Distant Finale: Difference between revisions

** ''.hack//Roots'' also had one entitled Returner. Like unison it has characters from the GU games and Roots in it.

* The final episode of ''[[El Cazador de la Bruja]]'' is set unspecified time after the showdown with the [[Big Bad]]. Judging by how much Ellis has grown, it must have been several years.

* The epilogue scene of ''[[Zegapain]]'' is set an ambiguous number of years after the final battle, with the lighthouse visited in an earlier episode now ravaged by time and reclaimed by nature. Depending on the viewer's interpretation, it can be a [[Bittersweet Ending]] ( {{spoiler|as Kyo started aging once he had been reconstituted as a real human being, but the time needed to restore this technology, and save the rest of mankind, might have surpassed his own lifespan}}.)

* The last chapter of ''[[Inuyasha]]'' takes place 3 years later, then jumps ahead a bit for the last pages.

* The final scenes of ''[[Solty Rei]]'' take place several years after the [[Final Battle]] (and attendant [[Heroic Sacrifice]]) to save the city from Eirene. {{spoiler|Roy finds Solty floating in space, still alive}}.

* The second bonus chapter of the ''[[Shoujo Sect]]'' manga jumped into the future to show that Momoku, Shinobu, and Maya were living together, and having this fact revealed to all of Shinobu's coworkers, much to her embarrassment.

* The ending to the ''[[Shaman King]]'' manga, "Funbari No Uta," is one of these. {{spoiler|It follows Yoh and Anna's son Hana, his emerging spiritual powers, and how he meets his very own Anna, whom he is destined to be with.}} We also get to see the main characters and what's become of them now that they're all grown up.

* The ending to ''[[Dragon Ball]] GT'' is set 100 years in the future where Goku and Vegeta's descendants fight in a World Martial Arts Tournament.

* One of these was planned for the ''[[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]]'' anime at one point, as noted in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b70GRNYnacI a Japanese trailer for the first movie]; aside from footage that doesn't actually appear in the movie proper, the crux of the trailer involves {{spoiler|an older Misty talking to a mysterious young girl with pinkish hair. No explanation as to who she is or who the other blue-haired lady with them is, and we'll never know}}. [[Long Runners|We know how well that one turned out, don't we]]?

* Apparently subverted in ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'': {{spoiler|Asuna wakes up 130 years in the future in 2135 instead of the intended 100 years, and finds out [[Everybody's Dead, Dave|everyone she knew has passed away]] in the intervening time, with Negi dying at 72 years old in 2065. Ayaka Yukihiro lasted the longest in waiting for Asuna dying at 115 years old in 2104, ironically the same year Asuna was to wake up. Evangeline simply turns up with Chao and they travel to a parallel dimension where it's only a few minutes after she goes to sleep in the Magic World.}} The epilogue then takes place 7 years later, showing a [[Where Are They Now? Epilogue]] for the class.

 

== Comic Books ==

* The final issue of ''[[Y: The Last Man]]'' gives us a view of what Earth has become 60 years after the series' climax, with flashbacks to update us on how the surviving characters spent the intervening time. Somehow, the issue maintains the same dramatic tension and plot twist quantity as all the others in spite of this device.

* There was foreshadowing that this device would be used in ''[[The Ballad of Halo Jones]]'', with a scene set in a university history lecture several thousand years after the events of the main story discussing Halo's significance as a historical character/folk hero. However, the comic was, unfortunately, never finished.

* Most of the last volume of ''[[The Sandman]]'' is this. Interestingly, it plays with the timeline by skipping back to Shakespeare at the end.

* The final issue of ''[[Planetary]]'' takes place a year after the previous one. And was released 3 years after the previous issue.

* The end of ''[[Superman: Red Son]]''.

* Mike Costa ended his run on IDW's ''Transformers'' comics with a Distant Finale. Issue 31 skips ahead hundreds of years into the future where a new age of peace has begun. Ironhide and Alpha Trion are some of the few remaining original Autobots, the Transformers live on Gorlam Prime instead of Cybertron, and Optimus Prime and Megatron have both disappeared with their names becoming legend. The issue ends with a group of young Transformers asking Ironhide to tell the story of when the Autobots finally defeated Megatron....

 

* ''[[Billy Elliot]]'' - Last scene is of his father and brother going to see him as a professional Danseur (Ballarino).

