Timeline theories: which one do you like best?

[dbgtFO]

Here's my crappy paint job of how I think it happened, taking everything into account, except Cell's 24 years line, but not much needs to be changed either way:

Spoiler:

[Desassina]

Didn't you like the program that I suggested? Inkscape and Power Point allow you to go back and forth between the lines and text box that you need. The former is harder to get into (but it's the closest you'll get to Illustrator for free), and the latter suffices. Anyway, I'm confused by your timelines. What are the rules, exactly?

[dbgtFO]

Didn't you like the program that I suggested? Inkscape and Power Point allow you to go back and forth between the lines and text box that you need. The former is harder to get into (but it's the closest you'll get to Illustrator for free), and the latter suffices. Anyway, I'm confused by your timelines. What are the rules, exactly?

I'm still getting to grips with it and I just wanted to put this out there as soon as possible

Rules are simply this:

• The time-machine can not travel back in your own timeline, instead it creates another, if the coordinates are set to a time in the past of the designated timeline.
• After a timeline is created, the machine automatically links up the two timelines, so it's possible to freely travel between the two without creating new ones, as long you don't travel further back on either timeline.
• The time-machine only creates new timelines based off the timeline it came from. Though creating a new timeline, things will happen the same way, they did in the timeline, the traveller came from, until the traveller starts influencing things, causing changes.

I think that should be it.
Trunks(T1) travels back, creates T2, where he kills Freeza and Cold and returns 3 years later, without creating a new timeline, as the two are now linked. But the Z-Fighters wind up dead anyway and the timeline manages to develop much the same way the original timeline did anyways.
Knowing all this Trunks(T2) after somehow getting rid of #17 & #18 wants to go further back in time, so he can make a timeline, where the Earth isn't that devastated, so he sets the timemachine to travel to a year before Freeza and Cold's deaths, so he can kill Dr. Gero and destroy the androids before they are activated.

However Cell(T2), who had been developing in the lab, kills Trunks(T2) and creates another timeline(the main one).
Since Cell(T2) doesn't interfere until much later, a duplicate of Trunks(T1) still kills Freeza and Cold just like in Cell's own timeline.
This duplicate Trunks of course has the coordinates for his return to his own timeline set just like the original did, but by trying to go that date, he's going to a date in the past of T1, which is impossible, thus unbeknownst to him, he creates the 4th timeline, from which he departs and returns to after Gohan kills Cell.
He then goes on to kill the androids and Cell and presumably lives happily ever after!

[Desassina]

I see. This is very interesting: most people have their own view of what the time travel shenanigans should be, and are quite capable of visual guides to help, even if that leads to disagreement over the others'. Hey, VegettoEX! Why not a podcast about the visual guides that we're making? There's no need to tackle the theory, just the effort that fans put to explain it, even if it's not official.

[Victorious]

No. The Trunks that appears later in Timeline 3 is not the duplicate that traveled earlier from Timeline 3.

The duplicate that traveled earlier from Timeline 3, went to Timeline 1, overwrote the other Trunks, and then went to Timeline 2, following the same steps that the overwritten Trunks would have taken.

The Trunks that appears later in Timeline 3, like I said, is a copy, a duplicate that was replicated when Timeline 3 was born. There's no Trunks traveling to that point in time in that timeline. That Trunks is there because he is a copy of an event, just like the earlier Trunks that killed Freeza appeared in the Timeline (3) simply because he was a copy.

Ohh of course, duhh. I suppose that works.

Here's my crappy paint job of how I think it happened, taking everything into account, except Cell's 24 years line, but not much needs to be changed either way:

Spoiler:

I definitely like this one, I like it more than the OP's actually. Because I dunno about duplicates merging back into 1 or 'over writing' one another. I feel once the Duplicate is made he's real and can't just disappear.

Didn't you like the program that I suggested? Inkscape and Power Point allow you to go back and forth between the lines and text box that you need. The former is harder to get into (but it's the closest you'll get to Illustrator for free), and the latter suffices. Anyway, I'm confused by your timelines. What are the rules, exactly?

I'm surprised Herms and VegettoEX haven't done a podcast about DB timetravel. They've done one on the legend of the SSJ, I think this time travel stuff is more interesting.

[Speedster]

Here's my crappy paint job of how I think it happened, taking everything into account, except Cell's 24 years line, but not much needs to be changed either way:

Spoiler:

I certainly like this theory a lot but here is the catch. Why the Trunks of T1 that travelled to T2 for the second time doesn't get duplicated in timeline 3 in Age 767 while the T1 Trunks who travelled to T2 Age 764 does? Why should Cell's travel affect them differently? Also when Trunks creates T4 from T3 why isn't the history of T3 the one that gets duplicated and is the one of T1 instead?

