Talk:Floating timeline

Floating timeline in action
http://www.chronologyproject.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?p=15124#15124 Re Carter /Clinton situation

For other examples of the sliding timscale in action, take a look at this:

http://www.jrhunt.co.uk/thunderbolts/plottriv.htm

Thunderbolts #33 Jolt's kind-of boyfriend wearing a Blink 182 T-Shirt, despite them not being around during Onslaught (Summer '96). Proof of Marvel's sliding timescale? Could be.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_182#Early_career_.281992.E2.80.931996.29 notes that this band did exist and was known as Blink 182 as early as 1995. However, they were not well known in 1996.)

Code of Honor#2, which takes place isochronally around the events of the Dark Phoenix saga: a bit of newspaper can be seen holding a review of the film Swingers, which starred John Favreau, who later played Foggy Nelson and will direct the Iron Man film. Due to the rolling timescale, this is not an anachronism (and was probably not an in-joke, since COH came out before 2003).

Eda Arul now overwrites Idi Amin in MTIO#41, due to Ronald Byrd. See pg 232 of FF Encyclopedia. This was specifically done to avoid topicality.

http://www.geocities.com/marvel_villains/advisor/advisor.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idi_Amin (The real Idi Amin is dead. He had the inclination to do what Mogul emperor Akbar did not to Hindus.)

08:33, 30 June 2006 (UTC)08:33, 30 June 2006 (UTC)Enda80

Cleanup
A good article overall, but it requires some cleanup. There is a lot of information presented here, but it is unorganized and the writing is hard to follow. Some of this information should instead be bulleted and listed as examples of a floating timeline, rather than just being written seemingly at random in the main body of the article. I'll try and get to it later when I have more time. -Kraw Night 06:11, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

James Bond
The James Bond of the novels was a veteran of World War II, but is immortal in the movie versions.

This is not strictly correct. James Bond in the movies is not immortal. The James Bond character which appears in the films from 1962's  Dr. No (film) to 2002's Die Another Day did live within a floating timeline - though immortality is a different concept entirely. Casino Royale rebooted the movie version of Bond in 2006, yet it is not presently clear whether the Bond movies that followed are still set within a floating time-line.

The timeline of the (canon) James Bond novels is confusing somewhat. The timeline established by Ian Fleming in the original novels was the 1950's to early 1960's. When the Bond novels returned in the 1980's the new author, John Gardner, used a plain and simple floating timeline and retained the ages of the characters as they were in the 1960's where Fleming had left them when he died in 1964. Although Gardner kept the ages the same, he did, however, make Bond grey at the temples as a nod to the passing of the years. Bond had aged sinced his adventures in the 1950s - but not by 30 years. When Raymond Benson took over from Gardner in the 1990s Bond returned to his youthfulness of the much earlier Fleming novels.

Currently the (canon) novels about James Bond's youth make clear that Bond was a young boy during the 1930s. This suggests that in any canon novel set in the 2000s James Bond would be a very old man.

Too long opening.
Please consider ordering everything by a section, the opening was so big I didn't even bother reading half of it. TheBlazikenMaster 20:27, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Other

 * Is it worth adding James Bond back in?
 * Would Blackadder count? Or Dr Who? TimothyJacobson (talk) 20:51, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Blackadder doesn't count. Each Edmund Blackadder is an ancestor of the previous one. The timeline is fixed on historical times. Despite each Blackadder sharing traits and names, they are ultimately different characters. Including Baldrick. There's a Christmas Special and several lines that mention this.

Doctor Who doesn't have a floating timeline either. Again, there's references to The Doctor meeting characters in certain timelines, like in the recent episode The Poison Sky. He's a time traveller, but his timeline is also fixed.

