View source for Meanwhile in the Future

{{trope}}
{{quote|'''''Sarah:''' Arlington? Arlington? Where've you gone? Oh god, I'm stuck here in the late Jurassic without a time machine.''
'''''Narrator:''' Meanwhile, in the early 20th century, Arlington Wolfe, cross-time detective, is trapped on an iceberg.'' 
|''[[Irregular Webcomic]]'', [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/podcasts/podcast017.html Podcast #17: Arlington Wolfe II: Parachronic Boogaloo]}}

An unusual form of [[Meanwhile Back At The]]. The story cuts back and forth between two plotlines, just as in [[Meanwhile Back At The]], but here the plotlines are separated in time as well as space; one of them is chronologically in advance of the other. The narrator treats the two different plot threads in different times as if they were happening simultaneously, despite the fact that, chronologically, the plot thread in the past is going to be resolved long before the thread in the future starts.

This can be used as a way to maintain suspense about past events, using [[Anachronic Order|out-of-order storytelling]] to keep the audience in the dark about crucial details.

[[Time Travel]] is not a neccessary element for this trope, but in those scenarios it can also reflect the ability of past, present, and future to interact with one another.

The actual phrase "Meanwhile in the Future" is usually used tongue-in-cheek, but there are examples of legitimate comic books using it with a straight face.

Related to [[Time Travel Tense Trouble]].

Note: Please don't duplicate entries between this trope, [[San Dimas Time]], and [[Portal to the Past]].

{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* In ''[[Drifting Classroom]]'', main character Sho and his entire elementary school have been sent to a [[After the End|post-apocalyptic]] [[Mordor|wasteland]]. Several times in the story, Sho's mother, still in the past, has received a psychic message from her son cryptically asking her to plant a [[Deus Ex Machina]] to rescue him from a cliffhanger that he's encountered in the future. She usually has to go through a short storyline to put everything in place, while the audience is waiting for Sho to escape the cliffhanger he's in.

== [[Comic Books]] ==
* The Swedish comic ''Goliat'' would announce cuts with captions like "Simultaneously in the Stone Age ..." in its time-travel arcs, without apparent irony.
* [[The Flash]] had a whole storyline that relied on this for it to work. The Flash (AKA Wally West) is stuck thousands of years in the future, forced to go past his top speed over and over again in order to get closer to his home time. Each time he does this, he risks dying—but he survives because the love of his girlfriend, Linda, is "like a lightning rod" which keeps him from getting lost in time and space. Meanwhile, in the...present, Linda has given Wally up for dead and moved on to a new guy. The moment she kisses him, (thus severing the connection between herself and Wally) the story cuts to an image of Flash, in the future, seemingly dying, despite the fateful kiss having happened over ''four thousand years ago'' from where he's standing.
* This happens at the beginning of a storyline in ''[[Ultimate Fantastic Four]]'' (before they go back to prevent Ben's transformation to the Thing.) Reed is in contact with Sue and Johnny who are both in different time periods. Their communicators are apparently acting as a [[Portal to the Past]] for communication.
* Business as usual in [[Silver Age]] ''[[Legion of Super-Heroes (comics)|Legion of Super-Heroes]]'' stories.
* Used as a plot device in a 1969 ''Action Comics'' story where the President asks Superman not to fly into the past or future for the next 24 hours to avoid disrupting a military experiment. No sooner has he agreed this than Superman receives an urgent distress call from the year 101,970. Instead of simply waiting until the next day before setting off, Superman uses a defective time-bubble belonging to the Legion. It takes him to his destination, but the defect causes him to age every year along the way, leaving him trapped in the future and over a hundred thousand years old. (He got better.) The point was raised in the letter column, with the editor eagerly accepting the reader's suggestion that Superman hadn't been thinking straight due to the effects of Red Kryptonite.
* Belgian comic ''[[Suske en Wiske]]'' (Spike & Suzy) does this constantly in their time travel stories. Most stories have one of the protagonists use the teletime-machine, in the meantime destroying it. Professor Barabas then spends the whole comic rebuilding it, after which the storyline is swiftly deus ex machina'd by reinforcements (most of the time Jerom). The teletime-machine also has a screen showing the events happening in the past.
* In the ''[[Strontium Dog]]'' "Max Bubba" storyline, Johnny goes back to the year 793 AD to stop the eponymous mutant from changing history. Bubba proceeds to kill every member of the Thoresen family, apparently to send a message to the future, with the result that descendants of the Thoresons spontaneously drop dead and vanish, yet everybody seems to remember them. Characters in the future continue to monitor temporal distortions, and infer from the various disasters which occur that Bubba is continuing to wreak havoc with history, and Johnny has failed.
* Somewhat lampshaded in ''[[DC One Million]].'' Half of the [[Justice League]] travels to the year 85,271 to be honored and feted. The ones in the present figure out that it's a trap, and start panicking to figure out a way to rescue their teammates before they're killed. The Huntress is the voice of reason when she points out that they have ''eighty thousand years'' to plan a rescue.
* During his run on ''[[Avengers]] West Coast,'' [[John Byrne]] once used the caption "Meanwhile, five hundred million years later..." seriously, in a non-[[Time Travel]] story. (It indicated a transition from ''memories'' of the distant past to the person remembering them in the present day.)
* A good third of the plotlines in ''[[Watchmen (comics)|Watchmen]]'' takes place in the past, focusing on the Minutemen and Crimebusters.

