39,327
edits
Stable Time Loop: Difference between revisions
m
Mass update links
m (Remove useless categories) |
m (Mass update links) |
||
Line 4:
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 [[
This is sometimes referred to as a "time loop" paradox, particularly when a character, object, or piece of information was never originally created, but exists solely because of its own existence. Also known as a "bootstrap paradox," from the classic Heinlein short story, ''[[By His Bootstraps]]''. It's also called an "[[Temporal Paradox|ontological paradox]]" on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontological_paradox The Other Wiki]. The classic hypothetical example is to jump into the future, steal some wondrous gadget, come back to the original time, grab the patent on that gadget and start mass-producing them immediately. Eventually, they become so ubiquitous or so common that you, ten, twenty years younger, show up and steal one. If it's the same one you stole before, it's an [[Temporal Paradox|Object paradox.]] If it's not, then it's this. The simplest version is the one where the time machine itself is the product of the stable time loop--the character sees a version of himself pop into existence with a time machine, hand it to him, and press the button, only to be whisked into the past where he hands it to his past self and presses the button.
[[Tricked Out Time]] is when you "change" the past on purpose to resemble this. Compare [[You Already Changed the Past]], [[Wayback Trip]], [[Timey
For further discussion of this trope, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predestination_paradoxes_in_popular_culture Wikipedia].
Line 15:
Importantly, this trope is not to be confused with [[Groundhog Day Loop]].
{{examples
== Anime and Manga ==
Line 24:
* In ''[[Martian Successor Nadesico]]'', {{spoiler|Inez Fressange, whose first clear memory is being lost in a desert at age 8, discovers that she got there through time traveling from the future... which is now the present, as she's taken [[The Slow Path]] back. She meets her younger self just before the temporal disturbance that triggers the loop.}}
* In ''[[Tenchi Muyo]] in Love!'', the criminal Kain attempts to go back in time to kill Tenchi's mother, Achika, so as to prevent Tenchi from ever having been born. Tenchi and company go back in time to stop him, and the climactic showdown forces Achika to utilize her power to the point that she shortens her own lifespan in order to protect her future son, thus causing her premature death that Tenchi had already experienced in the present/future.
* During the (rather long) Day 1 of the Mahora Fair sub-arc in ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' we get to see a Time Loop following Negi's use of it. Negi redoes the same day four times to make sure he has enough time to spend with every student. At various points Negi will run into students he hasn't run into yet because he's not that far in the loop. Setsuna, Asuna, Konoka and Kotaro all go along with Negi at one time or another in this loop. Naturally when Time Travel isn't a neat parlor trick it stops being so stable... or loop like, and quite [[Timey
* In ''[[Sailor Moon]]'', Chibi-Usa is able to exist because {{spoiler|she "stole" the silver crystal from Usagi in the future, returned to the past, and saved Usagi's life in the battle with the Death Phantom.}}
* In ''[[Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle]]'' - avoiding spoilers and the five paragraphs of text that it would require to fully explain it- something the main characters do halfway through the story is directly responsible for the creation of the lead female's hometown as we first saw it.
Line 75:
* 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 (Comic Book)|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.
* [[X-Men (Comic Book)|Rita Wayword]] was captured and changed into the [[Multi
* [[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.}}
Line 144:
** As explained by Ford Prefect, every form of [[Time Travel]] in that universe is a Stable Time Loop.
** Zaphod Beeblebrox is his own ancestor and descendant.
** That series of books is definitely [[Timey
** What's more, in the first book, it's suggested that the origin of life was caused by the Infinite Improbability Drive -- which was, of course, later built by living creatures.
* In the story ''The Red Queen's Race'' by [[Isaac Asimov]], an attempt to change history by sending modern scientific knowledge back to the ancient Greeks is subverted when the person translating the information finds out about the plan. The translator creates a [[Stable Time Loop]] by censoring the translation to include only odd bits of surprisingly advanced knowledge that actually turned up in the ancient world. Also, it's decided that doing this was necessary for history to happen as it already did.
Line 154:
** Plus, Artemis' adventures in the past are implied to inspire his younger self to research the faeries and begin exploiting them in his schemes.
* Lester Del Rey's 1951 short story "...And It Comes Out Here" features a time machine that's created by a time loop.
* In ''The Last [[Chronicles of Thomas Covenant]]'' Linden travels to the past to get the Staff of Law, since it is nowhere to be found in the present, since she picked it up in the past... [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|And because she picked it up in the past it didn't exist during the intervening years]], meaning that [[Big Bad|Lord Foul]] and his allies grew stronger because its power wasn't opposing them for all that time.
* In the [[Thursday Next]] Novel ''The Eyre Affair'', Thursday meets herself, and receives the news that the [[Big Bad]] is alive, and is told to travel to Swindon. As a result of the travel, she ends up caught in an patch of Bad Time, and arrives to deliver the message.
