Line #27 Main/WrongTimeTravelSavvy


1	->'''Martha Jones:''' But are we safe? I mean, can we move around and stuff?\
2	'''The Doctor:''' Of course we can. Why not?\
3	'''Martha Jones:''' It's like in those films: If you step on a butterfly, you change the future of the human race.\
4	'''The Doctor:''' Then, don't step on any butterflies. What have butterflies ever done to you?
5	-->-- ''Series/DoctorWho'', "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E2TheShakespeareCode The Shakespeare Code]]"
6
7	A key element in a lot of stories with TimeTravel is the character's knowledge, or lack thereof, of [[TemporalMutability 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.
8
9	This trope occurs when the plot hinges on the fact that the characters ''think'' they know how time travel works in their world, but they are mistaken. Because time travel narratives often imply what events "must" occur, this trope can involve AcceptableBreaksFromReality so as to maintain surprise (including surprise that the foreseen events do in fact occur).
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11	YouAlreadyChangedThePast can be an instance of this, if the characters in question are mistakenly confident that they could SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong (as opposed to just uncertain).
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13	----
14	!!Examples:
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16	[[foldercontrol]]
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18	[[folder: Anime & Manga]]
19	* In ''Anime/DragonBallZ'', Trunks assumes that by going back in time and saving Goku from his death via heart virus, the chaos brought by the Androids in his time will be vanquished. Once he returns to his time, however, nothing has changed. He figures out that all he did was create a new timeline and that his own timeline's past cannot be changed.
20	** Happens again in ''Anime/DragonBallSuper'' when [[spoiler:Present Zamasu]] learns that his plan [[spoiler:to kill Gowasu and steal Goku's body]] goes off without a hitch in the future, making him believe that his victory is inevitable. Beerus then destroys him, before assuming that [[spoiler:Zamasu's]] future self was also destroyed by this, when he was really protected by the time ring he wore.
21	* [[spoiler:Kanjuro]] tries to [[InvokedTrope invoke]] this in ''Manga/OnePiece''. [[spoiler:Kin'emon, Momonosuke, Raizo, Kiku, and himself]] all traveled 20 years into the future using the [[spoiler:Kozuki Toki's]] Time-Time power, but [[spoiler:Oden]] didn't make it along with them. To play on this, he disguises himself as [[spoiler:Oden]] to give people false hope, hoping that they won't remember that the Time-Time Fruit only goes ''forward'' and can't change the past.
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24	[[folder:Comic Books]]
25	* The Shea Fontana ''WebAnimation/DCSuperHeroGirls'' tie-in graphic novel ''Past Times at Super Hero High'' has Batgirl and Harley Quinn at one point stop in the 1980s to see a younger Amanda Waller being attacked by Solomon Grundy during their efforts to undo the alterations Harley caused to the timeline by taking a prehistoric egg during the class's field trip to the Jurassic period. Batgirl assumes that since Waller's encounter with Grundy happened before Super Hero High was founded and before either she or Harley were born, she and Harley shouldn't interfere. It isn't until hearing that Lucius Fox is principal instead of Waller upon returning to the present that Batgirl realizes that she and Harley were ''supposed to'' help the young Amanda Waller fight back against Grundy to [[StableTimeLoop ensure she'd later become their high school's principal]].
26	* ''ComicBook/UniversalWarOne'': Kalish enumerates the different ways how time travel can work, and eliminate one because he thought it was impossible. But he was wrong, and [[spoiler: Balti, who thinks that only his death can avoid a TemporalParadox, is DrivenToSuicide.]]
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29	[[folder:Fanfic]]
30	* Based on the idea of travelling to alternate universes being a different form of time travel, this essentially applies in ''Fanfic/CrossCases'' when Harry Dresden (''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'' initially learns that new acquaintance Sam Winchester (''Series/{{Supernatural}}'') is from an alternate universe. Harry assumes that "alternate universe" just refers to the kind of universe where a specific part of history changed, such as a world where Harry Dresden was never born, but everything else he understands about the world still applies. However, he is later informed that "alternate universe" could involve a divergence taking place so far back in the past that the very rules of magic have been changed as well, with the result that Dresden can't be certain Sam's opponents will play by the rules he relies on to keep himself ahead of his enemies.
