History Main / TheCretaceousIsAlwaysDoomed

!This trope is [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=17115372880.20875100 under discussion]] in the Administrivia/TropeRepairShop.

->''"We're in Pompeii!... And it's Volcano Day!"''
-->-- '''The Doctor''', ''Series/DoctorWho'', "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E2TheFiresOfPompeii The Fires of Pompeii]]"

TimeTravel is here and it's time to go to the Cretaceous at last and observe some dinosaurs! But we gotta [[SanDimasTime hurry up]], because by the end of the day [[ColonyDrop that asteroid is going to hit]]!

But wait, wasn't the Cretaceous period 79 million years long? That's millions of years longer than ''all of history after the Cretaceous'', which has spanned 65 [[note]] Or perhaps closer to 66, if recent studies are to be believed[[/note]] million years. Wouldn't it be better to go visit it any other day but the one guaranteed to kill you? And must it ''always'' be right at the impact zone at that?

This is when TheThemeParkVersion of prehistory reveals its dark side for time travelers. No matter how sophisticated the method of time travel used, the arrivers will always have to complete their tasks before the asteroid arrives. There is no way around it, sometimes even if you're observing [[ArtisticLicensePaleontology Jurassic or Triassic dinosaurs]]. And if the TimeTravel in question was random, it's even more astounding that EVERY protagonist gets sent back to the exact same date -- not to mention within the blast radius, instead of any other location on the planet. [[note]]If arriving at any random point during the existence of non-avian dinosaurs, there is a 1 out of 64.6 billion chance to land on a specific date.[[/note]] Considering the margin of error in the date of the impact, even if you went to exactly (or roughly) 65 million years ago on purpose, the odds that the impact is going to happen while you're there must be minuscule even if you stayed there for the rest of your life.

[[Administrivia/TropesAreFlexible This need not apply only to the K-Pg extinction]]. Fiction loves to [[{{Flanderization}} flanderize]] history into simple compact events and travelers headed to other periods may find themselves in the midst of other disasters, like arriving in Manassas only to find [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar a civil war is breaking out]], or visiting Pompeii only for a volcano to erupt. Such a visitor is not looking to change history or see said famous event, they just want to take a stroll and breathe in the surroundings only to realize: "OhCrap This 20th century ship I'm on is called the [[UsefulNotes/RMSTitanic Titanic]]!"

Sometimes this is explained by showing that [[BeenThereShapedHistory the protagonists caused]] [[PhlebotinumKilledTheDinosaurs the event in question]]. It turns out that [[YouAlreadyChangedThePast They Already Changed The Past]], and the only reason history books record that particular event happening on that particular day is because the time traveller just happened to appear at that time and place, by chance.

Related to InThePastEveryoneWillBeFamous. As noted above, it may be part of a PhlebotinumKilledTheDinosaurs plot, or TheDinosaursHadItComing.

