Stable Time Loop: Difference between revisions

 

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.

This is also the basic premise of how [[Time Travel]] would work, according to Albert Einstein. Simply put, even if it were possible to [[Time Travel|travel back in time]], you would not be able to change any events in the past, because they've already happened. No matter what your intentions, everything that you did would only fulfill the past. The only thing that would change is your perception of the events. (Hm, this somehow explains [[Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act]].)

 

 

[[Tricked-Out Time]] is when you "change" the past on purpose to resemble this. Compare [[You Already Changed the Past]], [[Wayback Trip]], [[Timey-Wimey Ball]], [[Retroactive Preparation]]. For the [[Recursive Canon|Recursive Fiction]] variant of this, see [[Mutually Fictional]].

 

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.}}

* In ''[[Natsu no Arashi]]!'', Kaya's diary was lost sixty years ago. So, Arashi time-leaps back to 60 years ago, grabs the diary from before it was lost, and brings it to the present. Which, as Hajime immediately explains, is why it went missing in the first place.

* When the heroes of ''[[Rave Master]]'' reach what was once the Kingdom of Symphonia they discover, along with the grave of Resha Valentine, a skeleton wearing a necklace identical to one Elie was wearing, complete with engraving, that she had purchased from a store. Many volumes later, characters go back in time. {{spoiler|Elie lost her necklace while in the past. Also, Sieg Hart sent Haru and Elie back to the present but is forced to remain in the past himself. This is when Sieg realizes that ''he'' was the skeleton they found back then. That knowledge in mind, he takes first opportunity to snag the necklace back and puts himself into position to be found fifty years later.}}

* In ''[[Mx0]]'', {{spoiler|Taiga fails to get into Senaigi because when he is asked "what would you do if magic were real?" and he answers (for reasons he doesn't understand) "Conquer the world." This causes a girl to laugh at him. After steaming over it all summer he decides to confront the girl at Senaigi, where he's mistaken for a student and ushered into the school. Once the faculty find this out, they decide to give him a chance at staying at the school to save their own face. They then send him [[Time Travel|back in time]] (possessing his own body rather than existing twice at one time) and tell him to read the invisible words on the final page of his interview book and he'll automatically pass. However, the book is lost and then found by his older sister who rushes it to him, but not before meeting her idol. She asks him for an autograph, but has no paper, so he signs the seemingly blank last page with the words "Conquer the world!"}}

* During the Great War in ''[[Kyo Kara Maoh!|Kyo Kara Maoh]]'', Suzanna Julia doesn't fully accept that she's going to die and that her soul is to become the next Maoh. So, to convince her, what does Shinou do? SEND HER YUURI, OF COURSE. Yuuri's presence in the past makes Julia finally accept her fate, and in turn makes it possible for him to exist as Maoh in the future.

* Yuki Saiko of ''[[Silent Moebius]]'' has a mysteriously great deal on renting her apartment and cafe (in Tokyo, no less). Then she gets sent back in time to 1999 before the Project Gaia catastrophe and meets a young man named Tohru and the two fall in love. It turns out that he grows up to be her landlord. The TV series also hints that he has something to do with the [[Tyke Bomb]] project that produced her.

** Oh, and his initial reason for hating Lupin was because in the future, Lupin's [[Identical Grandson|identical descendant]] hooked up with the girl he liked the day he was planning on proposing to her. [[Disproportionate Retribution]] anyone?

* When [[Kinnikuman|Geronimo]] goes through a trial to become a true Chojin, he enters a canyon where he and his sister got lost as children, but were saved by a mysterious stranger. While he's there, he finds another little boy and girl who've gotten lost, whom he saves. After saving them, he realizes that ''he'' was the mysterious stranger, sent back in time to save himself and his sister via STL.

 

== Comic Books ==

** The best part came, of course, when they BOTH decided to go after 7:30 Calvin, because he was the one who was supposed to be doing it. That didn't work either.

*** Eventually, it indirectly does work. Both the 6:30 and 8:30 versions of Hobbes wrote a story about [[Lampshade Hanging|how stupid Calvin was to attempt this plan in the first place]]. It got Calvin an "A+" for creativity.

** His plan, more specifically, was to merge the two magical spaceships (the actual one and the one that took [[The Slow Path]] for 10000 years) and prevent the time loop by making the spaceship ''stable'' through the power of applied [[Object Paradox]].

* In the [[Marvel Universe]], [[Cable]] was infected by a [[Sci Fi Name Buzzwords|techno-organic]] virus by Apocalypse, who, it is revealed later, got the virus in the past from Cable.

** Ironic in that {{spoiler|Jor-L sends his son to the past, as opposed to another planet, because he dislikes how placid humanity has become. Humans think they've learned all there is to learn and now just ''"have nothing left to do but wait and die"''. Jor-L hopes that sending his son to the past will change that. However, the antagonism between Superman and Lex Luthor is what inspires [[Cut Lex Luthor a Check|Luthor]] [[You Can't Fight Fate|to engineer the Golden Age]] Jor-L hopes to avert.}}

* In one story, [[Superman]] is shown a vision of the future, and sees a superhero codenamed Sirocco (which means The Desert Wind in Persian). Later, when Superman visits Iran and befriends Sirocco's present self, he accidentally calls him by that name. The man says the name is cool and asks Supes if he can use it for his codename.

* The final pages of ''[[Ultimate Fantastic Four]]'' #53 show that {{spoiler|Reed sends his Cosmic Cube back in time 30,000 years to the planet Acheron, where Thanos finds it}}, which precipitated his rise; when he lost it, {{spoiler|he influenced Reed to create it}}.

* In ''Tales From the Bully Pulpit'', Teddy Roosevelt gets help from the "Teddy of thirty minutes from now" (a reference to the ''[[Bill and Ted]]'' example below). At the end of the story, the main characters remember to go back and fulfill the time loop before going off on their adventures.

