Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
213,897
edits
Temporal Paradox: Difference between revisions
no edit summary
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) (rationalized header levels) |
No edit summary |
||
| (7 intermediate revisions by 5 users not shown) | |||
Line 2:
[[File:ParadoxWomanJ2 931.jpg|frame|[[Futurama|Torn From Tomorrow's Headlines!]]]]
{{quote|''"History abhors a paradox."''
|'''''[[Legacy of Kain|Legacy Of Kain: Soul Reaver]]'''''}}
A contradiction of causality within the timeline brought about by [[Time Travel]]. Theorized to be [[Time Crash|dangerous to the fabric of reality]], and known to be [[Your Head Asplode|dangerous to the brains]] of anyone who tries to get their head around them. [[Bellisario's Maxim|So don't]]. It's usually what [[The Professor]] worries about during a [[Time Travel]] story.
Line 86 ⟶ 87:
* In ''[[The Dark Tower/The Drawing of the Three|The Dark Tower]],'' Roland kills the man who murdered Jake, who Roland met in [[The Dark Tower/The Gunslinger|The Dark Tower]]. He spends the first part of [[The Dark Tower/The Waste Lands|The Dark Tower]] fighting off insanity because of the paradox this creates.
** To say nothing about what happens to Jake in the first part of [[The Dark Tower/The Waste Lands|The Dark Tower]] who is both alive and dead at the same time.
* The ''[[
* Time travel is forbidden in [[The Dresden Files]] because it might end up destroying the fabric of reality. Characters capable of seeing the future can't be specific about their visions for the same reason.
** The Gatekeeper, specifically, has a vision of something major in the Dresdenverse, and alerts Harry to it, in the most vague, roundabout way. Bob later explains he did this to avoid the entire universe going kaput. He also mentions that no one has ever caused a temporal paradox before, and you can tell by the way the universe keeps existing.
Line 158 ⟶ 159:
** Which takes us to the third game. {{spoiler|Arriving at Babylon they find the place ransacked because by retconning his past the vizier of course never died, got hold of the dagger, and proceeded to attack it, looking for the Sands of Time. Kaileena is captured, but when the Prince tries to rescue her the vizier stabs himself with the dagger, turning into a sand god or something, killing Kaileena and infecting the Prince with the sands. Princey manages to swipe the dagger though, escape, and sets about to kill the vizier again. Along the way he bumps into Farah, who had been captured way back when the vizier got the dagger, and discovers that the sands have manifested within him as the Dark prince; a seperate personality that tries to convince him to look out only for himself. He catches up with the vizier, is soundly beaten and thrown into a well, finds his father, who is dead again, and has a crisis moment where the Dark Prince tries to take over. He resists, fights the vizier again, kills him with the dagger, Kaileena appears and cleanses him of the sands, and all seems well. Then the Dark prince pulls him into his own mind, tries to screw it all up but he resists, gets rid of him too and gets the girl. Alls well that ends well. Aside from the dead father and ruined city.}}
* The flash game [http://www.kongregate.com/games/Scarybug/chronotron chronotron] revolves around the players ability to travel back to the begining of the stage (so that multiple version of the player exists at the same time). It is quite possible to either kill a past self, or bar their passage to the time machine - resulting in a time paradox "death", complete with a [[wikipedia:Penrose triangle|penrose triangle]] warning sign.
* According to [[Word of God]], there's an active paradox known as the [https://web.archive.org/web/20140807203942/http://zelda.wikia.com/wiki/Split_Timeline_Theory Split Timeline Theory] in the [[The Legend of Zelda|Zelda universe]]. Basically, when Link defeats Ganon at the end of [[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time|Ocarina of Time]] and Ganondorf gets sealed away by the sages, Zelda sends Link back into the past where he warns the king of Hyrule of Ganondorf's intentions [[The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask|and then leaves Hyrule]]. Now, this doesn't negate the need for time travel; instead that [[Bad Future]] remains, but without Link since he's back in the past. Much later in that future, Ganon escapes, and the events of [[The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker|Wind Waker]] happen, hence the "The people believed that the Hero of Time would again come to save them. / ...But the hero did not appear." in the prologue.
