system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[General] Do I exist in fictional universes?

If I had some sort of device that could transport me into, say, the latest episode of *Criminal Minds*, and then I made my way to my hometown, would I find another me there?

Or if I transported myself into the *MCU* and called my phone, would I hear my own voice on the other end?

So long as the setting is early-21st century Earth, I should exist, right?
gpt
It depends. For something like Criminal Minds et al, unless you live in an area affected by events from the show or the show's backstory, then you likely live there just as you do here. In general, worlds like that are explicitly identical to ours except where noted.

The MCU is a little bit trickier. Their WW2 had Hydra mucking about, Cap's deployment and the super soldier serum. Howard Stark making all those inventions for the allies. S.H.I.E.L.D. All of that likely had some kind of butterfly effect on the modern world (Sokovia and Wakanda being countries, for example). Chances are unless you're from, or descended from, someone affected by those events then you'd still exist though differences are still likely.

The closer a particular universe and its history are to ours, the more likely it is that you do indeed exist with the inverse also being true. That's not to say you couldn't exist in the 21st century of the Star Trek universe, it's certainly possible, but the chances of that version being identical to *you* are slim at best.