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| 4 | %% Don't duplicate the entire page as a "meta groundhog loop". |
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| 8 | %% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1612702326057908500 |
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| 11 | [[quoteright:147:[[Webcomic/{{XKCD}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/groundhog.png]]]] |
| 12 | [-[[caption-width-right:147:Somewhere, [[Music/SonnyAndCher "I Got You Babe"]] plays on the radio, and Creator/BillMurray wakes up in a cold sweat.]]-] |
| 13 | %% |
| 14 | ->''"Well, what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't one today!"'' |
| 15 | -->-- '''Phil Connors''', ''Film/GroundhogDay'' |
| 16 | |
| 17 | A plot in which the character is caught in a time loop, doomed to repeat a period of time (often exactly one day) over and over, until something is corrected. Usually, only one character or group of characters [[RippleEffectProofMemory realizes what's going on]], or at least has an odd sense of DejaVu — everyone and everything else undergoes a complete SnapBack, and if not interfered with will do the exact same things every time, right down to dialogue. |
| 18 | |
| 19 | Once the character realizes this, two things happen, usually in this order: |
| 20 | |
| 21 | # The character starts experimenting, then playing around with the people around them, [[CannotSpitItOut confessing or acting on]] their feelings for another character, telling off their boss, getting themselves killed in interesting ways, and other things, in a form of SaveScumming. |
| 22 | # The character finally gets down to the business of what's causing the loop, and finds out how to stop it, often using the information learned in all the previous iterations to make sure this one last loop goes perfectly. |
| 23 | |
| 24 | A common variation is that the looper is ''deliberately'' repeating the time period to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong (and because they keep failing, [[{{Determinator}} they repeat it again, and again, and again, and again, and...]]) In such cases, the looper has control of the loop and can stop it at any time -- if they just [[DespairEventHorizon give up and accept failure]]. |
| 25 | |
| 26 | A different variation has the loop actually be a fake, and time isn't repeating -- people are just acting out their routines identically, with characters left out of the loop (NoPunIntended) in a sort of elaborate scheme or prank to make them ''think'' it is. |
| 27 | |
| 28 | A Groundhog Day Loop episode can often be identified by the presence of several odd little events that are given full camera focus, yet don't have any apparent significance or relation to anything else. These are, of course, the events that will later be replayed in exactly the same order to emphasize that the day is, in fact, repeating in every particular. (Almost invariably, the looping character will at some point demonstrate his or her "prescience" by offhandedly predicting these events one after another.) |
| 29 | |
| 30 | Since this plot requires constantly revisiting handful of sets for the entire length of the episode(s), re-using some of the same footage over and over and generally no outside characters will act on the plot, this can be considered a form of BottleEpisode. |
| 31 | |
| 32 | Though [[OlderThanTheyThink not the earliest example]], this trope is [[TropeNamers named after]] the 1993 film ''Film/GroundhogDay'', which [[TropeMaker established the trope]] in Western popular culture. The UrExample of the trope is ''Literature/TheDefenceOfDuffersDrift'' from 1904, although in that case the loop traversals are dreams of Lieutenant [[MeaningfulName Backsight Forethought]] which permit him (and the reader) to learn which general tactical mistakes to avoid. |
| 33 | |
| 34 | Compare NewGamePlus and EndgamePlus for VideoGames. |
| 35 | |
| 36 | Requires RippleEffectProofMemory to be in play for any meaningful plot to take place. |
| 37 | |
| 38 | Not to be confused with a StableTimeLoop. |
| 39 | |
| 40 | '''See also:''' |
| 41 | * ChristmasEveryDay: In some cases, a loop will reset around Christmas. |
| 42 | * GroundhogPeggySue, a subtrope where the looping encompasses a substantial fraction of the character's life and the character may be able to skip over some of the intervening bits. |
| 43 | * MentalTimeTravel, because it's usually that. |
| 44 | * OutOfTimeOutOfMind, for when this looping does not affect the character's personality. |
| 45 | * RippleEffectProofMemory, since the character remembers the events that apparently never happened as far as everyone else in the universe is concerned. |
| 46 | * SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong, which includes a description of the distinction between the two. |
| 47 | * FixFic for the general category of fanfics where things that went wrong are set right. |
| 48 | * TheStoryThatNeverWas: In cases where the solution is to undo whatever started the loop, rather than going through the correct iteration of it. |
| 49 | * [[SuddenGameInterface Sudden Game Interfaces]] may pop up as the means by which the main characters control their time loops and their efforts to fix things. |
| 50 | * DreamWithinADream, if they keep waking up. |
| 51 | * EternalRecurrence, this on a universal scale. |
| 52 | * TimeLoopTrap, when this is used for deliberate imprisonment. |
| 53 | * KarmaHoudini, when the character stuck in the loop gets no punishment for their actions after the day loops (especially when the punishment takes place "tomorrow"). |
| 54 | * TimeLoopFatigue, when the character in the loop suffers physical or mental exhaustion due to the loop. |
| 55 | |
| 56 | See also TemporalParadox, YouCantFightFate, TimeyWimeyBall. Compare AmnesiaLoop. Note that explicit TimeTravel is not always involved, and in fact creates an entropy paradox. |
| 57 | |
| 58 | '''Be wary of spoilers, too:''' the very ''existence'' of a "Groundhog Day" Loop can be a spoiler in itself. |
| 59 | |
| 60 | ---- |
| 61 | !!Example subpages |
| 62 | |
| 63 | [[index]] |
| 64 | * GroundhogDayLoop/FanWorks |
| 65 | * [[GroundhogDayLoop/LiveActionFilms Films - Live-Action]] |
| 66 | * GroundhogDayLoop/LiveActionTV |
| 67 | * GroundhogDayLoop/VideoGames |
| 68 | [[/index]] |
| 69 | |
| 70 | !!Other examples: |
| 71 | |
| 72 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 73 | |
| 74 | [[folder:Advertising]] |
| 75 | * [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJH0HtTxEz0 A surreal set of commercials]] for Lay's Chips that aired on [[Creator/AmericanBroadcastingCompany ABC]] on February 2, 2024 had none other than Creator/StephenTobolowsky experiencing a [[ActorAllusion familiar]] [[Film/GroundhogDay situation]]. There were eight total spots that ABC aired in rotation on all of its network shows, so if you watched more than one ABC show you got to see some of the same commercials over and over, adding to the feel of DejaVu. |
| 76 | [[/folder]] |
| 77 | |
| 78 | [[folder:Animation]] |
| 79 | * ''Animation/BoBoiBoyGalaxy'': In "Looping Loopa": The power sphera Loopbot causes the day to loop back to when [=BoBoiBoy=] wakes up after having a strange dream, which he later realises is a vision of a memory from past loops as Loopbot is evading capture from Adu Du and telling [=BoBoiBoy=] to remember. By the fourth loop, [=BoBoiBoy=] leaps out of bed to tell the others of what's been happening with a plan to save Loopbot. |
| 80 | * ''Animation/FlowerAngel'': One of the fairies An'an faces late into Season 1 causes this effect, forcing An'an to constantly relive going to the movie theater with her friends to watch a ''VideoGame/MolesWorld'' movie before having to deal with her father's horrible cooking at dinnertime, along with Kukuru reliving a run-in he has with An'an's pet cat that leaves him scratched up. |
| 81 | [[/folder]] |
| 82 | |
| 83 | [[folder:Anime & Manga]] |
| 84 | * ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'': Mayuri invents a drug that forces his enemy to fight Mayuri over and over again. Every time the enemy kills Mayuri, he's sent back to the beginning of the fight to fight all over again while [[MentalTimeTravel retaining memories]] of the previous loops. After ten loops, the enemy's body becomes paralysed. While the drug is actually manipulating memory and spatial awareness, rather than causing real time travel, the paralysis it causes is genuine. [[spoiler:The "enemy" he uses this drug on is Hitsugaya when Hitsugaya is being controlled by Zombie-master Giselle.]] |
| 85 | * In ''Manga/CardcaptorSakura'', the Time card keeps the same day repeating indefinitely. It takes Sakura quite a while to notice it, and then she and Syaoran go hunting for it -- with Syaoran being successful. |
| 86 | * ''Anime/DayBreakIllusion'' has this happen in the final few episodes, when [[spoiler:Cerebrum traps Akari inside the Clessidra and forces her to relive the day she accidentally killed the Daemonia-possessed Fuyuna. However, instead of breaking her spirit, it allows her to learn Fuyuna's true feelings, and that gives her the courage to break free.]] |
| 87 | * In ''Manga/DGrayMan'' 's rather adequately named "Rewinding Town" arc, a small German town repeats October 28th over and over, until Allen and Lenalee (not previously caught in the loop, which was a localized phenomenon caused by [[{{Phlebotinum}} Innocence]]) find a way to fix it with the help of a local woman named Miranda Lotto [[spoiler:who then claims said Innocence for herself]]. Note that ''only'' the people of that town are in the loop--time is passing as usual for the outside world, and people on the outside are wondering why the heck they keep getting the same phone call every day ordering the same things for the same business. Which is what initially drew the attention of the [[ChurchMilitant Black Order]]. |
| 88 | * In the ''Franchise/DragonBall'' spin-off manga, ''Manga/DragonBallThatTimeIGotReincarnatedAsYamcha'', [[spoiler:if "Yamcha" dies, he would have to go back to the moment he reincarnated and try again. He never gets to do so since he does fine the first time around, but the guy that reincarnated as ''Chiaotzu'' has had to go through the same thing dozens of times]]. |
| 89 | * ''Manga/GirlsGoAround'': |
| 90 | ** The premise of the manga. One of the girls heavily regrets something and causes a time-loop, until Kyousuke and the girl figure out what the exact reason for their regret is, ending the loop. These are pretty simple, with the longest being Hiyori Izumi's, which lasted for 4 days. |
| 91 | ** The beginning of the manga turns out to be one itself. And this one's actually the complicated one, as it's not only the longest, but spans the entire plot and its background. [[spoiler:It was created by Chihiro, resulting in a stable-time loop.]] |
| 92 | * ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'': |
| 93 | ** ''[[Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventureDiamondIsUnbreakable Diamond is Unbreakable]]'': Yoshikage Kira gains an ability called "Bites The Dust" into his Killer Queen. It causes a "Groundhog Day" Loop when [[spoiler:someone finds out he's not Kosaku Kawajiri, the man he killed to hide his identity by blowing said person up and resetting time from the start of the day. Unlike other "Groundhog Day" Loops, however, this one has the benefit of making sure the person who found out his identity still explodes at the same time they initially died in even if the events that lead up to that death no longer occur, thus allowing Kira to kill one of his enemies without ever fighting them]]. However, it has several limitations: [[spoiler:"Bites the Dust" has to first bind to a specific target, who is the only person fully aware of the looping time (thus forcing Kira to realize time is looping with each iteration himself). Second, Kira can't use Killer Queen while "Bites the Dust" is activated, meaning he has to recall it and end the loop should he be forced into a situation where he needs it (like being attacked by another Stand User). Third, if Kira ends the current loop before anyone's time is up and they explode, their deaths are canceled and avoided. Fourth and most critically, people ''only'' explode if they learn his identity whether directly or indirectly via the person he attached "Bites the Dust" to, so if ''Kira'' is tricked into revealing his identity, "Bites the Dust" won't activate.]] |
| 94 | ** ''[[Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventureGoldenWind Golden Wind]]'': [[spoiler:Giorno's Gold Experience Requiem]] has the ability to reset things to zero, i.e. return them to what they were at the beginning. In addition to having such effects as reverting any attempt at attacking the Stand (such as by covering its eyes with blood; the blood simply ''returns to its source''). Upon delivering the finishing strike to [[spoiler:Diavolo]], it causes him to constantly relive [[spoiler:a ResurrectionDeathLoop]] with no way to ever escape it. |
| 95 | ** ''[[Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventureSteelBallRun Steel Ball Run]]'': Ringo Roadagain, whose Stand, Mandom, creates six-second loops. The catch is that it doesn't erase anyone's memories, and only Ringo is implicitly aware of the loop being rewound, which can generate additional confusion in others. The ability has little in the way of cooldown, so the heroes beat him by [[spoiler:setting up a longer chain of events that he couldn't get out within those six seconds]]. |
| 96 | * The ''Franchise/KagerouProject'' is ''built'' on this: |
| 97 | ** ''Every single one'' of the main characters has experienced one of these in the form of [[spoiler:the Never-ending world, where they are sent after dying on August 15th and are eventually spat back out with [[MagicalEye a super-power]]]]. In fact, the series receives its name from the most famous example, ''Kagerou Daze'', as mentioned in Music Videos below. |
| 98 | ** On a much larger scale, [[spoiler:the BigBad's plan of living forever runs on one of these; he possesses Konoha, kills all of Mary's friends, and she resets time to be with them again. When and how this happens varies, but it all unfolds the same every time.]] |
| 99 | * In a ChristmasEpisode of ''Manga/KimagureOrangeRoad'' (1987), Kyosuke repeats this holiday because he isn't able to decide if he should go to the party with Madoka [[spoiler:and]]/or Hikaru, and his PsychicPowers act up. |
| 100 | * ''Manga/MaguchanGodOfDestruction'': Yupisusu, the last of the Six Pillars, makes their entrance by [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor fulfilling Ruru’s wish to continue peaceful everyday life]], causing the same day to repeat with only other Gods of Chaos retaining their memories of the repeated days. |
| 101 | * The ''Nue'' arc (episodes 8 and 9) of ''Anime/{{Mononoke}}'' has an interesting example, wherein a mononoke has a group of ghosts (who don't realise they're dead) relive the same sequence of events over and over. |
| 102 | * In one story of ''Manga/{{Mushishi}}'' a character goes through his entire life with a surreal sense of déjà vu. His entire life is shown multiple times with no significant variations until the conversation changes in a repeat encounter with Ginko. [[spoiler:It turns out that at the end of every loop he enters a tunnel-like mushi that resets his life. He decides not to enter the tunnel this time, but later when his wife is mortally wounded he enters the tunnel with her causing her to experience the déjà vu the next time.]] |
| 103 | * ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' introduced a genjutsu used by [[spoiler:the Uchiha clan: Izanami, an ability meant to punish others for misuse of [[RealityWarper Izanagi]].]] The victim is caught in an endless loop of time they cannot escape until they finally [[spoiler:learn to accept reality and to not try to escape it with Izanagi. Itachi uses this to defeat Kabuto and control him to end Edo Tensei, and much later, Kabuto rejoins the fray as a good guy, learning his true nature through imprisonment by the spell.]] |
