History TabletopGame / InfiniteWorlds

* PatrioticFervor: This is a major pain in the ass for Infinity. Every major power on Homeline wants to support its parallel selves, even if they're kind of nasty (Infinity isn't allowed to mess with Bonaparte-4's France because Homeline's France is blocking it) or if their actions endanger the Secret (such as Russian involvement in the Reichsostland). (This does ''not'' apply to the Reich or Imperial Japan; Homeline Germany actually has plans to invade the former on Reich-5, and Japan has no fondness for the latter except in [[ZombieApocalypse exceptional circumstances]].)

** One vignette from the Centran side indicates that they think of the Nazis of Reich-5 as this. The Centrans think that they're more "orderly" than Infinity because they're organized as a hierarchical dictatorship. The Centrans don't realize that the Nazi bureaucracy is actually utter chaos, riven with so much backstabbing that it's almost impossible to get anything done.

** Any time the British Empire is doing too well in Quantum 6 and 7, it's a reasonable assumption that Centrum is involved; it's their favorite power to wank up high for cultural (they're descended from a global Anglo-French Empire -- although they would deny this has any relevence, as their whole world is equally Centrum), linguistic (they speak English) and strategic reasons (it's a very strong model on which to build a OneWorldOrder and easily guided along technocratic lines).

** Any time the British Empire is doing too well in Quantum 6 and 7, it's a reasonable assumption that Centrum is involved; it's their favorite power to wank up high for cultural (they're descended from a global British Empire), linguistic (they speak English) and strategic reasons (it's a very strong model on which to build a OneWorldOrder and easily guided along technocratic lines).

** Merlin's another partially-awakened giant: a world with technology equal to that of our own Earth, but with access to advanced {{Magitek}} as well (in fact, the world of the ''GURPS: Technomancer'' supplement). A blunder with Gate magic and Infinity's response to it made America's CIA aware of parachronics, and they've started spying on Homeline back (though Homeline is as of yet unaware of this); however, they are not necessarily hostile. More worrisome, [[ArgentinaIsNaziland the Condor Group Nazis in control of Argentina]] have made an alliance with Reich-5's Armanen.

** A potentially much, much worse case happened recently on the former myth parallel once designated Oppenheim: Once an Edwardian/WWI-era world with some myth parallel elements, the Spanish Flu hybridized with the Gotha virus to create the Gotha-Z strain - this one creates ''actual'' [[ZombieApocalypse undead]].

* TheRightOfASuperiorSpecies: Applied on the hell-world of Ariane, where human civilization was wiped out by a much deadlier [[ThePlague Spanish Flu]]. Infinity largely shrugs at the idea of enslaving stone-age survivors, but since Tibet has maintained a functional civilization under the lamas, Infinity has told the colonists to leave them alone and not try any freebooting there.

* TheTunguskaEvent: [[spoiler: In Taft-1, the Tunguska bolide's remains contained the... whatever it was that allowed Stalin to "sign his name in the book of Azathoth" in 1927, thereby becoming an immortal CthulhuMythos cultist-sorcerer, and beginning the Soviet Union's Mythos-fueled ascendancy.]]

* SummonBiggerFish: [[spoiler: On Taft-1, Case DEXTER is a Centrum plan to expose Infinity to Joseph Stalin, who in this parallel is an Azathoth cultist. Centrum doesn't actually like Soviet Communism at the best of times, Taft-1's Soviet Union is probably the most horrifically-evil USSR in the Infinite Worlds, and the CthulhuMythos is completely antithetical to everything Centrum stands for, but Stalin is a potentially-apocalyptic threat to Homeline if he discovers it.]]

* WeirdnessMagnet: Worlds in which senator [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Taft Robert A. Taft]] is/was president have either magic, an artificial spacecraft of unknown origin in orbit around Saturn or, most frequently, a peculiar sterilizing radiation [[spoiler:whose source is heavily implied to be ''[[Franchise/CthulhuMythos Azathoth]]'']]. Taft-6 seems to only be a "normal" world with slightly higher-than-usual mana and no radiation, and the Infinity Patrol are going nuts trying to figure out what's actually happening.

** The oil companies in Homeline are funding Greenpeace, who oppose the exploitation of other worlds. Said oil companies are trying to make outtime operations harder to preserve their own dying markets.

