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To think that an end to the hostilities would be called the very day after the source of the troubles was defeated...it's almost ridiculously efficient.
It is now, though it was not always, a pretty well-established concept in metaphysics that once something exists, it would take an outside force to make it stop existing. Things, in general, keep existing even when we're not looking at them. We could define "ontological inertia," or object permanence, as some psychology textbooks call it, as the tendency of that which exists to continue to exist.
Fans, and many TV writers, often forget this for some reason, and assume that the creator of a thing maintains some sort of existential tie to the thing created, and his continued survival is necessary. That is, if the creator is destroyed, it is "only natural" that the creation will pop out of existence (or, preferably, explode; see: Load Bearing Boss) along with him. (Clearly, this would be bad news for humanity were it true in general, as children, on average, tend to outlive their parents. It would also mean that whenever the first of anything died, its entire species would be gone forever.) Whatever damage or curse the Big Bad has done disappears when it is defeated. This is a type of Reset Button. Thus, this trope applies to any series or movie where the destruction of the Big Bad instantly results in sunlight, birds and flowers returning to Mordor.
Magic often lacks ontological inertia. Continuous effort has to be applied to keep it working against the natural order of things. Since magic follows its own rules, not necessarily those of standard metaphysics, this is entirely plausible. Few series make it clear why some magic persists, and some does not. It makes sense that a magical construct might break down, but if a mundane object was magically picked up and moved somewhere else, it makes somewhat less sense that it might snap back to its original location. Using this logic, a magical Load Bearing Boss makes sense, as it was its magic that had created the evil lair. This also leads to This Was His True Form in case of Shape Shifting.
Many types of Temporal Paradox hinge on how Ontological Inertia applies when mixed with time travel.
This trope often applies to television and movie illnesses, especially viruses and poisons. Once the patient is given the vital antiserum or antivenin, he is instantly cured, and all symptoms and (more importantly) all lesions, damage to internal organs or neurological damage already caused by the sickness or poison vanish without lasting ill effects within a few hours... sometimes within mere moments, while the audience is watching!
It also occasionally applies to beneficial conditions such as being able to heal oneself or having eternal youth. If someone in a story with no ontological inertia loses their healing powers, their wounds inexplicably return full force and they are incapacitated. Similarly, if they lose the powers that keep them young, they miraculously age up to their actual age and in many cases die. Also if the Weather Control Machine is destroyed, naturally everything will go back to the "default" weather setting of that area regardless of whatever new elements were introduced into the atmosphere to produce these new weather patterns.
Extremely common in fiction, as it results in inarguable victories upon completion of a task. Roll call! When the target is unsuspected, The Enemy Gate Is Down. When the target moves, it's a Golden Snitch. When the target is a person, Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead! When the target is the hero, We Cannot Go On Without You. When it results in a Collapsing Lair, the target is a Load Bearing Boss. When the target applies to warfare, the opponent is a Keystone Army. When the entire world is affected by the target, it's a Cosmic Keystone.
See also Liquid Assets and No Immortal Inertia - though these are more about Life Energy, they still represent states that can be easily restored to "normal".
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Examples
Anime & Manga
- Time Travel subversion: At the end of the first season of Sailor Moon, Usagi seemed to turn back time/erase everyone's memories of the past year. However, her two friends who had become a couple during that time... still are. To be fair, this was an example of a premature Grand Finale retooled when the series continued.
- Of note is that this might just be a case of Adaptation Decay, as in the original Japanese version, all of the people who lost their memory actually died, and were brought back to life afterwards. But, of course, in America, you can Never Say Die.
- From an OVA of The Slayers: a magic mirror is used to make clones of Lina and Naga, prompting the duo to smash the mirror on the assumption that it would destroy the embarrassingly pacifistic and modest (respectively) clones. Subversion: Not only did it not work, but the clones complained about Lina's over-reliance on violence as a result.
- In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Nia is terminally afflicted with a lack of ontological inertia after the Anti-Spiral turn her into their apparently made-of-energy herald. She hangs on long enough after the good guys' victory to get a romantic ending, though, as Heroic Willpower grows on trees in the Gurren-Lagann 'verse.
- A less noticeable example happened at the conclusion of the first half of the series, when Lordgenome was defeated and all of the Gunmen surrounding his base shut down. However, this was apparently because Gunmen piloted by Beastmen ran on outside power sources (usually the sun) and their boss was currently that energy source (this battle happening mostly at night).
- In Martian Successor Nadesico, this is apparently what destroying the Time Travel Black Box would have accomplished, averting the entire war and whatever else was accomplished through Boson Jumping. After some consideration and a couple childish shouting matches, though, the crew ends up deciding not to destroy the device and keeping the past, good and bad, intact. Fridge Logic indicates that not destroying it was probably a good idea regardless, as the device had actually been in use for millions of years.
- No Ontological Inertia is critical to the plot of Fate/stay night. The seven Masters fight by commanding their Servants — magical beings so powerful and unpredictable that beating one is nearly impossible, even for another Servant. But if you kill a Master or otherwise eliminate his Command Spells, his Servant can only keep existing for a little while (and it's much weaker during that time). Thus the way to win the Holy Grail War is to take the enemy Masters out of commission — and needless to say, only the good guys (Shirou and Rin) are particular as to how.
- The Assassin-class Servants actually rely on this. Other classes could potentially win the Holy Grail War simply by beating the snot out of other Servants in direct combat and forcing the now-helpless Master to surrender. Assassins, however, tend to fare poorly in direct combat, and possess abilities that are more effective against normal humans than Servants. Thus, Masters of Assassins are usually supposed to target other Masters with their Servants than other Servants.
- Another similar case is familiars. Generally, if the familiar's master dies, the familiar will also die shortly/immediately afterward. A familiar needs mana in order to live. Len is an exception as she has a partially demonic nature and is also a dream demon, meaning she can gather mana for herself in order to continue living. Possibly justified in this case as it's basically akin to eating/starvation and Len simply knows how to feed herself.