| 104 | * In an early chapter of ''Manga/NightmareInspector'', a woman seems to be suffering from a somewhat self-inflicted version of this: in her dreams, she writes "tomorrow will be exactly the same" on a piece of paper, and it is. She tries to stop the cycle and write something different in her dream, but the "something different" is "tomorrow I will stab someone to death". Freaking out, she goes to Hiruko... and it turns out [[spoiler:he's been the one writing "every day is exactly the same" for her every time, and it's all part of the loop.]] The customer, as far as we see, [[spoiler:[[DownerEnding never gets out]]]]. |
| 105 | * Midway through the final episode of ''Anime/Persona4TheAnimation'' Yu realizes that he's become trapped in one of these by the BigBad. [[spoiler:Actually, he remembers that he put himself in it on purpose as the result of a ''massive'' HeroicBSOD brought on by the apparent death of his friends at the hands of the BigBad.]] |
| 106 | * At the beginning of ''Anime/PokemonGiratinaAndTheSkyWarrior'', Dialga, the temporal Pokémon, traps Giratina in this so it can escape the Reverse World it was dragged into by Giratina. The time loop keeps Giratina from leaving the Reverse World because every time it tries using its own power, it gets warped back a short distance from the portal it created. The time loop is broken when Shaymin creates a portal Giratina can escape through. |
| 107 | * Caused by [[spoiler:Homura Akemi]] in ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'' after she [[spoiler:resets the past month countless times, of which we see five, in her attempt to [[ScreeningTheCall prevent Madoka from becoming a magical girl]] and meeting a bad fate. However, by resetting time, she layers multiple realities where Madoka is the focal point, causing Madoka's potential as a magical girl to increase exponentially, making Homura's quest all the more urgent and difficult. Though Homura [[SaveScumming memorizes the events of the loop and gains tremendous experience from it]], it's shown that little details change from time to time -- even things that she herself would have no influence over, like what instrument Sayaka's crush plays, or whether the magical girl Oriko has a vision of the coming end of the world.]] |
| 108 | * ''Anime/PunchLine'' is entirely based on this. Well, and asteroids, ghosts, and [[ItMakesSenseInContext panty shots.]] |
| 109 | * In episode 7 of ''Anime/ShoujoKagekiRevueStarlight'', there is a huge reveal that [[spoiler:Daiba Nana actually won Giraffe's audittions a long time ago and became the Top Star, which gave her the power to create any stage she wishes for. Nana wished to perform Starlight again in the exact same way her class did last year. She was sent back one year when they had just arrived at school so her wish could come true. She kept repeating time again and again by winning Giraffe's audittions and making the same wish to go back in time]]. |
| 110 | * Episode 10 of ''Anime/SpaceDandy''. A huge blast of [[AppliedPhlebotinum Pyonium]] hits the July 8 page of Meow's calendar, stranding the crew in a Mobius loop on Meow's home planet. They [[IdiotHero fail to notice anything]] out of the ordinary until QT brings it up on loop 88, but Dandy dismisses the question. It isn't until loop [[Mystical108 108]] that they finally realize that they know what's going to happen... [[WrongGenreSavvy so they assume they've developed superpowers]]. At that point the [[InteractiveNarrator the Narrator]] gets fed up and yells at them to get on with the story. [[spoiler:The only way to break it was by removing the calendar page, which can only be done by Meow learning AnAesop and working with his dad, using his dad's metalworking equipment.]] |
| 111 | * In episode 213 of ''Manga/SgtFrog'', Momoka is trapped in one, one day before finishing the theme park she ordered to be made for her crush Fuyuki. She requests the Keroro platoon's help, but Kururu warns her that if she has any doubts, she will be unable to escape -- and, worried about the future, Momoka decides she wishes to stay. Eventually she decides to [[spoiler:help finish the theme park a day early, and she spends the evening with Fuyuki. As a result, she finally escapes the time loop and learns AnAesop about making the most of today.]] |
| 112 | * ''Manga/ShinMazingerZero'' has this sort of plot, with [[RobotGirl Minerva X]] resetting the universe each time Kouji becomes a WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds and Mazinger turns into a demon, hoping that the next loop will be the last and definitive one. By the time she ''finally'' manages to pull a mildly good scenario, ''more than 2000 time loops have already taken place'', and [[BrokenBird poor Minerva]] is [[DespairEventHorizon just about to lose all her remaining hopes]]. |
| 113 | * ''Anime/StarDriver'' uses this to keep the maidens from leaving the island. Poor [[spoiler:Mizuno]] finds out the hard way after 4 fruitless attempts to leave the island. |
| 114 | * In the ''Anime/SteinsGate'' anime, Okabe uses a MentalTimeTravel device to repeat the same few hours [[spoiler:in an attempt to prevent Mayuri's death]]. In an variation on the trope, after Okabe fails numerous loops, [[spoiler:Kurisu points out that he's only been jumping back a few hours because the device didn't exist before then and he didn't want to remove it from existence, but that he can now build it exactly to spec at whatever point he needs. From then on, he's able to stretch out the loop cycle for days]]. |
| 115 | * ''Manga/SummerTimeRendering'': The main plot follows Shinpei, a boy stuck in a time loop while investigating the strange death of his childhood friend. There are quite a few caveats to this example though: 1) Each time the loop repeats later, eamning actions taken before a certain time become permanent and immutable, and dying too soon after a loop restart actually kills him, and 2) [[spoiler:when the villain learns of it, she starts looping with him and also maintains her memories]]. |
| 116 | * ''Literature/TheTatamiGalaxy'' is all about this kind of plot, but the episodes vary on how it plays out. In the first half of the series, each episode is the protagonist choosing to join a club, things going wrong, and it resetting at the end, and in each episode, it's a different club. Later, the protagonist chooses to reset the span of an evening, as he tries to choose the right romantic interest. Then, it gets weirder. Despite the various resets, there is ultimately continuity between the episodes, so it works as a JigsawPuzzlePlot. |
| 117 | * In the manga ''Manga/TsubasaReservoirChronicle'', the main characters find themselves trapped in the exact same day in a StoryArc. |
| 118 | * It only had one loop, but this was episode 11 of ''Manga/WeddingPeach''. Hinagiku's Saint Pendule (her magic wristwatch) sends her back in time one day in order to stop the MonsterOfTheWeek, who was "stealing people's time". About 12 time-traveling {{Ass Pull}}s later, the monster is purified. |
| 119 | * ''Anime/{{Zegapain}}'' plays with this trope. [[spoiler:Which leads to a massive plot twist, it turns out that the entire city of Maihara and all of its residents occupy a computer server that has to reset the memories of every resident, except the main cast, after five months because limitations keep it from exceeding this length. It is revealed to the main character that the server has reset over a hundred times by this point of the series.]] |
| 120 | [[/folder]] |
| 121 | |
| 122 | [[folder:Comic Books]] |
| 123 | * ''ComicBook/FiftyTwo'': At the end of the series, [[spoiler:Booster Gold imprisons Mister Mind in one of these, sending him back to the start of the year to be captured by Dr. Sivana, who inadvertently lampshades how trapped the worm is.]] |
| 124 | * ''ComicBook/NewGods'': ComicBook/{{Darkseid}} is able to invoke these at will by trapping the victims of his Omega Beams inside the Omega Sanction, [[AndIMustScream where they're forced to live out countless lives that get progressively worse]], including the manner of death. Both Batman and Superman have experienced this, but nobody had it worse than Mr. Miracle in ''ComicBook/SevenSoldiers'' who was [[FateWorseThanDeath beaten, burned, mutilated, and castrated in just his first life within it]]. Batman simply had to relive his DarkAndTroubledPast over and over. |
| 125 | * ''ComicBook/DisneyDucksComicUniverse'': In the story "Again and Again..." (''Donald Duck'' 336, 2006), Donald is forced to relive the same day over and over until he discovers what he did "wrong" on that day. The story spoofs elements of both ''Groundhog Day'' and ''Film/TheHudsuckerProxy''—with mouse-eared "Daddy Time" (i. e. Moses) being wise to the time loop, and a Phil-like character reliving a similar time loop in a movie on Donald's TV. |
| 126 | * ''ComicBook/FantasticFour'': Originally, the Sphinx was a powerful sorcerer who nearly wiped out Earth. To stop him, Reed Richards was forced to ask Galactus for aid. After defeating the Sphinx, Galactus decided to dish out a punishment by sending the man back in time to ancient Egypt just before he gained his powers and force him to live out his entire life over again. It's hinted the Sphinx was trapped in this loop, unable to tell anyone what was happening and, despite all his attempts, unable to alter his fate. That is, until a woman's attempt to rewrite reality managed to break him free of the loop. |
| 127 | * ''ComicBook/{{Hourman}}'': In issue #3, Hourman, Snapper Carr, and Bethany Leewas were trapped in one of these by Epoch. The loop was known as the Timepoint and was specifically designed as the ultimate prison. It forced Hourman and his friends to relive the same five minutes on the day UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy was shot. Though they were aware of the time loop, no matter what they did, at the end of five minutes they would always end up standing on the same street corner. |
| 128 | * ''ComicBook/InvaderZimOni'': The final issue of the series sees Zim and Dib trapped in a time loop, reliving the same day over and over, caused by Zim trying to harness the time manipulation energy of an EldritchAbomination's waste matter, only for GIR to inadvertently sabotage it. By the time Dib becomes aware of the loop (implied to be because of some random machinery Gaz [[BodyHorror stuck in the back of his head]]), it has recurred countless times, to the point that Zim (who is aware of the loop thanks to a specially designed hat) has come to the conclusion that it can't be broken and is now using the loop to pursue hobbies he didn't use to have the spare time for. Dib decides that he's been driven insane by the loop and takes over trying to break it. [[spoiler:He ultimately fails, and the issue ends with them still stuck in the loop.]] |
| 129 | * ''ComicBook/JusticeSocietyOfAmerica'': |
| 130 | ** The villain Per Degaton is caught in one (or, rather, one of the two versions of him is). In 1947, he tried to steal a TimeMachine and was split in two: one version is left behind and takes TheSlowPath to reconnect with the time machine when it arrives in the '80s, while the other leaves with the machine and becomes a ConquerorFromTheFuture but, because the time machine comes with a ResetButton, ends every criminal escapade back in 1947 again with no memory of what happened...until he has a [[PsychicDreamsForEveryone psychic dream]] filling him in on his criminal escapades the night before the time machine test, at which point it starts all over again. |
| 131 | ** The team itself would be caught in one in ''ComicBook/LastDaysOfTheJusticeSociety'', where winning the battle of Ragnarok means that they must fight the same battle over and over to prevent the destruction of the universe. Waverider and the Spectre freed the team from this during ''Armageddon: Inferno'', transporting Abraxas' "daemen" to take the JSA's place in that neverending cycle. |
| 132 | * ''ComicBook/PaperinikNewAdventures'': Self inflicted in one of the short stories. Trip, the son of the time-traveling criminal the Raider, uses his [[TimeMachine chronosail]] to cheat at a hockey game, then [[DickDastardlyStopsToCheat decides to do it again with his eyes closed]]... [[SubvertedTrope And his father, who was at the game in disguise, makes him lose to teach him a lesson and confiscates his time machine]]. |
| 133 | * ''ComicBook/JusticeLeagueOfAmericaRebirth'': Issue #20. Bonus points for Flash directly invoking the trope. |
| 134 | * ''ComicBook/LoveEverlasting'' plays with the concept as while its protagonist, Joan, isn't trapped in the literal same day experiencing the same exact events, she finds herself in a perpetual ''thematic'' loop of various love stories [[GenreRoulette across different time periods, locations, and genres]], all falling with the same RomanceArc of "BoyMeetsGirl, love blossoms, boy asks her to marry him, presumably to live HappilyEverAfter" before [[ResetButton being thrown into an entirely different love story to reset the whole cycle]]. Joan is fully aware of her situation and jostles between playing along and [[ScrewDestiny actively attempting to derail her stories]] (usually because she genuinely isn't interested in the LoveInterest and just wants to escape), but it turns out there are PowersThatBe that are ready to punish her tremendously for attempting to resist the cycle with a bullet to the head. |
| 135 | * ''ComicBook/TheSandmanEndlessNights'': In "Death and Venice", a nobleman has intentionally created a loop which includes an entire island and all its inhabitants (including the nobleman himself), in which a decadent consequence-free party has repeated every day for hundreds of years. It's warded to be beyond Death's reach, but she eventually persuades a random human passing by to force open the entrance, letting her slip inside, break the loop, and return everyone to their proper timeline. |
| 136 | * ''ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogArchieComics'': One issue had Sonic stuck in a loop when a party in his honor gets ruined when he breaks a foot trying to avoid the press. He ultimately fixes it by waking up three hours earlier and parking his kiester on a chair and ''waiting''. |
| 137 | * ''ComicBook/StrontiumDog'': When Johnny is contracted to bring his abusive Nazi-esque father Nelson Kreelman to justice, he decides not to collect on the bounty and instead traps him in a temporal loop where he's forever reliving his final moments, pathetically begging Johnny to spare his life. |
| 138 | * ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'': |
| 139 | ** In ''ComicBook/AMindSwitchInTime'', Clark Kent gets stuck into his own past body, reliving the same Thanksgiving Day over and again until he figures out how he can break the time loop. |
| 140 | ** In ''ComicBook/WayOfTheWorld'', ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} fails to save a child's life, but she intends to hand a time-travelling gadget over to his parents, reasoning that they can relive their time together over and again. |
| 141 | * ''ComicBook/XMen'': |
| 142 | ** In ''[[ComicBook/HouseAndPowersOfX House of X]]'' #2, we learn that [[spoiler:this is essentially Moira [=MacTaggert=]'s mutant power, to be reborn "in utero" after dying, reliving her life all over again. She uses these lives to attempt to give mutantkind a GoldenEnding]]. Her ''ComicBook/HouseofXCII'' counterpart, [[spoiler:Jubilee]], has the same ability. |
| 143 | ** In ''ComicBook/ImmortalXMen'' #1, it's revealed that [[spoiler:Mr. Sinister has cloned a bunch of Morias after the Quiet Council learned of Moria and is essentially doing this to make sure ''his'' plans go right.]] |
| 144 | [[/folder]] |
| 145 | |
| 146 | [[folder:Films — Animation]] |
| 147 | * The first segment of ''WesternAnimation/MickeysOnceUponAChristmas'' has Huey, Dewey and Louie stuck repeating Christmas Day over and over after they wish for it. |
| 148 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyEquestriaGirls'' special ''[[WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyEquestriaGirlsSunsetsBackstagePass Sunset's Backstage Pass]]'', the main source of conflict is Sunset Shimmer being stuck in a time loop. After missing the Postcrush concert due to Pinkie Pie, Sunset wishes she had another chance to see them. Equestrian magic promptly sticks Sunset back at the beginning of the first day, letting her have another chance. [[spoiler:It turns out to be Postcrush members K-Lo and Su-Z using a device called the Time Twirler to relive the same day over and over until they get their performance right.]] |
