I Hate Past Me: Difference between revisions

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The inverse of [[Future Me Scares Me]], where a character sees the past and either meets or somehow witnesses the actions of their past self, and just can't stand them. Maybe they were once a villain, and now that they've reformed dislike how evil they once were, or, inversely, they're ''more'' evil and show disdain for how "weak" their past self is. Maybe they're just more experienced, and are annoyed with how inexperienced and impulsive they were in the past. In any case, they're constantly ticked off by their past.

* In ''[[Noein]]'', Karasu condemns his past self for being an utter coward. [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong|Considering what he's trying to do]], not an entirely unreasonable attitude. And then {{spoiler|the titular Noein turns out to be yet another future Yuu, who hates ''both'' Yuu and Karasu}}.

* [[Naruto]], after the [[Time Skip]] in ''Shipuuden'', does an omake with his past self. He is shocked by the fact that he was a very annoying, obnoxious loudmouth before the [[Time Skip]].

== Fan Fiction ==

* In ''[[White Devil of the Moon]],'' [[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha|Nanoha,]] who is the reincarnation of [[Sailor Moon|Princess Serenity,]] ''strongly'' disapproves of the Princess' actions during the era of the Moon Kingdom, leading to a [[Calling the Old Man Out|Calling The Old Woman Out]] moment against the ghost of the queen.

== Film ==

== Literature ==

** This is a common effect of burning gold, actually, since it shows you either your past or a possible past (it's rather unclear- gold is probably the least understood of the core allomantic metals, since burning it is often a disturbing experience). Vin, the heroine of the original ''[[Mistborn]]'' trilogy, is also extremely uncomfortable with seeing her pre-[[Character Development]] [[Broken Bird]] self while burning gold, and never does it again.

* Upon seeing his decisions from an observer's point of view, [[A Christmas Carol|Ebenezer Scrooge]] eventually has little but large amounts of disdain for the choices his past self made, occasionally berating him despite knowing he can't hear.

* In Jonathan Carroll's novel ''The Wooden Sea'', the narrator, Frannie, who is a cop, meets his past self, a troubled teenage bully. However, he eventually does come to see that he really was a good kid and manages to help patch things with his (teenage Frannie's) father in the past.

* In [[Stephen Baxter]]'s novel ''The Time Ships'', when Moses meets his past self he initially doesn't like his trousers, his waistcoat, his attitude, or him. Damn young turk!

* In the "Q-Continuum" series of ''[[Star Trek]]'' novels, Q takes Picard on a trip through his past to show him why breaching the galactic barrier would be a bad idea. Throughout the trip Q laments his past self's actions. Understandable, since he did grant {{spoiler|a sadistic [[Eldritch Abomination]] and its equally monstrous cronies entrance to our galaxy which led to the destruction of an entire civilization that had actually earned Q's respect.}}

== Live Action TV ==

* In the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' story ''The Five Doctors'', after the past Doctors return to their respective timelines, the present Doctor (the fifth one) says "I am not the man I was ... thank goodness." This implies that while he might not exactly ''hate'' his past selves, he considers them phases he's since outgrown.

** This is a recurring theme in multi-Doctor stories, which inevitably end up with the various incarnations of the Doctor bickering with each other, such as the Third and Second Doctors in "The Three Doctors" and the Sixth and Second Doctors in "The Two Doctors". In the former it's suggested that the reason the Doctor seemingly can't stand himself is that he's actually more like his past / future selves than each self would care to admit.

** In ''[[Doctor Who/Recap/S21 E7 The Twin Dilemma|The Twin Dilemma]]'', Six states that he didn't like being Five. However, he was suffering from moodswings at the time, so it's unknown whether or not this statement should be taken seriously.

** Given what Eleven has said about himself ''in general,'' not any one specific version, it may be the fact that ''every'' other Doctor's face is the face of actions the Doctor detested having had to take.

* ''[[Samantha Who]]'' was about a woman with amnesia and as she puts her life back together is appalled to discover what an awful person she had been.

* In the American version of ''[[Life On Mars]]'', Sam is afraid of talking to himself as a child.

