This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Nate The Great: That opening quote has bugged me for some time. Shouldn't it be "time only moves when we ARE looking"? That is, unless explicitly told otherwise, we assume Issue 8 happened the day after Issue 7? Not to mention all of those cliffhangers where Issue 8 happens five minutes after Issue 7.
Ununnilium: I could see it going either way, really. It only moves inbetween stories. Sure, you only find out it has moved when you're told about it in a story, but...
Cassius335: Do TV Shows count for this (The Simpsons, possibly Pokemon...)?
Ununnilium: The Simpsons is an entirely different trope; when an episodic show without much inter-episode continuity just keeps going without aging the characters or having them change. I'm sure there's a trope for that. Pokemon has all the events taking place in a different world anyway, so time relative to the real world doesn't come into it.
Cassius335: Actually, Pokemon does seem to take place on Earth (albiet with some VERY strange additions to the (Japanese?) Animal kingdom). It's never been implied otherwise, AFAIK. Regardless, according to sources (I think someone translated the official site) Ash is (after 10 seaasons) 'still 10 years old, so some sort of temporal jiggery-pokery is going on... (later): Currently watching "A Meditite Fight"; a girl called Shauna declares herself as "The Greatest Trainer on Earth".
Ununnilium: That could just be an artifact of the dub, though.
Tanto: No, in the games the universe is explicitly stated to be an alternate-reality version of ours. (There are references to the real-life moon landing, etc.)
Morgan Wick: I think TV Time is related to Negative Continuity (and of course, Status Quo Is God).
Ununnilium: Oh, yeah, forgot about the moon landing refs in the games. Good catch.
Cassius335: Looks like someone's added The Simpsons. Ah, sod it then...
Ununnilium: I don't think 24 counts. There are actual dates in the show, we have change and the passing of time; it's just that the episodes don't play on the same days they take place.
Licky Lindsay: as the person who added The Simpsons, I'd be friendly towards a split if somebody thinks of a good name. When I brought it up in YKTTW, the lumpers convinced me.
Mister Six: The Simpsons definitely uses comic book time. The show's been on for close to 20 years and has featured contemporary cultural references throughout that run, but the characters are still the same age in any given episode. Bart was 10 when Clinton was president and he's still 10 now that Bush is in power. A prime example of comic book time.
Ununnilium: Yeah, I changed my mind.
Mister Six: Took out the 24 example because the series is actually set in future now. For posterity:
Ununnilium: Taking it back out.
What about Sweet Valley University, and all subsequent spinoffs? Also Beverly Cleary's stories about Henry Huggins and the Quimby (Beezus and Ramona) family? Even Judy Blumes stories about Peter Hatcher and Sheila Tubman?
Ununnilium: Yep, all of 'em fit here. Editing the entry to make that clearer.
- To no surprise Futurama has this going. Eight years have explicitly passed since Fry's arrival, yet each character has experienced no more than one or two birthdays.
What? Eight years have explicitly passed. Just because they don't show all the birthdays doesn't mean they don't happen. >>
Hazel: Is it just me, or is Barbara Gordon now older than Bruce Wayne? Batman is always thirty, whereas the former Batgirl is easily in her late twenties to early thirties, although no specific age is given.
Jack-of-Some-Trades: The idea that Batman is mostly a joke and partially an internet meme that got taken too far. If he's thirty now, then he was seventeen when he took in the twelve-year-old Dick Grayson (whose age is around twenty-five now). He's pushing forty. Babs is thirty-ish.
Nate The Great: Batman can't possibly be thirty still. I was under the impression that he was about twenty-six when he became Batman. About thirty when Dick Grayson came aboard. About thirty-five when Dick left in a huff to join the Teen Titans full time. He's got to be early forties by now, minimum. There's at least three years of Tim Drake as Robin to fit in there, not counting the lost year.
Ununnilium: You'll notice that, when Comic Book Time is around, what age a character logically has to be doesn't necessarily equate with what age they actually are.
- However, in Batman Beyond, it seems time has finally been allowed to catch up. This is because it's set 20 Minutes into the Future; the time between Batman's debut and "the present" was still about a decade.
- And don't forget the special situation of The Dark Knight Returns.
Falls under Elseworlds.
- The anime version of Gokuu vs Freeza. Ten episodes covering only a timespan of five minutes.
I'd say this is closer to Webcomic Time.
Later:
- This Troper ignores that he's still ten. Ash has to at least be 14 by the DP series.