| 149 | * ''Anime/UruseiYatsura: [[Recap/UruseiYatsuraBeautifulDreamer Beautiful Dreamer]]'' (1984) follows one for the early part of the film. This anime film was directed and written by Creator/MamoruOshii, later known for creating ''Anime/GhostInTheShell1995''. |
| 150 | [[/folder]] |
| 151 | |
| 152 | [[folder:Literature]] |
| 153 | !!!'''By Author''' |
| 154 | * F. M. Busby wrote a series of short stories which ran on this; the deuteragonist invented a "backspacer" which reset the world to a previous state, and often used it to rerun days until a variation occurred which didn't include some undesirable event, such as the start of World War 3. The protagonist was once allowed to use the device himself, and thereafter had RippleEffectProofMemory. |
| 155 | * Creator/KeithLaumer has written many stories that involve time travel and/or alternate realities, so it's almost inevitable that some time loops would appear. For part of ''Time Trap'' the protagonist is in a "Groundhog Day" Loop that includes a MiddleOfNowhereStreet. Though all the characters remain aware and remember previous loops, physically the world is reset once a day, including the dead returning to life -- except the protagonist, who retains any wear and tear from the day before. |
| 156 | * In a Sakyo Komatsu short story a businessman who is going bankrupt tomorrow makes a DealWithTheDevil and asks the Devil "to do something with tomorrow". Guess what happens to the businessman. |
| 157 | |
| 158 | !!!'''By Title''' |
| 159 | * In the book ''11 Birthdays'', the heroine, Amanda, relives her eleventh birthday over and over again, along with her ex-best-friend, Leo (also his eleventh birthday). One of the things about this loop is that they realize Amanda still has blisters from some uncomfortable shoes worn the last cycle, so their bodies and anything they keep on themselves remains. [[OhCrap Then they quickly realize that this means]] ''they will keep aging in the loop.'' |
| 160 | * Richard A. Lupoff's 1973 story "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12:01_PM 12:01 PM]]" is a possible candidate for TropeMaker: its protagonist experiences time endlessly resetting from 1:00 PM to 12:01, while everyone else is oblivious. At the end of the story he frantically rushes to meet a scientist with whom he can discuss the phenomenon before 1:00 arrives, but suffers a heart attack and dies. [[spoiler:And then it's 12:01 and he's alive again.]] (The makers of a short film adaptation attempted to sue the makers of ''Film/GroundhogDay'' but were forced to drop the case.) |
| 161 | * In ''Literature/AlexAndTheIronicGentleman'', the train is this with a twist -- people disappear with every loop. |
| 162 | * ''Literature/AllYouNeedIsKill'' (which was adapted into the movie ''Film/EdgeOfTomorrow'', see above) is about a young Japanese rookie soldier called Keiji Kiriya who dies during his first, disastrous deployment against the aliens who are wiping out mankind, only to reset back to the same point on the day before the battle, and continually do so every time he dies. Using the endless loops to train himself into an almost-unstoppable badass, he finds it still isn't enough to win the battle, until he meets Rita Vritraski, "the Full Metal Bitch", a young female war hero who, it turns out, [[spoiler:became a hero after using the same power he has to win a decisive battle for mankind]] and she explains that Keiji [[spoiler:accidentally stole the time loop power from the ''aliens,'' who are abusing their ability to reset time to outmaneuver humanity]]. The two team up to try and defeat the aliens. Then things go screwy when it turns out [[spoiler:the loop will never end unless one of them personally kills the other and [[BitterSweetEnding Keiji kills Rita to go on alone and win the battle]]]]. |
| 163 | * The short story "Absent Thee From Felicity Awhile" by Creator/SPSomtow has aliens grant humanity the gift of immortality, at a price; everyone must relive the day before the aliens came for a million years. |
| 164 | * Lauren Oliver's first novel ''Literature/BeforeIFall'' is about a teenage girl who repeats February 12 -- the day of her death. |
| 165 | * "The Cookie Monster"[[note]]Not [[Series/SesameStreet that]] one, unfortunately.[[/note]] by Creator/VernorVinge is a particularly unusual example -- the protagonists don't have RippleEffectProofMemory, but two of them have figured out how to preserve information -- [[spoiler:they're [[InsideAComputerSystem personality uploads of real people]] that [[DoAndroidsDream retained their human sentience]], and they can store information in the computer and send it out just before their cycle reset]]. This means that every single day they're confronted with the TomatoInTheMirror. Not to worry, though -- [[spoiler:they're not ThreeLawsCompliant, and ''they're'' the [[TitleDrop "cookie monsters"]] of the title (a reference to a "cookie" on the Internet). AIIsACrapshoot, and they're preparing for revenge...]] |
| 166 | * In the book ''Ctrl-Z'', the protagonist, Alex, has a computer that resets time a certain amount if you press Ctrl-Z. The protagonist's friend Callum knows about it, but only Alex has RippleEffectProofMemory. So in one story arc, Callum accidentally hits his father in the foot with a dart, so he rushes over to Alex's house to press Ctrl-Z, and finds himself back at his house before he threw the dart...but since he has no memory of what happened he does the same thing, and presses Ctrl-Z over and over, leaving Alex trying to figure out why time is resetting every few minutes. |
| 167 | * In ''Literature/TheDarkTower'', [[spoiler:the entire plot of all seven novels (excepting a few {{flashback}}s) is revealed at the very end to be a cycle. Roland finally reaches the Tower he has been trying to reach all this time, but as he enters it and climb the stairs, he notices several strangely familiar signs and sigils on the walls. When he then reaches the top, he sees a door with his name on it and realizes to his horror that he has reached and climbed the Tower countless times before. Roland is then forced through the door by the hands of Gan and transported back in time, he then wakes up in the Mohaine desert, back to where he was at the very beginning with his memory reset. How long the cycle has been repeating, and how long it will continue, is left to the reader's imagination. Notably though, this particular new iteration is implied to at least be somewhat different as [[NewGamePlus Roland this time possesses the Horn of Eld from the very beginning]]]]. |
| 168 | * ''Literature/TheDefenceOfDuffersDrift'' uses the dream variant as a framing device--not [[DreamWithinADream dreams within dreams]], but a sequence of dreams all depicting the same scenario where [[EnsignNewbie the protagonist]] must command his platoon of fifty men to defend a strategic riverbed crossing in UsefulNotes/TheSecondBoerWar. To prevent him from "cheating", the protagonist cannot remember the exact circumstances from dream to dream (enemy force composition and direction, et cetera), but he can and does learn general tactical lessons. |
| 169 | * In ''Literature/TheFlowerThatBloomedNowhere'', as Utsu goes through the weekend at the Order's sanctuary, she gets the distinct impression she's done all of this before. [[spoiler:As it turns out, the weekend has replayed 1,213,649 times, all of them having different scenarios that still end with everyone dying at the end, and the iteration we're seeing in the story is the very last one. Both Balthazar and Utsu are capable of remembering the loops for some reason, though Utsu has intentionally suppressed her memory, with the instances of deja-vu being the memories slowly returning. The exact mechanism of the loop is unknown, though it probably has something to do with the Apega, a giant machine built by the Order with the intention of reversing entropy.]] |
| 170 | * ''The Girl Who Leapt Through Time'', a 1965 Japanese novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui, is [[UrExample one of the earliest examples]] of this trope in Japanese media. It is about a high-school girl who gains the ability to time-travel and repeatedly relives the same day. It is also the TropeMaker in Japanese popular culture, where the novel is popular, was adapted into a 1972 television series and a hit 1983 film, and inspired numerous Japanese works (such as anime and manga) that use this trope. However, the story did not reach a wide Western audience until the 2006 anime film adaptation ''Anime/TheGirlWhoLeaptThroughTime''. |
| 171 | * Occurs during the short story "Endless Eight" in ''Literature/HaruhiSuzumiya''. Haruhi, who has godlike powers, ([[LockedOutOfTheLoop though she is kept forcefully unaware]], due to others fearing what a [[GenkiGirl person]] [[IJustWantToBeSpecial like]] [[LackOfEmpathy her]] would do should she realize she has such abilities) wishes at the end of the summer break that summer would never end. This accidentally causes a continuous loop of the previous two weeks every time she makes the wish. Which she ends up doing ''15,532 times.'' Each time, only Yuki [[RippleEffectProofMemory completely retains total memory of the previous loops]], while the others, except for Haruhi, suffer from déjà vu, eventually all figuring it out the situation, except for (obviously) Haruhi. [[spoiler:Only by forcing everyone to finish their summer homework does Kyon manage to make her not wish for summer to continue, finally ending the loop.]] When this story was adapted for the second season of the anime, Creator/KyotoAnimation, in order to have the audience empathize with the extreme boredom and tediousness the characters had to go through, [[AdaptationExpansion stretched the story out significantly]] by animating the same episode eight times, with only minor differences for each one. |
| 172 | * In ''Literature/TheHazelWood'', stories in the Hinterland (a realm of fairy tales) repeat themselves in a continuous loop, even though time moves normally for everyone else. Those who break the loop are called ex-story. |
| 173 | * The young adult novel ''Literature/HeirApparent'', by Creator/VivianVandeVelde, is about a girl trapped in a [[InsideAComputerSystem full-immersion virtual reality game]]; every time she dies in the game, the game starts over. |
| 174 | * Two books in the ''[[Literature/HelpImTrapped Help! I'm Trapped in _____'s Body!]]'' series had the character repeating either the first day of school or of summer camp, until he stopped acting like a jerk. The second of the two is more or less a {{deconstruction}} of this trope, and it turns out that the reason he was going through this was... because he didn't brush his teeth. |
| 175 | * This happens in the fourth arc of ''Literature/HumanityHasDeclined'' as part of a fairy plot to [[spoiler:get several instance of the main character in a PlaceBeyondTime, so they can make a lot of sweets]]. |
| 176 | * Creator/RLStine's ''It's the First Day of School...Forever!'' centers around a kid who finds himself repeating a disasterous first at school, which only gets worse with each loop. In the end it turns out that [[spoiler:the whole thing was a video game someone is playing, the loops are a result of the game being reset.]] |
| 177 | * In Creator/JoWalton's novel ''Lent'', a Groundhog Day-like form of reincarnation known as metempsychosis is an essential part of the damnation and punishment of demons, although some have more RippleEffectProofMemory than others. |
| 178 | * ''Literature/MartianTimeSlip'' by Creator/PhilipKDick involves the protagonist reliving the same day over and over again, [[MindScrew each time more bizarre than the last.]] After the day is over, he can't even remember it. |
| 179 | * In ''Literature/MasterofTheHeavenlyYard'', this is the fate of [[spoiler:Adam, Eve, Irina and Gammon]] due to a prematurely initiated [[ResetButton Court Ending]]. |
| 180 | * It's eventually revealed in "Literature/{{Middlegame}}" by Creator/SeananMcGuire that Rodger and Dodger have the ability to induce this for the entire universe. Everytime they've inevitably gotten things wrong and gotten themselves killed, they reset things. Each loop generally only has a few minor changes to try and push things forward and unlike most examples the starting point for the reset changes each time. It's the endpoint that remains constant. Without RippleEffectProofMemory, the two are bumbling their way through to a golden ending they have no clue even exists let alone how to achieve. By the time the novel ends, [[spoiler:they've been in what amounts to a 30 year loop for 13,000 repetitions, and have unknowingly reset the universe almost half-a-million years.]] |
| 181 | * Such a loop has apparently occurred at least a few times in Creator/RobertRankin's book ''Literature/TheMostAmazingManWhoEverLived''; by the time the plot begins, Hugo Rune, the self-proclaimed "amazing man", had worked out the secret of ''pre''-incarnation, allowing him to be reborn on his original birth date with all of his memories intact, to the extent that he has now arranged for himself to be born as quintuplets using their advanced knowledge as part of a plan for four of them to take over the world (the fifth, original Rune is focused on more philanthropic matters). |
| 182 | * ''Literature/MotherOfLearning'' involves a repeating month. Somewhat like All You Need Is Kill, the loop has been repeating for a while by the time the protagonist gets accidentally pulled into it. Unlike that one, however, [[spoiler:time isn't actually going backward; rather, the entire world is a copy, regularly destroyed and recreated inside a pocket dimension, to train the true Controller of the loop and help him find a way to stop an EldritchAbomination from being released at the end of the month]]. The protagonist is [[spoiler:just one of the copies of the original Zorian, and the loop Guardian doesn't intend to let him out into the real world]]. |
| 183 | * ''Literature/MushokuTenseiJoblessReincarnation'': |
| 184 | ** [[spoiler:Orsted]] reveals that due to a curse he repeats the same two hundred years of history over and over again until he [[spoiler:kills Hitogami]]. Having repeated this one hundred times he has roughly 20,000 years of experience and can identify potential allies, enemies and resources from experience in previous loops. |
| 185 | ** The Rewind Miko's ability has the side effect of allowing her to remember her lives in [[spoiler:Orsted]]'s previous loops. Each one of those lives was short and ended horrifically despite her attempts to escape, with the resulting mental trauma rendering her [[EmptyShell near catatonic]]. |
| 186 | * The premise of ''Neverday'' by Creator/CarltonMellickIII is that not just one or a few people, but a large and ever-growing part of humanity is stuck in one, waking up on the same day whenever they go to sleep or die. A new society has emerged that tries to solve such problems as how to punish criminals and how to provide incentives for people to still perform such jobs as are still necessary. Oh, and there's rumours of what happens if you manage to stay awake for long enough to make it into the Neverday, the next day that most people never see... |
| 187 | * In ''Literature/{{Pact}}'', a chronomancer uses his abilities to create one of these for his enemies. [[spoiler:Or so it seems. In actuality, Duncan Behaim uses his magic to fake a time loop, forcing Blake, Rose, Evan, and the rest of the people in the Jacob's Bell police station to forget the last few hours and reset themselves to where and what they were doing at the beginning of the affected period [[RuleOfThree three times]]. Our protagonists figure out what is going on when they notice that the sun is in a different position than it should be for how long they'd been at the station. It turns out real time magic takes more power than Duncan has at hand...]] |
| 188 | * The ''Series/DoctorWho'' Literature/PastDoctorAdventures novel ''Festival of Death'' features a race with this as their [[PlanetOfHats hat]]; after they die, they loop around back to the start and remember exactly how they screwed up. Because everybody has it, they're not limited to fixing the errors of a single day, or a single lifetime: they can adjust the course of their entire history. (If fixing a screw-up requires action more than one lifetime ago, a message can be passed back by a newborn child telling an adult, who waits to be reborn then passes the message on in the same way.) Fortunately for everyone else, they're not interested in using their abilities to conquer other planets, or anything petty like that; the messages that have been passed back from the end of their history have given them something far more important to worry about. |
