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Write Back to the Future
- 507 statements
- 98 feature instances
- 68 referencing feature instances
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So, your friend couldn't get through the one-way time portal before it closed, and as you're standing there wondering what to do, this guy from the Post Office comes up and says that he's got this letter, posted 80 years ago, and addressed to you. Turns out your friend spent ten years building a machine to stop the Big Bad, and he sealed it away right beneath where you're standing now. As you read it, you can't help but marvel that the message actually made it through the postal service. Write Back To The Future is when a time-traveler stuck in the past sends a message along The Slow Path to their compatriots in the future. It may be a way to get them back; it may be the solution to the problem they're looking for; it may just be an assurance that they had a full and rewarding life in whatever century they got stuck in. Usually, the message shows up right after the relevant time-travel. In especially clever instances, it may appear before said travel. The likelihood of this actually working depends on the method used to send the message. If you just drop a letter in a drawer, you're betting that nobody's going to move stuff around for the next sixty years, the desk isn't going to get moved, destroyed, or sold off, et cetera. On the other hand, if you put it in a safe deposit box in a major bank or even behind a loose brick in the masonry, it should be there decades later. Another method is to make many copies of the message to ensure that at least one survives (e.g. publishing it as an advertisement); this requires composing a message whose real meaning is only apparent to the intended recipient. Often, but not always, part of a Stable Time Loop. |
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Dropped link to GoneHorriblyWrong: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
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Dropped link to Timeline: Not an Item - UNKNOWN | |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_11859033 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_11859033 | comment |
In Narbonic, Dave's mind is bouncing around in time. His 16-year-old self gets a message on how to return to his own time, which was written by his 6-year-old self on the men's room wall (which wasn't cleaned in the next ten years). | |
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| Narbonic (Webcomic) | hasFeature |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_1a3a6af1 | type |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_1a3a6af1 | comment |
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. Have an example of this in action. | |
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| Continuum (Tabletop Game) | hasFeature |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_1abda7f9 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_1abda7f9 | comment |
The game Chrononauts revolves around time travel, and uses this trope. One of the cards is a "Memo from your Future Self," and acts like a counterspell via going back and time and stopping the previous card from being played. | |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_1b386512 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_1b386512 | comment |
In the Ranma ½ fanfic, Exact Change by Ozzallos, Nabiki does this. | |
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| Ranma ½ (Manga) | hasFeature |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_226f6b3f | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_226f6b3f | comment |
In the Haven episode "Sarah", when Duke is stranded in 1955, he manages to tell Audrey and Nathan what happened by writing a letter addressed to Audrey with instructions that it is not to be delivered until the present day. | |
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| Haven | hasFeature |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_261723fc | type |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_261723fc | comment |
Blackout: This is a common tactic used by time travelers to send messages forward to their home base at Oxford in the 21st century. If they get in trouble, time travelers will stick coded messages into personal ads in local newspapers, and Oxford historians will comb period news reports to find the messages and use them to figure out where to send retrieval teams. 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". |
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| Blackout | hasFeature |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_27777760 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_27777760 | comment |
The Eureka 4th mid-season finale had Jack travel back in time again to leave a message to himself to save Allison. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_27777760 | featureApplicability |
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| Eureka | hasFeature |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_283badac | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_283badac | comment |
In Dark Cloud 2, the diary and letters that Max is writing to his mother... since Elena, like Monica, is from 100 years into the future, and was forced to return there while Max was still an infant. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_283badac | featureApplicability |
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| Dark Cloud (Video Game) | hasFeature |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_28b5db60 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_28b5db60 | comment |
The protagonist of The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers sends a message from the past to himself, jotting a note on a book in Pig Latin. This isn't so much an attempt to convey information — he'd already seen the note, and been surprised by it, at a previous point in his time-traveling adventure — so much as a way to self-seal a Stable Time Loop and ensure his earlier self will pay attention to that particular book. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_28b5db60 | featureApplicability |
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| The Anubis Gates | hasFeature |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_299db5c7 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_299db5c7 | comment |
Bruce Coville's Book of... Magic II: What the Dinosaurs Are Like sees two kids using magic go back in time, to separate time periods, to find out what... well, the dinosaurs are like. (The spell, incidentally, also turns them into dinosaurs.) One breaks the spell and returns to the present day when he realizes the K-T Extinction Event is about to happen. The other, who went back much further, stayed in the past, and his skeleton is now in the dinosaur museum as an unidentified species. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_299db5c7 | featureApplicability |
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| Bruce Coville's Book of... | hasFeature |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_2a1c0056 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_2a1c0056 | comment |
Clara does this at the beginning of the "Continuum Conundrum" arc in Back to the Future, sending a letter from 1893 to Marty in 1986, to inform him that Doc has gone missing. Marty also tries this in the same issue by leaving a note in a canister at Doc's secret lab, concluding that if Doc is time traveling and visits the lab in the future, the note should still be there for him to find. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_2a1c0056 | featureApplicability |
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| Back to the Future (Comic Book) | hasFeature |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_2a8943c0 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_2a8943c0 | comment |
