History Main / OutOfTimeOutOfMind

* In one comic, {{Superman}} and Franchise/WonderWoman spent centuries fighting together against demons that assault Valhalla. While this has occasionally been referred to (Diana mentions it to Lois at one point), it doesn't seem to have had much of an effect on either of them.

* In ''LightNovel/MyNextLifeAsAVillainessAllRoutesLeadToDoom'', Catarina Claes regains her memories as a 17-year-old otaku after trip caused her to [[MySkullRunnethOver bump her head into a rock]]. Due to this, she sees herself as older than the other children who are biologically the same age as her, and yet she still acts her biological age, with her difference in behavior due to her specific new memories and not any life expirience.

* In ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'', there's a side quest where you leave Robo in the past, and zip ahead to find (and repair) him in the future. He's turned what would be a desert into a forest. No, his personality is in no way altered by this.

* This is implied to be a problem for Burst Linkers in LightNovel/AccelWorld. In the early levels their accelerated time is limited but once they hit level 4 they gain access to the Infinite Unlimited Field with no time limit to how long they can stay accelerated. An hour of real time is equivalent to just under 42 days in the Accelerated World. Too much time in the field can cause disruptions when coming out and its implied to be at least part of the reason why some of the higher level characters (particularly Niko/Scarlet Rain) don't precisely act their age.
* In ''LightNovel/MyNextLifeAsAVillainessAllRoutesLeadToDoom'', Catarina Claes regains her memories as a 17-year-old otaku after trip caused her to [[MySkullRunnethOver bump her head into a rock]]. Due to this, she sees herself as older than the other children who are biologically the same age as her.

* In ''Film/{{Jumanji}}'', when Alan and Sarah return to their normal ages in 1969 after finishing the game, they apparently remember all of it.

** However this is definitely a DefiedTrope during the central heist. Dom explains what will happen if any of the extractors dies in this dream: instead of waking up as usual, they will plunge into Limbo where the YearInsideHourOutside effect is deepest. They could be trapped there for a near-infinite amount of subjective time, and Dom makes it clear that this would utterly destroy their minds. [[spoiler: Mr. Saito and Robert Fischer nearly face this fate and only escape Limbo by rescue.]]

** However this is definitely [[DefeiedTrope defied]] during the central heist. Dom explains what will happen if any of the extractors dies in this dream: instead of waking up as usual, they will plunge into Limbo where the YearInsideHourOutside effect is deepest. They could be trapped there for a near-infinite amount of subjective time, and Dom makes it clear that this would utterly destroy their minds.

* ''Film/{{Inception}}'' is a borderline case, since you don't see what Dom was like "before", but you'd never guess from watching him that [[spoiler: he and Mal had been trapped in limbo for 50 years and grown old together.]]

* In ''VisualNovel/HigurashiWhenTheyCry'', after a century of being caught in a GroundhogDayLoop that nobody else remembers, [[spoiler: Rika Furude]] has a lot of practice [[DeliberatelyCuteChild acting like a child]], [[CreepyChild occasionally]] slipping into an emphatically different tone of voice and giving the kind of serious advice you'd expect from someone with a hundred years of experience, and sometimes falling into a bout of [[TheFatalist depression]] and [[DeterminedDefeatist frustration]] that peeks through the façade.

** Justified in his case because he's a damn robot.

* ComicBook/PlasticMan spends about three thousand years as a disembodied consciousness spread over thousands of miles of ocean. By the time he reforms himself, he admits that he'd suffered unspeakable agony, gotten used to it, gone insane, then gone sane. Mildly averted in that he does change somewhat (leaving the JusticeLeagueOfAmerica to be a better father to his kid) but not entirely.

** In the episode "[[Recap/FuturamaS3E19RoswellThatEndsWell Roswell That Ends Well]]", Bender gets left in the past and picked up again in the future, much like Marvin in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide'' mentioned above. Bender's reaction is quite different from Marvin's. When asked what it was like being buried in a hole for a thousand years, Bender replies "I was enjoying it until you guys showed up."

