Timey-Wimey Ball: Difference between revisions

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Excepting [[The Slow Path|mundane travel from the past to the future at a rate of one second per second]]<ref>For all you physics buffs out there, yes, this does imply that [[Time Travel]] is unitless.</ref>, no human has ever experienced [[Time Travel]] first hand. Indeed, we don't know if it's even possible<ref>Albert Einstein's mathematics show it is achievable by [[Time Dilation]] through accelerating to high speeds, but only towards the future and without a way back. We also know that gravity slows down time, meaning that you if you are in space your one second per second would be negligibly faster than on earth. Possibly exempting astronauts who, having been whirling around the earth at high speeds, have travelled a few seconds or minutes into the future depending on how long they have been in space.</ref>. So debating [[Our Time Travel Is Different|which time travel]] [[Temporal Mutability|theory is right]] is much like trying to find the best flavor of Kool-Aid. Fans [[Bellisario's Maxim|are aware and accepting of this]], just like no one minds when [[Our Monsters Are Different|our monsters are different]], or two different series have [[Functional Magic|different rules for magic,]] so long as the series' [[Magic A Is Magic A|own internal rules are consistent.]]

 

 

The standard [[Hand Wave]], if one is given, is that time is very complicated, and the particulars of the situation affect how the rules apply in ways that a layperson wouldn't understand. Which is one of the ''many'' reasons why some people absolutely ''frickin' '''HATE''''' time travel...

 

'''Warning: High chance of spoilers.'''

 

== Anime and Manga ==

== Comic Books ==

* In the 1980s Marvel ''[[Transformers]]'' comic, one can alter the past to suit the present. However, there is also the possibility that one travels to a different universe that is simply the same as your own. So thus, any attempt to travel back in time to, say, {{spoiler|build a giant cannon to destroy the dark god who created you when he turns his attention to Earth in order to free yourself from his control as Galvatron tried to}}, can potentially end in failure as it is not your own universe. {{spoiler|As it turned out, it WAS Galvatron's own universe.}}

* [[The Legion of Super Heroes]]. Let's start with [[Continuity Snarl|there's three of them.]]

* An issue of [[The Flash|Impulse]] had a mad scientist invent a time machine, and attempt to change the past so that he would rule the world. Impulse and Max Mercury go back in time to stop him, but wind up stuck in the far distant past. Max lectures Bart on the [[Butterfly of Doom]], and how even eating a fish might cause irreparable harm to the future. But then they discover that the mad scientist is now trapped in the past as well. The three of them decide that the best way to get home is ''to cause as much damage and destruction as possible''. Their [[Insane Troll Logic|logic]] is that if they completely change the past, it will alter the future so much that the scientist will never exist, which means he will never invent his time machine, which means they won't have travelled to the past in the first place, which means they won't actually cause any damage at all and find themselves back home. Confused?

* Say the word "Kang" to a fan of ''[[The Avengers]]'' and they'll often shudder. His time-travel schemes are so complex that his future self, Immortus, is another major Avengers enemy, and the two can often be seen fighting each other. To give a sense of scale: most Marvel Handbook profiles are one to three pages long except for major characters like Spider-Man, Iron Man or Wolverine. Kang's gets ''six pages'', and the bottom half of each page is devoted to Kang's timeline, which is chronological in years but requires jumping around from page to page to get Kang's chronological story.

* Limbo in the Marvel Universe (mainly shows up in association with ''[[X Men]]'') is an entire ''dimension'' of timey-wimeyness. When the X-Men entered and got separated, both Wolverine and Colossus encountered long-dead versions of each other, and managed to escape just fine in the end.

* ''Deja Vu'' starts out well enough, but implies that the detective has already gone back in time and failed. What's more, {{spoiler|the ending finishes without a [[Stable Time Loop]] of any kind, so either the changes made will reset or they've created one alternate timeline where everything is hunky dory and one where everyone's dead.}}

** In the original timeline, the love interest dies, and the hero's blood is all over her apartment. So apparently, in the original timeline, he went back and failed. But then in the new timeline, he gets his wounds saving the love interest. He doesn't bleed all over the love interest's place until after he saves her. So how did there end up being blood in the original timeline, but the love interests dies?