== [[Fan Works]] ==
* In ''[[Light and Dark - The Adventures of Dark Yagami]]'' the phrase "Meanwhile in the past" is used
* In ''[[The Unity Saga]]'' crossover, a [[Portal to the Past]] [[Our Wormholes Are Different|con intergalactic worm hole]] opens up in the ''[[Star Trek]]'' universe, linking them to the ''[[Star Wars]]'' universe ([[Captain Obvious|the latter]], [[Late Arrival Spoiler|bear in mind]], [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|takes place "[a] long time ago in a galaxy far, far away"]]). Although the [[Portal to the Past]] aspect justifies Meanwhile in the Future for most situations, at one point when Darth Vader is in the ''[[Star Trek]]'' universe, he communicates with the Emperor through Force meditations. And it's implied that this doesn't make use of the wormhole; they are just somehow able to link minds at times that correspond with the fixed temporal displacement of the wormhole.
* A version of this is used in the ''[[Code Lyoko]]'' fic ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3610335/1/Return_To_The_Past Return to the Past]'', which jumps back and forth between March 10, 2006, the present, and June 6, 1994, where Jeremie is trapped. Each timeline does take place over the straightforward course of one day, but June 6's time loop repeats seven times over the course of the story. There is no communication between the timelines - Jeremie never thinks to communicate with the future, and the Lyoko Warriors don't know where Jeremie is until just before he returns.

== [[Film]] ==
* ''Best Defense'' uses the [[Flash Forward]] form of this: the main story involved Dudley Moore on a development project for a new tank, with the secondary story following along with Eddie Murphy as a tank commander going through a comedy of errors largely due to flaws in the tank. The future story reflects the events in the past story as they go along, highlighting the design decisions (and corporate espionage) as they take place.
** At the climax of the film, Eddie Murphy's tank is overheating, leaving him a sitting duck on the battlefield, but Dudley Moore leaps to his rescue with a cooling device ... ten years earlier.
* ''[[12 Monkeys]]'' features characters communicating with scientists in the future with a business's answering machine in the "present", which a team of scientists spend months and years recovering from the decayed magnetic tape. While the continuity is well-explained, the interaction between future and present, even with the time machine, is relatively sequential.
* ''[[Frequency]]'', using the device of a ham radio owned by both the thirtysomething father in his time period and the similarly aged son in his, allowing the two to communicate. The timelines fortuitiously collide in the end sequence.
* In ''The Lake House'', two people living two years apart in the same house exchange letters through time. Near the end of the film, the woman (who's the one who lives in the future) realises that the bloke she's been writing letters to is the one that died in her arms near the beginning of the film. Thus she frantically races to inform him of what happened before he gets run over.
* ''[[Meet the Robinsons]]'' briefly does this when Louis is in the future while Bowler Hat Guy is still in the present.
* Justified in ''[[Déjà Vu (film)|Déjà Vu]]'': the time travel-based monitoring machine only has the power to "see" in the fixed time of 4 days and 6 hours earlier, being only able of controlling the P.O.V., and  {{spoiler|sending the main character's in the same past.}}

