Time travel and temporal anomalies can be messy and unpleasant . When fourth dimension starts getting out of whack , anything can happen . mass can be born over and over , run into themselves , relive the same day , or just screw up all their relationship . Here are all the room people get mat in their own timeline in science fiction .
Stable Time Loop, short
“ A piffling Something For Us Tempunauts ” ( several days )
In this classically - misanthropical Philip K. Dick storey , the whole cosmos gets get in a time loop , living the same few days over and over again .
Groundhog Day ( 24 hours )
Bill Murray ’s jerk - weatherman is condemned to repeat the same day over and over until he figures out exactly what he ’s guess to do in every state of affairs .
X - Files “ Monday ” ( 24 hour )
The world catch stuck in a Groundhog Day - way loop , with Scully and Mulder caught up in a coin bank robbery . Eventually the only individual who live they are all in a closed circuit convinces Mulder , and then finally he is able to make himself commend the loop and foil the bank robber .
Day Break ( 24 hours )
The premise of this unhappily short - dwell series is that Detective Brett Hopper has to relive the same day over and over until he figures out who ensnare him for murder .
Twilight Zone “ Shadow Play ” ( 24 hours )
A man is nab , tried , and executed on the same day . He knows he ’s trammel in a nightmare , but it continues to recapitulate , with the “ actors , ” i.e. judge , cellmates , etc . switching role the second time around . The root for X - Files Monday .
12:01 ( tv moving picture ) ( 24 hour )
This time , HR employee Barry is the only one who recognize that his agency is adhere in a “ time bounce , ” in this version for a whole day , thanks to some sinister experiments . Barry has to get to the bad cat in club to break off out .
Star Trek TNG “ Cause and Effect ” ( 12 60 minutes or so )
In this episode , the Enterprise gets caught in a “ temporal causality loop ” because of a place - sentence anomaly . The loop-the-loop ends in the Enterpise ’s destruction until Data figures out how to ship himself a message that will break the ship out of the cringle .
12:01 ( brusk film ) ( 1 hour )
Myron Castleman repeats the same 60 minutes over and over . He ’s unable to breach out even through suicide .
Source Code ( 8 minutes )
Colton Stevens dwell the same eight transactions over and over again in the torso of another homo , while he tries to keep a terrorist bombardment of Chicago
Doctor Who ( a few minutes , usually )
Time loops are a major fact of life on Doctor Who — but most notably , the Doctor puts everybody into a time loop to stop a major tragedy , in “ The Armageddon Factor . ” And the doc himself is caught in a “ continuing hysteresis ” in “ Meglos , ” stimulate Romana , K9 and him to relive the same moment over and over .
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Stable Time Loop, long
The First Fifteen life of Harry August ( variable life )
Harry Augustlives his whole life story over and over , return to infancy but remembering all his premature life . finally , he discovers that the end of the world is approaching , and he tries to stop it . With many “ Ourouborans , ” who double their lives over and over , the novel avoids paradoxes by describing the sentence loop as millenia long , with everyone living one life sentence per loop .
Life After Life ( a variable lifetime )
Ursula Todd also repeats her living along multiple timelines , and eventually begins to remember those repetitions . Although she begin in the same year , changing timelines leave in modify appointment of death . In her first incarnation , she become flat during her own birth .
Replay ( 25 year )
Jeff Winston die out of a heart tone-beginning in 1988 , but then wake up 25 twelvemonth earlier as his 18 - year - old self . He live his whole sprightliness over , but die out again of a heart blast . He repeat the loop , and he meets others experience the same phenomenon , but it gets humble and smaller each metre .
Timequake ( 10 years )
In this Kurt Vonnegut novel from 1997 , the total Earth lives the period 1991 - 2001 a second fourth dimension .
Meeting Yourself
The human race Who close up Himself
Daniel Eakins inherits a “ timebelt ” and uses it to interact with himself in unlike preferences and different clip . Let ’s just say that “ fold yourself ” is a euphemism for something else here .
Looper
Assassins for an unionized criminal offense family kill aim send from the future , until finally they must “ end the loop-the-loop ” and kill their own future selves .
“ By His Bootstraps ”
In this Heinlein short story , the main character , Bob , encounters multiple versions of himself as they pass through a “ prison term gate ” from the hereafter . Each time Bob stress to do something differently , he discovers that opening is already accounted for , with another variant of himself .
Timecrimes
After being chased by a mysterious gentleman with a bandaged face , Hêctor occupy refuge in a metre machine that get off him back one minute . He becomes the mystical figure who chase after himself , and the Hêctors keep on to manifold .
Star Trek ( 2009 )
Spock and a Romulan miner Nero are commit back in meter through a black hole , where Spock eventually meet his youthful ego .
Bill and Ted ’s Excellent Adventure
Bill and Ted from the future tense take on themselves in the Circle K parking mint and convert themselves to travel into the past .
Primer
Thanks to everyone who cite this one ! In this film , mass not only meet their preceding self , they whack their past ego on the school principal and impersonate themselves . It ’s a whole thing .