** Not to mention that the first time John changes history and saves his father, he suddenly has memories of both timelines, which is promptly dropped for the rest of the film as from then on he only has memories of how things originally happened.

** In ''Johnny and the Bomb'' Pratchett explains that most time travellers forget the original timeline when they return to the new one because of the human tendency to accept what's around them as normal; but if you really try (or are reminded of it by some useful clue) you can remember how things used to be.

* [[Harry Harrison]]'s ''[[The Stainless Steel Rat]] Saves the World'' features two overlapping timelines (one of which only has a temporary existence) ''and'' a loop. The lead character travels back in time to stop the Special Corps being removed from history, and manages to disrupt the enemy's plan. He then follows them further back in time, landing in an alternate history where Napoleon conquered Britain. He messes up the controls on the enemy time machine, and (after being rescued shortly before the alternate history disappears) follows them forward (but still long before his own time). He finds the villains (after a ''long'' time for them -- so long they've forgotten everything except that he's the Enemy), but is unable to stop them; they travel back in time, and he's only saved by a time machine -- allowing him to return to his own time -- which he then sends back with the instructions for what he just did. {{spoiler|Finally, he's told not to worry that he didn't stop the villains; they've just travelled to the first place he met them, where they will then travel back and create an alternate history where Napoleon conquered Britain, before...}}

* In ''A Tale Of Time City'' by [[Diana Wynne Jones]], the titular city exists outside of the flow of history on the rest of the world. From this vantage point, the citizens see that history works like weather patterns -- it shifts back and forth with minute details thanks to the butterfly effect and time loops. Basically, a more detailed explanation of the Timey Wimey Ball, where shifts in the time travel theories are explained away as the changing "weather patterns" of time. For instance, on one day in Time City the inhabitants may observe that [[World War II]] begins in 1939, but on another day they may notice that it has changed to 1938. Perhaps time in the book is two-dimensional, with Time City time orthogonal to time everywhere else. {{spoiler|Except it turns out that the history of Time City can shift back and forth too...}}

{{quote| '''Lu-Tze:''' For a perfectly logical chain of reasons, Vimes ended back in time even ''looking'' rather like Keel! Eyepatch ''and'' scar! Is that [[Theory of Narrative Causality|Narrative Causality]], or [[Stable Time Loop|Historical Imperative]], or Just Plain Weird?}}

** Which is why if you try to place the times and events of some books, they take place a couple years before a different book, and at the same time, hundreds of years before the IMMEDIATE SEQUEL of that different book.

** The [[Trope Namer|Trope Naming]] episode, ''Blink'', actually involves a mostly-internally-consistent [[Stable Time Loop]]. It's the show as a ''whole'' that fulfills the trope by being inconsistent.

** The whole of ''The Big Bang'' is built on this trope {{spoiler|-- The Doctor saving the day and escaping from the Pandorica is built on an ontological paradox -- he shows up already escaped to enlist Auton!Rory in effecting his escape.}} The Doctor even explains that this would normally cause drastic side effects for the universe, but luckily {{spoiler|the universe had already been destroyed.}}

