History Main / TheTimeTravellersDilemma

There's a very dark possibility of a SadisticChoice here. What if there's no such thing as InSpiteOfANail? What if the holocaust you're trying to prevent resulted in someone being born who will [[RetGone no longer exist]] if the situation of his parents getting together changes? What if there's [[ForWantOfANail millions of people who will be changed or erased against their will?]] What if this timeline had someone do a HeelFaceTurn who won't in the new timeline?

* This weighs on Edward throughout ''Fanfic/MyMasterEd''. [[spoiler: If Ed manages to [[SetRightWhatOnceWasWrong save Xerxes]], Amestris as a country won't exist. If Hohenheim never becomes immortal, he won't live long enough to meet Trisha, and [[RetGone Alphonse will never be born]]. Ed is acutely, ''painfully'' aware of this]].

->''"You see Jake, there's rules to this stuff. Wishing an event to be changes elements before and after it; memories will be destroyed, babies will not be born, potential worlds could be evaporated by your wish."''

* The second half of ''VisualNovel/SteinsGate'' revolves around this. Realizing that the D-Mail experiments he's been conducting help cement a BadFuture [[spoiler:and guarantee the death of his childhood friend]], Okabe has to negate each one in order to avoid it. The problem? Most of those D-Mails altered the past in ways that granted his friends a good deal of happiness - including his own, as [[spoiler:the first D-mail prevented the death of the woman he's fallen in love with.]]

* Discussed and averted in ''VisualNovel/VirtuesLastReward''. [[spoiler:Although the goal of the AB project is to prevent the release of the Radical-6 virus, the timelines in which Sigma and Phi failed to do so still exist. Phi talks to you about it briefly as part of the Multi-World Interpretation, and Tenmyouji and Quark talk about it during the Golden Ending, and some ethical implications thereof.]]

* In the "ComicBook/AgeOfApocalypse" arc of Creator/MarvelComics; set in a changed present where Charles Xavier was killed in the past; Magneto and Rogue have a son. The Time Traveler Bishop wants to change things back. Magneto supports Bishop in this, but reminds him that if they succeed; his son will be gone forever. Presumably this also bothered some writers; who later wrote that this world continued to exist as an AlternateUniverse. (Btw, Jean Grey stopped the nukes in the end.)

[[folder:Fan Fiction]]
* In ''Fanfic/MementoVivere'', a VideoGame/FinalFantasyX fanfiction, this is a main plot point of the story.

* Acknowledged and arguably justified in an episode of ''Series/{{Buffy|the Vampire Slayer}}'', involving not time travel but alternate realities. In the Season Three episode "[[{{Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E9TheWish}} The Wish]]", Cordelia wishes that Buffy had never come to Sunnydale, creating an alternate reality in which the town is overrun by vampires. Alt-Giles figures out how to reverse the effect, but at the last second, the demon responsible for it tries to stop him, asking why he thinks the alternate (original) universe is any better than the one he knows. Giles' response? "Because it has to be."

* The second expansion of ''VideoGame/FateGrandOrder'', ''Cosmos in the Lostbelt'', has wildly divergent {{AlternateTimeline}}s competing to replace the entirety of human history. The protagonists are fighting for the original timeline, but they inevitably make friends and allies as they explore each timeline. Unfortunately the mechanics of timelines in this game demand that all of them be erased in order to bring back the original timeline. It's suggested that the protagonists keep seperate from the inhabitants of each one to avoid having to repeatedly face this dilemma, but rejected because of the need to understand what's going on.

* Kyon of ''LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya'' once changed the world back to his old one via TimeTravel. He still has nightmares of the implications of what he did, mostly because [[spoiler:it was a world where Yuki Nagato had her fondest wish: being human and quite possibly in love with Kyon.]]

* Briefly addressed in ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary''. The cast didn't dwell on it much, probably because their universe was doomed anyway. Though [[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20050410.html the metaphor used]] when he makes the jump softens the blow. It also helps that it had only been a few weeks.

* The second half of ''VisualNovel/SteinsGate'' revolves around this. Realizing that the D-Mail experiments he's been conducting help cement a BadFuture [[spoiler:and guarantee the death of his childhood friend]], Okabe has to negate each one in order to avoid it. The problem? Most of those D-Mails altered the past in ways that granted his friends a good deal of happiness - including his own, as [[spoiler:the first D-mail prevented the death of the woman he's fallen in love with]].

* Kyon of ''LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya'' once changed the world back to his old one via TimeTravel. He still has nightmares of the implications of what he did, mostly because [[spoiler:it was a world where Yuki Nagato had her fondest wish: being human and quite possibly in love with Kyon.]].

* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'':
** Mentioned and averted by way of Q. In "Tapestry", Picard's artificial heart is damaged and he's about to die, so Q gives him the opportunity to change his past to prevent the injury that led to him getting the transplant. Picard worries that any action he'll take in the past could have disastrous consequences, but Q brushes him off with, "Nothing you do will cause the Federation to collapse or galaxies to explode. To be blunt, you're not that important."
*** Of course, while it doesn't have disastrous consequences for anyone else, the consequences to Picard's own life after not getting in the fight that caused the injury are so bad he immediately asks Q to change it back even if he does die. So averted on a galaxy-wide scale, but definitely present in his own life.