Sequel Gap

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/wiki/Sequel Gapwork

A film or other literary work where a Sequel is released long, long after the original work. May sometimes be a Trilogy Creep, very often related to Development Hell. Does not apply to Sequels In Name Only, Sequel Series, or Franchise Reboots. This Trope is for honest-to-goodness sequels. See also Capcom Sequel Stagnation, and a related Webcomic trope, Schedule Slip.

Examples of Sequel Gap include:

Anime and Manga

• Slayers Try (1997) and Slayers Revolution (2008) -- 11 years.
• Both in-universe and out-of-universe, there was a Sequel Gap between Mobile Suit Gundam and Mobile Suit Z Gundam. Real life: 7 years. In-universe, 5 years. This happened again later with Char's Counterattack, which came out 8 years after Z Gundam, and then after that, a couple of years later, came F91. Another, even bigger Sequel Gap is between Chars Counterattack and its direct sequel, Mobile Suit Gundam UC, which had its first episode launched about 17 years after CCA. The Universal Century certainly loves Sequel Gaps a lot.
• Ghost in The Shell (1995) and Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004) -- 9 years.
• Last Exile (2003) and Last Exile: Fam, The Silver Wing (2011) -- 8 years.
• Gunbuster (1988–89) and Diebuster (2004-05) -- 14 years.

Film

• Toy Story 3, a gap of 11 years from 2.
• Monsters, Inc. will be getting a prequel, Monsters University in 2013–12 years after it was released.
• The Secret of NIMH (1982) and The Secret of NIMH 2: Timmy to the Rescue (1998) -- 16 years.
• A number of Walt Disney Direct to Video examples:
  • The Fox and the Hound (film) (1981) and Fox and the Hound 2 (2006) -- 25 years.
  • Cinderella (1950) and Cinderella 2: Dreams Come True (2002) -- 52 years.
  • One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) and 101 Dalmatians 2: Patch's London Adventure (2003) -- 42 years.
  • Lady and the Tramp (1955) and Lady and the Tramp 2: Scamp's Adventure (2001) -- 46 years.
  • Bambi (1942) and Bambi II (2006) -- 64 years, a record for the longest gap in film.
• And Disney theatrical ones:
  • Peter Pan (1953) and Return to Neverland (2002) -- 49 years.
  • The Jungle Book (1967) and Jungle Book 2 (2003) -- 36 years.
  • Fantasia (1940) and Fantasia 2000 (1999) -- 59 years.
  • The Rescuers (1977) and The Rescuers Down Under (1990) -- 13 years.
• Cat City (1986) and Cat City 2: The Cat of Satan (2007) -- 21 years.
• The Incredibles (2004) and The Incredibles 2 (2018) -- 14 years.
• Tron (1982) and Tron: Legacy (2010) -- 28 years.
• Wall Street (1987) and Money Never Sleeps (2010) -- 23 years.
• The Hustler (1961) and The Color of Money (1986) -- 24 years.
• Psycho (1960) and Psycho II (1983) -- 23 years.
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) -- 19 years.
• Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983) and The Phantom Menace (1999) -- a 16-year Prequel Gap.
• Return to Oz was made 46 years after The Wizard of Oz. The stylistic differences are great enough that by some standards it's more of a thematic sequel than a direct one.
• An American Werewolf in London (1981) and An American Werewolf in Paris (1997) -- 16 years.
• Rocky V (1990) and Rocky Balboa (2006) -- 16 years.
• Rambo III (1988) and Rambo (2008) -- 20 years.
• The Blues Brothers (1980) and The Blues Brothers 2000 (1998) -- 18 years.
• WarGames: The Dead Code. 1983/2008–25 years (with some non-trope-fitters in between).
• Common with the Terminator series: 7 years to the second, 12 to the third, and 6 to the fourth.
• Also common with the Alien series: 7 years to the second, 6 to the third, and 5 to the fourth. And if you count the Alien vs. Predator films in the series, another 7 years to the first of those.
• Speaking of which—there's a fourteen-year gap between Predator 2 (1990) and Alien vs. Predator (2004). Or, not counting the Alien vs. Predator films as legitimate, there's a twenty-year gap between Predator 2 (1990) and Predators (2010).
• The Beastmaster and Beastmaster 2: Through The Portal of Time—9 years. It may seem short for this list, but by some accounts, it had the longest Sequel Gap as of 1991.
• Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles, released 13 years after the second.
• The Godfather Part II (1974) and The Godfather Part III (1990) -- 16 years.
• Superman Returns (2006), released nineteen years after the last Superman film—and chronologically following the second film, released 26 years before.
• The Three Musketeers 1973 & The Four Musketeers (1974) and The Return of the Musketeers (1989) -- 15 years. (Not unreasonable considering the latter is an adaptation of the book Twenty Years After.)
• Bean (1997) and Mr. Bean's Holiday (2007) -- 10 years.
• An obscure film noir movie Strange Bargain (1949) was given a sequel 38 years later in 1987—in an episode of Murder, She Wrote, where Jessica Fletcher investigated the original crime.
• Scream 3 (2000) and Scream 4 (2011) -- 11 years.
• Die Hard With a Vengeance (1995) and Live Free or Die Hard (2007) -- 12 years.
  • Also, the book that the first movie is based on was a sequel to The Detective, which was made into a film starring Frank Sinatra in 1968. Die Hard didn't come out until 1988.
• There's a 14-year gap between Basic Instinct and its sequel.
• Johnny English (2003) and Johnny English Reborn (2011) -- 8 years.
• Escape from New York (1981) and Escape From L.A. (1996) -- 15 years.
• Counting only the main American Pie films (the direct-to-DVD spinoffs are borderline In Name Only anyway), it's 9 years between American Wedding and the 2012 American Reunion.
• Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004) -- 9 years.
• Bad Boys (1995) and Bad Boys 2 (2003) -- 8 years.
• Brazilian filmmaker made a trilogy about his Alter Ego character Coffin Joe. The movies are At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul (1963), This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse (1967), and finally Embodiment of Evil (2008), only 41 YEARS after the second one. Of course, that doesn't mean he did nothing at all this years, even using Coffin joe in minor roles in his other projects.
• Spy Kids 3D: Game Over (2003) and Spy Kids 4D: All the Time in the World (2011) -- 8 years, by which time Fleeting Demographic had set in. The franchise was more-or-less remarketed as though new.
• The Naked Civil Servant (1975) and An Englishman In New York (2009) -- 34 years.
• Men in Black 3 comes 10 years after its predecessor.
• Harold Lloyd's The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947) was a sequel to his hit film The Freshman (1925).
• The Hobbit had its first part released 9 years after The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (see also the Literature entry below).
• Top Gun (1986) and Top Gun: Maverick (2022) -- 36 years, though work was being done on it as far back as 2012.

