History Main / YouAlreadyChangedThePast

* ''VisualNovel/SteinsGate'': Understanding this concept is what allows [[spoiler:Okabe (with some help from his [[TimeTravelTenseTrouble "future"]] self) to turn the constant stream of {{Downer Ending}}s into something much more pleasant.]] His early episodes [[AwesomeEgo boast]] about being "able to cheat the universe itself" doesn't look so silly anymore by the end. That said, the series doesn't follow this trope entirely with regards to time travel; it's more like a combination of ButterflyOfDoom and RubberBandHistory most of the time. Sending messages to the past can have fairly far-reaching implications (such as [[spoiler:[[GenderBender changing the actual biological sex]] of a [[DudeLooksLikeALady person]]]]), and the butterfly effect is explicitly called out by name. However, some events have greater inevitability than others (such as [[spoiler:Mayuri's death in the beta world line by a series of increasingly {{Contrived Coincidence}}s]]).

** This is explained in the final boss fight, which actually also reveals this trope was being subverted the whole time. Halfway through the fight Cortez realizes that he's outgunned and decides to go back in time and aid his past self to defeat the boss. This would be fine except that "future Cortez" never showed up to help you defeat the boss in the first place. Anya's talking of "creating a time loop" suggests that every prior instance of "looping" was caused by an alternate Cortez [[ForWantOfANail doing something significantly different]] (like say, deciding to make his AlternateSelf's job easier by passing a key he found.) and only now is the player-controlled Cortez getting to be the "Starter", which also conveniently means the Player doesn't have to fight the FinalBoss twice ("Past" Cortez isn't seen after the battle, because he presumably went back to help ''his'' past self battle Crow).

* ''VisualNovel/SteinsGate'': Understanding this concept is what allows [[spoiler:Okabe (with some help from his [[TimeTravelTenseTrouble "future"]] self) to turn the constant stream of {{Downer Ending}}s into something much more pleasant.]] His early episodes [[AwesomeEgo boast]] about being "able to cheat the universe itself" doesn't look so silly anymore by the end. That said, the series doesn't follow this trope entirely with regards to time travel; it's more like a combination of ForWantOfANail and RubberBandHistory most of the time. Sending messages to the past can have fairly far-reaching implications (such as [[spoiler:[[GenderBender changing the actual biological sex]] of a [[DudeLooksLikeALady person]]]]), and the butterfly effect is explicitly called out by name. However, some events have greater inevitability than others (such as [[spoiler:Mayuri's death in the beta world line by a series of increasingly {{Contrived Coincidence}}s]]).

* ''Franchise/BillAndTed'':
** ''Film/BillAndTedsExcellentAdventure'': One of the signs that Bill and Ted are [[BookDumb clever if not book smart]] is their recognition of this trope; they realize that to solve a problem in the present, they can use their time machine to plant helpful items in the past, and then they'll be there for their present selves to discover -- and they keep reminding each other "Once this is over, we have to go back and place all that stuff!"
** The entire climax of ''Film/BillAndTedsBogusJourney'' is B&T and the BigBad performing dueling versions of this. [[spoiler:Except that, as Bill points out, only the winner can change history, so all the things the villain thought he planted were just decoys B&T placed to lull him into a false sense of security. In fact, as dumb as Bill and Ted usually are, they tend to be ''very'' smart when it comes to this trick.]]

You [[TimeTravel go back in time]] to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong, only to discover that the "changes" you're making to the past were what "already" happened anyway. In other words, there was no "first time around" - the past only happened ''once'', there were no different "versions" of it, and the changes you made to the past ultimately created the very past you read about in the history books before leaving on the trip.

This does not necessarily mean that YouCantFightFate. For example, if Bob wanted to go back in time to stop Alice's death, he could simply convince his past self that Alice still died in the future. Following this logic, Alice never dies at all -- and Bob suddenly remembers how several months ago, some "other" Bob came up to him insisting that Alice was going to die of ''something'' and the two of them had to go save her, which they did, so she's still very much alive and well all along. ([[MindScrew Do you have a headache yet?]]) Or to avoid the headache and ensuing paradox, Future Bob could go back and [[TrickedOutTime save Alice in such a way that Past Bob still thought that she died - then drop her off in the present - kind of the present, anyway. The future. Past. Something.]]

