Times where someone attempts to Make Wrong What Once Went Right in Video Games.
- An elementary offensive tactic in Achron. Usually leads to your victim making defensive maneuvers.
- Specter used a time machine to go back in time and make primates the dominant race in the original Ape Escape.
- City of Heroes has a bit of a Grey-and-Grey Morality example: A future version of Nemesis, one of the Big Bads of the game, prevents Rularuu, the Biggest bad, from being completely destroyed by the Midnight Squad (the preeminent good guys) in the past, as he believes that keeping Rularuu alive will help against the Battilion (who are apparently even a bigger bad that Rularuu, if that's possible). Whether Future!Nemesis can be trusted in this, only time will tell...
- The Command & Conquer: Red Alert Series is about many attempts to mess with the timeline in order to prevent the other side from getting their secret weapons (such as the atomic bomb and Time Travel itself.)
- Interestingly, when Emperor Yoshiro finds out that his Empire of the Rising Sun was never supposed to exist in the third game, he has a Villainous BSoD (or Heroic BSoD, YMMV) about the destiny of the Japanese people. Fortunately for him, his son Tatsu doesn't have such ideals and is willing to continue the fight.
- Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time. Doctor Neo Cortex realized that with the powers of the Quantum Masks, he could go back in time and undo the one thing that stands between him and his dreams of world domination: the creation of his arch-nemesis Crash Bandicoot. He planned to travel back to the events of the first game and prevent his past self from starting Project Bandicoot. However, not only did Cortex fail, but ironically his defeat at the hands of Crash convinced Past!Cortex that Project Bandicoot would be successful, thus he went ahead and kickstarted the events of the franchise.
- The "Origin Crisis" DLC for DC Universe Online can have you (if you're a bad guy) mess around with the origins of various superheroes.
- Destiny 2: Season of Dawn deals in part with a splinter faction of the Cabal’s Red Legion attempting to hijack a time machine to undo their defeat in the base game, which broke their power in the Solar System and killed the Cabal emperor.
- Dragon Age: Inquisition: The main problem the Player Character faces when trying to ally with the rebel mages is that Magister Gereon Alexius invented time magic, and though he can't use it to erase the inciting incident (because the Inquisitor foiling Corypheus's plans and forming the Breach was what allowed time magic to work in the first place), he can erase any attempt on the Inquisition's part to reach out to the mages, essentially Save Scumming his way into a situation where Grand Enchanter Fiona sees no choice but to ally with him. This alteration leads to a Bad Future where the Inquisitor has to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. Originally, Fiona offers alliance to the Inquisition to close the Breach at Val Royeaux prior to Alexius' meddling. Her offer of alliance is the reason why the Herald arrives at Redcliffe to negotiate with the mages, only to see that Fiona didn't inform her fellow mages of the upcoming meeting. That tips the Herald off that something is amiss.
- Dragon Ball:
- The main enemy faction of Dragon Ball Online are the Time Breakers, who are purposefully trying to ruin Earth's history, particularly if it relates to anything good Goku did, as they want to turn him evil.
- Dragon Ball Xenoverse reveals the time-travelling ne're-do-wells Towa and Mira, the leaders of the Time Breakers, are out to change events in Dragon Ball's history for the worst, such as allowing Raditz to evade Piccolo's Special Beam Cannon, or reviving Nappa, because Towa was Dabura's sister, whose brainwashing and eventual death seems to have given her a vendetta against the heroes and timeline itself.
- Towa's goals are expanded upon in Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2: whenever a change in history is made, energy is produced that she feeds into Mira to make him stronger.
- Fate/Grand Order: The main plot for the first half of the story is that the Big Bad threatens to interfere with some major events in the past human history, and our heroes have to stop them. It's part of the main baddie's plan to travel in time towards the time before the first organic life existed, in order to create a new and better humanity that knows no death or suffering.
- In Final Fantasy VII Remake, Sephiroth is able to convince the heroes that the Arbiters of Fate are the real threat by showing them context-less visions of the future (scenes from the original game like the death of Aerith) and presenting them as what will happen if they fail to stop them. Of course, he is clearly actually manipulating the heroes into changing history so he can win in the end.
- Freedom Force Vs The Third Reich: the supervillain Blitzkrieg uses Timemaster's comatose body to go back in time and give Energy X to the Axis forces, causing them to win WWII.
- Atropos in God of War II goes back to when Kratos and Ares are fighting to attempt to destroy the sword that allows Kratos to win the fight, thus having him die to Ares.
- The premise of the popular Half-Life Timeline mod trilogy. Scientists at Black Mesa discovered time travel as a corollary to the dimensional portal technology they were working on... and gave it to the Nazis, allowing the Nazis to win WWII, build a timeship fleet, establish bases at key points in history and even invade parallel Earths.
- Downplayed and played straight in A Hat in Time, where some of the characters, after learning what the Time Pieces you're trying to collect can do, try to get their hands on them for their own purposes. While in their minds, their causes are just, it's at best petty (the Conductor wanting to reclaim an award he lost to maintain his perfect winning streak, and DJ Grooves "fixing" the awards so that he would win, believing his rival cheated every time), and at worst life and world destroying (Mustache Girl initially wanting to remove the Mafia from her home island, but instead turns her planet into a lava world, installing her own warped view of justice).
- In Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, the game starts off with a tiny guardian going back in time to avert the calamity. It turns out that this also caused some Malice to travel back alongside the tiny guardian from the future and it began to infect the present-version of said tiny guardian, to ensure that the calamity does happen, and in even worse form than originally. The corrupted tiny guardian decides to perform a Heroic Sacrifice to ensure that Calamity Ganon can be defeated, averting the sad backstory of Breath of the Wild.
- Conversely, in Jigsaw, the Big Bad Black is trying to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. Unfortunately, doing so would screw up the timestream, so you are forced to do this trope instead, causing major disasters throughout the twentieth century.
- Kronolog: The Nazi Paradox: Nazi future, atom bomb plans, WWII.
- Near the end of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Link manages to permanently kill Demise in the present by harnessing the power of the completed Triforce. In response to this, Ghirahim, Demise's sword, decides to incapacitate Zelda and use a nearby Portal to the Past to rewrite history by enacting the ritual to sacrifice Zelda's divine essence in order to bring back Demise in the past. Ghirahim actually succeeds at resurrecting Demise, his plan only foiled by Link following Ghirahim to the past and defeating Demise himself.
- In Metal Slug 7/XX, this is the main goal of the future Rebels; out of Undying Loyalty to their boss General Morden (who presumably either died or was captured in their timeline), they made a time window to go back in time and give him the resources necessary to defeat the Regular Army and change history in their favour. At the end however, the heroes destroy their gate, leaving the rebels stranded in the past.
- Ninja Commando have the main villain, Spider, being thwarted in the first stage, only to escape into a Time Machine and into the past in order to rewrite history and prevent his present-day defeat. Your titular heroes managed to find a prototype machine and gives chase to present Spider's plans.
- A lot of the plot of Radiant Historia is caused by someone doing this to try to bring about the end of the world. Most of what Stocke does throughout the story is to counteract the effects of their actions.
- In Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time, Dr. Nefarious's ultimate goal is to use the Great Clock to go back in time and not only undo his previous defeat at Ratchet and Clank's hands, but make it so that, after sufficient meddling with the time continuum, a universe has been created where heroes have ALWAYS lost and will ALWAYS lose to the villains. He proclaims this with his usual hamminess, of course, though he was unaware it would result in the Universe's destruction as was Azimuth for that matter.
- The player actually does this inadvertently at the start of Singularity due to time travel. Instead of the Big Bad dying in a fire, we save him, which results in the USSR taking over the world... oops. The player then spends the rest of the game trying to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, but in the end, the game designers give the player the choice to Take a Third Option in addition to the usual Paragon and Renegade choices.
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- An interesting (though poorly implemented) variation in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006). Silver tries to go back in time and prevent the release of the demon Iblis, but he very foolishly gets his information about the past from Mephiles—a monster who wants Iblis freed, and who lies so that Silver, acting on this advice, causes the very calamity he's trying to prevent. (Or, would have caused, if Silver's target were anyone other than Sonic the Hedgehog.)
- This trope happens again in Sonic Generations: The Time Eater starts messing with the timeline of Sonic's life in ways too specific and precise to be random chance. This is because Dr. Eggman is harnessing the Time Eater's power to travel through time, teaming up with his younger self and repeatedly trying to off Sonic. He is apparently unable to prevent Sonic from existing, so instead he sends Sonic into a gauntlet of dangerous moments in his life to try to get rid of him then.
- Spinal Breakers is a video game set in the future where a group of rogue robots called Hildroids managed to hijack a time machine and escape into various eras, in an attempt to drive humans into extinction so that the future is ruled by Hildroids. Your hero, Captain Waffle, gives chase in a different machine, leading to various stages from Ancient Egypt to the Ming Dynasty to the future.
- The Big Bad of Time Quest does this even more often. Just about the whole game is about undoing the tampering he's done (unless you want to leave the plot and use your time machine as a replicator instead).
- In Undertale, you, the player, do this if you choose to start a new game after achieving the Golden Ending, especially if you are planning to complete a Genocide run afterward. The game explicitly tells you that you are ripping the cast away from their happy lives on the surface to be once again trapped in the Underground, which even Flowey pleads with you not to do.
- In World of Warcraft, the Infinite Dragonflight pretends to be trying to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, once to prevent the first orc invasion and another time to stop then-prince Arthas from slaughtering the citizens of Stratholme, his first step to becoming the Lich King. However, as they also try to kill Thrall before he can reform the Horde and help save the world, it becomes clear that they are not as altruistic as they say. Their true goal is actually to cause a series of events that would lead to the end of the world, of time and of everything and everyone. Though according to their leader, this is still better than the alternative. But he's insane, so nobody knows for sure.Chrono Lord Deja (referring to Medivh opening the Dark Portal): Why do you aid the Magus? Just think of how many lives could be saved if the portal is never opened, if the resulting wars could be erased...
Chrono Lord Epoch: Prince Arthas Menethil, on this day, a powerful darkness has taken hold of your soul. The death you are destined to visit upon others will this day be your own.- According to Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects, the Infinites have a much more specific goal than the more broad end of the world: Erasing Thrall from the timeline, as he is the one who stops Deathwing. both Deathwing and the Infinite Dragonflight serve the Old Gods and so are loosely allied. Though what the Culling of Stratholme has to do with that isn't exactly clear.
- The plot of Warlords of Draenor happens because of this. Garrosh Hellscream, sent back in time to Draenor by the bronze dragon Kairozdormu prevents the Horde from drinking the blood of Mannoroth and instead arms them with the technology of present day Azeroth, creating the Iron Horde. Though in a twist, he was sent to an Alternate Universe instead (so his making wrong doesn't affect present day Azeroth until the Iron Horde makes a Dark Portal and starts trying to invade the main timeline).
- Yo-kai Watch 2 has this as part of its main plot, with the same plotlines as the anime, and with Kin and Gin being the main perpetrators as well, albeit the order of them are different, starting with the Watch missing first, then halfway into the game sending Jibanyan back in time, and doing (alongside Bronzlow this time) so with Whisper in the postgame.
