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The reverse of the [[Butterfly of Doom]], the Timeline-Altering MacGuffin is a nondescript item from the future that, if left in the past, will bring about an [[Alternate Timeline]]. This can be something that contains information about the future, such as a history book, for instance. It could also be a future technology that [[Giving Radio to the Romans|someone in the past decides to reverse engineer]]. The item will probably become a [[MacGuffin]] pretty quickly.
The former Trope Namer Gray's Sports Almanac is from ''[[Back to The Future]] Part II''. (Whenever referring to this trope, be sure to pronounce it like Marty did when he confronted Biff in the hot tub ("[[
{{examples}}
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* Possibly used in ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' when {{spoiler|1=Chao Lingshen produces what may or may not be a future copy of the Springfield family register}} as the ultimate party-breaking item. Whether it was real or not is irrelevant, since it was destroyed shortly after. She did, however, bring a number of real pieces of information and technology from the future as well.
** In chapter 349, {{spoiler|it makes a return later and is revealed to be... blank. The future was changed, so the family register has yet to be filled out.}}
* The "Whispered" of ''[[Full Metal Panic!]]'' are privy to "[[Black Box|Black Technology]]"
== [[Comics]] ==
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* The former Trope Namer was Gray's Sports Almanac in ''[[Back to The Future]] Part II'', which allowed Biff Tannen to become wealthy through using the information from the 2015 Gray's Sports Almanac that his future self brought to him in 1955 to make bets on the outcomes of sporting events.
** In the first draft of ''Back To The Future'' Marty revealed to 1955 Doc that all his crazy inventions could be cheaply powered with Coca-Cola ([[It Makes Sense in Context]]... [[It Runs on Nonsensoleum|well, almost]]) so when he traveled back to 1985 he actually ended in an alternate reality where everything was a [[Zeerust]] 50's rendition of the future, with hovering cars and robots everywhere powered by Coca-Cola. The dystopic part? [[A Little Something We Call "Rock and Roll"|No Rock and Roll!]]
* The Jet Engine in ''[[Donnie Darko]]''
** Probably one of the soonest 'futures' though- less than one month later.
* The arm and CPU from the first ''[[Terminator (franchise)|Terminator]]'', left behind in the 1980's, brought about the rise of SKYNET. [[Timey-Wimey Ball|Well, sometimes.]] In any event, since the Terminator was sent back in time ''by'' SKYNET, this is also a [[Stable Time Loop]]...until it's broken by the destruction of the items in the second movie, which doesn't stop SKYNET from rising again in the third. Yeah, [[Timey-Wimey Ball]].
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* This trope is played around with in ''[[The Pendragon Adventure]]''. Generally, taking an item from one territory to another is said to cause disaster and allow Saint Dane to win. This first occurs in ''The Merchant of Death'', the very first book, when Bobby ignores this warning and {{spoiler|gives the Milago tribe all the necessary parts to make an atomic bomb}}. Saint Dane is sometimes shown as doing this as well, such as in ''Black Water'' where he {{spoiler|uses a poison from another territory to try and poison the locals}}, but in the very same novel, the protagonists use {{spoiler|the antidote from the same territory as the poison}} to foil his plot. It goes so far as to have Bobby give the people of Ibara {{spoiler|weapons from Quillan to defeat an army of Quillan dado robots, who themselves were attacking Ibara on skimmers from Cloral}}.
* The trope is reversed in the ''[[Dragonlance]] Twins'' novels. Caramon bringing a volume detailing events back from [[After the End|a very dark future]] was the reason Krynn did not falter into an [[Alternate Continuity]] where it was utterly destroyed
* The ''[[1632]]'' series is about a small town from West Virginia sent back to the central Germany during the [[Thirty Years' War]], so almost every object in the town is a
** Of course the protagonists are [[Genre Savvy]] enough to realize what's going on, and go to great lengths to secure their remaining books. {{spoiler|One particularly nasty minor character who was selling history books to rival governments is told (in order to maintain his continued survival and freedom) to inform his customers that he will only sell copies because his supply is running low. The copies are loaded with deliberate misinformation. Thus the great Florida Gold Rush ensues...}}
* Done in Alfred Bester's ''Time and Third Avenue.'' A young lawyer accidentally gets a copy of the almanac from the far future year of 1985 and a timecop stops him before he opens it. The lawyer says all right, you can have the almanac: using it to speculate on stocks or bet on elections would be cheating, and I'm sure I can have a great career without cheating... only, I wish I could have some reassurance that the world won't end in a nuclear holocaust. So the timecop gives him a hundred dollar bill, one of the 1980 series. He can't spend it in his time, of course, but he feels that he's well paid {{spoiler|when he reads the name of the Secretary of the Treasury from the bill... and it's him.}}
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== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* In ''The Hanged Man'' episode of ''[[Journeyman]]'', a digital camera Dan accidentally left in the early 1980s causes technology to leap far forward when he returns to modern
* A non-time travel version occurs in the ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]'' episode "A Piece of the Action": A pre-Prime Directive starship 100 years prior had inadvertently left behind a book on Chicago gangs of the 1920s, which caused the civilization in question to develop into the original [[Planet of Hats]], with an entire culture based around 1920s gangsterism. After the crew has fixed the entire planet, McCoy leaves his communicator behind, alarming Kirk who worries that this trope will take effect. "In a few years they could be demanding a piece of ''our'' action!"
