Bad Future: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

{{quote|''And now the wheels of heaven stop''

''You feel the devil's riding crop''

''Get ready for the future:''

 

 

One of the more common [[Alternate Timeline]]s. The heroes are sent into the near future, and while they were gone the world became a [[Crapsack World|crapsack]], usually because [[The Bad Guy Wins|the villain(s)]] [[World Domination|took over]]. Nine times out of ten the hero will meet [[La Résistance]] and/or [[Future Badass]] versions of his friends who were left in the past, though they will of course usually appear older and/or more haggard (due in part to them presencing, and possibly being part of every event which led up to this time). The plot typically ends with the characters going back in time so they can [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong]], so this future can never happen.

 

[[Inverted Trope|Good Future]] variations are practically unknown, since knowing that the future is going to turn out okay removes any dire need for the characters to change things in the present. They do sometimes appear as an epilogue to show that the heroes did in fact succeed in changing the future.

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* ''[[Noein]]'' has two bad futures. Shangri'la, an empty world created solely to bring about the convergence of all other time spaces, and La'Cryma, a battered world that is under assaulted by Shangri'la.

* ''[[Steins;Gate]]'' has two: time travel research by {{spoiler|CERN leads to a dystopian future ruled by them}}. The protagonists actions prevents this and inadvertently ensures {{spoiler|that ''every country in the world'' gets time travel, which touches off a hellish World War 3.}}

* In ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' Chibi-usa comes back to the present to get help in order to save her own time. The Senshi end up travelling forward with her and fighting the evil force which has invaded Future!Earth. Becomes a bit of a [[Timey-Wimey Ball]] since there is a lot of travel between the present and the future, both by heroes and by villains, and Present!Mamoru and Usagi learn things which ought to help them avert the Bad Future in the first place, but apparently they don't because they need to go forward in order to learn them.

 

== Comic Books ==

** Other instances included a played straight Bad Future involving a race of Metal Sonics taking over, and a Bad Future-esque ''Present'' that came about by Robotnik managing to become a god, and [[Wonderful Life|deleting Sonic]] [[Ret-Gone|from history]].

* Startlingly averted in ''[[DC One Million]]'', where the heroes of the present learn that the Solar System of 80,000 years in the future is basically a mutli-planet utopia supervised by a benevolent Justice Legion. (Where, for example, the JLA discourages alien invaders by giving them a tour of the JLA museum, and superpowers are available on-demand.) It's not devoid of problems, but it sure looks nice from the perspective of the year 2000.

 

* The ''[[Pony POV Series]]'' chapter "Epilogue" depicts one of these ruled by [[Complete Monster|Discord]] where the Mane Cast never broke free of his power. Not only are they now his immortal servants, Twilight is now his [[Dragon]] and the dead rising from the grave to eat their loved ones happens ''a lot''. {{spoiler|Applejack's Healing chapter implies that eventually, Twilight manages to outwit him and restore her own memories behind his back, allowing her to begin plotting his downfall while he's none the wiser.}}

 

* ''[[Meet the Robinsons]]'', with the alternate future ruled entirely by a robotic ''bowler hat''. Specifically, when the Bowler Hat Guy takes credit for Lewis's Memory Scanner, he unwittingly helps Doris and her demonic, robotic bowler-hat offspring destroy the bubblegum neo-fifties [[Zeerust]] future in favor of a [[dystopia]]n future. Bonus points for a [[Future Badass]] mind-controlled Robinson family. You can tell they're Future Badass because all the women wear black lipstick.

* An abandoned concept in ''[[Aladdin (Disney film)|Aladdin]]'' featured Jafar wishing that he "''always was Sultan''", resulting in a [[Bad Present]] for Agrabah. The artists ''loved'' BadFuture!Agrabah, but the [[Timey-Wimey Ball]] was too much for the writers to get around.

** They got to use it in the series though: villain Abis Mal goes back in time, teams up with his own ancestor Abnor Mal, and tries to replace the current sultan's family as founders of Agrabah. Both of them being [[Harmless Villain|rather inept]] however, their plan does not work and is, as always, foiled by Aladdin.

* Averted in ''[[Back to The Future]] Part II'' in 2015. The filmmakers stated that they didn't want to just rip off ''[[Blade Runner]]'' and wanted to get people out of that sort-of grim mindset, so they portrayed the future as a generally nice place to live, though not perfect, and that any trouble was caused by the people (like Griff) there, not technology. Also, they knew that whatever they showed would likely become [[Zeerust|badly dated or inaccurate]] as the ''real'' 2015 came around, so they just [[Rule of Funny|made it all into jokes]]. The [[Bad Present]], on the other hand...

* ''[[It's a Wonderful Life]]'' did the "bad alternate present" thing way before that one.