- This Troper agrees. I've held that Kanto, Johto, Orange Islands+Whirl Islands, and Hoenn are a year each, minimum. Thus he has to be at least fourteen when Diamond/Pearl starts.
- This Troper ignores that he's still ten. Ash has to at least be 14 by the DP series.
Conversation In The Main Page.
- Another Batman Short Story called "Made Of Wood" features the original Green Lantern as the protector of Gotham City in the 1950s. Comic-Book Time settles in as Batman and said Green Lantern (who hasn't aged a day since the 50s) team up to stop a murderer who returns to action in the current decade. Still, the story's well done.
- Most elder members of the Justice Society (including Alan Scott) were exposed to "chronal energies" stolen by a villain in one story; this has caused them to age more slowly.
Yeah, this has an in-story reason, and there's already plenty of DC examples.
- Of course if you look at Phantom Stranger's various backstories there is usually a good reason for Stranger's lack of aging
- Esrever sngis fo gniga!
Changing to a more appropriate example.
- Accidentally inverted in Heroes. Here's how it breaks down: the first season took place over the course of about a month. The second season was four months later and took place over the course of a week or so. The third season is taking place over a similar scale and starts immediately after the second season... but events from the first season are referenced as "one year ago".
- Not so much, actually. The episode that references "one year ago" mostly takes place about six months before the first episode. The last few scenes however, are a flash forward to as little as a few hours before the first episode.
So... this is just plain not using it?
- Although, in the current edition and to the disdain of the fans, it has been advanced two centuries.
- What? The last comment makes no sense. Someone please make a better explanation.
- The year was stuck at 40,999 since the third edition of 40K (published in 1998). With the current release of the 5th edition (2008), they've shifted it forwards 2 centuries, which some fans haven't liked. The current setting is even more of a Crapsack World than the previous one...
- So is it now set in 41,199? 41,208? Should it be called WH41k now?
- Although, in the current edition and to the disdain of the fans, it has been advanced two centuries.
De-Thread Mode-ing.
- Sluggy Freelance has problems with this from time to time, as despite holidays being observed and years obviously passing, no one seems any older (if they were all twenty-somethings at the beginning, they should be at least thirty-somethings by now.)
- Of course they could all just be really immature thirty-somethings.
Canonically, time has passed, and they are really immature thirty-somethings.
- Back To The Future The Animated Series: It's now 1991, 6 years since 1985 when Marty McFly was 17 years old. He and Jennifer are still teenagers.
- That's not true - they were in college in the animated series. Granted, Marty should've been out of college by that point unless he was planning on becoming a doctor or a lawyer. Also, it didn't help that Marty was Flanderized into acting like an immature twelve-year-old. But no, at the very least he and Jennifer weren't still teenagers.
- It's actually problematic - to account for the JSA being around in both World War II and the present day, the members were taken off-stage into a kind of mystical holding tank for the time between the Mc Carthy era and about five years into DC's current timeline. Young Bruce *couldn't* have seen Alan Scott in action during the 1970s as a result.
- Although that's not the only story to ignore that "mystical holding tank", as shown elsewhere on the same site as the "fan-made timeline" above.
No they weren't. They just retired.
There is a theory among fans that "James Bond" is just a codename passed from spy to spy, but this is not supported in the films (other than the non-canon Peter Sellers version of Casino Royale) — indeed, in For Your Eyes Only, Roger Moore's Bond is seen laying flowers at the grave of the woman that George Lazenby's Bond married in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. This is also referenced in License To Kill when Felix Leiter comments that Timothy Dalton's Bond "was married once", and that it was "a long time ago".
- Another theory is that he switches to his "Strangely identical" son.
- There is the "Body Switch" theory — that Bond's brain and/or personality are transferred to a new body when his old one is killed. Which explains all the different faces and the long career. (A spy with over six decades of experience and a face and fingerprints — heck, DNA — that's easily changed? What spy agency wouldn't wet themselves?)
- This troper believes the scene in Quantum Of Solace where Bond asks a dying Mathis whether "Mathis" was his cover name lends support to the "'James Bond' as code name" theory.
- See Wild Mass Guessing. He's clearly a Time Lord.
Yes, see Wild Mass Guessing — for all of this.
- When you think about it, there's a major example of this in the Gantz manga. The volume which ended on Kei Kurono's death was released December 19, 2006. Almost two years later, the chapter which brings him Back from the Dead has been released, but still not in a volume format. How much time passed in-story between the events? A few hours.
- They've mention it's a six months
...so is it six months or a few hours?
