Changewars

Tag Area: Time Travel Trope
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #41

He Came from Nowhere

As a government scientist makes a breakthrough discovery, he’s confronted out of nowhere by a time traveling kidnapper from a future government. —Michael Main
Your work, this house, everything must be destroyed!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Terminator 1

The Terminator

Artificially intelligent machines from 2029 send a killer cyborg back to 1984 to kill Sara Connor because, in 2029, her son John will lead the resistance against the machines’ rule.

The story has a classic self-defeating act: The Terminator goes back in time to kill Sara Connor, causing Kyle Reese to follow and become romantic with Sara Connor, causing John Connor to be born and eventually lead the revolution, causing the Terminator to go back in time to kill Sara Connor, . . . —Michael Main
Kyle: [to Sarah at the Tech-Noir Club] Come with me if you want to live.
Gun-toting Arnold Schwarzenegger in his trademarked Terminator sunglasses and fingerless gloves.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Terminator 2

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Once more, the machines from 2029 send back a killer cyborg, this time a T-1000 to kill young John Connor in 1995, but Resistance-leader Connor of the future counters by sending a reprogrammed original T-800 to save himself. —Michael Main
The T-800: [to Sarah at the Pescadero State Hospital] Come with me if you want to live.
Shotgun-toting Arnold Schwarzenegger in his trademarked Terminator sunglasses sits stoically on his stolen motorcycle.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • 1992 Hugo
  • 1991 Nebula
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

From Time to Time

Finney’s sequel to Time and Again initially finds Si Morley living a happy life in the 19th century with his 19th century family, while The Project in the future never even got started because he prevented the inventor’s parents from ever meeting. But vague memories linger in some of the Project member’s minds, and Morley can’t stay put. —Michael Main
They’re back there in the past, trampling around, changing things, aren’t they? They don’t know it. They’re just living their happy lives, but changing small events. Mostly trivial, with no important effects. But every once in a while the effect of some small changed event moves on down to the—
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  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Infinity Ring 1

A Mutiny in Time

This first book of the multi-author series tells of how teens Dak (a history buff and odd duck), Sera (a science nerd), and Riq (a member of the secret Hystorians society) end up as the only ones who can save the world by fixing breaks in time that changed what was meant to be. Their first mission—saving Columbus from a mutiny that was meant to fail—is a disquieting choice that I would not choose as an introduction of history to children. For starters, they are choosing to save the man who brought genocide to the Americas. And to boot, in the broken world where the mutiny succeeded, his three ships still completed their voyage with no noticable change to subsequent centuries (apart from Columbus resting at the bottom of the Atlantic). —Michael Main
Time had gone wrong—this is what the Hystorians believed. And if things were beyond fixing now, there was only one hope left . . . to go back in time and fix the past instead.
An eight-pointed gold compass, marked in twenty-degree intervals around the edge.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Spy vs. Spy Animated Segment #63

Black Spy and the DeLorean

  • [writer and director unknown]
  • short segment of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid / Adjustment Burro,” from Mad [s03e11] (Cartoon Network, USA, 27 September 2012)
White Spy thinks he can win a drag race against Black Spy and his DeLorean, all in just thirty seconds of stop-motion animation! —Michael Main
88 MPH
The Black Spy from Mad Magazine reads a headline: Spy Challenges Spy to Drag Race!
  • Comedy
  • Satire
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

The Chronicles of St. Mary’s 1

Just One Damned Thing after Another

Fresh from finishing her Ph.D., Madeline Maxwell (aka Max) runs into her high school mentor who encourages her to apply for a position with a cloistered group of historians called St. Mary’s Institute of Historical Research. —Michael Main
Think of History as a living organism, with its own defence mechanisms. History will not permit anything to change events that have already taken place. If History thinks, even for one moment, that that is about to occur, then it will, without hesitation, eliminate the threatening virus. Or historian, as we like to call them.
A white coffee cup and saucer sit in front of background images of Big Ben
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Castle (s06e05)

Time Will Tell

A murder investigation leads to a suspect (Doyle) who says he traveled back in time to stop a catastrophe that will result in at least half the people on the planet dying. —Tandy Ringoringo
Ryan: I thought it was kind of derivative.
Esposito: Like a mash-up of 12 Monkeys and Terminator.
No image currently available.
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Poem

Armistice

Armistice has arrived in the time war with the Kelad. —Michael Main
We did not lose the Time War
Stylized outline of a rocket launching in a green circular seal for Daily Science Fiction.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

The Future of Another Timeline

Tess is a geologist (because, of course, geologists control the time travel of the giant ancient machines) and a member of the Daughters of Harriet (Senator Harriet Tubman, that is, from 19th-century Mississippi). On the surface, the Daughters are time travel scholars, but in reality, Tess and her fellow Daughters are fighting a pitched changewar for women’s rights against the oppressors known as the Comstockers. One more thing: While she’s at it,Tess also hopes to also save the souls of her teenaged self and her underground feminist punk friends in the 1990s, with a particular focus on their vigilante killing spree and young Beth’s abortion. —Michael Main
All five Machines had limitations, but the hardest to surmount was what travelers call the Long Four Years. Wormholes only opened for people who remained within twenty kilometers of a Machine for at least 1,680 days.
A watch dial with Roman numerals inside a dark blue flower on a bright red background.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Terminator 6

Terminator: Dark Fate

After the excitement of T2, you’d have thought that Sarah Connor and her son John could have settled down for a well-deserved, peaceful life. But, no: First a leftover T-800 Model 101 Terminator kills young John, and then 20 years later, Sarah meets two new characters—young Dani Ramos and an enhanced woman from the future—who are running from a new kind of terminator built by a new kind of Skynet. Certainly a fun T-romp, cast in the mold of T2, but really?!, if those johnny-come-lately millennial writers wanna live, they can’t be messing with the come-with-me line. —Michael Main
Grace: [to Dani and Diego at the car assembly plant] Come with me or you’re dead in the next 30 seconds.
Linda Hamilton (as Sarah Connor), Arnold Schwarzenegger (as the Terminator), and two new characters stand defiantly as a Rev-9 terminator walks single-mindedly toward us all.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Loki, Season 1

Hang on to your Tesseracts! Apparently, in Endgame, when the Avengers traveled back in time to swipe various things from the 2012 Avengers, they inadvertantly started a branch in time where Loki ended up with the Tesseract. Of course, once that occurred, the Time Variance Authority spotted him as a Variant and quickly recruited him to help in their fight against even more variant Variants. —Michael Main
Appears to be a standard sequence violation. Branches growing at a stable rate and slope. Variant identified.
Tom Hiddleston (as Loki) stands with his arms crossed and an annoyed look on his face, in front of a large analog clock with multiple hands.
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel