With films like Marvel's Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, as well as DC's The Flash coming to theaters over the next year, it's pretty clear that comic book movies are going all-in on the concept of the multiverse, an idea first made famous to comic readers by DC Comics in The Flash #123, "The Flash of Two Worlds".
But the multiverse wasn't created for comics, and it isn't just the purview of the superhero set. Many stories, including a great number of movies, have played with the idea that there is more than one Earth out there in the infinite unknown and given audiences a look at the endless possibilities that exist in a series of never-ending alternate realities where anything can happen.
10 Bill & Ted Face The Music Let The Duo See Their Alternate Lives
The third film of the comedy trilogy, Bill & Ted Face the Music showed not only a world where the musical duo had failed to turn Wyld Stallyns into the band that would save the world, as prophesized in the first two movies. As the daughters of the lovable musicians work to put together a band that will complete the prophecy, Bill and Ted find themselves traveling to alternate futures hoping that older versions of themselves have written the song that will save reality, only to find darker and darker versions of themselves.
9 Sliding Doors Shows Just How Much Catching A Train Can Change A Life
A romantic comedy that stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Sliding Doors follows Paltrow's character Helen Quilley through two realities. In one reality, Helen manages to make it onto a train just before the doors close and ends up making it home in time to catch her boyfriend cheating on her. Soon after, she meets a man named James, and the two fall in love, but when Helen becomes pregnant, she learns that James is married, leading to a tragic end for Helen, who gets hit by a van.
In the second reality, Helen doesn't get to the train in time and doesn't learn that her boyfriend is cheating on her until later, leading to her falling down a flight of stairs, but in this reality, she lives and finds true love!
8 Back to the Future Part II Created A Horrific 1985
One of the most famous instances of seeing an alternate Earth in a movie, Back to the Future Part II has an old Biff from 2015 steals the DeLorean and travel back to 1955 to give his younger self a copy of Grays Sports Almanac, leading to a reality in which Biff becomes the richest man in Hill Valley and kills George McFly.
As Doc Brown explains to Marty in the film, what Old Biff did was create a divergent timeline that needs to be erased in order for them to get back to their own 1985. The same alternate reality creation concepts were used in Marvel's Loki, with the TVA being charged with stopping divergent timelines.
7 Star Trek Rebooted With A Split In Reality
The idea of multiple realities is nothing new to Star Trek. Early in the franchise's history, fans were introduced to the Mirror Universe, a reality where the Federation was evil and the universe was in bad shape. Stories of the Mirror Universe have been a part of almost every Star Trek series going back to the original show.
But when the time came to reboot the Star Trek Universe with the 2009 film, Star Trek, the powers that be decided that instead of just starting from scratch, they would reveal that a time travel incident involving Spock and the destruction of Romulus led to the creation of the Kelvin timeline, allowing the original stories to continue to live on TV as new versions of classic characters were explored in the films.
6 Happy Death Day And Happy Death Day 2U Killed A Lot Of Trees
Horror movies often play with alternate realities, but none of them have had as much fun with the concept as Happy Death Day and its sequel Happy Death Day 2U had. Tree Gelbman initially finds herself in what appears to be an infinite loop of a single day that always ends with her being murdered, but across the two movies Tree learns that she isn't trapped in a loop; her consciousness is traveling to alternate timelines each time she dies thanks to a quantum reactor some students at the college have built.
5 The One Had Jet Li Fighting Himself
Created by James Wong and Glen Morgan, best known for creating Final Destination and their work on The X-Files, The One is a sci-fi action film that stars Jet Li as a MultiVerse Authority agent who travels across alternate realities killing versions of himself in the belief that with each version of himself he murders, he gets closer to becoming a superpowered being called "The One." The movie follows the final alternate version of himself that Li must kill to become "The One" as he fights to keep living. Despite the unique take on a sci-fi story, The One failed to make a mark at the box office.
4 Sonic the Hedgehog Crossed Universe By Accident
It wasn't until the 2020 movie Sonic the Hedgehog that most fans of the video game character learned that their favorite blue-haired speed freak was actually living in an alternate reality. As seen in the movie, Sonic lived in a reality where animals were anthropomorphic and magic was real, but was sent to Earth by Longclaw the Owl to keep him safe from some echidnas that were very upset with Sonic.
With a bag of gold rings that could open portals to other realities, Sonic found himself in Green Hills, Montana, and soon enough became friends with Sheriff Tom Wachowski as the two did their best to stop Dr. Robotnik from getting his hands on Sonic and the rings.
3 Space Jam Brought Animation To Life
The characters of the Looney Tunes have long lived in a world unlike any other; one that saw humans and animals interacting in ways that not only defy logic, but also physics. But it wasn't until 1996's Space Jam that Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and the other classic characters of the Looney Tunes universe used their abilities to bring a person from Earth to their reality. Needing help in a basketball game that would decide their fates, the classic toons brought the greatest b-ball player of all time, Michael Jordan, to their reality, bridging the two universes in a way never before seen.
2 The Chronicles of Narnia Led To Hidden Realities
One of the most beloved stories that include a multiverse, The Chronicles of Narnia started life as a series of books by C. S. Lewis before being turned into movies. In these stories, a group of children finds a portal hidden inside a wardrobe that can take them from their dull lives in the English countryside to the magical world of Narnia where all kinds of witches, monsters, and heroes can be found.
While The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe proved to be successful at the box office, the two follow-up films were not as well received by audiences, leaving the four remaining books that Lewis wrote still unfilmed.
1 Pacific Rim Revealed A Universe Of Kaiju
With all the amazing Kaiju vs Jaeger action of Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim, it can be easy to miss the moment where it is revealed that the kaiju that threaten the world come from an alternate universe where the monsters control everything. In the film, it is up to the Pan Pacific Defense Corps to track down the interdimensional portal called "The Breach" at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean that the Kaiju are traveling through and shut it down once and for all, ensuring that the apocalypse is canceled.