History YouCantGoHomeAgain / Film

* In ''Film/Film/ThePatriot2000'', Tavington is told by Cornwallis to take the gloves off in their war against the American colonists. Tavington demands the Ohio territory since if he does what is instructed, he can never go back to England with honor.

* The BittersweetEnding of ''Film/MagnificentWarriors''; the town of Kaal is destroyed and it's citizens are now wandering nomads, but they are free from Imperial Japanese rule.

** And, of course, the BigBad, Nero, is in the same boat, thanks to [[spoiler:the supernova that took out Romulus and his subsequent time-traveling.]]

** By the end of ''Film/ANewHope'', Luke has lost pretty much everything. His aunt and uncle are dead, he can't go back to the farm, because he would have been killed even before the Death Star incident thanks to the droids. [[MentorOccupationalHazard His mentor dies]], and Biggs, his best friend, dies being a human shield protecting him during the Battle of Yavin. [[TraumaCongaLine This all takes place over the course of a few days tops]]. A few expanded universe novels imply that the only thing that got Luke though was the adrenaline and the fact that he was given practically no downtime for him to think about it. Subverted in ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'', when he has to return to rescue Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt.

* In ''Film/{{Suffragette}}'', when Maud returns from a suffrage meeting, her husband doesn't let her enter their shared home and leaves her to sleep on the streets. [[spoiler: Fortunately the suffrage movement is prepared for such cases, and a room with affordable rent is provided almost immediately.]]
* In ''Film/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles1990'', the Foot find out where the Turtles' lair is and kidnap Splinter, forcing the Turtles to stay at April's...until the Foot find them there and attack. This is the reason why the Turtles are at April's new apartment in the beginning of the sequel ''[[Film/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtlesIITheSecretOfTheOoze Secret of the Ooze]]'' and looking for a new home; "We could always go back to the old sewer den." "Oh, right, Raph. It's a little tough, when about five hundred members of the Foot clan ''know where you live.''"
* In the ending of ''Film/ThorRagnarok'', [[spoiler: Surtur destroys Asgard in a massive explosion killing himself Hela and her Berserkers army while the Asgardians (with Thor as their new king) escape on a spaceship to find a new home.]]

--> '''AJ''': You don't get it do you? For me, home is a million miles away now. Home is on another planet. ''(He hunches over before rising with fangs and gold eyes)'' I'm a fucking zombie now!

* A major element in 2007's ''Film/{{Transformers}}'' movie. The civil war on Cybertron damaged the planet's surface, and the Allspark being destroyed means that the planet will die eventually. [[spoiler: At the end of ''Film/TransformersDarkOfTheMoon'', the Space Bridge's destruction possibly causes Cybertron to collapse on itself, forever preventing the Autobots from returning to their old home.]]

--> '''AJ''': You don't get it do you? For me, home is a million miles away now. Home is on another planet. (He hunches over before rising with fangs and gold eyes) I'm a fucking zombie now!

* At the beginning of ''WesternAnimation/RalphBreaksTheInternet'', [[spoiler:after steering wheel of the ''Sugar Rush'' arcade game breaks, with the company that made it out of business and a replacement part too expensive, the arcade manager is reluctantly forced to unplug the game. Thanks to Ralph, Vanellope and all the other characters manage to escape, but are now without a home. This ultimately leads into the main plot of Vanellope seeking out an internet game to be part of]].

* In the film version of ''Film/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'', the Earth ''is'' restored, but Arthur Dent decides that the world would be a better place ''without'' him, having fallen in love with Trillian and wanting to share her wanderlust.

* ''WesternAnimation/AnAmericanTail'' : The reason the Mousekewitz family emigrates to America is because the Cossacks burned their village to the ground.
** Interestingly, the village has been [[WordOfGod exclusively identified as]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shostka Shostka, Ukraine]]... which is still standing today.

* ''WesternAnimation/FrozenII'': Iduna (Anna and Elsa's mother) saved Agnarr from the battle in the Enchanted Forest between the Arendellians and the Northuldra. As a result, a mist wall magically concealed the forest, and Iduna was trapped outside of the forest, unable to return home. Despite the mist disappearing 34 years later, Iduna isn't around to return there--yet.

