History Main / EternalRecurrence

* ''VideoGame/BillyVsSnakeman'': Originally, the idea behind NewGamePlus was that your anime got a new season. However, [[GameplayAndStoryIntegration it was eventually made into an in-universe ability]] called "looping", which your ninja is unique in being able to do. Cici eventually recruits you to attempt to break into a different world, because if something goes wrong and you die, you'll just loop again. [[spoiler:It works on the second try; on the first try, you fail, but someone else succeeds - that someone else is ''you'' from the second loop]]. [[WhamEpisode The Jungle]] reveals that you've looped ''hundreds of times'' before the game began, due to the interference of [[spoiler:Timmy, a.k.a. Mr. T]]. It's also established in Billycon that the [=MikaMika=] Douga can sense the Loop, but can't affect it, and it's driving them insane.

* The world of ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'' series has a cyclic system of time. The seven spokes of the Wheel represent the seven eras, and the turning of the Wheel is the course of history repeating over and over again. [[{{Satan}} The Dark One's]] foremost human minion, Ishamael, was a philosopher who thought too deeply about this, [[TheNihilist concluded that human life is meaningless in the grand scheme of things, and wants to help his master undo creation because of it]]. Rand, TheChosenOne, struggled with this concept for a long, long time, before eventually concluding that [[spoiler: [[TheAntiNihilist the purpose of the Wheel was the opportunity to get things right next time and fix your mistakes]]]].

* ''Manga/KannazukiNoMiko'' (manga version) has a cycle of the world being destroyed by {{Orochi}}, one miko sacrificing her life to seal away Orochi, the other miko choosing one of eight possible worlds to revive, and the reincarnation of both mikos in the new world. [[spoiler:At the ending, it's suggested that the cycle is now broken… for now, at least.]]

* When the creators of ''Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann'' needed to explain the opening scenes which depict events similar, but for the most part completely different from what ends up happening, it was implied that this may have been a previous, unsuccessful iteration, which failed for one reason or another. [[spoiler: The spiral nemesis is spiral power being so over used that universe collapses into a big crunch due to the extra energy created]].

* One of possible explanations of what happened at the end of ''Manga/GetterRobo Armageddon'' [[spoiler: where main characters are dragged into another dimension in which endless war between an army of horrenderous monsters and an army of Getters takes place]] is this - it may be possible that [[spoiler: they are Getter Teams from previous versions of the world]]. It doesn't help that Manga/GetterRobo has crossed over with various Creator/GoNagai works, including abovementioned ''Manga/{{Devilman}}''.

** Ragnarok used to do this to Asgard in the MarvelUniverse, until Thor broke the cycle.

** It might not have even been Yahweh's creation, considering that the comic gives us two new fully fledged Creators. Some interpret this as the Creation where Yahweh originally came from.

* In Marvel's ''Comicbook/{{EarthX}}'' time is presented as a circle. One day, humanity's mutation will run it's course and we will lose our identities to become whatever people think we are or need us to be, then go back in time and become the Asgardians.
* IDW stories about the beginning of the war on Cybertron, such as ''ComicBook/TheTransformersAutocracy'' and ''ComicBook/TheTransformersPrimacy'', have the ancient city-bots Metroplex and Trypticon imply that the Autobot-Decepticon War comes around on a regular basis. Metroplex even states that the order to hide himself under Nyon, where Optimus eventually found him, came from ''Optimus himself''.

* In ''LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya'', one of Haruhi's first truly chilling manipulations of reality has to do with this phenomenon. Not wanting to go back to school before experiencing a truly full summer, she forces the cast to repeat the last two weeks of summer vacation. More than 15,000 times. Kyon eventually pieces together his sense of deja vu, and asks Yuki what is going on. Yuki, who retains full memory of the situation, tells him that they have repeated the summer over and over again. And how many times have they realized they're stuck in a time loop? Over 8000.

* Creator/PercyShelley's poem ''[[http://www.bartleby.com/101/607.html Hellas]]'' imagines the recurrence of classical Greece. (The choice of subject is quite appropriate, since cyclical time was a popular hypothesis with ancient Greek philosophers.)

* The Moties in ''Literature/TheMoteInGodsEye'' die if they don't reproduce regularly, so their population grows uncontrollably. Throughout their history they've repeatedly built up advanced civilizations only to collapse due to the inevitable wars due to overpopulation and competition for resources. Unlike Nightfall, they know this happens and have built many museums to store examples of technology so that civilization can be rebuilt faster the next time, in the hope that eventually they will have some breakthrough and break the cycle. Unfortunately for them, by the time humanity discovers them they've used up most of the natural resources in their system, and one of the Moties notes that each fall takes them further back because of this.

** In ''An Exaltation of Larks'' the travelers from the [[TheStarsAreGoingOut heat death of the universe]] have been making their way back to the Big Bang to turn the universe into a PerpetualMotionMachine by setting it up for eternal recurrence; rather than succumb to a slow heat death where no energy can be generated and the stars have died, it will instead cyclically expand, [[ApocalypseHow contract]], and then expand again over billions and billions of years, allowing life to start again.

* In the episode "Dance Dance Resolution" of ''Series/TheGoodPlace'', [[spoiler:Michael has put Eleanor, Tahani, Chidi and Jason through a constant repeating cycle of memory wipes to keep them tormenting each other in the IronicHell he constructed for them, only for one of them (usually Eleanor, but on one occasion, ''[[TheDitz Jason]]'' managed) to figure out eventually that they [[ThisIsntHeaven are actually in The Bad Place]], forcing Michael to erase their memories once again and start the process over]]. Chidi, a philosophy professor, lampshades this, calling their situation a "warped version of Nietzsche's eternal recurrence".