** River Song. Her encounters with the Doctor are not synchronized at all, and it's not even clear how events follow in canon. The journal checking seen in "[[Doctor Who (TV)/NS/Recap/S4 E8 Silence in The Library|Silence in the Library]]" and "[[Doctor Who (TV)/Recap/S32 E1 The Impossible Astronaut|The Impossible Astronaut]]," as well as the "spotter's guide" from "[[Doctor Who (TV)/Recap/S31 E4 The Time of Angels|The Time of Angels]]" seem to indicate that she meets the Doctor in a random order, but when River's [[Time Travel Tense Trouble|past/future]] with the Doctor is brought up in Series 6, it's implied that they're traveling in practically reverse order - the {{spoiler|kiss}} at the end of "[[Doctor Who (TV)/Recap/S32 E2 Day of the Moon|Day of the Moon]]" is implied to be River's last ''because'' it is the Doctor's first. Despite the fact they clearly ''aren't'' meeting in reverse order since the Doctor meets her {{spoiler|months after she was born}} four times after he 'first' meets her. And she doesn't recognize Rory in "[[Doctor Who (TV)/Recap/S31 E13 The Big Bang|The Big Bang]]" despite seeming to know him already in "[[Doctor Who (TV)/Recap/S32 E1 The Impossible Astronaut|The Impossible Astronaut]]," which is ''earlier'' in her timeline.

*** Simple enough: Their meetings are mostly random, and any given time the two meet up may be synchronized, but -overall- they're moving in opposite directions.

*** THEN HE SAVED CHARLIE. No, really. Seasons later, Hiro goes back in time, and gets none other than Sylar (the ''season one'' Sylar who'd ''never'' toyed with the idea of a [[Heel Face Turn]]) to repair Charlie's aneurysm telekinetically ''and'' leave her brains on the inside in exchange for non-[[Time Crash]]-inducing information about his own future. However, she's kidnapped by the [[Big Bad]] of ''that'' season, and Hiro doesn't see her again until she's an old woman who's lived a happy life that Hiro wasn't going to undo so he could have her. Still, it was pretty awesome to see Hiro turn "[[You Can't Fight Fate]]" into "[[Screw Destiny|Up yours, fate]]!"

* ''[[Kamen Rider Den-O]]'' spikes the Timey-Wimey Ball like no other: when an [[Monster of the Week|Imagin]] wreaks havoc in the past, it's translated into the present oddly. For example, if you were standing next to a bridge support, and an Imagin went to last year and broke it, you would see it vanish into thin air ''now.'' (As opposed to, say, remembering that time a year ago when they had to fix the bridge 'cause a monster trashed it. But since it was trashed in the past, it had to have been rebuilt at some point, right? Apparently, when an Imagin breaks something, the fix's [[No Ontological Inertia|Ontological Inertia]] fails [[San Dimas Time|shortly after the time the Imagin went back]].) Now ''that's'' the Timey-Wimey Ball at its wibbly-wobbliest.

** At one point, {{spoiler|Ryotarou's memory rebuilding the ''entire timeline'' after his sister and her husband deliberately break it in order to force their unborn daughter out of the timeline (long story). But wait, what about when Yuuto disappeared and Hana stated that Ryotarou's memory wouldn't be enough to bring him back because Ryotarou didn't know him as a young teen? Then... what about all the people Ryotarou didn't know or remember in the ''present'' time? What happened to them?!}}

** In the crossover movie "[[Kamen Rider OOO|OOO]], Den-O, All Riders: Let's Go Kamen Riders" An elaborate [[Temporal Paradox]] was revealed when we learned Naoki is {{spoiler|Mitsuru's father}}. They didn't even try to explain it. This is a paradox because Naoki was {{spoiler|stranded in the past after time had already been changed. The version of 1973 that led to the 2010 ''we'' know did ''not'' have Naoki in it. Therefore, Mitsuru}} ''should not exist'' in the 2010 we know.

*** The original ''[[Kamen Rider (TV)|Kamen Rider]]'' has two friends of Goro's by the names of... {{spoiler|Naoki and Mitsuru}}. We meet them in the latter third of the series. Whether ''Let's Go Kamen Riders'' is trying to say that they {{spoiler|are the same ones and we didn't know they were time travellers}} is hard to tell, but if that's what it means, it's certainly interesting. However, this adds another level to the timey-wimey: a 1973 with ''Let's Go Kamen Riders'' having happened led to the ''[[Kamen Rider]]'' universe proceeding in the manner we saw in the older shows, even though the whole movie is that the Den-Liner gang's trip leads to a [[Bad Future]] which {{spoiler|got a happy ending in the present, but can't ever be erased.}}

*** The whole thing gets kind of [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]], when two versions of O'Brien try to figure out the paradoxes and give it up, simultaneously saying, "I ''hate'' temporal mechanics!"

