruined Everything (And If It Never Happened), Theodore Roosevelt is elected in an unprecedented third term in office and allowing America to enter World War I and ending it much earlier, and furthering his progressive domestic policies such as social insurance for the elderly, a nationalized health service, and even recall elections for politicians and judges.
• Precision F-Strike: Swears in a video for the first time in his ten year's recap video when reviewing old videos and seeing a short "Boston Bombing" video out of nowhere.
  Cody: (beat) ...what the fuck?
• Public Medium Ignorance: Lampshaded with any mention of the Seven Years' War. For most Americans, knowledge of what could be described as the world's first truly global conflict (involving pretty much every major European power as well as two major Indian powers) is limited to the North American theatre known commonly as the French and Indian War.
• Regional Redecoration: What if there was an 8th continent? has Zealandia, the sunken continent that rests beneath New Zealand, as a landmass entirely above the water. Its presence causes changes in the local climate due to diverting water currents, remains isolated for roughly 80 million years, and has a much larger Maori population than in our timeline. Despite this, the landmass existing really doesn't change the course of history up until the 18th century, when the British colonize the region.
  • What if California was an Island? re-imagines everything from Central Oregon down to the tip of Baja California as a huge island, as cartographers once believed. The land around the strait separating it from North America would boast cliffs over 13,000 feet tall, making colonization of California extremely difficult. Once again, this really doesn't change much in the grand scheme of history. The biggest difference is that, in the Mexican-American war, the U.S. would take the far more valuable land of Sonora. While they would probably still take the island, its entire identity would be changed.
  • In his 3 scrapped scenarios video, Cody talks about the Atlantropa Project. The goal of this project was to lower the Mediterranean Sea level, allowing new land to form for colonization and agriculture. Except the seabed is too salty for agriculture and, as the sea continues to dry out, it turns the area into an extension of the Sahara as millions are forced to flee from the collapsing ecosystem.
  • "What if the Sahara was Green?" explores what would happen if we lived in a Saharan wet period, where the desert is a large grassland with several inland seas. With no desert preventing exploration, empires and nations could explore further into the continent, allowing groups who had little to no contact to mingle. This could allow for entirely new ethnic groups to emerge in the region.
  • The Snap from Infinity War would not lead to a more plentiful world in Thanos' words. The mass disappearance of billions of people would cause economic disaster, a breakdown in public services, and anarchy across the globe.
  • "What if the Great Lakes never existed" completely up-ends the modern era as we know it by imagining the Great Lakes as never forming. Without Lake Ontario, the Louisiana Territory is never created as France is unable to enter the interior through the St. Lawrence River or access the Mississippi from the north. The Seven Years War might play out very differently as France's colonisation of North America is limited to Quebec and so there is no firing on Fort Sumpter. And because there is no Ohio river, any attempt to settle west of the Appalachians is considered doomed to fail as there is nothing but endless forest past Pennsylvania save for a river system further south that was destroyed by the glacial expansion in the OTL. The northern half of the American Interior would remain as wilderness deep into the 19th century. No colonial conflict with France and little motivation to expand westward means the American Revolution might not have happened, creating a potentially unrecognizable Europe by the 19th century.
  • A couple follow-ups to "What if the Muslims Kept Spain?" explore various ways that the New World could change if the Reconquista failed.
• Ret-Gone: Any scenario involving the state of Ohio never forming usually includes a side-mention that Cody himself (or at least the version of him we all know) wouldn't exist. As his entire family pretty much stays there after about 1850.
• Russia Takes Over the World:
  • Averted. In "What if Russia won the Cold War?", instead of Soviet meddling, the USA turns to communism as a reaction against everything from Vietnam to Watergate and the oil crisis, with the new regime dismissing the USSR as a dictatorship.
  • In "What If Japan Never Attacked Pearl Harbor?", with the USA never intervening in World War II, the war becomes more bloodier where the Soviet Union takes the burden and conquers Japan and Nazi Germany, securing Soviet global dominance.
