History Main / OurTimeTravelIsDifferent

The theory here seems to be that going back in time immediately puts you in another dimension. Usually, this dimension will be some kind of wormhole or "[[TimePortal time tunnel]]" composed of flashing lights and cool special effects. You may even see images from famous moments in history fly by as a helpful gauge of when you're going. In less serious versions, the tunnel may be decorated with clocks and calendars or be labeled with years. Depending on the story, the wormhole links the user to a different spot on his own timeline or to a different spot on the next timeline over; the difference is largely academic.

* This is how time travel works in Creator/JasperFforde's ''Literature/ThursdayNext'' Series, but here you can also pause and loop. While Thursday only gives us an up-close view of this type of time travel, the ChronoGuard's repertoire seems much more extensive. Their office is something akin to this in reverse, and vague references are made to "The Cone", something around which Time Agents navigate... somehow... adding an element of wormhole time travel. You never even get an idea of how things like the Echo!Friday or the tech mining work, and you aren't meant to. Fforde's time travel depicts how utterly incomprehensible extensive time travel would be to the uninitiated.

* ''{{Literature/Alterien}}''. The Alteriens generate instant wormholes with an energy technique called tranzing. They use it to travel through both time and space.

* ''ItsNotLikeThatDarling'' has instantaneous, no-flash (no air displacement either, for that matter) time travel.

* The Cassiopeia in ''Manga/MahouSenseiNegima'' seems to function like this.

* This is also used, sometimes as AppliedPhlebotinum, but also for comedic effect, with Paradox, on WesternAnimation/Ben10AlienForce. Paradox has almost complete knowledge of the TimeyWimeyBall.

* Used in ''BlackKnight''.
* Used in an episode of ''Music/{{S Club 7}} in Miami'' (aka ''{{Miami 7}}''), where the group went into fog on a boat in the BermudaTriangle and fell unconscious, waking up in the 80s with clothes from that time. They regained their original clothes when they re-entered the fog to go back to their own time, except for Hannah, who kept her 80s shoes for reasons that were never explained.

* ''Anime/{{Doraemon}}''.

* The book ''Literature/{{Sonic The Hedgehog in the Fourth Dimension}}'' (also involves time machines using the two methods described below, but quite a few pages of narrative go into describing a trip made using a time machine using this method).

* This is how time travel works in Creator/JasperFforde's ''Literature/ThursdayNext'' Series, but here you can also pause and loop.
** While Thursday only gives us an up-close view of this type of time travel, the ChronoGuard's repertoire seems much more extensive. Their office is something akin to this in reverse, and vague references are made to "The Cone", something around which Time Agents navigate... somehow... adding an element of wormhole time travel. You never even get an idea of how things like the Echo!Friday or the tech mining work, and you aren't meant to. Fforde's time travel depicts how utterly incomprehensible extensive time travel would be to the uninitiated.

* ''[[VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiPartnersInTime Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time]]''.

* ''Franchise/{{Superman}}'', [[ComicBook/CrisisOnInfiniteEarths before 1985]], could do this under his own power.

* In ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'' Timeless Space works like this, after a fashion. No one ever ''intentionally'' uses it for time travel, but someone who enters and then leaves Timeless Space can return to the regular universe centuries before or after they left.
** Mainly because leaving Timeless Space is handled by [[spoiler:Uncle Time, who has enough power to send you anywhen he feels like.]]

* ''Pebble In The Sky'' Creator/IsaacAsimov has an excellent example.

* Isaac Asimov's ''Pebble In The Sky'' has an excellent example.

* In ''Series/QuantumLeap'', Sam arrives and leaves via an impressive special effect, but the final episode points out that this version applies in reverse: Sam sees what may be another leaper depart, and isn't sure what he just saw. He later explains it to Al, who also can't be sure -- neither of them has seen what a leap looks like. This implies instantaneous, since Sam is conscious when he leaps...

* This is just about how it works in ''VideoGame/SonicCD''; it would be more instantaneous except for the time required to load the next level, which uses a visual effect that suggests the Wormhole method, but when Sonic appears in the past or future, his momentum is conserved from whichever time period he left, making it clear that it's meant to be instantaneous.

* The short Website/YouTube film "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBkBS4O3yvY One-Minute Time Machine]]" has a guy (played by Brian Dietzen of ''Series/{{NCIS}}'') invent the titular device (shaped like a box with a BigRedButton), which [[MentalTimeTravel throws his mind back 60 seconds]], which he uses to try to hit on a woman on a park bench. Naturally, he goes through many iterations before he succeeds. She turns out to be a scientist herself and has published a book on time travel. She points out that every time he uses the machine, he dies, and a new version of him is created in a branched universe (we're treated to a montage of the girl freaking out at the guy suddenly slumping over dead multiple times in all those other universes). Unfortunately for ''her'', this revelation means he isn't likely to get a boner anytime soon, and she's ready to go (he was very successful in his attempts to pick her up). So, she quietly tells her future double she better make it worth it and pushes the button herself in order to avoid telling him the truth, willingly killing herself in order to allow her double to get some action. It's never explained why the original has to die for the time machine to work or why the inventor himself wouldn't know about it.

* In ''Literature/TimeAndAgain'' by Jack Finney, the protagonist surrounds himself with objects from TheGayNineties while living in a Victorian Penthouse overlooking Central Park; by [[IWishItWereReal imagining himself]] to be in the 1890s he wakes up one day and ''is'' in the 1890s.

* The "Time and Punishment" segment from the ' 'WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode ''[[WesternAnimation/TreehouseOfHorror Treehouse of Horror V]] sees Homer travel back in time through a dimension filled with clocks.

* In ''Discworld/WyrdSisters'', it's mentioned that people ''expect'' videotape-style time travel, but what they actually get is this.

