Stable Time Loop: Difference between revisions

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Through [[Applied Phlebotinum]], [[Functional Magic]], or some other means, our heroes [[Time Travel|travel back to the past]]. In the past, they wind up being responsible for the very events that underpin their own "present." This creates a chicken-and-egg scenario, in which the looping sequence of events has no clear beginning. The result of breaking the zeroth law of [[Time Travel]]: do not cause the event you went back to prevent.

 

Importantly, this trope is not to be confused with [[Groundhog Day Loop]].

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* In ''[[Simoun]]'', {{spoiler|Dominura and Limone [[Time Travel|travel back in time]] using the Emerald Ri Maajon, purportedly to stop Simulacrum from using the Simoun. To avoid a [[Temporal Paradox]] that would prevent them from meeting, however, they instead teach the very Emerald Ri Maajon that got them there to the local inhabitants and show them how to use the Simoun that they have lying around... thereby ensuring that history unfolds exactly as they remember.}}

 

 

** His attempt to use Time Loop Logic (see Real Life below) as a manually-performed perfect algorithm was... less than successful. The output: {{spoiler|'''DO NOT MESS WITH TIME'''}}

* ''[[Kyon: Big Damn Hero]]'' has these every few chapters, and so many that any unresolved ones are offering {{spoiler|Kyon protection from the IDSE.}} As soon as he resolves the last one...

 

== Film ==

** Then in the sequel to ''that'', the Terminatrix reprograms SkyNet tech to awaken it, thus resulting in the [[Turned Against Their Masters|Machine Rebellion]], which ultimately leads to that same SkyNet sending back the Terminatrix to awaken itself...

** Also, in the first film Kyle tells Sarah a message John gave him to memorize. In the second film we see that Sarah has given the message to John, so he can give it to Reese. So who wrote the thing?

* The premise of ''[[12 Monkeys]]'' is that [[Time Travel]] cannot alter history in any way—whatever you go back and do in the past, you've always gone back and done in the past. Cole remembers that as a kid, he saw {{spoiler|his own death}}, which later happens just as he recalled it. The researcher (and the other [[Time Travel|time travelers]]) went back from 2035 to 1996 for one reason only—to gather information about the original virus (which had greatly mutated by their own time) of [[The Plague]] that had decimated humanity in 1996, so that a cure could be developed in 2035. The near-destruction of humanity in 1996 will always happen; the 'happy ending' is {{spoiler|that humanity gains the chance to recover four decades later}}.

* ''[[Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home]]'' does this with the invention of transparent aluminum.

* In H. Beam Piper's short story ''Flight from Tomorrow'', a tyrant in the very far future forces a scientist to create a time machine for him as the ultimate escape route, and he uses it to flee into the past from a rebellion at the beginning of the story. He is not expecting a Stable Time Loop - quite the contrary - but the scientist not only left out some important information but sabotaged the machine, so that he went back not to the time he had researched, but to the mid-twentieth century. The tyrant is hunted down and killed as a plague-carrier. The scientist in his own time explains to the rebels that they cannot pursue the tyrant into the past, or they will meet the same fate; the scientist's audience realizes that a mysterious artifact from the distant past must be where the tyrant's body was covered over with concrete to prevent further contamination.

* In ''[[The Anubis Gates]]'' by [[Tim Powers]], the protagonist, Brendan Doyle, becomes the victim of [[Grand Theft Me]] in the 1800s and realizes that he is destined to be the poet, William Ashbless, whom he was researching in the present day. Partway through the book, he panics on realizing nobody ever ''wrote'' Ashbless's poetry—he copied it from memory earlier—but then shrugs it off, deciding that as long as it was ''there'', nobody would be bothered.

** Specifically, Ridcully's argument relies on the old "you can't step on an ant if you don't exist." His logic is that if they're in the past NOW, then they've already been there thousands of years ago, when it was now. Therefore, anything they do, they've already done (because it's the past and the past has already happened), and it's vitally important that they do whatever they do, because if they didn't, they wouldn't have done it and they'd have done the different thing instead.