** One of the comics actually referenced that event when various representatives were at Admiral Kirk's trial including one from that planet, with the only result being that the representative simply gives it back to [[McCoy]] after saying how he'd left it behind.
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** The NES ''Star Trek: 25th Anniversary'' game starts out with the Enterprise being pulled into unknown space by a wormhole. When they finally reach Federation space again, they figure out that the wormhole was a side effect of the gangster planet blowing itself up. The last mission requires you to go back in time to retrieve the communicator and prevent the explosion/wormhole.
** There was also the Next Generation comic issue "A Piece of Reaction" which follows the same plot (more or less).
* ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'' has a 29th Century timeship that was sent back to 1967. Interestingly, the 29th century technology helps create the "holoemitter" The Doctor uses for the rest of the series, so the timeship was a
** The final episode leaves the possibility of this trope rather alarmingly dangling overhead. Future Janeway comes back over a decade to bring the crew home, decking out the ship in all kinds of future tech and eventually infecting the Borg Queen with a super nasty future virus. Now, given the Borg's ability to adapt, one can speculate that if they manage to overcome that virus, they would then have adapted to technology and programming the Federation hasn't yet invented....
*** Not only that, but they had already assimilated her shuttle from the future by then, including the armor and the torpedoes.
** And in the [[Expanded Universe]] novels, specifically ''[[Star Trek: Destiny]]'', this does come back to bite them.
* In the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "The Long Game", Adam attempts to leave one of these for himself in the past by recording historical information from 197,988 years in the future on his mother's answering machine. The Doctor finds out. He's not happy.
** Ironically, Adam himself is at risk of becoming one. He has his own brain upgraded in the future, to interface with the computers of the time. Now whenever someone snaps their fingers near him a little port on his forehead opens up. The Doctor mentions that Adam has to lead a quiet life and not draw attention to himself, or he risks [[
* In ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise]]'', when {{spoiler|stranded}} in the 29th century, Archer finds a book about [[Big Bad|the Romulan Star Empire]]. Luckily, Daniels is there to stop him from reading it.
* In ''[[Lois and Clark]]'', after the first time Tempus was defeated, he was left in the past, where he wrote a diary a man would eventually use to become wealthy by investing in oil, plastic and computers. Later, that man's [[The Unfavorite|unfavorite son]] used the diary to blackmail [[Superman]] into stealing from the man's other son. According to this [[Villain of the Week]], Tempus was either a man from the future or a fortuneteller good enough to put [[Nostradamus]] to shame.
== [[Radio]] ==
* In the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' [[Big Finish Doctor Who|audio drama]] "Colditz", it's discovered that their accidental appearance at Colditz Castle goes horribly wrong, and Nazis from the 1960s reveal they got the ''TARDIS''. The twist is that {{spoiler|the
== [[Video Games]] ==
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** In ''[[The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim|Skyrim]]'' the player gets to read one themselves. If used near a temporal rift it lets them see an important piece of the past; used anywhere else it strikes them blind.
*** What's more, they are absolutely and utterly immutable, such that they can change history, just by being read. In ''Oblivion'' the ultimate thieves guild quest involves stealing one in order to break a Daedric curse.
* Another non-time travel version is in ''[[Predator]]: Concrete Jungle''. The game starts in 1920s Chicago, where the Predator accidentally leaves some of his technology behind. Cut to modern-day, and the technology has become way advanced, with [[Hollywood Cyborg
* In ''[[SD Gundam G Generation]] DS'', the cast of ''[[Turn A Gundam
== [[Western Animation]] ==
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[[Category:Time Travel Tropes]]
[[Category:MacGuffin]]
[[Category:
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