Bender's Big Score Time Para-fauxes (spoilers)

[on:]

Hey,

Just reserving a thread regarding all the time travel messes created in BBS.  In the DVD commentary DXC and gang freely admit they started writing the script with the time travel components mostly done for gags, but soon realized that they were going to have to start keeping track of all the time loops and character duplicates.  It got to the point where they had to sketch out a chart to keep track of what's going on (it appears as an Easter Egg in the DVD).

Overall I had a lot of fun with the time travel plot, but as my mind wanders over it I pick out quite a few logical errors.  Understandable, but one in particular stands out as problematic, which I call the "missing Fry" problem:

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At one point in the movie, three Frys exist at the same time.  One is frozen in the cyrogenic chamber, and two are talking to each other.  According to the rules, all copies must eventually die.  But only one Fry dies in th movie.  Why didn't the third Fry (i.e. the original Fry in the cyrogenic chamber) die?  Since the rules seems to be (a) the character that actually travels in the past is the "original" and (b) the "copy" dies after the time that the "original" goes into the past.

I'll outline my logic in more detail later, if you have trouble seeing what I mean.

Otherwise, feel free to comment on other time paradox problems here!

[Reply #1 on:]

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There aren't any "missing Frys". The one in the cryogenic tube becomes the original that travels to the past and freezes himself.

[Reply #2 on:]

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Strictly speaking he'd become both. The time loop created a divergent timeline that contained both Frys who I shall name FryT1 and FryT2 where T = timeline.

It works like this. FryT1 freezes himself and travels into the future. This is Timeline 1. Timeline 1 ends when FryT1 transports himself back in time and gives his advice to Nibbler, creating Timeline 2 containing FryT2 and now FryT1, trapped back in the past again. FryT2 in the tube carries on into the future, battles the brains and, with the information given to Nibbler by FryT1, is able to escape and perpetuate timeline 2. FryT1 lives out his life in the past, forever missing Leela and so on until FryT2 from timeline 2 comes back to speak to him. Then, presumably (since I haven't seen this bit) FryT2 dies and FryT1 returns to the future to carry on living there.

Which is depressing. I liked Devil's Hands...

Anyway, no missing Fry, no problem, since the Fry in the tube predates the creation of both Frys and so isn't a copy, but might be better considered as a foundation for them both.

[Reply #3 on:]

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There might be a simpler explantion that what Archonix put forward.  I think the rules that govern the deaths of copies only apply to copies that have actually travelled through time.  Fry could go back in time to the time right after he got frozen and he and his original self that is frozen in the tube will both be ok.  It's only when he goes back in time again and meets the first copy of himself that went back in time that there is a problem, and the first copy that went back in time has to die.  So the original copy and the latest copy can survive, just none of the others.

Here's a question though.  We know from The Why of Fry that Nibbler is in the room when fry gets frozen.  He therefore should have been present when Bender tried to kill Fry in Applied Cryogenics.  Why didn't he intervene?

[Reply #4 on:]

Another question that just occoured to me:

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We have two Frys frozen in one cryo-tube.  One of those Frys defroze on Dec. 31st, 2999, and in the film we see the second Fry step into that same cryo-tube and set it for 7.95 years.  BUT, in Space Pilot 3000, Leela accidently leaps into that same cryo-tube (which Fry left open) and the dial sets itself to 1000 years, which Fry changes to 5 minutes.  How could Leela fall into the open, unset cryo-tube when Fry2 has already set it?

Man, that question was hard to word so it'd make sense.

[Reply #5 on:]

 

Originally posted by boingo2000:
Another question that just occoured to me:

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We have two Frys frozen in one cryo-tube.  One of those Frys defroze on Dec. 31st, 2999, and in the film we see the second

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Fry step into that same cryo-tube and set it for 7.95 years.  BUT, in Space Pilot 3000, Leela accidently leaps into that same cryo-tube (which Fry left open) and the dial sets itself to 1000 years, which Fry changes to 5 minutes.  How could Leela fall into the open, unset cryo-tube when Fry2 has already set it?

Man, that question was hard to word so it'd make sense.

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Actually, I thought of the same question. If it's not paradox'd, i suppose it reset itself when Leela entered, it opened up again and he had to change the time again. If it made sence please tell me.

[Reply #6 on:]

The whole thing confuse me.

