#If you could travel back in time driver

Sometimes this is because of a Delayed Ripple Effect - the timeline has already been changed, but the change hasn't 'caught up' with the heroes yet and they can still work to fix everything before the change catches up with them and prevents them from acting further. But in this kind of story, there's some mechanism or other that will prevent the heroes from fixing the future after a certain amount of time in the past. Normally this doesn't make any sense - presumably, you have until the future to prevent something bad from happening in the future. San Dimas Time: The heroes go back to the past and have a time limit before something bad happens in the future.They have to find a way to break out of the loop and start moving forward in time again, often while using what they learned from experiencing that bit of the past so many times. 'Groundhog Day' Loop: The heroes relive the same bits of the past, over and over and over again.Whether those time travellers can return to their 'original' timeline or are stuck in the alternate one depends on the work. It's a distinct separation from a Stable Time Loop in that the future will always be different because of the intervention of time travellers. Alternate Timeline: The heroes go back to the past and change it such that the universe splits in twain.Either way, they might make it back to the present if they take The Slow Path. Or they might discover that they're in a Stable Time Loop and can't change anything even if they wanted to. If they can't, they have to choose between living a quiet life and trying not to interfere with the past, or using their future knowledge to make the past better. They now have to figure out a way to get back to the future. Trapped in the Past: The heroes go back to the past and get stuck there.Nobody will even remember that anything was ever different - not even the time travellers themselves, unless they have Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory. If they succeed, everything snaps back to normal without any further intervention. Reset Button: Something happens that changes the present, and the heroes go back to the past to prevent that thing from happening.In any event, you can't go back in time, kill Hitler, and prevent World War II from happening. the past villain is replaced with an even nastier entity, the present loses technological and social advancements spurred by the past conflict), or time itself will prevent you from doing it. Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act: Sometimes, the story makes it impossible to go back in time and stop a Real Life bad thing from happening.If this happens, the heroes have to go back to the past and undo their own changes, which returns everything to how it was. Set Wrong What Was Once Made Right: Sometimes, if you go back to the past to try and make it 'better', you end up making it worse, either by accidentally making a Bad Future, invoking a Temporal Paradox or Time Crash, or drawing the ire of the Clock Roaches.It can result in a Terminator Twosome, where the heroes follow the villains back to the past to try and stop them from changing it. Better for the villains, obviously, is bad for the heroes. Make Wrong What Once Went Right: The villains go to the past to change it so that the present is better for them.Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The heroes go to the past, this time because things went wrong in the past and they want to change it to make a better 'present'.Other times, it's a Wayback Trip: the heroes go to the past, realise that history is different from what they thought it was, and then change it so that it conforms to what they 'know' as history - they think they 'changed the past', but history already accounted for their actions. Sometimes it's because You Can't Fight Fate, but in the past instead of the future. Even if they interact with the past, the timeline has already accounted for it because You Already Changed the Past. Stable Time Loop: The heroes go to the past, only to realise that they can't actually change anything.They may or may not be successful, and if they aren't, it's because, well. So they return to their own time and resolve to prevent the Bad Future from happening. You Can't Fight Fate: The heroes go to the future, only to find a Bad Future where bad things will happen if things keep going the way they are in the present.But broadly speaking, time travel stories can fall into the following categories:

#If you could travel back in time driver

It can range from simply a device for moving The Hero from one Adventure Town to another, to a driver of the plot in itself as the characters try to understand the Nonsensoleum behind it. Time travel is a very versatile plot device. For related tropes, see Time Travel Tropes.