The Constant

You maniacs! You built it up!

"It's called a constant. Desmond, you have no constant. When you go to the future, nothing there is familiar. So if you want to stop this, then you need to find something there... something that you really, really care about... that also exists back here, in 1996."

— Daniel Faraday, Lost

When you Time Travel, or you spend some time as a Human Popsicle, or even just leave a place for a long time, things tend to change a lot. But even when almost everything has changed, there's some character or thing that exists in both time periods, not because of time travel, but because they remained there the whole time. They are The Constant, and they connect two different-looking settings together and prove they're the same place.

Frequently the work will go out of its way to make a point of The Constant, and in our examples we focus on these intentional, obvious Constants. If the time-traveling character didn't realize they were in the same place until discovering The Constant, then you have Earth All Along.

If the time traveled was too short, there may be so many Constants that it's unremarkable. For example, it's not uncommon for the entire cast from the past to switch to Future Badass versions of themselves in the future. Or centuries later, the civilization withers and the city is Reclaimed by Nature. On the other hand, there is no minimum time difference — a city may be reduced to an unrecognizable place overnight by a terrible weapon, except for The Constant—a famous statue or historic building—proving it was there. Or as Nena would say, "If I could find a souvenir / Just to prove the world was here."

If the time traveled is very long, the Constant will typically be a structure or an immortal being or a robot rather than an ordinary person. If it is a person, it's usually the Identical Grandson or a variation thereof (such as My Grandson, Myself).

Compare Earth All Along, Monumental Damage Resistance. Often invokes Never Recycle a Building.

If everything inexplicably survives in a slightly distressed state (at worst), it's a case of Ragnarök Proofing.

If the Constant in question ends up being destroyed in real life (e.g. the World Trade Center), its appearance in fiction can swiftly be rendered Harsher in Hindsight.

Not related to a high-ranking member of Providence from the Hitman series, or the history podcast by Mark Chrisler^note where the title refers to the human tendency to get things wrong

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Cowboy Bebop: When the de-frosted (on two levels) amnesiac Faye Valentine returns to Earth, she meets an old classmate of hers, now an old lady.
• In End of Evangelion, Unit-01, which harbors the soul of Yui Ikari, becomes fossilized as it drifts through space, and is said that it would go on to outlast the sun and the moon, an eternal testament to the existence of the human race.
• The Sacred Tree in Inuyasha. In the past, it's where Kagome meets the titular Inuyasha; hundreds of years in the future, it's still tended by her grandfather, even though a modern city has grown up around it. The nearby Bone-Eater's Well also exists in both times and acts as a Portal to the Past while it's at it.
• Nasuverse: The series actually justifies this with the Quantum Time-Lock system put in place by The World. As a limited amount of "water" exists to sustain so many worlds without the universe effectively overloading on the sheer weight of possibilities, Quantum Time-Locks happen every once a hundred years or so to ensure that Constants exist present in all other timelines (e.g. Camelot falling). Any other timelines that have anything different happen are purged altogether in a process known as 'pruning'. However, the median of which these timelines happen (termed as 'Proper Human History') can be extraordinarily variant to a variety of possibilities; it's just that the Quantum Time-Locks are a means of ensuring the most prosperous timelines for humanity survive, and any that have grown past the point of being able to be changed are as a result pruned.
• In the movie Pokémon 4Ever, the young woman Sammy meets is an old woman 40 years later when he meets her after a time trip.
• In Space☆Dandy, Dandy discovers that he is a constant. Throughout all different kinds of universes, he will remain as the same, more or less.