Miraculous Ladybug: The season five episode "Reunion" has three instances of this. After Alix escapes into time in order to safeguard the Bunny Miraculous, she hides a letter and photos of her adventures behind a painting for her father to find in the present day. Then Ladybug hides a letter for Alix, asking her to look up something two hundred years into the future. Finally, Alix goes into the past and leaves the reply under a statue in the museum, so Ladybug can make use of it. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_2a8943c0 | featureApplicability |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_2a8943c0 | featureConfidence |
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| Miraculous Ladybug | hasFeature |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_2bb4ae0f | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_2bb4ae0f | comment |
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.) | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_2bb4ae0f | featureApplicability |
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| Heroes | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_2bb4ae0f | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_2d311a08 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_2d311a08 | comment |
An interesting variation occurs in one episode of the original Ninja Turtles. Carter needs to contact time-travelling allies Landor and Merrik, but they're twenty years in the future. Carter sends a radio message into space, with the intent of bouncing it back to Earth via a star ten light years away. It works. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_2d311a08 | featureApplicability |
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| Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) | hasFeature |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_2d316ba2 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_2d316ba2 | comment |
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fast Forward: In one episode, the turtles have to deal with dozens of time portals opening up in future New York. The turtles get separated through time, with Donatello landing in modern-day New York. Having nothing but time on his hands, he quickly figures out how to control the device creating the portals and mails instructions to his brothers in the future. Apparently, in the century that it sat in the post office, it gained an iconic status. In the episode's Cold Open, the postal workers cheer when the countdown reaches zero, and they draw straws to determine who gets to deliver the legendary letter. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_2d316ba2 | featureApplicability |
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| Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_2d316ba2 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_2e2efbf9 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_2e2efbf9 | comment |
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. He later tapes it back together and reads it. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_2e2efbf9 | featureApplicability |
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| Back to the Future | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_2e2efbf9 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_2f427f2d | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_2f427f2d | comment |
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child features this in the final act, when some of the characters have become stranded in the past. Specifically, they find themselves just before the pivotal event when Voldemort is to attack infant Harry and his parents. They manage to signal present-day Harry to their whereabouts by (somehow) acquiring his baby blanket long enough to write an invisible message on it. The message was written using a material that would remain unseen until it reacted with a rare potion ingredient that spilled on it just before their departure from the present day, the blanket having been kept as a keepsake. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_2f427f2d | featureApplicability |
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| Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Theatre) | hasFeature |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_304d4028 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_304d4028 | comment |
Zorglub uses this system in the Spirou & Fantasio one-shot "Swams of Time", as after building a time machine to travel to the end of the XIXth century, he is unable to return. He gives a book with all the instructions for building a new time machine to the grandfather of one of the heroes' friends, with instruction to give it to the Count of Champignac on a certain date in the future, which the man actually does, by proxy of his grandson. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_304d4028 | featureApplicability |
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| Spirou & Fantasio (Comic Book) | hasFeature |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_30d9627b | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_30d9627b | comment |
In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978), Ford and Arthur do this by accident when trapped on prehistoric Earth. Arthur drops his towel during an earthquake, it gets fossilized in a lava flow, then thrown out into space when the planet is blown up by the Vogons two million years later and picked up by the Heart of Gold, where Zaphod interprets it as a message and comes to rescue them. The Heart of Gold is powered by the Infinite Improbability Drive, so things like this are par for the course. According to the Retcon in the Tertiary Phase, though, this all happened in the artificial universe in Zarniwoop's office, thereby explaining why the 'real'' Ford and Arthur are still on prehistoric Earth when the Phase begins. (The actual reason is that the Tertiary Phase was based on the third book, while most of the 2nd radio series never happened in the books, and the Retcon was attempting to incorporate the 2nd radio series into the continuity) |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_30d9627b | featureApplicability |
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| The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978) (Radio) | hasFeature |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_32d026ec | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_32d026ec | comment |
Rave Master. When Haru, Elie, and Sieg Hart travel unintentionally 50 years into the past, Sieg manages to 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, becoming the skeleton they saw the very first time they came there. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_32d026ec | featureApplicability |
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| Rave Master (Manga) | hasFeature |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_400469e | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_400469e | comment |
Calvin and Hobbes: Calvin writes a letter to his future self, expressing envy at having experienced life 20 Minutes into the Future. When he receives the letter, some days later, he feels sorry for his past self. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_400469e | featureApplicability |
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| Calvin and Hobbes (Comic Strip) | hasFeature |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_43576f5 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_43576f5 | comment |
Supernatural: In 6.18 "Frontierland", Sam receives a message (and a parcel with a plot device) from Samuel Colt, whom he met in 1861. In 7.12 "Time After Time", Dean is accidentally transported to 1944 by Kronos. He leaves a message to Sam in the house they were squatting in before the time-shift, thus helping Sam with the ritual required to bring him back. He remembers where Sam placed his sleeping bag and carves "Sam" into the wall near the floor. When Sam lays down to get some sleep, his eyes look straight at that section of the wall and he figures out that a letter is hidden in the wall. |
