Timey-Wimey Ball: Difference between revisions

Line 2:

[[File:Time_Yarn3_3310.jpg|frame]]

{{quote|''"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually -- from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint -- it's more like a big ball of [[Buffy-Speak|wibbly-wobbly]]... [[Trope Namer|timey-wimey]]... [[Metaphorgotten|stuff]]."''|'''The Tenth Doctor''', ''[[Doctor Who]]'', "[[Doctor Who~~/NS~~/Recap/S3 E10 Blink|Blink]]"}}

{{quote|''"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually -- from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint -- it's more like a big ball of [[Buffy-Speak|wibbly-wobbly]]... [[Trope Namer|timey-wimey]]... [[Metaphorgotten|stuff]]."''|'''The Tenth Doctor''', ''[[Doctor Who]]'', "[[Doctor Who/Recap/NS/S3/E10 Blink|Blink]]"}}

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]], 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.]]

Of course, sometimes they aren't. The Timey-Wimey Ball is the result of a series or movie where the writers are a wee bit confused or forgetful about exactly ''which'' kind of time travel can happen, sometimes within the span of one episode! One day [[You Can't Fight Fate]] (or at least not without the [[Butterfly of Doom]] coming along), but the next you can [[Screw Destiny]] and [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong]] by [[Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act|killing Hitler]] and changing the past for the better. Especially headachy because there's no [[Temporal Paradox]], or if there is it's totally arbitrary.

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...

Line 24:

* ''[[Natsu no Arashi]]!'' enjoys playing foosball with its Timey-Wimey Ball as characters jump back and forth across the hours, leading to a series of [[Stable Time Loop|Stable Time Loops]].

* When time travel is introduced to ''[[Dragonball Z]]'' it is assumed that Trunks travel backward from his [[Bad Future]] and warning the heroes about the Androids means that they will be able to defeat them and change his own timeline. Eventually, he travels back again, and finds that things are not playing out as they did in his own history. This is further complicated by the appearance of Cell, who travelled back from a timeline in which Trunks disabled the Androids before being killed by Cell and having his time capsule stolen. Trunks eventually concludes that nothing that happens in one timeline has any bearing whatsoever on another (meaning that killing the fetal Cell in the "present" won't retroactively destroy the Cell they are fighting, and there is a third Cell waiting for him back in his own timeline, which won't be affected by the Androids being stopped in the "present").

* The Manga [[Doraemon]] explains that changes in the past can still result in the present outcome. The analogue given was that there are many routes to get from point A to point B in time, and the journey through each routes are different, but yet still results in the traveller getting to point B in the end. So it is possible to get to the same outcome, even if the events played out differently.

Line 68:

* ''[[The Butterfly Effect]]'' has the events of roughly half of Evan's blackouts caused by his older self [[Mental Time Travel|going back to them]], while the other half were normal initially, but could be changed by his older self. One blackout even has examples of both. Also, it is established early on that Evan is the only who has any memory of the old timelines, but at one point another character notices a change in the timeline for no apparent reason.

* ''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?

* In ''Femme Fatale''... y'know what, screw it. You watch it and tell me what the hell that movie was about. {{spoiler|Was it [[Time Travel]]? [[Or Was It a Dream?]]?}}

* ''[[Frequency]]'' is one big [[Timey-Wimey Ball]]. You've got the son talking to the dad on the same ham radio, and even the whole "changes happen in sync with each other deal" mentioned in the ''[[Kamen Rider Den-O]]'' note above.

Line 76:

** And let's not forget the dog in the past timeline who responded to the name given to it in the future timeline.

* The movie ''[[Lost in Space]]'' contains a plot where the father walks into the future by an energy field just to find his son creating that energy field as a result to build a machine to travel into the past, because the entire family was wiped out as a result of the father disappearing by walking into the future...

* The [[Time Travel]] in ''[[Meet the Robinsons]]''. At first it is altered by the fact that {{spoiler|Doris}} went back in time and turned to the future into a {{spoiler|apocalyptic [[Bad Future]] where everybody is under the control of bowler hats}}. Lewis goes back in time and alters it, by announcing to {{spoiler|Doris that he will never invent her, killing her in the process so she doesn't get the chance to launch her plan.}} By the end of it all, it may or may not be a [[Stable Time Loop]]. A couple coincidences happen at the very end, {{spoiler|he meets his future adoptive parents, he says the name they give him, and he meets his future wife}}. However, it might be that {{spoiler|his parents would've given him that name anyway, and he might have ended up falling in love with the frog woman regardless of the fact he might know he marries her in the future. Also, his memory machine would've worked the first time around if the Bowler Hat Guy hadn't sabotaged it}}. So, it's open to interpretation, most people would choose the one that makes sense, but some don't, for some reason.

