Line #65 Main/RubberBandHistory


1	->'''Harvey:''' All modern research points to the elasticity of time, rather than a brittle framework.\
2	'''Crichton:''' Can it be corrected?\
3	'''Harvey:''' If nudged closely enough to course, events have a way of restructuring themselves. If the participants are the same, the venue's the same, the motivation's the same, then well: the outcome is likely to be the same.
4	-->-- ''Series/{{Farscape}}'', "[[Recap/FarscapeS03E05DifferentDestinations ...Different Destinations]]"
5
6	Rubber-Band History is the phenomenon where a story begins in an AlternateHistory but ends with the usual timeline having been restored. History, apparently, is like a giant rubber band: you can stretch it and twist it, but sooner or later it will spring back into its original form, and the more radical the change the nastier the SnapBack will be.
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8	Sometimes, the resident [[FutureBadass Alternate Badass]] of said timeline will come back if the alternate timeline threatens to become dominant again. Don't expect them to [[WeWantOurJerkBack stick around]], though.
9
10	This trope is easiest to grasp in the context of a series, where an episode starts with a radically different version of reality that sooner or later snaps back into the version established in earlier episodes. But it can also be seen in standalone works, where it's the timeline snapping back to "real" history -- ie. the version of reality familiar to the author and the audience. (In the latter case, it's often implied that in-universe the unfamiliar timeline is the original one and the change to our reality is a new alteration and not a reversion to a previous state; that still counts.)
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12	If history can't be brought back to its original form without some major differences, it's a CloseEnoughTimeline -- like when Alice escapes death, but our heroes make sure she gets run over by a truck a few minutes later anyway. If Alice's tomb is instead filled by Bob just to preserve the timeline, it's TrickedOutTime. Not related to the "rubberband" timeline for {{Long Runner}}s where characters don't age; that's ComicBookTime. Compare InSpiteOfANail.
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14	----
15	!!Examples:
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18	[[folder:Comic Books]]
19	* Creator/NeilGaiman's ''ComicBook/{{Marvel 1602}}'' is set in a timeline in which the heroes and villains of the Creator/MarvelComics Universe begin to appear 400 years early. In the end, the disrupting factor is identified and dealt with, and the history of the Marvel Universe is restored to normal (although the 1602 timeline survives in a pocket universe). And as Spider-Man 1602 shows that pocket universe will eventually shift back to established history with WWII and the creation of Captain America.
20	* In ''ComicBook/WonderWomanOdyssey,'' where the timeline has been drastically altered, this is {{Justified}} by the strands of fate. The [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1987 original timeline]] is still woven and can likewise be returned to as it was. It was then subverted by ''ComicBook/{{Flashpoint}}'' happening right when Diana had done what was needed to restore the timeline which destroyed the previous continuity through time travel shenanigans and left a drastically altered and DarkerAndEdgier ComicBook/{{Wonder Woman\|2011}} and the Amazons in its wake.
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23	[[folder:Fan Works]]
24	* In "Empty Graves", part of the ''Fanfic/SorrowfulAndImmaculateHearts'' series, Martha Kent has to deal with a succession of time-traveling assassins attempting to kill Clark Kent while he's still young and relatively defenseless. Each time traveler is from a different future which ceases to exist as a result of their actions -- for instance, one of the first is from a future where Jonathan and Martha kept Clark isolated on the farm for fear of what might happen if his origins were discovered, with the result that he grew up emotionally isolated from humanity and became a tyrannical overlord; having seen how that will turn out, Martha decides to risk letting Clark go to school and make friends, and that future is averted. After several such adjustments, the final time-traveling villain is from the familiar-to-the-reader timeline in which Clark grows up to become Franchise/{{Superman}}.
25	* The ''Franchise/PowerRangers'' fic "[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13550638/1/Forever-Yellow Forever Yellow]]" observes that chronal energy generated by time travellers can impact the memories of those with brief contact with visitors to the past, although it is still possible to change history if people spend a prolonged time in the past. As a result, for some time the assembled team of Yellow Rangers (operating around the time of ''Series/PowerRangersSamurai'') have to deal with opponents from the future where Venjix has conquered the world, but when they travel back in time to recruit [[Series/MightyMorphinPowerRangers Trini]] and [[Series/PowerRangersZeo Tanya]] from the past for additional firepower, the other Rangers won't retain any memory of the original brief visit, although Trini and Tanya still need to have their memories erased once the crisis is over.
