- Narrator: All six Animorphs
Visser Four digs up the Time Matrix from where Elfangor hid it two decades prior, so the Animorphs must stop him before he changes history to make humans easier to conquer.
Tropes:
- Alternate Timeline: Visser Four used the Time Matrix to create a world where humans are easy pickings for the Yeerks. The Drode smugly explains how the Yeerks are only a few short months away from total conquest of humanity.
- Alternate Universe Reed Richards Is Awesome:
- Downplayed with Melissa. She's a member of the Animorphs in the alternate timeline, but that's as far as it goes. She's naïve and does what Jake tells her to, meaning she's inoffensive in the misogynistic, totalitarian regime of "Nazi America".
- Inverted with Hitler, who's merely a soldier driving a truck in the new version of World War II. It doesn't stop Tobias's knee-jerk reaction to kill him on the spot.
- Arrow Catch: Tobias catches an arrow that Visser Four shot at Henry V with his talons. This tips off Visser Four that the Andalite bandits can follow him through time.
- Back from the Dead: By preventing the adventure from happening in the first place, the Animorphs are able to bring Jake back to life with Crayak unable to do anything about it.
- Bad Present: While Visser Four makes a hash of his attempts to Make Wrong What Once Went Right with the Animorphs bearing down on him, the start of the novel shows a world changed for the worse by his meddling with time unimpeded:The Drode: The lack of freedom among humans has made their conquest ever so much easier. Your few books, your two radio stations, your single television channel are all censored. Your technology is fifty years behind where it should be. Poverty is widespread, curable diseases run rampant, some women are forced to breed to repopulate the dominant white race while at the same time, in the major cities the poor and homeless are rounded up and shot—
- Boom, Headshot!: Jake dies from taking a musket pellet to the forehead while crossing the Delaware.
- Death Is Cheap: After Jake dies, the Animorphs find that they can't be killed. They realize that the Ellimist is enforcing to Crayak that only one of them can die on this mission.
- The Dung Ages: The fifteenth century is this for the Animorphs, who have the misfortune of having bird of prey eyes that can witness all the disease, parasites, and dysentery that the people in that era have. Luckily for them, this gives Visser Four away, as he's the only person there with proper teeth and no lice.
- Equal-Opportunity Evil: Heavily downplayed. The American Empire in the Bad Present does have some non-WASP members of the ruling class, like Cassie, but they're treated with heavy suspicion by the Police State apparatus. Jake thinks to himself that even though his Jewish-blooded father is a registered PoE, Patriot of the Empire, he still needs to be careful.
- Even Evil Has Standards: According to the Drode, Crayak doesn't want something like the Time Matrix in the hands of a mere Yeerk. Marco is skeptical, saying that the Time Matrix could be a threat to Crayak, which the Drode denies.
- God Guise: Tobias morphs to Hork-Bajir and rides on Jake's new warhorse morph to fool the English and French armies of 1415 into thinking that the devil has come to play. Tobias even steals a pitchfork for this role.
- Happy Place: After Jake dies and a time jump takes her away from his body and to a naval battle, Cassie retreats to the dolphin's mind until another time jump lands her in Princeton University.
- Hellhole Prison: In the "Nazi America" timeline, Rachel has been shipped off to one by her refusal to submit to the misogynistic society. Her role in the Animorphs is instead filled by Melissa.
- Intimidating White Presence: The team find themselves in an alternate timeline version of Princeton University (one where the American Revolution failed and the French won Trafalgar). Marco notices that there are less than half a dozen women in sight, and absolutely no black people, then one student calls Cassie a very bad word indeed. Having just witnessed the death of her boyfriend and her best friend in very short order, the kind, sweet, good-natured Cassie smiles as she tells the racist that she can become white, no problem. She turns into a polar bear, opens her jaws around his head and roars in his face. Rachel reappears at that moment to complain that Cassie is stealing her act.
- I Will Show You X!: Rachel's response to learning that her counterpart is "being taught her place" is to rant about showing everyone "her place" at any chance she gets.
- Kill It with Fire:
- Visser Four kills Horatio Nelson by setting his ship on fire during a battle against Napoleon's forces.
