Questions tagged [time-travel]

A concept frequently used as a plot device involving the manipulation of events by characters traveling through time.

Filter by
Sorted by
Tagged with
186 votes
8 answers
122k views

What caused and ended the time loop in Groundhog Day?

I've always wondered what caused the Time Loop experienced by Phil Connors in Groundhog Day, as well as what ended it, but I don't recall it being discussed in the movie. What was the cause for the ...
Wipqozn's user avatar
  • 1,963
106 votes
7 answers
9k views

Why don't Marty's parents ever mention how similar he looks to the Marty of 1955?

Although Marty is only in 1955 for one week, he plays a pivotal role in getting his parents together. He even briefly dates his mother. So, considering he plays such a pivotal role, does it make sense ...
Codemwnci's user avatar
  • 3,198
85 votes
12 answers
17k views

Why does Harry only make use of time travel in The Prisoner of Azkaban?

At the end of The Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry and Hermione travel back in time to save Sirius (and as it turns out, Buckbeak) and escape the Dementors. If this is a legitimate option for saving people,...
Lauren's user avatar
  • 4,905
70 votes
8 answers
59k views

In Back to the Future Part II, how could old Biff have made it back to 2015?

In Back to the Future Part II, Doc picks up Marty in 1985 and takes him to 2015. Then old Biff realizes the Delorean is a time machine. Old Biff steals the Delorean and travels from 2015 to 1955 to ...
Shiz Z.'s user avatar
  • 23.9k
58 votes
5 answers
76k views

What does the woman from the future mean when she says she's "in insurance"?

At the end of 12 Monkeys, the doctor spreading the virus gets on a plane and sits next to a woman we know (or can assume) is from the future. She tells the doctor that she's "in insurance." What does ...
Brian Kelly's user avatar
46 votes
8 answers
41k views

Why doesn't Marty use the other DeLorean?

In Back to the Future Part 3 Marty follows Doc back to 1885 to rescue him from being shot at the hands of Buford 'Mad Dog' Tannen. He arrives in 1885 some time after Doc has written the letter that ...
Cage's user avatar
  • 646
31 votes
12 answers
91k views

Is the time loop on the cruise ship a second timeline in Triangle?

In Triangle, at the start when Jess arrives at the boat for the "first" time, is this the start of the continuation of the ending scene? It's known that the cruise ship and any surroundings after ...
phwd's user avatar
  • 9,501
30 votes
14 answers
14k views

What happened to Thomas Granger?

In Primer there is a secondary character named Thomas Granger that the two main characters Aaron and Abe come in contact with. Apparently he is the father of Abe's girlfriend Rachel and is head of ...
magnattic's user avatar
  • 15.4k
25 votes
3 answers
5k views

How come the events of Terminator didn't change the future, but the events of Terminator 2 did?

The 1984 events in the original Terminator don't change the future - rather, the events are consistent with a single "version" of 2029, the 2029 seen in the film. This is evidenced by the fact that ...
PeteyPabPro's user avatar
24 votes
1 answer
13k views

Movie where father, mother and son are the same person? [closed]

Does anyone know the name of the movie, where there is a cyclic story line, with a son, who his mother is trying to save or something like that, and happens that the son undergoes a sex change ...
Vignesh Iyer's user avatar
23 votes
2 answers
3k views

What's the role of the Receiver/Transmitter in Avengers Endgame?

In Endgame we are shown that the Time Travelers leave from a transmitting / receiving unit. But this seems optional. When Tony and Steve are in 2012, they leave from there to get to 1970 - no ...
MovieMe's user avatar
  • 5,380
21 votes
1 answer
10k views

How did Biff return to 2015 from 1955 without a lightning strike?

What I don't get about Back to the Future Part II is how was Old Biff able to come back to 2015 from 1955 after he gave his 1955 self the Sports Almanac. If you recall from Part I, the chance ...
Raj Krishnan's user avatar
21 votes
2 answers
2k views

In "Looper" was there a reason why they didn't send people directly to the furnace?

In "Looper" the future bad-guys send back people to be killed in a field by a guy with a stupid gun who then takes them into what appears to be a massively-insecure blast-furnace equipped factory of ...
Chopper3's user avatar
  • 2,738
19 votes
5 answers
1k views

Why don't more things change back?

In Looper, why don't more things change when they kill/maim people? Like when Joe shoots himself at the end and Older Joe disappears, why doesn't it undo the things that Older Joe did seeing as he ...
Jacob Tomlinson's user avatar
19 votes
1 answer
12k views

Can the timeline of Predestination be written in chronological order?

I just finished watching this mind-boggling time travel movie which seems to create some sort of ultimate time paradox. I'm curious. Can the timeline of this movie be written in chronological order? ...
CuriousWebDeveloper's user avatar
16 votes
5 answers
3k views

Why don't they try to change the past?

