Time Travel: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''Time travel is theoretically impossible, but I wouldn't want to give it up as a plot gimmick.''|'''[[Isaac Asimov]]'''}}

 

 

A time travel story can simply use time travel as a vehicle to get the hero to the [[Adventure Towns]], or the [[Phlebotinum]] involved can be a key plot driver. No matter what story type the hero is going to need a [[Time Machine]] or [[Time Master]] to get around. Time Travel stories seem to fall into several categories:

# [[Alternate Timeline]]: The characters time-travel has split their universe in twain. There's the universe they're in (that's they've "changed") and the universe they're not in. (the "old" universe that wasn't changed.)

 

 

Time travel is also a very large source of [[Mind Screw]]s. This is because the human mind is used to one-way time; cause and effect requires it. In two-way time, the entire human logic system has to be thrown out.

See also [[Temporal Mutability]] for the very tricky problem of how (or even if) you can change the future or the past.

 

 

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* In ''[[Universal War One]]'', scientists build a space station that accidentally opens a wormhole, allowing limited time travel. {{spoiler|Then Kalish solves the equations that allow anybody to travel through time and space without limitation.}}

 

=== Film ===

 

=== [[Literature]] ===

 

=== [[Live Action Television]] ===

 

=== [[Tabletop Games]] ===

* In the card game ''[[Chrononauts]]'', the players are time travelers from various alternate futures, and are trying to change the timeline to match their own timeline's version of the "past" so that they can finally go home. Since all the alternate futures have conflicting versions of "history," and many of those conflicting versions require a specific outcome to World War II (Hitler was assassinated early and [[WW 2]] was Japan vs. America, Hitler lived and D-Day failed so that Germany won [[WW 2]], and a couple other variants), [[Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act]] gets a real workout. There's an alternate victory condition in which players have to collect certain combinations of [[MacGuffin|Mac Guffins]] of questionable historical importance, but that's for material gain, not timeline shenanigans. A third victory condition is to get hired by the local [[Time Police]] after fixing enough of other people's paradoxes.

* [[Continuum]] is a [[Tabletop RPG]] '''entirely''' about Time Travel. Read its page for the details; further information is not available here.

* ''[[Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle]]'' later turns out to have used this, having hidden it among a bushel of jaunts to alternate universes, or "countries". One "country" turned out to be the main characters' homeland in the past. {{spoiler|And our world, or one much like it, in the future}}.

* ''[[Pokémon 4Ever|Pokémon 4 Ever]]'' features a Celebi that inadvertently brings {{spoiler|the young Professor Oak}} with it to the present day when escaping from a hunter.

* In ''[[Mirai Nikki]]'', its use is so incredibly spoileriffic details can't be given. Let's just say it's important. {{spoiler|[[Yandere|Yuno Gassai]] abuses THIS.}}

* In ''[[Puella Magi Madoka Magica]]'', this turns out to be the main power of {{spoiler|Homura. The entire series is the nth iteration of a time loop that started when Kyubey granted Homura's wish for the chance to save an already-dead Madoka.}}

 

 

* ''[[PS238]]'', especially the later issues. Includes several confusing [[Stable Time Loop|stable time loops]]

* ''[[Booster Gold]]'' is the current Time Travel comic at DC, exploring the difficulties of [[You Can't Fight Fate|solidified time]] and the effects of the various crises on the time line, making it like [[Screw Destiny|"Wet Cement".]]

* Prior to [[Post-Crisis|1985]] [[Superman]] could time travel under his own power but would arrive in the past completely invisible and intangible, unable to interact with the past in any way, avoiding the problems with this trope. After 1985, he was no longer powerful enough to time travel at all.

** Not quite. He would be invisible and intangible only if he travelled to a period where he already existed, since he couldn't be in two places at the same, er, time. If he travelled to a time prior to his own birth, he was solid. However he still couldn't change the past.

 

=== [[Film]] ===

** In the 8th-century Japanese tale of [[wikipedia:Urashima Taro|Urashima Taro]]. Urashima Taro is a young fisherman who visits an undersea palace and stays there for three days. After returning home to his village, he finds himself three hundred years in the future, where he is long forgotten, his house in ruins, and his family long dead.

