History AlternateHistory / LiveActionTV

* ''Series/TheBoys2019'': In the show's universe, superheroes have been around at least since the '60s.

* ''Series/HouseOfCardsUK'' does something similar, with the events of the series kicking off after Margaret Thatcher resigns from office several years before she did in reality.

* Surprisingly, ''Series/DoctorWho'' has only dabbled with this concept a handful of times. The Doctor has meddled (or stopped meddling) in history all throughout the show's run, but he has visited alternate history-tracks only twice, in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS7E4Inferno Inferno]]" and "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E5RiseOfTheCybermen Rise of the Cybermen]] / [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E6TheAgeOfSteel Age of Steel]]", while in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E11TurnLeft Turn Left]]" we get the alternate history of "What if the Doctor was not there to defend the Earth?" Needless to say, it was pretty ugly.
** In ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS9E1DayOfTheDaleks Day of the Daleks]]'', the the Third Doctor visits a future Earth which he then retrospectively turns into an alternate history. To elaborate, just after the Doctor left our time, WorldWarIII broke out, weakening Earth and enabling the Daleks to take over. The Doctor learns enough about how the war started to return to our time and prevent it from happening, thus erasing the Dalek-occupied future.
** In the Fourth-Doctor episode "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E3PyramidsOfMars Pyramids of Mars]]" Sarah Jane asks why they don't just leave to avoid getting killed since they know the BigBad didn't destroy earth in the 19th century since she is from 20th century Earth. The Doctor explains that now that they are involved in events alternate histories are inevitable and "her" Earth may never exist if they don't stop the BigBad. He even takes her to her "present" and shows her a blasted and sterile wasteland that will result if they don't go back and fix things.
** The series is pretty much about alternate histories in practice, they are just super subtle about it. Over the years many incompatible histories and futures are shown from adventure to adventure. [[WordOfGod Showrunner Steven Moffat has outright SAID]] that [[SeriesContinuityError continuity errors]] aren't continuity errors, we just haven't seen the episode where the Doctor's traveled back in time to change history.
** However these become a major plot point in the 8th Doctor's earliest stories in AudioPlay/BigFinishDoctorWho. In "Invaders from Mars" there is a different number of U.S states and Orson Welles doesn't recognise Shakespeare. "Time of the Daleks" elaborates on what happened to Shakespeare, and in "Neverland" it is revealed that the Doctor saving Charley Pollard is causing the Universe to be infected by Anti-Time, which is destroying the Web of Time.
** ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E13LastOfTheTimeLords The Last of the Time Lords]]'' depicts a alternate 2008-2009 where the Master rules over Earth and Martha Jones becomes a legend while WalkingTheEarth. After the Paradox Machine holding the entire scenario in place is destroyed, [[ResetButton time reverts itself back and everything that happened over the year is erased from history.]]

* Implied in ''Series/ThirtyRock''. Events mirror the real world pretty closely (i.e. the Clinton, Bush and Obama presidencies), but there are some key differences, and the point of divergence appears to be around World War I. For instance, although the Austro-Hungarian Empire still fell, the Hapsburgs are apparently still in power as monarchs of both Austria and parts of what is modern Germany in our world, Transylvania is an independent country rather than part of a united Romania, and Kristen Chenowith was murdered in Yemen.

* ''Series/TheBoys2019'': In the show's universe, superheroes have been around at least since the 2000s. Billy mentions that some Dominican gangsters unsuccessfully tried to kill Translucent in 2007.

* You have to look carefully but it's in the background of ''Series/HouseOfCardsUS''. Walker, elected in 2012, replaced a Republican and is the 45th President of the United States. Also Frank starts the series as Majority Whip of the House of Representatives which, since he's a Democrat indicates that they didn't lose control in 2010.

* ''Series/TheWestWing'', like ''House of Cards'', has this in the background; the last real-life President who is identified is Richard Nixon, and the US election rotation is two years off from what it is in the actual world (i.e. President Bartlet was first elected in 1998 and ran for re-election in 2002, instead of 1996 and 2000 respectively).

