-->''They called it paradise, I don't know why.''\\
''You call someplace paradise, kiss it goodbye.''\\
- '''Eagles''', ''The Last Resort''

-->''Is anything better than finally [[HomeSweetHome finding your way home]]?''\\
''Is anything worse than finally reaching home, and finding that you're still lost?''\\
- '''Matthew Stover''', ''Traitor''

-->''[[TheTroubles With their tanks and their guns]],\\
Oh, my God, what have they done\\
To the town I loved so well?''\\
-'''Phil Coulter''', ''The Town I Loved So Well''

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 the GrandFinale. If the reason why they can't return is because of a DoomedHometown, then their quest is often {{Revenge}} or [[FightingForAHomeland a new place to stay]]. Sometimes they'll finally return WhereItAllBegan to challenge the force that kept them away for so long.

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.

Contrast StrangerInAFamiliarLand, where you ''can'' go home, but you no longer fit in.

----
!!Examples

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: Anime ]]

* In ''FullMetalAlchemist'', Ed and Al burn down their house so they won't be able to give up their mission, like Parn did in Record of Lodoss War. Of course, Pinako and Winry's house is always open to them, so they're not as homeless as they'd like to think.
** [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic Of course no one asks why they didn't just sell it instead]].
*** Except [[spoiler: Hohenheim]], who is convinced they did it so as not to face up to the whole "brought back an abomination of nature instead of our dead mother" thing every time they walked by the study.
* Yoko spends the first arc of ''TheTwelveKingdoms'' trying to get back to her own world. [[spoiler: Eventually, she comes to realize that she is needed far more in Kei than she is at home, and reluctantly agrees to become the Glory-King.]]
* Caro of ''MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha'' was exiled from her tribe when she was very young because [[PersonOfMassDestruction she was too powerful a]] [[SummonMagic summoner]]. Thankfully for her, while she can't return to her homeland ever again, Fate adopts her and gives her a new place to call home.
* Zoro of ''{{One Piece}}'' sets out to sea to find Mihawk, but is unable to find his way back due to his [[NoSenseOfDirection poor sense of direction]].
* In ''PrincessMononoke'', Ashitaka is permanently exiled from his home village to protect everyone from his curse.
* In RecordOfLodossWar, Parn is kicked out of his village at the beginning of the story. He dons his father's armor and subsequently burns his house down and from then has to go WalkingTheEarth.
* [[spoiler:Faye Valentine]] from ''CowboyBebop''. [[spoiler:She eventually finds the spot where her home used to be, only to discover there's nothing there now, not even ruins. She draws a spot in the dirt where her bed used to be, and lies there alone]].
** In fact, if you're willing to extend this to psychologically or spiritually being unable to return to home, then the entire main cast could count.
*Mostly Averted in InuYasha. For the first few episodes Kagome is trying to find her way home. After she discovers it's a simple as dropping into the dry well she comes and goes between the two periods. The video game for the PS2 plays this straight but more on that below
*A different use of this trope happens in .hack//sign. The main character Tsuksa is trapped in the online game The World. Unlike most uses of this troupe, for most of the series Tsukasa doesn't want to go back. [[spoiler: Changing this feeling is the point of the entire show.]]

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Comic Books ]]

* This trope is the premise of the story of the Silver Surfer. After sacrificing himself to become a slave to a supernatural godlike destroyer of worlds (to save his own homeworld, of course), the hero's memory is taken from him AND his homeworld gets displaced. After he (very quickly into the story) regains his memories, the rest of the plot is largely about finding his home planet again.
* A series of 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.
-> '''Snoopy''': You stupid people! You're parking on my ''memories''!!!
* Occurs to mutant alligator Leatherhead in ''TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles'' after he is inadvertently left behind on Earth by the escaping Utroms; several stories involve him unsuccesfully trying to reach the Utrom homeworld.
* This is the premise of the LegionOfSuperHeroes story Legion Lost. A group of Legionnaires find themselves galaxies away from Earth in a thrashed starbase.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Film ]]

