Commonly abbreviated to AH Cliches (no accent because we're a bunch of lazy francophobes), these describe certain concepts, technologies, events and scenarios that tend to crop up in a large number of timelines, particularly those written by those unfamiliar with the wider AH community. What follows is an alphabetical list of the most notorious clichés.

Important note: Not all of the concepts or plots listed here are clichés themselves ! While most are, many are just good ideas (e. g. a surviving independent British space/aviation industry), marred by the same old unresearched assumptions of AH authors. Others are tolerable (e. g. the greater proliferation or survival of airships/battleships than in our history), but can be easily overdone to the point of irrelevance… Or worse - making the reader bored.

• Airships

• Balkanize... NOW !!!

• Battleships

• Bland, united India

• British aviation industry

• British space program

• Confederate Cuba

• The Deutsches Reich Imperial European Union: In a world where the Central Powers have won WWI, it's nigh impossible to not have a German-led Zollverein in Europe, that will - of course - exclude Britain and France.

• Disunited Germany

• Disunited Italy

• Everybody loves eugenics: An easy, lazy way to paint an scenario as dystopic if one keeps butterflying real historical genocides and massacres away.

• Exiled royals go to the colonies: Wherein the home country in Europe is invaded, possibly by the French, and the royals have to go to the Colonies and continue from then on; inspired by the exiled of the Braganzas to Brazil between 1808 and 1822 after the Napoleonic invasion of Portugal in 1808.

• German techwank

• Halifax the surrender monkey

• Nazi Argentina: The idea that Argentina was crawling with Nazi sympathizers to the degree in which they could take power and join the Axis at any given moment just because the author says so.

• Nothing ever happens in South America

• No, it doesn't actually mean 'Wormwood'

• Operation Sealion

• Pan-Slavist Romania: A common misconception is that Romanians are Slavic people and that they would want to join a Pan-Slavic movement of their neighbours.

• Pan-Turkic Tajikistan: Similar to the above, the misconception that Tajiks are Turks, where as in reality they are Persians.

• Pan-anything: While movements such as Pan-Arabism, Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism existed in OTL, that doesn't mean other, sometimes ridiculous varieties would have existed in ATL.

• Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck

• Pendulum Fallacy: The idea that if a country/religion/ideology etc loses territory it has in OTL, it has to gain territory elsewhere to compensate.

• Pin the Zion on the Eurasia: A reference to the fact that Israel appears in multitudinous and bizarre places in many timelines. The title here was coined by ninebucks. Despite the name, Patagonia, Alaska and Australia are also popular destinations.

• Premodern Japan as a great power

• President Anybody

• President Cliche

• Randomian Congo

• Random Axis South America: When a random South American nation joins the Axis, or goes Fascist during the 1930s. Related to the already mentioned “Argentina becomes an instant refuge for vengeful Nazis, who set up a Third Reich in exile” cliché.

• Ridiculously overpowered Ireland

• Space filling empire

• Space programme changes: Generally, absolutely any TL which involves any change at all to the OTL space programme will result in a vastly more extensive and successful one than OTL. Even if the change consists of Neil Armstrong wearing red socks instead of white on March 14th 1967.

• Stupidly-named Italy

• That damned Kazakh border

• Uber Brandenburg

• Uber Cornwall

• Uninvadable super-duper Switzerland

• United State

• Villainous Afrikaners

• WWI and WWII must always occur

• Zheng He

Historical Misconceptions

Future History Clichés

The "Rules/Clichés of AH" thread (a.k.a. The Grand List of AH clichés)

Irritating clichés about pre-1900 alternate history

Irritating clichés about post-1900 alternate history

Overlooked Clichés

What annoys you in TLs ?

Allohistorical Convergence Pet Peeves - A thread critizing the Citroen DS Incident that often crops up in TLs, commonly leading to a lot of clichés.