** Leia is a more straight example of this. She literally can’t go home because her planet, Alderaan, was [[EarthShatteringKaboom was destroyed by the Empire.]]

* A major conflict in ''WesternAnimation/InsideOut,'' where Riley and her Emotions come to terms with leaving behind Minnesota.

* A major element in 2007's ''Film/{{Transformers}}'' movie. The civil war on Cybertron damaged the planet's surface, and the Allspark being destroyed means that the planet will die eventually. [[spoiler: At the end of ''Film/TransformersDarkOfTheMoon'', the Space Bridge's destruction possibly causes Cybertron to collapse on itself, forever preventing the Autobots from returning to their old home.]]

* In ''Film/StarTrek2009'', [[spoiler:Spock and Spock Prime]] both wind up afflicted by this trope: [[spoiler:Spock because Vulcan has just imploded]] and [[spoiler:Spock Prime because he's marooned in another timeline...''and'' Vulcan has just imploded.]]
** And, of course, the BigBad, Nero, is in the same boat, thanks to [[spoiler:the supernova that took out Romulus and his subsequent time-traveling.]]

* In the ''Film/ForrestGump'' movie, Forrest has Jenny's childhood house razed in order to bring closure to years of abuse by her father.
* ''Film/PaintYourWagon'' features this lyric: "Home is made for coming from, for dreams of going to/ which, with any luck will never come true."
* In the film version of ''Film/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'', the Earth ''is'' restored, but Arthur Dent decides that the world would be a better place ''without'' him, having fallen in love with Trillian and wanting to share her wanderlust.
* ''Film/TheHuntForRedOctober''. Marco Ramius makes ''sure'' that his defection will be real by burning all of the bridges behind him.
* In ''Film/{{Idiocracy}}'', where the main characters, after hibernating in pods for 500 years, wake up to a world of naturally selected idiots.
* In ''Film/HarlemNights'' (1989), Quick (Eddie Murphy) and Sugar Ray (Richard Pryor) pull TheCaper that results in [[spoiler:the death of the major rival crime boss.]]. Knowing the danger of what they have done, they take a last wistful look at the New York skyline before bidding the city goodbye.

* It takes Columbus a while to come to this conclusion in ''Film/{{Zombieland}}''. He wants to get back to Ohio to see if his family is still alive (although he eventually admits that that wouldn't mean much even if they were). He reacts appropriately when Wichita tells him that that's a pretty fruitless venture, as it's "a total ghost town". He still doesn't quite get it until he's about to leave and he realizes that he really can't go back home.

* In ''Film/AboutSchmidt'', during one of his excursions on the way to his daughter's wedding, Schmidt goes to visit his childhood home from many years ago, only to find a tyre shop now standing in its place. He still goes inside and tries to reminisce, to the bemusement of the clerk.
* In ''Film/HowardTheDuck'' this is what happens to the title character in order to save the Earth.
* Ash's fate in the original ending of ''Film/ArmyOfDarkness'', in which he [[spoiler:drinks too many drops of a sleeping potion and wakes up after the apocalypse]].

* In ''Film/ShanghaiNoon'', [[BigBad Lo Fang]] [[TraumaticHaircut cuts off Chon Wang's queue]], knowing full well that he can never return to China afterwards, which was absolutely TruthInTelevision for Chinese natives.

