Temporal Paradoxes in Western Animation.
Grandfather Paradoxes
- Naturally enough, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventures often courts this trope. One obvious example is the episode in which Bill and Ted neglect to buy Bill's father an antique railroad watch as a birthday present, to replace the one he lost as a child. Ted's initial plan is actually perfectly sound: take the original watch from Bill's father when he 'loses' it in the past, then give it to him in the present. This plan fails however, so they travel even further back in time to obtain the watch before Bill's father inherits it. Of course, this should mean that Bill's father wouldn't miss the watch in the first place, but the episode simply ignores this.
- In the DuckTales (2017) episode "Last Christmas!", Dewey is dropped into the past with a younger Donald and Della Duck (his mother and uncle, respectively). At the end of their adventure, Dewey tries to warn Delila about her terrible fate, but both ducks stop him.Dewey: Okay, but a gotta warn you what's gonna happen to you in the future!
[Donald and Della's eyes go wide and they quickly clamp his beak shut]
Donald: No! Keep your mouth shut!
Della: You can't warn us about our future! You'll disrupt the timestream!
Donald: Have you watched any movies?! - The Invader Zim episode "Bad, Bad Rubber Piggy" has one scene that demonstrates this perfectly when GIR finds out that Zim intends to send a robot back to the past to destroy Dib, leading to this classic line of dialogue:GIR: Wait... if you destroy Dib in the past, then he won't ever be your enemy, so you won't have to send a robot back, so then he will be your enemy, so then you will have to send a robot back... [head explodes]
- Starlight Glimmer's revenge plot in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic two-parter "The Cutie Re-Mark" results in this: she travels back in time to prevent the Sonic Rainboom that gave the Mane Six their Cutie Marks... to get revenge on them for foiling her actions in Our Town in "The Cutie Map - Part 1/Part 2", meaning she'd negate her own reason for going back in time in the first place. She and Twilight do seem to be immune to the timeline changes. Unlike many events, this actually does cause serious issues: each change to the past she makes causes a Bad Future worse and worse than the last.note
- In the rather Timey-Wimey Ball finale of Samurai Jack, Ashi is Aku's biological daughter, and after she uses her powers to transport her and Jack into the past to kill Aku (right after Jack's past self is sent into the future) she pops out of existence because if Aku is dead then Ashi was never conceived. But if Ashi doesn't exist, then who transports Jack back in time to kill Aku? The 100% Completion ending to Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time would apparently retcon that Ashi was able to remain intact after all, implied to be so that Jack could still travel back and stay in his own time.
- Superfriends: In the Challenge episode "Secret Origins of the Super Friends", the Legion of Doom tries to change history by messing with the origins of Superman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern. Okay, but seeing as how much of Super Friends is based on Pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths lore and hence Luthor's baldness and Start of Darkness were both accidentally caused by Superman when he was Superboy, how can Luthor — and as its founder, the Legion of Doom itself — exist if Superboy was never there to cause what happened to Luthor? Likewise, given his origins even Pre-Crisis involved someone copying Superman, how does Bizarro continue to exist as well? This also applies, to a lesser extent, to the others. Sinestro's crimes were exposed by Hal Jordan; maybe eventually, someone else would have, but it was Hal's newbie attitude that caused him to question an otherwise model Green Lantern; shift the timeframe and he maybe never meets the LoD. Most Cheetah origins have Wonder Woman involved in some way, at least some as Cheetah feeling challenged by her existence. Also, take Luthor grabbing Abin Sur's ring. That might get the Guardians' attention. Also, without those three, and especially Big S, would the SF have even formed, and since the LoD formed out of fear of this group... the list goes crazy on. Ah, everyone know time travelers are surrounded by a temporal bubble that prevents them from being affected by their own alterations in the timesteam. The real question is: if the Legion of Doom could see through time to spy on the "secret origins" of the heroes, how do they not know the entire Justice League's secret identities?