* The concept of travelling backward in time is relatively more recent. The idea was hinted at in Samuel Madden's ''Memoirs of the Twentieth Century'' (1733), and told more explicitly in Alexander Veltman's ''Predki Kalimerosa: Aleksandr Filippovich Makedonskii'' (1836).

* Zits in ''[[Flight (novel)|Flight]]'' time travels continuously by going into different bodies.

* ''[[Time and Again]]'', and its sequel ''Time After Time'' by Jack Finney.

** Which had more to do with the detrimental effects of dragon-based time-slipping: first, simply making the jump required traveling through the sensory-deprivation hell that is "between" for extended periods far beyond the quick three-breaths referenced in early stories, and second being in two places at once had ever-increasing mental effects on the travelers in question...effects that were decidedly unhinging to the travelers and intensified drastically the closer they were spatially to an earlier incarnation. Lessa's jump some four hundred years into the past very nearly killed her from apoxia, and the one recorded time that an earlier version actually caught sight of a later time-traveling one (for a split second, and even that only as a shadow moving in darkness) left the earlier incarnation almost completely physically and mentally incapacitated for a good fifteen minutes.

* ''[[A Tale of Time City]]'' by [[Diana Wynne Jones]]. Time City is "[[Place Beyond Time|outside]]" normal time, using recycled time (hence very important/emotional moments get burned in and are seen as time ghosts both before and after the event). Time is divided into unstable eras to be visited with great caution (ours obviously) and stable eras that they trade information with. However, they only sell information about the (relative) past, no stock market sneak previews.

** [[Oswald Bastable]] is also subject to this kind of involuntary shifting between alternate histories.

* [[Thursday Next]] features multiple versions of history within a single book, but only the reader and the (off-screen) timetravelers are aware of this fact.

* The ''[[Time Scout]]'' series is built around an Accident that caused [[Portal to the Past|time portals]] to open up between random times and places. The stories cluster around people who happen to go places for various reasons.

* [[Doomsday Book]], among other books by [[Connie Willis]], features time-travelling historians who visit the past via a "net".

 

=== [[Live Action Television]] ===

* ''[[Radiant Historia]]'' not only deals with time travel, but parallel universes caused by making different choices at certain points in time.

* Time Travel is used several times in the ''[[Command & Conquer: Red Alert]]'' series by various factions, trying to improve their fortunes (generally by removing key enemy figures, such as Hitler or Einstein). [[Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act|It never goes well]]; the first game kicks off when Hitler gets cut from history, leading to a WWII between the Allies and ''Stalin'', while in the third, the various time-travel shenanigans throughout the series have accidentally turned tiny backwater Japan into the Empire of the Rising Sun, a(nother) superpower bent on world domination. Hilariously, the Emperor believes in the "[[You Can't Fight Fate|inevitability of destiny]]", and has a serious [[Villainous Breakdown]] when he discovers the truth behind the Empire's existence.

 

 

** In ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy|The Restaurant at the End of the Universe]]'', Marvin the Paranoid Android is abandoned for most of the lifespan of the universe due to time travel. It is later stated that, due to his various time travel incidents, Marvin is several times older than the Universe itself.

* The novelization of the 1998 ''[[Merlin (TV miniseries)|Merlin]]'' series implies that Lancelot came from a place in the future, or in a possible future, and was brought from it to the time of Arthur, by Merlin, to act as the king's champion. When Merlin first arrives there, they seem to have heard of him, though they never bring up what the history of their land says about it all.

 

 

* In ''[[Genius: The Transgression]]'', time travel is possible, but it's almost never a good idea. There's an entire section devoted to time travel and results thereof.

* In ''[[Girls in Space]]'', whenever the girls find the Earth, it is a different time period. They have no control over which time period has appeared.

* ''[[All Over the House]]'' occasionally sees Emily and Tesrin venturing through time for fun.

* ''[[The Life of Nob T. Mouse]]'' has Memory Lane, an area of space that allows people to see the past as if it is playing out before them. It's used on occasion to jog peoples' memories.

=== [[Web Original]] ===

* The ''[[Global Guardians PBEM Universe]]'' features the Warlord, a [[Powered Armor]]-wearing villain from the future. He didn't like the way things were going in his time, so he came back to change them. Every story featuring him involves him trying to change some historical event to fit his own whims.

 

 

Mentioned in the end, since this series uses (and spoofs) ''every single trope'' listed above:

 

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Applied Phlebotinum]]

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]