- All Nasuverse examples avert this trope if you have any real familiarity with how that world works. Gaia, the will of the planet, exerts the force necessary to take anything of magical origin out of existence. In other words, magic has ontological inertia, but the planet destroys it constantly in the same way that it deals with normal inertia through the force of gravity.
- In fact, the only case in which things of non-natural origin appear to have ontological inertia is in the case of the Crystal Valley, created by Type Mercury/ORT. The idea is that ORT's very existence overpowers Gaia and overwrites the natural laws of Earth with its own.
- Applied to the Digimon Taken For Granite in episode 17 of Digimon Adventure, even though the character was not even dead.
- Digimon Savers has something rather like this trope, only applied to actual, physical inertia instead of a magic effect. Did you know that a 20-kiloton tanker can stop in about ten yards (from a speed of 23kts, even!) when the ghost possessing it is destroyed?... neither did I.
- In the Yes! Precure 5 movie, when Cure Aqua kills Dark Aqua, the latter's sword (which had been knocked out of her hand) vanishes behind her.
- More significantly, the whole reason she's Cure Aqua in the first place is related to a case of this. In the first episode, Karen (the future Cure Aqua) and her friend Komachi (the future Cure Mint) stumble upon a section of the library that's been damaged due to the fight with one of the Quirky Miniboss Squad and the Monster Of The Week. When the bad guys lose, the damage mysteriously repairs itself, leaving Karen and Komachi confused and with no choice but to start asking questions, eventually putting them in contact with the other heroines just when they're thinking "hey, we need two more magical girls..."
- In the previous Pretty Cure series whatever damage the monster had done was always reveresed after the battle.
- Subverted in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha where, upon hearing how Reinforce plans to delete herself to save Hayate, the Wolkenritter naturally assume that, being her Guardian Programs, they'd disappear with her. Not so, says Reinforce, as she'd transferred their links to her over to Hayate. However, this will likely end up a Double Subversion if Hayate dies, as it's implied that they'll die with her.
- Reversed in My-Otome, where a SLAVE's death results in the death of its Master, and an Otome's death results in the death of its Master.
- Making them possibly the worst bodyguards ever.
- Jutsu in Naruto seem to be like this. When Team Gai fought the Kisame clone, the first thing he did was puke out a whole lake's worth of water and when he was defeated the water disappeared. Similarly, during the attack on Konoha Orochimaru revived the First and Second Hokages who used really big jutsus to summon a bunch of water and trees but following the fight they just disappear.
- Also present summonings: if the summoner is killed, whatever they summoned goes back.
- In the Sanbi Arc of Shippuden, Guren gives Yuukimaru a Camelia Flower encased in crystal via her Crystal style jutsu. She tells him that it will never wilt as long as she's alive. During one of her battles with the Sanbi, the crystal cracked when she was wounded.When she makes a Heroic Sacrifice near the end of the arc to protect Yuukimaru, it shatters inwardly, but stays intact, showing she was Not Quite Dead. She's later rescued by Gozu.
- Bizarrely, a Dragon Ball Z special ("The Plot to Destroy the Saiya-Jins") did this with what appeared to be completely ordinary machines. A Tsufuru-jin scientist named Dr. Raichi tries to kill our heroes — and everyone else on the planet, as a side-effect — by planting several machines that spew out poison gas into the planet's atmosphere. When Dr. Raichi is killed, the last machine disappears with no explanation. Nobody seems to find this odd — perhaps the weird properties of the Dragonballs have jaded them.
- The Oozaru transformation is similar. It's triggered by glands at the base of the tail activating when a certain level of lunar radiation is absorbed through the eyes, but apparently requires a constant supply to maintain. Chop off the tail or destroy the source of the moonlight, and they'll revert back instantly, and in one case, the detached tail is seen to do the same. This is slightly odd as reverting back as soon as the moon explodes combined with the transformation triggered by seeing the moon seems to imply that the Oozaru would change back as soon as they glanced away from the moon, but whatever. The only exception is the Movie Tree of Might which apparently changes the rules around a bit for the convenience of the villain. Cutting the tail off still works in a flash, though.
- Mahou Sensei Negima naturally plays this for comedy and Fanservice. Takane constantly suffers Clothing Damage to the point that it becomes a running gag, and attempts to combat it by creating a magical set of clothes. Turns out that the clothes can't be maintained while one is unconscious. She learned this the hard way, after getting knocked out by Negi during the Tournament Arc, in a stadium full of people.
- It's played seriously later, when Nagi defeats the Lifemaker, and the war seemingly ends the next day, causing Takamichi to give the page quote. Something of a subversion, as the end of the chapter implies that the problems are not over. And they aren't. Not even close.
- A possible example occurs in Code Geass, where the only case of someone actually breaking geass (without use of Orange-kun's geass canceller) occurs after the death of the one who used it. Still, it is not made clear if Nunnally opening her eyes was due to a weakening of the geass or Heroic Willpower. Lelouch seems to think that Schneizel will remain loyal to Zero after his death., suggesting that some ontological inertia was in play.
- Further support for the idea that he's not quite dead yet
- In Hellsing, all the ghouls (zombies created when a vampire bites a non-virgin human) die when you slay the vampire who created them in the first place (a common theme in vampire stories; see below). That is, unless it's an artificial vampire created by surprisingly resilient Nazis. Then, the ghouls persist even after the vampire is killed.
- A major issue in Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle. We don't find out until the very last chapter, but clones cease to exist when the creator dies. Even after Yuuko gave up centuries of her life to get the clones into the cycle of reincarnation, they still vanish once the Big Bad dies.
Comics
- Particularly aggravating when mutants (in the Marvel universe) lose their powers and (in general) turn human. That is, you might have looked like this
 ◊ as a mutant, but once you're cured, you get an instant human body. Almost as if you had never been a mutant in the first place.
- That particular example is justified, as he was turned human by the Reality Warper Scarlet Witch. Other examples, not so much.