Ontological Paradoxes
- Futurama:
- In "Bender's Big Score", the "paradox-free time travel" isn't quite paradox-free: there remains an ontological paradox surrounding the origin of the name "Lars," as future-Fry chose that name when he realized that the injuries he sustained when Bender attempted to kill him made him Lars. From whence did the name come? If we just accept that there is no 'beginning' to the Lars and Fry cycle, then it all works out nicely. Fry says "Ow, my larynx", but it comes out as "Lars", at which point he realises "Oh hey, I look and sound like Lars now, I guess I am Lars!" Additionally, the temporal tattoo is an ontological paradox. At the end of the movie, Bender peels it off Lars's ass, takes it back in time, and puts it on the present Fry's ass. Thus, it was never actually created, and just loops through time eternally with no beginning or end.
- Fry's genetic material. Being his own paternal grandfather, the question is where exactly the information carried on his y-chromosome originated.
- "Decision 3012" has Leela being the campaign manager of a Senator who has traveled back in time to become the president of the world in order to prevent an apocalypse. He wins the election, but unfortunately invokes a paradox, which is explained by Bender. Since he changed the past, that would mean that he wouldn't have traveled back in time in the first place. The Senator disappears via Reset Button, and Nixon is reelected. Not only that, he went back in time using the same method as in the aforementioned movie. So much for "paradox-free" time travel. This brings along Fridge Horror, since this means that in about 20 years, there will be an apocalypse led by robots.
- This same paradox occurs in "The Why of Fry" with the Scootie Puff, Sr. but there it works out just fine (Fry tells Nibbler in the past to give him a better escape craft during the Infosphere mission, the Nibblonians give him one, and he escapes before the quantum interface bomb sends the Infosphere to the other dimension, which is not what happened the first time and invalidates the event that made it possible for him to go back in time in the first place).
- Most if not all of the above is due to said "paradox-free" time travel actually being "paradox-correcting" time travel: paradoxes come into existence repeatedly, but radiate enough doom that the universe actively kills them before they can do any damage. The only time this backfired on the universe was when the army of Benders was "corrected" all at the same time.
- In Gargoyles, time travel always creates a Stable Time Loop:
- David Xanatos planned out his fortune by time-travel. While in the past, he had a mundane coin and a note sent to his future self. The coin becomes a rare object worth a few thousand and the note contains instructions on how to invest the money.
- The Archmage goes back in time, rescues his past self from falling into a chasm, then schools him on how to acquire the objects that gave him the power to, among other things, go back in time and rescue his past self from falling into a chasm, then school him—
- The Phoenix Gate. It goes through all the events of the series until, to get it away from Puck, Goliath sends it to the distant past where it eventually gets discovered in the first place. The loop is looped.
- In the Kim Possible story "A Sitch in Time, Part 1/Part 2/Part 3", future-Shego gives present-Shego a plan to use the Time Monkey to Take Over the World. Coming up with this sort of plan on her own initiative isn't really like her — but she didn't have to, she just had to remember what she'd been told and go back in time to repeat it to herself.
- In the Milo Murphy's Law episode "Missing Milo", Milo, Cavendish and Dakota get stopped from running into a group of mutant pistachio monsters when a peach gets thrown at Cavendish which is then pocketed by Dakota; later after time traveling to 15 minutes in the past and seeing their past selves about to run into the mutants, Dakota hands the peach to Cavendish who uses it to stop themselves. This then leads to the two of them having a looping conversation about where the peach came from.Cavendish: Wait a moment, where did you get that peach?
Dakota: Someone threw it at you earlier.
Cavendish: But that someone was me.
Dakota: I know.
Cavendish: But where did I get it?
Dakota: From me.
Cavendish: But where did you get it.
Dakota: Someone threw it at you earlier.