* ''Series/TheHandmaidsTale'': The first episode shows the birth rate had plummeted in 2015 to catastrophic levels. While the US birth rate has fallen, it's still only slightly below replacement levels. (And in the real world, this is more due to societal changes where people ''choose'' to have children later, or not at all, rather than having [[SterilityPlague pollution cause an epidemic of miscarriages and stillbirths]], although the former was blamed as well.) This explains the "present day" being not far in the future after this.
* You have to look carefully but it's in the background of ''Series/HouseOfCardsUS''. Walker, elected in 2012 replaced a Republican and is the 45th President of the United States. Also Frank starts the series as Majority Whip of the House of Representatives which, since he's a Democrat indicates that they didn't lose control in 2010.

* In ''Series/{{JAG}}'' there really was a smoking gun connecting Saddam Hussein to Al-Qaeda, discovered by U.S. troops in one of Saddam's palaces, as seen in "Lawyers, Guns and Money". However this information appear to be classified (for some reason), because a year later Harm, Mac & Bud prepare their defense arguments before the International Criminal Court in "People v. [=SecNav=]" and Mac explicitly states that there is no smoking gun connecting Al-Qaeda to Saddam Hussein.

* ''Series/PoliticalAnimals'': Diverged sometime around in the '80s or at least 1992 at the latest. Bud Hammond's presidency seems to have replaced UsefulNotes/BillClinton's, and Hillary Clinton's turn as a Senator from New York seems to have been replaced by Elaine as Governor of Illinois.[[note]]Incidentally, the real HRC is originally from Chicago.[[/note]] Also, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was was replaced by Diane Nash (who is the first openly lesbian Supreme Court Justice).

* In the 2006 BBC adaptation of the short story "Literature/RandomQuest" by Creator/JohnWyndham, the PointOfDivergence between Colin Trafford's universe and the AlternateUniverse to which he is sent was the Berlin Wall never falling due to the fact that there was no ''glasnost'' and ''perestroika'', which implies that Mikhail Gorbachev never became the leader of the Soviet Union. As a result, the Cold War continued to intensify until the United States and the Soviet Union's power dwindled and both were eclipsed by the People's Republic of China. In 2005, Japan discovered significant oil deposits in the South Pacific and its threatening behaviour towards the Philippines and Indonesia over the course of the last 18 months has placed it on the verge of war with the US. The UK is suffering a severe drought with reservoirs throughout Southeast England and Wales being dry for months. This leads to the declaration of a state of emergency. The Western world is experiencing a severe fertility crisis which is expected to worsen over the course of the next ten years. Consequently, the United Nations Security Council has lifted its ban on human cloning and the first viable human clone has been already been born to a couple in San Francisco. In contrast to the 1971 film adaptation ''Quest for Love'', the space programme in the parallel universe is more advanced than in Colin's universe. There has already been a manned mission to Mars. In 2005, in a joint operation between NASA and the Chinese National Space Administration called the Juno mission, an unmanned Jupiter polar explorer was launched from Cape Canaveral. It took fifteen months to reach Jupiter.

** "What if the Aztecs had had escalators?" (Apparently it allowed them to fight off Cortez)

* ''Series/StrangerThings'' is a more subtle case than most, but it takes place in one where [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra Project MKUltra]] actually produced successful results. That would eventually result in the creation of [[GovernmentConspiracy Hawkins National Laboratory]] for developing [[PsychicPowers Psychic Power]]-equipped SuperSoldiers the United States would use against the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

* Korean drama ''Series/TheKing2Hearts'' takes place in an alternate universe where modern day South Korea is a constitutional monarchy.
* The TV series ''Series/{{Sliders}}'' used this as its entire premise. Every episode our heroes slide into a new alternate present.
** An interesting episode has them slide into a world with technology decades (if not centuries) ahead of normal. This is due to UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo lasting several years longer than in our world, resulting in a different president being elected. So when RoswellThatEndsWell came around, he made a decision to go public with the knowledge of aliens instead of covering it up. The resulting technological trade jump-started American progress, allowing for a manned mission to Mars to take place (apparently, the Reticulans were smart enough to not to give a primitive warlike race interstellar travel technology).
* ''Franchise/StarTrek'':
** The main Star Trek universe is already an alternate history compared to ours, with an incredibly devastating eugenic war taking place in the late '90s and at least 4 additional Voyager probes being launched by the end of the 20th century. Of course when ''[[Recap/StarTrekS1E22SpaceSeed Space Seed]]'' or ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture'' were shot, these points of divergence were still in the future.
** The MirrorUniverse repeatedly featured in various ''Franchise/StarTrek'' media is strongly implied to be this, although the specifics of the point(s) of divergence have yet to be touched upon. At the very least, the history of the [[EvilCounterpart Terran Empire]] stretches back before the 20th century, so it would be a case of AlternateHistory even when it was introduced in ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries''.
* ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' parodied this. For some reason all the questions came from a ten-year old kid in New Jersey, starting with, "What if Eleanor Roosevelt could fly?"
** "What if Spartacus had a Piper Cub?"
** "What if Napoleon had a fully armed B-52 at the battle of Waterloo?"
** "What if the Aztecs had had escalators?" (Apparently it allowed them to fight off Cortez)

