Stable Time Loop / Comic Books

• The basic gist of Monarch's backstory in Armageddon 2001: Hawk witnesses Dove die at Monarch's hands, Hawk becomes Monarch, Monarch travels back in time and kills Dove, rinse and repeat.
• Loop: No matter where you start reading the time loop scene, you'll end up right back where you started, as the panels and story form a loop.
• Maybe the best example is given by Universal War One: the whole plot is based on not one, not two but three nested stable loops, without any Plot Hole.
• In The Invisibles, Gideon is introduced to The Invisible College by an elderly Edith Manning, who recognises him as a time traveller from her youth. After entering the college, he is taught to Time Travel, which results in him going back and meeting her as a young woman...
• The elves in ElfQuest are only on the planet because their alien ancestors ("the coneheads," later termed "the High Ones") were attracted by the human tales of elven beings. The coneheads shapeshifted into elven beings and turned their spacecraft into a palace, then, as they were landing, were flung back to the caveman days, where all their powers stopped working and they were nearly killed. The few survivors founded some cultures that became the elves that begat the stories that prompted the coneheads to attempt to land in the first place.
  • Later on, the magic-user Rayek attempts to stop the event that flung the High Ones into the past. It's pointed out that those who were born as a result of this event would cease to exist should he succeed, but he doesn't care (except, it seems, for the few he knows personally). He's talked out of it by the three people most dear to him, who choose to suffer the same fate as the planet; as Rayek can't bring himself to erase them, he stands aside and lets the event happen as it already has.
  • His plan, more specifically, was to merge the two magical spaceships (the actual one and the one that took The Slow Path for 10000 years) and prevent the time loop by making the spaceship stable through the power of applied object paradox.
• In The Avengers, Sam Wilson shouted "Avengers Assemble" while teaming up with a group of Avengers from different eras, including the original 1960s team. The Vision took great pleasure in pointing out the implications of this.
  The Vision: Congratulations, Captain, on your first time paradox. The original Avengers now learned their Battle Cry from you.
• In the Marvel Universe, Cable was infected by a techno-organic virus by Apocalypse, who, it is revealed later, got the virus in the past from Cable.
• Superman:
  • In the Elseworlds book Superman: Red Son, it's revealed that Superman was sent back in time as a baby, because Lex Luthor 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.
  • Ironic in that Jor-L sends his son to the past, as opposed to another planet, because he dislikes how placid humanity has become. Humans think they've learned all there is to learn and now just "have nothing left to do but wait and die". Jor-L hopes that sending his son to the past will change that. However, the antagonism between Superman and Lex Luthor is what inspires Luthor to engineer the Golden Age Jor-L hopes to avert.
  • In Superman #657, during Camelot Falls, Superman is shown a vision of the future, and sees a superhero codenamed Sirocco (which means The Desert Wind in Persian). Later, when Superman visits Iran and befriends Sirocco's present self, he accidentally calls him by that name. The man says the name is cool and asks Supes if he can use it for his codename.
    Superman (thinking): And there you go, I've created a temporal paradox. A minor one, I hope.
  • The whole reason for Imperiex's existence during Our Worlds at War is that the multiverse is flawed, so he seeks to destroy everything to re-create it. As a force of nature, he can't be destroyed: to wit, when he seems defeated, his energy was merely absorbed by Brainiac, who then starts a plan to assimilate the universe with that power. Superman has a huge problem: If he destroys Brainiac, Imperiex gets free and can "hollow" the multiverse. But if he leaves Brainiac be, the multiverse will be assimilated. What does Superman do? He arranges for a Time portal to be opened and pushes Brainiac/Imperiex (who are the size of a PLANET) into it, taking them to... a milisecond after the Big Bang. Their essences get in the way of nature, forming our flawed multiverse instead of the "perfect" one that should have been, but making sure that neither is a problem from there on out in the present. Imperiex thus gets to realize the irony of its entire existence the instant before his "death".
