Fanfic / The Infinite Loops

There's action that makes you pump your fist in amazement, moments that make you "aww" from their gooey happiness. Things that you shudder to think about, and can bring a tear to the eye. It's not about quick jokes and entertainment anymore: it's about evolution towards something greater. It's about learning how to create something new inside the frame work we have.

You think it's about humor and being cool. But if you wrote something stronger, to touch the heart and mind and make a reader think, then isn't that enough? Expand your horizons far enough, put your mind to it, and you can do anything.

If we all prepare ourselves, look back, look forward, and make the choices we know are right, we can create something that will stand the test of time.

— Leviticus Wilkes on the Infinite Loops Misc. Thread

The Infinite Loops, also known as the Infinite Loops Project (ILP), or the Innortal-style Time Loops, are an ever-expanding genre of Time Loop fanfics.

The premise is that something has happened to Yggdrasil, the World Tree computer that contains and runs the multiverse. As a result, the various universes have been put in 'safe mode', time-looping until Yggdrasil can be repaired. Each universe's loop is maintained by the presence of an Anchor, a core person from that loop who is the first to notice their universe is looping. There is always an Anchor in a Loop.

As repairs to Yggdrasil continue, more people in each universe begin Looping as well, but are not necessarily aware participants in every Loop; only the Anchor is so blessed... or cursed. Your mileage may vary. Characters that are aware of the Loops and retain memories of their previous go-arounds are termed "Awake".

In addition, Fused Loops allow Loopers from different universes to interact. As a given, Loopers are tremendously stir-crazy due to the loops. Hilarity usually ensues.

Pages for compilations with 20 or more chapters

• The Disney Loops
  • The original Disney and Kingdom Hearts Loops can be found here.
    • The second compilation, which revises and continues the original, can be found here and here.
  • The Disney / Kingdom Hearts Loops thread can be found here.
• Doki Doki Literature Club Loops
  • The Doki Doki Literature Club! Loops can be found here and here.
  • The Doki Doki Literature Club loops are assembled on the Indie Game thread, found here.
• The Legend of Zelda Loops
  • The Zelda Loops are found here.
  • The Zelda Loops thread can be found here.
• The Jurassic Park Loops
  • Can be found here.
  • The thread can be found here.
• The Mega Man Loops
  • The Mega Man Loops are found here.
  • The Mega Man Loops are so long they've been broken into parts: 1 2 3
• The MLP Loops
  • The MLP Loops can be found here.
  • The MLP thread is so long it’s been broken into parts: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10.
• The Pokémon Loops
  • The Pokémon Loops can be found here.
  • The Pokémon Loops are so long that they've been broken into parts: 1 2 3 ^note Its Loops are now being posted in the second Nintendo Thread, but still being compiled separately.
• The RWBY Loops
  • The RWBY Loops can be found here. Another author, who actually started before the former, has written their own.
  • The RWBY Loop thread is found here.
• The Spyro Loops
  • The Spyro the Dragon loops ^note  covers both the classic and The Legend of Spyro series can be found here.
  • The Spyro the Dragon loop thread can be found here, with an official FanFiction.Net Forum found here.
• The Winx Club Loops
  • The Winx Club Loops can be found here.
  • The Winx Club thread can be found here.

Links to published compilations

• As a rule, all compilations are currently marked as in-progress.
  • Innortal's original series of Loops can be found here. Note that the events that take place within Innortal's Loops are generally taken as Broad Strokes in comparison with the later entries.
  • Miscellaneous loops can be found here and here.
  • The Ace Attorney and Professor Layton Loops can be found here.
  • The Attack on Titan loops may be found here.
  • The Camp Camp Loops can be found here.
  • The Cartoon Network & Nickelodeon Loops can be found here.
  • The DC Comics Loops can be found here
  • The Digimon Loops can be found here, while the Rockbane compilation is here. Please note that similarly to Innortal's, Rockbane's Loops are taken as Broad Strokes.
  • The Doctor Who Loops can be found here.
  • The Eyeshield 21 Loops can be found here
  • An Evangelion loop focusing on what caused the first loop crash can be found here.
  • The Fate/Grand Order loops can be found here.
  • The noncanon Fire Emblem: Awakening Loops can be found here.
  • The Fire Emblem: Three Houses Loops can be found here.
  • The Final Fantasy Loops can be found here. Bravely Default Loops are also posted here.
  • The Five Nights at Freddy's Loops can be found here.
  • The Fullmetal Alchemist loops can be found here.
  • The How to Train Your Dragon Loops (eventually expanded to encompass Pern and other dragon-centric settings) are found here.
  • All Homestuck Loops under 3000 words are posted here.
  • The Inuyasha Loops can be found here
  • The Log Horizon Loops can be found here
  • The Magi-Nation Loops can be found here.
  • The Mass Effect Loops are found here.
  • The Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Infinite Loops compilation can be found here.
  • The Nintendo Infinite Loops compilation (minus Pokémon and The Legend of Zelda) can be found here.
  • The Ōban Star-Racers Loops can be found here
  • The Ojamajo Doremi Loops can be found here.
  • The Ranma ½ Loops can be found here.
  • The Red vs. Blue can be found here.
  • The Sailor Moon Loops can be found here.
  • The Warrior Cats Loops can be found here.
  • The SCP Foundation Loops can be found here.
  • The Skullgirls Loops can be found here. An older version that went the route of Dead Fic is here.
  • The Shin Megami Tensei and Persona loops can be found here and here.
  • The Sly Cooper Loops can be found here.
  • The Star Wars loops can be found here.
  • The Transformers Loops can be found here.
  • The Touhou Project loops can be found here.
  • You can offer skull tribute to the Warhammer 40,000 loops here.
  • The Yu-Gi-Oh! Loops can be found here.
    • The second complication for the loops (focusing on ARC-V) can be found here.
    • The singular loop DENN can be found here and here.
  • An extended Ranma loop (and crossover with Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha) is here and here.
  • A continuation of Innortal's Naruto loops, compiled by a different author, can be found here.

Links to discussion forums about the loops

• The Miscellaneous Loops thread has been broken into parts: 1 2 3 4 56 789
• The Infinite Anime (formerly Gainax) Loops thread can be found here.
• The Animorphs Loops thread can be found here.
• The Ace Attorney and Professor Layton Loops thread can be found here.
• The Attack on Titan loops are located here.
• The Banjo-Kazooie Loops thread can be found here.
• The Code Geass Loops thread can be found here.
• The DC Comics Loops Thread can be found here.
• The Digimon Loops thread can be found here.
• The Doctor Who loops thread can be found here.
• The Final Fantasy Loops thread can be found here. Bravely Default Loops can also be placed here.
• The Fullmetal Alchemist loops thread can be found here.
• The Giant Mecha loops (formerly Gundam) can be found here.
• The .hack Loops thread can be found here.
• The How to Train Your Dragon Loops (eventually expanded to encompass Pern and other dragon-centric settings) are found here.
• The Homestuck Loops thread can be found here.
• The Indie Game thread (formerly the Five Nights at Freddy's thread) can be found here.
• The Jojos Bizarre Adventure Loops thread can be found here.
• The Looney Tunes Loops thread can be found here.
• The Log Horizon Loops thread can be found here.
• The Lyrical Nanoha thread can be found here.
• The Madoka Magica Loops can be found here.
• The Marvel Comics Loops thread can be found here.
• The Mass Effect Loops thread can be found here.
• The Mobile Suit Gundam Loops thread can be found here.
• The Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Loops thread can be found here.
• The Mobile Suit Gundam Wing Loops thread can be found here.
• The Naruto Loops thread can be found here. Includes all the O7 loops.
• The (now dead) Nasuverse loops can be found here. It now has a new thread.
• The Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network loops are located here.
• The Nintendo Loops thread can be found here and here.
• The Project Diva Loops thread can be found here.
• The Project × Zone Loops thread can be found here
• The Red vs. Blue Loops thread can be found here.
• The (now-dead) Sailor Moon Loops thread can be found here.
• The (now dead) Shin Megami Tensei and Persona Loops thread can be found here. Its content has been moved to "Sega X Namco X Capcom Vs. Yggdrasil (Project X Zone Infinite Loops)".
  • The Sega thread is also dead and has been moved to the Nintendo thread.
• The (now-dead) Shonen Jump Loops thread can be found here. Its content has been folded into "Miscellaneous Anime".
• The Sly Cooper Loops thread can be found here.
• The Star Wars loops threads can be found here and here.
• The Super Hero Loops thread can be found here.
• The Transformers Loops thread can be found here.
• The Warhammer 40,000 Loops are located here.
• The Worm Loops thread can be found here.
  • The older, now considered non-canon Worm thread can be found here.
• The Xenoblade Chronicles 1 loops are located here.
• The Yu-Gi-Oh! Loops thread can be found here.