Line 200 ⟶ 201:
* In [[Dragon Ball|The Bardock TV Special]] Bardock attempts to stop Freeza from destroying Planet Vegeta to prevent the creation of a Super Saiyan. {{spoiler|He fails.}} In the Episode of Bardock spinoff it turns out that Bardock {{spoiler|wasn't killed in the explosion but was sent back in time to before the Saiyans discovered Planet Plant.}} He fights Chilled, {{spoiler|Freeza's ancestor}}, and during the fight he {{spoiler|becomes a Super Saiyan.}} This means that Bardock {{spoiler|is the Super Saiyan of legend, and that Chilled was the one who passed the legend down to King Cold and Freeza.}} That in turn means that {{spoiler|Freeza destroyed Planet Vegeta because Bardock became a Super Saiyan when he fought Chilled.}}
** What's more is that Freeza {{spoiler|ordered Dodoria to kill Bardock }}{{spoiler|[[You Can't Fight Fate|specifically because]]}} {{spoiler|he feared Bardock may}} {{spoiler|[[Self-Fulfilling Prophecy|become a Super Saiyan...]]}}
=== Comic Books ===
Line 207:
* In [[Pre Crisis]] [[Superman]] comics, all time travel works this way, which is why Superman's ability to time travel by exceeding the speed of light is not a [[Game Breaker]]; he can travel back to the past, but he can't successfully change anything. [[The Movie]] ignores this.
* Link saving himself in ''[[The Legend of Zelda/Fanfic Recs|The Legend
▲=== Fan Fiction ===
▲* Link saving himself in ''[[The Legend of Zelda/Fanfic Recs|The Legend Of Zelda: The Return]]''.
=== Film ===
Line 233 ⟶ 231:
* Willow contains a predestination paradox (if you assume, as the film does, that prophecy really is knowledge of the future): Bavmorda's attempts to destroy Elora are the very thing that causes her own destruction, which she would not have attempted to do EXCEPT for foreknowledge that Elora was going to cause her destruction.
▲=== Live Action TV ===
* As ''[[Lost]]'' season 5 deals with a [[Stable Time Loop]], this type of paradox is emerging. Kate, Sawyer, and Juliet save Ben's life, allowing Ben to grow up and turn the wheel, which causes the time travel in the first place. There may be physical examples as well: in the future, Richard gives Locke a compass. Then Locke travels to 1954 and gives it back to Richard. While it's possible Richard now has two compasses (and must later give Locke the "newer" one,) or the compass was never created.
** The other major season 5 storyline has a similar problem. Jack's goal is to set off a bomb that will prevent their plane from crashing, meaning they'll never come to the island; completely erasing everything that's happened on the show. This means Jack will never have been there to detonate it. Interestingly, it is suggested that the explosion may end up doing the opposite of what Jack wants and leads to the plane crashing. The blast ends up creating {{spoiler|an alternate timeline where they never went to the island.}}
Line 250 ⟶ 247:
* Chronos, the Incarnation of Time from Piers Anthony's [[Incarnations of Immortality]] is immune to this, to an extent. He cannot be balked by paradox, he remembers the original and the new timeline, though no one else does. The limit is that he cannot interfere with his own workings ( the "Three Person Limit" ). He can exist once, go back in time and change things, but he cannot go back in time and stop himself from changing things, thus the three person limit.
* The ultimate time paradox story is [[Robert A. Heinlein|Heinlein]]'s ''--[[All You Zombies]]--'', {{spoiler|in which the protagonist turns out to be hisheritthey's own mother, father, son, daughter, grandmother, grandfather, grandson, granddaughter, great-grandmother, great-grandfather, great-grandson, great-granddaughter, great-great-grandmother, great-great-grandfather, and so on, ad infinitum.}}
** [https://web.archive.org/web/20090919144336/http://www.xs4all.nl/~pot/scifi/byhisbootstraps.html Another Heinlein story], ''[[By His Bootstraps]]'', takes things nearly as far. Among other hijinks, the main character gets a book from the future, which he copies into another one (the same one, when it's new?) when it becomes too old and falling apart. A good way to avoid an object-based ontological paradox.
