Video Games / Bookends

So you played the game from beginning to end...

Note that some bookends can be spoilers, so beware.

In Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War, as Pixy's opening narration points out, "it was a cold and snowy day" when it all started, the game's first mission, when him and Cipher (the player character) first fought together as buddies in the Belkan War. Fast forward to the last mission, where he's the final boss, about to start their final duel, he lampshades this. "Here comes the snow..."
The prologue of Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown sees "Scrap Queen" Avril Mead raise her arm to the sky with fingers spread in an open palm while blocking the sun's view. The epilogue sees Erusean Princess Rosa Cossette d'Elise do that very same pose, but with the Space Elevator in front of her.
Assassin's Creed: Ezio's life as an Assassin really begins with his family getting executed in Florence, and it ends in the same place when he dies there. Moreover, he was born in Florence, and died there as well.
Astra Hunter Zosma: The first boss of the game is Penumbra, who is clearly holding back in order to test Zosma. The Final Boss is her true self, Deneb, who holds nothing back in order to test if Zosma has what it takes to carry on her legacy as an Astra Hunter.
Asura's Wrath: The game starts with Vlitra's appearance, a Title-Screen like moment complete with press start, and Asura jumping off of Shinto. The last episode starts with Vlitra's reappearance, a Title-screen like moment complete with press start, and Asura jumping off of The Karma Fortress.
- The Chapter 4 DLC's final Episode starts with Asura awakening from meditation, a Title-Screen like moment complete with press start, and Asura riding a Shinkoku ship off of Earth.
Batman: Arkham City has Batman save Catwoman from Two-Face near the beginning of the game. Catwoman later saves Batman from being trapped under rubble near the end of the game.
Battle for Wesnoth:
- The first and the last line of Secrets of the Ancients have a Title Drop. The first line is about Ardonna's desire to achieve said secrets while the last is about Adronna's hope that someone would want it too.
- The first and the last narration of The Rise of Wesnoth ends with a Title Drop.
  Opening Narration: For this is the story of Haldric the First and the Rise of Wesnoth...
  Epilogue Narration: But some of us have remembered the true story of our arrival on this great continent. The true story of the Rise of Wesnoth.
Bayonetta series:
- The intro of the first game ends with Bayonetta calling out to Jeanne, who responds "I'm okay!" They then pose back to back as they plummet off a cliff face amidst falling rubble. After the final final boss fight, the two witches repeat this exact dialogue exchange (complete with pose), only this time the rubble is Jubileus' statue fragments rather than rocks, and they are plummeting towards the planet rather than a canyon. The game's story also begins and ends in a grave yard with a fake funeral to lure in angels. Only the second time it's day time and The Nun is Jeanne, not Bayonetta.... she's asleep in the coffin
- Bayonetta 2 follows the first game's tradition of an epilogue that has the same scenario as the prologue, this time with Bayonetta shopping in the city. A remix of Moon River plays through the first mission of the prologue, and that same song is used in the final verse of the final part of the game's Brutal Bonus Level.
In Beyond Good & Evil, the action begins with Jade opening her eyes during morning meditation and ends with her opening her eyes unleashing her powers to revive everyone in the Great Crypt.
All BioShock games end with the lighthouse at the beginning of the first game being present (This only holds true in the first game if you choose the Good Ending).
BioShock 2 begins and ends with the death of Subject Delta with Eleanor by his side.
BioShock Infinite has you begin at a lighthouse (itself a reference to the original BioShock) and undergo a baptism. The ending of the game has you going though more lighthouses (including the one from the first game) and a drowning by baptism. At both times, the same preacher is present.
- At the end of Burial at Sea-Episode Two (which is the franchise last entry with Irrational Games), the tail end of a plane is seen, signalling the beginning of the first BioShock game (and thus the franchise).
The first and last endings of The Binding of Isaac are both illustrated with Isaac's drawings and narrated by Isaac's father. The final ending goes a step further by bookending the entire game, returning to the first words of the opening cutscene—but this time, to give the story a happy ending, Isaac's dad narrates "Isaac and his parents lived in a small house on a hill..."
Black Mesa, as Fan Remake of the original Half-Life, has the first and final encounters with the H.E.C.U. in the levels "We've Got Hostiles" and "Forget About Freeman". Both sequences are set at sundown and involve Gordon, who had just made his way up from an underground portion of the titular research complex, engaging a large group of soldiers before heading back underground, with Ospreys flying in the background. In the first confrontation, Gordon is forced to retreat due to the H.E.C.U. having an advantages in numbers, position, and artillery, with new troops Fast-Roping into the battle via the Osprey to give you trouble. When Gordon faces them in "Forget About Freeman", however, they've been mauled very badly by a combination of the Black Mesa security personnel, the Xen Aliens, and Gordon himself, such that he ends up wiping out the entire force sent to stop him. Even the framing of the fights is different - the former represents the H.E.C.U.'s initial thrust into Black Mesa, while the latter is their retreat.
BlazBlue: The first major fight in the series is Ragna vs. Jin. The last one is as well, only now Jin is trying to protect Ragna from his own Heroic Sacrifice.
Bloodborne:
- The first mandatory boss in the main game is Father Gascoigne, a Hunter who attacks you because, well, he has gone mad. The final boss is Gehrman, the First Hunter, who fights you if you refuse to let him release you from the Dream because he takes your refusal to mean that you must have gone mad.
- If we include optional bosses, then the very first boss in the game is the Cleric Beast. The Superboss of the Old Hunters DLC is Laurence, the First Vicar, a Cleric Beast that's Wreathed in Flames.
Borderlands begins with Cage the Elephant's Ain't No Rest for the Wicked and Borderlands 2 ends with Lilith's line "heh, no rest for the wicked".
- The final DLC for the original game, Claptrap's New Robot Revolution, have the final boss battle occurring in Fyrestone.
The main story of BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm begins and ends with Catie and her friend Anon preparing for a long carriage journey, and with Anon waiting by the south gate while Catie explores the village. This is lampshaded by the two of them during the ending.
- On a wider note, the series itself begins and ends with Catie at the edge of a cliff overlooking a valley.
Brave Hero Yuusha: Player movement of the character starts in the Demon Lord's castle, which is where the last bit of player-controlled movement is too, where trying leaving gets a message of, with the second line only happening at the beginning:
Determined to bring the Demon Lord to his end, [Character Name] marched straight back into the castle and sought out the throne room!
Look, I don't like this, either. But you're here now, so...
Bravely Default begins and ends with the same fairy begging you to and thanking you for accepting and completing the quest, respectively.
Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars begins and ends with an explosion, even apparently reusing parts of the same animation. Averted in the Director's Cut, in which the game starts with Nicole (sidekick to the main hero) witnessing a politician being shot instead.
Call of Duty 3 mirrors Starship Troopers with a briefing in the back of a truck from Sergeant McCullen. The game closes on Guzzo making a similar speech in the back of an identical truck.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Roach's storyline begins and ends with the disposal of a lit cigar. Beginning with Captain John "Soap" McTavish's cigar on "Cliffhanger", which he just tosses off a cliff, and ends with Shepherd tossing the cigar on the gasoline-soaked bodies of Roach and Ghost in "Loose Ends".
- The series chronologically starts with (trying to) kill Ultranationalist leader Zakhaev. You finally succeed, albeit with a different player character, at the end of the first game. Fast forward to the third game: the final "boss" is his follower Makarov, and you're using the same player character (Price) as who tried to kill Zakhaev the first time around.
- The first mission of Modern Warfare 1 begins with Price finishing a cigar, the final mission of Modern Warfare 3 ends with Price lighting a cigar.
Call of Duty: Black Ops has a single-mission variant in "S.O.G." At the start, as the first verse of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son" plays over the radio, Mason's first line to Woods upon arriving in Vietnam is to tell him "you look like hammered shit". Ten or so minutes and a couple dozen Viet Cong corpses later, Bowman arrives over the second verse, and his first lines are telling Mason "you look like hammered shit" (Mason lampshades this by responding "yeah, 'Nam'll do that to you"). It continues into Black Ops II, where, in variations of the ending where Mason survives, these are his first words to Woods upon returning.
Centipede (1998): The opening cutscene of level 1-1 ends by saying "when you're asked to save the world, you don't ask why — you just make it happen". The end cutscene of the final level says "The battle was fierce, but Wally just made it happen."
Charlie Murder begins with the band fighting for their souls in the depths of Hell before being revived by paramedics. They later travel To Hell and Back to free Paul's soul and kick the Angel of Chaos' ass while they're at it.
Chrono Trigger can end with Good Morning, Crono... Except everybody's a Reptite.
- In most of the other endings, it closes with the same Millennial Festival that Crono attends at the start of the game.
Coffee Talk:
- The game starts with Freya as the first customer, thinking about writing her novel. The game ends with her as the last customer there, having had her book draft accepted by the publisher.
- Episode 2 begins and ends with Jorji and Lucas as the first customers, meeting the Barista on a stormy night. The Barista lampshades it by saying that it feels like déjà vu, while Jorji orders the same drink you served him on his first visit^note and Lucas orders the same Blue Pea Latte with art that Riona ordered on that first day.
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3:
- The first mission of the Soviet campaign involves capturing and protecting a fortress from an invading force. The final mission of the Allied campaign involves invading and destroying that same fortress before it can launch a rocket ship.
- Shinzo Nagama is the player's AI co-commander in the first and last missions of the Imperial campaign.
The Cliffhanger: Edward Randy have it's first and final mission ending with an intense boss fight against Black Ogre, the Big Bad. The first stage is set on a train with plenty of areas for the player to maneuver around and time their attacks, and ends with Black Ogre pulling a Villain: Exit, Stage Left, and players do not encounter him until the final stage.... where this time their fight is on the wings of an out-of-control biplane, a lot harder than their previous encounter. Black Ogre doesn't get to escape this time since he gets into the way of the biplane's propellers.
Conker's Bad Fur Day begins and ends with an inebriated Conker stumbling out of a bar.
The stage themes in Cool Spot take Bookends to its logical conclusion: The entire latter half of the game's stages are the first half stage's, only in reverse.
Cyberbots: In Jin's campaign, Shade serves as both his first opponent and his final opponent.
Crysis 2 has "They call me Prophet."
Cuphead: The second phase of the first boss, the Root Pack, is a giant, crying onion that damages Cuphead and Mugman with his tears. In the last phase of the Final Boss, the now-giant Devil starts crying, and damages Cuphead and Mugman with his tears.
Cyberpunk 2077: Each of the three V-centric endings bookends nicely into one of their three possible lifepath intros: both "The Corpo-Rat" intro and "The Devil" ending see V put their trust in the Arasaka MegaCorp and get screwed over by it; "The Nomad" intro sees V break off from their nomad clan and smuggle a live lizard into Night City, while "The Star" ending has them join a new clan and smuggle a Basilisk out of the city; and finally, both "The Street Kid" intro and "The Sun" ending have V accept on a suspiciously lucrative job from a shady fixer at a seedy bar.
In Dariusburst: Chronicle Saviours CS Mode, the first stage of the first mission, Oruriba, is a flyby of an ocean and some towers being destroyed, while "Freedom" plays in the background. The same scene is used in the first stage of the ultimate final mission, Kyokkuho.
Darkest Dungeon:
- The first and last words you hear is "Ruin has come to our family" from the narrator, first when he is sending the letter to the Heir to come and vanquish the evil he summoned, and when the heart of the world reveals that you and your lineage is doomed to repeat the same cycle as the previous Ancestor of summoning and stalling the hearts hatching until the inevitable end of the world happens.
- Additionally, the achievement "On The Old Road We Found Redemption" has you take the two starting heroes given to you in the tutorial, Dismas and Reynauld, from the beginning to the victory of the final battle. The achievement name itself is from a line the Ancestor says in the beginning cutscene.
- For the introductory cinematic, the narrator starts by asking the heir if "You remember our venerable house?", before describing it as opulent and imperial. At the end of the cinematic, he once again asks if "you remember our venerable house.", but this time calling it "a festering abomination!"
Dark Fall: The Journal begins and ends with you listening to an answering machine message from your brother Pete.
Dark Souls:
- The very first enemy you encounter in the series (including Demon's Souls) is a Hollow with a broken sword. So it's only fitting that the True Final Boss of the whole Souls series, Slave Knight Gael, fits the same description.
- The first weapon in the first game is always a broken straightsword. Gael's sword, the Broken Executioner's Sword, has an almost identical portrait, only much larger.
- The very first song you hear in Dark Souls is titled "Prologue." So what's the last song in the last game? "Epilogue".
Dead Space begins on board the USG Kellion where Issac Clarke is watching a video in which his significant other, Nicole Brennan, is obviously distressed. The video ends with static just before the player learns that this transmisson came from the USG Ishimura, which ominously has been sending out distress signals. Issac watches the same video immediately before fighting the Final Boss. Where it is revealed that the video ended with his wife commiting suicide by lethal injection. Meaning that the Nicole he had just been taking orders from was a hallucination produced by the Marker
- The game also begins and ends on the USG Kellion. The First time he is heading towards the USG Ishimura with Kendra, Hammond and at least one pilot. However the second time Issac is alone and fleeing the Ishimura or so he thought..
Deathless Hyperion begins and ends with a shot of outer space focusing on Saturn, respectively on the opening titles and credits.
Deus Ex:
- The ending where you let the Illuminati rule the world as a shadow government has a conversation that mirrors the opening conversation. In the introductory scene, Bob Page speaks with Walton Simons about the latter's new job as head of FEMA and how they will deal with those who stand in the way of their conspiracy. In the ending, J.C. and Morgan Everett plan to use the Illuminati's power to fix the damage that Page caused. The parallels with the opening scene raise the question about whether anything has truly changed.
- The game's opening conversation starts with an establishing shot of a statue of the globe with a hand curled around it. All three endings close with an identical shot of the statue(with the aforementioned ending's final scene taking place in that room), this time accompanied by a quote reflecting which ending was chosen.