  • In DC Comics Presents Annual 2: "The Last Secret Identity!", Kristen Wells, a researcher from the future, traveled back in time to find out who the mysterious superhero "Superwoman" was. Unable to find her anywhere, she eventually realizes it was she herself, so she puts on the Superwoman costume and uses future technology to do all the superheroic feats that future history books claim Superwoman did.
  • In Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade, alternate Supergirl (Supragirl from now on) travels to the 30th century where she meets Supergirl, who loans Comet the Superhorse to Supragirl. Then Supragirl goes back in time, and leaves Comet. Supergirl adopts him as her pet and ten centuries later she meets Supragirl and loans her horse to her alternate self before Supragirl goes back in time.
  • The original Legion of Super-Heroes seems to be an example of this—they were inspired by Superboy, and they make him a member and have him fight alongside them, arguably shaping him into the hero who inspired them. Also, a Bronze Age story showed Brainiac 5 was already a Legionnaire before Superboy. Thing is, Brainiac joined together with Supergirl. So the Legion went back in time to get Superboy joining them because Supergirl told them they were meant to befriend him.
  • Superman's Return to Krypton:
    • Subverted. Superman goes back to the past and finds out a crook is trying to steal Martha away from Jonathan Kent. Superman ruins the crook's plans by exposing him, which would kick off the loop (Superman ensures his adoptive parents get together -> he is raised by Jonathan and Martha and becomes Superman -> Superman time-travels and ensures his adoptive parents get together), but then he realizes what the crook was going to be exposed anyway whether he acted or not.
    • When Superman meets his birth parents and introduces himself using his Kryptonian name, Lara decides she will name her and Jor-El's son Kal-El after their wonderful friend.
  • In Superman (2023) #10, Superman and Marilyn Moonlight, the ghost of a forgotten hero from the 19th century, find themselves sent back to the Wild West, where they fight Terra-Man. A young woman watching this seems particularly impressed with Marilyn, and Superman realises that she just inspired herself to become a hero.
• The final pages of Ultimate Fantastic Four #53 show that Reed sends his Cosmic Cube back in time 30,000 years to the planet Acheron, where Thanos finds it, which precipitated his rise; when he lost it, he influenced Reed to create it.
• In Fantastic Four #288, The Beyonder reveals that when Dr. Doom turned out to be dead at the time of the Secret Wars, he simply plucked the Latverian tyrant from elsewhere in the time stream so he could participate. Years later, when the Beyonder is about to destroy Doom on Earth, Reed Richards warns him of the paradox that could be created … and so the Beyonder instead closes the loop and fulfills history by sending Doom to the Secret Wars.
• In Tales from the Bully Pulpit, Teddy Roosevelt gets help from the "Teddy of thirty minutes from now" (a reference to the Bill & Ted example below). At the end of the story, the main characters remember to go back and fulfill the time loop before going off on their adventures.
• In Amazing Spider-Man Annual #20, Arno Stark, the Iron Man of 2020, has developed a time machine that received military backing by an atomic bomb project that he is also developing. An anti-war terrorist locks up Iron Man's wife and son in the laboratory which contains the bomb, but is killed by Arno soon afterward. To defuse the bomb, Arno uses his time machine to go back to the 1980s to get the terrorist's retina patterns. In doing so, though, Iron Man becomes involved in a fight with Spider-Man which results in the child becoming scarred — giving him the motivation against Iron Man in the first place. It gets worse... Not only did Arno not get the retina scan he needed (the scanner was destroyed in the fight), he is suddenly returned to the future, only to discover that the bomb had detonated prematurely and killed his family.
• Alan Moore'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 the mysterious "Supremium" substance that both originally gave Supreme his powers and acts as his "Kryptonite" is what all time-looped matter eventually becomes.
• Larry Hama's Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja is entirely encircled by a time loop. Throughout the series, it is revealed that John Doe and Alfie O'Megan were left as infants at an orphanage by a screaming, burning woman. In the final issue, they realize they're part of a never-ending time loop, and must go back in time to avoid a paradox. As the two step through the time portal (reverting to infants in the process), they're followed by John's girlfriend. However, because she was being born at the same time, she cannot exist in two places simultaneously and begins to self-immolate.
• 52 has two of them in the Booster Gold plot line. One of them has Booster fake his death and then travel back in time a few weeks so he can become Supernova and drive Booster to the actions which lead him into the Loop. The other has Booster send Mister Mind back through time after forcing him back into his larval form, to the point where he was discovered by Doctor Sivana who imprisoned him until he was forced to infect Skeets, starting the loop over. Both were created due to the actions of Rip Hunter.
  
  Rip Hunter himself is also a stable time loop: he reveals that he's Booster Gold's son, who only will come into being because Rip Hunter drafts Booster Gold into his current job as secret protector of the timeline.
• The Flash:
  • Flash: Rebirth has used this to retcon the origin of the second Flash's powers. That lightning bolt that struck Barry in the first place? Caused by his future self and successor, stopping a psychopath speedster from killing Barry's Love Interest in the past.
  • Secret Origins Annual #2 from 1988 features a similar origin for Barry, by showing that the lightning bolt that gave Barry his powers was really Barry himself, having been turned into energy and traveling backwards in time after defeating the Anti-Monitor.
  • This is also a key part of the third Flash's history. Wally West (who was also the first Kid Flash) was raised by very strict parents, and saw superheroes as a sort of escape, with his favourite hero being the second Flash. He remembers a relative talking to him at a particularly low point after his dad had berated him. This guy told Wally that his parents want the best for him and are just afraid to dream, and that if he kept pushing through, all his dreams would come true. When Wally is flung through time, he ends up at that same family gathering and decides to find out who the guy was. Turns out, it was him. He tells his younger self that everything will turn out great, and leaves him a sketch of what would become the first Kid Flash costume.
  • Revealed to be part of the history of Eobard Thawne, the Reverse-Flash, in the storyline The Return of Barry Allen: Thawne was originally a fan of the Flash who went to great lengths to give himself Barry's powers and go back in time to meet his hero, only to arrive in the past when Wally West, Barry's successor, was the Flash, and learn of his destiny to become Professor Zoom while exploring the Flash Museum (the villain's true identity having been hidden from history to prevent Thawne learning of his fate). The trauma of this discovery causes Thawne to have a psychotic break, briefly convincing himself that he is Barry Allen to escape his destined death. The conclusion of the storyline implies that Thawne will lose all memory of his time in the past, but Wally and his allies speculate that Thawne's suppressed memories of his destined death are the reason for his future vendetta against Barry.
• In The New Universe, it is revealed that the Old Man is an older Ken Connell, who was thrown back in time and, thanks to the power of the Star Brand, lived for centuries before accidentally initiating the White Event and giving his younger self the Brand.
• From The Simpsons comics:
  • Radioactive Man #100 (cover date May 1963 in-universe) features Dr. Broom being sent back to the 1860s via a 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. Broome'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 were dealing with two renegade scientists tampering with time travel, and that's a pair o' docs better left alone."
  • The same issue has a scene where Fallout Boy's future self (by then having taken over as Radioactive Man) calls himself out for the time when he suggested to two supervillains that they should travel to the future and find out whether their plans worked and almost destroyed the universe - something 1963!Fallout Boy hadn't done yet. He does so at the end of the issue to Dr. Crab and Dr. Broome and seems to pick up on his mistake. Curiously though, in the framing story it's mentioned that this plot thread wasn't picked up until 1977, when the comic was written by a Continuity Porn-obsessed Promoted Fanboy.
• The Uncle Scrooge story, "Of Ducks, Dimes, and Destinies," features Scrooge's nemesis Magica DeSpell travelling back in time to steal Scrooge's lucky number one dime. The man who was supposed to pay Scrooge the dime for a shoeshine decides to go out for a drink after Scrooge passes out shining his ridiculously muddy shoes. Magica intercepts the man and steals the dime, only to realize that since she stole it before it was given to Scrooge, it is no longer the first coin earned by the world's richest man (the last component she needs for a spell to create an amulet that can turn things into gold). Magica winds up giving the dime to an unconscious Scrooge, completing the loop.
