Line #46 Main/YouCantGoHomeAgain


1	->''"Is anything better than finally finding your way home?''\
2	''Is anything worse than finally reaching home, and finding that you're still lost?"''
3	-->-- '''Creator/MattStover''', ''[[Literature/NewJediOrder Traitor]]''
4
5	For some reason or another, one of the main characters is displaced from their home -- be it in the sense of homeland, home planet, home universe, or literal house -- and unable to return. Often, their attempts to return form a key plotline or focal point of the series, but since StatusQuoIsGod, FailureIsTheOnlyOption (until, perhaps, the GrandFinale). If the reason why they can't return is because of a DoomedHometown or because they are TheExile, then their quest is often {{revenge}} or [[FightingForAHomeland a new place to stay]]. Sometimes they will finally return to WhereItAllBegan to challenge the force that kept them away for so long. Before the character leaves their home, they may give it [[LongLastLook a final glance before leaving.]]
6
7	This is often seen alongside FishOutOfWater, and tends to result in WalkingTheEarth or a WagonTrainToTheStars. TrappedInAnotherWorld usually entails this (so most examples of that trope are equally valid for this one). When this trope is applied to ''the entire human race'', it's EarthThatWas.
8
9	Contrast with IChooseToStay. Also contrast with StrangerInAFamiliarLand, in which you ''can'' go home, but find that you no longer fit in there. If you can't go home because you've been banned from doing so, you're PersonaNonGrata. PatriotInExile and TheStateless may also have been expelled from their native country. Compare TheCallKnowsWhereYouLive, TheExile, HatedHometown, NeverAcceptedInHisHometown, and SoWhatDoWeDoNow. A common outcome of the LeavingTheNestSong.
10
11	When this happens, some people may choose to [[StartingANewLife Start a New Life]] instead.
12
13	----
14	!!Example subpages
15	[[index]]
16	* YouCantGoHomeAgain/AnimeAndManga
17	* YouCantGoHomeAgain/ComicBooks
18	* YouCantGoHomeAgain/FanWorks
19	* {{YouCantGoHomeAgain/Film}}
20	* YouCantGoHomeAgain/{{Literature}}
21	* YouCantGoHomeAgain/LiveActionTV
22	* YouCantGoHomeAgain/VideoGames
23	* YouCantGoHomeAgain/WesternAnimation
24	* YouCantGoHomeAgain/RealLife
25	[[/index]]
26	----
27	[[foldercontrol]]
28
29	[[folder:Asian Animation]]
30	* ''Animation/HappyHeroes'': Big M. and Little M. crash-land themselves on Planet Xing Xing and can't return home to Planet Gray.
31	[[/folder]]
32
33	[[folder:Comic Strips]]
34	* A series of ''ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}}'' strips followed Snoopy taking Woodstock to the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm where he (Snoopy) was born, only to find it had been replaced by a parking garage.[[note]]Depending on when this strip was written, it may have been a ShoutOut to [[Film/TheWizardOfOz Terry, the Cairn Terrier who played Toto]], whose gravesite was destroyed by the building of the Ventura Highway. She now has a memorial statue at Hollywood Forever cemetery.[[/note]] This became the basis for one of the Peanuts specials where Snoopy is reunited with his siblings.
35	--> '''Snoopy''': You stupid people! You're parking on my ''memories''!!!
36	* The comic strip ''Adventures of Gamepro'' ended up like this. A pro gamer finds himself pulled into an AlternateUniverse where video game worlds are real. While he eventually makes it back to Earth, it turns out the superpowers he picked up while he was there tie him to the dimension, and being away is killing him. This forces a tearful goodbye between him and his girlfriend back home before he disappears back to the game dimension.
37	[[/folder]]
38
39	[[folder:Music]]
40	* The song "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdPR8gq3NsA I Can Never Go Home Anymore]]" by the Shangri-Las is made of this trope. It's essentially AnAesop about a girl who runs away from home and breaks her mother's heart to be with a boy, who she forgets about almost immediately, while it's implied that her mother dies of loneliness in the meantime.
41	* "You Can Never Go Home" by Music/TheMoodyBlues presents a psychological/spiritual version of the trope.