* Variation: In the movie ''{{Cars}}'', once Lightning [=McQueen=] starts settling in and feeling like he belongs in Radiator Springs, his past life finds him and drags him back. In this case, it's not that you can't ''go'' home, it's ''finding'' a home, and not being able to ''stay''.
**Also done in ''{{The Majestic}}'' where the main character's past comes back to disturb his new life.
* A major element in 2007's ''Transformers'' movie.
* ''An American Tail'': The reason the Mousekewitz family emigrates to America is because the Cossacks burned their village to the ground.
** Interestingly, the village has been [[WordOfGod exclusively identified as]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shostka Shostka, Ukraine]]...which is still standing today.
* In ''GrossePointeBlank'', John Cusack's charcter, Martin Blank, return to his home town for a reunion. While there, he visits his childhood home, only to find that [[spoiler:it's become a convenience store.]] This causes him to say the line, "You can never go home again, [[spoiler:but I guess you can shop there.]]"
** Not for long...
* In ''StarTrekXI'', [[spoiler: Spock and Spock Prime]] both wind up afflicted by this trope: [[spoiler: Spock because Vulcan has just exploded]] and [[spoiler: Spock Prime because he's marooned in another timeline...''and'' Vulcan has just exploded.]]
** And, of course, the BigBad, Nero, is in the same boat, thanks to [[spoiler: the supernova that took out Romulus and his subsequent time-traveling.]]
* TheSearchers ends with John Wayne leaving because his behavior has alienated his family.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Literature ]]

