The whole plot kicked off when Okabe accidentally sent the first D-Mail after seeing Kurisu lying in a pool of blood, drastically changing events so that, among other things, the above event was prevented from happening, allowing Okabe and Kurisu to fall in love with each other. Steins Gate explains that this is why Okabe been failing to change the timeline in his favor, specifically when he needs to save Kurisu from being stabbed.Unfortunately, Zeref has gone so far beyond the Despair Event Horizon that he simply doesn't care about any of that, as he has already come to reject the current world in favor of his new one. While that would ensure that the events of the manga would never happen, there is no guarantee that any of the characters in the current timeline would be born and/or suffer even more tragedy - for all anyone knows, Zeref could just be hastening the apocalypse. His chosen point is the time before he became immortal, so that way he can prevent all the tragedies that befell him and his brother. Rather than being stuck in an endless loop, Zeref intends to create an entirely new timeline to take the place of the current one. The Alvarez Empire arc reveals that Zeref's goal is to use Neo Eclipse to subvert the paradox problem.Notably, the only known instances where the gate was used and didn't backfire and cause some temporal problems is when characters used it to send others to the future and not the past. Had he done so, he would have had no reason to create the gate, which would causes Natsu to die again, etc. This is (presumably) also the same reason why Zeref never used the gate for its original purpose: to save his little brother Natsu from his premature death. Killing him would cause the gate to never exist - which would render the need for the Eclipse Project nil, allowing Zeref to survive, and so on and so forth. Chapter 436, which is an entire chapter on Zeref's past, reveals that Zeref was the one who created the Eclipse Gate. The goal of the project was to use the gate to go back 400 years into the past and kill Zeref before he became the Black Wizard. The original Eclipse Project would have caused one of these.May lead to My Own Grampa, though in this case the person killed (probably) wasn't originally your grandfather anyway. This paradox doesn't stop you from traveling to the future and killing your future self and your offspring, however. If the universe runs on Stable Time Loop, this type of paradox is simply impossible, as all changes that will have been going to happen have 'already' happened anyway, so you can't cause a change that will negate itself - something will have to intervene, no matter what or how.

The downside to this is that returning 'home' might be a tricky matter. Are you confused yet?Īlternately, this whole snafu can be ignored outright if you're using Alternate Universe-style time travel, where the time period you came from is separate from (and unaffected by) any meddling you do in the past. Which means he doesn't, so you don't therefore he does, so you do, etc. Which means he survives, so you exist, so you do go back to kill him. So, then, killing your grandfather causes you to not exist, and since you don't exist, you never killed him. Destroyed the time machine? Okay, but how did you use said machine to travel into the past in the first place? Kill the evil overlord while he's a child? Then you shouldn't have any reason to travel into the past to kill him, because he never grew up to destroy your village and all.

The name comes from the most famous variation, namely 'what would happen if you traveled back in time and killed your own grandfather?' However, it also applies to anything that happens while time traveling that should logically make your original time travel trip impossible or unnecessary.įor example, if you killed your grandfather in the past, you should never have been born, and therefore you couldn't have traveled to the past to kill your grandfather.

The grandfather paradox is a type of Temporal Paradox. My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic Temporal Irregu Rarity

Mage time paradox monster