** {{spoiler|Observant viewers will also note that no one mentions that the time machine stolen by Bowler Hat Guy was left behind in the present.}}

* Each ''[[Terminator]]'' movie uses a different theory of [[Time Travel]], though it's at least consistent ''within'' each movie.

Line 87:

** On top of that, when Eon succeeds in implanting himself in the Omnitrix, he declares that "two cannot exist at once", disappearing into a different point in the time stream.

* [[Primer]] uses an [[wikipedia:File:Time Travel Method-2.svg|interesting]] time travel method that begins to make sense.

* The film version of ''A Sound of Thunder'' (if not [[A Sound of Thunder|the book]]) uses hilariously inconsistent rules of time travel (and those rules don't make much sense ''before'' they start breaking them). It's a crucial plot point that the characters keep returning to the exact same point in time, but never run into previous versions of themselves (no explanation for that is given) ... until the time they do (no explanation for that either). Plants smash through the walls of a building because the past was changed in such a way as to cause plants to grow larger and more aggressively (no explanation is given as to why someone decided to build the building in the spot where, in the new timeline, a giant tree has been growing for ages - not to mention why the tree that's always been there smashes through the floor while people watch instead of just appearing as it if had always been there). At one point, the characters are unable to travel back to the point in time they want to reach because there's a time disturbance between the present and their destination in the past; the solution? Travel back to an ''even earlier'' point and then go forward (if you guessed that no explanation is given as to why the time disturbance is somehow not blocking that too, you've been paying attention).

** There were explanations - that the changes come in waves, changing things in fits and starts, not all as a whole. As for having to travel further back, that's easy to explain. Think of it as trying to get into a house, but the front door has something pressed against it stopping you from opening it. What do you do? Go in through the back door and then walk through the house to the front door to remove the blockage. Simples!

Line 110:

** [[Word of God|sir Terry]] himself at one point explained that "There are ''no'' inconsistencies in the Discworld books; occasionally, however, there are alternate pasts."

* ''[[Animorphs]]'' made use of [[Time Travel]] occasionally, and each time it apparently worked differently. Though, perhaps in fairness, different techniques of [[Time Travel]] were involved, at least one of which was by use of a [[Time Machine|thingy]] created by the closest thing to a [[God]] in the series, and another (a [[Bad Future]]-esque thing) was just flat-out never explained.

** The bad future was apparently {{spoiler|a dream caused by an advanced being for some reason. Maybe.}}

* Dean Koontz averted some time travel issues in ''Lightning'' by virtue of having ''the Nazis'' invent time travel, the limitation being that it can only send you ''forward'' (and then you snap back to your point of origin when you make the return trip). While this has its own problems, it at least eliminates the ability to murder your mother before she gave birth to you. You cannot change your own past, but you can change the past of anyone born after you so long as the changes you try to make are not contradictory, and you can bring objects back. Played straight in that if a contradiction is demanded, the portal will refuse the forward transfer (this gets {{spoiler|the heroine killed}} in one timeline). "Destiny struggles to reassert the pattern that was meant to be." Sometimes happily, and sometimes not so happily, it succeeds.

* The ''Never Again'' series starts out simple enough. It seems to follow the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics so that time travelers can do anything they want, but will create a new timeline that never intersects with the old. Then comes the third book, where that is thrown out the window, and the author's attempts to explain what is happening (with a lot of [[Techno Babble]] about "intersecting universes" and the like) [[Voodoo Shark|just raises further questions]].

Line 116:

== Live Action TV ==

* ''[[Black Hole High]]'': "Fate": When Vaughn, having traveled back in time to meet his mother, steals her hairclip as a memento, [[For Want of a Nail|all of history is rewritten]] so that his parents never meet, his father becomes a familyless loser instead of creating the wormhole, and Professor Z doesn't get a scholarship from his company to go to college. Which is all well and good. What no one attempts to explain is why, in this new history, Josie never attended Blake Holsey High (Though later events suggest that her presence there may have been engineered to keep her close to the wormhole).

