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Grandfather Paradox: Difference between revisions
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{{examples}}
== Film ==
* The plot of the first ''[[Back to The Future]]'' may be the most well known example, even though it's A. not Marty's ''grand''father it involves and B. he doesn't kill him, but rather accidentally {{spoiler|takes his place as his mother's object of affection}}. The rest of the movie has Marty trying to correct things before he's erased from existence.
** Though within the semi-canon/non-canon of the Telltale ''Back to the Future'' game, Marty does encounter his paternal grandfather and affects his own existence in time.
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== Literature ==
* In [[Robert Heinlein]]'s ''[[Time Enough for Love]]'', Lazarus Long just glosses over the possibility of creating a paradox while time-traveling by saying that it's impossible to create one. So he has sex with his mother, meets his younger self, enlists in the Army and fights in [[World War I]].▼
▲* In [[Robert Heinlein]]'s ''Time Enough for Love'', Lazarus Long just glosses over the possibility of creating a paradox while time-traveling by saying that it's impossible to create one. So he has sex with his mother, meets his younger self, enlists in the Army and fights in [[World War I]].
** In ''Door into Summer'', this is boiled down to the time-traveler protagonist waiting just outside of a room where he also is prior to his time-traveling activities, and briefly wondering what would happen if he ran in and slashed his counterpart's throat. He doesn't do it, of course, because that would be stupid and accomplish nothing, but he notes in present tense that he ''still'' hasn't figured it out.
* The [[Charles Stross]] novella ''Palimpsest'' has a twist: killing your own grandfather is the initiation rite for the [[Time Police]].
** The graduation ceremony is stepping back in time a few minutes and killing ''yourself''.
* Paradoxically inverted in "Grandpa", a short story by Edward M. Lerner. In it the protagonist, Professor Fitch, survives two assassination attempts by his grandson, and preempts a third by deciding not to have children.
* Averted in the ''[[Discworld
* In ''[[Johnny and The Bomb]]'', Bigmac suggests going back in time to kill Hitler. Johnny warns him of the dangers should he accidentally kill his grandfather, but Bigmac says it's safe since his grandfather doesn't look anything like Hitler. (Fortunately, by the time they obtain actual time travel, he's forgotten the plan.) Then they fall victim to an actual grandfather paradox: {{spoiler|their time travel results in Wobbler's grandfather being killed in a World War II bombing}}.
* In [[Michael Crichton]]'s ''[[Timeline]]'', one of the protagonists raises this paradox to the [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]] who's trying to send them back in time. The latter changes the subject to a long discussion about how it would be nearly impossible for one person to make the Mets beat the Yankees (ie, the forces of history are too large for one person to decisively change). When the protagonist presses the point, the Exec [[Hand Wave]]s it and moves on.
* The end of ''[[The Saga of Darren Shan]]'' explains how the story is an endless paradox because {{spoiler|the rule of Destiny is that if you kill someone, somebody else will take their place and do exactly as they would do (as an example, Evanna says that if you were to kill Hitler, somebody else would've taken his place and done exactly as he did.) and seeing as Darren goes through everything just to go back in time to stop the whole thing from happening, someone else will see the Cirque, join Mr. Crepsley and go on all the exact adventures Darren did, eventually having to stop themselves from seeing their best friend talking to Mr. Crepsley and then someone
* Inverted in two separate ways in [[Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey]]: {{spoiler|Traveling back in time to kill your parents will cause you to be outside of time, and therefore immortal (in-universe this is known as "severing ties"). Going back and impregnating your mother, or a direct matriarch of your family (grandmother, great-grandmother) will result in gaining heightened faculties (this is known in-universe as "stoking". Combo points for [[Squick|impregnating each one down the line until you are born]].)}}
* [[Gregory Benford]]'s ''Timescape'' describes a unique, quantum-mechanical approach to Grandfather Paradoxes. If a time-travelling signal were to prevent its own transmission, the signal and everything involved in triggering it would be in an ''indeterminate'' state where it neither does, nor doesn't, occur—like Schrödinger's Cat before the box is opened.
