Chased Off into the Sunset

Same old, same old apparently.

"Begin the end by chasing each other into the distance, then scream comically, followed by an Iris Out."

— The Narrator, How to Haunt a House

So the story has ended. The villain has been defeated, the orphanage will stay open, the girl has been rescued, and everyone just sits back to relax and celebrate their victory — right?

Except, to close the story, a character ends up chasing after another character, usually out of anger. Normally, this trope is Played for Laughs as the chased offender may have insulted someone else, did something stupid or wrong, or maybe committed some offense earlier on in the story. The two (usually it's two characters) end up in a chase while the others may look on, sometimes with indifference or sometimes even in amusement. Bonus points if they're friends or teammates, and extra bonus points if the character being chased is the defeated villain (who apparently does not Know When to Fold 'Em).

For this trope to apply, the chase has to happen at the end of the story. This could be the very end of a movie or TV show episode or just the end of an individual story in an anthology or a skit in a sketch comedy/variety show.

A type of Chase Scene and may overlap with Everyone Chasing You. If the chaser is an animal, it's Exit, Pursued by a Bear. Compare and contrast with Off-into-the-Distance Ending.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The final episode of Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts ends with an Escalating Chase that eventually drags in pretty much all the main characters. The principal glances out the window and notices that they're all just running in a circle.
• In Daily Lives of High School Boys, in the strip High School Boys and the New Term, Yoshitake and his group attended school one day before the term actually starts because the teacher misinformed them. It ends up with the students chasing after the teacher.
• Doraemon: Occurs in "A World Without Sound". In the final frame, Big G punches Noby while they run off into the distance.
• The 2nd opening and ending of The Familiar of Zero ends with Saito being chased by Louise.
• At the end of Episode 4 of the Little Lulu anime, after the Endurance Test is over and Tubby is awarded the medal for going the longest without any food, Tubby then figures out that someone else also walked the course besides himself, before pointing out that Lulu was the one who brought back the food that he hid the night before. Lulu then tells Tubby that she didn't want him to break the rules, which culminates in Tubby chasing after Lulu. Of course, earlier in the episode, when Tubby explains to Lulu about the food he hid all over the course the night before, Lulu was Obfuscating Stupidity to throw off Tubby's suspicions.
• Lupin III: A number of movies and episodes end with Zenigata chasing the title character off to the next adventure.
• One episode of Pokémon: The Original Series ended with Misty chasing after Ash after suddenly remembering he still owed her a new bike.
• Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie: With the day saved, Sonic runs for the horizon. Tails and Knuckles follow, then everyone else piles into Robotnik's Eggmobile and flies after. Sonic realizes that everyone is following him, and he puts on a burst of speed before the credits roll.
• Urusei Yatsura: The Final Chapter, the Animated Adaptation of the manga's final arc, has a revised ending where Ataru's refusal to say "I love you" to Lum and Lum's accepting him back despite that makes the residents of Tomobiki so angry they chase the teens away through the street, with the movie ending on a close up of Lum and Ataru's faces as each promises, in their own roundabout way, to love the other forever.

Asian Animation

• The Lamput episode "Fracture" ends with the Docs chasing Lamput into the distance after he gets back into shape from breaking the one bone in his body.

