Prequel

"Every generation has a legend. Every journey has a first step. Every saga has a beginning."

— The Phantom Menace tagline

A work that is produced after one installment in a series but, internally, is chronologically set prior to it.

Maybe the last entry in the series left no room for a sequel. Maybe the writers just want to explore the Backstory, Origins Episode, Start of Darkness or what have you. Maybe they want to provide more context to certain elements of previous installments. As they might say, sometimes it's not about the destination...but the journey.

Either way, it may be time for a Prequel (a portmanteau of "pre-" and "sequel"): a sequel that is set chronologically before the previous work. On one hand, this allows for Call Forwards as well as an opportunity to further expand the universe of a work. On the other, the prequel often heavily retcons the backstory, it can have consequences that should have been mentioned in the original story, and it's difficult to keep up the tension when the audience knows how it ends. For example, in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, various characters interact with others they would meet again in the original Star Wars trilogy, but in that film they show no evidence of recognizing them. Because the second Indiana Jones film was a prequel, audiences knew he would survive, and that he wouldn't get to keep the girl. That, however, doesn't mean a prequel can't have big twists or major reveals of their own and may even cast some aspects, if not the entirety, of a previous work in a whole new light.

TV Series usually wrap a prequel in a Whole Episode Flashback. A movie may get a prequel TV series. Sometimes writers will squeeze a story between existing entries in a series, making it both a sequel and a prequel. Prequels are also an easy way to make use of an Expansion Pack World and introduce new conflicts without undermining the resolution of the previous work by introducing an even more ultimate evil. Occasionally said ultimate evil can get their own prequel with a Start of Darkness.

One issue with prequels in electronic media is that if they come out years after the original, you have the problem of technology in Real Life advancing to the point that special effects, graphics, etc. make the prequel look more advanced than the original, which ends up with a Cosmetically-Advanced Prequel. Depending on the series, and the circumstances surrounding it, this can be overlooked, or jarring.

Remember that a work must be produced after its related installment to be considered a prequel; previous installments do not qualify for the definition. For example, Rocky is not a prequel to Rocky II, because Rocky II was both produced and set after the first.

Is often, but not always, an Origins Episode. Compare Backstory, Flashback and Interquel. Prequel in the Lost Age is a subtrope set in a bygone era mentioned in-universe. If a genuine sequel or interquel is released after the prequel, then it's Anachronic Order.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Agaki is a prequel to Ten - The Blessed Way of the Nice Guy, where an older Akagi is one of the major characters. IT got its own prequel spin off in the form of Washizu: King of Mahjong Hell.
• Arachnid: The seventh volume introduces an assassin named Imomushi who has her own goal in the story's battle royale. Shortly after, however, she's anti-climatically knocked off the plot and isn't seen again. A spinoff named Caterpillar was then published alongside the main story, showing Imomushi on an adventure of her own a year earlier. After 93 chapters, the story catches up to Arachnid and becomes a P.O.V. Sequel.
• Bad Company is an Origins Episode prequel to GTO: The Early Years showing how Eikichi and Ryuji first met and became friends.
• Saiyuki Gaiden is the story of the main four's godly past lives (and in Goku's case, forcibly forgotten childhood). The author acknowledged in the first volume that the ending is obvious for anyone familiar with the main series, and used it to heighten the tension: the audience knew from the very first page that Konzen, Kenren and Tenpou are going to die, and that Goku will lose his memory and spend 500 years imprisoned. What we don't know is how, or when.
• Spiral: Alive is the prequel to Spiral: Suiri no Kizuna, and mostly focuses on the serial murder of several Blade Children whose existence was missed by the Organization, and what the killer hopes to gain, involving Kiyotaka, Kousuke, Ryoko, Rio, and more.
• Codename: Sailor V occupies the strange definition of being both a prequel, and the source, of Sailor Moon. This is because, though Sailor V came first; most of Sailor Moon came before Sailor V which ran sporadically and wrapped up after Sailor Moon ended.
• Gundam:
  • Technically, anything that takes place in the Universal Century timeline and was released after Mobile Suit Victory Gundam is this to both it, F91 and Crossbone; some parts of Crossbone itself even count as this to Victory.
  • The novel Advance of Zeta serves as this to Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, telling the story of the Titans' test unit.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam Wing had a manga-only prequel named Episode Zero that showed formative moments from the early lives of the Gundam Pilots and Relena. The stories actually began life as a pair of flashback episodes that had to be cut when scheduling complications arose, and have the benefit of being penned by the show's head writer.
• Fist of the Blue Sky is a distant prequel to Fist of the North Star, set in pre-World War II Asia. It doesn't have much to do with North Star, but stars Ryuken's elder brother and predecessor Kasumi Kenshiro, whom the Kenshiro from North Star was named after. Other spinoffs of Fist of the North Star are standard prequels and side-stories though, centering around characters from the original series (the 25th anniversary movie Hokuto no Ken Zero is a prequel set a year before the events of the original manga).
• Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas tells the story of the previous Holy War between Hades and Athena, taking place 250 years before the original series.
• Around the time the Ginga Densetsu Weed anime was made, a manga was created called Ginga Densetsu Riki, the prequel to the 1980s manga and anime Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin. This tells about Riki when he was a puppy and encounters his father Shiro.
• Legend of the Galactic Heroes has two Gaiden series totalling 52 episodes which basically revealed the early military careers of Reinhard von Lohengramm and Yang Wen-li before the start of the series proper.
• Due to the Lupin III franchise's Negative Continuity, the only way to determine if a story is a sequel or prequel is if it is also an Origins Episode. A given episode or chapter cannot even promise if it happened before or after the last episode or chapter.
• Tokyo Ghoul: JACK takes place 12-years prior to the main story, and focuses on a teenage Kishou Arima.
• Handa-kun is a gag-comedy prequel to Barakamon that that features the main character's life in high school six years earlier.
• Osamu Tezuka's works tend to get some dubiously official prequels in order to explain how the main characters ended up the way they did. Young Black Jack fills in the holes of Dr. Black Jack's time in the Japanese medical field and how he came to abandon it, and Atom: The Beginning shows Professor Ochanomizu and Dr. Tenma as young scientists on the path to creating the technology that would one day help create Astro Boy.
• Like Sailor V, High☆Speed! (2013) turned into a strange hybrid of source material and prequel for Free! over its run. The first book came out well before its sequel anime, but the second was released before Eternal Summer and adapted afterwards as a prequel film.
• My Hero Academia: Vigilantes is a standalone prequel to My Hero Academia, set some time shortly before the events of the main series.
• Pokémon Journeys: The Series: The first episode serves as a prequel to the whole Pokémon: The Series, also revealing that Ash's Pikachu was a wild Pichu prior to evolving into a Pikachu.
• Queen Millennia: Chronologically, this series takes place generations before Galaxy Express 999 and gives a bit of background context for that setting, followed by Maetel Legend.
• Naruto: The Whorl within the Spiral one-shot is a prequel to Naruto focused on Naruto's father, and future Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze.

Arts

• The Last Supper: Leonardo da Vinci was tasked with painting something opposite to a depiction of The Crucifixion. Leonardo painted The Last Supper, where Christ announced his sacrifice through bread and wine.

Asian Animation

• Mechamato is an indirect prequel to BoBoiBoy, likely occurring more than a decade before that titular hero was even born, since the show's child protagonist is BoBoiBoy's father as a kid.

Audio Plays

• Big Finish Doctor Who:
  • Quinnis, narrated by Susan, takes place on a planet that was a Noodle Incident in the third ever serial.
  • Hunters of Earth, narrated by Carole Ann Ford not as Susan, is set during the period Susan was attending Coal Hill School.
  • The Beginning, narrated by Susan, begins with the Doctor stealing the TARDIS.
  • The War Doctor Begins, starring Jonathon Carley as a nascent version of the late John Hurt's War Doctor, is a prequel to the original series The War Doctor, which itself precedes "The Day of the Doctor".

