Multiversal Singularity - TV Tropes

Psylocke: For every alternate Earth, an alternate Betsy Braddock! [...] But what about you?
Marvel Girl: I've heard of some cross-time "Rachels" that are the offspring of Scott and Jean... but none of them are me. In my case, what you see is all there is. Not alternate versions of my present... just aspects of my past. Apparently, I'm unique.

• Godzilla: Singular Point: In the novelization, Godzilla is revealed to be an extra-dimensional entity that exists outside the multiverse and can project avatars of itself into universes in order to destroy and consume them.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run: The Holy Corpse only exists in the universe the story takes place in. Funny Valentine, whose D4C lets him travel between alternate universes, is only concerned with the "main" universe, and can summon duplicates from other universes for assistance.
• Space☆Dandy: The titular character was revealed to be omnipresent throughout the multiverse, which also explains the episodic nature of his adventures. This is the very reason the narrator, who is shown to be God, chooses Dandy to become the next God to save the universes.

• DC Comics: DC's cosmology has numerous gods and cosmic entities that exist beyond the scope of the Multiverse, often hailing from the Fifth and Sixth Dimensions or the Omniverse:
  • Alpheus the World Forger is a cosmic entity and denizen of the Sixth Dimension, the eldest son of Perpetua who was charged with creating universes to populate the nascent Multiverse.
  • The Anti-Monitor was a malevolent cosmic entity who ruled over the Antimatter Universe, an inverted reflection of the Pre-Crisis Universe created billions of years ago by an alien scientist. The cognate of the benevolent Monitor, the Anti-Monitor sought to destroy the Multiverse so that only the Antimatter Universe existed, but ultimately perished. In the new Multiverse a new Anti-Monitor named Mobius arose, a denizen of the Sixth Dimension and "brother" of Mar Novu the Monitor and Alpheus the World Forger.^note 
  • Barbatos is a Draconic Abomination created by Alpheus the World Forger to destroy unstable universes, though instead he began conquering them to create the Dark Multiverse, with ambitions of conquering and corrupting the main Multiverse as well.
  • The Great Darkness is a cosmic entity that embodies the void that existed before the creation of the multiverse and initially clashed with the Presence before coming to a truce… which the Great Darkness began subverting using villains like Barbatos and Darkseid as unwitting pawns. Upon learning of its existence, Darkseid sought to unleash it during the Final Crisis, but was thwarted.
  • The Monitor (Mar Novu) was a cosmic entity charged with observing and recording the events of the Multiverse, though after his death at the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths he was replaced by a council of 52 Monitors—one for each universe. In the new Multiverse. Mar Novu's New 52 counterpart was later introduced as the Over-Monitor—a denizen of the Sixth Dimension, the "son" of the cosmic entity Perpetua and "brother" of Mobius the Anti-Monitor and Alpheus the World Forger.
  • The New Gods: Darkseid, being the embodiment of all evil, has no actual multiversal counterparts. Instead, the Darkseids that exist throughout the multiverse are actually aspects of the one true Darkseid that exists within the extradimensional Fourth World. In Infinite Frontier, the Darkseid of Prime Earth absorbs his Pre-Crisis and New Earth incarnations and all his multiversal iterations to become more powerful than ever. When the events of Absolute Power cut Prime Earth off from the rest of the multiverse, Darkseid freaks out as a result of being overloaded by his absorbed counterparts' power and attempts to absorb the Spectre. Informed that Prime Earth being restored to the Multiverse would weaken him, Darkseid instead allows the heroes to kill him—his essence being shunted to the Elseworld and corrupting it into a dark reflection of Prime Earth.
  • Perpetua was one of the Source's Hands and was the entity directly responsible for the creation of the DC Multiverse, inhabiting the Sixth Dimension outside the Multiverse and giving rise to the World Forger, the Monitor, and the Anti-Monitor. She was supposed to create the Multiverse with the Seven Forces of the Universe,^note  but went rogue and instead used the Crisis Energies;^note  and as punishment was imprisoned in the Source Wall by the other Hands.
  • The Source of All Things—aka the Presence—is an omnipotent and omnipresent divine entity whose Hands were responsible for the creation of the Divine Continuum of the Omniverse (which in theory encompasses every multiverse and universe in both fiction and real life, but in practice only encompasses the DC and Wildstorm Multiverses, the Dark Multiverse, and Sphere of the Gods) and Hypertime (which encompasses Limbo and the Vanishing Point).