* At the end of ''Series/StargateSG1'', Teal'c is sent back in time through this method, to impart the solution to the problem of the Ori's ability to track the ship with the Asgard memory core (the Odyssey). The solution is on a memory crystal, which when inserted, prevents the Ori from tracking the ship.
** The crystal actually performs a rapid shutdown of the core. There's no other way to prevent the Ori from tracking it.

* "Hacking" time in ''WebVideo/KungFury'' works a lot like this.

->''"I'm standing at the time portal, which scientists say, follows 'Franchise/{{Terminator}}' rules. That is, it's one way only and you can't go back. This is in contrast to, say, 'Franchise/BackToTheFuture' rules, where back and forth is possible, and of course 'Film/{{Timerider|TheAdventureOfLyleSwann}}' rules, [[TimeyWimeyBall which are just plain silly.]]"''

* The short YouTube film "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBkBS4O3yvY One-Minute Time Machine]]" has a guy (played by Brian Dietzen of ''Series/{{NCIS}}'') invent the titular device (shaped like a box with a BigRedButton), which [[MentalTimeTravel throws his mind back 60 seconds]], which he uses to try to hit on a woman on a park bench. Naturally, he goes through many iterations before he succeeds. She turns out to be a scientist herself and has published a book on time travel. She points out that every time he uses the machine, he dies, and a new version of him is created in a branched universe (we're treated to a montage of the girl freaking out at the guy suddenly slumping over dead multiple times in all those other universes). Unfortunately for ''her'', this revelation means he isn't likely to get a boner anytime soon, and she's ready to go (he was very successful in his attempts to pick her up). So, she quietly tells her future double she better make it worth it and pushes the button herself in order to avoid telling him the truth, willingly killing herself in order to allow her double to get some action. It's never explained why the original has to die for the time machine to work or why the inventor himself wouldn't know about it.

* The short YouTube film "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBkBS4O3yvY One-Minute Time Machine]]" has a guy invent the titular device (shaped like a box with a BigRedButton), which [[MentalTimeTravel throws his mind back 60 seconds]], which he uses to try to hit on a woman on a park bench. Naturally, he goes through many iterations before he succeeds. She turns out to be a scientist herself and has published a book on time travel. She points out that every time he uses the machine, he dies, and a new version of him is created in a branched universe (we're treated to a montage of the girl freaking out at the guy suddenly slumping over dead multiple times in all those other universes). Unfortunately for ''her'', this revelation means he isn't likely to get a boner anytime soon, and she's ready to go (he was very successful in his attempts to pick her up). So, she quietly tells her future double she better make it worth it and pushes the button herself in order to avoid telling him the truth, willingly killing herself in order to allow her double to get some action.

* The comic book ''Major Bummer'' used the less serious version, with moments from history flying by on two dimensional "shards" of time, one of which ends up impaling a character.

* As mentioned, the ''Franchise/BackToTheFuture'' series.
** In the DVD extras, the director tells us that they created an elaborate visual sequence for time travel, putting it under the previous version. Then they decided that time travel wouldn't have any such visuals.

* Although ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'' uses the Wormhole method in the earlier stages of the game, once you acquire the Epoch, it switches to the instantaneous variety.
** And once the Epoch becomes an airship, it even accelerates to a high speed immediately before time-warping, making the way it works appear almost exactly the same as Back to the Future's flying [=DeLorean=].
* The MentalTimeTravel on ''Series/{{Lost}}'' [[spoiler:as well as whatever the heck happened to Ben at the end of season 4]] were instantaneous.
** A straighter example of instantaneous time travel was seen in the first half of season five, albeit not by choice and causing loads and loads of painful headaches and fatal nosebleeds. And was actually seen as [[spoiler: a cause of MentalTimeTravel as seen with Charlotte before she died]].

* Franchise/ArrowVerse handles time travel this way. When [[SuperSpeed speedsters]] time travel, they run fast enough to resonate with the Speed Force and enter it (which looks like a wormhole), at which point they can visualize where and when they want to go and appear there. The method used by the Time Masters involves jumping into the time stream (which appears like a different wormhole) and traveling through it to their destination. Only the former method attracts [[ClockRoaches Time Wraiths]], though.

* In the ''LightNovel/SuzumiyaHaruhi'' novels there is one instance of Nagato sending Kyon and Asahina three years forward in time in what Kyon experiences as an instant.

* In ''LightNovel/SuzumiyaHaruhi'' novels, whenever Kyon is time traveling, he has to close his eyes because it makes him so sick he could puke. The reader doesn't learn much of what is happening, but the hints sound like a version of [[OurWormholesAreDifferent Wormhole Time Travel]].

* Franchise/ArrowVerse handles time travel this way. When [[SuperSpeed speedsters]] time travel, they run fast enough to resonate with the Speed Force and enter it (which looks like a wormhole), at which point they can visualize where and when they want to go and appear there. The method used by the Time Masters involves jumping into the time stream (which appears like a different wormhole) and traveling through it to their destination.

** And once the Epoch becomes an airship, it even accelerates to a high speed immediately before time-warping, making the way it works appear almost exactly the same as Back to the Future's flying DeLorean.

Examples of this version of time travel:

Examples of this version of time travel:

Examples of this version of time travel:

Examples of this version of time travel:

->"''I'm standing at the time portal, which scientists say, follows 'Franchise/{{Terminator}}' rules. That is, it's one way only and you can't go back. This is in contrast to, say, 'Franchise/BackToTheFuture' rules, where back and forth is possible, and of course 'Film/{{Timerider|TheAdventureOfLyleSwann}}' rules, [[TimeyWimeyBall which are just plain silly.]]''"