Alternate Timelines are a device often used by creators because of the freedom they provide. This trope allows them to What If? established plots or characters without replacing, erasing or discontinuing the original version(s). Want to explore what happens if a Main Character is killed off? Want to try out a different dynamic between established characters? Want an important event in the story's fictional chronology to have changed? Alternate Timelines are your answer!
However, alternate timelines raise a simple question in a consumer's mind: "So... Is there a main timeline? Where did it start, and which one has the importance of age and emphasis? What are these Alternate Timelines an alternate to?"
The answer is, the Prime Timeline. It's the where The Multiverse started, it's the default setting for the work, and it typically has the largest number of unique characters (simply because it's also where the story spends most of its time). The alternate timelines all reflect this timeline in some way: If every Alternate Timeline is "Like Reality, Unless Noted," then this is the "reality" they differentiate themselves from.
A Super-Trope of The Earth-Prime Theory: an Earth-Prime is a Prime Timeline which has the added quality of being a Cosmic Keystone to the franchise's Multiverse as a whole. Compare Bizarro Universe, which is the same as the Prime Timeline but with something being reversed, or its subtrope Mirror Universe, where things are the same except that good and evil characters are flipped. See also Dark World, the nightmare version of the world of the Prime Timeline, or Cosmic Retcon, which may make fundamental changes to the Prime Timeline or nature of the multiverse in the work. Compare True Ending, Golden Ending, Cutting Off the Branches for paths in video game Story Branching that are true or canon.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run: The universe in which the story takes place is dubbed the "root world". What differentiates it from Alternate Universes is the presence of the Holy Corpse, mummified body parts of an important religious figure (implied to be Jesus Christ) which grant special abilities. Funny Valentine can travel to alternate universes where the Holy Corpse doesn't exist and the characters are instead hunting for another MacGuffin, such as Funny's diamonds. Since Valentine got this ability from the Holy Corpse, other versions of him can't use it (though Valentine can transfer the corpse part and his stand to them).
Comic Books
- The DCU: The setting has had several of these over the years, depending on what changed from the most recent Cosmic Retcon. During the Golden Age, anything involving alternate timelines was based on the (retroactively named) Earth-2. Through the Silver and Bronze Age, everything revolved around and branched off from Earth-1. After Crisis on Infinite Earths, everything collapsed back into New Earth with no more multiverse, though there were still Elseworlds stories that largely used New Earth as the Prime timeline. The New 52 reboot created Prime Earth, which has served as the main DC Universe Earth since, with later events changing the history of Prime Earth rather than replacing it. The centrality of a specific Earth as the main timeline is directly acknowledged by events such as Doomsday Clock and Dark Nights: Death Metal, though the latter ends with Prime Earth being pushed out of its place as being the literal center of the multiverse.
- Marvel Universe: Averted; the universe that serves as the comics' default focus is labeled Earth-616 — the "main" timeline from our perspective, but in-universe it's just another reality among infinite possibilities. If there is a "Prime" timeline with a special status over the others, we've never seen it.
Fan Works
- Feralnette AU: Due to how Time Travel works in this verse, there is only one Bunnyx. Unfortunately, she arrogantly believes that this makes her specific timeline the one true timeline, treating all others as Expendable Alternate Universes. She is directly responsible for this universe's version of Marinette deciding to stop caring about her social life after she dragged her into the Bad Future with Chat Blanc and blamed her for everything that had gone wrong, leaving her severely traumatized.
- In the Pointverse
, the canon Miraculous Ladybug is treated as the Source Universe, while the various fanfictions, including the aforementioned Series Fic, are timelines that diverged from it. Tikki confirmed to Marinette that their timeline diverged after an Akuma caused Ladybug and Chat Noir's identities to be revealed to Marinette, Adrien, Alya, and Nino.
