Point of Divergence

"Victory over Russia in the spring of '43 — a triumph for the Führer's strategic genius! The Wehrmacht summer offensive of the year before had cut Moscow off from the Caucasus, separating the Red armies from the Baku oilfields. Stalin's war machine had simply ground to a halt for want of fuel.
Peace with Britain in '44 — a triumph for the Führer's counterintelligence genius! ... [A]ll the U-boats had been recalled to their bases on the Atlantic coast to be equipped with a new cipher system: the treacherous British, they were told, had been reading the Fatherland's codes. Picking off the merchant shipping had been easy after that. England was starved into submission. Churchill and his gang of warmongers had fled to Canada."

— Fatherland

A point of divergence is a specific event in an Alternate History's or Alternate Universe's Backstory that occurs differently than it did in Real Life or canon. Most alternate history authors will change a single event, creating a "ripple effect", however, the point of divergence may range in importance and realism from a missing horseshoe nail to Time Travel and Alien Invasion.

Alternatively, an older name for this trope is "Jonbar hinge" — a reference to Jack Williamson's The Legion Of Time, in which such an event is pivotal.

Contrast Never Was This Universe.

This is a Super-Trope to Alien Space Bats, which covers points of divergence that are specifically supernatural in nature. See also What If?. If it's several notable chains of changes rather than a single overarching one, it falls under Adaptation Deviation.

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Example subpages:

• Fan Works

Other examples:

Anime & Manga

• Code Geass: The earliest known change from real-world history is the Celts throwing the Romans out of England and winning independence sometime around 1 AD^note The date given for this uses the franchise's Alternative Calendar, but other historical events mentioned roughly line up with the Gregorian calendar. However, even in the series' universe, this is somewhat suspect; it's noted that the first historical record of this event was a book written centuries later, and there are theories that the whole thing was made up to give Britannian rulers the Divine Right of Kings.

Comic Books

• In The Last West, something went wrong with America's first nuclear-weapons test, which led to America abandoning its quest for the atom bomb, which in turn altered the course of the war and thus history itself.
• The New Universe: The new universe was supposed to be exactly like reality until the White Event. The slogan was "the world outside your window."
• Ultimate Universe (2023): Thanks to the Maker's interference, the history of Earth-6160 has radically shifted from 1963 onwards, changing from a Close-Enough Timeline to a place where the Maker can play God as he sees fit without worrying about superheroes being a potential Spanner in the Works. Resultantly, it's an Alternate History that bears little resemblance to the mainstream Marvel Universe:
  • The Maker prevents Peter Parker from being bitten by the spider, thus preventing the creation of Spider-Man and by extension any of the heroes who followed on from or were inspired by him.
  • Loki pulled off a successful coup with the Maker's help and is now the King of Asgard with Thor kneeling before him. The Bifrost Bridge is also destroyed, preventing Asgard from ever interfering with human affairs.
  • The Fantastic Four never get empowered by cosmic rays thanks to the Maker delaying their rocket launch. He also decides to murder Johnny, Sue, and Ben out of pure spite.
  • Howard Stark and Obadiah Stane essentially become the Iron Man and War Machine of this world but are still primarily industrialists and war profiteers rather than genuine crime fighters.
  • Bruce Banner still becomes the Hulk but is nudged into seeking spiritual enlightenment to deal with his rage, resulting in Bruce making a name for himself as a world-renowned Warrior Monk with a flock of loyal followers instead of living in infamy as a Psychopathic Man Child of mass destruction.
  • The Harada (Silver Samurai) and Yoshida (Sunfire) families have united to form a powerful alliance that possesses great influence over the entire Asia-Pacific region. Illyana and Piotr Rasputin also seem to have become equally powerful oligarchs with their family boasting a reputation of being The Dreaded.
  • Both Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne are listed as inactive in the Maker's records, with Reed now in possession of their "Pym Generator".
  • Dr. Strange is listed as a captive in the Maker's records, with Reed in possession of the Eye of Agamotto.
  • Much to the Maker's own confusion, Earth-6160 never had a Super Soldier program, and therefore never had a Captain America at all. Even he can't figure out what became of that world's Steve Rogers. Tony and Doom manage to find him frozen in the Arctic, but nobody knows who he is, raising even further questions. However, Reed was able to confirm (or cause) the death of Earth-6160's Bucky Barnes and destroyed Jim Hammond (the original Human Torch).
• The world of Watchmen was identical to ours until the publication of Superman in 1938. In our reality, that kickstarted the Golden Age of Superheroes; in the Watchmen universe, that lead to ordinary people dressing up as costumed vigilantes and becoming crimefighters, leading to the dystopian alternate universe.

Films — Live-Action

• A Discussed Trope in The Flash (2023). Barry Allen initially believes this timeline to have been altered by him trying to stop his mother's death, but comes to realize that things had changed long before that event, such as an Aquaman who was never born and a much older Batman. In a conversation with this Batman, he's told that rather than creating a point of divergence for an alternate timeline, he's intersected with a vaguely similar but quite different universe. Rather than a point of divergence it is more a point of intersection.
• Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: The Manson murders veer into an alternate timeline at the point that the killers decide to target Sharon Tate's neighbor, fictional character Rick Dalton. Events then play out much differently than in Real Life.
• The Kelvin Timeline Star Trek movies were named as such after the timeline-diverging event in the 2009 movie's prologue where the USS Kelvin (and with it Kirk's father) is destroyed by time-displaced future Romulans whereas none of this happened the Prime Timeline. Both timelines exist running parallel to each other and have maintained sporadic contact with Star Trek: Enterprise being the only canon they share.
• In the Super Mario Bros. (1993) movie, the prologue explains that the alternate reality of the Mushroom Kingdom was identical to ours until the Chicxulub meteorite impact: in our timeline, the dinosaurs were killed off; in the Mushroom Kingdom, they weren't.
• With the exception of Logan as it's set in its own continuity, every entry in the X-Men Film Series released after X-Men: Days of Future Past is set in a new Alternate Timeline following the big Cosmic Retcon in 1973.

