Time-Traveler's Baby

You've just returned home from a little escapade in another time period. You also brought back a souvenir to remind you of your adventure. It's not exactly shiny nor something that can be sold, but one thing is certain: it's yours.

If the time traveler falls in love with someone in either the past or the future, chances are they'll have a child together. Sometimes, the child stays with the lover in their time period. In other works, the child goes with their time traveler parent to the latter's time period. If the child grew up with a Missing Mom or Disappeared Dad, the chances they are this trope are very slim except in science-fiction and/or fantasy. In the event that they can time travel as well, the child will likely face a conflict of which parent (and hence time period) to live with.

My Own Grampa is a subtrope. Can possibly result in Alternate Timeline Ancestry. Compare Kid from the Future, where an existing character's future progeny time travels. Contrast Grandfather Paradox, in which a person kills their own grandparent, accidentally or not. We also have Time-Travel Romance, Trapped in the Past and Love Transcends Spacetime, which can result in this. Depending on the circumstances, the kid may end up being a Wonder Child, or a result of Screw Yourself if both their parents are alternate versions of each other.

If the lover in the past wishes to meet their future partner again, they may Write Back to the Future, take The Slow Path, or both.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Dinosaur King: Rex Ancient was born in the Cretaceous period from a time traveling family from the future. He was sent into the 21st century to keep him safe from the Alpha Gang.
• One Piece: Amatsuki Toki, the user of the Time-Time Fruit, had two children, Kozuki Momonosuke and Hiyori, by Oden who was born 800 years later than her.
• Phoenix: Hagoromo starts with the "celestial maiden" O-Toki marrying a fisherman named Zuku. The finale reveals that she's a time traveler and she ends up returning to the future with her child.

Comic Books

• The Flash: Don and Dawn Allen are born in the 30th century, even though their father Barry is from the 20th. It turns out that Iris, Barry's wife, is a time traveler who was sent back as a kid and then adopted by the West family. She and Barry go to live in the 30th century before the children were conceived. Barry unfortunately becomes a Disappeared Dad as he returns to the 20th century for Crisis on Infinite Earths but gets killed. Barry's grandson, Bart, is Don's son and also born in the 30th century before being sent back to the 1990s.
• In Seven Soldiers of Victory (2005), Klarion and his people are all descended from Melmoth, the deposed king of the Sheeda, who travelled back in time to the Roanoke colony and impregnated most of the women there. They fled underground and gave birth to children with pale blue skin and pointed ears, and over time they built Limbo Town.
• Spider-Man 2099: Miguel spends the second and third volumes of the comic being trapped in the modern day (2014-2015 In-Universe) while he hails from 2099. In that time frame, he meets Tempest, start a relationship, and eventually she gets pregnant. Unfortunately, due to circumstances, Miguel only discovers this through Kid from the Future shenanigans. However, in The Amazing Spider-Man (2018), he gets trapped in the past for good and the three get to be a normal-ish family.
• X-Men: A variation occurs when Cable, the time-travelling son of Cyclops from the future (although he was born in the present time), comes to the present to save the newborn Mutant Messiah, born during the events of Messiah CompleX. He adopts the girl and raises her in the future, naming her Hope Summers. He then brings her back to the present during Second Coming.

Fan Works

• The Futurama Alternate Universe Fic Love Can Surprise You At Any Time In Your Life has Leela pregnant after Bender's Big Score with Lars' child. This follows the canonical reveal that Lars was a duplicate of Fry from another timeline, who'd gone back in time to 2000 then re-froze in 2012 himself to meet and fall in love with Leela again, only to sacrifice himself because being a paradox duplicate meant he was doomed to die. As such, Professor Farnsworth is concerned that Leela or her baby may be doomed to die as well, if such a thing can be passed on genetically. However, Leela keeps the baby as a symbol of what she and Lars had together before his death.
• The My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfiction "Daughter Of Discord" has a variation of this. Derpy has a daughter named Ditzy Doo. As for the absence of the foal's father Doctor Whooves, Derpy is so thick-headed that she has to be told outright that he time-traveled. The audio drama expands on this with her explaining that Whooves accidentally time-traveled while she was pregnant.

Films — Live-Action

• Back to the Future Part III: Downplayed.Dr. Emmett Brown, from 1985, meets Clara Clayton after the Delorean got him stuck in 1885. Clara was originally supposed to die in an accident, and became a paradox once Emmett saved her life. He eventually marries and has children with her, but since Emmett invents a time-traveling steam train, the family lives together outside of time, where there is no conflict with paradoxes or having to choose one time period over another.
• Predestination (and the short story from which it is adapted, —All You Zombies—) is a particularly twisted example. Jane grew up in an orphanage. In college, Jane fell in love with a man, who disappeared after she got pregnant. While performing a Caesarean section, doctors discovered Jane was intersex, possessing internal male and female sex organs. Complications during the birth forced them to remove her female sex organs; she then underwent a gender reassignment and began living as a man, "John". John's baby is abducted from the hospital. The barkeep provides John with the means to travel back in time, whereupon John meets his younger self and sleeps with her, before being forced to abandon her at the barkeep's insistence. The barkeep then abducts John and Jane's baby from the hospital and travels back in time, leaving the baby at the orphanage at which Jane was raised — the baby is Jane. Thus, John/Jane is his/her own father and mother.
• In The Terminator, John Connor is revealed to be this. Kyle Reese was sent back in time to protect John's mother Sarah from the machines, who wanted to kill her to prevent John from ever being born and thus leading the successful human resistance against the machines. Kyle and Sarah end up sleeping together, although Kyle is killed shortly after John's conception. He did get to fight alongside his son in the resistance but never knew he was John's father.

Literature

• A variation in The Dark is Rising: one of the major characters is Bran, an albino boy who is the son of a humble Welsh farmer named John Rowlands. Later, it is revealed that Rowlands is his foster father, for Bran is the son of King Arthur and Guinevere, brought forward in time.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Due apparently to an accident with a contraceptive and a time machine, the Zaphod Beeblebrox of the series is Zaphod I, with his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather numbered II-IV respectively.
• Outlander:
  • Claire Beauchamp Randall finds herself thrust into the 1740s. She meets a young man named Jamie Fraser and marries him, thinking that she might never return to her own time period. However, when she does return to her proper time period, she finds that she is pregnant with Jamie's child, who is hence named Brianna. When Brianna finds out about her real father years later, she goes back to the past to meet him. Like her mother before her, she can go back and forth in time through the stones.
  • Subverted with Geillis Duncan. Originally from the 1960s, Geillis travels back to the 1740s. She eventually has a son with Dougal MacKenzie. The child is given up for adoption and Geillis is eventually killed while trying to perform a spell to return to the twentieth century. Her son William Buccleigh MacKenzie eventually accidentally travels forward from his native time period of the 1770s to the twentieth century where he meets Roger, his many many times great grandson. Roger has to tell him that family records show that Buck never returns to his native time period and is presumed dead.
• Subverted in the Dennis Lee poem "There Was A Man."
  There was a man who never was
  This tragedy occurred because
  His parents, being none too smart
  Were born two hundred years apart.
• The Time Traveler's Wife: Henry DeTamble has a genetic anomaly that causes him to time travel uncontrollably. (Imagine an epileptic who jumps back or forward in time instead of having a seizure, or occasionally in addition to having a seizure.) After his wife has multiple miscarriages trying to conceive a child with him due to the genetic anomaly (i.e. fetuses keep traveling out of her womb^note It's implied her body is not fully accepting the fetuses, and the only way they can defend themselves is trying to 'escape' via traveling), he gets a vasectomy to spare her any more pain.However, his past self, pre-vasectomy, visits present Clare in one of his travels and impregnates her. Their daughter is also able to time travel, but has much better control over it.
• Time Wars: Forrester, the commanding officer of the time commando unit, has one of these in his backstory. When he was still a rookie time traveler, he was trapped in the past for a few months once and fell in love with a local girl. He had to leave her behind when she was rescued, but she was pregnant and gave birth to a son. The son shows up in the fourth novel of the series, having gained access to time travel himself, and becomes a significant recurring character.

