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Book Ends

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-we came in?

Matching scenes at the beginning and end of a story, often to show how things have changed through the course of the episode, or to demonstrate that they haven't changed at all.

This is extensively used in kid's shows to illustrate the characters applying the lesson they learned today, which happens to apply to the issue presented in the beginning. Ya'know, just in case they didn't catch it. In any work, bookends are a way to show whether Character Development has occurred.

Compare and contrast Here We Go Again, How We Got Here, Where It All Began. See also Call Back, Ironic Echo.

Bookends don't always spoil the ending, but usually they do. As an Ending Trope, Spoilers ahead may be unmarked. Beware.


Examples of Book Ends are listed on these subpages:
Examples of Book Ends include:


Advertising

  • The Montana Meth Project has some chilling public service announcements, with these two having the Book Ends. The first video shows a girl trying meth with her friends, saying she's only going to do it once. Cut to the next scene, where she uses meth again, still saying it's only once more. This was repeated a few more times, with the girl getting worse by the use of meth. At the end, the girl dies on her bed. Her younger sister then takes some meth from her older sister's jean pocket, saying she's only going to do it once.
    • The next video shows a young man trying meth, also saying that he'll only do it once, as he doesn't want to be like 'That guy', a meth-addicted psycho, which scarily resembles him. He then tries meth once again, also with the same promise. Repeat a few times with the man getting more addicted, and he ends up being exactly like 'That guy'. In the end, a young girl buys some meth with the promise of only trying it once, as she doesn't want to be like 'That guy'. Which is obviously the guy before.
  • In a similar vein, an Australian alcohol awareness advertisement opened with a father asking his son to get him a beer at a party, followed the son's descent into alcoholism, then ended with the son as an adult, asking his son to get him a beer at a party, with the implication that his son's life would follow the same course as his own.

Fan Works

  • The Star Trek: New Voyages episode "World Enough And Time" has beginning and ending scenes that take place about 30 years from the time of most of the episode, all based around the character Hikaru Sulu.
  • The Harry Potter Fanfic After the End begins and ends with a group hug surrounding Harry. Everyone is in a dark room, lit by a bluebell flame, which someone kicks out.
  • This Axis Powers Hetalia USUK kink meme fill about a bulimic Arthur/England starts with 'He felt cold', and ends with '“Alfred,” he murmured as he nodded to sleep, “You’re warm.”'
  • The Digimon Tamers fanfic Digital Prey begins and ends with Ruki Makino riding a train.
  • A Very Potter Musical begins with the musical number "Gotta Get Back To Hogwarts." Fast forward to the end of the sequel, when Harry finishes a moving speech and the whole cast breaks into song. Guess what they sing?
  • Two in With Strings Attached:
    • At the very beginning of the First Movement, Paul and John nervously walk along the beach, completely new to the world, wary of each other, and frightened. At the end of the Second Movement (in the chapter “Full Circle, Moebius-Style”), they walk together along another beach, back to being friends, more or less accustomed to the world (if not to their new magic), and enjoying sharing this utterly unique experience.
    • When the four first arrive in Ta'akan, they have a frightening experience in the Owner's Head Tavern when an enormous Bar Brawl erupts around them. When they leave the city for the last time (not counting when Ringo accidentally teleports back there), they have dinner in the Owner's Head and laugh at how tame the nightly brawl seems now.

Mythology

  • Older Than Dirt: The Epic of Gilgamesh starts with a narration that extols the might of the walls of Uruk, which seem to be meant to emphasize the glory of their builder, the king Gilgamesh. Until, of course, Gilgamesh fails to gain eternal life, and in the final line of the epic, he speaks the same passage to his new traveling companion Urshanabi. (Scholarly opinion is divided whether this is intended as Ironic Echo, or an affirmation that true immortality is found in lasting greatness of a man's works.)
  • The Hebraic multilingual poetic device called a chiasmus is this trope defined.