- That effect is (rather grotesquely) avoided during the Decimation arc, at least in some cases: for example, Chamber, whose mutant power destroyed his jaw and part of his chest, barely survived.
- X-Factor, in fact, did an arc based partially around that premise. SOME mutants became completely human looking when they became non-mutants, but other mutants retained vestiges of their mutations even after Decimation — horns, colourful feathers instead of hair, etc. — and some of them resent ex-mutants who can pass as completely humans who retain their attachment to their previous mutant state, because they can go back and forth, whenever they want.
- In what is probably the worst offender this editor has ever seen, Spider-Man character "The Lizard" was created by a man, Dr. Curt Connors, trying to grow his right arm back. When he becomes the Lizard, his right arm does, indeed, grow back. When he's cured and reverts to normal, however, he loses his arm again. Connors' RIGHT ARM has No Ontological Inertia.
- Ditto for Kommodo, who uses an improved version of Dr. Connors' formula, that allows her to transform at will. In human form, she has no legs. Where on earth do they come from?
- Scarlet Witch and her twin sons. To wit: back during the Vision & The Scarlet Witch mini-series, Wanda used a big mass of chaos energy to do the otherwise impossible — make herself pregnant with the android Vision's children. (Why an android would have reproductive organs... let's move on). We find out later on that the twins aren't kids with impossible origins, but magic-powered figments of Wanda's imagination. When she wasn't thinking of them on some level, they literally faded from reality. They were "killed off" when minor baddie Master Pandemon absorbed them into his demonic gestalt body. Recently, the twins were resurrected and aged-up as Wiccan and Speed of The Young Avengers (though their parentage has never been officially confirmed by canon or Word Of God).
- Used to horrifying effect in The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen volume II. During a dinner scene, Mr. Hyde's conversation slowly reveals that he has just brutally raped Hawley Griffin, the Invisible Man, whose blood gradually becomes visible on the walls and table and all over Hyde as Griffin dies in the next room.
- Averted in an interesting way in Judge Dredd. In the earliest years of the comic (those set in the 2100s) there has been a prophesied doom that would strike in 2120. Judges Dredd and Anderson used an experimental time machine to travel to the future where they find the cause, a psychic entity of huge power known as The Mutant, travel back in time and prevent it coming to pass. However the Zombie Dredd of the future that The Mutant had unleashed to torment Dredd had come back with them. It has become deanimated, but the fact remained that there was now a 13-year-older Judge Dredd corpse in the Black Museum. This being Judge Dredd, it came alive again and ran amok 12 years later, just in time to get everyone nervous about the old prophecy again.
Films
- In Magma: Volcanic Disaster, once the hero removes the underlying problem causing the eruptions (by setting off more eruptions underwater with nuclear weapons, despite nuclear weapon testing being the cause of the problem), all the volcanoes stop erupting, the lava recedes, and all fires are put out.
- The virus pandemic in Outbreak. Once the protagonist has found and isolated the antibody from the monkey's blood serum, by the next scene there's enough antiserum for all infected (how?). Once injected into the dying people, it instantly cures them and everything shortly thereafter has returned to normal, with no lasting ill effects.
- Practically every other movie (or TV episode) of this genre falls into this category, too, no matter if the magical cure if distilled from someone's blood or healing wild flowers picked by a Magical Native American.
- A major plot point in Underworld: Evolution, where many characters worry that killing the first vampire will turn all the other vampires back into humans, despite the fact that vampirism is caused by a VIRUS.
- This whole myth was intentionally created by the first vampire (for obvious reasons) in the 13th century, before anyone had any idea about viruses and what have you. However, this still doesn't explain why the protagonists seem to take the rumor seriously. (The only major character who hasn't been alive for centuries is Michael Corvin, a medical intern.)
- In Disney's Aladdin, Genie moves the palace to higher elevation per Jafar's orders. When Jafar is defeated, the palace instantly and magically moves back to its original position. The fact that defeating Jafar reversed Genie's actions makes this case particularly absurd.
- Since Genie only moved the palace because Jafar told him to, perhaps he simply decided to move the palace back? Genie has demonstrated that even without his freedom he is quite capable of acting on his own initiative when he feels it appropriate.
- I've mentally explained this one away as Agrabah having a permanent fix-this-place spell cast on it. Because it seems like the first thing any evil magical creature or presence does is blot out the sun, and when the sun comes back, everything affected by magic changes back, and the sun is obviously the solar power battery and... and... okay, it's still stupid.
- Further, Aladdin wished to become a prince. Genie fulfilled his wish. Somehow, once it was revealed that he *used* to be a street-boy, the revelation invalidated his fulfilled wish, and he was no longer a prince.
- Ah, but can Genie change the past? If not, then there's no way Genie can make Aladdin to have been born a prince; he cannot make Aladdin the legitimate ruler of a real country. What he can do is give Aladdin the wealth and power of a prince, which he does. Once Aladdin is revealed as low-born, he's still rich, but he's not a prince because he wasn't born one in the first place.
- "Rule number 1: I can't kill anybody... Rule two: I can't make anyone fall in love with anyone else... Rule three: I can't bring people back from the dead... Other than that, you got it!" So, sure. He can change the past. He explicitly says that outside of the few exceptions he can do anything. So if the change doesn't cause someone to die, doesn't cause someone to fall in love with anyone else, and doesn't cause someone to come back from the dead, he should be able to do it.
- A prince can sometimes refer to boy born of royalty, but more often it is defined as one who reigns over a principality.
Many Most kings in history are usurpers, not inheritors. So granting Aladdin princehood should have been an easy task for Genie. On the other hand, the law of Agrabah could specifically define a prince exclusively as one of royal blood (i.e. an inheritor) or as exclusively from a limited (short) list of known royal families. Or, the whole Be Yourself Aesop was about Aladdin not feeling princely, and being sensitive about his status as an unrefined (untrained) low-born street-boy.
- Genie's helping him woo the princess would technically be part of achieving the goal of becoming a prince. Of course it took two made-for-TV-movies and an animated series to get there, but eventually he did.