== Video Games ==

{{quote| '''Future You:''' Look at you fight; no wonder I turned to drinking.}}

** Though, to be fair, when you do the sequel quest "Mystery of the Infinite, Redeux", you're mocked just as much by Past You:

{{quote| '''Past You:''' I just want you to know that if we get through this alive, I'm making sure we turn out better than you. No offense.}}

* [[Blaz Blue|Hakumen]] has [[That Man Is Dead|renounced his old identity]] as {{spoiler|Jin Kisaragi}}. He considers killing his "past incarnation" to be atonement for his/{{spoiler|Jin's}} sins.

* In ''[[City of Villains]]'', one villain "morality mission" has you meet three future versions of yourself, two of which think you're an idiotic weakling. {{spoiler|The third is [[The Atoner]], whose pleas for you to do the right thing you ignore.}}

* The normally [[The Stoic|stoic]] Auron in ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'' actually ''attacks'' his past self when confronted with a phantom echo of his past in the ruins of Zanarkand. Since it's only an echo, he ends up fruitlessly shouting and swinging his sword to no effect.

{{quote| '''Young Sam''': Wow, I've never seen anything that advanced. It must have at least 640 kilobytes of RAM!<br />

'''Sam''': Ew. Whatever, kid. }}

* Subverted in ''[[The Last Days of Foxhound]]'', where The Sorrow shows the amnesiac Liquid his past in order to to show him how, violent, cruel and indifferent to humanity he was. Cue Liquid gushing over how much of a [[Badass]] he was.

* A book 4 arc of ''[[Fans]]'' pits the science fiction club against their book 1 versions, and nearly all of them have this reaction.

** [[Friend to All Living Things|Of all people,]] {{spoiler|Jade, who gets sick of Jadesprite's sobbing pretty quickly. When Jadesprite refuses to do the one thing that could probably get her the one thing she wants (to go back to being dead), Jade loses it and starts [[Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!|smacking sense into her, literally]].}} This is an especially strange example, since {{spoiler|her dead dreamself}} went back in time thirteen years ago, making her some sort of past self from the future... [[Mind Screw|Or was it future self from the past?]]

* A non-[[Time Travel]] example occurs in ''[[The Dragon Doctors]]'' when Kili and Greg go to part of the [[Spirit World]] where a person's past self resides. Kili, a kind, sensitive shaman, is confronted by her bratty teenage self and Greg, a mellow writer, is distraught when he sees his [[Totally Radical]] headbanger self.

* In ''[[Manly Guys Doing Manly Things]]'', the Commander fulfills a [[Stable Time Loop]] by going back about a minute to beat up his past self and steal his coffee. As he leaves, he tells his past self not to be such a "candy-ass" so that this won't happen again.

* From ''[[Narbonic]]'': "I'm your future, and I hate you. I'm {{spoiler|going to electrocute you now.}}"

== Western Animation ==

** Ironically, the past self is only a few days younger then the future self. Granted, a ''lot'' happened in those few days, including several magical transformations which increased his intelligence and dramatically boosted his power.

* In an episode of ''[[Justice League Unlimited]]'', [[Batman Beyond|old Bruce Wayne]] meets his past self and, during a suspect's interrogation, comments that "I can't believe I used to be so green." Afterwards, Old Bruce teaches his past self how to properly interrogate a criminal, foregoing the traditional method of terrifying the [[Mook]] and instead simply ''beating'' information out of him. This leads to an amusing [[Good Cop, Bad Cop]] with Batman playing both roles, and past Batman's teammates expressing their disbelief at the Batman they know being able to pull off Good Cop.

** The relationship is eventually inverted. His younger self dislikes Matrix's bitterness while Matrix tries to regain some of the idealism of his youth.

* ''[[South Park]]''- In the Go God Go duology, Cartman tries [[It Makes Sense in Context|warning himself not to freeze himself by using a phone designed to make prank calls in different periods in time]]. However, Past!Cartman doesn't believe Future!Cartman, and just insults him. This leads to Future!Cartman calling his past self an asshole.

** Excapt Bender. Because if there's one thing Bender loves, it's Bender.

* [[Vandal Savage]] in the ''[[Justice League]]'' episode "Hereafter". It took 30,000 years of self-imposed exile on the ruined Earth (which he ruined) as the last human being alive for him to give up his megalomania. As Savage prepares to send [[Superman]] back in time, Savage tells Superman that he must stop Savage's past self no matter what.