History Main / TheCretaceousIsAlwaysDoomed

* In the ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' episode "Road to Germany", Brian and Stewie travel back in time to Warsaw, Poland (though how they got to Poland from Rhode Island is never explained), September 1st, 1939. The date that Germany invades Poland and kicks off World War II. They have time for one Jewish wedding before tanks start rolling in.

* ''Series/PrehistoricPark'' may play the trope straight in the first episode, but Nigel's other trips follow other periods due to a desire to get animals at their end of their ropes, which minimizes paradoxes. At two different points he travels to points in time where his target species are in fact quite common: first the Mammoth in his second trip in episode 2, and later the Smilodon in episode 4. He didn't try and get any of them then and when he did get their respective species it was in the first and second trips of their episodes respectively. He did grab a wolly rhino and a terror bird during those trips, as ''those'' species were at the end of their time, though only the terror bird was planned.

* In the first episode of ''Series/PrehistoricPark'', Nigel must collect a T. rex for the park before the asteroid hits. He justifies this by saying that he wants to get a specimen that would have died anyway [[ButterflyOfDoom so the timestream won't alter too much]]. However, he later revisits the period on other trips involving significantly fewer asteroids.

* This happens many times during ''Literature/TheMagicTreehouse'' series. It's justified because the books are usually meant to take them to a specific event like the Pompeii eruption, but Jack and Annie [[ForgotAboutHisPowers often don't bother to read further in the book]] until said disastrous event is happening. Ironically, this is averted in the first book when the duo end up in the late Cretaceous, and there's not an asteroid in sight.

* ''Series/PrehistoricPark'' may play the trope straight in the first episode, but Nigel's other trips follow other periods due to a desire to get animals at their end of their ropes, which minimizes paradoxes. At two different points he travels to points in time where his target species are in fact quite common: first the Mammoth in his second trip in episode 2, and later the Smilodon in episode 4. He didn't try and get any of them then and when he did get their respective species it was in the first and second trips of their episodes respectively. He did grab a wholly rhino and a terror bird during those trips, as ''those'' species were at the end of their time, though only the terror bird as planned.

* In ''[[Literature/{{Animorphs}} Megamorphs 2]]'', a hole in space-time causes the Animorphs to accidentally arrive one day before the asteroid hit. They get into a tussle with several warring AncientAstronauts trying to colonize Earth, the losing species attempting revenge by diverting the path of a passing comet. The meteor's strike creates another hole that lets the kids return to the present. It was one of the weirder books.

* {{Averted}} in ''The New Dinosaurs'' by Dougal Dixon, which speculates on how dinosaurs and pterosaurs may have evolved if the K-Pg extinction ''hadn't'' happened.

* This happens many times during ''Literature/TheMagicTreehouse'' series. It's justified because the books are usually meant to take them to a specific event like the Pompeii eruption, but Jack and Annie [[ForgotAboutHisPowers often don't bother to read further in the book]] until said disastrous event is happening. Ironically, this is averted in the first book when the duo end up in the late Cretaceous.

* In ''Series/TheTwilightZone'' episode "There's No Time Like the Past" this was being done intentionally at first, as a man goes back in time to attempt to warn the people of Hiroshima about a nuclear bomb in 1945 (hours before it hit), prevent the sinking of the RMS Lusitania (hours before it was torpedoed), and kill UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler before UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. But when he decides to stop trying to change the past and go live in 1881, this trope still comes into play. He arrives the day before President UsefulNotes/JamesGarfield is assassinated, but decides to let it happen. Then it turns out he arrived a few days before a huge fire killed some children at the local schoolhouse, and he struggles with whether or not to prevent it, only to end up causing it when he does try to intervene.

** Nigel Marvin's missions go back to periods of time where species are at the end of their line. He went back to before the meteor impact to get a T. Rex, and grabbed a ''Triceratops'' and a flock of ''Ornithomimus'' while he was there while trying to get a Rex to follow. His later missions to the period were after species that died out before this point, like ''Microraptor'' and ''Deinosuchus''. The former did have a volcanic eruption go off, so at least two of his trips did involve giant explosions and dust clouds of death. The latter just had dinosaur eating crocs from Texas.