31	* The ''Franchise/{{Ghostbusters}}'' fic "[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/13178310/ An Unexpected Future]]" features Egon Spengler being sent through a dimensional portal where he meets [[Film/Ghostbusters2016 another team of Ghostbusters]]. The new team and Egon initially assume that Egon is basically from an alternate past, but after Egon returns to his time he and Ray determine that he was actually in the future of ''his'' reality rather than an alternate future, leaving Egon in particular disturbed at the notion that he'll be dead in just over two decades and all knowledge of their accomplishments as Ghostbusters essentially erased from history.
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34	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
35	* ''Film/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.
36	* The main characters of ''Film/{{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]].
37	* In ''Film/StarTrek2009'', old Spock claims NeverTheSelvesShallMeet to convince Kirk not to reveal his existence to his past self. He's actually lying, and just wanted to keep away from them so their friendship would develop naturally, but Kirk had no way to know that.
38	* ''Franchise/{{Terminator}}'':
39	** One interpretation of ''Film/TerminatorSalvation'' (and the whole series) is that the characters are [[YouAlreadyChangedThePast tragically wrong]] about the whole "no fate" thing.
40	** That doesn't fit with ''Series/TerminatorTheSarahConnorChronicles'' (though [[CanonDisContinuity that's okay]]; [[Film/Terminator3RiseOfTheMachines T3]]/[[Film/TerminatorSalvation Salvation]] and [[Series/TerminatorTheSarahConnorChronicles SCC]] are [[AlternateContinuity separate direct continuations]] from [[Film/Terminator2JudgmentDay T2]].) Chronicles actually has [[spoiler: different time travelers bringing back knowledge of different futures, though all feature the Skynet War]]; evidently time ''can'' be changed, but it's got a hell of a lot of inertia. [[spoiler:It gets even more complicated in SCC when we find out there are actually ''three'' factions trying to alter history, not just two. In addition to the Human Resistance and Skynet, there's also a group of rogue Terminators with their own mysterious agenda. When all of three groups mess with each other's attempts to change the past, it's a real MindScrew to even ''guess'' at who's "winning" and which version of the future we're currently on a path toward.]]
41	** Arguably, in ''Film/TheTerminator'', Kyle and Skynet [[YouAlreadyChangedThePast erroneously believe history can be changed]]. Then ''Film/Terminator2JudgmentDay'' retcons it so that they're right. [[note]]James Cameron's original plan was that the series would take place in a malleable timeline the whole time, but the prevention of Judgment Day had to be moved to the sequel due to being too much for just one film.[[/note]]
42	* ''Film/AvengersEndgame'': [[ComicBook/AntMan Scott Lang]] and [[ComicBook/WarMachine Rhodey]] expect time travel to work just like in ''Franchise/BackToTheFuture'' and almost every other movie dealing with the subject. A frustrated Hulk explicitly tells them that time travel doesn't work that way, explaining about TheMultiverse and alternate timelines. For instance, Scott believes in NeverTheSelvesShallMeet, while [[spoiler:present Steve ends up in a MirrorMatch with the Steve from just after [[Film/TheAvengers2012 the Battle of New York]].]]
43	** Interestingly enough, on ''Series/{{Runaways\|2017}}'', which also takes place in the MCU, time travel works exactly the way Scott and Rhodey think it does.