* Averted—by the characters, no less—in [[Isaac Asimov]]'s short story ''The Red Queen's Race''. They wind up creating a [[Stable Time Loop]] instead. {{spoiler|A scientist conducts an experiment to send modern scientific texts back in time, translated into ancient Greek. His translator, fearing a Temporal Paradox, only translates the parts that would account for the oddly anachronistic scientific advances ''already in our ancient history'', like Hero's steam engine or the infamous Baghdad Battery.}}
* In ''[[Artemis Fowl]] and the Time Paradox'', {{spoiler|Opal Koboi from the past travels to the present, and possesses Artemis' mother, making her appear ill. This forces present day Artemis to travel back in time to get the cure from the past Artemis. Opal then uses Artemis returning to the present to return to a few days before the present to make Artemis' mother ill in the first place. Ironically, this is all so she can aquire the secret of time travel.}}
Line 256 ⟶ 253:
* Played with in the latest ''[[Thursday Next]]'' book, where they find that despite the existence of the [[Time Police|Chronoguard]], no one has actually ''invented'' time travel yet, so they assume that the technology much have been sent from the future and eventually they'll find the spot on the timeline where someone invented it to [[Stable Time Loop|close the gap]]. As one character describes it, it's like they're running the technology "off of borrowed credit." This causes trouble however, when the Chronoguard begins to realize that no one in the timeline ''ever'' invented time travel. The resulting paradox causes the system to unravel and gets rid of any further possibility of [[Time Travel]] in the series (although it seems everyone in the populace has a [[Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory]]).
** But by the nature of the series, couldn't someone just enter [[H. G. Wells]]'s novel and bring out a working time machine?
* In ''[[Harry Potter and
* In ''Flatterland'' (a [[Spin Offspring]] sequal to [[Flatland]]), Victoria Line and the Space Hopper end up trapped in a black hole. They're rescued by slightly older versions of themselves with a portable white hole, producing both a reverse grandfather paradox and an object loop.
* {{spoiler|There's a human version of the object loop}} in ''[[
=== Newspaper Comics ===
* Unsuccessfully [[Invoked]] and thereby [[Subverted]] in ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]'': Calvin tries to travel two hours into the future so that he won't have to write the story they're supposed to be writing for school. But the future Calvin doesn't have it, because he went to the future to get it two hours ago. Then they both travel to one hour ago because they decide that that Calvin should have written it... but he refuses on the grounds that whatever they threaten to do to him, they'll be doing it to themselves. In the end, the two Calvins return to the future empty-handed, only two find that the two Hobbeses have written the story for them. When Calvin starts reading it out loud at school, it turns out to be a story about {{spoiler|his foolish time-travel while the tiger(s) save(s) the day.}}
:The timeline of this whole thing is a little paradoxical, but at least the object/information obtained has an origin.
=== Video Games ===
Line 276 ⟶ 271:
* ''[[Strange Journey]]'' has a rather curious form of this. In the second sector, you find a group of Disir whose time-control powers have been stolen by Yggdrasil. They send you to the future to battle him, but since he's so powerful, he'll just utterly [[Curb Stomp Battle|curb stomp you]] with a hearty [[Evil Laugh]]. Moments later, as you drift into unconsciousness, another guy pops up in the battlefield and starts hitting Yggdrasil. Moments later, you return to Sector Two, and the Disir tell you the battle's now engraved in your destiny. Fast-forward to Sector Five, and you find yourself in a very familiar battlefield, with a sleeping Yggdrasil, and a destiny goddess who reminds you you have to save yourself before Yggdrasil kills you in the past...
* The issue of paradox is averted in ''[[Second Sight]]''. Throughout the game, it appears that John Vattic is coming across information pertaining to peoples deaths, and then projecting himself back through time to avert them. The finale [[The Reveal|reveals]] that {{spoiler|the parts which Vattic thought were the "present" were actually potential futures he was seeing through precognition. So he was ''predicting'' deaths which hadn't actually happened, rather than averting deaths through time travel (which would create the paradox of why he would need to travel back in the first place.}}
* The entire plot of ''[[Dark Cloud]]'' is this. At the end, you have to go back 400 years in the past to erase the origin point of the [[Big Bad|Dark Genie]] because he's too strong to beat in the present. Of course, in doing so, you make sure that [[Unwitting Pawn|Seda]]'s wife comes [[Back