Comic Books

• Arkham Asylum: Living Hell is one. While published in the time frame between "Officer Down" and "Face the Face", it takes place before it (with a footnote even stating that it happened before Batman: No Man's Land) and features Jim Gordon, not Michael Akins, as police commissioner yelling at a doctor for releasing an inmate (which given both the "doctor" and the inmate are question are serial killers, with the former even stealing the real doctor's identity, one can't blame him) and Harvey Bullock as a police detective.
• Agent 47: Birth of the Hitman is an Origins Episode for Diana, 47 and the Shadow Client before they came to meet each other prior to Hitman: Codename 47 (or in the case of the Shadow Client, how he's a clone and helped 47 free them from their masters; The Institute). The comic book was released at the end of Hitman (2016), serving as a prequel to the franchise as a whole, and becomes increasingly more relevant to the story arcs of 2016's sequels; Hitman 2 and Hitman 3, which directly callback to this comic series.
• Blake and Mortimer: Plutarch's Staff (released in 2014) is the first story in the continuity of the series (at this point) as it is set in 1944. It tells how Blake joined MI-5, how him and Mortimer met again decades after their Indian adventure during their teens, and features the rising threat of the Yellow Empire while World War II isn't finished yet. Plutarch's Staff ending is actually the beginning of The Secret of the Swordfish, making it a direct Prequel.
• The Brave and the Bold (2007): Issue #33 is a prequel to The Killing Joke.
• Disney Kingdoms: Figment explores the origins of Disney Theme Parks characters Dreamfinder and Figment.
• The ElfQuest comics had a number of prequels over the years, most notably Bearclaw. The title character was the father of Cutter, the hero of the original series. The Bearclaw series sets up many of the events which occurred before the main story began, and in particular explains the implacable enmity between the human and elf tribes which led to the humans burning the elves out of their forest home at the beginning of Elfquest #1.
• Fables had a prequel in the form of a video game titled The Wolf Among Us.
• Fish Police: A special issue from Comico gives a backstory on main character Gill and the S.Q.U.I.D. organization.
• The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck works as a prequel to the Disney Ducks Comic Universe, telling Scrooge McDuck's life story long before Donald Duck and rest of characters were born.
• My Little Pony: The Movie Prequel is an unusual case. It's set prior to the events of My Little Pony: The Movie (2017), establishing the major new characters and settings. However, the actual release of the comics predates the film; the first issue was released in June 2017, four months prior to the movie's release.
• Poet Anderson: The Dream Walker is a prequel to the short film of the same name. It also gives background information that isn't in the short film.
• The Smurfs' limited-edition 50th anniversary story "The Flute Smurfers" is a prequel to the Johan and Peewit story "The Smurfs And The Magic Flute", telling what the magic flute was originally made for. It should be noted, however, that the Smurf Forest in the prequel resembles the flourishing Sugar Bowl forest of the Smurf comic book series more than it does the sparse rock-filled forest of the Johan And Peewit story that chronologically follows it.
• Star Wars Legends has Knights of the Old Republic. Pitched and sold as a prequel to the Knights of the Old Republic video game, the series avoids many typical prequel pitfalls such as Foregone Conclusion, Saved by Canon and having to feature heroes prior to their Character Development by focusing on an entirely different cast with an original plot instead. The game characters that do appear are relegated to supporting roles, and some too-on-the-nose Foreshadowing turned out to be Red Herring to keep the readers on their toes. In the end, the comics share the same setting and hit the required important plot points, but end standing completely on their own, with only a passing knowledge of the game required.
• Superman:
  • Many comic book prequels explain how things are different after a retcon. For example, Action Comics #158 shows young Clark Kent's life in a different way than Superman #1 had. This version was reconned out by The Man of Steel, which in turn was displaced by Superman: Birthright, Superman: Secret Origin and Action Comics (New 52).
  • The Krypton Chronicles, published forty-three years after the first story featuring Superman, narrates the history of Pre-Crisis Krypton and the House of El since the dawn of Kryptonian civilization.
  • The Superboy stories in Superboy (1949), Adventure Comics and Superboy 1980 were a prequel to the mainline series, telling the history of Clark Kent before becoming Superman.
  • Superman: Secret Files 2009 told the story of the beginning of the friendship between Kara Zor-El and Thara Ak-Var, and it is set prior to the events of New Krypton and Who is Superwoman?, which introduced Thara.
  • Adventure Comics #271: How Luthor Met Superboy'' narrated the until then untold story of the first meeting between both characters.
• Transformers
  • Beast Wars had gotten prequels from Transformers: Timelines, in multiple media formats.
    • The "Dawn of Future's Past" comic book, which takes place just before the first episode of Beast Wars and depicted the Maximals' pursuing of the Predacons that ultimately led to both factions ending up on prehistoric Earth.
    • "Theft of The Golden Disk", which is an animated short taking place before "Dawn of Future's Past" that serves to explain the circumstances under which Megatron got the Golden Disk.
    • "The Razor's Edge", a text story made available on the Transformers fan club website that tells of an adventure Airazor went on in her days as Wing Saber, the name she went by before she ended up on prehistoric Earth as one of the protoforms sealed in stasis pods the Maximals and Predacons searched for in the events of the Beast Wars cartoon.
  • Transformers: Generation One: The War Within series happens before the events of the main book, establishing the details of the war between the Autobots and Decepticons before they ended up on Earth.
  • The Transformers: Autocracy, The Transformers: Monstrosity and The Transformers: Primacy are a trilogy of miniseries that serve as prequels to IDW Publishing's Transformers continuity that is part of the Hasbro Comic Universe. The trilogy goes into detail about Optimus Prime's early experiences as a Prime and the Autobots' first clashes with the Decepticons before their war ended up bringing them to Earth.
  • The Transformers (Marvel) continuity received a prequel in a 2019 one-shot titled Transformers '84, which had a Framing Device of Punch narrating the events that led to Optimus Prime and several other Autobots leaving Cybertron in the Ark. The unexpected success of the one-shot led to it being followed the next year by a miniseries titled Secrets & Lies, where Punch continued to explain the events that unfolded on Earth and Cybertron after the Ark took flight and before the Autobots and Decepticons aboard the spacecraft were reactivated in the 1980's.
• Stardew Valley Before the Farmer is this for Stardew Valley, as it tells the story of what happened in the valley during the year before the player character arrived.
• Star Trek: Early Voyages: Aside from the series itself being a prequel to Star Trek: The Original Series, "Our Dearest Blood" depicts the Enterprise's mission to Rigel VII, a major part of the backstory to "The Cage". This includes Captain Pike's fight with the Kaylar in the abandoned Zemtar fortress, which the Talosians forced him to relive soon after abducting him. It turns out that the dress that the Damsel in Distress Vina wore in this illusion is identical to one actually worn by Talza, the aide of the Rigellian Minister Etashnan. Unlike Vina in the illusion, however, Talza left as soon as the Kaylar began to attack Pike as she had brought him to the fortress so that he could be ambushed.
• Ewoks: The events of the comic book chronologically took place before the events of the cartoon.

Fan Works

• While the fics in the Eleutherophobia series don't all take place in the order they were published, City of Lost Children is set the earliest of all, years before the point of divergence from canon.
• From Bajor to the Black and "The Universe Doesn't Cheat", for the series of Star Trek Online fics starring Captain Kanril Eleya. From Bajor to the Black explains how and why Eleya first joined the military and eventually became a Starfleet commanding officer, while "The Universe Doesn't Cheat" has her take the Kobayashi Maru.
• Soul Eater Zeta is a prequel to Soul Eater: Troubled Souls.
• The Diary of Glynda Goodwitch is the prequel to Weiss Reacts.
• Triumvirate is a prequel to the Elemental Chess Trilogy.
• Courtney and the Violin of Despair is mostly set at earlier dates than its parent work.
• Sunsplit Saga: The second story, Sunspawned, is the prequel to the first story, Sunsplit.
• Heart of a Lioness: Through the Eyes of a Queen begins 20-30 years prior to the first Lion King. The first book stars Simba's great-grandparents, the first King and Queen of Pride Rock.
• Infinity Train: Knight of the Orange Lily (taking place during Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon and some time after the end of Book 2 of Infinity Train) starts months before Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail (which takes place sometime before Episode 29 of Journeys and starting just when Book 3 of Infinity Train begins)
• Pride Lands Generations is a different telling of the Pride Lands' first king. While no set number of years are given for each generation, the main character Dhahabu is Simba's great-great-grandfather, and his father is the actual first Lion King until the final chapters. (Dhahabu is the first to actually rule from Pride Rock, however.)
• Sunsplit Saga: "Sunspawned" is the second story in the series, and its events are before the previous story, and expands on how Sunset and Sunburst are related, the fact of their relation having been revealed in the previous story, but not the precise events.

Films — Animation

• The Animatrix, an animated anthology film and prequel to The Matrix.
• Batman: Mask of the Phantasm is generally considered a prequel of Batman: The Animated Series as it tells the story of how Bruce Wayne becomes Batman. Whether the parts of the movie set in "present" are before, after or during the events of the show is open to fans' interpretation.
• The Lion King 1 ½ tells a bit of backstory about Timon and Pumbaa, as well as how they met.
• Miniforce: New Heroes Rise is this to the TV show as it shows how they became the team they are today.
• Minions reveals before they served Gru by the time of Despicable Me, the minions served Scarlet Overkill. This movie's sequel, Minions: The Rise of Gru serves even more as a prequel as it concentrates on Gru, the Despicable Me franchises adult protagonist Gru as a child.
• Monsters, Inc.: Good friends Mike and Sulley met each other at Monsters University. This is the first, and currently only prequel that Pixar has ever produced.
• The Powerpuff Girls Movie was a retroactive prequel, converting what was covered in just a couple lines from the Expository Theme Tune into a full movie.
• Puss in Boots is chronologically set before all of the Shrek movies.
• The Disney movie The Sword in the Stone is effectively a prequel to King Arthur's reign; it's based on the first quarter or so of the book The Once and Future King.
• Mexican movie Top Cat Begins is the prequel to both Top Cat: The Movie and the show, as it shows how the gang met.

