Ability to Time Travel From a Genie

Rose: I want [Queen Victoria] to say "We are not amused". I bet yous five quid I tin can make her say it.
The Dr.: Well, if I gambled on that, it would be an abuse of my privilege as a traveller in time.
Rose: Ten quid.
The Doc: Washed.

Time is money.

Therefore, if you lot control time, you control money.

The easiest and most popular way of using Time Travel for mercantile purposes is the Compound Interest Time Travel Gambit, but at that place are a lot of other means.

• Yous can make a time tour agency.
• You can merchandise through time.
• Yous tin utilise your knowledge of the future to make coin in the past. Example: go to the future and find out what horse is going to win, what stock is going to rise, what lottery number is going to be picked, etc. Notation that you can have only the information; you don't take to actually time-travel. Information technology still counts if somebody else (like a descendant who wants to make sure their family is rich) uses time travel to pass the info back to you, or if your knowledge of the future comes via Psychic Powers.

Beware of Time Police, though. And notation that the Butterfly of Doom and the Timeline-Altering MacGuffin both existed considering of this trope. Most common in series with Coincidental Fourth dimension Travel.

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Examples:

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    Anime & Manga

• Nobita in Doraemon manages to spiral this upwards via an inversion: He gets ahold of some candy from the future, which is the greatest candy he'south e'er eaten, only the Ridiculous Future Inflation that volition occur between the present and the candy'due south time period bankrupts his family. Good thing the series runs on Negative Continuity.
• In the backstory of Miss Kobayashi'south Dragon Maid, Shouta's father used precognition to plagiarize works of fiction (implied to be something past Tolkien) in lodge to gain funding for his magic research.
• Kirie from UQ Holder! uses her Save Scumming powers to make a fortune on the stock marketplace.
• At the end of Batman Ninja, it's revealed Catwoman sold the vase from Sengoku Era Japan Gorilla Grodd had been using as a trash can for his banana peels to an antiquarian store in Gotham for a squeamish sum.
• One of the showtime ways the protagonists of Steins;Gate try to use D-Mail service for personal do good is by sending winning lottery numbers to their by selves. In the contradistinct timeline, the winning lottery numbers are all right... except for the number 18, which is now 1ix. This is i of the start hints that changing the past volition cause other parts of the globe to modify.

    Comic Books

• One event of Dorsum to the Future shows that Md Brown financed his activities in the future by taking the DeLorean back to 1938 to buy several copies of Activity Comics #1, then selling a couple of them to an sale house in 2015 for $2.5 million, allowing him to beget a discounted hover-conversion for the DeLorean.
• The basic premise of Booster Gold, in which a human being from the time to come uses gadgets from his time and his cognition of the past to become a superhero and make coin through endorsements (and other less ethical means).
• In The Flash, Barry Allen's Evil Counterpart Professor Zoom is addicted to abusing the Speed Forcefulness's time travel capabilities to do good himself and punish those he doesn't like, often in astoundingly petty ways. For example, he non just murders his beat'southward married man earlier they were married, but also erases every man she had e'er dated from the timeline.
• Mega Man (Archie Comics) issue #53 reveals Xander Payne, having been sent back in fourth dimension after smacking the Reset Button at the end of Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Human: Worlds Unite, used his knowledge of stocks, lotteries and gambling to found the X Foundation and establish the Mr. X persona.
• In Thorgal in the independent episode "Three Ancients of the Realm of Aran", the three old men, rulers of the country, often defy a brave candidate to go through a perilous way in society to observe a huge treasure, that they could keep. Forth the way they are to accept a potion that makes them travel to the by, where they encounter the three men and then in their twenties. They then explain they use fools arriving from the future with a phial containing the H2o of the Dawn of Times, in gild to increase their ain riches, and they kill the now useless fool. Thorgal breaks the cycle by pouring the water on the ground.

