Some stories take place a very long time after their predecessors, whether only a few decades afterwards or after centuries or millennia. Depending on the amount of time passed and the events that took place in earlier stories, the previous story's characters and events may by the time of the sequel [[LegendaryInTheSequel have become famous or part of the historical record, or even entered into myth]]. If sufficient distortion and mythologizing takes place over generations or centuries of word-of-mouth retellings, then the sequel's account of the events of earlier stories [[LegendFadesToMyth may have become rather different from how the audience remembers it]].

Another trait of a Distant Sequel is that it can allow for significant changes to occur in the story's world. Actions taken by the main characters in earlier stories may have had the time to change the world in significant ways, characters may become parents or grandparents or leave distant descendants -- [[SpinOffspring who may in turn become the sequel's main characters]] -- nations may rise, grow and fall, and science and civilization advance or regress.

See also DistantFinale, where a work's last episode, scene or chapter is set a long time after its main body, which can easily lead into this trope if a sequel is made to a work with a Distant Finale. Compare with DashedPlotLine, where the plot skips years ahead several times over the course of the story. A SequelSeries may be more likely to be distant from its predecessor than a sequel within the same series.

Distant prequels are also covered by this trope, as the primary theme -- the time gap between the two stories and the changes that take place during it -- remains largely the same. In a sense, a work with a distant prequel itself becomes, retroactively, a distant sequel.

SubTrope of TimeSkip. Not to be confused with SequelGap which is when a sequel is released a long time later in RealLife, although it is certainly not uncommon for many works to be both of these tropes.

The opposite of this would be an ImmediateSequel, while the {{Prequel}} equivalent would be PrequelInTheLostAge.
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!!Examples:
[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
* ''Manga/{{Boruto}}'' takes place two decades after the conclusion of ''Manga/{{Naruto}}''.
* ''Manga/DeathNoteSpecialChapter'' is set over a decade apart from [[Manga/DeathNote the original series]], with Light's exploits now the stuff of current events classes and history books.
* ''Manga/FireForce'' is a distant StealthPrequel to ''Manga/SoulEater'' taking place several centuries in the past.
* ''Anime/{{FLCL}}'':
** The last episode of ''Anime/{{FLCL Progressive|AndAlternative}}'' explains that it's been around thirty years since the end of the previous series.
** ''[[Anime/FLCLGrungeAndShoegaze FLCL Shoegaze]]'' takes place ten years after the events of ''FLCL Alternative''. As such, Kana Koumoto is shown as an adult woman working alongside Tsukata Kanda.
* ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'':
** The first three parts, ''[[Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventurePhantomBlood Phantom Blood]]'' (1888), ''[[Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventureBattleTendency Battle Tendency]]'' (1938), and ''[[Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventureStardustCrusaders Stardust Crusaders]]'' (1988) take place fifty years apart each.
** Part 7, ''[[Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventureSteelBallRun Steel Ball Run]]'', takes place in 1890 of a new AlternateContinuity. The next part, ''[[Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventureJoJolion JoJolion]]'', takes place in 2011, about 120 years later. ''[[Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventureTheJoJoLands The JoJoLands]]'' takes place a decade after the latter.
* ''Manga/TheKindaichiCaseFiles'' has a SequelSeries called ''The (37-year-old) Kindaichi Case Files''. It is set 20 years after the original series, with Kindaichi now working as a {{salaryman}}. Miyuki is now an air stewardess, Akechi a Senior Commissioner in the police department, while Kenmochi has retired.
* ''Anime/MazingerZInfinity'' takes place years after ''Anime/MazingerZ''. Kouji Kabuto is no longer a hotheaded teenage boy fighting for justice, but has graduated into a respectable researcher of Photon Energy. His girlfriend Sayaka Yumi has become head of the Photon Research Lab while her father went on to become the Prime Minister of Japan. His little brother Shiro is about to graduate from high school and has taken a side job of test pilot of mass-produced Mazinger machines. His adopted older brother [[Anime/GreatMazinger Tetsuya Tsurugi]] has joined the army to bolster Japan's defenses with his good ol' Great Mazinger, and has married his childhood friend Jun Honoo and is expecting a child. The threat of Dr. Hell seemed to be a memory of the past until it came back knocking just in time when Kouji discovered a huge Mazinger.
* ''Franchise/{{Gundam}}''
** ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamF91'' and ''Anime/MobileSuitVictoryGundam'', the first sequels produced after ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamCharsCounterattack'', take place thirty years apart each.
** ''Anime/GundamReconguistaInG'' is set in the far distant future of the Universal Century setting, over a thousand years after it changed to a different AlternativeCalendar.
* ''Peach Girl NEXT'', the sequel series to ''Manga/PeachGirl'', is set 10 years after the events of the original series.
* ''Anime/PrettyCure'': ''Anime/PowerOfHopePrecureFullBloom'' is set 15 years after the events of ''Anime/YesPrettyCure5'', ''Anime/FutariWaPrettyCureSplashStar'' [[spoiler:and ''Anime/FutariWaPrettyCure Max Heart'']].
* The creator confirmed that ''Anime/TenchiMuyoWarOnGeminar'' is set in the distant future of ''Anime/PhotonTheIdiotAdventures''.
* ''Manga/UQHolder'' is set seventy-five years after the events of ''Manga/NegimaMagisterNegiMagi'', focusing on Negi's grandson Touta Konoe.
* ''Anime/YashahimePrincessHalfDemon'' is set fifteen years after the conclusion of ''Manga/{{Inuyasha}}'', and revolves around the daughters of Inuyasha and Sesshomaru.
* ''Anime/YuGiOhGX'' is set roughly ten years after ''Anime/YuGiOh'' and ''Anime/YuGiOh5Ds'' is set in the distant future of them.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Audio Plays]]
* ''AudioPlay/BigFinishDoctorWho'':
** ''AudioPlay/DalekEmpire'': The third series takes place 2,500 years after the first two. It focuses on the attempts of Siy Tarkov and Georgi Selestru to warn the Galactic Union about another Dalek invasion of Mutter's Spiral (a.k.a. the Milky Way Galaxy).
** ''I, Davros'' takes place on Skaro during the [[ForeverWar Thousand Year War between the Kaleds and the Thals]]. It tells the story of Davros from his teenage years until the activation of the first of his Dalek creations, shortly before the events of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E4GenesisOfTheDaleks Genesis of the Daleks]]".
** In "[[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho026Primeval Primeval]]", the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa visit her home planet Traken in about 1000 BCE, almost 3,000 years before the Doctor's fourth incarnation visited the planet in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS18E6TheKeeperOfTraken The Keeper of Traken]]" and it was destroyed by the Master in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS18E7Logopolis Logopolis]]".
** "[[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho034SpareParts Spare Parts]]" features the creation of the Cybermen, thousands of years before the First Doctor's first encounter with them in Antarctica in December 1986 in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E2TheTenthPlanet The Tenth Planet]]".
** In "[[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho086TheReaping The Reaping]]", Kathy Chambers encounters the Sixth Doctor and her old friend Peri in Baltimore on September 24, 1984 and helps them to defeat the Cybermen. Her brother Nathaniel's back is broken by a Cyber-Leader. In its sequel "[[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho087TheGathering The Gathering]]", the Fifth Doctor meets Kathy in Brisbane on September 22, 2006. She is attempting to prolong Nathaniel's life by partially converting him into a Cyberman. Notably, "The Gathering" takes place before "The Reaping" in the Doctor's personal timeline.
** In "[[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWhoNEDAS4SRAnEarthlyChild An Earthly Child]]", the Eighth Doctor is reunited with his granddaughter Susan and meets his great-grandson Alex Campbell in the 2190s, about 30 years after his first incarnation defeated the Daleks and left Susan behind in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS2E2TheDalekInvasionOfEarth The Dalek Invasion of Earth]]". However, considerably more time has passed for the Doctor in the interim.
** In "[[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho138TheCradleOfTheSnake The Cradle of the Snake]]", the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan and Turlough visit Manussa at the height of the Manussan Empire's power, about 800 years before the former three visited the planet during the time of the Sumaran Empire in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS20E2Snakedance Snakedance]]".
** In "The Exxilons", the Fourth Doctor visits the Exxilon colony [=E9874=] thousands of years before the destruction of the Exxilon civilisation and his visit to their home planet during his third incarnation in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS11E3DeathToTheDaleks Death to the Daleks]]".
** ''Franchise/BerniceSummerfield'':
*** In ''The Relics of Jegg-Sau", Benny encounters the robot [=K103=] on the planet Jegg-Sau, more than 600 years after the newly regenerated Fourth Doctor battled its prototype K1 in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E1Robot Robot]]".
