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Grandfather Paradox
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The grandfather paradox is a type of Temporal Paradox. The name comes from the most famous variation, namely "what would happen if you traveled back in time and killed your own grandfather?" However, it also applies to anything that happens while time traveling that should logically make your original time travel trip impossible or unnecessary. For example, if you killed your grandfather in the past, you should never have been born, and therefore you couldn't have traveled to the past to kill your grandfather. Destroyed the time machine? Okay, but how did you use said machine to travel into the past in the first place? Kill the Evil Overlord while he's a child? Then you shouldn't have any reason to travel into the past to kill him, because he never grew up to destroy your village and all. So, then, killing your grandfather causes you to not exist, and since you don't exist, you never killed him. Which means he survives, so you exist, so you do go back to kill him. Which means he doesn't, so you don't; therefore he does, so you do, etc. Are you confused yet? Alternately, this whole snafu can be ignored outright if you're using Alternate Universe-style time travel, where the time period you came from is separate from (and unaffected by) any meddling you do in the past. The downside to this is that returning "home" might be a tricky matter.... If the universe runs on Stable Time Loop, this type of paradox is simply impossible, as all changes that will have been going to happen have "already" happened anyway, so you can't cause a change that will negate itself — something will have to intervene, no matter what or how. This paradox doesn't stop you from traveling to the future and killing your future self and your offspring, however. May lead to My Own Grampa, though in this case the person killed (probably) wasn't originally your grandfather anyway. A subtrope of Murder in the Family. |
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Happens literally in René Barjavel's novel Le Voyageur imprudent (translated as Future Times Three) written in 1943 (hence the first novel to enunciate the grandfather paradox) where the time-traveler (Pierre Saint-Menoux) tries to assassinate Napoleon Bonaparte before his rise to power: at the last moment, a soldier jumps to take the bullet and save Bonaparte. This soldier is of course the time-traveler ancestor. The time-traveler is then wiped out from existence. There is even an appendix explaining the paradox at length (including the fact that, for the time-traveller, there is no real ending - he is constantly oscillating between existing and non-existing. The ending of the novel however makes it clear he does not exist any more - his fiancée is celibate, and the man he helped build the time machine in the first place is fruitlessly trying to make it work) | |
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Averted in Night Watch, where Vimes' mentor is murdered while he's in the past; he ends up taking over his identity, teaching his younger self everything that his mentor taught him. | |
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The Penguins of Madagascar "It's About Time" has a variation in that it's the time machine itself that trying to be destroyed by the time traveler which results in the paradox. Kowalski invents a time machine called the Chronotron. However, a Kowalski from the near-future appears before Private and tells him the Chronotron will cause The End of the World as We Know It, and as Never the Selves Shall Meet is in effect, he needs Private to stop his past self and destroy the machine. However, another Kowalski appears before Skipper and tells him that the Chronotron must remain because it's key to the universe's survival (because without it he can't go back in time) and needs his help to keep it safe. As it turns out, present Kowalski seeing his two future selves is what causes the Reality-Breaking Paradox, which results in rampant Lampshade Hanging of the Stable Time Loop in effect. Ultimately, Rico solves the problem by throwing the Chronotron into the time-space continuum rift after the other two Kowalskis have used it to destroy the former and shut the latter. Kowalski-B thus becomes the Kowalski they know. | |
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In Eric, the wizard Rincewind is time-traveling and says that since he's gone back to the beginning of time due to someone using him as a genie wishing to live forever (i.e. beginning to end of time), and he says that he would have to wait around for a while until he could kill his grandfather which is "the only aspect of time travel that really appealed to him". | |
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Inverted in two separate ways in Rant: Traveling back in time to kill your parents will cause you to be outside of time, and therefore immortal (in-universe this is known as "severing ties"). Going back and impregnating your mother, or a direct matriarch of your family (grandmother, great-grandmother) will result in gaining heightened faculties (this is known in-universe as "stoking". Combo points for impregnating each one down the line until you are born.) | |
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Until We Meet Again: Cassandra discovers she caused one when people stop remembering Travis. Since Lawrence was spending time with her rather than being at a party, he couldn't drive his friend home when he was drunk. So he went driving, and died in a car crash. As a result, all of his descendants, including Travis, weren't born. Cassandra is horrified when she learns this. | |
