Basic Trope: A finale that is set many years later keeps the cast together.
- Straight: The final episode of Quirky Adventures is set 20 years after the show's timeline.
- Exaggerated:
- The final episode is set 175 years later, and stars the characters' ghosts.
- There is an entire spin-off set 20 years later.
- Downplayed:
- Half of the final episode is set three years later.
- There is a short epilogue at the end of the last episode, or after the last chapter, which takes place in the future.
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue
- Justified: The characters all come back for a reunion with mutual friends.
- Inverted:
- Distant Prologue
- The finale is one big flashback.
- Subverted:
- A Distant Finale is announced, but it turns out that in the finale, the characters no longer keep in touch.
- The episode is All Just a Dream of Alice imagining what their lives will be like in twenty years time.
- Double Subverted:
- They are reunited in a Time Skip spin-off.
- Alice was Dreaming of Things to Come.
- Parodied:
- The characters literally didn't do anything during the Time Skip. The time period that the viewer doesn't see wasn't just uneventful; the characters somehow managed to do literally nothing, and they're all in pretty much the same position they were in before the skip. The fact that they're in the future has pretty much no effect on anyone's lives.
- The Time Skip is one million years later. Somehow, the main characters are still alive, despite not being The Ageless.
- Zig-Zagged: Alice, Bob, Guiying, and Hakim go one way while Carol, Douglas, Eric, and Fatima go another way for ten years each. Then Alice and Bob join Carol and Douglas while Eric and Fatima join Guiying and Hakim for ten years. Then they all get back together.
- Averted: The first and last episodes of the show take place around the same time.
- Enforced: A Poorly Disguised Pilot for a spin-off starring the characters' children set up by the original cast Passing the Torch.
- Lampshaded:
- "Coming up next, the Quirky Adventures finale. See the gang twenty years later!"
- "Has it really been 20 years since I've seen you? It feels like we just met up like, one or two episodes ago!"
- Invoked: The characters keep in touch.
- Exploited: In the penultimate episode the Big Bad is sentenced to twenty years in prison, but when he's released he uses the fact the characters are all still in touch to track them down and wreak his revenge.
- Defied: The characters avoid each other.
- Discussed: "Hey, Alice? I'm really grateful that we're still together after all these years!"
- Conversed: "I love shows with a Distant Finale episode. This proves how loyal the characters are to each other."
- Played for Laughs: The characters can't remember meeting each other after such a long time.
- Played for Drama: The characters die in the finale.
Back to Distant Finale
