History Main / YouWillBeBeethoven

** In ''[[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWhoCCS5E7PeriAndThePisconParadox Peri and the Piscon Paradox]]'', the Fifth Doctor has an adventure in Los Angeles where he defeats the fish criminal Zarl. But Peri eventually learns that [[spoiler:prior to encountering the Fifth Doctor, Zarl had a run-in with the Sixth Doctor and ''accidentally got himself killed'', forcing the Sixth Doctor to disguise himself as Zarl to ensure everything happens the way he remembers as the Fifth Doctor.]]

** In ''[[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWhoCCS5E7PeriAndThePisconParadox Peri and the Piscon Paradox]]'', the Fifth Doctor has an adventure in Los Angeles where he defeats the fish criminal Zarl. But Peri eventually learns that [[spoiler:prior to encountering the Fifth Doctor, Zarl had a run-in with the Sixth Doctor and ''accidentally got himself killed'', forcing the Sixth Doctor to disguise himself as Zarl to prevent a TemporalParadox by getting defeated by his younger self.]]

** In ''[[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWhoCCS5E7PeriAndThePisconParadox Peri and the Piston Paradox]]'', the Fifth Doctor has an adventure in Los Angeles where he defeats the fish criminal Zarl. But Peri eventually learns that [[spoiler:prior to encountering the Fifth Doctor, Zarl had a run-in with the Sixth Doctor and ''accidentally gets himself killed'', forcing the Sixth Doctor is disguise himself as the VillainOfTheWeek to prevent a TemporalParadox by getting defeated by his younger self.]]

->''"There's this man. He has a time machine. Up and down history he goes, zip zip zip, getting into scrapes. Another thing he has is a passion for the works of Ludwig van Beethoven. And one day he thinks, 'What's the point of having a time machine if you don't get to meet your heroes?' So off he goes to 18th-century Germany. But he can't find Beethoven anywhere. No-one's heard of him, not even his family have any idea who the time traveller is talking about. Beethoven literally doesn't exist. [...] The time traveller panics, he can't bear the thought of a world without the music of Beethoven. Luckily he'd brought all his Beethoven sheet music for Ludwig to sign. So he copies out all the concertos and the symphonies, and he gets them published. He becomes Beethoven. And history continues with barely a feather ruffled."''

** In a much darker twist on the trope, the War Master uses an extremely dangerous variant in an attempt to take control of the Daleks by inserting himself into the Skaro scientific elite pre-"[[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E4GenesisOfTheDaleks Genesis of the Daleks]]" [[spoiler:by getting Davros killed, posing as his father, and taking his place as the Daleks' creator and master]] in the ''Anti-Genesis'' storyline.

* In the ''Series/RedDwarf'' episode "[[Recap/RedDwarfSeasonVIITikkaToRide Tikka to Ride]]", the crew go back in time and accidentally kill Lee Harvey Oswald, preventing the Kennedy assassination. After the usual time travel shenanigans, eventually they convince a JFK from later in the timeline to take the place of the assassin, [[WhoShotJFK firing from the grassy knoll]].

There is also a variation in which the time traveller doesn't cause the historical figure's death, but instead discovers that the historical figure ''never actually existed''; the time traveller then has to impersonate the historical figure in order to [[StableTimeLoop create the history he remembers]]. This also makes the original historical figure an extreme ImpersonationExclusiveCharacter.

** In a much darker twist on the trope, the War Master uses an extremely dangerous variant in an attempt to take control of the Daleks by inserting himself into the Skaro scientific elite pre-''Genesis of the Daleks'' [[spoiler:by getting Davros killed, posing as his father, and taking his place as the Daleks' creator and master]] in the ''Anti-Genesis'' storyline.

** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E3TheMythMakers "The Myth Makers"]]: Vicki decides to leave the TARDIS when she falls in love with Troilus, becoming the Cressida of Greek mythology.
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS26E1Battlefield "Battlefield"]]: The Seventh Doctor discovers that he will, in his own future, become Merlin in the King Arthur legends.
** The teaser to [[Recap/DoctorWhoS35E4BeforeTheFlood "Before the Flood"]] has the Twelfth Doctor [[BreakingTheFourthWall directly teach the audience about his trope]], although he's specifically using it as an example to teach about the Bootstrap Paradox — if Beethoven's work was copied out by a time traveller, who actually wrote the music? The Whoniverse being what it is, as the above examples show, he also has to clarify that it's hypothetical; Beethoven ''did'' exist, and the Doctor's met him. ("Nice chap. Very intense. Loved an arm wrestle.")
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS37E3Rosa "Rosa"]]: A racist time-travelling villain sabotages events to prevent Rosa Parks' pivotal refusal to give up her seat on a segregated bus. Team TARDIS successfully get the bus and its driver back on course, but due to the saboteur, they need three more seats at the front of the bus filled by non-black passengers if Rosa is to be ordered to forfeit her place. With ''great'' reluctance, the Doctor, Graham and Yaz fill those seats, substituting for white passengers whom the saboteur had discouraged from boarding.

* The third ''VideoGame/ToukenRanbu'' [[Theatre/TouMyu musical]] features the Touken Danshi impersonating UsefulNotes/TokugawaIeyasu's retainers and Four Generals, after the Time Retrograde Army slaughters the Matsudaira clan in Ieyasu's infancy.

* In ''Literature/TheMissing'' series by Creator/MargaretPetersonHaddix, this is combined with TimeTravelEscape. A group of children who are adopted, but cannot find their birth parents. They find out they are long lost children of the past (such as Anastasia or Virginia Dare of the Roanoake Colony) that were taken by time travelers from the distant future. Unfortunately, the time machine went wrong and ended up at an airport in the 90s. In the second book, ''Sent'', this trope is almost played straight when Chip and Alex are found to be missing medieval princes who are meant to be killed.