Basic Trope: A variant of Alternate History wherein one of the many wars in history was fought with some kind of "weird" wonder-weapons.
- Straight: On Alice and Bob: The Series, it turns out that World War II had super-soldier technology and Diesel Punk Humongous Mecha, that were "wonder-weapons" and supplemented regular infantry.
- Exaggerated: There was absolutely nothing that we could consider "normal" on the war: ex. The Vietnam War was fought exclusively with mutants, Humongous Mecha as walking firebases and the Viet-Cong all underwent voluntary zombie virus infection. And nowadays, fifty years afterwards, the war is still ongoing.
- Downplayed:
- Alice And Bob: The Series is a superhero show and makes a passing mention that both sides tried to deploy super-soldiers during World War II. Unfortunately, they were too Awesome, but Impractical (at the time) and in the end the war really didn't changed from what we've read on the history books (aside from a couple of classified operations).
- The soldiers in World War II are clearly using some early Cold War weapons like AK-47 or M16 rifles. Easy to miss, but weird for viewers given that these guns are somewhat iconic.
- The soldiers in World War II are using actual, historically accurate high-tech weapons and vehicles from the era (for instance, Germans using Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighters and StG 44 assault rifles), the only exaggeration being that this stuff is used much, much earlier and more massively than it was in real life.
- The best strategic move in the war turned out to be using all of their magical resources deploying Anti-Magic en-masse defensively. By the time enemy barriers could be removed the war was basically already over anyway.
- The Panzer XII never left the drawing board in our time line, but it reached prototype stage in this one.
- One episode of Alice and Bob: The Series is about Bob's grandfather telling the former about this one time that a gremlin nearly got him killed during a bombing mission. Although it notably does not shows an actual gremlin, but the spectacular barrage of malfunctions the bomber suffered from the moment it took off cannot be blamed on simple lack of attention and sabotage this blatant would get anybody caught.
- Justified:
- The local Alien Space Bats felt that having Superman rip-offs beating the living hell out of each other in the middle of Operation Market Garden would make for a more interesting scenario.
- We're Overflow Error levels deep in Alternate History.
- Inverted:
- Subverted:
- The Phlebotinum du Jour of the setting is explicitly said to have been discovered on the 2030s and thus none of the "historical" wars were affected by it...
- The Phlebotinum du Jour of the setting was able to bring periods of (relative) world peace much faster than in Real Life...
- Double Subverted:
- ...and then the cast discovers some documents that mention that during the Carter administration a CIA operation tried to turn cocaine super-toxic but it Went Horribly Wrong and all sides spent a couple of months wiping out zombie hordes deep in the Latin American jungles before swearing unilateral secrecy.
- ...and then the cast discovers that some scientist had the idea back in the 1950s and managed to convince the government to adapt it to create bombers with unlimited flight time. But it didn't worked when they tried to unveil it on April 17th 1961
, so they decided to pretend the technology never existed. - ...but that means that "World War II" only lasted about a couple of weeks, and the application of said Phlebotinum made that short period every bit as bloody as the actual one.
- Parodied:
- One of the wars we know of history was fought with the show's Serious Business device, and this device just doesn't feels like it should have changed the world that badly (ex. the Vietnam War was a card tournament).
- The production team of "Raiders of the Lost Casserole" hurriedly add lines about "experimental technology" when they are unable to afford WWII-era props and the Anachronism Stew is getting too blatant.
- Zig Zagged: The Magic Goes Away during wartime and mass bloodshed, so sites of major conflicts didn't saw wizards fighting, but minor conflicts and standoffs (like the War on Drugs and the Cuban Missile Crisis) saw magic being used.
- Averted: Saying that the burning of Atlanta, the Holocaust, the Tet Offensive, the Iran-Contra Conflict and/or Nine-Eleven were the collateral damage of a bunch of card sharks not knowing when to quit is a bunch of
Unfortunate Implications waiting to happen, so whichever "secret history" the setting has, it remains well the hell away from the real-life conflicts. - Enforced: Executives want their toys to sell, and considering that the current gamer rage is historical wars, they decide to set their hundred-million-dollar film of a fight between a Humongous Mecha and a Kaiju in World War II with some handwaving.
- Lampshaded: "Gee. Here come the friggin' Nazi Zombies again! Hey, pal, it's 2017 already! Can't you get some other monster to summon so we can shoot?"
- Invoked: A time traveler brings this technology to World War II.
- Exploited: ??
- Defied:
- The episode of Alice And Bob: The Series that follows Bob's inventor great-grandfather Jim, his Science Hero friends and their necromancy-using enemies ends with all of them smashing their inventions, burning their documents and commiting suicide to prevent the government from weaponizing any of their gadgets and magic.
- An important plot point is that the Applied Phlebotinum could have changed the way the wars of the setting were fought, but the Evil Luddite conspiracy killed all the scientists working on it and couldn't touch the ones working for the government, so the Tech Tree went at the same pace as Real Life.
- The Magic Goes Away during wartime. Or the Alien Space Bats gather all of their wondrous toys (technological, mystical and human) and go home for the duration.
- Every precognitive realized how things would go horribly wrong just with the first war and set out to prevent it from reaching the same scale.
- Discussed: ??
- Conversed: "OK, whoever the heck thought that their Rent-a-Zilla film was going to get money if they made it a Japanese super-weapon used in Guadalcanal needs to be shot."
- Implied: One episode of Alice and Bob: The Series shows that Retired Badass Captain Patriotic has an Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal among other awards and decorations.
- Deconstructed: A time traveler brings advanced technology to World War II only to find that nobody there is really capable of using these unfamiliar machines.
- Reconstructed: The traveler then brings several future soldiers back as shock troops. It's a limited number, but they're basically a One-Man Army because of the advanced tech.
- Played For Laughs:
- One of the attempts on Hitler was performed with a Gender Bender laser (something similar was actually plotted, but not carried through because it was deemed Awesome, but Impractical).
- The deployment of wonder weapons (in all of their impractical, bug-filled Epic Fail glory, including our friends in the Armed Forces reacting to them like they were a Candid Camera sketch) provides fuel to the plot's mockery of Adolf Hitler (and/or other higher-ups in the Axis and Allied sides and/or other figures throughout history).
- One of the attempts on Hitler was performed with a Gender Bender laser (something similar was actually plotted
- Played For Drama: Alice And Bob: The Series follows an alternate version of World War II where every side uses mechas, magic, undead, weaponized Eldritch Abominations, super soldiers, etc. The conflict lasts twice as long, kills even more people, devastate places that where left untouched in the historical conflict, and turns into a stalemate.
- Played For Horror: Imagine any of the atrocities performed during wartime in history being done to empower the In-Universe Phlebotinum du Jour.