    Comic Strips

• Calvin and Hobbes:
  • The second time Calvin uses his time motorcar, he goes to the Jurassic to accept pictures of real dinosaurs and sell them in the present. His parents, even so, just see pictures of toys.
  • And the kickoff fourth dimension he used information technology, he planned on swiping something from the future and patenting it, but he accidentally went the opposite management in the fourth dimension stream.
  • And in another, he had to write a paper at 6:30 only didn't feel like doing it, so he went two hours into the future to choice up the completed paper. Except, of course, that at that place wasn't a newspaper at eight:30 since two hours ago he went to the future instead of writing it. six:30 and 8:30 Calvins rationally decide it'southward 7:30 Calvin'southward fault and get encounter him, but of course he'south no closer to writing it (and when 6:30 threatens to punch him, 7:30 points out viii:30 is going to feel it too). Fortunately 6:30 and viii:30 Hobbeses wrote the newspaper, a write-upwardly of that evening'southward adventures narrated by Hobbes. Calvin concluded upwardly (according to him) looking like a lunatic in front of the class, merely it got him an A+.

    Fanfiction

• In Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, Harry Potter experiments with a fashion to exploit the Stable Time Loop to chop-chop notice the answers to certain problems. The result? Practise NOT MESS WITH Fourth dimension.
• A minor case of this in the Titanic (1997) fic "Our Future is Now", where Jack, Fabrizio and Tommy were time-travellers. Afterwards they create a new timeline where Titanic gets to America, when Rose decides to get to the future with Jack, Jack decides to give Cal and Ruth a 'consolation prize' by advising Cal to get everything out of the stock market before October 1929 and recommends a suitable visitor Ruth tin invest her remaining money in to recoup her recent losses.

    Pic — Live-Action

• Discussed in Austin Powers when Number 2 suggests that, rather than going dorsum in fourth dimension to threaten the earth with nukes, that Dr. Evil use his knowledge of the hereafter to make money in the stock market.

  Number ii: Nosotros could make trillions.
  Dr. Evil: Why make trillions when you lot tin make... Billions?

• A Sound of Thunder has a tour bureau that takes its clients to the past to shoot dinosaurs.
• In the starting time scene of Time Cop, criminals make money by going dorsum to the 19th century and robbing a carriage full of gold... with light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation-aimed motorcar guns.
  • And the baddies' 2nd scheme is to coerce someone into going back to the Neat Low and buy stock.
• Primer. Abe and Aaron never got around to publicizing their time machine, because they were too decorated using hourly time travel to brand money twenty-four hours-trading stocks.
• Groundhog Day: Phil uses his knowledge gained from the "Groundhog Day" Loop to only walk up to an armored car and steal a bag of money at the exact moment neither guard will be looking. This is done more for the thrill of it than anything else, because he won't take fourth dimension to spend much of the coin before the next iteration of the loop.
• In Paycheck, Michael uses his auto to see the adjacent day'southward winning lottery numbers, giving him and the girl a Happily Always Subsequently even after he destroys the automobile. This is also the Big Bad'due south plan, simply on a much bigger scale.
• Back to the Hereafter Part II has the old 2015 Biff borrow the fourth dimension car for this, giving his 1955 self an annual with sports scores in the by (although Marty had actually bought the almanac for himself). The funny thing about the almanac is that in Part I, Md Brown told Marty he was going to learn the winners of the next 25 World Series, then objected strongly to Marty ownership the sports almanac in Part Two. However, information technology's implied that he had no intention of profit for the former and just wanted the Fun office.
• Although not the main focus of the movie, the protagonist of Frequency drops a hint to his perennially unlucky friend to invest in Yahoo when the visitor gets created. The epilogue shows that he did but that.
• Thrill Seekers featured an agency which used time travel for tourists who wanted to witness various disasters from the past, such as the Titanic and Hindenburg. The plot kicks off when a journalist notices the same human in photographic records of these events set decades apart but looking exactly the same, and afterwards steals his engineering science to avert upcoming disasters.
• The ending of Hot Tub Time Machine reveals that Lou, who chose to stay in 1986, became immensely wealthy using his cognition of the future to get an early lead on the tech boom, founding the search engine "Lougle". He besides became the frontman of Mötley Crüe (now called "Motley Lüe") along the way. Surprisingly Realistic Effect in the second moving-picture show, however, where Lougle is now falling apart because Lou, having run out of ideas to steal from the original timeline, is now running the company into the basis with his terrible business organisation decisions (amid them moving the company'southward HQ to New Orleans' French Quarter so he could go drunkard and party). Earlier in the flick, Lou too tries this past betting on the AFC Championship game, just for the Butterfly of Doom to kicking in with disastrous results.
• In The Time Traveler'due south Married woman, Henry and Clare are having coin problems, and their relationship is starting to crack. Then, he uses his ability to discover out the winning lottery numbers and get the $500,000 first prize. Clare is initially appalled at his misuse of his power, but he points out that his ability is, for the most part, a curse, so why not get something skilful out of it?