| 189 | * In ''Literature/PermutationCity'', one character inflicts this on a [[BrainUploading simulated copy]] of himself out of guilt as a kind of SelfInflictedHell, making the copy endlessly relive the worst moment of his life (in which he committed the crime he's punishing himself for). |
| 190 | * ''Literature/ReZero'' starts out as a {{Deconstruction}} of the kind of WishFulfillment plots common in [[TrappedInAnotherWorld isekai]] {{Light Novel}}s, featuring a WrongGenreSavvy protagonist with NoSocialSkills who struggles to get by as a [[{{Muggle}} normal human]] with [[FishOutOfWater no connections]] in a WorldOfBadass. Things go so badly wrong that Subaru is murdered... and wakes up at where he was a few hours ago. Turns out he has a "power" that allows him to go back in time after he dies, with his memories still intact. Unfortunately, [[AutoSave the checkpoints for "Return by Death" are beyond his control]] (often coming at the worst possible moments), retaining his memories means he retains [[TraumaCongaLine his many traumas]], and each time he returns [[ImHavingSoulPains he can feel a sinister force digging deeper into his soul]]. For extra BlessedWithSuck, this force also [[CannotSpitItOut harms Subaru or his loved ones if he tries to tell anyone about his abilities]], and generates an aura sinister enough that [[DetectEvil magically-sensitive people]] sometimes mistake Subaru for an EvilSorcerer and attack him. |
| 191 | * In Ken Grimwood's novel ''Literature/{{Replay}}'', the protagonist lives large chunks of his life repeatedly (as do a couple of other characters), waking after dying to find himself back in his college days. [[spoiler:However, with each subsequent cycle of death and reawakening, the cycle gets shorter as he wakes up at a later points in his original lifetime.]] |
| 192 | * "Showdown" by Creator/ShirleyJackson, which was probably written before her death[[note]]this is Shirley Jackson we're talking about[[/note]] in 1965, but not published until the 2015 collection ''Let Me Tell You'', would have been another trope maker. On July 16, 1932, Billy suspects that his town is haunted. He witnesses the in-plain-sight murder of young Tom Harper by brutal Thad Ruskin, whose daughter Susy was engaged to Tom. Tom asks Susy to never forget him, and she and ''all'' the witnesses vow to remember. Billy skips his chores to go fishing, and is sent to bed without supper. The next day and the next he goes through the same set of events and it's still July 16, 1932. He catches on and begins to try to change things; can he get across the street faster, can he stand closer to Tom when Thad pulls out the knife? Then he, and you, finally figure out what he should do, and [[DeadAllAlong what has already happened]]. |
| 193 | * In ''Literature/{{Sophie}}'', this is part of TheEndingChangesEverything that is not involved in the fantastical or anything. [[spoiler:Matthew has forced multiple women to re-enact this single night in every detail, pretended to be recovered, and ultimately killed them or left them to die in a locked bunker.]] |
| 194 | * In ''Literature/SundayWithoutGod'', [[spoiler:the students Class 3-4 trap themselves in one when they wish to reset time to prevent a classmate's death. They repeat the same year fourteen times, and it's only when Alice enlists the help of Ai that the seal over them starts to break.]] |
| 195 | * ''Literature/TalesForTheMidnightHour'' has one story called "The Old Plantation", which tells about a northern real estate agent spending the night in a house, despite being warned of its strangeness. Among other things, he finds a book called ''The Old Plantation'', which echoes his own life. The book ends with the in-story avatar realizing something horrifying and just stopping and waiting. As the protagonist tries to figure it out, he realizes he's waiting for himself to arrive and start the evening all over again. |
| 196 | * In ''Tears of a Dragon,'' the final book of Bryan Davis’ ''Literature/DragonsInOurMidst'' series, the protagonists visit an alternate dimension where all the former dragons are trapped in a time loop of a single day with no memories outside their present experience of that single day. They eat the same food, go to the same town meeting, go on the same dates—by the time of the story, they have been doing this for years on end without realizing it. Since they are the only ones who realize what is happening, it is the main characters’ goal to rescue the inhabitants of the somewhat misnamed "Dragons' Rest". |
| 197 | * In ''Literature/ThisUsedToBeAboutDungeons'' chrononauts have an innate ability to go back a day and reset time, although with a few caveats. While they are only aware of the times they personally reset, the guild communication system can be used to pass short messages between individual timelines. The exact number of times one of them can repeat a day is dependent on the individual, with 12 being noted as extraordinary, and there is a complex order of precedence that governs the order the resets apply when multiple chrononauts are involved. Generally they'll try to stay out of each other's way so they don't have to worry about it, but when they coordinate their efforts and pass messages between lower-priority and higher-priority chrononauts, they can potentially keep the same day playing out for years. |
| 198 | * In the ''Literature/{{Time Machine|Series}}'' gamebook series, there exist "rules of time travel"; supposedly, if you break them you're in danger of being caught in a time loop. You get the opportunity to break such a rule in one of the books, and all it does is to send you back to page one. Also note that since bad choices make you re-read pages you've read already, the protagonist technically falls into a few short loops (with two or three iterations, tops) on his every adventure. (Since some of them involve arduous weeks- or even months-long trips, it's probably not pleasant...) |
| 199 | * In Alex Scarrow's ''Literature/TimeRiders'', the station from which the heroes monitor time is a railway arch under the Williamsburg Bridge, New York, on a GDL of the 10th and 11th of September, 2001. This was done intentionally; In the wake of 9-11, no-one would pay them any mind, or at least, would forget about them completely. Thus, the heroes' presence would never contaminate the future in any significant way. |
| 200 | * In ''The Tunnel Under the World'', by Creator/FrederikPohl, Guy Burckhardt lives in a town where June 15th is repeated every day, but the inhabitants don't realize. It is later revealed that [[spoiler:everyone in the town is a miniature robot who was imprinted with the mind-pattern of a citizen of the real town, which was destroyed on June 14th. Advertising executives then used them to test various advertising techniques. It makes much more sense than it seems.]] |
| 201 | * The world of ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'' is in a Groundhog ''eternity'' loop. There are seven Ages, with the first always following the seventh. By the time an Age comes again, even the faintest legend of its previous existence has been forgotten. One of the ages is [[EarthAllAlong ours]]. |
| 202 | * This is weaponized in ''A World of Wonder''. The maximum penalty in Wonderland is to be "given pause," and forced to live your last hours of freedom over and over until the sentence is up. |
| 203 | [[/folder]] |
| 204 | |
| 205 | [[folder:Music]] |
| 206 | * In the "New Year Song" by the Russian avant-garde rock group ''[=AuktYon=]'' the whole world is trapped in the endless New Year loop. The protagonist seems to be [[OnlySaneMan the only one who is bothered by this.]] [[AntiChristmasSong It's quite depressing.]] |
| 207 | * ''One for the Vine'' by Music/{{Genesis|Band}} has a Moebius-strip structure: it starts with a primitive mountain tribe preparing for battle under a charismatic leader. One of the many who don't believe in this leader deserts, loses his way, and ends up amongst a similar tribe, who hail him as their new warlord... The song (but not the story) ends with him seeing a deserter in the distance suddenly vanish. |
| 208 | * The "Night ∞" Music/{{Vocaloid}} series could possibly take place on a day like this. The events that play out through the night are roughly the same, and the characters try doing things differently to receive a good "ending" to the night, possibly for time to advance normally. The residents of the mansion try following their "script" more strictly and the lost villager tries murdering the residents in more exciting ways, for example. |
| 209 | ** The story's ending is seen in 'Everlasting Night'. The lost villager finally finds a way to break the "Groundhog Day" Loop. How? [[spoiler:It's revealed that the 'lead role' must die for the 'play' to end. The girl pulls a HeroicSacrifice by stabbing herself and saves everyone else. Talk about a BittersweetEnding.]] |
| 210 | * A more low-key example occurs with country A Cappella group ''Home Free'' in their music video cover of Andy Grammar's "Honey, I'm Good". The group is having a bar night, but every time the song lead Rob takes a drink (even accidentally), he, and only he, has to start the night all over again. |
| 211 | * The protagonist of ''Aurora Borealis'' by Music/LemonDemon appears to be trapped in a time loop that lasts a year and ends during a nuclear apocalypse during Christmas. |
| 212 | [[/folder]] |
| 213 | |
| 214 | [[folder:Music Videos]] |
| 215 | * The music video for Craig David's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABuWphlnZ1A "Seven Days"]] uses a standard version until the final loop: After finally getting the day right, [[spoiler:he spills a drink on his date. Rather than go through another loop, he [[BreakingTheFourthWall breaks the fourth wall]] and rewinds the video about 30 seconds and just picks up from there.]] |
| 216 | * The Music/{{Vocaloid}} song [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04hG4DIlRA4 "Heat Haze Daze"]] uses this trope as the story. It seems that the two children really are left to repeat the loop forever, implied by the girl's last line, "I've failed again." [[spoiler:According to the Franchise/KagerouProject, the loop is eventually broken -- but the girl stays behind in the Daze.]] |
| 217 | ** In ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsc6HO-D4II Outer Science]]'' it has also been implied that [[spoiler:Mary]] has repeated the same time of her life over and over again, [[spoiler:trying to prevent her friends from dying by Kuroha's hand]] |
| 218 | * Music/SmashMouth has the music video [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB9JJIoAdYM "Then The Morning Comes"]]. When their lead singer Steve finally gets the day right (and wakes up with the girl), he quickly smashes his alarm clock. |
| 219 | * The music video for Music/{{Yellowcard}}'s [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9fLbfzCqWw "Ocean Avenue"]] finds the lead singer having to suffer some terrible fates, each one forcing him to repeat the same day, until he gets it right, in a similar reference to the German film ''Film/RunLolaRun''. |
| 220 | * Home Free's cover of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCLW7Xm1DXs ''Honey I'm Good'']] has the main character being rewound to the beginning of his evening out with his friends every time he takes a drink. In true Groundhog Day form, he's the only one who notices. |
| 221 | * Vic Mensa's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jUGAVUwhRU "Down on My Luck"]] starts with the rapper at a club when he gets a text from his girl. It rewinds back to that part whenever something goes wrong. |
| 222 | * Music/{{BTS}}: |
| 223 | ** The story of the Music/BTSUniverse is about a young boy who is given the chance to save his six friends from their tragic fates by being stuck on a time loop. Whenever he fails (if one of the other boys dies, gets harmed irreversibly, etc.), he immediately wakes up on his bed on April 11th, no matter how much time had passed since then. |
| 224 | ** The video for Music/{{V|Singer}}'s solo song "FRI(END)S" has V repeating the same day with a twist and getting hit by a car. First he is AloneAmongTheCouples, and then he is the only one in a happy relationship while everyone else fights. [[spoiler:The video ends with him waking up with a copy of himself, implying he realizes he only needs himself to be happy.]] |
| 225 | * Tessa Violet's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsPxaAVg584 "Bored"]] has several references to looping, for example she takes a framed poster from the wall and breaks it and when she turns around it's back up on the wall. |
| 226 | * The video for Arizona Zervas' viral hit [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16YnOUnbE6s "Roxanne"]] has a basic example. |
| 227 | [[/folder]] |
| 228 | |
| 229 | [[folder:Myths & Religion]] |
| 230 | * According to some esoteric teachings (refer to ''A New Model of the Universe'' by Peter Ouspensky), this is what the {{Reincarnation}} and the EternalRecurrence are ''actually'' all about: when you die, you are not reborn in some other body, you are reborn in your own at the moment of your own birth, destined to relive your own life in an endless cycle. This is also the [[FridgeBrilliance purported explanation of the déjà vu]]. |
| 231 | * There is a Japanese version of hell called Naraku where you are doomed to constantly repeat your sins for all eternity. |
| 232 | * President Brigham Young of the [[{{UsefulNotes/Mormonism}} Latter-day Saints]], speculated this was the final and ultimate punishment for the sons of perdition for rejecting the Holy Spirit. Cast into outer darkness for an ''inconceivably long time'', the duration they spend there begins to outweigh all God's love of the ages of pre-existence and mortal years on Earth. They're decomposing, soul and body, and about to thwart the will of God and his plan for salvation (impossible). This causes a TimeCrash for them, and they're sent straight back to the ''very beginning of time'' to start all over again, in the creator's hope of securing some form of communion and glory with them. Most will be stuck in this cycle for time unfathomable; others like Satan and Cain, will probably be trapped in this eternal loop forever. |
| 233 | [[/folder]] |
| 234 | |
| 235 | [[folder:Podcasts]] |
| 236 | * ZigZagged in the ''Podcast/AliceIsntDead'' episode "Alice," where the truck-driving CharacterNarrator repeatedly encounters the mobile, looping VanishingVillage of Charlatan, where residents are perpetually reenacting the same motions, but in increasingly bizarre and disturbing contexts. First they behave normally, [[spoiler:then stay frozen in their places while covered in muck, then exist in a total inferno while burning to death, then finally compulsively weep in a normal environment,]] but in the final visit, one of the townsfolk attempts to escape. In a peculiar variation, the Narrator isn't able to make sense of the loop's cause, or understand what triggered her own escape. |
| 237 | -->'''Narrator:''' I don't know what this meant. I only know that its meaning does not include me. I am not necessary to it. |
| 238 | * ''Podcast/TheAdventureZoneBalance'''s fifth arc, "The Eleventh Hour", has the party travel to a bubble of time in order to retrieve the [[ArtifactOfDoom Temporal Chalice]]. When they get there, they find themselves in the town of Refuge, which is repeating the same hour over and over again. At noon in each loop, the entire town is inexplicably destroyed, with only the party remembering what happened in the previous loops. In order to retrieve the Chalice, they have to figure out how to break the loop ''and'' stop the town from being destroyed at noon. |
| 239 | * ''Podcast/FindUsAlive'' has an unusual, complex example: The loop lasts just over 32 days, with the [=BC2=] wing re-collapsing every time the loop resets. However, the loop doesn't affect organic matter (or SCP-6320-related effects); plants continue to grow, memories and injuries persist over resets, and [[AllDeathsFinal all deaths are final]]. [[spoiler:Later, Harley discovers that tattoos persist across resets too.]] |