Multi-Fusion Threads

• These threads are for massively fused Loops. Expects things to get crazy.
  • This thread is for a story in which every Looper EVER is involved with the Battle of Pelennor.
  • This thread is for a story in which every Looper EVER is involved in the making of a Theatrical Production, directed by Haruhi and the S.O.S brigade.
  • This thread is for the Great Battle of Perim.
  • This thead is for the Yggdrasil Olympics.

Other

• Links containing useful information are found here.
  • This spreadsheet compiles all the known Looping universes, along with their Anchors and Loopers.
  • You can add to the Multiverse with this form. Please do not add new universes, anchors or loopers without checking the Miscellaneous Loops Thread first.
  • The Infinite Loops now has its own Wiki. View it here.
  • There is an index containing all snips from all threads which is currently under progress. You can find it here. ^note DO NOT open on mobile - the page will stop loading

---

The Infinite Loops provide examples of:

In General

• Aborted Arc: Given that multiple writers work on several loops at a time, this is bound to happen, though most are pretty good about finishing what they start. Most of the time this tends to happen because the arc isn't all that well received either by fellow loop writers or readers, a case of real life getting in the way, or a loop writer simply losing interest in the loops in general. Of course, there are cases of loop writers genuinely forgetting they were writing an arc too.
• Adaptational Badass: Basically a requirement: practically all Loopers acquire Wrong Context Magic or tech or abilities from other Loops.
• Adaptational Heroism: Some characters that were villainous in the baseline have mellowed out since they started Looping.
• Adaptational Villainy: Likewise, some characters that were heroic in the baseline have been broken by the Loops, though fortunately this is rare overall.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Due to variant Loops, the exact relationships between characters (particularly those who are Awake and those who aren't) can alter from time to time.
• Alas, Poor Villain: The typical (but by no means only) view of Sakura. While a lot of Awake beings fear her, including her own Anchor, it's typically acknowledged that when you get down to it, Sakura is just a sad girl who was the first to realize that she could toss away morality, since all of her actions ultimately amount to nothing. She manages to recover a little bit, but she still has her relapses like every looper, and the reputation amongst loopers for being the namesake of "Sakura Syndrome" chases her everywhere.
• Alternate Reality Game:
  • The 'Hub' universe is suppose to be our universe, and isn't looping because it was the only universe not damaged by what supposedly caused the loops in the first place (aside from Eiken, of course). While rarely ever brought up, there is mention that loop compilers and writers are supposedly seers who are able to see the shenanigans the characters get up to in the loops and are compelled to write about it as part of Yggdrasil's system of backing up data.
  • It's possible for loopers to loop into something called a 'near-Hub' loop for a brief time, which is essentially a copied, one-off loop version of our world where the Loops fan-fiction itself doesn't exist, to prevent Loopers accessing the main backups. Not many writers actually do anything with this outside of the characters talking to their original creators or taking items from the Hub loop, but it's there, technically making the loops this trope.
• Alternate Self: "Looping Twins" usually fall into one or another. They're the same character, but from different continuities that have both started looping. Usually, this setup is used to prevent Dissassociative Loop Identity Disorder from happening, especially if the alternate continuities are are vastly different. Some notable cases are Classic, Legends, and Skylanders Spyro, Taichi Yagami and Taichi 'Tai' Kamiya, VILE Carmen and Black Sheep Carmen, and the Thunder Cats, which have mirror twins of nearly all their looping classic and advanced counterparts.
  • Notably Averted in the Yu-Gi-Oh! loops, with the "Legacy Characters" (a.k.a. characters from previous installments who appeared in ARC-V). In this case, Multiple-Choice Past is in full force, as those loopers have two baselines in their heads each, loop into each baseline at a 50/50 rate, and tend to be pretty affected by the disparity; for example, Kite confuses his brother's preferences in food.
• Ambiguously Human: Or "Ambiguously Whatever Species You Started As When You Started Looping". Many Loopers, due to repeated species swaps, shapeshifting and other looping randomness, have been so many different things that they aren't even sure what they are anymore. Exacerbated in some cases due to these changes being permanent outside of Null Loops (i.e. absolutely Baseline loops where a Looper is back to their default form), leaving some to become an Eldritch Abomination with a thin veneer of humanity.
• Anachronic Order: There's no guarantee that a given snippet comes after the one before it or before the ones after it.
• Anachronism Stew: Loopers will sometimes swipe things from other loops to use later... no matter what technology base their home loop has.
• Apocalypse How:
  • Actions that result in Eiken Loops or extremely messed-up Loops often fall somewhere in here, since they usually involve a Looper causing a Branch to crash through their own actions and that means a whole universe falls apart. In addition, the Loops themselves are a last-ditch effort by the gods that run reality to stave off the absolute highest level of this, i.e. the complete annihilation and cessation of all reality throughout the infinite multiverses.
  • An event known as The Crash involves the highest level of destruction happening to an entire branch, that is a universe and its directly related multiversal variants, of Yggdrasil. It has been completely and retroactively wiped from existence; loopers that once knew whatever branch it was simply don't anymore, even the Admins only suspect that the Anchor for that branch had an instrument of some kind.
• The Artifact:
  • The Gods trying to repair Yggdrasil being referred to as 'Admins'. This was because the Admins from Ah! My Goddess were originally the ones repairing the multiverse. As the loops continued to grow and more deities based on actual mythical deities began popping up, actual Admins from that particular anime started becoming rarer and rarer, to the point they almost never pop up at all.
  • The time loop itself can end up becoming this for a few loop compilations. While they usually start out following the 'screwing around with canon events' plotlines, depending on how much source material there is (and sometimes even if there is a lot to go on), the snips slowly start to go from 'messing around with canon events' to 'watching near god-like characters play around and mess with each other', or 'watch them deal with odd variants', or 'watch them interact with characters not from their canon'. Of course, this is by no means a inherently bad thing. A lot of the more well known and liked snips tend to fall into those three categories.
• Bazaar of the Bizarre: During big enough Fused Loops that don't entail loopers catching up at the nearest bar or huge, chaotic battles for sport, it's common for Loopers to form flea markets where they barter with whatever's cluttering up their Subspace Pockets.
• Beyond the Impossible: Yggdrasil is like a computer and if Loopers force it to do things that it's not programmed for or doesn't have the capacity to perform, the result is an error. Errors mean more work for admins and Eiken loops for loopers.
• Bittersweet Ending: How the Crisis was resolved falls here. To counter a virus infecting Yggdrasil's master systems that threatened to activate any baseline villain who lived to the end of the current Loop, already active Loopers were asked to go around killing the unAwake villains so they couldn't activate. This did not just include outright villains but also those who didn't necessarily qualify as villains, but would have been threats regardless due to them growing more powerful as they looped or were likely to become Malevolent Looping Entities. The Loopers who went through this got put through an emotional wringer and wound up with a mixed blessing. On one hand, not every villain could be found and killed before the Loop ended, meaning those universes now have Looping threats active in them. On the other hand, the universes that did deal with these threats successfully got a new friendly Looper activation to compensate. For an example of the latter, the RWBY loopers compiled a list on who they didn't want looping, and successfully managed to kill them all before their Loop ended. As a result, they gained two more Loopers in Maria Calavera and Mercury Black, the latter trying (and failing) to Stealth Loop.
