History Main / ExpendableAlternateUniverse

** Later, Aradia pulls the same trick as Dave about a couple hundred times, and ends up with an army of alternates of herself from doomed timelines. The alternates know beforehand that they're doomed to premature death--it's one of the laws governing time travel in paradox space--and they're okay with this because Aradia's [[EmotionlessGirl completely emotionless]]. When all of the clones do get slaughtered, her friends don't seem terribly concerned about this, mostly because they have bigger problems to deal with than the philosophical implications of time travel clones.
** Getting back to Dave: Due to weird time shit, he occasionally encounters corpses of himself from alternate timelines, and he's more creeped out by this than his [[TheStoic stoic]] facade will let him admit. When Terezi tells Dave that he can achieve god-tier power by killing one of his doomed-timeline clones--who, as above, is doomed to die somehow, anyway--Dave refuses to do it. Then Terezi breaks down crying after seeing the doomed Dave die, even though alpha timeline Dave is still alive.
** When we get a look at the ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'' afterlife, we see that doomed-timeline alternates--Dave, Aradia, and a doomed John--are also there, and their souls are separate from their alpha timeline selves. This has created some weird moments, such as when John learns that his doomed timeline self dated [[spoiler:Vriska]] and she treats him with flippant familiarity, even though this John never got to know her too well. Then, later, [[spoiler:a dreambubble is destroyed, killing all of the dead alternates in it]], which the fandom did actually respond to with genuine sadness.
** The fandom was actually pretty sad to hear that the alternate Rose and Dave from the post-Scratch universe were dead, even though the main timeline Rose and Dave are still fine.
** The trope was turned on its head when it was revealed that the universe that had been considered the primary one for well over three years was actually a doomed offshoot. Cue a massive wipe, and the few survivors escaping to the ''true'' primary universe.

* ''Webcomic/KevinAndKell'' also played with this trope - with Kevin's sister, Danielle, dying in a HeroicSacrifice, only to be replaced with her double from the Human world (long story). Most of the main cast knows the truth, but have accepted her as part of the family; even if a few would rather believe that she returned from the dead than she's from another dimension.
* In ''Webcomic/{{Narbonic}}'', a TimeTravel device is powered by harnessing all the energy in, and in the process destroying, alternate universes "where they probably don't want to exist as much."
* Averted and played straight in ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance''. The main characters are surprisingly apathetic when they set up their TV to view alternate universes, and discover most universes end with one of them causing Armageddon. (It being a filler-guest story made in cut-and-paste style may have had something to do with this.) This is averted, however, during the "Aylee" and "That Which Redeems" arcs, where Torg tries his hardest to save alternate versions of the Sluggyverse; the death of [[spoiler:the Zoe from the Dimension of Lame]] is actually one of the saddest moments in the series, and profoundly affects Torg from there on out. Then again, there was the Punyverse... [[spoiler:it blew up, all of it, and it was a very remote reality with no obvious alternative versions of anything in the usual dimension, but they got away and just didn't care, presumably because it was such a stupid place and impossible to take seriously.]] To be fair, [[spoiler:the punyverse was being destroyed by an atomic chain reaction. There was nothing they could do but escape, and they had only seconds to escape in]].

** The trope was turned on its head when it was revealed that the universe that had been considered the primary one for well over three years was actually a doomed offshoot. Cue a massive KillEmAll, and the few survivors escaping to the ''true'' primary universe.

* A variation appears in the ''Series/TheOrville'' novella [[note]]origianlly written as an episode but derailed by COVID-related production problems with overseas shooting[[/note]] "[[Recap/TheOrvilleNovellaSympathyForTheDevil Sympathy For the Devil]]". An infant is left in the care of a simulator for thirty years, and ends up becoming an SS officer in charge of a [[UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust death camp]] within the simulated environment, When he is brought into the real world of the 25th century, the crew wrestles with the issue of his moral culpability for evil acts that didn't hurt any ''real'' people but have shaped him into a Nazi true believer.

** Seen in ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''. A time-space hiccup causes there to be two Voyagers in the same place at the same time drawing off the same power source. One of the Harry Kims is killed (and one of the Naomi Wildmans dies not long after being born), so the other Voyager sends their Kim and Naomi to the functioning ship before self-destructing to take out an invading alien force. Naomi and Harry's status as alternates is never mentioned again. This is somewhat an inversion of the trope, since it is implied that the destroyed Voyager is the "real" Voyager of the series! (though this, too, is never again mentioned)

** Another ''DS9'' episode seriously looks at this trope, where the ''Defiant'' crew learns that, thanks to the TimeyWimeyBall, they'll soon crash-land hundreds of years in the past on an isolated planet. While their descendants will form a thriving colony of 8,000 people, the crew themselves will inevitably die on the planet (save for the long-lived Odo) and never see their family and friends back home, and Kira will die shortly after the crash. Sisko really doesn't want to strand his crew, and knows they could easily avoid the accident now, but that would {{Retgone}} the entire colony, effectively killing thousands of people. Ultimately, the crew reluctantly decides to subvert the trope at their own expense and go through with the crash -- only for the older version of Odo to forcibly make the ship escape and erase the entire colony, all to prevent Kira from dying. Kira herself is ''horrified'' when she learns about this, especially as she'd made peace with dying for the sake of preserving lives.

*** Alternate Dr. Frasier (who somehow only popped up in one of the 20+ SG-1 teams along with Carter's snake-brained love-interest Martouf; both are dead in this world) comes from a version of Earth where the Ori plague was still ravaging the world and a cure was still unfeasible. Alternate Frasier outright demands that her reality be taken seriously by Stargate Command, and she receives help (the cure) from them.
*** The episode does also follow...or perhaps invert the trope: one of the other [=SG1=] teams is planning to sacrifice "Earth-1" to save their own Earth. Technically, the other SG-1 wasn't planning on sacrificing Earth-1. They just wanted to save ''their'' Earth by getting the prime universe's ZPM, figuring that a three-week ride on the ''Daedalus'' instead of an Earth-to-Atlantis gate wasn't too bad (SG-1 of the prime Earth argued that the ZPM was also needed to power the city's shield and other defences, but their alternates weren't that bothered about that). On the other hand, once the alternate SG-1 is stopped and sent back, the prime SG-1 team doesn't seem very concerned about the alternate Earth still lacking adequate defenses against the Ori.

** Subverted in "The Daedalus Variations"; the team is stuck on an alternate reality ''Daedalus'' which is jumping through different realities. In one reality, an unknown alien race starts attacking Atlantis. Sheppard insists on intervening convinced that this reality's Atlantis are still the "good guys". It leads to the aliens attacking them as well, but the alternate Atlantis helps so it works out. Played straight with Ronon however. Teyla at one point wonders if her dead counterpart had a child as well only for Ronon to say worrying about every single reality's Teyla and her child is pointless.

** That being said, he asks Evelyn to think strongly about going into the janitor's closet after exiting the elevator to deliberately create an alternate universe where she did so they have somewhere to talk after initiating her into verse jumping. This reality acts as a decoy to Jobu Tupaki and her forces to buy themselves time before Evelyn has to confront her.

* Subverted in ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold'': When a DepopulationBomb threatens to kill all life on Earth, Batman and Red Hood teleport it to another dimension. It turns out (as in, we find out they already knew) everyone on that Earth were already [[EverythingsDeaderWithZombies zombies,]] so the bomb's explosion was [[NegateYourOwnSacrifice completely harmless]]. Additionally, this episode primarily takes place in an EvilCounterpart world, similar to Earth-3 of the comics. Batman doesn't just want to escape this world, he wants to make it better (since, in this world, TheBadGuyWins is a regular occurrence). He frees the captured heroes, who are now being led by Red Hood, and the villains have been defeated. Batman only leaves when he feels like the native heroes have a good handle on things.

[[folder:Films -- Animation]]
* Averted in ''Westernanimation/MyLittlePonyEquestriaGirls1'', wherein Twilight Sparkle goes to a HighSchoolAU featuring human counterparts to her friends and most of the show's cast. While her main objective is to retrieve her crown where her Element resides from BigBad Sunset Shimmer, she also quickly makes a friendship with her counterparts. This becomes a plot point when at the film's climax, Sunset threatens to destroy the portal connecting the two worlds if she didn't give her the crown. Twilight reasons she'd stay to help them, even if they'd both be doomed to never return to Equestria, since Sunset would be free to hurt her friends either way. Her bond with her new friends is strong enough to summon the Elements of Harmony and defeat her OneWingedAngel form. Only when she ensures that her friends would try to show Sunset Shimmer kindness after stripping her of power, does she cross back to Equestria. Nor does she forget this world after leaving, coming back in [[WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyEquestriaGirlsRainbowRocks the next movie]] to help her human friends and [[TheAtoner a reformed Sunset Shimmer]] confront the next magical threat. Sunset, despite being from Equestria like Twilight, never shows any inclination to return after her HeelFaceTurn and [[IChooseToStay makes the human world her home]], defending it from magical threats. The series then continues on for more entries that don't involve the main series characters at all.
[[/folder]]

* Averted in ''VideoGame/RakenzarnFrontierStory'', as the Realmwalkers take every universe as equally important. And as they play the role of GuardianOfTheMultiverse, it is literally their job to make sure all of them stay safe.[[note]]This doesn't stop the game's creator from blowing up a few for a cheap shot at some franchises, though.[[/note]]

* An exception is the ''WesternAnimation/CodenameKidsNextDoor'' episode "Operation: P.O.O.L.", where the heroes don't try to just escape the horrible MirrorUniverse. They manage to actually make it better.

* In ''WesternAnimation/MegasXLR'', Coop ends up in an alternate reality where he destroyed the Glorft, turned evil, conquered the world, and worse, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking lost his gut and became ripped]]. In an exception, the real Coop decides to take care of his evil self, only to get Megas destroyed. Instead of simply pressing the ResetButton, [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome he steals the alternate Coop's abandoned Megas, leads the Glorft against Evil Coop's forces in a final epic battle, and gets Evil Coop trapped between the universes]]. It's as awesome as it sounds.

* Averting this trope seems to be the logic WesternAnimation/SamuraiJack lives by in his BadFuture. He repeatedly turns down the chance to return to the past and kill Aku before he could ever take over the world and gives it up to help his new friends. While this may seem stupid in that he'd negate the BadFuture so he'd never need to save his friends, it may be that he's just too kind to risk that this trope is true. Thus the best option would be to destroy Aku in the future and then return to the past and destroy him there. Ultimately, [[spoiler:Jack kills Aku in the past, which does indeed erase the future he was sent into--[[BittersweetEnding include Ashi, his lover who he met while he was there]]. Although heartbroken, Jack concludes that [[SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong restoring the Earth]] [[{{Reconstruction}} was worth the cost]]. Jack's allies were implied to have felt the same, as being told of Jack's goal to erase "the future that is Aku" did not keep them from coming to his aid.]]

* Averted UpToEleven in ''WesternAnimation/TurtlesForever'', where the 1986 and 2003 TMNT versions team up to stop 2003 Shredder and save not just their own worlds, but the entire TMNT [[TheMultiverse multiverse]].

** ''Film/DoctorStrangeInTheMultiverseOfMadness'': Defied. [[spoiler:Wanda's]] goal is to kill America Chavez, a child from another universe who has the power of inter-dimensional travel, and steal her powers. That way, [[spoiler:she can travel to an alternate universe where her children are alive, kill her alternate self, and take her alternate self's place so she can have her happy family life.]] Doctor Strange and Wong rightfully say throughout the film how horrible from both a safety and moral standpoint this plan is. Played straight with the fate of [[spoiler:The Illuminati]] however, a superteam from another universe that try to stop the villain and are all brutally slaughtered for their trouble, which garners no sympathy from anyone in the main universe.

** ''Film/AvengersEndgame'': [[spoiler:Subverted. When Bruce shows up in the past to take the Time Stone from the Ancient One, she refuses, as it will doom her branching universe to extinction. Bruce promises that, with time travel, they can bring it right back to the same instant it was taken (whether that will cause her timeline to merge back into the main one or continue as a branch that isn't doomed to extinction [[TimeyWimeyBall is unclear]]). She initially refuses, since they could die before they have a chance to put the stone back, but she accepts it once she hears that her successor, Doctor Strange, is the one who made the plan possible. At the end of the movie, Steve does use the time machine again to put everything back where it's supposed to be]].
** ''Film/DoctorStrangeInTheMultiverseOfMadness'': Defied. [[spoiler:Wanda's goal is to kill America Chavez, a child from another universe who has the power of inter-dimensional travel, and steal her powers. That way, she can travel to an alternate universe where her children are alive, kill her alternate self, and take her alternate self's place so she can have her happy family life. Doctor Strange and Wong rightfully tell her throughout the film how horrible from both a safety and moral standpoint this plan is and try to stop her from killing America and anyone else across the multiverse who stands in her way]].