• Self-Deprecation: Cody's made more than a few jabs at himself for his wonky release schedule.
  "In an alternate timeline where I was actually an efficient person who had videos out on time, my name wouldn't be Cody. I'd be an entirely different man. Maybe my name would be Kevin. Yes, in a world where I didn't have late videos, my name would be Kevin.
• Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale:
  • Cody notes that if aliens murdered three billion people in 1996,^note This is how many people director Roland Emmerich says died in the first film's alien invasion then civilization changes forever, and certainly doesn't rebuild the way it's depicted in the sequel. With over half of Earth's population of the time dead, and 108 of the world's most important cities destroyed (mostly in the most industrialized portions of Earth), civilization as we knew it before 1996 simply cannot recover, and humanity has to rebuild from scratch. If the second alien invasion comes to pass, humanity wouldn't be able to resist, and Earth is screwed.
  • Likewise, if Thanos really did wipe out half of life on Earth—including plants and animals according to Kevin Feige—this wouldn't result in balance. In the short term, the brain drain of so many people needed to do everything from farm crops to run nuclear power plants would be devastating enough. However, the results in the long term would be widespread war over remaining resources, mass migrations, famine, rapid climate change from the loss of so many forests, and ultimately a mass extinction. Without any context for it, humanity would never have an explanation as to why any of this happened, likely triggering some kind of spiritual revolution too.
• Shout-Out: A double, as What if Anyone Won the War of 1812? shows an Emperor Tigerstar map, that shows a pop-up of Tigerstar drawn like Garfield.
• Signing-Off Catchphrase: "This is Cody from the Alternate History Hub."
• Speculative Biology: The Extinction That Caused the Dinosaurs (And If It Never Happened) explores how Therapsids would evolve if the End-Permian Extinction never happened. They continue to diverse into larger forms (never Sauropod big without airsacs) with fur the 100 million years the Dinosaurs would have ruled. Cody suggests that Suminia, a synapsid with opposible thumbs from the Permian, could evolve into ape-like creatures.
  • Since the asteroid will still hit the Earth 66 million years ago, the large therapsids will go extinct and allow the dynapsids in their shadow to takeover. But with the cooler climate of the Cenozoic, these "dinosaurs" will evolve strange bodyshapes for eating grass and more feather covering to better protect against the cold.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: A majority of the channel's pop culture videos focus on this.
  • What if The Purge was real?: It would do nothing but just kicking an already downed U.S. economy. Without emergency services, fires would rage out of control, even just from an uncontrolled kitchen fire. Banks can be robbed, companies can use corporate sabotage, small businesses are now terrible investments, and insurance is a nightmare. Realistically, there would be a revolution at the immediate news that this policy was going to be implemented. A follow-up video further elaborates this by adding that the US would be isolated internationally by the purge, as no one wants to trade or do business with a nation that regularly destroys its own economy annually.
  • What if The War of the Worlds Happened, using the 1938 Orson Welles radio broadcast as its basis: Once the aliens are defeated, various pieces of technology left by them would be used to create new weapons, causing a world wide push for arms to counter the aliens, including space travel earlier. Eventually, if the aliens are defeated, all the nations would simply resume their conflicts except with new technology far ahead of where they were before.
  • What if Red Dawn really happened?: It would immediately turn into nuclear war. If not, then the U.S. could just fight off the invading communist forces through sheer military superiority. The Soviets, who were already spread thin across North America, Europe, and China, and dealing with a wheat famine, simply wouldn't have the manpower to keep fighting a conventional war like this.
  • Cody also often uses this to take various "stock" alternate history scenarios in different directions than what is usually focused on:
    • For example, in his video on a Muslim victory at Tours, he rather quickly shuts down the notion that Europe would be wholly Islamized, or even that the Arabs would take over large parts of Europe, but he does focus on the wide-reaching consequences of Charlemagne never being born, which would be a likely consequence of such a scenario.
