You Already Changed the Past: Difference between revisions
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{{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.''|'''[[Watchmen (Comic Book)|Dr. Manhattan]]'''}}
{{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
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.
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The Ancient [[Classical Mythology|Greeks]] and [[Norse Mythology|Vikings]] ''loved'' the notion that [[You Cannot Change the Future]], and their works heavily imply that they believed in this specific notion of time (which even the Gods were trapped in). Although they used predictions rather than time travel, the effect is the same. Many first-time readers of the classics who don't buy into this notion of time, or don't realize this is ''why'' [[You Can't Fight Fate]] in the classics, have a hard time accepting [[The Fatalist]] behavior of classical Greek and European heroes.
See also [[Self
----
'''Examples:'''
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* ''[[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
* 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.}}
* [[Steins Gate]]: Understanding this concept is what allows {{spoiler|Okabe (with some help from his [[Time Travel Tense Trouble|"future"]] self) to turn the constant stream of [[Downer Ending]]s into something much more pleasant.}} His early episodes [[Awesome Ego|boast]] about being "able to cheat the universe itself" doesn't look so silly anymore by the end.
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* ''[[Terminator|The Terminator]]'' gives a rare example of the good guys directly benefiting from the immutability of time. The machines sent back a Terminator to kill Sarah Connor before her son John Connor was born, in response, the rebels send back... the guy who becomes John's father.
** Also, in a deleted scene, it turns out that Cyberdyne, the company that built [[Sky Net]] and the original Terminators, acquired the remains of the Terminator. The sequel shows that they'd begun [[Stable Time Loop|reverse engineering the Terminator]], which would presumably have led to the creation of the Terminators had the events of the sequel not occurred, so it happened on both sides.
* Harve Bennett's explanation for why the ''Enterprise'' crew was so careless about altering history in ''[[Star Trek IV the Voyage Home]]'' seems to be (he says it in a rather disjointed way) that this trope is in place and the characters are [[Genre Savvy]]. Although this [[Timey
** 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.}}
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* 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}}.
* This was true in the novel ''[[The Time Travelers Wife]]'' by Audrey Niffenegger. The main character was constantly going into both the past and future, but everything was pre-set. Everything he did when he went into the past, he had "already done", and once something happened, he could never change it; in situations where he already knew what was going to happen, he had to act in the way he had already acted, he didn't have any choice.
* Douglas Adams' ''[[The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy]]'' universe works this way. in the second book, ''[[The
* [[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.}}
** Specifically, {{spoiler|the translator only includes information which would account for discoveries and advances already present in our own time line.}}
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== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* ''[[Star Trek the Original Series]]'' ("Assignment Earth")
* Early seasons of ''[[Andromeda]]'' used this, but it degenerated into [[Timey
* The first [[Time Travel]] episode of ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' ("1969") can be perceived as following this logic, but none of the subsequent [[Time Travel]] episodes in the [[Stargate Verse]] can -- they all involve alternate timelines instead.
** Though it seems SG-1 held to the "Alternate timelines/universes" first. The 20th episode of Season 1 had the "Quantum Mirror" which put Daniel Jackson in an alternate timeline/universe. "1969" was the 21st episode of Season 2.
** [[Stargate Continuum]] shows the present universe being [[Delayed Ripple Effect|erased]] by Baal's actions in the past. As a part of the SG-1 team consciously try to outrun the phenomenon, the stargate wormhole somehow shields them from it. So, while there are alternate realities in the [[Stargate Verse]], those may be unrelated to time travel. Either that, or the writers [[Timey
* In the ''[[Murder Most Horrid]]'' episode "A Determined Woman", a female scientist working on a time machine becomes so frustrated with her idiot husband's antics that she kills him. Several years later she is released from prison, finishes her time machine and goes back to try and save her husband, only to find that his confusion between the two versions of her is what caused his erratic behavior in the first place.
* After ''[[Hobgoblins]]'', a film, was shown on ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]'', Tom Servo tried to go back in time to stop the movie from being made by hunting down the director and... kicking him in the shin. Upon Tom's return to his present, Crow pulls up an article where the director claimed that his inspiration for ''Hobgoblins'' was that time when a squat red robot ran up to him out of the blue and kicked him in the shin...
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* This is actually done multiple times in the ''[[Doctor Who (TV)|Doctor Who]]'' universe (as are most time travel theories).
** In the series 4 episode {{spoiler|"The Fires of Pompeii"}}, The Doctor doesn't want to avert {{spoiler|the destruction of Pompeii}}, is convinced to avert it anyway, and then is forced to cause the disaster in order to avert a larger catastrophe.
** Blink: "You're reading aloud from a transcript of a conversation you're ''[[Timey
** {{spoiler|The rift in space time}} that already exists in {{spoiler|Cardiff}} is created by the Doctor's actions in "The Unquiet Dead".
*** And in series 5, the crack in the universe that's been causing so much trouble turns out to have been caused by {{spoiler|the TARDIS exploding}}. Fortunately, the crack transcends space and time so much that it extends back ''before'' the event which caused it, allowing the Doctor to {{spoiler|nip through and place the TARDIS on the other side of the crack, thus preventing the end of the universe}}. That's once he's [[Tricked Out Time]] in a variety of ways in order to get himself out of {{spoiler|that bloomin' Pandoricon}}. Usually (well, seven times out of ten) he's a stickler about not interfering with your own time line, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
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== Mythology and Religion ==
* As mentioned, Greek and Germanic mythology tended to hammer on the idea (relying on prophecies instead of time travel) that [[You Cannot Change the Future]]. Even the Gods can't change the outcome of the story. (How many steps is Thor destined to take [[Story Boarding the Apocalypse|in the final battle of Ragnarok?]]) Not only that, but historians actually posit that Viking culture went into a [[Crapsack World|prolonged funk]] over it, presaging the rise of [[The Seventh Seal|Ingmar Bergman]] and [[Werner Herzog (Creator)|Werner Herzog]] by ''centuries''. (The lack of sunlight in wintertime didn't help.) Vikings in particular lamented the decline in pagan beliefs for exposing them to the horrors of existentialism, making them less resigned to the inevitability of death in battle. Meanwhile, the Greeks preferred to set up stories where characters would have [[Hubris]] enough [[Flat Earth Atheist|to believe]] this trope did not apply to them, and then brutally [[Cosmic Plaything|swat them down]] in order to provide an entertaining [[Aesop]]. For examples, see [[You Can't Fight Fate]] and [[Self
* The concept of Predestination. This concept is prevalent in all Calvinist churches (Reformed, Presbyterian, Baptist, congregational, Pentecostal) and in nutshell means that the life and final depository of a human being is pre-ordained and pre-determined by God and he or she can do nothing to avoid it. In other words, people are selected either to Heaven or Hell before they even were born.
** This same concept is prevalent in Islam. The only way to avert the predestination is to [[Death Seeker|get killed in Holy War]], which earns you an automatic admission to Paradise.
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== [[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.
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* 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 ''[[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 (Animation)|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.
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