Groundhog Day Loop: Difference between revisions

[[File:timeloop1.jpg|frame|[[Haruhi Suzumiya|We have entered an endless]] [[Memetic Mutation|recursion of time.]]]]

 

 

A plot in which the character is caught in a time loop, [[Cursed with Awesome|doomed]] to repeat a period of time (often exactly one day) over and over, until something is corrected. Usually, only one character or group of characters realizes what's going on—everyone and everything else undergoes a complete [[Snap Back]], and if not interfered with will do the exact same things every time, right down to dialogue.

 

See also [[Temporal Paradox]], [[You Can't Fight Fate]], [[Timey-Wimey Ball]]. Note that explicit [[Time Travel]] is not always involved, and in fact creates an entropy paradox.

 

Déjà vu yet?

 

{{examples}}

* ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]'' is based on a rather dark version of this. Piecing together hints from the various repetitions to figure out what is really going on is an important aspect of the series. The nature of the loop—and who is involved—is not immediately apparent, and the underlying causes aren't fully stated until halfway through the second season (and the 8th installment in the games). Technically, {{spoiler|though, it isn't that ''time'' is looping; memories are just being copied/overwritten between alternate worlds}}.

** Something similar is happening in the sequel, ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro ni]]'', only this time, the cause of the loop is identified very early on: [[A Wizard Did It|A Witch Did It.]] Or not. [[Mind Screw|Or something.]]

 

 

* In the story "Death and Venice" in ''[[The Sandman]]: Endless Nights'', a nobleman has intentionally created a loop which includes an entire island and all its inhabitants (including the nobleman himself), and has lasted for hundreds of years. This is ultimately broken by Death.

* In the [[Donald Duck]] story "Again and Again..." (''Donald Duck'' 336, 2006), Donald is forced to relive the same day over and over until he discovers what he did "wrong" on that day. The story spoofs elements of both ''Groundhog Day'' and ''[[The Hudsucker Proxy]]''—with mouse-eared "Daddy Time" (i. e. [[The Hudsucker Proxy|Moses]]) being wise to the time loop, and a Phil-like character reliving a similar time loop in a movie on Donald's TV.

 

 

* ''[[The Best Night Ever]]'' revolves around Prince Blueblood being trapped on the day of the disastrous Grand Galloping Gala {{spoiler|until he ensures that the bearers of the Elements of Harmony actually enjoy themselves at the event.}}

 

 

* The Italian sci-fi movie ''Nirvana'' revolves around Solo, the character of a video game which goes through the same events again and again each time he dies. His creator Jimi eventually puts him out of his misery by hacking and deleting the whole game.

* The trope-naming Bill Murray comedy ''[[Groundhog Day]]'' is the most commonly known version of this trope. One thing not noticed by most people is just ''how long'' the time loop goes on for—Phil (Murray) has time to memorize every book in town, learn the complete backstory of every ''person'' in town, learn to speak French, become an accomplished pianist and sculptor, and go from being a self-centered ass to universally beloved... all this with only 24-hour increments to work with before everything resets to square one again. An early version of the script suggested that the loop runs for something on the order of several millennia, but in a DVD special feature the director states it's closer to ten years.

 

 

* In Ken Grimwood's novel ''[[Replay]]'', the protagonist lives large chunks of his life repeatedly (as do a couple of other characters), waking after dying to find himself back in his college days. {{spoiler|However, with each subsequent cycle of death and reawakening, the cycle gets shorter as he wakes up at a later points in his original lifetime.}}

* This trope is the arc connecting both acts of ''[[Waiting for Godot]]''.

** Well, the first one did. The 2nd is more or less a Deconstruction of this trope, and it turns out that the reason he was going through this was...because he didn't brush his teeth.

* The young adult novel ''Heir Apparent'', by Vivian Vande Velde, is about a girl trapped in a [[Inside a Computer System|full-immersion virtual reality game]]; every time she dies in the game, the game starts over.

* There was even a ''[[Sweet Valley High|Sweet Valley Twins]]'' book on this (weird as it sounds) where the more selfish of the two twins is forced to relive Christmas Eve day until she figures out it's, well... because she's selfish. [[Aesop]] ahoy!

