Timey-Wimey Ball: Difference between revisions

* In [[My Immortal]], the main character Ebony travels back in time to teach a young Voldemort about love. But when she does, the plot really starts to get strange. A few examples are that characters in the past know what will happen in the present, that items will not work in time-periods where its not invented yet and that people can't die outside their native time-period.

* In ''[[Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality]]'', the time turners are used much more frequently, which leads to this when two or more are involved. Dumbledore and Snape have to resort to charts.

** This is actually an inversion, or something. The writer doesn't appear to be confused about what kind of time travel is possible, rather, he works very hard to make sure that it follows consistent rules. And the characters know about these rules. But trying to work out the logical implications of these rules results in confused characters and confused readers.

* Used to great effect in ''[[The 10 Doctors (Fanfic)|The 10 Doctors]]''. It's even mentioned by name as to how all ten Doctors can be in one place at the same time.

* 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...}}

* In [[Terry Pratchett]]'s ''[[Discworld]]'' novels, the History Monks are originally presented in ''[[Discworld/Small Gods|Small Gods]]'' as ensuring everything happens [[Because Destiny Says So|the way it's supposed to]] (although, even then, the monk Lu-Tze decides to [[Screw Destiny]]). In ''[[Discworld/Thief of Time|Thief of Time]]'', it's revealed that, following various alterations to the Disc's temporal dimensions, the "true history" barely exists, and their main job is to prevent the [[Timey-Wimey Ball]] from imploding. And in ''[[Discworld/Night Watch|Night Watch]]'', when Vimes travels thirty years into the past to become [[My Own Grampa|his own mentor]], even the monks aren't sure what's happening.

** 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.

** [[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."

** In the "Waters of Mars" special the 10th Doctor explicitly states that there are fixed points in history which cannot be changed. Those points in history greatly effect the future and allow for time to follow a more or less consistent path. Anything he does to try and change history will simply cause the event to occur regardless. Even the Daleks are shown to respect this. The Doctor, feeling frisky, tries to alter one. Events remind him even a Time Lord has limits.

** In "The End of Time" the Doctor attempted to explain a Time Lock to Wilfred.

** 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.}}

** 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:

'''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.

* 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.

* [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.

** In the main continuity of the series, it gets worse when {{spoiler|Future!Dave}} starts incorporating [[Time Travel]] shenanigans. And even ''[[Time Master|he]]'' doesn't understand all the mechanisms behind it, his advice to the other characters (and the audience) is just basically [[Bellisario's Maxim|"Don't overthink it."]]

'''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. }}

** 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

** 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.

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

* 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]].

* This is probably gonna be the only way to understand the whole time traveling bit in ''[[Sonichu]]''. To wit, [[Author Avatar]] Chris is launched into the future where he is able to help those in the future [[Cure Your Gays|make the vaccine for homosexuality]] ([[Did Not Do the Research|even if that's not how it works]]) before being able to convince his future wife Lovely Weather he is is future self (despite the fact that he'd be ten or so years older) and do the nasty. He comes back, gives Magi-Chan Sonichu a Sonichu Ball and tells him to go back and get some of the vaccine to bring back to the past so they can cure everyone years earlier. And while he does talk to the past version of Lovely Weather, there's the case of the vaccine - if he brought the vaccine back from the past to cure everyone, why would there be a need for it in the future and oh, going crosseyed.

* In the double-episode "Two futures" of ''[[Captain Planet and the Planeteers]]'', Wheeler uses a time pool to go back and prevent himself from receiving the fire ring. This results in a [[Crapsack World|crapsack future]] because the Planeteers never became a team and saved the environment (though why they [[Fridge Logic|didn't just find another guy to accept it]] is never explained). He then goes back and prevents himself from preventing himself from getting the ring. Then they both escape into the time pool again and merge for some reason. Never understood that bit, myself. To make sure the viewers knew things were restored to normal, a scene from the utopian future is shown at the very end.

* The ''[[Kim Possible]]'' movie ''A Sitch in Time'' begins with Kim and Ron splitting up, [[Chickification|causing Kim to become worthless in fighting evil]] thus the [[Super Villain|Supervillains]] got hold of the Time Monkey, that [[The Dragon|Shego]] eventually stole and created a [[Bad Future]] with her as the ruler. But in the end, it's revealed that Shego was the one that caused Kim and Ron to split up in the first place. So basically, Shego only got the Time Monkey because Kim and Ron split up, but Kim and Ron split up because Shego used the Time Monkey...

* 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]]."

* [http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/81893/february-07-2007/tek-jansen---from-the-future This] episode of ''Tek Jansen'', a series of shorts originally created for [[Stephen Colbert]]'s show, illustrates how bad (or ''[[So Bad It's Good|awesome]]'') this trope can get.