Time Stands Still: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

{{quote|''"Stand still, you ever moving spheres of heaven,

Time freezes (or seems to) for everyone and everything in the entire universe, except for the main cast of the story. The characters find themselves in an eerie, calm, silent world where the people and objects around them have become motionless statues. In some stories, this phenomenon happens by accident; in others, the heroes can stop time by using [[Magic and Powers|magic, a super power]] or [[Applied Phlebotinum]].

 

 

Occasionally [[Handwaved]] by saying that the characters aren't really stopping time, they're just [[Super Speed|speeding themselves (and their minds) up]] to a point where everything else seems stopped. To emphasize this, sometimes you'll get a shot of something that should move really fast, like the wings of a hummingbird, moving very slowly. This means that the illusion of time standing still can be achieved with enough raw [[Super Speed]]. And sometimes it goes the other way, with time manipulation being the explanation for a character's [[Super Speed]]. Of course, if they're really going that much faster than everything else, they would need lots of [[Required Secondary Powers]] to move normally.

{{quote|'''''[[Memetic Mutation|ZA WARUDO]]!''''' '''''Toki yo tomare.'''''}}

* Through expert use of the time-travel device in ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' to repeatedly jump to the same time and space at super high speed, it is possible to obtain a very brief "pseudo time stop" effect.

** In the SNES RPG. Another Story, this is a costly (taking all 12 of her EP) but not fatal special ability that prevents the enemy from doing anything for three rounds. Given that the cost can be trivially recovered in ''one'' round, and the fact that no enemy has any defense against it, it quickly becomes a [[Game Breaker]]. The Fighting games also have it as well which if it hits freezes the opponent long enough to land a few extra hits in.

* This was what the villain did in [[The Movie]] of ''[[Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash Star]]'' to get the [[Magical Girl|magical girls]] after him.

* Happened during [[Chris Claremont]]'s run on ''[[Fantastic Four (Comic Book)|Fantastic Four]]''; the team travels to an alternate Earth which is covered in an endless ocean that seems to have frozen time.

* A backup story in ''Omega Men'' have the evil Spider Aliens send a team to conquer an out of the way planet populated by giants who perceive the world flashing by. To them, the sky is grey because of the 'effect' of the sun rising and leaving so fast. The Spider Aliens all go mad because they can't find a way to affect the time-slowed giants.

** In another story (both are from [[Don Rosa]] by the way), "On Stolen Time", Gyro has invented a stopwatch. A ''literal'' stopwatch. It freezes time for everyone who's not standing within about thirty feet/ten meters of the watch when it's activated. While others see the user teleporting from place to place and things disappearing and appearing, the user sees world frozen around him. At one point, Donald and his nephews manage to get into stopped time with the Beagle Boys, and a chase ensues, with such tricks as the ducks cutting across a pond to catch up with the Beagle Boys, Donald crashing against a butterfly and the Beagle Boys using flying pigeons as a ladder to escape.

* Marvel character [[wikipedia:Kiden Nixon|Kiden Nixon]], main character of NYX, can slow down time to an almost complete stop. She can return to a normal state by touching someone. She has to be extremely careful: the first time she did this, she broke someone's arm by simply poking it.

* ''Cashback'' plays around with this trope a lot, although it may just represent a daydream of the lead character. Or an excuse to [[Rule of Sexy|show a lot]] [[Fan Service|of boobs]].

* ''[[Clockstoppers]]'' (2002) has a wristwatch which can move the wearer into "hypertime," where time seems to stand still. (It doesn't though. It just moves ''really'' slowly). For some reason, this doesn't seem to affect whatever moving vehicles they occupy.

* The 1980 movie ''The Girl The Gold Watch and Everything'' (based on the novel by John D. MacDonald, which see) along with the movie sequel, ''The Girl The Gold Watch and Dynamite''.

* The ''[[Trancers]]'' series of film gave the Protagonist Jack Deth a watch that didn't wholly stop time, but stretched it for him. Explained in the film as 1 second stretched to 10, in the film it appears to last for about 90 seconds.

* The second ''[[Molly Moon]]'' book has the title character being able to stop time thanks to a [[Call Back]] from the first book.

* In David Eddings's ''[[Elenium]]'' and ''[[Tamuli]]'', one of the special abilities of the Troll Gods is to go into "No-Time", the space in between seconds, to traverse distances near-instantaneously. The characters, however, cannot affect the real world in this state. In the words of the [[Empathic Weapon|Bhelliom]], in order to move so much as a pebble in No-Time, you'd have to move the entire universe. Which ends up having [[And I Must Scream|horrific]] repercussions for several of characters.

*** [[It Gets Worse]] : at a later point, the same Troll God makes some of the characters "invisible" by breaking each second into two pieces, with the invisible guys only present for the smaller piece...again, he believes it works, so it does.