* The titular Ghosts of DanAbnett's ''{{Warhammer 40000}}: [[GauntsGhosts Gaunt's Ghosts]]'' earned their nickname in part because their homeworld of Tanith was destroyed by Chaos on the day of their Founding. Later, after the novel ''Necropolis'', thousands of survivors from Vervunhive join the Tanith after their home hive-city is so badly damaged in a battle against Chaos that the whole hive is rendered uninhabitable.
* Arthur Dent and Trillian in DouglasAdams' ''[=~The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy~=]''. The [[spoiler:Earth is gone for good, as are Arthur, Trillian and Ford. Even though there's a sixth book on the horizon, which means Arthur and Ford, at least, is still around in some form, I doubt the Earth's coming back.]]
* ''{{Neverwhere}}'' by NeilGaiman. Richard Mayhew no longer exists to his "London Above" life and most of his adventure helping Door [[{{Revenge}} avenge]] her family's deaths is because he thinks that when he does that, he'll find a way to go home. [[spoiler:He doesn't fit in anymore when he ends up home in the denoument, so he returns to London Below.]]
* In NeilGaiman's ''{{Stardust}}'', Tristan goes back home, but returns over the Wall to stay.
* The premise of ''TheOdyssey'', making it OlderThanDirt.
* ''The Homeward Bounders'' by DianaWynneJones makes a feature of this trope, with the titular characters traveling from world to world (unwillingly, unagingly) hoping that eventually they'll end up back home and stop. [[spoiler:The main character discovers that "you can never go back" when he finally manages to get to his world. Decades have passed; his 'home' no longer exists anywhere in the multiverse.]]
* Throughout the latter half of RobertJordan's ''WheelOfTime'' series, Rand al'Thor has the ability to open a CoolGate pretty much anywhere in the known world, and yet the closest he comes to going home is when he gives someone a lift there. He refuses to stick around, knowing that that part of his life is gone.
* In ''ASongOfIceAndFire'', leaving your home of Winterfell is really not a good idea. You may end up dead, on the run from people who want you dead, held captive, or in sworn service of the Night's Watch. If you ever do make it back, DoomedHometown.
* In ''The Scar'', stand-alone sequel to ''PerdidoStreetStation'', Bellis' primary objective is to get back to New Crobuzun, until her plans change when she realizes that she can't escape Armada.
* AndreNorton examples:
** In ''Android at Arms'', the protagonist and his Salariki friend accidentally end up in an AlternateUniverse via a CoolGate that the protagonist knew of by reputation; they had taken a chance of hiding out in its vicinity to avoid pursuit, since it rarely went into operation, and had bad luck. The protagonist knows, thanks to his studies with his late father, that nobody taken by the CoolGate has ever returned.
** In ''The Beast Master'', Earth has been destroyed in an interstellar war as of the beginning of the story; the titular character, a specialized kind of commando, chooses another planet to be sent to after the war. The military is (justifiably) worried about his state of mind, particularly since they haven't seen any of the obvious / expected reactions from him.
** In ''[[WitchWorld The Crystal Gryphon]]'', Ithkrypt (the capital of Ithdale) and Ulmsdale are both destroyed by FunctionalMagic to keep them out of the hands of invaders (though in separate incidents). The latter had no survivors other than the FishOutOfWater male protagonist, as far as he could tell; he joined up with the refugees from Ithdale (who include the female protagonist, their leader) to try to get them out of harm's way.
** In the TimeTraders book ''Echoes in Time'' (co-written with Sherwood Smith), this is the fate of some human {{time travel}}ers who go back into the far past on another planet. [[spoiler:The rescue mission sent to retrieve them learns that the team survived, but were physically changed so that they could not survive returning to Earth, so they had made the best of a bad situation.]]
** In ''Here Abide Monsters'', the protagonists are swept into AnotherDimension through a CoolGate, and learn that they are TrappedInAnotherWorld, called Avalon. Such refugees from our world fall into two groups: those who accept an offer by TheFairFolk to be assimilated, and those who persist as rootless wanderers and are treated as prey by various creatures.
** In ''Wraiths Out of Time'', the protagonist changes places with her AlternateUniverse counterpart, who dies in the process. Since she has no strong anchor to take her home, she cannot go back. In addition, the titular characters - the victims of a MadScientist - are in their wraith-state due to a similar problem.
* Everyone in {{Discworld}} knows wizards can never go home. Evidently after you've summoned a few creatures from beyond mortal planes and dabbled in the occult, the village you left behind just isn't home anymore.
* In Robert Sheckley's ''Dimension of Miracles'' the protagonist spends most of the book trying to get home.
* In a subversion, Frodo Baggins, in ''LordOfTheRings'', finds it easy to ''physically'' return home once the quest is over. But when he gets there, he finds it's not as he remembered it, and that he can't return to the simple pastoral innocence of his previous life. He leaves for the Grey Havens with the Elves and departs the world of Men forever.
* Not surprisingly, the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin entire premise]] of ''You Can't Go Home Again'' by Thomas Wolfe. George Webber, an author, literally can't go back to his small-town home because the residents think his debut book gave them a bad name and threaten to kill him over it, ''and'' the recent development boom has made the town almost unrecognizable compared to how George remembered it as a kid. Plus there's the deal with the Nazis taking all the magic out of 1930's Germany, and the whole [[EndOfAnAge Great Depression]] thing.
* In ''StarWars'', Alderaan is blown up. This is mined for much drama and angst in the ExpandedUniverse, with the various Alderaanians who were offworld at the time.
** Not to mention Luke's home, which is destroyed by Imperial Stormtroopers.
* Spader and Gunny from the {{Pendragon}} series ends up like this after Bobby tries to pull his Acolytes through the flume from Eelong to Zadaa, causing the Eelong flume to collapse and trap Spader and Gunny on a territory surrounded by [[FurryFandom catpeople]] for months (and like four books).
* Those selected for training as Eternals in TheEndOfEternity could never return home, because home would no longer exist due to Reality Changes.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