** To complicate matters further, it eventually turns out that both Vaughn's mother and Josie's father are [[Time Travel|time travelers]], so without Pearson's wormhole (the basis for [[Time Travel]]), Josie shouldn't exist either.

* ''[[Charmed]]'' has some rather interesting ideas of how time travel works:

** In one episode, Chris is taken 20 years into the future as a prisoner by a bunch of evil dudes. Before he leaves, he manages to slip in a comment about the "creaky floorboard". The witches take the hint and brew a potion for him to use as a weapon, which they hide under said floorboard. The camera goes back and forth, showing what is happening in the future (Chris facing the bad guys) and the present (the girls hurrying to finish the potion). It's strongly implied that, had they not gotten the potion ready in time (i.e. before Chris in the future is shown looking under the floorboard), Chris would have found nothing. In actual fact though, the girls could have relaxed and spent hours making the potion, it would still have been there 20 years into the future, provided it was never removed from under the floorboard at a later time. Speaking of which, I'm quite sure the writers assumed the potion would be gone after the episode, rather than continually being under that floorboard for the next 20 years.

** In another episode, a demon steals little 3-year-old Wyatt's magic powers. Next thing, 20-year-old Wyatt and his brother come time-travelling from the future, saying "We were fighting demons when Wyatt suddenly lost his powers, so we thought we'd come to the point in time where the change occurred and see what happened". This makes no sense in any form of time travel. If 3-year-old Wyatt lost his powers, then 4-year-old and 5-year-old Wyatt wouldn't have had any powers either, all the way up to 20-year-old Wyatt. It would make no sense for him to loose his powers only suddenly at the age of twenty. Not to mention, once they fixed the problem in the present, 20-year-old Wyatt should have never lost his powers in his time at all.

* ''[[Doctor Who]]'', again and again, to the point that they [[Trope Namer|named this trope]] in the course of [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshading]] it. Over the course of the show, nearly every theory of [[Time Travel]] has been used. How about "The Aztecs", where they explain that you can't really change history? Or "Day of the Daleks", where they find out the Daleks have conquered Earth in the future, and prevent it (using someone from the now-gone future, in fact)? Or in "Father's Day", where they create a [[Temporal Paradox]] and [[Clock Roaches]] start eating affected people? Let's not even get into all the [[Wayback Trip|Wayback Trips]]. Usually, the theory of [[Time Travel]] is consistent within a single story, but there are exceptions even to that. As the Doctor himself says, "I told you it was complicated." The trope name even comes from one of the Doctor's many attempts to try to explain why [[Time Travel]] didn't always seem to work the way it should.

** When the 10th and 5th Doctors meet up during a Children in Need Special "Time Crash" the 10th is in shocked disbelief to be seeing his former self, then goes on to use memories he picked up as the 5th meeting his future self to defuse the situation. When the illogic of this is brought up (not to mention the violation of multi-doctor meet up [[Canon]] established from the other 3 times this has happened), ''both'' Doctors mumble something about "Timey Wimey" and move on.

Line 128:

*** More about Fixed points in time in "Sarah Jane Adventures". Sarah Jane's parents dying is a fixed point in time because she has seen it, remembers it, and knows it happened. Changing that would be [[The End of the World as We Know It|bad]].

*** The Doctor tried to mess with a fixed point in "The Waters of Mars." [[Tear Jerker|It doesn't end well.]]

*** In "The Wedding of River Song" we finally get to see what happens if you alter a fixed point too much. All of time collapses, happening at once. You'll have Winston Churchill riding around on his personal mammoth while they discuss the political pressures caused by the War of the Roses, greet a Roman Centurion, and see a Silurian doctor for a check up. Only some people will be able to hang onto their memories of 'correct' time. If allowed to continue, time itself will break, causing the destruction of reality.

** The novels have an equally insane version, in which the 8th Doctor (infected by [[The Virus|Faction Paradox biodata]]) ends up interfering slightly in the life of the 3rd Doctor, [[Temporal Paradox|leading to him regenerating on the wrong planet and being infected by Faction Paradox biodata]]. Of course, [[Faction Paradox]] live and breathe this trope (as well as [[Temporal Paradox]]) at the best of times. It's their [[Planet of Hats|hat]].

