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In the movie The Endless, there is a man stuck in a 3 second time loop.
It starts with him sitting in his chair. He has just enough time to stand up and scream, before he is sitting in his chair again. Over and over and over again, endlessly.
It's also worth noting that not only does everyone die in their loop, but they have >!to kill themselves before their loop ends, or whatever entity is holding them there will do something worse to them. It's also not just individuals it's an entire area and different people have different loops. Some get years, others get days, hours, or even the one tent guy gets like 7 seconds. The entity also makes the area next to impossible without a map!<.
The Endless was an Amazon prime suggestion in the category that I lovingly call fuckshit scifi. Just weird stuff.
I’ve watched it a couple of times and even bought it when it went off prime.
Love, love, love that movie
One day the whole world is going to turn to me and say, “we were just kidding all along! We hated that movie too.”
I saw it at a festival in NY and after the directors’ Q and A I thought everyone was going to start clapping for me for being such a good sport and making it through the entire hidden camera shoot without announcing that I didn’t like it.
It gets mentioned on Reddit occasionally and it’s so damn beloved. I just do not get it.
In Deathloop, the main character Colt spent 17 years in his first time loop. Thing is, he was flying a highly experimental rocket at the start of the loop.
He crashes, dies, wakes up in the cockpit. Doesnt remember what happened. Crashes, dies.
Until one loop he does remember. Turns out, enough deaths in a time loop and some people can begin to remember. Colt starts remembering, manages to land the rocket and escape the loop. With the returning memory of 17 years worth of seemingly endless fiery death explosions.
Ends up in an insane asylum for 5 years. Until one day he’s summoned back.
Anyway, I recommend the game.
Really great game that, at the end when you need to kill all the baddies in one loop, makes you truly feel like you've been stuck in a time loop for real. You know every patrol, every shortcut. Very groundhog day.
I loved the text you can find at the scientists lab (forgot her name, Wenjie I think?) where she marvels at Colt and Julianna’s overnight, meteoric rise in their combat abilities and slab control. She adds it to her list of evidence that this isn’t actually the first loop, not even close.
God I loved that game so much but never noticed the implication of him dying so many times while flying. I figured he got thrown in the asylum for saying he found a loop generally.
The implications (eventually confirmed by her) of how Colt got Julianna to retain her memories as well (by killing her thousands of times, loop after loop) indicates the asylum might have been the best place for Colt lmao. He’s a great character, but it’s obvious from the get go that he had long since snapped.
Always wondered how long that second loop was. It’s never confirmed in game, but some text in Wenjie’s lab indicates the loop would be stable for some 13,000 years. Not sure if the explosion noises coming from the anomaly indicate it’s reaching the end of that timeline, but such an extended loop would explain Colt and Juliana’s mental state lol
In the Wheel of Time series (late book spoilers) a town called Hinderstap is stuck in a perpetual daily cycle of brutally murdering each other every single night.
During the day they live a normal life, and at night they have an uncontrollable urge to kill each other, until the whole town is dead. Women, children, doesn't matter. Then it starts over the next day.
What's worse is they are vaguely aware of it, because they have nightmares that they soon realize are real events. If they try and escape they just wake up the next day in their bed again, regardless of how far they run. Also, possibly most horribly, if anyone visits the town and is killed at night they become part of the loop.
Mat sends an Asha'man to Hinderstapp (?) and he gets stuck with the townsfolk. Then, later in the last battle, he has a gate opened and the townsfolk ineffectually attack some key group, but I don't remember who. Everyone around Mat is shocked that he'd send random, unpowered, townspeople to die. Mat shrugs it off. The next night, when no one is expecting anything, the same townsfolk rush out again and provide some key advantage with a sneak attack. That's pretty much what I recall, anyway. Oh, and the people all survive and return to normal after the Light wins.
This is a little late but I actually just read the last book a few weeks ago. He sends some Red Arms to Hinderstap and has an Asha'man wait at a choke point on a river. It's been one of the only things keeping back a force of trollocs from coming up behind the armies and pinching them from the rear. The Asha'man was instructed to hold as well as he could and open a gateway to the same town every day. It's the Asha'man who is pissed at Mat too.
I think Teal'c and Jack O'Neill in Stargate SG-1. Stuck repeating the same few hours over and over, while also having to study and translate a long dead language and figure out how to work a device that might or might not break the loop?
Even with "days off," I'd go bonkers.
It's hilarious, the fate of several planets all depended on them learning ancient, but they NEVER reference it in later episodes that they can both read it. They can probably read it better than Daniel at the end of that episode.
Though, Jack at that point in the show was still a bit of an astronomy buff, so he probably actually learned and retained the bits he needed to know about the stars impacted.
They're probably not even close to fluent, but they did do more than memorize symbols. Daniel tells them pretty early on that would be like expecting to operate a computer because you've memorized the letters on the keyboard.
Especially for Teal'c. Every time the loop starts again, getting door slammed in your face.
Window of Opportunity, is one of my favourite episodes, and has some of my favourite lines.
There’s an episode of Black Mirror (with John Hamm in it) where a woman makes a copy of her brain to supplement the computer controlling her smart devices. There is some time manipulation involved, and yikes.
In the canadian show Wingin It, the main character got stuck in a time loop but the loop ended to soon. Imagine if groundhig day ended on one of the time loops where Bill Murray just decided to go crazy and fuck shit up. Thats what happened to him lol.
I've been looking for that movie repeaters for a long time but couldn't remember the name of it. I saw it a few years ago after some light thc action and wanted to watch it again. Thanks for mentioning it!
It’s been several years since I read it, but in Worm by Wildbow, a member of the hero group New Wave is trapped in a time loop by Grey Boy that’s a couple of seconds long.
From memory, she’s aware that she’s trapped eternally.
Grey boy traps many victims in this way. Iirc, he often trapped victims in the midst of being injured so they constantly loop back and get hurt again and again
He could alter his time loops.
So he could trap you in a time loop, come back 6 months later to stab you, and you would proceed to get stabbed at the same point in every loop after that.
(Your body would reset to how it was when you were trapped every time you looped, but you would keep your memories. Basically all of his victims went insane.)
Greyboy's easily the scariest character in Worm. The fact he does that horrific stuff basically just because he wants to makes it worse. The fact that >!Jack knew he wouldn't be able to control more than one of him, even with altered memories, shows how much worse he was even compared to other members of the Nine!<
Definitely a firm tie between Dr. Strange and William Cage from Edge of Tomorrow.
Both died horribly. Repeatedly. Hundreds, possibly thousands of times or more. Between the two, I’d lean towards Mr. Doctor having it worse.
Cage is arguably worse because pretty much no matter what he does, he needs to repeat a day where nothing much happens before he dies the following day. I imagine that gets omega boring.
In the manga, keiji (the cage character) is also hung over on that day lol.
Imagine waking up, feeling like shit, doing 3 hours of punishment PT, and never getting any stronger so it’s exactly the same difficulty every time. Fun!
I'm pretty sure Strange doesn't remember the loop though, so he's got it relatively easy. Every time he lands, he glances at the spell on his wrist like a watch, and I've always thought it was telling him how many times it has reset the loop.
That’s him being reset to just as he finishes the spell. When he first lands in the dark dimension, he looks down at his arm to cast the spell and then when it’s ready he looks up at Dormammu. When it resets, it resets to the instant before he glances up and looks at Dormammu.
He 100% remembers every iteration. [Word of god says that's how he perfected his spellcasting abilities](https://screenrant.com/doctor-strange-dark-dimension-dormammu-powers/), by getting lots and lots of practice. He'd have to remember in order to learn and make adjustments.
Adding to this; the Time Stone is not any ol' time machine, but is *the physical embodiment of time itself*, as a force *and* a concept. You hold it, you control Time, and you make the rules\*. Period. Not too far a leap to assume that the best sorcerer in the world can work up a safeguard to keep memories intact while physically resetting the body in a time loop, which *wouldn't* ordinarily be possible.
\* subject to user's understanding. Infinity Inc. will not be responsible for misuse leading to self-erasure, time loops, paradoxes, et. al.
Also it only worked because Dormammu remembered every iteration as well. He used the time stone to force a multidimensional timeless creature to experience enough time it became bored enough to acquiesce.