Compare ItsAlwaysMardiGrasInNewOrleans, where regular travel always happens to coincide with famous events.
----
!!Examples involving the K-Pg extinction:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
* In ''Anime/GaoGaiGar'', [=ChoRyuJin's=] trip to the past coincided with the K-Pg event because they inadvertently ''caused'' it when they pushed the asteroid back through a wormhole to keep it from falling in the present.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Fan Fiction]]
* ''Fanfic/PrehistoricEarth'': In the t. rex rescue mission, ''A Continent of Blight'', the rescue team for the titular park travel to the late Cretaceous period just in time to rescue the ''T. rex'' and various other late Cretaceous Hell Creek fauna from the infamous meteor impact[[spoiler:...with team leader Drew ending up temporarily marooned in the past ''after'' said meteor impact]].
* ''Fanfic/PrehistoricParkReimagined'': In the story's t. rex mission ''Return of the King'', the titular park's rescue team travel back in time to a little over 36 hours before the infamous asteroid strikes for the sake of rescuing t. rex and as many other local Cretaceous period Hell Creek fauna as possible for the park.
* In Creator/Swing123's ''Triassic Park: Into the Past'', Calvin and Hobbes end up in the late Cretaceous Period, three days before the K-Pg Extinction Event.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Films -- Animation]]
* Subverted in ''WesternAnimation/{{Dinosaur}}''. Since it's a dinosaur movie, we get the obligatory asteroid strike to kick off the plot, but it's not ''the'' asteroid strike -- its damage appears to be confined to a relatively small area, and the dinosaurs in the cast manage to survive by migrating ''en masse'' to the nearest fertile area.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
* ''Film/SixtyFive'': No time travel is involved but it's otherwise played incredibly straight. Two HumanAlien survivors of a spaceship crash find themselves on prehistoric Earth during the time of dinosaurs. But not just ''any'' time, they have the incredible misfortune to land on the planet less than ''one day'' before the cataclysmic ColonyDrop. It's partly justified; they only got stranded on the planet when smaller asteroids, debris surrounding the big one, impacted their ship in outer space. What's a little less justified is that they happened to crash at the exact spot the meteor is also going to crash.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* [[InvertedTrope Inverted]] and [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] in the Italian children's book ''Aiuto, c'è un triceratopo in cantina!''[[note]]Help, there's a Triceratops in the basement![[/note]]. The time-travelling protagonists ''want'' to witness the end of the dinosaurs, but it takes them a lot of trial and error to zero in on the right instant. When another character asks them why they don't quit mucking around and skip directly to the extinction bit, everybody else roll their eyes.
* ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'': In ''[[Recap/AnimorphsInTheTimeOfDinosaurs Megamorphs 2]]'', a hole in space-time causes the Animorphs to accidentally arrive one day before the asteroid hit. They get into a tussle with several warring AncientAstronauts trying to colonize Earth, the losing species attempting revenge by diverting the path of a passing comet. The meteor's strike creates another hole that lets the kids return to the present. It was one of the weirder books.
* In ''Literature/TheScienceOfDiscworld'', the wizards and especially Rincewind see every asteroid and comet impact in Earth's ("Roundworld's") prehistory largely because they're fast-forwarding much of the time. It's still suspicious that they end up being virtually present at the moments of actual impact events -- including the dinosaur-ending one.