Literature

• In Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series, World War II is interrupted by a fleet of lizard-people from outer space (a.k.a. The Race) in 1942. This is both unlucky and lucky for the aliens: if they'd shown up 50 years early they would've swiftly annihilated a planet who had yet to discover military flight, rocketry, and the basic building blocks of nuclear weapons. If The Race had shown up 50 years later they would have been soundly defeated by humans with modern technology that matched The Race but with much greater understanding of tactics and strategy, not to mention several nations having massive nuclear weapons programs.
• Another Turtledove series, The War That Came Early diverges from our timeline when the German ambassador to Czechoslavakia is assassinated by a Czech nationalist while Hitler is negotiating over the Sudetenland in 1938. This prompts Hitler to invade Czechoslovakia, with Britain and France declaring war on Germany in turn. Germany has to fight to get Czechoslovakia instead of taking it over without a fight, and as a result loses the momentum that let them take most of Europe in real life. Instead they wind up in a bloody two-front slog for most of the rest of the series. On a smaller scale, Jose Sanjurjo in Spain listens to some good advice, leaves a bit of baggage behind, and survives the plane ride that killed him in real life. Because of the early outbreak of World War II, the Spanish Republicans are saved by aid from the Allies rather than being defeated in 1939, and Spain also turns into a stalemate.
• In still another Turtledove series, the Timeline-191 series, the point of divergence is right before the battle of Antietam. In the real world, a Confederate officer carelessly threw away a copy of General Lee's Special Order 191; the Union found the orders, which not only let them thwart Lee's invasion of the north but almost completely destroyed the Army of North Virginia. In Turtledove's books, the orders are recovered by a Confederate soldier instead, meaning Lee steamrolls McClellan's army and eventually manage to capture the White House, forcing Abraham Lincoln to recognize Southern independence. This also leads to analogues for both World Wars, with the USA and CSA on opposite sides.
• In his Crosstime Traffic series, each alternate timeline visited has a different POD:
  • Gunpowder Empire: Marcus Agrippa lived long enough to oversee the (successful) conquest of Germania by Rome.
  • Curious Notions: Imperial Germany won World War I, and later occupied the USA.
  • In High Places: The Black Death was much worse, leading to a new form of Christianity and Islam spreading as far north as France. A second timeline visited is speculated to be one where the Romans lost the Samnite Wars, leading to no Roman Empire and technological stagnation.
  • The Disunited States of America: The newly independent Thirteen Colonies were unable to agree on a constitution, leading to them eventually breaking away into their own nations.
  • The Gladiator: The US capitulated in the Cuban Missile Crisis and later the Vietnam War, leading to the spread of communism across the globe.^note However, since both POV characters are from this timeline, and learn their history from a biased curriculum, it's left vague if that is the true POD.
  • The Valley-Westside War: The Cold War turned hot in 1967, leading to The End of the World as We Know It. The main characters from the home timeline are trying to figure out exactly why it happened.
• The Years of Rice and Salt: The Black Death extinguished the European civilization.
• Seekers of the Sky: Jesus was killed by Herod's troops and the Redeemer took his place as the Messiah.
• In Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy series, history was changed when Richard I of England was not killed by the crossbow wound he took during the siege of Chalus-Chabrol. He returned to England and John never became king. Richard died in 1219 and his son Arthur took the throne.
• L. Neil Smith's North American Confederacy series has the divergence as the result of a single word added to the Declaration of Independence, "governments derive their just power from the unanimous consent of the governed." Somehow, as a result, the Whiskey Rebellion was successful and the entire continent became a Libertarian utopia.
• Harry Harrison uses the Trent Affair as the point of divergence for his Stars and Stripes trilogy, where Prince Albert dies before helping to resolve the incident peacefully, and the British Empire attempts to invade the US, resulting in both the USA and the CSA joining forces against the largest empire in history.
• In William Shatner's Mirror Universe trilogy, it's revealed that the titular universe split off from the main one when Zefram Cochrane let a coin flip decide whether he would tell the Vulcans about the Borg or not. In the Prime 'verse, he hides the truth. In the Mirror Universe, he tells them, and they believe him, resulting in a much more militant union between the races in an attempt to prepare for the inevitable return of the Borg. Naturally, this is rendered non-canonic by Star Trek: Enterprise.
• In Orson Scott Card's Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus, the focal point that brought our timeline into being is Christopher Columbus receiving a vision from God telling him to sail West to convert the Asian heathens to Christ. In the original timeline, he never received the vision, instead continuing his dream of retaking the Holy Land from the Muslims. He ends up leading the most devastating Crusade of all. Meanwhile, a progressive, bloodthirsty empire rises in Central America and, eventually, takes over the world. Their descendants invent Time Travel and sent a holographic message urging Columbus to go West. The goal of the protagonists is to create a third timeline that doesn't result in The End of the World as We Know It, throwing this trope out the window and going for a long-term approach.
