Groundhog Day Loop: Difference between revisions

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

 

 

 

Once the character realizes this, two things happen, usually in this order:

 

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}}

** 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 ''[[Cardcaptor Sakura]]'', the Time card keeps the same day repeating indefinitely, until it is defeated by Syaoran.

* In the manga ''Tsubasa'', the main characters find themselves trapped in the exact same day in the newest arc.

* The ''Nue'' arc (episodes 8 & 9) of ''[[Mononoke]]'' has an interesting example.

* ''[[Kimagure Orange Road]]'' had Kyosuke repeat Christmas three times, trying to get to the party with the "right" girl (without pissing off Madoka or crushing Hikaru's happiness). No-one else was aware of the repeats (though series [[Butt Monkey]] Yusaku gets wiped out in increasingly violent accidents each time). This came out in 1987, considerably predating most of the other examples.

 

 

* 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 movie ''Boris & Natasha'', a live-action ''[[Rocky and Bullwinkle]]'' movie, has a device which prevents accidents by reversing time by a few seconds any time it is destroyed. This allows sequences in the movie to be repeated until things change. The film ends with several ''hundred'' being activated at once. As Natasha notes, "Boris, ve haf been blown back to beginink of movie!"

* ''12:01'' is a made-for-cable movie on the subject from 1993. It is based on a 1990 short film, "12:01pm" and a 1973 science fiction short story by Richard A. Lupoff. The hero is given an electric shock at exactly 12:01, just as a nuclear device comes on line that causes time to loop. He's the only one who realizes this, and when he's not being killed each day, he tries to figure a way to prevent the nuclear device from going on-line. The short film is much darker, and ends with {{spoiler|the hero realizing that nothing can stop the loop, and even death is no escape.}}

* In the movie version of ''[[1408]]'', {{spoiler|the evil room tortures its victims for an hour. If at the end of that hour they still haven't killed themselves, it begins all over again. "You can choose to repeat this hour [[Fate Worse Than Death|over and over again]], or you can take advantage of our [[Driven to Suicide|express checkout system]]".}}

* In ''Camp Daze'', modern day protagonists find themselves stuck in a summer camp straight from 80's which itself is stuck repeating the same day when a mysterious killer murdered everyone over and over again.

* In ''[[High Spirits]]'', a comedy by [[The Crying Game|Neil]] [[Interview with the Vampire|Jordan]], two ghosts, Mary Plunkett and Martin Brogan (played by [[Splash|Daryl Hannah]] and [[The Phantom Menace|Liam Neeson]]), suffer through this: Martin repeatedly killing his wife, Mary, because he believes her to have cheated on him because she doesn't love him and thus, doesn't show any affection towards her. Making it even worse is the fact that she ''didn't'' cheat on him when she was alive.

* [[Source Code]] has an eight-minute-long loop. Actually, it's simulations of the last eight minutes of a dead person's life, repeated as necessary until the person experiencing them manages to complete his mission to find certain information. {{spoiler|Actually, that's what the creators of the system believe, but it's really an [[Alternate Universe]].}}

 

 

* 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.

* Richard A. Lupoff's story "[[wikipedia:12:01 PM|12:01 PM]]" is an early (possibly ''the'' earliest?) use of this trope. A man experiences time endlessly resetting from 1:00 PM to 12:01, while everyone else is oblivious. At the end of the story he frantically rushes to meet a scientist with whom he can discuss the phenomenon before 1:00 arrives, but suffers a heart attack and dies. {{spoiler|And then it's 12:01 and he's alive again.}}

** The makers of a short film adaptation attempted to sue the makers of ''[[Groundhog Day]]'' but were forced to drop the case.

* In one of Stainless Steel Rat series of books, the time traveling villain called He initially attacks the secret agency that forced stainless steel rat to work for them by wiping it out of existence. Stainless steel rat manages to foil He (the villain) at 3 different eras. At the last fight, he (Rat) randomizes time settings on the time machine as He (the villain) was about to start time travel. The loop starts again as he went to wrong era, and spent long time building again. He (the villain) was only vaguely remembering the secret agency as a threat when ready...