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| Supernatural | hasFeature |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_47caac60 | type |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_47caac60 | comment |
12 Monkeys: Unintended, but has the same effect. In "Mentally Divergent" Cole was carrying a note with the address of a mental institution he intends to infiltrate in 2015, when he accidentally ends up in North Korea in 2006. In 2015, Cassandra sees a nine year old photograph of the note (which was left behind at the North Korean military base when Cole was transported to 2015) and concludes that Cole will be at the mental institution right now. At some point in 2017, prior to her death, Cassandra made a recording for the scientists in the future, telling them about Leland Goines, the Army of the Twelve Monkeys, and mentioning Cole by name. |
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| 12 Monkeys | hasFeature |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_48cf61a6 | type |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_48cf61a6 | comment |
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. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_48cf61a6 | featureApplicability |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_49ff762 | type |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_49ff762 | comment |
Torchwood: In the episode 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). The Torchwood website advises agents not to try this: |
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| Torchwood | hasFeature |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_4e45b093 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_4e45b093 | comment |
On the flashback episode of The Big Bang Theory Sheldon attempts to do this with the rental agreement he has Leonard sign: | |
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| The Big Bang Theory | hasFeature |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_4e588869 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_4e588869 | comment |
In Darwin's Soldiers: Pavlov's Checkmate, Shelton's antimatter copy (long story)) uses this to inform modern-day Shelton that he's trapped in 1990. | |
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| Darwin's Soldiers (Roleplay) | hasFeature |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_4ea89245 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_4ea89245 | comment |
At the end of Waxwork II Lost in Time, Mark sends the time-door opener to his Love Interest this way. | |
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| Waxwork | hasFeature |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_4fde0f82 | type |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_4fde0f82 | comment |
Early Edition: Reversal: 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. Played closer to straight in one episode when a reporter at the paper in question realizes this is what is going on and writes an article for tomorrow's edition designed to catch his attention today. |
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| Early Edition | hasFeature |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_53a0bd8b | type |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_53a0bd8b | comment |
The Twilight Zone (1985): In "The Junction", Ray Dobson is extremely grateful to John Parker, another miner from 1986, for saving his life while they were trapped by a cave-in on September 16, 1912. In order to return the favor, he writes a letter to John's wife Melissa and leaves it with the church with instructions that it be delivered on September 15, 1986, the day before John became trapped. Although Reverend Bailey had every intention of delivering it on the day in question, he was called away and forgot to do so. By the time that he gets it to Melissa, John is already trapped in the mine. However, Ray's letter includes the location where he and John were trapped in 1912 and John is rescued in time. | |
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| The Twilight Zone (1985) | hasFeature |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_5b524eaa | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_5b524eaa | comment |
At the end of Goodnight Sweetheart, when Gary finds himself trapped in 1945, he writes a message of explanation and apology to Yvonne on the wall of his flat and then wallpapers over it - knowing that they're going to have that wallpaper stripped in the future (where his friend Ron lives in the same flat fifty years later, since Gary still owns it). | |
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| Goodnight Sweetheart | hasFeature |
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| Write Back to the Future / int_5d30f322 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_5d30f322 | comment |
Frequency: A police officer uses an old ham radio in his home to talk to his father using the same radio 30 years ago, allowing them to change events in the mean time. The officer enlists his father to stop a killer before he murders their own mother and wife. The father fails in his first attempt, but after hearing that the killer touched his father's wallet, he figures that the killer's prints are on it, and instructs the father to hide the wallet in a very out-of-the-way spot in the home, where the son finds it. After the ham radio is destroyed, the father communicates with the son one more time by burning a message into the oak table both of them are using. |
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| Frequency | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_5d30f322 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_5eb3c0ea | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_5eb3c0ea | comment |
In Amakusa 1637, the Time Travelers that remain in the past leave sealed cellphones to be found in the future. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_5eb3c0ea | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_5eb3c0ea | featureConfidence |
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| Amakusa 1637 (Manga) | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_5eb3c0ea | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_5ee57a01 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_5ee57a01 | comment |
In the pilot episode of Journeyman, the protagonist uses a time capsule to the future to prove to his wife that he's been time traveling: he digs under the brick patio in their backyard (which they put in right after they moved into the house) to reveal a toolbox containing a newspaper from 1997 and her engagement ring. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_5ee57a01 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_5ee57a01 | featureConfidence |
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| Journeyman | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_5ee57a01 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_64bf8c91 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_64bf8c91 | comment |
Milo Murphy's Law: In "Missing Milo", Milo ends up time-traveling to the future. His friends in the present see him on TV from an episode that originally aired fifty years ago. After seeking out the creator of the TV show, he admits to Milo being there in the past, and gives them a letter that Milo wrote to his friends, instructing him to give it to them in fifty years. When Milo gets back to the present, he admits that he never wrote the letter, and was never in the past. Sarah takes it to mean that Milo must time travel again at some point in the future. Milo agrees and decides to give the letter to the TV show creator when he goes back in time the next time. Finally fulfilled in the show's next season, where he successfully delivers the letter. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_64bf8c91 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_64bf8c91 | featureConfidence |
