Stable Time Loop: Difference between revisions

* 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.

 

== Comic Books ==

* Brilliantly subverted in the comic strip ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]''. It's 6:30 and Calvin doesn't want to do his homework, so he decides to [[Time Travel]] forward to 8:30. Then he can pick up the now-finished homework, bring it back to 6:30, and goof off the rest of the evening. But it doesn't work. There's no homework to pick up at 8:30 because Calvin never actually did the homework -- he went [[Time Travel|time traveling]] instead.

** 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.

* One ''[[The Simpsons|Radioactive Man]]'' comic from the 1960s features a villain being sent back to the 1860s via a [[Applied Phlebotinum|Trans-spatial Stair Climber]]. When a damaged robot appears out of thin air, he repairs it and programs it to kill Radioactive Man before placing it in a time capsule due to be opened in 100 years time. At the end of the comic, the robot is damaged by Radioactive Man before being hit by Dr. Broom's Time Machine Gun - and sent back to 1863. When Fallout Boy wonders about who built the robot in the first place, Radioactive Man reminds him that "we're dealing with two mad scientists, and that's a [[Incredibly Lame Pun|pair o' docs]] left well enough alone."

* 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.

* [[She Hulk]] once dealt with a rather complicated [[Stable Time Loop]] for her law firm. The case: A billionaire named Charles Czarkowski shot an unarmed man (dubbed "John Doe"), in the back, in broad daylight, in front of a dozen eye-witnesses, ''and'' it was caught on film. Czarkowski claimed that before the shooting he received a message from the future warning that John Doe was destined to shoot him, and Czarkowski shot him in self-defense. Fearing for his life when a time-robot attacked the courtroom, Czarkowski traveled through time, used a DNA scrambler to alter his appearance, and tried to send a message back in time to warn his past self. But when he saw his altered face in the mirror he realized that ''he'' was John Doe all along. The message he sent to warn himself accidentally implicated his future self in the murder of his past self. Then the [[Time Police|Time Variance Authority]] showed up and forced Czarkowski to go back in time again and get shot to maintain the time loop. On the plus side, the TVA had to drop the attempted murder charge against him.

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

** 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 ==

** In [[The Magids|Merlin Conspiracy]], (this is a doozy): Nick's part of the story begins with him sidestepping into other universes willy-nilly. A man named Romanov shows up to kill him. After he spares Nicks life, Nick later follows him to his personal island/mini-verse, where he is deathly ill. While taking care of Romanov, a [[Knight Templar]] and his two wards (Joel and Japeth) show up to finish Romanov off while he's down. They are dispatched, and one of the boys treads on an egg. Nick laughs. Several universe hops later and Nick winds up in Blest, where there is a ten year difference between Romanov's world, and the two boys are now the [[Big Bad]] [[Chessmaster|Chessmasters]] who kicked off the whole plot to begin with, and are the ones who not ''only'' sent Romanov to kill Nick, but also gave Nick a special virus to kill Romanov, which was what made him sick earlier. ''Which Nick himself accidentally gave them the idea to do''. He accused them on Romanov's island -while they were still young- of paying Romanov to kill him. Plus several other, minor time-related things, such as answering the phone while romanov was ill, causing wife to leave him. She winds up being Joel and Japeth's sidekick.

* 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...

** Far from the only [[Stable Time Loop]] in the ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy|Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'' series. Arthur, of course, met with Agrajag before one of the many deaths of his previous forms had ever occurred, and so he knows that he's going to be able to escape when Agrajag tries to kill him anyway. Also, the entire arc with the Golgafrinchams.

** 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]].

** Played with extensively in ''[[Discworld/Pyramids|Pyramids]]'', particularly in the construction-crew's "doppelgangs" and {{spoiler|Dios's fate}}. The paradoxes entailed are lampshaded when the engineers discuss the option of paying their loop-duplicated workers with loop-duplicated money.

** In ''[[Discworld/Soul Music|Soul Music]]'', Susan travels to the past and sees her father fight Death at the conclusion of ''[[Discworld/Mort|Mort]]''. Death spots her watching and recognizes her as the child of Mort and Ysabell, which convinces the [[Grim Reaper]] to stabilize the loop and spare his apprentice so the girl he's just spotted can be born.

** In ''[[Discworld/I Shall Wear Midnight|I Shall Wear Midnight]]'', {{spoiler|eldery Tiffany}} insists this trope is ''not'' in effect, as each iteration of this time-traveller's encounter with young Tiffany will actually result in a different conversation. The fact of their encounter is stable, but the details aren't set in stone.

