Basic Trope: Something changes history, but the effect is delayed.
- Straight: Alice is a time-traveler and uses her time manipulation to change something, but it takes a while for an effect to appear.
- Exaggerated: Alice blinks at a time she wasn't supposed to and as a result, in an hour, all of humanity ceases to exist.
- Downplayed: The changes are subtle and in real-time, affecting memory as well, so its delay isn't even noticed.
- Justified: Time itself is sapient and is trying to figure out what's going on after Alice's change and revising the timeline step by step from the event itself to the present.
- Inverted: The change Alice makes is very slow in effect, but the results of the change are shown immediately.
- Subverted: Alice makes a change to the past but history remains the same.
- Double Subverted: ...or so it seems, as Alice then goes some time between the event of her time manipulation and the present, seeing that time has changed and recognising the present will likely follow.
- Parodied:
- A history-altering time ripple approaches from the future at a rate of -263,000.note The date and time are currently 8:36 pm, June 28, 1960, and the ripple is still 20 years into the future. At what time will the wave hit?
Answer: 9:16 pm, same day.note- When will/did the wave hit June 28, 1950?
Answer: 9:36 pm, June 28, 1960.- Why weren't we affected by the ripple on June 28, 1950, when it hit that date?
Answer 1: Because the ripple didn't/won't hit 1950 until 1960. In 1950, the ripple was 2.63 million years into the future, or hadn't been generated yet.Answer 2: Who says we weren't affected in 1950? Once the ripple hit us in 1960, the new history became the true history. Therefore, we were affected in 1950. - Zig Zagged: Combining You Can't Fight Fate with this results in Alice going back and changing the past, but that change already happened. However, this is just one shown timeline, and the action happens in more than one, and effects can be seen in other timelines.
- Averted: Alice doesn't change the past at all.
- Enforced: A movie director thinks it would look cool and changes the script to make that happen.
- Lampshaded: "Okay, it should be about 20 minutes before I cease to exist."
- Invoked: A Mad Scientist builds a machine that uses this effect specifically.
- Exploited: The Cessation of Existence effect mentioned above is used to commit crimes and cause a large amount of problems and leave no suspects.
- Defied: You Already Changed the Past
- Discussed: "Again, how many minutes do I have, before I will have died an hour ago?"
- Conversed: ???
Back to Delayed Ripple Effect
