History Main / StableTimeLoop

*** In ''Interesting Times'', Hex answers a problem before it is asked. The wizard in charge eventually enters the problem to appease causality, but not until hiding in the privy for an hour and a half.

* ''Website/{{Starwalker}}'': Starwalker's drive allows her to travel through time. [[spoiler: This gets the attention of some {{SpacePirates}} who take over the ship. They force her to use her drive to go to the Solar System. Using the ability to travel in time, Starwalker gets them to the appointment 40 years early. They return to the present. However, the ripples of their passage causes strange measurements to be made of our sun. This gives Dr Cirilli the idea that a star step drive could work. In the "present" they meet the person who hired the pirates. She turns out to be the avatar for our sun. She hired the pirates to end the Starwalker experiment because the star step drive has the side effect of {{StarKilling}}.]]

** ''WebComic/EightBitTheater'' is revealed to be one ''giant'' time loop. Here's how it goes; [[spoiler: A child named Sarda loses his family and is traumatized- several times- by Black Mage and the Light Warriors. Sarda grows up to be the most powerful wizard in existence, and uses his power to go back to the beginning of the universe to become its master and prevent the Light warriors from existing. When he gets there, a White Mage beat him to it and now the universe obeys her commands, with Sarda stuck in the past. As the world forms around him, Sarda vows to keep White Mage from going back by putting her into a pocket dimension- which turns out to be the universe's birth. Meanwhile, Sarda decides to send the Light Warriors on quests so that they become [[BlatantLies heroes of legend]], and when they're at their strongest, destroy them for added humiliation, and in doing so they cause many of the trauma kid Sarda experienced.]] As Red Mage points out, Sarda is just as responsible for his suffering as they are, as he could have stopped them beforehand. He retorts with;

* ''Singularity plays around with this trope. All those tracks that tell you where to go next? Guess who laid them. Your ultimate goal ends up being breaking yourself from the infernal, stable time loop for good.

* One of the revived ''TheTwilightZone'' episodes involved a time traveler (played by Katherine Heigl) going back in time to kill Adolf Hitler as a baby. [[spoiler: the episode ends with her jumping into a river with the infant. Both drown. However, the Hitler's housekeeper immediately buys an infant from a homeless gypsy. The family rechristens the baby Adolf and acts as though nothing happened. It's that baby that grows up to be the monster the time traveler was trying to stop.]]

** Sisko's own existence. Sisko is the Emissary of the Prophet, and discovered the wormhole. This caused the prophets to [[spoiler:Possess Sisko's mom, so she'd marry Sisko's dad, ensuring Sisko's birth]]. The only reason the Prophets did this, is because they met Sisko in the future (and being outside linear time, realized the role they played in his life, and thus took it upon themselves to make it happen).

* In the TimeTravel episode of ''Series/{{Ghostwriter}}'', the kids in 1928 solve their case by sending Series/Ghostwriter to 1993 to find out how the case was solved, then bring the info back and use it to solve the case. As the kids in 1993 are reading old 1928 newspapers about the case, the pages start to turn blank -- if they don't send the info back, the case will never be solved and thus the newspaper will never have it.

** The Fifth Doctor story "Earthshock" also is an example [[spoiler: A ship is sent back in time and causes the extinction of the dinosaurs, the dominance of ''Homo sapiens'' and the creation of the ship. It also kills Adric.]]. So, really a win-win situation.

* In the first season of the new series of ''Series/DoctorWho'', The Doctor and Rose are followed everywhere by [[ArcWords the words "Bad Wolf"]] - in the final episode, Rose saves The Doctor's life and uses the time-bending power of the TARDIS to deposit the words in the past, in order to inspire her to go forward into the future and save The Doctor's life, which ends in her putting the words into the past, etc., etc. This also crops up a few times in the second and third seasons (since the words were placed all over time and space, there's no reason for them to stop showing up just because they're not needed anymore), and more times than you can shake a TARDIS key at in the Ten/Rose ExpandedUniverse novel ''The Stone Rose''. The phrase also turns at the cliffhanger of the fourth season episode "Turn Left" (with all written words, from the Doctor's point of view being replaced with "Bad Wolf" -- even the TARDIS' signage), in which it [[spoiler:heralds Davros' gambit to steal a number of planets in a plan that will either end up in the Daleks' domination of the universe or by the universe's destruction]]