Poetry

  • "The Cremation of Sam McGee" by Robert Service both begins and ends with the same stanza, referring to the queerest sight ever seen by the Northern Lights (namely the eponymous cremation). The poem in between these stanza's describes the events of Sam's death, his subsequent cremation, and what the narrator saw when he looked into Sam's funeral pyre. He saw Sam sitting up "looking cool, and calm", happy to be warm for the first time since leaving his home in Tennessee.
 

There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men that toil for gold
The Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Labarge that I cremated Sam McGee

 
  • Jabberwocky (largely nonsense):
 

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe,
All mimsy were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

 

Professional Wrestling

Tabletop Games

  • Many World Of Darkness sourcebooks both old and new begin and end with information related to a specific event. Mage: The Awakening has a diary in the front from a student, and ends with a letter from the mage who's teaching said student to that mage's last student, who went bad and was responsible for Awakening the student writing the diary. Promethean: The Created has the first and second halves of Mr Verney's interview with a psychiatrist.
  • The Eclipse Phase intro fiction 'Lack' begins and ends with Sava waking up in a new body and asking what the date is.

Web Animation

  • Red vs. Blue has one of the three possible endings as an inverted book end—whereas Episode 1 features the Blues spying on the Reds, who are chatting atop the base, here we have the Reds spying on the Blues doing the same thing.
    • This is also the canonical ending.
    • Grif and Simmons also once again call shotgun on the new vehicle, this time in reverse.
    • This happens again in the Recollection Saga. Reconstruction began with a soldier looking at the dead body of a Freelancer as the camera panned up in Valhalla, showing a huge number of characters (so many that the creators actually had to run several games and use splitscreen to get that many). Revelation ends with a soldier looking at the body of Agent Texas in Avalanche and the camera pans up to show a similar shot.
  • The first scene of There She Is is Nabi being harrassed by Doki at a drink machine. The final scene is Nabi wiping racist graffiti off of it while sharing a drink with Nabi.
  • The Strong Bad E-mail "theme song" from Homestar Runner actually begins and ends with Strong Bad singing "When E-mail Comes to Town, It's Like a Rainstorm in your Browser."
  • Bowser's Kingdom episode 1 ends with Mario beating up Hal and Jeff because a Shy Guy betrayed them and The Movie ends with Mario and Luigi beating Hal and Jeff because Steve betrayed them.

Web Comics

  • This happened in the first story of Honeydew Syndrome (the first five chapters).
  • In the second panel of the first strip of 1/0, "Let there be light!" In the second panel of the last strip, "Let there be darkness!"
  • David Willis loves this trope. Compare the first and second Roomies! strips with the final Roomies! strip, and (to a lesser extent) the first two Roomies! with this Joyce and Walky! which debuted two days after the Walkyverse's tenth anniversary.
  • Each volume of Ménage à 3 begins and ends with similar NSFW scenes. The first volume opens with Gary walking in on Matt and Dillon having sex on the couch and ends with Dillon walking in on Matt and Sandra having sex in about the same position. The second volume opens with Gary having an Erotic Dream about Zii in which she turns out to be a man and ends with Yuki having an Erotic Dream about a girl who turns out to be a female Gary. The third volume opens with Sandra waking up on DiDi's boobs, and ends with her waking up on Senna's.
  • 8-Bit Theater begins with Black Mage and Fighter lost while searching for a MacGuffin in the beginning. In the epilogue, they're once again lost while searching for another quest, and Fighter suggests they continue looking for the very same MacGuffin.
  • Concerned: The Half-life and Death of Gordon Frohman begins and ends with a snide joke about Valve's constant delays in releasing games.
  • Though not in the chronologically-first strips, Girly created these with the New First Comics and the Grand Finale.
  • Problem Sleuth begins with a particularly hard-boiled Private Eye Monologue delivered by the titular Problem Sleuth. After Problem Sleuth has performed Sepulchritude and used The Final Flip-Out, he's on the verge of death, where the original monologue's structure is used, except this time, it's talking about how he's in limbo.
  • The first Concession comic is mirrored by the appropriately-titled fifth-to-last comic. The Alt Text confirms that it is indeed the same customer.
  • The Phoenix Requiem begins with a celebration of "All Souls' Night" (in that setting it has similar importance than our Christmas/New Year's Eve). The comic ends with the same celebration 2 years later. The first scene begins with Jonas arriving. The last one ends the same way.
  • Homestuck did a variation at the end of its fourth act - the final scene of the end-of-act Animation Bump is of a meteor from the Reckoning passing through one of Skaia's defensive gates and striking John's house, which is exactly what happened in the conclusion of Act 1 and what kickstarted the adventure to begin with.
    • The end-of-Act 5 Animation Bump did the same thing: to represent all of the kids' reality being fundamentally reset by the Scratch, when Jade is enlarging the Fourth Wall for her and John to travel through, it displays a rapidly-reversing slideshow of many of the earliest panels of Homestuck, ending with the very first page of John standing in his room before cutting to white.
    • The first pesterlog of Act 5 Act 2 ended with John telling Karkat "See you soon". The last pesterlog starts with Karkat repeating the same line to Jade.
  • Irregular Webcomic: "Hey, there's comics on the Internet!" Keep in mind that 2011 David Morgan-Mar's soul was transported back into his 2002 body and Death made him forget everything that happened over IWC!'s run. Also, #3182 is only the Grand Finale of the main arcs; guest comics and Annotation comics have been posted since.
  • Darken both starts and ends with a character being resurrected to serve a demon lord.