[Reply #7 on:]

I think I found a  big paradox

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In 'The Cryonic Woman', Michelle says something like "I didn't know what happened to you.  No one did.  The police were going to organize a search, but your parents thought it was a waste of taxpayer money."  But now we know that a copy of Fry returned to the past on January 1st of 2000.  We know the copy-Fry stayed in touch with his parents because we see him eating with them. He even lived above the place where he worked (until he took a job at the aquarium).  The only time that copy-Fry leaves New York for a long time is when he goes on that whaling trip, but Mr. Panucci is the one who tells him to do it, so again, it's not like no one knows where he is.  So, when did Fry dissapear long enough to warrant a police search?

[Reply #8 on:]

The big paradox, soylentOrange. That's the big paradox.

Unlike this, which is the pair-a-Docs!

[Reply #9 on:]

Uh, Xanfor, may I remind you this thread is about Futurama? xD

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Something I think was good was when Bender was in that UFO battle, and we see Fry in the cryogenic tube, and the city being destroyed in the background. But, in SP3K, we see a medieval period. In Bender's Big Score, this wasn't seen or talked about or come to think of it, it's never ever been talked about.

[Reply #10 on:]

 

Originally posted by FuturamaPac:
Uh, Xanfor, may I remind you this thread is about Futurama? xD

No. No you may not. 

[Reply #11 on:]

 

Originally posted by soylentOrange:
I think I found a  big paradox

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In 'The Cryonic Woman', Michelle says something like "I didn't know what happened to you.  No one did.  The police were going to organize a search, but your parents thought it was a waste of taxpayer money."  But now we know that a copy of Fry returned to the past on January 1st of 2000.  We know the copy-Fry stayed in touch with his parents because we see him eating with them. He even lived above the place where he worked (until he took a job at the aquarium).  The only time that copy-Fry leaves New York for a long time is when he goes on that whaling trip, but Mr. Panucci is the one who tells him to do it, so again, it's not like no one knows where he is.  So, when did Fry dissapear long enough to warrant a police search?

I knew something was bothering me about that whole part. 
So does/did he actually change the past or what?

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(But the alien scammers said that the time sphere created no paradoxical consequences?)

[Reply #12 on:]

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When one enters the time sphere, history changes when they pop out of that time. However, the whole thing about Fry's paradox being Lars was where I got confused. I was also confused with "The Bender from way at the end". How could you go back in time, put the code on Fry's ass would mean that all of this wouldn't happen whilst changing all of the history.
Yeah, I couldn't make it sound easy either.

[Reply #13 on:]

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OK, so the "rules" for having a copy die are
(1) Original character travels to past, where he meets his past self, who is now the doomed "copy".  For example, when Bender goes back 17 seconds, the Bender he talks to is now the "doomed one".
(2) Both characters live up to the point where the original character time-traveled.
(3) If, in the new timeline, neither character travels back into the past at that point, we have a paradox, so only one character should exist, so then the doom clock begins.

Thus even though three Frys exist at once, since one Fry eventually does travel back into the past, there is only one extra copy that must die.  OK.  So at the end of the movie there are hundreds of copies of Bender that did not travel back in time when they were supposed to, creating a rift in the universe and presumably creating an opening for the Beast with a Billion Backs.

And yeah, they actually changed Fry's past permanently (i.e. retconned) so Luck of the Fryish and Cyrogenic Woman no longer technically exist.  Jurassic Bark as well, since the ending of that episode shows Seymour waiting fruitlessly for Fry.

 I wonder, why did Yancy name his son after Phillip in the new timeline then?

Either way, I think retconning some of the best episodes was pretty dumb.  As well as ignoring "Devil's Hands" completely--but that is a shipper topic.

[Reply #14 on:]

@justNibblin':

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But they can't have changed Fry's past permanently.  To do so would be paradoxical, since it would change the circumstances that would eventually lead to someone going back in time and altering his past.  It would be the grandfather paradox and the butterfly effect combined!  The time sphere is supposed to correct for time paradoxes, so history can't have been changed.  Somehow the events of the Cryonic Woman have to have remained intact.  Maybe the next movie will explain how that is possible?  ... Or perhaps the writers screwed up.

 

[Reply #15 on:]

I think I understand some of this now:

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All of the film was seen as a paradox as to the moment Bender put the code on Fry's ass and what happened since, but didn't actually take place, in a sense. I think.
All you gotta do if you get confused, we usually follow the original Fry or Bender.

[Reply #16 on:]

all of this is the problem with time travel in the movie because no matter what it will conflict with the series in some way.