• Black Hole Sue: In-Universe, Leah complains how no matter what she or anyone else does in her Branch, "Everything seems to revolve around those two idiots (Bella and Edward) and their relationship, whether it wants to or not." It's a fact that most loopers, even from said universe, cannot stand Bella and Edward, and it's why those two are the most wildly hated two non-loopers both in and out of universe because of it. Regardless, it doesn't stop loopers from causing them hell every chance they get, no matter how much they eat up baselines they loop into.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Apparently, before Twilight Sparkle came along, all the potential Anchors for the Terminator Loop had a tendency to go mad, die, or go mad and then die.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Inverted. Since all the characters know that the Hub universe (our world) exists, references to this generally make sense In-Universe. The only true example is Deadpool, who is the only one aware of the writers working on the Infinite Loops (and he isn't even looping).
• Broad Strokes: The general viewpoint on Innortal canon.
• Canon Immigrant: Not only do the loops allow characters from different canons to interact, there are even a few characters from other fanfics who have gone on to become Loopers too. These include:
  • Nobody Dies Rei
  • Past Sins Nyx
• Can't Catch Up: Several characters feel this way about themselves, especially if they Awoke later than others in their loop or from a Glitch. Most loopers feel this way about the Original Seven, who were the first seven Anchors to begin looping, as they are undoubtly the most powerful Anchors by merit of their age.
• Can't Take Anything with You: Unless it's soul-bonded to you^note Usually restricted to powerful magical artifacts or you put it in your subspace pocket.
  • Items from locked Loops can't be taken even with subspace pockets, and tend to get replaced with disapproving notes from the Admins. Twilight Sparkle was very disappointed to learn that she wouldn't get to play with Time Lord technology.
• The Chosen One: The Anchors of each universe, chosen to keep the universe stabilized.
  • The Chosen Many: Loopers in general, who are usually activated after an Anchor to help strengthen their home universe and to keep their Anchor on the right side of sane.
• Collector of the Strange: Loopers in general tend to collect things in their Pockets, some of which are normal, but some of which are on the odder side - Ranma Saotome, for instance, collects Death Stars.
• Comedic Sociopath: A non-Looping Nanny Ogg cheerfully brushes off Twilight and Rarity killing an evil witch because it's not someone she or Granny Weatherwax know.
• Continuity Drift: In-universe, the loops regularly have certain details vary between them, such as when and where the Anchor wakes up, and other such endless variations on what is deemed "baseline", i.e. the source material's original plot.
• Continuity Snarl: Both in and out of universe, due to bizarre Variant Loops and the absurd number of authors, respectively, as well as the Time Abyss scale of the Loops.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Loopers who manage to crash a Loop by pulling too many shenanigans (creating extra work for the admin responsible for it) get punishment loops in unpleasant settings, the most notorious being the Eiken loops. The rare few that enjoy Eiken loops get sent to places that they personally hate instead.
• Cosmic Flaw: Yggdrasil, the world tree, is actually a gigantic computer and each of its branches is a different reality, and it so happens that said computer has crashed; so badly that the gods - better known as Admins - are trying to fix it and discover what even happened in the first place, and the only way to buy time is to have people in the various settings repeat their lives over and over and over again. And yes, the system is susceptible to viruses.
• Crapsack World: Not only are examples of these settings caught up in the loops, some realities are labeled as Quarantined either because they are filled with malicious malware and viruses, manifesting as a mind raping Eldritch Abomination to Loopers, or because there are things in their baseline which are flat out dangerous to the multiverse as a whole. Uzumaki is an example of the former and the Skaia protocol used to be an example of the latter.
  • Also the Lovecraft Mythos, albeit due to a nonstandard cause:
    Sleipnir: You do realize that the Lovecraft Mythos is basically comprised of a branch of rogue hackers and viruses? They're the 4chan of Yggdrasil!
    Twilight Sparkle: That actually explains a lot.
  • Several worlds that were this in baseline, however, have begun to improve over time, thanks to the efforts of the Loopers.
  • The Twilight universe isn't highly regarded by visiting Loopers. It almost drove its Anchor, Leah, to irreversible despair and madness before an Admin realized she had become Awake and pulled her out for therapy in a better Loop. Loopers forced to go there tend to raise hell or kill those responsible for the setting's condition, some out of spite and others to get revenge for Leah.
  • The Amala branch - Shin Megami Tensei - did drive all its loopers crazy at one point, which led to The Edit. And even after that, these loops are not a cakewalk. Other than the many incredibly dangerous entities that obtain power by the number of people who know they exist, several flaws in the code prevent the loopers from improving their situation in any way.
• Crazy Workplace: The World Tree Yggdrasil is staffed by various deities/computer programmers tasked with preserving every fictional universe.
• Crossover: Fused Loops. What, and how much, is crossed over varies.
  • Also, the premise as a whole qualifies an Ah! My Goddess crossover.
  • Massive Multiplayer Crossover: According to the background lore, backups of universes stored in the Hub (our world) cause the natives to write fiction about those universes. On a more tangible note, the Admins will occasionally dump multiple Anchors into the same loop for laughs or to settle bets.
• Crossover Punchline: A favorite tactic by a lot of loop writers, though there are a lot who make a conscious effort not to over abuse this.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Fights between a Looper and a non-looper will, with very few exceptions, result in one in the Looper's favor, due to their vast experience and access to Wrong Context Magic and technology.
• Darker and Edgier: And Lighter and Softer. Gets zig zagged pretty frequently. While generally lighthearted, some writers will often write darker and more serious snips for several reasons, be it for character development reasons, plot reasons, or just because. Likewise, more serious in nature loop series will often have sillier snips that fall more in line with usual loops shenanigans. And some loops are, thanks to Yggdrasil's sickness, far more darker and worse off than the baseline of a given branch, such as when an Anchor's friends and family turn on them or the world was conquered by the villain before they woke up.
• Deadpan Snarker: Everyone gets moments of this.
  • World of Snark: No, a multiverse of Snark.
• Death Is Cheap: Most loopers regard death as an annoyance or minor inconvenience due to the loop reset always bringing them back.
  • Rincewind, on the other hand, is so efficient at running away that he has not yet died in ANY loop... Until the real-life death of Sir Terry Pratchett, at least. Since Death couldn't be there for Sir Terry in the Hub, Rincewind goes in his place, and dies for the first time in the Loops.
• Deity of Human Origin: Played Straight and deconstructed. Ascending to In-Universe Godhood is alright, like Goku becoming a Super Saiyan God, and quite a few loopers have become powerful enough to be considered gods in their own right. Ascending to Adminhood, however, is a bad thing. A very, very bad thing. Just ask Madoka...
• Depending on the Writer: This can come up on occasion, particularly with more divisive characters or power levels.
  • Exactly how the mechanics of characters 'Awaking' for the first time in the loops work is a subject many authors of the loops can't seem to agree upon. The only thing set in stone is that they have to be important to the Anchor in some way to start looping. Ask any of the authors about specifics though, and one will likely tell you only characters from baseline can loop, while another will say characters that originate from variants can loop, while others will say variant originated characters can only loop if soul bounded to the Anchor, while others say they have to be soul bounded to an artifact that they can stuff in their subspace pocket to survive the loop transition, while others say that it's impossible because subspace pockets can't hold sentient creatures, even if they're in a non-sentient object like a Pokeball... And then there are people who say pretty much the only qualification is how popular they are with the readers, and if people/the authors care about them enough to do so.
  • Of course, there's also character interpretations and such. One writer may write an arc to show that a character has some rather deep Hidden Depths... while another can write an arc shortly after that has them extremely Flanderized for the sake of comedy. Both can be true, also, given the nature of the Loops being a massive Time Abyss.
