History Main / BackToFront

* In the ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' episode "Yug Ylimaf" Brian messing with Stewie's time machine's odometer causes the entire world to run backwards, and only they know it's happening. Brian has to figure out how to stop it once Stewie gets unborn (aka shoved up his mother's uterus).
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Sealab 2021}}'', the "Shrabster" episode. It also parodied the ''{{WesternAnimation/Superfriends}}'' narrator, who would describe the temporal relationships of the scenes with glib prepositions. "Meanwhile!"
-->'''Quinn:''' Yeah, I really liked this episode, especially ''when it was on Series/{{Seinfeld}}''.

* The ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'' episode "Remains of the Platypus" opens at a wild party being held by Dr. Doofenshmirtz, where various weird things are going on and Doof has somehow brainwashed Perry into becoming his servant. The episode works backwards scene by scene to explain HowWeGotHere, and even includes a few nods to ''Memento''.

* [[http://www.cracked.com/video_17539_series-poor-decisions-twitter-song.html The Twitter Song]] on Website/{{Cracked}}.
* In Literature/HitherbyDragons, the legend Hard And Cold. Margaret wakes up in a prison yard after being stabbed with a shiv, gets put in prison awaiting trial for three years, then gets told that she's going to kill a man.
-->The future’s the same as the past. It’s all written down in the book of the world. The only reason we think any different is that our memory only works one way—aligned against entropy with the ordering of the world. But that’s an illusion. It’s not the truth. The truth is, it’s all just there, future and past, lifeworld and deadworld, hard and cold.

* [[http://www.fisheye.co.il/memento/ An absolutely brilliant "review"]] of the film ''Film/{{Memento}}''. The writer describes how he came to watch the film, but in reverse order - just like the film itself. (The review is in Hebrew, see translation [[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=iw&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=iw&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fisheye.co.il%2Fmemento%2F here]]).

* ''Webcomic/CaseyAndAndy'' does a variant [[http://galactanet.com/comic/view.php?strip=44 here]].
* ''Webcomic/CheckPlease'': 3.26 - "Cup V". The chapter starts with the events of the following noon with Eric's mom calling his phone and follows backwards (following morning, 11PM of the day, 10:26PM) until 10:25PM, the moment in which [[spoiler:Bitty and Jack kissed on the ice in national television]].
* [[http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1667.html This strip]] of ''Webcomic/IrregularWebcomic''.

* ''Webcomic/UnwindersTallComics'': [[http://tallcomics.com/comic/16 "The Accident"]].

* The main story of ''VideoGame/{{Planetarium}}'' is relatively straightforward, but some of its subplots are told in this style: [[spoiler:the Major Puzzle's answer can be deciphered only by entering the parts of it in backwards numerical order, and the contents of the love letter are revealed to be made up of the first letter of each different animal that was on a mission in each part starting with the '''I'''guana in part XI and ending with the '''W'''easel in part I]].
* ''[[http://www.hempuli.com/mush/ Mushroom Engine]]'' is a fan-game where you can play ''[[VideoGame/SuperMarioBros Mario]]'' backwards.
* ''{{VideoGame/Braid}}'' begins with "World 2". World 1 is actually the final world, and only accessible after you complete the other worlds. In World 1 the flow of time apart from the main character is inverted. The final level is actually the beginning of the game chronologically, and its revelation allows one to make sense of the rest of the story, not to mention that the second half tells the story of the first half backwards, and shows the true intent of the main character and the princess: [[spoiler:She was actually running away from Tim]].

* Although ''{{VideoGame/Battlefield 3}}'''s single-player campaign is told in the form of flashbacks during the interrogation (just like ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty: Black Ops'') of Staff Sergeant Blackburn, the interrogation itself is set before the final level, "The Great Destroyer." Likewise, Dima's playable levels are in reverse chronological order; the penultimate level "Kaffarov" is played mostly as Dima (the last portion has [[spoiler:the player as Blackburn being confronted by Dima]]) and is set after, while the first level where you play as Dima is set between "Kaffarov" and the interrogation / "The Great Destroyer." Coincidentally, just like ''VideoGame/AceCombatAssaultHorizon'', the first level "Semper Fidelis" is a partial (dream sequence) version of the final level "The Great Destroyer".
* In ''VideoGame/ToTheMoon'', Eva and Neil (and consequently the player) see Johnny's life in reverse.
* [[http://www.alkemi-games.com/tfp/ Thanks for playing]] (A.K.A. [[spoiler:''The Last Hope of Dr. Zeit'']]) is a whole game of this, complete with the gameplay going backwards.