26	* ''Fanfic/BrotherOnBrotherDaughterOnMother'' argues that time in ''Franchise/StarTrek'' has an inertia-like property that causes small alterations in the timeline to be papered over as history proceeds, resulting in a CloseEnoughTimeline. However, ''major'' alterations split off {{Alternate Timeline}}s that weaken the overall timestream, which can cause entire timelines and everything in them to [[RetGone disappear altogether]]. This is compared to a rope fraying.
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29	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
30	* This figures into the climax of ''Film/{{Looper}}''; [[spoiler:Old Joe changes history by [[SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong going back in time to kill the Rainmaker as a child]]. Young Joe eventually realizes that history is “snapping back” to its original form and that all Old Joe will accomplish is causing the Rainmaker’s StartOfDarkness to happen in a slightly different way than it originally did. To prevent this, [[HeroicSacrifice he shoots himself]], irrevocably breaking the StableTimeLoop and causing Old Joe to disappear in a PuffOfLogic. Cid never experiences his FreudianExcuse and thus never becomes a villain, subverting this trope.]]
31	* ''Franchise/{{Terminator}}'' is this after ''Film/Terminator2JudgmentDay''. Regardless of the timeline, there's always going to be a Judgment Day, and there's always going to be a RobotWar between humans and cyborgs. ''Film/TerminatorDarkFate'' takes this consistency to [[spoiler:its ultimate point by having both SKYNET ''and'' John Connor dead by the end of the prologue [[MeetTheNewBoss and time just placing new leaders for both factions and carrying on]]]].
32	* Discussed by Beast in ''Film/XMenDaysOfFuturePast'' as a theory among physicists posits that time, while alterable to some degree, is ultimately immutable (i.e.: You throw a stone in a river and it makes ripples, but the overall flow still moves forward smoothing out the ripples). [[spoiler: The ending seemingly averts this suggesting an AlternateTimeline can indeed be made. But if one takes ''Film/{{Logan}}'' to be a true sequel, than it seems the X-Men and mutantkind will experience a BadFuture no matter what.]]
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35	[[folder:Literature]]
36	* K.A. Applegate's ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' did this a couple times. In ''Elfangor's Secret'', a rogue Yeerk discovers a way of changing history, and sets about undermining Earth's past to make it easier to conquer. The book opens in the timeline created by his interference, with the protagonists unaware that this is not how history has always been until a SufficientlyAdvancedAlien steps in and grants them RippleEffectProofMemory, after which they pursue the Yeerk to restore history to normal.
37	* Creator/IsaacAsimov's ''Literature/TheEndOfEternity'' is set in the future, but it gradually becomes apparent that it's the future of a different past than our own. It ends with our history being created by a change in the past, when [[spoiler:the time-traveling protagonists derail the sequence of events that would have led to the founding of Eternity]].
38	* In ''Literature/DirkGentlysHolisticDetectiveAgency'' by Creator/DouglasAdams, the time travel shenanigans result in several changes to history which result in the timeline we're familiar with, where the [[NotSoExtinct coelacanth]] survived to the 20th century, Creator/SamuelTaylorColeridge never finished writing down "Kubla Khan", and Music/JohannSebastianBach is the world's most famous and prolific Baroque composer.
39	* The ''Literature/ThursdayNext'' books are set in an alternate history which gradually becomes more like our own over the course of the series, through two main mechanisms:
40	** A technology exists by which people can enter the world of a work of fiction and, potentially, affect the course of the story. In ''The Eyre Affair'', the novel ''Literature/JaneEyre'' initially has a different ending from the one in 'our' world. However, due to the exploits of the heroine and the events of the final climax taking place within the novel's original manuscript, the ending gets changed to the ending it ''does'' have in our world - something which everyone greatly approves of, since in that history the novel's 'original' ending was widely accepted to be [[DownerEnding depressing]] and dramatically unsatisfying. For added MindScrew, the fifth book, ''First Amongst Sequels'', does the same thing with the ''Literature/ThursdayNext'' books themselves.
41	** Thursday's father, a rogue TimePolice officer, spends much of the first four books bouncing around history and setting events right, and events after his intervention more closely resemble RealLife history. However, eventually time travel itself is [[RetGone retroactively never invented]], and that still leaves the ''Thursday Next'' world with a past, present, and future wildly different from our own.
42	* In Creator/JamesPHogan's ''Literature/TheProteusOperation'', the original timeline is one in which World War II never happened and the Nazis faded to obscurity after the Beer Hall Putsch. Some 21st century aristocrats go back to the 1920s and give Hitler funding and technology with the intent of moving in and taking over after he conquers the world for them. He takes what they offer, gives them the finger, and proceeds to take over just about the entire planet. An American team from that world's [[TheSeventies 1970s]] are able to go back to 1939 and sabotage the Nazis' time gate, and the uptime information they bring back is used by the Allied leaders to launch Operation Overlord and create our timeline.