== [[Literature]] ==
* Alan Garner's novel, ''Thursbitch'', uses this trope with some crossover between times in a small hamlet in England.
* In the ''[[Discworld]]'' novel ''[[Jingo]]'' Commander Vimes got, in a strange turn of events, a magical PDA that told him what was happening to his self in a different timeline, where he did not go to Klatch. {{spoiler|<s>He</s> Everybody dies.}} Maybe more a ''Meanwhile right now'', but a very good example none the less.
* The [[Michael Crichton]] novel ''Timeline'' justifies the time trip's thirty-six hour limit with the explanation that they weren't actually travelling into the past, they were travelling into a kind of parallel universe which existed in an earlier time, ''but in which time passed at the same rate as in our world''. The time machines only have enough battery life to maintain a connection for thirty-six hours before they needed to be recalled. Or something.
* Many of [[Alastair Reynolds]]' books work this way. There's a climax that the book is working towards in which all the characters will end up in the same place at the same time, and parts of the book are told in rough order of how long—in that character's time frame—it will be until the character reaches the climax. Since his books are [[Space Opera]]s in a setting full of [[Time Dilation]], this leads to quite a bit of skipping around in calendar years, especially toward the beginnings of his books.
* ''A Tale of Time City'' by Diana Wynne Jones, uses this constantly. Characters talk about, for example, World War II "becoming" longer (i.e. it starts earlier and finishes later), something that is apparently a gradual process, although "gradual" in what is hard to say. Partially justified by the idea that the eponymous ''Time City'' exists in its own personal timeframe outside the rest of time, but nonetheless, the time travelling doesn't make internal sense. Still a good book, though.
* This is a recurring gimmick in the ''Nicolas Eymerich, Inquisitor'' series by Valerio Evangelisti: While the main action is taking place in the middle ages, each episode also depicts a related subplot taking place "simultaneously" centuries earlier or later. And it doesn't even technically involve time travel, making the narrative device all the more contrived.
* ''[[Illuminatus]]'' is chock full of this, explicitly described as such to be paradoxic and funny.
* Douglas Adams' ''[[Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency]]'' had Susan Way talk on the telephone to Richard MacDuff, who was four billion years in the past. As Professor Chronotis points out, this was a matter they would just have to take up with British Telecom. (Note that the "telephone from the future" device also appeared in ''[[Doctor Who]]'', for which Douglas Adams wrote several episodes, which ''Dirk Gently'' borrows other plot elements from.)
* In the ''[[Warhammer 40,000|Warhammer 40 000]]'' novel Angels of Darkness, the story cuts back and forth between the interrogation of Chapter Master Astelan, and Brother Chaplain Boreas' storyline while on guard duty on Piscina, decades later. Interestingly, both plots include Boreas, and the effects of the first are enormous on the conclusion of the second plotline.
* As it is a book about Vlad Tepes and Elizabeth Bathory, who can somehow write letters to each other despite living over one hundred years apart, ''[[Count and Countess]]'' is quite full of this.
* H.G. Well's ''[[The Time Machine]]'' - the Time Traveller vanishes forever at the end and the narrator wonders where he wound up. He at least recognizes the contradictions and absurdities of time travel by saying "He may even now, if I may use the term ..."
* ''[[Cryptonomicon]]'' simultaneously juggles the story of World War II soldiers Bobby Shaftoe and Goto Dengo, World War II cryptographer Lawrence Waterhouse, and modern-day computer hacker Randy Waterhouse.
* ''[[Seekers of the Sky]]'' has the recurring plotline of the Redeemer ([[Alternate History|replacement]] [[Jesus]]), which is repeatedly alluded to in the present-day narration but revealed only in small heaps across two books.
* [[Dean Koontz]] does this in his time travel book ''Lightening'', as his hero has to bounce between the time lab in 1944,  {{spoiler|where he drops a few hints to Churchill about winning the war}} and helping his girlfriend in 1989 avoid time-traveling Gestopo men, so she doesn't get killed ''again''. It... gets complicated.