    Literature

• Spider Robinson'south Callahan'southward Crosstime Saloon story "Have You Heard The I...?" A fourth dimension traveler from the futurity arrives, offer to sell miraculous devices for all the pennies in the bar. He plans to bury the pennies in the nowadays and dig them up again in his own fourth dimension, where copper is extremely valuable due to resource depletion. He does information technology this way and so the Fourth dimension Cops don't realize he arranged for their finding through time travel (which is illegal in the hereafter).
• In Johnny And The Bomb, when Kirsty thinks that she and Johnny have traveled to the futurity, the first matter she wants to do is to find out what horses accept won so she and Johnny tin can go rich.
  • Later, after Wobbler has been trapped in the 1940s, he uses his noesis of upcoming trends in the fast food industry to open up his ain chain of hamburger restaurants and go a millionaire.
  • Whenever Mrs. Tachyon comes into any greenbacks, she time-travels to the appointment on the money or note to get the most value from the money.
• In the science fiction novella The Plagiarist, a time-traveller supports herself by passing off scientific discipline fiction stories from other authors (stories that wouldn't be published in the original timeline for decades) as her own writing.
• The Thursday Side by side series, where Time Travel is an integral and recurring aspect of the story's universe, has fourth dimension tourists, and at one signal we even come across a group capturing footage of the actual Boxing of Waterloo for a historical documentary.
• The unabridged indicate of The Visitor Novels is to find ways to make time travel profitable, such as salvaging artifacts at that particular time menstruation and having them be rediscovered in the 24th century.
• H. L. Gilt's story "The Old Dice Rich" is built around the Compound Involvement Time Travel Gambit, but with an unpleasant twist for the travellers.
• In the novel Replay past Ken Grimwood, the protagonist has a center assault at 43, and wakes up in the torso of his 18-year-old self. He uses his knowledge of the future to get rich, but gets bored with it.
  • In that same novel, the protagonist meets a young woman who likewise plant herself looping through time in much the aforementioned way(essentially a 20-plus year long "Groundhog Day" Loop). During i loop, she went to motion-picture show school, became a movie producer and recruited Steven Spielberg and George Lucas to collaborate on a science-fiction blockbuster chosen "Starsea" in 1976, one year before they created Jaws and Star Wars respectively. Starsea ends up becoming the nearly successful movie of all time, and she becomes a power histrion in Hollywood. The protagonist identifies himself every bit a fellow time-traveler when he meets her by mentioning some of her possible futurity projects; he asked if she would exist producing A New Hope, brash that Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind' may exist a fleck redundant after "Starsea"(which covered similar themes), but E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial should exist fine, as well as Raiders of the Lost Ark, but she should talk to Spielberg near that first sequel. Years later, she takes another unusual gamble by hiring Rob Reiner (years before he became a filmmaker) to direct a one-act nigh a mis-timed mismatched couple.
• In the novel The Human being Who Folded Himself, the protagonist uses his time-travel belt to get rich, merely gets bored with money and decides to mostly use fourth dimension-travel for sightseeing and screwing himself.
• Many people try this in Time Scout. Usually they try to smuggle artwork to the present, or gamble downtime. And time tourism is booming.
• In Up the Line, by Robert Silverberg, most of the major characters piece of work for the Time Service. The protagonist and several other characters are Couriers, who take parties of tourists to sightsee historical events. Ane use for the hefty fees charged to the tourists is financing scholarly inquiry via time travel.
• Conrad'south Time Machine by Leo Frankowski uses this in multiple forms. Kickoff of all, the characters start out planning to use their new scientific discoveries for things like railroad tunnelling rather than time travel; and they do have many non-time-travel uses for the technology that is also useful for making a time auto. At one betoken, during the process of figuring out how to invent a really workable means of time travel, they seriously consider using time travel to steal from a bank vault, and go as far as figuring out the plan for how to do this. Fortunately, Jim Hasenpfeffer points out that it would make more sense just to use stock tips from future newspapers, and the characters get the money they need that way. And so, about halfway through the book, the characters are whisked away to a fabulously wealthy Mary Sue Topia island paradise which was built by their ain future selves, in which all of this wealth was generated past the applied applications of time travel.