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In the final episode of Samurai Jack, Jack finally manages to travel back to his own time and kill Aku. Unfortunately, since his love interest, Ashi, was Aku's daughter, she ends up ceasing to exist. Cruelly, she seems perfectly fine until their wedding day, when she suddenly collapses, realizes Aku would have never fathered her, then vanishes in Jack's arms. According to Word of God, however, the Golden Ending of the tie-in video Game Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time where this is specifically averted through a hiccup of the universe, most likely from the Gods themselves finally cutting Jack some slack is the true canon ending; even if it does leave open questions like it being an alternate timeline separate from the show's ending, most fans don't care and happily accepted it. | |
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Miguel O'Hara from Spider-Man 2099 (2014 series) isn't sure exactly what would happen to him if his grandfather Tiberius Stone dies on his watch and he's not eager to find out. This leaves Miguel in the unenviable position of protecting a man he quite rightfully despises. | |
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The Unadulterated Cat: Discussed. Cats have no thumbs, and therefore do not need to worry about traveling back in time and shooting their own grandfather. They may try to become their own grandfather, but this is normal for barn cats anyway. | |
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Happens quite often in Stephen Baxter's Xeelee Sequence books, where entire wars are fought atemporally, causing battles to happen multiple times in different timelines with different outcomes, and where going back in time to give your own side intelligence about your enemy's future actions is a common tactic. Defied in one instance where a character receives information from a timeline that should no longer exist, but the information still remains. The explanation given was that time is flexible, and just because the one particular event that led to him getting that information now had never happened, in some other timeline he had gotten it a different way, and so he ended up still having it. | |
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Inverted in Haven, where after traveling back in time Duke accidentally saves his grandfather (who had already had a son). When Duke learns who he is, the issue becomes whether he needs to make sure he dies or let him continue living. Turns out it's neither. Duke is a part of a Stable Time Loop in which Sarah Vernon ends up killing Roy Crocker, because he found out from Duke that she was going to kill him, so he went after her first. | |
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Adam and Jamie decide to put this trope and the My Own Grandpa trope to the test when they went back in time in Irregular Webcomic!. They botch it up when they accidentally swap grandmothers, making each other their grandfathers (Adam is Jamie's grandfather, Jamie is Adam's). This does make them their own great-great-grandfathers, proving that this trope and the My Own Grandpa trope is possible. Myth confirmed! Incidentally, the people that should have been Adam and Jamie's grandfathers themselves went back in time to the Jurassic period, where they were eaten by an Allosaurus that used the time machine to go to the future and become president. | |
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Doctor Who Expanded Universe: For the Time Lords, Grandfather Paradox is an actual person who went back and, yes, killed his grandfather, which doomed him to a sort of undead temporal limbo. He's the Time Lord equivalent of the Bogeyman, and the splinter group/terrorist cult Faction Paradox considers him their spiritual leader, partly cause it pisses off the Time Lords. We actually meet him. He's quite literally the Anthropomorphic Personification of Future Me Scares Me — he's everybody's evil future self. And Faction Paradox has the entire trope as a sport for initiates. Want to get in? Kill momma. Before you were conceived. At one point, his appearance is described as eerily similar to the Ninth Doctor, which at that point would have been the Doctor's future self. In fact, the first time the Doctor encounters a Faction Paradox agent, the agent calls him "Gramps". | |
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Defied in the 2010 Dynamite run of Vampirella when Conqueror from the Future Professor Quatermass visits his great-grandfather to ensure that he'll invent time travel ahead of schedule to further his plans. When his great-grandfather hesitates, Quatermass shoots him only after asking him if his grandfather is safe at home. | |
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The plot of the first Back to the Future may be the most well-known example, even though it's a) not Marty's grandfather it involves and b) he doesn't kill him, but rather accidentally takes his place as his mother's object of affection. The rest of the movie has Marty trying to correct things before he's erased from existence. | |
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Discussed in an episode of Darkwing Duck where Gosalyn uses Quackerjack's time machine to bring three of DW's ancestors to the present. Darkwing starts to consider the potential consequences, leading to an Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap! realization. | |
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In Mortal Kombat 11, Kronika merges the past timeline with the current one, causing past selves of the current timeline characters to appear side by side. In one scene, Sonya from the past is holding Kano's past self hostage while Kano is holding Johnny's past self hostage at knife point. Kano states that if he kills the younger Johnny, it will mean Cassie would have never been born and would basically die. This gives Sonya a "Eureka!" Moment where she coyly thanks Kano for reminding her of the rules and then shoots Kano's past self in the head. This causes Kano to stumble around in pain until he turns into dust due to his past self being killed. | |
