12 More Movies You Didn't Realise Stupidly Broke Their Own Rules

12. Changes In The Past Change The Present - The Butterfly Effect

The Rule:

If Ashton Kutcher makes any changes to the past, they have huge ramifications in the future, which only he is aware of. Everyone else will carry on as if their lives have always been that way.

The Breaker:

Look, time travel logic is always an iffy thing to play with, because paradoxes start opening up the second you even mention messing with a time-line. You either embrace it or ignore it (as the X-Men movies and Terminator: Genisys did).

Unfortunately for The Butterfly Effect, the whole movie is defined by its rule about changing the past to reshape the future without anyone other than Evan being aware. It is entirely crucial, which makes it so frustrating when they just drop the central rule when the plot requires it.

When Evan is imprisoned, he hatches a plan of escape that involves his cellmate (the very unMexican Kevin Durand playing the very Mexican Carlos) and giving himself stigmata-style scars to convince him he's telling the truth. He pops back in time, stabs his hands and then jumps back. The only problem is that by every other bit of logic in the film, to Carlos, his scars would have been on him for the entire time he's known him, and not just when he jumps back to the present.

And the idea that something like that wouldn't in any way change the course of his life is just ludicrous.