History Main / TheSlowPath

* In the Mexican animated film ''Film/TheGuardiansOfTheLostCode'', the kid heroes after completing the first part of their mission, receive instructions to go to Ancient Egypt at 1345 BC, however Kimo mistakenly dials 1345 ''AD'' on their time portal, and end up in the middle of the desert with their objective buried under meters of sand; When they finally make it, they are greeted by the god Anubis who is particularly annoyed at having to wait for them for nearly 3000 years.
** Also after meeting the emperor Puji as a toddler [[spoiler: [[BigDamnHeroes He shows up as an old man in the final battle]]]].

* In the Mexican animated film ''Film/TheGuardiansOfTheLostCode'', the kid heroes after completing the first part of their mission, receive instructions to go to Ancient Egypt at 1400 BC, however Kimo mistakenly dials 1400 ''AC'' on their time portal, and end up in the middle of the desert with their objective buried under meters of sand; When they finally make it, they are greeted by Anubis who is particularly annoyed at having to wait for them for nearly 3000 years.

* In TheDCU CrisisCrossover ''DCOneMillion'', various Justice League members exchange places with their [[LegacyCharacter successors]] in the 853rd century. The MartianManhunter and the ResurrectionMan are already there. (As is VandalSavage, who keeps coming up in this trope).
** And Platinum of the MetalMen. She keeps the bodies of her former team, lost one by one.

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* The protagonists of ''Rainbow Mars'' by LarryNiven travel back in time hundreds of years using [[OurTimeTravelIsDifferent instantaneous time travel]] but lose access to it for the return trip. Instead, they use a stasis device on [[ItsALongStory their rocket ship]] to return to their own time, popping into reality here and there to inadvertently spawn ancient legends, including that of [[RussianMythologyAndTales Baba Yaga]].
* In Orson Scott Card's ''Speaker for the Dead'', [[EndersGame Ender]] leaves his sister to take the Slow Path while he [[TimeDilation flies off to another star system]] to make up for his prior mistakes. He knows she will probably die before he can get back. [[spoiler:At the end of the book, she does the same, so they've both aged roughly the same amount when they meet again in ''Xenocide''.]]

* In a variant, the golem Anghammarad from ''Discworld/GoingPostal'' plans to wait for the cycle of history to repeat itself, at which point it'll deliver a message it'd failed to deliver many thousands of years ago.
** It makes perfect sense to Anghammarad. As a golem, as long as he gets repaired occasionally he could last until the end of time, and the subsequent re-beginning.

* Bishop of the ComicBook/{{X-Men}} was stuck in the past during the team's mission to stop Legion. He therefore lived through the years as the ''AgeOfApocalypse'' storyline unfolded until its "present day." While the entire [=AoA=] timeline was wiped out at the end of the event, Bishop's memories of his life there were inherited by his mainstream continuity self. Somehow.

** In ''Bender's Big Score'', Bender ''repeatedly'' and happily volunteers to go back in time, steal precious historical treasures, and then wait in a cavern under Planet Express headquarters until a few seconds after leaving. And then [[spoiler:at the end of the film, Bender "wakes up" all of the bender duplicates and has them exit the basement when they were not logically supposed to, thus creating a hole in the universe, and setting the stage for the next film.]]

* In ''Series/KamenRiderOOO'', [[Series/KamenRiderDenO Den-O]], All Riders: Let's Go Kamen Rider'', one of two {{Street Urchin}}s who end up traveling 40 years into the past finds himself stuck there, . [[spoiler: in the end, he turns out not only to have been instrumental to helping the Kamen Riders make their BadFuture better, he also happens to be [[LukeIAmYourFather his best friend]]'s DisappearedDad.]]

* In ''Series/KamenRiderOOO OOO]], [[Series/KamenRiderDenO Den-O]], All Riders: Let's Go Kamen Rider'', one of two {{Street Urchin}}s who end up traveling 40 years into the past finds himself stuck there, . [[spoiler: in the end, he turns out not only to have been instrumental to helping the Kamen Riders make their BadFuture better, he also happens to be [[LukeIAmYourFather his best friend]]'s DisappearedDad.]]

* In NeilGaiman's original ''BooksOfMagic'' miniseries, the WellIntentionedExtremist Mr. E takes the protagonist to the end of time, so he can kill him without interference. [[TheGrimReaper Death]] stops him, and forces him to take TheSlowPath ''back'' -- with the implication that he will create a StableTimeLoop by teaching his younger self to time-walk.

