Inspired by the Kingdom Come and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns comic storylines, X-Men, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the political and social upheavals of the 1990s, the game depicts renegade superheroes fighting a corrupt and evil government.

Soon after the end of the war, many other super-powered humans began to appear, as people in mortal danger would sometimes manifest superhuman powers.

Super-powered criminals appeared as well, but were kept in check by their heroic counterparts; this period was analogous to the Golden Age of Comic Books in our timeline.

On December 7, 1941, Naval Station Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japanese fighters alongside Deltas associated with the Empire of Japan.

A Nazi Delta known as Kaptian Krieg received the distress call and soon arrived to put down what he thought was merely another uprising, only to be torn apart by Superior.

Senator Joseph McCarthy held his HUAC hearings over paranoia during the Second Red Scare, but a Delta hero named Patriot eventually shamed him into closing them earlier than in our timeline.

Instead of sniper fire, in this world, Lee Harvey Oswald was one of several super-villains in power armor who attacked the President's motorcade with energy weapons.

The Delta Registration Act was quickly passed by Congress, making it a federal offense punishable by life imprisonment to not register superpowers with the government within seven days of manifesting them.

On July 4, 1976, the "Bicentennial Battle" erupted in downtown Chicago as a showdown between the Devastator, his minions and allies, and Superior and the forces of Delta Prime.

Devastator threatened to detonate a mysterious "doomsday bomb" on top of the Sears Tower unless Superior surrendered to him, but his ultimatum was refused, and the bomb was detonated—everything within 25 miles (40 km) of the Sears Tower vanished, leaving a shallow crater into which Lake Michigan flowed, creating the Chicago Bay and killing millions.

Without the fear of Alphas, the Defiance and Delta super-villains were emboldened to act, leaving many cities scarred from super-powered conflicts.

When the Soviet Union neared collapse in 1988, a coup restored communist power, and the CIA orchestrated the assassination of the general responsible.

In 1989, in response to an incident involving Deltas in Chernobyl, a limited nuclear war broke out between the US and USSR, destroying Atlanta, San Francisco, Kyiv, and Minsk.

The Defiance reached its greatest strength as the development of the Internet in the 1990s made it much easier for Deltas to stay in contact and organize.

The Brave New World books were mostly black & white, with small glossy color sections that would give exposition about the setting and plot, and very important information, like new power packages.

Matt Forbeck has stated his interest in returning to produce new Brave New World materials, possibly in PDF format, but acknowledges the legal and licensing issues that may make such a project very difficult.

[3] Brave New World books always were intentionally vague about some parts of the setting, implying that there were mysteries that the general public (and player characters) would not know about.

The man who calls himself John F. Kennedy is actually "Facade", an Alpha shapeshifter who Superior convinced to temporarily impersonate the President to allow for a more orderly transfer of office.

The Multiversal Police returned to Earth, and spoke with Facade (impersonating President Kennedy), explaining the real nature of their powers and the danger their world was in, and they made a deal with him.