The finale of Deus Ex: Invisible War takes place on Liberty Island, where the first Deus Ex started.
Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening: The game begins and ends with Dante in his office, using the force of a kick to knock the phone into his hands so he can answer a call.
The story of Devil Survivor 2 begins with the protagonist and his best friend meeting with a classmate in the subway just before a subway train crashes and the world basically goes to hell. This all happens at 12:30 on Sunday. The last battle takes place exactly a week later, also on 12:30 Sunday. Furthermore, in two of the six endings a Reset Button is hit and you're transported back to the moment before the train crash that started everything. Whether the train still crashes or not depends on how well you played the game.
Diablo II: The first and last cinematics of the original game, in which a Dark Wanderer (Diablo in the beginning, Baal in the end) walks out of a burning building.
Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal:
- The very first thing you see when you start the campaign in 2016 is an entry from the Corrax tablets on the loading screen, and the Slayer's symbol fading in when he awakens from his sleep when you actually begin the game. In The Ancient Gods - Part Two, one of the last scenes is the Doom Slayer being sealed away inside his coffin once again, inside of which his symbol is engraved. The very last thing you see before the credits roll is the same Corrax tablet entry:
So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.
Dragon Age II's Framing Device begins with Varric being dragged into the Hawke mansion for an interrogation, and ends with his interrogator leaving.
- And, within the frame, when Hawke first arrives in Kirkwall, s/he enters the city via the Gallows Courtyard...which is also the location of the battle with the Final Boss.
- Dragon Age: Origins has an interesting example that applies only for a Dalish Warden and only with the Witch Hunt DLC — the story begins with your character encountering an Eluvian, and ends with you meeting Morrigan in front of another one.
Dragon Quest:
- The first three games of the series form the Loto trilogy. The trilogy begins and ends in much the same way. The last third or so of Dragon Quest III, a prequel to Dragon Quest and Dragon Quest II, almost exactly mirrors the plot of the first game, taking place in the same world in the past with essentially the same plot.
- The beginning of Dragon Quest VII is during the Amitt Harvest... And so is the end. Each time, you also are woken up by your mother to get out of bed and bring a fish sub to your father. That also happens at one other point in the game, but not during the festival.
- The opening cinematic of Dragon Quest VIII features two birds flying over the heroes at the beginning of their adventure. The 3DS version's Jessica ending shows those same two birds soar over Jessica and the Hero.
Draugen begins with Edward rowing a boat towards the village of Graavik, with Lissie commenting on the water being cold. The game ends with Edward rowing the boat away from the village, and again Lissie commenting on the water being cold.
EarthBound (1994): After Ness returns home and goes back to bed after going to check out the meteorite, he gets woken up again by Porky/Pokey banging on the door and asking for you to help him find his brother Picky. After the credits, you get woken up by Picky, who arrives with a letter left behind by his brother that serves as a Sequel Hook for Mother 3.
Epic Mickey has two:
- The first level you play in is Dark Beauty Castle, where you meet Gus, and learn to play. The final level is Dark Beauty Castle, where you must meet with Oswald and set up some fireworks.
- The opening cinematic of the game shows Mickey going through his bedroom mirror into Yen Sid's study. The ending cinematic shows Mickey returning through his mirror, into his bedroom.
At the start of Eternal Darkness, Pious Augustus narrates, "To think that once I could not see beyond the veil of our reality... To see those who dwell behind. My life now has purpose, for I have learned the frailty of flesh and bone... I was once a fool." At the end of the game, Alex Roivas narrates, "To think that once I could not see beyond the veil of reality, to see those who dwell behind... I was once a fool."
Escape From St. Mary's: Starts and ends in Murughesan's classroom with similar narration.
At the beginning of Eternal Eden', Noah goes with his best friend Downey to attend their princess's birthday party, and their failure to bring a satisfactory gift for her is what led to the main conflict. In the epilogue, we see Noah going with his "real" best friend, Dogan to attend their Father's birthday party. Noah, once again, forgets to bring a gift, and gives the exact same excuse as Downey to explain his lack of gift. Unlike the princess, however, the Father asks Noah to stay and just enjoy the celebration, and the party proceeds happily.
The Evil Within begins with Sebastian, Joseph and Kidman entering Beacon Mental Hospital. The game concludes with Sebastian leaving the hospital alone.
Fairune 2 has the Ancient Codex repeat his first three lines from the beginning of the game after the end.
Ancient Codex: Fairune... A world where imagination is reality. Currently... No demon is being resurrected to threaten the world. Nor is the world going to come to an end.
FAITH: The Unholy Trinity opens with John saying to himself that he has to finish what he started as he drives off to exorcise Amy. The Golden Ending has Amy herself implore John to finish what he started by exorcising her.
Fallout:
- The very first installment's intro and ending are both scored to "Maybe" by The Ink Spots.
- Fallout 3 begins and ends with "War never changes".
- It also begins with your father reading Revelations 2:16, which was your mother's favourite passage of the Bible. At the end of the storyline, 216 is the code for the water purifier that you have to activate.
- Fallout: New Vegas also begins and ends with "War never changes". Then again, "War never changes" is a Tagline for the series.
  - Dead Money ends with a narration very similar to its introduction, but with the warning that the opportunity to "begin again" is an illusion. If all companions survive, they take part in the narration.
  - An interesting example in the DLC Lonesome Road, in that it's designed to serve as the second bookend for a previously unseen part of the Courier's backstory: unbeknownst to the player, the Courier had been to the Divide before and accidentally caused its total destruction, inadvertently setting in motion the actions that cause the game to happen in the first place. Because of this, the Divide was intended to be a bookend on the story of Ulysses and the Courier that the DLC had shown us without having actually seen the first bookend.
  - If the player plays their cards right, then Benny and the Courier's story can begin and end the same way: with one tied up and the other pointing a gun at their head. Bonus points for being able to use the same gun.
After the prologue of Far Cry 5, the Deputy wakes up handcuffed to a bed frame, having been rescued by Dutch. The "resist" ending ends with the same scene. While hunking down in Dutch's bunker as the nukes go off, Joseph kills Dutch and once again has the Deputy handcuffed to the bed, even delivering a similarly-worded monologue to the player.
Farpoint begins with a Swirly Energy Thingy dragging the main characters from Jupiter - en route back home to Earth - all the way to an alien world, which turns out to be 3 billion years away from earth. It ends with the player character and Sole Survivor entering another Swirly Energy Thingy again, but this one leads to a White Void Room. The end.
Fate/stay night does this — even though Shirou is the protagonist, both the prologue to the entire game and the epilogue to the True Ending of Heaven's Feel (the last route in the game) are played from Rin's perspective.
In the first F.E.A.R., Paxton Fettel's first meeting with the Point Man has him say "They deserved to die. They all deserved to die" in regards to Armacham. In the third and (thus far) final game, The Stinger for Point Man's ending has Fettel angrily repeating this line as he narrates the events of his first Syncronization Event.
Final Fantasy VI has a musical example in the form of the opening riff, which sounds like "Thus Spake Zarathustra", which plays in the opening of the game, and again just before the final boss fight against Kefka as the God of Magic.
Final Fantasy VII begins and ends with the same shot of Aerith looking into the lifestream, with the first shot having her looking at it in a Midgar alleyway, and the ending shot having her as a part of the Lifestream itself.
- The prequel Crisis Core begins with a scene that bears striking resemblance to the opening of the original FFVII (a train pulls into a station, with the exact same cinematography even, then Cloud/Zack does a flip off of the roof of the train and strikes a dramatic pose). Crisis Core ends by showing... the original opening of FFVII, but remastered with modern graphics. Can you have three bookends?
Final Fantasy IX begins and ends with a traveling theater company putting on the same play in the same city, but as a front for a kidnapping the first time and sneaking someone in the second.
Final Fantasy X-2, Yuna frequently narrates the story in voiceover. One of the earliest cutscenes begins with her explaining, "It all began when I found this sphere of you." Both the Normal and Good endings end with the same line.
- X-2 has one with the original Final Fantasy X if you obtain the perfect ending. X began with Tidus standing on a little hill in Zanarkand... the perfect ending of X-2 shows Tidus and Yuna standing on that same hill together, completing their two stories.
Final Fantasy XIII-2 doubles up on this: it opens with a Final Boss Preview and, naturally, ends with the Final Boss. However, once you beat the game... Replaying the opening prologue for the first time will give you a special scene where Caius sits on Etro's throne and breaks the fourth wall to belittle and mock the player. And, once you have achieved 100% Completion and beaten the game again, the secret ending is... a special scene where Caius sits on Etro's throne and breaks the fourth wall to belittle and mock the player.
Final Fantasy XIV does this with the Shadowbringers MSQ. The first quest is initiated by speaking with Tataru Taru at the Rising Stones, and the final quest is completed by speaking with Tataru Taru at the Rising Stones.
Final Fantasy XV begins and ends with dialogue from when Noctis's car breaks down on the way to Hammerhead, set to Florence and the Machine's rendition of "Stand By Me".
Dissidia Final Fantasy did this in a meta sense to the whole franchise. It ends with all the heroes being sent back to their home worlds, followed by the Warrior of Light walking to Corneria, starting the plot of Final Fantasy.
Final Fantasy Legend II begins with the protagonist's father explaining to him / her/ it that he needs to leave on a mission, before exiting the house through an open window and abandoning both his child and wife. It ends with him explaining to the protagonist that he needs to leave on a new adventure, but this time, all three family members agree to go together, and all exit through the open window. The 2009 remake adds another bookend, with a pre-title screen sequence that parallels the ending's Boring Return Journey.
Fire Emblem:
- Fire Emblem: Awakening begins with Chrom and Lissa happening upon the Avatar unconscious in a field, and after speaking with each other, help the Avatar up. If you choose to have the Avatar finish off Grima, the last scene of that ending will play out the same as the start of the story, only the Avatar's Mark of Grima is gone, and Chrom welcomes the Avatar back.
- The Birthright route of Fire Emblem Fates has two:
  - The game begins with Corrin's maids, Felicia and Flora, waking him/her up for a training session with Xander. Between the first and second phases of the final battle, after Corrin is struck down by Garon's dragon form, s/he has a dream of being woken up in the same way, and sees Xander and Flora, who died during the campaign.
  - Corrin first meets Azura by the shore of a lake in Hoshido. In the ending, s/he returns there and sees Azura's spirit.
- Fire Emblem: Three Houses: The introductory cutscene of the game shows the final battle in the war against Nemesis, with Seiros defeating and killing Nemesis, with the soldiers under her command cheering once the battle is won. The ending cutscene of Verdant Wind(the Golden Deer/Alliance route) has Byleth and Claude defeat Nemesis, and the Alliance forces cheer once the battle is won.
Frogger's Journey: The Forgotten Relic:
- The final boss fight takes place in the same ruins at the dig site where Frogger found OPART at the beginning of the game.
- The game starts with Frogger arriving in Kabohti via Griffith's plane, and ends with Griffith returning him back to Firefly Swamp.
The Galaxy Angel has it if the players follows Forte's route throughout the entire trilogy. One of the C Gs in the first game depicts Forte sitting back-to-back with Tact, and the very last one in Eternal Lovers shows them bathing together in a hotspring, again, back-to-back with each other.
Game & Watch: The first game in the original line was Ball. The last was its Updated Re-release, Mario the Juggler.
Game of Thrones begins with Mors apprehending an old friend and executing him for desertion in front of new recruits. In one of his two endings, he returns to the Wall and happens on the execution of Patrek, a companion in the game. He quickly takes over and chops his head off, scaring the recruits by saying that all of them are just marking time.
Giana Sisters DS begins and ends with Giana sitting on her bed and examining her collection of blue stones.
In Ghost of Tsushima, the tutorial on combat at the beginning of the game takes place in a flashback with Jin and his uncle near Jin's home. His uncle serves as the final boss whose mission begins at the same location, though the actual duel takes place at the Sakai cementary.
In God of War (PS4):
- Near the beginning of the game, Kratos defeats the first boss, the Stranger, by snapping his neck. Near the end of the game, Kratos defeats the last boss, the Stranger/Baldur, by snapping his neck. This time, for good.
- Very early in the game, after Atreus succeeded in hunting the deer, Kratos moves to put his hand on Atreus's shoulder but backs away at the last second. At the end, when they finally reached their goal of scattering Faye's ashes, the camera pans back to Kratos finally having his arm around Atreus's shoulders.
The Grand Theft Auto series provides examples both within a single game and across them:
- The introductory mission of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas begins with CJ having to make his way to Grove Street after being ditched in Ballas territory by Tenpenny, who drove off with a glib, "See you round like a doughnut, Carl!". In the final mission, Tenpenny ends up crashing through the Grove Street bridge and dying near the Johnson residence, with CJ being the last person he hears leaving him with "See you round...Officer.".
- In a meta instance, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was the first game in the Grand Theft Auto series to have any sort of concrete links, story or otherwise, between itself and a previous game, thus kickstarting the "3D Universe" of GTA where every further game in the series would be an explicit prequel to Grand Theft Auto III until Vice City Stories, the last GTA game before another Continuity Reboot via Grand Theft Auto IV. Thus, in at least some way, the 3D Universe began and ended in Vice City. Even more appropriately, III is the first game in that universe and is chronologically the last, while VCS is the last game in that universe but is chronologically the first.
The Gray Garden: The game opens with Yosafire frolicking alone in the flower garden, then leaving with Froze for some apple pie at Dialo's house, only to fall down a hole that's appeared on the road. The final scene of the Good End has the other girls send Yosafire to fetch Froze from the garden, so they can go pick apples for more pie together. Also, this time, Yosafire jumps over the hole instead of falling in.
Grim Fandango opens up with a shot with a miniature mariachi band standing next to an ashtray. The ending has a real mariachi band standing next to a circular pool.
The Groove Coaster track "ouroboros -twin stroke of the end-" replicates the intro at the end of the song, representing the titular serpent. The ending notes are mirrored, but otherwise identical, as well.