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A Discussed Trope in A Quantum Murder by Peter F. Hamilton. The conclusion is you can due to the existence of parallel realities. In short, you're conceived in one universe, then go back in time and kill your grandfather in another universe. | |
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Discussed in The Dresden Files novel Cold Days, when Harry asks Vadderung what would happen if he were to travel back in time and attempt to kill his grandfather. The answer is that Harry's grandfather would beat him senseless, because Harry's grandfather is Ebenezer McCoy, Harry's mentor and the White Council's Blackstaff. Eventually he gives a more serious answer, it would destroy the current timeline and create two new ones, one where he failed and one where he succeeded. | |
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A Newgrounds cartoon "Grandbunny Paradox" made fun of this. It featured a bunny and a stick figure. The bunny went back in time to kill his grandmother and finds himself turned into a sheep, because his grandfather married a sheep instead of a bunny. The stick figure decides to do the same and kills his grandmother only to find himself turned into a tomato. He doesn't like being a tomato so he goes back and shoots the guy who sold him the gun to kill his grandmother... only to find himself now holding grenades. | |
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Discworld: In Eric, the wizard Rincewind is time-traveling and says that since he's gone back to the beginning of time due to someone using him as a genie wishing to live forever (i.e. beginning to end of time), and he says that he would have to wait around for a while until he could kill his grandfather which is "the only aspect of time travel that really appealed to him". Averted in Night Watch, where Vimes' mentor is murdered while he's in the past; he ends up taking over his identity, teaching his younger self everything that his mentor taught him. A Discussed Trope in The Last Continent when Ponder Stibbons tries to explain the idea to Archchancellor Ridcully, but runs up against the latter's Literal-Minded Metaphorgotten tendencies. "Why would I want to kill my grandfather? I rather liked the old boy." |
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Invoked in BioShock Infinite at the story's conclusion: Elizabeth travels back in time and kills Booker, her own father, before her conception in every possible timeline, thus forcing the universe to block off all branching timelines where Booker becomes Comstock who kidnaps Booker-from-another-universe's daughter Anna who grows up to become Elizabeth and develops reality-warping and time-traveling powers as a result of her dimension shift. In this way, the only timelines that are left are the ones where Anna/Elizabeth grows up peacefully with a never-baptized, never-be-Comstock Booker. | |
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The 12 Monkeys episode "Lullaby" has Cassie create a paradox by going back in time and killing Jones immediately after the death of her daughter, before she could start trying to invent time travel. The result is a "Groundhog Day" Loop until Cassie (and Cole, who comes back to help) can figure out what needs to happen to preserve the timeline. | |
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During the time travel arc of Thunderbolts, the current team ends up in New York, back in the days when the first team of Thunderbolts was still active and still serving as Zemo's disguised Masters of Evil. Due to a long chain of events, the past version of Fixer finds out about his future by secretly hacking the present Fixer's files, and the two get into an argument that causes the present Fixer to kill his past self by engaging a self-destruct built into his past-self's armor. This causes reality to start imploding in on itself, and the destruction of everything is only averted when Fixer has Centurius erase his memories and de-age him so that he can take his past self's place, creating a Stable Time Loop. This is ultimate fixed in a later Thunderbolts story when Kobik, the living Cosmic Cube in the form of a little girl, undoes the loop by erasing past-Fixer's death. | |
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Mentioned in Injustice 2: Reverse-Flash ends up trapped in the present, unable to return to his home in the future, because one of his ancestors died at the hands of the Regime (which the Flash was originally a part of, and whom Reverse-Flash personally blames). | |
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In Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, one episode in the four episode arc about the Chaos Emeralds starts with Sonic foiling a plot by Dr. Robotnik to prevent his ancestors from marrying and thus eliminate Sonic from the timeline. Sonic succeeds in sending Robotnik packing, but then causes the paradox himself by ordering a chili dog from his maternal ancestor, causing his paternal ancestor to become impatient waiting to be served and leaves. After Sonic disappears, Tails solves the paradox in about a minute by forcing the meeting to happen. | |
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When Schlock Mercenary, ventured into a Time Travel arc, they showed how it might look from the "Grandfather" side of things, only to prove that for the Schlock Universe, there ISN'T a Stable Time Loop in effect. Which is just what they need to save the Galaxy.... In this particulate case, the 'grandchild' is a VDA probe from the future, and the 'grandfather' is the younger version of the probe. | |
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My Family and Other Equestrians: Blade Star has been sent back in time to near the events of the season 2 finale of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, thanks to a Weeping Angel. How does he decide to get back? By causing a Grandfather Paradox. If he were to do something at that moment in the past, it would have a ripple effect on his own future, causing everything to change since Blade Star's arrival in Equestria. This would mean that the timeline in which Apple Bloom and Blade Star went to Time Turner's shop and encountered the Weeping Angel would not happen, or at least, happen differently. He would change the past, but therefore have never existed to come back and change the past in the first place. He then concludes that the Weeping Angel itself would become a paradox, as it fed off of something that had no time energy because it didn't exist. In Layman's Terms, he would potentially be brought back to his point of origin, and the angel would be caught in the paradox. Blade Star then decides to confront Queen Chrysalis and expose her to the ponies earlier than in canon, severely injuring her in the process. The paradox this causes is so huge that Discord has to come in and fix the mess, stating that this was simply way too much chaos for one being, even by his standards. |
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In Time Enough for Love, Lazarus Long just glosses over the possibility of creating a paradox while time-traveling by saying that it's impossible to create one. So he has sex with his mother, meets his younger self, enlists in the Army and fights in World War I. It Makes Sense in Context. | |
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Discussed and ultimately averted in Terminator Genisys. Sarah Connor tells the T-3000 (her son John Connor) that he can't kill either her or Kyle Reese because they're his parents and that would negate his existence. John retorts that since all three of them are outside their natural timelines, there truly is "no fate" and he can thus kill them without erasing himself. | |
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Parodied in The X-Files in "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose": the title character cites this as a reason why he shouldn't help Mulder and Scully catch a serial killer — because one of the people he might save could be the grandmother of the person who'd invent a time machine that would mean Clyde's father never met his mother and therefore he'd never have been born. As his ability to see the future had made his life a misery, Clyde suddenly realizes that wouldn't be a bad thing after all. | |
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The grandfather paradox is a major plot point in the third season of The Umbrella Academy (2019). After arriving back in the future, the Hargreeveses learn that they were never born in this timeline because something killed their mothers, and said something — Viktor empowering Harlan in 1963, and him growing up to psychically kill their moms by accident — was the result of their actions. This causes a reality-breaking paradox known as the kugelblitz, a "reverse black hole" that collapses reality unto itself. | |
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Bob and George: One more reason to hate time travel! (On top of Schrödinger's Butterfly questions of whether their acts can affect the author.) | |
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Timemaster: One of the corollaries to the game's Laws of Time Travel flat-out states that this is impossible. No matter what you try, you will never be able to kill one of your ancestors. Your enemies, on the other hand, can blow away as many of your ancestors as they feel like, which would erase you from the time stream. Time Corps agents are advised to never talk about their families. | |
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One of the death scenes in Time Gal has Reika fire her gun into a bunch of cavemen — and promptly dematerialize because she just shot one of her ancestors. | |
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Outlander: Claire, who has time traveled from the 20th century to the 18th century, has to stop Jamie from killing her future husband Frank's ancestor Black Jack Randall for at least a year, to give him time to father a child with Mary Hawkins. Jamie holds off so that Claire, who is pregnant, will have someone to go back to if she chooses to go back to the future. Then it turns out that Black Jack isn't Frank's direct ancestor, rather, it's his brother Alex. However Black Jack married Mary Hawkins after Alex died to Give the Baby a Father. Happens again when Claire, in 1968, almost tries to stop Geillis/Gillian from going through the stones to the 18th century to her eventual execution, before finding out that she's Roger's distant ancestor, meaning that her never going to the past and having a child would potentially end his existence. |
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Referenced in Continuum, when terrorists Liber8 attempt to eliminate their adversary Kiera Cameron- both displaced to 2012 from 2077- by killing her grandmother before she can give birth; Kiera attempts to counter this by threatening the pregnant mother of Liber8's founder. The paradox is apparently proven irrelevant when the grandmother of Liber8 renegade Matthew Kellog is killed before she has children and nothing happens to him, but Kiera's ally Alec Sadler notes that lack of evidence is not proof that nothing will happen. | |
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The Palaververse: In the time travel story The First Stitch, the paradox of killing a grandparent is mentioned, by someone from the past, to Rarity's surprise: | |
