Alternate Universe / Live-Action TV

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• Andromeda did several episodes exploring Alternate Universes in various ways: as a Near-Death Experience, and as a result of one character's ability to view potential futures. The most noteworthy was "The Unconquerable Man", which was an entire Clip Show playing out events from the show's history with a different lead character.
• Angel: Illyria mentions being able to live seven different lives at once in different universes back in her days, including a universe made entirely of shrimp. She tired of that one quickly.
• Awake (2012) is about a detective experiencing parallel realities after a car accident, one in which his wife has died, one in which his son has died. He uses tenuous cross-universe clues to solve crimes. The validity of the realities and the possibility that one is a subconscious response to trauma is always in question. The series ends with the possible introduction of a third reality in which both wife and son are alive.
• The Wishverse in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and the asylum-universe of "Normal Again")
  • These eventually became a running gag on the show, with Anya often mentioning universes she could potentially send people to: the universe of infinite Wednesdays, the universe without shrimp, the universe of nothing but shrimp...
  • At first, "Superstar" appears to take place in an alternate reality where Jonathan is the eponymous character, but it later turns out that he had cast a spell that altered reality itself.
  • There's also the universe as it was Before Dawn and Post-Dawn.
• Charmed (1998) employs a literal Mirror Universe, which could be accessed through a mirror.
• The Community episode "Remedial Chaos Theory" features the group rolling a die to choose who will go to the door to get the pizza. Abed warns that this will create 6 (actually 7) alternate universes. Everyone else of course dismisses this, but we the audience get to watch each one unfold. The differences ranges from different characters hooking up, mental break downs occurring, everyone having an awesome night, and everything going to shit. The versions of the characters in the universe where everything went to shit end up being recurring villains.
• Counterpart (2018) is a Science Fiction espionage drama about a Space Cold War between two parallel universes.
• Dark Matter (2015) introduced one in the second season episode "Stuff to Steal, People to Kill", via a glitch with the Raza's Blink Drive. The protagonists of Dark Matter are a crew of former ruthless mercenaries whose memories were wiped during stasis at the beginning of the series, prompting them to rename themselves One through Six and try to be better people than their original selves. The crew of the alternate Raza were never mindwiped and are still as evil as ever, as well as prone to Chronic Backstabbing Disorder and playing The Starscream towards each other in contrast to our Raza crew's Family of Choice. Our crew manages to get back to the primary universe by stealing the AU crew's Blink Drive, but their evil counterparts sneak along for the ride by attaching the alternate version of the ship's Marauder shuttle to the hull of our Raza. After that, they become a recurring nuisance in Season 3, joining forces with the crew's other enemies in a Big Bad Ensemble.
• Doctor Who:
  • "Inferno" has an alternate totalitarian Britain (branching off at least around the "defence of the republic act, 1943"), which is in a still greater rush to get free power from tapping the magma of the Earth. It is destroyed, with the Doctor able to just avert the similar events happening a few hours later in his "home" alternate. Not bad at all.
  • "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel" has the TARDIS fall through a crack in time and land in a universe where the Cybermen were being created on Earth (instead of coming from Earth's twin Mondas in the prime universe). Mickey explicitly references how common the trope is in comics. This universe crossed over again in "Army of Ghosts"/"Doomsday", and its effects continued to be felt in Torchwood's "Cyberwoman" episode. And in the Series 4 finale of Doctor Who, "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End".
  • "Turn Left": Donna Noble has an entire alternate universe built around her, where she never met the Doctor, and he consequently dies after the events of "The Runaway Bride". It does not fare well. In fact, the universe without the Doctor is pretty much a terrible place to be.
  • "The Big Bang": As a result of the near-total destruction of reality at the end of the previous episode, there's an Earth where stars are considered myths and there's no Doctor, before reality breaks down even more. And if a conversation between Amy's aunt and psychiatrist is to be believed, this reality's version of well-known atheist Richard Dawkins is the leader of a "star cult".
  • "It Takes You Away": The Solitract, a sentient parallel universe that was exiled from the main universe, and has become the stuff of Time Lord bedtime stories.