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46	[[folder:Literature]]
47	* In Literature/{{Dinoverse}} this once comes up. Four children have accidentally had their minds converted into "pure thought-energy brainwaves" and sent to the Cretaceous into the bodies of large prehistoric reptiles; as they're orienting themselves and wondering what happened, they get a message from the distant future, from sixty years ''after'' the accident. The message claims that they've been comatose for all sixty years but then posits a way they might get back and to an instant after the accident. The characters worry about this off and on, wondering if it means they've already failed, or if there's some paradox making it possible, or if they'll be dictating that message in the future.
48	* ''Literature/DowntimingTheNightside'' basically runs on this. As the story begins, time travel is brand-new and the people working with it are gradually piecing the rules together as they go along. There's a ''lot'' they miss, as protagonist Ron Moosic learns when he starts running into people from the future, who fill in several of the gaps. And then it turns out [[ZigZaggedTrope they don't really understand it either]] and are doing the same thing, just with more experience to work from. The understood rules of time travel are constantly twisted and broken, but the truth is that [[JustifiedTrope nobody truly knows what the rules actually]] ''[[JustifiedTrope are]]'' , which leads to, among other things, a truly ''epic'' instance of ScrewYourself.
49	* Creator/AlfredBester's ''The Men Who Murdered Mohammed'' plays around with this. A scientist attempts to erase his wife out of existence after he finds her cheating on him. He whips up a time machine, and goes back in time to kill her grandfather. [[spoiler:The catch? It doesn't work. So, he works bigger, rampaging through time, killing more and more famous people (hence the title, as even when he murders the founder of a major world religion nothing changes) with absolutely no effect on the present until, finally, he meets a fellow time traveler who explains that the past he's killing is his own, and he's unhinged himself from reality because of his actions]].
50	* Creator/LarryNiven: The Hanville Svetz series (beginning with "Get a Horse") features time travel based on the premise that, since time travel is impossible, [[InsaneTrollLogic if you travel back in time you actually enter a fantasy world.]] Thus, when Svetz 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. Svetz also finds a werewolf when he is after a dog, and finds a Roc chick when going after an ostrich. In ''Rainbow Mars'', the pattern continues, as the ancient Mars the characters visit contains elements from fictional Marses created by Creator/EdgarRiceBurroughs, Creator/RayBradbury, Creator/HGWells and others.
51	* ''Literature/TheTimeShips'' by Creator/StephenBaxter is a sequel to Creator/HGWells' ''Literature/TheTimeMachine'', 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 [[ButterflyOfDoom 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.
52	* Creator/ConnieWillis' works, particularly ''Literature/ToSayNothingOfTheDog'' and ''Literature/{{Blackout}}''. The protagonists spend a lot of time worrying about [[ButterflyOfDoom the Butterfly Effect]] and have a fairly well-developed theory of RubberBandHistory... but in every case it seems to work out as YouAlreadyChangedThePast.
53	* In ''Literature/TheLastContinent'', Scrappy (who should know) makes it clear to Rincewind that YouAlreadyChangedThePast is in effect, but Ponder Stibbons spends his time trying to explain the ButterflyOfDoom to the UU faculty who mostly refuse to understand it (ironically, Ridcully's bluff assurance that everything should work itself out is pretty close to what Scrappy's telling Rincewind).
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56	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
57	* On ''Series/AgentsOfSHIELD'', Fitz spends most of the series assuming time travel works on YouAlreadyChangedThePast logic, giving an explanation about how time is the fourth dimension and we just perceive time in a linear way. For most of season 5, a few characters think they're effectively invincible because they went to the future and saw either their future self or their descendant. The end of season 5, however, confirms that Fitz was wrong and the future can be changed after all. Fitz dies, but his earlier time duplicate lives on and doesn't have to become that Fitz anymore. Season 7 then reveals that time travel works on multiverse rules, the same way it does in ''Film/AvengersEndgame''. Daisy's mother gets killed in the past, but Daisy doesn't disappear.
