Basic Trope: A key event of history is changed, and Nothing Is the Same Anymore.
- Straight: Marty McFly kills Adolf Hitler. History is changed: World War II and the Holocaust never happened.
- Exaggerated:
- Marty McFly kills Adolf Hitler. History is wildly changed: World War II and the Holocaust never happened, Soviet Russia conquered Europe, the first atomic bomb is used against the alien ship that lands in Roswell, a second one settles the Vietnam War, Roosevelt was an alien spy, Richard Nixon was a used cars salesman...
- Marty kills a Dimetrodon to try to reset the timeline. Prehistory and History are wildly changed: Cetaceans remain relatively stagnant to Pakicetus, Sapient marsupials kill off the Australian Aboriginals, Rome and Carthage unified to fend off an aggressive surviving Minoan civilization, Islamic caliphates joined in on colonization, World War 1 is caused by the American Civil War, Hitler becomes a major figure in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights, Lenin converts to Zoroastrianism, Richard Nixon is still a used cars salesman...
- Marty McFly kills Adolf Hitler. History is wildly changed: World War II and the Holocaust never happened, Soviet Russia conquered Europe, the first atomic bomb is used against the alien ship that lands in Roswell, a second one settles the Vietnam War, Roosevelt was an alien spy, Richard Nixon was a used cars salesman...
- Downplayed
- Marty McFly kills Adolf Hitler, but we only see how that changed his personal life: we do not get any details on the geopolitical consequences of his action.
- Marty McFly kills Adolf Hitler... in an Expendable Alternate Universe. He returns home, and does not stay to check what happens next.
- Justified: Marty travels back in time for the purpose of changing history by killing Hitler, after carefully calculating exactly what outcomes are mostly likely depending on when and how he does the deed. HE returns to find the world different, Exactly as Planned.
- Inverted: The world is already an alternate history scenario from the begining, and Marty McFly changed an event of its fictional history. When he returns to the present, he finds out that in the new timeline Hitler rose to power in Germany, that he began WWII and the Holocaust, that he was defeated by the Allies, that WWII was followed by the Cold War, etc. (meaning, the new alternate history is basically the real world history).
- Subverted:
- You Can't Fight Fate
- Marty McFly kills Adolf Hitler, but the Red Skull is appointed as the new Furher. There is a recorded assasination of Adolf Hitler in history, but the rest of World War II and the Holocaust take place basically exactly as we remember them (invasion of Polland, expansion in Europe, attack on Pearl Harbour, invasion of Normandy, liberation of France, defeat of the European theater, atomic bombing of Japan, etc.).
- Marty McFly kills Hitler in the Fuhrerbunker in April 1945.
- Double Subverted: Marty McFly kills Adolf Hitler, the Red Skull is appointed as the new Furher, and everything else continues the way it did... and in the end, we discover some huge difference that had gone unnoticed. For example, that the US president is no longer Roosevelt, but Captain America.
- Parodied:
- Marty McFly kills Adolf Hitler, and history changes... but all the changes listed are humoristic Non Sequitur Fallacies. Hey, in the new timeline Tina Turner can really sing well!
- White South Africans head back in time to give the Confederacy AK-47s.
- Zig Zagged: Marty McFly travels back in time to kill Hitler, but when he returns to the present he discovers that one Nazi is as good as another, and someone had stepped up to fill Hitler's shoes in the Reich. He travels back in time again, kils the new guy, and this time things are different because the replacement was much more competent and the Nazis won. So he travels back again...
- Averted: Marty McFly kills Adolf Hitler. End of story. We never see the consequences.
- Enforced: The author hates Adolf Hitler with a passion, and writes the story specifically to daydream about the gory killing of Hitler and how would the world be better without him.
- Lampshaded: "Oh, no, history has changed again! I told Marty McFly to stop trying to kill Hitler!"
- Invoked: Doc Brown gives a lecture to Marty McFly on the several things that have gone wrong because he killed Hitler and changed history, unleashing the mother of all legions of Butterflies of Doom.
- Exploited: Mart McFly kills Adolf Hitler in order to become the saviour of the Jewish people who would have died during the Holocaust.
- Defied: Marty McFly is about to kill Adolf Hitler. Doc Brown stops him and gives him a lecture on the things that may go wrong.
- Discussed: Marty McFly has not killed Adolf Hitler yet. He begins to discuss with Doc Brown which things would change, which things would stay the same, and which things would not happen. Can he really prevent World War II? Can he really prevent the Holocaust? What will stop a Soviet expansion in Europe? How is the German society likely to react? Who is, in 1940s Germany, a likely replacement for Hitler in this scenario? And so on...
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: Marty McFly kills Adolf Hitler. His role in the story ends there. Now, the author identifies and follows all the Butterflies of Doom, providing sound rationales for each thing that changes, stays the same or does not happen.
- Reconstructed: ....eventually setting up a Stable Time Loop that forces another Marty McFly to alter history again.
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