History Literature / Overheaven

** Some space colonies actually find a MundaneUtility for ''nukes'', of all things - turns out, because they're great at melting ice and heating up the atmosphere, nuclear bombs make remarkably good terraforming devices.

* NotMeThisTime: Mars and Earth were still not fully on good terms at the time of Hell Day, and it was thought by some at first that the Beijing Impact had been a deliberate attack. Ryzov describes the Martian government's reaction to Hell Day as being "BringMyBrownPants, followed by 'we swear we didn't do it.'"

* NukeEm: India and Pakistan go to war in 2009, and thanks to a coup launched by mentally unstable Pakistani Army officer Masoud Noorani, the war ends up going nuclear. Pakistani nukes destroy or badly damage several Indian cities and irradiate the Ganges River for a while, whilst Indian nuclear retaliation (as well as non-nuclear OrbitalBombardment by the international taskforce that was trying to ensure nukes wouldn't be used) leaves Pakistan devastated. Thankfully, the destruction is largely confined to the Indian subcontinent - though it still ends up having an effect on the rest of the world, via a "minor" nuclear winter and producing so many refugees they effectively form a new demographic, the so-called Pravasi ("migrants").

* RebelLeader: Tobias Falco, [[CoolOldGuy "80-year-old zoomer"]] and former general in the Martian government, who kicked off the Red-Blue War by defecting to the Reds and occupying the erstwhile Martian capital of Primus. He proves himself a ReasonableAuthorityFigure and AFatherToHisMen during the war and a GracefulLoser at its end. Tragically, he's killed at the peace talks by a group of "Hard Red" terrorists who considered him a traitor to the movement, [[NiceJobFixingItVillain thereby uniting both sides against the extremists and helping to ensure the stability of the nascent Martian Alliance]].

** UsefulNotes/HugoChavez never becomes a leftist [[ForWantOfANail (he never discovers the stash of Marxist literature he did OTL because he was tuning in to the Mars landing that day instead)]]. He ends up having a TurnToReligion and living out his days as a small-town priest (and a GoodShepherd at that), while Venezuela goes off in an altogether different direction without him.
** Alberto Fujimori is hit by a car whilst attending college in America, [[FlorenceNightingaleEffect falls in love with his nurse]], and moves to America to marry her. He thus never becomes dictator of Peru.

** After the USSR successfully reforms into the Sovereign Union, they invest heavily in rehabilitating the Soviet image through culture, and in particular pop music. Thus, many ex-KGB agents reinvent themselves as managers for R-Pop labels - one of the most successful being one Vladimir Putin.
** The new president of India is none other than Creator/ShahRukhKhan, and he's turned out to be just the kind of positive influence India ''direly'' needs.
** Abbas al-Musawi, the man who in our timeline founded Hezbollah, never did so in ''OVRHVN''. Instead, thanks to advances in space travel in TheSeventies, al-Musawi develops a new perspective on humanity's place in the cosmos, and becomes an atheist. He goes on to start a successful punk rock band [[AllohistoricalAllusion (still called Hezbollah)]] in a much more peaceful Lebanon.
** UsefulNotes/OsamaBinLaden emigrated to the United States early on and leads an altogether unremarkable life running a chain of 7-Elevens in Southern California's Orange County. Meanwhile, a ''different'' Bin Laden, a distant relative of Osama, ''is'' leader of a terrorist faction - specifically, the [[EvilLuddite Emirate of Nejd]].
** In a Philippines where the Marcos regime came to an early end, Rodrigo Duterte ultimately becomes a VigilanteMan, and is eventually arrested and tried for the murder of 12 alleged drug dealers.

** Pakistan is Death. When upright, Death represents new beginnings, change, transition and letting go, while when reversed, it represents inability to move forward, repetition of negative patterns, dependency and resistance to change. Pakistan spent the 2010s seemingly trapped in a cycle of violence and suffering, but with the help of their orbital colonies, they gradually managed to lift themselves out of it. Now, Pakistan is trying to pull itself back together and move on. Time will tell whether it manages to take, though, and many Pakistanis, having learned the hard way how to manage by themselves, are unconvinced that Pakistan can, or even ''should'', be resurrected.

** Sri Lanka is The Sun. The Sun represents material happiness and contentment, and so Sri Lanka, largely insulated from events on the mainland, has managed to do rather well for itself. Sri Lanka had already been on good terms with Japan since even before the PointOfDivergence (long story), and they thus benefitted from ''OVRHVN'''s Japan being even stronger economically than OTL. Political reforms to rectify anti-Tamil discrimination averted the Sri Lankan Civil War, and after the Punjab War, a great deal of investment and outsourcing that was previously geared at India instead went to Sri Lanka. Today, while India still has the greater GDP, Sri Lanka has the highest standard of living and the healthiest democracy in the subcontinent. All things considered, Sri Lanka's sun seems to be on the rise.

