Peggy Sue / Fan Works

Fanfic writers find much potential in the Peggy Sue formula and tend to use it on their favorite characters.

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Anime & Manga

Bleach

• Hogyoku ex Machina that offers a few twists from the usual Peggy Sue premise. First, it has Ichigo and Aizen travel from the final battle back three months to when Aizen betrayed Soul Society. Then within minutes, Ichigo yells out that time travel shenanigans are going on, which other characters are quickly able to confirm. Finally, although Ichigo keeps his power-ups while Aizen loses his, it ends up being a more even playing field than one would expect.

Code Geass

• All For You has the premise that CC does this after Lelouch's death at the end of R2, and yet despite knowing all of what is going to happen and even actively including herself in the Black Knights as Infinity, everything still happens pretty much exactly like the anime. Well, except that the story is far fluffier and all the death and emotional turmoil has been removed.
• Subverted in Codes And Geass: Embracing Your Inner Megalomania, because Murphy actively hates "Trollouche" just as much as he does in canon. Which means Lulu has to work for his victories.

Death Note

• The Prince Of Death has this happen to Light after dying and becoming a Shinigami. The Shinigami King, is wary of Kira's presence in his world, and so sends him back to his mortal life, back to the day he would have received the notebook in order to get him out of the way and try to get him killed off for good.
• Silver Pard's Redivivus sends Light back to his infancy with Ryuk still at his side, tasked with saving as many lives as he took the first time around. Unfortunately for Light, he killed a lot of people, and (of course) L will always be around to make things difficult for him, even when he's just a frustrated Enfant Terrible who ''definitely'' hasn't killed a single person ''this time''.

Digimon

• It turns out that the entire reason for Zero 2: A Revision universe to exist in the first place is because the featured Original Character, Shaun wants to travel back in time in order to stop himself from releasing Demon and subsequently, killing off the entire Digidestined in the original timeline. However, a malfunction in the time causes him to travel way too far back, as in 33 years back to the point that his actions ultimately caused a divergent timeline and subsequently created the Zero 2 universe as we know in the fiction.

Dragon Ball

• Twice Upon a Time sees an elderly Vegeta sent back in time fifty-five years prior thanks to a wish on the Dragon Balls by Vegeta Jr. due to Vegeta's exact words, providing him with a chance to be there for his family.

Hetalia: Axis Powers

• In Chasing an Empty Dream, while trying to use magic to get information on the Holy Roman Empire, England accidentally sends himself, Germany, and Italy back to that time period. They witness HRE's fatal injury at the hands of the French Army and, upon seeing how devastated Italy and the past self of Prussia are by the kid's death, Germany decides to fix things by removing the bullet and disinfecting the wound. It works and Holy Roman Empire lives, only to reveal that the whole thing was a Stable Time Loop - Holy Roman Empire loses his memories from the trauma of the attack, and Prussia decides to rename him "Germany" because his empire doesn't exist anymore.

Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple

• History Strongest Disciple Again: The summary goes: When the missile detonates prematurely at Yami's base of operation during the invasion to prevent the Eternal Setting Sun, all hope seems lost... Until Niijima somehow rips a portal to the past that sucks Miu, Kenichi and himself in. Now armed with that knowledge, the trio must work together to change the future! Probably the first story of this genre in this particular fandom.

My Hero Academia

• The Fundamental Essence of Villainy: The crux of the series. In Apotheosis, which serves as a prequel to the rest of the series, Tomura decides to give Izuku All for One and all of the quirks he held, before sending Izuku back in time 2 years using an awakened form of Rewind.

Naruto

• Generally speaking, this is an extremely popular premise for Naruto fanworks, to the point that it has a dedicated FanficRecs page on This Very Wiki.

• Afterthoughts features a Naruto who finds himself receiving random memories from an older version of himself from another dimension. Rather than having full knowledge of the future, he's functionally getting limited precognition about a possible future, leaving him with impressions and feelings about what he should do.
• The Benefits of Omnipotence is a rather witty take on the genre that avoids overpowering Naruto. In fact, the biggest story arc so far happens when Haku and Zabuza kidnap Naruto after he reveals that Gato would have betrayed them, which your typical Marty Stu Naruto would've gotten out of.
• Blackkat's Reverse stars Kurama (the Kyuubi), sent back in time in a modified version of Naruto's body. Kurama cares about very few things and protecting the timeline isn't one of them. Once Kurama reunites with a child version of Naruto, everything goes Off the Rails as Kurama decides to Screw Destiny and let Naruto know that he has family. It results him in essentially declaring a one-man war against Akatsuki and the Elemental Nations.
• A Chance At The Road Not Taken.
• False Memories by Relden Calder: At the Chuunin exams, the Kage's Box where the Hokage, his wife, the Kazekage and the Kage's aides are sitting gets attacked by person or persons unknown.
  Fifteen years in the past, Naruto, Hinata, Gaara, Shikamaru and Temari wake up with all the memories they accumulated up to the attack — despite the fact they're just ten years old. Features excellent characterisation, very good grammar, and a fascinating plot that never breaks verisimilitude.
• For Love, a fic where Hinata was sent back fifteen years from a Bad Future where Akatsuki has won (after Naruto created a different timeline to canon by killing Nagato instead of sparing him) and tries to improve things starting from when she's five years old.
• For The Love of My Friends by Foxie-sama: An excellently written fic, the story is actually very believable and the characters stay in character. Recommended to any Naruto fans.
• I Am NOT Going Through Puberty Again!! is another deconstruction in that it's epilogue-compliant — Team 7 and Hinata didn't want to go back in time because the future they come from was as ideal as it could be considering the circumstances. They don't even know how they ended up in the past (Naruto had sealed away all scrolls and knowledge pertaining to Time Travel, as it was potentially dangerous), and unfortunately, they have no idea or means of undoing the situation. Also, unlike most Peggy Sue fics, they don't even bother trying to keep to the plot once they realize where, or when, they are, as to them, all of this happened decades ago and there is no way they'd manage to remember all the details, even with Sakura's amazing retention rate. To top it off, it's a Crack Fic, because they all managed to retain their skills and abilities, making two of them (Naruto and Sasuke) the most powerful shinobi in the world by far and diminishing any and all potential threats to them. All four are completely aware of this, and seemed to be milking the experience for all it's worth.
  • It also provides an inversion when it turns out that they weren't so much sent back in time as swapped with their child selves, which causes its own set of problems.
• In Myriad Ways by Charles Bhepin: It's a Peggy Sue with a twist: Naruto slowly goes completely insane. Sent back in time by the Shinigami to just before the Chuunin Exam, Naruto...well, just read it for yourself.
• The Kakashi Way has an adult Sasuke accidentally travel back in time to the day his team was first formed. After realizing what's happened, he decides to take a page from Kakashi's handbook and try fixing matters in rather indirect fashion... though he immediately curb-stomps Danzo and forces the Sandaime to recognize his old friend's treachery.
• Mixed With the Lightning of Slaughter beautifully subverts this by sending Sasuke back (from presumably some point near the end of the series)...but he may be going insane from the mind-breaking stress of involuntary time-travel.
• Reload also has Naruto and Sasuke doing the time warp again. Only it's been thousands of times, and all they want to do this time around is drink, party, and kill that damn cat. The end result is a very, very crazy Naruto who uses the power of SCIENCE! and an equally crazy Sasuke who has no gender identity — or, at most, a decidedly female one. At the start of one repeat, Naruto convinces Sasuke(-chan) to go on a road trip; their ultimate goal is a Ramen Festival in Suna. Inuzuka Hana joins them as the Only Sane Man. Then we're introduced to Naruto's most frightening creation — Keisei. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Word of God supposedly says that they're actually now free of the loops. Whatever happens now is going to happen period.
• A Second Chance For a Frozen Heart, definitely fits into both Death Fic and Fix Fic, though the death was canon. Given a second chance to save people precious to him Naruto accepts and bonds with the Kyuubi. Now back at the age of nine he gets ready to save Zabuza and Haku.
• This Time Around sends both Naruto and Sasuke back to save everything.
• Time and Again by KyLewin: Essentially, this story is a deconstruction of the usual Naruto goes back in time fanfiction. The main difference is that, unlike most other Peggy Sue fics, Naruto not only has a hard time readjusting to his 12-year-old body for the first few days, but he also doesn't even believe that he is in the past; instead, he is convinced that he is trapped in some kind of super illusory world. It gets better and worse for Naruto and his friends as he tries to change the village's fate for the better. It has a sequel, Here and Now, which is dead.
• Time Mix Up deconstructs the genre even further by showing what happens when four different time travelers from four different bad futures fall in the same origin point, and each one of them tries to fix what went wrong in their respective timelines. The result is utter plot derailment as their respective plans conflicts with each other. Later another time traveler shows up, one who comes from a future where everything came peachy and traveled by mere accident.
• Time Travel For Beginners Naruto and Sasuke try to "fix fic" their lives as Peggy Sues, but... It doesn't quite work out. Hilarity Ensues.
• The Tragedy of Repetition, by Rurouni12065: Instead of waking up in his twelve-year-old body, Naruto (who goes by Nanashi) exists as a separate entity to his younger counterpart. Puts a refreshing spin on the Set Right What Once Went Wrong time-traveling fics. In addition, this is perhaps the first fic that not only pulls off a believable Naruto/Anko pairing, but one where she doesn't come across as a creepy pedophile.
• Sasuke gets sent back (as an adult) in Two Steps Back, and adopts Naruto in order to give him a better childhood this time.
• Yet again, with a little extra help by Third Fang is one where Naruto goes back in time thanks to the intervention of an OC. It's notable in that crosses the crack, deconstruction, and adventure variations, in part due to the antics of the OCs, weary immortals who act nuts and are for the most part intervening only because it'd be entertaining for them.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