** The [[Virgin New Adventures|New Adventures]] had the concept that Time itself was a sentient entity who consciously fixed various timeline hiccups resulting from time travel with the Doctor as her champion.

Line 137:

** 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.}}

** ''A Christmas Carol'' also features this heavily. {{spoiler|It starts with the Doctor showing a video Karzan made as a boy to the older him - and traveling back in time to when he made it, leaving Karzan watching a video of the Doctor interfering in his past as his own memories change to reflect that this had happened. It ends with the Doctor showing the [[Future Me Scares Me|younger Karzan the man he turns into]], leading to the older one having a change of heart partly brought on by realizing he's turned into his father, and partly by him being retroactively altered by the experience of being horrified at seeing his older self as a boy.}} ''Ow.'' It's implied this method is far from perfect, as {{spoiler|Karzan's own mind-reading controls no longer recognizes him, despite the fact that it should logically have been programmed for the Karzan that existed in the current timeline.}} I think it's that the Doctor {{spoiler|changed the boy as well as the man. Hypothetically, Boy Karzan went through all the stuff that Scrooge Karzan did, but had the additional factor of seeing Scrooge Karzan and never wanted to become like he was.}} Presto Change-O and immediate echoes into the future... {{spoiler|his brain waves change - creating a new Karzan who both experienced Abigail ''and'' Scrooge Karzan and ''also'' maybe even at one point of the new history we didn't see ''rejected his father'' (so no actual mind control for him was made .}} Who knows? It is a [[Timey-Wimey Ball]] after all

** 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~~/NS~~/Recap/S4 E8 Silence in ~~The~~ Library|Silence in the Library]]" and "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S32 E1 The Impossible Astronaut|The Impossible Astronaut]]," as well as the "spotter's guide" from "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S31 E04 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/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/Recap/S31 E13 The Big Bang|The Big Bang]]" despite seeming to know him already in "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S32 E1 The Impossible Astronaut|The Impossible Astronaut]]," which is ''earlier'' in her timeline.

** 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/Recap/NS/S4/E08 Silence in the Library|Silence in the Library]]" and "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S32/E01 The Impossible Astronaut|The Impossible Astronaut]]," as well as the "spotter's guide" from "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S31/E04 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/Recap/S32/E02 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/Recap/S31/E13 The Big Bang|The Big Bang]]" despite seeming to know him already in "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S32/E01 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.

** To add to the weirdness that is time-travel in ''[[Doctor Who]]'', look at its opinion on the Blinoctich Limitation Effect. In some cases it seems to suggest that [[Never the Selves Shall Meet]], lest they cause reality to shatter. Or maybe that's only if there's another paradox nearby. Sometimes it causes memory loss if the two touch, like what happened to [[The Brigadier]]. Maybe the same object touching will just cause sparks. Or maybe nothing will happen at all except flirting. It's just whatever happens to work for the plot.

*** Father's Day summed it up pretty well. Pete Tyler being alive created a paradox, and anything else would make it worse. So yeah, interacting with one's past self makes sparks, and a paradox fills the air with gas fumes(sort of. Not really at all, but if that helps just think of it like that).

** [[Sarcasm Mode|And just because the DW section for this trope needs to be larger,]] used extensively in the episode "The Girl Who Waited". The TARDIS crew happens upon the 'Two Streams' health centre. They take people who have contracted fatal illnesses, and place them in the 'fast' stream, symbolised by a red water-fall. They can live their whole life and age normally in only a day. Meanwhile, their loved ones are in the slow stream, symbolised by a green anchor, and can watch their lover/family/friend have a fruitful life. Unfortunately, it all goes wrong when {{spoiler|Amy gets trapped in the fast stream. Eventually Rory manages to break in to save her, but 39 years have passed, leaving his wife old and bitter. He can jump back in time to save younger Amy, but can only do so with older!Amy's help. Except she doesn't want to be re-written and stop existing. Eventually they decide to save both of them by breaking the laws of causality; at the last minute the Doctor reveals this is actually a paradox and leaves Old!Amy behind to die.}}

* ''[[Dark Shadows (TV series)|Dark Shadows]]'':

Line 150:

