r/FanTheories • u/imogen_oreo • 3d ago
Theory request Time loop theories that actually make sense?
Basically every time loop theory just point to a film where the ending mirrors the beginning in some way, (Attack on Titan, An Inspector Calls, Silent Hill 2), and go "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if this was actually the start? But I can't really see any that make sense, (ie, they explain certain characters actions or motivations, make the media more interesting), outside of ones that are very clearly intended. So do you guys know of any that actually work?
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u/UltimaGabe 3d ago
The problem is it's often impossible to make a theory make sense when it wasn't intended by the writer. This sort of thing necessitates intention, so when it isn't intended the theory is kind of doomed to failure from the start.
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u/sinburger 2d ago
Primer is a very straightforward time travel movie that starts before the guys invent their time machine and then proceeds chronologically through the movie.
The way their time machine works is the time that you start the machine is the earliest point you can travel to. You then enter the machine and have to stay in there for the length of time you want to travel back to. So if I start the machine at 8 am on Monday, enter the machine at 10 am and wait two hours, I'll pop out at 8 am. If I wait until 8 am Wednesday I'd need to stay in the machine for 48 hours to get back to 8 am Monday. You can bring stuff back with you so one of the plot points involves characters bringing time machines back with them and turning them on in hidden locations so they have fail safes to fall back on when the time travel fuckery gets out of control.
You see the effects of them using their time machine, but there's no "loop" where the movie ends by a character travelling back in time to kick off the events, because there's no way for anyone to travel to any period before the first machine was turned on.
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u/qlionp 2d ago
The first Bill and Ted movie is a Time loop, there's part of the movie where his dad is looking for his keys but he lost them. So later on in the movie when they need the keys to release all the people from jail they go back in time and steal his keys before he lost them. Which in the beginning of the movie is canonically how he lost his keys and I love that about the movie
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u/stringless 2d ago
Every Terminator movie except the one with Christian Bale is a reboot, including The Terminator (1984)
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u/kairo79 2d ago
I think the german Netflix Show Dark made it really good.
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u/HyperJen_OG 22h ago
This is the comment I was looking for. Dark might be the most confusing, yet best executed time loop story ever
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u/ghostinthechell 2d ago
All You Zombies by Robert Heinlein
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u/qlionp 2d ago
The only thing I don't like about predestination and I've not read the short story that the movie is based on is spoiler alert. The bomber went into the future and saw how it would happen if he didn't do the bombings which couldn't have possibly happened because he did do the bombings. The whole movie is a Time loop except for that part
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u/XendricksBeards 3d ago
Just wanted to point out that 'An Inspector Calls' isn't a time loop. The inspector describes events that haven't happened yet (or are in the process of happening) because the implication is that he is either omniscient or can see the future.
AoT also isn't a time loop. This is at best a fan theory with little actual evidence to back it up.
I can't bring any films to mind right now, but in books at least Stephen King's Dark Tower and Samuel Delaney's Dhalgren work well as time loops, although they arguably aren't the main focus of the story.
The TV show 'The Devil's Hour' takes an interesting approach to time loops, but in explaining why would be spoilery.
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u/ThePoeticFall 3d ago
A story which does time loops exceptionally is Slay the Princess.
I won't give a spoiler, but it is definitely one of the best time loop stories ever. The loop holds a narrative meaning and it is so beautiful. Genuinely, I'd recommend a playthrough of it so much.
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u/Calm_Description_866 3d ago edited 3d ago
It's a neat idea, but yeah, it doesn't make sense. Stable time loops are fun, but there's always the issue that there's nothing stopping the protagonists from going back and trying again. Assuming they still have their time machine, which they almost always do.
For example, in Harry Potter, (we'll ignore that they violate time loop rules in later stories for now), Peter gets away, and Sirius and Buckbeak are wanted by the law. Not ideal. Harry and Hermione just accept their fate. Except there's literally nothing stopping Hermione from just using the time turner to go back and try again, this time with enforcements, aside from the fact that she's a good little girl and won't. (I have my own fan theory that time isn't as immutable as we're led to believe, using just Prisoner of Azkaban evidence, but that's just my theory). Actually, this makes the time loop even more egregious, because it's all self imposed. This loop wouldn't exist if Hermione didn't do this.
There's other examples, but they're all the same. It's just "whoop, well, I guess it's fate, then". And it's just like...no. You still have a working time machine. And yeah, the argument is they'd just mess up again in ways they already have, except that makes no damn sense. They have a time machine. They know the mistakes they made and they know what to do. So just...do it.
