History Main / TimeDissonance

* An episode of ''Manga/{{Mushishi}}'' features a Mushi that causes this - it syncs the host's perception of time with its own and, since it only lasts a day before it releases spores and dies, causes the host to effectively "grow old and die" every single day. It's curable, but a lot of people can't stand the dramatic shift in time dissonance and end up purposely infecting themselves again. One such infectee describes to Ginko how experiencing each day as an entire lifetime unto itself gave her a sense of deep fulfillment; in contrast, a normal human sense of time leaves her uncertain of and constantly anxious about the future.

* In ''Manga/TheSevenDeadlySins'', King and Diane are living together after King was found by Diane as a child. During this time, they meet a mountain man who gives them a meal of soup. They met the same man a little while later, only to find the man is now decades older. It was their only indication of how much time had passed. A "little" time later, they come across his adult grandson.

* Doctor Manhattan of ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'' experiences time in a non-linear sense. It can make it difficult to have a conversation with him as he simultaneously hears what you're saying, what you've said, and what you're going to say. This gives him an extreme sense of fatalism.
* Averted in ''Comicbook/TheSandman'', as Dream is about to punish his captor's son: "Time moves no faster for us than it does for you." In other words, he felt ''every day'' of the seventy-five years he was imprisoned, which makes [[FateWorseThanDeath what he does to his victim]], someone who could have released him ''decades'' earlier, a little more understandable.
* Marvel's Comicbook/{{Quicksilver}} experiences this. As he tells Doc Samson, what kind of attitude do you think ''you'd'' cop if everyone else seemed like that one guy who's really slow in the supermarket checkout line?

* If a ''Franchise/TouhouProject'' doujin involves [[{{Immortality}} Mokou, Kaguya, or Eirin]], expect this trope to be explored or at least given a mention. In Kaguya's case, her power is explicitly to cause TimeDissonance ('power over eternity and temporality'), which helps her while away long days of self-imposed exile.
* [[Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer Giles]] doesn't truly understand how old Xander's memories are (having gone as Methos from ''Franchise/{{Highlander}} on [[BecomingTheCostume Halloween]])'' in ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9250693/1/Your-Eyes-Have-Seen Your Eyes Have Seen]]'' until he refers to the Order of Teraka (A 3,000 year old order) as "reasonably old".
* In ''Fanfic/HogyokuExMachina'' when Ichigo and company try to explain what they think Ukitake's illness is and ask if Unohana knows how humans cure diseases, they're shocked when she replies that shinigami pray to no one, marking her knowledge as centuries out of date.
* In one ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'' story, Timmy asks Wanda about the morality of him [[DatingCatwoman dating Vicky]] who not only tortured him when he was younger but is an adult while he's barely a teenager. Wanda replies that she [[BlueAndOrangeMorality doesn't actually understand human morality]] because it changes so often, rarely staying the same between decades and never between centuries. To someone who's old enough to have been married for nearly ten thousand years, it's a chaotic mess.

* Death aka Literature/HarryPotter in ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10685852/3/On-a-Pale-Horse On a Pale Horse]]'' is so ancient that he occasionally measures time with Earth's age, such as thinking he hadn't been a hero in "four Earths' worth of time".

* The Abrasax siblings of ''Film/JupiterAscending'' are thousands of years old and speak of time casually. The Matriarch was 90,000 years when she was murdered. Jupiter assumes Kalique is late 40s (pre FountainOfYouth of course) and is in shock that she's actually thousands of years old.
* The aliens of ''{{Film/Arrival}}'' perceive time differently from humans, and it's actually a part of their language. [[spoiler: They can actually see their own futures as well.]] This turns into a big twist when it's revealed [[spoiler: what we thought were flashbacks of Louise's dead daughter Hannah are actually visions of her from the future]].
* In ''Film/HouseOfWhipcord'' Justice Bailey is getting on in years and his sense of time isn't the best. He talks about a girl they tried about five years ago, only for Margaret to inform him that it was thirty years.
* In ''Film/OhGod'', God exclaims that he processes time differently than how humans do, claiming that he sleeps for centuries at a time (the Dark Ages being one such era) and said that when he most recently woke up, Sigmund Freud was still in college.