* ''[[The Girl From Tomorrow]]'' has a very large one: Tulista travels back through time and retrieves Silverthorn. Taking him out of the timeline should screw with the future, but doesn't, thanks to one very [[Delayed Ripple Effect]]. Silverthorn then takes Alana back to 1990, and their presence in the timeline again fails to interfere with the future properly. It's only after Alana takes them both back to the year 3000 that people begin to notice the [[Delayed Ripple Effect]], despite the fact that if anything, it should have interfered with two time periods. They then attempt to resolve this by returning Silverthorn and Jenny to their respective time periods, only to have the capsule somehow U-turn and return to 2500, meaning there are (briefly) duplicates of Alana and Lorien. This is further compounded when Silverthorn builds a [[Portal to the Past]] to get some nuclear bombs. {{spoiler|This is only resolved when Petey resets the Portal to send Silverthorn and Draco to 70,000,000 BC.}}

** Given what Petey says at the end of the series and the events during Tomorrow's End, it looks {{spoiler|like the entire series is actually a [[Stable Time Loop]]}}

* ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'' can't decide if they are going for Static Time Travelling or a Dynamic Time Travelling. And that's the least problematic thing.

** Strangely, it seems the farther into the future they see, the more pliable time becomes. For example, if Hiro tries to fix something close to the present, for example, saving Charlie's life, or capturing Usutsu, it's impossible. Can't change it no matter how hard they try. However, the apocalyptic future they inevitably go to in every single season so far, they always find a way to avert that. Well, usually, that seems to be changing for season three, and even before that, some things were constant across all the alternate futures. Peter's scar, and Hiro being [[Badass]] with a sword.

*** Listen carefully, this is both [[Fridge Logic]] ''and'' [[Awesome but Practical]]; in the Heroes-verse, time has '''[[wikipedia:Torsion (mechanics)|torsion!]]''' This means that one can [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong]] only with "leverage"; only the passage of sufficient time permits time to be altered, thus preventing [[Seers]] and [[Time Travel]] from being a [[Deus Ex Machina]]!

*** The Charlie issue was kind of resolved in a "she's already dying" way rather than "time travel won't let me save her" way; this is more or less repeated with his father in the next season (only "it's his time" this time, instead of the already dying thing). As for the random jumps through time... he spends the rest of the season learning to control his ability; it turns out he just needed to get back the self-confidence which he had lost since he realized he couldn't save Charlie. The time jumps are a bit convenient, and that Hiro's explanation makes no sense doesn't help. Not to mention that nothing else they've done with time travel has made any sense. They don't even try to be consistent, it seems. Very comic booky... which is probably the point. Still makes for bad headaches, point or no.

*** However, The Heroes novel '''Saving Charlie''' took the opposite tactic, implying that Time/God wouldn't let Hiro save Charlie because [[You Can't Fight Fate]]. Over the course of the story, Hiro lost control of his powers several times in the past while he was trying to romance Charlie and wound up "jumping" to key locations relating to his quest to save Claire Bennet. Eventually, Charlie figures out what is going on, tells Hiro he must face his destiny even if it doesn't involve her and the two lose their virginity together the evening before Charlie goes into work, meets Hiro for the first time and then gets killed by Sylar.

*** 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.

Line 184:

** ''[[Star Trek (film)|Star Trek]]'' is even more disturbing: since it erased the later series from continuity, every time cast from the later series travelled back in time is a huge paradox on its own. Mostly ''First Contact'', since if Enterprise is still [[Canon]], its events ''have'' happened, which is quite a [[Mind Screw]]...

*** [[Word of God]] has it that instead of erasing the later series, it just split off a new timeline, so that the later series still happened in the original timeline but have not in the new timeline. Either way, Enterprise is still canon.

*** Alternately, the events of ''[[Star Trek: First Contact|Star Trek First Contact]]'' created an alternate universe in which Enterprise (and possibly ''[[Star Trek (film)|Star Trek]]'' as well) occur, but the later series all occur only in the prime timeline. For the earlier series however, [[Canon Discontinuity|Enterprise never happened.]]

*** The problem with that interpretation is that the 2063 events from ''First Contact'' are established as taking place in the prime timeline (Seven mentions the Borg being present during the flight of the ''Phoenix'' in "Year of Hell".)

