In the 2012 time travel movie "Looper," the main character Joe (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a convincing facial prosthetic) sacrifices himself to change the future. He aims to prevent his older self (Bruce Willis) from killing a child named Cid who is destined to become future villain with unique telekinetic powers— known as The Rainmaker. In the final scene, Cid is grazed by a bullet, but younger Joe’s shoots himself to make older Joe disappear from the timeline— offering the possibility of a different timeline and future outcome for the boy. 🎥

In 1893, Ingersoll Lockwood wrote “Baron Trump's Marvellous Underground Journey”, a tale about young Baron Trump's quest to find a "world within a world." Lockwood’s second book, published in 1896, was titled “1900, Or The Last President.” 🎥

Also in “Looper”, Young Joe/JGL carves a message into his own arm, which appears as a scar on the arm of his future self, Old Joe/Bruce. To communicate a meeting location across time, he carves the name "Beatrix," who was the waitress at a roadside café he often frequented. This choice of name is likely a reference to a line from Thomas Pynchon's book “V.”, which mentions "barmaids named Beatrix" as being the "fairest and saddest." 🎥

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"Call all the barmaids Beatrice and all the boys Benedick; I’m weary of staring in these mirrors of the human condition. What shall it profit a man if he gain his own soul but lose the world? Or, worse, what if you gain the world and lose only your car keys?"

"Why are the fairest always the saddest, with barmaids named Beatrix, or midgets in pubs?"