* In Creator/IsaacAsimov's short story ''Nightfall'', a well-known cult claims that all civilization is destroyed every 2049 years when the Stars come out and cover the planet (which never experiences true darkness) in fire. At the beginning of the story, an archaeologist discovers this has indeed happened several times already. [[spoiler:Turns out, every 2049 years five of its suns are in one hemisphere, while there's only one remaining on the other. That sun is eclipsed for a long period, eventually covering the whole planet in darkness as it rotates. All the people go crazy and set fires, looking for a new source of light, burning down their whole civilization like clockwork.]]

* There's a hypothesis that suggests that intelligent life gets to a point where it eventually destroys itself, and that is why we never met any aliens yet. Every time any intelligent extraterrestrial life got to a certain point, it ended up destroying itself before it left it's planet.

* The world of ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'' series has a cyclic system of time. The seven spokes of the Wheel represent the seven eras, and the turning of the Wheel is the course of history repeating over and over again. [[{{Satan}} The Dark One's]] foremost human minion, Ishamael, was a philospher who thought too deeply about this, concluded that human life is meaningless in the grand scheme of things, and wants to help his master undo creation because of it.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Xenoblade}}'', the BigBad has been orchestrating it like so: [[spoiler: life grows from the Bionis, that life advances in technology enough to leave the Bionis, Zanza wakes up and summons the Telethia to wipe out all life on Bionis, which eventually emerges again, and so on and so forth. Everything during the events of the game have been leading up to the conclusion of one of these cycles, but Shulk and his party are willing to put a stop to it.]]

* In Creator/MichaelEnde's ''Literature/TheNeverendingStory'', it is implied that Fantasia is destroyed on regular basis whenever the balance between worlds gets bad enough, so someone has to be sent a book and travel there to create everything anew.

* The Golems in ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' believe that the universe is circular, and one (Anghammarad, in ''Discworld/GoingPostal'') has been carrying a message to a long since deceased king with him for '''over nine thousand''' years, reasoning he'll get it right the next time.
** [[AC: I Remember When All This Will Be Again]] - the last words of Discworld/ReaperMan, delivered by the Death of Universes.

-->-- '''Multiple characters''', ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}''

* In the CD&D supplement "Tall Tales of the Wee Folk", a centaur relates an account of how the current CD&D cosmology, in which the Spheres of Energy, Matter, Time and Thought oppose the Sphere of Entropy, is a temporary phenomenon: in the distant past, the four Spheres were a single Sphere of Life, and ''Entropy'' was divided into four. The unaging Faeries of the present are former Immortals from this era, who'd protected the Sphere of Life during the previous iteration, and will do so again when their full powers return as the Spheres shift once again, in a neverending trade-off between Life's dominion and Entropy's.

* ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' gives us a writ-small version in a genre of Cardassian literature called the Cyclical Epic. A multi-generational series of characters go through very similar cycles of birth, growing, working for the betterment of the Cardassian regime, and dying as they pass the torch to the next cycle. It also works as a sly metaphor for the ''Franchise/Star Trek'' franchise as a whole, with each iteration having mostly the same premise, but with a new cast of characters exploring the unknown (except, of course, for ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', which mostly ditched the exploration theme).

** In ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIV'', this emerges from AsLongAsThereIsEvil. As long as humans believe in God and pray to Him, YHVH will exist, while as long as humans cannot live without repressing their desires, Lucifer will return. This results in an endless cycle where every time God or Lucifer wins (a Law or Chaos ending), that victory will set up the seeds of the next battle, and a Neutral victory just kicks the can down the road. [[spoiler: The White have a way out of this: [[OmnicidalManiac destroy the entire universe and humanity, and the fight will be over forever]].]]

* This trope is revealed to be the plan of the BigBad Wilhem in the third entry of the ''VideoGame/{{Xenosaga}}'' trilogy. The Lower Domain of the universe is fated to collapse at a certain point in time, so his plan throughout the series is to manipulate events to initiate Eternal Recurrence to "reset" the universe, in order to stave off destruction. It's strongly implied that he's successfully done this many times prior to the events of the game. [[spoiler:Post-game material suggests that his ''true'' goal was to delay destruction long enough for the human collective subconscious to evolve to the point that a true way to stop the collapse of the Lower Domain could be discovered.]]

* If you manage to purify all the crystals in ''VideoGame/BravelyDefault'', what awaits you is [[spoiler:an entire parallel world in which you have to do the entire thing over again]]. This has happened millions of times before, and you can do this process [[spoiler:five]] times [[spoiler:at which point TheDragon has succeeded in her plan to summon her boss into the celestial realm]]. Even with the rematches against the optional bosses being different from their first encounters, [[TropesAreNotGood this repetition has not sat well with many players]]. [[spoiler:Thankfully, the sequel downplays this by only having you press the ResetButton once]].

* This is an important part of Enrico Pucci's plans in part 6 of Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure. [[spoiler: The trick is to make the universe reach the parallel point in the next cycle so quickly that spirits don't have time to die.]]

* Happens as an result of CanonWelding between ''Manga/{{Devilman}}'', ''Manga/ViolenceJack'' and ''Manga/DevilmanLady'' - [[spoiler: world constantly resets itself and in every new version of it Akira Fudou and Satan reincarnate to fight each other]]. And in ''AMON'' [[spoiler: the world is on an extended version of GroundhogDayLoop, spanning millions of years from Satan's betrayal to Akira's death, so everything that happened once will happen all over again and again.]]

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'', when Bender, Fry, and Farnsworth travel to the end of the universe in a forwards-only time machine, they witness a new Big Bang, allowing them to return to the year 3010.
** Then they go too far and have to "bring her around again" and witness ''another'' Big Bang. But this time the new universe is about ten feet lower than their old one.