* ''Literature/HarryPotterAndThePrisonerOfAzkaban''. Harry is saved from dementors by a Patronus Charm cast mysterious figure who he thinks is his father. After he travels back, he eventually finds himself in the same place and waits for his father to show up... [[YouAlreadyChangedThePast and then realizes HE was the mysterious figure]], and saves himself. In fact, he only gains the ability to cast a true Patronus for the first time because he realized that he had already done it. Also, as Harry, Ron, and Hermione first head out to adventure, they hear noises that turn out to be Harry and Hermione as they complete adventure!part I.

** ''Literature/TheTechnicolorTimeMachine'', hinges on several Stable Time Loops. The premise is that a movie studio is about to go bankrupt, and so in desperation they try funding a seemingly crackpot physicist who's working on a time machine in exchange for the use of the completed model. It works, of course, so they take a camera crew back in time to film a historical about how the Vikings discovered America - they don't have to pay for sets or actors this way, and they can get the whole film done in a couple of days so they'll be able to show the bank that they have an asset they can monetize when the next loan payment becomes due. When they find the Viking that history says is the discoverer, however, he seems completely uninterested in attempting the journey... until they nudge him with a little bribery and technical assistance. A few other [[SelfFulfillingProphecy Self-Fulfilling Prophecies]] occur later on, including a note that nobody wrote and [[spoiler: a vicious practical joke one of the characters plays on himself in revenge for that same vicious practical joke he played on himself 'earlier.']]

* In the Bamboo Rhapsody episode of ''LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya'', [[spoiler:Kyon travels back 3 years and ends up being the cause of Haruhi attending his highschool]]. When Kyon complains that this contradicts Mikuru's explanation of TimeTravel, a [[SufficientlyAdvancedAlien sufficiently-advanced Yuki]] brushes it off with, "since there's no conclusion to the paradox theory, there's no way to prove there's no paradox." The StableTimeLoop gets tied in ''knots'' in ''[[LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya The Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi]]'', where [[spoiler:we see that three copies of Kyon and Mikuru actually exist at the same time for a brief period on December 18 (and Kyon actually memorizes the words he heard from his future self, to later tell them to his past self).]] Mikuru is the embodiment of stable time loops anyway; an entire book is dedicated to her walking around with Kyon triggering key events for her future. This phenomenon pisses off the anti-Mikuru, "Sneering Bastard," to no end; he ''hates'' that YouCantFightFate.

* In the {{Elseworld}}s book ''SupermanRedSon'', it's revealed that Superman was sent back in time as a baby, because [[spoiler: SelfDemonstrating/LexLuthor was the ancestor of Jor-L, and therefore Krypton is actually Earth in the future. That might explain why the ''Red Son''-verse doesn't have Kryptonite.]]

* Creator/AlanMoore's ''{{Supreme}}'' has two stable time loops, one forming the main plot of the initial plot arc, and a second in a single issue as a comic parody of the trope. It's strongly implied that [[spoiler: the mysterious "Supremium" substance that both originally gave Supreme his powers and acts as his "Kryptonite" is what all time-looped matter eventually becomes.]]

* One ''[[Comicbook/TheSimpsons Radioactive Man]]'' comic from the 1960s features a villain being sent back to the 1860s via a [[AppliedPhlebotinum Trans-spatial Stair Climber]]. When a damaged robot appears out of thin air, he repairs it and programs it to kill Radioactive Man before placing it in a time capsule due to be opened in 100 years time. At the end of the comic, the robot is damaged by Radioactive Man before being hit by Dr. Broom's Time Machine Gun - and sent back to 1863. When Fallout Boy wonders about who built the robot in the first place, Radioactive Man reminds him that "we're dealing with two mad scientists, and that's a [[IncrediblyLamePun pair o' docs]] left well enough alone."