** The enormous effect the resulting lack of religion would have on Bajor would have been good or Bajor. No Cardassian invasion, no holocaust. Alternate Bareil says his Bajor has no religion. Alt-Bajor is a high ranking member of the Empire.

** The Sphere Builders ''misled'' the Xindi into believing that humanity destroyed ”or rather, ''will destroy''” the new Xindi homeworld, because the Sphere Builders knew that, in the 26th Century, the Federation (which by then will include the Xindi) will decisively defeat the Sphere Builders at Procyon V.

* ''[[Star Trek Voyager (TV)|Star Trek Voyager]]'' has shown that in the 29th century, [[The Federation]] has become a sort of [[Time Police]], making sure no one messes with history. The fact that the previous (chronologically) series have never had a problem with timecops showing up is not addressed. They were even admonished that they ought to have been held to account before. Not to mention, if they did, [[Mind Screw|we'd never know about it]]...<ref>Mind you, if 29th century [[The Federation]] were to start messing with events that happened in their past, that would itself create a time paradox, and thus their own rules prohibit them from policing any temporal incursions that occurred prior to their becoming the [[Time Police]].</ref>

*** And even worse, the guy's future self was only mentally unstable ''because'' said [[Time Police]] had ''already'' "somehow combined" him with yet another version from an alternate timeline, who had been stranded for decades as a homeless guy on 20th century Earth. One would think they'd get the hint that "combining" people from different timelines is a bad idea...

** [[Deep Space Nine|Deep Space Nine's]] Sisko and his companions are visited by the Department of Temporal Investigations in ''Trials and Tribble-ations''. The agents mention that they have an extensive file on captain James T. Kirk. They also hate [[Predestination Paradox|Predestination Paradoxes]] and jokes.

** ''[[Star Trek Voyager (TV)|Star Trek Voyager]]'' also had one of the most illogical time travel plots. They're passing a planet and detect a massive explosion. They investigate the planet and find no life. Janeway and Paris are transported back to before the explosion. It turns out that Voyager's attempts to reclaim them caused the explosion. They stop trying which pushes the [[Reset Button]] and they pass the planet without incident. The entire episode ignores that they never intended to go to the planet in the first place, so the whole thing never should have gotten started, since there never would have been an explosion to cause them to investigate.

*** They didn't just stop trying; Janeway stopped their attempt by firing her phaser into the time-portal technobabble thingy. [[Percussive Maintenance|So time reverted to normal]]. Or something.

*** A quote from Jonathan Frakes re: ''Yesterday's Enterprise'': "To this day I do not understand ''Yesterday's Enterprise''. I do not know what the fuck happened in that episode. I'm still trying to understand it ... but I liked the look."

*** This one isn't all that hard as far as paradoxes go. During the Battle of Khitomer, the Enterprise-C made a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] against the Romulans attacking the Klingon outpost. This selfless act by a Federation ship on behalf of the Klingon Empire eventually led to a peace treaty between the Klingons and the Federation. However, during the battle, a massive explosion caused a [[Negative Space Wedgie]] to form, sending the Enterprise-C to the present. But without the Enterprise-C's presence at the battle, the peace treaty would have never formed, so once the Enterprise-C arrives in the present, the present almost immediately becomes a [[Bad Future]] where the Federation and Klingon Empire have been at war for decades. The Enterprise-D helps repair the -C enough to send it back through so it can be destroyed as it should have. But Tasha Yar, who in the [[Bad Future]] survived when she died in the "normal" timeline, volunteers to go back with the -C after being told by Guinan that she would not live when things go back to normal. So the Enterprise-C goes back to the Battle of Khitomer and is destroyed, but the results of the battle are changed just enough that captives are taken by the Romulans, including Tasha. So all in all, a bit more difficult to follow, but not all that hard to understand.