** Later in the series, it's revealed that the various methods of [[Time Travel]] work on the assumption that someone '''will''' invent [[Time Travel]], and deliver that technology to their current time. This starts causing trouble when people find that [[Time Travel]] '''won't''' be invented.
Line 162:
* The Robert L. Forward novel ''Timemaster'' demonstrates the use of a Stable Time Loop generated by a wormhole (technically, a "closed timelike curve") as an offensive weapon.
* [[Harry Harrison]] dumps ''[[The Stainless Steel Rat]]'' into Stable Time Loops so often that Jim treats it as a normal occurrence. Usually they're fairly brief, but ''The Stainless Steel Rat Saves The World'' is a novel-length stable time loop. Or more accurately, it's one stable time loop after another for the whole book, with one ''unstable'' time loop for variety.
* Another [[Harry Harrison]] book, ''[[The Technicolor Time Machine]]'', hinges on several Stable Time Loops. The premise is that a movie studio is about to go bankrupt, and so in desperation they try funding a seemingly crackpot physicist who's working on a time machine in exchange for the use of the completed model. It works, of course, so they take a camera crew back in time to film a historical about how the Vikings discovered America - they don't have to pay for sets or actors this way, and they can get the whole film done in a couple of days so they'll be able to show the bank that they have an asset they can monetize when the next loan payment becomes due. When they find the Viking that history says is the discoverer, however, he seems completely uninterested in attempting the journey... until they nudge him with a little bribery and technical assistance. A few other [[Self
* The [[Robert A. Heinlein]] short story "[[All You Zombies]]" uses the same device. The protagonist tells a bartender a story in which he {{spoiler|introduces his mother, actually himself before a sex change, to his father, actually himself after the sex change. He is also the bartender, sent back in time to recruit himself into the time-travel police.}}
** In ''[[The Door Into Summer]]'', {{spoiler|the protagonist travels into the future and sees machines he's almost sure he invented. So on that hunch, he finds a time-machine that can send him back. He makes some arrangements, returns to the future by [[Human Popsicle|cold sleep]] and lives happily ever after knowing the people who tried to ruin his life got their just deserts.}}
Line 170:
* ''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...
* ''[[The Time Travelers Wife|The Time Traveler's Wife]]'' by Audrey Niffenegger is full of Stable Time Loops. For example, on one of Henry's visits to his wife-to-be Clare in the past, he dictates to her a list of dates in her childhood when they're going to meet. They meet on those dates only because she knows he's going to appear -- there are some other times when he appears, but since those dates aren't on the list, she doesn't know he's there. When they meet as adults in real time, she gives the list back to him so he can memorise it. Where did it come from in the first place? Seemingly nowhere. Henry also taught his younger self a number of skills he knew he would need, such as how to pick locks. His theory is that to prevent [[Temporal Paradox]], he has free will while he's living in normal time but not while he's [[Time Travel|time traveling]].
** 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? [[
* In H. Beam Piper's short story ''Flight from Tomorrow'', a tyrant in the very far future forces a scientist to create a time machine for him as the ultimate escape route, and he uses it to flee into the past from a rebellion at the beginning of the story. He is not expecting a Stable Time Loop - quite the contrary - but the scientist not only left out some important information but sabotaged the machine, so that he went back not to the time he had researched, but to the mid-twentieth century. The tyrant is hunted down and killed as a plague-carrier. The scientist in his own time explains to the rebels that they cannot pursue the tyrant into the past, or they will meet the same fate; the scientist's audience realizes that a mysterious artifact from the distant past must be where the tyrant's body was covered over with concrete to prevent further contamination.
* In ''[[The Anubis Gates]]'' by [[Tim Powers]], the protagonist, Brendan Doyle, becomes the victim of [[Grand Theft Me]] in the 1800s and realizes that he is destined to be the poet, William Ashbless, whom he was researching in the present day. Partway through the book, he panics on realizing nobody ever ''wrote'' Ashbless's poetry -- he copied it from memory earlier -- but then shrugs it off, deciding that as long as it was ''there'', nobody would be bothered.
Line 223:
* In one episode of ''[[The Red Green Show]]'', one of Ranger Gord's educational shorts had him teaming up with his future self and going back in time to prevent a forest fire. After the two meet and team up with Past Gord, Future Gord explains his information shows the fire will be caused by lightning, which strike [[Butt Monkey|Red and Harold.]] The three Gords violently put out the fire and after looking like the usual [[Everybody Laughs Ending]], the three Gords decide to go to the future and celebrate. However, sparks from the time machine taking off end up causing the fire in the first place.
* ''[[The Adventures of Brisco County Jr]]'' has the titular character go back in time to meet himself and take a necessary [[McGuffin]] out of his own hands. Which is exactly what happened a few episodes ago.