* In ''[[KamenRiderOOO OOO]], [[{{Kamen Rider Den-O}} Den-O]], All Riders: Let's Go Kamen Rider'', one of two {{Street Urchin}}s who end up traveling 40 years into the past finds himself stuck there, . [[spoiler: in the end, he turns out not only to have been instrumental to helping the Kamen Riders make their BadFuture better, he also happens to be [[LukeIAmYourFather his best friend]]'s DisappearedDad.]]

* ''StargateSG1'': "Unending" -- SG-1 is trapped within a time-stop field on the ''Odyssey'' for fifty years. When they finally work out a solution, Teal'c volunteers to be excluded from the time-reversal effect, so that he can deliver a plan to save the ship. Fortunately, as a Jaffa, his lifespan is [[WeAreAsMayflies exceptionally long]], though he is still visibly older by the end of it.

** In ''StargateContinuum'', Mitchell goes back in time in order to stop Ba'al from sabotaging the Stargate Program. However, he accidentally arrives several years too early, and is forced to wait until Ba'al's attack takes place.
* ''StargateAtlantis'': "Before I Sleep" -- An alternate Dr. Weir has spent ten thousand years in stasis after saving Atlantis from flooding. She's still an aged old woman by the timme she's discovered.

* An AndIMustScream version is used in WesternAnimation/GeneratorRex. Van Kliess was sent back in time by breach and an episode focuses on how he got back to the present. While it looks like he's getting in a time machine during his travels between the various eras it's later revealed that [[spoiler:it's not a time machine but a stasis chamber and the AndIMustScream part comes when it's revealed that he was ''AWARE'' of each passing second during the the hundreds of years of waiting.]] And all while being chased by [[spoiler:Breach who had been turned into]] a mysterious energy force
* AndIMustScream and this trope are played for laughs in WesternAnimation/DarkwingDuck: DW goes back in time with Quackerjack's Timetop. Back to the time of the Dinosaurs. Only Dino-society is carrying an IdiotBall of InvaderZim levels. After much humor and hijinks, one of the dinosaur scientists pumps the timetop and sends the Quackerjack back to the present. DW is stuck in the past, until a Dino-scientst drops him in ''amber'' (he was making pancakes). Cue the passage of time, with DW frozen with his eyes open.... Launchpad and present day scientists find DW and crack open his amber tomb. Darwing just shivers and says[[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments "Does anyone know what eon it is?"]]

* In the third TheSecretsOfTheImmortalNicholasFlamel book, [[spoiler: Scatty and Joan think they have been sent back in time by Dee, and that, being immortal, they will have to take a very long slow path back to the others. However (more spoilers), it turns out that they are in fact in another world that only resembles prehistoric Earth.]]
** Another example would be Marethyu (WARNING MASSIVE ENDING SPOILERS)[[spoiler: who is none other than Josh himself. Turns out that when Sophie and Josh go back in time so that they can be there on Danu Talis and have the duel of the twins that everyone remembers them being there for so that the timeline of the series makes any sort of sense at all, Sophie leaves and heads back to the future, but Josh stays behind to sink the island and effectively destroy the world, getting the infamous hook that he becomes known for as "The Hook-Handed Man", and then must live through all the long years in order to do the various things that will/have happen/ed such as giving Nicholas the Codex to begin with. He also says in a throwaway line that he has lived through the equivalent of MILLIONS of normal years by the time the present day rolls around. Making him a certifiable TimeAbyss as well.]]

* 'Literature/ThursdayNext'': The [=ChronoGuard=] from Jasper Fforde's novels can end up with chronological ages of several centuries and actual ages in the mid-twenties because of all the time-travel whackery they get up to. This makes life very hard for their families, who are busy taking TheSlowPath and having grandchildren who end up being older than their grandfather.

* ''[[Literature/ArtemisFowl Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony]]'' reverses this. At the end of the book, Artemis and Holly return from the titular lost continent, having jumped forward in time three years. Butler, Artemis's family, and the entire rest of the world took the usual path through those years. Conveniently, it seems likely that Artemis picked up a talent on the trip that will obviate the need to explain this to his parents. [[PlotRelevantAgeUp Even more conveniently]], the skipped years make Artemis the same biological age as the love interest the book had set up for him... Except that the sixth book completely ignores this possibility, in order to ShipTease [[MayflyDecemberRomance something completely different.]]

* In the ''[[Series/StarTrekEnterprise Enterprise]]'' episode "E2," the titular starship is sent one hundred years back in time while attempting to travel through a Xindi subspace tunnel. As a result, it lays low for the next century, becoming a generational ship, all so that it can stop the accident from happening in the first place.