* ''Martian Time Slip'' by [[Philip K. Dick]] involves the protagonist reliving the same day over and over again, [[Mind Screw|each time more bizarre than the last.]] After the day is over, he can't even remember it.

 

 

** 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]]...).

* ''[[Angel]]'' episode "Time Bomb" stuck Illyria in a chaotic version (time is repeating but not in a fixed sequence). Each time it ends with her exploding. Unusually, Illyria is not the perspective character, and we see only a few bits and pieces of loop.

* ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' episode "Window of Opportunity". In the episode, the term "Groundhog Day" is used at one point in a partial [[Lampshade Hanging]] that implies the characters are [[Genre Savvy|aware of the film and its premise]], even though the similarity was not actually discussed within the episode.

** Also, when Daniel casually points out that O'Neill and Teal'c can pretty much do anything they want without fear of consequences, [[Hilarity Ensues]]. Especially since they're trying to stave off going crazy from going through the loops.

'''O'Neill:''' ''*pauses, turns around*'' "Right in the middle of my ''backswing''?!" }}

*** Boy does it ever. For years, this was voted [[Stargate SG-1|SG-1]]'s best episode. Ever.

** The episode ''Thank God It's Friday...Again" features a variation in which the characters aren't actually repeating the same day, but they are drugged into constantly believing that the current day is the end of the workweek and they get a day off tomorrow...except that day off never comes.

* ''[[Early Edition]]'''s "Run, Gary, Run" (itself a parody of the German art film ''[[Run Lola Run]]''), combines this trope with [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong]].

'''Xena:''' ''(looking from Gabrielle to Joxer and back)'' No, no, yes, no, I tried that, yes both ways, no, I don't know, no ''again''. Are there any more questions? Good. }}

* ''[[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.

* In the frankly slightly odd British show ''Hounded'', as soon as the hero stops the evil Dr. Mu's (short for Muhahahaha) plan Mu (literally) hits a reset button, resetting things back to the start of the day. As it turns out this is a trend which will happen every episode.

* ''[[Being Erica]]'' Season 3 has this where Erica has to relive the same day over and over after {{spoiler|Kai comes back from the future to tell her that he tried to find her in 9 years time and couldn't. Also that there will be a terrible disaster in a few years time in that area. Erica then spends her day panicking that she only has a few years left to live. Dr Tom decides to make her relive this day over and over to teach her to value the here and now.}}

* An episode of ''[[The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air]]'' has Will being hexed by a psychic. The end of the episode has [[Dream Within a Dream|him waking up from the events as if they were a dream]] to the morning before in which the dialogue from the beginning of the episode is heard.

* In the ''[[Haven]]'' episode "Audrey Parker's Day off" Audrey has to relive the same day over and over. Significantly, her injuries transfer between loops so by day 5 she is injured and extremely tired. She also apparently does not get much sleep between loops. Fortunately since this is Haven, Nathan believes her when she says she's reliving the day, and they learn a little more with each loop.

** They eventually realize {{spoiler|the first time around the daughter of a man with OCD was killed in a hit-and-run. His OCD combined with his "trouble" made the day restart, with a new person always dying. Eventually they save the daughter and he sacrifices himself to end it}}.

* The Ross Kemp vehicle ''A Christmas Carol'', a [[Setting Update]] of [[A Christmas Carol|the book]], added a Groundhog Day Loop; after each visitation Eddie Scrooge would wake up and it was still Christmas morning. After the first spirit, he was extra nasty just to prove it hadn't had any effect; after the second one he wanted to ''look'' like he'd changed, so gave people extravagant presents without finding out what they ''needed''; and after the third one he finally got it right.

 

 

* 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.

** Other than keeping the lady at the bomb shop from being mugged - due to contradicting with one other, more important sidequest - it is possible to help everyone in one cycle. It essentially requires using the Inverted Song of Time and having already beaten all of the dungeons, though.