Felicity's route in Growing Up begins and ends with her crying in the bathroom and the coach ordering the Player Character to look for her.
Guilty Gear: Faust's story began when he tried to save a little girl, failed and subsequently went mad and became a Serial Killer named Dr. Baldhead. When he discovered her death wasn't his fault, he became The Atoner. In Another Story, he saves Delilah by taking in an overload of energy from the Backyard, mangling his limbs and turning him into a Technically-Living Zombie.
Half-Life begins and ends in a tram. The sequel begins and ends with Gordon in stasis. In addition, the G-Man puts Gordon Freeman on a train at the beginning of Half-Life 2, and in the ending the G-Man says "this is where I get off" before stepping through a glowing doorway (much like the ones on the train).
- In the first game, Gordon goes down an AKIRA-esque lift in "Unforseen Consequences" (the first chapter after the action starts), and then down an identical one at the beginning of "Lambda Core" (the last chapter before heading to the alien homeworld Xen). Just to reinforce it, "Cavern Ambience" sounds in both times.
- Half-Life 2 begins with Gordon entering City 17 by train. Half-Life 2: Episode One ends with Gordon Freeman narrowly escaping an exploding City 17 by train, thus finally ending the City 17 story arc.
Halo:
- Halo 3 has an excellent example of a bookend in its ending. The Arbiter dismisses the apparent death of the Master Chief with "Were it so easy," mirroring the opening scene where the Chief holds a pistol to the Arbiter's head and all the Arbiter does is dismiss the possibility either of them could be killed so easily.
- A second example, bookending the entire original trilogy, is in the final video unlocked by sitting through the credits. The Master Chief climbs into a cryo tube to wait for rescue, after climbing out of a very similar cryo tube at the start of the first game (which was the Master Chief's introduction).
- At the end of the first game we have this exchange:
  Cortana: We did what we had to! An entire Covenant armada obliterated, and the Flood... Halo. It's finished.
  John: No. I think we're just getting started.
- And then, at the end of Halo 3:
  Cortana: You did it. Truth, and the Covenant. The Flood. It's finished.
  John: ...It's finished.
  - Bonus points for the using the same song (albeit updated) for both endings.
- Also, the first and third games both end with you fleeing a disaster that will destroy a Halo ring. The same Halo ring in fact. On a Warthog.
- The most iconic example in the original trilogy on par with the cryo tube scenes is the discovery of a new world to explore. In the first Halo, it was Halo, and in the secret end of Halo 3 it is Requiem.
- Halo: Combat Evolved is an example all on its own: you start on the Pillar of Autumn, making your way to an escape pod before it crash-lands on Halo; you end the game on the Pillar of Autumn, making your way to an onboard fighter before the Autumn blows up and takes Halo with it. This can actually be extended to cover pretty much the entire game, since the last third of the game is practically the first half in reverse...escape the Pillar of Autumn which is being overrun by Covenant, board the Truth and Reconciliation to rescue Keyes from the Covenant, fight your way up to the Control Room, explore an ancient structure infested by Flood and release them, fight your way through an ancient structure infested by Flood to find a way to destroy them, fight your way down from the Control Room, board the Truth and Reconciliation to rescue Keyes from the Flood, go back to the Pillar of Autumn to escape Halo which is being overrun by Flood.
- Halo: Reach, being a prequel to the main trilogy, leads directly into Halo 1, with Master Chief, Cortana, and the Pillar of Autumn heading for the Halo ring. Halo likes these a lot, it seems. Also in-game, the story begins and ends with a Dead Hat Shot of Noble Six's helmet.
Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life: The game starts with the player starting his life on the farm after the death of their father. The game ends with the player's child starting a career of their own after the death of the player. Especially if your child chose to run the farm.
The prologue to Heavy Rain features Ethan Mars, on a sunny day, with Perma-Stubble. Two of his Multiple Endings feature him on a sunny day with stubble, having shaved his Beard of Sorrow. The game proper begins with raindrops obscuring the camera before it pans down from the sky. The "Unpunished" epilogue for Scott Shelby ends with rain obscuring the camera as it pans up to the sky.
A notable gimmick of the Hitman series — at the end you return to where the story began.
Honkai Impact 3rd: Chapter XXI has a short side story "Shicksal Valkyrie" about two young orphaned girls living together in a wooden cabin. It starts with Leila, a novice Valkyrie, staring at the sunset and "saluting it with her eyes", as she does everyday. The sunlight is described to bathe the cabin in an orange glow and give it a warm feeling despite the cold. She talks with the other girl, Qingqiu, who doesn't want Leila to be a Valkyrie, because she is afraid of her dying on the battlefield. The scene gets interrupted as it turns out to be a memory replayed in a virtual reality. Leila leaves the memory travel room and the light of a setting sun this time is described as "staining the corridor with an ugly orange tint". Qingqiu is long dead, Leila's eyes became dull and she now hates seeing the sunset.
Hanging in the closet were a row of timeworn dresses for girls of 12 to 22 years old, with one for each age. As if the sun had never set, and the girl had never gone.
This doesn't apply to the whole story, but the individual episodes of I Miss the Sunrise begin and end with Ros in a stasis pod, generally including characters' reflections on the plot. The scenes also showcase crewmates gradually warming up to Ros, as they react more and more sympathetically to Ros being caged up in the pod.
- The exception to this is the final episode, which mixes things up a bit by destroying the stasis pod, probably to cement its status as a Wham Episode.
In Between starts with the terminally-ill protagonist on his deathbed, deriding Orson Welles' quote of "If you want a happy ending, that of course depends on where you stop your story", calling it rediculous. By the end of the game, after going through the Five Stages of Grief, he ends up back at his deathbed and once again calls Welles an idiot, but is instead mocking the notion of there being endings at all, content with the fact that he will move on to become a part of something else after death.
I Was a Teenage Exocolonist typically begins and ends with the protagonist getting trapped in the shed fire and a grown-up Anemone rescuing them from the doglike alien. In the end, they realize that the vision they had at the beginning came true, but this time, they've developed the skills to fight it.
Done in Infinite Space, although not in the beginning. During the first confrontation with Lugovalos near the end of Act 1, Bastian blasted the Vasta star using Krebs exalaser to take down the enemies and prevent their advance to LMC. Ten years later near the end of Act 2, during the final confrontation, Bastian's brother, Dietrich performed a Heroic Sacrifice by doing the exact same thing to prevent the enemies from chasing Yuri.
Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II starts with Kyle watching a recording left behind by his father. In one of the endings, namely, the Dark Side ending, at the very end, he starts watching it again, before crushing it under his boot.
Journey (2012) starts off in the desert, then you go on an adventure, meanwhile realizing it's not easy, reach the summit, and return to the desert. Justified as it's an evocation of The Hero's Journey.
At the end of the first level of Killer7, Harman shoots Kun Lan in the hand; Kun Lan catches the bullet and rides its momentum to the top of the Space Needle. At the very end of the game, the same scene is repeated 100 years later in China. The implication, as Kun Lan mockingly states, is that their battle will never end.
- Also, in one confrontation Harman asks "You're awake from your dream?" to which Kun Lan replies "Harman, the size of the world has changed"; in the other Harman asks "You're awake from your nightmare?" to which Kun Lan replies "Harman, the world won't change — all it does is turn", potentially implying that this is one of the few ways they pass the eternities. Switching sides so that they both get a chance to be "good" and "bad"
- The third part of the game, Cloudman, begins and ends with the same line: "The name's Andrei Ulmeyda." You'd be thinking and feeling different things both times, however; the first time, you'll be wondering exactly who this guy is, and the scene it starts is considered one of the funniest in the game. The second time, Ulmeyda had horrifically and tragically turned into a Smile earlier and had to be put down, after which his spirit somberly gave parting advice to his successor; once the screen fades to black, his first line is repeated to hammer home how tragic his death was.
The King of Fighters: Nameless's backstory involves him being created in a NESTS base located on the Martian moon Deimos. In The King of Fighters All Star, the end of the 2002 story has him revisit the base... and die ensuring that it's destroyed.
Kingdom Hearts:
- Kingdom Hearts:
  - From a meta standpoint, the first and final members of the Council of Disney Villains Sora defeats, Jafar and Hades, both originate from movies directed by John Musker and Ron Clements.
  - The game's tutorial, the Dive to the Heart, uses the song of the same name as its field theme and the song "Destati" as the battle theme. The Very Definitely Final Dungeon of the game, End of the World, uses remixes of the two songs, the same titled "End of the World" and "Fragments of Sorrow", as the field and battle themes, respectively.
  - The tutorial ends with Sora being told "You are the one who will open the door". Right before the Final Boss, as well as at the end of The Stinger, the line is repeated, but this time gets completed.
    You are the one who will open the door to the light.
  - The game's tutorial boss, as well as the first actual boss faced, come in the form of Heartless known as Darksides. The second phase of the game's final Boss Rush has Sora taking on another Darkside.
- Chain of Memories begins with Sora, Donald, and Goofy walking down a crossroads and finding Castle Oblivion, while the game ends with Riku and Mickey leaving Castle Oblivion and walking down the same crossroads.
- Kingdom Hearts II:
  - The first and Final Bosses are both Nobodies that utilize an attack that can be dodged using the "Reversal" reaction command.
  - Outside of the revisits during the second half of the game, each world ends with Sora shooting a beam of light from his Keyblade into a keyhole. The Final Boss fight against Xemnas ends with Sora and Riku shooting another beam of light from Sora's Keyblade through Xemnas to finish him off.
  - The first in-engine cutscene of the game takes place on a beach in the Realm of Darkness, while the final in-engine cutscene takes place on that same beach.
  - If you let the game enter Precap, a poem will be shown onscreen before you see any cutscenes or staff credits. The end of the game has Sora finding Kairi's letter in a bottle she sent out during the prologue, with the contents being revealed to be the very same poem.
  - The opening of the first game has Sora falling out of the sky and landing in the waters of Destiny Islands. This game ends with Sora and Riku doing the same exact thing.
  - The first game ends with Sora and Kairi being separated from each other, losing grip of one another's hand as the worlds drift away from each other. This game ends with the two reuniting, with the very final shot before the credits being their hands embracing.
- Birth by Sleep:
  - The game begins with Aqua and Terra having a friendly sparring match as part of their Mark of Mastery exam. The Final Boss of the game has Aqua in a fight for her life against Terra-Xehanort.
  - The very first cutscene of the game has Ventus linking his heart with Sora's in order to heal the damage done to it during Vanitas' creation. The Stinger for the game has Ventus' heart returning to Sora's once again in order to heal the damage done from destroying the χ-Blade.
  - The tutorial for the game ends with Terra, Ventus, and Aqua narrating that the night before the Mark of Mastery exam would be "the last night we ever spent beneath the same stars". The Stinger has Sora and Riku standing on a beach under a star-covered night, ending with text stating that "In time, the worlds would be saved by these two heroes who stood beneath the same blaze of stars".
- Dream Drop Distance:
  - The Climax Boss of the first game has Sora facing off against Riku-Ansem in an attempt to save Riku from the darkness possessing him. The Post-Final Boss of this game has Riku facing off against the Armored Ventus Nightmare in an attempt to save Sora from the darkness possessing him.
  - The tutorial the first game takes place inside of Sora's Dive to the Heart, while the Post-Final Boss for this game takes place inside of Sora's Dive to the Heart.
- Being the finale of the Dark Seeker Saga that has been running since the first game, Kingdom Hearts III has quite a few of these:
  - The first game's tutorial boss comes in the form of a Darkside, while a Darkside serves as the tutorial boss for this game as well.
  - The prologue of the first game has Riku giving a Paopu fruit, a fruit said to eternally link two people who eat one together, to Sora so that he can share it with Kairi, and the game ends with Kairi completing the cave drawing of her and Sora giving each other Paopu fruits that Sora had started in the prologue. Right before this game's climax, the two finally share Paopu fruits with each other, with the shot of them doing so mimicking the cave drawing.
  - The ending of the tutorial and the beginning of the game's climax take place in the same location, The Final World.
  - The first Nobody, as well as the first member of the original Organization XIII, Sora ever fought was Xemnas in an Optional Boss added in Kingdom Hearts Final Mix, with Xemnas also being the final Nobody and original Organization XIII member Sora fights in this game.
  - The opening cutscene of the game has a young Eraqus and Xehanort playing chess in a world called Scala ad Caelum. The Final Boss fight has Sora traveling to Scala ad Caelum to confront Master Xehanort.
  - Birth by Sleep has Master Xehanort falsely dubbing Terra a Keyblade Master as part of his plan to manipulate him, while in this game, Xehanort's last action before him and Eraqus ascend to Kingdom Hearts is to genuinely (albeit only implicitly) dub Sora a Keyblade Master by giving him the χ-Blade.
  - The final cutscene before the credits is accompanied by use of "Simple and Clean", the opening theme for the first game.
  - The first game ends with Kairi crying Tears of Joy as she realizes that Sora does reciprocate her feelings for him, while this game ends with Kairi crying tears of sadness as Sora fades from existence.
  - The game's first world, Olympus, ends with Maleficent and Pete searching for the Black Box as Xigbar watches them from a distance. The Stinger has Xigbar in possession of the Black Box as Maleficent and Pete watch him from a distance.
  - The Secret Ending for the first game takes place in a dark city with Roxas walking through it, all while Riku watches from the top of a tower. This game's Secret Ending takes place in another dark city with Sora, who Roxas is the Nobody of, and Riku walking through it, all while Yozora, who was previously noted to look strangely similar to Riku, and the Master of Masters, who wears the same black hood Roxas and Riku wore in the first game's Secret Ending, watch from the top of towers.
  - The very first words ever said in the series come in the form of Sora saying "I've been having these weird thoughts lately... like is any of this for real or not?". The Re Mind DLC ends the Dark Seeker Saga with the same line, once again said by Sora, only this time, Yozora is saying it alongside him.
Kirby:
- It's not the same locale, but in Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, Stage 1 of Pop Star is almost visually identical to Stage 1 of Ripple Star and shares the same stage music.