* ''Series/PrehistoricPark'' may play the trope straight in the first episode, but his other trips follow other periods due to a desire to get animals at their end of their ropes, which minimizes paradoxes. At two different points he travels to points in time where his target species are in fact quite common: first the Mammoth in his second trip in episode 2, and later the Smilodon in episode 4. He didn't try and get any of them then and when he did get their respective species it was in the first and second trips of their episodes respectively. He did grab a wholly rhino and a terror bird during those trips, as ''those'' species were at the end of their time, though only the terror bird as planned.

* In ''Literature/TheScienceOfDiscworld'', the wizards and especially Rincewind see just about every asteroid and comet impact in Earth's ("Roundworld's") prehistory largely because they're fast-forwarding much of the time. It's still suspicious that they end up being virtually present at the moments of actual impact events -- including the dinosaur-ending one.
* Scientists in Robert J Sawyer's ''Literature/EndOfAnEra'' travel back in time to the Cretaceous in order to (of course) study dinosaurs. Because of some uncertainty in the equations, they happen to arrive a couple days before the K-Pg Event. And for good reason, too. [[spoiler:They caused it.]]

* ''Timeriders'' likes to play with this trope. The second book involves ending up in the late Cretaceous with a dozen or so civilians, but despite the approximate date (about 62.5 million years BC - geology is wonderfully vague like that) the asteroid is not their primary mortality concern, but (in order) food and water, disease, predators and inbreeding. And the pack of highly intelligent and adaptable predators that have been stalking them for the last month, of course.

* Justified in ''Literature/{{Pathfinder}}''. The protagonist Rigg can travel back in time by identifying the [[FluorescentFootprints "path"]] of a living thing that had walked the land before. In a moment of urgency he picks the most recent path of an extinct animal he sees, which turns out to be fleeing the ColonyDrop that rendered it extinct.

* The 1998 UsefulNotes/AppleMacintosh game ''VideoGame/{{Nanosaur}}'' takes this trope UpToEleven: by the year 4122, humanity is extinct and genetically-egineered, intelligent dinosaurs rule the Earth. Problem is, due to their small genetic pool, inbreeding becomes a serious problem and they decide to send [[PlayerCharacter a velociraptor]] back to the Cretaceous era to collect various dinosaur eggs. You'll never play this game for more than 20 minutes, ''because that's all the time you have to complete your mission before the asteroid hits.''

This need not apply only to the K-Pg extinction. Fiction loves to [[{{Flanderization}} flanderize]] history into simple compact events and travelers headed to other periods may find themselves in the midst of other disasters, like arriving in Manassas only to find [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar a civil war is breaking out]], or visiting Pompeii only for a volcano to erupt. Such a visitor is not looking to change history or see said famous event, they just want to take a stroll and breathe in the surroundings only to realize: "OhCrap This 20th century ship I'm on is called [[UsefulNotes/RMSTitanic Titanic]]!"

This need not apply only to the K-Pg extinction. Fiction loves to [[{{Flanderization}} flanderize]] history into simple compact events and travelers headed to other periods may find themselves in the midst of other disasters, like arriving in Manassas only to find [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar a civil war is breaking out]], or visiting Pompeii only for a volcano to erupt. Such a visitor is not looking to change history or see said famous event, they just want to take a stroll and breathe in the surroundings only to realize: "OhCrap! This 20th century ship I'm on is called [[UsefulNotes/RMSTitanic Titanic]]!"

* Invoked in ''Series/Loki2021'' by the rogue Variant, who is able to avoid attracting [[TimePolice TVA]] attention by hiding at apocalyptic moments in time — you can't alter the timestream enough to make a noticeable difference if everyone you're affecting is dying in an hour anyway. After Loki deduces this, he and Mobius test this by visiting Pompeii and making a scene in the town just as Mount Vesuvius erupts. [[spoiler:It's later shown the TVA itself invokes this by sending everything from the errant timelines they "prune" to an apocalyptic event at the "end of Time", where they are devoured by [[{{Cumulonemesis}} Alioth.]]

* Invoked in ''Series/Loki2021'' by the rogue Variant, who is able to avoid attracting [[TimePolice TVA]] attention by hiding at apocalyptic moments in time — you can't alter the timestream enough to make a noticeable difference if everyone you're affecting is dying in an hour anyway. After Loki deduces this, he and Mobius test this by visiting Pompeii and making a scene in the town just as Mount Vesuvius erupts.

