Time Travel Tropes

Of all the concepts in Speculative Fiction, Time Travel is probably the one with the most possibilities for storytelling, and therefore the one that has been exploited the most. Whether you're casting a critical eye on the past, satirising the present through a warped future, or just looking for an excuse to have dinosaurs rampaging through New York, time travel is the way to go. Or, possibly, the way to have been going. It's so hard to tell these days. Or those days. Or whatever. Or whenever. We tend to get grammatically confused when talking on this subject.

Also, try saying the name of this page ten times fast.

In-Depth:


 * Time Travel
 * Temporal Mutability

Tropes:
 * Adventures in The Bible
 * Alien Space Bats
 * Alternate Self
 * Alternate History
 * Alternate Timeline
 * Anachronism Stew
 * Archived Army
 * Army of the Ages
 * Bad Future
 * Bad Present
 * Beethoven Was an Alien Spy
 * Born in The Wrong Century
 * Butterfly of Doom
 * Necessary Fail
 * Can't Take Anything With You
 * Casual Time Travel
 * Changed My Jumper
 * Chronoscope
 * Clock Roaches
 * "Close Enough" Timeline
 * Compound Interest Time Travel Gambit
 * Conqueror From the Future
 * The Constant
 * Contemporary Caveman
 * The Cretaceous Is Always Doomed
 * Crystal Spires and Togas
 * Delayed Ripple Effect
 * Equivalent Exchange
 * Excellent Adventure
 * Fantastic Time Management
 * Fashions Never Change
 * Fish Out of Temporal Water
 * For Want of a Nail
 * The Future
 * Future Badass
 * Future Loser
 * Future Me Scares Me
 * Futureshadowing
 * Future Slang
 * Get Back to The Future
 * Giving Radio to The Romans
 * God Test (to establish the veracity of the time traveller)
 * Godwin's Law of Time Travel
 * Gone to The Future
 * Grandfather Paradox
 * Groundhog Day Loop
 * Groundhog Peggy Sue
 * The Gump
 * Have We Met Yet?
 * Help Your Self in The Future
 * Historical In-Joke
 * Historical Person Punchline
 * Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act
 * Human Popsicle
 * Identical Grandson
 * I Hate Past Me
 * I'm Mr. Future Pop Culture Reference
 * Immune to Fate
 * Intangible Time Travel
 * In Their Own Image
 * In the Past Everyone Will Be Famous
 * In Spite of a Nail
 * It Will Never Catch On
 * I Want My Jetpack
 * Just One Second Out of Sync
 * Kid From the Future
 * A Little Something We Call "Rock and Roll"
 * Love Transcends Spacetime
 * Mass Teleportation
 * Meanwhile in The Future
 * Mental Time Travel
 * Merged Reality
 * Merlin Sickness
 * "Mister Sandman" Sequence
 * My Future Self and Me
 * My Own Grampa
 * Narnia Time
 * Never the Selves Shall Meet
 * Newspaper Dating
 * No Backwards Compatibility in The Future
 * No Equal-Opportunity Time Travel
 * Non Sequitur Causality
 * One-Man Industrial Revolution
 * Only One Me Allowed Right Now
 * Ontological Inertia
 * Other Me Annoys Me
 * Our Time Machine Is Different
 * Our Time Travel Is Different
 * Out of Time, Out of Mind
 * Past Right Now
 * Peggy Sue
 * Place Beyond Time
 * Popular History
 * Portal to The Past
 * Present Day Past
 * Reset Button
 * Reset Button Ending
 * Ret-Gone
 * Retroactive Precognition
 * Retroactive Preparation
 * Ripple Effect Indicator
 * Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory
 * Rubber Band History
 * San Dimas Time
 * Screw Destiny
 * Screw Yourself
 * Self-Defeating Prophecy
 * Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
 * Set Right What Once Went Wrong
 * Make Wrong What Once Went Right
 * The Slow Path
 * Spin the Earth Backwards
 * Stable Time Loop
 * Temporal Paradox
 * Temporal Sickness
 * Terminator Twosome
 * This Is My Boomstick
 * Time and Relative Dimensions In Space
 * Time Crash
 * Time Dissonance
 * Time Is Dangerous
 * Timeline-Altering MacGuffin
 * Time Machine
 * Time Master
 * Time Police
 * Time Travelers Are Spies
 * The Time Traveller's Dilemma
 * Time Travel Escape
 * Time Travel Romance
 * Time Travel Tense Trouble
 * Time Travel for Fun And Profit
 * Timey-Wimey Ball
 * To the Future And Beyond
 * Trapped in The Past
 * Tricked-Out Time
 * Trust Password
 * The Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer
 * Unstuck in Time
 * Wayback Trip
 * The Web Always Existed
 * We Will Have Perfect Health in The Future
 * We Will Not Have Appendixes in The Future
 * What Year Is This?
 * Which Me?
 * Who Shot JFK?
 * Write Back to The Future
 * Wrong Time Travel Savvy
 * Year Inside, Hour Outside
 * Ye Goode Olde Days
 * You Already Changed the Past
 * You Can't Fight Fate
 * You Will Be Beethoven