* The book ''[[All You Need Is Kill]]'' is a military-themed version of this. A man is stuck endlessly repeating his first day in combat, going from a green rookie to a seasoned fighter in half a year of constant repetition. Inspired directly by the concept of [[Save Scumming]] in real life.

 

 

** Some airings of the episode also looped the commercial breaks; you've got to wonder [[Screw the Money, I Have Rules|how much money]] [[Awesome but Impractical|the station was giving up to do that]]...

** It's worth noting that this is different from the typical in that the loop was only internal. In other words, the universe around the ''Enterprise'' and the ''Bozeman'' kept moving while they looped (The ''D'' was stuck for 17 and a half days, the ''Bozeman'' dated from when they had those [[Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan|funky uniform jackets]]...).

* ''[[Xena: Warrior Princess]]'' - Season 3 Episode 2, called "Been There, Done That", where the male half of two [[Star-Crossed Lovers]]—classic [[Romeo and Juliet]] complete with rival houses—makes a deal with Cupid to have the day repeat itself until he finds a way to keep his lover from killing herself and their families from killing each other; until a 'Hero would come along to save [the girl], make peace between the houses and end the loop.'

{{quote|'''Starcrossed Male:''' I was expecting Hercules or at least Sinbad.}}

{{quote|'''Gabrielle:''' We've repeated the day that many times.

'''Xena:''' ''(visibly frustrated)'' Yes.

** Eventually ends with Xena sorting out all of the local problems—with the use of her trusty chakkram—just in nick of time, having spent several loops calculating the exact way to do so.

* ''[[Give My Head Peace]]'' also has such an episode. Uncle Andy has a drunken 11th Night and wakes up on the 12th only to find that a precious Orange Banner depicting the Battle of the Boyne has been destroyed, presumably by the thuggish Scottish bandsmen who drunkenly slept the night off in his house.

** Also, "psychological breakthroughs" were also apparently carried across. I.e., if someone had made an exceptional hard choice or had an epiphany, they would actually alter their behavior the next loop, and all subsequent loops, with no outside interference. This mostly keeps the protagonist from having to solve everyone's problems every day, but sometimes ends up making things worse for him when someone doesn't do something he expects.

* ''[[Seven Days]]'' (episode ''Déjà Vu All Over Again'') mixed this with [[Cuckoo Nest]], as Frank was repeatedly sent back to the same series of events by another version of himself until he could save one of his friends without innocents dying in the process. Once again, the episode is a blatant ''Run Lola Run'' reference (if not rip-off), and a minor character of a psychologist is revealed in the credits to have the name: Dr. '''Lola''' Manson.

* ''[[Lois and Clark]]: The New Adventures of Superman'' features a somewhat darker version, in which Mr. Mxyzptlk creates a time loop in which things get a bit worse each time, to eventually result in [[The End of the World as We Know It]]. [[World War III]] is looming by the time Lois and Clark fix things. And this is the Christmas episode, no less...

** Of course, this being ''Lois and Clark'', even [[Darker and Edgier|somewhat darker versions]] are packed [[So Bad It's Good|full of cheese]]...

* The ''[[Blood Ties]]'' episode "5:55".

* In the ''[[Supernatural]]'' episode "Mystery Spot", Sam replays the Tuesday Dean dies over and over… and the [[Snap Back]] trigger ''is'' Dean's death. When Sam tries to explain, Dean responds, "like ''Groundhog Day''." Every. Single. Time. It's entirely likely the loop repeated roughly several thousand times: when asked, Sam says that he lost count after "about a hundred and fifteen". And, as we see in the [[Death Montage]], Dean's deaths become [[Crosses the Line Twice|exponentially more comical]]. Sam's efforts to save Dean reach a sheer paranoia and desperation that causes him to accidentally kill Dean himself… at ''least'' once. And kill Dean ''indirectly'' many more times.

 

 

* The music video for Craig David's "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABuWphlnZ1A&ob=av2e Seven Days]" uses a standard version until the final loop-After finally getting the day right, he spills a drink on his date. Rather than go through another loop, he [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|breaks the fourth wall]] and rewinds the video about 30 seconds and just picks up from there.