** On a smaller scale, minor recurring character Mrs. Cake is a psychic who is known to answer peoples' questions before they ask them; she then insists they ask, to stabilize the time loop, or she'll get a migraine.

*** Also the first paragraph of the book takes place later in the story, despite being chronologically first.

** Stable Time Loop is often used as a justification for being unable to change history in the Potterverse, but it seems to contradict what Hermione tells Harry in ''Prizoner Of Azkaban'' about wizards and witches having to be careful to avoid killing their past and future selves. One can explain this in various ways, but the end result is that canon is not entirely clear.

*** Probably it was a mistake made by J. K. Rowling, who did not realise that killing your past self would have caused a paradox. In-universe, it could be explained by Hermione being nervous about what they are doing that she makes that mistake - or else [[Fridge Horror|someone made that mistake, but was able to send notice of what he had done]].

* In ''[[Literature/The Green Futures Of Tycho|The Green Futures Of Tycho]]'' by [[William Sleator]], the protagonist learns to use his time machine from his future self, who only knows how to use the machine because he learned it from himself.

* Possibly subverted in the ''[[Star Trek]] [[Deep Space Nine]]'' [[Expanded Universe]] trilogy ''Millennium'', which involves a convoluted Quasi-Stable Time Loop in which the actions of a future Picard, Vash, and Nog help cause the creation of their alternate future, followed by the retroactive ''destruction'' of that same future. During the story both Dax and Miles O'Brien continually insist on maintaining a Stable Time Loop, but by the end it seems their actions can only succeed because of three people who ''shouldn't exist''.

* In ''[[Animorphs]]'', ''In the Time of Dinosaurs'', the Animorphs go back in time to the Cretaceous, fight the antlike alien Nesk for a nuke to explode (so that they can undo the time travel) and the Nesk divert a comet to the only home of the Mercora (the friendly aliens). The Mercora wanted the nuke so that they can explode and stop the comet from hitting, but Tobias and Ax rig the nuke ''not'' to explode, as the comet was the one that ended the dinosaurs (opening the way for humans to evolve). The force of the comet ends up sending the Animorphs back home.

* [[Dragonlance]] Legends reveals that humans, elves, and ogres can time-travel only to observe. This is how it's ''supposed'' to work. Throw in the ''unnatural'' races, which were not created at the beginning of time, like dwarves, gnomes, and kender, and you have problems. So, {{spoiler|Raistlin '''would''' be caught in a stable time loop which essentially just causes him to kill himself over and over again every 400-odd years...if it weren't for Tas and his powers of [[Temporal Paradox]].}}

** In ''Let's Kill Hitler'', Amy and Rory make a crop circle as a dramatic gesture to leave a message in time to get the Doctor's attention. They were most likely inspired by River Song's various messages to the Doctor previously in the series. However, {{spoiler|it turns out that their best friend Mels is River, and this is her first time meeting him as an adult. So this incident is probably where she got the idea for leaving unusual messages like this.}}

*** Heck, River's whole life is a giant time-loop! She only starting using her signature catch-phrase of "Spoilers!" after the Doctor used it on ''her'' the first time.

* ''[[Terminator]]: The Sarah Connor Chronicles'' - {{spoiler|Fischer only survived Judgement Day and taught the machines the things he did because he was in prison -- thrown their due to his future self planting a backdoor into military computer systems, having logged in, of course, with his own retinal scan.}}

** On the other hand, this is explicitly part of an aversion—Derek is from a future where Fischer ''didn't'' do these things, while his girlfriend Jesse is from the future Fischer contributes to (or at least '''a''' future where... oh, no, I've gone cross-eyed).

* Rulified by the german RPG ''[[The Dark Eye]]'' in which time travel follows a simple law: you cannot change the past, as it had already happened and you'll just end up doing what you did to create the present you're currently living in. If by some chance the hero does discover some [[Temporal Paradox|hopelessly contradicting action]], be prepared for time to [[Good Thing You Can Heal|heal itself]]. Oh, and the universe has [[Clock Roaches|wardens]] against such misuse, too.