*** In ''The Kingdom of the Blind", Benny encounters the Monoids in the early 27th century, approximately ten million years before the First Doctor encountered them (on two occasions 700 years apart) aboard the titular ship in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E6TheArk The Ark]]".
** ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'': "The Victorian Age" explores Captain Jack Harkness' early involvement with the Torchwood Institute in 1899, more than 100 years before the events of the series.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comic Books]]
* ''Franchise/{{Buffyverse}}'':
** ''ComicBook/{{Fray}}'' takes place in the BadFuture of the 23rd Century, more than 200 years after the events of ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' and ''Series/{{Angel}}''. Its protagonist is Melaka Fray, a recently activated Slayer who fights vampires (commonly called "lurks") and other demons in the town of Haddyn, formerly known as Manhattan.
** The graphic novel ''Tales of the Slayers'' tells the stories of various Slayers over the course of thousands of years from the first Slayer Sineya in prehistoric UsefulNotes/{{Africa}} to Melaka Fray.
** The one-shot ''Spike and Dru: All's Fair'' takes place in 1933. While Spike and Drusilla are in UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}}, the four brothers of Xin Rong, the Chinese Slayer killed by Spike in 1900 (as depicted in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS5E7FoolForLove Fool for Love]]"), seek their vengeance.
* ''Franchise/TheDCU'':
** All of the stories in ''ComicBook/LegendsOfTheDeadEarth'' are set centuries or millennia after the 20th Century. Both ''[[Franchise/{{Batman}} Batman: Shadow of the Bat]]'' Annual #4 and ''ComicBook/SovereignSeven'' Annual #2 take place at the end of the universe 19-20 billion years in the future.
** ''Batman: I, Joker'' takes place in 2083, then 85 years in the future. Gotham City is a police state ruled by a tyrant called the Bruce, a descendant of Franchise/{{Batman}}. Joseph Collins assumes the identity of ComicBook/TheJoker and plots to free Gotham from the Bruce's tyranny.
** ''Batman: Dark Knight Dynasty'' depicts the Wayne family's battle against the immortal ComicBook/VandalSavage over the course of almost 1,300 years. In ''Dark Past'', the English [[UsefulNotes/TheCrusades crusader]] Sir Joshua Wainwright fights Savage in 1222. In ''Dark Present'', in the 20th Century, Bruce Wayne is inspired by the legacy of his ancestor Sir Joshua to become the Dark Knight and dies in battle with Savage. In ''Dark Future'', the Wayne Enterprises vice president Brenna Wayne lives in the [[FloatingContinent flying city]] of [[NewNeoCity New Gotham]] in 2500 and manages to defeat Savage by stranding him on a meteor.
** In ''Robin 3000'', Bruce Wayne's 31st Century descendant, a teenage boy named Tom Wayne, assumes the identity of Robin after his uncle Bruce Wayne XX is killed by an [[AlienInvasion invading alien race]] known as the Skulps.
** In a series of stories featured in various Franchise/{{Superman}} titles, Klar Ken T5477 is a direct descendant of Clark Kent who operates as Superman XX in 2965, [[ExactlyExtyYearsAgo exactly 1,000 years]] after the first such story was published.
** The ''ComicBook/WorldOfKrypton'' backups that appeared in several Superman titles ranged from being set immediately prior to Krypton's destruction when Clark was a baby, to the very dawn of Krypton's founding with an AdamAndEvePlot of two alien settlers.
** ''ComicBook/TheKents was a series set in the 19th century starring the ancestors of Ma and Pa Kent.
** In ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'' #26, after Earth is conquered by UsefulNotes/{{Saturn}} in 3000, Bruce Wayne's descendant Brane finds a time capsule buried in 1939 featuring recordings of his ancestor and Robin in action. This inspires him to become the new Batman and fight against Earth's Saturnian oppressors, who are led by the warlord Fura.
** ''Franchise/{{Superman}}'' #400 explores the Man of Steel's legacy in a series of stories entitled "The Living Legends of Superman" which move increasingly further into the future. They begin in 2199 and end more than seven million years after the 20th Century.
* The whole premise of ''ComicBook/Marvel2099'' is that it is set decades in the future from the present-day Marvel universe (except the version seen in ''ComicBook/{{Timestorm}}'', which is implied to be an alternate present). When the original line was published, they were over a ''hundred'' years in the future, as the present stories were taking place in 1993. As time goes on, [[ComicBookTime it does get closer and closer to the present, though]].
* Inversely, any story about Captain America, the Invaders, or other WWII-era heroes in the present day becomes more and more of a distant sequel as time goes on. When Cap first came back, his original stories had taken place merely two decades prior, give or take a few years, now they are set 80 years from the present. A similar situation applies to the ComicBook/AgentsOfAtlas and any other heroes whose origins are firmly entrenched in a real time period.
* ''ComicBook/PlanetHulkWorldbreaker'' is a sequel to the ''ComicBook/PlanetHulk'' arc, but set a thousand years later. Some of the gamma-powered heroes of the 20th century are still alive, though.
* ''ComicBook/Rorschach2020'' is a sequel to ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'', taking place over 30 years after the events that transpired. It's not at all a direct continuation of the story featuring the original cast (although the faked AlienInvasion that decimated New York is a major background element), instead concerning itself with [[NoNameGiven a nameless]] detective unveiling a conspiracy behind a copycat of the long-deceased VigilanteMan, Rorschach.
* ''Franchise/PlanetOfTheApes'': The main BOOM! Studios comic book series explores the difficulties and tensions experienced by apes and humans living together in the city state of Mak from 2680 onwards, more than 600 years after the main storyline of ''Film/BattleForThePlanetOfTheApes'' and 1,300 years before ''Film/PlanetOfTheApes1968''.
* ''Franchise/StarTrekExpandedUniverse'': In the ''Star Trek Unlimited'' story "A Piece of Reaction", the ''Enterprise''-E visits Sigma Iotia II in 2371, 103 years after the events of "[[Recap/StarTrekS2E17APieceOfTheAction A Piece of the Action]]".
* ''Franchise/StarWars'': This is fairly common in the Legends continuity's ExpandedUniverse, as it covers several millennia of galactic history:
** ''ComicBook/DawnOfTheJedi'' takes place no less than 25,000 years before the movies, during the earliest origins of the force-using order that would later schism to form the Jedi and the Sith.
** ''ComicBook/TalesOfTheJedi'' is set 5,000 years before the movies and 100 years before ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic''.
** ''ComicBook/StarWarsLegacy'' takes place about one hundred years after the the original ''Franchise/StarWars'' movie trilogy, after numerous wars and political upheavals. The main characters are the descendants of the first trilogy's main cast, several generations removed, and when older characters show up it is typically as ghosts.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Fan Works]]
* ''Fanfic/ThreeDoctorsNineCompanionsWhatCouldGoWrong'': ''Retrograde'' takes place fifty years after the events of the other stories in this universe, and follows [[spoiler:a happily married Clara and Thirteen, along with their adopted daughter Matilda]], after they have settled down 2064 Brighton.
* ''Fanfic/{{Antipodes}}'' is set ten thousand years after the time of ''Friendship Is Magic''[='=]s first season, long after the fall of Equestria, and the events of the show are remembered only as faded myths of a bygone age.
* ''Fanfic/ASongOfIceStoneWindAndFlame'' is set a full 18,000 years after the events of Season 2 finale of ''The Legend of Korra''. 8,000 years before the story begins, the next Harmonic Convergence caused the Avatar and spirits to enter the world of ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', so, by the time of the first chapter, bending the elements and the Avatar are well-known to the people of Westeros.
* ''Fanfic/DiaryOfAWimpyKid25YearsLater'':
** As the name states, the story is set two and half decades after its [[Literature/DiaryOfAWimpyKid parent work]]. A considerable amount of things happened in the intervening time, including Manny ditching his family to move to New York and Rodrick getting married.
** Its AlternateUniverse, ''Fanfic/DiaryOfAWimpyKidRichAndFamous'', while not as distant from its parent fic, takes place in the year 2032, which sees what happens if Greg became Rich and Famous.
* ''VideoGame/EverywhereAtTheEndOfFunk'': Daddy Dearest mentions that Boyfriend is now in his thirties, making the events of that mod take place at least eleven years after the events of ''VideoGame/FridayNightFunkin''.
* ''Fanfic/FalloutEquestria'' takes place hundreds of years in an alternate BadFuture, after Equestria has been blasted into a ravaged hellscape in the magical equivalent of a nuclear exchange. The Mane Six are still recognized for what they did in the years of the war prior to the apocalypse, [[BigBrotherIsWatching although not all are remembered fondly]]. Civilization has had time to rebuild itself in rather unusual ways, and the only characters from the show still around all achieved biological immortality through ghoulification or... more peculiar means.