Comic Books

• An Archie Comics story had Jughead timing Archie for the latter's partaking in a track meet, where he is astonished to learn that he just broke the record for being the fastest there is. Come the day of the track meet, after Archie wins the race, Coach Kleats then reveals to Archie that Jughead's stopwatch is actually a lot slower than Archie, which angers Archie so much that he starts chasing Jughead at the end of the story.
• This happens in virtually every last panel of every story in the Spanish comic series Mortadelo y Filemón, with the two bumbling secret agents typically being chased by their boss, his secretary, the agency's scientist, or a combination thereof because they (again) screwed up their case big time. Sometimes, Mortadelo will also use his superhuman camouflage skills to hide as a cactus, cow etc. with Filemon hiding "in" him, and their suspicious pursuers in the vicinity looking around for them. Sometimes, Filemon will be the one chasing Mortadelo instead.
• Disney Ducks Comic Universe:
  • Frequently pops up in the European Scrooge McDuck stories (see Never My Fault for more details). When one of Scrooge's plans to make more money fails, rather than accept responsibility, Scrooge blames Donald Duck. The story then ends with an angry Scrooge chasing after Donald, often carrying a big club or mace. Huey, Dewey, and Louie usually look on, sometimes with indifference but sometimes chortling with amusement.
  • Depending on the story, Donald may have indeed caused the disaster for which Scrooge blames him. For example in the finale of The Seven Wonders of the Ducks (1990), Donald accidentally activates the Self-Destruct Mechanism of the Money Bin. In Uncle Scrooge and the Hittite Chariot (1982), Scrooge has managed to locate the titular chariot, which reportedly had mystical qualities, and assigns its transportation to Donald. Donald decides to remove and throw away some heavy and seemingly useless elements of its equipment, to make the chariot lighter and easier to transport. Much later the Ducks discover that the mystical qualities were solely due to the removed parts, which were by then destroyed. In both cases, the story ends with this trope.
  • Huey, Dewey, and Louie were victims of this themselves, usually with Donald wielding a switch or other instrument of corporal punishment.
  • In "Paperino e la card mania", Donald accidentally talks Scrooge into a business decision that ruins the market of telephone card collecting. In the final panel, Donald is chased by furious collectors and quips that, for once, it's not Scrooge chasing him.
• One of the Valhalla comic albums ends this way. Earlier in the story, Loki lures a giant's horse away to make sure the giant can't complete a bet. He does this by disguising himself as a mare — and months later, comes back with a gift for Odin, the eight-legged steed Sleipnir. Loki runs into the stallion again at the end of the story and promptly flees for his life with the horse in pursuit.
  • The very end of the comic also includes this. Loki believes himself to be the only one of the old gods to have survived Ragnarok, and takes the time to badmouth Thor and Heimdall post-mortem. Meanwhile, Röskva's visions have told her the gods have survived the fall of Asgard, and Thor and Heimdall decide to pop in on Loki just as he's done insulting them. The last we see of Loki he's chased off by a very localized lightning storm.

Films — Animation

• Alice in Wonderland: "The Walrus and the Carpenter" ends with the Carpenter chasing the Walrus to parts unknown after discovering he ate all the baby oysters himself.
• DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp: After his adventure is over, Scrooge McDuck decides to have some fun by diving into his fortune. However, that's when he notices Dijon trying to leave with his pants filled to the brim with a good chunk of the duck's wealth. This is immediately followed by Scrooge chasing after Dijon out of the Money Bin and into the streets of Duckburg, all while the DuckTales theme song is playing in the background.
  Scrooge: SOMEBODY, STOP THOSE PANTS!
• Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs: Played with, the movie ends with Buck realizing his nemesis Rudy (the great white Baronyx) is still alive, and goes back to continue fighting him.
• In Mavka: The Forest Song, the Big Bad's henchman Frol is last seen being chased off by his own chainsaw.
• Lupin III movies tend to have this.
  • The Castle of Cagliostro ends with Lupin III and his cronies fleeing in a car away from the police into the sunset.
  • The Mystery of Mamo provides a twist, by having Zenigata handcuff Lupin, then having them both run off together being chased by missiles launched by the US and Russia.
  • Lupin III: The First, like The Castle of Cagliostro, ends with Zenigata and Interpol chasing Lupin, Jigen, and Goemon into the sunset as Laetitia looks on.