I always saw Twelve Monkeys as being centered around the fact that the past cannot be changed. But why is that? Is it a physical law that makes it impossible to change or is it just the scientists ...
Maurizio In denmark's user avatar
16 votes
2 answers
9k views

How did Ulrich end up in 1953?

In season 1 of Dark, Ulrich, in search of his son goes through the portal in the cave and ends up in 1953. Throughout the show, they keep saying that one can either go 33 years in the future or 33 ...
tangentbundle's user avatar
15 votes
3 answers
3k views

Doc knows he will invent a time machine 30 years ahead and it doesn't change the future

In Back to the Future, Doc invented a time machine in 1985 and he was really excited and a little surprised that it worked. But later in the movie, Marty goes back and tells young Doc about it. Why ...
relaxxx's user avatar
  • 253
14 votes
1 answer
3k views

TV-Show: Time travel with group of different times. Fork-like tool used as weapon [closed]

I saw this TV-show in the '80s. I scarcely remember a thing. There was a group of people of different times traveling together across time. Here are two characters that I remember: FORK-GUY: A man ...
Shirley Temple's user avatar
14 votes
3 answers
2k views

Why don't Marty's memories change?

I've looked and I don't think this has been asked before. In Back to the Future 1, after Marty changes his parent's future, its obvious that he changes his own life and the life of his siblings ...
sanpaco's user avatar
  • 30.7k
14 votes
2 answers
919 views

Why did the time machine work different for J?

Towards the end of the film, J decides to use the time machine to gain an advantage over Boris. However, unlike before, when he time jumps he comes back into his body that was in 1969 before he made ...
DForck42's user avatar
  • 33.5k
12 votes
4 answers
2k views

In "The Time Traveler's Wife" why does Henry never meet himself?

There are several occasions in the Time Travellers Wife where Henry arrives at the same point as he's already been, such as when he sees himself die and when Alba is conceived. Why does he never meet ...
Liath's user avatar
  • 19.9k
12 votes
5 answers
4k views

Are there any guides to the timeline of Donnie Darko?

I have the basic understanding that the entire plot to Donnie Darko revolves around time traveling. As far as the ending is conceded, you may have various interpretations of what actually happened. ...
actcheon's user avatar
  • 363
11 votes
4 answers
667 views

How did Travelers bring matter/objects/artifacts into the past?

Travelers travel back in time by somehow planting information into the mind of a present-day person by the use of some quantum mechanism and a "TELL" (nevermind that GPS technology is nowhere near as ...
Dan Dascalescu's user avatar
11 votes
2 answers
4k views

How does killing Barron affect the timeline in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children? [duplicate]

In the movie "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children", Mr. Barron kidnaps Miss Peregrine in order to use her in his immortality experiment. With Miss Peregrine gone, the time loop she created in ...
Keshav Srinivasan's user avatar
10 votes
11 answers
44k views

What is the Butterfly-Effect in Mr. Nobody?

In Mr. Nobody, the concept of time-travel is blended with the butterfly effect. In the movie, when the old man tells his story as a child, he says that he chose his mommy and daddy because they would ...
ashutosh's user avatar
  • 255
10 votes
1 answer
704 views

What's the rush to travel forward in time?

In the 1984 events of Terminator: Genisys when Kyle and Sarah, having destroyed the only known enemy robot in their timeline, approach their one-shot Time Displacement Engine (TDE), they get into an ...
feetwet's user avatar
  • 2,154
10 votes
1 answer
2k views

Black & White time travel movie that ends with a repeating time loop [closed]

I am looking for a black and white science fiction movie that I watched a couple of times on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon in the early to mid 1960's on local Los Angeles television. The movie was ...
MeBdt's user avatar
  • 103
9 votes
5 answers
16k views

How is Cooper's age justified?

In Interstellar the course of events to my knowledge is the following: The time taken to travel from Earth to the wormhole is 2yrs (Aggregate = 2). After that we don't know how much time passed on ...
Cool_Coder's user avatar
  • 1,698
9 votes
3 answers
339 views

What happened to change Joe's timeline?

As far as I can remember, we see a total of three Joes in the movie. Joe A kills himself, then 30 years later gets sent back and is killed by Joe B, a closed loop. Joe B, however, changes from the ...
DForck42's user avatar
  • 33.5k
9 votes
5 answers
2k views

Where did the second Marty go?

At the end of Back to the Future (1985), Marty1 comes back to 1985 from 1955 to save Doc, and seems to get there too late. He sees Marty2 disappear into the past in the Delorean right upon his arrival....
MicroMachine's user avatar
  • 3,701
9 votes
1 answer
676 views

Time-travelling neo-Nazis try to give Hitler an H-bomb [closed]

A group of neo-Nazis steal an H-bomb (that looks like a briefcase) from a museum in the future, with the intention of going back in time and giving it to Hitler in 1944 or 1945 (near his defeat), to ...
oals's user avatar
  • 193
9 votes
1 answer
460 views

Time travel movie: guy wants to live in the past, travels there and meets another girl who wants to live even further in the past [closed]

