Write Back to the Future: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

* ''[[Rave Master]]''. When Haru, Elie, and Sieg Hart travel unintentionally 50 years into the past, Sieg manages to {{spoiler|send Haru and Elie back to the present at the cost of returning himself}}. He then proceeds to write letters to all their friends in the present, informing them of the final battle so they may help the hero. Then he sits down on a stone in order not to change the past and guards the only place where that time travel would be possible, {{spoiler|becoming the skeleton the saw the very first time they came there.}}

 

* In a [[Big Finish]] ''[[Judge Dredd]]''/''[[Strontium Dogs]]'' crossover, Johnny Alpha returns to his own time by leaving notes giving his exact location for his employers to find. Ready to leave, he gives such a note to Dredd, then immediately starts accusing him of betrayal when he fails to dematerialize. It turns out that without his help, Dredd won't survive to deliver the note.

* ''[[Superman]] Vs. [[The Terminator]]: Death To The Future'' #1 has Cyborg Superman leaving information for the future Skynet in a graveyard sculpture.

* In the Return of Bruce Wayne story arc, [[Batman]] time-travels forward and leaves clues to his whereabouts in and around the past location of Wayne Manor.

 

* In the ''[[Ranma ½]]'' fanfic ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2574681/1/Exact_Change Exact Change]'' by Ozzallos, Nabiki Tendo does this.

 

* Probably the best-known modern example is the letter Dr. Brown writes to Marty at the end of ''[[Back to The Future]] 2''. This is an example of "I'm happy in the past", but Marty finds evidence that Dr. Brown is killed a week after writing that letter, thus prompting him to go back and save him.

** Marty tries to do this in the first film, with a 'Do Not Open Until 1985' letter talking about how Doc gets gunned down. Doc tears it up while proclaiming he can't let it influence the future. {{spoiler|He later tapes it back together and reads it.}}

* Inverted in the Film ''The Lake House'': the letters time-travel; the people take [[The Slow Path]].

* In the movie ''[[12 Monkeys]]'', as Bruce Willis' character prepares to travel from the future, he is given the telephone number of an answering machine whose tape was found in archaeological research; the whole end-of-the-world problem ensured the tape was not erased for reuse (say that ten times fast).

* Edward Johnston does this in ''[[Timeline]]'', the film of the Michael Chrichton novel. also, one main character muses over what the life story of a knight buried in a recently-discovered grave might be. At the end, it is revealed to be ''his own'' grave, with an inscription to those of his friends who returned to the present.

 

* The novel ''[[Good Omens]]'' has a variation, where the author of the "deliver this message to this specific person at this address on this date" message is not a time traveler, but has the ability to see the future. And includes extra messages, addressed by name, for the three people who try to open the message before it reaches its intended recipient.

** To elaborate: Agnes Nutter predicted events of future generations, leaving a record for her descendants to consult, one prophecy at a time, in centuries to come. By the time the story is set, intervening generations have annotated many of these documents, including some ribald comments on the page that predicts Agnes's modern-day descendant will have sex with a particular other character.

* Isaac Asimov's ''[[Foundation]]'' series features a non-time traveling version of this: Psychohistorian Hari Seldon, having mathematically predicted the future, leaves a set of what amount to video recordings set to automatically play at specific times to reassure the people of the future that they're on track. The fact that one of them turns out to make no sense (well, ''little'' sense, one of the characters mentions they were thinking about doing that, but changed their minds because of the current crisis) is the evidence that convinces everyone that the villain called The Mule is a much more serious threat than they had previously thought. (And the fact that after The Mule is defeated the predictions start making sense again is the evidence used by the Foundation to show that a hidden Second Foundation, dedicated to keeping things on track, must exist.)

* In Connie Willis' time travel books, the historians use so much space in the classifieds trying to communicate with each other and the future that you begin to wonder if ''any'' classified ads are "real".

 

* ''[[Doctor Who]]'':

** In "Battlefield", the Doctor finds a note in his own handwriting with the body of [[King Arthur]], a message from his future self.

* In the episode of ''[[Torchwood]]'' where Jack and Tosh fall through a crack into the 40s, Tosh leaves notes for the others to find that contain the data they need to work out how to get them back. Requires extensive [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief]], as the message is in two parts: one in an electrical box and one in a tin can in a basement. The chances of them going undisturbed for about sixty years, and Gwen managing to find them both in one day, in the right order, boggles the mind.

** Similarly, in the series 2 episode "To the Last Man", 1918 Torchwood leaves "time-locked" instructions for 2008 Torchwood to follow regarding the 1918 soldier who's been cryo-frozen in the vault for all this time (except 1 day a year).

{{quote|As well as the danger of [[For Want of a Nail|tangentially altering the timeline in some way]], it relies on your messages being undisturbed for decades and subsequently found at the correct time. [[Lampshade Hanging|This is harder than it might seem]].}}

* One episode of ''[[Quantum Leap]]'' had Sam and Al switching places, and Sam was locked in the imaging chamber. Sam had Al write a letter to a lawyer with the code to unlock the door, which [[San Dimas Time|opened immediately]] when Al put the letter in a mailbox.

* In one episode of ''[[Friday the 13th: The Series|Friday The 13th The Series]]'', a character tries, and fails, to do this, hiding a note in a desk destined to become an antique. It isn't discovered until after she returns to the present.

