History Main / TimeTravelEscape

* In the MarvelUniverse it looked like this happened, but it didn't. A man believing himself to be [[CaptainMarVell Captain Mar-Vell]] appears. Everyone thinks that he's avoided his death from cancer by jumping forward in time. It turns out that time travel wasn't involved in the first place; the guy's really a Skrull sleeper agent brainwashed into thinking he's the real deal.

* In the MarvelUniverse it looked like this happened, but it didn't. A man believing himself to be Captain Mar-Vell appears. Everyone thinks that he's avoided his death from cancer by jumping forward in time. It turns out that time travel wasn't involved in the first place; the guy's really a Skrull sleeper agent brainwashed into thinking he's the real deal.

* ''BoosterGold's'' sister Goldstar, believed to have died in an explosion, was saved and brought to the present by Rip Hunter in the 2007 ongoing series.

* ''Film/TimeAfterTime'': UsefulNotes/{{Jack the Ripper}} use [[HGWells H.G. Wells]]' time machine to escape the London police by travelling to the future.

* In a recent issue of ''[[ComicBook/TheAvengers Avengers]]: ComicBook/TheChildrensCrusade'', [[spoiler: Stature rescues her father from his death in ''Avengers Disassembled'' in this manner. Time will tell if it sticks.]]

* ''Film/TimeAfterTime'': {{Jack the Ripper}} use [[HGWells H.G. Wells]]' time machine to escape the London police by travelling to the future.
** Also inverted, when [[HGWells Wells]] takes Amy Robbins back to 1893 with him at the end, thus causing her to be listed as dead in the newspaper they found when [[HGWells Wells]] took Amy a week into the future to prove that his time machine worked.

* In ''Literature/TimeScout'', people who are known to have been killed cannot be rescued. A group of activists begs for the rescue of JackTheRipper's victims. Experienced time travelers roll their eyes. Anyone who's completely unimportant can have their lives altered... but that means you don't know what to alter or how. Escape averted.

* In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1985S1E20 Profiles In Silver]]", a 1985 episode of the ''Series/TheTwilightZone'', a time traveller from 2172 goes back to observe the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but inadvertantly prevents it. This creates a new timeline that ends in the human race being destroyed by nuclear war. The time line is ultimately restored by the traveller taking Kennedy's place in the motorcade while the president is safely returned to 2172.

* Subverted in the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "Yesterday's Enterprise", where the U.S.S. ''Enterprise-C'' is saved from destruction by travelling into the future... but must then ''return'' to be destroyed to repair the irrevocable damage to the timeline the ship's time-travelling caused, because what was important wasn't the fact that the ship was destroyed, but the fact that it was destroyed '' [[HeroicSacrifice in a heroic sacrifice]]'' that now never happened.
* Something similar happens in "Profiles In Silver", a 1985 episode of the ''TwilightZone''. A time traveller from 2172 goes back to observe the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but inadvertantly prevents it. This creates a new timeline that ends in the human race being destroyed by nuclear war. The time line is ultimately restored by the traveller taking Kennedy's place in the motorcade while the president is safely returned to 2172.

* In the ''OuterLimits'' episode "Tribunal", history professor and Holocaust scholar Aaron Zgierski is taken back to Auschwitz by time-traveller Nicholas Prentice (who turns out to be Zgierski's own great-grandson). While there, they rescue Aaron's "older" sister (who is only eight at the time), who history records as being executed in a gas chamber, into the future to live out her life free of Nazi oppression.
** They also do the reverse with the man Aaron is trying to expose in the present as a former Nazi camp guard. Future history records that right before his arrest he fled the country and was never seen again. He disappeared because Aaron and Prentice kidnapped him and left him in the past dressed as a Auschwitz prisoner where his past self executes him.

* Discussed in ''ManyWaters'' when a pair of modern day twins trapped in [[Literature/TheBible Noah's time]] consider this method to save a local girl they have a crush on from the inevitable flood. They decide against it when they consider the ramifications, such as her lack of immunities from present day illnesses.

* In ''Literature/PerryRhodan'', during the ongoing battle against the forces of chaos as embodied by the Decalog of Elements and after having been abducted into the past himself, the eponymous protagonist manages to strike a deal with a reasonably helpful alien species of ''natural'' time travelers that allows him to both rescue another (and technically enemy) species that was wiped out way back during the Andromeda arc in this fashion and eliminate the Decalog's Element of Time at once. (Said Element consisting of a species of animals with time powers of their own that the first aliens were very interested in 'adopting'... which was in fact the only reason they agreed to involve themselves in ''present'' events this one time instead of staying in the 'safe' past as per their traditional practice.)