== [[Live-Action TV]] ==
* ''[[Torchwood]]'' - The episode "Captain Jack Harkness", set in 1941/2008.
** Also played straight in the first episode of series two, "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" with the conversation between Captains Jack and John, concerning the stat of the Time Agency, an agency which won't exist for several thousand years.
* ''[[The X-Files]]'' episode "Triangle" is split between modern-day shenanigans and the events of a doomed 30s cruise liner.
* The ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "Blink" has various characters in three different time periods. There is a very eerie illusion of communication between the three periods, but in fact, with the exception of a throw-away joke at the start of the episode which is never explained, it's entirely justified.
** The communication at the start of the episode is explained in the same way all of it is, by invoking the [[Timey-Wimey Ball]]. The Doctor learns the future side of the conversation in the future, then travels into the past to repeat his side of the conversation and leave other clues that aren't even his idea. He's just copying them from the future.
** This is actually an egregious closed time loop: the Doctor picks up the transcript in the future so that he can record the message that he then goes back and plants in the past, so that it can be copied down by Sally Sparrow, so that she can give it to the Doctor, so that he can record the message and go back and plant it in the past... and so on. Moffat leaves us with information, the transcript, which has never been created, which is one of the cardinal sins of time-travel plots.
** Another example is "The Girl in the Fireplace", where specific time-windows are open onto various points in one woman's life. These progress in real time, making the trope justified.
** "The Parting of the Ways" has Rose contemplating the Doctor's imminent destruction - several hundred millenia in the future. She's in a tremendous hurry to get back the future and rescue the Doctor, despite the fact that, logically, there's really no need to rush, as her companions point out totally unconcerned, while for her it had just been happening right then. Given that  {{spoiler|Rose pilots the TARDIS by effectively becoming a God, so can put it where/when she needs}}, there really was no real need to rush.
{{quote|'''''Rose:''' Two hundred thousand years in the future, he's dying, and there's nothing I can do.''
'''''Jackie:''' Well, like you said, two hundred thousand years, it's way off.''
'''''Rose:''' But it's not. It's now. That fight is happening right now.'' }}
** Also, the whole concept of the Doctor adjusting Rose's phone so that she can ring home wherever she is in space '''or time''', and get the version of her mother appropriate to Rose's personal time line, rather than say, the people who lived in her house 40 years ago or her mother aged 80.
** Another ''[[Doctor Who]]'' example: Winston Churchill calling the Doctor thousands of years in the future. Maybe his phone just picks a random point in time that the Doctor's in his TARDIS?
** Likewise, River Song contacts him via his psychic paper, with no explanation given for when in the Doctor's timeline this message reaches him.
** The classic series episode ''Terror of the Zygons'' mentioned that the Brigidier literally had a "time-space telegraph" with which he could call the doctor, though he was expicitly instructed not to use it except in extreme emergencies.
** And in ''The Pandorica Opens'', the Doctor and River are in a constant conversation over the phone while one is on the TARDIS traveling in time. After they get cut off, things stay "in sync": {{spoiler|the TARDIS explodes in 2010 and the shockwave is "immediately" felt in the second century (but not before).}}
* In the 1980's version of ''[[Twilight Zone]]'', the episode "A Message From Charity" tells the story of an '80s teenage boy communicating with a teenage girl in Salem 300 years earlier, and {{spoiler|communicating what he found in a history book to save her from a lecherous "judge"}}.
* ''[[Kamen Rider Kiva]]'' tells its story in 1986 and 2008 at the same time. Time jumps happen more than once per episode.
* Done in the ''[[Farscape]]'' episode "Different Destinations," with Jool, Pilot, and Chiana watching the Planet of the Week progressively deteriorate as John, Aeryn, and D'Argo stumble around in the past.
* Used pretty heavily in ''[[Star Trek]]''. Gleefully noticed and subverted in the ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'' episode "Timeless".
{{quote|'''The Doctor:''' I'm no time travel expert, but can't we just call ''Voyager'' again? The past isn't going anywhere.}}
** The episode "Endgame" has my favorite line about time: "'''Janeway''': Like they say in the Temporal Mechanics Department, there's no time like the present."
* In ''[[Power Rangers Time Force]]'', the Rangers summon their [[Humongous Mecha|zords]] from the year 3000 when needed, and after a battle they return to the future. In one episode, the zords are damaged and have to be repaired in the future, preventing the Rangers from using them in the next episode. No explanation is given as to why they can't just summon the zords from 1000 years ''plus one week'' into the future, where they would be fully repaired.
** ''[[Power Rangers SPD]]'' is implied to somehow run parallel to 2004, meaning that there was a year without monster attacks since the monsters were in 2025. There's no indication that ''[[Power Rangers Mystic Force]]'' followed ''[[Power Rangers Dino Thunder]]'' without having SPD in the middle.
* ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'' does this whilst Hiro was in Feudal Era Japan, as well as when Peter is in the post-apocalyptic future.
** The UK DVD box [[Lampshade Hanging|actually says "Meanwhile, in Feudal Japan"]] in its episode synopsis for "Out of Time".
** The episode Brother's Keeper has a Meanwhile Eight Weeks Ago Where Time Is Stopped.
* In the ''[[Lost]]'' episode "Because You Left," Daniel interacts with Desmond at some indeterminate point in the past. The next scene is Desmond suddenly remembering this conversation over three years later, with the implication that these events are in some way concurrent.
** On Lost, the past is immutable except for Desmond, so this is really weird regardless of when it updates. He's the only person who can alter the past, and he appears to stop paradoxes by having crappy memory. (Both of the past and sometimes of the future.) It is perhaps notable that the other person, Daniel, who attempts to alter the past (But can't, except when Desmond is involved.) also has crappy memory. In both cases, they don't remember things they should have remembered until after those things 'were caused' in the present. [[Fridge Brilliance|Perhaps that's how reality protects itself on Lost.]] If you went back to try to 'alter the past', the past version of you just remember events incorrectly until you decide to 'alter' it, after which point you correctly remember the way it always was, so no one really changes anything.
** In a more direct example, Lost's fifth season takes place in two different times. One group of characters are off the island in the "present" (2007), and another group is on the island, which is jumping through various time periods.
*** More recently, the season has been moving in the direction of reuniting the groups, though two old characters, along with a slew of new ones, are still stuck... in the future! On the whole, season five has shed the strict character-centric flashback/flashforward structure of previous seasons (the -forward part having been introduced {{spoiler|at the end of season three}}) in favor of more immediate ongoing plots in two time periods.
*** The Desmond interaction is possibly justified by the fact that he is jumping through time as well; perhaps a future Desmond shows up and recognizes Faraday.
** Notably, this device leads to a bit of [[Fridge Logic]] in "The Incident": there's no way they could have succeeded in {{spoiler|resetting time}}, because the episode shows that everything is normal thirty years in the future.
* ''[[Charmed]]'' has one neat example: while a powerless Chris is fighting future Wyatt in the... well, future, the Charmed Ones write a spell that gives back powers and hastily hide it in the attic where Chris can find it. Why bother hurrying hiding a spell that Chris won't use until more than twenty years later?
** Another example: A demon steals 3-year-old Wyatt's powers. Shortly thereafter, twenty-or-so-year-old Chris and Wyatt show up, having time-travelled from the future, saying "We were just fighting some demons, when Wyatt's powers disappeared. So we thought we'd timetravel back to the point in time when this was caused." Wait... what? The logical consequence of 3-year-old Wyatt losing his powers would have been...that he has no powers at age 4, 5, 6 all the way up to 20 (and beyond that, for that matter). Or that they fix the problem and he regains his powers at 3 and keeps them till age 20. How the heck did his 20-year-old self have powers and then randomly lose them? Why not his 40-year-old self? There's no way this makes sense.
* In the third and final series of ''[[Ashes to Ashes]]'', Alex's voiceover on the opening titles mentions time running out for her to get back home (i.e. to the present day). This isn't explained in the slightest, though, since neither world, now or then, is in any imminent danger whatsoever.
** Maybe explained by the finale.
* Justified in ''[[Starstuff]],'' since time passes at the same rate on both sides of the communication link.

