Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Difference between revisions

 

Note: [[World War II]] did not go wrong. Traveling there [[Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act|will only make it worse]].

{{examples}}

* The plot of ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]'' once the protagonists realize that they've {{spoiler|been trapped in a [[Groundhog Day Loop]]}} of murder, insanity and betrayal. {{spoiler|Rika and Hanyuu knew from the beginning, and were trying to save the town, but eventually nearly gave up.}}

* ''[[Steins;Gate]]'' runs on this trope. The protagonist Okabe voluntarily relives the same couple of hours over and over {{spoiler|as he tries and fails repeatedly to prevent his childhood friend Mayuri's death.}} Then, upon realizing {{spoiler|that doing so is futile, he instead opts to send new messages to the past in order to counteract every previous D-mail that's been sent.}} The series ends with a truly [[Mind Screw|Mind Screwy]] plan {{spoiler|put together by his future self to physically travel back to the past and save his love interest by fooling his past self into thinking she's dead.}}

 

 

* ''[[Exiles]]'' was supposedly pitched as ''[[Quantum Leap]]'' or ''[[Sliders]]'' with superheroes.

* ''[[Booster Gold]]'' does this quite a bit as the secret protector of the time line. It's when he has to set wrong what once went right or keep wrong what once went wrong that things get really morally complicated for him.

 

 

* In the ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' 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 Right What Once Went Wrong|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.]]

* In [[Heta Oni]], {{spoiler|Italy has been rewinding time again and again so that everyone can get out of the [[Haunted House]] alive.}}

 

 

* ''[[The Girl Who Leapt Through Time]]'' involves a girl who learns she has time-traveling powers, but each jump makes things worse. She has to stop herself from screwing everything up over and over.

 

 

* In ''[[Triangle]]'' this is what Jess tries to do after she realized she's in a [[Groundhog Day Loop]]. {{spoiler|But it only created another timeline which we don't see completely in the movie.}}

* Most of the ''[[Back to the Future (film)|Back to The Future]]'' sequels: the second one begins with Doc taking Marty to the future to stop his son from getting arrested, and then having to go into the past to stop teenage Biff from using a [[Timeline-Altering MacGuffin]] to become [[Screw the Rules, I Have Money|evil and rich]]. The third movie has Marty go back to 1885 to stop Doc from getting shot by Buford Tannen. The main problem in the first movie, however, is Marty's fault to begin with. However, Marty's eventual solution to this problem has the unexpected bonus of his father being more confident and assertive over Biff in 1985, leading to this trope in a roundabout way.

 

 

* [[Teresa Edgerton]]'s ''[[Celydonn]]'' books, specifically ''The Grail and the Ring'', have an interesting take on this. Strictly speaking, [[Time Travel]] is not possible. However, [[Functional Magic]] allows one to travel to the Inner Celydonn, to a shadow of the past, where one can see what really happened if one doesn't try to derail events. This quasi-[[Time Travel]] is used to find out What Once Went Wrong, so that it can be Set Right in the present, thus avoiding any [[Temporal Paradox|Temporal Paradoxes]].

* The ''[[Care Taker]]'' Trilogy focuses on people from a future where the world's ecosystem has been ruined coming back to the present: the "Turning Point", or the point at which it was theorized to still be possible to reverse the damage done. Their foes, who actually ''like'' the future as it is, also come back, with the aim of speeding up the damage, and ensuring their own victory.

 

 

* The [[Trope Namer]] is ''[[Quantum Leap]]'', whose entire plot is a series of these.

* ''[[Tru Calling]]'': Tru does this in almost every episode. A number of twists and variations of the trope are also used.

 

 

* 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.

 

 

* An elementary tactic in ''[[Achron]]''. Occurs often in multiplayer games as a response to another player [[Make Wrong What Once Went Right|screwing with your past]].

* Basically the whole premise of ''[[Daikatana]]'', although the main characters spend so much time screwing around in the mythic past that one could be forgiven for thinking it was otherwise.