58	* In ''Series/Dark2017'', everything that happens in the town Winden actually is a result of a bunch of {{Stable Time Loop}}s. However, most of the time a character first learns that time travel is real, they would try to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong, they ensure that the time loop would happen instead with their actions, like for example Ulrich Nielsen [[spoiler:trying to bring his son home ends in [[CreateYourOwnVillain setting his son's kidnapper on the path of doing so in the first place]]]].
59	* ''Series/DoctorWho'' has had several examples during its long run -- it doesn't hurt that the series itself doesn't stick to any hard rules about what you can and can't change. The Doctor often has to tell companions that they can't rely on ForegoneConclusion when facing threats in their relative pasts, the most dramatic example being in ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E3PyramidsOfMars Pyramids of Mars]]'', when Sarah Jane Smith says they can just return to 1980 since they know Sutekh didn't destroy the world in 1911 and the Doctor brings her forward in time to a version of 1980 where the world was destroyed in 1911, to demonstrate to Sarah that, yes, they do need to actually go back and stop Sutekh to keep her future intact.
60	** Expanded media has generally elaborated on the rules to explain that, while there are fixed points in time that absolutely ''cannot'' be changed, history itself is malleable enough that time travellers can get involved in events and reality will adjust to accommodate their presence so long as they don't actively interfere with anything they ''know'' happened a certain way.
61	* In ''Series/{{Life On Mars\|2006}}'' and ''Series/AshesToAshes2008'', both protagonists [[SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong 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 ''Ashes'', 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]].
62	* A plot point on ''Series/{{Lost}}''. Faraday spent the first block of episodes of the season 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.
63	** 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, ''Franchise/BackToTheFuture'' 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.]]
64	** Faraday attempts to change the past, and apparently manages it once with Desmond, and Desmond apparently does change the past a few times...but both of them just coincidentally manage to have 'swiss cheese memories', the existence of which can be linked to their time travel, so smart money said [[YouAlreadyChangedThePast they already changed the past]] the whole time, and the way causality protects itself on Lost is to simply make people remember things wrong, or not at all, if the memories would cause a paradox.
65	* In the ''Series/StargateSG1'' 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. On the other hand, later episodes dealing with TimeTravel reveal that history can be changed.
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68	[[folder:Video Games]]
69	* Several different forms of time travel exist in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'', [[TimeyWimeyBall each with their own set of rules and inconsistencies]]. One that is proposed by a character in ''Endwalker'' is a form of AstralProjection, allowing the user to see and hear the world of the past but not interact or alter events. A character would eventually put this into action, and it turns out the proposal missed one small detail: [[spoiler:Elidibus only factored in how much power the Crystal Tower would require to send [[PlayerCharacter the Warrior of Light]] ''to'' the past. Once they arrive, they have just enough of a presence that Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch can both sense them and use their own magic to give them form. Welcome to The World Unsundered! [[YouCantFightFate The present is still unalterable]] but [[StableTimeLoop there are more than a few loopholes now]].]]
70	* In ''VideoGame/RatchetAndClankACrackInTime'', many people have tried to use the Great Clock as a time machine to change things to their whims, [[BigBad Dr. Nefarious]] being the most recent. But as the Great Clock's creator has stressed more than once, the Great Clock is ''not'' a time machine; it's a CosmicKeystone that stabilizes the space[=/=]time continuum after a TimeCrash caused by continued abuse of time travel. If you tried to use the Great Clock to change time, it would destabilize and destroy the universe.
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73	[[folder:Web Comics]]
74	* ''Webcomic/BloodIsMine'': When [[EldritchLocation the library]] reveals that it can [[CosmicRetcon alter past events]], Dr. Finch asks if that means it can travel in time. The library replies that travel is for lesser beings. It doesn't ''travel'', it just ''is''.
75	* In ''Webcomic/FrankieAndStein'' Shelly is quite wrong when she insists that [[NeverTheSelvesShallMeet meeting the future versions of themselves]] would cause her and Stein's [[YourHeadASplode heads to explode]].
76	* ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}''.