Films — Live-Action

• Army of the Dead has a German-American prequel film titled Army of Thieves, which centers around safecracker Ludwig Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer, who also directs).
• The wuxia film Ashes of Time is a prequel to the novel, The Legend of the Condor Heroes, with it's "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue seguing directly to the novel's first chapter.
• The Godfather Part II is at once a prequel and a sequel to the original film, jumping back and forth between the young Vito at the turn of the century and Michael in the '50s.
• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a prequel to the first film, set one year earlier.
• The prologue sequence in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade shows Indy as a boy in the year 1912, featuring the origin of such things as his iconic hat, whip, scar and fear of snakes.
• Star Wars:
  • The entire Prequel Trilogy provides the backstory for Anakin Skywalker's turn to the Dark Side and the formation of the Galactic Empire. Some viewers objected to the way the series has Anakin interact with characters he does not seem to recognize later in the Original Trilogy. The Expanded Universe attempts to retcon some of the discrepancies away.
    • This despite the fact that Anakin/Vader was in the same scene in both trilogies with only a handful of characters. To wit, Palpatine, Obi Wan, Boba Fett (using a very generous definition of "with"), Tarkin and C3P0. In each case except the last, he does recognize them, with C3P0, well when they meet in Empire Strikes Back, Vader was kind of preoccupied.
    • The Prequel Trilogy’s films also show a far more advanced galaxy than the Original Trilogy, despite it being over two decades earlier. Justified to an extent as most of the Original trilogy takes place in the galactic boondocks or on Naval Ships while the Prequels are set in the main part of the galaxy. OTH, George Lucas says that was deliberate, as the prequels were a more "civilized age".
  • Rogue One is a prequel to A New Hope, ending very shortly (possibly minutes) before the first movie kicks off.
  • Solo is a prequel to the Original Trilogy featuring the origin story of Han Solo (naturally). It includes the beginning of his friendship with Chewbacca, his history with Lando Calrissian and the Millennium Falcon, and the circumstances of his record-breaking Kessel Run.
• Cruel Intentions II is a prequel to Cruel Intentions.
• The Tsui Hark movie A Better Tomorrow III was the prequel to the two John Woo movies that would kick off the Heroic Bloodshed genre. It follows Chow Yun-Fat's Mark Gor as he goes to Saigon, falls in love, and develops into the gunslinging badass that we know from A Better Tomorrow. And no, he does not keep the girl.
• Uwe Boll's House of the Dead is actually a prequel to the video games, although it is not considered canon.
  • Likewise with the first two BloodRaynes.
• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga details Furiosa's story before the events of Mad Max: Fury Road.
• Mallrats is set the day before the events in Clerks.
• The Scorpion King is supposed to be a prequel to The Mummy Returns, although the fact that there is nothing to indicate that Mathias will turn evil appears to break that connection. However, Word of God is that the Scorpion King featured in The Mummy Returns is actually Mathias's Identical Grandson. It is probably more of a spin-off than a true prequel.
  • The Direct to Video film The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior is a prequel to The Scorpion King, making it a prequel to a prequel.
• Paranormal Activity 2 is (mostly) a prequel to the first film. Its follow-up, Paranormal Activity 3, is a prequel to the second film.
• Final Destination 5 isn't explicitly advertised as such, instead opting for a Twist Ending in which the final two survivors of the bridge collapse die in the Flight 180 disaster that started the first film. However, some of the trailers spoiled this by showing new footage of Flight 180.
• The Thing (2011) is set less than a week before the first movie; it shows how the monster was first discovered and what it did to the Norwegian base.
• Although the films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe are standalone for the most part, their internal chronology makes Captain America: The First Avenger and Captain Marvel prequels as they take place entirely before the events of Iron Man.
• Most people would be surprised if you pointed out that The Muppet Movie was actually a prequel to The Muppet Show. Unless they've actually seen them. of course, since it's blindingly obvious that many of the various characters who are friends or at least co-workers of long standing on Show are meeting for the first time in Movie.
• Both X-Men Origins: Wolverine and X-Men: First Class serve as prequels to the original X-Men Film Series trilogy. X-Men: Days of Future Past, meanwhile, is an odd example in that it is both a prequel and a sequel to the original trilogy, concluding with a Cosmic Retcon that deletes the entire trilogy, and probably Origins: Wolverine and The Wolverine also, from the timeline. That means its sequel, X-Men: Apocalypse, while still taking place years before the original trilogy, isn't a prequel anymore (if one wants to nitpick very much, it is still technically a prequel, since the ending of Days features the aforementioned retconned timeline set during the original trilogy's time period.
• In the Planet of the Apes film series: The third, fourth and fifth films of the original series were Prequels to the first two, however; thanks to time travel the third qualifies as both a Prequel (from the Verse's point of view) and a Sequel (from that of the ape characters). Whilst Rise of the Planet of the Apes is officially a Continuity Reboot but works perfectly as a prequel to the original franchise.
• Terminator Salvation is a bit of an oddball because of the series's heavy use of time travel. It is both a sequel to Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, and a prequel to the events of the original The Terminator.
• Prometheus is described as a "semi-prequel" to the Alien series.
• AVP: Alien vs. Predator and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem were also prequels to Alien, but in the wake of this new film, their canon it difficult to determine.
• Red Dragon is a prequel to The Silence of the Lambs. The novel had already been adapted to film as Manhunter, but the original version did not fit into the film series with Anthony Hopkins as Lecter. The same goes for Hannibal Rising.
• Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd is a prequel to Dumb and Dumber.
• Both Exorcist: The Beginning and Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist, Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Prequels to the original film in two different perspectives (of the directors; the former is the result of a complex Executive Meddling for the latter).
• Tremors 4: The Legend Begins is the fourth and final film in the Tremors series and a prequel to the earlier movies.
• The Hobbit trilogy is set before The Lord of the Rings trilogy. This doesn't apply to the books, though: The Lord of the Rings was a proper sequel.
• There is no Word of God and it wasn't marketed as such, but The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, the last movie in the Dollars Trilogy, is a prequel to the other two. It takes place during the The American Civil War (1861–1865), while a grave stone dated 1873 is clearly seen in the first movie(A Fistful of Dollars). 'Blondie' also gains the iconic clothes ^note poncho, brown hat, Sheep fur vest he wears in the two other movies during the last third of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
• Cube Zero is a prequel to the original Cube. The main character suffers the same fate as Kazan from the original, but since they couldn't get the original actor they're only vaguely implied to be the same person. The continuity in this series is already marginal at best due to having different creators for each entry who all had different ideas on what the mythology should be.
• Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning is a distant prequel to the first Ginger Snaps featuring the apparent ancestors of the Fitzgerald sisters encountering a werewolf in a completely different time period.
• The western Nevada Smith, is a prequel to the The Carpetbaggers, a film about the movie industry.
• Underworld: Rise of the Lycans is the prequel to the rest of the series.
• Fantastic Beasts is a prequel series to the Harry Potter films. The first is set in 1926 (65 years before Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone), the second is set in 1927, and the third is set in 1932.
• Insidious: Chapter 3 is set before the events of the first film, showing what Elise, Specs, and Tucker were up to before they become involved with the Lamberts.
• The Conjuring series:
  • Annabelle is set a year before the titular doll is retrieved by the Warrens in the opening scene of The Conjuring.
  • As the title suggests, Annabelle: Creation shows how the doll came to be and thus predates the previous three films by having a 1955 setting (the first Annabelle is set in 1970).
  • The Nun is set in 1952, the earliest time period of the series and predating all previous films released.
• As indicated in the title, Ouija: Origin of Evil details the Start of Darkness of the main villains of Ouija, with a setting some fifty years prior.
• As the events of Wonder Woman (2017) happened before and in the same universe of Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice then is a prequel of both, though more directly connected to the latter.
• Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball takes place prior to Smokin' Aces. This doesn't show too much, since the plots are mostly unrelated except for featuring some recurring characters (such as Laslo Zoot and the Tremor family), at least one of whom was killed in the first movie.
• The original Japanese adaptation of The Ring has a prequel in Ring 0: Birthday, an Origins Episode set 30 years prior. The prequel is adapted from a short story of an omnibus novel that among other things includes a plain sequel and an Interquel.
• Death Race 2: Frankenstein Lives and Death Race 3: Inferno, despite being Numbered Sequels, are both prequels to the Death Race remake.
• Ophelia is a partial example. The first forty or so minutes is set before the beginning of Hamlet, covering what happened in the months leading up the king's death (including how Ophelia and Hamlet became a couple). It then segues into the events of the play, albeit with alterations due the story being told from Ophelia's perspective in this version.
• Orphan: First Kill is a prequel to Orphan.