* The vocaloid song "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04hG4DIlRA4 Heat Haze Days]" uses this trope as the story. It seems that the two children really are left to repeat the loop forever, implied by the girl's last line, "I've failed again."

 

 

* According to some esoteric teachings (refer to ''A New Model of the Universe'' by Peter Ouspensky), this is what the [[Reincarnation]] and the [[Eternal Recurrence]] are ''actually'' all about: when you die, you are not reborn in some other body, you are reborn in your own at the moment of your own birth, destined to relive your own life in an endless cycle. This is also the [[Fridge Brilliance|purported explanation of the deja vu]].

 

 

* The BBC radio play ''Time After Time'' features a man with amnesia who keeps reliving the same moments in a strange hotel and tries to escape. The reliving always begins with him hearing the eponymous Frank Sinatra song on a radio. {{spoiler|it is revealed at the end that he is in fact dying and it was all his mind processing his final moments}}

 

 

* Any videogame that has a save feature can be considered a manually-activated Groundhog Day Loop from the character's point of view, as they must repeat the same actions over and over until successful. This is also true when the game provides more than one "life" or "continues": when the character dies, they simply return to an earlier point in time, and must do things right to move on out of the loop. See also [[Save Scumming]] for aggressive application of this trope.

* ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask]]'' involves repeating the same 3 days over and over, solving puzzles by use of the daily schedules of the [[NPC]]s. Strangely, once you actually beat the game, everything you've done seems to have happened (everyone's problems are permanently fixed) despite it usually not being the case—there's not enough time to do everything in the game in a single pass, and there's no duplicate Links running around, so one would assume events from the last cycle would be the only ones to persist. The opposite of [[No Ontological Inertia]] is at work.

* ''[[Flower, Sun, and Rain]]'' involves one of these... however, the way the day plays out each time is so different that the main character initially doesn't realize it, and writes off the one repeating element as a bad dream.

* The MMO ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' has one of these for the last boss of End Time. Nozdormu gives you an hourglass to help you defeat Murozond, the final boss. This can be used up to 5 times; each use ultimately resetting the encounter, including use of skill cooldowns and player deaths.

* Similarly, in ''Eternal Poison'', {{spoiler|all five character storylines are revealed to be canon upon unlocking Duphaston's tale, the order in which the several iterations took place somewhat tangible with a bit of thinking. The time loop is also broken in Duphaston's story with the completed Librum Aurora, the death of Lenarshe, and the revival of Izel. The true ending culminates in a final battle between the five main leads and Izel.}}

* ''Marathon: Infinity'' has the potential for getting stuck in a loop. The game is non-linear: [[Sufficiently Advanced Aliens]], [[Time Travel]], and [[Cosmic Horror]]s are involved, and thanks to their influence, the protagonist finds himself frequently being shipped off to different points in the story (and, sometimes, different realities) based on how he completes any given level. Cycles are one possible outcome: you can find yourself running through the same series of levels over and over again, trying to figure out what you have to do differently to get out. (Note that this is only the one most reasonable and most commonly accepted theory out of the [[Epileptic Trees|many, many possible interpretations]] of just what the hell is going on in that game.)

* In the final [[Multiple Endings|Wrong End]] of ''[[Corpse Party]] Blood Covered'', {{spoiler|Satoshi finds himself about to relive the horror again, and is unable to keep it from starting}}.

* Similarly to Endless Eight described above in the anime section, this trope is also invoked by the ([[No Export for You|Japan only]]) video game, ''[[Haruhi Suzumiya|Suzumiya Haruhi]] no Heiretsu''.

 

 

* In the machinima series ''[[Red vs. Blue]]'', the antagonistic mercenary Wyoming has the ability to rewind little segments of time, essentially making him impossible to defeat: whenever something doesn't go to plan, he simply backtracks a few moments into the past and takes steps to avoid being beaten down by the protagonists. He's only foiled when one character's [[Deus Ex Machina]] allows him to keep his memory during rewinds and kills him before he has a chance to activate his power.

** Likely an allusion to players that perpetually [[Save Scumming|revert to last checkpoint]] to avoid undesirable outcomes.