Comic Books

• Bishop in Age of Apocalypse. When Legion accidentally killed Charles Xavier in the past, drastically altering the timeline where Apocalypse rose sooner than expected, took over America and reduced the world into a ruined husk, Bishop was the only one to have retained his memories from the original timeline since he was a time traveler from a distant future and an chronal anomaly of his own right. He tries to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, even though this means the AoA timeline would cease to exist.
• Black Science is about a group of dimensionauts who get sent on a journey across the multiverse. As they travel from reality to reality, patterns begin forming; Grant McKay always invents a device to travel through dimensions, the device is always sabotaged, Kadir is always the saboteur, and, most worryingly, the kids always seem to die.
• In the Marvel Universe, every reality has a version of Owen Reece, the Molecule Man. This is because the Beyonders deliberately created him as a constant as part of their deranged experiment to destroy the multiverse. The death of a Molecule Man destroys the reality he's in, so they're planning to trigger the self destruct of every Molecule Man to cause a chain reaction that obliterates existence.
• Robert Crumb's Mister Natural once had an immensely satisfying meditation in the desert. It starts when he arrives in a desolate spot, spreads out his blanket and assumes the lotus position. Some indeterminate time later, construction workers arrive to build a road past him. He remains transfixed even when junk thrown from passing cars bounces off his head. Eventually a small town grows up around him, and after what appears to be years of development he is finally noticed as a policeman brusquely orders him to move, he is blocking the traffic. (Apparently they managed to build the sidewalk under him.) The guru's only answer is a slowly rising hum that after a few panels causes the officer to flee in panic as the buildings around them crumble into dust. Once the location is back to its original state (you know, apart from the fact that the "sand" now consists of pulverized concrete, glass and asphalt) Mr. Natural stops humming, gets to his feet, stretches and yawns, declares "That was a good one!", rolls up his blanket and wanders off.
• There isn't always a Superman or a Batman equivalent on an alternate Earth, but there's always an Atom-themed character in every issue of The Multiversity.
  • Lady Quark in The Multiversity #1.
  • Al Pratt the Mighty Atom in Society of Super-Heroes: Conquerors of the Counter-World #1.
  • Ray Palmer in The Just #1.
  • Captain Adam in Pax Americana #1.
  • Mister Atom in Thunderworld #1.
  • Atomic Knight Batman in The Multiversity Guidebook #1.
  • The Human Bomb in Mastermen #1.
• One issue of John Barber’s Transformers run has Optimus Prime getting randomly transported to various time periods in the same location. To help the reader discern the chronology, the corpse of a monster killed in the earliest period is present in every subsequent one; the state of decay on the corpse gives the reader a sense of how long it’s been since that first event.
• The Ultimates
  • The newly thawed out Captain America is despondent over how different things are. Technology has advanced massively, his high school friends, fiance and army buddies are in their 80s and modern morality is completely different than the 1940s. That is until Nick Fury points out the American flag over a cemetery and comments that one thing hasn't changed. (Well, except those two extra stars from 1959.)
  • Tony Stark is getting rid of all his expensive souvenirs, and one of them is perfect for the newly reborn Captain America: the helmet he used during the war.
• Several Uncle Scrooge stories have his Money Bin on Killmotor Hill remaining unchanged (at least in the broad lines) through the centuries, much to Scrooge's pleasure whenever he time-travels to the future. It's also present in most Parallel Universe versions of Duckburg, though sometimes not (or no longer) owned by Scrooge.
• Vandal Savage acts as this sometimes for the DCU, since his complete unkillability allows him to survive pretty much any changes that would kill off everyone else.

Films — Live-Action

• Back to the Future:
  • The Clock Tower is a major example of this trope, as it appears under construction in 1885, working just fine in 1955, broken and run-down in 1985, transformed into a casino-hotel in the alternate 1985, and as a piece of high-tech modern art in 2015.
  • Doc Brown serves as one in the first film, as well, more so than Marty's parents or Biff, as he is aware that Marty has been time-travelling.
• In Demolition Man, Spartan meets the helicopter pilot who air-dropped him into his final mission before becoming a Human Popsicle. Despite Spartan's difficulty adapting to the future, he never bothers to sit down with the old guy and pick his brain.
• Both the film Field of Dreams and the novel Shoeless Joe, make note that baseball has still remained the same. In the movie, Terrance Mann even calls it this trope.
  "The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time."
  • This is subverted in a scene in the comic Spider-Man I (Heart) Marvel: Web of Love, where Captain America is seen watching a basketball game on TV with his Avengers pals and Mary Jane Watson-Parker. Confused by the rules added to the game since the 1940s and the resultant new tactics, he comments that at least baseball remained unchanged. Then Luke Cage brings up the designated hitter rule...
• In Idiocracy, a "Fuddrucker's" restaurant serves as the constant. After 500 years of increasing stupidity the name has gradually changed to "Buttfucker's". Oddly, it retains its status as a family restaurant, while Starbucks, H&R Block, and several other businesses have become brothels.
• In Inception, the folks who enter dreams carry a "totem", a small personal item that they alone know the exact size and weight of, to help them remember if they are in reality or dream state if need be. For instance, lead protagonist Dom carries a top that will spin endlessly in a dream, but topple in reality. Growers of Epileptic Trees may find some fertilizer in the observation that the viewer does not see it topple before the movie cuts to credits. Although Word of God states that eventually it does.
• The Statue of Liberty in the Planet of the Apes (1968) movie that features so prominently in its famous Earth All Along ending.
• The Christopher Reeve movie Somewhere in Time features an elderly hotel employee who recognizes the hero from his childhood — much to the hero's confusion, because from his perspective that event hasn't happened yet (he later goes back in time and meets a boy in the lobby who is clearly the same guy).
• Like Star Trek below, Star Wars gives the audience a few constants when telling a story in a new time period: The Phantom Menace has no Rebellion and no Empire, with a strange Republic and Trade Federation in their places; but we know it's the same 'verse because we see Obi-Wan from the beginning, and Artoo, Threepio, Yoda, Tatooine (including Jabba the Hutt), Anakin, and Palpatine later on.
• Inverted in the James Garner film, 36 Hours. The existence of something that should have vanished in a few days, a paper cut, is what convinces Maj. Pike, that he hasn't spent the last few years in a fugue state, as his German interrogators are trying to convince him he has in order to extract information from him.
• In the George Pal version of The Time Machine, the protagonist finds a couple of constants during his early trips into the near future, including his friend Filby, and a shop near his laboratory that is featured in the time-travel montage whipping through a succession of window displays (later spoofed in the Discworld series, as described below). However, on his main excursion into the distant future he finds that everything has changed.
• In the Guy Pierce version of The Time Machine, he meets an AI librarian from the New York Public Library who is still there in the overgrown, recognizable ruins of New York thousands of years later.

