| 1 | %% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1476773196001341900&page=1#17 |
| 2 | %% Please do not change or remove without starting a new thread. |
| 3 | %% |
| 4 | [[quoteright:350:[[Webcomic/SaturdayMorningBreakfastCereal https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/hitler_time_travelers.jpg]]]] |
| 5 | |
| 6 | ->''"If you time-travel into the past and then try to kill Hitler, it won't work as intended. It may even backfire."'' |
| 7 | -->-- '''Rules of Time Travel''' |
| 8 | |
| 9 | If you were given the power to [[TimeTravel travel through time]] and SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong, how would you improve the world? For many, the answer is obvious: '''kill UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler'''. This would prevent the atrocities of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust, and their myriad side-effects... right? |
| 10 | |
| 11 | Unfortunately, even in the land of fiction, this is not an easy task. For one, Hitler survived ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assassination_attempts_on_Adolf_Hitler at least 42 real-life assassination attempts]]'' thanks to his various [[PraetorianGuard bodyguards]], [[StateSec security forces]], and a healthy dose of luck -- maybe one of them was ([[TimeTravelTenseTrouble or will have been]]) yours! Targeting him before his rise to power will often turn out to be ludicrously difficult as well -- locating a lone, disillusioned war veteran wandering around post-WWI Europe is one hell of a [[NeedleInAStackOfNeedles needle-in-a-haystack]] search. |
| 12 | |
| 13 | Secondly, even if you do manage to kill him, [[NiceJobBreakingItHero something as bad or worse might appear in his place]]: maybe an even worse dictator takes over and [[AlternateHistoryNaziVictory actually wins]], or maybe [[DirtyCommies the Soviet Union]] starts the war instead. Maybe UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan never gets in a war it can't win and manages to [[JapanTakesOverTheWorld create its own lasting nightmarish superpower]]. Maybe if there was no horrific slaughter of "undesirables" that took place under Hitler's leadership, the rest of the world wouldn't have experienced the sort of collective shock upon discovery of the Holocaust that spurred them into beginning the process of purging racist and fascist elements from their own lands. Maybe Hitler's death will cause some kind of paradox, from [[GrandfatherParadox retroactively erasing lives in the present]] to [[ApocalypseHow destroying the universe itself]]. |
| 14 | |
| 15 | In short, it appears to be a cosmic law that ''something'' bad has to go down in the period of 1933-1945, and Hitler's premature death is either impossible or will make things worse. For narrative purposes, consider the AnthropicPrinciple: who would read a story in which someone tries to change history for the better, [[TheUntwist succeeds]], and creates a stable utopian timeline that isn't infested with ClockRoaches? After they've killed off Hitler, what would the author do with the rest of the book? |
| 16 | |
| 17 | Interestingly, it seems that neither [[UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt FDR]] nor [[UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill Churchill]] (or even [[UsefulNotes/JosefStalin Stalin]] while allied with them) have this immunity, because stories come up all the time about heroes having to stop a time-travelling neo-Nazi from [[MakeWrongWhatOnceWentRight sabotaging the Allies]] -- villains simply wouldn't care about any of the possible consequences. |
| 18 | |
| 19 | Compare JokerImmunity and GodwinsLawOfTimeTravel. This is a sub-trope of PrecrimeArrest, which is about anyone being punished for something that the time traveler knows they will eventually do. This is one case where attempts to PreventTheWar are ultimately counterproductive. |
| 20 | |
| 21 | See [[Analysis/HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct the Analysis page]] for musings on how this trope might have worked in RealLife had Hitler actually died earlier. |
| 22 | [[noreallife]] |
| 23 | ---- |
| 24 | !!Examples |
| 25 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 26 | |
| 27 | [[folder:Anime and Manga]] |
| 28 | * In the ''Manga/{{Devilman}}'' story "Late Spring in Vienna", Akira and Ryo end up in Austria in the 1920 to "kill a demon". A real one, turned into a Count. He has decided to buy a portrait of his wife Sophie, painted by a poor painter that has no choice - he would have preferred to keep it because he loves Sophie. A Jewish art dealer makes the arrangement, but the same evening Sophie dies, burnt by her demon husband. Akira and Ryo kill the lord demon and then come back to their time, hoping that history is in good shape after what they did. Then, back in the 20s, the painter is furious after Sophie's death, and places the blame on his dealer: "I hate you, I'll spend my entire life to destroy you and your whole race!" and the art dealer starts to run after him: "Hey, what are you saying? Where are you going like that? Adolf? Adolf Hitler!" |
| 29 | ** Made somewhat ironic by the fact that in real life, Hitler sucked at drawing people. |
| 30 | * Subverted in ''Manga/{{Zipang}}''. The hit is performed by someone of that time period acting on information from time travellers. An attempt was made by an IJN officer because he knows from the time-displaced crew of the Mirai, that the Axis would lose [[InSpiteOfANail no matter what]] and of the sufferings of the Japanese people after the war. To prevent that, he tried to kill Hitler so the war would end quickly and Japan could get a peace treaty with good terms. He failed. |
| 31 | * A fictional non-Hitler example of the same conundrum defines the last act of ''Manga/PandoraHearts.'' [[spoiler: Oswald, an antagonist, wants to go back in time and prevent the Tragedy of Sablier, a cataclysmic event that occurred 100 years ago, almost destroyed the world, functionally annihilated Oswald's city, traumatized most of the cast, and whose consequences are nearing destroying the world ''again.'' However, the Tragedy was driven by underlying tensions and issues that had gone unaddressed until erupting into the open so violently, meaning that erasing the Tragedy wouldn't remove the problems that actually caused it, only the specific happenstance triggers that Oswald knows of from this particular timeline--and even if Oswald does succeed, he will be destroying the existence of every person who lived after the moment that he changed. The protagonists find this last part unacceptable, positioning that a solution for those in the present and the future is the only way to actually move forward in regards to these underlying problems--however difficult it is to live with, leaving the past to the past is the only way to move on from it.]] |
| 32 | * In ''Literature/TheWorldsFinestAssassin'', Allen Smith is a skilled assassin who is killed by the organization he belonged to in a case of YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness. His soul encounters a goddess who gives him the option of being reborn with no memories of his previous life, or he could be reborn into a medieval fantasy world while retaining his abilities and skills he acquired on Earth. The reason is that she needed him to assassinate a hero who would destroy the world after defeating the demon lord. He asks her if he could kill the hero earlier on if he was prepared enough for it, but she tells him no. She says that only the hero can defeat the demon lord, and if he dies before that happens, then the demon lord would become unstoppable, destroying that world, or at least enslaving it. When he tries a TakeAThirdOption of saving the hero instead, she says it's possible, but would be less likely to succeed than to just simply assassinate them. |
| 33 | [[/folder]] |
| 34 | |
| 35 | [[folder:Comic Books]] |
| 36 | * Perhaps the ultimate comic book subversion of this trope is the short story [[http://slaymonstrobot.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/why-time-travel-is-illegal.html "Killing Time"]], written by Gerry Conway, illustrated by Tom Yeates, and published in the DC Comics science fiction anthology series ''ComicBook/MysteryInSpace'' issue #114, December, 1980. An idealistic time traveller assassinates Hitler with a laser rifle at a Nazi rally in 1938, but is then lynched by the enraged crowd. Hitler's generals find the laser rifle, eventually learn how to duplicate it, and conquer the world. Decades in the dystopian, Nazi future, an idealistic time traveller sets off to kill the first time traveller to prevent Nazi victory. In the utopian future of that outcome, a die-hard Nazi time traveller sets off to kill the second time traveller to ensure a Nazi victory, and on and on and on. The story ends with an image of an infinite series of rifle scopes trained upon an infinite number of backs. |
| 37 | * Parodied to the point of self-awareness in [[https://i.redd.it/hdf62viv1zv41.jpg an issue]] of ''ComicBook/{{Deadpool}}'', where Hitler is getting used to beating down time travellers - and then he decides to [[StupidJetpackHitler hijack one's time-travelling device]] and go after ComicBook/NickFury. He ''[[http://www.funnyjunk.com/Deadpool+vs+Hitler/funny-pictures/5072129 is]]'' [[FictionalizedDeathAccount killed outside his timeline]] by Fury, Deadpool and ComicBook/{{Cable}}, but the ([[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill extremely bullet-riddled]]) body is brought back to 1945 to keep history flowing. |
| 38 | * The Hitler thing was mentioned in a time travel arc of a Franchise/{{Godzilla}} comic book. However, [[spoiler:when the villain used his time machine to put Godzilla into the Titanic iceberg, the Big G's escape not only caused the famous collision, but the use of his nuclear breath warmed up the water, ''increasing'' the number of survivors.]] |
| 39 | * ''Comicbook/XMen'': |
| 40 | ** Someone makes the mistake of mentioning this idea to Magneto -- who is a Holocaust survivor. Predictably, he explodes. In the movie it was the anxiety of separation from his mother in the camps that first revealed the powers of the Master of Magnetism. Without such violent circumstances, Magneto would be a very different person. |
| 41 | ** The mini-series ''True Friends'' has Kitty Pryde and Rachel Summers accidentally travelling to the late 1930s. Kitty, who is Jewish and learned about the Holocaust from her grandfather, himself a camp survivor, decides to assassinate Hitler and most of his staff, until she is forced to choose between changing history and saving Rachel from the Shadow King. |
| 42 | * ''Comicbook/FantasticFour'': |
| 43 | ** In a comic book from the John Byrne era, the Invisible Woman, the Torch and She-Hulk find themselves in 1930s New York with Nick Fury. Fury decides to go to Germany and kill Hitler, and the other three try to stop him. They find Fury being interrogated by some goons while Hitler watches; they overpower the goons and free Fury, and Sue Storm gives an impassioned speech about not altering the timeline. Fury nods, starts walking out the door -- and then turns and shoots Hitler. It turns out that [[spoiler:it was AllJustADream.]] |
| 44 | ** In a storyline where a future Dr. Doom comes back to kill Reed, it is stated that timelines tend to correct themselves. For example, if you prevent UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln's assassination, people remember the time he was almost killed in the theatre - a couple of days before dying in a bathtub slip. Of course, stuff like that is DependingOnTheWriter - the Marvel multiverse is said to exist partly because time travel almost ''always'' changes things... but simply creates an alternate timeline. So for the above example, there would be a universe where Lincoln was killed in the theatre, and one where he wasn't. And probably at least one where he slipped on the soap, but not because of any universal correction as TheMultiverse. |
| 45 | * In the first story arc of ''Midnighter'''s solo series, he is sent back in time to kill Hitler in the trenches of World War One, only to be stopped by the TimePolice. In the penultimate chapter, Midnighter actually gets his chance to make the hit -- on the night Hitler would commit suicide. Cue epiphany: |
| 46 | -->'''Midnighter''': ...it was just this pathetic little man going off to meet his ultimately quite '''mundane''' fate...\ |
| 47 | '''Timecop''': It's '''always''' some pathetic little man. I seen ninety percent of the greatest scumbags in history up close, an' I can tell you: [[UsefulNotes/GenghisKhan Khan]], [[UsefulNotes/{{Cambodia}} Pol Pot]], UsefulNotes/{{Caligula}}, [[UsefulNotes/TheSpanishInquisition Torquemada]], whoever, you look at any one of these worms an' you wonder how people didn't spot 'em a mile off. But they always end up on top anyhow, somehow...\ |
| 48 | '''Midnighter''': Because people want them there. Adolf got elected, let's not forget.\ |
| 49 | '''Timecop''': True, Dave. [[HumansAreBastards People suck]]. [[TheDungAges The past sucks]]. But [[TheAntiNihilist that ain't no excuse for not trynna change the future]]. |
| 50 | ** In their downtime, ComicBook/TheAuthority likes to go to alternate universes and kill their Hitlers. |
| 51 | * In ''ComicBook/AllStarSquadron'' #2, Per Degaton noted that he could not time travel to the date of Pearl Harbor due to "interference" in the time stream. (The same writer, Roy Thomas, also had Rama-Tut experience timestream static. Perhaps the presence of so many people attempting to time travel to a certain point creates congestion, similar to many people attempt to use the same exit from a road.) |
| 52 | * In one classic ''ComicBook/StrontiumDog'' prog, Johnny Alpha and Wulf travel back in time to arrest Hitler and put him on trial before the Court of Ultimate Retribution. They have to pick him up moments before his suicide however, otherwise there would be nothing to try him for. |
| 53 | * The appropriately named graphic novel ''ComicBook/IKilledAdolfHitler'' both subverts and invokes this trope as the center to its entire plot. A down-on-his-luck hitman is hired to go back in time and kill Adolf, using a time machine that is only good for one round trip. Only he bungles the job, and Hitler steals the time machine and escapes to the present. With no way back home, he's forced to [[TheSlowPath live through the intervening years the normal way]], waiting for the day the time machine arrives so he can stop Hitler. |
| 54 | ** During a twist of events, he loses track of Hitler in the modern day, and another fifty years have to pass before his girlfriend finally solves the plot by travelling back in time - finally killing Hitler. It is complicated. |
| 55 | * In one issue of ''ComicBook/BoosterGold'', Booster off-handedly asks if this mission is stopping another time traveling Hitler assassin. |