42	* Burt Bacharach and Hal David's ''24 hours from Tulsa'', which is as close to home as Gene Pitney gets due to an unplanned encounter at his stop-off, which eventually leads to "I hate to say this to you, but I love somebody new. What can I do? And I can never, never, never go home again."
43	* The Finnish military march ''Jääkärimarssi'' (Yeager March). ''Syvä iskumme on, viha voittamaton, meillä armoa ei, kotimaata'' (Our strike is deep, our wrath implacable, we have no mercy and no homeland). Makes sense, because the Yeagers were patriots (or traitors, depends on which side you look at) who during the WWI joined the German Army to get military training for liberation war against Czarist Russia. The Czarist Law stated mandatory death penalty from high treason.
44	* "Golden Slumbers" on ''Abbey Road'', Music/TheBeatles' last album, starts "Once, there was a way to get back homeward..."
45	* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud6LiVJkwyA Pushin' the Speed Of Light]], a filksong about crewing an STL ship ends with the line "You've left behind you the world of men, with no way in space to go home again."
46	* A number of Jacobite songs focus on this trope since many were either exiled or refused to live in a land that no longer seemed their own. Two standards of this type are ''The Highlander's Farewell'' and ''It Was All For Our Rightful King''.
47	* "When We Return to Portland" is a song about fugitives who flee Portland to become pirates. They long for their old city, but the return would be a sure death sentence, thus "may fate never let us return"
48	* The TropeNamer is the DJ Shadow song "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAhYNzuJDMw You Can't Go Home Again]]". Despite being mostly instrumental, the overall feeling of the song can be described in the only words spoken at the beginning:
49	-->''And here is a story about... being free''.
50	* The Creator/{{RuPaul}} song "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auV66fvgBQI Never Go Home Again]]" is about the prevalence of this trope in the GLBT community, and how queer people often band together and form [[FireForgedFriends new families]] after facing rejection at home.
51	* Ry Cooder's song "How Can You Keep on Moving (Unless You Migrate Too)" includes a verse that converses this trope. [[DoomedHometown "I can't go back to the homestead, the shack no longer stands]]/[[PersonaNonGrata They said I wasn't needed, had no claim to the land]]/They said, [[GetOut 'Come on, get moving! It's the only thing for you!']]/[[LogicBomb But how can you keep moving, unless you migrate too?"]]
52	* {{Music/Pulp}}'s 'Sorted for E's and Wizz' has the singer, talking about a drugged-up episode at a music festival, imagine calling his mother and say "Mother, I can never come home again/'Cause I seem to have left an important part of my brain/Somewhere, somewhere in a field in Hampshire".
53	* "When You Leave That Way You Can Never Go Back" by Music/ConfederateRailroad is from the point of view of a man who's had a series of these all throughout his life. It starts with him having a bad fight with his father and running away from home, then getting a girl in Knoxville pregnant and abandoning her at the altar before their marriage, giving him two families he can never go back to. Almost {{Subverted\|Trope}} as he says in the last stanza that he would like to go back home anyway, beg for forgiveness, and do whatever it takes to come back... but then it ends with [[DownerEnding an even darker one]] as he reveals that he got with another woman in Houston and murdered her husband when the man walked in on their affair. He's sentenced to death and refuses to receive his last rites, with the priest warning him that if he leaves Earth this way, he'll become a wandering lost soul who can never return home to Heaven.
54	* {{Music/Creedence Clearwater Revival}}'s song 'Lodi' deals with this. The protagonist of the song is stranded in the titular town because his agent ran off and left him there, without enough money to afford a cross-country bus home. He's forced to perform at dive bars full of customers who don't care (and don't tip) to try and scrape together money so he can eat, and for a bus fare home. A year later, he's not any better-off financially than he was when he arrived.
55	** {{Music/Creedence Clearwater Revival}} also do this with their early hit 'Porterville' where the son of the town ne'r do well - who isn't quite as bad as his father - can't go home again ''because they will hang him high if he tries'', just because he's his no-good father's son.