** Bhutan, perhaps inevitably, is The Hermit. The Hermit represents wisdom, introspection and solitude. Isolated as it is, Bhutan managed to more or less completely dodge the war. They controversially kept their borders closed during the ensuing refugee crisis, and even in 2022 their only noteworthy interaction with the outside world is as a supplier of a very specific strain of fungus that happens to be useful in certain anti-cancer treatments.

* VelvetRevolution: Ultimately, this is how the Communist Party of China falls. After an even worse Tiananmen Square Massacre, years of further protests and deaths, and a botched attempt to invade Hong Kong that ends in humiliating defeat for the PRC, on the 8th anniversary of the Tiananmen protests in 1997, 500,000 protestors march on the square once more... and this time, the People's Liberation Army lets them in. The CCP is all but forced to organize a multi-party election, which they naturally lose in a landslide, and Hu Jintao steps down peacefully, allowing a new constitution to be written and the People's Republic to transition into the [[MeaningfulRename Federal Republic of China]].

** The three main divisions of [=MarsCom=] are also like this: [[BadassArmy DefCom]] (Defense Command), [[TheSmartGuy SciCom]] (Science Command), and [[TheEngineer CivCom]] (Civil Command).

* {{Neologism}}: Astropolitics - it's like geopolitics, but InSpace

* StrawNihilist: The "Cleaners," a fringe group from the Red-Blue War, believe humanity is unworthy to be on Mars and thus that all human influence must be wiped off the face of Mars. They espouse MisanthropeSupreme talking points, engage in sabotage, and even use [[DarkIsEvil a black flag]]. [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome Fortunately for everyone else, the Cleaners' nihilism means they don't attract many recruits]], [[EnemyMine and the Reds and Blues are not above working together to get rid of them.]]

* StartMyOwn: It becomes relatively commonplace for marginalized or stateless groups to engage in "exo-nationalism," leaving Earth and founding new nations in orbit or on other worlds.

* WhiteFlag: The spacegoing equivalent is extending your ship's radiator wings. Flying with radiators extended signals peaceful intent, flying with them retracted indicates hostility and extending them again in battle means you want to call a truce, negotiate or surrender. [[ISurrenderSuckers Firing while your radiators are extended]] is considered a serious war crime.

* BookEnds: The Cenozoic both began and ended with an asteroid impact.

* PlanetaryNation: Mars has the [[TheAlliance Martian Alliance]], Jupiter has the [[HegemonicEmpire Jovian Empire]] and Luna has the Lunar Covenant. A [[CommieLand Venusian Soviet]] has also been mentioned in passing. Notably, they tend to be somewhat looser than most examples, and thanks to the impact, Earth doesn't have one.

* PlanetaryNation: The Red-Blue War ends with the victorious Blues, the defeated Reds and the neutral Greens agreeing at the PeaceConference to unite under a new government, the [[TheFederation Martian Alliance]], which seems to encompass the entirety of Mars. It's the first such planetary government, but it's not the last - Ryzov has already given us a flag, a backstory and a fair bit of setting detail for the [[HegemonicEmpire Jovian Empire]], which encompasses Jupiter and all its moons, and ''Parbex Presents: Easter Island'' provided a bit of info on the Lunar Covenant, which controls the Moon. A [[CommieLand "Venusian Soviet"]] has also been mentioned in passing.

* WhyWeAreBummedCommunismFell: Not only does Russia successfully reform into a social democracy, the Chinese Communist Party is overthrown and the Castro regime in Cuba is forced to step down, leaving communism almost nonexistent on Earth, and communists there quite bummed indeed. This leads to the rise to prominence of "exit socialism," a theory asserting that establishing socialism on a planet already controlled by capitalism is either impossible or not worth the effort, and that therefore, the socialist state must be built from scratch, [[VideoGame/RedAlert3 in the one place that hasn't been corrupted by capitalism - space!]] Fortunately, the Soviet bloc had already been colonizing Venus.

** TheBattlestar: [[ShoutOut The ships outright called battlestars]] serve as a cross between a corsair and a mothership, and are described as [[MobileCity "heavily-armed mobile space-cities."]] They also qualify as MileLongShips: the Alliance's three "super battlestars" are 5.5 kilometers long each, and even the smaller "pocket battlestars" still reach 2.5 kilometers. They're the leaders of the Alliance fleet.

* SpaceshipGirl: After a certain point in the timeline, spaceships begin having AI constructs (referred to as "figureheads") that handle a large part of the ship's operations. Perhaps inevitably, they seem to invariably be this trope.
** Freedom Ship also has one. Her name is Liberty.

** Freedom Ship also has one, named Liberty.

* SpaceshipGirl: After a certain point in the timeline, spaceships begin having AI constructs that assist in the operation of the ship, and are, perhaps inevitably, depicted as this trope.