Literature

• 7th Dragon III UE72 Mikan no Yuuma is set before 7th Dragon III Code: VFD.
• In the Amber Brown series, the A is for Amber books featured rather younger versions of Amber and Justin, before Justin moved away and Amber's parents got divorced.
• Assassin's Creed: Underworld is a prequel to Assassin's Creed Syndicate starring Henry "The Ghost" Green, the leader of the British Assassins at the time and The Mentor to the Frye Twins.
• Before the Batman: An Original Movie Novel is an all-ages superhero prequel tie-in book to The Batman (2022).
• Behind Blue Eyes: a series called Nephilim: Behind Blue Eyes Origins was released in 2022, consisting of three volumes and detailing the early life of the central protagonist.
• The Belgariad/The Malloreon: The authors wrote prequels in which all "hidden" details and the like are explained. The Framing Device was a sequel, where the main characters are asked to write their memories.
• Bruce Coville's Book of... Magic: Wizard's Boy is one prequel to Coville's earlier story Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher — that book tells, briefly, of how the wizard Bellenmore was the one who helped send the dragons to their new world, and his apprentice Aaron, the title character of this story, is the one who figured out how to save the species by bringing their eggs back to Earth so they could be hatched and then sent to the other world again once they were old enough. This story takes place before those events.
• The Chronicles of Narnia: Several books are prequels or interquels to books written before. This is further complicated by the fact that the prequels assume that the reader is reading the books in the published order. The Magician's Nephew, for example, is the first novel (chronologically speaking, but the 6th in the publishing order), but unless one has read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (the 2nd novel chronologically speaking), one can miss a lot of the subtext and the deeper meanings worked into the novel. Complicating matters is the fact that the events of The Horse and His Boy (Book 5) are in fact taking place during the final chapter of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Book 1). While the author and most experts agree that you should read them in order of release rather than chronology, the publisher continues to insist on numbering them in chronological order, further confusing new readers.
• When Jennifer Fallon was writing the prequels to her Demon Child series, she had a large board labelled "These People Must Die" next to her desk, indicating characters she had to kill off before the end of the prequel series in order to avoid having to explain their absence in the original series.
• The Divergent trilogy is followed by four Four-centric short stories, three of which focus on him as a Dauntless initiate, 2 years before the events of the main series (the other is a P.O.V. Sequel of the first book). All were later collected in the Four: A Divergent Collection omnibus.
• In the Doctor Who Expanded Universe, the novella Time and Relative by Kim Newman is set shortly before "An Unearthly Child". There are also about ten short stories in the Short Trips series set prior to the TARDIS landing in Totter's Lane.
• Dragon Age: The novels The Stolen Throne and The Calling are prequels to Dragon Age: Origins. The former deals with the liberation of Ferelden from under the boot of the Orlesian Empire, while the latter introduces the Expansion Pack, explains how the Grey Wardens were allowed back into Ferelden, and hints at the origins of a major character.
• Dragons of Requiem has the Dawn of Dragons trilogy, which was released three years after the original trilogy. It takes place three thousand years before Song of Dragons and shows who founded and built Requiem, and how the Vir Requis united as a whole.
• The Dresden Files: Brief Cases has "A Fistful of Warlocks", detailing Anastasia Luccio's pursuit of a warlock in the Wild West in the late 19th century. It also features a guest appearance by the necromancer Heinrich Kemmler, who is very, very dead in the series' present.
• Dusty Revenge have a prequel, Dusty Raging Fist, released four years after the original but set a decade before. The titular rabbit protagonist managed to obtain Elemental Powers in the prequel, but thanks to Bag of Spilling lose his abilities after the final battle where the original game have him restored to his Badass Normal state.
• The Evolution of Claire takes place eleven years prior to the events of Jurassic World which follows the character of Claire Dearing in her first year of internship for Masrani Global.
• Fate/Zero is a series of novels that detail the events leading up to famous Visual Novel Fate/stay night. Considering the relatively short timespan between the two story-wise (ten years), much of the events in Zero had a significant impact on stay night.
• Isaac Asimov:
  • "The Psychohistorians": This Short Story was added retroactively when Foundation (1951) was published, to begin the Foundation series at -2 Foundation Era, compared to 50 F.E. of "The Encyclopedists". Year 1 is when the planet Terminus is colonized by the Encyclopedia Foundation.
  • Preludeto Foundation: This book is a prequel to his original Foundation trilogy.
  • The Stars, Like Dust: This book is a follow-up to Pebble in the Sky, still taking place in a far future where the Earth has become radioactive, but before the Trantorian Empire becomes relevant to the region of space it takes place in. This was followed by The Currents of Space, which takes place after The Stars, Like Dust but before Pebble in the Sky at a point when the Trantorian Empire's galactic dominance is in sight, but still distant enough that it hasn't renamed itself as the Galactic Empire it was in Pebble in the Sky.
• Jack Campbell's The Genesis Fleet series is set in the same universe as his The Lost Fleet books, but centuries earlier, during the formation of The Alliance. In the Vanguard novel, the recent invention of the jump drive has rapidly sped up the expansion of humanity into the galaxy. However, Old Earth's influence is waning, and the once mighty Earth fleet is being decommissioned. Even the old colonies are no longer the beacon of civilization they once were. The new colonies must fend for themselves in the face of pirates, slavers, and hostile colonies. The novel is focused on a number of characters, two of which appear to be the ancestors of key characters from the main series: Lieutenant Robert Geary of the recently-settled Glenlyon (in fact, the colony isn't even named at the start of the book) and Sergeant Dominic Desjani (although he doesn't appear until about two thirds of the way into the book) of the slightly more established Kosatka. Glenlyon finds itself the target of an expansionist militant colony called Scatha and, with no defense forces to speak of, must figure out a way to survive, its leaders realizing that colonies in similar situations must band together for common protection. The third and final novel of the prequels ends with the formation of the building blocks of the Alliance. The Distant Finale returns to just after the main series, with the two main characters discussing their ancestors and their roles in creating the Alliance.
• Joanne Harris's The Gospel of Loki serves as a prequel to her earlier fantasy novels Runemarks and Runelight. However, as a lifelong Norse Mythology fan, Harris likely worked out the basic plot of Gospel long before writing the other two books, much as Tolkien did with The Silmarillion and the hobbit books.
• Several Halo novels serve as this, including Halo: The Fall of Reach and Halo: Contact Harvest; the former focuses on the SPARTAN-II program, while the latter focuses on Sergeant Johnson and first contact with the Covenant. Another example is the The Forerunner Saga trilogy, a distant prequel that takes place during the time of the Forerunners.
• Hannah Swensen:
  • Book 23 (Christmas Cake Murder) is the earliest in chronological order, set soon after Hannah dropped out of college and came home to help her mother after Delores lost her husband and sank into depression from it.
  • Book 20 (Christmas Caramel Murder) was released after book 19 (Wedding Cake Murder), but takes place earlier — the prologue and epilogue of Christmas Caramel are set in September, while Wedding Cake is set in October.
  • Book 26 (Christmas Cupcake Murder) is set "before Hannah solves her first missing person case" and before her mother opened her antique store, making it a prequel to most of the series (the store in question had opened by book 4).
• Horatio Hornblower: The first book published, The Happy Return (Beat to Quarters in some regions) was intended as a stand-alone novel, but later became part of a multi-book arc (Ship of the Line, Flying Colours, The Commodore and Lord Hornblower). Hornblower and the Atropos, Hornblower and the Hotspur, Lieutenant Hornblower and Midshipman Hornblower, as well as the short stories The Hand of Destiny and Hornblower and the Widow McCool all take place before the events of The Happy Return.
• The House of Night:
  • Dragon's Oath, about Dragon's past and his relationship with Anastasia.
  • Lenobia's Vow, about Lenobia's past.
  • Neferet's Curse, which relates Neferet's past.
• Inkmistress: The book serves as one to Of Fire and Stars. Set centuries before, it shows the backstory for Queen Invasya when she was just a girl (who's a supporting character in both) and how Zumorda had come to the way things are there.
• The Kharkanas Trilogy is a prequel to the Malazan Book of the Fallen, set in The Time of Myths and telling an important part of the setting's backstory. It originally seemed like there was no need for a prequel as the backstory is covered quite extensively in the main series, however it turns out that a few millennia of time can change what actually happened into myths hardly related to the truth anymore. So even knowing how events eventually play out, how things ended up the way they did is a wholly different matter, sometimes overturning supposedly known facts without actually contradicting them.
• James Fenimore Cooper's The Leatherstocking Tales, published in this order: 4, 2, 5, 3, 1.
• Sergey Lukyanenko:
  • Dances on the Snow takes place about a century prior to the events of Genome, the first novel of the series. However, the author insists that Genome should still be read first, even though the novels target completely different issues (Designer Babies in Genome, clones in Dances on the Snow) and don't feature any of the same characters (except for one mentioned off-hand).
  • Lukyanenko's short story Shadows of Dreams is a prequel to Line of Delirium, as it describes one of Arthur's previous failed attempts to get to Grail with a teenage girl as his bodyguard. The latter is not revealed until the end of the short story, though.
• By the same token, Mass Effect: Revelation is a prequel to the first Mass Effect game, revealing the history between Captain Anderson and Saren, as well as how Saren found Sovereign.
• The Kill Order and The Fever Code are both prequels to the main trilogy of The Maze Runner series, taking focus to the background story and lore. The former tells the story of the first outbreak of the Zombie Apocalypse approximately a decade before the events at the Glade, while the latter is a direct prequel to the first book.
• Left Behind had a three-book prequel series following the twelve-book main series: The Rising, The Regime, and The Rapture, which all tell of events that took place up to the start of the main series, such as the rise of the Antichrist Nicolae Carpathia as well as the lives of future Tribulation Force members Rayford and Chloe Steele and Buck Williams.
• The Mortal Instruments series has one completed prequel series (The Infernal Devices) and one still in development (The Last Hours), both being set more than a century before the events of the main series. Plus, some of the novella collections (particularly, The Bane Chronicles) have stories predating TMI, as well.
• Most of Anthony Price's thriller novels form a sequence set in the present day (i.e. the 1970s and '80s, contemporary with when they were written), but four of them are prequels set in the 1940s and '50s, exploring the roots of the main sequence protaonists and the organisation they work for.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: The Spin-Off volume Side of Fire: Chronicle of Purgatory is set three years before the start of the main series and expands on the backstory of Alvin Godfrey, Leoncio Echevalria, and the rivalry between their respective student body factions, which forms a major part of several volumes of the main series.
• Jack Ryan:
  • Without Remorse covers the backstory for John Clark formerly Kelly, set before Jack Ryan, Sr becomes an adult.
  • Patriot Games occurs before The Hunt for Red October, in which there are a few off-hand references to PG's events.
  • Red Rabbit takes a step back to the very start of Jack Ryan, Sr's involvement with the US government, though was published after Executive Orders.
• In John Masefield's Sard Harker, the protagonist's backstory includes him having once played a small but important role in a rebellion in South America. Masefield's later novel Odtaa is set during the rebellion.
• Shannara by Terry Brooks:
  • First King of Shannara is the prequel to The Sword of Shannara Trilogy. It was written decades after that series was published. Even the trilogy's sequel series (The Heritage of Shannara) had been published before the First King of Shannara came out. As with the Narnia novels, it's best to actually read the Sword of Shannara and perhaps even the Heritage of Shannara novels before reading the prequel, as it assumes knowledge and therefore acts as a spoiler to the original novels (The Sword of Shannara especially).
  • The Genesis of Shannara is set even earlier; the Apocalypse How to the After the End setting of the main series. It also canon welds Brooks' Urban Fantasy series The Word and the Void, retroactively making them Shannara prequels as well.
• The Silmarillion is an example of how good some of these can be. None of the foreshadowing starts till the end of the Quenta Silmarillion, with Akallabêth and On the Rings of Power and the Third Age.
  • Not a wholly straightforward example though, since Tolkien started writing The Silmarillion long before he wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (in fact, The Hobbit was not initially part of the same continuity) and continued afterwards. Consider also that the main events of The Silmarillion are set thousands of years before The Lord of the Rings (though a few characters are still in both.) Akallabêth and On the Rings of Power... are (admittedly long) epilogues to the main narrative, with the latter bringing the action to the time of LOTR.
  • Especially true because Tolkien didn't actually write The Silmarillion ... he wrote a lot of background material for LOTR, in many drafts and revisions, and then used tiny fragments of them in LOTR to suggest that it had its own tales and legends. After he died his son pieced together a mostly-consistent narrative out of the background material and published it. Then he started publishing the Unfinished Tales series, which were various drafts of stuff that didn't get used in The Silmarillion (many of these being earlier drafts of pieces that did get used; confused yet?).
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • The Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas of are set hundred years before the main series. They portray the golden age of House Targaryen and feature many "legendary" characters from the main series, and links between the books have surfaced, including the Myth Arc relating to "The Prince That Was Promised" and the revelation in A Dance with Dragons of Lord Bloodraven, a supporting character in the earlier series alive in the present.
  • Archmaester Gyldayn's Histories are another series of novellas going back even further to a Civil War known as the Dance of the Dragons that took place 70 years before Dunk and Egg and 170 years before the main series. The Rogue Prince takes place before The Princess and the Queen, making it a prequel of a prequel.
• The Star Trek: Terok Nor novel trilogy; Deep Space Nine prequels set during the Cardassian occupation of Bajor.
• Star Wars Expanded Universe:
  • Master and Apprentice is set before The Phantom Menace, covering Obi-Wan's apprenticeship to Qui-Gon.
  • Queen's Peril is a prequel to both The Phantom Menace, set at the very beginning of Padmé's reign as Queen of Naboo, and its predecessor novel Queen's Shadow, which starts at the end of Padmé's time as queen.
  • Timothy Zahn's Ascendancy Trilogy is a prequel to his new-canon trilogy about Grand Admiral Thrawn (Thrawn, Alliances, Treason), about Thrawn's time serving the Chiss Ascendancy.
• Star Wars Legends: Timothy Zahn wrote Outbound Flight before he came up with the idea for the later-set Survivor's Quest, but due to scheduling Survivors' Quest was released first, resulting in a situation like this.
• The Tale of Little Pig Robinson by Beatrix Potter explains that Pig Robinson is actually the "piggy-wig" in Edward Lear's "The Owl and the Pussycat", and this is the story of how he ended up in the Land Where the Bong Tree Grows.
• The Tale Of Magic is this to The Land of Stories. It takes place when the main characters’ grandmother was a teenager.
• Third Maccabees from the apocryphal books of the Maccabees is an In Name Only prequel story, as it has nothing to do with Judah Maccabee or The Maccabean Revolt, but rather an early persecution of the Jews that took place in the 3rd Century BC.
• Wolfram von Eschenbach's unfinished epic poem Titurel was a prequel to his Parzival.
• Tortall Universe: The Beka Cooper trilogy is set nearly 200 years before the rest of the series, and features main protagonist Beka Cooper, who's the ancestor of other characters George and Aly. While the main plot is very much self-contained, it does show a bit about how Tortall came to be the way it is, including the outlawing of slavery and the decline of the female knights.
• When The Tripods Came, the prequel to The Tripods trilogy.
• The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor is a prequel to the comic book series The Walking Dead.
• Warrior Cats began doing prequels with several standalone Super Editions taking place a generation or two before the first series, a time period that is now often nicknamed the "prequel era". Some novellas have expanded upon this time period, as well as a generation or two before that. Later, the fifth arc Warrior Cats: Dawn of the Clans came out; it's a prequel about the founding of the Clans, set at least a few decades before the modern books.
• New Spring is a prequel to The Wheel of Time series, taking place about 20 years before The Eye of the World. What's particularly jarring is that it's actually a lot better written than the previous few books.
• Woodwalkers And Friends: Katzige Gefährten is one to Seawalkers. It shows what Carag and Tikaani did in the gap between Tag der Rache and Gefährliche Gestalten- Foregone Conclusion obviously ensues, because both of them are revealed to be alive in Seawalkers which was released a year before this book.