[Reply #17 on:]

another paradox along the same lines as the one I found in The Cryonic Woman:

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Seymour came looking for Fry in Jurrasic Bark, and eventually found him frozen in the cryonic tube at Applied Cryogenics.  Now that we know that a time-duplicate Fry stayed back in the past, this no longer makes sense.  Why would Seymour go searching for Fry if, as far as Seymour knew, he never dissapeared in the first place?  The only thing I can think of to get around this problem is if time-duplicate Fry for some reason didn't immediately return to his house once he got back to the past.  In "Bender's Big Score" Bender does say that Fry must have left the city, but I cant think of a reason why he'd do that.  Maybe this will be addressed in one of the other movies?

[Reply #18 on:]

 

Originally posted by soylentOrange:

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Seymour came looking for Fry in Jurrasic Bark, and eventually found him frozen in the cryonic tube at Applied Cryogenics.  Now that we know that a time-duplicate Fry stayed back in the past, this no longer makes sense.  Why would Seymour go searching for Fry if, as far as Seymour knew, he never dissapeared in the first place?  The only thing I can think of to get around this problem is if time-duplicate Fry for some reason didn't immediately return to his house once he got back to the past.  In "Bender's Big Score" Bender does say that Fry must have left the city, but I cant think of a reason why he'd do that.  Maybe this will be addressed in one of the other movies?

Most of the problems with these is that you didn't listen to the Prof. or Nibbler.

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It's a paradox creating time traveling bubble thing. The moment you leave the present, and the exact moment you arrive in the past, all of history between changes.
Per example, if you use the time code and kill, lets say Fry, in the past, he would seize to exist in future events. Duh!

[Reply #19 on:]

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You forget that the movie ended on a bit of a cliff hanger in which the whole universe had a tear in it. Something not to be overlooked. Im sure all the problems you're discussing will be tied up by the end of the saga.

In fact Im certain DXC, Matt Groening and and an army of writters are scouering these forum looking for suggested plotholes and solution to tie the saga up neatly. I want crediting as 'Sal', cheers. x

[Reply #20 on:]

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@Sal: I don't think that Matt Groening even reads what we're saying, he has ideas i'm sure, and probably doesn't get his ideas from a bunch of Futurama nerds xD. You could be right, I just wanted to say that because it made sense.

[Reply #21 on:]

 

Originally posted by FuturamaPac:

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Something I think was good was when Bender was in that UFO battle, and we see Fry in the cryogenic tube, and the city being destroyed in the background. But, in SP3K, we see a medieval period. In Bender's Big Score, this wasn't seen or talked about or come to think of it, it's never ever been talked about.

I just realized that probably has something to do with the medieval thing in the third movie.

As far as the time paradoxes go I saw something that I think is called the "Theory of Complementary Outcomes", or something to that affect. It says that time can only be altered if the outcomes are complementary. For example if Fry had killed his grandfather in Roswell and left he would never exist and never go back to kill his grandfather creating a paradoxical endless loop. However since he slep with his grandmother which ended up leading to a very similar result. The point is that according to the theory details don't matter as long as the end results are the same or similar to the original. This means that any changes have to be minor and relatively insignifigant because everything has such a far ranging affect on everything else. Bear in mind this is just a theory I heard.

Well, that is without a doubt the longest post I've made in a long time. I wonder where all this energy and exitement came from.   

[Reply #22 on:]

 

Originally posted by Frisco17:
As far as the time paradoxes go I saw something that I think is called the "Theory of Complementary Outcomes", or something to that affect. It says that time can only be altered if the outcomes are complementary. For example if Fry had killed his grandfather in Roswell and left he would never exist and never go back to kill his grandfather creating a paradoxical endless loop. However since he slep with his grandmother which ended up leading to a very similar result. The point is that according to the theory details don't matter as long as the end results are the same or similar to the original. This means that any changes have to be minor and relatively insignifigant because everything has such a far ranging affect on everything else. Bear in mind this is just a theory I heard.

I'm pretty sure this has to be how it goes down in the movie, because obviously the time traveling done changed the past, if only through the interaction of time duplicates. If history wasn't changed, Fry (that stayed Fry) would have interacted with himself the first time he threw Bender into the chamber, gone to Panuccis, gone back to the cryogenic chamber, talked to himself on the opposite side of the conversation, and then fallen into the freezer, creating a linear, duplicate-free timeline. However, because the Fry that threw Bender into the chamber acted differently after meeting his future self, history changed, and allowed him to eventually become Lars. This now explains the retconning of Luck of the Fryrish and the cheapening of Jurassic Bark. They still happened the way we saw them, but the time traveling caused different, but ultimately similar enough events to take place instead.