• She-Hulk once dealt with a rather complicated one 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 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.
• An issue of The Avengers from the Roy Thomas run revealed that back during World War 2, Captain America was freed from Baron Zemo by his own future self after the team travelled back in time.
• Marvel Zombies turns out to be this in Marvel Zombies Return. The zombies were eventually defeated by a redeemed zombie Spiderman and Sandman, but the zombie sentry survives. The Watcher decides that the virus will consume itself, and sends the zombie sentry back in time to become patient 0.
• Robo finds himself in one of these in Atomic Robo 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 Eldritch Abomination they're fighting. It's not a true Stable Time Loop, of course, because Robo is very insistent that there's no such thing as time travel.
• When Sonic the Comic did an adaptation of Sonic the Hedgehog CD (a game where time travel is one of the main mechanics), it pulled off a loop so neat that, in the last part of the story, they could reprint an unedited page from an earlier issue and have it make perfect sense and not seem like laziness on the part of the writer or artist. (The first time the page appeared, the audience perspective is that of present Sonic; the second time, we're following future Sonic, who's been shrunk.)
• In H-E-R-O, this is the fate of the HERO dial. At the end of the series, it gets thrown back in time, where it's found by its very first user, who featured in a Whole Episode Flashback earlier in the series.
• Thor's grandfather, Bor, was defeated in battle against Frost Giants. He did not expect them to use magic, and therefore wasn't protected when a sorcerer cursed him and turned him into living snow. He told his son, Odin, to find a stronger sorcerer and undo the curse, but Odin stalled for years. When Thor was born, Odin noticed he had Bor's eyes, and was racked with guilt when Bor's spirit came to him and told him he'd be forgiven if he adopts a child whose father he'd kill in his next war. As it happens, Odin's next war was against Frost Giants as well, and the child whose father he killed was Loki. Thus was Loki adopted as an Asgardian. The truth is Loki was the sorcerer who turned Bor into living snow. He returned back in time to do that, and then he appeared to Odin as Bor's spirit and told him to adopt the child. Then he went to his younger self and instructed him exactly what to do and say so to incite war between the Frost Giants and the Asgardians, so he'd be adopted as an Asgardian and become the man he's today.
  • Journey into Mystery (Gillen) brings us a whole new one, once again involving Loki. 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 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.
• In a Thunderbolts storyline, the team was sent back in time, encountering the original group, back when they were still villains posing as heroes. Fixer's past self learns of his future, decides he's a total loser, and tries to change things. Fixer tries to stop him, inadvertently killing him. This, along with the present T-Bolt's base being in the past too long, results in the unraveling of time. In order to fix things, Fixer has his appearance and DNA altered so he looks just like his young self, and stays in the past. The past Thunderbolts' memories are erased (including Fixer's), and the present Thunderbolts return home. Songbird points out at one point that Fixer is now fated to go round and round in time, forever more.
  • Despite all this, Fixer managed to reappear in the crossover event Avengers Standoff!, raising many questions as to how he escaped the time loop. However, in the new Thunderbolts ongoing, it turned out that his escape was pulled by childlike Reality Warper Kobik. In addition, Fixer didn't even remember the loop until Kobik restored his memories.
  • A more comedic example happened in the very same storyline Fixer got trapped in a time loop. Boomerang, out of his trademark weapons, heads for a locker where he stored some away, groaning about the time this very locker was empty and the police nabbed him. As he leaves, the Boomerang of that time is on the run from police and equally out of weapons. He reaches the locker and thinks he's been robbed when he finds it empty, thus unwittingly completing a loop.
• The climax of the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip "Hunters of the Burning Stone" strongly implies that the imprinting of the TARDIS on the human psyche influenced the design of the London Metropolitan Police Box, which the TARDIS would then by chance imitate and suffer Shape Shifter Mode Lock as shortly after the Doctor began his travels.