- Ah, but changing the past could have any number of effects, including any of those three. Perhaps if Aladdin had grown up a prince, people who didn't die will and people who did die, didn't.
- Not to mention the automatic reversal of changes Jafar made with the power of his sorcery, such as changing Abu into a toy and reducing the flying carpet to a tangle of thread. Undoing Aladdin's wish-attained gains was merely a most-powerful-sorcerer level ability, not of the higher order of a Genie-wish level ability.
- Apparently, in the XMen movies, Wolverine's healing factor doesn't have any ontological inertia. In the first movie, he revived Rogue by making her drain his healing factor. This caused all of the wounds he healed from that battle to re-open, despite the fact that this makes absolutely no sense.
- This Troper thought it came off more as every wound he'd ever suffered (note that this was pre-Origins). Which still makes no sense, but perhaps is more consistent?
- A rare biological "science" form of this trope occurs in the film Van Helsing. When he removes Mr Hyde's arm, it shrivels back to the arm of Doctor Jekyll as soon as it hits the ground.
- The League of Gentlemen Apocalypse is a meta-example of this trope. The League of Gentlemen characters invade the real world when their world starts to collapse as their creators have moved on to a new project.
- In Dario Argento's Inferno, the central apartment building collapses after its designer is strangled. (In Suspiria, the building bursts into flame after Helena Markos is stabbed, but that's more of a Load Bearing Boss.)
Gamebooks
- Averted in Lone Wolf. After the Darklords are defeated, the lands that they corrupted in their campaign of conquest are still corrupted. The intro pages of the Grandmaster series reveal that the Elder Magi and the Herbwardens are working to restore the Darklands to their original states, but realize that it will take centuries of effort to undo the damage.
- Played straight in Books 6 and 17. In the case of Book 6, killing the ancient Dakomyd causes it to instantly decay and turn to dust. In the case of Book 17, destroying the Deathlord Ixiataaga removes the power that kept the city of Xaagon in a suspended state, causes the entire city to collapse, breaks the cloud cover that prevented sunlight from reaching it, and "shuts down" all of Ixiataaga's undead minions.
Literature
- Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel Hogfather features such a Collapsing Lair: The Castle of Bones, located in the otherworldly realm of the anthropomorphic personification and winter god called the Hogfather, starts to disintegrate back into ice and snow from which is was created after the Hogfather became the victim of an assassination attempt to erase his existence from mythology.
- In a weird subversion, the Hogfather seems to have negative ontological inertia; he ceases to exist before the assassination plot is anywhere close to completion, and returns when the plot has been foiled (again, before completion).
- This is because the first part of the assassination plot is assembling the teeth of all the people in the world to disrupt their belief in the Hogfather. One of the first things Susan does after defeating Teatime is sweep all the teeth out of the magic circle — and then the Auditors act directly.
- In JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, the destruction of the One Ring also destroys everything that was created with its power.
- Its destruction also causes all of the other Rings, including the Three Rings of the Elves, to lose their power, meaning that all of the good that they wrought is destroyed along with Sauron's evil.
- About which they grieved endlessly. This was the test to which Galadriel referred when Frodo offered the Ring to Her; if She took the Ring, all that She had wrought would have remained. Instead it was all doomed to wither, and She'd become insignificant.
- Curiously, according to the story timeline, Barad-Dûr was built before the One Ring was forged, yet the story constantly claimed that its foundations were made with the power of the Ring.
- The timeline says Barad-Dûr was completed at about the same time as the Ring, so apparently he started at the top and worked down.
- This troper remembers that the men who survived the War of the Last Alliance destroyed Barad-Dûr, and Sauron rebuilt it in the Third Age, so he could have used the ring to rebuild Barad-Dûr.
- Except that Sauron never had the Ring at any time during the Third Age, though technically the Ring only needed to exist for Sauron to tap (some of) its power.
- Barad-Dûr may have in its original plans been a smaller tower (not requiring Sauron to keep it steady). Then, once the ring was forged, the tower was quickly expanded beyond structural limits. Interestingly the John Howe design◊ used in the Jackson films (based on Tolkein's cues) implies this kind of piecemeal construction.
- This is an Inverted Trope. Killing Sauron does not destroy the Ring, rather Sauron cannot be permanently killed until the Ring is destroyed.
- So obviously Barad-Dûr collapsed because Sauron was destroyed, not because the Ring was, just a convenient corollary. The Black Gates, although originally built by Gondor, collapsed because they were completely renovated and reinforced by Sauron. This is also why they look like the kind of pointy black-iron monstrosity that would be forged in Mordor as opposed to the works of elves, men and dwarves.
- Spells (at least, some of them) in the Harry Potter universe apparently lack Ontological Inertia. For example, Harry realizes that Dumbledore is dead when the paralysis that character had cast on Harry releases. That same spell has several times been used to zap someone and walk off, so there's no reason but Ontological Inertia that this would work.
- It is also stated that a piece of soul trapped inside a Horcrux disappears when the Horcrux is destroyed (handwaved as a Horcrux is, apparently, the exact opposite of a human being; thus the Ontological Inertia depends on what contains the soul).
- Commonly in stories involving vampires, werewolves or other "infectious" monsters; killing the "head vampire" (or what have you) also cures or kills any subservient creatures that one had created. Great way to have all of the main cast turned into these creatures and then have them back to normal in time for next week.
- This goes all the way back to Dracula, making it Older Than Radio.
- However, in the case of old Drac, the victim only got cured because the transformation wasn't complete yet. This has also been seen in the film Fright Night and the "Vampire Odyssey" series by Scott Ciencin; the vampiric transformation can be undone but only under very strict conditions (the creator vampire must be killed before dawn the same night, or the fledgling vampire must go without feeding for three whole nights).
- This is subverted in Underworld: Evolution, where the No Ontological Inertia rule is actually a load of nonsense made up by the First Vampire so his overly ambitious minions don't assassinate him.