* Scientists in Robert J Sawyer's ''Literature/EndOfAnEra'' travel back in time to the Cretaceous in order to study dinosaurs. Because of some uncertainty in the equations, they happen to arrive a couple days before the K-Pg Event. And for good reason, too. [[spoiler:They caused it.]]
* ''Literature/TheMagicSchoolBus'' book ''In the Time of the Dinosaurs'' has them escape from the asteroid at the end of their day in the Cretaceous, though also after visiting other periods; given that the purpose of the trip was educational, it's possible Ms. Frizzle secretly took them to the impact deliberately--and given that the bus can travel through time, the class isn't in any danger from it. It's averted in the corresponding animated episode however, where there is no asteroid because Ms. Frizzle sends them back ''67'' million years in the past.
* Justified in ''Literature/TheMagicTreeHouse'', where the eponymous treehouse is attuned to TimeTravel to a collection of important historical events... which tend to include certain disasters. Most notably, Jack and Annie end up in Pompeii as Mt. Vesuvius erupts, on the UsefulNotes/RMSTitanic, and in San Francisco in time for the 1906 earthquake. (Ironically, the one time they ''do'' go to the Cretaceous period, there's no asteroid in sight.)
* {{Averted}} in ''Literature/TheNewDinosaursAnAlternativeEvolution'' by Dougal Dixon, which speculates on how dinosaurs and pterosaurs may have evolved if the K-Pg extinction ''hadn't'' happened.
* Also averted in ''Literature/LestDarknessFall'' by L. Sprague de Camp. Martin Padway manages to stop the disastrous Gothic War in 535 AD and begins to repair the damage that the fall of the Roman Empire has done on Europe.
* Justified in ''Literature/Pathfinder2010''. The protagonist Rigg can travel back in time by identifying the [[FluorescentFootprints "path"]] of a living thing that had walked the land before. In a moment of urgency he picks the most recent path of an extinct animal he sees, which turns out to be fleeing the ColonyDrop that rendered it extinct.
* Justified in the ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' novel ''First Frontier'', where the Guardian of Forever sends the Enterprise crew back to the asteroid strike because someone else has already prevented it.
* ''Literature/TimeRiders'' likes to play with this trope. The second book involves ending up in the late Cretaceous with a dozen or so civilians, but despite the approximate date (about 62.5 million years BC - geology is wonderfully vague like that) the asteroid is not their primary mortality concern, but (in order) food and water, disease, predators and inbreeding. And the pack of highly intelligent and adaptable predators that have been stalking them for the last month.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
!!!'''In General:'''
* While they don't often involve time travel (with [[Series/PrehistoricPark maybe one exception]]), many dinosaur documentaries which follow the life of an individual dinosaur are fond of ending their stories [[EverybodyDiesEnding by having the asteroid impact]]. (If said documentaries are made by Creator/TheBBC it's a pretty safe bet that they'll use StockFootage from ''Series/WalkingWithDinosaurs'' to save money.)
** Averted by ''Series/DinosaurPlanet''. All four stories are set in the Late Cretaceous, but during the Campanian epoch, several million years before from the K-Pg event, and there is nary an asteroid in sight. The only story showing the [[spoiler:death of the main characters (Little Das' Hunt)]] is but a ''localized'' disaster.
** Averted in ''Series/PrehistoricPlanet''; while the series takes place at the end of the Cretaceous Period, the focus is placed on the evolutionary success of dinosaurs. The first series ends on a hopeful note with a ''Hatzegopteryx'' flying off into the sunset, and the second with a mother ''Nanuqsaurus'' feeding her young, and so far there has been no episode about, or even much acknowledgement of, the extinction event.