* ''{{Farscape}}'', John Crichton. Eventually he does make his way home, but he can't stay because he's changed too much...among other things, he's ''killed'', a ''lot''. While he's there, though, [[spoiler:an assassin tortures and kills his best friends, and wrecks his family's house]]. ''On Christmas''. Later, after he leaves, [[spoiler:he's forced to close the wormhole for good, to protect Earth from the Scarrans.]]
* Paul Bremer, a German soldier in World War One, returns home from the front in 1918 only to find he no longer understands civilian life in Germany.
** What show is this from?
* ''{{Stargate SG-1}}'', Teal'c
** An episode called ''100 Days'' plays with this trope. A meteor shower during a mission strikes the Stargate, burying it and leaving O'Neill stuck on an alien planet, with the rest of SG-1 having made it back to Earth. O'Neill spends the following months trying to find the gate, hoping that rescue will come. As he finally gives up on the idea of traveling through the stars and going back to Earth, he begins to make a life for himself with the people still on the planet with him. That is until his 100th day there when SG-1 finds a way to make contact with the gate and dig it out. O'Neill's having to choose between his new life and his old one is something of a TearJerker.
* ''StargateAtlantis'', the entire cast in the first season.
* The basic premise of Stargate: Universe.
* ''BattlestarGalactica'' combined this with a DoomedHometown to form the series premise. In addition, the fifth episode of the first season is also called "You Can't Go Home Again", and involves Kara Thrace attempting to escape a barren planet to return to the Galactica, which (surprise, surprise) she does manage to do at the end, by using a crashed Cylon fighter to get off the planet.
* ''{{Sliders}}'' for the entire run. They eventually combined this with DoomedHometown in order to give the series a BigBad.
** Although one episode ended with them briefly (a few minutes) ending up in a world that looked a lot like theirs, only to end in disappointment when Quinn sadly noted the fence gate at his home didn't squeak, as it did in their world, so they jumped into the next vortex that appeared. Only, after it vanished, to have a local guy come out of the house with Quinn's mother and mentioning he'd finally fixed the squeaky gate hinges.
* ''StarTrekVoyager'', series premise.
** This is especially true for Neelix, whose homeworld was destroyed, and Icheb, whose parents want only to use him as a weapon.
* In ''StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' Garak was exiled from Cardassia, and is only permitted to return after the entire planet has been carpet bombed.
* ''StarTrekEnterprise''. In "Home" the crew of NX-01 Enterprise return to Earth after three years in space, only to find that while they've learnt to accept aliens, xenophobia has increased as a result of the Xindi attack. T'Pol returns to Vulcan to discover that her mother's career has been destroyed because of her loyalty to Archer, while Archer has difficulty relating to his Starfleet superiors and friends who haven't shared his experiences.
* ''LostInSpace'', series premise.
* Likewise in ''LifeOnMars''. Sam finally returns from the grey-brown-orange world of 1973 and decides the modern world lacks colour.
* ''GilligansIsland'', in a comedy example.
* ''QuantumLeap'', in which not only can Sam Becket not go home, he can't even stay where he is, and must live moments from other people's lives, his leaps inevitable, finding himself in a new stranger's shoes each time.
* The Doctor in ''DoctorWho'' is unable to return to his home world of late, ever since it kind of got destroyed.
** In the old series, where the Doctor couldn't reliably control the TARDIS, most of his companions couldn't go home until it randomly ended up back in their home place and time again. Most of them didn't mind so much, but there were a couple of plot arcs in which the Doctor was actively trying get a character home, invariably without success; variations included "exactly the right place, but three centuries early" ("The Visitation"), "exactly the right time, but several lightyears away" ("Four to Doomsday"), "the right place ''and'' the right time, but due to a technical fault we're all only an inch tall" ("Planet of the Giants"), and "the right place and time, but the wrong ''universe''" ("Full Circle"), not to mention the ever-popular "despite the Doctor's confidence that he's succeeded at last, both the wrong place ''and'' the wrong time" ("The Reign of Terror", passim).
** Also in the old series, the Doctor couldn't return to Gallifrey because interfering in the histories of other planets was considered a heinous crime. When he was forced to reveal his location to them ("The War Games"), the Time Lords captured, tried and exiled him.
* And ''{{Torchwood}}'''s [[FishOutOfTemporalWater Jack Harkness.]]
** Not that he'd want to go back, apparently (going by the conversation with Ianto in "To the Last Man.")
* ''SpaceCases'', a thinly disguised ripoff of ''StarTrekVoyager''... which was, itself, a ripoff of ''LostInSpace''.
* In ''ThreeInThree'', the main character spends most of the plot trying to get back to the spreadsheet she lived in, only to discover in the end that she doesn't really belong there anymore.
* SidAndMartyKrofftProductions are notorious for using this one (HRPufenstuf, Lidsville, LandOfTheLost, TheLostSaucer, FarOutSpaceNuts).
* In ''{{Firefly}}'', neither River nor Simon Tam can return to their home on Osiris, because doing so would get Simon arrested and River sent back to the Academy. On a more blunt note, Malcolm Reynolds can't go back to his home on Shadow because the Alliance virtually destroyed the planet during the Unification War, rendering it uninhabitable.
* Part of the premise of ''{{Lost}}''. [[spoiler: Subverted in the third season finale, when they finally ''do'' get to go home, only to have Jack convinced it was a big mistake to leave]].
* In ''TheForeverWar'', decades and even centuries pass on Earth while the hero spends a few years on the front, due to [[TimeDilation relativistic trips]] to and from the black holes that make FTL travel possible.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Tabletop Games ]]