 

 

* Web comic ''[[Wapsi Square]]'' features a plotline where an ancient Mayan calendar is in reality a broken [[Time Machine]]. In 2012, this machine will reset all of time back to when the machine was first activated. Only one immortal character, Jin, retains memories of this event. She has lived about 81,200 years (56 iterations of the loop), living through the same looping time period, trying to fix the machine and end the loop. All the other characters in the comic are known to her, and she has been friends, enemies, maybe even lovers with each of them during the endless cycles of time she has lived through.

* ''[[Legostar Galactica]]'' parodies this when the USS ''Muffin'' [http://legostargalactica.comicgenesis.com/d/20021212.html enters a time loop], with first officer Marty pointing out that to preserve it they ought to go back, while the Captain just wants to get out, getting sufficiently annoyed by the third repetition to smack Marty in the mouth when he suggests going back in.

 

 

* Featured in an episode of ''[[The Angry Beavers]]'', "Same Time Last Week", where Dagget keeps getting [[Megaton Punch|literally knocked into last week]] by Norbert for annoying him all week.

* In ''[[Code Lyoko]]'' episode "A Great Day", [[Big Bad|XANA]] takes control of the time reset device the kids use to fix things after each attack and continues to turn back time to the start of the same day until the heroes can regain control.

* In ''Stickin' Around'', Stacy and Bradley keep getting sent back 15 minutes whenever gym class ends, until Bradley takes full blame for something he did instead of letting everyone share the punishment. [[Mr. Imagination|Then again]]...

* Disney's animated "Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas" has Mickey, Donald, and Goofy in three mini-stories centered around X-mas themes. The feature "Donald Duck: Stuck on Christmas" has the triplets Huey, Dewey, and Louie wish upon a star that is was "Christmas every day"; guess what they get.

** What made it different is that while it was Christmas every day, it wasn't a time loop. Everyone in the world is baffled that's always December 25, people run out of money to buy toys because they have the day off for Christmas every day, and the economy runs dry.

*** There is actually a flaw in this episode, since it wasn't actually a time loop and everyone remembered then what was to stop them from going back to work, stores from opening, and Santa to stop making toys. The reason the economy ran dry was people didn't go back to work which they could have easily done, just as long as they ignored the calendars.

* ''[[The Batman]]'' has Francis Grey in the episode "Seconds", who can "rewind" time by a few seconds whenever he wants, without anyone else aware of it. He still can't be in two places at once, of course, which is how he's defeated... {{spoiler|and the end result is that, when it really counts, he finally manages to rewind time all the way back to when he first became a criminal, but he chooses differently.}}

* The [[Animated Adaptation]] of ''[[The Mask (animation)|The Mask]]'' has Stanley Ipkiss trapped in a loop of a few hours by time-manipulating villainess Amelia Chronos. After the first few loops, he starts running to his apartment and getting the Mask on in order to hunt for her. Eventually, he discovers it's because of a watch-like device on his arm. The villainess is using the loops to put herself in a different spot each time, forming a geomantric array that will let her control time. {{spoiler|During their final battle, the Mask gets the device off of himself, resets it, and slaps it on her. Then he drops a grandfather clock on her face. The loop was changed to a few seconds, [[And I Must Scream|so it happens over and over and over...]] When the villainess reappears later, she reveals that subjectively, it took a ''thousand years'' for her to get out.}}

* A similar situation to that of the ''Supernatural'' episode above happened in the ''[[Jumanji (animation)|Jumanji]]'' animated series: Alan is suddenly killed near the beginning of the episode, but the boys manage to rescue him thanks to the "Slickomatic Chrono Repeater", a device obtained from Trader Slick capable of sending them back in time to the moment they last entered Jumanji. Unfortunately, this seems to be a rather unlucky day for Alan, seeing as he keeps dying in several ways, only for Judy and Peter to keep rescuing him until the device breaks, though they manage to survive the final crisis of the day. Though this may seem like a [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong]] plot, it has several Groundhog Day elements, such as the repeated lines and footage, as well as the characters growing frustration with all the repetition (the most visible example being the beginning of the "loop", where they are suddenly confronted with a swarm of giant ants heading towards them: though they were pretty scared at first, they start dealing with the problem with increased apathy as the "loop" repeats, culminating in the last repetition where, when faced with the ants, they simply ''sidestep out of the way'' with the most deadpan expression on their faces).