* ''[[Babylon Five|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
** {{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]].}}
* In the first season of the new series of ''[[Doctor Who (TV)|Doctor Who]]'', The Doctor and Rose are followed everywhere by [[Arc Words|the words "Bad Wolf"]] - in the final episode, Rose saves The Doctor's life and uses the time-bending power of the TARDIS to deposit the words in the past, in order to inspire her to go forward into the future and save The Doctor's life, which ends in her putting the words into the past, etc., etc. This also crops up a few times in the second and third seasons (since the words were placed all over time and space, there's no reason for them to stop showing up just because they're not needed anymore), and more times than you can shake a TARDIS key at in the Ten/Rose [[Expanded Universe]] novel ''The Stone Rose''. The phrase also turns at the cliffhanger of the fourth season episode "Turn Left" (with all written words, from the Doctor's point of view being replaced with "Bad Wolf" -- even the TARDIS' signage), in which it {{spoiler|heralds Davros' gambit to steal a number of planets in a plan that will either end up in the Daleks' domination of the universe or by the universe's destruction}}
Line 344:
* 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
* ''[[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.}}
** Then, in Season 3, Sam and Max have to use the astral projector from the Devil's Toybox to alter the actions of their ancestors Sameth and Maximus, to get the Devil's Toybox from Egypt and into the basement where they found it. The only way Sameth and Maximus did it in the first place was with information they wouldn't know at the time; not getting the box would probably destroy the universe.
Line 354:
* 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.
* This trope is brought up [[Tear Jerker|tragically]] in ''[[Wild Arms 5 (Video Game)|Wild Arms 5]]'', where it is revealed that heroine {{spoiler|Avril}} is stuck in one of these. She is forced to continually travel 1,000 years into the past to set in motion the events of the game... but not before she sets herself up to awaken during this time period so she can ensure things play out how they should, and she is sent to the past once again. She can never leave this loop, as it may have [[Butterfly of Doom|cataclysmic consequences]], and she'd much prefer [[I Want My Beloved to Be Happy|her beloved to be happy.]] Although all the traveling and slumber gives her [[Laser
* 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 ''[[Okami (Video Game)|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.}}
Line 384:
* In ''[[Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors (Visual Novel)|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.}}
* 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...?}}
* ''[[Escape From St Marys (Video Game)|Escape From St Marys]]'': Your explorations from the school reveal various cases of vandalism. When you go to the past, you turn out to be responsible for every one of them.
Line 396:
* 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.]
** Not quite as short as [http://www.nuklearpower.com/2005/03/24/episode-531-time-for-a-new-space/ this one] from ''[[
*** Equally as short is [http://faultylogic.comicgenesis.com/d/20071006.html this] Faulty Logic page, on why you shouldn't rob your future self.
* [http://www.nuklearpower.com/2009/09/19/episode-1174-oh-thats-what/ Here's another] ''[[
{{quote| '''Thief''': Well. I ''deserve'' this.<br />
'''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.<br />
'''Black Mage:''' Okay, I have a theory. It's called: '''I never knew it possible to care less about time travel.''' }}
Line 420:
*** {{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 more minor example, which still emphasises the nature of Weird Time Shit, is when Present-Karkat is on his bulletin board, having an argument with Future-Karkat. Eventually Future-Karkat logs off, having left Present-Karkat in precisely the right state of mind not to take any crap from Past-Karkat when he logs in. (Not only that, but Present-Karkat changes his typing colour from grey to candy-red to make a point ''because'' Future-Karkat is "already" doing it.)
* Meimu, the [[Big Bad]] of the "Rethinking the Natural Law" arc in ''[[Touhou Nekokayou (Webcomic)|Touhou Nekokayou]]'', creates one by accident when trying to [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong|Set Right What Once]] [[
* [[Bob and George]] [http://www.bobandgeorge.com/archives/010619c Information ontological paradox] causes one here.
* 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.}}
Line 462:
** 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
** The episode "M.I.A." hints at what could be a possible out within a [[Stable Time Loop]]: {{spoiler|Goliath travels back to [[World War Two]] London to investigate an accusation that he caused the death of a gargoyle back then. When it seems that the Gargoyle in question really is marked for death by fate, Goliath takes him to the present day with him, saving his life, but still preserving the effects of his death}}. Or fate could just have been screwing with him to achieve the predestined result.
* The ''[[Star Trek the Animated Series (Animation)|Star Trek the Animated Series]]'' episode "Yesteryear" has Kirk and Spock return from a trip to the past to find that the ship suddenly has a different science officer, and no one else knows who Spock is. Spock relates a memory from his childhood when his life was saved by an adult Vulcan, who he realizes looked exactly like he does now. So he has to take one more trip to the past to save himself and set things right.