* MagnificentBastard: [[FourStarBadass Supreme Commander Aaron Lang]], de facto leader of [=MarsCom=] and thus of the Blue side in the Red-Blue War. Described by Ryzov as a "functional sociopath," Lang assumes near-dictatorial control to win the war, and after the Reds have been crushed and Lang can essentially dictate whatever terms he wants at the peace summit... he agrees to almost everything the moderate Reds wanted, sets up a framework for a Martian world government, is proclaimed the first president of said Martian Alliance against his own wishes, and then immediately [[ShortLivedLeadership (as in, within a few minutes)]] pulls a {{Cincinnatus}} so that Utena Jackson [[DefeatEqualsFriendship (one of the Red leaders)]] can be elected president in a proper election. Afterwards, Lang reenlists in [=MarsCom=] as an ordinary private and goes on to have [[HeroOfAnotherStory numerous adventures of his own]] before happily retiring and finally, at age 116, [[LifeWillKillYou dying of natural causes.]]
* MeaningfulReleaseDate: Ryzov released a map (with accompanying lore) of America in 2150 on July 4th, 2023.

* AbsentAliens: Heavily downplayed, and DoubleSubverted for that matter, but still somewhat in play. There ''are'' microbes on Mars, and a fairly robust ecosystem in the underground oceans of Europa, but ''sapient'' life is notably absent. It clearly ''was'' around at some point, but isn't anymore -- alien megastructures around Delta Pavonis and Kapteyn's Star were spotted by our telescopes in 1999, but they seem to be abandoned.

* AprilFoolsDay: Ryzov always posts something funny for April 1st. For 2020, it was ''Lasagna Dawn'', the story of an exoplanet colonized by genetically engineered lifeforms based on, of all things, ''ComicStrip/{{Garfield}}''. For 2021, it was Wagon Station, [[IncrediblyLamePun a station wagon that's also a space station]]. 2022 gave us the story of ''[[AdvertOverloadedFuture Parbex Presents: Easter Island]]''. Most recently, the April Fool's 2023 post is Ryzov taking a [[SelfDeprecation self-deprecating]] dig at the tropes they use and their own ScheduleSlip.
** Notably, however, with the exception of 2023 [[RealLifeWritesThePlot (Ryzov had COVID at the time)]], all the "shitposts" have provided genuine ''OVRHVN'' lore. ''Lasagna Dawn'' goes into a lot of detail on the relevant facets of the AlternateTechline, ''Wagon Station'''s backstory provides a look into the dawn of the Space Boom, and ''Parbex Presents: Easter Island'' has a fair bit of important lore regarding the Lunar Covenant.

* CloneJesus: One company claims to have succeeded in their effort to clone Christ [[note]]key word being ''"claims"'' -- scientific consensus is that the DNA they used is not from the historical Jesus, but is at least from the right part of the world[[/note]], along with several other renowned historical figures. Clone Jesus is now a teenager living on a Jesuit compound in Paraguay. He goes by the name of "Joshua", preaches via Website/{{Twitch}} to an audience mostly his own age, and uses his fame to advocate for various charities and good causes. The Vatican's stance on him is as follows:

** Jovian calendars are even stranger, since Jupiter's year is twelve times longer than Earth's and its moons (where everyone lives) are tidally locked. Days aren't even called days on Ganymede, but "circads," and the light-dark cycle encompasses the whole eight-circad week.

** In 2150, [[ColonyDrop an asteroid strikes the Earth]], wiping out the majority of the population in what becomes known as Hell Day. It's likely a Class 3, almost Class 4, but humanity (barely) manages to survive.

** The rest of Sol (which comprises hundreds of millions of people) is unscathed by the impact itself, but the social, economic and political ramifications will reach across almost all of humanity.

** Ganymede being terraformed into an ocean world is a ''Anime/CowboyBebop'' reference.

* SingleBiomePlanet: Ganymede is being terraformed into an ocean world.

* SolarPunk: The term is name-dropped a few times, and indeed, most of Earth's electricity in 2022 is coming from green energy and nuclear fusion.

** By 2385, it's suggested that Luna and Mars are engaged in one.

* AllThereInTheManual: The maps, as impressive as they are, are at most half of the story. The real meat of ''OVRHVN'' lies in the lore documents Ryzov posts alongside the art.

** In 2150, [[ColonyDrop an asteroid strikes the Earth]], wiping out the majority of the population in what becomes known as Hell Day. It's likely a Class 3, almost Class 4, but humanity on Earth (barely) manages to survive. Of course, by then there are hundreds of millions of us ''off'' Earth...

** The rest of Sol (which comprises hundreds of millions of people) is unscathed by the impact itself, but the social, economic and political ramifications will reach across all of humanity.