| 56 | * The Superman storyline ''ComicBook/TimeAndTimeAgain'' brings this up in a follow-up issue when the time-observing Linear Men talk with Superman about their policy of preventing changes to history by citing Hitler as an example; they could go back and ensure that he died in the First World War, but they can't be sure that the new timeline would be better or worse than the original. Superman concedes to their point, recalling how he avoided changing history during his own recent trip back to the Second World War. |
| 57 | * This trope is inverted but nonetheless explored in the ''Dallas'' arc of ''ComicBook/TheUmbrellaAcademy'', when it is learned that saving JFK from being assassinated would result in [[spoiler:world-wide destruction via nuclear war]]. |
| 58 | * Averted in the second issue of ''ComicBook/PaperinikNewAdventures'': the villain builds a machine that specifically avoids this and the ButterflyOfDoom effect. Though he only gets a single shot at this, and botches it thanks to PK's intervention. |
| 59 | * One ''ComicBook/TwoThousandAD Time Twisters'' (Basically a ''[[ComicBook/ThargsFutureShocks Future Shock]]'' involving time travel) had Allied assassins go back to Hitler's birth to assassinate him. Hitler uses MentalTimeTravel to take control of his own infant self and kill the assassins, saving his own life in several different alternate realities. However, it comes back to bite him in the ass when his baby self's personality takes him over, leading him to make increasingly idiotic decisions and leads to his eventual suicide. |
| 60 | * Averted in ''Multiverse'', a graphic novel written by Creator/MichaelMoorcock for Creator/VertigoComics. In one plot thread featuring Seaton Begg, the Meta-Temporal Detective, the time-traveling detective investigates the murder of Hitler's niece, [[VillainousIncest who turned out to be his mistress as well]]. By the end of that arc, Begg did not actually ''kill'' Hitler, but his investigation did result in Hitler being arrested, and the Nazis discredited to the point where they would never rise to power in Begg's timeline. The consequences are never dealt with, as Begg moves on to his next adventure. |
| 61 | * Late in the series ''ComicBook/{{Lilith}}'' the protagonist travels to the [=1930s=] and, given her completely uncaring attitude about changing the timeline as long as she completes her mission and her strong morals the readers just know she'll go after him, the only question being if she'll succeed or not... Except the ''previous'' changes to the timeline have prevented World War I from starting just yet, [[DoubleSubverted so Hitler has done nothing to get Lilith after him and isn't even part of Germany's leadership or mentioned at all]]. |
| 62 | * In ''Harley's Little Black Book'', ComicBook/HarleyQuinn has lots of fun beating up Hitler to a bloody pulp, all the while giving him a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech, as a result of which his car crashes, and yet somehow he survives. Later, though, this is subverted as Harley is so annoying that she [[DrivenToSuicide drives Hitler to shoot himself]]. This is likely a StableTimeLoop, though. |
| 63 | * ''ComicBook/TheTransformersMoreThanMeetsTheEye:'' Brainstorm spent several million years building a time-machine so he could go back and stop Megatron being created (partly to save a guy he had a crush on). Once he gets there, he hesitates, not just because preventing the war might stop him being created. Then Rewind kills the not-yet activated Megatron anyway, since the shenanigans have given him a glimpse of an alternate timeline where this played out, and things ''suck'' for Cybertron, which is under the genocidal rule of the Functionist Council, but it's great for everyone else, since the Decepticons never formed, never took their show on the road, and never torched entire planets in the name of expansion. Whirl then implants a Spark Brainstorm had on him in Megatron's body, out of spite for the Functionists. [[spoiler:A later story arc then shows that in the alternate timeline the Functionists also decided to go around killing other species in the name of religious fundamentalism.]] |
| 64 | * In ''ComicBook/TheFlashInfiniteFrontier'', ComicBook/WallyWest ends up in the body of the Golden Age Flash and discovers that Adolf Hitler is not only in possession of the Spear of Destiny, but also hopped up on Speed Force energy. Wally suggests just shooting Hitler, but Barry Allen and Mr. Terrific shoot that down, noting that doing so would cause an EarthShatteringKaboom. [[spoiler:Hitler ''does'' explode due to the Speed Force energy being released normally and the Golden Age Flash, now in possession of his body again, and the Golden Age Ray have no idea if he survived that.]] |
| 65 | * Discussed in ''Days Missing'', a comic about a cosmic being called the Steward who averts extinction-level disasters. Over the course of the series he prevents such potential {{Apocalypse How}}s as GreyGoo, a 95% lethal airborne mutant form of Ebola and the Large Hardon Collider creating an UnrealisticBlackHole. We also see him in the past doing such things as ensuring some of the Library of Alexandria survives and early Chinese civilization isn't wiped out by steppes raiders. Real-world catastrophes of the Modern period aren't really mentioned until near the end of the series, where it's revealed that the comic takes place in an AlternateTimeline where World War II never happened, as the Steward foresaw Hitler's rise to power and prevented it by teaching him to paint like the greatest artists in history so he never got into politics. |
| 66 | * In the Vertigo anthology one-shot ''Time Warp'', the final story "The Principle" focuses on two time-travelers who work to ''prevent'' Hitler being assassinated by other time-travelers, noting that they detest having to keep people from killing Hitler, but know that it's important to prevent history from being mucked up. |
| 67 | * In the 11th issue of ''ComicBook/SquadronSupreme2015'', Spider-Man finds out that the Squadron need Reed Richards' time machine for their goals and asks what they intend to use the time machine to accomplish. |
| 68 | -->'''Spider-Man:''' If you're planning to assassinate Hitler, it won't work -- Don't you watch ''Twilight Zone'' reruns when they're on? |
| 69 | [[/folder]] |
| 70 | |
| 71 | [[folder:Comic Strips]] |
| 72 | * PlayedForLaughs in a ''ComicStrip/TomTheDancingBug'' Super-Fun-Pak comic, [[https://www.gocomics.com/super-fun-pak-comix/2022/01/13 "Tim Tripp, Time Traveller"]]. Tripp appears from the past, reporting that he successfully killed Krauss in 1932 Germany, preventing him from starting WWII. The person he's talking to asks if he means Hitler, causing Tripp to sigh and head back in time for the 8th time, wondering how many of these guys he has to kill. |
| 73 | ** In another, the idiot time traveller Percial Dunwoody convinces Hitler to go into art instead of politics. The result is that Hitler's landscape paintings inspired a genocide in Europe. |
| 74 | [[/folder]] |
| 75 | |
| 76 | [[folder:Fan Works]] |
| 77 | * In the ''Franchise/BackToTheFuture'' fanfic [[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9224856/1/Kill-Hitler Kill Hitler]], Marty and Doc go back to 1935 and kill Hitler. It results in more World Wars and [[Film/BackToTheFuturePartII Hell Valley]] and Doc and Marty return to 1935 to save Hitler. |
| 78 | [[/folder]] |
| 79 | |
| 80 | [[folder:Films -- Animated]] |
| 81 | * ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeagueTheFlashpointParadox'': In his BreakThemByTalking speech to the Flash, Professor Zoom notes that instead of killing Hitler, as is typical of this trope, Flash could have used his powers of time travel (which he achieved by running so fast that he could go backward in time) to "Stop Kennedy from being assassinated or making sure Hitler stays in art school. But no, you had to go save mommy". |
| 82 | [[/folder]] |
| 83 | |
| 84 | [[folder:Films -- Live-Action]] |
| 85 | * ''Film/{{Timecop}}'': The man addressing the Senate committee gives killing Hitler as an example of why the [[ButterflyOfDoom unpredictable nature of time travel]] means it has to be policed. |
| 86 | * ''Film/Timecop2TheBerlinDecision'': In the opening the protagonist has to stop the WellIntentionedExtremist villain from assassinating Hitler at a concert precisely because of the possibility of unforeseen consequences. |
| 87 | * Hitler himself is a ''result'' of the time travel exemption in the Australian film ''Film/AsTimeGoesBy'': |
| 88 | --> '''Mike:''' But you've got a time machine--you could stop it.\ |
| 89 | '''Joe Bogart:''' Couldn't stop the Holocaust--[[NoodleIncident got rid of Strasser]], and this dumb painter named Adolf showed up and did it all exactly the same way. Who'd'a read about it? |
| 90 | * Discussed in Creator/DavidCronenberg's movie version of ''Film/TheDeadZone'', when Johnny is debating assassinating a politician that he [[PsychicPowers knows is going to start]] WorldWarThree, and asks for advice from his friend Dr. Weizak (a Holocaust survivor). |
| 91 | -->'''Johnny''': If you could travel back in time, say, to Germany, before Hitler came to power, what would you do? Would you kill him?\ |
| 92 | '''Weizak''': Johnny, you must know that... I love people. And as a doctor, I am expected to save lives. So naturally, I would have no choice... but to kill the son of a bitch. ''(raises his drink)'' Do svidaniya. |
| 93 | * In ''Film/{{Looper}}'', Old Joe [[spoiler:travels back in time to kill a genocidal, telekinetic crime lord called the Rainmaker as a child,]] only for Joe to realize [[spoiler:that Old Joe's attempt would ultimately fail, and as a direct result cause the child to grow up evil and become the Rainmaker.]] |
| 94 | * In ''Film/MemoirsOfAnInvisibleMan'', the BigBad tells Nick, while trying to convince him to turn to his side, [[JustThinkOfThePotential what the U.S. government could have done]] if they'd had an invisible agent during World War II. Nick guesses he means "assassinate Hitler", and has more sense - [[YoureInsane he think's the guy's crazy.]] |
| 95 | * Discussed in ''Film/Flight1942'', when a modern-day plane accidentally travels back to 1940. Once the passengers have learned what has happened, one proposes that they use their knowledge of the future to try and kill Hitler, particularly since another pair of passengers are historians with expertise of this era, but other passengers shoot that down. While the original passenger protests that they can use their knowledge of the future to take Hitler by surprise, others point out he isn't trained for this kind of thing, and a soldier on the flight explicitly states that it would only take one mistake on the passenger's part for Hitler to get access to the future knowledge they're trying to exploit in the first place. |
| 96 | * In ''Film/AboutTime'' Tim's dad explains that since it's MentalTimeTravel, Tim can't change events from before he was born, and names killing Hitler as an example. |
| 97 | * The ''Franchise/{{Terminator}}'' films after the second (plus ''Series/TerminatorTheSarahConnorChronicles'') shows that trying to prevent Skynet from existing will never work - [[StableTimeLoop after all, the time-travelling killer robots must come from somewhere]]. ''Film/TerminatorDarkFate'' takes one step further by going the [[spoiler:"kill Hitler and [[MeetTheNewBoss someone similar takes its place]]" route with both Skynet ''and'' John Connor.]] |
| 98 | * In ''Film/ProjectAlmanac'', the group ponders about going back in time to kill Hitler, but Adam quickly shoots down the idea by pointing out that none of them can speak German and the time machine can't send them back that far in time. |
| 99 | * Zig-zagged in ''Film/Deadpool2'': |
| 100 | ** Originally the film included a scene where ''ComicBook/{{Deadpool}}'' used his TimeTravel device to kill Baby Hitler in his crib. Subverted. |
| 101 | ** Except the [[FocusGroupEnding Test Audience]] found Baby Hitler ''[[CutenessOverload too cute]]'' and the scene was cut from the theatrical release. Played straight. |
| 102 | ** [[ReCut Super-Duper Cut]] on Blu-Ray restored the DeletedScene and showed Deadpool about to do the deed. Subverted. |
| 103 | ** Except it also added TheStinger revealing that even Deadpool can't bring himself to do it. Played straighter. |
| 104 | ** But Deadpool also suggests bringing in Cable, who "loves killing kids". Subverted? |
| 105 | * ''Film/AvengersEndgame'': Gets referenced when the possibility of time travel is brought up. |
| 106 | -->'''Rhodey:''' If we can do this - y'know, go back in time - why don't we just find baby Thanos, y'know, and... ''[makes a gesture of strangling a baby with a rope, complete with "choking sound"]''\ |
| 107 | '''Banner:''' ''[shocked]'' First of all, that's horrible...\ |
| 108 | '''Rhodey:''' It's ''Thanos!''\ |
| 109 | '''Banner:''' ...And secondly, [[OurTimeTravelIsDifferent time doesn't work that way!]] |
| 110 | * In ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheDialOfDestiny'', the titular Dial, Archimedes' Antikythera Mechanism, is an ancient artifact that can take anyone through a time fissure and with the right calculations, could send anyone back in time and alter history. Naturally, someone wants to use it to go back to 1939 and kill Hitler before he can invade Poland, but the twist in the plot is that [[spoiler:it's the surviving Nazis, led by [[BigBad Jürgen Voller]], who want to kill Hitler because they blame [[GeneralFailure him]] for Nazi Germany losing UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, and seek to [[MakeWrongWhatOnceWentRight replace him with a more competent Führer]]. Luckily, it turns out that the Dial of Destiny is fixed to send time travelers to 212-213 BC, during the Siege of Syracuse, and operates on a StableTimeLoop, meaning that [[YouAlreadyChangedThePast Voller's plan was doomed from the start]].]] |
| 111 | [[/folder]] |
| 112 | |
| 113 | [[folder:Literature]] |
| 114 | * The UrExample was published in ''1941'' when Roger Sherman Hoar (under the PenName Ralph Milne Farley) published his short story "I Killed Hitler" in ''Magazine/WeirdTales'' in which a distant cousin of Hitler travels back in time and succeeds, only to find that history deals with it by forcing him to replace Hitler and play history out as it originally happened. |
| 115 | * [[Literature/TheSagaOfDarrenShan Darren Shan's]] Cirque Du Freak saga plays with this idea in conversation in Sons Of Destiny. As the main character, Darren, speaks to Evanna, they converse about the time travelling powers of Mr. Tiny. Evanna says that the events of history are pre-written, only the characters can change. Darren brings up Hitler, to which Evanna says that if he was killed off some other person would replace him, keeping the main events of history in check. |
| 116 | * This idea is expanded with a narrative TakeThat in Creator/TerryPratchett's ''Literature/LordsAndLadies'': 'Shoot the dictator and prevent the war? But the dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot him and there'll be another one along in a minute. Shoot him too? [[HeWhoFightsMonsters Why not shoot everyone and invade Poland?]]' |
