List of DC Multiverse worlds

The DC Multiverse is a fictional continuity construct used in numerous DC Comics publications. The Multiverse has undergone numerous changes since its introduction and has included various universes, listed below between the original Multiverse and its successors.

Originally, there was no consistency regarding "numbered" Earths—they would be either spelled out as words or use numbers, even within the same story. For example, "Crisis on Earth-Three!" (Justice League of America #29 (August 1964)) uses "Earth-3" and "Earth-Three" interchangeably. However, a tradition of spelling out the numbers emerged in "The Most Dangerous Earth" (Justice League of America #30 (September 1964)). This convention was disregarded in Crisis on Infinite Earths, and it became common practice to refer to the various Earths with numerals instead. Infinite Crisis used both, but Crisis on Infinite Earths: Absolute Edition and everything after 52 have referred to the alternate universes with numerals.

Because 52 introduced another set of Earths, The Flash: Flashpoint changed the nature of many of those Earths. The New 52 and Convergence restored the Pre-Crisis Multiverse; all Pre-Crisis Earths below 52 are spelled out (i.e., Earth-Three), realities from the 52 Multiverse and the New 52 Multiverse use a hyphen (Earth-3), and they later use a space (i.e., Earth 3) after the Dark Multiverse was introduced, which uses negative numbers (i.e., Earth -3).

Also, Earths that were "revealed as a distinct parallel Earth in The Kingdom #2", i.e., part of Hypertime, are marked with an asterisk. Variations of some of these worlds appeared in the 52 and New 52 Multiverses, which are also Hypertime realities.

Note that Wonder Woman met a duplicate version of herself coming from an unnamed twin Earth in "Wonder Woman's Invisible Twin", (Wonder Woman #59 (May–June 1953)). It was the first appearance of an alternate Earth in DC Comics.

Before the formal creation of its Multiverse, DC would use the "imaginary story" label to denote stories that did not fit and never were intended to fit into its canon—a tradition it would continue even after the creation of the Multiverse. Alan Moore's "What Ever happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" (Action Comics #583 and Superman #423) in 1986 was the last Pre-Crisis story to use the label.

By contrast, other stories were clearly intended to be canonical, but various details were wrong or there were stories told in other media that were never said not to be canonical. As a result, fans and editors would create other Earths to explain things like the Super Friends comic (set on what writers referred to as Earth-B).

Also there were many "one-shot" Earths (such as the Earth shown in "Superman, You're Dead, Dead, Dead" in Action Comics #399), for which few details were provided and would not be named until Crisis on Infinite Earths: Absolute Edition (November 2005) was published. Finally, not all alternate reality stories were assigned a name. These included (but were not limited to) the two-page "How Superman Would Win the War" (1940), the ancient Greece/ancient Israel mash-up world from Action Comics #308 (January 1964), the Earth where "The Super-Panhandler of Metropolis" and "The Secret of the Wheel-Chair Superman!" (Action Comics #396-397) take place, and some of the Earths seen in Superboy (vol. 4) #61-62.