* ''[[https://www.fimfiction.net/story/119448/1/the-frozen-west The Frozen West]]'': The story takes place among a griffon civilization with about a thousand years of recorded history, beginning with a mysterious storm at the dawn of records, that inhabits the twilight area of a TidallyLockedPlanet. A team of explorers uses a new airship to push into the unexplored frozen hemisphere, they eventually come across the ruins of ancient cities that show the reader that the story takes place a millennium after the events of ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'', after Nightmare Moon won, stopped the sun and moon's motion, and caused Equestria to become eternally dark and frozen and to fade from the memory of the people that survived the end of the world.
* ''Fanfic/JauneArcLordOfHunger'' is eventually revealed to take place more than four thousand years after Darth Nihilus' death in ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublicIITheSithLords''. Nihilus' spirit had spent most of that time in a DeepSleep inside his [[ArtifactOfDoom mask]], until Jaune stumbles across the mask and wakes him up.
* ''Fanfic/JoJosBizarreAdventurePartNineStairwayToHeaven'' takes place over 2,000 years after ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventureJoJolion''.
* ''Webcomic/TheLegendOfGenji'' is set 35 years after the end of ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra'', by which point most of Korra's friends have become middle-aged adults with families of their own, while her mentors are either retired or dead from old age.
* ''Fanfic/ThePiecesLieWhereTheyFell'' is set a thousand years after the events of "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS2E25ACanterlotWeddingPart1 A Canterlot Wedding]]" end in disaster, and follows a new generation of Element Bearers. The show's characters are still remembered, but often in [[LegendFadesToMyth highly distorted and mythologized ways]], and a Flim-Flam Corporation has apparently grown out of the Flim-Flam brothers' snake-oil businesses.
* ''Fanfic/PowerRangersCosmicDefenders'' takes place 35 years after its predecessor ''Fanfic/PowerRangersWingForce''. The one character from that fic appearing with any regularity [[SheIsAllGrownUp is now a mature military reader]], having been the KidAppealCharacter previously.
* ''Fanfic/WormInWaiting'' takes place over a thousand years after the events of ''Warframe'', following the Origin System's inhabitants having migrated to Earth Bet after the events of the game
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Film -- Animated]]
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Minions}}'' mostly takes place 42 years before the events of ''WesternAnimation/DespicableMe1''.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Film -- Live-Action]]
* ''Franchise/{{Alien}}'': ''Film/AlienVsPredator'' and ''Film/AliensVsPredatorRequiem'' take place in the 2000s, ''Film/{{Alien}}'' is set well over a hundred years later, ''Film/{{Aliens}}'' and ''Film/Alien3'' are set 57 years after the events of ''Alien'', and ''Film/AlienResurrection'' takes place another 200 years after that.
* ''Film/BladeRunner2049'', as indicated by the title, takes place 30 years after the original ''Film/BladeRunner''.
* ''Film/BlairWitch'' is set 20 years after ''Film/TheBlairWitchProject''.
* ''Film/Coming2America'' takes place 30 years after ''Film/ComingToAmerica''.
* ''Film/DoctorSleep'' (2019) takes place 39 years after the events of ''Film/TheShining'' (1980).
* ''Film/DraculaAD1972'' takes place approximately 70 to 100 years after the previous [[Film/HammerHorror Hammer]] ''{{Dracula}}'' films.
* The ''Film/FantasticBeasts'' series takes place over 60 years before the events of the ''Film/HarryPotter'' series, which mainly takes place from 1991 to 1998. [[Film/FantasticBeastsAndWhereToFindThem The first film]] is set in 1926, [[Film/FantasticBeastsTheCrimesOfGrindelwald the second]] is set in 1927, and [[Film/FantasticBeastsTheSecretsOfDumbledore the third]] is set in 1932.
* ''Film/GhostbustersAfterlife'' takes place 32 years after ''Film/GhostbustersII''.
* ''Film/GSaviour'' is set in UC 223, 70 years after the previous major installment in the UC timeline, ''Anime/MobileSuitVictoryGundam''.
* ''Franchise/{{Halloween}}'':
** ''Film/HalloweenH20TwentyYearsLater'' takes place 20 years after the events of ''Film/{{Halloween II|1981}}''. Laurie Strode, who was previously portrayed as a teenager, has become a mother of a teenage son.
** ''Film/Halloween2018'', which ignores all sequels of [[Film/{{Halloween1978}} the 1978 film]] (including ''[=H20=]''), is set forty years after said film, by which point Laurie is old enough to have a teenage granddaughter.
* ''Film/IndependenceDayResurgence'' is set during the twentieth anniversary of the events of ''Film/IndependenceDay''.
* The martial arts classic, ''Film/IronMonkey'', has a little-seen sequel, ''Iron Monkey 2'' released 3 years later and set half a decade later. Creator/DonnieYen is back, but instead of playing the Iron Monkey's best friend like the original he's the new Iron Monkey.
* ''Franchise/IndianaJones'':
** ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheKingdomOfTheCrystalSkull'' takes place 19 years after ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheLastCrusade''.
** ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheDialOfDestiny'' takes place 12 ywars after ''The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull''.
* ''Film/ItChapterTwo'' is set 27 years after ''Film/{{It|2017}}''. [[KidHeroAllGrownUp The child cast are now grown up]], each successful but miserable in their own ways.
* ''Film/JasonX'' is set in 2455, more than 400 years after the previous ''Franchise/FridayThe13th'' movies.
* ''Film/JumanjiWelcomeToTheJungle'' is set 21 years after ''Film/{{Jumanji}}''.
* ''Film/KaamelottPremierVolet'' (TheMovie of the French comedy series ''Series/{{Kaamelott}}'') starts ten years from where the series left off.
* ''Film/OuijaOriginOfEvil'' is set 47 years before ''Film/{{Ouija}}''.
* ''Franchise/PlanetOfTheApes'': ''Film/KingdomOfThePlanetOfTheApes'' is set three centuries after ''Film/WarForThePlanetOfTheApes''.
* ''Franchise/StarWars'':
** ''[[Film/ANewHope Episode IV: A New Hope]]'' and ''Film/RogueOne'' take place nineteen years after ''[[Film/RevengeOfTheSith Episode III: Revenge of the Sith]]'', enough time for the infant Luke and Leia to grow to adulthood, and for the nearly-extinct Jedi to fade almost entirely into legend.
** ''[[Film/AttackOfTheClones Episode II: Attack of the Clones]]'' takes place ten years after ''[[Film/ThePhantomMenace Episode I: The Phantom Menace]]''.
** ''[[Film/TheForceAwakens Episode VII: The Force Awakens]]'' takes place 30 years after ''[[Film/ReturnOfTheJedi Episode VI: Return of the Jedi]]'', by which point Luke, Leia and Han have all become quite old, Han and Leia have an adult child and Luke has managed to establish a new Jedi Order which was then betrayed and destroyed by Han and Leia's aforementioned child.
* ''Franchise/{{Terminator}}'': Somewhat downplayed with the first three sequels.
** ''Film/Terminator2JudgmentDay'' chronologically takes place 11 years after ''Film/TheTerminator'', ''Film/Terminator3RiseOfTheMachines'' is 9 years after ''T2'' and ''Film/TerminatorSalvation'' takes place 14 years after ''T3''.
** ''Film/TerminatorDarkFate'' chronologically takes place 25 years after ''T2''.
* ''Film/TopGunMaverick'' is set at least 34 years after ''Film/TopGun'' considering the {{Release Date Change}}s from 2020.
* ''Film/{{Tron}}'' takes place in 1982 with Kevin Flynn getting inside the TRON game, ''Film/TronLegacy'' takes place in 2010, with Kevin's son, Sam Flynn, taking the role of main protagonist this time.
* Aside from the PresentDay FramingDevice in the original, ''Film/WonderWoman1984'' takes place 66 years after ''Film/WonderWoman2017''. Most of Diana's friends and foes from World War I have since died, and she has found new ones in the new era. On top of that, ''[=WW84=]'' is set over 30 years before the events of ''Film/BatmanVSupermanDawnOfJustice'' and ''[[Film/ZackSnydersJusticeLeague Justice League]]''.
* ''Film/ZuWarriorsFromTheMagicMountain'' has it's sequel, ''Zu Warriors'' taking place 200 years later. The Immortal White Brow is the only character from the first film to return in the sequel.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* ''Literature/ArrivalsFromTheDark'': The novels typically take place decades or even more than a century after each other. Often there's a new main character in each novel, most of whom are related. The first book takes place in 2088, the second books jumps 37 years, the third novel is 141 years after the second, the fourth is 44 years after that, the fifth is set 42 years after the fourth, and the sixth and [[DiedDuringProduction likely final]] book jumps forward 148 years. The ''Trevelyan's Mission'' spin-off series begins 231 years after the final main novel, in the 29th century. The skips between spin-off novels are significantly shorter, often mere months.
