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Time Police / Video Games

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Time Police in Video Games.


  • In Achron it turns out that the reason that the Grekim are determined to wipe out humanity is because humans were about to discover Time Travel and the Grekim don't want anyone 'muddying' the time stream.
  • Blinx, big time. The game, which stars an anthropomorphic cat who works to repair time glitches in various dimensions, introduced the idea of the player controlling the flow of time to solve levels.
  • Castlevania:
    • Aeon from Castlevania: Judgment turns out to be one of these, although this isn't revealed until you reach Death's story. Even then, you only learn the details and meet the perpetrator once you unlock True Story mode.
    • Saint Germain from Castlevania: Curse of Darkness too, of course, Epileptic Trees suspect they may be the same person.
  • City of Heroes introduced the Menders of Ouroboros in a major update, who try to recruit the players into helping them fix the timeline to avoid a mysterious future cataclysm only referred to as "The Coming Storm".
  • Dragon Ball Online introduced the concept of the Time Patrol, who work to prevent criminals from altering history; their primary opponents are Towa and Mira's Time Breakers. The concept would be expanded upon in Dragon Ball Xenoverse and Dragon Ball Heroes.
  • Phoenix from F-Zero comes to the 27th century from the 29th to stop a criminal from the future from mucking up time in the past. What this has to do with entering the F-Zero Grand Prix is never really looked into or explained; although he modified his machine to be on par with the "current" standards so as to not completely outclass the other racers, he makes it pretty obvious he's from the future.
  • Final Fantasy:
  • The Journeyman Project:
    • You are the Time Police. The world's first time machine, the Pegasus Device, is safely in the hands of the Temporal Security Annex, an organization devoted to protecting the timeline from those who would change history for their own gain (presumably, they use it for historical research); naturally, the player — Gage Blackwood, TSA Agent 5 — ends up having to save history from a xenophobic madman trying to sabotage Earth's entry into The Federation.
    • In the first game, the job of policing history is performed by allowing historical changes to happen, grabbing a backup disc containing unchanged history from 1 million BC, then cross-referencing with recorded history in the altered present. There are no safeguards if history is altered so that the TSA fails to be founded (but there are safeguards if the TSA is founded but elements in the altered timeline's incarnation would prefer it to remain in its new state.), but fortunately an improved time machine is used from the second game onward that doesn't necessitate returning to the present before the next jump.
  • This is the purpose of the Sentinels of Hallifax in Lusternia. They spend most of their time cleaning up the messes of their fellow Hallifax guild the Institute.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Gears of Destiny has the Florian Sisters, who were tasked by their father to serve as the Guardians of Time, who will protect the Destined Fate. The plot begins when Amitie Florian goes after her sister Kyrie, who had gone rogue in a desperate attempt to find something in the past that could help her father achieve some progress in his planet restoration project before he dies.
  • In Nuclear Throne we have the IDPD, the Inter Dimensional Police Department, who comes from a timeline where the apocalypse never happens and chase your character throughout the game for unknown reasons. If you manage to get far enough to reach a third loop, it's inferred that they chase you to prevent the apocalypse from affecting their dimension, and that now it's too late.
  • Dusknoir of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers traveled back in time to apprehend a dangerous outlaw and prevent him from stealing the Time Gears, which would cause a Bad Future. Except that he in truth wishes to preserve the bad future, and the "criminal" Grovyle is actually trying to fix things.
  • The Dahaka from Prince of Persia: Warrior Within pursues the Prince throughout the game because he was meant to die in the previous game. The Prince either has to prevent the Sands of Time from being created in the first place or kill the Dahaka itself to stop it from eternally chasing him.
  • In the Ambitions expansion for The Sims 3, Sims using the Time Machine occasionally have narrow escapes from a mysterious "Keeper of Time." Everything only appears in flavor text, though, so there are no in-game implications.
  • Silver from Sonic the Hedgehog could be this, since his usual plot-important reasons to travel back in time is to eradicate anything that causes a Bad Future.
  • The Sequel Police from Space Quest IV are a villainous example, trying to hunt down and kill a time-traveling Roger on Vohaul's orders.
  • Star Trek Online:
    • The game features several different versions of this, as a consequence of the different natures of the temporal incidents. Some are directly from the show (the Department of Temporal Investigations, the 29th century Timefleet incarnation of Starfleet, Daniels' unnamed agency), one is an ad-hoc response (involving the player character and either a Section 31 or a Klingon Intelligence operative depending on alignment), two are counterpart agencies for other factions (the Klingons has Temporal Intelligence, the Romulan Republic has Romulan Temporal Defense) and one (the Temporal Defense Initiative) is a coalition of the temporal agencies of most major powers that will be formed in the 28th century. Ironically, the main contact with the current-time Time Police agencies occur as part of temporal meddling they themselves are responsible for.
    • The Time and Tide episode gives a relatively reasonable answer to the question about the correct timeline in the page quote — it's the one (or the ones) in which the main time-travelling powers came to an agreement to work together to put major restrictions on the usage of time-travel. It's not so much appeal to force as appeal to stability (the correct timeline is one which isn't constantly being altered in major ways).
  • In Sunless Skies, the Horological Office's official job is just to make sure that every clock in the Empire shows the same time (which is more important than it sounds when the laws of reality are slowly becoming mere suggestions and one of the cornerstone resources of the Empire is solidified, refined time, with both refinement and use of it affecting the surrounding area), but they occasionally lean towards being this.
  • The role of the Time Diver in Super Robot Wars's Alpha continuity is Time and Space Police; the job is initially taken up by Ingram Plisken who is subsequently killed and tries to take over the body of Ayin Barshem, later known as Cobray Gordon. The latter's force of will allows him to resist the possession, and eventually the original Time Diver passes on his title and responsibilities before moving on.
  • Sans from Undertale never explicitly says he's one, but he may as well be. When you go full on No Mercy, he outright states that he's been keeping an eye on the multiple timelines, that he saw them eventually end... and he could no longer afford to stand on the sidelines, and fights you head-on to put a stop to it all. And he's by far the hardest boss in the game.
  • War Craft Expanded Universe:
    • The Bronze Dragonflight is pretty much this. In World of Warcraft, they enlist adventurers to help them battle the Infinite Dragonflight, implied to be Bronze Dragons corrupted by the Old Gods (who tried to manipulate time to free themselves in the novels), keeping the timeline intact.
    • Notably, that corruption is a recent thing. As of The Burning Crusade it was implied that the Infinite Flight were rebelling Bronze Dragons rather than corrupted ones. Since the major theme for Wrath of the Lich King has been "Old Gods corrupt things", the Old Gods are behind it. Likely this will change at least twice more before it's actually given a concrete answer.
    • Also notably, the leader of the Bronze Dragonflight and the leader of the Infinite Dragonflight appear to be the same person from different times. Time travel is confusing.
    • Furthermore, he has always known that he will eventually become the other leader and that he will then be killed by players allied with his past self.
    • As of the end of Cataclysm, Nozdormu has lost his immortal powers. While the Bronze Dragonflight is still doing their job as Time Police, the trading card game has introduced a faction called the Lorewalkers. They seem to be mortals that are also stepping up to patrol history.
  • What the laws are exactly is kind of vague in Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?, but it's clear enough that it's illegal to steal historical artifacts from the past and the good characters are always concerned about history being disrupted.
  • Depending on the version, The Golden Alpaca from YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG is either implied to be a Clock Roach or (after an update) all but outright refers to himself as this trope, although either way it's closer to a guardian of worlds than a guardian of timenote . The updated Golden Alpaca, an anthropomorphic... alpaca... carrying a giant sword acts as the boss of Wind-Town after an extended period where your entire party consists of people who (in his mind) illegally crossed the boundaries between worlds and/or threaten their safety. (one travelled to the main character's world, one was minutes away from leaving, one had unknowingly travelled from another world, and one is an incarnation of a destroyer of worlds) and had just met up with another of these illegal travelers (The soul of a version of one of the aforementioned characters who wasn't stopped from leaving his world), who the Golden Alpaca promptly kills before attacking the heroes.


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