• Subcutanean: Remaining in sync with ones alternates is very important, if you don't want your realities to separate and get very weird. Elder Niko is an example of what happens when you desync. The parallel reality that Orion and Niko visit is mostly the same as their home one, with a few small distinctions. The word fourth becomes 'fourd' and the three-dollar bill doesn't exist anymore. In some versions, Orion's dead father is still alive. In others, he's still with his ex Bradley. In some versions, Orion and Niko get together.
• Averted in the Wild Cards series - while it seems that the arrival of Dr. Tachyon and the virus are the point of divergence for this world, there are characters like Jubal / Jhubben, not a joker but an alien that contradict this. Also, Jetboy and Dr. Tod, two earthling characters in the origins story, already are divergences from our history. That doesn't stop people from claiming the appearance of Tach and the virus are the first changes...
• In Fyodor Berezin's Red Stars books, the parallel world's history diverges from ours mere weeks before Nazi Germany's invasion of the USSR. A British warship intervenes to aid the pockets of resistance in the Balkans against Nazi occupation, resulting in Hitler having to put Operation Barbarossa on hold in order to divert troops to put down the opposition. This, in turn, gives Stalin the chance to finish his own preparations for a Back Stab and invade the German-occupied part of Poland. As a result, Germany is beaten in under two years (i.e. way before D-Day), and the USSR proceeds to "liberate" the rest of Europe. By the time 21st century rolls around, much of the world is in the hands of a powerful, militant Communist power, with North America being the only region still "free". The reason for the quotes is that the steady losses and liberal use of tactical nukes by both sides have forced the remaining nations to declare martial law and become just as militant as the USSR just to keep up. When the leaders of our world learn of this other world, they're horrified what might happen should the other world's leaders learn of ours.
• In Tamar Anolic's Triumph of a Tsar, history diverges from "our" timeline when Tsar Alexander II just barely escapes the bomb attack that killed him in real life and lives long enough to follow through on his plans to make Russia a constitutional monarchy.
• In Full Metal Panic!, the point of divergence is New Year's Eve of 1981, with everyone born on that day possessing low-level Psychic Powers and knowledge of science and technology far beyond than the current level of human progress; these people have been dubbed "Whispered". The actual cause was the "Yamsk 11 Incident", wherein Russian experiments on a psychic girl named Sofia somehow gave her that advanced knowledge and mind-linked her to everyone born at that moment, making her the "Whisperer" who grants them that knowledge. This in turn spurred more changes: Mikhail Gorbachev was assassinated, halting his Glasnost policy and prolonging the Soviet-Afghan war, meaning the Soviet Union still exists in the early 21st century; meanwhile, Whispereds working on Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" defense initiative produced Humongous Mecha, among other things.
• In Fire on the Mountain, John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859 happens as originally planned and is successful with the leadership of General Harriet Tubman. It leads to a successful slave revolt that establishes the socialist state of Nova Africa across what had been the southern United States; followed by another century of diverged history.
• In The Long Earth series, the further one steps away from Datum Earth ("Prime" Earth), the farther in time the point of divergence with the Datum is. The first hundredth or so Earths are nigh identical to Earth^note apart from being untouched by civilisation since humanity only developed on Datum Earth, since they diverged only a couple of years ago. As one moves further, the landscape changes more and more drastically as geology took a different path further away in the past (including a series of Earths where there is a large sea in the middle of North America). The furthest explorations reach versions of Earth that diverged so long ago that they can't even support life as we know it.
• The Silent Stars Go By by James White has as its point of divergence an Irish emissary from the King of Tara visiting Roman Alexandria in the mid-1st-century CE and recognizing the potential of Hero of Alexandria's real-life "aeolipile" primitive steam engine. Ireland / Tara has an industrial revolution and becomes the most powerful nation of the next millennium. By the alternate 1492, technology has progressed to the point of launching ships to habitable planets around other stars.
• Other Covenants:
  • "White Roses In Their Eyes" seems to diverge with Hitler getting killed in the Beer Hall Putsch, butterflying away the Holocaust.
  • "The Book of Raisa" diverges with Stalin surviving the stroke that killed him in OTL.
  • "The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships" diverges with Baruch Spinoza marrying and rejoining the Jewish community (albeit an Ashkenazi one).