  • The relative power of loopers also tends to vary a lot. Generally it's presumed loopers with any significant level of experience should have grown to the point that they should be able to curb stomp anything the loops throw at them that isn't a god in-universe (and for the best loopers, sometimes gods aren't even a problem). However, if an author needs a looper to be challenged for the sake of a story, expect them to struggle when dealing with things that would usually be trivial for them. Some authors get around that by having their story set in an early part of the Looper's time as a Looper if they need them challenged but others will simply set it as if it was the character's most recent appearance.
• Dimensional Traveler: Traveling to a variation of the universe you're in isn't a problem, as it's technically part of the same Loop. Traveling to a completely different Loop, on the other hand can create significant problems within Yggdrasil, especially if an Anchor spends a great deal of time during a Loop outside their Loop of origin. Once Upon a Time was designated Read-Only for a long time, since no one could tell just how many Anchors were needed to stabilize the multiple tangled potential Loops it encompasses in the first place.
• Dirty Business: Came up during the Crisis. A virus got uploaded that was guaranteed to activate someone by the end of the Loop if they didn't die during it, and the coding of said virus was inclined towards villainous characters. There was no way to purge the virus or otherwise stop it on the Admins' ends, and deliberately crashing loops to stop it would act as activation criteria and apply to everyone still alive when the crash happened. So the Anchors and Loopers of the Loops had to go around killing all possible threats that could be activated to counter the virus. This did not just include villains either, but anyone who could become a threat should they begin Looping. Quite a few Loopers were far from happy with having to do so but accepted that it was necessary, with varying degrees of success.
• Disaster Dominoes: Do not be surprised if what causes massive chaotic events started with a prank gone wrong at the exact worst time for it to happen, regardless of what compilation you're reading. If the series was already prone to it happening, events that don't lead into this are the exception, not the norm. The end results are usually comedic, but not always as Helia demonstrated.
• Doing In the Wizard: With regards to what's going on with Yggdrasil at the Admin level. In the Innortal era, all that was explained was that Yggdrasil was broken and the goddesses from Ah! My Goddess were working on it. It was little more than an Excuse Plot to allow for time looping shenanigans with the occasion crossover. As time has gone on, more focus has been placed on what's going on at the Admin level, and how the problems with Yggdrasil affect various loops.
• Door Stopper: When this entry was first added, the FiM loops had gone on for 105 chapters and 1,041,039 words. And that's not even counting all fics in the Infinite Loops as a whole...
  • The FiM loops have more than doubled in length as of August 2017. There are now a staggering 206 chapters and 2,122,201 words in the MLP Loops alone. That's like reading The Lord of the Rings trilogy over four and a half times!
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: Characters can have some Loops where their ability to access their subspace pockets or out-of-loop abilities are curtailed or sealed for various reasons (such as a Loop being Read-Only). Loopers can also do this to themselves to keep things from getting too boring, such as Ranma, one of the Original Seven, going a whole Loop using only one discipline of martial arts or only one move (which, technically, qualifies for the former). Loops that involuntarily lock down a looper's abilities are generally not fun for the Looper in question, which is why such Loops are sometimes used as punishments for having crashed a Loop.
• The Dreaded: Malicious Looping Entities (MLEs) by and large, but while Kyubey, the Tick, and even DIO Brando are considered horrifying, even they pale compared to the black hole of idiocy known simply as Billy. Mandy, who was aiming to become The Dreaded, was slightly less than thrilled at being upstaged by her idiotic friend.
• Dysfunction Junction: The Admins, depending on the pantheon. Just like in real life, the Olympians manage to be the worst, many of them being childish, spiteful and petty.
  • Not that some of the Loopers are much better, and even the best ones start getting worn down by the passing eternities.
• Eldritch Abomination: Usually the result of viruses getting into a computer, unless they're native. Sometimes Loopers can replace them.
• Empowered Badass Normal: Every Badass Normal becomes this over the course of the loops.
• Even the Loving Hero Has Hated Ones: Quite literally no one in The Multiverse likes Dolores Umbridge, even the nicest heroes such as Twilight Sparkle and Phineas and Ferb. The reasons for this all boil down to her being a Holier Than Thou Hypocrite who will punish anyone for just about anything they do, whether it's actually worth a punishment or not.
  • Ritsuka Fujimaru is noted to be capable of befriending and being unconditionally caring towards practically everyone, villians included... with the sole exception of Faerie England.
    Ritsuka: The Fae of Britain are horrible, awful existences that I frankly, could not care how horribly someone wants to kill them. I have watched DIO string them up by their entrails and stab them full of knives. I have seen the Doomslayer go on a one man rampage and slaughter every fae in his path until Morgan tossed him into the ocean. Alucard took great pleasure in coming up with individual tortures for every last one he could get his hands on, and I even helped participate in some of them, and then he held a zombie apocalypse war against the final foe of the Lostbelt. There is a long, long list of horrible, horrible things I have watched happen to the fae. They deserve every second of it.
• Evil Versus Oblivion: The main reason Loopers that would otherwise be labeled "Evil" are allowed to loop. They may be violent, sadistic, or murderous, but in the end, they still need Yggdrasil to survive and their presence as Awake beings helps stabilize and repair the damage to the World Tree. Without it, they too would be destroyed. Also, many of them have started to reform over time.
• Expendable Alternate Universe: Generally averted. Crashing a Loop is regarded as a Bad Thing (there are extenuating circumstances, such as if a Loop is too nightmarish to live through), and even doing horrible things that'll 'reset' when a loop does is not smiled upon. In fact, having this viewpoint is a critical component of Sakura Syndrome.
• Fantastically Indifferent: Zigzagged. Loopers have access to the myriad wonders and horrors of the multiverse thanks to a sick godtree, and quickly become used to the idea of strange things just happening. However, as many of them have pointed out, nobody has seen everything; new loopers frequently react with confusion to loop shenanigans, and even older loopers can be baffled by variant loops.
• Fate Worse than Death:
  • The cases where Loopers end up in Eiken usually qualify as this. Except for Haruhi and those who come from the Red VS Blue Loops... at which point the Admins find a Punishment Loop that works as intended for these people.
    • The Ren & Stimpy Show was a looping world commissioned late in the game to act as a punishment when Eiken wasn't enough.
  • More seriously, ascending past a certain power level can cause a universe to potentially cease to have ever existed. Whoever does this has to live eternally in a pantheon that will never forgive them for this even as they get duties to match their new status, let alone with the guilt that they alone are responsible for a universe dying permanently.
• Framing Device: The multiverse has crashed and now every universe is stuck in a time loop! Now watch for episodic shenanigans!
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: Sometimes, Loopers will Replace other characters, usually but not always other loopers. Occasionally they will replace a looper when that looper is replacing somebody else in the same loop.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Rohan Kishibe is shaping up to be this to the Loopers. The other Loopers keep an eye on him to be sure he doesn't become another Sakura, but otherwise they would rather not be around Rohan.
  • Some formerly villainous loopers are hit with this as well, both in universe and without.
• From Bad to Worse: Force ending a bad loop will result in an even worse loop. The loopers learned this the hard way, and force themselves to tolerate bad loops for this reason. There have been a few instances where they decided they'd prefer a punishment loop to a particularly terrible loop, and sometimes the Admins agree with their decision or help them crash it faster because even they can't justify a looper enduring these kind of nightmares.
• Fusion Dance: The Josuke Higashikata of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 8: Jojolion, if put into a fused loop, will have the second person that makes up him be whoever 'Josuke' is replacing.
• The Gadfly: The plot is basically the canon characters turning into a swarm of these in order to keep themselves sane during the time loops.
• Gender Bender: According to Twilight, this happens roughly two percent of the time. Some Loopers can have this a lot more often, however.