• This is so prolific in the Evangelion fandom to the point that fans theorized this was happening in the Rebuild of Evangelion movies. Like Naruto, this has its own dedicated FanficRecs page.

• Better Luck Next Time subverts this to the point of Dark Fic territory.
• Coupled Effort: After Instrumentality the three Children return to the past in the middle of the battle against Sandalphon... and Shinji and Asuka decide to get married immediately. However Rei returned right after Shinji's choice, whereas Shinji and Asuka spent ten years surviving alone in the devastated world, forced to lean on and help each other in order to survive, before going back. Unfortunately, Shinji became a tad -more- mind-broken and aggressive in the process, and Asuka of all people has to be the voice of reason among her fellow pilots and future family.
• In Dazed and Confused, Shinji is sent back to the beginning of the series and things immediately go wrong because nobody is acting like Shinji expects. It's gradually revealed that they've all been sent back too, but from very different continuities. This includes the Angels, who are much more difficult to beat since they too have looped back following their defeats and have learned from them. The fic was sadly abandoned before completion.
• Doing It Right This Time: The three Children and some other characters are sent back by Kaworu three months before the beginning of the War. This story stands out for several things: Shinji does not believe he can prevent the Third Impact but he decides to try anyway since it's very unlikely he could make things any worse; the three pilots have turned into accomplished snarkers and are both more cynical and more carefree, and one major trope convention is defied straight out of the gate^note A very conscious decision on the author's part to try something different with a well-used trope: They don't try to keep it a secret from their allies... including Gendo, whose inclusion as an ally is grudging at best. Oh, and there's something about polyamory, too.
• Fruity Loops by SpiderLobb plays this trope for both comedy and tragedy. Shinji, Asuka and Rei return to the beginning from the history every time that he dies. Unfortunately, he does this a lot, and the continuous repeats are having crazy effects on the pilots. For example, Asuka and Rei start to bond, and they go from rivals to friends to lovers that consider that Shinji belongs to them by right (and if the fic reaches that point, it is possible that Kaworu joins the harem).
• Yet another straight up and well written example is Higher Learning by Strike Fiss, although the Peggy Sue is not immediately apparent.
• There's at least one story (Home) that has Asuka going back and trying to hi-jack the plot. It ended up as a Dead Fic before much could happen with it.
• In Tune by Z98 pulls several subversions: Shinji, Asuka and other characters have traveled back in time with their intact memories... but instead of keeping their old bodies or reincarnating into their younger selves they have been reborn into completely different people -Shinji became a German violinist; Asuka a German army captain ad UN Auditor; Misato a German army general; and so on...-. So that rather setting out to influence events directly, they opt to work behind the scenes, infiltrate Nerv as average, clueless employees and mentor and support the Children without raising suspicions. They are also well-aware that their knowledge of the future will become useless after a while due to them altering the past.
• NGE Mitigation by Fourth Impact shows Gendo is Crazy-Prepared for everything... including possible time-travelers. However, when he is alerted someone has indeed come back from the future, and that person is beginning to influence his scenario, he has the identity of the traveler quite wrong.
  • For the first few chapters, it stays more or less in line with the original show, albeit with some minor (but poignant) deviations (such as Shinji being the one who's sent to retrieve the Lava Angel instead of Asuka). Then things completely "jump the tracks", so to speak, when Gendo decides he can no longer risk having his Scenario contaminated any further, and orders section 2 to eliminate Shinji. Normally, this would have been a good guess, seeing as how Shinji is prime Peggy Sue material, and the kid had been showing unexplained Character Development. However, in this case, the character growth was due to the influence of the actual time-traveler... Asuka. OOPS!
• Once More With Feeling (Crazy-88) has generally positive results of Shinji going back in time. This can be explained by him having gone back to before stuff began going downhill fast, and having a spine shoved in him during the time travel.
• The most notable, though the least accessible, example is the doujinshi RE-TAKE, which shows much of the later half of the series as Shinji's dream. Of course this doujin, despite the hentai, is also Original Flavour for Eva, so things go horribly wrong, such as Asuka dying in the second volume after being unable to sync with her Eva anymore and it being forced to self destruct for example.
  • This gets subverted entirely in Volume 3, when it turns out it's not really a Peggy Sue, but the original Shinji's consciousness sort-of possessing his analogue's body in an Alternate Universe. In the end, Shinji changes that parallel universe for the better, gets his taste of happiness, but recognizes he can't take back what he messed up the first time, and winds up back on the beach from EoE with Asuka, wiser, happier, and better-adjusted, but with nothing in the past really changed. Oh, and the Shinji he possessed and the local Asuka analogue forget everything that happened during the comic. At least they get to work out their issues in peace.
• Samsara by Chuckman shows Shinji having an awful day in his mother's death's anniversary. Before turning in for the night he wishes he had at least one good day. The next day he wakes up... and realizes it is still his mother's death's anniversary. He finds himself reliving that day hundreds of times without knowing how or why or how fixing it. After going crazy for several dozens of loops he realizes what he really wants -and his only way to break the loop- is making Asuka happy. He only needs figuring out how accomplishing that in one single day.
• The Second Try by Jimmy Wolk is something of a subversion; Shinji and Asuka travel back in time, but they leave their daughter behind. Emotional and well written.
  • The last few chapters are somehow very... dusty; be careful while reading them, or you might get something in your eyes.
• Yet another one (by a troper!): Taking Sights has Gendo go back instead of Shinji. Also a subversion of the common Fix Fic aspects of this genre.
• You would not know that Thousand Shinji is one until the last chapter when it is revealed that the Warhammer 40,000 gods sent a time-traveler back to the past to prevent an awful future.
• Unbroken has Asuka taking care of a near-catatonic Shinji after Third Impact for several months, until he disappears. Then Lilith/Rei shows up and sends Asuka back to just before Leliel with instructions to stop Shinji's descent into despair... but Asuka still has her own mental problems to sort out. It certainly doesn't help that her first attempt at being honest with her feelings resulted in Shinji going paranoid and shutting into himself even more, convinced that she's messing with him for her own amusement.

One Piece

• One Piece features many such fics, though they have a tendency to die off before or during the Alabasta arc.