Literature

• Used as a plot point in one Animorphs book, where the kids manage to use a vision of a Bad Future shown to them by the Ellimist to find out the location of the Yeerk Pool. In the vision (where they see what their city would look like in the aftermath of a full-scale Yeerk takeover) they notice that there's just one building in their city left standing, and they realize that the Yeerk Pool's exterior is the one building that the Yeerks wouldn't bomb if they ever launched a full-on attack.
• In Ursula K. Le Guin's short story "April in Paris", the protagonists occupy the same apartment in different centuries. Notre Dame is another Constant.
• In the Bolo story "The Night of the Trolls" by Keith Laumer, the protagonist comes out of a long stretch as a Human Popsicle to find that society has collapsed. The first friendly person he meets in the new world is an old man who turns out to be his son, aged considerably in the 80 or so years since the protagonist's stasis began.
• The old Hermit in A Canticle for Leibowitz, though his immortality is never explained in the book itself. However, most commentators agree that the final section of the book pretty much comes out and says that he's the Wandering Jew.
• The Chronicles of Narnia:
  • The Silver Chair:
    • The heroes are directed by Aslan to go to the Ruined City of the Giants and look for a sign that would tell them where to go. Not seeing anything, they are trapped in a snowstorm and forced to hide in a series of trenches. They realize their mistake later when returning to the site, they see the trenches were actually letters on a giant inscription:
      Though under earth and throneless now I be, Yet, while I lived, all earth was under me.
    • The city was gradually reduced to ruins, until all that was left was the inscription. Finally all that remained of the inscription was the final two words: "UNDER ME." (The long version is according to the antagonist, who is clearly trying to distract the heroes from their quest. The literal meaning is clear: Look under the inscription.)
  • In Prince Caspian, when the Pevensies return to Narnia and Susan finds one of their old chess pieces, they realize that they're in the ruins of Cair Paravel, the castle from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
• Hoid in The Cosmere. On every world and in every era, he appears in some way. His role varies wildly from story to story — Hero of Another Story, All-Powerful Bystander, The Trickster, Greater-Scope Paragon, Greater-Scope Villain — but he’s always involved somehow. This actually made it rather shocking when there was a story (Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell) where he doesn’t appear, or even get mentioned.
• In Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, we are treated to three separate stories: two during World War II, and one in the modern day. Many of the characters from the modern day are descendants of the characters from World War II. But apart from the younger Waterhouse's stories of his grandfather, there's only one man who appears in both timelines: Enoch Root, who hasn't aged a day. In The Baroque Cycle, we meet the far more distant ancestors of the protagonists of Cryptonomicon, as the book is set in the 17th century. But even all this way out, there's still one character in common: Enoch Root.
• In A Darker Shade of Magic, there are a few constants between the different dimensions, some bigger than others. The main one (and the settings of the plot) is London. There is always a city at that point of the world, and for some reason it is always called London.
  • Our own dimension is the Grey London, the one without magic, and is usually seen as unchanging but sturdy and long-lasting. Things from the Grey London can weather almost anything.
  • Red London is rich in magic, with many mages, and their abilities are seen as just a part of everyday life. The skyline might look one way one day, and be changed due to changing fashions the next.
  • White London is slowly being drained of its magic and its life energy due to it's proximity to Black London. The White dimension is currently undergoing a bloody, never-ending civil war, with the leader (or leaders) of White London changing every few years. People there are willing to do anything to get a bit of magic power.
  • And then there's Black London, the one which is never spoken of for fear its influence could spread. Its mages used dark magic, an extremely powerful but dangerous magic, completely recklessly, and darkness soon overtook it and threatened to spread to other Londons. So the doors between dimensions were destroyed, and only those few with blood magic can go as messengers between them.
  • There are also minor constants, such as an inn in London that always exists on the same street no matter what, and is often visited by some of the main characters.
• In Susan Cooper's novel The Dark is Rising, the immortal Will Stanton meets the character Hawkin hundreds of years in the past. Hawkin undergoes a Face–Heel Turn and becomes the Walker, condemned to Walk the Earth until it's time for him to fulfill his destiny in the present.
• Katharine Kerr's Deverry series:
  • In Daggerspell, a battle is fought among the ruins of a fortress at the edge of the grasslands. Several books later, we are shown in A Time of Exile, in a story set a few hundred years prior, how the building of that fortress started a small war, and why it was abandoned. Brangwen's grave is another straight example.
  • Averted when Nevyn, now a royal adviser, tries to find his old quarters in the royal brooch in Dun Deverry — and cannot, because the complex has been repaired and expanded so many times over the centuries since he was condemned to Walk the Earth.
• Discworld:
  • Lampshaded in Wyrd Sisters. The biggest expense of Time Travel is finding a fashion store that will remain open for 50 years in the exact same place, keeping the same mannequin in the display window.
  • Inverted in Night Watch. Sam Vimes ends up in the past after a magical accident, and has to keep things on-track while a criminal who went with him is messing everything up. Right when he's most despairing of ever getting back to where he belongs, a History Monk brings him his silver cigar case, a gift from the wife he doesn't have yet and a reminder that his "future" is real and has already happened. On the other hand, many of the important cast members' past selves feature in the story: Fred Colon, M(r)s. Palm, Young Vimes, Vetinari...
• For Michael Moorcock, the constant throughout every conceivable phase of the Multiverse is the Eternal Champion — originally Elric, but his incarnation is everywhere, often accompanied by the Companion to Champions, the Love Interest, and the Eternal Enemy.