| 240 | [[/folder]] |
| 241 | |
| 242 | [[folder:Radio]] |
| 243 | * One episode of ''Radio/AdventuresInOdyssey'' featured Liz wishing as she was going to bed that it could be her birthday every day. When she wakes up the next morning, she finds that her wish has come true. She spends the next half of a week living out a nearly-identical version of the same day over and over, with perfect memories of each reoccurring day, growing more and more frustrated with each repetition. It turns out in the end that [[spoiler:she was in the Room of Consequences all along, and the time loop was a setup designed by Eugene to warn her to BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor]]—especially hard-hitting because Liz was one of the show’s more mouthy characters. |
| 244 | * ''Series/DeadRingers:'' Spoofed when the hosts of BBC News figure they are stuck in one, with the constant, changeless repetition of Brexit news coverage. Having studied such things, they know the only way out is if the protagonist experiences CharacterDevelopment. Since they figure the 'protagonist' is Boris Johnson, they realise they're screwed. |
| 245 | * "[[Recap/TheShadowRadioS02E15 The Man Who Murdered Time]]", an episode of the old radio show ''Radio/TheShadow'', originally airing on January 1, 1939. A mad scientist, dying from an incurable heart disease, builds a time machine. It causes time to bend backwards and the world to repeat the same day. He then relives December 31 over and over again so that he can repeatedly kill his cousin, whom he has always resented. Lamont Cranston (The Shadow) is immune due to his powers and so is his companion, Margo Lane, when she is in physical contact with him. The Shadow thwarts the villain's evil plot and destroys the machine. If one does not count ''The Defense of Duffer's Drift'', this is probably the TropeMaker. |
| 246 | * The BBC radio play ''Time After Time'' features a man with amnesia who keeps reliving the same moments in a strange hotel and tries to escape. The reliving always begins with him hearing the eponymous Frank Sinatra song on a radio. [[spoiler:It is revealed at the end that he is in fact dying and it was all his mind processing his final moments.]] |
| 247 | [[/folder]] |
| 248 | |
| 249 | [[folder:Tabletop Games]] |
| 250 | * In ''TabletopGame/TragedyLooper'', up to three protagonists repeat a loop, in an attempt to stop a person's murder and other nefarious plots. The players need to experiment in the first time loops, then come up with a solution before the final loop finishes. The difference is that there's a limited number of loops to work things out. |
| 251 | * A variant of this happens in the TabletopGame/CurseOfStrahd. The adventure's main villain, Strahd vod Zarovich is trapped in the demiplane of Barovia. He could leave at anytime, but he stays, because he is obsessed with attaining the love of Tatyana, the bride of his brother Sergei. Strahd became a vampire and murdered his brother, but then the distraught Tatyana jumped off the cliff. The Strahd's curse is that Tatyana keeps on being born again and again, so Strahd tries to gain her love in an endless loop. The Dark Powers which created the demiplane ensure that Tatyana's incarnation keeps on dying just as he is about to succeed. The curse preys on Strahd's pride. He believes that he cannot possibly fail, because the incarnations give him infinite chances to attain her love, if he can just hatch the right scheme...so he is trapped forever. |
| 252 | * A rare positive example of this happens in a "mythic parallel" {{alternate universe}} in ''TabletopGame/InfiniteWorlds''. The world of Burton exists in an infinite loop of the ArabianNightsDays centered around the height of the Islamic Golden Age during the reign of Caliph Harun al-Rashid (786-809), and all the stories of ''Literature/TheArabianNights'' are true and endlessly repeated, the main characters being immortal. Thus, when 809 ends and Sinbad is on his final voyage, it becomes 786 and he's just returning from his first. Despite this, everyone is happy and able to live, age and die normally, hoping that they can do something memorable enough to become part of the story themselves. |
| 253 | [[/folder]] |
| 254 | |
| 255 | [[folder:Theatre]] |
| 256 | * TheMusical ''Theatre/GroundhogDay'', by necessity, [[ScreenToStageAdaptation shares the same premise]] as the TropeNamer film. Notably, the Broadway staging utilized circular turntables to represent the cyclical nature of events, and many of the songs were composed with the knowledge that in traditional western music theory, there are 12 semitones per octave, corresponding symbolically with with the 12 hours Phil experiences per day. Since a full octave ends and starts in the same note simultaneously, Tim Minchin composed "circular" melodies that begin as soon as they end and usually on dissonant, "unresolved" notes, [[MusicalGag much like the "Groundhog Day" loop itself]]. |
| 257 | * Not ''exactly'', but ... in ''Theatre/NoisesOff'', due to errors in the [[ShowWithinAShow Play Within A Play]] taking place "onstage", the cue for the entrance of a certain character is given three times. The first time the actor who is supposed to play the character is nowhere to be found, so the stage manager comes on and starts doing the part. The second time the actor actually playing the part comes on, and uneasily ''also'' starts doing the part. The third time the ''director'' (who was too distracted to notice there are already two of that character onstage) comes on, and for a bit all three of them are following each other around the stage, saying the same lines in unison. |
| 258 | [[/folder]] |
| 259 | |
| 260 | [[folder:Visual Novels]] |
| 261 | * The game ''3days ~Michiteyuku Toki no Kanata de~'' (''3 days ~Till Death Do Us A Part~'') revolves around the main character's 3 days repeating over and over again, where he is constantly being killed on the third day of the story (in various ways) but magically being brought back to life in the first day to repeat his 3 days. |
| 262 | * In ''VisualNovel/{{Clannad}}'', in order to get the true ending, the protagonist must play through parts of the game again and help attain happiness for the various characters, obtaining an orb each time. After gathering enough orbs, the player can then achieve the true ending. |
| 263 | * In ''VisualNovel/CrossChannel'', the game starts with a week where you briefly meet all the cast and the radio is completed, ending with a plea to any other survivors. Then the 'first' week starts, then the second. The third time, Taichi figures out what's going on and plays with the situation a little and manages to reconcile with Kiri instead of [[spoiler:having her go crazy and Youko kill everyone]]. Then the fourth week starts and it turns out that [[spoiler:during one week, Miki discovered the 'safe spot' where the journals are kept and has been avoiding the reset ever since. She's the truest example of ripple effect proof memory in the game]]. Oh, and Nanaka clearly knows what's going on. The resolution is rather bittersweet. |
| 264 | * ''VisualNovel/ChronoBox'': Nayuta spends most of the plot dating various characters, but one thing remains constant: he meets black-haired girl, who urges him to open the box, which shows him one of the limbs that will be stolen from a girl in the next loop. [[spoiler: Eventually revealed to be the simulation by Tsuzurai-sensei, it's goal being to torture the girls and main character himself.]] |
| 265 | * Actually completing ''VisualNovel/DokiDokiLiteratureClub'' requires starting it from the beginning more than once, leading to different versions of the same events starting from the day the PlayerCharacter joins the Literature Club. This relies on the player effectively having RippleEffectProofMemory compared to the characters, including the oblivious player character -- and somebody else also... |
| 266 | * ''VisualNovel/ExtraCaseMyGirlfriendsSecrets'': Every time Marty uncovers one of Sally's secrets and gets killed for it, or otherwise experiences an unsatisfactory outcome, he awakens earlier that day, retaining the knowledge of past loops in order to uncover even more secrets. However, his memories of each loop is hazy and he often has to review old information when he finds it again. [[spoiler:For the final loop, Nya gives Marty all his memories back.]] |
| 267 | * ''VisualNovel/HerTearsWereMyLight'' exploits the rollback and persistent data mechanics of the MediaNotes/RenPy game engine to achieve this. The character Time can rewind during conversations or warp to previously saved time points while retaining new memories, allowing her to change the outcomes of various events. |
| 268 | * In ''VisualNovel/HigurashiWhenTheyCry'', the entire story is ultimately a mystery version of this trope, with [[spoiler:Rika]] going through the same time period over and over, always ending with horrendous tragedy that forces [[spoiler:her]] to go back and try again as [[spoiler:she]] tries to find the root cause and put an end to it. |
| 269 | * ''VisualNovel/ALetterOfChallenge'': Every time the mysterious girl casts her spell, time resets back to when the protagonist was returning from school, right before she found the letter. |
| 270 | * In ''VisualNovel/LittleBusters'', if the player starts each route from the beginning as opposed to cleverly manipulating saves at critical points, they will quickly notice that Riki (the protagonist) and Rin (one of the heroines) comes with improved starting stats after each playthrough. Also, unless you leave a save file at the proper points Riki will be unwilling to take the crucial route branch choices apart from Komari's, thinking to himself things like 'something sad will happen if I go there' while at the same time the girl from the route in question will no longer appear after a certain date until you've completed the entire story. [[spoiler:All of the Little Busters are in a dream world created by Kyousuke, knowingly maintained by Kengo and Masato with the girls all playing more minor roles, apparently oblivious to the looping dream they're in. Kyousuke intends to keep the world going until Riki and Rin can face the truth without cracking: There's been a horrible bus crash and everyone other than Rin and Riki is on the verge of death with no hope of rescue. The improved stats show them growing while the girls disappear because they no longer have a role to play, but Komari just can't stay away.]] |
| 271 | * In ''VisualNovel/MuvLuvAlternative'', [[spoiler:the final thing that Takeru Shirogane learns before he ceases to exist is that the ''Unlimited/Alternative'' world's Sumika subconsciously kept him looping back to October 22nd of the ''Unlimited'' world upon his death (similar to the case of ''VisualNovel/HigurashiWhenTheyCry'') each time he falls in love with some other heroine and thus never reaches her, wiping Takeru's memories in the process. She lost that power when she and Takeru finally became one late into ''Alternative'', which is the final ''Unlimited'' loop.]] |
| 272 | * ''The Patient S Remedy'': [[spoiler:The big twist of the game is that the protagonist and the doctor are apparently the only ones aware of being stuck in some sort of time loop]]. |
| 273 | * In ''VisualNovel/RagingLoop'', this is a key aspect of the premise, with protagonist Haruaki trapped endlessly repeating [[DeadlyGame the Feast of the Yomi-Purge]]. [[spoiler:He's not the only participant in the game aware of it.]] |
| 274 | * In ''VisualNovel/Remember11'', [[spoiler:''[[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou the player]]'' is caught in a "Groundhog Day" Loop by the characters. To elaborate: every time "Self" reaches the end of the seventh day (Satoru's epilogue), it's transported to 7 days (and 1 year) ago, to the beginning of the game.]] |
| 275 | * In ''VideoGame/ShiraOkaSecondChances'' the main character, a friendless 20-something loser in a dead-end job, is given the chance by the angel Satsuko to become a high school student again and turn his life around. And every time he fails [[spoiler:-- or even when he succeeds --]] she keeps sending him back to do it again... |
| 276 | * In ''VisualNovel/SlayThePrincess'', regardless of what you do in Chapter I, Chapter II loops back to the beginning and puts you back in the woods where you started. You and the Princess still remember your previous encounter, [[EmpathicEnvironment and both the Princess and her basement evolved in reaction]], along with the Princess treating you accordingly, which unlocks one of the game's MultipleEndings. The Narrator either doesn't remember what happened, [[AmbiguousSituation or pretends not to]]. Either way, this also gets you a new voice in your head, which also remembers the events of Chapter I, along with the Voice of the Hero in all endings, which expresses confusion about how he keeps coming back to the forest. |
| 277 | * ''VisualNovel/SteinsGate'' invokes this in a dark tone. At a long-awaited, crucial point in the progress of the time machine, Mayuri [[spoiler:dies at the hands of a secret organization,]] and no matter how many times Okabe travels back, Mayuri [[spoiler:loses her life one way or another.]] It's an [[YouCantFightFate unavoidable fate]] literally dependent on the arms of the clock that Okabe is hellbent on stopping. Going through the story properly has Okabe slowly adjusting the timeline back to fix everything and avoid this fate, but the first time he tries to readjust the world he freezes. If you don't do it, he puts himself through an even worse loop that slowly causes him to break down. |
| 278 | * Creator/TypeMoon must like this trope with the Franchise/{{Nasuverse}}: |
| 279 | ** The ''VisualNovel/{{Tsukihime}}'' sequel game ''Kagetsu Tohya'' exists in a dream world of a single day that Shiki loops through. But what sort of day is it? Is it a school day? A holiday? The day of the culture festival? A day where, for whatever reason, Shiki wakes up as a cat? |
| 280 | ** In the ''VisualNovel/FateStayNight'' sequel ''VisualNovel/FateHollowAtaraxia''. This time it's the Holy Grail War that keeps repeating, allowing even characters who died in all three routes to reappear. The cause is revealed to be [[spoiler:Avenger/Angra Mainyu, the GreaterScopeVillain of ''Fate/stay night'' that found a dying Bazett and used his powers to create a time loop where he spent his time living the life of [[TheHero Shirou Emiya]] and acting as her Servant. In the end, the Masters and Servants aid Avenger in fighting the manifestation of the Holy Grail's curse to end the loop with his HeroicSacrifice.]] |
| 281 | * ''VisualNovel/YuNo'' from 1996 is the TropeCodifier for this in visual novels. After delinquent student Takuya Arima receives a TimeMachine[=/=]InterdimensionalTravelDevice dubbed the Reflector Device, he gets stuck in a time loop consisting of roughly two days. In this part of the game, the [[StoryBranching story splits into several routes]] that [[MultipleRouteMystery reveal separate parts of the overall plot]]. Each time a route is completed, he is unwillingly sent back to the starting point by a phenomenon known as Chaos Correction. All routes contain {{Plot Coupon}}s that must be collected in order to unlock the final route and escape the loop. This structure was [[UnbuiltTrope specifically designed with in-depth sci-fi justifications]] for ''YU-NO'', although [[OnceOriginalNowCommon now common in visual novels]]. Notably, the aforementioned {{Plot Coupon}}s look like small glowing orbs, which ''VisualNovel/{{Clannad}}'' blatantly copied. |
| 282 | [[/folder]] |
| 283 | |
| 284 | [[folder:Web Animation]] |
| 285 | * ''WebAnimation/AbilityNoX'': [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBwLQ9niV28 Eiji]] manifests an ability to turn back time during his wedding. He formed a city so everyone who lives there can relive the same day over and over with slight variations. [[spoiler:Eiji's wife eventually gets tired of the time loop, wanting to have kids and left him.]] |
| 286 | * ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmnq0ZWrlH4 Breath of the Wild: Rage! Die! Repeat?]]'' tells a story of a Bokoblin from ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'' stuck in one of these due to the game's monster respawn mechanic. |