• Genre Roulette: Though the over all theme is slice of life episodic comedy, having multiple writers even for the same story/compilation, this can pop up frequently. Some loops can be actiony, some focusing on romantic relationships, some can be dramas, etc, etc.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: Frequently, the Loopers, even the most villainous, will put aside their differences and play a few rounds of golf, or Chaos, or have a drink with others. After all, if you don't go crazy once in a while, you'll just go mad. The Smash loops are an enforced example.
• God Is Flawed: The Admins; they're even stronger than the Loopers, older as well, and generally just the same mentally as the Loopers are. They are also just as fallible, and their mistakes have ramifications for whatever branch they're responsible for.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: It's been demonstrated that if no explanation is forthcoming, and no fused loops occur, most Loopers and Anchors tend to psychologically deteriorate. The first case of this is known to be amongst the four original Evangelion loopers who, in a bout of desperation, deliberately crashed their loop with enough violence to force an early fused loop. Since then, most worlds experience semi-regular (though still random) fused loops.
  • It's noted that some worlds tend to have a significantly lower fused/unfused ratio of loops, which only had negative effects on its Anchor and Loopers. The Shin Megami Tensei verse is the best and most current example.
  • Intriguingly, an inversion of this is seen with Traveling Loopers. Since they crisscross the multiverse so much, they cannot often form strong emotional bonds and are left feeling isolated and alone, akin to a leaf on the wind. The best example of this is Bariss Offee, whose own code regularly results in her being far away from other Loopers.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: Yes.
• Groundhog Peggy Sue: Also yes.
• Hammerspace: Pockets. These are the only way Loopers can carry things over between the loops. The size of a Pocket is a function of power, how recently someone began looping, and to some extent authorial choice. (For example, Ichigo early in his Loops has space for either his Shinigami badge or Kon, but not both; conversely, Ranma, one of the oldest and most powerful Loopers, collects Death Stars.)
• Hated by All: All MLEs (Malicious Looping Entities) and many malicious non-loopers such as Umbridge. Hence, when Gendo Ikari starts looping when it was thought he never would, he finds himself at the mercy of an entire multiverse that hates his guts, and most have hated his Unawake self for millennia, at minimum. Most of the loopers have met his baseline self at one point or another (due to Evangelion being one of the seven oldest looping universes), and most (if not all) of them are not happy to see him looping.
• Heel–Face Turn: Apparently a requirement for villains to start looping. So far, the only exceptions have been the villains from The Venture Brothers, and that's because they treat evil more as a hobby than anything else.
  • Anti Villains can sometimes slip by though, due to not technically being villains. Paradox from the Yu-Gi-Oh! loops is such an example.
  • Sadly, MLEs are often aversions of this.
• I Hate Past Me: A common trend is for loopers, even ones who weren't villains, to hate how they were in Baseline, generally due to their values changing.
• In Spite of a Nail: Even in variant loops, the basic structure and cast of a universe will remain similar. This is a Justified Trope due to the way that the multiverse repairs are run.
• Immortality Bisexuality: Actually justified. When Yggdrasil broke, one of the most common things to go was the code regarding Looper sexuality. In fact, a Looper having any form of consistent sexuality is considered a miracle in of itself.
• Impossible Thief: A few, judged from the already impossible standards of Loopers.
  • The Trix from Winx Club are this even without being Loopers, having devised a way to steal the Dragonfire, a power that in their canon is impossible to do so (except they did it in canon, something that everyone and everything else who tried failed to do so). Too bad there are better impossible thieves around here...
  • Lupin III and his crew. He stole the Dragonfire without magic and made it look easy, everything inside Gate of Babylon and Gilgamesh' armour (that he is wearing at the time) while drunk (they had drunk all of Gilgamesh' wine inside Gate of Babylon before stealing the rest), a kiss from Carmen Sandiego, and what she was wearing under the trenchcoat.
  • Carmen Sandiego. In the Hitler Rants universe she stole Fegelein's antics, Hitler's ability to laugh at Fegelein, his rant for that and for stealing the other rant, the door of his office and his men's ability to chase her; while in a visit to Fate/stay night she decided to top Lupin's previous heist by stealing Gate of Babylon (not the treasures inside, the immaterial Gate of Babylon itself) and Gilgamesh' ability to care for it (then Lupin stole a kiss from her and her clothes).
    • Speaking of Carmen, she mentored her reboot self in impossible theft, to the point where her idea of a vacation loop starts with stealing every single VILE operative's thieving skills.
  • One Loop had Carmen steal The Cooper Gang's jobs, forcing them to be Interpol agents chasing her. A later Loop had them turn the tables on her.
• Inconspicuous Immortal: Many of the loopers are content to simply live whatever lives the loops give them, even if they aren't as glamorous as their Baseline lives. Even in their baselines, most loopers tend to not rock the boat too much, simply content to live how they always have.
• It Amused Me: Loopers do a lot of things to keep themselves amused after becoming utterly bored of the baseline events.
• Lemony Narrator: Not the narrative of the loops themselves, but the footnotes do tend to be off the walls at times, from being a Deadpan Snarker to being Captain Obvious.
• Lesser of Two Evils: While Admins always strive to make morally upright characters the Anchor, sometimes they end up being forced to go with more morally ambiguous characters as the Anchor, simply because they're better in comparison to most of the other possible Anchor candidates at the time.
  • Pretty much the only reason Ryuk ended up anchoring the Death Note universe is because of this. Not only does being a Shinigami make him immune to Death Notes (so the Anchor can't randomly die and crash the Loop on the regular), he quite frankly doesn't give a crap about the vast majority of the people from his verse, making smaller room for MLE potential. (And considering he's one of the few people from the DN verse who isn't a raging psychopath...)
  • The Tick ended up becoming the Anchor of his verse simply because he is the only viable candidate from the universe, and still ended up becoming an MLE. Let that sink in...
  • When the Grim Reaper is the only viable Anchor candidate for your universe, you know there's something seriously wrong up there. Granted, he's actually not that bad of a guy, even in comparison to more "normal" looper settings. Doesn't stop Billy and Mandy from eventually becoming Loopers, though. Ironically, Billy is the one who became labeled the MLE of the two, due to being literally Lethally Stupid, to the point where he regularly crashes Loops and kills Anchors by accident, or making loopers crash the current loop to get away from the hell he accidentally made. A number of loopers start killing him on sight just to avoid any further madness.
  • A less morally focused example would be the Nebulous Anchor system in general. It's only used in rare cases (the only commonly known example is with the Attack on Titan universe), and is generally considered low on the "resort to" list. It links several people together as Anchors, which can cause some severe dangers to the stability of the universe in question, but does allow for more efficient looping, and keeps options open in the event that one of the Anchor's dies in baseline.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Many Loopers run into common Variant Loops that they all agree to never mention again. Some examples include the ponies' Bureau Loops, Marvel's Marville variants, and the Pokeverse's Poké Wars worlds.
• Loophole Abuse: Grima manages to bypass the "no villain looping" rule due to Sharing a Body with Robin, who is the Anchor for that universe.
  • Anti-Villain Paradox from the Yu-Gi-Oh loops seems to have managed to avert this rule.
  • Due to the nature of the Transformers Loops, this rule doesn't apply to Decepticons.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Stealth Looper and Headmaster Ozpin from the RWBY Loops considers other Loopers this for the Anchors. As they put it, "No one being could ever survive eternity alone." The Loopers give the Anchors companionship to keep their sanity and thus their lives intact.
• Living Forever Is Awesome: Loopers generally come to this conclusion eventually. Whether they come to it because they decided to look at the bright side or because they've been driven mad varies.
• Lockdown: The operators of Yggdrasil try to do this to universes that contain potential security risks.
• Manipulative Bastard: A Looping Kyuubey tricked Madoka into ascending to a godlike level. This backfired spectacularly.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Some loopers don't match the normal looping standards.