• In Diana Wynne Jones's The Homeward Bounders, the Old Fort — in particular, the statue on the grounds — are the Constant. So are the canal arches, and the sign identifying the former Churt House.
• In Brian Aldiss's Hothouse, the world is utterly bizarre and unrecognizable to the novel's audience. But at the end of one chapter, the characters see a structure that means nothing to them, but the modern reader can recognize as—not a specific landmark, but an ancient castle, or the ruin of one.
• From In the Keep of Time, Smailholm Tower. In an unusual variation, it is also the "time machine", as it were. The interesting implication of this is that the key can only take time travelers to a time period where the tower exists, not before its construction or after it collapses.
• In H. Beam Piper's Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, the absence of an expected constant — the stone quarries of an area of Pennsylvania that the protagonist knows quite well, and which could not have eroded while leaving the local geography intact — tips him off to the fact that he has not travelled into the far future as he previously thought, but is in an Alternate Universe.
• Stephen Baxter's Manifold series:
  • Reid Malenfant himself is a constant throughout the 'series', each of which takes place in a universe with different starting conditions. He is the main character in Manifold: Space and Manifold: Time, and a primary character in Manifold: Origin. Always a mustered out NASA astronaut, his history diverges heavily in every book, but his drive for humanity's future and his confused love for his estranged wife remains a constant theme.
  • In ''Manifold: Space', Reid Malenfant and Madeleine Meacher becomes increasingly isolated from mankind as they are thrown system to system at the speed of light. Every time they return to Sol, mankind has changed and not necessarily for the better. However, every time they return they cross paths with Nemoto, a manipulative, paranoid, and seemingly ageless Japanese astronomer who works behind the scenes to protect mankind from her 'alien threat'.
• In The Redemption of Althalus, when the title character first goes to the House At the End of the World, he passes a particular dead tree, when he leaves the House, 2500 years later, the same dead tree is still there, The Goddess Dweia says the gods keep the tree around as a landmark.
• Marvin the Android serves as The Constant in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (both the book and the place) over a few hundred million years. He's understandably bitter about it.
• Older Than Radio: After sleeping for 20 years, Rip Van Winkle is dismissed as just a loony old man until he is recognized by his daughter, now grown with a family of her own.
• Robert Rankin's Brentford series has Professor Slocombe, who is implied to have been Merlin and have worked with Sherlock Holmes. Also, the Flying Swan, which shows up on 15th century maps.
• A Star Wars novel has someone who was nearly killed at the end of the Clone Wars and put into stasis for at least half a century, awaking long after the original movies. With almost everyone he knew long dead and the galaxy having gone through several wars and governments, he decides to search for a specific Constant, the YT-1300 freighter he was flying on the mission where he nearly died - the ship that has since come to be known as the Millennium Falcon.
• In Three Days to Never, the Constant is an integral part of time travel: the method to travel to a particular point in time requires an object that was present there and underwent a significant change at the target moment.
• In Time and Again, the hero must use a Constant to travel through time: His departure and arrival must be in the same structure. At one point, on the run from police, he ducks into the Statue of Liberty's disembodied hand (This was in 1880, and the statue hadn't been erected yet, but the hand holding the torch was on display in Madison Square Park in Manhattan for several years during this time.) and uses it to travel to the completed statue in the present.
• In Time Spiral, the type of time travel that Karn uses to go back in time to when he can seal the rift in Tolaria requires a solid link of related memories going back to when he needs to travel to. He uses his memories of his friendship with Jhoira.
• In The Time Traveler's Wife, Claire generally serves as Henry's Constant as he jumps around in time.
• Tolkien's Legendarium:
  • Elrond Half-Elven serves as the Constant for the Númenoreans/Dúnedain: because his brother Elros was their first leader. No time travel is involved here. He just remembers literally all of them due to being immortal himself. He is a constant presence in their lives, most Princes of Númenor went to live with him for a time before assuming the throne.
  • Galadriel serves as a Constant for the stories. She witnessed the events of the Quenta Silmarillion (Part III of The Silmarillion), and indeed this story seems to be her account of the events because we are privy to details of events that involve her or her siblings, but conversations between other characters often get glossed over (for example, everything said between Maedhros and Fingon is paraphrased except for Fingon's prayer to Manw&ediaresis;, but we get the full conversation between Thingol and Angrod even though the two events are theoretically of equal importance.) This would also explain why although the Battle at Alqualondë is described very matter-of-factly (as if by an eyewitness), Fingolfin's duel with Morgoth is described in a style resembling a legend with numbers that seem somewhat suspicious. Galadriel was present for the first battle, but did not witness the second one (and it specifically says the Eldar do not talk about it). She is then a minor character in both The Hobbit and The Lordof The Rings.
  • Círdan the Shipwright is one in-universe. He has been around in so long (since the elves first awakened at the place they were created, so for tens of thousands of years, making him the oldest known elf still there at the time of LOTR) that he is the only elf ever mentioned that has managed to grow an actual long grey beard. And he (or one of his two ports) is at the very least mentioned in almost every major work to do with Middle-earth.
• In the Usborne Puzzle Adventure The Vanishing Village, the protagonists must find help an 18th century village that's stuck in limbo. The only way they can get into the past is to bring something that originated in the village with them from the present day. It's a spoon, weirdly enough.

Live-Action TV

• In Ashes to Ashes (2008) which does not involve Time Travel Gene Hunt is Alex's constant because he was present in Sam Tyler's world in Life On Mars. This is of great importance to Alex as it could mean that she is inhabiting the same world as Sam Tyler, Thus disproving her original theory that she was in a coma. In the end, it is revealed that Alex is in purgatory.
  • This fact is highlighted in 2×08 of Ashes to Ashes:
    Martin Summers: Look at us. Couple of desperate cases. Now you've lost your lifeline...
    Alex: [mumbling in her sleep] No.
    Martin Summers: ...Your constant. Your Gene Hunt.
  • This is explained in the series finale when it is discovered that Gene Hunt "created" the Universe/Purgatory after his death and "modelled" it to his own liking.
  • Ray and Chris are also constants in both series, however Gene Hunt is the main constant to all characters because he is revealed to be a psychopomp for dead police officers.
  • Nelson the Bartender from Life On Mars also appears at the end of Ashes to Ashes (2008) because he is a holy power and is accepting Alex, Shaz, Chris and Ray into heaven.
  • A few minor characters (notably DCI Litton) from Life On Mars appear in Ashes to Ashes (2008) but because Alex never read of these characters from Sam Tyler's Notes, she can not ascertain if they are constants or figments. This is only revealed in the series finale.
    • It's all very Solipsistic!
• Babylon 5 has an Interplanetary Constant rather than a Temporal Constant. According to G'Kar every known planet has a food that's identical to Earth's Swedish Meatballs.
• Cheers has an entirely mundane example in the form of resident barfly Norm Peterson. He's been coming to the titular bar for so long there are at least two separate occasions where a person who hasn't been there in years or even decades comes back and instantly recognizes him. Another time, he claims he used to work out at a gym that was next door to Cheers none of the others remember, and says it was torn down to build a bookstore, then a bakery, then a bank...
  Sam: Bank's been there as long as I can remember.
  Norm: There you go.
• There are several in Dark (2017), thanks to taking place entirely in the same town, but the most frequently-recurring is the Winden Cave entrance, which appears in every single time period from the 1800s all the way to the far apocalyptic future where it’s the only landmark left among an endless desert.
• Happens from time to time in Doctor Who due to its time-travel nature.
  • In the old series, there was only one actor who crossed the tenures of more than two Doctors: The Brigadier. Even The Master and Davros changed actors. But Nicholas Courtney was there as Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart from the Second Doctor, to the Seventh, making his final appearance in The Sarah Jane Adventures. Companions changed, and the Doctor regenerated, but the Brigadier stood there throughout it all, always taking The Slow Path, and always ready to do the best he can. And that's what makes it so heartbreaking when you find out he has died by the time of the Eleventh Doctor.
  • The Second Doctor story "The Ice Warriors" is set in a future Ice Age, full of snow and glaciers. But the human scientists' base is an old Queen Anne mansion (including the furniture), making it recognizably our future (probably England). There's also a present- or past-style nursery shed.
  • Captain Jack Harkness has also become the constant for the universe. He can never die. He can never stop existing. And now, Rex Matheson seems to have joined him.
  • In "The Big Bang", events are put into place that make Amy Pond the constant for the entire universe.
  • The Doctor himself becomes this for Clara Oswald, as revealed in "The Name of the Doctor".
    Clara: Sometimes it's like I've lived a thousand lives in a thousand places. I'm born. I live. I die. And always there's the Doctor.