| 287 | * ''WebAnimation/MagicalGirlsOfAmazingRainbow'': In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvlZb-g16nI "Impossible ! Can I rescue my friends from the infinite loop world"]] [sic]: Ai gets stuck in a time loop which resets with Akari's death. When Ai decides to put herself in the truck's way to die in place of Akari, it doesn't end the loop, which instead starts to target Ai instead. Not even an assailant killing both Ai and Akari ends the loop, but it turns out that the loop is the work of a demon, who trapped the girls in a world of his creation. |
| 288 | * In the machinima series ''WebAnimation/RedVsBlue'', the antagonistic mercenary Wyoming has the ability to rewind little segments of time, essentially making him impossible to defeat: whenever something doesn't go to plan, he simply backtracks a few moments into the past and takes steps to avoid being beaten down by the protagonists. He's only foiled when one character's DeusExMachina allows him to keep his memory during rewinds and kills him before he has a chance to activate his power. |
| 289 | * ''WebAnimation/Supermarioglitchy4sSuperMario64Bloopers'': |
| 290 | ** Mario ends up entering a time loop during his failed attempts to save his brother, eventually destroying the time-space continuum. |
| 291 | ** In ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcrMSKdujv8 Wario Tries To Stop Himself From Dying]]'', Wario gets cursed by Death to die and relive the same day over and over again. Why? [[spoiler:Because Wario got the last of the choc mint!]] |
| 292 | ** ''WebAnimation/SMG4MovieWesternSpaghetti'' has a much darker take on the trope. [[spoiler:To keep Meggy from exposing his LotusEaterMachine, One-Shot Wren constantly shoots Meggy every single day, slowing making her more unnerved to the point that by the time a whole month passes, she's completely broken and constantly traumatized about his constant presence.]] |
| 293 | * Kind of happens in ''The Vicious Cycle of _________'' videos. In ''Ridiculous Loop of Turf War'', loop the video. At the end, the Inkling girl submerges back into the paint. Then, it goes back to the ending picture as she rises up again before getting shot and madness occurs again. Cut back to her shooting someone else and she dives back into the ink, the cycle repeats until you change the video you watch... |
| 294 | [[/folder]] |
| 295 | |
| 296 | [[folder:Webcomics]] |
| 297 | * Used in ''Webcomic/TheAdventuresOfDrMcNinja'' to defeat the villain [[spoiler:Sparklelord]], who is sent back in time and doomed to repeat the sequence of events leading him to be sent back, ad infinitum. Distinct from typical versions of this trope in that his memory also undergoes a SnapBack, making it impossible for him to escape. Might also be a StableTimeLoop, given that the removal of his memory is what prompts the repeat of events. |
| 298 | * ''Webcomic/CityOfReality'' features a device smuggled in from Magic World that acts as a ResetButton for the story, rewinding time but [[MentalTimeTravel preserving the memory]] of the person who activates it, and only that person. In its first appearance, it's used by a villain to defeat all of the heroes who oppose him, since all he has to do is rewind time to know exactly how they will attack him, and counter those attacks. He's tricked into losing it by a character who figures out a way to BatmanGambit him. Later, the device nearly causes a [[TimeCrash catastrophe]] in Reality by its mere existence, and the heroes figure out that the only way to stop it is to run its battery out, which is accomplished by [[spoiler:[[http://cityofreality.com/2009/10/01/03-43-648-1250/ dropping it on the floor button-down]]]]. (Note: Flash required to view the linked page.) |
| 299 | * [[http://www.shiftylook.com/comics/digdug/loop-dee-loop-writer-artist-dean-haspiel This]] ''VideoGame/DigDug'' related Platform/ShiftyLook comic puts this in motion. Dig Dug finds a time machine while digging, and then is sent back to when he found it. [[note]] Which is at the first panel. [[/note]] The comic is ''even named'' "Loop-De-Loop". |
| 300 | * ''Webcomic/TheEnds'' is set in a [[AfterTheEnd post-apocalyptic]] wasteland where a massive nuclear explosion has apparently distorted time, forcing the survivors into an endless cycle of death and rebirth. |
| 301 | * The Maze of Many in ''Webcomic/{{Goblins}}''. The characters from several alternate realities race for the MacGuffin. Each time they die, they are reset to the beginning of the dungeon. The maze is also reset when one team reaches the treasure, only without the winning team (who get to go home). They don't remember their previous attempts though, only a counter is shown how many times they failed. |
| 302 | * Neil Gaiman's short story, [[http://matrix.wikia.com/wiki/Goliath "Goliath"]] was written prior to the release of the first Matrix film as a promotional effort, and later made into a comic book and included in one of Gaiman's short story anthologies. It uses varying interpretations of this trope, by depicting a very tall, Robert Wadlow-esque man who keeps reliving moments of his life, having them speed up, rewound, looped with him remembering elements of his past differently, as he made different life choices along the way. Eventually he is met by an Agent, who explains that he's actually in a simulation, and aliens are attacking the Earth (we sent something out, something followed us back) by throwing asteroids into impact orbits. Gaiman's premise for the story (and part of the original Wachowski interpretation) views humans not as energy sources but as living parallel-processing computer nodes, and the protagonist was specially "engineered" to pilot a spaceship to destroy the aliens; the Agents are "reloading" and "overclocking" parts of the Matrix to help calculate a defensive/offensive strategy to destroy the aliens before they take out too many CPU farms. Unfortunately [[spoiler:even though the protagonist succeeds in destroying the aliens, the ship was designed as a one-way trip. The character pleads with the Agent -- in the hour of oxygen he has remaining -- to plug him back into the Matrix so he can write a goodbye note.]], and he again relives his life [[EarnYourHappyEnding in the way he wanted to]]. |
| 303 | * In the National Novel Writer's Month arc of ''Help Desk'', the character trying to write a story for [=NaNoWriMo=] loses a week of writing time because of a new video game, then gets back on track by adding a time loop to his story, [[{{Padding}} allowing him to copy paste the same chapter into the story multiple times]]. |
| 304 | * ''Webcomic/KillSixBillionDemons'': It's increasingly heavily implied that [[spoiler:the whole series is just one more iteration of an EternalRecurrence, with [[GreaterScopeParagon Zoss]] endlessly resetting time to find a worthy successor and get the GoldenEnding where the Seven are defeated and [[CrapsackWorld Throne]] restored to glory. Some characters, such as 6 Juggernaut, have a RippleEffectProofMemory, allowing them to notice this loop... and [[GoMadFromTheRevelation go completely insane from it]].]] |
| 305 | * {{Subverted|Trope}} in ''Webcomic/LeagueOfSuperRedundantHeroes'' [[http://superredundant.com/?comic=739-groundhog #739: "Groundhog"]]. Keith's coworker has a bit of deja vu and becomes convinced that they've become trapped in a time loop (which, given this is [[TheWonderland Shitropolis]], isn't normally that bad of a guess). |
| 306 | -->'''Keith:''' You're not in a time loop.\ |
| 307 | '''Coworker:''' Then explain to me why every day is the same!\ |
| 308 | '''Keith:''' This job just reaaaally sucks. |
| 309 | * ''Webcomic/LegostarGalactica'' parodies this when the USS ''Muffin'' [[http://legostargalactica.comicgenesis.com/d/20021212.html enters a time loop]], with first officer Marty pointing out that to preserve it they ought to go back, while the Captain just wants to get out, getting sufficiently annoyed by the third repetition to smack Marty in the mouth when he suggests going back in. |
| 310 | * The Story [[spoiler:"Back To Mornau"]] in ''Webcomic/MelvinasTherapy'' centers around a loop affecting a single town. The protagonist goes to his therapist [[BigBad Melvina]] and talks about leaving his hometown and the lack of closure he feels about as he cannot remember why he left. Melvina convinces him to return home to seek closure and he does. After he arrives the town descends into chaos as residents start becoming trapped repeating the same actions or [[BodyHorror start warping into fractal shapes.]] The protagonist eventually escapes through the abandoned mines where he discovers an EldritchAbomination responsible for the destruction. He realizes that it did all this to lure him here because he accidentally hatched it and because of {{Imprinting}} it thinks he is its parent. Given the choice between confronting it while its guard is down to save the town or escaping, [[DirtyCoward the protagonist chooses to save himself.]] The monster resets the town to how it was before while he [[RepressedMemories represses his memories]] to cope with the guilt of abandoning the town. Which in turn leads to him seeking therapy starting the cycle all over again. Notably the outside world continues on throughout this loop. |
| 311 | * Nenshe of ''Webcomic/RumorsOfWar'' experiences something between a "Groundhog Day" Loop and a DreamWithinADream, returning to a particular sequence of thoughts again and again until the voices in his head (in the form of his teammates) help him escape. |
| 312 | * In ''Webcomic/SaveMe'', Kendall is given the chance to save his estranged friends/former classmates from their tragic fates, waking up again on April 11th whenever he fails. |
| 313 | * The "Choose" plotline of ''Webcomic/SkinHorse'' has a time loop that resets whenever Jonah dies over the course of a very complicated day. Since he falls into the loop while in Anasigma headquarters, where EverythingIsTryingToKillYou, this quickly leads to him [[TakingALevelInBadass taking several levels in badass]]. Also, it doesn't appear to have been ''stopped'' as such, he just stopped dying. |
| 314 | * Used hilariously in a series of ''WebComic/SluggyFreelance'' strips, starting [[http://www.sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/19990412 here]]. |
| 315 | * ''Webcomic/StandStillStaySilent'': Emil having RecurringDreams translates into his dreamscape safe area running on a "groundhog day" loop. When Lalli gets stuck in it, he sees the recurring dream "reset" to its beginning when Emil falls asleep. |
| 316 | * ''Webcomic/SurvivingRomance'': Protagonist Chaerin is trapped in one, waking up on the day of the virus outbreak every time she dies. Some physical marks will persist across loops and she can even take objects with her by placing them in her mouth. |
| 317 | * ''Webcomic/TalesOfGreed'': "1 Minute" is about a watch that can turn time back by one minute. However, after three rewinds, the minute will repeat itself until the wearer takes off the watch. The protagonist takes advantage of this mechanism to perfect a skill within the loop and become an accomplished baseball player and fighter. [[spoiler:He is then kidnapped and bound by the watch's previous owner, who kills him and glitches out the watch while he's wearing it. The protagonist is [[AndIMustScream trapped in one minute of being killed over and over again]]]]. |
| 318 | * ''Webcomic/WapsiSquare'' features a plotline where an ancient Mayan calendar is in reality a broken TimeMachine. In 2012, this machine will reset all of time back to when the machine was first activated. Only one immortal character, Jin, retains memories of this event. She has lived about 81,200 years (56 iterations of the loop), living through the same looping time period, trying to fix the machine and end the loop. All the other characters in the comic are known to her, and she has been friends, enemies, maybe even lovers with each of them during the endless cycles of time she has lived through. |
| 319 | * ''Webcomic/WickedPowered'' ends with the villain trapping the main characters in an infinite "Groundhog Day" Loop, [[DownerEnding dooming them to relive the events of the entire comic over and over for eternity]], [[AndIMustScream unable to change any of it]]. |
| 320 | * ''Webcomic/{{Xkcd}}'' presents a...shall we say, ''interesting'' theory of [[http://xkcd.com/1076/ what really happened to Phil and Rita at the end of the original movie.]] |
| 321 | [[/folder]] |
| 322 | |
| 323 | [[folder:Web Original]] |
| 324 | * In ''Literature/{{Curveball}}'', the entire island of [[spoiler:Esperanza]] was magically [[RetGone erased from history]]. However, due to the interaction between two different, very powerful spells, a remnant of the island still exists, acting out the last day of the island's existence over and over again, forever. |
| 325 | * ''Literature/MotherOfLearning'' ([[LiteraryAllusionTitle as in]] "repetition is the mother of learning") is a fantasy story following Zorian, a mage-in-training, who is entrapped in a month-long loop that covers the beginning of his third year at his magical academy. Interestingly, [[spoiler:he's not the central character -- he was brought into his classmate's loop by accident]]. |
| 326 | * A few of the Practitioners in ''Literature/{{Pact}}'' specialize in manipulation of time. When Blake Thorburn is close to legally getting himself out of jail after many of the officers have been manipulated to keep him there, Duncan Behaim sends Blake back to the beginning of the day, undoing most of Blake's efforts but leaving him with his memory of the events. |
| 327 | * ''Blog/ScarfolkCouncil'': The small English town of Scarfolk is trapped in the 1970s. The clock hits midnight on December 31st 1979 and starts ticking off the seconds of January 1st 1970. [[CrapsackWorld And the '70s were hard enough in Britain, before you add in the totalitarian government and paranormal activity of Scarfolk.]] |
| 328 | * ''Website/SCPFoundation'': |
| 329 | ** [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1733 SCP-1733]] is a videotape that is a recording of a specific basketball game from 2010. While everyone in the tape has gone on to lead totally normal lives, the recording itself displays unusual behavior. Every time the video is rewound and replayed, the individuals on the tape appear to be conscious that they keep resetting back to a specific point, and any attempts to either leave the stadium or end the curse have resulted in absolute failure. After several dozen plays of the tape, the people on the tape have resorted to sacrificing people, players, and other bizarre decisions. The research staff decided to stop replaying the tape when the people on it suggested child sacrifice. |
| 330 | ** [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-2265 SCP-2265]] is a heartwarming example. It's a localized time loop trapping two history professors (designated SCP-2265-A and SCP-2265-B) in a section of the restaurant they're eating at, forcing them to repeat the same two hours and unable to react with the outer world. SCP-2265-A retained his memories of each iteration whereas SCP-2265-B did not. While SCP-2265-A initially panicked, he eventually learned to make the best out of the situation by engaging in countless conversations with SCP-2265-B on numerous subjects for two decades until the time loop ended. In an interview with Foundation personnel following the event, SCP-2265-A claimed he didn't regret his experience. |
| 331 | * Played with in a {{creepypasta}} titled [[http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Sim_Albert Sim Albert]], wherein a mysterious family appears on some peoples' games, containing a child sim named "Albert", his father, a young adult named Kaitlin, and three psychotic sims named Will, Pamela, and Robert. When left alone, [[spoiler:Will, lights the house on fire, killing him, Pamela, Robert, and Albert.]] The narrator [[VideoGameCaringPotential sees the broken life Albert lives in, and moves him out with Kaitlin]], breaking the cycle and [[spoiler:giving Albert's ghost the life he never got to live.]] |
| 332 | * [[http://wanderers-library.wikidot.com/mssrs-marshall-and-carter Mssrs Marshall and Carter]], a story from ''Website/TheWanderersLibrary'' shows that [[Website/SCPFoundation Marshall and Carter of Marshall]], Carter, and Dark, are [[spoiler:caught in something similar, where Marshall kills Carter every day, forever.]] |