** There's actually a [[Self-Imposed Challenge]] called the "3 day challenge" floating around the Internet that states "You can only play the Song Of Time once", thus kinda/sorta negating the whole Groundhog Day thing. Doing all 4 temples in one loop is very tough and forces you to skip almost all the sidequests.

* The main story of ''[[Grim Grimoire]]'' is also based on this trope. The same five days are repeated several times throughout the story, but only [[Cute Witch]] Lillet Blan seems to notice (and also seems to be [[It's Up to You|the only one powerful enough to stop it.]]) And then you find out that the loop has been going on much longer than you think...

* The main story of ''[[Ephemeral Fantasia]]''. The hero is initially the only one known to be unaffected, but he gradually frees others (who become playable) from the cycle by changing the way events play out.

* In ''[[Little Busters!|Little Busters]]!'', if the player starts each route from the beginning as opposed to cleverly manipulating saves at critical points, they will quickly notice that Riki (the protagonist) and Rin (one of the heroines) comes with improved starting stats after each playthrough. {{spoiler|The reason for that is because everything is in an artificial world created by Kyousuke, Masato and Kengo, as a result of a bus crash in real life in which the two are the sole survivors, and the artificial world would constantly rewind itself in an attempt to make Riki and Rin strong enough to handle the accident. The improved stats would, in a way, signify their growth in between each loop.}}

* The premise of ''Episode Aigis'' (''The Answer'' in the US), the epilogue scenario of [[Updated Rerelease]] ''[[Persona 3|Persona 3: FES]]''. The main characters find themselves trapped inside their dorm house in a one-day time loop, endlessly reliving March the 31st. This is caused by (and representative of) {{spoiler|Aigis' inability to move on after the death of the [[Hello, Insert Name Here|Main Character]] of ''Episode Yourself'', who [[Heroic Sacrifice|sacrificed himself]] to prevent [[The End of the World as We Know It]].}}

** There are many IF games like this: ''Moebius'' and ''All Things Devours'' are two more. In some cases, they go on about "top secret devices" so the fact that you're facing a time loop puzzle is not immediately obvious.

* The ''[[Tsukihime]]'' sequel game ''Kagetsu Tohya'' seems to take this form. It has the added [[Mind Screw|trippiness]] of the fact that, though Shiki repeats the same day over and over, just what ''sort'' of day it is can change. Is it a school day? A holiday? The day of the culture festival? A day where, for whatever reason, Shiki wakes up as a cat?

** Type-Moon must like this trope, because they did the same thing in the ''[[Fate/stay night]]'' sequel ''[[Fate/hollow ataraxia]]''. This time it's the Holy Grail War that keeps repeating, allowing even characters who died in all three routes to reappear.

* ''[[Shadow of Destiny]]''. The whole premise is that the main character is trying to change history so that he doesn't die; being killed results in living through the events prior to his death again until he gets it right and survives. Amusingly, in one part of the game it's possible to go through the same conversation for a third time, which results in the main character pre-empting what he knows the NPC he's talking with is about to say.

* Though not an exact example, in Episode III of ''[[Xenosaga]]'', {{spoiler|Wilhelm's}} plan is revealed to involve {{spoiler|preventing the impending collapse of the universe by enacting Eternal Recurrence, which would reset everything in the Lower Domain all the way back to the beginning of time, then repeating the process over and over. It's implied that not everything plays out in exactly the same way each time, since the post-game Database updates say that Wilhelm has successfully enacted Eternal Recurrence before, whereas in the game proper, Shion and co. reject his plan and stop him, electing to find a better way.}}

* ''[[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.}}

* In ''[[CROSS†CHANNEL]]'', the game starts with a week where you briefly meet all the cast and the radio is completed, ending with a plea to any other survivors. Then the 'first' week starts, then the second. The third time, Taichi figures out what's going on and plays with the situation a little and manages to reconcile with Kiri instead of {{spoiler|having her go crazy and Youko kill everyone}}. Then the fourth week starts and it turns out that {{spoiler|during one week, Miki discovered the 'safe spot' where the journals are kept and has been avoiding the reset ever since. She's the truest example of ripple effect proof memory in the game}}. Oh, and Nanaka clearly knows what's going on. The resolution is rather bittersweet.

