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Ontological Inertia: Difference between revisions
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Ontological Inertia acts as a buffer against changes to the cosmic status quo: You cannot (well, not completely) undo something that already exists.
Writer [[Fritz Leiber]] agreed with this trope in his ''Change War'' series of stories involving time travel, and devised the "Law of Reality Conservation" as a way to show how things couldn't just [[Ret-Gone|un-happen]]. In that context, it states that you ''can'' change the past (in fact he named one of the stories in the series, "Try and Change the Past"), but Fate will force a coincidental event to ensure that history proceeds down its intended path without paradox; every time you try to prevent one historical trend or event, a similar one will take its place in history.
On the other hand, what can happen instead is if you do change something in history that is significant, the time line "fractures", a whole new universe is created at that point, and you and the new event are in a completely different reality with the change you caused. So either you go back to your universe where the change never happened, or you end up going forward to the equivalent time in the new universe with the change that you made propagating from that point. If you don't like the result, you can try to go back and change time again, in which case, guess what, time "fractures" again to compensate for that new incident, and the cycle starts all over again.
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== Literature ==
* The plot of Terry Pratchett's ''[[Discworld/Thief of Time|Thief of Time]]'' deals with this kind of idea. When the Procrastinators (which are sort of spindles that regulate the flow of time in Discworld) slip out of control and time starts moving in weird ways, the History Monks attempt to re-regulate everything by dumping the excess time into various places (like the ocean, for example, which is "always big and wet" no matter what the time, and nobody cares if fishermen are suddenly drawing up a catch of weird fish that they've only ever seen as fossils). In fact, the entire history of the Discworld {{spoiler|is supposedly pieced together from all the scrapped bits of the actual time-line that they could find after a temporal blow-out which shattered all of history. They didn't just change the past, they literally ''pieced it all together from scraps and hoped nobody noticed the inconsistencies''. That's why some things in Discworld just don't make sense historically.}}
** To clarify, even the History Monks aren't sure why the Disc's history seems to keep the same general shape in spite of various things messing with time. Some ideas include the [[Theory of Narrative Causality]] (the [[Trope Namer]]) and the Historical Imperative, which appears to be equal parts this trope and [[Incredibly Lame Pun|a pun on Kant]].
*** The Discworld books also bring up the alrady-discussed concept of "steam engine time", which shows that human society tends to avert [[No Plans No Prototypes No Backup]] (i.e., if Thomas Savery hadn't invented the steam pump, one of his contemporaries who were working on the same subject would have patented roughly the same thing, and [[In Spite of a Nail|history might have been back on track]] just in time for James Watt to make the engine efficient enough to use portably, and no [[For Want of a Nail|boiling-over tea kettle]] need be involved).
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== Live Action TV ==
* [[Lost]] plays with this in Season 5. For example, when handling a nuke, Daniel assures them that it can't explode because the island still exists in the future they came from.
* [[The Legendary Adventures Of Hercules]] had an episode where they were worried about how their time travel might affect the present, but Hercules assured them that Time would correct itself, so nothing would change.
* In the final episode of ''[[Kamen Rider Decade]]'', when [[Big Bad]] [[Kamen Rider X|Apollo Geist]] is defeated, his forcible merger and destruction of the multiverse continues unabated. In fact, if anything it actually speeds up. This leads to Decade receiving a [[What the Hell, Hero?]] speech from his predecessors.
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* Mentioned in [[Shadow of Destiny]] (aka ''Shadow of Memories''). {{spoiler|It's ultimately revealed to be the driving force behind the entire story.}}
* The conclusion of ''[[Final Fantasy I]]'' is a version of this: {{spoiler|the Light Warriors shatter a [[Stable Time Loop]] by killing Chaos. In the process, they themselves are shunted into the newly-created time-line wherein Garland never abducted the princess and the Four Fiends never existed... and their memories are lost in the process.}}
* In [[Command
** It's implied that the Einstein that did the erasing will not see any changes. All he has done is create a divergent timeline which exists simultaneously with ours. Otherwise, he wouldn't be able to go back to his lab in 1946.
* [[Ontological Inertia]] is such a strong force in the ''[[Legacy of Kain]]'' series that the titular vampire spends most of his immortal life looking for a way to [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong|thwart it]] at a [[Take a Third Option|key point]] in his past. This is the origin of Kain's memorable "edge of the coin" speech:
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