History Main / TimeTravelEscape

* The now dead webcomic ''RPGWorld'' had a few supporting characters planning to use this kind of trick to revive a dead WrenchWench party member.

* Used in ''Film/{{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.

* ''Series/TerminatorTheSarahConnorChronicles'' pulls Sarah from a time before she died of cancer. Partially subverted, in that Sarah begins developing cancerlike symptoms about a year later, exactly as she did before Cameron pulled them ahead.
* ''Series/DoctorWho'' has Davros saved from death by Dalek Caan in the Series 4 finale.
** Not to mention the Cult of Skaro doing this to themselves "EMERGENCY TEMPORAL SHIFT" at least twice.
** In "The Girl in the Fireplace", the Doctor tries to do this to Reinette but she dies before he can.
** There's also an entire organisation, the Tesselecta, which use this trope to overcome HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct, not to save them, but to punish them. They know that horrible evil dictators have to die at certain times- they just remove them from their time-line shortly before, and punish them for all the horrible things they've done.
* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'':
** In the 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 [[InvertedTrope 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 [[ColorMeBlack dressed as an Auschwitz prisoner]] where his past self executes him.
** A later episode shows that the time travel agency Nicholas Prentice works for recruits via TimeTravelEscape; they take the potential recruit to the future seconds before they would have died, then offers them a choice between joining or being sent back to their death.
* ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'': In the season 9 episode "[[Recap/SupernaturalS09E21KingOfTheDamned King of the Damned]]", the demon Abaddon decides to coerce her rival-for-power Crowley by kidnapping his son Gavin from the year 1723 and torturing him. By the end of the episode, Crowley (who has regained part of his humanity) refuses the Winchesters' demand that he send Gavin back in time, because the boat that Gavin will use to emigrate to the American colonies will sink in a storm. As a last gift Crowley sets Gavin up with a new life in 2014.

* The ''MutantsAndMasterminds'' free adventure "Charge of the Freedom Brigade" introduces the eponymous World War II heroes as [[spoiler:mind-controlled antagonists]] but the ''FreedomCity'' continuity has its own WW2 team, as seen in the adventure provided with their Golden Age source book. The solution? Alternate universe traveller Dr. Tomorrow determined that the Freedom Brigade would be eliminated from the multiverse due to his changes in the main FreedomCity continuity, so he grabbed the Freedom Brigade and brought them to his future, the world of ''Erde'' to help fight Nazis in a world where the Axis won in WW2.

* Inverted in ''Film/DonnieDarko'', in which the protagonist goes back in time to die (at a point where he almost did, but survived), because [[SuicideForOthersHappiness he feels things will turn out better that way]].

* Inverted in ''Film/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.

* In ''VideoGame/StarTrekBorg'', 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.
** It gets funnier. The ship was only lost because Q time ports the ship to the "present" day during the battle of Wolf 359, creating a stable time loop in the process.

But they don't. Instead, the heroes grab John Doe and move him in time to the future (or the far past), allowing everyone in John's own time to ''think'' he's dead, thus preserving both the timeline and John's life.

* At the end of Peter David's ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} run, pre-Crisis Kara Zor-El lands in Leesburg and is discovered by the then current Supergirl Linda Danvers. [[spoiler:Inverting the trope, Linda goes back in time to die in Kara's place when it becomes clear that this event must come to pass. Subverting the trope, Kara eventually goes back to return the time line to normal.]]

[[folder:Comics]]

* In ''[[ComicBook/TheAvengers Avengers]]: ComicBook/TheChildrensCrusade'', [[spoiler:Scott Lang]] is rescued from his death in this manner.

* In [[VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft World Of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor]], as the alternate Draenor Archimonde is defeated, he sends the orc warlock Gul'dan to Azeroth's main timeline so he can summon the Burning Legion again there, kicking off the plot of the following expansion, ''Legion''.

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

** This was clearly an UnbuiltTrope during ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'', as this is not even suggested as a way of preventing Edith Keeler's death in "[[Recap/StarTrekS1E28TheCityOnTheEdgeOfForever The City on the Edge of Forever]]".
* In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1985S1E20 Profile 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.