  • Dark Pit is not an official co-anchor, but since he can only Awaken if Pit also happens to be awake, he is counted as one.
  • Both The Postal Dude Jr and The Other Postal Dude can not gain looper powers. They can only use Pockets.
  • Waltz only began looping due to a glitch, but could still use normal looping powers.
  • Pyra and Mythra are counted as one looper in spite of technically being two people (granted two share memories in Baseline, but they're still the only loopers that behave in this fashion).
• Mega Crossover: The premise gives the authors an excuse to cross over almost everything with everything else, and they use it.
• Me's a Crowd: Among the many powers loopers can learn like Shadow Clones, the Misaka glitch can cause this as well, accidentally making an undetermined amount of same, awake loopers during a single loop. While it's not advised that they should get in into fights with their copies when this glitch occurs, since the duplicates end up merging back to the 'real' one once the loop ends and they get all their memories from it, naturally, for many loopers, There Can Only Be One...
• Mood Whiplash: Due to the way the loops are structured, being episodic and having many different writers writing for it, this can pop up frequently. One loop can have the loopers wondering why they looped in as cuttlefish, while the next loop after it can be about the loopers trying to survive in a dystopia variant/fused loop.
• Multiple-Choice Past: Those suffering under Dissociative Loop Identity Disorder experience this, much to their dismay as after a while, even they aren't sure who the 'real' them is. It's caused when a Looper has many different variants based on how many Alternate Continuities their loop's universe has, where they have different roles and personality in almost every one of them. The most extreme cases are April 'O Neil (who has no less than ten possible 'real' hers and personalities) and Lyra Heartstrings, who has four based on common fandom interpretations of her due to her being a side character in baseline (though, unlike April, she's embraced her split personalities after she had an reality-shattering accident that made them real, and frequently talks to them in her mind when she has to make important decisions).
• The Multiverse: Is on the fritz, necessitating the loops.
• My Skull Runneth Over: Averted thanks to Yggdrasil handling the storage of the eons of memories loopers accumulate. This also gives the loopers eidetic memory, albeit in the same way one accesses computer records.
• Mythology Gag: Each of the Admins for each universe tends to have a job suited for their skills and talents.
  • Aphrodite, goddess of Beauty, gets roped into administrating the Eiken loops, mostly to keep up appearances. (Considering what she's like, most admins consider this to be a win/win: she's one of the very few who likes that branch.)
  • Artemis, who was among other things a goddess of wild animals, is in charge of the Jurassic Park and Prehistoric Park Loops.
    • Following her Punishment Detail, she's forced to work with Ardwinna, the Celtic goddess of animals.
  • Baron Samedi, Loa in charge of death (and certain aspects of life), gets The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy.
  • Bishamonten, god of righteous warriors and punisher of evildoers, runs the collective Gundam loops.
  • Clio, the Muse of History and Zeus' daughter, coded the Assassin's Creed loops.
  • Epona, Celtic goddess of horses and fertility, is in charge of the Legend of Zelda loops and, on at least one occasion, has looped in as Epona. She's also Sleipnir's girlfriend.
  • Ganesha, god of learning and education, helms the terminally confusing, inconsistent and incomplete Attack on Titan loops.
  • Hephaestus, god of technology, is responsible for the multitude of Mega Man Loops, as well as Ratchet and Clank and Thomas the Tank Engine.
  • Hades, god of the underworld (the place where souls reside), being the admin for Soul Eater, Danny Phantom and Blue Exorcist.
  • Janus, a god of passageways, manages the Portal Loops. Also, he became Admin for Disney / Kingdom Hearts loops, but eventually needed to have other Minor Gods help out to lift some of the burden.
  • Loki, the Norse god of trickery, is the Admin for How to Train Your Dragon.
  • Maat, responsible for judging the deceased, manages the Ace Attorney Loops.
  • Manu, the God of Fate for the people of ancient Chaldea, ended up taking over the role of Admin for the Nasuverse. While this means he's the Admin for Tsukihime and other Type Moon stuff, it mostly means he's the Admin for the Fate/ franchise, especially the part of the cluster he was first brought in to Activate, which focuses on the efforts of an organization named after his home of Chaldea.
  • Masakado, local deity of Tokyo, manages the Shin Megami Tensei and Persona Loops.
  • Nut, a Egyptian goddess of the heavens (i.e. space), is in charge of the Star Wars and Star Trek Loops.
  • Persephone, Hades' wife who is also a goddess of flowers (and daughter of the goddess of the harvest), is the admin for Trigun.
  • Sleipnir, who is a horse, happens to be in charge of the My Little Pony Loops.
  • Thor, who had a chariot pulled by two goats, is (partially) responsible for the Goat Simulator Loops.
  • Zurvan, the one who got the Doctor Who universe Loops going and vaguely stable, was a god of (what else) time and space.
  • Tu Di Gong, a Chinese god of wealth and and merit, handles Total Drama.
  • Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea, is the Admin for Pirates of the Caribbean, Peter Pan, and Percy Jackson.
    • His wife, Amphitrite, female personification of the sea, is the Admin for The Little Mermaid.
  • Bes, Egyptian protector god, is the Admin for Bolt, Big Hero 6, The Incredibles, Toy Story/Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, Kim Possible, American Dragon: Jake Long, and Sky High.
  • Despoina, Greek goddess of mysteries, is the Admin for Who Framed Rodger Rabbit? and National Treasure.
  • Kamohoali'i, Hawaiian shark god of sea navigation, is the Admin for Lilo & Stitch, Moana, and Finding Nemo.
  • Long Mu, a Chinese goddess most known for raising five baby dragons, is the Admin for W.I.T.C.H..
  • Medeina, Lithuanian goddess of forests, trees, and animals, is the Admin for Bambi, Robin Hood, Winnie the Pooh, Pocahontas, Brother Bear, Zootopia, A Bug's Life, and Brave.
  • Tyche, Greek goddess of luck, is the Admin for Phineas & Ferb/Milo Murphy's Law and Miraculous Ladybug.
  • Xolotl, Aztec god of monsters and twins, is the Admin for Monsters, Inc., The Nightmare Before Christmas, Gravity Falls, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody/Suite Life on Deck, and Pair of Kings (and by extension, the rest of the Disney Live-Action Universe).
• Nerf: In-Universe, several powers or artifacts that could easily cause a loop crash have been seriously toned down by the Admins in order to keep such things from happening. Some notable examples:
  • Most things that grant wishes that can/or cause high level reality warping have been toned down to where they can't do anything that would cause a loop crash, such as the Dragonballs, Fairy Magic, or most high level Reality Warpers in general like Haruhi.
  • Death Notes have been altered to where they can't work outside of pure baseline runs or their fused loop of origin, since even non-loopers or MLEs would be able to kill even the most powerful of Loopers and Anchors due to it being an even bigger Story-Breaker Power than what even the most powerful of loopers can possess ^note And unlike the Deplorable Word from the The Chronicles of Narnia, Death Notes could be activated from anywhere in the universe they're currently in before the nerf was applied, are divine in nature instead of magical, making countering them difficult, can be used before the looper is even aware they're in they're in the same loop as one and could reasonably react to counter it, and allows the user to pick and choose who they want to kill. The unaltered Death Notes would allow MLEs to remove any problematic loopers to their goal while keeping certain characters they need alive for whatever their goal may be, hence their alteration by the Admins.
  • While outside loopers can gain an element from the Elements of Harmony, only the Mane Casts' canon elements work outside of the initial loop an outside looper gets theirs in.
  • While it's entirely possible for a looper to become Exalted, those powers are then generally removed by the Admins at the first available opportunity, in part because if they hit a limit break, the character is likely to ascend and become a very, very dangerous MLE.
• Noodle Incident: Characters will refer to loops that happen offscreen sometimes.
  • We never really see the Eiken loops, only hear them referred to, probably because Eiken is actually quite dull once the novelty of the physiological implausibilities and incessant fanservice wear off. This branch is infamous for its Admin-enforced Railroading that makes it play out its baseline plot every single time in spite of a Looper's best efforts, which is the entire point – for Loopers, boredom is actually the worst punishment of all.