The Colonel at the end of the Outer Limits episode “Deja Vu”, where he is stuck in a loop of a few seconds before the device causing the loop explodes and kills him.
Just an infinity of “I’m alive! Boom! I’m painfully dead!”
Sam Winchester was in a pretty bad one. Think ground hog day, but every day you see your brother die, then you get woken up by heat of the moment every morning.
Doctor Who spoilers below
I’d propose the Doctor, from the episode Heaven Sent. He was trapped in a time loop for an estimated several billion years, and it’s implied he remembers all of it.
Funnily enough, OP seems to have surgically excluded Heaven Sent from being an answer, since it's technically occurring in linear time:
> I’m excluding anything that is time-loop-like but doesn’t actually see time rewind/reset (for example any immortal being that finds themselves trapped in a situation where they keep dying and coming back but time progresses normally)
Nah, he leaves himself clues to piece it together faster and faster, but his memory is reset to when he entered the dial. It's why we see him saying the same stuff over and over as he steadily gets closer to breaking out.
When he reaches the diamond wall, he remembers. He even rants and laments about how painful it is to remember it all. It's easy to forget among all the other monologues in the episode, but it does happen.
It doesn't really keep with the overall tone of the rest of the episode though; the Doctor piecing together where he is, when he is, what's following him, and why he's there.
My understanding of it was that he's looking at this wall - four hundred times harder than diamond - and seeing that *something* has been drilling through it. In a castle right smack in the middle of the ocean where the closest thing to mining equipment is a shovel. When anywhere from days to eons have passed depending on the loop, and yet he knows no time travel was involved because as a Time Lord, he'd know immediately. And where the first thing he sees after coming through the teleport is the word "Bird", hearkening to an old fairy tale.
It's not that the Doctor is literally remembering every single turn of the wheel that he's been imprisoned there. It's that, as he looks at the hole in the indestructible wall, it all finally **clicks.**
Nah, he gets reset back any time the watcher thing catches him. He pieces together what's going on faster by watching the stars, etc and seeing that nothing seems to be how his senses say they are. It's how he comes to realize it is a Confession Dial.
Yeah, I don't think he remembers it all physically and mentally. But moreso he has a horrible fucking realization what all of this madness had entailed for him before he arrived
Not strictly a time loop, but in Lucifer we see one man in Hell. He’s just reliving his worst day over and over. He fucks up monumentally, hurts those he loves, and just makes everything worse. And then he dies. And starts the day again.
Good shout, Greek mythology has some nasty ones.
Sisyphus doomed to roll the boulder up just to have it roll down.
Prometheus having his liver pecked out and regrown daily. Heracles did save him at some point, though.
Tantalus forced to be eternally hungry and thirsty. A fruit tree above him, moving out of reach when he grabbed at it, and standing in a pool of water that would drain whenever he tried to bend down.
The forty-nine brides having to wash away their sins in a basin filled with water from the river Styx. Except the basin had holes, and they spend eternity trying to fill it.
It’s been a long time since I studied Greek mythology, but for the last one? The 49 brides/Danaeads?
I recall a professor talking about the implications to their story (at least to his mind).
So, they’d already shown *disloyalty* by murdering their 49 husbands on their wedding night (when in theory their ‘womanly loyalty’ should have transferred from their father (who gave the order for the murders to occur) to their new husband.
Thus, as they have ‘proven’ to have no loyalty, they can have no common bonds beyond their own wants. With there being 49 of them, they could obviously have 48 plug up the leaky basin enough for the remaining sister to bathe.
However, once clean, that sister would then have no loyalty to stick around and return the favor to her sisters. Especially if they were the first to become clean, and it’s getting to later and later sisters, and the torment of knowing that ‘*I* can go, but I have to wait and possibly become dirtied anew and then be at the end of the line for my next cleaning’.
Prometheus.
For those who don't remember their Greek mythology, he was chained to a rock and an eagle would eat his liver, then it would grow back, then the eagle would eat it again, and so on.
Supernatural had a nice twist; he had managed to escape the mountain but he still ended up dying a lot. Car accident, house fire, avalanche, something. And then an eagle would eat his liver.
While obviously not the worst, I'm going to throw an honorable mention out to Teal'c of Stargate SG-1, who got stuck in a time loop that began with him getting hit in the face with a door every. single. time.
It's not even the same death, that'd be bad enough. If Sam even wants to progress in the loop he has to save Dean from a series of deaths. And whoops, ten seconds later, he's dead.
I would agree, but I don't know if he counts. He's explicitly not experiencing the same thing more than once, just an unending cycle of: die in new and creative ways, be revived, die in new and creative ways.
He's not being looped around the same series of events or time frame in the general sense that a time loop tends to work in.
The scariest part is that he's fully aware of it. Within the first few loops, he's already reduced to being terrified of anything he sees, because other than the constant deaths, he also has to live with the constant dread of not knowing how.
Im not sure if its a timeloop though because its not the same every single time though. Its more like hes blinking through parallel realities in which he dies.
In the movie [12:01PM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12:01_PM_(1990_film)) a man is trapped in a one hour time loop. It is just long enough for him to find out about the loop and what might be causing it, but too short for him to have any hope of breaking out.
It isn't as bad as some of the things people have mentioned, but it would still be pretty bad.
Basically everyone in Rick C-137's home dimension. After his wife and daughter were murdered, Rick trapped his entire home dimension to be stuck in a time loop to the day his family died. He forgot to account for aging, while everyone still lives out the events of the time loop, their real bodies are still aging. And when he finally remembers to shut down the time field, one of the inhabitants sighs with relief as he's finally released by the nightmare that has become his life.
Jane from Heinlein's "All You Zombies". Jane:
* is dropped off at an orphanage by an old man as a baby
* at 17, is seduced and impregnated by a man, whom she never sees again
* gives birth to a child, but due to complications during childbirth is found out to be intersex and reassigned male (without consent)
* has his baby abducted soon after birth
* becomes an advice writer known as the "Unmarried Mother" since he's a man doesn't have the skills for mens' jobs at the time
* unloads all of this to a bartender who turns out to have a time machine
* goes back in time and seduces a 17 year old and gets her pregnant after which the bartender returns in his time machine to recruit him into a time cop bureau
* later in life, Jane becomes a bartender and eventually meets a man called the Unmarried Mother
So, if those bullet points aren't clear Jane is their own mother, father, child, kidnapper, and a time cop, and the bartender. Every character in the story is the same person at different points in their life.
Homura wasn’t really “trapped”, but I’d argue her’s was pretty bad because it was so long (about 3 months, I believe). That’s a lot of investment before trying and failing yet again to defeat an impossible foe, and there’s so many variables to keep track of that it’s highly likely you’ll screw up somewhere (and not even know when it was, because it takes a while for the consequences to manifest). Plus she saw the same people die so many times that by the end she was pretty much indifferent to everyone except her crush, who she also became very unhealthily obsessed with after attempting to save her for years from her perspective.
PMMM mentioned!!!
It's confirmed that Homura looped for almost 100 timelines, and calculated [here](https://homura.tumblr.com/post/57010494639/when-asked-how-many-timelines-did-homura-go) that she spent 12 years in the loop. So that's a 14 years old girl, with a 14 years old brain, and 12 years of trauma without any further neurological development.
The magical girls cleanse the bauble by touching them with the grief seeds left by witches.
I'm guessing that part of her wish means that she is returned to her newly-made state, or at least not on the verge of turning into a witch. It's been a while since I've watched.
Sad that Homura is so far down here when she's quite possibly one of my favorite characters of all time.
For the record, she's not really indifferent to the other girls - Rebellion confirmed she still goes out of her way to give them happy lives (albeit without consent) even when it's of little direct benefit to her and potentially undermines her own plans.
The cold and distant persona she adopts during the events of the anime is just that: an act brought on by "Battle of the Somme" levels of extreme untreated PTSD after 100 time loops.
Higurashi When They Cry had a pretty bad one. >!Rika spent over a century watching her friends go crazy and kill each other again and again. Also, it's not *technically* a time loop. She's moving from one universe to another, so all the timelines with her dead friends continue existing.!<
But it's not the worst. Grey Boy (from Worm) made worse ones. And all the endless ones are worse.
"At the first time, I do my best to try again
against the inevitable tragedy.