| 117 | ** Also [[DiscussedTrope Discussed]] InUniverse in ''Literature/JohnnyAndTheBomb''. The protagonists talk about travelling back in time and killing Hitler, thereby averting World War 2, but TheSmartGuy points out that killing Hitler wouldn't erase the conditions that led to Hitler, and someone else would likely rise up in the same way Hitler did. |
| 118 | * In ''The Complete Time Traveler: A Tourist's Guide to the Fourth Dimension'', a fictional "documentational" book for time travelers, a scenario is mentioned where someone assassinates Hitler while he is still a young artist. The assassin never returns -- in this version of TimeTravel, dramatically altering history creates a parallel universe, and he returned to his present day in ''that'' universe instead of "ours". |
| 119 | * In Creator/StephenFry's 1997 novel ''Literature/MakingHistory'', Hitler's parents are prevented from conceiving, but his absence allows the taller, more handsome, cleverer Rudolf Gloder to ride the tide of frustration that gave birth to the Nazi party, and the results of his reign are ''worse'' for the world than Hitler's. Gloder has negotiated a stop to the war with Germany still in control of most of its conquests, and has reined in the anti-Semitism to the point that it hasn't inspired total war from his adversaries. This example is even more impressive when you consider that the entirety of Fry's mother's family (aside from her parents) were killed in Auschwitz. On top of that, Fry is also gay. |
| 120 | * In the AlternateHistory novels of Creator/HarryTurtledove's ''Literature/Timeline191'', the Confederates win the War of Secession and a subsequent war with the Union, the United States allies with Germany to win World War One, so World War Two features a fascist France and CSA against the USA and a Kaiser-ruled Germany. The Confederacy is led by Hitler-analog Jake Featherston and his ultranationalist "Freedom Party," complete with a genocidal campaign against Confederate blacks, but we also meet the actual Hitler, a German Army sergeant seething with hate but languishing in obscurity. |
| 121 | * In Creator/AlastairReynolds' novel ''Literature/CenturyRain'', UsefulNotes/WorldWarII is, in fact averted (although not by killing Hitler, he lives till old age) but the result is a negative one, as it effectively halts the progress of science and technology at pre-1940s levels. 'course, it happens in a separate world, not our world[[spoiler:, created as some kind of museum to protect human past. And technology may have been artificially halted to prevent rockets from banging on the roof]]. Effective. Most great leaps in technology pre-Internet was done in, or for, war. |
| 122 | * A passing mention of this is made in Creator/RobertAHeinlein's ''Literature/TheCatWhoWalksThroughWalls''. The plot involves an agency that can travel through time and across parallel universes. One of their early attempts at improving the world involved assassinating (humanely, they simply ensured that his parents were using birth control on the day of his conception) a Hitler-like dictator. His brutal reign doesn't happen, but what was originally a small-scale nuclear war turned into a global one, since the Hitler-analogue had kept the alternate America out of the war. They rid the world of the evil dictatorship, sure, but they also rid it of all life other than cockroaches. Unusually for this trope, they didn't take their failure as a sign that there are things they shouldn't be messing with; instead, they decided they needed better projections about what would happen should they make a change. |
| 123 | ** Another Heinlein passing comment is that eliminating Hitler was what led to Nehemiah Scudder's fundamentalist theocracy in the USA. |
| 124 | * Creator/AlfredBester's short story "The Men Who Murdered Mohammed" also displays a similar paradox. The story involves a professor burning with rage over his wife's affair, who decides to eliminate the other man. He does this by first killing the man's father before he was born, to no effect, he then goes and kills his grandfather. Again nothing. Soon, he's gone on a killing spree against many key figures in history, all in the hopes that one of them would end the existence of his wife's lover. He discovers that no matter how much he changes history, it all continues to make no change in the present. All he succeeds in doing is erasing ''himself'' from history. |
| 125 | * ''Literature/TheIronDream'' is a rather unusual example set in an AlternateHistory where Hitler emigrated to the US after UsefulNotes/WorldWarI to become a Sci-Fi/fantasy author. In this world, the Soviet Union conquers all of Eurasia and Africa, but this is all background material - Spinrad instead uses Hitler's [[FictionalDocument book-within-the-book]] ''The Lord of the Swastika'' to point out the UnfortunateImplications of Golden Age militaristic SF. |
| 126 | * In the novel ''Literature/DaysOfCain'' by J. R. Dunn, the Moiety is an history-monitoring agency run by mysterious hyper-evolved humans from the end of time, whose directive is that history must remain ''absolutely untouched'' so they can study it (in this sense, it's the opposite of the agency in Creator/IsaacAsimov's ''The End of Eternity'', who constantly tinker with history in order to improve it). The novel centers around a search for rogue agents who are trying to stop the Holocaust (which must be preserved to maintain historical integrity). Interestingly, it's revealed that the other customary linch-pin of history, the John F. Kennedy assassination (as well as the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy and the death of Mary Jo Kopechne), were the Moiety's attempt to stop the Kennedys' rise to power (which was not supposed to happen and was the doing of another rogue agent). |
| 127 | * Creator/OrsonScottCard's book ''Literature/PastwatchTheRedemptionOfChristopherColumbus'' is probably the epitome of both playing this trope straight and averting it. The protagonists learn that the voyages of Columbus are the result of interference from time travelers in an alternate future. They speculate that the rising American empires were on the verge of developing technologies that would have allowed them to travel to and ultimately conquer Europe, and sent Columbus to stop them. Unfortunately, that resulted in the near-total destruction of the population of the Americas, and set the world on a path that eventually resulted in irreversible ecological collapse. They end up planning another intervention in the past, with the hope of Europe and America finally meeting on a non-genocidal basis. The coda of the novel suggests that they were entirely successful. |
| 128 | * In the two-part alternate history novels ''Literature/FoxOnTheRhine'' and ''Fox At The Front'', Operation Valkyrie works because of a sneeze. Hitler dies, and guess what happens? [[NiceJobBreakingItHero The above described situation with Himmler takes place almost exactly as described]]. Though, things do end up seemingly better than in real life, as everyone's favorite MagnificentBastard Rommel ends up being TheHero, and Himmler ends up dying in a [[HoistByHisOwnPetard much worse way than Hitler]]. Oh yeah, and America gets to throw their first nuke at the Soviets instead of Japan. |
| 129 | * John Scalzi's short story, "[[https://web.archive.org/web/20121217041533/https://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/winter_2007/fiction_missives_from_possible_futures_1_alternate_history_search_results_b Missives From Possible Futures #1: Alternate History Search Results]]," gives eight possible scenarios resulting from Hitler being killed on August 13, 1908, in Vienna, Austria, each more unlikely (and more hilarious) than the last. |
| 130 | * One of the main characters in Sergey Lukyanenko's novel ''Dances on the Snow'' (a part of the ''Literature/{{Genome}}'' trilogy) mentions that simulations were done on what would happen if certain key historical figures were to be eliminated before they did what they did. The result was that no single person, even Hitler or Stalin, are important enough in the grand scheme of things to significantly alter the chain of events that resulted in the world history. It should be noted that no time travel technology exists in the novel, this was purely a simulation. |
| 131 | * In Li Harbin's ''Literature/TimeGhost'' series, killing Hitler has apparently gone wrong so many times that all time travel units have blocks on traveling to any time in which the man was alive, because the consequences are dire. This becomes a plot point when one Time Spy decides to prevent World War One instead, thinking it would change things so that World War Two didn't happen, which via chain reaction would mean that World War Three (which nearly wiped humanity out entirely) wouldn't happen. The resulting clusterfuck takes up the bulk of Time Ghost's main plot as this goes very, very, ''very'' wrong. |
| 132 | * Connie Willis's time-travelling historians can't go back to any event which is over a certain threshold of "significance" to world history. "The net" (the name for their time machine) won't open for them, or if it will, results are unpredictable. In-universe, someone did once try to go to Germany to kill Hitler in the early days of the net and ended up in South America. Similarly, you can't go to Waterloo or Lincoln's assassination. Since historians can be in the past for extended periods and travel freely once there, it's never explained why you can't go to a different location a bit earlier and travel to the site of the event you're interested in (perhaps the net somehow knows what you're up to?) but then it's never really explained why it's lethal to exist in the same time period twice, either. |
| 133 | ** It's said in ''Doomsday Book'' that the time traveller arrives at a nearby point in spacetime such that she cannot change history. (In that novel she aimed for England 1328 and landed in 1348; [[spoiler:she doesn't change history because everyone she meets dies.]]) The story we read may be the result of a series of loops converging on stability. |
| 134 | ** In ''All Clear'' there's a strong implication that [[spoiler: at least sometimes the net puts you somewhere unexpected in order for you to play a part you already played, leading to a {{Stable Time Loop}}. The slippage ''is'' to protect history, but nobody ever thought that it might work by ensuring you were in the place you were supposed to be. So you still can't go and kill Hitler, because your own history says you didn't.]] |
| 135 | * In Robert Asprin's Literature/TimeScout series, people important to history can't be killed. Period. There's no real explanation, but you'll trip, or sneeze, or die, or your gun will jam, or something, but you '''will''' fail. Essentially, in-universe PlotArmor. |
| 136 | ** The explanation is that when you're in the past, you don't change history, you merely fulfill your already-taken-place-just-hasn't-happened-to-you-yet part in it. So while you can mess about fairly freely in 'the shadows of history', you can't possibly change the way any event was recorded, because history already records that you clearly failed to change it. One villain's cover story involves him discovering an ancient photograph of himself doing something he has not yet done (it's a lie, but the story is accepted as perfectly legitimate effect of the time travel rules). |
| 137 | * [[InvertedTrope Inverted]] in Creator/StephenKing's ''Literature/ElevenTwentyTwoSixtyThree'' where, instead of going back in time to assassinate someone, the main character instead goes back in time to ''prevent'' an assassination, specifically that of JFK. [[spoiler: He learns the hard way that the trope goes both ways; not only did preventing the assassination actually [[BadFuture make things worse]] ([[CrapsackWorld for one thing, the Civil Rights movement never happened, about half of the world is rendered uninhabitable thanks to nuclear warfare]], and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Maine seceded to Canada]]), but it turns out that making drastic changes to history can [[TimeCrash destroy time itself]].]] |
| 138 | * Inverted ''and'' somewhat averted in Stanley Shapiro's ''Literature/ATimeToRemember.'' The narrator travels back in time to prevent the JFK assassination, fails, and is himself arrested as the assassin. His girlfriend then goes back, fails to prevent the shooting, but does prevent the hero's arrest. Finally the [[CoolOldGuy elderly]] [[TheProfessor genius]] who invented the machine determines to set things right by traveling back himself and [[spoiler: shooting Oswald on Nov. 21]]. An aversion in that the US pulls its military advisors out of Vietnam, and as a result the world basically relaxes out of the Cold War. On the other hand, we only get to see what happened for a few months thereafter; in a BittersweetEnding, by traveling back to a time when they themselves were already alive, the protagonists violated the law that something cannot co-exist with itself in the same space/time, and thus sacrificed their own younger selves -- and cannot return to their original present. |
| 139 | * ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' plays with this in Megamorphs 3: ''Elfangor's Secret'', but ultimately averts it, because by the time they get to World War 2, history is already so screwed up that killing Hitler won't matter -- [[RichardNixonTheUsedCarSalesman he's just a jeep driver in that world]]. So when Tobias wants to kill him, while Cassie doesn't see how they can kill Hitler in this world just because he's Hitler, given that he didn't do any of the things he did in the regular world. But Tobias "accidentally" kills him a few minutes later. |
| 140 | * Creator/DesmondWarzel's short story [[http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/08/wikihistory "Wikihistory"]]: |
| 141 | ** It's basically a time traveler's message board discussion about the importance of not killing Hitler: it turns out World War II and the Third Reich are vitally important to the invention of time travel and the foundation of the TimePolice. Noobs who didn't read the rules keep going back in time to kill Hitler anyway, and an increasingly angry moderator has to clean up after them. |
| 142 | --->'''[=BigChill=]''':''Take it easy on the kid, [=SilverFox316=]; everybody kills Hitler on their first trip.''\ |
| 143 | '''[=SilverFox316=]''': ''Easy for you to say, [=BigChill=], since to my recollection you’ve never volunteered to go back and fix it. You think I’ve got nothing better to do?'' |
| 144 | ** Another poster calls the others out on their Eurocentrism and asks why no one ever tries to kill other, arguably worse tyrants and murderers. [[spoiler:He goes after one of them, successfully kills him, and inadvertently {{RetGone}}s ''himself''. No one seems particularly inclined to undo his error.]] |