• In the Doctor Who (Titan) Fourth Doctor miniseries, the Lamp of Chronos turns out to be a time-looped artifact with no origin.
• In X-Factor it is revealed that the origins of Longshot and Shatterstar, two characters from different centuries in the Mojoverse, work this way. During a battle, the demon lord Mephisto blasted Shatterstar into the Mojoverse's past. There he was studied by the scientist Arize, who used his genes to create Longshot. Many years later, Longshot would marry Dazzler, a human mutant and father a child with her — Shatterstar himself. The time-traveling Shatterstar took his infant self, and erased Dazzler and Longshot's memories of his birth. He and his partner Rictor then took the infant a century into the future to be raised as a gladiator and play out Shatterstar's life as he remembered it.
  
  It is notable that this is not the first instance of this occurring in the Mojoverse, as a human stuntwoman from Earth, "Ricochet" Rita Wayword, is turned into the warrior-sorceress Spiral in the Mojoverse's future and then sent back into the past to serve an earlier version of Mojo and ultimately facilitate her own transformation into Spiral. Unlike many other dimensions in the Marvel Universe, the Mojoverse does not spawn alternate timelines easily (because it's a "pocket dimension" that's directly tied to the main Marvel Universe; most alternative timelines have their own attached Mojoverse), making such stable time loops possible there.
• In Next Men, the villain Sathanas goes back in time to 1955 and gives Senator Aldus Hilltop the means to create Project Next Men, which is designed to create superhumans. At one point, Hilltop has sex with Jasmine (one of the Next Men) and gains the same life-draining power that Sathanas had. He then realizes that he has become Sathanas himself.
• A number of Alan Moore's "Time Twisters" strips for 2000 AD were stable time loops. For instance "Chrono-Cops", in which the two Time Police officers interact with themselves on a number of occasions, but it all fits together in the end. And "Ring Road", in which a young woman in 1935 attacks an old woman who stops to give her a lift and steals her car. She finds herself inexplicably driving forward in time, through the 20th century, the post-apocalyptic era, and then through a fog bank to prehistory and eventually back to the 1930s. Just as things start looking familiar again, she sees a young woman, and stops to give her a lift...
• In The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, Brainstorm decides it would be neat to build a time machine to save his old crush from dying in a POW camp, and sells information to the 'cons to fund his lifelong project. Later, he decides it would be even BETTER to try stopping the war from happening at all. Of course, this is impossible because if the 'cons didn't exist, he couldn't sell himself to them to fund the project, but 'impossible' has never been a word in his vocabulary. So he goes back in time, but is closely followed by the crew of the Lost Light, who think he wants to kill Optimus Prime because he funded his project through the 'cons. It starts with a huge Energon fluctuation in a mine where Brainstorm first checks in on the past causing an evacuation during which Megatron loses his mentor, but there are other loops too, such as...
  • ...an adult Rodimus time-travelling to the Hot-Spot where his own spark spawned because Optimus Prime was checking out the Hot-Spot flare up caused by the time travel, and because he was there, he helped save his own freshly forged spark from being harvested for experimentation, and their failure to fully memory-wipe Glitch while there may well have started him down the road to becoming Tarn, who was directly responsible for the death of Brainstorm's crush in the first place...
  • ...their presences in a small Energon bar means Rung knocks over a glass of Energon of a pair of cops and starts a brawl that leads to the younger Megatron being arrested just for being there, even though he'd done nothing but reading poetry...
  • ...Chromedome stopping Whirl from killing either of the thugs who ruined his old life because he thinks it would cause a paradox because they in the future they will kidnap Senator Shockwave, even as he gives away where Shockwave will be by speaking in front of them...