Web Original

  • Sailor Nothing has the following at the start and end of the Web Novel. "My name is Shoutan Himei. I'm sixteen years old/seventeen years old, going on eighteen in two months, and I'm very tired."
  • Broken Saints begins and ends with a voice-over monologue by Shandala, starting with "I dream". Both start off much the same, but grow gradually different to reflect the change from the beginning and ending of the story.
  • The pilot of Cause of Death begins and ends with a shot of the sunny street, which counters the horrible things that happened inside that house...
  • Awkward begins and ends with the same discussion between Alex and Lester. The context and roles have changed, but the location and dialogue are the same.
  • Kickassia begins with The Nostalgia Critic knocking on President Kevin Baugh's door and telling him he plans to invade Molossia. It ends with a defeated Critic knocking on the door and giving Baugh his country back.
    • And speaking of The Nostalgia Critic, most of his reviews actually begin and end with him saying, "I'm the Nostalgia Critic. I remember it, so you don't have to!"
    • Suburban Knights begins with Angry Joe believing he's won a free car. It ends with Chester A Bum believing he's won a free car.
  • A Very Potter Musical opens with the song "Gotta Get Back to Hogwarts" and A Very Potter Sequel ends with a reprise of the same song.
  • Yogscast has one in their first season of Yogscast Minecraft Series. A bit before discovering the town full of NPCs, Lewis and Simon build a portal to the Nether (which doesn't work). At the end of the season, they are at the same portal, preparing to venture into it. However, they end up not trying to enter until the start of season three, with season two being more of a breather season. And the portal still doesn't work.
    • Season three starts with almost the entirety of Simon and Lewis's old world on fire, and them trying to reclaim items from the wreckage. Much later (though not at the end of the series, but at the end of an important part), they find Mistral City also on fire, and are trying to reclaim items from the wreckage. This time, specifically the Holy Record from the church.
    • In Survival Island (a custom map that eventually starts having slight relevance to the main plot that is billed as Season 2), they are in a slight hurry at the start to get coal for torches. Near the end, they again go looking for coal, this time to fuel the airship that will take them home.
  • Volume 3 of Dial B for Blog began with this image and ended with this one [dead link]. Both are based on the cover to Strange Adventures #162.
  • The Angry Video Game Nerd's 100th review ends with a shot of Castlevania II: Simon's Quest (the first game he reviewed).

Isn't this where-

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