** In "The Crystal Bucephalus," the fifth Doctor spends three years as a restaurateur after being abandoned on a random planet in a different era (he's looking to get picked up by time-traveling restaurant critics from the titular time-traveling restaurant).
** In "The Stone Rose," the Doctor reveals at the end that he'd taken three years off in the middle of the story to study sculpture under Michaelangelo in order to produce the titular statue.

* In ''BobAndGeorge'', the titular George is sent back several months in a time suit to fix some plot holes in the previous storylines. He does so, but the suit breaks, so he spends the time until time catches up with him on the beach in Acapulco.

* In the aptly named ''StickmanAndCube'' arc "The Slow Path," everyone ''but'' the titular characters are forced to take TheSlowPath when Stickman and Cube travel into the future. The wait severely flusters the Author, who has to somehow keep the readers occupied until they return.

** In ''Bender's Big Score'', the titular robot ''repeatedly'' and happily volunteers to go back in time, steal precious historical treasures, and then wait in a cavern under Planet Express headquarters until a few seconds after leaving. And then [[spoiler:at the end of the film, Bender "wakes up" all of the bender duplicates and has them exit the basement when they were not logically supposed to, thus creating a hole in the universe, and setting the stage for the next film.]]

* In ''Film/Inception'', Cobb, Mal and Saito find themselves trapped for many years in a kind of limbo state.

* In the first story arc of ''Midnighter'', the titular hero uses this by saving a man's life during World War 2 and asking for, in return, him to deliver a message to the Big Bad in the future.

* In Anime/PantyAndStockingWithGarterbelt, it turns out that [[spoiler:Garterbelt used to be a career criminal. When he died, God revived him as an {{Immortal}} and sent him back to the age of the dinosaurs to witness the entire evolution of mankind first-hand.]]

* A coffee grinder bought in a [[TheLittleShopThatWasntThereYesterday disappearing antiques store]] ([[spoiler: or the Lucifer Hawk that runs it]]) sends Yuki Saiko of SilentMoebius thirty years into the past, where she meets a young man named Tohru and they fall in love. When she gets back to her own time, they meet again [[spoiler: and it turns out he's her landlord.]]

* In Creator/TimPowers' book ''Literature/TheAnubisGates'', Brendan Doyle severely injures the ''ka'' Dr. Romany while both are back in time, to the point where the villain can't follow him through a time portal. In the "present" of the story, Brendan realizes the [[spoiler:"beggar's luck" he's seen before]] is Dr. Romany, after a century of desiccation, and after wondering how the ''ka'' returned to this time, whispers in horror, "Oh, God... You ''lived'' your way back..."

** In "The Invasion," the Brigadier has lived through four years of normal Earth-time while the Doctor and Jamie only spent a few weeks.

** In the 2010 Christmas special "[[YetAnotherChristmasCarol A Christmas Carol]]," the Doctor attempts to change the ways of a cold-hearted tyrant Kazran(in order to convince him to help save a crashing starliner where Amy and Rory were honeymooning) by visiting Kazran as a child. During their first visit, they encountered Abigail, a beautiful woman who was forced to live in suspended animation to avoid dying of a mysterious disease. Over the next few years, the Doctor would visit Kazran every Christmas Eve, and they would bring Abigail out of her cold sleep to celebrate the holiday with them. So while the Doctor time-traveled from one Christmas Eve to the next and Abigail slept from one Christmas Eve to the next, Kazran ended up taking the slower path.

** In "The Doctor's Wife", one of the things House does to torture Amy on the TARDIS is to make her believe this happened to Rory. At random intervals, Amy is separated from Rory by a sliding steel wall. She finds him a minute or two later, while much more time has passed for him. The first time, it's a few hours, and he's mildly annoyed. The second time, it's two thousand years, and he's a seething mad, wizened old man. The final time, he's a withered skeleton surrounded by messages saying "HATE AMY" written in what looks like blood. Of course, it's all an illusion and present Rory comes round the corner just a moment later.

** Weaponised by the Doctor in ''The Bells Of St John''. He jumps forward to the morning so that the people searching for him have been at it all night and are less effective.

** Interestingly, 576 billion years is only 37 times the age of the universe under old estimates of the age of the universe (around 15 billion years). Under more recent estimates of the age of the universe (around 13.7 billion), Marvin turns out to be around [[FortyTwo 42]] times the age of the universe.