History Main / ItBeganWithATwistOfFate

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

Sub trope of StumbledIntoThePlot. If the story also shows the outcome of the decision going the other way, it's a SplitTimelinesPlot. If the twist of fate is what distinguishes the ensuing course of history from our own, it's a PointOfDivergence.

* ''Fanfic/SoulEaterTroubledSouls'': Two of the protagonists, [[{{Tomboy}} Rowena]] and [[TheArcher Tsuji]], are brought into the adventure by pure chance after deciding to go on a group mission to Holland with Maka, Soul, and everybody else. In another twist of fate, they are among the random students selected to go on a VIP mission to Cobra Island. Lastly, [[{{Deuteragonist}} Caius]] arguably brings the canon protagonists into his ongoing conflict with [[BigBad Cancer]] the minute he joins the group. The chain of events that follow must be read to be believed.

* Hae-sin begins investigating ''Series/{{Healer}}'' when she tries to give a reckless driver a piece of her mind, only to overhear him talking about the enigmatic courier.

* In ''Fanfic/AmazingFantasy'', Izuku gets his spider powers by turning down an alleyway out of curiosity rather than [[ForWantOfANail walking under a shady underpass.]]

* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
** This tends to be the standard way Companions end up stuck on the TARDIS. Ian and Barbara just wanted to talk to Susan's grandpa to figure out why she was so odd. Jamie took a wrong turn from what would have been certain doom fighting with his unit. Bill Potts was curious enough to sit in on the new professor's lectures, even though she was too poor to actually attend university. Ace was just testing a new mixture of explosives and got herself blown clear across the galaxy. Amy Pond was a small kid who decided to feed an eccentric lost stranger. Grace Holloway was just the heart surgeon on call the night a dying Seven landed in the ER. [[spoiler: The Brigadier's grandfather]] was picked up for a one-shot adventure for refusing to shoot an enemy soldier.
** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E11TurnLeft "Turn Left"]], it's revealed that the only reason Donna Noble ever got embroiled in the Doctor's life at all was because one day, she turned left, not right. Good thing she did, too; that same episode reveals that turning right led to the Doctor's death, the nuclear destruction of London, and the end of reality itself. Yikes.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
** This tends to be the standard way Companions end up stuck on the TARDIS. Ian and Barbara just wanted to talk to Susan's grandpa to figure out why she was so odd. Jamie took a wrong turn from what would have been certain doom fighting with his unit. Bill Potts was curious enough to sit in on the new professor's lectures, even though she was too poor to actually attend university. Ace was just testing a new mixture of explosives and got herself blown clear across the galaxy. Amy Pond was a small kid who decided to feed an eccentric lost stranger. Grace Holloway was just the heart surgeon on call the night a dying Seven landed in the ER. [[spoiler: The Brigadier's grandfather]] was picked up for a one-shot adventure for refusing to shoot an enemy soldier.
** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E11TurnLeft "Turn Left"]], it's revealed that the only reason Donna Noble ever got embroiled in the Doctor's life at all was because one day, she turned left, not right. Good thing she did, too; that same episode reveals that turning right led to the Doctor's death, the nuclear destruction of London, and the end of reality itself. Yikes.
* ''Series/TheMandalorian'' opens with the titular character, a bounty hunter, taking up mundane bounties and deciding to take up an especially sensitive bounty because he needs to pay the metaphorical bills. Then the episode ends with him discovering that the bounty is an orphaned child.
* ''Series/MyRoommateIsAGumiho'': The fantastical MonsterRoommate premise happens only because Dam's drunk friend throws up on an expensive car...that happens to be owned by a thousand-year-old fox spirit. Cue Dam accidentally consuming Woo-seo's fox bead and being roped into living with him so she won't die.
* On ''Series/{{Psych}}'', after Jules finds out that Shawn's not really psychic and dumps him, Shawn suffers a HeroicBSOD that causes him to fantasize about what might have happened if he'd made one different decision (offering Jules DaChief's pashmina instead of his own jacket, as the contents of the jacket pocket were responsible for Jules realizing that he was a fraud). The fantasy version of events and the reality veer off in wildly different directions.
* In ''Series/ThunderboltFantasy'', a traveler gets caught in the rain and decides to take an umbrella left as an offering to a Buddha statue. A man under a tree nearby points out the blasphemy of the act and challenges the traveler Sho Fukan to show kindness to the next person he meets in lieu of the Buddha. That person turns out to be the key to a LegendaryWeapon who is being hunted by an evil organization, and now Sho has made himself their target for helping her.

* ''Literature/NoSpanishCivilWarIn1936'' short-circuits a [[UsefulNotes/SpanishCivilWar three-year fratricidal war]] and ends up altering the course of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII and beyond with a non-Stalinist anarchist-leaning Spanish Republic joining the Allies, all because a letter from Francisco Franco to President Manuel Azaña that went unanswered in real life was answered in that timeline.

* In ''Literature/TheSagaOfDarrenShan'', the title character made an odd move in a competition between his friends over a ticket to a circus, ended up winning the ticket and going to the circus. Throughout the first book, he can't stop talking about how much he regrets every little thing he did, how he wishes he had done anything differently -- he's writing this down in his diary just after being forced to become a vampire, fake his death, and leave his happy childhood behind.

* If Susan hadn't died suddenly, then Walt would have stayed in Australia since Brian wouldn't have tried to pawn him off to Michael.

** If one of the pens at the adoption agency had worked, then Claire would have given her baby to an Australian couple and wouldn't have been goaded by the psychic into getting on the plane by saying a couple in Los Angeles was waiting for her.

* Film/Brazil: Were it not for a fly getting jammed in a teletype and misprinting an arrest warrant for Tuttle as "Buttle," none of the film's events would have occurred.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TurningRed'', Mei's decision to glance down at her notebook causes Ming to notice it, open it, and grossly overreact to its contents leading to the incident at the Daisy Mart. Said incident is implied to have been the trigger for Mei's first transformation into her giant red panda form. Had the incident at the Daisy Mart not happened, Mei's first transformation would have likely been under significantly different circumstances leading to completely different events and Pandapocalype 2002 may have not happened at all.

* ''Fanfic/ForWantOfAName'' began when Amamiya Ren ''remembers'' the face of the man who ruined his life with the false assault case and how the Phantom Thieves went after the man ''first'' as their target, shortly after the group was fully established.

Sub trope of ForWantOfANail and StumbledIntoThePlot.

* ''Anime/BirdyTheMighty'': All of the chaos Tsutomu Senkawa had to endure can be traced back to his decision to go out on a night walk (in the original OVA/manga and remake manga) or go check out an abandoned house (in the "Rebuild" anime).