* ''[[https://store.steampowered.com/app/283230/Spoiler_Alert/ Spoiler Alert]]'' is a short comedic platformer that has to be played backwards, by un-defeating enemies and un-picking collectibles.
* How you usually experience the chapters in ''VideoGame/ReturnOfTheObraDinn''. You have to uncover what happened aboard the titular ship, and the primary way to do that is to see the moment a crew member died. In this memory there often will be another person who died earlier, and you can see the moment ''that'' person died, tracing back the chain of deaths from the last to the first. Chapters V and IV in particular are experienced entirely in reverse, with the (chronologically) last death of V connecting to the first death of IV in one long session of memory probing.

* The Creator/HaroldPinter play (and film version) ''Theatre/{{Betrayal}}'' chronicles a broken marriage in reverse, over a period of several years.

* The whole plot of ''Series/{{Rellik}}'' occurs like this, making it the only show that takes place over its entire runtime backwards.
* The backwards episode of ''{{Series/Seinfeld}}'' entitled "The Betrayal". The episode's title is a ShoutOut to the play ''Theatre/{{Betrayal}}'', as is the the fact that one of the characters mentioned in the episode is named Pinter.
* "Zig Zag", an episode of ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'' revival, starts InMediasRes in the middle of an armed standoff between a group of cyber-terrorists threatening to blow up a MegaCorp and the police, then goes backwards chronologically to explain how they got in this situation before jumping back to the present for the climax.
* ''Series/{{Thirtysomething}}'' used the device to good effect to dramatize a character's pregnancy.
* A variation on the theme was ''Series/RedDwarf'''s "Backwards", where the characters encounter a world where time moves backwards. A mysterious ache in Lister's ribcage and back, which appears when he first lands on the planet, is explained when a backwards BarBrawl -- or more accurately a barroom ''tidy'' -- breaks out. Cat hides in the bushes near the end, for the sort of purpose cats do that for. Quite what happens isn't shown but it clearly isn't something he enjoys very much.

* ''{{Series/CSI}}'': An episode started at the end of the shift and kept showing one case being worked, then jumping backward to the case just prior to it, showing how incidental characters in the later case were affected by the prior one, and at the end tying all the cases together in various ways.
* ''Series/{{CSINY}}'''s episode "Nothing For Something" opens with footage of the victim-to-be getting together with a guy from a bar, with the footage run in reverse. It actually doesn't look that odd until the spooning couple start putting their clothes ''on'' in bed.
* The episode of ''Series/ChinaBeach'' with Ricky Lake's character getting pregnant and having an abortion.
* An episode of ''Series/MalcolmInTheMiddle'' showed an [[EscalatingWar escalating prank war]] between Reese and Malcolm in reverse, each time showing the provocation for the last scene, and ending with the [[WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong predictably inoffensive spark]] that ignited the whole thing.
* ''Series/DoctorWho'': River Song's arc up until "Let's Kill Hitler" was this, since due to time travel her meetings with the Doctor aren't in the right order, and of the three times we've seen her they've been steadily earlier in her own timeline. Since then, it's become AnachronicOrder.
* ''Series/WhoseLineIsItAnyway'' has a game called "Backwards Scene," where the actors would improvise a scene backwards.
* ''{{Series/ER}}'':
** A backwards-running episode "began" with a defenestration from a hospital window. Subsequent scenes showing earlier and earlier events revealed the reason for the suicidal character's desperation.
** An episode began with two staff members being rushed to the hospital following a car accident. As it turns out, this is the culmination of an incredibly bad day for one of them. The scenes showing earlier events explain how things got to this point.

* Creator/OrsonScottCard's ''Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus'' involves a group of (future) scientists who study the past using machines that can look directly into it; one of the scientists was noted for always watching stories backwards, from a person's death to his birth.

* Sarah Waters' ''The Night Watch'' is in three sections, starting in 1947, then moving back in time to 1944, and finishing in 1941 as most of the characters meet.

