Set Right What Once Went Wrong, which includes a description of the distinction between the two.Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory, since the character remembers the events that apparently never happened as far as everyone else in the universe is concerned.Out of Time, Out of Mind, for when this looping does not affect the character's personality.Mental Time Travel, because it's usually that.Groundhog Peggy Sue, a subtrope where the looping encompasses a substantial fraction of the character's life and the character may be able to skip over some of the intervening bits.Christmas Every Day: In some cases, a loop will reset around Christmas.Not to be confused with a Stable Time Loop.
Requires Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory to be in play for any meaningful plot to take place.
It was largely unknown in the Western world until the 2006 anime film sequel The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.Ĭompare New Game Plus and Endgame+ for Video Games.
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is a 1965 Japanese novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui, which is the Trope Maker in Japanese popular culture (albeit involving voluntary loops), having had several adaptations, including a 1972 television series and hit 1983 film. The Ur-Example of the trope is The Defence of Duffer's Drift from 1904, although in that case the loop traversals are dreams of Lieutenant Backsight Forethought which permit him (and the reader) to learn which general tactical mistakes to avoid. Though not the earliest example, this trope is named after the 1993 film Groundhog Day, which established the trope in Western popular culture. Since this plot requires constantly revisiting handful of sets for the entire length of the episode(s), re-using some of the same footage over and over and generally no outside characters will act on the plot, this can be considered a form of Bottle Episode. (Almost invariably, the looping character will at some point demonstrate his or her "prescience" by offhandedly predicting these events one after another.) These are, of course, the events that will later be replayed in exactly the same order to emphasize that the day is, in fact, repeating in every particular.
A common variation is that the looper is deliberately repeating the time period to Set Right What Once Went Wrong (and because they keep failing, they repeat it again, and again, and again, and again, and.) In such cases, the looper has control of the loop and can stop it at any time - if they just give up and accept failure.Ī different variation has the loop actually be a fake, and time isn't repeating - people are just acting out their routines identically, with characters left out of the loop ( No Pun Intended) in a sort of elaborate scheme or prank to make them think it is.Ī Groundhog Day Loop episode can often be identified by the presence of several odd little events that are given full camera focus, yet don't have any apparent significance or relation to anything else.