History Main / Bookends

* From [[Fanfic/Swing123AndGarfieldodiesCalvinverse the Calvinverse]]: the opening of ''Fanfic/CanYouImagineThat'', canonically the first installment in the series, is replicated nearly word-for-word in the end of ''Fanfic/RetroChill'' (canonically its last... [[ContinuitySnarl we think]]).

* ''{{Kickassia}}'' begins with WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic 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.

** SuburbanKnights begins with Angry Joe believing he's won a free car. It ends with Chester A Bum believing he's won a free car.
** Oddly enough, one could apply this to each of the (as of 2012, first) four Anniversary specials with respect to the relationship between the Critic and WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd. The first one is basically a set-up for an all-out brawl between the two that had been developing for several reviews. At the end of the fourth special - "ToBoldlyFlee" - a now-friendlier Nerd ends up helping the Critic to [[BigDamnHeroes save the day]] and get his friend home, revealing a [[WorthyOpponent sense of respect that had developed]] in their time since the feud, culminating in a friendly handshake between the two before the Nerd departs.

* ''AdventCrossoverCrisis'' begins and ends with narration from SlyCooper, both times discussing how everyone goes through very strange lengths of time, even relative to how strange their life usually is. To a lesser extent, the first and last line of spoken dialogue are both said by {{Deadpool}}.

* The Season 3 episode of ''WWE NXT'' that introduces the comedy gold commentary team of CM Punk, [=Heel=] Michael Cole, and Josh Matthews begins and ends with CM Punk telling his fellow commentator to "Shut up, Josh".
* Molly Holly began her career in WWE as a blond in pigtails. Her persona, wardrobe and hairstyles changed more than a few times over the course of her career, but in her final in-ring appearance (The Divas Battle Royal at WrestleMania 25), she reprised her original blond pigtailed look.
* Lance Storm began his wrestling career in 1990 with a match against fellow Hart Dungeon alum, Chris Jericho. In 2005, he came out of retirement for one last match at ''ECW One Night Stand'' against ... Chris Jericho.

* [[TearJerker "Ladies and gentlemen,]] ShawnMichaels [[CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming has left the building."]]
* The Season 3 episode of ''Wrestling/{{WWE}} NXT'' that introduces the comedy gold commentary team of CMPunk, {{Heel}} MichaelCole, and Josh Matthews begins and ends with CMPunk telling his fellow commentator to "Shut up, Josh".
* The final match in the final episode of {{WCW}} Monday Nitro was a rematch of the first match on the first episode, Wrestling/RicFlair Vs Wrestling/{{Sting}}.
* In {{Edge}}'s final match, he won the match with a Spear. The very first move he used in his very first match? The Spear!
* TheIlluminati-style dominance of the [[NewWorldOrder nWo]] {{expy}} stable [[MassiveMultiplayerScam Immortal]] over {{TNA}} storylines was first established with Wrestling/HulkHogan finally turning heel at Bound for Glory in 2010 and a 30-40-minute segment explaining things on the following Impact. Said dominance would dwindle over time until it inevitably died the following year with Wrestling/HulkHogan finally turning face at Bound for Glory in 2011 and a 30-40-minute segment explaining things on the following Impact.

[[folder:Newspaper]]

[[folder:Professional Wrestling]]

* The final match in the final episode of {{WCW}} Monday Nitro was a rematch of the first match on the first episode, RicFlair Vs Wrestler/{{Sting}}.

* ''AVeryPotterMusical'' opens with the song "Gotta Get Back to Hogwarts" and ''AVeryPotterSequel'' ends with a reprise of the same song.
** This one's a weird case, because the sequel is actually a prequel, so when they're singing "Gotta Get Back to Hogwarts," it's like putting the two ends right in the middle. A little inversion, then?

* Pedro I of Brazil (also Pedro IV of Portugal) died in the same room where he was born.

* For many people, their life begins and ends in a hospital.
* There is a joke that you begin and end your life in diapers.
* For the more BloodKnight types, that you will go out the way you came in: naked, screaming, and covered in someone else's blood.
* People sometimes go through these without taking much note of it. For example, you begin and end the day asleep.
* Several people died on their birthdays. The most famous would probably be Ingrid Bergman. Tradition also holds this for Creator/WilliamShakespeare. (We only know when he was baptized and when he died, but the dates are such that it's certainly possible.)
* MuammarGaddafi -- born in [[DoomedHometown Sirte]], killed in [[DoomedHometown Sirte]].