| 145 | * Music/AbneyPark came out with a novelization of their band's fictional backstory. In it, they subvert the trope by kidnapping baby Hitler and raising him aboard an airship full of pirates. This causes Twentieth-Century civilisation to fail to recognise the dangers of having such an arch-villain when they see it, allowing one to take over the world, along with one of the crew stealing the airships' time-travel technology, giving said villain the willingness and tools to do so. He imprisons all of humanity that he can grab into three walled cities, keeps them in a state of technological regression, enjoys the best for himself, of course, and renders the rest a wasteland he thinks of as Natures' inalienable right, even though [[ArtisticLicenseBiology he's really just slapped together an improbable ecosystem out of whatever creatures he thinks are most]] [[RuleOfCool awesome]], in the manner of a seven-year-olds' action figure collection, leaving anyone who dares live outside his cities stuck in a Dungeons and Dragons monster manual. |
| 146 | * Spoofed in one sketch in ''Literature/FreeRangeChickens'', in which a time traveler succeeds in murdering baby Hitler and then finds himself unable to explain to a horrified onlooker why he did it. "Officer? This man just killed a baby". |
| 147 | * ''Literature/CompleteWorldKnowledge'' turns out to be an aversion. Throughout the [[Literature/TheAreasOfMyExpertise first]] [[Literature/MoreInformationThanYouRequire two]] books, the consistency of the made-up nonsense gradually forms a sort of AlternateHistory, and by [[Literature/ThatIsAll the third book]], we learn that Hitler drowned at a seaside resort during the 1930s. Franklin Roosevelt was nearby, and he ''did nothing''. |
| 148 | -->Why? What happened in ''your'' timeline? |
| 149 | * Averted, with a catch, in Kate Atkinson's ''Literature/LifeAfterLife''. Ursula lives her life over and over, and as she becomes more aware of past lives, she realizes she has a unique opportunity to kill Hitler before WWII. In at least two lives, it seems she does so. However, this results in her instantly being killed, so she can't "enjoy" the altered timeline. |
| 150 | * Timewyrm: Exodus from the Virgin New Adventures has the Doctor prevent Ace killing Hitler, telling her that if Hitler dies a competent madman could lead Germany. |
| 151 | * Played with in Creator/DeanKoontz's ''Literature/{{Lightning}}''. First, time travel is invented by the Nazis, and of course they're not going to kill their boss. Second, the rules of time travel prevent traveling to the past, making it impossible to go back and kill him before the war. Third, one of the Nazis does have a HeelFaceTurn and uses the time-travel device as essentially a teleporter to jump into Hitler's bunker. He points out that he ''could'' kill him but he's not going to, in order to demonstrate his loyalty. [[spoiler: At this point he's already sabotaged the time-travel program and guaranteed the outcome of the war that we all know, so there's no need for him to kill Hitler right then anyway.]] |
| 152 | * ''Literature/ThePrimalSolution'', a novella by Eric Norden. The central character somehow takes over the body of a young Hitler. After tormenting him for a while, the protagonist prepares to force Hitler to commit suicide. However, Hitler reasserts control just before throwing himself into the river. In shock over the whole experience, he wonders why the protagonist, who had identified himself as Jewish, did these horrible things to him. In a combination with the ButterflyOfDoom, the protagonist realizes that he had possessed Hitler before he had acquired any anti-Semitic feelings, and his possession caused those feelings. His attempt to prevent the Holocaust directly caused it. |
| 153 | * Partly averted in "It's OK to Say if You Went Back in Time and Killed Baby Hitler," by Jo Lindsay Walton. A group of time-travelers discover that their intervention has been reverted by a rival group. They start to plot their response, and by the end, [[spoiler: begin to question whether or not they have become the true Baby Hitlers.]] |
| 154 | * Played with in ''Literature/AllOurYesterdays''. Every attempt to stop James from building the time machine or otherwise sabotaging it has been met with failure, leading to death as the only option... but Em can't bring herself to do it and [[spoiler:James ends up killing himself to stop it all]]. |
| 155 | * "The Einstein Gun" is set in a world where Franz Ferdinand is never assassinated, because Gavrilo Princip's gun jams. World War I never happens, the old continental empires stand, Communism remains a mere fringe political theory, the USA stays isolationist and France becomes the West's beacon of democracy and freedom. Hitler remains in Vienna, where he [[InSpiteOfANail founds an equivalent to the Nazi Party]] and becomes Chancellor of Austria, where he institutes the same antisemitic and anti-Slav agenda as in reality, with the explicit support of Emperor Franz Ferdinand. The story ends with the Jewish-Austrian narrator and UsefulNotes/AlbertEinstein using an experimental time machine to send the eponymous gun back in time to the day of the assassination, hoping Ferdinand's death will derail Hitler's rise to power. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero Oops.]] |
| 156 | * The Creator/GregEgan short story "Literature/{{Oracle}}" plays straight and {{discusse|dTrope}}s this trope. An infinite number of {{Alternate Timeline}}s exists in a five-dimensional field of "Everett branches", wherein {{Dimensional Traveler}}s are unable to alter their own past but can interfere with other branches as they like. Since all known time travelers come from branches that suffered World War II, they can't change the path of the war, but are limited to minor interventions like redirecting the occasional bomb, which don't derail their personal histories. |
| 157 | * In ''Literature/BornACrime'', Creator/TrevorNoah discusses and deconstructs the motive for this trope, arguing that Hitler's atrocities are not that different from the European imperialism and colonialism inflicted on much of the world, particularly Africa. Westerners only consider Hitler to be the worst historical monster, because [[ProtagonistCenteredMorality he inflicted atrocities on them]] and because the Nazis kept such meticulous records of their atrocities. |
| 158 | -->'''Noah''': If black South Africans could go back in time and kill one person, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Rhodes Cecil Rhodes]] would come before Hitler. If people in the Congo could go back in time and kill one person, Belgium’s [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_II_of_Belgium King Leopold]] would come way before Hitler. If Native Americans could go back in time and kill one person, it would probably be UsefulNotes/ChristopherColumbus or UsefulNotes/AndrewJackson. ... [[ProtagonistCenteredMorality So in Europe and America]], yes, Hitler is the Greatest Madman in History. In Africa [[ButForMeItWasTuesday he’s just another strongman from the history books.]][[note]]The full quote is on the [[Quotes/HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct Quotes page]].[[/note]] |
| 159 | * In the third book of ''Literature/TheDireSaga'', Dire learns that when Timetripper first got his powers, he attempted to kill Hitler repeatedly, only to find that time keeps correcting itself when it happens. Hitler has, as a result, become extremely paranoid and canny about attacks. It's also resulted in a "groove" in time such that Timetripper keeps getting pulled back to that time period, and the death of Hitler is the easiest way to "reset" his powers. |
| 160 | * ''Literature/TheSupervillainySaga'': In one tie-in short story, Gary mentions that he went back in time to kill Hitler multiple times at various points in history. This just sprouted alternate timelines in which Nazism still arose without Hitler and the Nazis won the war without having to deal with his inept leadership, only for their FacistButInefficient government to fall apart in a few decades anyway. |
| 161 | * In Elaine Midcoh's ''A Trickle In History,'' the protagonist learns that it's impossible to go back and assassinate Hitler -- whenever someone tries, a weird coincidence happens and Hitler survives. The protagonist discovers, however, that she can go back in time and bribe an art school dean into accepting Hitler as one of his school's students, and thus avert the Holocaust that way. |
| 162 | [[/folder]] |
| 163 | |
| 164 | [[folder:Live-Action TV]] |
| 165 | * ''Series/ElChapulinColorado'' has an episode where Chapulin goes up against Hitler himself. [[spoiler: It ends up [[AvertedTrope being an aversion]] when one of Hitler's bumbling lieutenants pulls down a switch that blows up their headquarters, with all of them inside.]] |
| 166 | --> [[spoiler: '''Chapulin''': And then history will say that he commited suicide, that the Allies bombarded the place... anyway.]] |
| 167 | * ''Series/{{Danger 5}}'' go back in time and not only fail to kill Hitler, they create a BadFuture where he's taken over the world! Of course Hitler coming BackFromTheDead is a RunningGag in the series, so this is no surprise. What do you expect from a series about ThoseWackyNazis trying to TakeOverTheWorld...in TheSixties? |
| 168 | * Brought up numerous times in ''Series/DoctorWho'', especially the ExpandedUniverse. |
| 169 | ** In one of the novels, the Doctor helps Hitler to prevent other aliens from making things worse. Another criticised the whole "kill Hitler before the War" theory as a hypocritical exercise in futility, since the only person who would ultimately be able to kill Hitler before he'd ''done'' anything to merit death (as a ''baby'') would be someone who could willingly murder an innocent (a.k.a. [[IfYouKillHimYouWillBeJustLikeHim another Hitler]]). |
| 170 | ** ''Doctor Who'' has always used the Daleks as a metaphor for the Nazis, so the following exchange from [[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E4GenesisOfTheDaleks "Genesis of the Daleks"]] is about as close to this trope as we're going to get: |
| 171 | --->'''The Doctor:''' Just touch these two strands together and the Daleks are finished... Have I that right?\ |
| 172 | '''Sarah Jane:''' To destroy the Daleks? You can't doubt it.\ |
| 173 | '''The Doctor:''' But I do! You see, some things could be better with the Daleks. [[EnemyMine Many future worlds will become allies just because of their fear of the Daleks]]... But the final responsibility is mine, and mine alone. Listen: if someone who knew the future pointed out a child to you, and told you that the child would grow up to be a ruthless dictator who would destroy millions of lives, could you then kill that child?\ |
| 174 | '''Sarah Jane:''' We're talking about the Daleks, the most evil creatures ever invented. You must destroy them! You must complete your mission for the Time Lords.\ |
| 175 | '''The Doctor:''' Do I have the right? |
| 176 | ** PlayedForLaughs in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E8LetsKillHitler "Let's Kill Hitler"]], when the Doctor gets forced at gunpoint by Amy's friend Mels to go back in time to kill Hitler. Meanwhile, the crew of the Teselecta, a time-traveling infiltrator robot crewed by miniature humans who punish {{Karma Houdini}}s, tries to punish Hitler in 1938, only to realize they've come too early (they normally abduct them just before their deaths). Before they can rectify their mistake, the TARDIS comes crashing through the window, [[StableTimeLoop saving Hitler's life]]. Hitler takes the opportunity to shoot the robot, [[spoiler:hitting Mels instead]]. Rory then punches Hitler in the face and locks him in a cupboard, [[RuleOfFunny and he is never heard from again that episode]] while the ''true'' plot starts, [[spoiler: with Mels regenerating and revealed to be River Song]]. |
| 177 | --->'''Hitler:''' Thank you, whoever you are. I think you have just saved my life.\ |
| 178 | '''The Doctor:''' [[NiceJobBreakingItHero Believe me, it was an accident]].\ |
| 179 | '''Amy:''' What do you mean, we just saved his life? We cannot have just SAVED HITLER! |
| 180 | *** "Shut up, Hitler!" |
| 181 | ---->'''Rory:''' Is anyone else having trouble dealing with today? I'm getting this sort of banging in my head.\ |
| 182 | '''Amy:''' Yeah, I think that's Hitler in the cupboard.\ |
| 183 | '''Rory:''' That's not helping. |
| 184 | ** DiscussedTrope in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS34E7KillTheMoon "Kill the Moon"]]. The Doctor mentions taking Clara out to dinner in Berlin in 1938, and that they didn't kill Hitler while they were there, to prove a point that certain points in history are just too monumental for him to dare interfere in them. |
| 185 | ** Not played for laughs in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS35E1TheMagiciansApprentice "The Magician's Apprentice"]], when [[spoiler: Twelve meets a young Davros, creator of the Daleks, on Skaro. Davros later reminds the Doctor of his choice to abandon Davros by replaying Four's speech from above.]] |
| 186 | * In ''Series/TheDrewCareyShow'', Drew contemplates whether it would be moral to kill Hitler, and concludes he couldn't because then there would be no A & E. |
| 187 | ** But then he revises his opinion because he'd be on that channel all the time as ''the guy who killed Hitler'', yeah! |
| 188 | * Parodied in the Israeli sketch comedy series ''Series/TheJewsAreComing'': Hitler's very first memory is of a bunch of people popping out of time machines to try and kill him. |
| 189 | -->"But I was such a cute baby…" |
| 190 | * In the season five premiere of ''Series/{{Lost}}'', Pierre Chang explains to a foreman that the unlimited energy source beneath the Orchid greenhouse can be used to manipulate time. The incredulous foreman replies "What, we're gonna go back and kill Hitler?" to which Chang replies "Don't be absurd! There are rules! Rules that can't be broken!" |
| 191 | ** This exchange actually foreshadows an important event later in the season. [[spoiler:Sayid, having unwittingly gone back in time to the days of the Dharma Initiative, tries to kill Ben as a child, knowing that he will basically grow up to cause much death and suffering, essentially becoming the "Hitler" of the island. It doesn't work, and it's hinted that Sayid's actions might have even been what pushed Ben over to the dark side in the first place.]] |
| 192 | * In ''Series/TheMagicians'', a group of students from the 70s or earlier wrote a thesis on going back in time to kill Hitler, even building a time machine to World War II. They failed to account for the fact that [[{{Ghostapo}} Hitler was a skilled combat magician]] and were killed. |