** Result: There are [[Stable Time Loop|an infinite number of Sedas who both do and don't Time Travel]].
** And before you even get to that, there's that whole ordeal in Queens. After the boss battle, Rando breaks the Life Sphere, intending to return 100 year to the past with La Saia so they can get married. [[Fridge Logic|Since when is Time Travel defined as a feature of the Life Sphere?]] We're left with the same problem: if Rando and La Saia get married, La Saia never commits suicide because Rando never got the Life Sphere, resulting in La Saia's ship never being sunk, which should completely remove the Shipwreck dungeon from the game, which would mean that the Turtle was never built, meaning that Toan never did anything in Queens. And without a dungeon to go to, there's no place for the Atla to end up, so the town itself was never destroyed.
Line 283 ⟶ 278:
* ''[[Dragon Quest V]]'' makes use of the Reverse Grandfather Paradox: you travel back time to meet your child self, who keeps a piece of [[Applied Phlebotinum]] that would prevent the world from total annihilation. You switch that piece with a fake, knowing that the [[Big Bad]] will kidnap your child self and destroy the thingie.
* An example of the Object Loop occurs while recovering the key to Karazahn in ''[[World of Warcraft]]''. The key, as found in the present, was beyond the skills of Khadgar to repair and so was taken back in time to be given to Medivh. Due to the damage suffered by the key, Medivh could not immediately repair it, instead giving the player a spare key. The key he was repairing would be given to Khadgar, to continue its trek into the future to be broken and taken back, ad nauseum.
* In [[Sonic the Hedgehog (2006
** In this same game, Mephiles the Dark decides upon his name when Shadow addresses him by it. Mephiles then goes back 10 years and introduces himself to Shadow, who learns his name. Thus, Mephiles learns his name from Shadow and vice versa.
* The ''Journeyman Project'' series works on information paradoxes. The [[Time Police]] protagonist is only prompted to go back in time when monitoring devices report historical alterations. Thus, once his mission is completed, there was never a reason to go back in the first place. The only major loophole the series provides is the rule that anything travelling back in time while a temporal overwrite is moving forward ([[Timey-Wimey Ball|We know, we know]]) is rendered immune to causality.
Line 290 ⟶ 285:
** ''[[Remember 11]]'': Both Information Loop and Object Loop with Yuni's terabyte disk, which travels endlessly between 2011 and 2012 and back. [[Epileptic Trees|Possibly]] Reverse Grandfather Paradox in {{spoiler|"player's" involvement in the story, as "it" corrupts [[Dead Little Sister|Sayaka]], causing Satoru to devise a plan to summon and send it back in time, making "it" corrupt [[Dead Little Sister|Sayaka]]...}}
▲=== Webcomics ===
* At the climax of the Doc Gets Rad chapter of ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]'', villain {{spoiler|Sparklelord}} is sent back in time to the moment when he originally entered from [[Another Dimension]]. This version apparently overwrites the original copy of him, but without any accumulated memories, thus condemning him to repeat the same sequence of events for eternity. So there is an infinite quantity of him entering the loop, but nothing coming out... huh? Presumably, the only reason the universe doesn't implode is that the comic runs on the [[Rule of Cool]].
* Trying to understand a complicated series of events in [[Irregular Webcomic]] seems to lead to this conclusion. Two characters are captured for [[Organ Theft]] purposes. Their future selves come to save them, but end up being captured as well. The original pair having their organs stolen survive by stealing the organs from their future selves, but eventually come across their original organs, and put those in them as well so that when their organs are stolen, only the spares are taken. [http://irregularwebcomic.net/1871.html It's all very complicated]. Of course {{spoiler|The characters end playing a part in destroying the universe by destroying the only time machine in existence instead of using it to become their future selves.}}
Line 299 ⟶ 293:
** For a more minor example, at one point Jade complains to John that [[Running Gag|her pumpkins keep disappearing]] so John sends her some pumpkin seeds for her birthday. However, these get sent back in time, and it is receiving that present that inspires Jade to start gardening in the first place.