- Kirby's Return to Dream Land begins with Kirby, King Dedede, Meta Knight, and Bandana Waddle Dee hanging out on Planet Popstar before Magolor crashes into Dream Land. The ending sees the gang back in Dream Land after defeating Magolor and escaping Another Dimension on Landia.
  - Similarly, the Deluxe remake has the Magolor Epilogue, which begins with Magolor going through a portal to the depths of Another Dimension after his defeat in the main game. The ending has him go through another portal, but this time to the Dream Kingdom.
- In Kirby: Planet Robobot, the first level ends with Kirby running away from Clanky Woods. The final Secret Level ends with Kirby, this time in his Robobot Armor, running away from Clanky again, albeit with much better defense against him.
- Kirby and the Forgotten Land: The beginning of the game shows Kirby flying around Dream Land on his Warp Star before he sees the portal to the New World. The ending has him land back in Popstar with Elfilin, with the portal still active and only stopped through Elfilin's Heroic Sacrifice.
In The Last of Us both the first and last time you play as Joel, he's carrying his little girl to safety through a hostile environment with no means of defense.
The Last Story:
- The first dungeon you visit in the game, the Reptids' Cave, is also one of the penultimate dungeons of the game's main story. The characters in your party will even comment on how they're back on the exact place they've started.
- Early in the game, Calista takes Zael to the Stargazer's Tower at night so she can show him the meteor shower that happens there. The final chapter in the game sees the same happening.
In the original Blood Omen (From the Legacy of Kain series), Kain's quest for revenge really kicks off when he visits the Pillars of Nosgoth and talks to the ghost of Ariel. At the end, he returns to the Pillars for the final showdown with Mortanius/The Unspoken.
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth features a musical bookend in Kiryu's battle theme while in Kamurocho, "Funk Goes On" — the exact same battle theme as the one from the very first game in the series.
Live A Live:
- The Prehistory chapter begins with Pogo undergoing a right of passage by hunting small game for food. At the end of the chapter, he ends up hauling the biggest game anyone could dream of, a Tyrannosaurus rex.
- When the Earthen Heart Shifu first encounters Lei Kugo in the bamboo forest, she'll trail him before appearing in front of him, with the implication that the Shifu knew she was there. If Lei ends up as the surviving disciple, when the Shifu goes to confront the Indomitable Fist, a similar scene will play out, only this time with the implication that Lei got the jump on the Shifu.
- The Imperial China chapter begins with the Earthen Heart Shifu practicing his art and then failing to split a rock in half, leading him to realize that he needs to find a successor to pass his teachings on to. The chapter ends with the surviving disciple practicing their art and then successfully splitting the rock in half.
- The Wild West chapter begins with Mad Dog stopping the Sundown Kid as he rides along the desert and challenging him to a duel. After Sundown Kid wins, he fires at Mad Dog's horse, startling it and causing it to run away. If the player spares Mad Dog in their fight after defeating O. Dio, the chapter will end in a near identical scene.
- The Near Future chapter begins and ends with Akira waking up on a bench in the park.
- The chronologically first chapter of the game, Prehistory, features an optional Easter Egg in which Pogo encounters the monolith. The chronologically final chapter of the game, the Distant Future, has an Arc Villain in the form of a HAL 9000 expy.
- Near the beginning of the Distant Future chapter, Cube learns to make coffee, and will be violently rebuffed should he attempt to offer Darthe some. The chapter ends with a wounded and exhausted Darthe asking Cube to make some coffee for him.
- The Middle Ages chapter begins with Oersted and Streibough having a friendly duel in a tournament, while the chapter ends with the two having a Duel to the Death.
- The game's main theme, the same titled song "Live A Live", plays during the title screen, then later serves as the battle theme for the Dominion of Hate, the game's true final chapter.
Trails Series: A few games in the series have bookends especially since the series is a Long Runner.
- The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II: At the start of the proper prologue in the first game, Rean arrives at Trista from his home to enroll at Thors Academy full of hopes and dreams. At the start of the epilogue of Cold Steel II, Rean arrives at Thors following his participation in deterring the Calvardian Army to invade Crossbell and has become cynical of his situation.
- The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie: At the start of the game, Lloyd and the SSS climb up Orchis Tower to arrest Rufus' guards who are attempting to restart the world war which ended at the end of Cold Steel IV. At the end of the game, Lloyd, Jusis, Lapis, Nadia, Swin, and Zeit climb up Reverse Babel and "arrest" Rufus to save his life from the Heavenly Thunder which is about to destroy Babel after Rufus pulls off a Zero Gambit Approval.
  - Lloyd's Final Boss fight in the Divertissment chapter of Cold Steel II is Rean. The first fight of the Final Boss gauntlet in Hajimari is another version of Rean called Ishmelga-Rean though the playable Rean joins him for this phase.
  - Rean's Final Boss fight in Cold Steel I is against Crow in their Divine Knights. Rean's Final Boss fight as a playable character in the main game is in a Divine Knight fight against Ishmelga-Rean piloting Zoa-Gilstein. He's also joined by Crow and Rufus who are also no longer playable against the final boss fight of the main game.
The Legend of Zelda:
- The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask actually has four bookends:
  - One of the very first things you do in the game is play hide and seek with five red-headed children. One of the very last things you do in the game is play hide and seek with five red-headed children.
  - Since the game takes place in a "Groundhog Day" Loop three-day cycle, the same events repeat themselves over and over. In the very first cycle of the game, you have to go up to the clock tower at the end of the third day and face a boss encounter that you can only survive by playing a particular song on your ocarina. Then, once you play through the entire rest of the game, you have to go back to the same place, at the same time, and play a different song on your ocarina. The events of the battle unfold radically differently this time around, and once you watch the cutscene you get sent to the final dungeon.
  - The opening scene in the game is Link riding Epona through the Lost Woods searching for a long-lost friend. During the end credits, Link is riding Epona into the woods, continuing his original quest. Even the underscoring on the soundtrack is the same.
  - In the prologue, you get turned into a Deku Scrub, traverse a brief tunnel, and find a mangled-looking Deku sapling at the end of it. During the credits, you find the Deku Butler mourning there. As both of your other transformations were via taking over a recently deceased character, and the Butler previously noted your resemblance to his son, the implication is that the twisted sapling was the remains of the Butler's wayward son, killed by the Skull Kid to turn you into a Deku Scrub, and you've been running around in his body all game.
- Before that game, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time closes with Link approaching Zelda in the castle garden in a parallel to their meeting early in the game. This time we briefly see the Triforce of Courage on his hand.
  - There was also another set of bookends in this game. The very first scene with Sheik where you are introduced to the character, and the very last scene with Sheik where she reveals herself to be Zelda, are remarkably similar. They both take place in the Temple of Time and start off with Link running only to stop and turn around to find Sheik standing behind him after she announces her presence with the line "I've been waiting for you."
- As the plot of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker kicks off, Link leaves his hometown with the pirates. In the last scene of the game... Link leaves his hometown with the pirates. The tone of the latter scene is much more positive, though. Especially notable is that the first departing-scene had Link waving his grandma and neighbours goodbye with one hand, stoping for a few seconds, suddenly running forward a few steps and then starting to wave at them again, but this time with both hands. The second departing has his sister Aryll (who stays behind on Outset) doing this just the same way.
- The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess:
  - The first area you go to outside of the forest is Hyrule Castle after you are turned into a wolf and captured. Hyrule Castle is also the final dungeon of the game.
  - At the beginning of the game, Link has someone call for him at his second story window. At the end of the game, this happens again, but this time, Link isn't inside; he is riding Epona out of the village.
  - The final dungeon of the Fused Shadows arc is accessed from a cave at the bottom of Lake Hylia, and the boss is fought at the lowest point in the entire game world. The final dungeon of the Mirror of Twilight arc is accessed by a cannon that is also at Lake Hylia, and the boss is fought at the highest point in the entire game world. Both bosses have the same music, and both eventually involve latching onto and attacking an eye on the boss's back.
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past did it with bookends within bookends. The first dungeon in the Light World is Hyrule Castle. The last dungeon is also Hyrule Castle. Its analogous location in the Dark World is a pyramid, the first place you go after you defeat Agahnim. After defeating Agahnim again, you go straight back to the pyramid.
- The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening: The game begins with Marin waking you up on Koholint Island, and the game ends with Link waking up from the dream world of Koholint on a log in the middle of the ocean.
- Oracle of Ages: The main item of the first dungeon is the Power Bracelet, and the main item of the last dungeon is its upgrade, the Power Glove.
- In Hyrule Warriors, the first and final missions both take place in Hyrule Field.
- In BS The Legend of Zelda, Ganon's lair is in the back of the Old Man's cave.
- As a Meta example, Twilight Princess is a launch title for the Wii, while The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is the final major release for the Wii. If one groups the Wii and Wii U together as a sort-of "extended Wii family", The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was one of the first games released for the original Wii, while The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was the very last game Nintendo produced for the Wii U. Both games released on other consoles as well, with Twlight Princess releasing on the Nintendo GameCube and Breath of the Wild launching on Nintendo Switch, making them serve as similar segues between console generations.
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds: The first Fissure connecting Hyrule and Lorule that Link enters is the one connecting Princess Hilda's office to Princess Zelda's. It becomes inaccessable until right before the Final Boss, where it will likely be the last Fissure Link uses in gameplay.
LEGO Ninjago: Shadow of Ronin opens and closes with Kai telling a story that ends with Jay losing his pants and Jay saying that's not what happened.
The very first room of Liar Jeannie In Crucifix Kingdom has a passage that leads to the exit of the kingdom. Unfortunately, going there right away is suicide because it's guarded by the toughest boss battle in the game.
Life Is Strange: The very first location you see in the first episode is the lighthouse overlooking the tornado that will wipe out Arcadia Bay in five days. This very same place is where you make the final choice of the fifth episode.
The title screen of Limbo shows a treehouse with a broken ladder and flies hovering over two small corpses. The end shows the protagonist reuniting with his sister near the ladder of a treehouse, then returns to the title screen for maximum impact.
The first game of the Power Pro Kun Pocket series opens with a shot of Pawapuro-kun leaping towards the screen with a dog by his side. The final game opens with that same shot, still in monochrome, and then fades into a colored close-up of the two.
Lufia & The Fortress of Doom begins with Maxim's party entering Doom Island and defeating the Sinistrals. The final dungeon of the game has Maxim's descendant enter Doom Island and defeat the Sinistrals, 100 years later.
- The Hero's story begins and ends with him meeting Lufia, who has no memories of her past.
  - The same goes for Wain and Seena in Lufia: The Legend Returns.
Lufia: The Ruins of Lore begins with Eldin's father leaving on an adventure, and then Eldin leaving on his adventure. The ending has Eldin and his father leaving on an adventure together.
The Story Mode of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Gears of Destiny begins with the player controlling Amitie in the first match and ends with the player fighting against Amitie in the last match of the Playable Epilogue.
In Masquerada Songs And Shadows, the prologue and the ending end similarly, in both the Player Character is killed by the same woman on the roof of the government building, however while the character in the former case is Killed Off for Real the after credits cutscenes reveal the Player Character in the latter was the one who survived the Mutual Kill.
In Mass Effect, the Citadel is your first stop after the tutorial zone and the location of your showdown with Saren at the end.
In Mass Effect 3 it's also the Catalyst and the site of the ending.
- There's a similar effect in Mass Effect 2 , where the Sahrabarik system is both where you begin after taking control of your ship and where the relay to reach the Very Definitely Final Dungeon is located.
- Mass Effect 3 has a double helping, both in the game and for the trilogy. Within the game itself, the battle begins and ends at Earth, which you can only visit at the beginning and end of the game. For the trilogy overall, in both the first and third game you needed to make use of the Conduit and face off against an indoctrinated opponent who thought they weren't.
  - The first game also began at Earth.
  - Also, the geth-quarian war. Started by a geth slave asking his quarian overseer "Does this unit have a soul?". 300 years on, ended by Legion, your geth squadmate, asking this question to your quarian squadmate Tali, during a Genocide Dilemma. If you can avert disaster:
    Tali: Legion, the answer to your question... is yes.
    Legion: I know, Tali. But thank you. Keelah se'lai...
  - Alternatively, if you choose to destroy the geth:
    Tali: I'm sorry, Legion...
    Legion: Tali'Zorah... Does this... Unit... Have...
    Tali: Yes... Yes, it does.
- Shepard's interview about the Reapers in Vancouver at the very beginning of 3 culminates in a shout of "We fight or we die!" The Renegade option at the end of the last Rousing Speech in the series, during the battle of London, is to tell your team "You fight or you die."
- The Refusal Ending for Mass Effect 3 is a bookend to the inciting incident with the Prothean Beacon in Mass Effect 1. To wit: in ME 1, Shepard finds a warning by an extinct civilization which had fought and been wiped out by the Reapers. It sets off the first effort to stop the Reapers in this cycle. In the Refusal ending, after Shepard has refused to cooperate with the Catalyst in any way, pretty much the same thing happens - all advanced civilizations are wiped out but a few warnings were sent out. However, the creator of the new warning Liara has learned from the mistakes of this go-around. Cut to an unknown race thousands of years in the future defeating the Reapers because the warnings left for them were easy to understand and contained vast amounts of scientific and technical data.
Max Blaster and Doris de Lightning Against the Parrot Creatures of Venus: Early in the game, Ch'awwwk's Evil Gloating causes him to laugh so hard he falls off his perch. Doris can make a snarky comment that she hopes Ch'awwwk's weapon has as bad balance as he does. Towards the end of the game, during the brief epilogue where you control Ch'awwwk, you laugh and fall backwards. The Director makes a similar comment to Doris.
Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage: The Spider-Man and Venom videogame begins after Carnage's escape, with Spider-Man pondering how his enemies never seem to stay locked up. At the end of the game, Black Cat tells him that she fears that "monsters like that have a way of returning," and he reassures her that she should have faith, and hopes that some monsters stay locked up forever.