* ''Film/AvengersEndgame'': [[spoiler:Subverted. When Bruce shows up in the past to take the Time Stone from the Ancient One, she refuses, as it will doom her branching universe to extinction. Bruce promises that, with time travel, they can bring it right back to the same instant it was taken (whether that will cause her timeline to merge back into the main one or continue as a branch that isn't doomed to extinction [[TimeyWimeyBall is unclear]]). She initially refuses, since they could die before they have a chance to put the stone back, but she accepts it once she hears that her successor, Doctor Strange, is the one who made the plan possible. At the end of the movie, Steve does use the time machine again to put everything back where it's supposed to be]].

* Just like the series it's based after, ''WesternAnimation/WhatIf2021'' explores different timelines from events that happened in the ''Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse'', and like the series it's named after it tends to feature downer endings. Amongst these there's the Earth being overrun by zombies or Dr. Strange destroying the universe.

* ''VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening'' averts this in a big way. [[spoiler:Since a large amount of characters are from alternate futures where the heroes have had a lot less luck, in a Fire Emblem game especially, seeing any character as expendable can doom you down the road. And then there's how the characters, in-game, feel about the future characters. All of the future characters are children of the 'present' heroes. There's even a DLC chapter where the heroes from the present work to save one BadFuture timeline.]]
* Inverted in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemHeroes'', where one faction of villains views the ''main'' universe as expendable. [[spoiler:Hel had previously invaded an alternate version of Askr, with the local heroes teaming up with Embla to stop the invasion. Unfortunately, their attempt to seal her away [[GoneHorriblyWrong went horribly wrong]], with everyone from both nations, save Alphonse and Veronica, ending up dead. Hel then offered the royals a deal; help her destroy another world (the main universe), and she'd resurrect everyone in their world. Driven mad with grief and regret, the two, now going by the names Líf and Thrasir, accepted, fully willing to destroy another version of their homelands.]]

** ''VisualNovel/ZeroTimeDilemma'' continues the trend with multiple timelines that end badly. And it turns out that all the timelines that aren't [[spoiler:the one that leads to ''Virtue's Last Reward'' or the final ending are worse than ''VLR'''s timeline as they will eventually lead to radicals launching nukes that will destroy civilization.]] But it's taken to an even greater height as we learn that when anyone SHIFTs, their consciousness trades places with the consciousness that was in that body up to that point in time. So not only are the universes they are leaving behind screwed, but they are screwing over an alternate version of themselves in the process to retain their memories. This becomes especially relevant [[spoiler:in the ending. All 9 players have learned the truth of what they need to do to save the world. Only problem is that they are locked in the bunker which is about to explode with no physical way out. The only way they can escape with their knowledge to save the world is to SHIFT over to the versions of themselves that were freed before the game even began. They know full well that doing this will condemn the alternate version of themselves to die without ever knowing why. Though you can choose not to, you ultimately must to get the final ending.]]

*** After the breaches are closed, Wells daughter is rescued [[spoiler:and the apparent death of Jay Garrick]], Barry is told to forget about Earth 2 and move on with his life, saying that Earth 2's world is not his own to worry about. However, after seeing firsthand what it suffers at Zoom's hands, Barry feels guilty for leaving it at his mercy and vows to liberate it from Zoom.

** Another ''DS9'' episode seriously looks at this trope, where the ''Defiant'' crew learns that, thanks to the TimeyWimeyBall, they'll soon crash-land hundreds of years in the past on an isolated planet. While their descendants will form a thriving colony of 8,000 people, the crew themselves will inevitably die on the planet (save for the long-lived Odo) and never see their family and friends back home, and Kira will die shortly after the crash. Sisko really doesn't want to strand his crew, and knows they could easily avoid the accident now, but that would {{Retgone}} the entire colony. Ultimately, the crew reluctantly decides to subvert the trope at their own expense and go through with the crash -- only for the older version of Odo to forcibly make the ship escape and erase the entire colony, all to prevent Kira from dying. Kira herself is ''horrified'' when she learns about this, especially as she'd made peace with dying for the sake of preserving lives.

* Deconstructed in ''Series/{{Farscape}}'''s final season episode "Prayer". [[ItMakesSenseInContext Long story short]], John needs some information, and to get it [[spoiler: he has to kill someone in]] an alternate universe where everyone on Moya was combined for some reason. And [[spoiler: that someone is the combined Chiana-Aeryn, Aeryn being his love and Chiana being his little sister-figure. He points his gun, she starts begging for her life in a way that makes it clear she doesn't take it seriously because she can't believe John would do this...a tear rolls down her eye...John puts down the gun, says he can't do it. Which is probably why he brought his arch-nemesis/[[ShadowArchetype shadow]], who predictably grabs John's hand and the gun and executes Chiaeryn.]] He also had reason to believe that they were all going to die within the arn if he hadn't become involved. [[spoiler: This is hopefully why he shrugged off the deaths of two other crewmembers fairly easily.]] Scorpius directly pointed out to John that, officially, the entire alternate universe would ''wink out of existence'' the moment they left it, so anyone who "died" in it would also be ''wiped from existence'' soon enough - but he still felt bad about it.
* ''Series/HerculesTheLegendaryJourneys'' subverted this trope: Early in the show's run, one episode featured in a throwaway MirrorUniverse where everyone's personalities were swapped: Herc was an evil despot, his {{sidekick}} Iolaus was a cowardly jester, Ares was the God of Love, etc. Many seasons later, after Iolaus had been killed off, Herc wound up with mirror-Iolaus, who was [[CharacterDevelopment developed into an actual character]].

* Played with, and ultimately subverted, in ''Series/{{Fringe}}''. At first, it seems that Walter feels this way about his counterpart when he [[spoiler:steals his counterpart's son after his own Peter dies of a rare disease, but we later find out he intended to sent Peter back after curing him]]. Because of our Walter's action, which has also caused fissures in reality and mass casualties in the parallel universe, Walternate felt this way about OUR side, and used his position as Secretary of Defense to prepare for a war with it. Most of the third season is spent with episodes switching between universes, enabling the audience to gain sympathy for the parallel universe while believing that only one universe can survive, until [[spoiler:the season's final episode shows that the opposite is true - the survival of each universe is ''dependent'' on that of the other, and if one is destroyed the other will ultimately fall apart as well, so they have to work together and learn to trust each other]]. In the fourth season, Walter's dealing with a lot of guilt over the damage he did to the parallel universe. So, thoroughly subverted in the end.

* ''Series/{{Community}}'' episode [[Recap/CommunityS3E04RemedialChaosTheory Remedial Chaos Theory]] explores this. Jeff rolls a die to decide who gets pizza and creates six different timelines, each one of them starting events that develop depending on who leaves the group. In the main timeline, Abed catches the die, but in the timeline where [[TheHeart Troy]] leaves, things go very bad, very quickly. Pierce gets shot in the leg and dies, Annie gets locked away in a mental institution, Jeff loses an arm, Troy destroys his larynx, Shirley falls OffTheWagon and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Britta...dyes her hair blue]]. Abed and Troy decide that since this is obviously the darkest timeline, they should commit to being evil and find way to the main timeline, kill their alternate selves and reclaim their lives. This becomes a plot point later in the season, [[spoiler: as Abed starts seeing Evil!Abed in times of great insecurity, culminating in Evil!Abed taking over Abed's body in the season finale.]] Of course, since ''Series/{{Community}}'' is not a sci-fi show, any of this [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane may just be Abed's imagination.]]

* Inverted in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemHeroes'', where one faction of villains is trying to pull this on the ''main'' universe. [[spoiler:Hel had previously invaded an alternate version of Askr, with the local heroes teaming up with Embla to stop the invasion. Unfortunately, their attempt to stop her [[GoneHorriblyWrong went horribly wrong]], with everyone from both nations, save Alphonse and Veronica, ending up dead. Hel then offered the royals a deal; help her destroy another world (the main universe), and she'd resurrect everyone in their world. Driven mad with grief and regret, the two, now going by the names Líf and Thrasir, accepted, fully willing to destroy another version of their homelands.]]

* ''VideoGame/LEGOStarWars''. "In an infinite universe, all things are possible..." [[spoiler:Though it's really just the one parallel universe where you must [[DieChairDie blow everything up]] to collect a million Lego studs -- despite the fact that you're using Star Wars Lego figures on a generic suburban Lego Town...]]

** This becomes a plot-point when Odo prevents an alternate reality from happening to save Kira. In doing so he wipes out an entire human colony of eight thousand people who have evolved from the descendants of the ''Defiant'' crew.

** The episode "2010" sees the SG-1 of the year 2010 (ten years in the future of the time the episode aired) come up with a plan to erase their timeline, despite having defeated the Goa'uld with the aid of their allies the Aschen, because they've learned that the Aschen are sterilizing ninety percent of Earth's population to make Earth their slaves, with the Tau'ri lacking the resources to oppose the Aschen on their own and concluding that the only way to stop them is to prevent this alliance from ever being formed in the first place.

*** Alternate Dr. Frasier (who somehow only popped up in one of the 20+ SG-1 teams along with Carter's snake-brained love-interest Martouf; both are dead in this world) comes from a version of Earth where the Ori plague was still ravaging the world and a cure was still unfeasible. Alternate Frasier outright demands that her reality be taken seriously by Stargate Command, and she receives help (their cure) from them.
*** The episode does also follow...or perhaps invert the trope: one of the other [=SG1=] teams is planning to sacrifice "Earth-1" to save their own Earth. Technically, the other SG-1 wasn't planning on sacrificing Earth-1. They just wanted to save ''their'' Earth by getting the prime universe's ZPM, figuring that a three-week ride on the ''Daedalus'' instead of an Earth-to-Atlantis gate wasn't too bad (SG-1 of the prime Earth argued that the ZPM was also needed to power the city's shield and other defences, but their alternates weren't that bothered about that).

** In the season 10 episode "The Road Not Taken", Carter and her counterpart in another universe are experimenting with an ancient device simultaneously. Something goes wrong and our Sam is transported to the other side. The other Sam wasn't so lucky. No one from the other side seems too upset about this, whereas our SG-1 is extremely worried for the duration of our Sam's absence.

** And Rose is considered to have as much of a "happy ending" as she can without the Doctor -- her mother and father are reunited. Only it's the parallel counterpart of her Dad -- the home version is still dead, and the local version of her mother is [[AFateWorseThanDeath not around for various reasons]].
*** The season 4 finale confuses things once more by having [[spoiler:Rose]] make a herculean effort to contact the Doctor to warn him of a crisis that threatens ''every'' universe. The Doctor's world isn't so far into crisis as the alternate one, where "the stars are going out". By the end, a reshuffle has taken place: [[spoiler: Mickey's granny is revealed to have died, and he and Rose have concluded their unfinished business; so he returns home. The Doctor's almost-clone goes with Rose and Jackie to the alternate universe.]] Meaning that there's a character in the alternate universe who is - sort of - the counterpart of a character in the Doctor's universe, even though he originates from the Doctor's universe himself. Confused?

* Played with, and ultimately subverted, in ''Series/{{Fringe}}''. At first, it seems that Walter feels this way about his counterpart when he [[spoiler:steals his counterpart's son after our Peter dies of a rare disease, but we later find out he intended to sent Peter back after curing him]]. Because of our Walter's action, which has also caused fissures in reality and mass casualties in the parallel universe, Walternate felt this way about OUR side, and used his position as Secretary of Defense to prepare for a war with it. Most of the third season is spent with episodes switching between universes, enabling the audience to gain sympathy for the parallel universe while believing that only one universe can survive, until [[spoiler:the season's final episode shows that the opposite is true - the survival of each universe is ''dependent'' on that of the other, and if one is destroyed the other will ultimately fall apart as well, so they have to work together and learn to trust each other]]. In the fourth season, Walter's dealing with a lot of guilt over the damage he did to the parallel universe. So, thoroughly subverted in the end.

* Averted in ''VideoGame/BravelyDefault'' [[spoiler:during the final battle with Lord Ourobouros, who has successfully linked countless parallel worlds. After the opening phase of the battle, he begins using a powerful attack that destroys one of those parallel worlds, and does so multiple times. The main characters are appropriately horrified by this, with Agnes going into full-fledged HeroicBSOD mode. It's only once the inhabitants of the parallel worlds are able to fight back against Ourobouros' attack and prevent him from destroying them that the party regains their willingness to fight.]]

*** The crowning irony of this statement is that alternate Batman was 'created' by Vandal Savage murdering his parents instead of Joe Chill. How he would feel if he'd known they'd be murdered either way is never revealed, because none of the league have the heart to tell him. On the other hand, [=AlterBat=] seems to be saying, ''"I risk my life every day fighting Alternazis. Death was always a possibility. '''Go get the bastards!'''"''