• The Coward's Redemption continues the idea that after all of the other Straw Hats died, the only one left was sent back in time to change things. Just one slight change from the normal formula: the one who gets sent back with enough years before the journey begins to train themselves into shape for the Grand Line is Usopp, not Luffy.
• Crossed Lines sees every member of the Straw Hat crew travel back in time, only they're all from different timelines and none of them realize it until they start meeting up. The only two from the same timeline are Nami and Vivi.
• For Better or For Worse is another one where Luffy is sent back to his childhood. He made it to Raftel, but his friends died along the way; his willpower, with a little guidance from Roger's ghost, allows him to return to his 6-year-old self. The thing that sets this fic apart most is that one of the first changes Luffy makes is taming the Lord of the Coast and using it to travel to Minion Island to save Rocinante, collecting him, Law, and Bepo and bringing them back to Dawn Island. The three brothers grow to five and receive a father figure as a result. Infrequent but quality updates.
• Luffy's Renewed Adventure by F-ckthesystem125. This one has Luffy's crew massacred on the island before Raftel; only he survives, and he's imprisoned in Impel Down. He's eventually rescued by an old man with the power of the Open-Open Fruit, who offers him the chance to go back to the start of his adventures to ensure that the World Government does not attain the power it had before. Oh, and one thing sets this fic apart: said old man uses his powers to open Luffy's eyes to women. He's still an idiot in matters of love, but he's no longer oblivious. The story made it to the Skypiea arc before, in July 2020, the author announced that he was going to rewrite it.
• New Game Plus by DuncanIdaho2014. In this one, all nine members of the Straw Hat Pirates escape certain death from a Marine ambush thanks to Dr. Vegapunk's experimental time machine, sending their minds five years into the past. When time catches up to them, Luffy resolves to do things differently to ensure that they don't end up in that situation again, so he takes a leaf out of Whitebeard's book and begins recruiting more crews to follow him, forming the Straw Hat Armada. In canon progression, it's just begun the second saga (which ends with the Alabasta arc); it's a testament to the author's skills that it stands with even the other Peggy Sue fics that have already made it past Alabasta. Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond the author's control, the story is on an indefinite hiatus as of September 2017.
• Once Again by TheVictor. In this one, Akainu kills Luffy's crew, Luffy gives up, and a couple of years later Admiral Coby sends him back with his Toki Toki no Mi powers. This fic was the first Peggy Sue ever to make it past the Alabasta arc, and while the author vanished without a trace back in 2013, he set the bar high by making it to the middle of the Enies Lobby arc (about 1/4 of the series) before that. Once Again subsequently became the most popular fic in the One Piece fandom, a title it held for at least two years afterward, and it maintained its place as being the longest Peggy Sue in canon progression for three.
• The Rubbery Vengeance is one of these as well. Luffy made it to the end of the Grand Line but lost all of his friends along the way. Despair finally overtakes him and he kills himself, but he receives a second chance from God Himself. The story follows a very dark and very overpowered Luffy as he goes through his journey from the time he first ate the Gum-Gum Fruit. Also a harem fic. Last updated April 2020.
• Second Wind by The-Lost-Samurai. In this one, Luffy and Zoro reach the end of the Grand Line…but everyone else dies shortly before that. Luffy and Zoro come back in time to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, the method of which is revealed in Chapter 22. As of October 2016, it holds the new record for how far a One Piece Peggy Sue has made it in canon progression. It was placed on indefinite hiatus in October 2020 before the author formally discontinued it in February 2023.
• The Will Of D by The Animaniac Dude has Luffy travel back in time with Gold Roger's ghost helping him to do things right and save his crew while operating on another agenda involving the fishmen. Originally begun in 2008, the author began a rewrite in 2018, keeping the original premise but adapting with canon's revelations and twisting the entire fic to be Darker and Edgier, bringing the bad guys up to Luffy's level. The rewrite of already-present chapters is half-done, with the last update being in March 2019.
• There's also Young and Built to Fall by fingers-falling-upwards. In this one, the time travelers are Luffy and Ace, and they return back to their childhood sometime after Sabo's "death." The first eight chapters of the story are original content that follows Ace and Luffy as they come to terms with their past and gather the necessary materials to prevent Blackbeard from ever coming to power, easing a few tragedies along the way. Everything after that is rehashing of canon with a few minor changes and very little detail, skimming or even skipping entire arcs. Updates are slow, but the author is planning on making more AU changes soon. Note that the author began this story before canon revealed that Sabo was alive. Last updated March 2017.

Pokémon

• Ashes of the Past: The plot is that Gen IV's Big Bad Cyrus reattempted to gain control of the Sinnoh Creation trio... and succeeded, causing the end of the world. Consequently, Arceus sends someone with plenty of experience saving the world back in time to stop him: Ash Ketchum. He returns to the very beginning of his journey... meaning that until the journey takes them to Sinnoh and Team Galactic, the whole "saving the world" thing takes a backseat to Ash and friends taking several levels in badass as they go through their adventures again.
• Pokémon Reset Bloodlines has Arceus sending Ash back in time to prevent Cyrus from gaining control of reality and reshaping the world in his own image. However, a few things get garbled in transition, so the new timeline is quite different even before Ash's return. For example, he's 15 years old now, he kept in contact with Serena, and he's a Bloodliner (essentially a human with Pokémon-related powers). The story is, by Word of God, inspired by Ashes of the Past.
• Pokemon Secret Journeys involves The Beyonder from Marvel's Secret Wars (1984) taking over the Pokemon universe, and sending Ash Ketchum back in time as part of a challenge to help Arceus regain control of the world. The twist is, the world Ash is sent back in time to is an alternate timeline to the one Ash originally came from, merging the world of the Pokemon anime with the worlds of Sonic the Hedgehog, the Power Rangers, Digimon, Godzilla and the Disney Ducks Universe.

Ranma ½

• Actor in the Mirror is a well-written straight example that is quite enjoyable.
• Toyed with in The Bet: Study in Scarlet, where Akane found a way back to the day Ranma arrived after an ill-worded wish dropped her in a far-future era long after Ranma's bloodline died out, and she spent several centuries getting back (in the process becoming a legendary and universally-feared villain in that era). Problem is she seems to have forgotten a lot about human society (one does not use pain-inflicting pressure points to impress a prospective mate, even if putting them through a wall would somehow slide).
• Parodied in the short story Deja Vu All Over Again by Scott Jamison, wherein Akane is given a magical amulet which will take her back to the day she met Ranma so she can make sure their relationship gets off on the right foot — only to discover that a similar amulet has been given to every other girl chasing him as well when they all show up within minutes of each other.
• Ringmaster's The Demon's Contract.
• MM007's Ranma Restart: Bid for Freedom.
• Ranma, the Second Time Around, which is set to break one million goddamned words.
  • Already has, still not at 100 chapters yet.
• Lord Archive's Second Chances features an emotionally-shredded Akane going back in time via a wish from Urd to both prevent Ranma's eventual death and make their lives together happier.

Comics

• The Greatest of Them All: Peter has to go through the experience of being born all over again, and takes this opportunity to do everything he can to make things better and prevent the destruction of the multiverse at the hands of the One Below All.
• one day at a time (Nyame) is a Batman/DCU example where Jason Todd, thirty years after Bruce's death and twenty-five years after he became Batman in the wake of Dick's death (followed by Tim and Damian's deaths two years later), travels to the past after his death at age fifty via lung cancer. It also serves as a bit of a deconstruction, as despite all the tragedy he endured Jason managed to move on and live a mostly happy and fulfilling life. He even goes into a Heroic BSoD when he realizes that he's traveled back and merged with his sixteen-year-old self.

Crossovers

• Ah, Screw It! is a Harry Potter/Stargate SG-1 crossover, though the latter doesn't start showing up until the fourth year. Harry winds up going back to the day of his Sorting right after beating Voldemort, and, armed with seven years' worth of extra knowledge, does his very best to become the ruler of Magical Britain — while mercilessly trolling everyone within range.
• Hermione Granger: The Witching Hour (Harry Potter, The Gamer): Hermione's life has always been a video game, it's just that the console was hidden from her. It only shows up when she dies the first time. Because it's a video game, hers is a Disney Death and she can choose to start anew, which for all intents and purposes is traveling back in time. Hermione is quick to go this path if it means she can save her friends from death and Britain's Wizarding society from a tyrannical regime.
• The Infinite Loops is a Massive Multiplayer Crossover with too many franchises to list. The World Tree, Yggdrasil, has been damaged causing numerous realities to loop over and over again. Sometimes, the loops are different than normal, and other times, loops involve characters from different worlds meeting each other.
• Martian Manhunter is a Veronica Mars/Buffy the Vampire Slayer fusion in which a college-age Veronica is inserted into the Buffyverse as a high school student along with enough of her surroundings to make her past make sense. Only the Veronica Mars half of it is a Peggy Sue in the strict sense, but the Buffy half often functions in much the same way, as Veronica's a fan...
• Paradoxus:
  • Eudora kills Stella out of fear of her Light powers (Light is the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors weakness of the Burning Legion's Fel). Bloom is kind of collateral damage but a fearsome opponent nonetheless. After their demise, the situation rapidly degenerates into a gruesome, Hopeless War impacting several planets, one of them even suffering Argus' fate (being utterly corrupted by Fel). Desperate times call for equally desperate (and expensive) measures, so an elite squad from the Tyrannus Division is sent to the past to try and prevent the two Winx's deaths in an attempt to turn the tides in Magix's favor. Guess who is sent? Exactly! The mini Winx! Altalune, Trisha, and Stacy because it's their mothers who they're trying to rescue, plus Gilliam as a buffer between the two belligerent sisters and Zoe thanks to her tech-oriented skills. Also, Trisha was the one to come up with the idea and the scientific basis for time travel. They didn't get the Timeless' approval for this, so science is the only option left which, in turn, presents them with the 'if I see my younger self, either of us will fade' issue. Alas, Stella and Bloom's deaths are set in stone, so their daughters fail to save them.
  • There are two more characters who embody this trope. Both are more successful in their attempts to change the outcome of the timelines. Partly because they are more subtle and thoughtful in their changes and because well, they use magic to do so. One of them is Galadwen, the elven Chosen One of Elune. Her job is facilitated both by her long, long lifespan and having Chronormu (a Time Dragonflight) as an ally. As of now, Galadwen has seen no less than three timelines where both Azeroth and Magix succumb to Eudora. The second character goes under the alias of Indís and is able to mess with the time-space continuity due to her status as a nymph. Indís is the Tyrannus Division's founder as well as its main economical and political supporter. This Division is the main reason Magix hasn't been entirely conquered by the Burning Legion.
• Storm on the Horizon starts with Aloy waking up back in Rost's cabin after having experienced the full events of Horizon Zero Dawn, two days before the massacre at the Proving that kicked off the plot. With foreknowledge, she and Max successfully prevent the massacre and stop Olin and HADES from finding out who she is.

