Future Me Scares Me: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

* A few of the Montana Meth Project ads have serious examples of this (i.e. Bathtub, Laundromat, and That Guy).

 

* The title of this trope fits ''[[Noein]]'' perfectly (the series is even subtitled "To Your Other Self"). Karasu, the [[Future Badass]] version of the present-day Yuu, [[I Hate Past Me|is disgusted by his former cowardly self]]. Yuu, on the other hand, is scared by how intense and cold Karasu is. However, both are able to reconcile their differences when it comes to protecting/rescuing Haruka.

** The title character, {{spoiler|who is [[Evil Counterpart|another future Yuu]] that [[Love Makes You Evil|turned evil when he watched helplessly as Haruka died]] and became a [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|Well Intentioned]] [[Nietzsche Wannabe]]. The meeting between the three did not go well, obviously}}.

* In one chapter/episode of ''[[Urusei Yatsura]]'' Shutaro Mendō travelled back in time and very literally scared his younger self—the child Mendō acted like such an obnoxious brat to his future self that he provoked the latter into attacking him with a sword. The young Mendō hid in a jar until the older Mendō returned to his own time, but that experience was what gave him his claustrophobia and fear of the dark ("WAAAN! KURAI YO SEMAI YO KOWAI YO!"). [[Stable Time Loop|And what's more, the reason he travelled back in time in the first place was to prevent himself from getting that claustrophobia and fear of the dark.]]

 

* In a [[Story Arc]] of the ''[[Teen Titans (Comic Book)|Teen Titans]]'' comic, the Titans get dropped ten years in the future, and are more than a little disturbed to find that, in addition to [[Sidekick Graduations Stick|replacing their mentors]] and becoming [[Darker and Edgier]], their future selves are the dictatorial rulers of half of what used to be the United States. The future Titans are equally disturbed by meeting their "naive" past selves.

** This leads to a sequel arc where those future selves go back in time to [[Make Wrong What Once Went Right]] and stop their timeline from being erased.

** Played straight with his sister Valeria in the same story and her very similar adult self.

 

* Though it's never outright addressed in the canon during a real meeting between the two versions (that I remember), in some ''[[Heroes]]'' fanfiction, both Peter Petrelli and Claire Bennet are depicted as mildly disturbed and/or fearful of their future selves, both of whom tend to be Types III and V (or something like that), respectively, on the [[Sliding Scale of Anti-Heroes]], especially sometime during Volume 3. Conversely, {{spoiler|Gabriel Gray (i.e. Sylar)}} has calmed considerably by the time the episode Butterfly Effect rolls around, and even {{spoiler|has a beloved son}}.

* In ''[[Kyon: Big Damn Hero]]'', Kyon's future self is consistently rude and derogatory toward him. Of course, that's only because [[I Hate Past Me|his past self is incompetent]].

 

* ''[[Lost Christmas]]'' has {{spoiler|Goose and Anthony. Goose thinks Anthony is a nutter because of his powers, but they're really there to make sure Goose (good future) exists and Anthony (bad future) doesn't.}}

* The ''[[Lost in Space]]'' movie had Doctor Smith who thought he was rather evil until he met himself 20 years in the future {{spoiler|as a half-mutated spider bent on destroying all of humanity.}} His future self is also less than impressed with him: "I never liked me, anyway."

* ''[[Triangle]]'' is pretty much made out of this trope. A woman on a boat trapped in a series of time loops {{spoiler|becomes convinced that time only loops whenever everyone else on the ship is dead, so to save all her friends she has to kill all her friends. Naturally, Killer Jess comes off as an utter nutball to First-Time Jess}}, yet it seems like the [[Sanity Slippage]] is inevitable...

 

* Serves as the main plot of [[William Sleator]]'s ''[[The Green Futures Of Tycho]]''. Tycho finds a [[Time Machine]], doesn't like his future, and tries to fix it by changing the present and the past, only to make it worse. He repeats this until his future self is a tyrant selling out humanity to the aliens and planning some sort of invasion through time. He finally realizes why {{spoiler|(the time machine and the power it gives him over events is corrupting him)}}, but not before the tyrant version {{spoiler|(who still has the time machine)}} starts chasing him through history, to prevent him from fucking up the tyrant's plans.