* ''Film/{{Dawn of the Planet of the Apes}}'':
** Caesar visits his old home for the first time in years. However, it has gone into ruins and his former master is long gone.
** [[spoiler: Exploited by Koba as he set the apes' territory on the fire and shoots Caesar, blaming both acts on the humans. And without their home, the apes are forced to go into war.]]
* In ''Film/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles1990'', the Foot find out where the Turtles' lair is and kidnap Splinter, forcing the Turtles to stay at April's...until the Foot find them there and attack. This is the reason why the Turtles are at April's new apartment in the beginning of the sequel ''[[Film/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtlesIITheSecretOfTheOoze Secret of the Ooze]]'' and looking for a new home; "We could always go back to the old sewer den." "Oh, right, Raph. It's a little tough, when about five hundred members of the Foot clan ''know where you live.''"
* ''Franchise/StarWars'': WordOfGod states that the reason Obi-Wan had Luke Skywalker go to Tatooine after birth to live with the Lars family despite it being Vader's home planet is that Darth Vader is unwilling to ever return to Tatooine due to painful memories of the place.
** By the end of ''Film/ANewHope'', Luke has lost pretty much everything. His aunt and uncle are dead, he can't go back to the farm, because he would have been killed even before the Death Star incident thanks to the droids. [[MentorOccupationalHazard His mentor dies]], and Biggs, his best friend, dies being a human shield protecting him during the Battle of Yavin. [[TraumaCongaLine This all takes place over the course of a few days tops]]. A few expanded universe novels imply that the only thing that got Luke though was the adrenaline and the fact that he was given practically no downtime for him to think about it. Subverted in ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'', when he has to return to rescue Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt.
** Leia is a more straight example of this. She literally can’t go home because her planet, Alderaan, was [[EarthShatteringKaboom was destroyed by the Empire.]]
* In ''Film/{{Suffragette}}'', when Maud returns from a suffrage meeting, her husband doesn't let her enter their shared home and leaves her to sleep on the streets. [[spoiler: Fortunately the suffrage movement is prepared for such cases, and a room with affordable rent is provided almost immediately.]]
* At the end of ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger'', Steve Rogers wakes up in the present day, approximately 65 years after he crashed the Valkyrie into the Arctic to prevent the bombing of New York City. Most of the familiar landmarks of New York have changed, and almost everyone he knew is dead. He can go back to Brooklyn, but he can never truly go home.
* In the ending of ''Film/ThorRagnarok'', [[spoiler: Surtur destroys Asgard in a massive explosion killing himself Hela and her Berserkers army while the Asgardians (with Thor as their new king) escape on a spaceship to find a new home.]]
* In ''Film/EncinoMan,'' when the school takes a trip to the museum, Link stares at the exhibits of cavemen and comes to the [[HeroicBSoD horrified realization]] of what happened to him, and that the prehistoric world he knows is gone forever.
* [[InvokedTrope Invoked]] by Rocky in ''Film/TheAdventuresOfRockyAndBullwinkle'', when he learns that Bullwinkle's beloved alma matter has turned against them. Bullwinkle, naturally, [[ComicallyMissingThePoint misunderstands]].
* In ''Film/TimeTrap'', the protagonists enter a cave where [[YearOutsideHourInside a year passes outside for every second inside]], and at the end of the film they are over ten thousand years past their own time.
* ''{{Film/Highlander}}'': Connor is banished from his village and clan after his immortality is discovered. He narrowly avoids a BurnTheWitch thanks to the clan chief. (Which is probably for the best considering being burned alive drove an immortal in the series AxCrazy...)

* In ''Film/TimeTrap'', the protagonists enter a cave where [[YearOutsideHourInside a year passes outside for every second inside]], and at the end of the film they are over ten thousand years past their own time.

* ''WesternAnimation/FrozenII'': Iduna (Anna and Elsa's mother)saved Agnarr from the battle in the Enchanted Forest between the Arendellians and the Northuldra. As a result, a mist wall magically concealed the forest, and Iduna was trapped outside of the forest, unable to return home. Despite the mist disappearing 34 years later, Iduna isn't around to return there- yet.

* [[InvokedTrope Invoked]] by Rocky in ''Film/TheAdventuresOfRockyAndBullwinkle'', when he learns that Bullwinkle's beloved alma matter has turned against them. Bullwinkle, naturally, [[ComicallyMissingThePoint misunderstands]].

* ''Film/WonderWoman'': Hippolyta tearfully warns Diana that should she choose to leave Themyscira, she can never return. Diana acknowledges this, but still chooses to fulfill her purpose.

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]