History Main / IntangibleTimeTravel

* Daphne du Maurier's novel ''House on the Strand'', which involves several travels from 20th century Cornwall to its counterpart version during TheHighMiddleAges.
* In Literature/HowToLiveSafelyInAScienceFictionalUniverse, the physics of the universe prevents you from going back to an event you weren't at and changing that event by throwing you into another timeline. A heartbreaking example is of a young woman who uses time travel to get back to the moment when her grandmother died, because she wasn't there the first time. The grandmother can neither see nor hear her; even though they're in the same room, they're actually separated by a universe.

* In the book ''[=JumpMan=]'', the titular time-travel devices can only travel to certain points in history and leave their users a tiny bit out of sync with their timelines, leaving them invisible and (from what I recall) intangible, in accordance with the First Rule of Time Travel ("Don't Touch Anything"). The plot arises when a contest winner is accidentally given an illegal prototype [=JumpMan=] which DOESN'T do this...

* Used as the "inspiration for the story" in ''Literature/LastAndFirstMen'', as shown by the introduction to the book.

* ''Literature/Moon1985'': Jonathan Childes recalls a suppressed boyhood memory of a bedroom encounter with his week-dead mother - observed by an unknown adult figure. He realises this to have been his adult self, psychically projected across time.

* Franchise/HarryPotter has both "real" time travel, in which NeverTheSelvesShallMeet (Usually because one self will freak out and kill the other), but it also has Pensieves, which allow characters to jump into others' memories and remain intangible.

[[folder:Film]]

* ''Film/{{Constantine}}'': [[ComicBook/{{Hellblazer}} John Constantine]] goes back in time and sees several scenes from earlier on in the movie, but remains intangible and invisible.

[[folder:Theoretical Physics]]
* According to Einstein, this is how real time travel would have to work. He theorized that it could be possible to travel through time, as long as you didn't disturb ''even a single atom'' on the way, meaning you would have to be intangible and invisible.\\
Unfortunately, that also means ''none'' of your senses work, since all of them operate via the interaction of molecules: no light particles strike your retinas, no sound waves jiggle your ear drums, no flavors reach your taste buds, no odors waft up your nostrils, and nothing on your skin or in your body could react to the surrounding environment. Also, depending on how space-time is actually connected, your own personal time may also have to be frozen in order to obey the "no disturbance" rule (so you don't, say, asphyxiate shortly after you arrive in the past and fuck things up that way).\\
Thus, the trope would be inverted: you could be there, but [[AllForNothing you'd be able to experience or witness precisely nil]].
[[/folder]]

* In ''VideoGame/TombRaider'': Anniversary, a few cutscenes show Lara doing this through a magical artifact. Since TRA was a remake of [=TR1=], it was probably in there, too.

* ''A Handful of Time'': An old pocketwatch allows Patricia Potter to observe her mother's unhappy past -- from when her mother was her age and lived in the same house Patricia is staying.

** That said, the reason was explicitly that the past self would attack the future self, assuming [[ProperlyParanoid not without reason]] that it is a doppelganger of some sort, mostly because [[GrandfatherParadox the reverse makes no sense]]. But it is never said that you ''couldn't'' carefully set up some {{stable time loop}}s to exploit time travel. The series does not, nor indeed [[ForgottenPhlebotinum bring it up again after the one time]], but several {{fanfic}}s have run with the idea.

* ''Manga/NegimaMagisterNegiMagi'': Negi uses this to show Asuna, and accidentally all his other students (Nadoka used her book to see what they were talking about and ended up showing everyone else the visions), in order to show her what happened to his village and the reason he became a mage so that he could look for the Thousand Master. It was meant to show how them the kind of world they would end up in if they continued to help him as his contractors, and the very real possibility that any or all of them could end up killed (or some equal fate) by demons, or other mages, or what the hell ever else you could think of, the idea being that if he could scare them away they would be safe. And it does scare them... for all of about six seconds, until the realization of the things hes been through (his village being destroyed and the path hes been pushed into as such a young child, having to basically give up his childhood to find out the truth about himself and his family, and find a way to save the villagers who got turned to stone) makes them all so FURIOUS that they basically vow to be his personal army to help him.
* ''Manga/FutureDiary'' had this when Murumuru showed Yuki the "true" behind Yuno´s secret [[spoiler:...killing her current timeline version in the past and proceeding to impersonating her. However, Yuki´s desire to save this alternative Yuno in this vision was strong enough to defy the trope and make the second world Yuno hear (or at least sense) him in some way and even (in a very sad scene) call him for help by writing with her blood in a wall, but all in vain...]]