* Completely [[Averted Trope|averted]] in the upcoming indie RTS ''[[Achron]]''. The time travel is completely consistent, despite the game handing the players tools to: change the rate time flows around them, give orders to units in the past, ''send'' units into the past using time travel, and create [[Grandfather Paradox|time paradoxes]]... in competitive multiplayer. Bonus points for the system still managing to be fairly easy to learn.

* While ''[[Chrono Trigger (Video Game)|Chrono Trigger]]'' was generally consistent about how its time travel worked, there were a few odd instances. Like how Marle [[Temporal Paradox|paradoxed]] herself out of existence, despite time travelers not being directly affected by any other changes they'd made during the game. For instance, you can save Lucca's mom, but Lucca still remembers when she was crippled instead of having all her memories changed. Or when the future Robo came from was ''erased from existence'' without affecting him.

*** This also means that it is possible to beat the [[Bonus Dungeon|optional dungeon]] at the end of the game 3 times. However, if you start by beating the earliest version of it the newer versions will also be empty.

** According to the staff members, they never quite got a consistent set of rules down for time travel until they had already written themselves into a corner, so they just went with what they had.

** ''[[The Legend of Zelda Oracle Games (Video Game)|Oracle Of Ages]]'' has [[Stable Time Loop|Stable Time Loops]] ''and'' [[Temporal Paradox|Temporal Paradoxes]], to say nothing of things like the Black Tower, which grows in the present while being built in the past.

{{quote|''In four games, the precise nature of time has never remained constant. ''Ocarina of Time'' contains at least two very different mechanics, which theorists often find irreconcilable (and downright strange). ''Ages'' mechanics only begin to make sense when one sacrifices logic to storyline completely, and ''Majora's Mask'' Goddess of Time takes the whole thing to hell by drawing questions of omnipotence into the debate.|'''The Internet''', Trying to solve the mess that is the Zelda Timeline.}}

* ''[[Mario and Luigi Partners In Time (Video Game)|Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time]]''. This was [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] at one point, where doing something in the past gives E. Gadd an idea in the present, and he notes how paradoxical it is.

* ''Original War.''

* The recent ''[[Prince of Persia]]'' trilogy is one massive example of timey-wimey craziness. At the end of ''The Sands of Time'', the Prince {{spoiler|entirely reverses the events that just took place, making it so the events of the first game don't happen}}. This creates a paradox, and in ''Warrior Within'' the Prince is being chased by the Dahaka, a timeline guardian who is trying to ensure that the timeline proceeds as it was meant to. The Prince inadvertently creates a [[Stable Time Loop]] when he {{spoiler|kills Kaileena and creates the Sands of Time, the very thing that he was traveling back in time to prevent.}} Then, he discovers a way to co-exist with himself in the same timeline, which he uses until {{spoiler|his normal self in the past timeline is killed, allowing him to remove the Mask of the Wraith.}} At the end of the second game, {{spoiler|he has killed the Dahaka and successfully prevented the Sands of Time from ever being created}}, causing another disruption of the true timeline. In ''The Two Thrones'', the Prince discovers that his paradoxical actions in Sands of Time mean that the Vizier was never killed and war has been unleashed on his homeland. The Vizier {{spoiler|captures and kills Kaileena, once again unleashing the Sands of Time and effectively repeating the events of the first game in a different setting}}. The Prince eventually {{spoiler|kills the Vizier seals away the Sands again}} and seems to have learned from a all his futile time-travel, as he leaves the end of the game be with no further meddling.