** In the Fourth-Doctor episode "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E3PyramidsOfMars Pyramids of Mars]]" Sarah Jane asks why they don't just leave to avoid getting killed since they know the BigBad didn't destroy earth in the 19th century since she is from 20th century Earth. The Doctor explains that now that they are involved in events alternate histories are inevitable and her Earth may never exist if they don't stop the BigBad. He even takes her to her "present" and shows her a blasted wasteland that will result if they don't go back and fix things.
** The series is pretty much about alternate histories in practice, they are just subtle about it. Over the years many incompatible histories and futures are shown from adventure to adventure. [[WordOfGod Showrunner Steven Moffat has outright SAID]] that [[SeriesContinuityError continuity errors]] aren't continuity errors, we just haven't seen the episode where the Doctor's travelled back in time to change history.

* Parodied in the 2012 ''Radio/RoyalCanadianAirFarce'' special in a hilarious case of RussianReversal. When the Soviets won the 1972 Summit Series against Canada, the Soviets then proceeded to conquer the country and turn it into Soviet Canuckistan for real. Canada now flies the hammer and sickle, eats at Vladimir Hortons (a parody of Tim Hortons), and hockey greats like Paul Henderson were forgotten. Fortunately, Paul Henderson ''himself'' wakes up from his nightmare.

** As pointed out in ''WebVideo/HistoryOfPowerRangers'' the ''Power Rangers'' franchise takes place in a universe where the Earth's Moon has a breathable atmosphere and apparently normal Earth gravity. It was also still being visited by astronauts until Rita Repulsa was freed, by said astronauts.

* The ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' episode "My Heart Will Go On" takes place in the present of an alternate history in which the Titanic never sank. The timeline was created by Balthazar saving the ship to provide more souls to fight alongside Castiel, and also to stop Music/CelineDion's [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking career from taking off]].
* You have to look carefully but it's in the background of ''Series/HouseOfCardsUS''. Walker, elected in 2012 replaced a Republican and is the 45th President of the United States. Also Frank starts the series as Majority Whip of the House of Representatives which, since he's a Democrat indicates that they didn't lose control in 2010.
* ''Series/HouseOfCardsUK'' does something similar, with the events of the series kicking off after Margaret Thatcher resigns from office several years before she did in reality.
* ''Series/TheManInTheHighCastle'' is an adaptation of Creator/PhilipKDick's seminal alternate history novel in which the Axis won UsefulNotes/WorldWarII and have taken over the world. The USA is split between the German and Japanese empires.
* ''Series/TheWestWing'', like ''House of Cards'', has this in the background; the last real-life President who is identified is Richard Nixon, and the US election rotation is two years off from what it is in the actual world (i.e. President Bartlet was first elected in 1998 and ran for re-election in 2002, instead of 1996 and 2000 respectively).
* Implied in ''Series/ThirtyRock''. Events mirror the real world pretty closely, i.e. the Clinton, Bush and Obama presidencies, but there are some key differences, and the point of divergence appears to be around World War I. For instance, although the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell, the Hapsburgs are apparently still in power as monarchs of Austria and parts of what is modern Germany in our world, Transylvania is an independent country, rather than part of a united Romania, and Kristen Chenowith was murdered in Yemen.
* ''Series/TheHandmaidsTale'': The first episode shows the birth rate had plummeted in 2015 to catastrophic levels. While the US birth rate has fallen, it's still only slightly below replacement levels. (And in the real world, this is more due to societal changes where people ''choose'' to have children later, or not at all, rather than having [[SterilityPlague pollution cause an epidemic of miscarriages and stillbirths]], although the former was blamed as well.) This explains the "present day" being not far in the future after this.
* ''Series/PoliticalAnimals'': Diverged sometime around in the '80s or at least 1992 at the latest. Bud Hammond's presidency seems to have replaced UsefulNotes/BillClinton's, and Hillary's turn as a Senator from New York seems to have been replaced by Elaine as Governor of Illinois.[[note]]Incidentally, the real HRC is originally from Chicago.[[/note]] Also, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was was replaced by Diane Nash (who is the first openly lesbian Supreme Court Justice).