* ''[[Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban]]''. Harry is saved from dementors by a Patronus Charm cast mysterious figure who he thinks is his father. After he travels back, he eventually finds himself in the same place and waits for his father to show up... [[You Already Changed the Past|and then realizes HE was the mysterious figure]], and saves himself. In fact, he only gains the ability to cast a true Patronus for the first time because he realized that he had already done it. Also, as Harry, Ron, and Hermione first head out to adventure, they hear noises that turn out to be Harry and Hermione as they complete adventure!part I.

* 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]].}}

* ''[[The Man Who Folded Himself]]'': A young man inherits a belt from his uncle that allows him to travel to any time in the past or future. In doing so, he meets multiple alternate versions of himself, eventually reaching the point of Ultimate Narcissm, in two extremes. He winds up in sexual relationships with his multiple selves. The second extreme is where things get twisted and yet allows the [[Stable Time Loop]]. He gets bored with all of his alternate selves, and humanity as a whole, and decides to try to go back far enough in time to meet an alternate self so far from his own reality they are unrecognizable except by the belt they wear. The one he finds, exactly 1000 years before his date of birth, is a female version of himself. This then begins yet another sexual relationship, resulting in a child. Then comes confusion as the story slips between the two perspectives of the "parents," each wanted a child of the same gender as themselves. So they go into the future, get technology to make sure their child is the "correct" gender, and somehow, even though it is implied that only one child is born, ''both get their wish'' and bring their child to the future. They then take the role of Aunt/Uncle to that child, and the cycle begins anew. Gives a whole new meaning to the song, "I'm My Own Grandpa."......and father, and great-grandfather......... The book contains ''only one'' character, everybody he meets is a past, future, or alternate-reality version of himself.

** 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.

* 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]]."}}

** {{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.}}

* In the [[Time Travel]] episode of ''[[Ghostwriter]]'', the kids in 1928 solve their case by sending Ghostwriter to 1993 to find out how the case was solved, then bring the info back and use it to solve the case. As the kids in 1993 are reading old 1928 newspapers about the case, the pages start to turn blank -- if they don't send the info back, the case will never be solved and thus the newspaper will never have it.

* ''[[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.}}

** 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...

** 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).}}

* [[Stephen Colbert]] (circa 2009-2509 or so), the main character in [[The Colbert Report]], failed to stop Stephen Colbert (circa 2005-2009) from electrocuting himself, then took his place as host in order to be hosting the show in 2500 to come back in time [[Stable Time Loop|so he would exist in his present to come back in time]]...etc.

 

== 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...

* 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.

** 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.

* The [[Infocom]] [[Adventure Game]] ''Sorcerer'' features a [[Stable Time Loop]]. At one point, your future self appears and gives you the combination to a locked door, and demands your spell book. After you've unlocked the door, you have to travel back in time and give the combination to your past self, and get the spell book from him. (You can't carry anything with you when you go back in time.) The time travel spell is named "golmac" as a [[Shout-Out]] to the "gold machine", the time machine in ''[[Zork]] III''. It's fun to do silly things like screaming or singing when your future self appears, then watch how they're described when it's your past self doing them.

* 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.}}

* In ''[[Bastion]]'', activating the Bastion's [[Reset Button|Restoration Protocol]] rewinds time. {{spoiler|But it doesn't allow Rucks, Zia, Zulf, or The Kid to stop the Calamity from happening again. [[Stable Time Loop|So it happens again.]]}} [[Fridge Horror]] sets in when you realize how many loops it might go (or have been) through before something could change and lead to The Kid activating the [[Screw This, I'm Outta Here|Evacuation Protocol]] instead.

* [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.

{{quote|'''Thief''': Well. I ''deserve'' this.

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

{{quote|'''Sarda:''' No one can unmake the past. It's already happened, there's no "undo". Similarly, the future already happened. we just haven't '''reached it''' yet.

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

** {{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]].

** See the [http://mspaintadventures.wikia.com/wiki/Weird_Time_Shit Weird Time Shit] page on the MSPA Wiki (massive spoilers). The most prominent examples being {{spoiler|John receiving the same bunny for his birthday thrice,}} and {{spoiler|an ectobiology session where John basically creates himself, his friends, and their guardians, who are sent to Earth at different points of time by meteor-defense-portal-displacement.}}

*** 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''.}}