Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Difference between revisions

* In Marvel's ''[[Civil War (Comic Book)|Civil War]]'' storyline, the entire event was kicked off when Namorita, a member of the [[New Warriors]], fought a villain named Nitro whose ability was to explode. Said explosion killed hundreds, including Namorita herself. Because of this, Namorita's name was posthumously slandered with the rest of the [[New Warriors]], much to the chagrin of her ex-lover, Richard Ryder aka [[Nova]], even though they'd been broken up for years at that point. In his eponymous series, Nova is plucked out of the timestream along with a Namorita who is obviously from an era not only before the Civil War incident, but while she and Ryder were still lovers. Later, when the cosmic forces that threw them together start to send them back where they belong, Nova (being a [[Paragon]]-type character), refuses to let Namorita return to her own time (where she'll be doomed to repeat the same fate) and brings her to the present instead...consequences be damned.

* In an issue of ''Marvel Two-in-One'', the Thing goes back in time to cure his past self of being an orange-skinned monster and change his own life, but only succeeds in creating an alternate timeline where a now-human Ben Grimm quits the [[Fantastic Four]] and is replaced by Spider-Man. This becomes [[Make Wrong What Once Went Right]] in a follow-up story, when it is revealed that the absence of the Thing on the FF results in [[Planet Eater|Galactus]] succeeding in his initial attempt to feed on the Earth, leaving the remnants of humanity with a [[Crapsack World]] low in vital resources.

 

=== [[Fan Works]] ===

* In the ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' Fanfic/Play by post story [http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Abaddon#Abaddon.27s_14th_Black_Crusade Abaddon Quest], there's a rather amusing [[Inverted Trope|Inversion]], the eponymous Chaos Lord and his flunkies travel back in time to kill the [[God-Emperor]] as a baby, which is to say they travel back to Set Wrong What Once Went Right. Considering [[Image Boards|/tg/'s]] [[General Failure|Opinion]] of Abaddon, [[Failure Is the Only Option]]. As is [[Hilarity Ensues|Hilarity.]]

* ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]''

** Subverted in ''Evangelion [[RE-TAKE]]''. {{spoiler|Shinji of ''[[End of Evangelion]]'' wakes up in the past, just after the battle with Leliel. He tries to set right everything that went wrong to prevent the events of ''End of Evangelion''. It turns out he's only making life better for an alternate version of himself, and there's nothing he can do to change that. He eventually accepts it, and returns to the [[Crapsack World]] future he belongs to. Though there is an implication of a [[Happy Ending]] for him, so it's all good.}}

=== [[Music]] ===

* Ludo's rock opera ''Broken Bride'' follows an obsessed scientist, who invents a time machine so he can go back and stop his wife from dying in a car accident.

 

=== [[Video Games]] ===

** In ''In the Time of the Dinosaurs'', they must sabotage a nuclear device and sacrifice an entire colony of aliens, or else the Cretaceous Era won't end on schedule.

* In the novel ''[[Soon I Will Be Invincible]]'', Lily gets sent back in time to prevent a blight from wiping out humanity, but after she succeeds she decides she liked the blighted future better and becomes a supervillain to try to bring back her original future. However, this turns out to be an outright lie—she's a native of the current time period, although the era she claims as her origin really ''is'' a possible future that she has visited—and she ends up using it to trick another supervillain into saving the world.

* [[Dean Koontz]]'s ''Lightning'' {{spoiler|features a time-travelling protagonist who goes back to his own time, after having thwarted a Nazi Time Travel plot, and tells Winston Churchill about the Cold War. When he returns to the future, The Cold War never happened, as the Allies kept on pushing eastward after the Nazis surrendered, defeating the communists before the Cold War ever started.}}

 

** Done as a [[Shout-Out]] to ''Back to the Future'', when Peter has Death warp him back in time so he can relive a day in his teenage years. However he does so at a critical moment in the history of his relationship to Lois that ends with her married to Quagmire and him married to Molly Ringwald (its complicated, just go with it). Peter, along with Brian, convince Death to send them back to undo Peter's mistake.

** Also, explicitly referenced in an episode where Peter [[It Makes Sense in Context|becomes a Jehovah's Witness (among other things)]] and explains Jesus like this, leading to a ''[[Quantum Leap]]'' sight gag.

* Likewise, sister series ''[[American Dad]]'' had a [[Christmas Episode]] that featured a Ghost of Christmas Past trying to pull [[Yet Another Christmas Carol]] on Stan but he uses the opportunity to try and "fix" Christmas by killing Jane Fonda. His guardian angel stops him, but when they get back to modern times America is under the control of Soviet Russia. [[It Makes Sense in Context]].<ref>Stan also got [[Martin Scorcese]] off drugs, which meant no ''[[Taxi Driver]]'', which meant John Hinkley Jr. didn't try to shoot [[Ronald Reagan]], which meant Walter Mondale gets elected President and immediately surrendered to the USSR</ref> {{spoiler|In a bit of a subversion, trying to fix the original event by making ''[[Taxi Driver]]'' doesn't work, so Stan is forced to shoot Reagan himself (which much to his relief is told he just has to "wing him") to fix the timeline.}} Note that even in the end [["Close Enough" Timeline|the timeline isn't the same]]: {{spoiler|Since Stan only shot Reagan, his assistant James Brady was fine which meant no Brady Bill and thus America has less strict gun laws.}}