** [[It Got Worse|It gets worse...]] Not only did Arno not get the retina scan he needed (the scanner was destroyed in the fight), {{spoiler|he is suddenly returned to the future, only to discover that the bomb had detonated prematurely and killed his family.}}

* [[Alan Moore]]'s ''[[Supreme]]'' has two stable time loops, one forming the main plot of the initial plot arc, and a second in a single issue as a comic parody of the trope. It's strongly implied that {{spoiler|the mysterious "Supremium" substance that both originally gave Supreme his powers and acts as his "Kryptonite" is what all time-looped matter eventually becomes.}}

* [[Larry Hama]]'s ''[[Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja|Nth Man the Ultimate Ninja]]'' is entirely encircled by a time loop. {{spoiler|Throughout the series, it is revealed that [[Ninja|John Doe]] and [[Reality Warper|Alfie O'Megan]] were left as infants at an orphanage by a screaming, burning woman. In the final issue, they realize they're part of a never-ending time loop, and must go back in time to avoid a paradox. As the two step through the [[Portal to the Past|time portal]] (reverting to infants in the process), they're followed by John's girlfriend. However, because she was being born at the same time, she [[Never the Selves Shall Meet|cannot exist in two places simultaneously]] and begins to [[Spontaneous Human Combustion|self-immolate]].}}

** {{spoiler|Rip Hunter}} himself is also a stable time loop: he reveals that he's {{spoiler|Booster Gold's son, who only will come into being because Rip Hunter drafts Booster Gold into his current job as secret protector of the timeline}}

* Best one ever: The whole reason for Imperiex's existence during ''Our Worlds At War'' is that the multiverse is flawed, so he seeks to destroy everything to re-create it. As a force of nature, he can't be destroyed: to wit, when he seems defeated, his energy was merely absorbed by Brainiac, who then starts a plan to assimilate the universe with that power. Superman has a huge problem: If he destroys Brainiac, Imperiex gets free and can "hollow" the multiverse. But if he leaves Brainiac be, the multiverse will be assimilated. What does Superman do? He arranges for a Time portal to be opened and pushes Brainiac/Imperiex (who are the size of a PLANET) into it, taking them to... a milisecond after the Big Bang. Their essences get in the way of nature, forming our flawed multiverse instead of the "perfect" one that should have been, but making sure that neither is a problem from there on out in the present.

* One Silver Age Superman story featured Kristen Wells, a researcher from the future who traveled back in time to find out who the mysterious superhero "Superwoman" was. Unable to find her anywhere, she eventually realizes it was she herself, so she puts on the Superwoman costume and uses future technology to do all the superheroic feats that future history books claim Superwoman did.

* In [[The New Universe]], it is revealed that the Old Man is an older Ken Connell, who was thrown back in time and, thanks to the power of the Star Brand, lived for centuries before accidentally initiating the White Event and giving his younger self the Brand.

* The [[The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck|Uncle Scrooge]] story, "Of Ducks, Dimes, and Destinies," features Scrooge's nemesis Magica DeSpell travelling back in time to steal Scrooge's legendary number one dime. The man who was supposed to pay Scrooge the dime for a shoeshine decides to go out for a drink after Scrooge passes out shining his ridiculously muddy shoes. Magica intercepts the man and steals the dime, only to realize that since she stole it ''before'' it was given to Scrooge, it is no longer the first coin earned by the world's richest man (the last component she needs for a spell to create an amulet that can turn things into gold). Magica winds up giving the dime to an unconscious Scrooge, completing the loop.

* {{spoiler|[[Marvel Zombies]] turns out to be this in Marvel Zombies Return.}}

* When [[Sonic the Comic]] did an adaptation of [[Sonic CD]] (a game where time travel is one of the main mechanics), it pulled off a loop so neat that, in the last part of the story, they could reprint an unedited page from an earlier issue and have it make perfect sense and not seem like laziness on the part of the writer or artist. (The first time the page appeared, the audience perspective is that of present Sonic; the second time, we're following future Sonic, [[It Makes Sense in Context|who's been shrunk]].)

* In ''[[Dial H for Hero|H-E-R-O]]'', this is the fate of the HERO dial. At the end of the series, it gets thrown back in time, where it's found by its very first user, who featured in a [[Whole-Episode Flashback]] earlier in the series.

 

 

** 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?

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

''Scotty:'' Why? how do you know he didn't invent the thing! }}

** In the [[Novelization]] of ''IV'', Scotty says that he ''did'' invent transparent aluminum, and that it was ''necessary'' to show him how.

** The same thing also happens when Kirk sells the glasses he got from McCoy for some needed money. He even lampshades it.

'''Kirk''': And they will be again. That's the beauty of it. }}

* In ''[[Somewhere in Time]]'', there is a watch that an old lady gives to Richard Collier. Later on, Richard Collier goes into the past and gives the pocket watch to the much younger lady, who keeps it until the present. Also, Richard Collier's signature from the past in the book in the present - indicating that his trip into the past will be successful.

* In ''Time Rider'', the protagonist from the present unwittingly goes back to the wild west and meets an attractive young woman. After getting to know her (at ''her'' insistence), she asks about a necklace, which he claims his grandmother gave him. Through the course of the film, he gradually realizes that no, these aren't a bunch of really intense historical re-enactors, while she comes to understand that he really is from the future. {{spoiler|Just before he returns to the present, she snatches the necklace and holds it up, wordlessly and clearly explaining why she did it and who she will become. [[Squick]]}}

** The same could be said of the glasses found during the excavation. The glasses weren't left behind in the past, they were left in an alternate universe. (and if they had the "foresight" to leave the glasses in place in the alternate universe so they could find them in the future of the normal universe just because they knew to leave them in place in the alternate universe past...).

* ''[[La Jetee]]'' has two loops in it. The first one starts when the protagonist witnesses a murder as a child and the image of a young lady screaming in horror is burned into his memory. This memory is what allows him to travel back in time from the post-apoctalyptic future, and what causes him to try to escape his superiors and start a new life in the past. {{spoiler|He is shot by his masters while in the past, with his younger self watching, completing the loop.}} The second loop occurs when the man travels from the ruins of post-WWIII Paris into a future where civilization has returned to its peak, gathers supplies, and goes back to his own time so the supplies can be used to rebuild society and allow that utopian future to occur.

* ''[[The Time Shifters]]'' avoids this trope for the most part, as time is shown to be subject to change. At the end, however, {{spoiler|a dying man from the future recognizes one of the Feds, who likes to invent gadgets, as the future inventor of a temporal displacement device, which will open the door for time tourism. The Fed then notices an interesting device near the now-dead man and decides to hold on to it, not knowing it is a time machine}}.

