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You Already Changed the Past: Difference between revisions

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{{trope}}
{{quote|''Things have their shape in time, not space alone. Some marble blocks have statues within them, embedded in their future... Any moment now, Janey's watchband will break. Somewhere, the fat man is already lumbering toward the shooting gallery, steps heavy with unwitting destiny.''|'''Dr. Manhattan''', ''[[Watchmen (comics)|Dr. ManhattanWatchmen]]'''}}
 
{{quote|''One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not...about changing the course of history - the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end. The major problem is quite simply one of [[Time Travel Tense Trouble|grammar.]]''|'''Douglas Adams''', ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy/The Restaurant At The End of The Universe|The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy]]''}}
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Note that '''You Already Changed the Past''' implies [[Only One Possible Future]], which is the version of [[You Can't Fight Fate|fatalism]] found in many [[Older Than Feudalism|older]] works, such as Greek Drama, that don't involve time travel.
 
This trope ''arguably'' makes the most sense when considering time travel from a scientific point of view, see the [[wikipedia:Novikov self-consistency principle|]] on [[wikipedia:Novikov self-consistency principle|The Other Wiki]].<ref>Novikov's self-consistency principle was named "the [[Law of Conservation of History]]" by [[Larry Niven]] in his short piece "The Theory and Practice of Time Travel," published at least ten years prior to Novikov's work. Of course, [[Larry Niven]] is a [[Science Fiction]] writer, which may explain why [[Sci Fi Ghetto|nobody cares]]. Alternatively, this is an illustration of something called [[wikipedia:Stigler's law of eponymy|Stigler's Law of Eponymy]]: nothing ever gets named after the first person to discover it.</ref> However, the number of time-travel plots that it allows for are extremely limited and the logic gets complicated ''very'' quickly. This, however, also has the side-effect of creating a '[[Functional Magic|self-correcting universe]]' usually by a slew of [[Contrived Coincidence]]s (ie. if you try to shoot your grandfather the gun will jam; if you try poisoning him he will recover; if you try strangling him you will be overcome; if you wear [[Power Armor]] from the future you will have second thoughts; if you try [[Beyond the Impossible|sending a bomb back through time and detonating it directly inside his chest]] the time machine will break down). This can also lead to a scenario where the ''only'' reason why the past is not changed is because someone else says 'you cannot' and you take his advice. Meaning ''the advice itself'' is a part of the universe's self-correcting nature.
 
Thus, most time travel stories that involve altering the past will provide some of the characters with [[Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory]]. This makes less sense, but it makes for a narrative convenience. If a You Already Changed The Past plot is used, the time travel will probably be a one-off thing, since repeating it would most likely get tedious.
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** He encounters the brand-new original manuscript of a poem he'd studied in his own century, and wonders how it would pick up the stains he'd seen on it in his own time. A poet he recently met then walks in carrying some food, puts it down, and picks up the manuscript with his greasy hands to look it over.
** He encounters a 17th century book with an inscription in it that shakes him up. He later travels accidentally to that century, and on encountering the then-new book, writes the pig-Latin inscription addressed to himself that he would read in the future.
* The climax of ''[[Harry Potter and Thethe Prisoner of Azkaban (novel)|Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban]]''. They go to the past to save Buckbeak and Sirius, and Harry wants to see a mysterious figure that he believes to be his father. {{spoiler|Buckbeak never died; the thumping sound was the executioner taking his frustration out on a fence (pumpkin in the movie). The mysterious figure was Harry from the future saving himself, his dad really is dead. Then they save Sirius, who rides off with Buckbeak. Plus they hear a couple strange noises, which turns out to be their [[Time Travel|time traveling]]ing selves.}}
* ''[[To Say Nothing of the Dog]]'' by Connie Willis involves [[Time Travel|time traveling]] historians (which first appeared in her ''Doomsday Book'')who spend a lot of effort to repair the "incongruity" caused when one of them inadvertently brings a cat forward from [[QueenVictorian VickyBritain|Victorian England]] (they're extinct in 2057). This involves trying to make sure that the cat's owner winds up with the "Mr. C" that her diary specifies after they've accidentally introduced her to a different man. {{spoiler|It turns out that all perceived incongruities are the continuum's self-correcting system.}}
* ''Blackout'' and ''All Clear'', also by Connie Willis, have a similar example. Some historians go back to [[WWII]] era, then find that they can't get home. They agonize over every little thing they do, worried that the slightest change might cause the Germans to win the war. {{spoiler|It turns out that the things they did, the people they saved, and so on, were exactly the tipping points to let ENGLAND win the war. Their future, in which the thirdThird reichReich fell, predicates on them getting stuck in the past and doing the things they're convinced will ruin everything.}}
* [[Time Travel]] in the ''[[Pliocene Exile]]'' novels works this way. Of course, since [[Time Travel]] ''must'' take you back six ''million'' years (and then only works in one spot in France), it's rather difficult to know exactly what the [[Time Travel|time travelers]] already did.
* Used extensively in ''[[Suzumiya Haruhi]]'' this seems to be the whole purpose of future(er) Asahina. Who is suspected to be the superior of Present(or rather not-so-future) Asahina, and puts her younger self trough all the missions and trouble she already went trough herself. So she already changed the past because she will order herself to go to the past and change it so she can get to the future and order herself to change the past.
* Minor example in ''[[Young Wizards|So You Want To Be A Wizard]]'' by [[Diane Duane]]: Nita and Kit are stopped for a moment on their way to a world gate by a loud bang on the other side of a door they are about to open. It turns out at the end of the book {{spoiler|that it was Nita herself, coming back from the future a little earlier than planned and trying to avoid meeting their younger selves}}.
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* In ''[[Powerpuff Girls]]'' Mojo Jojo goes to the past to kill the adolescent Professor Utonium before he can create the Girls. The Girls pursue him. It turns out that in the past Professor was a lazy ass and a bully with no interest in becoming a scientist and creating the Girls, if it wasn't for Mojo's interference and the consequent encounter with and rescue by the Girls that gave him inspiration.
* In the season 2 episode "It's About Time" of ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'', Twilight Sparkle is visited by her future self (from a week later, looking entirely worn) and told "whatever you do, don't..." with the sentence being cut off. Past Twilight then spends the whole week worrying about and trying to prevent whatever happens during the next week, with each incident causing her to gain the looks of Future Twilight, indicating she hasn't changed the future at all. {{spoiler|She only then learns later that nothing actually happens. So she goes back into the past to tell her past self "Whatever you do, don't... worry about the future" only to end up being pulled back into the future right where it cut off for Past Twilight, setting the events into motion for the whole episode.}}
* Played with in ''[[Beast Wars]]''. While it is entirely possible to change the past and thus the future, thus finally answering Dinobot's soul searching about the nature of time travel and what that means for free will (if the past is immutable, than our ability to choose anything is a cosmic illusion). By changing the past, Dinobot learns that it is possible for an individual's choice to matter to the universe. Ironically however, with this new knowledge, it means that Megatron can change the past for the worst, and that the only choice Dinobot has is to invoke this trope.
 
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Time Travel Tropes{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Fate and Prophecy Tropes]]
[[Category:Plots]]
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}Time Travel Tropes]]
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