The existence of merpeople and meranimals in the World of Truth timeline gives them a far larger impact on pop culture for centuries now, being larger than OTL.
Differences from OTL[]
The standard practices regarding land animals and their underwater "counterparts" is solved to avoid connections with certain lookalike animals. In many works of fiction, undersea cowboys ride merhorses instead of seahorses, the same is true for the undersea equivalent of horse racing. Some of the examples mentioned here are also mentioned in the articles below.
H2O: Just Add Water still exists and still has the length of its OTL counterpart, with minor lore changes. In later seasons mermen do exist but are mentioned due to their societies being divided (like what was mentioned later in Mako: Island of Secrets).
Portrayals of kings in the merworld are often depicted as mermen. Disney and Felix the Cat's interpretations of King Neptune here are mermen. The former from the Disney cartoons has mermaid daughters OTL, so it makes sense ITTL to make him a merman. Over the years, the general trend is to make kings more barechested and musculated, while in the first half of the 20th century, they appeared mainly using traditional emperor robes while revealing their bare chest.
Literature[]
In 19th century Denmark, alternate endings of The Little Mermaid were first written as "letters of concern" to Hans Christian Andersen and his "grim ending", as merpeople are immortal (the author got the 300 years theory from German writers, due to the lack of evidence and exploration that existed at the time). And the common alternate endings involved the prince becoming a merman instead of the main character dying.
Comic books[]
Film[]
The reboot of The Little Mermaid in 2023 has gained mixed approach,
Live-Action TV[]
In 2023, Freeform successfully premiered a live-action adaptation of The Farleys, with greater emphasis on the merpeople
Video Games[]
Modding videogames to feature merskins became the norm in the 2000s
Animation[]
Very limited waves of merpeople and meranimals appeared before the "merboom" that started in 1989, usually under the form of the "Atlantis episodes". It wouldn't be until 1993 when animators decided to "ride the wave" and introduce an attempt at making an all-merfolk animated series (disregarding Disney's The Little Mermaid, whose TV series had more episodes ITTL than OTL, to reach the 65 benchmark for syndication, but failed because Disney bought ABC). DIC in collaboration with its Italian counterpart came up with Atlantic City, 65 episodes for syndication, the series was conceived during Arielmania among girls, and took a number of influences from normal kids cartoons of the time, set in the suburbs of Atlantis. The series gained a cult following in the early 2000s and became an internet meme by 2007. The name of the series protagonist, Cody Triton, likely influenced The Farleys, a 2011 Disney XD animated series.
Darwin the Merman, one of the defining cartoons of the 2000s, was Cartoon Network's answer to SpongeBob, and lasted for six seasons.
See also[]
- Differences from OTL