History Main / WrongTimeTravelSavvy

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* ''{{Wakfu}}'' gives us [[spoiler:Nox]], whose goal is to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong. [[spoiler: [[AlasPoorVillain Unfortunately for him]], time travel within the World of Twelve not only consumes ridiculous amounts of power, it quite possibly tears holes in the universe as well.]]
* Dinobot in ''BeastWars'' fears that YouAlreadyChangedThePast is in effect, rendering all of his choices meaningless. Then Megatron proves that you ''can'' change the past and watch the future change with it, which drives the plot from that point on.

->'''Martha Jones:''' ''But are we safe? I mean, can we move around and stuff?''\\
'''The Doctor:''' ''Of course we can. Why not?''\\
'''Martha Jones:''' ''It's like [[YouWatchTooMuchX in those films]]: [[ButterflyOfDoom If you step on a butterfly, you change the future of the human race.]]''\\
'''The Doctor:''' ''Then, don't step on any butterflies. [[ComicallyMissingThePoint What have butterflies ever done to you?]]''

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** His initial statements were correct: You can't change the future. Time is immutable. If you go back in time, you are already a part of the past that led to the present you came from, and you always have been (or will be). As Miles explains to Hugo, ''{{Back To The Future}}'' was completely absurd. Either you participate in the past, directly or indirectly causing your future, or you just stand aside and let things happen. Actually, since whatever happened happened, it doesn't matter which you chose because, from your perspective as someone from the future, you already made the choice. [[spoiler: And you can't even create an alternate realities. That so-called AU in season six was really just a shared post-mortem hallucination. The fact that it looked like an alternate timeline was a COMPLETE RED HERRING.]]

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* May have happened in ''{{Series/Heroes}}'', assuming the time travel plots there made any sense at all.

* Subverted in ''{{Homestuck}}''. Dave has no idea how his time traveling powers work and doesn't plan on changing that.

* ''TwelveMonkeys'' starts with the main characters seeming to know how time travel works, but by the end it's a bit more ambiguous whether they do or not.
** This is probably because the main character starts to feel like he's losing his mind and possibly dreaming up the whole future nonsense in his own mind. [[spoiler: Cole realizes he had been traveling through time after he attempts to prove it by telling Katheryn to make a phone call for him. The phone is supposedly his connection to the future. She returns telling him the phone number was some carpet place (or other business) and that she left a message about the twelve monkeys instead. The message was something he'd memorized from the future, so he knew he was traveling through time.]]

* The main characters of ''{{Primer}}'' start out by taking elaborate precautions to avoid changing the timeline too much. By the end of the movie, they've realized that they're in a branching universe-type situation where they can totally ignore these precautions. [[TimeTravelTenseTrouble By then, they've already spun the timeline wildly out of control.

* In the [[Film/StarTrek new ''Star Trek'' movie]], old Spock relies on Kirk's lack of knowledge about the mechanics of time travel in convincing Kirk not to reveal old Spock's existence to his past self.

-->-- ''DoctorWho'', "The Shakespeare Code"

'''The Doctor:''' ''Then, don't step on any butterflies. [[CompletelyMissingThePoint What have butterflies ever done to you?]]''

* The main characters of ''{{Primer}}'' start out by taking elaborate precautions to avoid changing the timeline too much. By the end of the movie, they've realized that they're in a branching universe-type situation where they can totally ignore these precautions.
** I'd call [[spoiler:drugging, beating up, and knocking your previous self unconscious, then tying yourself up in the attic for days at a time so you can take over their life,]] blatantly going against those precautions rather than just ignoring them. Then [[spoiler: the Granger Incident occurs]] and they realize that things have spun wildly out of their control.

** That doesn't fit with ''TheSarahConnorChronicles'', but maybe [[CanonDisContinuity that's okay]].

'''Martha Jones:''' ''It's like in those films: [[ButterflyOfDoom If you step on a butterfly, you change the future of the human race.]]''\\

A key element in a lot of stories with TimeTravel is the character's knowledge, or lack thereof, of how time travel works. Is the world [[YouAlreadyChangedThePast deterministic]]? Is time [[HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct hard to change]], or [[ButterflyOfDoom way too easy]]? Is there [[OurTimeTravelIsDifferent something else weird going on]]? Will a TemporalParadox destroy the universe, create an alternate one, or do you just risk being [[StableTimeLoop very confused]]? Of course, if the series itself [[TimeyWimeyBall keeps changing the rules]] it's up to the writer at the time whether or not you are wrong.

* In the StagateSG-1 episode ''1969'', Carter spends most of the episode telling the rest of the team they have to be careful not to change the past. Yet she doesn't seem to realize that Hammond's handing them the note before they left pretty much proves they're in a StableTimeLoop. But this fits with Carter's regular habit of introducing unnecessary complications into other people's plans just because the writers think it makes her look smarter.