* ''[[Back to The Future]]'' has one moment that looks like an example: the scene where Marty is in the past and he plays Johnny B. Goode, by Chuck Berry. Chuck's cousin hears it and calls him to hear it on the phone, implying that's where he got the idea for the song. However, given that Marty has clearly not [[You Already Changed the Past|already changed the past]] when the movie starts, and Chuck could not have heard enough of the song and Marvin had no opportunity to write down or memorise the lyrics, it should be obvious that this was an example of [[Alternate Timeline]].

 

== Literature ==

* There was a short sci-fi story where a king, who is is always coming up with crazy and unhelpful schemes to improve his small country discovers that a time traveler is helping his advisers to offset the impact of his schemes. He captures the time traveler and forces him to take them both into the future so he can how things will turn out. They arrive in ten years in the future and that the country is prosperous beyond his wildest dreams, so he asks a passerby "What was the big change that brought about this golden age?". The passerby answers "It all turned around when the crazy king disappeared ten years ago and the advisers started ruling the nation". As the king wonders why he disappeared a decade ago, the time traveler shuts the door to his time machine, leaving the king in the future.

* In [[Douglas Adams]]' ''[[The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy (novel)|Life, the Universe and Everything]]'', the poet Lallafa was known for writing beautiful poetry on habra leaves in the middle of a rainforest... So some [[Time Travel|time travelers]] picked him up from the rainforest and put him on the talk show circuit in the future. Of course, he had to ''write'' the poems at some point, so they just sent him back to the forest with a book of his poetry and a bunch of habra leaves...

** Zaphod Beeblebrox is his own ancestor and descendant.

** That series of books is definitely [[Timey-Wimey Ball]]. People are trying to build an ion factory. They don't finish it in time. so they keep pushing the construction start date back farther into the past, until the cathedral that was originally in the spot was never built in the first place. It then states that photographs of the cathedral suddenly became immensely valuable. Huh? Time travel, like everything else in those books, runs on [[Rule of Funny]].

** Also implied in "The Final Question" ("Can entropy be reversed?") when the Cosmic AC has finally compiled enough data to come up with an answer (despite the end of the Universe) and says {{spoiler|LET THERE BE LIGHT!}}

* In [[Jack Chalker]]'s ''[[Downtiming the Night Side]]'', a modern-day security officer is drawn into a time-loop by an incident instigated by himself, {{spoiler|a [[Time Travel|time-travelling]], [[Gender Swap|gender-swapped]] version of himself, and their estranged children, none of whom would exist had he not been pulled into the time loop in the first place}}.

* [[Time Travel]] in the ''[[Dragonriders of Pern]]'' books by Anne McCaffrey operates on this principle. Much of the [[Time Travel]] is undertaken knowing in advance that it will work ("since I've already done it, I might as well go do it..."). What isn't, is of the form "I think I'm the one who did it, so I'd better go do it..."

* ''Behold the Man'' by [[Michael Moorcock]]: Karl Glogauer tracks down the real Jesus, son of Mary, and finds that he's an idiot; so he...

** One time loop is Henry and Clare's marriage. From Clare's perspective, she meets Henry when he travels back in time to her childhood, lands in her backyard, and introduces himself as her future husband. From Henry's perspective, he meets Clare when he runs into her in a college library and ''she'' tells ''him'' that she's known future-him for most of her life and that they're going to get married. So when did they meet for the first time? [[Mathematician's Answer|The answer]] is "Both": He first met her at the college library, and she first met him in the Meadow. Because of [[Time Travel]], they both met a version of the other who was ignorant of their future relationship/marriage.

* 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.

** 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.

*** 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]].

*** Or, they could have lied to her.

* 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.

* 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]].}}

** This is specifically ''not'' an example of this. The book lays out the rules for how its time travel works, and they necessarily exclude stable time loops. In fact, the Dan at the end of the book is explicitly not the same as the Dan at the end of the book, for reasons that should be obvious if you've read the end of the book.

* One book continuity of ''[[Red Dwarf]]'' or [[Broken Base|the other]] puts Lister as the creator of the universe, having gone back to that point in time to see what happened.

* The William Tenn short story "The Discovery of Morniel Mathaway" is built around a stable time loop that involves an art historian meeting the object of his research.

* The short story entitled ''The Sky Looked Strange Today'' involves a man driving on the freeway when he is distracted by [[MacGuffin|a peculiar aurora on the horizon.]] When he looks back at the road, he crashes into a taxi cab that has started a pile-up, but time slows down for everything but the man. He gets out of his car into a motionless world when suddenly, his "guardian angel" appears and tells him that his next door neighbor caused the crash. He takes the man back in time, one hour earlier, and leaves him to figure out how to stop the pile up. In an impulse effort, the man slashes his neighbor's tires and, feeling he has succeeded, takes a cab to work before his past self sees him. As he rides in the cab, he notices the aurora again. Unfortunately, so does the driver. The man forgot that his neighbor works for the cab service. So, the neighbor rear-ends a car, causes the pile up, and just before the man is killed by his past self (still distracted), he says his odd last words: [[Title Drop|"The sky looked strange today..."]]

* Used quite effectively in Simon Green's [[Deathstalker]] series. Simon Deathstalker and his companions {{spoiler|receive superpowers by passing through the Madness Maze, an alien artifact built to combat a terrible menace that the aliens knew about. After the protagonist dies his true love, Hazel D'Ark, is driven insane by grief and resolves to go back in time and become so powerful that she can prevent it from happening. It turns out that ''she'' is the horrible unknowable menace the Madness Maze was originally designed to fight.}}

* In [[Andrey Livadny]]'s ''Ark'', {{spoiler|all the worlds encountered by the main character turn out to be biospheres built into the titular ''Ark'' for the various alien species on-board, an enormous [[Generation Ship]] literally built out of the Moon by humans thousands of years before in order to basically follow the ''[[Star Trek]]'' mantra. Most of the logs are lost, and the ship's AI has no idea where they are or even what year it is. Without the crew to aid in maintenance, the ''Ark'' is in a dire state of disrepair. They manage to find a yellow dwarf star nearby with a habitable planet. Since the spherical craft was never meant to land (imagine the tidal forces from a Moon-sized object), they are forced to drop it in water in hopes of cushioning the impact. They do as much as they can to brake before hitting the atmosphere. The main character, who is now an electronic consciousness in the ship's computer, separates the command module from the rest of the ship and lets it fly away from the planet with himself and the ship's AI still in it. The ''Ark'' somehow manages not to break apart on impact, although it creates massive tsunamis and empties out the sea they hit. Most of those on-board survive (probably due to some sort of [[Inertial Damping]]). One of the first people to get out is an old shepherd who introduces himself as Noah. The novel ends with the protagonist returning to the planet after several thousand years and teaching the inhabitants several important values, including "[[The Ten Commandments|Thou shalt not kill]]."}}

* ''[[Babylon 5]]'' has two of these, related to the same incident. The two-part episode "War Without End" in the third season has the protagonists cause the mysterious time incident on Babylon 4 that happened [[Call Back|in the first season episode "Babylon Squared"]]... at the conclusion of which, an important character travels back even farther in time to become the cause of one of the show's central [[Self-Fulfilling Prophecy|prophecies]].