• Eerie, Indiana:
  • In "Reality Takes a Holiday", Marshall is transported to an alternate universe in which Eerie, Indiana is a TV show and he is an actor named Omri Katz who plays Marshall Teller.
  • Eerie, Indiana: The Other Dimension takes place in a different universe from the first series, as the title suggests.
• The Alternate Universe on Fringe is a world where pockets of time and space become unstable due to Walter's kidnapping of Peter by crossing to the other side. In the AU, there are many details that differ from the characters' home universe, such as Martin Luther King Jr. being on the American $20 bill and the World Trade Centers still standing and Walter never went insane (and never hard parts of his brain removed), and is now the Secretary of Defense and head of their Fringe team, which takes far more drastic action to combat the far more drastic "Fringe Events" that occur "over there". Also, they're keen to show the presence of zeppelins, just so you know it's an alternate universe.
• Glee:
  • One of the Christmas Specials features a world in which Artie never got on a wheelchair. As a result, there's no glee club, and Mr. Schue is an alcoholic and still married to his manipulative wife Terri. Also, Rachel never went to New York to work on Broadway and remained in Lima working as a librarian, Puck and Finn never graduated and remained being Jerk Jocks, Kurt didn't graduate either because, without the support and help of the glee club, he was bullied twice as much, and Quinn, without Artie's help and support, never could recover from the psychological trauma of being stuck on a wheelchair after her car crash and committed suicide.
  • There's also the episode in which Tina is knocked unconscious and she wakes up in a world where she has traded places with Rachel, that is, Tina is the club's main lead and singer while Rachel has to stay in the back and never gets a solo.
• Grimm: There's at least one alternate universe where the Wesen run free and probably from their come from. In this universe Wesen can not vogue and humans live like in the Dark Ages.
• Hounded: When Rufus Hound is presenting a new show, he always gets pulled into a parallel universe by his Future Self.
• Kamen Rider:
  • Kamen Rider Decade uses Alternate Universes for its main premise. The main cast travels through various alternate universes which are modified versions of the previous Kamen Rider shows, varying from ones that're essentially the same as the originals but with different actors, to ones with de-aged protagonists or ones in high school or Dystopias.
  • Kamen Rider Dragon Knight uses the concept of alternate universes, accessible through mirrors. The Earth Kamen Riders are chosen because they are genetic doubles of the original Kamen Riders from the alternate universe of Ventara.
  • Kamen Rider Build is the first series not to use the Shared Universe established by the end of Decade, mainly because the backstory (Japan being split in three by mysterious walls that erupted from the Earth in 2007) is incompatible with the other shows, though they cross into the mainline universe in the movie Kamen Rider Heisei Generations FINAL: Build & Ex-Aid with Legend Riders. In the final arc of the main series, the protagonists enact a plan to merge their Earth with another universe's — implied to be the main universe — in order to stop the nigh-invincible Big Bad, which has the side-effect of retconning the events of Build out of existence.
  • Kamen Rider Zi-O seems to take place in the same world as Build. At first. Near the end of the series, it's revealed that because of the multiple changes to history, the many worlds of the Kamen Riders are starting to leak into each other. Schwarz so thoroughly messed up time that all of the quantum branches from before the Heisei period started to recombine, discrepancies be damned. In the end, the other worlds return to how they were before the series while a new World of Zi-O is created due to the Cosmic Retcon.
  • Kamen Rider Zero-One takes place in its own world separate from the main Rider timeline, due to its premise having far-reaching societal implications, such as AI robots blending into the human society. At least until it was retconned into being a part of the main Rider universe too and said implications were simply brushed off (although it's not like Zero-One didn't contradict itself on these elements either).
• Sci-fi series Lexx made this its staple. The first season of the show involved the characters jumping through an inter-universe rift twice, and in the second season once at the beginning, before the entire Light Zone was wiped out in the second Season Finale, forcing the Lexx (and a large amount of particle matter from the zone) to get forced back out into the other universe.
