History Main / TheConstant

[[caption-width-right:253:[[Franchise/PlanetOfTheApes You maniacs!]] You built it up!]]

* The Statue of Liberty in the ''PlanetOfTheApes'' movie that features so prominently in the EarthAllAlong.

** There's a ShoutOut to PlanetOfTheApes in an episode where Fry, Bender, and the Professor travel forward in time to the year 10000. Fry, walking through the ruins of the city of New New York, sees a tilted, half-buried Statue of Liberty and laments "They blew it up! (pan to an identical statue of a gorilla) ... and then the apes blew up their society too!" (pan to another statue with a bird's head) "And then birds took over and ruined ''their'' society!" (pan to yet another statue) "And then cows ..." (pan again) "and ... I don't know ... is that a slug maybe? [[BigNo NOOOOOO!]]"

* Both the film ''FieldOfDreams'' and the novel ''[[WPKinsella Shoeless Joe]]'', make note that baseball has still remained the same. In the movie, [[Creator/JamesEarlJones Terrance Mann]] even calls it this trope.

** In the DoctorWhoExpandedUniverse (or at least the AudioPlay/BigFinishDoctorWho audios and short story collections), there's the White Rabbit pub, on the Embankment. When the Fifth Doctor met Creator/WilliamShakespeare it was where Globe patrons went after a show. When the Second Doctor was arrested for celebrating Christmas during the [[OliverCromwell Cromwell Protectorate]], the landlord rescued him. The Doctor's long-term friend Edward Grainger (1906-2006) lived nearby and occasionally frequented it, and was his granddaughter's [[MyLocal local]] in the 1990s. It was also UNIT's local in the 2000s. In 2021, it was where Hex Schofield had a birthday party just before becoming the Seventh Doctor's companion. It even still exists in [[BerniceSummerfield the 26th century]], although for some reason it's been relocated to the planet Bedrock 12. At one point, the Doctor is touching the bar when Linda Grainger points out it's "the same pub", and gets a psychic shockwave of all the memories attached to it.

* Also Fry's boyhood home. When they find it in the ruins of Old New York it's a ruin and Bender even comments on time has been cruel to the house. They then switch to the 1990's to find it was in that condition even then.

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* ''{{Narbonic}}'' has one where Dave has to find a Constant, so he can get returned to the present. [[spoiler: Getting slapped/punched by a girl works!]]
* In ''{{Homestuck}}'', [[spoiler: Dad is pretty much the same guy in both the original universe and the post-Scratch universe.]]

* Jones (aka Wandering Eye) is a constant in ''GunnerkriggCourt''. In the flashbacks where the parents of the main protagonists are shown in their school days, Jones is there, appearing exactly as she does in the present. This (along with the inhuman speed and strength Jones had already demonstrated) led to fan speculation that Jones was a particularly humanoid robot, which author Tom Siddell shot down in comments without revealing any more than that. [[spoiler: When Antimony finally gets the story out of her, it turns out that Jones has been around literally since the Earth was formed. Even she doesn't know what she really is.]]

** There's a ShoutOut to ThePlanetOfTheApes in an episode where Fry, Bender, and the Professor travel forward in time to the year 10000. Fry, walking through the ruins of the city of New New York, sees a tilted, half-buried Statue of Liberty and laments "They blew it up! (pan to an identical statue of a gorilla) ... and then the apes blew up their society too!" (pan to another statue with a bird's head) "And then birds took over and ruined ''their'' society!" (pan to yet another statue) "And then cows ..." (pan again) "and ... I don't know ... is that a slug maybe? [[BigNo NOOOOOO!]]"

%%

If the time travelled was too short, there may be so many Constants that it's unremarkable. For example, it's not uncommon for the entire cast from the past to switch to FutureBadass versions of themselves in the future. On the other hand, there is no minimum time difference - a city may be reduced to an unrecognizable place overnight by a terrible weapon, except for The Constant proving it was there. Or as Nena would say, "If I could find a souvenir / Just to prove the world was here."

%%No real life examples, please.

* The American Flag in ''TheUltimates''. The newly thawed out Captain America is despondent over how different things are. Technology has advanced massively, his high school friends, fiance and army buddies are in their 80s and modern morality is completely different than the 1940s. That is until Nick Fury points out the American flag over a cemetery and comments that one thing hasn't changed. (Well, except those two extra stars from 1959.)

* Like ''Franchise/StarTrek'' below, ''Franchise/StarWars'' gives the audience a few constants when telling a story in a new time period: ''ThePhantomMenace'' has no Rebellion and no Empire, with a strange Republic and Trade Federation in their places; but we know it's the same 'verse because we see Obi-Wan from the beginning, and Artoo and Threepio, Yoda, and Tatooine later on.

* In DemolitionMan, every restaurant is a Taco Bell (or a Pizza Hut, [[ProductPlacement for Europe]]).

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[[caption-width-right:350:[[Franchise/PlanetOfTheApes You maniacs!]] You built it up!]]

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** This is subverted in a scene in the comic ''[[Spider-Man I (Heart) Marvel: Web of Love]]'', where Captain America is seen watching a basketball game on TV with his Avengers pals and Mary Jane Watson-Parker. Confused by the rules added to the game since the 1940s and the resultant new tactics, he comments that at least baseball remained unchanged. Then Luke Cage brings up the designated hitter rule...

->''"It's called a [[TropeNamer constant]]. Desmond, you have no constant. When you go to the future, nothing there is familiar. So if you want to stop this, then you need to find something there...something that you really, really care about...that also exists back here, in 1996."''

[[folder: Art]]
* An American artist once released a poster with a series of pictures showing how a patch of land developed over a hundred years from open prairie into a busy city. Through it all one thing remained: A slowly growing tree.
[[/folder]]

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* In ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'', the Illusive Man invokes this trope to give the newly BackFromTheDead Shepard a personal incentive to help Cerberus take down the Collectors, by having a larger and more advanced replica of the original ''Normandy'' built, convincing Joker and Dr Chakwas to join it's crew and sending Shepard to recruit some of their former squadmates for the mission. In doing so, he's able to keep Shepard's mind focused on the mission and not on the two years that have passed while they were clinically dead.

* JRRTolkien's Literature/MiddleEarth:

* Katharine Kerr's ''{{Deverry}}'' series:

** Most commentators agree that the final section of the book pretty much comes out and says that he's the Wandering Jew.

** The ''Next Generation'' two-parter "Unification", created for an anniversary and features Spock, who is used to link the past and the present.