** {{spoiler|Not to mention becoming the ancestor of Delenn, one of the show's main characters, whose own decision at the start of the war, started the chain of events that led to Sinclair's [[Time Travel]].}}

** The episode "Blink" also repeatedly uses it. At one point, the Doctor pre-records his half of a conversation with another character; when the other character has the conversation, it's written down, and the Doctor works off it to record his half. Also, his half is recorded as an easter egg on 17 specific DVDs; when the Doctor tells a video executive which discs to put the recording on, he's working from a list someone in the future made of DVDs that have the video on them.

** Also used "for cheap tricks" (his words) in "Smith and Jones"; when Martha first meets the Doctor, he stops in front of her on the street, takes off his tie, and walks off. When they meet at the hospital again, the Doctor can't ever recall meeting her. At the end of the episode, he goes back in time and takes his tie off in front of Martha in order to prove that the TARDIS is a time machine.

** The Fifth Doctor story "Earthshock" also is an example {{spoiler|A ship is sent back in time and causes the extinction of the dinosaurs, the dominance of ''Homo sapiens'' and the creation of the ship. It also kills Adric.}}. So, really a win-win situation.

** There's also "City of Death", in which an alien whose mind was split several ways across time after his space-ship landed on Earth and exploded. His past selves hid various treasures to be found by his future selves (including multiple copies of The Mona Lisa!), which were to be sold off and used to get the materials to create a time machine so he could go back and prevent the explosion - something The Doctor might have helped with had he not discovered that the same explosion was the "lightning bolt" that stirred up the primordial soup to begin creating life on Earth...

*** This episode also features possibly the most pointless stable time loop ever conceived. Young Amelia is thirsty, so the Doctor jumps back in time several hours and steals a drink. He then returns to the present and gives the drink to her. The reason she's thirsty in the first place is that a few hours ago [[Mind Screw|someone stole her drink]].

**** Given that Steven Moffat frequently writes in lines that poke fun at Dr Who tropes (Curse of Fatal Death is a long string of these!) this drink-loop is probably employed as an in-joke at how much the trope is being abused in this episode. In fairness though, they do acknowledge it on screen in this episode (and again in The Impossible Astronaut) that they're only able to do all this time-looping because the universe is collapsing.

*** This is fairly common in the [[Historical Domain Character]] episodes. Donna gives [[Agatha Christie]] the ideas for [[Miss Marple]] and ''[[Murder on the Orient Express]]''; Amy inspires [[Vincent van Gogh]] to paint his famous painting of sunflowers.

** In "Time," the second part of the 2011 Red Nose Day comedy special, we get three of these in as many minutes, two of which play this trope straight (Amy doesn't understand what her future self said, but still says it herself, even though the Doctor doesn't even explain it to her, and the Doctor waits for his future self to tell him which lever to use despite having no idea despite the time loop being a few seconds long) and the third of which justifies it:

Future Amy, flirtatiously: [[Screw Yourself|Hi.]] }}

** As of ''A Good Man Goes To War,'' the Doctor's ''name'' turns out to be one of these. The meaning of the word was apparently already established when he chose it, but due to centuries of crosstime adventuring, it turns out 'doctor' means healer ''because of him.'' However, in some places, [[Beware the Nice Ones|it means 'mighty warrior' because of him.]]

** {{spoiler|River Song's whole existence is a series of these. She is named after herself (twice!), she is directly responsible for her parents hooking up, she's indirectly responsible for her being conceived in the TARDIS, etcetera.}} In "Forest of the Dead" the Doctor manages to save her imprinted memory, because he figured his future-self wouldn't leave her to die, and his future-self, knowing that he ''didn't'', thus created a way to save her...

** 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.}}

* ''[[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.}}

* ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'': Anything to do with Hiro's adventures with Kensei.

** Near-miss at the end of the second season when {{spoiler|Peter Petrelli ''almost'' becomes responsible for the end-of-the-world timeline he visited earlier, through his efforts to prevent it...but drops the [[Idiot Ball]] after holding tight all season, and destroys the virus}}.

** The Prophets form a part of one. Sisko meets them in 2369, informing them that they are the gods of the Bajorans. That they sent the Bajorans "Orbs". Thing is, the Prophets live in a wormhole, and exist outside of time. From their wormhole, they can simultaneously access any era of history (Shown when they bring an ancient Bajoran to the present, then take him back to his time). So the Prophets, upon being told that this is what they do... do it. They send the orbs back in time, and begin acting as gods to the ancient Bajorans, causing the culture that Sisko gets to know... and then tells them about on his first meeting.

** Sisko's own existence. Sisko is the Emissary of the Prophet, and discovered the wormhole. This caused the prophets to {{spoiler|Possess Sisko's mom, so she'd marry Sisko's dad, ensuring Sisko's birth}}. The only reason the Prophets did this, is because they met Sisko in the future (and being outside linear time, realized the role they played in his life, and thus took it upon themselves to make it happen).

* In the premiere episode of ''[[Primeval]]'', Nick Cutter discovers a human camp (and human bones) in the Permian, as well as a camera with a picture proving his vanished wife had been there. In the first season finale, having been reunited with his wife, they travel back to the Permian where Helen convinces him to take her picture...which he suddenly realizes is the picture he'd discovered previously, and that the camp they just set up is the one he'd discovered originally. An actual change does happen to the past, however, which confuses things.