Live-Action TV

• Sliders, which deals with parallel universes on a regular basis, often has its main characters deduce the point of divergence between the universe they are currently in and their home universe (Earth Prime).
  • In the pilot, the point of divergence between Earth Prime and the Communist-ruled USA world is the outcome of The Korean War (loss for the US as opposed to a draw).
  • In another episode, World War II lasts for several years longer than expected, resulting in a different president being in office during the Roswell incident. Unlike most other worlds, this guy decides to make the knowledge of aliens public, forming a trade partnership with them. By the turn of the century, the US has ubiquitous Artificial Gravity and near-perfect health, and an almost-successful manned mission to Mars has taken place a few years prior.
• In The Boys (2019), the point of divergence is World War II. During the war, the Nazi scientist Frederick Vought created the Super Serum Compound V through experiments on concentration camp inmates. As the tide turned against Nazi Germany, he defected to the United States used his serum to create the first successful superhero Soldier Boy. Impressed by his work, the US government pardoned Vought and he subsequently founded the corporation Vought International, which creates his own line of corporate-backed superheroes that have become part of The Boys universe.
• An in-universe example happens in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "The Wish", when Cordelia's wish that Buffy Summers had never come to Sunnydale creates a parallel universe. The town is subsequently completely overrun by vampires led by The Master, because Buffy wasn't around to prevent the events of "The Harvest".
• Subverted in the two-part mirror universe episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. The opening scene implies the point occurred when Zefram Cochrane spontaneously chose to murder the Vulcan explorers instead of peacefully meeting them during First Contact. However, Mirror-Phlox later determines this was not the case, as Earth and Mirror-Earth's histories had significant differences prior to First Contact, specifically with many classical authors writing different works of literature in each timeline, meaning the exact point is indeterminate.