* While each ''[[Terminator]]'' movie managed to be internally consistent, ''[[The Sarah Connor Chronicles]]'' combined the continuities of the first two movies and then added some of its own time travel plotlines. Predictably, it's getting a little weird. The episode "Complications" is particularly troublesome. It introduces a new stable time loop and strongly implies that Derek and Jesse don't come from the same version of the future.

Line 191:

** As revealed in the finale, all time travel is monitored by [[God]] to create the best possible timeline and presumably keeps Leapers and good people from being erased by paradox and such.

* ''[[Timeslip]]'', a 1970s British series, presented a form of time travel where the past, not "really" being able to "happen again" is "fixed" -- by which we mean that you can interact with the people there, but not alter events, and can be hurt, but not "seriously". In the first serial, a time traveler is ''shot dead'', and collapses, unconscious, leaving blood, but ''no wound''. She wakes up, but still feels the pain of having been shot. We get the first minute of a muddled explanation about it being a sort of shared hallucination before it's dismissed as too complicated to explain.

* Many descriptions of [[Sapphire and Steel]] imply it's a [[Time Police]] show. Instead, it uses time travel - and the rules thereto - like a [[Cop Show]] uses criminal procedure: arbitrarily.

* ''[[Seven Days]]''. It is a rather harsh ground here, since the time machine is alien technology that was badly fixed by humans and due to possibly some screw up (or just plot convenience) it has all kinds of weird side effects. Anyway, when it works like it is supposed to do, it sends you back seven days and your old self and the time machine vanish, either erasing the 'bad' timeline or creating an alternate. It is consistent in that (And yes, people notice the machine and him vanishing, the episodes are just mostly centered on Parker and until he makes his call they don't know what happened.)

** There was an episode where an accident during time travel splits Parker into a good and an [[Evil Twin|evil version]]. The good version is killed, so the evil version is sent back in time ''again'', creating another ''good'' version.

* ''[[Red Dwarf]]''. Just about any time travel episode, but most especially the Season 6 cliffhanger in which the Dwarfers' [[Future Me Scares Me|scary future selves]] blow up Starbug, apparently killing everyone on board. Season 7 opens with Lister explaining direct to camera that, because they'd been killed, their future selves never existed to come back, therefore they hadn't been killed, and this is also why Starbug is suddenly bigger. The intelligent video camera suffers a <s>nervous</s> [[Explosive Instrumentation|explosive]] breakdown trying to understand this.

** And later in that same episode, The Boys From the Dwarf violate the same laws that allowed them to survive after they take [[John F. Kennedy]] back in time to assassinate his past self!

** In "Future Echoes", Rimmer tries to explain Timey Wimey to Lister:

{{quote|'''Lister:''' Hey, it hasn't happened, has it? It has "will have going to have happened" happened, but it hasn't actually ''happened'' happened yet, [[Funetik Aksent|hactually.]]<br />

'''Rimmer:''' Poppycock! [[Time Travel Tense Trouble|It will be happened; it shall be going to be happening; it will be was an event that could will have been taken place in the future.]] Simple as that. Your bucket's been kicked, baby. }}

* ''[[Smallville]]'' had a situation in the episode "Homecoming" that was similar to the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' "Time Crash" short mentioned above; Clark, briefly stuck seven years or so into the future courtesy of Brainiac 5, slips into the Daily Planet's elevator, where [[My Future Self and Me|his older self is waiting for him.]] Older Clark orders younger Clark to go to the Planet building's roof to prevent Lois' helicopter from crashing while he(the older Clark) prevents a nuclear reactor from melting down as Superman. When younger Clark asks his older self how he knew to wait for him, older Clark simply answers, "Time travel. Work it through." He knew because he had lived the same situation seven years ago.

* ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'': "In The Beginning," established that while time travelers can make small changes, they will ultimately lead to the same result because destiny cannot be changed. This is ultimately proven true when Dean's attempt to protect his family from the Yellow-Eyed Demon ends up causing his mother to make the deal with him that eventually kills her. "My Heart Will Go On" blatantly contradicts this by having an angel go back in time and stop the Titanic from ever sinking, preventing anyone on board from dying and leading to hundreds of their descendents who originally never existed appearing in the present. "Frontierland" circles back to no major changes, but it's a little unclear whether Sam and Dean's actions are a [[Stable Time Loop]] or [[You Already Changed the Past]].

