You Already Changed the Past: Difference between revisions

You [[Time Travel|go back in time]] to [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong]], only to discover that the "changes" you're making to the past were what "already" happened anyway. In other words, there was no "first time around" - the past only happened ''once'', there were no different "versions" of it, and the changes you made to the past ultimately created the very past you read about in the history books before leaving on the trip.

 

 

 

Needless to add, [[Time Travel Tense Trouble|grammar can sometimes become thoroughly useless]] at trying to put the point across, as all sense of tense gets thrown of the window. This trope is easier to observe rather than analyze.

* ''[[Urusei Yatsura]]'' has time travel in a few occasions.

** In one, Lum goes into the future where she brings back Ataru's diary. He reads it and believes things will go right for him, but attempting to cause them makes everything go horribly wrong. It's later found that when writing the entry about everything that went wrong, his tears blur the ink, causing it to look like he wrote about things going well.

* ''[[Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle]]''. Details would be massive spoilers, but suffice to say that time travels differently in different universes, and something the heroes do midway through in a world that later turns out to be their own past sets up the very premise of the story, as revealed in the finale.

** Also, one character who {{spoiler|pulls a [[Face Heel Turn]] halfway through is fated to pull a [[Heel Face Turn]] back, given that his future self, who actually reincarnates in the past is the protagonist's father. Yeah...see, all grammar is useless.}} In fact, depending on which angle you see it from, the whole story wouldn't have happened if the past had not already included the influence of the future.

** However, the first instance of tinkering with time that we knew of was ''not'' an example of this - the group visits the world of Shara twice, before and after visiting Shura which turns out to be the past of Shara; and the effects of their actions are quite visible. CLAMP seems to have [[Magic A Is Magic A|lost track of their time-travelling system]] as the [[Mind Screw]] got more and more complicated...

* In ''[[Rave Master]]'', after much time is spent freaking out over what horrible ways they've twisted the past, Sieg, Elie, and Haru (but mostly Sieg) discover that {{spoiler|all their actions caused the future they were trying to protect by not taking those actions. Haru made it very clear to the knight that the criminals he brought had invaded the castle ten days earlier, and that the knight was to take credit for catching them, which we see him talking about at the time Haru gave 50 years later. Getting Resha kidnapped enforced the king's decesion to have her fake her own death, leading her into the future where she get's amnesia and meets Haru, and ditching Sieg in the past leads to him being there to set the whole time loop up and make sure they mess with the past like they're supposed to.}}

 

 

== Comic Books ==

* An issue in ''[[The Mighty Thor]]'' series had an storyline where {{spoiler|Loki sends himself back through time with the aid of Hela to accomplish certain tasks that had already been mentioned in a previous issue, but with certain details left unclear. Turns out that Loki was responsible for many of the major events in Asgardian history, but it's left unclear whether they still would have happened had he never gone back in time. Even he isn't completely sure.}}

** {{spoiler|He lampshaded this trope, saying that he cannot change a past and make future comes different way, but he can make sure it will go a way it did.}}

** In the reboot movie ''[[Star Trek (film)|Star Trek]]'', 200-something years in the future, {{spoiler|Spock fails to save Romulus because he doesn't get there in time, and he and Nero and his crew are sent back to the present. Nero, in revenge, destroys planet Vulcan, which Spock Prime tells Kirk was because of his failure to save Romulus. So, Spock(presumably) now knows his failure to save Romulus in the future was what caused the destruction of Vulcan in the present, so, when the time comes, he can simply leave for Romulus ''earlier'', to make sure he gets there in time, thus averting the destruction of ''both'' planets. '''''But''''', if he averts these events, there's no way for him to know he should leave for Romulus earlier, and-[[Austin Powers|Oh, God, I've gone cross-eyed.]]}}

** This movie runs on the parallel-universe model of time travel. {{spoiler|Romulus is destroyed in the original Star Trek universe where all the previous series and movies took place. The time travel causes a new universe to branch off, in which Vulcan is destroyed but Romulus presumably won't be. If someone from the reboot universe goes back in time to before Vulcan's destruction to tell Spock to leave earlier to save Romulus, then both planets will be saved in the resulting universe.}}

*** Nero came from the Prime universe, {{spoiler|where Romulus had been destroyed. In the rebooted universe, if Romulus is in fact saved, the reboot universe version of Nero will have had no reason to go back in time. If someone then goes back in time from beyond that point, while making sure that Romulus is still saved, then they'd find that Nero never came from the future because that future was averted in the timeline they came from. Or else the re-rebooted universe becomes separated from the rebooted universe with the arrival of the person that tries to save Vulcan, just like Nero came back from the Prime universe to the rebooted universe in time to face the ''USS Kelvin''.}} So, there would be three time branches: the Prime Universe (Original Star Trek), the Rebooted Universe (Star Trek 2009, diverging from the encounter of the ''Narada'' with ''USS Kelvin'', where {{spoiler|Vulcan is destroyed but Romulus is saved}}) and the Re-rebooted Universe (diverging from the unknown person arrives from the future to some point between the ''USS Kelvin'''s destruction and {{spoiler|the destruction of Vulcan, and that person manages to save Vulcan and tell Spock to arrive to Romulus earlier}}).

* This gets covered regarding the movie ''Happy Accidents'' very well [http://www.mjyoung.net/time/happy.html here].

* In ''Deja Vu'', the first few attempts at actually changing the past just end up causing things the characters and audience have already seen happen. {{spoiler|Eventually, for the sake of having a happy ending, they do manage to make a change that works.}}

** This could be a case of {{spoiler|[[Subverted Trope|subversion]], as it was mentioned in passing during the course of the movie that a big enough change could change the future (i.e., not having the ferry blow up). As the [[Other Wiki]] has a [[wikipedia:File:Deja Vu Timeline.png|diagram showing at least four runs]] of the timeline are needed to explain how the events of the movie are possible, perhaps several trips of smaller changes adds up to one big enough change.}}

* In the 2007 film ''Premonition'', [[Sandra Bullock]] lives the week of her husband's death out of order. {{spoiler|She's unsuccessful in her attempts to save him, as on the last day she accidentally causes his death by preventing another one.}}

* Played with in ''[[Back to The Future]]'', where Marty goes back in time and introduces 1985 concepts to 1955, but the movie implies that he only changes the source of the original idea without actually altering their progression into the modern day. He didn't invent skateboards but he introduced skateboarding to Hill Valley earlier than would have caught on naturally, and he didn't write Johnny B. Goode, but hearing his guitar solo inspired Chuck Berry over the phone. Since these things don't actually ''change'' the future, it looks like they were always that way.

* 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}}.

* Douglas Adams' ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'' universe works this way. in the second book, ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy/The Restaurant At The End of The Universe|The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy]]]]'', while stranded on prehistoric Earth with an exodus' worth of incompetent aliens who are plainly going to begin colonizing, Ford Prefect tells Arthur Dent "This doesn't change the past, this is the past."

* [[Isaac Asimov]]'s short story "The Red Queen's Race" has a character who tries to ''make'' this trope happen. {{spoiler|He was asked to translate several modern books on physics into ancient Greek, with the work being beamed back into humanity's past. History fails to change because the translator was very careful to leave out most of the advanced material.}}

** Particularly annoying with Sayid {{spoiler|shooting young Ben}}, which was not only implied to have already happened, Kate and Sawyer's interference in order to put things right seems to actually have caused {{spoiler|Ben to become evil, as Richard says that because the island healed him he would always be "one of them" and that he would "lose his innocence". So by trying to kill him, they effectively caused what they were trying to prevent}}. Nice going, guys!

* ''[[Quantum Leap]]'' was somewhat inconsistent on this trope. In episodes that directly impacted Al or Sam, they would have the entire memory of both things happening. For example:

*** Actually {{spoiler|Al was already going to be a prisoner of war. Sam could have changed that, or save his brother. Al allowed him to save his brother by not telling him he was one of the prisoners}}.

