History Main / HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct

*** This trope is discussed in ''Series/StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds'' in concerns with [[spoiler:Khan Noonian-Singh]] as he is so important to humanity’s historical path than getting rid of him would bring about a BadFuture, no matter how benign or malicious.

** In "Storm Front" Captain Archer is urged by one of the people in the AlternateUniverse where Germany is winning [=WW2=] to use his phase cannons to destroy Berlin, but he tells her to be patient and let him correct history his way. This is a somewhat odd example, as history had already been massively screwed with, and conceivably Archer could have sterilized all of Earth to no ill effect, as the one event he did need to change would reset everything anyway.
** Incidentally, that timeline may (or may not) have been the result of this trope applied to ''Lenin'' - someone assassinated him in 1916, the Soviet Union never came to be, and Hitler could concentrate on the West.
** This trope is discussed in ''Series/StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds'' in concerns with [[spoiler:Khan Noonian-Singh]] as he is so important to humanity’s historical path than getting rid of him would bring about a BadFuture, no matter how benign or malicious.

* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': A man claiming to be a time-travelling historian attempts to invoke this when Picard asks for his advice on their crisis of the week. Picard is profoundly unimpressed, calling it a problem for first-year philosophy students rather than reality. It turns out to be a moot point, as the historian [[spoiler: is actually a time-travelling conman from the past.]]
* ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'':

* This trope is discussed in ''Series/StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds'' in concerns with [[spoiler:Khan Noonian-Singh]] as he is so important to humanity’s historical path than getting rid of him would bring about a BadFuture, no matter how benign or malicious.

Ironically, it would seem that neither FDR nor Churchill (or even Stalin, when allied with them) has this immunity, because stories come up all the time about heroes having to undo a mad would-be Nazi's [[MakeWrongWhatOnceWentRight altering the outcome of World War II using time travel]] -- villains simply wouldn't care about any of the stated consequences.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.

First of all, it often proves near-impossible to kill the man in the first place; like most dictators, he was protected by various [[PraetorianGuard bodyguards]] and [[StateSec security forces]]. After all, the guy survived about ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assassination_attempts_on_Adolf_Hitler 42 (known) real life assassination attempts]]'' -- maybe one of them was ([[TimeTravelTenseTrouble or will have been]]) yours! Trying to circumvent these by targeting him before his rise to power begins will usually turn out to be ludicrously difficult as well. Locating a lone, disillusioned war veteran wandering around post-WWI Europe is perhaps the ultimate [[NeedleInAStackOfNeedles needle-in-a-haystack]] search.

Secondly, even if you do manage to kill him, [[NiceJobBreakingItHero something as bad or worse might appear in his place]]: maybe an even worse dictator takes over and actually wins, or maybe [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn the Soviet Union]] starts the war instead. In addition, if it wasn't for Hitler's nightmarish slaughter of "undesirables" that took place under his leadership, the rest of the world wouldn't have experienced the sort of collective shock upon discovery of the Holocaust that spurred them into beginning the process of purging racist elements from their own nations and colonies. To do otherwise was to essentially agree with Hitler's beliefs, [[GodwinsLaw something that no sane person would even contemplate after 1945]].

Even worse, killing Hitler may prevent the assassin from existing in the first place, resulting in a GrandfatherParadox. In-story, this may cause any effects from [[InSpiteOfANail just making nothing that the time traveler does change anything]], to [[ApocalypseHow completely destroying the universe itself]].

Similar to the Grandfather Paradox which paradoxically prevents your birth, the Killing Hitler paradox erases your reason for going back in time to kill him. What are you going back in time for? To bump off some random Austrian housepainter?

Furthermore, while killing Grandpa might have a limited “butterfly effect”, killing Hitler would have wider consequences for everyone in the world, even just studying him in school.

Also, there is the many-worlds idea, where traveling back in time causes a parallel universe to rise, as in that case eliminating Hitler would create a new timeline without Hitler, but the old timeline would also still exist. Your time tripping is ineffective at eliminating the pain and suffering of the original timeline. [[GoneHorriblyWrong It might also create a new timeline with even more pain and suffering]]. After all, if Hitler didn’t rise to power, who’s to say that someone worse wouldn’t replace him?