[Reply #23 on:]

 

Originally posted by Sine Wave:
 I'm pretty sure this has to be how it goes down in the movie, because obviously the time traveling done changed the past, if only through the interaction of time duplicates. If history wasn't changed, Fry (that stayed Fry) would have interacted with himself the first time he threw Bender into the chamber, gone to Panuccis, gone back to the cryogenic chamber, talked to himself on the opposite side of the conversation, and then fallen into the freezer, creating a linear, duplicate-free timeline. However, because the Fry that threw Bender into the chamber acted differently after meeting his future self, history changed, and allowed him to eventually become Lars. This now explains the retconning of Luck of the Fryrish and the cheapening of Jurassic Bark. They still happened the way we saw them, but the time traveling caused different, but ultimately similar enough events to take place instead.

I think that's a good summary of what happened.  I loved how the delay of Fry's arrival at Panucci's Pizza by one minute changed the entire timeline (by arriving a minute late, the future Lars didn't see the slice of pizza, and thus he didn't think about returning to the chamber).  Only because of the all-purpose "paradox correction" could  such a thing really happen.  Of course, we're still left with some scenes of LotF and JB that I think are now non-canonical, at least in this universe.

[Reply #24 on:]

Oh... there'se a paradox thread?

Well, here's what  I had to say on the matter, posted in the wrong spot apparently:

 Here 

[Reply #25 on:]

It'd pretty much be a case of making some sort of diagram showing where each copy was, at each point in time and working out when they should have shown 2 or 3 copies but didn't for the sake of clarity. I agree with JBERGES that there's probably a lot fewer holes than we think there are though.

Shotgun not drawing any diagrams 

[Reply #26 on:]

The diagrams are on the DVD as an easter egg...I just haven't found them yet.

Also, where's TNUK when you need him?  Banned again?

I guess it's trendy to mark spoilers here

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I think the movie makes sense internal continuity-wise, except for the problem with Leela getting stuffed in the inactive tube in the pilot.  What I have a problem with is historical paradoxes (For the very first example, the Mona Lisa was never finished and therefore would never become famous and valuable) and the fact that this version of time travel alters history.  Futurama has never definitely done that before, and I'm sorry to say this can't be explained away in the same neat, concise manner that "Roswell That Ends Well" and "The Why of Fry" can.

There are two possibilities:

1) Universal Time Code (I heart that reference, by the way) time-travel works differently from the other versions we've seen, and is capable of altering the state of the universe rather than just creating Stable Time Loops.
2) Third person omniscient flashbacks seen in episodes like "Cryonic Woman", "Luck of the Fryrish", and "Jurassic Bark" are unreliable.

I need more time to think on this...the answer is probably just "no Stable Time Loops"...but I like Stable Time Loops.

[Reply #27 on:]

Sorta sounds like folks think of time as an active force that will try to "correct" things that don't conform to a set path. Time is just a unit of measure, or dimension. It may be that time could care less what people do any more than a foot or meter would.

[Reply #28 on:]

Yeah, but causality tends to follow basic rules, even if it doesn't do it in chronological order.  It's sort of the basis of our conception of reality.

[Reply #29 on:]

Also, although a more accurate analog would be between a meter and a second. The fabric of space is more comparable to time conceptually (Space-time continuum and whatnot).

[Reply #30 on:]

Ah!  A lot of things that confused me about the movie, have also confused others as well.

Heh, thank goodness I wasn't the only one confused by some parts of the movie.  ^^;


Now, I don't know if this has been mentioned before but anyway, I think I should mention this.

(I'm not sure if this is a paradox though, or just some weird thing that doesn't make any sense)

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Basically, the thing about the tattoo (time code) being on Fry's ass confused me.  I mean, it actually contradicts several episodes!!     


- In episode 1, "Space Pilot 3000", when Fry is on the probulater, wouldn't they have shown the tattoo being there? (then again, I don't remember if they actually showed Fry's ass in that scene, so this one may not count...)

- In "Futurestock", Fry pulls down his pants and moons Mom (of Mom Corp), by rubbing his butt against the window of the ship. However, as you can see, there is clearly no tatoo there.  So, how is that possible?

- In "Insane in the Mainframe", Fry is stripped of his clothes, on his way into the robot assylum.  But again, we don't see the tattoo anywhere.


This is one of the many things that confused me about the movie, the tattoo/time code being on Fry's ass - and how the tattoo was somehow absent in episodes where Fry's ass has been shown. 