Continuum
mollycoddler alert — in the Modern time of year of this Canadian time - change of location show , thing have gotten a bit puzzling . Some people are very narrowly missing meeting themselves , including one encounter that ’s already turn very unpleasant for all occupy .
Doctor Who
People are incessantly meet their younger self and getting their timelines tangled on Doctor Who . In particular , the Doctor and his fellow come across their next selves in “ The Space Museum , ” the Doctor and Jo forgather themselves in “ daytime of the Daleks , ” the Brigadier has a near encounter with himself in “ Mawdryn Undead , ” Amy Pond spoil track with her older alternate ego in “ The Girl Who Waited , ” Kazran Sardick meets himself as a young male child in “ A Christmas Carol , ” and the Doctor is always converge his preceding selves .
Meeting Your Ancestors
Kindred
Protagonist Dana is mobilize back in time by her ancestors , and she is drive to intervene so as to ensure her own design . Unfortunately , her ancestors include both striver owners and their slave .
Rant
Chuck Palanhniuk ’s protagonist may ( or may not ) have traveled back in prison term , encounter his own great - great - granny , and become his own root .
Quantum Leap “ The Leap Between the States ”
A leap takes Sam Beckett to the Civil War , and into the soundbox of his grandfather . Although this breaks the rules of Sam ’s quantum - leaping , it is explained in part by Sam ’s close hereditary coition .
Marty McFly accidentally messes up his parents ’ budding romance and has to limit it … or he ’ll never be abide . Which would be bad . For rock’n ’ roll , at least .
Saving Your Parents
expiry Date by Duane Swierczynski
The protagonist is transport back to the seventies , but only as an commentator . He tries to figure out how to intervene and keep his father ’s murder .
passe-partout of the Universe
As a reward for helping He - Man defeat Skeletor in Eternia , when Julie is sent home through a dimensional portal , she arrives well before she impart , and is able-bodied to prevent her parents from getting on a plane that will crash .
Frequency
A boy discovers that his short - wafture radiocommunication allows him to communicate with his father , 30 years in the past , and he uses this to fend off a catastrophe .
Unstuck in Your Own Timeline
Slaughterhouse - Five
Billy Pilgrim witnesses events in his life before they bump , as either an core of being an yardbird in an exotic zoo , or an gist of the trauma he support during WWII .
Time Traveler ’s Wife
Henry DeTamble , the eponymous time traveller , zooms around within the timeline of his sprightliness , and eventually his wife ’s life , as an effect of a genetical disorder , “ Chrono - Impairment . ”
Premonition
Linda Hanson ( Sandra Bullock ) lives the days of the week in which her married man is kill out of order . Although she does n’t save her married man , she does slightly alter the events so that , when she lives the solar day of her husband ’s chance event a 2d time , she is pregnant .
Star Trek TNG : “ Parallels ”
Worf come upon that he is quantum - fluxing through a infinite - clip fissure between multiple timeline with subtle but significant differences . He is the only one who is aware of the changing situations .
Lost
Electromagnetic actinotherapy causes both people and object , like the island , to become unstuck and bouncing around within their own timelines . In some case , this can become very nasty unless you discover your “ Constant . ”
FlashForward
In the novel by Robert J. Sawyer and the TV show that adapted it , everybody melanise out and sees a vision of their own future — but you’re able to try and change what come about . Emphasis on “ hear . ” ( Thanks to everyone who cite this one ! )
meet hoi polloi out of order is a way of life for the Doctor , specially in the novel series . The Second Doctor meets a much ulterior adaptation of the Brigadier , in “ The Five physician . ” Also , this phenomenon limit his whole relationship with River Song . Also , a future Doctor met his past companions in “ The Impossible Astronaut . ” And he has a very jumbled brush with Madame Pompadour in “ The Girl in the Fireplace . ” And so on .
Returning to a Past Self
Peggy Sue Got hook up with
At her 25 - year gamey school day reunification , Peggy Sue faints . She wake up as her high - school ego , but does n’t do anything other than .
Hot Tub Time Machine
The protagonists travel back in clip to 1986 and arrive in their vernal bodies , where they try not to commute anything in the past times — except for Lou .
Timelines Out of Sync
“ Jeffty is Five ”
Jeffty stick around five while everyone around him age . The public in his immediate vicinity also appease the same . Radios broadcast programs from the forties , and he institutionalise away for a decoder ring from 1945 in the 1970s .
Something Wicked This manner Comes
A forbidding magic carousel do people to grow old as they ride frontwards , untried as they turn on backwards .
Precursors
Borges
Jorge Luis Borges ’ write up suggest time loop and baffle timeline route . In “ The Garden of Forking Paths , ” the separate paths are forking timeline , “ Three Versions of Judas ” and “ Tlön , Uqbar , Orbis Tertius ” suggest alternate timelines .
Divine Punishment
Characters in Hades and in the Inferno are condemn to replicate the same activity for eternity , while in Purgatory , like in Groundhog Day , once someone repents , they get to break out of the repeating . In the Decameron , a man must evermore hunt down and discerp the woman who refused to marry him .
What exercise of time - whackery did we pretermit ? have us get it on !
Doctor WhoFrequencykurt vonnegutOctavia ButlerRobert A. HeinleinStar Trek
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