  • Superman: Mr. Myxyzptlk and his fellow fifth-dimensional imps—as the name suggests—come from the 5th dimension, and in New 52 are revealed to exist outside the typical boundaries of the universe. (Though Mr. Myxyzptlk also has several variants throughout the broader DC multiverse—such as the ones from the DC Animated Universe and My Adventures with Superman. Then again, Superman: Reborn states that even those are still the same entity.)
  • Watchmen: Dr. Manhattan is revealed to be the entity responsible for the creation of the New 52 in Doomsday Clock, discovering that changes made to the history of the mainline DC universe have ripple effects that can completely reconfigure the structure of the multiverse as a whole—terming the system the "Metaverse". Even entities as powerful as Mr. Mxyzptlk and Post-Crisis Eobard Thawne are so far below him in power that he can erase them from existence at will—or at least try to in the case of Mxyzptlk.
• Marvel Comics: Marvel's cosmology is home to numerous deities, cosmic entities, and eldritch horrors who originate before the Multiverse and/or exist Beyond the boundaries of the Multiverse, and therefore do not (at least as far as the comics are concerned) have any multiversal variants:
  • The Celestials are cosmic entities that originate from the First Firmament, the original iteration of the universe before it was shattered into a multiverse. As such they are singular entities, though they can project avatars of themselves into the different universes.
  • Defenders (2021): The Anti-All is a cosmic entity embodying the primordial void that existed between the Second and Third Cosmoses, and is the progenitor of the King in Black, Røkkva, and other dark entities—having been shattered into fragments that scattered across the nascent multiverse.
  • Eternity is the embodiment of the seventh iteration of the Multiverse, though he can project avatars of himself into his constituent universes.
  • Immortal Hulk: The One Below All is the dark counterpart of the One Above All, and exists outside the Multiverse in a realm called the Below-Place. It's also the source of "extreme gamma"—the mutagenic energy that turned Bruce Banner into the Hulk and gave most of his supporting cast their powers.
  • The Living Tribunal is a golden three-faced cosmic entity that exists as the One Above All's emissary and one of the most powerful Abstract Entities in Marvel's cosmology, being tasked with maintaining the balance of the Multiverse. As such he doesn't possess any variants, though he can project manifestations into multiple universes simultaneously. Slain by the Beyonders during their genocide of cosmic entities, the One Above All apotheosized the Adam Warlock of Earth-19141 into the new Living Tribunal when the Multiverse was recreated.
  • Oblivion is an Abstract Entity embodying the primordial cosmic void that existed before the Multiverse was created, and exists outside its boundaries—though he's able to project avatars and create offshoots made out of living darkness—such as the Chaos King.
  • The One Above All is an omnipotent and omniscient cosmic entity that created the Marvel Multiverse itself, serving as a metafictional avatar for the writers and artists working on the comics. He resides beyond all time and space in the House of Ideas at the Crown of Creation and is sometimes presented as one-and-the-same with the Judeo-Christian God (who also exists, but sometimes as a separate character).
  • Spider-Gwen: Multiple variants of Uatu aside, the Council of Watchers are presented as existing outside the Multiverse in Spider-Gwen (Vol. 2), with each Watcher being assigned a different universe to monitor. The Watcher of Earth-65 is the lazy Utau, while the more serious Watcher of Earth-8 is Utaa.
  • Spider-Man:
    • Morlun and his family — the Inheritors — are revealed in Spider-Verse to originate on Earth-001 and have no multiversal counterparts, travelling the Multiverse using the Web of Life and Destiny to consume the essence of Spider-Totems and their avatars.
    • Shuma-Gorath, one of the Great Old Ones, exists outside the boundaries of the multiverse and projects lesser manifestations of itself into the universes it seeks to conquer—which in the case of Earth-616 results in it being defeated and its manifestation execrated.
    • Spider-Verse reveals (or rather, retcons) that the Spider-Totems that maintain the Web of Life and Destiny and empower each Spider-Person exist outside the Multiverse, with there being several unique Great Totems such as the Other (which chose the Peter Parker of Earth-616 as its host before moving on to Earth-616's Kaine and then Earth-982's Peter), the Bride, and the Patternmaker.