* ''Series/{{Cavemen}}'': Cavemen have survived into the present day and exist as a minority group alongside ''Homo sapiens''.

* ''Series/TheManInTheHighCastle'' is an adaptation of Creator/PhilipKDick's seminal alternate history novel in which the United States lost UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.

* ''Series/TheManInTheHighCastle'' is an adaptation of Creator/PhilipKDick's seminal alternate history novel, mentioned above, in which the United States lost UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.

* Creator/SpikeTV ran a one-shot special, entitled "Alternate History", covering what would've happened if Hitler won UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo. It wound up being a spectacular example of ArtisticLicenseHistory when covering how we get to that point. More details are provided in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWoh6rgU3S8 this review]]. Some examples:
** The biggest goof is the complete exclusion of the Russian Front. The Germans concentrated the overwhelming majority of their resources in the East and suffered the most casualties there. The American-British-French invasion of Normandy is often given undue weight as a 'turning of the tide' event because of Hollywood movies focusing primarily on the Western front. While it certainly ''sped up'' the German defeat, by the middle of 1944 the German war effort was in fact already doomed. Even if the Germans had managed to repel the Allies at D-Day, they still had the whole issue of millions of pissed off Soviets marching on Berlin to deal with, not contemplating invading the UK and the US.
** The rationale they give for a German victory in D-Day is... deployment of the Me-262 jet fighter. One of the key aspects of Operation Overlord was ''aerial supremacy''; the Allies controlled the skies over the Channel. The Me-262 had some advantages over propeller based fighters, but the jet engines didn't make it a superplane (its performance not being critically better than any other plane constructed) - by the end of the war, Allied forces had racked up several 262 kills. Additionally, by 1944 Germany was having several problems with manufacture of jet engines - namely, they no longer had the resources to make them properly. The engines they could manufacture didn't last - they had to be rebuilt after operation, and had a short operational life.
** Then there's the whole "nuke the East Coast" bit. There's a reason the VideoGame/{{Civilization}} games have always made The Manhattan Project a world wonder - the effort to produce a viable nuclear weapon required a massive amount of research and resources; there's a famous anecdote that when General Groves asked for such-and-such a number of tons of silver from the U.S. Treasury, he got the starchy reply that "we do not speak of tons of silver at the Treasury. Our unit of measure is the troy ounce." (He did get the silver in the end.) The production of fissionable material alone took not only massive facilities to process the material, but large amounts of power to run said facilities (which is why the facilities were built in the Tennessee Valley.) Then there was figuring out how to make an atomic bomb actually work. And the US faced all that without any serious efforts to undermine the project - whereas Germany had their program hindered by several notable acts of sabotage, such as having a major shipment of heavy water scuttled. In addition, one of the great wastes of resources Germany committed was the whole driving out or killing of the Jewish scientists. You could say that in this "Alternate History" they didn't do that, but then they wouldn't really have been, well, Nazis. Aryan supremacy was a core plank of Nazi belief systems, and they were just not pragmatic enough to compromise on that.
** There was also the fact that Germany's nuclear program was actually ''nine separate rival programs,'' each actively hindering and the others and fighting for ever-dwindling budget. They were also constrained by ideologically-correct "German Physics," which threw out several relatively recently-discovered principles that made the Manhattan Project possible because they were considered tainted by association with Jews. The Nazis did everything possible to make sure that their nuclear programs would be nothing but abject failures in ''every area imaginable'', something "Germans make nukes first" scenarios conveniently gloss over.
** Hell, even if they DID manage to win the war by forcing the US and Soviets to surrender over nuclear bombs, there is no way they would ever enforce their laws in the US. The militaristic and patriotic nature of the nations would encourage an active rebellion against their controllers. Same goes with the United Kingdom. Controlling and patrolling a nation is much harder than forcing it to surrender (as has been evidenced several times in the Middle East). Germany would be burning through resources and money to no end trying to even establish a proper police force.