* ''Series/BabylonFive'': The short story "Space, Time and the Incurable Romantic", published in ''Magazine/AmazingStories'' #599, takes place from 2560 to 2593, approximately 300 years after the events of the series. Marcus Cole, [[HumanPopsicle having been revived from stasis]], has a clone of his lost love Susan Ivanova created with [[TransferableMemory all of the original's memories]] up to when she was critically injured in the Battle of Sector 300 in "[[Recap/BabylonFiveS04E19BetweenTheDarknessAndTheLight Between the Darkness and the Light]]".
* ''Literature/TheBalladOfSongbirdsAndSnakes'' is set 60 years before ''Literature/TheHungerGames'', focusing on a teenage Coriolanus Snow.
* ''Franchise/{{Buffyverse}}'': Like the similarly named graphic novel, the four ''Tales of the Slayer'' short story anthologies explore the lives and experiences of numerous Slayers over the course of almost 2,500 years from Thessily Thessilonikki in 490 BCE to Buffy's immediate predecessor India Cohen in 1993.
* ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia'':
** ''Literature/TheMagiciansNephew'' is set 1,000 years before ''Literature/TheLionTheWitchAndTheWardrobe'', 1,300 years pass between ''The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'' and ''Literature/PrinceCaspian'', a generation or so between ''Prince Caspian'' and ''Literature/TheSilverChair'', and seven generations between ''The Silver Chair'' and ''Literature/TheLastBattle'', which in turn takes place at the end of the world. This allows the world to change, often significantly, between novels, such as Narnia being overrun and conquered by the Telmarine people between the first novel and ''Prince Caspian''.
** Due to [[NarniaTime time flowing differently in Narnia than in our world]], far less time passes between sequels for the human protagonists than for the land of Narnia. The Pevensie siblings are children in ''The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe'', and they're only teenagers or young adults by ''The Last Battle'', even though millennia have passed in Narnia. ''The Magician's Nephew'' is the only one that's a distant sequel (or rather, prequel) in Earth time as well as in Narnia time -- it's set in TheEdwardianEra and focuses on Digory Kirke as a child, while the next book (chronologically) happens during [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII the Blitz]] and shows Digory as an old man.
* ''Literature/{{Dune}}'' loves this trope, but also does an ImmediateSequel (or near-immediate) or two:
** ''Literature/DuneMessiah'' is set twelve years after ''Literature/{{Dune}}''.
** ''Literature/ChildrenOfDune'' is set nine years after that.
** Then there's a ~3500 year gap before the beginning of ''Literature/GodEmperorOfDune''.
** This is followed by a ~1500 year gap, and then ''Literature/HereticsOfDune''.
** Which is immediately followed by ''Literature/ChapterHouseDune''.
* ''Literature/EndersGame'': ''Literature/SpeakerForTheDead'' is set about three thousand years after the first book, as this is the amount of time needed to travel from Earth to the book's setting, the planet Lusitania, in a slower-than-light sleeper ship. For Ender himself due to the time dilation, it’s been 22 years.
* ''Literature/TheEnduringFlameTrilogy'' takes place a thousand years or so after ''Literature/TheObsidianTrilogy'', by which point the latter's heroes have become the figureheads of the setting's main religion.
* Creator/IsaacAsimov's ''Literature/FoundationSeries'': Many of the books' component stories were first published in the {{Pulp Magazine}}s of the time. The overarching story achieves a DashedPlotLine effect due to skipping between characters, often with {{Time Skip}}s of a generation or so between stories.
** "Literature/ThePsychohistorians": A ShortStory added retroactively when ''Literature/Foundation1951'' was published, this begins the timeline of the Foundation Era at [[AlternativeCalendar -2 Foundation Era]], compared to 50 F.E. of "Literature/TheEncyclopedists". Year 1 is when the planet Terminus [[FoundingDay is colonized by the Foundation]].
** "Literature/TheEncyclopedists": The events in this story take place in 50 F.E., fifty years since the events of "The Psychohistorians".
** "Literature/TheMayors": The events in this story take place in 80 F.E., thirty years since the events of "The Encyclopedists" and manages to keep two characters from the previous story, who are now aged and important figures.
** "Literature/TheTraders": Created as an {{Interquel}} between "The Mayors" and "The Merchant Princes", occurring two decades before the latter (making it take place around 130 F.E.).
** "Literature/TheMerchantPrinces": The events in this story take place over a few years, starting twenty years after "The Traders" (and with none of the same characters), reportedly a "century and a half" since Terminus was colonized by the Foundation. This places it seventy years after the events of "The Mayors".
** "Literature/TheGeneralFoundation": The events in this story begins over forty years after "The Merchant Princes" (roughly 200 F.E.), and Ducem Barr (the offscreen son of an old man) is now, himself, an old man. Hober Mallow is gone, replaced by Sennett Forell (his bastard son). The other characters have all died from old age.
** "Literature/TheMule": This story takes place about a hundred years after the events of "Literature/TheGeneralFoundation"; Bayta Darell is a [[SpinOffspring descendant of]] the [[LegendaryInTheSequel famous Hober Mallow]], and newly married to our primary protagonist, Toran. They're on Terminus when [[PosthumousCharacter Hari Seldon's recording]] makes his FoundingDay appearance for 300 F.E.
** "Literature/SearchByTheFoundation": This story takes place sixty years after the events of "Literature/SearchByTheMule"; Arcadia (Arkady) Darell is a [[SpinOffspring descendant of]] the [[LegendaryInTheSequel famous Bayta Darell]], and fourteen years old. This places events at 365 F.E. to begin with.
** ''Literature/FoundationsEdge'': This story takes place one hundred thirty-three years after the events of "Literature/SearchByTheFoundation", in the year 498 F.E.
** Then there's ''Literature/FoundationAndEarth'', which joins Asimov's Foundation universe with his Robot novels, making ''Literature/Foundation1951'' a 15,000+ year distant sequel to ''Literature/RobotsAndEmpire''.
** "Literature/FoundationsConscience", by Creator/GeorgeZebrowski: This story takes place centuries after ''Literature/FoundationAndEarth'', which was the latest volume by InUniverse chronology. It even takes place after the ''[[FictionalDocument Encyclopedia Galactica]]'' edition that gets quoted in most of the other books, and is designed to be a story that brings [[DistantFinale closure to the series]].
* The ''Literature/{{Helliconia}}'' books are set centuries apart from each other, showing how the eponymous planet changes as it and its parent star Batalix [[BinarySuns orbit around Freyr]], cyclically affecting the planet's climate over centuries. The story of Aoz Roon overthrowing the two chiefs of his village and becoming one himself in ''Helliconia Spring'' is remembered in ''Helliconia Summer'' as nothing more than a cautionary tale that was probably made from whole cloth.
* ''Literature/InfernoLarryNivenAndJerryPournelle'': ''Escape from Hell'' takes place a hundred and fifty-odd years after ''Inferno'' -- Allen spends an unspecified amount of time reforming in the Vestibule after being blow to kingdom come in Cocytus, and only learns of the gap when he gets back to Dis. The essentially timeless nature of Hell means that this doesn't hugely impact his experiences in traveling through it, especially since the story was implied to already be set in the real world's future, and this serves chiefly to emphasize how easily the centuries pass by in the Pit.
* ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' starts 59 years after ''Literature/TheHobbit'' ends and then there is another 17 year jump before the main story of the Fellowship starts; this is not immediately noticeable due to most main characters belonging to species that are either very LongLived or actually [[TheAgeless ageless]], but enough time has passed for Bilbo to become an old man with an adult nephew and for the city of Dale to be ruled by the grandson of Bard, who becomes its ruler at the end of ''The Hobbit''.
* ''Literature/MassEffectAnnihilation'' takes place thirty years before the main events of ''VideoGame/MassEffectAndromeda''.
* ''Literature/{{Redwall}}'': Most novels are set a generation or so apart from one another, so that any given work tends to feature as main characters people who were either children in the previous book or who are the offspring of the previous work's main characters. As there are twenty-two novels in the series, the end result is that the last few books in chronological order take place a good few centuries after the first ones, and extensive dynasties and family lines can be traced among the characters who are each other's children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
* ''Literature/TheShadowhunterChronicles'':
** ''Literature/TheInfernalDevices'' takes place 129 years before ''Literature/TheMortalInstruments''. Some of the former's main characters are ancestors of the latter's.
** ''Literature/TheLastHours'' is set 25 years after ''The Infernal Devices''. It stars children of the latter's main characters, who are now middle-aged.