* The Deep Imaskari race in the ''DungeonsAndDragons'' ''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.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]

* ''[[WorldOfMana Secret of Mana]]'' for the SNES kicked off the plot with this, when TheHero is kicked out of his home village for removing a rusty sword from a stone, thus drawing monsters to it. In order to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong, he has to find a way to unlock the sword's true potential.
** With a little glitching, he can go home again, but he can't get out.
** Also, in ''Secret of Mana 2'', if you have Duran in your party and try to enter his house in Forcena, he will say that he can't return home until he has killed Koren, and the party will be unable to enter the house.
* For most of ''TalesOfSymphonia'', Lloyd is exiled from his hometown due to a petulant proclamation by an arrogant mayor who scapegoats him for the town's problems.
** To be fair, Lloyd and Genis ''did'' provoke the Desians into burning the village. Other bigoted mayors would probably be organizing a lynch mob at that point.
** Averted toward the end of the first disc when [[spoiler:The characters must decide which side they stay on when they separate the worlds. Ultimately, this is ruled out as a solution]].
* Subversion: In ''Fallout'', the player can visit the starting location (Vault 13) freely for the entire duration of the game (and is in fact required to do so at least once in order to progress the story). Once the game is won, however, the main character's "reward" for saving it is to get exiled ostensibly due to his experiences of the outside being deemed a potential disturbance to future social harmony and survival; the sinister real reason behind this development is revealed in the sequel. However, it's possible to get revenge for this exile through the use of violence.
** An easier way to get the additional revenge ending would be to get the "Bloody Mess" perk.
** In the sequel, for most of the story you can return home at any time... until [[spoiler: the Enclave decides to swing by, shoot all the men, kidnap the women and children, and burn whats left to the ground.]]
*** [[spoiler:After the end of the game, you carry out the objective that you had originally been sent to do, you rebuild your town with the survivors]].
** And in the third game, you ''can'' go back to your Vault during a certain quest... [[spoiler: but you can't stay.]]
* In ''Homeworld'' [[spoiler: you can't return to Kharak because TheEmpire has [[DoomedHometown annihilated all life on the surface]]]]. Everything works out fine, though.
* In ''[[WildArms1 Wild ARMs]]'' as well, Rudy is exiled from his adopted hometown by the town's mayor for releasing monsters into the village, after said mayor orders him to go into a dank cave and poke random things with a stick until something interesting happens.
** Made stranger by the fact that not even an hour later he is in the company of a knight and a princess, both of whom could have easily stood up for his character and cleared his name.
* A slight subversion occurs in ''GoldenSun'', which generally plays out like the ''[[WorldOfMana Secret of Mana]]'' example above: the heroes accidentally ignite a major incident, and it's strongly suggested that they go fix their mistake. The subversion comes in that you actually can return to your home village, and the villagers will even ask how things are going. However, the main character's mother will ignore you until your quest is finished, in a sort of twisted encouragement to both grow into manhood and to finish your quest as fast as possible. Thus, you are still barred from going back inside your actual house, [[spoiler:until your mother gets sick, anyways.]]
** The main characters of ''GoldenSun: The Lost Age'', Felix and Jenna, cannot return to their hometown, but for a different reason: the geography only allows them to return home by passing through a country in which they are (justly) wanted. [[spoiler:At the end, Alchemy's returning to the world destroys the hometown just before the characters return, although everyone survives]].
*** There's a small "glitch" that allows you to go back to Vale in Golden Sun: The Lost Age, although you can't enter the town.
* ''HalfLife Opposing Force's'' Adrian Shephard can't go home again because he [[spoiler: was trapped by the G-man in an alternate dimension to ''preserve him''. All in the name of "discretion". Which ultimately is made more depressing by the fact that Earth is now a CrapSackWorld under the jackboots of the Combine.]]
* ''FinalFantasyX'': Tidus spends most of the game looking forward to returning to [[DoomedHometown Zanarkand]], which he discovers is pretty impossible seeing that it's been in ruins for the past thousand years and [[spoiler: wasn't even really ''his'' Zanarkand anyway because he had been living in a literal dreamworld.]]
** ''FinalFantasyVII'' has it too. Cloud and Tifa can never have their home town back because it was burned to the ground by Sephiroth. Although [[spoiler: The town is rebuilt by Shinra and stocked with actors to cover up the event later in the game, the implication is still the same.]]
* Might be the fate of the crew of The ''Spirit Of Fire'' From ''Halo Wars''
* Rath from FireEmblem 7 was outcast from the Kutolah tribe at a very young age, due to a prophecy that said he'd have a great future if he saw the world on his own. In his solo ending, he returns to the tribe after the end and his tribesmen welcome him back warmly; in his paired ending with Lyn, Rath comes back alone but some time later Lyn joins him and they have a daughter, [[spoiler: Sue]]
* Your fate in the ''WingCommander'' games if, on timed missions, you don't land before your carrier jumps out.
* Subversion (sort of): In ''SilentHill4'', the protagonist is actually stuck in his apartment for the majority of the game and can't leave except through a hole in the bathroom which only takes him to certain areas of the town.
* In {{SuikodenV}} [[spoiler:You are forced to leave home when the palace is attacked and the hero's parents are killed, and are unable to return to Sol Falena until winning every battle in the game.]]
*InuYasha: Secret of the Cursed Mask (which has little to do with a cursed mask) the main character is yanked out of his or her time and can't return. Kagome's normal method of using the well is established early on to not work for the protagonist.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Web Comics ]]

* Parodied in ''{{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.
** ''{{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.
*** One scene with Meimi and Junpei implies that they may end up being ''forced'' out of Japan at some point. Until then...
* This trope is the premise of [[http://www.dummcomics.com/index?sid=95 Earthward-Ho!]].

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Web Original ]]

* The Dimensional Guardians trapped in Creturia in the web fiction serial DimensionHeroes.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

* ''ReBoot'' for most of the third season.
-->"''I live in the games. I search through systems, people, and cities, for this place: Mainframe; my home. My format? I have no format. I am a renegade, lost on the Net.''"
* For ''SamuraiJack'', it was his home ''time''.
* Part of the series premise for ''{{Transformers}}: BeastWars''. Everyone was stranded on a strange planet far from their homeworld of Cybertron; at the end of the first season, this was PlanetOfTheApesEnding, far from their home ''time'', which would be about three hundred years past our present day.
* ''AvatarTheLastAirbender'': One of the things that makes Aang and Zuko NotSoDifferent is that neither can go home again -- Zuko because he's been exiled, and Aang because [[DoomedHometown it's not there anymore]].
** Subverted when [[spoiler: Zuko betrays Iroh and is allowed to come back. Then subverted right back to straight when Zuko realizes it wasn't worth it and makes a HeelFaceTurn. And subverted ''again'' in the finale when he not only goes home, but he ''owns'' the home.]]
* Mario and Luigi in ''SuperMarioBrosSuperShow''.
** One episode did focus on the duo finding a way back home, but they opt to stay in order to protect Princess Peach.
*** This troper recalls the story a little differently; Mario lured Bowser out of Brooklyn, then chucked a bob-omb into the warp pipe, sealing Bowser out of it. Everyone cheers Mario on, until Bowser points out a very obvious [[NiceJobBreakingItHero flaw in his plan]]
* A conversation between WonderWoman and Hawkgirl in an episode of ''JusticeLeague'' notes that this trope applies to so many of them -- Superman and J'onn are each the LastOfHisKind, Hawkgirl is stranded light-years from home, Batman is an orphan, and Diana has just been exiled from [[strike: Paradise Island]] Themyscira -- that they should call themselves the "Just Us League".
* Danielle in ''DannyPhantom'' can't return to Vlad's manor where she was cloned and raised on the virtue that the owner is ''willing to kill her in order to make a better clone''! She spends her time constantly on the move.
* For a while in ''TheFairlyOddparents'', [[AlienAmongUs Mark Chang]] was unable to return to Yugopotamia, since it would force him into an ArrangedMarriage with Princess Mandie.
* ''{{Gargoyles}}'' sometimes plays with this trope, for example in "Enter Macbeth," in which Xanatos is released from jail and free to return to his castle... forcing the titular gargoyles to leave said castle and find a new home. It doesn't stop them from visiting occasionally, though...
* ''TheSimpsons'' parodied this a Tree House of Horror episode where Homer inadvertently travels back in time and repeatedly makes changes to the world. After some time, he settles on a world almost identical but where everyone has long forked tongues.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]