• The season 1 finale of The Librarians 2014 has Flynn and Eve travel through three alternate realities, after Dulaque messes with the Loom of Fate. In each of the three realities, one of the Librarians-in-Training is the Librarian, since Flynn never took the job offer 10 years ago. Strangely, Eve appears to have been recruited as the Guardian at the same time, but has since been killed under the same circumstances (stabbed by Excalibur during the events of the pilot). Each of the three realities is a Crapsack World. At the end of the episode, all three help Flynn and Eve restore the Loom, even though this would mean that they themselves would be written out of existence. Their prime counterparts don't remember a thing.
  • Stone!Librarian world: Stone failed to prevent the full return of magic to the world and is running around the world, containing the worst of the magical problems, while countries are being engulfed in conflicts. This version of Eve used to be Stone's lover.
  • Ezekiel!Librarian world: Ezekiel's attempt to handle the House of Refuge crisis has Gone Horribly Wrong, and the world is undergoing a Ghost Apocalypse, as Team Ezekiel (he found a way to make money as the Librarian) struggles to find a solution. This version of Eve was Ezekiel's mother figure.
  • Cassandra!Librarian world: Magic is everywhere. Cassandra herself is a powerful wizard, having used magic to get rid of her brain tumor, which affected her personality. The world is coming to an end, and she plans to escape reality in a manner similar to Morgan le Fay with a small group of followers. This version of Eve was Cassandra's friend, although she disapproved of the use of magic. After Eve's death, Lamia became the new Guardian.
• Season 6 of Lost features an alternate universe where 815 never crashed, and many other details are different. Word of God has it that neither timeline should be called "alternate" or "parallel" as those words imply that one is more real than the other. Flash-sideways has been decided to be the proper term. People in the flash-sideways actually retain memories from the other timeline, with Desmond seemingly able to switch between both willingly. The finale blows the flash-sideways out of the water entirely.
• Misfits:
  • The fourth episode has Curtis go back in time to the night he and his girlfriend Sam were busted for drug possession (the reason why he was on community service with the gang). After various failed attempts, Curtis does prevent the bust and him and Sam escape from the police, however it resulted on an Alternate Universe in which he was never on community service, which results in Kelly, Simon and Alisha being murdered by the probation worker, something Curtis had prevented from happening in the pilot.
  • Episode 2.6: A world in which a man who can manipulate lactose reveals their powers to the world, but later when more people with much more impressive abilities he is regarded as a joke in comparison, resulting on him going psycho and murdering Alisha, Nikki, Kelly and Nathan.
  • And then there's also that episode of Series 3 in which an old man gains Curtis' ability to travel in time and goes back to Nazi Germany to kill Adolf Hitler. However, he fails, Hitler obtains his phone and uses it to make gigantic technological advances that resulted in the Nazis winning WWII.
• Homaged in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode "Last of the Wild Horses", in which Dr. Forester and TV's Frank get to quip at the movie, and evil Mike and Bots watch on from Deep 13.
• In NCIS, a generally reality based show, features a series of clips from Alternate Universe based on a series of What-If moments. What if Kate hadn't died? Tony and Kate get married and have a kid. Yay! Ziva goes from crazy assassin to even crazier assassin. Aww. What if Gibbs also hadn't killed Pedro Hernandez? His demons consume him, he quits NCIS sooner, he becomes a (likely) alcoholic, shuts himself in his basement for months, is rude to Abby, and Abby/McGee and Tony/Kate become canon. What if Shannon and Kelly hadn't died? (Warning: major Tear Jerker behind those spoilers. Gibbs dies fighting overseas. No matter what, he lost his family.
  • Parent series JAG also had an Elseworld episode, appropriately named "What If?".
• The Outer Limits (1995):
  • "In Another Life", a man named Mason Stark is about to commit suicide, when he suddenly finds himself transported to another reality, pulled there by his more successful double (usually referred to as Stark), who has invented a device called the quantum mirror. Stark explains that he was using the mirror to meet his doubles from multiple universes in order to find out what his life could have been like. Then one of the doubles (known as Mace) murdered his wife and went on a killing spree. Stark has determined that Mason and Mace are from nearly identical universes, with the only difference being that Mason chose to try to shoot himself, while Mace opened fire on his coworkers. After finding himself in this universe, the insane Mace is trying to "put things right" by killing those, whom he shot in his own reality. In the end, the psychotic Mace and the cold-blooded Stark end up transported to other universes: Mace ends up in Mason's moments before the gun goes off, while Stark ends up facing off cops with a still-smoking gun (this ends predictably). Mason gets a happy ending, inheriting Stark's fortune and getting a second chance with the double of his deceased wife.