** Worse, {{spoiler|the letter ended up [[Stable Time Loop|giving the villain the information he needed to use his cursed antique, which was the cause of the character going back in time in the first place.]]}}

** {{spoiler|He}} also wrote a letter to {{spoiler|Delenn.}}

* ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'': Hiro, in the past, writes an account of his adventures on a series of scrolls and hides them in the hilt of a samurai sword. Conveniently, even though Hiro has been carrying the sword for several episodes, Ando only finds the scrolls after Hiro travels to 1671. (And somehow he gets them in the right order, too.)

** And considering it's the sword of a famous samurai that has been passed around to many owners over hundreds of years, it's a miracle that not one person has ever noticed that the bottom says "Ando, open" or that there are scrolls falling around inside.

* Reversal: In ''[[Early Edition]]'', the main character mysteriously receives newspapers a day ahead of time. He then spends the rest of the episode trying to avert the tragedies the newspaper describes before they happen.

* In the sixth season of ''[[Charmed]]'', when Chris gets dragged back into the future by {{spoiler|his fiancee, Bianca,}} the sisters write a spell to give him back his powers and stick it under a [[Chekhov's Gun|loose floorboard mentioned previously in the episode]]. Twenty years in the future, Chris pries up the old loose floorboard, finds the note, and returns to the past with his newly-recovered powers. The sequence is also an example of [[San Dimas Time]], as the sisters 'race' to write and place the spell 'before' Chris opens the floorboard, and were surprised when he re-emerged just a few moments after they planted the note.

** Though this is justified when you consider that the girls don't really understand time travel, despite attempted explanations by Leo.

'''Sheldon''': Well, that's disappointing. }}

 

 

* In ''[[Continuum]]'', this is a common solution to being "stuck" in the past while your Span recovers; the Scribes specialize in this. Also, taken to extremes, a way of "instant messaging" with fellow spanners. [http://www.yamara.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=85#85 Have an example of this in action.]

* This is also a recommended tactic in ''GURPS Time Travel'' and ''GURPS Infinite Worlds,'' where the authors suggest giving the message to a law firm to hold until the proper time. Other possible channels exist, they note, but a good lawyer won't even blink at the request.

 

* In ''[[Dark Cloud]] 2'', the diary and letters that Max is writing to his mother... {{spoiler|since Elena, like Monica, is from 100 years into the future, and was forced to return there while Max was still an infant}}.

* ''[[Chrono Trigger]]'' uses this with the Rainbow Shell. Leene leaves a message with it meant for Marle, which she reads 400 years after it's written.

* In ''Dark Fall 2: Lights Out'', {{spoiler|Parker (your character) reads Drake's diary and discovers a threatening message ''addressed to him''. Drake's foreknowledge is explained because he was being manipulated by Malakai, a time-traveling sentient space probe from the future.}}

 

* In ''[[Darwin's Soldiers]]: Pavlov's Checkmate'', Shelton's antimatter copy ([[It Makes Sense in Context|long story)]]) uses this to inform modern-day Shelton that he's trapped in 1990.

 

* ''[[Casey and Andy]]'': President Cleveland sends a message forward a century, to deliver a crotch-punch to his archenemy. {{spoiler|And husband to his wife}}

 

* ''[[Dexter's Laboratory]]'' used a short-term version of this, as Dexter (after opening a space gate to an alien world and being eaten by an alien blob) sends Dee Dee back several hours with a message... but past-Dexter doesn't get it until it's too late (which is to say, just after writing the letter in the first place), due to Dee Dee's ditziness and his own irritability.

* [[Xanatos Gambit|David Xanatos]], from ''[[Gargoyles]]'', makes his fortune via this trope. After he's zapped back 1020 years in time by the Phoenix Gate, he leaves a package in the care of the Illuminati, to be delivered to his younger self 1000 years in the future (1975). The package contains three coins (worth thousands of dollars by the time the younger Xanatos receives them and uses them for his first investments, but near worthless for their era) and a lengthy letter to be delivered twenty years after ''that'' (1995, one week before the beginning of the episode) that details what he will have to do to ensure that he is sent to the past to send the coins and the letter in the first place. And he even makes a crack about being a "[[Self-Made Man]]". [[Magnificent Bastard|Magnificent]].

* In the ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]'' episode "It's About Time!", Phineas and Ferb get trapped in the prehistoric past and send messages back to the present by scratching them into the mud next to a dinosaur footprint they know is going to become fossilized and end up in the local museum.

* An episode of ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2003|Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]: Fast Forward'' focussed on this. The Turtles received a letter, and later on get separated in groups of two across time and space. It's after Raphael and Michaelangelo from the future tell the same two from the past (in the present) to read the letter that they realize it had been sent by Donatello from 200something.

* Though not quite the same thing, an episode of the ''[[Superfriends]]'' has some of the super-heroes trapped in the prehistoric past. To get a signal to the heroes in the present, the trapped heroes bury their communicator in the ground at the precise location where the Hall of Justice will be built thousands of years from now. At that time, the heroes in the present begin to hear a signal coming from the ground. Somehow, this tells them that their friends are trapped in the past. Even as a kid watching this, none of it made any sense.

 

 

{{reflist}}