Like “everything together everywhere?” Can’t get enough of “The Flash” and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” this month? Then this list is for you. We’ve compiled a non-exhaustive sample of fiction about alternate universes and multiverses—from movies to TV to comics to books. This is a great starter kit if your media rushes to ask: What if?
Movies:
– “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946): In this Christmas classic, family man George Bailey becomes increasingly frustrated as opportunities pass him by, and it takes a fairy-in-training – on Christmas Eve – to help him. To dump him in a universe where he never existed and show him how important his life is.
– “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” (2022): After years of hints and slivers, including an emerging storyline in “Spider-Man: No Way Home” (2021), Marvel goes full-on in this exploration of the multiverse How realities can collide and start bleeding into each other.
– “Sliding Doors” (1998): Gwyneth Paltrow misses a train — and doesn’t. Two gritty realities unfold in very different ways, creating versions of her character that must be reconciled.
– “Tomorrow” (2019): Zac Malik, aspiring musician, finds himself trapped in an almost-identical universe where no one has ever heard of the Beatles (or Coca-Cola, for that matter) Have heard He starts singing the songs as if he wrote them. The hijinks feel bigger.
– “The Butterfly Effect” (2004): Ashton Kutcher plays a college student who finds he can revisit his past and change things, and each time he does so a different Reality is born.
– “The Family Man” (2000): After an encounter at a convenience store, cocky Manhattan finance man Jack Campbell awakens to a very different – and less prosperous – life in the New Jersey suburbs and finds himself married to his parents does it. Old girlfriend, whom he left years ago. As he navigates his new life and the choices he made or didn’t make to get there, a more complex picture emerges.
And for the kids…
– “Shrek Forever After” (2010): Shrek finds himself in an alternate, darker reality where he is never reunited with Fiona.
TV:
– “Star Trek” (1967 and onwards): A “Mirror Universe” show’s United Federation of Planets – reveals a darker, more evil version of the Terran Empire, one replete with brutality and murder. This universe was revisited in several “Trek” sequels in the 1990s and 2010s.
– “Russian Doll” (2019–present): In season one, Nadia keeps dying at a party and waking up in slightly different universes, though each awakening always ends with her death.
– “Undone” (2019-2022): In this captivating hybrid of live action and animation, a young woman’s relationship with her long-dead father takes an unexpected turn after a car accident when he appears in a vision and tells him other realities are possible – including the one he was alive and around to raise.
– “Fringe” (2008–2013): Sci-fi family drama meets law-enforcement procedural as a father infiltrates a parallel universe to rescue and steal another version of his son and destroy the world Deals with changing results.
– “The Man in the High Castle” (2015-2019): It’s the 1960s, the Nazis and Japan won World War II and the world is playing out in very different ways – sometimes in unexpected ways.
– “For All Mankind” (2019–present): The Soviet Union won the space race and was the first to reach the Moon. This is how history played out afterwards.
Comics:
– “Flashpoint” (2011): The DC Comics series that informed the film “The Flash”, it addresses the loss that the main character, Barry Allen, makes when he travels back in time to save his mother.
– “what if?” (Set in the 1970s): This speculative series, which began in the comics and moves to streaming TV in 2021, takes different corners of Marvel’s “main” universe and remixes events and characters.
– “House of M” (2005): The Scarlet Witch reboots reality and changes the lives of some of Marvel’s top heroes in radical and chaotic ways, including Spider-Man, Doctor Strange and Captain America. The series was one of the ingredients for the 2020 Marvel TV show “WandaVision”.
Books:
– “The Mirage” (2013): This novel by “Lovecraft Country” author Matt Ruff presents a completely looking-glass world where American Christian fundamentalists were the perpetrators of 9/11, who destroyed the Twin Towers in Baghdad. was attacked. , is located in the United Arab States. Characters include remixes of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
– “Einstein’s Dreams” (1992): Dreamlike fiction by Alan Lightman that explores the various permutations of time and alternate universes that Albert Einstein may have dreamed up in 1905 in coming up with his theory of relativity.
– “The Space Between Worlds” (2020): A novel by Micaiah Johnson that describes a time when travel across the multiverse has become commonplace – which creates very different safety problems for some of those who travel .