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The Time Warp Trio episode, “Dude, Where’s My Karma?�, has Joe’s uncle, Mad Jack, go back in time to prevent their ancestor, Prince Karna getting engaged with Princess Lakshmi and ends up with Joe and Jody being faded away. | |
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The Flash (2014): Avoiding the complications of the Grandfather Paradox is first implied, then confirmed to be the reason that the Reverse Flash aka Eobard Thawne aka Harrison Wells spares Eddie Thawne's life in the "The Man in the Yellow Suit". In the first season finale, Eddie takes advantage of this and shoots himself to erase Eobard from existence. Unfortunately, the ensuing paradox might be why a planet-threatening singularity shows up afterwards. In a later episode, the Reverse Flash returns, being an earlier version of the villain from before he traveled back in time to kill the Flash as a child (it's speculated that he was protected from the paradox by the Speed Force, as he would need to travel back in time again to set all the events into motion). Later Barry threatens to do this to himself to destroy Savitar, who turns out to be a time remnant of himself (kind of a speed clone) he'll create in the future. If he dies then, he can't create Savitar later on. Savitar says it might, but also points out the above example that Eddie killing himself didn't stop Thawne from eventually coming back and that the rules of time travel don't always completely apply to speedsters so Barry might just be killing himself but leaving Savitar free without anyone to stop him. |
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Steins;Gate explains that this is why Okabe been failing to change the timeline in his favor, specifically when he needs to save Kurisu from being stabbed. The whole plot kicked off when Okabe accidentally sent the first D-Mail after seeing Kurisu lying in a pool of blood, drastically changing events so that, among other things, the above event was prevented from happening, allowing Okabe and Kurisu to fall in love with each other. Without that, he wouldn't even be trying to save Kurisu in the first place. However, nothing says that he can't change events so that they're similar enough that his past self effectively does the same thing as before. | |
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In The Journeyman Project series, it's fairly easy to change something in the past, but, since the Delayed Ripple Effect travels only forward in time, it will not affect the time traveler himself, provided he doesn't return before the wave reaches his point of departure. This is also how, in the first game, the Temporal Security Annex keeps a copy of the world history from being overwritten by a time wave. A disk with the copy is kept in the distant past. If a ripple is detected (somehow), a time agent it sent back to that period to retrieve the copy, which can be then compared in the present to the history in the Annex's data banks to figure out the point of divergence. This is Hand Waved in later games, and the TSA simply knows where and when the change took place without the copy, but an agent still needs to be sent back before the wave hits to avoid him or her becoming part of the new timeline. | |
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In the true ending of The King of Fighters XIII, Ash stops his time traveller ancestor Saiki from returning to the past after losing the fight to the player. Soon after, Ash fades away taking Saiki with him. | |
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In Space Quest 5, anything that causes Beatrice's death will cause Roger to cease to exist. She is the eventual mother of his son, who saved Roger's life in the previous game. No Bea means no son, no son means Roger was never saved. The death screen will explain this each time. | |
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Discussed and inverted in Locksmith's Closet. When Lock and Gary travel into the future and find it uninhabited, Gary remarks that "at least we don't have to worry about our grandkids coming along and shooting us just to see what'll happen." | |
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In The Forgotten City, you go into a portal that sends you back to ancient Roman times, and the man who created the portal asks you to prevent the Golden Rule from being broken. If you ask him how you're supposed to get back, he'll point out that if no one breaks the Golden Rule, he won't have to create the portal, therefore you never travel back in time and will remain in the present. You can help him, or you can just kill him right then and there and prevent him from creating the portal, which sends you back to the present (with the worst ending). Alternatively, you can get the Golden Rule abolished, so no one ends up breaking a rule that no longer exists. | |
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In an episode of Futurama, Fry goes back to Roswell in 1947 and accidentally gets his grandfather killed in an atomic blast while trying to avert this. He doesn't stop existing because he also ends up doing his grandmother, becoming his own grandfather. Or, as he puts it, "I did do the nasty in the pasty." This becomes a key plot point in later episodes, as the extreme inbreeding causes him to have a birth defect that makes him immune to a number of things. This also means that, instead of merely being Professor Farnsworth's lateral ancestor (who is descended from Fry's brother), he is also the Professor's direct ancestor. In "Decision 3012," presidential candidate Chris Travers accidentally erases his own existence in the present (though presumably not in the future) this way. He was sent from a Bad Future to get himself elected instead of Nixon and avert the timeline in question. When he succeeded, he also prevented himself from having been sent back. |
