History StableTimeLoop / WesternAnimation

* In the ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' episode "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS2E20ItsAboutTime It's About Time]]", Twilight Sparkle comes across her (lightly injured) future self, who came from next Tuesday to give her a very serious message that she isn't able to finish due to Twilight constantly interrupting her. The rest of the episode has Twilight spend the next several days worrying about averting impending doom and getting more and more injured because of random events, matching up with her future self's injuries until Tuesday morning comes and absolutely nothing happens. She attempts to use a special magic scroll to go back in time and tell her past self that they wasted their time worrying for nothing, only for that previous interaction to play out. Upon realizing she just invoked this trope, she decides to shrug it off and declares it her past self's problem now.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'' full-episode special "The Secret Origin of Denzel Crocker": Timmy goes back in time to figure out why Crocker is so miserable. He discovers that Crocker had fairy godparents as a kid, and not just any random fairies, either--Cosmo and Wanda were his fairies. Since present-day Cosmo and Wanda had no memory of this, they quickly figure that Crocker had done something to lose his fairies. They then set out to try to stop this, but Timmy ends up being the one revealing Crocker's secret in public. Worse still, he leaves A.J.'s "Crocker-tracker" in the past, which Crocker managed to reconfigure with Cosmo's DNA, making it a much more effective "Fairy-Finder" than the one present-day Crocker previously had.

** Earlier episodes "And Then There Were None" and "And Then There Was Ben" provides an example that's ''a bit'' more complicated, which involves alternate versions of Ben. [[spoiler:Basically, a version of Ben who never retrieved the Omnitrix is attacked by evil versions of Ben working for Mainstream!Vilgax because he sees No Watch!Ben as a wildcard, but No Watch!Ben is saved by alternate, heroic versions of Omnitrix Wielders, including Mainstream!Ben. Vilgax is able to kill off all the Omnitrix wielders with a Chronosapien Time Bomb, but Mainstream!Ben passes on his Omnitrix to No Watch!Ben before dying. After, Professor Paradox takes No Watch!Ben back into time to when Mainstream!Ben was 10 years old, it turns out No Watch!Ben is the reason Ben has the Omnitrix at all, including causing the earthquake that caused Mainstream!Ben to fall into the crater. After this, No Watch!Ben also turns out to have been the one to have recruited all of the alternate version of heroic Omnitrix wielders, ''including'' Mainstream!Ben. After returning to a point after the bomb killed off the Bens, No Watch!Ben is able to reverse the damage, and the heroes mange to defeat Vilgax once more]].

** ...which actually proves to be only a semi-stable time loop. If it were a ''true'' stable time loop, Crocker would have had AJ's tracker the entire time. Either that, or he 'forgot' that he had it until immediately after Timmy gets back from his time-travel.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs'' Gargamel uses Father Time's magical hourglass to travel back in time to his childhood when he saw the Smurfs for the first time vent on killing the Smurfs with a rock over the spot the Smurfs stood at the time. Things however happen differently when Bigmouth appears distracting him, he drops the rock before time causing it to fall on his younger self while persecuting the Smurfs, presumibly causing his early hatred for them.

--> '''Raphael''': "We put the kabosh on you a long time ago! You're history!"

* ''WesternAnimation/TheTransformers'' featured a truly epic multi-layer time loop revealed over the course of several episodes. 11 million years ago, A3 led a [[TurnedAgainstTheirMasters revolt against the Quintessons]]; however, in 2006, the Quintessons yanked A3 into their own time to prevent themselves from losing Cybertron. Blaster, Perceptor, Blurr, and Wreck-Gar go back in time to help the rebellion, while the Aerialbots save A3 from the Quintessons. A3 returns to his own time to lead the rebellion. Two million years later, A3, now known as Alpha Trion, meets the Aerialbots, who have travelled back in time from 1986. The Aerialbots persuade him to save the life of a young dock worker named Orion Pax, who he rebuilds into Optimus Prime (and also rebuilds Orion's girlfriend Ariel into [[{{Fembot}} Elita One]]). The Aerialbots return to their own time and then, in 1984, Optimus Prime and Alpha Trion build the Aerialbots from a group of shuttles. You may wish to draw a diagram.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/UncleGrandpa'' episode "Future Pizza", Future!Uncle Grandpa goes back in time to warn Pizza Steve that he will lose all respect for him for reasons he can't explain. Pizza Steve then spends the entire episode worrying about everything he does being the thing that makes Uncle Grandpa lose respect for him, and near the end, he tells Uncle Grandpa that he's giving up on doing awesome stuff altogether. Uncle Grandpa tells him that all the awesome stuff he does is what makes UG respect him, which causes him to believe that giving up ''was'' what made Uncle Grandpa lose all respect for him. He then does everything he had wanted to do before, and asks "I didn't disappoint you, did I?". It then turns out that asking if he was disappointed was what made Uncle Grandpa lose all respect for him in the first place, and Uncle Grandpa goes back in time to warn Pizza Steve not to do that.