In short, it appears to be a cosmic law that ''something'' bad has to go down in the period between 1933 and 1945. Perhaps it's how World War II defined the 20th century; the technological advances, the political foundations, and the example of man's inhumanity to man at its absolute worst that changed whole societies' perception of evil and is ever present with us today. To imagine a world without it is to change everything. It may also be that Hitler, for all that he's considered the pinnacle of modern evil, is still a creature of his time and place; killing one man who did evil doesn't get rid of the circumstances and structure that put him in the position to do evil in the first place.

For similar reasons, UrbanFantasy usually avoids World War II in its backstory. Either it is taken for granted with no mention (as the modern world would be unrecognizable without it), the characters are not powerful enough to have changed history, or no superhuman or ancient conspiracy was involved with the peak example of HumansAreBastards. SealedGoodInACan is typically how this is excused if benevolent characters were both strong enough and would have been active in the 1930s and 40s. Evil ones may express [[EvenEvilHasStandards disgust]].

On the narrative side of things, consider the AnthropicPrinciple at work. Who would read a story in which someone tries to change history for the better, [[TheUntwist succeeds]], and creates a stable utopian timeline that isn't infested with ClockRoaches? After they've killed Hitler, what would the author do with the rest of the book?

Ironically, it would seem that neither FDR nor Churchill (or even Stalin, when allied with them) has this immunity, because stories come up all the time about heroes having to undo a mad would-be Nazi's [[MakeWrongWhatOnceWentRight altering the outcome of World War II using time travel]] -- villains simply don't care about any of the stated consequences.

''Vox'' has an eight-minute Website/YouTube video about where this trope came from. It's called [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJn8iUe6rwY Would you use time travel to kill baby Hitler?]]

See [[Analysis/HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct the Analysis page]] for musings on how this trope might have worked in RealLife had Hitler actually died prematurely. One last thing to think about: Is it moral if someone just shoots him before he does any evil? Do the ends justify the means? [[note]]Some works get around this moral dilemma either by preventing his conception, by killing him after he's begun promoting Nazism (which is evil in its own right) but before World War II and the Holocaust, or by getting his art school application approved or otherwise diverting him from his political ambitions. This doesn’t address the other ramifications as detailed above, though.[[/note]]

* ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheDialOfDestiny'': The titular dial (aka Antikythera) is an ancient artifact that can take anyone through a time fissure and with the right calculations, could send anyone back in time and alter history. Naturally, someone wants to use it to go back to 1939 and kill Hitler before he can invade Poland, but the twist in the plot is that [[spoiler:it's the surviving Nazis, led by [[BigBad Jürgen Voller]], who want to kill Hitler... because they blame [[GeneralFailure him]] for Nazi Germany losing World War II, and seek to [[MakeWrongWhatOnceWentRight replace him with a more competent Führer]]. Luckily, it turns out that the Dial of Destiny is fixed to send time travelers to 212-213 BC, during the Siege of Syracuse, and operates on a StableTimeLoop, meaning that [[YouAlreadyChangedThePast Voller's plan was doomed from the start]].]]

* ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheDialOfDestiny'': The titular dial (aka Antikythera) is an ancient artifact that take anyone through a time fissure and with the right calculations, could send anyone back in time and alter history. Naturally, someone wants to use it to go back to 1939 and kill Hitler before he can invade Poland but the twist in the plot is that [[spoiler:it's the surviving Nazis, led by [[BigBad Jürgen Voller]], who want to kill Hitler... because they blame [[GeneralFailure him]] for Nazi Germany losing World War II, and seek to [[MakeWrongWhatOnceWentRight replace him with a more competent Führer]]. Luckily, it turns out that Dial of Destiny is fixed to send time travelers to 212-213 BC, during the Siege of Syracuse, and operates on a StableTimeLoop, meaning that [[YouAlreadyChangedThePast Voller's plan was doomed from the start]].]]

* ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheDialOfDestiny'': The titular dial (aka Antikythera) is an ancient artifact that take anyone through a time fissure and with the right calculations, could send anyone back in time and alter history. Naturally, someone wants to use it to go back to 1939 and kill Hitler before he can invade Poland but the twist in the plot is that [[spoiler:it's the surviving Nazis, led by [[BigBad Jürgen Voller]], who want to kill Hitler... because they blame [[GeneralFailure him]] for Nazi Germany losing World War II, and seek to replace him with a more competent Führer. Luckily, it turns out that Dial of Destiny is fixed to send time travelers to 212-213 BC, during the Siege of Syracuse, and operates on a StableTimeLoop, meaning that [[YouAlreadyChangedThePast Voller's plan was doomed from the start]].]]

* ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheDialOfDestiny'': The titular dial (aka Antikythera) is an ancient artifact that take anyone through a time fissure and with the right calculations, could send anyone back in time and alter history. Naturally, someone wants to use it to go back to 1939 and kill Hitler before he can invade Poland but the twist in the plot is [[spoiler:it's the surviving Nazis, led by [[BigBad Jürgen Voller]], who want to kill Hitler... because they blame [[GeneralFailure him]] for Nazi Germany losing World War II, and seek to replace him with a more competent Führer. Luckily, it turns out that Dial of Destiny is fixed to send time travelers to 212-213 BC, during the Siege of Syracuse, and operates on a StableTimeLoop, meaning that [[YouAlreadyChangedThePast Voller's plan was doomed from the start]].]]

* ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheDialOfDestiny'': The titular dial (aka Antikythera) is an ancient artifact that take anyone through a time fissure and with the right calculations, could send anyone back in time and alter history. Naturally, someone wants to use it to go back to 1939 and kill Hitler before he can invade Poland but the twist in the plot is [[spoiler:it's the surviving Nazis, led by [[BigBad Jürgen Voller]], who want to kill Hitler... because they blame [[GeneralFailure him]] for Nazi Germany losing ''World War II'', and seek to replace him with a more competent Führer. Luckily, it turns out that Dial of Destiny is fixed to send time travelers to 212-213 BC, during the Siege of Syracuse, and operates on a StableTimeLoop, meaning that [[YouAlreadyChangedThePast Voller's plan was doomed from the start]].]]

* ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheDialOfDestiny'': The titular dial (aka Antikythera) is an ancient artifact that take anyone through a time fissure and with the right calculations, could send anyone back in time and alter history. Naturally, someone wants to use it to go back to 1939 and kill Hitler before he can invade Poland but the twist in the plot is [[spoiler:it's the surviving Nazis, led by [[BigBad Jürgen Voller]], who wants to kill Hitler... because they blame [[GeneralFailure him]] for Germany losing ''World War II'' and seek to replace him with a more competent Führer. Luckily, it turns out that Dial of Destiny is fixed to send time travelers to 212-213 BC, during the Siege of Syracuse, and operates on a StableTimeLoop, meaning that [[YouAlreadyChangedThePast Voller's plan was doomed from the start]].]]

* Subverted as a DiscussedTrope in ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'': in the episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft", Cartman directly asks Clyde if he would go back in time and kill Hitler given the chance, then adds that he himself wouldn't because he thinks Hitler was awesome.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' episode "The Late Phillip J. Fry," Farnsworth creates a time machine that can only go forwards in time. However, it can still be used to travel to any time you want because after the end of the universe, it just restarts from the beginning and everything plays out the exact same way as before (assuming no outside interference). During one loop, Farnsworth makes a stop in Nazi Germany to kill Hitler. However, we don't get to see how this changes history since they overshoot their destination again and have to make another go-around. This time, Farnsworth is too lazy to stop and tries to shoot Hitler from the time machine while it's moving. He misses and kills UsefulNotes/EleanorRoosevelt instead (we don't get to see how ''that'' changes history either).

* ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeagueTheFlashpointParadox'' by Professor Zoom during his BreakingSpeech against the Flash. However, he notes instead of killing Hitler, as is typical of this trope, that The Flash could have used his powers of time travel (which he achieved by running so fast that he could go backward in time) to "Stop Kennedy from being assassinated or making sure Hitler stays in art school. But no, you had to go save mommy".
** In ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'', one three-part episode, The Savage Time, involves traveling back in time, where ComicBook/VandalSavage has usurped control over the Nazis after being told, in a time-traveled message from his future self, that he "has to get rid of that lunatic Hitler" and seize control in order for the Germans to win the second World War. Strangely, though, Savage only freezes Hitler in cryogenic suspension, rather than more permanently disposing of him, and thusly Hitler is thawed out and restored to his "proper place" after Savage is defeated, hence fitting this trope. An attempted AuthorsSavingThrow was a subsequent commentary by the producers that this means that, in Justice League-Earth, World War II happened but the Holocaust did ''not'', courtesy of Savage's aborted attempt at changing the future.
* In ''WesternAnimation/MikeTysonMysteries'', [[TheAtoner the reformed]] Mike Tyson swore he would never use his fists for destruction except for two people: The "grandmaster" of the Klu Klux Klan, and Adolf Hitler. [[ChekhovsGun This last one ends up being used by Pigeon to trick Mike]] [[ItMakesSenseInContext into freeing the brain of Bobby Fisher, which was put inside Deep Blue by the android CEO of IBM.]]
** Fortunately for Mike, he later manages to accomplish his dream of killing Hitler when Marquess takes them back in time to 1889 to apologize to his son and Creator/OscarWilde, and they happen across Klara Hitler who asks them to watch her baby. Unfortunately, when they return to the present, they see that without Hitler the Jews [[TakeOverTheWorld took over the world]]. Mike doesn't seem to mind too much, however.

* ''WesternAnimation/LoveDeathAndRobots'': "Alternate Histories" supposes an app that postulates a series of increasingly ridiculous scenarios for Hitler dying at art college. Lampshaded by the app, which states that Hitler dying early is one of the most popular scenarios people look at. Beaten to death on the street[[note]]result, WWII delayed a couple of years, America nukes Berlin instead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki[[/note]], run over by horse-drawn sausage cart[[note]]Austria outlaws horses and goes {{Dieselpunk}} allowing Germany to win WWI[[/note]], suffocated by experimental Russian gelatin-encasing weapon[[note]]Russian nobility use their new weapon to kill off Communists and win WWI[[/note]], sexed to death by space hookers[[note]]space hookers teach the world free love[[/note]], crushed by meteor[[note]]the next asteroid destroys human life on Earth, allowing the rats to rebuild civilization and nuke themselves into oblivion, followed by the rise of the squid[[/note]], and finally caught in the crossfire between time-traveling Nazis and anti-Nazis only to be saved by his own future self and then make contact with future self causing a paradox[[note]]app bluescreens[[/note]].
* Invoked in ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'', where after a planet of snakes have decided to invade Earth, Rick goes back in time and leaves them a book that will lead them to invent time travel, expecting them to exploit this recklessly. Sure enough, after averting Snake Lincoln's assassination leads to the rise of snake Nazis, this leads to an attempt to go back in time to kill Snake Hitler that culminates in countless snakes going back in time to either save or kill Hitler to the point that it leads to a massive pile of snake corpses. This ends up alerting the TimePolice, who then go back in time to stop them from becoming sapient in the first place.

* Discussed in ''Flight 1942'', when a modern-day plane accidentally travels back to 1940. Once the passengers have learned what has happened, one proposes that they use their knowledge of the future to try and kill Hitler, particularly since another pair of passengers are historians with expertise of this era, but other passengers shoot that down. While the original passenger protests that they can use their knowledge of the future to take Hitler by surprise, others point out he isn't trained for this kind of thing, and a soldier on the flight explicitly states that it would only take one mistake on the passenger's part for Hitler to get access to the future knowledge they're trying to exploit in the first place.

* In the AlternateHistory novels of Creator/HarryTurtledove's ''Literature/{{Timeline 191}}'', the Confederates win the War of Secession and a subsequent war with the Union, the United States allies with Germany to win World War One, so World War Two features a fascist France and CSA against the USA and a Kaiser-ruled Germany. The Confederacy is led by Hitler-analog Jake Featherston and his ultranationalist "Freedom Party," complete with a genocidal campaign against Confederate blacks, but we also meet the actual Hitler, a German Army sergeant seething with hate but languishing in obscurity.
* In Creator/AlastairReynolds' novel ''Century Rain'', UsefulNotes/WorldWarII is, in fact averted (although not by killing Hitler, he lives till old age) but the result is a negative one, as it effectively halts the progress of science and technology at pre-1940s levels. 'course, it happens in a separate world, not our world[[spoiler:, created as some kind of museum to protect human past. And technology may have been artificially halted to prevent rockets from banging on the roof]]. Effective. Most great leaps in technology pre-Internet was done in, or for, war.