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| Milo Murphy's Law | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_64bf8c91 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_65608411 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_65608411 | comment |
Lazarus Long uses this trick in Time Enough for Love, when he's sent back in time to the early 20th century. It's a complicated set of multiple letters inside letters (with different instructions and dates on which to be opened), since he's writing it to a time two thousand years into the future. The recipients of the letters then use the date they stop being sent to pinpoint when to rescue him. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_65608411 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_65608411 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Time Enough for Love | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_65608411 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_6abf16c2 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_6abf16c2 | comment |
And in the Big Finish Doctor Who adventure "The Kingmaker", the Doctor and his companions, separated by two years when the TARDIS is stolen (by William Shakespeare) exchange notes by leaving them in the care of the owner of the eponymous tavern. The letters left by Peri and Erimem travel forward to the Doctor in the usual way, while the Doctor leaves his own notes on the assumption that one of his future selves (the "big-eared Northern chap" in a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo) will collect them and deliver them to the past. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_6abf16c2 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_6abf16c2 | featureConfidence |
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| Big Finish Doctor Who (Audio Play) | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_6abf16c2 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_6ce0d19c | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_6ce0d19c | comment |
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 opened immediately when Al put the letter in a mailbox. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_6ce0d19c | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_6ce0d19c | featureConfidence |
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| Quantum Leap | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_6ce0d19c | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_70814599 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_70814599 | comment |
This was done in reverse in the Stargate SG-1 episode "1969". General Hammond gives a note to Carter as they set out on a mission that ends up sending them to the aforementioned year. It ends up being read by his younger self, who takes the message to heart and helps the team out. In other episodes, the team uses this trope to send a warning to the past not to travel to a certain planet, and on another occasion, they record a video message of themselves to explain their situation to the alternate timeline that resulted from their meddling with past events. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_70814599 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_70814599 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Stargate SG-1 | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_70814599 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_7c038c18 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_7c038c18 | comment |
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. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_7c038c18 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_7c038c18 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Phineas and Ferb | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_7c038c18 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_7fbf9019 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_7fbf9019 | comment |
Steins;Gate: The future gadget lab receives a letter from Suzuha, after she is trapped in the past and loses her memory. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_7fbf9019 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_7fbf9019 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Steins;Gate (Visual Novel) | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_7fbf9019 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_7fc78282 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_7fc78282 | comment |
In The Lord of the Rings fic Don't Panic!, Penny, trapped in Middle-earth, thinks of writing forward in time to let her mother know she's alive. Elrond informs her that it would be impossible, since even with elvish magic, parchment will only last an Age or so. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_7fc78282 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_7fc78282 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| The Lord of the Rings | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_7fc78282 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_8125b468 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_8125b468 | comment |
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. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_8125b468 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_8125b468 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Batman (Franchise) | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_8125b468 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_81692f99 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_81692f99 | comment |
One Star Trek comic had Captain Kirk stranded in the distant past on an uninhabited alien planet. He spends the next several decades hauling rocks up to the top of a plateau (even carving a staircase to make the trips a bit easier) and arranging them in the shape of a Starfleet insignia big enough to be seen from space. Back in his own time, the Enterprise spots the insignia while scanning planets looking for Kirk, finds his skeletal remains, and is able to date them in order to travel back in time and retrieve him shortly after he'd been stranded to begin with. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_81692f99 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_81692f99 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Star Trek (Franchise) | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_81692f99 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_81f5276f | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_81f5276f | comment |
In Dino Time, after the protagonists go back in time and end up stuck in the past, they plan to carve an image into a rock to show their parents how to get the time machine to work. Oddly, they don't get a chance to carve the message, but somehow it got there anyway. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_81f5276f | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_81f5276f | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Dino Time (Animation) | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_81f5276f | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_85d4971 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_85d4971 | comment |
In the fanfic "Homecoming", Doc sends another cross-decade letter telling Marty about his plans and sending him some family documents it wouldn't do for a historian to find. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_85d4971 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_85d4971 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Homecoming (Fanfic) | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_85d4971 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_86be189a | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_86be189a | comment |