Roleplay

• For the major universes of We Are All Pokémon Trainers we have the following:
  • AU: Umbra getting sealed in an orb when he was the Ghost Lord, Hoenn getting flooded, Sinnoh suffering the Distortion, and Scolipede and Artemis taking over Unova.
  • PMD-B: The dragons succeeding in turning 99% of humanity into Pokémon.
  • Otherverse: The earliest known divergence is Grings Kodai using Azalea instead of Crown City for his Celebi plot.

Video Games

• World in Conflict. The game asks the question, what if the Soviet Union decided to go to war in 1989 rather than face collapse? The Berlin Wall still comes down in this world, but it comes down when the Soviets blow it down with demolition charges and flood West Berlin with their troops. They proceed to invade Western Europe, with varying degrees of success and failure. Then they decide to launch an invasion of the United States in the hopes of at least tricking the U.S. into pulling its forces from Europe to reinforce the home front.
• Resistance: The PoD occurs when Spain decides to heed U.S. demands after the destruction of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana in 1898. They agreed to give Cuba independence, averting the Spanish-American War. Then the 1908 Tunguska Event brought with it in this world an alien menace, a virus that infects and turns humans into savage alien creatures. World War II as we know it is averted in this world, but the aliens then invade at the end of 1949 from Russia (which had been slowly overrun in the proceeding decades).
• Turning Point: Fall of Liberty: The PoD is the death of Winston Churchill from a car accident in 1931, instead of surviving as in Real Life. Without his leadership, Britain quickly falls to the Nazis in World War II. The Nazis, along with Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan proceed to conquer their areas of interest, while the Germans built up the military even more. Eventually they launch a full-scale invasion of the United States in 1952.
• In the Fallout series, the PoD is shortly after World War II. The transistor (invented in 1947 in reality) wasn't invented until the 2060s, leading to desktop computers, robots, and other technology to use vacuum tubes instead, remaining bigger and bulkier, giving the series its Raygun Gothic and Zeerust aesthetics. For unclear reasons, this also stifled societal development, leaving the world stuck in the social norms of the The '50s.
• In BioShock Infinite, the divergence point is the 1893 World Fair, or rather, the construction of the floating city of Columbia for said fair. More precisely, the divergence point is the baptism of Booker DeWitt, which created Father Comstock and ultimately made Columbia possible. In-game, Elizabeth has the power to use "tears" as divergence points to enter alternate timelines.
• In Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story, the Homura Akemi seen in the game is the glasses-and-braids-wearing version seen in the beginning of Episode 10 in the anime. It turns out that the timeline Magia Record takes place in is one where she chose to not tell the Mitakihara girls about the Awful Truth regarding magical girls, witches, and soul gems. This prevented the severe rift it caused in the group, leading to Homura's relationship with the girls being a bit better than the original anime.
• Sword Art Online: Infinity Moment and its Updated Re Releases places its point of divergence at around the end of the anime's first story arc, wherein Kirito's final fight with Akihiko Kayaba/Heathcliff is interrupted by a glitch just before Kirito can land the killing blow, thus forcing the heroes to continue fighting their way to Aincrad's 100th floor.
• It's hard to establish where the point of divergence between Real Life and the Alternate Timelines of Shin Megami Tensei IV lies. Sometime before 2013, a suit of Powered Armor called the Demonica was invented, and Japan's Self Defense Force purchased a large amount of them. In 2013 itself, angels entered Earth from the Expanse, conspired to trigger a nuclear war, and started kidnapping innocents and God's Chosen to be spirited out of Earth when the nukes struck. In the chaos, a mysterious piece of software, the Demon Summoning Program, was dispersed through the Internet, giving some humans the chance to strike back. At the cusp of the angels' plan, with a large group of ICBMs looming over Tokyo, a young summoner made his stand, and through his choice created three possible worlds...
• According to the backstory for Enigma: Rising Tide, the RMS Lusitania was never sunk by a German U-boat, which prevented the US from entering World War I. The Central Powers win the war, with Germany annexing France and Britain. Churchill flees Britain for Hong Kong with the rest of the government aboard the HMS Hood and forms the League of Free Nations, which includes Britain's government-in-exile and Imperial Japan. The game is centered on controlling ships during this world's version of World War II, a Mêlée à Trois between the German Empire, the US, and the LFN. The game even includes an event that is a direct parallel to the attack on Pearl Harbor, except, in this version, it's the Americans performing a sneak attack on the German fleet at Scapa Flow, with Chancellor von Richthofen (yes, that one) giving a speech eerily similar to FDR's and announcing the end to the age of the battleship.
• In Timelines: Assault on America, the OSS manages to assassinate Hitler in 1942, along with a number of high-ranking Nazi officials. As a result, more competent generals take charge of Nazi Germany and find out what the Americans have done. With that knowledge, they cancel Operation Barbarossa (strangely, the invasion happened the prior year in Real Life) and direct their efforts towards the US, making plans with Japan to perform a simultaneous two-pronged assault.
• The backstory of Nier places its point of divergence at June 12, 2003, at approximately 3:00 PM JST, when a dragon and a monster appeared in the skies over Tokyo, fought, and subsequently died (the events of Ending E of Drakengard). After that, as a result of the monster crossing over from its home dimension into ours, a Mystical Plague started to take root among humanity that, over a thousand years later, leads to the extinction of the human race.
• In War Front: Turning Point, Hitler is killed in the early days of the war, and the new chancellor is much more competent. Under his leadership, Operation Sea Lion succeeds, and Britain falls to Germany. However, this also means that Germany never attacked the Soviet Union, and the Soviets build up their forces in preparation to strike at them.
• Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise has its point of divergence after the game's tutorial. In the manga, Shin dies by throwing himself off a ledge before Kenshiro's last attack takes effect, and the Yuria who had been seated on his throne is revealed to be a mannequin. In this game, Shin dies from Kenshiro's attack, and Yuria is nowhere to be seen — not even as a mannequin. Kenshiro learns of the city of Eden afterwards, where Yuria may be found. From there, most of the manga's events play out with Eden at the center of it all.
• Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero allows players to create points of divergence in the story of Dragon Ball Z by making specific choices at certain points, which causes the events of the series to play out in unique ways. To name one example: if Goku manages to overpower Raditz, the evil Saiyan brother will die when hit by Piccolo's first Special Beam Cannon, negating the need for his Heroic Sacrifice. While Goku never meets King Kai and learns the Kaioken and Spirit Bomb, he is able to participate in the fight against Nappa and Vegeta at a much earlier point in time. In this particular instance of events, Krillin ends up dying by Vegeta's hand, forcing Goku's transformation into a Super Saiyan before ever visiting Namek.
• Kaiserreich: Legacy of the Weltkrieg, a mod for Hearts of Iron 2 and 4, has their POD be the sinking of the Lusitania. After seeing the threat of America joining the war, the Kaiser puts a stop to unrestricted submarine warfare. Without America to relieve the weary Entente, Germany then begins to pull off multiple other points of divergence, including winning the war in the East and getting grain from Ukraine, evading starvation from the British blockade, which is in turn broken in a Second Battle of Jutland, and capitalizing on the French mutiny during the Nivelle Offensive, which allows them to place Paris under siege, resulting in France's capitulation and thus leaving Britain alone. Britain then sues for a Peace with Honor in 1921, giving Germany supremacy in Europe and radically changing how the world is by the 1940s.
• In Prey (2017): The divergence is explained in-game with Talos 1's museum. United States President John F. Kennedy secretly forms a space alliance with the USSR, intending to fully broker peace, because they secretly discovered a hostile alien life form orbiting the Moon and both parties sought to research the aliens, and the potential for a singularity, with all of Earth's resources. The exact divergence is that when the USSR screws Kennedy over by attempting to assassinate him, he survives in this timeline, and retaliates with a hostile takeover of the project, which stays fully in American hands and is eventually sold to a megacorporation, who manage to reverse-engineer genetic / neurological mutagens, or Neuromods. Kennedy wound up living over a century as well, thanks to Neuromod development.
• Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes is an alternate timeline to Fire Emblem: Three Houses, with its major point of divergence being Shez's survival after they and their fellow mercenaries were attacked by Byleth, after which they end up saving the leaders of the three houses from bandits in Byleth's stead. From there, they go on to rescue Monica, a student kidnapped by Those Who Slither In The Dark, forcing the villains to accelerate their plans and causing the Fodlan civil war to break out years earlier.
• It's implied in Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire that ORAS is an alternate timeline to the original games, Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, and the point of divergence is that in the Ruby and Sapphire timeline, the Ultimate Weapon from Pokémon X and Y was never created, meaning Mega Evolution never became a concept there.