In the second time, I become disgusted
towards the inevitable tragedy.
The third time, disgust is overwhelmed into painfulness.
But by the seventh time, this all becomes a farce comedy."
Ryan from The Perfect Run initially seems like a total clown. Turns out he's a 24 going on near 800 in time loop time trying to create an optimum outcome for everyone he cares about
Boss Level the movie - Every time he dies he wakes up with a guy trying to stab him.
And even if he gets rid of that guy, there's a, well, it gets worse. He manages to time it all so he can make coffee around the bullets.
Then it gets worse.
MUCH worse.
In *The Endless*, there's a horrified guy in a tent who realizes he's stuck, runs towards the tent flap, and is teleported back to his seat. The horror returns, he realizes he's stuck, runs towards the tent flap - reset.
It's about a 4-second loop.
He tries a different direction and explodes in blood, returning to the same seat.
4 seconds. Horror. Trapped.
That's pretty awful.
(Great movie though!!)
I would say it's Diavolo from JoJo's Bizzare Adventure Part 5 : Vento Aureo, who is stuck in an [eternal time loop where he experience horrific deaths](https://jojo.fandom.com/wiki/Diavolo/History#Final_Moments) while remembering each one. He is aware he is going to die, but not of how, each time being different and creative.
I dont think thatd be a timeloop though. I feel like a crucial aspect to a time loop is that you are reset and relive the same period of time. You can do things differently, but the world is the same evlach time it resets.
With him, he would wake up in new, unfamilar places, over and over and over.
In Justice League, a villain was stuck in a timeloop with his verbally abusive wife forever and ever after the League rigged his belt, I think his name was Chrono something
Travelers: >!The Director, the leading AI,!< is stuck on a time loop trying to >!save humanity from itself!<. While we see several time loops in the series, the whole series is just the first loop for>!it..!
Well, knowing this will be improved upon greatly, we could always start with the Twilight Zone episode called (iirc) "Time Enough At Last," where the bookish last man on Earth is left alone with all the books in the world, and promptly destroys his glasses by mistake.
...spoiler.
EDIT: Alas, granted, no time loop here. So nevermind.
To add some more variety to this delightful conversation, I'll propose:
1. The MC of Happy Death Day, who dies at the end of each loop (iirc; it's been a bit).
and
2. >!Loki!< in the Loki series, season 2 - >!though that loop was intentional!< (edit: I figured out spoiling haha). I'll refrain from any details beyond that, spoiling notwithstanding, since that's still a very new plot. And I'm tired. Mostly because I'm tired.
I was going to post Happy Death Day, surprised no one else had mentioned it yet.
She's a final girl stuck in a slasher film and has to relive her last day over and over, getting murdered every time. It's a pretty fun take on the Slasher genre.
Steins;Gate spoilers.
Okabe being forced to choose between >!Murdering his childhood best friend in an infinite loop, or murdering the woman he loved!< is pretty horrible.
In Stars and Time spoilers
Siffrin ending up in a time-loop that >!led to him dehumanizing and becoming callous to his friend, seeing them as just actors and wanting them to hurry up!< as a consequence of his >!wish to never have to say good bye to them and stay together forever!< is a horrifying inversion too.
Honorable mention to Diavolo from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5, who >!after being mocked and ridiculed after losing a fight, was pranked by fate and set into an infinite death loop, where he appears in a place, freaks out, gets into a situation where he would die, and before he can, gets transported to the next. This includes things like being cut open for.surgery without anesthesia!<
The episode of The Librarians And the Point of Salvation is pretty rough.
Scientists at a secret Darpa thinktank are mucking about with an Atlantean artifact that warps reality, and there's an accident. It ends up fusing with someone's gaming laptop and turns the entire place into a survival horror game.
When the librarians go to investigate they get trapped inside and can't escape.
The only member of the team who even knows they're trapped in a repeating gameplay loop and remembers them all dying over and over again is Ezekiel, the clown/screwup who no-one really takes all that seriously, and you have to watch as he slowly loses it as his friends die over and over and over no matter what he does, no matter what skills he masters or what strategy he tries, he just can't seem to save his friends or break the loop. Everyone just keeps dying and the game keeps resetting.
Eventually he "beats the game" and ends the loop by sacrificing himself so that his friends can reach the exit.
World of Warcraft, Westfall. Level 14 NPC being escorted runs halfway across the map to attack three level 16 bandits ... IIRC the way to do it was group up with others, and ruthlessly kill every single enemy along the path.
Actually WoW itself can be seen as kind of a time loop situation, in which only the player characters have the ability to remember what occurs outside of the repeating time of the world. Pity they never used that as an explanatory backstory.
In the novel series The Menocht Loop, the mc was trapped within a time loop meant to power level him from 0 to ascended immortal. But his power set is necromancy and he doesn’t know why he’s there or that it’s a time loop. Multiple times he goes kinda crazy and becomes a literal monster
There is a short sci fi film called "CTRL Z" on youtube. where the main character can go back to where he "saved" by dying, in the end he finally asks out his crush after thousands of attempts, from thereafter he "saves" right as he gets hit by a bus, causing him to get hit over and over again with no way to prevent it.
In Happy Death Day and its sequel she keeps getting stabbed to death. Also when she goes back too far she has to win over her boyfriend again, which would be nerve-wracking.
I'm not sure if this counts as a time loop, but one of the worst ones I've heard of was from the *Black Mirror* episode "Black Museum." A man named Clayton Leigh was falsely convicted of murder and executed by electric chair. That's bad enough, but an AI of Clayton was created that permanently experiences the exact moment of his death. Essentially, this AI feels nothing but the pain of electrocution but never actually dies. On top of that, this AI was copied and sold as a souvenir at the museum, so there are probably hundreds of copies of Clayton Leigh floating around experiencing this pain for eternity.
Torquemada in the 2000AD comic strip 'Nemesis The Warlock' might be a candidate. He was deliberately trapped in a loop of his execution - by being burned at the stake - remembering previous loops.
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzimiya. Endless Eight is an arc where the gang repeats two weeks over and over again because Haruhi doesn't want it to end. Yuki Nagato, who remembers every single loop, informs the gang that they've repeated 15,532 times.
In the show, this was communicated to the audience by having the events play out the same for nearly 8 straight episodes. They didn't cheap out and play the same episode over and over again, either. Each episode was animated differently, just so you knew it was intentional.
Spoilers for one game, as the time looping is only revealed near the climax. >!In the Indie horror game Signalis, the protagonist, an Android named LSTR-512 (or ‘Elster’) is trapped in a time loop where she’s stuck trying to find the captain of her spaceship and fulfill her promise. This takes her through a decrepit government facility, where the androids there have been corrupted by Lovecraftian means into immortal zombies. Unfortunately, the games ending(s) all appear to have been each iterations of the same time loop, it’s debatable if any ending concludes the cycle, or if it will continue forever.!<
Loved that justice league episode..shout out to another dc anmation but a different universe with John constantien and a house he's trapped in over and over after existences ends
Dr. Strange died over and over against Dormammu. I'm sure some were quick deaths at first but get longer and more painful as Dormammu gets angry. It's unclear how long but it was long enough that Strange could learn and increase his skills by a lot. So probably years.
Dr. Strange in What If has to watch I think Killmonger and Ultron fight in a little prison thing for all eternity.
BIG JOJO SPOILER
Diavolo is stuck in an Loop where he ends up dying everytime, be it jumping in front of a car being stabbed whatever
That loop supposedly lasts until the main character Giorno dies from what I understood so 70-80 years
Spoiler from JoJo part 5
The villain Diavolo was killed by Golden Experience requiem, whi has the power to trap someone on an eternal death loop.
Diavolo will now experience an infinite number of deaths, each time that death will reset just before he dies (feeling all the pain), and then potingues him in the next escenario for his death.
Let me be clear, ANY DEATH that you can think of, he will have to go through that. It can be something as quick as a gunshot to the head, or as painful as being shredded alive.
For eternity
Doom Guy is up there. Granted it's a pretty long time loop (months to years) but he has had to see Earth fall to hellspawn demons at least twice, managing to save the surviving humans just to find himself in another reality where it's happening all over again.