Medal of Honor: Underground: The first chapter takes place in occupied Paris in late 1942. After much Europe-trotting, the final chapter (not counting the Secret Level) takes you back to Paris just in time to take part in the Liberation of the city from German control, two years later.
Mega Man:
- Mega Man X began with the discovery of X and Zero. In the Mega Man Zero series, it's revealed that the former ended with both characters sealing themselves (the former to seal something, the latter to seal himself).
- There's an inversion between the X series and the Zero series too. In the supposed Grand Finale that is Mega Man X5, the good ending with X shows him keeping the Z-Sabre as reminder of his everlasting friendship with Zero. In Mega Man Zero, it starts near the end of the intro stage with him (now as a Cyber-Elf) returning the Z-Sabre to Zero.
- Inverted with Mega Man and Mega Man 2, and Mega Man 6 and Mega Man 7, as the ending theme for the first games of each pair is used as the beginning part of the intro theme of the second games of each pair.
- In Mega Man X2, the opening stage theme is also used as the final stage music before the confrontation with Sigma and Zero, if you failed to find and/or defeat all three of the X-Hunters. The first stage the player would see after the opening stage is the Central Computer Stage (AKA Magna Centipede's stage). The final battle also takes place in the Central Computer Stage.
- Mega Man Zero and Mega Man Zero 3 has very similar endings. Both involves an explosion of the final boss that Zero causes which knocks him out, both involves an Elf saving him from perishing in the explosion, X in Zero 1, and the Mother Elf in Zero 3, and both has X asking Zero to help take care of the humans-reploid relationship.
- Inverted for Mega Man Zero 1 and Mega Man Zero 2, as For Endless Fight, the ending theme for the former is played albeit with a different tone as the intro music for the latter.
Metal Gear:
- Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater has a possible example with the Green Tree Python, which appears at the very beginning of the game and the very end.
- Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots has the salute at Big Boss's grave.
  - Which also stands as a bookend to the entire Myth Arc. Both the When It All Began story of Snake Eater and the Grand Finale story of Guns of the Patriots end with Big Boss saluting The Boss at her grave, fifty years apart.
  - Almost as poignant: According to the Metal Gear Solid 4 Database, the place Naked Snake infiltrated, Tselinoyarsk, during the events of Snake Eater would eventually become the very same place where Big Boss would go to establish Zanzibar Land, leading to his last stand against Solid Snake in the finale of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake.
  - Also, you revisit the ruins of Shadow Moses, the site of the first Metal Gear Solid.
  - The final boss fight calls back to the first and last boss fights of Metal Gear Solid. The last fights of MGS and MGS4 are both hand-to-hand fights with Liquid on top of a Metal Gear. Like the first fight of MGS, the last fight of MGS4 is also against Revolver Ocelot. The difference is that in their first fight, they were both agile, powerful warriors. In the second, they're dying old men. In fact, the final boss is one to the entire Metal Gear Solid series - the first phase, as mentioned earlier, is reminiscent of the final boss of MGS1. The second, recalling MGS2, has Ocelot primarily focusing on powerful punches with the replacement arm he got from Liquid. The third, recalling MGS3, has both Liquid and Snake switching over to CQC. All three are accompanied by one of the boss tracks from their respective games.
- Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance starts with a serious Raiden removing his sword's sheath from a suitcase as he is going to fight enemy cyborgs. It ends with Raiden removing his sheath from a suitcase as he is going to fight enemy cyborgs, but this time with a grin.
- Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain ends with a Snake being briefed on Operation Intrude N313, bookending the whole series.
Metroid:
- Metroid II: Return of Samus: The game begins when you exit out of the spaceship. After completing your mission, you then go back to your ship. Taken even further with Metroid: Samus Returns where the beginning spot is also the Final Boss fight with Proteus Ridley.
- Super Metroid:
  - The game begins and ends with Timed Missions following boss fights (one with Ridley, the other with Mother Brain.)
  - The first and second bosses are Ridley and then Torizo. The final bosses before the Final Boss are Golden Torizo and then Ridley.
  - Also, Mother Brain is the first boss you see, as a memory of Samus from the events of the original Metroid.
- In Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, when travelling to Norion, the first world after the introductory GFS Olympus, for the first time, a short cutscene plays where Samus' gunship enters the planet's atmosphere. This type of cutscene plays again when entering the atmosphere of Phaaze, the final planet.
- Metroid Dread does this. The intro cutscene shows Samus landing in planet ZDR, followed by a fight with Raven Beak who defeats Samus but intentionally doesn't kill her. At the end of the game, not only is your final battle with Raven Beak since the whole game was a full trial on Samus, but the final destination to complete the game was a beginning cutscene spot where your ship originally landed.
Minecraft: Story Mode:
- Episode eight has Jesse, Petra, and Lukas all die and respawn without their armour and in their original clothes. Considering that this is the outfits the audience was introduced to them in and we haven't seen them wear them since episode three (for Jesse) and episode four (for Lukas and Petra), it creates a nice contrast for the final episode in the season.
- Played for Laughs. The series begins with Jesse and Olivia conversing about what they'd prefer to fight; chickens the size of zombies, or zombies the size of chickens. The Stinger of Episode 8 ends with Hadrian and Mevia having played that game, and stuck in a world with either actual chickens the size of zombies, or actual zombies the size of chickens, depending on what you picked all the way back in episode 1. Incidentally, if you let the timer run out and didn't answer Olivia's question in episode 1, then the episode 8 stinger will default to the "chickens the size of zombies" choice.
- The opening sequence for both Episodes 1 and 5 mirror each other.
- In Episode 1, you have a choice to put Radar in charge while your at the sea temple. In Episode 5, if you decide to hit the road, you can make Radar Beacon Town's new Hero in Residence.
- After meeting with Petra in the mines, you race each other. If you choose to hit the road in Episode 5, Petra challenges you to a race again.
- When you meet Jack for the first time, you tell Petra to either be herself, or play it cool. Later in Episode 5, Jack has a similar reaction to meeting Ivor. And you're given the same two options again. Bonus points for being in the same building
- The main story begins with Jesse getting a gauntlet stuck to their hand. You defeat Romeo by using a different gauntlet to take his admin powers away.
The final mission of Mission: Impossible(N64) returns you to the same submarine base as the first mission, but in reverse.
In Mitsumete Knight, the game starts with the following sentence: "April 1st, 26, in Dolphan Era. An Asian was about to immigrate to the Dolphan Kingdom, as a mercenary.", and then you see the Asian (aka the player) arriving at Dolphan Kingdom by boat; the first person he meets then is a Customs Official. At the end of the game, this same Customs Official is the last person he meets (barring any girl he could have scored during the game), and he leaves Dolphan by boat. If you got the Bad Ending where he got neither the Holy Knight Title nor a girl's confession of love, the following sentence will also appear: "March 16th, 29, in Dolphan Era. An Asian was about to leave the Kingdom, as a man.".
Monkey Island has one spanning several games: one of the first things Guybrush has to do at the beginning of The Secret of Monkey Island is shoot himself out of a circus cannon. The objective of the final major puzzle in Tales of Monkey Island, the final game in the series^note, is to get Guybrush into a cannon so that he can shoot himself out of it. He even grabs a nearby pot and uses it as a helmet in the latter case, calling back to him doing the same thing in the former.
Monster Hunter:
- Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate: Lagiacrus is the first monster encountered in the village questline, like in the original Tri. Ivory Lagiacrus is the Final Boss of the village questline, and Abyssal Lagiacrus is one of the last Superbosses unlocked.
- Monster Hunter Generations:
  - The first boss in the game is a theropod (Great Maccao) fought in the Jurassic Frontier. The final boss of the Low Rank questline is a theropod (Glavenus, albeit classified as a Brute Wyvern) fought in the Jurassic Frontier.
  - The first game of the series' fourth generation, Monster Hunter 4, has a giant insect (Seltas) as the first boss. The last game of the fourth generation, Generations Ultimate, has a giant insect (Ahtal-Ka) as the final boss.
The game Monster Party begins and ends with the protagonist leaving his house and then running into Bert. The only difference is, in the beginning, Bert asks for his help killing evil monsters in the Dark World, and at the end, he asks if Mark wants to go again.
Mother 3 has two:
- It begins with it's title logo, half-wooden, half-metallic. When the game finally ends, the Pig Mask Army corrupting the nature is beaten, and the world is reborn as new. The last shot is the same logo, only totally wooden and with a Earth instead of the metal O.
- One of the very first things that happen in the game is a panicked Thomas breaking the doorknob at Flint's house. You finally retrieve it After the End. However, this one may not qualify; if you know where to look, you can learn the whereabouts of the doorknob all throughout the game.
- Also, a series long one. The title screen music to Mother 1 plays in a long hallway around the end of Mother 3.
Myst:
- The game begins with a shot of a book falling through a starry expanse, eventually landing at some unspecified location where the player finds it. In the optimal ending of the sequel Riven, the player character jumps into the starry fissure that will hopefully take him home, and the last shot is the player character — from his perspective — falling through the same starry expanse. (There are further sequels after this, but they kind of do their own thing.)
- There's even a sort of middle Bookend. It is explained in other series media that the player lives on Earth. At the beginning of Myst, you link to Myst from a book on Earth, which is where the fissure leads and where you're trying to get at the end of Riven. But in between, you rescue Atrus by taking his missing page to D'ni/K'veer, which is a cavern underneath the surface ... of Earth.
- Moreover, most of the games and Ages start off with an early glimpse of the place you'll need to get to at the end. In Riven, for example, the site where the starry fissure can be opened is directly in view from where you first link into that world. In Myst, the very first screen is in sight of the marker post holding the white page to free Atrus.
The Neverhood: The first and last puzzles of the game involve a flytrap and five rings hanging from the ceiling.
The New Order Last Days Of Europe begins with the victorious Nazi Germans landing a man on the Moon and placing their flag on it. Should their Cold War with the USA and Japan end in a nuclear hellfire, the furthest post-apocalyptic event reveals that far into the future, humanity will still recover and place a man on the moon once more. The new Astronauts pause to glimpse at bleached white flag, the same one the Nazis placed years ago, and having no idea what it means or why it's there, take it down and place their own which symoblizes humanity finally overcomming the horrors of the Nazi Victory world.
The first stage of Ninja Commando is in Big Bad Spider's private base, where you defeat the villain's private army, including the first boss, only for Spider to escape via Time Machine. You uncover another prototype time machine in the same base, pursues Spider through several time periods to prevent Spider from rewriting history, and finally made it to the final stage, Spider's base where it all started.
No Man's Sky: When the game first starts, you are shown a first-person animation of traveling through space. Once you get to the center of the galaxy, the same animation plays in reverse, and the game starts over, with your ship and your scanner damaged.
The title screen in the original No More Heroes takes place in the parking lot of the No More Heroes Motel. The True Final Boss is fought in this same parking lot.
The first ObsCure begins with you leaving the school gym and entering the secret laboratory and ends in reverse, exiting the laboratory through the collapse gym floor. Double points should you be playing Kenny during the final boss fight.
- In the second game, the first and final chapters begin at the Delta Theta Gamma Frat House.
Octopath Traveler:
- Ophilia begins and ends her story with Lianna atop her favorite hill overlooking their home.
- Primrose's story begins with her dancing, her dance symbolic of her perseverance. At the end of her story, she determines to keep dancing, but this time with different conviction behind it. In addition, her first and last boss battles are against a disgustingly cruel man who murdered someone close to her and spends the fight reclining in a chair, accompanied by their flunkies. Until Simeon starts trying.
- Alfyn's first and last chapters has him fight a vicious animal so he can obtain something from it to develop a cure.
OFF: The first battle is a tutorial match between the Batter and the Judge. The last battle is likewise between the Batter and the Judge, only it's an actual life-and-death fight in the Purified Room over the switch that ends the world.
Overcooked! begins with a Hopeless Boss Fight against the game's Big Bad, in which you make nothing but lettuce and tomato salads. The final boss fight plays out like a Final-Exam Boss that has you making almost all of the new dishes you've learned how to make over the course of the game... except for the very last order, which is always that same salad.
In the Panzer Dragoon series, the prologue stage in the second game, Panzer Dragoon Zwei, which is chronologically the first, is called "Destiny Begins"; the name of the final stage in the fourth game, Panzer Dragoon Orta, is "The End of Destiny'' - the series' Grand Finale.
The Park opens with Lorraine stating "In my heart and mind, I always return to Atlantic Island Park." The story ends with Lorraine repeating the same lines, this time while sitting in a police interrogation room and giving every indication that the events of the game will indeed haunt her forever. Given Lorraine's tormented state of mind in the sequel, it's actually implied that she really has been reliving these events in her dreams for the last thirty years.
- Early in the same game, a park attendant tells Lorraine not to blame herself for losing Callum's teddy bear, reassuring her that "people lose things all the time," before asking that she "take a deep breath and think about the last place you saw your son's bear." In the ending, Lorraine is visited by a conspicuously identical detective who repeats the same lines — but this time, he asks that she think about the last place she saw her son.
The office in the first area of The Pedestrian (2020) features in the background a picture of a boat at a dock facing the sun. The game ends with the sign designer having teleported to that same area to take a well-deserved break from their work.
In the epilogue of Persona 2 Innocent Sin, Tatsuya, Lisa and Eikichi appear in the same place they first appear in the beginning of the game (Tatsuya and Lisa at their school bike rack and Eikichi at Sumaru Prison).
- Thanks to the Reset Button the final scene has some important differences. During the opening, a student remarks that Tatsuya is good with machines, just like the rumors say. This isn't true for the final scene, showing that the rumor curse is gone... at least until the sequel.
Starting with Persona 3, the main Persona games begin in April and end in March the next year.
Persona 4 begins with the protagonist arriving in the town of Inaba on a train, and ends with him leaving the town of Inaba on a train.
- Marie's Social Link begins with the protagonist taking her to Souzai Daigaku. If she isn't romanced, it ends with him taking her there, and she recalls the first visit as a memory that she made with you.
