Butterfly effect in popular culture

Ray Bradbury's 1952 short story A Sound of Thunder, which explores the concept of how the death of a butterfly in the past could have drastic changes in the future is a representation of the butterfly effect, and used as an example of how to consider chaos theory and the physics of time travel.[2] The story was made into a film of the same name, an episode of the television series Ray Bradbury Theater, and its influence can be seen in the film The Terminator, the short story "Kamikaze Butterflies", and an episode of the television series The Simpsons. "My Butterfly", an episode from the TV show Scrubs, also features two separate timelines, each influenced by a butterfly. The Butterfly Effect was also mentioned in The Amazing World Of Gumball in which a butterfly is let out of a jar which causes a series of events leading to a tornado.

Also in 1952, John Steinbeck illustrates the butterfly effect in his best-selling novel East of Eden: "The direction of a big act will warp history, but probably all acts do the same in their degree, down to a stone stepped over in the path or a breath caught at sight of a pretty girl or a fingernail nicked in the garden soil" (Chapter 4, paragraph 2).

The films The Butterfly Effect and Havana mischaracterize the butterfly effect in the typical fashion of its pop-culture understanding, according to writer Peter Dizikes, asserting that the butterfly effect can be calculated with certainty, which is the opposite of its meaning in chaos theory about the unpredictability of certain physical systems.[1] Jeff Goldblum's character Dr. Ian Malcolm from the 1993 movie Jurassic Park attempts to explain chaos theory to Laura Dern's character, Dr. Ellie Sattler, specifically using the butterfly effect as an example.[3] Terry Pratchett's novel Interesting Times tells of the magical "Quantum Weather Butterfly", who has the ability to manipulate weather patterns.[4] The 2009 film Mr. Nobody also delves into the concept of smaller choices, that inevitably result in larger changes that alter a person's life.

In William Tenn's short story Brooklyn Project, a tyrannical US Government brushes aside the warnings of scientists about the dangers of time travel and goes on with a planned experiment - with the result that minor changes to the prehistoric past cause Humanity to never have existed, its place taken by tentacled underwater intelligent creatures - who also have a tyrannical government which also insists on experimenting with time-travel.[5]

The Indian films Dasavathaaram,Super Deluxe and Nannaku Prematho are mainly based on the concept of Butterfly effect.

In Nick Hancock and Chris England's 1997 book What Didn't Happen Next: An Alternative History of Football it is suggested that, had Gordon Banks been fit to play in the 1970 FIFA World Cup quarter-final, there would have been no Thatcherism and the post-war consensus would have continued indefinitely.[6]

The 2015 video game Until Dawn features the butterfly effect as a central plot point, using the term to describe how the player's choices can drastically affect the outcome of the game's events.

The video game Life Is Strange, also released in 2015, makes multiple references to the butterfly effect and also uses it to describe how the player's choices heavily affects to the plot of the game.

Hip-hop artist Travis Scott mentions this phenomenon in his 2017 single Butterfly Effect.

In Captain Underpants and the Terrifying Return of Tippy Tinkletrousers, the Butterfly Effect is referred to as the Banana Cream Pie Paradox.

• Alternate history
• Point of divergence

• The meaning of the butterfly: Why pop culture loves the 'butterfly effect,' and gets it totally wrong, Peter Dizikes, The Boston Globe, June 8, 2008