Visual Novels

• Ace Attorney: To explain how the localization is set in California, the point of divergence is World War II, and more specifically the United States not signing anti-Japanese laws that they did in the real world. Thus, Japanese culture is allowed to flourish... and Japanese migrants bring their "reach a verdict as quick as possible" legal system with them.
• Arcade Spirits take place in a timeline where the ET video game wasn't Christmas rushed. As a result, The Great Video Game Crash of 1983 never happened and arcades remained as a popular mainstream of culture.
• Nasuverse:
  • An unspecified event around 300 AD is mainly responsible for why there are Dead Apostle-centric timelines (Tsukihime, Witch on the Holy Night, Melty Blood) and the Fate timelines instead of timelines where both concepts are prominent. In the Fate timelines, the Dead Apostle threat is mainly under control, unlike in the Dead Apostle-centric timelines. The Material book for Lord El-Melloi II Case Files reveals that the battle between Zelretch and the Crimson Moon took place in 300 AD, but it doesn't really explain what might have gone differently to have caused the divergence.
  • Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA diverges from the main Fate/stay night and Fate/Zero (and Fate/hollow ataraxia) timeline in that instead of helping the Einzberns in the Fourth Holy Grail War, Kiritsugu chose to stay with Irisviel and Illya instead and killed the Einzberns, in addition to discovering the truth about the Holy Grail and destroying it with Irisviel's help. The Fourth Holy Grail War continued without them, and judging by the presence of a Lord El-Melloi II (Waver) and Caren being in Fuyuki (as she came to replace Kirei after his death in the main timeline), Kayneth still died and Kirei died. Illya was also born later.
    • It's not clear what caused the decline of magic in Miyu's timeline, other than the fact that Pandora (Erika) never opened her box.
  • An alien supercomputer embedded in the Moon by Precursors, its subsequent discovery by humans, and the Aylesbury Ritual being held in the 1970s instead of its prophesied time, thus triggering the calamitous Overcount/1999 event is responsible for the divergence of the Fate/EXTRA timeline.
  • Fate/Apocrypha happens because Darnic Prestone Yggdmillennia steals the Holy Grail from Fuyuki during the Third Holy Grail War, causing the Yggdmillennia faction to rise in prominence. And the Einzberns summoned Amakusa Shiro instead of Angra Mainyu.
  • Despite Fate/strange Fake having no actual reason to diverge, it just did. Part of it is because Zelretch specifically pins his hope on sending in a Spanner in the Works to avert a possible Bad Future.
  • Fate/Grand Order itself diverges from FSN because of currently unspecified reasons that have resulted in only one Holy Grail War being held in Fuyuki, the formation of the Chaldea Security Organization, and the Evils of Humanity being laser focused on specifically carrying out their plans in this timeline. Beyond the main story, there are also several Servants derived from diverging points in the timeline:
    • EMIYA Alter comes from the Fate/stay night Heaven's Feel Bad End "Superhero" (also known as "Mind of Steel").
    • Assassin EMIYA is a Kiritsugu that was never hired by the Einzberns, so he never met Irisviel, causing him to fall further into despair.
    • The Lion King/Lancer Altria variants are from timelines where Altria mainly used Rhongomyniad instead of Excalibur.
    • The game's second major plot arc, Cosmos in the Lostbelt, features seven alternate timelines, each with their own point of divergence. What sets these timelines apart is that they diverged so much that they would be pruned by the World, for they were seen as dead ends for humanity:
    • The first Lostbelt, set in Russia, diverged in AD 1570 when an asteroid struck Earth and plunged it into a new ice age. The Russian tsar of the time, Ivan the Terrible, ordered his court mages to fuse the few surviving humans with Demonic and Phantasmal Beasts, creating a race of Beast Men called the Yaga. However, the Yaga were forced to spend all of their ability on merely surviving in the Death World Earth had become, and were therefore incapable of advancement and thus pruned.
    • The second Lostbelt, set in Scandinavia, diverged in 1000 BC when Surtr chose to defy his prophesied role in Ragnarok and set the entire world, not just Scandinavia, aflame. It took all of the Norse gods except Skadi to seal him away in a Heroic Sacrifice — but Surtr's rampage scarred the world so badly that it was incapable of supporting more than ten thousand humans at any given time.
    • The third Lostbelt, set in China, diverged in 210 BC when Emperor Qin Shi Huang discovered the secret to immortality. With eternal life in his hands, he set about conquering foreign lands until he had control over the entire planet. However, he hoarded all technological advancement for himself, set about planning the defense of the world rather than expanding outward from it, and left humans in a state of blissful ignorance, lacking education and expected to till the land until they reached a certain age, when they would be euthanized before the troubles of old age could affect them.
    • The fourth Lostbelt, set in India, has no specific date of divergence (the calendar used in that Lostbelt counts the Maha-Yuga Cycle rather than the Gregorian calendar), but is stated to have diverged at the end of the Kurukshetra War (which would put it around 3000 BC), when Arjuna, rather than coming to terms with his inner darkness, hit the Despair Event Horizon upon seeing the carnage that the war brought and vowed to become a god so he could erase evil from existence. He would succeed, merging with nearly the entire Hindu pantheon to become the Lostbelt's sole god, and sped up the Yuga Cycle to weed out what he deemed "evil" and reach his perfect world sooner. However, he ended up accelerating it too much, and between that and his impossibly high standards, he was doomed to drive humanity to extinction.
    • The Fifth Lostbelt, Atlantis, diverges in 12,000 BC, when Sefar, the White Titan that destroyed Atlantis, is stopped early by the Greek Gods (who are Alien AI) fusing together into a Humongous Mecha. With the Greek Pantheon remaining in power, the world gained incredibly advanced technology, but all of humanity was essentially enslaved to the Olympians. Not to mention that Zeus was planning to get rid of humanity anyway as part of his plan to depart into space.
    • The Sixth Lostbelt, Avalon le Fae, set in Great Britain, was initially believed to diverge in AD 510, when Morgan Le Fay was chosen to ascend to Britan's throne instead of Artoria. In truth, it has the same divergence point as the fifth, but diverges in the opposite direction. In this Lostbelt, Excalibur was never forged, and so Sefar was left to rampage unchecked and destroyed the world until it was just an endless ocean. The six faeries who were supposed to forge Excalibur were banished from Avalon forever for their sins, but they betrayed and poisoned the last surviving god Cernunnos to build a new Britain on the foundation of his and the primordial dragon Albion's corpses, and gave rise to the six fairy clans to rebuilt civilization. But since the Faeries lack creativity and are capricious by nature, it all only amounted to them repeatedly exterminating each other. It took Morgan le Fay establishing a totalitarian dictatorship to ensure even the smallest ounce of stability. And on top of that, the remaining humans are kept as literal livestock produced in factories, as said humans are technically clones of the last true human, Cernunnos' priest who the first fae tore apart but kept alive so they could have create more. Also, the land itself is trying to wipe the faeries out as it accumulates their collective curses and sins to birth monstrous Calamities to destroy Britain. And the titular Avalon le Fae is birthed (twice after the first fails) to create the sword that the original six did not in order to correct that sin. Notably, the circumstances of this POD result in it having an EX Divergence Depth, because Sefar effectively reset human history to zero - there is literally no shared history between this world and Pan-Human History.
    • The Seventh Lostbelt, Nahui Mictalan, set in South America, diverged at around 65 million BC. Or at least, it appeared this way - the actual point of divergence is at 300 million BC, when the Chixulub comet arrived at Earth much earlier than expected. The alien fungi it was carrying, which eventually become the Mesoamerican Pantheon and empower mankind in Proper Human History, ended up empowering the dinosaurs instead. Humans ended up evolving much earlier as a result. The problem is that this meant humans were around when ORT, the Ultimate One of the Oort Cloud, arrived. In Proper Human History, ORT's impact with Earth causes the extinction of the dinosaurs, but it then goes into hibernation since the humans it was tasked to destroy don't exist yet. Here, humans were around when it arrived, leading ORT to scour the world. Mankind was wiped out in a mass sacrifice to empower King Camazotz with the strength to defeat ORT, while the dinosaurs (now a race called the Deinos) migrated underground, gaining a new sun in the form of ORT's heart. While the changes to this timeline are more profound than even the sixth Lostbelt, it's still not truly a Lostworld as it still relies on a Cosmic Keystone to maintain itself with the difference being that Lostbelt ORT is that very lynchpin due to having consumed the Tree of Emptiness during its "war" with mankind.