* This happens twice in-universe in ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime''. Both times, it's because the character is being tested by the strange ter'angreal in Rhuidean. The first time, it's Rand in book 4, who sees the Aiel people's past. The first vision he sees is just a few hundred years before the present day; the last vision is the start of the War of Power in the Age of Legends. The second time, it's Aviendha in book 13, who sees [[spoiler:the future of the Aiel. The first vision she sees is scavengers hundreds of years in the future; the last vision is her daughter]]. Both times, this leads to shocking revelations for both the character and the reader.
* The children's book ''[[Literature/TheDayJimmysBoaAteTheWash The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash]]'' opens with a little girl named Meggie telling her mother about a class trip to the farm, and how things didn't get interesting until the cow started crying... because the farmer knocked a hay bale onto it... because he was distracted by the sight of his pigs climbing onto the school bus to eat the kids' lunches... and so on. There were three sequels, ''Jimmy's Boa Bounces Back'', ''Jimmy's Boa and the Big Splash Birthday Bash'', and ''Jimmy's Boa and the Bungee Jump Slam Dunk'' that featured the same girl telling similar backwards stories about a string of DisasterDominoes started by Jimmy and his pet snake.
* An in-universe example from ''Literature/MakingMoney''; Moist admits to the Patrician that putting mongooses in the post boxes was a bit much. Why were there mongooses in the post boxes? Well, to control the snakes. Why were the snakes there? Because of the toads. Why were the toads there? To keep the snails under control. Why were the snails there? Well, the Post Office had introduced cabbage-flavoured stamps...
* In Guy Haley's ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' novel ''Literature/{{Baneblade}}'', roughly half the chapters tell the current war story chronologically while the other half are flashbacks from the protagonist's past, going each further back in time.
* Julia Alvarez' ''How the García Girls Lost Their Accents'' opens with the titular sisters' adult lives in the United States and ends with their childhood in the Dominican Republic, from which the family was forced to flee due to their opposition to Rafael Trujillo's dictatorship.
* Rebecca Stead's ''Literature/WhenYouReachMe'' has Miranda telling the story starting in early April 1979 of what happened during the events of October 1978 through February or March 1979, the climactic event that the story led up to. The past events were told in past tense while the present events, which last through April, are told in the present tense.

* ''Film/JuRei'', a no-budget ''Film/{{Juon}}'' ripoff, is split into eleven "chapters" shown in reverse order.

* The short film ''Previously'' is played entirely in reverse.
* ''5 x 2'' begins with the end of a marriage and ends with the beginning of the relationship. Reportedly, another edition that uses normal chronology is called ''2 x 5''.

* The 2016 Japanese movie ''Film/MyTomorrowYourYesterday'' has half its story told this way. ItMakesSenseInContext.

* In one ''ComicStrip/PearlsBeforeSwine'' strip, Rat complains about that day's strip being printed in reverse order. The punchline is in the first panel, the setup in the last.

* ''Midnighter'' #7 tells the story backwards. Apparently it makes sense and is still good whether you read it front-to-back or back-to-front.
* There was a ''[[ComicBook/TheSimpsons Simpsons]]'' comics story that did just this, opening with the family driving over a bridge, flashing back through the kids' exploration of the Kwik-E-Mart to investigate an urban legend, and closing with a flashback to decades earlier, which confirms the myth was true. The bottom right corner of the last panel of the last page read, "The Beginning".

* Creator/RogerZelazny's short story Divine Madness chronicles a man being forced to relive in reverse his mourning for his dead love.
* An issue of ''The 3 Geeks'' tells a story this way.
* The twelve issue miniseries, ''Marvel: The Lost Generation'', gave snippets of the history of the First Line (a team of superheroes [[RetCon retconned]] into the Franchise/MarvelUniverse), with each issue taking place earlier in time. [[spoiler:The first issue showed the final fate of the team, while the last issued showed how the it formed.]] The series is unique, however, in that it was written to be read either way; by proper numerical order (starting with issue #1 and ending with #12) or published order (#12 to #1). You end up getting the whole story no matter what "direction" you chose to take it in, but the concept is fairly novel.

* ''ComicBook/{{Zannablu}} and the Smartness Serum'' starts right at the climax, with the protagonist barricated inside his house while people from different factions are trying to get in and get hold of said serum. The story is unveiled in a series of flashbacks, each probing a little further in the past, as Zannablù tells HowWeGotHere to his friend Crazy Pig. Parodied when Zannablù overdoes it and starts recounting his birth.

* ''Anime/LaMaisonEnPetitsCubes'': Sort of. The cartoon as a whole is not told this way. But as the old man dons scuba gear and descends into older and older levels of his home, the flashbacks that tell his life are staged in reverse order, starting with the old man feeding his dying wife, and ending with a flashback where they meet as children.