An episode of the revival Quantum Leap (2022) series had Ben write a letter intended to warn a woman (who herself was a recurring character and a Secret-Keeper of Ben's) of her husband's impending death from a treatable heart defect as he had leaped out before he could tell her directly. It works, but then he dies soon after in a car wreck. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_86be189a | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_86be189a | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Quantum Leap (2022) | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_86be189a | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_8b957d5d | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_8b957d5d | comment |
This trope is mocked in Life, the Universe and Everything when Arthur and Ford end up on Earth shortly before it's blown up. Arthur gets the idea to warn himself, but Ford points out that it wouldn't work by doing an impression of the hypothetical phone call "'Hello, me? It's me. Please don't hang up.' *shrug* He hung up. This is NOT my first temporal anomaly, you know." | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_8b957d5d | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_8b957d5d | featureConfidence |
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| Life, the Universe and Everything | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_8b957d5d | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_8d6c924b | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_8d6c924b | comment |
In Looper, Joe (and Jesse by force) write on their arm with a knife in the main time of the film so that the resulting wounds, after healing, show up on their older selves' arm telling them where to go to settle the situation. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_8d6c924b | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_8d6c924b | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Looper | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_8d6c924b | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_8f4ee60f | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_8f4ee60f | comment |
Back to the Future: 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. He later tapes it back together and reads it. Probably the best-known modern example is the letter Marty receives from Doc Brown at the end of Back to the Future Part II: Doc is in the DeLorean time machine when it gets struck by lightning, sending Doc to 1885 and stranding Marty in 1955. Doc writes a letter to be delivered to Marty's exact time and place to let him know that he's happy where he is, making this an example of "I'm happy in the past." Doc sent the letter simply for Marty's benefit, and in Part III it is revealed that it includes with it a map to the location where he hid the DeLorean after landing in the past and instructions for repairing it so Marty can return home to 1985. Later, however, Marty finds evidence that Doc is killed a week after writing the letter, prompting him to go to 1885 to save him. The courier who delivers it clarifies that it was left in the care of Western Union with specific instructions on where and when to deliver the letter. There was apparently a betting pool as to whether the recipient would even be there (the courier lost). |
|
| Write Back to the Future / int_8f4ee60f | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_8f4ee60f | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Back to the Future (Franchise) | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_8f4ee60f | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_96d99633 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_96d99633 | comment |
Gravity Falls: Journal 3 ties up one of the show's loose ends by having a letter addressed to Dipper and Mabel in which Blendin Blandin explains that in order to escape the custody of the Time Police due to his part in causing Weirdmageddon and nearly bringing about The End of the World as We Know It, he had been jumping through time, only to get stuck in the late 1800s and become a pocket watch repairman. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_96d99633 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_96d99633 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Gravity Falls: Journal 3 | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_96d99633 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_984757ed | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_984757ed | comment |
Marnie's diary serves as an unintentional message to the future in When Marnie Was There | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_984757ed | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_984757ed | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| When Marnie Was There | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_984757ed | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_9d963831 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_9d963831 | comment |
Septimus Heap: Septimus does this in Physik by hiding a letter in a book he knows will still be around in 500 years, and Nicko and Snorri do this in Queste. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_9d963831 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_9d963831 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Septimus Heap | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_9d963831 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_9e876c22 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_9e876c22 | comment |
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, threatening to reveal their sordid secrets (cheating with the secretary, left his squad to die, swindled a widow). 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. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_9e876c22 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_9e876c22 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Good Omens | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_9e876c22 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_a183d57f | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_a183d57f | comment |
In the Futurama episode "The Late Philip J. Fry", Leela discovers that Fry's been sent into the future, unable to return. She goes into a cave and blasts a pattern of holes in the ceiling. The resulting stalagmite formations over millions of years spell out a touching message for him. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_a183d57f | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_a183d57f | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Futurama | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_a183d57f | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_a676bd24 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_a676bd24 | comment |
In Dark Fall 2: Lights Out, 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. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_a676bd24 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_a676bd24 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Dark Fall (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_a676bd24 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_a698aa86 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_a698aa86 | comment |
In the Ghostbusters fic Future Shocks by Fritz Baugh, the Ghostbusters of the year 2024 travel back in time to the year 1986 to help the original team overcome the machinations of a time traveler. In a sequel set almost twenty years later, Winston and Ray exploit this trope to once again get aid from the 2024 team, who claim that the message was lost behind a cabinet for several years, and good thing too, as it arrived before their first time using time travel. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_a698aa86 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_a698aa86 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Ghostbusters (Franchise) | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_a698aa86 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_abbb5fed | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_abbb5fed | comment |
