History Main / ChickenAndEggParadox

* In ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'', in the last episodes it is revealed that ancient aliens crashed on Gravity Falls long ago. And one character muses if the spaceship crash caused all the weird things that happen on the place, or if all the weird things there caused the spaceship to crash.

[[/folder]]

** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOracleOfAges'' has a couple opportunities to combine it with TimeTravel to create a BootstrapParadox. One part of the ChainOfDeals to get the Noble Sword is to trade for a Goron's family heirloom; you then trade this vase to his ancestor in the past, which the ancestor then passes down to his descendants, creating a vase of infinite age with no point of origin.

* {{Exploited}} in ''WebVideo/YuGiOhTheAbridgedSeries''. Joey tells Serenity to overload Super Giga Mecha Nesbitt's logic circuits and confuse him to death. She tries using this specific paradox on him as an attempted LogicBomb; [[TakeAThirdOption however, he responds with "The rocket powered fist,"]] which Serenity objects to, [[RocketPunch until he launches]] [[TalkToTheFist such a fist at her]].

[[quoteright:350:[[WebVideo/ASAPScience https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/chicken_or_chicken_egg.png]]]]

* ''WebVideo/ASAPScience'': [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a8pI65emDE This]] video takes the "chicken" question and [[LiteralMinded answers it literally]], determining that the egg came first. The reason is because centuries ago, two "proto-chickens" would have mated and, due to genetic mutations, produced the first chicken egg.
* Creator/JonBois discusses this in part 2 of his ''Dorktown'' series [[https://youtu.be/wSjf3AjM7jY?t=1285 "The Story of Dave Steib"]], alleging that sports journalists [[Main/AwardSnub denied Dave Stieb the Cy Young Award]] because he was rude and dismissive to them--and that Dave was rude to sports journalists because they robbed him of the Cy Young Award.

* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping_(compilers) Bootstrapping]] refers to the creation of self-compiling compilers for a given UsefulNotes/ProgrammingLanguage: in other words, compilers able to compile their own source code. Methods include using an intermediate compiler made in another language[[note]]For example, Niklaus Wirth reported that he wrote the first Pascal compiler in Fortran[[/note]], writing intermediate compilers in a subset of the targeted language, compiling on another platform or even writing the compiler ''by hand'' in machine code.

The TropeNamer, which has become a StockJoke, originated as an [[OlderThanFeudalism ancient thought experiment]] first recorded by Creator/{{Aristotle}}: the chicken lays the egg, but it also hatches from it, resulting in a seemingly infinite cycle of chicken ➡ egg ➡ chicken ➡ egg. Aristotle and his successors considered this a key ontological mystery of the nature of the universe; in later years people tended to invoke DivineIntervention to explain it. [[ScienceMarchesOn The advent of modern biology ruined the postulate]]: the [[LiteralMetaphor literal answer]] to the original question is that the egg came first, on the grounds that eggs predate the UsefulNotes/{{evolution}} of chickens.

The TropeNamer is an [[OlderThanFeudalism ancient thought experiment]] first recorded by Creator/{{Aristotle}}: the chicken lays the egg, but it also hatches from it, resulting in a seemingly infinite cycle of chicken ➡ egg ➡ chicken ➡ egg. Aristotle and his successors considered this a key ontological mystery of the nature of the universe; in later years people tended to invoke DivineIntervention to explain it. [[ScienceMarchesOn The advent of modern biology ruined the postulate]]: the [[LiteralMetaphor literal answer]] to the original question is that the egg came first, on the grounds that eggs predate the UsefulNotes/{{evolution}} of chickens.

->''"Words have meaning, and names have power. The universe begun with a word, you know. But which came first: the word, or the thought behind the word? You can't create language without thought, and you can't conceive a thought without language. So which created the other and, thus, created the universe?"''

* ''PsycheWard'': When Taylor sees a "mental cobweb" in Basic Braining, she notes how it's another LiteralMetaphor and wonders if they pick their names for these phenomena based on what they are, or if they form in shapes based on how people think about mental processes. Oleander tells her that that's ''advanced'' Psychonaut business.