* Get ready for a [[Mind Screw]] - in [[The Chronicles of Fate]] [[Tabletop Games|tabletop RPG]], the ''entire multiverse'' is one gigantic Stable Time Loop which leads to it also being an [[Eternal Recurrence]] scenario.

** Another example is of the ork warlord Grizgutz and his army who, after setting off into the warp, arrives shortly before they left off and decides to hunt down and kill his previous self so he can own a spare of his favourite gun. The confusion results in the war-band being stopped in it's tracks.

 

 

** You can even get an even more immediate time loop by sending a mech back in time using a chronoporter. Then, you undo the original build order for the chronoporter and before time catches up, you let the mech build a chronoporter at about the same place. Because the chronoport (the action of sending a unit back in time) is bound to the unit and independent of the chronoporter, the mech will then travel back in time with the chronoporter it just built to build the chronoporter to be sent back in time.

** Amusingly, a Grekim unit can also literally become its own grandfather.

** Of course, the events of the entire game were erased from existence in the end, so yeah.

** [[Sonic Generations|Not anymore apparently]].

* In the first ''[[Breath of Fire]]'', {{spoiler|Nina is accidentally catapulted back in time. Before this occurs, Ryu and the others can meet a winged girl with amnesia who looks strikingly like an older version of Nina... After she vanishes, they can jog her memory and re-recruit her.}}

* [[Chzo Mythos]]: The Man in Red's reason for existing is to ensure reality maintains a stable time loop.

** The other half ot the Black Beast is equally paradoxical: The Black Beast's existence requires the fusion of Ragna and Nu's Azure Grimoires. Ragna's Azure came from {{spoiler|the remains of the Black Beast.}}

** In the prequel novel ''Phase 0'' it's revealed that {{spoiler|the time displaced Ragna sans memory ''is'' the original hero "Bloodedge". Ragna only calls himself "Ragna the Bloodedge" to honor the name of that hero, whose sword and coat he inherited. Also, the only reason Mitsuyoshi calls himself Jubei in the present is because Ragna kept calling him that. After Ragna died fighting against the Black Beast, Mitsuyoshi took the name Jubei in honor of his fallen friend.}}

*** "No wonder I started drinking."

* In ''[[Dragon Quest V]]'': {{spoiler|The Hero as a kid meets up a young man in Whealbrook who interested in seeing the Gold Orb you're carrying. The said orb later to be destroyed by Ladja before the first [[Time Skip]]. You learn that the Gold Orb is needed to raise the Zenithian Castle to the skies from underwater. You then visit the fairy castle, travel back in time using the mirror, find your younger self, and switch the decoy orb with the Gold Orb. The orb Ladja destroyed was a fake, and the young man early in Whaelbrook was your older self.}}

* In [[Spellforce]] {{spoiler|Rohan is both the [[Big Bad]] and [[Big Good]] of the game thanks to this. As a young man, he travels forward in time, kills his elder self and attempts to recreate The Convocation, a spell which nearly destroyed the world the last time it was cast. As he grows older, he has a [[Heel Face Turn]], and travels back in time in an attempt to repair the world. In that time he becomes embroiled in the plot to stop his younger self's schemes, setting in motion the events which lead to his own murder.}}

* There seems to be one in [[The Witcher]]: {{spoiler|The magical boy Alvin shows the ability to teleport himself to safety when in great dangers, but not having direct control over where he appears several times during the game. The last time he simply vanishes and is never heard of again. However, the Grand Master and founder of the Flaming Rose order seems to know Geralt way and repeats words that he had said to Alvin before he disapeared. He also has the same amulet as Alvin does, but it appears much older and worn. Apparently Alvin not only teleported through space but also time and his experiences during the war between the Knights of the Flaming Rose and the elves inspired him to found the Order in the past.}}

* The Space theme of ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]'' was stuck in one complex Stable Time Loop in which the characters constantly revenge their own actions to themselves. It ended taking up most of the other themes, and (as expected) ended in a [[Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies]] [http://irregularwebcomic.net/2166.html at the end of that year].