| 193 | * In series 3 of ''Series/{{Misfits}}'' [[spoiler: an old Jewish man who's bought Curtis' power]] attempts to travel in time and kill Hitler. Not only does he fail, he accidentally drops his cellphone, which Hitler finds and [[TimelineAlteringMacGuffin uses to advance Nazi technology by decades]]. When the guy gets back to 2011, he finds a world where Germany won the war and now rules Britain. [[spoiler: So Kelly gets given the time-travel power and uses it to go back and take the phone off Hitler. And then chin him. And ask him why he's "such a fookin' dick". And then "kick the shit out of him".]] |
| 194 | * ''Series/RedDwarf''. Hitler is saved from successful assassination when Lister steals his suitcase (with a bomb inside) during one time travel (where he uses "evolved" film developer). |
| 195 | ** A similar situation occurs in the episode "Tikka to Ride", but with JFK. [[ItMakesSenseInContext Listers travels back in time to stock up on curry]] and inadvertently prevents the assassination of JFK. This leads to Kennedy getting impeached and sent to prison and a second Cuban Missile Crisis. The team solves the problem by [[spoiler: abducting JFK while he's being transferred to prison and traveling back to 1963 where Kennedy himself becomes the second gunman from the Grassy Knoll.]] |
| 196 | ** A tie-in book has a Space Corps psychological test which includes the question "If you could go back in time and kill Adolf Hitler as a baby, would you?", to which Lister answers "[[ComicallyMissingThePoint No, because as a baby, I wouldn't be tall enough to reach him]]". |
| 197 | * A non-time-travel example appears in ''Series/{{Sanctuary}}''. It is revealed that [[UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper Druitt]] has killed Hitler months before D-Day, but the German high command has been using {{Body Double}}s to make it appear that he's still alive. In fact, they are glad Hitler's gone. Druitt realizes that Germany can't be brought down simply by killing one man. Interestingly, in the pilot episode, Helen claims that Druitt is a time traveler from the future, which would make this trope true, if his backstory wasn't {{RetCon}}ned later into a Victorian scientist who became a teleporter after injecting [[OurVampiresAreDifferent vampire]] blood. |
| 198 | * In one rather heavy-handed episode of ''Series/{{Sliders}}'', it was discovered that a world in which California was essentially a Nazi state, complete with the ethnic cleansing of minorities, had never had a Hitler (as per one character's befuddled reaction when Hitler's name is dropped), and had therefore never "learned its lesson", namely the horrors of racial oppression and genocide. |
| 199 | * ''Franchise/StarTrek'': |
| 200 | ** ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': A man claiming to be a time-travelling historian attempts to invoke this when Picard asks for his advice on their crisis of the week. Picard is profoundly unimpressed, calling it a problem for first-year philosophy students rather than reality. It turns out to be a moot point, as the historian [[spoiler: is actually a time-travelling conman from the past.]] |
| 201 | ** ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'': |
| 202 | *** In "Storm Front" Captain Archer is urged by one of the people in the AlternateUniverse where Germany is winning [=WW2=] to use his phase cannons to destroy Berlin, but he tells her to be patient and let him correct history his way. This is a somewhat odd example, as history had already been massively screwed with, and conceivably Archer could have sterilized all of Earth to no ill effect, as the one event he did need to change would reset everything anyway. |
| 203 | *** Incidentally, that timeline may (or may not) have been the result of this trope applied to ''Lenin'' - someone assassinated him in 1916, the Soviet Union never came to be, and Hitler could concentrate on the West. |
| 204 | ** This trope is discussed in ''Series/StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds'' in concerns with [[spoiler:Khan Noonian-Singh]] as he is so important to humanity’s historical path than getting rid of him would bring about a BadFuture, no matter how benign or malicious. Interestingly, it's indicated that ''time itself'' has actually been enforcing this trope as best it can: apparently the reason the Eugenics Wars didn't start in [[Recap/StarTrekS1E22SpaceSeed 1992]] is that multiple time travelers have attempted to sabotage it, but all they have managed is to push it slightly further into the future, and history is [[RubberBandHistory right back on track]] within a century or two. |
| 205 | --> [[spoiler: '''Romulan assassin''':]] ...and I've been ''stuck here'' for ''thirty years''! |
| 206 | * In ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' Gordon uses this trope to try and justify killing [[spoiler: Sam]] to Dean, asking him if he was able to sit next to a very young, aspiring Hitler, would he shoot him? |
| 207 | ** Made slightly {{Hilarious in Hindsight}} when [[spoiler: Dean ends up shooting Hitler. Who was resurrected rather than Dean killing him through time travel, but still.]] |
| 208 | * ''Franchise/TheTwilightZone'': |
| 209 | ** ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': In the episode "No Time Like the Past", a time-traveler attempts to snipe Hitler during a speech from a hotel window. He had a nice clean shot, then ''his gun jammed''. He is forced to abandon the attempt when the maid calls the police on him. It also handwaves the whole "doesn't think to go back farther" thing, as the time-traveler also attempted to prevent the sinking of the ''Lusitania''. It doesn't work either. |
| 210 | ** ''Series/TheTwilightZone2002'': In the episode "Cradle of Darkness", an agent comes back in time and kills an infant Adolf Hitler. In order not to be punished, his maid buys a beggar's baby and it is raised as Hitler, [[StableTimeLoop becoming the one we know.]] |
| 211 | * ''Series/MetalHurlantChronicles'': In "The Pledge of Anya", a warrior is sent to kill a child possessed by a demon, but can't bring himself to do it and is shot by police. Then it turns out the kid was Hitler. |
| 212 | * In ''Recap/MysteryScienceTheater3000S11E03TheTimeTravelers'' Crow is presented with the scenario of a T. rex coming out of a time portal, he says he'd saddle it up and go Hitler-hunting in 1940s Germany. |
| 213 | * In the final season of ''Series/TwelveMonkeys'', the team goes to 1944 to get an artifact. They're thrown to find Hitler is a surprise visitor and a pair of French Resistance soldiers are planning to set off a bomb. It's played straight with the group trying to stop the bomb so they can get the clock. But in the closing scene [[spoiler: a hysterical subversion comes in as Jennifer (a complete nutcase), sets off the bomb just because she can. Leader Katrina is shown at a bar, looking at a newspaper headline of Hitler's death while Himmler taking over and musing that the rest of World War II pretty much followed the same path, meaning killing Hitler at that point didn't really affect history at all.]] |
| 214 | * This trope is the basic premise of ''Series/KamenRiderZiO'', as it has time-travelers (Tsukuyomi and Geiz) come back in time fifty years to assassinate their "Hitler", Sougo Tokiwa aka "Oma Zi-O" ("Demon King of Time"), before he rises to power. The problem is that at this point in his life, Sougo is still a fundamentally decent person; and as Tsukuyomi and Geiz are ''also'' fundamentally decent people they can't bring themselves to kill him while he's still innocent and instead resolve to hang back and observe for the time being. Both have panicked at points and reached for their weapons when it looked like Sougo was taking steps toward becoming Oma Zi-O. Also complicating matters is that they're not the only time-travelers; Woz is loyal to Oma Zi-O and wants to preserve history as-is, while a group called the Time Jackers is trying to manipulate events to get their own PuppetKing on Oma Zi-O's throne. |
| 215 | * ''Series/StudioC'' has one sketch where [[Franchise/BackToTheFuture Doc Brown]], Franchise/BillAndTed, [[Series/DoctorWho The Doctor]], [[Literature/HarryPotter Hermione Granger]], and [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Spock]] all show up at the same time and place to try to kill Hitler. (Well, except for [[spoiler: The Doctor,]] who is just there to [[spoiler: serve Bill and Ted with papers for copyright infringement.]]) In the end, [[spoiler: Hermione kills him, then hitches a ride with Bill and Ted back to her own time, because the Time Turner only travels backward and she doesn't want to take TheSlowPath home.]] |
| 216 | * In ''[[Series/TheUmbrellaAcademy2019 The Umbrella Academy]]'' Diego wants Number 5 to take back to kill Hitler when he's done trying to save UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy. |
| 217 | [[/folder]] |
| 218 | |
| 219 | [[folder:Music]] |
| 220 | * In the song "Parantaja" by Finnish garage metal band [[http://riivaaja.free.fr/ Riivaaja]], a man of Jewish descent devises a time machine, travels to the past and assassinates Hitler. He returns to his own time to see the Soviets having completely taken over, and figures the only solution left is to go back to the past and assassinate ''himself''. |
| 221 | * Dan Bern's song "God Said No" has the narrator asking God to send him back in time to kill Hitler (as well as prevent the deaths of Music/KurtCobain and Jesus). God refuses (duh), saying that if He did send the narrator back, he wouldn't actually do the things he claims he would, instead getting caught up in other, more self-serving activities. |
| 222 | * Spoofed in Anal Cunt's "I Went Back In Time And Voted For Hitler", wherein the singer doesn't go back in time to kill Hitler but instead to vote for him. |
| 223 | [[/folder]] |
| 224 | |
| 225 | [[folder:Newspapers]] |
| 226 | * Dean Burnett, writing for ''[[UsefulNotes/BritishNewspapers The Guardian]]'', argues against assassinating Hitler [[http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2014/feb/21/time-travellers-kill-adolf-hitler?CMP=fb_gu here]], on the basis that it's impossible to know whether doing so would make things worse (amongst other things). |
| 227 | * ''The Washington Post'' article "[[https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2015/10/23/you-should-not-kill-baby-hitler-try-this-instead/ You should not kill Baby Hitler. Try this instead"]] recognizes the futility of killing Baby Hitler and instead proposes that kidnapping Hitler as a child and raising him in Britain would be best. |
| 228 | [[/folder]] |
| 229 | |
| 230 | [[folder:Stand Up Comedy]] |
| 231 | * Creator/NormMacdonald has a famous bit about this, saying "people always want to murder Hitler with their time machine, but I'd be afraid I'd fall under the spell of his beautiful eyes." |
| 232 | [[/folder]] |
| 233 | |
| 234 | [[folder:Tabletop Games]] |
| 235 | * In the ''TabletopGame/{{Champions}}'' module "Wings of the Valkyrie," the heroes must go back in time to save Hitler after another time traveller kills him before the Nazi Party rises to power... creating an AlternateHistory where things came out even worse (Germany went communist; the West lost the alternate version of World War Two to the German-Soviet alliance; a falling-out between the victors led to World War Three; several cities have been nuked and the major powers don't seem at all afraid of doing it again when the next war breaks out; the United States is sliding into homegrown fascism). Most people in the alternate 1987 have a general sense that [[JustBeforeTheEnd civilization is inevitably going down the drain]]. |
| 236 | ** It should be noted that the original version submitted by the credited author presented the heroes with an alternate history in which killing Hitler creates a worldwide Utopia; the point of the original version was to present the players with an opportunity to debate morality and present a hard choice about whether to restore the original history. Editorial meddling (and possibly concerns that such a module might be a campaign-ender) resulted in the published version, which greatly embarrassed the credited author. The less genre savvy readers included Holocaust survivors and the Anti-Defamation League, who had trouble with the premise that slaughtering 6,000,000+ Jews (and others) might make the world better. |
| 237 | * In ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}} Time Travel'', it is said that many new recruits to the Time Patrol ask this question: they are given more or less the same answers detailed at the top of this article. |
| 238 | ** It's also acknowledged, in a way, in the ''GURPS TabletopGame/InfiniteWorlds'' setting (which is more about ''crosstime'' travel). Some agents of Centrum (the antagonist timeline) have noticed that Homeliners get downright irrational (or even more so than usual) about timelines where Hitler exists, especially if he's winning. To Centrum, he's just another genocidal despot like so many in (other people's) history. |
| 239 | ** The GURPS [=WW2=] sourcebook, in a passage concerning the use of ''Infinite Worlds'' and time travel, gives this very trope as an unnerving example of a quest hook, about the players having to go back in time to ''protect Hitler'' lest he gets assassinated and a far more skilled leader takes his place and wins the war for Germany. |
| 240 | * Played with in ''TabletopGame/GeniusTheTransgression''. You can kill Hitler, but it won't do anything (except get the Time Cops mad at you). Hitler has been killed six times over, so the setting's Time Cops started cloning him. If you head back to 1921 Hamburg, you can get a tour of the cloning facility. In an added twist, the Time Police got there a bit late -- there was a Nazi party that led Germany to World War II and the Holocaust, but ''Hitler'' wasn't behind the reins first time around... |
| 241 | ** There's a very high rate of suicide among timecops who have to protect the Nazis. |
| 242 | * In the time-travel RPG ''TabletopGame/{{Continuum}}'', the Fraternity of Thespians use various disguises and impersonate historical figures throughout time to prevent Narcissists from changing the Known universe. It's ''very'' rude to ask them how many times they've had to impersonate Hitler; the common reply is "Further information is not available here". |
| 243 | * ''TabletopGame/FengShui'' uses this trope in order to explain how superficial shifts (changes to temporal events that don't involve capturing Feng Shui sites) work in the setting. If you killed Hitler in the 19th century hoping to keep Nazism and its various atrocities from going down, it would not work, because somebody else would simply take Hitler's place. |
| 244 | * In ''TabletopGame/TimeWatch'', the titular organization has a permanent base in Berlin ''specifically'' to deal with all the people who get their hands on time travel tech and decide to go kill Hitler. It's very busy. |
| 245 | [[/folder]] |
| 246 | |
| 247 | [[folder:Theatre]] |