** However, the first instance of tinkering with time that we knew of was ''not'' an example of this - the group visits the world of Shara twice, before and after visiting Shura which turns out to be the past of Shara; and the effects of their actions are quite visible. CLAMP seems to have [[MagicAIsMagicA lost track of their time-travelling system]] as the MindScrew got more and more complicated...

-->"Don't do ''anything.'' Except for what you [[TimeTravelTenseTrouble were always will have done]]. It's ''not'' a paradox if I was ''already'' part of the past."
* A ''ComicBook/{{Blade}}'' series had Doctor Doom lure the Daywalker to his castle, where Doom then proposed Blade with going back in time and saving his mother from a vampire attack. Blade asked him why he should do it, and Doom replies with "Because I've already seen you do it in the past." Doom is nice enough to give him a serum which would suppress his bloodthirst though.
* Doctor Doom's debut in Fantastic Four #5 has him send the heroes back in time to collect the treasure of Blackbeard the pirate for him. In order to do this, they don disguises and the Thing distinguishes himself so well at the swashbuckling that the pirate crew rally around him, electing him to captain the ship and give him a pirate nickname to match his appearance: Blackbeard!

* Subverted in the crossover ''ComicBook/{{Spawn}}''[=/=]''ComicBook/{{Wildcats|WildStorm}}'', where future versions of Grifter and Zealot (the former being the original's future self but the latter being a new Zealot) are sent into the past to slay Spawn to prevent him becoming a ruthless dictator known as the Ipsissimus. When they fail to kill him, the present Wildcats and Spawn agree to go with them into the future to defeat the Ipsissimus, but it turns out this was part of a predestination paradox, as the Ipsissimus uses the opportunity to give Spawn the medallion that corrupted him and caused him to turn evil to begin with. When back to the present, the influence stats, and Spawn starts EvilGloating... until the future Wildcats realize their mistake and make a last attempt to modify a minor action in the past. This causes Spawn to recognize future Zealot as an adult version of his widow's daughter Cyan, come back to his senses and hand the medallion to her, thus preventing the future.
* The time travel of ''ComicBook/TheTransformersMoreThanMeetsTheEye'' is like this, specifically of the StableTimeLoop variety - the war that [[spoiler:Brainstorm]] invents time travel to prevent turns out to have been DIRECTLY caused by time travel. On top of this, he was created ''because'' of the war, and had sold himself to the Decepticons to fund his project, which was why our heroes on the Lost Light believed he was going to kill Optimus and so followed him...
** Then they threw in a few Stable Time Loops of their own - To go into all the ways the Crew mucked up the future by travelling back in time to fix it/stop it from being changed would take up the best part of this page

** The most notable example is how Time Travel is the cause of the legend of the Sparkeater - because Whirl took a gun from Brainstorm's lab that turns people into Sparkeaters, which was only created because Brainstorm met a Sparkeater early on in the comic (which had been made by his gun millions of years ago, no less).

[[folder:Film - Live-Action]]

* ''Bill and Ted'':
** ''Film/BillAndTedsExcellentAdventure'': One of the signs that Bill and Ted are [[BookDumb clever if not book smart]] is their recognition of this trope; they realize that to solve a problem in the present, they can use their time machine to plant helpful items in the past, and then they'll be there for their present selves to discover - and they keep reminding each other "Once this is over, we have to go back and place all that stuff!"

* ''Film/DejaVu2006'': The first few attempts at actually changing the past just end up causing things the characters and audience have already seen happen. [[spoiler:Eventually, for the sake of having a happy ending, they do manage to make a change that works.]] This could be a case of [[spoiler:[[SubvertedTrope subversion]], as it was mentioned in passing during the course of the movie that a big enough change could change the future (i.e., not having the ferry blow up). As Website/TheOtherWiki has a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Deja_Vu_Timeline.png diagram showing at least four runs]] of the timeline are needed to explain how the events of the movie are possible, perhaps several trips of smaller changes adds up to one big enough change.]]