Literature

• Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep came out in 1992; the sequel, The Children of the Sky, was released in 2011 (19 years). A Deepness in The Sky—set in the same universe but not a direct sequel—came out in the interim.
• C. J. Cherryh's Cyteen and Regenesis (1988/2009) -- 21 years. Similar to the Vinge example above, Cherryh had other Alliance Union books come out between the two.
• The Time Ships, an official sequel to The Time Machine was published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the first book (1895/ 1995).
• There was a 12-year gap between the third and fourth book in The Demon Princes series. The series was always planned to have 5 books.
• The Earth's Children series had a 12 year gap between The Plains of Passage (1990) and The Sheltes of Stone (2002). Assuming The Land of the Painted Caves comes out as scheduled in 2011, that will have been another 9 year gap.
• Part I of Goethe's Faust was first published in 1808. Part II (a sequel in all but name) was released in 1832 (24 years).
• The Unicorn Chronicles had something like almost 10 years between the 2nd book and the 3rd book being published.
• Peter And Wendy (1911) and its authorised sequel Peter Pan in Scarlet (2006) -- 95 years.
• Closing Time, the sequel to Catch-22, was published in 1994; 33 years after the original novel.
• In the Magic Kingdom of Landover series, there was a fourteen year gap between the fifth book, Witches' Brew, and the sixth, A Princess of Landover (for reference, there were nine years between the release of the first book and the fifth).
• Gone with the Wind (1937) and its authorised sequel Scarlett (1991) have a gap of 54 years and then an officially authorized POV Sequel Rhett Butler's People (2007) 16 years later.
• My Side of the Mountain (1959) by Jean Craighead George had its sequel On the Far Side of the Mountain published in 1990, leaving a gap of 31 years. The third book, Frightful's Mountain, came nine years after that.
• Julie of the Wolves (1972) by Jean Craighead George got its sequels Julie and Julie's Wolf Pack in 1994 and 1997, respectively (22 and 25 years).
• Psycho, the original Robert Bloch novel (1959), and Psycho II also by Bloch (1982), which was totally unrelated to the film sequel—23 years.
• Magicians of Gor (book 25 in the series): 1988 -- Witness of Gor (book 26): 2001. 13 years.
• Fans of Isobelle Carmody's Obernewtyn series waited 10 years for the fifth book in the sequence; the fourth book, The Keeping Place was originally published in 1998, The Stone Key in 2008.
• In Clare Bell's The Named series, the release of the first four books was spread between 1983 and 1991. Seventeen years later, the series started its re-issue because of its new fifth book, Ratha's Courage (2008). The next year also saw a novelette written on Twitter and a short story in an anthology of speculative fiction.
• The fourth book in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, Foundation's Edge, was published in 1982, 29 years after the original trilogy.
• The third book in his "Robot Trilogy", The Robots of Dawn was published in 1983, 26 years after the second.
• The Hobbit (1937), followed by The Lord of the Rings (three volumes, 1954-1955) -- 17–18 years.
• The Pit Dragon Chronicles by Jane Yolen was originally a trilogy that was published 1982-1987. The fourth book came out in 2009–22 years.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books: 8 years between So Long and Thanks For All The Fish (1984) and Mostly Harmless (1992), and 17 years between Mostly Harmless and And Another Thing (2009). Though the latter was due to Author Existence Failure.
• The Iliad and The Odyssey were likely composed some time around 850 BC. The Aeneid, a Continuation Fic, was finished in 19 BC. If both are taken as part of Classical Mythology, that's a Sequel Gap of over 800 years.
• The Egypt Game (1967) and The Gypsy Game (1997) -- 30 years. Both are set in The Present Day through the use of Comic Book Time.
• The first two books in Leslie Barringer's Low Fantasy Neustria Cycle came out in 1927 and then '28. The third and final book was published 20 years after the second.
• Some 65 years separated Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman.