* The classic Hitchcock film ''[[North by Northwest]]'' ends with a tense and {{spoiler|literal cliffhanger in which Roger is desperately coaxing a frightened, dangling Eve to grab his hand so that she doesn't fall from Mount Rushmore. The camera zooms in on her terrified face as she flails to reach him, and suddenly his encouraging words turn to "Come along, Mrs. Thornhill!" and the screen wipes to show the two of them playing in bed on their honeymoon. That little wipe contains ''the resolution to the danger'' as well as their return from the mountain, any debriefing between them and the Professor, and their engagement and marriage.}}

* The last scene of ''[[Broadcast News]]'' shows the three main characters seven years on.

* ''[[Heaven's Gate (film)|Heaven's Gate]]'' ends with the main character on a boat off the coast of Rhode Island, married to another woman, more than a decade later.

 

== Literature ==

* The novel of ''[[The Lovely Bones]]'' ends with Susie's charm bracelet, which could have provided a clue to her murder, being found years after the fact by a couple who has no idea who it once belonged to.

* ''Time Regained'', the last volume of [[Marcel Proust]]'s ''A la recherche de temps perdu'', inverts this trope. We see all the characters we met in the preceding volumes—all those who have survived, at least—years or sometimes decades after they had last figured in the narrative. The party at which this all takes place is, however, the [[Long Runner|entire epic]]'s ''present'', with the whole story told in [[Flash Back|flashback]].

 

== Live-Action TV ==

* ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]'' reverses this - the premise is that 20 or so years after the main character has met, married and had kids with the girl of his dreams, said kids ask their father to retell the story of how the two of them met - and the entire series becomes a giant flashback to relate this story, going on for half a dozen seasons with only occasional <s>remarks from</s> [[Stock Footage]] of the kids to keep the frame story intact.

** They didn't ask. "Are we being punished for something?"

* Inverted on ''[[Newhart]]'': In the final scene of the last episode, Dick Loudon wakes up to discover that {{spoiler|his entire life from 1982 to 1990 as depicted in ''Newhart'' was actually a dream of Bob Hartley, the protagonist of ''The Bob Newhart Show'', which had last aired in 1978}}. That comes after a false [[Where Are They Now? Epilogue]] in the same episode.

* ''[[Dollhouse]]: Epitaph One'', included with the first season DVDs, is set 10 years in the future, {{spoiler|showing what the consequences of the Dollhouse's technology will be on civilization.}} It's not pretty. Nor entirely accurate, since it ended up getting renewed.

* ''[[Strange Days at Blake Holsey High]]'' has a strange exception, considering the final episode is a film. It takes place a year after Josie disappears into the worm hole.

* ''[[Third Watch]]'' ends with Office John "Sully" Sullivan giving an epilogue on the fates of all the characters—marriage, children, jobs, etc., including himself, retired and living upstate.

 

== Theatre ==

 

== Video Games ==

** Last Episode: {{spoiler|Saber welcomes Shirou into Avalon, after apparently having waited for him for an ''eternity''. Presumably an epilogue to the Fate scenario of the game}}

** Heaven's Feel:

* The [[Darker and Edgier|"A Wonderful Life"]] ''[[Harvest Moon]]'' sub-series ends with these, after you [[Bittersweet Ending|die]].

* While most of ''[[Rogue Squadron]]'''s story takes place prior to the Battle of Hoth, the last mission is years later during the ''[[Dark Empire]]'' conflict, specifically the Battle of Calamari where the World Devastators were stopped.

 

== Web Comics ==

* ''[[Unicorn Jelly]]'' ends with jumps of 350, 116666, and finally 150000 years. Then the semi-sequel ''[[Pastel Defender Heliotrope]]'' jumps ''700000'' years after the original. And then ''that'' sequel has a 100000 years later Distant Finale.

* ''[[Penny and Aggie]]'', a high school dramedy, skips ahead 6 years, in its final chapter (the previous arc having ended just before the main cast's senior year), to the characters' [[Class Reunion]].

 

== Web Original ==

* ''[[Tech Infantry]]'' has the Y3K story, set almost a millennium after the rest of the plot, and the [[Aborted Arc|abortive]] '"Tech Infantry: Exodus'' project, set several centuries after that.

 

== Western Animation ==