Temporal Paradox: Difference between revisions

** The comic itself likens it to the most common time travel power in video games: [[Save Scumming|"Load Game"]].

* Evil Katarakis of ''[[Starslip Crisis]]'' hasn't thought his brilliant plan all the way through:

** [[Time Cops|Deep Time]] isn't exactly the best off, either: one member spent spare weekends going back in time to kill Hitler, then back again to stop himself from killing Hitler. Another spends forty years on dead-end research, then tells a third agent to stop him from wasting his life on the matter. In yet another case, accidentally blowing up a planet causes an entire Deep Time spaceship to spontaneously fall apart.

*** At one point, people in the present protect themselves against attackers from the future by identifying the future guys' ancestors, and making sure they're on all the ships that the future guys are attacking.

* Naturally enough, the animated series of ''[[Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure]]'' often courted this trope. One obvious example is the episode in which Bill and Ted neglect to buy Bill's father an antique railroad watch as a birthday present, to replace the one he lost as a child. Ted's initial plan is actually perfectly sound: [[Stable Time Loop|take the original watch from Bill's father when he 'loses' it in the past, then give it to him in the present.]] This plan fails however, so they travel even further back in time to obtain the watch ''before'' Bill's father inherits it. Of course, this should mean that [[Temporal Paradox|Bill's father wouldn't miss the watch in the first place]], but the episode [[Bellisario's Maxim|simply ignores this.]]

* In ''[[Invader Zim]]'', an entire episode (Bad Bad Rubber Piggy) has one scene that demonstrates this perfectly: After GIR finds out that Zim intends to send a robot back to the past to destroy Dib, it leads to this classic line of dialogue:

* ''[[Superfriends]]''. In the ''Challenge'' episode, "Secret Origins Of The Super Friends," the Legion of Doom tries to change history by messing with the origins with Superman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern. Okay, but seeing as how much of Super Friends is based on Pre-''[[Crisis on Infinite Earths]]'' lore and hence Luthor's baldness and [[Start of Darkness]] were both accidently caused by Superman when he was Superboy, how can Luthor-- and as its founder, the Legion of Doom itself--exist if Superboy was never there to cause what happened to Luthor? Likewise, given his origins even Pre-Crisis involved someone copying Superman, how does Bizarro continue to exist as well?

** Ah, everyone know time travelers are [[A Wizard Did It|surrounded by a temporal bubble]] that prevents them from being affected by their own alterations in the timesteam. The real question is: if the Legion of Doom could see through time to spy on the "secret origins" of the heroes, how do they not know the entire Justice League's secret identities?

* Another [[Sandra Bullock]] film, ''Premonition'', [[Playing with a Trope|mixes this trope]] with [[You Can't Fight Fate]]: {{spoiler|Linda's attempts to prevent her husband's death cause it, but she does get pregnant before he dies, and prevents herself from going crazy and getting committed,}} which she could not have done had she not had the premonitions of the future.

* Referenced in ''[[Déjà Vu (film)|Deja Vu]]'' by agent Carlin right before they send a note back in time:

'''Carlin:''' Yeah, then I recognize my own hand writing and the universe explodes. }}

* [[The Terminator|Fathering the guy who will send you back in time]] counts, too.

* ''[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0498567/ Summer Time Machine Blues]'' is a Japanese film that starts with a group of high school students on a hot summer day stumbling upon a time machine and using it to prevent the remote control for their air conditioner from fizzling out due to a spilled coke can. ''[[Hilarity Ensues]]''.

* An Object Loop gets [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in ''[[Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home]]'' when Kirk pawns his reading glasses in 20th Century San Fransisco.

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

** [[Fridge Logic|Thinking about that a bit more]] suggests the possibility that said glasses were switched out somewhere between selling them to the pawn shop and giving them to Kirk, so the loop wouldn't be closed. It's not like there were no cataclysmic events like [[World War III]] in between.