* {{Inverted|Trope}} in ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'': in "Rick Potion No. 9", Rick and Morty inadvertently cause the end of the world and the former simply takes them to an alternate universe where they both died and take their counterparts' place, making this an example of an Expendable ''Main'' Universe. Morty is clearly traumatized by the notion that his friends and family are all doomed and he will spend the rest of his life with identical strangers. Given how nonchalant Rick is about this, it's quite clear that he considers ''every'' universe expendable. ''Rickmurai Jack'' reveals that the main Rick the audience has been following is from a different dimension than the Morty that the show is following.

* Averted in ''VideoGame/BravelyDefault'' [[spoiler: during the final battle with Lord Ourobouros, who has successfully linked countless parallel worlds. After the opening phase of the battle, he begins using a powerful attack that destroys one of those parallel worlds, and does so multiple times. The main characters are appropriately horrified by this, with Agnes going into full-fledged HeroicBSOD mode. It's only once the inhabitants of the parallel worlds are able to fight back against Ourobouros' attack and prevent him from destroying them that the party regains their willingness to fight.]]
* ''VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening'' averts this in a big way. [[spoiler:Since a large amount of characters are from alternate futures where the heroes have had a lot less luck, in a Fire Emblem game especially, seeing any character as expendable can doom you down the road. And then there's how the characters, in-game, feel about the future characters. All of the future characters are children of the 'present' heroes. There's even a DLC chapter where the heroes from the present work to save one BadFuture timeline.]]
* ''VideoGame/IntoTheBreach'' subverts this heavily. It's a roguelike where you play as a team of mech pilots hopping between timelines to save humanity. If you fail, then everyone in that timeline dies, and you jump to a new one. While this does allow you to lose a timeline and keep going, it also gives defeat much more meaning than just going back to the new game screen.
* ''VideoGame/LEGOStarWars''. "In an infinite universe, all things are possible..." [[spoiler:Though it's really just the one parallel universe where you must [[DieChairDie blow everything up]] to collect a million Lego studs -- despite the fact that you're using Star Wars Lego figures on a generic suburban Lego Town...]]
* In ''VideoGame/StarOceanTheLastHope'', the party accidentally travel to a parallel universe where [[spoiler:Edge indirectly destroys an alternate [[TheSixties 1960s]] Earth and everyone on it]]. The rest of the party plays this trope completely straight, writing off [[spoiler:Edge's accidental genocide]] as unimportant since it was just a parallel world that took the damage. However, [[spoiler:Edge]] himself averts this trope by realising just what he has done, and in response has a HeroicBSOD that lasts for the next ten or so hours of the game.
** The game itself plays this straight, as no matter what the characters' opinions are, the event has no importance to the plot besides making Edge angst and adding Meracle to the party.

* ''VideoGame/TalesOfXillia2'' dedicates itself to this trope in the greatest tradition of ''VideoGame/TalesSeries'' {{deconstruction}}s, with much of the plot revolving around having to destroy alternate universes that are threatening the prime universe simply by existing. The party brings up the morality of it on multiple occasions and often question if they truly did the right thing. It gets played for [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome realistic]] results when one of the playable characters is from one such alternate world and [[WhatTheHellHero is very upset]] to learn their world is gone because it "wasn't the real world".

* Averted in the ''Warlords of Draenor'' expansion of ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'', set in an alternate pre-Outland version of Draenor. Despite meeting alternate past versions of major orc and draenei figures, none are ever treated as "expendable" so much as allies or genuine threats. It's a shock when the Draenor version of [[spoiler:Prophet Velen]] sacrifices himself to counter a threat to the draenei in Shadowmoon Valley. Furthermore, members of the ''player's'' timeline, such as [[spoiler:Vindicator Maraad]], are ''also'' likely to die on Draenor. It helps that several important figures are not shown in the player's timeline, like [[spoiler:Yrel, who becomes an Exarch in this timeline but is not in the original]], or are already dead in the original, like [[spoiler:Durotan, Thrall's father, who in the original timeline died when he tried to stand against the fel-corrupted orcs]], or have a much different role, such as [[spoiler:Akama, a Broken assassin in the original timeline, but an exarch and major draenei leader on Draenor]]. It also helps that Outland, the version of Draenor in the original timeline, is a BadFuture of past Draenor, and fighting to save this Draenor from Outland's fate is seen as a worthy goal.
** The entire expansion ends up being a roundabout way to bring the orcish warlock Gul'Dan BackFromTheDead. In the main universe, Gul'Dan was killed off in a mission in ''VideoGame/WarcraftII'', and reintroduced in the next game as nothing but a skull -- which makes for a good ArtifactOfDoom but can't exactly provide the rest of the cast with engaging repartee. Alt!Gul'Dan, on the other hand, is an unrepentantly evil bastard who has cemented himself in LoveToHate territory after [[spoiler:[[KilledOffForReal blowing up Varian Wrynn.]]]]

* This is essentially the Ascians' modus operandi in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV''. [[spoiler:To make a long story short, the world the game takes place in is one which, after a fight between [[GeniusLoci the will of the planet]] and a being meant to keep him in check, was fractured into a lesser version of itself and thirteen reflections (i.e. alternate universes). The Ascians are trying to reunite the reflections to make their world whole again, which requires messing things up so badly on those reflections that they are utterly destroyed and their aether is left to rejoin with the Source, which triggers [[ApocalypseHow a Calamity]]. By the time of ''A Realm Reborn'', only five reflections are left, one having become so inundated with dark aether that it was turned into the Void where demons come from, and another seven were rejoined - and by the post-game of the second expansion, an eighth is well on its way to rejoining as well. Fortunately, the third expansion's story involves the player and their friends going to that reflection and saving what's left of it before it can be rejoined and trigger another Calamity on the Source.]]
* Franchise/FateSeries: This is part of the world's natural law. As shown in ''Videogame/FateGrandOrder'', the timeline naturally branches multiple times following the different possibilities of human history. However, there are only a finite amount of "water" (energy) to sustain so many different timelines at once, so every once in a while (around a century or so, usually during certain important historical events) the world would use something called a "Quantum Time-Lock", making everything that happened during its usage immutable. This has the side effect of CuttingOffTheBranches that strayed too far from the "trunk of the history tree", especially if those timeline branches end with humanity becoming stagnant in one way or another and thus the energy would be wasted on them. The timelines that are "pruned" underwent CessationOfExistence, but as shown in the second saga of the game, they can be "resumed" by planting something called the "Tree of Emptiness" on them, creating a "Lostbelt" that are centered on where the trees are planted (e.g Russian Lostbelt shows an AlternateHistory of Russia). These trees are planted by the new villains and the resumed "defunct" timelines threaten to overwrite whole human history, so our heroes travel around the world to destroy them; however, they're faced with the dilemma of having to end the lives of the Lostbelt inhabitants, but they're encouraged by one of their Lostbelt allies to continue fighting for their world's future, no matter the cost.
* In ''VideoGame/BackToTheFutureTheGame'' this is brought up as a plot point. Thanks to things going haywire in the past, Marty winds up in [[spoiler: a version of 1985 where Hill Valley is ruled by Edna Strickland, and has to recruit Doc (who had fallen in love with her) to go back in time and set things right. However this Doc learns that in the normal 1985, Edna is sad and lonely, and aborts the mission to try and stop Marty from succeeding]].
* One episode of ''Night Springs'', a ''Twilight Zone''-esque ShowWithinAShow in ''VideoGame/AlanWake'', touches on this. A professor has created a device that gives him quantum immortality: thanks to the many-worlds interpretation, whenever it's possible that he'll survive a situation that would otherwise kill him, this version of him will survive while another one dies. He demonstrates this by putting a gun with a live round to his head and pulling the trigger; the gun doesn't fire. His students are shocked by the idea, with one in particular bringing up the deaths of his alternate selves, which the professor brushes off as trivial. However, the device becomes unplugged as the professor grows more manic in the implications of his power, and his next demonstration... [[BoomHeadshot doesn't go so well]].

* ''Webcomic/{{Starslip}}'' has [[https://starslip.krisstraub.com/20050817.shtml this legendary comic]].
** Interestingly, the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum physics can be interpreted in a way that this is how Star Trek-style transporters work. They kill you here and build a clone out of the atoms that are somewhere else. Normally, quantum physics is interpreted as only having one of each particle, but it could be interpreted as that there's multiple particles, and the alternate universes where two are swapped is just as likely. As such, there's a universe, just as likely as this one, where the atoms you're being built of now made you up before. You're effectively being transported to an alternate universe where your atoms are already there. Alternate you gets transported to this universe by the same method.
* Also by Kris Straub: In ''Webcomic/CheckerboardNightmare'', some kind of time-travel mishap flings past-Chex into the present. Upon realizing that the many-worlds hypothesis must be in effect, present-Chex fixes this problem by killing his past self.
* In ''Webcomic/{{Narbonic}}'', a TimeTravel device is powered by harnessing all the energy in, and in the process destroying, alternate universes "where they probably don't want to exist as much."

* ''Webcomic/KevinAndKell'' also played with this trope - with Kevin's sister, Danielle, dying in a HeroicSacrifice, only to be replaced with her double from the Human world (long story). Most of the main cast knows the truth, but have accepted her as part of the family; even if a few would rather believe that she returned from the dead than she's from another dimension.
* Averted in ''Webcomic/ToSaveHer''; even though there are many, ''many'' parallel universes, Altenates of the same character are deliberately treated as separate people, even when the alternate of a dead character steps in as a SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute of the original.
* Averted and played straight in ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance''. The main characters are surprisingly apathetic when they set up their TV to view alternate universes, and discover most universes end with one of them causing Armageddon. (It being a filler-guest story made in cut-and-paste style may have had something to do with this.) This is averted, however, during the "Aylee" and "That Which Redeems" arcs, where Torg tries his hardest to save alternate versions of the Sluggyverse; the death of [[spoiler:the Zoe from the Dimension of Lame]] is actually one of the saddest moments in the series, and profoundly affects Torg from there on out. Then again, there was the Punyverse... [[spoiler: it blew up, all of it, and it was a very remote reality with no obvious alternative versions of anything in the usual dimension, but they got away and just didn't care, presumably because it was such a stupid place and impossible to take seriously.]] To be fair, [[spoiler: The punyverse was being destroyed by an atomic chain reaction. There was nothing they could do but escape, and they had only seconds to escape in.]]
* Subverted in ''Webcomic/GeneralProtectionFault'': the rest of the cast thinks Trudy is actually her counterpart from the "Emperor Nick" universe. That Trudy switched with "the real" Trudy, to give the latter a chance at true redemption. (So what they think is a new Trudy is actually still the old Trudy)

* ''Webcomic/FinalBlasphemy'' has Jeremy being shown several possible futures the author had planned, some of which had alternate timelines.

* In ''Webcomic/CommanderKitty'', apparently unsupervised abuse of the transporter can make it serve as a InterdimensionalTravelDevice and [[http://www.commanderkitty.com/2010/06/06/the-trouble-with-fluffys/ results in summoning an army of bizarre alternate universe clones]]. [[http://www.commanderkitty.com/2010/06/20/anything-but-that/ The only way to deal with them is to just sweep 'em into the closet]].
* In ''Webcomic/{{Goblins}}'' we have the Maze of the Many, a multiversal dungeon crawl where alternate versions of the player characters combat each other and the dungeon to get to the treasure room first. If a party gets wiped out or does not reach the treasure in time, they pop back into existence when they entered, their memories of the dungeon lost. "Our" versions of Minmax, Farogath and Kin have failed over two million times. The author throws in a filler detailing the background of some of the alternates every now and then.

* ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'' generally avoids this by being a [[http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Continuity multiverse]] rather than a universe, and thus all timelines are valid, and occasionally even have an effect on each other. TimeTravel stories generally involve a large tear in the fabric of time and space, and any threat coming through from another universe where things happened differently tends to mean something is terribly, horribly wrong, often to the point of [[BigBad Unicron]] being involved.
** In fact, later ''Transformers'' materials have indicated Unicron is a multiversal constant--one of the few things that is unchanged in the entire multiverse. If he is destroyed in one universe, that's fine--he still exists in the others. This doesn't prevent them from messing with each other, though--in Marvel's G1 comic, the Unicron of the Marvel continuity plucked Galvatron from both the future and an alternate universe to serve as his herald--presumably since Megatron, in that reality, was dead, and ''that'' Galvatron (and Unicron) had ''[[DownerEnding succeeded]]''.
** And the British comics go further then this by also having ''another'', much stronger, Galvatron from a different future who came back in time to kill Unicron. He abandons this plan when he accidentally changes history and realizes that, since he continued to exist, he was just in an alternate timeline. This is a slight justification to Galvatron not caring about the fate of a universe that wasn't his own though; he's a bit of a jerk and more than a bit mad.
** Played straight with ''WesternAnimation/TransformersCyberverse'' episode "The Crossroads". The Autobots find themselves stranded in [[PortalCrossroadWorld Unspace]] where they meet alternate Ark crews, two of which disintegrate to demonstrate the dangers of staying there too long. Fortunately, 8 of the alternate Arks manage to escape.

