History Main / SpinTheEarthBackwards

* In one of ''{{Doug}}'''s Quailman imagine spots, the villain plans to eliminate weekends by speeding up the rotation of the Earth. Quailman uses his machine to slow down the Earth's rotation to add a third day to the weekend, which he calls "Funday".
** Ironically, speeding up the Earth's rotation would realistically ''increase'' the number of days in a week, because it would make the days shorter without affecting the year. Maybe Doug fell asleep through astronomy class.
*** Actually, the whole premise is absurd. Weeks are a religious construct, not a natural cycle like days, months and years (solar calendars make months into an artificial construct so that there are 12 months in a year rather than 12 7/19 months). A week is 7 days, regardless of how long a day is or how many days in a month or a year.
**** This is all in the imagination of a 12 year old kid.
* One villain in ''TotallySpies'' tried this-- by ''flying rapidly around the planet with a high-class airplane'', no less.
* Averted in the ''{{Futurama}}'' episode "That Darn Katz!", when Earth's rotation is first stopped, then restarted in the opposite direction, but this has no effect on time.

* In an episode of ''CourageTheCowardlyDog'', the Earth is hit by an asteroid that two aliens are using to play a game, causing it to spin much faster than normal in its usual direction, sending Courage, Eustace, and Muriel 1000 years into the future. At the end of the episode, it gets hit by the Asteroid again and spins really fast in reverse, sending them back to the present.
** This one also seems to require SpaceFriction, since if anything caused the Earth to start spinning faster, it would keep spinning at that same speed until something else made it slow down, per Newton's First Law of Motion.

*** So does this mean if Donner had his way, Superman would have used it [[DeusExMachina twice in two movies?]]

*** So does this mean if Donner had his way, Superman would have used it [[DuesExMachina twice in two movies?]]

* The first ''Film/{{Superman}}'' movie is well-known (and well mocked) for including this toward the end of the movie. Superman flies around the earth at absurd speed, and somehow this seems reverse the earth's spin and turn back time. Fans have rightly pointed out for years that this makes ''no sense whatsoever''. However, according to WordOfGod, the scene was misunderstood: it wasn't this trope at all. Superman was actually flying so fast that he went ''faster than light'', thus going backwards in time as per the rules of special relativity. The earth's rotation reversed because, from Superman's (and the viewer's) perspective, time was flowing backwards and we were watching it in reverse.

* The first ''Film/{{Superman}}'' movie is well-known (and well mocked) for including this toward the end of the movie. Superman flies around the earth at absurd speed, and somehow this seems reverse the earth's spin and turn back time. Fans have rightly pointed out for years that this makes NO SENSE, whatsover. However, according to WordOfGod, the scene was missunderstood: it wasn't this trope at all. Superman was actually flying so fast that he went ''faster than light'', thus going backwards in time as per the rules of special relativity. The earth's rotation reversed because, from Superman's (and the viewer's) perspective, time was flowing backwards and we were watching it in reverse.

* The first ''Film/{{Superman}}'' movie is well-known (and well mocked) for including this toward the end of the movie. Superman flies around the earth at absurd speed, and somehow this seems reverse the earth's spin and turn back time. Fans have rightly pointed out for years that this makes NO SENSE, whatsover. However, according to WordOfGod, the scene was missunderstood: it wasn't this trope at all. Superman was actually flying so fast that he went *faster than light*, thus going backwards in time as per the rules of special relativity. The earth's rotation reversed because, from Superman's (and the viewer's) perspective, time was flowing backwards and we were watching it in reverse.

** TruthInTelevision (or it would be if FTLTravel was possible). Flying in a straight line faster than the speed of light would take you to the destination before you left from some point of reference. If you then change your point of reference (by accelerating), you can arrive back at the point you started from before you left. Just do it in a circle instead of back and forth, and it works. (Only patially truth in television though, as it should't be possible to *reach* the speed of light, let alone going beyond it. It would take not just a *lot* of energy, but an *infinite* amount of energy to do so, unless the rules of relativity are wrong)

* The first ''Film/{{Superman}}'' movie features a scene that ''looks'' like a straight example but is actually an aversion--he's not physically spinning the Earth backward, he's flying past the speed of light, by WordOfGod. Either way, it's the TropeCodifier.

** TruthInTelevision (or it would be if FTLTravel was possible). Flying in a straight line faster than the speed of light would take you to the destination before you left from some point of reference. If you then change your point of reference (by accelerating), you can arrive back at the point you started from before you left. Just do it in a circle instead of back and forth, and it works.

** TruthInTelevision. Flying in a straight line faster than the speed of light will take you to the destination before you left from some point of reference. If you then change your point of reference (by accelerating), you can arrive back at the point you started from before you left. Just do it in a circle instead of back and forth, and it works.

*** Actually, the whole premise is absurd. Weeks are a religious construct, not a natural cycle like days, months and years (mind you, solar calendars make months into an artificial construct so that there are 12 months in a year rather than 12 7/19 months). A week is seven days, regardless of how long a day is or how many days in a month or a year.
**** Of course this is all in the imagination of a twelve year old kid.

The nefarious [[ReptilesAreAbhorrent Dr. Dino]], a fearsome TyrannosaurusRex that spent eras [[SealedEvilInACan trapped in ice]] hundreds of miles beneath ground level and gained massive scientific intelligence through exposure to radiation from the planet's core, is hard at work with his evil scheme in his secret lab at the center of the Earth. He knows his people are long extinct, but he plans to undo that: he's installing a heat-powered, super-strong revolution motor in the center of the planet. When he finally switches it on, it will force the Earth's rotation to stop and reverse direction, thereby rewinding time to the Cretaceous period where the dinosaurs reigned supreme! [[EvilLaugh Mwahahaha...]]

[[FridgeLogic ...wait,]] ''[[FlatWhat WHAT?]]''

* Occured in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/Sidekick'' when Eric and Trevor were trapped in a super fast CoolCar that eventually got stuck in reverse.

* Stan does this in an ImagineSpot in ''AmericanDad''.

* [[http://xkcd.com/162/ This]] {{XKCD}} comic gets about as close to this trope as realistically possible, which isn't very much.