Line 469:
** ...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.
*** And the reason Cosmo and Wanda didn't remember having Crocker as a godchild? The past Cosmo was playing with the device Jorgen Von Strangle used to erase young Crocker's memories of having fairies (the device being a reference to [[Men in Black (Film)|Men in Black]]) and accidentally erased his and Wanda's memories of having Crocker as godchild.
* ''[[Transformers Generation 1]]'' featured a truly epic multi-layer time loop revealed over the course of several episodes. 11 million years ago, A3 led a [[Turned Against Their Masters|revolt against the Quintessons]]; however, in 2006, the Quintessons yanked A3 into their own time to prevent themselves from losing Cybertron. Blaster, Perceptor, Blurr, and Wreck-Gar go back in time to help the rebellion, while the Aerialbots save A3 from the Quintessons. A3 returns to his own time to lead the rebellion. Two million years later, A3, now known as Alpha Trion, meets the Aerialbots, who have travelled back in time from 1986. The Aerialbots persuade him to save the life of a young dock worker named Orion Pax, who he rebuilds into Optimus Prime (and also rebuilds Orion's girlfriend Ariel into [[
* In the ''[[Pinky and The Brain (Animation)|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 (Animation)|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.
** And within that wheel, Shego takes the monkey while in the past and escapes into the timestream, so Kim goes straight from the past to face Shego in the [[Bad Future]]. Shego manages to [[Take Over the World]] partly because Kim wasn't around to stop her, since she skipped over that whole time.
** On the other hand, the [[Ret Gone|self-destruction of the time monkey]] is only implied; if its destruction doesn't affect its past existence, then the movie becomes a case of the [[Timey
* The ''[[Dexters Laboratory (Animation)|Dexters Laboratory]]'' movie "Ego Trip" had this going on. The movie starts with robots appearing in the lab, looking for "the one who saved the future" and attacking Dexter. Inspired by this, Dexter hops in his time machine and ends up going on an adventure with [[My Future Self and Me|three future versions of himself]], battling four Mandarks. In the end, the day is saved when Dee Dee walks in and [[What Does This Button Do?|does her thing]] Furious at being upstaged, the four Dexters build some robots and send them to beat up "the one who saved the future". When he realizes this, Dexter's reaction is to give up on explaining time travel and then going to eat lunch.
* The only time time travel occurred in ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants (Animation)|SpongeBob SquarePants]]'' had Squidward going to the distant past through a series of events stemming from avoiding Spongebob and Patrick trying to get him to go jellyfishing with them. He meets the caveman versions of them and shows them not to be afraid of jellyfish by demonstrating jellyfishing, then giving both nets to try it themselves. Upon his return, he mocks whoever was the one who invented jellyfishing, to which Spongebob and Patrick tell Squidward it was him.
* ''[[The Penguins of Madagascar (Animation)|The Penguins of Madagascar]]'' episode "[[Exactly What It Says On the Tin|It's About Time]]" involves a time-traveling Kowalski trying to [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong]] while avoiding [[Temporal Paradox]]... {{spoiler|and a ''second'' Kowalski trying to avoid ''another'' temporal paradox.}} [[Hilarity Ensues]].
Line 481:
* In ''[[Teen Titans (Animation)|Teen Titans]]'' the [[Time Travel|time-travelling]] villain Warp ''thinks'' he's taking part in a [[Stable Time Loop]]; he goes back in time to steal a special clock because, a hundred years in the future, the historical records say that he went back in time to steal it. Unfortunately for him, the Teen Titans prove themselves able to [[Screw Destiny]] and stop Warp from stealing the clock, wrecking the time loop.
* An episode of ''[[Family Guy (Animation)|Family Guy]]'' explicitly pointed out the trope when Stewie and Brian accidentally caused the Big Bang due to time travel.
* In the ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (Animation)|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' episode "[[My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (Animation)/Recap/S2 E20 Its About Time|It's About Time]]", Twilight Sparkle comes across her (very badly injured) future self, who came from next Tuesday morning to give her a very serious message, but Twilight keeps interrupting her future self, until she gets sent back to the future before she could finish her warning. Present Twilight spends the next several days worrying about averting impending doom and getting more and more injured because of random events, matching up her future self's injuries {{spoiler|until next Tuesday morning comes, and absolutely nothing bad happens,}} which is when Twilight decides to use a special magic scroll to go back in time and warn her past self that nothing bad was going to happen and she had no reason at all to worry about. {{spoiler|Unfortunately, her past self kept interrupting her until the time travel spell wears out and Twilight returns to the future- which is now her present. Then she realizes what she has done: her half-done attempt to warn her past self about not worrying is what made her worry in the first place and created a stable time loop. After a few moments, she decides to shrug it off and declares it her past self's problem now.}}
* 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.}}
| |||