* In the ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' episode '1969,' the team travels back to the title year and has to figure out how to get home, meeting a young General (then Lieutenant) Hammond, two hippies, and a young Catherine Langford. General Hammond sends a note back with them that Captain Carter is not allowed to read until after they go through the gate. The note contains cryptic instructions as to how to get home, as well as instructions from General Hammond to his younger self to help the visitors (that from his POV writing the note he has already helped). It is later revealed that General Hammond has been waiting for years for the sign that it is time to send the note (evidenced by a large cut on Captain Carter's hand).

** Still on episode '1969', when the SG-1 team manage to travel back to the future, they accidentaly ended up jumping several decades in the future, far from their own time, arriving on a deserted SGC. There, they meet an old Cassandra (the human girl they rescued on a planet attacked by the Goa'uld on season 2), who was expecting them in order to guide SG-1's return to their time, implying that sometime between their return and her meeting with them in the future, she was told to meet them there so they could return to their time.

** Some [[Wild Mass Guessing|fan theories]] have it that this episode might be the entire reason that SG-1 exists. Hammond knew that the team had to be these specific people, because that's who he saw when they went back in time, so that's who he put on the team. Confused yet?

* ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]''. In "Time and Again" Voyager witnesses the destruction of a civlisation. When Janeway and Paris are accidentally sent back in time a few days before the incident, it turns out that the crew's attempt to rescue them is what triggers the disaster. Fortunately Janeway stops the attempt and the timeline [[Reset Button|returns to normal]].

** Features prominently in the three-part episode "Future's End". Captain Braxton, from the 29th century, goes back to the 24th century in a single-passenger timeship to destroy Voyager to prevent a 29th century disaster. Voyager fights back, causing the timeship's systems to malfunction and transport both ships to Earth in the late 20th century. The timeship crashes on the surface somewhere around 1967, and Voyager arrives safely thirty years later. Janeway sends down an away team to track down some temporal readings that might indicate a way back to their time when they encounter the now-aged Braxton, who admits that a wealthy 20th century businessman named Henry Starling found the remains of the timeship before he could get to it. Starling then proceeded to reverse engineer the timeship's technology, and used it to kick off the Information Age as we know it with crucial inventions such as the silicon transistor and the integrated circuit. This technology would of course develop over the centuries into computers such as Voyager's in the 24th century, and later the timeship's in the 29th century, which would then get thrown back to the 20th century and crash land...

** An even bigger one occurs in "He's Our You" and "Whatever Happened, Happened": {{spoiler|Ben torments and manipulates Sayid and others in the future. Sayid then travels back in time and shoots 12 year-old Ben, attempting to prevent Ben's later misdeeds. Kate, Sawyer, and Juliet, in order to save Ben, take him to the Others. This leads to Ben becoming the ruthless individual who later torments them, and who causes their time travel.}}

** According to [[Mr. Exposition|Daniel Faraday]], this is how time travel in the ''Lost''-verse works, except for Desmond for some damn reason.

** In yet another loop in the fifth season, in "The Variable", {{spoiler|''Faraday himself'' is killed by his mother when he travels back in time to before he was born. His mother therefore ''knows'', throughout Faraday's life, that she killed (the future) him, yet she accepts this "sacrifice" and uses every opportunity to strictly direct him along his destiny.}}

** Also in the fifth season, {{spoiler|Richard gives a compass to Locke, who then travels through time for a while and gives the compass to Richard in the 1950s.}} Where did the compass come from? Who manufactured it? Where did it go? Also shouldn't it age into dust? Perhaps it did age into dust, and Richard then created a new one which he gave to Locke and which became the same compass that had aged into dust.

** The plane crash itself. {{spoiler|The Losties crashed, travelled back in time, and caused The Incident. The Incident released a large amount of electromagnetic energy, which would later be the cause of the plane crash. In other words, they caused the crash. After it had happened (from their timeline's perspective).}}

* In ''[[Kamen Rider Kabuto]]'', {{spoiler|despite the fact that the Hyper Zecter was destroyed, the fact that Tendou had all ready attained it in a parallel time means he can send it back to himself from that future so he can have it to give to himself later when this time comes around. Yeah.}}

** Lampshaded in the movie ''God Speed Love'' where {{spoiler|Tendou gets the Hyper Zecter legitimately and uses it to go back in time to give himself his belt.}}

** It was stated that what had happened was fate, and that Dean wouldn't have been able to change the outcome. He had been sent back just to witness the events.

** Which is weird, because an angel later goes back in time to try to change it all. {{spoiler|She}} fails, of course, but it has nothing to do with fate.

* The [[Dawn French]] comedy [[Anthology Series]] ''Murder Most Horrid'' has an episode in which French plays an inventor working on a time machine. Her simple-minded husband's behaviour becomes so erratic that she bludgeons him to death with a wrench. After serving time for his manslaughter she returns home, completes the machine and travels back to try and stop herself, only to discover that the presence of herself from the future was what caused her husband to behave so annoyingly in the first place. She was even accidentally responsible for the wrench being in just the right place for her past self to pick it up...

* In [[Children of the Stones]] the village of Milbury seems to be caught in a loop where similar characters go through the same set of events again and again. At the end of the series, as Professor Brake and Matthew leave the village, Joshua Litton arrives. Litton is identical to Rafael Hendrick, who had been brainwashing the villagers. The implication is that the story is about to start again.

** {{spoiler|Somewhat amusingly, future-Walter realizes that he has no choice but to send the pieces of the machine back through time in order to complete the loop, and calls attention to the fact that this represents a paradox.}}

 

 

== Music ==

* The [[Black Sabbath]] song "Iron Man" is about a person who travels through time "for the future of mankind" only to find that the world is destroyed in an apocalyptic event. Deciding to return to his present to warn the people of the coming disaster, he gets "trapped in a magnetic field" which turns his skin into metal. Thus, when he warns the people of the present, they are frightened by his appearance and too afraid to listen to him. Then, out of frustration that no one heeds his warnings about the forthcoming apocalypse, he ''causes'' the apocalypse.

* "One For the Vine", on the [[Genesis (band)|Genesis]] album ''Wind and Wuthering'', tells the story of a soldier deserting from an army led by a messianic leader. The deserter finds himself on an icy waste populated by primitive people, who see him as a messenger of God. He reluctantly takes the role simply in order to help himself get home, but ends up becoming the very messiah from whom he fled. As he leads his army into battle, he sees one soldier run away from the host, and vanish...

* [[Planescape]]'s ''Faction War'' features a double time loop. Considering that the person stuck in it tried to overthrow the [[Powers That Be|Lady of Pain]], he had it easy.

