History Main / TimeTravelTenseTrouble

* A frequent out-of-universe problem when trying to describe events crossing ''ComicBook/CrisisOnInfiniteEarths'', due to the major differences in how the retcon affected different characters and different past events. A few characters were rebooted as completely new characters (ComicBook/WonderWoman), some were made so that they had been around before the Crisis, but their personalities and histories suddenly had always been very different from what all previous comics portrayed (ComicBook/{{Superman}}), some were erased from history (ComicBook/{{Supergirl}}), and some had basically the same history and memory that they had had before the Crisis (ComicBook/TheFlash, ComicBook/GreenLantern). Therefore, there's both the reader's perception of what "Pre-Crisis" and "ComicBook/PostCrisis" means (Pre-Crisis: [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks Golden]], [[UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks Silver]] and UsefulNotes/{{the Bronze Age|OfComicBooks}}, ComicBook/PostCrisis: [[UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks Dark]] and Modern Age), and there's the characters' perception of what "Pre Crisis" and "Post Crisis" means (basically: Pre Crisis: Before [[ComicBook/TheFlash Barry]] and [[ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} Kara]] died, Post Crisis: after Barry and Kara died). This leads to descriptions like "After the Crisis, Batman changed so that he had been dark and brooding both before and after Barry died."\\\

** In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, "Before Abraham was born, I am!" This taken to be a statement of divinity -- "I am" is connected to the "name" Yahweh or Jehovah, as God told Moses ("I am that I am") -- instead of evidence for a time-travelling Jesusmobile, but tenses for the omnipresent seem to run into the same problems with language.

** In ''Literature/TheLastContinent'', Scrappy tries to explain to Rincewind that he knows Rinso can save [=FourEcks=] because he's already done it, but he can't just go home because he hasn't already done it ''yet''.
** From the same book, a magically aged Ponder Stibbons thinks "You should've seen the temporal disturbances we will have been used to be going to get [[WhenIWasYourAge in my day]]."

--->'''Lecturer in Recent Runes''': You know, it's a good job we're wizards, otherwise this time travel business could really be confusing.

* ''Series/Charmed1998'':

* In ''Series/DayBreak2006'', Brett often ran into this whenever he tried to explain the GroundhogDayLoop to another character.

* Topical PanelGames like ''Series/HaveIGotNewsForYou'' also get confused by tenses when describing something that might happen between recording and broadcast (and might have changed by the repeat. And heaven knows what'll be happening by the time it's on Dave...) Sometimes averted by having a special Friday Morning recording, usually so an election’s results are known...

** In [[Recap/FuturamaS3E14TimeKeepsOnSlippin "Time Keeps on Slippin"]], Professor Farnsworth describes unpredictable bursts of MentalTimeTravel in a way that conveys they're accelerating but is no less mind-bending to parse literally.
--->'''Farnsworth''': At this rate, by Tuesday it will be Thursday. By Wednesday, it will be August. And by Thursday, it will be [[NaturalEndOfTime the end of existence as we know it]].
** In "The Farnsworth Parabox," [[Administrivia/TropesAreFlexible an analogous situation]] arises while discussing parallel worlds. As Professor Farnsworth-A is arguing with [[AlternateSelf Professor Farnsworth-1]] about the accusation that [[MirrorUniverse one of them is evil]] and wants to destroy the opposing universe:

-->'''Robin:''' ''"How do I know all this? Because I was born in the circus and raised on its history. And also because...I was there. Am there. Here. Right now. Back then. Forget it."''

[[folder:Web Comics]]

-->'''Dipper:''' When ''are'' we?
-->'''Mabel:''' ''(dramatically)'' The real question is, ''when'' are we? ''(pause)'' Oh wait, did you already - ?
-->'''Dipper:''' Yeah, I already -
--> '''Mabel:''' Alright.

'''Kim Possible:''' But if the Supreme One has the time monkey in the future... or the past... or... Wow. Aah! Brain pain.\\

* In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nPjFRsJGqA this scene]] from the ''WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2003'' episode "Timing Is Everything", the Turtles receive a message from their future selves, as well as a reminder to [[StableTimeLoop send the message to their past selves when they will have reached that point in the future]].

* ''Series/{{Charmed|1998}}'':

* In ''Series/{{Day Break|2006}}'', Brett often ran into this whenever he tried to explain the GroundhogDayLoop to another character.

** In "Future Echoes":

** After being [[RetGone erased]] by the inquisitor:

** At the beginning of "Tikka To Ride", Lister tries to explain how they recovered being killed by their future selves. The basic premise is easy enough (well, "easy"...), but Lister's grammar is so awful that the cameras keep exploding on him.

** ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'':
*** In the episode "[[Recap/StarTrekS1E28TheCityOnTheEdgeOfForever The City on the Edge of Forever]]" Spock falls into this when discussing Edith Keeler's effect on the timeline: "Save her, do as your heart tells you to do, and millions will die who did not die before."

