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Tras la pelea, todo cambió.

Tras la pelea, todo cambió.
After the fight, everything changed.
From Lesson 171:Sequencing past events·Spanish (Latin America)

Questions & Answers about Tras la pelea, todo cambió.

Since this lesson is about the past perfect (actions completed before other past actions), why isn't there a past perfect verb here?
The past perfect connects two past verbs, like if we said "After they habían peleado (had fought), everything changed." In this sentence, the earlier "event" is just a noun phrase (la pelea). Because there's no verb for the first action, we only need one verb for the second action (cambió), which takes the simple preterite.
Can I use después de instead of tras in this sentence?
Yes, absolutely. Tras and después de both mean "after" in this context. Tras is slightly more concise and can sometimes sound a tiny bit more formal or dramatic, but después de la pelea is completely natural and means the exact same thing.
Why use the preterite cambió instead of the imperfect cambiaba?
The preterite is used here to show a completed, definitive shift. The fight acted as a clear trigger that caused the change. If you used the imperfect (todo cambiaba), it would mean "everything was changing" continually in the background, rather than a complete "before and after" shift.
Does todo need an article or noun to mean "everything"?
No. When todo stands completely alone as the subject of the sentence, it translates directly to "everything." You only need to add an article and a noun when you want to say "all the [things]" (for example, todos los días or toda la comida).

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