43	* Ward Moore's novel ''Literature/BringTheJubilee'' begins in a timeline where the Confederacy won the American Civil War; the main character goes back in time to observe Gettysburg and accidentally changes history to our version.
44	* Creator/LawrenceWattEvans' short story "One-Shot" has a guy go back in time to save Kennedy from being killed by a love-sick Creator/MarilynMonroe. He drugs her and makes it look like a suicide. The Secret Service agent he confesses and proves his story to says he'll tell JFK about it after he gets back from Dallas.
45	* ''Literature/TimesWithoutNumber'' by Creator/JohnBrunner is a collection of short stories set in an alternate history where the Spanish Armada conquered England and the resultant European superpower went on to invent time travel. In the final story, an extremist travels back in time to sabotage the Armada; despite the hero's efforts, he succeeds, creating the history we're familiar with.
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48	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
49	* ''Series/{{Andromeda}}'': "The Unconquerable Man" depicts an alternative timeline in which Dylan Hunt is killed during the events of the first episode, and Gaheris Rhade survives. At the end of the episode, faced with disaster, Rhade travels back in time and sacrifices himself to secure Hunt's survival, creating the main timeline of the series. Unlike most versions of this trope, the episode doesn't begin in the alternate timeline, but instead with a scene of main-timeline-Hunt discovering a surviving trace of the old timeline, before going into a whole episode flashback.
50	* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
51	** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E8FathersDay "Father's Day"]]: Rose persuades the Doctor to take her to see her father, Pete, who died when she was young. She winds up saving his life. As a result, three points of history are changed without any adverse effect: Pete's death is witnessed, he doesn't die alone, and the driver who hit him stops and turns himself in to the police. In fact, there are indications that if Rose had saved Pete the first time, the change might've gone OK. It was doing it while her and the Doctor's earlier selves were there that messed up the timeline beyond the limit. Plus, when the Doctor is trying to summon the TARDIS into the church, he seems pretty sure that he can fix it so the Reapers will go away without Pete having to die. Of course that was before Pete gave Baby Rose to Adult Rose, letting the Reapers invade the church and kill the Doctor and cause the TARDIS to vanish.
52	** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E12BadWolf "Bad Wolf"]] subverts it: On his last trip to this era, 100 years before in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E7TheLongGame "The Long Game"]], the Doctor was confident that, after the defeat of the Jagrafess, the correct course of human history would reassert itself. It turns out that the confusion caused by those events gave the Jagrafess' [[TheManBehindTheMan secret bosses]], [[spoiler:the Daleks]], even ''more'' power to turn Earth into an even worse CrapsackWorld.
53	** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E10VincentAndTheDoctor "Vincent and The Doctor"]]: Tragically becomes the case when they are unable to alter Van Gogh's suicide beyond giving him one additional positive memory. He's still the same man at the end of the day and you can't change someone's fate that easily.
54	* The 1st season finale of ''Series/{{Eureka}}'' is set 4 years in the future. Things seem normal until an unexplainable body materializes in Section 5, followed by events from the past 4 years (such as a runaway tornado) popping up all over town. Turns out someone used MentalTimeTravel to change an event in the past and the "real" timeline is bleeding through trying to reassert itself. Time traveling again to prevent the original change is the only way to stop a cataclysmic collapse of both timelines.
55	* ''Series/{{Farscape}}''. {{Discussed}} between John Crichton and Harvey in "[[Recap/FarscapeS03E05DifferentDestinations ...Different Destinations]]". However every attempt by John Crichton to nudge events back the way they were only makes things worse, and he has to settle for a CloseEnoughTimeline in which a devastating war is averted but a massacre of innocent civilians takes place.
56	* ''Series/LegendsOfTomorrow'':
57	** In a variation, the [[spoiler:second season finale is about the rewriting of reality itself, time being rather easy to change in the Arrowverse. [[InSeriesNickname The Legion of Doom]] obtains the [[PublicDomainArtifact Spear of Destiny]] and is able to rewrite reality, leaving only Reverse-Flash, Captain Cold, Malcolm Merlyn, and Mick Rory aware of the change. It is resolved when the Legends get their memories back and [[MindScrew travel back in time to prevent the changing of reality, because it didn't happen until the year 2017.]]]]