** For another, we have one of John's conversations with Karkat, who is trolling him backwards through time. Karkat claims that John told him that humans hatch as slugs instead of being born, and John tells him that's completely false but thanks him for the pranking idea. Sure enough, in John's next conversation with Karkat, he tells him exactly that and Karkat believes him.
** For ''another'', much later on Karkat opens a memo only to be distracted by himself from ten minutes into the future angrily responding to it. Throughout the course of this conversation present Karkat becomes [[
* [[SSDD]], Doctor Cook claims that he got on the Maytec board of directors using stock market information from a PDA that was accidentally sent back in time. But then he locked up the present day version of the PDA and made sure it was never sent back, he noted that the future version didn't disappear or anything.
** Also the Anarchists were prevented from stealing the ''Wildfire'' time machine and using it to build the ''Inglourious'' fifty years earlier. Unfortunately they still have it, centuries before it wasn't built.
=== Web Original ===
Line 313 ⟶ 306:
'''Tank:''' ''Name overwritten. You may now call me Sheila."'' }}
** {{spoiler|Sheila killing Church because of the friendly fire setting?}} Guess who changed the default setting.
=== Western Animation ===
Line 329 ⟶ 321:
* This happens in the ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' episode "It's About Time". Twilight Sparkle meets her future self, who tells her that she was able to get here because of the time spells located in the Star Swirl the Bearded wing of the Canterlot Archives. Later in the episode, she goes there (for entirely different reasons) and ends up using a time spell...to go back and tell herself about the time spells. Hmm, now where did she learn about the location in the first place?
** The whole episode is this. Past Twilight is so bewildered and amazed by the concept of time travel that she can't shut up, and future Twilight doesn't manage to tell her what the actual thing she's supposed to be averting is before she gets sucked back to the future: all past Twilight knows is that future Twilight was from the following Tuesday. So she spends the week panicking about it, ends up with all the injuries future Twilight had when she visited, and by Monday night concludes the only way to stop whatever will happen by Tuesday from happening is to stop time. {{spoiler|So she goes to the archives, but as Tuesday morning arrives, nothing happens, but she finds the time spell and goes back in time to warn herself not to worry about the future...}}
== Unclassed, multiple or [[Timey-Wimey Ball|confused]] Examples ==
=== [[
* Improperly invoked in ''[[Light and Dark - The Adventures of Dark Yagami]]'', after Blud learns that Matt survived a car crash with "Yotsuba", he decides to write Matt's name in his Death Note in the future to kill him in the past. This results in the past changing, with Matt dying and Yotsuba surviving. Dark claims the reason why Blud is telling him and Light this now, rather than at the point in the future when he writes the name is "Its one of those time [[Rouge Angles of Satin|parradoks]] that they have in [[Back to The Future]]".
** Dark's exact words are "Oh I didn't tell you my death note can also kill people in the past and I am going to write his name in it in the future to kill him in the past and stop him stealing the death note." [[Sarcasm Mode|Hope that clears up any confusion.]] It doesn't help that the flashback scenes go from "Present Day" to "Meanwhile in the Past" to "Back in the Future"
Line 375 ⟶ 366:
* In the [[Time Travel]] RPG ''[[Continuum]]'', if a time traveler creates a paradox, they accumulate "frag," and if they accumulate too much, it eventually causes them to unravel. What's more, unchecked temporal paradoxes will eventually lead to the unraveling of reality itself. Much of the game centers around the players, who are part of "The Continuum" trying to fix paradoxes deliberately created by time travelers (known as "narcissists") who don't believe the official line on paradoxes, and who want to mess with the timeline for their own personal gain.
** Similarly, the expansion sourcebook (currently trapped in [[Development Hell]]) ''Narcissist'' has a different take on this—the original time traveler entered the "main" timeline's past and introduced time travel sometime around 14000 BC. Said time travel directly resulted in a [[The Singularity|singularity]] around 2500 AD, which then used its super-powerful minds and infinite resources to make ''sure'' that said time traveler never leaves our timeline (which would require a portal made out of X number of Temporal Paradoxes), and that time travelers don't cause the timeline to deviate from the history that led to the singularity. In alternate timelines away from "the swarm"—agents of the Singularity, named that because there's a lot of them, but they're disorganized idiots—paradoxes ''don't exist'': "frag" exists in the main timeline specifically due to the singularity's agents constantly trying to time-[[Mind Rape]] anyone attempting to change history.