!!!'''By Series:'''
* In an episode of ''Series/BetweenTheLions'', Walter and Clay Pigeon get transported inside a book about dinosaurs. At first they believe they've scared off a T-rex with their roars, but then Lionel turns the page and [[OhCrap they realize the T-rex was actually running from the meteor.]]
* With all the dinosaurs either being of AmbiguousSpecies or Jurassic and Cretaceous dinosaurs, living in a [[HollywoodPrehistory generic stereotypical prehistory]], ''{{Series/Dinosaurs}}'' could theoretically take place at any time during the Mesozoic, right? Nope. The last episode shows the start of the K-Pg extinction. (That was a deliberate choice of TorchTheFranchiseAndRun on the showrunners' part, but ''still''.)
* ''Series/DoctorWho'': While no dinosaurs (aside from a few fossilised bones) actually appear in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS19E6Earthshock Earthshock]]", the final episode has Adric trying to prevent a space freighter from crashing into the prehistoric Earth, unaware that the freighter is destined to become the "asteroid" which caused the K-Pg extinction. Not only does he fail to stop the impact, he ends up dying in the resulting explosion. (Depending on your view of [[TimeyWimeyBall how time travel works in the Whoniverse]], this is arguably justified: it's not that the freighter "happened" to arrive on Extinction Day; Extinction Day was going to be ''whatever day the freighter arrived on''.)
* Non-time travel example: In the DistantPrologue ("distant" meaning "prehistory") to ''Series/PowerRangersDinoCharge'', Sledge chases the Keeper to Earth and shoots him down. The Keeper is able to retaliate by sneaking a bomb aboard Sledge's ship, which then drops the load of asteroids it was carrying.
* In the first episode of ''Series/PrehistoricPark'', Nigel must collect a T. rex for the park before the asteroid hits. He justifies this by saying that he wants to get a specimen that would have died shortly afterwards [[ButterflyOfDoom so the timestream won't alter too much]]. However, he later revisits the period on other trips involving significantly fewer asteroids.
** Nigel Marvin's missions go back to periods of time where species are at the end of their line. He went back to before the meteor impact to get a T. Rex, and grabbed a ''Triceratops'' and a flock of ''Ornithomimus'' while he was there while trying to get a Rex to follow. His later missions to the period were after species that died out before this point, like ''Microraptor'' and ''Deinosuchus''. The former did have a volcanic eruption go off, so at least two of his trips did involve giant explosions and dust clouds of death. The latter just had gigantic dinosaur-eating crocs from Texas.
* Inverted in ''Series/{{Primeval}}''. Abby and Connor are trapped in the Cretaceous for a year and have to fight to survive there. None of them are worried about the comet hitting Earth. They are much more worried about the [[SavageSpinosaurs Spinosaurus]], which has his territory right next to them.
** Played straight in the spin-off novel ''Extinction Event''. A gigantic time anomaly is opening up in Siberia, and countless dinosaurs and other animals from the Late Cretaceous are coming into the present. Nick Cutter goes through this anomaly into the Cretaceous, and sees the comet in the sky. He realizes that they really are at the end of the Cretaceous period, and the comet will hit Earth in a few hours or weeks.
* {{Averted|Trope}} in ''Series/TerraNova''. The temporal conduit does take people to the Cretaceous, but roughly 20 million years before the K-Pg extinction. (For context, 20 million years is longer than hominids of any kind have existed, much less human civilization.)
* This is pretty much the premise of ''Series/TheTimeTunnel''. In theory, the Tunnel unpredictably sends the heroes to random eras; in practice, they always arrive while some famous, exciting event is happening, or about to happen.
* ''Series/WalkingWithDinosaurs'' naturally concludes with an episode about the asteroid and the mass extinction that followed, but it begins a few months before the strike so the narrative can follow some of the doomed creatures. Perhaps uniquely, it also emphasises how the Cretaceous really ''was'' doomed; thanks to already existent climate change and volcanic activity, dinosaurs are dying out and likely would have become extinct even without the asteroid (it should be noted this idea was controversial even then and [[ScienceMarchesOn not widely held anymore]]).
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
* Justified in ''TabletopGame/{{Predation}}'', where the choice of just before the asteroid impact was intentional so as to minimize the risk of a butterfly effect (the mass extinction "washing out" any changes the humans might make). It would have been a good plan [[OhCrap had time travel not abruptly stopped working]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'' has you traveling to 65 million BC, and in the conclusion of that part of the plot, a giant asteroid falls to the planet. Justified in that the asteroid that wiped out the remainder of the Reptites is actually [[BigBad Lavos]], which is implied to be the source of the Gates that make time travel possible.
* ''VideoGame/DinoRun'' involves you out-running the AdvancingWallOfDoom that is debris flying as a result from the asteroid impact.
* ''VideoGame/EVOSearchForEden'' ends the dinosaur era with a massive meteor bombardment, and makes a point of showing the ''Styracosaurus'' father, who's child you saved in an earlier level, [[PlayerPunch laying dead together huddled in fear]]. [[spoiler:A few dinosaurs manage to survive in scattered areas.]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Nanosaur}}'': By the year 4122, humanity is extinct and genetically engineered, intelligent dinosaurs rule the Earth. Problem is, due to their small genetic pool, inbreeding becomes a serious problem and they decide to send [[PlayerCharacter a velociraptor]] back to the Cretaceous era to collect various dinosaur eggs. You'll never play this game for more than 20 minutes, ''because that's all the time you have to complete your mission before the asteroid hits''.