    • Another example is on his video of Texas being independent. As he noted, it'd be unlikely it could remain as such and at most be a mostly unrecognized rump state. However, he does propose the fascinating possibility of Texas surviving long enough to ally or join the Confederate States of America in the American Civil War because of cultural ties. In turn, this would bring Mexico into declaring war on the CSA, leading to a two front battle (and the Mexican-American War being butterflied away beforehand...)
  • What if the Middle East had unified?: Removing the artificial borders of the region does not automatically mean everything is peaceful. What it does mean is that the region experiences change as a whole, either gradually or suddenly and forcefully. Furthermore, it would be the result of internal affairs rather than outside forces (barring if the rest of the world gets involved).
  • What if Russia kept Alaska?: Cody says the likely scenario going forward would be that the Red Army's inept naval force would permit the White Russians to escape across the Bering Strait after the Bolshevik Revolution. And while this would add a whole new dynamic to the later Cold War, the Soviet Union would never have the naval power to take Russian America back, permitting it to use Alaska's resources to become an equivalent to Taiwan. Cody also posits that it would be unlikely that Russian America would want to re-join Russia after the Soviet Union falls.^note Cody does briefly wonder what Vladimir Putin would do regarding Russian America. But that presumes he rises to power in this scenario.
• Take That!:
  • In response of YouTube demonetizing videos for showing things like swastikas regardless of context, like say you have a series about history that often covers subjects pertaining to World War II in which case you're likely to show swastikas often, Cody has taken to replacing the swastika with a black version of the YouTube logo.
  • His episode about Greenland features potshots at Johnny Harris’ video about stealing Hawaii, mocking it as for treating it like some shocking revelation.
  • Cody ends What if Nixon was never President? by noting that, if Bobby Kennedy were President, then there would be no route for Jimmy Carter to become President, and there would be no Camp David Accords, which brought peace between Egypt and Israel. He frames this as a take that to RFK's assassin, Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan.
    Message on the video: Congrats Sirhan Sirhan you played yourself
  • In the Pointless Hub video about Godzilla (1998), Cody talks about how the movie couldn't have been made after 9/11 and mentions this is his Turning Red moment. He then briefly plays a clip from the infamous The Mysterious Mr. Enter review of Turning Red in which Mr. Enter criticizes the movie for not addressing the fallout of 9/11.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • In The Decision That Ruined the Middle East, Cody explains the current problems the Middle East has were the result of Britain and France not honoring their promise to allow the Arabs to rule their own nation for helping fight Turkey during World War I. Because of the artificial borders made by Britain and France without considering the various ethnic and religious groups living there, tensions and sectarian violence by those groups continue to exist today in the Middle East. Furthermore, due to their broken promise, the Sharif of Mecca, who led the Arab Revolt, refused to seek aid from Britain when he was attacked by the House of Saud, a rival tribe who practice Wahhabism, an ultraconservative version of Islam, who would later overthrow him and become the new rulers of Mecca and the nation of Saudi Arabia. With the moderate Sharif of Mecca gone, the Saudis spread Wahhabism throughout the Islamic world thanks to the riches they gained from oil, which would later influence the rise of Islamic terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
  • In The Election That Ruined Everything (And If It Never Happened), Cody explains that all the international problems after World War I began with the policies of Woodrow Wilson. If Teddy Roosevelt were nominated as the Republican nominee for the 1912 election instead of Taft, he likely would've crushed Wilson in the election. He would enter the United States into the Great War by 1916. The war ends so fast that, at the very least, Communism never rises in Russia or anywhere else. In the lack of a fear of Communism, Adolf Hitler never rises to power, either; as a result, World War II as we know it never takes place. And Wilson's League of Nations is never formed, leading to the alternate timeline in The Decision That Ruined The Middle East.
    • As an aside, he mentions racial relations in the United States would also be different going forward, since it was Woodrow Wilson who re-segregated the federal government's bureaucracy in 1914.