[repeats] - This happens in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "It's About Time". Twilight Sparkle meets her future self, who tells her that she was able to get here because of the time spells located in the Star Swirl the Bearded wing of the Canterlot Archives, but present Twilight is so bewildered and amazed by the concept of time travel that she can't shut up, and future Twilight doesn't manage to tell her what the actual thing she's supposed to be averting is before she gets sucked back to the future: all past Twilight knows is that future Twilight is from the following Tuesday. She spends the week panicking about it, ends up with all the injuries future Twilight had when she visited, and by Monday night concludes that the only way to stop whatever will happen by Tuesday from happening is to stop time. She goes to the Canterlot Archives, but as Tuesday morning arrives, nothing happens, so she finds the time spell and goes back in time to warn herself not to worry about the future...
- The Star Trek: The Animated Series episode "Yesteryear" revolves around a Reverse Grandfather Paradox in which Spock prevents his own death as a child. He doesn't do it quite right this time around, resulting in a slightly revised timeline when he gets home. Originally, his pet had lived. This time, he arrives a moment late, and the pet dies.
- The Transformers: In the episode "War Dawn", the Aerialbots are sent back in time trying to destroy the Decepticons' time machine. This puts them back at the start of the war, right at the start of one of the very first Decepticon attacks. While they try to stay out of the way, they end up saving an insignificant, unimportant dock worker. As it turns out, that insignificant dock worker was the un-upgraded Optimus Prime, both giving the Autobots a leader and keeping the Decepticons from winning an important first battle, getting an advantage over the Autobots and likely winning the war. It was Optimus who had the Aerialbots created in the first place.
Other
- The Fairly OddParents!: In "The Secret Origin of Denzel Crocker", Timmy goes back in time to find out why Crocker was so miserable and to try to fix it. He finds out that as a child, Crocker himself had fairy godparents — and that they were Cosmo and Wanda, something that they don't remember — and figures out that he must've done something to lose his fairies. He tries to warn the young Crocker, but inadvertently ends up being the one who reveals the secret (with some help from both '70s Cosmo and modern Cosmo's stupidity). Furthermore, as Jorgen shows up to erase everyone's memories of there being fairies, young Crocker manages to get his hands on the DNA tracker that AJ had built so that they'd know when Crocker was around, and managed to get Cosmo's DNA to use in it, and managed to covertly write a memo on the back of it that fairy godparents exist without Jorgen noticing, allowing him to keep that knowledge after his memory of fairies was erased... which means that if Timmy had never interfered, Crocker would be neither miserable nor fairy-obsessed. However...
- Whereas when Timmy left for the past, Crocker was using a very primitive and likely useless "fairy finder", the Crocker in the present that Timmy returned to was using the tracker that AJ had built, implying that he had created an alternate timeline, and leaving one to wonder what happened in the original timeline. (Of course, considering it's explicitly stated in The Movie that few kids keep their fairies past their first year, much less until adulthood when they would leave anyway, we can guess...)
- The original timeline seems to be that '70s Cosmo is that cause of Crocker losing him and Wanda. Timmy then stops this incident only for present day Cosmo to turn on the mic while Timmy is talking and cause the incident to happen anyway. While this doesn't explain how Crocker knew about the existence of fairies after his mind was wiped in the original timeline, since we don't see the original incident play out, we can just assume any number of reasons for that. (Perhaps he managed to write a note in that timeline too.)
- There's also a Historical In-Joke to imply that it was an alternate timeline.
- Justice League:
- Lord Chronos from "The Once and Future Thing: Weird Western Tales/Time, Warped" is at first a meek scientist who invents time travel, which he uses to steal things from history that will not affect the timeline. Then his wife nags him about his lack of imagination, and one trip to the Wild West later, he decides that stealing the most famous items from history and setting himself up as master of space and time is the better way to go. Reality itself falls apart, so he decides to go to the beginning of time and do it all over again. Batman and Green Lantern manage to reset history. Batman also manages to create a close And I Must Scream moment by trapping him in an eternal loop of his wife's naggery (though his memory thankfully resets each time the loop repeats).
- Time travel itself seems perfectly fine: Superman goes to the future and the past, the Justice League goes to WWII, one of the team is from the future, and the list goes on. In "Hereafter", Vandal Savage notes that his time machine can't send him back to a period where he already existed, which may be with good reason: in "Time, Warped", time falls apart only when Batman is with his very old self.