* The ''[[Kamen Rider Kabuto]]'' movie ''God Speed Love'' is set in such a future. The meteor that brought the Worms to Earth was much larger than in the series and as a result vaporized Earth's oceans and turned the entire planet into a desert wast land and to make matters worse, {{spoiler|an evil Kamen Rider exclusive to the movie wants to let the Worms take over the world}}. Interestingly, this was actually the {{spoiler|original future and the series timeline is caused by the title character going back in time.}}

* One of those rare inversions drives the plot of ''[[Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure]]'': the good future is in danger of ''not'' happening if Bill and Ted don't get to start their band.

 

== Literature ==

* In ''[[A Christmas Carol]]'', the Ghost Of Christmas Yet to Come shows Scrooge the future consequences of his miserly ways: Tiny Tim dies, the deceased Scrooge's belongings are pawned off for chump change, everyone rejoices and no one mourns at his death, and he is buried in a neglected corner of the cemetery.

 

* ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'', "Five Years Gone," after New York was blown up, and Sylar takes over the country. And then ''again,'' with the Shanti virus having wiped out most of humanity. Season Three ''starts off'' apparently averting one Bad Future and creating a new one. Though the series seems to be moving toward that future ''anyway'' - [[Prophecy Twist|just by a different route]]. [[Super Registration Act]] - done. Nathan "betraying his kind" - done. Sylar posing as Nathan - done. And with Daphne dead and Hiro [[Brought Down to Normal]], nobody can [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong]] ''this'' time. {{spoiler|As of Season 4 the registration act is gone, Hiro is getting better (his powers are anyway), and it's getting more and more likely that Matt is going to change Sylar back.}}

* ''[[Double the Fist]]'' shows us one in the second to last episode where Steve has taken over the world and punishes people for being weak (which entails such things as reading and being comfortable) and uses Womp as the symbol of Weakness. Subverted in that this future apparently comes to be, and that within the context of the show, this is a good thing.

* The [[Flash Forward]]s on ''[[Lost]]'' are fairly dystopian, with characters hallucinating (maybe), trying to commit suicide, being killed, and going crazy. Unfortunately for them, all of the flashforwards have now happened in the present, making this Bad Future the canonical bad past in the show's current present time.

* While it isn't quite a traditional Bad Future ''[[Doctor Who]]'' story, "The Dalek Invasion of Earth," the second appearance of the Daleks in ''[[Doctor Who]]'', has just about all of the standard features of one. It showed a 22nd century Earth ruled by Daleks. This has gotten enshrined in the [[Whoniverse]] as ''the'' future, but the later "Day of the Daleks" showed ''another'' 22nd century dominated by Daleks, which did get undone. (The "Day of the Daleks" future happened following a nuclear war in the 20th century.)

* In [[Ludo]]'s [[Rock Opera]] ''The Broken Bride,'' we get to see the Bad Future caused by the narrator messing around in the time stream.

* In [[Black Sabbath]]'s "Iron Man", a man time-travels and witnesses the Bad Future, but when traveling back to the present, he gets turned into Iron Man, [[Self-Fulfilling Prophecy|who ends up causing the bad future.]]

 

== Video Games ==

* Let's face it, [[Sonic the Hedgehog|Sonic]]'s world seems doomed to being buried in flames no matter what they do.

** ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog CD]]'' uses a system of [[Time Travel]] that sends Sonic into the Past or Future. Bad Future (The [[Trope Namer]]) is the result of completing a level without fixing Robotnik's screwing with the past, which results in a dystopia with broken and rusted machinery everywhere. [[Inverted Trope|Good Future]] is a result of Sonic foiling Robotnik's plans and ends up with advances in technology and nature existing in harmony.

** In ''[[Sonic Rivals]] 2'', Silver travels back in time to stop the fiery monster Ifrit from destroying the world.

* ''[[Super Robot Wars]] Alpha Gaiden'' was almost entirely this: the heroes got sent to the far future where things were a bit messed up.

** ''Reversal,'' on the other hand, ''starts'' you in the Bad Future, then later takes the hero/heroine back to the past to change it.

* The NES role-playing game ''[[Magic of Scheherazade]]'' contains one of the first, if not ''the'' first, video game appearances of this trope. When the heroes visit a land threatened by a winter demon, and then use a [[Time Travel|time gate]] to jump thirty years into the future, they find that, according to future history, they vanished for thirty years. In the meantime, the demon won, and the world's now completely covered in ice.

* The ''[[City of Heroes]]'' MMORPG has a mission in which the hero travels to a future in which the villains have won, as part of a story arc to prevent that from happening.

* Similarly, ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' has the dungeon End Time, in which players are sent to a future where Cataclysm's [[Big Bad]] Deathwing has succeeded in destroying Azeroth, as part of a convoluted plan by the Dragon Aspects to kill him in the present. In this future, the [[Omnicidal Maniac]] [[Cult]] has won, the [[Eldritch Abomination]]s are free and everything is dead. The worst part? According to the Infinite Dragons (who try to stop the players from preventing this future), [[Beyond the Impossible|this isn't the worst possible outcome]], and that stopping Deathwing is only going to bring about worse ones...

