Instances of the "Groundhog Day" Loop in Fan Works.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
- Good Day Sunshine (Good Day Sunshine Good Day Sunshine Good Day Sunshine...)
places Antoine Triplett in one of these, endlessly repeating the day of his death and unable to avoid his fate no matter what he does in a way reminiscent of the Supernatural example below. Eventually, FitzSimmons help him realise that the way to break the loop is to kiss Skye.
- The Loop, where Gumball had a very bad day but for some reason, it keeps repeating over and over and he must find a way to break the loop while making the most out of the predicament. The elements of the day include:
- Larry having a bike accident in front of the Wattersons' house.
- Nicole getting upset at Gumball for breaking a plate of China that a deceased relative gave to her since he used it as a plate to eat a cookie off of.
- Richard getting a new tie and everyone commenting on it.
- Anais getting mad at Gumball for not listening to her about coming clean to Nicole about the plate.
- Gumball forgetting to put Darwin's name on their science project for class.
- Gumball being called up by Ms. Simian to answer a science question.
- The Pep Fest, which is a rally about the school cheerleaders putting on a show.
- All Assorted Animorphs AUs: "What if they were in a time loop?" is about Jake being stuck repeating the same day over and over again. Turns out Tom's Yeerk is in the loop too (it's unclear if the real Tom is), and Jake figures out that it's a trap by Crayak to get him to kill his brother.
- The Infinite Loops:
- The fic 'verse is a fairly well-developed genre that covers a wide variety of series, with some of the most well-known being centered on the universes of Naruto, Harry Potter, Disney, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and Pokémon. The backstory of this shared universe is that something happened to the multiverse-controlling supercomputer of Yggdrasil in the Ah! My Goddess universe, causing every universe to begin "skipping" like a record, with the goddesses trying to fix things in the background. Each universe that is looping (and more and more start to loop) will have an "Anchor" to keep them stable, this anchor being a single individual who loops more than anyone else and is always "awake" in the loops, remembering everything. But those they have close connections to will eventually start looping as well. The loopers retain memories (and usually powers and even items via Hammerspace) from previous loops, with a loop usually stretching from a significant early event within that series to their eventual death. Most of these fics take a comedic route, wherein the characters spend most of the time messing around with canon, especially when they learn that fixing the loop is completely out of their hands. What if we try beating the villain with a surprise party? Or just refuse to save the world and watch movies instead? And some loops are oddly non-standard from the start, with characters switching places, turning into other creatures, or crossing over with a completely different series.
- When it isn't being silly fun, the genre also looks at some of the negative consequences of looping through time. The most prevalent example is what is known as "Sakura Syndrome," named after Sakura from the Naruto universe, where a looper starts abusing the infinite resets the Loops offer to torture or otherwise abuse non-Loopers. There's also its near-inverse, Setsuna Syndrome, where a Looper believes that the canon or "Baseline" timeline is sacrosanct and must be preserved (which is not only pointless, but often completely impossible since many loops go Off the Rails before the Looper ever wakes up). There's also a restriction against having children in the loops, with the Goddesses going out of their way to meddle in the loopers lives to prevent this. The obvious reason being that said child will just cease to be as soon as the loop is done, and that's unneeded psychological stress for the parent.
- In one notable instance, the Groundhog Day universe itself started looping. Phil would Awaken the day before the infamous day; if he did everything exactly perfect, he got a third day before looping again. This went on for quite a while before anyone noticed the glitch—his universe was never supposed to start looping at all. The Admins patch things so that he'll spend most of his time in variants and other longer loops, unlike most universes, where baseline is by far the most common.
- Epiphany: Sephiroth finds himself reliving the events of Final Fantasy VII over and over again. He's gone through the original game, the Remake, and now we're somewhere past that. The thrust of the story is him trying to determine why he's in the loop in the first place.
- had we but world enough and time, in which Fry dies from a brain pathogen and Leela gets caught in a bubble of time repeating the day of his death, trying hard to figure out how to save him. Unlike most examples, Leela never actually gets out of the loop — it's explained that the time loop is because she's in a bubble universe, and ending it would simply wipe her from existence. At the very least, Fry manages to become aware of being in a loop as well and gets to be with Leela.
- In All Our Yesterdays Harry repeats the same day due to having a time-turner shard stuck under his shoulderblade. The loop doesn't end until he has it removed and destroys the unstable ward which made the time-turner explode in the first place.
- In DOOM Day Harry repeats the day Sirius died after wishing that he could do it over and over until everything was perfect.
- Getting The Hang of Thursdays, a fic featuring Severus Snape and Hermione Granger. Not your usual time-loop story, in large part because, as the author notes, the effect is a physical response to a magical accident, and not an attempt to dispense cosmic justice or teach a lesson.