- Subverted in Supernatural, episode "Heart". Unfortunately.
- In Anne Rice's "main" saga (Lestat the Vampire and The Queen of the Damned, mostly), one of the first vampires (who was also a witch/spirit seer/whatever) states that killing the first vampire would in turn kill all vampires. The king, who is the first vampire except he is not, it's actually his wife, but neither of them know it at the moment misunderstood it as "killing any vampire will kill'em all", so he let her go. This lack of ontological inertia is explained as vampirism actually being a spirit "possessing" Akasha, the queen. The spirit has lost his mind and identity (Amel has now what he has always wanted; Amel has the flesh. But Amel is no more.) and it's "core" resides in Akasha, granting her all vampire traits. Amel's "body" extends to the blood of every vampire there exists, so each of the later ones can die and that's it, but should the "core" die, the entire spirit passes on and all vampires are pretty much screwed. They manage to kill her anyways, by having another vampire absorb said "core" and become its new host.
- Subverted in Rainbow Mars by Larry Niven. In one of the short stories in that book, the entire future in which the book takes place has its past altered so that it never came about. This is caused by the ghost of the time traveler who changed it that way in the first place. Long story. However, Svetz returns to the future and finds it the same as always, due to the effects of "Temporal Inertia". There's still a new future, but his exists purely out of the fact that it did. Of course, this is in a book where time traveling back before the 20th century takes you to a fantasy world with unicorns, Moby Dick, leviathans and Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars.
- In some of the other Svetz stories it's more or less explicitly stated that Svetz' "time machine" slews across parallel universes so that he winds up in the past of a parallel universe which may or may not closely resemble his own universe's past. The reason that he can return to his own universe is that only PART of the time machine (the "extension cage") actually goes anywhere/when; the other part remains in what Svetz thinks of as "the present" and serves as an anchor. It's confusing, but time travel stories often are.
- This is invoked in Jonathan Strange And Mr Norrell. Since magic is the effect of a magician imposing their will on the universe, the surest way to cure a person of an enchantment is to kill the enchanter. Though at the end, the curse of darkness placed on the titular magicians lingers long past the death of the Gentleman with Thistledown Hair who placed this curse. Presumably, this is because the earth and the sky actually placed the enchantment, and the Gentleman with Thistledown Hair simply asked them to do this on his behalf.
- Averted, and explicitly referenced in the Ciaphas Cain book Cain's Last Stand, at the end Varan is dead, but people remain under his mind control. Cain says it would have been much easier the other way.
- Subverted in Larry Niven's What Good Is a Glass Dagger. The castles of the magician Wavyhill all collapse when he no longer keeps them functioning because he built them on hills shaped like waves, so that when the magic failed the hill would fall over and bury the castle, hiding any evidence he left behind.
- Used straight and made part of the plot in Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series, in the titular swords. The key to their power is that each sword was created in a manner that violates the natural laws of the world: Thorn is Thunderbolt Iron; Memory (Minneyar) was made from the keel of a ship from a far-off land (allegorical Thunderbolt Iron, if you will); and Sorrow (Jingizu) is a mixture of iron and witchwood, two substances that are naturally antagonistic. The magic required to bind them to a permanent form was so strong that it took on a kind of willpower of its own, desiring nothing more than to be released so the stress on the natural order could be removed. The Storm King capitalizes on this to cause the swords to seek him out, and uses their power to reverse time to bring himself back to life. In the end, the swords, drained of their power, disintegrate into nothingness.
- In fact, the Art is explicitly stated to work this way in general within the books; a rule of thumb measure of a character's magical power is how far they can bend the Laws, how long it takes to accomplish, and how long it lasts.
- In CS Lewis's The Silver Chair, after our heroes kill the witch, he cavernous kingdom begins to collapse. Puddleglum reasons this is the result of a spell the witch cast so that whoever killed her would die shortly after. Also, the gnomes are freed from their Mind Control.
- In Patricia C Wrede's Talking To Dragons, after the evil firewitch is killed, Daystar looks at Shiara, turned to stone. He thinks that some spells die when the caster does, but some powerful casters can do better. This one was powerful.
- Averted in Lloyd Alexander's ''The Black Cauldron''; destroying the Cauldron does not destroy all the Cauldron-born zombies. But at least it ensures no one will make any more of them.
- An interesting variation of this trope is used in Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth series as the power source of a superweapon, called "Fixed Cosmic Inertia". Basically, the device is placed in a stasis field that means that, no matter what happens to it, the major part of it continues to exist at the moment in space and time that it was originally built. When the weapon is triggered, the "rubber band" effect snaps the weapon to the present, translating all the accumulated energy into a single point in spacetime. The results are quite spectacular.
- In The Old Kingdom series, there's an example of lack of ontological inertia that actually works against the good guys. Because the Abhorsen has sort-of died, the wardings he put on the Wall to stop the Dead are weakened and about to break.
- An example with an explanation other that just magic; in Dean Koontz's Frankenstein, Frankenstein/Helios ensured that on his death a signal would be sent out to all of his creations via satellite causing them to drop dead.
- Terry Brooks used it twice. Once in Sword of Shannara, where destroying the Warlock Lord not only collapses Skull Mountain, but also destroys his Skull Bearers, he being the source of the magic keeping them alive. Then in Wishsong of Shannara, the destruction of the Illdatch, also destroys the Mord Wraiths in the same manner, though it's more of a Keystone Army moment.
- In the fairy tale The Bronze Ring found in Andrew Lang's The Blue Fairy Book, features a classical genie ring. Ontological inertia is intentionally canceled when the black sorcerer gets hold of the ring; his first command is "make waste of all that you've done." This is a common stratagem in fairy tales where wishing rings are involved, and may be one of the reasons usage limits were hardwired into later models.
Live Action TV
Tabletop Games
- Occasionally found in the Ravenloft setting for Dungeons & Dragons. When the Darklord of an "island" domain is killed, the island may cease to exist, sometimes simply being absorbed into the Mists, sometimes violently falling apart. What happens to the island's inhabitants is unknown.