* 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.

** 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]].

* The first ''[[Fallout]]'' game has the [[Player Character]] trying to find water for their fallout shelter after its water chip is broken. It ends with the PC staying in the post-apocalyptic Earth and heading off to start a new life. The sequel has a random encounter in which the player, now controlling a descendant of the character in the first game, travels back in time to just before the first game and ends up in the shelter. The only way to return to your own time is to break the shelter's water chip...

* A Stable Time Loop is essential to the plot of ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]''. Because the main party kills {{spoiler|Ultimecia}} in a partially time-compressed realm, {{spoiler|she is able to give her powers to Edea, thirteen years in the game's past, before she perishes.}} This is what makes {{spoiler|Edea the perfect choice to possess for Ultimecia's plans}}, and causes the main conflict in the present that leads to the need to destroy Ultimecia. Additionally, {{spoiler|1=after Edea inherits Ultimecia's powers in the past, the present-day Squall explains the concept of SeeD to her}}, thus inspiring the creation of the mercenary organization he grew up in and setting up his own role in the events of the game. The Stable Time Loop is further illustrated by the futile efforts at one of the cast members to [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong]]; she ultimately concludes that the past cannot be changed.

* ''[[Shadow Hearts]]: Covenant'' ends with {{spoiler|the character Karin Koenig being sent back in time some 25 years as a result of her journeys with the main character, Yuri Hyuga. There, the first person she meets is Yuri's father, and it's strongly implied that she goes on to become Yuri's ''mother''.}}

** And this raises the question of where Anne's Cross came from.

** Not only bizarre, but also [[Squick]] of possibly {{spoiler|[[Selfcest]]}} overlapping with {{spoiler|[[Foe Yay]]}}/HoYay. In one of the ending where you play as the heroine, you basically travel the world together with {{spoiler|[[Heel Face Turn|one of the aforementioned World Eaters]]}}, romance subtext included. It's still vague whose soul becomes whom (fans generally assume Gig became {{spoiler|Raksha}} while Revya became {{spoiler|Thuris}}, but another theory is that {{spoiler|Drazil}} waited the two souls to fuse together before splitting them apart. So you get either you romancing a half of your reincarnated alternate-dimension self or you romancing your reincarnated alternate-dimension partner, [[Running Gag|but you can call him Gig]]. But, hey, at least it proves that even [[Person of Mass Destruction|Gig]] [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold|can love!]]

* The ''[[Jak and Daxter]]'' series is basically one big stable time loop, with the first two games being both prequels and sequels to each other. At the end of [[Jak and Daxter The Precursor Legacy|the first game]], Jak discovers a huge portal through time. When activated at the start of [[Jak II Renegade|the second game]] it unleashes the Metal Head race into the world, and Jak and Daxter are immediately sent to the distant future. {{spoiler|There Jak discovers that he was actually born in the future, and helps his younger self go back into the past to be raised safe from harm so that he can become his old self and defeat the Metal Head leader.}}

* The end of the second stage and the beginning of the eighth stage of ''[[Gradius]] V'' are both set in the same timeframe and same battleship, with the past and present versions of the [[Cool Ship|Vic Viper]] running through segments of the stage alongside each other. The game records the actions of your 'past' version to replay in the second run-through.

* ''[[Time Splitters]]: Future Perfect'' had numerous examples of this. One of the earliest examples is also one of the most memorable - you are given a key by your future self that you need to progress, and later pass the key on to your past self, leaving its initial existence unexplained.

** As well in the You Genius U-Genix, when you find Dr. Crow, Cortez {{spoiler|explains the entire plot of eternal life to the main villain before the main villain has any chance to learn about it. Cortez seems to believe this is a version of Dr. Crow from the future, not knowing it was the only Dr. Crow that had not learned of the plot yet, effectively kick-starting the problem. Of course, younger Crow shows up only moments later, but Crow has already learned of the plan for eternal life, removing the necessity of younger Crow to explain it, and leaves with younger Crow's time machine.}} Cortez then shouts [[Atomic F-Bomb|"DAMMIT!"]] at the top of his lungs, having it be loud enough to transcend time (he is in 2240, and it is heard in 1960 by Harry Tipper).

* ''[[Sam and Max]] Season 2'' has the player create at least two stable time loops. The first involves {{spoiler|taking a boxing glove from a character's present self and giving it to his past self - one would initially assume that the boxing glove is the same one from Season 1, but it can't be, since it turns out to be on an infinite loop.}} The other time loop involves {{spoiler|traveling into the near future - so near as to be the next episode - and picking up an object, which causes the player character to be interrupted by someone calling from outside the window, asking for that object. The player character automatically tosses him the object, and receives another in return. In the next episode, the player character ''becomes'' the person outside the window, and must do what he remembers he did - an action that makes no sense without prior knowledge, even to the game's player.}}

*** There are other things. How do you know that the vampire elf needs to bite Jurgen the Vampire Hunter in the past? Because you've met Jurgen before in the present, as a vampire.

** Its sequel, ''Spellbreaker'', features a two-in-one: you have to establish ''two'' Stable Time Loops in two different locations (with time limits on each), or else be wrung from existence by the ensuing paradox should you try to leave the hourglass. Early on in the game, you find a magic zipper that functions as your Bag of Holding; going back to that location in the past, you find a sack in its place, and have to swap the two (and all the contents thereof) before the rising water kills you. Elsewhere, there's a disused cell containing a moldy spellbook, entirely illegible save for one useful spell; when you return there in the past, you have to put ''your'' spellbook where you found the moldy one in the future (memorizing as many spells from it as you can first!) and leave the room precisely as it was (or will be) before the guards arrive.

* The DS game ''[[Time Hollow]]'' is rife with these, mostly because {{spoiler|more than one person can adjust time.}}

* Near the beginning of ''[[Tomb Raider]]: Legend'' there is a flashback to Lara's childhood in which she set off an ancient device. Her mother then pushed Lara out of the way, looked into a ball of light and had a confused conversation with a mysterious figure (who the players can't see or hear) before disappearing. At the end of the game Lara inadvertently opens up a time portal and it is revealed that she was the person her mother was talking to at the start.

* In ''[[Vandal Hearts]]'', the NPC {{spoiler|Leena}} is sent back in time, and is then revealed to be the party member {{spoiler|Eleni}}, who had [[Easy Amnesia]] until that point. The loop aspect comes in with the character's pendant, given to the earlier version by the later version.