58	* ''Series/QuantumLeap'':
59	** In the episode "Lee Harvey Oswald", Sam leaps into the title character, and Sam and Al have to decide whether the purpose of the leap is to shoot Kennedy, ''not'' shoot Kennedy, or something else entirely, since [[WhoShotJFK Oswald might not have been the assassin at all]]. It turns out that [[spoiler:Oswald was the only shooter, no grassy knoll; the mission is to save Kennedy. ''Jackie'' Kennedy, who "originally" died in the shooting]].
60	** In the episode "Goodbye, Norma Jean", Sam leaps into Marilyn Monroe's chauffeur. The episode ends with Sam preventing her death from a drug overdose, keeping her alive long enough to make ''Film/TheMisfits''.
61	* ''Series/StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds'' provides this as the explanation for the Eugenics Wars, the franchise's most infamous ContinuitySnarl. In the episode ''[[Recap/StarTrekStrangeNewWorldsS2E03TomorrowAndTomorrowAndTomorrow Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow]]'', a time traveling Romulan saboteur explains that the presence of so many time travelers interfering in Earth's history ''should'' be making a much greater impact, but for some reason particularly major events simply cannot be removed from the timeline without extreme effort. Thus, despite Khan Noonien Singh originally starting the Eugenics Wars in the '90s, he's now only a child by the late 2020's or early 2030's. His reign of terror may not happen at the same time, but it's too important ''not'' to happen.
62	* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'': In "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS4E8YearOfHell Year of Hell]]", Krenim leader Annorax complains that it feels like time itself is fighting him in his efforts to alter history to bring his country BackFromTheBrink and his wife BackFromTheDead (she was RetGone as an [[FinaglesLaw unintended consequence]] of his first attempt at the former). In the end, [[RammingAlwaysWorks Janeway rams his timeship]], causing it to erase ''itself'' from history and thereby [[ResetButtonEnding return all his alterations to their OEM settings]].
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65	[[folder:Video Games]]
66	* ''Franchise/FateSeries'': There are multiple timelines in the verse, and the history in each naturally branches based on decisions/different happenstances that may occur. The "rubber band" here exists in the name of "Quantum Time-Lock" --a phenomenon where the world (which is a sentient being in this verse) decides that things that happen in a particular time and/or in a particular place is immutable. One can theoretically change the past events that led to the event that was secured by Quantum Time-Lock, but that past will inevitably be "corrected" so that it will fit the secured event in some way. To actually overwrite a Quantum Time-Lock without the "rubber band" coming into effect requires a massive amount of energy to pull off.
67	* ''VideoGame/TheTaleOfFood'': It is stated that it's impossible to change history, despite the constant time-travel to recruit food spirits.
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70	[[folder:Web Comics]]
71	* Oddball variation: In ''WebComic/IrregularWebcomic'', the Indiana Jones parody strips feature Hitler as a BrainInAJar - to circumvent the fact that the Franchise/{{Lego}} Group doesn't produce Hitler figures. This is later explained as the result of a change from yet ''another'' alternate history where Hitler died in the Reichstag fire. He was brought back in the jar by Adam Savage of the Series/MythBusters as part of ChessWithDeath (specifically, a bet that Adam couldn't confirm the myth that Hitler's brain was saved in a jar... [[StableTimeLoop hey]].)
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74	[[folder:WesternAnimation]]
75	* The ''WesternAnimation/DangerMouse'' episode "Once Upon A Timeslip" has some fun with this. When the narrator mentions the time is 12:15, an anomaly suddenly transports the cast to the year 1215 to act out a Robin Hood story. The narrator is first baffled but then reasons the change of pace is a good thing. He gets so caught up in his narration (in iambic pentameter) things deteriorate in a hurry. Fed up, Danger Mouse interrupts with "A timeslip occurred and transported them all back to the twentieth century and out of this mess!," which the narrator repeats. It sends everyone back to the present (for 1984, anyway). DM and Penfold do the closing announcements as the narrator gets taken away for a long rest.
76	* ''WesternAnimation/{{Freakazoid}}'' had the episode "Freakazoid Is History!," where the hero gets sucked into a time vortex and goes back to 1941 where he successfully averts America's involvement in World War II. He returns to the present to see "what Freak hath wrought." Among them: Rush Limbaugh is now a bleeding heart liberal, Sharon Stone can act, Euro-Disney is a success, cold fusion works, no more Chevy Chase movies...and [[WesternAnimation/PinkyAndTheBrain the Brain]] is now the country's president.
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Context Main / RubberBandHistory