* Subverted in ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold'': When a DepopulationBomb threatens to kill all life on Earth, Batman and Red Hood teleport it to another dimension. It turns out (as in, we find out they already knew) everyone on that Earth were already [[EverythingsDeaderWithZombies zombies,]] so the bomb's explosion was [[NegateYourOwnSacrifice completely harmless]]. Additionally, this episode primarily takes place in an EvilCounterpart world, similar to Earth-3 of the comics. Batman doesn't just want to escape this world, he wants to make it better (since, in this world, TheBadGuyWins is a regular occurrence). He frees the captured heroes, who are now being led by Red Hood, and the villains have been defeated. Batman only leaves when he feels like the native heroes have a good handle on things.
* In ''WesternAnimation/MegasXLR'', Coop ends up in an alternate reality where he destroyed the Glorft, turned evil, conquered the world, and worse, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking lost his gut and became ripped]]. In an exception, the real Coop decides to take care of his evil self, only to get Megas destroyed. Instead of simply pressing the ResetButton, [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome he steals the alternate Coop's abandoned Megas, leads the Glorft against Evil Coop's forces in a final epic battle, and gets Evil Coop trapped between the universes]]. It's as awesome as it sounds.
* Averting this trope seems to be the logic WesternAnimation/SamuraiJack lives by in his BadFuture. He repeatedly turns down the chance to return to the past and kill Aku before he could ever take over the world and gives it up to help his new friends. While this may seem stupid in that he'd negate the BadFuture so he'd never need to save his friends, it may be that he's just too kind to risk that this trope is true. Thus the best option would be to destroy Aku in the future and then return to the past and destroy him there. Ultimately, [[spoiler:Jack kills Aku in the past, which does indeed erase the future he was sent into--[[BittersweetEnding include Ashi, his lover who he met while he was there]]. Although heartbroken, Jack concludes that [[SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong restoring the Earth]] [[{{Reconstruction}} was worth the cost]]. Jack's allies were implied to have felt the same, as being told of Jack's goal to erase "the future that is Aku" did not keep them from coming to his aid.]]
* An interesting idea from the TV special ''WesternAnimation/RudolphsShinyNewYear''. Father Time explains that, every New Year's Eve, a new island appears in the Archipeligo of Last Year. On these islands, "time stands still", and the world remains as it did during that year forevermore. Since this is a children's show, we get to see TheThemeParkVersion of a couple of years (One Million BC is depicted as a paradise of jolly cavemen and singing dinosaurs, 1776 is defined by Independence Day and Ben Franklin, and 1023 is apparently the year in which all the world's fairy tales took place), but FridgeLogic sets in after that. Think about it; in 1964 Music/TheBeatles will never break up, but at the same time the Civil Rights movement will barely get off the ground. In 1944, World War II will wage forever, Pearl Harbor is still in flames, and Hitler will never die. In 2001... [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror need we go on]]? And there is the implication that all the people on these islands are the same people who actually existed in these time periods, meaning that somewhere out there are multiple versions of you, one for each year of your life, trapped forever in a nebulous 12-month span, never to grow, or learn, or live on. And if you indeed weren't from the real world and merely were a reflection living upon one of the islands, how would you ever know?

* After [[spoiler: Prismo]] dies in ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'', it's revealed that he set up a TimeTravel-based gambit to reverse this that involves [[ItMakesSenseInContext an alternate Jake falling into an eternal sleep]] and [[ItMakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext an alternate Finn getting turned into a sword]]. None of the three see any problem with this, and Jake might even be jealous of his parallel's amazingly comfortable sleeping arrangements. A later episode even shows ''the Finn turned into the sword'', who can [[TalkingWeapon still talk]], has no problem with this ([[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane assuming that's not just "prime" Finn talking to himself]]).

[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
* Either averted or played straight (depending on how you look at it) in the anime/manga series ''Manga/{{Bokurano}}''. [[spoiler:With every Humongous Mecha battle, an alternate reality that is strikingly similar to that of the universe of the main characters is simply wiped out of existence. The aversion is that the characters ''do'' acknowledge the consequences of doing this, and many of them are quite traumatized by it. Played straight in that, well, they end up doing it anyway. For the most part.]]
* ''{{Anime/Noein}}'' plays with this. All the Dragon Knights believe that universes outside their own are somehow virtual and unreal, Haruka is arguing with them all the way, and Karasu is the only one who's convinced/realizes that the "virtual universe" thingie connected to a real universe rather than creating an artificial existence. In the end, it's up to Tobi to drop the anvil - that peoples' existences are confirmed by interactions and specifically [[PowerOfFriendship bonds]], not by observing a collapsing waveform.
* ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWarsOriginalGeneration'':
** An inversion and subversion. A group of heroes fleeing their own universe after a coup against the corrupt [[TheFederation Federation]] fails, and they try to rebuild their powerbase in our universe. They get several things right, but are surprised when several major things that happened to our universe just didn't happen in theirs. The subversion lies in their belief of recruiting the heroes of OUR universe to help them at any cost, and the main characters treat them as important as any other person. However it's hard to say if this really counts, because aside from one main female characters' alternate counterpart who is so radically different they don't even know it's her until the end of the game, the rest of the alternate universe characters are all people that don't exist in the main universe, or at least have never appeared in story there. It's hard for the main characters to write Axel off as "oh it's just an alternate Axel Almer" when they don't know of any other Axel Almer.
** ''The Inspector'', the anime adaptation of ''Original Generation 2'', plays the trope a bit straighter; Beowulf, already established in the games as the parallel version of Kyosuke Nambu, goes from merely being Axel's unseen arch-nemesis to being the BigBad of the series who mercilessly slaughters his world's version of the SRX Team in the ColdOpening of the first episode.
* The anime ''Anime/DualParallelTroubleAdventure'', which features two parallel universes, take this to the ultimate extreme by having the characters seemingly view themselves as more important than everybody in BOTH worlds. At the end of the series [[spoiler: Kazuki and Mitsuki Sanada accidentally merge the two universes together into one new universe during an attempt to SaveBothWorlds. Only the main characters remember the events of the show; to be fair, the merger was a CloseEnoughTimeline, and attempting to reverse the change was beyond the abilities of the cast.]]
* In ''LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya'' (Disappearance) Kyon had to destroy the AlternateUniverse that [[spoiler: Nagato created]], to recreate his own Universe.
* In ''Anime/DragonBallZ'', Cell comes from a timeline different than that of Trunks or the regular timeline. While the regular timeline and the one Trunks is from are eventually saved, no one seems to ever care about this third timeline and after awhile it's simply forgotten.
** Somewhat justified. The implication of Cell arriving in the main timeline is that people on Earth in that timeline are already dead (because Cell killed them before traveling) or alive and well (because the Androids were killed by Trunks, forcing Cell to kill him and came back in time to find them instead).
*** All the Z Fighters are dead in that "forgotten" timeline as Cell killed the Trunks from it. So it ''is'' justified as the main protagonists of the story (with maybe the exception of Bulma and side characters like Chi-chi) are gone. Additionally, due to how time travel works in ''DBZ'', the only person who could travel to the third timeline is Cell himself.
** Averted with Future Trunks' timeline: while most of the characters are dead thanks to the Androids, it's treated as no less important and the Cell Saga even ends with a [[PostScriptSeason Post-Script Episode]] that shows him destroying the evil future versions of Androids 17 and 18 and Cell, bringing peace to his world. [[spoiler:Then played heart-breakingly straight in ''Anime/DragonBallSuper'' where the inhabitants of Trunks' timeline are slaughtered by Goku Black and Future Zamasu, then the entire parallel universe is erased from existence by Future Zeno in order to destroy Zamasu's immortal EldritchAbomination form, erasing even the souls of those in the afterlife.]]
** Seemingly played straight but then averted with ''Super'''s Universal Survival Saga. The premise is that 8 of the 12 universes fight in a battle royale for their survival; the losers are erased from existence and the winning universe survives and gets a wish on the Super Dragon Balls. [[spoiler:It's averted as the winner, Universe 7's Android 17, uses his wish to bring back the erased universes. The Omni-King(s) were actually expecting the winner to subvert the trope's mentality as a SecretTestOfCharacter on part of the multiverse's mortals; if any of them made a "selfish" wish, then every other universe, including the ones that didn't compete, would've been erased as well.]]
* The central conflict in ''VisualNovel/HigurashiWhenTheyCry Rei'' is about this. At first, [[spoiler:Rika]] is willing to do ANYTHING to get back to her 'own' universe without even contemplating the morality of it, up to and including [[spoiler:matricide]]. Then as she relaxes a little bit and lets herself become a part of the universe she contemplates the good parts of it and why it could be wrong to regard her original universe as a universe A and the one she's currently inhabiting as a universe B. In a BittersweetEnding typical of the series, she ends up committing an unspeakable sin to get back home anyway, only after acknowledging the meaning of it enough to be truly scarred by it. Sure, another characters tells her 'it was all a dream,' but it was rather probably an attempt at comforting through deceit.
* ''LightNovel/AsuraCryin'' spends a good deal of time getting us acquainted with the main universe of the show, though it's hinted early on there's another one. When several characters from the main universe (which is actually World-2) are killed off, the show changes gears and goes to World-1. While Tomoharu knows he doesn't belong here, an effort is being made to SaveBothWorlds; they're both considered equally real, though there's still only one Tomoharu between them.
* Inverted in ''VisualNovel/ElevenEyes''. 3 characters [[spoiler: who were all technically strangers in the beginning, seeing how all of them come from a different parallel world]] get brutally murdered. [[spoiler: In the end, not only does the person who did it [[KarmaHoudini get off clean]] because she was (technically) the good guy, but everything ends all and well, because in the world where they end up in, has all three of them alive and well, even though they are not the same characters we have come to know and love]].
* The ''Anime/CodeGeass'' manga ''Nightmare of Nunnally'' has the heroine use her Geass power to see an alternate universe - namely, the "mainline" universe of the ''Anime/CodeGeass'' anime. No interference here, though Nunnally says she's happier with the manga reality, mainly since [[spoiler:in the "other" timeline, her beloved brother Lelouch and half-sister Euphemia are dead]].
* ''Manga/FutureDiary'': Discussed by Minene and Yuki when they both [[spoiler: travel to the AlternateTimeline.]] Minene insists Yuki must invoke this trope if he wish to succed. Yuki defies it and tries to save everyone's versions. He makes the correct choice.
* ''Anime/YuGiOhTheDarkSideOfDimensions'' opens with shots of multiple parallel Earths being disintegrated by a golden light as it cuts to the Earth the movie takes place on. It's twisted around a bit as the villain's belief that the universe is expendable because he believes an altered one will be better is only the root of his ruthlessness, and otherwise has very little bearing on what he's doing and where the plot goes in the end.
* ''Anime/YuGiOhArcV'' had avoided this trope by making all of the universes different from each other, and making the few counterparts (There are only 2 sets) into individuals with different motives, backstories, and apparent personalities. This trope is finally introduced in episode 126, where [[spoiler:Leo Akaba's]] belief in this trope is a large part of what made them a villain [[spoiler: as the four universes that we've watched for 3 seasons are fragments of the one he came from.]] Ultimately, it's played straight as [[spoiler:the four dimensions merge, and the heroes' dimensional counterparts are subsumed into Yuya and Zuzu, respectively]].
* ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventureSteelBallRun'' sees the BigBad, [[spoiler:Funny Valentine]], constantly pull alternate versions of himself and others out of their home dimensions, whether to use them as a weapon or to shove his mind into the alternates when mortally wounded. He never once expresses sadness at ruining the lives of others, as he's convinced [[UpTheRealRabbitHole his is the only universe that matters]]. Oddly, his attitude may be ''justified'', as [[spoiler:the "main" universe is the only one where the Holy Corpse exists]]; certainly the other versions of himself never express complaints, not like they have much of a choice. Alternates that aren't the stand user cannot be in the same universe for very long as they will be turned into [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menger_sponge level 3 Menger sponges]] and obliterated, although if one is dead and the other is alive the alternate can stay in the universe until a portion of the root world corpse touches them. [[spoiler: Like Dio and Diego's head]].
* ''LightNovel/FullMetalPanic'': [[spoiler:BigBad Leonard Testarossa treats the main ''FMP!'' timeline as this, since he's convinced that it's a "wrong" universe due to the changes caused by the Yamsk 11 incident, and his ultimate plan is to change history and prevent the incident from happening in order to alter the entire world. Thus, he believes that any action he takes in pursuit of this goal -- up to and including mass murder -- is inconsequential since everyone killed will be alive and well once the timeline is altered. However, it's averted by the protagonists: Leonard's ally Sophia tries to convince Kaname to go along with the plan by showing her a vision of the other world where protagonist Sousuke was an OrdinaryHighSchoolStudent rather than a {{Child Soldier|s}} with a tragic, bloodstained life. Kaname refuses because, while that Sousuke might be a wonderful person, he's not the same Sousuke she fell in love with[[note]]Of course, it's unclear if Sousuke would even exist in the other timeline; Leonard utterly despises him, so if he had any say in the matter the answer would be "No"[[/note]].]]
* Averted in ''Manga/{{Doraemon}}'': In the fourth movie (and the remake) "Great Adventure Into the Underworld", Noby and Doraemon create an alternate universe that runs on magic instead of science. They then find out the world they created has a BigBad who wants to take over the Earth, and the duo race to try and return to their own universe. When the opportunity arises, however, Noby shoots down the idea after learning that while they and their world would be fine, the magic-verse they created will continue to play out and TheBadGuyWins, deciding to save it before returning.