* ''[[Ruby Gloom]]'' has an episode where Ruby is in charge of the Gloomsville World's Fair. The day doesn't stop repeating until the World's Fair goes right. Played with when Ruby forgets something she was going to say and leaves to take a short nap in order to remember. No one remembers her leaving.

* An episode of ''[[Johnny Test]]'' features a self-inflicted loop. After wasting a whole Saturday being forced to watch ballet on TV with Sissy and Missy, Johnny and Dukey get a device from Mary and Susan that will allow them to repeat the day as many times as they wish. They try to avoid watching the ballet with Sissy by force, but when that repeatedly fails to work, they decide to be nice to Sissy and Missy to see if that will work. This results in them all having the best Saturday ever. {{spoiler|In most instances, this would mean the end of the loop, but instead the trope is subverted when Johnny's dad points out that Johnny is falling in love with Sissy. Wanting to have nothing to do with that, Johnny presses the reset button again and proceeds to be mean to Sissy the next time around.}}

* ''[[Rolie Polie Olie]]'' had Olie trying to clean up the garage. Unfortunately, while he did attempt to do so, it always fell apart, falling on a device that his father was working on that resets time, sticking hin in a time loop.

* In the ''[[Rollbots]]'' episode ''Crontab Trouble'', a renegade Tensai named Reboot teams up with Vertex and attempts to put the City into stasis using the Crontab, a device that distorts time. Spin intervenes, of course, and Reboot uses the Crontab to reset the whole thing by about five minutes. Spin starts to catch on to the time loop, and explains it to the others as he gradually figures it out (Daso also seems to know what's going on). Noone else remembers the events, not even Captain Pounder, who sees concrete proof of Vertex's true identity.

 

 

* Possibly [[Truth in Television]] on a universal scale. It is theorized that if the Big Bang started everything, and a Big Crunch is the end of the Universe, and if the First and Second laws of thermodynamics hold true, then all matter and energy is contained in between the existances of these Universes, the meaning that everything will hold identical from one to the next because all of everything is identical to that of the presumed previous universe.

** That theory has been disproved. The first law would require any subsequent universe to expand farther than the previous one, eventually resulting in a heat death and breaking cycle. Conversely, it also means there could only be a finite number of previous universes, all smaller than the present one.

 

 

* A rather localized variation crops up in one issue of ''[[Lucifer (comics)|Lucifer]]'', where Erishad gains a kind of immortality by her body reliving one day over and over. {{spoiler|Unfortunately, that happens to be the day she miscarried.}}

* ''[[Hourman]]'' was once trapped in a place called "the timepoint" in which he and his friends were stuck reliving a five-minute slice of time on the day JFK was assassinated. Different in that the timepoint is a physical place which mimics this point in time, and not actually the time itself (though the effect is basically the same for those trapped inside).

* A very recent (as of December 2010) issue of ''[[Archie Comics]]'' has Jingles allowing Christmas Eve to repeat for a day so Archie can have more time to prepare, but the computer he used to turn back time gets frozen into a loop.

 

* Many [[fanfic]]s of completed anime series have one or another character [[Peggy Sue|looping back to the beginning of the series]] "[[Set Right What Once Went Wrong|To put right what]] [[Fix Fic|once went wrong]]". A few are [[Dead Fic|even completed]].

** Jeff Wong's ''Just Won't Die'' does this at least ''twice'' (I believe), plus a passing reference to an earlier occurrence, and some instances of "putting right" other things in [[It Makes Sense in Context|a variety of bizarre ways]].

** In the most recent chapter, the loop has been broken. [[Oh Crap|During a "vacation" loop]].

** There's a bit of [[Nightmare Fuel]] when you realize that like [[Haruhi Suzumiya|Yuki Nagato]] during the infamous endless eight, they too keep their memories of each and every loop. Though this later gets [[Averted Trope|averted]] when they become [[God Mode Sue]]s with all the experiences they've had and are also not limited by the same events happening over and over again. Unless they enter the [[Running Gag|horror that is]] [[Eiken]]

* Tends to be a very popular plot device in short and/or oneshot fanfics.

