History Main / SetWrongWhatWasOnceMadeRight

** One episode opens with Picard apparently lethally injured by a stray energy blast which happens to have destroyed his artificial heart. As he walks into the light, Q appears and (after claiming to be God and taunting him about how a natural heart would have survived the incident) offers him a chance to go back to his wild college days and avoid the bar fight and subsequent near-lethal stabbing that resulted in needing the artificial heart in the first place. The resulting timeline ended up essentially the same (Q promised to avert any ButterflyEffect or ForWantOfANail as part of the deal) but the changes to his actions and attitudes then carried forward, resulting in Picard himself ending up a boring, timid man who only ever played it safe and never learned how important it was to seize the moment and make his life count. It takes only a few hours in ''that'' dull life before Picard is calling on Q to let him undo the change, even if it means dying in the original timeline. Turns out the doctors in the present are able to save him after all, and he's left musing whether Q was even there or if it was AllJustADream.

* Played for laughs in the short story [[https://www.tor.com/2011/08/31/wikihistory/ "Wikihistory"]] by Desmond Warzel. Adolf Hitler, the Third Reich, and World War II are crucial to the formation of [[TimePolice the International Association of Time Travelers]], but newbie IATT members who didn't properly read the rulebook keep going back in time to kill Hitler. Each time, veteran member [=SilverFox316=] goes back and stops the newbies because no one else will do it, and his posts on the message board get more frustrated with every trip.

However, some FridgeLogic reveals that atoning time travellers aren't technically limited to those two options. If the technology for time travel allows one to make another attempt at changing history for the better, and if messing with history doesn't bring about worse consequences such as UpsettingTheBalance or an infestation of ClockRoaches, one can simply set out to [[TakeAThirdOption find and iron out all the small details that could set the bad future in motion]], thus achieving the desired result while minimizing or even nullifying any damage. Don't expect it to be ever attempted or addressed, though. Writers would rather play this trope straight for the same reason they prefer forcing a pregant character to [[GoodGirlsAvoidAbortion choose between aborting her baby or raising it]] over having her give it up for adoption: because it's [[RuleOfDrama bad for drama]].

* ''ComicBook/BoosterGold''
** One storyline had a future Blue Beetle offer to Booster the chance to go back into the past and save his friend, Ted Kord, before Maxwell Lord could kill him. Booster accepts despite Rip Hunter's warning that the past can't be changed due to being "solidified time" and he, along with the Dan Garret and Jamie Reyes Blue Beetles, go back and save Ted and even defeat Maxwell. However going into the present they find out Maxwell initiated his plan earlier then expected with the [=OMACs=] and took over the world. What's more, the future Blue Beetle is actually the Black Beetle and is part of a group of time-traveling supervillains dubbed "The Time Stealers". Booster, Ted, Dan and Jamie team with the surviving Justice League members to fight Maxwell and barely win the day... only for the Time Stealers to show up and are now poised to take over themselves. Ultimately, Ted realizes the only way they can win is to go back in time and allow history to play out, giving a heartful goodbye to Booster as he uses a time machine and returns to the day of his death.
** Another story, ''The Gift'', had Booster want to give Bruce a wedding gift for his, then, upcoming wedding to Selina (aka Catwoman). Inspired by the event of "For The Man Who Has Everything", he goes back to the day Bruce's parents were killed and prevents their murder. The changes are a mixed bag: Thomas and Martha are still alive sure, but Penguin is the president, Ra Al Ghul has two nations under his reign, there's a rampant Joker virus that causes people to kill themselves (as we see with Hal Jordan at the start), Dick Grayson is the Batman in this version who uses guns and Catwoman is an psychopathic murderer who only meows and is in no way acquainted with Bruce. After some poorly thought out shenanigans by Booster (to the point Skeets is temporarily destroyed and he's stuck in the timeline for a year) that result in the death of this timeline's Waynes, Alfred, Catwoman, and Batman. Booster tricks Bruce into going back to the day the Waynes initially died and allow events to play out (albeit the alt-Bruce [[DespairEventHorizon killing himself after seeing this]]) to fix the timeline.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim'' fic ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13019088/1/Blessing-in-Disguise Blessing in Disguise]]'', Red and Purple go back in time to kill Zim as he's born, thus preventing any of his screw-ups from damaging the Empire. [[ButterflyOfDoom Unfortunately for them]], this leads to them not being Tallest, and Irk being in a losing war with Meekrob. They then have to go back in time again to stop themselves from changing history.

