History Main / TheConstant

* Dracula's castle in ''Franchise/{{Castlevania}}'' games is [[{{Bizarrchitecture}} an ever-changing structure]] ("[[Chaos Architecture a creature of chaos]]" as ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaSymphonyOfTheNight Symphony of the Night]]'' puts it), but the corridor in its entrance stays the same. Also, the approach to Dracula's throne room generally includes a long staircase going upward from right to left.

* Dracula's castle in ''Franchise/{{Castlevania}}'' games is [[{{Bizarrchitecture}} an ever-changing structure]] ("a creature of chaos" as ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaSymphonyOfTheNight Symphony of the Night]]'' puts it), but the corridor in its entrance stays the same.

* Similar to ''Avatar'' but across a much longer time period, there is an episode of ''SamuraiJack'' where Jack visits a temple he had been to in the past. Not only do the martial artist students practice the same traditions, but there is even a monk there, thousands and thousands of years old, that Jack met when he was there.

* Across both wildly divergent timelines in the ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquer'' series, ''[[CommandAndConquerTiberium Tiberium]]'' and ''[[CommandAndConquerRedAlert Red Alert]]'', there is a corporation called Futuretech.

[[folder: Webcomics]]
* ''Webcomic/{{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 ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'', [[spoiler: Dad is pretty much the same guy in both the original universe and the post-Scratch universe.]]
** As well, Caliborn's home [[spoiler: is the troll's meteor and his planet is Earth, ''littered'' with Statues of Liberties.]]
* Jones (aka Wandering Eye) is a constant in ''Webcomic/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.]]
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[[folder: Web Original]]
* In ''Roleplay/DarwinsSoldiers: Pavlov's Checkmate'', the main team is trapped in 1990, and needs to send a message to a teammate still in 2010. They do this by noticing a file cabinet that they recall seeing in 2010, and slipping a note inside it.
* In ''FineStructure'', Anne Poole is the Constant for over 20,000 years.
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* In ''Film/DemolitionMan'', every restaurant is a Taco Bell (or a Pizza Hut, [[ProductPlacement for Europe]]).

* In ''VideoGame/Fallout4'' the Protagonist is [[spoiler:Cryogenically frozen, his wife killed, and his son kidnapped.]] His robotic butler, Codsworth, exists as a constant between the pre-war and post-war times. [[spoiler:The Vault-Tec Salesman who sold you your place in the Vault can also be found and recruited, however he has undergone 'Ghoulification' due to the radiation damage.]]

* The Statue of Liberty in the ''Film/PlanetOfTheApes1968'' movie that features so prominently in the EarthAllAlong.

* In ''VideoGame/Fallout 4'' the Protagonist is [[spoiler:"Cryogenically frozen, his wife killed, and his son kidnapped."]] His robotic butler, Codsworth, exists as a constant between the pre-war and post-war times. [[spoiler:"The Vault-Tec Salesman who sold you your place in the Vault can also be found and recruited, however he has undergone 'Ghoulification' due to the radiation damage."]]

->''"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."''

* In the ''{{Franchise/Bioshock}}'' series, [[spoiler: there is always a man, a lighthouse, and a city, no matter what universe.]]
* 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 her 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.

* Inverted in the James Garner film, ''ThirtySixHours''. The existence of something that should have vanished in a few days, [[spoiler: a paper cut]], is what convinces Maj. Pike, that he ''hasn't'' spent the last few years in a fugue state, as his German interrogators are trying to convince him he has in order to extract information from him.

* RobertRankin's Brentford series has Professor Slocombe, who is implied to have been Merlin and have worked with Sherlock Holmes. Also, the Flying Swan, which shows up on 15th century maps. Ironically, the real-life pub the Flying Swan is based on, the Bricklayer's Arms, has since been closed and turned into housing.

* Like ''Franchise/StarTrek'' below, ''Franchise/StarWars'' gives the audience a few constants when telling a story in a new time period: ''Film/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, Threepio, Yoda, Tatooine (including Jabba the Hutt), [[StartOfDarkness Anakin]], and [[BigBag Palpatine]] later on.

* Like ''Franchise/StarTrek'' below, ''Franchise/StarWars'' gives the audience a few constants when telling a story in a new time period: ''Film/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.

* The video game series ''LegacyOfKain'' has the nine Pillars of Nosgoth, while they don't remain in a constant state (the ruination of the pillars is a major plot point) they remain as a constant on the landscape of the environment and a general marker for the time period. Along with the Pillars, Ariel's soul is present in every game but ''Blood Omen 2'', and her state (bound to the Pillars) ''is'' constant, a reminder of Kain's decision not to sacrifice himself.

* The Clock Tower in ''Film/BackToTheFuture'' in a major example of this trope, as it appears under construction in 1885, working just fine in 1955, broken and run-down in 1985, transformed into a casino-hotel in the alternate 1985, and as a piece of high-tech modern art in 2015.
** Doc Brown serves as one in the first film, as well, moreso than Marty's parents or Biff, as he is aware that Marty has been time-travelling.

* In ''DarwinsSoldiers: Pavlov's Checkmate'', the main team is trapped in 1990, and needs to send a message to a teammate still in 2010. They do this by noticing a file cabinet that they recall seeing in 2010, and slipping a note inside it.

* From ''InTheKeepOfTime'', Smailholm Tower. In an unusual variation, it is ''also'' the "time machine", as it were. The interesting implication of this is that the key can only take time travelers to a time period where the tower exists, not before its construction or after it collapses.

* In TheRedemptionOfAlthalus, when the title character first goes to the House At the End of the World, he passes a particular dead tree, when he leaves the House, 2500 years later, the same dead tree is still there, The Goddess Dweia says the gods keep the tree around as a landmark.

** Elrond Half-Elven serves as the Constant for the stories, born in the last days of the First Age in ''TheSilmarillion'' and being a character in ''Literature/TheHobbit'' and ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings''. Technically, Galadriel was around for longer, but Elrond appeared in more works.

--> ''Martin Summers'': "Look at us. Couple of desperate cases. Now you've lost your lifeline..."
--> ''Alex'': *Mumbling in her sleep* "No."
--> ''Martin Summers'': "...Your constant. Your Gene Hunt."

* In ''VideoGame/DarkCloud 2'', there is almost always an overly obvious Constant: That baby [[{{Pokemon}} Lapras]]-looking thing you saved helped to form the labs! That girl was the sage all along! etc.

* Promotional material for ''Videogame/FiveNightsAtFreddys 3'' implies Freddy Fazbear intends to become this trope. [[spoiler:"I am still here."]]

*** Fry froze in 1999.

* In HBeamPiper's ''Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen'', the absence of an expected constant - the stone quarries of an area of Pennsylvania that the protagonist knows quite well, and which could not have eroded while leaving the local geography intact - tips him off to the fact that he has ''not'' [[TimeTravel travelled into the far future]] as he previously thought, but is in an AlternateUniverse.

** 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 [[UsefulNotes/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 [[Franchise/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.

** 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 [[UsefulNotes/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.