| 333 | * Played with for the AprilFoolsDay 2021 joke on Website/{{Wikipedia}}. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Today%27s_featured_article/April_1,_2021 The featured article]] was ''Film/GroundhogDay'', with the paragraph-long blurb consisting of the same two sentences repeated three times. Even the "recently featured articles" were repeated links to the ''Groundhog Day'' article! |
| 334 | * In the Wattpad online novel ''[[https://www.wattpad.com/story/312884506-velocity-to-never-exceed Velocity to Never Exceed,]]'' a passenger on a plane keeps reliving the last 28 minutes before the aircraft enters a fatal dive, and must try to figure out how to stop the crash from occurring. |
| 335 | [[/folder]] |
| 336 | |
| 337 | [[folder:Web Videos]] |
| 338 | * In the Ground Beef Day of ''WebVideo/TheAnnoyingOrange'', this occurs to Orange every time he annoys someone. |
| 339 | * ''WebVideo/DontHugMeImScared'' features one with shocking implications on the series. [[spoiler:The series ends with one, with Red Guy resetting the events of the series by pulling the plug on the machine controlling the teachers, which reverts all of the main characters back to the first episode. The last (and, by extent, first) line of the series is the Notepad saying "What's your favorite idea?"]]. |
| 340 | * Doc Brown vs. Doctor Who of ''WebVideo/EpicRapBattlesOfHistory'' has one -- the battle looping as the announcer yells the title, the famous ending ''TitleDrop'' overlapping into the beginning of the battle. The battle abruptly ends after The Tenth Doctor uses his Sonic Screwdriver to end the time loop and corrects the announcer a second time. [[WhatCouldHaveBeen A scrapped idea]] for the battle has the loop existing long enough for the video to be ten minutes long. |
| 341 | * This happens in the ''WebVideo/HitlerRants'' video [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H99gn0gwSsE "Hitler's Time Loop Tantrum"]], in which Hitler accidentally pushes a button that traps himself and his generals in a time loop. |
| 342 | * A particular variation plays out in the WebVideo/LoadingReadyRun ''[[WebVideo/CommodoreHustle Friday Nights]]'' video "Time Walking". [[spoiler:Here, the time loop is controlled by the use of a Time Walk card (an infamous [[TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering Magic]] card that lets you take an extra turn and is considered among the most broken cards in the history of the game), sending the user back to the beginning of the day when they first woke up. The time loop is ultimately broken by choosing not to use the card. However, the card is then ''traded'', and the new owner of the card winds up getting caught in a time loop of his own when ''they'' use the card, without even actually playing the game itself; however he only uses it accidentally to get more sleep and never notices. In a later episode the new owner tries to make it work again to explore alternate timelines, but it does nothing.]] |
| 343 | * In ''WebVideo/MindMyGap'', The Ugliest Man in the World is doomed to repeat a time loop of no longer than 10 minutes for the rest of eternity. The experience has left him with a loose sense of time, and a very bad memory ensuring that each time the events live out, he is completely unable to change the outcome. |
| 344 | * [[{{UsefulNotes/Mormonism}} The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints]] has a short movie, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBRqoJEXMhU "Reach Out]] [[https://www.lds.org/youth/video/reaching-out-through-love?lang=eng with Love"]], about a young Mormon named Guillermo who is asked by his bishop (priest) to invite his friend Steve to church and becomes trapped in a time loop until he can accomplish the task. |
| 345 | * In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5xAbp1SW5c "Rope A Dope"]], the titular Dope keeps reliving the same sequence of events wherein he accidentally antagonizes a gang of punks and gets knocked unconscious. He soon uses the loop to [[TakeALevelInBadAss train in martial arts]] to stop their reign of terror. |
| 346 | * In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5VSi7YNr4Y "Rope A Dope 2"]], the same thing happens again as the Dope bumps into Den, the lead punk from the first video, and the Dope starts trying to exploit the loop to beat Den and his gang. [[spoiler:The twist this time around is Den is looping as well, every time he gets knocked out by the Dope. By the end of the video, they've [[DefeatMeansFriendship earned each other's respect]], just in time for them to realize that the Martial Arts Mafia is coming for them both. The video ends as they both knock each other out to reset the loop again.]] |
| 347 | * [[https://youtu.be/Y47wKeEesV0 One take]] on [[MemeticMutation the "Steamed Hams" scene]] from ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode "22 Short Films About Springfield" shows time resetting every time Principal Skinner tells a lie with Superintendent Chalmers being aware of it. |
| 348 | * ''WebVideo/UrinatingTree'' compares a couple of [[EveryYearTheyFizzleOut teams that seem to repeat postseason failures year after year]] in similar manmers to the Trope Namer: |
| 349 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvpDYsbt9i4 "Congrats, Nationals!"]], for [[UsefulNotes/MajorLeagueBaseball the Washington Nationals']] inability to get past the National League Divisional Series by means of untimely mistakes in four consecutive appearences ([[EarnYourHappyEnding at least, until the 2019 World Series when they finally won it all]]). |
| 350 | ** By the time he gets to the 2016 Stanley Cup Playoffs in the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgfyC965kDM "San Jose Sharks: A Legacy of Failure"]] video, he describes the Sharks' first-round playoff defeat to the Oilers as "Groundhog Day without the humor." He then rubs it in by adding that Patrick Marleau, one of the Sharks' star players, had signed with the Maple Leafs after that defeat. |
| 351 | [[/folder]] |
| 352 | |
| 353 | [[folder:Western Animation]] |
| 354 | * ''WesternAnimation/ThreeBelow'': A troll trickster finds a piece of Akiridian tech and uses his magic on it, causing the day to loop. Aja only finds this out when she uses her serrator shield to protect herself from the blast; she retains her memories, but not her location. As it turns out, this was loop ''thirty-three''. Jim, the protagonist of ''WesternAnimation/{{Trollhunters}}'', was fighting it by himself the whole time because his amulet let him keep his memories. It was only when he accidentally bumped into Aja, causing her to stay in the building a bit longer and see the troll arrive and therefore able to defend herself, that anyone else realized what was happening. In the end, after [[BrokenMasquerade both teams have accidentally revealed their identities to the entire town]], Krel reprograms the tech to self-destruct in the past, before the troll found it, so that the whole mess never happens in the first place. Their memories are not preserved this time. |
| 355 | * ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'': In the episode "The Hall of Egress", Finn gets trapped in a cursed dungeon that transports him right back to the same room at the same time if he opens his eyes at any point without solving the dungeon the right way, even if he leaves. It takes a ''very'' long time (implied to be ''years''), and many, ''many'' attempts, but Finn is able to navigate his way out, back home, and back to the dungeon, where he finds the interior is different this time. Somehow, this allows him access to the actual exit of the dungeon and he's finally able to open his eyes and escape at the end for real. |
| 356 | * ''WesternAnimation/AladdinTheSeries'': The episode "Riders Redux" had the main characters getting stuck, one by one, in a constantly repeating showdown between a band of adventurers and a gang of rogues, until they managed to prevent the crystal the adventurers were carrying from breaking and thus acting as a ResetButton. |
| 357 | * ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'': |
| 358 | ** The episode "Father's Daze". Unlike other examples, there's no supernatural or scientific reason. Stan simply wipes the memories of the family every day, forcing them to redo Father's Day. When he's finally confronted on this, it's already well past Christmas. |
| 359 | ** In the ChristmasEpisode "Yule. Tide. Repeat.", Stan takes his family to a new outdoor mall, where the lighting of a dry and badly-wired Christmas tree results in a cataclysmic explosion and the death of everyone but Stan. A magic fortune cookie sends Stan back to right before a janitor pulled him out of the way of a train and gives him five minutes to either find and evacuate his family or prevent the explosion. When that fails, he finds that he only has a finite number of do-overs and decides to spend his last three with his family, and the loop is broken when [[spoiler:a video of Steve masturbating gets uploaded to every screen in the mall and the celebration is called off.]] |
| 360 | * Featured in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheAngryBeavers'', "Same Time Last Week", where Dagget keeps getting [[LiteralMetaphor literally knocked into last week]] by Norbert for annoying him all week. |
| 361 | * ''WesternAnimation/Animaniacs2020'': |
| 362 | ** In "Run Pinky Run!" Pinky is stuck in a loop where he must acquire money to pay off some gangsters who have kidnapped Brain. |
| 363 | ** The episode "Groundmouse Day" has Brain repeatedly trying to take over the world by co-opting a Groundhog Day ceremony, while stuck in a time loop, in a parody of ''Film/GroundhogDay''. Stephen Tobolowsky, who played Ned in the film, plays the radio DJ in this episode. |
| 364 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheBatman'' has Francis Grey in the episode "[[Recap/TheBatmanS4E8Seconds Seconds]]", who can "rewind" time by a few seconds whenever he wants, without anyone else aware of it. He still can't be in two places at once, of course, which is how he's defeated... [[spoiler:and the end result is that, when it really counts, he finally manages to rewind time all the way back to when he first became a criminal, but he chooses differently and instead becomes an ordinary repairman.]] |
| 365 | * The ''WesternAnimation/{{Breadwinners}}'' episode "Yeasterday" has Buhdeuce using a type of bread to give [=SwaySway=] a better day after he has a horrible day of work. Unfortunately, FailureIsTheOnlyOption because each time the day repeats [=SwaySway=] gets maimed or eaten, so Buhdeuce tries to make everything go the way it originally did until he inadvertently saves [=SwaySway=] from the pond monster that ate him during the first repeat. |
| 366 | * ''{{WesternAnimation/Chowder}}'' has one in the episode "Grubble Gum". The episode starts with Chowder taking a pink bubble gum from a store and when he puts in his mouth, he hears some faded screams. He buys all the gums and accidentally eats all of them, including the one he bought for Truffles. Due to fearing [[HairTriggerTemper Truffles]], Chowder swallows all the gum he has been chewing, which leads to a very messy situation where everybody gets stuck in the gum, until it becomes a huge pink ball that seemingly swallows the whole planet. When the camera zooms out, it's revealed the ball of gum arrived at the exact spot from which Chowder bought the gum at the beginning of the episode and he hears the same screams when he puts it in his mouth, seemingly relieving the same events. |
| 367 | * ''WesternAnimation/CodeLyoko'': |
| 368 | ** Invoked by the heroes in most episodes: after [[BigBad XANA]]'s plot is foiled, they use the supercomputer's Return to the Past program to turn back time to the previous day to undo whatever chaos came from the latest attack. Ulrich even has the "tired of doing this all over again" feelings when XANA makes an attack every day for a week. |
| 369 | ** In episode "A Great Day", [[BigBad XANA]] takes control of the program and continues to turn back time to the start of the same day until the heroes can regain control; from then on, the heroes use the program less often, now aware that each use amplifies XANA's power. |
| 370 | ** The series also features evidence that Franz Hopper intentionally relived the same day over ''two thousand times'' to give him the time he needed to program Lyoko and XANA before the TheMenInBlack came for him and his [[MadScientistsBeautifulDaughter daughter]]. He might have also [[MadScientist lost his marbles]] during this scenario. |
| 371 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/DangerMouse'' episode "Groundmouse Day", Count Duckula has a machine he can use to [[TimeStandsStill freeze and edit reality]], which he uses to frame Danger Mouse. Just as DM gets arrested, Penfold hits the machine and rewinds back to the beginning, just before Duckula's first edit. There's about four loops in which Penfold tries to explain what's going on or change things, but they all still end with DM getting arrested, until Penfold realises [[spoiler:he needs to rewind ''further'', and manages to defeat Duckula [[NoFourthWall during the opening credits]]]]. |
| 372 | * In the 2014 ''Frozen in Time'' Christmas special, as Patty and Eric Purtle are preparing for Christmas at their grandpa's place, numerous mishaps occur, with their parents sending them to their room. When they wake up, the loop occurs, with Patty and Eric smuggling the dog into the car, the presents getting knocked off the car roof, and Grandpa's cookie baking machine and magic clock get wrecked. Each time they think a problem is fixed, a new one arises, and they start working on improving their family relationships, and once the clock is fixed, the Chrstmas loop will end and time can continue as usual. |
| 373 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheGhostAndMollyMcGee'': Happens in “Perfect Day” when Molly has Scratch invoke a time loop curse so she can repeat New Years’ Day until she gets it perfect. The loops go gradually more and more wrong (Molly’s brother even [[BlackComedyBurst dies]] in one), and the curse is only broken when Molly allows the day to just play out and accepts that any day can be a perfect day. |
| 374 | * ''WesternAnimation/HomeAdventuresWithTipAndOh'' episode "Garbage Day" has Oh invent a do-over machine to let Tip try and fix her extremely bad day. Unfortunately, she becomes trapped in a loop due to her determination to make the day perfect, and keeps resetting over and over each time any minor inconvenience occurs until the machine begins to damage space-time. |
| 375 | * ''WesternAnimation/JacobTwoTwo'': "Jacob Two-Two's Time Trials" features a willing groundhog day loop, where Jacob uses a time machine to actively reset time in an attempt to stop himself from breaking his brother's Beatles record, [[ButterflyOfDoom and causing other disasters in the process]]. Another twist here is that the other characters are vaguely aware of the resets by experiencing DejaVu moments. |
| 376 | * The ''WesternAnimation/JohnnyTest'' episode "Saturday Night's Alright for Johnny" features a self-inflicted loop. After wasting a whole Saturday being forced to watch ballet on TV with Sissy and Missy, Johnny and Dukey get a device from Mary and Susan that will allow them to repeat the day as many times as they wish. They try to avoid watching the ballet with Sissy by force, but when that repeatedly fails to work, they decide to be nice to Sissy and Missy to see if that will work. This results in them all having the best Saturday ever. [[spoiler:In most instances, this would mean the end of the loop, but instead the trope is subverted when Johnny's dad points out that Johnny is falling in love with Sissy. Wanting to have nothing to do with that, Johnny presses the reset button again and proceeds to be mean to Sissy the next time around.]] |