* The computer game ''Save the Dinosaurs'', part of ''[[Creator/JumpStartGames Dinosaur Adventure 3D]]'', had you save a bunch of dinosaurs from all three time periods. You had [[TimedMission until the comet struck the earth (the time to impact being depicted by a timer) to save all of them]]; even if you were [[SanDimasTime in the wrong period to be affected]], the time tunnels, or the hub area, it was game over if time ran out.
* ''VideoGame/TheJourneymanProject'' Pegasus Prime invokes this with its historical log which contains unaltered historical information in case a rogue time traveler changes history. The Temporal Security Agency creates an artificial island back in the year 200 million BC, which is set in the late Triassic period, and hid it away inside a cliffside, safely protecting it from any wild predators. However, in a very short amount of time, the volcanic activity the Triassic/Jurassic extinction event was known for would occur, destroying the island completely preventing any of it from altering history.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Webcomics]]
* In ''Webcomic/DawnOfTime'', Dawn and Blue are returned back to their own time just as the asteroid is about to hit. They don't escape the asteroid, but they do manage to get away from the GrimReaper.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Videos]]
* ''WebVideo/PuppetHistory'': In Season Five, The Professor is [[FishOutOfTemporalWater trapped in the Cretaceous Period]], but is taken in by two kind dinosaurs who decide to [[InterspeciesAdoption raise him as their son]]. They spend a few happy months together, with The Professor wanting to return to his own home and time, but also loving his new family and enjoying seeing the period in person. At his dino parents' request, he does eventually explain how the dinosaurs will eventually go extinct, but [[TemptingFate assures them that they don't need to worry about it]]. After all, what are the odds that he landed right at the tail-end of the period's 79 million year period? No points for guessing what happens in the Season Five finale. The ContrivedCoincidence is deliberate, with the point being that in life, you don't ''really'' know what hand you've been dealt or what's coming up next--so make the most of it, and let the people you love know how you feel. [[spoiler:The Professor and his parents just barely escape the asteroid's impact, thanks to a well-placed genie wish from Ryan in the future.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/BackToTheFuture'' also pulled this out, with Doc Brown and Verne stopping a meteor from hitting to save a dinosaur they befriended, only to find out it was ''that'' one, and without it, dinosaurs still rule the earth.
* Subverted in one episode of ''WesternAnimation/FairlyOddParents''. Timmy travels back in time to get footage of dinosaurs for a film he's making, and Wanda points out "the comet that wiped them all out". Said comet hurtles into view, strikes the ground... and turns out to be a tiny rock about the size of Timmy's head that does absolutely nothing. Timmy promptly summons his lead actor, [[Creator/SylvesterStallone Sylvester Calzone]], to attack the dinosaurs instead.
-->'''Sylvester Calzone:''' You're the species, I'm the extinction!
* Invoked in the ''[[WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague Justice League Unlimited]]'' episode "[[Recap/JusticeLeagueUnlimitedS1E13TimeWarped The Once and Future Thing: Time, Warped]]". Lord Chronos punishes his goon Chucko by stranding him in the Cretaceous at the moment of the meteor's landing. ''[[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill At the site]]'' [[ColonyDrop of the meteor's landing]]. Leads to some hilarious [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVn-G3Ky2pg last words.]]
-->'''UsefulNotes/TyrannosaurusRex:''' ''[roars]''\\
'''Chucko:''' You think I'm scared? ''[ignites dual-bladed lightsaber]'' I'll be running this dump in a few yea... ''[turns and sees asteroid]'' [[ThisIsGonnaSuck Oh, phooey...]]
** Chronos, back in the present, then asks the rest of his goons, "Do you know what killed the dinosaurs? Well, ''Chucko does.''"
* Happens during an ImagineSpot episode in one of Albert Barillé's ''WesternAnimation/IlEtaitUneFois'' cartoon series. The kids are time travelling (with their imagination!) and they stop for a walk 65 million years BC. The storyteller is a bit dumbfounded at first trying to remember why that date is stuck in his mind before he realizes it, gets the children on the time machine and they depart seconds before the asteroid hits. YourMindMakesItReal... perhaps a bit too much.
* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken'' had various dinosaurs banding together to build a spaceship to head off the asteroid and failing miserably. It turns out this is a story told by George W. Bush explaining why they are extinct.
* ''WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2003'' zigags this trope. The turtles travel back to a point in the Cretaceous Period to prevent a plan by a villain that would cause the asteroid in the K-Pg extinction to narrowly miss the Earth. Though they succeed, they temporarily lose the Time Scepter that would allow them to return to the present for three months before finding it at the end of the episode. During the episode, we see a bright red dot in the sky that Donatello assumes is the asteroid in the distance, but he admits that he doesn't know when it's going to hit. He guesses it could be anywhere from weeks to years, and after the TimeSkip predicts they have three months until impact.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Other]]
* [[Ride/DisneyThemeParks The Disney ride]] based on ''WesternAnimation/{{Dinosaur}}'' mildly averts this by claiming initially you would have gone on a tour of the peaceful early Cretaceous, but a rogue researcher changed your arrival date to just before the extinction event because he wants to rescue Aladar, the film's hero.
[[/folder]]

