Alternate Universes of Popular Franchises

These are six settings based on major franchises that branch off at some early point in the timeline. So for instance, an alternate take on Star Wars that branches off after New Hope. I had originally intended this as a r/d100 Let's Build Series but didn't get any takers, so I figured I'd make it a Weird & Wonderful table.

Star Wars Episode V Whill of the Force: When Luke goes to Dagobah to train with Yoda, he taps into the Force and is inadvertently transported to a bio-tech Roman-esque Midichlorian Microverse of the Whills. The Whills are humanoids reminiscent of fairies or butterflies, who feed on the force. With the dissolution of the Jedi Order, their world has become cold and bleak, and tainted by their dependence on the Dark Side. The current ruler is essentially a Sith Lord, a parallel of Palpatine who looks like a xenomorphic Darth Vader. In order to return to the Galaxy (and come back with some sweet new Force skills, and maybe a few powerful allies), Luke will have to reignite the Force from within. He is hunted by Boba Fett, who is implied to either be a Whill, or a John Carter (Barsoom)-type who found is way into the Midichlorian Microverse. Through some shenanigans or other, perhaps the rest of the cast also wind up in the Midichlorian Microverse, or they reconvene after the fact, with the Whills joining the resistance.

Marvel Platinum Age: An alternate universe based on the premise that Jack Kirby eventually rose to a position of equal if not greater prominence at Marvel as Stan Lee, and never left for DC. Instead, The Fourth World spins out of Thor and is essentially the first major continuity-altering event comic. Eventually pre-Fourth World characters get re-introduced into continuity, but often in different ways than they originally appeared. OMAC is a post-Fourth World alternative future version of Captain America and a statement about post-World War II American Exceptionalism and capitalism. The Eternals are never created, but some eternals and deviants later become part of the Marvel canon as New Gods. Likewise, much of Jim Starlin's cosmic Marvel work is significantly different, given the changes to the marvel cosmic canon. The Marvel Universe continues to be about "real" people, but with a greater emphasis on cosmic, psychedelic, and existential themes. In the late 70's and especially the 80's, Kirby's work is laced with a growing cynicism, of the Vietnam War and US politics in general, and Marvel as a whole becomes more overtly and aggressively liberal and political, as well as nihilistic. While Alan Moore wrote very little for Marvel, no more so than in the real world, Kirby's work in the 80's and 90's more so resembles Moore's work than his real-world works at Marvel and DC through the 60's and 70's. This period of the Platinum Age, sometimes referred to as the Sterling Silver Age, is noted for its micro-cosmic horror; even as the Marvel cosmos spirals larger and larger, the ideas and themes and character flaws repeat themselves, spiraling downwards. Kirby hits a "glass ceiling" creatively and emotionally, the universe becoming "smaller". These themes receive little cultural recognition until the early 00's, after Kirby's death. In the mid-1970's Don McGregor takes a more prominent role at Marvel, and as a result so do Black Panther and Killraven. He leaves a mark on several other major Marvel characters including Namor, Daredevil, and the X-Men. McGregor and Kirby's X-men run becomes as much a success as Claremont's run was in the real world, but the emphasis remains more on the X-Men as students at a school. Elements of Claremont's run, including most of his early Uncanny X-Men characters, are brought about in his seminal X-Men International run, which combines elements of his real-world Uncanny X-men and later Excalibur works. It is generally acknowledged that the Platinum Age ended in the early 90's with the rise of creators such as Rob Liefeld. However, Grant Morrison's New X-Men run of the early 00's was seen as a spiritual return to the late Silver and early Platinum Age of Marvel comics and set the tone at Marvel for the better part of the 00's and early 10's.

Spider-Man and his Powerful Friends: Alternate Universe where Stan Lee and Margaret Loesch were successful in bringing Super Sentai to America before Saban. The "Power Rangers" (we'll continue to call them that). This is an earlier iteration than the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers from the 90's, and unlike Saban, they did not cut the footage with American actors, only dubbing the series. In the comic adaptation, Takuya Yamashiro, the Spider-Man of Japan, joins the team in a "6th Ranger" role, with a costume more reminiscent of the Power Rangers than Marvel's Spider-Man. Eventually this comic, along with related concepts like Planet Spider, Leapardon, and the Iron Cross Army, are integrated into main marvel continuity. A fictionalized version of Yamato Takeru is revealed to be an ancestor of Takuya, in a time-travelstory combining elements of Japanese Mythology / Fantasy and science fiction from the Planet Spider.

Matrix Recursion / Renaissance: Assumes only the first movie as canon. Neo, The One, has seemingly freed humanity from the machines. They have taken control of the Matrix, leading to a transhumanist renaissance, and leveraged their control of the Matrix to reach a peace pact with the machines, awakening more humans and repairing the environment of the real world. Behind the gilded utopia, political machinations (pun intended) ensue, as various factions of humans and machines both within the Matrix and in Zion and other nations of the real world differ in their ideologies and aims. Some cling to the 20th century nation-states that were artificially crafted by the machines, others believe they should embrace the machines and the utopian transhumanist opportunities that may arise from such an alliance. For all his power in the Matrix, Neo is not an especially competent politician, and seems to have grown addicted to his transhuman, god-like state in the Matrix, and is distancing himself from humanity, the machines, and the issues of the world. A new religion has formed around him, including even some machine adherents. And amidst all of this, Neo discovers something odd in the source code of the Matrix, something which suggests that everything they think they know is wrong, that Zion may just be another level of the Matrix, that humanity was never actually freed. Either in the latter part of the 2nd movie (Recursion) or perhaps the 3rd movie (Renaissance), he learns to use his One powers in the "real world", and this time truly free humanity (although many would rather not be freed; also, who knows if he really succeeded anyway...).

Mad Max Hyperspeed: This setting only assumes the first movie as canon. While the global economy collapsed after the oil crisis, the world continued onward. The United States, Soviet Union, and their various allies formed the research team known as the Multinational Alliance of EXtranormal (MAX) Technologies. MAX-Tech developed all sorts of alternative energies including viable geothermal, solar, and more exotic technologies such as tachyonic and dark energy. Just as it seemed that society was on the verge of recovery, something went horribly wrong. Some rumors say that MAX-Tech was sabotaged, others say there was an instability in one of their power plant designs that caused devastation throughout the world. Some far-fetched rumors even suggest it was strange, gigantic beasts that came up from the Earth, or came down from the stars, that destroyed the world. Those rumors may have been inspired by all the mutations and superpowers going around. Whatever the case, Australia, so far removed from the rest of the world, has become one of the last refuges of civilization. Even as society is rebuilding, various warlords have managed to acquire or create exotic weapons salvaged from MAX-Tech, quickly undermining any hope of recovery. Max Rockatansky travels across the desert by car or motorbike, preferring old-fashioned gasoline-powered rigs (but not above utilizing some MAX-Tech enhancements), ostensibly just trying to survive, but inadvertently helping others like a wandering ronin.

Twilight of the Superheroes: DC Comics never publishes Crisis on Infinite Earths, and instead publishes a version of Twilight of the Superheroes. Rather than allowing Twilight to serve as a "Final" superhero story as Moore intended, instead it leads into years-long status quo like a superpowered, cyberpunk Game of Thrones. While this direction was generally well received under Moore's leadership, after Moore left the company many felt the quality of the books declined. Some exceptions to this include the Kingdom Come event comic (now in-continuity). Eventually things revert to a more typical DC universe, albeit one in which a version of the multiverse still exists.