* In {{NASCAR}}, Jimmie Johnson's five consecutive Sprint Cup champion titles (2006-2010) were preceded and followed by Tony Stewart's second (2005) and third (2011) titles.
* In the 2012 NFL Draft, the Indianapolis Colts selected quarterback Andrew Luck with the first pick. With the last pick, they also selected a quarterback, Chandler Harnish.

[[/folder]

* The [[strike:Hebraic]] multilingual poetic device called a chiasmus is this trope defined.

--->Critic: See you on the other side, man.
--->Nerd: [[CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming Nice working with you, Critic.]]

[[folder:Other]]
* The Montana Meth Project has some chilling public service announcements, with [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWsqBIN6VD0 these]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-Vw2yt-Vn8&feature=related two]] having the BookEnds. 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.
* The cover of ''Magazine/NintendoPower's'' last issue is a remake of its first issue's cover.
* This applies to all websites' HTML codes. They all begin and end with the codes <html> and </html> respectively.
** Many other markup languages do this to.
[[/folder]]

* The Eastern Roman Empire, more commonly known as Byzantium, began with an emperor called Constantine, Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus, who founded the city of Constantinople in 330. It ended with an emperor called Constantine, Constantine XI Palaeologus, who died when the city fell to the Turks in 1453. Similarly, Rome itself was founded as a city by a man called Romulus, while the last Roman Emperor (in the west) was called Romulus Augustus. It gets deeper, with the first Emperor of Rome having had chosen the name Augustus. The last Western Roman Emperor shared his name with both founders.
** Emperor Julius Nepos continued to be recognized by Odoacer as Emperor of the West for four years after Romulus Augustus, but because he didn't rule the city of Rome (his empire was limited to the province of Dalmatia), it's more romantic to ignore him and specifically ''invoke'' BookEnds on the Western Empire.
** TheRomanRepublic also began and ended with a rebellion and civil war involving a man named Brutus.
** Arguably, the Roman Empire begins with a single city (Rome) sacked by a powerful neighboring people (the Gauls, in 390 BC). The Romans declared that this must never happen again. It ends eighteen hundred years later with a single city (Constantinople) sacked by a powerful neighboring people (the Turks, in 1453 AD).
* MarkTwain, the author of ''TomSawyer'' and ''TheAdventuresOfHuckleberryFinn'' was actually born when Halley's Comet was at its perihelion (when it is closest to the Sun), and he actually died when said comet was at its perihelion again 75 years later.
** It was actually one of his life's goals to live between the comet's appearances.

** Also, the war began with the Union Loss of Fort Sumter. Shortly after the war, on April 14, 1865, Fort Sumter had a flag-raising ceremony where the same commander who took the flag down when the Union lost the fort raised the same flag up. While this is nice bookends for the fort itself, this ceremony of taking back the fort was on the very same day Abraham Lincoln was assassinated - the last major loss of the Civil War.
* For many people, their life begins and ends in a hospital.
* There is a joke that you begin and end your life in diapers.
** And for the more BloodKnight types, that you will go out the way you came in: naked, screaming, and covered in someone else's blood.

** Also averted with most stars, since they usually expand when they die. Played straight, however that most stars are born from nebulae, and some turn into nebulae [[SublimeRhyme when they die.]]
** Also played straight with the Earth. Approximately 4 billion years ago, it was too hot to support life due to its surface completely being covered by magma, but in another 1 billion years, the Sun's transformation into a red giant will again make it too hot to support life.
*** Also because of the Sun's gradual increase in brightness, the Earth in the distant future will actually experience the same conditions as in its distant past but in the reverse order (for example, in the past there was a supercontinent preceding a meteorite collision preceding an ice age, in the future there will be an ice age followed by a meteorite collision followed by a supercontinent). At the same time the last living things will actually die out in the reverse order of how they evolves, with the last to appear also being the first to vanish. As a result the last living things to disappear will actually be bacteria, which were also the first to appear on our planet.
** And should humanity go extinct, then many of our iconic buildings will actually deteriorate in the reverse order of how and when they were built: the more modern skyscrapers will be among the first to crumble away, while structures lasting since the ancient times (such as the Pyramids of Egypt) will take millennia to disappear.