Films — Live-Action

• Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls ends with Ace being chased through the jungle by the native tribes, after they discover The Chief's Daughter is no longer a virgin.
• The alternate ending of Faster has the protagonist driving off into the sunset, pursued by police cars.
• Laurel and Hardy:
  • 1932 film ''Pack Up Your Troubles" plays this trope straight. Early on, Stan and Oliver get an Army cook in trouble. He vows that if he ever comes across the duo again, he'd come after them with a knife. At the end of the film, when they've happily resolved everything, they're asked to stay to eat. The cook turns out to be the former Army cook from before — and he makes good on his threat as he chases Laurel and Hardy off into the distance.
  • Block-Heads ends with Stan and Ollie being chased off by a gun-toting, jealous husband.
• In the live-action Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf film Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: I Love Wolffy, right before the end credits, Wolffy chases Paddi off into the distance.
• At the end of Happy Gilmore, Shooter McGavin is chased by a mob of angry fans led by the 7 feet tall Mr. Larson after Shooter steals Happy's commemorative jacket, and quickly has his screaming ass beaten offscreen while Larson orders him to stay still.
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: A humorous example occurs at the end of the movie when Marcus Broody - who has no experience with horses - tries to ride off into the sunset but winds up with his steed running wild. This forces Indy, Henry, and Sallah to chase after him in order to catch up with Broody and help him get his horse under control.
• Song of the South: The "Laughing Place" sequence ends with Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear being chased by a swarm of bees while Br'er Rabbit laughs at their misfortune.
• The Three Musketeers (1993) ends with D'Artagnan and all the musketeers chasing off Girard and his men. This is also a Book Ends as D'Artagnan's introduction showed him being chased by Girard and his men.

Literature

• Used in The Dark Tower series in a very spoileriffic fashion. The last line of the last book is the same as the first line of the first book: "The Man In Black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed."
• The third book of The Immortals ends with the Big Bad, Emperor Ozorne, trying to Take a Third Option that isn't "get killed by hyenas" or "abdicate in favor of his nephew" and undergoes a Magical Species Transformation into a Stormwing, which incidentally removes him from the throne and takes away his magic. A Stormwing then decides to take "Stormwing justice" out on him for his crimes and Ozorne clumsily flees. The Immortals was first intended as a trilogy; there turned out to be a fourth book, though, in which Ozorne survived and made a different kind of trouble.
• The book version of The Princess Bride ends with Westley, Buttercup, and crew on the run from Humperdink's forces.
• A Little Golden Book titled Tweety Plays Catch the Puddy Tat involves Tweety wanting to get Sylvester to stop chasing him. Tweety succeeds with a witch disguise, scaring Sylvester off. Tweety quickly gets bored though and allows Sylvester to chase him only twice a day. The book ends with Sylvester doing just that.

Live-Action TV

• The mandatory ending for The Benny Hill Show — Benny Hill's character is usually shown being chased off into the horizon by an angry mob.
• A Couch Gag during the Closing Credits of Blackadder II shows the minstrel singing the theme song irritating Blackadder, Blackadder chasing him, and finally catching & drowning him.
• In Radio Enfer, some episodes end with someone chasing someone else out of the radio crew's room.
  • The Halloween Episode has Jean-Lou accidentally insulting Mr. Giroux, causing the radio crew to lose the opportunity to win a trip to France. Vincent then arrives, congratulating Jean-Lou because the newspaper crew ended up winning the trip. This is followed by Jocelyne arriving and announcing that the trip was unfortunately cancelled, but that it'll be replaced with a trip to Ottawa. Vincent is disheartened, given that his parents brought him to that city too many times during family trips. He then starts chasing after Jean-Lou in anger.
  • One episode has Camille suffering from a burnout, so the other characters agree to replace her with all her chores while she is taking a break for a week. Once she comes back and realizes she now has a lot of free time, Jean-Lou asks her if she’s willing to teach him how to be a DJ, which happened earlier in the episode and turned into a disaster. Camille's reaction is to angrily ask Jocelyne where is the baseball bat that she used during her therapy session and proceeds to chase after Jean-Lou.
  • Vincent decides to do a video about the radio crew for one of his courses, filming the crew over the course of the episode. At the end, it turns out he edited the video in a way that made fun of the radio crew. Camille responds by destroying the VHS tape, only for Vincent to reveal he made a copy. This is immediately followed by the radio crew and Jocelyne chasing after him.
  • Jean-Lou comes up with an idea for an invention, which consists of a rat trap. Laplante helps him build the trap and even manages to sell it to a manufacturer. He then makes Jean-Lou sign a contract which gives to the latter the full rights to the invention. However, it's only immediately after the signature that Laplante admits the manufacturer's teckel ended up stuck in the invention, resulting in the manufacturer suing in response. Realizing that Laplante managed to shift the blame entirely on Jean-Lou thanks to the contract, Jean-Lou, Carl, and Maria chase after Laplante to get their hands on the contract. However, unlike other instances of this trope, Maria manages to block the door to the radio crew's room, resulting in Laplante electing to run into the radio booth and shutting the door.
  • Jocelyne has been dreaming of owning an off-road vehicle. She was hoping to get the money for it by being a speaker at several conferences (with a pretty good salary) over several years. When one such conference, where she was suffering from amnesia due to several blows to the head done by a frying pan, results in her no longer being able to do conferences, Germain points out that she won't get her off-road vehicle because of that. Jocelyne then asks "What off-road vehicle?", making Germain realize she's still suffering from amnesia and tries to hit her again with the frying pan. It ends with Jocelyne running away from Germain, while Carl, Maria, and Dominique are trying to stop him.

