Time Travel: Difference between revisions

## Includes cases of the [[Wayback Trip]].

# [[Temporal Paradox]]: ''Now'' it gets complicated...

## On the other hand, they may have set out to change history intentionally, so that the events that create their future/present -- and, thus, the conditions that prompted them to go back in time -- never happened, basically the same set up as above, but without the initial "accident."

## Characters go to the future! Upon returning to the past, they ''are'' able to fight fate and prevent the events of the future (seeing which prompted them to try to prevent the events of the future in the first place) from occurring.

No matter what the variation, if there's a scientist or scholar in the group, he'll be [[Reluctant Mad Scientist|giving warnings]] about the [[Temporal Paradox]] risk. And every trip risks an encounter with the [[Butterfly of Doom]] or accidentally leaving behind a [[Timeline-Altering MacGuffin]].

 

 

 

 

Even less sensibly time travel may run on [[San Dimas Time]] or display a [[Groundhog Day Loop]].

 

=== Film ===

* In the ''[[Terminator]]'' series, only organic things could be sent through time. No weapons or clothes or anything but the time traveller.

** Rather conveniently forgotten by T2. The only thing that allowed the original T-800 model 101 back through time was the fact it was a shell surrounded by living tissue. It was, to quote Kyle Reese, "something about the field generated by a '''living organism''''. Nothing dead will go." Therefore how exactly the T-1000 which was liquid ''metal'' managed to travel through is just, well, kinda unexplained.

** Dr. Irving Schlock {{spoiler|who is from the future (with Inflatable Technology)}}

** The Time Czar

 

 

* ''[[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.

* The ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh Tenth Anniversary Movie]]'' features Paradox, a time traveling villain who wishes to change the past, and Yusei goes through a time slip. During the course of the story, {{spoiler|both Judai and Yusei travel to Yugi's time, and at a certain point the Crimson Dragon takes Yugi 30 minutes back in time.}}

* 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.}}

 

=== [[Comics]] ===

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

* ''[[Justice Society of America|JSA]]'' has featured the modern Starman, a severe schizophrenic with powerful gravity controlling abilities. He claims, and it's probably true, that he is from a future Legion of Superheroes, future in terms of the Legion's comic too since he's an adult and the Legion in its comic is composed entirely of teenagers. Starman is also a dimensional traveler, who made his original appearance in [[Kingdom Come]] by helping Superman try and contain the villains and anti-heroes; apparently he can travel through time and the multiverse through a combination of his powers and a map that's written into his costume.

* 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.

 

 

* The concept of travelling forward in time can be found in several ancient stories:

** In the ancient Indian epic ''[[Mahabharata]]'', King Revaita travels to heaven to meet the creator Brahma and is shocked to learn that many ages have passed when he returns to Earth.

** 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).

** 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.

* The various protagonists of [[Michael Moorcock]]'s [[Jerry Cornelius]] stories time-travel more or less constantly - in fact with Jerry it's damn near involuntary.

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

* In the novel ''[[Rant]]'', {{spoiler|Rant uses a form of time travel to become his own stepfather.}}

* 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.

 

 

=== [[Video Games]] ===

* ''[[Achron]]'' takes the prime mention here - a [[Real Time Strategy]] game whose plot ''and gameplay'' are both mostly about time travel.

* ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]'' uses this in ''Wings of The Goddess'' to travel 20 years ago to the Crystal War, one of the largest wars in Vana'deil's history.

* ''[[Chrono Trigger]]''.

* The central plot of ''[[The Journeyman Project]]'' trilogy hinges on time travel, due to the existence of a government agency specifically created to prevent the alteration of history.

* ''[[Dark Cloud]] 2'' (a.k.a. ''Dark Chronicle''), both with objects the main characters carried and a flying, time travelling [[Cool Train]] that seems [[Galaxy Express 999|awfully]] [[Kamen Rider Den-O|familiar]].

* The ''[[Ecco the Dolphin]]'' series is all about time travel. The second game's plot even centres around the time travelling in the first game screwing up the time stream.

* ''[[Legacy of Kain]]'': big part of the plot. Especially in ''Defiance'' where point of view jumps between two protagonists in different eras, culminating in them both travelling to a same era to finally meet.

* The changing-the-past equivalent was used thrice in ''[[Ratchet and Clank]]: A Crack in Time'', the first time to save [[Cool Old Guy|Orvus]] from [[Big Bad|Dr. Nefarious]], the second to defend Zanifar from the Agorians, and the third to {{spoiler|prevent Azimuth from killing Ratchet.}} The main plot also centers around using the Great Clock to travel back to prevent larger incidents. In Nefarious' case, he wants to wrong all the rights in the universe. For Ratchet and Azimuth, it's going back to prevent the Lombaxes' banishment. {{spoiler|Either use would screw over the universe and all of reality, though.}}

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

* ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha As Portable]]: The Gears of Destiny'' features a Time Machine [[Lost Technology|Lost Logia]] discovered by a brilliant scientist who is trying to restore a dying world. The scientist, being the well-meaning and sane kind, decides not to use it since it for his purposes since that would cause too many complications to the timestream. Unfortunately, her daughter Kyrie, who doesn't want her aging father to die without succeeding in his life's project, decides to use it to retrieve an [[Applied Phlebotinum]] that only existed at one point of a specific timeline, kicking off the plot of the game.

 

=== [[Western Animation]] ===

* In [[Hanna-Barbera]]'s video series ''[[The Greatest Adventure Stories from the Bible]]'', three young adult archaeologists find a door that takes them back to Biblical times. (Good thing the portal has random entrances and exits scattered through time, allowing one to cover thousands of years of Biblical history in a few weeks.)