The story "The Count of Time" in the tie-in novel El tiempo es el que es of The Ministry of Time (based on an unproduced episode), starts with the discovery of a message left in a Medieval manuscript by a time-traveler asking to be rescued from the year 808 AD. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_abbb5fed | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_abbb5fed | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| The Ministry of Time | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_abbb5fed | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b12e31c6 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b12e31c6 | comment |
Star Trek: Federation: After the crew of the USS Enterprise encounters the Enterprise-D in a time distortion, in 2270 Captain Kirk decides to write a letter to the commander of the Federation starship that took part in a rescue operation near the Kabreigny Object in 2366. He has the letter sealed in the Starfleet archives with orders that it not be delivered for a century, making sure that it would not be delivered until well past the time the rescue operation took place from Captain Picard's perspective. Shortly after the destruction of the Enterprise-D in 2371 the letter is unsealed and delivered to Picard on Titan. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b12e31c6 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b12e31c6 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Star Trek: Federation | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_b12e31c6 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b24f49ab | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b24f49ab | comment |
Probably the best-known modern example is the letter Marty receives from Doc Brown at the end of Back to the Future Part II: Doc is in the DeLorean time machine when it gets struck by lightning, sending Doc to 1885 and stranding Marty in 1955. Doc writes a letter to be delivered to Marty's exact time and place to let him know that he's happy where he is, making this an example of "I'm happy in the past." Doc sent the letter simply for Marty's benefit, and in Part III it is revealed that it includes with it a map to the location where he hid the DeLorean after landing in the past and instructions for repairing it so Marty can return home to 1985. Later, however, Marty finds evidence that Doc is killed a week after writing the letter, prompting him to go to 1885 to save him. The courier who delivers it clarifies that it was left in the care of Western Union with specific instructions on where and when to deliver the letter. There was apparently a betting pool as to whether the recipient would even be there (the courier lost). | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b24f49ab | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b24f49ab | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Back to the Future Part II | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_b24f49ab | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b2913b67 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b2913b67 | comment |
In one episode of 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. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b2913b67 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b2913b67 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Friday the 13th: The Series | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_b2913b67 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b4996199 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b4996199 | comment |
A Spider-Man/X-Men series of novels called The Time's Arrow trilogy features Spidey and Bishop being trapped in the wild west period and using a photograph of themselves with a written message on it to the present day period on order for the rest of the X-Men to send them another device to the past so they can return home. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b4996199 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b4996199 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Spider-Man (Comic Book) | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_b4996199 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b859e0e1 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b859e0e1 | comment |
Part of the plot of The Door into Summer | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b859e0e1 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b859e0e1 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| The Door into Summer | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_b859e0e1 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b9b2268a | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b9b2268a | comment |
A variant in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny as it isn't the time travellers but the inhabitants of the past who create a time machine and puzzle to keep it hidden to specifically make sure someone comes back in time from the future to only that point in time. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b9b2268a | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b9b2268a | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_b9b2268a | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b9be26db | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b9be26db | comment |
Inverted in 5ive Days to Midnight. A case is sent back in time in an attempt to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b9be26db | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_b9be26db | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| 5ive Days to Midnight | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_b9be26db | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_ba4b95c9 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_ba4b95c9 | comment |
Used pretty well in the sci-fi action series Time Trax — the main character was able to arrange for someone to be taken to the future by dosing the person with the needed time travel drug, then leaving a coded classified ad in a paper that his team in the future was monitoring. Unfortunately, this conflicts with the show's insistence that "time travel" is actually "interdimensional travel" to a time-shifted parallel world. What this means is that nothing they do affects their own reality, so leaving messages in this world's newspapers would not cause them to magically appear for their colleagues to read in the future. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_ba4b95c9 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_ba4b95c9 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Time Trax | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_ba4b95c9 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_ba56500d | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_ba56500d | comment |
Wyatt does this on Timeless when the team are in 1962, in an effort to prevent his wife's death. It doesn't work, in large part because Western Union stopped their telegram service a few years before Wyatt's wife was killed. In a later episode, Rufus reveals that there is an established protocol for using this technique in case the team gets stranded. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_ba56500d | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_ba56500d | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Timeless | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_ba56500d | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_bb3fde3d | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_bb3fde3d | comment |