* One of the main plot points in ''[[Heta Oni]]''.

 

 

** This trope is also subverted when the day after Henry meets Lucy he tries the exact same tactic to get her to fall for him, thinking her reaction will be the same as the previous day. Since no day is ever truly identical to the one before it, Lucy's moods are subtly different from one day to the next, and the tactic fails the second time around. Likewise, she is explicitly stated to have good days and bad.

 

 

* In ''The Tunnel Under the World'', by [[Frederik Pohl]], Guy Burckhardt lives in a town where June 15 is repeated every day, but the inhabitants don't realize. It is later revealed that {{spoiler|everyone in the town is a miniature robot who was imprinted with the mind-pattern of a citizen of the real town, which was destroyed on June 14th. Advertising executives then used them to test various advertising techniques. It makes much more sense than it seems.}}

* A short story depicted a kid who was really not looking forward to playing in a football game the next day, so he went to bed wishing it was already Sunday. He woke up on Sunday but his mother was so angry with him that he went to bed wondering what had happened on Saturday. After living through Saturday he knew what happened, {{spoiler|but luckily, everything was resolved by Monday morning.}}

* Kurt Vonnegut's ''Timequake'' involved a time loop, although it wasn't repetitive like Groundhog Day. However, it involved a span of years, and everyone was aware it was happening but were powerless to change their actions or do anything under their own volition. [[Fridge Horror|Horrifying indeed.]] Once the loop reached its end, a large number of people had complete mental breakdowns.

* ''[[The Defence of Duffer's Drift]]'' uses the dream variant as a framing device—not [[Dream Within a Dream|dreams within dreams]], but a sequence of dreams all depicting the same scenario where [[Ensign Newbie|the protagonist]] must command his platoon of fifty men to defend a strategic riverbed crossing in [[The Boer War]]. To prevent him from "cheating", the protagonist cannot remember the exact circumstances from dream to dream (enemy force composition and direction, et cetera), but he can and does learn general tactical lessons.

 

 

* ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' also has an episode in which Teal'c is stuck in what basically amounts to a video game. Each time he fails, it resets, forcing him to start from the beginning. It adapts to his tactics and adds new threats each time, becoming ''worse'' with each go-around. It's based off Teal'c's own perceptions and feelings. At this point in the series, even though he's firmly and truly faithful to [[SG-1]], he also truly believes that [[Failure Is the Only Option|the Gou'auld]] ''[[Failure Is the Only Option|cannot]]'' [[Failure Is the Only Option|be beaten in the long term]] so that any time it looks like they'll win, some new thing suddenly comes around and kicks their ass.

* ''[[My Name Is Earl]]'' has an interesting version where most people hadn't seen a guy in years because a head injury caused him to forget the day he'd just had whenever he went to sleep. Earl uses the intelligence-gaining effect of a Groundhog Day Loop to try to atone for what he'd done to the guy, {{spoiler|but ends up deciding that it'd be better for the guy to just let things go since he ended up causing the guy to attempt suicide.}}

** Note that this is [[Paranoia Fuel|a very real condition]] known as Anterograde amnesia.

* ''[[Frasier]]'' once had three dates on three consecutive nights, which all went through exactly the same patterns.

* The ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "Carnival of Monsters" featured a version of this. A ship bound for India was taken, shrunk down, and put in a minature [[People Zoo]]. The memories of the passengers and crew are then altered to reset after ten minutes so they don't realize that they are never reaching their destination. Unfortunately the Doctor and Jo Grant are not part of the original loop, leading to them being "discovered" and arrested repeatedly as stowaways.

* ''[[Tru Calling]]'' revolved around a variation of the "reliving days" premise. Tru is asked by the dead to save her, resetting time to allow her the chance. One episode had her going through the same day about four times, each time in response to a different deceased asking for her help.

 

 

* According to Greek myth, Prometheus was punished by the other gods by being chained to a rock and having his liver pecked out by an eagle. As if that wasn't bad enough, his wound would always heal, only for the bird to come again the next day and repeat the process (he was eventually freed by Hercules).

