As a suggestion for the trope mentioned here that no one has a name for; GURPS Infinite Worlds refers to this effect as "Chaotic Time". It describes Chaotic Time by saying "If you go back as far as WWI, the act of buying a newspaper in London would reverberate down the timeline, and national boundaries would be different when you returned." This troper thinks Chaotic Time is as a good a name as any for this trope.
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The way you describe "Chaotic Time" makes it seem more like the super-trope, "For Want Of A Nail." Granted, it's just a name, and it sorta captures the essence of the trope. However, I think "Non Sequitur Causality" would be more straightforward. Another option this troper thought up is "Cause And Defect," which, while a bit off-target, contains a pun, thereby making it awesome.
I like "Cause and Defect." I would like to offer "Causality is a Harsh Mistress."
Neither of those imply that this is about time travel. Plus the latter makes it look like causality will punish you instead of just being random.
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Okay. Its clear that this is not the trope for what happened in Back to the Future as the changes were largely explained there. But they still had to "fix" the timeline (get Marty's parents together) and the "fix" didn't restore the timeline exactly.
Point being, do we have a trope for that?
Edited by gibberingtroper Hide / Show Replies
You know, the trope name isn't really clear about "changed you couldn't really affect", so perhaps we could expand this.
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Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Merge into new trope or redefine?
, started by DragonQuestZ on Mar 8th 2011 at 11:13:39 PM
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman