History Main / TimeRewindMechanic

** The fangame ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheMissingLink The Missing Link]]'' has the Magic Hourglass, which will rewind Link to where he was standing several seconds prior while the rest of the world moves forward as normal. It's primarily used for getting past barriers that were triggered by the player, though it's also used [[spoiler:to get behind [[PivotalBoss the final boss]].]]
** ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTearsOfTheKingdom Tears of the Kingdom]]'' would later introduce this to the series proper with the Recall ability, which causes any object of Link's choosing to reverse its pathway in real time while being unaffected by all outside forces.

* The undo feature (usually the Ctrl-Z button combo) in pretty much every editing software nowadays is essentially this, allowing you to revert any changes to a document you've made recently.

* ''VideoGame/Flashback'' adds rewind on death in an UpdatedRerelease. Depending on difficulty, there's a maximum amount of rewind time allocated per level.

* Starting with ''VideoGame/RaceDriverGrid'' and ''VideoGame/ColinMcRaeDirt2'', most of Codemasters' racing games include a "Flashback" mechanic that lets you rewind a limited amount, a limited number of times per race. Totalling your car gives you the option to Flashback instead of starting the race over again, but you can Flashback at any time if you so desire. Higher difficulties give you fewer Flashbacks.

* ''VideoGame/TheBindingOfIsaac'': The item Glowing Hourglass lets Isaac rewind time when used, putting him back in the previous room and undoing everything that happened in the current. Any RNG effects will play out exactly the same way when you go back into the room, but it can let you retry the room without taking damage or gamble risk-free. There's also a clever EasterEgg with the item as of ''Repentance'': using it in he starting room of the run (only possible without cheating if you get the item as [[VideoGameRandomizer Eden]] or from Eden's Blessing), using it will take you to [[spoiler:[[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon Home]], since it rewinds time to before Isaac escaped to the basement.]]

* ''LightNovel/ReZero'': This is Subaru's signature power which he dubs "Return by Death" where every time he dies, he will reset the time loop to a preset time and will have to relive the events again to try and prevent either his death or the demise of the various allies and friends he makes in the other world of Lugunica. The concept is also fairly harshly {{Deconstructed}} as this is the ''only'' power Subaru has, and he's otherwise just an ordinary, if athletically fit, human being in a WorldOfBadass, with pretty terrible magic skillsets when he tries his hand at improving his combat potential, so the only real advantage the power affords him is retaining knowledge of the future. The series also pulls no punches in showing that rewinding time by dying '''hurts''' Subaru really badly, and he retains the memory his painful demise right up to the point his consciousness slips away, which can often take quite a while, in one particularly gruesome case, [[spoiler: Subaru is DevouredByTheHorde]] and has an understandable FreakOut upon reviving from that particular death. A condition attached to his ability is that Subaru also cannot tell others about his time-looping, otherwise he runs the risk of them being struck dead in front of him, which combines with his mounting trauma to give Subaru variations of PTSD from his multiple loops and contribute to several cases of PoorCommunicationKills, as Subaru might gain knowledge of the future to come, but he cannot explain ''how'' or ''why'' he knows of these events to be without inventing several plausible excuses to deceive his allies. Despite being able to retain his memories, nothing else returns with Subaru when he starts the loop, so he cannot train and improve his combat potential overtly beyond retaining some muscle memory of certain skills. Subaru also has no control over ''when'' his loop starts or returns him to, so if he dies he has no idea of how far back he'll be allowed to return and alter the future. In several cases this has resulted in Subaru being stuck with the consequences of his decisions and no way to fix them, such as [[spoiler: making a fool of himself in front of the royal knights and receiving a public beating and humiliation in return, or being unable to save his valued ally Rem]] because his 'save point' upon his next demise sends him back to a point after these events have occurred, and he cannot alter or update that save point himself.

* SaveScumming works this way in ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}''. When you die and continue or reload a save to try again or undo a mistake, certain characters like [[spoiler:Flowey or Sans]] will [[RippleProofMemory remember what happened before you reloaded]] and will even comment on it. Other characters will sometimes even get cases of DejaVu, say with a character you save scummed back to life after an accidental death who may comment on how they suddenly feel scared for no reason or with a character remarking that the conversation they're having with you seems familiar. [[spoiler:Even deleting your save and restarting a fresh playthrough won't erase all the lingering effects of your last playthrough, and Flowey will even call you out as a coward if you did it to abort a run where you had killed characters. Doing a [[KillEmAll Genocide Run]] even ''permanently taints your game'', making it impossible to get the GoldenEnding no matter how many times you rewind time since not even time travel can undo you selling your soul to the game's BigBad.]]

* ''VideoGame/IntoTheBreach'' lets you reset the game to the previous turn once per stage. Isaac Jone's pilot ability lets you reset a second time.

* ''Film/{{Tenet}}'' features a phenomenon called "inversion". To sum it up, it's when the entropy of objects or people is "inverted", making them move backward through time. This leads to a [[SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome fight]] where [[MindScrew the end of the fight for one is the start of the fight for the other]]. [[spoiler:They are [[UpToEleven both]] [[StableTimeLoop the same]] [[TheNameless person]]. Basically, while watching this movie your brain explodes backwards and your [[SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome genitals explode forwards]].]]

* ''ComicBook/Zatanna'' had a one time villain named Backslash, a [[EvilBrit British]] [[LowerClassLout chav]] that [[SuperWeaponAverageJoe inexplicably acquired]] a fairy enchanted sword that allowed him to rewind short periods of time. Along with allowing him to avert blows, reversing time [[ManOfKryptonite completely nullified]] Zatanna's SdrawkcabSpeech based spellcasting. She had to [[FunWithPalindromes improvise palindrome spells]] to work around this.

* ''WesternAnimation/MiraculousLadybug'': Wielders of the Snake Miraculous possess an ability called "Second Chance" - they can mark a certain moment, and then rewind to that moment as many times as necessary, so long as the rewind is done within five minutes of the initial moment. So far, both Adrien Agreste (as Aspik, [[spoiler:and then as Snake Noir]]) and Luka Couffaine (aka Viperion) have used the Miraculous onscreen, with Luka being the apparent primary snake hero (as Adrien is [[SecondSuperIdentity also]] Chat Noir)

* ''Anime/DragonBallSuper'': Angels have this power, which Whis refers to as a "temporal do-over". They can rewind time by up to three minutes, allowing them to undo an event if they deem it catastrophic enough.

* Tracer's main shtick in ''VideoGame/{{Overwatch}}'' is that she can rewind time at any point by a fixed amount. Since it is an online multiplayer game, time only flows backwards for herself, effectively placing her where she was a few seconds ago.