Simpsons
I realize this article has numerous things in need of fixing, but I was thinking it's worth mentioning the continuity that is present in The Simpsons. For example, Maude Flanders died, and she was never brought back. Same with Bleeding Gums Murphy, and a few others, like Lionel Hutz and Troy McLure (who are permanently retired out of respect to Phil Hartman). I'm wondering if it's worth it, but I think I'll try and edit accordingly anyway. Any thoughts? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikekearn (talk • contribs) 06:06, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Okay, I added a few sentences onto the section. I don't know that it's needed, but the statement on other characters' deaths came from this site which clearly shows other characters who have died, most of whom were killed off in the same episode they were introduced. Not sure if it really needs to be added as a source, as that information is also available on the Wikipedia articles of those other characters. I also left out their cat, Snowball, as its death is the whole plot of one episode and was mostly a jab on the status quo maintained in the show. Oh, and I signed this one, see? --Mike | Contrib 06:30, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Upstairs, Simpsons and Family Guy use appropriate?
Is it really appropriate to this article to single out a specific show for it's own section? We could do this with numerous novel series, tv shows and etc. I can think of at least 4 off the top of my head. Using Upstairs, Simpsons or Family Guy as a general example is fine, but I don't think either show is any more significant in the use of this literary method than any other series or TV show. They smack of being akin to trivia sections. These sections should be removed or combined into one section and pared back. --Lendorien (talk) 13:51, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
 * They might be a little long, but I think they merit discussion for the different ways they have dealt with the issues the floating timelines created regarding the viewer's ability to suspend disbelief — The Simpsons with the episodes mentioned that either created humorously far-fetched explanations, or humorously retconned everything, and Family Guy for the two jokes cited. Daniel Case (talk) 16:23, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
 * On the other hand, I think this article makes the right decision in not discussing South Park's floating timeline, as that show has AFAIR only dealt with it once, by promoting the boys to fourth grade at the beginning of one season. Daniel Case (talk) 16:30, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Heartbeat
Has been going since 1992 but is still set in the 1960's! db1987db (talk) 03:18, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

critisim?
What there is no critisim of this? Shouldn't there be something about how this allows companies to keep selling the same characters forever? There is a little bit in the begening but could be expanded. Some shows such as the Simpsons actually mention the years as mentioned on the article, which would create a plot hole, or alternate laws of aging. However Homer Simpson is seen in flash backs as being young. Also what about when compared to other cartoons, hardly any cartoons ever age and is never mentioned that they never age. However Peter Pan part of the story is that people in Never Never Land never age. This idea is kind of destroyed by having every other cartoon never age either. This has to create serious plot holes or major numerous retcons. I get the idea of it and I get why it's done. But come on never aging for 40 years and/or changing the stroyline a dozen times is a little overboard. After a while you have to view it for what it is. People trying to keep you latched onto something you already are familer with to keep selling you more products. I'm sure there is plenty of critisim to this, the just don't call it "floating timeline". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.94.251.190 (talk) 07:21, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
 * See: Suspension of disbelief. Most cartoons, and many other types of fiction, require using it on a constant basis. I won't even mention how it ties into religion... :) -- Quiddity (talk) 18:03, 13 October 2010 (UTC)


 * It's the economy. Companies are still writing stories about Superman, Batman or Captain America because there's still people who read them. If people is not interested, that's it, end of floating timeline, new aging rules or whatever. Ask about it to Silver Surfer or Mr. Miracle. MBelgrano (talk) 18:30, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The economy requires suspension of disbelief? I'll buy that... -- Quiddity (talk) 19:31, 13 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I mean that to understand why companies may keep working with something forever or end doing so, is better understood if cartoons, comics, soap operas, etc; are studied as economic goods rather than as literary or creative works. Which they are, but Fox does not produce The Simpsons, Futurama or Krusty's Bar Mitzvah for the love of art. MBelgrano (talk) 22:46, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I understood what you intended, but you're bringing up an entirely more complex topic if we start discussing whether any art that is for sale, is done for primarily the love or the money. (Obviously Fox hosts the show for money, but what about Groening and the teams of writers and illustrators? What about any artist that has pieces for sale? etc etc.) As usual, Watterson sums it up best. -- Quiddity (talk) 18:52, 14 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Right that's why I'm sure there is some kind of critisim for floating timeline, it's like the audience is familer with this character so lets exploit it forever. Maybe I should go to the comic book section to see if there is this critisim. I can't believe there wouldn't be. At the same time tho I'm not sure how to find it from an actual source, because it's so common it makes it hard to critisize because you would be critizing an entire genre basically. There are a lot of jokes however to how do people stay the same age, etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.94.251.190 (talk) 01:49, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The alternative is realism, where every character slowly gets old and dies.
 * These aren't documentaries, they're entertainments. I wouldn't want to watch Bugs Bunny getting slowly older every year, eventually having medical problems for dozens of episodes, and then dying, never to return.
 * It's only restricted to the illustrated mediums currently, because actors are still all mortal animals. Once we have photorealistic computed-generated motion pictures, we'll surely have immortal and unaging characters in those mediums, too. -- Quiddity (talk) 18:52, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