Web Animation

• Snarled: The narrator Lucy figures she wouldn't have grown to resent and murder her friend if only she had not mispronounced it as "Ludy". Then kids would not have teased how it rhymed with Cooties, followed her well into highschool, and lead to Sean saying "Do you still have cooties?" that was the final straw.

Web Comics

• Dragon Ball Multiverse is a tournament between twenty different universes, each leading to their universes strongest warriors being radically different groups. The canon universe is Universe 18, and Future Trunks's universe is Universe 12.
  • Universe 1 and 10 were universes where the Supreme Kais decided to intervene in the affairs of mortals after Bibidi attempted to release Majin Buu. The two universes diverged from each other by the absence of the Kais in Universe 10.
  • Universe 3 is a universe where Bardock successfully rallied the Saiyans into rebelling against Frieza, killing him before he could transform by blasting him with an Oozaru army. The Saiyans, sans Bardock, were killed in turn by Dr. Raichi, but not before Kami fused into King Piccolo to repel their invasion of Earth.
  • Universe 4 is a universe where Super Buu absorbed Vegeta before the latter could release Fat Buu. Goku lost the subsequent fight and got absorbed along with Gohan, Goten, Piccolo, and Trunks. Buu spared Earth, but not before absorbing Bulma as a final farewell.
  • Universe 6 is a universe where Goku didn't intervene in Gohan's fight against Bojack, leading to the Galaxy Warriors killing the Z Fighters.
  • Universe 7 is a universe where Nail, on Guru's orders, fused with every Namekian he could find before Frieza's forces could kill them, becoming a Physical God and renaming himself Gast Carcolh. The Dragon Balls no longer exist, but Gast is capable of defending his universe by himself.
  • Universe 8 is a universe where Krillin killed Vegeta on Earth, leading to him, Gohan, and Bulma being killed by Frieza on Namek when they finally summoned Porunga. Goku and Nail subsequently fought and lost a two-man war against the Cold Empire.
  • Universe 9 is a universe where Cooler blew up Goku's pod before it ever reached Earth. Frieza and Cooler came to blows over this, with Cooler coming out on top and killing Frieza. With the technology afforded to them by the Red Ribbon Army, the human Z Fighters became the strongest force of their universe.
  • Universe 11 is the universe where Cell never showed up. Kami refused to fuse with Piccolo, nor did he let Goku and especially Vegeta use the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, but Goku and Krillin were able to befriend the Androids. Trunks returned to his future and used the remote to kill the future Androids, and was in turn killed by Imperfect Cell; that universe is implied to be Universe 15. Meanwhile, the past Z Fighters were woefully unprepared for when Babibi released Majin Buu.
  • Universe 13 is a universe where Kakarot never landed on his head as a baby, and fulfilled his mission to kill all humans before Raditz came to collect him. Vegeta, Nappa, Raditz, and Kakarot went on to destroy the Cold Empire.
  • Universe 16 is a universe where Vegetto didn't drop his shield after getting absorbed by Super Buu, thus never defusing^note this was written before Dragon Ball Super established that Potara fusion is only permanent if a Supreme Kai is one of the components.
  • Universe 17 is a universe where Gohan gave up in his final clash against Cell, leading to Cell's victory over the Z Fighters. With Future Trunks dying here, his home universe, Universe 14, continues to be terrorized by Androids 17 and 18, who killed the fetal Cell when Bulma accidentally lured them back to Dr. Gero's laboratory.
  • Universe 20 is a universe where the blast meant to throw Broly into the sun missed, leading to him coming back a few years later, now strong enough to overpower even a Majin Buu that had absorbed all the other Z Fighters.

Web Original

• Atlas Altera does not involve a single POD, but instead many ways history might have gone different.
• In Blue Skies in Camelot, the POD is that Marilyn Monroe's addiction is discovered by her butler in 1962, preventing her death.