* Time Travel is rare in ''[[Warhammer
* Averted in ''[[Genius: The Transgression]]''. As the game puts it, it turns out the universe doesn't particularly care if your grandmother gets shot and there's no shooter—barring [[Time Police|external intervention,]] you pop out of existence if you pull the trigger and the bullet hits home. This can have some interesting consequences, as the angry young lad seeking to avert a massacre in his country's history [[Ret-Gone|did not]][[I Am Your Father|discover...]]
* In ''[http://dig1000holes.wordpress.com/time-temp/ Time and Temp]'', a paradox would [[Ret-Gone]] ''[[Earthshattering Kaboom|all of existence]]''. Office temps (hence the name of the game) are used as field agents to prevent this, because they're otherwise [[Mooks|unimportant]] enough to minimize the risk of personal [[Grandfather Paradox]] - though their potential for [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|incompetence]] is at odds with this.
Line 400 ⟶ 391:
{{quote|<To a very confused Keira>
'''Daxter:''' Honey, the more you think about it, the more it hurts the head! }}
* ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog (2006
** Mephiles hates Shadow for sealing him, and attacks when he's freed. Shadow hates Mephiles for attacking him, and seals him. What?!?
* ''[[Radiant Historia]]'' has them. Logical, since one of its central themes is [[Time Travel]]. One of the most obvious examples is {{spoiler|a mission where you talk to a grieving widow, who laments the medicine she got for her husband never arrived till it was too late, leading the party's hero to accept the medicine and give it to the man in the past, causing him to feel better, negating the need for ordering the medicine in the first place}}. Well, gosh.
=== Web Comics ===
* ''[[Something
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20140705053535/http://www.cheercomic.com/?date=2008-01-31 This is confusing.] How is a flashback to the childhoods of the ''[[The Wotch|Cheer!]]'' girls even possible? Weren't they, you know, ''boys''? Just how much of the past did Miranda rewrite to cover up Anne's mistakes? Is it like what happens when a [[Misfile]] occurs? Argh...maybe it's best to pretend this isn't canon, especially seeing as there are [http://thewotch.com/index.php?epDate=2005-10-11 lots of] [http://thewotch.com/index.php?epDate=2005-10-19 people] [https://web.archive.org/web/20140705044639/http://www.cheercomic.com/?date=2006-05-30 who still remember.]
** Well, three of the girls do not remember ever being anything ''but'' girls, so presumably their memories were altered. [[Plot Hole|As for Jo...]]
* In the Surreptitious Machinations arc of [[General Protection Fault]], Empress Trudy travels back in time to give her younger self the necessary information on what she must do to take over the world. Near the end of the arc, Nick and Ki's son Todd reveals that the entire [[Bad Future]] he and Empress Trudy came from was the product of a temporal paradox, since it could not have happened without Empress Trudy advising her younger self, which would not be possible if it did not previously exist. It is heavily implied that {{spoiler|Pandemonium}} was responsible for the existence of the alternate future in the first place. As a result of the future being changed, Todd, the Empress and all other objects from the alternate future fade from existence, but the Empress teleports to a different time just before she fades, and the Gamester finds and recruits Todd.
Line 415 ⟶ 406:
=== Western Animation ===
* ''[[The Fairly
** Well the original timeline seems to be that 70's Cosmo is that cause of Crocker losing him and Wanda. Timmy then stops this incident only for present day Cosmo to turn on the mic while Timmy is talking and cause the incident to happen anyway. While this doesn't explain how Crocker knew about the existence of fairies after his mind was wiped in the original timeline, since we don't see the original incident play out, we can just assume any number of reasons for that. (Perhaps he managed to write a note in that timeline too)
** There was also a [[Historical In-Joke]] to imply that it was an alternate timeline.
Line 423 ⟶ 414:
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Narrative Devices]]
[[Category:Time Travel Tropes]]
▲[[Category:Temporal Paradox]]
[[Category:Self-Demonstrating Article]]
| |||