* ''Film/DejaVu'': The movie's first half has the characters observing the events of several days earlier through a giant monitor in real-time.

* The novel ''The Light of Other Days'', by Creator/ArthurCClarke and Creator/StephenBaxter, is about the invention of a kind of wormhole technology that allows it's user to view any location, in real-time. Due to it being relatively easy to replicate, the technology soon gets out of the hands of the government and is available to the general public, which immediately has drastic social consequences (since, essentially, the concept of "privacy" no longer has any meaning). Then, it's discovered that the wormholes can also be projected into the ''past''...

* ''Manga/MahouSenseiNegima'': Negi uses this to show Asuna, and accidentally all his other students (Nadoka used her book to see what they were talking about and ended up showing everyone else the visions), in order to show her what happened to his village and the reason he became a mage so that he could look for the Thousand Master. It was meant to show how them the kind of world they would end up in if they continued to help him as his contractors, and the very real possibility that any or all of them could end up killed (or some equal fate) by demons, or other mages, or what the hell ever else you could think of, the idea being that if he could scare them away they would be safe. And it does scare them... for all of about six seconds, until the realization of the things hes been through (his village being destroyed and the path hes been pushed into as such a young child, having to basically give up his childhood to find out the truth about himself and his family, and find a way to save the villagers who got turned to stone) makes them all so FURIOUS that they basically vow to be his personal army to help him.

* ''Comicbook/{{Superman}}'':

** ''ComicBook/WhateverHappenedToTheManOfTomorrow'' by Creator/AlanMoore, the last [[UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks Silver Age]] {{Superman}} story, uses this to heartbreaking effect. The Legion of Superheroes comes to bid Superman farewell, and Supergirl, being a member, comes with them. The story takes place after Supergirl's death, and Supergirl wonders why she didn't turn intangible and asks Superman what she's like when she grows up. Superman tells her that "Supergirl is in the past", assures her that she grows up to be beautiful... and breaks down sobbing when they leave.

* ''Comicbook/{{Savage}}'' introduced the Thousand Year Stare, a technique developed by Volgan scientists [[spoiler:in collaboration with Ro-Busters]] that forces its victims to view millennia over the course of three days. This is used to develop war robots based on the ABC Warriors they see in the future - robots which will eventually develop into those same ABC Warriors.

* {{Literature/Dinoverse}} seems to set this up, as traveling characters become invisible beings of 'pure thought-energy brainwaves', but they're never like this for long - said characters end up possessing the bodies of dinosaurs, acting through them.

* In ''VideoGame/TombRaider'': Anniversary, a few cutscenes show Lara doing this through a magical artifact. Since TRA was a remake of TR1, it was probably in there, too.

* The final dungeon of ''[[Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army]]'' has the eponymous protagonist literally traveling through time, climbing his way through a dungeon where every floor represents a later decade. Many of the [=NPCs=] in this location are ghosts from their respective time periods, but a few are Intangible Time Travelers, and they comment on how dangerous it is to wander through time in corporeal form like Raidou is doing. [[spoiler:The villain actually happens to be such a time traveler, having possessed a girl from Raidou's time period in order to change the past so that the events of the original ''Shin Megami Tensei 1'' and ''2''--which some of the aforementioned ghosts are a ShoutOut to -- never happened. More surprisingly, said villain turns out to be Raidou's successor from an unknown number of generations hence.]]

* This happens in the ''[[Franchise/AssassinsCreed Assassin's Creed]]'' franchise by using [[GeneticMemory the Animus to relive the protagonist's ancestors' memories]]. This is also played with as [[AbusivePrecursors Those Who Came Before]] ''were counting on this'' and used it to led the protagonist to [[spoiler:sacrifice himself to save the planet from a devastating solar eruption]].