56	* The bluegrass/hip-hop fusion group Gangstagrass addresses this trope in their song [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCEHQ_nhxOA "You Can Never Go Home Again"]]--specifically, in the context of trying to put one's life back together after serving a prison sentence.
57	* [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] in the opening line and PlayedWith in 'The House That Built Me' by Music/MirandaLambert as the singer's childhood home is still standing, but someone else is currently living there. The singer still asks the current tenant if she can enter to at least reminisce one last time.
58	* {{Music/Taylor Swift}}'s "My Tears Ricochet": "And I can go anywhere I want / Anywhere I want / Just not home..."
59	* Music/{{Zucchero}}: The song "Il Suono Della Domenica" (The Sound of Sunday) tells about Zucchero missing the rural homeland where he was born and raised. There's an English version of the song called "Someone Else's Tears", whose lyrics emphasize his tearful feelings about it, saying he can't stop crying.
60	[[/folder]]
61
62	[[folder:Mythology and Religion]]
63	* ''Literature/TheBible'':
64	** In the Literature/BookOfGenesis, after Adam and Eve break the rules in the Garden of Eden, they are cast out forever and an angel with a flaming sword guards it from them. Hence, they and their descendants spread around the planet. The trope is eventually [[AvertedTrope averted]] in Christianity, however, when God takes the consequences and punishment for human sin on himself.
65	** In the same book, after Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed, Lot and his daughters take shelter in a nearby cave. Lot's wife made the mistake of looking back as her hometown was destroyed, and ended up [[TakenForGranite being turned into a pillar of salt]]. And their unnamed daughters' fiances were killed along with their neighbors. They [[ButLiquorIsQuicker get their father drunk and rape him]], and each have a son by him, because they think they're the only people left AfterTheEnd.
66	** Also in the same book, most of Abraham's line falls into this, including Abraham and Sarah themselves. Abraham (then known as Abram) and his [[BrotherSisterIncest wife/half-sister]] Sarai are approached by {{God}}, given a MeaningfulRename, and told to migrate to the other side of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertile_Crescent the Fertile Crescent]]. Abraham has a son named Ishmael by his slave Hagar (who is from somewhere around Egypt or Nubia), and when he and Sarah finally have the biological son they've been waiting for (Isaac), Sarah makes him kick Hagar and Ishmael out into the desert. They are promised by an angel that everything will be okay, and Ishmael becomes the HeroOfAnotherStory. Meanwhile, Isaac grows up, and Abraham and Sarah ''really'' want him to marry a girl from the "right" family, instead of the local Canaanite women, whom they view as godless heathens. So they send a messenger back to Padan-Aram, and he brings home a girl named Rebekah as a bride for Isaac, and it's understood that ''she'' will never return home again after the marriage (which she accepts). They have two sons Jacob and Esau, and when Jacob and Rebekah trick Esau out of his inheritance, Rebekah sends Jacob off to Padan-Aram to her brother, where he marries Leah and Rachel. Although he ''does'' eventually visit Esau (who, to his surprise, has forgiven him), he never sees his parents again. His son Joseph is sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, and ends up in Egypt, where he becomes an important adviser to the Pharaoh.
67	** In the Literature/BookOfJeremiah, the titular prophet along with the Judean survivors of the Babylonian invasion of Jerusalem escape to Egypt for fear of the Babylonians, despite Jeremiah's warnings from God not to go down there. It is there where God through Jeremiah tells the refugees that a good deal of them will die there and never return to the land of Judah.
68	[[/folder]]
69
70	[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
71	* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons''
72	** The Deep Imaskari race in the ''Underdark'' setting live in a HiddenElfVillage. If anyone decides to leave, they automatically have the location of their home erased from their memory so that in the (highly likely) chance they are captured by something evil that can read minds, they will be unable to divulge the secret location.
73	** Elminster Aumar of the ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms''. At the start of [[Literature/TheElminsterSeries his book series]] a magelord on a dragon burns down his home village to assassinate his father, [[spoiler:a prince of Athalantar who had abdicated]]. About a century later, an orc horde destroyed the entire kingdom. The present-day city of Secomber is built on its capital's ruins.