* The final showdown between the titular heroine of [[Michael Ende]]'s ''[[Momo]]'' and the [[The Men in Black|Men in Grey]] happens after the local [[God]] stops time in the whole world, leaving only Momo (because she is carrying a certain [[MacGuffin]]), the Men in Grey, and a magical turtle (who is a fully-functional [[MacGuffin]] of her own right) able to move.

** MacDonald's novel tries to address some of the physics problems noted: Although the watch seems to freeze time completely, it actually slows it to a crawl, as a fired bullet still has a perceptible movement. Due to the slowdown, the air is thick and hinders movement, and everything appears to be red (presumably due to photon speed alterations).

* Larry Niven's ''[[Known Space]]'' series features several time-stopping force fields, e.g. the Slaver stasis field technology.

** In the same series, characters such as Death, his fellow Horsemen, and his granddaughter Susan, can move around "outside time". Milkman Ronnie Soak, the Horseman Formerly Known As Kaos, uses this talent to get milk delivered on time every morning. That is to say he delivers the milk at 7 am every morning, to everyone in the city ''at the same time''.

** Slicing may be a [[Deconstruction]], since it has a number of requirements to avoid the [[The Air Not There|"solid air" problem]]. At deeper levels, you see red/blue shift and have to keep moving so the air in your personal [[Bullet Time]] pocket won't all get used up.

*** They also have "the wall", the point at which time is sliced so thin that not even the most experienced of History Monks can take it; one named Zimmerman discovered what's now known as "Zimmerman's valley", a level of time-slicing which is relatively easy to maintain in spite of being so deep that hummingbird wings have all but frozen, and figured there was a second valley even closer to the limit, but never found it. Not if the way he exploded was any indication.

** ''Thief of Time'' had as its major plot point a clock being constructed that could perfectly measure time... and in doing so, completely halt it.

* [[H. G. Wells]]' story [http://www.classicreader.com/read.php/bookid.172/sec./ The New Accelerator] is about a drug that causes anyone who takes it to move at [[Super Speed]], making the rest of the world seem to be moving extremely slowly. In the story, the characters move so fast that the friction of their movements through the air nearly causes their clothing to ignite before they figure out what's going on.

* In Scott Westerfeld's ''[[Midnighters]]'' series, people who are born at midnight experience the "blue time", an extra hour where everything else is frozen.

* There was a novel where a man sees a strange ball of lightning striking near his house. The next morning, he realizes that everything around him is slowed down. Worse, it keeps slowing down and will result in him aging and turning to dust in a matter of minutes if he doesn't stop it (he calculates at one point that he is 300 times faster than everything around him). He attempts to communicate with a neighbor via the use of a typewriter. He types a message and has to wait for about an hour (his time) before the neighbor notices it. The novel points out the dangers of moving at these speeds, as he is constantly ripping his clothes and wounding himself on any object he accidentally hits, even tree branches. A bum who was near his house at the time is also hyper-accelerated. He uses this opportunity to steal. Both are eventually restored to normal, but the mysterious cause is never revealed.

** The protagonist at one point remembers reading ''The New Accelerator'' by H. G. Wells and noting that certain things done in the story are ludicrous, such as throwing a dog, which would have resulted in the dog having its head ripped off.

* In ''[[There and Back Again]]'' by Pat Murphy, Bailey finds a metal Mobius strip with the ability to alter the flow of time in a bubble around it, and frequently uses it to speed himself up to the point where everyone else is effectively stopped.

* This is a focal point of [[Stephen King]]'s short story "The Jaunt" - {{spoiler|the titular teleporation system appears to send things through it instantaneously, but sentient minds perceive the transit as an "eternity", to quote the first human test subject, with corresponding physical aging.}}

** Experiments with millisecond-tracking digital stopwatches suggest that the brain's perception shifts into an actual approximation of "bullet time" when its levels of adrenaline are highest. This happens because neurons' activity is devoted so tightly to whatever danger or challenge a subject is confronted by, the person actually picks up enough details so that time ''seems'' slower.

*** Another experiment claims that details are not perceived quicker in high-adrenaline mode. Although they used details not too related to the perceived danger source.

* The plot of the ''Langley's Ark'' story ''Killing Time''. The chapter immediately following the time-stop itself begins with one of the protagonists, a first-year Academy student, handing in a semester essay months before the due date. Her explanation: ''"I got bored. ... Very, very bored."''

{{quote|'''Aelisha:''' Great job Brin. I think you just killed time.}}

* The obscure True Brujah vampire clan from the ''[[Old World of Darkness]]'' could do this as a matter of routine.

* ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' has "Time Stop" as one of the top-level spells from AD&D and up. In the 1st and 2nd editions, the spell actually caused time to halt within a certain radius of the caster. Since third edition, however, the spell description has changed and the caster himself speeds up, merely creating the impression that time has stopped and altering the way actions play out while the spell is in effect.

** Psionic characters can learn the Temporal Acceleration power, which is similar to Time Stop, except available six levels earlier but not lasting as long.