  • In the Doctor Who Expanded Universe (or at least the Big Finish Doctor Who audios and short story collections), there's the White Rabbit pub, on the Embankment. When the Fifth Doctor met William Shakespeare it was where Globe patrons went after a show. When the Second Doctor was arrested for celebrating Christmas during the Cromwell Protectorate, the landlord rescued him. The Doctor's long-term friend Edward Grainger (1906-2006) lived nearby and occasionally frequented it, and was his granddaughter's local in the 1990s. It was also UNIT's local in the 2000s. In 2021, it was where Hex Schofield had a birthday party just before becoming the Seventh Doctor's companion. It even still exists in the 26th century, although for some reason it's been relocated to the planet Bedrock 12. At one point, the Doctor is touching the bar when Linda Grainger points out it's "the same pub", and gets a psychic shockwave of all the memories attached to it.
• In The Flash (2014), according to Earth-2's Harrison Wells, "Every earth has The Godfather". It's later established that the Big Belly Burger chain is a multiversal constant as well.
• The Grand Finale of Kamen Rider Zi-O reveals that every world has at least one Kamen Rider to represent it. Without one, the world would be lead to ruin. Even as the Big Bad who's destroying worlds to save his learns of this, he decides to keep destroying worlds anyway.
• The Trope Namer is the Lost episode "The Constant", in which Desmond is undergoing rapid Mental Time Travel between two times in his life and must find a Constant in the two times in order to avoid insanity and death. It's his girlfriend Penelope. In the same episode, Daniel Faraday discovers a note in his journal saying that if the same thing ever happens to him, he will use Desmond as his Constant.
• The Outer Limits (1995):
  • In "Vanishing Act", Trevor McPhee travels forward in time to 1960, 1970, 1980 and 1990. He meets his wife Theresa, who eventually divorces him due to his unavoidable absences, in every time period. Trevor also meets Theresa's new husband Ray Carter in 1960, 1970 and 1980. As Ray died in 1988, he only sees a video recording of him in 1990. Trevor's son Mark, who was conceived during his brief sojourn in 1960, is present from 1970 onwards.
  • In "Tribunal", Leon Zgierski and Karl Rademacher are present as young men in Auschwitz in 1944 and as elderly men in Philadelphia in 1999.
  • In "Time to Time", Angie Palmer is present in UC Berkeley in both 1969 and 1989.
• Star Trek:
  • Although there's no Time Travel involved, McCoy appears in "Encounter at Farpoint", the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, as a reminder that the two series take place in the same universe but different times.
  • The same idea occurs with all the other series of Star Trek as well, with a character from a preceding series showing up in the first episode of the new series (Picard in Deep Space Nine, Quark in Voyager, Spock (and a reference to an Admiral Archer) in the 2009 reboot. Enterprise, due to taking place earliest in the continuity, used Zefram Cochrane from Star Trek: First Contact.
  • In the two-part Next Generation episode "Time's Arrow", the long-lived Guinan is the link between times (along with Data's severed head).
  • The Next Generation two-parter "Unification, Part 1 & Part 2", created for an anniversary and featuring Spock, who is used to link the past and the present. Spock (specifically, Leonard Nimoy as Spock) is arguably this for the franchise as a whole, since he also appears in the 2009 reboot movie, where he actually serves to make it clear that the reboot is taking place in a different timeline, which is nevertheless at least related to the TOS one.
  • The Guardian of Forever in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" claims to be this for almost all sentient history. "Since before your sun burned hot in space, I have awaited a question."
• The Twilight Zone (1985): In "A Message from Charity", there is a rock near Harmon Brook in Annes Town (later Anniston) called Bear Rock, which is so named because it resembles a bear bending down to drink from the stream. In 1700, Charity Payne carves a message of love for Peter Wood, their initials in a heart, under the bear's jaw on the left side. He finds it in 1985.