77	** Subverted. Dave has no idea how his time traveling powers work and doesn't plan on changing that.
78	** Played straight with Terezi, who encourages John to fight [[DiscOneFinalBoss his Denizen]], because she has a computer program that can see into the future and knows that John survives well after the time of the fight. Naturally, John dies and creates an alternate, doomed timeline that Dave has to fix. Terezi is much more careful about this from then on.
79	* Appears briefly in ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'' when time travel suddenly becomes possible. Kevin resolves the matter [[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2005-04-03 experimentally]], genuinely frightening Petey, the local PhysicalGod.
80	* In one of the final arcs of ''Webcomic/UmlautHouse'', and the second arc of ''Umlaut House 2'', [[KidFromTheFuture Pierce]] is concerned that Rhonda's time travel could cause him to cease to exist. Instead he realizes that the timeline is fixed when his father asks him to think of a number between 1 and 16, then asks how old he was when he spontaneously decided to repaint the kitchen (they were the same number).
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83	[[folder:Western Animation]]
84	* Dinobot in ''WesternAnimation/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.
85	* In the episode "Paraducks", Gosalyn advises WesternAnimation/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.
86	* In the ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague Unlimited'' episode "The Once and Future Thing: Time, Warped", Static concludes that the heroes' victory is a ForegoneConclusion because Bruce Wayne is still alive in [[WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond the future]]. Bruce explains that it's not that simple -- he has no memory of traveling into the future during his younger days as Batman, which means that [[TemporalParadox the timeline is not definitively fixed]].
87	* ''WesternAnimation/{{Wakfu}}'': [[BigBad Nox]] wants to set the universe back two centuries to [[spoiler:[[SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong save his family]]]] by [[TimTaylorTechnology amplifying]] existing [[TimeMaster time-control magic]] as much as possible, [[PoweredByAForsakenChild using whatever means necessary]]. [[BigGood Grougaloragran]] says this is likely to just destroy the universe, but Nox is [[{{Pride}} very sure of himself]] and [[TheUnfettered unconcerned with the consequences of being wrong]]. [[spoiler:It turns out Nox was closer to the truth, but not by much. He really could turn back time without damaging the universe, but even with the amount of wakfu he gathered over 200 years of research and genocide (up to and including draining the source of life for every Sadida on the planet, but not what he ended up wasting over the course of his battles), he could only manage to go back in time by twenty minutes. He didn't even go back one fifth of ''one millionth'' as far back as he needed.]]
88	* ''WesternAnimation/XiaolinShowdown'': Omi [[TheSlowPath freezes himself]] to recover the Sands of Time from his future self. Spot the flaw in this plan. [[spoiler: If Omi spends all of his time frozen, he can't give himself the Sands of Time because his old self wouldn't exist. [[LampshadeHanging The show does point this out]] in the darkest way possible, as [[ButterflyOfDoom without Omi]] [[NotSoHarmlessVillain Jack Spicer rises up to become the new ruler of the world]].]]
89	* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'''s "Roswell That Ends Well," Farnsworth has no idea how in-universe time travel works since it's an uncommon event that can only happen through a freak accident. [[spoiler:[[YouAlreadyChangedThePast It turns out the past is unalterable]]]] in this case, though the series as a whole made it [[TimeyWimeyBall more variable]].
90	-->'''Farnsworth:''' You mustn't interfere with the past. Don't do anything that affects anything, unless it turns out you were supposed to do it. In which case, for the love of God, [[ConfusingMultipleNegatives don't not do it]]!
91	* In ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales2017'', Louie hatches a GetRichQuickScheme where he uses Gyro's time travel tub to go into the past and bring back valuable treasures. To ensure he doesn't screw up the time stream, he makes sure to only take artifacts that were lost to history moments before they were recorded to be lost. Unfortunately, he learns the hard way that in the show's universe, taking ''any'' object from its proper place in time disrupts the time stream and nearly causes time and space to collapse.
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