- In Ground Hog Day after an accident in Potions, Harry, Hermione and Snape repeat the same day until Snape comes up with an antidote.
- In Harry Potter and the Resurrection Veil Harry finds himself repeating the day he used Snape's Sectumsempra curse on Draco.
- In Loop in Time Harry casts a spell on Snape which forces the victim to repeat the same day until they make it perfect for the caster. Harry being the typical horny teenager, this involves having sex.
- In The Karma Circle: Chances on Top of Chances, Gaz is smothered while healing from a stomach bug in the hospital by someone with a grudge against her. Fortunately for her, the Entity of Death and Judgement sticks her in a loop with 30 resets, giving her a chance to prevent her death, if she can figure out who's responsible and how to stop them.
- Ron Stoppable ends up in one such loop in Endless Summer Days. Unlike most such loops, Ron has an easy way to convince others due to GJ being Crazy-Prepared and having a code for time travel. On his fifth (or sixth, he's not sure) loop, Betty Director basically orders Ron to do whatever he wants because 1) They don't know what the trigger is to end the loop, so it could very well be something ridiculous like making the President moon Congress, and 2) Such actions will keep Ron from snapping from the stress of his situation.
- Heroes Never Die: How Izuku's Quirk works. Every once in a while he gets caught in a loop, and has to figure out what he has to do to escape it. The loops are usually only a few minutes long, and are reset by his brutal death. He puts a suicide pill on his hero uniform so that he can reset at will.
- The main premise of Here we go Loopty Loo is that Class 1-A, Eraserhead, and All Might and later the UA Big Three, Toga, Dabi, and Shigaraki have been repeating about three years each loop for upwards of one hundred loops, with the loop typically starting just before the Quirk assessment and inevitably ending just before graduation or with the death of all the loopers. The loops often have differences from the original timeline, ranging from Gender Bender shenanigans or mild shuffling of class assignments to full AUs set in various other series like Among Us or Danganronpa. The loops are happening because a dying Deku passed One for All onto Eri as a last-minute attempt to save her in the original timeline. It combined with her own Rewind quirk to create the loops that will continue until all the loopers survive the loop.
- Looping Back to the Beginning: The members of Class 1-A (including Aizawa, and with Shinsou replacing Mineta) have been stuck in a timeloop that's gone on for so long that they've given up on finding the cause and basically just roll with it. They even have set times for when they get their memories for the loop and adjust their plans accordingly. They spend most of the loops either destroying the villains as fast as possible if they want to have a relaxing year, or trolling everyone, up to and including each other.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- The Best Night Ever revolves around Prince Blueblood being trapped on the day of the disastrous Grand Galloping Gala until he ensures that the bearers of the Elements of Harmony actually enjoy themselves at the event. At one point, he thinks he's pulled it off... but he has everything so rigidly planned and nailed down that nobody, not even him, has any real fun. When the loop starts again after that one, he goes out to the garden and considers freeing Discord. Notably, although Pinkie Pie is unaware of the loop, she's so erratic that she always does something different.
- In Early One Morning, Rainbow Dash has been stuck in one for some time, Twilight ends up joining her.
- The Flash Sentry Chronicles: Referred to as a Hedgehog Day in the series. Springer finds himself trapped in one, where he keeps reliving the exact same hour over and over again, with Ponyville being destroyed by an explosion at the end of the hour and killing everyone, including him. He relives the same hour countless times trying to find out who caused the explosion, then just relaxing and leaning more about everyone in town when he gets stressed after failing to stop the explosion. He and the others eventually stop the loop by destroying a time loop scroll Trixie cast, then stop the town from being destroyed by the explosion with Springer trying to pull a Heroic Sacrifice. The experience is slightly downplayed with The Reveal that everything was just a dream Springer had on a "Vision Quest" and only two hours passed in the real world, but everything he learned about everyone in town was true and he kept the skills he developed while in the loop.
- Hard Reset involves Twilight attempting to thwart a changeling invasion, only to get warped back to the same point in time whenever she dies. Which she does. Repeatedly. She eventually succeeds after having experienced hundreds of loops over the course of a month or so, and having become a battle-hardened warrior and a changeling's worst nightmare, as well as a PTSD-psychological wreck from the whole experience.
- The most widely known example is the controversial work Chunin Exam Day, in which Naruto repeats the same month over and over again in a time-loop for decades, before learning how to bring others in to the time loop and establishing a harem. It's mainly level grind plus humor and action.
- A probably better story that may have been inspired by CED is Time Braid, in which Sakura engages in level grinding, romance, and investigating who caused time to loop and why they did so. Madness abounds, due to both issues inherent in a time loop and bad actors.