* Comicbook/SheHulk once dealt with a rather complicated StableTimeLoop for her law firm. The case: A billionaire named Charles Czarkowski shot an unarmed man (dubbed "John Doe"), in the back, in broad daylight, in front of a dozen eye-witnesses, ''and'' it was caught on film. Czarkowski claimed that before the shooting he received a message from the future warning that John Doe was destined to shoot him, and Czarkowski shot him in self-defense. Fearing for his life when a time-robot attacked the courtroom, Czarkowski traveled through time, used a DNA scrambler to alter his appearance, and tried to send a message back in time to warn his past self. But when he saw his altered face in the mirror he realized that ''he'' was John Doe all along. The message he sent to warn himself accidentally implicated his future self in the murder of his past self. Then the [[TimePolice Time Variance Authority]] showed up and forced Czarkowski to go back in time again and get shot to maintain the time loop. On the plus side, the TVA had to drop the attempted murder charge against him.

* Robo finds himself in one of these in ''Comicbook/AtomicRobo and the Shadow from Beyond Time'', where three future versions of Robo instruct him to learn the ''hell'' out of hyperdimensional mathematics so he can return to that point in time-space to defeat the EldritchAbomination they're fighting. It's not a ''true'' StableTimeLoop, of course, because Robo is very insistent that [[ArbitrarySkepticism there's no such thing as time travel]].

** And now, JourneyIntoMystery brings us a whole new one, once again involving Loki. [[spoiler: The reincarnated Kid Loki meets Leah as Hela's handmaiden. He proceeds to write a character based on her into the past of the Serpent. Later, Hela's hand is healed, Leah (having been Hela's literal handmaiden) disappears, and Hela makes a cryptic comment to Loki about how everyone believes he is her father. When Surtur tries to burn the Nine Realms he recruits the girl Loki wrote into the Serpent's past, as she resents Loki [[MetaFiction for not giving her any chance to grow]]. Loki rewrites the girl's story so that she becomes the Leah that he knew. Then things happen in such a way that he ends up asking Hela to send the new Leah to a place as far away from him as possible. Hela sends Leah to the distant past, and reveals to the readers that ''she'' is Leah, all grown up.]]

* The climax of the ''DoctorWhoMagazine'' comic strip "The Burning Stone" strongly implies [[spoiler: that the imprinting of the TARDIS on the human psyche influenced the design of the London Metropolitan Police Box]].

* MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic has [[http://www.fimfiction.net/story/79147/1/que-sera-sera/whatever-will-be-will-be ''Que Sera, Sera'']]. Celestia's ability to know the future is finally explained after she summons Twilight Sparkle and her friends to defeat a great foe - an ancient dragon who has awoken and gone on a rampage, but Celestia knows that it is all according to plan - and indeed, the rampage was a collaboration between the dragon and Princess Celestia, without even Princess Luna's knowledge. [[spoiler: The reason is that the dragon is Spike, several thousand years older, and he uses his firey breath to send himself and the Mane Six back over two thousand years into the past. Twilight at first worries about changing the future, but eventually realizes that they are permanently stuck in the past and relaxes. Eventually she has two children, naming one of them after Celestia, and the other after Trixie, though her sister mispronounces Lulumoon as "Luna-moon". When Discord shows up, she and the rest of the mane six expect the princesses to show up... but they don't, because they're still foals. Namely, Twilight's. And the Elements of Harmony don't even exist yet, the only weapon that can beat Discord. Or at least, they don't exist in the form of the elements... In the end, Twilight and her friends have to sacrifice themselves and [[TearJerker BECOME the Elements of Harmony]], entrusting Spike to help Luna and Celestia, and then eventually become the monster that sends them into the past in the first place, several thousand years down the line. The story ends with Spike having reverted to his child-like form and finally reuniting with Celestia, who has just had to send her own mother to her death.]]

* ''{{Triangle}}'' has a very convoluted one. [[spoiler: Jess comes to the harbor looking dazed and eventually ended up being on a mysterious boat and threw a masked killer overboard. She realizes she's in a Groundhog Day Loop by seeing herself boarding the mysterious boat and tries to break the chain by killing herself becoming the masked killer and getting thrown overboard. She drifted back to the shore where she was able to hitchhike back home seeing herself with her son. She killed her other self and wanted to dispose of the body which resulted in a car accident killing her son. She gets on a taxi to go to the harbor and the trauma seems to have caused amnesia. She comes to the harbor looking dazed and eventually ended up being on the mysterious boat, etc. etc. etc.]]