In Danny Phantom episode, "The Ultimate Enemy" Jazz (in the present) sends a message to Danny, who's trapped 10 years in the future. She used a particularly foolproof method, too: she used the boo-merang, an item designed to target Danny Phantom specifically, with a message that she attached using her Iconic Item (her headband). | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_bb3fde3d | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_bb3fde3d | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Danny Phantom | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_bb3fde3d | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_c0c57462 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_c0c57462 | comment |
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. | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_c0c57462 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_c0c57462 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Chrono Trigger (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Write Back to the Future / int_c0c57462 | |
| Write Back to the Future / int_c16ac0e8 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
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Done in a West Coast Avengers story when the team is stuck in the past with a broken time machine that can only go further into the past. They plan to keep going backwards until they reach ancient Egypt, where time-traveler Rama-Tut can repair it. When they stop in 1776, they meet an ancestor of their member La Esperita. They write a message to La Esperita on a piece of silk (that would last longer than ordinary paper) and ask the ancestor to keep it in her family Bible. When the WCA reach Egypt, Rama-Tut is of no help — but Hawkeye has a conversation with the moon god Khonshu. In the present, Khonshu's hero Moon Knight suddenly has a vision, jets off to California, introduces himself to La Esperita, and tells her to read the message in her Bible. | |
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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. "Blink" revolves almost entirely around such messages. First, Sally finds a message addressed to her written behind the wallpaper of a derelict house. When she returns with her friend Kathy, Sally answers the door to someone with a letter for her while Kathy goes upstairs. The letter is from Kathy saying she had a long and happy life, delivered by her grandson; meanwhile, Kathy is sent back in time. Another character is asked to keep a message and take it to Sally by The Slow Path, and DVD Easter Eggs are inserted into seventeen unrelated DVDs which are all DVDs that Sally owns. At the end, she gives a list of these messages to the Doctor, closing the Stable Time Loop. A similar thing happened to companions Amy and Rory Williams in the end of "The Angels Take Manhattan". A mini-webisode, "P.S." has Brian Williams, Rory's dad, receive a letter while watering the plants in his son's and daughter-in-law's house, delivered by their adopted son (who is older than his grandfather), stating that they got stuck in the past and will never see Brian again. Come to think of it, the Angels seem to trigger this trope almost every time they send someone into the past. River Song uses this tactic all the damn time to get the Doctor's attention (mainly because he won't answer his phone), leaving messages in places that are sure to get his attention sooner or later. (It doesn't matter when exactly he finds them, because he can land the TARDIS precisely at the time she asks, even if that was millennia prior.) Occasionally, the Doctor uses the same technique to get a message to River. The Doctor does an indirect version of this to Amy and Rory in "The Impossible Astronaut". Among other things, he invades a crowd scene during the filming of a Laurel and Hardy movie he knows they own so that they'll see him when they watch it, and fools around with an Elizabethan-era noblewoman, lets himself get caught by her husband, and makes an excessively memorable jailbreak after being imprisoned for adultery in order to amuse the Ponds via history book. And in the Big Finish Doctor Who adventure "The Kingmaker", the Doctor and his companions, separated by two years when the TARDIS is stolen (by William Shakespeare) exchange notes by leaving them in the care of the owner of the eponymous tavern. The letters left by Peri and Erimem travel forward to the Doctor in the usual way, while the Doctor leaves his own notes on the assumption that one of his future selves (the "big-eared Northern chap" in a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo) will collect them and deliver them to the past. In "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS", the Doctor inscribes the words BIG FRIENDLY BUTTON on a temporal probe that he knows is going to end up in the TARDIS control and where the words will be burnt on to Clara's palm. In "The Name of the Doctor", Madame Vastra, needing to draw Clara into a psychic conference, writes a letter to her and arranges for it to be delivered on April 10, 2013. The letter is impregnated with a drug to knock her out. In "The Day of the Doctor", Eleven carves a note into the wall at the Tower of London for Clara to find in the present. It's the activation code for Captain Jack Harkness' Vortex manipulator, which she uses to travel back to free the Doctors. "Survivors of the Flux". While stranded at the start of the Twentieth Century, Yaz, Dan, and Professor Jericho create a message visible from orbit near the Great Wall of China for Karvanista, who along with the Lupari fleet is protecting Earth in 2021. Karvanista sees the message but it only annoys him, as he doesn't have a time machine so what's he supposed to do about it? |
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The Day My Butt Went Psycho!: In "The Flushinator", Zack writes a message in wet cement, asking his future self to travel back in time and hide a futuristic freeze ray in the bushes beside the sidewalk. He then reaches into the bushes and finds the freeze ray there. | |
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In Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, Claire and Jamie write to their daughter and son-in-law, storing the letters in a chest addressed to their oldest grandchild. | |
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In Back to the Future: The Game Marty once again does this in Episode 5 by giving young Emmet Brown a newspaper from the future, with instruction not to look at it until he receives the Key to the City (which the newspaper depicts). The subtle message being that Marty was stuck in the past and needed Doc to go back and pick him up. | |
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Timecop: During the protagonist Jack Logan's investigations in the past, he would frequently send back intel to his colleagues at the time agency by hiding coded messages in things like newspaper ads. | |
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Superman Vs. The Terminator: Death To The Future #1 has Cyborg Superman leaving information for the future Skynet in a graveyard sculpture. | |
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The Innsmouth Legacy. In Winter Tide, Dr Trumball's mind is swapped with a Yith and she falls in love with another abductee while studying in their Archives. After Trumball is returned to her body, she asks Aphra Marsh (who when she becomes a Deep One will be effectively immortal) to memorise a letter so it can be delivered to that person when they return to their own body thousands of years in the future. | |
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Casey and Andy: President Cleveland sends a message forward a century, to deliver a crotch-punch to his archenemy. And husband to his wife. | |
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Inverted in The Riftwar Cycle book Into a Dark Realm. Pug has a magical box which he uses to send his past self messages. | |