* In ''[[GURPS]]'' players can pay a few character points<ref>if the optional "Bullet Time" cinematic rule is used</ref> to freeze time for a moment. The spells ''Accelerate Time'' and ''Time Out'' are also similar to this.

* Quicktime/Overdrive in the ''[[SaGa]]'' Series, there is even one character in [[SaGa]] frontier whose specialized field was the control of time magic itself.

* In the ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' games, Chaos Control is sometimes the ability to "stop time." (Other times it's the ability to teleport or the ability to fly forward at insanely high speeds. Of course, they all look the same from the outside.)

*** During boss-battles, it seems more like stopping time, though. Shadow is able to move around normally and interact with enemies/bosses (attacking them, of course), so he's not teleporting. However, the opening movie before the main-menu had Shadow at one point teleporting around and attacking enemies (not that you can do [[Never Trust a Trailer|that]] [[Cutscene Power to the Max|in-game]]) which could mean it IS just teleporting around quickly and it being rendered as [[Bullet Time]] during boss-battles and certain cutscenes.

** In ''[[Shadow the Hedgehog]]'', it is concretely defined as "Space-time control". Which means that it can be either teleportation ''or'' time stop, depending on what you want to do with it at the time.

* In ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' the Bronze (acting as [[Time Police]]) and Infinite (interlopers trying to change timeline) Dragonflights have access to this amongst other time-related magic. On some occasions these powers are granted to players to use, such as in an Occulus instance where you can ride Bronze Drakes who can freeze everybody except your party in the whole area – it gets most use during the final boss battle of the instance, where you have to freeze him when he increases his attack.

* In ''[[Eternal Fighter Zero]]'', Mizuka Nagamori's Final Memory move, "Eternal Poem", freezes time and allows her to freely wail on the opponent for a while.

** That last one can be altered by powerful Shadows - the first real boss battle, against Priestess, takes place on a bullet train that the boss has unfrozen... and which is about to crash into another train just up the tracks. The fight's a [[Timed Mission]] as a result.

* In most ''[[Wild Arms]]'' games, [[Summon Magic|summoning]] the Time Guardian, Dan Dariam, will stop time for everyone except the summoner. Hugo of ''[[Wild Arms 4]]'' has the ability to do this whenever he's moving, letting him outspeed Jude's [[Super Speed|Accelerator]].

* In one of the worlds in ''[[Braid]]'', the movement of time is linked to Tim's movement. When Tim walks forward, time flows forward; when Tim walks back, time flows backwards. Time stops when Tim stands still.

* A [[Standard Status Effect|common status effect]] in RPG's (especially the [[Final Fantasy|Final Fantasy series]]) is Stop. It does [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]]. The victim is essentially petrified, unable to take any actions. Sadly, [[Useless Useful Spell|it's usually far more effective on you than it is on your enemies]].

** Starting with ''[[Final Fantasy V]]'', some Final Fantasy games also contain the usual variant. The Quick spell accelerates the caster to the point that they can take two combat rounds' worth of actions without any interruption from their enemies. In ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]'', this is especially useful for [[Samurai|Cyan]], whose special ability requires him to wait in real time to charge up an attack. Quick allows him all the time in the world to do that, as all the enemies are frozen for the duration. Interestingly, ''Final Fantasy VI'' contains Quick ''and'' Stop.

* One of [[Psychic Force|Richard]] [[Time Master|Wong]]'s moves which stops his opponent for a few seconds, unless the opponent is Wong himself.

* In ''[[Faxanadu]]'', the Hour Glass can be used to freeze enemies.

* The pocket watch in ''[[American McGee's Alice]]'' allows you to freeze time and everything around you (except for Alice) for around 30 seconds or so.

* {{spoiler|[[True Final Boss|Chakratarvin the Creator]] from ''[[Asura's Wrath]]'' has this as an attack, used to start up QTE's, to throw throw massive swords and other attacks. It's a [[Color Coded Time Stop]].}}

 

== Western Animation ==

* [[Big Bad|Nox]] from ''[[Wakfu]]'' is a [[Sdrawkcab Name|Xelor]], a race of beings with the power to manipulate time. So far, he hasn't ''stopped'' time per se, but he has slowed it down to the point where everything appears to have stopped. Furthermore, anyone who manages to break his spell suffers from [[Rapid Aging]] and other debilitating side-effects.

** This episode presumably inspired [[Don Rosa]]'s ''[[Donald Duck]]'' comics story "On Stolen Time".

*** Rosa incidentally later lamented on why he didn't simply make the device stop ''movement'' instead of time within certain radius, pointing out all the practical problems of stopped time, like solid air.

* One episode of ''[[The Mask (animation)|The Mask]]'' includes a poorly made time machine that is looping an ever-decreasing period of time. If not stopped, it will eventually lock all existence in a single instant eternally.

* Naturally, the time traveling episode of ''[[Danny Phantom]]'' has the TimeMaster easily doing this.

 

{{reflist}}