* In the beginning of ''The Company of the Dead'' a time traveller on board the ''Titanic'' hands the lookout a pair of night vision binoculars and so the ship avoids the fateful iceberg. The problem is that time soon rights itself and the ship hits a different iceberg a few hours later, sinking the ship with an even more catastrophic loss of life due to being far out of the range of both the ''Carpathia'' and ''Californian''. Worse, John Jacob Astor survives the sinking, setting off a chain of events where the USA never enters the First World War and as a result, the east coast is occupied by Greater Germany and the west coast by Imperial Japan.
* Alex Scarrow's ''Literature/TimeRiders'' novels have it as a set in stone rule for our heroes; no matter what, history can only go one way. It's poorly elaborated why, but that's just how it goes. It turns out it's mainly to avert this trope - because a single change can have incredible unforeseen consequences downtime, even a simple act of goodwill could result in a far worse future than you could ever have hoped for. A good example of this trope actually happens by accident in the sixth book, ''City of Shadows''. An assassin follows the gang into Victorian London, but arrives early because of a mishap, and accidentally catches Jack the Ripper before his final kill. Sounds good, right? Well, not really - [[spoiler: Jack the Ripper turns out to be a prominent noble, and his murder-in-self-defence is pinned on his would-be victim, a poor working-class woman whose hanging makes her a martyr figure for a socialist uprising in Britain. The royal family flee to Canada for safety, and one by one the twentieth century sees socialism rise in most of Western Europe (except France, for some reason). By the time of 2001, Socialist Britain is oddly old-fashioned, implied to be a police state, and on the verge of nuclear war as the US wants to send nuke parts to France in a reversal of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and it's implied that a nuclear holocaust follows soon after. As such, our heroes have to make the agonising decision to allow an innocent woman to be horribly murdered and to let her killer get away.]]
* A short story by Creator/StephenFry has a man travel back in time to have Hitler’s father drink water that renders him infertile. But the new present is ruled over by PragmaticVillainy Nazis, who simply fed the Jews the water during the Holocaust. So he goes back again and puts rats in the water, so it has to be replaced.

* A major theme in ''Series/DoctorWho'' where changing a moment in history, even for good reasons, could lead to TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt:
** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E8FathersDay Father's Day]]" shows Rose Tyler traveling back to see father die in a hit-and-run accident, but ends up saving him. This causes a TimeCrash that creates [[ClockRoaches flying dragon demon things trying to unmake reality]] and [[OhCrap the TARDIS got erased too]]. These events are (mostly) undone after Rose's dad dies, which he did as a HeroicSacrifice in order to get things back to normal.
** In Classic series, although this didn't happen, it was already mentioned twice that changing history for good could be a bad idea: first in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E6TheAztecs The Aztecs]]" when First Doctor's companion Barbara was disguised as a goddess and her decision of forbidding HumanSacrifice would wipe out this civilization; and later in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS19E6Earthshock Earthshock]]" when Fifth Doctor was unable to save his companion Adric, which would mean the end of humanity by the bomb made by the Cybermen would crash on the present Earth (instead went to prehistoric Earth and [[BeenThereShapedHistory destroyed the dinosaurs instead of a meteorite]]... [[HeroicSacrifice with Adric inside]]).
* ''Series/QuantumLeap'': The show's premise was the inverse, that Sam was travelling through time setting right what had once gone wrong, but this trope (or something pretty close to it) was namechecked in an episode, "The Boogieman", where Sam had an encounter with the devil, who takes on the guise of Al and complains malevolently that Sam has been undoing his work of setting wrong what once went right... Except that ItWasAllADream in the end, or mostly, or something. Don't think too hard about it, he'll be somewhen else next week.

* [[Recap/TheTwilightZone1985S1E20 "Profiles in Silver,"]] a Series/TheTwilightZone1985 episode, depicts a time-traveling historian inadvertently saving his FamousAncestor, UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy, from Lee Harvey Oswald's assassination attempt -- only to learn that Kennedy's survival will precipitate WorldWarIII. Sooner than send Kennedy back to certain death, the historian [[HeroicSacrifice replaces him and is killed in his place]]. The end of the episode shows Kennedy in the future, teaching a history class.

* ''VideoGame/LifeIsStrange''

** This is ultimately the result of the [[spoiler: "Save Arcadia Bay" ending]]. Since Max first started using her powers this caused a temporal anomaly to form as a typhoon that'll destroy the town. The only way to prevent it is for Max to use a picture she took when she first discovered her powers [[spoiler: and use it to go back to the day and allow Chloe to be killed by Nathan Prescott which Max had prevented and set the events of the game in motion.]]