* The plot of ''[[Taiyou no Shinden Asteka II]]'' (a.k.a. ''Tombs and Treasure'') is that the player characters are searching for Professor Imes, who went missing while exploring the ruins of Chichen Itza. One of the ruins is "The Tomb of the High Priest". The ending reveals that {{spoiler|the professor went back in time and ''became'' the High Priest}}.

* An unusual example in ''[[Ōkami|Okami]]'', where the protagonist's past self, Shiranui, travels to the future. {{spoiler|She saves Amaterasu and friends from a spell that holds them motionless and Ammy was too weak to break, but at the cost of a mortal wound. She returns to the past, dies, and is sealed. When she's awakened as Amaterasu, her powers are considerably weakened, which is why she needed to be saved in the first place.}}

** {{spoiler|Then one in ''[[Ōkamiden|Okamiden]]''. Chibiterasu meets the mermaid character early in the game and she mentions that she knows Chibi from somewhere, but he sure doesn't. Later in the game, you travel back in time and Chibi runs into the mermaid again, but this time he knows her and she doesn't know him. They separate and she doesn't interact with Chibi until the time they met before/would meet next.}}

* The indie game ''Original War'' is all about this, with the Americans and Russians sending soldiers into the distant past to fight over the game's [[Phlebotinum]]. Whoever wins the war keeps the [[Phlebotinum]], but near the end of the Cold War the losers send a strike force back in time to steal it...

** {{spoiler|"Small" explosion being a relative thing of course. They still are enough to take out a city -- in other words, the main character in ''Trinity'' stops the creation of a superweapon that could destroy a whole state and instead creates the 'smaller' atomic weapons that still are quite powerful.}}

* ''[[Chrono Trigger]]'''s entire plot is concerned with a bunch of stable and unstable time loops. One that carefully averts the paradox element is when {{spoiler|Crono dies and is completely vaporized by Lavos. Later his friends save him by going back to the moment in time just before he dies to replace him with a lifeless clone}}. This is not a paradox because they don't alter what anyone in the past witnessed and so don't inadvertently cancel their own actions. Most of the other time loops are not resolved so immaculately. Needless to say, ''[[Chrono Cross|this causes problems]]''.

* ''Sunset Over Imdahl'', a freeware game made with [[RPG Maker]], contains such a loop {{spoiler|the plague, the one that killed all of your loved ones, the one that you were sent back to try to stop? You were the carrier. A chill's running a marathon down your spine, isn't it?}}

* ''[[Xenosaga]]'': {{spoiler|THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE is one of these, put in motion by [[Big Bad]] Wilhelm to prevent the destruction of the universe.}}

* Present in the OEL [[Visual Novel]] ''[[Mirai Imouto]]''. Misaki travels from the future to the present, {{spoiler|and tries to find a way to prevent her brother, Hiseo, from dying due to his heart condition. One of the reasons she wants to prevent his death so much is because in her past (the story's present), her brother spent most of his time before his death with some random girl (future-Misaki), and present-Misaki grew up into future-Misaki remembering that she wasn't able to spend much time with Hiseo before he died.}}

* 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.}}

* In ''[[Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors|Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors]]'', this is one possible interpretation of the ending: {{spoiler|Akane worked her way through the Nonary Game 9 years in the past, transmitting the answers into Junpei in a possible future. When she reaches a puzzle she can't solve, she explores through possible futures until she figures out how to lead Junpei into one where he faces the same puzzle. He's able to solve it, and transmit the answer back to her, allowing her to avert her own death. But after this incident, she has to set up the second Nonary Game that Junpei finds himself in 9 years later, completing the loop. (The alternative theory is that Santa is trying to [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong]], while Akane is projecting an image of herself into the future throughout the first game.)}}

* In ''[[Do Don Pachi]] DaiFukkatsu'', {{spoiler|1=EXY, at the end of ''DoDonPachi dai ou jou'', tries to go back in time to prevent the Blissful Death Wars--that is, the events of DOJ, and destroy the cause of the wars. Not only does she fail, but in doing this, she also ''causes the Blissful Death Wars in the first place!'' If there's any saving grace in all this (due to the unclear meaning of the ending monologue), it's that your fighting simply prevented the wars from degrading into something even worse.}}

* [http://www.kongregate.com/games/I_smell/no-time-to-explain?acomplete=time No time to explain] You are watching tv when yourself from the future, with armor and a laser gun, bursts through your wall. He is dragged away by a giant lobster, and drops his laser gun. You use it to save him. When you defeat the giant lobster (and included alien mothership), {{spoiler|yourself from the future gives you his armor, and tells you to go into the time warp and warn yourself from the past. You do. And are dragged away by a giant lobster. guess who tries to save you...?}}

 

 

* In ''[[Stickman and Cube]]'', Cube purchases a time machine on eBay. The time machine then travels to the future by itself, and when it returns, Cube sends it back. Through time. To before they bought it. The guy who sold them the time machine finds it, and, having no other use for it, puts it on eBay...

* In probably one of the shortest and most succinct versions of the trope, Fuzzy of ''[[Sam and Fuzzy]]'' engages in a Stable Time Loop in [http://www.samandfuzzy.com/archive.php?comicID=202 this strip.]

*** Equally as short is [http://faultylogic.comicgenesis.com/d/20071006.html this] Faulty Logic page, on why you shouldn't rob your future self.

'''Sarda''': What you deserve is ''so much worse''. }}

'''Black Mage:''' Okay, I have a theory. It's called: '''I never knew it possible to care less about time travel.''' }}

** 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!]"

** {{spoiler|Sparklelord is unique in that he's half-unicorn exiled from another dimension, half-motorcycle stuck in a time loop. Something like that, anyway.}}

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

*** 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.

* 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.

* ''[[Faulty Logic]]'': Fox travels to the future to steal a comic idea from his future self. When he gets back, his past self snatches the page out of hand and disappears.

** Then there was the time he built a time machine for the sole purpose of going back in time to stop himself from building a time machine, because [[Logic Bomb|he knows he'll end up building a time machine and misuse it]].