Live-Action TV

In General:

• Smallville is a prequel of the Superman mythos.
  • Krypton is another prequel to the Superman mythos. The series takes place on the titular planet 200 years before its destruction and Kal-El's arrival on Earth. The protagonist is his grandfather Seg-El.
• Gotham is a prequel to the Batman mythos.

Series:

• The 1998 TV film Babylon 5: In the Beginning is a prequel to Babylon 5, which depicts the Earth-Minbari War (2245-2248), a major part of the series' backstory. Its storyline explores the involvement, direct and indirect, of numerous regular characters in the war, including Sheridan, Sinclair, Delenn, Londo, G'Kar, Franklin and Ivanova. The major exception is Garibaldi, who was said to have served as a Ground Pounder (GROPO) during the war in "The Long Dark". The Framing Device, which ties into the future sequences of "War Without End Part 2" featuring a devastated Centauri Prime, takes place in 2278. It involves the elderly Londo, the Emperor of the Centauri Republic, telling two young children and their nanny of humanity's heroism during the Earth-Minbari War and how it inspired the Babylon Project, the last, best hope for peace. The film ties into several other episodes as well such as "And the Sky, Full of Stars", "A Late Delivery from Avalon" and "Atonement".
• Better Call Saul is a prequel to Breaking Bad and focuses on the life of Amoral Attorney Saul Goodman seven years before he first met Walter White. At the time Saul still goes by his birth name of Jimmy McGill and has yet to have his Start of Darkness that would make him such a key player in the Heisenberg saga. Similarly, Mike Ehrmantraut has just arrived in Albuquerque and has yet to embark on his career as a criminal fixer.
• Black Sails is a prequel to Treasure Island. It shows how Captain Flint got the Urca gold and why he put it on Treasure Island. It also provides backstory for various characters from the book, including Long John Silver, Billy Bones, Israel Hands and Ben Gunn.
• Caprica is a rare example of a prequel TV series (to Battlestar Galactica). The prequel is so far separated in time (it begins 58 years before BSG) that only one character, William Adama, is shared between them—and while he was unquestionably the male lead in BSG, he's a secondary (if important) character in Caprica (and the vast time difference makes things, if anything, more interesting: How does he go from Willie Adama, gangster-in-training, to William "The Old Man" Adama, hardened officer of the Colonial Fleet?).
  • He doesn't. He dies, and his father has another son with his second wife whom they name William. He is the one who will become "The Old Man".
• There's a very popular, long-running Italian police-detective show, Il Commissario Montalbano. In 2012, the spinoff Young Montalbano appeared alongside it, about Montalbano as a young man.
• The Continental is a prequel series to the John Wick films. It follows a young Winston Scott as he begins his journey to become the manager of the New York City Continental Hotel
• The 1986 TV film Dallas: The Early Years is a prequel to Dallas which explores the origins of the Barnes-Ewing feud in the 1930s. The Framing Device takes place in 1951 and features J.R. as a teenager and Bobby, Cliff, Pam and Gary as young children.
• The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance is a prequel series to the 1982 Jim Henson film The Dark Crystal, detailing how the depraved Skeksis came to be at war with the Gelflings and caused the world of Thra to decay.
• Dickensian, a Massive Multiplayer Crossover of all Charles Dickens's characters is set prior to the novels (with, the writer admits, some fudging of dates). So Ebeneezer Scrooge is still a miser, Miss Havisham is a young woman who's just met Compeyson, Inspector Bucket has just become a detective, and so on.
• Fear the Walking Dead depicts the very beginning of the Zombie Apocalypse that The Walking Dead (2010) takes place in the aftermath of (albeit thousands of miles away).
• House of the Dragon is a distant prequel to Game of Thrones, taking place 200 years before it and chronicling the Dance of the Dragons, whose consequences will eventually culminate in the downfall of House Targaryen.
• Inspector Morse has spawned the prequel series Endeavour, about the young Morse (as well as a sequel series, Lewis, starring Morse's sergeant/sidekick). This allows more stories about Morse on TV, even though both the character and the actor have died.
• The events of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power are set before The Lord of the Rings.
• Prime Suspect 1973 is a prequel to Prime Suspect, about WPC Jane Tennison at the beginning of her career dealing with even more sexism than she will as DCI Jane Tennison.
• Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story was produced after Bridgerton and shows the youth of Queen Charlotte, before she became one of the ton's most formidable figures.
• Rock & Chips (originally announced as Sex, Drugs & Rock 'n' Chips), a prequel to Only Fools and Horses which is set in 1960, and tells the story of Joan and Freddie the Frog. It's a bit of a Genre Shift, being a rather downbeat drama with some laughs rather than the traditional sitcom of the original (and The Green Green Grass).
• The Dirty Harry parody TV series Sledge Hammer! ended its first season by blowing up Los Angeles, since the producers were expecting the series be canceled. When, much to their surprise, the series was picked up for a second season, they had to set it five years before the finale and called it Sledge Hammer: The Early Years.
• The mini-series Spartacus: Gods of the Arena is the prequel of Spartacus: Blood and Sand, sadly made because the main actor suffered from cancer (that eventually caused his death) and therefore the producers have to made something without him to entertain the audience in the hopes he would recover. He didn't, so they went for The Other Darrin route.
• Star Trek: Enterprise, which is set 100 years before Kirk's time period. Star Trek: Discovery is more of an Interquel, being set between Enterprise and TOS. Discovery itself has a spinoff, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, in the timeframe of the original Pilot Episode of TOS.
• Walker: Independence, set in the 1800s is a prequel to Walker focused on Cordell Walker's ancestor, Abby Walker.
• Why Women Kill: The second season, which is set from 1949-1950, takes place before the first season, which was set from 1963-2019.
• The Winchesters, which focuses on John and Mary Winchesters, is a Supernatural prequel set in the 1970s.
• Young Hercules, a prequel TV series to Hercules: The Legendary Journeys with a young Ryan Gosling portraying a much younger version of Kevin Sorbo's title character.
• Young Hyacinth was a one-off prequel to Keeping Up Appearances, explaining how Hyacinth's snobbish pretensions were formed when she was in domestic service to the local gentry in the 1950s.
• The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, a prequel TV series featuring stories from Indiana Jones' early life in Anachronic Order. The majority of episodes depicted Indy as a young man, set during his experiences in World War One and in the years after; the rest were about Indy as a boy, while on an extended journey around the world.
• Young Sheldon is a prequel to The Big Bang Theory that focuses on Sheldon Cooper's childhood.