** The opening line of the game:

* Episode 204 of ''[[Sam and Max]]'', Chariot of the Dogs, focuses on Time Travel. Within it, several stable time loops are created, including one that is required for getting Sam and Max to the time machine in the first place and another that comes into play in episode 205. However, as if completely ignoring the idea of stable time loops, much of the puzzle solving revolves around completely altering the time stream just so that you can fix a problem created by Max's personality the moment you start time travelling. One section even has Sam and Max accidentally letting themselves from the first season take their time machine, effectively rewriting everything the player had done in the past year, AFTER a needed macguffin to advance the plot was taken out of the time stream.

** But then, this is Sam and Max, and it stands to reason that any time travel plot WILL bring in to play every time travel concept as fast as it can for the parody, since it only has a few hours before the episode is over.

* The activation of the god-golem Numidium in the conclusion of ''The [[Elder Scrolls]] 2: Daggerfall'' allowed for several mutually-exclusive [[Multiple Endings|endings]]. The story-writers decided the simplest answer to this situation was for ''all'' of them to be true; the lore-writers followed suit. Cue the Dragonbreak, a moment in history where the Numidium's activation was so powerful it ''broke time''. Time followed every possible path the player could follow, each time ending with Numidium's destruction... and then time snapped back together and every event became part of the new reality.

** This has resulted in interesting paradoxes, including the existence of both the Worm God and Worm King, when they are both Mannimarco and should only be one or the other.

** ''[[Dragon Quest VII]]'' takes it [[Up to Eleven]] by centering the entire game around traveling to different times and places in order to restore the world... Good luck with keeping the different time lines straight.

* ''[[Apollo Justice Ace Attorney]]'' manages the difficult trick of pulling this off in a game that ''doesn't feature time travel.'' {{spoiler|In the last episode, Phoenix's investigation as shown would not be possible unless he could actually travel through time, rather than being able to select different times just being a tool for the convenience of the Jury. He uses evidence he gathers in the present in the past, as well as evidence he gathers later in the same portion of the timeline in earlier incidents.}}

*** [[Running Gag|And now]] apparently the timeline is too broken to go back pre-1933 (specifically the date of the Reichstag Fire). Complete with a link to this very article.

* [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003151 This page] of the Midnight Crew intermission in [[Homestuck]] typifies the response. Though most of the time travel shenanigans seem ''fairly'' self-consistent, it's still hella complex.

{{quote|'''Dave:''' see the thing with time travel is<br />

'''Dave:''' you cant overthink it<br />

'''Dave:''' you just got to roll with it and see what happens<br />

'''Dave:''' and above all try not to do anything retarded|'''[http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003504 John:]''' i'm just the timey-wimey messenger here. }}

*** Heroes of Time have two options. Either A) They change destiny and cause a branch timeline, or B) [[You Already Changed the Past]]. They naturally have some intuition about what changes cause what. Time magic practiced by the Felt is more loose, and can be used for pretty much any form of [[Time Travel]]. And then there's the weird stuff, like the Furthest Ring distorting space and time, potentially causing someone to meet their past selves by traveling in a straight line and Skaian portals.

** The Doctor's [[Doctor Who (TV)/NS/Recap/S3 E10 Blink|Trope Naming]] soundbite is used in [http://homestuck.bandcamp.com/track/arisen-anew Arisen Anew] from the Alternia Bound album.

{{quote| [[Memetic Mutation|Imagine four balls on the edge of a cliff.]] Say a direct copy of the ball nearest the cliff is sent to the back of the line of balls and takes the place of the first ball. The formerly first ball becomes the second, the second becomes the third, and the fourth falls off the cliff. Time works the same way.}}

* The characters of ''[[Melonpool]]'' handled time travel pretty responsibly the first two times. After they disable a mechanism that forbade them from being able to interact with things they had already done, including their past selves who ''were the time travelers'', the whole affair became a convoluted mess and every new revelation had to be resolved by [[Department of Redundancy Department|going back in time to stop themselves from going back in time to stop themselves from going back in time]]. The moral of the story is: don't mess with time travel or your [[Earthshattering Kaboom|universe will implode]].