* In "Body Work", a graphic novel spinoff of the ''Literature/RiversOfLondon'' series, people riding in one of the haunted cars are likely to find themselves suddenly viewing the street they're driving down ''as it existed in 1911'' when they look through the windshield or other glass windows. Looking out an ''open'' window shows the street as it exists in the present, so it's a '''very''' good idea to drive the rest of the way with your head out the window to avoid collisions.

* Used in ''Discworld/GoingPostal'' when Moist sees the past of the Post Office. However, he's still moving around in the present. The place had fallen apart quite a bit between the two time periods, as two of his deceased predecessors found out when one stepped onto a balcony that wasn't there anymore, and one fell down a flight of stairs that wasn't there in the past.

The argument goes that if TimeTravel were possible, we'd know about it, because we'd always be running into people asking "WhatYearIsThis". But who says time travel has to be a ''physical'' thing? An infrequent, but recurring trope is that of Intangible Time Travel, in which people travel through time only as observers--as spirits or projections, but not as physical beings.

* The manga version of ''Manga/ChronoCrusade'' has Rosette taking a JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind in Chrono's soul, allowing her to walk through his memories and see them first-hand.

* Negi uses this in ''Manga/MahouSenseiNegima'' to show Asuna, and accidentally all his other students (Nadoka used her book to see what they were talking about and ended up showing everyone else the visions), in order to show her what happened to his village and the reason he became a mage so that he could look for the Thousand Master. It was meant to show how them the kind of world they would end up in if they continued to help him as his contractors, and the very real possibility that any or all of them could end up killed (or some equal fate) by demons, or other mages, or what the hell ever else you could think of, the idea being that if he could scare them away they would be safe. And it does scare them... for all of about six seconds, until the realization of the things hes been through (his village being destroyed and the path hes been pushed into as such a young child, having to basically give up his childhood to find out the truth about himself and his family, and find a way to save the villagers who got turned to stone) makes them all so FURIOUS that they basically vow to be his personal army to help him.

* ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamUnicorn'', [[RealRobotGenre of all shows]], has this in the finale. In what is probably the largest and most awesome ContinuityNod in the franchise, [[spoiler:Full Frontal takes Banagher back in time, flashing past Amuro Ray stopping the Axis drop, the fall of A Baoa Qu, Amuro's battles with the Elmeth and the Big Zam, the original colony drop, the destruction of Laplace Station and more, all the while Encounters from the third Mobile Suit Gundam movie plays in the background. They eventually end up going '''[[BeyondTheImpossible beyond the Big Bang]]''', with Frontal pointing out that no matter what humanity may achieve, [[StrawNihilist the universe will invariably return to the void they're in right now]]... before a DivineIntervention from Char and Lalah undoes the whole thing.]] The JustForFun/HolyShitQuotient is strong with this one...

* In ''ComicBook/TheInvisibles'', the team use The HandOfGlory, a mystical artifact, to fold time down to a point. At that moment, they receive {{flashback}}s and {{flashforward}}s of events in their lives and the lives of others. In each instance, they are literally invisible to the people around them.
** Time travel through psychic projection is pretty commonplace in the series. Compare the "retrieval" of Marquis De Sade and King Mob's adventures in TheRoaringTwenties.
* The [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks Golden Age]] and [[UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks Silver Age]] ''Comicbook/{{Superman}}'' comics had instances where Superman went intangible whenever he time-traveled under his own power. Of course, this was only in some issues; the writers [[TimeyWimeyBall changed the rules whenever it was convenient]]. This eventually calcified into a hard rule of time travel in UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks--travelers heading to a time they already existed in would be reduced to intangibility, but would remain solid and able to interact with others if there was no other copy of themselves around (the idea being that by making it impossible to physically be in two places at once, the universe was preventing [[TimeParadox paradoxes]]).
** Used to heartbreaking effect in ''ComicBook/WhateverHappenedToTheManOfTomorrow'' by Creator/AlanMoore, the last [[UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks Silver Age]] {{Superman}} story--the Legion of Superheroes comes to bid Superman farewell, and Supergirl, being a member, comes with them. The story takes place after Supergirl's death, and Supergirl wonders why she didn't turn intangible and asks Superman what she's like when she grows up. Superman tells her that "Supergirl is in the past", assures her that she grows up to be beautiful... and breaks down sobbing when they leave.
* In the first collection of ''ComicBook/TheBooksOfMagic'' by Creator/NeilGaiman, young Tim Hunter, a potentially very powerful human magician, gets taken back in time in this manner by ComicBook/ThePhantomStranger as part of his education on magic. Later, unusually, he physically travels into one possible future (which people generally tend to see as spirits rather than physical beings) with Mister E.