Your rules of duplication seem to be applied inconsistently.

[dbgtFO]

Here's my crappy paint job of how I think it happened, taking everything into account, except Cell's 24 years line, but not much needs to be changed either way:

Spoiler:

I certainly like this theory a lot but here is the catch. Why the Trunks of T1 that travelled to T2 for the second time doesn't get duplicated in timeline 3 in Age 767 while the T1 Trunks who travelled to T2 Age 764 does? Why should Cell's travel affect them differently? Also when Trunks creates T4 from T3 why isn't the history of T3 the one that gets duplicated and is the one of T1 instead?

Your rules of duplication seem to be applied inconsistently.

...Oh dear, you're absolutely right! Guess it's back to the drawing board

[Cipher]

Aren't there explicitly four timelines implied in the series?

There's Cell's timeline, where he kills Trunks.

There's whatever timeline that Trunks had gone to, where he got the plans for the remote or otherwise became strong enough to kill the androids, which is why they're gone in Cell's time and why that Trunks has a time machine he can steal.

There's the main timeline, which is created by Cell going back in time years before Trunks originally arrives.

And there's the timeline created by Trunks going back into the past after Cell, his time in which allows him to defeat Cell upon returning home, creating an alternate future.

Two future timelines, two "present" ones. We see two of them, and the other two are implied by Cell's backstory. The series gives us as much, and I've never seen where any confusion could stem from with that.

I get what this thread is saying--that it's cleaner, perhaps, if the Trunks killed by Cell is about to go into the past for the first time, and that timeline involves no previous time travel ... but it's too different without basis. We have no reason to think it should deviate from what our Future Trunks' timeline is except for it missing Cell's intervention in the past.

[dbgtFO]

^The problem is with theory 2, where it's attempted to work in Cell coming from a timeline, where Trunks killed Freeza and Cold just like in the main timeline, so that's why things seem so different. Of course if we just ignore that claim by Cell, then it becomes much easier to work around.

@Speedster
It's funny, even before you made me aware of this problem, I had a solution to it, but it was just something I had thought up a while ago and it related to how a time traveler would be affecting another time traveler, when one came to a past, where there was going to be a time-traveler.
I didn't really like it though, but here it is:

Basically we could say that Cell's timetravel not only created the 3rd timeline, but must have also caused the 4th timeline to come into existence, as that Trunks has to arrive from somewhere and go back to a future very much like Timeline 1 and not Timeline 3, thus Trunks does not unknowingly create a 4th timeline, as it's already there by virtue of Cell's timetravel.

Yeah, not really feeling it, but that's the best I can come up with. How do you see it @Speedster & @Cipher?

[Desassina]

^The problem is with theory 2, where it's attempted to work in Cell coming from a timeline, where Trunks killed Freeza and Cold just like in the main timeline, so that's why things seem so different. Of course if we just ignore that claim by Cell, then it becomes much easier to work around.

I found a solution that went uncommented until now, where Cell's statement doesn't need to be ignored. It embraces his own past and future as one with the universe he's in, using a previous instance of time travel. Since he was the first to arrive, he created a new step where Trunks was going to create another, after he killed Freeza and King Cold. We end up having one more when Trunks arrives to help the Z fighters against the Androids, because he didn't in the previous instance. In the end, Cell comes from one step consisting of Trunks' interference, his arrival against the Androids, and his death before the time machine was stolen. No such thing as the Androids' deactivation, nor the unseen timeline implied.

Spoiler:

It's in the spoiler above, which I posted in the previous page.

[Victorious]

Regarding the Trunks that Cell kills in his own timeline. Is it actually stated that Trunks travelled back in time to get those blueprints? Why Couldn't he have just found them in the Cell timeline? Which would be the timeline he was born in.

[Victorious]

^The problem is with theory 2, where it's attempted to work in Cell coming from a timeline, where Trunks killed Freeza and Cold just like in the main timeline, so that's why things seem so different. Of course if we just ignore that claim by Cell, then it becomes much easier to work around.