  • Thor (2020): The Black Winter is a cosmic entity that exists outside the Multiverse as a dark counterpart to Eternity, devouring whole universes and leaving a cosmic void in its wake. It's also revealed to be the entity that created Galactus to serve as its herald.
  • Time Runs Out: The Beyonders—including the one from the original Secret Wars (despite him having been previously established to have numerous multiversal variants)—are cosmic entities that exist outside the Multiverse and can enter into the different universes, though their purpose is to maintain the Multiverse from without and serve as a check to the power of the Celestials.
  • Venom:
    • Knull—who debuted in Venom (Vol. 4)—is implied to have originated as one, being a denizen of the cosmic void that existed between the destruction of the Sixth Cosmos and the creation of the Seventh. However, the creation of the seventh iteration of the Multiverse also resulted in numerous variants of him being created as well.
    • The Eventuality—who debuted in Venom (Vol. 5)—is a version of Eddie Brock who has fully accepted his role as the King in Black, and while presented as the ultimate future self of the Eddie from Earth-616 he later claims to be a multiversal singularity of every Eddie Brock in the Multiverse that became Venom and took up the role of King in Black.
  • X-Men:
    • The true form of the Phoenix Force exists outside the Multiverse in the White Hot Room, though it can project aspects of itself into the various universes.
    • The Shadow King is—at least allegedly—a multiversal dark entity that embodies the dark side of humanity's collective consciousness, with Resurrection of Magneto #3 suggesting that he, Annihilation, the Adversary, the First Fallen, le Bete Noir, and the Goblin Force are all merely aspects of an even greater dark entity that exists in opposition to the Phoenix Force.
    • Rachel Summers, the lone survivor of the Days of Future Past timeline, is sometimes said to be unique in the multiverse, possibly due to her deep connection to the Phoenix Force. This is a downplayed trope, though, because other timelines do have daughters of Scott and Jean named Rachel/Marvel Girl/Phoenix (some even created by Chris Claremont, the same writer who established this), they're just not her, somehow.
    • The Mojoverse exists beyond the multiverse, and it's supposed to be the same Mojo who messes with the X-Men in every universe (except the Ultimate Universe, which has a human Mojo counterpart that's different enough to not qualify as the same character).
    • In X-Men: The Krakoan Age, the different iterations of Nathaniel Essex enact various schemes to become multiversal singularities called Dominions, though the only one to succeed is the Enigma... at least until he's shut down by the Phoenix.
  • Young Avengers: America Chavez, a superheroine with the power to create star-shaped portals—including to other dimensions and universes, was originally stated to be from the Utopian Parallel, a pocket dimension populated by Latina lesbians that existed outside the multiverse, leaving her without any variants after its destruction. However, this backstory was later retconned into false memories she developed to cope with the trauma she suffered as a child, with America and her family being native denizens of Earth-616.
• Marvel Versus DC: The Brothers are a pair of nigh-omnipotent cosmic entities who reside within the "Megaverse" and embody the Marvel and DC multiverses. Their fierce rivalry ultimately led to Marvel's Earth-616 and DC's New Earth merging into a single universe before being split apart by Access (Axel Asher), the Living Tribunal, and the Spectre. A copy of the Amagam Universe survived, being designated Earth-962 / Earth-9602 within the Marvel Multiverse and Earth-496 / Earth 1996 within the DC Multiverse, though the Brothers haven't been seen or referenced since.
• RASL: Discussed; RASL notes that although he's met several variants of people he knows in his travels to alternate universes and has even visited an apartment that looks like his, he has never found an alternate version of himself. His nemesis Sal accuses him of subsuming and destroying his own alternates whenever he enters a new universe; although the plot point is never fully confirmed, it's notable that Sal is the only other regular Drift user and we never see any alternate versions of him either, and Uma, the Maya variant who RASL sleeps with, has already been replaced by Maya.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (IDW): According to Renet, Time Masters do not possess counterparts in the multiverse as other people do. This would further imply that the various versions of Renet that exist in the franchise (the Mirage comics, the 2003 cartoon, the 2012 cartoon) are all the same Renet at different points in time.