- One where the spin-offs are included: One of the possible first battle songs in Persona 4 ^note would be "Reach Out to the Truth". The same song is used for the Investigation Team's final dance-off against the villains in Persona 4: Dancing All Night ^note.
Persona 5 similarly starts with the Protagonist taking the subway into Tokyo, and ends with him leaving the city with his new friends. The song "Wake Up, Get Up, Get Out There" plays at both the intro and post-credits sequences of the game.
- Early on in the game, Sojiro gives the protagonist a drive back to Leblanc after taking him to school, all the while complaining about having to take in a juvenile offender like him. During the ending, Sojiro drives the protagonist back after his release from juvenile hall on much friendlier terms, since he's warmed up to him over the course of the game.
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney:
- In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice For All, the game starts with Phoenix having a nightmare where the Judge tells him he is not fit to be an attorney. Phoenix dismisses the dream as nervous jitters. The scene occurs again near the end of the final case, where its meaning to Phoenix is more relevant under his current circumstances.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies has the final case take place in the courtroom that was the crime scene of the first case.
Pitfall: The Lost Expedition begins with a Hopeless Boss Fight against the Demon Jaguar, in which Harry is pinned down and about to be killed, then it flashes back to how he got there. Near the end of the game, you fight the Jaguar again, and he pins Harry down like before, but Quickclaw steps in and saves him.
In Planetarian, the game begins and ends (not the very end, but this does qualify) with Yumemi/Reverie's pitch for the planetarium.
Plants Vs Zombies 2: The game initially starts off almost identically to the first game, beginning at the Player's House with only Peashooter, Sunflower, Wall-Nut, and Potato Mine (in a later update, Cabbage-Pult is added and removed from Ancient Egypt). The final world, Modern Day, is back at the same house, but with the zombies from the previous worlds, returning zombies from the first game, and new plants to assist you.
In all the 1st gen Pokémon games, the first town you go to is Viridian City. That city is also the location of the last gym and the Pokemon League. And of course, your rival is both your first opponent and your final challenge.
- In the 2nd gen, the path through Johto is likewise designed so that, traveling through it the way the developers intended, after beating the eighth gym the player passes through their home of New Bark Town before surfing east and entering Kanto for the first time to get to the Pokémon League.
- In Black 2 and White 2, the first film in the Pokéstar Studios side mode has the protagonist, as the Riolu Kid, face Brycen, AKA Brycen-Man, at a certain crosswalk. The final film,Brycen-Man Strikes Back Harder, has the protagonist, now the Lucario Boy/Girl, face Brycen-Man at that same crosswalk.
- In Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, you have your first battle with Brendan/May at the beginning of the game near a pond in Route 103. Right after you defeat the Elite Four, you battle him/her again in the same spot.
- X and Y begin with a Fletchling flying into the player character's room and bumping into them, waking them up. Right before the credits play, a Fletchling performs a Fly-at-the-Camera Ending.
- Pokémon Sun and Moon:
  - In the original Sun and Moon, the player ends up helping Lillie save her Cosmog, Nebby, from Spearow in front of Tapu Koko's temple before Tapu Koko itself saves the two of you. Later, after you become Champion, Lillie and the player go into the temple to fight Tapu Koko. The player has the choice of bringing Nebby, now fully evolved into the box-art legendary (Solgaleo or Lunala, depending on the version), where there is one additional line of dialogue outright stating Tapu Koko has been waiting for this.
  - In Sun and Moon, the first person you see when booting up the game is Professor Kukui. Kukui also happens to be the final challenge before becoming the champion.
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers begins with your partner finding you on the beach amidst a sky full of Krabby bubbles, and ends in the same place with that partner mourning your obliteration from time.
On Mocktropica Island from Poptropica, the first achievement you get is titled "Achiever." The last one, which you earn after destroying the achievement system altogether, is "Ultimate Achiever."
In Portal 2: Near the beginning, Wheatley detaches himself from the rail that lets him move around, while yelling "Catchmecatchmecatchmecatchmecatchme". After the Final Boss, Wheatley shouts "GRAB ME GRAB ME GRAB ME!" as he gets flung into space.
Postal 2 begins with the Postal Dude leaving his trailer as his wife shouts at him, "And don't forget my rocky road!". At the end of Friday, after returning to the trailer for the day, the Dude's wife asks him, "Did you remember my rocky road?" Cue gunshot.
- In the second expansion pack, Paradise Lost, the Postal Dude finds out the demonic Mike J is planning to live in the Dude's trailer, quickly leading to the reveal that the person he's trying to marry is the Dude's own (ex-)wife, who introduces herself by once again shouting about her rocky road. This comes up for the last time after she's become the Final Boss, where her "The Reason You Suck" Speech aimed at the Dude finishes with "And worst of all, you never brought me my Rocky Road!".
Prince of Persia (2008) begins and ends with the Prince walking through a sandstorm, with a voice-over narration asking "What is one grain of sand in the desert? What is one grain amongst the storm?" The difference is that the answer changes from being "nothing" to "everything."
- Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones ends the Sands of Time trilogy with the Prince narrating to Farah as at the start of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time:
  "Most people think time is like a river, that flows swift and sure in one direction. But I have seen the face of time, and I can tell you: they are wrong. Time is an ocean in a storm. You may wonder who I am or why I say this. Sit down and I will tell you a tale like none you have ever heard."
Professor Layton and the Curious Village opens with Layton and Luke driving to St. Mystere. This is also the very last scene for the professor's last game, Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy; being the end of the prequel trilogy, it's just before the first game of the original trilogy.
Psychonauts as well, which begins and ends with Coach Oleander giving a speech in the campfire area (aided by Ford, the second time)... Well, until that other ending.
The Final Boss of Nintendo's original arcade version of Punch-Out!! was Mr. Sandman. The 2009 version for the Nintendo Wii, currently the last installment of the franchise, had the Final Boss be, again, Mr. Sandman.
Radiata Stories begins with Jack Russell leaving his home in Solieu Village in the early morning, shouldering a rucksack and his father's sword as a subdued song plays in the background. In one of the two endings Jack Russell leaves his home in Radiata City in the early morning, shouldering a rucksack and his father's sword as a subdued song plays in the background.
- Not to mention that the first thing we see in the game, even before being introduced to Jack, is Cairn slaying a dragon. No matter which story path you pursue, at the end of the game, Jack Russell, Cairn's son, slays a dragon.
The true final stage of Raiden IV uses a remake of Raiden II's first stage music.
Compare the opening scene of Rain World to the closing scene.
In Ratchet & Clank, the game opens with Clank learning of a plot, flying from his home planet to Ratchet's and crash landing. This is repeated with both characters late in the game (complete with crash landing after the final boss battle), and the tutorial level is the first part of the last level. The Big Bad points out it's poetic.
- Serial Escalation if you consider the games' endings. The first game ended with the eponymous duo falling from a great height and then, once the danger had passed, apparently splitting up. In this case, it was Ratchet leaving Clank on his own, then coming back. Compare A Crack in Time's ending, which includes the aforementioned toppling from a great height (on Ratchet's part) and, once the time crisis is averted, Clank choosing to stay at the Great Clock, then changing his mind and rejoining Ratchet at the last minute.
Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc: The game begins with Rayman and Globox taking a nap as black lums swarm over the land. The game ends with Rayman and Globox settling down for a nap when a flash-back shows how Rayman's hands wandered off to scare a red lum into becoming Andre.
- Rayman Origins begins and ends similarly, sleeping and chilling out at the Snoring Tree. After defeating the Magician and destroying his hideout, they fall from the sky, back to the Snoring Tree, resuming to their lazy activities.
Red Dead Redemption starts with John heading to Fort Mercer to find and kill Bill Williamson. He instead gets himself shot and nursed back to health by Bonnie. At the end of the game, the military find John, and continue to Swiss Cheese him.
- The second mission of the game is called "New Friends, Old Problems". There are 3 possibilities for the 2nd-to-last mission in the game, depending on the order the player chooses to do them in, but one of them is "Old Friends, New Problems".
- Red Dead Redemption II starts with the player character, Dutch, Micah, and Sadie in the snow, and later ends with the same characters in the snow, in the same territory of the map.
- It is revealed in 2 that Jack Marston first met Edgar Ross in 1899 by a river side during a fishing trip. Fifteen years later, they meet again next to another river. On both occasions, Ross is holding a shotgun.
The first thing Jack Baker says to Ethan in Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is "Welcome to the family, son!" as he delivers a "Hey, You!" Haymaker that ends the prologue. The last thing Jack Baker ever hears is "This is a farewell from the family, brother!" from Joe Baker, his brother and the protagonist of the End of Zoe DLC, before he is finally given peace in death.
Rhythm Heaven:
- The first three games in the series have one remix that includes every stage in the game. The stages that come first in the remix always appear once more for the finale (Space Dance for Tengoku, Karate Man for Heaven, and Packing Pests for Fever). The Left-Hand, Right-Hand, and Final Remixes in Megamix also follow suit, with Blue Bear, The Clappy Trio, and LumBEARjack respectively.
- Remix 8 in Tengoku, the final stage in the game, ends with Karate Man, the first stage in the game.
In Saints Row, the very first Rollerz mission involves you stealing a semi on the highway and delivering it to a friendly character. The very last Rollerz mission has you attempt to kill Price as he drives the exact same type of semi on the exact same stretch of highway, though under a time limit and withstanding attacks by his gang.
- One that transcends games: Before the showdown with Tanya Winters on the Vice Kings storyline, Ben King tells her to "die with some dignity". In King's loyalty mission Saints Row IV, you end up having to fight Tanya in the simulation, and once the fight is over Ben says to her "You never could die with dignity".
Sakura Wars:
- Sakura Wars (1996) opens with Sakura Shinguji getting off the train to Tokyo. In Sakura's ending, she goes back onto the train heading for Sentai, only for Ichiro Ogami to catch up with her.
- Sakura Wars 3: Is Paris Burning? features trains at the start and end of the game. In the opening, Ogami arrives in Paris via train. By the end, Ogami leaves on a train for Tokyo while reading the note from one of the girls he romanced throughout the game.
- Sakura Wars 4: Fall in Love, Maidens:
  - The first and last scenes of Ogami's story arc take place in Ueno Park where the cherry blossoms are blooming.
  - At the end of the game, the heroes crash the Mikasa during the Final Battle with Ōkubo Nagayasu, going all the way back to the first game where Yoneda crashes the Mikasa during the final battle with Aoi Satan/Shinnosuke Yamazaki.
- In Sakura Wars (2019), when Huang Yui is first introduced, she immediately calls Seijuro Kamiyama a pervert after spotting him near the women's bath. By the end of the game, she does the same thing just to tease him.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice starts with Sekiro and Kuro trying to escape from Ashina through a flower field, and are stopped by Genichiro. The game ends with Sekiro and Kuro trying to escape again through the same field, and being stopped by Genichiro again; only this time, Sekiro is much stronger and skilled than before. When Genichiro realizes he's been outmatched, he sacrifices his body to summon Isshin The Sword Saint from the underworld as the final obstacle for Sekiro and Kuro.
Shadow Hearts uses this in all three games. The first game begins and ends with a train ride, Apoina Tower is the first and final dungeon of the first disc of Covenant, and the beginning and bad ending of From The New World feature Shania standing atop a skyscraper.
- You could argue that Yuri's whole story is a giant bookend, as his story begins in Shadow Hearts on a train and, in the good ending of Covenant, at least, ends back on that same train.
Shadow of the Colossus begins with a shot of a hawk, which flies into the scene from behind the camera, and it ends with a shot of a hawk, which leaves the scene as the camera overtakes it.
Shantae: Risky's Revenge begins with the camera focusing on the sun before panning down to Shantae as she starts fighting off monsters in front of her lighthouse, and ends with Shantae talking with her friends in front of her lighthouse before the camera pans up to the blue sky until it reaches the sun.
In Shounen Kininden Tsumuji near the start of story, Tsumuji's childhood Peach is first seen around a yellow butterfly, and during the ending the same yellow butterfly appears near Tsumuji's house.
Silent Hill:
- The Good End of Silent Hill has Harry (and Cybil, if you saved her) find infant Cheryl/Alessa in the cemetery just like in the opening cutscene. If you got the Good+ ending, the opening cutscene of a New Game Plus begins with Cybil in the place of Harry's wife.
- Silent Hill: Origins ends with Travis finally being able to access the truck he ditched when he saw the Gillespie house on fire.
- Silent Hill 2 begins and ends with Mary's letter, and depending on which of the Multiple Endings you get, reveals what the rest of said letter reads like.
  - The "Leave" ending has James and Laura leave town through the cemetery where he first met Angela. The "Maria" ending has James and Maria returning to his car, still parked where he left it.
- Silent Hill 3's ending theme tune is a vocal reprise of the first game's opening theme.
- Silent Hill 4 opens with someone waking up in first person view in a haunted apartment; the "21 Sacraments" shows little Walter falling asleep in third person view in the very same apartment. You also re-visit previous worlds in reverse order.
The Simpsons Hit & Run: The first and last levels have Homer as the player character and are set in the suburban area. The key difference is that the last level is set during a Zombie Apocalypse and features Homer trying to save Springfield.
The first dungeon in Skies of Arcadia is Shrine Island, an ancient, ruined temple. You come back to it at the end of the game to enter the final dungeon, Soltis, which Shrine Island was originally a part of.
In Sol Cresta, the following conversation is repeated near the end:
Sho: This is Unit 01, Amaterasu! Is everyone okay? Come in, pilots! I repeat, come in!
Luna: This is Unit 02, Tsukuyomi. I'm all right.
Dril: Unit 03 Susano, alive and kickin'! Hamco is fine too. Who's askin'? You sound like you're about to cry.
Sho: I... I'm not crying!
Sonic the Hedgehog:
- Sonic the Hedgehog starts and ends with Green Hill Zone, the game's (and as well as the franchise's) first level.