• Robert Sheckley has a story where a couple running an electric appliance store have a few of those stolen. Turns out it was a genie from the past who got a job at the majestic palace solely through having influential relatives, and, when the queen demanded spells to clean her clothes or cool her chambers, he constitute the spells to be too complex and could practice nil but steal some tech from our time. At outset, they try to banish him (doesn't work because a genie is immune to all spells except from his own land, which they don't know). And so, they sabotage the devices and refuse to do maintenance on the ones already taken. So the genie attempts to start trading. At first, they are afraid it will cause a Temporal Paradox, but change their mind after the genie says "Don't worry, I'g from Atlantis. A couple of years and zippo will remain of information technology or your tech". So they decide to trade equally much every bit possible.
• In Tom Holt'due south Overtime, 1 firm guarantees investors a profit by sending their money back in time to invest in the Crusades! (It'south complicated.)
• In ane of Harry Harrison'south Beak the Galactic Hero novels, the titular hero ends up traveling through time to an alternate past where Nazis accept occupied New York. Ane of them captures Bill and his partner and asks them who they are. When Pecker explains that they're from the future, the Nazi starts enervating lottery numbers, despite Bill explaining that they're from thousands of years in the future and, thus, have no idea what "lottery" even is.
• In The Green Futures of Tycho, Tycho becomes hugely rich by paradoxically selling off future copies of his own time machine.
• In the YA novel Locksmith'south Cupboard, Lock and Gary apply a time portal to: (one) Hibernate five quarters under the porch. (2) Go to the futurity, get the quarters and bring them back to the present. (iii) Have the quarters from the future and hide them next to the "original" quarters. (4) Echo this process until they have 5,120 quarters, then phone call it a day.
  • Unfortunately, they forgot to do (v): Come up with a plausible, parent-satisfying caption for why they both have $640 in quarters stashed nether the bed.
• In Wikihistory , "SneakyPete" changes history past getting Hitler admitted to Vienna's Academy of Fine Arts, and brings back some genuine Hitler paintings to sell. He forgot that the paint on these supposedly 200-twelvemonth onetime paintings wasn't completely dry yet...
  • A like foul-up happens in the 1952 Isaac Asimov short story "Button, Button", where a scientist brings a piece of parchment with the valuable, 18-carat signature of Button Gwinnett to the nowadays day...that is, a piece of new parchment with the valuable, genuine, very fresh signature of Push button Gwinnett.
• Deconstructed in 11/22/63: the protagonist funds his attempts to fix the past by betting on sports, simply gets the attention of bookmarkers who try to beat out his secret out of him. His mentor, in addition to the sports-betting thing, ran a diner incredibly cheaply past buying all his meat in 1958 and selling it in the twenty-outset century.
• In The Impossible Stairwell, Etsugoya wins a bet with data obtained from his time to come self (although he is non aware of this at the time). Later he and Tsubakihara briefly talk over the ethics of doing this.
• In "A Sound of Thunder" past Ray Bradbury, Travis' bureau runs safaris into the past for big game hunters, who pay handsomely for the privilege. They accept swell care to ensure their clients only kill dinosaurs that were going to die anyway (in this case, a tree falling over it) and otherwise don't affect the present, merely this is the story that named the Butterfly of Doom...
• In Robert Heinlein's To Sail Across the Sunset, Lazarus Long travels back in fourth dimension and warns his parents of the imminent 1930s stock market place crash. This data makes his parents and their descendants extremely rich.
• In the brusk story "Time and Time Again" by H. Beam Piper, the 43-yr-old Allan Hartley's mind is sent back in time to his 13-yr-former cocky's torso in 1945. He intends to modify history past having his father Blake elected U.S. President in 1960 and thereby forestall the outbreak of World War III. Allan plans to raise primary capital for his father'due south campaigns past placing bets on the winners of the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes and past using his knowledge of future developments in chemistry to establish a company that will overshadow IG Farben.
• In Good Omens, Agnes Nutter left her descendants a book of prophesies that, when interpreted, gave them enough data about the futurity to be able to earn their living from her suggested investments. For instance, 1 prophesy was "Do not purchase Betamacks."
• Night Lookout man rather abruptly ventures into this territory in the later book. At showtime the full general assumption is that both Night and Day Watches finance their operations through front companies in the human world, with the Night Spotter feeling the obligation to rely on "wholesome" pursuits like making dairy products and therefore being generally more strained for cash than their Evil Counterpart. And then, in "Sixth Spotter" it is suddenly revealed that they take pretty much unlimited funds obtained by farseers playing stock market. Granted, information technology does play in the overarching theme of blurring the border between Light Ones and Dark Ones.