  • ...and best of all, Whirl, who was on the ship because he had been kicked out of the Wreckers for trying to use a lab-made Sparkeater on his comatose boss, creating the legends of Sparkeaters with a Gun that turns people into Sparkeaters made by Brainstorm millions of years in the future because he'd heard of the legends of Sparkeaters. This gun is also the cause of the Sparkeater that was on the ship, the presence of which gave Brainstorm the idea for the gun.
    Brainstorm: Kind of wish I'd been less ambitious now...
  • Brainstorm's final bid to prevent the war, assassinating a newborn Megatron, leads to Whirl adapting his watchmaking skills in order to install a super-powerful spark in Megatron's chest in order to save his life, ensuring that the war would go ahead, since the power of that spark likely saved his life plenty of times - possibly including the time Whirl himself, acting on orders from the corrupt Senate, beat Megatron half to death in prison - and gave him the power to be a champion gladiator after he left the mines, which would go on to provide him with a ready-made core for his army. Although, since Brainstorm had never killed before, it fell to Rewind to actually pull the trigger.
• By his own account, Thanos has no memory of how he survived his apparent death at the end of Captain Marvel #33, or how he still had the strength to even go on after such a crushing defeat. Thanos Annual #1 reveals that after his defeat, Thanos was taken to Mephisto's realm and nearly killed. At the last second, a future avatar of himself (created during the events of The Infinity Gauntlet) intervened and saved him. The avatar then showed Thanos glimpses of his future exploits, subconsciously instilling in him the drive to recompose himself and get back in the game.
• The Unbelievable Gwenpool: The final issue ends with a teary-eyed Gwen meeting her future self, who helps Gwen make the best of her final issue. Gwen uses the bulk of her pages to go on a lifetime adventures, going through years of storytelling to tie up loose ends and fight alongside other heroes. When she's nearing the end of the issue, Gwen goes back to the first page to meet herself, bringing the issue back to the start.
• After Savage became a prequel to ABC Warriors, it turned out that the first iterations of the titular robots were developed with the Thousand-Year Stare, a form of mental time travel in which the practitioners/victims looked forward in time and based their designs on the Warriors' ultimate forms from far in the future.
• Seemingly played straight but then subverted in Detective Comics (Rebirth). Held captive in an other-dimensional prison, Tim Drake escapes with a future version of himself who's now a ruthless Batman who kills. Tim insists he won't turn into this but the older version says he will, relating "I've had this conversation already." He's ready to go back to his time and let Tim continue down the path that led him to this. As he walks off, he makes an offhand-mention to Tim to "try and make up with Connor." When Tim asks "who's Connor?" Future!Tim freezes. He checks the timeline on his computer and realizes that while it's mostly the same, there are several differences. Future!Tim slashes Tim across the arm, then pulls off his own glove to see a long-healed scar that wasn't there before. He realizes something has altered time and thus broken the loop. Thus, he plans to do what it takes to stop his future from coming...meaning killing Batwoman.
• Wildstar is kicked off by the titular superhero traveling back in time to try and avert a 30-year war between Earth and alien invaders. It ends up being how he got his alien symbiote. He passed it on to his past self.
• Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! has an aversion to it. After Damage has a Super-Power Meltdown that allows history to restart, Waverider mentions that he needs to change history just a little bit to prevent this trope from happening. He does this by merging the point where Parallax was ready to destroy the last remains of time to the point where Green Arrow strikes him with an arrow with Kyle Rayner holding him. Waverider tries to save Kyle, but things happen too fast and he's unable to do so.
• In the seventh issue of the Muppet Babies comic book by Star Comics/Marvel Comics, Fozzie ends up being the one to coin his catchphrase of "Wocka Wocka Wocka" after circumstances result in him saying it in front of his prehistoric ancestor.
• Wonder Woman (1987): The Flash (Jay Garrick) thinks he's creating a stable time loop by going back to the WWII era to help his younger self escape like he remembers happening, however time is a not a constant thing and stuff starts changing in quick order, with Lantern's observations showing him there are three possible timeline outcomes to the time travel and that's without older Jay sticking around too long and potentially changing more.