- Sonic 3 & Knuckles begins with Sonic and Tails riding the Tornado across the ocean at the end of an adventure, with Sonic utilizing his Super Form to fly alongside the plane. It ends the exact same way, except with Sonic utilizing his newly discovered Hyper Form.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), due to a Reset Button Ending, ends by showing how the opening cutscene plays out differently in the new timeline.
- Sonic Unleashed ends the same way it began, with Sonic crashing face-first into the ground from a great height, except this time Sonic is cured of his werehog problem, and the unconscious Chip is just an illusion.
- The first thing you'll see in Sonic Colors is the title character running along side the Wisps. In the final battle, just before dealing the final blow, Sonic and the Wisps run side by side, ready to bring their powers together.
- Chaos presents this twofold. Sonic Adventure begins and ends with Sonic fighting him, in their normal and super forms, respectively. Things come even more to a full circle from a narrative standpoint by Sonic Frontiers: Not only are Chaos' origins explored, but the being whose actions set his tragic destiny in motion has been defeated, his desire to protect and avenge his kin has been fulfilled by the one who saved him from himself (Sonic), and all the characters who were involved in his story can now progress forward with their own separate paths, just as his actions helped shape their separate stories previously. The long journey begins, ends, and begins again with Chaos.
Soulcalibur VI: The Chronicle of Souls storyline begins with Kilik being given the Dvapara-Yuga by Xianglian, at the expense of becoming a Malfested when the Evil Seed made its way into the Ling Sheng-Su temple, and ends with Kilik entrusting to Xianghua a shard of Dvapara-Yuga after defeating Nightmare and Inferno.
- The same applies to each of the respective characters' Soul Chronicles:
  - Taki's first and last opponent in her Soul Chronicle is Geki. Only that in the latter part where he is possessed by Gel-O-Fury.
  - Mitsurugi's story begins with him leaving Japan to search for Soul Edge and ends with him returning home after he was tricked by Taki and Edge Master, which then leads to his fateful duel with Shugen Kokonoe and Setsuka's vendetta quest against her master's killer.
  - Connecting to both Ivy and Cervantes's character arcs: Cervantes was defeated by Sophitia and Taki before his revival into the Ghost Pirate we knew of him today. And in Ivy's own episode, she is confronted by Taki, the same person who slew Cervantes no less, who outright reveals to her that she has inherited Cervantes's cursed blood. In other words, she is Cervantes's daughter!
  - The game's main storyline also began with Siegfried stumbling upon Soul Edge after Cervantes's defeat, in the process is transformed into the Azure Knight. At the end of his Soul Chronicle, by defeating Inferno inside Astral Chaos, Siegfried once again becomes Nightmare before he could reach Soul Calibur.
  - Cassandra's Soul Chronicle is also connected to Sophitia's, the latter's character episode begin with Sophitia returning home and being greeted by Cassandra, only to writhe in pain due to a shard of Soul Edge lodged inside her heart, something that Cassandra would become increasingly aware of in her own episode. Cassandra's Soul Chronicle ends with her returning back to Athens, confronting Sophitia after she has just finished her duty.
  - Grøh's Soul Chronicle begins with him being nursed back to health by Azwel after being mortally wounded by Nightmare, while keeping his Malfestation in secret for the remainder of his character episode, with Azwel serving as the Final Boss of his character arc once his true colors are revealed.
  - Raphael's story begins with him being exiled from his clansmen, in the process losing all power, wealth, and influence and becoming a vagabond on the run until a fateful meeting with Amy, and ends with him inheriting Lord Dumas's wealth as his own.
- The Libra of Soul storyline begins and ends with the player character meeting up with Zasalamel.
Soundtrack Attack: The first song from the show encountered in the game is Steven's rendition of "We Are the Crystal Gems" from the pilot, in the second level of the first stage. Later, it comes back as the full extended intro in the second-to-last level of the final stage, as the last song from the show to appear.
Spec Ops: The Line:
- In one of the Multiple Endings, the game ends with Walker in the same position as Konrad, a man who tried to be a hero and royally screwed up, with the Distress Signal broadcast out to the world as it was in the beginning.
- Early in the game, you come across Konrad's transmission that has the line "Death toll...too many" at the end of the game, if you don't shoot Konrad, (or shoot yourself by aiming at your reflection) the transmission plays again and the game ends with those words. If you do shoot Konrad, you hear Walker's transmission ending with the words "Survivors...one too many"
- Upon Delta's arrival in a seemingly dead city, Walker says "Gentlemen, welcome to Dubai." If you choose to open fire on the American reinforcements at the end and survive the ensuing battle, Walker picks up the radio of the last man he kills and says the same thing.
The Spectrum Retreat does this is several ways.
- Every day at the hotel begins with you waking up and ends with you going to sleep.
- If you choose to remain at the Penrose at the end of the game, the final cutscene is the exact same as the first one.
- Alternatively, should you decide to leave the simulation, the game both opens and ends with Alex waking up, though under very different circumstances.
Spirits of Anglerwood Forest: The first and last level take place at the Fenn's house. Also, the game opens and closes with a long pan over the forest.
The first thing you hear in Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion is a the song "Calamari Inkantation" from the first Splatoon, as a mysterious poem appears onscreen. The last thing you will hear in the Octo Expansion (assuming you get 100% Completion) is the song "Calamari Inkantation" once again, as the music that plays during the Optional Boss fight against Inner Agent 3.
The last spoken line in the intro cinematic to Starcraft II is Tychus saying "hell, it's about time". The last spoken line of the last cinematic is Raynor saying the same thing.
Starcraft II Heart Of The Swarm begins and ends with Kerrigan saying I am the Swarm.
Starcraft II Legacy Of The Void, the first and last mission chains both take place on Aiur. Furthermore, the first mission of the game involves you reactivating warp conduits to allow the Golden Armada to warp onto Aiur to reinforce your attack; the first mission of the final mission chain involves you destroying the psi matrix to deactivate the warp conduits so Amon cannot warp in the Brainwashed and Crazy Golden Armada to reinforce his troops. The first mission chain comes to an end when Amon corrupts the Khala, driving most of the Protoss insane and forcing the survivors to flee Aiur; the last mission ends with Amon being expelled from the Khala and the Protoss are freed of his influence.
- Wings of Liberty, and Starcraft II as a whole, began with Jim Raynor at a bar in Mar Sara, reminiscing on old times, watching the news before leaving. Legacy of the Void, and Starcraft II as a whole, ends with Jim in the same bar, reminiscing on old times and old friends, now entirely alone, before leaving... this time, however, Kerrigan, in human form, picks him up. After that, he is never seen again, leaving only his badge behind.
Stay Tooned! begins and ends on the 4th floor of the apartment building where the game takes place, specifically the television in Room 4A. That television is where the toons break out into the real world at the beginning of the game, and upon finding the remote control they hid, you find the toons in the 4th floor hallway, where you use that television as a conduit to forcibly transport them back to their own fictional worlds at the end of the game.
The first episode "The House Abandon" in Stories Untold starts with the intro sequence showing who worked on the game. It's also the last thing the player sees in "The Last Session".
Strange Flesh: At the end of the tutorial level, you can, er, have some "fun" with a corrupted Joe. Right after you defeat the final boss, you must do the exact same thing with him in order to proceed to the room that will decide your ending.
Superliminal: The first object the player will have to manipulate is a chess piece blocking their path. The final puzzle also involves chess pieces, as you have to alternate them across a chess board to make a path, with the squares otherwise functioning as pits back to the room's entrance.
A staple in the Super Mario Bros. series:
- In Super Mario Galaxy, the first mission in the first galaxy is titled "Dino Piranha" and has you fighting said enemy. The last mission in one of the optional last galaxies is titled "Fiery Dino Piranha" and has you fighting the boss again, only this time he's on fire.
  - The game itself also begins and and ends at the Star Festival.
  - Also at the very beginning of the game, when Rosalina rescues Mario after he is thrown off Bowser's spaceship while attempting to rescue Peach, he can be seen lying unconscious in the middle of a field full of flowers. At the end of the game, after Bowser is defeated for the last time the universe collapses and recreates itself for some reason, and after Mario sees a giant Rosalina talking to him about how the universe endlessly repeats itself, he, Peach and Bowser are all seen lying unconscious in another field of flowers.
- Even the original Super Mario Bros. has some sort of Bookends: The game's second world apparantly features an underwater level followed by a level taking place on top of a broken bridge, and the third world apparantly takes place at night. This is actually reversed for the game's sixth and seventh worlds. And while at the end of World 1-4, the fake Bowser is revealed to be a gray Goomba, at the beginning of World 8-4, a trio of gray Goombas can be seen in a hallway.
- The title screen of Super Mario Bros. 3 is shown on a stage, and so is the game's ending.
- Super Mario 64 begins with Peach sending a letter to Mario, saying she baked a cake for him. At the end, after being rescued by the plumber, she decides to bake for him another cake.
- In Mario Party 2, the first and last mini-games in the Mini-Game Coaster are respectively "Bumper Balls" and "Bombs Away", both of which 1) take place on a floating island, 2) start with the same letter, 3) use the same background music, 4) are last-man-standing games, 5) appeared in the original Mario Party, 6) also share the same background music in their Mario Party incarnations, and 7) are in the same world in Mario Party's Mini-Game Island.
- Super Mario Party: During the opening cutscene, there is a left-to-right pan shot showing each of Mario's friends celebrating the prospect of another party, ending with Mario looking over all of them with his arms crossed and nodding his head in approval. During the ending awards ceremony there is a similar shot featuring all of the playable characters, good and bad, that ends with Bowser overlooking everyone with the same approval.
- A tradition in the Paper Mario series. The first game begins and ends with a party, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door begins and ends with Peach obtaining a treasure map, and Super Paper Mario begins and ends with a wedding.
  - Paper Mario 64: The very first battle is a fight against Bowser in a hall of Peach's castle. The second-to-last fight is another battle with Bowser in the same room.
- Luigi's Mansion 3:
  - The game opens with Luigi, Mario, Peach and the Toads arriving at the Last Resort. The game ends with them leaving the hotel.
  - Luigi is seen sleeping in the intro before Polterpup jolts him awake. His last scene is Polterpup jumping onto Luigi's lap and both of them fall asleep together.
- Happens in the Mario & Luigi series too. Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga starts with fighting Bowser in front of Peach's throne, the final battle is fighting Bowletta in front of her throne. Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time starts and ends with fighting Bowser in Peach's castle, except Bowser was a baby the first time. Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story begins with Bowser fighting Mario after barging into a conference room and as the penultimate battle has Bowser fighting Fawful in the same conference room. Mario & Luigi: Dream Team begins with Mario facing off against Antasma inside Luigi's dream, the penultimate battle has Mario fight Antasma inside the Dream World thanks to a portal opened by a sleeping Luigi.
- Mario's first and last Captures in the main story of Super Mario Odyssey feature Mario traveling through the mind of the entity he's Capturing. Mario's first Capture (in the Cap Kingdom) and last Capture (in the Darker Side of the Moon) is a frog.
Super Robot Wars Z starts off its plot with Kei Katsuragi detonating the Space Time Oscillation Bomb. 4 games later into the series, he's the guy who says the last voiced line of of the Z saga, Third Super Robot Wars Z Heaven's Chapter.
Hopps/Spero narrates the opening of Super Robot Wars X. He ends up narrating the same quote in the ending.
Super Smash Bros.:
- In Super Smash Bros. Melee, both the first Event Match (Trouble King) and the last one (The Showdown) use the Multi-Man Melee 2 track, and they both involve defeating Bowser with multiple lives.
- The announcement trailer for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate ends on a shot of a large, firey Smash logo reflected in the Inkling Girl's eye. The trailer for the game's final DLC character, Sora, opens in the same location on a similar shot of the logo reflected in her eye.
The PS1 Syphon Filter trilogy. The first mission of part 1 and the last mission of part 3 is in the subways of Washingotn DC.
In the intro cutscene of System Shock, the Hacker hacks into the Tri-Optimum's Citadel Station's databases to look for the info on Military Grade Neural Interface. At the ending cutscene, after refusing the job at Tri-Optimum (good move, considering the backstory of the sequel), he is back at the same building, same room as in the intro, hacking into Tetracorp's databases to look for the info on powered armor. Old habits die hard indeed.
- In addition, the last level of System Shock 2 is a recreation of the first level of System Shock 1.
Tail Concerto begins and ends with Waffle giving a blue crystal pendant to Alicia, the first time being a flashback when they were kids, with the second following the defeat of the Big Bad and the destruction of a giant monster. Both scenes even share the same lines of dialogue.
Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World: The story begins and ends with Marta in Palmacosta near the same shop with Emil arriving soon afterwards fulfilling her wish.
In Tales of the Abyss, the journey begins in Tataroo Valley at night. The final scene of the game takes place almost three years later, in Tataroo Valley at night.
Tears to Tiara 2: The story starts and ends with Divine Intervention by Ashtarte as she joins the rebellion with the Elephants and Taros of the Ba'al Battalion, with Chapter 1 ending in signal flares from all over Hispania communicating the success of the rebellion appearing like brilliant fireworks. The game ends with Divine Intervention by Ishtar to save her daughter's life, and signal flares from all The Empire's remaining legions communicating their acceptance of the new rule of Hispania appearing like brilliant fireworks.
Tekken: Kazuya's story in Tekken 1 started with him being thrown off a cliff by his father Heihachi. In Tekken 8, the "Despair" ending of its Story Mode has Kazuya throwing his own son Jin off a cliff.
Terraria: One of the intended first bosses in the game and the first boss in the Bestiary is the Eye of Cthulhu. The final boss, the Moon Lord, spawns True Eyes of Cthulhu, invincible minions that use variations of his attacks.
In Thief: The Dark Project, Garrett is discovered when he tries to pick a Keeper's pocket. In the end of Thief: Deadly Shadows, he is almost pick pocketed.
- This is heavily enhanced when Garrett and the pickpocket exchange the same lines as Garrett and the Keeper in the first game:
  "That's not for you."