Multimedia

• The entire 2004-'05 saga of BIONICLE, including the Adventures novel series, comics, online videos and the films Legends of Metru Nui and Web of Shadows take place 1,000 years before the 2001-'03 saga, detailing the struggles of the Toa Metru/Hordika before they became the Turaga of Mata Nui and how the Matoran of Metru Nui ended up on the island of Mata Nui in the first place. Technically, the 2005 story was an interquel set just before the ending of the 2004 plot, but it contained yet more flashbacks in comics and short stories. The original plan was to have even more prequel arcs, the Legends of Metru Nui film was actually set up as the finale of a whole series of prequel movies revealing the origin and Face–Heel Turn of Makuta, but those plans were scrapped after LEGO executives realized the new timeline confused children. Thus, later prequel materials were sprinkled into the novels, short stories and one graphic novel.

Music

• Noah's music video for "Kota Mati" is a prequel to their old "Tak Ada yang Abadi" video back when they were named Peterpan, showing how the people ends up dead in the latter video and who is the shooter.

Myths & Religion

• The Achilleid is set ten years before The Iliad and promises to explain how Achilles became a hero of legend. We see Achilles' training under Chiron, Thetis' first attempts to avert her son's destined death, and even the first meeting of Achilles and the Hero of Another Story, Ulysses.

Radio

• Parodied in one I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue round, which proposes such prequels as Alice Lives Here, Too Much Cheese Before Bedtime on Elm Street, The Empire Gets Struck and Taking the Long Way Round, Avoiding the River Kwai.

Tabletop Games

• The Legend of the Five Rings CCG featured two prequel sets: Scorpion Clan Coup, about the events that set the Clan War in motion, and Dawn of the Empire, which finally put the legendary gods and heroes of Rokugan's founding into CCG form.

Theatre

• While Oedipus the King is chronologically the first play of Sophocles' Theban trilogy, is was the second in production order, making this trope Older Than Feudalism.
• William Shakespeare did it too. The second history tetralogy (Richard II, Henry IV (1&2), and Henry V) were prequels to the first history tetralogy (Henry VI (1,2&3) and Richard III). And even those probably weren't written in order either; Henry VI 2, 3, and Richard III are almost one long play in three parts, the first part of Henry VI may well have been written a few years later.
• Another Part of the Forest by Lillian Hellman was a prequel to her play The Little Foxes set 20 years earlier.
• Cirque du Soleil's Toruk — The First Flight is the prequel to Avatar, retelling the story of the first Toruk Makto (an individual who manages to tame and ride a toruk in a time of great peril for the Na'vi) in the 9th century BC. The Tree of Souls is threatened by a volcanic eruption, and the Omaticaya clan sends a brave young hunter to gather the five items he needs in order to tame the toruk and and use the creature as a symbol to unite the clans and save the Tree. The hunter, Ralu, fails, but his friend Entu, a failed hunter, succeeds. The clans manage to rally even without the Toruk Makto, but their efforts to save the tree prove futile. Then Entu appears on the back of the toruk, and the creature manages to put out the flames, dying during the act. The Storyteller then reveals that he is Entu. There is some discontinuity there, as the Storyteller appears to be telling all this to the Sky People (i.e. humans), except humans didn't make it to Pandora until the 22nd century. It's highly doubtful that Entu has lived for so long.

