History Main / TimeCrash

* This was the goal of BigBad [[spoiler:Time Master]] from ''VideoGame/FreedomForce'' when he tried to break the Celestial Clock; he figured that since he would end when time itself did, he wasn't truly immortal, so that in order to make his immortality true and eternal he'd need to stop time itself on its tracks. At the end of the game, [[spoiler:Man-Bot makes a HeroicSacrifice and locks himself inside the clock to allow the rest of the heroes to escape. Wraiths of Chaos begin attacking the clock because of his presence there, locking Man-Bot in an EndlessStruggle to keep the Celestial Clock going and prevent another time crash from happening.]]

[[folder:Web Original]]

* Season 16 of ''WebAnimation/RedVsBlue'' ends with one that happens when the protagonists, through TimeTravel, cause a RealityBreakingParadox. The next season kind of explains what followed: the ones who caused the incident were expelled from the current timespace to instead be trapped reliving their memories, and the villains who inspired them to wreck everything in the first place are changing those past events [[AGlitchInTheMatrix (which everyone is starting to notice)]] so reality is broken further. In the meantime, the present had the person who inspired the paradox [[ParadoxPerson experiencing two timelines at once]] (one where he was shot in the neck, and one where he wasn't).

** Parodied in the mini-episode [[Recap/DoctorWho2007CiNSTimeCrash "Time Crash"]], a short made for Children in Need (which WordOfGod says is canon). The Doctor accidentally somehow merges his TARDIS with the TARDIS of [[TheNthDoctor his fifth incarnation]]. Hilarity ensues at first as a starstruck Ten (and a real-life admiring Creator/DavidTennant, who was thrilled to be on the same set with [[Creator/PeterDavison his own childhood favourite Doctor]]) and a bewildered Five have to stop their inadvertent meeting from ripping a hole in space-time the exact size of Belgium.

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** Series 5 could almost be considered a deconstruction — the "total event collapse" at [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E12ThePandoricaOpens the end]] destroys all of time, ''including'' before the event that caused it (i.e. [[spoiler: the TARDIS exploding]]), cracking but not destroying all of space and time (and having [[RetGone other effects]] as well). This, on top of giving us the season's ArcSymbol, also alerts the rest of the universe to the disaster and prompts them to [[spoiler: form an alliance to stop it, tracing the cracks to the TARDIS and assuming it's the ''Doctor'' who will have caused it]]. When the collapse finally happens, the Doctor doesn't particularly care about ''why'' (and it wasn't finally explained until three and a half years later), he just wants to stop it from ever having happened. The results, by the way, are devastating — Earth is one of only two celestial bodies (the other being the moon) that has ever been in the sky, and by 1996 [[spoiler: what little is left of the universe is starting to fall apart]]. In fact, the universe is so mangled that [[spoiler: ''they can't repair it'' — their only option is to ''completely reboot it'', which involves, among other things, erasing the Doctor from history. He gets better.]] It's eventually revealed the whole thing was [[spoiler:an elaborate and thorough assassination attempt that almost worked]].

Garden-variety temporal wedgies need not apply in this trope. This is not about your usual temporal inconveniences, the kind that [[RetGone make your best friend vanish from the time line]], put UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler [[GodwinsLawOfTimeTravel in the Oval Office]] or [[InSpiteOfANail make medieval Japanese the]] ''[[InSpiteOfANail lingua franca]]'' [[InSpiteOfANail of the 21st century]] — that is, the sort that can be solved by a simple trip back in time to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong. A good and proper Time Crash should have some large-scale, [[RealityIsOutToLunch reality-breaking]] effects: holes get punched in the fabric of space-time, the ClockRoaches show up and start eating people, things that should happen one after another happen the other way around instead (or worse, ''[[AllOfTimeAtOnce simultaneously]]''), etc.