 

 

* This trope is the entire purpose of the game ''[[Time Hollow]]'', where the main character is completely normal except that he can use his "Hollow Pen" to make a window into the past and alter an event.

 

 

* The [http://wiki.alternatehistory.com/doku.php/timelines/the_strangerverse?s=strangerverse "Strangerverse"] in [[Alternatehistory.com]] has its basic premise as this.

** In the ''[[United States of Ameriwank]]'', the traveler came to Colonial America before the American Revolution and gave George Washington a mission to unite the world under the United States to prevent an apocalyptic war.

** Almost all of the Strangerverse stories take as their basic premise that there was an apocalyptic war shortly before 2258, and that a group used prototype time-travel technology to send one person back in time long enough to hand over a few tools to an historic figure and tell the recipient why he is doing so. Just when and where the Stranger travels to, what tools are delivered, and whether the destination was the intended destination provide the -verse part of the Strangerverse.

 

* ''[[Samurai Jack]]'': "Now the fool seeks to return to the past, and undo the future that is [[Big Bad|Aku...]]" Partially subverted in that, within the run of the original series, Jack never ''did'' return to his original time and stop Aku from taking over the world. He's always trying, but he's more often than not just fighting Aku's dystopia and helping people survive. A future [[The Movie|film adaptation]] may play this trope straight. His never returning had more to do with [[Executive Meddling|the show being cancelled, though.]]

* This is ''[[Time Squad]]'''s mission; to keep the past from unravelling. However, all of these changes are comedic and none ever cause a bad future. They just have to be fixed.

 

 

* In the ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' manga, this is Chao Lingshen's motivation for messing around with her great grandfather's childhood, although whether she had an absurdly complicated [[Xanatos Gambit]] set up, or was simply playing [[Xanatos Speed Chess]] as her alterations made foreknowledge less useful is never made clear. She actually fixed the problem she went back to solve with the changes wrought by her first trip, but later makes a second one to tie up a loose end or two before the [[Cosmic Deadline]].

* Subverted in ''[[Dragonball Z]]''. Future Trunks also attempts to [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong]], but he does this in a timeline not his own: since in DBZ every timeline counts as another dimension, any changes made in the current time will not directly effect Future Trunks' past or future. He still wants to help out, hoping to create at least one peaceful world, and to return to his own time strong enough to finally stop what he wanted to prevent.

 

 

* Rayek from ''[[Elf Quest]]'' travels to the ''future'' in an attempt to 'save' his space-travelling ancestors from being thrown back in time and crashing on the planet. Unfortunately, all their descendants currently living on this planet will then cease to exist -- and will never have existed, since their ancestors will never have set foot on the planet in the first place. Opinions about whether or not this is a good thing differ -- he thinks it's good, everyone else thinks it's bad. [[A God Am I|Who cares about other men's opinion anyway.]] He tried to compromise by having the people he actually knew and cared about stay inside the palace, which would protect them from the history-wiping effects... but since this would only save the people standing immediately in front of him, and still wipe out everyone else on the planet, they refused his offer. {{spoiler|When confronted with the choice between annihilating everyone he ever loved, and preventing ten thousand years of suffering, he ends up suffering a BSOD and losing his powers.}}

* In the "Camelot Falls" storyline in the ''[[Superman]]'' comics, a prophetic sorcerer tells him what he needs to do to avert the extinction of humanity years down the line. In a subversion of this trope, Superman refuses to comply, namely because "what he needs to do" involves not preventing the deaths of countless innocents.

 

 

* In ''[[Galaxy Quest]]'', the "Omega 13" device is used to go back 13 seconds in time, "enough to change a single mistake".

* In the conclusion and epilogue of ''[[Jumanji]]'', Alan prevents Carl Bentley from getting fired (or gets him re-hired), and the kids' parents are stopped from going on their fatal ski trip.