{{quote| ''"Time travel, it's a cornucopia of disturbing concepts."''}}

* The plot of a ''[[Pinky and The Brain]]'' episode, in which the mice try to obtain a "World Domination Kit" from the future. It doesn't even ''try'' to make sense, but suffice to say it ended with the lab full of hundreds of Pinkys and Brains, and the ending tune changed to "They're Pinkys, they're Pinkys and the Brain Brain Brain Brain Brain Brain Brain [[Overly Long Gag|Brain Brain Brain]]."

** A short summary for all the non-Americans who can't see the video: {{spoiler|The Prince and his three attendants, one of whom is named Schlorb, crash land on a planet. Tek Jansen arrives (and to clarify arrives means appear out of nowhere with a time machine) from the future to protect them. Then a second Tek Jansen arrives from further in the future and shoots the first Tek Jansen. Tek explains that in five minutes the first Tek would have eaten a couple of berserker berries, gone insane, and attacked them. He then eats the berries and goes insane. A third Tek Jansen arrives from sometime and shoots the second Tek. He says that Schlorb explained everything to him, but does not remember when. A fourth Tek arrives from the future and sends the third Tek into the past because Schlorb has an important message for him. A fifth Tek accidentally arrives naked with some lady on top of a console. The fourth Tek leaves (and to clarify leaves means disappear with the time machine) with them. A sixth Tek walks on screen with two clean shirts and does not recognize the Prince or his attendants. A seventh Tek arrives and shoots the sixth Tek because one of the shirts had too much starch in it. The seventh Tek is then eaten by a slime monster. An eighth Tek arrives in some sort of armor and asks if he was eaten by the slime monster yet. The kids say yes and Tek leaves frustrated. [[Overly Long Gag|A ninth Tek arrives and says that he is pretty sure that he needs to take Schlorb into the past, and proceeds to do so. A battered tenth Tek arrives and warns the kids to stay out of caves, then leaves. An eleventh Tek arrives and says he knows of a great cave that they can camp out in. A twelfth Tek arrives, shoot the eleventh Tek, hands the group an egg beater, tells them to hand it to the next Tek that appears, and leaves. The Prince points out that this is pretty fucked up. A thirteenth Tek arrives fighting a giant egg. Tek grabs the egg beater and leaves, still fighting the egg. A fourteenth Tek arrives and explains that all this time travel has opened a chrono-rift in the space-time continuum. He is going to go fix it, but he wants the kids to do exactly what the next Tek tells them to. He leaves. But then a large group of Teks arrive all pointing in different direction. They proceed to fight each other, and the episode ends on a cliffhanger]]. This all happens in two minutes.}} You got all that?

* In ''[[Transformers Armada]]'', after {{spoiler|Thrust shoots Starscream with the [[BFG|Requiem Blaster]],}} we see a shot of Rad as an eight year old waking up in his parents' car and asking tiredly where the Mini-Cons are (implying his "present" mind was momentarily in his past body). Then cut to all the kids - possibly in an alternate future - being told by a slowly dying Hot Shot that the Transformers have all been eaten by Unicron because they didn't know that {{spoiler|the Mini-Cons were servants of Unicron}} and were led to their doom. After this, cut to the kids now being at the moment of the Mini-Cons' creation millions of years ago {{spoiler|1=inside Unicron. Rad then touches High Wire's hand and frees him (and by assocation all the other Mini-Cons) from Unicron's control by reminding them of their past/future happiness together.}} The Mini-Cons then know to go to Earth after they leave Cybertron to meet Rad and the other humans. Cut back to the humans returning mere moments before {{spoiler|Thrust shoots Starscream, whereupon High Wire and his teammates [[Combining Mecha|combine into Perceptor]] and knocks the gun away, causing Thrust to miss Starscream completely.}} And none of this is EVER EXPLAINED.