* It's not apparent from the start, but this is the central premise of ''VideoGame/{{Shrapnel}}'', an InteractiveFiction by Creator/AdamCadre. [[spoiler: The protagonist and an ill-fated time traveler are caught in a particularly vicious and inescapable Time Crash caused when the time traveler's time machine was damaged by a piece of shrapnel. Cause and effect cease to exist, and the protagonist experiences several key events in AnachronicOrder and dies multiple violent deaths with no lasting aftereffects before discovering the nightmarish truth.]]

* ''VideoGame/AllThingsDevours'' is all about averting a time crash. The timeline in the universe doesn't take kindly to paradoxes, and will promptly "censor" them with a [[StuffBlowingUp huge explosion]]. What's more, the lab housing the time machine is in the middle of Boston, and the military experimenting on it have no idea what they're doing.

* Criasu in ''Anime/HuggtoPrettyCure'' plans to destroy the future by stopping time in the present, thus preventing the future from ever coming to pass.

[[folder:Audio Plays]]
* The ''AudioPlay/BigFinishDoctorWho'' audio "[[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWhoCCS6E7TheAnachronauts The Anachronauts]]" involves the First Doctor's TARDIS being crashed into by some human temporal scientists who had made the first ever time flight, and both groups are then left on a desert island with no time travel. The result at first appears to be this, as the order of cause and effect seems messed up and things that cannot possibly exist (a 'time sprite') begin attacking them. However, this is a subversion, as it turns out that both teams are still inside the TARDIS and it has put the crews in a repair dimension while it attempts to ''stop'' time breaking down as a result of the crash.

** Rose causes a Time Crash in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E8FathersDay "Father's Day"]] when she saves her father Pete from dying at a hit-n-run incident when she was a baby. [[ClockRoaches Flying Killer Time Monkeys]] [[NiceJobBreakingItHero come out and eat everyone on Earth.]] Things are only fixed when Pete sees [[GroundhogDayLoop the car circling the same spot outside the church]] and realises he was meant to be hit by the car, [[HeroicSacrifice so he goes out and meets]] [[YouCantFightFate his fate]].

* This was the goal of BigBad [[spoiler:Time Master]] from ''VideoGame/FreedomForce'' when he tried to break the Celestial Clock; he figured that since he would end when time itself did, he wasn't truly immortal, so that in order to make his immortality true and eternal he'd need to stop time itself on its tracks. At the end of the game, [[spoiler:Man-Bot makes a HeroicSacrifice and locks himself inside the clock to allow the rest of the heroes to escape. Wraiths of Chaos begin attacking the clock because of his presence there, locking Man-Bot in an EndlessStruggle to keep the Celestial Clock going and prevent another time crash from happening.]]

* In the ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'' episode "[[Recap/RickAndMortyS2E1ARickleInTime A Rickle in Time]]", thanks to one of Rick's inventions purposely freezing time for six months for everyone but Rick, Morty and Summer, the three of them end up caught in a feedback loop of uncertainty resulting in their timelines being split in half (shown as a split screen) and continues to divide when one of them is uncertain about something which means they have to escape bofore thier alternate timeline collapses in on itself with them still in it.

* In ''Fanfic/HuntersOfJustice'' Metropolis suddenly experiences a "Temporal Cascade" where people and animals from across history are pulled from their native times and dumped into the present day, causing havoc. The source of the cascade is the criminal Chronos traveling back in time to steal items from the era that "disappeared" according to history. Team RWBY has to travel back in time to stop Chronos to prevent the damage from getting any worse.

* In ''Fanfic/HeroesOfJustice'' Metropolis suddenly experiences a "Temporal Cascade" where people and animals from across history are pulled from their native times and dumped into the present day, causing havoc. The source of the cascade is the criminal Chronos traveling back in time to steal items from the era that "disappeared" according to history. Team RWBY has to travel back in time to stop Chronos to prevent the damage from getting any worse.

* ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/30333318/chapters/74772423 Moebius]]'' has [[Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica Homura]] warned her use of time rewinds was putting the universe in serious risk of this. As she was getting help from Manga/{{Bleach}} characters such as Yorouichi and Urahara to replace that part of her arsenal, she obliges to prevent one. [[spoiler: However when Madoka makes a wish as part of a gambit to save the day, she panics, uses her powers, and causes a time crash to start. Fortunately Urahara was aware of the possibility of a panic use of a time rewind and had a back-up plan in place to undo it before it destroyed the universe.]]