| 248 | * The short play [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GBccHlQHMks If You Could Go Back...]] presents the scenario where the scientist that created the machine has to send her layabout roommate to stop the assassin she herself sent multiple times, as in each iteration they try and assassinate Hitler earlier and earlier in his career, and each version only makes things worse. At the ending, the scientist [[spoiler: goes back to Hitler's childhood and talks to him and hugs him - changing his nature rather than adding violence to a violent world.]] Not that that changes the end result - a new dictator arises and does the exact same thing. |
| 249 | * There is a 1966 Swedish play, ''Å, vilken härlig fred!'', about war, democracy, and civil rights that touches on this. One scene is in an alternate history where Nazi Germany won [=WWII=] and... not very much seems different. A movie poster announces the latest 007 film -- 007 Gert Fröbe, that is -- and the latest teenage fad is rück und rüll music, but otherwise the actors read the actual newspaper of the day and discuss current events that the audience would be familiar with. But: when one of the actors complains about Hitler getting the Nobel Prize ("a fat geezer who spends his time at the Riviera wrapped in a blanket making bad paintings") a member of the audience fetches some policemen who drag the actor off stage. |
| 250 | [[/folder]] |
| 251 | |
| 252 | [[folder:Toys]] |
| 253 | * ''ComicBook/BeastWarsUprising:'' One of the major nails in the backstory is that, during a version of the events of ''Beast Wars'', Beast War's Megatron managed to get away with shooting Optimus Prime in the head, but before she could vanish from existence, Blackarachnia managed to fatally poison G1 Megatron in return. The result was that without Megatron, the Autobot / Decepticon war proved far more destructive to Earth, and just in general. |
| 254 | [[/folder]] |
| 255 | |
| 256 | [[folder:Video Games]] |
| 257 | * VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlertSeries: |
| 258 | ** The central premise of ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert'' is that shortly after World War II, Albert Einstein uses a TimeMachine to meet Hitler at the one moment in history where his location in civilian life was absolutely verified (just outside the gates of Landsberg prison on December 20, 1924, after completing his sentence for his role in the Beerhall Putsch) and then [[RetGone erasing the future dictator from history]]. While this does succeed in preventing the original World War II, the power vacuum leads to an even greater conflict as UsefulNotes/JosefStalin makes his own attempt to conquer the world, with the Soviets and Allies (including Germany) slugging it out [[SovietSuperscience with weirder weapons]] in a "Great World War II" that takes place in the 1950s or so. |
| 259 | ** In contrast, the Soviet campaign for ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert2: Yuri's Revenge'' has them steal the Allied time machine to reverse the outcome of the base game's war and prevent Yuri from enacting his renegade plan of setting up Psychic Dominators following their defeat in the main game, leading to a total Soviet victory and world domination of Communism. It may be that the time between the actions of the time travellers and that of the time period their actions affected was so small, and also involving essentially the same people, that the long-term implications were manageable - similar TimeyWimeyBall shenanigans happen with the Allied campaign that only serve to see Yuri imprisoned before he can use his Psychic Dominators and General Carville [[BackFromTheDead avoiding the assassination attempt that claimed his life in the base game]]. |
| 260 | ** The Soviets pull an Einstein on Einstein in ''[[VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert3 Red Alert 3]]''; on the verge of defeat, they use a time machine of their own to take out the Allies' main scientist, erasing not only Einstein but the nuclear technology he helped create. While this causes the Soviet Union to be much more powerful in the new timeline, it inadvertently creates a new world power, the Empire of the Rising Sun, forcing the Soviets to ally with the Allies to defeat the Japanese (and canonically losing anyway). Einstein proves to be an exemption to this rule in that a corporation springs up to provide the Allies with chrono- technology in his place. Also note that by taking Einstein, and by extension nuclear weapons out of the picture, the game developers were able to create a war game that [[NuclearWeaponsTaboo didn't involve dropping a nuclear bomb on the Japanese]] (never mind that previous games had Chrono-technology as a personal invention of Einstein, while nuclear weapons were developed ''by the Soviets'', without Einstein directly contributing to the project, because the game runs on pure RuleOfCool and {{camp}}, and the developers certainly don't want you to think about the story). |
| 261 | ** ''VideoGame/RedAlert3Corona'', a planned FanSequel GameMod for ''3'', has this as the backstory: When the Empire of the Rising Sun surrendered to the Allies and Emperor Yoshiro consequently died of grief, his son Crown Prince Tatsu ordered a group of loyal Imperial scientists to recreate the Soviet time machine. Tatsu travelled back to TheMiddleAges, saved Möngke Khan (one of Genghis Khan's grandsons) from a cannonball shot that would have killed him, and [[GivingRadioToTheRomans gave the Mongol horde access to Imperial weapons]] that allowed them to sweep across Europe in a CurbStompBattle, in the hope of destroying western civilization and preventing the Allies and Soviets from ever rising to power. Then, [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness he disposed of Möngke with the classic handshake of historical retconning and left the Mongols to tear themselves apart]], back to the present satisfied of a job well done. On coming back, Tatsu discovers to his horror that [[InSpiteOfANail not only do the Allies and Soviets still exist despite his attempts to wipe out their ancestors]], but a new global superpower has emerged. Known as the [[ImperialChina Celestial Empire]], they are equal or even superior even to the Empire of the Rising Sun and have [[FromBadToWorse designs to conquer Japan]] and [[ChinaTakesOverTheWorld perhaps the entire planet]]. |
| 262 | * In the early flight combat sim ''Corncob 3D'', Hitler was apparently killed by a thrown bottle earlier in his life. In place of WWII, however, there was an alien invasion. Somewhat inexplicably, [=F4U=] Corsairs are still developed and flown against the alien threat. |
| 263 | * In ''VideoGame/WarFrontTurningPoint'', Hitler is assassinated very early in WWII. This, however, makes things ''worse'': under the even more effective leadership of his successor, the Nazis are able to occupy Great Britain. And when they are eventually defeated, things go ''haywire'': Russians take Germany's fall as the chance to advance into Western Europe, triggering a new conflict with the Allies. |
| 264 | * In an unused poster in ''VideoGame/{{Portal 2}}'', you are informed to, in event of time travel, avoid both your past and future selves, your dad, and Hitler. An unused and unrecorded Cave Johnson line states that all alternate parallel universe versions of you (or whatever test subject he was talking to at the time) are Hitler. He also warns you not to kill him if you meet him during the tests. |
| 265 | * Somewhat averted in ''VideoGame/TitanicAdventureOutOfTime''. The protagonist is a former British government agent, waiting in his apartment in the London of 1942 for a German bomb to land on him. He reflects on the past, and how it could have been altered. Somehow, he then ends up back on the Titanic, given a second chance to complete his mission. If you succeed, and manage to escape on a lifeboat with three particular items, Hitler never comes to power, WWI is similarly averted, and peace and prosperity reigns in Europe. Of course, if you escape but with two or fewer of the three items, in any particular order, there are various other horrible fates waiting for Europe, such as Soviet dictatorship under Stalin (without any Hitler to counter him, his power grew far greater) or the world wars not only going ahead, but Germany invading Britain. Amusingly, one of the items is a painting done by Hitler, which if recovered, makes him a famous artist, and thus he has no time to involve himself in politics. |
| 266 | * [[http://www.2flashgames.com/f/f-Time-Travel-Travesty-2473.htm "Time Travel Travesty"]] inverted the trope, in that the time-traveller WANTED something bad to happen. An evil genius comes up with an Evil Plan, go back in time to kill Hitler causing the Soviet Union to take over Europe. His henchman called him out on it, stating he's just copying the plot of ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert''. Unlike Red Alert though, the universe just explodes. |
| 267 | * Due to the way time travel works in ''VideoGame/QuantumBreak'', killing Hitler is impossible (long story short, the furthest back you can go is the first activation of the time machine you're using, and the first time machine was activated in 1999). You can find a draft for a book on time travel by Will where a note mentions that [[NeverHeardThatOneBefore he's really sick of hearing jokes about killing Hitler]]. |
| 268 | * A non time-travel related example in the fourth ''VideoGame/HeartsOfIron'' game: If the player derails the course of history in some way (the most obvious example being having Germany overthrow Hitler) in an attempt to avoid conflict, the game will go out of it's way to have other nations abandon their historical path and go out of their way to cause conflict with the player (i.e., if Germany opts to overthrow Hitler, France will abandon it's historical Democratic path and either go Communist if Germany restores the Kaiserreich and allies with Britain, or Fascist if Germany restores the Weimar Republic as a constitutional monarchy - an exception is if Germany restores the Kaiserreich but opts to reform the Central Powers, due to that path still putting Germany in conflict with the Allies), and unless the player takes out other nations that would cause trouble early on, those nations will still go down their historical paths (using the aforementioned example with Germany, the Soviets will still make their territorial demands from their neighbors in Europe, and Italy and Japan will still attack Greece or Yugoslavia and China respectively). Additionally, InSpiteOfANail, Hitler can still cause trouble (albeit under a PaperThinDisguise) if he fakes his death and either Argentina[[note]]referencing the joke of how many Nazis fled to the country to avoid persecution[[/note]], Greece[[note]]in this case, Greece has to restore ''The UsefulNotes/ByzantineEmpire''; he shows up as "Adolfos I"[[/note]], or the United States[[note]]as an architect from Brownow, Arkansas; while it's not required for him to show up, he can lead the [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar Confederate States of America]] if you wish[[/note]] go fascist[[note]]each of those identities corresponded with a different DLC - ''Waking the Tiger'' for Argentina, ''Man the Guns'' for the United States, and ''Battle for the Bosphorus'' for Greece; ''La Resistance'' allows for him to be a spy for a democratic Germany, whereas ''No Step Back'' broke the trend by not having him as a leader for one of the countries that got content - Poland, the Soviet Union, and the 3 Batlic States[[/note]]. |
| 269 | * Non-Hitler example in ''VideoGame/LegacyOfKain'': The vampire Kain, while leading [[LastStand a losing battle]] against the army of the brutal tyrant Nemesis, travels back in time. There he murders Nemesis's past self, the boy-king William the Just, [[FaceHeelTurn before he turns evil and unstoppable]]. When he returns to his time, he finds the vampire race almost wiped out by [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge crusaders avenging their beloved king]]. It turns out Kain was set up by [[TheChessmaster Moebius]], who arranged both the time travel, William's turn to evil, and the subsequent crusades. |
| 270 | [[/folder]] |
| 271 | |
| 272 | [[folder:Visual Novels]] |
| 273 | * [[spoiler:Heinz Heger]] in ''VisualNovel/ShikkokuNoSharnoth'' has apparently been going for something like this. [[spoiler:Whether it works or not is left ambiguous, but he himself views it as a failure.]] |
| 274 | [[/folder]] |
| 275 | |
| 276 | [[folder:Webcomics]] |
| 277 | * ''Webcomic/SubNormality'': |
| 278 | ** In [[http://www.viruscomix.com/page382.html this]] comic, the time travelers are all shot dead by Hitler’s guards before they can kill him, but their constant attempts on his life are making his guards worry about how the future’s going to turn out. |
| 279 | ** [[http://www.viruscomix.com/page493.html In this comic]], a sign on the time machine warns that “Booth is not to be used to kill Hitler”.[[note]]No, not John Wilkes Booth, although that WOULD be interesting...[[/note]] |
| 280 | ** Parodied and inverted [[http://www.viruscomix.com/page451.html here]], where two neo-Nazis try to travel back in time to kill President Roosevelt and cause the Allies to lose the war… only to fail when they evidently forget there were ''two'' presidents by that name and get their car thrown at them by President ''Theodore'' Roosevelt. |
| 281 | --->'''Theodore Roosevelt:''' I do declare you boys picked the wrong Roosevelt! |
| 282 | * Played with in [[http://www.squidi.net/comic/junkyard/tsd/view.php?series=tsd&ep=2&id=37 these webcomics]] on Squidi.net (keep clicking forward). |
| 283 | * Parodied by ''Webcomic/{{Starslip}}'' [[http://starslip.com/2008/08/22/starslip-number-854/ here.]] Maverick of [[TimePolice Deep Time]] used to kill Hitler and then go back in time to stop himself for fun. |
| 284 | * Averted (so far) in ''WebComic/JesusChristInTheNameOfTheGun''. [[KungfuJesus Jesus, himself]], does this, although it was much more difficult than expected. |
| 285 | * ''Webcomic/TheNonAdventuresOfWonderella'': |
| 286 | ** Used with "communist" China in this [[http://nonadventures.com/2008/03/29/big-trouble-in-regular-china/ this]] strip where Wonderella goes back in time to prevent China's air pollution problems and in the process save a young boy from drowning. When Wonderita worries about how this might impact the future, Wonderella states that things will be fine on the reasoning that a) it's just a little kid and b) he's named ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong Mao]]'' "like a kitty cat!" so things will turn out fine. |
| 287 | ** Invoked in [[http://nonadventures.com/2011/10/08/infant-bearable/ this]] strip, when Wonderella gets her hands on a baby Hitler. She and Patrietta consider 'fixing' him to not be a monster (or as much of one), Queen Beetle points out that Hitler was too influential to history to change, and even influencing him to be an ordinary citizen would create a GrandfatherParadox. They send him back, but let him keep his teddy bear. [[spoiler: Cue killer chainsaw-wielding teddy bear robots.]] |