 

== Web Original ==

* This is essentially one of Dr. Insano's backstories as part of ''[[The Spoony Experiment]]'': Insano is an alternate-universe version of Spoony, who has grown so angry with the ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' franchise that he wants to go back in time to erase it from existence. Since being able to travel through time would require him to study science for decades, he decides to create a time loop [[He Who Fights Monsters|just like that of the original]] ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' by studying science, travelling back in time and then obtaining all the knowledge he needs from his future self.

** 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.

 

 

== Western Animation ==

* The 2011 time travel [[Story Arc]] in ''[[The Packrat]]'' explains why Buchla modular synthesizers have no keyboard: Packrat scared and angered Don Buchla and destroyed his synth prototype with his time machine keytar.

* In ''[[Duck Dodgers]]'', the queen of Mars finds out the one moment in his life that inspired Dodgers to become the person (or duck) he is, and sends Marvin the Martian back to prevent it. When he arrives, though, he finds that Dodgers was just a waterboy then. Refusing to believe that they were wrong, Marvin tries to make it happen the way it did, and fails his mission to stop it in the process.

* In ''[[Futurama]]'''s episode "Roswell That Ends Well," Farnsworth is very adamant about not changing the past, unless of course it turns out they were supposed to change the past, in which case, they must, for the love of God, not not change it. Fry end up killing his grandfather Enos by mistake, after an attempt to keep him safe. He impregnates his grandmother, thus becoming his own grandfather, which becomes [[Chekhov's Gun]]. After that, Farnsworth gives up about not changing the past. The crew blasts up Roswell Air Force Base, steals some gear, rescues Zoidberg and Bender's body, and blasts off into space. Farnsworth then delivers one of the best lines ever: "Choke on ''that'', causality!" Oh yeah, and throughout all this, the crew ends up being the mysterious alien ship that crashed in Roswell, and Zoidberg is the alien.

* Time travel in ''[[Gargoyles]]'' (via the Phoenix Gate) can't be used to change the past - no matter what you do, [[You Already Changed the Past]]. But if the plot requires it, ''you can turn yourself into a god by means of a Stable Time Loop''. The Avalon arc includes the flashback antagonist known as the Archmage in a classic bootstrap scenario: he travels back in time, saves himself from his canonical death at the bottom of a cliff, spends a day jumping through time handing his past self an absurd amount of firepower, ending the day by sending his past self off to repeat the process.

** [[Magnificent Bastard]] David Xanatos uses this to his advantage in "Vows". When pulled to 975 AD, he gives the Illuminati a coin to hold onto for one thousand years, and then deliver it to a young David Xanatos. The coin wasn't worth much in the past, but by the time it reaches him in 1975, it's worth twenty grand, which is the foundation for his fortune. He also gave them a letter to hold onto for 1,020 years, so he'd get it precisely one week before the episode began, telling [[Write Back to the Future|himself exactly what to do.]] He makes a direct [[Lampshade Hanging]] of the trope when Goliath arrives to rescue him.

'''Xanatos''': But you won't. Because you didn't. Time travel's funny that way. }}

** Goliath found out that history is immutable to his dismay in the same episode. He tried to convince teen Demona not to turn evil. It worked, but only temporarily.

*** In the same scenes, Demona always knew history is immutable because she already saw it. Future/Present Demona was the one that brought them all to the past in that episode, and then she goes to her younger self. She travels 20 years into the then-future, to 995 AD, and Goliath catches a ride. She shows herself the slaughter of Wyvern castle, that all her rookery mates are dead, and then tells herself to get rid of all the humans. Initially her past self rejects this, and she fights herself. She at first seems to reject what her future self told her, and embrace what future Goliath told her as she is returned to 975. However, by the time those twenty years pass, she makes a plan to do exactly what her future self told her to do, eliminate all the humans from the castle. This causes the scene her future self used to scare her in the first place, resulting in the classic irony this trope generally causes. Future Demona wasn't actually trying to change it though, as she remembered what happened to her past self that night, and knew what would happen, it was all a trick to turn herself evil and turn her into the person she becomes.

**** 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.]]

** ...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.

* The intro short for ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'' theme park ride has this. Professor Frink learns that [[Back to The Future|Doc Brown's Future Technology Institute]] was bought out by Krusty the Klown and closed down, and uses the DeLorean to go back in time and prevent this. When he arrives, Frink accidentally runs down the investor to whom Doc was speaking, forcing him to sell the Institute to "that mercenary clown".

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

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

* In one episode of [[Justice League Unlimited]], Braniac 5 summons [[Green Lantern]], [[Green Arrow]], and [[Superman|Supergirl]] to the 31st century to help in a conflict as history records show that the three time-traveled once- but Supergirl didn't return, implying that she died. At the end {{spoiler|Supergirl doesn't die, but she enjoys 31st century-Earth more like the advanced society she grew up in, as well as developed a crush on Braniac 5, that she decides to stay voluntarily.}}

 

* You never thought you'd see it, but some non-trivial physicists are [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/science/space/13lhc.html?_r=2 wondering] [http://io9.com/5380647/is-the-large-hadron-collider-being-sabotaged-from-the-future aloud] whether the future is [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong|actively trying to scuttle]] the LHC research project. The string of mechanical difficulties, they say, may be more than mere chance: Whether through [future] human intervention or the universe itself exercising some form of upstream-acting [[Ontological Inertia]], the future is trying to make sure we don't mess with Higgs Bosons. Loopy? Literally. Crazy? Probably. Impossible? Well...

** [[Futurama|Mumbo? Perhaps. Jumbo? Perhaps not!]]

*** Less esoterically/more science-fictionally, a time machine that can't change anything would also be just dandy for observation, thanks. (Better, really, since you don't risk stepping on the [[Butterfly of Doom]].) Video from 20,000BC anyone?

* There is apparently a theory out there that human time travellers seeded the young planet Earth with life. This is sometimes known as the [[Fun with Acronyms|Completely Ridiculous Anthropic Principle]].

* Some theories of particle physics hold that antiparticles (particles with the opposite charge and parity of a "standard" particle) travel backward through time. It's also widely believed that particle-antiparticle pairs randomly pop into existence from the [[wikipedia:Quantum foam|Quantum Foam]], and then feel their mutual attraction and annihilate each other moments later. It's also possible to see this as a single particle traveling in a loop through time: Forward as a regular particle to annihilate with its antiparticle, then backward as its antiparticle to annihilate with its standard particle, and repeat.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Narrative Devices]]

[[Category:Tropes of Legend]]

[[Category:Time Travel Tropes]]