• In DIE, it's eventually revealed that Die itself is sentient, and has been reaching through time to ensure its own creation, which it did by manipulating Sol into creating the game it was spawned from, as well as the various famous authors who created the archetypes that Sol based the game on.
• The last book of Sasmira reveals that the dying old woman who gave Stan the ring in the first book was indeed Sasmira, who set up Stan to travel back to the past in order for him to meet her past self.
• Final Crisis: Orion gets murdered by getting shot with a bullet made of Radion (the Kryptonite Factor of the New Gods). No one is able to figure out where the shot came from and Batman carries the bullet around with him. Batman eventually uses the bullet to shoot Darkseid. After disposing of Batman, the dying Darkseid digs out the bullet and decides to fire it through a portal to the past to assassinate Orion. While trying and failing to stop him, Superman warns if he does this, he's just setting up his own death, but Darkseid does it anyway.
  • This also kicks off one that ended up being majorly important in Batman (Grant Morrison). Morrison brought in the cult of the bat god Barbatos, as well as an old plot point that Batman based his costume off an outfit that Thomas Wayne wore to a masquerade ball. It's revealed that the outfit was ritual garb for the cult, based on the purported appearance of Barbatos, who were trying to implicate him as a demon-worshipper. However, Return of Bruce Wayne reveals that Batman is Barbatos, or at least, he's the source of the original legend, by way of time traveling to various periods in history where he encountered the cult and repeatedly assuming Batman-like identities. So Batman inspired Barbatos's look, and Barbatos's look inspired Batman.
• During the 1940s, Green Arrow and his Kid Sidekick Speedy were part of a team of Golden Age heroes called the Seven Soldiers of Victory. As time progressed and Comic-Book Time made the two heroes too young to have been around during the 40s, a retcon established that this had occurred on Earth-2. Following the merger of all of DC's alternate worlds into a single continuity during Crisis on Infinite Earths, this aspect of Green Arrow's history had to be excised entirely, as Comic Book Time again made it impossible for Green Arrow and Speedy to have been active in the 40s. DC Infinite Frontier finally reintroduced this aspect by revealing that Green Arrow and Speedy had been sent back in time during a fight with the Clock King, and subsequently became founding members of the Seven Soldiers while stuck in the Golden Age. Amusingly, this retroactively made Green Arrow a Legacy Character inspired by himself.
• Astro City: Preserving this is why the Silver Agent voluntarily allows himself to be executed in 1973 by the people of Astro City. Prior to his execution, he had been pulled into the far future to lead a war against a galaxy-spanning menace. As he traveled back to the present day, he continued to help and inspire more people in their times of need — and he was afraid that trying to avoid his fate would lead to alternate timelines that would erase their efforts.
• Starman has one that only pays off in the final issues. For much of the series, Jack Knight has admitted that he knows very little about the Starman of the Sixties of why his father returned to superheroics after his breakdown due to his guilt for his participation in the Manhattan Project. Eventually, due to magic shenanigans, he's sent back to the sixties, where he meets said Starman - his own time-lost brother David, living out a year as Starman until he is due to return to his death, which was the start of Jack's own adventures, and his father, still in the middle of his depression, who he convinces to go to a charity gala... where he is due to meet his Second Love, Jack and David's mother, pulling him out of his funk, back to the superhero life, and closing the loop.
• The Shea Fontana iteration of DC Super Hero Girls had a tie-in graphic novel titled Past Times at Super Hero High, where the main conflict revolved around Harley Quinn creating a timeline where Super Hero High is run by Vandal Savage by taking a pterosaur egg during a class field trip to the Jurassic period. During Harley and Batgirl's efforts to fix the timeline, they at one stop witness a younger Amanda Waller being attacked by Solomon Grundy. Batgirl tells Harley they should leave Waller be under the assumption that Waller being in this situation before either of them were born or Super Hero High existed means they shouldn't interfere, later having to go back to that point in time to defend Waller from Grundy after discovering that their non-interference changed the timeline so that Lucius Fox is principal of the high school instead of Waller.

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