** {{spoiler|Captain Flowers dying from a heart attack in his sleep?}} He died from the heart medicine Church gave him to prevent that.

** The tank's AI named Sheila?

'''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.

* French-Canadian movie based from a cult tv show ''Dans une galaxie près de chez vous 2'' featured a spatio-dimensional rip (shaped like a zipper) who goes to present Earth. The Capitain was able to chuck down a DVD with their plea ([[Green Aesop|NOT to destroy the ozone layer]]) recorded on it. It backfired when the video got featured on ''[[YouTube]]'' and ridiculed as "[[wikipedia:Star Wars Kid|Star Wars Twit]]" (Being bad at pronounciation dosen't help). Nevertheless, it might have pushed a younger version of the Capitain to go into space, directly ''and'' indirectly setting the events of the show into place.

* ''[[Austin Powers]]: The Spy Who Shagged Me'' shows Austin briefly attempting to reason why no time paradox has occurred due to he and Dr. Evil time traveling to a date where they logically shouldn't be. Basil Exposition puts his mind at ease

Austin (also facing audience) "Yes" }}

* The reason the universe is ending in ''Star Crossed'' is because of all the various paradoxes created by the Federation, from [[Star Trek|Jim Kirk]] to [[Star Trek: Voyager|Captain Janeway]].

* In the ''[[Star Trek]]'' [[Trek Verse|universe]], time travelers (and the writers) are generally immune to the effects of changes they make to the timeline, and can therefore find themselves in an [[Alternate Universe]] where they should not exist (as in "The City on the Edge of Forever" ([[Star Trek: The Original Series|TOS]]), "Yesterday's Enterprise" ([[Star Trek: The Next Generation|TNG]]), or "Cold Front" ([[Star Trek: Enterprise|Enterprise]])).

* ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'' has an episode with Chief Miles O'Brien going forward in time a few hours and then, when he feels he's about to die, sends his future self in the past to take his place and prevent the disaster.

** One way this could work is that the original Present Miles was from and the Past he goes to have become [[Alternate Universe|Alternate Universes]]. The "first" universe, what was called the Present, Miles would never return to. However, the show just continues in the changed Past universe.

** And in ""Trials and Tribbleations":

'''Lucsly''': We hate those. }}

** Narrowly averted in the episodes "Past Tense I & II", where-in Sisko successfully impersonates a historical figure after the man is killed (saving Sisko's life no less) before he can make the [[Heroic Sacrifice]] for which history remembers him. That Sisko bears an uncanny resemblance to historical record of the man's appearance becomes something of a [[Brick Joke]] in later episodes.

* ''[[Jak and Daxter|Jak 2]]'': Try to keep up: [[Wrench Wench]] Keira found a "rift rider" (basically a time machine) just lying around (just go with it). So everyone gets in, flies to the future and land in a dystopian city. Keira and her father get away, but Jak is captured and the rift rider is destroyed. 2 years passes. The game starts. When you meet up with her again, she's working on another time machine, trying to recreate the one they found from memory. During the game, they meet up with a kid who looks a lot like Jak. At the end of the game, Keira finishes the rift rider so they can go home. But they have to take the kid with them who turns out to be {{spoiler|a young Jak. It turns out he was born in the future}}. So they have to take him on the rift rider back to the past so he can {{spoiler|be raised and come back to the future}} and fulfil his destiny, because it turns out that the rift rider Keira built from memory wasn't a replica, but the very same one they found in the past. So they have to go to the past to drop off the rift rider, so past Keira can find it and then go through the rift back to the present and [[Austin Powers|Oh no, I've gone cross-eyed]].

** Daxter sums it up for us.

'''Daxter:''' Honey, the more you think about it, the more it hurts the head! }}

* ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 (video game)|Sonic the Hedgehog 2006]]'' is [[Angrish|bnuh guh nyuh gubuh buh... blark...]] [[Mind Screw|ARGH]]! Thank God for the {{spoiler|[[Reset Button]].}}