- Weight Off Your Shoulder twists this trope around with the revelation that the canon universe is part of Bunnyx's ongoing efforts to force Marinette and Adrien together, as she's convinced the pair would make the ultimate power couple. Despite how much suffering, pain and anguish has resulted from this, Bunnyx flat out does not CARE, dismissing that all as "destiny", ignoring all evidence that the pair might simply not be compatible as they are.
- With This Ring: The protagonist, isekaied into the DC Comics universe, refers to the universe he comes from, with no superheroes, magic, or known aliens (i.e. Real Life), as "Prime", to the mild annoyance of experts like Hinon Hee Hannanan who would prefer to use the standard numbering (eg they're currently in universe 16). Unfortunately, he doesn't actually know which number the "Prime" universe is.
Films — Live-Action
- Back to the Future: After the events of the first movie, the standard timeline is the one where the McFlys live in a comfortable upper middle-class lifestyle, while Biff runs a fledgling car detailing business. In Back to the Future Part II, Marty and the Doc go back to 1955 to fix Biff using "Grey's Sports Almanac" to become rich and powerful.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe: Played With:
- The universe followed by default is, like the comics, treated as just one timeline among many, identified as Earth-199999 in a coffee-table Official Companion book released in 2008. Characters In-Universe — Quentin Beck of Spider-Man: Far From Home and Christine Palmer of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness — have referred to it as Earth-616... which Marvel already uses for its paper continuity, leading to fans viewing these as Easter Eggs and not the universe's true designation (especially since non-MCU projects like Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse call it Earth-199999). As the franchise continued, changes and developments in franchise ownership have allowed for the explicit referencing and incorporation of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man Trilogy and Marc Webb's The Amazing Spider-Man Series into their multiverse, with Multiverse of Madness including a visit to Earth-838 which features cameos of characters from franchises who have yet to be formally introduced.
- But up until the events of Loki (2021), the MCU was Prime in that it was the only one allowed to exist thanks to the Time Police cutting off all others and preventing new ones from forming. It's not clear why this timeline was chosen to be what they called the "Sacred Timeline", or if there was one that was preeminent before the Time Police started pruning.
- The Time Machine (2002): When his beloved Emma dies during a robbery, Professor Hartdegen builds a time machine, with which he can alter the past so that Emma survives her encounter with the armed robber. Alas, no matter how many times he ventures into the past, Hartdegen always fails to save Emma from a fatal circumstance. It's not until Hartdegen ventures into the far future, and meets the Supreme Morlock, that his folly is revealed: unless Hartdegen builds a time machine, no alternate timeline can exist; and his time machine won't be built unless Emma perishes to give him the motivation. To cement his proof, the Morlock presents Hartdegen with the same pocketwatch that the armed robber took from him 800,000+ years ago.
Literature
- Rough Draft: The protagonist is a supernatural "customs officer" who guards portals between parallel universes, each of which is an Earth from slightly or massively different timeline (with deviations ranging from humans merging with machines to having never evolved in the first place). The protagonist's own timeline is known as Earth 2, even though Earth 1 has never been discovered, as far as anyone can tell. This is because Earth 1 (a.k.a. "Arkan") is actually the original timeline, whose natives manipulate the other timelines as "rough drafts" for their own civilization, in order to test out different economic strategies and environmental policies to ensure maximum prosperity for themselves.
- Time Patrol: The Time Patrol protects an agreed-upon timeline from interference, specifically a timeline that leads to mankind's evolution into the hyper-advanced Danellians — who incidentally are the original founders of the Time Patrol itself. As revealed in the story "The Only Game in Town", this agreed-upon timeline is not the original, unaltered timeline. In the original timeline, China colonized the Americas before Europe could — and Time Patrolman Manse Everard has to interfere to prevent this from happening.
- Worm: There are multiple alternate universe, differing from each other by various degrees, which are referred to by the letters of the Semitic alphabets. Notably, the story's main universe is the secondary one, Earth Bet; Earth Aleph is one where parahumans (superheroes by another name) are much weaker than in Earth Bet.