Films — Live-Action

The Hobbit

• lay down your sweet and weary head has Thorin being sent back to the day Smaug attacked his kingdom. He slays Smaug before the dragon can destroy Erebor, causing massive changes to canon events from there on.
• A Shot in the Dark has Bilbo being unexpectedly sent back in time to the beginning of his journey with the dwarves. Armed with the knowledge of what transpired on that journey, he becomes determined to make sure that none of his friends die on the journey this time around even if he has to keep recklessly putting himself in danger to do it and also to destroy the One Ring himself so that Frodo won't have to take on that burden. The fic depicts this as a light-hearted romp for the most part until near the end where it's revealed that the reason Bilbo was sent back in time was that the lingering remnants of Sauron latched onto a portion of his soul and sent both of them back, knowing that Bilbo would want to go to Mordor himself to destroy his Ring and setting him up to fall into a trap by doing so. Bilbo is forced to give the Ring back to Gollum to prevent Sauron from getting his hands on it, leaving the fate of the Ring uncertain, but he does succeed in keeping all the dwarves alive and it's implied that the heroes knowing much earlier of Sauron's return will make the war go better for them this time around.

Marvel Cinematic Universe

• Born of the Same Impulse: Tony and Stephen are sent back to several years before Avengers: Infinity War. Tony finds himself in his lab with Bruce Banner, in the midst of creating Ultron. He manages to stop the AI from becoming malevolent and spends the rest of his new life trying to rebuild his now undone-tech, keeping the Avengers united, and helping his fellow time-traveler deal with his injuries and loss of power.

Star Wars

• Darth Vader: Hero of Naboo: In the midst of Episode V, Darth Vader is somehow transported to Naboo at the time of the invasion of Naboo, and allies with the Queen to facilitate their escape. Vader remains mostly mechanical, and, on Coruscant, he meets with Darth Plagueis, which leads to a series of events that send canon spiraling into a black hole. Oh, and the author says from the outset that someone else traveled back in time with Vader, but only specifies that it isn't Luke or Leia; it's not until Chapter 28 that we find out it's Boba Fett.
• The Desert Storm: Obi-Wan Kenobi, mentally scarred from the Clone Wars and Order 66, is transported twenty-three years into the past. He then changes his name to Ben Naasade, rescues Shmi and Anakin from slavery, and takes up his younger self as his padawan.
• Here I Go Again: Anakin kills Obi-Wan at Mustafar, but Obi-Wan meets Qui-Gon in limbo, who informs him of the Force's new mission for him. Obi-Wan accepts and awakens shortly before the Clone Wars begin. A Fix Fic that spans from Attack of the Clones through the Clone Wars series and up to Revenge of the Sith. Completed.
• Make a Brand New End: Instead of any familiar characters like Anakin or Obi-Wan, the Peggy Sue of this fic is Feemor, Qui-Gon's obscure former apprentice. After being killed by Order 66, his past self is bombarded by visions detailing events of the entire saga just before Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan leave for Naboo at the climax of Episode I. Much like Obi-Wan in the previously mentioned fics, this series is a Fix Fic where Feemor works to avert the Clone Wars, lead Anakin along a brighter path, and rekindle the lost relationships he had with Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, and many others.
• Out of the Dark Valley begins with Darth Vader, fifteen years after the events of Revenge of the Sith, finding a way to use the Force to project himself back to just before his duel with Obi-Wan on Mustafar. He collapses shortly afterwards, allowing Obi-Wan and Padmé to subdue him and take him with them into hiding, and events diverge from there. Partway through, however, the story shifts away from Anakin's perspective after he's caught by the Emperor during a botched assassination attempt to instead focus on Luke and Leia, and as a result the time travel and foreknowledge elements also fade from prominence.
• Palpatine Loses His Job has Padme travelling back in time after her death in Revenge of the Sith to her early days as the Queen, and she removes Palpatine from the Senate at the first opportunity, replacing him with Jar Jar with the excuse that it's a gesture of reconciliation with the Gungans.
• Shadows of the Future: Obi-Wan is killed by Anakin at Mustafar. The Force then sends him back to when they first met during the Naboo crisis thirteen years earlier and works to connect with Anakin better this time, becoming more of a cool Big Brother Mentor rather than the cold and aloof one he was before. Well, after he's done spending the first few chapters thinking he's been captured by the enemy or has gone insane.
• A Sith's Second Chance has the Force send Darth Vader back in time to the invasion of Naboo following Vader's sacrifice. However, note the title: the Force sent back Darth Vader, not Anakin Skywalker. Anakin is his own person, while Vader's body is restored to the state it was in at the end of Episode II. With the conscience that he regained against his son but the ruthlessness of the Dark Side, Vader plans to fulfill his destiny and properly bring balance to the force, overthrowing Sidious and cleansing the corrupt Jedi while at the same time ensuring that his counterpart on the Light Side has the life he deserves.
• Under the Cover of Darkness: Luke and Mara Jade, some time after the events of the Thrawn trilogy, Jedi Academy trilogy and Thrawn duology, find themselves sent back to the closing months of the Clone Wars due to an accident in a Sith temple. However, the reason they were in that temple to begin with was to infiltrate a Dark Side cult to rescue child captives that the cult intended to break and turn, which required them to pretend that Mara was a Sith and to fake Luke's torture and Fall; this ends up causing the Old Republic-era characters to also take them for Sith, which rather complicates their attempts to a) return to their own time, and b) prevent Anakin's Fall once they work out what's going on. Later chapters reveal that an additional figure was brought back alongside them — Obi-Wan's ghost.

Literature

Animorphs

• All Assorted Animorphs AUs: One chapter has all six Animorphs get sent back into their thirteen-year-old bodies right before Elfangor lands with their memories from the end of the war (Rachel only remembers up to her death, the others remember up until they meet the One, or in Cassie's case, when the others met the One). After they get over their intial shock, they go to meet Elfangor and get the morphing power, but still can't save him^note It's implied that even if Elfangor could have morphed to escape, he let himself die so the Yeerks wouldn't tear apart the planet looking for him. They acquire as many morphs as they can, and immediately head off to rescue Ax, who's swimming towards them simultaneously. They start by going over everything they did and deciding if it worked or not. They fix a number of problems before they even start, most notably taking the blue box from David before he can figure out what it is.
• What Tomorrow Brings starts with the Animorphs being sent back to the morning before they met Elfangor after Jake rammed the Blade Ship. The Ellimist only intended to bring the Animorphs to the new timeline, but (the real) Tom was accidentally sent back as well, and the Animorphs need to prevent three specific Yeerks from being transferred.

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi/The Untamed

• Second Chances is one of these, in which everyone travels back in time.
• Where There's A Will, There's A Road features this as a twist, though only the resentment-poisoned spirits of the Venerated Triad travel back. It's heavily implied that they've changed the past by being there, though.