[[folder:Comic Books]]
* Comic books have lots of alternate universes, from the DC comics {{Elseworld}}s and "imaginary stories" to Marvel creations like ''ComicBook/WhatIf'' and ''ComicBook/MarvelZombies''. Almost every one of these ends with a bucketload of corpses, or maybe the entire universe getting destroyed. It's not our Wolverine, we don't care if this one dies.
** This is even more blatant in SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong stories. The cover of ''Comicbook/DaysOfFuturePast'' boasted [[TonightSomeoneDies "In This Issue]]: [[KillEmAll Everybody Dies!"]]. It was true: Everybody did die, but in the dark future that wouldn't come to pass if our heroes in the present succeeded.
*** Except it was revealed that time travel in the MU just splits off [[AlternateHistory alternate histories]], so the original CrapsackWorld timeline ''still happened'', just not in the mainstream books; the attempt ''didn't'' save the [=DOFP=] X-Men.
*** Subverted in ''Paradise X'', in which a number of heroes go to immense lengths to save alternate universes (though some prove unsalvageable). The only thing they won't do is travel into the past to reset a universe, since this will just create another alternate (stranding the people they were trying to save). It pays off--even archvillain Annihilus from the Negative Zone is willing to help out, out of gratitude for the assistance.
** Marvel at least makes a small concession to this trope, in that the 'main' universe is Earth-616, implying that it is just another one among many. DC, on the other hand, traditionally had its main reality as Earth-1, implying it to be the real world that all the others are merely copies of. After the multiverse shakeups of ''ComicBook/TheNew52'' and ''ComicBook/DCRebirth'', however, the main world is Prime Earth (previously New Earth).
** Subverted in Creator/GrantMorrison's ''Earth 2'' graphic novel; when the Justice League discovers the existence of an alternate Earth run by villains, Batman flat out says it's not their problem but later changes his mind.
** Similarly, the heroes of the Marvel universe are entirely aware that there's an alternate Earth out there where the Nazis won UsefulNotes/WW2 and are turning the whole planet into a concentration camp. (First revealed in ''Excalibur'' back in the 1980s.) No one seems to care enough to do anything about it, not even Kitty Pryde, who is a first-hand witness, and Jewish.
** Related to this trope is the general deactivation of PlotArmor - no point maintaining StatusQuoIsGod when nobody's ever gonna come back, after all. For whatever reason, this seems to hit ComicBook/SpiderMan particularly hard; if he appears in an issue of ''What If?'', there's about a fifty-fifty shot that he'll get killed off, depowered, or otherwise made unusable.
** Despite the numerical designation of the main Marvel universe, there have been a few instances where it's implied that Earth-616 is the actual main reality that most of the multiverse spun-off from, such as in ''ComicBook/SecretWars2015'', where the Ultimate universe version of Reed Richards travels there and declares it as the main hub of the multiverse.
* ''ComicBook/CrisisOnInfiniteEarths'' was a series specifically designed to destroy {{Alternate Universe}}s in Franchise/TheDCU. There were so many around that the PowersThatBe felt they cheapened the "real" universe, so their death was mandated. As usual, the ending is considered happy even though several universes just got wiped out, along with all 6 billion-plus people (and [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman trillion-plus aliens]]) in each one.
** The Multiverse was such a constant until Crisis that people did, in fact, care about the people in most of the more prominent universes. In Crisis itself, the death of the original Crime Syndicate is just heartbreaking; they're supervillains, but they're still part of the world, and they fight more bravely for it than anybody else does for theirs. A few of them run headlong into a wave of antimatter by the end...
*** This is rather subverted in ''ComicBook/InfiniteCrisis'', as those who saved the single remaining universe decide that they saved the wrong Earth. Infinite Crisis is all about trying to stop these former heroes from re-writing the world in their mold. They nearly succeed.
*** The Multiverse was brought back at the end of Infinite Crisis, because of the temporary return of the Infinite Earths caused there to be too much aspects to return which made it impossible for New Earth to return to its original ComicBook/PostCrisis state. Because of the events of ''ComicBook/FiftyTwo'', Infinite Crisis' immediate sequel, fifty one of the [[TitleDrop fifty-two]] were now radically different from each other. People were happy about this... until ''ComicBook/CountdownToFinalCrisis'' came along and destroyed one earth (but not its universe), and destroyed a universe so utterly that it had to be rebuilt from scratch. Then a deadly mutative virus permanently altered all life in that same rebuilt universe. [[WordOfGod Grant Morrison]] has officially stated that Countdown [[CanonDisContinuity never happened]] (minus Earth 51 being destroyed which is what caused ''ComicBook/FinalCrisis'').
* In the Pre-Crisis era, DC Comics struck a balance between readers not caring about alternate continuity characters and the need to maintain the status quo of its mainstream continuity characters with its Earth-Two continuity. Under DC's multiverse system, Earth-Two was DC's original continuity from before the ContinuityReboot of the Silver Age. Since the Earth-Two characters were the original pre-reboot versions of the characters, it was expected that readers would still care about them since they weren't from some throwaway continuity. However, since the Earth-Two characters had been displaced by the reboot versions of the characters, there was less need for DC to maintain the status quo for the Earth-Two characters since they had the reboot versions to maintain the status quo. In the Earth-Two continuity, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the Flash all got married and Batman was later killed off.
* Then there's ''ComicBook/TalesFromTheDarkMultiverse'', which takes this UpToEleven. The story goes that long ago, there was a cosmic system intended to quality-assure the creation of new universes. Those which were inherently flawed or damaged would be melted down and recycled before life even evolved: only stable universes would get to live on. However, the entity in charge of all this was [[APupilOfMineUntilHeTurnedToEvil murdered by his apprentice,]] and suddenly the flawed universes formed a multiverse of their own: these universes were still unstable, and therefore, [[CosmicHorrorStory would always inevitably break down in one way or another.]] The result is that ''every story'' set in the Dark Multiverse [[KillEmAll ends with the destruction of all life,]] whether it's through Batman becoming the next Joker, Blue Beetle [[UnwillingRoboticization converting everyone into OMACs]] or killing them, the Black Lanterns wiping out everyone except Sinestro, or Lois Lane becoming Superwoman and wiping out the Earth to avenge Superman's death. Naturally, the characters in these universes consider themselves as valid as any others, [[ComicBook/DarkNightsMetal and then they tried]] [[ComicBook/DarkNightsDeathMetal to get out...]]
* In the comic version of ''ComicBook/{{Wanted}}'' the {{Villain Protagonist}}s jumped to other dimensions with the specific purpose of stealing things (such as an irradiated condom) and killing superheroes. While they were there they felt perfectly free to trash other realities to make their own go the way they wanted (of course, as supervillains they would have no such compunctions).
* Usually subverted in ''ComicBook/TheAuthority'' comics in that the title group (who have a CoolShip capable of traveling between realities) are more than willing to move into other realities and tell the locals how things should be done - Or Else!
** They do show respect for other realities at times, usually as long as they're run right - or if the Authority wants their help. In one instance they had to temporarily evacuate the world's entire population to other realities, and are seen negotiating with The Meritocracy, their gender-flipped counterparts in a gender-flipped reality. (They in turn put the decision to a worldwide vote rather than decide for themselves, resulting with a majority agreement from that world's people.)
** On the other hand, in one arc they destroy an alternate Italy and in another they cause the death of everyone on an alternate earth trying to power their ship.
* ''ComicBook/AgeOfApocalypse'' killed off almost the entire alternate cast, with only a handful escaping back to 616, but the series still had a cult following and Marvel eventually acceded to demands that Blink be brought back, meaning that ''someone'' must have cared.
** 2013's ''X-Termination'' appears to have killed off the [=AoA=] reality for good.
* On a Post-''Comicbook/ZeroHourCrisisInTime'' encounter between every possible version of the Comicbook/LegionOfSuperHeroes and the Time Trapper, the heroes criticize the trapper for toying with their histories, claiming they're not variants but people.
* This is the basic mindset of ComicBook/SuperboyPrime. Not only is every universe except his own “perfect” world expendable, but he believes he comes from the only real universe, and everywhere and everyone else in the multiverse are just fictional characters. Ergo, it’s perfectly okay to kill them, because they’re not real, and he is.
* Subverted in the first issue of ''ComicBook/{{Planetary}}''. ''Franchise/DocSavage'' {{Expy}} Doc Brass and his SuperTeam created a machine that uses a short-lived pocket multiverse as a supercomputer. Unfortunately for them, the pocket universes experience billions of years in the real-world seconds before they're destroyed, and a [[CaptainErsatz familiar-looking]] super team from one of the universes figures out what was going to happen to them -- and how to get to the universe where Doc Brass and friends were.
* In ''ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogArchieComics'', the second Robotnik came from a universe where he had already killed all the main characters. This second timeline is simply forgotten.
** Following the events of ''ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogMegaManWorldsCollide'', ALL of the Sonic universes save for a handful were wiped out by the CosmicRetcon. This is treated as being most definitely a bad thing but the characters have their own problems to deal with; namely keeping ''their'' world from blowing up.
* Taken to an extreme and PlayedForDrama in IDW's ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'' comics with regards to the Dead Universe. It's revealed in ''Dark Cybertron'' that Shockwave used the Regenesis Ores to ''render an entire universe uninhabitable from the moment of its origin'', thus creating the Dead Universe. He mentions it only in passing, showing just how emotionless and amoral he's become. This also makes the trope justified later when the Dead Universe collapses; the only important thing about it is that Optimus Prime and his team escaped in time, but only because everything there is already dead.
** Overlord and Tarantulas's plan in ''Requiem for the Wreckers'' is to create an infinite supply of these. Tarantulas will study the results of subtly changing the timeline at various points. At the last moment, Overlord reveals that he's just going to use the time portal to kill Megatron over and over again to settle his vendetta against the Decepticon leader. Tarantulas actually worries that this could damage the space-time continuum. [[LackOfEmpathy Neither of them could care less about the inhabitants of the other timelines they're generating]].
** Averted in ''ComicBook/TransformersMoreThanMeetsTheEye'' with the Functionist Universe. Initially introduced as a possible present that resulted from Megatron dying before he founded the Decepticons, the main cast eventually travel there and actively work to overthrow the Functionist Council, with Megatron staying behind at the end of the story arc to continue the fight. At the very end of the series, the Functionists invade the main universe and with Megatron close behind having spent many years in that timeline thwarting their attempts to exterminate organic life.
* ''ComicBook/BlackScience'', a comic about a group of {{dimensional traveler}}s, actually inverts this: [[spoiler: The alternate universe versions of the main characters are the ones who think that "our" versions are expendable.]]
* ''Daredevils #6'' has Earth-238 destroyed by Lord Mandragon, Saturnyne's replacement.
* ''ComicBook/XMan'': In ''X-Man #71-74'', Qabiri destroys five alternate Earths, causing all Earth designations to slide down one number each time.
* Used by Bishop during his hunt through time for Cable and Hope to justify him destroying virtually every other continent on Earth ''but'' America; as Bishop sees it, once he kills Hope and creates a new future, everyone else he's killed won't exist.
* The entire plot of ''Comicbook/NewAvengers'' vol. 3 revolves around Comicbook/TheIlluminati trying to solve Incursions, which occur when two alternate Earths nearly collide. The only solution is to destroy one of the worlds in order to spare the other. The heroes constantly seek to find ways to prevent this, but [[spoiler: [[ComicBook/SubMariner Namor]] ends up destroying one of the alternate Earths when all other options fail]].
** A few issues actually have the Illuminati watching different alternate worlds meet their end at the hands of nearly invincible threats they themselves have been fortunate to not yet challenge directly yet.
* ''ComicBook/SpiderVerse'':
** Averted by default in that the whole point of the story is the various alternate Spider-Men and Women trying to stop Morlun from killing people throughout the multiverse. On the other hand, the comic exploits the alternate universe angle to create an AnyoneCanDie atmosphere, making battle scenes even more dramatic.
** This was played straight as part of an AuthorsSavingThrow: Many popular alternate universe characters were killed off as a result of the crossover, with the straw that broke the camel's back being the [[ComicBook/MarvelComics2 MC2]] versions of Peter and MJ, parents to ComicBook/SpiderGirl. Those realities' numerical designations were quietly changed to reflect the idea that they were just similar-looking alternate realities to the ones you read. This of course means Spider-Verse!May's misery is not something to be concerned about, since ''our'' May is still as happy as ever. And of course, nothing is said about the many alternate realities that are irrevocably deprived of their Spider-Man, including alternates of ComicBook/SpiderMan2099, WesternAnimation/SpiderManAndHisAmazingFriends and even VideoGame/MarvelVsCapcom. Peter might be alive in VideoGame/MarvelVsCapcomInfinite, but that doesn't mean there isn't one version of him who will never know the glory of the [[GameBreaker Reality Stone combo]].
** Lampshaded when Pavitr Prabhakar (Spider-Man India) [[LeaningOnTheFourthWall starts to worry]] that he's just an expendable reflection of Peter. Spider-Man UK comforts him by bringing up his own experience with other dimensions, and asking who's to say it's not the other way around?
* ''ComicBook/SecretWars2015'': Battleworld is all that remains of every reality in the Marvel multiverse until ''ComicBook/AllNewAllDifferentMarvel''.
* ''ComicBook/ThargsFutureShocks'': When scientists accidentally tear a hole through spacetime leading to an alternate Earth during weapons testing for the army, a GeneralRipper decides to test their new missiles against the other dimension so they can steal their resources, declaring that their own reality is the only one that matters. Someone investigates and finds out that the portal didn't lead to an alternate universe, [[KarmicTwistEnding but their own dimension 60 hours in the future]].
* Defied in ''ComicBook/{{Infinity Wars|2018}}'': while he helps fighting, Soldier Supreme (Captain America & Doctor Strange mashup) objects he doesn't want his life to be undone, even if it means two "more real" heroes will live instead. Adam Warlock promises to try keeping this universe existing while restoring the real one, and the so-called "Warp World" continued to exist within the Soul Stone. Marvel returned to the concept of the Warp World a year later in the "Secret Warps" storyline, which officially treats the reality as its own thing.
* The titular heroine of ''ComicBook/{{Naomi}}'' was born in an alternate universe where a MassSuperEmpoweringEvent affected at least 29 individuals -- most importantly Zumbado, a mass murderer who was about to be executed when he gained his superpowers. He proceeded to conquer his Earth, and by the time Naomi visited her homeworld for the first time in seventeen years, it's in a post-apocalyptic state, and Zumbado is interested in invading the main DC Universe. That said, Naomi expresses a desire to rebuild her homeworld. Indeed, Creator/BrianMichaelBendis [[http://www.cbr.com/naomi-dc-comics-interview-bendis-walker-campbell/ claimed that one of his goals is to establish an intriguing new world for future writers to write stories about]], citing Creator/JackKirby's ''[[ComicBook/NewGods Fourth World]]'' as an example.

