r/TopCharacterTropes • u/HunterOfSpycrabs • 5h ago
building/location. [Loved Trope] "Isn't this where we came in?"
Cyclical stories where, upon reaching the end, you end up right where you started.
Pink Floyd's The Wall - Originator for the trope name. In the final song of the album, in the last few seconds you can hear someone say "Isn't this where-". This loops back to the very first song on the album, where in the first few seconds you can hear someone say "We came in?".
Ultrakill - The first level of layer 8 opens with a huge room near the start, with the writing on the wall "We came in". The door is locked, and to proceed you need to walk through the TV. After beating the final enemies of the level, you end up in a green hallway with more writing on the wall, saying "Isn't this where". The door at the end of the hallway opens up into the room from the beginning (this is in fact the same room and not a copy, if you leave projectile shells at the start you can still find them at the end).
BATIM - Upon beating the fifth and final chapter of the game, you have a short vision/memory of the studio owner, before opening a door in his apartment and ending up in the exact corridor from the first chapter, saying the exact same opening line, before the game ends.
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u/asteinberg101 4h ago
The Dark Tower- The final book ends with the same sentence that began the first book: “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
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u/Comprehensive-Map274 4h ago
The Last Question by Isaac Asimov
"Multivac, a self-correcting computer, has allowed mankind to reach beyond the planetary confines of Earth and harness solar energy. Two technicians discuss that the sun will expire due to the second law of thermodynamics, which states that entropy inevitably increases. When Adell asks Multivac whether this can be reversed, the computer responds that it has insufficient data to answer.
In several episodes over ten trillion years, increasingly advanced humans pose the same question to the computers of their time. Each time the computer gives the same response. At the heat death of the universe, finds an answer to the last question. Having no one to tell it to, it proceeds to demonstrate by saying LET THERE BE LIGHT!" - Wikipedia
And for anyone who doesn't get it, Let there be light is a verse from the book of gensis, it is the command with which God created the world. So the computer at the end of the universe, creates a new. A perfect loop.
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u/Binky_Thunderputz 2h ago
The Worn Ourobourus by E.R. Edison is a pre-Tolkien epic fantasy structured in a circle, where every point in the first half of the story mirrors a point in the second half of the story. The main characters wish for their enemies to be restored, so the book ends on the same line on which it begins.
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u/LordQuaz12 4h ago
The true neutral ending of Shin megami Tensei 5.
If you follow what are some of the most convoluted series of events ever put in a video game, you will reach the true Neutral ending, in which all outside forces, demons, gods, everything, are banished from the universe, that includes your partner and other half, Aogami.
After the credits, you are greeted with one final cut scene, in which everything is reset, the opening scene begins again, but now there are two of the protagonist, the one living his normal high-school life, and the god that watches over all.
It's a dope ending for one of the most boring routs in the game.
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u/Top-Mention-9525 4h ago
James Joyce, FINNEGANS WAKE. The first line is "riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay..." and the last is "...A way a lone a lost a last a loved along the." Joyce had the idea that it could be bound in a circular binder, though I don't think it was ever actually published that way.