* The plot twist of ''VideoGame/{{Starflight}}'' is that [[spoiler: the fuel you hunt the galaxy for is actually the Ancients race that everyone talks about. Their view of time is so much slower that we see them as rocks, but they are sentient beings. The reason stars are flaring up is being done by the race ''in self defense'']].
* The asari of ''Franchise/MassEffect'' seem to view time like this, with their thousand year lifespans. Liara and Shepard can discuss this in the first game. In the second, Asari Matriarch-slash-[[TheBartender bartender]] Aethyta complains that she tried to defy this ("We need to get our girls working earlier") and was laughed off her home planet for her efforts. Had anyone taken her seriously, the asari fleets might have been there to stop [[spoiler: Sovereign]] without needing humans as TheCavalry.
* ''VideoGame/{{Homeworld}}''
** Cataclysm gives us the Bentusi, who, when pressed, view our 'flicker-lives' as expendable next to their vast intelligences and memories. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcN-2l0ON9M Things change.]]
** When the Kiith Somtaaw try to convince the Taidanii that allying with the Beast and promising it half of the galaxy is only going to end up [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness screwing them over]] once it runs out of things to consume, the [[BigBad Naggarok]] points out that it'll take countless 'flicker-lives' for that to happen.
* In ''VideoGame/TheLongestJourney'', the Venar perceive all of their life simultaneously. They are aware of everything that has happened to them and will happen to them, from their birth to their death, as if it happened now. Save for a period of time, soon to come, where their perception will be clouded and hidden, which upsets them quite a deal. (And given that they're never upset or surprised by anything ever usually, this means something.)
* The Slylandro in ''VideoGame/StarControl'' seem to have this. Their standard unit of time is the Drahn, which is around 6460 Earth years. They're long lived enough that they remember the Ur-Quan from when they were a single species and part of the Sentient Milieu some 20,000 years ago, and are surprised to learn that the Ur-Quan turned evil so quickly.
** In fact, the Slylandro are the only species in the game that has records on ''the {{Precursors}}'', who gave them the ability to communicate with star-faring species in the first place. Unfortunately, most of the Slylandro's recollections on them have been lost over time (the [[LivingGasbag Slylandro]] are unable to write anything down, so they keep records through oral tradition).
* ''VideoGame/GalacticCivilizations'': The Altarians offer this as an explanation as to why the Dread Lords went all AbusivePrecursors and tried to kill everyone else. The Dread Lords (who are biologically immortal) were capable of "perceiving eternity", and didn't see any reason to permit intelligent life that would only last a couple million years at best any reason to survive, since they would evolve, live, and die in a cosmic "blink of an eye".

* ''VideoGame/DivinityOriginalSinII'': The {{Abusive Precursor|s}} Eternals [[TimeAbyss live up to their name]]. One thinks a seven-year timespan is "infinitesimal"; another, when [[SealedEvilInACan released from her tomb]] and seeing a mortal for the first time, is appalled that they're rotting before her eyes and have at most a few centuries left.

* As part of a MindScrewdriver to tie the plot of ''VisualNovel/{{Ever17}}'' together a certain character induces a BatmanGambit against ''himself'' because he only views time linearly when he has entered our dimension instead of existing in time. When he leaves, he apparently exists in a state like Dr. Manhattan above in that his mental state exists outside normal time, meaning he can trick his 'past' self but retain memories of what he's tricking himself with. Or something. ...Well, it works out in the end.

* In ''Webcomic/TheInexplicableAdventuresOfBob'', Voluptua's people, the alien Nemesites, all speak of centuries as casually as humans talk about decades. Voluptua has said she's reluctant to return to her homeworld, because if she just turns her head for a moment, Bob will age to dust.
* ''Webcomic/EightBitTheater'':
-->'''Sarda the (nigh-omnipotent) Sage:''' Your linear concept of time bores me.
* An Webcomic/{{xkcd}} [[http://xkcd.com/926/ strip]] features a "Time Vulture" following someone. Time Vulures can slow down their internal clocks so that time speeds past them; then they follow someone until they die and then eat them. When the character protests that he's not about to die, his friend tells him that, form the vulture's point of view, everyone says that just before they do.