  • In "Worlds Within", the physicist Dr. Anya Kenway is recruited by the Burkmeer Research Facility to conduct experiments on a test subject named Sasha Vadimsky but commonly referred to as URS-28. He was born in Belarus in 1987. His mother was a technician at Chernobyl who was critically injured in the disaster and ended up in a coma. She did not even realize that she was pregnant. The severely mutated Sasha was delivered via Caesarean section and was not expected to survive. He was brought to Burkmeer at some point after the Soviet Union collapsed. The scientists at Burkmeer discovered that Sasha's body was producing tachyons, the previously only hypothetical particle that travels faster than the speed of light. They incorrectly believe that he does not have a mind. Anya, who is dying of multiple sclerosis and has only a year to live, is able to make telepathic contact with him and she learns that Sasha is connected to his counterpart from a parallel universe. His mother tells Anya that Sasha's mind is trapped in her universe and the experiments to which he is going to be subjected will kill him. With the assistance of her co-worker and former fiancé Dr. David LaSalle, she bombards Sasha with protons in order to create a tear in the space-time continuum. As a result, his mind is reunited with his body in the other universe.
  • Discussed in "Abduction". Jason, a science fiction fan, theorizes that he, Cody Phillips, Ray, Brianna and Danielle may have entered a parallel universe.
• Power Rangers:
  • After Power Rangers was Un-Cancelled following the release of Power Rangers Samurai the previous series, Power Rangers RPM was revealed to take place in an alternate timeline to justify how the franchise could continue forward (since that series was set in a post apocalyptic timeline where the remainder of humanity were stuck in a single city).
  • Power Rangers Dino Charge is revealed in the following season to take place in its own separate timeline similar to RPM likely to justify the Mind Screw finale wherein the Rangers go back in time to kill Sledge and his crew 65 million years earlier and inadvertently save the dinosaurs from going extinct thus resulting in a present day timeline where they live side-by-side with humans.
• Red Dwarf:
  • "Ace" Rimmer (what a guy!) came from an Alternate Universe, and travelled between dimensions. The Red Dwarf crew themselves had previously travelled into an Alternate Universe in the episode "Parallel Universe". Some episodes have featured similar alternate versions of characters and events, but were a result of time travel rather than passing into another Universe (notably "Timeslides" and "The Inquisitor").
  • Rimmer enters a mirror universe in "Only the Good...", where he's captain of the ship, Kochnski is a Dumb Blonde, and the Cat a genius professor.
  • The dream world from "Back to Earth" is treated like this after the crew wakes up, and they find it hilarious that the people in it think they're real and the Red Dwarf crew are the fictional ones...
  • The books delve into this as well. While multiple universes are established in Better Than Life, they really come into play in Last Human and Backwards. Last Human occurs when the crew return from Backwards Earth to the wrong universe and try to track down Lister's other self. In Backwards, Ace Rimmer is given a backstory behind Project: Wildfire and turns up to save the crew. Bonus points for the fact that both books, having each been written by Grant and Naylor separately, take place in alternate universes to each other.
• In Seinfeld episode #137 "The Bizarro Jerry", Elaine is in a similar social circle where the Kramer equivalent is neat, George's is responsible, etc.
• In the Shadowhunters episode "This World Inverted", Clary visits an alternate dimension where the Shadowhunters haven't needed to exist for centuries.
• Nate experienced an Alternate Universe during a Near-Death Experience in an episode of Six Feet Under.
• The series Sliders used this as its central premise, with the characters travelling to a new universe every episode.
• Much of the Australian-Polish TV series Spellbinder takes place in a parallel world, which, initially appears to be primitive but is later revealed to be taking place After the End (an unknown Spellbinder experiment resulted in a global disaster). Temporary rifts occasionally open between our world and the world of the Spellbinders. The sequel Spellbinder: The Land of the Dragon Lord involves a machine, built by a Chinese inventor from yet another reality, that allows him to travel to any parallel world. The inventor and his companion from our world end up visiting several more worlds, including a world where much of humanity has been wiped out by a plague, and the cure that saved a tiny fraction of people also made them immortal and unable to reproduce, and another After the End world, where remnants of humanity try to rebuild after a devastating Robot War. The titular Land of the Dragon Lord is an alternate China, where ancient aesthetics mix with advanced light-based technology.