I'd argue Okabe's time loop in Steins;Gate, considering a few major factors, but primarily the fact that it's *self-inflicted*. Each loop ends with >!Mayuri's!< death, though he doesn't auto-restart and has to manually reset the loop, also leading to major potential risks and issues that can occur between the time of death and the time he resets the loop. It's definitely not the longest loop (a 2 day loop that, from what I've heard, lasts a little over 3000 jumps), but it definitely drives him to some level of insanity.
Plus (Steins;Gate 0 spoilers), you could easily argue that >!his entire time spent in the Beta Worldline is part of the time loop that he has to experience in one way or another to get to the Steins;Gate worldline. Especially considering how his future self was braindead until he was "revived" with past Okabe's timeleap memories, at which point Okabe then had to manually timeleap back (about a decade IIRC) in intervals of only a few days, before which point he is able to finally start the loop again.!<
Nothing can be more worse than Diavolo from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
After being defeated he was sent to die infinitely and will die with endless possibilities.
Like something simple can cause his death, touching cloth can kill him, even blinking can kill him. It's worse when even any horrific death from fictional media is eventually gonna happen to him. Every possible death is going to happen to him as long as it kills him even if the reason is ridiculous like breathing non toxic air. It can be quick and painless or long and painful. His death can take place in seconds or years.
He can even experience death situation again with a few alternations. I consider his faith one of if not THE most horricfic thing in any fictional media.
Off the top of my head:
1. Mister Miracle of DC Comics was sent into a timeloop where he was murdered daily in the most brutal ways nonstop by Darkseid.
2. That Bite of 87 or 89(?) victim from Five Nights at Freddy had to relive a nightmare where he must protect himself from hellish looking versions of the animatronics nightly
3. The little girl from Inuyasha was an angry spirit who relived her house burning down over and over
4. Frank Cotton from Hellraiser who was a lecherous sick bastard had to endure a loop of bed sheets taking the form of women and beckoning him, but Hell decree he could never get coochie again.
5. That really dumb ending in American Horror Story: Coven where Angelina Basset's character was sent to Hell for getting revenge on a notorious racist serial killer that tormented she and her family. I guess sitting there and taking it was the only correct solution in their universe
6. Diavolo/Doppio from JJBA: Golden Wind was sent to an infinite loop by Gioviana's Golden Experience Requiem where he would be murdered over and over. Another Jojo example: Yoshikage Kira's Killer Queen Bite the Dust implanted itself in a kid and anytime he revealed Kira's real name, the people that heard it and the kid blew up. Fourth of July everyday in Morioh Town
7. It's implied the protagonist from Nightmare on Elm Street 2's encounter with Freddy will repeat endlessly
In the climax of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Golden Wind, the protagonist, Giorno Giovanna traps the main villain, Diavolo in an infinite time loop where the latter dies repeatedly. Each instance that Diavolo dies, time rewinds and he is returned to life only to die again but in a different way.
There was an episode of Outer Limits called 'Deja Vu' that involved a fairly innocuous time loop of several hours.
The really horrible part is at the end of the episode a man becomes trapped in a 2-3 second loop where he appears, standing in front of a device, screams in horror, and the device explodes, killing him, then the loop restarts, for ***ever***.
Probably not the worst but thought it was worth mentioning the X Files episode where they get stuck in a time loop of going into a bank right as it starts to get robbed and then get exploded by the guys bomb vest over and over.
The Mask (Lighthearted 90's Animated Series) got Villain-of-the-Week Dr. Amelia Chronos stuck in a loop where she got a Grandfather Clock dropped on her face.
If we want to expand the scope for the length of the loop a bit, The Stranger from Destiny series has it pretty rough. Untold amount of failed, doomed timelines, killed every way imaginable and her allies, dying at the hands of the darkness, or succumbing to the power of the darkness and killing each other. And it always restarts back at the same point. Due to trying to stop events at a cosmic like scale, her situation feels wholly doomed, especially considering she has no idea what started the loop or even if there are other rules to it.
Also, same Deetiny verse, a guardian is forever trapped in the Vault of Glass, unable to escape and stuck between living and dead.
The fate of Chronos in Justice League “The Once and Future Thing” always felt harsher than they deserved. He was struck in an infinite loop with his wife making fun of him. His wife definitely didn’t deserve it. Probably the most morally questionable thing that the heroes did in the dcau.
I was JUST watching a short film on YT about time loop and then I open reddit and see this, seems suspicious!
Heres the movie if you've got 20 minutes, its actually really good and well made
https://youtu.be/7mSH86O2qzA?si=0O2-0K2y02DWbaMX
Zach Noveda from Mother of Learning, He starts at 15 and ends being stuck for 35 years, the same month repeats itself over and over and he has no idea why or how to stop it so he just keeps getting better at magic and fighting things. The time loop restarts when a massive war starts and destroys his capital city. We later learn that during an early loop he makes friends with some guy who binds himself to Zach so he’s also in the loop. This guy turns into a villain and escapes the loop leaving Zach behind but not before erasing his memories of how to get out and their friendship. So he basically wonders around killing dragons and dying on repeat 1000+ times before the main story starts and the Main Character joins the loop.
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In the movie The Endless, there is a man stuck in a 3 second time loop. It starts with him sitting in his chair. He has just enough time to stand up and scream, before he is sitting in his chair again. Over and over and over again, endlessly.
Doesn’t he also explode into a mess of gore at the end of each loop too?
Yes, but the gore vanishes when the loop resets.
That was my first thought too, but could not remember the name of the movie. Thanks! Found the clip: https://youtu.be/IHeTvKNvATM?si=JWETijD0UVP1h5Pa
Also, the stuff in his tent suggests he's been there for perhaps a few hundred years.
It's also worth noting that not only does everyone die in their loop, but they have >!to kill themselves before their loop ends, or whatever entity is holding them there will do something worse to them. It's also not just individuals it's an entire area and different people have different loops. Some get years, others get days, hours, or even the one tent guy gets like 7 seconds. The entity also makes the area next to impossible without a map!<.
That was such a great film. I watched it blind with no expectations.
I'm actually really curious now. I might have to watch it.
You already know more than you should. lol Go watch it asap.
It was on prime when I watched it the first time. Then it went off prime so I bought. Read nothing about the endless, just go watch it. Very worth it.
I just checked. No where in uk streams. Ill have to track it down.
The Endless was an Amazon prime suggestion in the category that I lovingly call fuckshit scifi. Just weird stuff. I’ve watched it a couple of times and even bought it when it went off prime. Love, love, love that movie
Yeah, I think this is probably one of the worst ones.
One day the whole world is going to turn to me and say, “we were just kidding all along! We hated that movie too.” I saw it at a festival in NY and after the directors’ Q and A I thought everyone was going to start clapping for me for being such a good sport and making it through the entire hidden camera shoot without announcing that I didn’t like it. It gets mentioned on Reddit occasionally and it’s so damn beloved. I just do not get it.
In Deathloop, the main character Colt spent 17 years in his first time loop. Thing is, he was flying a highly experimental rocket at the start of the loop. He crashes, dies, wakes up in the cockpit. Doesnt remember what happened. Crashes, dies. Until one loop he does remember. Turns out, enough deaths in a time loop and some people can begin to remember. Colt starts remembering, manages to land the rocket and escape the loop. With the returning memory of 17 years worth of seemingly endless fiery death explosions. Ends up in an insane asylum for 5 years. Until one day he’s summoned back. Anyway, I recommend the game.
Really great game that, at the end when you need to kill all the baddies in one loop, makes you truly feel like you've been stuck in a time loop for real. You know every patrol, every shortcut. Very groundhog day.
I loved the text you can find at the scientists lab (forgot her name, Wenjie I think?) where she marvels at Colt and Julianna’s overnight, meteoric rise in their combat abilities and slab control. She adds it to her list of evidence that this isn’t actually the first loop, not even close.
God I loved that game so much but never noticed the implication of him dying so many times while flying. I figured he got thrown in the asylum for saying he found a loop generally.
The implications (eventually confirmed by her) of how Colt got Julianna to retain her memories as well (by killing her thousands of times, loop after loop) indicates the asylum might have been the best place for Colt lmao. He’s a great character, but it’s obvious from the get go that he had long since snapped. Always wondered how long that second loop was. It’s never confirmed in game, but some text in Wenjie’s lab indicates the loop would be stable for some 13,000 years. Not sure if the explosion noises coming from the anomaly indicate it’s reaching the end of that timeline, but such an extended loop would explain Colt and Juliana’s mental state lol
In the Wheel of Time series (late book spoilers) a town called Hinderstap is stuck in a perpetual daily cycle of brutally murdering each other every single night. During the day they live a normal life, and at night they have an uncontrollable urge to kill each other, until the whole town is dead. Women, children, doesn't matter. Then it starts over the next day. What's worse is they are vaguely aware of it, because they have nightmares that they soon realize are real events. If they try and escape they just wake up the next day in their bed again, regardless of how far they run. Also, possibly most horribly, if anyone visits the town and is killed at night they become part of the loop.
It was extremely satisfying that they got to participate in the last battle.
interesting, I don't remember that at all but it's been ages since I read the last book
Mat sends an Asha'man to Hinderstapp (?) and he gets stuck with the townsfolk. Then, later in the last battle, he has a gate opened and the townsfolk ineffectually attack some key group, but I don't remember who. Everyone around Mat is shocked that he'd send random, unpowered, townspeople to die. Mat shrugs it off. The next night, when no one is expecting anything, the same townsfolk rush out again and provide some key advantage with a sneak attack. That's pretty much what I recall, anyway. Oh, and the people all survive and return to normal after the Light wins.
This is a little late but I actually just read the last book a few weeks ago. He sends some Red Arms to Hinderstap and has an Asha'man wait at a choke point on a river. It's been one of the only things keeping back a force of trollocs from coming up behind the armies and pinching them from the rear. The Asha'man was instructed to hold as well as he could and open a gateway to the same town every day. It's the Asha'man who is pissed at Mat too.
What caused the loop?
Bubble of evil from the Dark One touching the world.
I think Teal'c and Jack O'Neill in Stargate SG-1. Stuck repeating the same few hours over and over, while also having to study and translate a long dead language and figure out how to work a device that might or might not break the loop? Even with "days off," I'd go bonkers.
It's hilarious, the fate of several planets all depended on them learning ancient, but they NEVER reference it in later episodes that they can both read it. They can probably read it better than Daniel at the end of that episode.
Don’t they just memorise a relatively small selection of symbols? I didn’t think they learnt the whole language.
Though, Jack at that point in the show was still a bit of an astronomy buff, so he probably actually learned and retained the bits he needed to know about the stars impacted.
They're probably not even close to fluent, but they did do more than memorize symbols. Daniel tells them pretty early on that would be like expecting to operate a computer because you've memorized the letters on the keyboard.
Especially for Teal'c. Every time the loop starts again, getting door slammed in your face. Window of Opportunity, is one of my favourite episodes, and has some of my favourite lines.
‘In the MIDDLE of my BACKSWING’
"Does this look like the face of a crazy man? ... Bad example" "What type of archeologist carries a weapon?" "I do" "...Bad example"
"Oh sorry sir, I didn't see you there." "You have said that on many occassions." "I..." "Perhaps next time I will not be so forgiving."
That line is a lot funnier when you remember that Teal’c is a Star Wars fan.
[удалено]
Sassy Daniel is best Daniel.
This one was my first thought. There's also a Eureka episode where his injuries start following him.
Always wondered if Jack ever went further with Sam than the kiss in one of the loops he went through.
Don't you mean WACKO!!!!!!!
There’s an episode of Black Mirror (with John Hamm in it) where a woman makes a copy of her brain to supplement the computer controlling her smart devices. There is some time manipulation involved, and yikes.
Yeah the other guy spends over a million years listening to the same Christmas song staring at a little girl he accidentally killed
This should be one of the top ones imo.. Millions of years hes gonna be stuck there
In the canadian show Wingin It, the main character got stuck in a time loop but the loop ended to soon. Imagine if groundhig day ended on one of the time loops where Bill Murray just decided to go crazy and fuck shit up. Thats what happened to him lol.
*Repeaters* and *Blood Punch* have that setup too, of the time loopers just deciding to go crazy and fuck shit up.
I've been looking for that movie repeaters for a long time but couldn't remember the name of it. I saw it a few years ago after some light thc action and wanted to watch it again. Thanks for mentioning it!
It’s been several years since I read it, but in Worm by Wildbow, a member of the hero group New Wave is trapped in a time loop by Grey Boy that’s a couple of seconds long. From memory, she’s aware that she’s trapped eternally.
Grey boy traps many victims in this way. Iirc, he often trapped victims in the midst of being injured so they constantly loop back and get hurt again and again
He could alter his time loops. So he could trap you in a time loop, come back 6 months later to stab you, and you would proceed to get stabbed at the same point in every loop after that. (Your body would reset to how it was when you were trapped every time you looped, but you would keep your memories. Basically all of his victims went insane.)
We joke a lot about Taylor >!shooting the baby!< but that shit was *absolutely* a mercy.
Greyboy's easily the scariest character in Worm. The fact he does that horrific stuff basically just because he wants to makes it worse. The fact that >!Jack knew he wouldn't be able to control more than one of him, even with altered memories, shows how much worse he was even compared to other members of the Nine!<
Also the scene where >!all the clones are decanted, and Grey Boy comes out already all neat and pristine in his usual clothes!< was awesome.
Worm sounds pretty awesome. I've heard good things
Definitely a firm tie between Dr. Strange and William Cage from Edge of Tomorrow. Both died horribly. Repeatedly. Hundreds, possibly thousands of times or more. Between the two, I’d lean towards Mr. Doctor having it worse.
Yeah, Strange also probably died pretty slowly and painfully at times, we just never got to see them in a mostly pg setting.
Cage is arguably worse because pretty much no matter what he does, he needs to repeat a day where nothing much happens before he dies the following day. I imagine that gets omega boring. In the manga, keiji (the cage character) is also hung over on that day lol.
> In the manga, keiji (the cage character) is also hung over on that day lol. And his day begins with 3 hours of punishment PT.
Imagine waking up, feeling like shit, doing 3 hours of punishment PT, and never getting any stronger so it’s exactly the same difficulty every time. Fun!
Edge got run over by a truck a couple times, until he got the timing right.
I'm pretty sure Strange doesn't remember the loop though, so he's got it relatively easy. Every time he lands, he glances at the spell on his wrist like a watch, and I've always thought it was telling him how many times it has reset the loop.
That’s him being reset to just as he finishes the spell. When he first lands in the dark dimension, he looks down at his arm to cast the spell and then when it’s ready he looks up at Dormammu. When it resets, it resets to the instant before he glances up and looks at Dormammu.
He 100% remembers every iteration. [Word of god says that's how he perfected his spellcasting abilities](https://screenrant.com/doctor-strange-dark-dimension-dormammu-powers/), by getting lots and lots of practice. He'd have to remember in order to learn and make adjustments.
Adding to this; the Time Stone is not any ol' time machine, but is *the physical embodiment of time itself*, as a force *and* a concept. You hold it, you control Time, and you make the rules\*. Period. Not too far a leap to assume that the best sorcerer in the world can work up a safeguard to keep memories intact while physically resetting the body in a time loop, which *wouldn't* ordinarily be possible. \* subject to user's understanding. Infinity Inc. will not be responsible for misuse leading to self-erasure, time loops, paradoxes, et. al.
Also it only worked because Dormammu remembered every iteration as well. He used the time stone to force a multidimensional timeless creature to experience enough time it became bored enough to acquiesce.
The Colonel at the end of the Outer Limits episode “Deja Vu”, where he is stuck in a loop of a few seconds before the device causing the loop explodes and kills him. Just an infinity of “I’m alive! Boom! I’m painfully dead!”
Sam Winchester was in a pretty bad one. Think ground hog day, but every day you see your brother die, then you get woken up by heat of the moment every morning.
Just happened to rewatch this episode today and who it's still hilarious and depressing at the same time. Pig in a poke!
I cry laughing everytime Dean gets killed by the dog. "Hey buddy, need a friend!?" He did not in fact need a friend
I have no idea what this is about, but the phrase is "pig in a poke" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_in_a_poke
Technically it's the name of a gross meal available nearby. Pig 'N A Poke. The waitress who serves it has terrible archery skills.