** Even more specifically, they were about to be killed by whalers when they were rescued.

* In ''Franchise/{{Star Trek}}: Borg'', The U.S.S. ''Righteous'' was reported destroyed in the battle of Wolf 359. Q brought Cadet Furlong back in time to save his father (who served on the ''Righteous''), treating the whole thing as merely a joke. He never thought Furlong would actually DO it. Cue a time jump to save the crew of the ''Righteous'' from death at the hands of the Borg.

* ''TheJourneymanProject 2: Buried in Time:'' You are sent back in time to investigate, among other things, a space station that would later be found abandoned with even its AI destroyed. Said AI, Arthur, learns the truth when he scans you to find out what you're doing on the station: that he's going to die, and that even if both of you wanted to, you ''can't'' save him, because doing so would affect history. So, he ''copies'' himself onto a blank biochip you happen to be carrying, and is your sidekick for the rest of your time-traveling adventures in the game [[spoiler:until his HeroicSacrifice at the end, but [[UnexplainedRecovery he gets better]] for [=JP3=].]]
* Averted in ''ShadowOfMemories'', where you're explicitly told that you can't solve the problem of being targeted for assassination by time traveling out the way of an attack.
* In ''TimeHollow'', Ethan saves his parents from a burning restaurant 15 years in the past by opening a Time Hole linking that time to the present. Ethan's father carries his unconscious mother through the hole and to safety in the present day. This has some side effects though.
* ''EarthBound'' sees Buzz Buzz escape to the past after Gigyas destroys the universe.
* This is the premise behind the video game ''DarkestOfDays''. A peacekeeping organization, founded by the creator of the time machine, travels through history and ensures it maintains its proper course. The agents themselves are heroic individuals who died without their bodies ever being found, allowing them to be rescued without altering history. The protagonist is a member of General Custer's cavalry who lay wounded on the battlefield unnoticed, and his senior partner is a New York firefighter who was buried under rubble during 9/11.

* Rufus saves the Princesses from marrying some "royal ugly dudes" this way in ''BillAndTedsExcellentAdventure''.
* The humpback whales George and Gracie in ''Film/{{Star Trek IV|The Voyage Home}}'' were the subject of a TimeTravelEscape. All humpback whales were extinct by the end of the 21st century according to that timeframe, until the crew of the ''Bounty'' intervened.
* ''TimeAfterTime'': {{Jack the Ripper}} use [[HGWells H.G. Wells]]' time machine to escape the London police by travelling to the future.

* Inverted in ''DonnieDarko'', in which the protagonist goes back in time to die (at a point where he almost did, but survived), because he feels things will turn out better that way.
* Used in ''{{Freejack}}'', even though the people aren't technically being rescued. Whenever a rich, dying person wants a new body, they arrange for a victim to be taken from the past at the moment of their death. The person lives, but their mind is wiped so they'll make a suitable host body.

* Discussed in ''ManyWaters'' when a pair of modern day twins trapped in [[TheBible Noah's time]] consider this method to save a local girl they have a crush on from the inevitable flood. They decide against it when they consider the ramifications, such as her lack of immunities from present day illnesses.

* In ''Literature/{{Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban}}'', Harry and Hermione go back in time to save a hippogriff from an unjust execution and thus save Sirius Black from a FateWorseThanDeath. Of course, the way the story depicts the actual execution of the hippogriff the first time around and the reactions to the creature's rescue seem to indicate that [[StableTimeLoop Rowling wrote the book with no "first time" in mind after all.]]

* In ''{{Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban}}'', Harry and Hermione go back in time to save a hippogriff from an unjust execution and thus save Sirius Black from a FateWorseThanDeath. Of course, the way the story depicts the actual execution of the hippogriff the first time around and the reactions to the creature's rescue seem to indicate that [[StableTimeLoop Rowling wrote the book with no "first time" in mind after all.]]

* In ''{{Runaways}}'', when the Runaways go to return to the present from the early 1900s, they bring along Klara Prast, who can control plants and is in danger of a bad fate via her abusive (and much older) husband. [[spoiler:They also try plan along a street urchin who Victor fell in love with, but she is too afraid and stays behind.]]

* [[spoiler:Lucas]] in the TimeWars series dies in book 6, then comes back in book 9 when it turns out that [[spoiler:his corpse had been replaced with that of his parallel-universe double, who had just been killed.]]