| 377 | * A similar situation to that of the ''Supernatural'' episode above happens in ''WesternAnimation/JumanjiTheAnimatedSeries'': Alan is suddenly killed near the beginning of the episode, but the boys manage to rescue him thanks to the "Slickomatic Chrono Repeater", a device obtained from Trader Slick capable of sending them back in time to the moment they last entered Jumanji. Unfortunately, this seems to be a rather unlucky day for Alan, seeing as he keeps dying in several ways, only for Judy and Peter to keep rescuing him until the device breaks, though they manage to survive the final crisis of the day. Although this may seem like a SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong plot, it has several Groundhog Day elements, such as the repeated lines and footage, as well as the characters' growing frustration with all the repetition (the most visible example being the beginning of the "loop", where they are suddenly confronted with a swarm of giant ants heading towards them: though they were pretty scared at first, they start dealing with the problem with increased apathy as the "loop" repeats, culminating in the last repetition where, when faced with the ants, they simply ''sidestep out of the way'' with the most deadpan expression on their faces). |
| 378 | * This was how the Justice League gets rid of [[spoiler:Chronos]] in the end of the ''[[WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague Justice League Unlimited]]'' episode "[[Recap/JusticeLeagueUnlimitedS1E13TimeWarped The Once and Future Thing: Time, Warped]]". The villain tries to [[spoiler:turn himself into a god by escaping to the beginning of time]], but due to [[spoiler:Green Lantern and Batman altering his belt's programming]], he's put in [[spoiler:the moments where his wife yells at him at the start of the episodes, and the belt's function is only to rewind time by ten seconds.]] It would be a FateWorseThanDeath if it weren't for him being unaware of it. |
| 379 | * ''WesternAnimation/LiloAndStitchTheSeries'' had an example of a willing groundhog day loop in the episode "Melty", in which Lilo kept going back to change the past so she could simultaneously catch the experiment and impress her crush Kioni, but [[ButterflyOfDoom kept on setting off disastrous chains of events]]. After almost trapping them in a BadFuture, she was forced to relive the original humiliating future to avoid any greater trouble. |
| 380 | * The ''WesternAnimation/LittleCharmers'' episode "A Charming Do Over" has Hazel casting a spell to repeat a day at a magic carnival in an attempt to win a crystal ball, which repeats until the other Charmers get sick of it. |
| 381 | * The ''WesternAnimation/LittlestPetShop2012'' episode "In the Loop" sees Russell stuck in one. And the guest in the daycamp for that repeated day is a groundhog. |
| 382 | %%* ''WesternAnimation/LoonaticsUnleashed'' "Time After Time". |
| 383 | * The entire premise of ''WesternAnimation/{{Looped}}''. An experiment gone wrong causes two kids to repeat the same day over and over for a really long time. As a result, they start mucking around and changing things, partly out of boredom. Then again, sometimes other things escape the loop... |
| 384 | * The AnimatedAdaptation of ''WesternAnimation/TheMask'' has Stanley Ipkiss trapped in a loop of a few hours by time-manipulating villainess Amelia Chronos. After the first few loops, he starts running to his apartment and getting the Mask on in order to hunt for her. Eventually, he discovers it's because of a watch-like device on his arm. The villainess is using the loops to put herself in a different spot each time, forming a geomantric array that will let her control time. [[spoiler:During their final battle, the Mask gets the device off of himself, resets it, and slaps it on her. Then he drops a grandfather clock on her face. The loop was changed to a few seconds, [[AndIMustScream so it happens over and over and over...]] When the villainess reappears later, she reveals that subjectively, it took a ''thousand years'' for her to get out.]] |
| 385 | * ''WesternAnimation/MiraculousLadybug'': The Snake Bracelet has the power of Second Chance: once activated and within five minutes after that, it can rewind time back to the moment of activation, as many times as needed, and the user remembers everything they did so they can try to work out a different tactic. |
| 386 | * ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'': |
| 387 | ** In episode "Bloom and Gloom", Apple Bloom is caught in a nightmare sequence where she keeps waking up with a new cutie mark, goes to breakfast and has her sister Applejack react to it with surprise. |
| 388 | ** In "The Cutie Re-Mark" two-parter, the time loops Twilight, Spike and Starlight are stuck in resemble this trope the most rather than other type of temporal travel. They never encounter themselves in the past, despite using the spell several times; instead they [[spoiler:always arrive before the race between Rainbow Dash and the bullies, and Starlight can interrupt it in several different manners, while Twilight tries various tactics to stop her. It also shares the common element of finding the "right" way to stop it, in this case convincing Starlight to renounce her revenge]]. |
| 389 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Pantheon}}'': [[spoiler:Chanda ends up imprisoned in one after his successful uploading, where he relives the same boring day over and over, completely unaware what's really happening. But he breaks out when the failed uploads show him the truth and he slips out of his virtual prison unnoticed.]] |
| 390 | * Happens in the ''WesternAnimation/PepperAnn'' episode "T.G.I.F.", where the titular character fakes sick in order to avoid a history test she didn't study for. [[spoiler:The loop stops happening when she finally takes the test, but when circumstances make it look like it's still repeating, she reaches her RageBreakingPoint and snaps at everyone. Only then does she realize the loop ended and [[MustMakeAmends she has to make amends]] [[CrossingTheBurntBridge with everyone she yelled at]]. Unfortunately, [[HereWeGoAgain a new loop ensues after that]].]] |
| 391 | * The ''WesternAnimation/PetAlien'' episode "The Day that Wouldn't End" had Tommy and the aliens repeating a day where Tommy went through a HumiliationConga and always ended with Dinko blowing up the lighthouse, the first few times with a [[SelfDestructMechanism self-destruct button]], then a self-destruct ''lever'', and then the lighthouse exploded on its own. The loop ended when Tommy tried to avoid repeating his actions and another location exploded when Dinko pressed the button. |
| 392 | * A self-inflicted example in ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'''s GrandFinale "Last Day of Summer" when Candace and Dr. Doofenshmirtz use the latter's Do-Over-Inator in an attempt to thwart their respective cases of FailureIsTheOnlyOption. ([[OncePerEpisode Of course]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zccqC4SJsj0 there is a song]].) Eventually, the machine takes its toll on the space-time continuum and starts {{Ret Gon|e}}ing random things and people to another dimension, with the threat of destroying the whole universe if they don't stop it in time. |
| 393 | * Happens in the ''WesternAnimation/ReadyJetGo'' episode "Jet's Time Machine", where the kids go back in time to watch a meteor shower that they missed, but are stuck in an endless loop and keep missing the meteor shower. However, once they correct their mistakes, they break out of the loop and are able to watch the meteor shower. |
| 394 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken'' HalloweenEpisode "Happy Russian Deathdog Dolloween 2 U", the Nerd gets himself caught in a time loop where he continually heads to a Halloween party and is killed in gruesome ways from a killer with an oversized peach as its head. When he attempts to get revenge, the Nerd is constantly thwarted by his own undoing until [[MustMakeAmends he finally gets it right]] and gets into a big battle. Finally, [[spoiler:it turns out that the killer is Loopy the Time Loop Toucan and the Halloween party ensues [[Film/DonnieDarko until plane parts come in crashing through the ceiling]].]] |
| 395 | * ''WesternAnimation/RoliePolieOlie'' had Olie trying to clean up the garage. Unfortunately, while he did attempt to do so, it always fell apart, falling on a device that his father was working on that resets time, sticking him in a time loop. |
| 396 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/RollBots'' episode "Crontab Trouble", a renegade Tensai named Reboot teams up with Vertex and attempts to put the city into stasis using the Crontab, a device that distorts time. Spin intervenes, of course, and Reboot uses the Crontab to reset the whole thing by about five minutes. Spin starts to catch on to the time loop, and explains it to the others as he gradually figures it out (Daso also seems to know what's going on). No one else remembers the events, not even Captain Pounder, who sees concrete proof of Vertex's true identity. |
| 397 | * ''WesternAnimation/RubyGloom'' has an episode where Ruby is in charge of the Gloomsville World's Fair. The day doesn't stop repeating until the World's Fair goes right. Played with when Ruby forgets something she was going to say and leaves to take a short nap in order to remember. No one remembers her leaving. |
| 398 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Sidekick}}'': In the episode "This Hour Has 22 Million Minutes", a villain called "The Clock Puncher" causes a time loop which forces Eric to live the same day over and over again. |
| 399 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' ''[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS32E4TreehouseOfHorrorXXXI Treehouse of Horror XXXI]]'' segment "Be Nine, Rewind" has Lisa and Nelson stuck in a time loop on Lisa's birthday. |
| 400 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/SofiaTheFirst'' episode "The Birthday Wish", Sofia's birthday ends up going not so great like she intended, and wishes to relive her birthday and make it a good one. Her friend Ruby's fairy godmother Tizzy grants the wish -- she is now forced to relive the exact same day over and over until she has a "truly, happy birthday". After 37 tries, she finally learns to look on the bright side and have fun, which ends the loop. |
| 401 | * The ''WesternAnimation/SonicBoom'' episode "Hedgehog Day" revolves around Dr. Eggman attempting to escape a time loop he inadvertently caused during a battle with Sonic and his friends. |
| 402 | * ''WesternAnimation/StarVsTheForcesOfEvil'': |
| 403 | ** In "Mathmagic", Star tries to get out of trying to solve a problem in math class, but keeps going back in a time loop. She thinks her wand might have something to do with it, but as Omnitraxus Prime explains, it's actually because out of all the {{alternate universe}} versions of herself she's the only one who hasn't tried to solve the problem, and it's about to cause [[TimeCrash a catastrophic time paradox]]. |
| 404 | ** In ''Literature/TheMagicBookOfSpells'', Star's ancestor Queen Skywynne accidentally invented a time-loop spell when trying to banish her mother and the unwanted suitor she had in tow. It took her several iterations before she realized what was going on and managed to undo it, but then she figured out how to use the spell to get the citizens of Mewni to build a new castle, fitting five years' worth of labor into a single day. |
| 405 | * ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse:'' {{Subverted|Trope}} in "[[Recap/StevenUniverseS1E42WinterForecast Winter Forecast]]", [[KidHero Steven]] and [[MuggleBestFriend Connie]]'s goofing off keeps causing problems, with worse results when Steven inexplicably loops back and tries to prevent them. Ultimately it turns out not to be a literal time warp, but [[AllJustADream various possible futures]] that he's seeing from [[TheLeader Garnet]] sharing her [[PrescienceIsPredictable Future Vision]] with him. He uses them to avoid any goofing off and thus gets the best possible ending. |
| 406 | * In ''WesternAnimation/StickinAround'', Stacy and Bradley keep getting sent back 15 minutes whenever gym class ends, until Bradley takes full blame for something he did instead of letting everyone share the punishment. [[MrImagination Then again]]... |
| 407 | * ''WesternAnimation/TotallySpies'' has "Déjà Cruise". In the episode, the girls take a vacation on the WOOHP cruise ship, which gets hijacked by bad guys and eventually ends up sinking somehow, after which the girls wake up in their room and start the loop over. They break the loop by [[spoiler:learning to co-operate with their fellow agents on board instead of telling everyone to stand back while they handle it.]] The whole thing is, of course, [[spoiler:a training exercise set up by Jerry, and the entire ship is in on it.]] |
| 408 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/VivaPinata'' episode "Too Many Fergys", Les accidentally drops a time machine near Fergy's house, causing the next day to loop and Fergy to multiply until he turns it off. |
| 409 | [[/folder]] |
| 410 | |
| 411 | [[folder:Real Life]] |
| 412 | * Creator/ImprovEverywhere's [[http://improveverywhere.com/2003/03/22/the-moebius/ "The Moebius"]]. A group of improv agents acted out a moebius loop in a Starbucks. Every five minutes they repeated their actions, for an hour. A couple argues, a guy spills coffee, another guy dances through with his own boombox. To the patrons of the Starbucks, it at first looked like a really clumsy guy and a couple fighting and making back up, but by the third loop they began to realize all was not what it seemed. |
| 413 | * In a straightforward example, some TV channels have aired all-day marathons of ''Film/GroundhogDay'' on Groundhog Day, such as [[https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/43okl9/a_british_channel_is_showing_groundhog_day_all/ Sky Movies]] and Creator/{{AMC}}. Many TV showings of the trope-naming film also [[RepeatingAd air the same commercial multiple times in a row or have every break consist of the same commercials in the same order]]. |
| 414 | * It's a common radio station prank to play "I Got You Babe" twice in a row in the morning on February 2 -- it's the song Bill Murray always wakes up to every morning in ''Film/GroundhogDay''. |
| 415 | * The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poincar%C3%A9_recurrence_theorem Poincaré recurrence theorem]] works similarly to this. It states that certain systems, after a finite period of time, will return to a state close to the original state. The time elapsed until the recurrence is called the Poincaré recurrence time. Numberphile goes into detail on it [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GCf29FPM4k here]]. |
| 416 | * The Pythagoreans of ancient Greece were notorious for their belief that the entire universe constitutes a time loop from its beginning to its end. Once, a member of their audience stood up during a public lecture and loudly exclaimed, "You are seriously suggesting that one day I will sit here another time and listen to all that crap all over again?" |
| 417 | * Creator/JohnMulaney has a [[MemeticMutation famous]] stand-up routine where he describes replicating this trope with a prank he and his friends pulled; they went into a diner, poured a lot of money into the jukebox, set it to play “What’s New Pussycat” by Music/TomJones on repeat for ''hours'', and then sat down to watch what happened. By the third or fourth replay, people in the diner starting noticing something was up. By the sixth, they were starting to get either seriously pissed or extremely confused. And just to make it worse, Mulaney and his friends had “Its Not Unusual” play ''once'' between the seventh and eighth replays to create a HopeSpot where it seemed like the loop had ended; Mulaney notes that when the eighth replay began, [[RageBreakingPoint the entire diner nearly exploded into a riot]]. He also noted that the diner’s staff [[UnusuallyUninterestingSight did nothing to stop any of this until the customers begged them to unplug the machine, and never really responded to the Pussycat loop either]]. |
| 418 | [[/folder]] |
| 419 | ---- |
| 420 | ->''"Well, what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't one today!"'' |
| 421 | -->-- '''Phil Connors''', ''Film/GroundhogDay'' |
| 422 | |
| 423 | A plot in which the character is caught in a time loop... ...[[HereWeGoAgain wait...]] |
| 424 | %%Don't duplicate the whole page there, the beginning and the ending gets the joke across. |
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