Video Games

• This kind of ending occurs in some of the Mega Man spin-offs, with Mega Man chasing Dr. Wily.
  • ''Wily Wars ends with Dr. Wily feigning surrender, only to lob a bomb at Mega Man. When this sneak attack fails, Wily runs away with Megs in hot pursuit.
  • Mega Man V's ending involves Wily trying to attack Mega Man with his broken-down saucer, but it explodes, he begs for mercy, and then runs away from Mega Man.
• Shadow the Hedgehog: After Devil Doom is defeated, Knuckles chases off Dr. Eggman when the latter starts thinking about making a ploy for the Chaos Emeralds.
• Sonic Heroes: The end of the Team Sonic Route, Sonic has a few seconds to celebrate victory with Tails and Knuckles... before Amy appears out of nowhere to chase after him. Roll credits. The final scene of the Team Rose Route shows the scene again, only from Amy's perspective, revealing that both teams somehow defeated their respective Final Boss within 20 feet of each other without noticing. The final ending has Team Chaotix run off after Dr. Eggman to try and get their payment from him.
• Super Solvers: Treasure Cove! No sunset, but still relevant. After the player retrieves enough gems to rebuild the rainbow bridge to Invention Island, The Master of Mischief, Mortimer Maxwell, discovers that the magic, which is restoring the bridge and the island, is about to overtake his factory. In a panic, he leaps into the ocean and is chased off beyond the horizon by a shark trailing him.
• At the end of the Taz-Mania Licensed Game for the Sega Genesis, this happens to Taz when he attempts to eat the giant seabird's egg, only for it to hatch into a baby seabird and mistake him for its mother.

Web Comics

• Near the end of the Dominic Deegan storyline that introduced the Infernomancer, Stunt and Bumper exit being chased off by the Infernomancer's lackey. They survive, though we never find out how they did it (only that Bumper came up with the plan) and the lackey is never seen again.

Web Videos

• Real-Time Fandub: Eggman's final appearance in the Shadow the Hedgehog dub is him running away from Knuckles, who's trying to get him to quote his "pissing on the moon" speech again despite having just done so and asked that nobody request any more references from him.
  Knuckles: Eggman! Will you say it, will you say it again, Eggman?
  (Screen hard cuts to Knuckles chasing Eggman)
  Knuckles: Come here, come here, come here! Say it, say it, say it! I'm gonna get in your Twitter mentions. Say it, say it, say it!
  Eggman: No, no, no, no, no! Stop, stop, stop, stop getthefuckawayfrommeeee –- aaaaah...!
• R. H. Talltales's customary fate in Worlds Greatest Adventres, once his lies are exposed by circumstance. In a twist on the classic trope, the camerawoman herself is the one chasing him.