* ''Literature/{{Silverwing}}'': The prequel novel ''Darkwing'' might set a record for longest time gap between the main story and its followup. While the first three stories are ambiguously set in the present day (although in an AlternateHistory), ''Darkwing'' is set shortly after the K-Pg extinction event, over ''sixty million years ago'', chronicling how the first bats evolved.
* ''Literature/StarTrekNovelVerse'':
** The first two stories in the short story anthology ''Enterprise Logs'', "The Veil at Valcour" and "World of Strangers", take place in 1776 and 1942 respectively, hundreds of years prior to the rest of the stories in the collection and the usual time frame of the franchise in general. "The Veil at Valcour" is set aboard the Royal Navy vessel HMS ''Enterprise'' during UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution while "World of Strangers" is set aboard the US Navy vessel U.S.S. ''Enterprise'' (CV-6) during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.
** The short story "I Am Become Death" in the anthology ''Strange New Worlds II'' takes place in 4367, 2,000 years after the events of ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration''. By this time, [[AIIsACrapshoot humanity has gone extinct, having been replaced by a race of androids created by Data]].
** "The Second Star" in ''Strange New Worlds III'' takes place in 2425, about 50 years after the events of ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''. Tarina tells her grandchildren about her encounter with ''Voyager'''s crew in 2373.
** "A Girl for Every Star" in ''Strange New Worlds V'' takes place in 2123, about 30 years before the events of ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' and more than 140 years before those of ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries''. The 11-year-old Jonathan Archer meets a young Vulcan girl named T'Rama, who later becomes the mother of Sarek and the grandmother of Spock.
** "Our Million Year Mission" in ''Strange New Worlds VI'' is set in 1012260, on board a ship called the [=UberEnterprise=] NCC 1701-∞, which launched on the ten thousandth aniversary of Kirk beginning his five year mission, and has since spent a million years exploring the cosmos.
** "Guardians" in ''Strange New Worlds VII'' begins in 2297, thirty years after the events of ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'', and moves increasingly further into the future until it reaches 52267 when [[Recap/StarTrekS1E25TheDevilInTheDark the mother Horta's eggs hatch]].
** "Assignment One" in ''Strange New Worlds 8'' takes place from September 10 to 11, 2001. Gary Seven prevents Shaun Geoffrey Christopher from boarding one of the planes that crashes into the World Trade Center so that he can command the first manned mission to UsefulNotes/{{Saturn}} in 2020.
** "The Rules of War" in ''Strange New Worlds 9'' takes place during the Eugenics Wars in 1994, about 160 years before the events of ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise''. The story concerns Jonathan Archer's great-grandfather Nathan Archer fighting [[Recap/StarTrekTheAnimatedSeriesS1E7TheInfiniteVulcan Dr. Stavos Keniclius]] in North Africa and managing to negotiate a temporary cease fire with him so that a school can be evacuated. Captain Archer tells Trip about this event in "[[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS03E17Hatchery Hatchery]]".
** "Mestral" in ''Strange New Worlds 9'' takes place on the first day of WorldWarIII on May 1, 2053. The title character, [[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS02E02CarbonCreek a Vulcan who has been living on Earth disguised as a human since 1957]], meets Zefram Cochrane [[Film/StarTrekFirstContact ten years before his warp flight]] and introduces him to Lily Sloane.
** "The Immortality Blues" in ''Strange New Worlds 9'' takes place in 2063, 206 years before the events of "[[Recap/StarTrekS3E19RequiemForMethuselah Requiem for Methuselah]]". The [[{{Immortality}} immortal man]] who later calls himself Flint helps humanity to rebuild in the aftermath of World War III.
** The short story "Stone Cold Truths" in ''Tales of the Dominion War'' takes place in 2525, 150 years after the events of ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' and ''Literature/StarTrekNewFrontier''. The retired Brikarian Starfleet officer Zak Kebron tells his son Cal about his experiences during the Dominion War (2373-2375).
** The first two novels in the trilogy ''Literature/StarTrekTheEugenicsWars'' take place from 1974 to 1996, approximately 300 years before the events of "[[Recap/StarTrekS1E22SpaceSeed Space Seed]]" and ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan''. They tell the story of Khan Noonien Singh's life from his early childhood to his rise to power to his leaving Earth aboard the S.S. ''Botany Bay'' in 1996.
** The TNG novel ''The Captains' Honor'' revisits the SpaceRomans planet Magna Roma in 2365, 97 years after the events of "[[Recap/StarTrekS2E25BreadAndCircuses Bread and Circuses]]".
* ''Literature/WarriorCats'': The ''Dawn of the Clans'' series takes place in what the modern Clans would describe as being ancient times, focusing on the very creation and foundation of the Clans, generations before ''The Prophecy Begins'' took place. By the time of the main series, the events of ''Dawn of the Clans'' have long since faded into [[LegendFadesToMyth fuzzily remembered legend]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* ''Series/CobraKai'' is set 34 years after the events of the first film in the original ''Film/TheKarateKid'' trilogy, and revolves around former Cobra Kai star Johnny Lawrence, who reopens the dojo in a quest for redemption.
* ''Series/EastEnders'': The TV film ''[=CivvyStreet=]'' takes place in December 1942, more than 40 years before the events of the series. It explores the impact that UsefulNotes/WorldWarII had on the residents of Albert Square.
* ''Series/HouseOfTheDragon'' opens in the year 101, before skipping several years later to the ninth year of Viserys I's reign, "172 years before the birth of Daenerys Targaryen", who was 16 at the beginning of ''Series/GameOfThrones''. This means that the first episode is set 188 years before ''[=GoT=]''. The first season has a lot of timeskips, which span around twenty years or so, though the producers have stated that there will no longer be significant timeskips in future seasons, implying that the main bulk of the story will still be well over 160 years before ''[=GoT=]''. Also doubles as a PrequelInTheLostAge, since it takes place when House Targaryen is still in power, and dragons still fly all over Westeros.
* ''Series/ICarly2021'' begins roughly a decade after the original ''Series/{{iCarly}}''. Carly and Freddie are now in their mid-twenties and Spencer is now a very wealthy artist.
* ''Series/NirvanaInFire2'' takes place at least sixty years after ''Series/NirvanaInFire''.
* ''Script/{{Powerpuff}}'' takes place 18 years after the events of ''Franchise/ThePowerpuffGirls'', though it sets the original events in 2003 to fit the pilot's present of 2021.
* ''Franchise/StarTrek'':
** ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'', and ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' are all set approximately a hundred years after ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'', which in turn takes place a century after ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise''.
** The ''Star Trek: The Next Generation'' movies, ''Film/StarTrekGenerations'', ''Film/StarTrekFirstContact'', ''Film/StarTrekInsurrection'', and ''Film/StarTrekNemesis'', take place eighty to one hundred years after ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture'' and its sequels.
** ''Series/StarTrekPicard'' takes place in 2399, twenty years after ''Film/StarTrekNemesis''.
** ''Series/StarTrekDiscovery'': "[[Recap/StarTrekDiscoveryS3E07UnificationIII Unification (Part III)]]" takes place in 3189, 821 years after the TNG two-parter that started the story arc. We learn that Spock's efforts bore fruit many years after his death (well, time travel, actually). Vulcans and Romulans united and live together on Vulcan, which they have renamed to Ni'Var.
*** The fifth season of ''Discovery'' is revealed to be a DistantSequel to [[spoiler:the ''Next Generation'' episode [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS6E18TheChase "The Chase"]].]]
* ''Series/TinMan'' is revealed to be this to the Literature/LandOfOz books and not just a straight DystopianOz adaptation in the third part [[spoiler: by revealing Dorothy moved to Oz full time like she did in the books, becoming matriarch of the ruling family of which DG is a current scion.]]
* ''Series/TheTribe'': All the adults (and a lot of the children) in the world have been wiped out by a man-made virus, and the survivors are living in small tribes (some friendly, some antagonistic) and struggling along with a mixture of tech from Industrial Revolution-era to modern technology (they have computers). The series ends with a second virus being unleashed and the remaining inhabitants of the city fleeing the imminent cloud of death to safety to continue rebuilding civilisation... but in the distant sequel series ''The New Tomorrow'', society has regressed to an Iron Age level (a tribe of farmers, another of hunter gatherers, and a tribe of Privileged who live on slave labour), and what is remembered of the days of the Mall Rats and Bray, Zoot, Ebony, etc has been shrouded in myths. The only question left to wonder is -- if this is set sufficiently far after that the events of ''The Tribe'' have faded into myths, why are there still no adults anywhere to be seen?