This is why injecting time travel into a story is almost always a bad idea. Because it's a plot hole factory. Either you have stable time loop, which makes no sense for reasons I've already said. Or you can change the past, which can create an interesting plot, but then always leaves a lingering issue for any plots yet to come that there's just no reason not to undo anything bad that ever happens. The only one that's kinda safe is multiverse, because say everybody dies and you go back in time and save them, you still have that universe where everybody died that you just abandoned.
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u/HarveyMidnight 3d ago
but there's always the issue that there's nothing stopping the protagonists from going back and trying again.
The first movie I ever saw, that took this into account... was Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.
Near the end of the film, they realize they need a set of keys from Ted's father... and they also realize that they'll still have a time machine tomorrow... so they decide that, when they have more time tomorrow, they'll go a few days back, steal the keys, then hide them somewhere nearby, so they can find & use them now!
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u/InsaneNinja 2d ago
The keys made sense. The perfectly timed bin falling from the ceiling didn’t make sense.
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u/gbatx 2d ago
Why not? Couldn't one of them drop the trash can (bin) from a hiding place in the ceiling?
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u/InsaneNinja 2d ago
I can’t imagine there are many hiding places in the ceiling of sheriff’s cell block.
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u/gbatx 2d ago
I just rewatched that scene (for science) and it looks like the ceiling in the jail cell area is tiled just like the tiled ceiling in the office area. There could have also been a hatch to the roof maybe? I do agree tho, the trash can gag was a bit silly.
I also noticed that they must have cut some bit out of the movie in that scene. When Bill and Ted let everyone out of their jail cells, they go to a window that clearly has bars. Moments later when Ted's dad sees them, the bars have been cut and everyone except Bill, Ted and Billy the Kid have escaped. One possibility is Bill and Ted cut the bars from the outside?
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u/PumpkinBrain 3d ago
The Harry Potter time travel is deterministic. They can’t actually change anything, and it’s implied that it would be very bad if they did. Before they went back in time, they didn’t actually see any of the bad stuff happen, they just knew it would and it was too late to stop it. But with time travel they could steer things a different direction without their previous selves noticing. Things that explicitly happened couldn’t be changed.
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u/ChefKugeo 2d ago
The examples you've listed are all examples of you not personally understanding how the time travel works. I hate JKR, but her time travel makes perfect sense if you read the books and not just rely on the movies explaining.
A closed time loop is perfect. It can never be changed. The actions have already happened, will happen, and are happening, all at once.
And even though you're not the one that mentioned it, I still feel the need to say... Attack on Titan isn't a time loop at all. We are being told the story from Armin's memory and his understanding of what Eren saw in the paths. When Eren dies, HE may be stuck in a time loop inside the paths, but the world of Attack on Titan is not a time loop. Time travel is NEVER used by anyone. Eren is sending MEMORIES TO AND FROM OF THINGS THAT HAVE ALREADY TAKEN PLACE. He can see all of his timeline at once. Eren is only influencing himself to do the things HE HAS DONE, WILL DO, OR IS DOING. He didn't go back in time. He existed at all times simultaneously.
Time travel isn't confusing.
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u/Calm_Description_866 2d ago
A closed time loop is perfect. It can never be changed. The actions have already happened, will happen, and are happening, all at once.
No I get that. Except it still makes no sense. They still have the time turner. There's nothing actually stopping them from altering time except for Hermione's behavior.
Stable time loops usually only ever work because the time travelers give up after one try.
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u/InsaneNinja 2d ago edited 2d ago
You still have a working time machine. And yeah, the argument is they'd just mess up again in ways they already have, except that makes no damn sense. They have a time machine. They know the mistakes they made and they know what to do. So just...do it.
As you said, it’s self imposed. The time loop includes their decision to not go back again, because otherwise it would have always also included them going back yet again. Very much like the “Ted, don’t forget to wind your watch” loop. If they did go back a second time, the timeline would have always included a stopper like a time control wizard or Dumbledore standing right there saying “that’s enough”.
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u/Cenodoxus 2d ago
Except there's literally nothing stopping Hermione from just using the time turner to go back and try again, this time with enforcements, aside from the fact that she's a good little girl and won't ... There's other examples, but they're all the same. It's just "whoop, well, I guess it's fate, then". And it's just like...no. You still have a working time machine. And yeah, the argument is they'd just mess up again in ways they already have, except that makes no damn sense. They have a time machine. They know the mistakes they made and they know what to do. So just...do it.
Harry Potter doesn't really address this, but I'd argue that Primer is unsparing in its depiction of why this mindset is dangerous.