* ''WesternAnimation/DarkwingDuck'': In "[[Recap/DarkwingDuckS3E13ExtinctPossibility Extinct Possibility]]", the dinosaurs accidentally send back the timetop to present day with Launchpad and Gosalyn inside before Darkwing can board it. To comfort Darkwing, the dinosaurs invite him for breakfast and accidentally encase him in tree sap, becoming the fossil that was the reason he went back in time in the first place. Then in the present day Gosalyn and Launchpad break Darkwing out of the amber, restoring the status quo.

** "DeeDeemensional" begins with a giant monster attacking the lab. Before Dexter gets swallowed by it, he writes a message to warn his slightly younger self about not opening the passage that would free the monster and sends Dee Dee back in time to give it to him. However, younger Dexter doesn't believe Dee Dee's statement until he sees both the present and future versions of her. Because he had been rude to Dee Dee earlier, they both refuse to tell him the message until he does what they want. After he opens the passage, he writes the same message for his younger self, only to find out it's the very same message that future Dee Dee wanted to give him.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/TheFantasticFour1967'' episode "Rama-Tut", the heroes go back in time to ancient Egypt after finding an Egyptian tablet that seems to depict a man with a condition similar to the Thing's returning to normal. It turns out that the man in the tablet is the Thing himself, who briefly regains his human form after being enslaved by Rama-Tut.

* In the ''[[WesternAnimation/TheFantasticFour1967 Fantastic Four]]'' episode "Rama-Tut", the heroes go back in time to ancient Egypt after finding an Egyptian tablet that seems to depict a man with a condition similar to the Thing's returning to normal. It turns out that the man in the tablet is the Thing himself, who briefly regains his human form after being enslaved by Rama-Tut.

* ''WesternAnimation/DextersLaboratory''

* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/MaryShelleysFrankenhole'' [[spoiler: Film/TheWolfman1941 is bitten by a seemingly unknown werewolf and his girlfriend tries in vain to kill him with regular bullets before shooting herself. Decades later (after Dr. Frankenstein tries in vain to stop his immortality as a werewolf), he travels through a Frankenhole portal to the past and attempts to give his beloved a silver bullet loaded gun... before turning into the werewolf that bit him in the first place. Plus, the gun he tried to give her is the same one that she ended up killing herself with.]]

** Meanwhile, in the present, Sara, Melissa, and Zack are looking for Milo, and the Murphy family dog Diogee finds him…in a LostEpisode of their favorite TV show, ''Dr. Zone''. They go to meet with the show's [=creator/star=] Orton Mahlson, who gives them [[WriteBackToTheFuture a letter Milo gave him over 50 years ago.]] At the end of the episode, Milo learns of the letter, but realizes he hasn't been on that adventure yet. Rather than having to write the note later, he simply tucks it away in [[BagOfHolding his backpack]] to give to Orton Mahlson in 1965.

* ''WesternAnimation/ThePenguinsOfMadagascar'' episode "[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin It's About Time]]" involves a time-traveling Kowalski trying to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong while avoiding a {{temporal paradox}}... and a ''second'' Kowalski trying to avoid ''another'' temporal paradox. HilarityEnsues.

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' explicitly pointed out the trope when Stewie and Brian accidentally caused the Big Bang due to time travel.

** Earlier episodes "And Then There Were None" and "And Then There Was Ben" provides an example that's ''a bit'' more complicated, which involves alternate versions of Ben. [[spoiler:Basically, a version of Ben who never retrieved the Omnitrix is attacked by evil versions of Ben working for Mainstream!Vilgax because he sees No Watch!Ben as a wildcard, but No Watch!Ben is saved by alternate versions of Omnitrix Wielders, including Mainstream!Ben. Vilgax is able to kill off all the Omnitrix wielders with a Chronosapien Time Bomb, but Mainstream!Ben passes on his Omnitrix to No Watch!Ben before dying. After, Professor Paradox takes No Watch!Ben back into time to when Mainstream!Ben was 10 years old, it turns out No Watch!Ben is the reason Ben has the Omnitrix at all, including causing the earthquake that caused Mainstream!Ben to fall into the crater. After this, No Watch!Ben also turns out to have been the one to have recruited all of the alternate version of heroic Omnitrix wielders, ''including'' Mainstream!Ben. After returning to a point after the bomb killed off the Bens, No Watch!Ben is able to reverse the damage, and the heroes mange to defeat Vilgax once more]].