Video Games

• The ruined tower in Sheratan in Baten Kaitos Origins serves as a constant for Sagi, who can eventually use it to travel back and forth in time due to housing a spirit who was alive back then.
• In the BioShock series, there is always a man, a lighthouse, and a city, no matter what universe.
• Dracula's castle in Castlevania games is an ever-changing structure ("a creature of chaos" as Symphony of the Night puts it), but the corridor in its entrance stays the same. Also, the approach to Dracula's throne room generally includes a long staircase going upward from right to left. Sometimes other parts of the castle will remain the same between specific incarnations. For example, the clock tower in both Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night are very similar in layout.
• Leene's Bell in Chrono Trigger and the Black Omen, later in the game (but previously chronologically). Also the Sun Cave, the Nu and, of course, Lavos.
• Across both wildly divergent timelines in the Command & Conquer series, Tiberium and Red Alert, there is a corporation called Futuretech. This was introduced in the last respective entries of the series. In the first respective entries the constant was Kane (at the time the plan was for Red Alert to be a prequel to Tiberian Dawn, though that got lost when Red Alert 2 was made).
• In Dark Chronicle, there is almost always an overly obvious Constant: That baby Lapras-looking thing you saved helped to form the labs! That girl was the sage all along! etc.
• In Day of the Tentacle, the same house exists for over 400 years, from the days of the Founding Fathers to the future where the tentacles have taken over the world, although it's much more metallic in the future. Also, many objects in the house can be found in more than one time period. This is often used by the main characters to affect one or more future time periods. For example, since only inanimate objects can be passed through the Chron-O-John, the only way to send a hamster to Laverne in the future is to put it in the freezer, which is still around 200 years from now. Apparently, no one has bothered to look inside in all this time. The time machine is still in the basement in the future (though it's broken and useless), and the laundry room doesn't change in the slightest - the coin-operated dryer Bernard sets running in the present is still going two hundred years later (he fed it a lot of change).
• In Fallout 4, the Protagonist is Cryogenically frozen, their spouse killed, and their son kidnapped. Their robotic butler, Codsworth, exists as a constant between the pre-war and post-war times. The Vault-Tec Salesman who sold you your place in the Vault can also be found and recruited, however he has undergone 'Ghoulification' due to the radiation damage.
• Promotional material for Five Nights at Freddy's 3 implies Freddy Fazbear intends to become this trope. "I am still here."
• The video game series Legacy of Kain has the nine Pillars of Nosgoth, while they don't remain in a constant state (the ruination of the pillars is a major plot point) they remain as a constant on the landscape of the environment and a general marker for the time period. Along with the Pillars, Ariel's soul is present in every game but Blood Omen 2, and her state (bound to the Pillars) is constant, a reminder of Kain's decision not to sacrifice himself.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and The Legend Of Zelda Oracle of Ages play with this trope a lot. It's possible the Deku tree is an example across the games, if the one in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is the same one in Ocarina. (More likely, it's the tree that grew out of the Deku Sprout, since the old one died.)
  • As revealed in the climax of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Impa and Zelda are this, the former having guarded the latter in the Sealed Temple for millennia to maintain the magical seal on Demise.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, while the towns that weren't destroyed in the Great Calamity have been remarkably well-preserved in the century since, Revali's Landing and the Thunder Helm are two things from back then that are specifically pointed out to Link due to them being associated with the old Champions Revali and Urbosa respectively. Indeed, having those pointed out is enough for him to recover his memories of his old friends. There is also the older generation of Sheikah and Zora, but the fact that Link has amnesia means that they don't count from his subjective perspective.
• Happens several times to the immortal Kaim, in Lost Odyssey. A couple of incidents in the 'Dreams of a Thousand Years' section involve him meeting someone as a child, then crossing their paths again, 60, 70 or 80 years later, where they're old and dying, and he's still as young as ever. In the main game story, he also meets a wise old king - whom, as it turns out, he first met when he was a brash young prince, and taught a few things about combat, survival, and life in general.
• Mass Effect 2
  • The Illusive Man invokes this trope to give the newly Back from the Dead Shepard a personal incentive to help Cerberus take down the Collectors, by having a larger and more advanced replica of the original Normandy built, convincing Joker and Dr Chakwas to join her crew and sending Shepard to recruit some of their former squadmates for the mission. In doing so, he's able to keep Shepard's mind focused on the mission and not on the two years that have passed while they were clinically dead.
  • The Citadel and the Keepers that maintain it are the constant to cycle after cycle of galactic civilization, stretching back eons at the very least. This is deliberate on the part of the Reapers, as it factors into their destruction of cycle upon cycle.
• The intro to Star Ocean: Till the End of Time has a few, including the (pictured) Statue of Liberty.

Webcomics

• Jones (aka Wandering Eye) is a constant in Gunnerkrigg Court. In the flashbacks where the parents of the main protagonists are shown in their school days, Jones is there, appearing exactly as she does in the present. This (along with the inhuman speed and strength Jones had already demonstrated) led to fan speculation that Jones was a particularly humanoid robot, which author Tom Siddell shot down in comments without revealing any more than that. When Antimony finally gets the story out of her, it turns out that Jones has been around literally since the Earth was formed. Even she doesn't know what she really is.
• In Homestuck,
  • Dad is pretty much the same guy in both the original universe and the post-Scratch universe.
  • As well, Caliborn's home is the troll's meteor and his planet is Earth After the End, littered with Statues of Liberties. This was likely invoked by Dirk's Bro, who as a Guardian had some knowledge of Sburb/the future, and seeded the entire planet with shitty Liberties as a concept art piece, perhaps to leave a message to future residents that the planet is Earth All Along.
• Narbonic has one where Dave has to find a Constant, so he can get returned to the present. Getting slapped/punched by a girl works!
• Stand Still, Stay Silent:
  • In the Distant Prologue, the Finland segment focuses on an extended family that includes a couple by the name of Hotakainen that are expecting their baby to be born in the next few weeks. In the main story set ninety years later, the cast includes three Finnish young adults with the Hotakainen surname, who occasionally mention their grandmother. The family tree published at the end of Chapter 12 eventually confirmed that the unborn baby from the prologue and "grandma" were indeed the same person.
  • The area that the main cast is exploring used to be mainland Denmark, but the nation itself survived as a tiny island. The Denmark segment of the prologue focuses on someone from the mainland getting stuck on the small island in question because of sudden travel restrictions. The newscast announcing the travel restrictions mentions a couple of locations that become relevant in the early leg of the main cast's journey ninety years later.