* ''Franchise/UltraSeries'': ''Series/UltramanMebius'' takes place twenty-five years after ''Series/UltramanEighty'', as a continuation of the Nebula M78 Timeline (Showa Era).
* ''Series/VikingsValhalla'' is a set a century after the events of ''Series/{{Vikings}}'' at the tail-end of the UsefulNotes/TheVikingAge, with many of the characters being descendants of the original series' characters.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Radio]]
* ''Radio/TheGreenHornet'': The main character, Britt Reid, is typically depicted as the grand-nephew of John Reid, Radio/TheLoneRanger. As such, ''The Green Hornet'' is typically set two generations or so after the events of the earlier series, enough time for the Green Hornet's parents to be dead from natural causes.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
* ''TabletopGame/{{Century}}'': Each game in the original trilogy is set one century following the previous. While the ExcusePlot shows the trading companies being controlled by the same families, very few real life people would live to see the events of all three games.
* ''TabletopGame/WarhammerAgeOfSigmar'' is a very distant sequel to ''TabletopGame/WarhammerFantasy''. Precise timescales aren't specified, but the game's backstory begins with the destruction of the earlier setting, after which come unspecified numbers of millennia as the survivors of the setting of ''Fantasy'', known in ''Age of Sigmar'' as the World-that-Was, come across the Mortal Realms and populate them with new races, civilizations rise and fall, and cataclysms shape and reshape the Realms. By the game's present, only a relative handful of immortal characters remain from ''Fantasy''; otherwise, the setting has changed so much as to be essentially a completely new world.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Theatre]]
* The beginning of ''Theatre/HarryPotterAndTheCursedChild'' takes place nineteen years after ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows'', picking up where the book left off. The rest of the story takes place four years after that.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* ''Franchise/AceAttorney'': Unlike the 2010s-set ''VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorney'' installments, the spinoff; ''VisualNovel/TheGreatAceAttorney'' is set during the late 19th century and follows Phoenix's ancestor Ryunosuke (a native of Meiji-era Japan) and his allies as he attempts to become a lawyer in Victorian London.
* ''VideoGame/AndroDunos'' has a sequel set 28 years after the original, and a HappyEndingOverride that reveals despite thwarting the AlienInvasion, decades later earth ''still'' gets conquered.
* ''Franchise/AssassinsCreed'': A common occurrence, as the games are set all over recorded history.
** [[VideoGame/AssassinsCreedI The first game]] is set in 1191 AD, during [[UsefulNotes/TheCrusades the Third Crusade]]. ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedII'' and its subsequent followups ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedBrotherhood'' and ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedRevelations'' take place during [[UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance the Italian Renaissance]] and [[UsefulNotes/OttomanEmpire 16th century Ottoman era Istanbul]], many centuries later. ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedIII'' is set during the UsefulNotes/AmericanRevolution, a few centuries after ''II'' alongside ''[[VideoGame/AssassinsCreedIIILiberation Assassin's Creed: Liberation]]'' which is also set in the same time period. ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedIVBlackFlag'' is a prequel/interquel set during [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfPiracy the Golden Age of Piracy]], around fifty years before that, following the grandfather of ''III''[='=]s protagonist. ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedFreedomCry'' is set in colonial Haiti, 12 years after the events of ''Black Flag''. ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedRogue'' is very much a sequel to ''Black Flag'' and ''Freedom Cry'' set during the UsefulNotes/SevenYearsWar in addition to being a prequel to ''III'' and ''Liberation'' while ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedUnity'' takes place during the UsefulNotes/FrenchRevolution around 15 years after the events of the previous three games.
** ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedOrigins'' is set in [[AncientEgypt Ptolemaic Egypt]] and [[UsefulNotes/TheRomanRepublic the Roman Republic]] in 49 BCE, more than a thousand years before [[VideoGame/AssassinsCreedI the first game]]; ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedOdyssey'' is set in 431 BCE in UsefulNotes/AncientGreece during UsefulNotes/ThePeloponnesianWar, around 400 years before ''Origins'', whereas ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedValhalla'' is set in UsefulNotes/TheVikingAge and 9th century early medieval DarkAgeEurope, beginning in the year 873 AD, almost 1,300 years after ''Odyssey''.
* ''VideoGame/AzureStrikerGunvoltSeries'': In ''VideoGame/AzureStrikerGunvolt3'', Kirin reveals that the game takes place several decades after the previous installment. This is even alluded to in promotional material, in which Gunvolt is referred to as the "eternally young man" and retains his 14-year old appearance despite the TimeSkip.
* ''VideoGame/BaldursGateIII'' takes place a century after the events of ''VideoGame/BaldursGateII'', with the party members having become LegendaryInTheSequel.
* ''VideoGame/BattleArenaToshinden'': The fourth and final installment takes place around a decade after the original trilogy. We can tell by the fact that former protagonist Eiji has gone gray, and Kayin's daughter Naru went from a little child to a [[SheIsAllGrownUp bombshell]].
* ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty'': The first three games were set during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII; the ''VideoGame/ModernWarfare'' series is set around TheNewTens, around seventy years later.
* ''Franchise/{{Castlevania}}'' takes places over centuries with the Belmont clan's fight against Dracula:
** ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaI'' is set in 1691, ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaIIIDraculasCurse'' is a prequel set in 1476, ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaRondoOfBlood'' is a sequel in 1792, ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaBloodlines'' goes further to 1917, ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaHarmonyOfDissonance'' goes back to 1748, ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaAriaOfSorrow'' and ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaDawnOfSorrow'' are set in the 2030s, ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaLamentOfInnocence'' goes all the way back to 1094, ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaCurseOfDarkness'' is set in 1479, ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaPortraitOfRuin'' occurs in 1944, and the last Metroidvania game before the reboot, ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaOrderOfEcclesia'', takes place in the 1800s. The protagonists are thus often each other's ancestors and descendants -- the protagonist of ''Rondo of Blood'', Richter Belmont, is for instance the grandson of Simon Belmont, the protagonist of the original game.
** ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaLordsOfShadow2'' is set 1,000 years after [[VideoGame/CastlevaniaLordsOfShadow the previous game]], following the latter's DistantFinale. It follows the same protagonist as before, as he [[spoiler:becomes immortal after turning into a vampire]].
* ''VideoGame/ChzoMythos'': This happens twice.
** The first game, ''5 Days a Stranger'', takes place in the 1990s, ending with the death of multiple characters and the assumed defeat of the murderous ghost John [=DeFoe=]. The sequel is ''7 Days a Skeptic'', which takes place in 2385, aboard a spaceship, with only loose connections to the original game -- otherwise, it's a new cast of characters being terrorized, once again, by John [=DeFoe=].
** The third game, ''Trilby's Notes'', is set only a few years after the events of ''5 Days'', bringing the series back to a focused, overarching plot. Although the next game ''6 Days a Sacrifice'' follows this overarching plot trend, and even adds some meaning to the events of ''7 Days'', it also takes place in 2189.
* ''VideoGame/Cyberpunk2077'', being a SequelInAnotherMedium, is set 57 years after ''TabletopGame/{{Cyberpunk}} 2020'', and 32 years after ''Cyberpunk RED'' (which was set in 2045).
* ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'':
** ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsII'' takes place at least a thousand years after the events of the first ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsI'', by which point the Chosen Undead's journey to determine the fate of the Age of Fire is nothing but a faded memory.
** While the first two games take place close enough to each other that the First Flame showing no sign of permanently fading, ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsIII'' is set countless thousands of years in the future, after so many cycles have come and gone that the Flame is at risk of permanently going out and the events of the first two games aren't just legends, but the legends of long-dead civilizations. ''The Ringed City'' DLC is implied to be set even further in the future.
* ''VideoGame/DivinityOriginalSinII'' is set 1,200 years after ''VideoGame/DivinityOriginalSin'', and although it is not a ''direct'' sequel to it (it actually more closely follows ''VideoGame/DivineDivinity''), the two games form the two end points of the same story arc concerning the DangerousForbiddenTechnique Source as the origin of the divine power: ''D:OS'' explains how it got corrupted, while the sequel allows you remove it from the world entirely in some of the endings.
* ''[[VideoGame/{{Mother}} EarthBound Series]]'': ''VideoGame/Mother3'' is set an indefinitely long amount of time after the events of ''VideoGame/EarthBound1994''; by this point, [[spoiler: the world already experienced an apocalypse, with the survivors deliberately erasing all of their memories about life before the cataclysmic event]]. ''[=EarthBound=]'' itself is also a milder example in the sense that it is set an ambiguous number of years after the events of ''VideoGame/EarthBoundBeginnings''[[note]]that is, "[=199X=]" vs. 1988; the Japanese releases of ''Beginnings'', both the Famicom and Gameboy Advance port Mother 1+2 versions give a concrete 1988 regarding the latter but the cancelled English prototype which was eventually released on Wii U Virtual Console more ambiguously says "80 years after "the early 1900's"[[/note]], but is decidedly still "contemporary" in its setting compared to ''Mother 3''.
* ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'':
** The first four main series games all take place within a roughly 30 year period at the end of the 3rd Era, during and immediately after the reign of Emperor Uriel Septim VII. ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'', the fifth game in the series, then takes place in the 4th Era, [[TimeSkip over 200 years after]] the events of ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion Oblivion]]'', following a number of wars, political upheavals, and a massive eruption that devastated ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind Morrowind]]''[='=]s setting.
** Meanwhile, ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsOnline'' is a distant ''prequel'' to the main series, being set in the Second Era, several centuries before Tiber Septim founded his imperial dynasty. Tamriel as depicted in the MMO looks nothing like the "dark ages" described sparsely in the main series' in-game sources, highlighting how much historical knowledge has been lost over the nearly 800 years between the Planemeld and the fall of the Septims.
* ''Franchise/{{Fallout}}'': While individual games are set no more than a few decades after their predecessors, the years add up between installments -- ''VideoGame/Fallout4'' is set 125 years after the original ''VideoGame/Fallout1'', and, while still set in an AfterTheEnd ScavengerWorld, later games show signs of civilization having been rebuilt considerably from the point of the first few games. Among other things, agriculture, trade and nations larger than village-sized city-states all reappear as time goes on. [[TheFederation The New California Republic]], which the player helps establish and defend in early games, has for instance grown into a powerful nation by the time of ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas''. Conversely, ''VideoGame/Fallout76'' takes place nearly sixty years before the first game and 25 years after WorldWarIII, with the people of Appalachia even worse off than the [[VideoGame/Fallout3 Capital Wasteland]] and pre-War life still relatively fresh in people's minds.
* ''Franchise/FinalFantasy''
** ''Videogame/FinalFantasyVII'' is said through WordOfDante to be a distant sequel to ''Videogame/FinalFantasyX'' and ''Videogame/FinalFantasyX2''. A minor character in ''X-2'' eventually develops the technology to harness Mako energy from [[TheLifestream the Farplane]] and, a thousand years later, this research is perfected on another planet: the world of ''FFVII''.
** ''VideoGame/LightningReturnsFinalFantasyXIII'' is set 500 years after ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII2''. However, none of the cast have aged, because the release of Chaos has stopped time from ticking (and prevented babies from being born).
* ''Franchise/FireEmblem'':
** ''VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening'' is set in the same world and continents as ''VideoGame/FireEmblemMysteryOfTheEmblem'' and ''VideoGame/FireEmblemGaiden'', but about 2,000 years after their events. ''Mystery of the Emblem''[='=]s protagonist, Marth, is now a legendary figure known as the Hero-King, and two of ''Awakening''[='=]s main protagonists, Chrom and his daughter Lucina, are his very distant descendants. The only directly shared character is Tiki, an immortal [[OurDragonsAreDifferent Manakete]], who is a young child in the original games and an ancient, revered being in ''Awakening''. As many liberties are taken with the plots of those games, such as the [[RememberTheNewGuy Taguel being claimed to have existed all along]] and the Fire Emblem having an entirely different purpose, it also qualifies as BroadStrokes.
** Inverted with ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBlazingBlade'', which is a distant prequel, taking place 20 years before ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBindingBlade''.
* ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys3'' is set 30 years after [[VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys1 the first game]]. It's been so far into the future that the horrors of child murders at Freddy Fazbear's have turned into urban legends and scary campfire tales, ones which are apparently popular enough to commercialize on.
* ''VideoGame/FugaMelodiesOfSteel'' takes place a thousand years prior to fellow ''VideoGame/LittleTailBronx'' games ''VideoGame/TailConcerto'' and ''VideoGame/SolatoroboRedTheHunter'', and its setting of Gasco is [[spoiler:the previous form of ''Solatorobo''[='s=] setting of Shepherd.]]
* ''VideoGame/HeroesOfJinYong'' has a sequel, ''Wulin Warriors'', set a hundred years later. There's a MemorialStatue depicting the first game's hero, built in his honor.
* ''VideoGame/HogwartsLegacy'' takes place in UsefulNotes/VictorianBritain, over a century before the events of ''Literature/HarryPotter''.
* ''VideoGame/{{Jumper}} Three'' takes place millennia after ''Jumper Two'', due to Ogmo spending all that time in a spaceship. The game doesn't even provide any specific number, it just throws up a random number as a number of years that passed since Ogmo boarded the rocket in the intro.
* ''VideoGame/LegacyOfKain'': The franchise often jumps around by centuries or millennia between games -- '' VideoGame/BloodOmen2LegacyOfKain'', for instance, takes place 400 years after the original '' VideoGame/BloodOmenLegacyOfKain''.
* ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'': Most games are implied to take place anywhere between a few lifetimes to centuries and millennia away from each other, as Link and Zelda reincarnate over and over again throughout Hyrule's history, and events from various games often feature as legends of ancient deeds in chronologically later installments. While clear amounts of time are never given, games at the far end of the franchise's timelines, such as ''Spirit Tracks'' and ''The Adventure of Link'', take place millennia after games such as ''Skyward Sword'' and ''The Minish Cap'' that are set in the early parts of the setting's history.
** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker'' is the first game to explicitly state this[[note]]While older games also used this concept, this was generally only mentioned in advertising and creator interviews, not in the game themselves[[/note]], taking place a very long time after [[TheGreatFlood a great flood]] destroyed Hyrule at some point after ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker Ocarina of Time]]'', long enough that Hyrule itself, Link and his deeds and the Triforce have all long passed into legend, and that language drift has caused the dialect of Hylian spoken in ''Ocarina of Time'' to become an incomprehensible dead language to the people of the game's present.
** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaSpiritTracks'' takes place about a hundred years after the events of ''The Wind Waker'', after the previous game's main characters discover a new habitable continent and found a restored Hyrule upon it. The game's incarnation of Zelda is the granddaughter of Tetra, and a single very aged character remains to tell the new cast about about their predecessors' exploits.
** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'' is one to effectively the franchise as a whole. Exactly how long after the other games ''Breath of the Wild'' takes place is not stated, but 10,000 have passed since the ancient, technologically advanced Hylian civilization sealed the Calamity Ganon away in the game's backstory. This is on top of the amount of time that would have been needed for the medieval Hyrule seen in most games to develop the technology needed to create robots, GiantMecha and other such wonders to begin with, making the amount of time that must gone by between the times of the other ''Zelda'' stories and ''Breath of the Wild'' vast indeed.
* ''VideoGame/LunarEternalBlue'' takes place about 1,000 years after ''VideoGame/LunarTheSilverStar'', although it shares two returning characters.
* ''VideoGame/MassEffectAndromeda'' takes place six hundred years after the original ''Franchise/MassEffect'' trilogy, due to the time needed to travel between the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies. The impossibility of contact between the two galaxies and the fact that the colonists spent the travel time in cryogenic sleep mean that this has little immediate effect on the ongoing plot, although the characters are all very well aware that everyone they ever knew and loved is likely dead by now.
* ''Franchise/MegaMan'' loves this trope.
** In the main timeline, the ''VideoGame/MegaManX'' series takes place a century after the events of the [[VideoGame/MegaManClassic original series]]. The events of the ''VideoGame/MegaManZero'' series takes place a century after that, by which time Zero and X have become downright legendary figures. ''VideoGame/MegaManZX'' takes place two hundred more years after the previous series, while ''VideoGame/MegaManLegends'' is thought to take place several ''thousand'' years after ''ZX''.
** On a smaller scale, the events of ''VideoGame/MegaManStarForce'' take place two hundred years after the events of ''VideoGame/MegaManBattleNetwork''.
* ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3SnakeEater'' is a prequel to the entire ''VideoGame/MetalGear'' series that takes place in the 1960s.
* ''VideoGame/MortalKombatX'' is set 22 years after the events of ''VideoGame/MortalKombat9''.
* ''VideoGame/{{NieR}}'' is a unique example: the game uses Ending E from ''VideoGame/{{Drakengard}}'' as its backdrop, wherein the protagonists of that game are flung across time and space to Tokyo in the year 2003. The game's prologue opens in 2049, by which point the aftermath of the events of Ending E have caused the world to fall into decline. After the prologue, the game picks up 1400 years later. ''VideoGame/NierAutomata'', meanwhile, takes place in the year ''11945 AD'', several thousand years after the events of ''[=NieR=]''.