74	* The odds of a member of the Imperial Guard of ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' making it to retirement age are pretty low, considering that the Imperium is almost continuously at war with some if not all of its neighbors (and quite frequently itself). Those that make it are generally discharged on the planet they happen to be on when they retire, and their retirement package does not include a ticket back to their home planet (which could be thousands of light years away, depending on what events happened during their deployment). As such, there is a very good chance that anyone who enlists in a Guard regiment will never return to their home planet, let alone their home town, ever again. Indeed, the lucky ones instead get a commission and some land on the planet they conquered most recently, essentially becoming landed gentry there.
75	** This applies to the Regiments on a logistical and bureaucratic level. Once a regiment is raised it will likely never see its original homeworld or system. With new recruits being picked up from planets they pass, or liberate. Only the more famous and decorated regiments such as the Firstborn or Death Korps of Krieg have the privilege of getting reinforcements from their homeworld.
76	* ''TabletopGame/VampireTheRequiem'' goes to great lengths to describe why a fledgling should never go back to its mortal life. Even if its old friends and family can cope with its return as a vampire; even if the vampire has enough HeroicWillpower to keep its HorrorHunger and {{Unstoppable Rage}}s in check; the dysfunctional, sadistic, and highly lethal vampiric societies ''will'' find out and take a ''very'' dim view of mortals learning about their existence.
77	* In ''TabletopGame/ChangelingTheLost'', every newly-made Changeling quickly learns that the [[TheFairFolk Fae]] who abducted and transformed them left a [[CaptureAndReplicate lifelike impostor in their place]]. Good luck convincing the family that the deformed, unhinged version of their loved one who showed up out of nowhere is actually the real person. Even if they manage, Changelings are irreversibly bound to Fate, which tends to turn them into {{Doom Magnet}}s for mortals they get too close to.
78	* ''3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars'' opens by touching on this trope and then inevitably hammers it in hard on any Player Characters - all [=PCs=] are outcast from the utopian society on Earth, and forced into glorified penal legions sent to "proactively defend" Earth by committing genocide on all other life in the galaxy. Any character who lasts long enough can develop a "Hatred for Home" trait that risks them eventually going back to WhereItAllBegan... to exterminate Earth in revenge for what they were forced to do.
79	[[/folder]]
80
81	[[folder:Theatre]]
82	* Zigzagged in ''Theatre/JasperInDeadland'', as the shows subverts and double-subverts whether or not Agnes is actually dead, and whether or not it's possible for a dead person to return to the Living World.
83	[[/folder]]
84
85	[[folder:Toys]]
86	* The forgotten toy line ''Snailiens''. The heroes are a group of mollusc-like aliens who come to Earth to help save a population of oppressed insects. In the process, a human boy finds their ship, mistakes it for an interesting-looking shell and puts it on the highest shelf in his bedroom to keep it out of the hands of his baby brother. It's not destroyed, but it's so high up the miniscule heroes are resigned to the fact that they'll never get it back.
87	[[/folder]]
88
89	[[folder:Webcomics]]
90	* Parodied in ''Webcomic/MegaTokyo'', where Piro and Largo end up in Japan without any money to buy a ticket back home. They get several opportunities to fix this, yet for whatever reason, they never actually go back home.
91	** ''Webcomic/MegaTokyo'' is an interesting case indeed... With the plot and ''CharacterDevelopment'' going the way it is, it seems that Piro and Largo feel too tied up in the personal lives of all the people they've interacted with. As such, even if they were offered a fool-proof method to return to America, neither would likely take it.
92	*** One scene with Meimi and Junpei implies that they may end up being ''forced'' out of Japan at some point. Until then...
93	* ''Webcomic/TowerOfGod'': Urek Mazino followed Phantaminum into the Tower, but he discovered he could not get out of it anymore.
94	* Webcomic/SilverBulletNights: The head of Donovan's family has disowned him for being transgender, resulting in him living on the mean streets of Toro City. He can't return to the family home or business; his previous life is over.
95	* In ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'', it is foretold that Durkon ''will'' return to his homeland--posthumously. However, he's actually ''happy'' to learn this because he'd much rather be buried with his ancestors than to die somewhere else.