* The fae of ''Webcomic/{{Drowtales}}'' are type II {{immortal|ity}}s and thus very old fae have trouble remembering exactly [[http://www.drowtales.com/mainarchive.php?sid=6837 how long ago things happened]] and even [[http://www.drowtales.com/mainarchive.php?sid=7056 how old]] [[http://www.drowtales.com/mainarchive.php?order=chapters&id=1618 they are]], and as a result most drow don't keep track of their exact age and instead refer to themselves by generation, or how far removed they are from the Dark Elves who first fled to the Underworld.

* ''The Franchise/{{Transformers}}'', who are basically immortal unless someone destroys them (and even then they can usually [[DeathIsCheap come back]]), have this as well. Millions of years pass as decades for them. The rate at which they perceive time can vary greatly [[DependingOnTheWriter based on the needs of the plot]], but it's always at least somewhat in effect. Case in point. At the beginning of ''WesternAnimation/TransformersAnimated'', the heroes are asleep for 50 years. When they wake up, they treat it a no more severe a loss than a human would consider spending a few hours unconscious.
* The characters of ''WesternAnimation/ReBoot'', who live inside a computer, experience time much more slowly than humans. They frequently talk about "nanos" meaning nanoseconds, like the equivalent of seconds. Which leads to a bit of FridgeLogic when season 3 comes around and they point out that [[YearInsideHourOutside game time is accelerated (they age faster in games)]]. And games are a direct interface with The User... which means the user perceives time ''even faster'' than they do.

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}}'', the [[TheFairFolk Wyrd Sisters]], when presented with [[spoiler: The Archmage]]'s plan for revenge, explain that they have no problem [[TheSlowPath waiting nearly 1000 years]] for it.
-->''"What is time to an immortal?"''
* ''WesternAnimation/TheDrinkyCrowShow'': In one episode, Uncle Gabby meets another monkey who happens to look alot like him. Upon becoming a god, he takes Gabby into a separate universe called Dirt Girlatonia, filled with clones of the Captain's Daughter doing Girls Gone Wild acts. He and Uncle Gabby watch this spectacle for 50 billion years (which is shown by a black cuecard saying just that), with them still watching and staying the same as if only seconds gone by after the cuecard was shown. He ends up coming back to his own dimension and complains to Crow how he had to stay for 80 billion years, which Crow interrupted by stating he was only gone for 5 minutes, but Gabby justifies it by saying that the monkey god took him out of the space time continuum. This means Gabby is now more than 66.2 billion years older than the universe.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball'': One scene in [[Recap/TheAmazingWorldOfGumballS3E28TheQuestion "The Question"]] shows the planets attempting to sing to Gumball, but from Gumball and Darwin's perspective they don't seem to even be moving. By the time they finish singing about [[InsignificantLittleBluePlanet how insignificant peoples' lives are]], billions of years have passed [[LaserGuidedKarma and they realize they've wasted all of their time just before the sun explodes]].
* ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'' movie ''WesternAnimation/SchoolsOutTheMusical'' reveals that the pixies' plans to take over Fairy World always take 37 years. While still funny, it's not as absurd as it sounds because fairies and pixies are immortal.
* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/AladdinTheSeries'' had Genie say that a genie cold lasts for only a century or two, and realizes he forget that's a long time for mortals.
** Another episode has him falling in love with Eden, a fellow genie. Since Eden watches over a young girl and Genie has his own obligations to help Aladdin and friends they casually make plans for a date next century instead (when both parties will be long dead) like they're talking about next week. Though they do end up running into each other again in a later episode before then.

* Very much the case for God in ''Literature/TheBible''. Psalm 90:4 mentions 'For a thousand years are in your eyes but as yesterday when it is past, And as a watch during the night.'. Its mentioned again at 2nd Peter 3:8. Very likely there's a similar situation with angels.

** This trope is the reason some Christians don't see any incompatibility between the timeline of Creation in the book of ''Genesis'' and the actual, physical age of the Earth -- 6 divine days simply equal 4.5 billion solar years on the planet God created.