* ''Literature/JoelSuzuki'': In ''Fable of the Fatewave'', Joel and Felicity go back to the time of the Fourfoot War in order to prevent Blackspore from [[spoiler:bringing Marshall Byle over to help with the war in order to save all the people Marshall killed]]. They overshoot their destination and end up shortly before the start of the war. Joel's presence ends up causing the war - Chief Fourfoot falls in love with him and [[AndNowYouMustMarryMe orders him to marry him]], and Joel refuses. Island law allows someone from outside a chief's village to refuse marriage to a chief, and Fourfoot can't change that law without the agreement of the other three village chiefs, so he declares was on the other three villages in order to become sole chief so he can force whomever he wants to marry him. Later, Joel and Felicity manage to talk Blackspore out of [[spoiler:bringing Marshall over]], but just as the timeline is starting to change, Thornleaf knocks out Joel, Felicity, and Blackspore and finishes the incantation himself because he doesn't believe in messing with the timeline.

** The series finale had a somewhat omniscient bartender asking Sam if there was anything that he wanted to do differently. [[spoiler:Sam remembers when Al was invisibly dancing with his first wife, Beth, who became heartbroken when she thought Al was killed in Vietnam and married someone else by the time Al was released. Sam then travels to that moment and tells Beth that Al is alive and coming home - the next leap only shows a black screen, with epilogue text stating that Al and Beth had celebrated their 39th anniversary and Sam was never seen again.]] Supposedly, this is an example of ExecutiveMeddling, since the creators did not expect the show to be over at this point. When the news came about the show's cancellation, they hastily added a blank screen (so hastily they misspelled Sam's last name) as a half-assed attempt to wrap up the show.

* Music/{{Stereophonics}}: In the music video for "A Thousand Trees", a man sees his partner being hugged by a stranger. He assumes this means she is having an affair (though he should have wondered why she was so open about it when near enough to their house). He storms out after she gets back, and in the ensuing row on the street steps into the road as a car is going past, running him over - with the driver being the stranger from earlier, who then comforts his now distraught girlfriend - via the hug seen earlier. And all this for a music track that is seemingly about a report of sexual abuse by a girl against a man (the 'match that burned a thousand trees').

* ''VideoGame/{{Braid}}'' features this [[spoiler:when you try to rescue the princess - and then see that she was running away from you instead...]]

** Interestingly the first game in the series, ''[[VideoGame/BloodOmenLegacyOfKain Blood Omen]]'', used a different kind of time travel - the kind where you go back, do something, and return to the present to find the effects of your actions having taken place. This was played straight with no mention of the paradox that would ensue from this kind of time travel. Two games later, in ''[[VideoGame/LegacyOfKainSoulReaver2 Soul Reaver 2]]'', when time travel was reintroduced as a much more significant plot element, the rules were established ''around'' this instance of time travel, and it turns out Kain's original trip back to the past, as depicted in the first game without {{RetCon}}s, already met the criteria for how someone can achieve a true alteration to the time line.

* PlayedForLaughs in ''VideoGame/SamAndMaxFreelancePolice'', where the titular duo are stonewalled because they'd caused a mouse child to lose a treasured toy - so they travel back to the past to take the toy from him only to return it in the present.

* In the ''Series/Charmed1998'' fanfic ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3562774/1/Once-and-Future-Witches Once and Future Witches]]'', an attack on Leo and Wyatt causes the Charmed Ones of 2007 (just after the series finale) to go back to early season two and then all six of them go back to 1983. Once in that time, they are able to identify their foe as a demonic presence that exists outside of time and whose Darklighter agent had already killed Lynn, who Prue remembers as their childhood babysitter but was actually their first Whitelighter. However, since the Halliwells were travelling in time when Lynne was killed, Grams confirms that this means history hasn't been changed yet and Leo was always going to be the sisters' Whitelighter.