* In the novel ''Days of Cain'' by J. R. Dunn, the Moiety is an history-monitoring agency run by mysterious hyper-evolved humans from the end of time, whose directive is that history must remain ''absolutely untouched'' so they can study it (in this sense, it's the opposite of the agency in Creator/IsaacAsimov's ''The End of Eternity'', who constantly tinker with history in order to improve it). The novel centers around a search for rogue agents who are trying to stop the Holocaust (which must be preserved to maintain historical integrity). Interestingly, it's revealed that the other customary linch-pin of history, the John F. Kennedy assassination (as well as the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy and the death of Mary Jo Kopechne), were the Moiety's attempt to stop the Kennedys' rise to power (which was not supposed to happen and was the doing of another rogue agent).

* In the two-part alternate history novels ''Fox On the Rhine'' and ''Fox At The Front'', Operation Valkyrie works because of a sneeze. Hitler dies, and guess what happens? [[NiceJobBreakingItHero The above described situation with Himmler takes place almost exactly as described]]. Though, things do end up seemingly better than in real life, as everyone's favorite MagnificentBastard Rommel ends up being TheHero, and Himmler ends up dying in a [[HoistByHisOwnPetard much worse way than Hitler]]. Oh yeah, and America gets to throw their first nuke at the Soviets instead of Japan.

* In Li Harbin's ''Time Ghost'' series, killing Hitler has apparently gone wrong so many times that all time travel units have blocks on traveling to any time in which the man was alive, because the consequences are dire. This becomes a plot point when one Time Spy decides to prevent World War One instead, thinking it would change things so that World War Two didn't happen, which via chain reaction would mean that World War Three (which nearly wiped humanity out entirely) wouldn't happen. The resulting clusterfuck takes up the bulk of Time Ghost's main plot as this goes very, very, ''very'' wrong.

* Inverted ''and'' somewhat averted in Stanley Shapiro's ''A Time To Remember.'' The narrator travels back in time to prevent the JFK assassination, fails, and is himself arrested as the assassin. His girlfriend then goes back, fails to prevent the shooting, but does prevent the hero's arrest. Finally the [[CoolOldGuy elderly]] [[TheProfessor genius]] who invented the machine determines to set things right by traveling back himself and [[spoiler: shooting Oswald on Nov. 21]]. An aversion in that the US pulls its military advisors out of Vietnam, and as a result the world basically relaxes out of the Cold War. On the other hand, we only get to see what happened for a few months thereafter; in a BittersweetEnding, by traveling back to a time when they themselves were already alive, the protagonists violated the law that something cannot co-exist with itself in the same space/time, and thus sacrificed their own younger selves -- and cannot return to their original present.

* Music/AbneyPark came out with a novelization of their band's fictional backstory. In it, they subvert the trope by kidnapping baby Hitler and raising him aboard an airship full of pirates.
** This causes Twentieth-Century civilisation to fail to recognise the dangers of having such an arch-villain when they see it, allowing one to take over the world, along with one of the crew stealing the airships' time-travel technology, giving said villain the willingness and tools to do so. He imprisons all of humanity that he can grab into three walled cities, keeps them in a state of technological regression, enjoys the best for himself, of course, and renders the rest a wasteland he thinks of as Natures' inalienable right, even though [[ArtisticLicenseBiology he's really just slapped together an improbable ecosystem out of whatever creatures he thinks are most]] [[RuleOfCool awesome]], in the manner of a seven-year-olds' action figure collection, leaving anyone who dares live outside his cities stuck in a Dungeons and Dragons monster manual.
* Spoofed in one sketch in ''Free-Range Chickens'', in which a time traveler succeeds in murdering baby Hitler and then finds himself unable to explain to a horrified onlooker why he did it. "Officer? This man just killed a baby".