  "Please sir, I'm hungry."
  "It's not an easy thing to... see a Keeper. [smiles] Especially one who does not wish to be seen..."
Entomorph: Plague of the Darkfall: "How many more times must I encounter you?" — You begin the game and the final showdown with these words from the T'Urthrax Mata, after which she sends you back in time. But the second time you have a way to counteract that.
From the Tomb Raider series:
- Tomb Raider II. While the last level is set back at Lara's mansion, her quest for the Dagger of Xian begins and ends in China. Legend begins and ends in Bolivia.
- In the first level (and in the tutorial even) of Tomb Raider II is a zipline. No more are seen until you revisit China and ride one into the last level.
- The Last Revelation opens with two flashback levels showing Von Croy trapped in a collapsing temple with Lara unable to save him. In the present day, the game ends with the roles reversed.
- Also, after finding out the true fate of Amelia and getting closure in Underworld, Lara and Amanda are sent back to the original gate Amelia disappeared through in the flashback during Legend.
A musical meta-example in Touhou Project fangame Concealed the Conclusion: the theme of the Final Boss fight, after which Gensokyo ceases to exist, contains a piece of the very first theme of the first Touhou game. In a way, the same music that marked the beginning of Gensokyo, also marks its destruction.
- And in the Phantasm stage, its rebirth and Reimu's return to power are marked with a remix of several of the first-level themes from the PC-98 series.
Transistor starts off with the protagonist's dead friend slumped against a fence, the titular weapon embedded in his body. After the final boss battle, she returns, lies down by his body, and jams the sword into her gut.
The Infocom text adventure game Trinity ended with a time loop; you go back to the beginning of the game. This time, of course, you know what needs to be done, and the game ends with text to this effect just a few moves in.
Ugly begins with the main character waking up in a cellar, finding the magic mirror shard, and using it to climb on a wooden platform which then breaks under his weight. The true ending starts out with the same sequence of events.
In the first cutscene of Uncle Albert's Fabulous Voyage, Uncle Albert tries to take a picture of himself with the village's children, but the camera falls before the picture is taken. In the final cutscene, Uncle Albert tries to take the same picture, with more success this time.
Undertale:
- The True-Pacifist ending both begins, if one counts the intro if you wait too long on the menu, with a shot of Mt. Ebbot, and ends on the same shot, before throwing you into the Special Thanks.
- The first room of the first level is identical to the last one of the same level, and to the last room of the whole game.
- Toriel's house in the ruins of Home mirrors Asgore's house in New Home.
- Toriel is introduced saving the player from Flowey and calling him a "Miserable creature torturing a poor innocent youth." Near the end of the True Pacifist route she stops the battle with Asgore with an identical fireball and line, and even Asgore's expression is similar to Flowey's.
- In both the Neutral and Pacifist Ending, the player is again saved from death by Flowey's ring of bullets by someone else.
- After sparing Toriel, you can find her where you fell, saying "Don't worry about me... Someone has to take care of these flowers." During the True Pacifist Playable Epilogue, you can backtrack to the same place and find Asriel, who says the same thing.
- The last chords of the True Pacifist Ending song are renditions of Once Upon a Time, the opening song.
- A lone Froggit is both the first random encounter you meet in the Ruins, and the last "encounter" in New Home.
- Sparing Toriel, the first boss, is very similar to sparing both Flowey and Asriel. You have to repeatedly Spare/Save them, while they talk and are confused about what you're even doing. Toriel and Asriel even share the same not-lethal "attack" and a lot of Flowey's dialogue is similar to Toriel's. Asriel and Toriel's motivations to fight you are also very similar.
- Should you play the Genocide Route, Flowey is the first character you meet, and the last character you kill.
- Towards the beginning of a Pacifist run, Toriel hugs the player character before saying goodbye to them. Towards the end of a Pacifist run, the player can do the same thing to Asriel before he reverts to a flower.
- Comes up in the Genocide Run if you kill the Wake-Up Call Boss Papyrus by offering to give him a hug and then walloping him when his guard is down. The Final Boss, his vengeful brother Sans, will use the same tactic on you: offering you mercy and then hitting you with a One-Hit Kill if you accept.
- When fighting Undyne on a neutral route, her first attack consists of three spears slowly approaching you from the top of the screen, to give players a chance to learn how Undyne's special fight mechanic works. If you kill her, her final attack is identical to the first, this time because she is mortally wounded and can't muster up anything else.
The first Vietcong starts and ends with Hawkins entering/leaving Nui Pek on a helicopter, set to the tune of Deep Purple's Hey Joe.
The Walking Dead begins with Lee, the main character, in handcuffs. Depending on the player's actions, Lee will be handcuffed to the radiator he's sitting next to, in order to stop him from harming Clementine when he turns into a walker. Also, Lee is supporting himself on something while moving towards a walker that used to be a cop, and both have one of the two characters handing the other a weapon to beat a walker to death with; Clem gives Lee a hammer, and Lee rolls a baseball bat over to Clem.
- The ending to the fourth and final season plays out very similarly to the ending of the first, in which Clementine's leg is sliced open and bitten, which leaves AJ faced with a Sadistic Choice of either putting her down himself or leaving and letting her turn into a zombie, which mirrors the choice that she had to make at the end of the first season when Lee was infected. Depending on the choices you made throughout the season, AJ can opt to Take a Third Option and instead chop off the infected leg. And unlike if/when they tried it with Lee, it actually works this time.
In Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 6, the first chapter of the Story Mode has "New Generation" as the default race BGM. 99 chapters later and the song that plays before the credits roll is also "New Generation".
Warhammer: Dark Omen begins and ends with a similar conversation between Bernhardt and Klaus. "The crows never lose."
Wario Land:
- If you take the main story path in Wario Land II, you'll start off in Wario's Castle and end up in Syrup's Castle. However, the chapter "Invade Wario Castle" is a more appropriate example. It begins with Wario being tossed out of the castle by the Black Sugar Gang after the alarm clock failed to wake him up, and it ends with Wario reclaiming his castle and going back to sleep.
- The Final Boss of Wario Land 3 is fought in The Temple, the first place you visit in the game. The final Music Box piece (the last thing you need to find to access the Final Boss) is also found in Out of the Woods, the first proper level of the game.
- The intro to Wario Land 4 opens with a black cat narrowly avoiding being run over by Wario before a newspaper flies into its face, which shows an article about the Golden Pyramid and its treasure. The ending cutscene shows the same thing, with the differences being that the cat is a white cat and the newspaper advertises all-you-can-eat steaks.
WarioWare:
- Series-wide: Most games will begin with a stage hosted by Wario, typically with simplistic microgames designed to ease the player into the game, then end with another stage hosted by Wario, typically going under some kind of alias, with more difficult microgames designed to test the player's mastery of each of the game's mechanics.
- WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$: Wario is the host of both the first and last stages of the game. Both stages also have a similar plotline of Wario getting trapped inside one of his belongings, namely his boom box in the first stage, and his computer in the last.
- Game & Wario: Wario's first minigame is "Arrow", a Shooting Gallery where the player fires arrows at enemies to protect their strawberries, while his second minigame is "Pirates", which can be seen as an inversion of "Arrow" where the objective is to protect yourself from arrows being fired at you.
Warframe has two examples, both beginning at the same point.
- At the end of The Second Dream, the Lotus brings the Operator to the Transference chair and finally speaks with them face to face, during which she tells them "This is what you are". At the end of The Sacrifice, Lotus, now having returned to the Sentients and retaking the mantle of Natah, states that "This is what I am".
- At the end of The New War, in an inversion of Lotus carrying the Operator to their Transference chair, The Drifter, an Alternate Self adult operator, carries the Lotus to her sanctuary within Lua, after which they have a conversation with her, with the Operator occasionally popping in for further discussion. The dialogue even mirrors that of The Second Dream.
Wolfenstein: The New Order's prologue has the Allies launching an unsuccessful attack on Deathshead's fortress in the occupied Baltic, in an attempt to assassinate him. The final level is the resistance launching a similar attack on Deathshead's fortress in an attempt to kill him. This time it works.
The prologue of The Wonderful 101 is set on a long school bus under attack by the alien invasion that drives the game's plot, all while the team's Bragging Theme Tune plays. The epilogue is set in another bus under a very similar attack, except it's centered around new member Luka/Wonder-Goggles. The Bragging Theme Tune is changed to match the team being a group of 101 instead of 100.
World of Mana loves this trope:
- Secret of Mana begins with the Boy pulling out the Mana Sword out of its resting place, and ends with him putting it back.
- Trials of Mana begins and ends in the Sanctuary of Mana — in fact, the Sanctuary even acts as a Disc-One Final Dungeon, making for a Book-middle, as it were. Each character's story also begins and ends in their own home town.
- Legend of Mana begins with a vision of the Mana Tree being destroyed, and ends with a vision of the Mana Tree being restored.
In the Wrath of the Lich King expansion to World of Warcraft, the opening cinematic features a voiceover of King Terenas Menethil telling a young Arthas of the duties of a king, using Dramatic Irony to contrast with the latter's current status as the titular Big Bad. The final cinematic, upon the defeat of the Lich King in Icecrown Citadel, shows the ghost of Terenas comforting his dying son that "no king rules forever".
- Garrosh Hellscream makes his first appearance in Burning Crusade as the depressed chieftain of the Mag'har in the town of Garadar, but was shaken out of it by Thrall. In Warlords of Draenor, Thrall challenges him to a Mak'gora, which he agrees to on one condition: That it happens where it all started, on the future location of Garadar.
- The Mists of Pandaria expansion begins and ends with a Pandaren asking "Why do we fight?". The first time, Chen Stormstout states states that the real question is "What is worth fighting for?". The second, Emperor Shaohao explains why we fight and what is worth fighting for.
  Emperor Shaohao: But the question still remains... why do we fight? I trust you have learned: to fight out of fear or anger is to fight a war that never ends. Face your fears. Calm your hatreds. Find peace within yourself, so that you may share it with the world around you. These are the greatest treasures in life. Surely they... are worth fighting for.
- For a Horde player, Mists of Pandaria has another one. The quests leading up to Pandaria have both Garrosh and Nazgrim inside Orgrimmar. The final raid is The Siege of Orgrimmar where the player has to face off against Nazgrim and Garrosh as bosses.
- In Warlords of Draenor, the battle against Archimonde at the end of the Hellfire Citadel is where the players first entered the alternate Draenor.
In XCOM: Enemy Unknown, players can invoke this with Delta Two/Argentine Heavy if players chose to play from the tutorial, all the way to the Temple Alien Base. Bonus points if he was chosen as "The Volunteer".
- The opening video starts with falling stars which turn out to be abduction pods as the alien attack begins. The closing video ends with debris from the destruction of the enemy temple ship descending as falling stars.
In X-COM: Apocalypse much of the intro and the good ending are shot by the same surveillance cameras. The triumphant Annihilator lands on the same overpass where a UFO wreaked havoc in the intro.
Xenoblade Chronicles:
- Xenoblade Chronicles X:
  - One of the very first Normal Missions the player receives is one known as "A Hero's Ride". One of the very final Normal Missions the player is capable of completing, "Rise of the Blood Lobster", is a follow up to that mission.
  - The game's opening and ending cutscenes both have Lin Lee Koo narrating over them.
  - The game's prologue has Elma entering New Los Angeles through the West Gate Corridor overlooking the city, while the game's ending plays out in a very similar fashion. On a similar note, Elma is the first character to appear besides Rook, and excluding the epilogue, she is also the final character to appear in the game.
- Xenoblade Chronicles 2:
  - Malos serves as the final boss of the game's first chapter, as well as the Final Boss of the final chapter and the game as a whole.
  - At the beginning of the game, Azurda starts out in a Titan form before having to revert to a larval state to heal from the damage done to him during the climax of chapter 1. He returns to his Titan form in the game's climax.
  - One of the game's first Heart-to-Hearts has the option of having Rex note that he preferred Azurda's Titan form. After Azurda regains his Titan form, he remarks "I suppose this form suits me best."
- Xenoblade Chronicles 3:
  - The game begins and ends with a member of House Vandham crashing their ship somewhere near Ouroboros.
  - The opening scene of the game features a young Noah attending the Queen's anniversary, only for a strange cataclysm to occur. The Stinger of the game returns to that same ceremony, only this time no cataclysm occurs and the festival carries on as normal.
- Xenoblade Chronicles 3's Expansion Pack, Future Redeemed, features a few of these for the series as a whole, being the Grand Finale for the "Klaus Saga" that has been running since the first game.
  - Both the first game and Future Redeemed have Ontos/Alvis play a major role. Rather fitting, considering Alvis states at the end of the first game "I was here at the beginning, and I will proclaim the end." Similarly, the Final Bosses of the first game and Future Redeemed are against god-like entities wielding Ontos' Monado.
  - The first game and Future Redeemed both have Colony 9 and Prison Island as major locations in their respective stories. Similarly, both the first game and Future Redeemed both have Prison Island as the location the player travels through on their way to the Final Boss.
  - Xenogears, the first game in the greater Xeno series, has its credits accompanied by the song "Small Two of Pieces", sung by Joanne Hogg. Future Redeemed, which serves as the thematic finale for the Xeno series up to that point, has its credits accompanied by the song "Future Awaits", once again sung by Joanne Hogg.
In Xenosaga Episode III, not counting Omega Id, E.S. Levi is the first and final boss fought on board the E.S. units.
Xonotic has Stormkeep as both the second and last level of the Campaign.
Yakuza: The prologue and the game proper both end with Kiryu running from Tojo clan HQ, chased by a horde of angry yakuza, leaping into a car driven by Date and driving off.
- Yakuza 6, in its entirety, mirrors Yakuza in a whole lot of ways, all of which are major plot spoilers.
Early on in Zoids Legacy, Zeru is in need of a partner so he can compete in the local battle arena and coincidentally runs into Juno. After the credits the same scene plays out, with both of them having a mutual "Have we met before?" moment.

...want to go try for a New Game Plus?

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