Western Animation

• Aristotle chases after Socrates at the end of the Adventures from the Book of Virtues episode "Moderation", after Socrates eats the remaining cookies in the jar.
• The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius:
  • "Send in the Clones" ends with Jimmy getting chased to parts unknown by those who got bothered by his clones, after learning there's still one around when Jimmy claimed he got rid of them all.
  • "A Beautiful Mine" ends with Jimmy's friends turning on him after learning all their rubies have been destroyed to get back to earth, leading them to chase him down the block with their holographic shovels.
• The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3: At the end of "Princess Toadstool for President", King Koopa runs after Cheatsy after he explains why he voted for the Princess over him.
• Adventure Time:
  • In "What was Missing", Finn, Jake, Bubblegum, and Marceline spend the day opening the Doorlord's gate by forming a band and playing a song. In the end they get in and retrieve their stolen items. Finn points out that Marceline didn't lose anything, but she just wanted to hang out. Marceline gets angry, transforms into a large monster, and chases the other characters while they laugh at her.
  • In "The New Frontier", Finn has managed to rescue Jake from dying in a situation that he was going to fatalistically embrace after what he thought was a psychic dream predicting his death. Finn jokes that since he wasn't present in the original dream he'll have to never leave Jake's side ever again, squashing himself against him creepily. Jake runs away laughing, and Finn chases him as the episode ends.
• In the closing credits of The Beatles, the boys are pursued into the horizon by a bevy of fangirls and bevy of mermaids (who they encountered in the last bumper).
• The first episode of Bounty Hamster ends with Cassie and Marion, who have been tied together by a rival bounty hunter, hopping into the sunset to escape an angry mob of people whose space station they caused to crash.
• Donald Duck: In "Soup's On", after realizing that Huey, Dewey, and Louie tricked him into thinking he'd died in a rockslide, Donald is so mad he turns into a Big Red Devil and chases his nephews into the night with a pitchfork.
• DuckTales (1987):
  • Done after Launchpad McQuack crashes a spaceship right into Scrooge McDuck's swimming pool.
  • It happens to Launchpad again in the episode "The Golden Fleecing". At the end of the adventure, Launchpad is pursued by a lovestruck Harpy.
• The Fairly OddParents!: In "The Good Old Days!", this is how the 1930s cartoon Timmy wishes himself into ends: with Peg-Leg Vicky being chased into the sunset by a runaway buzzsaw. And for bonus points, she looks directly into the sunset and blinds herself.
  Sun: I warned ya!
• Fanboy and Chum Chum: The episode "Power Out" ends with both FB and CC getting chased by the angry townsfolk to places unknown after Fanboy's ignorance causes Lenny to break the Frosty Mart's power generator.
• Happens at least once in Fangface: one episode ends with Puggsy angrily chasing Sherman "Fangs" Fangsworth into the distance. This ends up happening when Fangs' alter ego, Fangface, attempts to eat Puggsy and then changed back. As Fangs has no memory of what his werewolf self did, he's puzzled as to why he's being chased.
• The Garfield and Friends episode "Weighty Problem" ends with Jon angrily chasing after Garfield after learning that the latter had tampered with the scale, making him think that he needed to lose extra weight.
• True to the title, most episodes (if not every) of Get Ace end with the protagonist being chased off by someone or something for reasons varying from sensible to totally random.
• Several episodes of Kaeloo have ended with Bad Kaeloo chasing Mr. Cat into the distance with the intention of beating him up.
• A couple of Kim Possible episodes end with Dr. Drakken fleeing from an enraged Shego.
• Played straight in the 1934 Merrie Melodies short "The Miller's Daughter". At the end of the cartoon, the lady of the house angrily lashes out at the cat, thinking it had broken a lamp. The two statues watch with pleasure as she chases the cat out of the house and into the distance.