• DC Animated Movie Universe: The Spectre witnessed the Flash as he went back in time to save his world, and in doing so caused the universe to fracture into a multiverse. The Spectre existed outside the multiverse and was not affected, nor was he affected when the multiverse was recombined into a single monoverse.

• Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: America Chavez follows her comic book counterpart's original backstory, hailing from the Utopian Parallel and not having any multiversal variants. As a result of this, she never dreams, as dreams allow someone to experience the life of one of their multiversal counterparts.
• The One (2001): The main antagonist, Gabriel Yulaw, wants to invoke this trope by killing all of his counterparts from the 125 alternate universes so that he will become The One and inherit all the power and abilities of his 124 alternate selves. By the time the movie starts, he has only 1 alternate left to go. Ultimately averted when his plan is foiled and he's imprisoned, so there's still one alternate self of him left.

• Chrestomanci: Most people are born with counterparts throughout their "Series" of nine worlds. Some are instead unique, which gives them nine lives, a prerequisite for the office of Chrestomanci.
• The Talisman: There are at least two parallel worlds (and more are implied to exist) in which doubles of the people on Earth exist (though they can radically differ from their Earth counterparts in both looks and personality). Some people however don't have a double in this other world, making them unique. They are known as "single-natured". The protagonist, Jack Sawyer, is such a single-natured person as his twinner from the other world drowned.
• In the Peter David Star Trek Novel 'Verse novel Q-Squared, Trelane drives only existing Jack Crusher of any timeline insane with the knowledge that he is the only one, that in every other timeline but his own his son Wesley lived while he died, and that his best friend Jean-Luc Picard ended up with his wife Beverly in every timeline including his own (as Wesley's death in his native timeline drove Jack and Beverly apart).

• Dark (2017): Season 3 shows that there are two alternate worlds, the one that has been previously depicted in the first two seasons and another, mirrored one which is inhabited by alternate selves of all characters from the world, with two exceptions: First, Jonas Kahnwald does not have an alternate counterpart, as his existence hinges on Mikkel time-travelling to the '80s, which doesn't happen in that world. And then there's the Unknown, the mysterious time traveller that always appears as a child, adult, and old person and is a literal Child of Two Worlds.
• Parallax: The many worlds all feature doppelgangers of the inhabitants of the town, with the exception of Ben, Katherine, and their mother Veronica. The reason for this is later revealed to be because they are Guardians, and anyone with Guardian heritage does not have any alternate version.
• Supernatural: The finale of season 14 reveals that the show's universe is just one of many created by God. While even other primordial entities like the archangels and Death have alternate selves in these universes, God, as their creator, does not. While a version of him, under his human alias of Chuck Shurley, does appear in the Bad Future timeline, that was before the multiverse was properly established and when the show was intended to only go as far as the Apocalypse, implying some Early-Installment Weirdness.

• Champions: Istvatha V’han, empress of a billion worlds, has never found any evidence of an alternate version of herself in all her multiversal conquests, including invasions of alternate versions of her home world, and neither has anyone else. She's the only Multiversal Singularity as far as anyone can tell, and she personally belives it's because she's from the Prime Dimension from which all others stem. This cannot be confirmed or denied, of course, but it explains a lot about her desire to conquer the multiverse.
• GURPS features this as the "Unique" disadvantage. In addition to being unable to meet multiversal counterparts of yourself, it also means you're at high risk of being wiped from existence if the timeline gets altered. As a consolation, you gain the benefits of the Zeroed advantage in any timeline that's not your own — you never existed in said timeline, after all.
• Sentinels of the Multiverse: Singular Entities are cosmic beings who exist outside the multiverse, as such only one of each entity exists and they can travel through the multiverse freely. Only two appear in the game, cosmic trickster Wager Master and Omnicidal Maniac OblivAeon, although the embodiment of progress Wellspring is behind Legacy's powers, and a handful more are mentioned in background fluff.

• Transformers: For a time, an important aspect of the different multiversal clusters (read: the various iterations of the Transformers franchise) was that several important characters were actually singular entities either travelling across the multiverse or projecting aspects of themselves into the different universes. This was eventually deemed to be too confusing, and a Cosmic Retcon dubbed "The Shrouding" eliminated the concept.
  • Unicron, a planet-eating Mechanical Abomination who debuted in The Transformers: The Movie, was revealed to be a multiversal singularity with all, or at least most of his iterations being the same entity. However, Unicron is ultimately shattered during the Shrouding, leaving different versions of him scattered across the Transformers multiverse.
  • Primus, the Thirteen original Transformers he created, and the Vector Sigma supercomputer that maintains Cybertron (itself Primus' physical form) are stated or implied to be multiversal singularities prior to the Shrouding. This retcon created a bit of a headache for writers, who had to reconcile the varying depictions of the Fallen (for example, the one in the Transformers film series) with the new lore that he was a multiversal singularity.
  • Vector Prime is a time- and dimension-traveling constant in the Transformers mythos. Though we see him in the Transformers: Cybertron show, he manned a Fourth-Wall Mail Slot and answered viewer questions, establishing he was a singular individual who appeared in multiple timelines by virtue of traveling to them directly and taking on other appearances rather than having multiple alternate versions of himself, including one jaunt where he became a GoBot.