== [[Radio]] ==
* In the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' audio play ''The Kingmaker'', The Fifth Doctor and his companions, Peri and Erimem, are stranded in two separate time zones. The story jumps between the two zones, telling the 'before' and 'after' of a sinister plot.
* In ''[[The Goon Show]]'' episode "The Treasure in the Tower", the plot switches between a pirate ship trying to bury its treasure in 1600 , and an attempt by the Ministry of Works in 1957 trying to find the treasure. At the end of the episode the pirates end up burying their treasure in 1600 in the hole dug in 1957 to find the treasure.

== [[Video Games]] ==
* [[Real Time Strategy]] game ''[[Achron]]'' lives and breathes this trope. With the ability to jump back and forth through time to create changes you have to react to an opponent who may not be in the same time period as you.
* The adventure game ''[[Day of the Tentacle]]'' jumped between three time periods at the same house; the modern day, 200 years in the past and 200 years in the future. Doing certain things in earlier periods would change the future periods.
** With actual "meanwhile" cuts between them, no less. Its time travel operated primarily on [[Rule of Funny]] and deliberately cartoony logic.
* Similarly, the second ''[[Back to The Future]]'' game for the NES let you jump between 1955, 1985, and 2015; doing things in an early period would alter later ones.
** Carried out even further with the obscure ''[[Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure]]'' game for the [[Atari Lynx]]. The player could travel to nearly a dozen different time eras, and many puzzles would require setting something up in the past to resolve an obstacle in the future.
* The ''[[Time Splitters]]'' games: while it's an undeveloped [[Excuse Plot]] that ignores the details in 1 and 2, Future Perfect goes the whole hog complete with time-bending radio headsets.
* ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time]]'' and ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages|Oracle of Ages]]'', have required Link to travel between the present and the past to solve puzzles. Some of this is done in [[Stable Time Loop]] fashion, but there are rampant absurdities too. For instance, in ''Oracle of Ages'', you can move seeds in the past to move the resulting vines in the present...''as many times as you want''. Not to mention the absurd tower that gets more constructed in the Present as it's built...in...the...past?
** That tower actually has [[Year Inside, Hour Outside|time stopped]] around it, as the workers are instructed to keep building until [[Loophole Abuse|the sun goes down]].
** Meanwhile, the events of ''Ocarina Of Time'' actually created three divergent timelines, which later games were set in.
* ''[[Legacy of Kain]]: Defiance'' has the story spilt between two characters that are in different time periods. Near the end they do eventfully end up in the same time period but as Kain is immortal it makes you wonder why he even cares about waiting for 100 years to meet up.
** There's an even more egregious example elsewhen. Kain at one point uses his telekinetic might to blaze a path through some ruins. Cut to Raziel 200 years later, and the columns are somehow untoppled.
*** Made even worse by the fact, later on, you do make use of Kain's temporal trailblazing.
** Everything probably justified due to the fact the reason they were separated in the first place is that Kain broke the [[Stable Time Loop]], so time went a little crazy.
* ''[[City of Heroes]]'' has screens that give a real-time overview of the situation in Recluse's Victory, a [[Player Versus Player|PvP]] battleground set in... the future.
** There's also the Co-op zone of [[Ancient Grome|Cimerora]]. You're 2,000 years in the past, fighting to protect time itself, but you get real-time updates to the goings on in [[City of Adventure|Paragon City]] and the Rogue Isles. You can also talk to your contacts in Cimerora while in the present day (and vice versa), by some [[A Wizard Did It|vaguely defined mental link]].
* [[Sonic the Hedgehog|Sonic CD]] made use of it as well. It even gave a 'Good Future' bonus when you beat Robotnik/Eggman.
* In ''[[Prince of Persia|Prince of Persia: Warrior Within]]'', the Prince uses time portals dotted around the castle on the Island of Time to get past broken down areas, activate devices that create paths for him in his own time and generally messes with the timeline to survive.
** Of course, messing with the timeline is what got him in that situation to begin with.
** This trope is expressly referenced early in the game. Shahdee says that Prince have reached the island, despite that she's in the Past, several hundred years before the fact.
* As good as the story of ''[[Mario & Luigi: Partners In Time]]'' may have been, its time-travel system was rather absurd. First, there's the fact that time seems to pass in the Present while you're in the Past and vice versa, like they were separated realms, though this can probably be explained by the whole [[Portal to the Past]] thing. Second, the Mushroom Kingdom was taken over by the Shroobs in the past, leaving the Kingdom in the Present.... completely UNAFFECTED! Some might see this as a result of a [[Stable Time Loop]], as Mario and Luigi defeat the Shroobs anyway, but that leads into a Paradox, since they can only defeat them because Present Mushroom Kingdom was free from the Shroob in the first place. Also, they are changing E.Gadd's past heavily... with the only result being him inventing some gadget. E. Gadd [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] this trope by noting how paradoxical it is.
* ''[[Freedom Force]]'' has an almost literal version of this in the second game, where the heroes have to go into the past to set a timed explosive on the shield generator for the ''[[Big Bad]]'''s fortress so they can get into it in the future. On the way in, they're recognized by one of his henchmen, who immediately demands that the guards raise their security from now on. [[Lampshade Hanging|"Meanwhile, in the future..."]] the guards standing outside the fortress disappear and [[Elite Mook|more powerful versions]] appear in their place while the characters are watching.
* ''[[Dark Cloud|Dark Chronicle]]'' does this handily, courtesy of the protagonists' personal [[Applied Phlebotinum]] activating a [[Portal to the Past]] (or in this case, 100 years in the future, and back again). Because [[Big Bad|Griffon]] has incredible powers over time  {{spoiler|and exists 10,000 years in the past}}, the two periods are treated as separate fronts in the war. [[Makes Sense in Context|It actually works.]]
* The last case of ''Apollo Justice: [[Ace Attorney]]'' takes place both in the game's present and seven years ago. On at least one occasion, you must find evidence in the present so you can [[Incredibly Lame Pun|Present]] it seven years ago.
* ''[[Space Quest|Space Quest IV]]'' plays this one completely straight, with a cutscene introduced with "Meanwhile, back in Space Quest XII" while our hero Roger Wilco is in Space Quest X.