Video Games

• Act Raiser 2 is hinted to be a prequel to the first ActRaiser.
• COPS 2170: The Power of Law is a Prequel to Paradise Cracked.
• The Legend of Oasis, known in Europe as The Story of Thor 2, is a prequel to the first The Story of Thor, known as Beyond Oasis in North America.
• The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard and The Elder Scrolls Online take place during the Second Era, hundreds of years before the main entries in The Elder Scrolls.
• Ever Quest Online Adventures takes place 500 years before the first Everquest.
• Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals serves as a prequel, starring the hero that appeared in the prologue and was the ancestor of the Player Character in Lufia & The Fortress of Doom.
• In Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis the main villain is a Soviet general called Guba, and one of the protagonists is a US special forces soldier by the name of Gastovski. The expansion pack Resistance features a new campaign set three years earlier, in which then-colonel Guba leads the Soviet invasion of a different island than those featured in the original game, and Gastovski is there to lend the locals a hand. Naturally, there are zero references to this earlier armed conflict in the original game.
• The Legend of Zelda practically runs on this trope. Only Zelda II: The Adventure of Link and the Breath of the Wild trilogy occur chronologically after the original game, with all the others being either prequels, sequels to those prequels, or take place on concurrent Alternate Timelines.
  • A Link to the Past was originally envisioned as a distant prequel to The Legend of Zelda. That remains the case, but as of 2020, there are five other games that take place during that timespan; three direct sequels to ALTTP (Oracle of Ages/Seasons and Link's Awakening) and two distant sequels featuring their own version of Link (A Link Between Worlds and TriForce Heroes).
  • Skyward Sword is chronologically the first game in the series, serving as an origin story for the Master Sword, the Kingdom of Hyrule, and even why evil is always able to rear its ugly head again and again, particularly with regards to Ganon's inability to stay fully dead.
  • The Minish Cap, chronologically the second game in the series, is the prequel to Four Swords, explaining the origins of both the Four Swords and Vaati.
  • Ocarina of Time was created to serve as a distant prequel to A Link to the Past and it still retains that status, with no other games taking place between them. That said, Ocarina of Time is also where the three main Alternate Timelines of the series originate.
  • Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is a Spin-Off entry in terms of gameplay, but a canonical prequel (well, given the events of the game, psuedo-prequel) to Breath of the Wild, making it the first Zelda game to be a prequel with the same Link.
• Tales of Symphonia takes place thousands of years before Tales of Phantasia, the game it precedes, and this is only known through references in the game, rather than being explicitly stated... such as the two worlds having the same names as the two moons of Aseria in Phantasia, the existence of Martel who guards a giant tree named Yggdrasill, the world maps in Symphonia being that of Phantasia split in two, Suzu and Sheena Fujibayashi, the Eternal Sword, discrimination against half-elves (although it's not as big a plot point in Phantasia as it was in Symphonia), Magitek flying machines (the Techbirds of Phantasia and the Rheairds of Symphonia have very similar designs, and in both games powering them up involves gaining the aid of the lightning summon spirit Volt).
• Dragon Quest:
  • In Dragon Quest III, you play what appears to be a standalone game in the series, only towards the end you end up in an alternate universe — the universe of Dragon Quest and Dragon Quest II. Only it's hundreds of years before I. At the end of the game, your hero is given the title of Loto (Erdrick in the original US translation) — which is the name of the legendary hero that the Dragon Quest character is descended from...
  • The second trilogy (IV, V, and VI) also appear to follow this format, though much more ambiguously.
  • The ending of Dragon Quest XI reveals that it takes place in the distant past of Dragon Quest III's world, as shown by the Hero of that game's mother reading about the story in an old book, before getting up to wake up her child to see the king.
• Infocom's Interactive Fiction game Zork Zero is, as the name implies, a prequel to the company's previous Zork and Enchanter trilogies.
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky is a prequel to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl.
• Fallout 76 takes place 59 years before the original Fallout in the year 2102, although Super Mutants are still present despite the Master not having created them until the following year and the Institute ones not being created until over a century later.
• Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is a prequel to the entire series and details the backstory and Start of Darkness of Big Boss, and was followed with Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and finally Metal Gear Solid V (with V having a closing scene teasing Metal Gear).
  • Ordered by canon chronology, the central plot thread is as follows: MGS3, Portable Ops, Peace Walker, MGSV, Metal Gear, Metal Gear 2, Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2, and (finally) Metal Gear Solid 4.
• Street Fighter is pretty bad about this. After the constant updates of Street Fighter II, the Street Fighter Alpha series arrived onto the scene in 1995, with the purpose of fleshing out the backstory by... showing what happened in between the original Street Fighter/Final Fight and Street Fighter II. After Street Fighter III (as well as 2nd Impact and 3rd Strike) came and went, Street Fighter IV comes out and... it takes place after II and before III. Street Fighter V would later continue the trend by being set after IV... but still before III.
• Most media associated with Final Fantasy VII (also known as the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII) take place before the titular game. In fact, the franchise only has one video game sequel, Dirge of Cerberus, which is set a few years after the ending of the game.
  • Before Crisis is set six years before VII, with the focus shifting to a brand of villains that got retconned.
  • Crisis Core is set four years before VII and explores about an important Posthumous Character who influenced that game's main protagonist. The ending even outright sequences into the opening of VII.
• Dissidia Final Fantasy gets Dissidia 012: Final Fantasy, which takes place on the previous iteration of the "Groundhog Day" Loop. Also, the series is technically a prequel to the first Final Fantasy, as the game's setting is revealed to be a copy of that game's world ("World B", as opposed to "World A"). The ending shows the Warrior of Light setting up for another adventure in World A (the first game's storyline), with other heroes returning back to their own homeworlds.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep takes place roughly ten years before the events of the first game. The secret ending includes a Distant Finale that takes place right after Kingdom Hearts II.
  • Kingdom Hearts χ not only takes place long before every other game, including Birth by Sleep, but immediately before the Keyblade War which made the universe the way it is throught the rest of the series.
• Devil May Cry series:
  • Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening is a prequel to the first Devil May Cry game.
  • Devil May Cry 4 used to be considered a prequel as it originally took place before Devil May Cry 2, following the original Anachronic Order of the games (3 -> 1 -> 4 -> 2) in such a way that DMC2 was still the last distant game in the lore. However, the release and marketing of Devil May Cry 5 retconned the chronology into swapping 2 and 4, no longer making the latter game a prequel.
• Castlevania had its first game set in 1691, but there have been games set before this time. And a shitload of sequels/interquels. So much so that the main climax isn't even a game yet! Chronologically, the main timeline begins with Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, which is set in 1094 and depicts the origins of Dracula, Vampire Killer and the Belmont Clan.
• Assassin's Creed:
  • Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles is a prequel to Assassin's Creed.
  • Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is a prequel to Assassin's Creed III that shows the life of Connor's grandfather Edward Kenway. Technically, however, it's still a sequel, since the modern day storyline takes place 20 Minutes into the Future, and the lives of the Kenways are only recordings that are simply viewed out of order.
  • By that same token, Assassin's Creed Rogue could also be considered a prequel of Assassin's Creed III, since the events deal with the fall of the Colonial Assassins some time before Connor meets Achilles.
  • And now there's Assassin's Creed Origins, which portrays the founding of the Assassin Brotherhood in Ptolemaic Egypt as the Hidden Ones by Bayek of Siwa and his wife Aya.
  • Assassin's Creed: Odyssey goes even further back in time than any of the previous installments in the franchise as it's set in the Peloponnesian War between 431 and 422 BC, around 400 years before the events of Origins.
  • Assassin's Creed: Valhalla is set three centuries before the Third Crusade of Assassin's Creed I.
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a prequel to Deus Ex and Deus Ex: Invisible War. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is a sequel to Human Revolution and the second prequel to the original Deus Ex.
• According to Word of God, Nexus: The Jupiter Incident is an unofficial prequel to the Imperium Galactica series, as it was originally planned as Imperium Galactica III: Genesis before getting stuck in Development Hell and switching developers and publishers several times. The basic storyline has not changed from the original, though.
• I Miss the Sunrise expands on and explains the shocking Sequel Hooks dropped at the end of The Reconstruction.
• The mod/scenario Fall from Heaven: Age of Ice, included in Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword, is a prequel to the popular mod Fall From Heaven II. The original mod is set in the fantasy world of Erebus at the start of the Age of Rebirth. The prequel scenario shows how the previous age (the Age of Ice) was ended by a hero unifying a scattered tribe and vanquishing a god.
• Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist is a prequel to Leisure Suit Larry, set in The Wild West. Zircon Jim Laffer is an ancestor of Larry Laffer.
• Child of Eden is said to be a prequel to Rez, although some call it a spiritual sequel.
• Halo: Reach: Since the game retells a well-known catastrophe in the franchise's backstory, much of the plot and marketing played on the drama of the Foregone Conclusion.
• Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak is a prequel to the original Homeworld. The game expands the backstory of Kharak, and how the search for the starship wasn't a simple ride into the desert. But a long grueling war where the Kiithid of the North fought a long bloody war against the Gaalsiens over the ruins of the starship.
• The entire Ace Combat series released after Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere.
  • Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War is a prequel to the entire series, especially ''Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War as the aftermath of the Belkan War itself plays a major part in 5's plot.
• The Tale of ALLTYNEX brings us RefleX (2008), which is a prequel to KAMUI (1999). RefleX in turn is preceded by ALLTYNEX Second (2010). Amusingly, the latter two games in the series are remakes of existing games: Reflection (1998) and ALLTYNEX (1996), meaning that retroactively, the series was still released in straight chronological order.
• The Sonic Boom Licensed Game is a prequel to the TV show.
• The Yoshi's Island series (besides Yoshi Topsy-Turvy) is a prequel to the Super Mario Bros. series, set when the Mario Bros. and Bowser were babies.
• The Stinger in the ending for Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker reveals that the game actually takes place before Super Mario 3D World (or as of the Switch port, Super Mario Odyssey), as Captain Toad winds up in 3D World's opening cutscene. Captain Toad follows Mario and crew down the clear pipe, which also explains how he wound up in the Sprixie Kingdom in said game. In the Switch port, instead, Toad and Toadette's cart ends in the Sand Kingdom, and upon Toad seeing the Odyssey flying through the skies, he eagerly follows it, much to the dismay of Toadette.
• Word of God has stated that Shadow of the Colossus is the prequel to ICO, and that Wander is the progenitor of the "cursed" horned children like the titular Ico, as signified by Wander becoming an infant with horns at the end.
• Five Nights at Freddy's:
  • Five Nights at Freddy's 2 is a stealth prequel, thus explaining why Phone Guy is alive and the restaurant is still running. It actually takes place shortly before "The Bite of 1987".
  • Five Nights at Freddy's 4 is either this or a P.O.V. Sequel to 2. If it's the former, it reveals that there was also a "Bite of 1983." If it's the latter, then it shows a child who is scared of Freddy and friends who ultimately becomes the Bite of 1987 victim.
  • Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location, thanks to a certain secret ending from the game's update, is implied to be a prequel, though just what it is a prequel to is hard to pinpoint. Basically, the game is designed as such that it could be placed at any point in the timeline. For a full answer: it might be an Origins Episode for the main antagonist and thus take place before the events of other games in the series, it might happen sometime in between 4 and 3 and explain about the antagonist's previously unmentioned son (though there's no stopping for the son to appear before 4 either), or it might be unconnected to any game thus far, because the antagonist's name is not fully confirmed to be his canonical name (it was previously revealed in a non-canon spinoff novel).
• One of the endings of House of the Dead 4 sets up the game as a prequel to House Of The Dead 3. It gets this in your face by telling you to go back and play House Of The Dead 3 after you managed to get said ending.
  • Meanwhile, Overkill is set before any other game in the series, identifiable because Agent G is introduced as being sent on his first assignment here.
• Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, rather than simply being remakes of the original Ruby and Sapphire, add new plot points touching upon the origin of Mega Evolution and the war in Kalos 3,000 years before the start of the series, tying them into Pokémon X and Y. According to Word of God, the former two take place an unspecified amount of time before the latter two.
• The Game Boy Advance game The Nightmare Before Christmas: The Pumpkin King is a prequel to the animated film The Nightmare Before Christmas that explains how Jack Skellington first encountered Oogie Boogie and why they hate each other.
• While most sequels in the Silent Hill series are standalone, the first game has a prequel in the form of Origins that focuses on a new protagonist who is nevertheless involved with the characters of 1.
• Life Is Strange: Before the Storm takes place three years before the original game. It shows how Chloe met Rachel Amber, who never appeared in the original but whose relationships and strange disappearance drove much of the plot.
• The followups to the Flash puzzle platformer Sleepy Knight: One-Trick Mage, Choppy Orc and Sticky Sorcerer, are prequels. (Each game ends with you freeing the main character of the previous one.)
• Gradius ReBirth (2009) is this to Nemesis 2 (1987), featuring Dr. Venom as James Burton's commanding officer before the former went rogue. Completing the third and final loop of the game exposes Venom's coup d'etat and Face–Heel Turn, setting up the events of Nemesis 2.
• Professor Layton: The second trilogy of games take place before the first, telling how, among other things, Layton met his assistant Luke.
• Red Dead Redemption II takes place before the first Red Dead Redemption, focusing on Dutch van der Linde's gang; the same gang whose remnants John must hunt down in the first game.
• Spider-Man: Battle for New York is set before Ultimate Spider-Man (2005) with Peter Parker still at high school.
• Hiveswap serves as one to Homestuck, taking place two decades (and several sweeps) before the Kids' and Trolls' sessions.
• Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade took place 20 years before Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, which stars Roy's father, Eliwood. Several characters from Binding Blade appear in Blazing Blade in their younger years like Hector and Marcus, and even few characters make cameo appearances like Sophia.
• Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent is a mobile spin-off of Octopath Traveler that takes place 3 years before the events of the latter. Specifically, it goes over events that were largely untouched in the original game and includes several cameos of characters from the base game.
• Yakuza 0 serves as an Origin Story for Kazuma Kiryu and Goro Majima, telling a story set during The '80s that documents how both men end up rising to power in the Tojo Clan and would become the Dragon of Dojima and the Mad Dog of Shimano respectively.
• Yandere Simulator's 1980's Mode is a prequel to the main game, featuring Yandere-chan's mother Ryoba, and setting up events that play key roles in the main story, such as the murder trial that led to Akademi's distrust of the police, the reason the third floor bathroom is haunted, and, of course, Ryoba meeting and successfully kidnapping her Senpai/Yan-chan's father.
• Tenchu chronologically begins with Tenchu 2: Birth of the Stealth Assassins, which is the second game in the series and shows Rikimaru and Ayame as teenagers and how they became the Azuma ninja they are in the present. The Nintendo DS installment Tenchu: Dark Secret is also set before the first game.
• Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon is a prequel to the Bayonetta games set during the title character’s childhood.
• The Art of Fighting series chronologically precedes the Fatal Fury series, with the second game of the former featuring a younger Geese Howard go from corrupt police commissioner to a feared criminal mastermind.
• Metro Awakening takes place in the year 2028, a full five years before the events of Metro 2033 started in the titular year.