* In the StagateSG1 episode ''1969'', Carter spends most of the episode telling the rest of the team they have to be careful not to change the past. Yet she doesn't seem to realize that Hammond's handing them the note before they left pretty much proves they're in a StableTimeLoop. But this fits with Carter's regular habit of introducing unnecessary complications into other people's plans just because the writers think it makes her look smarter.

* In ''LifeOnMars'' and ''AshesToAshes'', both protagonists attempt to change history, but fail despite their best efforts, leading them to draw the conclusion that the past cannot be changed. They also meet close relations and have close encounters with, but deliberately avoid actually meeting themselves. Then suddenly in series 2 of [[AshesToAshes A2A]] it all goes to hell when the BigBad [[spoiler: shoots his younger self in the face and frames Alex for the murder]]. NeverTheSelvesShallMeet [[SubvertedTrope indeed]].

'''Martha Jones:''' ''It's like in those films: If you step on a butterfly, you change the future of the human race.''\\
'''The Doctor:''' ''Then, don't step on any butterflies. What have butterflies ever done to you?''

* In ''LifeOnMars'' and ''AshesToAshes'', both protagonists attempt to change history, but fail despite their best efforts, leading them to draw the conclusion that the past cannot be changed. They also meet close relations and have close encounters with, but deliberately avoid actually meeting themselves. Then suddenly in series 2 of A2A it all goes to hell when the BigBad [[spoiler: shoots his younger self in the face and frames Alex for the murder]]. NeverTheSelvesShallMeet [[SubvertedTrope indeed]].

* In the [[Film/StarTrek new Star Trek movie]], old Spock relies on Kirk's lack of knowledge about the mechanics of time travel in convincing Kirk not to reveal old Spock's existence to his past self.
* Might be happening in ''{{Series/Heroes}}'', assuming the time travel plots there make any sense at all.

* A plot point on ''{{Lost}}'' this season. Faraday spent the first block of episodes convincing the other characters (and viewers) that the past cannot be changed. Just when everyone was starting to get it, Faraday changes his mind and the characters ended the season trying to dramatically alter their own destinies.
** With the season ending on a CliffHanger, we'll have to wait and see, but so far it looks like Faraday was right the first time. They've ended up [[YouAlreadyChangedThePast causing a lot of the stuff they were trying to change]].
*** And now in the final season, you learn that [[spoiler:they created an AlternateUniverse where they never came to the island. They don't know this though, as they're still on the island and nothing has changed for them. Desmond, after being exposed again to high levels of electromagnetic radiation, is suddenly aware of both timelines. In the universe where their plane never crashed on the island, Desmond starts going around "waking up" the other characters, and they start remembering their other lives on the island.]] The season isn't over yet, so we'll see where this leads...
**** Daniel Faraday's initial statements were correct: You can't change the future. Time is immutable. If you go back in time, you are already a part of the past that led to the present you came from, and you always have been (or will be). As Miles explains to Hugo, "{{Back To The Future}}" was completely absurd. Either you participate in the past, directly or indirectly causing your future, or you just stand aside and let things happen. Actually, since whatever happened happened, it doesn't matter which you chose because, from your perspective as someone from the future, you already made the choice. [[spoiler: And you can't even create an alternate realities. That so-called AU in season six was really just a shared post-mortem hallucination. The fact that it looked like an alternate timeline was a COMPLETE RED HERRING.]]

* LarryNiven's "Get A Horse" (and the other stories in the same series) features time travel based on the premise that, since time travel is impossible, if you travel back in time you actually enter a fantasy world. Thus, when the hero goes back in time to bring back a horse, he finds a unicorn. When he goes back to bring back a whale, he finds Moby Dick, and so on. No one in the series ever figures out that they aren't visiting the past, but rather are visiting fiction.

* ''The Time Ships'' by StephenBaxter is a sequel to HGWells' ''The Time Machine,'' detailing the Time Traveler's adventures after he vanishes at the end of the first book. He's heading back to the future to rescue Weena (a rare instance of SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong in which the "once" is in the future, though in his personal past), but finds the future [[ButterflyEffect radically changed]] because his story was published as a novel, preventing the BadFuture of Eloi and Morlocks. After learning this he [[LampshadeHanging muses dismally]] about how he'd expected history to be like a room he could move through while it remained basically unchanged.

* Dinobot in BeastWars fears that YouAlreadyChangedThePast is in effect, rendering all of his choices meaningless. Then Megatron proves that you ''can'' change the past and watch the future change with it, which drives the plot from that point on.
* In 'Paraducks', Gosalyn advises DarkwingDuck to not interfere when they get sent back in time to his childhood. Back to the present, and the city's held in the grip of a crime lord. Turns out they were in the middle of a StableTimeLoop instead..

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