• Stargate-verse:
  • Stargate SG-1 has had many different alternate universes. Oftentimes, the "alternate" Samantha Carter is not in the military and is engaged/married to the "alternate" Jack O'Neill. Alternately Daniel Jackson was never part of the Stargate Program. More often or not, when this is used, Earth is under imminent Goa'uld attack.
  • Stargate Atlantis also does this, though the details vary, and the universes aren't usually quite the Crapsack World versions that SG-1 is fond of.
    • In "McKay and Mrs. Miller", alternate Rodney is a really nice guy with lots of friends and alternate Sheppard is a member of Mensa, greatly annoying everyone with his egoism. In our universe, Rodney is the egoist one, Sheppard is a nice guy who took a Mensa test but turned down the offer to join.
    • In "The Daedalus Variations", a dimension-travelling Daedalus starship from an alternate universe pops up, and the team is trapped onboard when the ship continues to jump through alternate universes randomly. These include one where the planet Atlantis is located on hadn't formed into a stable planet, and one where they're attacked by an unknown group of hostile aliens. They can't shut down the dimension jump but they can reverse its direction, allowing them to get back before the engines quit on them and stranding them permanently.
    • And another is shown in the penultimate episode "Vegas". There, Sheppard is a homicide detective with massive gambling debts. He couldn't be included in the team because the stunt he pulled off in Afghanistan got him dishonorably discharged instead of getting Reassigned to Antarctica in time for the pilot. Rodney is more likable (though one scene suggests that he's simply better at keeping a lid on his ego) and the Wraith already made an attempt at culling Earth just to be repelled by the control chair in Area 51. Oh, and Todd got so delirious from starvation he's speaking in rhymes.
• Supernatural:
  • An Alternate Universe seems to be seen in the episode "What Is and What Should Never Be", but it's really all in Dean's head and everything is his perception — Mary's perfect, Sam and Dean are a bit wussy and the family is like any other. In his fantasy, his mother Mary and Sam's girlfriend Jessica were never killed by Azazel, so the Winchester family live perfectly normal lives and his Dad died peacefully. As Dean is utterly unhappy there, it seems he wants a extremely codependent relationship with Sam and the wracking memories of his family.
  • A real Alternate Universe, or rather a series of them, pops up in the episode "Mystery Spot" thanks to a repeating time loop in which Dean keeps dying. The iteration before the final time loop lasts months instead of the standard day, resulting in a dark, isolated Sam.
  • Later in the episode "It's a Terrible Life", where Dean is a Marketing Director for a firm and Sam is a techie in the same building with no memory of their hunter life beforehand apart from a few dreams, it's revealed that this was all a ruse from an angel to show Dean hunting is in his blood and he will always find a way to be a hunter. This is also a play on the It's a Wonderful Plot trope.
  • In the second AU episode, "The French Mistake", the brothers are sent to a universe^note which is basically our world with a bit of hyperbole where Supernatural is just a TV show filmed in Canada, in which Sam and Dean are played by Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, and there is no magic, demons, angels, monsters, or any supernatural beings at all.
  • And then there's "My Heart Will Go On", in which the Titanic never sank, somehow causing the Winchesters to own a Mustang, Bobby and Ellen to be married, and Celine Dion to be a lounge singer in Quebec.
  • The birth of Lucifer's son by a human woman causes the fabric of the universe to tear, creating a portal to an alternate universe known as "Apocalypse World". It's an After the End dimension where the forces of heaven and hell are locked in eternal combat and human civilization has been reduced to ashes.
  • In the Season 15 episode "Destiny's Child", the brothers encounter dimension-traveling alternate-universe versions of themselves. Really rich, executives in an extremely successful monster-fighting company, versions of themselves.