96	** Of course, he doesn't know the ''real'' reason he was sent away from his home in the first place: [[spoiler:it's prophecized that when he returns, it will result in the land's destruction]].
97	*** And this turned out to be subjected to ProphecyTwist. [[spoiler:A Durkon that got turned into a vampire ''is'' dead, after all.]]
98	** Then there's Vaarsuvius, [[spoiler:whose quest for power cost V's marriage and nearly the lives of spouse and children.]]
99	* A minor plot point in ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'' is that Sburb, a video game which can manipulate physical objects, is targeted at players who are entering adolescence and beginning to want to escape their homes for a life of their own. [[spoiler: Sburb also enforces this, since playing it eventually sends players to a Pocket Universe while their home planet is destroyed by meteors created by the game.]]
100	* Zeetha from ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'' doesn't know where her tribe is from. Everyone who was involved in her journey to Europa ended up dead one way or another.
101	* A plot arc in ''Webcomic/AtArmsLength'' allowed for the introduction of a new character, one that was in their Character contest back in 2012. This character appeared in a flash of light, and apparently is from another reality. Sadly, nobody knows how he got there, or if they will be able to send him back.
102	* In ''Webcomic/{{Freefall}}'', [[LoveableRogue Sam Starfall]] is prohibited from returning to his home world, due to his acquiring knowledge of technology far above the approximately "Steam Age" technology level there.
103	* In ''Webcomic/WeAreTheWyrecats'', K.A. tries hard to pick up where she left off after coming out of a coma, but reality sets in pretty quickly that the world not only isn't the same one she left, but that it's a decidedly worse one.
104	* ''Webcomic/AliceGrove'': Ardent and Gavia teleport to Earth from the [[SpaceStation orbital habitat]] where they grew up, then find that their requests to return are being ignored. [[spoiler:When they get back to space by a different route, they learn that their "habitat" is actually a [[{{Cyberspace}} simulation]] being run by a [[OrganicTechnology titanic, sapient space tree]], which won't accept them back because they've been infected by [[ClarkesThirdLaw impossibly advanced]] [[{{Nanotechnology}} picotechnology]] of unknown purpose.]] Rough day.
105	* In ''Webcomic/DanAndMabsFurryAdventures'', this trope is why Mab is travelling with Dan but this is played with. What happened was is that the [[spoiler: current queen of the faerie kingdom, Nutmeg, made a decree that no one could have a tail fluffier than the queen's]], so Mab, known for her fluffy tail, decided "Screw that" and left. She could go back home and [[spoiler: did for a little bit]] but she chose not to.
106	** This happened to Matilda and the reason why she can't go home is because [[spoiler: she ripped off her brother's arm and beat him with it. In her tribe, a female going against a male is punishable by death]].
107	* Webcomic/{{Africa}}:[[spoiler: Chui takes Africa's territory. She returns to try and reclaim it, only to get beaten. She returns to the new place in defeat]]
108	* A recurring theme in many webcomics about life in college, at least in late 1990s-early 2000s, perhaps in a bit more literal sense. In ''[[Webcomic/NineToNine College Catastrophe]]'' Jan [[https://www.tigerknight.com/cc/2002-05-18 visits his parents' home]] and finds his old room no longer suitable for life. In his case, it's used as a junk storeroom.
109	* In ''WebComic/DumbingOfAge'' Joyce and Becky briefly go back to their hometown for a weekend, only for Joyce to end up disillusioned because her church's congregation aren't as accepting of Becky's lesbianism as she is, and that they seemed to take Becky's father's side (her father, who tried to ''kidnap Becky'' to bring her back to the Lord).
110	[[/folder]]
111
112	[[folder:Web Original]]
113	* ''WebVideo/AtopTheFourthWall'': The Gunslinger's pocketwatch was made specifically to avert this trope. Under normal circumstances, travelling to another dimension would either be fatal to him, or it would cause the dimension to assimilate him, thereby making his own dimension fatal to him. The pocketwatch prevents these effects from occurring. But then Linkara destroyed the pocketwatch, causing The Gunslinger to be trapped in Linkara's world forever, unable to return. When Linkara realizes this, [[MustMakeAmends he swears that he'll find a way to fix it]].