- This trope forms an important part of the worldview of the Abber Nomads that inhabit the Nightmare Lands domain. Because their surroundings are constantly shifting, they see no reason to believe that anything exists when they are not interacting with it.
- Subverted in Mage The Awakening. Generally, if a mage is killed, their ongoing spells will end, since they require the mage's soul to function. However, mages have the option of relinquishing a spell, making it self-sustaining, at the cost of no longer being in control of it, and having to invest a dot of Willpower. Relinquishing a spell imbued into an item has a few other options for what has to be sacrificed.
- In Vampire The Masquerade, level 10 of the discipline Quietus is Punish the Sins of the Father, which kills the target vampire and all descended from him through the Embrace. So Yeah.
- In Warhammer, the normal rank-and-file undead (zombies, skeleton etc.) in the armies of the Vampire Counts slowly crumbles to dust when the general of the army is killed, since the magic power that have created them is gone. In case of creatures such as ghouls who are not technically undead but enslaved by the vampires will, they slink back to where they come from.
- This was partially averted on a grand scale when the spell Nagash was casting to resurrect the entire world's dead was disrupted. Most of the died again, but many stayed around and there are still places where the dead spontaneously come back due to the echoes of his spell.
- Abounds in Genius The Transgression. The most evident example is what happens
when if a Genius dies; all their Wonders have a notable chance of exploding.
Video Games
- In Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Link traveled to the future and defeated Ganon, banishing him to the Golden Realm. Upon returning to the present, Link discovers that Ganon is instantaneously defeated there at the same time as well.
- This troper was under the impression that Link merely traveled back to the moment before drawing the Master Sword and thwarted Ganondorf by not drawing it "in the first place."
- Twilight Princess confirms that Ganondorf was in fact not defeated in the past, but was captured and banished to the Twilight Realm instead.
- That failed execution happened several years after Ocarina of Time. And by the way, We Who Read the Dialogue know many things, such as the fact that at the end of Ocarina of Time Zelda bent the timeline. Link's deeds and peoples' memories of his heroics were left intact(Majora's Mask intro), but the clock had been turned back seven years so that Link could live those years instead of having spent them asleep in the Chamber of Sages.
- Word Of God says the timeline splits at that point rather than just bending. Though Word of God on the Zelda timeline isn't always consistent with itself either.
- A rather ridiculous example of this is mentioned in Shang Tsung's Mortal Kombat Armageddon bio: Supposedly, his master, Shao Kahn, has a contractual stipulation with anyone who pledges allegiance to him that, if Shao Kahn ends up biting the dust, so too will they, which also means he's able to revive his minions should they die due to this link. In a minor subversion, however, it's apparently treated as an unsubstantiated rumor among Khan's allies, hence why Shang Tsung had no compunction about slaying him with fellow sorcerer Quan Chi's help at the beginning of MK Deadly Alliance. A minor point of argument with this among fans is exactly who will be affected by this trope should Shao Kahn be Killed Off For Real.
- An even more blatant example occurs in Mortal Kombat 3, as defeating Shao Kahn revives all the people who died in the game's opening apocalypse (presumably having their souls taken only rendered them mostly dead). This wasn't the case in the very first edition of Mortal Kombat 3, which suggested that most of humanity remained dead even after the game ended, but that changed in all the subsequent editions, presumably to make further Earth vs. Outworld sequels easier to write.
- Occurs in the end of Kingdom Hearts when Sora and Mickey seal the Door to Darkness, every world and everyone that the Heartless destroyed was brought right back to the way they were before the Heartless attacked.
- The world of Drakengard has No Ontological Inertia. You ready for this one? The seals placed against the Seeds of Resurrection also hold back the "true world", in which the Grotesqueries roam free and hold dominance over all things. The world the protagonists are trying to save is a protective illusion. Thus the world that the majority of Drakengard takes place in doesn't have any real permanence: the moment all the seals are broken, the world as we've known it disappears. The sky, for one, immediately turns red. In the sequel, the change is even more violent, as the sky literally shatters. This leads to a bit of Fridge Logic when one wonders how those seals came to be in the first place.
- In Makai Kingdom, anything that has been created by being written down in the wish-granting Sacred Tome will suffer the same fate as the page it was written on should the tome be damaged. Spilling coffee on the book is probably not a good idea — burning it is even less so.
- In some video games, projectiles cease to exist if the enemy that fired them is destroyed.
- At one point in the console RPG Chrono Trigger, the player is given the choice to fight and kill Magus, the villain for the first half of the game, or to spare his life since certain other characters have far surpassed him on the Villain Meter. If you choose to kill Magus, his curse on Glenn/Frog is lifted at the end of the game, whereas if you let Magus live, Glenn is still a frog at the end. This raises questions, because if Magus is alive at the end of the game, he travels back to 12,000 BC to search for his sister, after which the time gate closes forever. So what exactly happens in a No Ontological Inertia scenario when Magus dies of natural causes after laying the curse in his personal timeline, but thousands of years before the curse in objective time?
- The Play Station version adds to the confusion with an additional ending cutscene which features a human Glenn, which plays whether or not you killed Magus.
- The Nintendo DS version adds one more ending that may avert the issue of Magus dying of old age in 12000BC: Instead, he's killed by the Time Devourer outside time.
- Averted in Bloodrayne 2, where killing the Big Bad at the end of the game doesn't actually change anything; the world remains the same vampire-ruled hellhole the Big Bad turned it into halfway through the game. The protagonist even remarks how thinking everything would change back to normal after the Big Bad's death was "pretty stupid, huh?"
- Mega Man both is and isn't an example. On the one hand, enemies' shots continue existing after you kill them (except, jarringly, in the Japan-only Wonderswan game Rockman and Forte). On the other hand, the moment Mega Man kills most bosses, the battle is over and all remaining attacks vanish. But you can still sometimes kill yourself if there are hazards in the room, and simultaneous kills are possible (they count as a win for the boss).