@Speedster
It's funny, even before you made me aware of this problem, I had a solution to it, but it was just something I had thought up a while ago and it related to how a time traveler would be affecting another time traveler, when one came to a past, where there was going to be a time-traveler.
I didn't really like it though, but here it is:

Basically we could say that Cell's timetravel not only created the 3rd timeline, but must have also caused the 4th timeline to come into existence, as that Trunks has to arrive from somewhere and go back to a future very much like Timeline 1 and not Timeline 3, thus Trunks does not unknowingly create a 4th timeline, as it's already there by virtue of Cell's timetravel.

Yeah, not really feeling it, but that's the best I can come up with. How do you see it @Speedster & @Cipher?

Well that makes more sense than Trunks causing timeline 4 IMO.But then we get a universe where there is no time traveller intervention, but is somehow caused by a timetraveller to an unrelated timeline. Would that mean timeline 1, supposedly the "original timeline " could also have been caused in the same manner?

[Speedster]

Here is my timeline theory that is based on Daizenshuu's "official" time placement:

Spoiler:

Time-travelling rules:
1. When you go back in time you duplicate your own timeline up to the point you travelled back, thereafter the duplicated timeline will contain the differences of your own interaction there.
2. When you return to the future you may duplicate your original timeline if you had been duplicated yourself due to the actions of another time-traveller.
3. It is not possible to go to the past of your own timeline. That is prevented both directly but even indirectly. For example when you return to your original timeline from the past of the new timeline you cannot arrive to a point earlier from the one you had left from.
4. If you attempt to go back further in time from the time-point you once arrived then a new timeline is created with past identical to the timeline from where the time-traveller starts up to the time-point of visit.
5. If you had spent a period of time in the new timeline and you then return to the original timeline then subsequent trips to the past of the new timeline must be after the time-point of the new timeline you have left from last time. Attempting to go to the in-between period wil result to the creation of another timeline identical to the original up to the point of timesplit. Suppose you went back in time X years creating a new timeline and stayed there for Y years (where Y<X). Then you return to your original timeline and attempt to go back in time for anything between X and X-Y years (say X-Y/2 years). This will result to duplication of the original timeline at that time-point (that is X-Y/2 years from the time you left).
6. All actions in any timeline were meant to happen. They were set in stone. As such once you travelled to a timeline even your future interactions or visits to that timeline are in fact set in stone. As it was also set in stone, that you were going to leave your original timeline to go create another timeline in the first place. Free will is an illusion.

(Cell's 24 year line can be perfectly explained with my TRUE timeline which I posted here).

[Victorious]

Cell's 24 year line can be perfectly explained with my TRUE timeline which I posted here. But below is my own take on the alternate timelines using the (incorrect) "official" Daizenshuu time placement which explains everything except of course the 24 year line. I will later post the same timeline theory with my TRUE time placement which explains the 24 year line too.

Anyway here is my timeline theory that is based on Daizenshuu's (incorrect) time placement:

Spoiler:

So what in your model creates the Trunks timeline? is it Cell's time travel?

[Speedster]

So what in your model creates the Trunks timeline? is it Cell's time travel?

Yes. T2 Cell travelling further back in time creates T3 (aka Trunks' timeline). But let me elaborate.

In this model when you go back in time you duplicate your own timeline up to the point you travelled back, thereafter the duplicated timeline will contain the differences of your own interaction there. Once you have created a new timeline you can freely travel between your original timeline and any point in the new timeline since the splitting point. If you (or any other time-traveller) attempt to go further to the past than the first time point of visit then a new timeline is created. That new timeline will be identical to the one you left from up to the time-point you visit.

However in my TRUE timeline I argue that this method contains a paradox. You should not be able to travel back and forth in the newly created timelines. You have to wait for the new timeline to unfold differently if you want to travel there. If you attempt to go to a future point without waiting the equivalent amount of time, then you will just create yet another timeline similar to your original up to the new time-point you visit.

In other words Trunks had to wait for 3 years to pass in order to be able to travel three years ahead of the point he first arrived in the new timeline as otherwise he would just create another duplicate of his own without the changes he made since the point of his first arrival. Because if he could go to any future point in that first new timeline and that timeline had already played out its events he would be able to see the outcome of his own actions without him even being there in the first place!

If you add up everything, Mecha Freeza was actually killed in Age 762. Trunks then said he came 20 years from then, i.e. from 782. He then went back to this time, waited 3 years and then he was able to travel back to the same timeline he created but 3 years ahead of the time-point he first visited. So the second time he travelled back, he did so from Age 785. Cell came from 788 which was stated to be 3 years ahead of Trunks’ second departing time-point.