Western Animation

• Justice League: The Episode The Savage Time occurs when Vandal Savage uses time travel to send information to his past self, allowing him to usurp Adolf Hitler in 1944, managing to bring the Nazi Superweapons into reality, and when D-Day happened, not only were they repulsed, but as said by a future Batman, it was "the beginning of the end" for the Allies, and the beginning of his new empire. Therefore, the league, who were displaced in time when the change occurred, have to Set Right What Once Went Wrong and set history back on course.
• The alternate universe in ''Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension" branched off from the mainstream one when Doofenshmirtz didn't get a Hilariously Abusive Childhood, and only got one Freudian Excuse that the main Doof didn't have, allowing Doof-2 to become eviler and more competent.
• The Simpsons: The "Treehouse Of Horror XXXIV" segment "Ei8ht" takes place in an Alternate Continuity in which Sideshow Bob successfully murdered Bart in "Cape Feare". The segment opens with the scene of Sideshow Bob singing "For He Is An Englishman" as part of Bart's Scheherezade Gambit, only this time he sees through the trick and brutally murders Bart as the tied-up Lisa watches helplessly. The segment then flashes forward to 2023, eschewing the show's usual Comic-Book Time by showing Lisa and the Springfield Elementary School children having since grown up.
• Pretty much the whole plot of Sonic Prime happened due to Sonic ended up creating the Shatterspaces by colliding with the Paradox Prism.
  • New Yoke City is essentially what would happen if Sonic never existed, allowing the Green Hill Zone to be conquered easily by the Dr. Eggman (or rather, in this case, Eggmen), harnessing the power of the Paradox Prism shard without Sonic there to oppose them. Furthermore, Nine was never saved from his bullies, resulting in him becoming a cynical loner.
• The world of The Venture Brothers features "super science" and numerous legitimately super-powered heroes and villains, but has otherwise seen nearly all of the same media and societal progress. Throughout the series, several mentions of made of events taking place differently in reality (ex.Lloyd Venture, grandfather of Rusty, was actually the first person on the moon in 1902; Buddy Holly and The Big Bopper did not die in a plane crash in 1959, but instead that was a cover for their becoming the supervillains Red Mantle and Dragoon, etc.) but by far the oldest possible PoD mentioned is that the Greuthungi chieftains Saphrax and Alatheus did not kill Roman Emperor Flavius Valens as they did in reality. It is possible that it happened even earlier (Archimedes is mentioned as having worked on the ORB), but Saphrax and Alatheus is the first stated difference from our reality.
• This is the basic premise of What If…? (2021): Every episode features a new timeline which depicts an event of the Marvel Cinematic Universe happening different, allowing for an all-new plot to develop from that point on. Examples that the series focuses on are...
  • "What If... Captain Carter Were the First Avenger?"/"What If... Captain Carter fought the HYDRA Stomper?": Caused by Peggy staying in the main theater while the serum is being injected into Steve.^note An additional factor is HYDRA failing to obtain the Tesseract until much later than in the Sacred Timeline, which may have factored in Peggy's decision to stay in the theater.
  • "What If... T'Challa Became a Star-Lord?": Caused by Yondu outsourcing his work to Taserface and Kraglin, causing them to accidentally abduct a young T’Challa instead of Peter Quill.
  • "What If... The World Lost Its Mightiest Heroes?": Caused by Hope Van Dyne joining S.H.I.E.L.D. and dying on a mission. This is the first episode where the cause of divergence isn't seen on-screen or revealed until the climax, due to the episode being a murder mystery.
  • "What If... Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?": Caused by Christine Palmer accompanying Stephen in his car, then dying in the subsequent crash. The events of Doctor Strange (2016) happen exactly the same way, but after those events is where the side effects of Stephen's loss become clear.
  • "What If... Zombies?!": Caused by Janet van Dyne becoming infected by a virus in the Quantum Realm who then passes it on to Hank Pym, who spreads it to the Avengers, as the situation exacerbates into a Zombie Apocalypse.
  • "What If... Killmonger Rescued Tony Stark?": Caused by Erik Stevens (a.k.a. Killmonger) protecting Tony Stark in Afghanistan on the day he was to be abducted by the Ten Rings, which proved to be part of a much grander scheme on Killmonger's part.
  • "What If... Thor Were an Only Child?"/"What If...? S3E4 "What If... Howard The Duck Got Hitched?" What If... Howard the Duck Got Hitched]]": Caused by Odin returning infant Loki to his Frost Giant family and raising Thor as an only child.
  • "What If... Ultron Won?": Caused by Ultron successfully uploading himself into the body that was to become Vision.
  • "What If... The Watcher Broke His Oath?": Caused by... well, the Watcher breaking his oath of non-interference to stop Ultron from destroying the multiverse itself.
  • "What If... Nebula Joined the Nova Corps?": Caused by Ronan deposing Thanos and Xandar having to shield itself off from the rest of the universe to stop him from invading.
  • "What If... Peter Quill Attacked Earth's Mightiest Heroes?": Caused by Yondu delivering Peter Quill to Ego. In addition, a version of the Avengers consisting of Hank Pym, T'Chaka, Bucky Barnes, Wendy Lawson, Bill Foster, and Thor is formed by Howard Stark and Peggy Carter.
  • "What If... Happy Hogan Saved Christmas?": Implied to have been caused by Justin Hammer receiving a longer prison sentence.
  • "What If... Iron Man Crashed into the Grandmaster?": Caused by Tony Stark getting stranded on Sakaar during the events of The Avengers (2012).
  • "What If... Kahhori Reshaped the World?": Caused by Surtur destroying Asgard before the founding of America.
  • "What If... Hela Found the Ten Rings?": Caused by Odin banishing Hela to China.
  • "What If... The Avengers Assembled in 1602?": Caused by Steve Rogers accidentally cracking the Time Stone during Thanos' invasion of Wakanda.
  • "What If... Strange Supreme Intervened?": Caused by Strange Supreme capturing various beings in order to sacrifice them to restore his universe.
  • "What If... The Hulk Fought the Mech Avengers?": Caused by Sam Wilson befriending Bruce Banner instead of Steve Rogers.
  • "What If... Agatha Went to Hollywood?": Caused by Agatha Harkness discovering Tiamut beneath the Earth. Seeking to cast a spell to drain the Cosmic Energy, she decided to go to Hollywood under the guise of an actor to cast it.
  • "What If... The Red Guardian Stopped the Winter Soldier?": Caused by the Red Guardian stopping the Winter Soldier's assassination of Howard and Maria Stark.
  • "What If... The Emergence Destroyed the Earth": Caused by Tiamut's emergence going on as planned years earlier, resulting in the birth of Tiamut the Communicator and allowing Quentin Beck to take control.
  • "What If... 1872": Caused by Shang Chi and Xu Xialing being born much earlier, in the 1800s (as were several others), and, seeking to escape Wenwu's tyranny, Xu Xialing immigrated to the United States in the late 1860s. Uatu admits that this isn't a typical POD in the sense of a single event that differs from how it happened the Sacred Timeline (even the 1602 universe diverted when one person arrived in that time period who shouldn't have been there), but that in the outer reaches of the multiverse, things are different.
  • "What If... The Watcher Disappeared?"/"What If... What If?": Caused by Uatu's fellow Watchers putting him on trial for his various interventions

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