** Of course, parts of the time loop were unstable, as Iki Piki's Splanch is now, theoretically, infinitely old.

* The entire Surreptitious Machinations story arc of ''[[General Protection Fault]]'' was ultimately about ''stopping'' a Stable Time Loop that a tyrant was using to stay in power.

* Occurs in ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' during the {{spoiler|"[http://sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/050124 Oceans Unmoving]"}} [[Story Arc]], thanks to a godlike who decides "[http://sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/060201 Life's SO much funner with the paradox rules turned off!]"

* Every instance of time travel in [[Umlaut House]].

* It's pretty safe to say that the majority of the plot of ''[[Homestuck]]'' is ''built'' out of Stable Time Loops, both intentionally and accidentally created. To describe ''all'' of them would probably take up most of this page.

*** Best of all, the latter actually leads to the former. After {{spoiler|Dave gives John the first bunny, John gives it to baby Rose, who fixes it with her sewing needles thirteen years into the future and gives it back to John, who then gives it to baby Jade. Jade has it taken from her accidentally by an [[Alternate Universe]] version of ''her grandfather'', named Jake. He then fixes it up again, and tunes it up to be incredibly dangerous, before sending it back to her. It gets waylaid on the way, allowing [[Punch Clock Villain|Jack Noir]] to take it and use the Black Queens [[Ring of Power|Ring of Orbs Fourfold]] horribly mess up John's session. The bunny eventually gets back to John a third time, [[Big Damn Heroes|just in time to]] [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|save him from]] [[Big Bad|Jack Noir]], but not before things become so irreparably damaged that they need to ''restart their universe'', through an [[Apocalypse How|apocalypse of at ''least'' Class X-4]] to fix it.}} And best of all? The {{spoiler|restarted time line is ''the one Jake comes from''.}}

*** To clarify: {{spoiler|Doc Scratch, a being powered by the Green Sun, set forth a plan that would end in Earth and Alternia being destroyed. Earth was destroyed by the Sovereign Slayer, another being powered by the Green Sun, while Doc Scratch personally manipulated events on Alternia to lead to the destruction of the universe. The circumstantially simultaneous destructions activated the Tumor, a giant bomb that, when activated, will create the Green Sun. Ironically, the people who put the Tumor in place thought they were trying to destroy the sun...}}

*** {{spoiler|On top of all this, the Green Sun is located at the center of a "region" known as paradox space, which as the name suggests eats logic and shits "It just did, now shut up about it". Distance and time interact in incomprehensible ways, so that you have to know the proper route to not only ensure you end up ''where'' you're going, but you get there at the right time too; going three feet to your left could rocket you a million years into the future, and you'd never even notice until you got there.}}

* A major one in ''[[Two Evil Scientists]]'' occurs when Tails attempts to {{spoiler|bring Sonic and Mega Man back from the time periods Quint sent them to, only to accidentally rescue the titular scientists from their former self-destructing fortress, after which they suddenly became dangerous - which was the primary reason Tails was trying to bring Sonic and Mega Man back.}}

* Shelly of ''[[Wapsi Square]]'' managed to take advantage of time loops and places where time flows in different directions to arrange the [[Vision Quest]] gone wrong in her childhood that had a huge influence on her character.

{{quote|'''Adam''': Oh, no! I ''hate'' time travel.}}

* This probably happens in [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20040126 this] ''[[Girl Genius]]'' strip. The time window that Bang sees the first time happens after the second one from the point of view of the characters in the window. Gil calls Bang a maniac in the first one, probably because she pointed a gun on them in the second one, which she did because "earlier" he insulted her.

* In ''[[Red vs. Blue]]'', Church creates an uncountable number of Stable Time Loops as he fails his objective each time and keeps trying.

** Local [[Cloudcuckoolander]] Caboose makes the following unintentionally profound statement when Church talks to him about his experiences with the timeline: "Time LINE...? Ehh, time isn't made out of LINES. It is made out of circles. That is why clocks are round!"

