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The Distant Prologue is a short introduction scene that takes place a significant amount of time before the main plot starts.
Bonus points if it has subtitles in visual media: for example, "8,000 Years Ago", followed by "Present Day" after the Time Skip to the period when the majority of the work takes place. Can overlap with When It All Began.
Examples:
Cross-Media
- The Stargate Verse loves doing this, in both movies and TV series.
- The original Stargate movie had two distant prologues: one in Egypt in 8,000 BC, followed by Egypt in 1928, and finally the United States of the "present day" (which is somewhere in 1994-1996 — the franchise is somewhat inconsistent about this).
- Stargate Atlantis starts with a flashback to millions of years ago, when the Ancients left Antarctica for the Pegasus galaxy in the titular city-ship.
- The Ark of Truth starts with a Distant Prologue in an even earlier time period, when the Ancients left their home galaxy for the Milky Way galaxy.
- The specific wording also sounds like a parody of Star Wars
Anime and Manga
- Mai-Otome, to 14 years ago, when all three main characters were infants (and the series is intentionally misleading on which one of them appears in the prologue).
- Flame of Recca, with the prologue taking place 400 years earlier
- Pokémon films have done this in the fourth, seventh, and eighth movies.
- Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS begins with Nanoha rescuing a child Subaru before fast-forwarding to the present time with a now teenage Subaru preparing for her qualifying mage exam for B-Rank. According to the lore, four years pass in-between.
- One Piece starts with the execution of Gold Roger on the first page, time skips to Luffy's childhood for the rest of the first chapter, then time skips another 10 years to when Luffy becomes a pirate. (In the anime, Gold Roger's execution was exposition put in the start of the opening theme and Luffy's backstory became a Whole Episode Flashback just after Zoro joined the crew.)
- The AKIRA film starts with a very short prologue set in 1988 (basically showing the destruction of Tokyo with what initially appears to be a new kind of bomb) and quickly cuts to the year 2019.
- The Silent Möbius TV series opens with Project Gaia going awry in 1999 and then cuts to somewhere around 2029 or 2030.
- Dragon Ball Kai opens with the final scenes of the Dragon Ball Z TV special Bardock: The Father of Goku, set 23 years before the start of the series.
Comic Books
- Y: The Last Man does this in some issues.
- ElfQuest starts with the arrival of the first elves, trolls and preservers on the World of Two Moons and their fateful meeting with humans, and then jumps forward about ten thousand years between two panels!
- Immortal Iron Fist starts in the 13th century with one of the early Iron Fists defending his home; from this point on the story takes place in the modern day.
Film
Literature
- Good Omens has three. Genesis, sealing the garden, and twelve years ago.
- Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds, maybe (it appears at first to take place in the distant future, but it doesn't take too long for the main action of the book to move into the even more distant future).
- The Wheel of Time starts with Lews Therin Telamon finding out that in his madness he killed his wife. He kills himself and the story picks up 3,000 years later where Lews Therin is reborn as Rand al'Thor.
- The Way of Kings has a timejump after each of the first few chapters, getting progressively smaller. Starting with thousands of years, then 5 years, then a few months...
- Death Day has a prologue set about 500 years before the main story..
- Almost every book in The Belgariad and its sequel series, The Mallorean. Most of the time these prologues are told in the style of a historical document or legend
- Going Postal has "The 9000 Year Prologue" and "The One Month Prologue". The former is from the point of view of a golem stuck on the bottom of the ocean.
- It's not anything plot-relevant either - it's just the only interesting thing that happened to him in all that time.
- Stranger in a Strange Land begins with the first ship to Mars taking off, along with some information on the crew before it crashes. It picks up again years later when the next ship to Mars is sent out and Michael is found.
- Several Warrior Cats books have prologues which take place long before the main story. The most notable ones are Firestar's Quest and Sky Clans Destiny, which take place about 20-30 years before the story begins (and seeing as the characters are cats, none of them were born yet back then).
- Also notable is Dark River, which takes place at least twice as early as those.
- Although the prologue in The Fall Of The Sea People is set nearly 900 years before chapter 1, it is a character's childhood example rather than an ancient history example: Éirime is an immortal by the time she returns home.
- Lightweights all. The prologue to The Silmarillion takes place before the Creation.
Live-Action TV
- A few episodes of The X-Files have prologues that take place years after the actual episode is set, such as Duane Barry and Young At Heart. The opening scene of The Movie actually opens in prehistoric times and then flashes ahead to 1998.
- Gerry Anderson's UFO begins one year in the future (ie 1970) with Colonel Straker witnessing a UFO attack. The rest of the series takes place 11 years in the future (1980) when Straker is head of the anti-UFO organization SHADO.
- Supernatural.
- Lost's "The Incident" begins in a period that's at least a couple hundred years prior to either main plot.
- Red Dwarf starts off in 2180 (though that date has changed several times. Only the first book and Ourobourous have confirmed this, with the first two series saying late 21st century and series 3/4 saying 23rd). Skip three million years once Lister enters stasis.
Video Games
- If used in videogames, it's often a Justified Tutorial. For example, in Final Fantasy XII, the prologue puts you in the shoes of a rookie soldier caught in an unexpected ambush, having to quickly learn the ropes. Afterwards, you flash forwards to his younger brother, in another time and place, and the game proper begins.
- Also used in the little-known Steambot Chronicles, where the tutorial shows a young boy being taught how to maneuver one of the titular Steambots, prior to a lengthy boat-trip. The game proper begins with another boy waking up with Easy Amnesia after a shipwreck.
- Tales Of Phantasia.
- Tales of Innocence.
- Lufia.
- Done in Command & Conquer: Red Alert, except that "present day" is actually WW 2-era.
- Mother 3.
- The intro from Freelancer picks up where Starlancer ends, with an "800 years later" separating the two.
- Homeworld, as seen here
 . This turns out to be just a taste, as the backstory of the video game is extended further, later.
- Dragon Quest III has a prelude showing bits and pieces of your father Ortega's journey, leading up to his fateful confrontation with a dragon atop a volcano. After he vanishes, the king declares that you, his then-infant son or daughter, must continue his journey once you're old enough. The game proper begins on your Dangerous Sixteenth Birthday.
- Xenogears has an opening cutscene set several thousand years before the main plot. Its connection to the plot only becomes apparent many hours in.
- Xenosaga opens with the discovery of a mysterious artifact on Earth. The games take place a long long time later, after Earth has been lost.
- Dreamfall starts with Brian Westhouse (a side character from The Longest Journey) in a Tibetan monastery in 1933. Chapter one is about Zoe Castillo, resident of Casablanca in 2219. DF then tops it by having a reverse-Distant Finale: The Stinger is about Briant Westhouse before he arrives at the monastery from the prologue.
- Max Payne starts off with a scene from the ending, then jumps back three years, to the day Max's wife and daughter were murdered, then forward to the start of the game proper.
Web Comics:
Western Animation:
- The pilot of Futurama starts off in 1999, and the rest of the season takes place in the year 3000.
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