* ''[[Time Squad]]'' involves time travel in almost every episode, as its name implies.

* ''[[Meet the Robinsons]]''.

 

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

* ''[[Charmed]]'' had a central character who was from The [[Bad Future|Horrible Future]].

* ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' had several episodes involving time travel--"1969" when they travel back to said year due to Stargate mishaps, [[Groundhog Day Loop]] episode "Window of Opportunity", "2010" showing a possible future where everyone is sterilized, "It's Good To Be King" with prophecies from the Ancient time-travelling puddle jumper, season-8 finale "Moebius" involving the same jumper and a twisted [[Time Loop]] (to be expected given the name), and season 10 [[Grand Finale]] "Unending".

*** 1. Travelling through a wormhole that intersects with a solar flare causing the wormhole's course to alter sending the matter in transit back to the either the dialing Stargate, the destination Stargate or another Stargate altogether.

*** 2. Using a time machine built by the Ancients to either get an area of a galaxy stuck in an ever repeating loop, or a Puddle Jumper with a time machine component that can only jump in jumps of 100+

*** 3. Although not time travel persay, but, Asgard time dilation fields can be reversed to the time when the field was created.

* In season 2 of ''[[Roswell]]'', Max travels back in time after everyone but he and Liz dies, in order to persuade past-Liz to break up with past-Max and make him get together with Tess. It's very silly and involves mariachis.

* ''[[Babylon 5]]'' called upon time travel in a few key episodes.

* ''[[Lost]]'' hinted mildly at time disparity in season 2, flirted with time travel in season 3, and took the full plunge by the end of season 4.

* One of the missions in ''[[Osu Tatakae Ouendan]]'' involves being called by Cleopatra in Ancient Egypt to cheer on her helping her workers to build a Pyramid in 10 days so she can use its magic to get more beautiful and greet her lover Marc Antony properly.

** Likewise, in ''[[Elite Beat Agents]]'', one of the missions involve travelling back in time (by purpose) to Florence in the 15th Century, to help Leonardo Da Vinci win the heart of Mona Lisa and eventually create his masterpiece of painting.

*** Time travel also plays a substantial role in {{spoiler|the main story}}; among other things, {{spoiler|the finale take place ages before most of the characters were even born}}, and {{spoiler|Impa is escorting Zelda around the surface at the exact same time her older self is continuing to monitor the Imprisoned}}.

* ''[[Ultima II]]'': The main part of the game involves travelling between ''five'' time periods, [[The Dark Times|Legends (no time)]], [[One Million BC|Pangea (9,000,000 BC)]], 1423 BC, [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future|1990 AD]], [[After the End|the Aftermath (2112 AD)]]

* The current mega-arc of ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]'' has massive time travellings done by many many characters in many many themes. {{spoiler|This might be a [[Xanatos Roulette]] on the part of the author to resurrect himself and [[Screw Destiny]] after he got killed by himself in the future and becomes Death of Going Back in Time And Killing Yourself and is suppose to go back and kill himself to continue the [[Stable Time Loop]]}}. Also, Leonardo da Vinci is a time traveller, is British, and made deals with Deaths. Did I mention that [[Doctor Who|TARDIS]] also exist, and being used by the pirates and British navy crews (the latter owns it (?)), with the theme sets in 18th century? Yeah, it's that weird.

* 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.

* ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]''. [http://drmcninja.com/page.php?pageNum=12&issue=14 Time-traveling Thomas Jefferson.] I don't really need to say it.

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

** Of course our magnificent bastard villain, is still badass enough to still make his fortune using it.

* ''[[Justice League]]'' had quite a few time travel stories, including one entire season that involved parallel universes and a stable but horrifying time loop that would result in a civil war between the world's governments and the world's superheroes. {{spoiler|But it was all a [[Xanatos Gambit]] on the part of Brainiac-infected Luthor; the time travel stuff wasn't real, just a red herring.}}

** In "Melty", Lilo makes a fool of herself in front of her love interest, Keoni, and uses Jumba's time machine to go back to the past and change it. However, a side effect of the machine is that something (in a classic Ray Bradbury Butterfly effect) changes in each time line (which usually goes horribly bad). In the end, Lilo learnes a valuable [[Fantastic Aesop]] of literally not dwelling into the past.

** In "Skip", Lilo and Stitch capture an experiment that is able to travel ten years into the future. In the first ten year travel, a seventeen (and shall I say HOT!) Lilo finds out that she has missed out on seven years of her life. When she goes another ten years in the future, everyting is hell. The villain Hamsterviel has taken over the island and the planet, captured all the experiments, and has become king of the galactic federation. Lilo decides that she can't force herself to grow up too early and conventiantly sets the reset button on the experiment to go back to the present time. My personal opinion to this episode is: Why didn't Lilo and Stitch starve to death when all that time went by?

* In the world of ''[[Wakfu]]'', [[Time Travel]] is the only time related power the [[Time Master]] race of Xelors ''doesn't'' possess. The [[Big Bad]] has to go on a genocidal campaign that has lasted centuries to gather an absolutely massive amount of Wakfu and pump it into a powerful [[Amplifier Artifact]] to make a trip through time possible. {{spoiler|And he still only manages to go back ''twenty minutes''}}.

* The entire final season of ''[[The Smurfs]]'' was about time travel, coupled with [[Failure Is the Only Option]] as the Smurfs end up in one time period (and/or geographical location) after another.