** Kevin O'Donnell Jr's short story "Gift of Prometheus" uses a time-travel variation on this. The protagonist is shot while dematerialising and is frozen outside of time in endless pain.

* Sisyphus' punishment also reflected this trope. He had to continually push a rock up a hill, only to watch it roll back down and have to start over.

* The [[Norse Mythology|Norse legend]] of the Everlasting Battle ends with two kings, Hedin and Högni, and their armies fighting each other on an island.<ref>For those who like details, it's said to be [[wikipedia:Hoy|Hoy in Orkney]]</ref> Everyone dies, but during the night, Högni's daughter Hild, being in love with Hedin, revives them all with magic, so [[What an Idiot!|they fight and kill each other again the next day]], and so on until Doomsday. Though one variant claims that the loop was broken after centuries when a Christian king [[Redemption Equals Death|killed them all together.]]

 

 

* On [[The Other Wiki]], some joker once edited the "Infinite regression" page so that the first entry in the "See Also" list was "Infinite regression".

** [[Rule of Funny|That's hilarious]].

 

 

* ''[[Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead]]'' can be interpreted this way: the two are forced to perform the same actions over and over during every performance of ''[[Hamlet]]'', possessing just enough instinct to know their lines, but being completely in the dark about who they are and what their purpose is during the scenes they're ''not'' in. It's... complicated.

 

 

** ''[[Mabinogi (video game)|Mabinogi]]'' takes this one step further and requires getting the NPC's to be friendly to you to get certain jobs, items, etc. However frequently their conversation will start off with "Nice to meet you, who are you?", even with any of the titles acquired from finishing the mainstream storylines, or even just talked to them a few seconds ago. Rebirthing the character or not talking to the NPC for a few real world hours will result in the NPC forgetting who you are again. ''Mabinogi'''s mainstream quests that require additional players (and have cutscenes) often results in players refusing to join unless the cutscenes are skipped, having seen them many times already.

*** In the Generation 3 mainstream quests, this is actually referenced in a book given to you that was written to explain all the oddities such as the difference between real time and Errin time, why your character can respawn, and of course, why NPC's forget who you are.

 

 

* The "Choose" plotline of ''[[Skin Horse]]'' has a time loop that's almost exactly like a standard Groundhog Day Loop, except that it resets whenever Jonah dies instead of having a fixed length. Since he falls into the loop while in Anasigma headquarters, where [[Everything Is Trying to Kill You]], this quickly leads to him [[Taking a Level In Badass|taking several levels in badass]].

 

 

* One episode of ''[[The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron]]'' has Jimmy hypnotizing his parents into having his birthday party early. Unfortunately, he told them that his birthday was "tomorrow", meaning another birthday party the day after that, and then the day after that, and so on. Unlike the other examples, everyone but Jimmy's folks is aware of the repetition. {{spoiler|They later reveal that the hypnosis broke sooner than it appeared to, but they kept going through the motions to teach Jimmy a lesson.}}

* ''[[Mighty Max]]'' seems to end on this trope. {{spoiler|In the last episode Armageddon enveloped the world, a giant spider kills Max's guardian Norman, Skullmaster kills Virgil and takes the portal-making hat, which turns into a crown. At the very last second Max grabs Skullmaster and takes control... and ends up at the very moment he opened the package with the hat in it, and ''knows he's starting over again''.}}

* One episode of the ''[[Silver Surfer]]'' animated series has [[Adam Warlock]] as a supersoldier created to fight the Kree. Fearing his power, his creators trapped him in a Groundhog Day Loop time anomaly in space in which he fights the same battle over and over again the same way (his own memory getting reset each time). New objects can be drawn in so how he fights exactly the same way against a growing number of ships from different eras is a mystery. The Silver Surfer is not affected by the anomaly and manages to pull Warlock out. By the end Warlock not being able to cope with events that transpired in the real world, flies back in the anomaly and goes back to fighting obliviously in the loop, presumably forever.

 

 

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[[The Stinger|Also see:]] Groundhog Day Loop

 

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