* MuammarGaddafi - born in [[DoomedHometown Sirte]], killed in [[DoomedHometown Sirte]].

** Or species that reproduce by splitting, such as bacteria. The individual bacterium is born when its "parent" splits, and it dies when it splits into two more bacterium.
* "What hath God wrought?" was both the very first, and the very last, telegraph transmission.
** To be a little more specific, "What hath God wrought?" was the first electric telegram, sent in 1837. (Optical telegraphs, using smoke, mirrors, or semaphore, existed long before.) The "last telegram" mentioned above was the last telegram sent by Western Union. Telegraph is still in use in countries including Bahrain, Germany, Japan, and Sweden, mainly for formal notices (mainly funerals, weddings, and births), and for sheer novelty. It's also still in use in areas of the world without Internet access.
* People sometimes go through these without taking much note of it. For example, you begin and end the day asleep.
* The major European conflicts of the twentieth century. To whit: the Eastern Question of what would happen to the newly formed Balkan states after downfall of the Ottoman Empire triggered World War I, as Serbia wished to take over Bosnia which was an Austrian protectorate. WWI caused WWII, as Germany (and other nations) were deeply unsatisfied by the results of WWI. It also caused the Russian revolution, and the first major communist power. WWII caused the spread of communism through Eastern Europe, mostly through the Soviets, but through homegrown communist partisans in Yugoslavia. This led to the Cold War, which contributed to the downfall of communism in Eastern Europe. The downfall of communism in Yugoslavia led to the disintegration of the nation, and the YugoslavWars, posing the new question: what would happen to the newly formed Balkan states after the downfall of Yugoslavia? Especially as Serbia wished to take over Bosnia. The history of the twentieth century began and ended with [[UsefulNotes/OttoVonBismarck "some damn thing in the Balkans."]]
* Pedro I of Brazil (also Pedro IV of Portugal) died in the same room where he was born.
* Playwright Eugene O'Neill's last words: "I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room, and God damn it, died in a hotel room."
* When Jaroslav Seifert, a Czech Nobel Prize winning poet, was born in September, a butterfly flew into the room and alighted on his mother's bed. When he died, there was a butterfly flying over his coffin at his funeral. The church must have been warmed by loads of people present or it must have been an unusually warm winter becuase he died in January.

* This applies to all websites' HTML codes. They all begin and end with the codes <html> and </html> respectively.

[[folder:Other]]
* The Montana Meth Project has some chilling public service announcements, with [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWsqBIN6VD0 these]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-Vw2yt-Vn8&feature=related two]] having the BookEnds. 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.
* The cover of ''Magazine/NintendoPower's'' last issue is a remake of its first issue's cover.
[[/folder]]

** Arguably, the Roman Empire begins with a single city (Rome) sacked by a powerful neighboring people (the Gauls, in 390 BC). The Romans declared that this must never happen again. It ends eighteen hundred years later with a single city (Constantinopel) sacked by a powerful neighboring people (the Turks, in 1453 AD).

''[[Music/PinkFloyd -we came in?]]''

** Also played straight with the Earth. Approximately about 1 billion years ago, it was too hot to support life due to its surface completely being covered by magma, but in another 1 billion years, the Sun's transformation into a red giant will again make it too hot to support life.
*** Only if, by "approximately 1 billion years," you mean "4 billion years." Earth's crust was solid by 4 billion years ago. Life was up and running on Earth as early as 3 billion years ago, complete with oxygenic photosynthesis.

** Oddly enough, one could apply this to each of the (as of 2012, first) four Anniversary specials with respect to the relationship between the Critic and TheAngryVideoGameNerd. The first one is basically a set-up for an all-out brawl between the two that had been developing for several reviews. At the end of the fourth special - "ToBoldlyFlee" - a now-friendlier Nerd ends up helping the Critic to [[BigDamnHeroes save the day]] and get his friend home, revealing a [[WorthyOpponent sense of respect that had developed]] in their time since the feud, culminating in a friendly handshake between the two before the Nerd departs.

-->'''Rythian/Zoeya''': I miss you, I need you, [[InterruptedDeclarationOfLove I love you]]."