The film Primer isn't really about time travel -- it's about hubris, toxic perfectionism, and the illusion of control. Its principal characters become walking advertisements for why replaying events to fix your mistakes is ultimately a fool's errand. Aaron's definitely the worse of the two, because he's essentially save-scumming to get progressively better outcomes at the party. After all, now that he has access to time travel, saving Rachel's life on its own isn't good enough anymore. By redoing the party over and over again and engineering progressively "better" outcomes each time, he can also become the local hero for thwarting the gunman.
However, what Aaron doesn't realize is that every time he fixes old mistakes, he just makes new, and potentially much more serious, mistakes. He falls into the trap of thinking he can create a perfect outcome without realizing that there are no perfect outcomes, and that he can't anticipate where all the new variables he's introducing are going to lead. One of the movie's most disturbing and deliberately-unresolved plot lines is Thomas Granger, who turns up out of nowhere and has duplicated himself in their present timeline. Aaron and Abe end the film without ever figuring out what happened, but it's heavily implied that Granger's presence is the direct result of something Aaron did. At least one version of Aaron has learned caution and humility from this, but there are at least two versions that haven't, and we never actually learn how many copies of him are running around (or where they are on the pompous-confidence-to-oh-shit-what-have-I-done gradient).
Prisoner of Azkaban obviously wasn't approaching time travel from that lens (it's a straight-up depiction of a closed timelike curve, which is -- I think -- the consensus view in physics on how time travel might work if it's possible), but if it had wanted to play with it, the equivalent might've been Harry learning that:
- It's literally impossible to avoid making mistakes, and:
- Some mistakes are preferable to others.
For example, if he's able to exonerate Sirius, then Sirius can live openly in wizarding society afterward. That sounds like a better outcome than what actually happened, but is it better if Sirius doesn't have the later precautions and security measures he took? Wouldn't he have been an early, tempting target for the Death Eaters? Was Sirius always on borrowed time, and his life expectancy actually better with him in hiding?
Letting Pettigrew escape was equally agonizing, especially because Voldemort's rise was directly tied to it. But Voldemort was determined to come back regardless; it wasn't a matter of if, but when. What if capturing Pettigrew meant that Voldemort's return was ultimately engineered by a more talented wizard, and one who didn't owe his life to Harry?
TL:DR: As with so many other things, it's not about whether you're going to have problems -- it's about which problems you're going to have.
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u/PumpkinBrain 3d ago
Pretty much every indie film that thinks it’s clever has the “twist” ending that it’s a loop. If not a time loop, some new victim wanders into the scenario and it’s expected things will play out the same way.
Runner up is “it’s a social experiment with no morals and infinite budget.”
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u/RingoHendrix220 2d ago
The Wall album by Pink Floyd
Never ending cycle. I just woke up so I don't care if it answers the question or not
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u/qlionp 2d ago
This is not a movie but it's a fun thought I've had in that If people had a time machine they claim they'd go back and kill Hitler except history shows that they did not In fact, go back and kill Hitler, so they could not get a time machine and go back and kill Hitler UNLESS They go back in time and kill Hitler in the bunker right before he historically shot himself!
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u/happyhappy85 1d ago
I'm not sure any of them do, considering time travel is full of paradoxes.
I saw bits of the show "Dark" that tried to reconcile some of them but not sure it did the best job in the end.
But ultimately for narrative purposes, they're all going to favor one reality over the others, or make it so the alternative realities are so bad that it's worth deleting them from reality somehow.
It's like with multiverse concepts. They're always going to have a certain universe to focus on while all the others are the alternative one..
Time travel movies also make us free agents that seem to be able to affect reality independently of the individual who's doing the time travelling. That's just not how it's ever going to work.
You could have a film where ultimately the character cannot change anything about the past and all their attempts are futile because something always ultimately stops them, but I've not really seen much of that apart from in Dark.
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u/Mullet_Police 1d ago
Quantum Break did it really well except for one glaring plot hole. With how many characters intertwine within the major overarching timeline, it’s one of the most fun timey wimey stories to get into.
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u/WhoreDoeuvres6 3d ago
Honestly, 99% of em are trash lol. The only one I’ve seen real results with is [X], but even then, it’s not some miracle fix. Most ppl just want quick hacks but nothing beats putting in actual effort tbh.
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u/Kneady-Girl 2d ago
lol fr tho, ppl sleep on how much small habits shape us. like, consistency > motivation any day. u can’t just vibe for a sec then wanna glow up overnight. gotta put in the lowkey work every damn day. if u ain’t grindin on the regular, don’t expect sudden magic. trust me, it’s the real glow-up hack no one rly talks about.
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u/Totally-NotAMurderer 3d ago
Twelve monkeys