*** Bender does this about 20-30 times with no noticeable change, although that might be explained by the fact that he spent most of that time doing nothing in a limestone cavern. Then again, after [[spoiler: killing Fry, he shows up in the future, acting as if he had just killed Fry yesterday, even after spending 988 years alone grieving about it.]]

* ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'': Marvin is stranded on a desolate planet for 576,000,003,579 years (he counted). He mostly uses that as an excuse to complain more. Somewhat more understandable, since he's a robot.

* ''Literature/TheHichhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'': Marvin is stranded on a desolate planet for 576,000,003,579 years (he counted). He mostly uses that as an excuse to complain more. Somewhat more understandable, since he's a robot.

* ''Literature/TheHichhikersGuideToTheUniverse'': Marvin is stranded on a desolate planet for 576,000,003,579 years (he counted). He mostly uses that as an excuse to complain more. Somewhat more understandable, since he's a robot.

* In ''Film/{{Jumanji}}'', when Alan and Sarh return to their normal ages in 1969 after finishing the game, they apparently remember all of it.

A case of StatusQuoIsGod. See YearInsideHourOutside, GroundhogDayLoop, and TheSlowPath for causes of the extra time.

* Averted in the ''LightNovel/SuzumiyaHaruhi'' novels, where being [[GroundhogDayLoop trapped in a time loop]] for ''thousands'' of repetitions is a likely contributing factor to [[spoiler:Yuki's later breakdown]] in the fourth novel (no one else retained conscious memory of the loops). So it s also played straight as regards everyone else, though [[JustifiedTrope justified]] by their memory loss.

* Averted with ComicBook/CaptainAmerica in Dimension Z. He spends a decade there raising a kid and fighting evil under horrible conditions, and returns to the real world to find only minutes have gone by. For a lot of reasons, this really messes him up.

* Notably averted in ''Film/GroundhogDay''. While it doesn't use time travel, the protagonist, Phil Connors, is trapped in limbo for what the WordOfGod said was around ten years (so, 3,652 repetitions or more), and becomes a much better person by time he is freed, as well as learning several foreign languages, memorizing thousands of books and learning to sculpt and play the piano like a master. Notably, (although it's played for humor) he is shown committing suicide using various methods for a long stretch of time, understandable behavior of someone in this scenario.
* Averted in ''Film/BackToTheFuture'', when Marty, after spending a week in TheFifties, overreacts to seeing Jennifer again and she replies, ironically enough, that "you're acting like you haven't seen me in a week."

* Averted in ''Film/FrequentlyAskedQuestionsAboutTimeTravel''. The three protagonists are randomly skipping through time whenever they enter the men's room of a pub. One character goes back into the bathroom alone, then appears a few seconds later with a big beard and stories implying that, from his perspective, he had been trapped in a BadFuture for about three years. He spends the rest of the movie slightly feral and kinda... off.

* Averted in ''Film/AboutTime''. Tim is definitely changed by falling in love with Mary, and treats losing that as losing a central part of his life.

* Averted in Creator/WilliamSleator's ''Literature/{{Singularity}}''. The protagonist spends about a year inside a timewarp, which is about an hour outside. Changing his personality was his goal going in, and it works, especially because the timewarp is only about 8 feet across, and he's the only person in it.

* Averted in the ''Literature/{{Nightside}}'' novels. When John Taylor encounters or psychically views his closest friends as they exist in the future, not only has their behavior and demeanor changed over time, but [[spoiler: it turns out ''they're'' the ones who've been trying to kill him ever since he was a little kid, because they blame him for causing TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt.]]
* Averted '''horribly''' in ''[[Literature/SkeletonCrew The Jaunt]]'', a short story by Creator/StephenKing, in which [[spoiler: the method of interplanetary travel, which is harmless if undertaken while unconscious, takes eons to the waking mind. Every living being who has done the latter either died from shock upon returning, or was driven incurably insane.]]

* Averted in ''Series/TheXFiles'' in the Groundhog Day scenario episode "[[Recap/TheXFilesS06E14Monday Monday]]", where a single day keeps repeating itself with only one person being aware of the loop. She realises something needs to be done to break the loop, and her numerous attempts to do so leave her visibly drained and frustrated from the constant repetitions.