    Live-Action Television

• Blackadder Back & Forth involves an unscrupulous man with a fourth dimension automobile. By the stop he'southward King, his buddy is PM, he'southward married to the hottest woman in history, he has 98% approving, and had disbanded parliament.
• In the Childrens Hospital episode where Dr. Maestro traveled back to the 40s, he made sure to write down a Long List of businesses that would go famous in the ensuing years. Unfortunately, the plan isn't that well thought through, and so he winds up locking it in a desk and eagerly reading it in the present solar day.

• Doctor Who:
  • "City of Decease": The Monster of the Week is splintered throughout time. His Renaissance persona makes Leonardo da Vinci whip up half-dozen more copies of the Mona Lisa with the intent of having his 20 ^th -century persona steal the one in the Louvre and so sell off all seven and make a huge profit.
  • "The Long Game": Adam Mitchell, a Teen Genius who joined the Doctor and Rose on their travels at the end of the previous episode, tries to brand money out of information most hereafter technological developments, which could cause major disruptions to the timeline if it led to advances being made centuries ahead of their time. So the Doctor sends Adam home and tells him he is no longer welcome in the TARDIS.
  • "School Reunion": It was just evidently weird how the school teacher the Medico replaced won the lottery — she didn't even play. The winning ticket was pushed under her door at midnight.
  • Gets lampshaded in "The Unicorn and the Wasp", when Donna accidentally mentions Miss Marple and Murder on the Orient Limited to Agatha Christie years before she wrote them, and then adds, "Tell you what, copyright, Donna Noble, okay?"
  • "The Stop of Time": It'due south implied the Doc did this with the lottery ticket which he gave to Donna. And he got the coin to buy the ticket from the bride's expressionless father in the by, so that he could go her a wedding ceremony nowadays.
  • The Eleventh Doctor increasingly likes to get rid of pocket-sized interfering characters by arranging for them to win the lottery, even on planets where in that location is no lottery.
• In Early Edition, Gary supports himself by using tomorrow'south newspaper to bet on the ponies.
  • Gary only did that in the first episode and quickly realized that the money didn't bring him happiness. Later, he was always against using the paper for personal gain.
• On Eureka, the Season ane finale involves a time-travel paradox that, when resolved, leaves Carter and Henry the only people who remember it. In the second season premiere, Carter points to out Henry that they now know all the sports results for the adjacent four years, as well as what movies will be proficient.
• In Family Matters, Carl gives his past self data on the stock market and in the present day becomes fabulously wealthy. However in this time he and his wife never had kids, Carl has been simply money hungry, and just before they go back to set up it his married woman wanted a divorce.
• Attempted in the early seasons of Goodnight Sweetheart but due to Condition Quo Is God it doesn't piece of work. A later attempt is more successful.
• A variation occurs in the television adaptation of Proficient Omens. Agnes Nutter uses her extremely accurate prophecies to direct her descendants in the 80s to invest in "Principal Jobbes motorcar" for "an Apple that cannot be eaten".
• In Life on Mars, Sam participates in sweepstakes for the 1973 Grand National. He uses his knowledge to make sure he tin profit from Red Rum's win.