If in the above episodes it wasn't there before, then at what point in the series is it chronologically, supposed to be there?          

 


Also, there's something else I've been wondering.

There's 3 things that REALLY confused me.

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1. How many duplicate copies of Fry were there total?  (not including the one in the freezer tube, because this is actually the original Fry, or rather becomes the original Fry in the future)

I mean, there was only one duplicate copy of Fry, because he only used the time code once, right?


2.  How many copies of Bender were there?  Actually, I'm guesing there were probably too many to count, lol.   XD


3.  Okay, so if the second Fry (the duplicate of Fry) IS Lars, then....who is Lars at the beginning of the movie?     


Shouldn't there now be 2 Lars?  The Lars that exists at the beginning of the movie (Lars 1) BEFORE Fry went back in time and duplicated himself.  And supposedly, there's a second Lars (Fry's copy realizing that he is Lars), who froze himself and therefore created Lars 2?

If so, then wouldn't that mean there's actually two copies of Fry?  The original Lars (which apparently, was Fry to begin with), and the Lars that gets killed in the movie? 

But if that's true, then wouldn't the orginal Lars still exist?  Man, I'm so confused here.  XD

[Reply #31 on:]

This is confusing. Supposedly if Bender didn't put it on Fry's ass until the end, we wouldn't have seen it until the end because that would've been when the change in history would have propagated in the future. Actually, everything about Bender's final trip (him being seen out of sync in the cryogenics building and the timecode tattoo itself) both don't add up, and seem to be the only times that somewhat sensible time-traveling rules were breached. Maybe that's why the universe got ripped a new one.

Also, I understand how Bender had so many duplicates at the end, but how did the stuff he stole get time duplicated?

[Reply #32 on:]

You know what, I just thought of something else. 

There is yet another contradiction.

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In the movie, they had the Box Network, which was the company that cancelled Planet Express.

However, in "When Aliens Attack", there was a flashback of Fry spilling soda (or was that beer?) all over the transmitter of the Fox Network, therefore knocking Fox off the air.

But this would mean that the network Fox does exist in the Futurama universe.  So how come in the movie they used the...Box network instead?     

[Reply #33 on:]

Because what would Fox have to do with a delivery company?

[Reply #34 on:]

Oh yeah, good point.

I forgot about that.  XD


I guess that part kinda confused me at first, with the sign changing back and forth from Box to Fox, lol.

[Reply #35 on:]

Regarding the tatoo's origin.  I pretty sure the writers intended that to be a joke, in that the origin of the tattoo is a self-contained causal loop.  However, you're right in earlier episodes of the series Fry's butt did not have a tattoo.

As David X Cohen says, "never let reality get in the way of a good joke."

[Reply #36 on:]

What i want to know is where did the tatoo come from to begin with.

and also have't we seen the professor's back before? I'm sure he didn't have his 'ink.' 

 

origionaly posted by FryFangirlLisa:
3. Okay, so if the second Fry (the duplicate of Fry) IS Lars, then....who is Lars at the beginning of the movie?


Shouldn't there now be 2 Lars? The Lars that exists at the beginning of the movie (Lars 1) BEFORE Fry went back in time and duplicated himself. And supposedly, there's a second Lars (Fry's copy realizing that he is Lars), who froze himself and therefore created Lars 2?

we the first Lars from the beginin onlgot there because Fry froze himself. there was no Lars when fry becme lrs because it was in the past in abou 2012.

[Reply #37 on:]

Mmm yes, but it's causality that can tossed out the window in Quantum Theory. It gets more like probabilties and odds. Given enough attempts anything can happen no matter how unprobable. And all outcomes spin off all their outcomes (etc.) into valid realites.

[Reply #38 on:]

Yeah, but previous Futurama time-travel sexcapades weren't shown as being based in Quantum theory.  Alternate universes weren't created, or if they were, they were immediately ignored after they'd served their purpose (Fry telling Nibbler that Scooty Puff Jr. sucks, and therefore creating a universe in which he wasn't sent back to 1999.  Note that there are also other explanations for this scene).  In this movie, we see several different timelines happen without so much as a scene cut in between.

[Reply #39 on:]

The Farnsworth Paraboxes are, although time seems to be somewhat syncronous between those universes. I'm not sure what's the source of your distress on the matter...

It seems probable that the time sphere is capable of accessing a timeline "up and down" on the scale of past, present, future and can access "across" all the different timelines. Not unlike a multi-disc CD player.