* ''The Franchise/{{Transformers}}'', who are basically immortal unless someone destroys them (and even then they can usually [[DeathIsCheap come back]]), have this as well. Millions of years pass as decades for them. Case in point. At the beginning of ''WesternAnimation/TransformersAnimated'', the heroes are asleep for 50 years. They treat it as a couple hours unconscious, and treat it as no big deal.

Compare YearInsideHourOutside and contrast its inverse, YearOutsideHourInside, compare and contrast NarniaTime, and see MerlinSickness for another difference in the way time is experienced. Compare ProportionalAging, where the dissonance affects a creature's rate of maturation. For beings who experience/see their present, future and past all at once, see NonLinearCharacter.

** Most of the main characters are at least [[TimeAbyss a few dozen millenia old]], but their personalities can be quite different from one another even if they're the same age. Anyone in the main setting considered to be truly old ''was around at the beginning of the world''. Even [[BigBad Makuta]]'s plot had gone on for several thousand years before he brought it to fruition. Still, the main story takes place [[ComicBookTime just over a year]], which isn't commented on by anyone despite their huge lifespans.
** In the Spherus/Bara Magna setting this is downplayed somewhat, as there are mentions of those who have actually died of old age. Still, that means that 'elderly' characters such as Ackar have still been around for ''upwards of 100,000 years''.

* In ''Legion of Super-Heroes', Element Lad ends up in a TimeAbyss after an incident involved him being sent to the beginning of the universe and living in isolation before life evolved where he was. By the time his friends meet him again, he's on such a different time scale that he's completely forgetful of conversations that occurred moments before, and has taken to calling other life blinkers in reference to their lifespans.

* In Legion of Super-Heroes Element Lad ends up in a TimeAbyss after an incident involved him being sent to the beginning of the universe and living in isolation before life evolved where he was. By the time his friends meet him again, he's on such a different time scale that he's completely forgetful of conversations that occurred moments before, and has taken to calling other life blinkers in reference to their lifespans.

* In ''Webcomic/TheInexplicableAdventuresOfBob'', Voluptua's people, the alien Nemesites, all speak of centuries as casually as humans talk about decades.

* In ''Film/{{Her}}'', Samantha, the artificial intelligence attempts to convey her perceptions of the timeline to Theodore Twombly.

* In ''Webcomic/AxisPowersHetalia'', the main characters are all {{Anthropomorphic Personification}}s of nations who have been alive for hundreds of years. It's been shown that what feels like days or weeks to them is actually years to regular people.

* If a ''VideoGame/{{Touhou}}'' doujin involves [[{{Immortality}} Mokou, Kaguya, or Eirin]], expect this trope to be explored or at least given a mention. In Kaguya's case, her power is explicitly to cause TimeDissonance ('power over eternity and temporality'), which helps her while away long days of self-imposed exile.

* Vaarsuvius of ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'' at one point attributes his/her SesquipedalianLoquaciousness to "my elven insensitivity to the flow of time."

*** Akatosh is the draconic TopGod of the Aedric pantheon, and is the [[AnthropomorphicPersonification embodiment]] of the idea of "time". It is said that he was one of the first beings to manifest out of the raw energy of the early universe, and he [[TimeMaster started linear time]] following the creation of Mundus, the mortal plane. At several points in history, Akatosh has also been "[[HijackingCthulhu tampered with]]" so to speak, typically my mortals wielding divine implements. These {{Time Crash}}es are known as "Dragon Breaks", with the longest one occuring during the 1st Era when a group of anti-Elven inquisitors performed a ritual with the intent to purge Akatosh of his Elven influences. This proceeded to break time for a period of [[OneHundredEight 1008]] years (measured using Nirn's moons, which are said to be the decaying "flesh divinity" of the [[GodIsDead dead creator god]] and thus unaffected), during which bizarre occurances happened such as children giving birth to their own parents, the sky changing colors depending on the observer, and events as large as wars happening according to once source but mentioned as ''not'' happening by another.

