The Free Universe - TV Tropes

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The Free Universe: Open Source Characters and Settings is a website containing profiles and lists of public domain characters, artifacts, and settings from various sources, the most primary being old comic books but including other media, for anyone to use. The characters and elements can be used individually, or they can be taken together as Massive Multiplayer Crossover universe.

Created by argosail in 2010, the site was built and expanded by him and others for several years after. It also has a somewhat active forum.

See also Jenny Everywhere and the Public Domain Superheroes Wiki.

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Contains examples of:

• Alternate Universe / Another Dimension: The atlas lists several types of these, including:
  • World of Funny Animals: Paw World and the Animalverse.
  • Alternate Tooniverse: The Sillyverse.
  • Bizarro World: The Tyrantverse.
  • Dream Land: Dreamland.
  • Dark World: The Tyrantverse, Conquerverse, Machine World, Zombie World, and War World.
  • Land of Faerie: Fairyland/Elfland
  • Mirror Universe: The Tyrantverse.
  • Pocket Dimension: All of the Magical Realms are this.
  • The Underworld: Hades and the Inferno.
  • Villain World: The Tyrantverse and Conquerverse.
  • The Wonderland: Most of the Magical Realms, including the actual Wonderland.
  • Alien Space Bats: The Dinoverse, Dragonverse, Machine World, and Zombie World.
• Animal Superheroes: Paw World has several, such as Atomic Mouse and Flash Rabbit.
• Anti-Hero: A section is devoted to anti-heroes, such as Stardust the Super Wizard and Fantomah.
• Atlantis: The sunken city is discussed in the atlas.
• Awesome Underwater World: The Free Universe oceans are full of exotic underwater locations. A particularly notable one is the city of Arqtiq, where everyone has telepathy and perfect gender equality.
• The Big Bad Wolf: One of the fairy tale characters included.
• Body Horror: The Disc Men are cyborgs made by taking the still-living heads of humans and attaching them to mechanical bodies made from the spare parts of spaceships.
• Brought to You by the Letter "S": Some of the superheroes have uniforms like this.
• By the Power of Grayskull!: Captain Marvel, who of course has this power, is featured.
• Canon Welding: The site incorporates characters from works whose copyrights have expired, open-source characters such as Jenny Everywhere, and original creations from site contributors. The site encourages visitors to incorporate elements from the Free Universe into their own works.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: The Daredevil is so good at martial arts that he has been described as having super strength and speed.
• Clarke's Third Law: The Magician from Mars's powers actually come from her cells being mutated by rays from a cathode machine.
• Colonized Solar System: In the atlas, every planet in the solar system has some kind of human base.
• Connected All A Long: It turns out that the Martian terrorist leader called "the Hood" battled by the Magician from Mars was actually the Magician's evil aunt, Vanza.
• Creepy Good: The Black Terror is a pharmacist who gave himself superpowers and wears a dark, creepy costume to fight crime.
• Crossover Alternate Universe: The Free Universe as a whole is this for every public domain work it incorporates.
• Crossover Cosmology: Thor, Hercules, and other heroes, artifacts, and places from various mythologies and religions, all make appearances.
• Deal with the Devil: Legend has it that this is how the Claw got his powers.
• Demon Lords and Archdevils: The Claw is a powerful being from Hades, who can summon minions from it.
• Dimensional Traveler: Jenny Everywhere, aka "the Shifter" can travel between realities.
  • The Mirror Man travels back and forth between our world and the world inside mirror reflections.
• The Dog Bites Back: While the Zutarian Imps are not especially vicious or aggressive, when they are conquered by a warlord named Tyrno, they eventually turn on him and kill him.
• Dracula: He is appears in the index of "Monsters and Outcasts".
• Eldritch Abomination: There's a sub-section devoted to H. P. Lovecraft's characters.
  • The Mirror Man is an extra-dimensional, shape-shifting creature that travels into our world from mirrors.
  • The Claw is also a good example, being a sorcerous Humanoid Abomination from Hell.
• Eldritch Location: The "Beyond" from Fawcett Comics, a shadowy netherworld of the dead that preys on the world of the living, is a good example.
• Fairy Tale Free-for-All: Several characters from fairy tales are listed.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Almost every fantasy concept you can imagine has some role in the Free Universe, as well as the wider multiverse.
• Fire and Brimstone Hell: The Inferno.