*** In the episode "Relativity":

** So does Miles O'Brien in ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine''.

** In the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "Time Squared", Picard must try to find a way to prevent the destruction of the ''Enterprise'' that he knows is coming.
--->'''Picard:''' We must anticipate, and try not to make the same mistake... once.
** At the conclusion of "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS5E26S6E1TimesArrow Time's Arrow]]", Picard bids farewell to Guinan of the 19th Century.
--->'''Guinan:''' [[TheSlowPath I'll see you in 500 years, Picard.]]\\

* ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'': In the GroundhogDayLoop episode "Mystery Spot", Sam, the only one who has experienced the loop, asks Dean, in what would become a MemeticMutation:

* In ''Literature/HarryPotter'', Hermione insists on the correct tense when she travels back in time. Hermione likes things just right!

--> '''[[Manga/TsubasaReservoirChronicle Syaoran]]:''' Please don't get too upset at [[MyOwnGrampa my]] [[TimeTravel past]] [[CloningBlues self]] for the things [[EvilTwin he]] [[WhamEpisode is going to do,]] he's going to be going through a very hard time just then.

** In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, "Before Abraham was born, I am!" This is a statement of divinity -- "I am" is connected to the "name" Yahweh or Jehovah, as God told Moses ("I am that I am") -- instead of evidence for a time-travelling Jesusmobile, but tenses for the omnipresent seem to run into the same problems with language.

* ''ComicBook/DisneyDucksComicUniverse'': In an ''Uncle Scrooge story'', the evil witch, Magica has this problem

* ''[[Animation/{{Gandahar}} Light Years]]'':

* ''LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya'': Mikuru is aware of the tense trouble, but she keeps flubbing it anyway. Considering that Mikuru is spacey and {{Moe}}, this leads to Adult Mikuru showing Kyon a mole on her breasts while saying something like "But you were the one who told me about it... wait, has that not happened yet? oops...". Later in that episode Kyon casually asks Mikuru if she has a mole "right about here" and points to the location on his own chest. She turns around, checks, and starts trying to beat the information out of him. That would be where Kyon "told her about it" -- it's a bootstrap paradox.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* Microsoft Outlook's "Warning: This meeting occurs in the past."
* Subversion's error message "Cannot reverse-merge a range from a path's own future history."
* Larry Niven called this effect "Excedrin Headache Number SQRT(-π)".
* Of course, this problem affects only languages with compulsory tense-marking. For example, English mandates tense-marking of verbs ("went", "am going" and "will go" for "go", for instance), while Chinese leaves the verb alone and puts time markers around it ("go yesterday", "go now" and "go tomorrow").
* This is part of why explaining time modeled as the 4th dimension can be quite difficult.
* There is a real life issue with this as anyone who has worked night shift can tell you. Do nights for years and other people remarking about tenses becomes an OverlyLongGag.
** When a night-shifter talks about waking up and eating dinner, it messes with people's heads more than you'd think.
** Leaving for work? "Have a good day... er... night!"
** Eating lunch at 2 AM? That's weird -- even though that's what almost everyone calls the meal they eat in the middle of their shift.
** People who work at hotels, apartment buildings, etc. and other open-24-hour places often are never sure to say "good morning" or "good evening" between midnight and 4 AM, because the early risers are all mixed up with the people returning from a late night out, and each may end up with the person replying "It's not morning/night, it's night/morning!"
** Hotels/hostels that allow late night check-ins also often have the issue that the worker has to constantly switch between days since the newcomers are from "yesterday", but the check-outs are from "today". Switching shifts can become equally confusing when someone asks if you can take over Saturday without being clear whether the night Friday-Saturday or Saturday-Sunday is meant.
* In relativity, two events separated by a space-like space-time interval (i.e. every observer will note that light from one event cannot reach the position of the other event before the other event occurs) have no consistent ordering. Different observers will disagree about which event occurred first, and one reference frame will observe the events occurring simultaneously.
* Analytically, there are 4 different timescales to be concerned about in speaking: the time of the speaker, the time of the receiver, the time of the event, and the time of the comparative event. In standard life, the first two are equal and the latter two can be present, past, or future to the speakers or each other, leading to the seven standard tenses: present, past, past-past (formally the pluperfect "had"), past future "was going to", future, future-past (or future perfect, "will have"), and future-future (omitted in English and most other languages). If time travel is possible, this means both speaker's and listener's timespans have to be referenced. As these are completely independent of the event timescales, we cannot omit the present tense on either, so we must multiply by three twice for a total possibility of 54 tenses. While some may be omitted as redundant, this still presents a formidable linguistic challenge should time travel ever be possible.
* Talk to someone on the other side of the Planet, or really ''anyone'' who lives in a time zone significantly different from your own. Watch people say "Have a good night" to someone before saying "Off to lunch, bye!" and everything else.
** Or talking about today's events, which could be their yesterday or tomorrow depending on where you are. Things like New Year are regularly quite amusing since half the world already lives in a different year.
** International phone calls (professional and private) are often quite a challenge since both sides not only have to check their schedule, but also to figure out which time it is at whose place. There is a reason that there's websites dedicated to nothing but calculating the time of multiple places.
** On the internet it's easy to make this happen on demand. All you need is a chat room that has people from the US and Australia. (Australian time zones run 11-13 hours ahead of the US depending on which one.)
* The Global Game Jam has this issue every year. It always starts at the same time. ''Local time'' that is, leading to the rule: don't talk about the theme until Hawaii got it.
* Creator/DanielRadcliffe ran into this problem when trying to describe how they filmed the seven Harrys scene in ''Film/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows'' (where they had to film the scene seven times with him playing seven different characters, then put it all together):
-->'''Radcliffe:''' If you moved too far an inch to your left, it was unusable because you would be standing on a version of me that we then filmed next, which is gonna be put in later... if you follow me... If you ''do'' follow that, well done, you should join the visual effects department.
* You can sometimes run into this when talking with others about a novel/movie/series/etc. if not everyone is at the same point in the story. Within your respective experiences of the setting, your past may be their future, or vice versa.
* References to "midnight" can often be ambiguous; do they mean midnight at the start of the day, or midnight at the end of the day? In the 24-hour system, this is resolved by using 00:00 for "start" and 24:00 for "end", and the latter can often be seen on transport timetables. In the 12-hour system, 12 AM was supposed to be "start" and 12 PM "end", with midday being just "12" or "noon", but this has been overturned by digital timepieces, so sometimes "12:01 A.M." and "11:59 P.M." are used instead.
[[/folder]]

* During ''Fanfic/{{Facing the Future|Series}}'', Danny runs into this when describing [[spoiler: his bad future self fighting his good future self]].

* From Wiki/{{Wikipedia}}'s [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Traveler_Convention#Time_Traveler_Convention article]] on the MIT Time Traveler Convention: "The spacetime coordinates continue to be publicized prominently and indefinitely, so that future time travelers will be aware and have the opportunity to have attended."

* Mikuru from ''LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya'' is aware of the tense trouble, but she keeps flubbing it anyway. Considering that Mikuru is spacey and {{Moe}}, this leads to Adult Mikuru showing Kyon a mole on her breasts while saying something like "But you were the one who told me about it... wait, has that not happened yet? oops...". Later in that episode Kyon casually asks Mikuru if she has a mole "right about here" and points to the location on his own chest. She turns around, checks, and starts trying to beat the information out of him. That would be where Kyon "told her about it" -- it's a bootstrap paradox.

* ''ComicBook/{{Cable}}'': There's often no telling from which point in his life the Cable you're dealing with is actually from. It would be ''completely possible'' for him to be KilledOffForReal, and ''still'' continue to appear in comics simply because he hasn't died ''yet''. The best you have is a few markers, like whether or not he's currently infected with the T-O virus, or if he has Belle (a sentient A.I. who helps manage his time-travel abilities). However, even ''that'' isn't a given.
* A frequent out-of-universe problem when trying to describe events crossing ''ComicBook/CrisisOnInfiniteEarths'', due to the major differences in how the retcon affected different characters and different past events. A few characters were rebooted as completely new characters (Franchise/WonderWoman), some were made so that they had been around before the Crisis, but their personalities and histories suddenly had always been very different from what all previous comics portrayed (Franchise/{{Superman}}), some were erased from history (''Comicbook/{{Supergirl}}''), and some had basically the same history and memory that they had had before the Crisis (Franchise/TheFlash, Franchise/GreenLantern). Therefore, there's both the reader's perception of what "Pre-Crisis" and "ComicBook/PostCrisis" means (Pre-Crisis: [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks Golden]], [[UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks Silver]] and UsefulNotes/{{the Bronze Age|OfComicBooks}}, ComicBook/PostCrisis: [[UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks Dark]] and Modern Age), and there's the characters' perception of what "Pre Crisis" and "Post Crisis" means (basically: Pre Crisis: Before [[Franchise/TheFlash Barry]] and [[Comicbook/{{Supergirl}} Kara]] died, Post Crisis: after Barry and Kara died). This leads to descriptions like "After the Crisis, Batman changed so that he had been dark and brooding both before and after Barry died."\\\

* ''ComicBook/DisneyDucksComicUniverse'': In an Uncle Scrooge story, the evil witch, Magica has this problem

** In ''[[ComicBook/Supergirl2005 Supergirl vol. #5]]'' issue #22, Supergirl runs into this trouble when she remembers that she travelled to the far future and fought/will fight alongside the ''ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes''.

* ''Film/{{Jumanji}}'': After the game is won, Alan and Sarah find themselves as their preteen selves in 1969 again, with time having been completely reset. While he reconciles with his father, [[SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong Alan also explains what actually happened in the shoe factory earlier that day]], starting off saying "Back in 1969..." before fixing that to "earlier today...".