* Averted, with a catch, in Kate Atkinson's ''Life After Life''. Ursula lives her life over and over, and as she becomes more aware of past lives, she realizes she has a unique opportunity to kill Hitler before WWII. In at least two lives, it seems she does so. However, this results in her instantly being killed, so she can't "enjoy" the altered timeline.

* Played with in Creator/DeanKoontz's ''Lightning''. First, time travel is invented by the Nazis, and of course they're not going to kill their boss. Second, the rules of time travel prevent traveling to the past, making it impossible to go back and kill him before the war. Third, one of the Nazis does have a HeelFaceTurn and uses the time-travel device as essentially a teleporter to jump into Hitler's bunker. He points out that he ''could'' kill him but he's not going to, in order to demonstrate his loyalty. [[spoiler: At this point he's already sabotaged the time-travel program and guaranteed the outcome of the war that we all know, so there's no need for him to kill Hitler right then anyway.]]
* "The Primal Solution", a novella by Eric Norden. The central character somehow takes over the body of a young Hitler. After tormenting him for a while, the protagonist prepares to force Hitler to commit suicide. However, Hitler reasserts control just before throwing himself into the river. In shock over the whole experience, he wonders why the protagonist, who had identified himself as Jewish, did these horrible things to him. In a combination with the ButterflyOfDoom, the protagonist realizes that he had possessed Hitler before he had acquired any anti-Semitic feelings, and his possession caused those feelings. His attempt to prevent the Holocaust directly caused it.

->''"If you time-travel into the past and then try to kill [[UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler Hitler]], it won't work as intended. It may even backfire".''

First of all, it often proves near-impossible to kill the man in the first place; like most dictators he's protected by various [[PraetorianGuard bodyguards]] and [[StateSec security forces]]. After all, the guy survived about ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assassination_attempts_on_Adolf_Hitler 42 (known) real life assassination attempts]]'' -- maybe one of them was ([[TimeTravelTenseTrouble or will have been]]) yours! Trying to circumvent these by targeting him before his rise to power begins will usually turn out to be ludicrously difficult as well. Locating a lone, disillusioned war veteran wandering around post-WWI Europe is perhaps the ultimate [[NeedleInAStackOfNeedles needle-in-a-haystack]] search.

* In the two-part alternate history novels ''Fox At The Front'' and ''Fox On the Rhine'', Operation Valkyrie works because of a sneeze. Hitler dies, and guess what happens? [[NiceJobBreakingItHero The above described situation with Himmler takes place almost exactly as described]]. Though, things do end up seemingly better than in real life, as everyone's favorite MagnificentBastard ends up being TheHero, and Himmler ends up dying in a [[HoistByHisOwnPetard much worse way than Hitler]]. Oh yeah, and we get to throw our first nuke at at the Soviets instead of Japan.

->''"If you time-travel into the past and then try to kill [[UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler Hitler]], it won't work as intended. It may even backfire."''

* In the ''Manga/{{Devilman}}'' story "Late Spring in Vienna", Akira and Ryo end up in Austria in the 1920 to "kill a demon..." A real one, turned into a Count. He has decided to buy a portrait of his wife Sophie, painted by a poor painter that has no choice - he would have preferred to keep it because he loves Sophie. A Jewish art dealer makes the arrangement, but the same evening Sophie dies, burnt by her demon husband. Akira and Ryo kill the lord demon and then come back to their time, hoping that history is in good shape after what they did. Then, back in the 20s, the painter is furious after Sophie's death, and places the blame on his dealer: "I hate you, I'll spend my entire life to destroy you and your whole race!" and the art dealer starts to run after him: "Hey, what are you saying? Where are you going like that? Adolf? UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler!"

** But Deadpool also suggests bringing in Cable, who "loves killing kids." Subverted?

* Spoofed in one sketch in ''Free-Range Chickens'', in which a time traveler succeeds in murdering baby Hitler and then finds himself unable to explain to a horrified onlooker why he did it. "Officer? This man just killed a baby."

* In the time-travel RPG ''TabletopGame/{{Continuum}}'', the Fraternity of Thespians use various disguises and impersonate historical figures throughout time to prevent Narcissists from changing the Known universe. It's ''very'' rude to ask them how many times they've had to impersonate Hitler; the common reply is "Further information is not available here."