== [[Web Comics]] ==
* [[Played for Laughs]] and refenced by name in [http://www.poisonedminds.com/d/20010108.html this] ''[[SSDD]]'' strip.
* Seen in the ''[[Narbonic]]'' storyline "Dave Davenport Has Come Unstuck In Time". Probably justified; Dave's consciousness is bouncing around between three of his past and future selves without his conscious control, so the events are ordered as he experiences them.
* ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]''{{'}}s [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/podcasts/podcast017.html podcast #17] uses the line "Meanwhile, in the early 20th century" delivered deadpan for humorous effect.
** And the temporal-paradox theme [[Crossover]] uses "[http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2163.html Meanwhile, 2 years into the future of a story that occurs 70 years earlier]".
** [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2177.html This comic] includes a [[Lampshade Hanging]] of sorts, and the annotation contains, yes, a link to this very page. And this example was added... ''clicks stopwatch'' ten minutes after it was posted.
*** To say nothing of the plotline that led to that [[Lampshade Hanging]], which was more like "Meanwhile in the present/past/far future/fantasy world/'real world'/..."
** Used again [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2253.html here], with Adam and Jamie detonate explosives simultaneously, while being 12 billion years apart.
** And lampshaded again [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2627.html here].
* A [[Running Gag]] in ''[[Dinosaur Comics]]'' is T-Rex bugging Shakespeare in a panel titled "''Meanwhile, in Tudor England''," but given the [[Dada Comics|kind of comic]] ''[[Dinosaur Comics]]'' is...
* ''[[Dresden Codak]]'' utilizes the similar "Long ago, in the future". Again, time travel.
** Combined with aggressively [[Temporal Mutability|Branching Timelines]]; the very fact that the time travellers have travelled back in time means that that future will never happen, but ''does'' impact the present, so it's slightly easier to think of it as the past.
* The author of ''[[Casey and Andy]]'' carefully justified it in [http://www.galactanet.com/comic/view.php?strip=659 this strip]. Note also [[The Rant]] below.
** Meanwhile, in 1893, [[Running Gag|Grover Cleveland has just "so owned" Present!Andy]]  {{spoiler|and eventually [[The Dog Bites Back|been owned by]] Present!Andy}}. More specifically, the Present!Andy of a few seconds previous to [[Flash Back|100 years]] and [[Present Day|112 years]] respectively into the future of 1893. The example was a rare and [[Mind Screw|vaguely disturbing]] use of changes in the future affecting a simultaneous point in the past.
{{quote|'''Casey''': [[Lampshade Hanging|This just keeps not making sense!]]}}
* Avoided in ''[http://www.tru-lifeadventures.com TRU-Life Adventures]. Old Bob's multiple appearances in the present have not been shown in his own personal chronological order.
* ''[[8-Bit Theater]]'' gives us "Meanwhile, at the beginning of time" when White Mage is sent back in time and starts creation.
* [http://www.byrobot.net/?cid=043.jpg Used and discussed in this Byrobot "Sally and Thumb: Urchins in Goner-Town" strip.]
* A running gag of sorts in [[MS Paint Adventures]]' latest series, ''[[Homestuck]]''.
** YEARS IN THE FUTURE {{spoiler|... BUT NOT MANY}}
** "Meanwhile, the past pulls a mean double reacharound..."
** Also, the [[Bad Future|"Accelerate"]] update.
** "Jane: Enter" reveals  {{spoiler|two characters were in the future all along.}}
* The ''[[Girls in Space]]'' storyline "The Pickled Past" is set in present time and in Edinburgh, 1644. Both stories run at the same time and the events in the 17th Century affect the present day storyline.