Live-Action TV

• Black Hole High: Josie and Vaughn are later revealed to be the children of time travelers, which is signified by the fact that they have left instead of right-twisting DNA. Josie's father is particular is Andreas Avenir, the main antagonist of the series.
• Dark (2017) has quite a number of them:
  • The very first is Jonas Kahnwald, who learns about it in the fifth episode of season 1. His father, Michael Kahnwald, is actually Mikkel Nielsen, who travelled from 2019 to 1986, later married Hannah. Their son Jonas was born in 2003.
  • Episode 4 of season 3 reveals that Jonas, who now has travelled not only between timelines, but also to another world, and the Martha of the alternate world are the parents of the Unknown, the mysterious time-traveler who always appears as a child, adult, and old man.
  • The same episode shows that Hannah, who travelled from 2020 to 1954, had an affair with Egon Tiedemann resulting in her becoming pregnant. She decides against aborting and in the seventh episode of the season, shows that her child is Silja.
  • Speaking of Silja, after staying in the 2040s and 2050s as Elisabeth's second-in-command, she arrives in 1890 and starts a relationship with fellow time traveler Bartosz Tiedemann, who came from 2020, and have two children: Noah and Agnes.
  • Agnes and the above mentioned Unknown, both already the result of time travels, are the parents of Tronte Nielsen.
  • And then, the probably most complex one, concerns Elisabeth and Charlotte Doppler, who are revealed in the final episode of season 2 to be mother and daughter to each other. Charlotte is born in the 2040s to Elisabeth and Noah — who travelled from 1921 to 2020 — only to be stolen as a child and brought to 1971 to be raised there. She later has two children with Peter Doppler — Franziska and Elisabeth — who will later give birth to Charlotte — and so on.
• Doctor Who:
  • In "The Doctor's Daughter", Jenny is created from the Doctor's DNA on another planet, where she is meant to be a soldier in their war. She is given the choice of traveling with the Doctor,but unfortunately dies in his arms before she gets the chance. However, she regenerates after the Doctor has left and decides to travel space on her own.
  • Victims of the Weeping Angels are sent back in time, unable to return to their own time, and often start families. However, since they and their descendants are unable to travel in time past the first instance, there is usually no conflict involved.
  • Both of River Song/Melody Pond's parents are time travelers. Because she was conceived in the TARDIS while in the time vortex, she is part-Time Lord, even though her parents are both human.
• The British sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart is about a man named Gary Sparrow who uses a time portal to wartime London to live a double life. He ends up marrying a woman (Phoebe) in the past and having a son with her.
• La Brea eventually reveals that Gavin is the son of a pair of time-travelers from the future who settled in the past, which explains why he keeps having visions of the distant past — they're actually memories from his childhood.
• Outlander: World War II nurse Claire Beauchamp is magically transported back to 18th century Scotland where she falls in love with Highlander James Fraser. However, they get swept up in the ill-fated Jacobite Uprising of 1745 . Knowing that he will almost certainly die and that the English wife of a well-known Jacobite traitor will be hunted to the death, Jamie sends Claire back to the safety of the 20th century, even though this all but guarantees that the child Claire is carrying will never know its father.
• The episode "Ouroborous" of Red Dwarf provides backstory to Dave Lister. He was originally found as a baby inside a box, which was under the pool table, which was in the Aigburth Arms in Liverpool. He eventually turns out to be a Lister's own child from the far future, who (so as to avoid paradox) is taken backwards in time and left under the pool table in the pub.
• In the second season of Resident Alien, "Baby" is the child of a version of Harry Vanderspeigle who travelled back in time from the distant future.
• Star Trek:
  • In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "All Our Yesterdays," Spock is sent back in time to the ice age of an alien planet and meets Zarabeth. Somehow, being sent back in time has also regressed Spock to what Vulcans were be in that time period, an emotional savage. In the episode it's merely implied that he slept with Zarabeth, but the non-canonical novels make it clear that he did and she got pregnant. The novels even have his son Zar come to the "present" a few times via the Guardian of Forever.
  • In Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Yesterday's Enterprise", an alternate timeline is created, in which Tasha Yar never died and was born earlier. The timeline is mostly restored, but "Redemption" would later reveal that the alternate Tasha lived out the rest of her life in the prime timeline and had a daughter named Sela with a Romulan.
• Super Sentai series Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger has an episode paying tribute to the earlier series Mirai Sentai Timeranger, where the characters travel a year back in time from their present day to fight some villains. While the Core 5 Gokaiger are off fighting, Gai (GokaiSilver) befriends a young boy who turns out to be the son of Domon/TimeYellow and Honami Moriyama, a civilian Domon had had a brief romance with before he had to return to the 30th century at the end of Timeranger. At the end of the episode, Domon sees a photo Gai took with the mother and son, and is brought to tears upon recognizing Honami and realizing who the boy must be.

Podcast

• In Welcome to Night Vale, one episode concerns a bearded visitor from the future who comes to the present and takes a local wife. He is swiftly killed by the hooded figures, however, and by the end of the episode, his wife gives birth to a child with a similar beard.

Theatre

• Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: Scorpius Malfoy is rumored by many to be this, since the family secluded themselves after Scorpius's birth and his mother got suddenly ill under mysterious circumstances, leading some to believe she used an illegal time turner to go back and conceive a child with Lord Voldemort (since traveling too far back and or changing too much can make one fatally ill). This was proven false — Astoria had a pre-existing blood-borne curse that already made her physically frail, with her pregnancy worsening her condition. The seclusion was meant to protect the family from prying eyes.

Video Games

• Dark Chronicle has Max being the son of Elena, who is a rebel leader from the future who fights against Emperor Griffon's army and she traveled to Max's father's time to give birth to Max before having to return to her own time.
• Fire Emblem: Awakening: Despite not being able to personally time travel, Robin is capable of marrying and having a kid named Morgan with anybody that is the opposite gender as them. This includes any of their comrades' offspring from the future — who can time travel — such as Lucina.

Visual Novels

• Zero Time Dilemma: One ending has Sigma and Diane trapped. They grow fond of each other and eventually have a pair of babies. They send copies of the babies back to the past using a machine since they don't even have food for themselves at that point. Naturally, those babies grow up and have big roles in the plot of the game.

Webcomics

• Commander Badass from Manly Guys Doing Manly Things is a Super-Soldier from the distant future who has fathered two children with his modern day ex-wife. Despite the rather bizarre family situation, he's depicted as a Good Parent.

Western Animation

• In Futurama, the Planet Express crew is blown back to the 1950s where Fry's attempt to preserve his existence by protecting his accident-prone grandfather fails when said grandfather is blown up by a bomb test. When Fry realizes he isn't fading out of existence, he infamously winds up having sex with his grandmother. As he later finds out, this act causes him to become his own grandfather.

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