* ''Radio/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'':
** Marvin the Paranoid Android spent eons waiting for the crew until the Restaurant at the End of the Universe was built and he was parking cars. More of a joke, because Marvin's personality is [[TheEeyore permanently sulking]] and won't change no matter how much time passes. In the books, he eventually becomes several times older than the universe itself.
** Averted in ''So Long and Thanks for All the Fish'': Arthur Dent, having hitchhiked around the galaxy a few times, finds himself returning to an Earth set after he left, but not as far after as he actually spent bumming around (more than ten years have passed by his clock, a few months by Earth's clock). He [[HandWave explains it all]] by saying he went to Southern California and had a "face drop", supposedly all the rage there: his friends don't entirely believe him, though most of the inconsistencies in his story are written off as a combination of jet lag and the fact that Arthur's on his sixth or seventh beer by the time he starts coming out with the weirder stuff, but they can't figure out how he's changed so much.

* ''VisualNovel/CrossChannel'' averts this. [[spoiler:Although humanity has apparently been annihilated, Miki is [[GenkiGirl bright and cheerful]] as always. After she decides to "reset" along with everything else, we see a more fragile side of her.]]

* Averted for Lillet of ''VideoGame/GrimGrimoire''. She becomes increasingly brusque in her dealings with the others with each cycle, primarily because she finds that [[AdultsAreUseless the teachers just make things worse if she tried to explain it]].

* Very averted in ''VideoGame/QuantumBreak''. In the beginning, Paul is forced to travel through a malfunctioning time machine, which eventually results in him traveling to 1999 and taking TheSlowPath back to 2016. To his best friend Jack, he's only out of sight for about an hour, but changes in that time from an upbeat wisecracker to an [[TheUnfettered unfettered]], [[DissonantSerenity dissonantly serene]] WellIntentionedExtremist determined to stop [[TimeCrash the End of Time]]. [[spoiler:Beth is an even better aversion. When she gets sent to the End of Time and chases Paul back to 1999, she also takes TheSlowPath to 2010, where she was supposed to go in the first place. In the mere minutes she's out of Jack's sight (from his perspective), she transitions from determined, tough ActionGirl to a broken wreck far past the DespairEventHorizon, thanks to the fact that YouCantFightFate making her believe her entire goal -- stopping the End of Time -- is pointless.]]

* In ''[[ComicBook/XForce Uncanny X-Force]]'', Psylocke engages in a duel of minds with the Shadow King. While only a few minutes pass in the real world, the two battle endlessly for centuries on a psychic plane. After the duel ends, Psylocke seems immediately contacts her team to resume their mission. She brushes the whole ordeal off and never speaks of it again.

* Captain Picard, in the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS5E25TheInnerLight The Inner Light]]", lives an entire lifetime in twenty minutes. (Well, okay, not an entire lifetime, but they probably didn't want to deal with the weirdness of Picard waking up as a newborn baby.) The only major difference is that he now plays the flute, and one reference in a later episode where he admits it caused him to (somewhat) rethink his priorities about what he gave up in his personal life to advance his career. In the later episode "Lessons", Picard describes his memories of the experience as dreamlike, in an apparent bit of retroactive justification. Ronald D. Moore later commented on this:
--> '''Ronald D. Moore''': I've always felt that the experience in "Inner Light" would've been the most profound experience in Picard's life and changed him irrevocably. However, that wasn't our intention when we were creating the episode. We were after a good hour of TV, and the larger implications of how this would really screw somebody up didn't hit home with us until later (that's sometimes a danger in TV – you're so focused on just getting the show produced every week that sometimes you suffer from the "can't see the forest for the trees" syndrome). We never intended the show to completely upend his character and force a radical change in the series, so we contented ourselves with a single follow-up in "Lessons".
* In the ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' epsiode "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS04E19HardTime Hard Time]]", Chief O'Brien served out an illusionary twenty-year prison sentence lasting only a few hours of real time. Downplayed however, because the actual episode was about him dealing with readjusting to society and coming to terms with what he did when he was a prisoner, but (uncharacteristically for [=DS9=]) it still didn't have any noticeable long-term effect.

