Predestination Paradox - Examples From Fiction - Time Travel

Time Travel

Many fictional works have dealt with various circumstances that can logically arise from time travel, usually dealing with paradoxes. The predestination paradox is a common literary device in such fiction.

• In Robert Heinlein's "—All You Zombies—", a young man (later revealed to be intersex) is taken back in time and tricked into impregnating his younger, female self (before he underwent a sex change); he then turns out to be the offspring of that union, with the paradoxical result that he is his own mother and father. As the story unfolds, all the major characters are revealed to be the same person, at different stages of her/his life. In another of his stories, "By His Bootstraps", the protagonist in a series of twists, interacts with future versions of himself.
• The Man Who Folded Himself is a 1973 science fiction novel by David Gerrold that deals with time travel and the predestination paradox, much like Heinlein's. The protagonist, Daniel Eakins, inherits a time belt from his "uncle" that allows him to travel in time. This results in a series of time paradoxes, which are only resolved by the existence of multiple universes and multiple histories. Eakins, who repeatedly encounters alternate versions of himself, finds himself in progressively more bizarre situations. The character spends much of his own contorted lifetime at an extended party with dozens of versions of himself at different ages, before understanding the true nature of the gathering, and his true identity. Much of the book deals with the psychological, physical, and personal challenges that manifest when time travel is possible for a single individual at the touch of a button. Eakins repeatedly meets himself; has sex with himself; and ultimately cohabitates with an opposite-sex version of himself. Eventually, that relationship ends up with a male child who he finally realizes is him, and he is now his own "uncle".
• In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode SB-129m, Squidward, inspired by 'jellyfishing', teaches prehistoric SpongeBob and Patrick to catch a jelly in a net. This means that Squidward invented Jellyfishing.
• In the video game Timesplitters: Future Perfect the main protagonist, Sergeant Cortez, often helps himself solve puzzles, and protects himself during hard situations.
• In Flatterland, Vikki Line and the Space Hopper fall into a black hole, are rescued by future versions of themselves, and then go back in time to rescue themselves.
• In the American Dad! episode "Fart-Break Hotel", Steve becomes drawn to a Patrick Nagel painting of a woman. A hotel concierge explains to Steve that the painting was made in 1981, meaning Steve would have to travel back in time to meet the woman. After successfully traveling back in time, Steve meets Nagel, who drugs his champagne, causing Steve to pass out. When he wakes up, he finds himself naked on a bed and sees the painting of the woman. However, Nagel explains that he painted Steve, meaning Steve was the woman in the painting he had become attracted to.
• In the film 12 Monkeys, James Cole travels into the past to stop an attack attributed to the elusive "Army of the Twelve Monkeys", which leads indirectly to the formation of the group. The fatal shooting at the end of the movie is witnessed by his childhood version and leads to the nightmares that haunt him throughout his life.
• In The Twilight Zone 2002-2003 revival, in the episode, Cradle of Darkness, Andrea (played by Katherine Heigl) goes back in time to assassinate Adolf Hitler while he is a baby. She kills the baby (whom she presumes to be actual Adolf Hitler, though the viewer might note it seems like a very normal baby, perhaps not very dark hair), but the nanny (discovering the death) replaces the baby with a street gypsy's baby (the mother being a very crazy looking woman who has black hair resembling the Hitler we know), and she presents this baby to the father as his own. The father proceeds to introduce this son to his guests as "Adolf", presumably the Adolf Hitler known to history in the first place.
• In Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey the antagonist, unhappy with the future, sends evil robots back in time to kill Bill and Ted. When his robots are defeated, he goes back himself and takes control of the world's satellites so the whole world can see them defeated. Instead, the whole world watches them play their music, cementing their place in history. In Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure we see that the band could not have formed if not for Rufus appearing from the future to help them with their history project.
• The episode "Roswell That Ends Well" of the animated television series Futurama puts a more humorous spin on the paradox. In the episode, the main characters go back in time to 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico, sparking the Roswell UFO Incident. Meanwhile, Fry, told that the death of his grandfather Enos would nullify his own existence, becomes obsessed with protecting the man. He shuts Enos in a deserted house in the desert in order to protect him, failing to realize that the house is in a nuclear testing site. The resulting atomic test kills Enos, but Fry does not disappear. Fry later comforts Enos' fiancée, no longer believing her to be his future grandmother. He has sex with her, only to realize afterward that she is his grandmother and therefore he is his own grandfather.