** Ganymede being an ocean world is a ''Anime/CowboyBebop'' reference.

* AllThereInTheManual: The maps and flags, as impressive as they are, are at most half of the story. The real meat of ''OVRHVN'' lies in the lore documents Ryzov posts alongside the art.

** In 2150, [[ColonyDrop an asteroid strikes the Earth]], wiping out the majority of the population in what becomes known as Hell Day. It's likely a Class 3, almost Class 4, but humanity (barely) manages to survive.

** The rest of Sol (which comprises hundreds of millions of people) is unscathed by the impact itself, but the social, economic and political ramifications will reach across almost all of humanity.

** In 2022, sentient AI has only just recently been invented. The anti-technology groups are fearing it will be the end of us all, the transhumanists are proclaiming it will bring TheSingularity... [[BenevolentAI and MIT's Sophia, the first of her kind, is on alt-Twitter, liking people's fanart of her as a cute anime girl.]]

* CityOnTheWater: As the ice melts on Ganymede, the colonists move out of their [[UndergroundCity cities dug into the ice]] and build floating arcologies.

* ArcNumber: Nines show up on a semi-regular basis. Eight planets plus Luna, nine [[FloatingContinent aerospheres]] making up the United Principalities of Cloud 9, nine grand duchies on Ganymede.

** Venus is colonized by way of "aerostats" - essentially floating airship-cities in the Venusian clouds. It's also the setting's premier CommieLand.

** Jupiter's moons will eventually be united under the "Jovian Empire." Europa and Ganymede are of particular interest -- the former is home to (''probably'' non-sentient) alien life in its underground ocean, and the latter is actively being terraformed into an ocean planet by the 2070s.
** Saturn's moons are colonized as well, but there doesn't seem to be a PlanetaryNation there. Instead, the transhumanists on Titan and the "squids" on Enceladus are engaged in a SpaceColdWar with the backing of Mars and Earth, respectively.
** Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are colonized by the Martians. Pluto may or may not also be home to German vampires - ItMakesSenseInContext.

** And then, in 2150, another probably-natural example happens in the form of Hell Day. An asteroid comes crashing down on top of Beijing, wiping out most of the population via shockwaves, superheated temperatures (and ensuing firestorms), earthquakes (which trigger volcanic eruptions), Kessler Syndrome in orbit and nuclear winter-like conditions and general chaos after the fact. Once the dust (literally and metaphorically) settles, the rest of Sol, particularly Luna, will devote its efforts to rebuilding Earth.
* CultureChopSuey: Offworld colonies end up like this on a semi-regular basis. Deimos is British-Japanese, whilst Ganymede is British-Indian.

* DiesDifferentlyInAdaptation: Nelson Mandela dies in 1984 in ''OVRHVN'', and without him, South Africa falls into civil war.
** Several other [[HistoricalDomainCharacter Historical Domain Characters]] also die before they can rise to fame:
*** Ruhollah Khomeini dies before he gets a chance to lead the Iranian Revolution (meaning Iran is still a Shahdom into the modern day).
*** Thomas Sankara dies in obscurity (meaning, among other things, that Burkina Faso is still called Upper Volta).
*** Deng Xiaoping dies in an accident in 1984, and he's succeeded by the incompetent Sun Luoyang, who ultimately brings about the downfall of the CCP.
*** UsefulNotes/ChiangKaiShek [[DeathByFallingOver falls down the stairs and dies]] in 1967, and his son Chiang Ching-kuo is hit by the ambulance as it arrives at the scene of his father's death. With the Chiangs thus out of the picture, Taiwan ends up reaching an agreement with China and the UN to remain as a recognized, but separate, country.
*** Valentina Tereshkova, in OTL the first woman in space, ITTL goes on to lead the Soviets' first expeditions to Venus. Tragically, a freak accident leads to her falling to her death into the sulfuric clouds of Venus. Rather than discouraging further Venusian endeavors, however, her death is viewed as a HeroicSacrifice of sorts, and the Warsaw Pact's efforts to colonize Venus are soon in full swing.
*** Harvey Milk survives the assassination attempt that killed him in our timeline, and goes on to become mayor of San Francisco... only to discover in 1982 that he has AIDS. He uses the time he has left to advocate as much as possible for doing something about the disease, and it's partly thanks to him that Ronald Reagan is, unlike in OTL, persuaded to actively work to combat HIV. The end result of all this is that Milk's efforts get the cause of [[PreserveYourGays gay rights]] into the mainstream earlier than OTL, and that in 1987, scientists at Stanford University [[FindTheCure successfully develop a cure for AIDS]], which saves millions of lives around the world.
*** Saloth Sar, the man who in OTL would become Pol Pot, dies in 1969 of a snakebite. The Khmer Rouge thus never come to power, and this combined with the USA never invading Cambodia (on account of a shorter [[UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar Vietnam War]]) produces a still troubled, but slightly better off Cambodia.