* ''ComicBook/AstroCity'' has this as part of the BackStory of one of the early stories. A man has been having recurring dreams about a woman he's never met, but apparently knows everything about, and it's slowly driving him insane. One night, he learns what happened; a jilted supervillain built a time machine, and used it to challenge the god of time, and their conflict tore the original timeline to shreds. A number of superheroes patched the timeline together as best they could, and one of the things that vanished in the cracks was the woman, his wife (her grandparents never met because they were forced to put Air Ace's battle with the Barnstormers a day early).

[[quoteright:350:[[Creator/SalvadorDali https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dali_soft_watch_at_moment_of_first_explosion.png]]]]

* When the [[TimePolice Time Variance Authority]] arrested ComicBook/SheHulk after she used time travel to save Hawkeye's life, the whole trial was to determine what will cause a ''bigger'' Time Crash, letting her off with a warning or ''eradication'' from the universe (as in, a RetGone, which they are capable of doing.) The biggest evidence against her was a vision of the future that showed additional carelessness on her part causing the apocalyptic reckoning war. (This was ''so'' convincing for Jen, she ''changed her plea to guilty''.)

* A ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' WhatIf episode ends with the space-time continuum being shattered by Fry ''not'' going to the future. Because of his ''[[MeanwhileInTheFuture previous]]'' [[StableTimeLoop adventures]] [[GrandfatherParadox in time]], the universe itself is tied in to his existence.
** In the main ''Futurama'' universe: at the end of ''Bender's Big Score'' Bender creates so many time paradox duplicates that he makes a tear in the fabric of reality. This becomes a major plot point in the sequel ''The Beast With A Billion Backs''.
** The most apt ''Futurama'' example has to be "Time Keeps On Slipping", in which the removal of [[{{Unobtanium}} chronotons]] causes time to skip randomly. Professor Farnsworth explains the ramifications thusly:
--->"At this rate, by Tuesday it will be Thursday, by Wednesday it will be August, and by Thursday it will be the end of existence as we know it!"
* Chronos did this in the "Once and Future Thing" episode of ''[[WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague Justice League Unlimited]]'' due to wantonly taking stuff from the past to appease his needy wife. Time started to crack and fall apart, killed several people, and nearly erased all of reality before Batman and Green Lantern stopped him.

* The ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' episode "It's About Time" [[PlayedForLaughs plays this trope for laughs]] when Twilight, certain that some horrific disaster is going to occur by next Tuesday thanks to a visit from her future self, spends the week leading up to it trying to find out what the disaster ''is''. As Tuesday draws ever closer with no idea of what catastrophe is coming or how to prevent it, a frantic and sleep-deprived Twilight decides that the only way to avert the disaster is to find a spell to stop time itself so that Tuesday never comes. [[spoiler:Fortunately for the universe's sake, she doesn't find any such spell, and the impending disaster was just a misunderstanding resulting in a StableTimeLoop.]]

* In the ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'' episode [[Recap/RickAndMortyS2E1ARickleInTime "A Rickle in Time"]] thanks to one of Rick's inventions purposely freezing time for six months for everyone but Rick, Morty and Summer; the three of them end up caught in a feedback loop of uncertainty resulting in their timelines being split in half (shown as a split screen) and continues to divide when one of them is uncertain about something which means they have to escape bofore thier alternate timeline collapses in on itself with them still in it.
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs'' episode "No Time For Smurfs", Handy, Brainy, Clumsy, and Smurfette tamper with Father Time's Sands Of Time hourglass first by causing time to go backwards, then by causing time to repeat previous events, creating temporal copies of themselves in the process, then they break the hourglass and cause time to stand still. They try to fix it by creating a new hourglass and putting the sands into it in the hopes of restoring time, but instead they create a time crash in which the sun repeatedly rises and sets and random weather patterns appear in the sky, which as Father Time reveals is a result of mixing the Sands Of Time. Fortunately, Mother Nature and Father Time join together to straighten out the whole mess, restoring everything to normal and causing the temporal copies to vanish.
* In, of all shows, ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'', this happens in "SB-129" when Squidward breaks a time machine in a panic, sending him to a weird dimension that he seems to be stuck in forever, but he gets back when he finds the time machine after breaking through the floor of the dimension.