* A two-part episode of ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' is set in an altered timeline where time-traveling aliens had armed the [[ThoseWackyNazis Nazis]] with an arsenal of devastating energy weapons, leading to the rapid conquest of Europe, Asia and at least the eastern seaboard of the U.S. It features a highly entertaining alternate-universe propaganda clip describing the bright, shining future in store for America now that it's Germany's "partner". The point of divergence was the assassination of Lenin before he could turn Russia communist, though by the time of World War 2 itself, the aliens have become open allies of the Nazis.

* The Creator/{{BBC}} serial ''An Englishman's Castle" is set in an alternate 1970s, in which Nazi Germany had invaded and occuppied Britain during WWII. The protagonist is the writer of a popular soap opera (also called "An Englishman's Castle") that is set during the Battle of Britain.

** ''Series/HouseOfCardsUK'' does something similar, with the events of the series kicking off after Margaret Thatcher resigns from office several years before she did in reality.

** Hell, even if they DID manage to win the war by forcing the US and Soviets to surrender over nuclear bombs, there is no way they would ever enforce their laws in the US. The militeristic and patriotic nature of the nations would force encourage an active rebellion against their controllers. Same goes with the United Kingdom. Controlling and patrolling a nation is much harder than forcing it to surrender (as has been evidenced several times in the Middle East). Germany would be burning through resources and money to no end trying to even establish a proper police force.

* ''Series/TheHandmaidsTale'': The first episode shows the birth rate had plummeted in 2015 to catastrophic levels. While the US birth rate has fallen, it's still only slightly below replacement levels. (And in the real world, this is more due to the societal changes where people choose to have children later, rather than with pollution causing an epidemic of miscarriages and stillbirths.) This explains the "present day" being not far in the future after this.

* ''Series/TheHandmaidsTale'': The first episode shows the birth rate had plummeted in 2015 to catastrophic levels. While the US birth rate has fallen, it's only slightly below replacement levels still. This explains the "present day" being not far into the future after this.

* ''Series/TheHandmaidsTale'': The first episode shows the birth rate had plummeted in 2015 to catastrophic levels. While the US birth rate has fallen, it's only slightly below replacement levels still. This explains the "present day" being not far in the future after this.

* Implied in ''Series/ThirtyRock''. Events mirror the real world pretty closely, i.e. the Clinton, Bush and Obama presidencies, but there are some key differences, and the point of divergence appears to be around World War I. For instance, although the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell, the Hapsburgs are apparently still in power as monarchs of Austria and parts of what is modern Germany in our world, Transylvania is an independent country, rather than a region of Romania, andKristen Chenowith was murdered in Yemen.

* Implied in ''Series/ThirtyRock''. Events mirror the real world pretty closely, i.e. the Clinton, Bush and Obama presidencies, but there are some key differences, and the point of divergence appears to be around World War I. For instance, although the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell, the Hapsburgs are apparently still in power as monarchs of Austria and parts of what is modern Germany in our world, and Transylvania is an independent country, rather than a region of Romania.

* Implied in ''Series/ThirtyRock''. Events mirror the real world pretty closely, i.e. the Clinton, Bush and Obama presidencies, but there are some key differences, and the point of divergence appears to be around World War I. For instance, although the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell, the Hapsburgs are apparently still in power as monarchs of Austria, and Transylvania is an independent country, rather than a region of Romania.

* Implied in ''Series/ThirtyRock''. Events mirror the real world pretty closely, for instance the Bush and Obama presidencies, but there are some key differences, and the point of divergence appears to be around World War I. For instance, although the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell, the Hapsburgs are apparently still in power as monarchs of Austria, and Transylvania is an independnet country, rather than a region of Romania.

* As pointed out in ''WebVideo/HistoryOfPowerRangers'' the ''Franchise/PowerRangers'' franchise takes place in a universe where the Earth's Moon has a breathable atmosphere and apparently Earth normal gravity. Also it was still being visited by astronauts until Rita Repulsa was freed, by said astronauts.