Live-Action TV
- Arrowverse, based on DC Comics properties:
- Most of the shows took place in Earth-1. When alternate timelines started being incorporated, the only ones that weren't "What if Earth-1 but different" were timelines from other DC properties being brought into the multiverse. Most of the heroes and events took place in Earth-1 through the event Crisis on Infinite Earths (2019), which destroyed the entire multiverse and seemingly collapsed everything into Earth-Prime. Despite the name, the remaining alternate universes post-Crisis tend to be very different from Earth-Prime and there has been essentially no contact since the event.
- Subverted with The Flash (2014) when it is revealed that the murder of Nora Allen was perpetrated by the time-traveling Reverse Flash, meaning that the main timeline of the series was not the original timeline. And that's before Flashpoint and various other irreversible speedster-related time travel shenanigans.
- Community: In "Remedial Chaos Theory", Jeff's die roll determining which of their seven-man party goes downstairs to get the pizza is immediately lampshaded by Abed to generate six different timelines. We then see six different versions of the night. After these, Abed catches the die and commenting that Jeff had left himself out of the count, and the group sends him downstairs instead. This results in the best and happiest version of the evening. In The Tag, the group that had lived out the darkest version of the evening considers this one the "Prime Timeline", and Evil Abed schemes to return there.
- Dark (2017): The final episode reveals that the two parallel universes in which the most of series' plot is set are divergent, but interconnected branches of a single original timeline that was split when the scientist H. G. Tannhaus attempted to travel back in time to save his family from the accident that killed them. In order to break the Stable Time Loop that binds the two universes together and restore the natural course of time, Jonas and Martha have to travel to the original timeline (which can only be accessed in special circumstances) and prevent the split by saving Tannhaus' family. They succeed, but since neither of them exists in the original timeline, they are erased from existence along with their respective universes. However, the epilogue shows that the surviving characters are much better off in the restored original timeline than they ever were in either of the divergent parallel universes.
- Loki (2021): At the beginning of the series, the "Sacred Timeline" is the only one, maintained by the Time Variance Authority at the behest of the all-knowing Time-Keepers by pruning all Alternate Timeline "branches". After game-changing reveals and choices made at the end of season 1, it starts to branch freely, but the original timeline keeps getting referred to as the Sacred one in season 2.
- Star Trek has its original timeline, founded by Gene Roddenberry in The '60s but not named the "Prime Timeline" until J. J. Abrams used it to differentiate his reboot's Alternate Timeline from what he was doing. Meanwhile, Roddenberry added a Mirror Universe, and (in Season 2 of Star Trek: Picard) we got a second Mirror Universe that was more successful than the first. And that's just the ones that have been revisited in more than one installment!
Roleplay
- Wanya Kingdom VS Awoofy Unity takes place in Alternate Universes of the Kirby franchise. The Kirby games themselves are treated as the prime timeline, being numbered Universe 0.
Video Games
- Another Eden: During the "Apex of Logic and Cardinal Scales" story, it's established that the timeline of the game is, in fact, the main timeline; and that alternate ones can be destroyed if they become too different from the main one. The main plot of that story arc is that two competing alternates are fighting for survival by trying to manipulate events in the main timeline to make it resemble their own. It also explains why the game's events are the "main" timeline; because it's composed of many intertwined sub-timelines that are near-identical with only slight variations. Most players take this as a metafictional reference and that the "sub-timelines" are each person's individual playthroughs, with the millions of players experiencing the same story overall collectively forming the timeline.
- EverQuest II takes place in an Alternate Timeline that split off from the events of the Plane of Time in the original EverQuest. The Goddess of Magic, Druzzil Ro, sent players back in time to just before they could learn the secret to becoming gods themselves and bring about assured universal destruction. This ended up creating two timelines, and EQ2 also takes place 500 years into the future just to help the settings stand apart. The discussion of time threads is brought up in EQ2, where players learn that while everything started in EQ's Prime Timeline, it's implied that the cataclysms that shifted the world in EQ2 and the events that have unfolded is still the 2nd-best timeline of the countless others that can exist.