Line 246:

* ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 (video game)|Sonic the Hedgehog 2006]]''. Shadow's story depends on a [[You Already Changed the Past]] [[Stable Time Loop]] (Mephiles breaking out of the Scepter of Darkness in the present is the direct cause of Shadow traveling to the past and [[Sealed Evil in a Can|sealing Mephiles in the first place]]). [[Meanwhile in the Future]], Sonic directly contradicts this by traveling from the [[Bad Future]] to the present and successfully [[Setting Right What Once Went Wrong]] (by preventing the death that was a direct cause of the Bad Future). And due to his interactions with both Shadow and Sonic, Silver's story uses ''both'' sets of time-travel rules, depending on the scene. If there hadn't been a [[Reset Button Ending]], the [[Temporal Paradox|temporal paradoxes]] probably would have caused the whole plot to erase itself anyway.

* A Timey Wimey Ball in the good ending of ''[[Shadow Hearts]]: Covenant'' sends the main character back to the beggining of the first game with the implication that both of the first game's endings are canon. It also {{spoiler|sent Karin back in time to meet Yuri's father and become Yuri's mother.}}

** Some people believe that the proper play-through is first game: bad ending, second game: good ending, first game: good ending. It helps if you prefer the many-worlds explanation of time travel. This has a benefit of {{spoiler|explaining Anne's Cross.}} Yes, it {{spoiler|goes through a time loop}}, but it's only a single (open-ended) one. Others wonder why {{spoiler|Anne's Cross}} doesn't get more battered with every loop, apparently thinking there's a stable time loop going on.

* 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.

Line 271:

* Trying to track the [[Ret-Gone|timeline changes]] in ''[[Misfile]]'' may lead to you repeating this trope name [[Madness Mantra|over and over and over again]]. Just [[Take Our Word for It]].

* ''[[Narbonic]]'' features an extended time-travel subplot which establishes that it is difficult, but not impossible, to change your own history. Physical time-travel takes all the energy that exists in the Universe {{spoiler|or, as it turns out, in some other universe that's just out of luck}}, but it's possible to transfer your consciousness back or forward in time into your own body, and you can undergo changes as a result of altered behavior. For instance, Dave never smoked. At several points, the question of paradoxes comes up, and it is immediately dismissed by pointing out that thinking about it could cause it to happen, so it's better not to.

** The same storyline provides an example of inconsistent time travel effects within a single sub-plot. Dave didn't cease to have ever smoked until after the time travel; however, {{spoiler|Caliban's demotion}}, though also caused by the time travel, was established backstory before the time travel occured.

* ''[[Minions At Work]]:'' [http://www.minionsatwork.com/2009/02/minions-152-working-overtime.html Pretend it never happened].

* There don't seem to be any concrete rules to ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' [[Time Travel]]. Possibly [[Justified Trope|justified]] by the presence of beings like Father Time, Uncle Time, and the Fate Spiders who have an interest in making sure time runs smoothly and/or in a [[Rule of Fun|fun]] way.

** In a more recent strip, Old-Riff says that [[Time Travel]] follows the branching timeline rules, and therefore you can't change the past, you're just abandoning the [[Bad Future]] in favor of a different universe. But really, the way it works, this revelation doesn't actually contradict anything, since from the characters' perspective, they would have no way of knowing.

* Time travel in [[Irregular Webcomic]] at first ''appears'' to work in a [[Stable Time Loop]] fashion, but then it's revealed that {{spoiler|It's possible to "break" a [[Stable Time Loop]], an action capable of ''destroying the entire universe.'' [[Oh Crap|Several time loops have already been broken]].}}

** And now {{spoiler|Every universe, save the "espionage" theme universe, has been destroyed. They got better.}}

Line 286:

** However, [[Magic A Is Magic A]] applies heavily and every form of time travel is internally consistent. The problem arises when there are at least ''four'' different forms of time travel, and possibly even more, all of which abide different rules

*** 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~~/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.

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

* Done [[So Bad It's Good|hilariously badly]] in the abandoned indy RPG ''[[Zybourne Clock]]'':

{{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.}}

Line 298:

** Since the "Yellow Church" claimed his plan to solve the Sidewinder crisis "seemed like such a good idea at the time", it could be safe to speculate Sister/Yellow Church is there due to a further loop leading back to Sidewinder.