[[folder:Fan Works]]
* In ''Fanfic/AloneTogether'', WesternAnimation/KimPossible falls back on this concept as a way of distancing herself from increasingly disturbing realizations about her experiences in the Other World, telling herself that those things happened to another version of her, not her real self. This rationalization breaks down during a phone call from Shego, who clearly sounds like the friend and lover she knew in the Other World rather than the Arch-Enemy she knew in this one.
* In ''Fanfic/{{Ancienverse}}'', [=DARC=] regards the main universe as useless and expendable.
* Played straight in the ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'' fanfic ''[[https://m.fanfiction.net/s/11860936/1/ Betrayed]]'', somewhat surprisingly considering the fic's theme that actions taken before a RESET aren't expendable or necessarily forgivable. Several alternate timelines where Frisk acted differently are visited, all of which except the Pacifist timeline are far worse than the main one, whether because Chara reignited the Human-Monster War and it ''didn't'' fizzle out, or because Frisk is a psychopath who enjoys killing monsters and returned to the Underground to finish the job, or has a LackOfEmpathy and kept the monsters trapped and in anarchy ForTheLulz. Moreover, Gaster takes souls from other timelines on a regular basis, not caring that doing so incites wars interdimensional in scope. He also brings warriors from nasty timelines to more peaceful ones. The heroes go to great lengths to repair the damage done to their own timeline, but don't even try to fix the others that are just as bad or worse, though admittedly they have the "one can't fix an infinity of worlds" excuse.
* ''Series/TheFlash2014''/''Series/Supergirl2015'' crossover ''Fanfic/CallMeKara'' averts this. Even though [[ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} Kara]] was effectively betrayed by her home dimension, she still cares about what happens to it, and when ComicBook/{{Darkseid}} shows up both she, [[Franchise/TheFlash Barry]] and the whole Justice League go to her Earth to fight.
* The ''Manga/RanmaOneHalf'' fanfic ''The Converging Series'' (sequel to ''Descents and Inversions''): the non-canon main characters are accidental time travellers from different alternate futures who are descended from various pairings of the canon characters. While the OnlySaneMan recognizes the existence of coexisting alternate realities (having had to deal with his reality-hopping amazon "half-sister" in the prequel), all the others decide to force the current reality into their own, to ensure their own continuous existence.
* ''FanFic/CoreLine'' [[ZigZaggedTrope Zig-Zags the trope]]. In the aftermath of a multi-versal collision (which created the setting) it is obvious that many people believe this (and there's [[TerroristsWithoutACause even a terrorist faction]] (the "Knights Of The True Timeline") that takes it to its InUniverse logical extreme, exterminating Alternates of people willy-nilly), there are a great many who come from those Alternate Universes that scream that (Dimensional) ClonesArePeopleToo.
* ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger: VideoGame/CrimsonEchoes'' has three timelines, the one that was created after the BigBad from the original game died, one where the myths of [[CoolSword a certain legendary sword]] never existed, and one that was mentioned in the official sequel ''VideoGame/ChronoCross'', where the aforementioned BigBad was not around to influence evolution and a long-dead race was revived to wage war on the now-ordinary humans. This fan-game's [[TheWatcher Watcher]] kinda doesn't like that these alternate timelines exist, as his workers, if you did something to muck up the timeline to make it different from normal, will not allow you to return to base until you make the necessary changes that keep history on track.
* ''Fanfic/ACrownOfStars'': Subverted. In this story Shinji and Asuka discover the existence of a whole multiverse full of alternate universes and parallel realities. Upon arriving Avalon they meet some of their alternate selves and hear about other worlds similar to theirs. However the rulers of Avalon treat all of them as an important deal.
* Subverted in crossover ''Fanfic/EchoesOfYesterday'', in where ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} gets dragged into [[Literature/{{Worm}} Earth-Bet]]. Kara misses and wants to go back home badly, but after finding out via a bit of fact-checking what kind of CrapsackWorld she has landed into, she decides she must do everything in her power to help.
* ''Fanfic/AnExtraordinaryJourney'' evokes the SGC's usual philosophy of not worrying too much about alternate universes, but when circumstances send Willow to parallel universes she can't help but try and help her local counterparts, ranging from saving Dawn from a car accident to fighting her magic-corrupted alternate. While Willow once claims that she has adopted this philosophy after [[spoiler:she slightly ascends to kill Adria and is banished to another universe by the other Ascended]], in reality she was just pretending not to care about this reality to put the First off-guard until she could contact the Asgard for help getting home.
* {{Deconstructed}} in the ''Fanfic/FeralnetteAUBigFatBreak''. [[TimeMaster Bunnyx]] believes that she's meant to "fix the timeline" if it diverges too far from her own world (aka [[WesternAnimation/MiraculousLadybug the canon show]]). In actuality, she's just meddling with other timelines, trying to force ''her'' parameters for how things should be onto them, when her actual job requires her to accomplish tasks while effecting these alternative timelines as little as possible. She doesn't see these alternates as real, and the drastic personality and lifestyle change Marinette undergoes in the this AU's timeline was her fault to begin with, as some of her previous meddling caused the teenager to undergo a HeroicBreakdown.
* Defied in ''Fanfic/FrozenTurtles'': While Arendelle is in another dimension, Elsa, Anna, Kristoff, Olaf and Sven consider the Turtles' lost Earth to be their Earth as well, and join the effort to save it.
* Taken up to BlueAndOrangeMorality levels by "A.K." in the ''Literature/HarryPotter'' {{Fanfic}} ''[[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2829366/1/ Dimension Hopping For Beginners]]'' who hunts down each dimension's [[BigBad Lord Voldemort]] and sometimes helps the Harry Potters he meets along the way, but other times 'helps' others inappropriately, like dumping a justifiably angsty version in an army boot camp to 'toughen up' rather than helping him appropriately resolve his emotional trauma, or even worse, by killing any Harry Potter who he disapproves too strongly of (such as one [[SlashFic in love with]] Draco Malfoy). In his own words:
-->'''A.K.''': It's not every Harry Potter I've let live.
** Although this is also a case of A.K. just being an [[JerkAss ass]][[AntiHero hole]] with a MoralMyopia, as he [[WhatTheHellHero has a (justified) go at the Wizarding World]] for the treatment which caused one version of Harry Potter to become the Dark Lord Levicordus, and goes to quite great lengths to help some of the other versions, but seemingly has a rule of killing any Harry Potter in love with Draco Malfoy, and also advises another Harry that "[[MurderIsTheBestSolution Avada Kedavra is cheaper than a divorce lawyer]]".
* In ''Fanfic/HarryPotterAndTheNightmaresOfFuturesPast'', Harry acknowledges that sending his memories back to his eleven-year-old self from a timeline where society has basically collapsed after the war against Voldemort went on until he was thirty will either create a new reality or destroy the one he exists in, but Harry is so broken after seeing virtually everyone else he ever knew die that he doesn't care and the only other person he can talk to (Dumbledore's portrait) accepts that he can either help Harry with this last plan that might save some people, or just wait until Harry becomes so depressed he kills himself.
* ''FanFic/TheInfiniteLoops'' has Loopers refer to this attitude as Sakura Syndrome, and generally frown upon it. Yes, reality is stuck in a time loop but not only will your fellow loopers remember your actions, if you break the world too hard you might wind up in the Eiken Loop [[spoiler:or accidentally [[RetGone destroy your universe.]]]]
** Also massively ''averted''; as most of the loopers are both massively powerful and constantly exposed to alternate universes, they've practically created a science of fixing them in as short a time as possible. Given full power, most of them can do it in minutes, if not seconds. Given a universe that limits their power somehow, it takes them...hours. Occasionally days. Every universe matters, no matter how inconsequential.
* Not explicitly stated, but speculated in the ''Series/{{Arrowverse}}'' fic ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12397789/1/League-of-two-Earths-new-world League of Two Earths]]'' when Oliver, Barry, Kara and their allies realise that Earths 1 and 38 have been merged into one universe. As far as the wider world is concerned, Star City, Central City and National City have always existed on the same Earth and their heroes’ respective team-ups still took place, but only those who directly interacted with people from the other worlds before the merge still remember the original course of events (so, for example, Iris and Winn still know about parallel universes even though they never travelled to the other world themselves, but as far as Alex Danvers is concerned the Flash and Central City have always been on her Earth). The heroes eventually determine that when their worlds merged, anyone with counterparts on both Earths would have merged into one person with the ‘stronger’ counterpart taking precedent, so essentially the weaker counterpart, whether from Earth-1 or Earth-38, has ceased to exist as an independent entity.
* Ignored in ''Fanfic/AManLikeNoOther''; it is clearly stated that the timelines of [[Film/TheHungerGames Panem]] and the [[Film/TheAvengers2012 Avengers]] exist independent of each other the moment Katniss and Steve brought the other Avengers into this future and gave them the chance to change it, so both timelines can co-exist.
* Goes back and forth in the ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' fanfic ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12122558/1/Mirror-World Mirror World]]'', as the story starts when Sam is abducted by a syndicate of hunters from a parallel reality because they want to analyse him to see if he has the immunity to Eve demonstrated by their version of Sam. Not only do these hunters not bother to explain why they want him or check to see if he has that immunity before they capture him, they treat him more like a thing than a person, showing no sign that they care about anything he might have to contribute based on his own experiences in his reality. By contrast, after Dean and Castiel follow the Syndicate to their world to rescue Sam, [[spoiler:rather than abandon that world to its fight against Eve, Dean and Castiel help the Syndicate assemble the weapon he and Cas used against the Leviathans to kill the Eve of this reality, with the alt-Gwen Campbell- alt-Sam's closest friend- ashamed that it took two men from another world to make the Syndicate see how far it had fallen]].
* In Applejack's reharmonizing chapter in the ''Fanfic/PonyPOVSeries'' has her seeing a large number of these staring into the Truth, a pool that shows the viewer all kinds of uncomfortable truths. She sees the BadFuture presented in "Epilogue" along with others. The most heartbreaking is the "Orangejack" timeline, where she discovers that she could've lived perfectly happily without returning home and met the love of her life, even having children. She's heartbroken at the realization her children won't exist because of her choice, until Celestia reveals that universe still exists and they'll live on in that path.
* ''Fanfic/ShinjiAndWarhammer40K'': Subverted. Shinji cares just as much about the original canon alternate world that he might have inadvertently destroyed as he does about his own.
* Disregarded in the ''Supernatural'' fic ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7996195/1/Will-the-Real-Dean-Winchester-Please-Stand-Up Will the Real Dean Winchester Please Stand Up]]'' where Dean swaps places with his counterpart in another universe; alt-Dean might at least partly agree to fight the current threat as it's the only way to get himself home rather than explicitly caring about his other self's associates, but at one point Dean explicitly rejects the option of opening a portal in his new world to return to his own because of the risk that things from his world might get through to this one, which would include demons that could target his counterpart's children as payback for his own actions.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Films -- Animation]]
* Averted in ''Westernanimation/MyLittlePonyEquestriaGirls1'', wherein Twilight Sparkle goes to a HighSchoolAU featuring human counterparts to her friends and most of the show's cast. While her main objective is to retrieve her crown where her Element resides from BigBad Sunset Shimmer, she also quickly makes a friendship with her counterparts. This becomes a plot point when at the film's climax, Sunset threatens to destroy the portal connecting the two worlds if she didn't give her the crown. Twilight reasons she'd stay to help them, even if they'd both be doomed to never return to Equestria, since Sunset would be free to hurt her friends either way. Her bond with her new friends is strong enough to summon the Elements of Harmony and defeat her OneWingedAngel form. Only when she ensures that her friends would try to show Sunset Shimmer kindness after stripping her of power, does she cross back to Equestria. Nor does she forget this world after leaving, coming back in [[WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyEquestriaGirlsRainbowRocks the next movie]] to help her human friends and [[TheAtoner a reformed Sunset Shimmer]] confront the next magical threat. Sunset, despite being from Equestria like Twilight, never shows any inclination to return after her HeelFaceTurn and [[IChooseToStay makes the human world her home]], defending it from magical threats. The series then continues on for more entries that don't involve the main series characters at all.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
* The 2001 film ''Film/TheOne'' is about an interdimensional criminal who's been going through every universe and killing his counterparts to steal their lifeforce, and is down to the last one (ours). Grave consequences are implied if there's only one of one person in the multiverse. Notably, this is a rather constrained multiverse: it is explained that every time a sun turns into a black hole (or something like that) a new universe is created and so far this has happened 125 times. At the very end of the movie, the villain is sent to the "Hell Universe" which serves as a jail for all the others... [[ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale there's an entire universe dedicated to being a prison system]]. No mention of the original inhabitants or what became of them.
* ''Film/MenInBlack3'': Griffin is an alien capable of seeing all timelines at once, though he's not certain which one he's in. This means that he's often fretting whether or not this is the timeline that something disastrous happens based on [[ForWantOfANail minor actions that seem insignificant to others]] (such as Boris being delayed at traffic lights or Kay leaving a tip for pie).
* ''Film/Cube2Hypercube'': A group of people are trapped in a giant maze of interconnected cubical rooms which also has distorted AlienGeometries and intersecting parallel universes. One character eventually becomes [[AxCrazy violently insane]] from the stress and hunger. He solves his food problem by repeatedly [[NoPartyLikeADonnerParty hunting down and eating]] alternate versions of the people in the hypercube.
* Played with in the movie ''Film/StargateContinuum''. The team gets sent to an alternate timeline where the stargate was lost at sea and the SGC was never founded. When they suggest that they use the stargate to travel back in time and set things back the way they were, the alternate universe Landry chews them out for thinking they had the right to alter the lives of every human on the planet. [[spoiler:They wind up having to do this to save Earth by the end of the movie anyway; it just took a year or so for a suitable threat to turn up.]]
* ''Film/AvengersEndgame'': [[spoiler:Subverted. When Bruce shows up in the past to take the Time Stone from the Ancient One, she refuses, as it will doom her branching universe to extinction. Bruce promises that, with time travel, they can bring it right back to the same instant it was taken (whether that will cause her timeline to merge back into the main one or continue as a branch that isn't doomed to extinction [[TimeyWimeyBall is unclear]]). She initially refuses, since they could die before they have a chance to put the stone back, but she accepts it once she hears that her successor, Doctor Strange, is the one who made the plan possible. At the end of the movie, Steve does use the time machine again to put everything back where it's supposed to be]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* In the ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' novel ''Test of Metal'', Bolas at one point uses clockworking to attack Tezzeret with a massive swarm of undead copies of himself from timelines where he lost the fight. Later [[spoiler: Tezzeret says that he can forgive Bolas despite an oath to kill him because he did kill him, over and over again.]]