* Invoked in ''Series/{{Loki 2021}}''. The TVA can detect changes in the timeline, except in cases where a sufficiently large disaster -- natural or otherwise -- will wipe out any evidence of changes and anyone who might have bore witness to them. The Variant exploits this by traveling to the brief window prior to these disasters, wherein their actions cannot affect history.

* Invoked in ''Series/Loki2021'' by the rogue Variant, who is able to avoid attracting [[TimePolice TVA]] attention by hiding at apocalyptic moments in time — you can't alter the timestream enough to make a noticeable difference if everyone you're affecting is dying in an hour anyway. After Loki deduces this, he and Mobius test this by visiting Pompeii and making a scene in the town just as Mount Vesuvius erupts.

Related to InThePastEveryoneWillBeFamous. As noted above, it may be part of a PhlebotinumKilledTheDinosaurs plot.

* Invoked in ''Series/Loki2021'' by the rogue Variant, who is able to avoid attracting [[TimePolice TVA]] attention by hiding at apocalyptic moments in time — you can't alter the timestream enough to make a difference if everyone you're affecting is dying in an hour anyway. After Loki deduces this, he and Mobius test this by visiting Pompeii and making a scene in the town just as Mount Vesuvius erupts.

* ''Literature/TheMagicSchoolBus'' book ''In the Time of the Dinosaurs'' has them escape from the asteroid at the end of their day in the Cretaceous, though also after visiting other periods; given that the purpose of the trip was educational, it's possible Ms. Frizzle secretly took them to the impact deliberately. It's averted in the corresponding animated episode however, where there is no asteroid because Ms. Frizzle sends them back ''67'' million years in the past.

* While they don't often involve time travel, many dinosaur documentaries which follow the life of an individual dinosaur are fond of ending their stories [[KillEmAll by having the asteroid impact]]. (If said documentaries are made by Creator/TheBBC it's a pretty safe bet that they'll use StockFootage from ''Series/WalkingWithDinosaurs'' to save money.)

But wait, wasn't the Cretaceous period 79 million years long? That's millions of years longer than ''all of history after the Cretaceous'', which has spanned 65 [note: Or perhaps a bit closer to 66, if recent studies are to be believed] million years. Wouldn't it be better to go visit it any other day but the one guaranteed to kill you? And must it ''always'' be right at the impact zone at that?

But wait, wasn't the Cretaceous period 79 million years long? That's millions of years longer than ''all of history after the Cretaceous'', which has spanned 65 [[note: Or perhaps a bit closer to 66, if recent studies are to be believed]] million years. Wouldn't it be better to go visit it any other day but the one guaranteed to kill you? And must it ''always'' be right at the impact zone at that?

But wait, wasn't the Cretaceous period 79 million years long? That's millions of years longer than ''all of history after the Cretaceous'', which has spanned 65 million years. Wouldn't it be better to go visit it any other day but the one guaranteed to kill you? And must it ''always'' be right at the impact zone at that?

* Invoked in ''Series/Loki2021'' by the rogue Variant, who is able to avoid attracting TVA attention by hiding at apocalyptic moments in time — you can't alter the timestream enough to make a difference if everyone you're affecting is already about to die regardless. After Loki deduces this, he and Mobius test this by visiting Pompeii and making a scene in the town just as Mount Vesuvius erupts.

This is when TheThemeParkVersion of prehistory reveals its dark side for time travelers. No matter how sophisticated the method of time travel used, the arrivers will always have to complete their tasks before the asteroid arrives. There is no way around it, sometimes even if you're observing [[ArtisticLicensePaleontology Jurassic or Triassic dinosaurs]]. And if the TimeTravel in question was random, it's even more astounding that EVERY protagonist gets sent back to the exact same date. Considering the margin of error in the date of the impact, even if you went to exactly (or roughly) 65 million years ago on purpose, the odds that the impact is going to happen while you're there must be minuscule even if you stayed there for the rest of your life.

** ''Even his trips into the future'' fit the trope. If he visits anything ''ever'' it's practically guaranteed to precipitate large-scale deaths in some incredible fashion.