* According to Miller in ''Film/RepoMan'', ''all of human history'' is a StableTimeLoop. Of course, he doesn't [[TheSchizophreniaConspiracy seem the most reliable source on these things]], although the [[StonerFlick rather drug-fueled ending]] makes it seem a bit more likely.

* ''[[LosCronocrimenes Timecrimes]]'' involves a triple loop of sorts.. A man named Hector sees a girl stripping in the woods and is then chased into a laboratory by a man with a bandaged face and scissors. Hector is told by the lone scientist in the lab to hide in a machine, which sends Hector back in time an hour, causing him to become "Hector 2" while "Hector 1" is still watching the girl strip and being chased. At first the scientist and Hector think it's best for Hector 2 to lay low until Hector 1 is through the machine, but Hector 2 begins to realize that his actions are causing results that he saw as Hector 1. After he cuts his face and bandages it, then finds the girl and the scissors, he makes her strip and chases Hector 1 into the machine. Unfortunately during this Hector 2 witnessed his wife's death, so he returns in time again, becoming Hector 3, working to save his wife while Hector 1 watches the girl strip and runs, and Hector 2 makes the girl strip and chases Hector 1. Hector 1 and Hector 2 eventually vanish because they become Hector 3, closing the loop.

** Far from the only StableTimeLoop in the series. Arthur, of course, met with Agrajag before one of the many deaths of his previous forms had ever occurred, and so he knows that he's going to be able to escape when Agrajag tries to kill him anyway. Also, the entire arc with the Golgafrinchams.

* In the story ''The Red Queen's Race'' by Creator/IsaacAsimov, an attempt to change history by sending modern scientific knowledge back to the ancient Greeks is subverted when the person translating the information finds out about the plan. The translator creates a StableTimeLoop by censoring the translation to include only odd bits of surprisingly advanced knowledge that actually turned up in the ancient world. Also, it's decided that doing this was necessary for history to happen as it already did.
** A StableTimeLoop also occurs in Creator/IsaacAsimov's ''Literature/TheEndOfEternity'', as well as a paradox that is implied to create our timeline by inspiring fission research.

* A short story by Anne Lear, ''The Adventure of the Global Traveller'', has SherlockHolmes' nemesis Moriarty steal the Time Machine (from [[TheTimeMachine H.G. Wells' story]]), only to have it break down (and completely disintegrate) [[PushedInFrontOfTheAudience on stage]] at the Globe during the first performance of ''Theatre/{{Macbeth}}''. Moriarty recites the Third Murderer's lines as he recalls them from reading the play; afterward, Creator/WilliamShakespeare is delighted with the new lines and [[ThrowItIn writes them into the script]]. Like Ashbless's poetry below, [[TemporalParadox no one ever wrote the lines]]: the first time they were spoken it was from memory...

* The ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novel ''Discworld/TheLastContinent'' is essentially a single, but quite complex, StableTimeLoop, in which the problem Rincewind has to solve is caused by the wizards accidentally going back in time while looking for him. It also includes Ridcully dismissing Ponder Stibbons' worries about the ButterflyOfDoom (or Ant Of Doom in Ponder's example) by concluding that history ''depends'' on you treading on the ants you've already trodden on.

** StableTimeLoop is often used as a justification for being unable to change history in the Potterverse, but it seems to contradict what Hermione tells Harry in ''Prizoner of Azkaban'' about wizards and witches having to be careful to avoid killing their past and future selves. One can explain this in various ways, but the end result is that canon is not entirely clear.

* Possibly subverted in the ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' ExpandedUniverse trilogy ''Millennium'', which involves a convoluted Quasi-Stable Time Loop in which the actions of a future Picard, Vash, and Nog help cause the creation of their alternate future, followed by the retroactive ''destruction'' of that same future. During the story both Dax and Miles O'Brien continually insist on maintaining a StableTimeLoop, but by the end it seems their actions can only succeed because of three people who ''shouldn't exist''.

* The entire plot of ''WhenYouReachMe'' is Miranda slowly discovering that she is in the middle of one of these.

* In ''{{Smallville}}'', "Apocalypse", Clark goes back in time back to Krypton to protect his baby self from Brainiac.

