"Unbelievable that Old Biff could've chosen that particular date. It could mean that that point in time inherently contains some sort of cosmic significance, almost as if it were the temporal junction point, for the entire space-time continuum. On the other hand, it could just be an amazing coincidence."
—Doc Brown, Back to the Future Part II.
In most Time Travel stories, it seldom matters what day the Butterfly of Doom flaps its wings. Not so in these stories; Rubber-Band History protects and smooths the timeline except for these critical dates in history when the tiniest change is catastrophic. This is what's known to be the starting point of history changing as you know it.
Say, if someone travels back to the date of your birth and interferes with the birthing process, this could result in your life being different from how it is in the present. As it is crucial for your history to continue exponentially.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Comic Books
- Batman (Tom King): In the arc "The Gift", Booster Gold returns to the day when Bruce Wayne's parents were killed and stops their deaths as a pre-wedding gift for Batman in the present. However, this turns Gotham and the world into such a hellhole that Green Lantern Hal Jordan kills himself with the power ring in front of Booster as the opening sequence of the arc.
- Booster Gold (2007): Rip Hunter reveals early on that there are points in history called "Solidified Time", points in time so integral to history that all attempts to change them are doomed to fail. Booster Gold finds out the hard way when Rip tasks him to stop Joker from crippling Barbara Gordon and all his attempts fail. When the Black Beetle helps him in stopping the death of the Ted Kord Blue Beetle, the ignition point of the Infinite Crisis event, he ends up creating a Bad Future where Maxwell Lord and Brother Eye take over the world, forcing Booster to send his friend back to his destiny.
- Flashpoint: The Flash finds himself in an altered timeline where Thomas Wayne is Batman, Superman is nowhere to be found, and Wonder Woman is now at war with Aquaman. It turns out that all these changes occurred when Barry traveled back to the date of his mother's murder at the hands of Thawne.
Film — Live-Action
- Back to the Future Part II: Old Biff from 2015 decides to give his younger self from 1955 a sports almanac in order to make himself a millionaire in the future. The date he chooses? November 12, 1955. That's right! The same day from the first movie that also determined Marty's existence! Lampshaded by Doc Brown as the temporal junction point for the entire space-time continuum. Fridge Brilliance comes in when you realize it's also a significant day for Biff: it's the day that started with him being left with an expensive bill for his car after having been previously humiliated with a crash into a manure truck and ended with him punched in the face by the supposed wimp George McFly, so Biff might remember it as the worst day in his life.
Live-Action TV
- Dark (2017): A lot of significant things happen on June 27th, like the apocalypse in 2020 and the 1986 incident in the nuclear power plant, as well as the opening of the time portal. As the series finale shows, this all goes back to another world, the origin world, in which H. G. Tannhaus tried to create a time machine. When he turned it on on the 27th of June 1986, it instead split his world into two interconnected worlds where Time Travel exists.
- Doctor Who: Series 5 centers around the date of June 26, 2010. The Doctor discovers that this is the date when the temporal event that caused the mysterious cracks in the universe occurs, before discovering this is also the planned wedding date of his companion Amy Pond to her childhood sweetheart Rory, the day after he picked her up in the TARDIS. In "The Pandorica Opens", the temporal event turns out to be the Doctor's own TARDIS exploding, causing a total event collapse that the Doctor had to stop by erasing himself from existence. He used Amy's wedding and her near-Ripple-Proof Memory to ensure he could come back into existence afterwards. Doubles as a Meaningful Release Date, as the season finale "The Big Bang" premiered on the exact same day.
- In the Henry Danger episode "Back to the Danger", Drex uses the Time Jerker's time machine to travel back to 1989 to "Take Your Kid to Work Day", which, as it turns out, is the day Ray became indestructible.
- Inverted in Loki (2021); in season 1, Loki and the TVA are hunting Sylvie, a female Loki variant, but cannot find them even though their presence should be causing detectable changes in the Sacred Timeline. As it turns out, they've found hiding places in areas shortly before they are hit by cataclysmic disasters, where their actions can't cause butterfly effects.
Video Games
- Fate/Grand Order: The protagonist and Chaldea in general have the job of correcting Singularities, points in time that are crucial to the continued functioning of human history and humanity in general, but that have become corrupted by evil forces that have used Holy Grails to throw things out of whack.
- Jigsaw: The science underlying the time machine (the Kaldecki Effect) only allows time travel to moments with high "temporal potential" - those that could be considered turning points in history.
- Reverse: 1999: A phenomenon called "The Storm" is the main underlying event of the game, first happening on the very last day of 1999, and is able to transport people back in time to a specific era, this is also noted considering how much of the playable characters, the Arcanists, all come from different time periods, each with a varying cause and effect.
Western Animation
- Cars Toons: In the episode "Time Travel Mater", Mater accidentally causes a clock to fall on top of his radiator. Every time he sneezes, he gets sent to a certain place in history, one of those being where he meets Stanley, the town founder. When Mater refuses a radiator cap from Stanley, the salesman decides to go to California instead. When Mater realizes that this is the day Stanley founded Radiator Springs, he finds out that if Stanley leaves, there would be no Radiator Springs in the future.
- In The Fairly OddParents! episode "The Secret Life of Denzel Crocker", March 15th is The Dreaded to the students of Dimmsdale Elementary, due to it being the day Denzel Crocker is at his worst. It turns out that on March 15th, 1972, Crocker lost his fairies Cosmo and Wanda, and became the crazy teacher that he is in the present.
- Futurama: Fry accidentally falling into a cryogenic chamber on 31 December 1999, and being frozen for 1,000 years, is repeatedly shown to be a pivotal event in history, and repeatedly revisited.
- "Anthology of Interest I" reveals that Fry not getting frozen would have caused a temporal paradox that would ultimately destroy the universe.
- In "The Why Of Fry", the Brain Spawn reveal that Fry's freezing wasn't an accident—Nibbler pushed him in on purpose—and send Fry back in time to give him the opportunity to undo it and live out his life normally. Nibbler persuades him not to, and he ultimately pushes himself into the cryo-chamber, setting the timeline right.
- In "Bender's Big Score", Fry once again travels back to the moment of his freezing, this time to snag the pizza he'd been delivering. He then uses the same cryo-chamber to return to the future, while a temporal duplicate of him stays behind to live out the life he never got to. Said duplicate ultimately becomes Leela's future fiancé, Lars Fillmore.
- In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Season 5 finale "The Cutie Re-Mark", Starlight Glimmer goes back in time to the day when young Rainbow Dash made a sonic rainboom that resulted in the Mane Six getting their cutie marks at the same time note . When she interferes, Twilight and Spike witness the timeline changing drastically, resulting in multiple Bad Futures where Equestria gets threatened or taken over by one of the past big bads. Lampshaded, as Starlight, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie all struggle to believe that preventing a single group of ponies from becoming friends could result in Equestria's destruction. Downplayed, as Twilight explains that it wasn't the date that was important — all friendships are important in Equestria, and breaking even one can have devastating consequences down the line.
- In the Ninjago episode "Wrong Place Wrong Time", Garmadon decides to use the Mega-Weapon to travel back in time to the day of the pilot episode in order to prevent his son from becoming the Green Ninja.
- In the Phineas and Ferb episode "Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo", when Candace from the future decides to use the time machine to bust Phineas and Ferb once and for all, she time-travels back to where it all began: The day where the boys built the rollercoaster. Once this is accomplished, this results in Perry getting hit by the ball of tinfoil instead of Doofenshmirtz, resulting in him taking over the Tri-State Area.