"Let's change the date."
The app Multiversity shows the viewer six ways history could have played out if Hitler died before his rise to Fuhrer. Based on the short story "Missives From Possible Futures #1: Alternate History Search Results" by John Scalzi.
Rebecca Riedy voices the computer voice.
Tropes:
- Abnormal Ammo: One timeline involves Hitler dying from a test run of gelatin-mold-based weaponry by Russia. They proceed to use it to resolve all their conflicts and take over the world, becoming the ones to reach the moon in 1988.
- Adaptation Explanation Extrication: In the original short story, the gelatin weapon developed by the Russian aristocracy is revealed to have been developed from technology taken from The Tunguska Event, which in this timeline was a crashed spaceship instead of a meteor. This explanation is left out of the short.
- Adolf Hitlarious: A whole episode dedicated to a rubbery, squeaky-voiced Hitler dying in increasingly ludicrous ways.
- Alien Space Bats: Some of the more insane timelines involve elements like extradimensional prostitutes.
- Artistic License – History:
- Hitler is portrayed with his iconic toothbrush mustache in 1908, while in real life he didn't start trimming it like that until after World War I. Tropes Are Not Bad — it's hilarious to watch a perfectly recognizable Hitler getting killed over and over, and the app isn't exactly going for historical accuracy. This would not be the most improbable thing in the short, either, not by a long shot.
- "Willy Brandt" was born "Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm"; He took on the pseudonym to avoid Nazi agents. With no Nazis, he'd have no reason to change his name but, just with Hitler's toothbrush mustache, this name is used for recognition value.
- Asshole Victim: Well, the all episode revolves around killing Hitler himself. In the first scenario, he even dies as a direct consequence of him hitting a Jewish child.
- Breather Episode: It's a more comedic oriented episode than most of the other ones, and has a lighter tone than any other episode.
- Butterfly of Doom:
- Hitler dying in different scenarios creates tiny to enormous changes in the timeline.
- At least in first few iterations, the fate of the future is decided solely by whether or not he bumps into a young Jewish boy.
- Butt-Monkey: Hitler. The whole thing is pretty much about watching him suffer.
- Cockroaches Will Rule the Earth: Timeline 5 has rats take over after 93 percent of all lifeforms get extinct after an asteroid impact. The rats later kill themselves and get replaced by peaceful squids as the dominant lifeform.
- Colony Drop: Earth is hit by an asteroid in one iteration. Human life is wiped out. The rats take over, evolve, then destroy each other. Finally, two million years later, squids land on the moon.
- Death by Looking Up: Hitler's fate in timeline 5 when he looks up before getting smashed by a meteor.
- Enfant Terrible: Downplayed and Played for Laughs. The Jewish child Hitler hit stabs him back in the knee, in self-defense. However, one may wonder why a child so casually bares a flick knife on him.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: The Blue Screen of Death.
- Gelatinous Encasement: The entire third scenario revolves around Russia making a weapon to trap people in gelatin.
- Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act: The whole point of the Multiversity app is to ponder what would happen if Hitler were killed in the past, in increasingly outlandish ways. The narrator lampshades this, mentioning that Hitler's death is apparently one of the most common "what-if" scenarios requested.
- In the very first scenario, Hitler's death only delays World War II, and somehow causes the Americans to nuke Berlin instead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Other than that, nothing seems to change significantly.
- In the sixth scenario, exaggerated when Hitler is attacked by a squad time-traveling Anti-Nazis sent to kill him, and protected by a squad of time-traveling Nazis sent to protect him. The two groups both die and he is saved by his future self.
- In Spite of a Nail: In the first scenario, Hitler dies before his rise to Fuhrer, but World War II still proceeds (albeit late, and the atomic bomb is dropped on Berlin instead of Hiroshima/Nagasaki) and Neil Armstrong is still the first man on the moon by 1969.
- Look Both Ways: Timeline 2 has Hitler crossing a street and getting run over by a Bratwurst truck because he was distracted swearing at a Jewish child.
- Never Shall The Selves Meet: Hitler's future self saves his past self from the crossfire of future Nazis and anti-Nazis, only to obliterate themselves and all of time and space by touching each other. It even breaks the app itself, leading to a Blue Screen of Death.
- Oktoberfest: One timeline has Hitler be killed by a Bratwurst truck and the closing credits play Bavarian folk music.
- Out with a Bang: Hitler is banged to death by hot space prostitutes, who go on to enlighten the world with their spacely hotness and pave the way to a steamy Free-Love Future.
- Russia Takes Over the World: Timeline 3 has Russia become the sole superpower because of their early success with the gelatin weapon.
- Serendipitous Survival: Timeline 4 has Hitler survive the gelatin death by getting drawn towards the sexy ladies.
- Shout-Out: The scenario after the app crash is called "Lincoln shoots first"
, very likely a reference to the "Han shot first" meme. - Starfish Language: In the fifth death scenario, Earth is eventually populated by a civilization of squids, leading to "Gluugsnertgluug" performing the first Moon Landing millions of years into the future.
- Stupid Jetpack Hitler:
- Subverted during the second Hitler death scenario. After Hitler dies in a freak Bratwurst cart accident, Austria outlaws horse-drawn carts and thus they adopt cars earlier. As a result they become a technological superpower and help Germany win World War I, averting the Third Reich altogether. Then, the Germans reach the Moon in 1958, more than a decade before Americans would've reached it. In short, they became Stupid Jetpack Germans because Hitler wasn't in the picture.
- And then played straight in the final scenario, where future Nazis with laser weaponry time travel to protect Hitler from time-traveling future anti-Nazis... And then future Hitler blasts in on a mecha suit to save his past self from the ensuing crossfire.
- Terminator Twosome: Timeline 6 has two factions of future terminators, one to kill Hitler and one to protect him.
- Would Hurt a Child: Since Hitler is, well, Hitler, he has no problem with hitting a Jewish child in the first scenario. Hilariously backfires, when two strong adult Jews come to save the child, and proceed to cartoonishly beat Hitler to death, with even the child stabbing him in the knee in the process.