114	* The Dimensional Guardians trapped in Creturia in the web fiction serial ''Literature/DimensionHeroes''.
115	* In the Literature/WhateleyUniverse, Phase can't go home again. His family are the largest anti-mutant force on the planet.
116	* qntm's "Be Here Now" story introduces a multiple-universes system of time travel. It's impossible to time-travel in one's own timeline, but you can "jump the tracks" to any point in any other timeline. The only thing is, the destination timeline is always "the next one down the [infinite] chain", so you can never go back home again once you've time-jumped once.
117	* ''Roleplay/SurvivalOfTheFittest'': At the end of v3, [[spoiler:JR Rizzolo]] manages to return home after (ostensibly) being the SoleSurvivor, only to find that [[spoiler:his family has disowned him and completely moved out]].
118	* The premise of ''[[Literature/TheMagicForIdiots Mabaka! Magic is for Idiots!]]'' revolves around a novice wizard from another dimension getting stuck on Earth with no way to get back. Naturally, he ends up staying with the same girl [[CrashIntoHello whose yard he crash-landed into]]. At least until a year is up and he can return via a dimensional transport system.
119	* ''WebVideo/TheAutobiographyOfJaneEyre'': In episode 9, Jane has caught cold and is really sick, which also triggers her homesickness. It's all the more sad because she doesn't really have her home. The house feels empty and isolated, she doesn't have anybody to talk to; she misses university, but concludes that it was just a dorm room.
120	-->''"I just want to go home, except for I don't know where that is."''
121	* ''Podcast/RandomAssault'': Kate will never be accepted by her family for wanting to be a female.
122	* In ''Literature/TheJenkinsverse'', Xiù Chang returns to Earth after spending two years living among an alien species called Gaoians, barely survives the effects of a nervejam grenade, spends three years hiding in exile pretending to be a Gaoian, and five years stuck in a stasis pod after narrowly surviving the destruction of a starship. Her experiences leave her unable to relate to her family and friends back home, but unwilling to return to Gao as that would put the Gaoians in danger from the Hunters. In the end, the only people she feels at home with are fellow abductees Julian and Allison.
123	* ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'':
124	** The first three volumes of the show are set in Beacon Academy, the boarding school that is training the titular team of students and their friends and colleagues. By the end of Volume 3, the girls are approaching the end of their first year in a four-year programme. [[spoiler:However, the villains instigate an invasion of the school by the Monsters of Grimm, leaving the school destroyed, the teachers and students evacuated, the headmaster killed, and a magically-frozen Grimm Dragon passively attracting more Grimm to the school's ruins. The finale ends with the titular team scattered, and a cross-continental quest beginning to try and seek answers to who the villains are.]]
125	** During Volume 8, the heroes try to find a way to save the people of both Atlas and Mantle from Salem and her forces while Ironwood and the Atlas Military only try to save the people of Atlas and abandon Mantle to die. [[spoiler:During the climax of the Volume when Ironwood threatens to bomb Mantle himself, the heroes come up with a plan to evacuate the citizens of the entire Kingdom to Vacuo using the Staff of Creation. Because they used it to create something new, the previous command on it to keep Atlas [[FloatingContinent flying above Mantle]] stops and the city starts to fall. At the end of the Volume, Atlas ends up crashing onto Mantle as the people are evacuated while the cities were both covered in flames and flooded. Because of this, Weiss and the people of the Kingdom can never return to their homes again.]]
126	* In ''Literature/{{Twig}}'', Sylvester realizes, after he deserts [[AcademyOfEvil Radham Academy]] with Jamie, that by killing the Baron Richmond and taking Jamie he's finally crossed the line and made Radham and his fellow Lambs his enemy, and that he can't go home, not alive, at least.
127	* ''WebAnimation/MurderDrones'': After Uzi's father betrays her, and the Worker Drones are still cowardly and powerless against the Disassembly Drones, Uzi decides to exile herself because there's nothing she can do to convince them to fight. [[ThenLetMeBeEvil Besides, Earth is looking like a much better place to rule over.]]
128	[[/folder]]
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