Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel - Plot

Plot

The film begins with Ray (Chris O'Dowd) being fired from his job as a costumed guide in a theme park attraction called "Star Ride". Ray's good friends Pete (Dean Lennox Kelly) and Toby (Marc Wootton) promote "Dinoburgers" at the theme park restaurant.

After work, they go to the cinema. Leaving the film, they complain about the quality of the movie. Toby declares that he has many great ideas and reads some from his notebook, and declares that he'll write a letter to Hollywood in protest. In the pub, he writes the letter and complains about remakes -- Jude Law, Han shot first -- and mentions "more Firefly and/or Serenity" as a positive suggestion.

Ray goes to the bar in another section of the pub. An American girl called Cassie (Anna Faris) catches his attention. She explains she is a time traveller whose time machine has been built into her body, and that her job is to find and repair "time leaks" and stop "editors". He returns to his friends, but they don't believe him. A short time later, Pete goes to the toilet.

Pete finds the bar full of dead bodies, including his own bloody corpse. In a panic, he returns to the toilet, and when he re-enters the bar again, he has returned to his own time.

The others then follow him to the toilet and retrace his steps. They end up going back in time. Ray realizes Cassie is still where he met her previously and goes to talk to her. Cassie doesn't believe him and leaves, only to immediately return, her hair and clothes having changed. She explains six months has passed for her.

Cassie instructs Ray to simply hide out and wait the half hour until they catch up to the time their past selves went into the toilet. After waiting for a half hour, the three once again need to go to the toilet. They leave but arrive in the distant future. Pete tries to go back into the women's toilet to reverse the trip. He explains he's been frequently using both toilets and randomly jumping time periods in an attempt to get back home. They go into the main bar. Pete insists that what they need is weapons and food, so they scrounge around in the rubble, finding a knife, a corkscrew and an ancient package of crisps with an expiration date of May 2094 (which taste bad, being so long past the expiration date). The outside world is a bleak ruin, also coated in ash and dust, indicating that they are in a post-apocalyptic future. Ray wants to go out to explore, and Toby wants to stay by the fire they've built till rescue comes, but Pete is eager to give the toilets another try so they can get back to their own time. While seeking a piece of wood to turn the knife into a spear, Pete discovers a partially decaying mural on the back wall of the pub showing the three of them sitting in the pub dressed as they are now, implying that they become famous, but from the decayed state of the mural it was impossible to deduce what for. Startled by a noise, they speculate that it could be the sound of a giant insect. It turns out to be just a homeless person walking by pushing a squeaky shopping trolley, who gets his head bitten off by a giant ant.

They wait in the toilet. Pete hints that sometimes other creatures enter the toilet. They hear a noise and hide. They see their past selves trace Pete's steps trying to travel in time. They hide from their past selves. After their past selves leave, they then run out into the garden to find the place full of people dressed just like them. It turns out to be an "imagineer" fan theme night based on them. They find the same mural as before, this time in a more perfect state, and observe that they becoming famous has something to do with the bit of note paper written earlier, they speculate what could have been written on both sides of the piece of paper. A second time traveller named Millie from Causal Adjust shows up and helps send them back to their own time.

They end up back in the pub about an hour early, so they decide to sit at a nearby table eavesdropping on their earlier selves, buy some pints and wait it out. After their past selves leave, they go back to their original seats to read the note on the back of the letter that will make them famous. When Ray goes outside to pee, Cassie appears again, wearing a different outfit. Ray thanks Cassie and Millie and the people at Causal Adjust. Cassie doesn't know any Millie and realizes she must be an editor sent to kill them at their finest moment. Cassie attempts to go back and fix the problem but her time machine has been taken offline, so she returns to the bar, finding Millie there. Pete fights with Toby to destroy the note, but they are stopped by Millie. Millie makes Toby an offer: "die and live on as legends or live a long life anonymously" but Toby defies her. Millie sets off a blast killing everyone in the pub (leading to the tableau of death that Pete had seen earlier). Ray makes one last move to reach for the note. He doesn't reach it but instead spills a pint, which destroys the note, breaking causality. With nothing to make them famous, time rewinds and things seem to have gone back to normal, however they keep their memories of the time travel events.

The three friends walk home and wonder if the adventure is really over. Cassie then appears through a big glowing portal. She reveals that they have only fourteen hours to save the Earth (a reference to the film Flash Gordon), and urges them to go with her to a parallel universe. Ray convinces them to jump into the portal. After they leave, Ray and Pete come out from around the corner, only to realize they have a second duplicate Pete.

After the credits Ray and the two Petes hear a shout "get back freak" and Toby runs past being chased by a version of himself. Pete has the last words saying: "This is all getting a little bit too complicated".