** In one episode, Congress is reviewing Project Quantum Leap's funding and leans on Al (acting as the project's representative) to have Sam alter history in ways beneficial to the US. Al tries to get Sam to prevent the [[wikipedia:1960 U-2 incident|U-2 spy plane incident]], but Sam is in the past protecting a young attorney. At the end of the episode, the Congressman in charge of the committee is about to cut the project's funding when, [[Meanwhile in the Future|in the past]], Sam unintentionally corrects the attorney on a key piece of Constitutional law which she had wrong and she says could have made her fail the bar. Cut to the present, where the obstructionist Congressman is replaced by an older version of the attorney, who approves the project's funding for another year. It's never made explicit, but Al's surprise at the sudden change suggests that he's aware of the change.

 

== Theme Parks ==

{{quote|[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v{{=}}I9r2EYy3rxU By trying to change the past, I have actually caused it to happen!]}}

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* All the [[Time Travel]] in ''[[Bob and George]]'' eventually resolves itself into this.

** At least, that's what the character believes. The character with enough nigh-omnipotent abilities to force things on the track he remembers.

** Sarda did this to himself. As a young wizard, he time-traveled back to the beginning of the universe, only to find that a White Mage had gotten there first. After living through all of creation being formed around him, Sarda planned to put that White Mage into a pocket dimension before she could go back in time to the universe' start...only for that pocket dimension to be the beginning of the universe.

* Played straight on ''[[Futurama]]'', where Fry ends up in 1947 and spends half the episode just trying to make sure his grandfather doesn't die. After the Professor warns him not to change the past ''unless'' he was already destined to change the past, Fry's extreme caution and stupidity result in his grandfather being vaporized by an atomic bomb. However, subsequent events make it clear that the [[Tricked-Out Time|man Fry killed was not actually]] Fry's grandfather, and that his real grandfather is {{spoiler|Fry himself}}. Of course, this is immediately followed by the Professor launching a full-blown assault on Area 51 with his intergalactic starship to retrieve the parts necessary to get home...

{{quote|'''Professor''': Choke on that, causality!}}

** Xanatos uses this to his advantage. He gives two period coins to the Illuminati, along [[Write Back to the Future|with a letter]]. The coins are like pennies in the past, but by the present they're very valuable and are the coins that started his fortune. The letter of course, is to tell him to do just that.

** Later, Goliath attempts to use the time-travelling Phoenix Gate to save Griff from being killed during the Blitz in WWII London, after being accused of abandoning or murdering Griff by his companions. With incident after increasingly improbable incident occurring that indicates the universe has decided Griff is its new [[Chew Toy]], Goliath ultimately concludes that fate will not allow Griff to get home and uses the Phoenix Gate to bring Griff back with him to the present, thus causing his original disappearance.

* ''[[The Fairly Odd Parents]]'' special "The Secret Origin of Denzel Crocker": Timmy and 21st-century Cosmo were the ones responsible for {{spoiler|making Crocker lose his fairy godparents ''and'' giving him the opportunity to partially get around the ensuing mass mindwipe}}, which also indirectly led to his own birth due to {{spoiler|the disappointed scientists at Crocker's presentation in the '80s [[Rule of Funny|investing in Dinkleburg's parachute pants]] and causing him to break up with Timmy's mom, thereby getting his parents together.}}

* Somewhat subverted in the ''[[Invader Zim]]'' episode "Bad, Bad Rubber Piggy" had Zim send a robot rubber piggy into Dib's past at crucial points to kill him, only he survives by an inch each time (though everytime he comes close to death he's given robotic body parts from his father due to losing his own) and after many mishaps, he sends a piggy to the past to warn him not to send any piggies to the past in the first place. Unfortunately the premise of the piggies was they replaced something in the timeline they're sent to and one replaces Zim's brain at the end.

* 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.