• Super Sentai: Of the existing seasons, only one is ever confirmed to exist in an alternate universe, that being Uchu Sentai Kyuranger. This is because the premise of the series is that a demonic overlord has been ruling the known universe for the past three centuries, making it either far into the future or another dimension entirely. The latter is confirmed in a crossover with Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger and Space Sheriff Gavan, when the red and silver rangers get flung through a wormhole into what seems to be Sentai's main universe.
• The Twilight Zone (1959): In "The Parallel", while orbiting Earth in his space capsule Phoebus 10, Major Robert Gaines is sent to a parallel universe which is highly similar to his own but with some important differences, both major and minor. In terms of his personal life, he is a full colonel, his house has a white picket fence which was never there before and he takes sugar in his coffee. In terms of wider history, John F. Kennedy is not the U.S. President in 1963 and no one has even heard of him, a man named Anderson supervised the construction of the Panama Canal rather than George Washington Goethals and the World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker was never found after his B-17 disappeared in October 1942. Gaines also mentions that he has determined from looking at the encyclopedia that there are numerous other differences between the two universes but he does not elaborate.
• The Twilight Zone (1985):
  • In "But Can She Type?", a beleaguered and overworked secretary named Karen Billings, who is verbally abused by her boss Burt Nelson at every opportunity, is accidentally sent to a parallel universe by a malfunctioning photocopier. She soon discovers that being a secretary is the most glamorous and exciting job in existence in this universe. At a party, other guests are enthralled by her stories about her job and a highly paid fashion model tells her that her dream job is to be a secretary. Karen eventually decides to move to this universe permanently after Burt once again berates her. She accepts Edward Rehnquist's offer to organize his company's Paris office and is driven to the airport in a limousine.
  • In "The World Next Door", work-a-day schlub Barney Schlessinger discovers a parallel universe where his Alternate Self is a famous inventor after going through a doorway in his basement. (There are lots of cultural differences between the two worlds as well.) The two men end up changing places, to their mutual happiness.
  • In "The Road Less Traveled", a version of Jeff McDowell from an alternate universe who lost his legs in The Vietnam War crosses over to ours after spending years wondering how his life would have turned out had he not gone to Vietnam. The Jeff of our universe dodged the draft in 1971 and went to Canada with his girlfriend Denise in 1971. They eventually married and had a daughter named Megan. In the alternate universe, Denise was killed in a motorcycle accident. The alternate Jeff is not angry or resentful as our Jeff fears but glad to have gotten the chance to see the life that he could have had.
  • In "Song of the Younger World", Amy Hawkline and Tanner Smith are able to transfer their souls into the bodies of wolves in a parallel universe using magic.
  • In "Memories", Mary McNeal is transported to a parallel universe in which everyone can remember their past lives.
  • Discussed in "Something in the Walls". Sharon Miles speculates that the creatures that live in the walls are from a parallel universe which has intersected with ours and are only able to enter our universe through these intersections.
• Almost all of the Heisei Ultra Series (that is those from the 1990s onwards) take place in universes separate from the default Showa universe. This tends to result in things like monsters having different origins and the backstories of the Ultras being changed.
• VR.5's Missing Episode, "Parallel Lives" had Duncan wake up one morning to find himself in a universe where Sydney, rather than her sister, had died in a car crash years earlier (of course, it eventually turned out that neither sister had actually died; both the car crash and the parallel universe were complex VR hoaxes. The episode was intended to test the viability of replacing the central character for the second season, a possibility which became moot when the series was not renewed).
• Wizards of Waverly Place had an episode where Alex goes through a mirror and enters a parallel universe where nearly everything is about her and in her favor.
• Xena: Warrior Princess, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys use a mostly standard Mirror Universe: Good characters become Evil, shaven characters become bearded etc. But regular Iolaus is a good, shaven, competent warrior and regular Joxer is good, shaven and incompetent; in the Mirror-verse, they are both good and shaven, but Iolaus is incompetent and Joxer is competent. There are some weird rules for the two universes. If a person (or a god) dies in one universe, he also dies in the other. Unless they happen to be not in their universe at the moment. This happened to the alternate Iolaus who was trapped in an "in-between" world when "our" Iolaus took a knife in the gut. Also happened to Hercules, as his double the Sovereign was killed while in this "in-between" world.

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