* Creator/LarryNiven's "All the Myriad Ways", actually deals with an inversion - because billions of new alternate worlds are created every second (every time anyone makes a choice, even such a minor choice as what color socks to put on, or even to put on socks at all, a new universe is born; multiply that by the billions of people on the earth, and...), people no longer value their ''own'' lives, because they know alternate versions of themselves will do better if they die -- and why ''not'' commit murder, rape, robbery, or suicide, if you were always destined to do so in at least one timeline? The story ends by showing nine very different outcomes to the same story with only the last line changed on a whim of the protagonist.
** In the story collection of the same name, this is followed by an essay where Niven explains his dislike for the concept of "infinite divergent worlds", reasoning that it essentially nullifies free will, as no one can really choose any action if, in the bigger picture, they choose ''every'' action.
*** L. Neil Smith has named this "Niven's Fallacy", pointing out that you are the only one you have. Only your choices count, since you can only live one life, in one universe at a time. Your perspective is of a single existence at a time, and your actions shape that existence from your perspective. You are you, your double is someone else - if you had done something differently, [[TimeTravelTenseTrouble you wouldn't be you]], you would be someone else looking back, asking a different set of questions. Thus, while Niven says that infinite Expendable Alternate Universes for every decision means that they all cancel each other out and [[TheFatalist there is no such thing as free will]], Smith says that they in fact mean that [[TheAntiNihilist each of an individual's decisions is proof of godlike power]], as each of them creates ''[[RealityWarper a different universe for each to inhabit]].''
* Avoided in Creator/DianaWynneJones's ''Literature/{{Chrestomanci}}'' sequence, where events in alternate Earths do affect events in the main character's world (which isn't ours, and isn't World One, either. Nor is our Earth - we're World 12B.) However, saving a life from another world can throw the whole system into disarray if you're not careful... so any traffic between the worlds has to be carefully regulated.
* While several of Creator/PhilipKDick's novels and stories happen in alternate or subjective realities, the best is arguably ''Literature/TheManInTheHighCastle'', where a native of a universe where the Axis won WWII discovers an alternate USA (and also reads of a third) where they did not. None of these is our universe. Another is ''Eye In The Sky'', where a group of people each gain control of reality as they individually wake from a coma. Reality in this case is according to prejudice and their wishes, rather than an alternate, but the idea of decisions causing the change holds true.
* In the ''Literature/{{Sterkarm}}'' novels by Susan Price, amoral tycoons are quite happy to strip-mine the past for natural resources via time-travel. They don't care that by so doing they'll screw up the future, because it's only possible to get to the past of an alternate "dimension", and therefore it's not ''their'' future.
* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'':
** Played with in the novel ''Literature/{{Night Watch|Discworld}}'', in which Lu Tze tells Sam Vimes that despite there being multiple alternate timelines, and a theory that states everything which could physically happen ''must'' happen in one of them, there are nevertheless events which haven't, such as there being no parallel universe in existence where Sam Vimes ''as he is now'' has killed his wife Sybil, showing that individual choices do matter.
** In ''Literature/{{Jingo}}'', Sam's PDA somehow gets switched with one from a different timeline. He's horrified as he realizes that, if he had made the wrong choice at the wrong time, a lot more people would have died. Including Vimes himself: "Things to do today... Die..."
** In ''Literature/MenAtArms'', Pratchett all but says at the start that there were a lot of coincidences and lucky breaks that made the novel's happy ending possible--and then notes that in most universes, it didn't happen that way. [[spoiler:Cuddy and Detritus didn't fall through the weakened street. Or Edward d'Eath didn't do anything with his rage, and just nursed his grudge alone.]] "[[AnthropicPrinciple In a million universes, this was a very short book]]."
** It's a plot point in ''Literature/LordsAndLadies'', where the weakening boundaries between the Discworld and Fairyland are also causing the boundaries between alternate realities to weaken, enough for the protagonist Granny Weatherwax to remember the lives of her alternate selves. Realizing it helps her [[spoiler:figure out how to Borrow a swarm of bees at the climax]].
* In Creator/HBeamPiper's ''Literature/{{Paratime}}'' stories, the home timeline carefully guards the secret of inter-timeline travel and takes advantage of resources from less developed (or completely uninhabited) timelines. The Paratime Police suppress gross exploitation such as inter-timeline slave-trading, but the bottom line is that Homeline's interests come first.
* In the Literature/StarTrekShatnerverse Mirror Universe trilogy, the Mirror Universe versions of Kirk and Picard both refer to the 'prime' reality (the reality depicted in the series) as the "ghost" universe, acting as though their counterparts are just weak imitations, in contrast to how the prime reality treats the Mirror Universe as an equal.
* Creator/KeithLaumer's works:
** After Piper and before Turtledove, there's the ''Imperium'' stories, where the "Maxoni-Cocini drive" allows access to parallel timelines - but at the risk of destroying one's home time-line in an unspecified chrono-nuclear disaster. In fact, our Earth is in the middle of a Blight made up of timelines where the M-C drive went horribly wrong.
** Laumer's ''[[http://www.webscription.net/10.1125/Baen/0743435273/0743435273__18.htm Dinosaur Beach]]'' explores parallel time and the Timesweepers who have to clean up the messes left by previous time-travelers while fighting off others who don't want the extant lines cleaned up.
* Creator/HarryTurtledove has made a living off of this trope. All of his books, aside from fantasy novels, deal with this trope in some way (and most of them are pretty good) but the most blatant is the Crosstime Traffic series, in which eponymous company has solved our earth's Malthusian troubles by developing "Chronophysics" and the technology to go to parallel worlds. Although this mostly gives him license to drop modern teenagers into period pieces, as the books are obviously written for teenagers, and they are pared down from his normal book length, forcing him to sacrifice the plot and world development which is omnipresent in his best works.
** By the way, the Crosstime Traffic series is a ShoutOut to Piper, as the names of the people who developed the technique in Turtledove's stories are clearly based on those who developed the Paratime technique.
* Played with in ''Literature/TheTalisman'', by Creator/StephenKing and Peter Straub. When flipping between {{Alternate Universe}}s of our Earth and The Territories [[spoiler:and others at the end]], someone will switch minds with and take over the body of their double from that universe. ...unless they don't have one (as is the case with Jack, the protagonist), where they disappear from their home world and appear in the other.
* Comes up in the ''Literature/WorldGates'' trilogy by Creator/HollyLisle, especially when one character talks to the fellow that was her husband, only he's a still-alive version in another universe.
* Creator/RogerZelazny:
** ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfAmber'' series has the Amberites treat the "shadows" as less valuable than the "real" world containing Amber. How ''much'' less valuable? [[MeaningfulName Caine]] murdered one of his alternate selves and dumped the corpse in Amber as part of faking his own death. He was one of the "good" guys. And they also think little of recruiting hundreds of thousands of shadow-dwellers as cannon fodder for their civil wars. To be fair, the "nothing but us is real" mentality starts to unravel a bit once the main characters figure out that their own world isn't exactly the "prime universe" as they've been lead to belive - and attitudes towards Shadow-dwellers [[ContinuityDrift seem to be at their most sociopathic early in the series]], with most of the major characters softening a bit as time goes on.
** In his novel ''Literature/ADarkTravelling'', alternate worlds are referred to as "bands", and three of them have become dystopian "Darkbands". The protagonists find themselves caught up in an attempt to liberate a Darkband, with the end result being [[spoiler:a splitting of the band into two new ones, one free, and one where the liberators failed and were killed, as the battle went both ways. The main character expresses a desire to visit his own grave when that band is liberated.]]
* This is the premise of the ''Literature/StarTrekMyriadUniverses'' series of novels from Pocket Books, exploring various "what-if" scenarios in the Star Trek universe. This is also the premise of the first novel in the ''Crucible'' trilogy, ''Provenance Of Shadows'', which explores both the aftermath of "City on the Edge of Forever" and an alternate universe where [=McCoy=] '''did''' save Edith Keeler and Spock and Kirk never came back for him, leaving him stuck in the alternate past forever.
** The ''Myriad Universe'' novella "A Gutted World" is a good example of the KillEmAll attitude to alternate universes. By the end of the story, the entire main casts of ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' and ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' are dead. So is ''the entire Klingon homeworld''.
* In another ''Franchise/StarTrek'' novel, ''Q Squared,'' the crew becomes concerned that exposure to alternate universes will cause people to become sociopathic, referring to the phenomenon as "Niven syndrome." This ends up inverted: the only character we see going AxCrazy does so from the [[GoMadFromTheRevelation revelation]] that he ''only exists in one possible universe'', having been [[DieForOurShip killed off in every other one to allow his wife and best friend to get together (and even in his universe, his son dies towards the same end result).]]
* Creator/GregEgan plays with this a few times.
** His short story "[[http://everything2.com/title/The+Infinite+Assassin The Infinite Assassin]]" deals with this from the inside: the protagonist is remarkably uniform between worlds, so he can leave one world, complete his cross-universe mission, and return to a completely different set of bosses who'll nevertheless recognize him. His sense of identity is correspondingly diffuse: "I am the ones who succeed."
-->And I wonder: in how many infinite sets of worlds will I take one more step? And how many countless versions of me will turn around instead, and walk out of this room? ''Who exactly am I saving from shame, when I'll live and die in every possible way?''
** If that's not mind-boggling enough, check this out: [[spoiler:the protagonist's ultimate defeat]] involves being blasted into "Cantor Dust". If your victory condition has been mathematically restricted to a nowhere dense subset of the space of all universes, then you can win in one, you can win in many, you can even win in an "uncountably infinite" number of universes. But that's still an infinitesimal subset, meaning you've been defeated in "100% of ''all'' universes".
** This is actually ''weaponized'', for lack of a better term, in the novel {{Literature/Quarantine}}. In a future when neurological mods can be implanted to alter the workings of the brain, a pair is developed that will A) suppress the user's ability to collapse wave functions by observing them and then B) let them choose from among the infinite possible timelines which one will become real. A person using it can do anything they want, as long as there's even the slightest possibility of it actually occurring. Break locks by picking random combinations, navigate through a crowded room unseen because everyone happened to be looking the other way at the same time, walk through walls via quantum tunneling effects.
** "[[http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/MISC/SINGLETON/Singleton.html Singleton]]" is about an AI who's specifically designed ''not'' to have alternate versions of herself.
* Creator/NealStephenson's ''Literature/{{Anathem}}'' mixes this in, at the end.
* Creator/RobertReed likes this trope. In a more straight example in his novel, ''Down The Bright Way'', there are thousands of alternate Earths, each of which started diverging around the time apes started becoming more intelligent. In ''Mere'', a race of aliens has quantum sized structures in their brains that cause them to see a faint "aura" around some objects, which they interpret as being glimpses into alternate universes. Hyperfiber in his ''Literature/GreatShip'' universe is an extremely durable material that gains its strengths from spreading any damage and energy over hundreds of alternate dimensions, making it nearly impossible to destroy.
* The ''Literature/DoctorWhoNewAdventures'' novel ''Blood Heat'' subverts this; after bringing peace to the AlternateUniverse where the action of the novel takes place, the Doctor reveals that because it's an artificial timeline generated from the 'real' universe, it's siphoning energy from the 'real' universe that will cause the original one to end billions of years prematurely unless he destroys it. This does not stop him from feeling great guilt at the very real lives he is being forced to end in the AlternateUniverse, nor his companions from angrily [[WhatTheHellHero lashing out at him for this]] when he tries to justify it with this trope for their sake. [[spoiler:Later novels in the series reveal that an old enemy of his created the artificial universe precisely to put the Doctor in this position.]]
* Played with in Simon Hawke's Literature/TimeWars series book ''The Pimpernel Plot'': After the time commandos effective wipe out an alternate universe by retroactively preventing the event that accidentally created it, Colonel Forester deliberately invokes this trope by asserting the people in the alternate universe were just potential people, little more than ghosts who never properly existed in the first place, because otherwise they'll have to accept being the worst mass murderers in history.
* In Creator/StephenBaxter's ''The Time Ships'', the Time Traveler is horrified at discovering that he's changed history by leaving the account of his first travels (published by H. G. Wells as ''The Time Machine'', of course) even though the world he's averted is the horrible CrapsackWorld of Morlocks and Eloi. He's so distraught he tries to prevent himself from inventing the machine, which of course goes horribly wrong. Fortunately it turns out that he's creating alternate universes, not destroying history.
* ''Literature/LastMage'' [[SubvertedTrope subverts the trope]] with a whole continuum of differing universes, none of which the protagonist (who, like his alternates, is charged with protecting only one) considers expendable.
* WordOfGod is that a future book of ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'' will invert this -- an alternate universe version of Harry has a habit of summoning himself from other universes to act as fall guys when he needs to fake his death. The future book will include him summoning "our" Harry.
* ''{{Literature/Worm}}'' [[PlayingwithaTrope plays with this]] extensively:
** The protagonists live on "Earth Bet", regarded as something of a hellhole by the inhabitant of "Earth Aleph" (albeit an interesting one to some people) because they suffer frequent [[CrisisCrossover supervillain-induced disasters]] that kill lots of people. There are careful treaties to avoid war between the two worlds. Theory predicts that Aleph and Bet are the only worlds at the optimum "distance" to each other to include alternate-universe versions of individual people and still be accessible.
** The supervillain [[spoiler:Coil has a power based around this, allowing him to take different actions in two identical timelines and collapse the result he doesn't like. He tortures people for fun in his "throwaway" timelines, although never people so important that it would derail his plans if he was forced to keep that timeline.]] Although he speculates it may just be a simulation.
** Later [[spoiler: [[InvokedTrope invoked]] when it's revealed that all superpowers are transferring energy and matter to and from nearby parallel worlds in order to function, many of which are implied to be nearly identical to the world of the main story except that they're randomly devastated by superpowers.]]
** At one point a portal to another universe is created, and deliberately tuned to an uninhabited world ("Earth Gimel") so that it can be exploited for resources and used for mass evacuation in case of disaster. [[spoiler:Although the sequel reveals there were a few scattered native inhabitants after all.]]
[[/folder]]

