History Film / TheButterflyEffect

* AnAesop: Similar to that of ''[[Film/TheTimeMachine2002 The Time Machine]]'' remake, all of the bad futures Evan creates are a result of his efforts to create a future where he and his love interest are together. It's only by [[spoiler:scaring Kayleigh at their first meeting, ensuring she never chooses to stay with her abusive father in order to stay close to her best friend, that Evan succeeds in creating a future where everyone is well-adjusted and happy.]] Sometimes, the kindest thing you can do for someone is to let them go. This all ties into another lesson that we are all the sum of our experiences, so seemingly small changes can make a huge impact over someone's lifetime.

* ForWantOfANail: The film explores how certain little actions in Evan's childhood drastically affect his adult life, as Evan learns the hard way in his several time travel attempts.

* TraumaCongaLine: A brief description of the various horrible things depicted in the course of this film: self-harm, mental illness, child rape, child pornography, domestic child abuse, manslaughter, murder, infanticide, violent animal cruelty, incarceration in a mental hospital, suicide, multiple stillbirths, prison violence, neo-Nazism, white supremacy, prison rape, being stabbed in the genitals, being forced into prostitution, heroin addiction, quadruple amputation, lung cancer. The director's cut even culminates in probably the only example of [[spoiler:prenatal suicide]] in cinematic history. This is a relentless miserable, joyless film, to such a contrived extreme that many critics complained it fell repeatedly into {{Narm}} territory.

[[quoteright:204:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_butterfly_effect_001_45.jpg]][[caption-width-right:204:''[[TagLine It will all end well in the beginning.]]'']]

* AnAesop: Similar to that of ''[[Film/TheTimeMachine2002 The Time Machine]]'' remake, all of the bad futures Evan creates are a result of his efforts to create a future where he and his love interest are together. It's only by [[spoiler: scaring Kayleigh at their first meeting, ensuring she never chooses to stay with her abusive father in order to stay close to her best friend, that Evan succeeds in creating a future where everyone is well-adjusted and happy.]] Sometimes, the kindest thing you can do for someone is to let them go. This all ties into another lesson that we are all the sum of our experiences, so seemingly small changes can make a huge impact over someone's lifetime.

* BackToTheWomb: In the director's cut of ''Film/TheButterflyEffect'', it's revealed that Evan's MentalTimeTravel powers can take him all the way back to the womb once he has some footage of that time. [[spoiler: In the ending, with his power about to break down from cumulative brain damage, Evan enacts a last-ditch attempt to change history for the better by travelling back to before he was born and [[TemporalSuicide strangling himself with his own umbilical cord]].]]

* BeautyIsNeverTarnished: Horribly averted [[spoiler: in Kayleigh's junkie prostitute incarnation]].

** There are actually two more endings other than the director's cut where things seem even more open-ended. [[spoiler: Evan decides to go in the other direction to follow Kayleigh, or they stop to introduce themselves and decide to get some coffee.]]

--> '''Evan:''' I guess charisma and eyeliner go a long way.

* TemporalAbortion: In the Director's cut ending: [[spoiler: Evan ends up strangling himself with his umbilical cord in the womb.]]
* TemporalSuicide: At the end of the director's cut, [[spoiler: Evan uses his MentalTimeTravel powers to go all the way back to when he was a fetus still in his mother's womb and strangles himself to death with his own umbilical cord so that [[RetGone he couldn't ruin the lives of everyone he would've met]]. It's also strongly implied Evan's two unborn siblings who were stillborn had the same powers and [[HistoryRepeats went through the same thing]]]].

* ParentalIncest: Kayleigh was molested by her father. He molested Tommy instead in another timeline thanks to Evan mucking around with the timeline and [[LooseLips not shutting up after getting his point across]].

* AnachronismStew: A very small one. A flashback shows teenage Evan and his friends at the movies watching ''Film/Se7en'' which opened in September of 1995. However, the film listed below ''[=Se7en=]'' on the marquee is ''Film/DumbAndDumber'' which opened in December 1994 and was on VHS by that point. Maybe there was a limited re-release in the original timeline.

* DeusAngstMachina: This is a movie in which the main character is molested by his friend's father (along with his friends), physically attacked by his insane father who is then beat to death in front of him, accidentally blows up a woman and her baby in a [[DeadlyPrank prank gone wrong]], has his pet dog burned to death and watches his best friend go insane... ''within the first '''half hour'''''.

* IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy: Evan spends the whole movie going back in time to try to end up with the girl, mucking things up more and more, before figuring out that this is the only way to go. In fact, this {{Aesop}} is taken to an extreme, as in ''everyone in the world would be better off without knowing you at all''. In an alternate ending, the character figures ''that'' out as well, and [[spoiler:''strangles himself in the womb'']]. [[SarcasmMode God knows]] why they don't show [[DownerEnding that one]] on TV... It's also strongly implied that this alternate ending has happened MANY MANY times before to his mother with previous pregnancies...

** By averting the dynamite mailbox prank, [[spoiler:Evan loses both of his arms and grows up an amputee. This creates the future where Kayleigh ends up with Lenny, which Evan doesn't accept]].

** [[{{Goth}} Thumper]] gets some characterization in that because Evan most likely never knew Thumper before going to college, so in each scene he appears he's relatively the same. [[spoiler:Such as in the "Evan is a frat jock" timeline, Thumper is walking along the hallway and Evan asks Thumper by name what time it is, to see if he's recognized by his roommate in the other timeline, Thumper curses him out and walks off]]. Thumper dresses similar from scene to scene, stands up for himself when threatened, and seems to be a bit of a Casanova, and [[spoiler:when the new timeline is formed where Thumper and Evan's beds are reversed, in one scene he is making love in Evan's bed instead of his own implying he likes that side of the dorm room (which was Thumper's in the establishing dorm room scene before the timeline changes) better than his own.]]

* DownerEnding: The director's cut. [[spoiler:Evan realizes that [[DoomMagnet he's the reason why everyone else's lives are so miserable]], so he travels back to when he was still in his mother's womb and suffocates himself.]]

* BreakHerHeartToSaveHer: In the theatrical cut, [[spoiler:Evan finally decides that the best course of action is to go back to where he and Kayleigh first meet and be mean to her, so she never befriends him, moves away with her mother, and avoids the sexual abuse by her father which ultimately leads to her suicide]].