Harry Potter

• Has a FanficRecs page.
• Again and Again: Harry discovers that his life is stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop and he can't die... and this totally sucks.
• Back Again, Harry?: A most unusual Peggy Sue fic, one that refuses the usual powerups and exceptional maturity in favor of sending Harry back from his visit to Kings Cross Station in Deathly Hallows to a certain night spent staring into the Mirror of Erised.
• Backward With Purpose: Always and Always complicates the premise in three ways: 1) Harry, Ron, and Ginny go back, 2) The Lost Prophecy has changed to unpredictable levels, and 3) the author seems to have had the whole fic planned out before posting the first chapter.
  • And then its sequel, The Book of Albus has Albus Severus Potter travel back in time and he indirectly interacts with his own parents when they traveled back in Always and Always. Again, signs that the author has everything planned out.
• Curse of Fate: Immortal Harry, after watching friends and family die over thousands of years, only wants to join his loved ones in death. Believing he's found a way, he sends himself back into the body of his infant self, vowing to change his fate. A really hilarious crack fic; Harry manages to convince the Death Eaters that he is the reincarnation of the Dark Lord; Hilarity Ensues. Also, find out just how many Death Eaters ("here to kill you") can fit into a phone booth. Was said to be discontinued by author in personal messages.
• Fox Ears: The Weasley family is deep in mourning after the battle of Hogwarts, but George has better ideas than to sit around and cry about something he'd rather just fix. And Charlie believes he can do it.
• From the Flame to the Spark is among the rare breed that features Ginny Weasley as the only time-traveler, though other characters are affected by fragments of the future that comes back in Ginny's wake. Features a believable determinator!Ginny, hardened from leading the DA during the year Harry was Undesirable No. 1, that doesn't even attempt to keep events close to the original timeline. At only half-way through Harry's first school-year, three horcruxes are already destroyed, and Snape has died fighting Quirrell.
• Furious Angels features Ginny Weasley, rather than Harry Potter, returning to the past. The return is incomplete, however, so she doesn't quite remember details from the future very often, or very completely, and this causes problems.
• Zigzagged in George Weasley and the Computational Error. George Weasley jumps back in time as a 40-year-old man to his first year. He still has his own body, but he has the ability to possess his younger self when necessary...though the person who decides whether it is necessary is Fred and Fred doesn't particularly like it when this mysterious "Saintlike One" possesses his twin.
• Harry Potter and the Nightmares of Futures Past (web archive here) is the best of this sort, judging from its popularity; with over 20,000 favorites, it's easily the most popular fan fiction in the entire Harry Potter fandom. Although well-written, Harry's future knowledge and skills make him extremely powerful, extremely quickly. ~400,000 words and it's only at the start of the fourth year; the author hasn't updated it in over two years, but he's taken breaks just as long as that before.
• Harry Potter and the Temporal Beacon: Harry and Hermione find a way to make a "save checkpoint" at the end of the 3rd year, just before its end. Each time they die they get resetted to that point. Author warns not to expect it to have an ending, since he plans to keep expanding on it as long as he has enough new good ideas to add to the story. 430,000(+) words
• Wastelands of Time is only the most recent in a long series of Harry failing to save the world. And trying his hardest anyway.
• Harry Potter and the Witch Queen — Harry gets unwillingly sent back through a dark ritual after a long stalemate with Voldemort. Main heroes are Harry and Hermione, and there is also a dark!future-Hermione featured in the story as well. 124,000(+) words and is not finished yet.
• His Own Man, has Harry return to the summer before his first year after meeting Dumbledore in the other King's Cross Station. He ends up far closer to the other Houses than he was in canon, especially the Slytherins, and the Malfoy family in particular.
• In This World and the Next: Harry and Hermione are sentenced to death for killing Ron the Death Eater, but are saved when the Dementor explodes and sent back in time to visit various strife on the Weasleys and Dumbledore, among others.
• Jamie Evans and Fate's Bitch: Harry, at the end of his life, comes back as himself, only he's a girl now. And in an alternate timeline where the Potters lived and had a daughter (him). It's pretty confusing.
• Knowledge is Power has Harry and Hermione sent back in time by his parents' ghosts at the end of Order of the Phoenix.
• Mirror of Maybe: An old fic from before Order of The Phoenix where Harry isn't technically time traveling — he's just had a very long look through a clairvoyant magical object. SuperPowered!Harry + SnapeSlash may scare people away.
• The Moment It Began in which Snape goes back to the point where he called Lily a mudblood. 300,000 words, and the story has an unfinished continuation by another author.
• Oh God, Not Again!: So maybe everything didn't work out perfectly for Harry. Still, most of his friends survived, he'd gotten married, and was about to become a father. If only he'd have stayed away from the Veil, he wouldn't have had to go back and do everything again. Also, because the Veil was the method of time travel, he finds out that Sirius time traveled as well. Hilarity Ensues.
• The Peace Not Promised: When Severus Snape reaches the afterlife, he's offered the opportunity to go back and seek to resolve his many regrets. He accepts in hopes of keeping Lily safe this time (and he has no intention of preserving the timeline more than absolutely necessary) — but he has to start at a point where she has already broken off their friendship.
• Thoroughly deconstructed in A Question Of When by vlad, in which Romilda Vane (a Stalker with a Crush side character from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) is given nearly limitless Mental Time Travel powers... which she uses to try and seduce Harry Potter. Exceptional use of language (tenses begin to switch constantly about halfway through as Romilda begins to lose her grip on things like "where" and "when") and is unique in how Time Travel is treated as a Mundane Utility.
• Reunion: A parody of Peggy Sue fics, starring Harry, Hermione, Luna, and Susan Bones as the returnees. They're on a mission to take the timeline and tie it into a pretzel, complete with copious amounts of Death Eater murder. Now complete.
• Sisyphus: Takes a twist on the general Peggy Sue plotline; Harry gets another chance - and another and another... After a while they stop feeling like chances at all. Very well-written and be prepared for a hint of dark, morbid humour.
• To Shape and Change: AU. Time Travel. Snape goes back in time, holding the knowledge of what is to come if he fails. No longer holding a grudge, he seeks to shape Harry into the greatest wizard of all time, starting on the day Hagrid took Harry to Diagon Alley.

A Song of Ice and Fire

• Begin Again and Unforeseen Consequences by Salamon2 have the four youngest Stark children return to the beginning of the series. Something of a Fix Fic, save that several of the changes — such as No One/Arya killing Theon - bring things to a head ahead of schedule.
• Robb Returns: In a certain time, when the Red Wedding happened, the Gods (all of them) decide that there were too many lost leaders to win the War for the Dawn. So to remedy this, they send Robb back from his death, starting a cascade of choices that will bring the Seven Kingdoms together in a new way to be prepared for the Others. Somewhat unusually, the typical Set Right What Once Went Wrong aspects are dropped fairly quickly. The story instead focuses on the return of the magic, the growing power of the Old Gods, and preparing Westeros for the Others.

Ward

• Warp has Victoria Dallon return to the beginning of Worm. Unfortunately, her desire to avert the end of the world is hampered by the fact that she had little influence over the events of the first novel.

The Wicked Years

• Almost Like a Prophecy has Elphaba accidentally sending herself back through time through her magic, which she uses as a second chance to fix what she sees as her mistakes right. Namely, to protect those she loves.
• For Good is a story which starts off a year after Wicked ends and throws Glinda into the body of herself (Galinda) shortly before "Dear Old Shiz." Thrown for a twist in that she immediately decides to change things for good and that she's not the only one finding herself back at Shiz.

Live-Action TV

Arrowverse

• Future Shock has the Earth's heroes lose the war against Darkseid eleven years into the future. With options depleted Kara, Miss Martian, Sara Lance and Thea Queen play the ultimate gamble, to send Kara's memories, some essential tech, and all the resources they can muster back to before the war was lost, before everyone died, before there was even a Supergirl. And this time, Kara intends to do better.

Buffyverse

• Compelled to Play Again features a Peggy Sue Illyria. Though the Fang Gang makes a huge difference in the battle against the First, Illyria's changes cause more evil eyes to turn towards the Hellmouth. The story is the first in a series, though the Peggy Sue aspect is strongest in the first.
• Cordelia's Wish sends Cordelia back so she can join the Scooby Gang from day one... Her efforts to turn it into a Fix Fic go rather disastrously wrong, however, landing squarely in Cosmic Horror Story territory, as the tropes list indicates.
• Here is Gone gives Spike (former Big Bad) a Peggy Sue after he completes his Heel–Face Turn and acquires his soul.
• M. McGregor's I Am What I Am sends the soul of a dying 97-year-old Xander back in time to take over his own body during That Halloween Episode. He takes a rather more direct approach than in most examples of the trope.
• The Journeyverse turns Xander into a massive Marty Stu, then gives him a Peggy Sue and carries Faith, Dawn, and Giles along for the ride. It is also a Massive Multiplayer Crossover.
• Yahtzee (no, not that one) has a fic called Two Steps Back that gives this idea an interesting twist. After his final battle, Angel is given a device that can send him backwards through his life, a little farther each time; he can use it as many times as he wants, but he can't go forward again. Angel thinks he'll only need one jump to fix everything, but he soon learns how easily "knowing then what you know now" can lead to disaster...
• Vintage Season is one of the very few Buffy the Vampire Slayer-based Peggy Sue stories to feature Dawn as the time traveler. She makes a deal with D'Hoffryn as a means to seek vengeance against the First Evil by going back in time to prevent its schemes from coming to fruition.
• Wesleys Mulligan: What happens when you get an Angel season 5 Wesley kidnapping and replacing his Buffy Season 3 counterpart? Well, things certainly go differently. This much more genre savvy and brutal Wesley does not play well with the much more innocent cast of the early Buffyverse. Played fairly straight here without any major negative impacts.