- All this holds for the X, Zero, and ZX series too. In fact, these series are sometimes a bit more generous — X usually doesn't die if he lands on spikes after winning.
- The Super Famicom / Game Boy Advance Rockman & Forte has a boss you must balance over a lava pit in order to damage it. When you kill it you have to remember to jump off the scale and onto stable ground before the scale breaks and you fall into lava. Quite jarring.
- In Mega Man X, you have to jump over a spike pit to land the finishing blow on Rangda Bangda. Upon killing it the spikes break and you safely land on the ground. Rangda Bangda was maintaining the spikes?
- A simultaneous kill between yourself and Sigma in X will break the game.
- Also, simultaneous damage (no player death) between yourself and Rangda Bangda (and perhaps other bosses too) on the killing blow wwill allow X to walk around freely during the boss' death throes.
- Mega Man Battle Network is all over this trope. In any battle, as soon as you kill the last enemy, you're invincible; all onscreen attacks will either disappear or pass right through you. This is true even in Network Transmission, a sidescrolling homage to the classic series. Examples abound in the plot of the games too: when you beat an enemy NetNavi, whatever havoc it's created in the real world is harmlessly defused.
- In Metroid Prime, killing Flaahgra instantly purifies all the water throughout the vast Chozo Ruins. This troper wasn't aware that the water flowed so quickly. Or maybe it could be explained with "by the time you get back there, it's already purified," but then again, this troper didn't see any water movement at all in some places.
- Then again, your scan visor doesn't say the water is completely purified, only that the poison levels are below damaging concentrations and continuing to drop, and the water does seem to flow pretty fast in several places (fountains, waterfalls, et al). The plant life remains toxic, notably the trees.
- Another Metroid series example occurs in Prime 3: Corruption, in which the final boss is a load bearer of galactic proportions - upon defeat, not only is the boss's planet destroyed, but so is all Phazon throughout the entire galaxy, instantaneously, and in suitably explodey fashion.
- Possibly justifiable in that Phazon is shown to be a sentient entity; it's possible that it functions on a sort of Hive Mind, and by destroying Phaaze, the apparent "core" of this Hive Mind, the rest of the Phazon in the universe is left literally brain-dead and explodes as a natural result of death. Or something.
- In the MMORPG City Of Heroes, killing a character with summoned pets kills the pets as well. This arguably makes sense when the pets are animated stone or illusionary phantoms, but in the case of the "Mastermind" player class, this extends to autonomous robots and ordinary street thugs. Note, however, that ordinary mooks brought onto the field by such an act do have ontological inertia.
- The same effect applies to hunters and warlocks in World Of Warcraft. Whether it happens with NP Cs tend to vary on whether they are normal units (where they almost never disappear) or bosses, when they frequently do.
- Subverted for WoW in that as a hunter your pet (if alive at the time) merely goes away when you die — when you resurrect yourself you don't have to revive the pet, but merely call it back to you with a quick whistle. As for Warlocks, it can be assumed that the demons go back to their own dimensions after you die. They certainly have enough quotes that point out how much they hate obeying you/spending time in your dimension.
- Diablo has the "Poisoned Water Supply" quest, where the presence of monsters has caused the village's waters to become tainted. Kill the monsters and the water instantly becomes clean.
- Diablo II has the similar quest "Den of Evil." Kill all the monsters in the Den, and sunlight inexplicably begins shining through into it.
- It's a slightly odd moment in Sonic Adventure 2 (amongst other games) when you realise that destroying an enemy causes all of its projectiles that are coming towards you to mysteriously disappear.
- A common version of this trope: eliminating the source of a computer virus (in most cases the "original virus") stops each and every one of its offspring. Now, if that were so easy in the real world...
- Averted in Disgaea 2: According to the art book, even with the death of The fake Xenon, Veldime will in fact remain a netherworld. The people will remain Demons, the monsters that were attracted to the world under Xenon's influence will not leave, And while the landscape's transformation has been halted, what had already been changed will remain so. The book does go on to say however, that since Xenon is no longer draining the morality and consciences out of the people, they will at least stop turning evil, and points out that many changes brought to Veldime as a Netherworld were in fact positive, so things still work out in the end.
- Takes on another form in online games that utilize "lag compensation," notably first-person shooters. Suppose two combatants fire upon each other, one with a plasma gun, another with a rocket launcher. From each player's perspective, the other hasn't yet fired; meanwhile, on the server, the rounds pass each other by mid-flight. The plasma bolts, having faster velocity, hit their target first for lethal damage. Should the rocket launch and plasma death occur within the lag compensation window (usually around 1/10th of a second), the rocket "was never fired," and the plasma gunner gets an easy kill. Outside the window, the plasma gunner still has to dodge the rocket. This phenomenon also causes hastily-flung grenades to disappear, and assault rifle victims to apparently die from one or two bullets.
- In Digimon World, it is possible for a fireball, stormcloud, or various other projectiles to vanish in midair because the user's technique was interrupted.
- In Final Fantasy IV, killing a summoned creature kills the summoner as well. Played for a My God What Have I Done moment in the village of Mist, when Cecil and Kain discover to their horror that not only did the King of Baron's package just nuke the town, but they personally murdered Rydia's mother by killing her summoned dragon in the Mist Cave.
- Averted in Final Fantasy VI. Kefka's reign appears to prevent life from flourishing. Upon his death, the world is still ravaged and desolate, but some people who have been trying to get flowers to grow succeed in getting a single flower up.
- That's because Kefka's influence wasn't actively preserving the world in a magical state of ruin, but it was merely preventing its natural recovery. As soon as he's gone, and all magic with him, life begins sprouting up all over the place again because there's nothing holding it back anymore.
- Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines mocks the "head vampire" variant, as that's really not how the game it's based on works. You can find a neonate who's lamenting his undead condition and seeking a cure; you can either let him down easy or try to con some money out of him by saying it only works if you kill the head vampire with a stake of "holy rosewood" (which you just happen to have).