* The ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS7E10Shattered Shattered]]" has a NegativeSpaceWedgie warp sections of the ship into different times in its history. Chakotay finds himself the only one able to breach into these different sections ranging from before Voyager first launched [[ContinuityCavalcade to parts of nearly every season of the show with associated characters involved]], like Seven-of-Nine before her Borg implants were removed in season four or Seska when she took over the ship in season two.

* In ''LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya'', the character creates a Time Crash [[ArcWords 3 years ago]] that prevents human time travelers from going back further than that. Presumably, Yuki's faction has no problem as Yuki mentions very casually that the humans' TPDD is an average method of time travelling. Moments later, she leads Kyon and Mikuru into a room and freezes the whole room, stopping time in there. It is maintained, even when Yuki engages in a battle against Ryoko in a data space created by Ryoko.

* In ''Webcomic/AndShineHeavenNow'' the [[Anime/ReadOrDie I-Jin]] [[Literature/TheTimeMachine Wells]] goes back in time to kill one of Integra's ancestors, [[Manga/EmmaAVictorianRomance Prince Hakim]]. This causes things to rapidly get chaotic until Alucard briefly comes face to face with [[LightNovel/VampireHunterD D]] at which point time and the universe are completely torn apart and everybody from all possible timelines finds themselves in the [[Franchise/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy Whole Sort of General Mish Mash]]. [[spoiler: With some help from a version of Wells who worked for ''Hellsing'', Yomiko prevents everything from happening by swapping the I-Jin Wells's time machine with one that was about to explode from overuse, causing him to explode and almost the entirety of the Shine or Die arc from happening in the first place.]]

* In ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'' episode "Déjà Vu", a time travel experiment goes wrong [[spoiler: after an attempt to weaponize it by a corrupt military official]], which results in a GroundhogDayLoop... with a nasty twist. Each iteration grows shorter, and eventually there will be no hope of preventing the Time Crash from destroying the world. [[spoiler: In the end, the disaster is averted, and the man responsible suffers a [[KarmicDeath Karmic]] FateWorseThanDeath, as the malfunctioning time machine traps him in the moment of his own annihilation.]]

* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' episode "Shattered" had a NegativeSpaceWedgie warp sections of the ship into different times in its history. Chakotay finds himself the only one able to breach into these different sections ranging from before Voyager first launched [[ContinuityCavalcade to parts of nearly every season of the show with associated characters involved]], like Seven-of-Nine before her borg implants were removed in season four or Seska when she took over the ship in season two.

* The Time Eater in ''VideoGame/SonicGenerations'' deliberately does this as revenge against Sonic, thrusting Sonic into the White Space, a [[PlaceBeyondTime region beyond time]], and shattering time from at least as far back as 1991. When Sonic finally faces the Time Eater, it's at the Center of Time, where the Time Eater has taken chunks of places from various moments in the franchise and sent them floating about.

* ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales2017'': In the episode "Timephoon", Louie steals (er, [[InsistentTerminology borrows]]) Gyro's time machine to "rescue" ancient lost treasures throughout history in a quick-rich scheme. He's under the impression that, because the treasures were going to be lost regardless, taking them before they ended up becoming lost won't affect the time-stream. Unfortunately, he doesn't realize the time machine releases waves of energy which transport random entities throughout time with it, resulting in a massive "[[TitleDrop timephoon]]" which teleports all sorts of historical figures in and around Scrooge's mansion, makes all the clocks go haywire, and eventually starts zapping people from the present into different times.

* Chronos did this in the "Once and Future Thing" episode of ''[[WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague Justice League Unlimited]]''. Time started to crack and fall apart, and killed several people before it was stopped.