• Lampshaded/subverted on Lost, in which Hurley goes back to the '70s and attempts to rewrite (or rather, write in the first place) Return of the Jedi when he goes dorsum in time — not to make money, but to improve it, because "Ewoks sucked, dude." He apparently has every intention of sending it to George Lucas.
• Ane recurring plot in El Ministerio del Tiempo is people using the time doors to explore the by or the futurity for their ain profit. Flavour 2'southward chief antagonist, Darrow Ltd., is all nearly this, going to the past to buy or steal important cultural masterpieces and and so sell them in the present - even if, for example, doing that would remove that cultural masterpiece's worth from the timeline.
• In Odyssey five, five astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Odyssey are sent back in time by a Sufficiently Advanced Alien to prevent Globe'south destruction that they have simply witnessed. After the Mental Time Travel, 2 of the crewmembers pass up to spend the next several years trying to figure out what volition happen. One of them, a cynical geneticist named Kurt Mendel, decides to use his knowledge of the hereafter to make some money and live information technology up. He bets all his savings on the outcome of a close football game, whose result depends on a unmarried field goal kick that near missed in the previous timeline. To Kurt's surprise, the kicker misses this time. He finds out that his unusually large bet has caused more people to bet on the game. When the kicker found out, the pressure acquired him to miss. Despite losing all his money Kurt is overjoyed, because this proves that the hereafter tin can be changed.
• The Orville: In the 29th century, artifact dealers go dorsum in time to steal famous vehicles. To forbid the timeline from being altered, they but steal vehicles that were originally destroyed.
• In Red Dwarf, the crew's future selves abuse the Fourth dimension Drive'due south power to indulge in the luxuries of the past. This likewise meant hobnobbing and currying favors with the worst that humanity had to offer, such as the Hitlers. The present-day crew is so disgusted by what they have become that they engage in a hopeless battle against their hereafter selves' greatly upgraded ship.
• Stargate:
  • Stargate SG-i:
    • Done as a Brick Joke in "1969". Afterwards being returned to the eponymous yr, Jack borrows some coin from his commanding officer'south younger self, promising to pay him back with interest. When the team returns habitation, said commanding officer tells Jack with a grin that Jack owes him $539.50, with chemical compound involvement.
    • "Moebius" involves SG-i traveling back to 3000 B.C. to retrieve a ZPM. Additionally, when Daniel suggests this at the beginning of the episode, Jack complains that he wouldn't allow him utilize their time auto to become back and sentinel the Cubs win the Globe Series.
  • In the Stargate Atlantis episode "The Last Man", Sheppard tries to do this; while he'due south temporarily in the future, he asks hologram-Rodney if he remembers whatever Super Bowl winners from the 25 years after Sheppard left and before Rodney made the hologram. Unfortunately for him, Rodney "never was much of a sports fan"...
    • Likewise, Rodney is Canadian.
• An episode of Star Trek: The Adjacent Generation concerns a traveller from the 25th century who came back to run across what the 24th century was like...except he was really from the 22nd century and had stolen the Time Machine he was using, and then he could steal futuristic engineering science and bring information technology to the past (his present) where he would "invent" information technology.
  • The Deep Space Nine volume "Legends of the Ferengi" has a brief summary of what happens when a race of CMOT Dibblers discovers Time Travel:

  17822 was a very interesting year on Ferenginar. In that year alone, over twenty thousand Grand Nagi held office; the Ferengi Financial Exchange crashed 3152 times, while setting 12322 record highs; there were 41098 ceremonious wars; an unknown number of Ferengi-incited interstellar wars (estimates are in the millions); and the Ferengi sun went nova at least once a week.

  In other words, 17822 was the twelvemonth Ferenginar discovered fourth dimension travel.

  • Eventually a Ferengi named Twim decides to put a finish to the lunacy, does... something... with a fourth dimension car; and when the dust cleared, Twim was K Nagus and the penalization for Time Travel was decease.
• An episode of The Twilight Zone (1959) involved a camera that could take pictures of the future (you lot take a motion-picture show, but when it develops it shows the subject five minutes in the future). The people in the episode get to the racetrack and have pictures of the tote lath, which would prove the winners and who they should bet on.

    Podcasts

• Well, parallel universe travel, but Twilight Histories specializes in providing actions to alternating worlds. Also in the episode "May His Kah Suffer Forever" the pharaoh is a traveler from some other universe who has come to cleave out an empire of his own in Egypt.

    Video Games

• In the Time Travel based RTS game Achron this is known as 'Retconomy'. One of the playable species creates harvesters past morphing one of their bones units. These basic units tin can be congenital and paid for in the future and so sent into the past where they get harvesters and brainstorm gathering resources. The finish result is that the player will take gathered more resources in a shorter amount of... er... time than a thespian that had non used time travel.
• The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask has an interesting take on this. Y'all tin "set" the lottery past simply doing the verbal aforementioned thing equally before. This works considering the lottery numbers are stock-still for a given save file, so you can buy a lotto ticket on the first mean solar day, >> to the last twenty-four hours to discover the number, then go back in fourth dimension. Once y'all've gone back in time, y'all tin can buy the side by side/concluding (run across time paradox for explanation of that comment) winning number, >> to the third day, and past golly, you accept the winning number. Rinse and Echo until yous max out the money. Or, more efficiently, but open ane of the 100 rupee chests in Clock Town, eolith the money, rewind time, then open it again.
• The aliens in Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders accept a auto aboard their mothership that predicts winning lottery numbers. Once you get aboard, all your fiscal troubles are over.
• The trope is used very loosely in Rampage Through Time.
• In The Sims 3 expansion pack Into the Future, you can travel to the future and become to Oasis Gardens' urban center hall to obtain noesis of winning lottery numbers, and then travel back to the present to utilise that knowledge to obtain a big sum of Simoleons. Doing this is one of the steps necessary to have the Philanthropist statue made in your laurels.
• In Bioshock Space, musician Albert Fink has fabricated a bundle past taking advantage of a portal to the future in his studio to plagiarize songs.
• In Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, this is Large Bad Cyrille La Paradox'south plan. Past altering the by, including making false genealogical trees, he intends to found his present organization equally an Northward.M.O. Superpower, with himself being allegedly descended from royalty.
  • His lackey, Grizz, has a similar usage of fourth dimension travel: brand elaborate cave paintings in the Ice Age, dig them upwardly in the present, and then sell them for an obscene fortune.
• Agent v, Cuff Blackwood, is framed for stealing items from his mission fourth dimension periods in The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time, and he enlists his past self to fix the problem. From the news manufactures, everyone is enlightened of what the dangers of time travel are well-nigh, and from how historic Cuff was from his efforts in the previous game, his peers pass up to believe that Gage would ever do this for personal gain, he was only arrested because that'due south where the evidence pointed. Turns out that he really was framed. His colleague Agent iii, Michelle Visard, tampered items in those mission time periods to spread time travel engineering science to an alien race, since she, having had to inquiry several fourth dimension periods of war, believed humans should not exist trusted with time travel technology. Because the items she was modifying would not just coincide with Cuff'due south mission locations, they were also to exist sold in an auction at the Louvre in the nowadays day, Amanuensis 3 could get abroad with it without the Temporal Security Agency knowing. She almost succeeded, if not for future Cuff'southward intervention in the first place.
• Played for Drama in Quantum Break. A fourth dimension travel experiment gone wrong in 2016 sends Paul Serene to the End of Time, only he manages to find another working time car and escape back to 1999 (the earliest he tin can go by the game'southward time travel logic), where he founds Monarch Solutions with the aim of finding a mode to end the Terminate. With his future knowledge, Paul makes fiscal investments that cause information technology to speedily grow into a Mega-Corp. A long series of whiteboards in the concluding level even shows his preparations yr by year, whether they're financial (investing in YouTube and Twitter the moment they become available) or would provide good PR (having cleanup services ready when Deepwater Horizon explodes, helping Monarch employees during the subprime mortgage crunch).
• In Path of Exile, i of the seasonal league mechanics (which is now in the main game), involves this. You lot encounter an explorer named Alva Valai who offers yous a business proposal: She opens a Portal to the Past to an ancient temple that'southward been lost in today'due south history built 2000 years ago during its construction, kill some architects to determine what kind of treasure room gets fabricated in in that location, repeat eleven more times until she can pinpoint the temple's location in the present, loot it, then reset the timeline of the temple and repeat. Some other NPC mentions that Alva's fixation with annexation this particular temple keeps her from wrecking havoc on the timeline.

    Web Blitheness

• In Sonic for Rent, the plot of Season 6 revolves effectually Sonic using the Epoch to go back in time to make himself rich and powerful, before escalading into other characters doing the aforementioned thing. Unfortunately, this ends up having a negative upshot on the space-fourth dimension continuum.