Downton Abbey

• Authors of Our Own Fate sees Matthew, upon the moment of his death, waking up the night before the news broke of the Titanic's sinking. He proceeds to make a list of all he will do to change the future, with some events working out well (him and Mary get together much sooner) while others do not (Pamuk becoming a ranting, screaming madman that nearly beats Carson to death). To further complicate matters Sybil has also returned to the past and is much more willing to alter things, with her hiring Bates to kill Pamuk and then risking her relationship with Tom by revealing she is a time traveler.

Game of Thrones

• no matter how bright a torch sends Sansa from a timeline in which most of Westeros has already fallen to the White Walkers into the body of Cersei Lannister the day of her wedding. She immediately sets herself to become a much more competent and politically active Queen, goading Robert into at least putting token efforts to unify the realm and developing a successful and productive marriage. While this does avert a great deal of the issues that plagued the realm in the original timeline, events are changing as well to counter her own efforts, starting with Littlefinger being sent to King's Landing far too early.
• The Raven's Plan: With the White Walkers having triumphed over the living, the remaining heroes use a highly risky Blood Magic spell channeling the power of the Old Gods to send some select people back in time to Set Right What Once Went Wrong by preventing the wars that left Westeros depleted of the resources necessary to effectively counter the Others. However, due to the massive Last Stand Hold the Line battle going on around the spot, the spell becomes fueled by the extra blood sacrifices and much more powerful than intended, "awakening" far more people than originally planned. Despite the unexpected turn of so many remembering their previous lifetimes (and deaths), the people of Planetos overall are grateful for this miraculous second chance and get to work to not waste it, with some even looking to gain some justice they never got in the previous timeline.
• Shielding Their Realms Forever initially starts out ten years after the events of the series finale where it turns out that the Others have not been entirely defeated (with the implication that the Night's King put a piece of himself in Bran as a back-up for himself), so Jon is sent back to when he was resurrected from the dead in "Home" and he immediately gets to work to not only find out how to truly defeat the Others but also save as many people as he can from the dark paths their fates took them in the original timeline.
• There and Back Again starts out as a Continuation Fic where Jon Snow meets the Stranger (one of the aspects of the Seven-Pointed Star making up the Faith of the Seven) four months after the series finale and offered the chance to go back in time to five years before the series' events began, fix his mistakes, and truly fulfill the Prince That Was Promised prophecy. Other characters are also sent back to help Jon, including Ned, Sansa, Varys, Maester Aemon, and Tormund. However, a wayward soul also makes their way back in Daenerys Targaryen, who is determined to get revenge on all those who wronged her.
• The What If...? series centers on certain characters wishing they could start their lives over, with varying degrees of success.
  • In What If...? Catelyn Tully, Catelyn wishes on a star that Brandon Stark, Ned's brother to whom she was originally betrothed, didn't die, just so she wouldn't have to deal with the "insult" that Jon Snow's presence brings her anymore. She wakes up the next morning in her childhood bedroom in Riverrun and realizes that she's in an Alternate Universe where, among other differences, the Mad King Aerys II died earlier on which allowed Rhaegar to be crowned king. Cat is initially ecstatic when she gets married to Brandon, but Be Careful What You Wish For is in full effect here, as she is hit with the realization that she was only ever in love with the image of the "Wild Wolf" and he's a very different husband from how Ned was; this, along with several other faux pas moves she makes, quickly sours Cat as an obnoxious in-law to the rest of the Stark family. She also ends up figuring out that Jon is actually her nephew through Lyanna and Rhaegar, which means her ire at Jon was completely misplaced. The story ultimately ends with her wishing she could go back to her original life.
  • In What If...? Elia Martell, Elia wishes she never got married to Rhaegar while Gregor Clegane and Amory Lorch kill her and her children during the Sacking of King's Landing. She then wakes up in her childhood bedroom in Dorne and immediately gets to work trying to make sure she doesn't get married to the prince with the extremely unstable father.

iCarly

• iFight Crime With Victorious has Megan Parker and Sikowitz going back in time after the heroes fail to stop the Big Bad from turning Seattle into a nuclear ground zero and later become Affably Evil as a result of the current timeline.

Lois & Clark

• The questionably titled but quite nicely written Begin the Begin by Aromassa has the post-finale, married Lois and Clark accidentally going all the way back to the Pilot and their first meeting, and rebuilding the events of the show from there.
• Zoomway's Kerth-nominated The Persistence of Memory has more intentional bits of time-travel, with the protagonists going back to revisit and correct some of the key moments in their relationship.

Lost

• Knowing Lost, rather than having a canon character go back in time, opens with two rabid Lost fans from the real world waking up in the wreckage of Oceanic 815 after having a Cryptic Conversation on the flight home from the finale party. The fic takes itself very seriously, with one character (Ryan) doing everything he can to fix the show's many problems, while the other (Kevin) tries to keep things in line and stay detached from the events unfolding around him. It appears the "course correction" that prevented the canon characters from changing the past in season 5 is in effect and hinders Ryan's attempts change the most painful events in the show.

Merlin (2008)

• To Start Anew begins with a century-old, post-finale Merlin using a spell to put his magic himself into his younger body, before Morgana discovered her magic. However, rather than actively using his foreknowledge, he wipes his memory upon arrival, leaving himself a note with instructions on what to change to avoid Arthur's death, and a failsafe spell in case it doesn't work. He tries multiple times to stop Morgana and Mordred from their canon Face-Heel Turns by being more kind to them, but fails every time, nearly driving himself insane from grief. Finally, Merlin instead instructs himself to come clean and change Arthur's mind during his ultimatum with The Disir. The rest of the story follows what happens from there.
  • It later turns out that Gaius and Nimueh had used the same spell years before in order go back and bind Arthur's innate magic before Uther could discover its existence, at the cost of The Disir's ultimatum.

Smallville

• In New Beginnings, Lois Lane interferes with Clark Kent trying to use the Legion Ring to prevent being exposed by Linda Lake, causing them going back eight years in the past instead of some few months.

Supernatural

• If I knew then what I know now has Dean going back into his four-year-old body to save his mother's life and change the plot.

The Walking Dead (2010)

• Awake features this trope mixed with a "Groundhog Day" Loop: Rick, Daryl, Carol, Glenn, and Carl wake up back at the beginning of the series after arriving at Alexandria in Season 5. The five are forced to relive the same day over and over, initially with only a few of them being awake at a time, until all five are awake in the same loop and manage to change Morgan and Duane's future.
  • The sequel, Aware, picks it up from there, with the five working to change later events. The most recent chapter (updated in 2015) reveals that other members of the cast who made it to Alexandria have gotten some of their memories back, including Michonne and Maggie (the latter having her memories fully restored upon reuniting with Glenn).

Miscellaneous

• 4chan's /co/ has a copypasta fic involving King Arthur getting a chance to start over. He asks Merlin to change the female squirrel who pursued him in one sequence of Disney's The Sword In The Stone into a human to be his friend and companion (and implicitly his wife rather than Guinevere).
  • The T-rated story is here◊.
• Halfway through Fanfic/{ITSMYLIFE}} ITS MY LIFE!]] the main character has killed almost everyone and accidentally finds a time machine. She points out that it may be possible for her to fix everything, but first she arrives too early and then too late and eventually ends up fighting another self-based villain entirely.
• Imperium Ascendant is a Warhammer 40,000 fanfic where the God-Emperor of Mankind is able to use the power of the Warp to reach out from the grim darkness of the far future to warn his past self, 10,000 years ago, about what is to befall his grand plans, and give him a massive power boost. The resultant story is an Alternate Universe Fic about past-Emperor trying to use his newfound knowledge and power to prevent the Imperium from becoming what it was in the 41st millennium.
• The Infinite Loops is this on a massive scale. The underlying concept is that reality itself is broken, and until the problem has been fixed, all the universes (i.e. every fictional and real universe that exists) are set to repeat a certain period (usually start to end of whatever media it's based on) over and over. Also, one person in each universe is its "Anchor" and is aware of the repeats, as are any individuals they've managed to "awaken", and so have ample opportunity to engage in this trope. Many Loopers can boast millions of iterations, and the first few have mostly lost count. Shenanigans are extremely common, as it makes for a great coping mechanism.
• The School Rumble fanfic School Rumble: Time Rumble is this with a twist. Harima Kenji gets sent back in time to win Tenma's heart... but everyone's feelings toward everyone else in the series (both romantic and non) travel back in time with him. Needless to say the plot goes ridiculously off the tracks very quickly, with barely a casual glance at the Stations of the Canon.
• Vive, Vale, Gaude has Ryou Fujibayashi encounter a distraught Tomoya in the hospital where she works. She discovers that he lost everything: Nagisa and Ushio. She encounters a wish shop (which may be a CLAMP reference) and she is then sent back in time, where she attempts to ensure things flow smoothly so that they might be able to avoid that fate.