** Played straight when a bunch of Takanuvas are taken from their original universes, forcibly turned evil, and then [[spoiler:get smashed to bits by one of the good guys with a warhammer]]. Yes, it's a SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome, but when that FridgeLogic hits you, it hits ''hard''.

* {{Deconstructed}} in the ''Fanfic/FeralnetteAUBigFatBreak''. [[TimeMaster Bunnyx]] believes that she's meant to "fix the timeline" if it diverges too far from her own world (aka [[WesternAnimation/MiraculousLadybug the canon show]]). In actuality, she's just meddling with other timelines, trying to force ''her'' parameters for how things should be onto them: whether they're actual {{Bad Future}}s or the only difference is Marinette dating someone else. She doesn't see these alternates as real, and the drastic personality and lifestyle change Marinette undergoes in the this AU's timeline that she's trying to "fix" was her fault to begin with, as some of her previous meddling caused the teenager to undergo a HeroicBreakdown (which only gives 'Feralnette' more reason not to buy into the time traveler's CondescendingCompassion whenever she shows up).

* {{Deconstructed}} in the ''Fanfic/FeralnetteAUBigFatBreak''. [[TimeMaster Bunnyx]] believes that she's meant to "fix the timeline" if it diverges too far from her own world (aka [[WesternAnimation/MiraculousLadybug the canon show]]). In actuality, she's just meddling with other timelines, trying to force ''her'' parameters for how things should be onto them. She doesn't see these alternates as real, and the drastic personality and lifestyle change Marinette undergoes in the AU's timeline that she's trying to "fix" was her fault to begin with; some of her previous meddling caused the teenager to undergo a HeroicBreakdown, which only gives 'Feralnette' more reason not to buy into the time traveler's CondescendingCompassion whenever she shows up.

* In the ''Fanfic/FeralnetteAUBigFatBreak'', this is how [[TimeMaster Bunnyx]] regards every single timeline/alternate reality that doesn't perfectly match up with her own (that being [[WesternAnimation/MiraculousLadybug the canon show]]). While she's meant to avoid interfering too much with these worlds, Bunnyx [[WrongGenreSavvy wrongly assumes]] that it's her duty to 'correct' them by making them into carbon copies of her own. She also treats these worlds and their inhabitants as less 'Real' than her own. While she claims that she wants to help 'Feralnette', she refuses to offer any ''concrete'' aid -- any 'help' she's giving is entirely on her own terms, trying to force her reality into the same mold, all while [[CondescendingCompassion talking down to]] Marinette. Her actions even played a direct role in why that particular Marinette underwent a drastic personality and attitude shift in the first place, as she showed Marinette a BadFuture and blamed it on her, which caused the teenager to undergo a HeroicBreakdown.

* {{Deconstructed}} in the ''Fanfic/FeralnetteAUBigFatBreak''. Bunnyx believes that she's meant to 'fix the timeline' if it diverges too far from her own world. In actuality, she's just meddling with other timelines, trying to force ''her'' parameters for How Things Should Be onto them. She doesn't see these alternates as Real, and while she claims she wants to help the AU's version of Marinette, she intends for that to be solely on ''her'' terms.

* In the ''Fanfic/FeralnetteAUBigFatBreak'', this is how [[TimeMaster Bunnyx]] regards every single timeline/alternate reality that doesn't perfectly match up with her own (that being [[WesternAnimation/MiraculousLadybug the canon show]]). While she's meant to avoid interfering too much with these worlds, Bunnyx [[WrongGenreSavvy wrongly assumes]] that it's her duty to 'correct' them by making them into carbon copies of her own. She also treats these worlds and their inhabitants as less 'Real' than her own. While she claims that she wants to help 'Feralnette', she refuses to offer any ''concrete'' aid -- any 'help' she's giving is entirely on her own terms, trying to force her reality into the same mold, all while [[CondescendingCompassion talking down to]] Marinette.

* In the ''Fanfic/FeralnetteAUBigFatBreak'', this is how [[TimeMaster Bunnyx]] regards every single timeline/alternate reality that doesn't perfectly match up with her own. While she's meant to avoid interfering too much with these worlds, Bunnyx [[WrongGenreSavvy wrongly assumes]] that it's her duty to 'correct' them by making them into carbon copies of her own. She also treats these worlds and their inhabitants as less 'Real' than her own. While she claims that she wants to help 'Feralnette', she refuses to offer any ''concrete'' aid -- any 'help' she's giving is entirely on her own terms, trying to force her reality into the same mold, all while [[CondescendingCompassion talking down to]] Marinette.

* An interesting idea from the TV special ''WesternAnimation/RudolphsShinyNewYear''. Father Time explains that, every New Year's Eve, a new island appears in the Archipeligo of Last Year. On these islands, "time stands still", and the world remains as it did during that year forevermore. Since this is a children's show, we get to see TheThemeParkVersion of a couple of years (One Million BC is depicted as a paradise of jolly cavemen and singing dinosaurs, 1776 is defined by Independence Day and Ben Franklin, and 1023 is apparently the year in which all the world's fairy tales took place), but FridgeLogic sets in after that. Think about it; in 1964 Music/TheBeatles will never break up, but at the same time the Civil Rights movement will barely get off the ground. In 1944, World War II will wage forever, Pearl Harbor is still in flames, and Hitler will never die. In 2001... need we go on? And there is the implication that all the people on these islands are the same people who actually existed in these time periods, meaning that somewhere out there are multiple versions of you, one for each year of your life, trapped forever in a nebulous 12-month span, never to grow, or learn, or live on. And if you indeed weren't from the real world and merely were a reflection living upon one of the islands, how would you ever know?

* In the ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' novel ''Test of Metal'', bolas at one point uses clockworking to attack Tezzeret with a massive swarm of undead copies of himself from timelines where he lost the fight. Later [[spoiler: Tezzeret says that he can forgive Bolas despite an oath to kill him because he did kill him, over and over again.]]