Video Games

• Bionic Commando (1988) and Bionic Commando Rearmed (2008) -- 20 years.
• Duke Nukem 3D (1996) and Duke Nukem Forever (2011) -- 15 years. There were a few games that played differently a few years after 3D, however.
• Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters (1991) and Kid Icarus: Uprising (2012) -- 21 years. The trailer for the new game pokes fun at this by having Pit say, "Sorry to keep you waiting."
• Super Metroid (1994) and Metroid Prime / Metroid Fusion (2002) -- 8 years. Then 8 more years to Metroid: Other M (2010). Then 11 more to Metroid Dread (2021).
• Marvel vs. Capcom 3—a decade after the second game.
• The Great Giana Sisters (1987) and Giana Sisters DS (2009) -- 22 years.
• Fallout 2 was released in 1998, Fallout 3 came out in 2008–10 years.
• StarCraft II, 12 years after the original.
• Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike (1999) and Street Fighter IV (2008) -- 9 years. Although, there were other Capcom fighting games featuring Street Fighter characters.
• Sonic The Hedgehog 3 (1994) and Sonic the Hedgehog 4 (2010) -- 16 years. Although there were many other Sonic titles released between then.
• Mega Man 8 (1996) and 9 (2008) -- 12 years. As with Sonic, there were other Mega Man titles released, though nearly all of them falling into the various other sub-series.
• Golden Sun: The Lost Age (2003) and Golden Sun: Dark Dawn (2010) -- 7 years.
• Team Fortress Classic and Team Fortress 2. Eight years.
• Diablo III will come out 11 years after the original.
• Goblins 3 (1993) and Gobliiins 4 (2009) -- 16 years.
• American McGee's Alice (2000) and Alice: Madness Returns (2011) -- 11 years.
• NiGHTS Into Dreams... (1996) and NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams (2007) -- 11 years.
• The Longest Journey (1999) and Dreamfall (2006) -- 7 years. Plus Dreamfall Chapters (still in pre-production in 2011).
• Out Run (1986) and Out Run 2 (2003) -- 17 years. Although it did have other pseudo-sequels (namely Turbo OutRun and OutRunners for the arcades).
• After Burner III (1992) and After Burner Climax (2006) -- 14 years.
• Dance Dance Revolution EXTREME (2002) and Dance Dance Revolution SuperNOVA (2006) -- only 4 years between those two major arcade releases, but the four years before saw no less than 7 major arcade versions of DDR, as well as Plus versions and spin-offs.
• X (a 3D First-Person Shooter for Game Boy, 1992) and X-Scape (DSiWare, 2010) -- 18 years.
• Tron (1982) / Discs of TRON (1983) and Tron 2.0 (2003) -- 20 years.
• Raiden III (2005) -- 7 years if you count Raiden Fighters JET (1998) as the last entry, 11 if you count Raiden DX (1994) as the last.
• G-Darius (1997) and Darius Burst (2009) -- 12 years.
• Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1990) and Metal Gear Solid (1998) -- 8 years.
• River City Ransom (1989) and River City Ransom 2 (scheduled for 2012) -- 23 years. There has been other Kunio-Kun games in Japan in the years between (including other beat-'em-ups), but as far as a genuine River City Ransom/Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari sequel is concerned, the closest thing there is to one was Downtown Special: Kunio-kun no Jidaigeki Dayo Zen'in Shūgō for the Famicom, a feudal-themed pseudo-sequel released exclusively in Japan in 1991, and the GBA version (River City Ransom EX) released in 2004.
• Carmageddon TDR 2000 (2000) and Carmageddon: Reincarnation (scheduled for 2012) -- 12 years.
• Luigis Mansion (2001) and Luigi's Mansion 2 (scheduled for 2012) -- 11 years.
• Pilotwings 64 (1996) and Pilotwings Resort (2011) -- 15 years.
• Sam & Max: Hit the Road (1993) and Sam & Max: Culture Shock (2006) -- 13 years.
• Final Fantasy IV (1991) and Final Fantasy IV: The After Years (2008) -- 17 years. Note that this is in regards to a direct story sequel, as the Final Fantasy series is Non-Linear Sequel with 14 titles in the main series.
• Pikmin 2 (2004) and Pikmin 3 (planned to be a launch title for the Wii U in late 2012) -- 8–9 years.
• EarthBound (1994 in Japan) and Mother 3 (2006) -- 12 years. It should be noted that MOTHER 3 fell victim to Vaporware status for a very good chunk of that time - its earliest incarnation was intended for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and it ended up emerging at the end of the Game Boy Advance's lifespan!
• Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts (1991) and Ultimate Ghosts 'n Goblins (2006) -- 15 years. Not counting the Wonderswan game Capcom licensed to Bandai, the Game Boy Advance port of Super, or the Gargoyle's Quest spin-off series with Firebrand (aka Red Arremer).
• Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (1995) and New Super Mario Bros. (2006) -- 11 years. Mario had kept on going in the meantime, but New was a direct return to classic 2D platforming that had been mostly abandoned since Yoshi's Island.
• Donkey Kong (1981), Donkey Kong 94 (1994), and Mario vs. Donkey Kong (2004) -- 13 years and 10 years, respectively.
• Donkey Kong Country 3 (1996) and Donkey Kong Country Returns (2010) -- 14 years. If you count Donkey Kong 64 (1999) in the series, it's 11 years.
• Super Smash Bros. Melee (2001) and Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008) -- 7 years.
• Thunder Force V (1997) to Thunder Force VI (2008) is another 11 years.
• Seiken Densetsu 3 (1995) to Seiken Densetsu 4 (2006) is, again, 11 years. Spin-offs were produced in between but this was the first numbered game since.
• Shantae (2002) to Shantae: Risky's Revenge (2010) -- 8 years.
• Wasteland (1988) to Wasteland 2 (scheduled for 2013) -- 25 years.
• Yoshi's Island (1995) to Yoshi's Island DS (2006), that's 11 years if you only count games in the direct Yoshi's Island series. If you count other Yoshi games, the gap between Yoshi's Story (1997) and Yoshi's Topsy Turvy/Universal Gravitation (2004) would count instead, with 7 years between games.
• Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc (2003) and Rayman Origins (2011) -- 8 years. The Raving Rabbids games are only spin-offs.
• Disaster Report's fourth game came out nine years after the third due to real life disaster setting it into Development Hell. Counting English releases only, it raises to thirteen years.
• Armored Core: Verdict Day (2013) to Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon (2023) -- 10 years.