  • A more serious example is The Death Note War, where Pocketable Death Notes were made accessible for a loop. Chaos ensued.
  • Quite a number of snippets have this as their sole premise. Generally, one character will ask how a bizarre event started, with the other character either not knowing or rattling off a list of Noodle Implements.
• Non-Heteronormative Society: Even if someone's loop in question comes from a world where same-sex relationships would be frowned upon, chances are they won't think twice about it if they happen to see that type of relationship between other loopers.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Stealth Looping, i.e. when someone who is looping hides the fact that they are looping from other loopers. It usually stops working at some point due to loopers Spotting the Thread, but some stealth loopers are famous for having never being discovered (such as the loopers of Star Trek or the stealth Anchor of the Skullgirls branch).
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: This is the main reason the Star Trek Anchors never really act on their foreknowledge (to the point where the vast majority of visitors don't know who the Anchors are), as they'd have to explain themselves to their branch's Department of Temporal Investigations in every Loop. Since they cannot stomach the idea of literally endless paperwork, every Star Trek looper deliberately chooses to be a stealth looper.
• Obvious Rule Patch: After the problems with Grima, the admins created the Grima patch, which prevents any villain who is either linked to the hero, or a dark version of said hero, from having their looping memories. Aside from Robin, other known loopers who have the patch applied to them include Shulk (to block Zanza) and Shield Knight (to block the Enchantress).
• Off the Rails: Most loopers take great pleasure in messing up the plotlines of their various series in amusing ways. Even more when it interferes with a non-looping character's plan. Shinji in particular loves messing with Gendo's scenario.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Essentially Picard's reaction upon learning the Doctor's started Looping.
  • Picard is good for these, since his desire for a nice and quiet Loop is usually ruined by a visitor doing something incredibly bizarre, like Rainbow Dash going past the Enterprise at warp-speed, carrying a massive Pop Tart.
  • Anyone's reaction to meeting an Malevolent Looping Entity, as all of them have earned their reputation for being both insanely dangerous and capable of damaging a looper's mind.
• Older Than They Look: All the loopers eventually, though it's most notable with "children" loopers. Even though they're technically well beyond 'of age' it's still weird to see stuff like the Cutie Mark Crusaders drinking alcoholic beverages and doing other non-children appropriate things, especially if they don't use magic to age their bodies up beforehand.
• Omniscient Database: Yggdrasil, as per Ah! My Goddess canon. Except right now it's on the fritz, and "now" is going to extend past eternity.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten:
  • Absolute Zero seems to have one of these moments. During said loop he installed an MP3 player and speakers in his armor, then started to liberally play "Let it Go" when he felt like it. He however failed to check to see who else was Awake, so Argent Adept recorded the whole thing and uses it to annoy Absolute Zero.
  • Applejack will never live down the time she tried to make an alcoholic beverage out of potatoes (explanation: their name in French means 'apples of the earth', so she tried to make cider out of them) and ended up creating what has since been dubbed "potato acid", which literally blinded Twilight when she tried drinking it (who had to ascend to alicorn form to fix it), and set Discord on fire. This has been brought up several times since, with Applejack complaining about not being allowed to live it down.
    • It's since been used in a contest among the Heroic Spirits of Fate Grand Order. Several outright died and had to be resummoned, several barely survived... and Gawain loved it.
• Out of Time, Out of Mind: Outside of some specific cases, be they good or bad, most loopers tend to act a lot like they did before they started looping.
• Physical God: Most of the oldest Loopers are powerful enough to fit the trope, and are actively preventing themselves from ascending to full-on godhood. Ranma, in particular, is so powerful that he is able to create a subspace pocket that at the very least contains multiple solar systems, and is referred to as a universe.
• Pocket Dimension: Literally, since Loopers learn to create a storage dimension within their souls, referred to as "subspace pockets". The size varies depending on the users' power, and only the creator (or Admins) can access them.
• Power Limiter: Ranma has a set, wished up from the Dragon Balls.
  • Also the original function of the Subspace Pockets, to take up increasingly larger amounts of the Looper in question's power and mental focus. The side-effect of carrying things past the Loop reset is entirely tangential, but is used as a selling point to newer Loopers.
• Predestination Paradox: Yggdrasil has a few protections against lesser time travel messing up the Loops. Predestination Paradox Protection, via the Ouroboros Patch, means that a Loop will typically only allow time travel that's 'already happened'. Then there's the Nesting Doll Protection Law which says that you can't damage a major Loop (the Infinite Loops) while in a minor one (your typical "Groundhog Day" Loop with an exit, or 'win', condition).
• Price on Their Head: Some loopers, such as Pikachu and Anakin Skywalker, are known to put out rewards for non-loopers to find and capture MLEs during loops.
• Railroading: Safe-Mode Servers, such as Eiken, railroad loopers onto the canon plot. On a personal level, Setsuna Syndrome is characterized by seeing the events of the baseline (or in some cases, a 'perfect timeline') as sacrosanct and attempting to railroad events to happen like they would in canon. This is usually because the sufferer believes that doing so in just the right way for long enough will end the time loop (which is absolutely not true).
• Reading Ahead in the Script: As mentioned above, savvy loopers will exploit the Mutually Fictional nature of loops to get an overview of any world they end up in. Some loopers even keep a copy of their own script or book on hand to give to newcomers.
• Reality-Breaking Paradox: Occasionally pops up, which results in the loop ending earlier than normal. Granted, it's a bit more justified due to the multiverse being on the fritz. Sometimes, loopers will actually invoke this, despite usually resulting in punishment loops, to force resets and escape extremely unpleasant variants.
• Recursive Fanfiction:
  • Technically, all the fics made after Innortal's. Though they all have their own unique plots in between the episodic shenanigans, they're still set in the same overall Multiverse as his. (Though, exactly what and which of Innortals snips are treated as canon by the community as a whole thanks to his... err, unique brand of humor is still heavily debated to this day.)
  • Loops based around other fanfiction universes also tend to pop up pretty frequently too. Notably, even a few characters from Fanfiction universes have ended up becoming loopers too. These include Nobody Dies Rei and Nyx.
• Ret-Gone: An entire universe was destroyed at the conceptual level in past, present, and future because of data corruption. It's implied that it's not the first to go that way...
  Sleipnir: It effectively never existed. Any fused Loops you had with that universe have now never happened. Aside from the forced system–wide reset of the Loops the collapse triggered, even the divine operators of Yggdrasil have no memory of it beyond an almost completely corrupted file of the 'jumpstart' attempt with a fused Loop that ended in its destruction.
  • Madoka's universe is currently hosted within her bow (her weapon, not the one on her head), which means if she ever loses the bow it might cease to exist.
  • What happens if this happens to a Looper (at least in-universe) is explained in a Mega Man loop. It won't get rid of the Looper for good, but as Sonic explains it, getting hit with the Ultimate Annihilator (essentially a Ret-Gone weapon) tends to end the Loop really fast.
• Rousseau Was Right: Loopers who are villains in baseline tend to reform very often. It helps that they're usually fully aware of where their villainy will take them and don't want to go there, while Good Feels Good. Sakura Syndrome is the opposite of this.
  • The aftermath for the Crisis would reveal that this was being enforced by the Admins, to Yggdrasil's detriment. As a result, aversions to this trope had been shown off more regularly.
• Sanity Slippage: It's implied but not outright stated that Kaylee has Sakura Syndrome, after a dozen Loops where Serenity's technical problems keep changing, with her having no idea why it's happening. It leads her to try and overload the engines.
  • It's a given that most loopers begin to snap a little bit after enough time, as the PTSD, boredom, and in some cases loneliness begins to really add up.
• Samurai: Johnny Bravo trained under Master Splinter and became one, and became less of a flirt in the process.