What does this mean?
" ====Cleveland Show & American Dad==== And it`s same floating timeline from Family Guy in other MacFarlane shows on the Cleveland Show and American Dad with same concept by all characters nearly age bit and personalities are try to change but it get bit success or mainly failing every episodes. " I mean, really, that doesn't even make an approach towards comprehensibility. Can someone please fix this mess? --Khajidha (talk) 20:21, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Why do all these companies think they need a floating timeline?
Instead of thinking that events published now are taking place now, and that the origin of the Fantastic Four is 20 years ago, wouldn't it be simpler to let the origins as they were and simply consider that stories published now are taking place in the 80's? Not only does it avoid modifying the past (if the Fantastic acquired their powers in the 90's then they weren't trying to be the first manned space flight), but it also gives an answer to the question "Why, with all those geniuses, isn't the world's technology well ahead of our own?" By reading the stories published now as taking place in the 80's, you can see that indeed the presence of people like Reed Richards, Hank Pym and Tony Stark have made the world progress faster than our own, since it has technology 30 years in advance of its time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.6.75.251 (talk) 15:10, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
 * That would still be a floating timeline, it is just anchored at the opposite end from what the currently used floating timelines are. I have often considered this idea myself, but most people seem to expect what they are reading now to be occurring "now" unless it is specifically called out to them as occurring at some other time. And then it tends not to sell as well, because "people don't like period fiction" (at least that's the generally accepted wisdom). --Khajidha (talk) 20:05, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
 * If it's anchored at a fixed point, then it's not floating. --86.199.200.162 (talk) 16:56, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Origins and rationales?
I would love to see this article cover more information about floating timelines in general, in introductory material before the list of specific examples. When were they first used, and by whom? Was it originally a conscious choice, or did it just happen? Who came up with the term "floating timeline," and when? What are some of the reasons that they're used? What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of using them? The "criticism" section of this talk page asks some of the same questions, but seems to me to be primarily oriented in opposition to floating timelines; I'm more interested in a general encyclopedic discussion of them. If I had the time and resources, I would add this material myself, but I don't know anything about how or when the concept developed. --Elysdir (talk) 21:00, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

X-Men age
More recently however, Beast has typically been depicted as middle-aged, Cyclops in his early-mid 30s, and Iceman still in his early 20s.

What's the basis for this? I'd agree on Cyclops, but I have no particular reason to think Beast is depicted as older. He's a furry cat/ape man! How can you tell how old he's being shown to be? I've not read many comics where Iceman appears to any significant extent, but I'd also be interested as to why one would think he's being depicted as being in his early twenties. john k (talk) 15:10, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

As a comic book reader, I am more familiar with Iceman. I have read most of his 1960s appearances, and some samples from various subsequent decades. I am still not sure where this idea of him being that much younger comes from. Iceman was introduced in 1963 and was soon established as the youngest member of the original X-Men. But not by a huge age-margin. In "X-Men" vol. 1 #32 (May, 1967), Iceman celebrates his 18th birthday. Several of his 1970s and early 1980s appearances depict him as a college student, and he eventually graduated with a degree in accounting. I have not noticed him being depicted as physically younger than the other founders.

A recurring theme with Iceman is that he has been depicted as having an immature personality. Some writers have even used the idea that he has yet to explore the true limits of his powers and keeps coming up with new ways to use them. That does not mean he is a kid character, and his "junior" status does not get brought up a lot when interacting with characters who are younger than him (such as the cast of New Mutants and Generation X). Dimadick (talk) 05:14, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

So we should remove the statement, right? john k (talk) 22:11, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

Probably, unless a source can be found for it. Dimadick (talk) 07:21, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Marvel Comics' floating timeline.
I have been myself critical of the way Marvel Comics has used its floating timeline, but this is because it has been inconsistent and rather arbitrary in depicting different characters. The conclusions of the article and the talk page may oversimplify a more complex situation.