* How you usually experience the chapters in ''VideoGame/ReturnOfTheObraDinn''. You have to uncover what happened aboard the titular ship, and the primary way to do that is to see the moment a crew member died. In this memory there often will be another person who died earlier, and you can see the moment ''that'' person died, tracing back the chain of deaths from the last to the first. Chapters V and IV in particular are experienced entirely in reverse, with the first death of V connecting to the last death of IV in one long session of memory probing.

* The children's book ''The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash'' opens with a little girl named Meggie telling her mother about a class trip to the farm, and how things didn't get interesting until the cow started crying... because the farmer knocked a hay bale onto it... because he was distracted by the sight of his pigs climbing onto the school bus to eat the kids' lunches... and so on. There were three sequels, ''Jimmy's Boa Bounces Back'', ''Jimmy's Boa and the Big Splash Birthday Bash'', and ''Jimmy's Boa and the Bungee Jump Slam Dunk'' that featured the same girl telling similar backwards stories about a string of DisasterDominoes started by Jimmy and his pet snake.

* An in-universe example from ''Discworld/MakingMoney''; Moist admits to the Patrician that putting mongooses in the post boxes was a bit much. Why were there mongooses in the post boxes? Well, to control the snakes. Why were the snakes there? Because of the toads. Why were the toads there? To keep the snails under control. Why were the snails there? Well, the Post Office had introduced cabbage-flavoured stamps...

* ''{{Series/CSI}}''
** An episode started at the end of the shift and kept showing one case being worked, then jumping backward to the case just prior to it, showing how incidental characters in the later case were affected by the prior one, and at the end tying all the cases together in various ways.
** ''Series/{{CSINY}}'''s episode "Nothing For Something" opens with footage of the victim-to-be getting together with a guy from a bar, with the footage run in reverse. It actually doesn't look that odd until the spooning couple start putting their clothes ''on'' in bed.

* The twelve issue miniseries, ''Marvel: The Lost Generation'', gave snippets of the history of the First Line (a team of superheroes [[RetCon retconned]] into the MarvelUniverse), with each issue taking place earlier in time. [[spoiler:The first issue showed the final fate of the team, while the last issued showed how the it formed.]] The series is unique, however, in that it was written to be read either way; by proper numerical order (starting with issue #1 and ending with #12) or published order (#12 to #1). You end up getting the whole story no matter what "direction" you chose to take it in, but the concept is fairly novel.

* An in-universe example from ''Discworld/MakingMoney''; Moist admits to the Patrician that putting mongooses in the post boxes was a bit much. Why were there mongooses in the post boxes? Well, to control the snakes. Why were the snakes there? Because of the toads. Why were the toads there? To keep the snails under control. Why were the snails there? Well, the Post Office had introduce cabbage-flavoured stamps...

* At one point, in Creator/ChuckJones's ''WesternAnimation/TomAndJerry'' cartoon "Shutter Bugged Cat", Tom plays footage from "Heavenly Puss" backwards. Not a bad idea for a ClipShow.

* The video for alt-J's "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVeMiVU77wo Breezeblocks]]" depicts a violent domestic confrontation with the action occurring backwards. At the end the physical destruction to objects like bottles and furniture has been undone, but the emotional damage is clearly not.

* Orson Scott Card's ''Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus'' involves a group of (future) scientists who study the past using machines that can look directly into it; one of the scientists was noted for always watching stories backwards, from a person's death to his birth.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'' episode "Blood of the Father, Heart of Steel", all of the Brock scenes are shown front to back, but are intercut with the scenes at the Venture compound that run Back to Front. The point in time is monitored unusually; rather than following time, it follows the resale value of an original copy of Marvel Comics # 1, which gets progressively more abused as the Venture household doesn't realize its value.

--> The future’s the same as the past. It’s all written down in the book of the world. The only reason we think any different is that our memory only works one way—aligned against entropy with the ordering of the world. But that’s an illusion. It’s not the truth. The truth is, it’s all just there, future and past, lifeworld and deadworld, hard and cold.

* ''{{VideoGame/Braid}}'' begins with "World 2". World 1 is actually the final world, and only accessible after you complete the other worlds. In World 1 the flow of time apart from the main character is inverted. The final level is actually the beginning of the game chronologically, and its revelation allows one to make sense of the rest of the story, not to mention that the second half tells the story of the first half backwards, and shows the true intent of the main character and the princess: [[spoiler: She was actually running away from Tim]].