• Flying Brick: The American Crusader can fly, has Super-Strength, and is super tough.
• Frankenstein's Monster: He and his creator are both in the Free Universe.
• Funny Animal: The Paw World section lists several, including character such as Krazy Kad and Ignatz Mouse and Flip the Frog.
• Headless Horseman: The Trope Namer himself, along with Ichabod Crane, are included.
• Historical Domain Character: A few, alongside the PD ones.
• Humanoid Abomination: The Claw, while usually having a human size and shape, is an ancient and powerful demon-sorcer from Hades whose origins are Shrouded in Myth. The Mirror Man also sometimes appears human-shaped.
• The Imp: Zutarian Imps are a race of short aliens that, while having powerful weapons and armies, are not particularly aggressive.
• Intra-Franchise Crossover: Versions of public domain characters who appeared in public domain films are included along with the original versions of the characters.
• Island of Mystery: The Free Universe has more of these than you can shake a stick at.
• Jack Frost: One of the folktale characters who gets a mention.
• Jekyll & Hyde: The Trope Namer is featured.
• Legion of Doom: A few of them, such as the Deadly Dozen and the Monster Society are described here.
• Little Green Men: Zutarian Imps are small, humanoid aliens with green skin.
• Lost World: The atlas has a lot of them in its "Mysterious/Hidden Regions" section, including the original example.
• Lunarians: The moon is described as being inhabited by Selenites and colonists.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: The focus is on old superheroes, which there's no shortage of, but there's another list of plenty more from folklore, literature, film, and television. It's implied that all the characters and elements exist in the same universe (the Free Universe) but it isn't necessary for adaptations to use them all.
• Mirror Monster: The Mirror Man can enter our universe through mirrors.
• Monster Clown: The Clown is a mob boss and terrorist that dresses up as, appropriately enough, a clown. For bonus points, he also used to perform in a circus.
• Monster Mash: Ghosts, vampires (including Dracula), Frankenstein's Monster, several Mad Scientists, witches,Sorcerers, Quasimodo, Dr. Jekyll, The Invisible Man, The Phantom of the Opera, demons and devils, aliens, Eldritch Abominations, including members of the Cthulhu Mythos, a Monster Clown, the Headless Horseman, and other monsters can all be found.
• The Multiverse: See the entry for Another Dimension.
• My Greatest Failure: The Arrow, aka Ralph Payne, used to be a secret agent, until he was forced to choose between keeping his cover and saving the life of the woman he loved. He kept his cover and let the woman die. After that, he created the identity of the Arrow so that he would be able to save others without giving away his dientity.
• Original Generation: In the forums, site members add their own creations to the roster of public domain heroes.
• Public Domain Artifact: They have a large list of them.
• Public Domain Character: What the site is mainly about.
• Race Lift: When the site created new designs for the heroes it featured, some superheroes, such as Amazing Man, were changed from white to different ethnicities. Word of God explained that this was to give some diversity to the ranks, as almost all of the heroes (being pre-Civil Rights Movement) were originally white blond men.
• Reference Overdosed: Hundreds of public domain works are alluded to, especially in the atlas and "elements" pages.
• Sadistic Choice: In the Arrow's backstory, when he was a spy he had to choose between saving the woman he loved, or keeping his cover, which could potentially have saved save thousands of lives. He chose to keep his cover, and has been haunted by it ever since.
• The Sandman: Another mentioned being.
• Scary Dogmatic Aliens: The Solanoids worship the sun, and want to keep it from ever dying by launching other planets into it, "feeding" it.
• Shared Universe: The Free Universe was created mainly for this reason, allowing anyone to set a story in it and use its characters.
• Spring-Heeled Jack: He's in there too.
• Starfish Aliens: The Amoeba Men.
• Super Team: Has a few straight examples, as well as the League of Destiny, which is a parody of this trope.
• Weird Crossover: Characters and elements from superhero comics, classic literature, silent films, B-movies, picture books, and more are all included in the Free Universe.
• Weird Historical War: A lot of the superheroes fought in World War II.
• World of Weirdness: All manner of superheroes, supervillains, aliens, wizards, robots, gods, and demons exist in the Free Universe, and it's filled to the brim with fantastical locations and happenings. Don't believe us? See the lists of different locations and the world timeline.
• World War III: These are what cause the War Worlds.