** The series later attempts to explain all this earlier time-travel nonsense during the "Recollections" trilogy of seasons by {{spoiler|explaining that the Red and Blue soldiers are actually simulation troopers meant to test Freelancer troops against a myriad of mad situations and everything they were subjected to in Blood Gulch was in fact a controlled situation they weren't meant to understand.}}

* The ''[[Terminator]]'' variety is spoofed in the ''[[Atop the Fourth Wall]]'', where time travel doesn't work on pants.

Line 317:

*** [[Flat What|What?]]

* Time travel in ''[[The Fairly Odd Parents]]'' is... confusing. The first time [[Time Travel]] is used as a plot device, and in most subsequent appearances, history is very malleable and can easily be changed... with serious consequences. However, the episode "The Secret Origin of Denzel Crocker" appears to utilize a straight [[Stable Time Loop]]... however {{spoiler|Timmy's time traveling, in addition to causing Crocker to lose his fairies as a kid, also gave him a much more sophisticated fairy-tracker which he didn't originally have as an adult}}, meaning that {{spoiler|Crocker must have lost his fairies}} a slightly different way the "first time around". However, in a much later episode when Timmy wishes he were never born, ''a la'' ''[[It's a Wonderful Life]]'', Jorgen reveals that Crocker's childhood would never have been ruined had Timmy never existed, which means that there ''was'' no "first time around" <ref>if there were, one would expect that Timmy negating his own existence would have undone all his changes to the past and history would be restored to the way it originally proceeded, sans Timmy of course</ref>. In other words, the writers wanted to use both [[Stable Time Loop|Stable Time Loops]] and [[Temporal Paradox|Temporal Paradoxes]] at the same time, resulting in a confusing mess.

** The problem with the "Crocker wouldn't have become obsessed with Fairies" outcome rings hollow when, watching the Secret Origin episode again, the viewer sees that Cosmo was the one who wound up getting Crocker's childhood screwed up...

*** Then again, if Timmy wasn't present to wish what had caused Crocker such misery, Cosmo likely wouldn't have had the opportunity to travel back in time and screw up Crocker's childhood.

** The first time they time-travel also brings up a lot of questions. The Time Scooter and Laser Eyes still frequently make an appearance whenever Timmy needs wishes that he never unwished. But that entire episode contradicts everything else, such as Cosmo and Wanda being Bill Gates's Godparents (at the time, they should have been Crocker's parents) and the appearance of Timmy's Dad. Depending on the version, Mr Turner either met Dinkleberg when they were children, or didn't even know about the couple until they moved next door.

* ''[[Time Squad]]'', for a show ''about'' [[Time Police]], has some of the worst time travel logic ever. The premise itself of how the past "unravels" as time moves on would make [[Doctor Who|The Doctor]] tear his hair out.

* ''[[The Penguins of Madagascar]]'' has Kowalski try to stop two paradoxes that he created at the same time. While it's eventually resolved with a stable time loop, the second/third Kowalski couldn't have existed without having it's own paradox. It's... confusing. And the paradoxes effect time is only a few hours.

Line 331:

*** I'm pretty sure the closed loop trick only works inside the black hole.

**** If only! The Gödel metric manages to have closed timelike loops in a universe that has ''no singularities'' and is even topologically ''simply connected''. No, I cannot visualize that either.

* [http://reason.com/blog/2009/10/14/they-say-you-cant-fight-the-fu The Higgs-Boson, according to some people.]

* [[wikipedia:Git (software)|Git]]. Git is a version control system. Like all version control systems, Git allows you to store files in time: essentially, taking a snapshot of a directory at a particular point and allowing you to roll back to it. Like any VCS, it can store many such snapshots. And, as with many VCS schemes, you can go backwards in time and start a new branch of changes relative to that particular time. With most VCS schemes, history can be branched, and created, but never modified or destroyed. Not so in Git, which allows you to go back in time and ''change'' what used to be there, rewriting past changes. What happens in the future, when changes have been made based on those previous changes? You get the Timey Whimey Ball in your ''source code'', and now have to go through and figure out how to undo the horror you may have created.

** Fortunately, Git preserves even changes to history (perhaps in a form of [[San Dimas Time]]), so you can revert your edits to history.