* Double-inverted in ''[[The Time Traveler's Wife]]''. Henry DeTamble rarely travels forward in time, but he is often zapped into the past randomly and without warning. On one such trip, he meets up with his future wife, then-girlfriend. He begs her to have patience with him, because he remembers how shallow and immature he was as a young man. Seeing how mature future-Henry is, Clare is reassured.

* Doctor Impossible of ''[[Soon I Will Be Invincible]]'' mentions meeting "the original villain team" The Delinquent Five when they came from the Fifties to seek help from their present selves, assuming they would be wealthy, powerful rulers by now. Dispiritingly, the heroes and governments are still in charge. He notes "Maybe that was the beginning of the end for them."

* In ''[[Altered Carbon|Woken Furies]]'', Takeshi Kovacs, the [[Anti-Hero]] of the sci-fi novels by [[Richard Morgan]], finds himself up against an illegal copy of himself made when Kovacs was a good deal younger. More vicious and less world-weary, 'young' Kovacs is noticeably unimpressed that his future self hasn't made more of his life, like becoming a crime kingpin or suchlike.

** Done straight in a case where Taylor must help a man who's being pursued by his apparent past selves, who are disgusted by how his life turned out, and by future selves who either want to ensure he'll become them, or prevent him from doing so. For the past selves, he's this trope; for the future ones, he's its inversion.

* ''Of Two Minds'' by Carol Matas and Perry Nodelman. It's established from the beginning that the protagonist is a [[Jerkass]], and becoming more so as she exploits her [[Reality Warper|Reality Warping]] abilities. {{spoiler|The [[Big Bad]] is another reality warper, with an oddly familiar appearance . . .}}

* ''[[Skulduggery Pleasant]]'' has Darquesse, a mysterious figure who has been seen my many seers to destroy the world, and it turns out she's {{spoiler|Valkyrie (or at least Valkyrie's true-name empowered alter-ego)}}.

 

* Hiro Nakamura in ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]''; see the page quote (in fact, [[Trope Namer|the trope is named based on it]], with a clarity tweak).

** Most of the future heroes are pretty scary. The exception is {{spoiler|Sylar}}, who is [[Heel Face Turn|considerably nicer]]...and is rather afraid of reverting to his past self (in one future, anyway; in another, he's {{spoiler|''President'', and has just about everybody else's powers, and is about to top even himself by committing super-genocide}}.

* [[Played for Laughs]] in [[Yoshi's Island|Yoshi's Island DS]]: {{spoiler|Baby Bowser throws a tantrum upon learning that, when he grows up, he'll still be a loser wanting to take over the world.}}

 

* In ''Superosity'', character Boardy (an amnesiac super-being who isn't sure if he's an alien or a robot) has met a future version of himself who is a crazy, obnoxious jerk, and a further future version who is pure unadulterated evil. He was alarmed to find out the first future him is, according to it, from a very near future, and there have been signs recently in the comic that his sense of right and wrong is beginning to slip. These are only a couple of the futures the cast has visited; Boardy always seems to be either evil or dead. He's remarked on how annoying this is.

* Subverted in ''[[Fans]]!'', where the present day characters encounter their past selves, and their past selves mistake their present selves' character development as being a [[Face Heel Turn]]. The present characters then wipe the floor with the past characters, taking advantage of everything they've learned.

{{quote|'''Iafa''': He's still disappointed that this future version of himself is a murderer with no poetry, but we seem to be getting on okay.}}

 

* [[Sonic the Hedgehog|Classic Amy]] is shown to be less than pleased with her modern self in [http://dhim.deviantart.com/art/CRYOCH-MACHINE-Amy-and-Amy-215805015 this] [[Lady Lumps VS Boy Bumps|CRYOCH Machine]] animation.

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==