* And referenced almost explicitly in the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' two-parter ''Time's Arrow'', which deals with a similar subject. It's put in as something of a ShoutOut to sci-fi fans: Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) receives his own watch from the ''Enterprise'' who have time-travelled back to his period in history after recovering the watch from a cave in the future (and no, [[MemeticMutation it was not made from a BOX OF SCRAPS!)]]. The end of the two-parter concludes with Clemens in the same cave in that time period, looking at the same watch ... and, with a chuckle of amusement, putting the watch down again so the ''Enterprise'' crew will find it in the future, thereby sentencing the watch to an eternity inside the StableTimeLoop, as the watch was put there by Clemens to trigger off the loop to begin with.

** Implied during the Year of Hell arc. The captain of the ship behind the constant fluctuations in the timeline created his ship to prevent an enemy from having conquered his. While he succeeded, a plague caused by their absence wiped out his family. He continued tinkering with the timeline in an attempt to restore his family. Ultimately the timeship was destroyed, reverting the timeline to its original course... where the captain is studing to build a timeship to keep his people from being conquered.
*** Implied to be a broken cycle, as he puts down his notes and walks away at the end. Given that the timeship misfired and erased itself from history, ods are that the loop was broken and the ship was never built in this new timeline.

** Let's just say that ''Series/{{Lost}}'' has confusing time travel. However, the clearest, unambiguous example of a StableTimeLoop in the show is "The Constant", in which Daniel's journal guides him to tell Desmond certain things to his past self, which his past self then records in the journal before losing his memory. Most notably, the frequency needed to make his time machine work came out of nowhere, since it was passed back and forth between Faraday and Desmond infinitely. Unless, that is, past Faraday already knew the frequency before Desmond showed up.

* Creator/StephenColbert (circa 2009-2509 or so), the main character in ''Series/TheColbertReport'', failed to stop Stephen Colbert (circa 2005-2009) from electrocuting himself, then took his place as host in order to be hosting the show in 2500 to come back in time [[StableTimeLoop so he would exist in his present to come back in time]]...etc.

* In the ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' episode "In the Beginning," Dean's actions help to set many elements of the series in motion, from encouraging his father to purchase the [[CoolCar Impala]] that Dean later drives, to accidentally focusing the attentions of the [[MagnificentBastard Yellow-Eyed Demon]] on his mother, Mary. [[WordOfGod The creator of the show]] noted that the StableTimeLoop concept confused Creator/JensenAckles a bit. He was told to [[MST3KMantra just go with it.]]

* The "Boom Boom Machine" in ''Series/{{Fringe}}'' originated from a StableTimeLoop. [[spoiler:Supposedly built by the First People, the machine was actually built in the future by future versions of the main characters and sent back in time millions of years to be discovered by the present-versions of the characters, who believed it to be an ancient device created by a mysterious race known as the First People, who were humans that evolved long before the dinosaurs. The present-day characters searched for all the pieces of the machine and reassembled it in order to try and fix the damage to space-time that interdimensional travel had caused. However, when activated, the machine creates a bridge between the two universes, forcing Fringe Team and alternate-Fringe Team to work together to repair the damage.]]

* The KamenRiderOOO section of Movie Taisen MEGAMAX: Kamen Rider Poseidon, the movie-exclusive villain, turns out to be [[spoiler:Aqua, a future Rider infected with the Core and Cell Medals that were thrown into time in the series finale]]. What makes this a StableTimeLoop? [[spoiler:Prior to the time jump, Aqua was a water-based Rider...who was afraid of water. An older Kougami gives Aqua a belt with three artificial Core Medals with the promise that it will "make him into a real hero". Cue the time-space accident that transforms him into Poseidon, the time jump where he encounters Eiji and the gang who save him, and Aqua being inspired by their courage to overcome his fears to ''beat'' Poseidon. That's right, the whole thing is one big temporal BatmanGambit created by Future!Kougami.]]

* Get ready for a MindScrew - in TheChroniclesOfFate [[TabletopGames tabletop RPG]], the ''entire multiverse'' is one gigantic StableTimeLoop which leads to it also being an EternalRecurrence scenario.