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In Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky, the player character traveled back in time from a Bad Future to change the past. When they succeed, they have just enough time to say one last goodbye to their partner before they fade away. Ultimately averted, as the lack of Ret-Gone makes the point moot. | |
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A non-grandfather version appears in Oglaf. A sorcerer is promised the Standard Hero Reward for going back in time and curing a devastating plague before it starts, but when he returns, the plague never happened, so the queen never made the promise (this strip is worksafe, the rest of the comic is not). He doesn't press the point, saying he wouldn't believe himself either. | |
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Inverted in Stargate: Continuum, where Cam Mitchell winds up going back in time, and eventually (ten years down the road) keeping his Grandfather alive as a way of setting right what Ba'al had messed up. Said paradox was directly referenced before, when Mitchell found out that he doesn't exist in the new timeline because Ba'al killed his grandfather. | |
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Lampshaded in an episode of Invader ZIM, by GIR of all people. Perhaps because of this trope, Zim finds himself unable to actually kill Dib in the past. | |
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The Morphin' Grid prevents this in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: Shattered Grid as it decides to split apart every single era of the Power Rangers timeline into its own little universe after Lord Drakkon murders Tommy Oliver during his early Green Ranger days. | |
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In The Door into Summer, this is boiled down to the time-traveler protagonist waiting just outside of a room where he also is prior to his time-traveling activities, and briefly wondering what would happen if he ran in and slashed his counterpart's throat. He doesn't do it, of course, because that would be stupid and accomplish nothing, but he notes in present tense that he still hasn't figured it out. | |
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Fairy Tail: The original Eclipse Project would have caused one of these. The goal of the project was to use the gate to go back 400 years into the past and kill Zeref before he became the Black Wizard. Chapter 436, which is an entire chapter on Zeref's past, reveals that Zeref was the one who created the Eclipse Gate. Killing him would cause the gate to never exist — which would render the need for the Eclipse Project nil, allowing Zeref to survive, and so on and so forth. Time would be stuck in an endless loop. This is (presumably) also the same reason why Zeref never used the gate for its original purpose: to save his little brother Natsu from his premature death. Had he done so, he would have had no reason to create the gate, which would causes Natsu to die again, etc. Notably, the only known instances where the gate was used and didn't backfire and cause some temporal problems is when characters used it to send others to the future and not the past. The Alvarez Empire arc reveals that Zeref's goal is to use Neo Eclipse to subvert the paradox problem. Rather than being stuck in an endless loop, Zeref intends to create an entirely new timeline to take the place of the current one. His chosen point is the time before he became immortal, so that way he can prevent all the tragedies that befell him and his brother. While that would ensure that the events of the manga would never happen, there is no guarantee that any of the characters in the current timeline would be born and/or suffer even more tragedy — for all anyone knows, Zeref could just be hastening the apocalypse. Unfortunately, Zeref has gone so far beyond the Despair Event Horizon that he simply doesn't care about any of that, as he has already come to reject the current world in favor of his new one. |
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Averted in Time Trax, which the protagonist claims to be taking place in a time-shifted parallel world instead of their own past (except for the times when the shows writers forget that and treat it as an actual past). A criminal from his own time is attempting to track down an eliminate the ancestors of Darien's old partner, who was involved in a car accident that killed the criminal's girlfriend. The criminal assumes that, by making sure the guy is never born, the accident will never have happened, and she will still be alive. Darien tries to convince him that this isn't how time travel works. | |
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Subverted on Timeless when the pilot episode ends with historian Lucy returning from altering the fate of the Hindenburg (it crashed a day later with only two people killed) to find that her sister, Amy, no longer exists. A computer search reveals that Lucy's father, Henry, married the granddaughter of someone who was supposed to die on the Hindenburg and never met Lucy's mother, Carol. Lucy is at first confused how she can exist if her parents never met...then realizes it means Henry was never her father in either timeline. | |
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In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, if you kill Major Ocelot instead of just knocking him out, you get the "TIME PARADOX" Nonstandard Game Over. Ocelot is integral to the plot of the previous games in the series, which take place chronologically after Metal Gear Solid 3. Hilariously, the HD re-releases of the game have an achievement/trophy for doing this entitled, "Problem Solved, Series Over." | |