 * First of all, not every Marvel character remains youthful due to the floating timeline. A relatively large number of characters have been established as immortal or functionally immortal because they are gods, demons, magic users, belong to a species with a longer-lifespan than standard humanity, or are mutants and/or mutates whose powers delay their aging. Some examples follow, but are not exhaustive.
 * Namor has been depicted as born in the early 20th century, still being youthful or a teenager in his 1939 debut. He has served as a veteran of World II and his service has never been retconned away. Instead it has been established that he has retained his relative youth because he belongs to a long-lived species and being a centenarian does not really affect him.
 * Nick Fury was originally depicted as a sergeant in World War II in the retro series Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos. When re-introduced in the "modern" Marvel Universe of the 1960s as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, he was only slightly older. To explain how a World War II veteran remains that young, it was eventually established that he has ingested the Infinity Formula, an immortality drug which prolongs his lifespan. Its effects and limits have been rather inconsistently portrayed over the years, but he remains portrayed as a World War II veteran.
 * The female characters Spitfire and Blonde Phantom have been consistently depicted as 1940s veteran heroes. They were originally allowed to age into old age, but modern storylines depicted them regaining their youth through rather convoluted means. In Spitfire's case one of her early appearances had her bitten by a vampire. It was retconned decades later that she gained vampiric powers of her own. Go figure.
 * The original idea with Wolverine was that nobody was certain how old he was. The Origin mini-series established that he was born in the late 19th century and it is his healing factor who keeps him young. Various stories have him depicted as a veteran of both World War I and World War II and a rather lengthy (and sometimes contradictory) biography of the character has been established through various stories.
 * Various characters are centuries or millennia old. Mister Sinister's origin depicts him as a scientist in the Victorian era, Dracula has been active since the 15th century, Belasco is a sorcerer from 13th-century Florence, Exodus is a Crusader from the 12th century, Diablo is an alchemist who gained immortality in the 9th century, Morgan le Fay has been active since the 6th century, Tyrannus is an ancient Roman, Hercules is an ancient Greek, Sersi (Circe) and the Forgotten One (Gilgamesh) are apparently the characters from ancient mythology re-interpreted as Eternals, Apocalypse and Ozymandias are ancient Egyptians from the early dynastic period, Selene is about 17,000 years old, and Varnae is about 20,000 years old.
 * Some of the gods are only a few thousand-years old, but the trio of Gaea, Chthon, and Father Set, termed as Elder Gods, are depicted as millions or billions of years-old and ancestral to most forms of terrestrial life. Their creator/father the Demiurge has been much less oftenly depicted, but he is apparently the personification of the Earth's biosphere and alive since its creation.


 * Second, characters who are affected by the floating timeline do not necessarily remain the same or similar age as their original appearance, though how much they are allowed to age is up to the writers or editors.
 * Spider-Man was introduced as an 15 or 16-year-old high-school student in 1962. He graduated high school later in the 1960s, and spend the following decades as a college student and postgraduate student with a side-career as a professional photojournalist. He has married (and through a retcon) dissolved his marriage, been a father and lost the kid to infant death or abduction, and pursued other careers as a school teacher, research scientist, or businessman. His exact age is rarely given, but most estimates have him aged to his late 20s or early 30s.
 * Other teenaged Marvel characters of the 1960s, such as the Human Torch, the Wasp, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver, and various Spider-Man classmates have long since aged into adults, with storylines involving their marriages, their divorces, parenthood, or mentoring younger characters.
 * Some of the teenaged Marvel characters of the 1980s have also aged or matured considerably. Kitty Pryde was 13-year-old when introduced in 1980, the youngest member of the X-Men at the time. She has since had an active love life, attended and graduated college, and served as a teacher and headmistress of X-Men-related schools. Wolfsbane, one of the youngest members of the original New Mutants, has children of her own. Jubilee pursued a short-lived acting career following her graduation from school. She has in recent years adopted a child and struggles to raise it. They are no longer depicted as kid characters.
 * Some characters have aged notably little or ceased aging altogether. Franklin Richards was introduced as a newborn in 1968. He has since aged into a child or a preadolescent but has remained one for decades. The relatively few storylines depicting him as a teenager or adult involved time travel or alternate timelines. Cassandra Lang (introduced as a young child in 1979) is mostly depicted as a teenager for the last couple of decades. Luna Maximoff (a newborn in 1982) is now a child or preadolescent, but almost never depicted as a teenager. Leech (introduced as a child in 1984) remains a child for the last 30 years. Artie Maddicks (introduced as a child in 1986) has not aged a bit in 30 years.
 * Some characters seem to rapidly age. Valeria Richards (a newborn in 2002) went from learning to speak to being a child prodigy and kid superhero within a few years. Sequoia (a newborn in 1989) was at least in his mid to late teens by 2002 and is now fully independent from his mother. Adult superheroes Genis-Vell (introduced in 1993) and Phyla-Vell (introduced in 2003) are both posthumous children of Mar-Vell, a character who died in 1982. Based on the floating-timeline, they should be underage instead. Dimadick (talk) 07:39, 27 April 2016 (UTC)