* The elves in ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'', if you don't piss them off.This happens to the elves, too. It even bleeds over to the Fellowship somehow in Lothlórien, so that they experience less time there then actually passes. As Legolas puts it:
---->"...change and growth is not in all things and places alike. For the Elves the world moves, and it moves both very swift and very slow. Swift, because they themselves change little, and all else fleets by: it is a grief to them. Slow, because they do not count the running years, not for themselves. The passing seasons are but ripples ever repeated in the long long stream. Yet beneath the Sun all things must wear to an end at last."

** While not truly immortal like in some other fantasy series, the [[OurElvesAreBetter races of Mer (Elves)]] are LongLived compared to humans, with prominent examples of Altmer (High Elves) and Dunmer (Dark Elves) living naturally for several centuries (and some who've [[WizardsLiveLonger enchanced their lifespans with magic]] living for several ''milennia''). This is also a reason several of these races believe that HumansAreBastards. They see Men as having pitifully short lives filled with violence and savagery who disrupt everything the elves try to achieve. Some of the most extreme Altmeri religious beliefs (like those espoused by the [[AntiHumanAlliance Third Aldmeri Dominion]] under the leadership of the [[ANaziByAnyOtherName Thalmor]]) even teach that Elves are oppressed by the very ''[[FeelingOppressedByTheirExistence existence]]'' of humanity. Even more reasonable Elven leadership, such as the Second Aldmeri Dominion (which you can join in ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsOnline''), are opposed to a human empire dominating Tamriel because, with such short lives, they can't do a fair and balanced job ruling the continent.

* ''VideoGame/DivinityOriginalSinII'': The {{Abusive Precursor|s}} Eternals [[TimeAbyss live up to their name]]. One thinks a seven-year timespan is "infinitesimal"; another, when [[SealedEvilInACan released from her tomb]] and seeing a mortal for the first time, is appalled that they're rotting before her eyes and have at most a century left.

* Averted in ''Comicbook/TheSandman'', as Dream is about to punish his captor's son: "Time moves no faster for us than it does for you." In other words, he felt ''every day'' of the seventy-five years he was imprisoned, which makes [[FateWorseThanDeath what he does to his victim]], someone who could have released him ''decades'' earlier, a little more understandable. Of course this falls a bit into SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale. While Creator/NeilGaiman isn't strictly a science fiction writer (be does a bit of everything) he probably just wanted the scene to have more effect. Even for human beings, it's been proven that the longer you live, the faster time moves for you given the comparison to your overall life span (1 year feels like forever to a 10 year old because that's 10% of their life up to that point but while still long feels much faster for a 40 year old as that's only 2.5% of their life span). While time certainly dragged for Dream in his fish bowl as he had nothing to do but sit their for decades, his life span is in the billions of years which meant that the time he was trapped for was only .000000005% of his life up to that point.

* Father from the Creator/KAApplegate books ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' (and, afterward, the Ellimist).
* Referenced on occasion in ''Literature/{{The Bartimaeus Trilogy}}'', in relation to spirits from [[EldritchLocation the Other Place]], who have no natural lifespan and can in theory live forever. Bartimaeus and other such spirits have been around for millennia and have seen all of human history pass by. This unsettles even some magicians, such as Bartimaeus's master from the 4th book when he realizes that Bartimaeus remembers the ancient kingdom of Eridu:

* Played with somewhat in ''Literature/TheBelgariad''. Despite being immortal and having lived for seven and three thousand years respectively, Belgarath and Polgara don't really throw their age around, aside from dropping periods like "a few centuries ago" the way most might say "last week." That's usually enough to weird out others.

* In ''Literature/TheFifthSeason'', the Stone Eaters are [[TheAgeless unaging]] and have [[PerpetualMotionMonster no physical needs]], so being pulverized and buried in the planet's mantle to [[PullingThemselvesTogether Pull Themselves Together]] over millennia is more of a stern rebuke than an AndIMustScream situation. Some of them "garden" by holding trees in place for centuries to guide their growth.

* In ''Literature/IHaveNoMouthAndIMustScream'', AM alters Ted's sense of time [[spoiler:after he frees Benny, Ellen, Gorrister and Nimdok.]]