Web Original

• In Darwin's Soldiers: Pavlov's Checkmate, the main team is trapped in 1990, and needs to send a message to a teammate still in 2010. They do this by noticing a file cabinet that they recall seeing in 2010, and slipping a note inside it.
• In Fine Structure, Anne Poole is the Constant for over 20,000 years.

Western Animation

• Similar to Avatar but across a much longer time period, there is an episode of Samurai Jack where Jack visits a temple he had been to in the past. Not only do the martial artist students practice the same traditions, but there is even a monk there, thousands and thousands of years old, that Jack met when he was there.
  • And when Jack finally finds his homeland.
• King Bumi from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Aang knew him as a kid, got frozen in ice for 100 years, and then meets up with Bumi again as an old, crazy king. An episode is resolved by the revelation of this Constant.
  • Katara acts as this in The Legend of Korra particularly for the audience. She's the only member of the original cast that we see until the 9th episode (save statues, of course).
• In The Fairly OddParents!, when Timmy changed the past and ended up living in a terrible foreign country called Ustinkistan (inside hasn't been invented, the nights last 11 months, during which werewolves are on the prowl, and the last boat to ever leave the country sailed fifty years ago), Timmy was forced to use a turnip time machine to go back in time and change the past back. After using the machine, Timmy noticed that everything was still the same, leading him to believe that the time machine didn't work. Wanda then tells him it did and he was now fifty years in the past. As she noted "Not much changes here in Ustinkistan".
• Futurama has several Constants: the subterranean ruins of New York, the pizzeria where Fry used to work, the various heads of celebrities preserved in jars, and so on. The biggest one is probably Nibbler, who was responsible for Fry being frozen a thousand years earlier. And Fry's dog… whom we'll skip over before we start to tear up.
  • Applied Cryogenics somehow manages to survive for 1000 years without a power failure (or apocalyptic destruction), despite the "No Power Failures Since 1997" sign on the wall in the pilot episode, and that we see the world reduced to medieval levels twice during that time.
  • There's a Shout-Out to Planet of the Apes (1968) in "The Late Phillip J. Fry" where Fry, Bender, and the Professor travel forward in time to the year 10000. Fry, walking through the ruins of the city of New New York, sees a tilted, half-buried Statue of Liberty and laments "They blew it up! (pan to an identical statue of a gorilla) ... and then the apes blew up their society too!" (pan to another statue with a bird's head) "And then birds took over and ruined their society!" (pan to yet another statue) "And then cows ..." (pan again) "and ... I don't know ... is that a slug maybe? NOOOOOO!"
  • Also Fry's boyhood home. When they find it in the ruins of Old New York in "Luck of the Fry-ish" it's a ruin, and Bender even comments on how time has been cruel to the house. They then switch to the 1990's to find it was always that run-down.
• Demona and Macbeth in Gargoyles had a spell laid on them around 1025 AD which has rendered them immortal.
• In the Justice League episode "Hereafter", Superman is hurled forward some 30,000 years. He soon finds the immortal Vandal Savage as the sole survivor of the human race...who also happens to be responsible for the extinction of the rest of it. Savage feels understandably guilty about the whole thing, and sends Supes back to stop his past self.
  • There is also the Watchtower which, in a subtle Chekhov's Gun, has survived reentry to crash land in the jungle.
  • The episode "Epilogue" invokes this as it relates to Batman: in the time of Batman Beyond, an older Terry McGuinnis learns from Amanda Waller, who is now an elderly woman, about the circumstances behind the fact that he was, biologically, Bruce Wayne's son: it was all an effort to ensure that, now and in the future, the world would have a Batman.
• Love, Death & Robots. The episode "Sonnie's Edge" takes place in a vandalised and derelict St Paul's Cathedral, now repurposed as a fight ring for remotely-controlled bioengineered beasts, in the midst of a neon-lit future London.
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: No matter the universe, there’s always a Spider-Man (or Spider-Woman) and they’re always inspired to be heroes by the loss of loved one. More darkly, it’s implied that in every universe he appears in Kingpin always makes the same mistakes and always ends up losing his family because of it.

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If anything goes wrong, TV Tropes will be MY constant.

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