History Main / StableTimeLoop

* ''TabletopGame/{{Continuum}}'' is an RPG where the characters' entire goal is to ''make sure stable time loops work out''.

* In the Franchise/MegaMan games episode of ''WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd'' the Nerd decides to go back in time to see past versions of himself. He goes back to 2007 and sees himself just having reviewed ''Independence Day'' on UsefulNotes/PlayStation, and tells him to review some crappy games based on ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''. He goes back to 2006 and sees himself in his review of ''A Nightmare on Elm Street'' as "The Angry Nintendo Nerd" and convinces him to change his name to "The Angry Video Game Nerd". Finally he goes to 2004 and tells the version of himself that just finished ranting on ''Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde'' to keep working on reviewing games he thinks are of poor quality.

* Possible example in the Cygnus X-1 duology by Music/{{Rush}}: the narrator is pulled into the black hole known as Cygnus X-1, and arrives in a world ruled by the Olympian gods which may or may not be our own world in the distant past. He ends the war between Apollo and Dionysus by telling them his story. They dub him Cygnus, after the black hole through which he entered their word. He becomes a god, presumably the mythological figure the constellation Cygnus, and thus the black hole Cygnus X-1, is named after.

* Parodied in the linking material to ''Radio/TheNewsQuiz'' Best of 2023 ClipShow, in which Andy Zaltzman claims to have travelled to the year 3024, where he discovered a buried wax cylinder recording of ''The News Quiz'' Best of 2023, which he is now sending back to 2024, so that it can be broadcast at the very time [[MindScrew it originally was]].

[[folder:Web Original]]

** In Season 3, Church ends up TrappedInThePast due to explosion, and after taking the TheSlowPath, decides to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong. His attempts creates an uncountable number of these as he fails his objective each time and keeps trying. Local CloudCuckoolander Caboose makes the following unintentionally profound statement when Church talks to him about his experiences with the timeline: "Time LINE...? Ehh, time isn't made out of LINES. It is made out of circles. That is why clocks are round!" [[spoiler:Subverted when it turns out Church was in a simulation designed to mentally torture him the whole time, and he never time-traveled to begin with]].
** In Season 16, the Reds and Blues are each given a TimeMachine TeleportGun and free reign to run amuck through history. Their actions end up becoming YouAlreadyChangedThePast, BeenThereShapedHistory, or a combination of the two. Jax Jonez even states that the "Closed Loop" theory is how some sci-fi writers deal with paradoxes in stories.

* The Flash game ''No Time To Explain''. Your character is chilling at home when a future version of himself appears out of thin air, warning you of imminent danger. Seconds later, a giant crab grabs him and carries him away, leaving you to use his weapon to save your future self. After defeating the crab, [[spoiler: your future self opens a time portal back to the beginning of the game before dying. You travel back to your past self's living room, and try to warn him of the danger your future self warned you about. Seconds later..]].

[[caption-width-right:350:[[StatingTheSimpleSolution Next time, just wait for the DVD.]]

[[caption-width-right:350:[[StatingTheSimpleSolution Next time, just wait for the DVD.]]]]

** The opening story of ''The New Adventures of Franchise/BerniceSummerfield: Volume 2 The Triumph of Sutekh'' has Benny discover the Doctor in a Martian pyramid fighting Sutekh for possession of his mind. [[spoiler: Then he dies.]] The final story has [[spoiler: the Doctor, battling Sutekh in the far future, disappear as Sutekh attempts to take over his mind. He then gets pulled out of the loop by Isis, but Sutekh is left to repeat it forever]].

* ''Fanfic/MiraculousCity'': In chapter 17, Ladybug briefly arrives a short time into the future, and runs into that times Rena Rouge and Carapace who embrace her in relief but, for the timeline sake, unable to tell her why. Chapter 36 [[spoiler:would reveal that Marinette had feared something bad would happen to her. When the Disaster Team exposed Team Miraculous's identities, she took that as the sign that this isnthe incident [[CrazyPrepared and gave Socqueline the Ladybug Miraculous in case something happens]]. This would lead for the same events from chapter 17 to occur in chapter 34.

* Former Wrestling/{{CHIKARA}} wrestler Wrestling/ArchibaldPeck was susceptible to TimeTravel due to Wrestling/EddieKingston hitting him with the [[FinishingMove Backfist to the Future.]] To explain, Archie (as Mixed Martial Archie) was backfisted to the past in a backstage argument with Eddie Kingston during his LoserLeavesTown match at ''[=Chikarasaurus Rex=]'' in June 2012, becoming the Mysterious and Handsome Stranger. Meanwhile, a second Archie (as Archibald Peck) returned to finish that match and was exiled from CHIKARA after being pinned. Stranger!Archie (backfisted back to the present by [[Film/BackToTheFuturePartIII Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen]]) appeared a while after Exiled!Archie started his walk, unmasked after slopping Veronica at the Season 11 finale, and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djqqgSEoW9U was allowed to compete]] in CHIKARA by reasoning that he was not Exiled!Archie. Stranger!Archie, well aware that he was on borrowed time, still chose to compete against Kingston at the 2nd Stage of the 2013 Tag World Grand Prix, and was backfisted back to that Loser Leaves Town match, becoming Exiled!Archie and presumably closing the loop...
** ...except there was more to the loop than once thought. The Ashes video "When?" confirmed that the "doppelgänger" Stranger!Archie saw before the aforementioned backfist was Exiled!Archie, and that he was indeed present at ''Never Compromise'' (quite possibly in more than one form, as two Archies were spotted during the aftermath).

** ...or so everyone thought. Archie [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzf5PXY-brw appeared]] at the 2015 SeasonFinale ''Top Banana'', took the sole copy of the 2015 yearbook, learned that he would perish at the hands of Wrestling/{{Deucalion}}, and fled the building. Hasn't appeared since, and is still at large. Doubles as TheCuckoolanderWasRight.

* ''WesternAnimation/MeetTheRobinsons'' is about a boy named Lewis traveling to the future and meeting a family [[spoiler: that would eventually become his when he grows up.]] A few of the things that he sees in the future then influence some of the things that he does when he gets back to the past, such as [[spoiler: to always agree with the girl who would become his wife and to invent Carl the robot. Lewis even learn his {{Catchphrase}} (Keep moving forward) from his future self.]]

* "The Bet" by Show of Hands is about a man who finds ten grand next to a car crash, takes it, bets on horses with it, wins ten grand and... yeah, you see where I'm going with this.

* In Season 6 on the ''LetsPlay/HermitcraftServer'', Grian mysteriously loses several stacks of diamonds and a villager with no explanation. When he builds a time machine to reclaim the diamonds from the past, he realizes how he lost them in the first place.