• Visual Pun: The War That Came Early: An Average Video About A Bad Series has a few. Nazi Germany overextending its reach and being stretched too thin has Nazi Germany literally getting stretched and distorted, and when Cody says "Hitler jumped the gun", Hitler physically jumps over a gun.
• Vindicated by History: In-Universe, the result of the Morgenthau Plan, a proposal that would forcibly de-industrialize Germany, would not only be the starvation of the millions of Germans but making fascism out to be correct in the eyes of the Germans.
• Vodka Drunkenski: In What if Russia was Muslim?, he brings up Russia's historic love of booze, as expressed Prince Vladimir's famous quote—"Drinking is the joy of the Rus. We cannot exist without the pleasure."—as one of the reasons why he rejected Islam as Russia's new faith.^note Of course, Cody mentions that alcohol was far from the only reason Kievan Rus embraced Byzantine Christianity, like favorable trade deals with the Byzantine Empire. He also says that a Muslim Rus could have fomented a more liberal Islam where alcohol consumption was tolerated.
  Cody: That is an actual quote, and it is the most Russian thing I have ever heard.
• Wham Line: In What if the Cuba Missile Crisis Went Hot?, the Americans are steamrolling through Cuba, confident that they can secure Cuba's sole nuclear launcher without the conflict escalating into a nuclear exchange. Suddenly:
  Cody: (white flash, then footage of a nuclear explosion) Thousands of Americans are vaporized in an instant. The Cubans didn't have just one nuclear launcher. They, along with the Soviets, had a hundred tactical nukes the Americans knew nothing about.
• World War III: Several scenarios focus on turning points in the Cold War that could have sparked World War III, and none of which end well for everyone.
  • In What if the Cold War Went Nuclear, the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident inadvertently caused mutual assured destruction. Everything in the Northern Hemisphere are left obliterated in nuclear hellfire, leaving an irradiated hellscape of raging winter and polluted water. Everything south of the equator, however, are spared from the devastation because there aren't any strategic areas to actually bomb. But those southern countries will experience social upheaval from the nuclear aftermath ranging from famines, revolutions, and even genocide. At the very least humanity will survive.
  • What if America Had Nuked China? has Douglas MacArthur authorized to use tactical nuclear bombing against Communist China in the Korean War (specifically nuking the Manchurian border and preventing the Chinese from helping the North Koreans). This act terrified the Soviets, and leading to two outcomes all resulting in World War III: the Soviets and China immediately declared war on America and its allies, and everyone die as nuclear technology progresses, destroying cities, before both nuclear powers obliterate each other; the Soviets doesn't declare war on America, but use MacArthur's actions as an excuse to use their own nukes in their proxy wars which eventually lead to World War III.
  • What if the Berlin Blockade Sparked World War III has both the United States and Soviet Union caught into war in 1949 after a small skirmish. However, both sides are unprepared for war as the Americans didn't have the troops to defend Western Europe, and the Soviets didn't have a nuclear arsenal at the time. Countless Soviet tanks from the East overrun the outnumbered Americans and their allies. But the Soviets could not hold Western Europe for long and American nuclear bombers nuked the Soviets into submission than what Nazi Germany did in all of World War II.
  • In What if the Cuban Missile Crisis Went Hot?, John F. Kennedy allowed military intervention in Cuba and provoking a nuclear exchange between the U.S. and Russia, causing hundreds of millions to die. JFK is reviled in memory as the man who pushed the button that started World War III.
  • In What If the Nuclear Bomb Never Existed, due to the aforementioned nuclear bomb was never developed, World War III between the Soviets and Americans becomes a conventional war not unlike that of the previous one. Because of the Soviets lacking the logistics and economic benefits than their NATO counterparts and geography, the Soviets are unable to make any significant advances into Europe while the West simply outlast the Soviet tide until they finally buckle, ultimately leading to the Soviet Union collapsing from domestic unrest.

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"We'll never truly know how things could've changed, yet it's fun to theorize."