----
!!Examples involving other historical events:

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
* ''Film/TimeBandits'' has Kevin and the dwarves arrive on the ''Titanic'' not long before it sinks.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* In ''Literature/DoomsdayBook'', time traveler Kivrin arrives at the start of the Black Death epidemic of 1348, twenty years later than she intended to arrive. The explanation is that history resists people from going to any time but specific dates, hence why she must arrive in 1348.
* This happens many times during ''Literature/TheMagicTreehouse'' series. It's justified because the books are usually meant to take them to a specific event like the Pompeii eruption, but Jack and Annie [[ForgotAboutHisPowers often don't bother to read further in the book]] until said disastrous event is happening. Ironically, this is {{averted|Trope}} in the first book when the duo end up in the late Cretaceous, and there's not an asteroid in sight.
* In ''Literature/{{Timeline}}'', a medieval history teacher and his students, working in an archaeological dig at a (fictional) ruined castle in France, travel to 1347 - mere days before the castle was taken by the English during UsefulNotes/TheHundredYearsWar. The trope is played even more straight when they return to the present and kick the [[spoiler:{{Jerkass}} CorruptCorporateExecutive that built the time machine]] into the time machine, sending him to the same place... in 1348, just as the Black Plague arrives. Since he never comes back, they assume he caught it and died. TheFilmOfTheBook condenses this and just has the guy thrown into the FinalBattle in 1347, right in time to get a sword strike to the head.
* ''Literature/TimeRiders'' is interesting, as mentioned above. Because of alternate timelines, examples include accidentally landing on the lawn of the White House minutes before a Nazi invasion, prolonging the siege of Nottingham for about a week (in-universe predictions held it to hours at best under the pressure of Richard I's armies) and the fact that one of the team was a steward on the Titanic is explained thoroughly; the Agency needed to know ''exactly'' when and where these teenagers would have died. What better than someone known to have been missing in action at the bottom of the ship in one of the most infamous voyages of the twentieth century?
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* This is often the driving plot device of ''Series/DoctorWho''. The Doctor and his companions will arrive at some key moment in time just before a volcano explodes, a ship sinks or a war breaks out (and usually find an alien plot behind it). Eventually, [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E4TheDoctorsWife the personification of the TARDIS explains why]], [[AscendedFanon and it's exactly what fans had speculated for decades]]:
-->'''The Doctor:''' You didn't always take me where I wanted to go.\\
'''Idris:''' No, but I always took you where you ''needed'' to go.
** Even his trips into the future fit the trope. If he visits anything ''ever'' it's practically guaranteed to precipitate large-scale deaths in some incredible fashion.
* Invoked in ''Series/Loki2021'' by the rogue Loki Variant, who is able to avoid attracting [[TimePolice TVA]] attention by hiding at apocalyptic moments in time -- you can't alter the timestream enough to make a noticeable difference if everyone you're affecting is dying in an hour anyway. After Loki deduces this, he and Mobius test this by visiting Pompeii and making a scene in the town just as Mount Vesuvius erupts. [[spoiler:It's later shown the TVA itself invokes this by sending everything from the errant timelines they "prune" to an apocalyptic event at the "end of Time", where they are devoured by [[{{Cumulonemesis}} Alioth.]]]]
* ''Series/PrehistoricPark'' may play the trope straight in the first episode, but Nigel's other trips follow other periods due to a desire to get animals at their end of their ropes, which minimizes paradoxes. At two different points he travels to points in time where his target species are in fact quite common: first the Mammoth in his second trip in episode 2, and later the Smilodon in episode 4. He didn't try and get any of them then and when he did get their respective species it was in the first and second trips of their episodes respectively. He did grab a woolly rhino and a terror bird during those trips, as ''those'' species were at the end of their time, though only the terror bird was planned.
* Intentionally subverted in ''Series/QuantumLeap'', where Sam's time-traveling missions (as determined by an unknown entity) only involved fixing the lives of normal people, never celebrities. The closest that he came to do so was when he tried to prevent UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy's assassination, and succeeded only in saving his wife (who, in the original timeline, had also been killed).
* ''Series/RedDwarf'': In "[[Recap/RedDwarfSeasonVIITikkaToRide Tikka to Ride]]", when Lister insists on using a time machine to go back to 21st century Earth and order a few thousand curries, the time machine misses and winds up depositing them in Dallas, on the day of JFK's assassination... right in the book depository as Lee Harvey Oswald's lining up his shot.
* ''Series/TheTimeTunnel'': If the protagonists end up in a place where a historic event took place, they always arrive just before said event occurred. Indeed, the very first episode sends them to the ''Titanic''.
* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': In the episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S4E10NoTimeLikeThePast There's No Time Like the Past]]", this is done intentionally at first, as a man goes back in time to attempt to warn the people of Hiroshima about a nuclear bomb in 1945 (hours before it hit), prevent the sinking of the RMS Lusitania (hours before it was torpedoed), and kill UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler before UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. But when he decides to stop trying to change the past and go live in 1881, this trope still comes into play. He arrives the day before President UsefulNotes/JamesGarfield is assassinated, but decides to let it happen. Then it turns out he arrived a few days before a huge fire killed some children at the local schoolhouse, and he struggles with whether or not to prevent it, only to end up causing it when he does try to intervene.
* Every episode of ''Series/{{Voyagers}}'' entailed this, since the whole point was to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* In the ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' episode "[[Recap/FamilyGuyS7E3RoadToGermany Road to Germany]]", Brian and Stewie travel back in time to Warsaw, Poland (though how they got to Poland from Rhode Island is never explained), September 1st, 1939, the date that Germany invades Poland and kicks off UsefulNotes/WorldWarII (the Germans did not reach Warsaw until a week later). They have time for one Jewish wedding before tanks start rolling in.
[[/folder]]