** Played with when [[http://xkcd.com/1063/ Black Hat Guy goes and kills Hitler]]... in April 1945, in the bunker, while the Red Army is storming the city and Hitler is just about to commit suicide. Played straight from the perspective of the person who persuaded him to do it, since it was a reasonable assumption that he'd know to do it ''before'' World War 2. Black Hat guy was right after all when he said they should have used the time machine to do something fun, instead of wasting their only chance at time travel in a futile attempt to satisfy the other's person's "obsession with this Hitler guy." Of course, given what a humongous {{troll}} Black Hat Guy is, it's entirely likely that he deliberately missed the point of the other person's insistance on killing Hitler out of spite, thus calling into question exactly how futile it would have been otherwise. Also we only have [[ConsummateLiar Black Hat Guy]]'s [[UnreliableExpositor word on what he did with the time machine]].

[[http://superredundant.com/?comic=1233-art-of-debate Referenced]] in Webcomic/LeagueOfSuperRedundantHeroes. "You went back in time to kill Hitler and prevent World War 2. That's like Time Travel 101. It sounds like a good idea, but you have no idea what the consequences would be to a change that massive."

* ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeagueTheFlashpointParadox'' by Professor Zoom during his BreakingSpeech against the Flash. However, he notes instead of killing Hitler, as is typical of this trope, that The Flash could have used his powers of time travel (which he achieved by running so fast that he could go backward in time) to "Stop Kennedy from being assassinated or making sure Hitler stays in art school. But no, you had to go save mommy."

* ''The Washington Post'' article "[[https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2015/10/23/you-should-not-kill-baby-hitler-try-this-instead/ You should not kill Baby Hitler. Try this instead."]] recognizes the futility of killing Baby Hitler and instead proposes that kidnapping Hitler as a child and raising him in Britain would be best.

* In ''LightNovel/TheWorldsFinestAssassin'', Allen Smith is a skilled assassin who is killed by the organization he belonged to in a case of YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness. His soul encounters a goddess who gives him the option of being reborn with no memories of his previous life, or he could be reborn into a medieval fantasy world while retaining his abilities and skills he acquired on Earth. The reason is that she needed him to assassinate a hero who would destroy the world after defeating the demon lord. He asks her if he could kill the hero earlier on if he was prepared enough for it, but she tells him no. She says that only the hero can defeat the demon lord, and if he dies before that happens, then the demon lord would become unstoppable, destroying that world, or at least enslaving it. When he tries a TakeAThirdOption of saving the hero instead, she says it's possible, but would be less likely to succeed than to just simply assassinate them.

* Non-Hitler example in ''VideoGame/LegacyOfKain'': The vampire Kain, while leading [[LastStand a losing battle]] against the army of the brutal tyrant Nemesis travels back in time. There he murders the boy-king William the Just [[FaceHeelTurn before he turns evil and unstopable]]. When he returns to his time, he finds the vampire race almost wiped out by [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge crusaders avenging their beloved king]]. It turns out Kain was set up by [[TheChessmaster Moebius]], who arranged both the time travel, William's turn to evil, and the subsequent crusades.

---->'''Rory:''' I'm getting this sort of banging in my head.\\

'''Roy:''' That's not helping.

'''Amy:''' Yeah, I think that's Hitler in the cupboard.

Similar to the Grandfather Paradox which paradoxically prevents your birth, the Killing Hitler paradox erases your reason for going back in time to kill him.

* In Creator/AlastairReynolds' novel ''Century Rain'', UsefulNotes/WorldWarII is, in fact averted (although not by killing Hitler, he lives till old age) but the result is a negative one, as it effectively halts the progress of science and technology at pre-1940s levels. 'course, it happens in a separate world, not our world[[spoiler:, created as some kind of museum to protect human past. And technology may have been artificially halted to prevent rockets from banging on the roof.]]. Effective. Most great leaps in technology pre-Internet was done in, or for, war.

-->(''Outskirts of Berlin, 1910''[[note]](1920 in the original Hebrew[[/note]])\\