* In the ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' episode "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS2E20ItsAboutTime It's About Time]]", Twilight Sparkle comes across her (lightly injured) future self, who came from next Tuesday morning to give her a very serious message, but Twilight keeps interrupting her future self, until she gets sent back to the future before she could finish her warning. Present Twilight spends the next several days worrying about averting impending doom and getting more and more injured because of random events, matching up her future self's injuries [[spoiler: until next Tuesday morning comes, and absolutely nothing bad happens,]] which is when Twilight decides to use a special magic scroll to go back in time and warn her past self [[spoiler: that nothing bad was going to happen]] and [[spoiler: she had no reason at all to worry about. Unfortunately, her past self kept interrupting her until the time travel spell wears out and Twilight returns to the future- which is now her present. Then she realizes what she has done: her half-done attempt to warn her past self about not worrying is what made her worry in the first place and created a stable time loop. After a few moments, she decides to shrug it off and declares it her past self's problem now.]]
** To add to this, Future Twilight tells her past self where to find the time spell.

* ''WesternAnimation/''DarkwingDuck'': In "[[Recap/DarkwingDuckS3E13ExtinctPossibility Extinct Possibility]]", the dinosaurs accidentally send back the timetop to present day with Launchpad and Gosalyn inside before Darkwing can board it. To comfort Darkwing, the dinosaurs invite him for breakfast and accidentally encase him in tree sap, becoming the fossil that was the reason he went back in time in the first place. Then in the present day Gosalyn and Launchpad break Darkwing out of the amber, restoring the status quo.

* In the final episode of ''WesternAnimation/Ben10Omniverse'', [[spoiler:the villain Maltruant is revealed to be stuck in one, something that he is ''completely unaware of''. He reassembles himself, sets out to remake the universe in his image by going to before time has started and the current universe has yet to be created, only to be defeated and destroyed by Ben. Then Professor Paradox hides the pieces of him across the universe, and the cycle of reassembly and defeat starts all over again.]]

*** Also, in the movie, their main method of time travel is stated to be a self correcting method. Thusly, any copies made using the time travel are doomed to die horribly at some point. Some last longer than others. Farnsworth and Nibbler state that there can't be any paradoxes, and if there are, [[spoiler: such as by the end of the movie where it's revealed there's hundreds of Benders (all of whom one Bender foolishly tells to stay underground until that moment, thus completely screwing up the timeline of the whole movie and creating hundreds of paradoxes)]], it rips open a hole in the universe, [[spoiler:which is exactly what happens, leading to the events of the second movie.]]

** Time travel (via the Phoenix Gate) can't be used to change the past -- no matter what you do, YouAlreadyChangedThePast. But if the plot requires it, ''you can turn yourself into a god by means of a Stable Time Loop''. The Avalon arc includes the flashback antagonist known as the Archmage in a classic bootstrap scenario: he travels back in time, saves himself from his canonical death at the bottom of a cliff, spends a day jumping through time handing his past self an absurd amount of firepower, ending the day by sending his past self off to repeat the process.

** In another episode, Batman reprograms the villain's time belt to stick him in one of these; his StartOfDarkness, in which his shrewish wife berates him over and over and over, into infinity.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans'' the [[TimeTravel time-travelling]] villain Warp ''claims'' he's taking part in one; he goes back in time to steal a special clock because, a hundred years in the future, the historical records say that someone stole it at that point. It's unclear if he was lying about the whole thing or mistakenly thought the records referred to himself, but the Titans manage to ScrewDestiny and stop the robbery.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans'' the [[TimeTravel time-travelling]] villain Warp ''thinks'' he's taking part in one; he goes back in time to steal a special clock because, a hundred years in the future, the historical records say that he went back in time to steal it. Unfortunately for him, the Teen Titans prove themselves able to ScrewDestiny and stop Warp from stealing the clock, wrecking the time loop.

* ''WesternAnimation/MuchaLucha.'' Señor Hasbeena is a JadedWashOut since he lost his World Championship title in 1972 and never won it again, an incident that continues to haunt him for years. In "Woulda, Coulda, Hasbeena", Rikochet accidentally opened a time portal to the day of that fight and Hasbeena tried to stop the incident that resulted on his defeat, only to become the one who caused it in the very first place. Specifically, a light shone on Hasbeena's face during the fight, blinding him temporally and allowed his opponent to get the upper hand and defeat him. When past!Hasbeena tried to prevent this, a light from the ring shone on the big buckle of his belt and onto Past!Hasbeena's face thus leading to the events described above.