Visual Novels

• Weirdly enough, this is subverted in DDLC+, the Updated Re-release of Doki Doki Literature Club! — that is to say, something looks like a prequel but isn't exactly. The side stories that are added are clearly a prequel to the original story in the sense that they detail how the characters got to know each other and formed the Literature Club. They do suffer from slight continuity problems typical in prequels in that, since they focus on developing the characters' relationships, it makes it a bit odd that some issues seem to be more unresolved in the original story that was written first.^note For example, Natsuki is insecure about reading manga because it's seen as immature in her school. In the original game, she says "As if I could ever get my friends to read this. They just think manga is for kids." However, in the side stories, Sayori did read her manga with her, the rest of the Literature Club learnt not to look down on it, and she broke up with her old friends who were mean to her about it, so what's she even talking about? You could contrive an explanation — eg. she got insecure again, to the point of ignoring what's actually happened, because Monika suddenly kind of made fun of her for reading manga, which itself seems like Aesop Amnesia or Out-of-Character Moment in the light of the prequels, but that could be explained knowing Monika was under pressure for an unrelated reason — but it would get a bit strained. However, DDLC+ also contains a backstory, revealed later, about a group of people who were the fictional developers of the game, and this explains how the side stories are in a different simulated universe than the game proper, one where certain things are different. So the sort-of-prequel side stories are actually in a different in-universe Alternate Continuity from the main game; they (or at least the first ones, anyway) are set before those events in the timeline of the history of the Literature Club but don't actually lead up to them in the broader story where it all being a game is part of the story. It Makes Sense in Context.

Web Animation

• Comics 5-11 of Kirby Guardian take place before the rest of the series and showcase why Adeline is the way she is in episode 6
• Season 9 of Red vs. Blue began showing a prequel story delving into the backstory of Project Freelancer, split between showing Church's attempts to revive Tex in the Epsilon Capture Unit. Season 10 continued this setup, though the modern parts are about the Reds and Blues (plus Agents Washington and Carolina) trying to hunt down the Director of Project Freelancer.

Webcomics

• Webcomic parody: In this strip of Dinosaur Comics, God publishes a sequel to The Bible, then a prequel that takes place in the universe before this one.
  T-rex: What happened to it?
  God: IT WAS FULL OF WIENERS DUDE
• The Aikonia webcomic is one to the videogame of the same name.
• In a way, Hivebent is one for Homestuck, revolving around the trolls' session without any input from the kids. Of course, it's later revealed that without the kids, their entire session couldn't have happened.
• My Impossible Soulmate is a standalone prequel to Rain (2010). It centers on the life of Chiaki Koizumi, the author of the fictional in-universe manga Black Wings: Kaminari, Rain’s favorite manga.
• The Order of the Stick has had two print-only books. The first, numbered 0, is On the Origin of PCs, which shows what the heroes were doing before joining together. The second, #-1, is Start of Darkness, which shows the backstory and origins of Team Evil leaders Xykon and Redcloak, along with how the Monster in the Dark ended up as their secret weapon.
• Contest Jitters is one for Satin Steele.
• Prequel, the aforementioned Elder Scrolls fan webcomic, is is one for Oblivion.
• Dirty Healings was released after the Hazbin Hotel pilot but is set before it. It shows how Angel Dust wound up being Charlie's first patron.

Web Videos

• The Vampire Diaries: A Darker Truth: The show is supposed to be a prequel to the events of the first episode of The Vampire Diaries. It shows what happened when Damon first arrived in Mystic Falls and leads up to Vickie's attack in the pilot.

Western Animation

• The '90s cartoon short Another Froggy Evening appeared to be a prequel to One Froggy Evening for most of the cartoon, where Michigan J. Frog appears in earlier time periods and meets characters who resemble the man who discovered him in the original short, but this is subverted in the Twist Ending: Michigan eventually reaches a desert island, and the castaway that sees him thinks of him as food rather than a chance to exploit him for fame. Just before the frog was put in a cooking pot, however, he was then abducted by Marvin the Martian. It turns out, happily, that Michigan's croaks are considered Martian, and Marvin and Michigan end it off with a duet.
• Arcane is a prequel series for League of Legends, serving to tell the origins of several of the game's Champions and how they end up where they are in the present lore. While the show was originally considered an Alternate Continuity to the franchise's mainline lore, a developer update released in October 2023 announced that the series would now be treated as the canonical origins of any Champions that appear in it from that point onward.
• Parodied in Earthworm Jim, with a "promo" of Young Earthworm Jim which would feature Jim's many "adventures" before the suit came about.
• Recess: All Growed Down was released in 2003 (two years after the show was cancelled), but features T.J. and his friends as kindergarteners, rather than fourth (or fifth) graders.
• All Hail King Julien serves as a prequel to the Madagascar franchise, as it explains how King Julien became king in the first episode, and is otherwise set chronologically before the first movie.
• Dawn of the Croods serves as a prequel to The Croods, showing the family living happily with other cave families in Ahh! Valley.
• Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated is heavily implied to be a prequel to the original 1969 series in its final episode.
  • The forthcoming HBO Max series Velma will definitely be a prequel to the Scooby series as it will focus on Velma's origins as mystery cracker.
• In The Lion Guard, the first two seasons take place in the middle of The Lion King II: Simba's Pride, as Kiara, Kovu and Vitani were shown as cubs. However, the final season takes place after the end of The Lion King II as Kiara, Kovu and Vitani were shown as adults.
• Disney's Hercules: The Animated Series is a prequel to the Disney movie Hercules of the same name, showing Hercules during his teen-age years.
• The Alf animated series is a prequel to ALF showing Alf's life on Melmac.
• In the case of Star Wars Legends, long before the prequels that we all know, the animated shows Droids and Ewoks were prequels of the original trilogy. The first told the story of C-3PO and R2-D2 before they met Luke and the second one told the lives of the Ewoks before their first encounter with humans.
• Considering that Taz-Mania shows Taz still living in Tazmania and in his parent's house probably in his late teens/early twenties, then the show can be considered a loose prequel to the Looney Tunes cartoons.
• Batman: The Brave and the Bold's season 3 episode "Bold Beginnings!" features stories told by Green Arrow, Plastic Man, and Aquaman as they each take turns explaining to one another how they first met Batman.
• Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai is set in the year 1920, about 64 years before the original film, and follows the origins of Gizmo and the shopkeeper Mr. Wing.

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