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Brought up and discussed in Tenet when the heroes deduce that the unseen Greater-Scope Villain from the future that is supplying and directing the Big Bad intends for the world to be destroyed, seemingly not caring that this would, logically, kill them as well. They speculate that who or whatever the Future Villain is, they are immune to the Grandfather Paradox (or at least believe they are) and thus have no fear of what will happen if they destroy their ancestors (assuming they are even human). The aforementioned Big Bad, for his part, seems to believe that they are affected by the paradox, but have arranged things in such a way that the world will be instantly recreated in a better form upon destruction. We are never told if either point-of-view is right, or anything else about the Future Villain for that matter. Like the nameless Protagonist, they have no real identity or backstory beyond what is narratively important; being the bad guy. | |
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The Warhammer 40,000 supplementary material has an Ork warboss who traveled back in time a day and proceeded to kill his past self so he could have two copies of his favorite gun. Unfortunately, this so confused the Orks under his command that the WAAAGH! he was leading fell apart. | |
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The Wrath of Giga Bowser: Young Link is seen coming face to face with Giga Bowser during the latter's rampage. In the very next scene, the adult version of Link suddenly vanishes. | |
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In Chrono Trigger, Marle disappears from existence due to her being mistaken for her ancestor, Queen Leene, who was kidnapped at the time she landed in the past. Since everybody stopped looking for Leene because they thought they had found her, she was killed, thus causing Marle to not exist. Fortunately, Leene hasn't been killed yet, so our heroes are able to go rescue her, which allows Marle to exist again. While this is clearly a grandmother paradox, everyone seems to remember that she existed, at least long enough for her to cause herself to have never existed. | |
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6teen: Jude Lizowski misinterprets this in "Bicker Me Not," where after Jonesy accidentally breaks up George and Gracie Bickerson (an elderly couple that's been married for fifty years), Jude reveals that his own grandparents got married fifty years previously (he never clarifies if they were his mom's parents or his dad's parents). However, Jude never met them, "on account of the fact that they were political rebels who went into hiding" before he was born—after the rest of the gang points out that (assuming Jude's grandparents are still alive) they're probably around the same age as the Bickersons, Jude begins to think that George and Gracie are actually his grandparents. This is what leads to Jude misinterpreting the titular paradox: if George and Gracie break up (in the current timeline) and don't get back together, he'll eventually cease to exist. | |
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In a variant of this, in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fan-comic "Twilight's Erasure", Cozy Glow from an Alternate Timeline erases pregnant Twilight's mother's baby in the past from the existence, which also not only makes present Twilight's presence become unnoticed by every pony, but also causes her to lose her talents and cutie mark, and eventually slowly regresses her. | |
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The old Doctor Who RPG encourages GMs to be cruel to players who try this. One popular result is that, if you go back in time and point a gun at your grandfather, then the young version of your grandfather will leap out of the way, pull his own gun and shoot you dead. Paradox? What paradox? | |
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Back to the Future: The Game: Marty does encounter his paternal grandfather and affects his own existence in time. | |
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In Summer Time Rendering, Shadow Ushio is transported back to the past where she erases the whale form of Hiruko before it could copy and devour Haine. This causes all shadows, including Ryuunosuke, Hiruko, Haine, and eventually Shadow Ushio, to disappear since they were all created from shadows that no longer exist. Meaning there is now nobody capable of going back in time to erase the whale in the first place, thus creating the paradox. | |
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Subverted in The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages; Ralph attempts to destroy his own ancestor Queen Ambi (who is possessed by Veran), knowing that it will remove him from existence and willing to take that consequence to protect the people of Labrynna. But she proves more than capable of defending herself. | |
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In the R-Type games, a fanmade theory inspired by the obscure points of the plot, features the main antagonists the Bydo Empire (a race of biomechanical creatures that can directly control technology), created by humans as a weapon in the future. The theory, really shortened, would result in the Bydos understanding how bad and evil their situation was for them. After failing mass suicide different times (because the humans like the player, fighting them, actually made them more powerful), the Bydo would go back in time and destroy humanity when the empire still wasn't created, effectively resulting in a long-term Grandfather's Paradox. | |