• The video game Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, the Prince is chased by the Dahaka, whose purpose is to preserve the time-line by erasing the Prince from it. Unable to fight the monster, the Prince travels to the Island of Time to kill the Empress of Time, who created the time-manipulating sands from the first game. He hopes to prevent the sands from being created, since it was the sands that put him in his current predicament. However, the Prince realizes too late that killing the Empress is what creates the sands, and hence he becomes the architect of his own fate. A secondary paradox is the Sand Wraith, who seems to stalk the Prince throughout the first half of the game, even trying to kill him at one point. The wraith is killed by the Dahaka shortly before the Prince kills the Empress. After killing the Empress, the Prince realizes that he can change his fate by using the Mask of the Wraith, which transforms him into the Sand Wraith and sends him back in time a short distance. He learns that the wraith (who he now understands to be his future self) was trying to protect him, rather than attack him. Upon reaching the point at which the Dahaka is supposed to kill him, the Prince uses his knowledge of the encounter to have his younger self die instead, ending the mask's power and creating a grandfather paradox as well.
• The film Donnie Darko incorporates an example of fictional predestination paradox. Donnie avoids death by a jet engine that appears out of nowhere, only to later, because of information he has learned since, send the engine back in time himself so that he may die by it. He thereby negates all activity that occurred between the appearance of the engine and him sending it back, including his learning of the reason that he must die. This is explained through use of a tangent universe and a physical and temporal theory.
• In Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry is saved from the Dementors by a stag patronus. At that time, he thought it was his dead father's spirit of some sort watching over him. After traveling back in time, he realizes he was the one who produced the patronus- after watching himself being attacked and seeing that no one had produced the stag patronus- he himself casts the spell, producing the stag patronus he had seen earlier. Similarly, in the film, Harry and his friends are alerted to the presence of the Minister for Magic when a rock hits Harry in the head; but after traveling back in time, Hermione recognizes the same rock and throws it at Harry herself.
• In the Legacy of Kain video game series, more specifically Soul Reaver, Soul Reaver 2, and Defiance, the predestination is evident in the Soul Reaver as well as Raziel, whose soul is contained inside. Through the storyline of the 3 games it is learned that Raziel's soul must become part of the Reaver, despite the fact that it has been a part of the weapon the whole time. Defiance ends in Raziel being stabbed by the Reaver, allowing his soul to be transferred to it, however because of the purification his soul had gone through earlier the cycle is broken rather than beginning again.
• In the Terminator films, Skynet, a computer program that controls nearly the whole world in the future, sends a machine to the past in order to kill John Connor, the future leader of the human resistance, at different points of his life: once before he is conceived (by killing his mother, Sarah Connor), again when he is 10 years old (in Terminator 2: Judgment Day) and a final time a few days before Judgment Day happens (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines). In the second film Dr. Dyson (Joe Morton), the lead scientist for the Skynet project, explains that the surviving arm and CPU chip of the original Terminator was analyzed and found that the technology was so advanced, they (humans) would have never invented the technology themselves and was used to create Skynet in the first place. However, all the components and research were destroyed in an attempt to prevent Skynet, but in (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines) Skynet is built anyway without any information or components from the future, implying that it was inevitable. In a not yet made movie, the humans somehow successfully invaded the complex in which the time machine is placed, manage to send someone else to the past so that the Connors can be protected, which is what starts the series. In The Terminator, the machines send the T-800 and the humans send Kyle Reese: Kyle will be John Connor's father (that is, if Skynet had not have happened, Kyle Reese would have no reason to go back in time to protect Sarah, and thus John Connor would not have been born).
• In the episode "He's Our You" of the television series Lost, several characters travel back into the 1970s. One of them, Sayid Jarrah, encounters the younger version of Benjamin Linus, the leader of the Others, and a man who has committed various acts such as betraying the Dharma Initiative and causing their complete genocide by the Others, the manipulation and deceit towards various people on the show and caused much strife to Sayid personally including recruiting him to become an assassin during his wife's funeral. When Sayid meets Ben's younger version he believes that it is his destiny to kill him and prevent all of the bad things he does from ever happening. However when he does this by shooting him, Ben is taken to the Others where they state that they could heal him in a mysterious temple but, "his innocence would be lost" and he would "always be one of them." By trying to prevent Ben from doing the things he did, Sayid actually caused him to become the evil manipulator that he is and caused all of the evil acts he committed.
