Delayed Ripple Effect: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

'''Doc''': [[Lampshade Hanging|Beats the shit out of me]].|'''''[[Back to The Future]]''''', deleted scene.}}

 

 

 

 

The [[Trope Namer]] is from the ''[[Back to The Future]]'' [http://bttf.wikia.com/wiki/Ripple_effect films].

 

== Anime and Manga ==

 

 

* In ''[[Back to The Future]]'', Marty has a week to get his parents together before he will be erased from existence. Over the course of that week, a photograph he carries shows him and his siblings slowly fading away. On the DVD, the filmmakers admitted that this makes very little sense. To complicate matters even further, when he (mostly) restores the timeline, the photo changes back instantly.

* ''[[A Sound of Thunder]]'': Giant translucent waves, which they called ''timewaves'', came out of nowhere and knocked people around ''[[The Matrix|Matrix]]''-style, altering groups of species with every passing, over and over. Apparently, stepping on a butterfly in the past causes [[For Want of a Nail|drastic changes in evolution]]. Fair enough. However, with the use of this trope, apparently simplistic animals species are more prone to having their evolutionary histories altered, and with each wave the environment gets more and more altered. Which means the metropolis got claimed by a fierce jungle, despite the fact that the residents are all still there, and the parks are filled with baboon monsters that are completely bulletproof, unless shot in the throat, and after X number of waves grow wings. The protagonists must hurry to a working time machine to save the butterfly, as they themselves will be altered by the final wave. [[You Fail Biology Forever]] indeed.

** This is, of course, purely for the audience, as wormhole travel is instantaneous for travelers (what with them being disassembled into molecules and all).

* In ''[[Meet the Robinsons]]'', the changes made by the bowler-hatted man visibly ripple across the future, ditto for when Louis reversed those changes. In fact, an entire scene is devoted to Louis giving the Bowler Hat Guy a tour of the restored timeline, repairing itself at an extraordinarily slow rate.

** On the other hand, Lewis' decision to never make Doris should have reversed things then and there, but it didn't happen until he faced Doris and told it so. Doris vanishes instantly.

* In ''[[Frequency]]'', the effects of the temporally-displaced conversation between father and son don't take place all at once, usually seen as time waves or a sentence written in the past appearing in the present letter-by-letter.

 

 

== Literature ==

** In that story, it turned out that the attempt to change history resulted in a [[Stable Time Loop]] instead.

* And something similar happens in Asimov's "The End of Eternity", when the protagonist tries to disrupt a planned [[Stable Time Loop]] by ''not'' doing what the script says he should. He expects this to alter his present and for everything to wink out of existence, but it turns out the effects won't be felt until he's made the decision not to reverse what he did, and that decision becomes irrevocable. {{spoiler|By then, he's trapped in 1939 and can't see the effects anyway.}}

* In the 1983 novel ''Millennium'' by [[John Varley]] (and the movie based on the book), it takes time for the temporal paradox and catastrophic breakdown of the fabric of time to reach the present (our future), thus giving the hero time to try to avert it. These waves can even be detected, giving the future a chance to buckle down.

* In the ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' novel ''In the Fourth Dimension'', after failing to stop some baddies from contaminating the Big Bang with the Chaos Emeralds so the whole of history will be infected by evil, Sonic and Tails have to literally ''outrun'' the ripple effect on their treadmill-based time machine in order to change ''recent'' history to prevent the villains from getting hold of the Chaos Emeralds in the first place. Which ''instantly'' undoes the change at the beginning of time. [[Mind Screw]] much?

 

 

== Live Action TV ==

** Which pretty much contradicts TOS episode, "The City on the Edge of Forever". As soon ad Dr. McCoy stepped through the Guardian of Forever, the Enterprise disappeared. Likewise, TNG film "First Contact" also showed immediate changes. Both also showed that people and ships at the epicenter of such a change are unaffected so they can [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong]].

** It also contradicts a previous episode in which Daniels pulls Archer from a turbolift into his own time in order to protect him from the Suliban. As soon as Archer is transported to the future, they look around and see total devastation around them. Apparently, [[The Federation]] would never exist without Archer being in the right place at the right time.

 

 

* In ''[[The Journeyman Project]]'', shortly after you report for work (as a glorified ''Timecop''), a series of alterations to history occur, and you have five minutes upon their detection to go back to 100 million B.C. before the temporal ripple hits your point in time. Once there, you retrieve a disc containing a record of unchanged history, in order to determine the points in time that have been changed.

** The [[Updated Rerelease]] ''[[The Journeyman Project]]: Pegasus Prime'' partly fixes the [[Fridge Logic]] inherent in this scenario: if history was altered so drastically, [[In Spite of a Nail|then how come there's still a Temporal Security Agency to return to?]] It turns out that while the TSA still exists in the alternate timeline, it's a much different organization with a militaristic bent and a mandate to actively research history instead of simply protecting it. This is averted entirely in the sequels, where changes to the timeline can be detected from the future without the use of the Journeyman Disc.

* In the ''[[Chzo Mythos]]'', {{spoiler|''two'' of these are critical to the [[Big Bad]]'s plot.}}

* ''[[Achron]]'' is a real time strategy game that features the time ripple - you can go back in time and order your units around, but the effects won't catch up with you until after some time. The kicker - your enemy can do the same.

** This delayed ripple provides a solution to the [[Grandfather Paradox]] - each "time wave" that passes switches the timeline between the killer and killee surviving. Since you can only travel back about eight minutes (relative to The Present), once the act of killing "falls off" the eight-minute timeline, it can't be changed in any way, and the paradox stabilises in its current state.

 

 

 

== Western Animation ==

* In the ''[[Justice League]]'' episode "Hereafter", Vandal Savage, upon sending Superman back in time to foil an evil scheme of his, has to wait a few minutes to see the changes.

 

[[Category:Time Travel Tropes]]

[[Category:Delayed Ripple Effect]]