Video Games

Crossovers

• Killing The Past, a Night in the Woods and Enter the Gungeon crossover, has Mae, Gregg, Angus, and Bea enter the Gungeon to find The Gun That Can Kill The Past.

Control

• New Girl (mortimermcmirestinks):
  • While the ETC Experiments was supposed to let Jesse do this, all it does is have Polaris from the new timeline give that version of Jesse visions from the original timeline with no context for any of it.
  • Somehow, this did happen with Langston, waking up with all of his memories from the canon timeline despite his lack of involvement in the experiments.

Elden Ring

• Maidenless No Longer: The Tarnished, having gone through New Game Plus countless times and maxed out his level in a game with an Absurdly High Level Cap, decides to do one last run where he saves everyone. Melina, who spends most of the time following him around invisible, is completely flabbergasted by him, especially when he starts curb-stomping demigods naked. And then he starts seducing the women he saves, and Melina starts getting much, much more flustered.

Final Fantasy

• The Fifth Act: After an accident with a time materia, Cloud is thrown into the past (not returned to his old body) before the events of Crisis Core. Instead of trying to save Sephiroth, he sets off to kill him and prevent the coming tragedies. Being Cloud, what he actually planned is entirely different from what he ends up doing. The Fifth Act defies The Stations of the Canon as Cloud's actions dramatically change the course of Midgar and it's revealed that the fic is a Subversion. Cloud doesn't Set Right What Once Went Wrong as he created a new timeline when he time traveled.
• Fusion, where Cloud is given the chance by Aeris to go back to his life in the military and to try to save Sephiroth. This was written long before the Compilation came out, so some of the characterizations obviously differ from the later installments, and some of them coincide (like Cloud angsty-self in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children). This is a Slash Fic and it's sadly dead.
• The Final Fantasy VI fanfic Second Chances pulls this off magnificently by way of the Opera House glitch that sends the player back to the World of Balance if you leave a rat alive in the rafters and the party loses a battle to it during the second half of the game. In-story, Celes is killed by a rat knocked down from the opera house rafters by the Dirt Dragon's Quake spell. But thanks to the Phoenix Magicite, she unwittingly mentally goes back in time to just before the opera boss battle. Both she and the others are initially unsure of what happened at first and whether or not to believe she experienced the future, but ultimately do. Not everything goes according to plan, but most of the changed events turn out for the better.
• Time Paradox is a Final Fantasy fic where Cloud, one he gets his life sorted out, gets sent back in time against his will and placed in an alternate reality where everyone else is either a Cloud Cuckoolander, The Wonka, Ax-Crazy, Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!, Crazy Is Cool, or... okay, summary: Cloud Strife is the Only Sane Man and a Peggy Sue to a universe that he really isn't bothered about changing the fate of. Hilarity Ensues.

Fire Emblem

• In A Chance for a New Dawn, Bernadetta watches Byleth die during the final battle of the Verdant Wind route, and nearly kills herself out of grief over his death only to wind up back in a pre-war Garreg Mach with the memories of everything that happened beforehand. Her ultimate goal is to keep Byleth (and their relationship) alive.
• The plot of Fire Emblem: Three Houses: Fifth Path basically boils down to Byleth (who in this timeline went down the Blue Lions route) traveling back in time to prevent the war, and by extension the deaths of her friends, from ever happening. This is after she accidentally freezes time.
• Godspeed starts with Byleth dying during the final battle of the Azure Moon route and being sent back to the events of the beginning of the game, with Sothis encouraging him to avoid making the same decisions he did before to throw the war off its course before it even begins.

Mass Effect

• Mass Effect: Life is a Game has a Male!Paragon!Shepard and a Female!Renegade!Shepard take a one-way trip from Mass Effect 3's endgame into the same universe. His is Mental Time Travel, hers isn't. They get married.

Mega Man

• Mandi Paugh's Powered Down has a variation of this. Mega Man switches bodies with his counterpart from the PSP remake of the first game, Mega Man Powered Up, eventually attempting to use his knowledge to prevent Mega Man 2 from ever happening. Unlike other Peggy Sue fics, it doesn't affect his own timeline, but he's still using knowledge of his own future to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.

Persona Series

• Persona 3:
  • Reset puts the protagonist in an interesting situation: He wakes up in front of Tartarus the day before his arrival in Iwatodai, and finds that he's been replaced by the female protagonist from P3P, and that Elizabeth has taken his place as the Great Seal. He's no longer a Wild Card and his former friends and Social Links no longer are as close with him, and he must make a great deal of effort to prevent the Arcana Shadows from being defeated to stop Ikutsuki's plans and Nyx's return. Dead-ends in the summer, unfortunately, with the author having no intention of continuing.
• Persona 4:
  • Fortune no Hikari is an interesting take on this. In it the main character goes back in time to the start of the game after one of the Downer Endings. However he's unable to come up with a way to save the Sacrificial Lamb character at the start without making himself look suspicious and thus fails to save her. He also opts to let a lot of things play their course since he knows it will work out in the end and is afraid trying to change it will make things worse. He does however cause a few minor changes, such as preventing a friend from doing something stupid to get the police off their case, use his knowledge of the future to start of on better terms with his uncle, and subtly give a few hints to cause his two friends to admit their feelings and become a couple almost right away rather than go on with the Ship Tease for months on end.
• Persona 5:
  • Breaking (all the) Things has Akechi being sent back in time at the moment of his death, ending up near Shido just before Akira was framed for assaulting him. Akechi impulsively punches Shido out for real, before quickly realising that he just derailed Akira's story and prevented the Phantom Thieves from coming into existence. He later tries to set things back on course by giving Akira's description to the local police, but it doesn't get back to Shido thanks to Judge Kurusu's influence and Akira still doesn't get arrested. This forces Akechi to create the Phantom Thieves himself, eventually forming his own team with Morgana, Futaba and Haru, and covering as many of their canon targets as he can. It's only when he targets Akira's estranged mother and causes his father's corruption to be exposed that Akira ends up being sent to Tokyo and Shujin. Even then, the Velvet Room inhabitants have no idea what to do with him.
  • Retribution of the Trickster has Joker and Morgana get a New Game Plus after losing everything else to the final boss... but in the Royal timeline.
  • Rig the Game: Royal is an interesting twist on this premise. In one timeline, Joker manages to kill the final boss, but only after he's already destroyed everything else. Unable to restore the ruined world, Igor and Lavenza grant him a consolation and send him to a different timeline similar to his own, two years before the events of the game. In this timeline, identical to Royal but for the fact that the Trickster is female, Joker from the ruined world will use all of the resources he has to rig the game in the new Trickster's favor and prevent the ruin he lived through from coming to pass a second time.
  • Royalty-free Rerun puts a unique spin on the trope in that it's not Joker who goes back in time, but late-game party member Sumire. After the rest of the Phantom Thieves are killed during the final battle of Royal, Sumire decides to commit suicide rather than live in the altered reality; instead of dying, she wakes up in April, shortly after her sister's fatal accident. Sumire uses this chance to join up with the Thieves much earlier than she did in canon and prevents several traumatic events like Shiho's attempted suicide.
  • The fic series Start Again features a version of this where the entire party is transported back in time from the Darkest Hour of the original game. The catch? They don't all get sent back to the same point. And certain events are isolated enough from each other that several time travelers believe they're the only ones, and start changing things from their end. A beautiful collection of chaos currently six stories long (plus a seventh fic that exists just to keep track of the twisting timeline).
  • Throw Away Your Mask has a post-death-and-Maruki Akechi sent back to his ten-year-old self, who lives in Iwatodai and subsequently gets involved in SEES' and later the Investigation Team's stories.
  • The Trickster's Reawakening has Joker sent back from right before he would have died after the Fusion to a year before the events of the game. He vows to be a better person, friend, and lover this time around. The pairing is the Protagonist and Ann, with the biggest plot point being that Shiho joins the Thieves in spite of not having a Persona...which has serious consequences down the line.

Pokémon

• Anachronism is a Pokémon Sword and Shield Dark Fic where Gloria is transported to a slightly different timeline after the Darkest Day goes horribly wrong. With slightly different design than she previously had, Gloria must avoid the wrongs of her original Pokémon journey.

Sonic the Hedgehog

• Blast to the Past has Silver, Blaze and Princess Elise thrown back in time in an Archie/Fleetway mixed Mobius, when Sonic and Eggman were apparently friends. Knowing that the Metarex, the antagonists of the fic, were attempting to alter the timeline to take over Mobius and the universe, Elise ensures that the plot doesn't come to fruition. However... in doing so, it turns out that Princess Elise herself was the one responsible for turning Eggman evil, very much the same way Sonic was responsible in the Fleetway comic.
• A rather strange example occurs in the fanfics (link unavailable because apparently they're on an "adult" site) A Rose And A Thorn 3 and A Rose And A Thorn 4. The OC 'Project: Mirage' loses everything — including her lover Espio and her vision — at the end of ARAAT3, and then with Sonic's help uses the Time Stones to try and re-write history in ARAAT4. She — and the reader — learn many strange things about the events on the ARK, including the possibility that she is perpetuating a time loop that may have been going round for centuries, and the uncertainty of whether Espio reminded her of a former love on ARK — known as Project: Midnight — or that Midnight reminded her of Espio.

The World Ends with You

• A variation occurs in Chapters. The main character experiences the game's own New Game Plus, which means he can't change anything, but he can mentally slap himself over how he acted...and find post-game content.

Xenoblade Chronicles

• Where We Don't Belong: The story's main premise, the Ouroboros are essentially sent back in time to their respective worlds before Shulk and Rex started their journeys. The twist is that due to the nature of the "Endless Now" and the resulting loss of memories, the Ouroboros have no experience with their own native worlds; rather than expertly altering the plot, they're just bungling through with no idea what they're doing. Most of them literally don't even know what species they are, much less the local political situation that they can exploit.

Other Games

• The highly-moddable Hentai JRPG Monster Girl Quest has a popular (although still in development) mod for it called 'Monster Girl Quest NG+'. The mod is a New Game Plus mode for the original that justifies being such through a new Peggy Sue narrative where the hero Luka is sent back to the day his adventure first began, complete with all his skills, powers (except the powers of the Four Elemental Spirits, since those are dependent on the spirits accompanying him and they didn't follow him back) and equipment, including the unique Angel Halo sword, and, more importantly, complete knowledge of the game's big plot twist (namely that God Is Evil and the Monster Lord is a Noble Demon who he had actually ended up married to in the future). This leads to amusing scenarios where the Goddess Ilias tries to give him a divine mission to slay the Monster Lord only for him to tell her to go fuck herself (to her complete befuddlement as he'd always been a pious believer before), and he now has absolutely no qualms about breaking the goddess' taboo about sexual contact with monster girls.

Visual Novels

Danganronpa

• And Again combines this with "Groundhog Day" Loop. Naegi inexplicably reawakens at the beginning of the game and takes it upon himself to ensure Everybody Lives.
• A Student Out of Time has this in the format of an ask blog. Hajime Hinata inexplicably finds himself back at the beginning of the Danganronpa timeline, now with the chance to prevent The Tragedy and save the lives of his classmates.

Fate Series

• Fate/Black Avalon: In a variant, Morgan, the one going back in time, had absolutely nothing to do with the original events; the very first change she made was getting herself summoned instead of someone else. She still fills the role, though, as she has full knowledge of the future and uses it to put everything on a more preferred path.
• Fate ReNight is a Peggy Sue fic for the Fate/stay night Visual Novel, where Shirou accidentally activates the remains of the Grail and wishes himself back from the end of the Fate route to the moment he summoned Saber. What's notable about this fic is that it is both the first Fate/stay night fic of this type and, although the author is a self-admitted Saber/Shirou fan, he seems to take a sadistic glee in the fact that Fate Shirou lacks a lot of the knowledge revealed in other routes (Archer's identity, Sakura's situation etc), and because of this most all of Shirou's attempted fixes backfire. He has recently begun to play with the dream-sharing between Servants and Masters, which likely is going to complicate Shirou's efforts to conceal the time travel thing from Saber.

Web Animation

RWBY

• Not this time, Fate is a RWBY fan fic about Jaune being stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop while trying to do this. But the overall narrative makes this a deconstruction of the trope. The author goes to great lengths to establish just how hard "fixing" the story would be even with time travel, while also calling into question the morality of playing with timelines for the sake of saving a few specific people.
• Two Minutes Silence follows Team RWBY's defeat at the end of Volume 8, as they, Jaune, and Neo are all sent back to the beginning of Volume 1, with RWBY and Jaune aiming to undo most of the disastrous events that occur in Volume 2 onwards as well as try and convince Neo to take a more neutral stance between the two warring factions.
• What a Wonderful World revolves around Team RWBY going back over 24 years in the past and meeting STRQ when they were first-years.

Western Animation

Avatar: The Last Airbender

• The Chosen is an Avatar: The Last Airbender fan ficlet that features three twists on the basic Peggy Sue premise. First, it's Ozai who gets to go back in time following his defeat at the hands of Avatar Aang. Second, Ozai lives over his entire lifetime from age 15 onward multiple times, totaling several hundred years at the least. Third, the canon timeline is the last and final loop Ozai ever experiences.
• Distorted Reality combines this trope with Mirror Universe: Yangchen sends Aang back to the end of his 100-year hibernation, but in an alternate world where the Water Tribes are bent on world domination, Kuruk was his immediate predecessor instead of Roku, and Azula and Zuko start out as his allies and Sokka is his pursuer, all to keep him from becoming the same Well-Intentioned Extremist that Jet had been. It ends up Gone Horribly Wrong, with the two realities merging and the Spirit World threatening to collapse in on itself, which Guru Pathik thinks will destroy the Multiverse unless it is stopped.
• Weary Sovereigns is another Avatar fic of the time loop sort wherein the five members of the Gaang are trapped in this situation; every time they die, they return to their bodies in the past at the moment Aang awakens in the iceberg. Having experienced the same lifetime so many times that they have now lost count, they’ve passed the stage of insanity, settled into resignation, and begun taking turns deciding what they do to the world in each lifetime; it’s all they can do to keep themselves entertained. Dead since 2015, but very well-written.

Miraculous Ladybug

• Reboot: Marinette is sent back in time by Master Fu to prevent the The End of the World as We Know It, specifically into the body of her thirteen year-old self the morning she gains her miraculous.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

• In the Pony POV Series, Queen Chrysalis ends up being a deconstruction. She sees the events of the canon episode and adjusts her plans accordingly...but fails to factor in the Butterfly of Doom and that her changing her behavior will cause OTHERS to change theirs, which is ultimately her downfall.
• A Second Chance features Twilight Sparkle being visited by her future self who gives her the knowledge of everything that happened in her life before sending back in time to the moment when she first left for Ponyville. Armed with this newfound information she begins to make changes for her life and her friends as well as stopping threats before they occur.

The Owl House

• Odaliaverse involves Odalia Blight being revived moments after dying at the Day of Unity, decades into the past before she entered Hexside, giving her a chance to ensure she doesn't repeat the same mistakes her past life did.

Star Wars

• Dominoes (Star Wars: The Clone Wars) has the various members of Domino Squad transported back from the points of their deaths to the date of the final test. From there on out, they work to change things for the better-most pressingly, exposing Order 66.

Steven Universe

• In The Peridot Effect, there's a variation in which Peridot wakes up 4,500 years prior to the events of the series to discover everything up to the season five finale was all a premonition. She had no intention of going back, and the time she left was bright, with everyone earning their happy ending and making strives towards fixing Homeworld. She's upset at first, but decides she can't just sit, wait, and let everything happen again with what she knows now, and requests an assignment to Earth at the first opportunity; she abandons Homeworld, frees Lapis from the mirror, and (re)joins the Crystal Gems.

Total Drama

• Courtney's Crusade for Redemption has Courtney as travel back in time to Total Drama All-Stars, giving her the chance to make up for all her mistakes on that season and take her life down a new and better path.
• In Ezekiel's Time Tour, thanks to Chris and Chef fooling around with a time machine for an upcoming Total Drama season, Ezekiel is sent back to the World Tour season, to where he decides to redeem himself, make some friends and win.
• Total Drama: Cody's Redemption has Cody time travel to Total Drama Island, where he decides to use the opportunity to not only play differently, but also stop pursuing Gwen and befriend different girls, which results in Lindsay and Bridgette developing feelings for him.
• Total Drama Redemption has an adult Noah be sent to an alternate timeline of Total Drama Island, where he is given the opportunity to redeem himself by improving his performance in the competition. The fic was popular enough to inspire other writers to try similar stories.

Trollhunters

• Withhold takes the Peggy Sue premise of the episode "Unbecoming" and has Jim predict where Kanjigar has his fatal battle with Bular and saves him, thus Kanjigar does not die and Jim does not become the trollhunter.