== [[Web Original]] ==
* A line almost identical to the title of this trope is used in The Banjo Kid's [http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/community/myvideos/74334-thebanjokid/video/4029-Banjo+Kid+Reviews%3A+Hell+Girl/ review of ''Hell Girl'']{{Dead link}}. (By the way, he was talking about the present).

== [[Western Animation]] ==
* ''[[Kids Next Door]]'', "Op FUTURE".
* ''[[Futurama]]'':
** Parodied in the episode "The Why of Fry", wherein a temporal paradox threatening the existence of the universe itself cuts away with a jarring "MEANWHILE!" voiceover to a B-story involving Leela dating the mayor's aide.
** Also in the episode "Roswell that ends well," the crew travels to the past and accidentally leave Bender behind. Back in the year 3002, Fry wonders how lonely Bender must be stuck 1000 years in the past... until he realizes that 1000 years later, Bender would be back to the year 3002 and they can just go find him.
** But done straight in ''Bender's Big Score'', which cuts back and forth from the main narrative in the future to a B-story in the twentieth century.
*** In the episode ''The Late Philip J. Fry,'' Fry, Bender and Professor Farnsworth are traveling forward in a time machine that can only journey to the future. At some points we cut away to what is going on with Leela and the rest of Planet Express, including visits to the years 3030 and 3050. Truly, this is technically "Meanwhile, back in the past," but what the heck.
*** However, you can see a cause-and-effect here, as Leela leaves time-traveling Fry a message preserved in a cave, which Fry discovers a billion years later.
*** Due to the circular nature of the universe, this is also a "Meanwhile, in the future's future".
** The [[Couch Gag|title screen]] of "The Luck of the Fryrish" reads "Futurama: Broadcast simultaneously one year in the future".
* One episode of ''[[Superfriends]]'' has the ever-so-serious voice of the narrator intoning "Meanwhile, ''back'' in the future..." with no apparent irony.
** Helped by the fact that the show was made a decade before ''Back to the Future'' came out.
* Similarly, the narrator of ''[[Underdog (animation)|Underdog]]'' delivered the line, "And at that moment in the present, the Thanksgiving Day parade reappeared."
* ''[[Wolverine and the X-Men]]'' seems to use this trope. The "hunters" appear in the same episode Wolverine get kidnapped and analyzed, every time Wolverine tries to contact Prof X he's ''always'' a bit further in his own personal timeline, and the season finale happens at the same time as the people in the future fight Master Mold and the past gets changed.
* [[Justice League]]'s Vandal Savage must have his own [[Timey-Wimey Ball|field of time]] around him, as this happens repeatedly and inconsistently. Noticeable at the end of the episode ''Hereafter''.
** This might be justified in his case. (Or [[Magic A Is Magic A|as justified as any]] [[Time Travel]] trope is, at least...) At various times it has been a rule in the DC universe, and the [[Diniverse]] might use this as well, that the same person can't travel through time to a period in which another version of that person exists. If they do, the time-traveling version is [[Intangible Time Travel|intangible]] and invisible. But Vandal Savage is immortal and exists for ''all'' of humanity's history and future. This makes direct time travel impossible for him (although there are ways to do whatever he wants indirectly), so [[Mental Time Travel]] is the only option, and a phenomenon he's prepared for and used to, and no doubt there are other tricks that could be used. This rule is explicitly stated by Savage in "Hereafter", but is ignored in other parts of the DCAU, including two episodes of ''[[Static Shock]]'' and the [[Justice League Unlimited]] two-parter "The Once and Future Thing".
* In An episode of ''[[Extreme Ghostbusters]]'', Kylie, through a time slip, ends up in a [[Bad Future]] where ghosts run rampant and the Ghostbusters are all dead (but remembered as heroes) while a guy from that time ends up in the present day. The episode cuts back and forth between Kylie in the future and the rest of the Ghostbusters in the present, making it seem like everything is happening simultaneously.

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[[Category:Time Travel Tropes]]
[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
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