* The original ''VideoGame/{{PAGUI}}'' and it's sequel are set 10 years apart. Huo Wang-Lin, the seven-year-old protagonist of the first, returns as a KidHeroAllGrownUp.
* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'':
** ''VideoGame/PokemonLegendsArceus'' takes place during the distant past of the Sinnoh region, before humans and Pokémon developed the close bond they share in the present day. The period's culture and technology are based on those of real-life Japan around the 16th century, and numerous species of Pokémon are encountered that, by the series' present day, have long since gone extinct or been replaced by modern variants.
** In a similar but downplayed vein, ''VideoGame/PokemonSunAndMoon'' is implied to take place a decade after ''VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue'', with the grown up versions of the old protagonist and rival aviliable to battle in the post-game.
* ''VideoGame/SeaOfStars'' is a very distant prequel to ''VideoGame/TheMessenger'', with a billion years set between them.
* ''VideoGame/SakuraWars2019'' takes place twelve years after ''VideoGame/SakuraWarsSoLongMyLove'', by which point the original Combat Revues from Tokyo, Paris and New York seal themselves to thwart the demon invasions, the new World Luxury Operatic Federation (WLOF) is formed, and Sumire Kanzaki has managed to establish a new Imperial Combat Revue in Tokyo.
* ''VisualNovel/ShinzaBanshoSeries'': Due to the immense timescales it operates by, the series embraces this trope quite frequently as it is a huge multiversal epic with each new installment focusing on a new gods era, usually at it's tailend. This also means that various settings of the series vary wildly in terms of tone and style. From the Dystopian Cyberpunk story ''VisualNovel/ParadiseLost'', to the contemporary fantasy ''VisualNovel/DiesIrae'', to the medieval Japanese ''VisualNovel/KajiriKamuiKagura''. The HighFantasy ''Literature/AvestaOfBlackAndWhite'' inverts this by being a distant prequel.
* ''[[VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic]]'' occurs 3,956 years before the main ''Franchise/StarWars'' movies, and ''VideoGame/StarWarsEclipse'' takes place two centuries before them in the [[Franchise/StarWarsTheHighRepublic "High Republic" era]].
* ''VideoGame/TalesSeries'':
** ''VideoGame/TalesOfSymphonia'' takes place thousands of years before ''VideoGame/TalesOfPhantasia'', enough time for magitek civilizations to rise and destroy themselves in a war before a meteor impact sends the world back into another technological dark age. An exact time gap is not given, but the [[{{Fanon}} general consensus]] is four thousand years, with ''Symphonia''[='=]s ending acting as YearZero for the calendar used in ''Phantasia''.
** ''VideoGame/TalesOfBerseria'' similarly takes place in the far distant past of ''VideoGame/TalesOfZestiria''.
* ''VideoGame/SoulcaliburV'' takes place 17 years after ''VideoGame/SoulcaliburIV''.
* ''VideoGame/StriderArcade'': ''Strider 2'' is set 2000 years after the original ''Strider'', in a world where Meio's plans were eventually successful.
* ''VideoGame/{{Tekken}}'': The third game is set 19 years after the second, with the sequels following the new timeline. The games now focus on Jin Kazama, son of Kazuya Mishima, the hero-turned villain of the first two games.
* ''VideoGame/WildArms'': Each of the games takes place hundreds or thousands of years apart from each other. It's never stated exactly how long nor which order they're in, but enough time passes that the entire planet can be geographically shuffled, including one game where the oceans have completely dried up.
* ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles'':
** ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles2TornaTheGoldenCountry'' takes place around 500 years before ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles2''.
** ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles3'':
*** The game is explicitly set in the future of the first two games, with Shinya Takahashi stating that "the story of ''Xenoblade Chronicles 3'' ties together the futures of the worlds depicted in ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1'' and ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles2''." [[spoiler:Played with later. While it has indeed been hundreds if not thousands of years, that's only in the "Endless Now" of Aionios. It's unclear when exactly the worlds merged together, with some plot points implying it was only a few decades after ''1'' and ''2''. Once the worlds are separated again at the end of the game, they are able to continue with barely a hiccup, and it's unclear what impact Aionios had on the two worlds]].
*** ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles3FutureRedeemed'' takes place over one thousand years before the main game.
* ''VideoGame/{{Ys}}'': The first game takes place 700 years after the later-released prequel ''VideoGame/YsOrigin'', while the other games all take place within a few years of each other.
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[[folder:Web Comics]]
* ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'' fan-comic ''Webcomic/{{Deal}}'': ''Deal'' is set thirty years after ''GravityFalls'', showing a world where Dipper and Pacifica have children and Bill Cipher returns with a vengeance.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Original]]
* ''WebOriginal/BosunsJournal'': The bulk of ''Bosun's Journal'' takes place over a timespan of a hundred and thirty-odd million years, sufficient to see posthuman life on the ship fall into savagery and then animalism, evolve and diversify into various clades, and then produce a number of new sapient species and their own descendants. ''Bosun's Return'' is instead set some time after the first series' DistantEpilogue, placing it comfortably six billion years in the future. By this time, Earth has undergone so many geological, technological, and biological changes that it is almost entirely unrecognizable, rendering it almost an alien world for the expedition sent to its ruins.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Video]]
* The fan-made series ''WebVideo/DanganronpaDespairTime'' is set approximately thirty years after the end of [[Franchise/{{Danganronpa}} The Tragedy]], where the world has largely recovered and Hope's Peak Academy has opened up divisions in other countries; the United States' East Coast Branch is on its 27th class. Of course, things haven't exactly one back to normal, with the titular SadisticGameShow apparently a popular piece of entertainment.
* ''WebVideo/EmpiresSMP'' Season 2 is set over a thousand years [[AfterTheEnd after the events of Season 1]], and those events have become so distant that the two seasons' storylines are thus far virtually independent from each other (in most perspectives of events). In spite of this, there remains a deep connection between the seasons, ranging from small-scale {{Continuity Nod}}s to {{Mythology Gag}}s, to [[spoiler:Pearl's omnipresence as a deified PosthumousCharacter]], and [[spoiler:Sausage regaining his PastLifeMemories from Season 1 and the ''WebVideo/AfterlifeSMP'']] is a prominent character arc in itself.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/OneHundredAndOneDalmatianStreet'' takes place in 2019, almost 60 years after the events of Creator/{{Disney}}'s 1961 ''WesternAnimation/OneHundredAndOneDalmatians'' film.
* ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond'' takes place in the future of the ''Franchise/DCAnimatedUniverse'', specifically 2039, where an aging [[WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries Bruce Wayne]] trains a new Batman, Terry [=McGinnis=].
* ''WesternAnimation/CastlevaniaNocturne'' is set a few centuries after its [[WesternAnimation/Castlevania2017 predecessor]]. The first series is set in a somewhat vague timespan but is roughly placeable at the tail end of the 15th century; ''Nocturne'' is instead set at the start of the French Revolution and shortly after the Haitian one, in the early 1790s. It focuses on Victor Belmont's distant descendant, Richter Belmont, as he battles new supernatural forces.
* ''WesternAnimation/DragonsTheNineRealms'' takes place in the same universe as ''Franchise/HowToTrainYourDragon'', only 1,300 years after the events of the original trilogy, putting it in the modern age.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra'' takes place 70 years after ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'', by which point Aang has died of old age, allowing the Avatar to be reborn among the Water Tribes in the form of the protagonist. Characters from the previous series, all now famous historical figures, are either in old age (like Toph, Katara and Zuko), deceased (like Sokka), or deceased but still present as spirits (like Aang and Iroh). Other characters include the middle-aged children of the first show's main cast, many with children of their own. The world has also undergone an industrial revolution, with the main setting being a fifth nation, known as the United Republic, that was established in the intervening years.
* ''Franchise/MyLittlePonyGeneration5'' is a sequel to ''Franchise/MyLittlePonyGeneration4'', but long after the original generation's events have passed into legend. The events of the previous generation are described as "Ancient Equestria" in-universe, and it is established that the pony races separated and [[TheMagicGoesAway magic disappeared]] in the intervening centuries.
* ''WesternAnimation/SamuraiJack'': The fifth season takes place fifty years in-universe after the fourth season, by which point most characters -- except Jack, who seems to have become immune to aging -- have become elderly and have families of their own.
* ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'': ''WesternAnimation/BeastWars'' and its sequel ''WesternAnimation/BeastMachines'' have a cast from Cybertron in the distant future of [[WesternAnimation/TheTransformers the original cartoon]], by which point the original's events [[LegendFadesToMyth are the stuff of myth]] ([[PlotHole even though some of its veterans are still alive]]). Although in the former, it turns out [[spoiler:both the Maximals and Predacons have traveled to [[EarthAllAlong Earth in the distant past]]]].
[[/folder]]
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