You have
You Cant Go Home Again, you have
Stranger In A Familiar Land, and you have this.
Basically, this is when a character who wants to escape some nastiness, or probably he just defeated the nastiness, and finally returns home... and sees that the nastiness is there, too.
It can happen in the middle of the plot or be a finale. In case of the former, it can trigger
Lets Get Dangerous or give the unlucky homecomer
a level in badass when he finally decides to give the nastiness a fight. In case of the latter, it can be a
Shoot The Shaggy Dog ending.
Examples
- The final chapters of The Lord Of The Rings deal with the Scouring of the Shire, which has Frodo and the hobbits, fresh from finishing off the quest to defeat Sauron and destroy the Ring, returning home to find that the Shire has been taken over by evil Men led by Wormtongue and Saruman. The hobbits mobilize their fellows and drive the Men out of the Shire. Wormtongue stabs Saruman In The Back after being abused one time too many by the wizard and is promptly killed by the hobbits as he tries to get away.
- Doom 2 begins with this.
- Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor has this as one of the multiple endings.
- Knights Of The Old Republic, the destruction of Dantooine
- In The Suffering, you're on an island overrun by hideous monsters. In the sequel, you're back in your hometown—and the monsters have followed you.
- Obligatory Buffy The Vampire Slayer example: a kid in a coma somehow "escaped the nightmare world in which he was trapped." Said nightmare world has leaked out to create a sort of town-wide Room 101.
- One of the earliest and most famous examples, The Odyssey: Odysseus finally arrives in Ithaca to see that a horde of unruly suitors have taken over his home, eaten his food and are vying for the hand of his wife while refusing to leave.
- In the movie The Warriors, the titular group are a "hero" street gang, and after being framed for murder, have to fight their way from New York back to their home in New Jersey. After many battles, traps by the police, and losing their members, they finally, as the sun rises, arrive "home"...an industrial dump filled with smokestacks and pollution, yet their happiness cannot be denied.
- In Digimon Tamers, Takato is horrified to find out shortly after the team returned to the Real World from the Digital World that the D-Reaper followed them home, kicking off the last arc.
- The last few chapters of Coraline.