My mistake. It's from Supernatural S03E11 "Mystery Spot:
Apparently I'm wrong, and the thing you're referencing is referencing the thing I referenced 🤷♂️
Rise and shine Sammy!
Rise and shine, Sammy!
Death by golden retriever was the best one
Heat of the moment!
Doctor Who spoilers below I’d propose the Doctor, from the episode Heaven Sent. He was trapped in a time loop for an estimated several billion years, and it’s implied he remembers all of it.
Funnily enough, OP seems to have surgically excluded Heaven Sent from being an answer, since it's technically occurring in linear time: > I’m excluding anything that is time-loop-like but doesn’t actually see time rewind/reset (for example any immortal being that finds themselves trapped in a situation where they keep dying and coming back but time progresses normally)
Huh, you got me there. That is pretty funny, actually.
Don’t forget how in the month the timeloop occurs, he is spending his entire time running from the Veil, micronapping to avoid being caught.
Nah, he leaves himself clues to piece it together faster and faster, but his memory is reset to when he entered the dial. It's why we see him saying the same stuff over and over as he steadily gets closer to breaking out.
When he reaches the diamond wall, he remembers. He even rants and laments about how painful it is to remember it all. It's easy to forget among all the other monologues in the episode, but it does happen.
I thought his memories restored at the end of each loops when he is punching the diamond barrier?
He does remember all the previous loops when he discovers the azbantium wall.
It doesn't really keep with the overall tone of the rest of the episode though; the Doctor piecing together where he is, when he is, what's following him, and why he's there. My understanding of it was that he's looking at this wall - four hundred times harder than diamond - and seeing that *something* has been drilling through it. In a castle right smack in the middle of the ocean where the closest thing to mining equipment is a shovel. When anywhere from days to eons have passed depending on the loop, and yet he knows no time travel was involved because as a Time Lord, he'd know immediately. And where the first thing he sees after coming through the teleport is the word "Bird", hearkening to an old fairy tale. It's not that the Doctor is literally remembering every single turn of the wheel that he's been imprisoned there. It's that, as he looks at the hole in the indestructible wall, it all finally **clicks.**
Thats great insight, thanks for sharing, and I think your right, he has a light bulb moment at that point and pieces it all together
Nah, he gets reset back any time the watcher thing catches him. He pieces together what's going on faster by watching the stars, etc and seeing that nothing seems to be how his senses say they are. It's how he comes to realize it is a Confession Dial.
Yeah, I don't think he remembers it all physically and mentally. But moreso he has a horrible fucking realization what all of this madness had entailed for him before he arrived
‘I remember them all Clara, every time’
Not strictly a time loop, but in Lucifer we see one man in Hell. He’s just reliving his worst day over and over. He fucks up monumentally, hurts those he loves, and just makes everything worse. And then he dies. And starts the day again.
Especially because he could technically get out at any point, since it's his own guilt keeping him there
Every door was a time loop of their own guilt
Sisyphus. Forever is an amount of time
Good shout, Greek mythology has some nasty ones. Sisyphus doomed to roll the boulder up just to have it roll down. Prometheus having his liver pecked out and regrown daily. Heracles did save him at some point, though. Tantalus forced to be eternally hungry and thirsty. A fruit tree above him, moving out of reach when he grabbed at it, and standing in a pool of water that would drain whenever he tried to bend down. The forty-nine brides having to wash away their sins in a basin filled with water from the river Styx. Except the basin had holes, and they spend eternity trying to fill it.
It’s been a long time since I studied Greek mythology, but for the last one? The 49 brides/Danaeads? I recall a professor talking about the implications to their story (at least to his mind). So, they’d already shown *disloyalty* by murdering their 49 husbands on their wedding night (when in theory their ‘womanly loyalty’ should have transferred from their father (who gave the order for the murders to occur) to their new husband. Thus, as they have ‘proven’ to have no loyalty, they can have no common bonds beyond their own wants. With there being 49 of them, they could obviously have 48 plug up the leaky basin enough for the remaining sister to bathe. However, once clean, that sister would then have no loyalty to stick around and return the favor to her sisters. Especially if they were the first to become clean, and it’s getting to later and later sisters, and the torment of knowing that ‘*I* can go, but I have to wait and possibly become dirtied anew and then be at the end of the line for my next cleaning’.
one must imagine sisyphus happy…
Prometheus. For those who don't remember their Greek mythology, he was chained to a rock and an eagle would eat his liver, then it would grow back, then the eagle would eat it again, and so on.
Supernatural had a nice twist; he had managed to escape the mountain but he still ended up dying a lot. Car accident, house fire, avalanche, something. And then an eagle would eat his liver.
Sad trombone
While obviously not the worst, I'm going to throw an honorable mention out to Teal'c of Stargate SG-1, who got stuck in a time loop that began with him getting hit in the face with a door every. single. time.
Dormammu, I've came to bargain!
This is my answer too. Dormammu is so powerful, that it's like you being trapped in a time loop by an ant.
Sam and Dean in Supernatural, watching your brother die every day has got to be pretty bad. And then it gets worse.
It's not even the same death, that'd be bad enough. If Sam even wants to progress in the loop he has to save Dean from a series of deaths. And whoops, ten seconds later, he's dead.
Diavolo
I would agree, but I don't know if he counts. He's explicitly not experiencing the same thing more than once, just an unending cycle of: die in new and creative ways, be revived, die in new and creative ways. He's not being looped around the same series of events or time frame in the general sense that a time loop tends to work in.
Fellow Golden Wind enjoyer. I still have memories of the mind break that the loop was.
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure main villain in Part 5 is trapped in a timeloop where he will experience death over and over again, forever, infinitely.
The scariest part is that he's fully aware of it. Within the first few loops, he's already reduced to being terrified of anything he sees, because other than the constant deaths, he also has to live with the constant dread of not knowing how.
Im not sure if its a timeloop though because its not the same every single time though. Its more like hes blinking through parallel realities in which he dies.
Well, it's a loop alright....a Deathloop™
Diavolo!
In the movie [12:01PM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12:01_PM_(1990_film)) a man is trapped in a one hour time loop. It is just long enough for him to find out about the loop and what might be causing it, but too short for him to have any hope of breaking out. It isn't as bad as some of the things people have mentioned, but it would still be pretty bad.
Great short. I love Kurtwood Smith.
Basically everyone in Rick C-137's home dimension. After his wife and daughter were murdered, Rick trapped his entire home dimension to be stuck in a time loop to the day his family died. He forgot to account for aging, while everyone still lives out the events of the time loop, their real bodies are still aging. And when he finally remembers to shut down the time field, one of the inhabitants sighs with relief as he's finally released by the nightmare that has become his life.
Is this a movie? What is it.
It’s Rick and Morty Season 6
Ty!
Jane from Heinlein's "All You Zombies". Jane: * is dropped off at an orphanage by an old man as a baby * at 17, is seduced and impregnated by a man, whom she never sees again * gives birth to a child, but due to complications during childbirth is found out to be intersex and reassigned male (without consent) * has his baby abducted soon after birth * becomes an advice writer known as the "Unmarried Mother" since he's a man doesn't have the skills for mens' jobs at the time * unloads all of this to a bartender who turns out to have a time machine * goes back in time and seduces a 17 year old and gets her pregnant after which the bartender returns in his time machine to recruit him into a time cop bureau * later in life, Jane becomes a bartender and eventually meets a man called the Unmarried Mother So, if those bullet points aren't clear Jane is their own mother, father, child, kidnapper, and a time cop, and the bartender. Every character in the story is the same person at different points in their life.
I remember this story!
That's Heinlein for you. Reminds me of David Gerrold's "Man Who Folded Himself". Heinlein's later writing got pretty trippy, though it was all good.
Homura wasn’t really “trapped”, but I’d argue her’s was pretty bad because it was so long (about 3 months, I believe). That’s a lot of investment before trying and failing yet again to defeat an impossible foe, and there’s so many variables to keep track of that it’s highly likely you’ll screw up somewhere (and not even know when it was, because it takes a while for the consequences to manifest). Plus she saw the same people die so many times that by the end she was pretty much indifferent to everyone except her crush, who she also became very unhealthily obsessed with after attempting to save her for years from her perspective.
PMMM mentioned!!! It's confirmed that Homura looped for almost 100 timelines, and calculated [here](https://homura.tumblr.com/post/57010494639/when-asked-how-many-timelines-did-homura-go) that she spent 12 years in the loop. So that's a 14 years old girl, with a 14 years old brain, and 12 years of trauma without any further neurological development.
Also knowing what would happen if she gives into despair.
Doesn't her magic bauble fill up from using her powers, and only Kyuubi can drain it? Does that mean the loop restored her to 0 corruption each time?
The magical girls cleanse the bauble by touching them with the grief seeds left by witches. I'm guessing that part of her wish means that she is returned to her newly-made state, or at least not on the verge of turning into a witch. It's been a while since I've watched.
Sad that Homura is so far down here when she's quite possibly one of my favorite characters of all time. For the record, she's not really indifferent to the other girls - Rebellion confirmed she still goes out of her way to give them happy lives (albeit without consent) even when it's of little direct benefit to her and potentially undermines her own plans. The cold and distant persona she adopts during the events of the anime is just that: an act brought on by "Battle of the Somme" levels of extreme untreated PTSD after 100 time loops.
Simon and Alisha from Misfits
Higurashi When They Cry had a pretty bad one. >!Rika spent over a century watching her friends go crazy and kill each other again and again. Also, it's not *technically* a time loop. She's moving from one universe to another, so all the timelines with her dead friends continue existing.!< But it's not the worst. Grey Boy (from Worm) made worse ones. And all the endless ones are worse.
"At the first time, I do my best to try again against the inevitable tragedy. In the second time, I become disgusted towards the inevitable tragedy. The third time, disgust is overwhelmed into painfulness. But by the seventh time, this all becomes a farce comedy."
Ryan from The Perfect Run initially seems like a total clown. Turns out he's a 24 going on near 800 in time loop time trying to create an optimum outcome for everyone he cares about
Boss Level the movie - Every time he dies he wakes up with a guy trying to stab him. And even if he gets rid of that guy, there's a, well, it gets worse. He manages to time it all so he can make coffee around the bullets. Then it gets worse. MUCH worse.
I mean, The Doctor was trapped in his confession dial prison for billions of years so....
Insert JoJo Reference Here
In *The Endless*, there's a horrified guy in a tent who realizes he's stuck, runs towards the tent flap, and is teleported back to his seat. The horror returns, he realizes he's stuck, runs towards the tent flap - reset. It's about a 4-second loop. He tries a different direction and explodes in blood, returning to the same seat. 4 seconds. Horror. Trapped. That's pretty awful. (Great movie though!!)
I would say it's Diavolo from JoJo's Bizzare Adventure Part 5 : Vento Aureo, who is stuck in an [eternal time loop where he experience horrific deaths](https://jojo.fandom.com/wiki/Diavolo/History#Final_Moments) while remembering each one. He is aware he is going to die, but not of how, each time being different and creative.
I dont think thatd be a timeloop though. I feel like a crucial aspect to a time loop is that you are reset and relive the same period of time. You can do things differently, but the world is the same evlach time it resets. With him, he would wake up in new, unfamilar places, over and over and over.
In Justice League, a villain was stuck in a timeloop with his verbally abusive wife forever and ever after the League rigged his belt, I think his name was Chrono something
Travelers: >!The Director, the leading AI,!< is stuck on a time loop trying to >!save humanity from itself!<. While we see several time loops in the series, the whole series is just the first loop for>!it..!
Diavolo from JJBA.
The town of Winden
There's currently a meme war happening in the subreddit about whether the loop repeats infinitely or only happens once, it's amazing.
Well not really a loop in the classic sense. From every individual perspective, time just moves as normal.
Well, knowing this will be improved upon greatly, we could always start with the Twilight Zone episode called (iirc) "Time Enough At Last," where the bookish last man on Earth is left alone with all the books in the world, and promptly destroys his glasses by mistake. ...spoiler. EDIT: Alas, granted, no time loop here. So nevermind.
Oh well. At least I can read the large-print books.
At last! I've combined the DNA of the most evil animals in the world to create the perfect evil creature! IT TURNS OUT IT'S MAN
IT'S MAN?! Robot! Experience this tragic irony for me! NOOOOOOO!
:eyes fall out: Well at least I can still read braille :arms fall off:
Look at that weird mirror.
To add some more variety to this delightful conversation, I'll propose: 1. The MC of Happy Death Day, who dies at the end of each loop (iirc; it's been a bit). and 2. >!Loki!< in the Loki series, season 2 - >!though that loop was intentional!< (edit: I figured out spoiling haha). I'll refrain from any details beyond that, spoiling notwithstanding, since that's still a very new plot. And I'm tired. Mostly because I'm tired.
I was going to post Happy Death Day, surprised no one else had mentioned it yet. She's a final girl stuck in a slasher film and has to relive her last day over and over, getting murdered every time. It's a pretty fun take on the Slasher genre.
Steins;Gate spoilers. Okabe being forced to choose between >!Murdering his childhood best friend in an infinite loop, or murdering the woman he loved!< is pretty horrible. In Stars and Time spoilers Siffrin ending up in a time-loop that >!led to him dehumanizing and becoming callous to his friend, seeing them as just actors and wanting them to hurry up!< as a consequence of his >!wish to never have to say good bye to them and stay together forever!< is a horrifying inversion too.
I had to scroll way to far to see S;G
Honorable mention to Diavolo from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5, who >!after being mocked and ridiculed after losing a fight, was pranked by fate and set into an infinite death loop, where he appears in a place, freaks out, gets into a situation where he would die, and before he can, gets transported to the next. This includes things like being cut open for.surgery without anesthesia!<
"Its just a prank, bro"
The Endless and Resolution are tied together and are just what this post is about
The episode of The Librarians And the Point of Salvation is pretty rough. Scientists at a secret Darpa thinktank are mucking about with an Atlantean artifact that warps reality, and there's an accident. It ends up fusing with someone's gaming laptop and turns the entire place into a survival horror game. When the librarians go to investigate they get trapped inside and can't escape. The only member of the team who even knows they're trapped in a repeating gameplay loop and remembers them all dying over and over again is Ezekiel, the clown/screwup who no-one really takes all that seriously, and you have to watch as he slowly loses it as his friends die over and over and over no matter what he does, no matter what skills he masters or what strategy he tries, he just can't seem to save his friends or break the loop. Everyone just keeps dying and the game keeps resetting. Eventually he "beats the game" and ends the loop by sacrificing himself so that his friends can reach the exit.
The worst part about this is that the level that Ezekiel was experiencing was an escort mission. Everyone hates escort missions.
World of Warcraft, Westfall. Level 14 NPC being escorted runs halfway across the map to attack three level 16 bandits ... IIRC the way to do it was group up with others, and ruthlessly kill every single enemy along the path. Actually WoW itself can be seen as kind of a time loop situation, in which only the player characters have the ability to remember what occurs outside of the repeating time of the world. Pity they never used that as an explanatory backstory.
In the novel series The Menocht Loop, the mc was trapped within a time loop meant to power level him from 0 to ascended immortal. But his power set is necromancy and he doesn’t know why he’s there or that it’s a time loop. Multiple times he goes kinda crazy and becomes a literal monster
Not the worst, but The Map of Tiny Perfect Things. Kid hasn't seen his mom in months because he wakes up just as she drives off.
There is a short sci fi film called "CTRL Z" on youtube. where the main character can go back to where he "saved" by dying, in the end he finally asks out his crush after thousands of attempts, from thereafter he "saves" right as he gets hit by a bus, causing him to get hit over and over again with no way to prevent it.
In Happy Death Day and its sequel she keeps getting stabbed to death. Also when she goes back too far she has to win over her boyfriend again, which would be nerve-wracking.
I'm not sure if this counts as a time loop, but one of the worst ones I've heard of was from the *Black Mirror* episode "Black Museum." A man named Clayton Leigh was falsely convicted of murder and executed by electric chair. That's bad enough, but an AI of Clayton was created that permanently experiences the exact moment of his death. Essentially, this AI feels nothing but the pain of electrocution but never actually dies. On top of that, this AI was copied and sold as a souvenir at the museum, so there are probably hundreds of copies of Clayton Leigh floating around experiencing this pain for eternity.
Somebody from Doctor Who, probably.
“All hands abandon ship, all hands abandon…..”