- All is Relative Except the Stubbornness of a Demon starts with Naruto having done so many loops that he's the oldest thing on the planet except for the Kyuubi. Unlike most examples, there is no escape condition and Naruto has long since accepted that he'll be repeating his life forever. While exactly how long the loop has been going on is never stated, Naruto notes that he married a particular waitress in seven different loops.
- Do You Remember Love, a One-Shot Fic inspired by Ken Grimwood's Replay. Naruto's signature Shadow Clone jutsu duplicates his soul with each use so that every time he dies, he cycles back to being 12 years old. At the start of the story, he's lived the same cycle for at least 3000 years and has taken the time to master various skills such as carpentry, cooking, painting, playing instruments and writing literature. He's also realized there are long-term consequences when he tries to make drastic changes in each loop and is resigned to letting events run their course. After hearing his story, Sakura learns the Shadow Clone jutsu so she can be with him too (until his stockpile of souls finally runs out).
- Parodied in the mockfic What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Each loop only lasts 10 seconds and Naruto quickly finds it boring.
- And Somebody Spoke And I Went Into A Dream is a Beatles fanfic that places Paul in one of these. It's left open-ended in the fic itself, but the author states that they believe that Paul sacrificing himself to save John at the end of the fic ends the loop.
- Everyday Is Exactly The Same, which takes place in the first season of the anime and involves Usagi and Mamoru trapped together on the day of Tuxedo Mask's duel with Zoisite. It ends when Mamoru decides to allow the Negaverse to take him, as in the canon universe. Him and Usagi have bonded and fallen in love at this point, making it quite the Bittersweet Ending.
- The Mirror Has Two Faces has a chapter based on International Dateline episode of the series but with Bailey stuck in the loop instead of Cody, she thinks that going to dance as a girl (she had been dressing as boy) is the way out but just like the show, she needs to slow down the ship.
- In It's All in the Details, the events of "Mystery Spot" are ended after only a few dozen loops when Castiel senses Dean's contract completing and resetting itself, prompting him to step in and encourage Loki to end the loop early with the threat that he will start using Loki's true name so that his older brother can hear it.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
- "Born to Fight" ultimately reveals that Cameron is basically in one; after the events of the series, once John travels to the future to retrieve her chip, he uploads her memories into the version of her that has just been created by Skynet, and ultimately sends her back into the past to meet his younger self as originally happened, aware that she will relive events over and over. However, the epilogue reveals that Cameron was sent back to 1989 rather than 1999, allowing John to follow her into the past and live with Cameron for ten years of peace until she has to meet his younger self, John speculating that the two will share what moments they can in 2007 while his younger self is asleep until she has to compelte her part of the loop.
- "It worked alright", where Jade West arranges a bomb to kill Tori and Beck because she believes Tori is cheating on her with Beck, only to learn that Beck is actually helping Tori plan her proposal to Jade. Jade is too late to stop the bomb and is sentenced to lethal injection, the fic ending with the revelation that Jade is reliving the moments leading up to her death in Hell (similar to the hell-loops of Lucifer).
Unsorted
- Kazuichi Strangelove: Kazuichi Souda finds himself in one when he and the other survivors attempt to go through the events of Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair once more to save their deceased classmates. His attempts to save his classmates usually lead to either unexpected Butterfly of Doom deaths or Monokuma starting new motives to guarantee a murder.
- In Once, Twice, I Lost Count Harry, Ron, Hermione and Harry's boyfriend Terence keep repeating the Final Battle until Voldemort dies and Terence lives.
- In the Pony POV Series, the final confrontation with Dark World!Discord strongly suggests that he's somehow stuck in one that repeatedly ends with the Elements of Harmony defeating him.
- It eventually turns out that Nightmare Paradox, Twilight's potential Nightmare self, has been forcing this on Discord in order to eternally torment him. . He's long since had a Heel Realization and doesn't even want to be a villain anymore, but she just resets the loop anytime Discord does something he's not "supposed" to do. The loop is finally broken with Paradox's defeat.
- Princess Fidelitas AKA, the Alicorn Rainbow Dash born from Eclipse's purified Nightmare Manacle is the literal antithesis of this trope. One of her domains is Breaking Cycles, which effectively translates to being able to instantly end timeloops. She's also able to strip a person aware of the loops of all the gains they obtained via it, reverting them to their original form in terms of power and experience. All this is, according to Word of God, a cosmic 'rule patch' for the above event by the Elders and she's essentially a custom made Eclipse killer.
- Purple Days is a Game of Thrones fanfic where the hated prince/king Joffrey Baratheon is run through a time loop. It begins with Black Comedy at his many deaths, but ultimately leads to Character Development slowly leading The Caligula into becoming The Good King.