• In Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox, Artemis's mother contracts the deadly magical disease, Spelltropy. To save his mother, he travels into the past to save the Silky Sifaka lemur, which he kills at age 10 by handing to the Extinctionists. In the past, Artemis the elder meets Opal Koboi, who follows Artemis into the future. In the present, Opal gives Artemis's mother Spelltropy-like symptoms, which causes Artemis to time-travel in the first place.
• In the 2008 episode of Doctor Who: "The Doctor's Daughter", the TARDIS takes the Doctor, Donna, and Martha to find the source of the Doctor's Daughter's signal. However, the TARDIS arrives early, which leads the Doctor to the accidental creation of his daughter, thus activating the signal. In the 2010 episode "The Big Bang", the Doctor is released from the Pandorica by Rory Williams, using the sonic screwdriver supplied by the Doctor after his release. In the 2011 episode "Let's Kill Hitler", Mels, a friend who Amy and Rory name their daughter Melody after, turns out to be a pre-regeneration version of River Song, who in the prior episode, "A Good Man Goes To War", was established to be an alias used by their daughter as an adult, an alias she adopts shortly after regenerating and hearing the Doctor, Amy, and Rory refer to her as such, having known her only by her alias until recently.
• In Red vs Blue, when the character Church is thrown back in time in Episode 50, he tries to prevent certain things from happening, in the process leading to everything becoming the way it was: kicking dirt on a switch hoping it to be replaced, instead it was kept and later got stuck; giving his captain painkillers to prevent a heart attack, but killing him because the captain is allergic to aspirin; trying to make the tank not kill him by disabling the friendly-fire protocol, which later proves his death; telling the tank and robot that they should not leave and build a robot army, thereby giving them the idea to do it; trying to shoot O'Malley with the rocket launcher only to shoot Tucker because of the launcher's highly defective targeting system and his inability to aim.
• In the PlayStation 2 video game Shadow Hearts: Covenant Karin Koenig, one of the main protagonists, falls in love with Yuri Hyuga. She is gently rejected because Yuri still has feelings for the exorcist Alice Elliot, who died in the previous game. Unrequited love does not stop her from fighting alongside Yuri, though, until at the end of the game when she is flung into the past and meets Yuri's father. There you finally see a picture she is given earlier in the game by Yuri's aunt that shows his father, mother and Yuri as a child. It's obvious the woman in the picture is Karin, thus making her Yuri's mother. She ends up being the only one staying in the past because she knows she is to become Yuri's mother and assumes the alias "Anne". She also takes back a cross Yuri gave to her, which is the same cross that belongs to his mother. The cross becomes an Ontological paradox.
• The Black Sabbath song "Iron Man" tells the story of a man who time travels into the future of the world, and sees the apocalypse. In the process of returning to the present, he is turned into steel by a magnetic field. He is rendered mute, unable verbally to warn people of his time of the impending destruction. His attempts to communicate are ignored and mocked. This causes Iron Man to become angry, and have his revenge on mankind, causing the destruction seen in his vision.
• In The Penguins of Madagascar, the episode "It's About Time" sees Kowalski constructing a time machine called the "Chronotron". A future Kowalski tells Private to convince his present self not to complete it. After he decides to destroy the Chronotron, another Kowalski from the future tells Skipper to convince him to save the Chronotron. When the present Kowalski spots his future selves, a vortex appears. The present Kowalski activates the Chronotron and goes back in time to talk to Private. When Private points out that if Kowalski had not invented the Chronotron then he would not have gone back in the first place to tell himself not to make it, the future Kowalski then goes back in time to talk to Skipper. Rico then throws the Chronotron into the vortex, sealing it. While a baffled Kowalski tries rationalizing that such a simple thing defies all laws of the universe, Skipper simply states that Rico is a maverick who makes his own rules, and tells Kowalski to invent something that will not destroy the world.
• In the Red Dwarf episode "Timeslides", Dave Lister travels back in time using a mutated photograph of a pub in Liverpool where his band once played a gig to give his teenage self the idea of inventing the Tension Sheet (a stress relief tool invented by Fred 'Thickie' Holden, a former classmate of Arnold Rimmer, which earned him millions). This causes him to become rich and famous in the past and never get stuck on Red Dwarf. Arnold Rimmer, in an attempt to experience fame and fortune for himself, travels back even further in time to his school days, to give his own younger self the idea of inventing the Tension Sheet instead. Unfortunately for Rimmer, while he is giving young Rimmer the idea, the conversation is overheard by Thickie Holden (who sleeps in the next bed) and he is able to patent the idea before young Rimmer can, therefore putting everything back to how it was at the start of the episode.