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* Happens literally in René Barjavel novel ''Le voyageur imprudent'' written in 1943 (hence the first novel to enunciate the grandfather paradox) where the time-traveler (Pierre Saint-Menoux) tries to assassinate Napoleon Bonaparte before his rise to power: {{spoiler|at the last moment, a soldier jumps to take the bullet and save Bonaparte. This soldier is of course the time-traveler ancestor. The time-traveler is then wiped out from existence.}}
== Live
* For the [[Doctor Who|Time Lords]], Grandfather Paradox is an actual ''person'' who went back and, yes, killed his grandfather, which doomed him to a sort of undead temporal limbo. He's the Time Lord equivalent of the Bogeyman, and the splinter group/terrorist cult [[Faction Paradox]] considers him their spiritual leader, partly cause [[For the Evulz|it pisses off the Time Lords.]]
** We actually meet him. He's quite literally the [[Anthropomorphic Personification]] of [[Future Me Scares Me]] - he's ''everybody's'' evil future self.
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== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[Genius: The Transgression]]'''s stance on the subject: "And yes, if you kill your own grandmother before your father is born, you will cease to exist. The universe, it turns out, doesn't care that much if your grandmother gets shot in the head and there's no shooter. You still go poof."
* The old ''[[Doctor Who]]'' RPG encourages [[GMs]] to be cruel to players who try this. One popular result is that, if you go back in time and point a gun at your grandfather, then the young version of your grandfather will leap out of the way, pull his own gun and shoot ''you'' dead. Paradox? What paradox?
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== Video Games ==
* In ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 3'', if you kill one of the bosses instead of just knocking him out, you get the "TIME PARADOX" [[Nonstandard Game Over]]. The reason is quite meta: you killed a boss which starred in a previous game, because ''3'' is a prequel to ''1'' and ''2'', which means you killed a boss in ''3'' which exists in ''1'' and ''2'', so with that boss dead he shouldn't exist in ''1'' and ''2'' anymore, so...
* Narrowly averted in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages|The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages]]''; Ralph attempts to destroy his own ancestor Queen Ambi (who is possessed), ''knowing'' that it will remove him from existence. Subverted when she ends up kicking his ass instead.
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== Web Comics ==
* ''[[Bob and George]]'': [http://www.bobandgeorge.com/archives/010325c One more reason to hate time travel!] (On top of [[Schrödinger's Butterfly]] questions of whether their acts can affect the author.)▼
▲* [[Bob and George]] [http://www.bobandgeorge.com/archives/010325c One more reason to hate time travel!] (On top of [[Schrödinger's Butterfly]] questions of whether their acts can affect the author.)
== Web Original ==
* A [[Newgrounds]] cartoon "Grandbunny Paradox" made fun of this. It featured a bunny and a stick figure. The bunny went back in time to kill his grandmother and finds himself turned into a sheep, because his grandfather married a sheep instead of a bunny. The stick figure decides to do the same and kills his grandmother only to find himself turned into a tomato. He doesn't like being a tomato so he goes back and shoots the guy who sold him the gun to kill his grandmother...only to find himself now holding grenades.
* In the [https://web.archive.org/web/20111219055426/http://www.abyssandapex.com/200710-wikihistory.html International Association of Time Travelers] skit, which is mostly dedicated to [[Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act|going back in time and killing Hitler]], this ends up being the fate of {{spoiler|1=AsianAvenger}}.
== Western Animation ==
* In an episode of ''[[Futurama]]'', Fry goes back to Roswell in 1947 and accidentally gets his grandfather killed in an atomic blast [[Defied Trope|while trying to avert this trope.]] He doesn't stop existing because he ''also'' ends up doing his grandmother, becoming his own grandfather. Or, as he put it, "I did the nasty in the pasty." {{spoiler|This becomes a key plot point in later episodes, as this event caused him to have brain damage that made him immune to a number of things.}}
* In ''[[The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog]]'', one episode in the four-episode arc about the Chaos Emeralds starts with Sonic foiling a plot by Robotnik to prevent his ancestors from marrying and thus eliminate Sonic from the timeline. Sonic succeeds in sending Robotnik packing, but then '''causes the paradox himself''' by ordering a chili dog from his maternal ancestor, causing his paternal ancestor to become impatient waiting to be served and leave. After Sonic disappears, Tails solves the paradox in about a minute by forcing the meeting to happen.
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{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Time Travel Tropes]]
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