''[they jump in the air and high-five, then realize that they've just done]''\\

* ''WesternAnimation/KidVsKat'': In the two-part episode "Kat To The Future", Coop travels back in time using Kat's time machine to stop Millie from finding and adopting him. He succeeds, but upon returning to the present, Coop finds the human race, including himself, has been enslaved by Kat's alien race, his friends, family, and neighbors have become LaResistance, and Kat rules the Earth with Coop's house as his HQ. Luckily, Coop manages to restore the timeline to its [[CloseEnoughTimeline mostly original state]] by stopping himself from causing this future to happen.
* ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'': The episode "Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo" has Candace's adult self travel back in time to the events of the first episode to finally bust her brothers. However, her actions end up giving Doofenshmirtz the opportunity to conquer the Tri-State Area unimpeded (the helicopter that flies away with the rollercoaster avoids Perry's grappling hook, causing Perry to get hit by the giant tinfoil ball and put in a full body cast for eighteen months), turning it into a dystopian hellhole and [=OWCA=] is powerless to stop him. [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone Upon seeing what her actions have caused for the future]], Candace decides to go back in time and stop herself from changing the past, restoring the original timeline.

* In ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'': "The Best Christmas Story Never Told", Stan gets annoyed with all the secularism of the holidays (The tree getting banned, Christmas now just referred to as the "holidays", etc) and blames Jane Fonda for it (long story short to his [[InsaneTrollLogic logic]]: She inspired hippies to grow up and be modern liberals). When he's visited by Michelle, a ghost of Christmas Past, he uses the opportunity to escape from his YetAnotherChristmasCarol story to kill Jane then changes targets to Donald Sutherland who inspired her. As he's tracking him, he runs into Martin Scorsese and convinces him to stop doing drugs. Michelle and Francine manage to pull him back to the present only to find out the Soviets now rule the US. They find out Stan started a domino effect that, by keeping Martin from doing drugs, prevented him from directing ''Film/TaxiDriver'', this, in turn, didn't inspire John Hinckley Jr to assassinate Ronald Reagan to impress Jodie Foster, which prevented Reagan's popularity with the people during his election and lost to Walter Mondale who, in turn, immediately surrendered the U.S to the USSR as his first official act as president (If you haven't guessed, this is a very silly show). To fix it, they try to make ''Taxi Driver'' themselves but naturally fail. So Michelle opts to just have Stan do the assassination attempt himself, which he succeeds (albeit at the loss of the Brady Bill aka the gun wait law. Stan naturally doesn't have a problem with that).
* In ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'', "The Time Traveler's Pig", Dipper tries to impress Wendy while at a carnival and ends up beaning her in the eye due to a misplaced throw at a ball toss. He meets a time traveler, Blendin Blandin, and manages to swipe his time travel device (designed like a tape measure) so he can go back and try to do the ball toss attempt better, Mabel joining in so she can relive winning a pig she dubbed Waddles. After several failed attempts, he has Mabel help him manage an impressive shot but at the cost of Pacifica getting Waddles instead since Mabel helping Dipper prevents Mabel from going to the game booth early to do so. Mabel pleas with Dipper to go back in time and fix this but he refuses initially until he sees Mabel slip into depression when he travels a few weeks ahead in time. He relents, goes back and allows events to play out as intended though it works out in the end.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Spliced}}'': In "Mr. Wrinkles in Time", Peri and Entree travel back in time to stop Entree's younger self from throwing Two-Legs Joe's stuffed toy Mr. Wrinkles into the volcano so Joe will like Entree more in the present day. They succeed, but the present ends up becoming a dystopia where Mr. Wrinkles is revealed to have been EvilAllAlong and has enslaved all of Keep-Away Island ([[ItsAllAboutMe Entree doesn't really care since Joe likes him now, but Peri forces him to help fix things anyway]]). The two then go back in time again to fix the timeline, although their past selves steal their time machine and end up causing trouble in the present. Upon returning to the present with another time machine, Entree just decides that this situation is good enough.
* ''WesternAnimation/DcSuperheroGirls'': Babs eats a bean burrito just before a school assembly, causing her fart to be heard in front of the whole school, making her a laughingstock, so she convinces Barry (the Flash) to take her back in time and switch out her burrito for one without beans, and the two quickly decide to make a few additional changes to the past (Barry *gasp* ''only put one exclamation point on his grandma's birthday card'' and has been haunted by it ever since). These minor changes somehow lead to a variety of [[BadFuture Bad Futures]], so Babs and Barry have to go back and undo them, but the Babses from said futures all come back to stop them. And then the Babses from the various ''good'' futures where they do manage to undo their changes all come back to stop the bad Babses from stopping the original Babs from switching out her burrito. Got it? Good.