• In the PC game Fallout 2, there is a chance that the player may encounter the Guardian of Forever of Star Trek fame in an Easter egg. Should they use the device, they will be taken back in time to Vault 13, the home of the Vault Dweller, the player character's ancestor. Using a certain computer in the Vault will result in the water purification chip being irreparably damaged, thus setting in motion the events of the previous game, that eventually result in the Vault Dweller being exiled and establishing the player character's tribe. The game humorously notes that "this comforts for some reason".
• In the British Television show Misfits, The group repeatedly encounters a man they call Superhoodie, who seems to know a lot about them. He's almost always seen whenever they have to deal with a dangerous situation and helps them out of it. The character Alisha Bailey eventually discovers he's really a future version of their friend Simon Bellamy and begins a relationship with him. He's shot and killed while trying to protect Alisha from a man who believes he's in a violent video game. He requests she doesn't tell his past self who he is and she agrees. Alisha, because of future Simon, begins respecting present day Simon and the two become closer. Alisha is killed by Rachel, a woman who the Misfits killed, but was returned in ghost form by a medium named Jonas to exact revenge on them. As Alisha dies in Simon's arms, she tells him Superhoodie's true identity. Later, Simon acquires a one-way time travel ability from a power dealer named Seth, traveling back and becoming Superhoodie. Rudy Wade, a member of the group, mentions that the paradox will continue and they'll probably just keep going in circles.
• In The Transformers episode "The Key to Vector Sigma", Optimus Prime assists in the creation of the Aerialbots who, in the later episode "War Dawn", are sent back through time, thus activating their vital role, and ensuring Optimus Prime's existence into the future.
• In Sam & Max Season Two there exist 2 examples of this paradox:
  • In "Ice Station Santa", Sam and Max must save their future selves from being killed. In "What's New, Beelzebub?" they are saved by their past selves; this creates an infinite loop of "save and later be saved; the savers are later saved".
  • In "Chariots of the Dogs", Sam and Max are given an egg by their future selves from "What's New, Beelzebub?" who they also give a remote control too. Later, in What's new Beelzebub S&M give their past selves the egg and get the remote from them which, once again, creates an infinite loop. However this creates an inconsistency(paradox) in which the egg has no origin.
• In the Chinese novel Bu Bu Jing Xin, centering the rivalry of Kangxi Emperor's sons for the throne during the 18th century Qing Dynasty, which will results the monarch's fourth son Yinzhen as Yongzheng Emperor. Its main character, Ma'ertai Ruoxi (Zhang Xiao), a time traveler from the 21st century, aware the princes' feud would leads to a tragic outcome. However, she is romantically entangled with the three of them, unawares that her relationship with them would inadvertently leading history to be unfold as written in the future instead of changing it.
• In the Rampage of Haruhi Suzumiya, the fifth in a series of light novels by Nagaru Tanigawa, is about Haruhi Suzumiya, a girl who can unconsciously change the universe to her tastes (like a deity) and wishes that the summer holidays would never end. As a result, the summer loops over 15,527 times before her friend Kyon realises what is happening. He tries to break the time loop many times by trying to stop her leaving a restaurant to go home at the end of the day. He eventually succeeds by convincing Haruhi to come to a study session, as neither of them have done their homework yet. Although this was only a 30 page chapter in the book, the much-anticipated second season aired what was essentially the same episode eight times, with minor differences in camera angles, the characters' clothes etc. This caused a lot of tension for fans and caused many of them to drop the series.
• In the 20th episode of the second season of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, "It's About Time," the character Twilight Sparkle receives a warning from her future self about an impending disaster, but she is pulled back into the future before she can explain what the disaster is. Twilight drives herself mad with worry in an attempt to prevent the disaster, which ends up not happening. However, in her efforts, Twilight discovers a spell that will allow her to travel back in time, and attempts to warn her past self not to worry. She is pulled back into the present before she can warn her past self not to worry about the future, closing the loop.
• In the web-comic Homestuck, there is a point where one of the characters who time travels often, Dave Strider, is told he must trust an alien named Terezi and proof of their trust will be a thumbs up from a future Dave nearby. He would not have trusted Terezi had he not returned to the past and he wouldn't have returned to reassure his past self if he didn't trust Terezi.