* ''[[Warthogs]]'', an adventure game where a [[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]] expy has to roll back time repeatedly in order to pass his magic exams.

* The indie horror game ''[[The white chamber]]'' uses this as the plot, although it is not explained to the player until the very end. It turns out that {{spoiler|the main character is something of a bitch and went around slaughtering all of the other crew on the ship, one by one. She is forced to walk the horror and abomination filled wreckage of the ship until she shows enough remorse and compassion to warrant her "redemption". If you do not get enough good points, the game ends with her starting over, again and again and again and again....}}

* 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.

* Used in ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]'' to defeat the villain {{spoiler|Sparklelord}}, who is sent back in time and doomed to repeat the sequence of events leading him to be sent back, ad infinitum. Distinct from typical versions of this trope in that his memory also undergoes a [[Snap Back]], making it impossible for him to escape. Might also be a [[Stable Time Loop]], given that the removal of his memory is what prompts the repeat of events.

* ''[[City of Reality]]'' features a device smuggled in from Magic World that acts as a [[Reset Button]] for the story, rewinding time but [[Mental Time Travel|preserving the memory]] of the person who activates it, and only that person. In its first appearance, it's used by a villain to defeat all of the heroes who oppose him, since all he has to do is rewind time to know exactly how they will attack him, and counter those attacks. He's tricked into losing it by a character who figures out a way to [[Batman Gambit]] him. Later, the device nearly causes a [[Time Crash|catastrophe]] in Reality by its mere existence, and the heroes figure out that the only way to stop it is to run its battery out, which is accomplished by {{spoiler|[http://cityofreality.com/2009/10/01/03-43-648-1250/ dropping it on the floor button-down]}}. (Note: Flash required to view the linked page.)

 

 

* 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.

*** 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.

**** But how would they cash their paychecks? Banks aren't allowed to be open on Christmas, so if it's still Christmas, the banks are still closed.

* ''[[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.

 

 

* ''[[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).

* Johnny Alpha in ''[[Strontium Dog]]'' occasionally punishes a criminal by using a time drode to send them two seconds back in time, at which point the drode reactivates... for all eternity.

* 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.

 

** 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]].

* 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.

 

 

* 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.}}

* A science-fiction short featured a man who lived his life out of sequence. Most of his childhood was intact, with only a few future-self bits, but [[Puberty Superpower|after adolescence]] his existence became totally nonlinear; whenever he went to sleep, he risked waking in another part of his life, so long as he hadn't yet lived it. Eventually he discovered that his first wife, who died young, had the same condition, and was able to change history so that she lived, erasing all the parts of his life after her death and letting them live them over together.

** "If This Is Winnetka, You Must Be Judy" by F. M. Busby.

* 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.

 

 

* ''[[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.

* There's one episode of ''[[Wicked Science]]'' where Elizabeth transports Toby to an [[Alternate Universe]] where they are a couple and his friends hate him. In order to make him accept the new reality she makes him go through this trope with the help of a [[Reset Button]].

 

 

* 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.

 

 

* 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]].

* Try a Google search for "recursion"!

 

 

* ''[[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.

* A twist on the common [[Interactive Fiction]] time loop puzzle is seen in ''Slouching Towards Bedlam.'' There is an in-game explanation for why your character has the unique ability to save, reset, and go through the day over and over. The game won't end until you stop playing it or take drastic action.

* The final thing that {{spoiler|Takeru Shirogane}} learns in {{spoiler|''[[Muv Luv Alternative]]'' before he ceases to exist}} is that {{spoiler|Sumika subconsciously kept him looping back to October 22nd of the ''Unlimited'' world upon his death (similar to the case of ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]'') each time he falls in love with some other heroine and thus never reaches her, wiping Takeru's memories in the process. She lost that power when she and Takeru finally became one late into ''Alternative''.}}

 

 

 

 

* 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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