Wayback Trip: Difference between revisions

 

See also [[Meanwhile in the Future]]. Compare to [[Excellent Adventure]].

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* In one episode of ''[[Wandaba Style]]'', the girls [[Phlebotinum Breakdown|accidently travel to the past]], when [[Teen Genius]] Susumu was a mere [[Child Prodigy]]. While there, they encourage him to follow his dreams, and even act as guinea pigs for toned down versions of experiments he'll run in the future, yet when they return to the present, nothing at all has changed.

 

 

* This trope is the basic premise of the ''[[Terminator]]'' movies (even though side effects cause some ontological paradoxes).

 

* ''[[Doctor Who]]'' does this all the time, especially in the new series. It was pointed out by Martha in "The Shakespeare Code". The Doctor explained that it was similar to ''[[Back to The Future]]''. Except this doesn't make sense either; in ''BttF'', Marty was the one who altered history, whereas in the episode, the witches existed totally independent of the Doctor's travels. The general [[Hand Wave]] is that things have gotten ''really'' screwy since the Time Lords died off.

** In the original series serial "Pyramids of Mars", Sarah Jane asks why they have to stop the villain destroying the Earth in 1915, when they know it's fine in 1980. In reply, the Doctor takes her to 1980... and it turns out to be a desolate wasteland. Apparently, once the Doctor arrives somewhere, he must complete the [[Stable Time Loop]] to maintain the "proper" version of history. (In which case, one wonders... and this question has been voiced in the series... why the heck does the Doctor keep traveling around?! Arguably, if he didn't, the effect would be that 1980 Earth had ''always'' been a desolate wasteland, and there wouldn't be a "real" 1980 for Sarah to come from) In ''Blink'', the Doctor explains that time, rather than being a linear chain of cause and effect, is actually "[[Timey-Wimey Ball|a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff]]." This apparently explains everything.

* In the various Caverns Of Time instances in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'', the players' goal is preserving some event in Azeroth's history the way it should be, by defeating The Infinite.

 

* "The Stormbreaker Saga" in ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' involves Zoe and Torg going back to medieval times and stopping the demon K'Z'K (who they blasted into the past in an earlier arc) from conquering the world. How this works in terms of a [[Stable Time Loop]] or [[Delayed Ripple Effect]] is made more confusing by [http://www.sluggy.com/daily.php?date=990303 this] strip, which thankfully invokes [[Bellisario's Maxim]] to [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshade]] it.

** Zoe also claims that the answers to her history test changed over night, with the new answers being in line with her experience in the past. The internal consistent theory of time travel is not revealed to the readers. (If there is one.)

 

* The trope name comes from ''Peabody's Improbable History'', a [[Three Shorts|segment]] on ''[[Rocky and Bullwinkle]]''. In every episode, Peabody and Sherman would visit a historical personage with some problem that kept them from doing what they were supposed to do historically, and help them with it.

** In the first appearance of this segment, it is explained that a straight-up [[Time Machine]] is actually rather boring since [[In the Past Everyone Will Be Famous|not everyone in the past is famous.]] So, Mr. Peabody invented a "Should-Have-Been" machine to ensure that his trips will be interesting rather than historically accurate. (Which leads to [[Unfortunate Implications]] when they meet Native Americans and convince them to [[Values Dissonance|let the European colonizers win]].)

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