I'm searching a time travel movie about a guy who wants to live in the past. Somehow he was brought there and meets another girl. That other girl ironically wants to live even further in the past. I ...
Luke's user avatar
  • 201
9 votes
4 answers
2k views

Time travel movie with a spinning time machine [closed]

I've been looking for a long time for the name of a (probably) made-for-TV movie involving a time travel machine that spun like a small carousel, with a teenage boy and girl sitting on it. After ...
EmmaV's user avatar
  • 411
9 votes
1 answer
462 views

Identify Kids Time Travel TV Show [closed]

I've been looking for this tv show for a while, but I can't find any references to it at all. I know it is definitely pre 2001 The series starts with some teen from the future looking for someone who ...
Fozzedout's user avatar
8 votes
5 answers
3k views

Crossing your own timeline, changing the future - how does that work?

There are many movies and TV episodes in which a character "crosses his own timeline", sometimes even meeting his past or future self (e.g. The Day of the Doctor). Technically, I should say meeting ...
Robin Green's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
593 views

Back to the Future Part 2: What was the point of going to the future?

In Back to the Future Part 2, Doc practically forces Marty to come back with him to 2015 to correct something regarding his kids. Basically Marty Jr. needs to say "no" to Griff so that he doesn't get ...
Raj Krishnan's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
1k views

Time travel movie with a loser watching an apple rot, and there are moon people [closed]

I'm trying to find a movie which I watched around 2008-2009 winter with the following details: The story starts 50-200 years before today. There is no electronic devices around. The protagonist was a ...
hkBattousai's user avatar
8 votes
3 answers
4k views

Critical plot hole in Primer?

Primer is by far the most sophisticated time travel movie I've ever seen. Did you know that director Shane Carrurh wanted the objects to stay inside the box when traveling back in time, so they keep ...
shay__'s user avatar
  • 181
8 votes
1 answer
5k views

What are the time travel rules in Midnight In Paris?

Every instance of time travel for Gil Pender involves a vehicle from the destination era transporting him to a landmark from that era. He also seems to be able to leave the era trivially at will. In ...
Erik's user avatar
  • 2,832
8 votes
1 answer
402 views

Track all changes to the timeline in the Terminator series

In accordance with the topic challenge on time travel in TV and movies and celebrating Future Day: There are quite a few Terminator questions relating to specific changes in the timeline or to ...
Josh's user avatar
  • 503
8 votes
3 answers
2k views

What if the coordinates of NASA were not sent?

I haven't seen this answered yet so here goes...In Interstellar, what if Cooper never sent the coordinates to himself? When he's in the tesseract, he surely remembers receiving the coordinates of NASA....
Julio's user avatar
  • 81
8 votes
1 answer
3k views

A movie with a time machine that is being used to stop a crime [closed]

It's a Hollywood movie.I saw it five or six years ago, and now I don't remember its name or cast. The plot was something like this: there is a department with a time machine. They use this machine to ...
user12946's user avatar
7 votes
1 answer
380 views

Time and Space Travel?

In the movie 12 Monkeys, when James Cole was sent back in time for the second time, they sent him by mistake to the WW1 era. But I think the place where they sent him was not in USA, but in Europe and ...
Alexan's user avatar
  • 583
7 votes
2 answers
2k views

Shot mechanic in Tenet

In Tenet, when someone got shot by an inverted bullet, shouldn't the person be hurt before getting shot and recover immediately after the inverted bullet shoots him? If not, then why was the wall ...
wqeeqwqe's user avatar
6 votes
5 answers
12k views

How did Marty meet Doc in 1955 after Doc has travelled to 1885?

In Back to the future II, Marty burns the almanac in the bucket and Doc's DeLorean was struck by lightning, causing doc to travel to 1885 accidentally. Then Marty receives a letter from Doc which was ...
kvchivukula's user avatar
6 votes
2 answers
2k views

Why didn't Kellog die in S1E5?

In Continuum Season 1, Episode 5, But Kellog didn't die. Kiera had some speculations about why that happend, but they all seem kinda odd. Is there an explonation consistent with the serie's logic?
Markus Klein's user avatar
  • 3,240
6 votes
2 answers
1k views

Time travel paradox in Futurama

In S7E3 "Decision 3012", a man from the future travels back in time to stop Nixon winning the election. Since he defeats Nixon, there is no need for him to return to his own time. He never does and ...
PriestVallon's user avatar
  • 10.2k
6 votes
1 answer
21k views

Time Travel & The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

I just watched the movie The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and it was beautiful. Since it's a movie with a concept of Time travel and loops questions might come up. In the movie nearly towards the end ...
Deepak Kamat's user avatar
  • 3,434
5 votes
4 answers
3k views

How is Agent J able to get the time-travel device in Men in Black 3?

In Men in Black 3, Agent J (Will Smith) goes to see Jeffrey Price in the electronics store to obtain the time-travel device built by Price's father that J can then use to travel back to 1969 to avert ...
Nobby's user avatar
  • 31.6k