* The Flash game ''No Time To Explain''. Your character is chilling at home when a future version of himself appears out of thin air, warning you of imminent danger. Seconds later, a giant crab grabs him and carries him away, leaving you to use his weapon to save your future self. After defeating the crab, {{spoiler|your future self upens a time portal back to the beginning of the game before dying. You travel back to your past self's living room, and try to warn him of the danger your future self warned you about. Seconds later...}}

* [http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/443631 Robutt] a robot is trapped in a time loop wherein it constructs itself out of junk, sacrifices its battery to power the new version, which gets in a time machine and goes back to do it again.

* ''[[A Very Potter Sequel]]'' features a Stable Time Loop '''within''' a Stable Time Loop—an impressive feat for a stage play.

 

 

**** The final irony of this is that young Demona was simply told "the humans" destroyed our clan. She assumed it meant the humans in the castle, and tried to get rid of them by allowing the Vikings to sack the castle. In reality, it was the Vikings who killed the gargoyles, so this became a classic case of [[Self-Fulfilling Prophecy|fulfilling a prophecy by trying to stop it.]]

** The episode "M.I.A." hints at what could be a possible out within a Stable Time Loop: {{spoiler|Goliath travels back to [[World War Two]] London to investigate an accusation that he caused the death of a gargoyle back then. When it seems that the Gargoyle in question really is marked for death by fate, Goliath takes him to the present day with him, saving his life, but still preserving the effects of his death}}. Or fate could just have been screwing with him to achieve the predestined result.

** ...which actually proves to be only a semi-stable time loop. If it were a ''true'' stable time loop, Crocker would have had AJ's tracker the entire time. Either that, or he 'forgot' that he had it until immediately after Timmy gets back from his time-travel.

* In the ''[[Pinky and The Brain]]'' episode "Brain of the Future," the two mice travel to the distant future in a time machine given to them by their future selves, who had just returned from the distant future. There, they lose the time machine they arrived in but manage to steal a "different" one and return to give it to their past selves...

* ''[[Kim Possible]]: A Stitch in Time'' has this. Shego stole the time monkey only because she stole it, went back in time, transferred Ron away from Kim, and then told herself to steal the time monkey. This somewhat changes when the time monkey is is destroyed and the entire timeline that its use created is revoked, [[Ret-Gone|along with the very existence of the time monkey]]. So, you destroy it once, it erases itself from ever existing. So Shego never went back in time, Ron never left KP, and nobody ever knew or cared about the time monkey.

* ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2003]]'' notably in "Timing is Everything".

* In ''[[Teen Titans (animation)|Teen Titans]]'' the [[Time Travel|time-travelling]] villain Warp ''thinks'' he's taking part in a Stable Time Loop; he goes back in time to steal a special clock because, a hundred years in the future, the historical records say that he went back in time to steal it. Unfortunately for him, the Teen Titans prove themselves able to [[Screw Destiny]] and stop Warp from stealing the clock, wrecking the time loop.

* An episode of ''[[Family Guy]]'' explicitly pointed out the trope when Stewie and Brian accidentally caused the Big Bang due to time travel.

* In the ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' episode "[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic/Recap/S2/E20 Its About Time|It's About Time]]", Twilight Sparkle comes across her (very badly injured) future self, who came from next Tuesday morning to give her a very serious message, but Twilight keeps interrupting her future self, until she gets sent back to the future before she could finish her warning. Present Twilight spends the next several days worrying about averting impending doom and getting more and more injured because of random events, matching up her future self's injuries {{spoiler|until next Tuesday morning comes, and absolutely nothing bad happens,}} which is when Twilight decides to use a special magic scroll to go back in time and warn her past self that nothing bad was going to happen and she had no reason at all to worry about. {{spoiler|Unfortunately, her past self kept interrupting her until the time travel spell wears out and Twilight returns to the future- which is now her present. Then she realizes what she has done: her half-done attempt to warn her past self about not worrying is what made her worry in the first place and created a stable time loop. After a few moments, she decides to shrug it off and declares it her past self's problem now.}}

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Narrative Devices]]

[[Category:Tropes of Legend]]

[[Category:Time Travel Tropes]]