    Webcomics

• Dave Strider of Homestuck uses his fourth dimension travel powers to create several copies of himself from the futurity. They get dressed in various disguises and cooperate in a stock exchange, thus assuasive Dave to brand a killing. In that location is i downside, though: Dave always has to make sure he's going to be his future selves, or else he volition spawn an alternate timeline, and one of the rules of time travel in Homestuck is that alternating timelines, and anybody from them (even if they travel into the blastoff timeline), are doomed to die.
• In the "Instant Replay" arc of Schlock Mercenary Kevyn uses stock market information from the time to come to go several million credits and hire the mercenary visitor that was going to kill captain Tagon.
  • Similarly, his future self buys a lottery ticket once he'south washed saving the galaxy, and bets on some rigged races which gets the mob angry at him.
• Doctor Cook from Southward.S.D.D got on the Maytec lath of directors after finding a PDA with stock quotes that fell through a time portal. In add-on when he and the other "Due south.Due south.D.F." cast get stranded in the 21st century he starts a tech company (even Tessa admits to making a few quid via hereafter knowledge).
• This is how Cassie Wells of Times Like This funds many of her fourth dimension travels, and her fourth dimension machine in the commencement place.
• Jin of Wapsi Square uses her retentivity of previous times through a "Groundhog Day" Loop to make a killing in stocks.
• Saturday Morning time Breakfast Cereal proposes an alternate version of A Christmas Carol where Scrooge does this.
• xkcd: A time machine is built that'due south powered by low-background lead, which is deficient enough that they merely accept plenty for ane round trip. After explaining that the primary source of depression-groundwork lead is Roman shipwrecks they decide to create some more than.

    Western Animation

• On American Dad!, Stan goes back in time to the 70s and drops a "Best of the 1970s" cassette there. The Roger of the past finds information technology and becomes a wealthy songwriter past "writing" the songs on the tape. He then loses it all thanks to heavy spending on parties and luxuries when disco goes out of style.
• In one episode of The Tick, people from the far hereafter take set upwards a hotel in prehistoric times, using Australopithecus as staff.
• David Xanatos of Gargoyles created a Stable Time Loop where he had a money from a yard years agone sent to his younger self, which past then was worth enough to start his financial empire.
• On The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Male child Genius, Jimmy goes dorsum in time to make his father invest in a successful business that he originally decided not to invest in. When Jimmy goes dorsum to the present, he has everything he ever wanted, only his parents are cold and distant.
• In the Kim Possible "A Sitch In Time" mini-arc, Shego lays the groundwork for world domination by using time travel to make a fortune.
• In the Popeye cartoon featuring "Brutus" instead of "Bluto", there was a story where Wimpy used a crystal ball to go wealthy through the stock market.
• In the Cherry-red-Spears Superman cartoon, at that place was one episode where Lex Luthor stole a machine that can see ane hour into the hereafter. He considered using it to bet on horses.
• In Code Lyoko, Ulrich uses a Return to the Past to buy a winning lottery ticket for Yumi's family, so they won't have to relocate. This gets everyone mad at Ulrich because each Return to the Past makes Xana stronger.
• An episode of the Captain Caveman segment of The Flint Comedy Show sees this as the 20th century villain Futuro's plan: using a time machine to go back in time to Bedrock and steal random worthless stuff (a glaze rack, benches, a greenbacks register, etc.) and sell it in the present equally valuable "antiques."
• Louie'south "Go-Rich-Quick Scheme" in 1 episode of Ducktales 2017 involves using time travel to "find" lost historical treasures before they were lost. It'due south not stealing considering, being lost, they didn't belong to anyone. While it seems similar the setup for a Stable Fourth dimension Loop, information technology actually sets up a "Timephoon" that brings people from each timeframe he visited into the present.
• In the Justice League Unlimited two-parter "The Once and Future Affair", a supervillain named Chronos uses a fourth dimension car to steal numerous artifacts and monuments from the past, allowing him to become a wealthy and powerful offense lord when he returns home to Gotham City in the future.
• A more sympathetic example appears in the Southward Park episode "Goobacks". The titular time travelers come from a Bad Hereafter of poverty and unemployment. Thus, they travel dorsum in time, work odd jobs, and prepare up dorsum accounts that volition provide for the families they left behind.
• Stroker and Hoop had Yet Some other Christmas Carol where Stroker stumbles into a lottery scam band where the Ghost of Christmas Future relays winning lottery tickets to the Ghost of Christmas Past through the Ghost of Christmas Present as they teach people the significant of Christmas. They effort to assassinate Santa Claus when he started getting on their trail, which gets Stroker involved when he accidentally got their electric current lottery ticket.

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