• This happens at the end of the Mr. Bogus episode "Waterboy Bogus", when Mole accidentally pokes Ratty in the backside with his trident. When Mole tries apologizing to an angry Ratty that he didn't mean to poke him, Ratty takes the trident from Mole and starts chasing after him across the water, as sort of a Shout-Out to the Little Lulu example above.
• My Life as a Teenage Robot: The episode "The Boy Who Cried Robot" ends with Jenny chasing after Tuck, shooting from her laser cannon, after he cries wolf on her one too many times.
• A Pixie, Dixie and Mr. Jinks cartoon had Jinks charged with guarding the food of a fancy dinner party, only for the "meeces" to disrupt things. It ends poorly for Jinks, who is chased in the distance by the mansion butler, swatting Jinks with a broom.
  Pixie: I didn't know the butler could run so fast.
  Dixie: Neither did Jinks!
• There are a couple of episodes of Pucca that end with Garu being chased by the titular character as she wishes to kiss him (which Garu does not like).
• The closing credits for The Real Ghostbusters ends with the Ghostbusters chasing after Slimer for tripping them up during a parade held in their honor.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In the ending of "Opposite Day", Squidward chases SpongeBob and Patrick into the distance with a bulldozer that he used earlier to clean up the mess they made at SpongeBob's house.
  • "My Pretty Seahorse" subverts this with Spongebob and Mr. Krabs chase Mystery to get her to cough up the money she ate from the safe. This is not the last joke of the episode, as Patrick is shown being unable to enter a store. due to the plank of wood nailed to his head.
  • "A Life in a Day" ends with a wheelchair-clad SpongeBob being chased by an angry Larry in crutches.
  • "Giant Squidward" ends with Squidward chasing SpongeBob and Patrick for cutting his kelp to turn Squidward back to normal.
  • "To Save a Squirrel" ends with a starving SpongeBob and Patrick chasing Sandy after she puts them though a survival adventure.
    "Next time, I'll bring more granola!"
  • "The Other Patty" ends with Mr. Krabs and Plankton chasing SpongeBob away to parts unknown, with their newly established "teamwork".
  • "Kooky Cooks" ends with Mrs. Puff, who now has a craving for sponge after eating SpongeBob the night before, chasing him for seconds.
• The Static Shock episode "The Usual Suspect" ends with Virgil's sister, Sharon, chasing after him after one too many wisecracks.
• This is a typical ending for MGM's Tom and Jerry cartoons:
  • In "The Bodyguard," the dog catcher's truck drives away with Spike the bulldog penned inside. Jerry pursues the truck, hoping to free Spike a second time, while Tom pursues Jerry because that's what Tom does.
  • In "Part Time Pal," Mammy Two-Shoes chases a drunken Tom under the moonlight for giving her a Water Wake-up, his hiccuping helping him avoid each swipe of her broom.
    • Another cartoon (rarely seen because Tom emerges from a pile of coal in soot-Blackface) has him running away from Mammy into the distance, only for her to bean him in the head with a thrown lump of coal just as he reaches the horizon.
  • Inverted in "Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Mouse," where it's Jerry chasing an ultra-miniaturized Tom around the house.
  • Played with in "Texas Tom," where Jerry rides Tom like a bronco into the western sunset.
  • "The Vanishing Duck" ends with Jerry and Quacker chased away by an invisible Tom, who whacks them with a coal shovel.
• The 1960 Yogi Bear cartoon "A Bear Pair" has Yogi and Boo-Boo winning a free trip to Paris, France. Before leaving, Ranger Smith reminds them that they are goodwill ambassadors from Jellystone; however, when Yogi mentions being an ambassador later on, this leads to a belief among the French that the two bears are visiting dignitaries. Yogi ends up creating an international incident when he unwittingly insults a French chef and his carefully prepared meal. They're expelled from the country; upon their return, an angry Ranger Smith chases Yogi into the distance while clubbing him with a baseball bat.

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Statler: Why does every story end with the hero getting chased off in the distance?
Waldorf: I don't know, but at least it's better than getting chased underground!
Both: Doh-ho-ho-ho-ho!

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