| 288 | --->'''Queen Beetle:''' [If Hitler] wasn't a monster anymore, you'd never do this in the first place. There'd be no reason to "fix" a ''nice'' Hitler. |
| 289 | * The main character of ''Webcomic/LeastICouldDo'' decides to write an "alternate history" novel. [[http://leasticoulddo.com/comic/20081229 Guess what the plot is?]] |
| 290 | ** Of course, in this case, the trope is averted, in large part because [[AuthorAvatar the star of the novel is the writer]], who makes everything better. |
| 291 | * ''Webcomic/IrregularWebcomic'': |
| 292 | ** [[http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2661.html In one comic]], Steve the crocodile hunter is told that his plan to stop the war by taking out Hitler can’t work, as it’s impossible for time travellers to kill Hitler -- which doesn’t impede his plans much, since he was planning on ''wrestling him into submission'', not killing him. (Of course, the comic has a reference to this page). |
| 293 | ** Also mentioned [[http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2451.html here]], where the Mythbusters’ younger selves consider killing Hitler as a way to test out their time machine. |
| 294 | --->'''Young Jamie:''' A.k.a.: “How much ''more'' can we mess up history?” |
| 295 | ** [[http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/3070.html Here]], they dismiss the possibility of doing it because [[ItsBeenDone it’s been done so often that they’ve run out of original punchlines on the topic]]. |
| 296 | * Averted in ''[[Webcomic/{{mezzacotta}} Lightning Made of Owls]]'', but even if the plan goes perfectly, [[http://www.mezzacotta.net/owls/?comic=332 don't expect any gratitude]]: |
| 297 | --> '''Samantha''': His success is your fault? But he's the most overrated artist of the 20th century! What could have ''possibly'' been worse? |
| 298 | * Inverted in ''WebComic/BlackAdventures'', where N and Black travel back in time to ''save'' Hitler. |
| 299 | * Played straight in [[https://tapas.io/episode/98670 this arc]] of ''This Is Douglas'', where the main characters are foiled by a GrandfatherParadox. |
| 300 | * ''Webcomic/{{Spinnerette}}'' Issue 8 begins with a time traveling Ben Franklin unwitting saving Hitler from as of now unknown time traveling assassin [[spoiler:while completely nude.]] [[https://www.spinnyverse.com/comic/10-17-2011 Starting here]] |
| 301 | ** Franklin's [[https://www.spinnyverse.com/comic/10-28-2011 super power]] is also based on this same principle: probability goes ''out of its way'' to ensure no harm comes to Ben. |
| 302 | * ''Webcomic/SquareRootOfMinusGarfield'' has [[http://www.mezzacotta.net/garfield/?comic=993 this]] comic, where killing Hitler invokes one of the strip's RunningGags. |
| 303 | * Discussed in [[http://www.reallifecomics.com/comic.php?comic=title-2838 this]] ''Webcomic/RealLifeComics''; Greg wants to go back in time and change something trivial (Las Vegas choosing to build a giant TV instead of a life-size [[Franchise/StarTrek U.S.S. Enterprise]]) and Tony points out all the cause-and-effect even a twenty-year change would cause before adding "Why do you think I haven't gone back to the mid-1930's and killed Hitler before World War II started?" |
| 304 | * ''Webcomic/{{xkcd}}'': |
| 305 | ** Played with when [[http://xkcd.com/1063/ Black Hat Guy goes and kills Hitler]]... in April 1945, in the bunker, while the Red Army is storming the city and Hitler is just about to commit suicide. Played straight from the perspective of the person who persuaded him to do it, since it was a reasonable assumption that he'd know to do it ''before'' World War 2. Black Hat guy was right after all when he said they should have used the time machine to do something fun, instead of wasting their only chance at time travel in a futile attempt to satisfy the other's person's "obsession with this Hitler guy". Of course, given what a humongous {{troll}} Black Hat Guy is, it's entirely likely that he deliberately missed the point of the other person's insistance on killing Hitler out of spite, thus calling into question exactly how futile it would have been otherwise. Also we only have [[ConsummateLiar Black Hat Guy]]'s [[UnreliableExpositor word on what he did with the time machine]]. |
| 306 | ** [[http://www.xkcd.com/1617/ Beret Guy also travels through time to kill Hitler]]. He finds it easier than expected because he traveled to the future by hiding in a time capsule. |
| 307 | --->'''Beret Guy:''' Anyway, I'm here to kill Hitler.\ |
| 308 | '''Ponytail:''' But he died long ago!\ |
| 309 | '''Beret Guy:''' Oh, good! That was easy. |
| 310 | ** In [[https://xkcd.com/2222/ this strip]], one of the main character's future selves traveled back in time to kill Hitler, but they got the year way off, traveling to the present day instead of the 1900's. |
| 311 | * Referenced in ''{{Webcomic/Homestuck}}'' when Jake meets Meenah, who in another lifetime went on to become an evil empress and then traveled to this universe, took over earth, flooded it, and [[ApocalypseHow wiped out almost all of humanity.]] Jake reasons that this basically makes her fish-Hitler, and therefore that, since everyone knows that if you travel back in time and meet Hitler you must kill him, he should immediately beat her up. Except, of course, he hasn't gone back in time, and Meenah isn't even really the same person as the Condesce anyway, so all he achieves is beating up an innocent person while their friends freak out around them. Then again, Meenah was already dead...and she barely noticed because she had just learned about said alternate self and was {{Squee}}ing over her. So maybe not ''that'' innocent. |
| 312 | * In ''WebComic/CaptainSNES'', one of the non-canon side stories include this. The end result is a dystopian future with a gendercide. Alex, however, finds himself intrigued when [[VideoGame/ChronoTrigger Marle]] throws herself at him. So much so that he wants the Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act repealed. |
| 313 | * [[ColonelBadass Commander Badass]] of ''Webcomic/ManlyGuysDoingManlyThings'' is a member of the Navy TIALS, an elite group of time traveling soldiers from the future who go to right wrongs in history. While Hitler himself is mostly left alone (aside from getting a punch in the face), the Vietnam War is presented in this context: the Commander went to that time period twice, once to win the war for America, and a second time to stop himself cause winning the war caused the ''Franchise/{{Rambo}}'' movies to never exist, and that's just too bizarre a world to contemplate. |
| 314 | * ''Webcomic/SaturdayMorningBreakfastCereal'' : |
| 315 | ** Referenced in [[http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2920 this]] strip: [[spoiler:Hitler only came to power ''because'' of the meddling of a time traveler who went back in time to kill a man named Hartler whose ascent to power caused... a longer version of the Great Depression. This is actually a real argument against trying to change the past, as one can't predict what will happen in the altered timeline]]. |
| 316 | ** Averted in [[http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3116#comic this one]], where the time traveler succeeds by going back and providing Hitler with a scholarship at an art school at the right moment. Although history ''is'' vastly improved, the traveler discovers that it still has [[LukeIAmYourFather a few disturbing side effects]]. |
| 317 | ** [[http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1907 Possibility C]] of the red button hover-over is that the reason no time travellers show up to prevent bad things from happening is that they’re ''really'' bad at doing things like killing Hitler. |
| 318 | ** And yet [[http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3266#comic another twist]] -- Hitler becomes so good at killing time travellers that the people of the far future have to recruit him to fight time travelling invaders from even farther in the future, [[spoiler:all of which turns out to be the plot of a cheap movie]]. |
| 319 | ** In [[http://smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3918 this one]], the result of killing Hitler turned out so well that humanity began systematically hunting down every historical villain in order to improve the present. However, the definition of what constitutes a "villain" predictably dropped over time from people like Hitler and Vlad the Impaler to regular jerks to people who were not perfect, flawless saints. In the end, humanity retroactively wipes itself out of existence. [[spoiler: It turns out to have all been a plot by future aliens to trick humans into removing themselves from the timeline.]] |
| 320 | ** A part of this is discussed in [[https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/apes this comic]], where the alien points out that [[spoiler:it's [[HumansAreInsane a bit alarming]] that humans focus on "''killing'' Hitler" [[MurderIsTheBestSolution instead of doing something non-violent to prevent his rise]]]]. |
| 321 | * A played with variant appears in ''Webcomic/TheAdventuresOfDrMcNinja''. The mysterious Chrononaut turns out to be [[spoiler: Chuck Goodrich, the mayor of Cumberland... or rather, an alternate version of Chuck. See Chuck is a time traveler who came back in time to prevent a ZombieApocalypse that destroyed the future. Only he's not the first or last Chuck to come back in time; every time a Chuck comes back and helps prevent the apocalypse, it just spirals into a new timeline where something ''else'' destroyed the world. The result is that the timeline we follow is regularly getting a new Chuck Goodrich.]] |
| 322 | ** A slightly straighter version crops up later; [[spoiler: the zombie-timeline Chuck, tired of King Radical's constant outwitting of the heroes, uses the time portal under Cumberland to go back in time and try to kill Radical hundreds of years before he can even begin his evil plan. Unfortunately for Chuck, a StableTimeLoop and the fact that Radical is an alternate Chuck Goodrich as well means that Radical kills him and proceeds to dedicate part of his life to tracking down the Chuck that will eventually try to kill him.]] |
| 323 | * Israeli webcomic ''[[https://twitter.com/TheismComics/status/704106419939897344 The Ism]]'' points out a potential problem: |
| 324 | -->(''Outskirts of Berlin, 1910''[[note]]1920 in the original Hebrew[[/note]])\ |
| 325 | '''Jew:''' (''[[NakedOnArrival Appearing naked out of thin air]],'' Franchise/{{Terminator}}''-style'') Get over here Hitler! I'm gonna make you PAY!\ |
| 326 | '''Hitler:''' (''Having just killed him'') This is the TENTH time a random Jew has tried to kill me. THERE MUST BE SOME SOLUTION TO THIS JEWISH PROBLEM. |
| 327 | ** Original Hebrew [[http://www.theism.co.il/comics/timetravel here]]; it’s slightly different than the English version. |
| 328 | * In [[http://www.gocomics.com/super-fun-pak-comix/2017/09/26 this]] [[Webcomic/TomTheDancingBug Super Fun Pak Comix]], a time traveler triumphantly declares that he's stopped World War II and the Holocaust by killing someone named Krauss. After his friend asks if he means Hitler, the time traveler grumbles that this would be the eighth time he's had to go back and kill someone. |
| 329 | * In the commentary for [[https://www.nerfnow.com/comic/2792 this]] ''WebComic/NerfNow'' comic Jo specifically says that he would not go try killing Hitler should he gain the ability to time travel because of this trope. Instead, he's going to [[MediaNotes/FightingGameCommunity EVO 2004]] to see the infamous Daigo parry against Justin live. And maybe buy stock in Google before it took off. |
| 330 | * In [[http://www.squidi.net/comic/junkyard/tsd/view.php?series=tsd&ep=2&id=37 this]]sequence from ''The Starship Destiny'', the Guardian of Time initially refuses to allow Gizmo to change history by killing Hitler, but acquiesces when Gizmo proposes a second trip to stop himself from killing Hitler. He instead decides to help his past self kill Hitler and stop himself next time, leading to an army of himself all killing Hitler together and ultimately resulting in an infinite loop that destroys time itself. It ends when he is prevented from going back in time in the first place by his future self, who warns him of the consequences and gives him a video recording of himself killing Hitler. |
| 331 | * [[http://superredundant.com/?comic=1233-art-of-debate Referenced]] in ''Webcomic/LeagueOfSuperRedundantHeroes''. "You went back in time to kill Hitler and prevent World War 2. That's like Time Travel 101. It sounds like a good idea, but you have no idea what the consequences would be to a change that massive". |
| 332 | [[/folder]] |
| 333 | |
| 334 | [[folder:Web Animation]] |
| 335 | * Averted in ''WebAnimation/RedVsBlue'' The Shisno Paradox, where Tucker and Sister offhandedly mention they shot Hitler during an argument. Though it's not quite clear if they killed Hitler before his rise to power, or shot him while he was in his bunker during the last days of the Reich. |
| 336 | * ''WebAnimation/{{Ducktalez}}'': Dewey attempts to avert this as soon as he gets time travel powers in episode five, but ultimately is forced to play it straight, even ending up saving Hitler himself |
| 337 | [[/folder]] |
| 338 | |
| 339 | [[folder:Web Original]] |
| 340 | * Invoked in the AlternateHistory timeline ''[[Literature/WebersGermanyTheVeterinarianTotalitarian Weber's Germany]]''; Paul Driscoll from the ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'' episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S4E10NoTimeLikeThePast No Time Like the Past]]" manages to ''shoot'' Hitler during the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, but that just leads Friedrich Weber, otherwise a historical nobody, to seize control of the Nazi Party, then Germany, radically changing the course of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. According to WordOfGod, this led to the passage of a law banning attempts to change history through time travel. |
| 341 | * Discussed in the ''Podcast/TheThrillingAdventureHour'' Amelia Earhart, when Amelia realizes the Nazis are gunning for her by preventing her parents from being together. She and her handler Abby Adams mention they can't do the same to Hitler because his nursery is heavily guarded. |
| 342 | * ''Website/SCPFoundation'': |
| 343 | ** [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-2451 SCP-2451]] is created by an attempt by the American military to send one of the soldiers back in time to kill Hitler, only for seemingly nothing to happen. However, said soldier winds up becoming a walking temporal anomaly, through which other time travelers from other dimensions exit to kill ''their'' historical genocidal tyrants. |
| 344 | ** A rejected SCP that made it into [[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-100-j SCP-100-J]] was "Little Addie", a duplicate of a six-year-old Hitler who was terminated without any alterations to the timestream. |