• AdventureQuest Worlds: The Hero is the only being in the Multiverse that does not have a parallel counterpart and is wholly unique to their world. This is because of their true identity as the Eternal Dragon of Time, a cosmic titan of reality responsible for kicking off the game's events in the first place. When they were slain by Galanoth, their death caused a ripple effect that fused the previous Artix Games into the Multiverse and reincarnated the Eternal Dragon into a mortal with no memories of their past.
  • In addition, Paul and Storm, the interdimensional bards introduced during the "Mirror Realm" event, also don't have counterparts as they are from a "suburb" outside the multiverse.
• Dragalia Lost:
  • Elysium is the holy dragon who has the power to see all timelines due to having the power to travel between them. Due to how a lot of those timelines fall apart and the current one is at risk of the Progenitor awakening, he deems it necessary for only one timeline to exist.
  • The Progenitor, real name Xenos, is one of the creators of the universe and by extension the multiverse who overlooked the realm of possibility in all of the universes. Due to most of them crumbling, he became jaded and decided to have full control over the lives of his creations to the point that he decided to destroy every universe so that only one of his designs exists.
  • Beren, the fifth scion of the Alberian Royal Family is locked away in the main universe due to his dangerous power. Not just that, but he is the only Beren in the entire multiverse as every other Beren died at a young age. Because of this, Beren felt he never had a choice at all and was thus motivated to help Xenos erase the multiverse. Subverted at the end where, upon the multiverse being restored, Beren is established to be revived in them so that he can experience an actual life of choice.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy: It's revealed that Shinryu is a Draconic Abomination that resides in the Interdimensional Rift, with most (if not all) of its appearances across the series being the same entity travelling the Final Fantasy multiverse hunting its nemesis Omega. Shinryu serves as the Greater-Scope Villain-turned-Big Bad of the series, sustaining the cycles of conflict to both amuse itself and so that it can feed on the energies generated by the battles between Order and Chaos.
  • Final Fantasy VII Rebirth: The Ultimania reveals that Sephiroth has become a being transcending dimensions, exemplified where he hunts incarnations of Aerith across multiple timelines and during his boss fight as Sephiroth Reborn—where he simultaneously battles Cloud's party, Cloud himself, and Zack Fair in different timelines.
• Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]: Sora and Riku visit two versions of the same world, where each character they meet is a separate copy of the same character. The one exception is Joshua from Traverse Town, who can manifest in both worlds simultaneously.
• The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: Many characters from Hyrule are shown to have an Alternate Self in Termina, and even Link is vaguely implied to have Kafei as his variant, given their identical facial structures and animations. The Happy Mask Salesman is an exception, being the same one from Ocarina of Time.
• Pokémon: Arceus is revealed to be a divine entity transcending time and space in Pokémon Legends: Arceus, with the iterations captured by the player characters simply being aspects of itself it sends to accompany those it deems worthy.

• Fate Series: The Throne of Heroes where the Heroic Spirits reside exists outside of time and space, with the Servants being lesser copies that are projected into different universes across the Type-Moon multiverse—even into the Tsukihime branch, where they shouldn't be able to exist. This enables Heroic Spirits from the past and even the future to be summoned as Servants at any point in the space-time continuum, as well as people from pruned timelines being able to survive being erased from existence by becoming Heroic Spirits. That said, Heroic Spirits can have multiple Servant variations that can be very different from each other in terms of personality and powers, and can even exist independently from one another and interact with their mortal past selves.

• SCP Foundation: SCP-8056 is Jennifer Vide, the daughter of Dr. Harold Blank and Dr. Melissa Bradbury, who fell into the baseline universe from another one where the Foundation is apparently called Cornerstone and there are only about a billion people on the planet. Jennifer seems to be the sole survivor of a 'Deadline', Foundation terminology for a non-viable timeline, as while other members of Foundation staff in the article have encountered their variants, there is no indication that Jennifer exists other than her physical self.

• American Dad!: Played with in "Multiverse of American Dadness" with the singer Shaggy, who is an important constant of every reality. Every version of himself playing a concert, for example, is an event happening simultaneously in the Multiverse. However, it turns out that the realm outside the Multiverse actually has a god-like Shaggy who implies that each universe's Shaggy is an aspect of himself.
• Rick and Morty: Downplayed; it's revealed in "Rixty Minutes" that variants of Summer, while they exist, are very rare in the Central Finite Curve, due to Summer being the result of an unwanted pregnancy, and there being more realities where Jerry and Beth split than ones where they got married. This plot point runs into a bit of a Continuity Snarl in later seasons, as the Smith-Sanchez family has to relocate to another universe more than once, and do encounter a couple of Summer variants.
• Sonic Prime:
  • After Sonic shatters the Paradox Prism trying to attack Dr. Eggman, he creates a multiverse where all of his friends have variants, but he and as it's later revealed, Shadow lack any.
  • Zig-Zagged with Eggman; the Chaos Council is made up of a pseudo-family of Eggman variants of various ages, but they're all native to the dimension of New Yoke City.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil: Glossaryck and the Magic High Commission are cosmic entities formed to govern the entire multiverse's magic system, with Omnitraxus residing outside of the multiverse itself to oversee it.