 

 

* ''[[Animorphs]]'':

** In ''Elfangor's Secret'', the team is sent back to prevent Visser Four from changing key events in the past. {{spoiler|Unfortunately, those changes were much more far-reaching than either side anticipated, and would've prevented the Holocaust, though likely still making a worse future. So in order to [[Reset Button|return the present to normal]], the team has to [[Shoot the Dog|essentially condemn millions to death]]. Eventually they decide on paradoxing out the events of the novel, deciding that at least this way it happened naturally.}}

 

 

* Naturally, ''[[Life On Mars]]'' and ''[[Ashes to Ashes]]'' have played with this: in Sam's case, it was finding out why his father abandoned him, as well as arresting the serial killer who'd kidnapped his girlfriend and a crime lord who'd had a witness in his custody murdered; in Alex's, it was preventing her parents' death by car bomb. Their success rates are... varied; Sam eventually wound up ''convincing'' his father to skip town, because there was that little matter of a murder and racketeering charge if he stayed...

* ''[[Doctor Who]]''

 

 

* ''[[Red vs. Blue]]'' uses the [[Stable Time Loop]] variety of this trope. When Church is blasted into the past by a nuclear explosion, he uses the opportunity to try and correct each disaster that has occurred in the series up to that point. Of course, it turns out he's the cause of most of them, including his CO's mysterious heart failure, numerous injuries to his teammates, and his ''own'' accidental death ("Oh my god! ''I'm'' the team-killing fucktard!"). When his every attempt to prevent the bomb from going off fails, he eventually gives up, makes sure a copy of himself is blasted into the future with his teammates, and delivers a bitter [[Aesop]] about accepting reality as it is.

 

 

* The ''[[Ravenloft]]'' boxed-set adventure "Castles Forlorn" sends the heroes to a haunted castle which shifts repeatedly between three time periods. They have the opportunity to free an imprisoned woman while in the second of these eras, which causes corresponding historical changes to the third.

* The notorious ''Champions'' module "Wings of the Valkyrie" combines this and the Hitler exemption and setting things wrong: the player characters need to travel back in time to save Hitler; a previous traveller had ensured Operation:Valkyrie's success, expecting this would cripple the Reich. It didn't work; the Reich's new leadership was just as evil, and much more capable.

 

 

* In ''[[Pokémon Mystery Dungeon]]: Explorers of Time'' and ''[[Pokémon Mystery Dungeon]]: Explorers of Darkness'', before ending up in the past with amnesia the player character was part of a team that has come from the future to prevent time from stopping. Succeeding in the mission causes a [[Temporal Paradox]], causing both you and everyone met in the future to cease to exist. Except then the partner you met at the beginning of the game angsts until [[Anthropomorphic Personification|Dialga]] decides you do get to exist after all.

* Subverted numerous times in the ''[[Prince of Persia]]'' series. In fact, these subversions are the driving force for much of the Prince's story.

 

 

* Played completely straight in ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'', right down to the "only one chance."

* Inverted in ''[[Chainsawsuit]]'', with [http://chainsawsuit.com/2009/06/10/strip-231/ The Time Ruiner!]

 

 

* ''[[The Fairly Odd Parents]]'', episode "The Secret Origin of Denzel Crocker". Timmy's attempts to stop his teacher from growing up to become a fairy-obsessed maniac result in him lamenting, "[[Stable Time Loop|NO! This is exactly what I was trying to ''prevent'']]!" To clarify {{spoiler|Timmy finds out Crocker had fairies (''his'' fairies in fact) in his childhood and was actually quite beloved by the town. But at the ceremony they were throwing for him, Timmy accidentally reveals them to the whole crowd. Granted it wasn't his fault though as Cosmo turned the power to the mics back on in his usual bout of stupidity. And even then the original timeline would've had Cosmo stupidly blurt out their existence anyway. Say the least it all went downhill after that.}} At least he stopped the election of [[Richard Nixon|President McGovern]].

* The first ''[[Futurama]]'' movie "Bender's Big Score" deals extensively with time travel, ending with Bender going back to the year 2000 with the tattoo on the time duplicate Fry's ass to put the tattoo back onto past-frozen Fry's ass in the first place, for any of the plot to make sense.