Playing With: Timey-Wimey Ball
: How Time Travel
works is inconsistent within a single series.
- Straight: In the series Just in Time, Tana often travels in time and changes the past, thus affecting the present, but it never has any unintended effects. When Timmy travels to the past to prevent the accident that killed his parents, they remain dead no matter what he does.
- Exaggerated: In addition to the above: Tara is her own grandmother. Tom often observes the past with no ill effects, but when Tina tries to do the same thing for five minutes, she accidentally unleashes a Butterfly of Doom. This becomes a Temporal Paradox, which threatens to destroy the universe... but then Tana travels in time and prevents the entire disaster from happening.
- The time travel in Just in Time has a few oddities, for instance that a character may or may not be able to call someone in the present while time travelling.
- Just in Time is a Long Runner. Time travel changes a little between seasons.
- Justified: Different time travellers have different means of time travelling. Different means of time travelling work differently and have different possibilities.
- Inverted: The time travel makes little sense, but at least it isn't inconsistent.
- Subverted: Tana explains that Timmy does something differently from her, and that's why he can't change the past.
- Double Subverted: When Timmy tries to do what she told him to do, he still can't change the past.
- Parodied: Every time a character travels in time, a cosmic roulette determines which rules the time travel will operate under.
- Zig Zagged: Tana can change the past. Timmy can't, but it's because he uses an older time machine. When he tries Tana's time machine, he's free to save his parents. One of Tina's observations of history ends with Godwin's Law of Time Travel, but that's only possible because Tina is under a curse. Tom tries to avert it, but finds out that You Can't Fight Fate. Then it turns out it was All Just a Dream... of a time traveller whose bad dreams are somehow caused by his time travels!
- The time travel is logical and perfectly consistent.
- The time travel in Just in Time has clear, unambiguous rules from the first episode.
- There is no time travel in Just in Time.
- Enforced: "Oh, Crap, the time travel in this series isn't consistent at all." "Just leave it as it is. We don't have time to change it. Nobody will notice anyway."
- Lampshaded: "She can Screw Destiny! Why can't I?"
- Invoked: A mischievous Reality Warper decides to mess with the time travellers.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: ???
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "Sigh. Another show that doesn't care about getting its time travel consistent."
- The timeline becomes increasingly inconsistent and messed up to the point where it collapses.
- Meta: The inconsistent time travel drives audiences away from Just in Time.
- But the collapse causes time travel not to be invented in the first place, and everything is restored to normal.
- Meta: The creators realize the show can still be made enjoyable with enough Rule of Cool and Rule of Funny.
Go back in time here
, which may or may not cause a Temporal Paradox