| 345 | ** There is also an inversion in the form of [[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-3780 SCP-3780]], where the Foundation has to ensure [[UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy JFK]] is assassinated and stop time travelers/other anomalies from preventing the shooting. |
| 346 | ** [[http://scp-int.wikidot.com/scp-cn-2965 SCP-CN-2965]] is Adolphe Sax, inventor of the saxophone. For some reason, time travellers who want to kill Hitler keep targeting him instead, [[HistoricalInJoke causing all the near-death accidents that he experienced during his childhood]]. |
| 347 | * [[http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/commentary/alttext/2007/02/72711 Why the grandfathers?]] asks Creator/LoreSjoberg in this short story. |
| 348 | [[/folder]] |
| 349 | |
| 350 | [[folder:Web Video]] |
| 351 | * In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbtclliJY2k this Cracked video]], time-traveling assassins fail because they pick the wrong date, arriving during the siege of Berlin (the day Hitler would have killed himself anyway). And they ''almost'' (but not quite) help him survive. |
| 352 | * [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S75Rfva9O8&feature=player_embedded This parody PSA]] is an inversion, with a time-traveling Hitler narrowly avoiding getting hit by a car. |
| 353 | * In the WebVideo/GloveAndBoots video [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75nBenOWul0 10 Reasons Why Time Travel is No Good]], the concept of going back in time and killing Hitler is mentioned. However, it theorizes that doing so could create an alternate reality with [[EverythingsDeaderWithZombies zombie Hitler]] or a universe with [[InsaneTrollLogic 20 Hitlers]]. |
| 354 | * Parodied in ''WebVideo/HardlyWorking'''s [[http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6834347/hardly-working-killing-hitler Killing Hitler]]. The first time they try it, the adult Hitler beats up the time traveller. The second time he does it again, but as an adolescent. The third time traveller attacks him with a rifle when he's a small child. However, Hitler steals it, and then forces the traveller to tell him how to make an atomic bomb. And then kid Hitler travels through the portal into the future. And to add insult to injury, he renamed the city of Berlin [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Owen Sux]]. |
| 355 | * Averted in [[http://vimeo.com/47489262 Punching Hitler]]; although they don't kill him, they [[spoiler:punch him repeatedly, causing him to change the direction of his life repeatedly in the end and presumably averting the Holocaust.]] |
| 356 | * In Creator/RoosterTeeth's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsVuSVUzZrw Macrowave Time Machine]] short, Chris invents the time machine by putting a microwave inside a bigger microwave and turning them both on. The first time he uses it, he goes back in time to kill Hitler, and every other time he goes back again to [[SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong fix what he screwed up the last time he went]], each time making things worse in the present. |
| 357 | * [[https://youtu.be/dq0irgJJCOA This time machine tale]] takes a moment from stealing cereal through time and creating paradoxes to explain why it won't work. |
| 358 | * [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trcLKX1Yw34 This]] parody 'ad' for Mercedes shows a car stopping automatically when two kids are playing in the road, but then mowing down child-Hitler, as the car "recognizes dangers before they arise". |
| 359 | * [[Series/WorldPeace Sam Hyde]] has a famous sketch where he's on a date with a Jewish woman who asks him where he would live if he lived in another time period, and Sam goes on to theorize about how he'd end up becoming "[[https://youtu.be/T2AnqEMIYMA Hitler's top guy]]" if he lived in Nazi-occupied France despite disliking Hitler and disapproving of his actions, because Hitler's charisma would have been too difficult to resist. During the same sketch, he says that he wishes someone would time travel back to before Hitler was born to take him out. |
| 360 | [[/folder]] |
| 361 | |
| 362 | [[folder:Western Animation]] |
| 363 | * Subverted as a DiscussedTrope in ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'': in the episode "[[Recap/SouthParkS10E8MakeLoveNotWarcraft Make Love, Not Warcraft]]", Cartman directly asks Clyde if he would go back in time and kill Hitler given the chance, then adds that he himself wouldn't because he thinks Hitler was awesome. |
| 364 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' episode "[[Recap/FuturamaS6E7TheLatePhillipJFry The Late Phillip J. Fry]]", Farnsworth creates a time machine that can only go forwards in time. However, it can still be used to travel to any time you want because after the end of the universe, it just restarts from the beginning and everything plays out the exact same way as before (assuming no outside interference). During one loop, Farnsworth makes a stop in Nazi Germany to kill Hitler. However, we don't get to see how this changes history since they overshoot their destination again and have to make another go-around. This time, Farnsworth is too lazy to stop and tries to shoot Hitler from the time machine while it's moving. He misses and kills UsefulNotes/EleanorRoosevelt instead (we don't get to see how ''that'' changes history either). |
| 365 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/TimeWarpTrio'' episode "Able Was I Ere I Saw Elba", the group warps back to 1815 France and [[NiceJobBreakingItHero inadvertently help]] UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte win the [[LastStand Battle of Waterloo]]. After returning to the present they see that France ended up [[TakeOverTheWorld taking over the world]], with America in particular being renamed "New France", and they have to go back to fix it. |
| 366 | * ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken'' demonstrates a possible loophole to this trope: a skit during the episode called "Dicks With Time Machines" features...well, dicks screwing around with the past. However, the last one doesn't try to kill Hitler but instead chooses to publicly humiliate him by showing footage of him on the toilet at one of his rallies. This effectively destroys Hitler's ability to get anyone to listen to him and changes the name of the skit to "Heroes with Time Machines". |
| 367 | * Downplayed in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''; Homer wakes up at work thinking he has traveled back in time and the first thing that comes to his mind is stopping Hitler, but he is in the present day and just missed the point about a retrospective radio show talking as if the year were 1939. The writers also toyed with this idea for a sci-fi themed Halloween episode but nothing was produced and only a [[http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Nazis_on_Tap raw internal short]] touched the topic. |
| 368 | * ''WesternAnimation/ChinaIl'' had an episode in which Steve Smith and Ronald Reagan worked together to avert every disaster that had ever taken place, including stopping Lincoln's assassination and converting Hitler to Judaism. This inevitably resulted in the present age being attacked by every apocalyptic event possible, and as for Hitler, [[RuleOfFunny the Nazi party was now made up of Jews]]. |
| 369 | * ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'': "[[Recap/JusticeLeagueS1E24To26TheSavageTime The Savage Time]]" involves traveling back in time to World War II, where Vandal Savage has usurped control over the Nazis after being told, in a time-traveled message from his future self, that he "has to get rid of that lunatic Hitler" and seize control in order for the Germans to win the second World War. Strangely, though, Savage only freezes Hitler in cryogenic suspension, rather than more permanently disposing of him, and thusly Hitler is thawed out and restored to his "proper place" after Savage is defeated, hence fitting this trope. An attempted AuthorsSavingThrow was a subsequent commentary by the producers that this means that World War II happened but the Holocaust did ''not'', courtesy of Savage's aborted attempt at changing the future. |
| 370 | * In ''WesternAnimation/MikeTysonMysteries'', [[TheAtoner the reformed]] Mike Tyson swore he would never use his fists for destruction except on two people: The "grandmaster" of the Klu Klux Klan, and Adolf Hitler. [[ChekhovsGun This last one ends up being used by Pigeon]] to trick Mike [[ItMakesSenseInContext into freeing the brain of Bobby Fisher, which was put inside Deep Blue by the android CEO of IBM]]. Fortunately for Mike, he later manages to accomplish his dream of killing Hitler when Marquess takes them back in time to 1889 to apologize to his son and Creator/OscarWilde, and they happen across Klara Hitler who asks them to watch her baby. Unfortunately, when they return to the present, they see that without Hitler the Jews [[TakeOverTheWorld took over the world]]. Mike doesn't seem to mind too much, however. |
| 371 | * On a closely related note, an episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Freakazoid}}'' involves the clownish hero traveling back in time and, almost accidentally, preventing the attack on Pearl Harbor. Realizing what he's done, he wonders what his own time will be like now. ''"What hath Freak wrought?!"'' he wonders aloud. He returns home to find that... [[AntiClimax everything is exactly the same,]] except that Creator/SharonStone is now a [[ShakespearianActors Shakespearian actress,]] there are no Creator/ChevyChase movies, and Creator/RushLimbaugh is standing on a street corner collecting charity donations for the poor. He decides these are good changes. (Oh, and [[WesternAnimation/PinkyAndTheBrain the Brain]] [[CrossoverPunchline is President of the United States]]). |
| 372 | * ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'' had an episode where Steve and his friends modded a video game into one where they go back in time to [[RetGone prevent Hitler from existing]] [[ForcedMiscarriage by beating a boss fight against a monstrous Klara Hitler who is visibly pregnant with Adolf as a fetus]], only to fail in their attempt. Later, after trapping Stan in his own LotusEaterMachine and creating a giant zombie using the Klara code that turns out to be too powerful for them to delete normally, they program the Hitler fetus into the zombie to give it [[AttackItsWeakPoint a weak point]] for Steve to shoot. |
| 373 | * ''WesternAnimation/LoveDeathAndRobots'': "[[Recap/LoveDeathAndRobotsAlternateHistories Alternate Histories]]" supposes an app that postulates a series of increasingly ridiculous scenarios for Hitler dying at art college. Lampshaded by the app, which states that Hitler dying early is one of the most popular scenarios people look at. Beaten to death on the street,[[note]]result: WWII delayed a couple of years, America nukes Berlin instead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki[[/note]] run over by horse-drawn sausage cart,[[note]]Austria outlaws horses and goes {{Dieselpunk}}, allowing Germany to win WWI[[/note]] suffocated by experimental Russian gelatin-encasing weapon,[[note]]Russian nobility use their new weapon to kill off Communists and win WWI[[/note]] sexed to death by space hookers,[[note]]space hookers teach the world free love[[/note]] crushed by meteor,[[note]]the next asteroid destroys human life on Earth, allowing the rats to rebuild civilization and nuke themselves into oblivion, followed by the rise of the squid[[/note]] and finally caught in the crossfire between time-traveling Nazis and anti-Nazis, only to be saved by and then make contact with future self, causing a paradox.[[note]]app bluescreens[[/note]] |
| 374 | * Invoked in the ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'' episode "[[Recap/RickAndMortyS4E5RattlestarRicklactica Rattlestar Ricklactica]]". After a planet of snakes have decided to invade Earth, Rick goes back in time and leaves them a book that will lead them to invent time travel, expecting them to exploit this recklessly. Sure enough, after averting Snake Lincoln's assassination leads to the rise of snake Nazis, this leads to an attempt to go back in time to kill Snake Hitler that culminates in countless snakes going back in time to either save or kill Hitler to the point that it leads to a massive pile of snake corpses. This ends up alerting the TimePolice, who then go back in time to stop them from becoming sapient in the first place. |
| 375 | * Played with in the final episode of ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold''. The BatmanColdOpen has Batman team up with Abraham Lincoln to stop Lincoln's assassination at the hands of John Wilkes Booth, only for the last few seconds to reveal Batman was saving the Lincoln of a parallel universe instead of his own. The fact Booth was a {{Steampunk}} {{Cyborg}} might have been a subtle clue. |
| 376 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekLowerDecks'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekLowerDecksS1E05CupidsErrantArrow Cupid's Errant Arrow]]", Captain Docent mentions having to go back and kill somebody who was worse than Hitler as one of his more stressful missions. |
| 377 | [[/folder]] |
| 378 | |
| 379 | [[folder:Other]] |
| 380 | * [[http://www.artc.org Atlanta Radio Theatre Company]] has a RadioDrama-style story called ''The Assassins'', where a time traveler trying to halt WWII assassinates a six-year-old boy to prevent the rise of Nazi Germany. The twist? Hitler was the guy who ''replaced'' the dictator-to-be that was assassinated. |
| 381 | * One recurring joke in John and Hank Green's Brotherhood 2.0 videos is the Evil Baby Orphanage, a project suggested by a fan during an argument over whether killing Baby Hitler was ethical: instead of killing him, kidnap and raise him in a hidden mountain orphanage with other kidnapped historical despots. |
| 382 | * Referenced in real life when Braunau am Inn, the Austrian town where Hitler was born, was captured by the Allies. Among the residents who spoke up at a meeting where the townsfolk decided to surrender without a fight was the elderly midwife who'd aided in Hitler's birth. She pointed out that their town would ''already'' suffer a black mark throughout history, in part because she ''hadn't'' strangled him as a newborn; as much as she wished she'd done so, the shames of the past couldn't be changed, and putting up a futile resistance now would only reinforce that stain. |
| 383 | [[/folder]] |
| 384 | |
| 385 | ---- |
| 386 | Besides, you know ''[[GodwinsLaw who else]]'' killed Hitler? '''''[[DrivenToSuicide Hitler!]]''''' And [[HitlerAteSugar you don't want to be like Hitler]], ''do'' you? |
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/context.php
FollowingContext Main / HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct
Go To
- Show Spoilers
- Night Vision
- Sticky Header
- Wide Load