- Fate/Grand Order has what is referred to as "Proper Human History", which is the game's main timeline and is considered the primary axis around which humanity will maintain Earth's future and beyond. The second storyline, Cosmos in the Lostbelt, features seven wildly divergent Alternate Timelines dubbed "Lostbelts" originally deleted from the multiverse somehow returning from their deleted state and forcibly planted onto an Earth wiped clean of Proper Human History, forcing the protagonists to take down the seven Lostbelts in hopes of restoring Earth's original timeline.
- The Adult Timeline, debuting in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, is the original setting of the Zelda franchise, with the Child and Fallen Hero Timelines being created through time travel and one version of Link dying against Ganon, respectively. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom establish an entirely uncertain timeline made distinct by the inclusion of the Zonai in Hyrule's history and a new Imprisoning War with a new version of Ganondorf.
- Tales of Xillia 2 is set in what is called the "Prime Dimension", from which alternate dimensions called "Fractured Dimensions" branch off from, though Fractured Dimensions themselves can still create offshoots. However, all Fractured Dimensions believe that they're the Prime Dimension, and the only way for them to know they aren't is if someone from the Prime Dimension (or even another Fractured Dimension) enters their world to destroy it, or if they fail to summon the Land of Canaan, which only exists in the Prime Dimension.
Webcomics
- Homestuck: A central part of the setting's convoluted time travel mechanics is the concept of the Alpha Timeline. In-universe, timelines branch easily and often, but almost all are treated as secondary and inevitably degenerate into nothingness; the only stable one is the "central" or Alpha Timeline, which the main narrative follows. This is so because each universe's history is set up and supported by Stable Time Loops that move things around between the past and future, and play key roles in setting up multiple necessary events. These loops are very complex and delicate, and usually happen without any conscious control by anyone; thus, even a slight change in history, even a slightly modified timing of some event, can compromise them. The Alpha Timeline is the timeline where everything happens as it needs to; in "doomed timelines", some loop or another is prevented, compromising the whole chain. This makes the doomed timelines filled with temporal paradoxes — essentially, the causes that caused effects within them no longer happened even though the effects are still paradoxically there — and thus cannot exist long-term, but instead gradually erode. However, some doomed timelines still play important roles by serving as the origins of things, people, and information that then travel back to before the split and become part of the Alpha Timeline (starting with Dave from a doomed Timeline saving Alpha John).
Western Animation
- Futurama parodies this in "The Farnsworth Parabox". When the Planet Express crew travel to an alternate universe, the inhabitants of this new universe resent any implication that they're just a knockoff. This results in a compromise naming scheme: the universe most of the show takes place in is called Universe A, and the new alternate universe is Universe 1.
- Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths is an odd case where Earth Prime — the original universe from which all other universes are just offshoots — is not the protagonist's universe. It's a universe where Earth was knocked off its orbit and is now a lifeless rock. Owlman's goal is to set off a universe-destroying bomb on Earth Prime, on theory that this will also destroy every offshoot universe, and therefore the entire multiverse.
- Subverted in Rick and Morty as the "prime" Earth is destroyed in the middle of the first season with Straw Nihilist Rick teaching a horrified Morty to treat every reality as an Expendable Alternate Universe as they find a new Earth to call home. This has happened at least three times now. It's later revealed that the reason Rick could discard it so easily was because he wasn't the prime Rick. Prime Rick was his Evil Doppelgänger, the smartest and most sociopathic of all Ricks, with our Rick impersonating him to his family while spending his life tracking him down on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
- The movie Turtles Forever depicts "Turtle Prime" as the world of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Mirage) comic books. Utrom Shredder decides to travel there and kill the original Mirage Comics Turtles during the time of the first issue in order to unmake the entire Turtles multiverse. This concept is revisited in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) cartoon episode Trans-Dimensional Turtles.