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 1}}'' has the PlayerCharacter trying to find water for Vault 13 after its water chip is broken. It ends with the PC staying in the post-apocalyptic Earth and heading off to start a new life. VideoGame/{{Fallout 2}} has a random encounter in which the player, now controlling a descendant of the character in the first game, travels back in time to just before the first game and ends up in Vault 13. The only way to return to your own time involes breaking the Vault's water chip...
* A Stable Time Loop is essential to the plot of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII''. Because the main party kills [[spoiler:Ultimecia]] in a partially time-compressed realm, [[spoiler:she is able to give her powers to Edea, thirteen years in the game's past, before she perishes.]] This is what makes [[spoiler:Edea the perfect choice to possess for Ultimecia's plans]], and causes the main conflict in the present that leads to the need to destroy Ultimecia. Additionally, [[spoiler:after Edea inherits Ultimecia's powers in the past, the present-day Squall explains the concept of [=SeeD=] to her]], thus inspiring the creation of the mercenary organization he grew up in and setting up his own role in the events of the game. The Stable Time Loop is further illustrated by the futile efforts at one of the cast members to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong; she ultimately concludes that the past cannot be changed.

* The Creator/{{Infocom}} AdventureGame ''VideoGame/{{Sorcerer}}'' features a StableTimeLoop. At one point, your future self appears and gives you the combination to a locked door, and demands your spell book. After you've unlocked the door, you have to travel back in time and give the combination to your past self, and get the spell book from him. (You can't carry anything with you when you go back in time.) The time travel spell is named "golmac" as a ShoutOut to the "gold machine", the time machine in ''VideoGame/{{Zork}} III''. It's fun to do silly things like screaming or singing when your future self appears, then watch how they're described when it's your past self doing them.

** In all reality, The entire game is one BIG Time Loop which is both stable and constantly shifting. The overarcing plot is one huge Stable Time Loop [[spoiler:due to the protagonist sending himself hints and clues at the end of the game to his startgame self]] but the events of both the past and present during certain periods is in constant flux, even though due to the looping nature, that flux is always in its own stable loop.
* Near the beginning of ''Franchise/TombRaider: Legend'' there is a flashback to Lara's childhood in which she set off an ancient device. Her mother then pushed Lara out of the way, looked into a ball of light and had a confused conversation with a mysterious figure (who the players can't see or hear) before disappearing. At the end of the game Lara inadvertently opens up a time portal and it is revealed that she was the person her mother was talking to at the start.

* The Creator/{{Infocom}} InteractiveFiction game ''Trinity'' contains both a major and a minor loop. The minor one involves an umbrella lost by a woman in London that you retrieve; when you go back in time to just before the bomb is dropped on Nagasaki, you give the umbrella to a girl, who will grow up into the woman you met in London. [[spoiler:The entire game is a StableTimeLoop; you go back in time to sabotage the Trinity test (which would've powerful enough to have destroyed most of New Mexico,) create a TemporalParadox because without atomic weapons, you would have never been born, so the universe resolves the paradox by making a small explosion every time an atomic weapon is detonated, and the game ends with you repeating your actions in the beginning.]]

* In VideoGame/BookwormAdventures Volume 2, [[spoiler:[[EvilCounterpart [=EviLex=]]] doesn't exist at all, but in reality is a time travelling Lex. This StableTimeLoop was orchestrated by Bigger Brother to keep Lex busy and to get Lex to give him the Magic Pen.]]
* In ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'', the Menders of Ouroboros are a time-travelling group dedicated to keeping the timestream straight. The first one you meet accidentally creates a StableTimeLoop when he rambles on about how you and he solved a problem in a mission you haven't undertaken yet.

** Yet ''another'' StableTimeLoop was introduced in ''Extend'', but whereas the above had some benefit to [[BigBad Yuuki Terumi]] when it finally broke, this one was ''explicitly'' created trying to ''prevent'' it from manifesting, and its existence is, to him, ''purely'' detrimental. [[spoiler:When Terumi tried to assassinate Jin Kisaragi in Kagutsuchi in another world, Makoto Nanaya interfered in the hit and grilled him for his plans regarding Jin, Tsubaki, and Noel - the latter of which ''does not exist'' in this world. In his and Relius' attempt to eliminate her, she winds up asking Kokonoe and, later, Tsubaki about the aforementioned nonexistent Noel, which ultimately [[SpannerInTheWorks fucks everything up]] in that world. In subsequent worlds, Terumi tries to keep her from making things worse for him by [[ReassignedToAntarctica sending her to Ibukido]], but it's only when the first loop breaks that she arrives... and investigates the Ibukido cauldron. No points for guessing what she does next.]] Ain't hindsight a bitch?