* In the late 1990s, numerous US Army, Air Force, and Naval bases throughout Europe and the United Kingdom closed down - often becoming the property of the home militaries of those countries in which they were located. You want depressing? Try this: the children who grew up on some of those bases would be turned away by ''armed guards'' if they tried to visit their old home-towns.
** The children that grow up in most Army, Air Force, or Naval bases will get turned away by armed guards if they try to visit their own home towns; you need a current military ID, or an escort with current military ID, and simply being the offspring of an Enlisted or Officer individual won't get you a current military ID past the age of 21.
** Reversed in cases where the former base is annexed by the surrounding town and added to the local housing stock. Then, the trick becomes figuring out where the gates ''used to be''.
* Many people find themselves displaced from their homes due to political turmoil. One noteworthy case was Mehran Karimi Nasseri, an Iranian who ended up having to live in an airport terminal lounge for '''18 years''' because his refugee papers were stolen.
* When the Berlin Wall was built in 1961 to complete the "Iron Curtain", those who found themselves in East Germany had to stay there. Not that it stopped some of the more determined ones.
* This is [[YourMileageMayVary considered]] a major cause of the Palestinian opposition to/hostility towards the Israeli state. While the argument is valid (there are villages lying abandoned to this day), millions of others from the Sudetenland to the Punjab have been similarly displaced and gotten on with their lives elsewhere instead of stewing in refugee camps for generations, including roughly 1 million Jews kicked out of Arab countries, most of whom ended up in Israel.
** This troper thinks that's a really simplistic way of looking at it, and you should probably avoid bringing politics into this.
* For many Americans today, the concept was an abstract or something that happened in other countries... until Hurricane Katrina left tens of thousands with no homes (or jobs) to return to.
* This troper recently watched The Last Days, a film that featured interviews with concentration camp survivors from Hungary who revisit. For one of the women interviewed, it was especially painful coming back to the town where she had lived and seeing her old house. She and the other survivors had moved elsewhere, often to America, after getting out of the camps.
* It used to be a common thing in American culture where parents would kick their children (especially boys) out of the house as soon as they turned 18 or graduated HighSchool depending on when in the school year their birthday fell. (by law, hitting 18 legally makes you an adult) since they were supposed to face the world on their own and survive on their own. People even scorned others that chose to live with their parents, believing that they were freeloading or just lazy. While this mindset is still around, it is almost rare now thanks to a changing economy and prices on everything always going up, which has forced people to either find roommates or stay home with the family. That ''does'' make you an AcceptableTarget for comedians though...
* Soviet Union soldiers during World War II who were captured as POWs by the Germans risked death by returning to the Soviet Union after the war. Many either stayed in Germany living in Displaced Persons camps, or immigrated elsewhere.
* Much of the original American colonies were settled by the losers of seventeenth century religious and political brawls in Europe. The colonies of course hung on even if a reversal of the fortunes of war meant that they now COULD go home again.
* The Jacobites, the White Russians, and many others who have lost a civil war. White Russians had their own neighborhoods in Paris, Istanbul, Shanghai, and other cities. They would often become [[LegionOfLostSouls mercenaries]] or spies, or similar such things.
** In some cases it did mean they finally went home to a place they never knew. Mannerheim was a Finnish Noble who was in the Russian Military for nearly 30 years and forgot how to speak Finnish. He became Regent of Finland but found Finland strange. He lost his bid for president after helping to set up a new government. He spent most of the next 20 years semi-retired until WorldWarTwo when he was Field Marshall and was later elected president.
----
<<|UniversalTropes|>>
<<|OlderThanDirt|>>