- In the Elder Scrolls series, any kind of summoned creature instantly disappears once you slay the summoner. Considering that most summoned creatures are daedra, that partially makes sense, what would keep a mighty demon lord in the pathetic mortal realm once he can leave it again? However, it becomes somewhat confusing when Necromancy is involved. A few summoning spells allow you to summon undead minions, which work with the same concept like the Daedra. That would count as Necromancy, right? Well, if yes, it becomes Fridge Logic with the Necromancer caves, which often contain both necromancers and undead. Those undead, however, do not perish upon defeating all the necromancers in the cave, even though it wouldn't make any sense for them to be there if not resurrected by the necromancers.
- This troper has always been bothered by the idea of undead minions dying upon their master's defeat anyway. There might be several reasons for that, though. If the necromancer becomes some sort of Hive Mind for his brainless minions when resurrecting them (though in that case, they should actually just stand there and do nothing once their master is dead) or when the undead need some kind of constant magical power "fuel" to continue existing which comes from the necromancer, like in the Wo D. However, in my opinion, the use of necromancy is merely the resurrection of a corpse followed by forcing it under your command, which, again, would make them brainless statues at most once the necromancer dies, not just fall down dead again.
- A corpse or skeleton has little to not muscle with which to move, and generally has little to nothing holding it together in one functioning piece. It could be said that necromancy not only revives them but grants the capability to magically move. It can't reverse the rotting, the lack of thought, etc, but the magic itself could be coded with predetermined behaviors (xxx is a friend, don't harm, yyy is enemy, attack).
- Averted in the Legacy Of Kain series, though it's mentioned by the series' Original Vampire once.
- Subverted in Guild Wars. Ranger pets remain alive when their master is killed. Ranger/Ritualist spirits do as well. Necromancer minions don't die either, but they become neutrally hostile and attack anything in aggro range when the necromancer controlling them is killed.
- Both subverted and played straight with the Garden of Seborhin. Completing the mission and halting the corruption doesn't return it to its original state. However, beating the Big Bad does.
Web Comics
- The permanence of any spell run amok in The Wotch seems inversely proportional to the number of people still stuck when the danger has passed. For example, a demon turns dozens of people into human-animal hybrids, and even a stone fountain, but they all turn back when he vanishes. On the other hand, a girl turned temporarily into an imp switches a couple, and they stay switched for months after she turns back, and only switch back at all because a witch does it for them.
- Averted in Bob and George; George is wearing a time travel suit that makes him intangible. When the suit is destroyed, he stays intangible. A lot of fans were surprised by this, given the prevalence of this trope.
- In Sluggy Freelance, the demon K'Z'K possesses Gwynn's body and changes it to a large, monstrous form. He seems able to change alter this form at will and does so, and at one point even reconstructs it after being put through a meat grinder. And when he's banished from the body, which is looking monstrous at the time, it returns to its normal shape (albeit comatose because he keeps her soul). At least, before this, one of the characters mentions the possibility that she might come back as minced meat.
Western Animation
- In an episode of Ben 10, a giant tick-like alien lands on Yellowstone Park and begins sucking all life in the area dry. The Tennysons are in the area, but are unable to stop it immediately due to the usual aliens proving ineffective. By the time Ben finally learns to use the new alien of the week, the entire area is gray and dead, the usual geysers are spitting poison, and the ground is brittle and breaking apart in large floating chunks. After the tick is destroyed, the background literally turns green and lush again in midconversation, and the gunk that Ben has to wash off the Rustbucket is the only evidence that the tick was ever there.
- Why then did the gunk remain? Just to make life suck for Ben.
- The TV series of Martin Mystery pretty much breathes this trope. Any negative effect, curse or evil spell instantly disappears often not only after the Monster Of The Week is destroyed but also when it is resealed or even thrown into a holding cell. For a monster that sucks lifeforce and makes you look like your grandparents, even moving the victims out of the monster will be enough to make them look like healthy teenagers in under two seconds again.
- Actually, said monsters are usually rendered inert by the end of the episode, negating their curses. Check the discussion pages for my explanation on the matter of Ontological inertia.
- Duck Tales: Treasure of the Lost Lamp: when the genie is made a real boy and thus de-powered, Dijon (who had been transformed into a pig from a wish by the Big Bad) is restored to normal.
- An episode of My Life As A Teenage Robot involved Jenny being turned into a rampaging monster by a tiny machine that had infected her. As soon as the machine was removed all the changes were undone in seconds right before the camera. The thing that makes this particularly egregious is the fact that Jenny is the titular robot.
- The Gilligan's Planet episode "Too Many Gilligans" featured an alien cloning machine that began cranking out copies of the cast until the landscape was filled with them. When the machine was destroyed, all the clones vanished.
- Near the climax of the Disney version of The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, Quasi pours ridiculous amounts of molten
lead iron copper from a cauldron onto the soldiers in the sqare below. A little later, Frollo dies by falling into it. Then, when the protagonists come out of the cathedral at the end of the movie, the boiling metal is gone and the square is full of people.
Real Life
- Small children (below 8 months) don't have cognitive functions for object permanence and have to acquire them. So if they can't see something anymore, the object — at least for them, which makes this at least partly Truth In Television — fades away as if it never existed in the first place.
- How do you know that isn't what actually happens? Eh? Eh?
- During the next stage, children understand the significance of objects and people disappearing, but don't quite understand that they can return. Cue the baby crying while Mom is away.
- Puppies develop object permanence at around 8 weeks.
- This troper noticed that his youngest daughter (7 months old) seems to always have understood object permanence. Which, if she weren't so friggin' cute, would have to be a little creepy.
- Used and subverted in Shakespeare's "The evil that men do lives after them;/The good is oft interred with their bones". A line which almost directly succeeds the much better-known "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears".
- Contrast the Bible, where it is promised that sins against God will be punished for three or four generations, while devotion wil be remembered for a thousand (Deut. 9-10). That's what, a partial subversion?
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