* Similarly played for scares in ''Literature/JohnnyGotHisGun'' where Joe is unable to tell time [[AndIMustScream due to having lost most of his body and senses]] in which it becomes an obsession with him; judging by how often a nurse comes to treat him or by the warmth of the sun. He has no idea how long it has been since he had most of his body blown off.

* The Ents in ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'', if you don't piss them off.
** This happens to the elves, too. It even bleeds over to the Fellowship somehow in Lothlórien, so that they experience less time there then actually passes.
*** As Legolas puts it:

*** The elderly wizard Windle Poons muses that this has happened to him in recent years, with weeks and months seeming to flit by in an instant, which is strange because individual days seem to take forever.
*** A variation is that [[AllTrollsAreDifferent trolls]] ''believe'' that they perceive time backwards, reasoning that if you can see the past, it must be in front of you, whereas the future is invisible and therefore behind you. This is based on the similar perception of a Native American tribe, the Quechua.

** Inversion: when [[spoiler:the hero Hazel]] dies at the age of ten, he is so old that his deeds have already passed into the realm of half-remembered myth for the other rabbits, who cannot count beyond four.

* [[PlayingWithATrope Played with]] quite a bit in ''Toys/{{Bionicle}}''. Most of the main characters are at least [[TimeAbyss a few dozen millenia old]], but their personalities can be quite different from one another even if they're the same age. Anyone in the main setting considered to be truly old ''was around at the beginning of the world''. Even [[BigBad Makuta]]'s plot had gone on for several thousand years before he brought it to fruition. Still, the main story takes place [[ComicBookTime just over a year]], which isn't commented on by anyone despite their huge lifespans.

* ''VideoGame/{{Homeworld}}'' Cataclysm gives us the Bentusi, who, when pressed, view our 'flicker-lives' as expendable next to their vast intelligences and memories. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcN-2l0ON9M Things change.]]

*** On a meta level, the series tends to treat divinity as [[spoiler:the being knowing that they are a character in a video game and using that knowledge to affect the world around them]]. The [[PhysicalGod Tribunal deity]] Vivec dives deeper into this concept in his ''36 Lessons'' book series as well as in [[LooseCanon developer-written supplementary materials]]. For example, a real life player of the game who goes from playing ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Syrim]]'' to ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind Morrowind]]'' has gone back in time 200 years in-universe, but only had a couple of minutes pass in real time. Unless the player is extremely knowledgeable about the series timeline, it might be difficult to tell "when from when", just like an in-universe deity.

* Coyote from ''Webcomic/GunnerkriggCourt'' "forgot how short a time humans have in the world". He demonstrates this by pondering why the medium he's speaking to looks younger than he remembers her, mistaking twelve-year-old Antimony for her dead mother (who was twenty-something when Coyote last met her.)

*** This has been put forward as a possible reason why dogs evolved to work so well with humans: they experience time at similar rates, and thus experience the world similarly to humans.

** Many studies also reveal that the widespread smartphone addiction speeds up the perception of time as people spend their days mindlessly scrolling through the same applications rather than paying attention to their surrondings.

* The earliest activity of [[Franchise/CthulhuMythos Cthulhu]] happened 10^63 years before the creation of the Universe. [[CaptainObvious That probably qualifies.]]

* In ''Manga/TheSevenDeadlySins'', King and Diane are living together after King found Diane as a child. During this time, they meet a mountain man who gives them a meal of soup. They met the same man a little while later, only to find the man is now decades older. It was their only indication of how much time had passed. A "little" time later, they come across his adult grandson.

** In ''Discworld/SoulMusic'', he's shown to have a nonlinear memory, similar to Dr. Manhattan's.
** ''Discworld/ReaperMan'' has two scenes displaying this. In one, a group of mayflies grumble that you don't get the kind of sun they had in their [[strike:day]] hour; now it's all red and near the horizon. Meanwhile, pine trees are having a similar conversation, but it takes seventeen years, and one is cut down. There's "a shocked pause for a couple of years" then one says "He just went! Just like that!"

* Shows up in ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'' - the older (and hence more experienced and magically powerful) wizards were all born a few centuries ago, and haven't adapted to rapidly changing technology. This is not a good thing.