#often the biggest difference is black zetsu suddenly deciding to show up and act like a stupid cartoon villain lol

[evilkitten3]

But listen, if Izuna had said yes to Hashirama's help after he was injured and he still died, would Madara rampage like in canon? Would he still chase the infinite tsukyomi?

the thing is, hashirama never offered to help izuna. i'm actually not sure he could have - the hiraishingiri pretty much cut through him like butter. moreover, while madara himself lauds hashirama's medical prowess, we actually know very little about his capabilities with medical ninjutsu. he could heal wounds without any hand seals, that's mostly all we know.

here are hashirama's words immediately after izuna is injured:

「マダラ・・・お前はオレには勝てない・・・もう・・・終わりにしよう・・・忍最強のうちはと千手が組めば・・・国も我々と見合う他の忍一族を見つけられなくなる・・・いずれ争いも沈静化していく」

"madara... you can't beat me... let's end it already. if the strongest shinobi, the uchiha and the senju, form an alliance... the country won't be able to find another shinobi clan able to counterbalance us... the conflict will eventually calm down"

he doesn't acknowledge izuna at all. whether he intended an offer of medical aid to be implied or not, it's never addressed. a bunch of people have claimed that this makes hashirama a jerk, and while i definitely get that viewpoint, i do think offering to help izuna without being absolutely certain he was capable of doing so would've been a terrible move, politically speaking. madara might have known that hashirama isn't the sort of man who would do something like this, but the rest of the uchiha clan would have no reason not to assume that hashirama didn't just take advantage of madara's kindness/trust/desperation/whatever to ensure that izuna died while potentially leaving room for madara to feel indebted to him for trying in spite of all the reasons he had not to bother.

hell, the clan might even come to the conclusion that madara intended for izuna to die so he could get his eyes, given what ended up happening in canon, so his fallout with them might actually happen even faster (and without the uchiha ever joining konoha at all, although without madara around to counter hashirama, i have no idea if/how the uchiha would manage against the senju from there)

all that aside, if hashirama had indeed offered help and izuna had agreed to take the risk and died anyway and the uchiha clan trusted that that was what had actually happened, i think pretty much everything else would've proceeded according to canon.

there's definitely plenty of fun possibilities to play around with concerning madara's path in life, but tbh i personally believe that without a massive deviation from canon, he would've eventually become who he became. hashirama definitely fucked up here and there, but i honestly don't think there was anything he could've personally done alone that would've changed madara's fate short of killing him back when they were kids, which he was never going to do. he was always doomed.