* ''VideoGame/EVOSearchForEden'' ends the dinosaur era with a massive meteor bombardment, and makes a point of showing the ''Styracosaurus'' mother, who's child you saved in an earlier level, [[PlayerPunch laying dead together huddled in fear]]. [[spoiler:A few dinosaurs manage to survive in scattered areas.]]

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]

* Invoked in ''Series/Loki2021'' by the rogue Variant, who is able to avoid attracting [[TimePolice TVA]] attention by hiding at apocalyptic moments in time — you can't alter the timestream enough to make a noticeable difference if everyone you're affecting is dying in an hour anyway. After Loki deduces this, he and Mobius test this by visiting Pompeii and making a scene in the town just as Mount Vesuvius erupts. [[spoiler:It's later shown the TVA itself invokes this by sending everything from the errant timelines they "prune" to an apocalyptic event at the "end of Time", where they are devoured by [[{{Cumulonemesis}} Alioth.]]]]

* ''Timeriders'' is interesting, as mentioned above. Because of alternate timelines, examples include accidentally landing on the lawn of the White House minutes before a Nazi invasion, prolonging the siege of Nottingham for about a week (in-universe predictions held it to hours at best under the pressure of Richard I's armies) and the fact that one of the team was a steward on the Titanic is explained thoroughly; the Agency needed to know ''exactly'' when and where these teenagers would have died. What better than someone known to have been missing in action at the bottom of the ship in one of the most infamous voyages of the twentieth century?

* Also averted in ''Lest Darkness Fall'' by L. Sprague de Camp. Martin Padway manages to stop the disastrous Gothic War in 535 AD and begins to repair the damage that the fall of the Roman Empire has done on Europe.

* ''Timeriders'' likes to play with this trope. The second book involves ending up in the late Cretaceous with a dozen or so civilians, but despite the approximate date (about 62.5 million years BC - geology is wonderfully vague like that) the asteroid is not their primary mortality concern, but (in order) food and water, disease, predators and inbreeding. And the pack of highly intelligent and adaptable predators that have been stalking them for the last month.

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': In the episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E112NoTimeLikeThePast There's No Time Like the Past]]", this is done intentionally at first, as a man goes back in time to attempt to warn the people of Hiroshima about a nuclear bomb in 1945 (hours before it hit), prevent the sinking of the RMS Lusitania (hours before it was torpedoed), and kill UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler before UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. But when he decides to stop trying to change the past and go live in 1881, this trope still comes into play. He arrives the day before President UsefulNotes/JamesGarfield is assassinated, but decides to let it happen. Then it turns out he arrived a few days before a huge fire killed some children at the local schoolhouse, and he struggles with whether or not to prevent it, only to end up causing it when he does try to intervene.

* ''WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2003'' zigags this trope. At a point in the Cretaceous Period, the turtles travel back to prevent a plan by a villain that would cause the asteroid in the K-Pg extinction to narrowly miss the Earth, temporarily lose MacGuffin that would allow them to return to the present for a few days before finding it at the end of the episode. During the episode, we see a bright red dot in the sky that Donatello assumes is the asteroid in the distance, but he admits that he doesn't know when it's going to hit and when he doesn't know if they'll get back to the present, he guesses it could be anywhere from weeks to years.

** ''Series/WalkingWithDinosaurs'' naturally concludes with an episode about the asteroid and the mass extinction that followed, but it begins a few months before the strike so the narrative can follow some of the doomed creatures. Perhaps uniquely, it also emphasises how the Cretaceous really ''was'' doomed; thanks to already existent climate change and volcanic activity, dinosaurs are dying out and likely would have become extinct even without the asteroid.

* ''VideoGame/EVOSearchForEden'' ends the dinosaur era with a massive meteor bombardment, and makes a point of showing the ''Styracosaurus'' mother, who's child you saved in an earlier level, [[PlayerPunch laying dead together huddled in fear]].