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Case 63: Dr Knight is a psychiatrist working with Peter, a patient who claims to be a time traveler from 40 years in the future. She doesn't believe him, thinking he's instead lying or delusional. In their very first session together, Dr Knight suggests that, if true, Peter's story could be verified by doing a DNA match with his currently-living mother. She expects his story to be conveniently unverifiable, assumes Peter will say no, they can't intervene in his parents' lives because that could stop them getting together, creating a Grandfather Paradox. But to Dr Knight's surprise, it's a Subverted Trope—Peter encourages her to go talk to his parents, explaining that their origin story as a couple is actually a Stable Time Loop that hinges on Dr Knight's interference. This could also be considered an Inverted Trope, as time travel doesn't threaten Peter's existence, it causes it. | |
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Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song: Vivy, who is on a hundred-year mission to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, gets the impulse to save the life of an anti-AI terrorist she keeps running into during her few first tasks to change history. It later turns out that the terrorist is literally the grandfather of someone important in the life of the scientist from a hundred years in the future who gave Vivy her mission in the first place. | |
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Genius: The Transgression's stance on the subject: | |
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In Mage: The Awakening: Joining the highest ranks of the Cult of the Doomsday Clock requires that a mage reach through time and kill their past self, making their existence a Paradox and allegedly freeing themselves from the shackles of time. Subverted in that this actually allows an abyssal monster to devour the mage's existence and take their place in the world, since those entities are Paradox incarnate. Archmasters are explicitly allowed to use time travel to erase their lives from history. It doesn't annihilate them, simply because archmasters are partway Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence and aren't bound to the material world, but it does, well, erase their lives from history. |
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The 2002 film version of The Time Machine is inconsistent in how it deals with this. The first act demonstrates that it is actually impossible to create a paradox; Alexander builds his time machine so he can save his love Emma from dying, but no matter what he does, she always ends up dying in one way or another, because if she didn't, he wouldn't build the machine and save her. However, the third act throws this out the window when Alexander travels from 802,701 to even further in the future, discovers that the Morlocks have conquered the Earth, and then goes back to 802,701 to destroy them so that they can't. By the first act's logic, it should be impossible for him to do this, since he's erasing the reason for his own actions, but it works perfectly anyway. | |
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Legends of Tomorrow: While the series lets people change history in all sorts of wonky ways, the forces of the universe won't allow Constantine to deliberately prevent his own existence by giving his father a "back alley vasectomy". Every time he tries, he stops existing for a few seconds and immediately falls flat on his ass when he reappears. | |
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Feng Shui goes with a belt-and-suspenders approach. Actually changing history is hard and requires taking possession of feng shui sites; doing something minor like shooting your own grandfather changes nothing. Johnny Wong will return to the present to discover that his grandmother met someone functionally identical to his old grandfather and the only difference is that his name is now Johnny Fong. If you do make the effort to make your changes stick, you can shift history so that you never existed... but accessing the Netherworld (the method of time travel) immediately locks in your personal timeline at that point, and you will never be affected by future shifts. So Johnny Wong returns to a present where he doesn't exist and never did, but he still exists because he's locked to a timeline where he existed. (The Netherworld is full of people who had one too many shifts happen to them and retreated from a world that they no longer know and that no longer knows them.) | |
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Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous: The True Aeon ending causes the Player Character to be erased from history because Areelu Vorlesh's experiments in planar science are stopped before they begin, meaning the PC was never created to begin with. | |
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The end of The Saga of Darren Shan explains how the story is an endless paradox because the rule of Destiny is that if you kill someone, somebody else will take their place and do exactly as they would do (as an example, Evanna says that if you were to kill Hitler, somebody else would've taken his place and done exactly as he did.) and seeing as Darren goes through everything just to go back in time to stop the whole thing from happening, someone else will see the Cirque, join Mr.Crepsley and go on all the exact adventures Darren did, eventually having to stop themselves from seeing their best friend talking to Mr.Crepsley and then someone ELSE taking THEIR place and so on. Darren says that afterward you could read the books again and change all the names and it'd still be technically correct. | |
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