* ''Series/{{Eureka}}'':
** Justified in the second season, where the main character does remember everything and acts differently. He is forward and way too personal with his future wife and forgets that his daughter isn't old enough to drive. Eventually his mind is [[LaserGuidedAmnesia wiped of future events]] and he returns to normal. [[spoiler:The other time traveler does not, but that's a plot point. And he's a lot better at faking it.]]
** When a team [[spoiler: including the previous two]] is sent to an alternate reality by way of the past, they spend the entire first half of the fourth season trying to reconcile the differences between the time periods. We're still waiting to see if it continues to be an issue.
* In the ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'' episode "[[Recap/TorchwoodS2E13ExitWounds Exit Wounds]]", [[spoiler:Jack is taken back in time to 27AD and buried alive, spends most of the next ''two millennia'' repeatedly dying and reviving, is dug up in 1901 and put into cryo-storage so he won't meet his past self, and finally wakes up in the present day. So this one incident has accounted for most of his life so far, yet once the other characters have found him they seem to assume he can just pick up where he left off -- as it seems he can.]] It's too early to tell whether this incident will ever be referred to again. \\
When asked about it at Comic-con, John Barrowman admitted that it would probably not come up again, specifically. The explanation given was more or less that Jack retreated into himself so that it wouldn't have as harsh an effect on him.
* Averted in the ''Franchise/{{Buffyverse}}'', whose mythos establish that in the "hell dimensions," years and years and years pass before any noticeable length of time has gone by on Earth.
** When Angel is sent to one after the season two finale, he spends the following four or five months before his return enduring what Giles describes as basically being ''centuries'' of unimaginably horrible torture. Sure enough, he arrives back on Earth completely feral and seemingly with no memory. It takes him several weeks of rehabilitation with Buffy before he's functional around other people again, and he's never the same as he was in the first two seasons.
** Similarly, Fred and Connor were deeply affected by spending five and seventeen years in hell dimensions (far fewer than Angel) ''and'' they weren't even being tortured like Angel was.
** In the Season 6 episode "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS6E3AfterLife After Life]]," Spike informs the newly-resurrected Buffy that she was dead for "147 days." He asks her, "How long was it for you...where you were?" To which Buffy responds vaguely: "A lot longer." It screwed up her life for some time afterwards, and she never ''quite'' got back to her old self. [[spoiler: She was in a Heaven dimension, and rather unceremoniously ripped out of it to end up in a coffin where she had to dig her way out and then find herself in a Sunnydale temporarily overrun by demons]].

** In the episode "[[Recap/StargateSG1S4E6WindowOfOpportunity Window of Opportunity]]", Teal'c and O'Neil are stuck in a time loop for at least 3 months, 10 hours at a time. During the episode they, among other things, learn how to juggle and a good amount of the Ancient language. There's not much evidence that any of the changes are permanent.

* [[spoiler:Rory]] in the series 5 finale of ''Series/DoctorWho''. The series 6 premiere confirms that he's still him and remembers those events after history is fixed, and [[spoiler:he stopped being made of plastic]]. He apparently spent almost 2000 years [[spoiler:protecting the Pandorica containing Amy]] without noticeably changing in personality, falling in love with someone else, or forgetting his old life.

* There was an episode of ''Series/{{Sliders}}'' where Quinn and Maggie were transported to a "bubble universe," where they lived out their entire lives as a married couple, then returned to the "real" world, no time having passed. They briefly talk about the experience of having just spent an entire lifetime together, but it has no lasting effect on their personalities or their relationship to one another.
* Arguably, the more mundane extension of this trope could be the standard sit-com plot where an adult character meets a childhood friend they haven't seen in years only to discover that the person literally hasn't changed at all - usually right down to still living with their parents, having the same part-time job they had in high school, and wearing T-shirts for bands that would have been popular a decade or more earlier. The regular character will either ruminate on how they can no longer relate to this relic of their old life or to revert immediately to their matching younger mindset.