* In one TearJerker of an issue of ''ComicBook/FantasticFour'' a young boy douses himself with fuel and sets himself on fire because he wants to be like the Human Torch. It doesn't help that an adult friend of his warns him to stay away from the fuel, jokingly saying that "it could turn you into another Human Torch." Johnny Storm himself is wracked with guilt over the incident, and then The Beyonder appears out of nowhere, intrigued by his grief. He takes them both back in time in intangible form to show Johnny how much the boy adored him. It doesn't help much.

* In the movie ''Film/{{Constantine}}'', [[ComicBook/{{Hellblazer}} John Constantine]] goes back in time and sees several scenes from earlier on in the movie, but remains intangible and invisible.
* In the movie ''Film/{{Click}}'', the rewind button on the main character's remote allows him to intangibly review earlier parts of his life.
* Roughly the first half of ''Film/DejaVu'' has the characters observing the events of several days earlier through a giant monitor in real-time.

* Murdoch Glourie, from the film ''Film/TheGhostGoesWest'', ghosts around for 200 years into the future (1935 being the future for him, and the present for the other characters), because he has some UnfinishedBusiness.

** Kind of winked at during "Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol." When Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present are at the Cratchit house, the Ghost ''actually opens the door'' for Bob and Tim, who are coming home from church, and ''no one'' mentions or even notices.

* At first, in ''Literature/PastwatchTheRedemptionOfChristopherColumbus'', a machine called the Tempoview allows researchers to view and record history, supposedly unnoticed. (Turns out this isn't the case, and the technology is developed to allow standard TimeTravel.)
* The short story "The Men Who Murdered Muhammed" by Alfred Bester has a [[MindScrew very confusing]] variant on this. Time travelers can interact normally with the past or future... at first. However, if they cause a TimeParadox, then the universe responds by erasing ''them'' from existence. From the time traveler's perspective, they don't literally cease existing--rather, everyone around them spontaneously stops acknowledging their presence (except for other time travelers who've been similarly erased).
* In Kit Pearson's children's book, ''A Handful of Time'', an old pocketwatch allows Patricia Potter to observe her mother's unhappy past - from when her mother was her age and lived in the same house Patricia is staying.
* In the ''Literature/OddThomas'' series, the titular character has come to the hypothesis that the insubstantial wraiths that gather when some really bad shit is going to go down are actually dicks from the future who enjoy watching human suffering. They aren't totally intangible, though, as upon knowing your knowing about them, they will rectify the situation by making sure you are no longer around to know.

* ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamUnicorn'', [[RealRobotGenre of all shows]], has this in the finale. In what is probably the largest and most awesome ContinuityNod in the franchise, [[spoiler:Full Frontal takes Banagher back in time, flashing past Amuro Ray stopping the Axis drop, the fall of A Baoa Qu, Amuro's battles with the Elmeth and the Big Zam, the original colony drop, the destruction of Laplace Station and more, all the while Encounters from the third Mobile Suit Gundam movie plays in the background. They eventually end up going '''[[BeyondTheImpossible beyond the Big Bang]]''', with Frontal pointing out that no matter what humanity may achieve, [[StrawNihilist the universe will invariably return to the void they're in right now]]... before a DivineIntervention from Char and Lalah undoes the whole thing.]] The HolyShitQuotient is strong with this one...

* Max gains the "future vision" ability in ''[[SamAndMax Sam & Max Season Three]]''.

Thus, the trope would be inverted: you could be there, but you'd be able to experience or witness precisely nil.

\\
Unfortunately, that also means ''none'' of your senses work, since all of them operate via the interaction of molecules: no light particles strike your retinas, no sound waves jiggle your ear drums, no flavors reach your taste buds, no odors waft up your nostrils, and nothing on your skin or in your body could react to the surrounding environment. Also, depending on how space-time is actually connected, your own personal time may also have to be frozen in order to obey the "no disturbance" rule (so you don't, say, asphyxiate shortly after you arrive in the past and fuck things up that way).
\\