  • Not to mention Jack, who Anchors his own universe.
• Seen It All: After enough go-rounds, most loopers will have some form of this attitude.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: It's a given that Loopers will use their foreknowledge to avoid certain major tragedies (keep the original Jurassic Park from failing, keeping Buddy Pine from becoming Syndrome, giving Carrie a wonderful prom, etc.).
• Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness: All over the place. Some Loops can be incredibly dark, while others exist only for a brief joke. By and large, the Loops tend to be more serious than when Innortal wrote them.
• Something Only They Would Say: Loopers can figure out if someone's Looping if they say something like "feeling Loopy" or "need an Anchor" or some other thing such as a newly Looping Nino asking Alya if she remembers the time they got thrown in the Komodo Dragon cage. She responds that it was a panther cage and that's how she realizes he's Looping.
• Stealth Expert: Every Star Trek Looper manages to keep themselves hidden incredibly well, to the extent that only two have been discovered by other Loopers so far, Captain Kirk and Captain Picard. The reason for this is because if the Department of Temporal Investigations found out, the Trek Loopers would be buried in paperwork every Loop.
• Strong and Skilled: Due to quite literally having all the time in the world they need to master their powers (as well as any they happen to pick up over the course of the loops), many loopers are master fighters without having to sacrifice any power for it.
• Story-Breaker Power:
  • Between the accumulation of personal abilities/skills/etc., access to all sorts of tech from around the multiverse, and simple experience, veteran loopers tend to short-circuit the plotlines of any loop they enter. (Especially if they've visited the "Hub" loop and had time to digest the relevant source material.)
  • Part of the reason Death Notes were near flat-out banned was because of this trope, as they managed to be a Story-Breaker Power even by looper standards!
• Straw Nihilist: The chief symptom of Sakura Syndrome. A Looper throws morality, care, and restraint out the window because in their eyes, Looping renders all choices meaningless since everything always resets.
• Take That!: While doing Take Thats towards other loops or loop settings is extremely frowned upon (unless it's considered an acceptable target by the community at large), this doesn't stop the authors from slipping in remarks about their feelings towards other things, some of which are actually aimed at things in the loops they're writing for!
  • The fact that The Conversion Bureau variants are often treated with disdainful hostility from the FiM loopers, and the multiverse at large, can be see as a Take That! to its setting. A few loopers have a Bureau loop be their first introduction to the Friendship is Magic branch, and it takes them subjective centuries to get over their instinctive hostility to Equestrians as a result.
  • While not treated as A Fate Worse Than Death territory, they're often not particularly fond of pre-Gen IV MLP loops either due to how boring it is.
  • The Twilight Saga is often treated as a Fate Worse than Death loop for a good portion of the Multiverse, its Anchor (Leah) included!
  • Eiken loops, being used as the most common punishment loop, is in the same boat too.
  • The Star Wars loopers aren't particularly fond of the more Merchandise-Driven spin-offs of their loops, the Christmas special being a very common target.
  • And of course, a lot of authors are not above sporking common fandom plots or clichés. If it's a common fandom plot element, it's been parodied or picked at in the loops at some point.
• Time Abyss: All Loopers eventually become this in the subjective sense because the loops make them "older than Merlin".
• Time Crash: Something happened to the multiverse, resulting in every world being put into a looping safe mode while the admins sort things out.
  • The Crash, which happens when something went horribly wrong in a fused Mega Man Loop, resulting in the total erasure of the unknown loop. It had knock-on effects through-out the other universes, even causing several new loopers to activate.
  • Another one happens later on, this time because of a human-obsessed Lyra Heartstrings, a magical portal, and a poorly thought-out plan, which according to Twilight Sparkle prematurely ended at least three separate loops simultaneously, and set the loops and the repair of Yggdrasil back by a few thousand years.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: The loops hate this, resulting in the Doctor Who universe being Read-Only for a long time. This is because causing a Temporal Paradox while in a Loop causes it to crash, something a bit more severe than simple premature termination of a Loop.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Those suffering from Chrysalis Syndrome (AKA: first awaking after a non-baseline run where they have a different role, and thus keeping their memories from that instead of their usual baseline) go through a brief bout of this. Thankfully, it's not as bad as Dissociative Loop Identity Disorder because after the first initial loop, they have a solid baseline to get used to, but they do have a hard time accepting it depending on what their role was. (Especially if they're normally a villain, which usually results in My God, What Have I Done?.)
• Top God: The Admins. Most branches have their in-universe gods, but the admins are the Gods that keep their branches from pooping themselves. A lot of the Admins are also implied to be far more powerful than in-universe gods, with a few even being implied to be even more powerful than some eldest loopers like the Original Seven.
• Uniqueness Decay: A given, considering loopers can stick most things in their subspace pockets, which results in the item being duplicated when the loop resets. Everything from the Elements of Harmony, the Master Sword, to the Dragon Balls can, and likely has, many duplications of it throughout the multiverse. (Though, some of them don't retain the powers they have outside of the initial loop they got it from.)
• Wham Episode:
  • The Crash is a wham episode for every single Loop. An entire universe is wiped out, completely and utterly, damaging several other universes, and jumpstarting new Loopers in the process. It serves as a stark example of just why the Loops are occurring.
  • The Crisis was another. Several Loopers are forced to cross lines they never wanted to in order to keep some nasty people from looping and in some cases that didn't even work. Adding onto this is that, following the end of the Crisis, the restrictions on villains looping have been lessened.
• Whole-Plot Reference: Comes up on occasion, either via variant loop setup, or loopers deliberately trying to invoke them.
• Willfully Weak: No Looper is allowed to ascend to the same level of godhood as the Admins, as it will cause the destruction of their home loop. Experienced Loopers normally use a mixture of Guile Hero, Power Limiter, Manipulative Bastard, and the tools in their subspace pockets to avert Victory Is Boring.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: This is a given. It's even explicitly stated by Twilight Sparkle:
  "Gilda, I'm an Anchor. Which means I've been awake for every single loop. Sure I've gotten powerful, but among Anchors and other long time loopers the truism is ‘with great power comes great insanity.’ I've been better than most, but even I've had moments where I slipped. You'll find this out yourself, but imagine everyone around you had a disease. They remember everything up to a certain day. After that, they can't keep a new memory past a full day. They just keep forgetting and reliving the same day, over and over again. Only you remember and grow. How long before you stopped seeing them as friends out of frustration? How many days till you stopped seeing them as people at all? How many weeks till you started meddling, manipulating them for what is 'best'? How many months till you started smashing them in frustration that they can't bucking remember anything?!"
• With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Many Loopers, mainly anchors, wind up taking this stance. They all know that if they wanted to, they could do whatever they wanted unopposed whenever they pleased. However, all of them understand that just because they have the power to do so, doesn't mean they should.
• World of Snark: Many loopers use snark as part of their coping mechanism.
• World Tree: Yggdrassil itself.
• Wrong Context Magic: Loopers are able to retain abilities between loops, which leads to Jedi using chakra or ponies with Intelligent Devices.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Attempts to end the loops have happened way too many times, and it's always resulted in a reset. The Anchors have long since stopped caring.
• You Can't Fight Fate: Sufferers of Setsuna Syndrome can be firm believers in this, which is why they developed it in the first place. They often get rather annoyed with usual looper antics that cause their loop to go Off the Rails, believing something bad will happen if they diverge from the baseline, despite evidence to the contrary.

Subpages:

• Innortal's Loops
• Loops A To M
• Loops N To Z

---