* Averted in ''[[Literature/SkeletonCrew The Jaunt]]'', a short story by Creator/StephenKing, in which [[spoiler: the method of interplanetary travel, which is harmless if undertaken while unconscious, takes eons to the waking mind. Every human who has done the latter either died from shock upon returning, or was driven incurably insane.]]

* ''Memorie di un cuoco di un bordello spaziale'' (sequel of ''Memorie di un cuoco d'astronave'') by Massimo Mongai. The protagonist Rudy "Basilico" Turturro lives hundreds of incarnation in a single long, lucid dream caused by an alien disease. Only extensive medical assistance prevents death by starvation (the disease accelerates the metabolism) and by the shock of returning to the real world. The trope is averted as he requires psychiatric help later, as the lucid dream was exceptional, and he regrets the lost.
* ''Il gioco degli Immortali'' also by Masomnipotenti. The protagonist is kidnapped by omnipotent entities to be a pawn in a sort of betting game, that lasts for years. In the end he is released, just a few instants after the kidnapping. The entities restores its physical body (less fake teeth, for some reason), but left him all memories. The trope is almost averted anyway: while he seems ok, we really know ''nothing'' about him before the start of the game, so it's hard to know if he changed at all.
* In A wise man's fear, the main character Kvothe spends a vague ammount of time in a paralel world, when he finally comes back to his time to his companions he was explained he was gone for only a couple days, but he looks older and has an unshaved beard, his own theory is that he was gone no less than a month and probably at least a year.

* '''"Memorie di un cuoco di un bordello spaziale"''' (seguel of ''"Memorie di un cuoco d'astronave"'') by Massimo Mongai. The protagonist Rudy "Basilico" Turturro lives hundreds of incarnation in a single long, lucid dream caused by an alien disease. Only extensive medical assistance prevents death by starvation (the disease accelerates the metabolism) and by the shock of returning to the real world. The trope is averted as he requires psychiatric help later, as the lucid dream was exceptional, and he regrets the lost.
* '''"Il gioco degli Immortali"''' also by Masomnipotenti. The protagonist is kidnapped by omnipotent entities to be a pawn in a sort of betting game, that lasts for years. In the end he is released, just a few instants after the kidnapping. The entities restores its physical body (less fake teeth, for some reason), but left him all memories. The trope is almost averted anyway: while he seems ok, we really know ''nothing'' about him before the start of the game, so it's hard to know if he changed at all.

* In one comic, {{Superman}} and WonderWoman spent centuries fighting together against demons that assault Valhalla. While this has occasionally been referred to (Diana mentions it to Lois at one point), it doesn't seem to have had much of an effect on either of them.

* Averted with CaptainAmerica in Dimension Z. He spends a decade there raising a kid and fighting evil under horrible conditons, and returns to the real world to find only minutes have gone by. For a lot of reasons, this really messes him up.
* Played with in Uncanny Avengers. During the course of the Apocalypse Twins storyline, Earth gets destroyed, all the mutants are relocated to a new homeworld, Planet X, and the five remaining Avengers are scattered. Thor tries for years to find a way to undo the destrution, Havok and Wasp get married and have a daughter, Katie, on Planet X, and Wolverine and Sunfire are imprisoned by the villians, with Sunfire forced to constantly incinerate Wolverine. After 5 years, all five Avengers get their consciousnesses sent back a-la Days of Future Past via Kang, and save the world. The reactions afterward are mixed. Thor and Wolverine are fine, the latter brushing off the years of torture because he's Wolverine. In the course of saving the world, Sunfire was transformed into an energy form resembling his look from the Age of Apocalypse, and says he feels more disconnected, but doesn't talk about his years as a captive, aside from asking Wolverine how he's doing. Wasp went on a personal retreat for several weeks, and Havok goes into stasis for the same period to heal some injuries. They discuss their feelings on the whole matter, especially Katie having been kidnapped into the timestream by Kang, but going forward they do seem to still be married.