* WeirdnessMagnet: Worlds in which senator [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Taft Robert A. Taft]] is/was president have either magic, an artificial spacecraft of unknown origin in orbit around Saturn or a peculiar sterilizing radiation [[spoiler:whose source is heavily implied to be ''[[Franchise/CthulhuMythos Azathoth]]'']]. Taft-6 seems to only be a "normal" world with slightly higher-than-usual mana and no radiation, and the Infinity Patrol are going nuts trying to figure out what's actually happening.

* DiminishingVillainThreat: In ''Alternate Earths'', Reich-5's Imperial Japan, especially their ''[[SecretPolice Kempei Tai]]'' organization, were every bit as deadly an adversary as the Nazis. In ''Infinite Worlds'', Japan is decaying into warlord states and the ''Kempei Tai'' have, within a single generation, gone from being the guys who gave the Gestapo nightmares to a bureaucratic tar pit.

* ALighterShadeOfBlack: On Gotha-Z, the one major power that has not been destroyed by the G-Z virus is UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan. It's not any nicer than Homeline's version, and they make no bones about raiding non-Japanese survivors for resources, but given the fact that it's a ZombieApocalypse, Infinity isn't objecting too hard to the support they get from Homeline's Japan.

** A sidebar mentions how Infinity knocked off an al-Qaeda terror plot in early 2001.

* PatrioticFervor: This is a major pain in the ass for Infinity. Every major power on Homeline wants to support its parallel selves, even if they're kind of nasty (Infinity isn't allowed to mess with Bonaparte-4's France because Homeline's France is blocking it) or if their actions endanger the Secret (such as Russian involvement in the Reichsostland).

For more information and tropes concerning several of the worlds (including Reich-5 and Centrum), also see ''TabletopGame/GURPSAlternateEarths''.

* AlternateUniverse: Where all these alternate histories (and some worlds so weird they're barely recognizable as Earth) can exist.

* RedScare: Merlin-1's America ''hates'' Commies, and their reaction to discovering the dominance of the Soviet Union in Taft-1 was to send in Black Berets to redo the Vietnam War. This is potentially a ''''''VERY BAD THING''''':
-->"However, they’ve encountered something even worse than Red aggression: a scattered tribe of dwarfish cannibals (the Chaucha, or [[Franchise/CthulhuMythos Tcho-Tcho]]) that uses magic – [[WrongContextMagic but not any kind of magic Merlin-1 understands.]]

* RichardNixonTheUsedCarSalesman: It's par for the course for most timelines to have a bunch (apart from the odd instances that don't have ''any'', which is a research topic in itself). It's even possible to meet your own alternate-universe self, who likely as not will have a very different life experiences. In what may just be the Most Triumphant Example, the director of the Infinity Patrol's secret ISWAT special task force is... an alternate [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Skorzeny Otto Skorzeny]]. However, this Skorzeny was, in his home parallel, a freedom fighter for the [[RagTagBunchOfMisfits multi-national and -denominational]], proto-democratic [[TheRepublic Republican]] [[TheAlliance Alliance]] (in this timeline, European monarchies endured almost unopposed until the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 1930's), and really, really ''hates'' ThoseWackyNazis [[OtherMeAnnoysMe (especially when they're other hims)]], and so uses live-fire sabotage missions against them [[TrainingFromHell as part of the standard ISWAT training]].

* WeAREStrugglingTogether: Possibly Infinity's greatest handicap in its parachronic operations (especially compared to the mostly unified front Centrum presents) is that a LOT of Homeline's various governments, corporations, [=NGOs=], and even criminal groups have access to parachronic tech (legally or otherwise) and use it to push their often wildly conflicting agendas across the parallel worlds. Consequently, a lot of their ressources are tied up monitoring, policing and otherwise cat-herding all these groups.

* RichardNixonTheUsedCarSalesman: In what may just be the Most Triumphant Example, the director of the Infinity Patrol's secret ISWAT special task force is... an alternate [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Skorzeny Otto Skorzeny]]. However, this alt-Skorzeny was, in his home parallel, a freedom fighter for the [[RagTagBunchOfMisfits multi-national and -denominational]], proto-democratic [[TheRepublic Republican]] [[TheAlliance Alliance]] (in this timeline, European monarchies endured almost unopposed until the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 1930's), and really, really ''hates'' ThoseWackyNazis [[OtherMeAnnoysMe (especially when they're other hims)]], and so uses live-fire sabotage missions against them [[TrainingFromHell as part of the standard ISWAT training]].
** Par for the course to have a bunch, really. It's even possible to meet your own alternate-universe self, who likely as not can have a very different life experience.