* ''[[Legacy of Kain]]'' does this many times.

* In ''[[Second Sight (video game)|Second Sight]]'', {{spoiler|1=John Vattic's adventures in the present are eventually revealed to be premonitions of a future where the mission to Dubrensk went horribly wrong; the Zener Children have been horribly murdered, Jayne Wilde has been committed to an asylum, Colonel Stark and the WinterICE team have been disgraced, and John's been confined to the Osiris Research facility. Plus, with the tissue samples taken from both the Children and John, many units of psychic soldiers are in production...}}

* [[Big Bad|Ultimecia]]'s [[Villain World|time period]] in ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]''. Possibly. The [[Stable Time Loop]] means that the future Ultimecia comes from is guaranteed to happen - but just ''how'' bad a future it's going to be is the subject of some debate, since the player only sees Ultimecia's castle and its immediate surroundings, and [[Badass Army|SeeD]] is evidently right on her doorstep.

* [[Space Quest]] Twelve as depicted in ''[[Space Quest]] IV''. Vohaul's taken over Xenon's [[Master Computer]]. Killer droids patrol the abandoned streets. any living being is taken and [[And I Must Scream|given a lobotomy, then fitted with a contraption that permanently holds their eyelids open]]. Roger's [[Kid From the Future]] is a battle-hardened veteran of [[La Résistance]], and implies that Roger (and Beatrice) do not live to see him grow up. Worse, Roger is sent back to his own timeline, and can ''remember'' what he saw, [[Stable Time Loop|but has no way to prevent it.]] Um...[[Sierra]]? Was this ''supposed'' to be a comedy?

* The ''[[EverQuest]]: Seeds of Destruction'' expansion pack deals with this. The players are sent through the Plane of Time to a period where Norrath had been destroyed by the Legion of Mata Muram- creatures born of sheer chaos. The Gods have been killed, the moons of Luclin and Drinal both destroyed with Norrath, and the sun is about to go nova. The only remaining living creatures are a single tree and Zebuxoruk, the God of Knowledge. He explains that it's the adventurer's responsibility- and the future's only hope- to restore Norrath by traveling back to certain points in time to make sure that history does not deviate from how it originally played out.

* ''[[Duke Nukem]]: Zero Hour'' features both a bad future, where most of civilization has been [[After the End|wiped out in a nuclear war]], and a bad "alternate present".

* ''[[Fire Emblem: Awakening]]''... {{spoiler|Lucina and her fellow Children Characters are from one, where the [[Big Bad]] Gimle killed and [[Grand Theft Me|took over the PlayerCharacter's body]] and destroyed everything- and killed just about every character in front of their eyes. It's so bad that every one of them, save for the enigma, Mark, is a form of a "[[Shell Shocked Senior]]" when they show up in the present, thanks to time travel. (Don't ask about Mark. S/He's a [[Noodle Incident]].)}}

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* In ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]'', there's a Bad Future in which superintelligent dinosaurs rule the world and most of the characters are either dead or part of [[La Résistance]].

* In ''[[Powerpuff Girls Doujinshi]]'', {{spoiler|there's at least one timeline where Megaville and everyone in it are slaughtered due to one of the heroes performing a [[Face Heel Turn]]. Said timeline is explored in a spinoff to its sister comic, ''[[Grim Tales from Down Below]]''.}}

 

== Western Animation ==

* ''[[Megas XLR]]'' pulled this in the series finale. The local power is not the Glorft, as might be expected (Gorrath's dead); instead, Coop discovers at the end of part one that this world is ruled by {{spoiler|an [[Evil Overlord]] version of Coop himself}}.

* ''[[Samurai Jack]]'': The entire premise of the show is that the main character is flung into a Bad Future and tries to return to his own time.

** Later, near the end of the third season, Enzo and AndrAIa found Mainframe even more like a traditional Bad Future, where they had been gone for what amounted to years, with a struggling [[La Résistance|resistance]] against Megabyte's rule added in... except this time, it was ''real''.

* ''[[The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron|The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius]]'' had this in "The Tomorrow Boys". Carl was an outlaw, Sheen was a garbage-surfer, and Jimmy was a loser married to Cindy. Oh, and {{spoiler|Libby took over the world.}}

* ''[[Futurama]]'' is generally a subversion, with some aspects being bad and some being good, much like the present. However, in an episode featuring a time machine that can only go forward, the characters visit a Bad Future in which robots are destroying all of humanity.

** Bender, however, thought it was an excellent future. Did you see the view from the [[Nothing but Skulls|mountain of skulls]]?

** There was also the tv movie Channel Chasers which featured one ruled by Vicky.

* ''[[Argai the Prophecy]]'' has Queen Dark ruling over 2075.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:You Would Not Want to Live In Dex]]

[[Category:Time Travel Tropes]]

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]

[[Category:We Will Not Use an Index In The Future]]