* Played with in Music/DepecheMode's video for "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvfcnpJRf0Q Wrong]]" It starts with a car rolling backwards through a city street, the driver apparently having fallen asleep inside. As it proceeds, the driver sits up and looks around drowsily at the point where he would have collapsed behind the wheel. But as the video goes on we realize that [[spoiler: [[SubvertedTrope the video isn't playing backwards, the car is rolling in reverse.]] The man behind the wheel isn't the driver -- he's a victim who had been bound, gagged, placed in a mask (disguising the gag) and probably drugged before being placed in a car with all the controls removed, and he spends the video trying to free himself.]] It manages to be way creepier than what the viewer first thought.

* This happens twice in-universe in ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime''. Both times, it's because the character is being tested by the strange ter'angreal in Rhuidean. The first time, it's Rand in book 4, who sees the Aiel people's past. The first vision he sees is just a few hundred years before the present day; the last vision is the start of the War of Power in the Age of Legends. The second time, it's Aviendha in book 13, who sees [[spoiler: the future of the Aiel. The first vision she sees is scavengers hundreds of years in the future; the last vision is her daughter]]. Both times, this leads to shocking revelations for both the character and the reader.

* The first ''{{LightNovel/Durarara}}'' OVA is told this way opening with a mysterious UFO sighting, then flashing back an hour or so at a time to eventually reveal that [[spoiler: the "UFO" was just a bunch of punks covered in glow-in-the-dark paint who got punched really hard]].

* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
** River Song's arc up until "Let's Kill Hitler" was this, since due to time travel her meetings with the Doctor aren't in the right order, and of the three times we've seen her they've been steadily earlier in her own timeline. Since then, it's become AnachronicOrder.

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vor65mNB8Uk This cigarette ad]] by Creator/DavidLynch plays in reverse. Forwards or backwards, [[DadaAd it doesn't make]] [[MindScrew any more sense]].

''[[https://store.steampowered.com/app/283230/Spoiler_Alert/ Spoiler Alert]]'' is a short comedic platformer that has to be played backwards, by un-defeating enemies and un-picking collectibles.

* Italian novelty rapping act MC CAVALLO's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWEOoenLWNE "Me li presti 2 kili di culo"]] is yet another example.

* "Zig Zag", an episode of ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'' revival, starts InMediaRes in the middle of an armed standoff between a group of cyber-terrorists threatening to blow up a MegaCorp and the police, then goes backwards chronologically to explain how they got in this situation before jumping back to the present for the climax.

* "Zig Zag", an episode of ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'' revival.

* Rebecca Stead's Literature/WhenYouReachMe has Miranda telling the story starting in early April 1979 of what happened during the events of October 1978 through February or March 1979, the climactic event that the story led up to. The past events were told in past tense while the present events, which last through April, are told in the present tense.

* The 2016 Japanese movie ''[[Film/MyTomorrowYourYesterday My Tomorrow, Your Yesterday]]'' has half its story told this way. ItMakesSenseInContext.

* In the 1931 Kaufman & Hart play ''Merrily We Roll Along'', each scene takes place in an earlier year than the previous one, opening in 1934 and ending in 1916. ''Merrily We Roll Along'' was loosely adapted into a [[Theatre/MerrilyWeRollAlong musical]] by Creator/StephenSondheim and and George Furth in 1981, with a SettingUpdate; voices from the GreekChorus count the years of TheSeventies and TheSixties going backwards during the scene changes.

* In the 1931 Kaufman & Hart play ''Merrily We Roll Along'', each scene takes place in an earlier year than the previous one, opening in 1934 and ending in 1916. ''Merrily We Roll Along'' was loosely adapted into a [[Theatre/MerrilyWeRollAlong musical]] by StephenSondheim and and George Furth in 1981, with a SettingUpdate; voices from the GreekChorus count the years of TheSeventies and TheSixties going backwards during the scene changes.

* The musical ''TheLastFiveYears'' chronicles the doomed courtship/marriage of Jamie and Cathy, employing this trope selectively: her songs and side of the story go backward in time, while his go forward. They only sing two duets in the entire show. The first is at their wedding when their timelines meet, and at the end, where Cathy is saying goodbye at the end of their first date while Jamie says goodbye for good.

* Music/Nightwish's ''Dark Passion Play'' from the album with the same name begins with a boy whispering "The End" and ends with the boy whispering "The Beginning".