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This also comes up in an episode of Stargate Atlantis. Due to a freak cosmic accident, Sheppard is transported 48,000 years into the future. In order to help him come back to the present, McKay programs a sophisticated, artificially intelligent simulacrum of himself and leaves it in Atlantis where it waits until Sheppard arrives. | |
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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. | |
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In Criminal Case: Travel in Time, the team does this while stranded in The '60s by opening a trust fund account for their boss then leaving a distress message inside the vault for him to read in 2029. It works, but unfortunately, the timeline had already been altered by the Big Bad, turning 2029 into a Bad Future where he the boss holds no power. | |
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Discussed and carried out in "Every Good Fairytale": Sherlock Holmes promises to write to his wife, two centuries into his future. Beth is positive they'll survive, as her family possesses Watson's journals, and she turns out to be right. | |
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In Quick to the Trigger, the old archaeological dig Dr. Oliver went to in Egypt now has a word carved in one of the bracelets that reads Trueheart. Kotaro states that it's the effects of their friends who traveled back to Ancient Egypt to signify that things are going right on their end. | |
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The novel Timeline had several of these. The first clue that time travel is happening is when the head scientist visits the time travel corporation, and suddenly his archaeologists find a thousand-year-old parchment with his handwriting on it, as well as his glasses. This kicks off the plot. At the end of the book, the archeologists find the grave of one of their team who stayed in the past, with a message for them in the epitaph. | |
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In the movie 12 Monkeys, as Cole 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. Problem is, they don't tell him the details, so he expects someone "in the know" to answer... | |
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In the Family Guy episode "The Big Bang Theory", Stewie and Brian head back in time to the life of Leonardo da Vinci in order to prevent his assassination, which due to a variety of reasons is the lynchpin that would cause all of spacetime to fall apart. When they ultimately fail, only for reality to remain intact, they deduce that Stewie — a descendant to Da Vinci — is meant to take Da Vinci's place for the time being, and so he sends Brian to their present-day home. It too remains intact before there's a knock on the door: a representative from The Vatican delivering a message from "Da Vinci himself", who did so with instructions it be on their current exact time and date. The message — written a week after Brian left — has Stewie explain that he placed himself in a cryogenic stasis device in their basement, instructing Brian to dig him up. | |
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This was attempted in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Eye of the Needle". A very narrow wormhole led almost home, but 20 years into the past. The crew wrote messages to home and gave them to someone on the other end of the wormhole, to pass on to Starfleet 20 years later, in the present. Unfortunately, that someone died several years before the USS Voyager left, and the messages were never delivered. | |
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In season 6 of Charmed, when Chris gets dragged back into the future by his fiancée, Bianca, the sisters write a spell to give him back his powers and stick it under a 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. | |
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At one point The Tick and Arthur are stranded in the prehistoric past. Arthur takes months, years carving a message into the hardest stone he can find in the hopes that the message would survive millions of years of erosion to be discovered in the future The Tick breaks it. For those who're curious, some hard granite erodes at a rate of approximately one inch every million years; since they were cohabiting with Australopithecus, letters would probably have to be carved at least a foot deep and wide spaced to still be legible today, assuming they were left exposed to the elements. | |
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Likewise, at the end of Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox, Artemis sends back a note to the past Mulch Diggums after he defeats Opal Koboi to break Artemis and Holly out after they were captured by the past Butler. | |
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In Babylon 5, after traveling 1000 years into the past and becoming the prophet Valen, Jeffrey Sinclair writes a letter to himself and leaves it in the care of the Minbari, who delivers it to him just before the beginning of the sequence of events that end in him traveling back in time. | |
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Men in Black: The Series has one episode where Jay, Kay, and Elle needed to stop a giant radioactive alien bug from reaching and destroying Phoenix in two hours, but in the present time it was way too big to take down so Jay and Kay travel back in time to the Wild West era when the alien was just an easily breakable egg hidden in an Abandoned Mine. Unfortunately they got captured by the back-then Boom Town sheriff and thrown into jail, berift of their normal advanced weapons (even if they weren't afraid of messing up the timeline by intoducing future alien tech for civilians to witness) and time travel in the series operates under San Dimas Time rules so they can't go back in time and try again. Kay's solution is to bury a small machine into the dirt floor of their jail cell, which emerges by itself at a preset time back in the present day of the now-Ghost Town where only Elle is around to see the message of "follow us back in time — we need help." | |
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The Diffy family in Phil of the Future attempts to do this when their time machine breaks down for an extended period of time in the early 21st century. Phil and Pim's school plans to bury a time capsule that isn't supposed to be opened for 100 years. Their parents Lloyd and Barbara recognize the capsule as an odd thing they both found by accident on a date before they were married, and plot to use this trope to create a Temporal Paradox so they don't get stuck in the past. It fails, because one student put in a can of spring-loaded snakes as a prank, causing Lloyd to spill the drink he and Barbara brought on their picnic, and Lloyd uses his note from the past to wipe up the spill and never reads it. | |
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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. | |
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In The Extinction Gambit, the first novel in The Extraordinaires trilogy, The Retrievers — having met Kingsley and Evadne when they travelled through time to 1666 — leave a message with a Demimonde law firm to be delivered to a girl matching Evadne's description in 1908. | |
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Inverted in The Lake House: the letters time-travel; the people take The Slow Path. | |
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Data's head was used for this, in the Star Trek: The Next Generation two-parter "Time's Arrow"; with Data's head having been blown off before his body and the rest of the crew went through the now-closed portal, Picard is able to use an iron filing to tap a binary-coded message into the neural net of the damaged head to warn the Enterprise not to destroy the portal and how they might use it to bring him home, correctly assuming that his crew will use the head they salvaged when this mission began to repair Data. | |
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