History Main / GetBackToTheFuture

* Downplayed in the Soviet campaign of ''[[VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert2 Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge]]'', in which the time machine gets too much power and takes the player and all nearby Soviet units to {{Prehistoria}}; to return to the recent past like Zofia had originally intended, you only have to survive against the dinosaurs for a couple of minutes while the time machine recharges.

* ''{{Futurama}}'', "RoswellThatEndsWell": Supernova radiation collides with radiation from a microwave oven with metal inside to create a wormhole that sends the Planet Express ship back in time, accidentally creating the RoswellIncident and [[spoiler:making Fry [[MyOwnGrandpa his own grandfather]].]] They need a microwave oven in order to go back through the wormhole before it closes in, oh, say... EXACTLY 24 HOURS!

* This is TropeNamer and the plot of ''BackToTheFuture'', where Marty is stranded without plutonium in 1955 and needs to [[LightningCanDoAnything harness lightning]] in order to get home. The 3rd point makes several appearances in the series as well, including Marty messing up his parents relationship in the first movie and the GraysSportsAlmanac scenario in the second.

** In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS3E10Blink Blink]]", the Weeping Angels strand the Doctor and Martha in 1969 and they have to get Sally Sparrow to send the TARDIS back to them, so from their perspective the plot follows this trope. On the other hand, [[LowerDeckEpisode the episode isn't written from their perspective...]]

* This is TropeNamer and the plot of ''BackToTheFuture'', where Marty is stranded without plutonium in 1955 and needs to [[LightningCanDoAnything harness lightning]] in order to get home. The 3rd point makes several appearances in the series as well, including Marty messing up his parents relationship in the first and the GraysSportsAlmanac scenario in the second.

* This is the plot of ''BackToTheFuture'', where Marty is stranded without plutonium in 1955 and needs to [[LightningCanDoAnything harness lightning]] in order to get home. The 3rd point makes several appearances in the series as well, including Marty messing up his parents relationship in the first and the GraysSportsAlmanac scenario in the second.

* ''PhineasAndFerb'', "It's About Time!": Phineas, Ferb and Candace are stranded in the age of dinosaurs after their time machine is destroyed, and Phineas has to WriteBackToTheFuture telling the Fireside Girls to build a second time machine and come rescue them. When the rescue party arrives, it looks like they're still going to be stranded, because the time machine has to be plugged in. Fortunately, a convenient bolt of [[LightningCanDoAnything lightning]] gives them the power they need to get home.
** In "Phineas And Ferb's Quantumn Boogaloo" Future!Candace goes back in time and busts her brothers on the day they made that Rollercoaster. She goes to the future and finds its now a distopia. Then she goes back ''again'', stops her other previous self before she can bust her brothers, succeeds, but they both get trapped in the past. So they track down Phineas and Ferb so they can repair the time-machine and take them back to the future. (Or one of them, at least. Or maybe it never happened at all. TimeyWimeyBall means that this episode is something of a MindScrew.]]

[[caption-width-right:220:[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Three guesses what the plot is]]...and the first two don't count.]]

An accident involving time travel strands someone in the past; they have to figure out how to get back to their own time. The accident can take at least three forms:
* The traveler didn't mean to time travel at all, and has to figure out what was going on in the first place in order to replicate it.
* The traveler breaks or loses a crucial component of the time machine in the journey, and has to find it or improvise a replacement.
* The traveler accidentally [[ForWantOfANail screws up the past]], and the time machine won't work properly until they SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong.

Compare TrappedInThePast, where the character simply lives in the past instead of trying to return.
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[[AC:{{Film}}]]

[[AC:{{Literature}}]]

* In ''DoomsdayBook'' and ''Blackout''/''AllClear'' by ConnieWillis, time travelers are stranded in the past, the former during the Black Death and the latter during the second World War.

[[AC:LiveActionTV]]
* A solar flare in the ''{{Stargate SG-1}}'' episode "1969" strands SG-1 in the year 1969; they need to make a cross-continental road trip and use their foreknowledge of some other solar flares in order to get back.
* Most of the main cast of ''{{Eureka}}'' is sent back to 1947 in "Founder's Day". [[spoiler:Interestingly, this specifically averts the third variant; they ''do'' screw up the timeline, and they manage to get back to a version of 2010 anyway...]]
* The ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' episode "...Different Destinations" has the third variant, though they explicitly only have to get close to the correct events in order for the timeline to correct itself. [[DownerEnding Unfortunately, the "close" version into which they stumble is the one where a peace conference turns into a massacre, and they can't go back again to correct it.]]
* The ''StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' episode "Little Green Men" has a starship accident which puts Quark, Nog, and Rom in [[RoswellThatEndsWell Roswell]] in 1947; they need get back to their ship and figure out how to reproduce the accident.
* ''LostInSpace'' episode "Visit to a Hostile Planet". The Jupiter 2 goes through a time warp and ends up orbiting Earth in the year 1947.
* ''StarTrekTheOriginalSeries''
** "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow_Is_Yesterday Tomorrow Is Yesterday]]": While breaking away from a black hole, the Enterprise is flung back in time to the year 1969. They must find a way to [[NowDoItAgainBackwards reverse the effect]] to return to their own time.
** "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Our_Yesterdays_(Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series) All Our Yesterdays]]": Kirk, Spock and [=McCoy=] are sent back in time to earlier eras of the planet Sarpeidon and must find the doorway(s) that will take them back.

** In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS3E10Blink Blink]]", the Weeping Angels strand the Doctor and Martha in 1969 and they have to get Sally Sparrow to send the TARDIS back to them, so from their perspective the plot follows this trope. On the other hand, [[LowerDeckEpisode the episode isn't written from their perspective...]]

* ''TheTwilightZone'' TOS episode "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Odyssey_of_Flight_33 The Odyssey of Flight 33]]": In 1961, a airliner is sent back to the time of the dinosaurs when it's accelerated to enormous speed by an unusual jet stream. It uses the jet stream to try to get back and ends up in the recent past (1939).
* ''Series/ItsAboutTime'' starts out being about two astronauts TrappedInThePast, and passes through this trope on the way to a ReTool into a show about cavemen adjusting to the present.

[[AC:TabletopGames]]
* Each of the players in ''{{Chrononauts}}'' is a time traveler from an alternate history, stranded in our timeline. One of the three ways a player can win is to restore his specific timeline and return home.

[[AC:WesternAnimation]]

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* The traveler breaks or loses a crucial component of the time machine in the journey, and has to improvise a replacement.

* The ''StargateAtlantis'' episode "Before I Sleep" is a cross between this trope and TrappedInThePast; an alternate-universe version of Weir ends up returning to the present by cryogenically preserving herself and taking TheSlowPath.

* ''ItsAboutTime'' starts out being about two astronauts TrappedInThePast, and passes through this trope on the way to a ReTool into a show about cavemen adjusting to the present.

* The ''{{Farscape}}'' episode "...Different Destinations" has the third variant, though they explicitly only have to get close to the correct events in order for the timeline to correct itself. [[DownerEnding Unfortunately, the "close" version into which they stumble is the one where a peace conference turns into a massacre, and they can't go back again to correct it.]]

* ''DoctorWho'':

* In ''JohnnyAndTheBomb'', Wobbler finds himself unable to travel forward in time from the Second World War after he inadvertently [[GrandfatherParadox causes the death of his own grandfather]], leading to a timeline where he stays in the past and uses his foreknowledge to become the richest man in the world. His friends go back to save Wobbler's grandfather and restore the timeline.

** Or the classic episode where Spock and Kirk have to follow a not-himself McCoy to 1930's Earth to prevent him from accidentally changing history.

* ''{{Futurama}}'', "RoswellThatEndsWell": Supernova radiation collides with radiation from a microwave oven with metal inside to create a wormhole that sends the Planet Express ship back in time, accidentally creating the RoswellIncident and [[spoiler:making Fry [[MyOwnGrandpa his own grandfather]].]] They need a microwave oven in order to go back through the wormhole before it closes in 24 hours.

* This is the plot of ''BackToTheFuture'', where Marty is stranded without plutonium in 1955 and needs to [[LightningCanDoAnything harness lightning]] in order to get home.
** The 3rd point makes several appearances in the series as well, including Marty messing up his parents relationship in the first and the GraysSportsAlmanac scenario in the second.

* This is the plot of ''BackToTheFuture'', where Marty is stranded without plutonium in 1955 and needs to [[LightningCanDoAnything harness lightning]] in order to get home.

* ''{{Futurama}}'', "RoswellThatEndsWell": Supernova radiation collides with radiation from a microwave oven with metal inside to create a wormhole that sends the Planet Express ship back in time, accidentally creating the RoswellIncident and [[spoiler:making Fry [[MyOwnGrandpa his own grandfather]].]] They need a microwave oven in order to go back through the wormhole before it closes in 24 hours.

* In the ''DoctorWho'' episode "[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS3E10Blink Blink]]", the Weeping Angels strand the Doctor and Martha in 1969 and they have to get Sally Sparrow to send the TARDIS back to them, so from their perspective the plot follows this trope. On the other hand, [[LowerDeckEpisode the episode isn't written from their perspective...]]
** A great many stories from the the First Doctor era pretty much lived on Rule 2. In the second story, the Daleks took a vital component to the TARDIS (rendering the ship immobile), the TARDIS was trapped behind a one-way wall in an Aztec temple, the TARDIS was buried under a pile of debris during the Dalek Invasion of Earth and so on.