The Cell arc takes place in Age 765 and since Cell was originating from 788 his line that he was born 24 years from the time he appears in the Cell arc is explained. To be pedantic it would be 23.5 years but he could have well rounded it up to 24.

[Esfír Dedragón]

I actually created a diagram, by hand, of all the timelines and where the points of divergence occurred weeks ago.

Perhaps I should post it on here someday?

[Lord Frieza]

I think the Doctor said it best.

"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff"

[dbgtFO]

Here is my timeline theory that is based on Daizenshuu's "official" time placement:

Spoiler:

Time-travelling rules:
1. When you go back in time you duplicate your own timeline up to the point you travelled back, thereafter the duplicated timeline will contain the differences of your own interaction there.
2. When you return to the future you may duplicate your original timeline if you had been duplicated yourself due to the actions of another time-traveller.
3. It is not possible to go to the past of your own timeline. That is prevented both directly but even indirectly. For example when you return to your original timeline from the past of the new timeline you cannot arrive to a point earlier from the one you had left from.
4. If you attempt to go back further in time from the time-point you once arrived then a new timeline is created with past identical to the timeline from where the time-traveller starts up to the time-point of visit.
5. If you had spent a period of time in the new timeline and you then return to the original timeline then subsequent trips to the past of the new timeline must be after the time-point of the new timeline you have left from last time. Attempting to go to the in-between period wil result to the creation of another timeline identical to the original up to the point of timesplit. Suppose you went back in time X years creating a new timeline and stayed there for Y years (where Y<X). Then you return to your original timeline and attempt to go back in time for anything between X and X-Y years (say X-Y/2 years). This will result to duplication of the original timeline at that time-point (that is X-Y/2 years from the time you left).
6. All actions in any timeline were meant to happen. They were set in stone. As such once you travelled to a timeline even your future interactions or visits to that timeline are in fact set in stone. As it was also set in stone, that you were going to leave your original timeline to go create another timeline in the first place. Free will is an illusion.

(Cell's 24 year line can be perfectly explained with my TRUE timeline which I posted here).

Now that's just beatiful!
Haha, I completely forgot the androids would still be very much alive in the original timeline, so yeah, Cell would not need to commit suicide
And yes, I do prefer your true timeline, as for me it makes more sense to view the travel between timelines to have those rules, rather than Trunks just being capable of going back and forth between the 2, when 8 months passes in his timeline contra 3 years in the new timeline.

[Desassina]

Speedster, that's beautiful, and it's quite similar to mine (in terms of logic), but with the advantage of Trunks and Cell being alive in different timelines, when the only thing that it took was an odd and even turn of events (Goku killing Freeza and King Cold twice). It allows one to consider movie 9, and the possibility of Cell returning. Thumbs up!

[Alehandrew]

Here is my timeline theory that is based on Daizenshuu's "official" time placement:

[spoiler][/spoiler]
Time-travelling rules:
1. When you go back in time you duplicate your own timeline up to the point you travelled back, thereafter the duplicated timeline will contain the differences of your own interaction there.
2. When you return to the future you may duplicate your original timeline if you had been duplicated yourself due to the actions of another time-traveller.
3. It is not possible to go to the past of your own timeline. That is prevented both directly but even indirectly. For example when you return to your original timeline from the past of the new timeline you cannot arrive to a point earlier from the one you had left from.
4. If you attempt to go back further in time from the time-point you once arrived then a new timeline is created with past identical to the timeline from where the time-traveller starts up to the time-point of visit.
5. If you had spent a period of time in the new timeline and you then return to the original timeline then subsequent trips to the past of the new timeline must be after the time-point of the new timeline you have left from last time. Attempting to go to the in-between period wil result to the creation of another timeline identical to the original up to the point of timesplit. Suppose you went back in time X years creating a new timeline and stayed there for Y years (where Y<X). Then you return to your original timeline and attempt to go back in time for anything between X and X-Y years (say X-Y/2 years). This will result to duplication of the original timeline at that time-point (that is X-Y/2 years from the time you left).
6. All actions in any timeline were meant to happen. They were set in stone. As such once you travelled to a timeline even your future interactions or visits to that timeline are in fact set in stone. As it was also set in stone, that you were going to leave your original timeline to go create another timeline in the first place. Free will is an illusion.

(Cell's 24 year line can be perfectly explained with my TRUE timeline which I posted here).

This is the best job of explaining the cell arc timelines I've ever seen! One question, do we have any evidence of the 17 and 18 in Trunks' timeline defeating a cell? How likely is that?