* In ''{{Spellforce}}'' [[spoiler:Rohan is both the BigBad and BigGood of the game thanks to this. As a young man, he travels forward in time, kills his elder self and attempts to recreate The Convocation, a spell which nearly destroyed the world the last time it was cast. As he grows older, he has a HeelFaceTurn, and travels back in time in an attempt to repair the world. In that time he becomes embroiled in the plot to stop his younger self's schemes, setting in motion the events which lead to his own murder.]]
* There seems to be one in ''TheWitcher'': [[spoiler:The magical boy Alvin shows the ability to teleport himself to safety when in great dangers, but not having direct control over where he appears several times during the game. The last time he simply vanishes and is never heard of again. However, the Grand Master and founder of the Flaming Rose order seems to know Geralt way and repeats words that he had said to Alvin before he disappeared. He also has the same amulet as Alvin does, but it appears much older and worn. Apparently Alvin not only teleported through space but also time and his experiences during the war between the Knights of the Flaming Rose and the elves inspired him to found the Order in the past.]]

** Its sequel, ''VirtuesLastReward,'' seems to be setting this up as well. [[spoiler: There are at least two. The first occurs in the path where the old woman does not die - upon nearing the end of the path to Phi's ending, Sigma and Phi go back in time and save her, thereby setting up the timeline in which she lives. The second one is the cycle Sigma and Phi are going though, as explained by the diagram in the true ending route. However, the characters are actively trying to ''break'' the stable time loop, [[MindScrew which is why they set it up in the first place.]]]]

* In ''VideoGame/{{Bastion}}'', activating the Bastion's [[ResetButton Restoration Protocol]] rewinds time. [[spoiler:But it doesn't allow Rucks, Zia, Zulf, or The Kid to stop the Calamity from happening again. [[StableTimeLoop So it happens again.]]]] FridgeHorror sets in when you realize how many loops it might go (or have been) through before something could change and lead to The Kid activating the [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere Evacuation Protocol]] instead.

* The Space theme of ''Webcomic/IrregularWebcomic'' was stuck in one complex StableTimeLoop in which the characters constantly revenge their own actions to themselves. It ended taking up most of the other themes, and (as expected) ended in a RocksFallEveryoneDies [[http://irregularwebcomic.net/2166.html at the end of that year]].

* ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'': [[DefiedTrope Defied]]. When dealing with an [[spoiler: exploding galactic core]], a missile with exactly the same ID signature as one which already exists is detected. It turns out it came from the future, which gives Kevyn the idea and means to travel back in time and prevent the problem from ever occurring, and also [[spoiler: save Tagon's life]]. However, rather than first send the missile back to give him the idea, Kevyn ''destroys'' the present version of the missile to prove that the universe does not enforce a StableTimeLoop. After all, if it did, [[YouAlreadyChangedThePast there would be no point in what he's about to try]].

* ''[[Theatre/AVeryPotterMusical A Very Potter Sequel]]'' features a StableTimeLoop '''within''' a StableTimeLoop -- an impressive feat for a stage play.

* In Machinima/ChronicleOfTheAnnoyingQuest, when the party reaches the Caverns of Time, Guy accidentally activates a rune that displaces him in time from previous points in the story, including his original warlock apprentice outfit, his tier 1 set ghost form, and his tier 2 set undead form. After a few confused remarks by the past versions, Guy casts a spell to send them all back. What makes it a StableTimeLoop is present!Guy's reaction to the situation:

** The episode "M.I.A." hints at what could be a possible out within a StableTimeLoop: [[spoiler: Goliath travels back to WorldWarII London to investigate an accusation that he caused the death of a gargoyle back then. When it seems that the Gargoyle in question really is marked for death by fate, Goliath takes him to the present day with him, saving his life, but still preserving the effects of his death]]. Or fate could just have been screwing with him to achieve the predestined result.

* ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls'': Mojo Jojo goes back in time to try to kill Professor Utonium as a young boy to prevent him from creating the Powerpuff Girls. The girls follow and save TheProfessor, and it was this very incident that inspired him to get into science and try to create "the perfect little girl."

* In ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans'' the [[TimeTravel time-travelling]] villain Warp ''thinks'' he's taking part in a StableTimeLoop; he goes back in time to steal a special clock because, a hundred years in the future, the historical records say that he went back in time to steal it. Unfortunately for him, the Teen Titans prove themselves able to ScrewDestiny and stop Warp from stealing the clock, wrecking the time loop.

* In one episode of ''[[WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague Justice League: Unlimited]]'', Braniac 5 summons Franchise/GreenLantern, GreenArrow, and {{Supergirl}} to the 31st century to help in a conflict as history records show that the three time-traveled once- but Supergirl didn't return, implying that she died. At the end [[spoiler: [[ProphecyTwist Supergirl doesn't die, but she enjoys 31st century-Earth more like the advanced society she grew up in, as well as developed a crush on Braniac 5, that she decides to stay voluntarily.]]]]

* In terms of the theory of relativity, time travel would take the appearance of a ''closed timelike curve'', which is a series of events returning to its starting point - such as time travel returns to the past. That leads to the inevitable paradoxes, but some solutions claim that if time travel is possible at all, it's only possible in a stable form: the only form of time travel possible generates a StableTimeLoop.
** While that may seem supremely useless - what good is a time machine if it can't change anything? - that's not really true. A computer that could only build {{Stable Time Loop}}s could run algorithms like "open time communication channel to 5 minutes into the future, receive answer from future, close channel, check answer (which takes 5 minutes in this example), if correct, send answer over the communication channel that was now just opened, if incorrect send different answer to past over the same communication channel", and then consistency would force the algorithm to return the output to some given puzzle. This is known as Time Loop Logic. Receiving an incorrect answer from the future would cause a paradox, and thus is impossible. Therefore either the answer will never arrive, or you will have created an ontological paradox, fabricating the answer from nowhere. The step of checking the answer is required for the algorithm to work.

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* In ''Anime/ElHazardTheMagnificentWorld'', the main character and company are sent to El Hazard by Ifurita. They meet her in El Hazard, but as an enemy who doesn't remember them. After a HeelFaceTurn, Ifurita rescues everyone from a time-space distortion weapon, and realizes that she must be caught in it in order to go back in time in order to start everything.

* ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls'': Mojo Jojo goes back in time to try to kill Professor Utonium as young boy to prevent him from creating the Powerpuff Girls. The girls follow and save TheProfessor, and it was this very incident that inspired him to get into science and try to create "the perfect little girl."

* One of the revived Twilight Zone episodes involved a time traveler (played by Katherine Heigl) going back in time to kill Adolf Hitler as a baby. [[spoiler: the episode ends with her jumping into a river with the infant. Both drown. However, the Hitler's housekeeper immediately buys an infant from a homeless gypsy. The family rechristens the baby Adolf and acts as though nothing happened. It's that baby that grows up to be the monster the time traveler was trying to stop.]]

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'''s episode "Roswell That Ends Well," Farnsworth is very adamant about not changing the past, unless of course it turns out they were supposed to change the past, in which case, they must, for the love of God, not not change it. Fry ends up killing his grandfather Enos by mistake, after an attempt to keep him safe. He impregnates his grandmother, thus becoming his own grandfather, which becomes ChekhovsGun. After that, Farnsworth gives up about not changing the past. The crew blasts up Roswell Air Force Base, steals some gear, rescues Zoidberg and Bender's body, and blasts off into space. Farnsworth then delivers one of the best lines ever: "Choke on ''that'', causality!" Oh yeah, and throughout all this, the crew ends up being the mysterious alien ship that crashed in Roswell, and Zoidberg is the alien.

* ''PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'' [[spoiler: Homura Akemi created this with her time-powers constantly reliving the same month to save Madoka from dying, its inferred she has done this countless times.]]