- In Recursion Harry repeats the same day until he gets together with Hermione.
- In Repeat After Me Draco keeps repeating the same day after a Potions accident until he admits his feelings for Hermione.
- The Danny Phantom fanfic Rewrite Clean Lenins is a variation on this. Danny is forced to relive his first day of junior year over and over again, though every loop is a little different and he doesn't have Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory. Turns out the loops were rough drafts written in a strange notebook by the Ghost Writer, who didn't realize they were being published as reality until Danny confronted him.
- Episode Six of RWBY: ABRG (RWBY Abridged) has Weiss getting stuck in one after throwing a fit over having Ruby chosen as her team leader over her, among other grievances, until she makes peace with her.
- Lelouch in Screw You Fate, I'm Going Home is permanently stuck in a loop where each time he dies, he revives with all his memories at a random point in the original timeline. The first time, he Set Right What Once Went Wrong and lived to be over one hundred years old. After two thousand years of loops, Lelouch has given up on ever breaking free.
- Happens in The Sweetie Chronicles: Fragments, when Sweetie Belle lands in the aforementioned setting and gets caught up in the loops. Rather heartwarming, as Blueblood is happy to have some companionship who doesn't forget everything each morning, and he puts his plans on hold just to help her. And rather heartbreaking when she eventually moves on, and he realizes that the original Sweetie Belle remembers nothing.
- In Time Magic Is For All Intents And Purposes A Useless And Dangerous Magecraft, Waver finds himself repeating the same day over and over again and wonders why, given that no rational magus would do something so reckless as to reverse time, and the only thing that really happens to him that day is a budget meeting. He eventually realizes that there's only one person out there with the magical talent to reverse time and the lack of sense to actually do it — Flat, who needed an extra day to complete a homework assignment. But since he isn't the one who remembered the repeated day, he procrastinates again, fails to do the assignment, and then needs to reset the day again. The loop ends when Waver sits on Flat until he does his homework.
- Fan fiction set in Middle-earth from Tolkien's Legendarium:
- Some fans of The Lord of the Rings believe that a loo explains all those Tenth Walker stories. After Frodo and company finish the quest, time loops back, and they must do the quest again, but with a new Tenth Walker in the company. The characters forget about the loop as time resets their memories. This time loop appears in both I am NOT a MarySue and MagnoliaCinderellaCupcake.
- Groundhog GDIME takes its name from this trope. Charlize from England falls into Middle-earth, multiple times. After each visit, Middle-earth seems to reset itself. The loop continues as Charlize tries again, but she always fails to seduce Legolas.
- A Thread Unraveled involves Maedhros reliving the Battle of Unnumbered Tears over and over until they can turn the crushing defeat into a victory.
- In Tomorrow is for Never, Gadget finds herself stuck in a time loop after a plane crash kills the rest of the team while they're at a hockey game while she was distracted with her inventions. The first time the day repeats itself, Gadget saves the others from the initial accident, but their attempts to help in the rescue leave Monterey Jack paralysed apart from his head and right arm while Chip becomes a colder individual who uses Gadget to psychologically manipulate a depressed Dale in the name of 'the big picture', and the second loop sees Gadget inadvertently leave Chip and Dale the impression that they're holding her back while simultaneously making Gadget perceive herself as a monster for stringing them along for so long. After an unspecified number of 'practice loops', Gadget is eventually able to prevent the original plane crash by leading the other Rangers in a rapid bit of repair-work on the plane's subtly damaged wing, allowing her to move on to the next day. It is suggested at the end that the loop was created by the spirit of her deceased father to give her new insight into her life.
- In Valentine's Day Repeated Draco repeats the same Valentine's Day until he accepts Harry's feelings for him.
- Velma Meets the Original Velma plays this fairly differently; after Velma and the gang started to recognize the more nonsensical elements of her universe, such as Scooby's ability to talk, Scooby went on a rampage and killed Mystery Inc, before rebuilding the entire world and his friends so that they could continue their adventures. However, every time Velma would remember what happened before, and Scooby would have to kill her and everybody else before rebuilding again. He laments that each time is fairly different from the last and veers ever further from the original world, the most recent being the furthest from capturing the essence of the original. The video ends with Scooby announcing that he will get it right next time, before killing Velma.
- The Perry/Doof plot in Visions of the Future involves a Try-It-Again-Inator, which lets Doof retry their encounter until he manages to stop Perry. Thirty-five times later, Perry finds a way out of it before Doof finds a way to stop him; the reflected beam instead hits Phineas and Ferb and their friends, giving Ferb a chance to prevent Isabella (and later Phineas) from using the Chronoscope to look forward in time.