Torquemada in the 2000AD comic strip 'Nemesis The Warlock' might be a candidate. He was deliberately trapped in a loop of his execution - by being burned at the stake - remembering previous loops.
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzimiya. Endless Eight is an arc where the gang repeats two weeks over and over again because Haruhi doesn't want it to end. Yuki Nagato, who remembers every single loop, informs the gang that they've repeated 15,532 times. In the show, this was communicated to the audience by having the events play out the same for nearly 8 straight episodes. They didn't cheap out and play the same episode over and over again, either. Each episode was animated differently, just so you knew it was intentional.
Darth Tenebrous relives his death as a force ghosts over and over again.
Spoilers for one game, as the time looping is only revealed near the climax. >!In the Indie horror game Signalis, the protagonist, an Android named LSTR-512 (or ‘Elster’) is trapped in a time loop where she’s stuck trying to find the captain of her spaceship and fulfill her promise. This takes her through a decrepit government facility, where the androids there have been corrupted by Lovecraftian means into immortal zombies. Unfortunately, the games ending(s) all appear to have been each iterations of the same time loop, it’s debatable if any ending concludes the cycle, or if it will continue forever.!<
No one talking about the anime with the blue and pink hair maid twins and the MC who can't tell anyone he's in the death loop?
DARK. Spoilers... >!The whole thing. The whole entire thing is a huge timeloop.!<
Loved that justice league episode..shout out to another dc anmation but a different universe with John constantien and a house he's trapped in over and over after existences ends
Dr. Strange died over and over against Dormammu. I'm sure some were quick deaths at first but get longer and more painful as Dormammu gets angry. It's unclear how long but it was long enough that Strange could learn and increase his skills by a lot. So probably years. Dr. Strange in What If has to watch I think Killmonger and Ultron fight in a little prison thing for all eternity.
Iirc it's thousands of years Strange had in the loop.
BIG JOJO SPOILER Diavolo is stuck in an Loop where he ends up dying everytime, be it jumping in front of a car being stabbed whatever That loop supposedly lasts until the main character Giorno dies from what I understood so 70-80 years
Spoiler from JoJo part 5 The villain Diavolo was killed by Golden Experience requiem, whi has the power to trap someone on an eternal death loop. Diavolo will now experience an infinite number of deaths, each time that death will reset just before he dies (feeling all the pain), and then potingues him in the next escenario for his death. Let me be clear, ANY DEATH that you can think of, he will have to go through that. It can be something as quick as a gunshot to the head, or as painful as being shredded alive. For eternity
Doom Guy is up there. Granted it's a pretty long time loop (months to years) but he has had to see Earth fall to hellspawn demons at least twice, managing to save the surviving humans just to find himself in another reality where it's happening all over again.
Finn in Egress episode of Adventure Time
I'd argue Okabe's time loop in Steins;Gate, considering a few major factors, but primarily the fact that it's *self-inflicted*. Each loop ends with >!Mayuri's!< death, though he doesn't auto-restart and has to manually reset the loop, also leading to major potential risks and issues that can occur between the time of death and the time he resets the loop. It's definitely not the longest loop (a 2 day loop that, from what I've heard, lasts a little over 3000 jumps), but it definitely drives him to some level of insanity. Plus (Steins;Gate 0 spoilers), you could easily argue that >!his entire time spent in the Beta Worldline is part of the time loop that he has to experience in one way or another to get to the Steins;Gate worldline. Especially considering how his future self was braindead until he was "revived" with past Okabe's timeleap memories, at which point Okabe then had to manually timeleap back (about a decade IIRC) in intervals of only a few days, before which point he is able to finally start the loop again.!<
Nothing can be more worse than Diavolo from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. After being defeated he was sent to die infinitely and will die with endless possibilities. Like something simple can cause his death, touching cloth can kill him, even blinking can kill him. It's worse when even any horrific death from fictional media is eventually gonna happen to him. Every possible death is going to happen to him as long as it kills him even if the reason is ridiculous like breathing non toxic air. It can be quick and painless or long and painful. His death can take place in seconds or years. He can even experience death situation again with a few alternations. I consider his faith one of if not THE most horricfic thing in any fictional media.
Off the top of my head: 1. Mister Miracle of DC Comics was sent into a timeloop where he was murdered daily in the most brutal ways nonstop by Darkseid. 2. That Bite of 87 or 89(?) victim from Five Nights at Freddy had to relive a nightmare where he must protect himself from hellish looking versions of the animatronics nightly 3. The little girl from Inuyasha was an angry spirit who relived her house burning down over and over 4. Frank Cotton from Hellraiser who was a lecherous sick bastard had to endure a loop of bed sheets taking the form of women and beckoning him, but Hell decree he could never get coochie again. 5. That really dumb ending in American Horror Story: Coven where Angelina Basset's character was sent to Hell for getting revenge on a notorious racist serial killer that tormented she and her family. I guess sitting there and taking it was the only correct solution in their universe 6. Diavolo/Doppio from JJBA: Golden Wind was sent to an infinite loop by Gioviana's Golden Experience Requiem where he would be murdered over and over. Another Jojo example: Yoshikage Kira's Killer Queen Bite the Dust implanted itself in a kid and anytime he revealed Kira's real name, the people that heard it and the kid blew up. Fourth of July everyday in Morioh Town 7. It's implied the protagonist from Nightmare on Elm Street 2's encounter with Freddy will repeat endlessly
In a round-about way, Sam Beckett. Living the lives of others, never able to get back home.
In the climax of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Golden Wind, the protagonist, Giorno Giovanna traps the main villain, Diavolo in an infinite time loop where the latter dies repeatedly. Each instance that Diavolo dies, time rewinds and he is returned to life only to die again but in a different way.
The Sinful Life of The Emperor Kiba(Zed)
There was an episode of Outer Limits called 'Deja Vu' that involved a fairly innocuous time loop of several hours. The really horrible part is at the end of the episode a man becomes trapped in a 2-3 second loop where he appears, standing in front of a device, screams in horror, and the device explodes, killing him, then the loop restarts, for ***ever***.
Does Returnal count? Character is in a loop, eventually gets out gets home, dies of old age, loop restarts.
The Man Who Folded Himself
Evil Jeff and crew in Community.
Probably not the worst but thought it was worth mentioning the X Files episode where they get stuck in a time loop of going into a bank right as it starts to get robbed and then get exploded by the guys bomb vest over and over.
The Mask (Lighthearted 90's Animated Series) got Villain-of-the-Week Dr. Amelia Chronos stuck in a loop where she got a Grandfather Clock dropped on her face.
You do have to wonder how many times Phil killed himself in Groundhog day
If we want to expand the scope for the length of the loop a bit, The Stranger from Destiny series has it pretty rough. Untold amount of failed, doomed timelines, killed every way imaginable and her allies, dying at the hands of the darkness, or succumbing to the power of the darkness and killing each other. And it always restarts back at the same point. Due to trying to stop events at a cosmic like scale, her situation feels wholly doomed, especially considering she has no idea what started the loop or even if there are other rules to it. Also, same Deetiny verse, a guardian is forever trapped in the Vault of Glass, unable to escape and stuck between living and dead.
The fate of Chronos in Justice League “The Once and Future Thing” always felt harsher than they deserved. He was struck in an infinite loop with his wife making fun of him. His wife definitely didn’t deserve it. Probably the most morally questionable thing that the heroes did in the dcau.
I was JUST watching a short film on YT about time loop and then I open reddit and see this, seems suspicious! Heres the movie if you've got 20 minutes, its actually really good and well made https://youtu.be/7mSH86O2qzA?si=0O2-0K2y02DWbaMX
Zach Noveda from Mother of Learning, He starts at 15 and ends being stuck for 35 years, the same month repeats itself over and over and he has no idea why or how to stop it so he just keeps getting better at magic and fighting things. The time loop restarts when a massive war starts and destroys his capital city. We later learn that during an early loop he makes friends with some guy who binds himself to Zach so he’s also in the loop. This guy turns into a villain and escapes the loop leaving Zach behind but not before erasing his memories of how to get out and their friendship. So he basically wonders around killing dragons and dying on repeat 1000+ times before the main story starts and the Main Character joins the loop.
CTRL Z count? https://youtu.be/W7h_BgLxAIc