*** Sort of done when the Doctor also [[spoiler:rescues Rose, her mother, and later his clone by taking them to an alternate dimension]]. Also, Donna convinces the Doctor to rescue a single family off of Pompeii when the volcano erupts.
**** Which then comes back to bite Earth in the butt. Peter Capaldi played both Caecillius in the Fires of Pompeii and John Frobisher in Torchwood: Children of Earth. The Word of God (or at least his personal theory) is that Frobisher was Caecillius' descendant, and his involvement was a result of the Doctor's meddling.
**** And now Capaldi plays the Twelfth Doctor. Interesting how this fits into his theory.

* ''TheSarahConnorChronicles'' pulls Sarah from a time before she died of cancer. Partially subverted, in that Sarah begins developing cancerlike symptoms about a year later, exactly as she did before Cameron pulled them ahead.

** This was clearly an UnbuiltTrope during ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'', as this is not even suggested as a way of preventing Edith Keeler's death in ''[[Recap/StarTrekS1E28TheCityOnTheEdgeOfForever The City on the Edge of Forever]]''.

But they don't. Instead, the heroes grab John Doe and move him in time to the future (or the far past), allowing everyone in John's own time to think he's dead, thus preserving the timeline.

* 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 (since they don't recognize her name among the Biblical list of people aboard the ark). They decide against it when they consider the ramifications, such as her lack of immunities from present day illnesses.

* In Creator/{{Grant Morrison}}'s ''TheInvisibles'', the protagonists send "psychic projections" of themselves to eighteenth-century France and bring a "projection" of the Marquis de Sade back with them. King Mob explains: "You'll be like a ghost [in the twentieth century] but when you reach the end of your life here you'll unite with your future projection. I know [[LampshadeHanging it sounds ridiculous]], but [[HandWave trust me.]]"

* In ''Film/BackToTheFuture III'', Marty and Doc save Clara Clayton from dying without realizing that doing so will [[AlternateHistory change history through the children she would have taught had she lived in the original timeline]]. In the end, Doc fixes this "mistake" by removing Clara from the timeline when he builds a second time machine and taking her into the future.

* In ''Comicbook/{{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.]]

* In ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague Unlimited'', history says that three Leaguers were taken to the future for a mission, but only two returned. Turns out that Supergirl decides to stay in the future. The death assumption came from the Legion members misinterpreting their woefully inaccurate records. They only knew it would be three people, not who exactly, and that one never was never sent back, which they assumed as a death.

* In ''JusticeLeagueUnlimited'', history says that three Leaguers were taken to the future for a mission, but only two returned. Turns out that Supergirl decides to stay in the future. The death assumption came from the Legion members misinterpreting their woefully inaccurate records. They only knew it would be three people, not who exactly, and that one never was never sent back, which they assumed as a death.

* In {{Grant Morrison}}'s ''TheInvisibles'', the protagonists send "psychic projections" of themselves to eighteenth-century France and bring a "projection" of the Marquis de Sade back with them. King Mob explains: "You'll be like a ghost [in the twentieth century] but when you reach the end of your life here you'll unite with your future projection. I know [[LampshadeHanging it sounds ridiculous]], but [[HandWave trust me.]]"

* Ultra-Man, a member of the [[GlobalGuardiansPBEMUniverse Global Guardians]], originally fought the [[ThoseWackyNazis Nazis]] in the 1940s. He was brought to the present when a villain's superweapon accidentally ripped a hole in the Time-Space Continuum.

* At the end of Peter David's {{Supergirl}} run, pre-Crisis Kara Zor-El lands in Leesburg and is discovered by the then current Supergirl Linda Danvers. [[spoiler:Inverting the trope, Linda goes back in time to die in Kara's place when it becomes clear that this event must come to pass. Subverting the trope, Kara eventually goes back to return the time line to normal.]]

* ''{{Starslayer}}'' starts with Celtic warrior Torin Mac Quillion being plucked from the battle against Roman legionaries were he is supposed to die and transported into the distant future.

** During ''BlackestNight'', Booster stops Ted Kord's body from reanimating over again this way. By taking his body outside the time stream, it is no longer reachable by his black ring and stays permanently dead.