- After Visser Four leaves the mortally wounded John Berryman, Marco throws the Yeerk into a burning tank.
- Make Wrong What Once Went Right: Visser Four's plan is to make humans easier for the Yeerks to conquer. Thanks to the horrible, totalitarian society that resulted from his historical changes, it works.
- Mirror Universe: The world created by Visser Four is one where a totalitarian regime has taken over America thanks to all the wars that went differently, including World War II. Therefore, aside from Ax, all of the Animorphs are worse people, being Politically Incorrect Heroes at best. Special mentions go to:
- Jake is a "junior Nazi" as Marco describes, who demands to be called Supreme Leader, thinks of handing Cassie to the authorities because of her empathy, and is ashamed of his Jewish ancestry.
- Marco is the least openly-changed, but has an even worse case of Somebody Else's Problem, since he has his mom and Pong (the latest video game in this universe), and he refers to the Brazilian tribes who are being genocided by the Americans as "jungle rats".
- Cassie is a slave owner. Keep in mind that Cassie is black. And in a twisted way, she's still The Heart of the team, since she's vaguely anti-genocide and thinks of slaves as not completely stupid.
- Not What It Looks Like: In 1415, Tobias realizes how bad it looks that he's entering a church, in Hork-Bajir morph (7 feet tall with a spiked tail and horns), and carrying a pitchfork. He apologizes to the priest in thought-speak and tells him it's not what it looks like.
- Oppressive States of America: The Bad Present sees the United States (possibly still part of the British Empire) become one of these.The Drode: Your country is an empire, ruled by terror and torture. It has made war on the nations to the south. It slaughters peoples it calls 'Primitives.' It enslaves anyone with an IQ below eighty, as well as anyone born with what you call defects. All in all, it's my kind of place.
- Psychic Static: John Berryman used his favorite play, Henry V, to annoy Visser Four. Visser Four's response is to use the Time Matrix to kill Henry V.
- Pyrrhic Villainy: It's strongly implied that Visser Four's reign of terror over the past ends when he gets captured by soldiers at Normandy since his future knowledge now contradicts the new reality. Sure, he made humans easier for the Yeerks to conquer, but was most likely executed in the past instead of returning to the Yeerk Empire with the Time Matrix.
- Rage Breaking Point: After hearing that Jake and Rachel are dead, Cassie has no patience for the racism of 1934. She responds to a racist by "turning white", AKA morphing to polar bear and roaring in his face. Marco and the newly alive Rachel comment on how this attitude is more of a Rachel thing to do.
- Rain of Arrows: The Animorphs learn what it's like to be animals caught in the crossfire of medieval armies armed with bows and arrows.
- Ret-Gone: The Animorphs use the Time Matrix to erase John Berryman from existence, preventing Visser Four from ending up in the position to find the Time Matrix in the first place. The world goes back to normal after that, as none of the changes Visser Four made to history ever happened without John Berryman.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The Animorphs have to stop a time travelling Yeerk from changing human history for the worse. Thanks to the Ellimist and Crayak, they're given a Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory and are immune to any of the effects of changing history, as well as traveling along with the Matrix as it passes through space and time.
- Someone Has to Die: Crayak refuses to let the mission happen unless one of the Animorphs dies during it. Obviously, he wants Jake to die, because Jake made the Howlers ineffectual and saved the Iskoort. Even though Jake does die, it doesn't stick.
- Torches and Pitchforks: The people of 1415 see Ax demorphing from harrier, assume he's a demon, and form an angry mob.
- Those Wacky Nazis: They don't exist by the point in the book where the Animorphs reach Normandy, not that it stops Rachel from wanting to kill them.
- Villains Want Mercy: Visser Four begs Rachel to not kill him when she corners him in chimpanzee morph. He changes his tune to laughter when she gets blown in half by cannon fire.
- War Is Hell: Ax keeps trying to find some sort of significance to the bloody human wars he witnesses, but finds none. The Animorphs have nothing to offer him but "that's just the way it's been".
- Wham Line: The book opens with Tobias monologuing about being free as a bird... then he mentions Melissa in place of where the reader would expect Rachel. It only gets worse from there.Even the slaves, standing by to attend to their masters and mistresses, seemed to be having a good time.
